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How should we live? Shall we aim at
happiness or at knowledge, virtue, or the creation of beautiful objects? If we
choose happiness, will it be our own or the happiness of all? And what of the
more particular questions that face us: Is it right to be dishonest in a good
cause? Can we justify living in opulence while elsewhere in the world people are
starving? If conscripted to fight in a war we do not support, should we disobey
the law? What are our obligations to the other creatures with whom we share this
planet and to the generations of humans who will come after us? (see also ethics)
Ethics deals with such questions at all
levels. Its subject consists of the fundamental issues of practical decision
making, and its major concerns include the nature of ultimate value and the
standards by which human actions can be judged right or wrong. (see also right
and wrong)
The terms ethics and morality are
closely related. We now often refer to ethical judgments or ethical principles
where it once would have been more common to speak of moral judgments or moral
principles. These applications are an extension of the meaning of ethics.
Strictly speaking, however, the term refers not to morality itself but to the
field of study, or branch of inquiry, that has morality as its subject matter.
In this sense, ethics is equivalent to moral philosophy.
Although ethics has always been viewed
as a branch of philosophy, its all-embracing practical nature links it with many
other areas of study, including anthropology, biology, economics, history,
politics, sociology, and theology. Yet, ethics remains distinct from such
disciplines because it is not a matter of factual knowledge in the way that the
sciences and other branches of inquiry are. Rather, it has to do with
determining the nature of normative theories and applying these sets of
principles to practical moral problems.
When did ethics begin and how did it
originate? If we are referring to ethics proper--i.e., the systematic study of what we ought to do--it is clear that
ethics can only have come into existence when human beings started to reflect on
the best way to live. This reflective stage emerged long after human societies
had developed some kind of morality, usually in the form of customary standards
of right and wrong conduct. The process of
reflection tended to arise from such customs, even if in the end it may have
found them wanting. Accordingly, ethics began with the introduction of the first
moral codes.
Virtually every human society has some
form of myth to explain the origin of morality.
In the Louvre in Paris there is a black Babylonian column with a relief showing
the sun god Shamash presenting the code of laws to Hammurabi. The Old Testament
account of God giving the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mt. Sinai might be
considered another example. In Plato's Protagoras
there is an avowedly mythical account of how Zeus took pity on the hapless
humans, who, living in small groups and with inadequate teeth, weak claws, and
lack of speed, were no match for the other beasts. To make up for these
deficiencies, Zeus gave humans a moral sense and the capacity for law and
justice, so that they could live in larger communities and cooperate with one
another. (see also religion)
That morality should be invested with
all the mystery and power of divine origin is not surprising. Nothing else could
provide such strong reasons for accepting the moral law. By attributing a divine
origin to morality, the priesthood became its interpreter and guardian, and
thereby secured for itself a power that it would not readily relinquish. This
link between morality and religion has been so firmly forged that it is still
sometimes asserted that there can be no morality without religion. According to
this view, ethics ceases to be an independent field of study. It becomes,
instead, moral theology. (see also sacred and profane)
There is some difficulty, already known
to Plato, with the view that morality was created by a divine power. In his
dialogue Euthyphro,
Plato considered the suggestion that it is divine approval that makes an action
good. Plato pointed out that if this were the case, we could not say that the
gods approve of the actions because the actions are good. Why then do the gods
approve of these actions rather than others? Is their approval entirely
arbitrary? Plato considered this impossible and so held that there must be some
standards of right or wrong that are independent of the likes and dislikes of
the gods. Modern philosophers have generally accepted Plato's argument because
the alternative implies that if the gods had happened to approve of torturing
children and to disapprove of helping one's neighbours, then torture would have
been good and neighbourliness bad. (see also good and evil)
A modern theist might say that since God
is good, he could not possibly approve of torturing children nor disapprove of
helping neighbours. In saying this, however, the theist would have tacitly
admitted that there is a standard of goodness that is independent of God.
Without an independent standard, it would be pointless to say that God is good;
this could only mean that God is approved of by God. It seems therefore that,
even for those who believe in the existence of God, it is impossible to give a
satisfactory account of the origin of morality in terms of a divine creation. We
need a different account. (see also theism)
There are other possible connections
between religion and morality. It has been said that even if good and evil exist
independently of God or the gods, only divine revelation
can reliably inform us about good and evil. An obvious problem with this view is
that those who receive divine revelations, or who consider themselves qualified
to interpret them, do not always agree on what is good and what is evil. Without
an accepted criterion for the authenticity of a revelation or an interpretation,
we are no better off, so far as reaching moral agreement is concerned, than we
would be if we were to decide on good and evil ourselves with no assistance from
religion.
Traditionally, a more important link
between religion and ethics was that religious teachings were thought to provide
a reason for doing what is right. In its crudest form, the reason was that those
who obey the moral law will be rewarded by an eternity of bliss while everyone
else roasts in hell. In more sophisticated versions, the motivation provided by
religion was less blatantly self-seeking and more of an inspirational kind.
Whether in its crude or sophisticated version, or something in between, religion
does provide an answer to one of the great questions of ethics: Why should I do
what is right? As will be seen in the course of this article, however, the
answer provided by religion is by no means the only answer. It will be
considered after the alternatives have been examined.
Can we do better than the religious
accounts of the origin of morality? Because, for obvious reasons, we have no
historical record of a human society in the period before it had any standards
of right and wrong, history cannot tell us the origins of morality. Nor is
anthropology able to assist because all human societies studied have already
had, except perhaps during the most extreme circumstances, their own form of
morality. Fortunately there is another mode of inquiry open to us. Human beings
are social animals. Living in a social group is a characteristic we share with
many other animal species, including our closest relatives, the apes.
Presumably, the common ancestor of humans and apes also lived in a social group,
so that we were social beings before we were human beings. Here, then, in the
social behaviour of nonhuman animals and in the evolutionary theory that
explains such behaviour, we may find the origins of human morality. (see also animal
behaviour)
Social life, even for nonhuman animals,
requires constraints on behaviour. No group can stay together if its members
make frequent, no-holds-barred attacks on one another. Social animals either
refrain altogether from attacking other members of the social group, or, if an
attack does take place, the ensuing struggle does not become a fight to the
death--it is over when the weaker animal shows submissive behaviour. It is not
difficult to see analogies here with human moral codes. The parallels, however,
go much further than this. Like humans, social animals may behave in ways that
benefit other members of the group at some cost or risk to themselves. Male
baboons threaten predators and cover the rear as the troop retreats. Wolves and
wild dogs bring meat back to members of the pack not present at the kill.
Gibbons and chimpanzees with food will, in response to a gesture, share their
food with others of the group. Dolphins support sick or injured animals,
swimming under them for hours at a time and pushing them to the surface so they
can breathe. (see also social
contract, altruistic behaviour)
It may be thought that the existence of
such apparently altruistic behaviour is odd, for evolutionary
theory states that those who do not struggle to survive and reproduce will be
wiped out in the ruthless competition known as natural
selection. Research in evolutionary theory applied to social behaviour,
however, has shown that evolution need not be quite so ruthless after all. Some
of this altruistic behaviour is explained by kin
selection. The most obvious examples are those in which parents make sacrifices
for their offspring. If wolves help their cubs to survive, it is more likely
that genetic characteristics, including the characteristic of helping their own
cubs, will spread through further generations of wolves.
Less obviously, the principle also holds
for assistance to other close relatives, even if they are not descendants. A
child shares 50 percent of the genes of each of its parents, but full siblings
too, on the average, have 50 percent of their genes in common. Thus a tendency
to sacrifice one's life for two or more of one's siblings could spread from one
generation to the next. Between cousins, where only 12 1/2 percent of the genes
are shared, the sacrifice-to-benefit ratio would have to be correspondingly
increased.
When apparent altruism is not between
kin, it may be based on reciprocity. A monkey
will present its back to another monkey, who will pick out parasites; after a
time the roles will be reversed. Reciprocity may also be a factor in food
sharing among unrelated animals. Such reciprocity will pay off, in evolutionary
terms, as long as the costs of helping are less than the benefits of being
helped and as long as animals will not gain in the long run by
"cheating"--that is to say, by receiving favours without returning
them. It would seem that the best way to ensure that those who cheat do not
prosper is for animals to be able to recognize cheats and refuse them the
benefits of cooperation the next time around. This is only possible among
intelligent animals living in small, stable groups over a long period of time.
Evidence supports this conclusion: reciprocal behaviour has been observed in
birds and mammals, the clearest cases occurring among wolves, wild dogs,
dolphins, monkeys, and apes.
In short, kin
altruism and reciprocity do exist, at least in some nonhuman animals
living in groups. Could these forms of behaviour be the basis of human ethics?
There are good reasons for believing that they could. A surprising proportion of
human morality can be derived from the twin bases of concern for kin and
reciprocity. Kinship is a source of obligation in every human society. A
mother's duty to look after her children seems so obvious that it scarcely needs
to be mentioned. The duty of a married man to support and protect his family is
almost equally as widespread. Duties to close relatives take priority over
duties to more distant relatives, but in most societies even distant relatives
are still treated better than strangers.
