Morality: What's In It For Me?

A Historical Introduction To Ethics

William N. Nelson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367014728
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429722295
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

How are the demands of morality related to the needs, interests, and projects of people? Are they a burden, or are they good for us? Are they nothing but arbitrary impositions, or should we expect them to be justified? And will the answers to these questions tell us why and whether we should be moral? In this short, accessible text, William Nelson poses these questions in a form appropriate for beginning students and treats them in a way that both they and their teachers will appreciate. In the company of major figures from the history of ethics, Nelson explores the key issues surrounding topics like egoism, altruism, the good life, and the requirements of morality. A special strength of his presentation is the way he demonstrates how the views of these historical figures prefigure the theories espoused by different schools of contemporary thought. Students get not only the historical positions in terms of which contemporary debates are framed but also up-to-date discussions of utilitarianism, contractualism, problems of collective action, and the relations between virtue and duty-based theories. Nelson's own view that morality is not a single subject matter enables him to show how each of the historical traditions has a role to play in a coherent and defensible pluralistic account of morality. At the core of this pluralism is a commitment to the democratic view that morality must not merely serve practical human purposes, but it must also be justified to the people it governs. Imaginative and insightful, intelligent and informed, this is an excellent first text for students of ethics and the history of ethics.

Part One
The Greek Tradition

1
Self-Discipline and Tranquility

Epictetus, A.D. 50-130

Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well [s. 8].

So says Epictetus in the Encheiridion, or, in the translation I am using, the Handbook,¹ a collection of sayings and pieces of advice taken from the longer Discourses. The son of a Greek slave, bom in Asia Minor in about A.D. 50, Epictetus was himself taken to Rome as a slave. Eventually freed but later banished from Rome by Emperor Domitian in A.D. 89 or 92, he lived as a teacher in Nicopolis, on the northwest coast of Greece, until his death in A.D. 130.

The saying I have quoted above is typical of much of what Epictetus says in the Handbook. Well-being, he insists, depends not necessarily on external events, which may or may not work out as we would like, but rather on the desires and attitudes we adopt. At the very beginning of the Handbook, Epictetus calls our attention to the fact that our powers are limited. “Some things are up to us and some are not up to us” [s. 1]. The things that we can control--that are up to us--are “our impulses, desires, [and] aversions.” “Our bodies … possessions … reputations … public offices” are not up to us. If we wish to live well, what we must do is concentrate on the things that are in our control. If we seek possessions or reputation and do not get them, we will be disappointed and frustrated. But if we avoid such desires in the first place, we rule out the possibility of these disappointments.

That is at least part of Epictetus’s point, and it seems to be what he has in mind in the first passage I quoted. Sometimes, though, his remarks seem to have a different emphasis. For example, he says that not only should we limit our desires, but we should also learn as much as possible about the actual nature of things and maintain an awareness of what we learn. Thus, he tells us, if you are fond of something, “remember what sort of thing it is.” If it is a jug, remember that it is a jug, “for when it is broken you will not be upset.” Jugs, after all, do break. And “if you kiss your child or your wife, say that you are kissing a human being; for when it dies you will not be upset” [s. 3]. Again, if you are going out to the public baths, “put before your mind what happens at baths—there are people who splash, people who jostle, people who are insulting, people who steal” [s. 4].

This second kind of advice, that we understand the nature of the world we live in, is closely related to the first kind, that we limit our desires to avoid frustration: If we have an accurate understanding of the way the world is, we also know which desires and aversions are likely to lead to frustration. If we know people are mortal, then we also know that if we want our spouses and children to live forever, we are bound to be disappointed.

Epictetus also cautions us to be aware of the judgments and evaluations we make and to distinguish the judgment we make about a thing from what that thing is itself. We can choose to judge that death is dreadful, or that grades lower than As are disasters; and if we do so, we may be distressed and angry. But these judgments, again, are our own, and if we want to avoid being distressed and angry, it is in our power to change the judgments that make us feel this way [s. 5].

