Commitment

Piers Benn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317488262
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Most of us care about certain people and things, and some of these concerns become personal commitments, involving our values, our relationships, our work and our religious or political stances. But what is commitement, and why should it matter? Is social commitment - for example, to the family - being eroded by individualism or ironic detachment? And how should we deal with the potential tension between devotion to a life-stance, and the doubts prompted by pursuit of rational integrity?

In this work, Piers Benn delves into the relationship between commitment and meaningful life, and asks whether commitment must be based on truth to provide such meaning. He also explores obstacles to commitment such as boredom, sloth and indifference. Drawing on his own experience of dithering and procrastination, he suggests that a sceptical, cautious attitude to important matters can be both a virtue and a real obstacle to human fulfillment.

1 Introduction: the problems

DOI: 10.4324/9781315710211-1

This book is about commitment. But what are the hard, philosophical questions that commitment, in general, raises? Isn’t there a disturbing vagueness in the title, as if commitment were just one thing, when perhaps it is really multifaceted? Many things come to mind when we think about the concept. There is, most obviously, the idea of responsibility. A manufacturer’s warranty explains “our commitment to you” in respect of the product or the quality of service. A bank says it is committed to “the highest standards of customer service” (whether or not that is the case). A doctor is committed to acting in the patient’s best interests; he or she gives them priority over all else, and must never allow them to be subordinated to other concerns, such as financial ones. Commitment, more generally, has connotations of steadfastness, dedication, a refusal to be deflected from the task at hand. The person who is committed, say, to his profession can be expected to be reliable in it. Someone in a “committed relationship” can be expected not to leave it, or not without very good reason.

For these sorts of reasons, the idea of commitment is often associated with promises or undertakings. A sincere promise implies a genuine commitment; if someone promises you something, you have a right to expect that person to deliver on it. We thank people for promising to do certain things for us. But we do not thank them for promising, as such, but for acting on that promise in future. In other words, we thank them in advance. Hence it is very annoying when people expect to be thanked for promising things, even though, in the event, they do not deliver. “But you should be grateful that at least I said I’d do it!” has a hollow ring to it; the properly tight-lipped response should be, “No, I am not grateful that you said you’d do it. I was grateful to you for being about to do the thing you said you would, but I now withdraw that gratitude, since you did not in fact do it.”

It is also interesting to look at how our word “commitment” translates into other languages. The French translation is instructive: the Collins Robert dictionary translates it as “charges”, “responsabilité(s)” or “engagement”. The emphasis there seems to be on obligation; even “engagement” can be used in the context of financial agreements, although it can also refer to commitment in a much wider sense. The taking on of responsibilities is central, and with that comes the idea of intention. “I am committed to mastering Hungarian within three years” suggests an intention from which I am determined not to be swayed.

But we should not be sticklers for dictionary definitions or translations, which in any case are suggestions or approximations. We should also look at the wider connotations of the idea. Risk, sacrifice, feeling sure (or at least, acting as if sure), courage, enthusiastic engagement, perseverance, the endurance of hardship or uncertainty: these are all notions naturally prompted by the idea of commitment. And there is an important distinction to be made between commitments to beliefs and commitments to actions. This dichotomy will run though my discussion. The range of areas I choose to discuss may seem somewhat disconnected from each other, so some explanation is in order. I concentrate primarily on the following: the commitments we have to one another, of various kinds – contractual, erotic, parental and so on; the commitments we have with respect to work and especially vocation; and those we have to political and especially religious creeds or ways of life. Their uniting thread is that they present us with practical or theoretical choices, all of which confront formidable obstacles. Sometimes they do not seem to be choices, because the commitments involved appear utterly basic and instinctual, like normal parental love. Yet some people act as if they did not have such instincts. My uniting strategy is to present the different kinds of commitments that arise in these different areas of life, say why they might be good to have, and then say what the obstacles may be. I also try to discuss, in each case, whether lacking, or giving up, commitments may be a good thing. We often think, for example, that love relationships are intrinsically valuable and cannot meaningfully be based only on present consent. Yet at the same time, there are occasions when they should be ruptured. Also, there may be times when intellectual or moral integrity requires us to stay the impulse to commitment, to learn to doubt, and put up with the discomfort this may bring. A unifying question throughout my discussion is therefore: what makes commitment valuable in general, when it is, and when should it be avoided? This, in turn, leads me to very general questions about obstacles to commitment, particularly concerning boredom, ennui and acedia (literally, not caring). It also leads, in my final chapter, to a discussion of a major reason for valuing certain commitments, namely, that commitment is a central ingredient in the meaning of life. But even here I suggest that it may be better to risk a sense of a lack of meaning and some unhappiness rather than to make false or frivolous commitments. So the tension between the urge to commitment and grounds for resisting it is present throughout the whole essay.

