Morality and Modernity

Ross Poole

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781138178304
• eBook ISBN: 9781134959662
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Ross Poole displays the social content of the various conceptions of morality at work in contemporary society, and casts a strikingly fresh light on such fundamental problems as the place of reason in ethics, moral objectivity and the distinction between duty and virtue. The book provides a critical account of the moral theories of a number of major philosophers, including Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Habermas, Rawls, Gewirth and MacIntyre. It also presents a systematic critique of three of the most significant responses to modernity: liberalism, nationalism and nihilism. It takes seriously the suggestion that men and women are subject to different conceptions of morality, and places the issue of gender at the centre of moral philosophy. Poole has written a valuable addition to the Ideas series.

1
THE MARKET AND ITS MORALITIES: UTILITARIANISM, KANTIANISM AND THE LOSS OF VIRTUE

Supposing virtue had been the road to fortune, either I should have been virtuous or I should have simulated virtue as well as the next man.

(Diderot)¹

It is hard to overestimate the importance of the eighteenth century in the genesis of modern conceptions of social life. It was in this century that a large number of thinkers came to believe that a fundamentally new kind of society was coming into existence in Western Europe, and undertook the project of making sense of the changes that were taking place. The enterprise was immensely productive, not only of an understanding of the modern world, but also of how that understanding was to be gained. Almost all the disciplines which today define the various areas of social enquiry can trace their origins to the disputes, debates and discoveries of the eighteenth century: economics, sociology, ethnography, history, aesthetics, even philosophy, were all born in this period. The fixity of the divisions between the disciplines was, however, a later development. Though most of the great theorists of the eighteenth century—Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Mandeville, Montesquieu, Diderot, Voltaire—celebrated the division of labour, they did not practise it. (Significantly enough, it was Kant who called for a more intensive application of the division of labour in intellectual life: in practising what he preached, he invented modern philosophy.²) In particular, they did not draw a sharp distinction between social understanding and moral debate. They were aware that the issue between tradition and modernity was a choice between different ways of life and the different conceptions of morality associated with those ways of life. Their project was not just to understand but also to participate in the moral debates which accompanied the transition to the modern world. It is necessary for us to understand their enterprise—as they understood it—as ‘moral science’. That this term has become, not just an archaism, but a near oxymoron, is a consequence of their work; but it is also a barrier to understanding it.

My concern in this chapter is with one major theme in eighteenth century moral science: the characterisation of modern society as ‘commercial society’, or—as we would say now—as ‘market society’. This concept was given its canonical formulation by Adam Smith, but it can reasonably be considered a collective product. It was one of the great intellectual achievements of the eighteenth century, and it continues to dominate mainstream economic thought. It also, I will argue, informs the dominant conceptions of morality in the modern world. Initially I will present it without some of the nuances and qualifications with which it was presented by Adam Smith and others. Some—though not all—of these will emerge later in the chapter.

‘COMMERCIAL SOCIETY’

Man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of the good offices that we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.

(Adam Smith)³

Many of the characteristic features of commercial society derive from three elements:

(i) a social division of labour, such that the various productive activities through which human wants are satisfied are divided amongst distinct individuals and groups of individuals (thus there are those who grow wheat, others who bake bread, still others who brew beer and so on);

(ii) a legal framework of private property and contract, such that individuals have exclusive rights to the use of those objects which they own, and also the right to transfer these rights to others; and

(iii) an individual propensity for self-interested behaviour.

These conditions did not spring into existence in the sixteenth or seventeenth century; elements of them have been present in almost all societies. What is uniquely characteristic of the modern world is the extent to which they have become central and pervasive features of social life. Historically, the development of the three conditions went more or less hand in hand. It was not until a legal institution of individual property rights was well established that a national and international division of labour came to exist, not just for a few luxury items, but for a wide range of subsistence goods. Alongside these developments was the emergence of a conception of identity and motivation focussed on the independent private property owning individual. For the moment, however, I will not be concerned with the historical actuality of market society, but with its concept—with an ‘ideal type’ in Max Weber’s sense. For this it is convenient to treat the conditions as distinct though related elements.

If we assume that each individual has a variety of wants, then the social division of labour implies a situation of mutual interdependence, with each individual dependent upon the activity of others for the satisfaction of his wants. (We will see in Chapter 3 why the male pronoun is appropriate here.) The institution of private property means that the goods are not directly available to satisfy the wants of those who do not own them. The problem is resolved through the market: individuals exchange goods which they own but do not want for goods they want but do not own. Thus, goods become commodities. Exchange may be direct, as in barter. However, any moderately complex market economy will require the existence of money as a medium of exchange, where money both measures the exchange value of all other commodities and is directly exchangeable with them.

Each individual will strive to maximise the satisfaction of his wants. All things being equal, he will only be able to do this by participating in market relationships, and this will require that he direct his energies towards producing goods which other people want. Thus, the self-interested individual must become socially productive. Each individual will strive to sell his own goods for as much as possible, and purchase those of others for as little as possible. However, so long as there is no interference, each must accept the price determined by the ratio between the supply of similar goods and the effective demand for them. In these circumstances, the best way for an individual to improve his position is to be more efficient than his competitors. So the market puts a premium on productive efficiency. Of course, fluctuations in supply and demand will benefit the fortunate, and penalise the unfortunate. However, such fluctuations will be reflected in the price of commodities, and this will enable those adversely affected to relocate their productive activity away from areas of over-production. Where everyone does this, there will be a tendency for demand and supply to move towards an equilibrium, and thus for those wants which find expression in the market to be satisfied by it. But this tendency will never be fully realised. The diversity of individual wants which is presupposed by the market will be increased by it, goods which were once luxuries will come to be taken for granted, and what were wants will become needs. However, as wants and needs increase, so too will the market provide the means to satisfy them.

These results may be called ‘invisible hand theorems’ (after Adam Smith). Individuals pursue essentially self-directed goals, but as a consequence of this, a range of other goals are achieved: the wants of others are satisfied, productive efficiency increases, what were luxuries become everyday consumption items and so on.⁴ There is a logic to the process, but it is not that of individual intention. The overall social order must be conceived in terms of the unintended consequences of individual action. There is, in other words, a hiatus between the intentional content of individual activity and its overall social significance.

This story presupposes a certain quite specific conception of individual identity. If the operations of the market are going to fall into the beneficent patterns described, the participants must be prepared to exchange their property, move from one area of productive activity to another and give up particular social relationships as market forces dictate. This implies that the individuals concerned have a concept of themselves—an ‘identity’ as I shall use the term—which is given independently of (in ‘abstraction from’) specific property holdings, specific kinds of work and specific social relationships. In other social forms, that one owns a particular piece of land, performs particular tasks or stands in particular social relations, has been considered essential to one’s identity. They are conceived of, not as subject to choice, but rather as defining the place from which choices are made. Within the market, however, these become not sources of identity, but roles which one might assume better to achieve one’s purposes. The individual who assumes these roles, but has an identity independent of them, is the abstract individual of much liberal, political, economic and social theorising.

The goals pursued by these abstract individuals also take on an abstract and indeterminate character. There are a large number of diverse productive activities co-ordinated by the market. Each of these activities has its specific goals and criteria of performance. However, insofar as the individual must be prepared to move from one activity to another, he must be concerned, not so much with the goals which are specific to each activity (e.g. the particular excellence involved in a craft), but with an end which is achievable through certain activities but which may equally be achieved through others. Though the market presupposes a range of different desires, it imposes a certain homogeneity on them. The object of desire is always something beyond the activity which one engages in to achieve it. Indeed, it becomes plausible to suppose that all the desires which find expression in the market have a common goal, a shared end for which the medley of activities in the market is merely a means.

It is a matter of some nicety to specify what that end is. It must be something which is sufficiently non-specific to be produced equally by a wide variety of different activities, but at the same time have sufficient substance to move individuals to action on its behalf. This problem was resolved by early utilitarians by positing pleasure (or happiness) as the ultimate object of all desire, and pain (or unhappiness) as the ultimate object of all aversion, where these were conceived of as measurable psychological states, distinct from the activities which produced them. The relationship of this pleasure/pain continuum to these activities was precisely analogous to the profit and loss which resulted from market transactions; indeed, on Bentham’s customarily blunt account of the matter, one’s pain or pleasure is precisely measured by the amount of money one possesses:

The thermometer is the instrument for measuring the heat of the weather: the barometer for measuring the pressure of the air. Those who are not satisfied with the accuracy of these instruments must find out others that shall be more accurate, or bid adieu to Natural Philosophy. Money is the instrument for measuring the quantity of pain or pleasure. Those who are not satisfied with the accuracy of this instrument must find out some other that shall be more accurate, or bid adieu to Politics and Morals.⁵

Contemporary utilitarians have sought to avoid the psychological implausibility of Bentham’s account by positing, as a kind of metadesire, the desire to satisfy all one’s other desires, so that what is finally desired is the satisfaction of all (or as many as possible) of one’s desires. This manoeuvre provides an absolutely general way of specifying what it is one wants when one wants something, without being committed to the thesis that there is a substantive object (a psychological state or whatever) which is always wanted. The precise solution is of little importance here. I will occasionally adopt the jargon of individuals seeking to maximise their ‘utilities’, but do not pretend to have a clear account of what this means. The major point is that however we characterise the final goal of individual behaviour, this must take on a highly abstract and non-specific character; it thus corresponds to the equally abstract character of the goal seeking individual.

