By: ALEXANDER GILMAN

The relationship between the liturgical, defined by Jean-Yves Lacoste as “the logic that presides over the encounter between man and God writ large,” and the ethical is deeply ambiguous. Throughout Lacoste’s phenomenological work, Experience and the Absolute, the call of man and the world is set in contrast with the call of the Absolute. In this text Lacoste begins with the Heideggerian notion of our being as being-in-the world-toward-death and explores how a liturgical relationship with the absolute subverts, but also sublates, our being-in-the-world in favor of a being-toward-God. Without rejecting Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, Lacoste aims to show how a liturgical relationship is a free choice of any Dasein. However, this turning-toward-God from being-in-the-world is not without complications. Since our ethical obligations and relationships dwell in the world, it may also be the case that ethics is subverted in the logic of the liturgical. Lacoste discusses ethics in many parts of the text, but nonetheless a thematized understanding of the exact relationship between ethics and liturgy is still necessary. There are several possibilities for how this relationship may manifest itself. The liturgical could be irreducibly separate and contradictory to ethics; the liturgical could ground ethics by creating the possibility of ethics; the liturgical could provide specific ethical content, such as virtues, laws, and commandments. In the end, we must especially look for specific ethical principles that could guide our behavior, not just a vague ethical space. I will thus maintain a basic definition of ethics as a system of moral principles that govern a person or group’s action. We must weigh these possibilities and definitions against Lacoste’s framework for the liturgical.

To help flesh out this relationship, I will also discuss Soren Kierkegaard’s philosophy of the religious and the ethical, giving a cross-reading of Fear and Trembling and Repetition guided by Dominic Desroches’ article “The Exception as Reinforcement of the Ethical Norm: The Figures of Abraham and Job in Kierkegaard’s Ethical Thought. I believe the relationship between the liturgical and the ethical is a fundamental problem in religious thought for it must be deciding factor in the legitimacy of any religious system. The boldness and rigor of Lacoste’s project to reconcile the Heideggarian phenomenological analytic of Dasein with the Christian commitment to being-toward-God must be weighed against a consideration of the ethical else it is in danger of being irrelevant to our own lives.

The first possibility for the relationship between the liturgical and the ethical, that they are in fact irreconcilable and contradictory, seems to be the momentum of the first several chapters of Experience and the Absolute. By chapter four, Lacoste brings to the fore what it is becoming a real problem in his analytic of the liturgical: subverting our relationship with the world in order to prioritize our relationship with an unknown Absolute. Liturgy appears from most of Lacoste’s accounts to contradict the logic of the world and consequently, possibly contradict our ethical responsibilities. Lacoste writes in summary, “We have defined liturgy as the resolute deliberate gesture made by those who ordain their being-in-the-world a being-before-God, and who do violence to the former in the name of the latter.”ii Although Lacoste is careful to say that liturgy transgresses and annuls rather than eliminates or destroys our relation to place, to history, and to the world, its implications are nonetheless disturbing.

Especially since in his framework we are subverting our relation to place in exchange for a liturgical ‘nonplace,’ our time for a ‘nonevent’ and our relationship to others or world for a ‘nonexperience,’ this free choice for the liturgical appears at first glance not only to be ethically suspect but also precarious in its logic. Lacoste even uses this latter word to describe the liturgical commitment, thus he is well aware of how it looks. On this point Lacoste expands, “Liturgy actually suffers from being in the margins and at a distance in two ways. It is removed from definitive realities, which it at best represents inchoately. And it is removed from all that which, in the domain of the provisional, justifiably demands that we take care of it.”iii It is suggested by this point that liturgy serves no reasonable purpose except as a diversion and distraction from the responsibilities of the ethical. The logic of liturgy is one “foreign to the logic of action.”iv

Thus, Lacoste must ask, “Is liturgy a form of divertissment?”v Lacoste’s answer will be a clear “no” but the question demands of liturgy to defend itself against the implications of subversion. In other words, why should we risk contradicting or distracting our ethical responsibility, which is tangible and concrete, for the precariousness of the liturgical?

Lacoste further complicates the issue by resisting an ethics gained solely from the logic of our being-in-the-world. By critiquing Emmanuel Levinas’ first philosophy and siding with Heidegger, he writes, “Yet the mute call that renders me “hostage” to others places no obligation on me that would emanate solely from the a priori conditions of my presence in the world.”vi Our initial condition of being-in-the-world is in fact also a divertissement from the ethical: “the world keeps the injunctions of the good veiled over.”vii Beyond the inferior ethics of the social contract, the ethical, similarly to the liturgical, aims to subvert the solipsism and existential self-centeredness of Dasein’s being-toward-death. Thus, we cannot simply disregard liturgy as irrelevant because our being-in-the-world does not grant us an originary ethics. Lacoste’s account of liturgy problematizes the ethical for believers as well as nonbelievers. We must then ask two additional questions: can the ethical be (re)gained through the liturgical and is there an alternate source for the ethical outside the liturgical?

In order to grant liturgy a positive relationship to ethics, either through grounding its possibility or providing ethical content, it must be through a paradox. If liturgy subverts our relationship to the world and diverts from the logic of work, but also provides something positive to the consideration of ethics, then the relationship is contradictory. This does not mean, however, that it is impossible. After thematizing the problem of ethics in liturgy Lacoste makes the bold claim that “The diversion that liturgy has as its task is perhaps alone in permitting us to rigorously ground the ethical meaning of our facticity.”viii This is indeed a surprising statement. First, it is claiming that the very diversion we questioned as ethically suspicious in fact grounds ethics. Second, liturgy is the sole ground for ethics. Third, the meaning of our facticity, our being-in-the-world, is, at least partially, ethical. Against the implications of liturgical divertissement, Lacoste wants to argue a strong, positive relationship between the liturgical and the ethical. There are three possibilities in Lacoste’s work for how the liturgical may ground the ethical. We must ask whether they are satisfying answers to the problems above.

First, Lacoste argues that time spent liturgically grants us a symbolic distance from the inherence of the world, thus unveiling the ethical from the divertissement of the world. Lacoste explores the logic of the “initial” versus the “originary” to flesh out this possibility. The initial, our everyday, already always being-in-the-world, as we mentioned above, “keeps the injunctions of the good veiled over.” The night of the vigil, the liturgical time par excellence, subverts our relation to world, brings us to the margins of our being-in-the-world in order to remove the world as a hindrance between ourselves and the Absolute. This turning toward God through the liturgical night, Lacoste argues, also has a morning in which we turn back toward the world, granted a distance that allows perspective and new clarity on the problems of our being-in-the-world. He writes, “The new day that concludes the liturgical vigil must be understood as the gift of the beginning given one again: the symbolism of the origin leads to the reality of a starting point, to the reality of a space opened to a freedom capable of willing, and indeed of doing good.”ix By subverting the inherence of the world we gain purity of vision, and possibly of intentions, prior to our initial thrownness. The liturgical returns us to our “originary” nature, suggesting a pre-Lapsarian symbolism, gives us back the possibility of being ethical without the distractions of the world. This is a useful starting place for developing a relationship between liturgy and ethics.

With this conclusion, however, we have not gained a real ethic but only a possibility for ethics. There is nothing inherent in the distance gained by liturgy to return to the world with an ethical project. In another place, though, Lacoste suggests a way in which liturgy additionally alerts us to our responsibility through the liturgical unhappiness of consciousness. He writes, “The liturgical unhappiness of consciousness reveals, not only that liturgy prevents us from doing good during the time of entr’acte, but also that we have ignored the ultimate (though veiled over) stakes of our being-in-the world, and that we can no longer continue to do so.”x This unhappiness, the one that motivates this paper, stays with the person during the liturgical. He or she feels that the liturgical vigil is time taken away from the necessary exigencies of the ethical. This perceived deficiency in the liturgical combined with the distance gained throughout it perhaps gives a possible solution to how the liturgical may more rigorously ground the ethical. Lacoste continues, “liturgy enables us to dwell in the world and on the earth by superimposing on our facticity the order of an ethical vocation that alone authorizes us to let the Kingdom invest itself in world and earth in advance.”xi The liturgical, then, allows the transcendent ethical logic of the Kingdom, of the eschaton, to come to the world. We see in liturgy how far the world is from the Kingdom and thus desire to change the world.

Here, it seems, Lacoste has reconciled ethics to liturgy, but there are some problems still lurking in this answer, or at least an incompleteness. In response to the first claim that liturgy opens a space that subverts and gives distance from the world, it must be reemphasized that this gives nothing but the possibility of the ethical. Even when the liturgical unhappiness of consciousness imbues us with a sense of the irresponsibility of the liturgical, this desire to return to the world still lacks any specific ethical principles. We are called back to the world with a clearer vision but how can we go about bringing the Kingdom to the world? If our being is fundamentally duplicitous, how can our beingin- vocation during liturgy inform our being-in-fact, ethically or otherwise? At best, this grounding of ethics is the grounding of a desire for the ethical. Lacoste’s claim lacks the kind of ethical framework we have in Levinas. The liturgical need not give us dogmatic rules, but it should give a concrete foundation for how to be ethical. Since Lacoste disagrees with Levinas that the ethical relation is original to our being, it seems he shies away from providing an ethical system at all. Despite this incompleteness, a lot has been gain by grounding a desire for the ethical. It shows that the liturgical and the ethical have a positive relationship. But thus far this relationship is still unthematized. We do not, as Lacoste assumes, have any sense of the “ethical ground of our facticity” but rather simply that the ethical is possible and desirable. This desire should want something more concrete and specific.

Although Lacoste does not relate this next concept directly to ethics, I believe there is one moment in the text that may be read as a more specific way in which liturgy provides an ethical framework. The liturgical project of abnegation aims to subvert our consciousness, our subjectivity, and our will. With regard to the first, Lacoste describes liturgy as “disoriented consciousness.”xii Liturgy places us in a relation different from any other relation, to an object for example. Rather than being strictly intentional, in the Husserlian sense, in the liturgical relationship we do not gather objects around us as the subject but “make ourselves available before God.”xiii The subject is no longer the center of the experience. Lacoste continues, “The I [le moi] can content itself with being an I. Now, it is precisely liturgical (in)experience that provides the exemplary case of a decentering and marginalization of the ego.” Through this dislodging of the I we become the other par excellence of the Absolute. But since the Absolute is not an other in the same sense of an worldly object or person, the relationship is disproportionate. Our otherness subordinates our ipseity. Through liturgy we exist primarily in the mode of You. Although this is not as originary to our being-in-the-world as the mode of I, the liturgical disorientation of consciousness forces us into a relationship that can radically reorient our relationship to others.

Ironically, this kind of reorientation recalls the philosophy of Levinas that Lacoste rejects, although in a different form. By de-centering the ego through liturgy we achieve two things: first, a greater selflessness and realization of the limitation of our subjectivity, and second, a model for ethically “making ourselves available” for others. Levinas’ conception of being “hostage” to the other thus takes on a new meaning through the liturgical and can thus be a useful category without conceding to his first philosophy. The relationship we have to the Absolute, throughout the language of a relation rather than that of Kingdom versus world, gives us a framework for applying a liturgical (non)experience to a worldly, ethical experience. If this disorientation of consciousness is not just incidental but rather essential to the liturgical, we have gained a more concrete grounding for the ethical. Yet, there is still something dissatisfying in this conclusion. It lacks specific ethical principles that could help guide our being-in-the-world. It gives a model for becoming a You that can hear the call of the other, but this relationship must be fleshed out more. Moreover, Lacoste does not directly connect disorientation to ethics, so we only have implications. An ambiguity still ultimately remains.

In Fear and Trembling Soren Kierkegaard explores a similar tension between the ethical and faith through the analysis of Abraham attempting to slay Isaac on Mount Moriah. Kierkegaard develops a framework for comparing the action of Abraham as the Knight of Faith and the tragic hero, or Knight of Infinite Resignation. The drama that Kierkegaard lays out for consideration involves heroic acts that suspend ethics. In the case of the tragic hero, the ethical is suspended in order to accomplish a higher ethic, such as Agamemnon sacrificing Iphigenia in order to save the polis. He stays ultimately within the ethical even when he suspends it. Abraham, Kierkegaard concludes, does no such thing but rather entirely and radically suspends the ethical for his act of faith; “in his action he overstepped the ethical altogether, and had a higher telos outside it.”xiv For Kierkegaard, Abraham’s action, although not a part of everyone’s faith commitment, is fundamental to the religious attunement. Abraham mythically dramatizes the paradox and dangerous implications of intending something transcendent, just as Lacoste’s treatment of the liturgical necessitated such radical subversion of worldliness. Kierkegaard, however, presents the problem in even starker terms.

The example of Abraham expresses for Kierkegaard the basic religious act of faith. Kierkegaard, unlike Lacoste, gives a specific definition of the ethical that he then juxtaposes with the religious. For Kierkegaard to be ethical is to will the good for the universal: “the individual’s ethical task is always to…abrogate his particularity so as to become the universal.”xv In another way, it is to put the other, as an abstract totality, before the self. The ethical is that which applies to everyone at all times. He does not flesh it out more than this, but implicit in it is an ethical attitude more concrete than with Lacoste. The religious flows through this universal but ends above it. He writes, “Faith is just this paradox, that the single individual as the particular is higher than the universal, is justified before the latter, not as subordinate but superior…”xvi The religious person’s relationship to the Absolute supersedes his or her relationship to the universal, to the ethical. Thus not only do the faithful appear non-ethical or neutral, in that they intend outside the ethical, but they also appear unethical, in that they negate the universal.

The religious attunement’s utter contradiction with the ethical is irreducible and pronounced in Kierkegaard, and thus unlike Lacoste, there is within the religious little room for finding an ethic. At least Kierkegaard is hard-pressed to find one, as he remarks, “I can understand the tragic hero, but not Abraham, even though in a certain lunatic sense I admire him more than all others.”xvii There is not within the religious drama an obvious ethical logic, hidden away in a nice paradox. Here it is a stark betrayal of the ethical, not just as a diversion but as a positive act: “What we usually call a temptation is something that keeps a person from carrying out a duty, but here the temptation is the ethical itself which would keep [Abraham] from doing God’s will.”xviii Lacoste’s conception of the liturgical can be critiqued as a temptation in the first sense, as a hindrance to carrying out the ethical. Abraham’s act does not just subvert but negate the ethical. The knight of faith is unethical, and thus we have here an even more difficult and disconcerting problem.

Besides the subtle, and ultimately unsatisfying, suggestion that Abraham must eventually descend Mount Moriah and return to the world, there is no reconciliation of the religious and ethical in Fear and Trembling. Abraham acts on the absurd and cannot be understood in terms of the universal, of the ethical. Even if we accept Abraham’s return home as possibly ethical, since his act was a negation rather than a subversion of the ethical, it is simply not enough to solve the problem. Dominic Desroches in his essay on Kierkegaardian ethics suggests a cross-reading of Fear and Trembling and Repetition to work out this problem. In the latter text, which was actually published before Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard compares the concept of recollection to that of repetition. In recollection, one returns to a past circumstance expecting similar feelings but is naturally disappointed. Recollection ends in melancholy. Repetition, however, is a return forward, a renewed will and passion to live in old circumstances in a fresh and invigorated way. When read through the lens of Abraham and ethics, a religious repetition is willing the particular over the universal, in order to repeat the universal with new vigor. Repetition suggests that faith is necessary for the ethical, a thesis similar to that of Lacoste’s, but Kierkegaard’s idea gives a more specific ethical framework.

Yet, this conclusion seems to fundamentally contradict Fear and Trembling: how does repetition succeed in this retrieval of the ethical? In the afterward to Repetition Kierkegaard addresses the reader in terms familiar to the discussion in Fear, “The exception thinks also the universal when it thinks itself, it labors also for the universal when it elaborates itself, it explains the universal when it explains itself.”xix The exception, the willing of the particular as in Abraham, in fact strengthens the universal by underlining the meaning of the universal. In its very absurdity and insanity, the exception reinforces the logic of the universal. He continues:

“In the course of time one grows weary of the perpetual patter about the universal, always the universal, repeated to the most tedious extreme of insipidity. There are exceptions. If one cannot explain them, neither can one explain the universal. Commonly one does not notice the difficulty because one does not think even the universal with passion but with an easygoing superficiality. On the other hand, the exception thinks the universal with serious passion.”xx

Similar to Lacoste, Kierkegaard makes the argument that the religious act grants a sort of respite and distance from the ethical that actually reinvigorates the latter. Yet additionally, repetition deepens ethical knowledge. By pushing the universal to its margins, its contour is regained. The religious repetition moves forward, adding richness and understanding, just as Lacoste says, “the circle that unites liturgical reason and ethical reason is the fundamental rhythm of existence, which transgressing its native conditions, desires the accomplishment of the human beyond what can be derived from our facticity.”xxi Thus Lacoste agrees with Kierkegaard’s model but we gain something concrete through Kierkegaard that is perhaps missing in Lacoste’s analysis. Placing the relationship between the religious and the ethical in the terms of the universal and particular, a specific ethical system is suggested. Because Kierkegaardian repetition reinforces the universal, rather than just returns us to our facticity with a new clarity, it brings with it an ethical framework, an attitude that suggests, through faith, how we may act ethically. The rigorous absurdity of faith provides logic to the ethical.

That is not to say that Lacoste provides nothing in filling out this complex relationship between the ethical and the liturgical. Combining the more specific Kierkegaardian language of the universal with Lacoste’s sophisticated logic of the vigil, originary, and Kingdom, as well as the liturgical disorientation of consciousness, we have thus gained a tenable possibility for how the liturgical may be reconciled to the ethical. Nevertheless, achieving such a reconciliation necessitated a creative reading of both writers in conjunction. Also, even with his additional and useful framework, there is a lot to be desired in Kierkegaard’s ethics. We in the end still lack the more practical guidance of how the liturgical may relate to a real ethical relationship. What if there is a question about what should or should not be willed as universal, such as the famous story provided by Kant of the murderer at the door for your friend? Do you lie and betray the universal for perhaps a higher ethic such as the tragic hero? The details of such a framework are not worked out.

Thus in the end, with Lacoste and Kierkegaard, we have three specific concepts that relate the liturgical to the ethical: that the liturgical vigil opens us an pure space for the ethical, that the disoriented consciousness provides a model for the ethical relation, and that repetition reinvigorates the logic of the ethical universal. In short, we have a suggestion for the relationship between the liturgical and the ethical, but not much of an ethics. In order for this problem to be truly satisfied, more work must be done to show what kind of ethical principles can be gained from the liturgical and thus why we should think the liturgical at all with regard to ethics. Moreover, the ambiguities and implications of the liturgical, such as its successful subversion of the logic of the world, also beg the disturbing question: why think the ethical at all? Why not stay in an indefinite vigil? Why return to the anxiety-ridden logic of being-in-the-world? Ultimately, we desire not just a relationship between the liturgical and the ethical but a meaningful synthesis that can guide our entire lives from the nightly vigil to our daily interactions with people and things.

End Notes

i) From Existentialist Thinkers and Ethics, ed. Christine Daigle (London: McGill-Queen’s
University Press), 2006.
ii) Jean-Yves Lacoste, Experience and the Absolute (New York: Fordham University
Press, 2004), 39, emphasis mine.
iii) Ibid, 68.
iv) Ibid, 78.
v) Ibid, 70.
vi) Ibid, 72.
vii) Ibid, 73.
viii) Ibid, 70.
ix) Ibid, 97.
x) Ibid, 73.
xi) Ibid, 75.
xii) Ibid, 149.
xiii) Ibid, 152.
xiv) Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 88.
xv) Ibid, 83.
xvi) Ibid, 84.
xvii) Ibid, 86.
xviii) Ibid, 88.
xix) Soren Kierkegaard, Repetition (New York: Harper & Row, 1941), 133.
xx) Ibid, 134.
xxi) Lacoste, 76.

Alexander Gilman (’11) is a History Major and a Philosophy Minor from Boston College

Image taken from deviantart.com

ABSTRACT: The Fool offers a famous objection to Hobbesian ethics: if practical rationality is rooted in self-interest, then isn’t it rational to abandon ethical reasoning when doing so “conduces to one’s benefit”? In this paper, I examine Hobbes’ reply to the Fool as it reveals the limitations of the moral theory presented in Leviathan. I begin by sketching out the reply and two traditional ways of interpreting it – the “case-by-case” interpretation and the “rule-commitment” interpretation. I argue that for empirical reasons both these interpretations fail to answer the Fool’s challenge. I then turn to an interpretation that I think a more promising answer to the Fool: Gauthier’s theory of conventional reason. This theory, I argue, contains a crucial insight that the first two interpretations lack: what Hobbes really needs to do to reply to the Fool is not to reconcile covenant-keeping with self-interest, but rather to show how constraints on the pursuit of self-interest can be rationally justified. Gauthier’s attempt to do so within Hobbes’ framework fails, but this failure illuminates a fundamental problem with Hobbes’ moral theory: that moral constraints on the pursuit of self-interest cannot provide reasons to a Hobbesian agent.

At the beginning of Chapter XV of Leviathan, Hobbes introduces an ethical antagonist now famous in the literature on early modern philosophy: the Fool. The Fool says in his heart, “there is no such thing as justice,” and alleges that it is rational to break covenants when doing so “conduces to one’s benefit” (90). That a character who reasons in this manner makes an appearance in Hobbes’ treatise follows in a long tradition; like Plato’s Thrasymachus, Grotius’ Carneades, and Hume’s Sensible Knave, the Fool allows his creator to confront the threat of ethical skepticism head on.

In what follows, I examine Hobbes’ reply to the Fool as it reveals the limitations of the moral theory presented in Leviathan. I begin by sketching out the reply and two traditional ways of interpreting it – the “case-by-case” interpretation and the “rule- commitment” interpretation. I argue that for empirical reasons both these interpretations fail to answer the Fool’s challenge. I then turn to an interpretation that I think a more promising answer to the Fool – Gauthier’s theory of conventional reason. This theory, I argue, contains a crucial insight that the first two interpretations lack: what Hobbes really needs to do to reply to the Fool is not to reconcile covenant-keeping with self-interest, but rather to show how constraints on the pursuit of self-interest can be rationally justified. Gauthier’s attempt to do so within Hobbes’ framework fails, but this failure illuminates a fundamental problem with Hobbes’ moral theory: that moral constraints on the pursuit of self-interest cannot provide reasons to a Hobbesian agent.

The Fool makes two claims, which, when combined, yield a conclusion hostile to the authority of Hobbes’ laws of nature. The first is a claim about practical reason: “every man’s conservation and contentment being committed to his own care, there could be no reason why every man might not do what he thought conduced thereunto” (Hobbes 90). On this view, practical reason is a purely selfish endeavor. The reason you have to do X is determined by the expected utility of X to your interests. This conception is recognizably Hobbesian. As Hobbes explains in Chapter XV, “of the voluntary acts of every man the object is some good to himself” (82), and what is “against benefit” is “against reason” (91). This egoistic theory of practical reason saturates Hobbes’ discussion throughout the Leviathan; he makes use of it especially prominently in his discussion of covenant (82), gratitude (95), and the nature of law (100). On the Fool’s first claim, then, he and Hobbes seem to agree.

The Fool’s second claim is an empirical one: that sometimes violating a covenant is in an agent’s interest. Combining this claim with the egoistic theory of practical reason, the Fool reaches the conclusion that “to make or not make, keep or not keep, covenants was not against reason, when it conduced to one’s benefit” (90). Indeed, as Kavka (1995) points out, the Fool’s reasoning applies not just to the keeping of covenants, but to all of Hobbes’ laws of nature – Gratitude, Complaisance, Equity, and the all the rest (Kavka 3). If the Fool is right, then whenever one of these laws compels an agent to act in a manner contrary to her interests, it is rational for the agent to violate the law.

For Hobbes to refute this reasoning, he needs to show that a rational agent should not break a covenant purely out of unilateral considerations of self-interest. He does not have to show that a rational agent should never break a covenant, period. It is plausible that, at times, other laws of nature will compel a rational agent to break a covenant, or that the spirit of Hobbes’ “easy sum” of all the natural laws – “Do not that to another, which thou wouldst not have done to thyself” (Hobbes 99) – will run contrary to covenant keeping. Indeed, as Kavka points out, Hobbes deems acceptable a particular type of violation of the laws of nature – what Kavka calls a defensive violation (4). A defensive violation occurs in response to a violation undertaken by another party, and it works to protect an agent from being taken advantage of by other violators. An offensive violation, by contrast, is chosen simply because an agent has calculated that violating will be to her advantage. It is this second type of violation that Hobbes is trying to prove irrational.

It is possible to interpret Hobbes’ goal differently: perhaps he accepts the rationality of such offensive violations but simply wants to modify the Fool’s (and the reader’s) calculation of how often a good chance to offensively violate occurs. The problem with this interpretation is that it has Hobbes introducing an antagonist with whom he is in fundamental agreement – a view that clashes strongly with the manner in which the Fool is presented. Hobbes does not say to the Fool, “you’re right, but it happens less than you think,” but rather, “this specious reasoning is nevertheless false” (91). It seems that Hobbes takes the issue to be one of principle, not quantity of cases. In addition, Hobbes’ linguistic choices – naming his interlocutor “The Fool,” referring to the Fool’s reasoning as “successful wickedness” (90) – suggest that he does not consider the Fool an intellectual bedfellow. These texts present prima facie evidence that Hobbes does not want to show the reader merely that the Fool has overestimated a fundamentally sound conclusion, but rather that the Fool’s reasoning itself is misguided.

How does Hobbes attempt to do so? His answer consists of two parts. First, Hobbes provides a clarification about what it means to make a rational decision. This clarification does not contest the Fool’s view that ultimately, practical reason derives from considerations of self interest, but it does introduce an important distinction: “When a man doth a thing which…. tendeth to his own destruction (howsoever some accidence which he could not expect, arriving, may turn it to his benefit), yet such events do not make it reasonable or wisely done” (91). On this view, the reasonableness of an action is not determined by its actual outcome, but rather by the outcome that could be reasonably expected from an agent’s deliberative standpoint. An example makes this distinction clear: imagine a man who, in exchange for 500 dollars, jumps out of an airplane with no parachute. Unbeknownst to him, the plane just happens to be passing over the world’s largest pile of pillows, on which he lands safely. He walks away 500 dollars richer, but the choice he made was not rational, because he could not have reasonably expected to benefit from it (even though, in fact, he did).

