William of Ockham seems to have embraced a rather striking variety of divine command morality. He wrote,
The
hatred of God, theft, adultery, and actions similar to these actions according
to the common law, may have an evil quality annexed, insofar as they are
done by someone who is obligated by a divine command to perform the
opposite act. But as far as the sheer
being in these actions is concerned, they can be performed by God
without any evil condition annexed; and they can even be performed meritoriously
by an earthly pilgrim if they should come under a divine precept, just as now
the opposite of these in fact fall under a divine command.
Many of us find the moral implications of Ockham’s view unacceptable as it appears to imply that anything whatsoever—even, say, Recreational Baby-Stomping—would be morally permissible or obligatory were God to command them. And a part of what motivates Ockham’s view is a desire to avoid imposing any sorts of moral restrictions upon the divine will. God has prohibited such things, but he could have required them and might one day do so, for all we know. The implications seem morally repugnant.
Kyle Swan has called this the “anything goes” objection—abbreviated as “AG.” He states AG as follows:
(AG) If God were to command that we torture an innocent child to death, then torturing an innocent child to death would be morally right.
He goes on to suggest that this apparently counterintuitive claim is indeed an implication of at least some versions of Divine Command Theory. And it is an implication that just seems obviously and intuitively false. Any theory that implies that anything goes is “wildly counterintuitive” and worthy of the dustbin. As Mary Midgley once put it, “An ethical theory which, when consistently followed through, has iniquitous consequences is a bad theory and must be changed.”
But, Swan thinks, there is a way in which the divine command theorist may acknowledge the implication while resisting the force of the anything goes objection. He takes his cue from David Copp, who defends his “society-centered” theory of morality against similar objections regarding apparent “nasty” implications.
On Copp’s view, whether a moral standard is justified is determined by what it is rational for members of a given society to accept. But this, in turn, depends upon contingent circumstances that might have been different. And those different circumstances could be such that acts that are currently prohibited and contrary to currently and deeply held pre-theoretical moral beliefs—acts such as the fatal torture of innocent children, to stay with Swan’s example—would be sanctioned by the justified standards of that society. So Copp concedes that his theory has implications that, taken at face value, might seem counterintuitive. For instance (and still staying with Swan’s example), his theory seems to have the following seemingly nasty implication (NI):
(NI) If societal circumstances were different, then torturing children to death would be morally right.
But Copp thinks this statement is ambiguous between two interpretations of (NI). And the distinction turns on the scope of what he calls the “moral operator”—the phrase, morality would be such that—which appears in the following two claims. Consider, on the one hand, the assertion
(NI1) If societal circumstances were different, then morality would be such that torturing children to death would be morally right.
And, on the other
(NI2) Morality is such that if societal circumstances were different, then torturing children to death would be morally right.
In the case of (NI1) the scope of the operator is “narrow,” ranging over only the consequent, whereas in (NI2) it is “wide,” ranging over the entire conditional. According to Copp, (NI1) follows from his theory but (NI2) does not. That is, he may allow—as his theory entails—counterfactually that morality would have consequences that, by our current lights, are “nasty” if those counterfactual circumstances obtained. But this has no bearing upon the implications of actual moral standards in the actual circumstances.
Indeed, Copp thinks his Society-Centered theory predicts that people will tend to accept simple formulations of moral standards, such as Torturing children to death is morally wrong rather than more complex, nuanced forms that specify possible circumstances with different moral implications. People predictably tend to harbor the pre-theoretical moral conviction that torturing children to death is wrong—period—that is, in any and all circumstances. And so, his society-centered theory predicts that “its central doctrine”—that right and wrong are relative to societal and other circumstances—“will be counterintuitive.” But that “central doctrine” involves a second-order, metaethical rather than a first-order moral claim, and he thinks there can be no conflict between the two sorts of claims. The question, he thinks, is whether the theory has implications that run contrary to common moral intuitions—not complex metaethical theories about the grounds and justification of morality. And if his critic goes on to say that his contrary intuition is, in fact, a metaethical intuition, Copp’s reply is that this is a contrary theoretical belief where the discussion was whether the theory conflicts with pre-theoretical moral beliefs. Such a critic, Copp thinks, is simply in the grip of some contrary ethical theory so that the criticism is hardly surprising.
