Self-Perfection as a Paradigm for Ethics: Part I*

 

 

Many are the arts among human beings . . . that have been discovered experientially from experience, for experience makes the course of life pass along the path of art, and inexperience along the path of luck.

Plato, Gorgias, 448c4 – 7

 

Perhaps nothing seems clearer to us and more pervasive in our lives than ethics. We are taught from our earliest ages that it is important that we “be good” or “do the right thing.”

Perhaps nothing seems clearer to us and more pervasive in our lives than ethics. We live constantly with a sense of our obligations and duties, and with whether we have failed or succeeded in living up to them; and it is generally not considered bad form to remind others of their own. We are taught from our earliest ages that it is important that we “be good” or “do the right thing.” Unlike some concepts that can be difficult to understand, ethical norms seem to be readily cognizable. Indeed, we believe they need to be of such a form that virtually anyone can follow them. Of course, at the same time that we recognize how pervasive ethics is in our lives, we also recognize that there are many complicated ethical questions that do not seem to lend themselves to easy answers. Yet, for all the potential difficulty in finding some answers, we seem readily able to comprehend the nature of those difficulties in a way that would not be true of, say, a problem in theoretical physics. And although we at least have a sense that complicated ethical theories may occupy the time of philosophers, we also believe that philosophers are considering matters we generally understand, and which are not themselves simply products of the philosophers’ own reflections. Ethics is something real for us all, not a theoretical construct. It would still be of concern to us even if ethical theorists did not exist.

Whatever else might be said about ethics, then, its universality is palpable. We have phrased this last sentence carefully. We are saying that ethics is of concern to all of us—not that it should be, or that the world is a better place when it is, but that it is in fact of concern to all of us. The first question, therefore—and, we would venture to say, the last, as well—is simply: What is it about which we are so concerned? This question, simple enough in itself, is somewhat complex to answer. We could be concerned about something because the very presence of others continuously demands that we be so concerned. As an example, this might take the form of recognizing the need for rules governing relations among persons, while also responding to pressure to follow those rules. Or, what we are so concerned about might relate to the very nature of becoming who we are, irrespective of the demands that arise from the presence of others. As it turns out, these two types of concerns match the two basic approaches to ethics that we wish to outline here; and their tension animates much of the reflection on ethics both in ordinary life and in theorizing about ethics. The former sort of concern, where the necessity of living among persons is taken to be the principle reason for developing norms of conduct—even with respect to ourselves—we shall designate as the template of respect. The latter sort of concern, where the source of all norms—even those concerning our life among others—derives from the existential fact that we must make something of our lives, we shall designate as the template of responsibility.^[1] We offer these approaches as fundamental, alternative frameworks. While there can be overlap between them, in the sense that particular prescriptions consistent with one framework might also be so with the other, one must nonetheless choose a starting point and understand any “overlap” in terms of one or the other of the two basic templates. One must make this choice because particular moral prescriptions do not exist without a context through which they are understood, appreciated, and developed. At some level of fundamentality, we get a context which is basic. The two templates just mentioned seem to us to be the basic orientations within which to frame thought about ethics.

From the foregoing, it is apparent that by a framework, we mean a pre-theoretical orientation that one adopts or utilizes when one begins to reflect more systematically upon the nature and meaning of ethical norms or conduct. This orientation may in turn influence one’s understanding of the very nature, meaning, and relative importance of the ethical norms and conduct themselves. The template of respect and the template of responsibility as frameworks are not two theories of ethics, but approaches within which theorizing will take place. As such, not only do these frameworks not generate particular norms, but they do not even generate the principles from which those norms are derived. This is not to say, however, that the frameworks lack the power to constrain or generate implications. If they were totally vacuous, they would be of no service. What they do is provide the central or orienting characteristics of the problem, and thereby guide one in reaching the kinds of answers likely to be acceptable. Moreover, frameworks help to provide boundary conditions for what is within the scope of a topic or area—in this case, ethics. In addition, frameworks can provide a basis for weighting some values over others. They do all of these things because they may arguably refer to certain existential conditions that render the frameworks themselves plausible.