The second step in Hobbes’ reply is this: because of the way the state of nature works, violating covenant is the equivalent of jumping out of a plane with no parachute, in that 1) it tends toward the destruction of the person who does it, and 2) the person cannot reasonably expect to avoid this destruction. Hobbes derives 1 from the necessity of cooperation: “In a condition of war wherein every man to every man … is an enemy, no man can hope by his own strength or wit to defend himself from destruction without the help of confederates” (91). But no one will cooperate with someone who breaks his covenants, particularly not in the kind of iterated collective action problems entailed by a confederacy. Therefore, a covenant-breaker can only be received into society “by the error of them that receive him,” an error that “he could not foresee nor reckon upon” (92). Such an error is Hobbes’ version of landing on the world’s largest pile of pillows; it cannot be rationally expected.

Important to this reasoning is the notion of decision under uncertainty. When a choice is being made under conditions of uncertainty, a rational agent must take into account not only the value and probability of different possible outcomes, but also the reliability of her calculations. The evidence she is using might be faulty, or incomplete, or she might be biased, ignorant or deceived in a way that is leading her to misinterpret the situation. These possibilities introduce a degree of uncertainty to the decision-making process that must itself be factored into evaluating a decision’s rationality. Hobbes seems to think that the decision to keep or violate a covenant is made under this type of uncertainty, and that even if all of an agent’s evidence suggests that violation of covenant will be beneficial, the reliability of that conclusion will be uncertain to such an extent that it will not be rational to risk the drastic consequences – in Hobbes’ view, certain destruction – of getting it wrong.

I will examine two interpretations to which this reply has given rise, though there are many others^[1]. One is called the case-by-case interpretation^[2]. On this view, Hobbes is arguing that, given the uncertainty inherent to decision-making and the dire consequences misjudgment, there will be no cases in which you can reasonably expect to benefit from covenant violation. This interpretation is close to traditional readings of Hobbes, and it follows easily from the text of the reply, which is framed in terms of individual decisions. If the reasoning is sound, then Hobbes has successfully answered the Fool’s challenge.

However, one of the reasons this answer has drawn so much attention is that there seem, on the surface, to be obvious problems with it. Are there really no cases in which it is possible to reasonably expect that violating a covenant will be more beneficial than keeping it? They do not seem difficult to imagine. For example, suppose that, while on a trip around the world, your one-person plane breaks down in Egypt, and you hire a nameless, friendless, deaf mute orphan boy to help you fix it, promising him $2,000 in exchange. He does his work beautifully, and once he finishes and you have tested everything to make sure it works, you load yourself into the cockpit. You are about to close the window when the orphan boy holds out his hand, expecting to receive his money. In this situation, it seems reasonable for you to expect to benefit from closing the window, revving the engine, and flying away. No one else knows about your covenant with the boy, and he won’t be able to tell anyone. Even if he could, you would be long gone, and whatever bad reputation you develop in that particular Egyptian town would not touch you in America. Of course, there is some uncertainty (what if you break down in that town again? what if the orphan boy grows up to wield great power and to use it expressly to revenge this offense?), but the uncertainty is not sufficient to undermine the reasonableness of your expectation. Why would it be irrational simply to fly away?

Cases like this seem to be what the Fool is talking about, and they are more common than the strangeness of the example might suggest. All that is necessary is a situation in which, even after considerations of consequence, probability, and uncertainty are taken into account, the risks of covenant-violation are calculably low, and the benefits calculably high, such that it is reasonable for an agent to expect violation to work to her advantage. The frequency of such cases can be disputed; that they do, sometimes, occur cannot. And, on the case-by-case interpretation of Hobbes’ reply, this seems to be all that the Fool needs.

The force of this objection has led some interpreters^[3] to abandon the case-by-case interpretation and present instead a “rule-commitment” reading. On this view, Hobbes is arguing not just against a particular decision – to break covenant – but against an entire paradigm of decision-making – namely, case-by-case reasoning – when applied to covenant-keeping. On this view, Hobbes thinks it irrational to attempt to calculate, in each new situation, whether violating a core moral rule like covenant-keeping will be in your interest. Rather, the best thing to do is to commit to a rule or cultivate a disposition that will govern your behavior in all cases. If this interpretation of Hobbes is correct, then the real disagreement between him and the Fool is about what type of decision-making process is most rational. The Fool implicitly accepts case-by-case decision-making, while Hobbes argues that if you commit to a rule such as “never break covenants,” you will ultimately benefit more.

Why would commitment to this rule yield such a benefit? Interpreters give different arguments. Gauthier focuses on the social benefits: if an agent’s commitment to never break covenants is adequately discernable by potential confederates, then those confederates will have reason to choose partnerships with that agent rather than with others who are suspected of case-by-case reasoning. Indeed, because it is in the interests of potential confederates to become as skilled at such discernment as possible, the easiest way for an agent to withstand their scrutiny will be to actually commit to the rules beneficial to confederacy. This advantage means that rule-committed reasoners will be offered better opportunities for cooperation than case-by-case reasoners, and will therefore do better in the long term, even though they will pass up chances to violate that would have worked to their short-term advantage.^[4]

In addition to these social benefits, committing to rules solves technical problems often encountered during deliberation. Kavka argues that trying, in the face of each opportunity to violate covenant, to systematically anticipate all of the advantages and disadvantages of various possible outcomes, calculate the probabilities of those outcomes, and reckon with the uncertainty of your calculations is a taxing process, and the energy saved by committing to a simple rule can be put to much more beneficial use elsewhere (Kavka 21). What’s more, rule commitment avoids recognized problems in the psychology of human decision making, such as the tendency to succumb to the temptation of short-term reward without adequate recognition of the potential long-term costs. It therefore reduces, in the long term, the number of mistakes that an agent makes, and ultimately yields a net gain (Kavka 21).^[5]

Such considerations may begin to build an argument for committing to rules rather than reasoning case by case. But is it, in fact, the argument that Hobbes makes against the Fool? On the surface, the text of the reply itself suggests otherwise. Hobbes frames his discussion with the Fool as an analysis of which individual actions are most reasonable, not which type of practical rationality. Nowhere does Hobbes mention the notion of rule commitment, nor does he explain why such commitment would be more beneficial in the long term than reasoning case by case – an explanation presumably necessary for showing why the Fool’s approach is wrong. If Hobbes’ real intention in his reply to the Fool is to prove the fallacy of case-by-case practical reasoning, then he is doing so in a manner both singularly indirect and contrary to his usual, geometric style of explanation. Of course, it is possible that Hobbes explains the value of rule commitment elsewhere in Leviathan, or that he simply takes it for granted. Kavka seems to take the former view, and he cites as his evidence the passage in Chapter 15 in which Hobbes explains that the laws of nature are both prudentially grounded and, in Kavka’s language, “general prescriptive rules of conduct” (Kavka 1986, 360). Such textual evidence, however, is far from decisive, as the passages are perfectly compatible with the case-by- case interpretation as well; Hobbes could believe that what makes the rules general and prescriptive is that adhering to them will be more prudent in each particular case.

Nevertheless, a rule-commitment interpretation of Hobbesian practical reason does have a few theoretical advantages to recommend it. For one, it helps explain some of Hobbes’ political doctrines that a case-by-case theory has trouble with, such as the absolute authority of the sovereign and the reasonableness of remaining in the social contract even when it seems against your interest.^[6] It also allows Hobbes both to disagree substantively with the Fool and, at least in Kavka’s view, to defeat him, thus saving Hobbes from the embarrassing choice of having introduced either an opponent he fundamentally agrees with or an objection he fails to meet. For these reasons and others, scholarly debate about the rule-commitment interpretation remains vigorous.

Even if this is the correct interpretation of Hobbes’ reply, however, I believe that, like the case-by-case interpretation, it ultimately fails to refute the Fool. Even if we grant Kavka’s/Gauthier’s empirical claims about the long-term advantages of rule commitment (many of which are open to objection), there will remain situations in which the long- term benefits of breaking a rule are calculably greater than the long-term benefits of keeping it. In such situations, a rule-committed reasoner will be voluntarily doing something that she can see quite clearly is not to her benefit. There are two arguments against accepting this scenario. One, given by Hampton, is that Hobbes’ egoistic theory of motivation renders it impossible.^[7] This first argument, though, may be surmountable by appeal to the agent’s belief that her policy of rule commitment is ultimately in her interest, so I will focus on the second: even if such an action is possible, it is nevertheless irrational, because a much better approach is available. Rather than following the rules rigidly, even when doing so is obviously disadvantageous, an agent will reap much greater rewards by following the rules generally – thus reaping the benefits of rule- commitment – and also remaining able to identify and take advantage of opportunities in which breaking the rules is calculably beneficial. Kavka argues against this conclusion by citing the uncertainty inherent in trying to identify such opportunities (Kavka 1995, 22- 23), but he ends his paper with a question that undermines his argument: “is uncertainty really so widespread, and benefit so unlikely, that we cannot reliably determine of potential rule violations ahead of time when they ‘conduced to one’s benefit’?” (30). The obvious answer seems to be no. Imagine, again, your plane’s break-down in Egypt. While you are watching the orphan boy repair your plane, you have quite a bit of time to calculate whether this would be a good time to break your general rule of keeping covenants. Such situations are common – so common, in fact, that, it may be to your substantial disadvantage to adopt of a mode of practical reasoning that leaves them unexploited.

I conclude, therefore, that both a case-by-case interpretation and a rule- commitment interpretation fail to answer the Fool’s challenge. Case-by-case reasoning leads to the violation of covenant in cases like the breakdown in Egypt, and rigid rule- commitment seems irrational compared to general rule-following and occasional rule- breaking – a policy that also compels leaving the orphan boy empty handed. Either way, the Fool has triumphed, and the boy goes hungry.

In what remains of the paper, I will explore one more interpretation of Hobbes’ reply – Gauthier’s theory of conventional reason. This interpretation has at its core an insight that the other two lack. Both case-by-case and rule-commitment interpretations have Hobbes playing an empirical game with a Fool – a game, I have argued, that the philosopher loses. Gauthier, by contrast, wastes no time with empirical speculation; rather, he focuses on a much more central feature of the Fool’s argument – the egoistic conception of practical rationality. Both case-by-case and rule-commitment interpretations take this conception for granted, and they are thus stuck forever on the Fool’s turf. Recognizing this, Gauthier rightly searches for a new playing field. His failure to find one also compatible with Hobbes’ thought illuminates a fundamental barrier to Leviathan’s moral project – Hobbes’ inability to rationally constrain the pursuit of self-interest.

Gauthier’s move is to attempt to develop a conventional standard of rationality that allows Hobbes a way around the egoistic notion of practical reason that grounds the Fool’s argument. He does so through appeal to Hobbes’ notion of right reason: “when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord set up for right reason the reason of some arbitrator or judge to whose sentence they will both stand” (Hobbes 23). According to Gauthier, this notion contains the “germ” of an adequate reply to the Fool – albeit, a reply that Hobbes does not make explicit (Gauthier 1979, 557). It is this: only in the state of nature do people reason solely for the sake of personal advantage – a type of practical reason that Gauthier calls “natural reason.” Once they come to understand that this manner of reasoning leads to a war of all against all, they agree to renounce it and set up a conventional standard of reason that compels each person to seek something everyone wants – peace. This renouncement, according to Gauthier, is inextricably tied to the limiting of natural right: “if one lays down some portion of one’s right to do whatever seems conducive to one’s preservation and well-being, so that one may find peace, then one renounces preservation as the standard of reason, in favor of peace” (Gauthier 577). This “conventional reason” functions in a manner similar to the judge Hobbes advocates erecting to settle disputes, in that it unites previously subjective, competing “reasons” under a shared standard. On this view, the Fool errs because he appeals to an egoistic standard of reason that the social contract renders obsolete. Once an agent has laid down part of her natural right, she will no longer accept arguments of the Fool’s form: “X is irrational because it doesn’t conduce to an agent’s interests.” Rather, she will only respond to arguments like, “X is irrational because it does not conduce towards peace.”

Gauthier does not claim that Hobbes actually makes this argument against the Fool. He does claim, however, that Hobbes could make it using resources in the text already available to him, and that doing so would be consistent with everything else in Leviathan (Gauthier 548). This latter claim, I will argue, is incorrect; central points of Hobbes’ system cause serious problems for Gauthier’s theory. One is the role of covenants in the state of nature.^[8] According to Hobbes, the capacity to make covenants for the sake of temporary safety and mutual defense is extremely necessary in the state of nature. As Hobbes makes clear in the reply to the Fool, no man can hope to survive without the confederacies that covenants make possible. Granted, such covenants are easily voided by “any reasonable suspicion” (84) that one party will violate, but they are nevertheless valid provided conditions of mutual trust (84). Indeed, covenants had better be possible in the state of nature, because at least one is required to get out of it – namely, the covenant to establish a mutual sovereign. But Gauthier’s “conventional reason” applies as a standard only after agents have left the state of nature. How, then, can he answer Fool-like reasoning about covenants prior to the social contract – in particular, the covenant to establish the contract itself? He cannot appeal to “natural reason,” because that would simply leave us back where we started, and he cannot appeal to “conventional reason,” because such a convention has not been erected. This poses an obstacle to Gauthier’s ability to answer the Fool on Hobbes’ terms.

A bigger obstacle, though, is Gauthier’s need to transition social contractors from natural reason to conventional reason – a transition which seems incompatible with Hobbes’ psychology. For Gauthier’s theory to work, participants in the social contract must actually replace their natural pursuit of preservation and advantage with a new, conventional pursuit of peace. But Hobbes does not present the natural pursuit of advantage as a merely contingent feature of human life that can be discarded at will, like a hat that goes out style. Rather, he presents natural reason as fundamental to human nature – so much so, in fact, that he tries to ground a political system on it. It is therefore difficult to see how the transition Gauthier needs could take place. Man’s fundamental selfishness cannot be simply willed away by the social contract. Indeed, Hobbes’ psychological picture of reason makes this clear. According to Hobbes, reason is simply the “scout and spy” (41) of human desires, which in turn are the result of mechanistic processes in human physiology. Entering into a social contract does not fundamentally alter the physiology of people’s desires, so it cannot fundamentally alter their reason. This suggests the conclusion that Hobbes seems to take for granted throughout his discussion: that people within the social contract retain the same fundamental (selfish) nature that they had outside of it. Unless Gauthier proposes that participants in the social contract undergo some kind of physiological restructuring, then, he faces a serious barrier in explaining how conventional reason can actually replace natural reason.

In response to this objection, Gauthier could argue that the conditions of the social contract, including the mutual acceptance of conventional reason, enable natural desires normally stifled by the state of nature – such as the desire for peace – to take hold over the human will, such that reason will be the scout and spy for a new master. On this view, the peace-seeking standard of conventional reason will retain natural, psychological endorsement so long as the social contract remains intact.^[9] But this view seems to render Gauthier’s whole theory unnecessary. If the social contract is sufficient to create conditions such that the desire for peace holds sway naturally over human psychology, then there is no need to erect a convention. Natural reason will be perfectly sufficient on its own. And then we are simply back where we started with the Fool’s original objection.

Indeed, the persistence of natural reason thus puts Gauthier in a serious and, I think, decisive bind. If the acceptance of conventional reason is perfectly continuous with natural reason, then such a convention is simply the extension of the natural pursuit of advantage. In that case, it does none of the work that Gauthier needed it to do – namely, allowing him to rebuff the Fool’s appeal to the natural pursuit of advantage. But if the dictates of conventional reason actually diverge from natural reason in a manner that would constrain the pursuit of advantage, then natural reason alone cannot compel obedience to them. The Fool would put it thus: if participants in the social contract accept conventional reason only for the sake of their individual advantage, then when such acceptance runs contrary to individual advantage, what reason does an agent have to continue with it? Hobbes’ assumptions about human nature give Gauthier no resources with which to answer.

I conclude, therefore, that because Gauthier cannot escape the fundamental selfishness of Hobbesian natural reason, his innovative approach to the Fool’s challenge ultimately fails. Nevertheless, his insight is keen. Gauthier sees that in order to answer the Fool, what Hobbes really needs to do is not to justify obedience to natural law in terms of self-interest, but rather to justify natural law as a constraint on the pursuit of self-interest. Such a constraint would take Hobbes’ theory beyond the realm of simple prudence and into the realm of actual morality,^[10] thus allowing him to answer the Fool with considerations other than advantage and disadvantage. Gauthier’s conventional reason attempts to ground such a constraint, but Hobbes’ fundamental assumptions about human nature do not allow it traction. Gauthier’s failure is thus illuminating: the text keeps dragging Gauthier back to the Fool’s egoistic arena because, at bottom, it is Hobbes’ arena too.

In a sense, then, the reason Gauthier fails is the same reason that any attempt to constrain the self-interest of Hobbesian agents will fail: the practical rationality of a Hobbesian agent is fundamentally selfish. This assumption cuts down any possibility of a rational constraint on the pursuit of self-interest. If morality dictates something that is not to the long-term advantage of a Hobbesian agent, it will not be rational for a Hobbesian agent to do it. Indeed, even theorists who interpret Hobbes’ morality in non-prudential terms are forced to limit their concept of obligation such that it only applies to acts that can be adequately motivated in Hobbes’ world – that is, only to acts that can be done for the sake of personal advantage.^[11] As Nagel and Plamenatz convincingly argue, such interpretations fail to present a system of moral obligation as it is normally conceived.^[12] Plamenatz puts its forcefully: “when someone is morally obliged, there is something he ought to do, whether it is to his advantage or not” (3). This is precisely the type of rational constraint Hobbes needs in order to answer the Fool, and precisely the kind he cannot have. He is left with only an empirical appeal to prudence – an appeal my discussion of case-by-case and rule-commitment reasoning has tried to show insufficient.

Those of us who regularly get our planes fixed in foreign countries, however, need not worry too much that we are acting irrationally when we choose to pay the orphan boys who help us. Hobbes’ assumptions about practical rationality are deeply suspect. Surely it is possible to act both rationally and contrary to your expected long- term interest. Indeed, any substantive notion of morality will require that we do so, and in some cases will render considerations of self-interest in some sense beside the point. To answer Fool-like challenges to other injunctions of morality – do not murder, do not rape – in terms of prudence is both implausible and almost offensive. The reason you should not rape someone has nothing to do with whether or not doing so would be to your long- term advantage. If we seek a plausible account of the ethical rationality, Hobbes’ reply to the Fool is not the place to look.

Work Cited

Darwall, Stephen. Philosophical Ethics. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998).

Gauthier, David. The Logic of Leviathan. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1969).

Gauthier, David. Morals by Agreement. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987) 162-182.

Gauthier, David. “Thomas Hobbes: Moral Theorist,” Journal of Philosophy 76 (1989): 547-559.

Hampton, Jean. Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986).

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Ed. Edwin Curley. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994). Originally published 1668.

Kavka, Gregory. Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory. (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1986).

Kavka, Gregory. “The Rationality of Rule-Following: Hobbes’ Dispute with the Foole.” Law and Philosophy 14 (1995): 5-34.

Nagel, Thomas. “Hobbes’s Concept of Obligation,” The Philosophical Review, Vol. 69, No. 1 (1959): 68-83

Plamenatz, John. “Mr. Warrender’s Hobbes,” Political Studies Vol. 5, No. 3 (1957): 295-308Warrender, Howard. The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: His Theory of

Obligation. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957).

End Notes

^[2] Hampton, for example, takes this view in Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986) 92-94.

^[3] See Kavka, “The Rationality of Rule-Following: Hobbes’ Dispute with the Foole,” Law and Philosophy 14 (1995): 17-30. Also Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987) 162-182.

^[4] For a more detailed explanation of this analysis, see Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, 162-64

^[5] Kavka fails to note the potential disadvantages of rigid rule commitment, such as the inability to adapt to new situations, respond flexibly to nuance and detail, or test out new maxims of action in low-risk situations.

^[6] See Kavka, “The Rationality of Rule Following,” 19

^[7] See Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition, 93

^[8] This point was suggested to me Stephen Darwall, who elaborates on it in Philosophical Ethics (Westview Press: Bounder, 1998) 103-104.

^[9] I am grateful to Stephen Darwall for suggesting that I consider an objection of this sort.

^[10] Of course, more work has to be done to build a rich moral system than simply justifying constraints on self-interest. As Darwall points out, real morality constrains not just the pursuit of your own good, but also the pursuit of any good, and such constraints implicate distinctly moral notions of blame and censure. Hobbes may be helping himself to such notions in places in Leviathan, but he has not earned them, and they clash both with his psychology and his deterministic metaphysics.

^[11] See Warrender, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 212 and Taylor, “The Ethical Doctrine of Hobbes,” 408.

^[12] See Nagel, “Hobbes’s Concept of Obligation,” 68-83 and Plamenatz, “Mr. Warrender’s Hobbes,” 295-308. Indeed, Warrender’s thesis sometimes seems to have given rise to a whole generation of criticism. Gauthier even claims to have been inspired to study Hobbes by its inaccuracy (see Gauthier, The Logic of Leviathan, p. v).

Joseph Carlsmith (’12) is a Philosophy and Humanities Major at Yale University

Image taken from DeviantArt.com

(http://wangblad.deviantart.com/art/Selfish-Black-and-White-66265848?q=boost%3Apopular%20in%3Aphotography%20selfish&qo=57)

In Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, he writes that the ideal philosopher “treats a question; like an illness” (PI 255). This move from treating a question as something to be answered to treating it as something to be cured might encapsulate the focus of the Investigations; it certainly sums up Wittgenstein’s approach to various problems relating to the philosophy of language, the philosophy of logic, and the philosophy of mind. In this sense, Wittgenstein considers his method therapeutic and concludes that philosophy should do nothing more than demonstrate how its own questions are rooted in mistake. But Wittgenstein does not treat one particular question which, in light of his therapeutic method, seems particularly problematic: “What ought I to do?” i.e. the ethical question. This paper seeks to perform Wittgensteinian therapy on that question. In section I, I present my interpretation of Wittgenstein’s therapy, which I argue entails both intellectual and aesthetic reversals. In section II, I use my interpretation of his therapy to begin treating the ethical question, attempting to at least provide a model of the therapy which intellectually treats the question. In section III, I show that a full treatment of the ethical question will necessarily entail a positive ethical account, and suggest one such account by an appeal to a religious aesthetic rather than a philosophic one. I conclude with a discussion of the ethical purpose of the Investigations in light of this positive account.

I. Philosophy and Therapy

In order to establish a firm understanding of Wittgenstein’s philosophical therapy, we must start with the so-called illness. What, exactly, is the philosophical condition which Wittgenstein intends to cure? Though it is tempting to answer with “participating in the western philosophical tradition,” i.e. engaging in the content of most western philosophy courses, it is not clear that Wittgenstein’s project is focused upon targeting such a broad, academic audience; since Wittgenstein himself fails to specify exactly who he is targeting, it is helpful to situate him within his philosophical milieu. G.P. Baker and P.M.S Hacker portray Bertrand Russell, one of Wittgenstein’s influences, as representing the antithesis of Wittgenstein’s philosophical therapy in his advocating philosophy as “the most general of sciences” (Baker and Hacker, 458). In reaction to the worry that philosophy has, after two millennia, achieved no concrete breakthroughs comparable to those of the sciences, Russell sought to develop a philosophical system that could support an accumulation of theories and therefore provide an avenue for progress. As Baker and Hacker write, Russell thought that philosophy’s lack of progress “is a symptom that philosophers have been mistaken in their methods. The remedy is to emulate the method the sciences follow with such conspicuous success” (ibid). Without further investigation of Russell’s theory, we already have a clear illustration of a condition that Wittgenstein intends to cure. The philosopher finds that he is dissatisfied, for the intellectual tradition that he finds himself within has apparently failed to provide adequate answers to the problems that it poses. His dissatisfaction operates on two levels: (i) meta-philosophically, in his dissatisfaction with philosophy as a whole – for example, the realization that philosophy has made such little progress while the sciences have, and (ii) philosophically, in his dissatisfaction with his own answers (or lack of answers) to the questions of philosophy. This dissatisfaction, as Baker and Hacker note, is unconsciously taken as a “symptom”: but rather than the symptom prompting a diagnostic process, i.e. the description of why one feels as one does, it prompts the philosopher to seek out a novel way of solving the problems, as Russell did. Wittgenstein rejects this second method as the appropriate response to philosophical dissatisfaction.

In writing “A philosophical problem has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about’,” (PI 123) Wittgenstein implicitly identifies this condition of dissatisfaction with Plato’s aporia, the state of being at a loss that one finds himself within upon realizing that he lacks knowledge. Wittgenstein’s remark highlights that philosophical problems are formally aporetic; it is the nature of a philosophical problem to effect aporia. Where our portrait of Russell depicts him as unconsciously taking aporia as a symptom of philosophical failure, Wittgenstein contends that philosophy is essentially aporetic: to engage in philosophic discourse is to be at a loss. And it is a specific kind of lostness that Wittgenstein describes as the aporetic condition, one produced by grammatical confusion rather than lack of knowledge. The problems of philosophy begin in mistake. He writes, “what confuses us is the uniform appearance of words when we hear them in speech, or see them written or in print. For their use is not that obvious” (PI 11). Here Wittgenstein, in highlighting the uniform appearance of words, may be noting a variety of phenomena: that a sentence in our language always requires a subject and a predicate, that we have adjectival and nominal forms of the same word (e.g. happy and happiness), that our verbs alternate between different forms (is, to be, being), etc. Whatever the nature of the uniformity, it produces problems which arise when the use of a word is not obvious and therefore is confused with a different, unintelligible (thought seemingly intelligible) usage. This may be the moment when, for example, we see that “His sermon was very meaningful,” is an intelligible sentence, and so we begin to wonder, “Is life meaningful? What is the meaning of life?” although that usage is not grounded in the same practice as the former. And at this stage, language is officially suspended: “For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday” (PI 38). And so the formal beginning of philosophy – the articulation of a philosophical problem – arises out of a mistaken approximation as to the usage of certain words and phrases.