Now, it is easy to see how Kyle Swan proposes to utilize Copp’s discussion in order to defend Divine Command Morality against the “anything goes” objection. Certainly, some varieties of divine command morality imply that, had God commanded otherwise, then morality would be such that torturing children to death would be permissible or mandatory. But this does not entail the claim that Morality is such that had God commanded otherwise, then torturing children would be permissible or mandatory. Rather, Morality is such that torturing children is wrong. Read your Bible.
I am flatly unconvinced by Copp’s—and, so, Swan’s—argument. There is much to criticize in both accounts, but I’ll focus on just one issue: Why in the world should we suppose that what Copp here calls metaethical[1] views are in any way antithetical to pre-theoretical convictions? In fact, this brings me to one of my central claims: Metaethical considerations are embedded in our pre-theoretical moral beliefs. Further, I think that a specific “metaethical” content is invoked by those beliefs. Permit me to explain.
There is more than one way for an ethical theory to have Midgley’s “iniquitous consequences.” Perhaps we think first of the above sorts of examples in which some critic charges that the theory implies the rightness of the obviously wrong, or even the wrongness of the obviously right. But it is also possible for a theory to have all of the intuitively right implications for all of the intuitively wrong reasons. We may be happy that, after careful deliberation, Smith has decided to refrain from torturing Jones. But this happy decision hardly finds justification in the consideration that his doing so would have splashed blood on Brown’s new Italian shoes. Even if we found ourselves in an odd sort of world in which every time someone was tortured someone else’s shoes were ruined (and every time someone’s shoes were ruined someone else was being tortured), this would hardly be a convincing explanation of the wrongness of torture.
A central question of normative ethics, then, is “What makes right acts right and wrong acts wrong?” Competing ethical theories offer different answers to this question. Some answers seem better than others, and determining which are the better is an important part of ethical theory assessment.
Consider, then, a generic version of ethical egoism, which maintains that an act is right if it benefits the agent and wrong if it either harms the agent or results in less benefit than some available alternative. Some of us think that the principle of egoism has “iniquitous consequences” in that it seems to prescribe, "Do whatever you can happily get away with." And so it seems that the theory implies that one ought to pillage and plunder and rifle and loot like the best of pirates, so long as we really are the best of pirates in our ability to avoid both retaliation and remorse.[2] Not so, our egoist friend may tell us. As Jerome K. Jerome (who was probably not an egoist) once suggested, “We are so bound together that no man can labor for himself alone. Each blow he strikes in his own behalf helps to mold the universe.” With this bit of wisdom in mind, the ideal egoist will realize that his own interests are best served by considering and respecting the interests of others.
Now, my own view is that we can labor for ourselves without molding the universe, at least, if we are sufficiently clever. But even if we were to make a gift of this point and suppose that a world populated by ideal egoists would be like one big Hallmark commercial, the deeper flaws of the theory remain. On egoism, one has direct duties only to oneself. If the ideal egoist is civil and kind and charitable, it must be because he believes his selfish direct duties have in tow various indirect duties regarding others. If ideal egoism implies the wrongness of torture, then it can only be because it somehow harms or wrongs the torturer—perhaps either because he is sure to suffer the fate of so many of the world’s cruel dictators or because he is sure to ruin his loafers. But surely if torture is really wrong at all, the explanation must begin with a direct concern for the victim. Even an untutored Meno—or your decidedly unphilosophical Aunt Edna—would likely concur, and so to think this is not necessarily to be in the grip of some contrary ethical theory.[3] But any such explanation that essentially involves direct duties to the victim also involves a direct route away from egoism.
