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QUESTIONS
THAT
MAT TER AN INVITATION TO PHILOSOPHY

SIXTH EDITION

ED. L. MILLER
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO

JON JENSEN
LUTHER COLLEGE
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Published by McGraw-Hill, an imprint of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 1221

Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. Copyright © 2009, 2004, 1996, 1992,
1987, 1984. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Miller, Ed. L. (Ed. LeRoy), 1937–
Questions that matter : an invitation to philosophy/Ed. L. Miller,
Jon Jensen.—6th ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-07-338656-0 (alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-07-338656-1 (alk. paper)
1. Philosophy—Introductions. I. Jensen, Jon, 1967– II. Title.
BD21.M46 2009
100—dc22
2008002054

The Internet addresses listed in the text were accurate at the time of publication.
The inclusion of a Web site does not indicate an endorsement by the authors or
McGraw-Hill, and McGraw-Hill does not guarantee the accuracy of the information
presented at these sites.

www.mhhe.com
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For
the fair
Cynthia
—E. L. M.

and

For Rachel,
my light
in the darkness
—J. J.
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About the Authors

E
D. L. MILLER holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of
Southern California and a Doctorate of Theology from the University
of Basel, Switzerland. Professor Miller’s philosophical interests
encompass both the history of philosophy and philosophical theology. In
addition to numerous articles and reviews, his other books include Believing
in God, Philosophical and Religious Issues, God and Reason, and Salvation His-
tory in the Prologue of John. He has taught at California Lutheran University,
St. Olaf College, and, for the last thirty years, at the University of Colorado,
Boulder. In addition to being a member of the philosophy faculty, he also
teaches for the Religious Studies Department and is Director of the Theol-
ogy Forum, A Center for Theological/Philosophical Discussion. He is a
member of the American Academy of Religion, the Society of Christian
Philosophers, and Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas. He is listed in The
Directory of American Scholars and Contemporary Authors. Professor Miller
travels regularly to Europe, and his family regards Switzerland as its “sec-
ond home.” Spare time is often spent on the plains doing research on the
Colorado Indian War, in the mountains skiing, or on his speedboat on Lake
Dillon.

J
ON JENSEN received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of
Colorado, Boulder, where he was a student of Professor Miller. While
his philosophical interests vary widely, his research and publications
focus on environmental philosophy. Jensen has taught at the University of
Colorado, Green Mountain College, and now at Luther College, his alma
mater. In addition to teaching philosophy, he directs Luther’s Environmen-
tal Studies program and enjoys canoeing, bicycling, backpacking, and gar-
dening. Jensen lives on a small farm near the Upper Iowa River with his
wife, Rachel, and two young daughters, Sylvia and Lily.
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Contents

PREFACE xiv

INTRODUCTION
THE NATURE OF PHILOSOPHY

1
WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? 5

The Word Itself 5

The Fields of Philosophy 6
A Rational, Critical Enterprise 9
A Working Definition 13
Philosophy, Religion, and Science 14
A Little Logic 15
What Is An Argument? 16
Fallacies 22
Professor Miller’s Four Principles 25
Of Beards and Bread 28
Chapter 1 in Review 31
Readings from:
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers; Plato, Apology;
Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles; Jaggar, “How Can Philosophy
Be Feminist?”; Woodhouse, A Preface to Philosophy

v
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vi PART ONE
CONTENTS THE QUESTION OF REALITY

2
THE FIRST METAPHYSICIANS 39

The First Theory of Reality 40

Three Pre-Socratic Traditions 42
The Discovery of Form 46
Chapter 2 in Review 47
Readings from:
Aristotle, Metaphysics; Copleston, A History of Philosophy; Guthrie, A
History of Greek Philosophy; Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics

3
THE IDEA OF FORM 51

Plato and Socrates 51

The Two Worlds: Appearance and Reality 55
The Theory of the Forms 58
Degrees of Reality and Knowledge 64
The Good, the Sun, and the Cave 67
Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato 72
Aristotle’s View of Form 74
After Plato and Aristotle 77
Chapter 3 in Review 79
Readings from:
Plato, Euthyphro, Timaeus, The Republic, Phaedo; Aristotle, Metaphysics,
Poetics; Quine, “On What There Is”

4
MIND AND MATTER 83

Descartes: The Father of Modern Philosophy 84

“What Can I Know for Certain?” 85
The Intuition of Mind 86
The Deduction of God 90
The Deduction of Matter 92
Some Objections 95
The Mind-Body Problem 95
Mind: A Set of Dispositions or Functions 98
Chapter 4 in Review 103
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Readings from: vii

Descartes, Discourse on Method, Meditations on First Philosophy; Searle, CONTENTS
Minds, Brains and Science; Ryle, The Concept of Mind; Churchland,
Matter and Consciousness

5
IDEALISM 107

What Is Idealism? 107

Berkeley and Locke 108
Berkeley’s View: Esse Est Percipi 111
Five Proofs for Subjective Idealism 113
Hylas and Philonous 118
Solipsism or God? 122
Some Objections 125
Chapter 5 in Review 127
Readings from:
Berkeley, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous

6
MATERIALISM 131

What Is Materialism? 131

Man a Machine 136
The New Materialism 140
Are the Mind and Body Identical? 143
Beyond Freedom and Dignity: Skinner 146
Are All Things Determined? 151
Chapter 6 in Review 153
Readings from:
Lucretius, The Nature of Things; Hobbes, Leviathan; Laplace, A
Philosophical Essay on Probabilities; La Mettrie, Man a Machine;
Hanson, “The Dematerialization of Matter”; Smart, “Materialism”;
Taylor, Metaphysics; Churchland, Matter and Consciousness; Skinner,
Beyond Freedom and Dignity

PART TWO
THE QUESTION OF KNOWLEDGE

7
SKEPTICISM 161

Varieties of Skepticism 161

Pyrrho: The Classic Skeptic 163
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viii Is Absolute Skepticism a Coherent Position? 166

CONTENTS Rorty and Friends: Historicism and Pluralism 170
Chapter 7 in Review 179
Readings from:
Diogenes Laertius (on Pyrrho), Lives of Eminent Philosophers;
St. Augustine, Against the Academicians; Rorty, Philosophy and the
Mirror of Nature; Grenz, “Star Trek and the Next Generation”;
Plantinga, “The Twin Pillars of Christian Scholarship”

8
THE WAY OF REASON 183

Two Main Theories about the Basis of Knowledge 183

Reason as the Basis of Knowledge 184
The Rationalism of Plato 186
The Rationalism of Descartes 192
A Contemporary Version: Chomsky 198
Chapter 8 in Review 201
Readings from:
Plato, Phaedo; Descartes, Discourse on Method, Rules for the Direction
of the Mind; Jaggar, “Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist
Epistemology”; Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, “Language
and the Mind”

9
THE WAY OF EXPERIENCE 205

What Is Empiricism? 205

Classical Empiricism: Aristotle and St. Thomas 206
Modern Empiricism: Locke 209
Radical Empiricism: Hume 218
Chapter 9 in Review 226
Readings from:
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae;
Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding; Hume, A Treatise
of Human Nature, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

10
THE PROBLEM OF CERTAINTY 231

Kant and Hume 232

Some Important Terminology 232
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Is There Synthetic A Priori Knowledge? 233 ix

The Limits of Reason 240 CONTENTS
Chapter 10 in Review 241
Readings from:
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics

PART THREE
THE QUESTION OF GOD

11
GOD AND THE WORLD 247

Natural Theology 247

The Cosmological Argument 250
The Teleological Argument 259
The Problem of Causality 269
Chapter 11 in Review 273
Readings from:
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Summa Theologiae;
Jastrow, God and the Astronomers; Paley, Natural Theology; Tennant,
Philosophical Theology; Dembski, “The Intelligent Design Movement”;
Black Elk Speaks; Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion; Kant,
Critique of Pure Reason

12
GOD AND REASON 279

The Ontological Argument 279

Is Existence a Predicate? 282
The Moral Argument 287
Is There a Moral Law? 292
Is Religious Experience Evidence for God? 296
Chapter 12 in Review 303
Readings from:
St. Anselm, Proslogium; Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy;
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason; Malcolm, Knowledge and Certainty;
Lewis, Mere Christianity; Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil;
Pascal, Pensées; Russell and Copleston, “The Existence of God”;
Weil, Waiting for God; Broad, Religion, Philosophy, and Psychical
Research; James, The Varieties of Religious Experience; Freud, The Future
of an Illusion
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x 13
CONTENTS GOD AND EVIL 307

What Is the Problem? 307

Some Solutions 311
Evil as a Privation of Goodness 314
The Free-Will Defense 319
Evil as Therapy 322
Evil Is Irrational 327
Chapter 13 in Review 333
Readings from:
Mill, Three Essays on Religion; Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion; Job 38: 1–11; Isaiah 55: 8–9; St. Augustine, The Enchiridion
on Faith, Hope, and Love, On Free Choice of the Will; Plantinga, God,
Freedom, and Evil; Mackie, “Evil and Omnipotence”; Irenaeus,
Against Heresies; Hick, Evil and the God of Love; Camus, The Myth of
Sisyphus and Other Essays, The Plague

PART FOUR
THE QUESTION OF MORALITY

14
CHALLENGES TO MORALITY 341

The Challenge of Relativism 341

The Challenge of Determinism 346
The Challenge of Psychological Egoism 354
The Challenge of Existentialism 358
Chapter 14 in Review 369
Readings from:
Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity; Benedict, “Anthropology and
the Abnormal”; James, “The Dilemma of Determinism”; Hume, An
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; D’Holbach, The System of
Nature; Stace, Religion and the Modern Mind; Frankena, Ethics; Hume,
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals; Hobbes, On Human
Nature; Sartre, “Existentialism”; de Beauvoir, The Second Sex; Jaggar,
“Feminist Ethics”; Marcel, The Philosophy of Existentialism

15
UTILITARIANISM 373

The Question of Consequences 373

What Is Utilitarianism? 374
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Bentham’s Version: Quantity over Quality 376 xi

Mill’s Version: Quality over Quantity 379 CONTENTS
Some Objections 388
Chapter 15 in Review 392
Readings from:
Hoffer, Saved! The Story of the “Andrea Doria”; Bentham, The Rationale
of Reward, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation;
Mill, Utilitarianism; Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism”; Moore,
Principia Ethica; Regan, “The Radical Egalitarian Case for Animal
Rights”

16
THE ROLE OF DUTY 397

Morality as Unconditional 397

The Good Will 403
Kant’s Categorical Imperative 405
The Test of Moral Actions 406
Some Objections 411
Chapter 16 in Review 414
Readings from:
Beck, “Preface” to translation of Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics
of Morals; Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, “On a
Supposed Right to Lie because of Philanthropic Concerns”; Martin
Luther King, Jr., “The Ethical Demands of Integration”; Manning,
Speaking from the Heart

17
VIRTUE 417

Character and Action 417

Aristotle on Happiness and Virtue 418
The Virtues 424
Objections 426
Is There a Natural Law? 427
Chapter 17 in Review 432
Readings from:
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Politics; Hill, “Ideals of Human
Excellence and Preserving the Natural Environment”; St. Thomas
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae
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xii PART FIVE

CONTENTS
THE QUESTION OF SOCIETY

18
LIBERTY 439

The Liberal Perspective: Locke 439

Liberalism and Capitalism 450
A Radical Response: Marx 453
Some Objections 457
Chapter 18 in Review 458
Readings from:
The Bill of Rights; Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding,
Second Treatise of Government; The International Declaration of the
Rights of Man; Declaration of Independence; Smith, An Inquiry
into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; Mill, On Liberty;
Marx, Early Writings

19
DEMOCRACY 463

Government by the People 463

Rousseau’s Social Contract 464
Some Objections 470
Plato’s Philosopher Kings 472
Chapter 19 in Review 477
Readings from:
Declaration of Independence; Rousseau, The Social Contract; Hume,
Essays Moral, Political, and Literary; de Tocqueville, Democracy in
America; Plato, The Republic; Aristotle, Politics

20
JUSTICE 481

The Problem 481

Rawls: Justice as Fairness 483
Nozick: Justice as Entitlement 491
MacIntyre: Justice as Virtue 497
Okin: Justice, Gender, and the Family 502
Chapter 20 in Review 505
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Readings from: xiii

MacIntyre, After Virtue; Rawls, A Theory of Justice; Marty, “Rawls and CONTENTS
the Harried Mother”; Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia; Sheffler,
“Natural Rights, Equality, and the Minimal State”; Feinberg, Social
Philosophy; Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family

POSTSCRIPT 509
A (SHORT) PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY D-1
CREDITS C-1
INDEX I -1
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Preface