There is, however, an additional element which contributes to the philosopher’s aporia: what more idealistic thinkers have termed “wonder” concerning the problems of philosophy, Wittgenstein discusses in terms of “captivation”. In comment 114, Wittgenstein includes a confessional remark regarding his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in which he claims that the prior work was an attempt at capturing the essence of reality; immediately following, he writes, “A picture held us captive. And we couldn’t get outside it, for it lay in our language, and language seemed only to repeat it to us inexorably” (PI 115). This confession introduces the aesthetic relationship of the philosopher to the question: the aporetic condition extends beyond a misunderstanding of language to a seemingly inescapable attachment to that misunderstood language. The picture held them captive because it was captivating, being rooted in the language they had adopted and deeply seated within their aesthetic framework, i.e. “the frame through which we look at it” (PI 114). This aesthetic results when a philosopher, having been mistaken about his language, becomes wedded to the philosophical vocabulary; this contributes to “an urge to misunderstand [the workings of our language]” (PI 109). This urge is motivated by some attractive ideal located within the philosophical vocabulary: in Wittgenstein’s case, he reports that this ideal was the “crystalline purity of logic” (PI 107). Robert Fogelin, however, discusses how this aesthetic might develop given any philosophic vocabulary, and that the general process runs thus: “Impressed by a certain feature of language, we elevate it to the status of a model for the description of all language. We become absorbed in certain similes and distort phenomena to fit under them” (Fogelin 141).

It is this distortion that characterizes Wittgenstein’s aporia, as the philosophical language begins to conflict with the language from which it was derived. This leads the philosopher to the form of the philosophical problem: “I don’t know my way about” (PI 123). The philosopher unconsciously abandons language informed by practice, and thus loses the ground upon which he conducts his reasoning. For philosophical discourse is conducted in language – yet Wittgenstein maintains that the philosopher is only utilizing the appearance of language, a confused language, not a language legitimated by practice. The tension produced by the conflict between this pseudo-language and legitimate language effects aporia: “We feel as if we had to repair a torn spider’s web with our fingers” (PI 106). Moreover, the philosopher’s aesthetic binds him to his aporia, as he remains attracted to his mistaken notion of an ideal because of its sheer impressiveness. It is this combination of mistaking language’s usage and adopting the philosophic aesthetic that constitutes aporia; aporia is therefore not, as the traditional philosophers might say, an indication that one doesn’t “actually know” something. As Wittgenstein would say, this response would itself be grounded in the mistaken language.

Wittgenstein’s response, on the other hand, is therapy . I will present a plausible account of Wittgenstein’s “justification” for his therapy later in this essay, as I find that it is deeply intertwined with the possibility of positive ethics stemming from the Investigations; for now, our interest is in the therapeutic method itself. As aporia results from both (i) the mistaken application of language and (ii) the philosophic aesthetic engrossed in that mistake, effective therapy would require both an intellectual reorientation and an aesthetic reorientation. This, I argue, is just what we find in the Investigations.

The intellectual reorientation occurs upon the moment that the philosopher realizes his error and corrects it. Having realized his mistake, the philosopher will reappropriate language grounded in usage, and his philosophical problems will disappear; as such, there will be no need for them to be answered. Wittgenstein’s greatest challenge here is resisting a method that itself adopts a philosophical vocabulary and thereby fails to adequately escape aporia . In order to avoid this, he resists explanation and emphasizes description: “All explanation must disappear, and description alone must take its place. And this description gets its light – that is to say, its purpose – from the philosophical problems. These are, of course, not empirical problems; but they are solved through an insight into the workings of our language” (PI 109). This process appears to operate sequentially: (1) the philosopher realizes that he is at a loss, having engaged philosophically with a problem; (2) he, or his therapist, engages in the explanatory process of describing the language which the problem is couched within (i.e. the description gets its light from the problem); (3) the philosopher experiences an “insight” as to how the problem illegitimately arose, and he thus abandons his philosophical vocabulary and returns to legitimate language. Wittgenstein here uses the vague term “insight” intentionally, as he is avoiding positing a theoretical model as to the nature of “understanding” and is instead using experiential language to convey the immediate reality of the event. Such language, I might add, is grounded in usage, as when we say, “It all just clicked,” or, “A light bulb went off in my head”. Wittgenstein would betray his own position if he were to explain the nature of the insight.

Wittgenstein does, however, allow for more concrete methodological techniques in his therapy. He writes that some of our misunderstandings “can be removed by substituting one form of expression for another; this may be called ‘analyzing’ our forms of expression, for sometimes this procedure resembles taking a thing apart” (PI 90). Wittgenstein’s allowance for this being called “analysis” is explained by its common definition, “to take apart, to break up and examine”. More importantly, though, Wittgenstein’s remark is self-referential: in substituting “analysis” for “substituting one form of expression for another”, he demonstrates the spirit of his remark. For he does not intend to claim that such an analytic method would constitute a process that would reveal the “real meaning” of an expression; rather, he intends to show that it effects different ways of beholding the same expression. By beholding “analysis”, “substituting one expression for another”, and “taking apart and examining”, simultaneously, we may be able to grasp the ethereal connection between the three and understand how we came to assign “analysis” a special meaning, if we did at all. Thus the analysis does not provide an explanation, but rather arranges the circumstances such that an “insight” can occur; it is a method conducive to description, not explanation. Nevertheless, this method does allow for concrete, therapeutic techniques, should we find them amicable to achieving an insight.

Wittgenstein, however, does intend to push against a rigorous, singular methodology in the Philosophical Investigations: he makes this point clearly, in saying, “There is not a single philosophical [therapeutic] method, though there are indeed methods, different therapies, as it were” (PI 133, my note in parentheses). This remark respects the individuality of each patient’s experience, allowing Wittgenstein to avoid positing a theoretical and comprehensive model as to the phenomenology of aporia. It also, though, calls attention to the norm which Wittgenstein intends to effect through his therapy: a true aesthetic reversal. James Peterman describes this in saying: “Philosophical therapy, like aesthetic critique, is designed to get someone to change a philosophical view and ultimately his or her philosophical sensibility” (Peterman, 123, my italics). I will clarify, or perhaps dispute, Peterman’s word choice when he claims that philosophical therapy initially changes someone’s “philosophical view” – I maintain that Wittgenstein intends to defy the terms of philosophy altogether in effecting a non-philosophical view of a certain phenomenon in language. And ultimately, following Peterman’s claim, Wittgenstein intends to effect a non-philosophical sensibility, which is not a manner of beholding a single proposition or phenomenon but one’s entire world.

This distinction explains Wittgenstein’s intention in saying that “the clarity we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear” (PI 133). Questions disappear when we, in a sense, stop asking them. For the elimination of one philosophical problem through therapy cannot guarantee that the real problem is in fact treated, which is that the philosopher finds himself so wedded to the philosophical vocabulary. And so Wittgenstein’s positing that philosophy ought to be inherently therapeutic is done with an eye to effecting a sensibility that beholds language and phenomena in such a way as to not give rise to philosophical problems. This will entail a permanent abandonment of the philosophical vocabulary and a complete return to legitimated language. So, we take again our caricature of Russell. As we portrayed him, Russell’s philosophical problem was that, loosely speaking, philosophy had not quite uncovered truth as a result of deficiency in its methods; and so he developed an entirely new philosophical system that might be able to adequately answer the problems of philosophy. But let’s say that we now performed therapy on Russell, and through analysis got him to see that his new philosophy somehow stemmed from a misappropriation of language. Might we expect that his next move would be to develop an entirely new philosophical system? Because Russell (as we characterize him) is obsessed with finding the answers of the philosophical problems – and though we may have succeeded in getting him to realize that his one particular view was mistaken, there is no guarantee that this will make his philosophical problems completely disappear. What will make those problems completely disappear, though, is a total change of sensibility. James Edwards illustrates this nicely: “The change in belief about the temperature might well leave every other belief unaltered; the aesthetic reversal could not but bring about other differences in its train: hence calling it an alteration in sensibility” (Edwards, 135).
And, Wittgenstein posits, one of those “other differences” that the aesthetic reversal is supposed to bring about is peace. “The real discovery,” he writes, “is the one that enables me to break off philosophizing when I want to. – The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself in question” (PI 133). The state of being wedded to the philosophical vocabulary is characterized as torment – presumably because philosophical thinking is categorically at odds with the language from which it developed, and so can never provide adequate answers to its own questions. The philosophical sensibility will therefore live in continual disappointment – Russell’s realization that philosophy has provided inadequate answers to its own questions will continually happen. And so the aesthetic reversal, i.e. the “real discovery,” will allow the philosopher to not only abandon a philosophical issue but to stop philosophizing completely. This in turn will bring peace – freedom from philosophical captivation.

II. Treating the Question

And so, in summary, the cessation of philosophy brings the philosopher peace. It is in (i) treating the particular questions of philosophy – and experiencing an insight as to what mistake brought each question about – and (ii) in experiencing a change of sensibility which frees us from even wanting to engage in philosophy, that we are freed from philosophizing altogether and can then go about living our lives peacefully. This process, on some level, may intuitively strike us as plausible, even desirable, when we have philosophical questions in mind that seem categorically unsolvable and somewhat superfluous: for example, certain questions of metaphysics and epistemology (e.g. What is being? Is the cat on the mat?). I think, however, that this process seems deeply disturbing when applied to what I will call “the ethical question,” of which a common formulation is, “What ought I to do?” Nevertheless, the history of philosophy suggests that this question is distinctly philosophical – and certain formulations or treatments of this question have undoubtedly slipped into the kind of philosophical mistake that deserves therapy. I will attempt, using the methodologies outlined above, to hazard a Wittgensteinian treatment of this question. I do not intend to demonstrate that Wittgenstein’s method especially applies to one particular tradition, nor do I intend to claim that Wittgenstein himself would support my analysis. Rather, I intend to show how such a treatment remains consistent with Wittgensteinian therapy.

Stage 1: Aporia

The salient characteristic of any philosophical problem, and the indication that it deserves therapy, is that it effects aporia. In what sense might “What ought I to do?” be understood as formally aporetic? This particular question resembles Wittgenstein’s formal definition of the philosophical problem (PI 123) in two striking and distinct ways: (i) it is a confusion in language, in that it indicates that the philosopher does not know how to properly apply certain linguistic concepts (such as the word “ought”), and (ii) it is a clear articulation of ‘not knowing one’s way about’ in a very practical way, for it indicates that the philosopher very literally does not know his way about life. As such, the ethical question participates in the form of the philosophical problem in a much more apparent way than many philosophical questions: we could imagine a philosopher saying, “What ought I to do? I don’t know my about,” including the second sentence by way of explanation of the first. That is, the ethical question not only follows the aporetic form; it itself is also an expression of aporia. And if this is the case, then the question itself – when asked in a philosophical way – can legitimately be taken as a symptom of philosophical aporia. The therapist, therefore, has grounds to proceed.

Stage 2: Analysis

Given that the analytical process is one of the few concrete methods that Wittgenstein provides in the Philosophical Investigations, I will attempt to demonstrate it here as applied to “What ought I to do?” Recall that this will entail a type of “substituting one form of expression for another” (PI 90) that may provide the conditions under which an “insight” might occur. Firstly, let us examine the many different iterations of the question in an effort to perceive the language within which the question is buried. For example, the question may appear as: What ought I to do; What should I do; What is the right thing to do; What is the best thing to do; What is the best way to live; What is the right way to live; What action is the most moral; What is the moral life; What is the good life; etc. From this we see that the ethical question is intimately tied to language of compulsion (ought, should), language of correctness (right thing to do), superlative language (best thing to do, best way to live, most moral), language considering orientation towards life (the moral life, the good life) and language of value (moral, good), among other linguistic tropes.

Here we must tread carefully, for Wittgenstein stresses that therapy must abandon explanation and instead hinge upon pure description in order to legitimately free itself from philosophy. Thus, rather than attempting to reconstruct how these regions of our language brought about the ethical question, we will rather investigate those regions further. Compare these uses of such regions:

1. You really should go to the store; we’re out of cereal.
2. You ought to call her back, you said you would.
3. Everyone should donate around Christmas time.
4. Given the choice, you should fly Alaska instead of United.
5. It’s better to give food, and not money, to homeless people.
6. The right thing to do would be to pay for the parking ticket.
7. One should act only according to that maxim which you can at the same time will to be a universal law.
8. Oh, I should just go to sleep, I won’t get anything more done tonight.
9. You should love your neighbor as yourself.

Which of these different uses, the therapist might ask, were you thinking of when you asked the question “What ought I to do?” Being generous, we might say uses 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 9 broadly fall under the question when asked philosophically, whereas uses 1, 4, and 8 certainly do not. However, the philosopher might really only have wanted an answer like 7 or 9 when they asked the question; or perhaps only an answer like 5. The important thing, though, is to notice that the grammar of example 1 is related to the grammar of example 7 – for both answers would function as appropriate responses to the question “What ought I to do” if it were asked under different circumstances.

Stage 3: Insight?

And having received such therapy – and, undoubtedly, much more – we are thus in a condition to experience an “insight” into the nature of our problem that allows us to dissolve it. I maintain that such an insight is ineffable under Wittgensteinian therapy – to articulate the insight would be to posit a theoretical model of the origin of a philosophical problem which would itself lead to philosophical problems. For example, one might be tempted to think that because obligatory language is utilized in example 2, we were tricked into applying that language to a non-existent universal standard, thereby making the question “What ought I to do?” misguided. But here, we have already slipped back into making a philosophical claim – namely a claim about the ontological status of a moral standard. And so a traditional philosopher might retort to our insight, “But how can you really know that the standard does not exist?” and we would have to defend ourselves philosophically. If, on the other hand, we allow our insight to remain an ineffable experience, taking the form of a realization that shakes us from the philosophical vocabulary and returns us to everyday language, we have legitimately escaped the problem.

III: A Religious Aesthetic

The second and more meaningful aspect of Wittgensteinian therapy is its emphasis on the aesthetic reversal. As I have argued, therapy is not complete until the philosophical questions have completely disappeared, and as such our therapy on this question is not finished until we have stopped asking it. And yet – can we stop asking such a question? As I have discussed, philosophical therapy intends to alleviate aporia, but it seems as if denying the meaningfulness of the ethical question is in fact condemning the philosopher to eternal aporia. For if we cannot ask “What ought I to do?” then what do we do? If we are not allowed to formulate theories concerning how to live our lives, then how will we live? Having treated the ethical question, it seems as if the philosopher might still be at a loss, if not intellectually then practically; for he remains without direction. For this reason, I argue that an effective aesthetic reversal will not only be one that entails the cessation of asking the ethical question, but also be one that includes an ethical reversal. For the patient cannot stop asking “What ought I to do?” until he knows what to do. In other words, the possibility of positive ethics must be included in any account of treating the ethical question with Wittgensteinian therapy; I will spend the rest of this paper discussing this possibility.

There is little help from within the Philosophical Investigations that aids in the construction of this positive account. Wittgenstein does, however, stipulate some provisions as to how we ought to go about it. The only clearly relevant remark that he includes is within proposition 77. Embodying a traditional, philosophical voice, he articulates the worry that his critique of philosophy will lead to the assertion that “everything – and nothing – is right.” Wittgenstein’s response, of course, neither directly attacks nor defends this claim; instead he notes that, “And this is the position in which, for example, someone finds in ethics or aesthetics when he looks for definitions that correspond to our concepts” (PI 77). Notice that the worry Wittgenstein’s interlocutor articulates is an expression of the aporetic condition, i.e. the form of the philosophical problem. And Wittgenstein’s response is to point out that aporia results when we look for ethical definitions that correspond to his concepts. Wittgenstein’s provision here is: do not attempt to draw absolute, one-to-one correlations between the thoughts presented in the Philosophical Investigations and ethics; this will lead to the formalization of a philosophical theory and therefore to continual enslavement to philosophy’s error. The particular position that Wittgenstein is guarding against is the ethical stance that “because I have performed therapy on the ethical question, everything goes.” This would represent a lapse into the philosophical sensibility, as it would continue to assume that ethical standards have ontological status (either “there” or “not there”) and that this status informs ethics.

With this in mind, I will turn to one more place in the Investigations that might prove useful in constructing a positive ethical account: Wittgenstein’s saying, “Once I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: ‘This is simply what I do’”(PI 217). The corresponding ethical definition to such an attitude might be construed as a kind of “everything goes” morality of the variety that Wittgenstein dismissed above. That is, we might be tempted into thinking that Wittgenstein is denying the need for justification on philosophical grounds and that therefore we are authorized to act in any manner whatsoever without justification. Yet we are trying to escape the kind of morality that needs “authorization”, and such a position would itself be appealing to a type of justification.

It seems clear, then, that a positive ethical position stemming from the Investigations will be one that does not rely on philosophical justification at all because, in a sense, it justifies itself. We will not be able to arrive at such a position through argument. Instead, I propose that we must arrive there through a movement of passion. In the compilation of Wittgenstein’s remarks Culture and Value, we find a caricature of religious conversion that will serve as my model for the aesthetic-ethical reversal which can legitimately overcome the ethical question. Wittgenstein writes:

“It strikes me that a religious belief could only be something like a passionate commitment to a system of reference. Hence, although it’s belief, it’s really a way of living, or a way of assessing life. It’s passionately seizing hold of this interpretation. Instruction in religious faith, therefore, would have to take the form of a portrayal, a description, of that system of reference, while at the same time being an appeal to conscience. And this combination would have to result in the pupil himself, of his own accord, passionately taking hold of the system of reference. It would be as though someone were first to let me see the hopelessness of my situation and then show me the means of my rescue until, of my own accord, or not at any rate led to it by my instructor, I ran to it and grasped it.” (CV, 64)

This caricature both contains all the necessary elements of the aesthetic reversal and provides an avenue through which they might legitimately occur. The process follows a familiar pattern: (i) the pupil realizes that he is living in aporia. The teacher helps him do this by showing him the “hopelessness of [his] situation”. Of course, it is in seeing that he does not know how to live that the pupil is brought to a place in which he can legitimately learn, just as the philosopher must realize that he does not know his way about in order to find it. (ii) the pupil is instructed in the means by which he might escape aporia. This resembles the therapist describing the features of language that a philosophical problem is couched within, except the religious instructor describes a system which is wholly new. What is most important, though, is that the instructor is appealing not to the pupil’s philosophical sensibilities, but to his conscience. Again, I take it that Wittgenstein purposefully uses a vague term – to demand that he give a metaphysical account of “conscience” would be misguided, as he intends to convey the immediate reality of the experience of encountering the doctrine. (iii) the pupil actively develops a passion for the doctrine, and seizes upon it. This is the moment of the aesthetic reversal. For the philosopher beholds an ethical position in light of its justification; our convert beholds his faith in light of his passion. He has thus changed his “way of living, [his] way of assessing life” not only in content, but also in form. And in evaluating his own position, the convert does not have to appeal to a philosophical vocabulary in order to justify his actions. Rather, he is legitimately able to say, “This is simply what I do” (PI 217). It is significant that the convert cannot be lead to his faith by the instructor, as this would align more with the philosophical aesthetic. In philosophy, the recipient of one’s argument ought to have no choice but to concede; in religious training, by contrast, the pupil ought to have total control of his choices. This insures that the pupil does not convert because of some justification provided by his teacher and therefore that he does not slip back into the philosophical mode.

From here we can consider whether the ethical question has completely disappeared for the convert. One the one hand, it is clear that the convert is no longer at a loss. He is committed to a system of reference and therefore knows his way about. On the other hand, the convert also has abandoned the philosophical aesthetic, having underwent an aesthetic reversal which brought him to an ethical view rooted in passion. And so the question “What ought I to do?” appears to have legitimately disappeared. If this Wittgensteinian therapy has been successful, the convert’s movement will bring him peace; Norman Malcom, an associate of Wittgenstein’s, illustrates how this might plausibly happen: “The function of the words, ‘It is God’s will’, when said religiously and seriously, in a time of trouble, is not to offer the final explanation, nor any explanation at all. Instead, they are an attempt to bring an end to the torment of asking ‘Why did it have to happen’ – an attempt to give the tormented one rest, to provide peace” (Malcolm, 86). In other words, the claim “It is God’s will” functions not as a justification but as a description of a situation, and it is by beholding a situation in this way that its philosophical potentialities disappear.

Conclusions

James Edwards, in his final analysis of Wittgenstein’s work, advances the claim that, “Wittgenstein’s later work… is itself intended as an ethical deed” (Edwards, 219). When we understand that Wittgenstein’s therapy is not justified by an appeal to philosophical reasoning but that it ‘is simply what he does’, as if religiously, then we can finally appreciate the gesture that the Philosophical Investigations communicates. The Investigations can present its therapy because its author came to his ethical position through therapy. The work thus represents a therapeutic aesthetic which justifies itself. As such, it need not be defended, at least philosophically, for presumably it is more a labor of passion than of duty. Moreover, we can view the nature of the “religious” conviction that Wittgenstein emulates as being a bit broader than we might have initially conceived. For there is nothing “religious,” in the common sense of the word, in writing a therapeutic book. There is, however, a certain religious attitude that Wittgenstein must have adopted as the driving force of the work. This attitude perhaps explains his comment to M.C. Drury: “I am not a religious man but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view” (Malcolm, 1). It is in presenting an account of therapy, without justification, that Wittgenstein embodies the ethical message of the work: that we must be completely free of the need for justification, relying solely upon our aesthetic orientation, in order to legitimately live.

Bibliography

Baker, Gordon P., and P. M. S. Hacker. Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Pub., 2004.
Edwards, James C. Ethics without Philosophy: Wittgenstein and the Moral Life. Tampa: Universityes of Florida, 1982.
Fogelin, Robert J. Wittgenstein. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1976.
Hacker, P.M.S. “Philosophy.” Wittgenstein: a Critical Reader. Ed. Hans-Johann Glock. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001.
Hallett, Garth. A Companion to Wittgenstein’s “Philosophical Investigations” Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977.
Malcolm, Norman. Wittgenstein: a Religious Point of View? Ithaca: Cornell Univ., 1994.
Peterman, James F. Philosophy as Therapy: an Interpretation and Defense of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophical Project. Albany: State University of New York, 1992.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, and Joachin Schulte. Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe and P.M.S. Hacker. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Culture and Value. Ed. G. H. Von Wright and Heikki Nyman. Trans. Peter Winch. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980.

Michael Putnam (’13) is a Philosophy Major at Whitman College

ABSTRACT: Advancements in the field of medicine have created several novel ethical concerns. Developments in neuroscience, for example, have resulted in the creation of a new field called “neuroethics.” This paper addresses the neuroethical issue of psychopharmacological enhancement; should society have rules against psychopharmacological enhancement or “brain steroids,” particularly in academia? If so, on what guidelines should the rules be based? I argue that there should be no major restrictions against enhancement itself, although drugs that are blatantly harmful should be prohibited as with therapeutic drugs. In Part One, I provide arguments in favor of psychopharmacological enhancement. In Part Two, I describe and refute arguments against such enhancement. Finally, in Part Three, I provide some conclusions regarding psychopharmacological enhancement and brain science in general.

Consider the following examples:

• You are an undergraduate student aspiring to go to medical school. You have been studying for the MCAT for the last 3 months of summer, grinding for eight hours per day. The test day finally comes, and you do well and score 30 out of 45. Your friend, meanwhile, has been enjoying his summer—going to the pool, to the beach, and hardly studying. Four weeks before the exam, however, he started taking a new pill, with no known side effects, that improved his attention and short term memory. His big day came and he scored a 33.
• You have discovered that your spouse has just been diagnosed with a brain tumor. Surgery is very risky with minimal chances of survival. Two doctors in the area are willing to perform the surgery. Your friend from college is one of the surgeons. He tells you that he has been taking the same pills throughout medical school and even takes them now during surgeries—they improve his memory, concentration and focus, and reduce the natural tremor of the hands (effect proven through research trials). The other doctor that is willing to do the surgery is “normal” and refuses to take such a drug due to his desire to be “natural.” Which surgeon do you pick?

Most people have a different emotional response to the same person of each scenario. Many would view the friend in example one as “cheating” or taking the “easy way out” without putting in effort; they would be against the friend using the enhancement pill because it is “unfair.” In the second scenario, however, most people would side with that same “cheater” and would effectively choose the friend surgeon to operate since he improves the chances of the spouse’s survival. What is the difference between the two situations?

These examples raise a variety of difficult ethical questions in relation to the emerging field of psychopharmacology. As Walter Gannon writes in Defining Right and Wrong in Brain Science, “the oldest and most difficult of these questions is how to weight the potential benefits of psychotropic drugs against the risks (233). Since the brain is the most complex and least understood organ in the body, “there may be unforeseen adverse effects of altering neurons and neural systems” (233). Many “psychotropic drugs can have both positive and negative effects on the brain and mind” (233). Although the “general aim of psychopharmacological intervention in the brain is to restore dysfunctional systems responsible for psychiatric or neurological disorders,” many techniques are being used to enhance already normal brain function (233). Currently, “a number of pharmaceutical and nutritional supplement companies are interested in selling drugs that…allow individuals to go without sleep for longer periods of time than they otherwise could or herbal substances that allegedly improve memory” (Caplan, 272). Scientists realize that “a drug capable of helping an Alzheimer’s patient retain memory function might also provide some enhancement to those who simply have poor memory skills and that the market possibilities for selling a drug such as a memory enhancer are huge” (Caplan, 272). Many students, for example, “are keenly interested in any drug that might improve their ability on tests or in musical, dramatic, or athletic performances by allowing for increased short-term memory, greater attention span, or reduced anxiety” (Caplan, 273).