If kinship is the most basic and
universal tie between human beings, the bond of reciprocity is not far behind.
It would be difficult to find a society that did not recognize, at least under
some circumstances, an obligation to return favours. In many cultures this is
taken to extraordinary lengths, and there are elaborate rituals of gift giving.
Often the repayment has to be superior to the original gift, and this escalation
can reach such extremes as to threaten the economic security of the donor. The
huge "potlatch" feasts of certain American Indian tribes are a
well-known example of this type of situation. Many Melanesian societies also
place great importance on giving and receiving very substantial amounts of
valuable items. (see also gift
exchange)
Many features of human morality could
have grown out of simple reciprocal practices such as the mutual removal of
parasites from awkward places. Suppose I want to have the lice in my hair picked
out and I am willing in return to remove lice from someone else's hair. I must,
however, choose my partner carefully. If I help everyone indiscriminately, I
will find myself delousing others without getting my own lice removed. To avoid
this, I must learn to distinguish between those who return favours and those who
do not. In making this distinction, I am separating reciprocators and
nonreciprocators and, in the process, developing crude notions of fairness and
of cheating. I will strengthen my links with those who reciprocate, and bonds of
friendship and loyalty, with a consequent sense of obligation to assist, will
result.
This is not all. The reciprocators are
likely to react in a hostile and angry way to those who do not reciprocate.
Perhaps they will regard reciprocity as good and "right" and cheating
as bad and "wrong." From here it is a small step to concluding that
the worst of the nonreciprocators should be driven out of society or else
punished in some way, so that they will not take advantage of others again. Thus
a system of punishment and a notion of desert constitute the other side of
reciprocal altruism.
Although kinship and reciprocity loom
large in human morality, they do not cover the entire field. Typically, there
are obligations to other members of the village, tribe, or nation even when
these are strangers. There may also be a loyalty to the group as a whole that is
distinct from loyalty to individual members of the group. It may be at this
point that human culture intervenes. Each society has a clear interest in
promoting devotion to the group and can be expected to develop cultural
influences that exalt those who make sacrifices for the sake of the group and
revile those who put their own interests too far ahead of the interests of the
group. More tangible rewards and punishments may supplement the persuasive
effect of social opinion. This is simply the start of a process of cultural
development of moral codes. (see also social
group)
Before considering the cultural
variations in human morality and their significance for ethics, let us draw
together this discussion of the origins of morality. Since we are dealing with a
prehistoric period and morality leaves no fossils, any account of the origins of
morality will necessarily remain to some extent speculative. It seems likely
that morality is the gradual outgrowth of forms of altruism that exist in some
social animals and that are the result of the usual evolutionary processes of
natural selection. No myths are required to explain its existence.
It is commonly believed that there are
no ethical universals--i.e., there is
so much variation from one culture to another that no single principle or
judgment is generally accepted. We have already seen that such is not the case.
Of course, there are immense differences in the way in which the broad
principles so far discussed are applied. The duty of children to their parents
meant one thing in traditional Chinese society and means something quite
different in contemporary Anglo-Saxon society. Yet, concern for kin and
reciprocity to those who treat us well are considered good in virtually all
human societies. Also, all societies have, for obvious reasons, some constraints
on killing and wounding other members of the group.
Beyond that common ground, the
variations in moral attitudes soon become more striking than the similarities.
Man's fascination with such variations goes back a long way. The Greek historian
Herodotus relates that Darius, king of Persia,
once summoned Greeks before him and asked them how much he would have to pay
them to eat their fathers' dead bodies. They refused to do it at any price. Then
Darius brought in some Indians who by custom ate the bodies of their parents and
asked them what would make them willing to burn their fathers' bodies. The
Indians cried out that he should not mention so horrid an act. Herodotus drew
the obvious moral: each nation thinks its own customs best.
Variations in morals were not
systematically studied until the 19th century, when knowledge of the more remote
parts of the globe began to increase. At the beginning of the 20th century, Edward
Westermarck published The
Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (1906-08), two large
volumes comparing differences among societies in such matters as the wrongness
of killing (including killing in warfare, euthanasia, suicide, infanticide,
abortion, human sacrifices, and duelling); whose duty it is to support children,
the aged, or the poor; the forms of sexual relationship permitted; the status of
women; the right to property and what constitutes theft; the holding of slaves;
the duty to tell the truth; dietary restrictions; concern for nonhuman animals;
duties to the dead; and duties to the gods. Westermarck had no difficulty in
demonstrating tremendous diversity in all these issues. More recent, though less
comprehensive, studies have confirmed that human societies can and do flourish
while holding radically different views about all such matters.
As noted earlier, ethics itself is not
primarily concerned with the description of moral systems in different
societies. That task, which remains on the level of description, is one for
anthropology or sociology. In contrast, ethics deals with the justification of
moral principles. Nevertheless, ethics must take note of the variations in moral
systems because it has often been claimed that this knowledge shows that
morality is simply a matter of what is customary and is always relative to a
particular society. According to this view, no ethical principles can be valid
except in terms of the society in which they are held. Words such as good and
bad just mean, it is claimed, "approved in my society" or
"disapproved in my society," and so to search for an objective, or
rationally justifiable, ethic is to search for what is in fact an illusion.
One way of replying to this position
would be to stress the fact that there are some features common to virtually all
human moralities. It might be thought that these common features must be the
universally valid and objective core of morality. This argument would, however,
involve a fallacy. If the explanation for the common features is simply that
they are advantageous in terms of evolutionary theory, that does not make them
right. Evolution is a blind force incapable of conferring a moral imprimatur on
human behaviour. It may be a fact that concern for kin is in accord with
evolutionary theory, but to say that concern for kin is therefore right would be
to attempt to deduce values from facts. As will be seen later, it is not
possible to deduce values from facts in this manner. In any case, that something
is universally approved does not make it right. If all human societies enslaved
any tribe they could conquer, some freethinking moralists might still insist
that slavery is wrong. They could not be said to be talking nonsense merely
because they had few supporters. Similarly, then, universal support for
principles of kinship and reciprocity cannot prove that these principles are in
some way objectively justified.
This example illustrates the way in
which ethics differs from a descriptive science. From the standpoint of ethics,
whether human moral codes closely parallel one another or are extraordinarily
diverse, the question of how an individual should act remains open. If you are
thinking deeply about what you should do, your uncertainty will not be overcome
by being told what your society thinks you should do in the circumstances in
which you find yourself. Even if you are told that virtually all other human
societies agree, you may choose not to go that way. If you are told that there
is great variation among human societies over what people should do in your
circumstances, you may wonder whether there can be any objective answer, but
your dilemma has still not been resolved. In fact, this diversity does not rule
out the possibility of an objective answer either: conceivably, most societies
simply got it wrong. This, too, is something that will be taken up later in this
article, for the possibility of an objective morality is one of the constant
themes of ethics.
The first ethical precepts were
certainly passed down by word of mouth by parents and elders, but as societies
learned to use the written word, they began to set down their ethical beliefs.
These records constitute the first historical evidence of the origins of ethics.
The earliest surviving writings that
might be taken as ethics textbooks are a series of lists of precepts to be
learned by boys of the ruling class of Egypt, prepared some 3,000 years before
the Christian Era. In most cases, they consist of shrewd advice on how to live
happily, avoid unnecessary troubles, and advance one's career by cultivating the
favour of superiors. There are, however, several passages that recommend more
broadly based ideals of conduct, such as the following: Rulers should treat
their people justly and judge impartially between their subjects. They should
aim to make their people prosperous. Those who have bread are urged to share it
with the hungry. Humble and lowly people must be treated with kindness. One
should not laugh at the blind or at dwarfs. (see also Egypt,
ancient)
Why then should one follow these
precepts? Did the ancient Egyptians believe that one should do what is good for
its own sake? The precepts frequently state that it will profit a man to act
justly, much as we say that "honesty is the best policy." They also
emphasize the importance of having a good name. Since these precepts are
intended for the instruction of the ruling classes, however, we have to ask why
helping the destitute should have contributed to an individual's good reputation
among this class. To some degree the authors of the precepts must have thought
that to make people prosperous and happy and to be kind to those who have least
is not merely personally advantageous but good in itself.
The precepts are not works of ethics in
the philosophical sense. No attempt is made to find any underlying principles of
conduct that might provide a more systematic understanding of ethics. Justice,
for example, is given a prominent place, but there is no elaboration of the
notion of justice nor any discussion of how disagreements about what is just and
unjust might be resolved. Furthermore, there is no probing of ethical dilemmas
that may occur if the precepts should conflict with one another. The precepts
are full of sound observations and practical wisdom, but they do not encourage
theoretical speculation.
