If It`s Right for You Is It Right for Me?
By Gilbert C. Meilaender, Jr.
- Abstract
- I. Freedom in Vocation
- II. Adding some Complexity
- III. Some Strictly Theological Considerations
- IV. Conclusion
- Endnotes
[Dr. Gilbert Meilaender holds the Board of Director`s Chair in Christian Ethics at Valparaiso University in Indiana. The accompanying article was first printed in the Journal of Religious Ethics, Spring, 1980, pages 125-134.]
Abstract
It is almost commonplace to suggest that what is morally right for one person to do must also be right for anyone else similarly situated. The author suggests that this "universalization requirement" applies to only a limited sphere of the moral. life, chiefly to duties of perfect obligation. Extending the requirement beyond. this sphere fails to leave room for human freedom in vocation or for a clear recognition of human finitude.
Most of us, at least some of the time, are inclined to think that whatever is right for us to do must also be right for anyone in similar circumstances. And, of course, there is often good reason to stress this. We may fear that we or others, in denying the Kantian thesis about universalization, may simply be making excuses to protect a guilty conscience. Or, more modestly put, we may think that regular attention to whether we would be willing to universalize our deeds–may have a salutary effect on the self-regarding impulses which in large measure shape our action. The requirement of universalizability is, in such contexts, a demand for fairness.
Without denying this, we may still question whether it is necessary to hold that, whenever I think I ought to act in a certain way, I am committed to thinking that all persons similarly situated ought to make the same choice. I offer here several reasons for doubting this.[i] By contrast, my thesis, roughly stated, is that a universalization requirement can apply only to a certain restricted set of moral obligations, namely, those which constitute our duties of perfect obligation. This can for now be only a rough statement because a consideration of certain complexities will require that this simple thesis undergo modification below.
It may be helpful at the outset, though, to be more precise about what universalizability requires. J. L. Mackie (1977:83-102) has provided a classification of three stages at which universalization may be required in our ethical reflection. First, it may mean simply that all merely numerical differences between one person and another should be deemed irrelevant. Thus, Mackie writes (1977:84), the ascetic could not say, "I cannot allow myself such indulgences, but I do not condemn them in others." At this level, however, nothing would prohibit a strong man from adopting and universalizing a principle endorsing rigorous competition and survival of the fittest. Second, it may require that–beyond the obvious preference of self involved in regarding numerical difference as morally relevant–we seek imaginatively to put ourselves into the other person`s place. Thus, the strong man would ask himself what life would be like for the weak man in a rigorously competitive world, and whether he would want that life to be his. Third, it may require us not only to imagine ourselves in the other`s place but to imagine that–while in his place–we share his preferences, values, and ideals. Thus, the strong man would not consider that, even in a harsh world, he prefers to be self-reliant. He would instead consider the preference of the other person.
Only the first of these stages can with any plausibility be said to be a requirement built into the logic of moral language (and even that may be questionable, as Mackie indicates). The third is clearly a substantive moral position and, indeed, one which, though perhaps useful for achieving political compromise in a pluralistic society, may be quite unsatisfactory as a fundamental moral stance. Our discussion will for the most part be limited to the first and second stages.
I. Freedom in Vocation
An adequate ethical position must recognize that we have some moral responsibilities which oblige all persons similarly situated. But it must not characterize the whole of morality in these terms. To do so would be to destroy any possibility of choosing the sort of person we wish to be, of determining our character through the choices we freely make.[ii] There are many important human ends which one might choose to serve–ends as diverse as close personal friendships, communion with nature, self-sacrificing service of others, cultivation and creation of beauty, worship of God, and so forth. It seems true to say of these ends (1) that they are incommensurable; and (2) that any of us might say to himself and others when choosing a way of life: "This is what I ought to do; nothing else would be right for me." It is the ineradicable use of moral language in such first person contexts which a universalizability requirement fails to allow.[iii]
Of such a decision we may want to use the language of decision ("I am determining my being") or, with Peter Winch (1972:168), of discovery ("I am finding out something about myself"). The fact that we may consider it our vocation, our calling, indicates that it may be and often is regarded as a discovery, not merely a decision. Either sort of language is, in fact, appropriate, since here discovery and decision are inseparable. Moralists who want to require universalizability throughout the whole of morality must either deprive us of the words `ought` and `right` in such contexts or deprive us of the freedom to determine our character in a way of life. One is occasionally tempted to think that many moralists do want to deprive us of such freedom. It makes for a neat and tidy world but then, so does what I sometimes believe is the librarian`s ideal: to have all the books in the stacks and no one permitted to check any out. Tidy, but too restrictive!
