The Illusion of Freedom Separated from Moral Virtue | Raymond L. Dennehy,
University of San Francisco | IgnatiusInsight.com
The Illusion of Freedom Separated from Moral Virtue | Raymond L. Dennehy, University of San Francisco
http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/dennehy_freedom1_nov07.asp
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Journal of Interdisciplinary
Studies (Vol XIX, 1/2 2007), and is reproduced here by the kind permission of JIS. It won the Oleg Zinam Award for Best
Essay in JIS 2007.
This essay proposes that
liberal democracy cannot survive unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates
its culture. A monistic philosophical conception of virtue ethics has its
roots in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a rationally
defensible basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society. Such
a monistic virtue ethics--insofar as it is a virtue ethics--forms
individual character so that a person not only knows how to act, but
desires to act that way and, moreover, possesses the integration of
character to be able to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for
immoral choices create a bad character that inclines the individual to
increasingly worse choices. A nation whose members lack moral virtue
cannot sustain its commitment to freedom and equality for
all.
FREEDOM AND VIRTUE
The thesis defended in this
essay is that liberal democracy cannot survive unless a monistic virtue
ethics permeates its culture. Two arguments are given in its support.
First, a monistic philosophical conception of virtue ethics has its roots
in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a rationally defensible
basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society. Second, a
monistic virtue ethics--insofar as it is a virtue ethics--forms individual
character so that one not only knows how to act, but desires to act that
way and, what is more, possesses the integration of character to be able
to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices
create a bad character that inclines the individual to increasingly worse
choices. A nation whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its
commitment to freedom and equality for all.
But
liberal democratic doctrine presents a major practical challenge to the
installation of any theory of monistic ethics. Given its commitment to
functioning as a procedural democracy, the challenge springs from two
premises. The first premise is that liberal democracy is committed to
ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom
consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal
democracy is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual
or group behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. These
two premises are implied in John Stuart Mill's famous dictum: "The only
freedom which deserves the name, is that of preserving our own good in our
own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or
impede their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18). Although the argument of
this essay presupposes that liberal democracy is the form of government
best suited to humans insofar as they are rational, autonomous beings, the
two premises are mutually contradictory and, if consistently applied, will
inevitably lead to its self-destruction.
Regarding the first part of the thesis, two questions arise. What is meant
here by "virtue ethics?" And, why virtue ethics, as opposed to other
ethical theories, such as utilitarianism or deontologism? First, virtue
ethics here refers to that state of character that integrates intellect,
will, appetite, and passion, so that one regularly acts in ways that
actualize one's potential to become more fully human. Thus, as Aristotle
enjoins, moral virtue is an "excellence of behavior" (1941: 954-55).
Second, virtue ethics is the ethics of choice because it is the only
ethical theory that grounds itself in the principle that human nature is
universal: since all human beings have the same human nature, they are
bound by the same ethical principles. If there is a single, universal
human nature, it follows that theories of virtue ethics that hold for a
pluralistic understanding of the moral virtues are excluded from what is
here meant by "virtue ethics" (Swanton 2003: 27). And, just because it
understands that to be human is to be embodied, it maintains that ethical
behavior for a human being demands harmony, orchestrated and monitored by
reason, among all the human faculties, intellect, will, passions, and
appetites.
Pope John Paul II called attention to
the mounting danger to democracy from a concept of subjectivity carried to
excess, and a notion of freedom based on the concept of the individual
isolated from society (Dennehy 2006: 50-53). These developments express
themselves in various ways, one of which is the change in the popular
understanding of constitutional rights. Russell Hittinger shows that
whereas in Colonial times rights were perceived as objective claims
against the government, today, personal self-creation, to wit, the right
to privacy, is lauded as the primary constitutional right (1990: 486-99).
This attitude toward subjectivity cannot be separated from a sense of
alienation from nature. Since nature has its own furniture and dynamics,
all too frequently it poses an obstacle to personal ambition. And, since
the body is a part of physical nature, it, too, must be viewed as
obstructive. When the norm for conduct is subjective desire, it is
inevitable that the individual should find himself increasingly in tension
with both nature and society. The tension with society can be handled
diplomaically: the individual limits his behavior by respecting the rights
and desires of others so as to avoid retaliation. The tension with his
body is handled by denial; it is rejected root and branch as a source for
ethical norms of conduct, since it is perceived as an impediment to
personal fulfillment.
For a consistent radical
dualist, who acknowledges only one's soul or self-awareness as his true
self, while seeing his body as, at best, a mere encasement, a virtuous
life is still possible, as Socrates demonstrated in his own actions and
commitments. The Platonic Forms--eternal, perfect, and unchanging--could
furnish the unwavering standards for ethical behavior. But a glorification
of subjectivism to the extent of relegating all external criteria to the
realm of the oppressive demands that, as a matter of principle, freedom
can have no limits. De facto, it will, nonetheless, be limited by
practical considerations of living with other people, but it is perceived
as a reality conceded but never accepted. G. W. F. Hegel rightly saw this
attitude as a dangerous moment in the development of a people's ethics,
since it dichotomizes the personal and the public. The individual
grudgingly obeys the law, while believing that only his conscience has
moral authority (Hegel 1962: 85).
