Why Be Moral?

Learning from the Neo-Confucian Cheng Brothers

Yong Huang

• Editorial: SUNY Press
• Año: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781438452920
• Categoría: Theology & Religion
• Categoría: Ethics & Religion

Yong Huang presents a new way of doing comparative philosophy as he demonstrates the resources for contemporary ethics offered by the Cheng brothers, Cheng Hao (1032–1085) and Cheng Yi (1033–1107), canonical neo-Confucian philosophers. Huang departs from the standard method of Chinese/Western comparison, which tends to interest those already interested in Chinese philosophy. While Western-oriented scholars may be excited to learn about Chinese philosophers who have said things similar to what they or their favored philosophers have to say, they hardly find anything philosophically new from such comparative work. Instead of comparing and contrasting philosophers, each chapter of this book discusses a significant topic in Western moral philosophy, examines the representative views on this topic in the Western tradition, identifies their respective difficulties, and discusses how the Cheng brothers have better things to say on the subject. Topics discussed include why one should be moral, how weakness of will is not possible, whether virtue ethics is self-centered, in what sense the political is also personal, how a moral theory can be of an antitheoretical nature, and whether moral metaphysics is still possible in this postmodern and postmetaphysical age.

Chapter 1

Joy (le 樂)

“Why Be Moral?”

1. Introduction

The question “Why be moral?” has long troubled moral philosophers. The question is puzzling, because it does not ask, Why should we be moral? which is relatively easy to answer. For example, we can use Thomas Hobbes’s argument: if we are not moral to each other, we will be living in the state of nature, in which everyone is at war against everyone else. The question is, Why should I be moral? Put more concretely, it is, Why should I be moral to others, particularly if my not being moral to others will not cause them to be equally or even more immoral to me? Obviously, this is a question raised by an egoist who is first of all concerned with his or her self-interest.1 To such a question, we might be tempted to answer: If everyone, just like you, acts immorally to others, thinking that acting immorally will not cause others to be equally immoral, then everyone will act immorally to each other; as a result you will also be treated immorally by others; so you should be moral to others. However, such an answer is obviously not convincing to the person who poses the question: even if this were the case, since at least my being moral to others cannot guarantee that others will be moral to me, why should I be moral to them? It would certainly be much worse to me if I am moral to others while they are immoral to me.2 In this chapter, I first examine the legitimacy of the question (section 2) and the inadequacy of some representative answers to the question in the West (section 3). I then devote the rest of this chapter to presenting what seems to me a more adequate answer to the question provided by the Cheng brothers (sections 4–7). I conclude this chapter with a brief summary of this neo-Confucian answer.

2. The Question of “Why Be Moral?

As absurd as it might appear, this question has been repeatedly posed, rather seriously, in the history of Western philosophy. In the form of “Why should I be just,” it was put most sharply by Glaucon and his brother Adimantus, as devil’s advocates, in Plato’s Republic. Glaucon presents his famous example of Gyges’s ring, a ring that one can use to make oneself visible or invisible at will. Suppose that there are two such rings, with one for a just person and one for an unjust person. On the one hand, the unjust person uses the ring to make himself invisible when doing unjust things and visible when doing just things. This is because, in Glaucon’s example, the unjust person is not someone who consistently does unjust things or does nothing but unjust things. Rather,

the unjust man must act as clever craftsmen do. … The unjust man who attempts injustice rightly must be supposed to escape detection if he is to be altogether unjust, and we must regard the man who is caught as a bungler. For the height of injustice is to seem just without being so. To the perfectly unjust man, then, we must allow him, while committing the greatest wrongs, to have secured for himself the greatest reputation for justice, and if he does happen to trip, we must concede to him the power to correct his mistakes by his ability to speak persuasively if any of his misdeeds come to light. (Plato 1963b, 361a–b)

On the other hand, the just person uses the ring to turn himself invisible when doing just things and visible when not doing just things. This is because

if he [the just man] is going to be thought just he will have honors and gifts because of that esteem. We cannot be sure in that case whether he is just for justice’ sake or for the sake of the gifts and the honors. So we must strip him bare of everything but injustice and make his state the opposite of his imagined counterpart. Though doing no wrong he must have the repute of the greatest injustice, so that he may be put to the test as regards justice through not softening because of ill repute and the consequences thereof. But let him hold on his course unchangeable even unto death, seeming all his life to be unjust though being just. (Plato 1963b, 361c)

In short, if an unjust or immoral person can have the appearance of being just or moral, and a just or moral person can have the appearance of being unjust or immoral, an egoist will ask, “Why should I be just or moral?” Here, as Glaucon’s brother, Adimantus, points out, it seems that injustice pays much better than justice: “[T]he consequences of my being just are, unless I likewise seem so, not assets, they say, but liabilities, labor, and total loss, but if I am unjust and have procured myself a reputation for justice, a godlike life is promised” (Plato 1963b, 365b).

