The Fallacies of Egoism and Altruism, and the Fundamental Principle of Morality
The Fallacies of Egoism and Altruism,and the Fundamental Principle of Morality
(after Kant and Nelson)
The State of Nature has a Law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one: And Reason, which is that Law, teaches all Mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions.
John Locke, The Second Treatise of Civil Government, §6
Ethical goods are goods in relation to persons -- goods for persons. There are multiple persons, and these are divided generally into self and others. Ethical goods thus fall into two categories: goods for the self and goods for others. All ethical goods are autonomously defined by selves (i.e. people know what they like), except in relation to morality, which contains absolute ethical goods. The pursuit of goods for the self is self-interest, and in general it is no moral duty, only prudence, to pursue one's own self-interest. Thomas Jefferson, in a letter from 1814, expresses this nicely:
But I consider our relations with others as constituting the boundaries of morality....To ourselves, in strict language, we can owe no duties, obligation requiring also two parties. Self-love, therefore, is no part of morality. Indeed it is exactly its counterpart. It is the sole antagonist of virtue, leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others.
Non-moral goods are matters of ethical hortatives rather than imperatives, as explained in relation to the polynomic theory of value. Confusion about moral and non-moral goods, goods for selves and good for others, produces characteristic fallacies, as follows:
The fallacies of egoism are: 1) egoistic moralism (or moralistic egoism), the sense that it is a moral duty to pursue one's own interests (Ayn Rand sounds like this, and many earlier moralists, including Kant, posit a category of "duties to self," such as Jefferson properly denies above); and 2) egoistic [moral] aestheticism, the sense that no moral duty exists to restrain the actual pursuit of one's own interests (sounds like Nietzsche but is not Rand). Egoistic aestheticism eliminates all moral duties to others, leaving only prudent or "enlightened" self-interest to govern relations with them. An egoistic aestheticism which is not a moral aestheticism would simply mean that goods for the self are worthy of pursuit; and that is not a moral fallacy. Egoistic moralism and egoistic aestheticism can actually be combined, which would make it a duty to pursue self-interest whatever the cost to others.
Moral duty does arise where goods for others, which may or may not overlap goods for the self, are concerned. Moral duty consists of respect for the autonomy of others, which means allowing the free exercise of the innocent, competent will of others in regard to their own interests.
"Allowing the free exercise" means the use of neither fraud (deception) nor force (coercive threat of violence or actual violence) against the will of other persons in the disposing of their interests.
"Innocent" means that the other is not actually committing or effecting a wrong, whether or not they intend wrong (although they actually are morally innocent if they do not intent wrong and are not negligent). The intentional or negligent commission of a wrong entails loss of some rights of autonomy and self-interest both in order to prevent the active commission of the wrong and in order to extract retribution (through the loss of goods, proportional to the wrong) as just punishment for wrongs committed.
"Competent" means mentally able to rationally evaluate and pursue one's own self-interest. Incompetent persons do not lose rights of self-interest and only lose rights of autonomy in so far as their self-interest can be better evaluated and pursued, in their behalf, by others.
"Their own interests" are self-defined in the areas or matters where, according to the types of interests considered below, we have rights of possession, use, and exchange.
It has become common to say that people have rights wherever they have interests, but this principle does not allow for "compossibility," the possibility that the rights can all be exercised at the same time, since many interests overlap and conflict. Such "rights" must necessarily be abridged, a dangerous characteristic, since any rights can then be abridged for any expedient reason. If not all interests are protected by rights, however, then rights can be moral and legal claims that cannot be abridged.