Regarding the
second part of the thesis, given democracy's commitment to pluralism
(diversity), Mill's dictum seems the only defensible possibility for any
political society that regards itself as liberal. But the fatal flaw
appears when that dictum is compared with a possibility and a reality. The
possibility is expressed with the utterance of Mustafa Mond in Aldous
Huxley's novel, Brave New World: "People [here] are happy; they get what
they want, and they never want what they can't get" (1966: 149). The
inhabitants of Huxley's world think that they are free, for all their
desires are gratified. The reality is that they are slaves, incapable of
desiring anything beyond what they have been genetically designed and
conditioned to desire. Like the iconic Alfred E. Newman, they ask, with
candor, "What, me worry?" If there is any sense in which this may be
called "freedom," then perhaps subjective freedom is the term for it, for
they are aware of no limitations to their
desires.
This raises the question: "Is freedom
the personal state of being objectively unrestrained or the subjective
state of not being aware of being restrained?" What is to prevent both
Mill's dictum and Mond's observation from being true simultaneously of the
same group of people? What about a nation whose inhabitants are allowed
the freedom to do everything they may wish to do as long as they do not
violate anyone else's personal freedom, but do not realize that they have
been programmed to desire only what their government determines them to
desire? One might object that such an outcome in a free society, although
possible, is highly improbable, since the majority would not allow the
encroachments on freedom and rights that would initially have to occur
before a techno-totalitarian regime such as Huxley's Brave New World could
come into existence. But the technology involved is merely an instrumental
cause of the illusion of freedom, not the illusion itself. Could there be
other causes?
Is it within the realm of
plausibility that the majority of members of a political society could
think they are free when, in fact, they are not? The answer is "Yes." The
principal cause would be the attempt to preserve a freedom that is
separated from moral virtue. But "would be" is the subjunctive mood and,
thus, belongs to the realm of the merely possible. It is undeniably
possible for a population to suffer from the illusion of being free, but
the real cannot be inferred from the possible. Agreed. But the reality is
already here, evident from practices ratified by legislatures and popular
vote, as well as ratified by the courts as constitutionally protected.
Each counts as an example of the freedom to "choose one's own ends." In
terms of the public vs. private model, they are alleged to belong in the
sphere of private behavior insofar as they pertain to actions that do not
violate the rights of others. Relevant examples include:
1. The
rapid decline of public and private support for objective and substantive
ethics in favor of relativism.
2. The erosion of respect for human
life in Western democracies. Since Roe v. Wade (1973), some 50 million
unborn human lives have been destroyed in the United States alone. That
U.S. Supreme Court decision conferred legal justification for killing more
Americans than the combined number of those killed in the Revolutionary
War, the Civil War (North and South), World Wars I and II, the Korean War,
the Vietnam War, and the first Gulf War (Murti 2006: 57-60). To be sure,
the classical conception of the state's goal to make men moral undoubtedly
produced its share of abuses. Equally certain is the progress in public
acknowledgment of the dignity of human conscience heralded by the
emergence of liberal democracy. Nevertheless, the widespread practice of
abortion in Western democracies shows that monstrous crimes can be allowed
and condoned by a society that from its beginnings has proclaimed its
commitment to the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,
and that in the name of the right to run one's life as one chooses as long
as, by so doing, one respects the rights of others, nevertheless creates
laws, policies, and court decisions that contradict that
commitment.
3. Embryonic stem-cell research uses human beings,
during their earliest stages of development, as objects of scientific
research, not only for the purpose of finding cures for genetically based
illness and defects, but also in the hope of creating designer
humans.
4. The contradiction is manifest in a society that
proclaims its dedication to the protection of the young, while failing to
introduce laws and policies that shield them from easy access to
pornography.
5. The mounting support for same-sex marriage in the
face of the fact that the official and special recognition of marriage in
society has always been intimately tied to procreation and the realization
that men and women are by nature importantly different, a difference
necessary to the proper development of children.
6. Legislative and
judicial violence to the right of free speech. For example, the British
Parliament recently approved a law that makes it illegal for teachers,
even in a Catholic school, to teach that homosexuality is immoral (Bogle
2007: 1). This, apparently, to protect homosexual students from feelings
of unworthiness.
PROCEDURAL VS. FORMATIVE DEMOCRACY
The argument against a
morally neutral conception of freedom collides not only with a fundamental
premise of liberal democracy, but also, it seems, with a central tenet of
what Americans accept as the public philosophy. Michael Sandel succinctly
sets forth that tenet:
"The central idea of the public philosophy
by which we live is that freedom consists in our capacity to choose our
ends for ourselves. Politics should not try to form the character or
cultivate the virtue of its citizens, for to do so would be to "legislate
morality." Government should not affirm, through its policies or laws, any
particular conception of the good life; instead it should provide a
neutral framework of rights within which people can choose their own
values and ends" (1996: 58).
