Essays

The Inner Necessity of Moral Virtue

Abstract

In this essay, I develop a conception of morality that was proposed in The Basis of Morality and its Relation to Dramatic Form in a Study of David Copperfield. The leading idea is that human experience and action are governed by the sense of a life that is valued in itself, and that this is the source of morality. Thus, a life that is valued in itself is valued in different ways, and its value in itself is preserved and promoted by a sense of responsibility to that life. In the following argument, I elaborate on this view by contrasting it with the moral theories of Aristotle and Simon Blackburn, thereby revealing further, less obvious elements that are implicit in the idea. The contrasts enable us to see two main elements; namely, the entanglement of moral judgement with self-interest, and how the character in things and ourselves depends upon non-mechanical causation. When taken together, these elements show that the inner necessity of moral virtues to reflective life implies that inconsistency in our moral judgement is an aspect of the realization of things and their character, and therefore unavoidable. The detailed discussion that follows will show how all of these things are related to a conflict of moral values that is created by the different ways in which life is valued in experience. 

 The moral dimension of reflective life has two interdependent aspects, the individual life that is valued in itself, and a common life that is valued in itself. In order for a moral theory to be fully coherent and convincing it is necessary that a satisfactory account is given of both the individual life and a common life as being valued in itself, and that the interdependence of these two aspects is adequately understood. As a means of presenting a clear exposition that might successfully explore the nature of morality, I will develop a theory in contrast with two widely different conceptions of human action – Aristotle’s theory of morality in relation to the teleology of human life, and Simon Blackburn’s idea, in Ruling Passions, of moral sense based on sentiments such as benevolence, sympathy and compassion. The particular ways in which these theories fail both of the requirements to which I refer make it relatively easy to apply this criticism to any other theory with which we are familiar.

   For the conception of human life that I propose, reflective life is a life that is valued in itself, and this is evident in all of the various aspects of our experience. Hence a reflective being is one that is challenged to make something of itself in the different spheres that characterize its life, in the way that it makes a living, for example, or participates in relations with others, or contributes to a family and the flourishing of children. It is also inclined to recognize, in many ways, the value of individuals and groups of individuals and to endeavour to sustain and promote the collective life in which it participates, and to recognize the value of individual lives in such rituals as funerals, christenings and the bestowal of honours. In the light of these transparent elements of human experience, the formulation of a life that is valued in itself is intended to establish a definition that applies specifically to what is human, and, by implication, to distinguish what is valued in itself from the evaluation of things because they answer to a purpose, or a function or because they provide a particular pleasure or satisfaction. These two senses of ‘value’ are clearly related insofar as the latter play a part in constituting a life that is valued in itself.

   When a form of life is related to value in this way, the moral dimension of reflective life automatically suggests itself. For in a life that is valued in itself, and this is expressed in all of the various aspects of such a life, morality is necessarily realized in the actions and experiences that give this form of life its many qualities and character. The challenge to a reflective being to make something of its life is morally sensitive in the sense that acting in accordance with this challenge must be significant in terms of how action of this kind should be taken, with respect to an individual life and a common life that is valued in itself. In normal circumstances, there is a moral difference between a man who devotes himself to becoming an architect and one who decides to become a hedge fund manager or a bandit. There is a moral significance even in the choice itself, as one intends to make his own life worthwhile by contributing to a common life and the other seeks to acquire the wealth that may have been legitimately created by someone else; while in the nature of ordinary relations with others, or friendship, or family life a moral dimension is assumed in the formation of these different kinds of association. In the first decency and respect are assumed as personally and socially necessary, while in closer relations like friendship and family life the association between individuals largely depends upon loyalty and genuine interest. Morality is at the heart of these kinds of relationship, it is not added in by sentiment or reason, and this is why there is a moral dimension in reflective life as a form of life.

   The moral dimension of a métier can be appreciated in the uncompromising attitude of an artist like Beethoven or Webern or Cézanne – in his insistence on getting things right for the sake of the work and regardless of how it might be seen by others. For example, Cezanne’s concern for a true realization in painting represents an inner compulsion that governs the execution of the work and without this moral dimension it could not reach its extraordinary heights. Sentiment such as pride and self-respect cannot account for this since it is possible only when talent is put to the service of aesthetic ideals. The power of the work is dependent upon a specifically moral dimension, and not upon a supposedly spiritual or transcendental meaning with which it might be confused. Such confusion is especially manifest in relation to music, and in particular in relation to the late quartets of Beethoven, and it is possible to interpret these pieces illuminatingly without reference to a transcendental realm (Nelson 2010). We can see the same moral dimension in all art that is serious and highly intelligent.

   As a dimension of reflective life, morality is much more than simply making rational decisions about personal behaviour. My discussion of David Copperfield (Nelson 1998) shows how Dickens portrays the manner in which moral dispositions are moulded, and moral attitudes are formed in a particular way by inclination and experience, and a sense of identity. This means that there is a profound influence of moral inclination upon the designs, both in substance and execution, that express our participation in a life that is valued in itself. A small child can be disturbed when things are not done in the manner that they expect, in, for example, the way that their food is presented or when somebody disregards an innocuous convention. These things make sense without being subject to reasoning, though they may be affected by our deliberate thought, actions and behaviour. 

   For example, in art the spontaneous participation in a life that is valued in itself is not reflected in the inclusion of a moral idea, rather it lies in an instinctive respect for the value of a form of reflective life. Furthermore, this implicit commitment should not be confused with a deliberate attempt to parade the work as an expression of moral worthiness. It might well be claimed that Cezanne’s insistence on a precise realization is largely driven by a

psychological inclination over which he has no control. This is not to claim that feeling plays no part in his effort to achieve a satisfying realization of an aesthetic goal; obviously, it plays a considerable part in deciding when the goal has been reached. But it is inspired by and subservient to a moral requirement, the requirement of responsibility to the value of a painting.      

   Furthermore, if, as these observations show, morality does not originate in a particular sentiment or faculty, but is intrinsic to the form of life in which life is valued in itself, then we would expect to see its moral dimension at the most basic level – that is, in our sensory perception and ordinary experience of ourselves and the world. In sensory experience, the constitution of a physical object is determined by psychological inclination and past experience, and moral significance must be included in this. For example, to a mature person, a physical object such as a knife or a gun has a moral significance because its harmfulness is obvious (that is, conveyed in our sensory perception, picturing, or imagining of it). In our experience of an everyday object we do not have to discover its moral significance by reasoning about it, nor is its moral significance mediated through our sentiments and desires. 

   The moral significance of an object can be quite independent of our desires, sentiments and emotions. For example, the moral significance of a gun is the same for all mature people regardless of their feelings about it. A funeral might have the same moral significance for two mourners, for one of whom the occasion is a matter of respectful sympathy while for the other it is an occasion for grief. Thus, a moral perception is neither a sentiment nor dependent upon sentiment; here it is a sense of the meaning of an occasion, and, because this occasion is an occasion for the subject, the sense of its meaning is implicitly a form of self-awareness. It is a direct perception in precisely the same sense as seeing a gun or a knife as a weapon (or seeing a cup as a vessel for drinking tea or coffee); because reflective life has a moral dimension so does our experience, and moral significance is woven into the sensory perception of a knife as a weapon, just as the idea of healing is woven into the visual appearance or taste of a medicine.

   In the absence of a moral dimension there is no reflective life because a life that is valued in itself depends upon the preservation and promotion of what can be valued. Neither reason, nor sentiment, nor social co-operation, in itself or in concert with the others, implies morality, and when we speak of moral honour and moral respect it is not always self-evident that ‘moral’ refers in any clear and unambiguous sense to morality. For example, while the honour that a funeral bestows upon the member of a family and its circle is likely to have a moral significance, the honour and respect that are given to authority and the nominally distinguished might have no moral significance at all. When that is so, what is lacking is something that exemplifies respect for a life that is valued in itself. We should bear in mind that, as a dimension of reflective life that arises naturally out of the necessity to further such a life, morality is generated in a multiplicity of different ways by the many-sided nature of that life. 

   When a person decides to pursue a certain course in life, or study a particular subject or acquire a skill, he or she assumes a moral attitude simply by taking that action and thereby promoting and preserving the value of that sphere and values that are connected with it. To develop a previous example, he might study architecture and thereby further the values associated with this field. Commitment to the value of architecture and values related to it is involved in what he is doing, and its moral significance does not require any sentiment of benevolence or sympathy for others, or for mankind in general. Nor does it present itself as a maxim that demands a rational justification. In short, declaring that something has genuine value is already to assume responsibility for it, to assume a moral attitude. If someone claims that a painting he owns is of genuine value we would expect him to ensure that it was well framed, clean and placed in an advantageous light, and so that it would not be damaged by temperature or light. This moral attitude can be revised or refined by rational argument, and so to this extent it is subject to reason, but reason is not its source and it is not specifically a defining characteristic of a rational being. It is a defining characteristic of a reflective being.