Should society have rules against psychopharmacological enhancement, particularly in academia? If so, on what should the rules be based? I will argue that there should be no major restrictions against enhancement itself, although drugs that are blatantly harmful (e.g., death or serious injury) should be prohibited as with therapeutic drugs. In Part One, I will provide arguments in favor of psychopharmacological enhancement. In Part Two, I will describe and refute arguments against such enhancement. Finally, in Part Three, I provide some conclusions and final thoughts about psychopharmacological enhancement and brain science in general.

I. Arguments for the Use of Psychopharmacological Enhancement

Psychopharmacology has always had great potential. As Martha Farah states in Emerging Ethical Issues in Neuroscience, “the enhancement potential of some psychiatric treatments is, in itself, nothing new” (20). In reality, pharmacological enhancement has begun and “is arguably being practiced now in several psychological domains: enhancement of mood, cognition, and vegetative functions, including sleep, appetite, and sex (20). Of special interest are the manipulations that “alter cognitive abilities, including attention and memory” (22). Attention includes “active use of working memory, executive function, and other forms of cognitive control” (Farah & Wolpe, 50). It also includes sustained effort and resistance to distraction and is “primarily modulated by dopamine and norepinephrine” (Farah, 22). In addition to providing a therapeutic effect for children with ADHD, stimulants, such as Adderall and Ritalin may induce cognitive changes in normal individuals: they may enhance “vigilance, response time, and higher cognitive functions, such as novel problem solving and planning”—an effect many healthy individuals have discovered and are utilizing. (Farah, 22). In some school districts “the proportion of boys taking [Ritalin even] exceeds the most generous estimates of ADHD prevalence” (Farah & Wolpe, 50). Meanwhile, current advances in neuroscience are paving a variety of new therapeutic techniques to fight dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Although they are developed to treat memory-related disorders, “many of them will be put to use—and will be efficacious—in people who are not ill,” proving to be of special interest to normal people (Ackerman, 77). One drug specifically developed to treat narcolepsy, for example, can actually “prolong alert wakefulness for days” (Farah, 23). Recognizing the “desire of most people for quicker, sharper, and more reliable memories,” many researchers are “explicitly pursuing drugs or pharmacological agents that might improve our ‘normal’ capacity to remember, that might enhance the cognitive performance of both underachievers…and overachievers, and that might prevent, halt, or reverse age-related memory decline” (President’s Council on Bioethics, 237-8).

So what is the problem if college students use Adderall to study for the MCAT? They are, in effect, improving their cognitive functions. Such drugs can be beneficial for a person’s individual well-being. He/she will become more attentive with greater memory functions; “memory enhancement could benefit individuals by enabling them to access a broader base of factual and conceptual information, as well as to process this information more effectively in decision making and other cognitive tasks” (Glannon, 265). This may help him/her to be more capable, to reach specific goals in life, and to overall live a happy and successful life.

Psychopharmacology may also be seen as advantageous for the well-being of the community and for the public good. Students and individuals may become better, more attentive citizens, engineers, doctors, and lawyers; society as a whole may benefit. Doctors that are more attentive and alert may save more lives; scientists that can stay awake longer may have more breakthroughs. Humanity is always trying to move forward and improve, and this is certainly one way of improving humanity, the quality of life, and the standard of living.

There is also the issue of autonomy and individual right. It would appear to be an infringement on personal freedom to restrict access to safe enhancements (if they are too risky, however, it may by interpreted as beneficence). If a free individual decides to tamper with his/her own brain, it should be generally allowed. After all, that brain is the property of that person. If a person wants to and is allowed to tamper with and augment breast size, why can’t a person be allowed to augment his/her brain?

II. Arguments against the Use of Psychopharmacological Enhancement and Refutations

Despite all the aforementioned benefits of psychopharmacology, there still seems to be “something wrong” with it. As Farah writes, “most of us would love to go through life cheerful and svelte, focusing like a laser beam at work and enjoying rapturous sex each night” (24). Yet most people “also feel uneasy about the idea of achieving these things through drugs” (24). What can this gut feeling be attributed to?

The first potential problem that springs up is the “possibility of serious side effects for the individual, including long-term or delayed effects that might evade current FDA safeguards” (Farah, 24). Even more risky is the “off-label use” or the use of drugs for “purposes for which [they] were not originally designed and for which they did not initially receive FDA approval” (Gannon, 233). If allowed, will psychopharmacology be detrimental to the well-being of the individual? After all, this neuroscience-based enhancements intervene “in a far more complex system,” the brain, than other enhancements for the body (Farah & Wolpe, 52). As a result, we are “at greater risk of unanticipated problems when we tinker” (Farah & Wolpe, 52). A young, ambitious pre-medical student may get into Harvard Medical School and attain a prestigious job thanks to enhancement. He may also get a chance to save many lives and benefit society. However, this early success may unfortunately be followed by a “middle-age of premature memory loss and cognitive decline” (Farah, 22). If the enhancement drugs are taken at too early of an age, they may have some detrimental effects: “empirically, prodigious memory is linked to difficulties with thinking and problems solving, and computationally, boosting the durability of individual memories decreases the ability to generalize” (23). Would “endowing learners with super-memory interfere with their ability to understand what they have learned and relate it to other knowledge” (Farah & Wolpe, 52)? It appears that “normal forgetting rates may even “be optimal for information retrieval” (Farah, 25). In other words, if you remember too much or if you have too much clutter stored, you might have difficulty retrieving specific information. That is part of the reason why interest in memory enhancement has thus far just “been confined to the middle-aged and elderly, whose memory ability undergoes gradual decline in the absence of dementia,” even when healthy (Farah 23; Farah & Wolpe, 50). Although “few consider memory enhancement for the young to be a goal,” it is still important to consider the possible ethical implications. Drugs aimed at enhancing attention, however, can be aimed at children or young adults.

Despite all the recent advances, still very little is known about the complex brain and even less is known regarding which limitations “are there for good reason” (Farah, 22). From an evolutionary standpoint, there might be “hidden costs” to enhancement; since we “understand little about the design constraints that were being satisfied in the process of creating a modern human brain,” we do not know “which ‘limitations’ are there purposefully” (Farah, 24). Walter Glannon echoes this idea and states that “the limits we have in our capacity to remember only so many facts or events may be part of a natural design that is critical for our survival” (266). Sometimes forgetfulness is beneficial and allows a human being to cope with stressful or traumatic experiences (in addition to the aforementioned effect of improving ability to retrieve information, generalize, and problem solve in kids). If a person lives and intensely remembers all the bad that has happened, he/she would be constantly tormented.

The brain remains to be “the most complex organ we possess;” no other system “has so many roles and consists of so many interoperating parts” (Leshner, 76). This “interconnectedness of its parts and the multitasking nature of [the brain’s] individual structures means that any intervention, however small or precise we try to make it, is unlikely to have a single consequence” (Leshner, 76). Cognitive functioning, for example, is part of an “interconnected system in the mind” that involves emotional processing so “trying to enhance cognitive processing could impair emotional processing,” making an individual indifferent and unable to experience life’s pleasures (Glannon, 268). Altering the brain may have several other effects in other areas, some that we cannot even imagine today.

None of these potential risks to the individual, however, warrant complete restriction on the use of pharmacological enhancement, although it is true that long-term consequences have not been fully investigated. It is possible that the long-term effects will not be known for a long time since clinical trials are very slow and expensive—is it worth waiting to find out the possible effects (if any)? This involves potentially great cost-benefit tradeoffs. Furthermore, “a concern with long-term or hidden side effects is not unique to enhancement but applies to therapeutic treatments as well” (Farah, 24). That implies that psychopharmacological treatments for dementia, Alzheimer’s, or narcolepsy would all have to be outlawed. In reality, “drug safety testing does not routinely address long-term use, and relatively little evidence is available on long-term use by healthy subjects” (Farah & Wolpe, 52). It is important to note, however, that “although safety is a concern with all medications and procedures,” our “tolerance for risk is smallest when the treatment is purely elective” or is for enhancement purposes (Farah et al., 294). Different people will also be willing to take different degrees of risk to achieve the enhancement they desire.

Short-term consequences, on the other hand, are being studied and it is possible to counteract and prevent them through the use of other drugs. Psychopharmacology has always been considered for enhancement but hardly implemented solely for the reason of safety. The enhancement aspect has remained the same but what has changed is the side effect and risk aspect of the treatments: “with our growing understanding of neurotransmission at a molecular level, it has been possible to design more selective drugs with better side-effect profiles” (Farah, 20). Prozac actually belongs to a class of drugs named “SSRI” in which the first letter stands for “selective” (Farah & Wolpe, 47). Farah states that “adjuvant therapy with other drugs is increasingly used to counteract the remaining side effects” (20). The result of both new and adjuvant drugs is the same: “increasingly selective alteration of our mental states and abilities through neurochemical intervention, with correspondingly less downside to their use by anyone, sick or well” (Farah & Wolpe, 48). It is important to keep in mind that even “normal” drugs against illnesses or disorders have side effects; anti-depressants may even increase the risk of suicidality in young adults or children yet these drugs are not restricted (Leon, 1787). Similarly, psychopharmacologically-enhancing drugs should not be prohibited. However, people do need to be educated and informed about the possible side effects so that they can make informed risk-benefit analyses, decide which risks are “acceptable in view of a drug’s benefits,” and determine whether to take the drugs or not (Farah et al., 295). Of course, more research is necessary to determine all the possible risks. Contrary to popular belief, however, Farah and Wolpe state that so far, medications and stimulants “have good safety accords, and their long-term effects may even be positive” (52).

Paul M. Matthews states in Transforming Drug Development Through Brain Imaging that novel testing techniques in the future, including brain imaging, may speed up the long, tedious, and expensive process that entails “develop[ing] a compound, test[ing] it in the laboratory and then in clinical trials, and finally obtain[ing] approval for it as a new drug” (153). A faster process may result in more drugs being more thoroughly tested and may, in effect, reduce the amount of negative side-effects, making more drugs safer and more efficient. However, as Henry T. Greely states in Knowing Sin: Making Sure Good Science Doesn’t Go Bad, we cannot make “prinum non nocere, ‘first do no harm,’ a binding obligation” since too often harm will occur” and inevitably does (93). Nonetheless, “doing no harm can be an inspiration” and researchers and physicians still need to “think about the ethical, social and legal consequences of [their] work” so that enhancement medicine, for example, does not become riddled with negative side effects, whether they be physiological, social, or ethical in nature.

The third main argument against psychopharmacological enhancement in academia stems from potential harm to society if use becomes widespread. There are worries that these enhancements or drugs will not be fairly distributed or may create more separation between the classes. As Donald Kennedy states in Neuroscience and Neuroethics, “perhaps it is our belief that the playing field should be level—we worry about the students who can’t access the drug” (59). It is “likely that wealthy and privileged will have the choice of self-enhancement and the less privileged will not” (Farah, 25). Ritalin use by normal healthy people, for example, ís highest among college students, an overwhelmingly middle-class and privileged segment of the population” (Farah et al., 295). There will be “cost barriers to legal neurocognitive enhancement and possibly social barriers as well for certain groups” (295). Others in opposition to neurological enhancement are concerned that allowing such enhancements to be undertaken will result in higher levels of normalcy that will put others—those who choose not to enhance or those who cannot choose to enhance, including the poor—at a disadvantage. This, in effect, would be a form of indirect coercion. “Employers will recognize the benefits of a more attentive and less forgetful workforce” while “teachers will find enhanced pupils more receptive to learning” (Farah et al., 295). Merely competing against “enhanced coworkers or students exerts an incentive to use neurocognitive enhancement,” whether it be to keep a job or stay in school (Farah et al., 295). As Chatterjee points out in The Promise and Predicament of Cosmetic Neurology, some people might be coerced “to make use of every possible advantage, including enhancements, just to stay in place” (307).

If these are seen as potential harms that justify prohibition, then many other activities that are normally accepted should be restricted also. As Farah states, “our society is already full of such inequities” and unequal access itself “is generally not grounds for prohibiting neurocognitive enhancement, any more than it is grounds for prohibiting other types of enhancement, such as private tutoring or cosmetic surgery, that are enjoyed mainly by the wealthy” (Farah, 25; Farah et al., 296). Kennedy echoes this response by asking “what about the kids who can’t afford a preparatory course for taking a standardized test” (59). MCAT classes are certainly not evenly distributed at a price of almost $2,000, yet they are still allowed. What differentiates MCAT classes from a pill if “both raise the same questions about distributive justice” (Kennedy, 59)? Both seek to enhance cognitive functions and both can be successful; “the brain makes no distinction between psychopharmacology and experience” since both are able to cause physical changes in the brain (Ackerman, 57).

Nobody seeks to “prohibit private schools, personal trainers, or cosmetic surgery on the grounds that they are inequitably distributed” (Farah, 25). If anything, these activities stem from our capitalistic society; some people get ahead, pursue, and hope to attain further opportunities to excel. Moreover, in the United States, “wide disparities in access to and quality of health care and education are tolerated” (Chatterjee, 306). If such atrocities are tolerated and if there is unequal access to these “life enhancers,” how is pharmacological enhancement any different?

Also, consider the alternate to the idea of coercion of the poor: people living in poverty may choose to spend their money on these drugs in an attempt to get out of poverty; “in principle there is no reason that neurocognitive enhancement could not help to equalize that opportunity in our society” (Farah et al., 296). In comparison with other forms of enhancement, from good nutrition to high-quality schools, “neurocognitive enhancement could prove easier to distribute equitably” (Farah et al., 296). If these drugs succeed in increasing memory and performance in school, this might be “the way out” of poverty. As Walter Glannon states in Psychopharmacology and Memory, memory enhancement “could promote greater opportunity for individuals to have better education and more lucrative employment” (265). Janet Radcliffe Richards had a similar argument against those who believe organ transplants exploit the poor which I adapt to psychopharmacological enhancement: “as we contemplate with satisfaction our rapid moves to…protect the poor, we leave behind one trail of people who [simply want to enhance], and another of people desperate [and willing enough to take the medications to get out of poverty]” (533). This intervention thus seems “in direct conflict with all our usual concerns for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (533).

Radcliffe further states that “coercion is a matter of reducing the range of options there would otherwise be;” in other words, coercers come and take away options until the best available is the one they want (535). Offering enhancement medicine for academic purposes, however, does not restrict the range of options; it actually may provide a vehicle to get out of that poverty. Even if the widespread use of enhancement drugs does serve as an act of coercion on the non-poor, it would be as “much of an infringement on personal freedom to restrict access to safe enhancements for the sake of avoiding the indirect coercion of individuals who do not wish to partake”(26). It is also worthwhile to “consider a scenario in which the entire populace is given full and equal access to Ritalin, Prozak, and other enhancers” (Farah, 25). Even if the drugs are proven to be completely safe, most people would still feel uneasiness, so it is more than likely that their “qualms about enhancement” are not linked to equal opportunity (Farah, 25).

The final concerns regarding psychopharmacological enhancement in academia stem from the belief that it goes against some widely-shared intuitions. This group of concerns results “from the many ways in which neuroscience-based enhancement intersects with out understanding of what it means to be a person, to be healthy and whole, to do meaningful work, and to value human life in all its imperfections” (Farah & Wolpe, 52). First, “brain steroids” lead to the moral objection to “gain without pain.” As the common saying “no pain, no gain” demonstrates, most people in our society “feel that there is value to earning one’s happiness, success, and so on” and that “accomplishments in life are made meaningful partly by the efforts they require” (Farah, 25; Farah & Wolpe, 53). Some argue that engineered improvements in performance, however, “are not authentic, not earned, and therefore not morally commendable” (Caplan, 273). Enhancement may be seen as a “moral shortcut” that “undermines the natural development of the human being to become self-reliant and to overcome obstacles” (Ackerman, 16, 57). If a student takes Adderall to study for the MCAT, it might be interpreted as “cheating,” “taking the easy way out, and lacking dignity or value;” Adderall enables him/her to study for less time and absorb about the same amount of material. Enhancement as a whole may reduce the effort needed for personal accomplishment.

Although people “recognize the value of earning life’s rewards, our lives are [still] full of shortcuts to looking and feeling better” (Farah, 25). For example, “we do not disapprove of people who dislike vegetables improving their health by taking vitamin pills” (25). “Nor do we begrudge” medical school applicants their MCAT books or Kaplan classes (25). As Farah states, psychopharmacological enhancement “can therefore be seen as fitting in with an array of practices that are already accepted and widespread” (25). Although it does feel exciting to achieve our goals after testing our limits and “striving, struggling, and working to overcome innate boundaries,” it is also “very satisfying to have benefits that simply come from out of the blue or through good fortune” (Caplan, 275). Life is full of those pleasures and, consequently, “we do not always have to ‘earn’ our happiness to be really and truly happy” (Caplan, 275). Even if the “no pain, no gain” idea was held up, it would be difficult to determine “who decides which pains should be suffered to build character and which can be reasonably avoided,” something that would be necessary to transform this concern into public policy (Chatterjee, 306).

Some proponents of restriction on enhancement in academia argue that “the happiness or satisfaction achieved through engineering is seductive and will lead to a deformation of our character and spirit” (Caplan, 273). They also state that “to accept enhancement for our children will undermine and deform the role of the parent” (Caplan, 273). The President’s Council argued that enhancement will “distort or deform our character” and asked this question: “why would one need to discipline one’s passions, refine one’s sentiments, and cultivate one’s virtues—in short, to organize one’s soul for action in the world—when one’s aspirations to happiness could be satisfied by drugs in a quick, consistent, and cost-effective manner” (Caplan, 273)? In essence, if we enhanced ourselves and “our achievements and enjoyments came easy, why would we continue striving to be good and virtuous people” (Caplan, 274)? These critics seem to appeal to virtue ethics, claiming that through the use of enhancement, people will cease to desire to be good, honorable, hard-working individuals with good traits of character. Furthermore, if people “seek to perfect” their children through enhancement, the kids will no longer be seen as “gifts”–now possibly an appeal to religious ethics—and the parents may not be taught humility or be as “open to the unbidden” (Caplan, 276)

This argument, however, falls short in many aspects. As previously mentioned, there are already many people taking shortcuts—not necessarily neurological—that may be looked down upon but aren’t. In fact, we “generally encourage innovations that save time and effort, because they enable use to be more productive and to direct our efforts toward potentially more worthy goals” (Farah et al., 296). In addition, “laying the blame for vice at the foot of enhancement ignores the inconvenient fact that the desires for quick returns, easy money, and instant gratification have nothing at all to do with enhancement” (Caplan, 274). Instead, they are “traits of many, if not most, human beings” (Caplan, 274). Even if enhancement is prohibited, individuals will probably still desire to “cheat” or take “shortcuts.” If children cannot take a pill to focus and memorize more for the test, they just might look over and copy someone else’s answers. Just because a person is enhanced with a better attention span or memory does not mean he/she will not be ready for challenges in the real world or will be “weak and spineless” (Caplan, 274). These characteristics are innate and improving performance “is not necessarily toxic to virtue” (Caplan, 274). Regarding the enhancement of children, a parent “can accept a gift, embellish, tweak, noodle, and modify it in order to improve it, and still cherish what was given as a gift” (Caplan, 276). It should not be necessary to accept a “random draw of the genetic library” or accept a “random point mutation” simply to learn to value and “abide the unexpected” (Caplan, 276). Overall, “should the state be allowed to interfere in how parents choose to raise their children” (Greely, 92)? In our free, capitalistic society, many believe that “it is their right to do whatever they can to minimize their distress and maximize their achievement. They may believe it is their duty to give their children every advantage” (Ackerman, 62).

Since psychopharmacology changes brain function and the brain is generally associated with the “self,” other pro-restriction arguments state that such drugs would undermine the commonly held idea that “persons endure over time” (Farah & Wolpe, 53). Although some of their characteristics may change, “there is a self that remains constant for as long as the person can be said to exist” (Farah & Wolpe, 53). What makes the brain so special “is that it is the seat of the mind;” it is the “essence of the ‘self’ and, therefore, “altering how a person’s brain works may be altering who that person is” and his/her essential being” (Leshner, 76; Gannon, 233). If you change your brain and mind, are you actually changing yourself and your personhood? Since the brain is the final common path for the experience and expression of mental activity, “any intervention in our brains raises the specter of not only causing potential physical disability but also changing our cognition, emotion, or even our personalities” (Leshner, 76). Some people thus argue that “the changing of abilities, memories, and mood at will by swallowing a pill may undermine the idea of a constant ‘self’” and, consequently, is wrong (Farah & Wolpe, 53).

A similar objection to such enhancement stems from the Natural Law theory. Altering brain structure and function, specifically for enhancement purposes, is not natural (it is, after all, an enhancement of the human condition). The same issue arises with other types of enhancement. Gregory Pence mentions in Re-Creating Medicine how in medicine today, “many naysayers warn that we must accept natural limits…that we are too materialistic…that we are narcissistic in wanting better bodies than we inherited…and that all the above show our warped priorities” (161). This line of thought opposes enhancements of the mind and body and considers improvements improper.

After further investigation, however, this argument falls short of justifying restriction on psychopharmacological drugs in academia. There are plenty of current practices that are similarly unnatural and change the self and personhood. If drugs that alter the brain and, in effect, alter the self should be prohibited, then anti-depressants, for example, should be outlawed since they also change the self (from a depressed individual to a happier individual). That treatment, however, can be argued as therapy to normalize a “deviation” so another example is necessary. Martha Farah and Paul Root Wolpe in Monitoring and Manipulating Brain Function state that “the attempts of human beings to use chemical substances to alter normal affective and cognitive traits is as old as the drinking of alcohol” (48). Shouldn’t alcohol be prohibited if it temporarily changes the self, making some individuals polar opposites from their normal, sober selves? There are also a plethora of other procedures being done that are not natural. Consider “cosmetic surgery and the use of human growth hormone for healthy children who are naturally short” (Farah & Wolpe, 51). Although they do not specifically affect brain function as do psychopharmacological drugs, they are nonetheless enhancements that are generally accepted. Is laser eye surgery, a procedure that “sometimes can give eyes better than 20-20 vision” immoral or wrong (Caplan, 271)? Caffeine can also act as a stimulant (and some people do indeed use it for academic purposes) yet it is not prohibited. Meditation, tutoring, and psychotherapy are all enhancement techniques, although non-neuroscience-based, that affect brain function and the person yet are not seen as objectionable (in fact, these are “often seen as laudable”) (Farah & Wolpe, 52).

Further opposition to enhancement states that maximizing performance of healthy individuals through such drugs is in a sense commodifying human abilities. A commonly shared intuition is that “persons have a kind of value that is independent of any commodity or capability they bring to the world”—Kantian ethics (Farah & Wolpe, 53). People have value “independent of how well they do what they do” (Ackerman 81). We do not value a spouse or a child “because of how well he or she performs,” like we would a car. We value them “because of some essence of their personhood that we care about—the very essence that we instinctively feel comes under threat of distortion or replacement whenever a medical intervention touches the brain” (Ackerman, 81). By taking the drug and altering our neurochemistry, it is almost as if we are improving our performance and abilities “the way we would improve the performance of a car, opining the hood and going in and tinkering” (Ackerman, 81). Psychopharmacological drugs can indeed maximize the performance of an already healthy, functional person and this “can be viewed as commodifying human abilities” (53).

This idea is again contradicted by the number of other practices that similarly commodify human abilities; it is not simply “unique to Ritalin-enhanced executive ability” (Farah et al., 297). It is probably more baldly on display “in books and classes that are designed to prepare preschoolers for precocious reading, music, or foreign language skills, but many loving parents seek out such enrichment for their children” (Farah et al., 297). If such activities are not prohibited based upon the idea that they “commodify” human abilities, then there is no reason to justify the restriction of enhancement psychopharmacology.

III. Conclusions & Final Thoughts

Although some of the arguments against brain enhancement are valid, I do not believe they are sufficient to restrict the use of enhancing psychopharmacological drugs in academia. As Arthur Caplan states in Staining their Brains: Why the Case Against Enhancement is Not Persuasive, “each argument carries some emotive force but is not a sound basis for rejecting choices that individuals might make to improve or optimize themselves or their children” (273). It is true that there “may be unforeseen adverse effects of chronically altering brain circuits with psychotropic drugs” but I believe it is up to the individual to “weigh their short-term benefits against their long-term risks” (Gannon, xvi). It will be up to the person to decide whether “the benefits of performing better on exams or having better memory [is] worth any risk to other mental functions” (Gannon, xvi). Nonetheless, these concerns do not warrant restriction. William Safire in Visions for a New Field of ‘Neuroethics’ asks “what is there to stop us from using such a ‘Botox for the brain’” to make a person more “intellectually attractive” (10)? I believe the only factor that will warrant restriction has to do with safety; only if studies show a severe and dangerous correlational or causative effect of the drugs on the body or brain, will restriction on that particular drug be enforced. Restriction on enhancement in academia itself, however, will not come to fruition.

From a practical viewpoint, it would be hard to regulate psychopharmacological enhancement in academia (for example, to prevent “cheating”). Millions of prescriptions are written every year for drugs that act on the brain yet, as Sandra Ackerman writes in Hard Choices, Hard Choices, “it is startling to remember that there are no objective tests for mental disorders” (55). Farah states in Emerging Ethical Issues in Neuroscience that “the line between healthy and sick is a fuzzy and perhaps arbitrary one” (21). It will be difficult to distinguish between kids with ADHD who need stimulant medication for therapy and normal, healthy kids who might want it for enhancement: “as with affective disorders, it is difficult to locate a discontinuity between normal attentional functioning and ADHD (22). If doctors intervene too “high up” on the continuum, they would be practicing enhancement. Farah even states that “pharmacological enhancement of children’s attention is routine in some communities” (22). Parents are eager to “give their children every edge in school” and “press their pediatricians for medications” (22). Teachers, meanwhile, “often welcome the greater orderliness in a classroom of attentive students” (22). And since ADHD in children is “diagnosed primarily on the basis of parent and teacher questionnaire responses, it can be difficult to free the diagnostic process from the values and standards of the respondents” (22). This difficulty to separate enhancement from therapy will make monitoring and restriction of psychopharmacological enhancement very difficult.