The same practical bent can be found in
other early codes or lists of ethical injunctions. The great codification of Babylonian
law by Hammurabi is often said to have been
based on the principle of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," as
if this were some fundamental principle of justice, elaborated and applied to
all cases. In fact, the code reflects no such consistent principle. It
frequently prescribes the death penalty for offenses that do not themselves
cause death--e.g., for robbery or for
accepting bribes. Moreover, even the eye-for-an-eye rule applies only if the eye
of the original victim is that of a member of the patrician class; if it is the
eye of a commoner, the punishment is a fine of a quantity of silver. Apparently
such differences in punishment were not thought to require justification. At any
rate, there are no surviving attempts to defend the principles of justice on
which the code was based. (see also law
code, Hammurabi, Code of)
The Hebrew people were at different
times captives of both the Egyptians and the Babylonians. It is therefore not
surprising that the law of ancient Israel, which was put into its definitive
form during the Babylonian Exile, shows the influence both of the ancient
Egyptian precepts and of the Code of Hammurabi. The book of Exodus refers, for
example, to the principle of "life for life, eye for eye, tooth for
tooth." Hebrew law does not differentiate, as the Babylonian law does,
between patricians and commoners, but it does stipulate that in several respects
foreigners may be treated in ways that it is not permissible to treat fellow
Hebrews; for instance, Hebrew slaves, but not others, had to be freed without
ransom in the seventh year. Yet, in other respects Israeli law and morality
developed the humane concern shown in the Egyptian precepts for the poor and
unfortunate: hired servants must be paid promptly, because they rely on their
wages to satisfy their pressing needs; slaves must be allowed to rest on the
seventh day; widows, orphans, and the blind and deaf must not be wronged, and
the poor man should not be refused a loan. There was even a tithe providing for
an incipient welfare state. The spirit of this humane concern was summed up by
the injunction to "love thy neighbour as thyself," a sweepingly
generous form of the rule of reciprocity. (see also Hebraic law)
The famed Ten
Commandments are thought to be a legacy of Semitic tribal law when
important commands were taught, one for each finger, so that they could more
easily be remembered. (Sets of five or 10 laws are common among preliterate
civilizations.) The content of the Hebrew commandments differed from other laws
of the region mainly in its emphasis on duties to God. In the more detailed laws
laid down elsewhere, this emphasis continued with as much as half the
legislation concerned with crimes against God and ceremonial and ritualistic
matters, though there may be other explanations for some of these ostensibly
religious requirements concerning the avoidance of certain foods and the need
for ceremonial cleansings.
In addition to lengthy statements of the
law, the surviving literature of ancient Israel includes both proverbs and the
books of the prophets. The proverbs, like the
precepts of the Egyptians, are brief statements without much concern for
systematic presentation or overall coherence. They go further than the Egyptian
precepts, however, in urging conduct that is just and upright and pleasing to
God. There are correspondingly fewer references to what is needed for a
successful career, although it is frequently stated that God rewards the just.
In this connection the Book of Job is notable as an exploration of the problem
raised for those who accept this motive for obeying the moral law: How are we to
explain the fact that the best of people may suffer the worst misfortunes? The
book offers no solution beyond faith in God, but the sharpened awareness of the
problem it offers may have influenced some to adopt belief in reward and
punishment in another realm as the only possible solution. (see also Job,
The Book of)
The literature of the prophets contains
a good deal of social and ethical criticism, though more at the level of
denunciation than discussion about what goodness really is or why there is so
much wrongdoing. The Book of Isaiah is
especially notable for its early portrayal of a utopia in which "the desert
shall blossom as the rose . . . the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb . . . .
They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain." (see also Nevi`im)
Unlike the ethical teaching of ancient
Egypt and Babylon, Indian ethics was philosophical
from the start. In the oldest of the Indian writings, the Vedas, ethics is an
integral aspect of philosophical and religious speculation about the nature of
reality. These writings date from about 1500 BC. They have been described as the
oldest philosophical literature in the world, and what they say about how people
ought to live may therefore be the first philosophical ethics.
The Vedas
are, in a sense, hymns, but the gods to which they refer are not persons but
manifestations of ultimate truth and reality. In the Vedic philosophy, the basic
principle of the universe, the ultimate reality on which the cosmos exists, is
the principle of Ritam, which is the
word from which the Western notion of right is derived. There is thus a belief
in a right moral order somehow built into the universe itself. Hence, truth and
right are linked; to penetrate through illusion and understand the ultimate
truth of human existence is to understand what is right. To be an enlightened
one is to know what is real and to live rightly, for these are not two separate
things but one and the same.
The ethic that is thus traced to the
very essence of the universe is not without its detailed practical applications.
These were based on four ideals, or proper goals, of life: prosperity, the
satisfaction of desires, moral duty, and spiritual perfection--i.e.,
liberation from a finite existence. From these ends follow certain virtues:
honesty, rectitude, charity, nonviolence, modesty, and purity of heart. To be
condemned, on the other hand, are falsehood, egoism, cruelty, adultery, theft,
and injury to living things. Because the eternal moral law is part of the
universe, to do what is praiseworthy is to act in harmony with the universe and
accordingly will receive its proper reward; conversely, once the true nature of
the self is understood, it becomes apparent that those who do what is wrong are
acting self-destructively.
The basic principles underwent
considerable modification over the ensuing centuries, especially in the Upanisads,
a body of philosophical literature dating from 800 BC. The Indian caste system,
with its intricate laws about what members of each caste may or may not do, is
accepted by the Upanisads as part of
the proper order of the universe. Ethics itself, however, is not regarded as a
matter of conformity to laws. Instead, the desire to be ethical is an inner
desire. It is part of the quest for spiritual perfection, which in turn is
elevated to the highest of the four goals of life.
During the following centuries the
ethical philosophy of this early period gradually became a rigid and dogmatic
system that provoked several reactions. One, which is uncharacteristic of Indian
thought in general, was the Carvaka, or
materialist school, which mocked religious ceremonies, saying that they were
invented by the Brahmans (the priestly caste) to
ensure their livelihood. When the Brahmans defended animal sacrifices by
claiming that the sacrificed beast goes straight to heaven, the members of the Carvaka
asked why the Brahmans did not kill their aged parents to hasten their arrival
in heaven. Against the postulation of an eventual spiritual liberation, Carvaka
ethics urged each individual to seek his or her pleasure here and now.
Jainism,
another reaction to the traditional Vedic outlook, went in exactly the opposite
direction. The Jaina philosophy is based on spiritual liberation as the highest
of all goals and nonviolence as the means to it.
In true philosophical manner, the Jainas found in the principle of nonviolence a
guide to all morality. First, apart from the obvious application to prohibiting
violent acts to other humans, nonviolence is extended to all living things. The
Jainas are vegetarian. They are often ridiculed by Westerners for the care they
take to avoid injuring insects or other living things while walking or drinking
water that may contain minute organisms; it is less well known that Jainas began
to care for sick and injured animals thousands of years before animal shelters
were thought of in Europe. The Jainas do not draw the distinction usually made
in Western ethics between their responsibility for what they do and their
responsibility for what they omit doing. Omitting to care for an injured animal
would also be in their view a form of violence.
Other moral duties are also derived from
the notion of nonviolence. To tell someone a lie, for example, is regarded as
inflicting a mental injury on that person. Stealing, of course, is another form
of injury, but because of the absence of a distinction between acts and
omissions, even the possession of wealth is seen as depriving the poor and
hungry of the means to satisfy their wants. Thus nonviolence leads to a
principle of nonpossession of property. Jaina priests were expected to be strict
ascetics and to avoid sexual intercourse. Ordinary Jainas, however, followed a
slightly less severe code, which was intended to give effect to the major forms
of nonviolence while still being compatible with a normal life. (see also theft)
The other great ethical system to
develop as a reaction to the ossified form of the old Vedic philosophy was Buddhism.
The person who became known as the Buddha, which
means the "enlightened one," was born about 563 BC, the son of a king.
Until he was 29 years old, he lived the sheltered life of a typical prince, with
every luxury he could desire. At that time, legend has it, he was jolted out of
his idleness by the "Four Signs": he saw in rapid succession a very
feeble old man, a hideous leper, a funeral, and a venerable ascetic monk. He
began to think about old age, disease, and death, and decided to follow the way
of the monk. For six years he led an ascetic life of renunciation, but finally,
while meditating under a tree, he concluded that the solution was not withdrawal
from the world, but rather a practical life of compassion for all.
Buddhism is often thought to be a
religion, and indeed over the centuries it has adopted in many places the
trappings of religion. This is an irony of history, however, because the Buddha
himself was a strong critic of religion. He rejected the authority of the Vedas
and refused to set up any alternative creed. He saw religious ceremonies as a
waste of time and theological beliefs as mere superstition. He refused to
discuss abstract metaphysical problems such as the immortality of the soul. The
Buddha told his followers to think for themselves and take responsibility for
their own future. In place of religious beliefs and religious ceremonies, the
Buddha advocated a life devoted to universal compassion and brotherhood. Through
such a life one might reach the ultimate goal, Nirvana,
a state in which all living things are free from pain and sorrow. There are
similarities between this ethic of universal compassion and the ethics of the
Jainas. Nevertheless, the Buddha was the first historical figure to develop such
a boundless ethic.
In keeping with his own previous
experience, the Buddha proposed a "middle path" between
self-indulgence and self-renunciation. In fact, it is not so much a path between
these two extremes as one that draws together the benefits of both. Through
living a life of compassion and love for all, a person achieves the liberation
from selfish cravings sought by the ascetic and a serenity and satisfaction that
are more fulfilling than anything obtained by indulgence in pleasure.