Both conservative
and liberal politics are in agreement that "freedom consists in the
capacity of people to choose their own ends." The disagreement occurs when
one asks whether any specific traits of character are needed for an
individual's exercise of freedom, and who has the responsibility for
overseeing the acquisition of those character traits. Since republican
political theory sees the government's role as that of preparing people to
acquire the virtues needed for sharing in self-rule, deliberating with
other citizens about what the common good is and how it is to be realized,
it entertains a formative conception of politics that demands its
involvement with the moral virtues and chosen goals of its citizens. In
contrast, the past decades have witnessed the greater influence of the
procedural politics of liberal political theory, with its commitment to
ensuring equal justice for all without any officially expressed concern
for its citizens' personal moral state. The differences between the two
theories are real, but they are not what they seem. Both denounce the
government's unjustified interference in the lives of its citizens, but
differ on what constitutes the injustice:
"Liberals invoke the
ideal of neutrality when opposing school prayer, restrictions on abortion
or attempts by Christian fundamentalists to bring their morality into the
public square. Conservatives appeal to neutrality when opposing attempts
by government to impose certain moral restraints--for the sake of workers'
safety or environmental protection or distributive justice--on the market
economy. The ideal of free choice also figures on both sides of the debate
over the welfare state. Republicans have long complained that taxing the
rich to pay for welfare programs for the poor is a form of coerced charity
that violates people's freedom to choose what to do with their own money.
Democrats have long replied that government must ensure all citizens a
decent level of income, housing, education, and health care, on the
grounds that those who are crushed by economic necessity are not truly
free to exercise choice in other domains. Despite their disagreement about
how government should act with respect to individual choice, both sides
assume that freedom consists in the capacity of people to choose their own
ends" (Sandel 1996: 58; emphasis added).
If both
sides seek to defend the same primary value, to wit, the freedom to choose
one's own ends, their conflicting reactions to government intervention in
the lives of its people must hinge on assigning conflicting meanings and
valuations to the phrase, "capacity to choose their own ends." And thereby
hangs a tale.
TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY
At stake here is the clash
between two concepts of liberty: negative liberty and positive liberty.
Simply expressed, negative liberty holds that freedom is the absence of
external restraint, while positive liberty holds that freedom is the
opportunity to do what is worth doing. In the Anglo-American tradition,
liberalism subscribes to negative freedom. That is the underlying
rationale for Mill's statement that: "The only freedom which deserves the
name, is that of preserving our own good in our own way, so long as we do
not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain
it" (1954: 18).
In contrast, a review of the
Continental tradition shows that liberalism is predominantly identified
with positive liberty, a tradition that extends back to ancient times (De
Riggiero 1959). The classical political philosophers--Plato, Aristotle,
Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas--agreed that the primary aim of the state
was to make its members moral. Plato's notion that "the State is the
individual writ large," regardless of the metaphysical view that underlies
it, in itself merely reflects the ancient Greek conception of the polis or
city-state, which recognized no distinction between the individual's good
and the good of the city-state. For the ancient Greeks, citizenship did
not mean rights against the state, but rather membership in it, the
opportunity to participate in the activities and life of the community
(Sabine 1953: 742). It is no exaggeration to say that this participation
was viewed as one with the state's commitment to the moral life of its
citizens. This is evident in the Republic, where Plato argues that the aim
of the state is the implementation of justice, a concept which, for him,
refers both to the external relations of men and to their internal states
of the soul, as well (1992: 116-21). Aristotle echoes this view (1941:
935-36).
The classical view of the individual's
relation to political society underwent a gradual yet, in the end, radical
change. The impact of Christianity on Greco-Roman culture transformed the
understanding of that relationship. No longer did the individual exist
primarily for the city-state or empire, for now he could look to a destiny
in eternity with his Creator. To be sure, there was also the influence of
Stoicism, which rejected the view that the individual had meaning and
value only in virtue of membership in the city-state. Stoic philosophy
insisted, on the contrary, that everyone, whether belonging to a
city-state or not, was a world citizen, a civitas maxime. The
deepening sense of the nature and dignity of the human person was
accompanied by a corresponding reassessment of the nature and extent of
the monarch's authority (Maritain 1966: 30-33). This transformation in the
understanding of the individual's relation to political society caused, in
turn, a shift in the standard of what constituted moral behavior. In place
of the city-state and empire, the transcendent God became the standard.
For example, Martin Luther's emphasis on conscience, rather than the
Church, as the direct voice of God's will for the individual, widened
further the gap between the individual and earthly institutions (Plamenatz
1963: 175). And, while it is true that a corresponding expansion of
personal freedom was acknowledged, the new sense of freedom was a freedom
from temporal, not divine, laws.
The
classical-Christian view was supplanted in the sixteenth century by Nicolo
Machiavelli who, in his manual of practical politics, formally separated
politics from morality:
"there is such a distance from how one
lives to how one ought to live that he who abandons what is done for what
ought to be done learns what will ruin him rather than what will save him,
since a man who would wish to make a career of being good in every detail
must come to ruin among so many who are not good. Hence it is necessary
for a prince, if he wishes to maintain himself, to learn to be able to be
not good, and to use this faculty and not use it according to necessity .
. . . For, if everything be well considered, something will be found that
will appear a virtue, but will lead to his ruin if adopted; and something
else that will appear a vice, if adopted, will result in his security and
well-being" (2005: 87-88).
