"This is an extremely worthwhile book-a real bridgebuilder-executed by one of the few philosophers in the world able to speak eloquently in the language of Anglo-American and Continental philosophy." -Owen Flanagan, Duke University Both Anglo-American and Continental thinkers have long denied that there
can
be a coherent moral defense of the poststructuralist politics of Michel
Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-Fran9)is Lyotard. For many Anglo
American thinkers, as well as for Critical Theorists such as Habermas, poststructuralism is not coherent enough to defend morally. Alternatively, for Foucault, Deleuze, Lyotard, and their followers, the practice of moral theorizing is passe at best and more likely is insidious. Todd May argues both that a moral defense of poststructuralism is necessary and that it is possible. First, he develops a metaethical view of moral theoriz
ing that treats it as a social practice rather than a transcendentally derived
guarantee for right action. He then articulates and defends antirepresen
tationalism, a principle central to poststructuralism. Finally, May offers a version of consequentialism that is consonant both with the principle of antirepresentationalism and with other poststructuralist commitments. In conclusion, he distinguishes morality from an aesthetics of living and shows the role the latter plays for those who embrace antirepresentationalism. Todd May is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Clemson University. He is
the author of two previous books published by Penn State Press, The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism (1994) and Between Genealogy and Epistemology: Psychology, Politics, and Knowledge in the Thought ofMichel Foucault
(1993).
The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, Pennsylvania
Todd May
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism
The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, Permsylvania
Contents Preface Introduction Moral Discourse 2 Moral Antirepresentationalism
3
A Multivalue Consequentialism
4 Consequentialism and Supererogation
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Public�lion Data May, Todd, 1955The moral theory of poststructuralism / by Todd May. cm. p. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-271-01468-7 (cloth) ISBN 0-271-01469-5 (paper) 1. Ethics, French.
2. Ethics, Modern-20th century.
4. Foucault, Michel-Ethics. Jean Fram;ois-Ethics.
3. Deconstruction.
5. Deleuze, Gilles-Ethics. 6. Lyotard,
I. Title.
BJ703.D44M38 1995 170'.944-dc20
94-45435 CtP
Copyright
Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-1003 II is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to usc acid-free
paper for the first printing of all clothbound books. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements o( American NaHonll1 Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Librny Materials, ANSI 2.48-1992.
vii
1 19 47 81 119
5 From Morality to an Aesthetics of Living
135
Bibliography
147
lndex
151
Preface In this book I defend several central tenets of the pOSlstructuralism of thinkers like Gilles Deleuze, Jean-Franc;ois Lyolard, and especially Michel Foucault. My arguments, however, are made mostly in the idiom of Anglo-American philosophy. Although I harbor no iUusieR that I have addressed all the relevant issues, especially all the relevant metaethica! issues, I do hope to have built the framework for a coher cnt defense of an important strand of recent French philosophy. As with my previous books, working with Sandy Thatcher, Cherene Holland, and the staff al Penn Slate Press has been a pleasure. I can not imagine a more cooperative publishing house. Keith Monley's copyediting will doubtless save more than one reader from unneces sary puzzling over my arguments. Alisa Carse was helpful in point
ing out several important texts in Anglo-American philosophy that I would otherwise have overlooked. Discussions with Mark Lance about the material yielded new insights and helped me avoid numerous er rors. Owen Flanagan and Peter Railton offered thoughtful comments on the text, allowing me to situate my work more clearly within the context of Anglo-American moral theory. The errors that remain must be chalked up to my own philosophical shortcomings. Readers of my previous book, The Political Philosophy of Poststruc will recognize this book as a development of
turalist Anarchism,
thoughts first sketched in that book's last chapter. Sections of that last chapter are scattered throughout the first severa) chapters of the present book. This book is dedicated to three people, two of them in memoriam. The latter are Michel Foucault and John Coltrane. The third, still very much alive, is Tek Lin. Without these three, I would be bereft of even the modest knowledge that I do possess about the art of living.
Introduction Doing philosophy, especially moral philosophy, is like trying to hold a bunch of Ping-Pong balls under waler al the same time. Just as you get that last one under your pinky, another one slips out from beneath your thumb and forefinger and floats to the surface. And you are left figuring out how to rearrange your grip just a little in order to keep them all under at once. In moral philosophy, the Ping-Pong balls are our moral intuitions-at least our deep ones-and the grip, our mOfal theories. The trick is to figure oul the right grip, so thai some stray
moral intuition does not come floating to the surface 10 stare lazily at you in stark refutation of your efforts. This book proposes the right grip. However, like all moral theories,
this proposal does not attempt to answer-or even to generate a ma trix for answering-all the relevant questions that might impose them selves on someone who wants to live a morally worthy life. In fact, the proposal offers some reasons such a matrix cannot be constructed, reasons that morality inevitably involves the clash of deep conflicting moral intuitions whose resolvability at any given theoretical level may be impossible. Like all moral theories, then, mine is a proposal not just about how to keep all the Ping-Pong balls under water but also about which things are the Ping-Pong balls and which the floating debris. The proposal has three separable parts: a metaethics of moral talk (Chapter 1), a concrete moral principle regarding what I call antirepre
sentationalism (defended in Chapter 2 and extended in Chapter 5), and
a consequentialist moral theory (Chapters 3 and 4). Since at least two of these can stand independently of the others, it is important to say some thing both about the relations between them and about the motivation for presenting them as a whole. In the case of the metaethics , that is not
so difficult. A:ny good metaethics ought to offer an account of moral ity--or some significant part of it-that allows for at least some compe tition between moral theories for acceptance. This is because the his torical disputes that have characterized moral philosophy ought to be seen, it seems to me, precisely as moral disputes, as disagreements within the moral realm. If a metaethical approach rules out one of the theoreti cal claimants as not offering a moral theory or not engaging in moral philosophy, then the disagreement between them is no longer moral. It
Introduction
2
is, at best, a disagreement between a moral theory and some other kind of theory. Although I defend a version of consequentialism as offering the best structure for a moral theory, I see no benefit in doing so by giving an account of the moral realm thai precludes deontological or virtue ethical accounts from being considered moral theories. Such theoretical coups d'etat have the dual weaknesses of making the task of the moral theorist too easy (it is not difficult to defend a moral theory as better than competing moral theories when its major rivals are no longer considered even to be moral theories) and of not grappling with the questions for which we seek answers by turning to moral inquiry. (f, for instance, the disputes between deontologists and consequentialists are not moral ones, the conclusion we should draw ought not to be that one or the other is a superior moral theory but that some of the most interesting philosophical action is occurring in a field other than morality. So there is some necessary independence of the metaethics from the moral theory, in the sense that the metaethics does not entail the moral theory here proposed. The situation is not quite as simple regarding specific moral principles. It is questionable whether a certain type of
Introduction
3
the metaethical question can be raised whether a moral theory ought to be prescriptive theory as well as a theory of value (a concern that will be addressed in Chapter 3), the theory of value offered here, whether or not all that a moral theory should be, is consonant with any number of delineations of the moral realm. It is also a theory to which one can be committed without being committed to the prin ciple of anlirepresentationalism, although I expend some effort to con struct a consequentialism that responds to that principle (which is why
the presentation of the principle precedes that of the theory). The principle of antirepresentationalism, however, although inde pendent of the metaethics, is not independent of the consequential ism. In fact, one of the virtues claimed for the consequentialism is that, in contrast to act-oriented nonconsequentialist and virtue-theoretical approaches, consequentialism offers the most attractive moral theory for one who embraces antirepresentalionalism. I argue that a commit ment to antirepresentationalism effectively predudes one from articu lating the moral reaLm virtue-ethically, and that at least one, more or less representative, rights-based approach to antirepresentationalism fails to capture important implications of the principle.
reflection, should it not affirm certain principles-or at least stand ready
This does not mean, however, that I defend a traditional view of consequentialism, or, more important, that I see the concerns of a tra
to affirm them-could be called moral at alL If, for instance, someone is conSidering whether to pursue a project that would involve the tak
ditional consequentialism as vindicated over those of a traditional deontological theory. What is offered here, and explicated in Chapter
ing of innocent human life, and if, in reflecting on the advisability of
3, is a multivalue consequentiaLism, one that does not measure accord
the project, the idea does not arise that the taking of innocent human life constitutes a reason not to pursue that project, it could reasonably
ing to a single value, such as pleasure or preference, all the conse quences entailed by the alternatives facing someone in a given situa
be asked whether such reflection could be called moral. (This constraint on morality is pursued further in Chapter 1.) There are moral prin
tion. This change from a single- to a multivalue consequentialism has several ramifications that need to be addressed.
ciples or values, then, that cannot be jettisoned without raising the question whether one is engaged in moral discussion at all. We may
First, the cost of such a change is that moral dilemmas that might otherwise seem to admit of a solution might now appear more intrac table, involving the relative weighing of two (or more) values that can
call such principles or values morally "basic" in this sense. This issue, however, has no direct bearing on the specific principle that is pro posed here-the principle of antirepresentationalism-since it is a prin ciple that can b e rejeded without concern that its rejection would place one outside the moral realm altogether. The principle is not a "basic" one, even if it is justified by some more "basic" ones. So the metaethics J offer here entails neither the moral theory nor the moral principle I defend. The proposal's moral theory is also independent of both the metaethics and the principle of antirepresentationalism. There are many metaethical accounts of moral talk that could be and indeed have been constructed with which consequential ism generally and the multivalue consequentialism here proposed are consistent. Although
not be reduced to a single measure. This cost would seem to vitiate a multi value consequentialism, because as a moral theory it might be unable to provide moral guidance in difficult moral situations. While this cost must be conceded, I argue that a multivalue consequential ism actually reflects the current state of our moral knowledge. There are many moral situations that are difficult to resolve because they involve incommensurable values. While the theory holds out the pos sibility of resolution, it does not legislate one that would be artificial and would deny deep shared moral intuitions. This cost, however, points toward another one that might prove more damaging to the theory. Is it possible that a multivalue conse quentialism could either prescribe or endorse conflicting courses of
4
Introduction
action in a given sHuation? If so, the theory itself would see� to be internally inconsistent. This is an important objection that reqUIres an extended response (and receives it in Chapter 3). Aside from its costs, the multivalue consequentialism here proposed offers significant concessions to traditional nonconsequentialist theo ries of morality. There are two often related criticisms of consequen tialism posed by such theories Ihat, if true, would display (on sequentialism's distance from our moral convictions regarding equal treatment and fairness. The first is thai consequentialism allows the violation of individual rights if such violation promotes the best con sequences. For any single-value consequentialism, there is always the threat of such a violation. Assuming, for example, the single value were happiness, it would be morally advisable to violate someone's pur ported right if violating that right would cause more happiness over all. Even assuming the proposed value were a right of some sort, it would endorse violations of other rights if such violations contrib
Introduction
5
lusory. Some of the untoward entailments of single-value consequen tialism should force a rethinking of the commitments consequential ism has traditionally made. The merits claimed here for consequen tialism, as opposed to deontological or rights-based moral theories, are, for the most part, structural rather than substantive. Specifically, they are that consequentialism better accommodates the principle of anti representationalism and that it accords better with the project of moral deliberation in cases of potential conflict, particularly conflicts between rights and other consequences. Thus, the most compelling reason to embrace a multivalue consequentialism is not that it gener ates moral principles that resonate better with our current moral in tuitions. In fact, our intuitions are diverse enough that they include rights, duties, and the types of consequences traditionally cited by consequentialism.2 Rather, the reason to embrace consequentialism is that it gives us a better picture of our moral space. Let us return, however, to the question of the relations between
uted to the preservation of the right valued. This is not a problem for a multivalue consequentialism that endorses a variety of rights, how
metaethics, moral theory, and moral principle. With independence run
ever. The latter d oes f �ce the problem of weighing rights when they . . conflict, u that IS a different problem, one that, I argue, is better re
three different aspects of the work: the metaethics, the principle, and
? �
solved WIthin the framework of a consequentialist analysis than within a purely rights-based one. Of course, the idea that a consequentialist can coherently offer an account of rights at all has also to be addressed.
�
The �ther prob em for traditional versions of consequentialism has . to do WIth the Just �ce of the distribution of consequences. Here a single . value consequenhahsm faces a dilemma: either its value is distribu tion-neutral, in which case it faces charges of distributive injustice in cases where allegedly unjust distributions will result in more overall con tributio� to the value; or its value is one of distributive justice, in . �vhlch case It has left no room for which values are to be distributed ultiv�lue consequentialism resolves this problem by mak�ust1y . l A m . . 109 fair distribution of certain goods or values one of the more heavily .
weighted values in the theoretical structure. At this point, however, one may wonder whether the theory has conceded so much to nonconsequentialist perspectives that it is no longer a pure consequentialism. The perceived concessions are not ilL The S:[jgl(>-val �e �on�eq �entialist mig�t try to fudge matters here and say tha t the smgle value � s , X dlstnbuted accord109 to pattern Y of just distribution." . ASld� from . the q�eshon whether this is any longer a single-value consequential 'sm, ,t still runs mto the problem that issues of distributive justice usually con cern m ?rc than one value to be distributed (unless, of course, one defines the vatuI' . to b� ?,stflbuted so abstractly that one gains a formal solution to the problem by . sacnf.clng any interesting mora! content).
ning in so many directions, it may fairly be asked, What unifies these the moral theory? There are two answers here, the first easier and less surprising than the second. The first is that if alt three are right, then we have in hand a fairly good overview of the moral realm. Given the argument above for the independence of metaethics and moral theory, one would expect their relationship to be one of consistency rather than seamlessness. However, with both together, the moral realm is delineated much more sharply than with merely one. The principle of antirepresentationalism further directs moral reflection by offering a strong, ceteris paribus, constraint on moral deliberation and action. Taken together, then, the three draw the battle lines for moral delib eration, not as a unified front for attacking moral questions, but as several well-coordinated fronts that should, in the end, prove as pow erful as any single well-fortified front (if the martial metaphors will be forgiven in a book on morality). The second answer to the question of what unifies these different theoretical strands is not as straightforward. Although it will not be manifestly apparent in much of the book, I am trying to provide a moral defense of many of the political writings of contemporary French 2. It is not, of course, the role of a moral th'.'Qry simpty to COdify Our moral intuitions. Nor must it be committed to preserving all of them. However, when it rejects a morat intuition of ours, it must do so for reasons, and those reasons presumably-at least in part-rest on other, more deeply held moral intuitions. This sccms to me an implication of Rawls's concept of reflective equilibrium . 1 discuss this issue more in Chapter 3.
Introdu ction
6
thinker,s, especially those of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean Fran�Ois Lyotard, thinkers I will group under the rubric "poststruc tUfalist." This task involves taking their common and deepest corn , enls and showing how Ihey are morally both compelling and mlt � conSistent. It is a project that, although outlined in Ihc last chapler of my last book/ is not undertaken without some hesitation. The pri mary Source of that hesitation is the attitudes of these thinkers them selves toward moral reflection, as attitudes that ranged from reticence (Fou �a ult and Lyotard) to outright disdain (Deleuze). . of the poststructuralist approach to political philosophy, es C::rlhCS pecially those associated with the Critical Theorists (who have focused primarily on �ouca �lt), have seen the lack of a moral grounding for poststructurahst claIms to be one of the most problematic areas of its thought, The (broadly) critical theoretical argument against this as pect of poststructuralism begins with the recognition that, for poststructuralism, power is both creative and pervasive, Power is cre ative in that it not only represses pregiven objects but also creates its � bjects: f�r inst��ce, psychological practice creates certain personal Ity types In addlhon to marginalizing others (which it also may help , pervasive in that power lies not only in the state or in to cre �te), It I� orgamzed reSistance to the state but at all levels of interpersonal (and, , psychological practice creates its objects, intrapersonal) interac smce tion. "For Foucault," writes Michael Walzer, "there is no focal point, but rather an endless network of power relations.'" And Peter Dews: " IDluring the 1?70's Foucault's inclination is to play down the repres . sive and negahve aspects of power and to present the operation of power as primarily positive and productive."5 J� order to grasp this dual point, which is the starting place for the . theoretical critique, it would perhaps not be a bad idea to offer Critical an example. In Discipline alld PIli/ish, Foucault offers a history of the . prison, an � es �ecially the French prison, that tries to undermine any . progressIvist history that would portray prisons as gradually reform mg themselves from a state of barbarity to their current state of semibarbarity. �roj ects such as the shilting of emphasis from punish . , ment to rehablhtatlon have had the effect not so much of introducing �uma �e t�eatment of prisoners as of turning them from doers of wrong 1010 crlmmal personalities, "Behind the offender, to whom the inves-
�
3 , T t P01i1ic1l1 Philosophy ofPostSlwcll/rlllist AIJarchism
(University Park: Penn
sylvanlll Stale University Press, 1994), chap, 6. 4 .."The Politics of Michel Foucault," in FflUCIlUII: A CritiCll1 Reillier, ed. David COUSinS Hoy (Oxford: Basi! Blackwell, 1986),55. 5. Logic, of Disi"Ugralio'l: Post-Structuroli'l Though! /Iud /I,t Claims of Cr;tiCllt TlI(cry (London: Verso, 1987), 161-62.
Introduction
7
tigation of the facts may attribute responsibility for an offense, stands the delinquent whose slow formation is shown in a biographical in vestigation, The introduction of the 'biographical' is important in the history of penality. Because it establishes the 'criminal' as existing be fore the crime and even outside il."6 Modern penology, along with the allied "sciences" of psychology, criminology, and sociology, creates objects like delinquency, abnormal ity, and at-risk personalities, which in turn it feels called upon to cure, quarantine, or oversee. This creation is not merely an ideological ob fuscation; it does not cover up some truth about who the objects of penal intervention really are. Instead, by subjecting them to its proce dures, penology and its allied practices actually produce their objects in the specificity of their characteristics. This productive aspect of power is not restricted to the state, but occurs by means of a convergence of several practices that not only emerge from nonstate sources but also do not directly answer to the state. The relation, for instance, between psychotherapeutic practice and the state is a complex one; it would be an inadequate character+ izalion of this relation's political effects to say that they work to sup port state power. For the poststructuralists, not only psychology and penology but many practices create their political effects this way. The convergence of social practices often creates political effects that are not correctly seen as either emanating from or in support of a single institution (state or otherwise) or a single class. Rather, the social field is a field of political effects, effects of power, that both constrain and constitute many of the ways in which people act and think of them selves. In short, for poststructuralism the social field is a network of intersecting practices, each generating (by itself and in resonance with others) effects of power, power effects that are both productive and pervasive.1 But if power is productive and pervasive, then one must wonder for two related (but not always clearly distinguished) reasons-what jus tification there would be for resisting it. First, if the moral principles that are invoked to justify the resistance are themselves social creations, what justificatory force can they possess? Since what are being criticized are social practices, and since the ground of criticism is also a social prac tice (the social practice of moral discourse), and since all social prac6, Disripliut aud Punish 119751. trans, Alan Sheridan (New York: Random House, 1977),252. 7. One might be tempted to ask here what power is. For the postslructuralists, ;t is the efk><:tive enactment of constraints and restraints upon behavior.
Introduc tion
8
is it ab�ut lices are products (at least in pari) of power relali�ns, what l passing of capa II renders � thai � the social practice of moral discourse judgment on other practices? On what grounds do we privilege mOral. , ity? And if we cannot privilege any moral principles, how are we to JUs,
tify political critique? . Second, if power is everywhere, then is the result of all resIstance not just another set of power relations? One does not escape power by political intervention; one merely redistributes it by creating new or different practices thai themselves generate power effects. But if there are always to be power relations, then what is the point of resistance? And if there is no poinl lo resisting exercises of power, then postslruc· luralism as a political theory loses its point. In Nancy Fraser's words, "The problem is that Foucault calls too many different sorts of things power and simply leaves it at that. Granted, all cultural practices in volve constraints. But these constraints are of a variety of different kinds and thus demand a variety of different normative responses."& The latter point assumes that, for poststructuralists, power is inher ently problematic, and thus that the goal of political intervention is, in sofar as it is possible, to eliminate it. That assumption is mistake n. Fou cault, who is the direct object of these criticisms, replied by pointing out that "relations of power are not something bad in themse lves, from which one must free oneself.. . . The problem is not of trying to dissolve them in the utopia of a perfectly transparent communication (as it is for Jurgen HabermasJ, but to give one's self the rules of law, the techniques of man agement, and also the ethics, the ethos, the practic e of self, which would allow these games of power to be played with a minimum of domina tion.'" That practices are often infused by relations of power, then, consti t �tes no obstacle to a critical assessment of those relations. The ques . tIOn IS not whether there is power but which relations of power are acceptable and which unacceptable. And it is on the question of ac ceptability that critics claim poststructuralism founders. Peter Dews writes that Foucault and lyotard conceptualize political conflict in terms of a clash between two kinds of forces ...on the assumption that an oppressive force is one which claims truth or universal validity for its standpoint . .. . But although the universality of a principle 8. "Foucault on Modern Power: Empirical Insights and Normative Confusions'" Praxis Ill/enla/iollall (1981): 286. 9. ' The Ethic of Care for the Self as iI Practice of Freedom" [1984 interview].
:
in
TIlr Filial Flmmllll, I'd. James Bernauer and David Rasmussen (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), 18.
•
Introduction
does not in itself guarantee that absence of coercion, the rejection of universality is even less effective in this respect, since there is
nothing to prevent the perspective of one minority from includ
ing its right to dominate others.o L Habermas, in a similar vein, claims that "Foucault resists the de mand to take sides; he scoffs at the 'gauchist dogma' which contends that power is what is evil, ugly, sterile, and dead and that that upon which power is exercised is 'right, good, and rich.' For him, there is no 'right side."'Ii Furthermore, there can be no right side for Fo �ca�lt . because he calls into question the values by whICh he could )ushfy
any critical stand. "But if it is just a matter of mobilizing counter-power, of strategic battles and wily confrontations, why sh �uld w.e �uster
any resistance at all against this all-pervasive power clfc�lahng m �he bloodstream of the body of modern society, instead of Just adaptmg ourselves to it7"L2 As Nancy Fraser puts it: Foucault "fails to appreci ate the degree to which the normative is embedded and infused throughout the whole of language at every level, and the degree to which, despite himself, his own critique has to make use of modes of description, interpretation, and judgment formed within the modern Western normative tradition."L3 The charges advanced by Dews, Habermas, and Fraser, though not identical. have the same result. For the latter two, Foucault's rejection of Enlightenment values (or, as Habermas terms it, "mod�rnity") un dercuts the possibility of political critique. By embraCing a stand wholly outside our context, Foucault bars himself from using any of it
for the purposes of furthering a political vision. Alternatively, insofar as Foucault would like to invest his analyses with a critical power, he is forced to abandon their motivating assumptions in order to do so. For Dews, the specific problem is not modernity, but universality (but a universality in the modern moral sense). By precluding all binding universal values, Foucault and Lyotard also preclude assessment of any discourse or practice as oppressive or dominating. In either cri tique, however, the problem is that Ihere is no place from which moral judgment could arise: it is inaccessible to the poststructuralist approach to political tHeory. 10. Logics ()f Disil1ltgrati()lI, 217. 11. Tile Philosophical Discourse ()f Modernity: TWI'Ivl' Leclurrs [1985], trans.
the case I to show thlll the second sentence of this
Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987),282. In some sense, make
for II
poststructuralist ethics tries
quotation does nol follow from Ihe first. 12. Ibid., 283-84.
13. �FoucauJt on Modern Power/ 284.
10
Introduction
Contrary to many who would like to defend poststructuralism including the posistruciural.isis themselves-I believe thai the demand for a moral grounding for poslstructuralisl claims is a justified one. It is not unfair 10 demand of pOSlstructuralism a justification or justifi
cations regarding the pOSitions it takes; and I do not see how, without lapsing into the very "decisionism" of which Habermas accuses ii,
poststructuralism can avoid meeting that demand. Moreover, for rea sons that I make clear below, I believe that the traditional poslstructuralist resistance to this demand is based on a confusion that led Foucault, Deleuze, and lyolard [rom an embrace of the principle of antirepresentationalism (or something like it) to a rejection of moral discourse altogether. Thus, the second, and for me more urgent, task of this book is to articulate both a moral theory and a metaethical standpoint that is confluent with the broad commitments of poststructuralism. Before turning to that task, however, it is worth pausing a moment to show how much poststructuralists have left themselves open to the critical theoretical critique. Perhaps Deleuze is the most vehement in his rejection of morality. He praises Spinoza's Etllics, for instance, be cause it "replaces Morality, which always refers existence to transcen dent values. "II For Deleuze, as for Nietzsche, the project of measuring life against external standards constitutes a betrayal, rather than an affirmation, of life. Alternatively, an ethics of the kind Spinoza has offered seeks out the possibilities life offers rather than denigrates it by appeal to "transcendent values." In more purely Nietzschean terms, the project of evaluating a life by reference to external standards is one of allowing reactive forces to dominate active ones, where reac tive forces are those which "separate active forcefrom what it call do."L} More than one commentator has pOinted to the irony of an ethical approach that, while condemning moral evaluation by reference to standards that are not instantiated in life, promotes instead an ap proach to evaluation that itself banks on what could be but is not yet.L6 Although the matter is not quite as simple as that (I have argued else where that, for Deleuze, both life-affirming forces and life-denying 14. Spilloltl: PrDcticDI Philosophy [19701, trans. Robert Hurley (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988), 23. 15. Deleuze, Niet�sclLt Dud Phi/osop/ly [1962\. trans. Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983),57. 16. See. e.g.. Vincent I)es(-ombes, Mud�m FW1(h PhilOS<Jphy 119891, tra"". L. Scott Fox and I . M. Harding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pr�s, 1980), 180; and Vincent Pecora, "Deleuze's Nietzsche and Post-Structuralist Thought." SubStauce 48 (1986): esp. 48.
Introduc tion
11
question remains, ones are within, rather than exterior to, life),17 the g and which as life affirmin life as ined determ be to are forces which practices that denying? How are we t o recognize and distinguish the to this ques answer 's Deleuze are active from those which are reactive? is at is what because , enough not tion-that we must experiment-is whether assess to how but forces active e sue here is not how to promot ed, is indeed ac an arrangement of forces, or a practice, once promot to achieve a how nol is n questio the words, Ln . other tive or reactive to me an un goal, but which goals are to be achieved. That seems avoidably moral question. is legend. Foucault's reticence in propounding principles of action y Sexllalit of History of TIle volume first His oft-quoted remark in the of ent deploym the against attack counter "The rallying point for the but modell, nalytic psychoa Ithe sire sex-de be to not sexuality ought its crypticism and bodies and pleasures"L8-is more generally cited for an alternative inadequate development than for its establishment of avoided mak t view of sexual practice.Lt Throug hout his life, Foucaul principle for or � for d�ciding ing recommendations either for action aVOided. whICh and ed promot be which actions or practices should tone of the with r, howeve , sharply sts contra e This studied reticenc prison reha nalysis, psychoa of es practic the which in s, his historie a way that bilitation, population contro), and so forth are discussed in In those ility. acceptab is designed to raise doubts about their moral , to analysis political his of works, he seems, while confining the scope pre have that s practice ing abandon -for offer reasons-moral reasons sented themselves to us as natural and unavoidable. Lyotard has been more attuned to the moral dimension of political theory than eilher Deleuze Of Foucault, but in trying to engage in moral
recommendations has aVOided the universal bindingness of norms tra· ditionally associated with moral principles. His extended conversation with Jean-Loup Thebaud, Atl ]IISlt (entitled in English just Gamillg), tries to come to terms with this problem regarding the issue of justice. The threat posed to practice in articulating a universal conception of justice is that of allowing one linguistic genre, the one Lyotard calls "cognitive," to dominate over others. In answer to Thebaud's question, Why be just?
Lyotard replies:'"Any discourse meant to account for prescriptions, trans17. May, �The Polilics of liFe i n the T hought of Gilles Deleuze." 5�b5tQllct 20,
no. 3 (1991). 18. Tht Hi 5tory oj St:CUQ/ity. vol. 1, All III'rod�c'ion 11976], trans. Roberl Hurley
(New York: Random House, 1978), 157. 19. E.g., Mark Cousins and Athar Hussain. Micht/ Foucault (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984), 223.
12
Introduction
forms them into conclusions of reasonings, into propositions derived from other propositions, in which the latter are metaphysical propositions on being and history, or on the soul, or on society. . .. What seems to me so strong in Kant's position, of course, as well as in Levinas's, is that they reject in principle such a derivation or such a deduction."lOLyotard con cludes that thc "language game" of morality "has no origin; it is not de rivable. There you are. This implies that the task is one of multiplying and refining language games."ll That position is of a piece with the one developed in Lyotard's last major work, The Differtlld. The political project regarding language is thai of respecting genres and avoiding the domination of some genres by oth ers. The problem here, as Sam Weber points out in the aftenvord to Jllst Gaming, is that such a projei:t is internally incoherent. "[T[he concern with 'preserving the purity' and Singularity 'of each game' by reinforcing its isolation from the others gives rise to exactly what was intended to be avoided: 'the domination of one game by another: namely, the domina tion of the prescriptive."n The command to respei:t the diverSity of lan guage games is precisely a moral one; moreover, it is a universally bind ing one. "Everyone ought to respect the diversity of language games" is a prescriptive that is not confined to prescriptive discourse but is meant to be followed regardless of what genre of language one is en gaged in. And there is another problem. It cannot be that
all
genres ought
equally to be respected. If it were, then genres whose project is to domi nate other genres would have to be equally respected. While nol theo retically incoherent, such a pOSition is certainly politically so. That is precisely Peter Dews's point. Thus, nol only must the command to re spect language games be universal, it must be nuanced as well in order to promote what it wants to promote: the flourishing of different genres of discursive practice. Lyotard would like to press the idea that it is judg ment, in the Kantian sense of deciding cases without appeal to overarching rules, that must determine our assessment in particular cases of conflicts between genres. This, however, cannot be true, since for judg· ment to gel off the ground al all there must be a principle to which ap peal is made. It is more accurate to see judgment as comprising often competing principles that must be honed more finely in particular cases than to see it as lacking principles altogether . It seems, then, that poststructuralists wanl to take back with one
13
introduclion
the other. To understand this ultimately self-defeating stand, at least olle important contextual factor should be taken into account.
�
-:he
political context within which these wr t� rs theorize w� s, and remams, . sharply determined by the general upnsmg In France m May and June
of 1968: "the events of May" or "May '68," as it has come to be called. In the uprising, students first, and then many workers, staged weeks of protest against the de Gaulle government, and for at least several days it was uncertain whether the government itseJf w�uld fall The : . significance of the uprising for subsequent theones a� 10 three 1Oter related facts about it: that it was student led, that It mvolved many
�
diverse demands not traditionally associated with the Marxist Left, and that the French Communist Party aligned itself with the de Gaulle government to suppress the uprising. . For many, including the current generahon of French poststructur . . alists one of the central lessons to be drawn from the upnsmg was
;
that he traditional Marxist-Leninist approach to progressive politics was dead, that rather than trust a vanguard party to oversee and shep herd people's interests, people needed to speak publicly in the name of their own-inevitably very diverse and irreducible-interests a�d desires. T his lesson became a cornerstone of French poststructurahst theory, more or less codified in what I have called the principle of . antirepresentationalism, which I defined in my last book as the prin ciple that "representing others to themselves--either in who they are or in whal lhey want-ought, as much as possible, to be avoided."D I
argue at length for this principle-or rather one like it-in Chapter 2, for some of the reasons offered by Foucault (and ratified by Deleuze and Lyotard) and for some other reasons as well. The principle of anti representationalism, although informing t e
�
work of these thinkers, was, because of their rejection of moral diS course, never set forth and defended as such. This, I believe, contrib uted to a confusion that has subverted a moral defense of their posi tion. Foucault, Deleuze, and Lyotard seem to think that a commitment to the principle entails a refusal to engage in moral discourse altogether, as though moral discourse was itself, like many of the practices they criticized (e.g., psychoanalysis, Marxism, religion), a practice of repre senting others to themselves .
hand the moral principles they go to great lengths to cast aside with
Tn fact, however, antirepresentationalism, far from preduding moral discourse, is, if the argument of this book is right, an element of it. In order for morality to be unaVOidably representationalist, the proserip·
20. Lyotard and Thebaud, Jllst Gaming [19791. tran5. Wlad God:tich {Minne apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985),45. 21. ibid., 49. 22_ [bid., 104.
23. Thl' Political Philosophy of Post·Structuralist Altllrc/,ism, 130. The prinCiple is articulated nere in a different ilnd more nuanced way, in good part because in the current text I am less concerned with faithfulness to their view and thus feel freer to add my own emendations and correction5.
14
Introduction
tion of representationalism would have to cover far more ground than it actually does. It would have to proscribe not only practices of telling people who they ought to he and what they ought to want, but practices of ever telling or commending to people what they ought to do. Only in , way would all of morality, and not just that part of it that concerns thiS what people ought to be and want, fall under the proscription called anIirepresenlationalism. . N�ne of these t�inkers has made any argument-nor could one Imagme them maklOg one with any success-that there ought to be . no practices that tell people what they ought to do Such an argument , would he unaVOIdably self-defeating not only for poststructuralism �ut for any polit!cal theorist who attempted marc than just a descrip tIOn or explanatIOn of our political circumstances. Assuming-and I do not see how we can avoid this assumption-that the poststructuralists mean to commend certain social arrangements as be.Her (or, in any case, worse) than others, they are also at least com mitted to normative principles commending actions that lead to those . better social arrangements (or away from those worse ones) Jt seems, th�n, th�t some �Iippage from legitimate complaints against represen tatlOnalis.t p �acl1ces to complaints against all practices of prescription or pro.scnp.tlOn was. involved in the move from embracing antirepre . sentatlOnallsm to rejecting moral discourse l� Th� chall�nge facing someone who wants to defend the broad per spech�e �ehnealed by Foucault, Deleuze, and Lyotard is to abandon the r�Jechon of mor�1 discourse and to construct a moral approach that IS consonant With the contributions these thinkers have made. Meeting this challenge involves two related but distinct tasks. The first task, the concern of Chapter 1, is the construction of an account of moral practice, and specificaUy moraI discourse, as a contingent (rather than �ranscendent.ally grounded or guaranteed) and yet compelling p �actl�e. The .task is to show that the discursive practice of morality is hlstoncally situated and subject to some of the same political forces as other discursive practices, and yet that it can nevertheless com . mand-at least in its broad outlines--our assent If, on the one hand morality is not conceived as a contingent practice, then it cannot b� brought into line with the general poststructuralist view that all our . discursive practices are contingently grounded and politically infused If, o� the other hand, moral discourse is not sketched in such a way that It can compel us, then the underlying normative commitments of poststructuralism lose their force. 24.
�his characterization is a bit rough-and-ready and is instantiated differ
ently WIth each of these thinkers.
15
Introduction
The second task, which occupies the remainder of the book, is to articulate a moral theory t�at preserves po.sts�ructurali�t commitme.nts, d pecifically the commitment to the prmCiple of antuepresentatl0n :�s;. This is the moral theory proper. (For readers wh� are interested I Iy in a moral defense of poststructuralism and not 10 the status of i troduction to Chapter 2 :o�al discourse, skipping right from this n rstan�in�. Although I un?e of problems should not create any deep . as Indicated . above, IS, 11 t, throughou ly periodical 1 cof
25. Although idiom of the text is primarily Anglo-America�, at iI co� pl� of crucial places I have chosen to use terms aSSO(iated m re with Conh�ental thm k . mg . � My purpose in doing 50 is to orient both Anglo:A�eTlcan and CO�lmenlal phtloso phers to the inler:;;ections of the current work WIth Important Conllnenta] themes.
16
Introduction
Introduction
17
Both traditions, for instance, have been preoccupied with the sig nificance of language in constructing our view of the world. Both have
who we ought to be. Our personal characteristics, outside of those re quired to perform our moral duties, aresimply not the province of moral
concerned themselves with the role of social or community norms in epistemic justification. Both have raised questions about the integrity,
theory, and the attempt to make them so is both a violation of personal autonomy and a contribution to an invidious social conformity. What
or self-containedness, of the reflecting subject. What the current book attempts is the articulation and defense of a position that responds to several current moral concerns that are shared between Continental and Anglo-American philosophers: the social role of moral justifica tion, the political concern over personal autonomy, and the need to
Michael Stocker has called our "moral schizophrenia"26 in separating our morality from our personal feelings and projects is actually a sign
articulate moral phenomena in ways that do nol reduce them to simple matrices of duly or value. My suspicion, although I do not argue for
The upshot of this-and it is the subject of the last chapter-iS that we must make a strict distinction between morality and what I call an aesthetics of living. People's Jives can be seen as artistic creations. They
Before redeeming all the promissory notices this introduction has been issuing, let me offer a word about the general moral perspective
their unified composition, by their extremities or their balance, by their depth or their spontaneity, by their complexity or their simplicity. Some
proposed here. It is pervasive, in the sense that it sees no area as im mune from moral inquiry or judgment. It does not demand unlimited
lives we may call beautiful, others ugly. Some lives we want to emu late, others surround ourselves with, and still others avoid. AU of these
this, is that if such a position can stake its claim in the moral field, then it will draw the sympathies of segments of both traditions.
of good health. The demand for a unity of living championed by virtue ethics results, not in a cure for any moral schizophrenia, but instead in a social echolalia that we should be loath to prescribe.
may attract or repel us in any number of ways: by their contrasts or
sacrifice, however; moral theory is pervasive, but moral demands are
judgments ought to be seen in aesthetic, rather than moral, terms: they
not. First, although consequentialism is often seen as demanding that
concern what we (do or do not) like or appreciate or admire rather
one always perform the act that maximizes the good, an account of su
than what ought and ought not to be. We may have no appreciation for a life we consider to be ugly in an aesthetic sense, but this poses no
pererogation can, and will, be offered that mitigates the demands con sequentialism might be seen as placing upon an individual wondering about the extent of her or his moral responsibility. Moreover, the view
moral obligation to the person whose life it is to change it. That person may, of course, want to change it in order to please us or to attain some
that consequentialism demands that one always maximize the good
other goal that requires that she not be viewed as constructing an ugly
confuses the idea of consequentialism as a theory of value and conse
life. But should that person decide not to change it, we would have no moral ground from which to condemn her for her refusal.
quentialism as a theory of duty. Consequentialism should be seen as the former. Furthermore, the relation between value and duty is a com plex one that does not involve the simple reduction of the latter to the former. These are the subjects of some of Chapter 3 and of Chapter 4. The second reason unlimited sacrifice cannot be demanded by moral theory has to do, not with what one might be asked to do, but with
who one might be asked to be. The current status enjoyed by virtue ethical approaches rests in good part on their claim to address a moral fragmentation that characterizes contemporary life. Morality, they hold, has become distant from the way people conceive of and construct their lives, and so an approach to moral life must be developed that can inte grate its concerns into people's life concerns generally. What is required, in short, is an ethics of living rather than a moral theory of value or action. Virtue-ethical approaches try to provide this by constructing views of the good life rather than views of value or right action. 1 1lrgue in the chapter on anti representation that such an approach is wholly misguided. Although morality may commend to us certain val ues or actions and demand of us others, it has no business telling us
Thus we must separate moral judgments of action from aesthetic judgments of lives. Although the separation is often difficult, especially since, as shall be seen, moral values cannot be constructed without vio lating in part the principle of antirepresentationalism, it remains always necessary. The cost of assimilating what others ought to be to what we would like them to be is too high not to engage in the task of distin guishing the two, of erecting a barrier between the constraints that can be placed upon one's actions and the art by which one lives one's life. If the moral perspective articulated here is correct, then, morality will be seen as'a practice that is relevant to any personal deliberation over how to act, that prescribes values primarily and specific actions derivative from those, and that is concerned with our obligations to others rather than our relationship with ourselves. It is to the con struction of that perspective that I now turn.
26.
"The Schizophrenia of Modem Elhi(ai Theories," !oumal of Plrilosophy 73
(1976): 454.
1 Moral Discourse
We live in a philosophical age in which metaethics is once again on the agenda. It is, in the words of recent writers, a "great expansion,"1 a period
in which the philosophical world is letting it thousand theories bloom. This vital and as yet unchanneled production emerges from several shared per ceptions that have come to be taken as commonplace in current metaethical discussion. First moral talk possesses a semantics and a pragmatics al once far more subtle and far closer to scientific (or more generally descriptive) talk than a generation of noncognilivism would have us believe. Second, the ontological status of values is far less settled than noncognilivism had thought; to deny the reality of values al least requires a detailed argument, not merely an appeal to intuitions aboul meaningfulness. And last, there
has been a sense, one that can only be called "moral," that we ought not to
dismiss moral talk, that moral talk is a serious practice, and that it thus deserves deeper scrutiny than it previously received. A division of current metaethical theories has arisen that seems at times to be a metaethical aporia. Moral talk is, like other types of talk, a prac tice. However, when this aspect of ethics is focused upon, for instance in the recent work of Allan Gibbard or Simon Blackburn, the potential truth slatus of moral claims is rendered suspect. In Gibbard's words, NNorma live judgement mimics the search for truth."l Alternatively, when avail· ability of moral claims for evaluations of truth and falsity is argued for, L Stephen Darwall, Allan Gibbard. and reteT Raiiton, "Toward Fill de Siecle Ethi(s: Some Trends," PlrilO$Dphiclll Review 101, no. 1 (1992): 121. 2. Allan Gibbard, Wist Choi(ts, Apt Fulillg$: A Throry of Normative Judgemrnt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 218.