"One of the marks of a certain type of bad man," C. S. Lewis (1960:62) has written, "is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting everyone else to give it up." To be such a bad person is what universalizability requires of us. We may recall that at even the first stage of the universalizing process Mackie does not permit the ascetic to say, "I cannot allow myself such indulgences, but I do not condemn them in others."
Those theorists who would make universalizability a requirement governing the whole of the moral life deprive us of the freedom to determine our way of life in such a way as to consider it peculiarly ours. This is, I think, what Hauerwas and Burrell (1977:122) mean in suggesting that the standard account of moral reasoning (i.e., universalizability and related viewpoints such as an "original position" argument) "obligates us to regard our life as would an observer." I cannot think that I ought to forego meat twice a week because there are many hungry people in the world or because it is a useful discipline without committing myself to the belief that all of us who are not starving (except perhaps children, pregnant women, and those with certain health problems) ought to do likewise. There are countless decisions like this one which, when we make them, shape our character and vocation and determine the manner in which our life will relate to others. To deprive us of the ability to use "ought"-language concerning these choices not only flies in the face of ordinary language but also removes from morality`s realm many of the most important decisions people make. To permit "ought" language here but require that it be universalized does not do justice to the human power of self-determination. It is what we might call the imperialism of moral theory at its worst.
Although extreme cases are not always best for making my point, it may prove instructive to consider the case of Captain Oates, a case considered by W. D. Hudson (1970) in defending Hare`s account of universalizability. Hudson maintains that if Captain Oates, in walking out of the tent to die in the Antarctic, had said to himself, "I ought to walk away," he would be committed to requiring the same of all persons similarly situated. He then writes (Hudson, 1970:221): "Would Oates have rejected that implication? I doubt it. Surely a man in his position, acting as be did, we presume from a sense of duty, would think that anyone in the same position who failed so to act would be blameworthy." It is possible–though I am not sure even this is clear–that Oates (were he to wax philosophical at such a moment) would think that any person similarly situated, who held the set of ideals which he himself held, ordered and balanced those ideals in the same way, and had committed himself to the same way of life, would also be committed to walking out of the tent to die.[iv]
Even if this should be true, it would still be quite different from the sort of duty which is universalizable in any strong sense. Suppose, for example, Captain Oates had decided that, in order to make his own food supplies last longer, he should take his companions by surprise and kill them. We would, I believe, condemn such an act in the case of Captain Oates and anyone else with a set of ideals similar to his. But, more importantly, we would condemn anyone at all who ventured to take that way out of his predicament. We would feel no need to inquire about the whole way of life he had chosen before rendering moral judgment, and to see this is to see the sphere in which universalization properly operates.[v] Certain fundamental moral duties are indeed universalizable, but the ways in which we exercise our beneficence toward others are (usually) not. Indeed, I suggest that if we thought Oates` act should be required of anyone similarly situated we would not really think that it told us much about Oates` character, about the man he was. It could not have such meaning for us if we thought, as Hudson does, that Oates himself would assume that anyone else in his position would be blameworthy for not doing the same.
Thus, I make no claim that all choices concerning what we ought to do are free from the requirements of universalization. There are duties which bind all of us and which we are free to omit only at our moral peril. We may account for these in any number of different ways: with Kant (duties of perfect obligation); with Philippa Foot (negative duties); with Bernard Gert (the moral rules); with Grisez and Shaw (basic human goods against which we may not directly turn); with H. L. A. Hart (minimum content of natural law); or with Yahweh (the Decalog). What we ought not do, however, is extend the claims of universalizability beyond this portion of the moral life.
