The Art of Living Well

Moral Experience and Virtue Ethics

Paul van Tongeren, Thomas Heij

• Éditeur: Bloomsbury Academic
• Année: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350012851
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Philosophy
• Sous-sujet: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

In this first English translation of the prize-winning Dutch title Leven is Een Kunst, Paul van Tongeren creates a new kind of virtue ethics, one that centres on how to 'live well' in our contemporary world. While virtue ethics is based on the moral philosophy of Aristotle, it has had many interpretations and iterations throughout history and features prominently in the thinking of the Stoics, Christian narratives and the writings of Nietzsche. The Art of Living Well explores and expands upon these traditions, using them as a basis to form a new interpretation; one that foregrounds art and creativity as paramount to the struggle to act in an authentic and moral way. Acting as both a clear introduction to virtue ethics and moral philosophy and a serious work of original philosophy, this book connects philosophy with real lived experience and tackles, head-on, the perennial philosophical question: 'how do we live well?'

IIHERMENEUTICS AND EXPERIENCE

German philosophers Leonard Nelson and Gustav Heckmann developed a method for philosophical enquiry through conversations based upon the examples set by Socrates. These dialogues are determined by the asking of specific questions. First, one needs a starting question – for example the main question of Plato’s Politeia, ‘what is justice?’; or questions like ‘do we always have to respect the opinions of others?’, ‘is authenticity sufficient for good leadership?’, ‘is patience a virtue, or a sign of weakness?’ and ‘is friendship always a virtue?’ Second, the enquiry itself is done by asking questions, just as Socrates did. However, anyone who would try to only ask the questions that Socrates asks would be done very quickly. In addition to these questions, we also need hypotheses; besides the questions ‘what do you mean?’ or ‘is this correct?’, one also needs a direction to look for an answer – or again, a question: ‘what do you think of the following?’

Although ethics is primarily concerned with the asking of questions, it is only possible to ask a question for someone who is willing to search for answers and to test the possible answers. In the previous chapter, we saw that the asking of ethical questions is both possible and necessary. That’s all very well, but is ethics also able to provide some answers? Can ethics claim to offer knowledge about the good life? In this chapter I will try to answer this question. First I will discuss one of the most astute critics of the knowledge claims made by ethical theories (in section 1). Then I will show what kind of knowledge an ethical theory can develop, and that this happens in different ways because there are different types of ethical theories (in section 2). By elaborating on the themes ‘happiness’ (in section 3) and ‘human dignity’ (in section 4) I shall give examples of the kind of answers that are to be expected from a moral theory. Finally (in section 5) I reconnect that way of doing ethics with the things I wrote on examples in the first chapter. Those who are not interested in the methodological considerations in this chapter can, without any problems, skip the first two sections.

1 A critique on the philosophical pretensions of ethics

In his book Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985) Bernard Williams expressed his critique on the pretensions of ethics. The central question in that book is: what is philosophy capable of with regard to Socrates’ question ‘how to live?’ Can philosophy answer this question? Do you have to philosophize to answer that question? Williams is sceptical about this, not because ethical questions are unanswerable, but because philosophy is unable to help us in finding answers to these questions. However, Williams uses the term ‘philosophy’ in a very specific way: that of a theoretical foundation, justification or test of the answers given to Socrates’ question.

Williams shows the inability of philosophers to provide an answer to the questions of Socrates, unless they themselves are guided by a certain answer. Generally speaking, we can distinguish two types of answers to that question, the two that determine both main types of ethical theories as they are usually distinguished. These are usually referred to as teleology and deontology and are associated with the names of Aristotle and Kant respectively. Teleological ethics starts with an understanding of the telos or purpose of human life or action and tries to reason from there how to act to realize that purpose. Deontological ethics, on the other hand, starts from an original obligation (deon), from which it then derives the rules of the right life. Of both forms of ethics, Williams shows that they only have a justifying power for whoever already agrees with presuppositions of the answer. That, as Aristotle says, leading a virtuous life is in our own best interest, will only be convincing for people who have been educated in such a way that they are interested in a virtuous life. That a certain kind of life is in your best interest cannot be proved except in a way that presupposes that you already share that perspective. There is no external access to the understanding of the moral goodness of virtuous life. Kant rightly states that it is rational for everyone (that is, that everyone has good reasons), from their own interest in freedom, to oblige others not to interfere. That does not, however, necessarily mean that everyone has good reasons to accept what others ask of him or her. The deontological theory says something about what someone would reasonably do if he were purely rational. But real people are never purely rational. You would have to be prepared already to take an impartial viewpoint to follow Kant, but that readiness is by no means self-evident for real people who, after all, always attach more importance to their own interests than those of others. A rational theory not only fails to bring about this willingness, but it cannot even provide a solid basis for it, that is to say: it cannot prove itself to someone who does not already acknowledge it.

We therefore have to start from moral beliefs that are in fact already given and not expect that philosophical ethics can lead us to a certain conviction. But, Williams then asks, is an ethical theory able to test our actual moral beliefs? His answer is once again sceptical and he underpins this scepticism in a discussion of two ethical theories that are known as the most important contemporary forms of teleological and deontological ethics: utilitarianism and contractualism.