The Moral Theory of poststmcluralism
20
severed. I snow the connections between m oraI talk and practice get rd Boyd and Peter beIow how rea I·ISt� about va lues. sueh as Richa there is universal agreement , Raillon, perform this seven'ng Of course, sl ' mu both dispby the mechanism by . that an,Y ,account 0f moral lalk · . ' . must articulate the ways in whieh It IS whIch It IS action gUldmg and to fall owever, most theories have tended meamn . �'u I as a Ianguage. H . . . ment, noncognll!Vlsm to require dual this to one side or the o�h er. f . What this chapter propos�s is the former and cogmhvlS0m to the latter. discourse, a theory in which its actIOn a theory of moral talk as �or 1 � are seen as of a piece, rather than guidingness and its meamng uIness
in permanent tension.). . the current moral field: I hold, with To stake out my POSltlOn within . be taken seriously as claims of fact, ld u realists, that clai ms of value sh � . that moral discourse' when true, is but deny that the reason for thiS IS ,. I hold with noncognitivists, that a so in virtu e of being e�planator � an end�rsement, but deny that such moral claim is a commitment a a semantics of the projectivist "quire comml'tments and endorsement"s . 'th rationalists, that moral discourse IS or �xpressi vist type; I � ingness, but deny that that bon� .is a logically bound to acllon � g; and I hold, with relallvlsts, product of necessary pract cal reasonin . circumscribed, but deny culturally be ma that our Own moral dlSCou mora hold our l claims modestly �r that that fact means we o ht t discourse. My POSImoral ly different S I that we can concel've a radlCa. . . . . and, more scienhhcof n conceptio a ' . 10 .mts. tiOn IS anchoreu " at three po ng) "demisleadi bit a is this (although generally, what I want to caII ' in a reductionist account normative Iy scriptive" ---di scour�e as . discourses as 'practices in a wider social of truth; and 10 a vlew o ;�P . S'1' n is closest to that found in the recent field. I n some ways, th iS : id Wiggins; however, it replaces many work of john McDowell aP with cognitive ones, and disputes of McDowell 's perceptua� themes that allows for values, but nol account ' Wigg�ns s account of truth � true or false. nte d prachcal judgments, to be offers what Foucault, Deleuze, and ! My hope is that this POS''fon t be had'. a view of moral talk that Lyotard have assu med couId no ut having to cast anchor in some transhows its normative force WI'th or have to be cast there, then the post· seendentaI ground , Should anc . " ' . practices as empirically shl" ling a n u ve structuralist view of dl5Cursl abanId have' ,·n this case at least' to be open to political scruf y wOU . one of the motivations the poststructural. 10. IS doned. 1 believe that thiS
�01�, � f ,: �
-
t
Moral Discourse
21
ists had for either avoiding or rejecting moral discourse altogether. (The other motivation, regarding the principle of antirepresentation alism, I discuss in the next chapter.) Alternatively, if the lack of tran scendental support entailed the complete arbitrariness of moral dis course, then the project of moral theorizing would be rendered use less. Moral talk would possess no more moral claim upon others than either emotivist displays of personal attraction or disgust or subjec ' tivist reports of one s personal feelings. I begin this chapter by criticizing a contemporary approa ch to moral discourse and then offer an approach that resolves the difficult ies the criticized approach faces. From there, I discuss the status of moral values. At that point, it should appear that there is no difference be tween descriptive claims and moral ones, a position that would make incomprehensible the idea that moral discourse is action guiding . So I turn then to the distinctive traits of moral discourse, delineating both its discontinuity from descriptive discourse and its limits relative to other pOSSible moral and nonmoral discursive practices. As I tread this path, I carry on a running conversation with competing theorie s in order to show both their motivations and what I consider to be their strengths and failings. I should emphasize that, more than the chapters that follow, this chapter provides an overview rather than a defense , The position I stake out here involves commitments on issues that it would take a separate book to defend adequately. My purpose in proposin g this view, then, is twofold: to offer (1) a reasonable compet itor in the field of metaethics that (2) reflects poststructuralist commitm ents and meets poststructuralist critiques of morality.
�� � ;�
�
-
of Anglo·Ameri· . • may ring strangely in the ears 3. The term "moral dISCOU� common among Continental1sts and should re m r can philosophers. It is a.te ticed language game of moral talk. be taken to mean Ihe SOCIally P
:�
A Critique of Moral Realism Imagine this exchange: "You ought to write a letter to Congress de manding a suspension in aid to all countries that violate human rights." "I wrote a letter to my congresspers on just yesterday asking for a sus pension in aid \0 Israel." These two sentences, though clearly related by content, have tradi tionally required linguistic accounts that are wholly distinct. The lat ter, as a descriptive sentence, lends itself either to truth-conditional or inferentialist accounts; the former lends itself to expressivist accounts . Recent philosophers have attempted to draw the semantics of these two sentences much closer together, but the strategy for drawing them
22
The Moral Theory of Poststrucluralism
closer is to lake the prescriptive sentence on a certain model of de scriptive ones. Thus, moral talk is seen to possess truth conditions, just like descriptive talk, and furthermore the truth conditions for moral talk are irreducible to (even when, as is the case with Railton, they are supervenient upon) those for physical talk. In short, moral discourse is distinct from and yet similar in kind to descriptive talk, which provides the model for it. This strategy. unsurprisingly, involves a metaphysical commitment to moral entities, be they values or a conception of the good, as in some sense existent. This commitment underlies the view of moral discourse as irreducible, since the entities of which it speaks are, relative to the world we inhabit, explanatorily both efficacious and ineliminable. Two of the most powerful theories of this type of moral realism have been offered by Richard Boyd and Peter Railton, and though neilher of them provides a specifically linguistic underpinning to their conceptions of the status of moral entities, the assumption just cited underlies both. Boyd argues that the explanatory efficacy of moral entities requires us to submit to a realism about them. In that sense, he commits himself to the construction of a moral realism that is of a piece with his scientific realism. His strategy, as he states it, is to "[slhow that our moral beliefs and methods are much more like our current conception of scientific be liefs and methods (more 'objective: 'extemal: 'empirical,' 'intersubjec tive: e.g.) than we now think."4 Broadly, Boyd offers theory a of the good as a "homeostatic dusler," a duster of properties neither any one nor the entirety-but instead several-of which are definitive for the good. The analogy he draws here is with the biological concept of a species: "The appropriateness of any particular biological species for induction and explanation in biology depends upon the imperfectly shared and homeostatically related morphological, physiological, and behavioral fea tures which characterize its members."5 lf the good were a homeostatic cluster, then it could be considered a natural kind, playing an explana tory role in our theories in much the same way that other, scientific, natu ral kinds currently do. (In Chapter 3 the concept of a homeostatic clus ter, without its metaethical commitments, is discussed in more detail.) To the objection that the natural kinds posited by science are not nearly as contentious as the good is, Boyd replies that in order to consider sci ence in a realist way, one must assume that one's theories are approxi mately true, and engage in "reflective equilibrium" between theory and evidence from there. In fact, the heart of Boyd's view of scientific real ism is the notion that the reason for realism about our theories is not, as 4. Boyd, "HolY to Be a Morat Realist,� In Essays Oil MOrlli ReuliSnI, ed. Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (Ilhaca, N.Y.: Cornell Universily Press, 1988), 184. S. Ibid., 198.
Moral Disrourse
23
positivists might argue, that observation is distinct from theory (and thus from the natural kinds posited by theories), but instead precisely that there is no distinction: theories are confirmed as a whole rather than by connection to some theory-neutral obseJValion. Boyd claims that exactly this analogy holds for moral theories: the natural kinds they posit are understood realistically not because there is independent evidence for them but rather because they allow us to see the world in a way that is continually confirmed. Thai such confirmation would be a requisite for Boyd's realist com mitments is a view that will be familiar to those with an acquaintance with his views on scientific realism, presented, for example, in his semi nal ariele, "Realism, Underdetermination, and a Causal Theory of Evi dence." There he argues that the acceptability of scientific realism hangs on "the question whether or not certain inter-theoretic judgments of like lihood or plaUSibility are matters of experimental evidence about causal relations or merely the reflections of arbitrary conventions.Hi Given the unlikeliness of the latter, particularly in light of the confirmation offered by ongoing scientific practice, he urges us to adopt the former. Roughly, then, Boyd's argument for moral realism has two steps: first, explanatory efficacy is evidence for a causal relation between world and sentence, and second, moral discourse possesses explanatory efficacy and thus should be thought to possess that same causal relation. Although I argue in a bit, contra the second step, that all moral realisms, inasmuch as they are guided by a model of explanatory efficacy, are misguided, it is worth noting that the causal theory of evidence is itself controversial. I do not want to take issue with Boyd's claim that the intertheoretical success of scientific practice s i evidence for the truth of its claims, or with the idea thai that success is somehow predicated on causal interaction with the world. But his reaLism seems to want more (although I may be wrong about this). It seems to aim at the idea that there is a certain kind of causal relation thai is involved in scientific success, one that presum ably has to do with truth-producing conditions. The causal theory of evi dence, thus read, is structurally indistinguishable from many correspon dence theories of truth, and it shares their problems. Why should we be lieve that Ihere is a particular type of causal relation between people and their world wtlen their interactions with it produce true (or even prag matically successful) claims beyond the type that may be called true (or successful)?1 And if there is a type, then what is it? These are ques tions that Boyd has to confront if his causal theory of evidence is to 6. Boyd, "Realism, Underdetermination, and a Causal Theory of Evidence,"
NOl<s 7 (1973): 8-9. 7. The potential confusion of even thinking there is a type �true· be.:omes evi-
dent momentarily.
.
24
The Moral Theory of PoststructuraHsm
add anything to more straightforward realisms, of which Peter RaiJton's offers an example. Railton's realism bypasses the problem of causal theories of evidence,
linking explanatory efficacy and moral realism directly. The strategy for doing so is a naturalistic reduction of moral terms. What requires a com mitment to moral realism, then, is not a causal relation that holds be tween moral sentences and the world, for which explanatory efficacy pro vides testimony, but the coherence of the web of explanation itself. Moral realism allows us to explain natural phenomena by natural means, if we recognize that those natural means also include such entities as the good for someone or some community. Rou?hl�, ailton's strategy is to clarify the notion of a nonmoral good for an Indtvtdual as that which an idealized version of that individual
�
would choose for him- or herself. The idealized version of man A would beA himself, but possessing "unqualified cognitive and imaginative pow
ers, and full factual and nomological information about his physical and psychological constitution, capacities, circumstances, history, and so on. " To deriv� �oral good from this notion involves simply transferring it . from indIVIdual to community. Moral good is what an idealized version of a community would choose for itself. Thus moral good is, as Railton puts it, "an objectified subjective illlerest." This interest is naturalistic, in volving no more than a choice between possible actions; it circumvents the ontologically dicey project of positing a realm of moral values. It is also mutable; interests change with communities and within communi ti�s in the un folding of history. Last, and yet perhaps most significantly, . . thIS Interest IS explanatorily efficacious. For instance, the fact of social unrest can be explained not only by reference to people's desires and the situation in which they find themselves, but also by the fact that an ide alized version of that community would not choose its current arrange ment. This latte� explanation has the additional advantage of offering routes �ut of SOCIal �nrest and toward greater social rationality. "We may
. pomt to the eXIstence of feedback mechanisms described here as grounds for belief that we can make qualified use of historical experi ence as something like experimental evidence about what kinds of prac tices in what ranges of circumstances might better satisfy a criterion of social rationality. That is, we may assign this mechanism a role in a quali fied process of moral learning. " &
The objection has been raised to Railton's realism that it runs afoul of one version of the open-question argument. After all, it is queried, is it not pOSSible to wonder whether the choice an idealized version of a community would make is the morally correct one?9 This objection, however, is misplaced. As an unmotivated challenge, it, like the origi8. Railton, �Moral Realism," Philosophical Revirw 95, no. 2 (1956): 9. "Toward Fi" de Siecle Ethics: Some Trends,"' 177.
173-74, 173, 195.
25
Moral Discourse
nal open-question argument, cuts too wide a swath. Naturalist expla nations of anything would be prohibited by such a challenge. Such a challenge could take the following shape: suppose the subjectively
objectified interest for a community would consist in the enslavement of another community; surely we would hesitate to call that good. Here exploitation of third-world countries might provide a model for such an interest. Railton, however, would merely have to define the com munity as humanity in order to avoid such a charge. Moreover, he would have some motivation to do so, because such a definition would allow him to explain the universalizability traditionally associated with moral claims. If the objection were pressed in the direction of query ing whether some things could be good whether or not any idealized community chose them, it would begin to lose its own plausibility as an objection. Such a move, though perhaps in keeping with a Kantian spirit, in fact does more to put on display a weakness of Kantian ap proaches to moral philosophy. There is a flaw in Railton's approach, but it lies elsewhere, in the assumption that one can glide smoothly from the subjectified objec tive interest of an individual to that of a group. This glide is not con sidered problematic by Railton, and he does not present any argument for it.IQ It seems to me, however, that the glide would be anything but smooth; in fact, you cannot get hither from yon. Most communities consist of individuals (and subgroups) with a diversity of interests. What would be considered by some of them to be a situation to be chosen, givell who tlley are, would in fact be considered abhorrent to others, give" who tlley are. The conflict here is not one that can be re solved by greater knowledge among those individuals. The bar to a community choice here is the fact that the central com mitments of individuals and subgroups composing it, those commit ments on the basis of which they are defined as those particular indi viduals and groups rather than as abstractions (e.g., purely rational beings), show no prospect of coordination under a general commu nity interest. The avowed racist and the woman who has dedicated her life to civil rights will not-perhaps even cannot-choose the same Course for their community, even under conditions of idealized knowl edge, because what would count as the best possible social arrangement "
10. The transition takes place on pages 190-91 of Moral Realism," where he introduces the idealization of social rationality as the criterion of moral good ness. Note that the argument against this transition could also be considered an i di argument against the possibility of the good for an individual, should the n vidual be conceived in psychoanalytic fashion as possessing several centers of interest instead of just one. For more on this latter possibil i ty, see Donald Davidson's "Paradoxes of Irrationality," in Phi/osop/lieal Essays 011 Freud, ed. Richard Wollheim and James Hopkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 289-305.
26
The Mora l Theory of Poststructufalism
for one would be a disaster for the other. It is useless to reply that, given idealization, the racist would abandon his or her commitments by virtue of seeing the social distress it would cause. Such a reply misses the point that racism is a basic commitment of this individual, and thus social distress, although unfortunate, remains Ihe best pos
sible situation. It is just as useless to try to abandon the notion of ba sic commitments, for without these. Railton's project, that of natural izing the good and thus reJativizing it to specific communities, be comes indistinguishable from the kinds of deontological theories that posit the individual as without determinate qualities. Aside from Ihe specific differences between their positions, the fail ure of Boyd's and Raihon's projects siems from the shared attempt to assimilate moral discourse to descriptive discourse, this by means of trying to show that moral discourse is explanatorily efficacious. I want
to be clear here. The problem is not that Boyd and Railton think of moral claims as factual ones; I am in complete agreement with that idea, and in thai sense find the realism that motivates their analyses to be of a piece with my own position. Rather, the nub of the issue is in what they conceive a fact to be; and this, in turn, is a matter of com mon linguistiC commitments. For both thinkers, a fact is part of a causal nexus in which the fact can be explained by other facts and can itself explain those facts. The entitlement of a claim-any claim-to our as sent is determined by (although not reducible to)lI its ability to find a place in the explanation of this causal nexus. Thus all facts are in some sense part of the same network of causal relations, and correspond ingly, all meaningful claims are in some sense "descriptive" as well. It is the explanatory role of what I have been calling "descriptive" language that is the model for all discourse for both Boyd and Railton; moral discourse is meaningful because it, like the discursive practices of the various sc:iences, is explanatorily efficacious. Although Boyd and Railton differ Significantly in their conceptions of what it is to be explanatorily efficacious-for Boyd, it is a matter of being in a causal relation to the world, while for Railton it concerns instead the ability to contribute to an explanation of that world-they agree on the gen eral linguistic perspective. As Railton puts it, his approach "treats the cognitive character of value discourse-its descriptive side, as we have called it-as essential to it, and then seeks to account for the prescrip11. As Railton points out, HIO find an e;l(planatory role for a property that simply
is stipulated to be idenlical with goodness would not, in itself, tend to show that this
property affords a satisfactory interpretation of 'good'. Good has a distinctive role in deliberation and ac tion, and il must be shown that the reducing property is a plau sible camH d�te for this role.·' "Naturalism and Prescriptivity,· Sociill Philosophy and Policy 7, no. 1 (1989): 162.
27
Moral Discourse
tive force of value judgments as arising from the substantive content of such judgments."u . . Even if there were a way to defend either Boyd or Raliton agamst the criticisms I have offered, there remains an insurmountable obstacle to their approaches and to any approach that views the.worthin�ss o m�ral discourse as related to its place in explanatory practices. DaVid Wlggms, among others, has within moral discourse distinguished between "valua tions" and "deliberative (or practical) judgements."ll The former are
�
fact stating: they tell us what is. The latler are commendatory: they tell us what we should do. Although, as Wiggins admits, much ground sepa rates these Iwo, this broad distinction explains why naturalist approaches to moral discourse, such as Boyd's and Railton's, are doomed to failure.
At best, they can offer a linguistic account that holds for values; but they do so at the expense of any ability to offer one for practical judgments. The reason for this is simple: practical judgments fall nowhere within the causal or explanatory nexus. When, as Boyd puts it, moral discourse is to be seen on a model with scientific discourse, one is precluded from accounting for judgments that are not fact stating. These judgments, pre· sumably, must be relegated to noncognitive analyses. Such accounts, then,
�
may tell us why certain values exist, but cannot tell us why we shoul do anything to promote them. Although that is an advance upon tradi tional noncognitivist accounts of moral discourse, it remains a far cry from releasing moral discourse from the grip of noncognitivism.14 As Witlgenstein would say, this approach to language consists in too
one-sided a diet. ls While it may be the case that one person's modus PO"E'llS is another's modus to//ells, I believe that the necessity to commit moral
discourse to explanatory efficacy does not so much tell us about such discourse as signal a problem with the linguistic view that underlies it. I would like, instead, to tell a different story about language, one that rec ognizes areas of commonality among various discourses without privi leging one mode of discourse. In this way, we can see what moral com mitments share with descriptive ones without having to assimilate the moral to the descriptive. 12. Ibid., 1 54. 13. "'Truth, lnyention, and the Meaning of Life,· in Essays 011 Mural Rra/ism, ed.
Sayre·McCord, 133. 14. Wiggins too believes that practical judgments are unlikely candidates for judgments of truth or falsity, although for reasons very different from those of
Va/urs, Trulh, 2d ed. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 139--84. esp. 173-78. ( ad· dress Wiggins' s view on thIs below. . ' 15. "A ma in cause of philosophical disease-a onc·sided d 'et: onc nOUris hes
Boyd or Raillon. Cf. Wiggins, ''Truth as Predicated of Moral Judgements:' in Nuds,
one's thinking with only one kind of e;l(ample.u Wittgcnstein, PI,ilOSDI'h;cal ltr�$· liglllillus,3d ed., !rans. G.E.M. Anscombe (New York: Ma cmil lan. 1958), 155.
28
The
Moral Theory ot Poststructuralism
Language and Moral Claims Robert Brandom has recently offered an analysis of asserting that al lows one to see the similarities between moral claims and scientific ones without it commitment to explanatory efficacy as undergirding both. His analysis offers a good starting place for understanding moral discourse. In his article "Asserting,"!' he calls OUf attention 10 the fact
that asserting a claim is it type of doing-it is it type of action-and should thus be treated in pragmatic terms. The type of action that as
serting is involves two essential components: commitment and entitle ment. To assert a claim involves both the commitment to justify the claim if challenged and the entitlement of others to assert the claim and to defer the responsibility for justification of the claim to the pre
vious assertor.
Thus, by the act of asserting a claim, one enters a social space in which one has taken on responsibility for one's claims and licensed olhers 10 asserl them in one's name. Bul if someone is to navigate this
sodal space successfully, that someone musl have some idea how 10
justify what she or he says. "By being caughl up in asserlional prac tices with the dual slructure of authority and responsibility, sentences acquire content in the sense of an inferential-justificatory role. Under
standing a sentence as used by a community ('grasping' its inferen tial-justificatory role) is being able to teU what counts as a justifica tion of it, and in what justifications it plays the part of premise. Fail ure to understand a sentence in this sense disqualifies one from as serting iL"17The kind of social space that one enters upon asserting, then, is, as Wilfrid SeUars has termed it, "Ihe space of reasons. "Ia Thus asserting, as a kind of doing, is a move in what Willgenstein has dubbed a language game. The various parts of the language game are
connected by the inferential relations between them, of which one needs to have at least some understanding in order to engage success fully in asserting in that language game. More needs to be said about language games, particularly moral ones, but for the present, I want to emphasize the idea of a language game as an inferential network in which asserting is a particular type of move. 16. 17.
Brandom, NAsserting,� Ibid ., 643.
NOlis 17, no. 4 (I9S3); 637-50.
IS. NThe essential point is that in characterizing an episode or a state as that of Iw()Willg, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing il in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able 10 justify Empi rlcism and the Phitosophy of MindH [1956], n i Sci Routledge and Kegan !'aul, 1963). 169.
ImCt, PtF"Ctplioll, "lid Rttllily (New York: what one says ." Sellars,
h
29
MOral Discourse
For Brandom, the significance of his analysis lies in showing that asserting needs 10 be conceived in social, rather th�n per�nal, terms. . ''It is not the intention of the speaker which matters m the fust mstance, . b t the social authority of his remark."I� In addition to this pomt, how e cr, there are three others to which I want to call attention. First, at
�
the level of asserting, there is no difference in status between a m�ral claim and a descriptive one. Both involve commitments and enlltle
ments, and both are moves in their respective language game�. . . . Second what vindicates an assertion is its successful JushhcatlOn
�
within th inferential network in which it stakes its claim. That infer ential network does not have to be an explanatory one. There may be
different, and yet not competing, inferential n� tw�rks-Iangu�ge ames-in which the claims of assertors can be vmdlcated. The kmd . f reason that works in one inferential network might not work 111 an other. Thus, although explanatory efficacy might be the mark of a su�
�
cessful justification of a claim in one of the langua�e games of SCI ence, it need not be in the language game of moral dl�ourse. Third, this account of asserting involves a normallve compon�nl
that attaches to all assertions, even scientific ones. To assert som�thmg is 10 take responsibility for it and to permit others �o count on 1\. Re sponsibility and permission-commitment and entttlement-are �or mative notions. In this way, Brandom has, at the level of as�rtmg, . . inverted Boyd's project of assimilating the moral to the s� lenhflC by
instead showing that scientific assertions have a normative compo
nent that, while not moral,1II shares some of the normativity of moral assertions.lI
The position just delineated does not, of course, answer the � ues· tion of the status of moral values. In order to do that, I need to Intro duce anolher element into the discussion: truth. Although this cannot be the place to settle Ihe issue of the nalure of truth, I want at least to . gesture at an approach to truth that, if compelling, prOVides a strong motivation for the account of moral discourse developed here. That approach is a deflationary one, according to which claims about Ihe . truth of a sentence add no new property to that sentence but constl tule more or less an iteration of it. 19. Brandom, Asserting, � 648. 20. Unlike descriptive claims, moral claims, as I will show, have a particular h
kind of normative universality and action-guidingness. . 21. Boyd may n i deed allow for normati'ity n i his acc.ount . of SCience, ��. � cially in counting empirical success to b(' eVIdence for t�ktng hs.co�rses reahsh � cally. He downplays this normative aspect, however, tn aSSI mIlating moral to scientific discourse.
30
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism
Although rea lists are not committed to correspondence theories of truth, one can see a streak of correspondence in such approaches as Boyd's causal theory of evidence It is somehow the match between what one says and : the way the world IS that seems to undergird such an approach. Although the problems that have beset correspondence theories-particularly the problem of what the correspondence relation is supposed to be-do not tell against realist Iheories,12 an adequate theory of truth that does not rely on word-world relations of any kind would certainly sap much of the motivation that lies behind realism. This is because, if truth is not a matter of getting the world right, nothing bars ascription of truth to claims that do not even try to get the world right. (They do not try to get it wrong either; they jusl do not try to get il.) Deflationary th�ries of �ruth-theories of truth that depict the prob lem of truth as philosophically shallow-are tailor-made for elevat ing the cognitive status of moral discourse, because those accounts are meant to deny Ihat truth involves the word-world relations for �hich corres �ondence theories have argued. r want to sketch a par ticular deflatIOnary theory here and show how it further vindicates the status of moral discourse relative to nonmoral descriptive dis course. J do not argue for the account here and should nOle that if this accounl t�rns ou t to be wrong and another deflationary account cor . rect, nothmg In my more general account of moral discourse would b e changed. My purpose in sketching this particular account is to show how it affecls the cognitive status of moral discourse. The deflationary account I focus on, the prosentential theory of truth, has been articulated in two slightly different forms, one by Dorothy Crover, Joseph Camp Jr., and NUl"l Belnap/,3 and the other by Robert Brandom.H The differences, however, are of less concern than the simi larities. What the accounts share is a sympathy with traditional re dundancy Iheories of lruth, which hold that claims of truth add no content to the original claims to which they refer. For traditional re dundancy theories, truth is eliminable. To say, for instance, "It is true that snow is white" is to say no more than "Snow is white." The addi tion of truth adds nothing to the original sentence. T�e problem with the redundancy account in this form, however, is that It cannot handle sentences like "Everything he said is true." This is
31
Moral Discourse
because, when the "is true" is removed from the sentence, what is left is not even a sentence-it is nonsense. The Challenge, then, for those sym pathetic with the redundancy Iheory of truth, is to develop an account that preserves the conlent-eliminability of truth while slill allowing it some linguistic role. As Grover, Camp, and Belnap put it, "'true' is far from redundant, bul its role in English is logical rather than ascriptive. "2$ The prosentential theory, in conlrast with traditional redundancy theo ries, assigns truth an anaphoric role as a prosenlence, in much the same way that a pronoun has an anaphoric role within sentences. When, for example, someone asks, "Where is John?" and the reply is "He went to the park," the "He" in the latter sentence refers 10, stands in for, Ihe "John" of the first sentence. A prosentence works the same way. For in stance, a woman who attends my class may find herself enthralled with what I was saying (especially if she was not listening very critically). Upon leaving the class, the woman might get asked what she thought of the lecture. Suppose the reply is "Everything that Todd said is true." Now, that sentence does not, on the prosentential (or any other defla tionary) theory, ascribe any special status or property to what I said in class. Rather, it stands in for what r said, relieving the student of having to repeat everything I said.l6 So the prosentential lheory, while analyz ing sentences like "It is true that snow is white" as emptily redundanl more or less as do traditional redundancy theories, offers a more so phisticated approach that allows it to deal with the counterexamples to the traditional redundancy Iheory. On the prosententiai theory, then, truth has a role to play, but it is a purely inlralinguistic role: truth-talk helps us navigate around our dis cursive practices more easily and cleanly. This is not to claim thai there is nothing to be said about word-world relations. There is, in fact, plenty to be said, for instance, about the relation between your saying 10 me "Please pass the salt" and my passing you the salt. But none of what there is to be said about word-world relations has to do with Ihe nature of truth. 25. . A Prosentential Theory of Troth, H 123. 26. In A Prosentent;al Theory of Tro th" (87), .
•
criteri aH for a p�osentence:
As has been �t.>en, Corre!ipondence is not an issue for Rai!ton in the slime wily It mlly be for Boyd. 23. "The Prosen ten tia l Theory of Truth," Plu"losophicl/l Studies 27 (1975): 73-125.
It can OCC\lpy the position
UniversIty Press. 1992). 24. "Pragmatism PhcnomenaUsm. and Truth-Talk.H in Midwrst Studi,.s IOS0I" ly 12 (1988); 75-93.
anaphoric substituends
..
22
Dorothy Grover has defendt.-d the prosententia! theory at length in "arious ar tlcl�s cOllected in her book A Pro$eIl/{'llIilll T/leory of TruIII (Princeton : Princeton
.
.
ill Plri
the authors offer
of a declarative sentence.
It can be used anaphorically either in the III�y way
quantificationlll wily. Consequently, in each use
it hilS an
"some rough
or the
antecedent from which one may
(in the qua nti ficationlll cases)-in either case,
derive an anaphoric substituend (in the laziness cases) or a fam ily of the substituends arc sentential. It is "generic" in the sense
sentence might rum up
malching Ihe position of the anaphor. in one use or another, any declarative
that,
liS anaphoric subslilucnd.
.
32
The Moral Theory of Poststrucluralism
The prosententiai theory of truth adds a semantic dimension to Brandom's account of asserting_ Whereas Brandom can be taken to argue that al the pragmatic level of asserting, there is nothing to dis
Moral Discourse
33
as a normative practice of making, endorSing, and licensing claims, then it is not surprising both that the status of moral discourse-since it is not primarily descriptive-becomes questionable and that science
tinguish moral from descriptive claims, the prosentenlial theory can he taken 10 argue that at the semantic level of being true, there is still
becomes the model for discourse. This type of scientism is particularly evident in recent noncognitivist
the distinction cannot be made on the issue of cognitive status is not
portrays them as the product of an evolutionary story of i�creasin� co . . ordination of practices ralller than as the fact-statmg III their own nght.
�
�
noth ng � stinguishing them. If moral talk and nonmoral descriptive or sCientific talk are to he distinguished, it must be in some other way than their cognitive status. Moreover, contra the realists, the reason that moral discourse, like scientific discourse, is efficaciously expJana t?ry. Rather, it is that discourses are of many types, and that asser lions can be made successfully in many of those types of discourses, and that the being-true of those assertions has nothing to do with their
accounts of discourse, for instance, Allan Gibbard's norm-expressivism in Wise Choices, Apt Feclillgs: A Theory of NormaJive fildgemclIJ. He argues that the best account of the normativity of our discourses is one that
On the speculative [evolutionary) account I have sketched, nor
mative judgements will depend not only on features of the situ
corresponding to the world.
ation judged, but on discussion in the observer's own commu
claims and practical judgments-becomes clear. When I say, "It is good . not to ktll people randomly over a minor irritation," that is true if and
mative discussion, as I have pictured it, will lead to the consen sus it does in virtue of various pressures on the discussants; dif
Given this account of truth, the status of moral claims-both value
only if it is good not to kill people randomly over a minor irritation. Similarly, if I say, "You ought to defend the rights of minorities," that is true if and only if you ought to defend the rights of minorities. To posit the truth of a moral claim is to do no more-but no less-than to commit to that claim itself. At the level of what claims admit of the
�
pos�ibility of truth t ere is nothing to distinguish values from practi : cal Judgments. This IS because on the prosentential account, truth is not tied to descriptive content, either by causal reference or by any o t er means. Moreover, regarding values, we can, in some sense, say
�
With Boyd (Railton's case is more difficult, since he may want to re
duce goodness to other natural qualities rather than pose it as a natu ral kind in itself) that there is moral goodness and moral badness in the world, just as there are protons and electrons, and tables and chairs. The reasons to believe in the existence of moral values do not have to do with their explanatory efficacy, or any other likeness to what ' have been calling descriptive discourse. As John McDowell has said regarding moral "world views," "To query their status as world views on the ground of not being scientific is to be motivated not by science but by sci�ntism."p As can be seen, this scientism derives not merely . from a b md devotion o s�ience but from a view of language that . makes sClenilsm all but inevitable. When descriptive discourse is con
!
�
ceived as the model of linguistic practice, and when descriptive dis course is seen as reflective of or corresponding to a reality rather than . 27 . "Are Moral Requirt'ments Hypotheticill tmpcrative5?" .,/v/d1l111 Soc.ely, suppl. vol. (1978); 19.
.
Prout'ding, vllllf Ar
nity and the consensus that emerges from that discussion. Nor
ferent pressures on them will lead to different consensus judge ments. This is a matter of what the psychic mechanisms that un derlie normative judgement are adapted to do. There is no spe cial kind of fact about the situations judged to which these mechanisms are adapted to produce a correspondence.lII The account I have offered so far allows us to make several comments on this passage. First, if Brandom's account of asserting is correct, there are always pressures on discussants, and those pressures are a matter of con forming to social practices of justification. This is because disc:ussion in . volves assertion, which in turn involves language games, which III turn
involves normative pressure. That is the case whether the subject under discussion is physics or morality. Second, the adaptation of "psychic mechanisms" to the environment shows nothing either way about the truth of claims, moral or otherwise.l"< (Gibbard himself is willing to admit this in the case of nonnormative discourse.) Third, the temptation to extrapo late from adaptation to nonfactuality in the case of morality follows from
belief in a monistic correspondence theory of word-world relations. for Gibbard, factuality is a matter of representing the world, and represent ing is "correspondence by design, or by the Darwinian surrogate for de sign." Only on the basis of this assumption, which I have spent the 28. Wise Choices, ApI Fee/iugs, 112. 29. David Wiggins, for one, has offered an evolutionary account of mora! dis course in a \'cin similar to Gibbard'$, but hc $CC$ no reason to move from the adap tation that account invotves to its lack of factuality. See »Universallzabillty, Impar tiality, Truth,ff in Nmts. V�/UtS. Truth, 2d cd. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), esp. 64-68.
34
The Moral Theory of POslstructuralism
entirety of Ihis chapter up to this point questioning, can he infer that "where nor�at ve judgement naturally represents something, a plainly
�
non-normalJv€ Judgement could naturally represent the same thing."30 H.owe�er, the effects of scientism are not solely upon noncognilivislS. . Davl Wlggms, for v h�m Ihe. vindication of moral discourse is a long standmg concern, sill ! hnds hImself divorcing practical judgments from val�es and according truth-value only to the latter for reasons that a de
�
�
flationary account serve to undermine. For him, a theory of truth must present truth as playing a substantive role. To possess the possibility of
35
Moral Discourse
Once again inverting Boyd's construction, the similarity between sci ence and morality lies not in morality's explanatory force but in science's normative underpinnings. What is it, then, thai gives us reasons to believe in practical judg ments, and for that matter in values? Reasons themselves. Whal is emerging here is a view of linguistiC practice generally, of which moral linguistic practice is a species, in which what counl as adequate moti vations for the belief in the truth of a claim or Ihe existence of an en tity are the reasons that can be brought forth and defended against all comers in favor of thai claim or that entity. Such reasons cannot be
t�uth, a cerlain claim x must, among other features, "under favourable clrcumstanc�s command. convergence [of belief), and the best explana . tIOn of the eXistence of thiS convergence will either require the actual truth inconsistent with the denial of 'X.'Hll For him, then, the extreme of x or
offered as compelling to one who refuses the game in its entirety, sim ply because nothing will count as a reason in that area for that person. Morality, in short, cannot be defended from the outside; it is holistic.
�as caught hol � of here is not the question
would be a sacrosanct slarting-point, supposedly immune to critical scrutiny, in our earning the right to claim that some such verdicts or judgments stand a chance of being true. That is nol at all to say that
.
�
unhkellhood. �f convergence in the case of practical judgments, as opposed . to values, �Ihtates a�amst the idea that practical judgments can be true Of false. ThiS conclUSIOn confounds truth and justifiability. What Wiggins of truth regarding practical
Judgments but Instead the difficulty, given the divergent interests and outlooks that characterize any community, of being able to come to some agreement about a practical judgment. However, 10 claim that this diffi c.ulty is � matter of lruth is to offer the wrong diagnOSis for symptoms nghtly cited.
�ractical judgments arc indeed less likely to command convergence of bebef than values are, nol because practical judgments do not admit of �ruth, bu � b�a.use they are harder to justify. But the issue, in both cases, . IS that of lushflcatlOn, not of truth or of explanatory efficacy. As Geoffrey
Sayre-McCord has put the point:
T
he crucial �imilarily (between evaluating actions and evaluat Ing e�planahonsJ is that in defending OUf evaluations (whether
of achons, institutions, or explanations) we must inevitably rely
on a theory Ihat purports to justify our standards of evaluation as
over against other sets of (moral or explanatory) standards. In
To believe that it needs such a defense is precisely the earmark of scientism. As McDowell has said: "No particular verdict or judgment
we musl earn that right from an initial position in which ali such ver dicts or judgments are suspended al once, as in the projectivist pic ture of a range of responses to a world that does nol contain values. "ll
The Moral Realm At this point it may look as though moral discourse were indistin
guishable from descriptive discourse, not because it is reducible 10 it,
but instead because they are both linguistic practices that fall under the same account. It is now time to begin distinguishing moral dis course from other types of discourse, in order both to isolate its cen tral characteristics and to show how what are traditionally considered
�oth cases, we will be .e�gaged n i the process of justifying our
its distinctive traits-its action-guidingness and its universality-ap
but that between moral theory and scientific epistemology.31
linguistic and nonlinguistic components of linguistic practices) in his article "Some Reflections on Language Games ." Working within the Context of language games, he distinguishes inferential moves within language games from transitions into and oul of those games. The lat-
!udg.ments, n�t of explamlng our experiences. The analogy to keep In mmd here IS not that between moral theory and scientific theory
30. Wise ClJo;ctS, ApI Fulil1g�, 109, 114. 31. Wig�in�, NTru �h as Predicated of Moral Judgements," 147. The other four fea �ures WigginS dellneales are lhat truth must be a dimension of assessment for . belle�s, that a truth-claim must have content that is assessible. that true beliefs are true In vlrtue of something, and that the conjunction of true beliefs is also true. 32. ..Moral Theory and Explanatory Impotence," in EsSilYS 011 Mor�1 Rt�lism, ed. Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (lIhac�, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), 278.
pear in my account. Wilfrid Sellars has discussed the relations between linguistic prac tices and other nonlinguistic practices (or, alternatively, between the
33. "Projcdion and Truth in Ethics," The Lindley Lecture, University of Kan sas, 1987, 10.
36
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism
ler are of two different types: language entry transitions and language departure transitions. Language entry transitions are "those learned tran sitions . . . in which one comes to OCCupy a position in the game . . . but
the terminlls a quo of the transition is not la position in the gamel." Lan guage departure transitions are "these learned transitions in which from �cupying � �osi tion in the game . . . we come to behave in a way which . lS not a posItion In the game."ll (The difference between transitions into a�d oul of a language game and moves within a language game is nol a
dlff�rence between actions and something else. Intralinguistic moves f?T Instance, the justifying of assertions by other assertions-are also ac lions. Language games are social practices, nol static abstractions.) Moral discourse is particularly, but not solely, concerned with language departures. In a moral claim, for example, of the form "One morally ought . to perform X under circumstances C," one is stating that if circumstances
37
Moral D iscourse
Ihat call for moral action differently from those less virtuous.:III Jt seems right to me that the question of what description a set of circumstances falls under is central 10 the issue of moral action; however, moral dif ferences are not easily reducible to such differences of description. It is still morally possible, although this may be bad news, for someone to agree, for instance, on all descriptions of what constitutes a human
being, the differences between human beings and property, and still hold that slavery is morally permissible (perhaps by divorcing sla very from ownership of property). A claim to that effect is one we would find morally abominable, but we could hardly deny it its sla tus as a moral claimY In this distinction between circumstances and principles, values tend to fall on the side of circumstances, while principles fall on the side of practical judgments. (We can define a moral principle as a practical
C obtain, Ihen one oughl lo perform action X. One is commending a cer . lain langua�e de �art�re transition. Now, the reasons for such a language
iudgment that is not situation-specific, that is, as a practical judgment
overlap: whether i t is indeed morally obligatory, or even morally good
may argue, for instance, whether a contemplated action should be considered an act of courage or merely of bravado. In doing so, we
deparlure, In satlsfymg the following two discrete conditionals, often (or right or a display of the proper character, etc.) 10 perform that action under those circumslances and, in a given context, whether those cir
cumstances in fact obtain. The chiasm between these two conditionals
can be seen in the fact Ihat moral disagreement can-and oflen does �c �r in sit.uat.ions in which agreement that circumstances C obtain might Inv!le rethlnkmg whether the moral principle was indeed the right one.
Here one has the option of denying that the circumstances are C or of revising the original principle. One can imagine, for instance, that if a fetus conna;ted to advanced and expensive medical equipment, could : survive outSide the womb two weeks after conception, this could force upon someone who supported abortion as a choice until lhe moment of
�
�
via ilily a ecision whether to redefine viability or to abandon a pro . chOice pOSitIOn almost entirely. The significance of these two sources of reasons should not be under estimated. In an argument that can be traced back to Hume, human sen �iments are universal; disagreement occurs only regarding facts. It is, for . I�stance, poSSible to hold that a disagreement over the moral permissi . bility of slavery is �ot a conflict of moral sentiments, but rather hinges on the fac �ual question of, for example, what constitutes a human being and what IS amenable to property relations. This position finds contem porary echoes both in Richard Boyd's homeostatic cluster theory of the good» and in John McDowell's claim that people of virtue see situations
34. Sellars, "Some Reflections on Lllnguage Carnes" {1954j, in Sci�"c�. Perup . alld Reality IIQU, (London: Roulledge and Kegan Pau\, 1963). 329. 35. See Chaple. 3, pp. 97ff.
that covers many situations. The principle of antirepresentationalism, discussed in the next chapter, is a moral principle in that sense.) We
mighl not necessarily be commending or prescribing any particular language deparlures; we might just be trying to get the right take on the situation. It is not difficult to see, however, that a decision regarding which value the situation embodies is not entirely divorced from the question of how one ought to act in it. This seems to be the source of McDowell's more perceptual claims that virtuous persons see situations differently from nonvirtuous persons, and also of the secondary-quality analyses offered by both McDowell and Wiggins.» If certain situations are such that we are disposed to respond to them 36. See, e.g., "Are Moral Requiremenls Hypolhetical Imperatives?" 20-21, and uVirlue and Reason," The Morris/ 62 (1979): 333: "POSse5Sion of the virtue must involve not only sensith'ity to facls about others' {l'elings as reasons for acting in certain ways, bUI also sensilivity 10 facts aboul rights as reasons for acling in certain ways; and when circumstances of both 50rl, obtain, and a circumslancl' of Ihe second sort is the one Ihal should be acted on, a po55CSSOr of the virlue of kindness must know Ihal it is so. � In this latter article McDowell argues against the kind of syllogistic reasoning thai I propose here as II model of moral discourse. Nevertheless, a5 an account of Ihe kinds of implicit moral leaming Ihat we in fact do, his accounl seems righl. However, regarding explicil moral discourse. Ihe kind of reasoning I describe here seems to provide a more accurale picture. WhClher one believes that moral learning should remain implicit or be1::ome explicit and self-crilical may hinge on how one evaluates our current moral siluation. 37. This point is of a piece with my argument above againsl Railton's mo\'e from conceplions of individual good to conceplions of moral good. 38. Cf. McDowell NValucs and Secondary Qualities N n i EsSllys 011 Morlll Rill/ ism, I'd. Sayre McCord, 166-80, and Wiggins, NA Sensible Subjectivism?" n i Nuds, VII/UtS, Trulh, 185-214. ,
-
,
38
The Moral Theory of I'oststrucluralism
morally, this is because our description of them cites values that they embody, values that themselves are tied to moral action .)') In any case, once Ihe reasons have been offered (and, presumably, agreed upon), the moral claim becomes action guiding. The claim "One ought morally to perform action X under circumstances C" along with the claim "Circumstances C obtain" provides the motivation for a lan guage departure: the performing of action X. The peculiarly action guiding character of Ihe moral claim contrasts with that of a purely descriptive claim, for example, "It is stormy when circumstances C obtain," which, when combined with the claim "Circumstances C ob tain:' is not action guiding.� Here, by the way, we can catch a glimpse of a possible resolution to the debate whether an "ought" can be derived from an "is." In essence, my claim is that a guide for action cannot be derived entirely from an "is," but neither can it be derived from an "ought." It is, in fact, the interaction of the two in moral discourse that provides the grounds for action. Though in some sense moral claims are distinct from descriptive ones, in the language game of morality seen as a practice-as what Wiltgenstein would have called a "form of life" (LebrlZsform)-moral claims and descriptive ones areboth necessary. Both these types of claims have a normative base in the assertional structure described above, but in order for morality as a linguistic practice to exist, its specific struc ture must comprise both moral claims and descriptive ones, linked by networks of reasons both to one another and to other language games, so that not only are specific linguistic practices-and espeCially moral ones-inseparable from "forms of life," but "forms of life" themselves are inseparable from a "web of life." This cannot be all there is to the story, however. As yet, we have not sufficiently distinguished moral claims from, say, claims of etiquette. Moral claims aJso possess a universal character. Claims that one ought morally to perform aclion X or that killing is wrong or that it is mor ally praiseworthy to help those who are oppressed by one's own gov errunent are not made relative to a cultural context. If the claim "One ought morally to perform X in circumstances C" is true, then one ought to perform X in circumstances C. The best reasons one has for believ ing that such a claim is true are precisely the reasons that can be given 39. This may also be the place where reasons for acting morally can be seen as . mternal rather thim external. On this account, however, they are internal reasons ly, as it were, by means of the connection between how people describe on ari S it uations and how they act, rather than, as is traditional, because they directly affect motivation. 40. Unless, of course, those two claims are thought of a5 pllrt of an enthymemalic argument whose suppressed premise is something like �One should carry an um brella when il is stormy.�
�
�
39
Moral Discourse .
the moral language game. Thus universality is a characteristic of
:�orality, as rationalists such as Alan Gewirth and David �authier think
(the former for Kantian reasons, the latter for HobbeSian ones), but at because we are compelled to universalize our claims for nonmoral
�easons (either as the conditions for all successful aclion or as Ihe con �
ditions for realizing personal interest). It is precisely ecause mor�l claims mean what Ihey seem to mean that they are universal; and If . e attempt to diS they are true, they are binding upon � veryone. cover nonmoral justifications for morality shares With th� mOral real . ism of Boyd and Railton the project of grounding moral claims In some . thing other than morality. Such a project misconceives �oral dlscourse . by ignoring its particular status as � language game, a discurSIVe prac
�
tice that forms part of our web of life.
An objection here might be raised by Gilbert Harman, whose moral relativism is founded precisely on Ihe rejection of the bindingness of moral claims upon those who have no reason to accept them. "Our moral principles are binding only on those who share them or whose principles give them reasons to accept them."·1 How, Harman asks, could one hold another morally responsible for an action that she or
he had no reason not to commit or for an omission she or he h�d no reason to rectify? Harman agrees with the current account that Judg
ments of moral good and bad occur within culturally specific moral discourses, and infers from this not only that we ought not to hold . those who do not have access to our moral principles responSible, but also that since we ought not to hold them responsible, moral right ness and wrongness are relative to the principles one's culture holds.
�
Harman's position that cross-cultural ascriptions o moral respon . sibility are often poorly motivated is right, but he ml�c�ncelves the . reason for it. The firsl inference from the cultural relatiVity of behefs
�
to the ascription of moral responsibility only to those w o have ac cess to those beliefs is (in most cases) fine. It is the further mference to relativism that does not follow. One wants 10 ask, why does not hav ing a reason for an action absent one from m.oral resF nsibility for it? . The answer, roughly casl, is that the person m questIOn dtd not know that that action was morally blameworthy or praiseworthy. (This al
lows Harman'to separate judgments of good or evil from judgments of responsibility.) But such a princip e is a moral one" and o�e that . resides precisely in our own moral diSCOurse. Harman s pnnclple of withholding judgment is compelling , not primarily bec�use of its re . lation to the object of moral judgment, but because of Its relatIOn to those of us who operate by the !ighlS of a moral discourse we share
�
41. Harman, The N"ture of Morality (Oxford.: Oxford University Press, 1977),
9Q.
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism with Harman. As such, it is bound to the justifications and to the quali
Morat Discourse
41
world views, passions, and outlooks that morality struggles to balance
fications that might attach to it in balancing it with other moral claims. Thus, the attempt to move from the propriety of withholding judg ment to moral relativism is undercut by the practice within which we
would have to be reduced to a pale conformity.
can offer reasons to withhold judgment in the first place. However, an objection can arise here from another quarter. Suppose someone were to claim that Harman was right about moral responsi
includes, among its more general principles, one of respect for differences, all other things being equal. That principle is justified by
bility but wrong about judgments of good and evil. That would be a more full-blown relativism, one that would recommend withholding
that moral meddling often produces more harm than benefit to those who are the object of the meddling. Now, in specific situations, for
We might think about the withholding of moral judgment regarding those that do not share our principles as follows: Our moral practice
recourse, say, to the good of personal autonomy and to the recognition
all moral judgment on those who do not share our moral discourse.
example. the performance of clitoridectomy by other cultures. the
Aside from the traditional objection that such a claim would have to allow that contradictory moral claims could both be true, the reason
principle of respect for differences clashes with � the: mo� al commitments, say, the commitment to safeguard the phYSical Ultegnty
for finding such a position unpersuasive is that it banks upon the very
of others. The moral dilemma, then, is to articulate the right moral
discourse it is trying to reject. A certain kind of cultural relativism-a
principle for this particular situation, a principle that would apply in
better word here would be "modesty"-about our own moral judg
all relevantly similar situations.
ments seems at least arguable, if not compelling, because a strong case
This would involve, of course, thinking about similar moral dilem mas as well as this particular case. What it would lIot involve, how
can be made for it by the lights of our moral practice. That modesty would have its roots in a respect for differences, a historical view of
ever, is taking the commitment to safeguard the physical integrity of
what happens to other cultures when we try to assimilate them, and a
others and applying a "modesty operator" to it in the case where one
recognition that we have hardly perfected the art of living-a short
is dealing with another culture. Although the practical effect of my
point of view. Thus the truth of cultural relativism is not a truth exter
proposal might very well be the same as the application of the "mod esty operator," the latter. by subverting the universality of moral
coming that might be traceable in part to deficiencies in our moral Ml to our moral discourse but one that lies, I hope, deeply-but fear, not deeply enough-in our own moral discourse.
This position, however, might lead one to question the universality of moral claims. If modesty is to be one of our principles, then does that subvert the claim of principles to be universal? No. We must not think of our discourse as having moral claims to which we might ap ply a "modesty operator," to tone them down from universality to something less. Rather, the problem-and is this not the problem of moral judgment generally?-is to find the right articulation of our principles in the first place. What makes moral judgment and the for mation of a moral position a dicey affair is not the status of moral claims but rather their content. Moral judgments of what responsibil ity exists in a situation or of what to do under certain circumstances are often difficult. This difficulty might lead one to believe that moral claims are situation-specific. This would be an illusion. The difficulty attaching to moraJ djscourse derives from the difficulty, given the pos sibility both of competing moral claims and of competing descriptions of the circumstances one finds oneself in, is that of articulating a cor rect moral principle. Were morality situation-specific, there would be no such thing as morality because there would be no generalization. Alternatively, were morality an easy affair, the different interests,
claims, renders what is distinctive about moral discourse incompre hensible. Another difficulty, however, forces a further deepening of the ac count before we can say that we have in hand a characterization of uniquely moral practice. As David Wiggins points out, universaliz ability cannot generate moral claims, but can only test them once gen erated. A claim must already be agreed to be moral before one can see whether it is acceptable-by means of universalizing it. The problem .....lth universalization as a generative principle of moral action, as he points out, is that all the candidates for that which is to be general ized are unacceptable: they do not generate assuredly morally accept able, or even moral, claims. The problems with straightforward Kantian universalizability are well known. H may, for instance, be morally right to forgive a debtor his or her debt, but this is not necessarily a universalizable principle, and its denial is certainly not a contradiction. If, alternatively, one speaks of universalizing, not in a transcendental sense, whose denial would be a contradiction, but in a more empirical sense, one is faced with the problem that an action one might want to sel! universalized might not be one others want to see universalized, and morality is, if anything, at least partially a taking account of others' viewpoints.
42
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism
Moreover, if one then moves to address this problem by removing oneself from one's specific desires, it becomes unclea r what the basis is for judging an action 10 be desirable if univer salized,u We must nol c�nSider universalization, then, as a method for deciding which prin ciples a� moral, but instead must test and adjust already recognizable , ?,orai pnnCiples by means of their universalizability: "Universalization 1� no longer it �ethod or any part of the method for the initial genera hon 0,£ moral l�eas and principles. It works on what is already fully morahzed and In no way merely prima facie. At best, it is a method of reminder a�d adj �slment alr ndy implicit in what it is deployed upon. � . bidde . . . the umversahzer , , , IS n onto the scene not in the role of an explorer �r first map-maker but in the role of a surveyor visiting a scene �lready dl�overed and directly known."uThis should not be surpris I�g to us, glVe� the above discussion. Moral discou rse is a cultural prac . both . , tice, As such, It IS dlshnct from and intersects with other cultur al practices. To expect universalizability to be determinative for what should count as moral claims would be asking a single principle to bear an a wfullyheavy burden-too heavy, as Wigg ins argues, What we must , . do IS re�og� l�e the ineliminable but not exhaustive place . for . unlversal!zablhty In moral discourse and pract ice. Moreover, if claims often considered extern al to moral discourse "�ultural modesty," for instance-are in fact internal to it, then moral dl�ourse runs deeper than many previous moral theorists have thoughl. , chapt It IS part of the purpose of thiS er to render plaUSible the idea that moral discourse in fact runs very deep. Robe rt Arrington has suggested that not only what counts as a correct moral claim but what counts as a �oral clai� at al/ can be decided only by the lights of our own moral . diScourse. Morality ha� to do with personal autonomy and integrity, respect for persons, aVOidance of harm to perso ns, similar notions. I� a person or a SOciety uses the word 'morality' to and refer 10 motlers dis tmct �rom these, we are not willing to grant that are talking about I,o ral': y, what we mean by 'morality.'" Furthermothey re, morality is not de � fined Independently of the kinds of practices we consider to be exem pl�ry of morality. ln a Wittgensteinian move, Arrin gton asserts that cer . tam moral claim s act as "grammatical rules" for the const itution of morality and no� m rely s �ubstantive mora l claims: "'One ought to ; � , keep �ne s promises and It IS wrong to tell a lie' simultaneously serve to defme, on the one hand, 'keeping one's promises' and 'lying' and, on the other hand, the moral notions of obliga tion and wrongdoing, , . , One does not understand morality by grasping a general definition of 42. Wiggins, "UniveTsaJizabilily, ImpaTtiality, Truth," esp. 68-78, 43. Ibid., 78-79.
Moral Discourse
iti one understands it by knowing that we are morally obligated to tell thc truth and keep our promises, as well as 10 avoid harming others and to respect them." About these grammatical rules, then, "it makes no sense to say that we believe [them!. for if we did so we might incor rectly believe them. . . . anyone who rejects them simply does not un derstand what morality is or simply rejects morality."" Arrington's point is an important one, although it is slightly mis cast. He has cottoned on to the Wittgensteinian point that if moral dis course is a linguistic practice of giving reasons for action, then there is eventually a bedrock beneath which one can offer no more reasons, and that to ask for any beyond them is to misunderstand the linguis tic practice in which one is engaged. (It would be a mistake, for in stance, to ask for a principle of universalizability as a concept that supports all the others in thc practice.) "Nothing we do can be de fended absolutely and finally, But only by reference to something else that is not questioned. I.e, no reason can be given why you should act (or should have acted) like litis, except that by doing so you bring about such and such a situation, which again has to be an aim you accept. "45 At some point the giving of reasons runs out; in order to engage in moral discourse, the discussants must share something within the moral language game. However, it does not follow that the something those discussants must share can be articulated in advance. That there are indeed isolable basic moral claims that one cannot question with out exiling our moral discourse seems doubtful; moral discour�e is more holistic than that, This is not to say that in the context of a given discussion there must be a basic claim or group of claims that discus sants must share in order to engage in recognizably moral discourse, but rather to insist upon a skepticism that outside of those contexts there is a list of moral claims that could be called basic.u If this is right, then not only does the cpistemic point that there are claims that cannot be disbelieved if one is to be considered moral fail, so does the semantic poinllhat certain claims are definitional for moral 44. Arrington, RatiOllalism, Rtlilism, (/rid Rtllltiuism: Ptrsputivts ill C,mtemporllry MorM Episttmology (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), 252, 283, 275. 45, Witlgenstein, Culture lIud Va/lit, ed, G. H. von Wright and trans. Peter Winch (Chicago: Univhsity of Chicago Press, 1980), 16. 46. This, I ta"-e it, is the force of Susan Hurley'S noncentralism in her meta ethical view: "Non·ce.rlTII/ism about reasons for action mjects the view that the general concepts such as riglrt OT ought are conceptually prior to and independent of spe cific reason-givingconcepts such as just or u"kind. Instead it may take identifica
, . tion of discrete specific values such as justice and kindness as a startmg pomt, subject to revision, and give an account of the relationships of interdependence between the general concepts and specific reason-giving claims." Notural Rcasolls (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989), It. ,
44
The Moral Throry of Poslstructuralism
discourse. Arrington claims that the general features usually associated with moral practice-he lists prescriptiveness and overridingness in ad· dition to universality-do not tell us enough to define moral discourse. "What remains to give substance to the notion of morality are the spe cific moral dimensions: telling the truth, keeping promises, avoiding harm to others, respecting others, and so on."p Although the Witlgensteinian point that one needs instances as well as general rules in order to define a practice seems right. I would not go so far as to assert that there are specific moral claims that offer substance to moral linguistic practice and without which the practice one is engaged in could not be defined moraL This position, I believe, sheds light on a dispute between Phillipa Foot and John McDowell regarding the question whether moral re quirements are categorical or hypothetical. Foot argues that "moral judgements have no better claim to be categorical imperatives than do statements about matters of etiquette,"·s because one has to buy into a system of morality in order for moral claims to be rationally compelling. McDowell denies this, claiming that virtuous people see a situation in such a way that reasons for acting other than morally are just not perceived. to be part of that situation. "If a situation in which virtue imposes a requirement is genuinely conceived as such, according to this view, then considerations which, in the absence of the requirement, would have constituted reasons for acting otherwise are silenced altogether-not overridden-by the requirement."·9Thus the moral force of the situation lies in its description, which the situa tion itself motivates, rather than in an independent desire to be moral that one brings to the situation. Foot's position is not unlike Harman's in that it shares the idea that one cannot be compelled by reasons that belong to a language game to which one does not subscribe. To that extent, she is subject to the critique offered above. However, she is right to the extent that cat egorical imperatives are intrinsic to language games and can ratio nally be denied. b y one who refuses to play the game. McDowell, al ternatively, clearly speaks from within a game-the game of the vir tuous person-and he has captured an important aspect of moral dis course in doing so. What distinguishes moral discourse from etiquette is not that one is categorical. while the other is not, but that, should both practices be accepted, the moral one always takes precedence. A 47. Rationalism, Realism. and Relutivism, 286.
48. �Mora1ity as a System of Hypothetiul Imperative5,� in VicC"S altd Virtlles Rlld Otlrer Essays i1l Moral Pllilosophy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), 164. 49. McDowell, �Are Moral Requirements Hypothelical lmperative,r 26.
Moral Discourse
45
situation that is rightly described as moral compels one to answer the moral questions it poses; there can be no question of weighing other, nonmoral considerations against it to see what comes up the winner. This seems to be a more satisfactory way to capture the intuition that moral discourse is somehow overriding.50 Last, the question, why be moral? cannot be answered without already
�
being within moral discourse. Moral discourse is anchored now ere but in itself, which is to say that it is without anchor. The HobbeSian may reply that one can answer the question by saying that morality is good policy; but inasmuch as the reasons a Hobbesian would �ffer for per forming action X under circumstances C would not be recogmzably moral, the Hobbesian is not engaged in moral discourse. She or he is engaged in a discourse of self-interest, which not only is no more surely founded. than moral discourse but also, if the account offered here is correct, is subject to the very moral scrutiny that it purports to found. To engage in moral discourse is to be engaged by a practice that, though interacting
�
with other practices to form a web of life, remains always irred.ucib e to . them. In that sense, the view here is externalist rather than tnternaltst. I have not argued that the commitment to rationality implies a �om�it ment to moral principles. It does imply a commitment to nor�atlve ynn ciples-the normative principles of the language game one IS playtng but those principles need not be specifically moral ones. Thus, one can be rational without being moral. Alternatively, however, if the account of moral discourse offered here is right, then morality runs very deep in our culture's-and in many cultures'-fabric of social life. To be rational without weighing moral considerations is surely a possibility, but not one that we may readily recognize for ourselves.sl The worry, then, to which internalism is a response, does not cut deep into the account I have tried to construct. Peter Railton captures this point well: If there is a penalty to being irrational in the non-instrumental sense, it is not the penalty of having a bad time or being unSO. Samuel Scheffler articulates a similar position in his book HI""nll Mvrality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ]992) when he claims that morality should be conceived as �mOOerate" and yet "pervasive� (see esp. p. 6). While for Scheffler the moderation takes the form of agent-centered prerogatives, for the account I am offering the moderation occurs by means of the principle of antirepresenta tionalism and the duty!supererogation distinction. 1 discuss Scheffler'S position on agent-centered prerogatives briefly in Chapter 4, where J try to show that the o\"erridingnes$ of mor�1ity does not entail that we must always be held to the highest moral standards. 51. This is a point Richard Miller has made as well in his Mornl Difft'rences: Trulh, lus/iet, olld Con$Cil'lIet in a World of COIIJlic/ (Princeton: Princeton Univer Sity Press, 1992), esp. chap. 3.
The M oral Theory of Poststrucluralism
46
able to do what one wants or being cut off from all community of care or humanity. Rather, it is the penalty of being unable without deception to see oneself and onc's actions a certain way, of being unable without deception to defend oneself and one's actions in light of a certain standard, or to claim a (cer tain] kind of objectivity or autonomy in one's deliberative prac tice or agency. This will be a felt penalty only for someone for whom this way of seeing oneself has some evaluative impact, i.e. someone already indined to take such a standard to heart.Jl To sum up this metaethical section, moral discourse is a cognitivist
2 Moral Antirepresentationalism
practice that is specifically concerned with language departure tran sitions that are held to be universally binding. PUlling the paint that way shows the links between what I have argued and traditional ways of thinking about morality. It also shows how many different types of moral theory can be accommodated. Both of these aspects are, to my mind, virtues of the account. It would be surprising if moral discourse turned out to be radically different from what people have taken it to be, although, if my account is right, discourses generally and several important metaethical issues specifically need a bit of reconceptual ization. Also, as indicated in the Introd uction, a metaethical position that excludes by definition important moral approaches is probably a wrong one. Finally, the account I have offered is in tune with the insistence of poslstructuralists like Foucault, Deleuze, and Lyotard on the impor tance of seeing our discourses as contingent social practices. Where they have rejected moral discourse (or at least think they have) be cause of its transcendental character, I have shown how one can em brace it without according it a transcendental status-and along the way have shown how hard rejecting it would actually be. My success in this matter, however, has not by a long shot translated into a vindi cation of poststructuralism or underpinning of its moral commitments. My discussion has answered only the question of how moral discourse
can be compelling without being transcendentally grounded. This only
allows the moral case for poststructuralism to get off the ground. Whether it will actually fly depends on whether the central moral com mitment of poststructuralism-the commitment to antirepresentation alism-is one that can be defended, and on whether a general moral theory or moral view in line with antirepresentationalism can be con structed. 52. '·Some Questions About the Justification of Moratity," in PI,i/cJ$ophica/ Per
SptCtiW5, vol. 6, Ethics, 00. James Tomberlin. (Atascadero, Calif.: RidgeView
lishing Co., 1992),43.
Pub
Reflective equilibrium, in one way or another, seems to lie at the root of much of contemporary moral philosophy. Utilitarianism tries to accom modate intuitions about justice and rights, and in doing so evolves n i to a multivalue consequcntialism of a kind I discuss later. Deontologists ac knowledge that no rights or duties can be maintained as such, regardless of the consequences, and so restrict the scope for the ascription of rights and dUlies.1 Alternatively, some of our intuitions about issues such as abortion or surrogate parenthood are viewed with a skeptical eye given broader, more general moral commitments. It seems that moral philoso phy can happen in no other way, since at the level of moral intuitions there is too much conflict to dispense with broader considerations alto gether, and at the level of theoretical consolidation the phenomena to be saved are altogether too diverse to admit of a simple codification. This chapter, although proposing a general moral principle, at the same
lime cuts a swath through several conjoining regions of trus variegated territory. To sal that its purpose is to defend a moral principle �n the . basis of certai n deeply held intuitions is mostly true, but a bit mislead ing, since there is a discussion of when the principle does not apply. To s..1y that its purpose is to reject a standard philosophical approach to mo rality is also mostly true, but would be only a partial view of the matter. Finally, to say that it is designed as a partial defense of liberal or leftist I. See, e.g., Charles Fried's discussion 01 the Hcatastrophic" n i Righi and Wrong (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 10, or Judith Jarvis Thomson's discus· sion of trade-ofls in The Rtohu ofRighls (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1�).
"
The Moral Theory of Poststrucluralism
MOT.II Anlirepresentatioll.l1ism
49
politics against certain (though by no means all) conservative approaches
features of this principle require discussion in order for the principle to
would also be true, hut would neglect the theoretical results derived from
be understood. First, the ceteris paribus clause, "other things being equal":
hedging about the principle defended here.
The principle does not prescribe an absolute ban on representing or com mending certain intentional lives as intrinsically superior or inferior to others. Rather, it supports the idea that such representing or commend
If the situation of moral philosophy is inescapably one of reflective equilibrium, then any approach to its realm must at the same time look upward toward theoretical consolidation, downward toward specific moral intuitions, and crosswise toward political, epistemic, and even metaphysical commitments that attach to a specific moral discussion. This
chapter add resses, in the course of defending a specific moral principle,
i a morally bad thing and that one should not in general engage in ing s practices that promote it. It may be that certain goods that cannot be achieved except by means of engaging in such a practice are important enough to justify its adoption; even when that is the case, however, onc
in our moral theorizing and in order to show a bit what the surrounding
should acknowledge that one is dirtying one's hands by so engaging. Of course, such a ceteris paribus clause or caveat can be applied to al
territory itself looks like, both in confirmation of the metaethical picture
most any worthwhile moral principle one can call to mind. For n i stance,
drawn in the preceding chapter and in anticipation of later discussion.
most people would ratify the principle "People ought not, all things be
the surrounding issues both in order to display the role of that principle
The principle to be defended here s i one that I call the principle of antirepresentationatism, or, more simply, antirepresentationalism.2 The anlirepresentationalism in question is moral and has nothing to do with
ing equal, to kill innocent human beings." The real moral issue here is, when are other things not equal? With regard to the principle of killing, things are almost always equal, while not so with the principle of antirep
issues of semantic anti representationalism associated with philosophers
rcscntationalism. Although true, that docs not, of course, empty the lat
such as Richard ROTty.
ter principle of its sanctioning power. That power depends upon the prin
The discussion occurs in four stages. First, the principle is discussed, its relation to poststructuralism is drawn, and then it is defended. Sec
ciples that justify it, which must for the moment await articulation. What
ond, objections and limitations to it are considered. In both of these stages, characteristics of the moral realm are highlighted and their roles discussed. Third, some implications for acceptance of the principle are detailed. In particular, I argue that even a limited acceptance of the principle of antirep resentalionalism, among its more manifest implications, raises strong doubts about the ultimate tenability of a virtue-ethical or virtue-theoreti cal approach to morality. Finally, I offer an argument why a consequen tialist moral theory, rather than a rights-based one, better preserves the force of antirepresentationalism.
The Principle and Its Defense The principle of antirepresentationalism is as follows: People ought not, other things being equal, to engage in practices whose effect, among others, is the representation or commendation of certain intentional lives as either intrinsically superior or intrinsically inferior to others. Several 2. The term "an!irepresentationalism," like the term "moral discourse," has a more Continental than Allgto·American lone. It refers to what has come to be called in Continental drch�5 "the critique of representation," For more on this, see my Political Plli/()sopity uj Posls""crrlrQlisr Allllre/.is"" chap. 6.
needs to be recognized forpresent purposes is that the principle has some moral sanction behind it but that that sanction is not absolute. Crucial to an understanding of this principle is an understanding of practice as one of its salient aspects. As used in the last chapter, the term "practice" may be defined as a social pattern of behaviors directed to ward a socially recognized goal. What makes the pattern of behavior so cial is its interpersonal activity at some level. In other words, there can be no private practices, at least as defined here. In addition, a practice usu ally involves its own language game, which works, among other things, to justify acts within that practice and to set the practice's parameters. Two facts about practices are important for antirepresentationalism to make sense. First. the emphaSiS in the phrase "patterns of behavior" is on the patterns more than the behavior. Practices can involve very differ ent acts that may be part of a single pattern. For instance, many different moves may be made in chess, or many different strategies may be adopted during courtship, but the similarities of the overall patterns define chess and courtship as practices. Second, and more important, practices often have effects that are dif ferent from their goals. The goal of courtship is usually the establishment of intimate relations with another person. Practices of courtship in our SOCiety, however, have had effects, often deleterioUS, upon women and homosexuals. II would be hard to say of at least some of those cffects that they were among the goals of the practice, bUI that does not mean that they are not among its effects. In Ihe case of anlirepresentalionalism, part
50
The Moral Theory
of PoslstructUTalism
of Ihe argument hinges on effects of representation that are not among its goals. Third, the use of the terms "representingN and "commending" should be clarified. To represent one intentional life as intrinsically better {or worse)l than another would seem to be just a form of commending it. But though this is true the practice of representing can bea bit more involved than what we think of as commending. In representing a certain life or type of life as better than another, one displays it as a model of life, one holds it up as a paragon of how (intentional) life ought to be lived. One can commend a life without seeking to discover Ihe specific elements or their specific relation in what one is commending. By "representing" is meant the articulation of certain intentional lives as better than others because they are more normal, more praiseworthy, or whatever. The final term that needs clarification is "intentional life," by which I mean the way a person conducts his or her mental comportment toward him- or herself, others, and Ihe world. This use of the term avoids any metaphysical issues about mind-body relations, the idea being that inas much as the state of a person is described intentionally rather than physi cally, people ought to avoid representing or commending some of those stales as intrinsically better than others. Because the effects of represent ing or commending certain intentional lives are not the effects, or at least not as profoundly the effects, of representing certain physical lives as in trinsically better than others, the emphasiS here is on mental lives inten tionally described. Should some physicalistic reductionism of the mental turn out to be true, that would have no effect upon the argument pre sented here, since the issue has to do with lives as described a certain way, not with Jives-even the same lives-described otherwise. In sum, then, the principle of antirepresentationalism states that people ought, all other things equal, not to engage in social patterns of behavior whose effect (among others), if not whose goal, is to commend or hold up as a model certain mental lives intentionally described as intrinsically (as opposed to instrumentally) superior to others. The principle of anlirepresentationalism is a cornerstone of poststruc turalism. Although it is nowhere articulated as such-because of post structuralist resistance to moral theorizing-it everywhere informs post structuralist political theory. The targets of poststructuralist critique are often practices that repre sent to people not what their intentional lives ought to be but what they in fact are; particular offenders here are psychological and psychoana lytic practices. Although the critique is sometimes cast as against accoullts oj, rather than comllle/Idaliolls of, certain intentional lives, il is clear that 3. For the sake of simplicity, the remainder of this chapter refers simply to in trinSically superior intentional lil'es.
Moral Antirepresentationalism
51
the problem for the poststructuralists lies in the fact that certain accounts effectively become commendations by the role they play n i our social practices generally. Poststructuralists have not, for instance, criticized biological accounls of intentional lives, because they have not, at least as yet, had the same coercive effect as psychological ones.' For Foucault, Deleuze, and Lyotard, the embrace of antirepresentation alism has two faces. First, the power to represent people to themselves is oppressive in itself: practices of telling people who they really are and what they really want erect a barrier between them and who (or what) they can create themselves 10 be. A/Iii-Oedipus can be read in this light as a work whose project is to demolish current representational barriers be tween people and who they can become, and in that sense Foucault states its point exactly when he calls it "a book of ethics."s Second, representing people to themselves helps reinforce other oppressive social relations. As Lyolard points out in Tile Pastmodem Condition, for instance, science as a practice that reinforces thinking of ourselves and our worth solely in terms of efficient production connives with the Enlightenment narrative of hu man history as a progressive freeing of humanity from the bondage of superstition. And for Foucault, the disciplinary project of psychological control and rehabilitation reinforces oppressive capitalist social relations: "If economic exploitation separates the force and the product of labor, let us say that disciplinary coercion establishes in the body the constricting link between an increased aptitude and an increased domination."6 Whal leads the poststructuraJists astray in regard to moral theorizing, in addition to their metaethical assumption thai morality requires a tran scendental ground, lies, I believe, in their peculiar embrace of antirepre sentationalism. They seem to extrapolate from the unacceptability of cer tain practices of telling people who they are (unacceptable because it tells them, aside from any obligations to others, who they VI/gilt to be) the unacceptability of telling people what-at least in some cases-they ought to do. But if representationalist practices are offensive because of the con sequences they produce, then il is reasonable to draw the conclusion (and it is difficult to read the poststructuralists as not drawing this conclu sion) that one ought not, other trungs being equal. to engage in them. That conclusion, however, is a moral one. It is a universal prescription for action. Thu�, although resisting moral theorizing, the poststructural isis s(''em so to resist on grounds that are themselves moral. 4_ However, with the rise of the genome project and the fashionability of ex plaining everything n i terms of evolution. this may soon present a danger. 5. Preface to Auti-Oedipus: Capitalism IIIrd Sc/rhol'lrrf"ia !1972\. by Gilles Dcleuze and Felix Guattari and trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. lane (New York: Viking Press, 1977), xiii. 6. Oisdl'lirre IlIId Prmi5ir 119751, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York Random House,
1977), 132.
52
The Moral Theory of Posl$tructuralism
Given poststructuTalism's ambivalent embrace of the principle of anlirepresentationalism and knowing what the principle in fact is, it re mains to be seen why anyone ought to subscribe to the principle of anlirep rescntationalism. After all, it is not a principle that commands OUT imme diate assent, like the principle "People ought not to kill babies." This lack
of immediate assent is, of course, no bar to OUf accepting the principle; bul lhe principle is, in this sense, a second-order one, deriving its justifi cation from other, more dearly held principles. The case for the principle takes what can broadly be called a negative path and a positive path. The negative path reveals the ties between
antirepresentationalism and deonlologically oriented liberalism, while the positive path is moreconsequentialist and reveals a divergence from such liberalism. The negative path starts with a challenge; why should we believe that some n i tentional lives are intrinsically superior to others? The burden of proof seems to lie with those who hold such a belief, because in al least some cases, and probably many, the claim of intrinsic superiority is to be
Moral Antircprcscntation..1lism
53
sionate states of mind, however, but upon the treatment that results from them. Here it might be objected that the intrinsic/instrumental distinction being used is empty, since the link betwet'n intentional lives and action is
too profound to allow one to separate what one does from one's attitude in doing it. Even if that distinction were, in many cases, artificial for pur poses of promoting behavior, however, it would not be so for purposes of evaluating behavior. Even if cerlain intentional lives were necessary fOf certain behavior to occur, the question would still remain, what makes that person, or his or her behavior, morally praiseworthy or morally
blameworthy. If I am correct, it is not the intentional life that makes it so. I! is either the behavior itself or its consequences that form the proper arena of moral assessment. One might think here that such a proposal immediately rules out aU
deontological and virtue-ethical approaches 10 morality, but I believe that deontological approaches can fairly easily accommodate the principle, at least insofar as its justification conforms with the negative path. Many
had al the expense of a positive valuing of one's present intentional life,
people would want to claim, in Kanlian fashion, that the right action is
and it is fair to ask, of someone who 5
way is part of one's inlentional life if anything is. In order to accommo
worse than another one you might lead, what is better about the latter one. In order to see why, it is helpful to distinguish between, on the one hand, liking the intentional life of another and, on the other, holding it to be intrinsically superior.
H J do not find your intentional life to be attractive--if, for instance,
you seem to me to do all the right things for all the wrong reasons-then
J may nol wanl to be around you, but that does not lead me to say that there is a morally better way for you to be or that you have a moral obli gation to be different. The claim of intrinsic superiority, however, does have that force. If one intentional life is intrinsically superior to another, then the person whose intentional life is judged to be inferior has a rea son-a moral reason-to change that life. It does nol seem unfair, then, regarding Ihe claim of intrinsic superiority, to ask what makes Ihat inten
tionaI life superior. For several reasons, I am skeptical that there can be an adequate an swer to thai question, although I do nol want to rule it out in principle.
First, since the issue is one of intrinsic superiority, one cannot appeal to the likely behavior or consequences that will result from certain inten tional lives as opposed 10 others. The principle of antirepresentational
ism does not rule out the pOSSibility of certain intenlional lives being ill
strumelltally superior to others because of the consequences of those lives. Feeling compassion toward others maybe positively correlated with treat ing them kindly, and that gives us a reason to feel compassion toward others. That reason is based not upon the intrinsic superiority of compas-
the action done for the right reason and that a reason for acting a certain
date antirepresentationalism, however, one only has to import what is praiseworthy about certain reasons for action into the description of the
Volvo. Moreover, upon seeing my Sift you get depressed at the thought that someone you like considers you to be a Volvo person. Now, there are many ways to describe my act and, among those, several that are ame
nable to a moral assessment of the act. One of the latter is to say that I bought you something thai depressed you, but that I did so for a good reason. A weakness of this description (not a fatal weakness, but one that may motivate us to consider possible alternative descriptions) is that it seems to divorce what was good about the act from the act itself, as though the act were ball and yet excusable because of the inlentional life behind it. A better altemative would be to describe the act as a failed attempt to buy you a nice birthday gift. The act was fine, there was nothing wrong with it in itself, but it had unfortunate consequences. This second descrip tion, by locating the problem in the consequences of the act rather than in the act itself, both pinpoints the problem where it actually exists and pre serves what deontological appro.1ches would like to preserve: a decision procedure that focuses upon acts rather than upon consequences.
54
The Moral Theory of Poststructuraiism
To the idea that the ascriber of intrinsic superiority to intentional lives faces a burden-of-proof problem, a second objection might be that it is no harder to give an account of the intrinsic superiority of intentional lives than it is to give an account of, for instance, states of affairs. There is always a difficulty in deciding what criteria, if any, one can use to delineate the in
trinsically superior from the merely instrumentally useful or the intrinsi
cally inferior. Why should the question be any more difficult in the case of
intentional lives than in the cases of behavior or states of affairs? In all cases,
whatever decision is made regarding intrinsic value will leave out some
Moral Anlirepresenlationalism
55
beyond the mere liking of it for oneself, it is intrinsically superior, one
must also make a commitment 10 hold others to it. (This is the universal ity characteristic of morality discussed in the previous chapter.) It is the moral force of that commitment that is being denied here. Here the link between antirepresenlationalism and liberal political theory becomes manifest, although the commitme.nts of antirepresenta tionalism are stronger than those of (at least much of) liberal political theory. Antirepresentationalism assumes the intrinsic value of autonomy and uses that assumption to shift the burden of proof to those who would
thing thai others consider to be intrinsicaHy valuable, and thus obligations
posit the intrinsic superiority of certain intentional lives. II is, of course,
There is, however, a great deal of moral difference between saying
or to claim that it is outweighed by the intrinsic value of certain inten
either to be or to do certain things will accrue 10 unwilling others.
someone ought to do something and saying someone oughl lo be some
thing. In the former case, legislation of whal l oughl lO do can be justified by reference to the effects upon olhers of my doing it. In the latter case, however, the issue of whall ought to be cannol be so justified. It is, per
theoretically possible either to challenge the intrinsic value of autonomy
tional lives. I am not sure that a compelling reply can be given 10 Ihe first challenge, since the moral distance that separates valuers of autonomy
from nonvaluers seems too great to bridge; regarding the second chal
lenge, it remains to be seen what this ntrinsic i value consists in that can
haps, fair for a majority of people, a majority that finds access to suffi
outweigh the value of autonomy.
lieve access to sufficient food to be an intrinsic good to contribute to such
been cast upon the ability of those who support the idea of intrinsically superior intentional lives to make their case.' Some empirical reasons also support such skepticism. For example, although it might be fair to press
cient food to be an intrinsic good, to require even those who do not be
access. The reason for this is that the claim of intrinsic goodness attach ing to access to sufficient food affects everyone. U il is claimed, however, that possesisng great courage, whether displayed or not, is an intrinsic good, then peopleare asked to conform to a certain way of being whether
or not Ihat way of being has any bearing upon the larger social arena.
Such a claim runs roughshod over the value of individual autonomy, the idea that people ought to be allowed, without undue pressure, to make of themselves what they want, especially when thai self-making does not harm anyone else. In the case of behavior and states of affairs, one's au
tonomy may be limited by decisions about intrinsic good; but when de
cisions are made that create obligations aboul who one should be regard less of the effects of that way of being upon others, then the realm in which one can exercise one's autonomy begins to shrink.7 One might ask, at this paint, about the person who finds his or her own inlentional life unacceptable. Surely in that case it would not be a violation of autonomy for him or her to decide that another intentional life s i superior to his or her current one, and thus to feel compelled to embrace it. Granted, but in that case the distinction between liking an intentional life and finding it to be intrinsically superior needs to be in voked. The person who wants to exchange his or her intentional life for another can lay daim to liking it better. But in order to make the case that
7. The most compelling reason for limiting the majority'S dictating intrinsi· cally good behaviors or states of affairs to which all must contribute also has to do with the value most of uS place on autonomy.
So far, because of the way our moral space is constructed, doubt has
certain of our moral principles regarding interpersonal n i teraction upon other cultures, it would not be so to press any principles regarding inten tional lives. Owen Flanagan and Richard Miller have called attention to the multifarious ways moral personalities can be formed, particularly in other cultures. Flanagan, reviewing the psychological literature on traits that would be relevant to constructing any sort of moral naturalism, con cludes that "even the increasingly rich and fine-grained descriptions of (candidate) natural traits provided by modem biology, cultural anthro
pology, and cognitive psychology fail to provide anything like a deter minate picture of a 'natural morality'-of a morality which befits, or can be read off from, our natural aims, capacities, and interests.'" This would lead one to suspect intrinsically superior intentional lives. Of course, it could just as easily lead one to suspect the intrinsic superiority of any moral category. While such suspicion s i justified, it does not tell the whole story. 8. The use of the possessive �ourN indicates that there may be other, differ ently arra ngl!d moral spaces within which the allempl to construe certain inten tional Uves as superior would not cause such a moral ruckus. Below, in discuss· ing the posith'e path toward justifying antircpresentationalism. I also discuss the embeddedness of the principle not only in Our conceptual space but in our his torical and political space as well. 9. V,lriditS oj MOrlll Personality: Ethics lind Psychological R(lIlism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991),51. .
56
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism Richard Miller, in his article "Ways of Moral Learning."10 demonstrates
thai moral personalities that would be considered stunled by lhe stan dards of, say, Lawrence Kohlberg's criteria actually work to foster com
munity goals of other cultures. For instance, in the ethnic group of Ihe Tiv, where the preservation of the community-Ihe "tar"-is of central moral importance, Ihe court system is constructed such that witnesses are brought n i by each side of the dispute, paid by that side, and expected
to testify sympathetically for thai side, even at the expense of telling the truth. Now, we might consider the willingness to engage in lying, espe cially in courl, to be a character flaw, but the Tiv do not. To betray the
side that has paid one for testifying would "spoil the tar"; it would ruin the solidarity of the community. Moreover, one justifies one's lying to the
other side by pointing out that one was performing a service for which one was paid. No offense, then, need be taken, Tiv morality dictates behaviors very different from our own. We need not find at least many of these behaviors morally objectionable. because we possess (I hope), alongside our other moral principles, a principle enjoining cross-cultural tolerance and understanding. Such a principle
has its limits: child abuse and the mistreatment of women often consti tute reasons for overriding any principle of tolerance and imposing our
own moral standards. Given the diversity of moral practices and a prin ciple of tolerance, however, situations in which we are tempted to im pose certain of our own standards mustinvolve egregious offenses against those standards. And the offense of not realizing a certain intentional life
surely does not faU into the category of the egregious. II is hard to imagine criticizing members of other cultures for not real izing certain intentional lives, or even excusing them from doing SO given
their cultural orientation. The lesson to be drawn here, in keeping with
the discussion of the previous chapter, is that morality is primarily a prac
ticc or group of practices, in the sense of practice discussed above. As
such, principles of evaluation ought to be bound up with the practice
and the behaviors and consequences that flow from it rather than with
the characters and personalities that may or may not lay behind those behaviors and their consequences. This does not mean that one can never impose one's moral practice(s) upon others; but it does mean that in or
der to be justified in doing so, the offense rectified by so imposing. at the very least, must be contrary to fundamental principles guiding one's view
of the role of moral practice. Put schematically, morality is essentially
interpersonal and only secondarily, if at all, intrapersonal. The objection could be raised here, however, that although we cannot justifiably (i.e., by the lights of our own moral practice) impose standards 10. PiJilosopiJical R4!vinv 9<1, no.
57
Moral Antirepresentationalism
for intentional lives cross-culturally (even though we can at times im pose standards of action), and although that does indicate 5Om�thiflg �eep : about our morality, it does not prevent us from focusmg upon mte�ho�al lives in our own moral practice. Why not say that, for us, there are mlnn
sically superior moral lives, not because there is �ny naturalist stand�rd of human moral flourishing. but because those lives would best reahze
OUT moral practice? To hold this, however, is already to concede that
�
morality is deeply a matter of interpersonal practice an th�t moral char . . acter or inlentionallife is parasitic upon a practice that IS prlmanly mter personal. If this is so, and if the pr nciples for the evaluation of mo al . . practice are primarily those of behaVior and Its co�uen�es, an If s lf ! ing the burden of proof onto those who would POSIt the Idea o mtnnsl
�
� � �
�
cally superior intentional lives preserves autonomy, then there IS g� although certainly not conclusive-reason to jettison the promotion of certain intentional lives as intrinsically superior to others. The positive path of argument for the principle of antirepresentation alism relies upon the consequences of practices that represent or commend certain intentional Jives as intrinsically superior, rather than upon any
�
moral or empirical suspicion cast upon the idea of an intrinsica ly supe rior intentional life. Here, as in the second branch of the negative path, the emphasis is on empirical, rather than transcendent�l. arguments.
Roughly, the claim is that the consequences of what we DUght call re�re sentationalist practices are morally suspect, and thus that those practices ought to be abandoned.
'
. Much of the impetus for this argument is based upon the hlstor!ca1 ap , . preach developed by Michel Foucault, especially in his ,",,:ork lscrplmt . 1l1ld PUllish. Foucault traces the rise of psychologIcal servICes m France
!1
�
�
from the mid-eighteenth to late nineteenth cen ury and finds that I e emer gence of psychological therapy has as much, If not more, to do.wlth tech . niques of social control as with discoveries about the hu ".'�n mmd �I�d Its functioning. In some ways, this claim should not be surpnsmg . IntUltlVely, . . we recognize that the concept of "normality ' is u in our oclety m a �. normative sense. We claSSify people or behaVIOr as abnormal by way of a description of their deviation from a socially accepted norm, to be sure; however, that deviation is generally regarded as a problem to be addressed,
:
�
:
not merely a fat! to be noted. Moreover, we so regard "abnor�ality' even when its effects on others are either minimally or not at all dlsturbmg 10 us. Someone talking loudly to a friend standing behind me in line at the supermarket may be obnoxious; but someone talking loudly to .him- or
herself in that line needs to be removed from my presence and gIven ad equate psychiatric treatment whether that person wants it or not. For Foucault, this attitude derives from the emergence of much of psy i which involves the chological practice from what he calls diSCiplne,
"
"
1l\e Moral Theory of Poststruduralism
58
reg�lation of bodily ?"ovements in a coordinated fashion. Discipline, which had been exercised by monasteries and by some military quarters fo� many years, became a primary technique of ensuring obedience in prisons, schools, and factories over the course of the nineteenth century. In or�er to accoll.nt for both the successes and the failures of disciplinary , pra cllces,praclI�loners of discipline turned increasingly toward psycho , logical e�planatJons of behavior. Thus psychological practice became, in part, an Instrument to ensure the efficacy of diSCipline; and that inslru� menl, given that techni'lues of djscipline establish and reinforce social con trot in specific areas, issued in an alignment between psychology and , control generally.ll SOCial Recent studi� have indicated that practices of therapeutically oriented . the role of social psychology continue to fulfill control. In an overview of the ris� of psychiatric practices in the United States, Robert Castel, Fran�olse Caste!, a�d Anne Lovell have detailed how psychotherapeutic practices are ubiqUitous not only in the courts and with groups tradition all� regarded as "abnormal," but with the population at large. Regarding c�ll?ren.' they n�te that "psychiatric labels are often thin disguises for dlfflcullies . adjusting to specific social, family, or scholastic situations rather t�a� descriptions of clear-cut pathologies."12 They report, for in �tan.ce, . FIV� hundred thousand to one million schoolchildren are being malntamed on .d�ugs. M?St are classed as hyperactive or as suffering from so-c�lled minimal brain dysfunction. Both diagnostic categories have been subJ�t to sev�re abuse."l} And they conclude that "manipulative psych�l�glCal techruques have come into their own along with a particu lar poiIhcal system, a system that uses Ie<:hniques 10 help maintain and reproduce a specific set of social relations. The consequentialist argument against representationalist practices devolves, then, upon the claim that such practices promote, in situations of persona1 s or maladjustment, a focus upon what might be . unhappines wrong With oneself rather than upon what might be wrong with the soII. This quic� ov�rview, of course, does not exhausl the (often controversial) . . m
"11
h,stOrIcal portraIt Foucault draws of the intertwined emergence of diSCipline, psy . chology, and penal t�hnJques. For a competing historical view (which does not, ho�ever, �m to raise doubts about the general points I have raised), see Pieter Splerenbe:g s Spectad/.' of ufferi"g (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) or, �t (I �hghtly greater distance, Klaus Doerner's Madmen nud tile Bourgeoisie: A
�
SOCIal History of IIISIWlty and Psyclliatry
119691, trans. Joachim Neugroschel and Jean Steinberg (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981). 12. Castel, Castel. and Lovell, Tht Psychiatric Society [19791, nns. Arthur Goldha�mer (New York: Columbia Unive1"llity Press, 1982), 202. 13 .Ibld, �07. My own mother was told, when I was a child, that 1 should be
t
.
. preSCribed R ltalm for hyperactivity. She n:ofused. 14. Ibid, 292.
Moral Antireprescntationalism
59
positing an cial arrangements in which one finds oneself. They do 50 by devaluing by l-and intrinsically superior intentional life-the norma from the e de"iat they that degree other forms of intentional life to the ior, behav t devian ing devalu up wind normal. Such practices, then, e becaus e, anyon on effects rious delete has ior whether or not that behav mism confor way, that In life. onal intenti rmal" "abno an it is a product of and a noncritical attitude toward one's society are either produced or reinforced. for in It is not difficult to see how such practices work in the case,exuali ty homos . mn conde to lt stance, of homosexuality Since it is difficu n have might it s effect rious � delete directly on the basis of any With wrong hing somet is there that made is nonhomosexuals, the claim that de homosexual desire and thus with the behaviors that issue from in.the illness l sire. In this light, the inclusion of homosexuality as a mentaof tile AmeTl ctllt l Manlla first two editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical as ",,:, lity u mose� h h ltho � �� � Psychological Associatioll is instructive. � iOn mciuS earher Its , edillon third the dropped as a mental disturbance in cts of indicates a readiness to classify deviant social behaviors as produ homo of case the in ess, readin a Such life. onal an "abnormal" intenti g others: a sexuality, has yielded the following consequences, amon have �hav e group of citizens has been socially marginalized; privat tnstanciors gov es, e extrem been subjected to moral sanction; and in more ly moral as ed accept been has y ernment intervention into sexual activit I justified. ' those Other harmful effects of representationalist practices, particularlyare not ntion, intenre and ication classif eutic therap psycho concerned with i s effects these of n far to seek. Perhaps the most famous documentatio eight which in ,"16 Places D. L. Rosenhan's study "On Being Sane in Insane experimenters presenting (falsely) one symptom-hearing voices saying words like "empty," "hollow," and "thud"---checked into mental hospi tals around the country. After checking in, the experimenters abandoned the fake symptom; all other information they gave about themselves (ex cept identifying information, such as their names) was true. Seven of the with eight were diagnosed as schizophrenic, and all eight were discharged days n ninetee of e averag an a diagnOSiS of schizophrenia in remission, ,
BOlllers v. Hardwick, where a police arrest of two men engaged in homosexual behavior was upheld on the basiS of their break ing Georgia's antisodomy law. 16. Sciellu 179 (1973): 250-58. Gh'co the recent discoveries of medical bases for schizophrenia, thc rapidity and universality with which thc d!agnosis-and .md,catcs the case . its attendant social stigma-was applied to the cxperlmenters with which wrongheaded, yet damaging. rep�ntationa]isi practices can become matters of due course.
15. See, for instance, the case of
The Moral Theory of Poststrucluralism
6IJ
after they were admitted.l?
are underscored by a series of so l The dangers of representationaism . cHlI psychological studies engaged by Henri Tajfel and his colleagues, . whICh have suggested that being placed into one group as opposed to another brings with it an immediate loyalty to other members of that group but also a loss of sensitivity to overall community welfare and prejudice . agamst members of other groups, no matter how bizarre or even random the basis for group classification. Thus, the loyalty thai follows from shared aesthetic pre ferences, 18 or even no criteria at all,'9 can be sufficient to pro . , . mote prejudicial practices. (Admittedly, prejudicial considerations were not completely determinative; considerations of fairness played a role as well, but had to compete with prejudicial ones.) If this is so, then the ef.
�ects of rep�ntati.onalism described above are unsurprising. The posit�
I n tlonal stales as i�trinsically superior or inferior is likely IIlg of certain nte
. . . i dividuals or groups to le�d to prejudice and marginalization of other n l positive effects, constitutes a strong and, III the absence of �untervaiing representationalism . reason to embrace anh
If these argu �ents are right, then there is a bond between many
psychotherapeutic and other representationalist practices and some cur rently established, morally problematic social relations. The connection een a normative commendation of the normal and representational
�rn:
ISm IS clear. However, one may ask whether, in order to find this line of argum �nt successful, one has to find the cllfrent social relations such prac . !Ices reinforce to be unacce table, Many of the writers cited here clearly
�
mIt ment (though I share it) is not necessary. do. However, such a com The consequences these writers point to have to do with an unthink ing conformism and a tendency automatically to blame oneself for one's unhappiness rather than investigate possible causes in one's social sur roundings. If successful, such consequences blunt a society's critical and 17 For yet �noth�r case study of a psychiatrically based representationalist : . ' . prach� w�th shgmah;o;mg effects, !OCe Prudence Rains s Bl'Comillg QII UIIW/'d MOlher: A SO(lrJlOglCnI AccollIIl (Chicago, Aldine/Atherton, 1971), which documents at tempted stigmatizations of unwed pregnant women (especially black women) at a couple of shelters. 18. H. Taj�el, B. Flament, and R. r. Bundy, "Social Categorh:alion and Inter � group 8ch�vlor, Eu ropea�J 'ollmal of Social Psychology 1, no. 1 (1971), 149-78. . 19 M. �Ilhg and H. TaJfe" "Social Categorization and Similarity in Intergroup . , , EJlrop.'au !ollmal ofSocial Psychology 3, no. 1 (1973): 27-52. The authors BehaVIOr cite studies with what seem to be contrary results; they note, however, that in those studies the absence o( in-group favoritism may have followed from a mea sUr(!menl of prejudice that involved a rating of olhers in which no goods were at stake �nd Ihal was thus trivial. In the current studies, prejudice was detected when II was a mattcr of distributing money. Thus, where there arc 110 stakes' a world wherc stakes are pervasive' i thcre may be no in-group favoritism; but n one could expect favoritism to arise. .
61
Moral Antircpn.-sentationalism
ical orters of current social and polit self-critical edge. Even many supp ction refle to sucn relations, if not subject relations will want to admit tnat ge nerating into less satisf�ctory arran dege of risk and critique, run the t, onen comp ve flectl acth'e critical self-n: ments. A society tnat lacks an . structural liS for IOn imat receive legit where people neither ask for nor repre and abuse. Thus, the spread of tion ipula man for ripe is relations, wno those ng amo only not ern conc for sentationalism should be a cause who unacceptable but also among those find current social arrangements any m so o ce kind promoted by tne dominan . . do not. Self-absorption of the tdu mdlv the ly tens to �ro uce n?t mere psychotherapeutic practices threa tnelf dIssolution. but ions relat al mun alization of com t, not that this positive �ath fi�ds fa Now, it mignt be objected here ance l dom eLr t h wl only � but $C, � per with representationalist practices t be cl�lmed, It migh s, Thu . ents gem arran l in current (or conceivable) socia e�re ds is not a moral principle of antLf what the positive path recommen n' taho esen repr principle to the effect that sentationaLism but some lesser how of s alysi an d too om nant a� alist practices should nol become . ver, Situation. This obJectlon, �we . ent curr our in so me they nave beco . pnn ific speC the With than ry al theo has more to do with the role of mor mor�l lgh, throl go to ction obje this for ciple under discussion. In order III less, then not too deeply enm�shed principles need to be, if not time and right how idea seems to me some current social contingencies. That nst the background of Ine related agai up hcld n somehow wrong wnc one role of moral principles, idea that guiding our behavior is . to s need to be developed III order On the one hand, if moral principle l reflec· .�ora of lexity comp the then cope with every specific situation, Moral rding specific moral deClsl�ns. tion might cause a paralysiS rega the On viOr. ral guidance for our beh? principles, then, must provide gene of goal tne l fulftl principles does not other nand, the provision of general . g moral principles . moral theorizing or even of havin in specific situations, �oral p,?n' use, beca only not but ially part This is Lch to discover or to dectd� w h . ciples come into conflict, and it is hard p�lIlclples 1 mor �neral ugh altho � use, � should predominate. It is also beca lples can vior, specif iC moral pnnc can serve as general guides to our beha of �uch gth stren social context. The better help us navigate our current .nClples pn l mo�a ral gene es from tne specific moral'Principles itself deriv . e the principle under dls:cussiOn, th. ding regar ever, How tnem y that justif . and cn tIOn reflec l socia of and omy appeal to considerations of auton a princi�le tha�, Ihou�h not use tique can offer a strong justification for rtneless provLde gUidance III our own ful in some other societies, can neve society under current conditions.
�
�
�
? �
a�
�
�
62
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism
��
Objections to the Principle
: ourse, ma y po�sible obje ctions could be raised to the prin � ciple of t ep nlatIO�absm, some of whic h I have offered in my initial . [ens: de t e pr Clpl . other objections are, I think, mos � t ilIustra tive th f om e pom t of view of the principle itsel c f and from Ihe oint ' of vlew p 0, moraI theorv ne " " ns J r�J ' Jy 10e 'Irst lwo obJe<:lJo " ge are wrong" the th" d ' o recl. Its corr ecl�ess, �owever, does not necessitate the a an d m n 0 'nt l.re�res entatlOnahsm but is part of Ihe ceteris paribus : clause thai renders I he pnnClple non absolute. � fi � t Objection concerns situations in which people desire 10 hav e su Th or lVes pres enled or commended to them � . Is there not some moral Of comT\It1 agains! them if we bar such representation? In order � lo ans e thIS , obJ�tlOn , we must understand first that the principle does t at practices of presenting or commending certain inte . ntional es ug th to be ro lb't ed: It ,",ys that people oug I:' ht not to en age in : . suc prac ces. I S dlSltnctlOn l important because it may well e that whi c ractI es ought o b discoura ged, they ought not to be ban � ned outrig . ana ogy here IS With offe nsive speech. There are man y acts of s h that peop eought not to per form. Nevertheless, those acls ought not banned, either because such banning would itself be a violation of t be n r because a consequence of banning them might be a sti o c a S h gene�a lly. The same holds for anti representation_ alism Pr Ch.ces ° represen t mg or commending ought � . to be discouraged by th pnnclp le but not outright banned . ��w, thisposition might seem to accord with the pos . itive ath to the cat.lOn of the principle hut to conflict with the negativ e P th. This is se, though one Citn argueas with speech-that ther e ou ht to be protections of cert ain behaviors that may not bring about the bes con se enc one can h rdl make the sam e argument for violations � � of au to Owe\'�r, vlolatlOns of autonom y, like consequences, are mat ters . egree. lOlatlOn s of autonomy such as rape or denial of votn i g rights a e greglOus and need to be banned. Others, such as making a person ee worthless, althoug h often effective in prevent . ing someone . from ursumg or her life g ls, ought, for a variety of reasons, to be � perm i l of but Isco raged. AntlfCprese ntationalism falls into the cate � go auto omy VIOlations, although to argue for that wou ld be a bit w·d ' eo current purposes. Suf fice I·t t0 say that banning practices of representin o me ding certa intentional lives as intrinsically superior woul o e Oor to all kmds of ban s on behavior, and the effe . . . ct of such er�lzze d ban m IS something hea � � rtily to be avoided. Morality , even en It offers prmclples for action, cannot be redu ced to promoting the
��
� � �� : � �
T�
•
"
b
�
::;:s: � � �� S:; ! � � l? �� � �
�
�
�
IS
�
! � fli�; � ��� � � �
;::�
� �� ;:;� ; 7 � �
;,;�� �
��
�
�
�
�
�
�
�IS
�
� �
Moral Antirepresenhltionalism
63
good and banning the bad without, in the end, backhandedly promoting the bad. (This point is important not only for present purposes but also for seeing the motivation behind incorporating antirepresentationalism into a consequentialist moral theory, which I discuss below.) That said, the objection, then, would have to rest not on the banning of practices of representation but on a more vigorous right of those who want such representation to have it. A right like that, however, is a hard one to defend. if, for instance, psychological therapeutic practices are rep resentationalist, then to have a right to representation might involve some
thing like a right to therapy or its eguivalent. Such a right would pre sumably correlate with an obligation to provide representation. But why
should such an obligation exist? One might be able to see one's way to an obligation to provide material support, and even counseling support, but
.10 obligation to provide representation or commendation of intrinSically superior lives seems a bit beyond the pale.1O If this is true, then the only
Sllpport for the objection would be the consequentialist claim that hav ing practices of representation promotes some value or values that not
having them does not. I have already argued, however, that from a gen
eral consequentialist perspective antirepresentationalism is a defensible principle. The second and third objectiOns are more Davidsonian in inspiration.
They address the idea that taking people as human n i volves taking them n i a way that necessarily requires representation of the kind discouraged by the principle. One of the lessons of Davidson's radical interpretation is that in calling others persons we are already ascribing certain beliefs and desires to them, either that they believe and desire much the same things we do or that they at least possess rational abilities similar to ours. Ac cording to the second objection, if we do not make such ascriptions, then we are not in a position to conceive of them as people. Now, such a con ception of others is not merely descriptive, it is normative as well. In tak ing others to be like us, we are not engaged simply in an operation that
ascribes certain beliefs and desires to them; we are calling them rational. If others appear to us as wholly other, as unaccountable through our con ceptual resources, we cannot justifiably call them rational. Obversely, if
they do not appear to us as wholly other, it is because we see them as ratio-
20. One might ask here what difference there is between counseling support and psychotherapy as a representationalist practke. Roughly, the difference lies in their respective aims. The former tends to aim its advice at more modest goats and, when using psychotogical theory, does so in a more eclectic and less disci plined way. The laller, by contrast, operates with a morc full-blown theory of the psychologically good or normal and sees that theory as gUiding the most impor tant aspects of therapeutic practice. Thus it is the latter, more than the former, that runs afoul of the principle of antirepresentationalism.
64
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism
nal, �ause we can account for what they do in terms of ralional projects.II This wo.uld se.em to pose a problem for antirepresentationaJism . Are we not, by ��mg our normative categories upon their intention al lives, thereby prlvl1e�mg our own intentional lives as intrinsically superior? A� we ".01 saYlIlg Ih�t OUT own intentional lives are a standard by which to Judge Intentl.Onal hfe generally, and thus representing or commending . t�roug� �h� prac� lce of radk,\l interpretation intrinsically superior inlen t�onal h.\es.? I thm k not, but not because we do not set our intentional lives as In some sense a st�ndard for interpretation. In interpreting some �ne el� as more or less like me, I am indeed privileging my own inten tlO�al hfe, bllt IIot r�J�tive. to tltal oilIer's. This is becaus e, in taking others to be like �e, I am pnvl leglOg not only my Own inlentional life but theirs as we!!. It IS lrue that I privilege it because it is like my own, but I am not . �ryl.n� to Impos e or oomme�d a�other intentional ife l on the interpreted . . IOdlVldu�1. In � se�, t�e situation IS Just the opposi te. I am privileging my own IOtenbonaJ hfe 10 order to understand and inextricably to privi I�ge the i�tentional y�e o� the other. Thus, although radical interpreta Ii�n doe:> IOvolve pnvilegmg an intentional life, its project is to lend that . pnvl!e�mg t� othe� intentional lives as well, and thus to avoid seeing certam mtentlOnal lives as intrinSically superior to others . If that were all there were to the relation between interpretation and ant�represenl�tionalism, then the two would, I believe , be perfectly com pahble. That �s n�t, however, all there is. There is anothe r objection aris mg fr0n;t �adlcal mte pretation that is not met so easily. For in taking � . ,mot�er s I�tenh�nal Itfe 10 � li�e my own, I am not only privileging my . own mtenlional hfe, I am pnvlle gmg some very Specific aspects of it. Those aspects, and m�re specifi�ally the aspect of being truth-b elieving, found . a deeper objection to anhrepresentationalism. The claim to understand another assumes t �at lhat other is essentially truth-believing. Taking oth . . ers 10 b� Iruth-bel ,evl.ng IS, agmn, a normative and not merely a descrip . . . tive takmg. In radICal mterpretation, I assume that others possess Ihe same regard for truth that I do, and I assume that that is a good thing. (If not, I would endeavor to change it in myself.) This thir� objection is stronger than the second one, since it cannot be �et br say'�g that there is equal privileging of my own and another's mtenhon�l l..fe. Here, it is ��e quality of my n i tentional life-its being . truth-behevmg-that IS pnvlleged as intrinSically superior. Moreover, bro..1d-based reasons can be given for taking others to be truth-believing.
,21. .Thj� objection cannot be gotten aroUl1d simply by saying that radical inter prctn t� on �s not a practIce. If the Davidsonial1 perspec tive is right, radical Il1ter p�talloll IS .not only a practice but Ol1e of the most basic of our social practices. w�thout which we would lack all lin8ui�tic al1d epistem ic bases for interactiOIl wllh one another.
Moral Antirepresentationalism
65
Not only am I taking them to be like me in a way that I value; if I were unable so to take them, I would be unable to interact with them. Imagine a society in which being truth-believing were not privileged. Much of the motivation for our interactions with others would either be lost or have to be radically recast.ll lt seems thai we necessarily privilege truth believing as an aspect of our intentional lives, and thus see at least one ilSpect of those lives as superior to possible alternatives. One might counter thai although practices of inculcating truth i dividual to act as bclievingness need to be ratified, it is always up to an n though she or he were believing the truth without really believing it. Such a counter would be lame, however, since it would equally apply to all those i tervention, that themselves repre practices, such as psychotherapeutic n i tentional lives as opposed to others. It is in sent or commend certain n deed hard to imagine that these practices exist as ubiquitously as they do without possessing any practical efficacy regarding either the perspectives or the doctrines they promulgate. Any counter based on the denial of such efficacy, then, would be both deeply counterintuitive and subversive of Ihe principle of antirepresentation itself. (Ifpractices of representation were ineffective, then what would be the need to sanction against them?) I think, then, that this last objection musl be conceded. It can and ought 10 be conceded as pari of the principle's ceteris paribtls clause, however, and not as telling against the entire principle. The objection is that there i is an aspect of our intentional lives that must be privileged because it s necessarily an aspect of our understanding of others and because it is difficult to imagine our society functioning without such privileging. This caveat leaves vast areas of our intentional lives open to the question whether they ought to be subjed to representation or commendation as intrinsically superior or inferior. The essence of the arguments of the nega tive and positive paths is that at least many of them ought not. While there may be other aspects of our intentional lives that present the same difficulties as truth-believingness, I suspect that their effects are local, qualifying without disqualifying the principle of anlirepresentalionalism. As argued above, such qualificatiOns are part of moral theorizing. since to discount moral principles for the reason thatthey possess caveats would leave us with a moral system too vague and abstract 10 be of any signifi cant use in out moral thought and practice. 22. Given the pragmatic values associated with truth-telling for one's culture, this objection has far less force when applied to other cultures. There is no deep necessity to pressure members of other cultures to share our beliefs, at least for the reasons the current obje.:;tion presses. Moreover. we can refrain from doing so while slill considering members of other cultures to be rational . For a discussion of thIs last point, see Anthony Appiah's /11 My Failla's HOIIsr (Oxford: Oxford Uni versity Press, 1990.)
66
The Mora! Theory of Poststructuralism
The Principle's Implications for
�Ight, then the project of thlnkmg about morality in terms of a virtue eth ICS may well be misguided. Second, and related, we need to introduce into our mo al thinking a distinction betwe � en morality, on the one hand, and what might be called an aesthetics of living. on the other. This latter implication, as indicated in the last chapter, is of more concern to poststructuralism than Ihe former. With regard to virtue ethics. I take it that what distinguishes this ethics . from act. mented moral theories like consequentialism and various � deonloioglcai approaches is its characterol ogical focus. Rather than per form moral assessment in terms of acts, virtue ethicists such as Michael Stocker and Michael Siote urge that ethica l theories concern themselves with personally and communally developed virtues from which acts flow. As Slote puts it, "A virtue ethics in the fulles t sense must treat aretaic notions Hke 'g ' or excel ent') ra he then deontic notion � � s (like 'morally wrong,' . . oug t, fight, a d obhg ation ) as pnmary, and it must put a greate � r em phaSIS on the et h ical assessment of agents and their (inner) motives and character traits than it puts on the evalu ation of acts and choices."z:I There are, of course, several motivation s for the change in focus. For Stocker, these motivations derive from the purp orted inability of act theo . . nes to deal With phenomena he considers moral, such as friendship and regret.l' For Siote, several technical problems vitiate both commonsense morality and utilitarianism as moral accou nts, for instance, their self-other symmetry, which prevents an agent from focusing upon the success of his or her projects more than the Succe ss of others'.Z5 Without, for the n:'0ment, a�dressing th�ir s�ifi� �o�cerns, it can be seen that the pri n clpl� of a lIrepresentatlOnahsm, If It IS true, provides a strong reason � to aVOid a virtue-theoretical account of morality. The reason for this is fairly straightfor ward. If moral life is to be evalu ated on the basis of characterological traits divorced from one's acts then certain intentional lives will be held to be intrinsically superior to o hers.
�
� :
�
t
23. From Morality to Virlllt (OHford: Oxfor d University Press, 1992), 89. This . View, whlch seems derive a t leaSI in pari [rom ATistotle, distinguishes between good acts and good hves. J ssume-alth ough since I am not an Aristo tle scholar, I would be happy to retract this assumption_ that the following critique also ap plies to Aristotelian ethics. 24. See Plural and Crmflicling Values (OHford: Clarendon Press, 1990). 25. See From Moralily 10 Virtl'e.
t�
a
,
67
Alternatively. if the purpose of virtue-theoretical accounts is not to evalu
Morality and Moral Theory
�
Moral AntirepresentationaJism
ate characterological traits divorced from action but instead to provide an account of which characterological states would best realize a specific act-oriented ethical theory, then the motivation for virtue ethics as an al ternative to act-oriented moral lheory would be unclear. In the latter case, virtue ethics could be seen as supplementary to act-orienled ethical theo ries because it helps determine what kinds of intentional lives are either fruilful or necessary for the promotion of certain kinds of acts. But that reduces virtue ethics to a psychological helpmate of act-oriented theo ries, which falls far short of the claims its proponents make for it. It might be queried whether the principle of antirepresentationalism will allow even for that secondary role of virtue ethics, since it seems still to privilege certain intentional lives as opposed 10 others. It musl be borne in mind, however, that what the principle opposes s i not the privileging of certain intentional lives as opposed to others re/ative to a certaill goal, but their privileging per se. What offends against antirepresentational ism is not the attempt to promote the "mind-sets" that help people act in morally superior ways, but the atlenlpt to place intrinsic value on those "mind-sets." If antirepresentationalism opposed even an instrumental privileging of certain intentional lives, then it would potentially consti tute a bar to many morally urgent tasks, since it would disallow the valo rization of the intentional lives necessary to perform those tasks. For antirepresentationalism, however, what justifies the privileging of one inlentional life as opposed to another lies not in the intentional life bul in the acls to which it leads. And even then, antirepresentationalism would counsel caution with respecl lO allY privileging of certain intentional lives, because of the potentially deleterious consequences that could ensue from that privileging (as mentioned above in the discussion of the positive path of the argument for the principle). Thus antirepresenlationalism is in no way to be construed as an antimoralism. It s i not a fancy way of saying that people should leave one another alone (except in a circumscribed arena). It is compatible with the strictest utilitarianism and with many forms of deontology. What it is not compatible with are moral theories Ihat attach an intrinsic value to ways of being as opposed to ways of doing. The second'implication of the principle is that moral lheory needs to be divorced from what I have called an aesthetics of living. Although the distinction between morality and an aesthetics of living is the subject of the lasl chapter, it s i worth seeing the immediate implication of anti rep rcscntationalism here. Moral theory has 10 do with our relations with oth ers and with the community in which we live. It does not have to do with self-relation. Our relationship with ourselves is morally private: it is im mune from moral assessment. If anlirepresentationalism is right, then how
68
The Moral Theory of PostslructuraJism
we Ihre OUT lives may be the object of much moral assessment, but only inasmuch as it affects others, not as it is in itself. Otherwise put, the moral assessment of lives, which concerns our lives in their interpersonal as·
69
Moral Antirepresentationalism
intentional life is intrinsically superior while holding that one should, in
of us, com· fi'(juired of us and much more still that, while not required hardly be could Potato Couch a mends itself to us. Given that, being an utilitari any ly Certain . context real ble morally justified in any forseea no needed that world a world, perfect a imagine But would think. so. onalism would contribution from the CouchPotato. Then, antirepresentati Couch Potato's being the with wrong nothing is there that hold to have in w ich any exactly thaI. It is once again a bit hard to imagine � world no dIfference makes thIS but one would be immune from act judgments; to the theoretical implication. e consequences, 1 suggest that we accept these (perhaps) counterintuitiv the goods pro for pay to prices enough small seem both because they because what and lism ntationa ireprese ant of ment endorse an by moted we just do that ers is really causes many to be repulsed by these charact many of that fact the not like them. To put the latter point another way, them. with concern our of most us find such people ugly may exhaust from selves our tance s di to easy it find We might want to and might even . to the obhg would that ion nat � condem � them, but to justify a moral bnng e m be would It ssary. unnece and t difficul both change would be . antirepresenta onahsm ing out a cannon to k.ill a fly. And in that damage of such can be seen, in part, as worried about the collateral
that one has certain duties solely to oneself, when one has accepted a
antirepresentationalism and a popular strain of contemporary ethical
principle that eschews the privileging of certain ways of being, divorced from their effects upon others? So antirepresentationalism seems to offer
thought. For the virtue ethicists, as well as for philosophers like Bernard
peelS, must be divorced from an aesthetic assessment of lives, which con cerns our lives in their intrapersonal aspects. We may find our relations with others a matter for moral judgment and may be obliged in the tradi tionally moral sense 10 revise those lives on the basis of that judgment; n i matters thai do not concern others, however, no such obligation may arise.
Those lives may be considered "beautiful" or "ugly," and we may or may not want to have personal commerce with such lives; but our judgments
about them do not oblige those persons judged to continue or to change themselves.26
Strictly speaking, such i'I distinction does not follow directly from
antirepresentationalism. It is always open to someone to say that people ought not to engage in practices of commending or representing certain
intentiona l livcs as intrinsically superior and yet to say that one has cer· tain duties of action toward oneself. However, such duties become hard to motivate when one rejects the notion of intrinsically superior inten tional lives. It is no contradiction, for instance, to deny that a courageous
one's relationship with oneself, act courageously. But it is hard to make out why one would want 10 do so. Why, after alt would one want to say
good reasons for-even if it does not entail-a distinction between mo rality and an aesthetics of living.
�
� �
se�'
operations. . . These reflections underline the distance between the pnnClple of
Williams, questions of morality have too long been divorced from ques tions of how one lives one's life, and need to be reincorporated into them.
�
impact. The first is manifest in a character we might call Evil in Intent,
If the argument of this chapter is right, then this stra of th�ught is mis . . guided. The divorce between morality and an aesthetICS of hvmg IS to be preserved, not overcome. Questions ofho\\' one lives one's life apart from . one's relations to others are not matters for ethical intervenhon or sua
someone who, while offering no evidence of any malicious thinking or
sion but aesthetic matters that should be talked about in terms very dif
desiring, even to those closest to her or him, secretly wishes evil upon
ferent from those of obligation and intrinsic value.
There are two counterintuitive consequences of such antirepresenta tionalism to which I want to call attention in order to defuse their initial
everyone around. Evil n i Intent in fact treats people well but is, unbe knownst to anyone else, profoundly misanthropic. It is a bit hard to imag· ine that someone CQuid be Evil in Intent, but if someone were, anyone embracing antirepresentationalism would have to say that there is noth
ing morally condemnable about him or her. The second consequence manifests itself in a character we could call
the Couch Potato. In our world as it is, there may be much that is morally
26. I believe that with the concept of an aesthetics of living, much of what th(' virtue ethiclsts have sought to addres� can be captured. But contra the virtue ethicists, it is captured n i a discourse that is recognizably, if not always radically, distinct from morality.
From the Principle to Consequentialism My final task in this chapter is to motivate people who find themselves sympathetic with the principle of antirepresentationalism to embrace consequenlia!ism generally. 1 do so primarily by offering an argument that a rights·based account of morality would have difIiculty incorporat ing the principle of antirepresentationalism. I assume that aside from the
70
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism
virtue--ethical approaches I have rejected on the basis of the principle, the only �urrent alternative to a consequentiaJist accommodation of the prin . ciple IS a deonlologicai one. Therefore, if deontology does have difficulty accommodating the principle and consequentialism does not, then we have a reason to embrace consequentialism, aside from any other struc. tural advantages it may possess. .1 do nol p�tend tha the difficulty
�
I raise here for deontology is any
. thmg like a final word In the matter. Although I want to motivate others o tum t�ward consequentialism on the basis of antirepresentationaiism, . IllS possible that a rights-based moral theory can overcome the problems I raise for one particular construal of a rights-based theory. If it did, how
�
eve r,it would have to do so for reasons that give enough to consequen , . tlahsm that not only the moral insights of consequentialism but some of its structural features would be found in the rights-based theory. The rea son for the tum toward consequentialism I offer here, then, and the rea
son I offer in the appendix to Chapter 3 for rejecting rights-based theo ries a� moral theori � both have to do with the structure of rights-based theones. Should a nghts-based theory arise with enough structural simi
larities to consequenliaHsm to make these two accommodations' more power to it. In addition to (and partly because of) poststructuralism's embrace of so �thing like the principle of antirepresentationalism, poststructuralist writi ngs have a consequentialist flavor. Any reader of Foucault, Lyotard, or Deleuze will note that they are concemed n i their political analyses . With the effects of certain social practices, with the way those practices constrain and restrain people's behavioral possibilities. I showed evidence
�
�
of this a ove in. the defense of anlirepresentationalism, citing Foucault's �bservatlOns With regard to the consequences of representationalist prac tices for those who are its objects. Further commentary on this conse
quentialist orientation can be found in Deleuze and GuaUari's discus �ion in Anti-OedipusP of the constraints psychoanalytic self-understand mg places upon the range of practical possibilities or lyotard's discus sion in Tile Differ(')ld� of the deleterious effects of the dominance of scien tific a,lld more gellerally cognitivist ways of speaking. This cOllSequentialist flavor is not accidental. There is a deep reason
Moral Antircprcscntationalism
71
constitutive subjectivity has had as one of its results the neglect of Ihe constitutive power of social practices. As long as people are perceived as largely self-constituting, the ways the social practices in which they are immersed not only limit but also produce that constitution is either ig nored or relegated to a secondary status. Poststructuralist antihumanism
is a reaction to this ignoring of social constitution, of the productive na i the Introduction. By undercutting the pretentions ture of power cited n of humanism, poststructuralists hope to draw our attention to the many small, contingent, and often dispersed practices that contribute to who
we are-and to our concept of ourselves as primarily self-constituting
beings.2'I Poststructuralism's antihumanist tum goes hand in hand with a tum
away from manydeontological approaches 10 moral thinking and toward a conscquentialist approach for the following reason. Deontological ap· proaches-and one thinks of Kant here in particular-have traditionally
pictured the moral relation as one between a person's intentions and be havior. But if intentions are a matter ofsuch deep social constitution, then to seek in them a basis for moral judgment is misguided. The proper ob
ject of attention is not the intention but rather the social practices that produce the intention. And when the social practices are interrogated, the proper mode of evaluation cannot be based upon intention. Poststruc turalists go to great lengths to show that many social practices are not the product of someone's or some group's intentions but instead the prod uct of a contingent, often accidental history. So the moral issue is not one of intentions but of consequences. Cast in terms more strictly poststruc tUTaiist, the issue is not one of origins but of effects. Thus, turning away from the phenomenological and existentialist emphasis on a constitutive subjectivity leads the poststructuralists, in the same gesture, to reject any moral evaluation that can be associated with subjective structures. None of this suggests that poststructuralists embrace consequential ism. As mentioned, they reject the embrace of any moral theory. Instead, the moral concerns come out discretely and often indirectly. But when they do, they have what I have called a consequentialist flavor to them. It is, I believe, their antihumanism thai gives rise to this (Javor. The main thread of my argument, however, takes a particular rights based defense of antirepresentationalism and shows its inadequacy. The
for the poststructuralist convergence upon consequentialism, a reason that is bound to their (often misunderstood) commitment to antihumanism. For the poststructuraists, i the philosophical and political focus upon a
rights-based defense is one I construct out of Ronald Dworkin's liberal theory, and particularly his rights-based defense of pornography. I do
27. A"U-OtdipIIS: CQpit�lism �lld Schizophrtllio 11972], trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (New York: Viking l'ress, 1977). 28. The Differelld: PI,mse5 1/1 Dis/llltt [1983j, trans. Ge<:>rges van den Abbeele (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988).
29. Given this task, it is not difficult 10 see why poststructuT3lists have rejected, at times almost violently, the phenomenology of Husserl and the existentialism of Sartre.
this wilh some hesitation because Dworkin's nuanced thought is, in all
72
The Mow] Theory of Poststrucluralism
likelihood, not reducible to the rights-based position I saddle him with here (or to any other rights-based theory). The position I criticize, then, is one thai can be constructed out of certain of Dworkin's writings but is
not one that I would hold Dworkin to. In order to make the latter claim which I believe to be false--I would have to go far afield of the limited purpose of showing the problems with a rights-based approach to antirep resentationalism. Given this, I might more appropriately have written "Dworkin·" or "Schworkin" instead of "Dworkin." My only reason for not doing so is that the quotes with which I construct the position to be criticized are from Ronald Dworkin, not Ron
Moral Antirepresentationalism
73
Why, then, do we possess the particular right to equal concern and respect? If my reading of Dworkin is correct, that question has no an swer. That we possess that right is treated by Dworkin as a datum. In introducing the right in his essay "What Rights Do We Have?" he writes: "I presume that we all accept the following postulates of political moral ity. Government must treat aU those whom it governs as with concern, that is, as human beings who are capable of suffering and frustration, and with respect, that is, as human beings who are capable of forming i telligent conceptions of how their lives should be lived. and acting on n Government must not only treat people with concern and respect, but with equal concern and respect. "llWe always have a legitimate complaint against the government, then, if we can show that it has not treated us as equals. And in pressing that complaint, we need not justify our claim to
equal concern and respect.":J) He distinguishes treatment as equals from
be treated as an equal, only the accusation that we have not. II is the right to be treated as an equal that, in Dworkin's analysis,
or in ensuring that everyone possesses the same amount. To treat one as
cal decisions must be, so far as is possible, independent of any particular
ernment treat[s] all those in its charge as
equals, that is
as entitled to its
equal treahnent, which consists either in giving everyone the same amount
an equal requires sensitivity to the different contexts in which people find themselves. For instance, if I offer two people one aspirin apiece, even
issues out onto antirepresentationalism. Equality "supposes that politi conception of the good Hfe, or of what gives value to life. Since the citi zens of a society differ in their conceptions, the government does not treat
though only one of them has a headache, I may be treating them equally
them as equals if it prefers one conception to another, either because the officials believe that one is intrinsically superior, or because one is held
cern and respect. (It is this distinction, by the way, that forms the basis for Dworkin's attempt to show how a liberal can support affirmative ac
the more numerous or more powerful group."l-I To treat people with equal concern and respect, then, is to refuse to privilege one conception of hu
but I am not treating them as equals, that is, as equally deserving of con tion and avoid being charged with the injustice of differential treatmentp For Dworkin, to be respected as an equal is a fundamental right we
i fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that it is lite fundamental possess; n right we possess. Two questions emerge for Dworkin at this point: What is a right? And why do we possess this particular one? Regarding the first point, Dworkin says, "If someone has a right to something, then it is wrong for the government to deny it to him even though it would be in the general interest to do SO."32 Government actions can be justified by reference to arguments of policy (i.e., to engage in a certain policy pro i motes the general interest) and arguments of principle (i.e., to engage n a certain policy protects the rights of certain individuals). For Dworkin, a right is a claim someone can invoke successfully against a governmental
i 10 refuse to characterize one view of man flourishing over another. It s life as more valuable or worthy than another. Dworkin's antirepresentationalism emerges clearly in his defense of what he calls a right to pornography. Dworkin is critical of utilitarian approaches to pornography because they leave the central question, whether people ought to be protected in their participation in or con sumption of pornographic practices, subject to the contingencies of so cial altraction to and repulsion from the practices themselves. If, for in stance, people were repelled from pornography in such numbers that its presence would provide more unhappiness on balance than happiness, the utilitarian approach might well commend banning it.)I'; As an alternative, Dworkin constructs a rights-based strategy that asks
action that is justified by arguments of policy.
whether there is a basic right to engage in pornographic practices. Along
30. Dworkin, " Li beralism " [1978), n i A Malter ofPrinciple (Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1985), 190. 31. See "Reverse DiS(:rimination" [1976], in Takiug Rights SeriQusly (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977). 32. "What Rights Do We Have?" in Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), 269.
33. Ibid., 272-73. 34. "Liberalism," 191. 35. II might well commend banning ii, but would not necessarily commend banning it. If there were other consequences of the banning that would pro .mote more unhappiness than happiness, then the utilitarian would be against banning.