If Machiavelli
deserves credit for the separation of morals and law, the secularization
of political theory seems to have begun with Marsilius of Padua who
interpreted Aristotle to mean that politics reached no further than the
tangible world: "Marsilius completely despiritualized politics and thereby
eliminated the transcendent from any place in the world of men, a position
quite the opposite of both Aristotle and Aquinas" (Schall 1984: 173).
Subsequent political theory was characterized by moral neutrality,
surfacing in the twentieth century as
Realpolitik.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's
Social Contract is a reaction to Machiavellianism. Therein, he
attempts to rebuild democracy on the foundation of the Greek city-state,
fusing, once more, morality and politics: "the State or the City is
nothing but a moral person the life of which consists in the union of its
members" (Rousseau 1960: 276). Accordingly, he recognizes no distinction
between the individual's moral liberty (which for Rousseau is the only
genuine liberty) and his political or civil liberty. Hence, he can write
that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be free" (Rousseau 1960:
262-63). This classical idea of the city-state was picked up and developed
by Hegel: "The State is the actuality of the ethical idea" (1962: 107).
This is not to overlook important differences between Rousseau's concept
of the General Will and Hegel's theory of the State as Ethical Idea. For
example, Hegel criticizes Rousseau for making the General Will a mere
extension of the individual's conscious will, instead of properly making
it the "absolute or rational will" (Hegel 1962: 33). Yet both thinkers
sounded the alarm against the rise of amoral politics, and shared the
ambition of restoring the goal of classical political theory to make men
moral. That ambition carried over into British political theory,
exemplified in the writings of neo-Hegelians like Bernard Bosanquet (1920:
194) and Thomas H. Green (1960: 31-32), which examined the relation of the
individual to society as the preface to their challenges to the notion of
negative freedom espoused by advocates of laissez-faire
economics.
The concept of positive liberty is
complex, more so than negative liberty. For one thing, there seem to be
two distinct versions of positive liberty, which may be characterized as
the metaphysical/ethical and pragmatic versions. It is important to
separate the two, as the former grounds freedom in objective moral
principles, while the latter looks instead to socio-economic and
psychological conditions that enhance the individual's capacity to
actualize one's choices. Advocates of the metaphysical version, such as
Rousseau, Hegel, and Bosanquet, hold that freedom consists in being one's
own master. Self-mastery requires a virtuous character, since it implies
the capacity to act in accordance with reason, which is impossible without
a virtuous character. In terms of political liberty, this means obeying
the laws of the state, which is construed as the embodiment of reason, so
that in that obedience, one is really obeying one's higher
self.
The pragmatic version is clearly the
conception of freedom embraced by liberal political theory. Its advocates,
like John Dewey, along with his present-day descendant, Richard Rorty, are
directly interested more in the individual's socio-economic condition than
in his moral and rational development. They hold that freedom is having
the opportunity to do what is worth doing (Dewey 1963a: 7). In terms of
the individual's freedom, this version, as with the ethical version, means
obeying the laws of the state, but they do not ascribe metaphysical or
ethical properties to it. Rather, they see the cultural traditions, laws,
and social institutions of political society as furnishing the conditions
for the individual's fulfillment. It is as a member of a civilized society
that one actualizes one's potential. Hence, Dewey wrote that freedom
consists in the ability to participate in the cultural riches of modern
democratic society (1963b: 5). In this sense, the pragmatic version of
positive liberty resembles that of classical political theorists, but the
resemblance ends there.
Most telling of all is
that, in contrast to classical theorists, proponents of the pragmatic
version do not necessarily acknowledge an objective or absolute standard.
They do appeal to standards like "self-realization" and "spiritual
enrichment," but interpret them broadly to mean such things as feeling
that one's work is important or avoiding poverty and economic in-security.
In criticizing negative liberty, advocates of the pragmatic version of
positive freedom do not deny that the absence of restraint is the primary
condition of freedom. What they deny is that this condition alone makes an
individual free. Freedom, they insist, depends on the presence of certain
socio-economic conditions, without which a person cannot do what he
wishes, or at least cannot do what a civilized person ought to be able to
do. Practically speaking, he or she is not free.
The rationale for this view rests on a distinction between formal and
effective freedom (Dewey 1963b: 34-35). From a formal standpoint, freedom
is the absence of external restraint; but this, according to advocates of
the pragmatic version, is a hollow criterion. It fails to take into
account the individual's specific circumstances. No doubt, every theory of
political liberty, even versions of negative liberty, assumes to some
extent the conditions or opportunities necessary to act on one's
decisions, but for advocates of the pragmatic version of positive liberty,
these are of central importance. Freedom, they say, must be effective; it
must be the freedom to do something worth doing. The absence of external
restraint guarantees the freedom of someone who enjoys favorable
circumstances, such as enough money and education, but that guarantee does
not extend to one who lacks them. This was the argument successfully
deployed against laissez-faire politicians in nineteenth-century Britain
by the neo-liberal movement for government interventionist legislation to
help factory workers in labor negotiations with factory owners. The latter
resisted proposed laws that would regulate labor negotiations by insisting
that such would violate the freedom of owner and worker to arrive at a
mutually agreeable labor contract. Factory owners claimed that if the
worker found the contract unacceptable, he was always free to find
employment at a factory that had an acceptable contract. But attempts to
prevent the legislation failed when it became clear that factory owners
were united in standing firm behind the same working conditions (Green
1964: 51-52).