Mediating between these two abstractions are the various determinate activities involved in the production and exchange of commodities. These may be characterised as ‘work’ in the slightly special sense of activities whose raison d’être lies outside them: they are primarily conceived of as means to distinct ends. As such, these activities fall within the scope of that form of reason which is required by the market: that of seeking the most efficient means of achieving given ends. The individual who is rational in this instrumental sense is one who minimises the work required for the goal pursued; and unless an individual is rational in this way, he will not participate effectively in market transactions.

This form of reason must also inform the behaviour of individuals with respect to each other. If the invisible hand is to weave its beneficent patterns, each individual must be prepared to treat others solely in terms of their contribution to his own goals. If he is moved by the circumstances of those with whom he is bargaining, he will not enforce the competitive price; if he is touched by the plight of his employees, he will not replace them with more efficient methods of production; and if he is sensitive to the feelings and aspirations of his debtors, he will not enforce bankruptcies. In the long run it is non-altruistic behaviour which produces the most beneficial results; however, that run may be very long indeed, and the suffering of many specific individuals remains uncompensated, except perhaps by the prosperity of others. Widespread sensitivity to the plight of such individuals would mean that the long run tendencies would remain unactualised. It is only to the extent that individuals are ready to act with a certain impersonality, not to say ruthlessness, with respect to each other that the market as a whole will exhibit the beneficent tendencies which have been its glory.

Once the identity of the individual is conceived in abstraction from his relations with others, the assumption of pervasive self-interest becomes almost inescapable. Other individuals occur in the reasoning of such individuals only as means or impediments to ends which are independent of them. Within this structure, it becomes impossible to conceive of activities which are genuinely other-directed, i.e. take the well-being (or the ill-being for that matter) of another as their goal. And whatever the precise content of the individual’s final goals, these are sought as his goals (his utility, his gratification). The self-directedness which is necessary for optimal market behaviour emerges as part of the very structure of purposive activity.

Reason in an instrumental sense informs the behaviour of the market individual. But reason also exists in another form and with a different function: that of comprehending the workings of commercial society and explaining them to its members. For the market is characterised by a certain opacity: as a whole, it displays certain patterns or regularities, which have something of the appearance of natural laws. However, these laws are not natural, but social: they are the outcome of human actions. But, as we have seen, they are not intended as such; rather they are the unintended consequence of what individuals do. Hence, it is the task of the science of society, with political economy as its first exemplar, to discern the nature of these laws and to explain to those who both make these laws but are subject to them, the secret of their own social behaviour.⁶ The cognitive gap between individual intention and social consequence which it is the task of social science to bridge is not merely the result of inattention or social complexity. It is due to a discontinuity between what is intended and what is finally achieved. The individual is concerned solely with his own well-being; nevertheless, the result of what he does is to further the well-being of others with whom he is not concerned. Indeed, he will secure this result much more surely than if he had taken the well-being of others as the direct object of his behaviour.⁷ It is part of the logic of the market to sever the conceptual continuity between the intentional content of an individual’s action and its overall social meaning. Reason in the form of social science is needed to explain to the individual the meaning of what he does.

In so doing, of course, it also justifies it. Self-interest is validated, not in its own terms, but because it is conducive to social well-being. This argument has important repercussions for conceptions of morality. For it is a crucial presupposition of an ethics of virtue, at least in the form in which this was debated in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,⁸ that there be a continuity between the motivation for an act and its effects, e.g. between the virtuous disposition to seek the public good and the actual furthering of that goal. However, if it is the case—as was gleefully argued by Bernard Mandeville⁹—that an overriding concern with self is a much more effective source of social prosperity and well-being, that ‘private vices’ are ‘public benefits’, then that presupposition fails. In which case the ‘knight of virtue’¹⁰ must either adopt the quixotic and unattractive stance of clinging to the moral centrality of motivation whatever the consequences, or move towards a more consequentialist evaluation of human acts. This latter is the path towards utilitarianism.

UTILITARIANS AND FREE-RIDERS

It is not surprising that utilitarianism is the morality most readily associated with the market. After all, the glory of the market is the extent to which it maximises production in j...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. The Market and its Moralities: Utilitarianism, Kantianism and the Loss of Virtue
• 2. Capitalism: The Power of Reason
• 3. The Private Sphere: Virtue Regained?
• 4. Liberalism and Nihilism
• 5. The Illusory Community: The Nation
• 6. Modernity and Madness: Nietzsche’s Apotheosis
• 7. Towards Morality
• Notes
• Bibliographical essay
• Index