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In order to preface the contrast of these ideas with Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, I will allude to the underlying structure for moral action that is strongly implied in them. It is important to make an explicit statement about the scope of our actions in this respect and the things to which morality specifically applies. So, contrary to the fashionable emphasis on our treatment of others, I propose that the three aspects of moral action refer, a) to its significance to oneself and how we make something of our lives as reflective beings, b) to how we behave towards other people, and c) to how our actions affect our common life as a community. This is a basic structure for morality and not exhaustive – we may well have reasons to consider the treatment of other sentient creatures, and a common life may be extended to include far more than a narrowly defined community. These qualifications are not especially important to a general theory of this kind.

   With respect to a, responsibility to a life that is valued in itself refers to all of the individuals who participate in that life, including oneself. Aristotle puts the individual at the centre of his moral theory by making personal happiness and fulfilment as a rational being the goal of a moral life. To take this a step further, a life that is valued in itself is centred in the lives and experience of the individuals for whom life is valued, and therefore responsibility to such life lies pre-eminently in how its direction and purpose are determined by personal experience and action. Both b and c are self-evidently fundamental to morality and they imply one another, in the sense that how we affect others affects the community and vice versa. They are also a grounding for a, since it is only by means of involvement with others in a community that a sense of values is acquired. To this it can be added that in the absence of concern for one’s own character a sense of responsibility to the lives and well-being of others would lose a large part of its motivation. There will be something to say about the interrelations between these aspects of morality when we go into Aristotle’s theory. 

   In Book 1 of The Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle presents a teleological conception of human being that sees its psychological purpose and fulfilment in happiness – which is defined as a man who acts in accordance with moral and intellectual virtue. That is to say: a man who knows himself to live a virtuous life in pursuit of an understanding of himself and the world. It is in his or her approximation to this goal that an individual is happy, and fulfils the nature of a rational being such as a person. The intellect is seen as divided between the practical, which masters the changing elements of experience and morality, and is represented by prudence, and the theoretical which is contemplative and represented by philosophy, science and art (understood as technical skill). However, for Aristotle, the happiness of a human being and its flourishing also depends upon the fitness and health of all aspects of its nature, including such attributes as physical strength and beauty, and this implies a development in the soul, or nature of the person, as a rational being. It also concerns the social significance of the person, his position in the community and his being honoured by those to whom he is socially connected. The goal of human nature for Aristotle is not represented by a contemplative hermit; the image of a seer as a recluse does not belong to the ideals or the purposes of Aristotle’s theory, which are significantly political. Ethics is a study of what makes a good person and therefore a good community; good individuals are necessary to the running of a good community and a good community creates the means for making people good.      

   Aristotle’s theory has a biological basis. This is evident in his teleology of eudemonia defined in terms of happiness and flourishing. Plants and animals have their ways of flourishing and rational creatures have their ways, which are seen as an extension of the others, and inclusive of them. This conception of flourishing is reflected in the ways in which morality is conceived in his theory, in the sense that human flourishing is possible because reason enables a person to organize and order life (and so live virtuously) because he or she can control instinct and desire in ways that are not possible in a non-rational creature. Rationality also makes it possible for the human to experience the divine, and the intellectual powers that it gives him mean that he can be blessed beyond the simple capacities of other animals. 

   Taking the view that reflective life is one that is valued in itself, and that moral values are necessary to such life does not follow Aristotle’s biological model. In this connection morality defined as responsibility implies much more than the mastery of desire by reason, particularly as it is at the heart of decisions that affect the direction that is taken by the life of an individual. Cézanne’s dedication to painting is not defined by the mastery of desire by reason, and, from this point of view, it becomes possible to question the whole scheme of thought in Aristotle’s theory. So, the idea that eudemonia is the goal to which human life is directed can be opposed by the obvious alternative, namely that it is the accomplishments of a man or woman, or the life that he fashions and his contribution to it, that represent his goals, and it is through these that reflective life is realized and considered worth defending. According to this viewpoint, a sense of flourishing and happiness are not the goal of living reflectively but typically though not always accompany his achievements and are thwarted by his failures. In this, the biological basis for morality is replaced by a conception of responsibility to a form of reflective life, and self-interest is closely related to what makes moral values necessary. Instead of adding divinity to biology in order to explain the excitement of intellectual experiences, we should conceive of a person as a reflective creature, the nature and experience of which is determined by self-awareness and the sense of a life that is valued in itself. 

   Aristotle’s conception of intellectual virtue can be seen as a basis for his emphasis on reason in the theory of moral virtue (for example, the absence of imagination and memory from his intellectual virtues). This, in turn, supports his assumption of the categorical nature of moral virtues, as defined by the prudent man’s adherence to a mean in his moral judgements. The mean represents moral virtue for Aristotle, in the sense that s good man is one who is habituated to good actions and uses reason in order to avoid extremes and make the right decisions. Prudence is the intellectual virtue of reason in these matters. According to this appraisal of human actions, a good moral judgement is unequivocally sound because it is balanced simply upon rational deliberation and a true perception of oneself and the world. The true perception of oneself and the world is acquired through education and habit. 

   In opposition to Aristotle’s view, the intellectual virtues of imagination and intuition enable an artist to take chances that might be essential to the creation of great work, and this defies the idea that courage is typically a mean that avoids opposite extremes. Such an artist is not irrational, but he or she is not confined to thinking in accordance with habit and mere reason, since he might devote much time, energy and commitment to experiment that could lead into something that transforms our understanding of ourselves and the world. So, while the likelihood of his success will depend upon his knowledge of the art form, a successful realization will emerge from his courageous response to intuitive feeling and imagination – that is from intellectual virtues that are not specifically rational. What applies in this connection to art applies generally to original thought that is of any consequence, and so must apply to Aristotle’s own philosophy.

   In the Nichomachean Ethics, courage is regarded as the mean of cowardice and recklessness, the former being a lack of courage and the latter being an excess of the same virtue. It is a problem for this argument that, while a cowardly person is lacking virtue, recklessness in itself has nothing to do with courage, it is simply the opposite of carefulness, circumspection or due caution. Revealingly, extreme courage could legitimately be associated with self-sacrifice, as in the case of a man who sacrifices his own life for the sake of his family, or a soldier who takes great risks to protect his fellow soldiers from an attack or ambush. In this light, there is no excess of courage, since the self-sacrifice cannot reasonably be considered as exceeding this virtue, rather it should be seen as virtuous in the highest degree. This implies that, in relation to courage, while there can be a lack it is illogical to speak of excess, and Aristotle’s calculus breaks down.

   We can go further than this and say that what applies to courage must also apply to any other virtue, since it is equally true of any virtue that an extreme expression of it must remain a virtue and be virtue in the highest degree. The example of courage shows that the extreme expression of a virtue can never be excessive because in losing its connection with that virtue it also becomes a separate quality and no longer one of the terms for a mean. For another example, the faithful pursuit of a vocation might mean that a person denies him or herself the opportunity to acquire fame and wealth, and this could be considered to be an extreme expression of personal integrity. Such a denial would not be renunciation of the world, but rather acting with the virtue of integrity to the highest degree. A complete renunciation could be seen as an expression of integrity, but, more correctly, as a separate disposition and thereby excluded as a term for the mean of integrity. The logical flaw in Aristotle’s calculus will be exposed by any virtue we subject to this kind of analysis.

   The failure of this calculus can be seen as a symptom of what is wrong with Aristotle’s conception of the intellectual virtues, in particular with its emphasis upon reason at the expense of inner experience, imagination and memory. Hence, in his moral theory, the imposition of a rational formula for virtue inhibits the imaginative freedom that is necessary to our understanding of relations between virtue and the complex circumstances in which it is realized in human experience. St. Peter’s denial of Jesus is an example of such complexity, and one that leaves no room for the Aristotelean calculus. In the circumstances, Peter can only choose between extremes, either to admit his connection with Jesus and face execution, or deny the connection and save himself. Significantly, the virtuous response would have been generated primarily by Peter’s sense of himself and the world – as determined by experience, imagination and memory. It would not have been a matter of calculation but a spontaneous expression of his commitment to the relationship to Jesus, and, above all, his faith.

   A profound work of art on the encounter that Peter’s denial engenders can be found in Luigi Tansillo’s sixteenth century Italian cycle of poems, The Tears of St. Peter, as set to music by Lassus in a cycle of madrigals. Here, there is a great moral significance in Peter’s knowledge of what his betrayal means to Jesus. This is at the heart of Tansillo’s characterization of them, and it alludes to something more than friendship, since their relationship is inseparable from the fundamental purpose of Jesus’ life, and the importance of Peter’s faith. Tansillo makes the bitter disillusionment of Jesus central in the story of Peter’s denial. It gives a particular depth to the moral fault of disloyalty, which is represented in the poems in a strikingly personal way and is amplified by Lassus in his addition of a further poem to the cycle. This is why Peter’s sense of himself and the world, as determined by experience, imagination and memory, is part of moral judgement, and of critical significance in understanding the intellectual virtues in this connection. Hence the work demonstrates what is necessary to understand the implications of a morally complex situation.