Committing to commitment

A pertinent question about writing about commitment is: why write about it at all? Might not the very process be a kind of displacement activity, a way of thinking abstractly about commitments rather than actually forming any, rather like a character who, after much soul-s earching, announces, “I am thinking of becoming a doer”?

This essay is not autobiographical: that would surely be boring and self-i ndulgent. But it does arise, to some extent, from my personal concerns. Here are some examples at random. In the UK there was a general election in 2010, and until almost the last minute I didn’t know how I was going to vote. I have never had a party political allegiance of any real depth or passion, even though I take politics seriously. Political philosophy is engaging, but party political propaganda is largely composed of vapid rhetoric (“we shall build a fairer society”, and so on), and is unintelligible to me when it does get down to concrete detail, particularly when it comes to economics. You could argue that if you can’t commit, you shouldn’t vote, but that is taking purity a bit too far, like trying to be more Catholic than the Pope.

Talking of popes, a second and less straightforward example concerns religion. My parents were not religious, although I did attend a Nonconformist Christian day school. I read religious literature in the school library, largely of an evangelical Protestant stripe. I found much of it frightening and depressing, and started worrying about hell and the devil. It was not that I really believed in these entities: I was just stuck with a lively imagination and a fear that these things just might be real; a fear that if they were, I could be in real trouble – the worst trouble imaginable. Why, then, did I not act as if they were real, and ask for divine guidance? The worst thing is to worry, yet do nothing about it. The trouble was that I had a fairly lucid intellectual grasp of the issues, yet did nothing. In other words, for whatever reason, I had an entrenched difficulty with certain sorts of commitment. The fear of getting things wrong was always standing in the way of getting things right.

I sometimes attend Mass at a liberal Anglo-Catholic church, but at the altar I am always the one to get the blessing rather than take communion, the latter possibly being an act of sacrilege in an agnostic non-believer like me, who was never even baptised. At least the priests there are not the sort to transfix you with a saved expression and ask if you have found the Lord yet. The liturgy and music are beautiful, the sermons often thoughtful. I have often prayed that if there really is a God he may make himself known to me, but all the while wondering whether I really was sincerely praying for this, as I was somewhat afraid that he might respond, if he exists. (In which case, why was I praying? Did I think God would be fooled? Well, the human mind is complex: think of George Orwell’s doublethink in Nineteen Eighty-Four). Oddly, it is a comfort to know that some communicant Christians turn out to have similar worries.

Now let us briefly move on to other matters: for example, ethics. For many years I lectured at universities in subjects variously called ethics, applied ethics or moral philosophy. Most recently it was medical ethics to a mix of health-care professionals, keen young medical students and miscellaneous interested others. Certainly I enjoyed explaining ideas, engaging in the cut and thrust of argument, encouraging critical thinking, conjuring up creative thought experiments and adding a bit of dry humour to it all. I was good at devil’s advocacy, at challenging people’s positions on a whole range of issues. When it came to familiar topics such as abortion, assisted dying and what it takes to be a person with something clumsily called “moral status”, I was good at presenting all sides of the arguments in a fairly even-handed way.