This formulation of the nature of moral duty is functionally similar to Immanuel Kant's version of the moral law as requiring one to act always to treat others as ends also and never as means only. Since treating others as means is to use them to further one's own self-interest (or some other interest), and this can be done in many completely innocent ways, the crucial question is what treating someone as an "end also" amounts to. An "end" clearly stops the action of the will, so that the will does not continue to some further good. That makes the "end" a good-in-itself. While we may value others as goods-in-themselves, we usually do make use of them for ulterior ends; and the only way to reconcile their function as both end and means is if they are willing to pursue some ulterior end in our behalf. Thus, Kant's formulation calls on us to respect the autonomy and dignity of persons, allowing them the freedom to help or not to help us in the pursuit of goods. If they are not willing to help us, then we cannot use them as means to our self-interested ends. That complements the version of moral duty given above. There we leave people alone to pursue their self-interest, while with Kant we do not force them to pursue ours.
I should note, however, that this interpretation of Kant is not consistent with Kant's own view of the moral law; for Kant actually states the rule as "Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only" [Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Lew White Beck translation, Library of the Liberal Arts, 1959, p.47]. Thus, one should treat oneself as an end also as well as means. Since it doesn't make any sense that one could violate one's own will, Kant needed to have in mind more than just autonomy as the content of the self as an end. Since that is the area where Kant's theory seems indefinite, leading to endless interpretations over the years (including rejection by Schopenhauer as indeterminately vague), and would in any case involve duties to self, which don't exist, I do think that part of Kant's moral law can be amputated without real loss, and that it is appropriate to do so. Respecting the autonomy of others is a simpler, more definite, and more defensible principle than whatever it would mean to respect oneself, as well as another, as an end in itself. [note]
Leonard Nelson, although essential to the treatment of ethics here, with his theories of ideal ethics and of moralism, stuck too closely to Kant's first version of the moral law (to act so that the maxim of one's action can be universalized without contradiction), which is moralistic, and produced a moralistic formulation of the moral law himself. Thus, he calls the moral law "the principle of abstraction from the numerical determination of persons" [System of Ethics, Yale, 1956, p. 113] and says:
If we suppose that all interests affected by our action are those of a single person, if we suppose, in other words, that the interests of the person affected by our action are ours as well, we would favor the preponderating interest regardless of whether it is our own or that of the other person. [ibid. p. 114]
This makes Nelson's theory actually teleological, for right action is then to bring about the "preponderating interest" among all those affected by an action, though, dealing with actual affected interests, this is not quite as absurd as teleological theories that simply require that the "greatest good" be effected in every situation, which is actually beyond the scope of human cognition or action. Nelson's theory, nevertheless, is moralistic both because every action then becomes a moral issue, where the "preponderating interest" must be calculated, and because it can make some non-moral interest of others into the consideration which determines moral action, for there is nothing to prevent the "preponderating interest" from being a non-moral interest. Nor can the "preponderating interest" even be determined in a theory of value where most goods, the goods of ideal ethics, are not absolute and will often not, and could not, be agreed upon by different persons. Only where a moral issue is already involved will there be a "preponderating interest" that is absolute, determinable, and preemptive over non-moral and personal goods; and such a moral issue, as above, will always involve the respect for the innocent, competent will of others with respect to their own interests.
It is a shame that Nelson errs when it comes to the content of the moral law, but this provides an important lesson how mistakes can be made even in the context of a theory that is sound and fruitful. Similar problems occur with Nelson's view of Socratic Method and non-intuitive immediate knowledge.
A reconcilation of teleological and deontological ethical theories is possible when we note that some ends are not to be attained but simply, as already attained, to be respected. That will occur with persons as ends-in-themselves. A Utilitarian or other teleological theory that allows persons to be used, simply as means for some ulterior end, overlooks the status of persons as ends already. It has always been possible to argue for a teleological theory by saying that individual rights, etc. are among the appropriate ends that teleological ethics would be pursuing. One need merely add that they are not among "appropriate" ends but are absolute ends which absolutely restrict morally acceptable action. Since persons as ends are not purposes to be realized through action but are features of the moral universe that absolutely restrict action, it is more straightforward and revealing to see morality in deontological rather than teleological terms. Now, however, these can be translated into one another, and teleological theories that allow for expediency rather than morality can be revealed as relativizing, not morality in some abstract sense, but the moral worth of a person as an absolute end-in-itself and good-in-itself.