   The pivotal moment of the cycle lies in Jesus’ backward glance as he is taken away by his captors. This glance impresses upon Peter the meaning of their relationship and the degree to which it has been betrayed. In this respect, sensory perception is not merely a vehicle for data which can then be examined by reason, but also a medium of moral intention, and meaning is conveyed instantaneously. A person who was unable to understand the intention would be lacking in moral perception.

   The involvement of experience in the formation of moral judgement implies a further significance that is directly related to the assumptions that are made by Aristotle when, to a great extent, he excludes experience, imagination and memory from the intellectual virtues. For the involvement of these non-rational elements in moral judgement means that it is entangled with self-interest, and that the ascription of moral virtues cannot be categorical. As we have just seen, Peter’s sense of himself depends upon the intellectual virtues of experience, imagination and memory and these include the inner life of sensory perception. A person’s sense of him or herself is, of course, a direct expression of self-interest, and so, in this case, the entanglement of moral judgement with self-interest in inescapable.

   In this light, we can expand on the situation that is dramatized in The Tears of St. Peter. On being told, ‘When the cock crows thrice you will deny me thrice’, Peter is quick to protest and vows to die with his Lord. In the cold and sober recognition of what he has done in denying any connection with Jesus, he is starkly exposed to the importance of that connection and its implications. Namely, that he has given his life and its significance to the conception that Jesus has of himself. Thus, we can now see how deeply Peter’s moral judgement is entangled with self-interest as it affects the judgement of both, and how deeply he is trapped by this entanglement. In this respect, the cycle of madrigals dramatizes the entanglement of moral judgement with self-interest in a way that is psychologically acute and logically irresistible. With great subtlety, the music takes us into the disciple’s mind and heart.

   In these remarks, we can see that because moral judgement is entangled with self-interest, it simplifies Peter’s situation to dwell on his cowardice, or his disloyalty, or his lack of integrity. To define his action purely in terms of moral virtue is to abstract its value from the full human reality of our behaviour and its moral implications. So, while it is undeniable that a person can be courageous or cowardly, honest or devious, loyal or disloyal, there are many circumstances in which reference to moral virtues is no more than a superficial gloss on the moral significance of our behaviour. Aristotle’s attachment to moral virtues in his conception of morality deprives him of the ability to reach into the heart of the matter and understand the psychology of reflective life. A calculus based on moral virtues is no more than a convenient device for making superficial judgements upon a person’s character and actions.

    A commonplace and undramatic example of the entanglement of moral judgement with self-interest, which shows that moral virtues cannot be ascribed categorically, is that of a scientist who believes that money should not be wasted on music education. He is not being dishonest if, on the strength of his own experience, he considers music to be a leisure activity, and cosmology and the study of sub-atomic particles to be infinitely more important. But he cannot be categorically described as honest if this conviction arises out of an inflated conception of the value of physics and a meagre conception of what can be achieved in music. The self-examination that is necessary to a categorical ascription of honesty would, in many cases, simply exclude the possibility of making any judgement, since few could know enough to be completely honest.

   Therefore, moral virtues cannot be ascribed categorically because a person’s conception of a life that is valued in itself is necessarily determined by self-interest (having such a life entails responsibility to its value). On one hand, moral judgement is necessary to our participation in a life that is valued in itself, and, on the other, a particular judgement is determined by the personal history that has enabled the individual to make something of his or her own life. Thus, he might in all sincerity make a judgement without being aware of how it has been shaped by his past. In this connection, David Copperfield is a subtle and convincing portrayal of the moral dimension of reflective life in action (Nelson 1998).  

   Hence, the categorical conception of moral virtues depends upon a secure understanding of our motivation with respect to actions that are morally sensitive. We cannot be considered to be honest, or just, or prudent, or courageous in a pure sense if the understanding of our motives is uncertain, and we are following inclinations that are merely interpreted as morally pure. In this connection, we should add to the three aspects of moral responsibility the aspect of self-interest, as a factor that fundamentally determines the nature of behaviour in a reflective being, and consider this in relation to the possibility of understanding our motives. An indissoluble tension between experience of a life that is valued in itself and moral responsibility to such a life implies that a categorical conception of moral virtues cannot be sustained throughout our experience and actions. This alone represents a serious threat to Aristotle’s system.

   There is a strong tendency for the three aspects of moral responsibility to a life that is valued in itself to overlap. We can see this in Aristotle’s aristocratic moral philosophy. The possession of slaves is a failure to acknowledge the freedom of others, and obviously a moral failure, but this also overlaps with a moral degradation of the slave owner. In order to maintain a relation of this kind it is necessary both to behave oppressively and, if one is morally responsible, to pervert one’s own understanding. This is because, in this case, moral justification for your way of life requires the kind of explanation that is given by Aristotle himself, namely that a person’s being used as a slave is sanctioned by his or her inferiority (which is akin to that of a lower animal). Since it is easy to recognize that this inferiority is created by the restricted life that he or she is forced to live, the moral justification given by Aristotle and other slave owners is a corruption of the mind. The moral violation of oneself that is concealed within the moral violation of others is especially telling in this case, as the contemplative life of insight and understanding is taken by Aristotle to represent the highest value and ultimate expression of virtuous fulfilment in a human life. To include the third aspect of responsibility to a life that is valued in itself: it is not difficult to see both that the self-vindicating practice of slavery violates a common life, and that Aristotle’s philosophical endorsement of the malign practice is even more deeply corrupt for having some political authority.

   The moral injury to oneself in certain kinds of deception and exploitation of other people is, moreover, a familiar way in which we can see the three aspects of moral responsibility overlap. But something similar can be seen in the violation of oneself that is present in forms of moral evasion and self-deception. A common example is the smiling friend who employs a stream of diversionary good humour in order to hide from his insincerity. By keeping up the pretence of friendship he ‘forgets’ all of the past disloyalty that is characteristic of his part in the relationship, and thereby becomes a reassuring semblance of what his victim imagines him to be. The moral injury to oneself in this example lies in falsifying a relation between people that is naturally valued, the violation of which trivialises life for the individual concerned. Clearly, his evasion injures the other person insofar as he or she is taken in and therefore deceived about the nature of this association. Hence the ‘friendship’ is a corruption of human relations in general, and violates a common life that is valued in itself. 

   Apart from its destructive psychological consequences, this kind of corruption jeopardises reflective life itself, since a life that is valued in itself depends upon a genuinely shared evaluation of many things by a whole community or certain groups within it. A reflective being cannot even consider the prospect of living a life that is simply enjoyed and endured, and in which nothing is distinguished or important. Thus, in the absence of moral responsibility a life that is valued collapses, and avoidance of this threat is a powerful incentive to be responsible. Imagine a world in which all teachers are habitually insincere.

   The purpose of these comments on the Nichomachean Ethics is not to produce a comprehensive critique but to offer a contrasting view that serves as a framework for the conception of morality that I wish to present. Therefore, I will not extend the examination of Aristotle’s theories about virtue into a discussion of his theory of the teleology of human life and the function of a rational creature. What I have said about intellectual virtues and the entanglement of moral judgement with self-interest, and the non-categorical nature of moral virtue, is sufficient to satisfy my purpose. It should be obvious that this removes the internal support upon which Aristotle’s virtue theory depends, and this removal has been a means of showing how moral values can be understood as necessary to a life that is valued in itself. We have seen that the value of reflective life is determined by how that life is lived by an individual, or individuals, and the different kinds of example that I have given suggest that being necessary to reflective life is the one thing to which the three overlapping aspects of morality apply with equal validity.

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In Aristotle’s theory, reason is given a specific role as the origin of moral judgement and moral virtue, and it is closely related, as we have seen, to the biological emphasis in his conception of ethics. The rationality of a person is what enables him or her to discipline and organize life by acting against the promptings of instinct and feeling, and thereby live a good life. This makes it possible for a man to enjoy a life that is centred in the mind, insofar as the practical use of reason enables him to live contemplative life in the full awareness of his own virtue (Book 1). However, contrary to these ideas, the practical use of reason can be seen in ways that are much less attached to this biological emphasis, as, for example, in the employment of reason to pursue a vocation. Becoming an architect, or learning to play a game successfully, or acquiring knowledge of some field must involve the use of reason in a much richer sense than that of the mastery of desires and impulses, and each of those kinds of rational behaviour generates its own sphere of desires. 

   In this respect, a person is much more than a rational animal that can make use of reason in order to curb desire and thus impose order on its life. To a being who experiences a life that is valued in itself reason often serves an exploratory inclination that generates desires that have no direct source in biology, and may also have little to do with happiness, immediate pleasure or a good life as Aristotle defines it. Often a reflective being might better be described as one that takes chances with its happiness, and this can be largely true of all of the important spheres of its experience.