If we press further, we may see that there is a connection between the requirement of universalization and that of utilitarianism (i.e., universal and impartial benevolence).[vi] The utilitarian, believing all human goods to be commensurable, thinks that (at least in theory, however difficult the calculations may be) we can prescribe how each of us ought to exercise his or her benevolence. On this theory, benevolence is no longer an imperfect obligation, binding on us all in different (and freely chosen) ways. Instead, the course my benevolence ought to take is strictly determined. Anyone similarly situated ought to be benevolent in exactly the same way. At this point the requirements of universalizability and universal and impartial benevolence merge–and, in so doing, destroy genuine freedom in vocation.[vii]
II. Adding some Complexity
I have suggested that only certain fundamental moral duties are universalizable. These by no means constitute the totality of the moral life. Having done our duty in this limited sense, there remain for each of us countless decisions about who and what we shall be and how we shall aid others–decisions which cannot be universalized, though we might well use the moral ought in speaking of them. Moral duties which are universalizable remain fundamental in the sense that one cannot, I think, choose a vocation which requires systematic violation of these duties. We should permit them that much imperialism, but no more.
Now, however, we must complicate this thesis a bit.[viii] The Kantian language which characterizes beneficence as a duty of imperfect obligation may be misleading. Consider the following case: I am starting my usual after-dinner stroll during which I make it a point to think of nothing significant. As I walk out to the street I notice the neighbor child playing in the street where she may quite possibly be injured by one of the passing cars which so often speed down our street. It will take relatively little effort for me to carry the child over to her parents who are planting flowers along the side of their house. To do so would, I presume, be characterized as a beneficent act. To fail to do so would not precisely be to inflict harm on the child. Yet, I suppose we would think that anyone similarly situated ought to remove the child from the dangerous place she has chosen to play. The child`s need is relatively great; my loss if I help her relatively small.
This is an obligation which seems universalizable even though it requires more than merely refraining from inflicting harm. It requires that one bring aid. Hence, it was not incorrect of Luther to write, in explanation of the commandment not to kill, "We should fear and love God that we may not hurt nor harm our neighbor in his body, but help and befriend him in every bodily need." There are, however, limits to what we can be morally required to do in bringing aid (whereas there are, in my view, no limits on the requirement that we refrain from doing certain evils). If, instead of finding the neighbor child playing in the street I see her drowning in the ocean, and if furthermore I cannot myself swim, I do not think I am morally required to try to save her. Even so, if when I catch a glimpse of her terrified eyes as her head bobs up I say to myself, "I ought to give it a try," that is a correct use of moral language. It announces or expresses the person I am or will be. But that moral ought cannot be universalized.
What distinguishes these cases? We might suggest at first that they are distinguished by the different degree of burden I must bear and risk I must run. It is, after all, likely to cost me far more to launch out into the ocean than it will to interrupt briefly my stroll. And there is surely something to this explanation. It is part of the reason Christians have often claimed that only grace could elicit from a person like me a decision to brave the waves and try to save the child; for such a decision would require a degree of self-forgetfulness not naturally to be expected (or required) of us.
But I do not think that the burden or cost to the agent can be the decisive factor. Consider another case. Suppose others judge me capable of doing great benefit as a physician. Suppose also that I have made no commitments which would make it impossible for me to undertake the necessary training, that I know myself capable of it, feel reasonably sure that I could be happy as a doctor, believe there is a great need for doctors, and would not have to make any great sacrifice to become one. Suppose also, however, that what I really want to do, what I would find most satisfying, is running a catering service for elite country clubs. Should I be subject to moral censure if I decide that others, perhaps even those less suited for the task, will have to be physicians while I run my catering service? I think not; for this is simply one of those choices which goes beyond the moral law and determines one`s being. As long as, in making it, I do not violate any of my fundamental moral duties,I cannot be blamed.