Bernard Williams is famous for his ironic criticism of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism, he says, prescribes certain actions from the point of view of an impartial observer, who is omniscient, impersonal and abstract, ‘but otherwise normal’. Of course, such a person does not actually exist. One must always have a motivation to act or to do something, and motives are always personal and relative. Just as we can’t give up our personal involvement ourselves, we would not accept it if our loved ones treated us from a strictly impartial point of view. Judges and politicians must be impartial, but a mother should care more about her own child than about any other child; I expect from my doctor, too, that he acts in my interest and not in a way that would be best in general or that would most serve the public interest.

John Rawls’s contractualism is criticized by Williams in a way that is similar to his criticism of Kant. According to Rawls, rules of justice should be drawn up in a rational discussion in which we hide our personal interests under a ‘veil of ignorance’. However, according to Williams the outcome of this discussion shows that Rawls in fact starts from a certain – liberal – moral understanding of what a person is. That is not a problem in itself, but it is if the theory pretends to say something that would also apply to people who do not share the same prejudice already.

An impartial point of view to build an ethical theory on is impossible; anyone who still presupposes it is in fact concealing a well-defined intuition. Philosophy cannot provide us with compelling reasons for accepting one or the other intuition. Ethical theory cannot provide a foundation for answers to Socrates’ question, and it cannot provide an ultimate test for our moral intuitions: not from ‘outside’ those intuitions, since from there they can never get inside; nor from ‘inside’ those intuitions, since then they will not be able to ‘escape’ them enough to test them. Yet this does not mean that philosophy can do nothing at all in relation to Socrates’ question, or that ethics is only a matter of feeling. It is a question of determining what we mean by ‘philosophy’ and ‘ethics’.

2 Hermeneutics of moral experience

The image of philosophy that emerges from Bernard Williams’s criticism is derived from scientific rationality. Science is about an understanding of the world apart from our own place in it (see Chapter I.3). Williams makes it clear from the outset that his scepticism only concerns these pretentious philosophies, but not every form of ethics. He, too, believes that critical reflection on Socrates’ question is indeed possible, but does not call this reflection ‘ethical theory’, but ‘ethical thinking’. According to Williams, its aim is ‘to help us form a world, that is our world, in which we can lead a social, cultural and personal life’. Williams’s book can therefore be read as a plea for the rehabilitation of practical philosophy that helps us achieve this goal.

This practical philosophy of ‘ethical thinking’ can in my opinion, be characterized as hermeneutic, although Williams himself does not use this term. Throughout the book – and, as far as I know, in the rest of his work – the term ‘hermeneutics’ does not appear. Nevertheless: what he describes as an alternative to ethics, and does not want to call ‘ethical theory’, largely corresponds to what I want to call hermeneutical ethics or ethics as hermeneutics of moral experience. Williams puts it like this: ‘There could be a way of doing moral philosophy that started from the ways in which we experience our ethical life. Such a philosophy would reflect on what we believe, feel, take for granted; the ways in which we confront obligations and recognize responsibility; the sentiments of guilt and shame. It would involve a phenomenology of the ethical life’ (Williams 1985: 93). He immediately adds, however, that this might well be a good philosophy, but most likely would not yield an ethical theory. As I said before, I believe that such a ‘phenomenology of moral life’ can be regarded as hermeneutical ethics. The most important thing is that such an ethics understands its task as an explanation or interpretation. As we explain a poem, we can also try to interpret, so to speak, the text of our own moral experience. In the words of Williams, now supplemented by me: such an ethics wants to explain what we mean by ‘what we believe, feel, take for granted (about what life is all about); by the ways in which we deal with obligations and acknowledge responsibilities; by feelings of guilt and shame’ and so forth. To indicate what this ethics would mean, I will briefly elaborate on a number of characteristics.

First of all, such ethics also considers moral reality and the moral experience from which it departs as an interpretation. Just as the poem itself is an interpretation of meaning that the poet has ‘heard’, so too moral experience is not only an object of interpretation by ethics, but also interpretation by itself: the interpretandum is also an interpretation. This means that moral intuitions or feelings are not explained as ‘facts’ by this ethics, but interpreted and understood as interpretations. For example, sciences such as sociobiology, ethology or brain science may be able to discover facts about moral life and explain them evolutionarily or otherwise: cooperation, for example, will yield an evolutionary advantage; love, insofar as it is connected with sexuality, will have something to do with those parts of the brain that we have in common with other animal species, and so on. Nevertheless, feelings of love and hatred, of trust and community spirit also form an interpretation of ourselves and the people around us, and of the meaning they have for us; interpretations that must be explained in reflections on the difference between love and friendship, between the love you have for your partner and the love you feel for your children, or on the expectations that lie in trust, on when our trust is broken, and so forth. An ethical theory that ignores its own hermeneutical character might mistakenly believe that moral facts, interests for example, exist as neutral data. Such a theory denies that interests only become morally relevant through interpretation; that, for instance, needs only become rights through interpretation. Bernard Williams criticizes utilitarianism as such a naive denial of the hermeneutical nature of reality. If that ethical theory states that acting justly is what satisfies as many preferences as possible, it forgets that those preferences are not neutral things in the world, but interpretations, and it misinterprets them by failing to recognize this. An adequate practical philosophy must therefore first and foremost try to understand the interpretation offered by moral experience. Williams therefore says of ‘ethical reflection’ – which he distinguishes from ‘ethical theory’ – that it does not lead to ‘ethical knowledge’, but that it does produce ‘understanding’ (Williams 1985: 168).