It is sometimes thought that because the
Buddhist goal is Nirvana, a state of freedom from pain and sorrow that
can be reached by meditation, Buddhism teaches a withdrawal from the real world.
Nirvana, however, is not to be sought for oneself alone; it is regarded
as a unity of the individual self with the universal self in which all things
take part. In the Mahayana school of Buddhism, the aspirant for
Enlightenment even takes a vow not to accept final release until everything that
exists in the universe has attained Nirvana.
The Buddha lived and taught in India,
and so Buddhism is properly classified as an Indian ethical philosophy. Yet,
Buddhism did not take hold in the land of its origin. Instead, it spread in
different forms south into Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, and north through Tibet
to China, Korea, and Japan. In the process, Buddhism suffered the same fate as
the Vedic philosophy against which it had rebelled: it became a religion, often
rigid, with its own sects, ceremonies, and superstitions.
The two greatest moral philosophers of
ancient China, Lao-tzu (flourished c.
6th century BC) and Confucius (551-479 BC), thought in very different ways.
Lao-tzu is best known for his ideas about the Tao
(literally "Way," the Supreme Principle). The Tao is based on the
traditional Chinese virtues of simplicity and sincerity. To follow the Tao is
not a matter of keeping to any set list of duties or prohibitions, but rather of
living in a simple and honest manner, being true to oneself, and avoiding the
distractions of ordinary living. Lao-tzu's classic book on the Tao,
Tao-te Ching, consists only of
aphorisms and isolated paragraphs, making it difficult to draw an intelligible
system of ethics from it. Perhaps this is because Lao-tzu was a type of moral
skeptic: he rejected both righteousness and benevolence, apparently because he
saw them as imposed on individuals from without rather than coming from their
own inner nature. Like the Buddha, Lao-tzu found the things prized by the
world--rank, luxury, and glamour--to be empty, worthless values when compared
with the ultimate value of the peaceful inner life. He also emphasized
gentleness, calm, and nonviolence. Nearly 600 years before Jesus, he said:
"It is the way of the Tao . . . to recompense injury with kindness."
By returning good for good and also good for evil, Lao-tzu believed that all
would become good; to return evil for evil would lead to chaos. (see also Chinese
philosophy)
The lives of Lao-tzu and Confucius
overlapped, and there is even an account of a meeting between them, which is
said to have left the younger Confucius baffled. Confucius was the more
down-to-earth thinker, absorbed in the practical task of social reform. When he
was a provincial minister of justice, the province became renowned for the
honesty of its people and their respect for the aged and their care for the
poor. Probably because of its practical nature, the teachings of Confucius had a
far greater influence on China than did those of the more withdrawn Lao-tzu.
Confucius did not organize his
recommendations into any coherent system. His teachings are offered in the form
of sayings, aphorisms, and anecdotes, usually in reply to questions by
disciples. They aim at guiding the audience in what is necessary to become a
better person, a concept translated as "gentleman" or "the
superior man." In opposition to the prevailing feudal ideal of the
aristocratic lord, Confucius presented the superior man as one who is humane and
thoughtful, motivated by the desire to do what is good rather than by personal
profit. Beyond this, however, the concept is not discussed in any detail; it is
only shown by diverse examples, some of them trite: "A superior man's life
leads upwards . . . . The superior man is broad and fair; the inferior man takes
sides and is petty . . . . A superior man shapes the good in man; he does not
shape the bad in him." (see also chün-tzu)
One of the recorded sayings of Confucius
is an answer to a request from a disciple for a single word that could serve as
a guide to conduct for one's entire life. He replied: "Is not reciprocity
such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others."
This rule is repeated several times in the Confucian literature and might be
considered the supreme principle of Confucian ethics. Other duties are not,
however, presented as derivative from this supreme principle, nor is the
principle used to determine what is to be done when more specific duties--e.g.,
duties to parents and duties to friends, both of which were given prominence in
Confucian ethics--should clash.
Confucius did not explain why the
superior man chose righteousness rather than personal profit. This question was
taken up more than 100 years after his death by his follower Mencius,
who asserted that humans are naturally inclined to do what is humane and right.
Evil is not in human nature but is the result of poor upbringing or lack of
education. But Confucius also had another distinguished follower, Hsün-tzu,
who said that man's nature is to seek self-profit and to envy others. The rules
of morality are designed to avoid the strife that would otherwise follow from
this nature. The Confucian school was united in its ideal of the superior man
but divided over whether such an ideal was to be obtained by allowing people to
fulfill their natural desires or by educating them to control those desires.
Early Greece was the birthplace of
Western philosophical ethics. The ideas of
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, who flourished in the 5th and 4th centuries BC,
will be discussed in the next section. The sudden blooming of philosophy during
that period had its roots in the ethical thought of earlier centuries. In the
poetic literature of the 7th and 6th centuries BC, there were, as in the early
development of ethics in other cultures, ethical precepts but no real attempts
to formulate a coherent overall ethical position. The Greeks were later to refer
to the most prominent of these poets and early philosophers as the seven sages,
and they are frequently quoted with respect by Plato and Aristotle. Knowledge of
the thought of this period is limited, for often only fragments of original
writings, along with later accounts of dubious accuracy, remain.
Pythagoras
(c. 580-c.
500 BC), whose name is familiar because of the geometrical theorem that bears
his name, is one such early Greek thinker about whom little is known. He appears
to have written nothing at all, but he was the founder of a school of thought
that touched on all aspects of life and that may have been a kind of
philosophical and religious order. In ancient times the school was best known
for its advocacy of vegetarianism, which, like
that of the Jainas, was associated with the belief that after the death of the
body, the human soul may take up residence in
the body of an animal. Pythagoreans continued to
espouse this view for many centuries, and classical passages in the works of
such writers as Ovid and Porphyry opposing bloodshed and animal slaughter can be
traced back to Pythagoras.
Ironically, an important stimulus for
the development of moral philosophy came from a group of teachers to whom the
later Greek philosophers--Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle--were consistently
hostile: the Sophists. This term was used in the
5th century to refer to a class of professional teachers of rhetoric and
argument. The Sophists promised their pupils success in political debate and
increased influence in the affairs of the city. They were accused of being
mercenaries who taught their students to win arguments by fair means or foul.
Aristotle said that Protagoras, perhaps the most famous of them, claimed to
teach how "to make the weaker argument the stronger."
The Sophists, however, were more than
mere teachers of rhetorical tricks. They saw their role as imparting the
cultural and intellectual qualities necessary for success, and their involvement
with argument about practical affairs led them to develop views about ethics.
The recurrent theme in the views of the better known Sophists, such as
Protagoras, Antiphon, and Thrasymachus, is that what is commonly called good and
bad or just and unjust does not reflect any objective fact of nature but is
rather a matter of social convention. It is to Protagoras
that we owe the celebrated epigram summing up this theme, "Man is the
measure of all things." Plato represents him as saying "Whatever
things seem just and fine to each city, are just and fine for that city, so long
as it thinks them so." Protagoras, like Herodotus, was an early social
relativist, but he drew a moderate conclusion from his relativism. He argued
that while the particular content of the moral rules may vary, there must be
rules of some kind if life is to be tolerable. Thus Protagoras stated that the
foundations of an ethical system needed nothing from the gods or from any
special metaphysical realm beyond the ordinary world of the senses.
The Sophist Thrasymachus
appears to have taken a more radical approach--if Plato's portrayal of his views
is historically accurate. He explained that the concept of justice means nothing
more than obedience to the laws of society, and, since these laws are made by
the strongest political group in their own interests, justice represents nothing
but the interests of the stronger. This position is often represented by the
slogan "Might is right." Thrasymachus was probably not saying,
however, that whatever the mightiest do really is right; he is more likely to
have been denying that the distinction between right and wrong has any objective
basis. Presumably he would then encourage his pupils to follow their own
interests as best they could. He is thus an early representative of Skepticism
about morals and perhaps of a form of egoism, the view that the rational thing
to do is follow one's own interests.
It is not surprising that with ideas of
this sort in circulation other thinkers should react by probing more deeply into
ethics to see if the potentially destructive conclusions of some of the Sophists
could be resisted. This reaction produced works that have served ever since as
the cornerstone for the entire edifice of Western ethics.
"The unexamined life is not worth
living," Socrates once observed. This
thought typifies his questioning, philosophical approach to ethics. Socrates,
who lived from about 470 BC until he was put to death in 399 BC, must be
regarded as one of the greatest teachers of ethics. Yet, unlike other figures of
comparable importance such as the Buddha or Confucius, he did not tell his
audience how they should live. What Socrates taught was a method of inquiry.
When the Sophists or their pupils boasted that they knew what justice, piety,
temperance, or law was, Socrates would ask them to give an account of it and
then show that the account offered was entirely inadequate. For instance,
against the received wisdom that justice consists in keeping promises and paying
debts, Socrates put forth the example of a person faced with an unusual
situation: a friend from whom he borrowed a weapon has since become insane but
wants the weapon back. Conventional morality gives no clear answer to this
dilemma; therefore, the original definition of justice has to be reformulated.