This is an instance where the question of cost or burden borne by the agent does not seem to be a crucial factor. Rather, what is important seems to be what a decision does to one`s character. If, when the little girl is playing in the street with cars speeding by, I blithely continue my stroll, I help to make myself a person who is indifferent to the obvious needs of other human beings. If her parents ask me why I did not move her when I saw her in the street and I answer that I thought perhaps someone else might, that is not likely to seem a very good answer. If, on the other hand, my very sick neighbor catches me in a spare moment when I am not catering at the country club and says, "you might have helped me had you become a doctor," I am entitled to respond, as Charles Fried (1978:38) suggests, "No more than countless other persons." The little girl playing in the street is particularized; to ignore her need is to shape my character in important ways. It begins to make of me the sort of person who will not be beneficent at all. The same is not true of the decision to cater at the country clubs. That vocational choice tells us nothing about whether we might expect me to respond with help for (at least some) human beings in need, even to respond at great cost to myself. For that choice involves no rejection of the duty to be beneficent.
Thus, the crucial factor is not merely the cost or burden borne by the agent. Relevant also–and, I think, more important–is the effect on the character of the agent, the degree to which a particular decision will necessarily help to create a person indifferent to human need. As long as our vocational decisions do not shape our character in that way, we are free–free to make of ourselves what we will, free of the imperialism of any universalization requirement.
III. Some Strictly Theological Considerations
It is always good to have a text, and the following will do:
You are a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love upon you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples; but it is because the Lord loves you…. (Deuteronomy 7:6-8a)
In the Bible terms like `grace and `mercy` are terms of particular, personal relationships for which no more universal rationale can be given. As Oliver O`Donovan (1977:14f.) has pointed out, this is quite different from the sense we give to `mercy`–as when, for example, we say that it ought to temper justice. God`s mercy rests upon Israel for no reason–beyond the simple fact that it does. Similarly, with Jesus` parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16). Some work many hours, enduring the heat of the day; others begin only near the very end of the work-day. Yet, all receive the same wage. This is not injustice to those who worked longest (or so the owner of the vineyard claims) but generosity and mercy toward those who came last.
An ethic which seeks the kind of universality we have been considering may find itself judging even the holiness of God. As Donald Mackinnon (1957:104) has written with respect to Kanes ethic: "There is a kind of arrogance here, and also more than a hint of the clear subordination of what is personal–namely God and men and their relation to Him–to something which is formal and universal, even in a special sense abstract–namely the law of reason." Our concern here will not be with judging the holiness of God–we must leave something for the philosophers of religion to do–but with whether such personal, particularized concern can be a justifiable feature of our actions toward one another.
Even if God can be trusted always when be shows this kind of particularized, personal mercy, we probably cannot. That is sufficient, reason for thinking that many of our basic duties must be subject to the requirement of universalization. It represents a drive for fairness and disciplines our self-regarding impulses. To apply this to the whole of our lives, however, is, as Mackinnon hints, a sign of o`erweening pretension. We do not, like God, have unlimited responsibilities which are universal in scope. We are tied to particular people in particular times and places–and we may wish to spend ourselves especially in their behalf and, even, think we ought to. If a moral imperialist asks why they should be preferred to the countless other people living (and still to be born), we are not likely to find an answer any better than Moses` "because the Lord loves you." This does not mean that such an answer justifies any conduct at all. The basic, universalizable moral duties limit the ways and the degree to which we can prefer the needs of certain people. But, within the discretionary space which they leave, we are genuinely free to do so (or not to do so).
Advocates of universalization cannot deny what all of us know: that such "arbitrarily" focused concern adds much of great importance to human life. They are therefore likely to defend it on grounds something like Sidgwick`s (1907:434) suggestion that
each person is for the most part, from limitations either of power or knowledge, not in a position to do much good to more than a very small number of persons; it therefore seems, on this ground alone, desirable that his chief benevolent impulses should be correspondingly limited.
Sidgwick here has his hand on the right idea, our finitude; but he misunderstands its significance. It is as if, being finite, we give a grudging acquiescence to this fact while doing all we can to blunt its significance for human life. Or, we might say, it is as if a parent were to be like a public functionary, charged with looking after a certain number of members of the body politic. To some that might seem very rational indeed-but how little like a family it would be! What is needed, instead, is a glad affirmation that we are finite-that we are creatures rather than the Creator and that, therefore, we are neither responsible for achieving the greatest good on the whole nor always of legislating for humankind. If we do not see this and insist on worshipping the creature rather than the Creator, it is to be feared that God in his wrath may give us up to a universal and impartial benevolence.