But there it ended. What did I really think about these issues? Where did I stand? In many cases I didn’t really know. This might have been due to legitimate uncertainty or confusion about issues about which one cannot, without being “deeply shallow”, think dogmatically. Perhaps I was not intellectually quite up to it. Maybe, even, there was a cowardly avoidance of moral commitment, for fear of getting something crucially important wrong. It could have been sheer weariness with the topics. Who knows? But if I am asked point blank whether I think an early abortion is morally tantamount to infanticide, or whether doctors (or anyone else) should have the right to assist a suicide, or what we may do to animals to provide medical benefit to humans, there are times when I feel I really cannot answer. And this is uncomfortable, and even a professional disadvantage, for many highly productive writers get a great deal written because they have an agenda, which they apply to as many areas as possible. Having such conviction is energising; being less clear about one’s views can cause a despondent lack of motivation to write, for fear of having nothing to say.

There is another commitment that is fundamental for most people, and by far the most important one. It is, of course, love, whether parental, erotic, of philia (friendship) or of agape (charity). Love brings us to some of the deepest issues involving commitment and I shall devote a more philosophical chapter to them later on.

So all this is just a short account of some reasons why I chose to write about this subject: why the issue of commitment matters, philosophically, to me. But, of course, all of this is about individual commitments. What about the societal factors that underpin individual commitments? We talk about the values of a society. Does this make sense? Could it even be that societies themselves have commitments, which are more than the sum of individuals’ commitments within those societies? What are they? I shall start by saying a little more about commitments at an individual level, and then try to find the bridge between them and wider questions of the commitments – or, as I prefer to say, values – of society as a whole.

The crisis of commitment

If a difficulty in forming individual, personal commitments besets us, should it worry us and, if so, how can we rationally remove the obstacles to commitment? Or is this the wrong question? Should we be trying to do this rationally at all? Perhaps we should, if only because it may help silence paralysing fears and doubts that can hold up our lives. Maybe nagging thoughts such as “I might be wrong” or “This new relationship, or career-change, or house-move may be a mistake” are major obstacles to real goods. Many risks, after all, are rational – they are more likely than not to pay off – and the risk involved in not taking risks may be considerable. But there is a deeper worry, which affects commitments of a more fundamental or “existential” kind. The worry is about moral or intellectual integrity. True, I might be happier or more active if I believed something with certainty, but is it either possible or commendable to “choose” a belief? Shouldn’t beliefs, or at least important ones, be based on evidence? Moreover, if I am to try to base my beliefs on evidence, don’t I need a rationally based confidence that my ability to assess the evidence is fairly reliable?

Scepticism: radical versus reasonable

At one extreme, these thoughts can tempt us towards that bête noire of philosophy, radical scepticism. In its classic Cartesian form, a radical philosophical sceptic challenges my claims to any knowledge by remarking that things I normally take to justify these claims are consistent with my being radically deceived, or simply dreaming. Maybe I am being perpetually deceived by an evil demon, or perhaps I am really a brain in a vat, being stimulated by electrical devices that produce convincing, but entirely illusory, experiences. The sceptic then challenges me to produce good reasons for thinking I can know anything at all, given that the brain-i n-a-vat hypothesis is consistent with all the thoughts and experiences I have. If he really wants to be provocative, he suggests that it is more economical to suppose that my experiences are all that really exists, since this avoids postulating entities (the external world, other minds and so on) that are surplus to explanatory requirements.

It is a relief to see that there are few, if any, such sceptics around, even among philosophers. Were there such people, they might attract the attention of the mental health services, unless they keep their opinions to themselves for the simple reason that there is literally no one else to share them with. The “refutation” of the sceptic remains a highly controversial and involved matter. Fortunately, this is not my central concern here. We do not need to take radical scepticism seriously to see that there are many particular areas where a degree of scepticism is in order, and often more than is allowed for in everyday, non-philosophical life. Many life stances, to do with the nature of the good life, virtues and vices, religion, politics and much besides, seem to be founded on claims that can be assessed for truth or falsity, and only a shallow dogmatist would think such assessment is always easy.