Consider classical Utilitarianism. Here, we are told that a right act is one that maximizes human happiness. A textbook criticism of the theory charges that a consistent utilitarian might be found justifying just about anything—slavery, child torture, cat juggling—under certain circumstances. Most utilitarians, I think, resist the implication. Mill, for instance, retorted that his is a doctrine worthy of swine only on certain silly and obviously false assumptions about human nature, and observed that of course the Principle of Utility—like any principle whatsoever—may be thought to work ill if we assume “universal idiocy.” R.B. Brandt, in his discussion of Morality, Utilitarianism and Rights, brushes aside such objections as just “unsympathetic,” and suggests that they are readily met by a more sympathetic and sophisticated interpretation of Utilitarianism. Sometimes the distinction between Act and Rule Utilitarianism is urged as a way of blocking the untoward implications on the ground that Rule Utilitarians will not tread where Act Utilitarians rush in.
Mill, as you know, devoted a chapter to the question of what connections, if any, there are between justice and utility. And he speaks there of rights, such as, perhaps, a right to liberty. Bentham, of course, had said that the notion of natural and imprescriptible rights is “nonsense on stilts.” A careful reading of Mill shows that he does not disagree with his mentor. He had earlier instructed that sometimes we are morally obligated to abstain from the very act that has beneficial consequences—perhaps a surprising thing for a Utilitarian to say. This is in those cases in which the action “is of a class which, if practiced generally would be generally injurious.” Hence, moral rules—“secondary principles,” he sometimes calls them--are spawned from the Principle of Utility, and we are morally obligated to follow such rules even in some cases in which their violation would—in the particular circumstances—produce the greatest utility. But it is also possible for two or more rules—Speak when you are spoken to, say, and Don’t talk with your mouth full—to clash as when you have just taken a bite and your waiter asks how you like the food. In such cases, Mill thinks, we must consult the Principle of Utility itself to determine which of the rules trumps the other.[4] The resulting decision is based upon considerations of the competing rules and their respective effects upon general utility if generally followed.
It is from precisely these sorts of considerations that Mill develops his theory of justice and of rights. Some human goods are more vital than others due to their relative contribution to human well-being and happiness. The more important the good is the less likely the corresponding protective rule will be trumped by a competing rule. And so he tells us, “Justice is a name for certain classes of moral rules, which concern the essentials of human well-being more nearly, and are therefore of more absolute obligation, than any other rules for the guidance of life” (Mill 2001, p. 59). And again: "Justice is a name for certain moral requirements, which, regarded collectively, stand higher in the scale of social utility, and are therefore of more paramount obligation, than any others." (Mill 2001, p. 63)
Evidently, Mill imagines a hierarchy of rules erected upon the foundation of utility itself. Those moral rules, which are designed to safeguard our fundamental security or well being, derive their supreme importance and impose paramount obligations due to the weight of the goods that they protect as weighed on the scale of social utility. Individual “rights” are thus claims that people have to those goods, and the claims themselves are sustained by that same concern for utility.
We typically think of rights as having what we might call a trumping function in that if I can demonstrate a right to something then, all else equal, the conversation is over. Mill finds this trumping function in the pride of place afforded certain rules in the scheme of things, and he also finds correspondence between those goods and interests protected by paramount rules and those widely believed to be guaranteed by natural rights. But his is decidedly not a theory of natural rights. Such are stilted nonsense from Mill’s perspective just as surely as from Bentham’s, as he makes clear. A right, he tells us, is a claim that society ought to defend in the individual. To say, for instance, that I have a right to property is to imply that through, say, legislation or education or enforcement, society ought to defend me in my possession of that property. And it is here where Mill makes the connection between rights and utility clear:
"To have a right, then, is, I conceive, to have something which society ought to
defend me in the possession of. If the objector goes on to ask, why it ought? I can
give him no other reason than general utility." (Mill 2001, p. 54)
The rights to life and liberty are not endowed by any Creator, nor are they intrinsic to our nature, but rather are derived from the duty to promote maximal happiness. Nothing here would be likely to cause Mill’s forbear, Bentham, to turn over in his booth. Mill, like Bentham, maintains that the sole basis for according “rights” to individuals is the effect that doing so has upon the advantage to society. He, no more than Bentham, has “anterior” or “inherent” rights in mind. If Mill goes beyond Bentham in thinking of such rights as absolute or inviolable, it can only be due to his confidence in the stability of, to use Kant’s phrase, “the nature of man and the circumstances of the world in which he is placed.” If we share his confidence, then we might agree that utilitarian rules fortify just those things that we think are protected as rights. But whether we agree that Mill has offered a plausible account of rights will depend upon whether we also agree that individual rights do not entail direct duties to the bearers of those rights.