Both the frameworks here, for example, might have within them a norm to the effect that stealing is ethically defective. The reasons for that defectiveness, however, might be put in different terms, such as its showing a lack of respect for others or reflecting an unwillingness to be responsible for what one does. Language may even cross over the frameworks, with someone working within the template of responsibility framing principles in terms of respecting others, and someone from the template of respect talking about the need to take responsibility. The difference would come not merely from the linguistic form of these prescriptions, but from the way they are viewed and how they are networked with other norms within the same framework. Moreover, a given framework may influence patterns of emphasis of value. Toleration, for example, may rank higher and be more consistent with other norms in the framework of the template of respect than would, say, courage, which might have more force within the template of responsibility. It is not that each eschews the other value, but rather that the significance of not just either of these two, but any given value differs because of the framework in which it appears. In discussing these frameworks, our purpose here is to set out unabashedly the basic nature of “the perfectionist turn” we are making.

 

Two Framing Perspectives on Ethics

The division between frameworks we are suggesting is not one that is readily apparent in modern understandings of ethics.

The division between frameworks we are suggesting is not one that is readily apparent in modern understandings of ethics, because the two principal modern ethical approaches of utilitarianism and deontology are, as we see them, both within the template of respect. So-called virtue ethics appears to fall under the rubric of the template of responsibility, but many of the efforts in this direction are, rather, a grafting of virtues into a respect-based ethical framework. So, perhaps it is best to start with some of the characteristics of the template of respect, and then to examine some of the ways in which it contrasts with the template of responsibility. The basic question of a respect-based template of ethics, and its framing perspective, is simply: How should one conduct oneself with regard to persons (including oneself)? A descriptive and phenomenological answer to this question might be to say that our life among persons involves our being directed along some paths and not others by the accepted and enforced norms of society as dictated by social practices, social institutions, and social authorities. Yet, that we “should” behave in certain ways as dictated by society does not yet tell us why we should. The “why-we-should” in the context of the template of respect has to do with its demands and rules being worthy of our allegiance. Our concern at the moment is to discuss not the reason why any norms are worthy, but rather the fact that they are.

Ethics in its speculative domain, then, is fundamentally about whether the norms or rules are correct, appropriate, or worthy, according to some criteria that will be used to define our obligations and thus direct our conduct. In the case of the template of respect, the subject area of applicable rules is one of defining our relations toward persons. The recommendations or norms which function as conclusions about how conduct ought to proceed are thus the obligations inherent to the framework and the network of norms connected to it. Whatever the recommendations may be for optimal conduct, the basic question in the template of respect remains the same: What obligations do we have to persons?—the answer to which comes in developing or recognizing norms designed to manage or define relations among those persons.

Once one sees relations among persons as the fundamental subject area, one recognizes that the basic source of value in that system is persons themselves. We cannot be centrally concerned about our relations with persons unless we first believe they have some special value or status. It is our relations with persons, among all other things to be found in our environment, that call for the particular kind of consideration that we are taking to be ethics. And it is that same initial valuing—call it, respect—that will help us to judge whether norms we might be asked to follow are “correct.” If a given norm seems to ignore or denigrate that initial necessary respecting and foundational priority of persons, we would have grounds to call for a modification or rejection of the norm. Treating someone as a slave, for example, would typically be considered as undermining the priority of respect for persons. It is important to notice, in this regard, that the question of whether persons are deserving of equal respect is a derivative question from the sort of respect we are speaking of here. One might say, for instance, that people deserve different forms of respect based upon their accomplishments; but in saying that, one is still showing respect for persons—or, perhaps more clearly, personhood. There is certainly a kind of equality in giving every person respect, though that very equality of respect might also allow for inequality of treatment.

It seems evident why a Kantian-based deontology would fall within the rubric of the template of respect. As Kant notes, the good will has “absolute worth;” and he says of it that “a good will is not good because of what it effects, or accomplishes, nor because of its fitness to attain some intended end, but just because of its willing—that is, in itself.”^[2] The recognition of what is good in itself ipso facto generates respect. Respect in this context, for Kant, is respect for the moral law, which is what the good will itself comes to advocate. But only certain kinds of beings—namely, persons—can have respect and exercise a good will. Where there are appeals to non-consequentialist factors such as intention, fairness, incursions of past obligations, and the like, the force of those appeals would result from a conception of the fundamental priority of persons and what that priority implies by way of appropriate conduct. Something is not said to be respected if it is, as Kant notes, “a means only.” There must be a dimension to it that is promoted because of itself, rather than what it effects.

Under the rubric of the template of respect, then, ethics refers to a pattern of norms derived from and expressive of a respect for persons, the function of which is to orient the actor toward exhibiting such respect by willing or following the norms that define it. Fundamentally, the template of respect is about relations among persons, of which one is usually allowed to include oneself. Hence, we can see that understanding ethics in this way sees persons as associated together under a common set of norms equally applicable to all—and the moral agent, when acting, as seeking to establish relationships in conformity with these norms.

As does the template of respect, the template of responsibility begins by recognizing an existential condition. It sees human beings as being inevitably thrown together and thus in need of norms for guiding their relationships. True as it is that we emerge in the middle of such relations and norms, the first existential condition faced by the template of responsibility is not relations among persons but, rather, the fact that one must make a life for oneself. Whether the relational norms surrounding one in one’s social environment are ideal or horrific, one does not escape the task of self-responsibility. One may have that responsibility taken away from one, as in the case of slavery, but one cannot abdicate it. At first blush, this last claim seems false. People appear to abdicate responsibility all the time. Yes, they do, but our point is that they are the ones who are attempting to abdicate it, which is another way of saying they are the ones responsible for the attempt at abdication. One can fail to take (acknowledge) responsibility, but one cannot fail to be responsible and still be a choosing self.

We do not cease to be responsible for ourselves until we cease to be.

It is important to note at this stage that the issue of being responsible for making something of one’s life is not fundamentally one of discovering what relation one ought to have with oneself. That way of looking at the issue of responsibility is to effectively see oneself as one person among others. That would be exactly what is desired in the template of respect; but here one’s existential responsibility places one’s own person—and here, we mean oneself as an individual, concrete, flesh-and-blood human being—in the primary role for ethical reflection, and thus of more fundamental concern than the role given to persons generally. As just indicated, we may or may not have responsibility for certain persons or things in our environment; but we do not cease to be responsible for ourselves until we cease to be.^[3] Our primary concern must, therefore, be ourselves. Putting the point this way in no way implies a lack of concern for others, any more than the respect-for-persons perspective necessarily rejects a concern for oneself. The difference between them lies in what is ultimately the foundational wellspring for ethical action and judgment. In the respect-for-persons framework, one can respect oneself as a person and treat oneself accordingly. In a responsibility template, one is a person whose responsibilities will include interactions with others also similarly responsible for themselves.

In a sense, what we are saying is that in the template of responsibility, one does not end up having a certain kind of relation with oneself. Adam Smith is no doubt correct that we can spectate about ourselves and our own conduct, and that the dialectical self is a common enough factor in ethical reflection. Moreover, relations with oneself have, since antiquity, been a feature of ethical self-development. Still, the notion of responsibility here is not essentially about having a relation with oneself, but rather one of being oneself. Consequently, as Aristotle indicates, worrying about the right relationship to have with oneself would be a sign of ethical incompleteness. The object here is not one of constructing the right relations with oneself, but of constructing the self in such a way that there is no division between the acting, willing, and being of the self. Ironically, the final object of the template of responsibility could be to lose the sense of self in favor of unselfconsciously being oneself.

[The] ethics of individualistic perfectionism that we advocate is not an egoism.

Ironically again, this perspective indicates why the template of responsibility (and more particularly, an ethics of individualistic perfectionism that we advocate) is not an egoism. Indeed, the usual way of talking about egoism is to see how a proposed action or good in some way serves the self. But this is no different than making the self something to which one has a relationship; it is just proposed as the only relationship that matters. In the template of responsibility, the issue is not how something might benefit the self, but what kind of self one is making by taking on the benefit. The artificiality of egoistic actions is not just the exclusive focus upon self, but the relationalizing of the calculations upon which the actions are based. Put in ontological terms, we are not a mere node in a network of relations, but the ground for such relations. Julia Annas in her important work The Morality of Happiness opens by describing something like our ethics of responsibility as being an “entry point for ethical reflection” and notes the following:

[T]hought about one’s life is no longer seen as central to ethical philosophy, at least to ethical theory. At best the question is seen as marginal, to be answered when the main lines of the theory are already established.^[4]

After indicating that ancient ethical philosophy did make the framing problem of ethics one of (to put it in our terms) what to make of one’s life, Annas goes on to note,

[I]t is never felt [by ancient ethical philosophers] that the point of ethical theory is to help us to solve hard moral problems or to determine our rules of everyday duty. These are seen as tasks to be fulfilled once the outline structure of ethics has been got right, not as tasks which form that structure itself.^[5]

In other words, the movement toward the sorts of issues that predominate within the template of respect would be approached within the framework of the template of responsibility, because making something of one’s own life is the primary problem and the defining purpose of ethics. Our duties and responses to hard moral questions are to be a function of the kind of persons we ought to be making of ourselves, rather than the starting point for, and central means to, defining our own ethical nature.

We have argued elsewhere that the division between the good and the right, here placed within the template of respect, tends to trivialize the good.[6] The good, in other words, tends to take a back seat to the search for universal norms of right, usually of justice, that can regulate what it means to give respect. So, although on the surface it looks as though one is equally free to discuss the right (relations among persons) and the good (the values, aspirations and virtues one should have), the right turns out to be all that really matters when the template of respect’s framework is employed. To say that the template of responsibility has the same problem of finding room in its framework for a discussion of right is to fail to understand the problem. For finding a place for one or the other is already to have adopted the framework of the template of respect, where the two are separate concerns, as noted above. The good and the right remain united in the template of responsibility. We do not, therefore, in the end, have the convenience of “reconciling” the two fundamental ethical frameworks of respect and responsibility by allowing one to be used when we want to emphasize the right and the other when we want to emphasize the good. Thus, the template of responsibility, in which the good and the right are not understandable apart from each other, is a primary alternative, and not just another “perspective” on something called “ethics,” in which the emphasis is placed on the good.

This equilibrium solution is certainly an attractive answer to the framework problem, because it would seem to allow for all our intuitions to be simultaneously captured. The solution does also, however, raise the question of why there are dual cores to ethics. However, duality is inherently unstable, leading one to end up pretty much where we are now, with paradigmatic templates for approaching ethics. In our view, then, one must choose one of the paradigms, and not hope for some imagined equilibrium between them. This is why we advocate making “the perfectionist turn.” As already implied, the perfectionist turn is, for us, a turn toward the template of responsibility and a turn away from the template of respect.

A full answer, however, to whether or not reconciliation is possible would, of course, involve an exploration of a number of other philosophical commitments one might have to make, including whether there is a need to adopt a comprehensive philosophical framework (as opposed to trying to solve the issue without reference to anything outside of ethics). In this regard, we direct the reader to our soon-to-be published work, The Realist Turn: Repositioning Liberalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).
 
Part II of this essay can be found here.
 
*Virtually all of this essay is taken from “Introduction: What is Ethics?” in Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen, The Perfectionist Turn: From Metanorms to Metaethics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), pp. 1 – 26.  It is reproduced with the permission of Edinburgh University Press.
 
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^[1]We have tried to employ terms for each position that sound positive and are attractive in themselves. “Responsibility” and “respect” are also terms employed within each framework; that is, within the framework of respect, one can speak of responsibility and vice versa. The terms were chosen not to exclude usage by the other framework, but because both are common to ethical contexts, and because “respect” seems basically relational and “responsibility” basically agent-centered, befitting the fundamental orientation of each framework.

^[2]Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, rev. ed., trans. and eds. Mary Gregor and Jens Timmermann (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012), 4 – 394, p. 10.

[3]As an initial approach to reflections on ethics, the template of responsibility would seem to hold that individuals are prior to persons, whereas the template of respect would hold the opposite.

^[4]Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 27.

^[5]Ibid., p. 28.  See also Julia Annas, Intelligent Virtue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

[6]Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics [hereafter, NOL] (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), chapter 2.