This same question was later raised again by Thomas Hobbes’s “irresponsible fool” and David Hume’s “sensible knave.” In Hobbes’s Leviathan, unsatisfied with their life in the state of nature, in which no one has security, people as rational beings will follow some general rules of reason or laws of nature. The first law is that people ought to endeavor to make peace, and the second law is that they ought to make covenants with each other, in which they mutually agree to lay down some of their natural rights or liberties. It is at this stage that the “irresponsible fool” comes to the scene. He “hath said in his heart there is no such thing as justice, and sometimes also with his tongue, seriously alleging that every man’s conservation and contentment, being committed to his own care, there could be no reason why every man might not do what he thought conduced thereunto; and therefore also to make or not make, keep or not keep, covenants was not against reason when it conduced to one’s benefit” (Hobbes 1998, 15.4). The question the fool has is whether he should honor the covenant he has made with others or whether it is irrational for him not to honor it. His answer is that it is rational for him to honor as well as break the covenant, as long as the action he takes in either case conduces to his benefit, since the “reason,” as the fool understands it, “dictates to every man his own good; and particularly then when it conduces to such a benefit as shall put a man in a condition to neglect not only the dispraise and revilings, but also the power, of other men” (Hobbes 1998, 15.4). Here the fool’s reasoning is this: since it is reasonable to seek one’s own good, what reason do I have to (why should I) keep the covenant (be moral)?

Hume argues for moral virtues from self-interest or self-love (see Baldwin 2004): virtues are beneficial to those who possess them, while vices are harmful to those who are inflicted by them. For example, Hume argues that “avarice, ambition, vanity, and all passions vulgarly, though improperly, comprised under the denomination of self-love are here excluded from our theory concerning the origin of morals, not because they are too weak, but because they have not a proper direction for that purpose” (Hume 1957, 92–93). In other words, they are considered vices not because they are expressions of self-love, but precisely because they cannot serve the purpose of self-love. Just like such “monkish virtues” as celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, and solitude, which Hume thinks should be placed in the catalogues of vices, they “serve to no manner of purpose; neither advance a man’s fortune in the world, nor render him a more valuable member of society; neither qualify him for the entertainment of company, nor increase his power of self-enjoyment[.] We observe, on the contrary, that they cross all these desirable ends, stupefy the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper” (Hume 1957, 91).

He goes on to argue that “the immediate feeling of benevolence and friendship, humanity and kindness is sweet, smooth, tender, and agreeable, independent of all fortune and accidents. … What other passion is there where we shall find so many advantages: an agreeable sentiment, a pleasing consciousness, a good reputation?” (Hume 1957, 102). So he thinks that it is superfluous to prove that “the virtues which are immediately useful or agreeable to the person possessed of them are desirable in a view to self-interest” (Hume 1957, 100). Hume regards such virtues as natural in contrast to justice and fidelity, which he regards as artificial. The main distinction between natural and artificial virtues is that, while one immediately feels that the former are beneficial to oneself, one does not have such a feeling of the latter. For example, a person who borrowed money from others does not feel naturally that it serves his self-interest to return the money. So in the case of artificial virtues, “ ’tis certain, that self-love, when it acts at its liberty, instead of engaging us to honest actions, is the source of all injustice and violence; nor can a man ever correct those vices, without correcting and restraining the natural movements of that appetite” (Hume 1978, 480). To make such correction and restraining, Hume argues that such artificial virtues are not only “absolutely necessary to the well-being of mankind” (Hume 1957, 121), but also to the well-being of each individual. To show this, he makes an interesting analogy: “[T]he same happiness, raised by the social virtue of justice and its subdivisions, may be compared to the building of a vault where each individual stone would, of itself, fall to the ground; nor is the whole fabric supported but by the mutual assistance and combination of its corresponding parts” (Hume 1957, 121). Here, by being part of the building, each stone not only contributes to support the vault but is also being supported by other stones making up the vault. By analogy, by being just, an individual not only contributes to the well-being of mankind but also serves his or her own well-being. It is in this sense that Hume thinks that the artificial virtues ultimately can also be justified by self-love.

It is also here, however, that Hume conceives the possibility of a sensible knave, who, “in particular incidents, may think that an act of iniquity or infidelity will make a considerable addition to his fortune, without causing any considerable breach in the social union and confederacy. That honesty is the best possible policy may be a good general rule, but is liable to many exceptions; and he, it may perhaps be thought, conducts himself with most wisdom, who observes the general rule, and takes advantage of all the exceptions” (Hume 1957, 102). In other words, the sensible knave agrees that acts of justice and fidelity generally contribute to both the well-being of mankind and that of himself. However, there are exceptions. On the one hand, as Hume himself acknowledges, sometimes justice does not contribute to the well-being of mankind. For example, “riches inherited from a parent are in a bad man’s hand the instrument of mischief. The right of succession may, in one instance, be hurtful” (Hume 1957, 121). On the other hand, similarly, sometimes violation of justice may better contribute to one’s fortune, especially when such violations are done wisely so that they will not be found out. So the sensible knave will be just only when it serves his self-interest but will take all opportunities of injustice when such injustices better serve his self-interest.