Although advocates of the
pragmatic version of freedom maintain that they are improving the
possibilities for the exercise of the very freedom that advocates of
negative freedom seek, the tension between them seems irreconcilable.
Consider, for example, the different ways in which the Herbert Hoover and
Franklin Delano Roosevelt administrations reacted to the Great Depression
in the United States. Hoover believed that the entry of the federal
government into the economy constituted interference with free enterprise
and, accordingly, refused to allow massive government assistance to the
depressed economy. Roosevelt held the opposite view, and reacted
accordingly. Not surprisingly, Hoover embraced the negative concept of
freedom (1934: 107-35), whereas Roosevelt conceived freedom as positive
(Schlesinger 1957, 1: 424; II: 651-52).
The
classical objection to positive liberty is that, by confusing freedom with
things like justice, goodness, one's higher self, or the laws of the
state, its application leads to an oppressive political society in which
its members are deluded in the belief that even when the law restrains
them from doing what they wish to do, and requires them to do what they do
not wish to do, they are nevertheless "free." Perhaps the most dramatic
expression of this is Rousseau's claim that "it may be necessary to compel
a man to be free" (1960: 262-53). History offers sufficient evidence of
the threat to individual freedom posed by the identification of freedom
with the state or with things other than choosing one's own goals. But
critics of negative liberty have found ample evidence of threats to the
individual from attempts of procedural democracy to form policies based on
moral neutrality, illustrated by the legalization of abortion, embryonic
stem-cell research, and sexual promiscuity. Accordingly, they warn that
what Plato called the "greed for freedom" will lead to the moral collapse
of civil polity and the emergence of tyranny (1992:
227-38).
Here, it would be well to return to the
two premises set forth in the first paragraph of this essay. The first is
that liberal democracy is committed to ensuring its individual members the
widest latitude of personal freedom consistent with the freedom of others.
The second is that liberal democracy is committed to moral neutrality in
all matters where individual or group behavior does not violate the rights
and freedom of others. Striving to fulfill the promise of Dewey's
liberalism in contemporary democracy, Rorty advocates the abandonment of
all absolutes in favor of a kind of mule-trading of principles that leads
to "reflective equilibrium," by which he means the best practical
allocation of justice in society (1991: 190). But, surely, some principles
are non-negotiable, such as the right of the innocent to life. If both
negative liberty and the metaphysical/ethical version of positive liberty
are unacceptable as the standard of democratic freedom, on what basis can
the theory of monistic virtue ethics lay claim to providing the
solution?
THE NATURAL LAW FOUNDATION OF VIRTUE ETHICS
American democracy has its
foundation in natural law, as is clear from the Declaration of
Independence. Since the monistic theory of virtue ethics maintains that
the standard of moral conduct is human nature properly ordered, and that
that nature is universal, it follows that it presupposes natural law
theory. For, if there is a single human nature, it follows that all humans
will have the same exigencies, display the same drives, and hence be bound
by the same essential principles. Nominalists deny that there is such a
thing as a real human nature or essence, but besides courting nonsense,
nominalism is inconsistent with a universal declaration of human rights or
any rational defense of civil rights. Only if all humans are essentially
the same (this excludes morally irrelevant characteristics such as race,
state of health, economic condition) are they all entitled in justice to
the moral and legal considerations called "rights." That is why an
epistemological nominalist like Rorty can only propose pragmatic social
policies. Since he maintains that our philosophical claims are culturally
and historically bound, there is no "God's eye view" from which we can
view reality (Rorty 1991: 202). Our picture of ourselves and nature is
irredeemably ethnocentric.
Moreover, public
discourse is the lifeblood of democracy, but no constructive discourse is
possible without commonly accepted principles, many of which originate in
natural law theory. Equally important is that because the natural law is
knowable by unaided reason, religious pluralism is compatible with public
discourse to the extent that reason transcends all ethnocentric and
religious boundaries. It is the coin of the (world) realm (Murray 1960:
30-33).
To grasp the precise connection between
natural law and moral virtue, it is necessary to avoid confusion over
terms. In common parlance, "natural" is a synonym for spontaneous
occurrences, such as the sprouting of sapling trees, dogs growling over a
bone, or reflexively throwing one's hands up to one's head to fend off a
thrown object. This use of the word juxtaposes the natural to the
artificial, which embraces all products of human artifice. Since aspirin
and eyeglasses are artificial, instead of natural, the use of "natural" to
express moral approval and "unnatural" to express moral condemnation may
seem comical.