So the Socratic dialogue gets under way. (see also Socratic method)
Because his method of inquiry threatened
conventional beliefs, Socrates' enemies contrived to have him put to death on a
charge of corrupting the youth of Athens. For those who saw adherence to the
conventional moral code as more desirable than the cultivation of an inquiring
mind, the charge was appropriate. By conventional standards, Socrates was indeed
corrupting the youth of Athens, but he himself saw the destruction of beliefs
that could not stand up to criticism as a necessary preliminary to the search
for true knowledge. Here, he differed from the Sophists with their moral
relativism, for he thought that virtue is something that can be known and that
the good person is the one who knows of what virtue, or justice, consists.
It is therefore not entirely accurate to
see Socrates as contributing a method of inquiry but no positive views of his
own. He believed in goodness as something that can be known, even though he did
not himself profess to know it. He also thought that those who know what good is
are in fact good. This latter belief seems peculiar today, because we make a
sharp distinction between what is good and what is in a person's own interests.
Accordingly, it does not seem surprising if people know what they ought morally
to do but then proceed to do what is in their own interests instead. How to
provide such people with reasons for doing what is right has been a major
problem for Western ethics. Socrates did not see a problem here at all; in his
view anyone who does not act well must simply be ignorant of the nature of
goodness. Socrates could say this because in ancient Greece the distinction
between goodness and self-interest was not made, or at least not in the
clear-cut manner that it is today. The Greeks believed that virtue is good both
for the individual and for the community. To be sure, they recognized that to
live virtuously might not be the best way to prosper financially, but then they
did not assume, as we are prone to do, that material wealth is a major factor in
whether a person's life goes well or ill.
Socrates' greatest disciple, Plato
(428/427-348/347 BC), accepted the key Socratic beliefs in the objectivity of
goodness and in the link between knowing what is good and doing it. He also took
over the Socratic method of conducting philosophy, developing the case for his
own positions by exposing errors and confusions in the arguments of his
opponents. He did this by writing his works as dialogues in which Socrates is
portrayed as engaging in argument with others, usually Sophists. The early
dialogues are generally accepted as reasonably accurate accounts of Socrates'
views, but the later ones, written many years after the death of Socrates, use
the latter as a mouthpiece for ideas and arguments that were Plato's rather than
those of the historical Socrates.
In the most famous of Plato's dialogues,
Politeia (The Republic), the imaginary
Socrates is challenged by the following example: Suppose a person obtained the
legendary ring of Gyges, which has the magical property of rendering the wearer
invisible. Would that person still have any reason to behave justly? Behind this
challenge lies the suggestion, made by the Sophists and still heard today, that
the only reason for acting justly is that one cannot get away with acting
unjustly. Plato's response to this challenge is a long argument developing a
position that appears to go beyond anything the historical Socrates asserted.
Plato maintained that true knowledge consists not in knowing particular things
but in knowing something general that is common to all the particular cases.
This is obviously derived from the way in which Socrates would press his
opponents to go beyond merely describing particular good, or temperate, or just
acts, and to give instead a general account of goodness, or temperance, or justice.
The implication is that we do not know what goodness is unless we can give this
general account. But the question then arises, what is it that we know when we
know this general idea of goodness? Plato's answer seems to be that what we know
is some general form or idea of goodness, which is shared by every particular
thing that is good. Yet, if we are truly to be able to know this form or idea
of goodness, it seems to follow that it must really exist. Plato accepts this
implication. His theory of forms is the view that when we know what goodness is,
we have knowledge of something that is the common element in virtue of which all
good things are good and, at the same time, is some existing thing, the pure
form of goodness. (see also Good,
the)
It has been said that all of Western
philosophy consists of footnotes to Plato. Certainly the central issue around
which all of Western ethics has revolved can be traced back to the debate
between the Sophists, on the one hand, with their claims that goodness and
justice are relative to the customs of each society or, worse still, merely a
disguise for the interests of the stronger, and, on the other, Plato's defense
of the possibility of knowledge of an objective form or idea of goodness.
But even if we know what goodness or
justice is, why should we act justly if we can profit by doing the opposite?
This remaining part of the challenge posed by the legendary ring of Gyges is
still to be answered, for even if we accept that goodness is objective, it does
not follow that we all have sufficient reason to do what is good. Whether
goodness leads to happiness is, as has been seen
from the preceding discussion of early ethics in other cultures, a perennial
topic for all who think about ethics. Plato's answer is that justice consists in
harmony between the three elements of the soul: intellect, emotion, and desire.
The unjust person lives in an unsatisfactory state of internal discord, trying
always to overcome the discomfort of unsatisfied desire but never achieving
anything better than the mere absence of want. The soul of the good person, on
the other hand, is harmoniously ordered under the governance of reason, and the
good person finds truly satisfying enjoyment in the pursuit of knowledge. Plato
remarks that the highest pleasure, in fact, comes from intellectual speculation.
He also gives an argument for the belief that the human soul is immortal;
therefore, even if just individuals seem to be living in poverty or illness, the
gods will not neglect them in the next life, and there they will have the
greatest rewards of all. In summary, then, Plato asserts that we should act
justly because in doing so we are "at one with ourselves and with the
gods."
Today, this may seem like a strange
account of justice and a farfetched view of what it takes to achieve human
happiness. Plato does not recommend justice for its own sake, independently of
any personal gains one might obtain from being a just person. This is
characteristic of Greek ethics, with its refusal to recognize that there could
be an irresolvable conflict between one's own interest and the good of the
community. Not until Immanuel Kant, in the 18th century, does a philosopher
forcefully assert the importance of doing what is right simply because it is
right quite apart from self-interested motivation. To be sure, Plato must not be
interpreted as holding that the motivation for each and every just act is some
personal gain; on the contrary, the person who takes up justice will do what is
just because it is just. Nevertheless, Plato accepts the assumption of his
opponents that one could not recommend taking up justice in the first place
unless doing so could be shown to be advantageous for oneself as well as for
others.
In spite of the fact that many people
now think differently about this connection between morality and self-interest,
Plato's attempt to argue that those who are just are in the long run happier
than those who are unjust has had an enormous influence on Western ethics. Like
Plato's views on the objectivity of goodness, the claim that justice and
personal happiness are linked has helped to frame the agenda for a debate that
continues even today.
Plato founded a school of philosophy in
Athens known as the Academy. Here Aristotle (384-322 BC), Plato's younger
contemporary and only rival in terms of influence on the course of Western
philosophy, came to study. Aristotle was often fiercely critical of Plato, and
his writing is very different in style and content, but the time they spent
together is reflected in a considerable amount of common ground. Thus Aristotle
holds with Plato that the life of virtue is rewarding for the virtuous, as well
as beneficial for the community. Aristotle also agrees that the highest and most
satisfying form of human existence is that in which man exercises his rational
faculties to the fullest extent. One major difference is that Aristotle does not
accept Plato's theory of common essences, or universal ideas, existing
independently of particular things. Thus he does not argue that the path to
goodness is through knowledge of the universal form or idea of "the
good."
Aristotle's ethics are based on his view
of the universe. He saw it as a hierarchy in which everything has a function.
The highest form of existence is the life of the rational being, and the
function of lower beings is to serve this form of life. This led him to defend slavery--because
he thought barbarians were less rational than Greeks and by nature suited to be
"living tools"--and the killing of nonhuman animals for food or
clothing. From this also came a view of human nature and an ethical theory
derived from it. All living things, Aristotle held, have inherent potentialities
and it is their nature to develop that potential to the full. This is the form
of life properly suited to them and constitutes their goal. What, however, is
the potentiality of human beings? For Aristotle this question turns out to be
equivalent to asking what it is that is distinctive about human beings, and
this, of course, is the capacity to reason. The
ultimate goal of humans, therefore, is to develop their reasoning powers. When
they do this, they are living well, in accordance with their true nature, and
they will find this the most rewarding existence possible.
Aristotle thus ends up agreeing with
Plato that the life of the intellect is the highest form of life; though having
a greater sense of realism than Plato, he tempered this view with the suggestion
that the best feasible life for humans must also have the goods of material
prosperity and close friendships. Aristotle's argument for regarding the life of
the intellect so highly, however, is different from that used by Plato; and the
difference is significant because Aristotle committed a fallacy that has often
been repeated. The fallacy is to assume that whatever capacity distinguishes
humans from other beings is, for that very reason, the highest and best of their
capacities. Perhaps the ability to reason is the best of our capacities, but we
cannot be compelled to draw this conclusion from the fact that it is what is
most distinctive of the human species.
