Living Philosophy

An Introduction to Moral Thought

Ray Billington

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134453078
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

First published in 2003. Living Philosophy: An introduction to moral thought, Third edition is a thoroughly revised and updated version of its highly successful and popular predecessor. Incorporating several brand new case studies and discussion points, the book introduces central questions in ethical theory to the student and assumes no previous knowledge of philosophy.

Section 1

General Theory of Ethics

1

What is Philosophy?

To state that you are a philosopher is to risk committing social suicide. When asked one’s profession by a stranger, it is usually a conversation-stopper to affirm that one reads or teaches the subject. The image of the philosopher conjured up in many people’s eyes is that of a dilettante, an exponent of ideas and ideals unrelated to the real facts of life; an occupier of an ivory tower giving unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

Yet philosophy is probably the oldest academic discipline known to the human race; one which has occupied the minds of innumerable human beings since time immemorial. From Plato to Wittgenstein, from Aristotle to Russell, fundamental questions about our existence have been asked by philosophers. Why am I here? What is life’s meaning or purpose? Is there an ultimate reality? What can I validly talk about? How am I to determine the difference between right and wrong? Much of the casual conversation in places where people talk comes round to such issues at one time or another.

Assuming, then, that one doesn’t have to have two heads in order to qualify, and that one can be a relatively normal human being in the process (and normality, so far as human beings are concerned, is invariably relative), what exactly is one engaged in when studying philosophy? The word itself is, not surprisingly (since the subject took off with the Greeks of the classical period, 500–400 BCE, of Greek origin. ‘Philo’ means to love, or like, and ‘sophia’ means wisdom. It would be no exaggeration to affirm that this etymological definition takes us little further forward. To declare oneself as a lover of wisdom is to do no more than assert one’s support of rationality against prejudice, of experience against innocence, which is not saying much. But at least it gives us a clue, a hint, as to the meaning of the word. To study philosophy means that one is at least attempting to look a little more deeply into things than may normally be expected. It suggests that the student of the subject will not, as a rule, accept opinions or arguments only at their face value. He or she will look and reflect beyond the headlines of the daily newspaper, above the reverberations of the self-assured know-all, and will feel uneasy when encountering glib answers to complex questions. Instead, one will look for underlying attitudes which influence opinions, create points of view, and determine ideologies – which, in their own turn, may establish procedures. The philosopher will ask ‘Why is this so?’ when faced with an affirmation; ‘are you sure?’, when reacting to a wild statement; ‘on what grounds do you go along with this?’, when confronted with an attitude. For the philosopher, few points of view are likely to be totally cut and dried, right or wrong.

Of course, this does not mean that many philosophers have not made the claim to possessing ‘ultimate truth’. On reading any history of philosophy one will be confronted with a series of men claiming that they have hit on this. Plato, for instance, was convinced that our human ideals reflect the ‘forms’ of heaven; Descartes was sure that reason conquers all – ‘I reflect, therefore I am’; Kant affirmed the infallibility of the good will. However, in recent years, particularly in Britain and America, philosophers have concentrated their attention on the analysis of words and ideas; they have treated philosophy as more a tool than an end in itself. In the right hands, this tool is extremely useful: one of the best books on philosophy that I have read is written by John Hospers and entitled, rather forbiddingly, An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis. In Hospers’s hands the philosophical tool has a sharp edge; unfortunately, in others’ it has been dulled, if not completely blunted: either that, or it has become as pedantic as did theology when the debate raged as to how many angels could stand on the head of a pin. As a result, many English readers of philosophy have, over the past forty or so years, felt themselves being dragooned into a narrow, arid approach to the subject, which, for a considerable number of them, has killed it off. In the light of this, it is not to be wondered at that philosophy has, in some circles, become a word to generate the suspicion that the philosopher has divorced himself from the world that people understand and are comfortable with, the world of relationships, of eating, working, and making love. The search for the philosopher’s stone seems to have produced a number of petrified philosophers.

Philosophical Analysis

Despite these lapses, the analytical process is a good place to start when attempting to describe what philosophy is about. It requires a person to look more deeply at the statements which people bandy about than is normally expected of him. There must be few people who are not willing, at a moment’s notice, to give their opinions on any issue with which they are presented. It may be their view on the government’s handling of the economy, the merits of American football compared with other versions, or the rights of the trade unions under capitalism. Whatever the issue (or almost) the general public can be expected to hold forth with what sounds like conviction. Thus most of the British people, according to media reports, supported the bombing of the Taliban in Afghanistan; most believe that a spouse-poisoner, if not a dog-poisoner, should be hanged; ask anyone in a bar the answer to what is arguably the greatest social problem facing the western world today, racism, and his answer is likely to be breathtaking in its simplicity.

So what does it mean to look more deeply into such matters? The first requirement is obvious, and needs no distinctive contribution from philosophy: that a person should take some trouble to ascertain the facts of a situation before venturing an opinion. This will not always be entirely possible, of course, but it should be enough to prevent the pub bore from mouthing headlines from his Daily Bigot as though he himself had actually done some thinking on the issues. Any expert in any field will expect this kind of self-discipline; what follows from it is peculiarly philosophical: acknowledging and identifying the difference between factual statements and value judgments, between truth, as far as this can be arrived at, and opinion. We shall return to this issue specifically in Chapter 3 but a few initial remarks can be made at this stage.