It will perhaps come as no surprise to hear that Mill is not, after all, a natural rights theorist. But my concern here is with the structure of the utilitarian explanation of the rightness or wrongness of acts—what Robert N. Johnson calls the form of the theory.[5] If society ought to defend me in my possession of life and liberty, then it ought to do so for the sake of society and not for my own sake. Smith’s torturing Jones may be wrong, and Mill might even insist that it violates Jones’s "rights," but if asked why Jones should be thought to have such rights, Mill can “give no other reason than “general utility.”[6]
When John Adams defended the British soldiers implicated in the Boston Massacre, he no doubt had a direct concern for the natural rights of the men themselves. But he also noted that the lynching for which the public was clamoring would have left a “foul stain” upon the country. The Utilitarian, who has no place for natural rights, is left only with this latter sort of concern and its overall effect upon general human happiness. It is wrong for Smith to torture Jones because it splashes blood on the collective societal shoes.
In short, when we consider the form of the Utilitarian theory—its structure of explanation for the wrongness of everything from torture to rape to genocide—what makes such acts wrong has not directly to do with the victims for their own sake. Rather, it looks beyond them to something else. In this respect, it has the same explanatory structure as we’ve seen for the ideal egoist’s explanation for the wrongness of torture. It is, in fact, an indirect duty view when it comes to moral concern for individuals. In this way, it shares the same structure of explanation as the Kantian explanation for the wrongness of animal cruelty or environmental degradation or a common sense account of the wrongness of vandalism—not from a concern for the things themselves but for the consequences elsewhere.
My argument is that in seeking a
plausible answer to such questions as, “What makes
it wrong for Dr. Mengele to perform lethal or maiming experiments on unwilling
children?” we are looking for an answer that says, in effect, “Because it
wrongs the victimized children.” And my claim is that this expectation is embedded in our
pre-theoretical belief that such acts are wrong. But the
utilitarian can give no other reason than general utility. Where we might
have thought that to violate a person’s right is essentially a matter of wronging that person, these
concepts appear to have been divorced on Mill’s theory. Here, it is
something like “society-at-large” or, perhaps, “humanity” itself that is
“wronged” when an individual’s rights are violated. Worse, as my professor
Marcus Singer used to say, the Prime Directive for the utilitarian is to
maintain a number in the
universe, representing the net quantity of happiness is achieved. Nor is the
number to be maintained for anyone's sake but for the sake of itself. And
this, I say, is as implausible as the egoist’s answer—even if the utilitarian
and the egoist can assure us that no right-thinking utilitarian or egoist would
ever justify the rightness of the obviously wrong.
Similar things may be said of standard Aristotelian accounts of virtue ethics, which tell us that the rightness or wrongness of an act is determined by whether it is the sort of thing that an ideal person would do. Robert N Johnson has an interesting essay discussing whether Kant qualifies as a virtue ethicist. His verdict is that he does, but that he departs from the standard account. And the departure consists in the fact that Kant looks to an independent standard—the Categorical Imperative in its formulations—in order to determine whether an act is right or an agent virtuous. As Rosalind Hursthouse explains, virtue ethicists traditionally “eschew” any such independent standard.[7] And so Robert Johnson’s formula seems to capture the essence of standard virtue ethics accounts of moral rightness and wrongness:
For all actions j and all persons S, it is right (to be done, ethical, correct, etc.) for S to j in C at t if and only if j-ing in C at t is or would be characteristic of a flourishing human life (Johnson 2008, p. 60).