Second, hermeneutical ethics acknowledges that there is no starting point for it other than the interpretations we have in moral experience. So moral experience is not something that should be put between brackets or concealed in a universalistic, rationalistic way. On the contrary: it should be the starting point for our explanations. The ethical theories criticized by Williams try to base certain moral prescriptions on as few presuppositions as possible. For example, they try to put in parentheses what one or the other finds important or valuable, and only assume that people all have interests, to search as neutrally as possible for a rule that can regulate the advocacy of those interests. Instead a hermeneutical ethics offers a reflection that tries to bring out, describe and explain ‘our moral preconceptions’ – i.e. the way in which we always understand ourselves, the other and the world, prior to explicit ethical theorization, in moral terms, in terms of values and meaning. The language of such ethics is not as neutral as possible, but tries to include one’s moral engagement as much as possible. So-called ‘thick’ ethical concepts, such as deceit, promise, coarseness, courage, shame, etc. are not excluded, but are, on the contrary, essential. The fact that these concepts are always personal, that they cannot be separated from the ways in which people feel connected to them, is not an obstacle, but rather a necessary condition for the kind of practical philosophy that is presented here. Hermeneutics provocatively argues that prejudices do not obstruct our understanding, but make it possible. Just as we cannot explain a poem without considering that it appeals to us, we cannot engage in ethics without considering our moral commitment. Instead of trying to reach for a position that is as similar as possible to no specific, personal or individual position at all, we should rather adopt a human position. Or, as Williams puts it: ‘to see the world from a human point of view is not an absurd thing for human beings to do’ (Williams 1985: 118).

The choosing of ethical experience as a starting point brings a certain indeterminacy of the object of ethics. This is not a culpable vagueness but a deliberate attempt to escape strict delimitation. One cannot say what ethics is about without having already started with ‘doing ethics’; your preconception of what is morally relevant will affect your answer. Williams speaks of ‘all those things that are relevant to answering Socrates’ question’, the question ‘how to live?’ Any further delineation is only possible at the price of a certain circularity: morals are those matters that have moral relevance for the answer to that question. It is quite possible that these things differ from person to person, from group to group and from culture to culture – just as different people are touched by different works of art. Nevertheless, my explanation of what is appealing to me may reveal to someone else something that he or she had not noticed before.

Third, if ethics can only start from moral experience, this means that ethical theories that pretend to start elsewhere (‘outside’) must also be, as it were, reread and interpreted as internal interpretations of moral experience as well. Such an approach thus allows or even obliges us to reread the history of philosophical ethics as a collection of interpretations of (aspects of) moral experience, as a series of hermeneutical designs. Aristotle, Kant, utilitarianism and Rawls can – after Williams’s sceptical criticism – be rehabilitated as ‘partial’ interpretations of moral experience. To this end, we must apply an elementary hermeneutical rule: the rule that says that one can only understand a text by reconstructing the question to which it is an answer (Gadamer 1975: 355). If we do so with the different ethical theories, we shall see that it is an illusion to think that they only provide different answers to one and the same question. Kant, Aristotle, Mill and Rawls ask different questions, and they do so because they explain different aspects of the moral experience.

Utilitarianism (a) answers the question: which of the available options promises the most benefit, i.e. offers the best chance of satisfying the most of the desires of the greatest number of people involved? Utilitarianism therefore presupposes a given objective and a given number of possibilities for action. It will inevitably provide relative answers (which option offers a better chance than the other ones?), and it will interpret acting in a ‘poetic’ (in the sense of the Greek poièesis) way (as ‘producing’ satisfaction) and thus use efficiency as an important criterion. Contractualism (b) answers the question of which rules we should agree on. It therefore presupposes a situation that can be characterized as a problem of cooperation between parties with different interests. This question already anticipates an answer in terms of impartiality and accountability. The Kantian duty-based ethics (c) answers the question of whether we are allowed to do the thing we have already done or intend to do. This theory thus focuses on what we ourselves really do, i.e. on our intentions. It seeks a categorical judgement and thus not only presupposes a given law or criterion, but can also only derive this from a concept of human being from which every particularity is removed, that is: humans as purely rational beings. Lastly, virtue ethics (d) answers the question of how we can flourish optimally, and thus understands our actions not as poiesis, but as praxis. Like Kantian ethics, it is not interested in the instrumental, but in t...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Art
• I Ethics and Meaning
• Attention
• II Hermeneutics and Experience
• Relations
• III Virtue and the Art of Living Well
• Love
• IV Greek and Christian
• Patience
• V Nietzsche and/or Aristotle
• Shame
• VI Virtue Ethics in a Disenchanted World
• Aphorisms
• Copyright