74
The Moral Theory of Poststrucluralism
the way to concluding that there is, he argues that the considerations that
bear on the question callnot include how people feel about others who read or engage n i pornography. To thai end, he posits a "right of moral
independence," which stales that "[pJeople have the right not to suffer
disadvantage in the distribution of social goods and opportunities, in cluding disadvantage in the liberties permitted to them by the criminal
law, just on the ground that their officials or fellow-citizens think that their opinions about the right way for them to lead their lives are ignoble or wrong."lIi For those familiar wilh Michel Foucault's descriptions of practices
whose goal is to reduce or marginalize behavior considered deviant, the
resonance of Dworkin's right of moral independence with the drift of
Foucault's own views should be manifest. However, for Dworkin, the
right of moral independence is derived from the right to equal concern
and respect, and thus stands or falls with the latter." Since Dworkin's defense is rights-based, he is unconcerned (at least within the limits of the rights-based analysis I am constructing for him) with the consequences
of people's having the corollary right, except inasmuch as a violation of the corollary right is derivatively a violation of the fundamental right, For Dworkin, the purpose of recognizing a right is to ensure protec
tion against encroachment, particularly by government agencies, in fa vor of promoting the general interest. In short, rights are protections , against a governmentally promoted utilitarianism Dworkin's antirepre , sentationalism is conceived as a right against such a utilitarianism This view hides two assumptions. First, it is primarily governing agencies or their affiliates that are in a position to force certain forms of representa tion upon people, Second, the way those governing agencies do so is by
direct restriction of how people act and, as a consequence, by indirect restriction of how people come to see who they are and what they want. There are good reasons to believe that both of these assumptions are
oversimplified. Regarding the latter, conceiving power solely, or even
primarily, in terms of restrictive force misses much of the operation of , the political field lt Not only are Foucault's studies exemplary in this area; much recent AnglO-American philosophy has come to recognize that how
36. Dworkin, �Do We Have a Right to Pornography?H (1981], in A Mlltter of 1985), 353, Rae Langton has of
Principle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
fered an interesting critique of Dworkin's defense of pornography, a critique based on Dworkinian grounds, in NWhose Right? Ronald Dworkin, Women, and Por nographers," PhiloS(Jphy Iwd PIII1lic Affairs 19, no, 4 (1990): 311-59, 37. Dworkin's argument, presented on pages 359--{)5 of "Do We Have a Right to Potrlographyr attempts to show that f i depen i there were no right to moral n dence, people could order their societies in ways that violated the right to equal concern and resp«t,
Moral Antirepresentationalism
75
is a product ,of social forces that we conceive ourselves and our world . by production, Two promment also but ction operate not only by restri Burge's arguments that mental con xarnples of this recognition are Tyler is going on "in one's head" but, al �ent is determined not only by what ld f� ces one, fin�s on�lf i�, �nd WI f by the social and linguistic practi ices. pract lshc ImgU of tton determma Sellars's arguments for the social these argu�ents have,rarely been reg of ns icatio impl ical polit the Since y, and since the reglstrabon �f them istered in Anglo-American philosoph l view of powcr as a negatl\'e, rcwould help to undermine a traditiona them, , ressive force, it is worth pausing over s articulated m the prevIous view his with ing keep i n rs p Wilfrid Sella language as either an enclosed �Ifchapter has jetti�oned the view of outside world, in favor of holdmg fercn;ial whole or as a,reflection of the ing arises wilhin the context mean , to be a social practice '" On this view view of langu�ge as s:eUthe on does it of a current semantic whole-as l and natural worlds, as m t e �Iew enclosed-but is tied to both the socia ltlfanous s with the world are mu . of language as a reflection, (Those bond ctIOn or refle f nds me�ely b � � and intersecting, however, not lingulShc, urut-be It � word, phrase, correspondence.) The meaning of a i fe ntl l a d practical moves at or sentence-broadly consists in the � � � � , lsbc umt wlthm the curre,nt practtce lingu that canbe made both to and from ices with which languagc mtersects). of language (as well as the many pract ing is normative, in the sense that The implication of this is that mean t the,world or a �t lang�age per meaningfulness is not a fact abou � m a �oClally �onstl m moves wlth but consists in the acceptability of certa , t�m qU,est\O�s of the not, does rs tuted practice When one raises, as SeIla tic conslderallons agma -pr what and to whom those moves are acceptable enter,s the political realm, bul by aside-they are acceptable for, one sts, For what attac�es, to ques route that is foreign to many liberal theon o,f cer r what the acceptable lzfll,ts tions of acceptability is not the issue of ,' of ,lt ,tlOl COflSt table accep the : what tain social practices are, but instead a In g ansm ice l pra t iv a nonn a � � them is. Otherwise put, if language is o not to ave II to m perta that ions social field, then Ihe political quest permitted an� which forb, den, merely with which uses of il ought to be s the creaho� of a pa�hcular but more deeply with what kinds of effect , Language, m short, IS a (set linguistic practice has led to in the first place
�
'
��
�
t�
�
�
� �
�
38 1 give a more comprehensive treatment of the idea that power is creativ�, from he poinl ofview of contemporary French thought. in chapter 4 of The Polrtt
;
39_ His most centr�1 arguments for this position are made In EmplT1c�sm and the Philosophy of MindN 119561 and "Some Reflections on Language Games . 1\954\. both in Science, Perception, and Reality (New York: Routledge and Kegan P;lUl, 1963), cllI Plrilosoplry of poslslrllch,ralisl Anarchism.
.
N
'
,
•
76
The Moral Theory of Poslstructuralism
of) normative practice(s) thai works by means of creation as much as sup
Moral Antirepresentationalism
77
some distance toward undermining Dworkin's seeming assumption that
pression; as such, it has more to do with politics than theorists of either
power is a restrictive force and that therefore a rights account offers an
self-enclosure or referentialily have thought.
adequate articulation of the protection necessary against practices of rep
Tyler Burge has extended this line of thought to show that the content of menial activity is a matter of what is going on not only "in someonc's head" but in the surrounding society and natural world as well. In an
resentationalism.
If these arguments are right, then power relations do not consist merely
in restricting our identities and our behaviors but also in producing them.
often-discussed thought experiment,'" Burge considers the case of some
And if this is so, then, contra what seems to be Dworkin's first assump
one who thinks, correctly, that he has arthritis, but also thinks, incor
tion, the range of practices subject to political scrutiny is considerably
rectly of course, that he has arthritis in his thigh. Now, if this person
broadened. If power relations are produced at various points in the po
inhabited a society in which the tenn "arthritis" referred not to joint ail ments but to a wider range of general rheumatic ones, it would be incor·
litical field, the question of which ones are acceptable and which are not does not merely concern governmental activities, but the activities of a
rect to say of him that he had any thoughts about arthritis, because our
variety of institutional and even noninstitutional entities. Thus Dworkin's
term "nrthritis"-that is, the term "arthritis" as we use it--does not ex·
first assumption loses its force when the inadequacy of the second as
ist in his linguistic context. No one in that SOCiety would ever have re· ferred to arthritis as we know it, although the term would have been in
currency in reference to something else; thus there is no reason to be·
sumption is recognized. Specifically concerning antirepresentationalism, the ssue i is not only what the state can and cannot do relative to promoting ways of life or
lieve that the patient would have any "arthritis thoughts." Thoughts
self-understanding in an individual or group. This is an issue, but it is
about arthritis are dependent then-not only causally but substantively
not the only one and perhaps not even the central one. Also at issue are
on the linguistic practices of the society in which one exists. If mental content does not exist solely "in the head," however, if it
the variety of intersecting nongovernmental practices that come to con
stitute us as who we arc. And these are practices that, as noted earlier in
is constituted not only b y neural activity but also by the practices in
the defense against the first objection to antirepresentationalism, we
which one finds oneself, then any individualism about mental content
would be reluctant to claim a right against. To have an antirepresenta
becomes imposSible. What a person i s thinking is a social and linguis·
tiona list right would be to have a right against all psychological evalua·
tic matter as well as a personal one; and given the above consider·
tion, against the proliferation ofpsychoanalytic and psychological theory,
ations on Sellars's view of language, what is going on in a person's
against many penal, social-work, and religious activities and practices.
head is a social and political creation subject to those considerations.
Do we really want to say that we have a right against these, based on a
desires is not merely descriptive but normative and political as welL
against them that we ought to be able to press somewhere such that they
In short, the answer to the question of what a person thinks about or Sellars's and Burge's views of language and mental content converge
with the Foucaultian view of power as a creative force as well as a re· pressive one. They undercut what Foucault called the juridical view of power as a repressive operation,�L showing instead that power, inasmuch as it inhabits social practices, i s productive and constitutive, not merely negative and prohibitive. Although a full defense of Sellars's and Burge'S views cannot be offered here,12 their implications for political thought go
40. From "lndiYidualism and the Mental," in Midwesl SludiN iu Plri/osoplry, Yol.
4, Studirs ill Mrlaplrysics, ed. I'eter French, T. Uehling Jr., and H. Wellsten (Minne
apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979), 73-118. 41. Foucault, A History oj StXLjolily, vol. 1, Au /ntroducliOll 119761, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Random House, 1978), esp. 81-91. 42. For a further defense of Burge, see my "Umits of the Mental and the Umit�
right to equal concern and respect? Is it really a matter of having a claim could no longer be practiced? This is implausible. It is implausible precisely because the notion of right, as Dworkin uses it, is conceived as a claim that can (or ought to) be pressed against, or with the assistance of, a large nstitutional i structure like a government. What eludes Dworkin's approach is the idea that the kind of representation he correctly sees as insidious does not occur solely-or even primarily-by means of governmental regulation, nor can it be redre3sed by governmental means. It occurs by means of a thouof Philosophy,� /ouTIIIlI of Spec..lllti� Plli/osoplly 9, no. 1 (1995): 36-47; for more on the relationship between Sellars and Fouuuli (although here the emphasis is "pist('mological rather than political), see my 8etweell GelLtll/oSY Dlld Epistemology: Psychology, Politics, alld KII.,wletlge ill 'he Thought ofMichl'l FOLjCa,,1I (Uniyersity Park: p.,nnsylv�nia State University Press, 1993), chap. 6.
78
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism
sand small intersecting practices of which the proper moral question to ask is not, "Do we have rights against them?" but instead, "What conse· quences do they have, are these consequences acceptable, and what ought we to do about them if they are nol?"�) An objection might be pressed here, however, on o..vorkin's behalf (or on behalf of the Dworkin I have constructed). It could be claimed, with some reason, that Dworkin's project is not that of asking what practices ought and oughl not to be engaged in, but rather that of asking what
practices tlJe govemment ought and ought not to be engaged in. Thus, a
rights-based antirepresentationalism is mei'lnl only to curb government abuses, nol to tell against representationalism altogether. This objection requires a twofold reply. First, if the goal is to allow some sort of moral independence, drawing the line between governmental practices and nongovernmental practices is not merely artificial; if the claims made here are right. it is also only marginally relevant. Moral independence can be had only if a whole cluster of practices, governmental and nongovern mental, are struggled against. And, as argued, it s i difficult to .see the justification for the struggle against them articulated in terms of rights. (This is not to claim that there cannot be any rights in the neighborhood of representation, but rather that the reasons to resist representation can not be reduced to a defense against violations of those rights.)4-I
Second, if the goal is only to restrict the government and not to make
any claims about moral independence aside from that, then one wonders what the right to moral independence amounts to. The right is a right in
name only, since it is undermined by practices against which one cannot press one's claim of right. In order to build an effective moral case against representation, then, one has to turn from a rights-based approach to a
consequentialist one (in which rights may constitute a restricted domain).
Resistance to practices of representation, then, cannot be easily, per haps at all adequately, articulated through a rights-based perspective. This is not because the idea of fights cannot adequately be conceived. (Al
though the notion of "natural" rights seems inconceivable, the idea that there are certain rights we ought to have is, as far as it goes, unobjection able. In fact. part of the project of the next chapter is to show how con sequentialism can accommodate the idea of rights.) And it is not because
43. Much of the argument I have i usl gh'en can be seen as a deo>pening of Ihe positive path of the argument for antirepresenlalionalism. [ did not offer it there, �au5e it would have introduced complexities inlO the positive path that were unnecessary to eslablish the main pOint. 44. For instance, there may be a right against government banning of pornog raphy or against forcn i g mental patienlS into therapy, bUI the protection of those rights docs not go very fpr toward p rolecting aga inst the insidious Cffe<;IS of prac tices of represenl"tion.
Moral Anlirepresentationalism
79
a coherent rights-based critique of representation cannot � formul�ted. 1 take it that the Dworkin I have constructed has accomphshed preClsely . i a more complex affillf that task. Rather, because representationalism s than can be handled by a rights-based approach, we must tum to conse . quentialism in order to give an adequate assessment of Its problems.
3 A Multivalue Consequentialism
As:;uming that the principle of antirepresentationalism is right and that
the principle offers good reasons to reject a virtue-theoretical approach to morality, and assuming further that we cannot capture the principle in
its fullness with a rights-based approach to morality, then the obvious candidate for a moral theory that respects the principle is consequential· ism. Consequentialism itself has been criticized for many reasons, some of which I listed in the Introduction: insensitivity to distributive justice, willingness to endorse rights violations, and so forth. These reasons are good ones; and yet their target is not consequentialism per se, but rather
the particular values that various consequenlialisms have traditionally embraced and more deeply the fact that each of them has embraced a single value. If, for instance, maximization of overall happiness is the single value of a consequentialist morality, then the unwilling sacrifice of great quan tities of happiness of a small number of members of a community might i crease in happiness such sacrifice would be justified by the marginal n produce for oth'er members of the community, should those latter be nu merous enough relative to the former. Now, of course, in deal ing with
such problems many theorists, such as John Stuart Mill, were moved to
embrace an ideal, rather than a hedonistic, utilitarianism. For ideal utili tarians, happiness is to be measured not only quanti tatively but qualita tively as well: there is not only more or less happiness, there are also better and worse happincsses.
82
The Moral Theory of Poststructuraiism
A Muttivalue Consequentialism
83
This solution faces a dilemma, however. The advantage sought by those
do with what people prefer. Values are the goods that people prefer, and those are what should be maximized in any consequentialist theory.' This
measure. Now, if ideal utilitarianism focuses on the ideal and posits dif.
,,1IolVs for a generation of values that reflect what people already value and not what they are told they ought to value-which would be repre
a single-value consequentialism. There is no common measure. (This does not mean that there cannot be comparison of any kind. Jt does mean,
only a preference model of consequences but the very idea of holding
who posit a single value to which to reduce moral calculation is thai it allows such calculation to range over different situations with a common ferent kinds of happiness, not just different amounts, then it is no longer
sentationalist. There are at least two reasons, however, for thinking that this approach will not work, and both, in different ways, threaten not
however, that the comparison can only be ordinal with any degree of
together antirepresentationalism and OIly theory of value.
confidence. Cardinal comparison is more nearly guesswork.) Alterna
Natural RenSOlls.2 Hurley offers a
l itarian focuses on the utilitarianism and posits a com tively, if the ideal uti mon measure of happiness, then one wonders how cillierences can be diHerences of kind and not merely of quantity.
This argument can be repeated for any candidate for the single value
i terest, preference, to which consequentialism has aspired, be it pleasure, n i not that we must abandon or whatever. But the lesson of the argument s consequentialism if we are ever to arrhle at a moral theory that captures i tuitions; it is that we must abandon the idea of a single all of our deep n value consequentialism. Any consequentialism that is sensitive only to the maximization of a single value and not to considerations of its distribution or its conflict with other values is likely to fail to Cover enough of our moral space (or at least not the right places) to be an adequate theory. Thus, if we are to arrive at a defensible consequentialism, it must
be a multivalue one.
The Dilemma of Antirepresentationalism and the Nature of a Moral Value
One reason is based on an argument Susan Hurley presents in her book Davidsonian argument in favor of the
claim that preferences cannot be interpreted as such without already re ferring to values, and thus that there cannot be a straight derivation of value from preference. She starts from Davidson's holistic arguments for the claim that belief. preference, and meaning are inextricable. To review Davidson briefly here, when one is in II situation of radical interpretation-where one must understand the speech of others from scratch-the translation manual that one constructs for oneself inevita bly has a holistic orientation. That is because, in order to make sense of the people one is interpreting, the interpreter must assume that they and the interpreter share roughly similar beliefs and desires. Otherwise, there would not be enough constraint on interpretation to offer any translation i at all, or even to be sure that those to be interpreted were engaging n meaningful speech. So the ascription of meaning. belief, and desire is of a piece. Change one n i the translation manual you construct for yourself and you are forced to reevaluate the others. Davidson further argues that relative to others we are always in a situation of radical interpretation, so that all interpretation of others, even those who speak the same language, is holistic in the sense he has described. Hurley claims that the same goes for the relation between preference and value. One cannot even coherently ascribe a preference to someone
of specifically moral value. It is a theory of goods that must be considered
without already holding them to embrace certain values. tn the case of first-order preferences, many of the constraints on interpretation of what
��s f�r the purposes of moral evaluation and deliberation. Consequen liahsm IS not concerned with aesthetic goods, or even with goods that concern what I have caUed the aesthet.ics of living. It is concerned with
one another. (If one prefers A over B and B over C, one will prefer A over
The theory of value that is the heart of any consequentialism is a theory
goods that somehow ought to compel everyone, even if, as David Wiggins has argued and I have shown above, those goods are not generated by a process of universalization. The question, then, for the antirepresenta tionalist is, How can values be generated that do not run afoul of the principle of antirepresentationalism, that is to say, do not impose some image of an intrinsically superior intentional life? The most straightforward way to such a generation is to found values in subjective preferences. On that model, what count as values have to
those preferences are involve considerations that make those preferences T''ilional in some broad sense, for example, transitive in their relation to
C.) Hurley argues, however, that such constraints involve ascribing val ues to people at the same time that one ascribes preferences, because, for instance, if one cannol ascribe the holding of the value of tranSitivity re-
1. Prcference utilitarianism can be seen as II single- or multi"alue consequen tialism, depending upon whether there is a common measure to weigh conflict ing preferences. The first argument against it below works against either (onstrllal, while the s('(ond works primarily against the former (Cnstmal. 2. Oxford: Oxford Unil'ersily Press, 1989.
84
The Moral Theory of POSlstructuraHsm
garding the interpreted's preferences, it is unlikely one could give an in terpretation of what those preferences are, or even whether the interpreted has preferences.}
A Muitivalue Consequentialism
85
i the preferences others have, and thus in founding project of nterpreting values on preferences in an attempt to avoid representationalism?
1be problem s i not as pernicious as it may appear. What Hurley argues
group have similar preferences that derive from a common human na
is not that we must force others to share our values in order to figure out what their preferences are. Instead, she argues that we must assume that
ture, because the decision about which preferences are the natural ones requires normative evaluation. As Hurley puts the point:
ences CIITTf!IIt/y stand. Hurley's point s i a hermeneutic one, not a moral one.
Moreover, one cannot escape this problem by arguing that people as a
We need a theory of human nature that allows determinations of eligibility with respect to extended preference (i.e., preferences concerning which entire world one would want to live in, preferences thai reputedly reveal common human preferences] to be sensitive to distinctions that it is /lormal alld IIlItllra/ . . . to recognize and care about, in the context of familiar human reason
they share our values in order to interpret their preferences as
those prefer
She is arguing that there are certain values thai we must ascribe to others in order to IInders/and what their preferences are. To object, then, to the com bination of antirepresentationalism and a theory of values, on the ground that founding values in preferences already presumes a commitment to cer tain values, either misses the point of antirepresentationalism or falsely as sumes that the project of understanding others involves a representational ist coercion that in fact it does not. (Hurley, of course, does not offer this
giving practices and forms of life, or which have an ntelligible i
objection, since she does not discuss antirepresentationalism.) In this sense,
function in relation to human society or human flourishing; we do not want a theory of human nature to give insensitive,
Hurley'S discussion of the value-\adenness of preferences is like the first Davidsonian objection discussed in the previous chapter. To assume that
unperceptive, abnormal, and other unusual persons a veto over
people are like us is not necessarily to make them be like us.
eligible distinctions.' The upshot here is that the very ascription of preferences to others involves already holding them as embracing certain values, and more
II)
over values globally similar the ones we hold. This may seem to present a problem 10 the project of defending moral values while at the same time holding the principle of antirepresentationalism, because the attempt to found values on preferences, and thus to avoid representationalism regarding values, itself requires the ascription of values in order to get started. If so, then is there not a representationalist coercion in the very
3. Hurtey does argue that intransitivity can ellist in people's preferences, but she says that the reason for this is that preferences-and \'alues--
None of this is meant to argue that one indeed can found values, com mensurate with antirepresentationalism, on preferences. So far, I have only argued that there is no obvious bar to that strategy. The second rea son one might offer for the cleavage between antirepresentationalism and a theory of values, however, does involve an obvious bar to such a strat
egy. In doing so, it forces us both to a further weakening of antirepresen
tationalism and to a new view of what a moral value oughl to be. The second reason to avoid founding values on preferences comes from
Thomas Scanlon's direct critique of such a strategy in his article "Prefer ence and Urgency."� Unlike Hurley's argument, Scanlon's does not hold thai ascriptions of preferences and of values are interdependent, but lhat, however arrived at, the use of preferences to found values skews moral deliberation n i a way that conflicts with deeply held moral intuitions. It s i thus a moral argument, in contrast to Hurley's hermeneutic one. The argument begins by distinguishing between "subjective criteria," for the fashioning of values, and "objective criteria." A subjective criterion he defines as "a criterion according to which lhe level of well-being enjoyed by a person in -given material circumstances or the importance for that person of a given benefit or sacrifice is to be estimated by evaluating those material circumstances or that benefit or sacrifice from the point of view of that person's tastes or interests." Such a criterion would be in keeping with the principle of anlirepresentationalism, since it allows that what is important for a person be decided by that person, rather than by others. 5. JOIInral of Philosoplry72., no. 19 (1975): 655-69.
The Moral Theory of Posistruciuralism
86
An objective crilerion he defines as "a criterion thai provides thc basis for appraisal of 11 person's level of well-being which is independent of that person's tastes and interests,"6
Scanlon's argument is that moral appraisal cannot rely on subjective criteria, because such a reliance would, in questions of just distribution, allow for the urgency of some subjective preferences, say for caviar, to compete on the same ground for OUf moral attention as the urgency of
others, say for 11 place to sleep al night. As Scanlon puts the point, "Ihe
principle of equal satisfaction as I have stated it [i.e., as 11 principle of
distributive justice based upon weighting preferences, as a subjective cri terion would have it, by reference to a sense of personal urgency rather
than 10 content] would give this same kind of consideration to a person who, because of some special interests or unusually refined or expensive tastes, could not be raised to a 'normal level of satisfaction' without very high expenditures."? Thus, laying aside the conlent of the criteria of val ues and evaluating them solely on the basis of their personal urgency seems to commit one to giving the same weight to claims that seem not at all equally important. One might wonder, at this point, why personal urgency should be the criterion for measuring the degree to which a preference ought to com
mand our moral attention. Of course it need not be. But if competing claims of subjective preference are not to be decided on the basis of their
content, that is to say, on the basis of objective criteria, then there must be some basis on which to decide which preferences place a moral claim on us and which do nol, and some basis on which to decide how much of a
A Multivalue Consequentialism
87
ereel of moral value, that is 10 say, of what ought 10 be morally binding upon everyone, even upon Ihose who do not hold that value to be of value. Now, as seen in Chapter 1 (in replying to Gilbert Harman's moral
relativism), this does nol imply thai those who do not act according to this value or do not promote this value must be forced to do so. We can draw a distinction belween whom we should find morally wrong and whom we should find morally blameworthy. Nevertheless, if moral dis course s i a practice, and if practices have their own social, political, and
moral effecls, then we can reasonably assume that the choice of moral values in a society has a coercive effect upon how people live their lives,
and does so by representing ceriain intentional lives-that is, those lives that embody the moral values decided upon by objective, rather than subjective, criteria-as intrinsically superior 10 Olhers. Thus we are in a moral dilemma. The principle of antirepresentation alism has been argued for, and the cost of its denial assessed. On the other hand, the cost of appealing to subjective criteria in constructing our moral values and their relative weight has been assessed by Scanlon. Cleaving
to either hom of the dilemma is unattractive. Is there a way, then, of split ting the difference to arrive at a viable compromise? How ought reflec tive equilibrium to operate here?
i concession to antirepresenlationalism, we need both to re Perhaps, n think what a moral value ought to be and at the same time to widen (or,
really, recognize the width of) candidates for moral values. And in con cession to the argument againsl subjective preference, perhaps our can didates for moral values musl end somewhere, and perhaps there must
claim those preferences have. The role of personal urgency is to provide
be some relative weighing of the candidates that we take on board.
provide it.
constitute a good or even a satisfying life, but as goods to which people ought to have access. A modicum of happiness, a right to physical safety,
that basis in situations in which differences in content cannot ex hypothesi
If personal urgency is not to play that role, then what will? It
s i hard to imagine, once the content of the preference is bracketed out, whal to appeal to aside from its intensity for the person whose prefer ence it is. And if the intensity of a preference is to be the arbiter of its moral worth, then we are necessarily driven toward some unloward con clusions in assigning moral value. If Scanlon is right-and I see no way around his conclusions-then we need to appeal to what he calls objective criteria in assigning moral values. That is to say, questions of which moral values ought to compose a multi value consequentialism and of what relative weight each ought to have cannol be answered solely on the basis of subjective preferences. This poses a problem for antirepresentationalism because the assigna tion of moral values addresses the question of what ought to be consid6. Ibid., 656. 658.
7. Jbld., 659.
I suggest that we think of moral values not as goods that somehow
a jusl share of, or opportunity to obtain, social advantages-whatever we see as moral values are to be thought of as goods that ought to be
available to people rather than as goods that are definitive of a kind of
life that is superior 10 other kinds of lives. Thus whal makes a moral value morn/ is that it is a certain kind of value-a good to which all ought 10
good t at is of that kind � i a moral value, a value thai is have access. . to be included In a multwalue con sequentiah sm. Such a conception offers a way to navigate the dilemma of reconciling
Any
�
antirepresentationalism and moral values, because il separates the idea of what peopleshould have access to from the idea of what people should be like. Thus it allows for the universality characteristic of morality with out that universality imposing-at least initially-a vision of lives that are morally superior simply in virtue of what Ihey are. It does allow for judgments of moral superiority: one acts in a morally superior way when
88
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism
A Multivalue Consequentialism
89
one enhances access to goods to which everyone ought to have access, that is, when one contributes to the sustaining or enriching of moral values, But
resentationalism, as does almost any decision about which values ought
but rather in what is good to do, and moreover what is good to do for others.
to be considered moral ones, because access to certain goods as opposed to others promotes the construction of certain lives as opposed to others.
If a moral value isa good to which people ought to have access, antirep resentationalism would advise that a rnultivalue consequentialism have
A community that considers musical education a moral value but does not consider access to baseball games one promotes lives concerned with
more, rather than fewer, values. To have more values is to have more
music more than lives concerned with baseball. In that sense, it engages in a practice (the practice of morality) one of whose effects is to promote i tentional life (enjoyment or valuing of music) as superior to a certain n another (enjoyment or valuing of baseball). As with the choosing of val
it grounds that superiority not in any vision of what is good to be, in itself,
goods to which people ought to have access, and thus allows a wider range of the kinds of lives thai can be lived. A rnultivalue consequential ism that includes among its values not only education about Western so ciety and history but also education about other cultures promotes not only a tolerance for other cultures but a general access to different vi sions of life, and thus (one hopes) a tolerance and even support for dif ferent kinds of lives n i one's own culture.
Any relative weighing, however, conflicts with the principle of antirep
ues, so with their relative weighing. A more heavily weighted moral value
promotes the idea that that value has more worth than a less heavily weighted one.
The problem lies n i the universality of moral values. I have defined a
This does not imply that any kind of life is morally okay. A life, for
moral value as a good to which everyone ought to have access. But this
instance, that violates moral values is morally condemnable, just as a life that promotes moral values is morally praiseworthy. But again, the crite
leaves open the twin questions of which goods are important enough
rion for such a life is not that it is condemnable or praiseworthy for what
more and which the less important ones. Any answers to those questions
it is, but that it is so for what it does to and for others. If that were all there were to the story, then these considerations would effect a complete reconciliation of the idea of a moral value and the prin
that everyone deserves access to them and, among those, which are the will result---even though that result may not be a goal of moral prac
tice-in the promotion of some intentional lives over others and thus will
violate the principle of anlirepresentationalism.
ciple of antirepresentationalism. That is not all there is, however. (There
Scanlon's argument for the necessity of objective criteria, then, is right
are a couple of loose Ping-Pong balls floating around.) First, moral val
when applied to the question of assigning and weighing moral values. Certain values, and with them certain intentional lives, must necessarily
of the status of a theory. One of the characteristics of a moral theory that
be advantaged over others. And thus we must place a second limit on
distinguishes it from being merely an n i ventory is that it must not only
antirepresentationalism. Not only must we concede that truth believingness, at least within a culture, is a representationalist practice that ought to be promoted; we must also concede that moral valuation is,
ues have to be weighed one against another in any moral theory worthy
list its values but also offer (or be structurally capable of offering) some relative weighing of values. This does not mean that at any given mo ment a multivalue theory can resolve every conflict among its values. It does mean, however, that not all values can be considered of the same moral weight. I will not say much about how to weigh all specific moral values one against another. That task, given how wide I have argued the moral net ought to be cast, would probably require many volumes. How ever, since the multivalue consequentialism I offer here includes such values as rights, just distribuions, t and other goods, it is not hard to see some initial possibilities for relative weights: rights are weighted most heavily, distributive justice less so, and other goods fall into neither cat
egory but are still goods to which people ought (although less than in the other cases) to have access.' 8. Such a scale might involve turning into rights 50me considerations that have �n thought of as matters of distributive justice. For instance, a Rawlsian differ ence principle could delineate certain rights rather than justice if it came to be thought of as morally compelling enough.
at least partially, a representationalist practice that, if we are to have any moral values at all, must also be promoted. Although this second conCt�S sion limits antirepresentationalism, it, like the first caveat, does not viti ate it in any deep way. Antirepresentationalism continues to have les
sons for how we ought to think about our moral values, lessons that limit some of morality's potentially coercive effects. Such lessons derive their moral force from moral values, for instance, the values of autonomy and of critical reflection on one's social practices.
It is possible, then, to reject the values on which antirepresentationalism is founded and on the basis of that rejection hold a more coercive view of moral values. The previous chapter argues against that rejection. Turning matters around, however, the acceptance of antirepresentationalism itself involves the acceptance of moral values defined as goods to which everyone ought to have access. In accepting antirepresentationalism, then, one already accepts some limitations upon it. Otherwise put,
90
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism
anlir:epresentationalism is justified by value s that, merely by being . conslde m?ral, lead to the promotion of certain intentional lives over others as lntnnsicalJy more valuable. This limitation is nOI, however, a . se {.refutlng one. Rather, the idea is that a commitment to certain values . . nngs with It, �t least in our social conte xt, a commitment to a practical Judgment-anhrepresentationalism _which in tum offers a perspectiv e on how those values (as well as other s) should be taken.9 One �ay w nder, given this discussion � , if it is at all possible, on the perspective bemg developed here, to offer any judgments about bette r , and worse �ves. One such judgment has already been alluded to: mor ally better lives are those which prom ote or enhance moral values. How ever, many people, particularly those attracted to virtue-ethical ap . proaches to m rality , are after something more. If the persp ective devel . � oped �o far s nght, then even if there s i a place for such judgments, that � place IS not In the realm of moral disco urse. As I argued in the last chap ter, there may be s ch a place, but the values it considers are aesthetic � �er than m�ral It concerns what ra t might be called beauty rather than � dulles and obhgat ons. Most significan tly, it does not have the obligatory � force thai moral diSCourse and pract ice possess.
�
�
�
A MultivaJue Consequentialism
91
that role is fulfilled by a theory of multiple values rather than one value. The first part of the task involves relating the proposed moral theory to moral practice. The second involves examining issues of coherence and conflict in a theory with more than one value. Since the proposed theory is consequentialist, it defines the right in terms of the good, that is, it measures the moral rightness of an act in terms of its contribution to goodness. In this case, the rightness of an act is defined in terms of its contribution to goods to which everyone should have access. No action is morally good in and of itself, without reference 10 some value to which it contributes. It is easy to see how this works
when a traditional utilitarian good is at stake, for instance, happiness. If happiness is a value, then a right act is one that contributes to happiness. If, alternatively, we wish to speak in terms of rights (as opposed to right acts), we can say, for example, that a person has a right to physical integ rity, meaning that there is a value, physical ntegrity, i to which that per
son (and everyone else) should have access. A morally good act is one that contributes to that value, that is, respects or enhances people's right to physical integrity.
Now, a multivalue consequentialism might seem to be committed to defining an act as morally right and wrong at the same time, in cases where the act contributes to one value while detracting (rom another. This problem is easily surmounted, however, by recognizing that the appella tion "right" as attached to acts is not an aU-or-nothing affair. An act can thnt it contributes to a value, wrong to the extellt flint
Consequentialism a s a Moral Theory
be right to the extellt
50 fa� in this chapl�r, I have focused my
attention, by way of addressin the dilemma of antirepresentationalis m and moral theory, on what mora �alucs a�. Next I �ust ask what a consequenfialist theory of mora l values IS, espeCially a multlvalue one. This task requires that I address, first, the role of a moral theory thus conceived and second, the quest·lon of how '
�
9. �hiS way o� usplitling the difference� between antirepresentationalism and mor v lues arnves, through a very different route, at a condusion analo gous to one ur ey comes to in �he lasl chapl er of Natz."lI Rl'tlson5. There she claim s thai the vaJue of a tonomy IS twofo ld: it is valuable in ilself, and it is � valuable because Ihe exerciSe of autonomy conlr ibutes to · u nd-· . t:U " nk" - views t."U · 0thuman good m a �Ithca · I oo?,m�nity. This is analogous 10 the view developed here that re "'I mg Supenor mtentional lives is bad, in part because it \'iolates autono . y View concedes, as noted, that the developme nt of moral values, while neces� . s�ry, �'olates anllrepresenlalionalism and should occur with a sensitivity to that :1018110n.) One of the differen(es conce rns the emphasis I have laid on antire . . re s�ntallonahsm, or what is analogous to the first value of autonomy in Hurl y's View. In her perspective as well as mine, . however, both roles are present thoug h not Without some tension between them.
�
�
�
_
:r
'
�
it detracts from another. What ultimately determines its rightness over its wrongness is the relative weights of the values to which it contributes
or detracts and the amount of contribution and detraction involved. There are, of COUI"$C, cases in which it is difficult to offer an account of relative weights or of relative contribution and detraction, and this makes moral ddiberation difficult for one who embraces multivalue consequentialism. This difficulty, however, stems not from any deficiency n i a moral theory that posits multiple values but rather from the complexity of our deep moral i...tuitions-those intuitions that, should a moral theory fail to cap ture them, would constitute a reason for rejecting that moral theory. Questions remain concerning the place and meaning of conflict in a
i ed. on the relation be moral theory, bilt clarification must first be gan
tween a theory of values and action. Germane to that clarification is the discussion of Sellars's treatment of language departures in Chapter 1, in which J argued that moral discourse is part of the language game of moral practice, that moral claims found certain language departures, that moral claims involve both characterizations of practical judgments (or principles) and circumstances, and that values should be thought of as part of the
92
The Moral Theory of Poslstructuralism
circumstances (either actual circumstances or contemplated ones). Val ues, then, are embedded in claims of fact thai are lied to action, not di rectly, but in a mediated way, the mediator being a practical judgment. In a single-value consequentialism, there is a lighter relation between the claim of value and the practical judgment leading to the act. One only has to weigh the amount of value produced consequent upon each of a contemplated set of acls in order to tell which is the right one; the act producing the most of thai value is the act one should perform . In a mul tivalue consequentialism, however, with the possibility of conflicting val ues, the recognition thai one act will produce more of a certain value than another act does nOl lead directly to a practical judgment. One still has to know what other values are at stake in a given setof circumstances and how those values weigh relative to each other and to the value one has before one. Practical judgments, then, are derived from relative weigh ing of values as well as from the recognition of the amount contributed to any particular value by a contemplated act. This difference, however, does not introduce any deep new difficulty into the account of the relation between values and practical judgments. Assuming that the task of relative weighing can be performed, one act (or a circumscribed set of acls) will be thought to contribute the most to a certain value (or properly weighted combination of values). That is the act that will be prescribed by the practical judgment; it is the right act,
the act that one should perform. This is not to say that the act one should perform is the act it is one's duty to perform. To move from the claim that one ought to perform a certain act to the claim that that act is one's duty
is to neglect the possibility of supererogatory acts: acts that one ought 10
perform but that are not one's duty. In other words, the "ought" or
"should" connected with a practical judgment derived from reflecting upon a situation in the light of a theory of multiple values reflects a judg ment about an act thatbest contributes to the (properly weighted) value(s) in that situation. In that sense, it has the moral force of an "ought" or a "should"; given the theory at hand, the practical judgment cites the act that that theory prescribes for one to perform. The question whether it is one's duty to perform that act is a separate question, however (and is addressed in the next chapter when supererogation is discussed).lo 10. One might want to quibble with the proposals for the usage of the words '·ought� and "should," <:!aiming that those terms should be reserved for duties. Although I prefer the usage I have articulated, partly because it helps explain the force of such locutions as �You ought to be kinder to people, although you ha\'e no duty to do SO,H not much hangs on it. If the reader prefers 10 think of the distinction between rightness and duty such that "ought"' and "should" have the force of moral duty, thai suits me.
93
A Multivalue Consequentialism
Now, it may look, given the way the discussion has moved .so far, .as though practical judgments were both situation-specific and acl1o� gUId ing. Regarding the former, however, as argued In .Ch�pt�r 1, thLs need l Judgments whose not be the case. Reflection on values can lead to pract ica . The principle of situation one just than broader is field of application , . antirepresentationalism is an example of that The argument for that prin
�
nces, but th� circum n: sta ciple takes into account both values and ci stances it concerns itself with are larger sOCial ISSUes not restricted to a single situation. In the case of broader principles, however, one must.a.l most always add a ceteris paribus clause, since there are probably speCific situations in which the broader principle could be overridden by another
broader principle that embodies more (or more important) value(s) . . �on Regarding the characterization of practical judgments as solely act guiding, one can see at a glance that such judgment� can a.l� be acho�
evaluating. An action·evaluating, as opposed to actlOn-SUldmg. prach cal judgment would likely take the form of a "should have" or "ought to have," as opposed to a "should" or an "ought." A multivalue consequentialism, then, performs the several roles that a
moral theory needs to perform, once one rec�gnizes the role of �oral discourse. It allows for guidance and evaluatIOn of acts, evaluation of . situations, and a relative weighing of moral goods It is distinct from stan dard nonconsequentialisl moral theories in seeing value as prior to prac . tical judgments or general principles of action Such a distinction does different from those of principles moral to not mean that it is committed the idea of a aban�o�s one Once however. theories, uentialist nonconseq
single founding value, the way is open for consequentiahsm 10 �pl� to tv.'o of the central criticisms leveled against it by nonconsequenllaitsts, specifically that consequentialism is willing to step on the rights of.so.me i order to realize quantitatively more value and tha.t c�n�ue�ha lsts n s dlstrlbuhon. are more concerned with the amount of value than With I t The first criticism is addressed straightforwardly, by including certain
�
�
rights as values in the theory and by ascribing relatively eav� �eights to those rights. It seems, in fact, that what characterizes a. right IS Its �Ia tively heavy weight compared, for example, to the happmess th�t mIght
�
be produced by violating that right. Thus certain fundamental rtg ts, as goods to whict't everyone ought to have access, if incorporated .�to a
multivalue consequentialism, can meet the criticism leveled at tradlt�onal consequentialism regarding potential rights violations. How such fights are conceived is delineated in the appendix to this chapter. Nonconsequentialist theories, however, need not be oriented spec f � cally toward rights. As Ronald Dworkin points out for the case of poiltl
�
cal philosophy-and the same holds for moral philosophy-rights-based
PoststructuraliShl mora. l theories are distin ct from duty-based on-' A b.o"lC' poll ". might be goaI-based, . whIC h caS(! it would take some 001 I"rk' ca.) theory b �F£; �:, �! ;;;;��;:;E '��:'�:;f��;�E� ¥��' �:I; ;�:���E :!�% t asset forth in.th� TenC:m��::::t�, �'sl�� �:� ,��Gty�:;;ilInonc onsequenhahsf theories ho��v�r, donots:ern to pose an obstacle to a mult ivalue consequentiafum. . Irs , many 0 the duties that one might have unde r a d�t�-b�sed theory fmd their COunter_ parts in either rights or other type so �'��:��',��:�;: :0���:1�; ��� �.����, �i£���i:! a component of the rnult . g Its . 'obliguatory ' ivalu e conse q uen rla[Ism, d rawm force the hold that theary 0, value has upon us This does t . :I:from �r;: th�\� a�:��ec��i�thai �!��tion w� havea duty to prom�te or enha::e ra e I , s�n�e so,:"e value-promoting actions will prove to be supererogato eoz ry of ,value is able to incorporate on the v?i'ue�ti�� =a��I�I��� :�h:cory mcorporates on the side of practical judgment. Could there, however, be duties that are not duties 10 som good? Not if anti�prese onalism is right. If the duty�::�t;wa som' good to W�lch everntati should' have access, then it can o�Y b'�, owa , rd a more pnvate goodyone , el" her mme or someone else's. If it is mme, ' then I can ....., said 10 have oblig ati o ns to m ' If Th a s a ::! c,hapte�, runs co��ter to antirepresent�:o�aliS:-; an� ��S���dt�: gme, without posJlmg some justifying good to wh'ICh everyone ought to have access how constr��a�:�ument that antirepresentational_ ism should be'overritodden h Alternatively, if the dutyinisS towa private good f I t�::� d� :;:s:!� conceivrd�a'asmore ::rd ole-bound; r , that iS��S:;:�t: e a �: r : :�d, �u d e, be � �ef�ctor, or has some specific role �is-a-viS !:'e�� se 0 fnendshlp IS treated in the next chapter it act-oriente� moral t��ories proposed' bi; �i��u�b"��!c�:t!�e�:�:�i:;!s"o�owever, er spe oflc duties, need to be justified by reference to p�bhc goods-motoral values, in the sense I am uslng th e a d ie e S t��j;����; �:':7: ��I�: �n :;;' :�'omp jU�� :::��l !�r�� v��� �����a�� nonc liance will not promote the violation of some other moral o had such a duty, then public ���t� :c:�����ed�i:'���rc��1��:�'�.�� '9"")' (Cambrid"", Harvard UnivcrSity Pres , s, 94
The Moral Theory of
10
L",
.
:{,::�:;:II'E
L._
'
,D,w ,_",', kin, Tnki"x Rig/,ts Seriously ,
..,�
Multivalue Consequentialism which is patently absurd (as just war would never be morallythejustifiable, the Vietnam War can attest). of period through lived who us of those If this is right, then all moral duties must be justified. by reference to value can admit of the distinc moral values, andy as long as a theory ofthere no reason to claim that a tion between dut and supererogation, all theisintuitions ofa duty-based theory of value cannot suffice to capture moral theory, justice, the Regarding questions of justice, and especially distributive ve claims distributi te accommoda to ability s theory multivalue a case for ' There are at least two strategies for doing ward. straightfor more even is heavily than others certain goods soP The first would be to weigh morethat contribute to them are that ought to be broadly available, so acts that to others. The second ute b contri considered morally beller than acts that sort of "metavalue" a as acts that value a strategy would be to introduce n values and re certai to applies that metavalue a of distributive justice, strategy is not second the Although them. of s distribution certain quires as theoretically neat the first one, there does not seem to be any bar to using it. a multivalue conse The argument that is being constructed here forthose who have criti among ement l puzz quentialism might cause some moral important te accommoda to failure its for ialism cized consequent consequen multivalue a has asked, be might it sense, what In intuitions. if it is forced tialism been vindicated against nonconsequentialist theories tially ar to adopt some of the framework of those theories (consequen superior the that is answer ticulatcd, to be sure) in defending itself? The e. ity of a multivalue consequentialism is more structural thanatesubstantiv antirepre accommod to easier is it chapter, As was argued in the last ialist theory than a sentationaHsm within the context of a consequent chap t one; further, as is argued in the appendix 10 this nonconsequenialist we have, ter, consequentialism helps make more sense of which rights d theory, In moral and how far they extend, than does a purely rights-basevalues-an d their moral the concern deliberation, the central quC!stions , about Questions committed be to ought we relative weight-to which how we should act are derivative from those; questions about what we should be, given antireprescntationalism, are inappropriate for moral in quiry, Thus a m6.ltivalueconsequenlialism is vindicated against nonconghly like, Tho two strategies is e:
A
as
12.
rou
these
mas Scanlon's strategies for revising utilitarianism in light of Rawlsian theory; see "Rawls' Theory of Justice," Uuiw.sity of Pem,sylfHl"ill LIIw Rn;iew 121 (1973); 1054-56. Scanlon notes that the first of these two strategies, which is the one I lift directly from him, differs from the second in that it �Ilows the possibility of over enough alternatil'e value be promoted by riding con$iderations of justice doing so. The sec;ond strategy precludes such considerations of weight.
should
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism
96
seque,:,lia is� by providing the best sirllc/llfe for pursuing moral inquiry; . and It 15 vmdlc� ted gainst any single-valueconsequentialism by accom � . modating the d IVersity of goods 10 which nonconsequentialists have called our �ttention. nus vindication does not imply, then, thai we reatly have no nghts, for example, or that what rights we do have are depende nt on how much happiness having them promotes. What is superior about a , multlvalue consequentialism as a moral theory is its ability to accommo date our deep moral intuitions as well as to provide a framew ork for reflecting upon them. The claim for superiority, however, is made good only if several prom . Issory notes a�e It m�sl be shown that rights can be thought of consequentially. ThaI IS done In the appendix to this chapter. Also, it must be shown that the theory of value admits of the distincti on between d�ties a�d supererogatory acts. That is the subject of the next chapter. Flnall�, It must also shown that the move from a single-value conse . �uenh�hsm !o a multlvalue consequentialism does not bring with it any . inconSIstenCIes or Incoherence that would undermine the theory's claim to accommodate our diverse moral intuitions.
!
redeem�. �
97
A Multivalue Consequentialism
by conflicts of values. If the upshot of a multivalue consequentialism is that the values in question are incommensurable, then the appeal to moral theory seems to be pointless. We might as well just go wilh our intuitions
and leave theory alone. Furthermore, the existence of conflicting and irreconcilable values threatens logically to undermine any multivalue consequentialism. Since, as I have argued, there is il connection between values and practical judg ments, in situations of conflicting values there would seem to be issuing from them conflicting practical judgments. "You ought to do x" and "You ought to do not-x" could be the prescriptions of conflicting values in a moral dilemma. Since these prescriptions contradict each other, they seem to reveal an internal inconsistency in the theory, thus undermining it as a theory. These problems spawn three questions. First, does a multivalue con sequentialism generate conflicts of values? Second, are those conflicts of values in principle irresolvable? Third, do such conflicts-whether or not they are resolvable in principle-undermine the theoretical structure of a multivalue consequentialism? As a first approach to these questions, let us look at the multivalue consequentialism proposed by Richard Boyd in his article "How to Be a Moral Realist." Boyd constructs a "homeostatic duster" conception of
The Coherence of Consequentialisrn By �apturing our deep moral intuitions, a multivalue consequentialism achieves an advantage over any Single-value consequentialism, but that advantage carries with it a corresponding cost: it introduces conflict in areas tha! a single-value consequentialism (at least in prinCiple) does not.
F ora�y slngle-value consequentialism, the question of which act n i a given , . sltuatlon .ISthe one that ought to be performed can be answered in purely . quantltallve terms. The act that ought 10 be performed is the one that
produces the IIIOS/ of the value proposed by the consequentialism. Of
COll�, s uch measurements of quantity are often notoriously difficult, but . that diffIculty attaches to the measurement of any values. A multivalue consequentialism, in addition to facing the difficulty measuring specific contributions to its values, has also to face the problem that two or more values may be incommensurable. There may be no common denomina tor that allows for comparison. If so, then it is unclear how a moral deci sion is to be made. This is a deep problem for a multivalue consequentialism, since the appeal to a moral theory is often motivated by situations of moral dilemma, where it is unclear what the moral resolution of a particular problem should be. Those kinds of situations are usually characterized
the good, following the use of the term in science, and especially in biol ogy. "According to various property-cluster or criterial attribute theories, some terms have definitions which are provided by a collection of prop erties such that the possession of an adequate number of these properties is sufficient for falling within the extension of the term." As Boyd points
out, classification n i to species is an example of the use of cluster con cepts. "The appropriateness of any particular biological species for in duction and explanation in biology depends upon the imperfcctly shared and homeostatically related morphological, phYSiological, and behavioral features which characterize its members." What makes the duster con cepts homeostatic is that "leJither the presence of some of the properties . . . tends (under appropriate conditions) to favor the presence of the oth ers, or there are underlying mechanisms or processes which tend to main tain the presence of the properties . . . or both.
"13
For Boyd, haman good is a homeostatic cluster concept allowing for the development of a consequentia lism that engages in moral evaluation on the basis of how much actions or policies or practices contribute to or detract from the human good. There are, of course, many contributors to human good, and some of those contributors, for example, literacy, "fa13. Boyd. hHow to Be a Moral RealiSI,� in EssaY5 011 Moral Realism, cd. Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (Ithaca, N.¥': Cornell University Press, 1988), 196. 198, 197.
98
The Moral Theory of PoststructuraJism
vor, the pre�ence" of others, for exam ple, familiarity with the world in which one lives. Nov, Boyd, as [ have , shown (see Chapter 1), uses the � �ome�t�tlc c?ncepho n of the good in order to support his moral real. lS�. HIs Idea IS that the good can be thought of as a natural-kind term With the same ontological s�atus as homeostatic cluster concepts in sci� e n.ce, We need not be committed to moral realism, however, in orde r to IhInk of the good homeostatically. S�or� of its realist commitments , Boyd's homeostatic consequential . _ �m IS kln to the multivalue conseque ntialism being developed here. Ther . , e IS a dlff� rence In regard to moral conflict, though. Boyd's idea of a ho �eost�SIS seems to preclude or at least lessen conflict, since it assumes a workmg togethemess" of each of the properties in the cluster. "In � ac� tual practice, a concern for moral goodness can be a guide to actio n for the morall� �oncerned because the homeostatic unity of moral goodness tends to mltJ�ate possible conflicts between various individual goods." . '4 fi TI us workl�g�t ogetherness, or mutual reinforc . ement, may not be suf . cle":t �o eli nu nate all moral conflict; however , Boyd's response to an �emalOlOg moral conflict is a Hum ean denial that moral conflict actu allY IS moml cOnflict. He writes: "[CJaref ul philosophical examination will . veal, I believe, that agreement on nonmoral issues would eliminate al most all disagreement about the sorts of moral issues which arise in ord' moral practice. "" Thus, the homeost asis remains because anythin� . . t at might des�oy ItS mutually reinforcing character is not part of the c1ust�r at all. Disagreements are abou t facts, not about gOOds. ThIs seems to me an overly optimist ic approach to moral conflict It is surely true that factual agreement would help resolve some moral � i ues Moreover, as I showed n i Chapter 1, the fact/value disti nctio n is enough that many situations that are described in terms of val be help�lIy redescribed in terms of nonvaluational states. Howe:e � d':� oral dIlemmas Of conflicts seem to resist such reductions or rede�cfip � � . IOns. I cannot, for Insta nce, think of any potential new facts that would resol�e the debate between adVO Cates for and against choice ardin :borhon ��lthough.so,:"e new fact might alter a specific POSiIiO�. ., th! . w faci a�ut vla.blhty cited in Cha pter 1). At issue in the debat� over . a:rlton are irredUCibly normative question s like when rights ought to be grante� a fetus �r how much cont rol a woman ought 10 have over her re capacity or how much and in wha t ways we ought to value I e. In difficult areas like these we turn to moral theories if not � swers then at least for a framewo rk within which to gro�e Our w�� ward answers. I am not convinced that these difficulties can be resolved
n:ry
r!
por'Ou�
rlrodu�lt�e
���
14. Ibid., 203.
15 . Ibid., 213.
A Multivaluc Conscqucntialism
99
outside of the area of normative judgment, and specifically judgment re garding conflicting and potentially incommensurable values. So we must, at least for now, abandon Boyd's homeostatic optimism and admit, in answer to my first question, that a muJti\'alue consequen tialism generates conflicts of values. It s i tempting to think that this ad mission also forces an affirmative answer to the second question raised above. As explanation, consider the following dilemma. If two values of a multivalue consequentialism conflict, then either there is or there is not some third value that forms the common denominator between the two and in terms of which a measure of relative weight can be made. If there is such a third value, then the two values are reducible to a single value, . and we are on the way back to a single-value consequentialism Alterna tively, if there is no such third value, then the conflict is irresolvable, be cause there is no common measure by which to resolve it. The second hom of this dilemma is a false one, however. The lack of a common measure, or at least the lack of an interesting one, does not pre clude comparison between two values. It is perfectly coherent to speak of one value as more important than another, without offering a common measure by which that value is more important. Having access to music, all other things equal, may be said to be more important than having access to ice cream. This s i not because there is some common standard against wruch access to music and access to ice cream can be weighed. And it is not, as Scanlon argues, because subjective preferences tend to ward music over ice cream. Rather, it has to do with \'arious roles music plays in the lives of individuals and communities: as expression, as self identification and self-construction, as communal bond. If one seeks some common value here, aside from something as vague and uninformative as "importance in individual and communal life," one will find none. But thisdoes not pre::lude the possibility of a (fairly) uncontroversial judg ment of relative worth." The fact that we can accord relative weights to n i commensurable val� ues does not solve the problem of conflict, however, since in moral di lemmas we are faced with alternative courses of action each of which seems to contribute an equal amount of value. Take, for instance, the clas sic case of the prisoner of war who has planted a time bomb in a popu lated area. Do you torture the prisoner in order to get information that will save the lives of innocent people? On the one hand, if we believe 16. Fairly uncontTOversiai, thai is, if we tay anlirepresentalionatism aside for such valuations, as we must. It is worth comparing this discussion with SUSlln Hurtey's discussion of conflicts of values in Natural R..aWIIS, 259�3, whcll! she discusses incommensurabitily of diffcrenl kinds of vatues (morat and nonmoral), and concludcs that such ncommensurability i does not imply that Ihere is no cor reet d«ision to be mad� between them.
100
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism
thai peoplehave a right against physical torture, Ihe consequences of tor ture violate a heavily weighted value. This value may override the sav ing of more than one innocent life.1' On Ihe other hand, when the num ber of potential innocent deaths starts to rise, Ihe weight may begin to
A Multivalue Consequentialism
101
The problem with this approach is that it resolves conflicts by making
the tie between value and action mysterious. If values have no relation 10 i not to argue action, then what is the point of a theory of value? This s that values must be internal to action in the sense that anyone who rec
1)
shift. At some point, it becomes hard to tell whether torture is justified.
ognizes the value feels motivated to act, or even (as argued in Chapter
Then we have a moral dilemma, a potentially irreconcilable one.
that someone who fails to recognize the value is immune from its moral
Having now recognized that there are conflicts of values that can arise
force. But it does mean that people ought, morally, to act in accordance
in a multivalue consequentiaiism, and having seen that those conflicts,
with the value. If one denies thai bond between value and action, one
even when they are between incommensurable values, do not necessar
denies the point of a theory of value altogether. This way around the prob
ily preclude moral judgment between them, we now must ask whether
lem, then, is no way at all; we need to confront it more straightforwardly.
there are, in principle, irresolvable conflicls and whether the presence of
In confronting the problem, we need first to re<:ognize that a conflict
such conflicts introduces inconsistency into the theoretical structure of a
of values may not represent an irresolvabiLity in principle. It may just
multivalue consequentialism. Regarding the former, we must first recog
mean that we do not yet know how to resolve the question of relative
nize that what is at issue are conflicting values, not just competillg ones. If
valuational weights. Amartya Sen has emphasized this. He says that
it were just a question of competing values, then it might be permissible
"!dlecision making with unresolved conflicts is part of a more general
to promote any of the alternatives. In a case of conflicting values, how ever, the conflict arises when promoting one of the alternatives violates
thai incompleteness can be either open or closed. Open incompleteness
problem, viz., decision making with incomplete rankings." Sen points out
another. Some see this conflict of values as rendering a multivalue moral
"is exemplified by a partial ordering that can still be extended, e.g., by
theory inconsistent because it results in that theory's recommending both
more information . . . or by the use of some other supplementary prin ciple."" Closed incompleteness, on the other hand, admits of no resolu
for and against a certain course of action at the same time.IN One way lIot to deal with such a conflict is to deny the inconsistency by saying that what is at issue are values, not actions. Such a line of think ing would run like this: A consequentialist theory of value is pre<:isely a theory of value. It tells us about what is morally better and worse. but does not tel! us anything about how to act. Thus, although there can be conflicts of values, there can be no inconsistency in prescriptions, because theories of values do not concern themselves with prescriptions, just with values. In the end, on this line of thinking, conflicting values are really just competing ones, since in moral dilemmas what are at stake are equal (or indiscernibly different) amounts of value on all sides. 17. The incorporation of rights into a multil'aiue consequentialism has the ad I antage, relatil'e to traditional conscquentiaHsm, of not counting the taking of a : to be equal to the not-sal'ing of a life. Thus, life in TIre Realm of Rigl./s (Cam bridge: Harvard Unil'ersity Press, 1990). Judith Jarl'is Thomson argues that a con sequenlialisl would hal'e 10 admil lhal the killing of one healthy pcrwn in order �o ��e Ihe lil'e� of five people. each of whom needs a differCllt organ. would be Jusufled. That IS true of most traditional consequentialisms, but 1101 of onc that can figure rights into the consequelltialist framework. 18. This issue is of a piece with the issue of whether Wought� implies "C/ln.� If r oughl to perform an act because it contributes to a value, and yet I ought to rcfr�in from doing it be.::ause it violates a differentl'alue, then I cannot do what r ought to do. Whatever I do. I do something I ought not to do and do not do something r ought to do.
tion-no modification, by the addition of new information or otherwise, of the rankings one has in front of one. II should be clear that, given the discussion so far, multivalue conse quentialism must be open, and not just because openness mitigates the problem of conflict, although it does. There are at least two elements of the theory as it is articulated that commit it to openness. First. the metaethical discussion has emphasized the open-ended nature of all moral discourse: its caveats and its sensitivity both to new principles and infor mation and to redescription. Second, the articulation of a multivaluc con sequentialism that is as consonant as possible with antirepresentational ism is one that promotes a wide variety of values. The grealer the num ber of values, the more difficult it is to come to a complete ordering in accordance with relative weight. Someone who embraces a multivalue consequentialism of the kind defended here is almost forced to admit that there are scenarios and values that have not been addressed in one's
moral deiiberll.tions. and that among those there may be some thai would tip the scales one way or another in a direction one might not anticipate.
i like much of scientific theorizing, in Moral theorizing, in this sense, s
i the prod which the existence of phenomena that one cannot account for s
19. "Well-Being. Agency, and Freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984," /{)rmral ()! PIliIM{)p"y 72, no. 4 (1985): 179.
102
The Moral llwory of Postslructuralism
for further research and study. There is no reason, then, that the existence of conflict in morality must entail that the enterprise of moral lheory is . . less respectable than that of science. What we need to know eplstemlCally is not whether conflict can exist, but whether it can be resolved. If we take up Sen's argument, we ean see that the proper approach to a particular conflict of values is not to pronounce summarily upon its resolvability but to try to resolve it or to recognize that it cannot be re �olv �d given current resources. A particular multi value consequential Ism IS, then, a theory of value. It tells us which goods count as moral val ues and what their relative weight is. Such a theory is necessarily com plex and needs to be constructed piecemeal out of a variety of reflections upon proposed values, specific circumstances, and historical knowledge. The following analogy, offered by Thomas Nagel, might be helpful here: ':(Ejthics �s more like understanding or knowledge in general than it is like phYSICS. Just as our understanding of the world involves various points of view-among which the austere viewpoint of physics is the most powerfully developed and one of the most important-so values come from a number of viewpoints, some more personal than others, which cannot be reduced to a common denominator any more than history, psy chology, philology, and economics can be reduced to physics."2
(Oxf
of thiS 11'1 Natural Reasons 256-60. NThe issues of whether it's a good thing for a : theory to be comprehenSIVe. on the one hand, and monistic, on the other, are two different issues, which cut across one another: a pieceml!al coherence function that's a patchwork of local theories but covers at! the ground that needs to be covered may be a beller theory than one that's monistic, but applies only to one dimensional issuesU (258).
A Multivalue Consequcntialism
103
Thus, the answers to the second and third questions I raised-whether conflicts of values are necessarily irresolvable and whether such irresolvability undermines the theoretical structure of a multivalue con sequentialism-are now before us. There is no necessary reason for irresolvability in conflicts of moral values, even when those values are incommensurable. Moreover, the avoidance of irresolvability need not always take place on the basis of an arbitrary decision to weigh some value more heavily than another. In resolving moral conflicts, one looks at the consequences of embracing one value at the expense of another, perfonns thought experiments to see which value ought to be held more dearly, and so forth. In short, conflicts of values are addressed and re solved-if they are so---on the basis of the strength of the reasons that can be adduced for the relative weights of the various values involved. In all this, moral intuitions, especially deeply held ones, have a role to play. (Whether this adds an element of decisionism into moral reflection is a topic to which I return momentarily). Whether all conflicts of values can be resolved is the final question for any multivalue consequentialism, and one that would, given these con siderations, take many philosophers writing many volumes to answer. i right, But if the analogy that Nagel makes between ethics and knowledge s and if multivalue consequentialism is the proper approach to morality, then the question whether multivalue consequentialism is ultimately seamlessly consistent is much like the question whether knowledge is ul timately seamlessly consistent. One assumes so in order to keep gOing, and perhaps must assume so in order for the project to appear rational; i the right way. and as inconsistencies arise, one tries to resolve them n How rightly to resolve a moral issue, however, may be a matter of contention. When we try to resolve a moral conflict, engaging in research i to the consequences of holding certain values, perfonning experiments, n and so forth, then what ought to be the final arbiter of moral justifica tion? In particular, what role should our moral intuitions play in the de cision about values and their relative weights? Here we are faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, ifwe go with our moral intuitions in all cases of conflict, it s i useless to have a moral theory. What is the point of a moral theory that plays no role in moral deliberation? On the other hand, if we let the toheory be the final arbiter of moral conflicts, then we face two other problems. First, the theory, as currently articulated, may not have the resources to resolve the conflict; cases of this type are those where our relative weightings seem to be equal and where promoting one value violates another. Second, and more troubling, if our moral theory does then how do we gener i not need to be responsive to our moral ntuitions, ate values and relative weights--our moral theory-in the first place? Moral intuitions are the raw material of moral theories. If they do not
104
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism
have to be answered to in some fashion, then there is no hasis upon which to build a moral theory. The short answer to this dilemma is an appeal to Rawls's nolion of
reflective equilibrium. I.n moral deliberation, we go back and forth
between our intuitions and our theory in order to arrive at a resolution of moral conflict. This answer is right, but it c,m lead to tht! charge that moral
deliberation in cases of conflict is arbitrary be<:ause it supplies no real
105
A Multil'aluc Consequentialism
put it, "the total field is so undercletermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to re-evaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. "23 If science and morality are holistic in this way, then reflective equilib
rium is a necessary feature of all scientific and moral inquiry because the distinction between theory and observation (or, in the case of morality, theory and moral intuitions) is fluid, so that there are no claims that can
method for resolving conflicts. This charge, however, can be answered in
be held constant, no claims against which olher claims can be tested once
turn first by noting that reflective equilibrium is not only characteristic of moral deliberation, it is characteristic as well of scientific inquiry.
and for all. This picture of inquiry, both scientific and moral, is what one
Richard Boyd points this oul in his defense of moral realism (which, by substituting the term "cognitivism" for "realism," yields a position
The upshot is that a multivalue consequentialism, relying as it must on
consonant with that outlined in Chapler 1):
The extent of the potential for rebuttals . . . can best be recognized if we consider the objection that the role of reflective equilibrium
in moral reasoning dictates a constructivist rather than realist
would expect on the view of moral discourse developed n i Chapter 1.
reflective equilibrium in order to resolve conflicts of values, s i not dimin ished in status as a moral theory or as a (set of) claim(s) of knowledge. Therefore, a multivalue consequentialism informed by, although not sub servient to, the principle of antirepresentationalism is a viable-and per haps even superior-approach to moral theorizing.
conception of morals. The moral realist might reply that thc dia
lectical interplay of observations, theory, and methodology which, according to the realist, constitutes the disc01JCry procedure for
scientific inquiry illsl is the method of reflective equilibrium, so
that the prevalence of that method in moral reasoning cannot by itself dictate a non-realist conception of mor.lls.21
The reason reflective equilibrium characterizes both scientific and moral inquiry can be traced back to w.V.O. Quine's arguments in hisdas sic artide "Two Dogmas of Empiricism." The two dogmas against which he argues are the idea that there could be a hard and fast distinction be tween the analytic and the synthetic and the idea that one could reduce empirical claims to claims about set,se-data. Together these dogmas sup port a picture of scientific activity as built upon a bedrock of observa tions that can act as the final arbiter of scientific disagreement and to
which all theorizing has to answer. In abandoning these dogmas, science has to concede that there is no unwavering foundation for its activity and that scientific theorizing is a holistic endeavor in which the distinc tion between revisable and unrevisable claims gets effaced.zz As Quine
21. �How to Bea Moral Realisl,� 199-200.
22. Although effaced the distinction never entirely fa lls away. AI any given moment. some claims a� considered revisa ble and others unrevisable within the in terthc oretical web that is the current state or scientific knowledge. Sut the roles can be changed, 50 that, ror example what waS once the rel'isable synthetic claim that water is H,O becomcs defining for what will count as water. ,
.
Appendix: Consequentialist Rights-Claims A consequentialist account of rights may seem straightforward and uncontroversial. The idea is thai a right is a moral value-a value to which everyone ought to have access-and that actions can be judged as mor ally better or worse depending on their consequences for that value, on how much they contribute to or detract from it. Unfortunately, matters are not as simple as that. What if rights-claims, in particular, cannot be conceived within the structure of consequentiaLism? Then the enterprise of a multivalue consequentialism might founder even before it gets to the sticky questions of which rights to incorporate and how to weigh them relative to one another.
Judith JarviS Thomson, in chapter 5 of her recent book Ti,e Realm of
Rights, argues forcefully that rights-claims cannot be conceived on a utili
tarian model. erucial parts of her argument, however, apply to any form of consequentialism. Specifically, she argues that violations of rights claims are not consequences of acts, because the violations occur directly by means of the acts, not by means of their consequences. Her argument,
23. "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," in From a Logical Har\'ard University Press. 1953), 42-43.
Po;,,/ of View (Cambridgc,
106
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism
then, is metaphysical rather than ethical; but its effe<:1 is to deny the ap plicabiity l of the very structure of consequcntialism to the broad area of rights-claims. Otherwise put, rather than take the traditional tack of claim ing that consequenlialism cannot accommodate rights-daims, because the recognition of such claims does not depend upon weighing the conse quences of recognition against those of nonrecognition, she argues in ef fect that the metaphysical structure of a rights-claim resists incorpora tion into the theoretical structure of consequentialism. The force of the Iraditional tack can, of course, be blunted by moving from a single-value to a multivalue consequentialism that includes rights-cJaims as values. That is what has been argued for in the bulk of this chapter. Such an easy accommodation, however, cannot be made for Thomson's argument. If Thomson is right, then consequentialism is forced into a dilemma: it must either deny the necessity of rights-claims and try to find a way of accommodating our moral intuitions in that regard through some other value, or it must abandon the project of becoming an overarching moral theory. Neither of those two routes s i very attractive to a consequential ist. Thus, I take the direct route of arguing that Thomson's argument-or at least the implication of her argument-is wrong. and that consequen tialism can accommodate rights-claims. I also argue, a bit more brieAy,
that rights-claims are best conceived within the context of a consequen tialist theory, since a more compelling account of their moral role can be
A Multivalue Consequentialism
107
utilitarian consequentialism, but her argument is equally applicable to any other form of consequentialism. A consequentiaHst act-utilitarian ism she defines as holding that "X ought 10 do alpha if and only if the consequence-set of X's doing alpha would be better than the consequence set of X's doing any of the other things it is open to X to do instead."li>She contrasts this with nonconsequentialisl act-utilitarianism, which holds that it is not merely the consequence-set of an acl lhat delermines whether il ought to be done, bul the "act-plus-consequence-set." The difference here is that in the former case the act itself is value-neutral, the only value lying in the act's consequences; in the latter case, however, acts can have value. Her argument against nonconsequentialist act-utilitarianism con cerns us only peripherally here, since it is directed more toward prob lems of a utilitarian conception of value than those of a consequentialist conception of rights.
The argument Thomson uses against the utilitarian conception of rights
hinges on a case that, she claims, commits the utilitarian to a m�ral1y abhorrent solution. Suppose a surgeon, whom she calls Bioggs, lS ap proached and told that five patients need organ transplants or they will die. Each one needs a different organ. Now, if Bloggs culS up one healthy
person, removes the five needed organs, and transplants them inlo each of the patients, they will aU live. The consequentialist act-utilitarian, she
claims, is committed 10 cutting up the healthy person, since the conse
offered. This appendix proceeds in three stages. First, I review Thomson's com
quences of that act are the saving of five lives at the expense of one. This
tialism. Second, I discuss its weaknesses and propose an alternative, con
utilitarianism because, first-and this is the utilitarian idea-value is
plex argument and sketch its implications for a multivalue consequen sequentialist account of rights. Finally, I present the motivation for see
ing rights-claims as consequences, showing how the role of rights is best articulated by consequentialism.
Thomson-drawing upon the classic distinction of rights into powers,
claims, and privileges offered by w. N. Hohfeld (although he considered his analysis to be one of legal, rather than moral, rights)2.f-holds a right to
be a claim that one has upon another; thus rights-claims (hereafter, for con venience, "rights") are correlative with duties. "It does seem right to think
that X's having a claim against Y is at least equivalent to, and perhaps just
is, V's behavior being constrained in a certain way."� Here, of course, the constraint can be either to do something or not to do something.
Given this structure of a right, Thomson argues that rights cannot be accommodated by consequentialism. She works within the context of a 24. "Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions As Applied 10 Judicial Reasoning,"
Yait' Law /OImra/ 23 (191J). 25. TIl.. R(nlm of Rights, 79.
commitment strikes her as uncontrovertibly wrong. In Thomson's eyes, this solution follows from consequentialist act determined by maximizing the good. However the good is defined, five lives' worth of it are, in utilitarian calculations, certainly more than one life's worth of it. This is a classic criticism of utilitarianism, and it is
e;:'
precisely to deal with it, and with criticisms like it, that I have articulat a multivalue consequentialism. If this were all there were to Thomson s argument, the multivalue consequentialist could claim that rights also
have value and thus that acts can have the consequences ofpreserving or violating rights. . The second reason for Thomson's claim that this unpalatable solutIon follows from cbnsequentialist act-utilitarianism blocks this easy route for Ihe nonutilitarian consequentialist. Simply put, Thomson's notion is that the acl of cutting up the healthy person, rather than its CQllseqllences, is
the violation of that person's rights. Here the distinction between conse quentialist and nonconsequentialist act-utilitarianism becomes significant. For the latter, but not for the former, the ac! itself can have negative value
26. Ibid., 129.
106
The Moral Theory of Postslrucluralism
and thus can be appealed 10 in a utilitarian assessment. (Thomson ar
gues, however, that modifications of this case show the ultimate unacceptability even of nonconsequentialist act-utilitarianism.) What
Thomson finds right about nonconsequentialist act-utilitarianism is its focus upon the act of cutting up the person. What she finds wrong is that, however utilitarianism lays out its conception of value, there can be cases constructed in which it would be not only justified but even obliga tory to cut up the healthy person. She concludes thallhe reason the sur geon cannot proceed has to do with claims possessed by the healthy pcr
son thai the act of cutting him up would violate. As she puts it. "If the
109
A Multivatue Consequentialism
surely does; but this does not show that Bert's moving his forefinger has value--value, in our use of that term, being everywhere illlrillsic."l'I
The upshot of these commitments is thai conseguences must be di
vorced from the acts that bring them about in any theory worthy of the name consequentialist. I do not wish to dispute these commitments, es pecially since Thomson, who does not believe any of them are true, de clines to argue against them. What is controversial is the claim about rights that she derives from them. For Thomson, consequentialism is committed to two central ideas: that morality resides n i value and that moral worth s i separable from the acts
surgeon cuts up the young man and removes his parts, the surgeon will
that create it. For her, both are wrong. The latter is wrong because some
thereby infringe some claims of the young man's, and it is not the case that sufficiently much more good would come of infringing them than
moral worth resides in acts themselves (or the refraining from them); the
would come of not infringing them."Z7
ply moral data. She sums up her position thus:
For Thomson, then, the act of cutting up the person, rather than its consequences, constitutes the rights violation. Why? Although Thomson does not diredly consider the possibility that a right could be a conse quence, her discussion implies an answer to that question. "We may pre sumably suppose that a consequentialist act utilitarianism so uses the word 'consequence' that an event E is a consequence of X's doing alpha
former is wrong because rights-claims are not matters of value but sim
The varieties of utilitarianism do not appeal to us primarily be cause of the various theories of value that their friends set before us-theories to the effect that it is only pleasure or happiness or welfare
or
what have you that
/las
value; they appeal primarily
because of what they all have in common, namely the underly
ol/ly if E is discrete from the event that consists in X's doing alpha."lII
ing idea that value is all morality reduces to. But it won't do.
Such a view would require a metaphysical commitment to what she calls
There is more to morality than value; there are also claims. And it
the Reductive Theory of Action. Consider her example of Bert's killing a
is not because a claim infringement has negative value that we
child by shooting him. The only plaUSible way to say that the child's death
ought not infringe claims. We ought not infringe claims-when we ought not infringe them-because of what a claim is.:JJ
is discrete from the act of the killing is to commit to a theory of action that reduces events to the purely physical. Otherwise put, there can be no single act "the killing of the child"; such an act would put the killing out of range of consequentialist evaluation, since the killing would be an act, not the conseguence of an act. In order for the killing to be a conse
Value attaches either to the act-plus-consequences, in the case of nonconsequentialism, or solely to the consequences, in the case of conse quentialism. The former type of theory is mistaken because it neglects
quence, it has to be a consequence of, for instance, Bert's moving his fin ger in a certain way. Acts, in short, must be conceived purely as bodily
the moral worth of goods that cannot be reduced to value, namely claims.
movements.
ng i mOTal worth to value, it removes moral worth from the acts them
For Thomson, there are still other commitments attached to consequen
tialism. First, in order morally to distinguish between intentional and unintentional killing, the consequentiaHst must hold what she calls a Causal Theory of Intention, that is, must hold that intentions can cause bodily movements. Second, the consequentialist must hold the No-value Thesis, which states that acts have no value by themselves, only in their consequences. "Consider Bert's moving his forefinger. By hypothesis, it caused a child's death, and if anything has (negative) value, a chi l d's death
27. Ibid., 146.
28. tbid., 125.
The latter type of theory is doubly mistaken, since, in addition to reduc selves, which are the site of claims. Although the alleged consequentialist mistake is twofold, defending consequentialism does not need to occur in two separate steps. If it can be shown tha't the infringement of a right can be conceived as the co�� quence of an action, then the right itself can be posited as a value. This IS
precisely what the account I am proposing would do. Thus the major task in replying to Thomson's argument is to avoid the issue of value, simply by positing rights as one form of value in a multivalue conse29. Ibid., 133. 30. Ibid., 148.
110
The Moral Theory of PoslSlructuralism
quentialism, and to address the issue whether they can be consequences. lei us return to the case of the forced transplants. It is a violation of a right, says Thomson, to cui up the healthy young person in order to do
nate her organs 10 five other people. Thomson, it seems to me, is wrong about this, at least as matters stand. Given the information we have about the case, we simply do not know whether any rights will be violated if the Olle person's organs are doled out to the five. Suppose, for instance, thal lhe five patients are siblings of the healthy person, siblings for whom she would honestly give her life should the need arise. Suppose they are her husband and four children. Suppose they are brilliant strategists with· out whom a struggle for national liberation would collapse, and she would rather die than watch that struggle cease. In none of these cases does the surgeon's proceeding constitute the violation of a rights-claim, because the claim of right is a claim, not against being cut up, but against being cut up involuntarily. Now, why might that matter? Is it not still the acl of cutting the person up without her consent, rather than the consequences of the cutting, thai constitutes a violation of this person's rights? Not that straightforwardly. In order for the act itself to constitute a violation, the very cutting-knife splitting flesh-has to be a rights violation. That is what is being denied
here. Knife splitting flesh does not constitute a rights violation unless the person whose flesh it is would rather the knife not split it. Thus, the ques tion whether an act violates a right cannot be answered without appeal to something outside the Reductive Theory's specific description of that acl. Two objections prescnt themselves immediately. First, one could claim that indeed a right was violated in the act of cutting but that consent had been given to violate the right. This suggestion, if true, would create seri ous problems for the consequentialist, since it precludes thinking of the rights violation as a consequence. It does not have much plausibility, how ever, since it would sever the relation between violation of a right and one's claim not to have that right violated. A violation of a right is, if it s i
anything, a violation of a claim one has. H one no longer exercises the claim, then it is hard to see how the right, which that claim is, can be violated. Thomson chooses another route. Rights can be abandoned, she ac knowledges,by the consent of the claimant of those rights. "The outcome of consent," she writes, "is that the consent-receiver has acquired a privi lege, and thus that the consent-giver has ceased to have a claim."ll For
her, then, the healthy person has a right not 10 be cut into but can aban don that right by consenting to the operation. This is surely a coherent 3\. Ibid., 348.
A Mult ivalue Consequentialism
111
position. (Later I discuss how this view of rights compares with a conse quentialist treatment; there the argument is that such a view of rights, although without obvious internal problems, is not as compelling as the one consequentialism can offer.) But this view, although of a piece with Thomson's analysis, does not establish the falSity of a consequentialist view. To establish such falsity, one would have to show not only that the consequentialist view is committed to the Reductive Theory of Action but that even on such a theory there was a rights violation in the nct itself that consequentialism could not accommodate. The first objection asserts this, but that objection is implausible. Thomson's position has a weaker implication. If rights can be voluntarily abandoned, then there is no im
mediate bar to denying that rights concern more than the acts themselves,
at least reductively described (and perhaps even nonreductively de scribed). The question remains, however, whether it is possible to conceive of the right not to be cut open involuntarily in a consequentialist fashion. What the consequentialist must be able to do is to assert that cutting the person open without consent results in-rather than is-a violation of that person's rights. The consequentialist does have a way to make this
case. It s i perhaps best understood on analogy with promising. Suppose that I borrow your car, promising not to run over anyone with it. As it turns out, I get careless and do run over someone with it. Now, it seems that the promise breaking in this case can be described in either of two ways. First, it can be said that the act of running over someone consti tutesa breaking of the promise. This seems straightforward. The very act of running over someone is in itself an act of promise breaking. Alterna tively, it can be said that a consequence of my running over someone was that I broke a promise to you. In the latter articulation, there remain two discrete parts (not two discrete events, because what is relevant here in the promise is not the act of promising bul the promise enacted by the act), my promise and my running over the person, and the running over is a breaking of my promise because of its consequences for the promise I made to you. I have chosen the analogy with promising here because having a claim of right is like being the recipient of a promise in the sense that it pro
g
duces an obli ation for those against whom the claim can be pressed. If I have a right against you, you have an obligation to me to act in accor dance with my right. So rights are like social promises: even if another
has not made a promise to respect a certain right, that other ought to act as though she or he had.
Once that is seen, then the substitution of "right" for "promise" makes no difference to the account offered here. If you have a right that I not
112
The Moral Theory of Postslructuralism
run over someone with my car (or that I nol do violence to you, nol ex
ploit you, etc.), then if I do run over someone with your car, the conse quence of that is that I have violated yOUf right. The difference between a
A Multivalue Consequentialism
113
of X's doing alpha if and only if botl! (i) E is discrete from X's doing alpha
and (ii) if X's doing alpha occurs then E occurs.")2 This seems to me an
right and a promise here is that in the latter case the consequence re dounds upon what is owed to you in virtue of a specific act, although the
adequate analysis of what we might call the idea of "consequence of," but not of whal we might call the idea of "consequence for." In the case
consequences are not for the act so much as for the promise made by you have, but not n i virtue of any aci. Turning back to the transplant
seqm!llces of (as in future caused events of) the running over of someone, but with the collseqllfmcesJo' (as in the act's bearing upon) the promise. In
case, it can be said that Ihe act of cutting a healthy person open without her permission has as a consequence a violation of her right.
caused events but also bearings.
means of that act; in the former case, the consequences are for a right that
Now, someone might object that all this is mere sophistry, since the consequences a consequentialist must be committed to are those that oc cur after the event. In the example of the promise, this event would be
of promise breaking, the consequentialist is concerned not with the COII
defending a consequentialist account of promise breaking, then, we need to widen our notion of consequences so that it includes not only future
Whether such a move might be acceptable to Thomson depends upon its fit with the Reductive Theory of Action, since it is clearly compatible with the Causal Theory of Intention and the No-value Thesis. I beieve l
the event in that case, that fact does not damage the argument. The con
that it s i compatible with the Reductive Theory of Action, but that it points
sequences in question are for a promise that, while made before the event,
compatibility with the Reductive Theory lies in the fact that the latter is
the act of running someone over. While the consequences do occur after
s i still in force at the lime of the event. Surely we can say, in another con text, that an act a person performs may have consequences for our view of who that person is or what that person did at an earlier time. If I see you teaching English to a foreign student, I might find that admirable. However, if later I discover that you have sexual designs upon that stu dent, whom your teaching may have put in a position of gratitude to ward you, that has consequences for both my evaluation and my descrip tion of what you were doing earlier. In this case, my view of you, al though formed earlier, persists until my later discovery, which has con sequences for that view. Why should the same not be true for conse quences of promise breakin& which can affect a promise that, though formed earlier, continues to be in place at the time it is broken? Although Thomson is surely right that the consequence-producing act and the con
sequence are discrete, there is no reason that they should be subject to a simple one-way temporal relation in the evaluation of action. The act of running someone over can have consequences for the promise not to, just as it can for the victim of my carelessness. Another objection, closer to Thomson's own analysis, directs itself not to the temporal nature of the consequential relation but to its event na ture. As noted above, the consequence of the running over is not for the event of act promising, but for the promise itself. This reading conflicts with Thomson's analysis of a consequence. While herself pointing out the difficulties of clarifying the idea of consequences in terms of causal ity between events (in her example, do I cause someone's hat to go into a
puddle if I do not stoop down to pick it up as it rolls by me?), she settles on an analysis of consequence that says that "an event E is a consequence
the way toward compatibility with other theories of action as well. Its
concerned with descriptions oC but not relations between, discrete events. The reason Thomson wants to saddle consequentialism with the Reduc tive Theory has nothing to do with any accounts of causality Reductive Theory might be committed to, but instead with its seeming to be the only account that can carve event descriptions into small enough units to allow a consequentialist analysis to get off the ground. Thus, Bert's kill ing of the child can be viewed consequentially only if the event of Bert's action and the event of the child's dying are discrete. In the case of the promise breaking. the promise and the running over of someone are dis crete on any account, if for no other reason than that the running over is an act and the promise is not. (The act of promising, of course, is; but even that is discrete from the running over.) So the Reductive Theory is compatible with it. Appealing to the concept of "consequences for" also seems to pOint to the compatibility of a Nonreductive Theory of Action with consequen tialism. For instance, the incident of promise breaking was described in nonreductive tenns: making promises, running people over. By introduc ing the concept of "consequences for," those descriptions could be used
without compromising a consequentialist account. Combining such us
age with a no�reductive use of "consequences of," there is no reason to think that in the end a Nonreductive Theory of Action cannot be devel oped for consequentialism. At this point, however, one might wonder why, if we are to count "con
sequences for" as well as "consequences of" as consequences, we both32. Ibid., 129.