Understood this way, the question “Why be moral?” has often been regarded as absurd and can be safely ignored. Stephen Toulmin, for example, thinks that this question reaches “the limits of ethical reasoning—that is, the kind of occasion on which questions and considerations of an ethical kind can no longer arise” (Toulmin 1964, 160). In his view, “ethical reasoning may be able to show why we ought to do this action as opposed to that, or advocate this social practice as opposed to that,” but “there is no room within ethics for” the question “why ought one to do what is right.” To be moral is to do what I should do; and to ask, “Why should I be moral?” is to ask, “Why should I do what I should do?” which is “on a level with the question ‘Why are all scarlet things red?’ ” (Toulmin 1964, 162). In other words, for Toulmin, the question “Why should I be moral?” just like the question “Why are all scarlet things red?” is a tautological question. To answer this question, we can only ask a rhetorical question, “What else ‘ought’ one to do?” (Toulmin 1964, 162), just like the answer to the question “Why are scarlet things red?” can only be a rhetorical question: “[W]hat else can scarlet things be?”3

While Toulmin regards this question as illegitimate because it is tautological, F. H. Bradley considers it unreasonable because it is self-contradictory: morality asks us to be not self-interested, but the person who asks the question “Why should I be moral?” is apparently looking for some self-interested reasons for being not self-interested. In his view, when we ask the question of why be moral, we are regarding morality as a means to some further end, but morality is the end in itself. He argues that “to take virtue as a mere means to an ulterior end is in direct antagonism to the voice of the moral consciousness. That consciousness, when unwarped by selfishness and not blinded by sophistry, is convinced that to ask for the Why? is simply immorality; to do good for its own sake is virtue, to do it for some ulterior end or object, not itself good, is never virtue; and never to act but for the sake of an end, other than doing well and right, is the mark of vice” (Bradley 1935, 61–62).4

Is then the question “Why should I be moral?” indeed an unreasonable one? Here, morality tells one what one should do. When we ask people to be moral, we are essentially saying that “you should follow morality”; in other words, we are saying that “you should do what you should do.” So when someone asks the question “Why should I be moral?” the person is indeed asking “Why should I do what I should do?” However, this is not a tautological question. Kai Nielsen makes an important distinction between the moral and nonmoral uses of the word “should.” While the second “should” is indeed used in the moral sense, the first is used in a nonmoral sense. Thus, Nielsen points out:

When I ask, “Why should I be moral?” I am not asking … “What moral reason or reasons have I for being moral?” That indeed is like asking “Why are all scarlet things red?” Rather I am asking, can I, everything considered, give a reason sufficiently strong—a non-moral reason clearly—for my always giving an overriding weight to moral considerations, when they conflict with other considerations, such that I could be shown to be acting irrationally, or at least less rationally than I otherwise would be acting, if I did not give such pride of place to moral considerations? (Nielsen 1989, 286–87)

In other words, the question “Why should I be moral?” asks “whether it is rational for me to be moral,” assuming it is a good thing to be moral. However, if this is the case, does this mean that the question “Why should I be moral” is indeed a self-contradictory question? In appearance it is. Bill Shaw and John Corvino agree with Nielsen’s distinction between moral and nonmoral uses of the word “should.” In their view,

when people ask, “Why should I be moral?” they are not asking “Why (morally) ought I to do what I (morally) ought to do?” Such a question clearly would be circular. Rather, they are asking, “Why is it in my interest to do what I (morally) ought to do?,” “What (non-moral) reasons are there for acting morally?” or “Why should moral claims have any purchase on me in the first place?” (“should” is used here in a non-moral sense). Put in these ways, the question is quite intelligible. (Shaw and Corvino 1996, 374)

According to Shaw and Corvino, the first “should” asks what self-interested reasons I have to do what I ought to do. Since what I ought to do is something not self-interested, the question “Why should I be moral?,” that is, “What self-interested reasons do I have to be not self-interested?” becomes a self-contradictory question. David Copp, however, disagrees. In his view, to ask, “What self-interested reasons do I have to be moral (to be not self-interested)?” is to ask, “Does morality override self-interest? Or does self-interest override morality?” Here, Copp assumes that “there are possible cases in which the overall verdicts of morality and self-interest conflict” and claims that “the conflict between morality and self-interest in conflict cases is therefore a normative conflict; it is conflict between the overall verdicts of different normative standpoints. I take it that the question of whether moral...

Índice

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Joy (le 樂): “Why Be Moral?”
• Chapter 2: Virtue (de 德): Is a Virtuous Person Self-Centered?
• Chapter 3: Knowledge (zhi 知): How Is Weakness of the Will (akrasia) Not Possible?
• Chapter 4: Love (ai 愛): Ethics between Theory and Antitheory
• Chapter 5: Propriety (li 禮): Why the Political Is Also Personal
• Chapter 6: Creativity (li 理): The Metaphysic of Morals or Moral Metaphysics?
• Chapter 7: Classics (Jing 經): Hermeneutics as a Practical Learning
• Appendix: Neo-Confucian Hermeneutics at Work: CHENG Yi’s Philosophical Interpretation of Analects 8.9 and 17.3
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover