Philosophy 433
History
of Ethics
Darwall
Winter
2008
HUTCHESON
III
I Section
VII- rights and obligation. In
Section VII, Hutcheson gives what he calls a "deduction of some complex
moral ideas, viz., of obligation, and right . . . from this moral
sense." We have already seen two different
senses of 'moral
goodness' that he defines in terms of the fundamental simple idea of
approbation: viz., the moral goodness of motives and motivated actions,
and the
moral goodness of choices. Now he will try
to show that other important moral notions can be seen as complex ideas
that
have the simple idea of approbation as their core.
And correlatively for those
complex ideas that employ the simple idea of condemnation.
II
Hutcheson's treatment of rights is
particularly
interesting. It is quite subtle and
anticipates (by over a hundred years!) J. S.
Mill's
utilitarian theory of rights which is much better known. Here is his general statement:
"Whenever it appears to us, that a faculty of doing, demanding, or possessing any thing, universally allow'd in certain circumstances, would in the whole tend to the general good, we say, that one in such circumstances has a right to do, possess, or demand that thing. And according as this tendency to the publick good is greater or less, this right is greater or less." (182) What he means by a 'faculty' here is a sanctioned protection--thus a person has a faculty of doing, possessing, or demanding something if he is protected against anyone's interfering with his doing, possessing, or demanding it, protected, that is, by the state's applying sanctions against anyone who attempts to interfere. If the complex set of laws and conventions that create such sanctions advances the public good, then the person has a right. If not, he does not.
Hutcheson
goes on to give an account, within this general framework, of perfect,
imperfect, external, alienable, and inalienable. These
categories had developed within the
natural law tradition, and within legal theory.
Hutcheson, in effect, begins the whole utilitarian tradition of
arguing
that such categories of rights, like the very category of a right
itself, makes
sense when giving realization to such distinctions in social and legal
institutions promotes the public good, and that it does not make sense
when
doing so does not promote public utility.
III Obligation.
The other major notion in play in
Section
VII is that of obligation. We can raise
the question of obligation, in the distinctive sense this question had
during
this period, in the following way. With
apologies
to Hobbes, imagine a "fool" who "saith
in his heart":
Why should
I be benevolent?
Hutcheson
wants to answer this question without appeal to the existence of law. Unlike Hobbes, Hutcheson believes that there
is sufficient justification to be benevolent quite apart from any
conventional
sanctions that might be attached to it.
A. Prudential obligation. Now one sense to the question, is there an
obligation to be benevolent?, which
Hutcheson recognizes,
and which would have been familiar in
"if, by obligation, we understand a
motive from self-interest,
sufficient to determine all those who duly consider it, and pursue
their own
advantage wisely, to a certain course of action is . . . " (177)
Hutcheson
thinks there are two distinct kinds of reason why a person is likely to
lead a happier
life if she is a benevolent person. First,
because she has a moral sense, she will be pleased with her benevolence
and
will not be subject to the feelings of condemnation she would have were
she to
be malevolent. Second, even without a moral sense, a
benevolent person will realize many indirect benefits of her
benevolence, e.g.,
in the reciprocal benevolence of others, and so on.
How
compelling are these arguments? One
problem with the first argument is: if
all we know about approbation and condemnation is that they are
pleasures and
pains we feel when we contemplate our own motives, this gives us very
little
reason to think that they must always overbalance whatever pleasures
that
acting malevolently might bring as effects or whatever pains acting
benevolently might bring as effects. It
may be true that our feelings about ourselves matter to us ,
but Hutcheson's theory doesn't give us any particular explanation of
why this
would be so.
Moreover,
there seems to be a further problem with any argument of either of
these two sorts
that we have a justification for being benevolent.
They don't seem to provide us a justification
of the right kind. Anybody who is
convinced that he has a justification for being benevolent only if it
will work
out best for him if he is seems to be undermining his benevolence by
his
justification. The benevolent person
takes it to be adequate reason to act that another person would benefit. But anybody who supposes he will only have
adequate reason for being benevolent if he profits doesn't seem to be
like that.
B. Moral obligation. Hutcheson seems to feel the force of
this, and so he explicitly claims that there is another sense of
'obligation':
"If by
obligation we understand a determination, without regard to our own
interest,
to approve actions, and to perform them; which determination shall also
make us
displeas'd with ourselves, and uneasy upon
having
acted contrary to it: in this meaning of
the word obligation, there is naturally an obligation upon all men to
benevolence . . . " (176)
We need to
analyze this carefully. That the
determination "shall also make us displeas'd
with
ourselves, and uneasy upon having acted contrary to it . . . " is a
consideration of the very sort that Hutcheson considers under the first
sort of
motive or "obligation" discussed above (of course, it is the second
in Hutcheson's text). So what does he mean by a "determination, without regard to
our own
interest, to approve actions, and to perform them . . . "?
Well, we
know that he thinks that in having moral sense we have a disposition to
feel approbation
when we contemplate benevolence. But
does this really answer the fool's question?
He has already admitted that we have this feeling or simple
idea, and he
still asks, why should I be benevolent?
Hutcheson
also says that we have a disposition to perform benevolent acts. But we have to be careful to see what he
means. We might think that moral sense
itself gives us a motive to perform benevolent acts.
But, on reflection, how could it? First,
benevolent acts are motivated by the
motive of benevolence. Second, Hutcheson
holds elsewhere (in his Essay on the passions) that every human motive
is
either an irrational passion, or a desire for someone's pleasure
(oneself or someone
else). So how could moral sense motivate
directly? And note that even without
that
further psychological
claim, moral
sense could at best second the motive of benevolence.
It may be
that in referring to the "determination ... to perform them" Hutcheson
is actually referring to benevolence itself.
How adequate an answer would that be?
What do we learn from this about the fundamental
character
of Hutcheson's ethics as opposed to Hobbes's?