Reciprocity (Routledge Revivals)

Lawrence C. Becker

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138016712
• eBook ISBN: 9781317703327
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

The tendency to reciprocate – to return good for good and evil for evil – is a potent force in human life, and the concept of reciprocity is closely connected to fundamental notions of 'justice', 'obligation' or 'duty', 'gratitude' and 'equality'.

In Reciprocity, first published in 1986, Lawrence Becker presents a sustained argument about reciprocity, beginning with the strategy for developing a moral theory of the virtues. He considers the concept of reciprocity in detail, contending that it is a basic virtue that provides the basis for parental authority, obligations to future generations, and obedience to law. Throughout the first two parts of the book, Becker intersperses short pieces of his own narrative fiction to enrich reflection on the philosophical arguments. The final part is devoted to extensive bibliographical essays, ranging over anthropology, psychology, political theory and law, as well as the relevant ethics and political philosophy.

PART 1 THEORY

Introduction to Part 1

DOI: 10.4324/9781315780719-1

This is a book of moral theory about reciprocity. Its destination is the following set of propositions: Reciprocity is a moral virtue. We ought to be disposed, as a matter of moral obligation, to return good in proportion to the good we receive, and to make reparation for the harm we have done. Moreover, reciprocity is a fundamental virtue. Its requirements have presumptive priority over many competing considerations, and that priority makes reciprocity a crucial consideration for a wide variety of important moral problems. Specifically, reciprocity fixes the outline of our nonvoluntary social obligations – the obligations we acquire in the course of social life, but acquire without regard to our invitation, consent, or acceptance. Leading examples include some of our obligations to our families, to future generations, and to obey the law.

The argument offered in support of those propositions is virtue-theoretic. It is not directly about obligations, rights, duties, interests, preferences, values, or social welfare. Instead it is about excellence of character; it proposes part of a substantive theory of the virtues.

Reciprocity has been the subject of ethnographic studies, experiments in social and developmental psychology, hypotheses in social anthropology and political theory, speculations in phenomenology and structuralist anthropology, and even treatment techniques in clinical psychology and psychiatry. It has been less prominent, by name at least, in moral philosophy, but its controlling ideas lie behind much of the moral theory about restitution, retribution, gratitude, fair play, and proportionate justice.

Almost all of the work on reciprocity treats it as a fundamental notion – as something of paramount importance for at least some aspects of human social life. Some of the claims for it are sweeping. It has been held to be a defining, or ‘structural’ element in the human psyche, giving rise to our most basic social practices and institutions. It has been held to be a central feature of social transactions, and the determining factor in the development of personal and political power. Other claims are more modest: that reciprocity enhances some sorts of relationships but not others; that it plays an important part in individual social development; that it is the best strategy for dealing with iterated prisoners’ dilemma games; that it helps to develop the trust necessary for friendship.

Disagreement about these matters can often be traced to different definitions of reciprocity. For some writers it is a simple tit-for-tat notion, referring to more or less direct and exact returns ‘in kind’. For others it refers also to elaborately indirect exchanges that are decidedly not in kind. There is dispute about whether it is an obligation or an ideal, whether it includes retaliation or is limited to returns of good for good, whether it underlies or is derived from the concept of justice, and whether it conflicts with benevolence. Such diversity makes it difficult to connect all of the work on the subject.

The argument of this book is not meant to connect all of that work, though the Scholium does refer to a wide range of it. Rather, the argument here is meant to explicate and defend, in considerable detail, a particular conception of reciprocity, to show how a disposition to reciprocate in that way can be justified, and to draw out some of the implications of those conclusions for concrete moral issues.

The concept of reciprocity that I shall defend may be summarized in the following maxims: that we should return good for good, in proportion to what we receive; that we should resist evil, but not do evil in return; that we should make reparation for the harm we do; and that we should be disposed to do those things as a matter of moral obligation. Reciprocity is a ‘deontic’ virtue.

Three things about those maxims should be noted in advance. First, I will argue that we owe a return for all of the good we receive, not merely for the good we accept. That contention is a crucial feature of the arguments, and it is one of the surprising results of taking a virtue-theoretic approach. Second, I will argue that the obligations of reciprocity come from the justifiability of being disposed to make reciprocation obligatory. Again, the conclusion is established by way of virtue theory. And third, I will argue that the sense of obligation here ought to appear to us, at least in many cases, only in retrospect. This result defeats some important objections to reciprocity arguments. It is easily available to a virtue-theoretic approach, though not (or at least not obviously) to what are sometimes called act-morality approaches.