T
he publication of this sixth edition of Questions That Matter comes
24 years after its initial printing and over a quarter century since the
manuscript was first completed. This provides a sort of landmark
because for the first time the book is older than many of the students likely
to be enrolled in a traditional introduction to philosophy course. Obviously
much has changed in the world in the past twenty plus years, and the book
has evolved in response to these changes. But the majority of the material
has not changed. It is a hallmark of philosophy that most of the “questions
that matter” are timeless and remain as pressing today as they were more
than 2,000 years ago when Socrates and his contemporaries were debating
the nature of existence. The attempt throughout the life of this textbook has
been to sustain the timeless while adapting to changing times. Hopefully
we have succeeded in this attempt.
While maintaining the basic structure and approach, two major changes
mark this sixth edition. First, the book is shorter by three chapters than
previous editions. We responded to feedback from teachers and reviewers
that the text was simply too long for the one-semester introduction to phi-
losophy courses in which it is used. Three chapters have been cut from this
editon to make a leaner, more user-friendly text. In each case, some key
elements of the old have been adapted into neighboring chapters, so the
basic questions are not lost even as the treatment is condensed significantly.
Although we recognize that anything cut from the fifth edition will be
missed by some users, we have listened to feedback in deciding where to
trim the text. We hope you will agree that the benefits of a slightly shorter
text outweigh the loss of important material. The second major change
comes in the final section of the book, “The Question of Society,” which
deals with issues in social and political philosophy. Here a new chapter on

xiv
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democracy and a reworking of the material on liberalism update this area xv

of philosophy that changes the most because of its inherent ties to our PREFACE
society and the real world of politics. We have attempted to make this sec-
tion more relevant to our contemporary world while remaining firmly com-
mitted to a historical approach to the subject matter.
In addition to these changes, we have, of course, made minor adjust-
ments throughout in the interest of accuracy, readability, and updating.
Some new sections have been added and the whole has been enhanced by
some new boxed material. We have continued the ongoing attempt to do
justice to recent philosophical developments, especially the philosophical
role and contributions of women. Beyond these improvements the book
remains basically unchanged—which we take to be a plus.
As stated in previous prefaces, the book is intended as an introductory
text for students whose college experience may not include a subsequent
course in philosophy. We have endeavored to make lucid a very difficult
and often confusing subject and, at the same time, to do justice to its history
and importance. We hope that the integrity of the subject has survived our
efforts at simplification and abbreviation.
In the pursuit of this goal we have been mindful of the classroom setting:
(a) The instructor’s task. The best way of showing respect and concern for
the goals and methods of the individual instructor is to provide a text that
is not confining or burdensome. Instead, it provides instructors with a point
of departure that will enhance and strengthen their personal approaches to
the subject and their goals for their students. (b) The student’s task. Most of
the students using this text will have no background in philosophy and are
likely to be baffled by their first encounter with the subject’s language,
distinctions, concepts, and the like. This first encounter is likely to be the
student’s best (and for many, only) opportunity to master a subject that
really does pose the questions that matter. A student can be cheated of that
mastery but can never avoid the questions. Thus we have been guided
throughout by a concern to represent and discuss the issues in a coherent,
readable, and stimulating style. Furthermore, we have attempted to orga-
nize the content so that the students will be able to appreciate for them-
selves that there really are coherence and direction amid the twists and
turns. We have also been guided by a conviction that explanatory aids can
be utilized to promote understanding in an often difficult subject.
Our attempts to present the material in a way that will most profit the
student and the classroom are evident in the following:

• Major historical thinkers have been discussed, but not to the exclusion
of contemporary contributions.
• Appropriate and extended selections from primary sources have been
included, interspersed throughout the discussions, making it possible for
students to read the major thinkers for themselves.
• Major fields in philosophy have been included, as well as the major
issues and traditions in those fields.
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xvi • No topic or issue has been excluded on the grounds that it was too
PREFACE
difficult.
• The book seeks to accommodate the instructor’s creative use of the pri-
mary materials, thus allowing him or her to develop self-designed
exchange with the students.
• Fields and issues have been chosen that are most likely to be relevant to
the student’s mastery of elementary philosophy.

Each part of the book represents a major topic in philosophy, though

instructors are encouraged to consider these topics in whatever order they
deem appropriate. Each chapter contains a discussion of the relevant issues,
plus a variety of supplemental material. The discussion is presented in as
logical and historical a manner as possible, showing connections, roots, and
influences. The issues and positions are documented with frequent and
usually copious quotations from philosophers, woven into the text. The
rather generous margins contain running summaries of the adjoining sec-
tion. These serve the student not only as an indexing device, but also as a
method for quick review of the most important ideas. At those points where
basic terms, concepts, or positions need to be explained, summarized, or
emphasized, the section is interrupted with a boxed insert. Still other inser-
tions contain relevant information—for example, biographical sketches.
Illustrations have been included so as to provide, on occasion, visual relief
and reinforcement. Each chapter concludes with a review section that
includes a brief summary, a list of basic ideas, a self-test, questions for
reflection and possible discussion, and an annotated bibliography (“For
Further Reading”) of works of varying levels geared to assist especially in
research and writing projects.
An introduction precedes the whole. Here we explain the nature of phi-
losophy and include various definitions and concepts, as well as a discus-
sion of issues and problems involved in the philosophical enterprise itself
and its relation to other fields. We have shortened the introductory discus-
sion of logic and focused more on informal arguments and fallacies.
With respect to the broad outline of the book, we feel that the more or
less standard way of organizing and presenting philosophical material is,
after all, the best. The reader will find here a much more restrained approach
than may be found in some texts, which verge on the flamboyant and far-
flung, and at the same time an attempt to provide, nonetheless, a visually
arresting format. Furthermore, the interest in treating (whenever possible)
historical contexts, connections, and developments can only benefit both the
study and the teaching of philosophy.
This book has grown out of many years of teaching beginning philoso-
phy courses to innumerable students. We have tried to pay attention to
what works and what doesn’t in the attempt to confront, engage, and
instruct.
Beyond that, we have been much helped at every stage by editors at
McGraw-Hill, most recently, Mark Georgiev, and previously, Jon-David Hague,
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Judy Cornwell, Cynthia Ward, Kaye Pace, and Anne Murphy, and by those xvii
who reviewed the material for the sixth edition: PREFACE

Christopher Eubanks, University of Arkansas

Thompson M. Faller, University of Portland
Barbara Hands, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Andrew G. Kampiziones, Francis Marion University
Edward N. Martin, Liberty University
Norah Martin, Unversity of Portland

Closer to home Professor Miller again thanks his colleagues at the Uni-
versity of Colorado, including Wes Morriston, Diane Mayer, John O. Nelson,
Phyllis Kenevan, Carol Cleland, Chris Shields, and my philosopher-friend,
Lee Speer, who made invaluable contributions regarding the basic concept
of the book and has provided excellent counsel all along the way, and other
philosopher-friends, Beth and Paul Losiewicz, Paul Keyser, Paul Saalbach,
and Garry Deweese. With respect to manuscript preparation, much thanks
goes to several assistants; Craig Hubbard, Dan Handschy, Michael Thomp-
son, Paul Awald, John S. Meyer, Michael McCloskey, Damian Baumgardner,
Richard P. Becker, Jeff Brower, Erik M. Hanson, Glenn F. Ashton, Greg John-
son, and Deborah Nutter.
Jon Jensen wishes to thank his philosophical mentors, those people who
taught me what it means to think clearly and carefully about the most
important questions. Though many people have been influential, I wish
to thank especially John Moeller, Richard Ylvisaker, Claudia Mills, Dale
Jamieson, Jim Nickel, Bill Throop, and, of course, Ed. Miller. For help with
the fifth edition, I am grateful to Anthony Smith for his diligent work. On
this sixth edition, Matt Simpson, my colleague next door, was invaluable.
His keen philosophical eye prevented many an error and his guidance
improved Part Five significantly. Finally, and most importantly, I thank my
dearest Rachel, the light and love of my life, whose support and friendship
make everything possible.

“For us who have undertaken the toil of abbreviating, it is no light matter, but calls
for sweat and loss of sleep.”
—II Macc. 2:26 (Revised Standard Version)

Ed. L. Miller
and
Jon Jensen
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N
DE
UNITED KINGDOM DENMARK RUSSIA

SWE
St. Anselm (c. 1033–1109) Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Fyoder Dostoievsky (1821–1881)
FINLAND

AY
William of Ockham (c. 1285–1349)
W Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924)

RW
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1697)

NO
NETHERLANDS
John Locke (1632–1704)
David Hume (1711–1776)
Benedict Spinoza (1632–1677) RUSSIA
Adam Smith (1723–1790)
William Paley (1743–1805)
W
Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)
ESTO
ES
STO
S TO
ONIA
O
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
Hastings Rashdall (1858–1924)
F. R. T
Tennant (1866–1957) A
ATVI A
G. E. Moore (1873–1958)
RELA
RELAND
AN ITAL
T LY
C. D. Broad (1887–1971) NMARK
N ARK
C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) UNITE
U ITED
D LITHUANIA Pythagoras (c. 600 B.C.)
Gilbert R
Ryle (1900–1976) KINGDO
DOM Parmenides (c. 475 B.C.)
( USSI
USSIA)
SSI
SS
S Empedocles (c. 450 B.C.)
Frederick C. Copleston (1907–1994)
A. J. A
Ayer (1910–1989) Zeno (c. 440 B.C.)
Antony Flew (b. 1923) THER
THER
ERLAN
R AND
AN S BELARUS Gorgias of Leontini (c. 425 B.C.)
U. T. Place (1924–2000) Lucretius (c. 60)
St. Ambrose (c. 339–397)

BEL
ELGIUM
GERM
MANY St. Francis (1182–1226)
IRELAND POLAND Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274)
George Berkeley (1685–1753)
LUXEM
LLU
U BO
OURG
O URG
R CZECH
SPAIN
P REPUBLIC
FRANCE SLOVAKIA UKRAINE
St. Teresa of A
Avila (1515–1582)
René Descartes (1596–1650) C
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
St. John of the Cross (1542–1591) as
FRANCE p
Nicolas de Malebranche (1638–1715) SWIT
WITZERLAND
IT
T AUSTRIA MOLDO
OVA
O A

ia
V
Voltaire (1694–1778) HU
UNG
GAR
RY

n
ROMANIA

Se
Julien Offray
f de la Mettrie (1709–1751) SLOVE
ENIA

a
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
CRO
RO
OATIA
TIA GEORGIA
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) THRACE
BOOSNIA-
Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973) ANDOR
OR
OR HERZE
H
HEE EGOVINA Leucippus (c. 450 B.C.) AZERBAIJAN
RT
RTUGAL SERBIA
Jean–Paul Sartre (1905–1980) Democritus (c. 425 B.C.)
ITALY
AL BULGARIA AR
RMENIA
Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) MONTENEGRO
Simone W Weil (1909–1943) SPAIN
N
Albert Camus (1913–1960)
MACEDON
MACEDONIA
M NIA
N IA (Thrace)) TURKEY
GERMANY BANIA
BA Thales (c. 600 B.C.)
Albert the Great (1193–1280) TURK
KEY Anaximander (c. 575 B.C.)
Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–c.1327) Anaximenes (c. 550 B.C.)
Gottfried W
Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) GREECE
G E Heraclitus (c. 500 B.C.)
Baron d’Holbach (1723–1789) Xenophanes (c. 500 B.C.)
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
Johann Gottfried von Herder (174444 SYRIA
1803) GREECE
MOROCCO ALGERIA
Georg W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) Cratylus (c. 500 B.C.)
St. Augustine (354–430) IRA
AQ
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) TUNISIA Socrates (c. 470–399 B.C.) B NON
BAN
Karl Marx (1818–1883) Protagoras (c. 425 B.C.)
Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) The philosophers shown on the
LIBYA
Y EL
EL map here and inside the back cover
Rudolf Otto (1869–1937) ALGERIA Epicurus (c. 300 B.C.) have been cited in the text. They are
Aristippus (c. 400 B.C.) Pyrrho (c. 300 B.C.) placed with the country usually
Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) Dead Sea
ea
Carneades (c. 150 B.C.) associated with their work; ancient
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)
JORDAN
N thinkers are identified in terms of
present-day locations.
LIBYA
EGYPT

ISBN: 0073386560 Front or back endsheets

Author: ED. L. Miller, Jon Jensen Color: 4
Title: Question That Matter Pages: 1-3
Philosophers in
Space and Time
CANADA
(United States)
Hudson
Bay
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Atlantic
Oce a n

UNITED STATES
William James (1842–1910)
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)
C. J. Ducasse (1881–1969)
Paul Tillich (1886–1965)
Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
Brand Blanshard (1892–1987)
UNITED STATES Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)
Herbert Feigl (1902–1988)
William K. Frankena (1908–1994)
Willard V. O. Quine (1908–2000)
Norman Malcolm (1911–1990)
John Hospers (b. 1918)
Richard Taylor (1919–2003)
Pacific
John Rawls (1921–2002)
Ocean John Hick (b. 1922)
Joel Feinberg (1926–2004)
Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
Alasdair MacIntyre (b. 1929)
Robert Nozick (1938–2002)
Caribbean Alvin Plantinga (b. 1932)
MEXICO
Sea John Searle (b. 1932)

RUSSIA
Philosophers in
Space and Time
(Asia)
KAZAKHSTAN
MONGOLIA

UZBEKISTAN
KYRGYZSTAN
NORTH
KOREA
TURKMENISTAN TAJIKISTAN
SOUTH JAPAN
SYRIA CHINA
LEB. KOREA
IRAN AFGHANISTAN
IRAQ
ISR. BHUTAN
JOR.
PAKISTAN NEPAL
JAPAN
SAUDI U.A.E. D. T. Suzuki (1870–1966)
ARABIA MYANMAR
OMAN INDIA
LAOS
CHINA
YEMEN THAILAND VIETNAM Confucius (551–479 B.C.)
BANGLADESH
Lao Tzu (c. 500 B.C.)
IRAN CAMBODIA
Zoroaster (c. 500 B.C.)
Mani (216–276)
SRI
LANKA MALAYSIA

INDIA
SINGAPORE
Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) INDONESIA PAPUA
(c. 560–480 B.C.) NEW GUINEA
Jainism
Hinduism

AUSTRALIA
Indian J. J. C. Smart (b. 1920)
Ocean
AUSTRALIA
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QUESTIONS
THAT
MAT TER

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INTRODUCTION

THE NATURE
OF PHILOSOPHY

“P
hilosophical reflection is not an activity indulged in only by spe-
cialists called philosophers who allegedly live in architectural
monstrosities known as ivory towers. Just as each of us at times
engages casually in horticulture or medicine or carpentry without special
training, so practically all of us on certain occasions spontaneously occupy
ourselves with philosophical questions.
“We may, for example, read in the newspapers of a child born hopelessly
malformed and defective, but who, if operated upon at once, might none-
theless be kept alive. And we may read further that the physician in charge,
realizing that the child’s life could not be other than a grievous burden to
himself, to his parents, and to society, refrained from operating and allowed
the child to die. Then, in letters from the readers to the editors of newspa-
pers all over the country, controversy rages about whether the physician’s
action was morally right or morally wrong. And even if we do not ourselves
take active part in them, we too form opinions on the question.
“In such a controversy the participants do not merely state their moral
appraisal of the physician’s course. They also give reasons of one kind or
another to support the validity of their judgment. And if these reasons are
in turn challenged, each participant brings forth considerations he believes
adequate to vindicate the validity of his reasons.

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“The reasons, and the reasons for the reasons, that are thus appealed to
as grounds for endorsing or condemning the physician’s action, constitute
a moral philosophy, or at least a fragment of one. And the mental activity
of searching for those reasons, and of then so editing them as to purge them
of the inconsistencies of exaggerations or errors that opponents were able
to point out, constitute philosophizing, or philosophical reflection.
“In this example the issue is a moral one, and the philosophy constructed
on the spur of the occasion by a participant is therefore, as far as it goes,
a moral philosophy: that is, a theory of the nature of the difference between
moral right and wrong, and the nature of the situations to which appraisal
in terms of morality and immorality is congruous. But similar controver-
sies, or indeed doubts within one person’s mind, arise about issues of other
kinds: about the merits of certain works of art, for example, or about edu-
cational issues, or about the sufficiency of the evidence offered as basis for
a given assertion, and so on. The fragmentary philosophies similarly impro-
vised on such occasions are then a philosophy of the art, a philosophy of
education, or a philosophy of knowledge. And there can be no doubt that,
on the occasions impelling us to engage in such reflection, a judgment
shaped by the conclusions reached in that reflective manner is likely to be
wiser than would be one made without it.”
C. J. Ducasse, The Key Reporter, 23 (1958), p. 3.

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CHAPTER 1

WHAT IS
PHILOSOPHY?

I
nasmuch as this text seeks to introduce the reader to philosophy, it
may seem appropriate to begin by defining the term. We will indeed
try to define and characterize philosophy, but the reader should have
no illusions that this is how one comes to understand it. The only way to
understand what philosophy is about is to participate in it. This means to be
confronted with philosophical questions, to use philosophical language, to
become acquainted with differing philosophical positions and maneuvers,
to read the philosophers themselves, and to grapple with the issues for
oneself. Therefore it is not at the beginning but rather at the end of such
a book as this that one might really understand something of philosophy.
Nevertheless, we must begin somewhere, and it may be useful to have at
least some idea of the subject before us, right at the start.

THE WORD ITSELF

Four ways of getting at the meaning and nature of philosophy may be pro-
posed. First, let us look at the word itself. “Philosophy” comes from a Greek Philosophy: The
word that means “love of wisdom.” It was first used by the ancient Greek love of wisdom
thinker Pythagoras (about 600 B.C.), who likened philosophers—pursuers of
wisdom—to spectators at ancient games:

. . . when Leon the tyrant of Philius asked him who he was, he said, “A philosopher,”
and that he compared life to the Great Games, where some went to compete
for the prize and others went with wares to sell, but the best as spectators; for

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6 Pythagoras, the first to call himself a

“philosopher”
THE NATURE
OF PHILOSOPHY

similarly, in life, some grow up with servile natures, greedy for fame and gain,
but the philosopher seeks for truth.1

To be sure, something of the spirit and character of philosophy is suggested

in this way by the very meaning of the word—but not much. We must
know more about this “pursuit of wisdom.”

THE FIELDS OF PHILOSOPHY

Let us then, second, approach the meaning of philosophy from a different
standpoint—namely, from the standpoint of its several fields or areas of
investigation. Not all lists of the fields of philosophy agree, but most of
them would almost certainly include four: metaphysics, epistemology, value-
theory, and logic. Some of these terms may seem to be taken from a foreign
language, but they are not as difficult as they sound.

1
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, VIII, 8, tr. R.D. Hicks (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1925), II.

“Philosophy is like the measles. It must be caught from someone who is already
infected. To learn to philosophize, you must try your luck arguing with a live
philosopher.”

Elmer Sprague, What Is Philosophy? (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 3.
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7
As a philosophical concept, metaphysics originated in the first century B.C. when WHAT IS
PHILOSOPHY?
Andronicus, a scholar in Rhodes, was editing Aristotle’s works. He found it difficult
to classify one of these works and simply placed it meta ta physika, which in
Greek meant “after the physical [works].” By a happy coincidence the Metaphysics
of Aristotle did in fact concern primarily the “first principles” of things, the ultimate
causes that lie after or beyond (meta) the physical (physika).

Metaphysics means, usually, the study or theory of reality. The question Metaphysics
of metaphysics is, What is reality? What is real? This involves, of course,
many related questions, such as, Is reality some kind of “thing”? Is it one
or is it many? If it is one, then how is it related to the many things around
us? Can ultimate reality be grasped by the five senses, or is it supernatural
or transcendent? And so on. It should be mentioned that sometimes the
word “metaphysics” is used in a narrower way to concern only transcen-
dent reality—that is, reality that lies beyond the physical world and cannot
therefore be grasped by means of the senses. Therefore supernaturalists
do metaphysics in the first sense because they raise the question of reality,
and they do metaphysics also in the narrower sense because they believe in
supernatural or transcendent reality—say, God. On the other hand, materi-
alists do metaphysics in the first sense because they too raise the question
of reality, but their belief is not metaphysical in the narrower sense because
they deny that anything is real except matter.
Epistemology is the study or theory of knowledge. The question of epis- Epistemology
temology is, What is knowledge? What does it mean “to know”? This too
implies many other questions, such as, How is knowledge acquired? What,
if anything, do the senses contribute to knowledge? What does reason con-
tribute? Can we be really certain of anything? What is truth? Some phi-
losophers think that the fields of metaphysics and epistemology are, in a
way, the pillars of all the rest. Why would one say this? Are the questions,
What is real? And how can I know it?, in some sense the most basic ques-
tions of all? Is it possible that how you answer these questions will deter-
mine your whole philosophical outlook?
Value-theory is, obviously, the study of value. The question here is, What Value-theory
is value? It should be noted that this question does not involve any par-
ticular sort of value, but value of all sorts—the value of tables, steaks,
political ideologies, laws, actions. Most philosophers study value-theory in
one of its subfields, where the focus is on a particular sort of value. Ethics Ethics
is concerned with value as it applies to personal actions, decisions, and
relations; it is concerned with moral value. Ethics raises questions such as,
What is morally good? What is right? Are there any absolute or universal
moral principles? Does the end ever justify the means? Am I my brother’s
keeper? Closely related to ethics is the study of social and political values,
the values that determine the principles and institutions of our life together
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8 in society and the state. Questions here include, What is justice? What is the
THE NATURE
basis of political authority? Which form of government is best? What rights
OF PHILOSOPHY do individuals possess? A third specific type of value-theory is aesthetics,
Aesthetics which studies the values involved in art and our experience of beauty. It
raises the questions, What is beauty? What is art? Are there any objective
standards by which artistic works may be judged (or is beauty in the eye of
the beholder)? Ethics, social/political philosophy, and aesthetics are all prop-
erly subfields of value-theory, but are more commonly studied than the
question of value as such.
Logic Logic is the study of the principles of reasoning. The question of logic is,
What are the principles of right reasoning? We have saved logic for last,
since traditionally it stands in a somewhat different relation to the philoso-
pher than the other fields do. The other fields suggest something that is
studied by the philosopher—reality, knowledge, value, and the like. Logic
is a tool philosophers employ as they set about to investigate these issues.
This was recognized already in antiquity. Aristotle was the first to formulate
in a systematic way the principles of right reasoning, and the writings in
which he did this (his “logical” writings) came to be called the Organon,
which in Greek means “instrument” or “tool.” This view of logic as a tool
has, however, changed somewhat in recent years. With the rise of mathe-
matical and symbolic logic, logic itself has become for many a proper object
of philosophical study.
When we distinguish in this way the several fields of philosophy, we
suggest something of the diversity of philosophical questions: the question
of reality, the question of knowledge, the question of morality, and so on.
But the questions posed by these various fields cannot, after all, be so neatly
separated. In many ways these questions (and their answers) rise and fall
together. Do not the questions of value-theory bear directly upon ethics,
aesthetics, and metaphysics itself? Would not one’s theory of reality (for
example, one’s affirmation or denial of God) probably hold implications for
one’s view of morality, knowledge, and reality? Would not the opinion that
there is no certain knowledge whatsoever cast a certain light—or darkness—
over all questions of reality, value, or anything else? In this way we must
The unity of emphasize also the unity of philosophical questions.
philosophical
questions

THE FIELDS OF PHILOSOPHY

• Metaphysics: The study of reality (sometimes also the study of transcendent
reality).
• Epistemology: The study of knowledge.
• Value-theory: The study of value, including moral, aesthetic, social, and political
values.
• Logic: The principles of right reasoning.
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9
WHAT IS
SECOND-ORDER INQUIRIES PHILOSOPHY?

An ordinary question, such as What is X?, is called a first-order question. A ques-

tion about a first-order question is called a second-order question—for example,
What is the meaning of the question, What is X? Second-order questions are also
called meta questions, or “talk about talk.” Sometimes whole studies can be
oriented in the direction of second-order concerns. Thus metaethics is talk about
ethical talk. Philosophical areas such as philosophy of religion, philosophy of
science, philosophy of law, and philosophy of education tend to be second-order
inquiries. On the other hand, it is often difficult to separate talking about talk from
the primary talking itself. Why would you raise a second-order issue unless you
were interested in the primary issue in the first place?

In addition to the standard fields of philosophy some further areas should

be mentioned—namely, where philosophical concern relates itself to other
disciplines, the “philosophy of ______” category. Examples are the philoso-
phy of religion, philosophy of science, philosophy of education, and philoso-
phy of law. Here a particular discipline is viewed and treated philosophically;
the philosopher is concerned with such issues as the nature of that disci-
pline’s subject matter, the adequacy of its methodology, the meaning and
clarification of its concepts, its logical coherence, and its relation to and
implications for other fields. In the “philosophy of ______” studies, it is The “philosophy
sometimes difficult to separate the primary subject (religion, science, educa- of _____” areas
tion, law) from the secondary questions raised by the philosopher (questions
concerning methodology, concepts, logic relations). Nonetheless, it should
be clear that the “philosophy of ______” studies are largely second-order Second-order studies
studies—that is, studies about studies. If, for example, you ever take a course
in the philosophy of science, you won’t light any Bunsen burners, collect
any specimens, or dissect any frogs. What you will do is think and talk about
science. That is, you will analyze the meaning of science, scientific language
and concepts, scientific procedures, conclusions, and implications.
It should be noted, though, that in actual usage the distinction between
the fields of philosophy and the “philosophy of ______” areas is not hard
and fast. Aesthetics, for example, could accurately be represented as the
philosophy of art, whereas philosophy of religion would certainly raise, say,
the metaphysical issue of God’s existence and nature.

A RATIONAL, CRITICAL ENTERPRISE

In our third attempt to characterize philosophy we propose something more
illuminating than giving the root meaning of the word and something less
Philosophy involves
cumbersome than defining its several fields. And we come to the heart of reason, criticism,
the matter when we suggest that whatever else it may be, philosophy is a examination,
rational and critical enterprise. analysis
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10
THE NATURE
OF PHILOSOPHY SOCRATES

S
ocrates was born in Athens about 470 B.C. He must have come from a fairly
well-to-do family (there is some evidence that his father was a stonecutter),
since as a young man he was a fully armed hoplite (foot soldier) in the army.
His appearance and character are notorious. He is said to have resembled a
satyr (mythological creature, half human and half goat), we know that he had a
(continued on next page)

The word “rational” is important. Sometimes in philosophical discus-

sion the words “rational,” “rationalist,” and “rationalism” are used with a
rather technical meaning, as we shall see later. But here we intend these
words in a more ordinary and loose sense. They have to do with reason
and reasonableness. A rational argument, for example, is one that makes
sense, is coherent, and is well founded. A rationalist is a person who is
given to argument, investigation, and evaluation. And rationalism is the

RATIONALISM (THE LOOSE SENSE)

The view that affirms reason, with its interest in evidence, examination, and evalua-
tion, as authoritative in all matters of belief and conduct.
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11
pug nose, and the comic dramatist Aristophanes represented him as strutting WHAT IS
like a waterfowl and rolling his eyes. We also know that he was a man of PHILOSOPHY?
considerable physical endurance: He could spend long hours in meditation
(once, a whole day and night) uninterrupted by the need for food; he once
went barefoot on a wintry military expedition; and he could consume vast
amounts of wine without becoming the least bit tipsy. More than once he dis-
tinguished himself for bravery during the Peloponnesian War, during which time
he married Xanthippe, who according to tradition was one of the world’s out-
standing shrews. In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates represents himself as having
been instructed by Diotima, a prophetess-philosopher, who—if she actually
existed—was an important thinker indeed.
In the Apology (Plato’s account of Socrates’ trial) Socrates relates the origin of
his philosophical mission: Once a friend of Socrates asked the Delphic Oracle
who the wisest of men was, to which the Oracle responded, “Socrates.” Socrates
himself was much perplexed by this answer and concluded that if indeed he was
wisest it could only be because he was so aware of his ignorance. Much turned
off by the Sophists, who seemed to him to be more interested in the appearance
of truth than in truth itself (and even charged for their instruction), Socrates pur-
sued abiding and fixed truth. In fact, Aristotle credits him with being the first to
seek definitions, especially of moral ideas such as justice and piety. Socrates
utilized dialogue as the method of this pursuit, confronting, interrogating, and
wheedling his adversaries into clearer thinking.
Eventually, on the wrong side politically, he was tried and found guilty of
trumped-up charges of teaching strange gods and corrupting the youth. He
scorned the opportunity of escaping prison and willingly drank the poisonous
hemlock. The year was 399 B.C.
Although universally regarded as the model of the philosophical spirit, and in
some ways as the founder of Western philosophy, Socrates never published a
word—and thus today would have been denied tenure at any major university.

position that affirms reason as one of the highest authorities—maybe even

the highest authority—in matters of belief and conduct. There is, in all of
this, a certain critical activity that must not be missed. In being a rational
enterprise, philosophy seeks to eradicate from our perspectives every taint
and vestige of ignorance, superstition, prejudice, blind acceptance of ideas,
and any other form of irrationality. It challenges our ideas, analyzes them, and
tests them in light of evidence and arguments. It presses us to coherent
and valid expressions of our ideas.
The early Greek philosopher Socrates (ca. 470–399 B.C.) has always been
regarded as a kind of symbol of philosophical activity, especially its rational Socrates: the symbol
and critical nature. It is no wonder. Socrates was constantly pressing him- of philosophical
self and everyone else for clarity and answers. His method was to engage activity
someone over the meaning of some term or idea, usually a moral concept,
and then to cross-examine his opponent mercilessly until some progress or
clarity was achieved. According to Plato’s Apology (an account of Socrates’
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12
THE NATURE “. . . it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to
OF PHILOSOPHY
philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced
little by little and stated difficulties about the greater matters.”
—Aristotle

defense at his trial), Socrates likens himself to a gadfly that incessantly

stings and disturbs and challenges the citizenry:

If you put me to death, you will not easily find anyone to take my place. It is
literally true, even if it sounds rather comical, that God has specially appointed
me to this city, as though it were a large thoroughbred horse which because of
its great size is inclined to be lazy and needs the stimulation of some stinging
fly. It seems to me that God has attached me to this city to perform the office of
such a fly, and all day long I never cease to settle here, there, and everywhere,
rousing, persuading, reproving every one of you. You will not easily find another
like me, gentlemen, and if you take my advice you will spare my life. I suspect,
however, that before long you will awake from your drowsing, and in your annoy-
ance you will take Anytus’ advice and finish me off with a single slap, and then
you will go on sleeping till the end of your days, unless God in his care for you
sends someone to take my place. . . .2

It is from this same context that perhaps the most famous line of all philo-
“The unexamined sophical literature comes: “The unexamined life is not worth living”:
life is not worth
living.” I tell you that to let no day pass without discussing goodness and all the other
subjects about which you hear me talking and examining both myself and others
is really the very best thing that a man can do, and that life without this sort of
examination is not worth living. . . .3

As in Socrates, the accent in all philosophy clearly falls on reason and

criticism. But can everything be reasoned? Must every proposition, idea, and
belief be exposed to the searchlight of critical reflection? Some philosophers
would answer with a loud Yes. Others would not be so optimistic, insisting
The limits of reason that there are limits to the rational and critical enterprise. If true, then this
in itself is an important fact about philosophy and must be reckoned with
constantly. Many philosophers do in fact recognize that reality and our
experience of it are, after all, bigger than philosophy: Not everything can
be grasped intellectually; not everything can be reduced to an argument;
not everything can be expressed in language. But what happens at the point
where reason gives out? Do we simply draw a blank? Some would say that
Nonrational and it is at this point that the nonrational too plays a role, and even an inevi-
irrational table role. But it is important here that we do not confuse “nonrational”

2
Plato, Apology, 30D–31A, in The Last Days of Socrates, tr. Hugh Tredennick (Harmondsworth:
Penguin Classics, 1954.)
3
Ibid., 38A.
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13
WHAT IS
NONRATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL PHILOSOPHY?

• A nonrational claim is one that is justified, if at all, through an appeal to some-

thing other than or different from reason. Authority, feeling, intuition, religious
illumination, mystical experience, and the like are all nonrational justifications.
Example: “I believe in heaven because of my faith in God.”
• An irrational claim is contrary to reason. There are two forms of irrational claims.
1. A claim that flies in the face of everything we would expect from history,
experience, and nature.
Example: “Herds of giraffes are currently roaming the White House.” This
is highly improbable and absurd, but it could conceivably be true.
2. A claim that could not conceivably be true; it involves a self-contradiction
and is therefore logically impossible.
Example: “I have a collection of round squares.”

with “irrational.” That which is irrational is incompatible with general

experience or reason itself, whereas that which is nonrational is simply dif-
ferent from and maybe even higher than experience or reason.
If we do believe in nonrational knowledge, what forms might it take? Cer-
tainly philosophers disagree among themselves about the possible significance
of the claims of intuition in the sense of an immediate and direct apprehension
of truth, mystical experience as a transcendent and ecstatic union with ulti-
mate reality, various forms of religious and inner illumination, poetic visions
or feelings, and the like. On the other hand, many would agree at least on the
inevitable presence of ultimate presuppositions (also called basic assumptions,
faith assertions, etc.) that are known with certainty as the foundations of all
of our other ideas but that themselves cannot be proved. This view is known
as foundationalism. Probably the most common defense of this view is the claim Foundationalism
that from a purely logical standpoint not everything can be argued or there
would never be an end to the arguing. A long time ago Aristotle pointed out
that every argument finally rests on something that cannot be proved, and
that it is the mark of an uneducated person not to realize that. There must be,
as it were, a last outpost or final court of appeal. Do you believe with foun-
dationalists that every philosophical system or position or argument neces-
sarily rests at some point or other on some idea or ideas that are certain and
basic and undemonstrable? If so, then you must believe that here, if no place
else, the nonrational too makes a contribution.

A WORKING DEFINITION
Perhaps, finally, we may pose a working definition of philosophy, one that
does some justice to what we have seen to be both its theme and its varia-
tions: Philosophy is the attempt to think rationally and critically about the most Philosophy defined
important questions.
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14 The theme is that philosophy is a rational and critical activity. Philoso-

THE NATURE phizing in all forms seeks to think and to think hard about something. But
OF PHILOSOPHY about what? Here we have the variation. There are quite differing ideas as
to what philosophy should be rational and critical about. Still, even here
Variations philosophers have in common that they see themselves as addressing the
on a theme really important questions, questions that are fundamental to everything.

PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, AND SCIENCE

If this is what philosophy is, then how does it stand in relation to those
two other great enterprises, religion and science?
What is religion? As if we did not already have enough problems, “religion” is a slippery
word indeed, as is evident from looking in any dictionary. But two things
are clear. First, religion has to do with many of the same things philosophy
has to do with: ultimate reality, the meaning of life, good and evil, immor-
tality, human nature, and so on. In fact, religion usually involves beliefs
about such things and beliefs that are worked out and adhered to in a fairly
systematic and fixed manner, though perhaps not in as critical a manner as
in philosophy. Second, in addition to this intellectual aspect of religion is a
more important one, one that concerns not so much the thinking as the
willing side of our being. What is really distinctive about religion is the
commitment it involves.
It may be helpful to note that this latter aspect of religion is true to the
very origin of the word: “Religion” comes from the Latin religare, which
means “to bind one thing to another.” The religious individual is someone
who is personally bound to something. This something is usually understood
to be God, and the worship of God and active participation in rituals, ceremo-
nies, and proclamation are further evidence for the existential rather than
intellectual character of religion. We might ask, however, whether the object
of such commitment must be God. Perhaps the object of such commitment
Religion as ultimate need only be something ultimate—as the German-American theologian Paul
concern Tillich said, one’s “ultimate concern.” Could this something as easily be a
political cause? the pursuit of pleasure? the acquisition of wealth? But then
again, Tillich reminds us that some things may be perceived as being ultimate
that really are not. Is it possible to be bound “religiously” to something that
is not ultimate, to have an idolatrous faith, to be worshipping an idol instead
of a real thing? Be that as it may, religion would appear to have mainly to
do not so much with our intellects as with our decision, action, worship, and
love—not so much with what we think as with what we do.
Science brings us back to the study of something. In fact, our word
What is science? “science” comes from the Latin scientia, which means simply “knowledge.”
It was in this sense of the word that it was held (and still is by some) that
“theology is the queen of the sciences and philosophy is her hand-maid.”
For most people the word has lost this original meaning and is now used
sometimes to refer to the social sciences (such as sociology, psychology,
anthropology, etc.) but more often to the natural sciences (such as physics,
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15
“Life without philosophy is inconceivable.” WHAT IS
PHILOSOPHY?
—Socrates

“Philosophy is a silent dialogue between the soul and itself.”

—Plato

“All men by nature desire to know.”

—Aristotle

biology, chemistry, astronomy, etc.). Almost always the words “science” and
“scientist” are associated with such things as test tubes, dissections, micro-
scopes, telescopes, periodic charts, nuclear fission chambers, and laborato-
ries occupied by people wearing white jackets.
Taken in this usual sense, science is easily related to philosophy. Like
philosophy science is the pursuit of knowledge: It is an intellectual activity
and it studies something. Unlike philosophy, however, its focus is much
more restricted. Specifically, it narrows its focus to the study of the natural Science: the study of
world alone, whereas our experience of nature may be but one aspect of the the natural world
total reality that interests philosophers. Likewise, the scientific method is
more restricted than the philosopher’s method may be. Inasmuch as scien-
tists are interested in the world of nature, they naturally employ primarily
the tools of observation and experimentation: the test tubes, dissections, micro-
scopes, and telescopes mentioned above.

A LITTLE LOGIC
But back to philosophy. We have seen that philosophers and careful thinkers
strive to make their arguments, positions, and pronouncements rational—that
is, well conceived, well evidenced, well stated, and persuasive. To ensure this
goal philosophers pay attention to the philosophical discipline of logic, which Logic: the key to
we have already defined as the study of right reasoning. Not that there is philosophizing
any choice about it. The philosopher, and others who reason critically, can
no more do without logic than the physicist can do without mathematics. It
is the tool or, as someone has suggested, the “key” to philosophizing.
From the traditional logic first formulated by Aristotle to the various
forms of contemporary symbolic and mathematical logic (which seem to
many like a foreign language), the science of logic has become a very com-
plicated and sophisticated business. A real course in logic would have to
take up many matters: the nature and uses of language, problems of defini-
tion, types of propositions, types of arguments, the construction and use of
symbolic languages, probability theory, the nature of hypotheses and theo-
ries, and so on. We cannot do much here, but a beginner in philosophy
should be introduced at least to some of the bare elements of logic, espe-
cially arguments and fallacies.
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16 WHAT IS AN ARGUMENT?
THE NATURE
OF PHILOSOPHY When you see the word “argument” you might think of disagreements or
quarrels, often accompanied by shouting, clenched fists, tears, and the like.
Well, an argument might or might not involve these things. Consider the
following interchange:

A: Capital punishment is immoral.

B: No it isn’t!
A: Yes it is!
B: Well, what do you know about it?!
A: I know more about it than you do!
B: Oh yeah? You’re an idiot!

Argument: premises, There is plenty of disagreement and lots of noise here but no argument. An
conclusion . . . argument is an attempt to show that something is true by providing evi-
dence for it. More technically, it is a group of statements in which one is
said to follow from at least one other. The statement that follows from the
others—that is, the “something to be shown”—is called the conclusion; the
statements from which the conclusion follows—that is, the evidence—are
called premises. Thus we have the argument

It is immoral to kill persons.

Capital punishment is the killing of persons.

Therefore, capital punishment is immoral.

in which the first two statements are the premises of the argument and the
third is the conclusion. Naturally, in an argument not just any old state-
ments can serve as premises and conclusion, as in

In fourteen hundred and ninety-two,

Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
Switzerland exports many cuckoo-clocks.

Therefore, capital punishment is immoral.

but there must be some connection between them. This connection, by which
. . . and inference the conclusion is said “to follow” from the premises, is called an inference, or,
more technically, an entailment.
In ordinary discourse, arguments may be presented in a variety of ways.
Usually, though, there are certain words or expressions that introduce
premises and other words that introduce conclusions. We list here just a
few of them:

Premise signals: Since, because, for, as, inasmuch as, otherwise, in view
of the fact that, for the reason that
Conclusion signals: Therefore, thus, accordingly, we may infer, which
shows that, points to the conclusion that, as a result
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ELEMENTS OF AN ARGUMENT 17
WHAT IS
PHILOSOPHY?
Premise
Premise
Inference

Conclusion

Can you separate the premises from the conclusion in the following
argument?

. . . for a producer to convince the institutions which finance movies that his film
will be profitable, he has to line up a “bankable” star; and if he has a project
for a political movie, the star is unlikely to sign on if he doesn’t agree with the
film’s politics. Which means that the political movies the public is getting from
Hollywood today represent, by and large, the political thinking of actors.4

What is the nature of the connection between premises and conclusion—

the inference—that results in arguments? Here the important distinction
between deductive and inductive arguments comes into play. It is sometimes Deductive and
said that deductive arguments reason from the whole to the part, or from inductive arguments
the general to the specific, as in

All humans are mortal. ] ⎡⎢ universal

Socrates is a human. ⎣ proposition
particular
Therefore, Socrates is mortal. ] ⎡⎢
⎣ proposition

whereas inductive arguments reason from the part to the whole, or from
the specific to the general, as in

Socrates is mortal. ⎤
Plato is mortal. ⎥
⎥
Aristotle is mortal. ⎥
Vivaldi is mortal. ⎥ ⎡⎢ particular
⎥
Tim is mortal. ⎥ ⎣ proposition
· ⎥
⎥
· ⎥
· ⎦
universal
Therefore, all humans are mortal. ] ⎡⎢
⎣ proposition

While this is certainly true of some deductive and inductive arguments, it

fails to express their real nature. What is more important, again, is the kind
of connection that exists between premises and conclusion in deductive and

4
Richard Grenier, “Jane Fonda & Other Political Thinkers,” Commentary, June 1979.
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18 Aristotle, credited as the first to formulate

systematically the principles of reasoning. His
THE NATURE “logical works” were eventually collected and
OF PHILOSOPHY issued under the title Organon.

inductive arguments. In a valid deductive argument the premises ensure,

or guarantee, the conclusion: If the premises are true, the conclusion must
be true also. It is a matter of necessity. In a good inductive argument, on
the other hand, the premises suggest the conclusion (“to induce” means “to
influence” or “to persuade”): If the premises are true, the conclusion is
probably true. It is a matter of probability.
Let us consider deductive arguments a little further. What is this neces-
sity we spoke of when we said that if the premises are true, the conclu-
sion must be true? Why must the conclusion be true? Answer: By virtue
Logical entailment of a relation of entailment, or logical implication, between terms or prop-
ositions in the premises: “To entail” means “to include” or “to involve.”
Thus deductive entailment has to do with the way in which a term or
proposition may be included in another. And the way in which this may
be done so as to result in a valid argument is specified by valid argument
forms.
The most traditional and yet one of the most common forms of a deduc-
The syllogism tive argument is the syllogism. This is a type of argument consisting of two
premises and a conclusion (“syllogism” comes from a Greek word meaning
“propositions considered together”). An example of a valid syllogism, or at
least the form of one, is

All X are Y.
All Y are Z.

Therefore, all X are Z.

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19
“A syllogism is a reasoning in which something different emerges with necessity WHAT IS
PHILOSOPHY?
from what has been laid down.”
—Aristotle

A possible translation, or substitution for the symbols, might be

All politicians are liars.

All liars are despicable.

Therefore, all politicians are despicable.

One of the most important things to appreciate here is that deductive Truth, validity,
validity has to do with form, and form alone. What makes an argument valid and soundness
is that it conforms to a valid argument form. But there is a big difference
between validity and truth. An argument may be absolutely valid even
though every statement in it is false:

All politicians are Communists.

Babe Ruth is a politician.

Therefore, Babe Ruth is a Communist.

It goes without saying that every proposition, including the conclusion, in

an argument might be true, and the argument be invalid nonetheless:

All U.S. presidents have been males.

Abraham Lincoln was a male.

Therefore, Abraham Lincoln was a U.S. president.

Obviously, what we are interested in is both validity and truth. We may call
a deductive argument that is valid and whose premises are true a “sound”
argument.

TRUTH, VALIDITY, AND SOUNDNESS

• Valid arguments display proper deductive form.
• True statements are possible in any argument regardless of form.
• Sound arguments have both valid form and true premises.
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20
THE NATURE
OF PHILOSOPHY INDUCTIVE REASONING
It is hardly possible to give a better example of the essential nature of inductive
reasoning than that provided by the master sleuth himself, Sherlock Holmes,
whose “powers of deduction” were actually powers of induction. Look at the
procedure and kinds of evidence he employs in The Hound of the Baskervilles:

“So far as I can follow you, then, Mr. Holmes,” said Sir Henry Baskerville,
“someone cut out this message with a scissors—”
“Nail-scissors,” said Holmes. “You can see that it was a very short-bladed
scissors, since the cutter had to take two snips over ‘keep away.’”
“That is so. Someone, then, cut out the message with a pair of short-bladed
scissors, pasted it with paste—”
“Gum,” said Holmes.
“With gum on to the paper. But I want to know why the word ‘moor’ should
have been written?”
“Because he could not find it in print. The other words were all simple and
might be found in any issue, but ‘moor’ would be less common.”
“Why, of course, that would explain it. Have you read anything else in this
message, Mr. Holmes?”
“There are one or two indications, and yet the utmost pains have been taken
to remove all clues. The address, you observe, is printed in rough characters.
But the Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the
highly educated. We may take it, therefore, that the letter was composed by
an educated man who wished to pose as an uneducated one, and his effort
to conceal his own writing suggests that that writing might be known, or come
to be known, by you. Again, you will observe that the words are not gummed
on in an accurate line, but that some are much higher than others. ‘Life,’ for
example, is quite out of its proper place. That may point to carelessness or it
(continued on next page)

We have seen above that in deductive arguments validity in the form

results in a conclusion that follows as a matter of necessity. In the case of
inductive arguments, however, there is no question of validity at all, and
therefore no logical necessity in the conclusion can be expected. What is
Not necessity, aimed at is truth in the premises and probability in the conclusion. It cannot
but probability be stressed too strongly that no inductive argument can deliver a conclusion
that is demonstratively certain. The most that can be hoped for is a degree
of probability, though the more supportive the premises, the more reasonable
and the higher the probability of the conclusion. Thus, as with deductive
arguments, not just any old premises will do. Here too there must be an
inference between premises and conclusion, just as in deductive arguments.
On the other hand, whereas in deductive arguments the inference is a strictly
logical one resulting in a necessary conclusion, in inductive arguments the
inference is a supportive one resulting in a probable conclusion.
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21
may point to agitation and hurry upon the part of the cutter. On the whole I WHAT IS
PHILOSOPHY?
incline to the latter view, since the matter was evidently important, and it is
unlikely that the composer of such a letter would be careless. If he were in
a hurry it opens up the interesting question why he should be in a hurry,
since any letter posted up to early morning would reach Sir Henry before he
would leave his hotel. Did the composer fear an interruption—and from
whom?”
“We are coming now rather into the region of guess work,” said Dr. Mortimer.
“Say, rather, into the region where we balance probabilities and choose the
most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination, but we have always some
material basis on which to start our speculations. Now, you would call it a
guess, no doubt, but I am almost certain that this address has been written
in an hotel.”
“How in the world can you say that?”
“If you examine it carefully you will see that both the pen and the ink have
given the writer trouble. The pen has spluttered twice in a single word, and
has run dry three times in a short address, showing that there was very little
ink in the bottle. Now, a private pen or ink-bottle is seldom allowed to be in
such a state, and the combination of the two must be quite rare. But you know
the hotel ink and the hotel pen, where it is rare to get anything else. Yes, I
have very little hesitation in saying that could we examine the wastepaper
baskets of the hotels round Charing Cross until we found the remains of the
mutilated Times leader we could lay our hands straight upon the person who
sent this singular message.*

This is an excellent illustration of what goes on in inductive arguments: moving

from particular facts here, analogies there, common threads and connections
everywhere, to a conclusion that is suggested by all of that evidence.

*A. Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles (New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1902),
pp. 46–48.

What is the connection, this “supportive inference,” between premises

and conclusion in an inductive argument that makes the conclusion at least
reasonable and probable? We note here just two of the ways in which induc-
tive arguments can take shape.

DEDUCTION AND INDUCTION

• In a valid deductive argument: If the premises are true, the conclusion must be
true, by virtue of a logically necessary inference.
• In a strong inductive argument: If the premises are true, the conclusion is prob-
ably true, by virtue of a supportive inference.
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22 The first and most obvious form of inductive reasoning is to generalize

THE NATURE on the basis of particular instances. The simplest of this kind of argument
OF PHILOSOPHY is called universal generalization and has the form

The method of Instance 1 of A is observed to be X.

generalization Instance 2 of A is observed to be X.
Instance 3 of A is observed to be X.
Instance 4 of A is observed to be X.
Instance 5 of A is observed to be X.
·
·
·

Therefore, all A is X.

Quite different from the inductive methods of generalization is the

The method method of analogy. This kind of reasoning can take many different forms,
of analogy but its essential nature is indicated by

A is observed to be X and Y.
B is observed to be X and Y.
C is observed to be X and Y.
D is observed to be X and Y.
·
·
·
M is observed to be X.

Therefore, M is Y.

That is, if M is analogous, or similar, to A, B, C, D . . . in being X, it is prob-

ably also similar in being Y.

FALLACIES
Although logic covers many topics, understanding faulty reasoning or fal-
lacies is one key component. Logical fallacies are often divided into two
Formal and informal types: formal and informal. Formal fallacies are mistakes in reasoning that
fallacies result from breaking some rule of validity: mistakes with respect to the form
of an argument. A course in logic focuses primarily on deductive arguments
and formal fallacies. Informal fallacies are quite different. They are mistakes
that arise from carelessness with respect to the relevance of ideas or care-
lessness with respect to the clarity and consistency of our language. There
are many such fallacies. We list here only some of the most common ones.
Mastery of them will prevent many unnecessary blunders in philosophical
discussion and, for that matter, any discussion whatsoever.

1. Loaded language is language with the sole purpose of swaying the

emotions of the audience for or against an argument. Example: “It’s
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23
WHAT IS
LOGICAL FALLACIES PHILOSOPHY?

• Formal fallacies: Mistakes in reasoning due to a failure in following the rules

for the formal structure of valid arguments. These fallacies do not concern truth
or falsity but validity.
• Informal fallacies: Mistakes in reasoning due to carelessness regarding rele-
vance and clarity of language. These fallacies bear directly on issues of truth
and falsity.

murder in cold blood. How could anyone say she has a right to have
an abortion?”
2. Equivocation occurs when a word or expression changes its meaning
in the course of an argument, sometimes referred to as a “weasel word.”
Example: “Everyone says she has good taste, so I would love to nibble
her ear.”
3. Begging the question occurs when the conclusion of an argument is
already present, usually disguised, in one of its premises; also called
circular reasoning. Example: “You can’t expect eighteen-year-olds to
vote intelligently because they are too young to have good judgment
about the issues.”
4. Ad hominem (appeal to the person) irrelevantly attacks the person
making a claim rather than attacking the claim itself. Example: “You
pro-choice people are selfless, godless, and immoral—probably Com-
munists, too!”
5. Straw man inappropriately simplifies an opposing argument so that it
becomes a cartoon or caricature of the true argument and is easy to
refute. Example: “Now the anti-handgun fundamentalist will tell you
that the mere presence of a loaded pistol means that Mr. Finnegan is
going to get drunk and shoot Mrs. Finnegan. Or that the Finnegan
grandchild will one day play with the pistol, it will go off, and there
will be tragedy.”
6. “Person who” is the fallacy of generalizing or drawing a conclusion
from too little information. Also called a hasty induction, it often takes
the form of “I knew a person who . . .” and then draws a conclusion
based on one instance. Example: “Smoking does not cause cancer. My
Uncle Joe smoked three packs of Camels every day for fifty-three years;
then he died in an auto accident without even a trace of cancer.”
7. Ad populum (appeal to the masses) seeks to stengthen a claim by an
emotional appeal to the passions and prejudices of the listeners. Exam-
ple: “Don’t you think we all should get out early today?”
8. Ad ignorantiam (appeal to ignorance) affirms the truth of something
on the basis of the lack of evidence to the contrary. Example: “The
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24
THE NATURE
OF PHILOSOPHY FIND THE FALLACY!
Here are some examples of reasoning that involve informal fallacies. Can you
identify them?

1. “I’m all for women having equal rights,” said Bullfight Association president
Paco Camino. “But I repeat, women shouldn’t fight bulls because a bullfighter
is and should be a man.”
San Francisco Chronicle, March 28, 1972
2. The Moral Majority’s Rev. Jerry Falwell . . . claims that Jesus Christ favored the death
penalty. On the Cross, Falwell says, He could have spoken up: “If ever there was
a platform for our Lord to condemn capital punishment, that was it. He did not.”
Time, January 24, 1983
3. America is one of the few democracies to employ the death penalty, yet the
death penalty has not been proved to deter criminals.
Colorado Daily, May 24–27, 1991
4. Mysticism is one of the great forces of the world’s history. For religion is nearly
the most important thing in the world, and religion never remains for long
altogether untouched by mysticism.
John McTaggart and Ellis McTaggart,
“Mysticism,” Philosophical Studies, 1934
5. I also admit that there are people for whom even the reality of the external
world . . . constitutes a grave problem. My answer is that I do not address
them, but that I presuppose a minimum of reason in my readers.
Paul Feyerabend, “Materialism and the Mind-Body
Problem,” Review of Metaphysics, 1963
(continued on next page)

superb quality of her character can be demonstrated by the fact that

I’ve never heard a word spoken against her.”
9. Red herring introduces an irrelevant or unimportant topic in order to
divert attention from the main question. The term “red herring” comes
from the practice of dragging a strong-smelling fish across the trail
during fox hunts in order to confuse the hounds. Example: Q: “Should
handguns be banned?” A: “Everybody talks about handgun accidents.
But think of how many people are killed each year in auto accidents!
Why don’t we ban automobiles?”
10. False dilemma involves limiting the options considered to only two in
a way that is unfair to the person facing the dilemma. This is the same
as the failure to adequately consider alternatives. Example: “It seems
to me that a person just can’t win when it comes to what you eat. Either
you eat meat and cause veal calves to be tortured or you starve to death
on bread and water.”
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25
6. If elected, would you try to fool some of the people all of the time, all of the WHAT IS
PHILOSOPHY?
people some of the time or go for the big one: all of the people all of the time?
TV Guide cartoon
7. Pity the many teens who are influenced by atheism, humanism and secu-
larism, who are swept along by vulgar dance and pornography and who
party on drugs, tobacco and liquor. Sex is for marriage. Other ways breed
heartache.
Letter to the Editor, Time, Dec. 30, 1985
8. LOTS of things are invisible, but we don’t know how many because we can’t
SEE them.
“Dennis the Menace” cartoon
9. It’s too bad that Mother Teresa cannot view other religions as being valid
and as authentic as her own Roman Catholicism. Her holier-than-thou atti-
tude toward Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism smacks of bigotry and
condescension.
Letter to the Editor, Time, Dec. 4, 1989
10. According to R. Grunberger, author of A Social History of the Third Reich,
published in Britain, the Nazis used to send the following notice to German
readers who let their subscriptions lapse: “Our paper certainly deserves the
support of every German. We shall continue to forward copies of it to you,
and hope that you will not want to expose yourself to unfortunate conse-
quences in the case of cancellation.”
Parade, May 9, 1971
11. As the loving mother of three happy children, I prefer the “silent scream” of
the unwanted fetus to the reverberating cry of the unwanted child.
Letter to the Editor,
Time, April 15, 1985

PROFESSOR MILLER’S FOUR PRINCIPLES

It will be apparent soon enough that this book has a decidedly historical
cast. To be sure, we want to pay attention to logic and current develop-
ments. But we want also to know about those thinkers, movements, and
broad perspectives, strewn over 2,500 years, that have brought us where
we are today and otherwise confront us with so many—yes—philosophical
options. There are, however, pitfalls in the study of historical philosophy.
As warnings against these pitfalls I have formulated Four Principles for the
Study of the History of Philosophy. Heeding these principles may save you
lots of misunderstanding and other troubles:

• The Clarification Principle

• The Deculturalization Principle
• The Modified Sergeant Friday Principle
• The Smartness Principle
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26
THE NATURE
OF PHILOSOPHY
“For man, the unexamined life is not worth living.”
—Socrates

The Clarification Principle asserts that it is always easier to appreciate the

clarity of an idea once the idea has been clarified. The point here is that we
should not judge too harshly those who have not benefited from long years
of critical reflection and consequent clarification of ideas. Some distinctions
are hard to see until they are seen; then they are easy to see. Also, some
claims are obviously true once the competing claims have been shown to be
impossible; and so on.
According to the Deculturalization Principle, the real substance of philoso-
phy should never be confused with the cultural elements necessarily involved
in its expression. Any philosophy, in the attempt to express itself, must resort,
for example, to a certain language. And is it a surprise that a philosophy may
reflect a prevailing view of the physical universe, or draw upon standard
ideas about the soul, or employ examples from conventional morality or
images from popular religion? The important point is to recognize that these
may be purely incidental to the real point, and not to throw out the baby
with the bathwater. What is called for is, rather, a setting free of the real
philosophy from these purely accidental features inevitably involved in its
expression for a particular audience at a particular time and place.
The Modified Sergeant Friday Principle seeks to instill a healthy respect for the
text—that is, what the philosopher actually wrote: “Just the text, ma’am, just
the text.”5 It may, of course, sometimes be necessary or useful to speculate on
what a philosopher might have said, should have said, or could have said, or
to try to fill in some gaps or draw some inferences, but one must never lose
sight of what is actually there in the text. That, in the end, is all we have.
Finally, the Smartness Principle: Always assume that the philosopher is
smarter than you are. The danger here is that a philosopher may say some-
thing that seems to you to be silly, stupid, or absurd, so you give up on it,
whereas if you had stayed with it you might have learned that, in the larger
context or with further explanation, it wasn’t stupid at all. It may, of course,
turn out that you were right—“That really was dumb!”—but that too is
something you may not be sure of if you throw in the towel too soon.
I don’t pretend that these are the only principles relevant for the study
of the history of philosophy, but I do claim that they’re good ones and that
they’re suggestive of the sorts of concerns that make for solid study.

5
For those readers who are too young to know, Sergeant Friday was the main character in
the radio, and then TV, program Dragnet. He often responded to overly enthusiastic witnesses
with a pointed “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.”
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27
WHAT IS
FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY PHILOSOPHY?

It has often been observed that women are, by and large, conspicuous by their
absence from the history of philosophy. It is true, for example, that in the massive
Encyclopedia of Philosophy one searches in vain for women in philosophy, except
for the most incidental references. Some have felt that there may be more going
on here than meets the eye.
Feminist philosophers argue that a male bias has been at work in our philo-
sophical tradition, resulting not only in excluding important contributions by women
but even controlling some of our basic philosophical concepts. In the following
extracts from an article in the American Philosophical Association Newsletter on
Feminism and Philosophy, Alison Jaggar emphasizes the first, briefly develops
“dualistic thinking” as an example of the second, and concludes that, if real, the
male bias in philosophy betrays some of the ideals of philosophy itself.

The western philosophical tradition at first sight appears to be almost exclusively

the creation of male minds. No woman is listed among the great names of phi-
losophy, and those women whose names are mentioned in a philosophical con-
text usually are presented as having made at best minor contributions. Harriet
Taylor, for instance, is admitted to have helped J. S. Mill, but Mill’s strong asser-
tion that she was his main philosophical inspiration invariably is discounted. Other
women in the history of philosophy fare even worse: Socrates’ wife, Xanthippe,
was a nag, seeking to divert her husband from his philosophical midwifery, while
Queen Christina of Sweden was so immoderate in her demands that she caused
Descartes’ death by making him get up too early in the morning.
The apparent absence of women from the western tradition is far from
entirely illusory. There is no doubt that women’s opportunities to enter into
philosophical discourse have been curtailed severely by lack of education and
by other social constraints. Nevertheless, some feminists believe that a few
women did manage to make a philosophical contribution, but that this contri-
bution has been overlooked because of bias against work by women. . . .
One persistent theme in both French and Anglo-American feminist philoso-
phy is a criticism of dualistic modes of conceptualization. Feminist philoso-
phers frequently claim that the western tradition typically presents reality as
structured by polar oppositions, pairs of entities or qualities that are defined
in contrast to each other. Examples of such dichotomous categorizations
include private/public, nature/culture, body/mind, particular/universal, concrete/
abstract, object/subject, subjective/objective, emotion/reason. Feminists have
asserted that these dichotomies evidence male bias at least in the sense that
the first term in each pair historically has been associated with femininity and
conceived as inferior to the second term, which is associated with masculinity.
A considerable amount of feminist philosophy responds to these dualisms in
various ways. Some feminists seek to free the dichotomies from their gendered
associations; some retain the gendered connotations, but seek to invert the
hierarchical ordering; others still claim that dualistic thinking itself is masculine
and endeavor to rethink the distinctions in ways that will avoid the problems
supposedly engendered by rigid dichotomies. . . .
(continued on next page)
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28
THE NATURE Showing that claims of male bias in philosophy are possible does not estab-
OF PHILOSOPHY
lish, of course, that any such claims in fact can be substantiated. It may be that
some claims can be substantiated and others cannot. The commitment to inves-
tigate male bias, however, springs from an impulse that is simultaneously philo-
sophical and feminist. It is philosophical in so far as it seeks to understand the
world in terms of categories and ideals that do not reflect and promote merely
the interests of a few, and it is feminist in so far as it is inspired by a determina-
tion that women’s achievements and capacities, concerns and interests, should
receive full and fair appreciation and evaluation. If feminists are correct in even
some of their claims, it is the western tradition rather than feminist philosophy
that, perhaps unknowingly, has subordinated truth to politics and that therefore
constitutes a highly sophisticated form of propaganda.*

Well, what about this? What do you make of the idea that concepts and ways
of philosophizing might be male biased? Be that as it may, the traditionally male-
dominated philosophical world is on notice. Feminist philosophy is achieving
increased visibility and importance as is evident from the number of courses being
offered on the topic of philosophy and women, the appearance of the APA News-
letter on Feminism and Philosophy, the publication (in progress) of a multivolume
A History of Women Philosophers, the appearance of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist
Philosophy, and, of course, the increased numbers of women teaching philosophy
and otherwise contributing to contemporary philosophical work. Can you imagine
ways in which this may bear on the direction of future philosophizing?

*Alison Jaggar, “How Can Philosophy Be Feminist?,” American Philosophical Association

Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy, April 1988, pp. 4, 6, 8.

OF BEARDS AND BREAD

A few final observations may be useful for understanding the nature of
philosophy. For one thing, Barba philosophum non facit, “The beard does not
the philosopher make.”
In some sense we are all philosophers. We all think and reflect in our
own critical way about the questions that matter most to us. Naturally,
there are good philosophers and there are bad philosophers—some reason
and reflect more critically than others, some are oblivious to the fallacies
and mistakes in their reasoning, some are more coherent than others in their
philosophical expression, some can give it more time than others, some are
Is everyone professionals while most are amateurs. But everyone asks the important
a philosopher
by nature?

“Those who wish to succeed must ask the right preliminary questions.”
—Aristotle
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questions and tries, however feebly, to formulate meaningful answers. 29

Everyone participates, more or less, in the philosophical enterprise. WHAT IS
Some would even take philosophical awareness and activity as being PHILOSOPHY?
constitutive of human nature; that is, philosophical activity is part of what
it means to be a human being, or at least a full and healthy human being.
Mind you, it is not just thinking that makes us philosophers, but thinking
critically about the biggest things. Aristotle expressed it better than anyone
in the very first words of his Metaphysics: “All men by nature desire to
know.”6 And it is clear from what followed that he meant knowing about
the biggest things, about the questions that really matter.
Another important point: Philosophia panem non torrit, “Philosophy bakes
no bread.” Sometimes this saying is intended to express the perception
(often true enough) that there is little money in the philosophy business.
More often, it is a way of expressing the apparent irrelevance or impracti-
cality or uselessness of philosophy. Is philosophy
It has seemed to many that philosophical concerns are far removed from really useful?
the everyday world of work, political parties, abortion, love, death, automo-
biles, euthanasia, radios, capital punishment, bank loans, and the draft. This
impression is understandable. Questions about the eternity of the world, the
nature of the highest good, whether tables and chairs continue to exist when
we leave the room, whether a runner can pass through an infinite number
of points in a finite amount of time, how the mind interacts with the body,
and how many angels can dance on the head of a pin certainly appear
abstract, academic, and remote from the real world. The impression is also
very old. Plato tells that Thales, the first philosopher of the Western tradi-
tion, was once strolling along while gazing into the sky and making certain
astronomical observations—and fell into a well. Ever since, people have
poked fun at philosophers who seem to be so preoccupied with what is
above their heads that they have little idea of what is at their feet.
But the idea that philosophers merely think about the world while oth-
ers live in it obviously involves a misunderstanding of the real nature of
philosophy. A moment’s thought reveals that the questions that may seem
to be the most remote are also the most important. What we think about
our own selves, God, the physical universe, value, and the like—and, as Philosophical
we just insisted, we all do think about these things—determines how we issues as basic
actually live in the world, and what we think about things like abortion,
politics, euthanasia, capital punishment, death, and the draft. Everything
else in our practical lives is dictated in some way by our views about those
“remote” things.7 If you doubt this, a little reflection on your activities,
commitments, aspirations, and decisions this very day will probably prove it.

6
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 980a, tr. W. D. Ross, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon
(New York: Random House, 1941).
7
Sometimes the question How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? is cited jokingly
as an example of the irrelevance of philosophical issues. But even this question (whether or not
it was ever actually posed in this way) can be shown to involve an issue that, in its medieval
and scholastic context, held important implications.
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30
THE NATURE
OF PHILOSOPHY THE INEVITABILITY OF PHILOSOPHY
In his A Preface to Philosophy, Mark B. Woodhouse provides a nice set of exam-
ples of the inescapability of philosophical issues.*

1. A neurophysiologist, while establishing correlations between certain brain

functions and the feeling of pain, begins to wonder whether the “mind” is
distinct from the brain.
2. A nuclear physicist, having determined that matter is mostly empty space
containing colorless energy transformations, begins to wonder to what extent
the solid, extended, colored world we perceive corresponds to what actually
exists, and which world is the more “real.”
3. A behavioral psychologist, having increasing success in predicting human
behavior, questions whether any human actions can be called “free.”
4. Supreme Court justices, when framing a rule to distinguish obscene and
nonobscene art works, are drawn into questions about the nature and function
of art.
5. A theologian, in a losing battle with science over literal descriptions of the
universe (or “reality”), is forced to redefine the whole purpose and scope of
traditional theology.
6. An anthropologist, noting that all societies have some conception of a moral
code, begins to wonder just what distinguishes a moral from a nonmoral point
of view.
7. A linguist, in examining the various ways language shapes our view of the
world, declares that there is no one “true reality” because all views of reality
are conditioned and qualified by the language in which they are expressed.
8. A perennial skeptic, accustomed to demanding and not receiving absolute proof
for every view encountered, declares that it is impossible to know anything.
9. A county commissioner, while developing new zoning ordinances, begins to
wonder whether the effect or the intent (or both) of zoning laws makes them
discriminatory.
10. An IRS director, in determining which (religious) organizations should be
exempted from tax, is forced to define what counts as a “religion” or “religious
group.”

*Mark B. Woodhouse, A Preface to Philosophy (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1980), pp. 25–26.

Or consider your view on some important or controversial issue, such as

abortion or war. Do you not discover there are some fundamental philo-
sophical principles or ideas at work? And why are you reading this book,
anyway? In some sense, then, everyone is a philosopher, and philosophi-
cal questions are, in spite of their appearance, the most basic and most
important of all.
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CHAPTER 1 IN REVIEW 31
WHAT IS
SUMMARY PHILOSOPHY?
The best way to appreciate what philosophy is about is to philosophize. This
book will enable you to actually confront basic philosophical issues and to
engage many important philosophers on their own ground.
In the meantime, though, something important can be learned about
philosophy through a consideration of the word itself (the “love of wis-
dom”) and its several branches (metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, etc.). In
an attempt to emphasize both the essence and the breadth of philosophical
activity, we proposed a working definition: Philosophy is the attempt to
think rationally and critically about the most important questions. One
should always remember Socrates and his challenge, “The unexamined life
is not worth living,” as embodying the ultimate philosophical concern. On
the other hand, it must be admitted that reason has its limits, and what
role is to be played by the nonrational (say, ultimate presuppositions) is
itself a good philosophical question.
Whatever else philosophers might be interested in, they are surely inter-
ested in coherent and persuasive reasoning. Laying down the rules and
providing some techniques are the tasks of logic.
Still more relevant is the nature of arguments. If philosophers aren’t good
at arguing, what are they good at? A real argument is a carefully devised
piece of reasoning involving premises (what is reasoned from), a conclusion
(what is reasoned to), and an inference (the connection that yields the con-
clusion from the premises). But does the conclusion follow from the prem-
ises necessarily or probably? This is the difference between a valid deductive
argument, where the conclusion is guaranteed by the premises, and an induc-
tive argument, where the conclusion is supported by the premises.
Among the most important things to be learned from an introduction to
logic are the informal fallacies. As opposed to formal fallacies, mistakes with
respect to the formal structure of an argument, informal fallacies arise from
inattention to the relevance or clarity of language.
Everyone is more or less engaged in the philosophical enterprise, and
though philosophical issues may seem at times rather remote, a moment’s
reflection will reveal that they really are basic and, whether one realizes it
or not, they deeply affect our daily lives. Let us, then, make the most of our
philosophical impulses by beginning where we are and, by critical reflection,
analysis, and clarification, progress if possible to someplace even better.

