Human Morality.

• Author: Raz, Joseph

I believe that it was opposition to utilitarianism which first bred arguments claiming in one way or another that a view of morality according to which morality is very demanding is mistaken just because morality cannot be so demanding. On first hearing, this type of argument is liable to seem suspect. Humans should be fit for morality, and unfortunately too often they are not - one is inclined to say. If we find morality too demanding the fault is with us and not with morality. The idea of human morality, in the sense of a morality fit for humans in not being too demanding, is surely, one is tempted to say, a typical modern perversion of the truth. If, however, my conjecture is correct and consideration of the demandingness of morality arose and gained currency in the context of discussions of the merits and demerits of utilitarianism, then this dismissive response is shortsighted. Utilitarianism, whatever its shortcomings, was the first widely accepted view of morality which gave the interests of every sentient being direct and exclusive weight in distinguishing morally right from morally wrong action. To be sure other views of morality held that all human or all rational life is as such of (equal) value. But for no previous view was the road from value to right action so direct, being neither mediated by nor mixed with other considerations. That is why utilitarianism - and any other view of morality which shares this feature of it - gave rise to concern about the demandingness of morality. If it is wrong for me to act in my own interest whenever I could instead do something that would serve the interests of others more than any act open to me could serve my own interest, then arguably I am only rarely allowed to act in my own interest. This is absurd, and a view of morality of which this is a consequence is surely wrong. Hence the eagerness of utilitarians and others with similar moral views to argue that no such conclusion follows from their way of understanding morality.

In the last thirty years or so the debate has moved a long way beyond the crude formulations of the previous paragraph. Yet it has never been so carefully and systematically examined as in Samuel Scheffler's Human Morality.(1) Scheffler distinguishes four responses to a view of morality which presents it as being very demanding. Apart from denying its correctness and insisting that morality's demands are moderate, one can also seek to moderate the consequences of a demanding morality without denying that it is demanding, either by claiming that there are actions which are not at all subject to moral judgment (the question of the scope of morality), or by claiming that it is sometimes rational to act against morality since morality is sometimes overridden by other considerations (the question of the authority of morality). Finally one may object to a view of morality because it presents it as demanding by being overintrusive, that is by requiring that every action however trivial (taking a sip from the mug of coffee in front of me) be preceded by a deliberation of the moral permissibility of the act. This raises the question of the role of morality in our practical deliberations.

Scheffler's own view is that morality's scope is pervasive, that is that moral considerations bear on any conceivable action, but that it does not impose a pervasive presence in our deliberations. Except when special reasons apply one acts morally if one acts as morality directs and would not have done so had one been aware of moral considerations against the act unless they proved insufficient to prohibit the act.(2) That is, in the majority of cases moral (or morally explicit) considerations need not be present to one's thought. All that is morally required is that had moral reasons against the action been perceptible they would have been given the consideration they deserve. Additionally and most importantly, morality's demands are - according to Scheffler - moderate and not demanding. On the authority of morality Scheffler reserves judgment. He does not believe that no consideration can ever override the ultimate moral verdict on an action. But he leaves the question open.

Low-keyed and closely argued, Scheffler's book is itself exemplary in the humaneness of its tone and wisdom. I find myself largely agreeing with his general outlook and with his conclusions. Where I have doubts they are commonly not about what Scheffler says, but about what he does not say. Sometimes the feeling creeps in that the argument stops too soon. The problems I will briefly discuss below exemplify this feeling.

1. The Problem of Moral Intrusiveness

   Perhaps one distinction between various ways in which morality can be too demanding can be helpfully mentioned here. The most obvious way for morality to be too demanding is by leaving too little room for a person to pursue his own interest. But even if morality is not too demanding in this way it can be too demanding in requiring that on all occasions - even those on which people may pursue their interests - people's actions should be at least partly motivated by explicitly moral thoughts, even if those amount to no more than the thought that the action is morally permissible. When this is the case then morality is too intrusive. Life, as Scheffler (who does not refer to this as a way of morality being too demanding) puts it, is overmoralized. Fear of overmoralizing life is, according to Scheffler, one major difficulty with the conclusion, which he rightly defends, that morality is pervasive in scope, i.e., that no voluntary human action is in principle resistant to moral assessment. The fear of overmoralization arises out of what he calls the strong assumption, which he finds Bernard Williams endorsing, namely

   that if we deem it morally permissible for the man to save his wife precisely because she is his wife, we are then committed to a further view about what the man's "motivating thought" should be when he acts; his motivating thought should be that it is his wife who is in danger, and that in such situations it is morally permissible to save one's wife.(3)

   More generally the assumption is that "once one classifies an act as morally permissible, one is committed to holding that the agent who performs it should be motivated, at least in part, by the thought of its moral permissibility" (p. 29).

   Scheffler is aware that if the strong assumption (or even some watered down version of it) is correct then the view that morality is pervasive commits one to "an overmoralised conception of the self" (as he puts it (p. 29); but we know roughly what he means).

   He counters the strong assumption, and weakened variants of it, by listing five ways in which moral considerations can figure in one's deliberations and motivations, the fifth and least explicit being that:

   [A]lthough acting in response to some feature of a situation that he does not represent to himself in overtly moral terms, a person may nevertheless satisfy two related counterfactual conditions: first, that he would not have acted as he did if he had believed that doing so was wrong; second, that if a consideration had come to his attention that seemed to militate against the moral permissibility of his act, he would not have performed the act, unless further deliberation had convinced him that there was reason to discount the consideration in question. [p. 32]

   I agree, but the difficulty is not yet avoided. Two related considerations remain to be confronted. First, is what is true of morally permissible actions also true of morally obligatory actions? Second, even if morality does not require that people act for explicit moral reasons, must it not be morally acceptable for them to do so? Scheffler and others may feel that whatever the answer to these questions they are irrelevant to his concern with the demandingness of morality: none of the possible answers to these questions raises the specter of the overmoralization of life which was Scheffler's concern in this part of the book. But I am not so sure that that is so.

   Consider the case of moral duties. If it is one's moral duty to develop one's musical talents, or to encourage one's child to develop a musical appreciation, then is it not overmoralizing to suppose that one's duty is discharged only if one acts as duty requires out of a sense of moral duty? Of course these are not rhetorical questions. Some may deny that one can have moral duties to oneself. I mentioned this example merely to illustrate what is to me the most surprising aspect of the book, namely that at no point does it buttress its arguments (all with direct bearing on our understanding of the nature of morality) by considering other essential features of morality. My example of duties to oneself suggests that Scheffler's arguments leave hostages to fortune. Those whose understanding of morality differs from his (unstated) conception of it may well find various ways of avoiding some of his conclusions. From now on I will disregard the question of duties to oneself, or other problems which to my knowledge may depend on controversial views about the boundaries of morality.

   Possibly parents in our culture do not have a moral duty to attempt to develop the musical appreciation of their children, but the example is not controversial in the same way. If such a duty exists it is a moral duty. It is an aspect of parents' duties to look after their children. So let us assume that it exists. Does it follow that parents who develop their children's musical appreciation out of sheer delight in music and in experiencing it together with their children, and who never give a thought to the question whether they have a moral duty to do so, are morally at fault? Or, is there a moral defect or blemish in their conduct because they are not motivated by the thought that their actions are ones they have a moral duty to perform? I am going to assume that in the conduct of...