The argument begins (Chapter One) with an explication of what I call the ‘general’ conception of morality. It holds that the moral point of view is the most inclusive one we can manage – the one we use when we say ‘All things considered, here is what we should do.’ Prudence, self-interest, altruism, social welfare, efficiency, economy, etiquette, and aesthetic considerations are all relevant, then, to moral argument understood in this way. They must be relevant, at least in principle, if moral argument is argument about what to do all things considered. That sort of argument is defined by a set of aims, limits, standards, and procedures. Constructing a moral theory ‘under’ the general conception is therefore a rule-governed activity. There are criteria of validity and soundness for its arguments.

Moral theory is then defined (Chapter Two) as the attempt to work out a way of life that can be given a reasoned justification under the general conception of morality. It has an a priori part, consisting of whatever can be derived from the constraints of the general conception alone, but it is also based on experience. In particular, its virtue-theoretic arguments appeal to empirical hypotheses about human nature. The outline of an Aristotelian argument for virtue is sketched and defended in Chapter Two.

Chapter Three (Reciprocity) is the core of the book. It explicates and defends at length the notion of reciprocity outlined above. Readers who wish to work quickly through the two preliminary chapters will need to extract from them at least the following ideas. From Chapter One: the concept of a well-defined activity; the general conception of morality; the well-definedness of the general conception. From Chapter Two: virtue theory; grounding a moral judgment; generalizability; the teleological tendency and deontological commitments of morality under the general conception.

Chapter Four (Virtues and Priorities) argues that reciprocity is a fundamental virtue, and explicates briefly a cluster of related ones: generosity, empathy, conviviality, and practical wisdom. Chapter Five (Virtue, Social Structure and Obligation) is meant to show how reciprocity generates obligations, and how it supports conclusions about social practices and institutions. The chapters of Part Two consider some particular institutions in the light of the reciprocity arguments.

I know a man who thinks he lives in debt. Not ordinary debt. (His house is clear, he pays his bills.) And not a miser's debt. He gives to causes and helps his neighbors. He has a worthwhile job.

What I mean is something different. What I mean is gratitude. Even for a thing as small as a meal we make or a joke we tell a flicker of it is in his eyes. Not for me, or for anyone in particular. Just gratitude.

He acts as though he were never, ever, fully entitled to anything. As though good will, and good motives, and conscientiousness on the part of others were never his by right or reason, but always something to admire.

He is grateful to his parents, even though he cares for them in their old age. He is grateful to his employer, and loyal, even though his work is barely noticed. And he is grateful to his country too (the strength of those emotions is embarrassing), even though he's suffered for it.

He is aware of what he does for others. He just thinks that everything he is and has is somehow owed to them. Without them, he would never have been anything. Without them, he would collapse like a house of sticks.

It is, he thinks, a debt that cannot be repaid. He is not, he thinks, an atom – not a solitary, lonely, self-sufficient provider of his own good life. He is mortgaged to the teeth by the love of his friends.

He is a fool.

Chapter 1 The General Conception of Morality

DOI: 10.4324/9781315780719-2

Every moral theory is embedded in a conception of the moral point of view, and suffused with ideas about what counts as a moral judgment, a moral reason, a moral justification. To the extent that these ideas are obscure or implausible the theory will be unconvincing; to the extent that they are muddled the theory will flounder. The purpose of this introductory chapter is to outline the concept of moral argument that will be used throughout the book, and to give reasons for thinking that it is a plausible one. I adopt what I call the general conception of morality, in which the moral point of view is taken to be the most inclusive one possible – the all-things-considered point of view. Moral argument ‘under’ the general conception of morality is reasoning in the same plain sense that figuring out what move to make in a chessgame is reasoning; it is moral reasoning only in the sense that it is done without any special-purpose restrictions.

Practical Reasoning

Once a game is defined, reasoned action-guidance within the game, for the players, follows an unexceptional pattern: the status of play is described; the permissible moves are surveyed; the best move is found and recommended. What counts as the best move (within the game, for a player) is implicit in the game itself. That is, the best move can be inferred from the rules and current status of play. So the practical reasoning within the game is thoroughly ordinary – though of course hardly ever in a form directly testable for validity. Someone says: ‘The Queen is pinned and castling is impossible. In fact, anything but Bishop to K-5 is mate in two. Move the bishop.’ Translation into a testable form is tedious, but the process is a familiar one. The premises are exploded into a series of preliminary deductions, the preliminary conclusions compressed into generalizations, and the final argument constructed from them together with the relevant rule(s). A preliminary deduction would look something like this:

Rule:	A Queen cannot move onto a square occupied by one of her own men.
Fact:	White's QR-5 is occupied by one of White's own men.
Conclusion:	White's Queen cannot move onto QR-5.

