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1. MORAL EXEMPLARISM BETWEEN THEORY and ANTI-THEORY The 105 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XX, 2018, 2, pp. 105-122 ISSN: 1825-5167 Sapienza Università di Roma Dipartimento di Filosofia [email protected] References to moral exemplars run deep into the history of philosophy, as we find them featured in rather disparate context and approaches which span from virtue ethics to moral perfectionism, from existentialism to moral particularism. In the varied and growing contemporary literature on moral exemplarism, we find a number of options that can be brought down to the two rather broad yet distinctive categories of theoretical and anti- theoretical approaches. In the paper, I showcase and contrast these two varieties by taking the views of Zagzebski and Rorty as representative of, respectively, the reference to exemplars as most perfect beings to aspire to and get guidance from, and the use of them as next yet foreign beings to experiment with and get provocation from. Finally, I will draw some consequences for a conception of moral education hinged on unsettlement and transformation rather than on imitation and reproduction. Moral Theory; Moral Education; Spiritual Exercises; Linda Zagzebski; Richard Rorty. 1. MORAL EXEMPLARISM BETWEEN THEORY AND ANTI-THEORY The contemporary orthodoxy in moral philosophy has variously committed to a version of isolationism, bracketing our first order moral views from their philosophical account: that is, the tools and strategies to investigate the most general shape of the moral life should not be influenced by one particular picture of it on pain of jeopardizing the impartiality of our meta-ethical and normative theories alike, hence turning moral reflection into moral preaching of sorts. This theoretical model has been attacked from a number of corners 106 SARIN MARCHETTI by the so-called “anti-theorists”1, who argued against what they take to be the impossible and eventually pernicious task of peeling off one‟s substantive conceptions of the good life from one‟s philosophical accounts of it – a maneuver which, according to this heterodox approach, often conceals precisely those very foundationalist agendas and ambitions moral theorists themselves wove against the moralizers2. With its stress on the importance of exemplar beings in both shaping one‟s conduct and revising one‟s views about how to live up to ethical standards, moral exemplarism sits rather well with, and can be read as belonging to, this feast of anti-theoretical approaches critical of mainstream moral theorizing, or so I will argue. In fact, according to this approach, moral thinking and acting move from the confrontation with embodied excellent human existences that might or might not inspire us and enlighten our conducts in the particular situation we find ourselves in, rather than with allegedly neutral templates which we should accept or reject independently from the standpoint we occupy – templates that nevertheless represent but one precise picture of the moral life as pumped by our allegedly pre-philosophical moral intuitions3. Furthermore, the very modality and goals of moral inquiry are different: while moral theorists seek moral justification and prescriptions via impersonal argumentations, exemplarists seek moral insight and transformation via personal confrontation. While acknowledging the force and opportunity of an exemplarist approach to ethics, I distinguish two main varieties of it: a broadly theoretical one – most articulately and effectively defended by Linda Zagzebski – based on the centrality of the excellence of the exemplar‟s virtues, and a broadly anti- theoretical one based on the centrality of the relationship we establish with the exemplar – which I find congenially articulated in the later work of Richard Rorty. While the former hinges on our capacity to recognize and possibly 1 For the manifesto and classical statement of anti-theory, see Williams 1985, and Clarke and Simpson 1989; for a criticism, see Louden 1992; for a recent, critical assessment of the whole debate, see Fotion 2014. 2 By moralism I here mean both the promotion of one precise moral option in disguise – to be distinguished from the inscription of moral significance into moral reflection itself – and the extension of moral considerations by means of philosophical imposition beyond the boundaries of what is ordinary felt as pertaining to the range of the moral – to be distinguished from the open-endedness of the moral. The multi-faced and wide-ranging topic of moralism has been explored in several of its nuances by Taylor 2012. 3 The battle over moral intuitions is also quite lively, and has been recently reinvigorated by the clash between experimental philosophers and their critics. For a survey and proposal congenial to the perspective advanced here, see Koopman 2012. On these themes, see also Lecaldano 2009. 