But in the natural law tradition,
"natural" is intended in the sense of the Greek word for nature,
physis: "The conception underlying that term sees nature itself as
teleological: a striving for fulfillment (horme) is attributed to
all natural entities, including human beings. What allows an entity to
actualize the potentials of its determinate nature, its essence, and
thereby to attain its perfection (telos) is natural and therefore
good or desirable; what frustrates its actualization is evil or
undesirable" (Dennehy 1993: 630). With this understanding of "natural,"
the products of human artifice are not necessarily unnatural, since they
may contribute to the positive actualization of human nature: aspirin
alleviates pain; eye glasses facilitate the aim of the eye, which is to
see; the formation of political society is necessary for human
flourishing. The telos of each living thing is determined by its
essence or nature. Thus, the theory of natural law derives from the human
understanding that "there is, by the very virtue of human nature, an order
or a disposition which human reason can discover and according to which
the human will must act in order to attune itself to the essential and
necessary ends of the human being. The unwritten law, or natural law, is
nothing more than that" (Maritain 1966: 86).
An
objection frequently raised against natural law is that if it is indeed
natural, how come all peoples do not follow the same set of moral laws?
The answer is epistemological and ethical. Regarding the epistemological,
one can, following Maritain, distinguish between the ontological and
gnoseological aspects of natural law. The former term refers to human
nature or essence as it really is; the latter refers to one's
understanding of that nature. Historical and social forces have much to do
with how a people understand moral behavior. The more clearly they grasp
human nature and its exigencies, the more closely their moral behavior
conforms to natural law. Thus, natural law does not change because human
nature does not change (Maritain 1966: 85-89). What changes is knowledge
of human nature--for better or for worse.
The
moral virtues, chief among them prudence, justice, fortitude, and
temperance, play an indispensable part in the fulfillment of natural law.
However, establishing that connection requires several preliminary steps.
First, there is a preamble to natural law: "Do good and avoid evil"
(Aquinas 1945: 774). This is implied in all action, for no one acts except
to obtain what is good or avoid what is evil. The mugger forcibly takes
the woman's purse, since acquiring money in that way appears to him to be
good, that is, desirable; the child tries to avoid eating the vegetables
on his plate, because eating them appears to him to be undesirable. These
are examples of viewer-relative perceptions insofar as they refer to
actions that are objectively morally evil, although appearing to be good.
One might understandably suppose that, as such, they are hardly salutary
examples of natural law whose principles are supposedly universally and
objectively correct. The bridge between subjective, viewer-relative
perception and objective moral law is found in spontaneous human
strivings, which Aquinas calls "primary principles: the inclination to
preserve one's life is the natural law ground for the prohibition of
murder; the attraction between the sexes is the natural law ground for
marriage and family; the inclination of humans to live together in society
is the natural law ground for justice since to live in society requires
respect for people" (Aquinas 1945: 775).
The
problem with abstract principles is that applying them in concrete
situations generates variables, the more concrete the situation, the more
variables. For example, it is one thing to get agreement on the statement,
"Murder is wrong," but quite another to find agreement on whether a
particular act of homicide counts as murder. It is one thing to get
agreement on the statement, "Stealing is wrong," but quite another to get
agreement when someone sneaks food from a grocery market to feed a
starving family. The moral virtues provide the bridge between the
principles of natural law ethics and proper action. The virtues of
justice, fortitude, and temperance give the agent the right ends to
pursue, while the virtue of prudence tells him what means to choose, in
the particular situation, to realize those ends (Aristotle 1941: 1026).
Knowing the proper means to a desired end is not the only thing needed for
virtuous action; one must also desire the end. Most important of all,
since ethics has its fulfillment not in thinking, but in acting, the
virtue of prudence does not simply show what means will lead to the
virtuous goal, it commands that they be used. It does not say, "It is
wrong to steal that person's wallet"; rather, it issues a command, "Do not
steal that wallet." Thus, virtuous behavior demands more than a
theoretical knowledge of which actions are to be done and which avoided;
one must possess the practical virtues to execute the decisions that a
virtuous person would make.
"President Clinton's
so smart, how could he get himself involved with Monica Lewinsky, when he
knew they were investigating him in the Paula Jones case?" So exclaimed an
obviously intelligent and educated panelist on a CNN talk show at the
beginning of the Clinton impeachment process. A common error in ethical
deliberation is the assumption that the criterion for judging whether
actions are moral or immoral is the same for judging whether statements
are true or false. The above question is a case in point. Its author
failed to understand that morality is not in the intellect, but in the
will. People frequently act contrary to what they know they ought and
ought not to do. The respective criteria for truth and action are
importantly different. The criterion for truth is conformity between
thought and thing. The statement, "It is raining out," is true, if it is
raining out. Its truth depends on actual meteorological conditions, which
is to say that those conditions, whatever they may be, exist independently
of whatever may be said about them.
The opposite
obtains in ethics. The criterion for truth in moral action is the
conformity of the will to right desire (Simon 2002: 10). Unlike the
criterion for a true statement, the conformity is not between the agent
and a preexisting reality. On the contrary, the agent's choice creates the
reality, first, by altering the external state of affairs and affecting
others, and second, by either strengthening or weakening his or her
character. Thus, matching one's will to right desire requires more than
merely knowing how one ought to behave. To reiterate, one must desire to
behave according to right desire, and also possess the integration of
intellect, will, passion, and appetite to translate the desire to behave
according to right desire into acting according to right desire. It is not
surprising, therefore, that Plato's educational regimen for children
chosen to become philosopher-kings was to last a full thirty-five years,
consisting as much of character formation as intellectual acumen. Moral
virtue required the integration of all one's faculties--intellect, will,
passion, and appetite.