A broader and still more pervasive
fallacy underlies Aristotle's ethics. It is the idea that an investigation of
human nature can reveal what we ought to do. For Aristotle, an examination of a
knife would reveal that its distinctive quality is to cut, and from this we
could conclude that a good knife would be a knife that cuts well. In the same
way, an examination of human nature should reveal the distinctive quality of
human beings, and from this we should be able to conclude what it is to be a
good human being. This line of thought makes sense if we think, as Aristotle
did, that the universe as a whole has a purpose and that we exist as part of
such a goal-directed scheme of things, but its error becomes glaring once we
reject this view and come to see our existence as the result of a blind process
of evolution. Then we know that the standards of quality for knives are a result
of the fact that knives are made with a specific purpose in mind and that a good
knife is one that fills this purpose well. Human beings, however, were not made
with any particular purpose in mind. Their nature is the result of random forces
of natural selection and thus cannot, without further moral premises, determine
how they ought to live.
It is to Aristotle that we owe the
notion of the final end, or, as it was later called by medieval scholars, the summum
bonum--the overall good for human beings. This can be found, Aristotle
wrote, by asking why we do the things that we do. If we ask why we chop wood,
the answer may be to build a fire; and if we ask why we build a fire, it may be
to keep warm; but, if we ask why we keep warm, the answer is likely to be simply
that it is pleasant to be warm and unpleasant to be cold. We can ask the same
kind of questions about other activities; the answer always points, Aristotle
thought, to what he called eudaimonia.
This Greek word is usually translated as "happiness," but this is only
accurate if we understand that term in its broadest sense to mean living a
fulfilling, satisfying life. Happiness in the narrower sense of joy or pleasure
would certainly be a concomitant of such a life, but it is not happiness in this
narrower sense that is the goal. (see also summum bonum, eudaimonia)
In searching for the overall good,
Aristotle separates what may be called instrumental goods from intrinsic goods.
The former are good only because they lead to something else that is good; the
latter are good in themselves. The distinction is neglected in the early lists
of ethical precepts that were surveyed above, but it is of the first importance
if a firmly grounded answer to questions about how one ought to live is to be
obtained.
Aristotle is also responsible for much
later thinking about the virtues one should cultivate. In his most important
ethical treatise, the Ethica Nicomachea
(Nicomachean
Ethics), he sorts through the virtues as they were popularly
understood in his day, specifying in each case what is truly virtuous and what
is mistakenly thought to be so. Here, he uses the idea of the Golden Mean, which
is essentially the same idea as the Buddha's middle path between self-indulgence
and self-renunciation. Thus courage, for example, is the mean between two
extremes: one can have a deficiency of it, which is cowardice, or one can have
an excess of it, which is foolhardiness. The virtue of friendliness, to give
another example, is the mean between obsequiousness and surliness.
Aristotle does not intend the idea of
the mean to be applied mechanically in every instance: he says that in the case
of the virtue of temperance, or self-restraint, it is easy to find the excess of
self-indulgence in the physical pleasures, but the opposite error, insufficient
concern for such pleasures, scarcely exists. (The Buddha, with his experience of
the ascetic life of renunciation, would not have agreed.) This caution in the
application of the idea is just as well, for while it may be a useful device for
moral education, the notion of a mean cannot help us to discover new truths
about virtue. We can only arrive at the mean if we already have a notion as to
what is an excess and what is a defect of the trait in question, but this is not
something to be discovered by a morally neutral inspection of the trait itself.
We need a prior conception of the virtue in order to decide what is excessive
and what is defective. To attempt to use the doctrine of the mean to define the
particular virtues would be to travel in a circle.
Aristotle's list of the virtues differs
from later Christian lists. Courage, temperance, and liberality are common to
both periods, but Aristotle also includes a virtue that literally means
"greatness of soul." This is the characteristic of holding a high
opinion of oneself. The corresponding vice of excess is unjustified vanity, but
the vice of deficiency is humility, which for Christians is a virtue.
Aristotle's discussion of the virtue of justice
has been the starting point for almost all Western accounts. He distinguishes
between justice in the distribution of wealth or other goods and justice in
reparation, as, for example, in punishing someone for a wrong he has done. The
key element of justice, according to Aristotle, is treating like cases alike--an
idea that has set later thinkers the task of working out which similarities
(need, desert, talent) are relevant. As with the notion of virtue as a mean,
Aristotle's conception of justice provides a framework that needs to be filled
in before it can be put to use.
Aristotle distinguished between
theoretical and practical wisdom. His concept of
practical wisdom is significant, for it goes beyond merely choosing the means
best suited to whatever ends or goals one may have. The practically wise person
also has the right ends. This implies that one's ends are not purely a matter of
brute desires or feelings; the right ends are something that can be known. It
also gives rise to the problem that faced Socrates: How is it that people can
know the difference between good and bad and still choose what is bad? As noted
earlier, Socrates simply denied that this could happen, saying that those who
did not choose the good must, appearances notwithstanding, be ignorant of what
it is. Aristotle said that this view of Socrates was "plainly at variance
with the observed facts" and, instead, offered a detailed account of the
ways in which one can possess knowledge and yet not act on it because of lack of
control or weakness of will.
In ethics, as in many other fields, the
later Greek and Roman periods do not display the same penetrating insight as the
Classic period of 5th- and 4th-century Greek civilization. Nevertheless, the two
dominant schools of thought, Stoicism and Epicureanism, represent important
approaches to the question of how one ought to live. (see also Roman
Republic and Empire)
Stoicism
had its origins in the views of Socrates and Plato, as modified by Zeno and then
by Chrysippus in the 3rd century BC. It gradually gained influence in Rome,
chiefly through the teachings of Cicero (106-43 BC) and then later in the 1st
century AD through those of Seneca. Remarkably, its chief proponents include
both a slave, Epictetus, and an emperor, Marcus Aurelius. This is a fine
illustration of the Stoic message that what is important is the pursuit of
wisdom and virtue, a pursuit that is open to all human beings owing to their
common capacity for reason and that can be carried out no matter what the
external circumstances of their lives.
Today, the word stoic conjures up one
who remains unmoved by the sorrows and afflictions that distress the rest of
humanity. This is an accurate representation of a stoic ideal, but it must be
placed in the context of a systematic approach to life. Plato held that human
passions and physical desires are in need of regulation by reason (see above Plato
). The Stoics went further: they rejected passions altogether as a basis
for deciding what is good or bad. Physical desires cannot simply be abolished,
but when we become wise we appreciate the difference between wanting something
and judging it to be good. Our desires make us want something, but only our
reason can judge the goodness of what is wanted. If we are wise, we will
identify with our reason, not with our desires; hence, we will not place our
hopes on the attainment of our physical desires nor our anxieties on our failure
to attain them. Wise Stoics will feel physical pain as others do, but in their
minds they will know that physical pain leaves the true reasoning self
untouched. The only thing that is truly good is to live in a state of wisdom and
virtue. In aiming at such a life, we are not subject to the same play of fortune
that afflicts us when we aim at physical pleasure or material wealth, for wisdom
and virtue are matters of the intellect and under our own control. Moreover, if
matters become too grim, there is always a way of ending the pain of the
physical world. The Stoics were not reluctant to counsel suicide
as a means of avoiding otherwise inescapable pain.
Perhaps the most important legacy of
Stoicism, however, is its conviction that all human beings share the capacity to
reason. This led the Stoics to a fundamental sense of equality, which went
beyond the limited Greek conception of equal citizenship.
Thus Seneca claimed that the wise man will
esteem the community of rational beings far above any particular community in
which the accident of birth has placed him, and Marcus
Aurelius said that common reason makes all individuals fellow citizens.
The belief that human reasoning capacities are common to all was also important,
because from it the Stoics drew the implication that there is a universal moral
law, which all people are capable of appreciating. The Stoics thus strengthened
the tradition that sees the universality of reason as the basis on which ethical
relativism is to be rejected.
While the modern use of the term stoic
accurately represents at least a part of the Stoic philosophy, anyone taking the
present-day meaning of epicure as a guide to the philosophy of Epicurus
(341-270 BC) would go astray. True, the Epicureans regarded pleasure
as the sole ultimate good and pain as the sole evil; and they did regard the
more refined pleasures as superior, simply in terms of the quantity and
durability of the pleasure they provided, to the coarser pleasures. To portray
them as searching for these more refined pleasures by dining at the best
restaurants and drinking the finest wines, however, is the reverse of the truth.
By refined pleasures, Epicurus meant pleasures of the mind, as opposed to the
coarse pleasures of the body. He taught that the highest pleasure obtainable is
the pleasure of tranquillity, which is to be obtained by the removal of
unsatisfied wants. The way to do this is to eliminate all but the simplest
wants; these are then easily satisfied even by those who are not wealthy.
Epicurus developed his position
systematically. To determine whether something is good, he would ask if it
increased pleasure or reduced pain. If it did, it was good as a means; if it did
not, it was not good at all. Thus justice was good but merely as an expedient
arrangement to prevent mutual harm. Why not then commit injustice when we can
get away with it? Only because, Epicurus says, the perpetual dread of discovery
will cause painful anxiety. Epicurus also exalted friendship, and the Epicureans
were famous for the warmth of their personal relationships; but, again, they
proclaimed that friendship is good only because of its tendency to create
pleasure.
Both Stoic and Epicurean ethics can be
seen as precursors of later trends in Western ethics: the Stoics of the modern
belief in equality and the Epicureans of a Utilitarian ethic based on pleasure.