   As the expression of a life that is valued in itself, any sphere to which a person commits him or herself must entail moral responsibility. In deciding to become an architect, or a footballer, or a serious student he assumes a moral attitude to the values that are inherent in the sphere, and each will make its own moral demand on his use of practical reason. It would not be morally responsible, for example, for an architect to ignore the history of architecture, since this would be contrary to a proper recognition of his interest. Hence, we can imagine a wide diversity of ways in which human activity involves a use of practical reason that has a moral aspect. At the same time, it is clear that there is no specific use of reason, such as the mastery of desires and instincts, that represents the function of reason in our moral behaviour. Reason is simply a necessary part of any true engagement that is made with things that we consider to be worth taking seriously.

   The same kind of judgement might be made of feeling. For somebody who wished to become an architect, it would be healthy to have some enthusiasm for architecture, and this is generally true of our interests and goals. In this connection, having a passion is a moral feeling and so the encouragement of such feeling can be seen as morally responsible. Moreover, as with reason, there is no particular orientation of feeling that can be identified as specifically moral and guide our realization of a life that is valued in itself. This is because moral values lie intrinsically in our involvement in reflective life, and not in any faculty, or feeling, or psychological disposition that plays a part in its realization.

   Morality cannot be identified with our sentiments and natural sympathies because we can act morally in direct opposition to our sentiments. An obvious example is admitting to oneself the exceptional value of an achievement by someone towards whom we feel the deepest personal antipathy. This can be motivated by the suppression of one feeling by another in which, for example, the antipathy is countered by shame or embarrassment. However, enmity can also be overcome by an attitude of respect for a life that is valued, since judging simply according to sentiment debases the life in which we participate. The sense of a life that is valued in itself is not originated by feeling, sentiment or emotion, it is engrained in our responses to the world in which we participate. So, while it is impossible to establish introspectively that our motivation lies in certain feelings or in moral responsibility, we

know that our attitudes are affected by the moral dimension of reflective life. Hence it is possible, when absorbed in the achievements of someone we normally dislike, to forget altogether our feelings about the person. Habitual resistance to the value of people and things by sentiment is self-evidently degrading to the value of life. Furthermore, in this example, we can see that life refers both to the individual lives of reflective beings and to the common life in which they participate interactively. Denying an achievement that you are capable of recognizing denies the value of both the individual concerned and something of the shared life in which we participate. 

   In this connection, it should be recognized that a life can be valued only when the individual participates in a common life with other reflective beings of the same species. Assuming it to be possible, a completely solitary sentient being might well possess reason and feelings, but values are not generated by individuals alone. They can only be generated by communities, since it is only in the light of what others believe, affirm and deny that one can see an object or course of action as having value, as opposed to being desired, or feared, or abhorred. In order to be of value something must meet a standard that is agreed and thereby makes it something not simply to be desired but also something which is owed recognition and respect. There is no meaning in the idea of recognition and respect in a solitary and socially isolated individual. Respect for something is not merely private, it has a social significance and therefore solicits, where appropriate, the assent of other people.

*

Turning to Ruling Passions, Simon Blackburn’s approach to the basis of morality lies in a Humean emphasis on feeling and emotion, and specifically those of sympathy, benevolence and compassion. This theory is naturalistic in nature in that it aims to establish the psychological foundations for morally inclined sentiments in a mechanical conception of inputs and outputs that determine our sensory perceptions and the deliberations that flow from them. At the outset, I wish to oppose the distinction between inputs and outputs.  Just as I see a cup as a vessel for drinking tea or coffee, I would see an adult beating a child in the street as iniquitous. I would not, as Blackburn implies, see a morally neutral phenomenon and evaluate it as morally significant. Because everything that I experience acquires its character from a life that is valued in itself, and this entails moral perception, my realization of any physical object, or person, or action, or situation is necessarily from a moral point of view, even though my moral perception might be insubstantial, inaccurate or mistaken. Most of the time things may be seen as merely stable and of little moral significance, but nevertheless the sense of moral responsibility is always an aspect of sensory perception and experience. So, while my values and ideas about virtue are influenced by the social world to which I belong and my personal history of involvement with specific individuals and institutions, moral sensitivity itself has its origins in the nature of reflective life.  

   Blackburn describes the input as a recognizable type of character or action or situation, and the output as an evaluative response that is directed towards action. We should acknowledge that he does not represent this as a strictly sequential process – for example, the input and output can occur together in an instant, as, for example, in seeing an adult beating a child as iniquitous, and he refers to those occasions when thought is required to assess the situation and an input and output phase are clearly suggested in our moral deliberations. However, he maintains a basic distinction between a morally neutral situation (input) and an evaluation of it in terms of attitudes that dispose us to take some action (output), and this description of a morally significant event is a basic tenet of his theory and consistent with his argument as a whole (elsewhere he claims that a sentiment can only be opposed by another sentiment). The assumption that an individual, action or situation is morally neutral cannot be justified if our perceptions always give the object or event its character, and thereby make no room for the input/ output distinction. For example, when I see a cup as a vessel for drinking tea or coffee the object is undeniably given its character by my perception of it – a lizard’s perception would give it a very different character. Similarly, the nature and moral significance of an adult beating a child would also be given by my perception of it, always conceding that deliberation might change my perception (I might realize that the adult was pretending).

   Blackburn’s duality of input and output rests on a separation of the event and the response that is made to it, and the terms that he uses appear to be perfectly reasonable. If the event is neutral both morally and experientially then our moral perception of it must come from the attitudes and emotions that represent an output. But this breaks down even more decisively if, in addition to the object’s being given its character by the perception of it, our attitudes and emotions are not the source of its character. When I see a cup simply as a vessel for drinking tea or coffee my attitudes and emotions play no part in sensory perception; rather, the cup acquires its character from its place in my experience, and the same is true of my seeing iniquity in the beating of a child by an adult. This is not an attitude based on feeling, or an emotion, but rather a perception based on understanding; I would certainly have an attitude and feelings but they are not what make my reaction a moral perception, and there are many cases in which I have no attitude or emotion apart from seeing an action as morally irresponsible (for example, it is how I react to reading about the love affairs of Louis XIV).

   Blackburn defines the inner structure of moral experience as a ‘staircase’ of responses from sensory responses to moral attitudes that are based on them (pages 9/12). His staircase is an ascent from basic sensuous pleasures and aversions, related, for example, to the taste of food, through more complex sensory experience in the appreciation of art, which may include an element of approval or disapproval, to actions, like the beating of a child by an adult, that warrant a moral judgement and appropriate resistance, condemnation and punishment. But as in the input/output model to which it is complementary, Blackburn’s staircase is more like an attractive but loose proposal than a convincing argument. For while the beating of a child can easily be related to feelings of disgust that have a more primitive sensory origin there are many kinds of morally sensitive phenomena that do not have any such connection. Cézanne’s dedication to painting, or another person’s commitment to a serious and worthwhile vocation has a moral value as the expression of responsibility to life, and in these cases moral judgement is in no way continuous with sensory experience and taste.

   For Blackburn, the input/output model, together with the staircase of moral inclinations, belongs to his attempt to provide a naturalistic analysis of ethics and this is developed into a more general psychological account of human action in Chapter 3. The following passage exemplifies his approach.

Consider the example of gameplaying. Here, too, there is a definitive normative order: a game is defined by its rules. There is a limit to the extent to which people can fail to conform to the rules. A rule may be broken now and again, but the systematic and acknowledged breaking of the rules becomes not that, but a change of the game. Yet it is largely an empirical matter which game people are playing. Their behaviour tells us which patterns they do conform to and that in turn tells us which game they are playing: that is, which are the rules to which they ought to conform.  Roughly: to play football is to behave in any of a large variety of ways that are licensed by the rules of football…There is, in other words, an assimilation of the normative and the causal order. We know what a desire is by knowing what it would make sense to do in the light of having the desire; but then we know whether someone has the desire by seeing if this light is one that makes good sense of what they do. API can be true because beliefs and desires are defined by what it is that they make sense of. But they are attributed by what they make people do, under the rubric that people do what makes sense to them…The theory of mind that is suggested by these considerations is twofold. On the one hand, the concept of a belief or desire, or any other state of mind, is identified using normative terms. These are defined in terms of what it makes sense in the light of them, given other states similarly defined. On the other hand, their presence in any subject is identified empirically in terms of the causal structures visible in the actions the subject performs, and those she would perform in other circumstances. Any apparent mismatch is averted via the analytical principle API.         (pages 57/8)

In effect, Blackburn assimilates normative experience to mechanical causation as it is revealed by physics, chemistry and biology, though he cautiously describes this as their being assimilated to each other (‘an assimilation of the normative and the causal order’). In doing this he avoids the stigma of reducing the mental to the physical but it is clear that the latter provides the standard for causation to which he must find a way of getting normative behaviour to conform. API (a priori principle of interpretation) is presented as the solution that transforms the elusive complexities of our juggling with beliefs, desires and values. The tautology, ‘they must represent what makes sense to us’, affirms a kind of mechanical causation, one that is akin to physical causation in producing an intelligible sequence of events in our deliberations and decisions. The normative is assimilated to a step by step causal sequence by being interpreted as psychologically necessary.     

   Therefore, we can think of psychological causation as an extension of the physical, as in the causation of a ball rolling down an inclined plane. If the plane and the ball are smooth then a mechanical causation will involve the shape of these objects and gravity and we can see a step by step sequence that is transparently intelligible. Making sense of things in the interaction of beliefs, desires and values is equivalent to the elements of the physical event and gives them the same degree of intelligibility, making for a comparable mechanical causation. 

   However, mental causation is more than a dynamic interaction of beliefs, desires and values, it is also implied in the realization of oneself and the world that gives rise to beliefs, desires and values. In this connection, non-mechanical causation is entailed by reflective life and we can see it in the recovery of a name, or suddenly seeing the form concealed within a semi-abstract painting or a piece of music. There is no trace of an intelligible step by step sequence in these kinds of experience. For Blackburn, API makes normative behaviour conform to such a sequence. This is because ‘the concept of a belief or desire, or any other state of mind, is identified using normative terms’ and ‘their presence in any subject is identified empirically in terms of the causal structures visible in the actions the subject performs.’ Against this, the sense of a life that is valued in itself is present in the sense of oneself implicit in our perception of the object, and the interdependence of mechanical and non-mechanical causation, along with the intercausal causation implied in it, is essential to being sentient.

   To give an example of non-mechanical causation in the experience of oneself: an athlete can only value his or her strength, agility and speed because he has a sense of himself as a reflective being; that is to say, a sense of himself as having a life that is valued in itself or what we normally call a sense of his own identity (his athletic prowess exists, and as something worthwhile, because it is the intended outcome of his training and approach to life). Without this, his strength, agility and speed would have no meaning. We cannot value our life for a particular reason unless we value that life in itself. 

   Having the sense of a life that is valued in itself is not like having a belief or desire. It is a matter of desire for an athlete to develop his strength, agility and speed, and this enables us to see the desire in his behaviour, in accordance with API, whereas the sense of a life that is valued in itself is a form of self-awareness that can determine the character of an object in many ways. It might take the form of seeing a cup as a vessel for drinking tea or coffee (recognition), of remembering a name from one’s past, or of seeing the form concealed within a semi-abstract painting or a piece of music (insight). In this connection, a sense of oneself is created not simply by obvious relations, as in knowing how our powers are the outcome of training, but also by experience that is subliminal in nature. Critically, we cannot assimilate this sense of ourselves to a strictly empirical or mechanical causation like that of a ball rolling down an inclined plane – how we realize an object subliminally, under the influence of past experience, is by definition largely obscure. 

   This non-mechanical causation is not the causation of the physical sciences and, moreover, it is pervasive in our experience and deeply influential upon personal identity and the constitution of things. In this light, its interconnection with mechanical causation points to a complexity for the theory of mind that cannot be resolved in naturalistic terms, since it entails a mutual involvement of materiality and self-awareness that is fundamental to the perception of an object, and to our beliefs, desires and values (Nelson 2010, 2018).

   We can strengthen our understanding of what is implied in having the sense of a life that is valued in itself by considering it as part of the experience of a young man and his development. Clearly, nobody has a picture of himself as being in possession of a certain kind of life. But we can imagine the man as having what he sees as a number of strengths and weaknesses. For example, he might be reasonably capable with an interest in drawing and his life might be socially stable. At the same time, he might be gauche in his relations with others and lack abilities that he would like to have, for example in sport and music. For much of his youth he might be burdened by feelings of inadequacy and an inability to make progress in his life. Let us say that things change for him when he develops a strong interest in architecture and he is able to immerse himself in something that he finds deeply interesting. 

   While it is obvious that his strengths will help him to succeed, it might well be the case that his weaknesses will also play an important part in this. Without being thought about, the sense of failure through which he has lived might be an essential part of an intense dedication to his ambition to become an architect, and in this respect a subliminal pressure might lie behind the sense of himself that guides his progress. Thus, we can refer to the sense of a life that is valued in itself without implying anything very explicit, like a picture of oneself or a lengthy description. Similarly, a person might feel him or herself to be generally capable, and have good reason to think that in various spheres he will be able to analyse a problem and solve it. The inner sense of himself that such a person has is not a matter of remembering the successes of the past, but rather one of feeling in a certain way about how to cope, and this feeling is part of what enables him to cope. This is not knowing oneself to possess a particular skill, but having a favourable sense of oneself.

   In order to define the sense of a life that is valued in itself by reference to the inner experience of a person, we can distinguish between two essential kinds of continuity, sequential continuity and phenomenal continuity. We can highlight the former in the person who is generally capable. In someone who knows how to fix a tap there is a knowledge of how to replace a washer, accompanied by the knowledge that he or she is able to execute the task. In this respect, there is a sense of assurance that at each point in the process he will be able to move on to the next in an uninterrupted sequence. This moment to moment self-assurance is a subliminal sense of oneself as having a certain ability, and so the individual’s sense of himself is bound up in the sequence. Moreover, our lives are very much determined by sequential continuity as one day is generally similar to another, and so we can see our identity as reflective beings in the familiarity of activities and the things involved in them. We experience a sense of oneself in all of the things that we perceive and with which we concern ourselves.

   We can highlight phenomenal continuity when we consider the young man described above as a middle-aged man reflecting upon different aspects of his past experience. This makes the wider point that the sense of a life that is valued in itself is manifested in the overlapping of different spheres in our experience. Imagine that in looking back on his youth, he recalls two distinct kinds of experience. One is of long nocturnal walks on his own from his home to the beach. These walks have the air of being an aimless pleasure, in which familiar places acquire an elusive allure by virtue of being in darkness, an allure that is occasionally intensified by tantalizing lights in the windows, which evoke the existence of lives from which he is excluded. In his imagination, he tries to x-ray the houses and create an interior structure for them. The other experience is of hearing a piece of music for the first few times. In this he is excited and intrigued by something rich and elusive about the first of the Brandenburg Concertos. The sense of something highly structured suddenly appearing, and with an exuberant and lucid vitality, comes to him as an unprecedented musical vision. Being in its own world, it has a profoundly tantalizing sense of meaning and significance.

   These events obviously belong to his experience in the sense that they both belong to his past, and belong to a sequential development that makes them possible. He could not have had them when he was three years old. But there is also an affinity between them that suggests they belong to an individual experience of life in a more interesting way, for which the order in which they occurred is irrelevant to his reflection. I have used language that draws attention to this affinity and its play of disclosure, concealment and imagination in different kinds of sensory perception. Thus, he would have good reason to feel that something substantial about his identity is present in these memories; that they represent a phenomenal continuity in his sense of himself, and therefore in his sense of a life that is valued in itself.

*

Blackburn’s conception of beliefs, desires and values as an assimilation of the normative and the causal order underpins his elucidation of the moral sentiments in Chapter 7, The Good, the Right and the Common Point of View. His assumption that there is such a thing as a moral sentiment which governs our moral judgement rests on the primacy of beliefs and desires and a foundation for them in nature. As we have seen, this foundation is by no means secure, and we should add that the idea of a moral sentiment is not as inevitable as it might appear to be. For though expressions like moral outrage and moral uneasiness combine ideas of morality and sentiment, the reference to experience in these terms does not necessarily define the nature of moral virtues, any more than ‘football fanatic’ defines the nature of a game. 

   The argument in Chapter 7 depends upon some decidedly shaky empiricism from David Hume and Adam Smith. For example, in the section ‘Vibrating in Sympathy’, the natural sympathy that we share ‘with others in the sentiments they entertain of us’ is ‘tellingly’ presented in relation to being mortified by being told that you have bad breath. Here, ‘either surveying ourselves as we appear to others, or considering others as they feel themselves, we enter, by that means, into sentiments which no way belong to us, and in which nothing but sympathy is able to interest us’. A girl in her teens could tell Blackburn and Hume that, in this case, the accusation is mortifying because it puts you in the wrong and makes you feel embarrassed and bad about yourself. This is the opposite of a sentiment that is based on sympathy for the feelings of others. When we consider the crimes and heartless offences we commit without the slightest sign of being mortified, it is unlikely that many of us would care deeply about briefly exposing somebody to an unpleasant odour. In circumstances of this kind, sympathy would actually be shown by one who knew that his or her companion had bad breath and refrained from mentioning it, and nobody would be mortified. Blackburn continues with another ‘staircase’ that is even more curious than the first. 