107 Two Varieties of Moral Exemplarism duplicate the excellent life we read in the words and deeds of the exemplar, driven by the admiration for and aspiration to their lives, the latter hinges on our willingness to be reshaped by our real or imaginary conversations and engagement with such lives, driven by self-scrutiny and self-knowledge. While the former has among its key quests those of defining what exemplars are, how to individuate them and imitate them, the latter is interested in the relationship we establish with them and in how we are possibly displaced and transformed by them. I claim that it is exemplarism of the latter breed that we should endorse if we don't want to ultimately fall back to the prescriptivist, theoretical conception of moral thinking that exemplarism should be critical of. That is to say, it is only when exemplarism is made anti-theoretical that we can prevent it from becoming yet one more arrow in the moralist‟s quiver, thus jeopardizing its fierce opposition to abstractedness, on the one hand, and over-commitment, on the other. What I aim at disclosing is a space for moral reflection which is both morally committed (in the sense of not being morally neutral) and yet not morally charged (that is moralistically driven), where exemplars play the role of those very (concrete as against rarified) devices for moral education through which we explore and possibly transform our understanding and practice of our moral life without being given one to be inculcated from without through strokes of prescriptions. After sketching the blueprint of Zagzebski‟s theoretical model (§2), I shall voice a number of concerns about some of its metaphilosophical and ethical implications (§3), and eventually turn to an different, anti-theoretical rendering of exemplarism as inspired by a line of reasoning drawn from Rorty (§4). Some very general conclusions about the nature and scope of philosophical ethics and some gestures towards the future path to travel will round things up (§5). 2. EXEMPLARS AS EXTRAORDINARY BEINGS In a number of recent writings (most notably, 2010 and 2017), Linda Zagzebski sketched a very sophisticated and skillfully knitted up theory of moral exemplarity through which she aims to reclaim the centrality of extraordinary (virtuous) beings to moral judgment and moral education. Her goals are not so much descriptive and suggestive, but rather prescriptive and foundational in spirit: by offering a categorization and evaluation of the various directions in which exceptionality can be reached and most importantly admired and longed for, she sketches a meta-ethics as well as a 108 SARIN MARCHETTI normative theory of moral value and conduct. Moral exemplars do show what goodness is as well as urge us to realize it. This combo is presented under the auspices of a “radical kind of virtue theory [she] call[s] „exemplarism‟, which is foundational in structure but which is grounded in exemplars of moral goodness, direct reference to which anchors all the moral concepts in the theory” (2010, 41). Zagzebski‟s foundationalism is then grounded on the direct reference to exemplars and the normative role of the universal emotion of admiration. According to this scheme, narratives and tales are those very features of our ordinary moral practices through which we reinforce our confidence in referring to the right kind of people, and such identification is one pre-theoretical aspect of our moral practices that theory must explain and account for. Narratives and tales link the a priori element of moral theory (that is, foundationalism) to the practical aspect of our moral lives though (that is, exemplarism), as Zagzebski remarks at several stages, the resulting theory amounts to no manual for good deeds but rather to something closer to a moral map (2010, 43ss) which is up to the various individual to interpret and put to use. Exemplars possess a distinctive deep psychological structure that makes them maximally good or excellent, and that we can and should carefully observe, even if this natural or acquired endowment might well change among exemplars and through time. We educate the normative emotion of admiration through reflection and further experience, and in so doing we cherish and emulate those extraordinary individuals who handle us maps to get around and live by. Now, Zagzebski notices how admiration and desire are two distinct aspects of goodness, as we admire things we don‟t desire, and desire things we don‟t admire. As against Aristotle, admiration (which opposite is contempt) is depicted as primary to desirability: according to Zagzebski‟s exemplarist moral psychology, key to the moral life is the will (and often obligation) to model ourselves on whom we want to be like. Admiration is a motivating emotion that tracks how things are in the world, and, in this sense, “admirable” works as a thick concept, with the descriptive part as inseparable from the evaluative one. Zagzebski writes: The test of whether someone is admirable is always that we admire her on reflection and continue to admire her after we obtain more information about her and reflect on our emotion and the emotions of those we trust.
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