The Moral Theory of PoslSlroCluralism
114
ere<:! to add the voluntarist condition to the analysis of a right. Why not say directly, for instance, that in the transplant case Blagg's cutting open of a healthy person would have the consequence for her of violating her right, without having to stipulate that whether it was a violation depends upon the issue of consent? There are three reasons for avoiding the direct route. First, and most fundamentally, it seems to me that it is wrong. The counterexamples offered above indicate that the act of cutting someone up, isolated from its context, is simply not a rights violation.
A Multivaiue Consequentialism
115
not ha�e to submit to use as means to a large number of greater social ends; nghts, then, offer protection against such forced submissions. The problem such an account faces is that, as both Fried and Thomson
�
a�knowle ge, there are limits to the inviolability of most rights. Within a
CIl"CUmscnbed purview, rights are inviolable; but outside of it, those rights
�o longer hold. For instance, a right against trespass can be overridden In order to prevent a greal harm from occurring. Thomson refers to this
circumscription as "the tradeoff idea": "It is permiSSible to infringe a claim
The second reason has to do with theoretical intuitions. So far the ar
if and only if infringing it would be sufficiently much beller for those for
gument has been that the consequentialist can accommodate the notion of a right just as the nonconsequentialist does. There has been no attempt
those for whom infringing it would not be good.":J4 Fried also admits that
whom infringing it would be good than not infringing it would be for
to make a case for which accommodation is better. If the comparison were
"the catastrophic may cause the absoluteness of right and wrong to yield.
between "consequences for" directly attached to the act and the
. . . the concept of the catastrophic is a distinct concept because it identi
textual comparison, our n i tuitions might lean more heavily toward the
cluding the categories of right and wrong) no longer apply."'" Although
nonconsequentialist account, rather than, as I believe s i the case, the con
fies extreme situations in which the usual categories of judgement (in
nonconsequentialist account, since it can function without adding an ex
acknowledging the circumscription of rights, however, neither Thomson
traneous device. Once the account is framed in terms of a wider context, however, it can be seen that that device is used in our everyday evalua
nor Fried offers a theoretical accommodation of it. The circumscription . of fights poses he same problem of accommodation for deontologists
tions, and the resort to it seems less exceptionable. Now, either end of
that the fact of nghts seemed to pose for consequentialists.
this reason-that adding in the direct account is theoretically objection
A natural way to understand this circumscription is by means of a . multlvalue consequentialism in which rights are values. In a multivalue
to the theoretical intuitions of some, in which case I apologize for the
consequentialism different rights are accorded different relative valu ational weights in the value system. Other consequences are accorded
able or that adding in the contextual account s i not-might not conform detour and refer them back to the first reason.
�
The third reason for introducing the voluntarist condition, and with it
other weights. A person's right to personal property, say, could be ac
the idea of a wider context, is that once the notion of rights is detached
corded a greater weight than another person's physical flourishing. In such a ca�, the claim of flourishing is not enough to trump the right. , . However, If suffiCIently many people's phYSical flourishing were at stake �r, alternatively, if it were a matter of life and death-not merely flour . IS lng-for a single person, the (sum of the) weight(s) of consequences
from spedfk acts and placed into a wider context, the broad theoretical structure into which rights fit, and their place within that structure, can be more clearly articulated. Such an articulation is a consequentialist one; and armed with a defensible consequentialist account of rights, we can look briefly into it. The upshot of that look is that the preference for a consequentialist account of rights-claims lies not in any better understand ing it offers of the concept of a right, but rather in the better understand ing il offers of the role of a right. The danger for a nonconsequentialisl account of rights is that of being unable to explain which rights we should have or why we should have any in the first place. Without embedding an account of rights into a larger moral framework, their motivation becomes unclear. Thomson herself does little to provide that framework; others, notably Charles Fried, have tried.JJ Generally, nonconsequentialist attempts to found rights have ap pealed to issues of personal autonomy and respect. The idea here is roughly that the preservation of personal autonomy ensures that people 33.
Right and Wrong (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1978).
�
�
mlgh be enough to override the right to personal property. (Of COurse, the nght to personal property could itself be divided into several weightings, depending on what types of property were at issue: the right t? bar strangers from using one's phone is not of weight equal to the TIght to bar strangers from sleeping in one's bed.) That, it seems to me, is actually how we think of the limits of claims of right. What is distinctive about rights in contrast to other claims of con sequence is that rights are weighted such that they cannot easily be cashed . Out In terms of other consequences (contra what utilitarians like Mill thought). The preservation of rights does not necessarily bring with it the most happiness, the maximization of preference, or the promotion of
34. Tile Realm oj Rights, 152.
35. Righi Dud Wrong, 10.
116
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism
other values traditionally associated with consequentialism. Otherwise put, rights constitute a separate, although not disconnected, category of value, and their ascription in a consequentialist theory entails thai that theory must be a multivalue one .
How, then, are the weightings that different rights possess to be as signed? I see no way of assigning the relative weights rights possess that i can avoid our moral nt uition. This does not constitute an objection to consequentialism, however, since any admission of circumscriptions of
i plies a balancing of rights agamst (other) consequences and thus rights m throws us back upon comparisons of categories that share little in the way of a common measure. Thomas Scanlon, however, in arguing for a consequentialist concep tion of rights, claims that "a central concern of most rights is the promo tion and maintenance of an acceptable distribution of control over im portant factors in our lives.")!; Scanlon's view, in brief, is that the assign ment of rights is part of the larger project of distributional assignments
117
A Multivaluc Consequentialism
helps to reinforce the recognition that rights have a role to play in pro
moting an overall state of affairs ncorporating many values. As Scanlon puts it, "Keeping in mind the empirical basis of a right . . . provides a i
ground (1) for seeing that apparent exceptions' of the kind mentioned '
above are not justified simply by balancing one right against another; (2)
for seeing where genuine balanCing of interests is called for and what its
proper terms are; and (3) for seeing how the content of a right must change
as conditions change.")] One does not, of course, have to endorse Scanlon's view of rights as
answerable to distributional considerations of fairness and equality to
acknowledge the point that, once viewed consequentially, rights can be
seen as part of a larger moral theory whose goal is the promoti on and
balancing of a variety of goods. The point, rather, is that Scanlon offers a
powerful example of how rights, viewed consequentially, can be assigned weights in a system of balancing competi ng public goods. There are, then, two reasons to believe that embedding rights claims -
in a social arrangement. As such, rights assignments must be answerable
in a multivalue consequentialism gives a better account of rights than
and fairness of processes. Ascribing rights, then, is a way of helping to ensure equality and fairness, specifically by allowing people to pursue
weights can be aSSigned to those rights, and those weights can both mo
to-at times by incorporating, at others by limiting themselves in favor of--central distributional considerations, such as equality of distributions
their lives more or less in the ways they see fit. However, such pursuance is only one consideration in distributional assignments, which must be
balanced against other aspects of fairness and equality in the articulation of a just system of distribution. Here the voluntarist condition discussed above assumes a fuller sig
embedding them in nonconsequen tialism. First, the fact of their circum scription can be recognized and the motivation for such a circumscrip
tion understood. Second, through some process of reflective equilibrium,
tivate their acceptance n i the first place and limit their application with
out arbitrary stipulation. If the account of rights I have offered here is a correct rejOinder to Thomson's arguments, then recognizing them consti tutes no bar to the articulation of a multivalue consequentialism.
nificance. If rights are a way, as Scanlon holds, of allowing people some control over their lives, then the voluntarist condition forms the core not merely an afterthought--of the right not to be cut open without con sent. Rights are a good that mllst be balanced against other social goods;
understanding them as preservers of control over one's life helps liS to
see the larger social and moral context into which they fit. The volunta rist condition is what, in the transplant case (as well as in many other
cases), allows this aspect of a right to be grasped. Such a view, as Scanlon notes, lends an empirical quality to the assign
ment of rights, since whether rights contribute, as well as which rights contribute, to equali ty and fairness depends in part on the specific condi
tions under which the assignment is made. This quasi emprical view (instead of, for instance, a view that holds rights to be nalural, in which case it would be unclear why they should be th ought of as circumscribed) -
36. Scanlon. "Rights. Goals, and Fairness," in Theories Waldron (Oxford: Oxford University I'ress. 1984). H8.
i
of Rigl!ls,
ed. Jeremy
37. Ibid., 146.
4 Consequentialism and Supererogation
In the last chapter, I left an important issue hanging. that of supereroga
tion. The reason supererogation is particularly important is that conse
quentialism, as a theory of value, does not dire<.:t1y distinguish between which value-contributing activities or practices are our duty to engage in
and which are supererogatory. This has led many theorists to assume that no distinction can be drawn on a consequentialist aCCQunt between du ties and supererogatory acts. In particular, proponents of virtue ethics and other ethical approaches that focus on who one is rather than (or, in some cases, alongside of) what one does have tended to assume that there are parts of OUf moral lives thai cannot be addressed from a perspective that evaluates action alone. For instance, Michael Stocker, in his recent
book PlllrQI QIld CQlzj1ictilzg VQ/lles, writes that "our ethical theories which concentrate so much upon acts . . . leave no space for the important moral options created by supererogation, self-regard, and friendship."1 1f he is
right, then any consequentialist theory of morality requires us to maxi mize the good or goods that theory is committed to, since it does not distinguish the goods we are required to maximize from those we are pennitted (or permitted to a certain degree) to leave unmaximized. Sac rifice of one's personal interests for the good of others is a lot of seU sacrifice indeed, and even more so in a multivalue consequentialism that endorses a large number of goods to be contributed to. And Stocker is not through there; he ascribes to act-oriented theories of morality two other failures. (Of course, technically, consequentialism 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990, 93.
The Moral Theory of Postslrucluralism
120
is not
Consequcntiaiism and Supererogation
121
good thing, I can see no reason to go further and say that there are certain
category runs afoul of the principle of antireprescnlationaiism, as was ar
attitudes toward others that people ought to be asked to develop. To ask that, above and beyond contributing to various goods to which others ought
fore, that the consequentialism I am proposing does not see self-regard in
toward them is to undercut a fair bit of my autonomy without that under
moral terms is actually a positive feature of the moral theory. The question
cutting producing something of commensurable value. Now, it may be that
of friendship, however, is more complex and needs to be divided into two
in our world, where people naturally enjoy friendships and therefore are
gued in Chapler 2, especially in the example of the Couch Potato. There
to have access, I take up a certain fellow feeling or develop a certain warmth
questions: First, is forming friendships morally praiseworthy or morally
willing to offer them, the issue of friendship is less pressing than it might
required? And second, are there moral duties that come with friendships?
be in a world where friendship was scarcer. I am willing to admit that and
On the one hand, it could be argued that friendship ought to be a moral
value, a value 10 which everyone ought to have access. In that way, Stocker's objection could be overcome directly. This seemingly plausible idea, how ever, comes at a cost. As virtue ethicists (and others) have pointed out, friend ship is a matter not merely of what one does for someone else but of the relationship to someone else in the doing of it, the warmth and fellow feel ing that is traditionally associated with friendship.l Friendship, then, as opposed to generally beneficent treatment, involves the formation of cer tain kind of intentional life and thus seems to run afoul of antirepresenta tionalism. Now, this situation leaves three options. First, one could argue
to grant that there might be conditions, very different from our own, in which friendship ought to be considered a moral value. But, as I have ar gued, values are not given once and for all. If a world in which friendship was scarce emerged, and if it could be shown that the consequences of hold ing friendship to be a moral value heavily outweighed the costs to autonomy,
then it might be that friendship ought 10 be incorporated as a moral value.
That world, however. is not our world. If, then, friendship ought not to be considered a value, are there even
any duties that a friendship, once embarked upon, requires? Here the an swer is yes, but one does not have to posit any new values to get those
that friendship is in fact consistent with antirepresentationalism, because
duties. Someone with whom I share an understanding that we are more
form certain acts, and thus that friendship does not violate antirepresenta tionalism. Second, one could argue that friendship does violate antirepre
led her 10 believe) that I can expect more from her (and she from me)
sentationalism but that antirepresentalionalism, as in the cases of truth
acquaintances. To fail to deliver more, including a certain attitude, is to deceive the person whose friendShip has been claimed; it is to be dishon
the intentional life required is a "mind-sel" that is needed in order to per
believingness and the formation of values, needs 10 give way. Finally, one might agree that friendship violates antirepresentationalism but claim that it is friendship that must give way. The first path, although attractive, seems to me misguided. What gives value (if not moral value) to a friendship is not the consequences of a certain attitude but the attitude itself. If, for instance, someone who seems
to be a friend tUJ"ns out to be, recalling the example raised in Chapter 2, Evil in Intent, we will certainly think ourselves mistaken in having con sidered this person a friend, although there have been no differences in the consequences of his or her actions. (That is the point of the example.) What it is that makes a friendship, then, has to do wilh an attitude that we value intrinsica!iy, not just instrumentally. Ought we, then, to ask the principle of antireprescntalionalism to give
way once more? I think not. Although access to friendship is a surely
2. On the importance of warmth and fellow feeling as crucial components of friendship, s"e the virtue ethicist Michnel Stocker's uSchizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories," /o"rual of Plli/osoplly 73 (l976): esp. 455-60, and the consequen tialist Peter Railton's Alienation, Consequcntialism, and thc Demands of Moral ity,H Philowphy (lIId P,,"';c A.ffoirs 13, no. 2 (1984): esp. 135-38. U
than mere acquaintances is someone who has led me 10 believe (as I have
induding certain attitudes of warmth and fellow feeling-than from mere
est. Honesty, however, is a value that is uncontrovertibly a moral one; it is a good to which everyone ought to have access. Thus. Ihe second question I raised regarding friendship cannot be answered affirmatively without the necessity of positing any new values that respond directly to friendship.3
3. This perspective on the duties of friendship can also apply to duties toward relatives. Some may think, for instancl', that prople have duties toward their par ents simply by virtul' of being the children of those parents. It secms to me that the obligation, if there s i one, lies elsewhere, in the grat itude one displays for what one has been given. (This does not mean thai familial relationships should � based on obligation. In fact, in the kinds of families most of us would want to be in, the idea 01 obligation rarrly, il ever, comes up. But if there is an obligation, it must lie in gratitude.) This means that should a child have nothing to be grateful for from his or her parents, then that child is without obligation to them. I think that anyone who has worked with abused children, as my wife has, will back me up on this. Conversely, in the relation of parents to children, ob"iously no one has a duty to create children. but if one does, one has a duty to do what comes with the child, that is. child raising. The values here are those of having access to education, security, and so forth. Now, one might argue that in the ca�e of parenting, the parents have an oblig�tion to have a warm attitude toward the child, and this distinguishe, it from friend,hip. But re<:all that warmth is also an obligation of friendship.
122
The Moral Theory of Posistructuralism
Another issue concerning friendship, however, preoccupies virtue ethi cists and others who fi nd consequentialism and other act-oriented (or consequence-of-act-oriented) moralities distasteful. It concerns the ques tion whether a moral theory ought to allow for partiality toward one's
Consequentialism and Supererogation
123
cold. 1n the case of saving children, it somehow ought to be right that I
privilege my own children over others when I act, not just eXCl/SQble; to make it merely a permissible moral error is to render morality distant from one's deepest relationships.
friends or loved ones. Briefly put, act-oriented moral theories do not draw
My reply to this s i that morality is distant from one's deepest relation
distinctions between people or relationships when prescribing how to
ships, and indeed it ought to be. As Susan Wolf trenchantly puts the point,
act. That is what it means to take everyone impartially. But thai means
"There is no need for morality to tell you to love your children and have
that, morally considered, one has no more obligation----or, alternatively
friends."5 Morality coordinates relations between people (and perhaps
put, no more dispensation to treat one's feelings-toward one's own chil
other beings) who do not necessarily have one another's interests in mind.
dren than toward a lotal stranger. And this, it is claimed, is nol the way a
As such, it needs to treat people impartially rather than partially. Thus,
moral theory should operate. Now, the universality characteristic I ascribe to morality in Chapter
1
does not entaiJ any impartiality. Universality is compatible with partial ity. It is perfectly coherent, for instance, for a moral theory to incorporate
the best one ought to hope for from a moral approach is the withholding of moral condemnation for partial behavior, not the moral endorsement for that partiality. Supererogation can provide the former; no moral theory ought to provide the latter.'
the principle "One ought to treat one's friends and relatives better than
Let us turn, then, to supererogation. I assume here that a supereroga
strangers," as long as that principle is seen as a universal one. The ques
tory act is one that s i morally good but not morally required, or alterna
tion of impartiality is, n i that sense, a substantive moral issue rather than
tively one that is morally good but directly fulfills no duty. For the pur
a metaethical one. That said, traditional consequentialism, like deontology, is certainly
poses of simplicity of presentation, the account of supererogation pro posed here begins by considering supererogation for the single-value
impartial. It prescribes the contribution to values without regard to who
consequentialism of act-utilitarianism. However, the adjustments that
the object of the contribution is. Moreover, adding a concept of justice,
would be required in order to accommodate a multivalued consequen
although rendering the distribution of goods sensitive to specific types
of people. does not do so in a way that allows one to privilege friends or
loved ones. Furthermore, a multivalue consequentialism, at least as I have articulated it, has no more resources for partiality than any traditional consequentialism. Nor should it. If a conscquentialist account of super
tialism arc considered at the appropriate moments. Such adjustments do not affect the structure of the account to be offered here. A widespread assumption is that consequentialism cannot account for supererogation. Thus, Michael Siole writes, "!Ajct-consequentialists . . .
erogation can be defended, then although it will not allow for partiality,
regard the supererogation that ordinary morality allows for as some sort of illusion. "1 The motivation for this assumption is straightforward. For
it will allow for withholding moral judgment when partiality is shown,
consequentialists in general, and aCI-utilitarians in particular, there is
which is aU that a moral theory needs to allow. Broadly put, consequentialism holds that everyone is, for the sake of moral theory (distributional considerations aside), equally deserving of moral treatment. My children, although I may care for them more than for other children, have no more moral standing than other children. Now, I may have certain obligations to them that I do not have to other chil dren,' but should a conflict arise in which, say, I have the choice of saving one of my children's lives or the lives of two other children, it remains morally better to save those two other children's lives. To do so, when my own child's safety is at stake, may be supererogatory; but this does not mean that partiality is built into the theory itself. It may be objected here that permitting partiality is not enough. What needs to be done is to build it into the theory, otherwise morality is too
4. See note 3 above.
generally one act (or at most a small set of acts) that produces the best 5. �Morality and Partiality," in Plli/oS()phiCIlI PmpeclilltS, vol. 6, Etllies, ed. James Tomberlin (Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview Publishing CO.,1992), 258. The VLew [ am drawing here parallels Wolf's e�eenent discussion in this article . 6. One might wonder here whether, if this is right, morality ought to be over riding, as I argue d it was In Chapter 1 . Would it not be better if we sometimes acted against morality, if morality is to be impartial? ' think nol. Although 1 could not imagine myself ever allowing meof my children to perish for the sake . � of two other children, neither can I imagme why 1 should argue that such an ath tude shoutd be morally condemned. Those two other children, after all, howe lives they would like to lead, and perhaps even parents who would like to be able to see those lives ben i g led. To claim that the impartialist perspective o�ght not to have sway is always, at some le\'et, to ratify the ascription of more mherent worth to some people than to others. 7. " Rational Dilemmas and Rational Supererogation,� Philosophical Topirs 14. no. 2 (1986); 73.
124
The Moral Theory of Poslslrucluralism
consequences. That act (or a choice among that small set) s i the act that should be performed. When one performs that act, one acts in the mor ally correct manner; otherwise not. Therefore, the idea that one can act in a morally correct manner and yet not be required to do SO is incoherent, since in any given situation there is a single morally correct action-and it is required-or alternatively only one small range of acts that fulfill one's duty. Although all of the premises of this argument are true, the conclusion does not follow from them. This is because what one ought to do and what one ought to be required to do are, for consequentialists, distinct matters. Sidgwick puts it this way: IAJlthough, in the view of a Utilitarian, only the useful is praise worthy, he is not bound to maintain that it is necessarily worthy of praise in proportion as it is useful. From a Utilitarian point of view . . . we must mean by calling a quality "deserving of praise:' that it s i expedient to praise it, with a view to its future produc tion: accordingly, in distributing our praise of human qualities, on utilitarian principles, we have to consider primarily not the usefulness of the quality, but the usefulness of the praise.' In that narrow gap between "the usefulness ofthe quality" and "the use
fulness of the praise" lies the supererogatory. Simply put, for an act-utilitarian (hereafter simply "utilitarian"), or for that matter any consequentialist, a supererogatory act is a morally right act the praising of which if performed, but the not condemning of which if not performed, would bring the best consequences. Alternatively put, a supererogatory act is a right act that to consider directly duty-fulfilling would have bad consequences. What distinguishes a supererogatory act from a duty is that failing to perform a duty is cause for condemnation, because condemning would have better consequences than not condemn ing. II is a bit unclear to me, and fortunately for me a bit wide of my current goals, whether duties should be praised if performed. There seem to be cases either way; and since there is already enough by way of crite ria to distinguish duties from supererogatory acts, I shall leave that ques lion alone. It is a bit puzzling, although true, that this account of the supereroga tory, which would seem to follow directly fromSidgwick's passage quoted above, was embraced neither by Sidgwick nor by later utilitarians. (Per haps this si the reason for Stocker's and Siote's assumption that utilitari anism just could not handl� supererogation.) Sidgwick, for instance, writes 8. MelJrods at fIllies, 7th ed. (London: Lowe and Brydon. 1906), 428.
u ni i
n
Conseq e tal sm and Supererogatio
125
that "a Utilitarian must hold that it is always wrong for a man knowingly to do anything other than what he believes to be most conducive to Uni versal Happiness. Still. it seems practically expedient-and therefore in directly reasonable on Utilitarian principles,-to retain, in judging even the strictly voluntary conduct of others, the distinction between a part that s i praiseworthy and admirable and a part that is merely right."9 Simi larly, J. O. Urmson, in "Saints and Heroes," claims that "lsJimple utilitari anism, Kantianism, and intuitionism . . . have no obvious theoretical niche for the saint and the hero.",oHe later concedes that utilitarianism is in the best position to reformulate itself to accommodate the saint and �he. hero, but assumes that such an accommodation could not happen wl thm the confmes of the theory as it is traditionally structured. For both Sidgwick and Urmson, the solution to the problem posed by the supererogatory is metaethical in the sense that it is a question of how and where to use utilitarian theory. Utilitarian principles can be brought to bear upon that use, but those principles would be applied 10 the theory rather than by it. The argument here, however, is that an account of the supererogatory can be given from within the theory itself by following Sidgwick's suggestion that we evaluate separately the consequences of the act judged and those of the act of judging. I suspect that what has led utilitarians astray is the failure to grasp fully the fact that supererogation requires two acts. For a multivalue consequentialism, the situation with respect to the supererogatory is only slightly different from that for utilitarianism. The general principle-that a supererogatory act is a m�rally rig�t a�t the praising of which if performed, but the not conde g of which If not performed, would bring the best consequences-remains intact. Th� que:'" lion arises, however, of what consequences are relevant to consider extending or withholding praise. For instance, if two values of such a consequentialism are utility and justice, then although it is dear that a supererogatory act is one whose praise would promote utility and jus tice, it is unclear how to assess an act whose praise would promote one to the detriment of the other. mmn
III
9. Ibid., 428. 10. "Saints and Heroes,� in Essllys ill Moral Plli/asop/ly. ed. A. 1. Melden (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1958), 207. Although �any of the co�cern� of the present chapter are close to Urmson's. two centrat differences rem �ln. F!rst, he holds that the fact of saintly and heroic actions dictates a reevalualion of the role of moral theories, whereas I argue that such actions are accommodated eas ily within consequentialism, even in its simptest forms. Second. he does not offer . the idea that for consequentialists the concept of the supererogatory Involves two acts, not just one. Were he to clarify the second point, the first would, I believe, fall inlo place.
126
The Moral Theory of Posistructuralism
127
Consequentialism and Supererogation
However, this is not a problem for a consequentialist account of the
although not for condemnation if they are not performed. Some acts both
supererogatory, but rather a query about the relative wcightings of con meting values in any rnultivalue consequcntialism of the kind consid
ought to be perfonned and ought to be condemned if not performed (bar
ered in the last chapter. Whichever way the wcightings are determined
guishes the two? For consequentialists, they are distinguished by the consequences of praise and blame. . Compare the consequentialist account of the supererogatory WIth the
will simply be applied to (or re(]ected in) the application of the super ism that, to appeal 10 an over erogatory. Thus, a multivalue consequ ential
simplification, weights justice twice as high as utility will consider su
ring relevant unforeseen circumstances). The question is, what distin
pererogatory an act the praise of which promotes (more than) twice as
traditional utilitarian account of punishment. The utilitarian believes that there are right acts that should be punished. Suppose, for instance, that we
much n i terms of utility than it subtracts in terms of justice, but not an act
are standing at a bus stop and I push you toward an arrivn i g bus. You have
�
the praise of which detracts as much from justice as it adds to utility. The
good renexes and avoid getting hit by the bus. Suppose moreover hat,
question of relative weightings here is a difficult one, but its difficulty
unbeknownst to either of us, there is a bicycle coming from the other direc
lies in articulating the relations between values in the consequentialism,
tion that, had I not pushed you, would have thrown you nto i the bus. By the lights of the utilitarian, I performed a right acl. However, I should be
not in their application to assessments of the supererogatory. That s.1id, one can also see that supererogation is not a value in the multivalue consequentialism. It is a structural mistake, a category mis
punished for performing that act, because puns i hing it would in all likeli hood bring in its wake better consequences than letting it go unaddressed.
goods. The question of which acts to consider supererogatory and which
With punishment. as with supererogation, what is at issue is not merely the consequences of the act itself bul the consequences of one's own acts in
acts to consider duties is a question one who is n i the position of judging the acts of another (or oneself), whether those acts are real or just con
may resist this account of punishment, preferring, say, to posit a value of
take actually, to see duties and supererogatory acts as themselves moral
templated, asks oneself. It is a question of how one should act vis-a-vis other acts. In forming a practical judgment about how to act, that is, how to judge an act, one asks oneself whether one ought to consider those acts duties or supererogatory acts. And in answering that question, one asks oneself, if one is thinking morally, what consequences the various judgments will have. That is where the distinction between duty and su pererogation arises. Thus, supererogation arises at Ihe level of practical judgments, not at the level of value formation.
In this view of supererogatory acts, a view to which some may object, what makes an act supererogatory lies not only in the act itself but also in
regard to that act. (It should be noted that a multivalue consequentialism
corrective justice and justifying punishment in terms of it.) There seems to be a tighter fit among our moral intuitions in the con sequentialist account of supererogation than in the utilitarian account of
�
punishment. It seems more nearly right to prai.se a right act I an to pun ht merely ish one, even when one recognizes that the pumshed act was n g
by accident. Aside from the objection that the consequentialist account separates the supererogatory quality from the act that is supererogatory, there are other objections that might be urged against that account. One might ask,
the act or acts performed in regard to it, for example, praising it or com
first' whether there are acts that we would not want to call supereroga tory but that would fulfill consequentialist criteria for supererogation.
mending it to others. One may want to say that acts either are or are not
Alternatively, one might ask whether there are acls that we might want to
supererogatory; they do not take that quality from some other act. The
call supererogatory but that would not turn out so on the account pro i posed here. The first route does not seem as promising as Ihe second, s�� . one standard objection to utilitarianism, at least, is, as MIll says, that It IS
view here, however, s i that although it is the acts themselves that are or are not supererogatory, they do in some sense take that quality from other
acts. And this is as it should be. After all, the difference between acts of duty and supererogatory acts cannot lie in the types of goodness each
posses,ses since wecan think of different circumstances in which the same
type of act would in one case be a duty and in another supererogatory. Helping a total stranger who is drowning is in most cases supereroga tory, but not when you arc the lifeguard. The difference between the two must lie in the attitudes we take toward them. Some call for high praise,
"too high for humanity:'ll that it asks too much of us. And along the sec ond route, we can find an example that may lax our intuitions. It may be supererogatory in the utililarian account, as in ?ther accounts, to ask of someone that she sacrifice her life 10 save the hfe of someone else. This is because when such a sacrifice is asked of her and considered to be one of her duties, a reasonable response could be to feel threatened 11.
Utilitariallism
118611 (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1979), 17.
128
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism
and turn away from moral duly altogether. As Urmson notes, "if we were to represent the heroic act of sacrificing one's life for one's com rades as a basic duty, the effect would be to lower the degree of urgency and stringency that the notion of duty does in fact possess." ll ln addi tion, if one's own life is thought less valuable, people may come to think
of life generally as possessing less value. However, what about the case
Consequentialism and Supererogation
129
goodness as a guide to one's own acting, the account of the supereroga tory offered here emphasizes the disutility of always holding others to that criterion.
Along this line, however, another objection might be pressed that the
account offered here reinforces the irrelevance of consequentialism as a
guide for action and limits its role to the evaluation of action. On the lIccounl of supererogation offered here, there are no acts that can be called
in which one is asked to sacrifice one's own life to save the lives of many others? Here one could recognize that one's life is a worthy object of value
supererogatory, because they take their supererogatory nature n i part from
and that one should not have a duty to sacrifice it for merely one other.
another act, and to that extent are dependent on it. As a result, just as
Moreover, since the lives of many are at stake. there is less of a chance
Railton has argued that sometimes the most utility can be generated by
thai some people's turning away from moral duty altogether will out
neglecting utilitarian theory as a guide for action, so supererogatory ac
weigh the good that would come from some people's considering such a
tions may at times best be performed without the guidance of consequen
sacrifice to be their duty. In that case, what many of us would consider to
tialist theory. ntis is because in many cases the question whether one
be a supererogatory act might not be thought so by the utilitarian. (One might imagine a similar case being constructed for a multivalue conse
should go "above and beyond" the call of duty (although this aboveness
quentialism, by pressing the consequences for whatever values it chooses,
unless it incorporates the preservation of personal autonomy asa heaVily weighted value.) For at least some, in particular those of a more
and beyondness is not quite the right way to picture the matter) is not best answered by asking whether, should one do so, the best consequences would flow from one's being praised. In deciding, for instance, whether to attend 11 demonstration against an oppression for which one or one's
deontological bent, asking one to give up one's life for others, no matter
country is not responsible, it is probably not a consideration relevant to
how many others, is always supererogatory, perhaps because it violates
the decision that someone else's praising such attendance would make
a certain notion of the integrity of a person. Although this outcome of the utilitarian account may be
the world a better place 10 live.
The objection here is an important one, since it concerns not only the
counterintuitive to some-or even most-of us, I do not think that it can
status of consequentialism but also the role of moral theories generally.
reasonably be considered beyond the pale. It might be considered a right
The dilemma for a consequentialist seems to be that she or he is forced to
of people not to have to give up their lives for others, but as the number of those others rises, the right can seem a bit uncomfortable to live with.
admit either that among the roles of moral theory, guiding our moral lives is not one, or that consequentialism does not fulfill an important crite
(Of course, the comfort probably falls off less rapidly when it is oneself asserting the right.)
rion of a moral theory. The first admission seems wlpalatable, while the
[n any case, it should be noted that the extraordinariness of this ex ample points to the fact that a consequcntialist account of the supereroga tory does much to blunt the "too high for humanity" objection ordinarily pressed against utilitarianism. A consequentialist concept of the super erogatory helps to introduce a distinction between right actions and ac
tions that are considered one's duty, such that one can recognizc that there
are right actions one ought not hold people to perform. This distinction is complementary to, although not identical with, the distinction offered by Peter Railton and others between utilitarianism as a criterion of righl ness and as a guide for actionP Whereas the latter distinction empha sizes the futility of one's own lIttempt to use the utilitarian criterion of 12. " Saints and H('ro"s," 212. 13. See, e.g., Railton's "Alienation. Conscquentintism, nnd the Demands of Mo. rality," 134-71 .
second offers a good reason to abandon consequentialism. The way out of this dilemma, I believe, is to grasp the first horn and show that matters are not quite as simple as they seem. In his recent book HIIIIIIZII Morality, Samuel Scheffler, discussing what he calls the "deliberative role of morality," points out that the motiva tions leading one to act in a morally appropriate manner are diverse, and
that s i as it should be. For instance, when one's wife is drowning, the recourse to moral theory in deliberating whether to save her would be
considered m6rally inappropriate. In thai case, moral theory ollgllt /lot 10
serve as a guide for action. Alternatively, there are many cases, particu larly those involving moral conflict, in which the appeal to and delibera tion over moral principles would seem to be a 5;111: quIZ 11011 of committing a morally defensible act. Those are the cases, as noted in the lasl chapter, that serve as paradigms for the formation, testing, and us!:! of a morlll theory. Thus, the requirement placed upon a moral theory that it serve as
130
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism
a guide for all action that falls within the purview of moral evaluation either implies too constricted a view of what is morally relevant (in which case it would not be a morally good thing for the husband to save his wife) or neglects the diversity of SOUKe5 thai arc relevant to moral moti vation."
Consequenialism t and Supererogation
131
is a complex one in which it is difficult 10 decide outside a spedfic situa
tion which ought to lake precedence. As Wolf incisively puts the poinl, duty is not a boundary line below which fall the morally condemnable and above which the morally noble; "there is a line of duty, but it is nec
essarilya dotted line."17
Therefore, although it may be a fair requirement of a moral theory that
The example Wolf uses in order to show that the supererogatory can
it always provide evaluation of moral action ("may be" instead of "must
take precedence over duty is that of a professor, on the way to her office
be," since at least virtue ethicists might dispute this), it is a mistake to
to put in her office hours, who sees an elderly man in a burning apart
ask of such a theory that it always provide moral guidance as well. This
ment building. Now, rescuing the man is a supererogatory act, and keep ing one's office hours is a duty, but one would be hard put 10 argue that one must refrain from rescuing the man ill order tofulfill the duty of keep
does not entail, however, either thai moral theories have 110 role in offer ing guidance or that consequentialism cannot ever offer guidance. As
Scheffler points out, there are many cases when the tum to moral theory
as a guide for one's decisions s i imperative if one is not to get losl in the
moral mazes that often surround us. And to suggest that the deliberation
ing one's office hours. In this case, as Wolf says, "it is better to violate
one's duty than to forego the opportunity to do a good that is not one's
duty."ls
over consequences-whether, as in the case of utilitarianism, asking which
The lesson Wolf draws from this and related exampl('s is that the as
action will produce more of a single value or, in the case of a multivalue
sumption that moral permissibility is defined as lying at the limits of one's
consequentialism, asking what and how much value{s) will be promoted and how to weigh those values relative to one another�is never relevant
duty (the impermissible below it and the permissible above or outside it)
to our moral lives is to cleave to an ethical position so extreme that no
that "[oJn the one hand . . . the goal of a theory of duty is to set minimal
moral theorist would be able to embrace it,l! Thus, although consequen
standards of moral decency. On the other hand . . . its being one's duty to
misses the complexity of morality'S relation to goodness. She concludes
tialism does not, as Railton's reflections and the current account of su
do something does not necessarily imply that, all things considered, one
pererogation concede, serve as a guide for moral action in many cases,
should do il."19 This complexity is both accommodated and partially explained by the
the reasons for this testify to the limits of moral theory rather than to the failure of consequentialism to fulfill its role as such a theory. Before concluding this chapter, the account of supererogation offered here must be squared with other considerations that have been brought to bear on the nature of the supererogatory and must be contrasted with competing consequentialist accounts of the supererogatory. Over twenty years ago, Joel Feinberg pointed out that the relation between the super erogatory and duty is not merely a lexical one in which the former is
consequentialist account of the supererogatory I have offered. It is ac commodated because the consequentialist can imagine situations in which beneficial consequences will likely follow from praising one when one
neglects one's duty in order to take advantage of an opportunity to do much more good. This is even more likely if the effort required by what would normally be considered a supererogatory act is minimal. Kamm points out, for instance, that although meeting a business deadline might
more than or above and beyond the latter. There are many examples of supererogatory actions that are simply other than duty.16 This idea has
not, in a case of conflict between the two it is n i most cases permissible to
been expanded recently by Francis Kamm and Susan Wolf, who argue
save the life. And furthermore, "when the effort required to save a life is
that the relation between personal nterest, i duty, and the supererogatory
17. "Abov(' and Below the Line of Duty," Philosophicnl Topics 14, no. 2 (1986): 132. Francis Ka;nm's article is "Supererogation and Obligation," loumol of Phi losophy 82 (1985): 118-38. Michael Stocker cites Kamm's article seemingly as an example of how the supererogatory stands as a refutation of solely action-guid ing moral theories (Pllaal and Conf/icting Valiles [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 19901, 93 n. 6). If the present account of the supen"rogatory is right, then not only is her arguml'nt no obstacle to the supererogatory being recognized in a solely aetion gUiding theory, it also is confluent with it. \8. "Abov" and Below the Line of Duty," 139. 19_ Ibid., 145.
t4. This discussion appears n i chapte r 3 of Humn" Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). 15. For n i stance, even Charles Fried, who, as noted in the last chapter, tried to delineate the moral realm without appeal to consequences. admits that even the duties he describes as "absolute" can be limited by the extremity of consequences that might follow from them, and concedes that this could b(' deliberativ('ly r('l· ('vant. 16. Feinberg, " Supererogation and Rules" [1961], in Doing ond Deserving (Princeton: rrinceton University Press. 1970), 3-24, esp. 10-14.
generally be considered a duty, whereas saving the life of another might
132
The Moral Theory of PoslSlruCluralism
Consequentialism and Supererogation
133
small, we may have a dilly to save the life, rather than meet the business
what he calls "the personal point of view": the interests, attachments,
deadline, although, in general, we would have to make grellter efforts to
and commitments that belong to specific people and that bias them in their everyday behavior against objective moral considerations. The per
keep the business deadline than to save the life:';,) All this s i what one would expect on a consequentiaiisl account of su pererogation: what are supererogatory acts in most circumstances can ei ther take precedence over or even become duties depending upon the con sequences of praising the performance and not condemning the failure to perform. Thus, in the buming-house case one would still, by most conse quentialiSI criteria, want to call the saving of the man supererogatory but
would nol consider the attending of office hours a reason nol to save the man, and in the business-deadline case one would wanl lo call the saving
of the life a duty, that is, something condemnable if not perfonned.
The reason consequentialism accommodates these complexities so well
is that it recognizes that what confers the supererogatory quality upon
sonal point of view is admitted into consequentialism by means of an "agent-centered prerogative (that) would allow each agent to assign a certain proportionately greater weight to his own interests than to the interests of other people. It would then allow the agent to promote lhe
nonoptimal outcome of his chOOSing, provided only that the degree of its inferiority to each of the superior outcomes he could instead promote in no case exceeded, by more than the specified proportion, the degree of sacrifice necessary for him to promote the superior outcome. "D This "hybrid consequentialism" is clearly devoted to ensuring that there is a dividing line between duty and what lies "beyond" it. The cen tral difference between it and the account offered here lies in its modify
an act has to do with more than the act itself. It also has to do with the actions one takes in regard to that act. The mistake, cited by Feinberg, in
ing the structure of consequentialist theory. Thus, rather than remain
thinking that there is a simple lexical relation between supererogation
judged act, Scheffler instead introduces a restriction UpOli consequential
and duty; the mistake of holding that duty always takes precedence over supererogi'ttion, discussed by Wolf; and the mistake of assuming a clear
however, leads to another one, discussed above. Scheffler's "hybrid con
strictly consequentialist and distinguish the act of judgment from the ism, in the form of a prerogative open to the moral agent. This difference,
distinction between the class of duties and that of supererogatory acts, noted by Kamm-all have a common root in the mistake of thinking that
sequentialism" is meant not only to evaluate action but also to guide it.
what confers the supererogatory quality upon an act has to do solely with the act itself. Otherwise put, accounts of the supererogatory that seek an
are permissible and which ones required. This S(.>ems to be an advance upon the account offered here; since one often cannot be guided by the
isolable group of acts or criteria for supererogation, excluding the con text of action and the context of the judgment of action, founder against
consequences of the judgment upon one's actions, the proposed account leans much more heavily on the evaluative role of moral theories than
deep moral intuitions in specific cases. Supererogation has to do with a dynamic complex involving the performed act, the act or acts one takes
upon their deliberative role.
in regard to that act, and the circumstances in which all these acts occur.
Finally, there are two suggested revisions to consequentialism, similar
in their effects to the account of supererogation offered here, that need to be addressed. The first is Samuel Scheffler's famous "hybrid consequen tialism" offered in The Rejectioll o/Consequelltialism;:!-I the second is Michael
One can ask, looking upon the possible avenues of action, which ones
These differences, it should be noted, concern primarily the structure of consequentialism, not its results. It s i likely that the demarcation porous though it may be--between one's duty and what is "beyond" it
will be similar in the two accounts. That is because the "proportionally greater weight" that Scheffler accords to the agent-centered prerogative is bound to the consequences of the permissibility of the prerogative. This
Slote's "satisficing consequentialism" proposed in Commoll-Sense Moral
is also true of the account proposed here; for that account, the question,
ity aud COllsequelltialism.u
although approached from the side of the judgment of the act rather than the act judged, remains one of which actions one ought to be held bound to and which not.
Both of these works, by offering revisions of
what consequentialism can reasonably ask of us, seek to mitigate the ob jection that consequentialist theories are too relentlessly demanding in their scope. Scheffler proposes that instead of requiring that moral agents bring about the best consequences, moral theories that take their cue from consequential ism need to settle for something less n i order to allow for 20. "Supererogation �nd Obligation," 124. 21. Oxford: Oxford Univ()rsity Press. 1982. 22. London: Roull()dg() and Kegan Paul, 1985, esp. chap. 3.
The question, then, is whether Scheffler's proposal ought to be accepted
on structural grounds over the account proposed here. The account pro posed here, as noted, has the advantage of not having to introduce metatheoretical considerations. Supererogation does the work of agent centered prerogatives from within consequentialism; it does not have to 23. Schefft('r, The Rtjection 0f Cousrqueu,inJislII, 20.