Goods for the self are interests of person, property, and contract. These translate into rights. "Interests of person" are the possession and control by a person of their own body, labor, and other attributes of their personal status (e.g. reputation, civil rights, etc.). "Interests of property" are the possession and control by a person of tangible and intangible assets, distinct and separable from the person, the ownership of which is recognized in custom and law, usually giving the owners powers of exclusive possession, use, and exchange. Interests of person and property impose duties of respect to refrain from the use of fraud and force against the person and property of others. "Interests of contract" are the agreements and promises through which interests of person and property are usually managed and altered, and so respect for person and property also becomes respect for contract.
Interests of person and property in general forbid wrongs of commission, i.e. fraudulent or violent damaging acts against persons and property, by others. Moral duty also forbids wrongs of omission -- or posits duties of commission (or duties to act) -- requiring positive actions for the sake of another because of contract (see below) or where fundamental interests, such as life and limb, are endangered. The distiction between duties of omission and commission is ancient, as Thomas Jefferson noted in 1813, in a letter to John Adams, about rabbinical law:
From the law of Moses were deduced six hundred and thirteen precepts, which were divided into two classes, affirmative and negative, two hundred and fourty-eight in the former, and three hundred and sixty-five in the latter.
The duties of omission (the negative ones) thus constitute 60% of the total. This may indicate their more fundamental and straightforward nature, as the Ten Commandments themselves mostly begin with "Don't" (Lô' in Hebrew). The duty to act in the cases of commission involves the judgment that the other person is in some respect physically unable or mentally incompetent to help themselves. The pursuit of goods for others is altruism.
The fallacy of altruism, or altruistic moralism (or moralistic altruism), is the sense that there is a general duty, or that morality as such requires us always, to act in the interest of others. On the other hand, an "altruistic moral aestheticism" [or, simply, "altruistic aestheticism"] is not a moral fallacy; for this only means that a person may act for the good of others if this seems good, which is unobjectionable as long as the action respects the autonomy of others, i.e. is not against their innocent and competent will. The asymmetry between egoistic and altruistic moral aestheticism, that one is a fallacy and the other isn't, is due to the circumstance that morality limits the pursuit of self-interest and posits respect for others. The removal of moral constraint in aestheticism thus would be motivated for the self, which can then gain through wrong, but would not be motivated for others, who were protected from wrongful loss.
Altruistic moralism is often a tempting doctrine because the rule for the specification of non-contractual duties of commission appears to be complex. There will be such a duty on a person only where:
The other is unable to help themselves,
the other is in danger of serious and irreversible harm,
there is no one else present who has a more defined contractual obligation to help the other (e.g. lifeguard, parent, physician, policeman, etc.) and who is able to do so, and
a person is able to act competently to prevent that harm without comparably endangering either themselves personally or the interests of those who are contractually dependent upon the agent for support (e.g. children or other family, etc.). [This will be simplified below.]
A person who does more than is required by these conditions, i.e. who acts even at the cost of endangering themselves or damaging their own interests of comparable magnitude to those originally endangered, acts with supererogation, i.e. beyond the requirements of moral duty. Altruistic moralism denies supererogation. Since non-contractual duties of commission involve judgments of incompetence or physical disability, altruistic moralism implies paternalism, i.e. the judgment that the agent knows better the interests of others, and how to pursue them, than they do themselves. Paternalism and altruistic moralism thus will lead to basic violations of moral duty as the actual innocent and competent autonomous will of others may be abridged by force. That is a general problem with any form of altruism, that the self-defining character of what is good is transferred from the other to the altruistic agent, always raising the danger that another may be judged incompetent simply because their judgment about what is good for them may differ from the agent's.
ETHICS
Ideal or Euergetic Ethics, the good and the bad: goods for self (moralized into egoistic moralism)
MORALITYIdeal or Euergetic Ethics, the good and the bad: goods for others (moralized into altruistic moralism)
Morality, right and wrong: moral goods (de-moralized into egoistic [moral] aestheticism)
|
|