Plato's student,
Aristotle, gave fuller articulation to the nature and requirements of
moral virtue by separating practical wisdom (phronesis) from
theoretical wisdom (sophia), thereby rejecting the Socratic
principle that no one deliberately does evil (1941: 1028-29). On the
contrary, Aristotle observed, just as one can know what medicine to take
and yet not take it, so one can know how one ought to act and yet fail to
act that way (1941: 956). As if to anticipate a criticism of Kantian
ethics, he insisted that one who has to struggle to resist the urge to
overindulge does not have the virtue of temperance, since the very
struggle betrays a lack of integration among his faculties (Aristotle
1941: 1050). One starts on the path of acquiring moral virtue by first
acting as a virtuous person would act until one can perform virtuous
actions easily and pleasurably. To avoid mistaking the mimicry of virtuous
action for the real thing, Aristotle held that the latter must have the
following three characteristics: (1) the agent must know what he is doing;
(2) he must choose the action for its own sake; (3) the act must proceed
from a fixed and permanent state of character (1941:
956).
The popular conception of the penalty for
immoral behavior is some sort of physical, mental, or socio-economic harm
to oneself: excessive drinking causes liver damage or loss of employment;
lying leads to the loss of trust among one's family and associates, etc.
While no one would deny that those are undesirable outcomes, classical
moral theorists insisted that the price to be paid for immoral behavior is
worse: the loss of rational control. Some challenge the view that a chosen
immoral act is an expression of irrational behavior. Candace Vogler, for
example, sees no reason why one who successfully plans and performs
immoral acts on a regular basis in order to attain his or her goals cannot
be said to be acting rationally (2002: 40-41). But, she is clearly using
the word "rational" analogously. The agent's behavior is "rational" in the
sense that it is the result of sound deliberation and efficient
execution.
But, in the sense of rational
entertained by classical moral theorists, his or her behavior is
irrational because it cannot lead to the goal that everyone seeks. From
the subjective standpoint, the goal is happiness; from the objective
standpoint, the goal, according to Aquinas, say, is eternity in the
presence of God (Vogler 2002: 34). Socrates zeroed in on what makes the
actions of even the most successful of immoral people, the tyrant,
irrational. Having made his way to the top by lying, cheating, betraying,
and murdering, he can only associate with his own kind--liars, cheaters,
betrayers, and murderers. His own untrustworthiness condemns him to be
surrounded by deputies whom he cannot trust. More relevant, having failed
to integrate his appetites and passions with reason, the tyrant is now
held in thrall by his own unruly and self-destructive urges (Plato 1992:
249-51).
So, there are at least two reasons why
Vogler's immoral agent does not act rationally. First, by a career of
immoral scheming and choosing, he has sold himself into slavery, riveting
his will to the evil rather than the good. Admittedly, his choices may be
called "rational" in the sense that his planning and acting are logically
derived from, and consistent with, his immoral attachments. But, that is a
different sense of "rational" from the sense of the word when applied to
moral behavior. Second, immoral choices have blinded him to the true state
of his life and circumstances. He may feel free, and believe he is acting
freely, but this is a merely subjective freedom, based on his belief that
his choices and actions are unrestrained. Like members of Huxley's Brave
New World, they are slaves living delusions of
freedom.
Consider, for example, the virtue of
chastity, which is the cardinal virtue of temperance as the latter
pertains to sexual appetite. The term "chastity" is badly misunderstood.
The modern world identifies it with the prudish view that regards
sexuality with disdain and even fear; thus, one is chaste to the extent
that one is not sullied by sexual behavior. But, rather than pertaining to
a Gnostic or Manichean prudishness toward bodily functions, the
etymological roots of "chastity" refer to purity or clarity of vision in
matters of sexual behavior. The chaste person is one who sees the other
person for what he or she is, a being of dignity for whom appropriate
respect and justice are due. In contrast, one who has become enslaved by
the vice of lust no longer sees the other in a true light. Just as the
lion cannot appreciate the stag for its grace and beauty, but only as
food, so the lustful person can only see another person as a source of
sexual gratification (Pieper 1975: 166-67). Or, if the vice is greed, the
other is perceived as a source of monetary enrichment, and the like. Of
course, references to sight are meant to be analogical. The state of vice
does not blind one to the truth that the other is a human being, a person
for whom justice demands respect. But, to the extent that vice corrupts
reason, the focus on the other person is distorted by the desire for
gratification.
The libertarian argument for the
legalization of drugs pinpoints the problem of freedom. The argument has
two prongs. The first is that attempts by federal and local authorities to
stanch the flow of drugs into America have been a spectacular failure
(Nadelman 2004: 1). The second is that a mentally competent adult has the
right to ingest whatever substance he or she chooses, as long as that
behavior does not violate the rights of others. But, would a permissive
government policy pertaining to the sale and use of narcotics produce a
better, or at least no worse, set of conditions for human flourishing? A
population lacking the virtue of temperance so that the majority of its
members make sensual gratification their criterion of valorization, can be
counted on to conclude, when voting for a political candidate or law, that
what guarantees that gratification is what is good for
democracy.
THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM
The illusion reveals itself
in the inconsistency between the criticism of objective moral norms as the
fulfillment of personal freedom and the fact that living and acting
without moral virtue inevitably yokes one's will to one and the same
object of desire. The standard criticism of positive freedom is that the
demand that one act according to putative objective standards in order to
be free is to confuse freedom with things, which, however laudable--truth,
justice, beauty, goodness, or the law--are not what freedom is. The
criticism goes on to say that the confusion is dangerous, since it can
delude a population into believing that their adherence to those kinds of
lofty standards makes them free when it fact it allows an oppressive
regime to control their lives (Berlin 1961:
9-10).
But a characteristic of the lack of
virtue, and surely of the state of vice, is the will's enslavement to a
specific object of desire. So, despite insisting that to be free, the
individual must have before him a range of options, the lack of virtue
produces the opposite: prospective choices are inevitably evaluated in
terms of their relation to the principal object of one's vice. Kant's
heteronomous man looks as though he chooses on the basis of a
consideration of options, but his will is necessitated to only one of
them--the object of his vice (1993: 45-48). From the viewpoint of a formal
consideration, the structure of the choice is like that of one who guides
his choices by moral virtue insofar as those choices are guided by a
standard external to his subjective self. But from the viewpoint of a
material consideration, the two could not be farther apart. The virtuous
agent chooses according to a rule of reason (orthos logos; recta
ratio) the locus of which is the organization of passions and
appetites according to reason.
The emergence of
liberal democracy signals a deepened understanding of the dignity and
freedom of the human person, the integrity of conscience, and the equality
of all human beings. But in a finite existence, to fill a hole, one must
dig a hole. For all its glories, liberal democratic theory has lost sight
of the individual's connection with the political community. Granting the
dangers inherent in Rousseau's theory that each individual is a
manifestation of the General will or Hegel's view that individuals are
microcosms of the State, or other totalitarian theories in which the
individual has no meaning or value apart from the state, liberal theory
seems to have traveled in the opposite direction, construing the
individual's relation to the political community primarily in utilitarian
terms. This has blinded liberal democracy to the meaning of Plato's
observation that "the State is man writ large": the moral condition of the
political community expresses the moral condition of its members. It would
be well to remember that Hitler and his Nazi Party gained control of
Germany following free elections.
If positive
freedom, especially the metaphysical version, poses threats to a people's
freedom to choose their own ends by imposing the state or a higher self as
one's true self, so that one is deluded into believing that by obeying the
law, one is really obeying oneself, negative freedom hardly offers a
better prospect. The possibility of a nation enslaved in their respective
and collective actions by their vices, but believing they act freely
because they do what they wish, is as disturbing as it is
plausible.
Virtue ethics offers the solution to
the extent that it furnishes the standard for action based on
understanding and choice unhampered by un-disciplined passions and
appetites. For the virtuous person, freedom is negative in the truest
sense insofar as he or she enjoys a freedom from both external restraints
and the inner restraints of vice. That is the route to human flourishing,
both for self-fulfillment and preparation for citizenship. The argument
for a virtuous society must not be allowed to go begging. Thomas Aquinas
observed that after one loses the virtue of chastity, thereby succumbing
to the vice of lust, the next virtue to be lost is justice, the obligation
to pay each his due. That is because vice, being a malignancy,
metastasizes. First, there was the sexual revolution, accompanied by the
mainstream acceptance of pornography; then legalization of abortion on
request; and now the movement to legalize physician-assisted suicide and
infanticide (Verhagen & Sauer 2005: 960). The objectification of women
as sexual objects has led to the creation of a new social category: a
class of disposable people, to wit the unborn, the sickly and deformed,
and the elderly. Hardly a desirable policy for democratic societies,
regardless of whether they are procedural or formative polities. For if,
indeed, what the American people want most is the freedom to choose their
own goals, why do they not acknowledge that the freedom to kill the
innocent and defense-less contradicts any democratic freedom, for it is
the freedom of the strong against the weak who have no choice but to
submit (Pope John Paul II 1995: 28-29).
The
enduring ideal is a democracy that confers the widest latitude for
personal freedom on its members, the vast majority of whom, including
elected officials and judges, have characters shaped by a monistic virtue
ethics. The crucial question is, who has the responsibility of inculcating
ethics in society? The cackling of the sacred geese warned ancient Rome of
impending danger. Where are our geese?
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Raymond L.
Dennehy is Professor
of Philosophy at the University of San Francisco.
After serving from 1954-58 as a radarman in the U.S. Navy aboard the heavy
cruiser, USS Rochester in the Pacific Theater of Operations, he attended
the University of San Fransisco, obtaining a B.A. in philosophy. He studied
philosophy in the graduate school of the University of California, Berkeley,
finally getting his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto.
He is the author of Anti-Abortionist
at Large: How to Argue Intelligently about Abortion and Live to Tell About
It. (Go here
for reviews and excerpts.) His previous books are Reason and Dignity
and an anthology he edited, Christian Married Love. He is frequently
invited on radio and television programs, as well as university campuses,
to speak and debate on topics such as abortion, physician-assisted suicide,
and cloning.
He is married to Maryann Dennehy, has four children and eleven grandchildren.
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