The development of these ethical positions, however, was dramatically affected
by the spreading from the East of a new religion that had its roots in a Jewish
conception of ethics as obedience to a divine authority. With the conversion of
Emperor Constantine I to Christianity by AD 313, the older schools of philosophy
lost their sway over the thinking of the Roman Empire.
Matthew reports Jesus
as having said, in the Sermon on the Mount, that he came not to destroy the law
of the prophets but to fulfill it. Indeed, when Jesus is regarded as a teacher
of ethics, it is clear that he was more a reformer of the Hebrew tradition than
a radical innovator. The Hebrew tradition had a tendency to place great emphasis
on compliance with the letter of the law; the Gospel accounts of Jesus portray
him as preaching against this "righteousness of the scribes and
Pharisees," championing the spirit rather than the letter of the law. This
spirit he characterized as one of love, for God and for one's neighbour. But
since he was not proposing that the old teachings be discarded, he saw no need
to develop a comprehensive ethical system. Christianity
thus never really broke with the Jewish conception of morality as a matter of
divine law to be discovered by reading and interpreting the word of God as
revealed in the Scriptures. (see also Judaism)
This conception of morality had
important consequences for the future development of Western ethics. The Greeks
and Romans, and indeed thinkers such as Confucius too, did not have the Western
conception of a distinctively moral realm of conduct. For them, everything that
one did was a matter of practical reasoning, in which one could do well or
poorly. In the more legalistic Judeo-Christian view, however, it is one thing to
lack practical wisdom in, say, household budgeting, and a quite different and
much more serious matter to fall short of what the moral law requires. This
distinction between the moral and the nonmoral realms now affects every question
in Western ethics, including the very way the questions themselves are framed.
Another consequence of the retention of
the basically legalistic stance of Jewish ethics was that from the beginning
Christian ethics had to deal with the question of how to judge the person who
breaks the law from good motives or keeps it from bad motives. The latter half
of this question was particularly acute because the Gospels describe Jesus as
repeatedly warning of a coming resurrection of the dead at which time all would
be judged and punished or rewarded according to their sins and virtues in this
life. The punishments and rewards were weighty enough to motivate anyone who
took this message seriously; and it was given added emphasis by the fact that it
was not going to be long in coming. (Jesus said that it would take place during
the lifetime of some of those listening to him.) This is, therefore, an ethic
that invokes external sanctions as a reason for doing what is right, in contrast
to Plato or Aristotle for whom happiness is an internal element of a virtuous
life. At the same time, it is an ethic that places love above mere literal
compliance with the law. These two aspects do not sit easily together. Can one
love God and neighbour in order to be rewarded with eternal happiness in another
life? (see also Last
Judgment)
The fact that Jesus and Paul,
too, believed in the imminence of the Second Coming led them to suggest ways of
living that were scarcely feasible on any other assumption: taking no thought
for the morrow; turning the other cheek; and giving away all one has. Even
Paul's preference for celibacy rather than marriage and his grudging acceptance
of the latter on the basis that "It is better to marry than to burn"
makes some sense once we grasp that he was proposing ethical standards for what
he thought would be the last generation on earth. When the expected event did
not occur and Christianity became the official religion of the vast and
embattled Roman Empire, Christian leaders were faced with the awkward task of
reinterpreting these injunctions in a manner more suited for a continuing
society.
The new Christian ethical standards did
lead to some changes in Roman morality. Perhaps the most vital was a new sense
of the equal moral status of all human beings. As previously noted, the Stoics
had been the first to elaborate this conception, grounding equality on the
common capacity to reason. For Christians, humans are equal because they are all
potentially immortal and equally precious in the sight of God. This caused
Christians to condemn a wide variety of practices that had been accepted by both
Greek and Roman moralists. Many of these related to the taking of innocent human
life: from the earliest days Christian leaders condemned abortion, infanticide,
and suicide. Even killing in war was at first regarded as wrong, and soldiers
converted to Christianity had refused to continue to bear arms. Once the empire
became Christian, however, this was one of the inconvenient ideas that had to
yield. In spite of what Jesus had said about turning the other cheek, the church
leaders declared that killing in a "just war" was not a sin. The
Christian condemnation of killing in gladiatorial games, on the other hand, had
a more permanent effect. Finally, but perhaps most importantly, while Christian
emperors continued to uphold the legality of slavery,
the Christian church accepted slaves as equals, admitted them to its ceremonies,
and regarded the granting of freedom to slaves as a virtuous, if not obligatory,
act. This moral pressure led over several hundred years to the gradual
disappearance of slavery in Europe. (see also human
equality)
The Christian contribution to improving
the position of slaves can also be linked with the distinctively Christian list
of virtues. Some of the virtues described by Aristotle, as, for example,
greatness of soul, are quite contrary in spirit to Christian virtues such as
humility. In general, it can be said that the Greeks and Romans prized
independence, self-reliance, magnanimity, and worldly success. By contrast,
Christians saw virtue in meekness, obedience, patience, and resignation. As the
Greeks and Romans conceived virtue, a virtuous slave was almost a contradiction
in terms, but for Christians there was nothing in the state of slavery that was
incompatible with the highest moral character.
Christianity began with a set of
scriptures incorporating many ethical injunctions but with no ethical
philosophy. The first serious attempt to provide such a philosophy was made by
St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430). Augustine was acquainted with a version of
Plato's philosophy, and he developed the Platonic idea of the rational soul into
a Christian view wherein humans are essentially souls, using their bodies as
means to achieve their spiritual ends. The ultimate object remains happiness, as
in Greek ethics, but Augustine saw happiness as consisting in a union of the
soul with God after the body has died. It was through Augustine, therefore, that
Christianity received the Platonic theme of the relative inferiority of bodily
pleasures. There was, to be sure, a fundamental difference: whereas Plato saw
this inferiority in terms of a comparison with the pleasures of philosophical
contemplation in this world, Christians compared them unfavourably with the
pleasures of spiritual existence in the next world. Moreover, Christians came to
see bodily pleasures not merely as inferior but also as a positive threat to the
achievement of spiritual bliss.
It was also important that Augustine
could not accept the view, common to so many Greek and Roman philosophers, that
philosophical reasoning was the path to wisdom and happiness. For a Christian,
of course, the path had to be through love of God and faith in Jesus as the
Saviour. The result was to be, for many centuries, a rejection of the use of
unfettered reasoning powers in ethics.
Augustine was aware of the tension
caused by the dual Christian motivations of love of God and neighbour, on the
one hand, and reward and punishment in the afterlife, on the other. He came down
firmly on the side of love, insisting that those who keep the moral law through
fear of punishment are not really keeping it at all. But it is not ordinary
human love, either, that suffices as a motivation for true Christian living.
Augustine believed all men bear the burden of Adam's original sin, and so are
incapable of redeeming themselves by their own efforts. Only the unmerited grace
of God makes possible obedience to the "first greatest commandment" of
loving God, and without such, one cannot fulfill the moral law. This view made a
clear-cut distinction between Christians and pagan moralists, no matter how
humble and pure the latter might be; only the former could be saved because only
they could receive the blessing of divine grace. But this gain, as Augustine saw
it, was purchased at the cost of denying that man is free to choose good or
evil. Only Adam had this choice: he chose for all humanity, and he chose evil.
At this point we may pass over more than
800 years in silence, for there were no major developments in ethics in the West
until the rise of Scholasticism in the 12th and
13th centuries. Among the first of the significant works written during this
time was a treatise on ethics by the French philosopher and theologian Peter
Abelard (1079-1142). His importance in ethical theory lies in his
emphasis on intentions. Abelard maintained, for example, that the sin of sexual
wrongdoing consists not in the act of illicit sexual intercourse nor even in the
desire for it, but in mentally consenting to that desire. In this he was far
more modern than Augustine, with his doctrine of grace, and also more thoughtful
than those who even today assert that the mere desire for what is wrong is as
wrong as the act itself. Abelard saw that there is a problem in holding anyone
morally responsible for the existence of mere physical desires. His ingenious
solution was taken up by later medieval writers, and traces of it can still be
found in modern discussions of moral responsibility.
Aristotle's ethical writings were not
known to scholars in western Europe during Abelard's time. Latin translations
became available only in the first half of the 13th century, and the rediscovery
of Aristotle dominated later medieval philosophy. Nowhere is his influence more
marked than in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas
(1225-74), often regarded as the greatest of the Scholastic philosophers and
undoubtedly the most influential, since his teachings became the semiofficial
philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church. Such is
the respect in which Aquinas held Aristotle that he referred to him simply as
The Philosopher, and it is not too far from the truth to say that the chief aim
of Aquinas' work was to reconcile Aristotle's views with Christian doctrine.
Aquinas took from Aristotle the notion
of a final end, or summum
bonum, at which all action is ultimately directed; and, like
Aristotle, he saw this end as necessarily linked with happiness.