Epictetus’s Conception of Ethics

In offering the kind of advice I have described here, Epictetus is responding to what, for the Greeks, was certainly the central question of ethics—“How should one live one’s life?” It is not the question one usually finds at the beginning of a modern text on moral philosophy, though the question “how should I live my life?” is a question most reflective people ask themselves at one time or another.

The answers Epictetus offers are quite specific and detailed. They are the sorts of answers one might find immediately useful and directly applicable to one’s situation. There is little in the way of abstract, philosophical theory in the Handbook. Indeed, if Epictetus were writing today and had a good publisher, his book would appear between shiny covers, with a picture of soaring gulls on the cover; and it would be found not in the philosophy section of your neighborhood bookstore but under Self-Help. (I say this, I should add, not to denigrate either Epictetus or Self-Help.)

Epictetus’s work is an example of the tradition of Greek and Roman ethical thought called the “Stoic” tradition, which flourished for five hundred years. His writings are often included in modern textbooks on ethics as an example of this tradition. In fact, it was in such a textbook that, as an undergraduate, I first encountered the Handbook. What now strikes me as most remarkable about this work, however, is how very different it is from the great majority of the books I later learned to think of as the central works in moral philosophy. Part of the reason, as I have already noted, is that there seems to be much advice and very little theory in this work. More relevant to my purposes, though, is the fact that what Epictetus says seems to have little to do with morality, at least as I, and I assume my readers, now think of it.

When I think of morality, of the judgments that are characteristic moral judgments, I think not of advice about what attitudes or beliefs to adopt nor of the suggestion that I might become more aware or perceptive, but of the judgment that something is wrong, or sinful, or the judgment that someone has a right or an obligation. The image that comes to mind is the image of some rule, or law, perhaps like the Ten Commandments, or some method for making decisions like The Golden Rule. And I think of these laws or rules as having an external source of authority, as the criminal law does. If they serve a purpose, it is not the purpose of making my life happier but a purpose like protecting the interests of others, promoting the common good, or maybe even the purpose of pleasing a temperamental god.

Epictetus hardly mentions (hardly, but not never--I will come back to this) such rules or laws. He does not talk about moral problems or moral dilemmas in the way we do today. Today, people turn to moral philosophers (or to other specialists in ethics) for help in solving problems, which they see as matters of deciding what is the right thing to do. We worry about what morality requires, for example, in medical situations: Is it right to help terminally ill patients die an easy death, or must we do everything we can to prolong life? What about severely handicapped infants or even fetuses? We also worry about whether capital punishment is permissible or whether it is wrong to give priority to minority applicants in college admissions or in hiring decisions.

In all of these cases, and many more, the picture seems to be that there are moral laws or rules, that it is important to comply with them, but that it is not quite clear what they are or what they require. Physicians and patients, pregnant women and fetuses, employers and job applicants, all have, or may have, rights and obligations, but we can’t tell what to do until we know just what these rights and obligations are and what they imply.

Epictetus is not motivated by a desire to solve problems like these. At least in the passages I have quoted, what seems to worry him is not the fear that he might do the wrong thing. What he offers is not so much judgments, much less commands or prohibitions, but rather pieces of advice. And the advice is intended not to secure compliance with some set of external rules but to help us to live happier, more satisfying lives. If anyone were to ask Epictetus why we should follow his advice, it is pretty obvious how he would reply. He would say that if you do, “your life will go well” [s. 8]. He would say that the things that are “up to us,” our attitudes, desires, aversions, and the like, are the “only things that yield freedom and happiness” [s. 1]. By rising above the desires and attitudes we happen to have and rejecting those that don’t serve us well, we become the masters of our own lives, and we avoid unnecessary pain and frustration.

How Good is Epictetus’s Advice?

While Epictetus’s picture of the nature of ethics is quite different from the modern picture, his conception of how the ethical life, as he conceives it, can be justified is a good deal clearer than it is in many modern theories. Implicit in the Handbook are answers to a good number of the questions I mentioned in my Introduction. There is an idea of what ethics requires of us, an idea of what its point is, and an idea of what kind of answer we should expect to the question “why be moral?” If Epictetus is right, we will just plain be happier if we do as he suggests. And he may well be right. At least, many people in distress find great consolation in this kind of advice. It seems to improve their lives, or at least make them more content with their lot. Still, it is also possible that Epictetus’s advice is not the best. While he intends it to be good advice for someone seeking to live a good live, it may not actually be good advice. There are a number of reasons to think this.

One reason I shall mention now but then put to one side. A lot of what Epictetus recommends seems to have a pretty direct connection with personal well-being, but here and there what he says sounds more like moralistic preaching than like consoling advice:

Appropriate actions [duties?] are … measured by relationships. He is a father: that entails taking care of him, yielding to him in everything, putting up with him when he abuses you or strikes you. “But he is a bad father.” Does nature then determine that you have a good father? No, only that you have a father … In this way, then, you will discover the appropriate actions to expect from a neighbor, from a citizen, from a general, if you are in the habit of looking at relationships [s. 30].

In addition to moderating our desires, forming realistic expectations, and the like, then, we also apparently are supposed to follow something like rules in our conduct toward others. We are to obey our fathers, be good neighbors and citizens, and [s. 31] obey the gods and even have correct beliefs about them. We should also “set up … a certain character and pattern” for ourselves. We should “speak rarely” and only about appropriate subjects; in sexual matters, we should “stay pure as far as possible before marriage”; and, in conversation, we should “stay away from making frequent and long-winded mention of what you have done” [s. 33].

Now, there is some question, in my mind, whether strict obedience to a father or to the gods is the kind of thing that tends to make one happy. Epictetus would insist that the policy of obedience is one that we ought to choose, freely, for ourselves, so that, in a sense, we remain our own masters. And by limiting our other desires--by learning to take abuse with equanimity, for example—we can mitigate the costs of acquiescing in the authority of others. But then everything hinges on whether the advice that one should learn to minimize desires and to want only what is in one’s power is good advice. That is the question to which I now want to turn.

People who are aware of the world around them, who have accurate, realistic expectations, and who have learned to desire, or care about, only the things they can be certain of attaining, are likely to be, almost by definition, contented. They will not suffer frustration, disappointment, or regret. They won’t be angry or resentful. They will accept their lot with tranquility. But will they be happy? Can we reasonably say that they live good lives? Well, someone might say that such people must be happy, simply on the ground that whatever desires they have are satisfied. But we should be aware of what this answer assumes. It assumes that the only issue in choosing desires is whether they are freely chosen and whether they are or are not easily satisfied. If that were true, then we would maximize our chances of being happy simply by freely and consciously choosing desires that were the easiest ones to satisfy. But it may not be true. It may be that there is more satisfaction, sometimes, in goals that are more uncertain and difficult to reach.

Most of us, in the course of our lives, develop new interests, even passions, and many of us feel that our lives are greatly enriched by them. We discard old interests, and we find new ones, new hobbies, new sports, new friends, new careers, or new aspects of careers we already have. These new interests often challenge us, leading us to discover talents we didn’t know we had, and they absorb our interest. We feel that our lives are better, not simply because more of our old desires are satisfied but because we have found new sources of satisfaction and because the new satisfactions are sometimes deeper. But the deeper satisfactions may not be as easy to achieve as the older, less deep ones.

The experiences I describe here are, I hope, familiar to my readers. If I am right, it is important to be aware of them. These possibilities have a great deal to do, for example, with how we raise and educate our children: If we care about their well-being, we need to provide them with the opportunity to experience a variety of possible interests and the capacity to develop new interests and the skills these interests demand. But now I am getting ahead of myself. The question I have been raising is whether we can assume people are living well if all we know about them is that their desires are satisfied and they do not suffer disappointment. What I have claimed is that people whose desires are satisfied might not be as well off as they could be--if they had acquired and satisfied more profound desires and interests. Perhaps the point could be put this way: One dimension of well-being is contentment, the degree to which we avoid frustration and disappointment; but a second dimension has to do with the richness of our lives, the variety and depth of the satisfactions life affords us.² Offhand, there is likely to be a trade-off between these two. The kind of life, the attitude toward life, that offers the richest possibilities may also open the door to frustration and dissatisfaction. One need only think of the commitment to raise a family or to enter a competitive profession.