If a law was to be developed, what features would the “FDA take into account when weighing whether or not to approve a drug that might be taken by healthy people to augment or improve some aspect of themselves” (Ackerman, 59)? How sure can we truly be that the medicine is safe and how much benefit outweighs the risks? The safety criterion is an issue in itself since testing has to be done on healthy people who may just end up with getting sick. Whether healthy people “will risk endangering their health for the sake of mental improvement remains to be seen” (Ackerman, 59).  And, in an extreme case, will society “be willing to relax the safety standards for an enhancement drug that produces a very substantial effect, catapulting the user from, say, average intelligence to brilliance in one dose” (Ackerman, 59)? All of these issues will make the development of regulations very difficult.

Enhancement of cognition in normal people has become and “is now a fact of life, and the only uncertainties concern the speed with which new and more appealing enhancement methods [with less adverse side effects] will become available and attract more users” (Farah, 24). Overall, I feel the public fear or feeling that brain enhancement and manipulation is wrong and dangerous will pass. It is a possibility that our innate fear of the new and novel leads to the questions and concerns about psychopharmacology. As Donald W. Pfaff writes in A Brain Built for Fair Play, this fear may then manifest in and serve as a basis “for the human instinct for fair play” (41). Are we trying to protect the vulnerable because “at some time in our lives, we will all be vulnerable” (Ackerman, xii)? Are we simply afraid and do not want others to propel ahead of us in academia, for instance? This fear may cause us to apply the Golden Rule and then use the inequity reason as a basis for rejecting enhancement.

There were many novel techniques that were historically looked down upon but are currently widespread. Paradigms change as do standards in society; as Mark Waymack states in Philosophy of Medicine, “history is replete with medical innovations that were reviled, contested, and that some medical authorities tried to prevent, but which we now gladly accept as valuable, appropriate, and perhaps even at the core of good medical practice” (91). Gregory Pence, in Re-Creating Medicine, points out that as late as the mid-19^th century “it was considered unprofessional (and unethical) for a physician to visually examine a woman’s genitalia” (91). For many years, “women in childbirth were not offered painkillers” (91). These practices were thought as morally wrong but were adapted as time progressed. A “similar uneasiness” was even “evident in the early discussions of the human genome project;” it is a “control issue and a fear that at some point scientists are going to unalterably change the fundamental sense of what it means to be human or to control one’s world” (Ackerman, 114). Most people accept the “augmentation of our facilities on the outside of the skull, comfortably wearing glasses or contact lenses or even cochlear implants, yet feel uneasy at the prospect of someone tinkering with the equipment inside” (Ackerman, 113). I believe this barrier partially has to do with “a shortfall in the public misunderstanding of science” so educating the public to allow them to perform more realistic risk-benefit analyses is critical. With education and time, I believe society will adapt to the use of psychopharmacology for enhancement as it has to the plethora of other treatments or activities.

As I hope to have shown with the example at the beginning of the paper, the decision about whether using “enhancement drugs” is ethical “does not require long thought or debate when the life of someone we care about might hang in the balance; an ethics of enhancement would play no part in this choice” (Ackerman, 75). Not all enhancement is bad and if a person wants enhancement, it does not have to be bad (Caplan, 285). Instead of “looking inward to our own nature…to see what is or is not permissible,” we need to “look outward to the world that we create, to the institutions that shape our societies, and to the relationships, especially the most intimate and enduring relationships in our lives—those with our parents, our partners, and our children—those relationships that are so central to our flourishing—and to ask, ‘What will be the likely impact of any particular enhancement technology on the possibility of fulfilling those relationships” (Ackerman, 76).

I have come to a conclusion that there would be no detrimental consequences and, consequently, psychopharmacological enhancement should not be prohibited or restricted upon. This does not imply, however, that individuals should not think for themselves and perform risk-benefit analyses about whether to take specific enhancement medication or not. It is essential that consumers do not take “unknown risks for scientifically but well-advertised benefits” (Greely, 90). We, as a society, must also not become over-reliant on drugs to make us better or to fix our problems (which, consequently, may eliminate the intimate doctor-patient relationship.

I believe the practice of cosmetic neurology is inevitable. Many people are “predicting that the 21^st century will be the century of neuroscience. Humanity’s ability to alter its own brain function might well shape history as powerfully as the development of metallurgy in the Iron Age, mechanization in the Industrial Revolution, or genetics in the second half of the twentieth century” (Farah et al., 289). There is always the possibility that good science aimed at the treatment of neurological disease may be applied for enhancement purposes. We must never cease to examine the “benefits and dangers of neuroscience-based technology, or ‘neurotechnology,’ and consideration of whether, when, and how society might intervene to limit its uses” (Farah et al., 289). Until we have “disentangled the a priori from the empirical claims, and evaluated the empirical claims more thoroughly, we are at risk of making wrong choices” (Farah et al., 297). Thinking about and considering such neuroethical problems “may help us maximize the benefits and minimize the harms of the revolution in brain science” (Greely, 94). When we deal with brain science, we are “dealing with the organ that makes us unique individuals, that gives us our personality, memories, emotions, dreams, creative abilities, and at times our sinister selves” (Ackerman, xii). We, as a society, must remain careful and attentive since the brain is, after all, “the seat of what we consider our humanity” (Ackerman, ix).

Psychopharmacological enhancement will go on to challenge current philosophical beliefs as it already has. As Farah and Wolpe state, “brain-based enhancement [is] forcing us to confront the fact that we are physical systems. If specific abilities, personality, traits, and dispositions are manifest in characteristic patterns of brain activation and can be manipulated by specific neurochemical interventions, then they must be a part of the physical world” (54). This realization and idea, however, “does not mesh easily” with our intuitions about personhood and the traditional ideas regarding the soul or the “nonmaterial component of the human mind” (Farah & Wolpe, 54). If the self or soul can be changed physically and chemically, is it truly immaterial?

Regardless of the answer to that question, we should not be afraid to challenge current beliefs and progress. As Pence states, “we are on the age of exciting new frontiers in medicine” (290). “Medical advancement can reshape what it means to be human: better athletes through enhancement medicine, brighter and funnier children through cloning, and three careers instead of one-plus-retirement as longevity increases” (180). Instead of being fearful, we need to embrace this “exploding knowledge” that “is giving us new opportunities, if not for ourselves, then for the next generation” (180). Hippocrates once said that “life is short, science is long; opportunity is elusive, experiment is dangerous, judgment is difficult.” Psychopharmacological enhancement has a possibility to increase opportunity and make our judgment sharper, making science easier and our lives, longer, better, and more pleasant.

Bibliography

1. Defining Right and Wrong in Brain Science, essential Readings in Neuroethics (edited by Walter Glannon, Ph.D.)

1. Visions for a New Field of “Neuroethics” by William Safire [from Neuroethics: Mapping the Field (Dana Press, 2002):3-9]
2. Emerging Ethical Issues in Neuroscience by Martha J. Farah [from Nature Neuroscience 5 (2002):1123-1129]
3. Monitoring and Manipulating Brain Function: New Neuroscience Technologies and Their Ethical Implications by Martha J. Farah and Paul Root Wolpe [from Hastings Center Report 34, no. 3 (May-June 2004):35-45].
4. Neuroscience and Neuroethics by Donald Kennedy [from Science 306, October 15, 2004].
5. Ethical Issues in Taking Neuroscience Research from Bench to Bedside by Alan I. Leshner [from Cerebrum 6 (2004):66-73].
6. Better Memories? The Promise and Perils of Pharmacological Interventions by President’s Council on Bioethics [http://www.bioethics.gov/background/better_memories.html]
7. Psychopharmacology and Memory by Walter Glannon [from Journal of Medical Ethics 32 (2006):74-78]
8. Shall We Enhance? A Debate by Arthur L. Caplan and Paul R. McHugh [from Cerebrum 6 (2004):13-29]
9. Neurocognitive Enhancement: What Can We Do and What Should We Do? by Martha J. Farah, et al. [from Nature Reviews Neuroscience 6 (2004):421-425]
10. The Promise and Predicament of Cosmetic Neurology by Anjan Chatterjee [from Journal of Medical Ethics 32 (2006):110-113]

2. Hard Science, Hard Choices: Facts, Ethics, and Policies Guiding Brain Science Today by Sandra J. Ackerman [Dana Press, 2006]

3. Philosophy of Medicine by Mark Waymack

4. The Dana Foundation’s Cerebrum (2007)

1. Transforming Drug Development Through Brain Imagining by Paul M. Matthews
2. A Brain Built for Fair Play by Donald W. Pfaff
3. Knowing Sin: Making Sure Good Science Doesn’t Go Bad By Henry T. Greely, J.D.
4. Re-Creating Medicine by Gregory E. Pence

5. Nephrarious Goings On: Kidney Sales and Moral Arguments by Janet Radcliffe Richards [from Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 21 (1996)532-544]

6. Hippocrates, Hippocratic writings. Edited with an introduction by G.E.R. Lloyd. Harmondsworth (Penguin), 1978, 206.

7. The Reviewed Warning for Antidepressants and Suicidality: Unveiling the Black Box of Statistical Analysis. Andrew C. Leon. Am J Psychiatry 164:12 December 2007.

Gennadiy Katsevman (’10) is a Philosophy major at Loyola University Chicago.

Art courtesy of adnrey

John Stuart Mill, one of the most prominent British philosophers of the 19^th century, has had a tremendous influence on political philosophy, ethical theory, and much of the liberal thought which has dominated contemporary Western culture. His libertarian viewpoints are espoused in his essay On Liberty, which is an unwavering defense of individual liberty and freedom from limitations imposed by society. A few years later, Mill published his essay Utilitarianism, in which he argues that utility is the fundamental principle of morality. The principle of utility, or the greatest happiness principle, states that right actions are those which produce the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people, and wrong actions are those that produce the greatest unhappiness. Mill’s advocacy of the concepts of happiness, freedom, and individual liberty, serves as the groundwork for his Utilitarian theory of ethics, and the two works Utilitarianism and On Liberty are perhaps the two most important essays which express his viewpoints.

However, when comparing the two texts, one cannot help noticing an inherent tension between them. Mill’s discourse in On Liberty, is supposed to be written in a Utilitarian spirit. Can Mill truly provide an adequate defense of the protection of individual liberty and freedom, while approaching the issue from a Utilitarian standpoint, which emphasizes the promotion of society’s utility at the cost of individual happiness? Mill’s fundamental principle of utility presupposes that happiness is the only thing to be valued as a goal, and for its own sake. In order to remain consistent with Utilitarianism, the notions of individual liberty and freedom can only be valued as vehicles toward that same goal. In other words, freedom can only be valued instrumentally, because it promotes happiness. It cannot be valued in and of itself as a natural right. This apparent tension between the two texts also manifests itself within On Liberty as Mill himself struggles with reconciling the two notions of freedom and utility. It will be necessary first to analyze the tension within On Liberty, before delving into the relation between Utilitarianism and On Liberty. In this paper, I will argue that Mill contradicts the principle of utility through his arguments for the protection of liberty, because he yields to the fact that liberty should be pursued for its own sake.

There are several examples within On Liberty, which portray the concept of liberty[1] as valuable only as a vehicle toward the end goal of promoting happiness. These examples prove Mill’s consistency with Utilitarianism, because only happiness is valued in and of itself. In the first example of the instrumental value of liberty, Mill says, “In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is, therefore, capable of being more valuable to others. There is a greater fullness of life about his own existence, and when there is more life in the units there is more in the mass which is composed of them.”(On Liberty 60) In essence, this is an argument based on the principle of utility. According to the quote, individuality is valued because it promotes happiness for the individual, which, in turn, promotes happiness for society as a whole. Later in the text, Mill also points out that “originality is a valuable element in human affairs” and that “it is necessary further to show that these developed human beings[2] are of some use to the undeveloped.”(Ibid., 61) He also supports “mental freedom”(Ibid., 33) on the grounds that it allows for the development of an intellectually active society. These quotes serve to illustrate that part of Mill’s argument for the defense of liberty does seem to include extrinsic value, which is consistent with Utilitarianism. As long as liberty is valued as a means to the end of happiness, the principle of utility is not undermined.

On the other hand, there are also many instances where Mill appears to be accepting the inherent value of liberty as a goal in itself, rather than as a vehicle toward the end goal of happiness. In the first chapter of On Liberty, Mill begins by introducing “one very simple principle.”(Ibid., 9) This is very dangerous for Mill, because according to Utilitarianism, the sole fundamental principle for human beings is the principle of utility. Furthermore, he goes on to describe this principle and states that “the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection.”⁶ This principle is regarded as the “harm principle” and serves as one of the major arguments within the text. An individual can act with absolute and complete liberty as long he or she does not cause harm to another. With this statement, Mill seems to be placing liberty in a protected position, regardless of whether the recognition of liberty would promote utility. There are several examples in which Mill seems to express liberty as being inherently valuable. For instance, chapter three begins with the title, “Of Individuality, As One of The Elements of Well-Being.”(Ibid., 53) This title is very important, because it does not define individuality as a means to well-being, or happiness, but as part of well-being. If the notion of individuality were included within the principle of utility by definition as part of happiness, then such a statement would not be contradictory. Since the principle of utility is defined as simply pleasure and absence of pain, there is no indication that individuality has any inherent good according to Utilitarianism.

At this point, it is noticeable that there is a clear internal contradiction within Mill’s argument in On Liberty. He seems to be insisting that his “harm principle”, is a protected principle distinct from utility, while at the same time insisting that liberty is only defended because of the principle of utility. The “harm principle” espoused in the text allows the individual to act with absolute freedom as long as no one else is affected by his actions. This seems to imply that the principle of utility has no jurisdiction within the personal sphere of the individual as long has the individual’s actions are “self-regarding.”(Ibid., 74) However, if the individual’s freedom was recognized only instrumentally, then even this personal “self-regarding” sphere could be interfered with in order to promote utility.

Although Utilitarianism and On Liberty are not directly related or in dialogue with each other, Mill’s ideas on “public utility” and “private utility” in his later work help explain the tension in his earlier work. Mill explains this distinction in Utilitarianism. He says private utility is “the interest or happiness of some few persons” (Utilitarianism 19) and public utility means to promote utility “on an extended scale.”⁹ When viewing On Liberty through the lens of private versus public utility, it becomes clear what Mill is actually saying. He is arguing for the protection of liberty, for its own sake, only at the level of private utility. In contrast, liberty is valued instrumentally, in terms of public utility. For instance, Mill says an action “which neither violates any specific duty to the public, nor occasions perceptible hurt to any assignable individual except himself, the inconvenience is one which society can afford to bear, for the sake of the greater good of human freedom.”(On Liberty 80) Mill is saying that in cases where freedom and utility conflict, freedom will be valued regardless of the private utility that would be promoted by stripping away that freedom. However, by valuing freedom for its own sake, regardless of its private utility, the greater public utility will be promoted. In essence, Mill seems to insist on the inherent value of freedom, but uses the promotion of public utility at a larger scale in order to cover this flaw and remain consistent with Utilitarianism. This viewpoint is also made clear at the very beginning of the essay when Mill explains his intentions for On Liberty. In the introduction, he says “I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.”(On Liberty 10) Mill must have anticipated the apparent tension that readers would recognize in his work, and with this statement explains that he will protect liberty at the private level, but will also remain faithful to Utilitarianism by valuing liberty as a means of promoting utility on a larger scale.

The reconciliation of the two notions of freedom and utility is so difficult, that Mill’s argument, an attempt to solve this tension, is bound to raise many questions. Is Mill entitled to make such a claim? Is it consistent to accept the principle of utility as fundamental at an extended scale, but place limits on it at the private level? Can liberty be valued intrinsically when viewed through one lens, but extrinsically in another?

The following quote from Mill’s response to an objection in Utilitarianism, may make the answer to this question clearer. The response is to the objection that Utilitarianism is too demanding by asking an individual to promote happiness for an entire society. He says “private utility, the interest or happiness of some few persons, is all he has to attend to.”(Utilitarianism 19) With this statement, Mill is making it clear that cases of public utility are only “exceptional”, and in general, individuals should only be considered with private utility. If each individual is only concerned with private utility, the level at which liberty is protected and valued for its own sake, then the realm of public utility or the “greater good” seems irrelevant at a subjective level. If an individual’s morality is defined strictly in terms of private utility, then it would make no difference whether liberty would be valued intrinsically or extrinsically at a larger scale, because the realm of public utility would not be a factor. In this sense, from the subjective standpoint of individuals, Mill accepts that liberty is inherently valuable, pursued for its own sake, and protected from the influence of utility. The instrumental value of liberty at the level of public utility cannot be argued for on Utilitarian grounds, because it has no practical significance for the individual in Utilitarianism.

In this sense, Mill ends up unintentionally yielding that liberty is inherently valuable in On Liberty. His argument for its value as a vehicle to promote happiness in terms of greater public utility, is inconsistent with Utilitarian principles and results in a principle of liberty that is protected and independent from the principle of utility. As a result, Mill cannot solve the apparent tension between On Liberty and Utilitarianism, because his defense of liberty leads to the undermining of the principle of utility. Furthermore, it would be necessarily impossible for him to reconcile both positions, because a true defense of liberty and freedom cannot rest on extrinsic value in the Utilitarian sense, but only on intrinsic value. If the notion of liberty is valued only as a means to an end, its very nature would be different depending on what the end may require. The very concept of liberty seems to escape this notion, and insists on being defended as a natural right to be recognized in and of itself. This is made evident through Mill’s failure in his argument. Ultimately, Mill is placed in a position where he can either defend liberty while renouncing the principle of utility, or he can maintain the principle of utility at the expense of a defense of true liberty.

Endnotes

[1] It is important to note that the term “liberty” is used by Mill as an umbrella term throughout the essay, and includes the concepts of freedom, individuality, and originality.

[2] The developed human beings Mill refers to are those people who have fully developed their faculties freely and openly through the exercise of their freedom of individuality and originality. These people are regarded as those who have attained a very high level of happiness because they have satisfied their utmost intellectual desires. Through this development, these human beings would be useful to society in countless ways by exercising their faculties for the benefit of society.

Works Cited

Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978.

Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001

Raafay Syed (’12) is a Philosophy and Public Health Studies major at The Johns Hopkins University.

Art courtesy of =drezdany.

I. Introduction

The debate on the role of neuroscience in the context of the law has crucial repercussions for the notion of legal responsibility. Legal responsibility and moral responsibility are not necessarily analogous; however, there is a strong correlation. Moral responsibility often informs our sense of legal responsibility, but the latter is best understood as a subset of the former. Legal responsibility is less demanding than moral responsibility mainly due to the context of its function: the courtroom. In the courtroom, evidence is the focus of judgments, whereas moral responsibility adjudicates in cases that are purely internal to an agent and transcend evidence. For example, when dealing with virtuous actions, a person probably upholds their legal responsibility when she works in a soup kitchen to feed those in need. If she would be doing so, only for personal benefit (e.g. to look virtuous or solely for economic gain) we would mostly only judge this act deplorable on moral grounds. Conversely, if a person shoots and kills another person, both legally and morally we are interested in the internal workings of the agent. Exculpatory factors derived from impairment of mental faculties, specifically in the legal domain, suggest that committing an act alone is not adequate for justifying the attribution of guilt and responsibility. These are some common conceptions of legal and moral responsibility, many of which rely on some conception of an intentional moral agent that has a will. In this paper, I first examine the text of Greene & Cohen and their conclusion that a shift to a consequentialist justification of punishment follows from a new understanding gained by neuroscience. After criticising their conclusion, I look at an article by Joel Feinberg where he outlines the differences between legal and moral responsibility. This will prepare the ground for considering Levy & Bayne as well as Ryan & Deci who argue that the will is an essential part of our understanding of responsibility and self-determination respectively. Finally, I consider Levy & Bayne’s characterological account and the plausibility it gains in direct balance to the implausibility of Greene & Cohen’s conclusion.

Greene & Cohen describe the dialectic that neuroscience encroaches on in the field of philosophy of law. There are two recourses, (1) discoveries and understanding gained through neuroscience will transform our legal attitude or (2) such a new understanding would only provide details that the current legal framework is adequately able to accommodate. They advocate the latter and take the position that neuroscience will have a transformative effect, “not by undermining [the law’s] current assumptions, but by transforming people’s moral intuitions about free will and responsibility” (Greene and Cohen 1775). They further state that our current legal principles owe their veracity to our intuitive sense of justice. It is this sense of justice that they believe will be transformed by neuroscientific discoveries. To this effect, they conclude our intuition of justice should shift from the use of punishment for retribution to punishment for consequentialist reasons. I will reject the claim that a change in our sense of justice as they describe it would not also affect current legal principles. I will attempt to expose a fundamental intuition that underlies both the current law and our intuitions of justice such that they are interdependent. Further, the arguments of Levy & Bayne 2004 about the indispensability of the will and its role within legal responsibility will add on to this discussion. I will also evaluate the potential of characterological accounts of “will” to pose a viable alternative to switching to the consequentialist solution Green & Cohen suggest to be necessary.

The interest in neuroscience for questions of law follows naturally from the dual component for legal conviction in criminal cases. The defendant must not only be proved to have committed an illegal act, but mens rea must also be established. Greene & Cohen suggest mens rea can be understood narrowly and loosely: Narrowly, Intention and on the other hand loosely as “all mental states consistent with moral and/or legal blame,” (Greene and Cohen 1775). An interest in mental states is evidence of a main assumption inherent in our legal system. This crucial connection is where our dialogue of will is most important. However, I will first outline Greene & Cohen’s theory in more detail before illustrating this point.

II. Legal Principles and Moral Intuitions

Amongst others, there are two premises that the arguments of Greene & Cohen rely upon. First, that science, specifically neuroscience will undermine the common libertarian convictions of free will and take with it the retributivist justification that depends on these convictions. This appears to be an assumption because such a move assumes we can eliminate the will. This is something Adina Roskies (2006) believes neuroscience alone is unable to do. The second premise is that a rejection of common-sense free will and retributivism “[ensues] a shift towards a consequentialist approach to punishment’ (Greene and Cohen 1776). Is this the only other option? Could the characterological approach of Levy & Bayne be plausible and thereby still preserve a notion of will? If so this would weaken Greene & Cohen‘s argument.

With these questions in mind, I will now explicate Greene & Cohen’s position. The conceptual playing field takes shape by contrasting consequentialist and retributivist justifications for punishment. Retributivist justifications of punishment according to Greene & Cohen suffer from an internal tension: compatibilism and incompatibilism of free will with determinism. They argue incompatibilist libertarian intuitions underlie the current law. This is evident, say Green & Cohen, because there is often a gap between moral intuitions and what the law deems relevant (Greene and Cohen 1776).

Greene & Cohen provide critiques of both justifications. Consequentialist justifications are forward-looking. Their aim is to insure future societal welfare but they are susceptible to objections as are most other utilitarian type theories. For many it may appear that utilitarian type theories allow the justification of anything as long as there is a greater benefit to the whole. In the case of legal responsibility, Greene & Cohen admit that “consequentialist theories fail to capture something central to common-sense intuitions about legitimate punishment” (Greene and Cohen 1776). Retributivist justifications are backward-looking and are less concerned with the welfare of society as a whole. Retributivist punishment functions more to remedy a debt that has been incurred by a criminal whether to society or another individual. Their critique of the retributivist justifications focuses on the scepticism of free will in a deterministic world.

What of this deterministic world? On the subject of determinism, they reference Peter van Inwagan (1982): “determinism is true if the world is such that its current state is completely determined by (i) the laws of physics and (ii) past states of the world” (Greene and Cohen 1777). They admit free will is often conceived as the ability to do otherwise, but note that Frankfurt (1966) questions this assumption. Later in the paper, we will consider those implications, which I believe Greene & Cohen have neglected to do. In the end, say Greene & Cohen, there are three main solutions to the problem of free will: hard determinism, libertarianism and compatibilism. They argue for a consequentialist justification for punishment since it is plausible with all three options, whereas retributivist justifications necessitate a stance on free will. They continue to expand their argument by assuming punishment can reasonably only be carried out for actions that are freely willed. Since hard determinism would undermine justification for any punishment and, according to a previous claim, libertarian views are “scientifically suspect” (Greene and Cohen 1778) they conclude that retributivism requires a compatibilist view. However, Green & Cohen believe that neuroscience will increase the tension between the “compatibilist legal principles and libertarian moral intuitions” beyond its breaking point (Ibid.), ending with an inability to support retributivist claims.

An argument that states neuroscience will not change the law (Green & Cohen refer to Morse 2004), maintains the law only requires “a general capacity for rational behaviour” to deem people legally responsible. This means a neurological explanation may well provide better and more detailed evidence of rationality, but it will not fundamentally change the law “unless it shows that people in general fail to meet the law’s very minimal requirements for rationality” (Greene and Cohen 1778). This point will be instrumental in undermining Greene & Cohen’s argument. Proponents of the fact that neuroscience will change the law, says Morse, are often committing the fundamental psycholegal error. If neuroscience provides us with a neuronal explanation of acts committed then one who commits this fallacy would argue that this fact is exculpatory for legal responsibility. However, under the assumption of physicalism, every action is caused in some way by the brain. Thus, establishing a causal relation between brain states and action is not sufficient to bring into play any legal ramifications except perhaps in the case where some brain state sufficiently impairs minimal rationality.