We can usefully see each of Hume and Smith as suggesting a four-part process. First we love one or another quality in people when we come across it, possibly because we have been educated to do so. Then we take up the common point of view which turns love to esteem, assessing a trait of character as admirable or the reverse. Third, we can become aware that this is a trait that we ourselves exhibit, or do not. And fourth, when we do so we are moved to a self-satisfaction and pride, or unease and shame, corresponding to our original assessment, and imagining this assessment of ourselves made of us by others. This is a kind of internal vibration in sympathy with the imagined sentiments of others. Hume constantly insists on the way our own pride resonates with the imagined esteem of others, or the way our own humility resonates with their imagined contempt.                                            (page 203)

Although there are places in Ruling Passions where Blackburn opposes an over-simplified account of our motivation and experience, this critical moment, in which he provides a definition of moral inclination, is marked by a mechanical conception that echoes the assimilation of the normative and the causal order. Mechanical relations in accordance with nature disregard the fluidity and complexity of attitudes, beliefs and desires in reflective experience. Hence the progression from loving a personal quality to taking up a common point of view that turns love to esteem is hardly universal. It is common for the transition to go the other way, as when esteem is excited by a trustworthy advocate, or a wave of popular interest, and this leads to an appreciation and love for the object or, of course, disappointment. We often esteem or deplore other people on the basis of reputation, hearsay, rumour or gossip, without having had any direct experience of the person. There are even some who exploit this means of shaping our opinions. Hence the response that is described by Blackburn as, ‘a kind of internal vibration in sympathy with the imagined sentiments of others’ often looks more like a languid submission to somebody else’s authority.

   The other steps in the process are no more convincing. It is a familiar expression of our egotism that we esteem some quality in another person just because we imagine it to be one which we ourselves possess, or to devalue the talents of others when they are talents that we ourselves do not possess. In reflective experience as we understand it, there is no stepwise progression from loving a quality that we see in another person to corresponding feelings about ourselves, rather, these things co-exist in a varied and unsystematic interplay from the start. Thus, Hume’s insistence that ‘our own pride resonates with the imagined esteem of others’ overlooks the many occasions in which imagined contempt propels us into an exaggerated sense of our own importance, and those in which the imagined esteem is good but not good enough to resonate with our pride. Furthermore, when our humility is in response to the imagined contempt of others it is likely to be prompted not by sympathy with their feelings but by fear of their ridicule or censure. 

   The difficulty Blackburn has in establishing a psychological context for moral sentiments that are basic to moral judgement is symptomatic of the impossibility of establishing a moral theory that is based on such feelings as sympathy, benevolence and compassion, despite their being an incentive to action that is taken for moral reasons. That morality should not be identified with benevolence can be demonstrated quite easily, since a moral value (e.g. justice) is impartial and benevolence is normally partial. For example, x, y and z are colleagues in an institution, and x and y dislike z. On one occasion when they are together x deliberately humiliates z and this becomes known to the head of the institution, who demands from y an account of what has happened. In these circumstances y might unjustly minimize x’s offence, as he is normally sympathetic to x and quite unsympathetic to z. It is obviously self-contradictory to propose that injustice and dishonesty are moral. 

   We cannot dispose of this example by saying that sometimes there may be exceptions but in general a moral sense can be derived from feelings of benevolence. When y is told to give an account of x’s actions there is a moral demand made on him, since the worth of his account hinges upon his honesty. Moreover, morally similar cases are commonplace and this counts heavily against the idea that feelings of benevolence are the source of morality. Even if, somewhat desperately, it is suggested that y is protecting x out of loyalty to him and loyalty is a moral quality, the example can just as easily be one in which there is no particular friendship or occasion for loyalty between x and y, only y’s inclination to be more benevolent to x than to z.

   The attachment to Hume and his tendency towards a mechanical account of moral perception is reflected in an important psychological aspect to Blackburn’s theory, and it represents a point of conflict with my conception of morality as a dimension of reflective experience. In Chapter 8, Self-Control, Reason and Freedom, the following passage is part of an argument with a Kant-inspired conception of reason as an independent legislator over our desires and inclinations that is itself of no interest to me here. Therefore, I am deliberately taking this passage out of its context in order to oppose it as being illuminatingly characteristic of Blackburn’s approach.

Deliberation is an active engagement with the world, not a process of introspecting our own consciousness of it. The last thing you want to do when you are wondering when to make your dash through the traffic, or whether to move bishop to rook 5, is to take your mind off the traffic or the chessboard. In fact, this may be the last thing you ever want to do: consider the many ways of failing that await the poet who makes his or her own consciousness of emotion into the subject of a poem, instead of the emotion itself…Supposing that my own desires fill the foreground of deliberation is exactly akin to supposing that my experience is my normal object of concern when I attend to features of the external world. Now this mistake in the philosophy of perception nourishes the idea of a realm of ‘sense data’, or immediate objects of perception, and thence leads to thinking of ourselves as spectators in an inner theatre: a Cartesian self whose relationship to perceptions is uncannily like my relation to the world, but also mysteriously unlike it, if only because it does not itself need second-order data.                                                       (page 254)

The problems of second-order data and thinking of ourselves as spectators in an inner theatre are created by the underlying assumptions in Blackburn’s moral philosophy. Namely, that the physical object and external world have an independent identity as phenomena, that owes nothing to how they are perceived by sentient beings like ourselves. This unjustified opposition is what also creates the Cartesian self, the mysteriousness of which arises out of a tortuously confused way of thinking about the physical object.

   There is nothing odd about ‘my experience [being] my normal object of concern when I attend to the features of the external world’. This is so every time I consider what I register in the face of another person, or what it is that I find compelling in a sculpture of Brancusi or in a spare, intense musical composition by Webern. If I did not consider how I am affected by the language and form of, say, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 then I could not possibly make any progress in understanding it, as the poem is not simply an item in the external world. Rather, it should be properly described as an interplay between an external object and the reader’s inner response to it, an interplay that increases in richness and subtlety as the meaning of the poem is revealed with the aid of self-awareness.

   Take the lines, ‘Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines / And often is his gold complexion dimmed, / And every fair from fair sometime declines / By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.’ If I could not see my response to the connection between ‘too hot’ and ‘the eye of heaven shines’, I would not appreciate the metaphor that presents the young man as sun-like in being both sexually promiscuous and physically radiant. Then I would not have a basis for forming a response to ‘his gold complexion dimmed’, which alludes to the physical and moral effect of promiscuity on him. This also depends on my self-awareness in absorbing the second line as continuous with the first. In reading the subsequent lines there is a similar awareness of my response to the suggestive use of language and the logical progression in the thought it conveys. 

   With reference to Blackburn’s assertion that the poet expresses an emotion and not consciousness of his or her own emotions, these comments indicate how wrong he is. In Sonnet 18, the lines are spoken by two personae, the poet and the sceptic, and both are fairly represented in my remarks on the second quatrain. Self-awareness, including emotional self-awareness is basic to the poem, and we see this clearly in the ways in which metaphor and the music of the lines express the self-conscious attitudes and feelings of the ‘poet’ and sceptic towards the subject (for a discussion of the sonnet as a whole, see Nelson 2010 and 2017).

   It is obvious from these remarks that the ability to make sense of any poem, or other work of art, depends on a self-awareness that accompanies our response to the flow of meaning in the work. Also, it should be clear that this self-awareness is not a matter of paying direct attention to oneself; rather, it is a subliminal sense of what has gone before, and this sense can be extended to our being subliminally in touch with many elements of the work at the same time. Otherwise, when I deliberate upon its meaning I could not achieve a coherent interpretation of something as subtly organized as one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. However, what is strikingly true of reading a Shakespeare sonnet is also true of making sense of any poem or work of art, and, furthermore, of any statement or conversation. Subliminal self-awareness is necessary to our holding in mind the sense of a sentence, so that we can ultimately know what is intended by the speaker.

   In order to exclude self-awareness from our deliberation upon immediate experience, Blackburn uses examples in which attention to oneself is well-nigh impossible, such as being immersed in a game of chess. However, it is possible that self-awareness is always an aspect of experience but, in some cases, it is obscured by the need to attend to whatever is being experienced (e.g. a physical object, the course of a game, a memory or idea that one is trying to seize hold of). In a torrid game of football, or facing a fast bowler in a cricket match it is unlikely that a player will have much time for paying attention to his or her own responses, he simply has to make the correct response (which itself implies some degree of self-awareness). Another kind of experience might well leave room for self-awareness in our deliberations upon the object, and introspective self-awareness might be incorporated into the experience when it recurs. 

   For example, a man might notice that he is attracted to women of a particular nationality who have what seems to him to be a special kind of quietly reflective demeanour. When he sees some women of this kind he is intrigued not only by the object but by his response to it, and wonders why this kind of appearance excites his curiosity. And because this experience is not an isolated one but has happened a number of times with different women, whenever it occurs the interest in his own response might accompany his response to the object itself. This is a clear and unambiguous case in which deliberation on the object of an experience includes introspective deliberation upon the inner sources of a sensory experience.