As a philosopher, I know that I am biased towards finding examples mainly of philosophical stances, and this is a danger to be guarded against. Most people’s doubts about commitment have nothing particularly philosophical about them: “I’ve fallen in love with a man who seems to love me and want to move in with me, but is this a fantasy? Do I really know him well enough to trust him if he lives with me?”; or “I’m over the moon about being offered what seems like a dream job, but is there a catch? There was something, indefinably, not quite right about the person who interviewed me”; or even “I’ve just had a polite email, in quaint English, from a gentleman in Nigeria, sprinkled with references to the Lord Jesus, who is anxious to give me half a million pounds if I open a bank account for him, so he can deposit his vast fortune there – the only minor formality being that he needs all my bank details for the process to get started. Do I make such a commitment?” (Well, all right, the last example is not a particularly difficult thing to choose not to commit to, although there must be a few people gullible and greedy enough to fall for this notorious scam.)

So questions about commitment arise in different kinds of area, ranging from everyday matters to more philosophical issues concerning values, life stances or metaphysical beliefs. There is, therefore, an important distinction to be made between practical and theoretical commitments, between those concerning what to believe and those concerning what to do. But what they have in common is that at least two issues stand out. One is that of risk, at least in many cases. In moving in too quickly with someone you haven’t properly got to know, you risk disillusionment, or worse. The other is that of irreversibility, at least in intention. Commitment to a person, or to live according to certain values, is in effect an inner declaration that there is no going back. It is more than merely having strong passions or beliefs, without any particular thoughts about their future.

Passions, of their nature, are powerful but often ephemeral. But commitment is more a matter of saying to yourself: maybe I won’t always feel this way about my new love (job, home or whatever) but I shall try not to let any change in my feelings fundamentally alter the way I act. For example, the Anglican marriage service requires you to promise to stay with your spouse “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health” (my italics). In other words, although a desire to commit oneself may be kick-started by intense passion, commitment implies the intention to stick with the marriage even when misfortune strikes, and this could include the waning of feelings that were once passionate. This is another way of saying that marriage (in Western Christendom at least) has traditionally been seen as a vow rather than a contract, a perception especially reinforced when the ceremony is religious. Of course, contracts also imply a commitment – not to breach them – but they may be time limited, and it may be legitimate to breach them if the other contracting party breaches them first. With vows, things are different. To enter a marriage with the thought “if this goes wrong, or I get bored, I can always get a divorce” may not be to commit oneself at all. This is not to say divorce is always wrong: it is to say that entering into such a relationship, thinking in advance that it is always a possibility, casts doubt on the sincerity of the promise.

This observation is not, per se, a moral argument in favour of commitment. Perhaps, for all that has been said so far, commitment to another person “till death do us part” is unnecessary and irrational. It is only a conceptual point about what commitment involves. This will be discussed later.

What has been suggested so far is that issues about commitment arise both in matters of purely personal significance and for societies, and include questions about the extent to which individuals should let their own interests and desires be circumscribed by what is vaguely described as the “common good”. Furthermore, questions about individual commitment can be subdivided into both philosophical or existential questions about meaning and value and “mundane” questions, for example about whether to commit oneself to a larger mortgage for a bigger house. But is commitment of any kind a good thing per se? Or is it neutral, with a value entirely derived from what it is you are committed to? Can it be bad if reached without adequate consideration? Or, on the contrary, is there a level of deep reflection that is intrinsically inimical to commitment? In what follows, I hope to shed some light on these questions and the tensions they provoke.

Reflective doubt

So to individual commitments again. The actively religious person, for example, tries to live his life in the light of claims to truth, even if he readily acknowledges that there is much more to religion than propositional belief. For example, traditional Christianity has doctrines such as that there exists a God with a certain nature, and affirms in its creeds that a man who lived in first-century Palestine, Jesus of Nazareth, is...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction: the problems
• 2. Love
• 3. Work
• 4. Faith, chance and the ethics of belief
• 5. Boredom and acedia
• 6. Commitment, life and meaning
• Bibliography
• Index