ETHICS IN THE HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY Also by Robert f. Cavalier LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN'S TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS: A Transcendental Critique of Ethics
Also by fames Gouinlock JOHN DEWEY'S PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE THE MORAL WRITINGS OF JOHN DEWEY
Also by fames P. Sterba JUSTICE: ALTERNATIVE POLITICAL PERSPECTIVES THE DEMANDS OF JUSTICE JUSTICE IN THEORY AND PRACTICE ETHICS IN THE HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY
Edited by Robert J. Cavalier Coordinator 'Project Theoria: Interactive Video Media for Moral Reasoning' Carnegie Mellon University
James Gouinlock Associate Professor of Philosophy Emory University Atlanta and James P. Sterba Professor of Philosophy University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana
M MACMILLAN Selection and editorial material© Robert J. Cavalier 1989: Chapter 1 ©Arthur Adkins 1989; Chapter 2 ©Alfonso Gomez-Lobo 1989; Chapter 3 ©Thomas Losoncy 1989; Chapter 4 ©Vernon J. Bourke 1989; Chapter 5 ©Larry May 1989; Chapter 6 ©David Fate Norton 1989; Chapter 7 ©Christine Korsgaard 1989; Chapter 8 ©John Lachs 1989; Chapter 9 ©Richard Schacht 1989; Chapter 10 ©James Gouinlock 1989; Chapter 11 ©Hazel E. Barnes 1989; Chapter 12 ©Stephen Darwall1989; Chapter 13 ©James P. Sterba 1989.
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First published 1989
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Ethics in the history of Western philosophy. 1. Ethics. Theories, to 1980 I. Cavalier, Robert J., 1947- II. Gouinlock, James, 1933- III. Sterba, James, P., 1943- 170'.9 ISBN 978-0-333-45244-8 ISBN 978-1-349-20203-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20203-4 Contents
List C'f Figures vi Preface vii Acknowledgements ix Notes on the Contributors xi 1 Plato 1 Arthur Adkins 2 Aristotle 32 Alfonso Gomez-Lobo 3 St Augustine 60 Thomas Losoncy 4 Aquinas 98 Vernon f. Bourke 5 Hobbes 125 Larry May 6 Hume 155 David Fate Norton 7 Kant 201 Christine Korsgaard 8 Mill 244 John Lachs 9 Nietzsche 271 Richard Schacht 10 Dewey 306 James Gouinlock 11 Sartre 335 Hazel E. Barnes 12 Moore to Stevenson 366 Stephen Danvall 13 Toulmin to Rawls 399 James P. Sterba Index 422
v List of Figures
Figure 1 AMOR 77 Figure 2 Analysis of Choice 105
vi Preface
Comprehensive and sustained work in the history of ethics has been suprisingly meagre, especially in light of the dictum that 'an under• standing of philosophy often entails an understanding of the history of philosophy'. Henry Sidgwick' s Outlines of the History of Ethics for English Readers (1886) is the one durable work of the past while Vernon J. Bourke's History of Ethics (1968) and Alasdair Macintyre's A Short History of Ethics (1967) are the only works of the present that can be genuinely recommended. And each of the above contain differences in method and points of emphasis, making them far from the final word on the subject. The weakness of scholarly work in this area can be explained in two ways. The first has to do with the extreme difficulty that a single person would have in trying to think through the entire history of moral philosophy. The difficulty arises from the fact that a true history of ethics is deeper and far more complex than a mere 'summary of positions'. To understand a philosopher's ethical theory, that philosopher must be placed within the immediacy of the specific philosophical issues and the general cultural problems that con• fronted the writer at the time of his work and that formed the frame of reference for the meaning of his position. A true history of ethics takes the form of a historical narrative which contextualises a moral theory in order to achieve a correct understanding of that moral theory. Research into this kind of approach to the history of ethics is critically lacking. The lack of work in this area comes not only out of the difficulty of the task, but also out of a certain attitude taken by 20th-century Anglo-American philosophers with regard to the very idea of moral philosophy itself. Macintyre, in After Virtue (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), sees this attitude in 'the persistently unhistorical treatment of moral philosophy by contemporary phil• osophers in both the writing about and the teaching of the subject' (p. 11). He amplifies this by noting that 'we all too often still treat the moral philosophers of the past as contributors to a single debate with a relatively unvarying subject-matter, treating Plato and Hume and Mill as contemporaries both of ourselves and of each other'. With this attitude, history has become irrelevant to the subject• matter of ethics.
vii viii Preface
This book hopes to overcome both the difficulty of and the attitude towards doing a history of ethics. It seeks to provide a prolegomenon to the writing of a historical narrative through a series of single• author chapters which discuss the context of selected ethical theories as those theories are found in key figures of western philosophy. The emphasis in each case will be on the development of the theory within the specific historical context that formed its immediate frame of reference. The criterion used for choosing the philosophers to be discussed is that the philosopher chosen should be a major systematic writer in the history of western philosophy. The only exception to this rule is in 20th-century Anglo-American ethical theory, where the analytic method tended to produce a series of specialised works and articles that are best represented by a collec• tion of writers rather than a single figure. This is a 'history of ethics' that is valuable for the student wishing to know a certain theory, a scholar wishing to criticise a certain theory, and a person wishing to study the history of ethics in the sense of seeking themes, divergences and convergences. No attempt is made here to draw sweeping conclusions or to make comparative judgements regarding the whole of the history of ethics. Furthermore, our task is not to produce an encyclopaedic view of the entire history of ethics nor to pronounce the final word on any particular philosopher within that history. Rather, we seek to join the recent move in philosophy that recognises the importance of history and context in the ongoing activity of philosophy. We hope that by taking this route we have provided access to these ethical theories, and in such a way that they will become understandable to a broad range of readers.