For this reason, Morse believes neuroscience does not pose a challenge to the law, as we currently know it. Greene & Cohen agree in principle with the subtle notion the psycholegal error elucidates but add a distinctive appeal to the moral intuitions and commitments of society. According to Greene & Cohen, “The legitimacy of the law itself depends on its adequately reflecting the moral intuitions and commitments of society. If neuroscience can change those intuitions, then neuroscience can change the law” (Greene and Cohen 1778). To circumscribe these intuitions they say what really matters for responsibility for most people is evidenced by the kinds of disjunctive questions they ask in these situations. Questions such as “was it him, or was it his genes? … Was it him, or was it his brain?” (Greene and Cohen 1778-9)

The example of Mr. Puppet highlights these intuitions. The example also accentuates the disparity between what the law’s interests are and what we intuitively hold to be true about responsibility. The law is interested in establishing minimal rationality as a prerequisite for legal responsibility, but since we can construct hypothetical situations such as Mr. Puppet, where outside control does not come at the cost of impairing rationality it appears that in the face of a deterministic worldview, which precisely postulates outside control, the law seems inadequate in separating these cases. Greene & Cohen put it this way, “rationality is just a presumed correlate of what most people really care about” (Greene and Cohen 1780). This is what underlies the fundamental psycholegal error. We are intuitively opposed to any outside forces that exert control over us, that we are quick to exculpate in any situation where that is the case. Greene & Cohen conclude that we are all similar to Mr. Puppet since determinism is true at least to some degree because of physical laws. Further, free will seems to require actions that are independent of external forces and thus requires us to reject determinism. Since determinism is true to some degree a libertarian free will is a misunderstanding and incompatible with determinism. In principle, I agree with Greene & Cohen that Mr. Puppet brings forth some vital questions about our intuitions, but I believe they have not gone deep enough in investigating a fundamental assumption that both the law and the case of Mr. Puppet share.

They believe that as we discover more about the mechanistic processes about the brain the plausibility of “dualist and libertarian intuitions” will decrease. In this respect, they compare the brain to a bottleneck through which every influence on our behaviour must flow. Neuroscience will provide us with the tools to discover what is going through this bottleneck. In a reflection on how this may play out in the future Greene & Cohen see a time where the dichotomy between the questions of being truly guilty and simply a victim of neuronal and external forces will become obsolete. For this to happen there must be an intermediate step. We need first accept that being a victim of neuronal and external forces is still sufficient for legal responsibility of any kind. Is it possible to preserve a notion of will (whatever its status) and is this perhaps required to justify any sense of being responsible for ones actions? Greene & Cohen themselves sate that “it is possible that we will never be able to fully talk ourselves out of [our intuitive sense of free will]”. (Greene and Cohen 1781). It seems plausible to say that neuroscience may inform and fine-tune our intuitions to some degree in this area. However, the central question for this paper investigates whether its elimination altogether would leave sufficient grounds for the law’s current assumptions.

III. The Case for the Law’s Dependence on Intuitions About Justice

At this point I present an intermittent argument to challenge Greene & Cohen’s conclusion that neuroscience will change our moral intuition but not change the law’s current assumptions. We pick up on the idea of rationality in a setting such as Mr. Puppet. I believe just because neuroscience may show a one-to-one correlation between brain states and actions this does not mean that our actions can be sufficiently explained at the level of a deterministic world. If the functioning within the brain does adhere to some physical laws and even if the outside world has the same physical laws this is not in principle sufficient to conclude that our environment determines our actions. This detail is putatively dismissed by Green & Cohen with the example of Mr. Puppet, and means that their conclusion makes certain implicit assumptions about the phenomenon of will.

Let us be more concrete with some examples. There are two options both in respect to the world and to our brain/mind. Either the world is (1a) determined (knowing the beginning state and all the physical laws that regulate movement to future states) or (1b) it is indetermined. On the other hand, the will could be (2a) libertarian in nature (the possibility of doing otherwise) or (2b) the will could be an illusion (where we at least appear to have the possibility of choosing otherwise) or (2c) there is no will (no moral responsibility). Greene & Cohen believe a determined world eliminates both 2a and 2b. I believe 2b is still a viable option.

To consider this, let us look at external versus internal factors. Feinberg mentions that an external factor (e.g. dust in the eye) can interfere with internal workings such as intentions, but I propose this “interference” only makes sense if the internal processes are viewed as self-contained and not just an extension of the external (determined or indetermined) world.

Thus, if neuroscience were to reveal that our will can be reduced to determined brain states we would still be interested in one person’s specific brain state for questions of moral or legal responsibility. It would not make sense to ask what the state of the world is in our attempt to discover what this person’s particular role was in the deterministic world and from this make an inference about responsibility. This illuminates a fundamental assumption, precisely, that looking at a particular part of the causal network (e.g. the individual’s brain) has more moral significance than the world at large. I believe this is a fundamental assumption the law makes. However, the kind of justice that Greene & Cohen support when they suggest that consequentialist justifications for punishment are the only plausible ones in face of a deterministic worldview undermines this assumption. Thus, they are presupposing that we would accept such a view of justice to argue that neuroscience will lead us to change our intuitions in precisely that direction. It is also possible that our intuitions about justice and more specifically our intuitions about individuality prevent us from conceiving of ourselves as simply a physical extension of the world, even if this world were to be physically determined.

The fact that the current law is interested in the internal as exemplified in the individual brain precludes such a conception of justice. Specifically, on Greene & Cohen’s account, the law’s assumptions center on the question of rationality. Recall, Morse’s statement about minimal rationality. I propose that this rationality is a question of the internal and individual brain state as opposed to a question about the world at large. Therefore, if Greene & Cohen were to suggest that our sense of justice were to change in the way they propose then this would mean “we all lack minimal rationality.” On the other hand, if we would like to argue that the law’s current assumptions are unaffected, then we must be able to maintain individuality, which has the correlate of will despite an externally determined world.

Rationality in the abstract is behaviour or reasoning that is precisely not just based on external influences. Can nature be rational? Would an earthquake be morally responsible for the deaths it caused? These two questions alone illustrate the intuitions we have about justice. If the law establishes a difference between nature at large and us as people (moral agents, who are rational) this distinction itself is witness that at least in principle there is a separate standard that we apply in the case of assumed intentional agents in both the areas of moral and legal responsibility. Using this terminology, I believe Greene & Cohen wish to say that neuroscience will demonstrate that there are no moral agents therefore we need consequentialist justifications for punishment. Does this then not change the fundamental assumptions underlying current law?

It may be possible that neuroscience reveals that we are just an extension of a determined environment. We can then either continue with an illusion to maintain our intuitions (N.J. Block (1971) makes an argument for the compatibility of mechanistic and teleological explanations of behaviour), or we can change our intuitions, but then we will also affect the law’s current assumptions. More so, because of the interconnectedness of rationality, individuality and moral agency it appears implausible to change our notion of justice without also fundamentally challenging the law’s current assumptions.

IV. Eliminating the Will

To bring forth the complexity that underlies our intuitive sense of free will Greene & Cohen delve into a psychological analysis of our perceptions of inanimate objects versus those that appear to move around at will. To make sense of the behaviour of different objects in the world our minds, say Greene & Cohen have developed two distinct cognitive systems. In this fundamental folk psychological intuition, we find the grounds for the psycholegal error. A moral agent must necessarily be seen as having a mind that acts as its own cause. Determinism would clearly undermine our attribution of such minds and thus challenge our attribution of responsibility. Greene & Cohen themselves on the topic of eliminating the will include this passage:

“many compatibilists sceptically ask what would it mean to give up on free will. Were we to give it up, wouldn’t we have to immediately reinvent it? Does not every decision involve an implicit commitment to the idea of free will? And how else would we distinguish between ordinary rational adults and other individuals, such as young children and the mentally ill, whose will – or whatever you want to call it – is clearly compromised? Free will, compatibilists argue, is here to stay, and the challenge for science is to figure out how exactly it works and not to peddle silly arguments that deny the undeniable (Dennett 2003)” (Greene and Cohen 1777)

For Greene & Cohen, the compromise that allows responsibility despite a lack of free will is exemplified with a consequentialist justification for punishment. They conclude that neuroscience will not change the law, because the law’s concerns lay elsewhere, but that the underlying intuitions or moral responsibility will change by what neuroscience can bring to the table. Free will is an illusion and our intuitions will ultimately have to change from retributivist to consequentialist justifications for punishment.

I have already made a case for a dependency of the law on our moral intuitions. Now that we have analyzed Greene & Cohen’s argument in depth, and argued against a change of intuitions that still preserves the current law, we can address the claims they have made with regard to the will. The heart of their argument depends on challenging the conception of free will. At this point, it is helpful to consider the difference between free will and will proper. Greene & Cohen’s dialectic focuses on free will since they wish to pin this against a deterministic worldview. Do they also mean to eliminate a psychological understanding of action in terms of will? Are free will and will proper synonymous, or can we derive an explanation of action in terms of will that is compatible with determinism? These questions force us to ask what it is about will that is so important in our conception of moral agency. A firm stand on this issue will help us gage the extent of influence neuroscientific discoveries may have. To help in elucidating this issue we must certainly consider the contribution of Harry Frankfurt. I believe it is plausible to take the view of Frankfurt with respect to free will combined with neurological explanations to preserve a sense of will. We shall also consider the option of replacing will with a characterological account.

First, we delineate moral responsibility by considering Feinberg; in Problematic Responsibility in Law and Morals, he provides a detailed discussion. The greatest factor separating legal and moral responsibility according to Feinberg is that “judgments of legal responsibility are strongly influenced by ulterior practical purposes” (Feinberg 341). These practical concerns deal with the inherent vagueness in judging “how … losses can best be distributed and whether certain kinds of risk-taking are to be encouraged or deterred” (Feinberg 343). Punishment and compensation are further practical concerns that a legal system must deal with (Feinberg 343). Moral responsibility according to Feinberg has many unique aspects. At large, it is “liability to charges and credits on some ideal record” (Feinberg 345). The exactness that legal questions demand such as the year and a day rule (to determine if an act contributed to a death) is inappropriate when considering moral responsibility. However moral responsibility is in principal precisely decidable as it must be read off facts and deduced from them. Further, moral judgments are “absolute” in contrast to legal judgments. Legal judgments are not as strong, since they only say the agent had an “‘important’ contribution for the purpose of the law” (Feinberg 345). Finally, moral responsibility must deliver regular and predictable judgments that are not subject to luck (Feinberg 346).

Feinberg asserts that in many situations it may be impossible to make moral judgments, since actions are not the only contributor to the outcome. Being “at fault” and moral responsibility are not identical. “A person can well be morally at fault in what he does without being morally responsible for some given harm” (Feinberg 347). Our intuition about morality is that “moral responsibility for external harm makes no sense, … moral responsibility is therefore restricted to the inner world of the mind, where the agent rules supreme and luck has no place” (Ibid.). He further mentions that this is where volition is undertaken and intentions formed where an agent “govern[s] those inner thoughts and volitions which are completely subject to [her] control” (Ibid.)

Even though moral responsibility primarily looks towards the inner workings Feinberg continues and shows how even moral responsibility can be susceptible to an outside influence (e.g. luck) such as a speck of dust in one’s eye that interrupts someone’s rage from progressing (Feinberg 349). Feinberg notices it is odd to speak of responsibility for one’s intentions, but: “having a character of a certain sort is often a necessary condition for the forming of any particular intention” (Ibid.). By hypothesizing two agents with similar character but different intentions formed (due to external influence), Feinberg concludes that responsibility is not derived from character alone, but rather from how important of a contributor the character was in the particular situation (Feinberg 350). By making a list of possible contributors towards forming a certain intention despite character Feinberg points out that some of these contributing factors are external in nature (ie. Upset stomach, rude remarks, hyperactive adrenal gland). In this sense, we arrive at the same problem as with legal responsibility; (Feinberg 350-1) the problem of exactness and balancing factors that have contributed to the intention. Feinberg’s final and central claim is that it is a “mistake to think that by restricting responsibility to an inner jurisdiction we can thereby make precise its vaguenesses [sic]and eliminate its contingencies [sic]” (Feinberg 351). This illustrates some of the similarities between legal and moral responsibility.

What of the balance between internal and external factors? What Morse calls the fundamental psycholegal error is summed up by “regard[ing] actions only as fully free when those actions are seen as robust against determination by external forces” (Greene and Cohen 1780). This is evidence to their anti-compatibilist tendencies. Most of their discussion looks at the role of free will. They believe libertarian conceptions of free will are in contradiction with neuroscience. (Ibid.) Ryan & Deci hash out what kind of understanding of will can stand in the face of neuroscience. They agree that the understanding of Descartes postulating a force that tilts the mechanical processes in the brain is such a version of the will that cannot stand up to neuroscience (Ryan and Deci 1571). In their discussion on autonomy, Ryan & Deci explore several philosophical notions to define autonomy. Both from a phenomenological perspective and modern analytical approaches we see that independence from external influences or constraints is not necessary to have autonomy. In both cases, assent or consent to these influences is sufficient for autonomy (Ryan and Deci 1560-2). The self-determination theory (SDT) of autonomy is used in discussions of psychological aspects relevant to autonomy. In this context the opposite of autonomy, heteronomy, is defined as “regulation…by forces experienced as alien or pressuring, be they inner impulses or demands, or external contingencies” (Ryan and Deci 1562). Ryan & Deci bring further depth to an understanding of autonomy. Instead of an all or nothing autonomy, they propose that “within SDT, autonomy for any given action is a matter of degree” (Ryan and Deci 1563). If this is the case, it makes the dispute between proponents of will-talk and those that maintain it to be an illusion more complex.

Both the notions that Feinberg and Ryan & Deci bring forth show that despite external influences (even inner workings of the brain) our intuitions still support an investigation of intention. Even though Feinberg admits our character can be influenced by alien forces it is a determination of the degree of influence that has a bearing on responsibility. The term “will” can thus be understood as an overarching term, a mental place holder, that bears testimony to a fundamental assumption underlying our intuitions about responsibility.

V. The Charaterological Account

Levy & Bayne bring to the table examples of pathologies of the will. Since it is our purpose to argue for behaviour with the aid of the notion of will it would be begging the question to speak of pathologies of the “will”. Thus, we will consider the example of Levy & Bayne as pathologies of the common notion of agency. If we succeed in showing that these pathologies indispensably require the notion of will to make them intelligible then we would succeeded in opening the way for the indispensability of the will. Evaluating this claim, however, is not within the scope of this paper, rather, if we can show that the characterological account of the will, which Levy & Bayne provide is sufficient for maintaining a retributivist justification of punishment we have still weakened the claim of Greene & Cohen.

We begin by looking at the argument of Levy & Bayne. A very helpful distinction they make is to separate the notion of will into three senses of the notion: genesis of action, phenomenology of agency and degree of effort. For responsibility Levy & Bayne maintain that an agent must “exercise a certain form (or degree) of control” (Levy and Bayne 465). They then discuss the situation of loss of control. If rational control is required for responsibility there can be two “disorders of control” namely failures of authority and failures of inhibition. Failures of authority: “call[s] into question the ascription of the action to the agent” (Ibid.). Failures of inhibition: the action is ascribed to the agent, but the agent “has lost rational control over their actions” (Ibid.). They also note that there is a parallel between the depletion of rationality in delusional persons and the impaired agency at the root of pathologies of the will.

Since much rests on the ability of control Levy & Bayne, strongly link this capacity with responsibility. They then continue to offer another possibility in the form of a characterological account that maintains a notion of responsibility despite a lack of traditional control over one’s actions. Frankfurt is instrumental in providing an example where this would be desired. Levy & Bayne summarize this contribution of Frankfurt by saying “rather than identify an agent’s character with the mechanisms that underlie the normal control of their actions….agents are fully responsible for their actions only if they are the product of desires that they endorse” (Levy and Bayne 467). On this account, the notion of will could simply correspond to an endorsement of actions. This would be similar to Ryan & Deci’s self-determination theory. Hereby we rescue retributivist justifications by appeal to character. This only leaves the problem of adjudicating between a lack of the capacities of self-control and the degree to which they have been exercised to determine whether an agent endorses an action (Levy and Bayne 468).

VI. Conclusion

I thus conclude that elimination of will may not prevent a model of legal/moral responsibility, but doing so would change the current intuitions about moral responsibility quite extremely. The discoveries of neuroscience will not be sufficient to change our moral intuitions to such a degree, especially because we have other alternative ways of conceiving will that preserve the underlying libertarian intuitions. Even in the case where alien influences on our will challenge our libertarian intuitions, Frankfurt and Levy & Bayne offer responsibility grounded in character. Inclusion of will is a prima facie requirement for legal responsibility, but even if a libertarian will cannot be supported it is not necessary to adopt a consequentialist justification for punishment. Finally, if this strong conclusion is unconvincing I propose that the will is at minimum a critical notion that functions as a mental placeholder to make discussions of legal/moral responsibility intelligible, since moral responsibility conceptually requires an intentional agent. Thus, even in a consequentialist justification we would need to acknowledge moral agents if we want to have a conception of what is best for a society of intentional agents.

References

Feinberg, Joel. “Problematic Responsibility in Law and Morals.” The Philosophical Review July 1962: 340-351.

Frankfurt, Harry G. “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility.” The Journal of Philosophy (1969): 829-839.

Golding, Martin P. “Responsibility.” The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory. Ed. M. Golding and W. Edmunson. 2006. 236-247.

Greene, Joshua and Jonathan Cohen. “For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything.” The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (2004): 1775-1785.

Levy, Neil and Tim Bayne. “A will of one’s own: Consciousness, control, and character.” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry (2004): 459-470.

Morse, Stephen J. “Moral and legal responsibility and the new neuroscience.” Neuroethics. Defining the issues in theory, practice and policy. Oxford University Press, 2006. 33-49.

Roskies, Adina. “Neuroscientific Challenges to Free Will and Responsibility.” TRENDS in Cognitive Science 10.9 (2006): 419-423.

Ryan, Richard M. and Edward L. Deci. “Self-Regulation and the Problem of Human Autonomy: Does Psychology Need Choice, Self-Determination, and Will?” Journal of Personality (2006): 1557-1585.

Markus Prinz (’09) is a Philosophy Major at McGill University.

Introduction

As secularized accounts of morality’s social origins, the theories of Italian Renaissance political thinker Niccolo Machiavelli and the 19^th century German continental philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche call for a transvaluation of morality. If we analyze their systems of thought through the distorting, reductive lens of conventional modern connotations, we see the repugnancy of Nietzsche’s sexism or anti-Semitism or the cold, calculating, seemingly self-interested tactics of Machiavelli; as a consequence, we fail to delve deeper into the complexity of these works. This dismissive approach needs to be unlearned and replaced with a more detailed examination of how these figures redefine the notions of good and evil as the foundations of their philosophy and political theory, respectively. Over the course of describing their ethical theories and the ways in which they transvalue the moral standards of their times and attempt to show that vice can legitimately constitute virtue, I would like to explore the question: to what degree can Nietzsche and Machiavelli be defined as consequentialists? Finally, I will touch on the relationship between transvaluation and consequentialism.

Transvaluation Defined

One of the reasons that Nietzsche and Machiavelli have been studied for so long is the sense of theoretical novelty and innovation stemming from their transvaluations; both thinkers seem particularly sensitive to the importance of re-evaluating standards and social mores which facilitates philosophical progress. The concept of “transvaluation” is usually attributed to Nietzsche, rather than Machiavelli; however, the term aptly applies to both. In On the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche explicitly states the project of such a genealogy, or history of morals, and writes about the “need” for a transvaluation, which he defines as a “critique of moral values, the value of these values themselves must first be called in question... (20) Nietzsche’s project involves seeing value from the perspective of a meta-cultural stance. The process of transvaluation is essentially a re-assessment of concepts; one takes a step back from the internal, socially constructed systems of value to look at the larger picture, even if this means tearing down their foundation. There is also a shift from a view of morality as something that has objective, intrinsic worth to a view of it as having a subjective, socially and extrinsically determined worth.

Transvaluation: What is being “Transvalued”?

Nietzsche and Machiavelli, in their renunciation of traditional “popular morality”, criticize the Christian ethics which permeated their respective time periods in order to make way for new secular modes of thinking (On the Genealogy of Morals 45). Christian values are precisely what the two aim to attack and transvalue. Machiavelli draws on his own transvaluation of values for the purposes of providing a blueprint for the success of the state. Just as Nietzsche describes a moral dichotomy (slave morality and noble morality), Machiavelli explores two sets of morality: traditional Christian ethics and a political morality. He rejects the former in lieu of acceptance of the latter. Bernard Crick acknowledges that there are two seemingly incompatible spheres of morality, which he divides into the Christian and the Pagan worlds. There exists a conflict between Christian ethics, or “morality of the soul”, and political Pagan morality, or “morality of the city”, and one is forced to operate within one sphere or the other (Crick 67). Machiavelli points out the often mutually exclusive natures of both spheres and is emphatically anti-Christian. A political thinker more than a systematic philosopher, he never undertakes the task of attempting to reconcile the two spheres. This negative view of Christianity is further promoted in The Discourses, in particular sections 11-15. In these sections, Machiavelli makes an important distinction: he is not anti-religion, although he is opposed to Christian dogma. What makes Christianity so distasteful to him is the underlying element of passivity. Such a biblical command as “Turn the other cheek” is completely at odds with Machiavellian principles. Machiavelli’s play La Mandragola delineates the importance of action with the protagonist Callimaco, who says, “I’ve got to try something, be it great, dangerous, harmful, scandalous” (17). It is of further interest that Machiavelli’s works are grounded in unflinching secular realism. Focusing on the present world, he rejects the Christian view that life on earth functions as a spiritual test for soul-making and developing morally significant characters in order to ultimately gain entry to Paradise in the afterlife. As Mansfield states, Machiavelli is interested in establishing prosperity in the world of the here and now (Machiavelli’s Virtue 48). Let us act, he seems to be saying, as if there is no “next world”, and do our best to work with the present conditions. However, on a more general level, Machiavelli recognizes the social utility of religion; it inspires the armies, gives them courage, and unites the people under a common ideological bond. Religion for Machiavelli is a positive thing if it acts a catalyst for the people to political action, but deleterious if it leads to stasis (as Christianity does, according to Machiavelli’s interpretation).

Nietzsche’s obsession with the flaws of Christianity is concisely and elegantly formulated in the “In Attempt at a Self-Criticism” in The Birth of Tragedy:

Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life’s nausea and disgust with life… Hatred of ‘the world,’ condemnation of the passions, fear of beauty and sensuality… For, confronted with morality (especially Christian, or unconditional, morality), life must continually and inevitable be in the wrong, because life is something essentially amoral. (23)

For Nietzsche, Christianity is so destructive to the interests of man because it is rooted in a denial of life, and, moreover, constitutes a kind of perversion in that it restrains the instincts of human nature. The Christian religion teaches that natural sexual impulses and human evil are things of which we should be ashamed, and as such, it is necessarily life-negating; life, Nietzsche points out, encapsulates more than simply what human moral constructs deem “good.” To truly be considered life-affirming, we have to recognize that life is intrinsically supramoral, and we must embrace both halves of the whole, the light and the dark. Nietzsche attempts to critique morality; if the so-called purpose of morality is to label and prescribe what is beneficial as good, he advises that we critique the value of values to determine if the good is actually beneficial. Nietzsche tries to tear down the Christian traditional ethical concepts of self-sacrificing, self-denying moral goodness. Nevertheless, there are positive ethical assertions being posited.

Transvaluation: The Ethical Theories of Nietzsche and Machiavelli Explained

The Genealogy of Morals is a historical, psychological, etymological account of the origins of the meaning of morality. Nietzsche’s approach leads him to a documentation of control conflicts between socio-economic classes, a power-fueled process of assertion and retaliation, or competitive desires for supremacy. Moral valuation, according to Nietzsche, actually splits into a dichotomy relative to two social groups: the aristocracy, or the highest order in the social hierarchy, and the lowest rank, which is that of the slave. The aristocratic sense of the good is synonymous with power and centralized in self-affirmation. Using language as an instrument or expression of power, the aristocracy proves their supremacy by identifying and labeling as good the very actions the ruling class takes, notably making no distinction between the action and the executor of the action. From the noble’s self-justifying perspective, he is inherently good, and thus his behavior is but a perceptible manifestation of his good nature, rendered good by the mere fact that it originates from him, the source of goodness. In master “Roman” morality, power equates to goodness. Occupying the opposite end of aristocratic ethical values is “badness”, which is more or less all that is not the aristocracy, namely the lowest social class. The plebian is deemed bad automatically on the grounds that he is by definition deprived of power, and therefore indisputably separate from the aristocracy and their concept of goodness. The noble regards the commoner with indifference, seeing him as being of no consequence. He is actually incapable of feeling enmity towards the lower class, as he is not considered worthy of his attentions.

Slave morality consists of the polarities of “good and evil”, rather than the aristocratic valuations of “good and bad.” Under this reactionary ethical system, the slave despises the aristocrat, who in his eyes possesses the ability to choose weakness, yet remains in power. The weak, resenting the powerful, delude themselves into believing that their weakness is virtue, while the seemingly unattainable power is renamed vice, and thus gain superiority in the only sense they are capable: the transvalution of the pre-existing aristocratic morality. By redefining the aristocratic good as “evil”, the slave himself secures a degree of control over the nobles, the self-validating social tyrants. He linguistically transforms his impotence and subjection into his very sense of worth (On the Genealogy of Morals 56). This moral value generates from hatred, and the slave’s joy consists in the suffering of the nobles. Slave morality is, in contrast with self-affirming aristocratic morality, spiteful, vindictive, and actively negating. Furthermore, the slave’s good is in fact his evil; it is rooted in hate and malicious delight in diminishing the authority of and even inflicting pain upon the oppressive nobles, exemplifying our traditional concept of vice. In Nietzsche’s phrase “beyond good and evil” we see his desire for philosophy to move beyond a slave conception of morality (Ibid., 55).