   There is no need to speak here of an inner theatre. The self-awareness in our experience is as natural as awareness of the world and its objects, and Blackburn makes the mistake of separating the perceiving subject from the world – it doesn’t occur to him that the sentient being, along with its sensory perceptions, feelings and emotions and other kinds of inner experience, is itself an essential part of that world. If I see a bicycle this is my perception of a bicycle, and what goes on in me when the object is realized as a physical object (or phenomenon) is as relevant to the perception and its reality as the material source for it (Nelson 2010). For obvious reasons, it is typical for me to be interested in the bicycle itself, for example, in the use I wish to make of it, but it is no less natural for me to be interested how I perceive the object (as, for example, a stylish and efficient mode of transport or a disconcertingly unstable mode). Sometimes interest in the object and interest in one’s response to it are tightly interwoven, as in the commonplace experience of thinking that someone is ‘not my type’. This may imply a considerable and highly significant interest in our responses, and interest in our own responses plays an important part in our attitude to other people generally (not to mention a vast array of other things). Blackburn’s input/output model of perception is invalidated by the necessity of subliminal self-awareness to realization of the physical object as a phenomenon. 

   Another kind of example may show us more clearly how subliminal self-awareness is involved in ordinary experience. Thus, when I am asked a question about my behaviour, or a decision I have made, certain ideas might subliminally accompany my reply. If I am then asked a further question, I might realize what these thoughts were and recognize them as having been subliminal. Suppose that I meet a friend and he asks me where I am going. I tell him that I am going to an exhibition of French landscape paintings, and as I speak the idea of Cezanne’s watercolour landscapes occurs to me in the form of a velleity of which I am only fleetingly conscious. Co-incidentally, my friend asks me if I am familiar with just these paintings and this makes me aware of what I have been thinking. I might reply, ‘Funny you should mention those paintings, I was just thinking about them’, when, if he had not mentioned them, I would have no idea of what my passing thoughts had been. I am strongly inclined to believe that though the co-incidence in this kind of example is rare, subliminal thought accompanies our experience constantly, but, in being subliminal, it normally escapes recognition.

   What occurs subliminally here is analogous with the sensory perception of the paintings, in the sense that the subliminal experience is prompted by feeling for the paintings as objects of exceptional value. This can be inferred from the circumstances in which the subliminal experience has occurred, and so, just as seeing the actual paintings has the moral dimension of their value being an occasion for responsibility to them, so this dimension is implicit in the subliminal experience, however slight and short-lived it may be. In both cases, moreover, the moral dimension is in the object as it is realized, and not in an ‘output’ that is distinct from the ‘input’ of a morally neutral object.

*

 A common mistaken assumption lies behind Aristotle’s categorical moral virtues and Blackburn’s mechanical causation. In Aristotle, the connection of virtue with eudemonia, or personal flourishing, depends on the assumption that moral virtues are possessed categorically. Blackburn’s mechanical causation, in the psychological action that validates belief, desire and values as the expression of what makes sense to us, can be applied to the moral sentiments, which makes them consistent with causation in the natural world. For both, morality serves a purpose in nature, and nature is conceived in terms of mechanical causation. In one way or another, moral behaviour is treated as an extension of biology, and it is just a matter of which natural faculties or tendencies are predominant in producing specifically moral judgements and moral virtues. This means that in both theories the aspect of morality that is related to the behaviour and experience of an individual conforms automatically and without internal conflict to the aspect that is related to a common life. 

   Though they share a biological point of view, there is a difference of emphasis in Aristotle and Blackburn, and this lies in how they see relations between morality as it applies to the individual and to a common life. Whereas a focus on moral sentiment makes social cohesion the ultimate concern and vindication of our moral actions, Aristotle sees the purpose of morality as primarily in the happiness for the individual of a good life. For one, morality lies in a curtailment of desire and inclination by moral feeling, which is itself a form of desire, and this is for the common good; for the other social harmony is a fundamental requirement in order for individuals to have a life that is worth living. For Blackburn, morality sustains a life that is considered to be worthwhile in many ways, including the feelings of sympathy for others and self-regard inherent in moral behaviour; while, for Aristotle, the possession of character and the moral virtue that this entails is central to the realization of a good life.

   We have seen that neither of these theories succeed in the primary concern of integrating the fundamental aspects of morality. In the case of Aristotle, when we examine the psychological foundations that are related to moral virtue, it is clear that entanglement of moral judgement with self-interest excludes the possibility of a categorical ascription of moral virtues. On the other hand, Blackburn fails to show that moral sentiment is the human tendency that truly defines our moral behaviour, and this means that he also fails to justify his belief in a naturalistic integration of moral intention into a scientific conception of causation. 

   Reflective life implies that responsibility to a common life is entailed by the sense of a life that is valued in itself. The biologically inclined views of Aristotle and Blackburn make a connection that is based on the idea of integrating the beliefs, desires and values of the individual with social cohesion in a common life. The political is central to Aristotle because order in our common life is instrumental to a good life for the individual, while Blackburn’s theory, insofar as it is concerned with moral sentiment, makes this instrumental to order in our common life. However, the involvement of one aspect in the other is not simply instrumental, the moral action of an individual is also an expression of the common good, and in this the relation is more than a biologically determined connection.

   We have seen how the violation of others can also be a violation of oneself, as in the promotion of slavery, and violation both of oneself and of others invariably implies a violation of the common good. This is in accord with the concept of a moral value, since we have also seen that values are significantly distinguished from desires, feelings and sentiments. A value is only realized in the light of our common experience, and thus our concern for a moral value has behind it the idea of a common good, in conformity with the social dimension of values in general. Conversely, we can also see that because responsibility to a common life arises out of responsibility to a life that is valued in itself, moral judgement is entangled with self-interest. A life can only be valued in itself if it reflects the interests of a sentient being, and those things that enable it to experience such a life. The influence of self-interest on moral judgement is normally obscured in our actions by shared assumptions, and so it is normal for morally sensitive actions to be judged in much the same way by many people. For this reason, it can be claimed that there is, without qualification, a morally right action in any particular case, even though this claim can be made for an alternative action.

    Circumstances which show us, in a complex human action, how moral judgement is entangled with self-interest have been seen in the example of Saint Peter’s betrayal of Jesus as it is interpreted by Luigi Tansillo and Lassus. Here, the self-interest of the disciple is entangled with Jesus’ self-interest, with the consequence that Peter’s preservation of his own life represents a moral failure that he comes to see as deeply significant to both of them. The entanglement of moral judgement with self-interest is not easily recognized in theories which do not see into the nature of reflective life.

   To clarify the distinction implied here, we should understand the connection between non-mechanical causation and the inner necessity of moral values to reflective life. In order to do this, we might look into the key move in Blackburn’s argument concerning the assimilation of normative and causal orders, ‘We know what a desire is by knowing what it would make sense to do in the light of having the desire; but then we know whether someone has the desire by seeing if this light is one that makes good sense of what they do.’ 

   In this connection, we might consider the experience of trying to remember a name and it’s suddenly coming to us twenty minutes later, or listening to a piece of music over and over and finally getting it on the tenth hearing. Blackburn is trying to establish a psychological form of mechanical causation that fills the causal gap, but these examples are partly non-mechanical in their transition from desire to the sense that can be made of it by observation. Not only is there a common experience of memories and imaginary images and ideas that come to us unbidden and without the slightest intimation of a step by step mechanical causation, non-mechanical causation plays an essential part in sensory perception. Desire and aversion play a subtle part in such perception and often they cannot be simply related to a disposition or inclination that we have reason to believe has caused it. This is especially true of a strikingly new experience, such as hearing or seeing or reading something that is highly original and makes a deep impression on us. 

   Even more telling is when we suddenly see the form in, say, a piece of music with which we are well acquainted. In this case, the meaning of the work can suddenly appear in a completely new way, even though we have listened to it many times over a number of years. This does not mean that mechanical causation plays no part in the experience, but simply that without non-mechanical causation, as in our ordinary sensory perception, there would be no experience of this kind. Mechanical causation is, of course, essential to any experience and quite obviously in the case of music. In relation to the experience I am referring to, this might include the influence of other musical or non-musical experiences on the new perception. For example, my experience of the first section of the final contrapunctus of Bach’s Art of Fugue may have been transformed by my having repeatedly listened to The Tears of Saint Peter. 

   In all of these examples certain kinds of mechanical causation can be proposed, but it is non-mechanical causation that is predominant. The basic distinction here is between a process that is discernibly sequential and realization of the object as possessing a certain character. Thus, in observing mechanical causation, our attention is directed towards the features of an object that enable the process to unfold in an intelligible sequence, as in the case of a ball rolling down an inclined plane. Here we are interested, for example, in the smoothness and shape of the ball, and its size, because they are essential to mechanical causation in this instance. We would not be so interested in its colour or weight, or whether it was made of iron or wood or plastic or rubber. In our sensory realization of the character of a name we are trying to remember, or of the form and meaning of a piece of music, we are not primarily interested in a process even though a process and intelligible sequence are involved. The character is a realization of something that has an immediate significance, and makes some allusion through its formal arrangement to our sense of ourselves and the life in which we participate.

   Phenomena are fundamental – they are realized in the mental sphere, and not simply in that of physical interaction. Non-mechanical causation is intrinsic to sensory perception and therefore to the realization of phenomena. We can say, therefore, that without mechanical causation there would be no experience of movement, change, development, evolution or growth and decay, while without non-mechanical causation there would be no identity of sentient beings or of things, and nothing would have any character or qualities. Phenomena are both the source and the measure of what counts as causation, and those who wish to understand the latter solely in terms of mechanical causation are given no encouragement by phenomena (Nelson 2018).

   These remarks provide a psychological context for moral judgement, since we cannot understand the moral significance of an action unless we take into account both mechanical and non-mechanical causation. Because the kind of judgement in question concerns the character of an action and a person, presenting sentiments as moral and as cogs in a kind of mechanical causation is misguided from the outset. Thus, it is unsurprising that a simple causal component like moral sentiment will not provide a convincing solution to the problem. For example, in a disloyal act of deception it is not a mechanical failure of causation that makes the character of the action and the perpetrator bad, rather it is how these are perceived by us, which is essentially a matter of non-mechanical causation. Hence, we perceive them as bad because, in themselves they violate our conception of a life that is valued in itself, by the individual or individuals who are deceived, and by the common life in which perpetrator and victim(s) participate. 

   In this regard, we might say that initially the moral value of an action lies in its having a certain character in the perception of those to whom the action is morally significant, and not in any particular faculty like reason, or feeling like sympathy. Reason and feeling are relevant insofar as they influence how the character of an action or person is realized in sensory perception, and in how this might be revised in moral reflection. Just as a cup is realized as a vessel for drinking tea or coffee, how a person responds to hearing about fraudulent behaviour will be affected by his or her past thoughts and feelings over such deception, and this response may be altered by considering exactly what has occurred in this particular case.

  The argument in this discussion has defended the idea of inner necessity in relation to moral virtue by showing that a life that is valued in itself can be sustained only by means of virtues like honesty, integrity, justice, courage, nurturing and temperance. In this respect, moral inclination is not grafted onto a biological basis in a specifically human teleology or sensibility, and by opposing such a framework it has been possible to show how the inner necessity implies further aspects of morality. Namely, the entanglement of moral judgement with self-interest (which excludes the categorical ascription of moral virtues), and a fundamental distinction between mechanical and non-mechanical causation (without which there could be no significance in our action or in ourselves). Though these aspects have been arrived at in different ways, they can be associated with each other in terms of the theory. 

   An essential interplay between mechanical and non-mechanical causation follows from the same reflective life that creates the entanglement of moral judgement with self-interest; the realization of character by non-mechanical causation must be complemented in moral judgement by this entanglement. In other words, if we were to exclude the entanglement we would also exclude the possibility of any kind of character in an object or person. And since morality is concerned with our practical thought, an awareness of these ideas and their connection to each other is of considerable importance to our sensitivity to the different kinds of moral deliberation that define our experience as reflective beings. 

   The purpose of this line of thinking can be illustrated by analysing the connection between the entanglement and non-mechanistic causation in terms of different moral points of view. For example, it is obvious that ideas of integrity, justice, courage and nurturing are significantly different in the conceptions of morality that we have seen from Aristotle and Hume. At its most extreme, the affirmation of pride and self-assertion by the former extends to lofty dismissal, by the superior man, of the opinions and worth of the vast majority of his fellow human beings. Therefore, it can be assumed that Aristotle’s exemplary man of virtue who is worthy of human happiness and flourishing would view the moral virtues in question with a certain severity – in how they are manifested, and in who may be entitled to them, and entitled to assign them. According to Hume, these virtues would have a very different meaning, and their emphasis would be decided by a sensitive interest in the welfare of others, both for its own sake and as something that is essential to harmonious relations in a just society. Moreover, they would apply to all of us, short of some relevant incapacity, and with equal force.

   In order to appreciate the contrast, we might consider the attitudes of each of them to the moral virtue of nurturing. For Aristotle, the Humean conception of personal growth and development would involve a corrupt betrayal of a person’s potential for a flourishing human life, since it would promote a soft indulgence of oneself and others at the expense of acquiring strength and independence. For Hume, Aristotle’s conception of nurturing would coarsen the sensitivity to others that is necessary to social harmony, and to the kind of understanding of oneself, other people and the world upon which his idea of a virtuous contemplative life depends.

   It is clear that for either philosopher the moral virtues as conceived by the other can no longer be regarded as moral, since they do not preserve and sustain or promote a life can be genuinely valued in itself, in the individual or in a common life. Since our sense of the value of things is determined by our own interests, the example shows how moral judgement is entangled with self-interest; for Aristotle, a life that is valued in itself is organized and sustained in one way and for Hume this is done in another way. For each, the alternative deprives human action of its moral character, and in doing so deprives a form of reflective life of its character. This implies both that the entanglement is essential and that we cannot establish a common basis for conflicting points of view. There is no conception of, say, integrity or nurturing that is compatible with both Aristotle’s and Hume’s moral point of view.

   If removing the differences that are created by the entanglement removes the possibility of character in ourselves and the world, we are faced with the opposite question: how it is that we retain a sense of the character of things when moral judgement is so obviously beset by internal contradiction? The answer is that people and things retain their character largely because we are inconsistent in our moral judgements. We are inconsistent in adopting a moral framework according to circumstances, and also in applying a particular moral judgement according to circumstances.

   We are inconsistent because moral judgements are made not simply according to a moral outlook but also according to the form and structure of a life that is valued in itself. Thus, in one sphere of his life a man might be Aristotelian in his moral outlook and in another he might be Humean, both with conviction and without noticing any conflict in his attitudes. Say, for example, his talents give him good reason to pursue a vocation which he sees as worthwhile in itself and as a means of satisfying his ambitions, and giving him the kind of self-esteem that he feels he ought to acquire. Without being ruthless he might, in order to meet the demands of his choices, find that he has little time for the people around him, such as relatives and neighbours, and therefore little time for the virtues extolled by Hume – his sympathetic concern for others might be reduced to something perfunctory. At the same time, he might be thoroughly Humean in the moral guidance that he gives his children, ensuring as far as he is able that they develop the sympathetic concern for others that will make them decent individuals. The spectacle of his own child acting with Aristotelian arrogance and contempt for a social inferior might fill him with dismay and lead to parental action. Examples of this kind show us how inconsistency in our moral outlook makes it possible for things to retain their character when a moral framework is beset by internal contradiction.

   In a society in which hypersensitive concern for the feelings of others is accompanied by a seemingly insatiable appetite for competition and an individual or team ‘thrashing’ its rival in one game or another, the contradiction within moral judgement is commonplace and can be seen everywhere and at all times. Furthermore, many games are made highly attractive by extraordinary skill, endurance and athleticism in the participants, but none of us would bother to watch a game simply for these qualities; in general, games depend for their vitality upon winning and losing. In the realms of sport the keen follower, usually one may assume a model of humanity, far exceeds Aristotle in his or her exultation of superiority in the object of his devotion. Again, the inconsistency does not detract from character, but rather protects it, and we can see this in the preternaturally heightened character that is seen in successful individuals in competitive activities.

   For many, to be deprived of sport would take a great deal of the character from life, and along with the competitive fantasy of games it would also take away all of the spellbinding skills, strategic talents, mental agility, inventiveness, and displays of strength and physical power. From this example of how circumstances affect the moral framework of moral judgement we can move to our inconsistency in making particular moral judgements. Just as personal skills and athletic qualities are transformed in our judgement by competition, so our moral judgement of an action can depend upon the effectiveness of that action. For example, a bystander who successfully restrains a thief may be admired for his or her courage while another who fails in comparable circumstances may be condemned for being reckless with his own safety. Often our moral judgement depends not simply upon the nature of an action but also upon its outcome, and this is associated with what inspires our confidence in a life that is valued in itself.

   These remarks concerning the plasticity of moral judgement point to an inconsistency that is rife in our everyday experience, and it strongly supports the conclusion that entanglement of moral judgement with self-interest and preservation of the character of things are deeply intertwined in the experience of reflective beings. In contrast with the partial and biologically inclined theories of Aristotle and Blackburn, this relation illuminates the moral dimension of reflective life and, in keeping with the diversity of its spheres of interest, can be given a wide range of potentially conflicting forms of expression.

Related Texts and Music

Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics; with an English translation by H. Rackham. Revised edition. Cambridge, Mass. and London:  Harvard University Press, 1934. (The Loeb Classical Library, 73)

Blackburn, Simon. Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001

Available at epdf.pub

Lassus, Roland de. Lagrime di San Pietro = The tears of Saint Peter; words by Luigi Tansillo. CD by Ensemble Vocal Européan, directed by Philippe Herreweghe.  Arles: harmonia mundi, 1994 

Nelson, B. R. Forms of Enlightenment in Art. Cambridge: Open Angle Books, 2010

Nelson, B. R. Mechanical and Non-Mechanical Causation, 2018 [online] Available at: www.brnelson.co.uk

Nelson, B. R. Sensory Knowledge and Art. Cambridge: Open Angle Books, 2017 

Nelson, B. R. The Basis of Morality and its Relation to Dramatic Form in a Study of David Copperfield. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998