This conception was Christianized, however, by the idea that happiness is to be
found in the love of God. Thus a person seeks to know God but cannot fully
succeed in this in life on earth. The reward of heaven, where one can know God,
is available only to those who merit it, though even then it is given by God's
grace rather than obtained by right. Short of heaven, a person can experience
only a more limited form of happiness to be gained through a life of virtue and
friendship, much as Aristotle had recommended.
The blend of Aristotle's teachings and
Christianity is also evident in Aquinas' views about right and wrong, and how we
come to know the difference between them. Aquinas is often described as
advocating a "natural law" ethic, but
this term is easily misunderstood. The natural law to which Aquinas referred
does not require a legislator any more than do the laws of nature that govern
the motions of the planets. An even more common mistake is to imagine that this
conception of natural law relies on contrasting what is natural with what is
artificial. Aquinas' theory of the basis of right and wrong developed rather as
an alternative to the view that morality is determined simply by the arbitrary
will of God. Instead of conceiving of right and wrong in this manner as
something fundamentally unrelated to human goals and purposes, Aquinas saw
morality as deriving from human nature and the activities that are objectively
suited to it.
It is a consequence of this natural law
ethic that the difference between right and wrong can be appreciated by the use
of reason and reflection on experience. Christian revelation may supplement this
knowledge in some respects, but even such pagan philosophers as Aristotle could
understand the essentials of virtuous living. We are, however, likely to err
when we apply these general principles to the particular cases that confront us
in everyday life. Corrupt customs and poor moral education may obscure the
messages of natural reason. Hence, societies must enact laws of their own to
supplement natural law and, where necessary, to coerce those who, because of
their own imperfections, are liable to do what is wrong and socially
destructive.
It follows, too, that virtue and human
flourishing are linked. When we do what is right, we do what is objectively
suited to our true nature. Thus the promise of heaven is no mere external
sanction, rewarding actions that would otherwise be indifferent to us or even
against our best interests. On the contrary, Aquinas wrote that "God is not
offended by us except by what we do against our own good." Reward and
punishment in the afterlife reinforce a moral law that all humans, Christian or
pagan, have adequate prior reasons for following.
In arguing for his views, Aquinas was
always concerned to show that he had the authority of the Scriptures or the
Church Fathers on his side, but the substance of his ethical system is to a
remarkable degree based on reason rather than revelation. This is strong
testimony to the power of Aristotle's example. Nonetheless, Aquinas absorbed the
weaknesses as well as the strengths of the Aristotelian system. His attempt to
base right and wrong on human nature, in particular, invites the objection that
we cannot presuppose our nature to be good. Aquinas might reply that it is good
because God made it so, but this merely shifts back one step the issue of the
basis of good and bad: Did God make it good in accordance with some independent
standard of goodness, or would any human nature made by God be good? If we give
the former answer, we need an account of the independent standard of goodness.
Because this cannot--if we are to avoid circular argument--be based on human
nature, it is not clear what account Aquinas could offer. If we maintain,
however, that any human nature made by God would be good, we must accept that if
God had made our nature such that we flourish and achieve happiness by torturing
the weak and helpless among us, that would have been what we should do in order
to live virtuously.
Something resembling this second
option--but without the intermediate step of an appeal to human nature--was the
position taken by the last of the great Scholastic philosophers, William
of Ockham (c. 1285-1349?). Ockham boldly broke with much that had been taken
for granted by his immediate predecessors. Fundamental to this was his rejection
of the central Aristotelian idea that all things have a final end, or goal,
toward which they naturally tend. He, therefore, also spurned Aquinas' attempt
to base morality on human nature, and with it the idea that happiness is man's
goal and closely linked with goodness. This led him to a position in stark
contrast to almost all previous Western ethics. Ockham denied all standards of
good and evil that are independent of God's will. What God wills is good; what
God condemns is evil. That is all there is to say about the matter. This
position is sometimes called a divine approbation theory, because it defines
"good" as whatever is approved by God. As indicated earlier, when
discussing attempts to link morality with religion, it follows from such a
position that it is meaningless to describe God himself as good. It also follows
that if God had willed us to torture children, it would be good to do so. As for
the actual content of God's will, according to Ockham, that is not a subject for
philosophy but rather a matter for revelation and faith.
The rigour and consistency of Ockham's
philosophy made it for a time one of the leading schools of Scholastic thought,
but eventually it was the philosophy of Aquinas that prevailed in the Roman
Catholic Church. After the Reformation, however, Ockham's view exerted influence
on Protestant theologians. Meanwhile, it hastened the decline of Scholastic
moral philosophy because it effectively removed ethics from the sphere of
reason.
The revival of Classical learning and
culture that began in 15th-century Italy and then slowly spread throughout
Europe did not give immediate birth to any major new ethical theories. Its
significance for ethics lies, rather, in a change of focus. For the first time
since the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity, man, not God, became
the chief object of interest, and the theme was not religion but humanism--the
powers, freedom, and accomplishments of human beings. This does not mean that
there was a sudden conversion to atheism. Renaissance thinkers remained
Christian and still considered human beings as somehow midway between the beasts
and the angels. Yet, even this middle position meant that humans were special.
It meant, too, a new conception of human dignity and of the importance of the
individual.
Although the Renaissance did not produce
any outstanding moral philosophers, there is one writer whose work is of some
importance in the history of ethics: the Italian author and statesman Niccolò
Machiavelli. His book Il
principe (1513; The Prince) offered advice to rulers as to what they must do to
achieve their aims and secure their power. Its significance for ethics lies
precisely in the fact that Machiavelli's advice ignores the usual ethical rules:
"It is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how
not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to the
necessities of the case." There had not been so frank a rejection of
morality since the Greek Sophists. So startling is the cynicism of Machiavelli's
advice that it has been suggested that Il principe was an attempt to satirize the conduct of the princely
rulers of Renaissance Italy. It may be more accurate, however, to view
Machiavelli as an early political scientist, concerned only with setting out
what human beings are like and how power is maintained, with no intention of
passing moral judgment on the state of affairs described. In any case, Il
principe gained instant notoriety, and Machiavelli's name became synonymous
with political cynicism and deviousness. In spite of the chorus of condemnation,
the work has led to a sharper appreciation of the difference between the lofty
ethical systems of the philosophers and the practical realities of political
life.
It was left to the 17th-century English
philosopher and political theorist Thomas Hobbes to take up the challenge of
constructing an ethical system on the basis of so unflattering a view of human
nature (see below). Between Machiavelli and Hobbes, however, there occurred the
traumatic breakup of Western Christianity known as the Reformation.
Reacting against the worldly immorality apparent in the Renaissance church, Martin
Luther, John Calvin, and other leaders of the new Protestantism
sought to return to the pure early Christianity of the Scriptures, especially
the teachings of Paul, and of the Church Fathers, with Augustine foremost among
them. They were contemptuous of Aristotle (Luther called him a
"buffoon") and of non-Christian philosophers in general. Luther's
standard of right and wrong was what God commands. Like William of Ockham,
Luther insisted that the commands of God cannot be justified by any independent
standard of goodness: good simply means what God commands. Luther did not
believe these commands would be designed to satisfy human desires because he was
convinced that desires are totally corrupt. In fact, he thought that human
nature was totally corrupt. In any case, Luther insisted that one does not earn
salvation by good works: one is justified by faith in Christ and receives
salvation through divine grace.
It is apparent that if these premises
are accepted, there is little scope for human reason in ethics. As a result, no
moral philosophy has ever had the kind of close association with any Protestant
church that, say, the philosophy of Aquinas has had with Roman Catholicism. Yet,
because Protestants emphasized the capacity of the individual to read and
understand the Gospels without obtaining the authoritative interpretation of the
church, the ultimate outcome of the Reformation was a greater freedom to read
and write independently of the church hierarchy. This made possible a new era of
ethical thought. (see also religion)
From this time, too, distinctively
national traditions of moral philosophy began to emerge; the British tradition,
in particular, developed largely independently of ethics on the Continent.
Accordingly, the present discussion will follow this tradition through the 19th
century before returning to consider the different line of development in
continental Europe.
Thomas Hobbes
(1588-1679) is an outstanding example of the independence of mind that became
possible in Protestant countries after the Reformation. God does, to be sure,
play an honourable role in Hobbes's philosophy, but it is a dispensable role.
The philosophical edifice stands on its own foundations; God merely crowns the
apex. Hobbes was the equal of the Greek philosophers in his readiness to develop
an ethical position based only on the facts of human nature and the
circumstances in which humans live; and he surpassed even Plato and Aristotle in
the extent to which he sought to do this by systematic deduction from clearly
set out premises.
Hobbes started with a severe view of
human nature: all of man's voluntary acts are aimed at self-pleasure or
self-preservation. This position is known as psychological
hedonism, because it asserts that the fundamental psychological
motivation is the desire for pleasure. Like
later psychological hedonists, Hobbes was confronted with the objection that
people often seem to act altruistically. There is a story that Hobbes was seen
giving alms to a beggar outside St. Paul's Cathedral. A clergyman sought to
score a point by asking Hobbes if he would have given the money, had Christ not
urged giving to the poor. Hobbes replied that he gave the money because it
pleased him to see the poor man pleased. The reply reveals the dilemma that
always faces those who propos |