Similar things may be said of standard Aristotelian accounts of virtue ethics, which tell us that the rightness or wrongness of an act is determined by whether it is the sort of thing that an ideal person would do. Robert N Johnson has an interesting essay discussing whether Kant qualifies as a virtue ethicist. His verdict is that he does, but that he departs from the standard account. And the departure consists in the fact that Kant looks to an independent standard—the Categorical Imperative in its formulations—in order to determine whether an act is right or an agent virtuous. As Rosalind Hursthouse explains, virtue ethicists traditionally “eschew” any such independent standard.[7] And so Robert Johnson’s formula seems to capture the essence of standard virtue ethics accounts of moral rightness and wrongness:
For all actions j and all persons S, it is right (to be done, ethical, correct, etc.) for S to j in C at t if and only if j-ing in C at t is or would be characteristic of a flourishing human life (Johnson 2008, p. 60).
Now, it is
a gross understatement to say that rapists and torturers of innocent children
are not behaving as ideal persons or as those who are flourishing as
humans. Show me a rapist and I’ll show
you someone who is behaving in less than an ideal manner. But surely there is more to the account than
this? The trouble with the formulation
as it is applied to such examples of obviously wrong acts is that it does not
essentially include any reference to the way in which the acts—rape or torture—wrong the victim. There is no essential reference, that is, to
any direct duties that are owed to
persons. On Johnson’s characterization
of Kantian virtue ethics one might say that kindness, for instance, is a virtue
because of our duty to promote the
flourishing of persons. And so we have
the grounds for a satisfactory account of the wrongness of such acts as rape and
torture. But not so on standard,
Aristotelian accounts. Because of this,
I think they fail to capture an essential feature of our pre-theoretical moral
beliefs.[8]
Now to return to divine command morality. Recall William of Ockham’s claim that evil
qualities may be “annexed” to acts, but that the acts themselves, so far as the
“sheer
being” of the acts themselves is concerned,
are neither good nor evil. It all
depends upon how the act—even an act as wicked as rape or child torture—is
related to some actual divine command or prohibition. On this view, our direct duties are to God alone. If
rape is wrong its wrongness is explained by God’s attitude toward the act and
not by the fact that it violates any direct duty owed the victim. It implies that all duties whatsoever are cut from the same cloth as environmental duties on a theistic stewardship ethic. There, nature itself has no moral standing,
that is, nature itself is not the object of any direct duties. Environmental degradation is like vandalism
as it is the owner who is wronged or treated unjustly.
Perhaps trees and rivers and Buicks can be harmed or damaged, but they cannot be wronged. And now, on Ockham’s sort of view, neither
can babies. My claim here is that this suggestion itself—beyond the apparent “anything goes” implication—is
repugnant, and the repugnance is not merely the yield of some opposing ethical
theory.[9] In fact, my argument is that
the reverse is true: reflection upon our pre-theoretical beliefs ultimately
invokes some sort of theory that countenances direct duties to individual
persons and with that, I think, a deontological theory holding that moral
properties are inherent and not merely relational.
Of course, Swan’s “anything goes” worries are avoided on the commonly held view—often neglected by critics who urge Euthyphro-like objections—that God always commands in accordance with his necessarily good nature. If God is essentially morally perfect, then the scenarios imagined by Ockham are strictly impossible. In that case, to ask If God commanded us to torture innocent children to death would it be morally right? Is a little like asking If the wheels on pickup trucks were square circles would they handle well in snow? or How many doughnuts would come in a dozen if seven plus five made thirteen?
One such view that appeals to God’s nature in this way, and which has been defended by William Alston, Robert Adams and William Lane Craig, among others, is that God’s nature is the source of moral value and God’s commands—which are always consistent with his nature—are the source of moral obligation. William Alston argued that while we can understand moral goodness in reference to the divine nature, something more—namely, an appeal to actual divine commands—is necessary to make sense of moral obligations. After all, he noted, we are not obligated to do everything that it might be good for us to do. It is certainly a good thing for me to spend time fishing with my grandson, but all else being equal—for instance, if I have not promised to do so—then it does not seem that there is a standing obligation to do so. On this Alston-Adams-Craig view, it takes a divine command to transform the morally good into the morally obligatory. Lacking any divine commandment, I am not obligated to take my grandson fishing though it may be a very good thing to do. But should God command it, then it would be morally required of me.
Another advantage of the Alston-Adams-Craig view over Ockham’s divine command morality is that, presumably, there is room for thinking that acts have their value inherently as they, in their nature, either resemble or are contrary to the divine nature. But whether an act also has the property of being obligatory would seem to depend upon whether it “should come under a divine precept” to use Ockham’s language. Shall we say, then, that the property of obligatoriness is thus “annexed”—added on—to acts? But this seems very implausible once we generalize beyond select examples.
Of course, Swan’s “anything goes” worries are avoided on the commonly held view—often neglected by critics who urge Euthyphro-like objections—that God always commands in accordance with his necessarily good nature. If God is essentially morally perfect, then the scenarios imagined by Ockham are strictly impossible. In that case, to ask If God commanded us to torture innocent children to death would it be morally right? Is a little like asking If the wheels on pickup trucks were square circles would they handle well in snow? or How many doughnuts would come in a dozen if seven plus five made thirteen?
One such view that appeals to God’s nature in this way, and which has been defended by William Alston, Robert Adams and William Lane Craig, among others, is that God’s nature is the source of moral value and God’s commands—which are always consistent with his nature—are the source of moral obligation. William Alston argued that while we can understand moral goodness in reference to the divine nature, something more—namely, an appeal to actual divine commands—is necessary to make sense of moral obligations. After all, he noted, we are not obligated to do everything that it might be good for us to do. It is certainly a good thing for me to spend time fishing with my grandson, but all else being equal—for instance, if I have not promised to do so—then it does not seem that there is a standing obligation to do so. On this Alston-Adams-Craig view, it takes a divine command to transform the morally good into the morally obligatory. Lacking any divine commandment, I am not obligated to take my grandson fishing though it may be a very good thing to do. But should God command it, then it would be morally required of me.
Another advantage of the Alston-Adams-Craig view over Ockham’s divine command morality is that, presumably, there is room for thinking that acts have their value inherently as they, in their nature, either resemble or are contrary to the divine nature. But whether an act also has the property of being obligatory would seem to depend upon whether it “should come under a divine precept” to use Ockham’s language. Shall we say, then, that the property of obligatoriness is thus “annexed”—added on—to acts? But this seems very implausible once we generalize beyond select examples.
It is
good to take my grandson fishing. It is
also good to refrain from drowning him in the lake.
The value of both of these acts is derived from God’s necessary nature. It takes a divine command to transform the
former into a moral obligation. Do we
also require a divine command in order to ground the obligation not to drown
him? Do these two acts have equal
potential for becoming obligatory? The
view under consideration would seem to imply it. But surely not! Is there not an obvious difference between
the two types of act that is determined by features that are intrinsic rather
than extrinsic to the acts themselves?
Philosophers distinguish between duties of justice and duties of beneficence. The latter involve such things as extending help to those in need, while the former include the avoidance of harm, among other things. Immanuel Kant referred to duties of beneficence as “wide” and duties of justice as “narrow.” The idea is that we have a standing general duty to help those in need, but we also have some degree of latitude in determining whom, when and how much we shall help. I am not obligated to donate to every charity that has gotten hold of my phone number. Despite attempts of phone solicitors to make me feel guilty, the charities probably do not have a just claim on my help, nor am I somehow wronging them or doing them an injustice if I refuse to help. But I am failing in my moral duties if I have resolved never to help anyone. I am under no obligation to carry cookies to my neighbors, but I am morally stunted if I never show kindness to anyone. Duties of justice, on the other hand, are “narrow” in that I am not afforded such latitude. All else equal, I ought to tell the truth and refrain from lying. It is not left to me to determine when or to whom or to what degree I shall be truthful.
Observe a couple of things about this distinction and how it relates to the Alston-Adams-Craig view. First, the view seems to have the implausible implication that the distinction between justice and beneficence is a distinction without a difference until the acts are related to some divine command. But surely this distinction runs deeper than that? Second, that distinction itself would seem to provide us the means of marking off the (merely) good from the obligatory. And the sorts of considerations that do seem relevant for making sense of the distinction involve such issues as whether people are wronged or done an injustice. Even if we agree that a divine command is sufficient to render a specific act of beneficence obligatory, I cannot see why such a command is necessary in order to impose a duty of justice. Presumably, I am obligated to refrain from a great many things, from adultery to zoophilia. Does my obligation to keep myself to only one (human) woman obtain only because of the relation that the deeds bear to a divine command?
Philosophers distinguish between duties of justice and duties of beneficence. The latter involve such things as extending help to those in need, while the former include the avoidance of harm, among other things. Immanuel Kant referred to duties of beneficence as “wide” and duties of justice as “narrow.” The idea is that we have a standing general duty to help those in need, but we also have some degree of latitude in determining whom, when and how much we shall help. I am not obligated to donate to every charity that has gotten hold of my phone number. Despite attempts of phone solicitors to make me feel guilty, the charities probably do not have a just claim on my help, nor am I somehow wronging them or doing them an injustice if I refuse to help. But I am failing in my moral duties if I have resolved never to help anyone. I am under no obligation to carry cookies to my neighbors, but I am morally stunted if I never show kindness to anyone. Duties of justice, on the other hand, are “narrow” in that I am not afforded such latitude. All else equal, I ought to tell the truth and refrain from lying. It is not left to me to determine when or to whom or to what degree I shall be truthful.
Observe a couple of things about this distinction and how it relates to the Alston-Adams-Craig view. First, the view seems to have the implausible implication that the distinction between justice and beneficence is a distinction without a difference until the acts are related to some divine command. But surely this distinction runs deeper than that? Second, that distinction itself would seem to provide us the means of marking off the (merely) good from the obligatory. And the sorts of considerations that do seem relevant for making sense of the distinction involve such issues as whether people are wronged or done an injustice. Even if we agree that a divine command is sufficient to render a specific act of beneficence obligatory, I cannot see why such a command is necessary in order to impose a duty of justice. Presumably, I am obligated to refrain from a great many things, from adultery to zoophilia. Does my obligation to keep myself to only one (human) woman obtain only because of the relation that the deeds bear to a divine command?
Of course, Alston and others hold that acts may be either
consistent or inconsistent with the divine nature, and those that are
inconsistent are not good. Adultery is not good, and this is what motivates the
seventh commandment. But then it is hard to see why our obligation in such
cases is not simply to refrain from acts that are not good, that is, contrary
to God’s nature). Assuming that we can make sense of the appeal to God’s nature
in the first place, why not suppose that duties of justice have
their ground in the justice of God so that, command or no command, all unjust
acts are immoral in virtue of this very incompatibility? What work, beyond,
perhaps, a possibly important epistemic
role, is left for the commands themselves?
Indeed,
the incarnate God issued a new commandment: “That ye love one another.” He
added a bit by way of explanation: “As I have loved you, That ye also love one
another” (Jn 13:14 KJV). That same tradition has it that God is love. Again, why not suppose that God’s nature is the ultimate ground of the
requirement rather than the command itself, as seems implied in an additional
command, “Be ye holy, for I am holy”? And we may ask, is love commanded because
it is obligatory for us to love one another, or is it obligatory because it is
commanded? The Alston-Adams view implies the latter. But the former seems more
plausible, as there seem to be deeper reasons for love, and I believe it is
implied by the Christian tradition itself.