Robert J. Cavalier Carnegie Mellon University Acknowledgements
A collaborative effort involving years of preparation naturally owes a great many debts to a number of individuals and institutions. We would like first of all to express our gratitude to the Matchette Foundation for supporting a conference on this topic that was held at the University of Notre Dame in the Spring of 1985. Our appreci• ation also extends to the Philosophy Departments of Emory, Notre Dame and Towson State universities. Individuals who have offered helpful comments, encourage• ments, suggestions and criticisms or who have otherwise enabled the book to reach its finished state include: Tom Beauchamp, Jude Dougherty, Wolfgang Fuchs, Jerald Kreyche, James Rachels, J. B. Scheewind and Calvin 0. Schrag. There have been many others besides, and we appreciate all who have helped.
ix Notes on the Contributors
Arthur Adkins was educated at Merton College, Oxford and is currently Edward Olsen Professor of Greek and Professor of Phil• osophy and Early Christian Literature at the University of Chicago. His books include Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values and Moral Values and Political Behavior in Ancient Greece.
Hazel E. Barnes, recently retired from the University of Colorado at Boulder, has been a long-standing interpreter of Sartre's work. She translated Being and Nothingness and is author of An Existentialist Ethics.
Vernon J. Bourke, Professor Emeritus at StLouis University, is one of the world's foremost authorities on Thomas Aquinas. His works include History of Ethics, the Thomistic Bibliography, St. Thomas and the Greek Moralists, The Pocket Aquinas and Aquinas' Search for Wisdom.
Robert J. Cavalier received his degrees from New York University and Duquesne University and taught philosophy at Towson State University from 1981 to 1986. He is currently at Carnegie Mellon University, where he is working on 'Project Theoria: Interactive Video Media for Moral Reasoning'.
Stephen Darwall, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, is the author of Impartial Reason and numerous articles on contemporary ethics.
Alfonso Gomez-Lobo has attended the University of Athens and has degrees from the universities of Tiibingen and Munich, Germany. He is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Greece Program at Georgetown University. His many articles include studies of Aristotle that have appeared in Spanish as well as English philosophical journals.
James Gouinlock received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Columbia University in 1969. He has been teaching in the Department of Philosophy at Emory University since 1971. Before that he taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo and at DePauw University.
xi xii List of Contributors
He has served as both Director of Graduate Studies in Philosophy and as Chairman of the Department at Emory. Dr Gouinlock' s scholarly publications have been principally in the field of American philosophy, especially the philosophy of John Dewey. He is the author of John Dewey's Philosophy of Value and Excellence in Public Discourse: John Stuart Mill, John Dewey, and Social Intelligence. He is also the editor of The Moral Writings of John Dewey. He was on the Executive Committee of the Society for the Advance• ment of American Philosophy from 1978 to 1981 and was President of the Society from 1983 to 1986.
Christine Korsgaard received her degree from Harvard and currently teaches at the University of Chicago. Her articles on Kant include 'Kant's Formula of Humanity' in Kant-Studien, 'Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value' in Ethics and 'The Right to Lie: Kant on Dealing with Evil' in Philosophy and Public Affairs.
John Lachs received his degree from Yale and is currently Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. His writings on Mill include 'Mill on the Happy Man' in Journal of Philosophy and 'Two Views of Happiness in Mill' in The Mill News Letter.
Thomas Losoncy, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University, is founder of the International Patristic, Mediaeval, and Renaissance Conference and author of many articles and papers on medieval philosophy.
Larry May is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University, and received his degree from the New School of Social Research. His publications on Hobbes include 'Hobbes's Contract Theory' in the Journal of the History of Philosophy and 'Hobbes on Equity and Justice' in Hobbes's Science of Natural Justice.
David Fate Norton is one of the foremost authorities on Hume's thought. He is Professor of Philosophy at McGill University and from 1986 to 1987 was a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh. Former editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy, his works on Hume include David Hume: Common Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician and David Hume: Philosophical Historian, edited with R. H. Popkin. List of Contributors xiii
Richard Schacht currently holds the Chair of the Philosophy Depart• ment at the University of Illinois at Urbana. His is the author of Nietzsche and of many articles on Nietzsche.
James P. Sterba is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He specialises in political philosophy and practical ethics. The books he has written or edited include Justice: Alternative Political Perspectives, The Demands of Justice, Morality in Practice, The Ethics of War and Nuclear Deterrence, Contemporary Ethics and How To Make People Just. He is also general editor for Wadsworth's Basic Issues in Philosophy Series.