BASIC IDEAS
• The problem of understanding philosophy
• “Philosophy”: the love of wisdom
• The fields of philosophy
Metaphysics
Epistemology
Value-theory
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32 Ethics
THE NATURE
Aesthetics
OF PHILOSOPHY Logic
• The unity of philosophical questions
• The nature of the “philosophy of _______” studies
• Second-order studies
• Rationalism (the loose sense)
• Socrates as a model of the philosophical spirit
• The limits of reason
• The nonrational and the irrational
• Foundationalism
• Philosophy: a working definition
• Philosophy and religion
• Philosophy and science
• Logic as the tool or key to philosophizing
• The nature and elements of an argument
• Deductive reasoning
• Logical entailment
• The syllogism
• The distinction between truth and validity
• Inductive reasoning
• The method of generalization
• Analogical reasoning
• The distinction between formal and informal fallacies
• Informal fallacies
• Professor Miller’s Four Principles for the Study of the History of Philosophy
Clarification Principle
Deculturalization Principle
Modified Sergeant Friday Principle
Smartness Principle
• Philosophy as a universal enterprise
• The importance of philosophy

TEST YOURSELF
1. Why is Socrates regarded as a symbol of philosophizing?
2. Ethics and aesthetics can be construed as subfields of . Why?
3. Why is philosophy “rationalistic” (in the loose sense)?
4. What is the working definition of philosophy suggested in this chapter?
5. What are the two ways in which science differs from philosophy?
6. What is an argument?
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7. What is the relation of premises and conclusion in a deductive argu- 33

ment? In an inductive argument? WHAT IS
8. What is the difference between a formal fallacy and an informal fallacy? PHILOSOPHY?

9. The Smartness Principle has most obviously to do with (a) respect for
a philosopher, (b) the features of a culture that affect the expression of
a philosophy, (c) the phenomenological approach to philosophy, (d) the
nonneutral character of philosophical claims.
10. State exactly what is involved in logical necessity. Consider the statement
“All barking dogs bark.”
11. What kind of logician was Sherlock Holmes? Why?

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• In spite of their stress on the use of reason, some philosophers readily
concede that reason has its limits. Do you believe that it is possible,
nonetheless, to know something in a nonrational way? Why do some
even maintain that this is crucial to philosophizing itself? How might
the appeal to the nontraditional be abused?
• Is the ideal of reasoning in a purely objective way (that is, uninfluenced
by biases and the like) really possible? If not, then what? And what about
the difference in intellectual “temperaments”? Is that good or bad?
What’s to be done about it?
• How might it be argued that the borderlines between philosophy and all
other disciplines may often be very blurred? Why might philosophers
look upon their own discipline as the biggest and best?
• Everyday talk is sometimes full of fallacies, especially informal fallacies.
Can you spot and identify any in today’s newspaper? You might pay
special attention to the editorial pages and letters to the editor.

FOR FURTHER READING

John Arthur. Studying Philosophy: A Guide for the Perplexed. Second ed. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2004. A study-centered guide to thriving
in your first philosophy course.
A. J. Ayer. The Central Questions of Philosophy. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
1973. A timeless introduction to the big questions of philosophy.
Simon Blackburn. Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999. A very engaging look at some central philosophi-
cal topics, including free will, ethics, and God.
Edward Craig (ed.). The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London:
Routledge, 2005. The “shorter” (one volume) version of this encyclopedia
is still quite comprehensive.
Ted Honderich (ed.). The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005. Accessible entries on all the major thinkers and
topics in philosophy that provide background and explanation.
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34 D. Q. McInerny. Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking. New York: Random

THE NATURE House, 2005. Short and accessible guide to applying logic to everyday
OF PHILOSOPHY life.
Thomas Nagel. What Does It All Mean?: A Very Short Introduction to Philoso-
phy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Very clear introductions
to nine major philosophical questions in less than 100 pages.
Bertrand Russell. The Problems of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1912. Classic introduction to philosophy that shows how the major ques-
tions are timeless.
Nigel Warburton. Philosophy: The Basics. Fourth ed. London: Routledge, 2004.
Focuses on laying out contrasting arguments on major philosophical
issues.
Anthony Weston. A Rulebook for Arguments. Third ed. Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Co., 2000. Student-oriented introduction to informal logic and
writing a philosophical essay.
Jamie Whyte. Crimes Against Logic. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004. A witty book
that exposes myriad logical flaws in contemporary society.
*In addition, see several relevant articles in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
ed. Edward Craig (London: Routledge, 1998): “Philosophy,” “Philosophy of
Law,” “Philosophy of Religion,” “Metaphysics,” “Epistemology,” etc.

Online resources:
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/
Both of these sites provide alphabetical listings of major philosophers,
theories, and topics with short descriptions and explanations.
A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names, http://www.philosophypages
.com/dy/
This is a concise guide to technical terms and personal names often
encountered in the study of philosophy.
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PA R T O N E

THE QUESTION
OF REALITY

W
hat is reality? What are things made of? What is ultimate?
What is it that everything depends on for its existence? What
is really real?
There are many ways of posing the question of reality. However you
pose the question, you do have an answer—don’t you? Your idea of reality
may be only half-conscious (and it may be only half-baked), but you do
have some answer of your own to the question: What is really real? The
point is to have a good answer, an answer that is well conceived and well
evidenced. Why is this so important?
Some philosophers would say that in some ways the metaphysical ques-
tion, or the question of reality, is the basis of all the other questions that
matter. Whether or not this is strictly true, no one would deny that the
metaphysical question is at least a basic one. Doesn’t what you believe
about reality determine to some degree what you believe about all sorts of
other things? If, for example, someone told you that he or she believes that
all that exists is matter in motion, governed by fixed and unalterable laws,
then couldn’t you predict pretty much what that person thinks about some
other important things? If, on the other hand, you were informed that he
or she believes in a supernatural and absolute being, couldn’t you imme-
diately guess that his or her views on those matters would probably be
quite different?

37
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In this way, then, the question of reality is a fundamental one. How we

answer it will determine in a big way our perspectives on many issues, as
well as our perspective on the universe and our experience generally. Let
us, then, have a care with respect to the question of reality.

38
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CHAPTER 2

THE FIRST
METAPHYSICIANS

A
ristotle said that philosophy began (and always begins) with
“wonder,” and the Pre-Socratic philosophers (those philosophers
who lived before Socrates) wondered mainly about reality. They
asked the biggest question of all: What is reality? What is the essential
nature of things? What is the underlying reality that is revealed in the many
things about us? And how is this underlying, essential reality related to
these many things? How are the many things about us derived from this
underlying reality? This is the problem of the One and the Many. As one can
see, it actually involves two questions:

• What is the ultimate reality (the One)?

• How is everything else (the Many) related to it?

It is important to appreciate this problem because philosophers grappled

with it from the very beginning and still do.

THE PROBLEM OF THE ONE AND THE MANY

The problem of identifying the ultimate reality (the One) that underlies all things
(the Many) and of explaining the relation between them or how the Many derives
from the One.

39
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40 THE FIRST THEORY OF REALITY

THE QUESTION
OF REALITY Western philosophy came to birth in about 600 B.C. More specifically, it was
born in the city of Miletus on the western coast of Ionia (now Turkey) in
Thales, the first the person of Thales, traditionally called the first philosopher. To the ques-
philosopher tion What is ultimate reality? Thales seems to have answered, first, that
reality is one thing. He and his followers in Miletus have therefore been
called the Milesian monists. As a metaphysical theory, monism (literally,
“one-ism”) emphasizes in some way or other the unity of reality. Usually,
it is the doctrine that everything is reducible to or is an expression of a
single essence or nature.
Why these earliest philosophers were bent on reducing all things to one
reality is not easy to explain. Perhaps it was a carryover from the mytho-
logical period when everything was derived from the gods, who were them-
selves traced back through a genealogy of the gods to the divine Parents—
and indeed Parent—of all. Be that as it may, the desire to reduce everything
The ideal of to one is not peculiar to these earliest philosophers. All of us take simplicity,
simplicity economy, and unity as principles of explanation. In this way a scientific
theory, for example, may be judged preferable to others by virtue of the
fact that it encompasses and unifies the others.
Thales: Water is To the question What is ultimate reality? Thales answered, second, that
reality it is water. Understandably, one might be amused at this view of ultimate
reality. But it may not be as silly as it seems at first, and you could prob-
ably imagine why Thales said this. First, water is a necessity for all living
things. Second, water, or moisture, seems to be present in most things.
Third, water seems to be everywhere: It bubbles up out of the ground, it
comes down from the sky, and it collects on windshields. Fourth, as we
peer out over the vast expanses of the ocean, it might seem (as in fact is
the case) that there is more of this “stuff” than anything else in the world.
This may have been especially relevant for Thales, who lived on the edge
of the Great Sea (the Mediterranean) and who inherited the belief that the
world was surrounded by the great River Oceanus. Fifth, it should be noted
that water, more obviously than other common substances, can exist in
different forms; it exists usually in liquid form, but it can be frozen solid,
and it can exist as a gas.
Aristotle on Aristotle gives us a brief account of the first philosopher’s search for an
Thales’ claim underlying reality, and also some speculations of his own as to why Thales
identified it with water.

MONISM
As a metaphysical term, monism (from the Greek monos, “one”) is the belief that
reality is in some sense one, usually one in essence or nature.
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Thales, the first philosopher, believed that

water is the underlying reality of all things.
41
THE FIRST
METAPHYSICIANS

Of the first philosophers, . . . most thought the principles which were of the nature
of matter were the only principles of all things. That of which all things that are
consist, the first from which they come to be, the last into which they are resolved
(the substance remaining, but changing in its modifications), this they say is the
element and this the principle of things, and therefore they think nothing is either
generated or destroyed, since this sort of entity is always conserved, as we say
Socrates neither comes to be absolutely when he comes to be beautiful or musi-
cal, nor ceases to be when he loses these characteristics, because the substratum,
Socrates himself, remains. Just so they say nothing else comes to be or ceases to
be; for there must be some entity—either one or more than one—from which all
other things come to be, it being conserved.
Yet they do not all agree as to the number and the nature of these principles.
Thales, the founder of this type of philosophy, says the principle is water (for which
reason he declared that the earth rests on water), getting the notion perhaps from
seeing that the nutrient of all things is moist, and that heat itself is generated from the
moist and kept alive by it (and that from which they come to be is a principle of all
things). He got his notion from this fact, and from the fact that the seeds of all things
have a moist nature, and that water is the origin of the nature of moist things.1

In any event, this was the first metaphysical theory. Reality is one, and
it is water. It was the first metaphysical theory, but it was hardly the last.
Thales’ successors had their own theories about ultimate reality.

1
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 983b, tr. W. D. Ross, in Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon
(New York: Random House, 1941).
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42
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY A GUIDE TO PRE-SOCRATIC PRONUNCIATION
Thales Thā⬘-lēz
Anaximander A-naks-i-man⬘-der
Anaximenes An-aks-im⬘-e-nēz
Xenophanes Ze-nof⬘-a-nēz
Heraclitus Her-a-kl ⬘-tus
Pythagoras Pi-thag⬘-o-rus
Parmenides Par-men⬘-i-dēz
Empedocles Em-ped⬘-o-klēz
Anaxagoras An-aks-ag⬘-o-ras
Leucippus Loo-ki⬘-pus
Democritus Di-mok⬘-ri-tus

THREE PRE-SOCRATIC TRADITIONS

We cannot go into detail on all the Pre-Socratic theories. We may, however,
The Ionians distinguish three broad traditions: the Ionian, the Italian, and the Pluralist.
It was characteristic of the early philosophers living in Ionia to identify
reality with some sensible substance—that is, with some substance we can
see, touch, hear, and smell. Thales said water. Others in the Ionian tradition
advanced other candidates. Anaximander, for example, proposed an inde-
terminate substance, perhaps a kind of mixture from which the sensible
qualities (hot, cold, moist, dry) have been sorted out. Anaximenes proposed
air, which, through thickening and thinning, produces the different things
about us and holds all things together as a sort of life-principle. Xenoph-
anes opted for both water and earth. Heraclitus stressed the fluctuating or
ever-changing character of things and championed fire as the underlying
reality, which, though continually transformed into and out of the other
elements, always displays a divinely appointed balance and order.
The Italians The thinkers in the Italian tradition, however, inclined in a different direc-
tion. Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans believed that everything is essentially
number. It sounds strange, of course, to say that the underlying reality is num-
ber, and it is not perfectly clear, in fact, what Pythagoras and his followers
meant by this. It is clear, though, that this idea points us away from the ordi-
nary sensible elements in the physical world and in the direction of the non-
sensible, or incorporeal, structure of things. Even more extreme in this regard
were the philosophers from Elea. Parmenides, for example, insisted that only
being is, and that being must be one and immutable; with this he denied utterly
the reality of the sensible world along with all plurality and motion.
The Pluralists The Pluralists, as may be guessed from the name, sought to identify
reality with a plurality of substances while maintaining that each of these,
at least, is a Being and thus one and immutable. Of the Pluralists, Emped-
ocles was the first to posit the four traditional elements as principles of all
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43
TWO PYTHAGOREAN VIEWS ON HOW THE FIRST
METAPHYSICIANS
THE WORLD BEGAN
Some say that the solid body is constructed from one point. For this point, by
fluxion, creates the line, and the line, by fluxion, makes the plane, and this,
by moving in depth, generates the three-dimensional body. But this position
of the Pythagoreans differs from the earlier.*

The first principle of all things is the One. From the One came the Indefinite
Dyad as material substance for the One, which is cause. From the One and
the Indefinite Dyad came numbers; from numbers, points, lines; from plane
figures, solid figures, sensible bodies, of which the elements are four: fire,
water, earth, air. Changing and transforming themselves completely, there
arises out of them a cosmos, animate, intelligent, spherical, surrounding the
earth which is at the center and which itself is spherical and inhabited.†

Comment: The first of these accounts, with its image of a point flowing into a
line, a line into a plane, etc., is the later and more sophisticated.