Unconditional love is commanded because it is the morally appropriate
attitude to have toward individuals whose value
is unconditional as bearers of the imago
dei.
Where does this leave us? I think that as we think about the relation between God and morality, one necessary condition of any acceptable theory allows room for thinking that at least some of our obligations are grounded in direct duties owed persons. Such duties, I would urge, should be seen as in turn grounded upon the inherent value of those persons themselves. Some will insist that this ultimately hangs morality from a peg that hangs outside heaven. After all, they may say, if persons have inherent worth then this is due to certain good-making features of personhood itself, and whether persons possess such features is a question independent of origins. If the features are there, then they are there regardless of whether persons have been created from the dust or have emerged from the mud. I have elsewhere attempted to argue that we may think of the value of created persons as a matter of resemblance to a personal Creator.[10] Whether that line may be defended successfully is a question of great interest to me.
Where does this leave us? I think that as we think about the relation between God and morality, one necessary condition of any acceptable theory allows room for thinking that at least some of our obligations are grounded in direct duties owed persons. Such duties, I would urge, should be seen as in turn grounded upon the inherent value of those persons themselves. Some will insist that this ultimately hangs morality from a peg that hangs outside heaven. After all, they may say, if persons have inherent worth then this is due to certain good-making features of personhood itself, and whether persons possess such features is a question independent of origins. If the features are there, then they are there regardless of whether persons have been created from the dust or have emerged from the mud. I have elsewhere attempted to argue that we may think of the value of created persons as a matter of resemblance to a personal Creator.[10] Whether that line may be defended successfully is a question of great interest to me.
[1] On
my own taxonomy Copp’s “metaethical” considerations are issues of normative ethics, but no need to
quibble.
[2]
And for such reasons, some deny that egoism is any sort of ethical theory at
all.
[3]
Here is an experiment that you may try at home.
Ask your Aunt Edna, who has never reflected carefully about normative
ethics or metaethics, whether she thinks rape is wrong. When she testifies that she believes it is
indeed wrong, ask which explanation of its wrongness seems correct: Rape is wrong because it wrongs the victim or Rape is wrong because it wrongs the rapist.
[4] A
familiar objection here—one that convinces me—is that Rule Utilitarianism just
collapses into Act Utilitarianism so that we have a distinction without a
difference. But let us grant the
distinction for present purposes.
[5]
Robert Johnson……
[6] It
should be unnecessary to clarify that I am not
arguing that practicing Utilitarians must consciously hold “general utility”
before their minds with no direct regard for individuals. Indeed, the Utilitarian might come to think
that a belief in natural rights is a useful fiction as the world would be a
happier place if we all believe and behave as though the interests of
individuals count for their own sake.
Even so, the structure of the Utilitarian explanation looks beyond such
individual interests to general utility.
[7]
Hursthouse
[8]
My criticism does not reduce to what Hursthouse
calls the “egotism objection,” namely, that consistent virtue ethicists,
in behaving generously or benevolently are, in fact, acting out of a concern
for their own characters. Compassion is
a virtue that takes the welfare of others into direct consideration, and
nothing I say here denies this. Still,
the explanation of what makes compassion a morally desirable trait appeals to
the notion of the ideal person and not to any duties owed to or value possessed
by those objects of our compassion. The
Kantian (or Confucian) virtue theorist, however, has the resources to correct
this deficiency. See my discussion in “The
Moral Argument” in J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology.
[9]One
might observe that Psalm 51 has David declaring to God, “Against Thee and Thee
only have I sinned.” But he seems to
have been given to hyperbole (“I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin my
mother conceived me”) in this poetic expression of repentance and remorse. Surely Uriah factors into the formula
somewhere?
[10]
See my main essay, “Moral Particularism,” in R. Keith Loftin, ed., God and Morality: Four Views.
