Here I am sitting in a café in Dorking pondering how and why some people get paid for writing newspaper columns or other pieces on things they know remarkably little about, as it were, as a job; and now I’m perhaps about to do something comparable, venture a few words on ethics. But I guess I’m at least not publishing or getting paid for it.
I’ve been re-reading Brian McGee’s interviews with philosophers back in the 1970s. It’s at least got me thinking, even if tentatively. It may perhaps be reasonable to distinguish between two ‘rival’ approaches to the study of ethics, the one deriving most of all from Kant and stressing ‘rules’; and the other owing most to Aristotle and accenting ‘virtue’. There is of course much to be learned from each. What I want to do here is address issues of the context on which we consider: (a) forming and signing up to rules, universal or otherwise, and (b) recognizing, commending and promoting virtue.
In acknowledgement of Heidegger, I want to say that we find ourselves, as it were, ‘thrown’ into the world, beset by the contingency that this involves; and not just contingency, ‘finitude’ too. Understandably ‘anxious’, how are we to come to terms with the indubitable fact of a limited lifespan? What’s it all about, at least for us (now we’ve been born, before we die)? Unlike Heidegger I don’t feel especially anxious, nor, pace Sartre, do I find the freedom I’m stuck with especially terrible or terrifying. But I am grateful to them for not getting bogged down in the Anglo-Saxon linguistic philosophy rampant (if that is the word) in the UK at their time of writing. They at least addressed the human condition/predicament.
If you don’t fall into the trap of looking for ‘absolutes’, as is the case with foundationalist epistemologists for example, the pressures ease (start on the path to ‘any’ foundationalist epistemology and you wind up, in my view at least, as a radical skeptic; and foundationalist epistemologies at one end of the spectrum, and radical skepticism at the other, are equally unsustainable). Popper understood this. Yes, we are stuck with a chunk of life we were not previously consulted about, and we will die. We are in fact just another species that has evolved on planet Earth. It could well have been otherwise, but this in fact is how it is.
I’m not saying that I take my current equanimity lightly. I have reasoned my way to it over time, having a few anxious moments en route, and, who knows, I might falter as I get (even) older, though I hope and trust not.
So back to rules and virtue. I am not going to enter into arcane linguistic debates here, though some are interesting enough. To reiterate, I want to contextualise such debates. It is apparent that putative universal rules are hard to come by, though the temptation to keep searching for them, remains. Even controlling for societal and cultural variability by time and place, there are it seems always exceptions to any rule one might be tempted to posit. Sometimes it is clearly right to lie for example, for all that lying is generally undesirable. As for virtue, or the lauding and exhortation of good people rather than good rules, similar or equivalent problems arise.
Given the circumstances in which we humans find ourselves, and – let’s face (up) to it – in the absence of any supernatural or extra-human lanterns to lighten our way, it makes sense to recognize and come to terms with the fact that we are necessarily social beings. But unlike many other species, we have agency. We may not use our agency much – I have maintained that our human agency is structured though not structurally determined – but we indubitably have it (Sartre’s Matthieu showed that when he stabbed his hand). Surely a reasonable basis for ‘grounding’ (not founding) a human ethic is in necessary conditions for sociality and sociability? What is it to live well and even thrive together? Critical realists and others write about human flourishing. Ground rules ‘yes’ (accepted conventions/laws will be required), plus a measure of personal virtue or goodness; but these will emerge via a reflexive praxis rather than follow a pre formulated utopian (elite) philosophical blueprint, though such blueprints might well serve as catalysts for collective decision-making.
What I’m suggesting here does not rest on any form of reductionism. Recognising that we are one species amongst others acknowledges our biological ‘underpinnings’; but we do not as social beings reduce to the necessary biological (or psychological) mechanisms for our emergence and constitution as social beings.
A serviceable ethics for human cohabitation and flourishing might be articulated through the concept and precepts of ‘communism’, as hinted at in early Marxian texts and discussions, and as recovered in contemporary French philosophy (eg Badiou).
A social transformation is required since the present version of rentier capitalism unambiguously rests on the domination, exploitation and inter-generational deprivation and suffering of the many at the hands of the few. I have elsewhere commended a strategy of ‘permanent reform’ towards such a society. The form of ethics I think defensible – at least in principal – must I think be constructed against this background.
It is in many respects a logical offspring of the trinity I have elsewhere seen as enjoying a natural ‘affinity’: sociology, education and socialism.
Okay I know this is a short blog and raises more questions than it answers, but I have written others that fill in some of the gaps. Ever onwards and upwards.