What I say here may, of course, be mistaken. I certainly don’t think I have proved it. I can only ask my readers to reflect on their own experience. But whether or not what I say about happiness or well-being is right, what I think I have shown is that what Epictetus says rests on certain assumptions that are not obviously true.

So far, I have spoken as if Epictetus’s key assumption is an assumption about the nature of happiness: A contented life, freely chosen and devoid of frustration, is a happy one. But there are other possible ways to interpret him. Perhaps, for example, he is just a pessimist. He may agree with me that, if we are lucky, we can live far happier lives than the life of mere contentment—but the world is such a harsh place and other people are so unpredictable and unreasonable that we are almost certain to be disappointed if we set our sights high. It is true, after all, that Epictetus was a slave much of his life and that he lived in Rome during a period of great turmoil—during the time when Nero was emperor and not long after the reigns of Tiberius and Caligula. And perhaps in circumstances like these, Epictetus’s attitude is the best one to take. Indeed, in many of our lives, there are times when it is best to set our sights lower and to learn to find satisfaction where we can. But this falls short of recommending Epictetus’s attitude as a good general guide to life.

Another possibility, slightly different, is that he is not pessimistic but is, as modern decision theorists would put it, “risk averse.” Someone who is risk averse, roughly, is someone who worries far more about the possibility of loss than about any possible gain. An extreme form of risk aversion leads to what is called a “maximin” attitude toward planning: Choose a plan by looking only at the worst possible outcome of each plan and then select the one with the least-bad worst outcome (i.e., choose the plan with the maximum minimum payoff). This is, to say the least, a very conservative attitude. It is the attitude of a football coach who would never call a pass play because, after all, the pass might be intercepted. But someone with such an attitude might advocate the kind of life Epictetus advocates even if he or she admitted that there were possible greater advantages to other lives. It is just that the possible losses are also greater and, to a risk averse chooser, that settles it.

A final possibility is that Epictetus, or someone like him, could think that the attitudes he recommends are a good strategy for dealing with life, and perhaps especially for dealing with other people, in the sense that minimizing desires or learning to control desires indirectly makes it easier to attain the various goals one does have. People who are too demanding, too “needy,” as it is sometimes put, drive others away. Perhaps, paradoxically, if we want less, we get more.

Now, to repeat, it is not my aim to try to defend one of these interpretations as the only correct one. What each represents is a possible way of defending the main kinds of advice Epictetus offers. People who accept this advice may do it for any of these reasons or, indeed, for some further reason. If they want to defend it (to themselves or to someone else) they need to give some reason, and they need to be prepared to defend the reason, too! (Is it really true that we will get more from life if we seek less? Perhaps.)

Conclusion: The Limits of the Stoic Perspective

As philosophical works go, the Handbook of Epictetus is relatively straightforward. It is not difficult to understand, at least in a general way, what kinds of behavior and attitude Epictetus means to recommend, nor is it difficult to understand what he takes to be the point of his recommendations. Moreover, since it is quite clear how Epictetus understands the purpose of his inquiry, it is also easy to see what kind of arguments or evidence we need either to support or criticize his theory. To a large extent, his conclusions amount to practical advice, based on experience of life. Just as an experienced carpenter can teach techniques to an apprentice, so also, Epictetus seems to think, can someone with experience of life in general teach others how to live better. And surely there is something to this analogy. After all, people do go to parents, friends, and sometimes psychotherapists just because these other people have experience dealing with life’s problems and sometimes know what to do. Of course, the aims of life in general are less concrete and more controversial than the aims of a craft like carpentry. Even people who agree that they want to be happy may disagree about what happiness is. Indeed, one of my main criticisms has been that Epictetus may have a limited or eccentric conception of happiness. Vet even here, it is quite possible that experience with life can at lea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Why Be Moral?
• PART ONE THE GREEK TRADITION
• PART TWO MODERN MORAL PHILOSOPHY
• PART THREE CONTEMPORARY REFLECTIONS
• Notes
• Selected Further Readings
• About the Book and Author
• Index