The Moral Th('OfY of Poststructuraiism
134
5
ask the question of the limits of consequenlialism itself. Moreover, there need be no loss in terms of guidance for the proposed account. Since, as
argued above, the duty (supererogation distinction, inasmuch as there is
one, would be roughly the same on both accounts, on the proposed ac count one could derive agent-centered prerogatives, n i asmuch as there
can be any, from the kinds of things that are considered supererogatory. The looseness of the duty/supererogatory distinction may render it dif
From Morality to an Aesthetics of Living
ficult to derive such prerogatives, but that looseness is one that attaches to agent centered prerogatives whether they are considered as derived -
from an account of supererogation or as a modification of the structure
of consequentialism. The point here is that, as ScheWer himself has more recently argued, moral deliberation is a complex affair to which moral theory ought to lend its guidance only under specific conditions.
Slote's account, which is similar in many respects to Scheffler's, can be
treated more briefly. Slote suggests that consequentialism ought to drop the goal of optimization and substitute for it the goal of sntisficillg: instead of maximizing the good, our duty ought to be to do enough good, or
good enough. (Slote thinks of this view as an advance upon Scheffler's proposal, since it does not require that permissibility depend upon what one is actually doing but only upon what one should actually be required
At the outsel, I said that a central goal of this book is the construction
to do.) It is fairly easy to see that the same considerations that apply to
and defense of a moral perspective that can found much of the political
Scheffler's proposal are relevant here. Satisficing is a way of drawing the
philosophy associated with poststructuralist thought, at least its non
distinction between duty and what lies "beyond" it; it limits the require
Derridean strain. Readers who have followed me so far may be struck by
ments consequentialism can place upon a moral agent. The argument of
how "unradical" this moral perspective is. It relies on a scaffolding al
the present chapter has been, however, that such a limitation is already built into consequentialism, even in its simplest articulations. It is a mis
ready erected by much recent Anglo-American moral theory; and where
it adds something new, it does so by building a little new scaffolding on the old and working from there. This may be fine as moral theory, but
take to think that a consequentialist conception of the good is directly translatable n i to one's duty; in order to understand duty, one has to un
what can it have to do with poststructuralism?
derstand supererogation as well. Thus understood, satisficing is another
Although I cannot discuss here all the links with poststructuralisml�
structural change introduced into a moral theory that has the resources
to accommodate the advantages of the change without in fact having to
but have already discussed several�l want to offer two thoughts that
change. Consequentialism is, as it were, wide enough to accommodate
poslstructuralism that emerges in the work of Foucault, Deleuze, and
agent-centered prerogatives or considerations of satisficing; it does not need to be stretched beyond its borders. If this is right, then the mul tivalue consequentialism articulated here al lows for a distinction between duty and supererogation without having to
Lyotard-is to last beyond the next wave of Parisian philosophical fash
modify its structure. Furthermore, with an account of supererogation in
place, a multivalue consequentialism can meet the current criticisms of con
sequentialist theory. It meets objections regardng the relation between value i
and action, rights, justice, self regard, friendship, and supererogation.
have a more general significance. First, if poststructuralism�alleast the
ion, it is going to have to anchor itself at one or more places in the philo
sophical tradition. This is not because that tradition is some kind of canon to which poststructuralism, or any other philosophical movement, ought
properly to make obeisance. Deleuze, among others, has rightly cast scorn
on this uncritical valorization of the Western philosophical tradition.2 The
necessity for anchoring points is philosophical, not political.
-
Furthermore, if what I have said so far is right, then many of the val
ues considered to be moral values, in violation of antirepresentational
ism, may no longer be considered so. They are, instead, values that have to do with the aesthetics of living .
1. As
noted in the Introduction,
I
do this in
the last chapler
of Tile Political
Pllilo$opl,y ofPostslructuralist Allarc/,ism (UniverSity Park: Pennsylvania State Uni versity Press, 1994).
2. '·The history of philosophy has always been the agent of power in philoso· phy, and even in thought. It has played the ""presser's role: how can you think
136
The Moral Th('{)ry of Poststructurnlism
Wilfrid Sellars writes that "empirical knowledge, like its sophisticated extension, science, is rational, not because it has afoul/datioll but because it is a self-correcting enterprise which can put any claim in jeopardy,
though not aI/ al once.") Since there is no exterior epistemic foundation
From Morality to an Aesthetics of Living
137
gestion, which this book constitutes, is that the anchoring points are in morality.s The second thought regarding the link between poststructuralism and the moral perspective I have offered here is the commitment I believe
to which science-or any other type of knowledge, for that matter---can
Foucault, Deleuze, and Lyotard have made, one way or another, to the
appeal, in its process of self-correction it must hold something constant
principle of antirepresentationalism. Having done so, they have at least
within itself as a criterion to judge its proposals. Science can put any of
tacitly committed themselves to its justification and to whatever the prin
its claims or theories up for assessment, but if the assessment is to yield
ciple entails. (Recall here Brandom's analysis of asserting.) Justifying the
any defensible results, it must be on the basis of other claims or theories
principle involves recourse to several traditional moral notions of au
that, for the moment, remain Wlquestioned.·
tonomy, consequences, and so forth; the entailments of the principle
There is, and for much the same reasons, an analogous lesson regard
n i volve its bearing on non-act-oriented moral theories and on the struc
ing philosophical radicalism. It runs like this: You can be radical any
ture of moral theory generally. My argument has been that, given a com
where in philosophy, but not everywhere at the same time. The poststruc turalist perspective defined by Foucault, Deleuze, and Lyotard attempts
mitment to the principle, moral theory falls out in the way I have articu lated, or at least in some way like it. Thus the more or less traditional
to be radical regarding many of our epistemological and political com
picture of morality I have painted here is of a piece with the principle of
mitments. It asks us to see as epistemic projects and in political terms
antirepresentationalism.
much of what we have taken for granted and asks us to rethink what we
On this picture, morality is both a central practice in our own lives
mean by politics. In doing so, it shows us that much more is up for grabs
and one that intersects with many of our other practices; but it is not the
than we might previously have thought. Epistemically and politically, it
only practice to which we can appeal in thinking about the construction
is no longer enough for us to say, "That's just lhe way things are." (Post
of our own lives. If "what we are talking about is how one should live,"
structuralism is, of course, not the first perspective to do so, but neither
as Bernard Williams thinks Socrates considered it to be/ then we cannot
need it be.)
ask morality alone to answer. This is nol because, as Williams thinks, the
But then, what motivates us to question what we previously took for
structure of morality is lacking something it needs to have. It is for two
granted? Why bother? And why should we seriously consider the radi
other reasons, both connected with antirepresentationalism. First, it is not
cal alternatives this particular perspective proposes to us? If poststruc
morality'S role to answer the question of how one should live. Second,
turalism is to answer these questions, it must appeal to us in terms with
there is no way, or no group of ways, that one should live.
which we can in some way identify. We must be able to see ourselves in
In what other terms might we think about our lives and judge others'
its proposals, or else it is nothing more than interesting fiction to us.
liws, then, if not moral ones? Although there are undoubtedly many, let
Whatever those terms are, they are the anchoring points I mentioned a
me suggest one. I offer it because it captures many of the judgments we
bit ago; they are the points at which poststructuralist analyses touch us
have wanted to make about our own and others' lives, and does so with
where we are and bring us to where poststructuralism wants us to go.
out the sanction that morality does. I suggested in Chapter 2 that we call
They are, in Sellars's terms, what make the project "rationa!." My sug-
it an "aesthetics of living." Such an idea is not new, and has been given
without having read Plato, Descartes, Kant, and Heidegger, and so·and-so'S book
in our society art has become something which is related only to objects,
recent articulation by Michel Foucault: "What strikes me is the fact that about them' A formidable school of intimidation which manufactures specialists in thought-but which also makes those who stay outside conform all the more to this speCialism which they despise. An image of thought called philosophy has been formed historically and it effectively stops people from thinking. � Dialogues
0977],
and not to individuals, or to life. That art is something specialized, which is done only � experts who are artists. But couldn't everyone's life be come a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object,
by Gilles Deleuzc and Claire Parnet, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara
3. �Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" ]1956],
Habberjam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987),
13.
in Scie"ce, Perception, alld
Rea/ily (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963),170.
4. For more on the epistemic relation between Sellars and Foucault, see my
Belwee" GCII""logy ,,,,d Epistcmology' Psychology, Politics, l1l1d Kllowledgc ill lire Thought
of Miclrel FOllclwl1 {University Park: Pennsylvania
State University
Press,
1993).
5. It is certainly possible to ignore those questions, and some, even some sym pathetic with poststructuralism, have not seen the necessity of addressing them. This failure contributes as much as any other factor to French philosophy as a series of passn i g vapid fads.
6.
Ethics "lid /1,1' Limits of Plrilosophy
1985), 1.
{Cambridge:
the impression
of recent
Harvard University Press,
138
The Moral Theory of Postslrucluralism
but not tife?"1Judging lives in aesthetic terms, alongside the moral terms this book has developed, allows us a productive way to think about life and how to live it without introducing the burden-oppressive both to theorizers and to the objects of Iheory-of wondering which kind of lives oughl to be universalized and in what ways. Having two different dis courses n i which to articulate one's life or the lives of others brings with it the possibility of conflict; there can be beautiful lives that are not as morally compelling as others, and morally exemplary lives that have little beauty to them. This conflict however, is a problem, not for theory, but for living; our choices and OUf judgments are often not only between con flicting values but between conflicting types of values, moral and aes thetic among them.s To get a sense of the aesthetics of living, let us turn to a couple of lives, simplistically rendered, in order to see how such judgments might work. One life-a personal favorite-is that of John Coltrane, the jazz saxophon ist. Coltrane changed jazz in important ways by broadening its expres sive capacities. He sought ever new ways to express himself and his "spiri tuality" (having had some sort of spiritual experience in 1957 while medi tating) through his saxophone, and n i doing so broadened considerably the expressive possibilities of the saxophone and of jazz generally. Mak ing his instrument more expressive required him not only to reflect on new musical possibilities and on what he wanted to say with them, it also required an extraordinary amount of practice, in which he engaged 7. The FOllculIl1 Rrader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984). 350. This
aspect of Foucault's work, and of the work of the poststructuralists generally, shows
the palpable influence of Nietzsche. In the following pages, I urge a discourse of the aesthetics of living alongSide that of moral discourse.
One way of reading
Nietzsche would be that he tried to slIbslillllf a discourse on the aesthetics of living
for thai of moral discourse. In addition to the reasons cited in this book for the
poststrucluralisl reje<:tion of moral theory, one could also cite the influence of Nietzsche's own rejection of morality. Such a reje<:tion presents the poststructuralists, whose political commitments are more straightforwardly progressive than Nietzsche's. with dilemmas the discussion in this book attempts to resolve.
S. It might be urged here that I have already committed myself to privileging
the moral in a conflict between moral values and aesthetic (or any other kind) of values. That is true, but two things need to be taken into account. The first is the difference between supererogatory acts and duties discussed in the last chapter. which gives some leeway to judgments in favor of the aesthetic rather than the moral. And second, one needs to recognize how difficult it can be to separate moral from aesthetic judgments about lives, even though the discourses them· selves are separable. If, as
I
have argued, we should cast our moral valuational
net wide to accommodate antirepresentationalism, then there are many kinds of
lives that, merely by being lived, allow others access to goods to which they would
otherwise not have had access. Moral judgments of lives, then, are always dicey affairs-as they should be.
From Morality to an Aesthetics of Living
139
dutifully and enthusiastically. Moreover, it required an openness to, rather than a defensiveness toward, other new approaches to jazz; and Coltrane, often thought quiet, was known to question other jazz inventors-like Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk-to distraction in order to learn what they were up to. Coltrane lived his life as an artistic creation, seeking its possibilities and rendering them as best he could, in music. Looking upon one's life as a work of art need not, however, involve art in the traditional sense; nor need it involve a single theme to which one dedicates oneself. Imagine another life, that of a teacher who, though never becoming known beyond the circle of those she affects, passes a certain fascination for living on to each of her students. She teaches literature at a small liberal arts school and, although she does not publish anything, has developed the talent of displaying the riches of many novels before her students. She may coach the women's cross-country team, which, though it does not have a stellar record, has members who love running and who are as good at it as they are going to be, in part because of her coaching. (I imagine her, before a race, exhorting her runners not with some platitude like "Run hard, girls," but instead with something like "Run beautifully, and the speed will come of itself.") Although not a leader in progressive issues, she induces n i her friends a sense of the humanity of others, which they carry with them in their relationships with others. There is, then, a certain reverence for life, for one's own and others, that she induces in those with whom she has contact. Like John Coltrane, but in a different way, she has made of her life an artistic creation. Now, how shall we think about these lives? There are, of course, moral judgments to be made. Both of these people contributed to values to which everyone should have access. Coltrane contributed to music and con structed access to different kinds of musical expression. The teacher gave many people access to literature and, by inducing a sense of humanity in her friends, very possibly contributed indirectly to the alleviation of need less suffering. But moral judgments do not seem to exhaust all we want to say about lives like these. (And if these particular ives l do not strike you, I am sure you can think of lives that do.) They are, iI! tlleir very par ticularity, beautiful lives. Their lives, while not exemplary in the sense that we would prescribe them for others, are such that, should we be touched by them, we find ourselves enriched. Art, in many ways, is like that. The French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty once said of painting, "It is more accurate to say I see according to it, or with it, than that I see it."9 Among its functions, art allows us to see the world in ways we would not have otherwise; or per9. "Eye and Mind" (1961], trans. Carleton Da!lary, in The Primacy ofPerceptiOlt
(Evanston.
!II.: Northwes tern University Press, 1964), 164.
140
The Mor"l Theory of Pootstructuralism
haps it allows us to see different worlds in what we call "the" world. I suggest here that certain lives do that too. They offer us possibilities for
From Morality to an Aesthetics of Living
141
terprctations (and, perhaps most likely, something in between). I suspect the answer to this question lies more in the philosophy of art than else
richness of life itself. If they are models for us, it is not because they offer
where, so I leave it to people more competent than I to address it. Nonetheless, this issue has immediate bearing on issues here. If a
the possibility of our imitating them, but rather because they remind us
noncognitivist approach to discourse about the aesthetics of living is right,
of the possibility of looking upon and constructing our own lives in more
then the hopelessness of a convergence between aesthetic and moral discourse-if the analysis of moral discourse I have defended is right becomes apparent. There can be no temptation to unify the two, because
living that, even if not our own, nevertheless instill in us a sense of the
aesthetically compelling ways than we otherwise might have. There is, then, a particularity to the aesthetics of living that does not lend it to the kind of universalizing criteria that characterize moral think ing and practice, not only because of the 5<1nction of antirepresentation
the terms aesthetics-of-living discourse uses would not be property ascribing terms, and thus the question whether they should be
alism but also because of what the aesthetics of living is. Someone whose
universalized would be inappropriate; it would be a category mistake
life is aesthetically pleasing does not necessarily embody characteristics
even to try to argue that everyone should embody them. Instead they
that we would want to see n i everyone, but we are glad that person pos
would be "property evoking." gesturing at some aspect of a person's life
sesses them.
that resists categorization but that in its particularity is something to be admired. Alternatively, if discourse about the aesthetics of living is taken
the John Coltrane example, we might say that he carried through a certain
cognitively, it might be argued not only that the terms it uses can be
his life was organized around a single theme and displayed it in different
room for them.
What characteristics are these? What do we say about such people? In
theme, that of expressing himself in new ways in music. To that degree,
incorporated into moral discourse but that moral discourse needs to make
ways. Because of this, we might say that his life had depth, that it moved
Such an argument might run like this: While it is true that it seems
deeper and deeper into his chosen theme, if not exhausting its possibilities
nappropriate i to think of any one aesthetic value as an ideal for all people,
then certainly mining more of them than many before him had done. Last,
it is equally true that not any given moral value is equally ideal for all
we might say that it had an expressiveness that resonates for many of us, that it discovered resources that, to the extent that we can follow his mu
people. Regarding a multivalue consequentialism, different people are
sic, are also our resources, and to which we thus respond. Of the teacher, we might say that her life displays balance, that she
differentially placed relative to contributing to its goods. Thus, some people ought to contribute more to distributive justice than others, since they are better placed to do so. Others, meanwhile, ought to contribute
organizes several themes into a harmonious whole. Although she does
to literacy, or to happiness. Why not say the same thing about values
not sound the depth that Coltrane did, she can cover more ground with
associated with the aesthetics of living? Everyone, it might be said, ought
out losing her way. Moreover, in the ground she covers she discovers, and helps others to see, a beauty that might not have otherwise been ap
to construct a lHe of some beauty-just as everyone ought to contribute i different cases. to the moral good-but that construction can be different n
did not, after ail, write the literature she teaches. Nevertheless, in her discovery and display of aspects of literature that her students had not
it would differ with different people.
seen before, she creates a beauty that without her would not have ex
isted. In that sense, her life, rather than a canvas or (what used to be) a
problem that aesthetic obligations would entrain and that moral ones do
nected with all this. In applying these aesthetic tenns to people's lives,
order to detennine which to pick in cases of conniet. The insidiousness of such a project in the cases of values associated with the aesthetics of living is clear. It would be a particularly egregiOUS violation of the prin Ciple of antirepresentationalism, even if this principle were far weaker than I have argued it is, to offer differential moral weight to different aesthetic values.
parent. She may not in all cases be the initial creator of that beauty-she
pen, is the instrument she plays. Let me confess at this point some puzzlement about a deep issue con are we aHempting to capture important aspects of those lives, to say true things about them? Or, alternatively (or perhaps concomitantly), are we
trying to evoke their lives, to express them in the same way that their lives seem to express something that is difficult to capture? Otherwise put, the semantics of aesthetic talk about people's lives is something I am uncertain about, vacillating between cognitivist and noncognitivist in-
Thus, there might be a general moral obligation to "beautiful" living. but The problem with such an approach is that it misses the distinctive
not. For if the consequentialism I have defended is right, there would have to be distinctions between aesthetically better and aesthetically worse
lives, not only tvitilill but also between aesthetic values. Recall that part of the point of a moral theory is the relative weighing of moral values in
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism
142
The argument, however, might be offered in a softer form. It might be said that one moral value among others, perhaps not a strongly weighted one, should be that of aesthetic living. Aesthetic living can occur in many ways, corresponding to the many tenns, cognitively interpreted, that are appropriate to use in describing people's lives aesthet ically. Thus, we do not have to weigh aesthetic values relative to one another, but the value of aesthetic living as a whole relative to other moral values. This would allow for some obligation to aesthetic living. without the insidious con sequences just cited.
From Morality to an Aesthetics of Living
143
connection to blameworthiness" are. Once the moral force of such judg ments is withdrawn, their motivational force comes down to little more than what one likes or does not like.)) But then the project of virtue eth ics, as an ethics, becomes unclear. Surely there s i a need for judgments of the kind I-and Slote---a -c ll
moral. The question, then, is whether judgments of character are prop
erly to be thought of as falling wilhin the realm of the moral. I have ar gued that given the principle of antirepresentationalism, they are not.
What this argument amountsto, once its aesthetic values are completely
Judgments of character require another type of discourse, one that does not give moral force to positive and negative judgments about character.
that we need to ae
tute to moral discourse nor as a larger realm within which moral dis
separated from any moral consequences they might have, s i a balking against the Couch Potato example discussed in Chapter 2. There I said
principle of antirepresentationalism. I see no reason to abandon that po sition. If the principle of antirepresentationalism is right, then any good provided by incorporating values associated with the aesthetics of living
into moral discourse would have to be bought at the expense of conse quences that far outweigh it. It is best, then, even if the proper semantics
If, then, a virtue ethics is to be articulated, it can be so neither as a substi
course falls. It must be solt/ething other than moral discourse. There seems no reason, then, to call this discourse an "ethics," since that term has long been associated with moral force. (Along the same line, there also seems to be no reason to call it a "vir/ue ethics.")IZ "Aesthetics of living" is more appropriate.
By way of concluding, I want to focus on three implications of looking
of aesthetic discourse turns out to be co gnitive, to keep a strict distinc
at one's life in aesthetic terms rather Ihan solely in moral ones. They are,
tion between moral and aesthetics-of-Iiving discourses.
may yet constitute the most important legacy of poststructuralism.
One can imagine at this point a virtue ethicist, not without some justi fication, responding that the approach to the aesthetics of iving I am of l
fering is fully compatible with Ihe virtue-elhical approach. Michael Slate has d.rawn the parallel explicitly.
We can thus adopl a perspective thai sees certain things a person does as better or worse, that allows us 10 judge him more or less admirable or criticizable, without finding ourselves committed
10 specifically moral judgements, and that
this s i the perspective
from which a non-egoislic virtue ethics that avoids moral con
cepts insists on judging performance, motive, and character. Com
mon-sense virtue ethics can avoid all common-sense or other moral judgements and restrict itself to intuitively plausible judgements
of admirability and deplorability tlsat have no essential comlectioll to blameworthiness, and what results from our move in this direc
tion is a form of ethics that s i already perhaps familiar from the example of Spinoza and that is also interestingly analogous to
ordinary IICS/llctic evaIuation.lo
I can find falllt with nothing here, as long as we understand how weak
Ollt "judgements of admirability and deplorability that have no essential 10. Siote, From Moralify fO Virfue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ]992), 121.
in essence, three freedoms to which I want to call attention and which
Though there is nothing startlingly new in Ihese freedoms, pointing them II. This is not to say, contrary to my uncertainty above, that the proper seman tics for aesthetic judgments is expressivist. Rather, it is to claim that even if aes thetic judgments are to be thoughl of cognilivel y, the beauty or ugln i ess they as cribe cannot be thought of as offering a redson for changing oneself (or for stay ing the same) in the universalizn i g �115e that moral judgments possess. !he o�ty motivation they can offer, as nonmoral judgments, Is the one that goes With bemg aesthetically pleasing or displeasing, which, shorn of any moral force, comes down to whether one likes things that way. �ce 12. Throughout, I have used the term HmoralityH rather than Het�ic�,� Si the laller term seems. in its current usage, to suggest a targer realm Within which morality, perhaps somewhat transformed, falls. If I am right, then there is no such thing as ethics, so conceived. This may come as a disappointment to sor:ne, particularly those who would like to see a single discourse answer to the quesuon of how one should live. However, the fact that moral considerations often confl ict with other types of considerations does not tell us anything abou! morality, and particula rly abo"ut its fa ilings, as virtue ethicists would have us believe. It te�ls us about the difficulty of living. In " Morality and Partiality," Susan Wolf conSiders the case of a woman who must ask herself whether to shelter her son, who has committed a crime. She concludes, rightly in my view, that "[t)o describe the woman's conflict as one be/weeu morality and the bonds of love seems . . . to capture or preserve the split, almost schizophrenic reactio� I think �e ou�ht to have !o her dilemma . . . . Though one wants as far as pOSSible to aVOid being torn, sph�: i this case seem to me less reasonabl.e disintegrated, the more unified alternatives n (in Philosophical Persl'<'Ctivt'5, vol. 6, Elhics, cd. James Tomberlin [Atascadero, Ca!!f.: Ridgeview Publishing Co., 1992], 256).
144
The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism
out can offer a view of the field by means of which it may be easier to engage in the project of self-creation. The first is freedom from a certain kind of bondage to Ihe moral. John Rajchman, the Foucault scholar, has complained that "ltJne piety of moral theory is 10 try to S<1y what is good for each and all of us, and where and how 10 find it. Our experience matters for such theory only to Ihe degree that it conforms, or fails to confoon, to such theoretical goods and obli·
galions,"l) Rajchman's second sentence is an accurate characterization of morality; the mistake he points out in the first sentence is that of trying to discover how to conduct our lives solely from within the space de
From Morality to an Aesthetics of Living
145
seeks true--or satisfying-answers. This does not mean that the truths one is after are merely illusions, or that those answers are a product of some alleged unconscious drives or conflicts. What is at issue here is not the answers one seeks but the life that seeks them. It is that life that sets its problems for itself and its approaches to those problems. Now, all of this may seem individualistic, as though these two free
domscould be had without taking into account the community in which
one lives. This, of course, is false. The terms in which one thinks of one self and one's possibilities, the practical parameters of those possibilities, and the ease or djfficulty of realizing them are all social as well as indi
fined by the discourse so characterized. We cannot. And that is Ihe good news.
vidual matters. It would be even more accurate to say that the n i dividual
Many of us who are philosophically oriented have turned to morality for an answer to the question of how we should live, and many of the
ity is not only a matter of freedom but also of constraint, both constraint from and constraint to. We need not, however, think of the aesthetics of
turning. But morality does not possess the answer. It is not built to take
living as a purely individual matter; it can reach into the social as well. Our communities, like our selves, are matters for creation. If we can loosen
moral theories developed over the centuries have encouraged us in our
s i also a social matter. And certainly the social nature of our individual
on that burden, and the attempts to rebuild it so that it can do so are
ourselves from the grip of thinking that our world is given to us, and can
misguided. In answering the question of how to live our lives, we need
begin to ask ourselves about the world we would like to construct, then we can also begin to see our way to a third freedom, a freedom of com
not think of ourselves solely as subjects of the right or the good or the virtuous. If we are not fr� from morality-and indeed we ought not to be free from it-we arc certainly free from reducing our lives to it.
i a point Michel Foucault saw dearly. munity construction. This s
free from, but what we are free for. To the extent that we conceive our
There is an optimism that consists in saying that things couldn't be better. My optimism would consist rather in saying that so
lives aesthetically, we see those lives as objects to be constructed rather
many things can be changed, fragile as they are, bound up more
than as cogs in a machine whose function is already given. (fhis is the deep truth of existentialism.) lnstead of looking for a law under which
with circumstances than necessities, more arbitrary than self-evi
Our second freedom flows from the first. It concerns not what we are
we fall, a goal to which we all ought to aspire, or an essence it s i our task
to realize, we may think of ourselves as a canvas to be filled or a score to be written. Our lives are always before us, in no sense (except at death) behind us; having no truth or meaning it is our particular burden to shoul der, we are free to ask ourselves what distinctive themes are going to characterize our lives.
This is as true of those who construct philosophical lives as of others. As Rajchman pOints out, "A philosopher must discover or define 'his' or
dent, more a matter of complex, but temporary, historical circum stances than with inevitable anthropological constraints. . . . You know, to say that we are much more recent than we think isn't a way of taking the whole weight of history on our shoulders. It's rather to place at our disposal of the work that we can do on ourselves the greatest possible share of what is presented to us as inaccessible. I� This third freedom is inseparable from the first two, and indeed the
'her' difficulty, and this difficulty becomes what is most distinctive about his or her philosophy. That is why philosophical difficulty is more than conceptual or rhetorical difficulty; it is also 'subjective."'I. A philosophi
first two are meaningless without it. Recognizing it, we can see that nei
cal life, then, is not merely a matter of discovering "the truth" but of de termining the problems to which and the perspectives within which one
i tionalism from which it derives much of its force need be thought of n an individualistic fashion. Our intentional lives ought not to be repre sented to us, not only so that each of us may create her or his own but
13. Trulh Mid Ems; Foucalllt, Lacall, alld llie Questioll of flliin (New York; Routledge, 1991), 143. 14. Ibid" 26.
IS. "Practicing Cri ticism 11981 [. an interview with Didier Eribon, tr�ns. Alan Sheridan, in Michel FOIICallll; Po/ilics. PIli/os()I'''Y, Cul/ure, ed. Lawrence Kritzman (New York: Routledge, 1988), 156.
ther the idea of tin aesthetics of living nor the principle of antirepresenta
"
The Moral Theory of Poststructura!ism
146
also so that we can create a community in which many lives can be cre ated and can interact in mutual flourishing. In all this creation and self-creation, we must, of course, answer to morality. But, as I have argued, although morality is pervasive and over
Bibliography
riding, it is not totalitarian. II is limited by the principle of anlirepresen tationalism and by the distinction between duty and supererogation. And
if what I have said so far in this chapter is appealing, it offers us a way to think about our relation to morality that renders it less oppressive than the traditional distinction between morality and self-interest.
In the tra
ditional vision, the role of morality is thai of constraining the actions of
naturally self-interested beings in order to prevent a descent into sheer
in this vision: either morality if we think of our lives as objects to be constructed
barbarity. There is an either-or embedded
or selfishness. But
rather than as bundles of desires to be fulfilled, we can begin to see our way not only to a new view of ourselves but also to a new view of our relation to morality. Rather than the either-or-either me or morality we can see ourselves in a complex relation to our moral discourse and the actions it prescribes. The aesthetics of living, while not reducible to morality, is not its in evitable rival either. Their relation is more like a marriage than a negotia tion between enemies: between the two there is sometimes conflict, some times convergence, and sometimes compromise. The difficulty and the promise of a life do not, it seems to me, tie so much in realizing as much self-interest as possible while still satisfying the taskmaster of morality; they lie in the balancing of moral and nonmoral demands and possibili ties in the creation of an object in which the delicate flame of beauty can be seen flickering.
Appiah, Anthony. hz My FlZlher's HOl/se. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Arrington, Robert. RatiOlJIIlism. Realism, alld Relativism: Perspectives in COlltem· porury Moral Epistemology. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989. Billig, M., and H. Tajfel. uSodal Categorization and Similarity in Intergroup Behavior." European jOllmal of Social Psychology 3, no. 1 (1973): 27-52. Boyd, Richard. "How to Be a Moral Realist." In Essays on Moral Realism, ed ited by Geoffrey Sayre-McCord. ---. "Realism. Underdetermination, and a Causal Theory of Evidence." NaZIS 7 (1973): 1-12. Brandom, Robert. "Asserting." NailS 17, no. 4 (1983): 637-50. ---. "Pragmatism, Phenomenalism, and Truth-Talk." Midwest Studies in Phi losophy 12 (1988): 75-93. Burge, Tyler. "Individualism and the Mental." In MidUJf.'st Studies in PI,i/oso phy, vol. 4, Studies in Metaphysics, edited by Peter French, T. Uehling Jr., and H. Wettsten. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979. Castel, Robert, Fran�oise Castel, and Anne LovelL The Psychiatric Society (1979]. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
Cousins, Mark, and Athar Hussain. Michel Foucault. New York: SI. Martin's Press, 1984. Darwall, S tephen, Alan Gibbard, and Peter Railton. "Toward Fill de Siecle Eth ics: Some Trends." Philosopirica/ Review 101, no. 1 (l992): 115-89. Davidson, Donald. "Paradoxes of Irrationality." In Pllilosophical Essnys 011 FreZld, edited by Richard Wollheim and James Hopkins. Camb ridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche alld Philosophy [1962]. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. ---. Spinow: Practical Philosophy (1970]. Translated by Robert Hurley. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism alld Schizophrenia [1972]. Translated by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. lane. New York: Viking Press, 1977. Deleuze, Gilles, and Claire Parne!. Dialogues [1977]. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. New York: Columbia University Press, 198�. Descombes, Vincent. Modcrr! Frcud, Philosop/!y [1979]. Translated by L Scoll Fox and J. M. Harding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Dt>ws, Peter. Logics of Disintegration: Post-Structuralist ThaI/gilt alld the Claims of Crilical TIIeory. london: Verso, 1987. Doerner, Klaus. MadmclI alld the BourgeoiSie: A Social History of IlJsauily alld Psychiatry [1969]. Translated by Joachim NeugroS(:hcl and Jean Steinberg. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981. Dworkin, Ronald. "Do We Ha\'e a Right to Pornography?" [1981]. In A Maller of Principle.
.
Bibliography
148 ---
, "LibcralismH (1978). In A Matter of Prillciplt. . A Motler of Prillciplr. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985. , "Reverse DiscriminationH (1976). In Tllking Rigll/s SeriOl/sly. . Takillg Rights Seriously. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 19n. . "What Rights Do We Have?" In Tllkhr,1: Rig/lfs Seriously. Feinberg, Joel. "Supererogation and Rules" [19611. In DollIg and Deservil1g.
---
---
---
---
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970. Flanagan, Owen. Varieties of Moml Persollality: Ethics and Psyc/w/ogica/ Rea/ ism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991. Foot, Phillipa. "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives." In Viers Ilnd Vir/III's alld Oflrer Essnys ill Moral PI/ilosoplry. Berkeley and Los An· geles: University of Califomia Press, 1978. Foucault, Michel. Discipline alld PUllisll (1975]. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Random House, 1977. . HThe Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom" [interview]. In The Fi,lal FOllcall/t, edited by James Bernauer and David Rasmussen. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988. . The FOllcault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow. New York: Panthron, ---
1984.
---
---. A History ofSexuality. Vol. 1, All Illtroductioll (1976], translated by Rob
ert Hurley. New York: Random House, 1978. . "Practicing Criticism" [1981 interview]. Translated by Alan Sheridan. In Michel FOllcoull: Politin, PhilosopllY, Crrltrrre, edited by Lawrcnce Kritzman. New York: Routledge, 1988. . Preface to Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism alld Sclri:ropllrellia, by Gilles Dclcuze and Felix Guattari. Fraser, Nancy. "Foucault on Modem Power: Empirical Insights and Norma tive Confusions." Prtrxis IlItt'fllUtiorral l (1988): 286. Fried, Charles. Rig/It I/Ild Wrollg. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978. Gibbard, Alan. Wise Clroicrs, Apt Feeli,lgs: A Tlrt'ory of Normative ,udgt'mrrlt. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990. Grovcr, Dorothy. A Prost'rrtential Theory of Trlltlr. Princeton: Princeton Univer sity Press, 1992. Grover, Dorothy, JosephCamp Jr., and Nuel Belnap. "The Prosentential Theory ofTmth." PJrilosophical Studies 27 (1975): 73-125. Habcrmas, Jurgen. T/w Plri/osop/lical Discourse of Modarrity: nlle/f)e Lectull 's [1985). Translated by Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987. Harman, Gilbert. Tire Nature ofMortrlity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Hohfeld, W. N. "Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions As Applied to Judi cial Reasoning." Yale ww 1011111111 23 (1913). Hurley, Susan. Nalurlll Reasons. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Kamm, Francis. "Supererogation and Obligation. H lozmral of PlriloS(Jphy 82 (1985): 118-38. Langton, Rae. "Whose Right? Ronald Dworkin, Women, and Pornographers." PlliloS(Jplly Ilnd PI/blic Affairs 19, no. 4 (1990): 311-59. Lyotard, Jean-Fram;ois. TIle Differrrrd: Pllrases in Dispute [1 9831. Translated by Georges van den Abbeele. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Prcss, ---
---
1988.
Lyotard, Jcan-Fram;ois, and Jcan-Loup Thcbaud. JU51 Gaming (1979J. Trans lated by Wlad God�kh. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1985.
149
Bibliography
May, Todd; Belweell Cenea/og!! Ulld Epislt'm% gy: PsycllOlogy, Politics, alld KIIOW/ Mgt' 11/ tire TirOl/girt ofMlc/ltl Forrawlt. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993. . "The Limits of the Mental and the Limits of Philosophy." loumal of SJIf'cuiative Plri/OS
---
---
---
---
---
-----
---
---
(l973):
1020-69.
ISO
Bibliogrnphy
"Rights, Goals, and FairneS5.� In Theories of Righls, edited by Jeremy Waldron. Oxford: Odord University Press, 1984. Scheffler, Samuel. Hunlau Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. ---. TIll' Reject/rm ojColIUt/lltlitialislII. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. Sellars, Wilfrid. MEmpiridsm and Ihe Philosophy of Mind" 119561. In SciCIICt, Perception, nlld Reali/y. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963. ---. "Some Reflections on Language Games" [1954]. In ScitllU, Perceptioll, (/lid Rrality. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963. Sen, Amartya. NWell_Being, Agency, and Freedom: The �wey Lectures 1984.N 1011 rna! of PM/asap!!y 72, no. 4 (1985): 169-221. Sidgwick, Henry. Methods 0/ Ethics. 7th ed. London: Lowe and Brydon, 1906. Slole, Michael. CO/llmon-S�IIS� Morlliity lind Constqutntill/ism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985. ---. From Mornlity to Virtue. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. ---. "Rational Dilemmas and Rational Supererogation." PhiiosophiclIl Topics 14, no. 2 (1986): 59-76. ---.
Spierenberg, Pieler. Tire Spectac/t 0/Suffering. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer sity Press, 1984. Siocker, Michael. Plural arrd Conflicting VlI/lIl's. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. ---. HThe Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories." JourlllIl 0 / Pllilosophy 73 (1976): 453--66. TajfeL H., B. Flament, and R. P. Bundy. "Social Categorization and Intergroup Behavior." E.rlropelllr /Ollrnal o/Socilll Psychology 1, no. 1 (1971): 149-78. Thomson, Judith Jarvis. TIlt Realm 0/Rights. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990. Tomberlin, James. Philosoplliclli Perspectives. Vol. 6, E.tlrics. Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview Publishing Co., 1992. Urmson, J. O. "Saints and Heroes." In E.ssays ill Mornt Pllilosopiry, edited by A. I. Melden. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1958. Walzer, Michael. "The Politics of Michel Foucault." In Foucllult: A Critical R�ader, edited by David Cousins Hoy. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986. Wiggins, David. N A Sensible Subjectivismr In Nttds, Vlllues, Truth. 2d cd. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991, ---. "Truth As Predicated of Moral Judgements." In Needs, Vlllues, Trulll. 2d ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991---. "Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life." In ESsays 011 Morlll Real ism, edi ted by Geoffrey Sayre-McCord. ---. "Universalizability, Impartiality, Truth.� In Nerds, Vnllles, Trutll. 2d ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991. Williams, Bernard. Elllies imd tire Limits 0/ PlrilosopllY. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Culture and Value. Edited by G. H. von Wright and trans lated by Peter Winch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. ---. Philosophical frrve5tigotiorrs. 3d ed. Translated by G.E.M. AnscombI'. New York: Macmillan, 1958. Wolf, Susan. "Abo\'e and Below the Line of Duty." Pfli/osophical Topics 1 4, no. 2 (1986): 131-48. ---. �Morality and Partiality.H In PhiiosopJrical Perspcctir.>tS, vol. 6, Elllies, edited by James Tomberlin.
Index anlirepresentationalism, principle of. 2. 3,5, 10, 13-14, 16.17,21, 37, 45 n. 50,46,47-79, 81, 83-90, 94, 102.
lOS. 120-21, 137, 138 n. 8, 140, 141--43, 145, 146
Habermas, lUrgen, 8, 9-10, 15 Harman, Gilbert, 39-10. 44, 87 Hume. David. 36, 98 Hurley, Susa n. 43 n. 46, 83-35. 90 n. 9,99 n. 16, 102 n. 20
Arrington, Robl'rt, 42-44 autonomy, 54--57, 62, 121, 128
impartiality, 122-23
Belnap, NUI'I, JO-31 Boyd, Richard, 20, 22_24, 30. 32, 35, 37,
Kamm. Francis, 130-32 Kohlherg, Lawrence, 56
39,97_99, 104
Brandom, Robert, 28-30, 32, 33, 137 BurgI', Tyll'r, 75-77 Camp, I�ph, Ir., JO-31 Castel, Frano;oi�, 58 Castel, Robert. 58 coherenct of multivalue consequentialism, 96-105
Coltrane, lohn, 138-40 Davidson. Donald, 63-65, 8J Deleuze. Gilles, 6, ]0-11, 13. 14, 20. 46. 51, 70, 135-37
deontology, 2, 3, 5, 26, 47, 52. 53, 69-79. 122, 128
Dews, Peter, 6, 9, 12 Dworkin, Ronald. 71-79, 93 Feinberg, loel, 130, 132 Flanagan, Owen, 55 Foot, Phillipa, 44-15 Foucault, Michel, 6-11, 13. 14,20, 46, 51,
?
57-58, 70, 4, 76, 135-38, 145
Fraser, Nancy, 8-9
Lovell, Anne, 58 Lyotard, Jtan-Fran�ois, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11-12, 13, U, 15, 20, 46, 51, 70, 135-37
McDowell. John, 20, 32, 36-37, 44-15 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 139 Mm,]. S., 81, 127 Miller, Richard, 45 n. 51, 55-56 moral realism, 20, 21-27, 32 moral thl'Ory, role of, 90-96, 129-30 moral value, definition of, 87
Nagel, Thomas, 102, 103 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 10. 138 n. 7 practie�l judgment, definition of, 37 principle, definition of, 37 Putnam, Hilary, 15
Railton, Peter, 20, 22, 2-1-27, 32. 39, 45-46, 120 n. 2, 128, 129, 130
Rajchman, John, 144 reflective equilibrium. 22, 47-48, 87, 104-5, 117
freedom, 143-46
rights, n i a moral theory, 88, 93, 105-17 ROlly, Richard, 15, 48 Rosenhan, D. L., 59
Gauthier, David, 39 Gcwirth, Alan, 39 Gibbard. Ailan, 19, 33-J4 GroVl'r, Dorothy, JO-31
Sayre.McCord, Geoffrey, 34 Scanlon, Thomas, 85-86, 89, 95 n, 12, 99,
Fried, Charll" , 47 n. 1, 114-]5, 130 n. 15 friendship, 120-23, 134
116-17
Scheffler, Samuel. 45 n. SO, 129-30, 132-34
Index
152 St'lbrs, Wilfrid, 28, 35--36, 75--n Sen, Amarlya, 101-2 Sidgwick, Henry. 124_25 Slotl', Michael, 12), 124, 132, 134, 142-43 Stocker, Michael, 13, 119-20, 124, 131
n.
17
Walzer, Mich;1CI, 6 Wiggins, Oil"id, 20, 27, 33 n. 29, 34, 37, H-42,82
n.
17,
truth, 20, 29-32, 34, 64-65 univet$ality of moral language. 35,
38-42, 43,46, 55, 82,89, 122, 138,
140,141, 143 n.
Il
virtue ethics, 2, 3, 16, 48, 53, 66-68, 69, 142-43
123-34, 138, 146
IDS-IS
91, 105-9, 123--28, 130
70, 81, 90, 94, 119. 120, 122, 130,
subj('ctive prl'f""'nce, 82-87 supererogation, 16,92. 95, 96, 119,
Tajte!, Henri, 60 ThomSOn, Judith jllrvis, 47 n. 1, 100
Urmson, J. 0" 125. 128 utilitarianism, 47, 66, 69, 73, 74, 81-82.
Williams, Bernard, 69, 137 Witts'msldn, Ludwig, 27, 28, 38, 42-44 Wolf, Susan 123, 130-32, 143 n. 12