And the final inference – constructed from the conclusions of many preliminary ones – would look like this:

Rule:	Each player must try to checkmate the other and to avoid mate by the other.
Fact:	Among the moves now permissible for White, only Bishop to K-5 will avoid mate.
Conclusion:	White must move Bishop to K-5.

Such inferences can be formalized and tested for validity by standard deductive methods. So what counts as a valid argument of this game-guiding sort is no different from what counts as a valid argument in logic generally.

What counts as a sound argument here, however, is instructively different from the standard case. Standardly, a sound argument is a valid one whose premises are true. But the rules of a game are neither true nor false. They do not describe; they define and prescribe. What is true (or false) is not the rule itself but rather the statement that a certain rule is in fact a rule of the game. So a sound argument, here, is one whose fact-premises are true and whose rule-premises are accurate. (A rule-premise – call it R – is accurate for the game G if and only if the statement ‘R is a rule of the game G’ is true.)

Of course, even in the simplest game-guiding arguments, there may be difficulty in establishing the truth of the fact-premises or the accuracy of the rule-premises. (Are there really only three permissible moves? Do the rules require resignation, or is that just a custom among some players?) Preliminary arguments for dubious premises are probabilistic, and impart a commensurate degree of tentativeness to the final conclusion:

Rule:	It might be the rule that players must resign when they believe they are about to be checkmated.
Fact:	White believes there is probably no way for him to avoid checkmate.
Conclusion:	It might be the case that White must resign.

What is true of game-guiding arguments is true of action-guiding arguments generally: insofar as they deal with a well-defined activity, and are made within that activity, for those engaged in it, soundness can be assessed with standard logical tools. I shall argue later that morality is a well defined activity. But for the moment, I simply want to explicate the concept of such an activity.

Rules and Definition

Consider the following limiting case: Call a game (or activity of any sort) completely defined if any possible act whatsoever is either required or forbidden by the rules of the game. In such a game there would be no room for discretion. There would be a determinable, deductively sound argument, about any proposed act, to the conclusion that a given player is either required to do it or forbidden to do it. Of course, that is so only within the game and for the players. Arguments drawn from the rules of a game have no necessary bearing on bystanders, or on players who want to know what to do with their winnings.

It is instructive to consider carefully just what kinds of rules it takes to make a game completely defined. To be completely defined, a game must satisfy these conditions:

1. Any act whatsoever is, determinably, either a play in the game or not.
2. Any moment whatsoever is, determinably, either an opportunity for a given player to make a play or not.
3. Every play is, determinably, either a good, bad, or indifferent move for each player.
4. A move can have different values for different players, but a given move can have only one value for each player.
5. For any given player, at any given opportunity to move, there is at most one good, one bad, and one indifferent move available to that player.
6. Players must make exactly one move each time they have an opportunity.
7. Players must make good moves in preference to indifferent ones, and indifferent ones in preference to bad ones.

If a game fails to meet any of these conditions, then it will fail to be completely defined – that is, there will be times when there is either some uncertainty about what is to be done, or some latitude for the players.

What is in...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• A Note about Form
• PART 1: THEORY
• Introduction to Part 1
• Chapter 1: The General Conception of Morality
• Chapter 2: Moral Theory
• Chapter 3: Reciprocity
• Chapter 4: Virtues and Priorities
• Chapter 5: Virtue, Social Structure, and Obligation
• PART 2: PRACTICE
• Introduction to Part 2
• Chapter 6: Families
• Friends
• Chapter 7: Future Generations
• Chapter 8: Law
• PART 3: SCHOLIUM
• Introduction to Part 3
• Notes on Form
• Notes to Chapter 1
• Notes to Chapter 2
• Notes to Chapter 3
• Notes to Chapter 4
• Notes to Chapter 5
• Notes to Chapter 6
• Notes to ‘Friends’
• Notes to Chapter 7
• Notes to Chapter 8
• Index of Names
• Index of Subjects