Statements of fact are those that can be verified, in that they can be tested and shown to be either sound or unsound. Let me make a few factual statements. My pipe is large, compared with others of its genre (if you doubt this, I suggest we meet some time so that I can discover the extent of your willingness to give me a fill of tobacco). The trees in my garden are bare (fact) which is not surprising because it is the month of December (another fact, though not open to verification by you, the reader). Your spelling is good, bad, or somewhere in between, as the case may be: a simple test would quickly verify which is the case. Many, if not most, of our statements can be verified in one way or another. But, whatever proportion of the whole they may be, there remain numerous statements, which we all constantly make, of the type that cannot be verified: they cannot be divided into the categories ‘true’ or ‘false’.

Suppose, for instance, I state that the Marxist interpretation of history is more valid than that of the Roman Catholic Church: on what basis can the ‘truth’ or otherwise of such a statement be tested? I have just read a newspaper article in which the author demonstrates, apparently to his own satisfaction, that there is a connection between violence depicted through the media and violence as expressed in real life: how would one set about proving this thesis? I am informed by a certain set of people that all abortions are wrong because they break the Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill’. Other people, however, assure me equally vehemently that abortions are, and must remain by law, acceptable, because otherwise the woman loses her inalienable right to choose whether or not to continue with the pregnancy. By reference to what set of facts am I supposed to make up my mind on this matter?

The one certain fact about these issues and a thousand like them is that there are no verifiable facts which will enable us to make up our minds about them. Protagonists for any of these points of view may argue as though there were such solid support for their case, but they are blinded by their strength of conviction. Thus those who oppose abortion on the grounds that it is a form of murder have unilaterally decided that the foetus is in fact a person, even if only a potential person. Their opponents, on the other hand, have decided that a potential person is in fact no more an actual person than a tadpole is a frog, a caterpillar a butterfly, or a fertilised egg a chicken. All these judgments, from whatever side, are not factual but value judgments, based on the understanding of each individual concerned as to which forms of human behaviour are most worthwhile, and which standards are most worth upholding. But all these judgments, admirable though we may often think them to be, and though often expressed with passion, conviction and sincerity, belong in the end not to the realm of hard fact but to that of, at best, belief, at worst, fantasy, with hope occupying the middle ground.

It is possible, then, to make certain statements which may be declared to be ‘true’; the earth is round, the Pythagoras theorem is sound, light travels at a certain speed: but the words ‘true’ or ‘false’ can never be used when making evaluative statements. It is true that Reagan’s term in the US presidency was longer than that of Carter; it is not true that he was a better (or worse) president, even if the majority of Americans think one (or other) is the case. Similarly, it is not true that football is a more manly game than tennis, that breeding animals for food or for their skins is wicked, that homosexuality is unnatural. Many people hold strong views on all these issues, but that does not make them true, since there exists no set of facts by reference to which they can be verified; and this situation is changed not one iota by strength of opinion, articulateness of expression or consistency of thought.

So one of the main tasks of the philosopher through the centuries has been to arbitrate within this confusion of provable and unprovable statements. In the process, he often seems to sit on the fence, to the despair, if not actual contempt, of many. But to expect him to come off his fence and provide his fellows with some kind of hierarchy of values in the form, say, of some latter-day Ten Commandments would be looking for him to exceed his role as a philosopher, and as inappropriate as demanding that a book critic should write a bestseller. The philosopher’s task is to analyse statements, not to grade them; he is a teacher, not a preacher. His aim is to increase understanding and tolerance, and the realisation that these two are fellow travellers.

This aspect of philosophy is illustrated by the following conversation:

First philosopher: What do you mean?

Second philosopher: What do you mean, ‘What do you mean?’?

This is a philosophical joke and therefore, like a German joke, is no laughing matter. The question, however, is basic. What do I mean when I call someone an imperialist, or a fascist, a reactionary, or simply immoral? Whatever is meant (and it may be no more than an expression of dislike for the person so addressed) an analysis of the words in relation to the person to whom they allegedly apply will almost certainly reveal that they are no more than an expression of my personal values, which to other people may seem to be merely prejudices.

Philosophy Within Other Disciplines

The philosopher then extends this approach into other disciplines. This is not to say that he claims to make academic judgments relating to those disciplines. No philosopher of history, for example, would presume to have anything worthwhile to say, as a philosopher, about the causes of the civil wars in England or America. What he does claim is the right to bring into question the fundamental assumptions of any discipline, whether in theology, art, science, psychology, history, or elsewhere. The student of medicine, for instance, will be taught that his main concern must be to alleviate suffering and preserve life; and most of the general public expect this of their doctors. But the philosopher must pose the question, what should the doctor do, or recommend, when these two desirable aims are in conflict? This leads inevitably to a discussion about the rights and wrongs of euthanasia – an issue which is at the heart of at least one of the case studies presented in this book.

Philosophy of History

Let’s have a closer look at the first example used, that of history. One of the basic assumptions in this discipline is that there is such a thing as historical certainty, from which lessons can be drawn; without this assumption, it is hard to conceive how anyone could study the subject. But what is the nature of such certainty? Is it the same as ‘historical truth’? It may well be answered that it is a fact that a certain treaty was signed by certain dignitaries at a certain place on a certain date, and that it is the historian’s job to be aware of this. Fine: but is this the stuff of which history is made? These, surely, are no more than the dry bones of the subject: what puts meat on them is the interpretation offered by the historian, the suggestion that event A, carefully chronicled, caused e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface to the first edition
• Preface to the second edition
• Preface to the third edition
• Section 1: General theory of ethics
• Section 2: Approaches to ethical theory
• Section 3: Issues in moral and practical philosophy
• Section 4: The moral agent
• Appendices
• Glossary of terms
• Notes
• Further reading
• Index of names
• Index of subjects