While Nietzsche criticizes conventional morality and even morality in general by boldly claiming that “every morality is, as opposed to laisser aller, a bit of tyranny against ‘nature’ also against ‘reason’”, he never successfully escapes from the very oppositional thinking which he so adamantly detests (Beyond Good and Evil 100). Nietzsche, although he claims to despise morality, is clearly making a positive moral assertion of his own. The “life-affirming versus life-negating” opposition that is so salient in his writing forms a kind of new morality in its own right. Leila Haaparanta, in her article A Note on Nietzsche’s Argument, attempts to reconstruct Nietzsche’s critique of moral philosophy in strictly logical terms and also offers insight on his positive ethical theory and supports the interpretation that Nietzsche is asserting a life-affirming morality (494). Nietzsche observes that the polytheistic religions of antiquity are superior to Christian monotheism because in that epoch “There was only one norm, man” (The Gay Science 191). Nietzche’s morality, then, may be reduced to a simple and noble calculation: a true morality justifies man as perhaps an intrinsically moral being. It is his very natural instincts which Nietzsche labels as morally good, and the conscious repression of them as amoral. His moral prescription is essentially that vitality and natural impulses are the only ethical standards by which we should live. We have to accept the chaos and the dissonance, i.e. not only what is deemed by Christian values to be “good”, but also the “evil”.

In Book I of The Discourses, Machiavelli promotes his own view of the origins of morality. Like Nietzsche, he identifies the establishment of moral terms with power conflicts and social classes. In the earliest days of human history, people lived in primitive independence of social structure, organization, and law (106). As populations began to increase, so did interactions between people, until eventually more or less isolated individuals or small groups of individuals banded together in the name of the utility-steeped purpose of increasing the chances of survival. They chose a leader, a man of mental and physical distinction, to augment a sense of social cohesiveness and guide them as an early stages executive figure. This figure, not doubt, was a paradigm of the Machiavellian idea of virtu¹; he exemplifies the political role in Machiavellian thought which Pitkin identifies as the Founder, “a male figure of superhuman or mythical proportions, who introduces among men something new, good, and sufficiently powerful so that it continues beyond his lifetime on the course he has set” (The Founder 52). As such, the people felt a sense of obligation and indebtedness to their leader, or Founder, for the prosperity of the collective. After the establishment of governments, Machiavelli explains, people formed a notion of justice based on the way their leader was treated. Thus original concepts of good and evil were rooted in other individuals’ exhibitions of gratitude or ingratitude towards the Founder; when instances of ingratitude arose, men were filled with resentment for the ungrateful, and came to associate ingratitude with evilness and vice, while instances of gratitude shown to their leader induced valuations of goodness and virtue (The Discourses 107). Laws were created to accommodate these vicarious feelings, i.e. to punish the ungrateful and reward the grateful. Justice for Machiavelli is a purely subjective term revolving around the well-being of the leaders of the state. Moral judgments were formulated by the appropriation of gratitude towards the Founder, who had made social success possible, not because of inherent goodness or badness, and it is these relativist foundations of traditional morality which Machiavelli seeks to expose but also manipulate to the advantage of the whole.

Machiavelli’s transvaluation of values is most apparent in the infamous work The Prince. Espousing the ideals of civic duty and the common good, Machiavelli’s notion of virtue is inextricably bound up with classical republicanism. Good and evil are transvalued according to ends, i.e. the noble republican goal of liberty, preservation and expansion of the state, and the overall well-being of the people within the state are re-defined as the good. What society traditionally deems to be “evil” is even, at times, a necessary means to achieve the good. Evil in Machiavellian terms constitutes what is harmful to the republic.

…[A] ruler, and especially a new ruler, cannot always act in ways that are considered good because, in order to maintain his power, he is often forced to act treacherously, ruthlessly or inhumanely, and disregard the precepts of religion. Hence he must be… capable of entering upon the path of wrongdoing when this becomes necessary. ( The Prince 62)

Machiavelli’s concept of good actions and moral behavior is tied to social and political action and a sense of necessity. “Wrongdoing” for Machiavelli should be a term in quotations, since it so-called evil actions are justified and made good by the positive outcomes his actions produce. Bernard Crick articulates this sentiment rather bluntly, but accurately, with his recognition in the introduction to The Discourses that the impetus behind the action of Machiavellian figures is the understanding that “[s]omeone has to take up the dirty work” (64). For example, the people may despise a ruler for raising taxes and call him miserly, but when the state later needs these funds, the stability of the country which his prudence and foresight maintained will outweigh the initial financial inconveniences. Machiavellian virtue utilizes acts that would be classified as Christian evil as instruments to achieving higher goals. Methods of cultivating the collective good vary with one’s position in society; the task of redefining morality falls upon the ruler of a principality or republic. He must exercise virtu and the willingness to take part in such ethical transvaluations as the circumstances demand, while the citizen must demonstrate civic virtue and carry out the deeds which his government requires of him for the betterment of the state. It could even be argued that if there are two spheres are morality, the political and the Christian, the former requires evil and transvaluation, while the latter is concerned solely with goodness in the deontological sense.

Transvaluation of the Concept of Violence: Ethical Behavior Made Compatible with Violence

Machiavelli and Nietzsche’s views on violence clearly stem from their ethical transvaluations, in which they both recognize the need for “evil”. To recapitulate, in Nietzsche’s case, evil is to be embraced simply on the basis that it composes only part of a unity, that is, extramoral life. In Machiavelli’s case, this “evil” is necessary at times to achieve the greater good of the well-being of the republic, and thus “evil” and cruelty become in a sense vindicated, and made good, by the attainment of the ends. Violence is most often viewed as a form of moral evil because it involves humans choosing a wrong action from a set of morally significant actions, and hence it functions as an effective paradigm of Nietzschean and Machiavellian ethical transvaluation theory in application. An expansionist, Machiavelli acknowledges the inevitability of inter-nation conflict, as well as the need for conflict within the state. The former is highlighted in the form of military virtue in The Art of War, in which Machiavelli labels expertise in battle as a necessary evil, but one which even the generals, the executors of that evil, must only resort to it with the utmost reluctance. Furthermore, good generals and soldiers must be first and foremost good citizens. Machiavelli underscores the significance of patriotic necessity-driven motives in warfare. The art of war is not a craft which truly good soldiers will want to pursue in times of peace, and violence is not something which they will actively seek out (The Art of War 18). Additionally, Machiavelli discusses the positive influence of institutionalized conflict on the state’s overall prosperity in The Discourses. He posits that the violence which erupts between the two social groups of the plebian and the Senate actually facilitates legislative progress, and thus leads to the betterment of the republic (113).

Nietzsche views violence as an essential facet of human nature, which is inclined towards cruelty and schadenfreude. In the Second Essay of On the Genealogy of Morals, he describes the origins of guilt. This state arises from a financial relationship: the debtor-creditor relationship. Guilt is, in a modern context, largely associated with the failure to meet a responsibility, but initially it simply meant that the debtor needed to pay off his debt. If the debtor failed to make his payment, the creditor would be allowed to torture him as payment. Punishment functions as sharp and vivid memory aid to fulfill our promises (On the Genealogy of Morals 61). However, morality causes us to brand these creditor instincts as wrong. No longer having the ability to take our aggression out on others causes us to turn our cruel tendencies inward, replacing sadism with masochism. This internalization of cruelty is what breeds bad conscience. Nietzsche departs from Machiavelli in the sense that for Machiavelli, violence is a rather unpleasant undertaking, the only means available of attaining a higher, nobler goal. For Nietzsche, suffering takes on another dimension: it is an end in itself and is to be promoted for its own sake (On the Genealogy of Morals 67). It is in this essay that he explores the idea of a cheerful suffering. His concept of an ideal society would be one devoid of traditional morality, where cruel instincts are allowed free reign, under the sole confines of the debtor-creditor contract. Nietzsche calls for us to do away with moral oppositional thinking, implying that it is preferable to live in such a natural state of ritualized physical violence and torture rather than to cope with the bad conscience of the moral era which traditional morality imposes upon us.

Machiavelli and Nietzsche’s recognition of the essential nature of violence is a direct result of their ethics, and has caused many to accuse them of simply being immoralists. While it may appear that both Nietzsche and Machiavelli are not actually positively asserting a moral code of their own, Nietzsche’s is a kind of life-affirming, humanity-affirming morality, and Machiavelli’s is a classical republican morality. While he operates according to reason of state, the concept that different standards of morality apply to the political arena, Machiavelli is clearly not devoid of idealistic motivations, as frequent charges of realpolitik would suggest, and like Nietzsche, who, despite explicitly voiced aversions to moral constructs, he is not calling for a complete abolishment of morality. Machiavelli’s agreement with such extreme instances of violence, particularly the sons of Brutus case, in which he praises the conduct of a man who killed his two sons because they were acting against the state, strikes the modern Western reader as radical (The Discourses 393). To refute immoralist charges, we must take into consideration Machiavelli’s admonition against the employment of excessive violence, or cruelty that does not serve a noble end (The Discourses 132). Machiavelli emphasizes the importance of the ends, and condemns action for the sake of action, or violence merely for the sake of violence. In Machiavelli’s world, everything that is noble serves a greater political purpose, and every action should be justifiable to be considered worthy and good. In the process of maintaining any state, violence is a fundamental component, and Machiavelli does not attempt to sugarcoat its undeniable necessity. The Machiavellian leader maneuvers around the problematic rigidity of traditional morality to live according to the exigencies of the moment (The Discourses 430). Republicanism becomes an epistemological matter; the populace often do not know what is best for them, and it takes a leader equipped with virtu, a preternatural understanding of actions which will bring about the best consequences, to know when to transvalue and resort to violence.

The Problem of Determinism: Evidence against the Formulation of Positive Ethical Theory?

The concept of free will plays an important role in any ethical theory, and has been an object of contention in the philosophical traditions of both modernity and antiquity. The crux of the problem appears to be: if a philosophy relegates the concept of free will to a mere fiction and takes a deterministic approach, then it logically follows that, since we have no control over our actions, we cannot be held morally responsible for them. If this is the case in Machiavelli and Nietzsche’s theories, then what role can any kind of moral code play? I would argue that determinism does not provide an impediment to the formulation of their ethics.

Nietzsche’s views of free will are extremely complex; for the most part, he claims that free will is an empty idea, but other aspects of his work would suggest otherwise. On the one hand, we see Nietzsche’s professed disbelief in free will in On the Genealogy of Morals: “there is no ‘being’ behind doing, effecting, becoming; ‘the doer’ is merely a fiction added to the deed—the deed is everything” (45). It is a human prejudice to distinguish an action from the subject, Nietzsche says. However, in reality, there is no causal chain involving two separate entities: a performer of an action and the action itself. There is no free will that enables the subject to choose to act or to refrain from acting in such a way, as with action, there is always necessity. Contrastively, in Aphorism 341 of The Gay Science, Nietzsche presents the idea of eternal recurrence, the concept that life repeats itself over and over again into eternity. Instead of lamenting this “greatest weight” to no end, Nietzsche suggests that we revel in this escape from the unbearable weightlessness of nihilism. The fact that every event and thought inevitably occurs again and again regardless of human actions or attempts to evade it is not in fact a source of anxiety or depression. There seems to be an element of choice here, beyond the overwhelming determinism. Through amor fati, love of fate, we can in a sense choose to transcend the conditions beyond our control, as Nietzsche declares, “I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth!” (The Gay Science 223).We may not be able to ward off eternal recurrence, but we can freely control our psychological attitudes towards it. In other words, we can choose to fatalistically despair, resigned to Hamlet-like nausea at the futility of human action, or we can laugh like the ubermensch in the face of the eternal recurrence (Beyond Good and Evil 68). Similarly, free will in Machiavelli emerges with restraints, but still intact. Prevalent throughout his works is the figure of Fortuna, a female personification of fortune. Departing from the medieval view of a Fortuna who turns a single wheel that determines the Fate of men, he constructs a worldview marked by a plurality of options. According to Pitkin’s view of Machiavelli, there are multiple wheels “so that it may be possible for men to choose among them, or to jump from one to another… the stress on activism and human choice in Machiavelli’s vision is really new” (Fortune 146 Pitkin). With Machiavelli too, then, there is some wiggle room for free will. Furthermore, in Chapter XXV of The Prince, Fortuna is described as not only a fickle and cruel woman, but also a viciously raging flood. Executing virtu and foresight, as well as carefully preparing for the future, can eliminate some of the woe brought about by Fortuna. Of course, there is always a degree of unpredictability, as there are clearly many variables working against any given person, no matter how much virtu he practices, but Machiavelli stresses in his constant exhortation to action that we can and must do our best to conquer the half of human behavior which is within our power to control (85). We can conclude, then, that in both Machiavelli and Nietzsche’s thought, free will is given some degree of validity, and this enables the development of their particular moral codes.

Nietzsche and Machiavelli’s Consequentialism as Ethical Egoism and Ethical Altruism

Despite the shared basis of transvaluation in their ethical theories, Machiavelli looks beyond the self for the moral justification which he assigns to human behavior, while Nietzsche is primarily concerned with the self. These views of the value of the individual versus the collective lend themselves to a self-oriented form of consequentialism, or ethical egoism, and a common good-oriented consequentialism, or ethical altruism. Consequentialism is a broad category of normative ethics which is based on the idea that the value of an action derives not from any intrinsic value to the action, but from the consequences that arise from it. The value of an action, then, is extrinsic and not intrinsic. Machiavelli’s political ethics would be best characterized as ethical altruism.² The clearest formulation of his consequentialist orientation is in The Discourses: “ It is a sound maxim that reprehensible actions may be justified by their effects, and that when the effect is good… it always justifies the action” (132). This work in particular highlights Machiavelli’s other-regarding love and altruism. In Section 9 of Book I, he presents his concept of the ideal leader: one whose sense of self-interest drops out completely for the attainment of the common good (Discourses 132). This leader must eliminate his sense of self and his own desires, as he exists for the service of the republic.

While Machiavelli’s works are steeped in the classical republican value of the greater good, a kind of ethical altruism, in The Gay Science, Nietzsche presents his ideal of the lonely intellectual immersed in the vita contemplativa, the contemplative life. Furthermore, in On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche rejects the judgment that the herd, the majority, should be considered above the interests of the nobles, the minority (56). Placing this kind of noble individual above the relatively ignorant, intellectually unremarkable masses, he values the process of self-development, or self-becoming. Nietzsche refuses to equate the “good” with the “useful” or “expedient”; nevertheless, he certainly is concerned with the consequences of behavior at the level of the individual. How we choose to behave determines whether or not we will, in his terms, become who we really are, that is, come closer to the ideal of a true self. Failing to act on our own impulses and learning the habit of obeying the interests of others above our own results in the breeding of bad conscience. Nietzsche’s morality is one defined by ethical egoism, the view that it is right to always act in our own best interests. We should always say “yes” to ourselves, as to deny our own desires is unnatural, or un-vitalistic, and hence unethical. Whether an action is right or wrong depends on whether or not it is good for the self.

Conclusion: The Relation between Consequentialism and Transvaluation

Having analyzed the ethical theories of Nietzsche and Machiavelli, including their views of the self, free will, and violence, and the anti-Christian sentiments featured therein, as well as Machiavelli and Nietzsche’s ethical transvaluation and versions of consequentialism, I think we can see that there is a relation between transvaluation and consequentialism: consequentialism itself is a form of transvaluation. In Nietzsche and Machiavelli a transvaluation involves the redefinition of moral valuation away from the “intrinsic”, deontological notion of an action’s value. Instead of looking at the actions themselves, they look at whatever causally follows it to determine whether an action is right or wrong. Nietzsche evaluates good in terms of consequences for the self in his ethical egoist picture, while the ethical altruist Machiavelli evaluates good in terms of consequences for others.

Works Cited

Gilbert, Felix. “Machiavellianism.” Machiavelli. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.

Haaparanta, Leila. “A Note on Nietzsche’s Argument.” The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 153. (Oct., 1988), pp. 490-495.

Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Discourses. Trans. Leslie J. Walker, S.J. Ed. Bernard Crick. New York: Penguin Classics, 1984.

Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. Ed./Trans. Quentin Skinner. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.

Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Art of War. Trans. Christopher Lynch. Chicago: Chicago UP, 2003.

Machiavelli, Niccolo. La Mandragola. Trans. Mera J. Flaumenhaft. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 1981.

Mansfield, Harvey C., Machiavelli’s Virtue. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale. New York: Random House, Inc., 1967.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House, Inc. 1966.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House, Inc., 1967.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House, Inc., 1974.

Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. “Fortune.” Fortune is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolo Machiavelli, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. “The Founder.” Fortune is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolo Machiavelli, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. “The Passion of Liberty.” Fortune is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolo Machiavelli, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

2 The term “Machiavellianism” is predicated on a portrayal of Machiavelli as indulging in pure self-interest; however, Felix Gilbert looks into the etymological history of the word, just as Nietzsche researches the history of the concepts of “good and evil.” He illuminates the fact that the negative connotations of the word are based on a misreading of Machiavelli and comments that it simply came to mean “evil” in the twentieth-century (Machiavelli 174). In common usage, we tend to attribute Machiavelli with the term “utilitarianism” and a rational-to-the-point-of-inhuman utilitarian calculus. To say that Machiavelli is a utilitarian is really a misuse of the word; people intend to use it to mean the selfishness of the fox’s wiles and the lion’s machismo as methods to attain personal success in a monarchy. Any act which maximizes utility, i.e. increases total happiness, is moral. To think of the republican consequentialist end of the “public good” as interchangeable with “utility” might be a step in the wrong direction. Firstly, utilitarianism has aims of a universal scope, but the utility of all people everywhere, independent of spatial political boundaries, is not Machiavelli’s concern. Machiavelli’s patriotism, his specifically Florentine nationalist sympathies, highlights this concept; Pitkin acknowledges Machiavelli’s sentiment that we should value our own political state above others, and the domestic above the foreign (The Passion of Liberty 153). According to Machiavelli, your state is your moral obligation, not the happiness of mankind. Secondly, Machiavelli is entirely silent on human happiness, and his political theory is not concerned with achieving it. Civic duty and the practice of virtu do not necessarily increase overall happiness, but they will contribute to long-lasting institutions and a flourishing state. The goal of classical republicanism seems to be the satisfaction of the abstract “good” of the people; not their psychological well-being, but solid socio-political structures and greatness of an Empire. There is the overriding notion in Machiavelli’s works that what is “best” for the republic, the attainment of things like economic prosperity and state longevity, does not always coincide with the happiness of its citizens.

Helen Ciacciarelli (’09) is a Philosophy and English Literature major at Rutgers University.

By Asam Ahmad

ABSTRACT: In April of 2008, Yale University’s Aliza Shvarts was accused of a sort of ‘insanity’ that made her unable to make sound judgements and jeopardize her own body for the sake of her art. This paper aims to explore the nature of Shvarts’ artistic project and understand the hyper-reactionary interventions that followed its appearance. I will argue that what caused this hyper intervention and the disciplinary actions that followed was more than just the project itself – it was the very ambiguity of the Event the project was presenting us with, its very refusal to ‘name’ the meaning of that event, and its threatening status in the (patriarchal) public discourse as a result of this ambivalence. In attempting to explicate the threatening (but emancipatory) potential of Shvarts’ insistence on ambivalence, I hope to demonstrate that the punitive measures incurred by Shvarts for refusing to name that ambivalence ["name that ambivalence" not idiomatic. could replace with "disambiguate" or "explain her performance" MH] and thus contain its disruptive potential reveals the ways in which the dominant patriarchal and heteronormative discourses circumscribe the female body and thus deny the autonomy of the female subject.

…

In April of 2008, Yale University’s Aliza Shvarts was accused of a sort of ‘insanity’ that made her unable to make sound judgements and jeopardize her own body for the sake of her art. As her senior art project, approved and guided by two senior faculty members, was about to be shown at Green Hall (part of the Yale campus), US media felt obliged to intervene, telling us what the project was really about, why and how it was so unbelievably shocking, and making sure to question the ‘mental health’ of the student who was presenting it along the way. What caused this hyper intervention and the disciplinary actions that followed was more than just the project itself – it was the very ambiguity of the Event the project was presenting us with, its very refusal to ‘name’ the meaning of that event, and its threatening status in the (patriarchal) public discourse as a result of this ambivalence. This paper aims to explicate the threatening (but emancipatory) potential of Shvarts’ insistence on ambivalence, and in so doing, to demonstrate that the punitive measures incurred by Shvarts for refusing to name that ambivalence and thus contain its disruptive potential reveals the ways in which the dominant patriarchal and heteronormative discourses circumscribe the female body and thus deny the autonomy of the female subject.

I.                   Discerning the Potential

Shvarts’ (forced) explanation of her project insists on ambivalence as a fundamental component of her artistic project. Here is the first paragraph of her statement:

For the past year, I performed repeated self-induced miscarriages. I created a group of fabricators from volunteers who submitted to periodic STD screenings and agreed to their complete and permanent anonymity. From the 9th to the 15th day of my menstrual cycle, the fabricators would provide me with sperm samples, which I used to privately self-inseminate. Using a needleless syringe, I would inject the sperm near my cervix within 30 minutes of its collection, so as to insure the possibility of fertilization. On the 28th day of my cycle, I would ingest an abortifacient, after which I would experience cramps and heavy bleeding.

These self-induced miscarriages gain their ambiguous and ambivalent status by Shvarts’ ingestion of the abortifacient near ‘the expected date of [her] menstruation’ cycle. The artistic piece itself consists of a giant cube covered with plastic sheeting onto which Shvart’s blood is plastered with Vaseline so as to stop it from coagulating. Onto this cube are projected images of Shvarts in her bathtub, collecting the blood as it is discharged from her body. As Shvarts herself notes, the ‘performance exists only as I chose to represent it’ – a statement which, unfortunately, will be flatly contradicted by the institutional intervention carried out by Yale’s administrative staff. What is important for now, is the very ambiguity that Shvarts insists upon and its isolation of ‘the locus of ontology to an act of readership.’ The artistic representation forces the reader to name the blood on display – and in so doing, to participate in the normative injunction to ‘literally construct bodies’ through the linguistically and politically ideological and authorial act of naming the blood (as either menstrual discharge or as the result of miscarriage).

Louis Althusser is helpful here in explicating the ways in which the body does not just come into being physically but is already ideologically and linguistically ‘pre-appointed.’ Noting the ‘ideological ritual that surrounds the expectation of a ‘birth,’ Althusser writes: ‘[everyone] knows how much and in what way an unborn child is expected: [...] it is certain in advance that it will bear its Father’s Name, and will therefore have an identity and be irreplaceable.’ Even before its birth, ‘the child is always-already a subject (boy or girl).’ These ideological rituals ‘literally construct bodies’ – which is obviously not the same as saying that the body exists only as an ideological or linguistic construct. Instead, it points towards the ways in which no ‘subject’ is or can be formed outside of the patriarchal and (hetero)normative discourse which demarcates the space the subject will occupy, and that even before it is born, there are ideological, linguistic and even political demands that it must fulfill simply in order to be constituted as a subject. Shvarts’ refusal to name that blood then – as either menstrual or a result of miscarriage – deprives the ‘reader’ of the ideological need to partake in these expectant rituals, and requires the reader to locate the ontology of the act and the blood him/herself – to name it – and thus determine its coordinates within the normative discourse as either ‘just menstrual blood’ or the blood of the pre-appointed, ‘irreplaceable’ subject in Shvart’s womb. [I wonder whether this is a genuine or a false dilemma. It would seem possible to "name" the blood in several ways that the author fails to mention - why must the blood of an abortion be the blood of an 'irreplaceable' subject? Why should we even think that a fetus is a subject / person? MH]

Shvarts’ refusal to name that blood, her refusal to allow us to easily digest the piece by self-ascribing a ‘word to something physical,’ is what gets her into ‘trouble.’ The confinement of the ‘something physical’ outside of the linguistic order (and thus inside Lacan’s Real), gives us an idea of the troubling nature of ambivalence – particularly in relation to the female body – and the dominant discourse’s need to remove that ambivalence in order to stabilize and contain its disruptive elements.

II.                The Insistence on Ambivalence

Coincidentally, Shvarts’ own explanation of her project relies most heavily on Judith Butler’s text entitled ‘Gender Trouble.’ Shvarts’ refusal to assign a word to the blood means that the performance (and the act itself) exists only as ‘copies of copies of which there is no original.’ Besides the obvious invocation of Derrida here, one should also note the analogy with Butler’s argument that gender is performative rather than expressive, that it is learnt (imitated, copied) rather than expressing ‘an internal core or substance.’ When Shvarts’ notes that ‘it is a myth that women are “meant” to be feminine and men masculine, that penises and vaginas are “meant” for penetrative heterosexual sex,’ she is implicitly trying to destabilize the (hetero)normative categorizations of gender and (especially) sex as ontological givens, as somehow tied together by some transcendental moment prior to the ‘sexed’ body. She is, in her own words, asking us to see that ‘normative understandings of biological function are a mythology imposed on form’ – a mythology that enables the ‘sexist, racist, ableist, nationalist and homophobic perspective[s].’

Butler’s reading of Julia Kristeva’s Abjection can help us make sense of this seemingly hyperbolic claim. For Butler, the body is not written upon as a ‘pre-discursive entity’ because the body itself does not exist prior ‘to its cultural inscription.’ Butler argues that we must reconsider the body’s status as a ‘blank page,’ as a ‘void,’ and as ‘the inscribed surface of events’ if we are to ‘truly’ emancipate ourselves from the heteronormative construction of a stable male/female gender binary and ‘the implicit hierarchy’ it maintains. In elucidating her argument, Butler notes that to maintain such discursive and ontological stability, the body as a ‘discrete’ entity must first be stabilized – and it is this very stability which Kristeva’s notion of the abject calls into question. Butler writes: ‘[what] constitutes the limit of the body is never merely material, but [rather] the surface, the skin [of the body] is systemically signified by taboos and anticipated transgressions; indeed, the boundaries of the body become [...] the limits of the social per se.’ In Kristeva’s account, these boundaries through which the discrete body and the discrete subject are constituted require the ‘abjection’ of that ‘which has been expelled from the body, discharged as excrement,’ and for these abjections to be ‘literally rendered “Other”‘ in order for the body to maintain its status as a discretely demarcated entity and a discretely defined ‘self.’

Shvarts’ blood then, as it exists in the artistic installation, is so ‘threatening’ precisely because it threatens to disrupt the stability of these discretely demarcated entities; precisely because it refuses to abject or to name that which must be abjected for the normatively defined and normatively constructed foundation of the body as a discretely demarcated entity to be maintained. We can begin to see now why Shvarts’ makes the claim that these mythologies (of function) enable the ‘sexist, racist, ableist, nationalist and homophobic perspective[s].’ If the abject is that which ‘confounds [the "inner" and "outer" worlds of the subject] by those excremental passages in which the inner effectively becomes [the] outer,’ it follows that the repulsion, the disgust one feels in the presence of the abject is more than just a biological impulse or an ‘evolutionary’ function – it effectively locates the ‘mode by which Others become shit’ and ‘I’ retain my purity. Read in this way, Shvarts’ blood in the piece, its ambivalent, unnamed presence and its refusal to become abjected as simply a ‘natural’ biological expulsion, threatens more than just the public discourse and the political and normative conventions that accompany it: it effectively threatens us – threatens our constitution of ourselves as subjects and as discrete selves. It refuses to admit to our authorial intervention by its insistence on its ambiguous and ambivalent status, a status that is unable to be contained by the discursive fields which wish it to be absolved, disappeared, and denied.

III.             Containing the Ambivalence

Thus far, I have tried to limit the discussion of this Event in the public sphere in order to explicate what Shvarts’ was trying to do and why it was so threatening to the public discourse surrounding it. It will be instructive now to bring into focus that (hyper) public reaction and the institutional interventions that ensued. Noting this reaction is instructive in different but interrelated ways: it can help us explicate what it reveals about the status of a woman’s body in our culture today, what the normative injunctions are doing here, and how the disciplinary, punitive measures surrounding the woman’s body function, holding it in place, and making sure it does not cause trouble.

Even a cursory glance at the media’s urgent need to name what Shvarts is doing makes apparent that, where Shvarts insists on ambivalence, the characterizations rush to get rid of it, to name her project as either ‘Abortion Art,’ a ‘Hoax,’ or a ‘Rant against the “Patriarchal Heteronormative.”‘ As I have been arguing all along, this immediately demonstrates that the act of naming is an ideological and political act: by containing the disruptive ambivalence of Shvarts’ project, the incitement to name illustrates the destabilizing potential of Shvarts’ disruption of the “Patriarchal Heteronormative.”

The installation was first brought to the public’s attention by the The Drudge Report website. From there it was picked up by various news outlets and discussed excessively in the blogosphere. This discussion was, alas, quick to follow in the ‘shocked-but-not-awed’ mould of the national US media. One website asked readers the question ‘How messed up is Aliza Shvarts?’ – with the only choices being: a) Very messed up, but about what I’d expect from an artist, b) Very very messed up, or c) Put-her-in-jail-messed-up. Conservative news outlets in particular were quick to emphasize the ‘shock’ of a woman performing ‘repeated self-induced’ miscarriages for the purposes of artistic commentary – but they were quick to transmute ‘miscarriages’ into abortions, the a-word having a particularly insidious tinge in American cultural discourse. Even The New York Times, which claims for itself the status of the ‘paper of record,’ sided with the Yale administrators in a lengthy article explaining how, ‘while freedom of expression is important in the academic world, so is providing guidance and setting limits.’ Mario Lavandeira, the owner of Perez Hilton, the popular gossip website, wrote a lengthy diatribe against the sanity of Miss Shvarts, replete with several adolescent ‘Ew[s]!’ and the mandated ‘humanistic’ interventions to ‘save her from herself!’

With this onslaught of superficial, hyper-reactionary characterizations of Shvarts’ project (and disturbingly, of Shvarts herself), the administrative staff at Yale University decided that ‘something had to give.’ That something, of course, was the questioning of Aliza Shvarts, which concluded with the demand that the project and its attendant concealment of what actually transpired had to be publicly divulged. It was thus revealed that Shvarts’ entire project was a ‘creative fiction,’ the redundant adjective inevitably required to quell even the most patriarchal of institutions. This intervention and the following statement released by the Yale administrators reassured all concerned individuals that they need not worry themselves as the sanctity of the patriarchal discourse had not ‘really’ been violated.

While this revelation is extremely unfortunate, as it takes away the initial force of Shvarts’ project, the hyper reactionary characterizations by the media and the institutional interventions by the Yale administrators unmasks an even more disturbing reality. By reacting so forcefully, by denying Shvarts’ right to her own privacy and her rights as an artist, the consequences which resulted from this public revelation reveal even more clearly the controls which the dominant discourse maintains on the female body and the female subject.

Even apart from the fact that only women can give birth to children, I suspect that, all other things being the same, this piece would not have roused nearly the level of frenzy it did or the incitement to disciplinary action it required had the piece been performed by a man. While we can recognize the real ethical concerns outlined by some in the media, it is important to note that what is at stake is Yale’s public disclosure of what actually transpired in the period leading up to Shvart’s public installation. Yale could have easily verified whether the project crossed any ethical boundaries, but instead they chose to publicly disclose the nature of the entire project. This explicitly tells us that the rights of the dominant culture to not be disturbed are more important than the female subject’s attempt to artistically explore why those disturbances are there as disturbances, and how and why they function in the way that they do.

Further, the normative and institutional interventions answer the question of the female subject’s bodily sovereignty explicitly in the negative: not only is the female subject not an equal subject – the female subject does not even have the right to her own body. As one feminist blogger sarcastically notes,

Ours is a quaint, superstitious culture with strict rules about where and when and why and how male and female reproductive materials may touch. There are different consequences depending on the sex of the parties involved. For example, there are no consequences at all for men (unless they are homos). But women sure have a lot of explaining to do if their genetic material touches someone else’s before they have secured the permission of a bunch of authority figures, such as the ghost of a dead Nazarene on a stick, their dad, their boyfriend, or the U.S. Government.

While we can have a laugh at ‘the ghost of [the] dead Nazarene on a stick’ or the characterization of our culture as ‘quaint’ and ‘superstitious,’ we cannot afford to forget that these differential measures and consequences, apart from being soundly unfair, are extremely destructive not only to the female subject but to our claims for being a ‘just’ and ‘fair’ society. Moreover, they reveal the ways in which our culture maintains its patriarchal and heteronormative stability by restricting different punitive measures for different subjects, and by implicitly demanding adherence to its prescribed ontological categories of being by reserving for itself the right to regularly ‘punish those who fail to do their gender right.’

IV.             Conclusion

Through an explication of both Aliza Shvart’s artistic goals and the punitive measures she incurred by refusing to ‘do her gender right,’ I have tried to show how the dominant patriarchal and heteronormative discourse maintain their stability and their inevitably sutured coherence. This dominant discourse maintains for itself the institutional, social, and even linguistic apparatuses which make sure that the female subject does not exercise her full autonomy as an ‘ego-driven’ consciousness or fulfill her rights as an individual subject. Certainly, I have not exhausted all of the ways in which and through which the female subject is interpellated, the ways in which even the right to her own body and its processes are denied, and the multiple ways in which this circumscribed space is continually being reinscribed for her. But I have also tried to show that, even as the dominant discourse shores up its discursive unity, structural cracks and possible openings for future interventions appear. Aliza Shvarts’ project may not be shown at the Green Hall because of her refusal to be denied her autonomy as a female subject and as an artist, but the consequences she has incurred and the singularly unfair judgements that have been passed upon her – by the public, by the media, by the institutions of which she is a part, and, of course, by the dominant patriarchal discourse – show us more clearly than perhaps ever before that the emancipation of the female subject remains an ongoing project, and that it is ‘the prerogative of every individual to acknowledge and explore’ not only the emancipatory potential this project contains for all human beings, but also to explore the ways in which we can, and indeed must, help bring it to fruition.

Footnotes

Edidin, Peter. Controversy Over Abortion Art. The New York Times. April 19, 2008. Accessed April 25, 2008. < http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/19/arts/design/19arts-CONTROVERSYO_BRF.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Shvarts%2C+Aliza&st=nyt&oref=slogin>.

Nizaa, Mike. Sticking to the Bit? Yale’s Abortion Artist. The New York Times. April 18, 2008. Accessed April 18, 2008. < http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/sticking-to-the-bit-yales-abortion-artist/index.html?hp>

Shvarts, Aliza. Shvarts Explains her ‘Repeated Self-Induced Miscarriages.’ Yale Daily News. April 18, 2008. Accessed April 18, 2008. <http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24559>. Unless other indicated, all quotes are from Shvarts’ statement.

Daum, Meghan. It’s Period Art. Los Angeles Times. April 26, 2008. Accessed April 27, 2008. <http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-oe-daum26apr26,1,2249073.column>.

Althusser, Louis. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: Norton, 2001. 1505.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Shvarts notes that her project is meant to be an ‘intervention into our normative understanding of “the Real” and its accompanying politics of convention.’ She is, of course, invoking Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic model here, and it is important to note the importance of ambivalence as a disrupting intervention into the seemingly smooth functioning of the Symbolic and Imaginary Orders. See, for instance, Leitch, Vincent. Jacques Lacan. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: Norton, 2001. 1278-1284.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. Leitch, Vincent. New York: Norton, 2001. 2497.

Ibid, 2492-2497.

Ibid, 2492. This has sometimes been read as if Butler is proposing that there simply is no body. Of course Butler knows that there is – but her account of the dangers of maintaining the body as somehow untouched by the discursive fields through which we access it underlines the problems of denying a ‘precategorical soure of disruption’ in our understanding of the body. Another way of saying this is that we must acknowledge and deal with the fact that we have no access to the body outside of the discursive fields of ‘intelligibility’ and knowledge which structure our thought and form the basis of all our emancipatory ideals (2490-92).

Ibid, 2490-2501.

Ibid, 2493.

Ibid, 2494. See also Kristeva, Julia. Approaching Abjection. The Powers of Horror. New York: Columbia P, 1982. 1-31.

Ibid, 2495.

NA. Aliza Shvarts: Abortion Goo Girl Rants Against the “Patriarchal Heteronormative.” American Digest: Dispatches From the New America. April 17, 2008. Accessed April 25, 2008. <http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/bad_americans/abortion_goo_gi.php>.

Nizaa, Mike. Sticking to the Bit? Yale’s Abortion Artist. The New York Times. April 18, 2008. In the interests of space, I will cite the rest of the news sources in the Works cited page, unless two different articles are from the same source.

NA. How Messed Up is Aliza Shvarts?. Zimbio. April 17, 2008. Accessed April 26, 2008. <http://www.zimbio.com/Aliza+Shvarts/polls/3/How+messed+up+is+Aliza+Shvarts>.

Ibid.

Drucilla Cornell’s reinterpreation of Derrida’s Law for a feminist jurisprudence is extremely instructive here. If the Law does not, and even cannot, ‘see’ the literal and symbolic violence it incurs on the female subject – indeed, if it cannot even recognize her as an equal subject under the law, what obligation does a woman have to follow that civic law when it denies or conflicts with her very subjectivity under the Law and as a human being? See, Cornell, Drucilla. Civil Disobedience and Deconstruction. Feminist Interpretations of Derrida. Ed., Holland, Nancy J. NA.

As the owner of the blog I Blame the Patriarchy writes: ‘Because Art is godly and dudely and should always be literally, unambiguously true, and literally, unambiguously devoid of the artist’s ladyparts (which two conditions are really one and the same); anything less shows a shocking disregard for human life, heterosexuality, the rules, the Lord, the exacting standards of misogyny uniformly and eternally endorsed by our august culture of domination, and those baronial Yale benefactors who happen to be anti-choice’. NA. She Couldn’t Just Sign It “R. Mutt” and Call It a Day? I Blame The Patriarchy. April 22, 2008. Accessed April 24, 2008. <http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2008/04/22/yale-art-hoax/>.

NA. Miscarriage Art Cube Provokes “Outcry.” I Blame The Patriarchy. April 18, 2008. <http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2008/04/18/miscarriage-art-cube-provokes-outcry/>.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. Leitch, Vincent. New York: Norton, 2001. 2500.

Cornell, Drucilla. Civil Disobedience and Deconstruction. Feminist Interpretations of Derrida. Ed., Holland, Nancy J. NA.

Yale administrators demanded that, unless she sign a statement that her ‘performance [...] was a fiction that she had concocted,’ her project would not be shown. Shvarts refused. Kennedy, Randy. Yale Demands End to Student’s Performance. The New York Times. April 22, 2008. Accessed April 25, 2008. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/arts/22arts-YALEDEMANDSE_BRF.html?scp=3&sq=Shvarts%2C+Aliza&st=nyt>.

Asam Ahmad (’10) is a Philosophy and Literature specialist at University of Toronto.

Abstract: The death of Socrates has always been a controversial topic in philosophy, particularly the incongruity of his views on civil disobedience. In the Apology, Socrates claims that if acquitted on the condition he refrains from philosophizing, he will nevertheless continue to do so. In the Crito, Socrates argues that disobeying “the judgments the city came to” is wrong. The essay will address the inconsistency by focusing on the purpose of each argument, i.e. on the aim each argument serves. In Crito he argues against civil disobedience in order to convince Crito that escaping the death penalty is morally wrong. Yet, in the Apology, he argues for civil disobedience. In the latter, the objective is unclear. I contend that the argument’s aim is to prevent civil disobedience on his part; it serves the purpose of facilitating his death, thereby, preventing civil disobedience in the case of acquittal on the condition he stops philosophizing.

I.

It is my purpose to expound on the consistency of Socrates’ views in the Apology and Crito regarding civil disobedience and on his motives for presenting them. First, I will present the views and their arguments and distill their supporting principles. Then, I will compare the principles by applying them to one of the views and, thereon, look for inconsistencies. During the investigation, I will interpret a statement key to establishing the authenticity or spuriousness of a possible inconsistency by considering its causes, namely the desire(s) or psychological need(s) that prompted Socrates’ statement. And, finally, I will argue for an interpretation and discuss its implications.

II.

Socrates expressed in the Apology that, even if acquitted on the condition that he would stop philosophizing, he would not comply. However, this seems at odds with Socrates’ argument in the Crito against civil disobedience, i.e. against escaping the death penalty by leaving Athens.

In the Apology, Socrates argues for civil disobedience with the following: 1) when a civilian is ordered to take a position by a superior, that person must assume the position “without a thought for death or anything else,” [28d] but disgrace; 2) the gods’ authority is superior to the authority of elected officials (28e); and 3) the greater the authority, the greater the disgrace that results from disobeying (28d-29a). It follows from all three premises, that when faced with conflicting orders from a god and from a man, the path to follow is the god’s mandate, because when thinking only of disgrace [premise 1], the correct action to follow is the divine order, for the god’s authority is greater [premise 2] and disobeying such an authority would bring further disgrace [premise 3]. This belief is evident in Socrates when he says “[i]t would have been a dreadful way to behave [. . .] , if [. . .] I had [. . .] remained at my post where those you had elected to command had ordered me, and then, when the god ordered me, as I thought and believed, to live the life of a philosopher, to examine myself and others, I had abandoned my post for fear of death or anything else” [28e]. Socrates clearly considers the god’s order superior to, and of greater authority -that is, more disgraceful to disobey- than the official’s because he thought it “dreadful” to follow the latter, whereby, he would violate the god’s injunction.

In the Crito, Socrates, using reductio ad absurdum1, argues against civil disobedience using four premises: 1) “one must never do wrong” [49b], 2) one should fulfill a just agreement (49e), 3) cheating a just agreement harms the other party (50b) and 4) the agreement between Socrates and the state -”to respect the judgments that the city came to”[50c], in particular, his death sentence- is just (48c-51e); whereas, the reductio assumption is fleeing the city to avoid the death penalty is the right course of action, namely civil disobedience is justified. It follows from premise 2, 3 and 4 that by leaving the city, Socrates cheats a just agreement [premise 2 and 4] and, thereby, wrongs the city [premise 3]. It follows from this conjunction and premise 1, that if Socrates flees the city he would do a wrong, which contradicts premise 1; therefore, either premise 1 is false or the assumption is false. Since premise 1 had previously been established to be true; the assumption is necessarily false. Therefore, Socrates should not flee the city; in other words, civil disobedience is not the right course of action.

III.

I will now extract the underlying principles from all of the premises used in the arguments above. Here are the premises again: 1) one should never do wrong, 2) one should fulfill a just agreement, 3) to cheat a just agreement is a wrong, 4) the agreement between Socrates and the state is just, 5) one should follow a superior’s order without thinking of death, or anything else, but disgrace, 6) a god’s authority is superior to the authority of a man and 7) the greater the authority of the superior, the greater the disgrace when deserting the assigned post. Premise 4 is the example of a just agreement pertinent to the argument, i.e. an instance of premise 2′s observance, not a principle. Premise 2, namely that one should not cheat a just agreement, is a part of the normative claim in premise 1, viz. one should never do wrong, given this, I will not distinguish it from premise 1. Premise 3 is an instance of wrongdoing; it is not a principle but an example of one’s violation. For simplicity’s sake, premise 6 and 7 will be compounded into the principle: the disgrace of disobeying a greater authority, e.g. a god, is greater than the disgrace of disobeying a lesser authority, e.g. a man. The remaining premises are the principles active in the arguments. Henceforth, premise 1 is principle 1, premise 5 principle 2, and premise 6/7 principle 3.

IV.

Now, I shall apply all principles to his view in the Apology2. If Socrates is acquitted on the condition that he cease to philosophize, but nevertheless continues to do so, he will follow the order of the god as indicated by principle 2 and 3. However, principle 1 seems to be neglected because he will wrong the city through civil disobedience. This Socrates recognizes when, in the Apology, he says “I do know [. . .] that it is wicked and shameful to do wrong, to disobey one’s superior, be he god or man” [29b]. This statement may be interpreted in two ways: either he considers ‘one’s superior’ the commander with greater authority of the two, by which I mean that when they issue conflicting orders, the only superior that need be followed is the one with the higher authority, for a superior authority nullifies that of the lesser authority; or ‘one’s superior’ is a god (or any man with greater authority than oneself), that is, if two conflicting orders are given only one of the two superiors can be obeyed, and this at the expense of the other. A “shameful and wicked” act is indeed being committed by disobeying the lower authority, but with lesser disgrace attendant upon the agent. Naturally, in the second interpretation, Socrates would serve only the divine commandment because, when sure disgrace would result otherwise [principle 2], one should obey the order from the greater authority because lesser disgrace will result from disobeying the lesser authority [principle 3]; one would in effect select the lesser of the two evils. Both interpretations suggest that a course of action along the lines of the divine order be taken, the action Socrates supports. The former, on the one hand, observes principle 1 because the city’s authority is nullified (and, as such, is not Socrates’ superior); therefore, no civil disobedience has taken place and no harm is done. On the other hand, the latter violates principle 1 because the lesser authority is harmed.

V.

Nonetheless, I believe the interpretation Socrates had in mind was the latter-for three reasons. One, the former would need to postulate a fourth principle, namely that a greater authority invalidates the authority of the lesser superior (something Socrates never says), thereby, preempting principle 2 so as to contradict it, which ordains that only the amount of disgrace — not level of authority — can be used to decide which superior is to be obeyed (something Socrates does say). To those who think that considering the level of authority in determining disgracefulness is an objection, I say that, while the level of authority is needed to determine the orders’ “shameworthiness” (the amount of shame or disgrace one may endure for the achievement of a goal), the deciding factor is the resulting shame or disgrace, i.e., when considering the consequences of following one superior as opposed to the other, the level of authority determines the shameworthiness; but in deciding which superior to follow, disgrace is the one parameter. The decisive role of shameworthiness is completely undermined by this now questionable postulate.

Two, in what way would the higher superior invalidate the authority of the lesser, given that in relation to Socrates both authorities are superiors and, as such, according to Socrates, have the right to command him (29b); it seems exceedingly unlikely that this right vanishes in cases where the commanded, the inferior, thinks and believes two superiors with different levels of authority give conflicting orders, even more so when communication between the superiors has not occurred and may never occur. I believe Socrates is only making a normative claim, namely that one should obey a superior, “be he god or man” [29b], because it is wrong to do otherwise; a normative claim akin to principle 1 since it advises against doing harm. Furthermore, the principles he uses throughout Crito and the Apology support this claim. For instance, in Crito, he argues that disrespecting a judgment the city came to-namely the death penalty-by escaping the city is wrong because he would cheat a just agreement with the city and its laws and, thereby, harm them. This same agreement is still effective if the judgment the city arrived at were acquittal on the condition that he stops philosophizing instead of the death penalty; both the conditional release and the death penalty would be judgments the city came to. Therefore, if he continues to philosophize when commanded to do otherwise he would nevertheless cheat the just agreement he has with the city and its laws, and so harm them.

And, three, Socrates, as you may remember, said, “[T]he god ordered me [. . .] to live the life of a philosopher, to examine myself and others;” [28e] he was ordered, among other things, to examine himself, to turn onto himself the Elenchus, the Socratic Method. Through the Elenchus, Socrates rigorously analyzes the beliefs of others and his own in order to weed out inconsistencies. He believes that through the Elenchus one’s soul is improved because it reveals our ignorance “[a]nd surely,” says Socrates, “it is the most blameworthy ignorance to believe that one knows what one does not know” [29b]. This belief is seen again when he says “[i]f you put me to death [. . .] you won’t harm me more than you harm yourselves” [30c-d]; he believes he benefits others through examining them. Therefore, I believe that the desire or psychological need to rid himself and others of inconsistencies suggests that any apparent inconsistency in (or between) the dialogues serves a purpose3. I propose that the purpose for advancing the paradoxical view in the Apology is to prevent what he treasures most, his soul, from being damaged.

VI.

Recall the nature of Socrates’ claim in the Apology, viz. that he would continue his philosophical investigations even if acquitted on the condition that he do otherwise, is a counterfactual; Socrates has, in fact, not committed civil disobedience. He treasures the soul the most. He says that his service to the god is the greatest blessing for the city because it persuades people not to care for their bodies or wealth “in preference to or as strongly as for the best possible state of [their] soul[s]” (30a-b). In order to protect his soul from damage, he says “you cannot avoid executing me, for if I should be acquitted, your sons would practice the teachings of Socrates and all be thoroughly corrupted” [Apol. 29c]; he argues for the death penalty, calling it necessary, unavoidable. It was indeed necessary because it follows from the principles that a conditional release conflicting with the god’s order would inevitably result in civil disobedience, which would harm the city (which entails the violation of principle 1) and, therefore, damage Socrates’ soul . Given that his soul was in peril, Socrates explicitly sets out to avoid things he knows to be bad, e.g. doing wrong and disobeying his superiors [violating principle 1], rather than things of which he does not know whether they may not be good, e.g. the death penalty (Apol. 29b-c). Moreover, in other parts of the Apology he angers his judges by saying he should get free meals in the Prytaneum (a privilege reserved for Olympic champions), and later sets what he thinks his penalty should be to a measly thirty minae and this amount only because his friend Plato (a person known for his abundant wealth) had offered to help him with the fine (Apol. 36e-37a, 38b). This further supports my claim that Socrates needed the death penalty in order to avoid wronging his city, and, given that he practiced the Elenchus on himself (as ordered by the god), he knew that in order to avoid doing wrong to either of his superiors death was the only way his soul would escape any blemish. This claim is also consistent with his epistemology, i.e. death is not to be feared because nothing is known of it (Apol. 29b-c), and his metaphysics, i.e. the soul is immortal and the body is not (Men. 81b-82a). Moreover, Socrates concludes that the death penalty may indeed be a good thing because his divine sign4 has not opposed him (Apol. 40a-d). Therefore, by articulating his purpose to continue philosophizing regardless of any injunction, he further insured adherence to principle 1. That is to say, Socrates devises the argument for civil disobedience in the Apology to convince the jurors of his determination to obey the divine order at the expense of any court order opposing it, thereby, further securing his death sentence. His death would result in -and from- obeying both the god and the court, since the divine order and the verdict would no longer conflict. Consequently, there are no inconsistencies between his actual view in the Apology, i.e. that disobeying a superior is “wicked and shameful” [29c] and his view in the Crito.

Let us think of it this way: suppose an officer orders a subordinate to pick up a package at the post office. At arrival, there is no parking in sight. In order to carry out the order, the subordinate decides to use a handicap space. When returning to the car a ticket awaits on the windshield. Had he foreseen the ticket by not parking illegally, he would have disobeyed the order but by disobeying a city ordinance, that is, parking illegally, you get a fine. It follow from Socrates’ principles that you ought to violate the law because more disgrace would result from neglecting the officer’s order than from violating a city ordinance. Socrates’ “ticket” is to stop philosophizing. I contend that, in the Apology, Socrates’ purpose in presenting the view that civil disobedience is justified is to bring about a conviction that would prevent the “ticket” (his being directed to not philosophize any more) from being issued, in other words, that would result in the observance of both orders; the conviction is the death penalty. The subordinate would avoid disobeying either superior by running instead of driving to the post office. One may object that assuming such foresight is unwarranted. However, given that Socrates believed a god ordered him to live the life of a philosopher and examine himself and others accordingly, the assumption that in the course of abolishing false and inconsistent beliefs he foretold a possible inconsistency is very much justified. Socrates later took measures to avoid the “ticket” because he knew that it would lead to the degradation of his soul. Ultimately, Socrates devised the argument for civil disobedience in order to prevent his violation of the principles by which he lived his life.

Bibliography

Code, Alan. “Ideas from Aristotle’s Logic.” In The Philosophy of Aristotle. Oxford University Press, Forthcoming

Pappas, Nickolas. Review of Socrates’ Divine Sign: Religion, Practice and Value in Socratic Philosophy, by Pierre Destrée and Nicholas D. Smith, eds., Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: 11 October 2005

Plato. “Apology”, “Crito” and “Meno.” In Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy: From Thales to Aristotle, by S. Marc Cohen, Patricia Curd and C.D.C. Reeve. Hackett Publishing Company, 2000.

Said Saillant (’11) is a Philosophy and Psychology major at Rutgers University.