IV. Conclusion
It may be suggested that, in terms of the tradition of Christian ethics, I have been asserting the importance of the traditional Roman Catholic distinction between a lower realm of duty (commands) and a higher standard of perfection (counsels). While there would be some truth to that suggestion, the difference is important to note. There is, on the view I have been defending, no particular vocation that is saintly or closer to perfection. Or, to put it differently and in the way my own theological views incline, all ways of life which do not in themselves violate the fundamental duties we owe all human beings are ways that saints may choose to live.
Moralists will begin to be (almost) as interesting as novelists when they recapture some sense of the importance of the first person. What is right for me may not be right for you, even if our situations are similar. This does not mean that I cannot feel the force of your chosen way of life or be drawn by its lure. Indeed, much of the charm of the novelist`s work is that (if he is good at it) he permits us to feel the lure of many ways of life not our own. "Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality " (cf., C. S. Lewis, 1969:140). There is no reason why moralists, along with their other tasks, could not eschew imperialism and strive (in their own perhaps less imaginative ways) to do as much.[ix]
Endnotes
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[i] I am not, of course, the first to look askance at the universalization requirement, whether in the general Kantian sense I gave it above or in the specific sense given it by R. M. Hare. Stanley Hauerwas (1974), from the perspective of an ethic of char-acter, has argued that universalizability plays only a limited role in ethical reflection. For an~even more explicit statement of this point of view, see the essay co-authored by Hauerwas and Burrell (1977). Peter Winch (1972:151-170) provides a very sensitive and critical discussion of Hare`s thesis.
[ii] My argument here draws heavily on Grisez & Shaw (1974) and on P. F. Strawson (1966).
[iii]It seems clear to me (a) that we do indeed speak this way; and (b) that the "ought"` can only be characterized as a moral one. Gilbert Harman (1977:59) has distinguished four senses of ought. They are (1) an ought of expectation (Oscar ought to be here by now); (2) an ought of evaluation (there ought to be more time for baseball in life); (3) an ought of reasons (the thief ought to wear gloves); and (4) the moral ought. I do not see how statements of the sort I am discussing, statements which we often utter, could be anything other than the moral ought.
[iv]To put it this way makes clear that we could argue for the applicability of a universalizability requirement here only by reading into "similarly situated" the character and vocation of the agent. But to do this raises several worries. (1) We may worry that "similarly situated" has been interpreted in such a way as to trivialize any moral bite it might have had. (2) We may worry about the sense in which Oates could really imagine others to have committed themselves to the same way of life and still call it his life. Both worries are legitimate.
[v]It is also to see that my criticism of universalization in morality is far less sweeping than that of Hauerwas and Burrell (1977).
[vi]Mackie (1977:93) suggests that this happens only at the third stage he delin-eates-i.e., when we (for purposes of reflection) adopt the values and preferences of the other persons and seek some compromise among them. This shows even more clearly that this third stage is a substantive moral position, not part of the logic of moral discourse
[vii]It is the failure to appreciate this which leads Charles E. Harris, Jr. to find problems where there are none in the ethic of agape. Harris (1978:21) "assumes that the fundamental idea in universalization is that one must accept as an ideal the state of affairs in which everyone acts in accordance with the principles to be universalized." Such moral imperialism the Christian ethicist, at least^~ -, ought to avoid. If we do not avoid it, we will end where Harris (1978:20) does, using "universalizability … as a filter" to separate acceptable from unacceptable forms of agape, There was a time when Christian ethicists thought the Bible would aid them in that endeavor!
[viii]Much of the example and argument in the following paragraphs, though certainly not the conclusions, I owe to the helpful criticisms of David Little.
[ix]For their helpful criticisms of an earlier version of this paper, I wish to thank David little, Gene Outka, and Paul Ramsey.
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