The point flows into a line;

the line flows into a square;

the square flows into a cube.

In the second account, the One, the ultimate reality, generates the “Indefinite
Dyad” or “Two,” which represents a sort of indeterminate matter out of which the
One fashions numbers, the building blocks of the cosmos. In both accounts it is
difficult to know where, if at all, the gulf between incorporeal and corporeal real-
ity is bridged. It is often observed that this distinction did not even clearly exist
at the time of the Pre-Socratics.

*From Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, X, 281, tr. Ed. L. Miller.
†
From Alexander Polyhistor, quoted in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers,
VIII, 25, tr. Ed. L. Miller.

things: earth, air, fire, and water. In addition he posited Love and Strife,
which, respectively, draw the elements together and separate them in an
endless cycle. A world, such as ours, results when the four elements are
unified under the attraction of Love. Anaxagoras taught that all things are
constituted by a mixture of an infinite number of infinitely divisible par-
ticles or seeds (each seed being dominated by a certain quality, and a given
thing being determined by the kind of seeds that dominate it), but that pure
Mind controls the whole. Leucippus and Democritus advocated the first
atomic theory, explaining that everything arises mechanically out of a sort
of coagulation of an infinite number of irreducible atoms (the Greek word
atomos means, literally, “uncuttable” and therefore something irreducible).
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44
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY SOME PRE-SOCRATIC PRONOUNCEMENTS*
“As our soul, being air, holds us together, so also spirit and air encompasses the
whole world.”
—Anaximenes

“You cannot step twice into the same river.”

—Heraclitus

“It is necessary to say and think what is. For Being is, and Not-Being is not.”
—Parmenides

“In everything there is a portion of everything else, except for Mind. And in some
things there is Mind also.”
—Anaxagoras

“. . . the four roots of all things: Shining Zeus, life-bearing Hera, Aidoneus, and
Nestis who with tears fills the springs of mortals with water.”
—Empedocles

“Nothing happens at random, but all things from reason and by necessity.”
—Leucippus

*Tr. Ed. L. Miller

The historian of philosophy F. C. Copleston has provided a statement of

the importance of the Pre-Socratics with respect to (1) their formulation and
various resolutions of the problem of the One and the Many, (2) their more
distinctive roles as the first cosmologists, the first to advance rational theo-
ries about the nature of the kosmos or world, and (3) their importance for
the subsequent philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.

It is often said that Greek philosophy centres round the problem of the One and
the Many. Already in the very earliest stages of Greek philosophy we find the
notion of unity: things change into one another—therefore there must be some
common substratum, some ultimate principle, some unity underlying diversity. Thales
declares that water is that common principle, Anaximenes air, Heraclitus fire: they
choose different principles, but they all three believe in one ultimate principle.
But although the fact of change—what Aristotle called “substantial” change—may
have suggested to the early Cosmologists the notion of an underlying unity in the
universe, it would be a mistake to reduce this notion to a conclusion of physical sci-
ence. As far as strict scientific proof goes, they had not sufficient data to warrant
their assertion of unity, still less to warrant the assertion of any particular ultimate
principle, whether water, fire or air. The fact is, that the early Cosmologists leapt
beyond the data to the intuition of universal unity: they possessed what we might
call the power of metaphysical intuition, and this constitutes their glory and their
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45
THE FIRST
COSMOS METAPHYSICIANS

Although the Pre-Socratics grappled in different ways with the problem of reality
and change, they always maintained a respect for the world as ordered and
rational. In fact, the Greek word for “world” was kosmos, which meant, originally,
a “decoration” or “ornament,” a thing of beauty. This overtone was eventually
lost, but for the earliest philosophers kosmos could best be translated as “world-
system.”

claim to a place in the history of philosophy. If Thales had contented himself with
saying that out of water earth is evolved, “we should,” as Nietzsche observes,
“only have a scientific hypothesis: a false one, though nevertheless difficult to
refute.” But Thales went beyond a mere scientific hypothesis: he reached out to
a metaphysical doctrine, expressed in the metaphysical doctrine, that Everything
is One.
Let me quote Nietzsche again, “Greek philosophy seems to begin with a
preposterous fancy, with the proposition that water is the origin and mother-
womb of all things. Is it really necessary to stop there and become serious? Yes,
and for three reasons: Firstly, because the proposition does enunciate something
about the origin of things; secondly, because it does so without figure and fable;
thirdly and lastly, because in it is contained, although only in the chrysalis state,
the idea—Everything is one. The first-mentioned reason leaves Thales still in the
company of religious and superstitious people; the second, however, takes him
out of this company and shows him to us as a natural philosopher; but by virtue
of the third, Thales becomes the first Greek philosopher.” This holds true of the
other early Cosmologists; men like Anaximenes and Heraclitus also took wing
and flew above and beyond what could be verified by mere empirical observa-
tion. At the same time they were not content with any mythological assumption,
for they sought a real principle of unity, the ultimate substrate of change: what
they asserted, they asserted in all seriousness. They had the notion of a world
that was a whole, a system, of a world governed by law. Their assertions were
dictated by reason or thought, not by mere imagination or mythology; and so
they deserve to count as philosophers, the first philosophers of Europe.
But though the early Cosmologists were inspired by the idea of cosmic unity,
they were faced by the fact of the Many, of multiplicity, of diversity, and they
had to attempt the theoretical reconciliation of this evident plurality with the pos-
tulated unity—in other words, they had to account for the world as we know it.
While Anaximenes, for example, had recourse to the principle of condensation
and rarefaction, Parmenides, in the grip of his great theory that Being is one
and changeless, roundly denied the facts of change and motion and multiplicity
as illusions of the senses. Empedocles postulated four ultimate elements, out of
which all things are built up under the action of Love and Strife, and Anaxagoras
maintained the ultimate character of the atomic theory and the quantitative expla-
nation of qualitative difference, thus doing justice to plurality, to the many, while
tending to relinquish the earlier vision of unity, in spite of the fact that each atom
represents the Parmenidean One.
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46 We may say, therefore, that while the Pre-Socratics struggled with the problem
of the One and the Many, they did not succeed in solving it. The Heraclitean
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY philosophy contains, indeed, the profound notion of unity in diversity, but it is
bound up with an over-assertion of Becoming and the difficulties consequent on
the doctrine of Fire. The Pre-Socratics accordingly failed to solve the problem,
and it was taken up again by Plato and Aristotle, who brought to bear on it their
outstanding talent and genius.
. . . It should be clear that Pre-Socratic philosophy is not simply a pre-philosophic
stage which can be discounted in a study of Greek thought—so that we should
be justified in starting immediately with Socrates and Plato. The Pre-Socratic phi-
losophy is not a pre-philosophic stage, but is the first stage of Greek philosophy:
it may not be pure and unmixed philosophy, but it is philosophy, and it deserves
to be studied for the sake of its own intrinsic interest as the first Greek attempt to
attain a rational understanding of the world. Moreover, it is not a self-contained
unit, shut off from succeeding philosophic thought in a watertight compartment;
rather it is preparatory to the succeeding period, for in it we see problems raised
which were to occupy the greatest of Greek philosophers. Greek thought devel-
ops, and though we can hardly over-estimate the native genius of men like Plato
and Aristotle, it would be wrong to imagine that they were uninfluenced by the
past. Plato was profoundly influenced by Pre-Socratic thought, by the Heraclitean,
Eleatic and Pythagorean systems; Aristotle regarded his philosophy as the heir
and crown of the past; and both thinkers took up philosophic problems from the
hands of their predecessors, giving, it is true, original solutions, but at the same
time tackling the problems in their historic setting.2

THE DISCOVERY OF FORM

It is true, in spite of their obscurity and fragmentary nature, that the spec-
ulations of the earliest philosophers are not only fascinating but also impor-
tant. For here lie the roots of the first major philosophies. And in this respect
yet another point must be made—namely, the progress of the Pre-Socratics
toward “the discovery of form,” as it is called by a noted historian of Greek
philosophy, W. K. C. Guthrie:

The Egyptians had thought of geometry as a matter of individual rectangular or

triangular fields. The Greek lifts it from the plane of the concrete and material
and begins to think about rectangles and triangles themselves, which have the
same properties whether they are embodied in fields of several acres or in pieces
of wood or cloth a few inches long, or simply represented by lines drawn in the
sand. In fact their material embodiment ceases to be of any importance, and we
have made the discovery which above all others stands to the especial credit of
the Greeks: the discovery of form. The Greek sense of form impresses itself on
every manifestation of their activity, on literature and the graphic and plastic arts
as much as on their philosophy. It marks the advance from percepts to concepts,
from the individual examples perceived by sight or touch to the universal notion

2
Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy (Baltimore: Newman Press, 1946–1974), I,
pp. 76–80.
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47
THE FIRST
THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION OF ALL: METAPHYSICIANS
“WHY IS THERE ANYTHING?”
“. . . each of us is grazed at least once, perhaps more than once, by the hidden
power of this question, even if he is not aware of what is happening to him. The
question looms in moments of great despair, when things tend to lose all their
weight and all meaning becomes obscured. Perhaps it will strike but once like a
muffled bell that rings into our life and gradually dies away. It is present in
moments of rejoicing, when all the things around us are transfigured and seem
to be there for the first time, as if it might be easier to think they are not than to
understand that they are and are as they are. The question is upon us in bore-
dom, when we are equally removed from despair and joy, and everything about
us seems so hopelessly commonplace that we no longer care whether anything
is or is not—and with this question “Why is there anything rather than nothing?”
is evoked in a particular form.
“But this question may be asked expressly, or, unrecognized as a question, it
may merely pass through our lives like a brief gust of wind; it may press hard
upon us, or, under one pretext or another, we may thrust it away from us and
silence it. In any case it is never the question that we ask first in point of time.
“But it is the first question in another sense—in regard to rank. This may be
clarified in three ways. The question “Why is there anything rather than nothing?”
is first in rank for us first because it is the most far reaching, second because it
is the deepest, and finally because it is the most fundamental of all questions.”

Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, tr. Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1959), pp. 1–2 (with slight editing).

which we conceive in our minds—in sculpture no longer an individual man but

the ideal of humanity; in geometry, no longer triangles but the nature of the
triangularity and the consequences which logically and necessarily flow from
being a triangle.3

But it remained for Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle to bring the discovery to
full light and to draw out its full philosophical implications.

CHAPTER 2 IN REVIEW
SUMMARY
Something happened in about 600 B.C. that marked the beginning of our
own philosophical tradition. The human intellect took a quantum leap in
critical thinking. According to Aristotle, what sparked this leap was a new

3
W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1962–1981), I, pp. 36–37.
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48 and wide-eyed wonder at the world and a search for its underlying
THE QUESTION
nature.
OF REALITY All of the early philosophers were guided by the Principle of Simplicity,
and they sought to understand the world in terms of some one reality, or
as few as possible. They differed, though, in the character and number of
the underlying reality. The Ionian, Italian, and Pluralist traditions reflect the
widely different courses taken by the Pre-Socratics. Always, however, it was
the twofold problem of the One and the Many: (1) What is the underlying
nature or reality of all things? and (2) How is the multiplicity of things
around us derived from this reality, or how do we get from the One to the
Many?
Already in the Pre-Socratics the idea of Form, or the ideal essence that
is imperfectly represented in the Many, was emerging. As we will see in
the next chapter, this was the dominating idea of Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle, and the whole continuing tradition stemming from these think-
ers. We will also see that two Pre-Socratic philosophers—Heraclitus and
Parmenides—exerted a special influence on the subsequent thinkers.

BASIC IDEAS
• The problem of the One and the Many
• Monism
• The ideal of simplicity in explanation
• The first theory of reality: water
• Three Pre-Socratic traditions
The Ionians
The Italians
The Pluralists
• The emergence of form

TEST YOURSELF
1. The problem of the One and the Many is really two problems. What are
they?
2. True or false: The Italian tradition was more abstract in its conception of
reality than the Ionian tradition.
3. Give a few reasons Thales might have identified water as the ultimate
reality.
4. What did the discovery of “Form” consist of?

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• Were the Pre-Socratics so odd in seeking a simple explanation for the
nature of things? What is meant, exactly, by the claim that simplicity has
always been a principle of explanation?
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• It is always easy when looking back to judge an idea or theory as naive. 49

What might be said on behalf of the earliest theories of reality as being THE FIRST
well conceived, critical, and persuasive at the time? METAPHYSICIANS

FOR FURTHER READING

Jonathon Barnes. The Presocratic Philosophers. Revised ed. London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1982. A recent, full-scale, and authoritative investigation.
John Burnet. Early Greek Philosophy. Fourth ed. London: Macmillan, 1930.
Old, standard treatment of the Pre-Socratic philosophers (selected frag-
ments plus commentary) written from a positivistic perspective.
Frederick Copleston. A History of Philosophy. Baltimore: Newman Press,
1946–1974. I, Part I. Brief survey of the Pre-Socratics by a renowned
historian of philosophy.
W. K. C. Guthrie. A History of Greek Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1962–1981. I and II. Two volumes of extensive accounts of
the Pre-Socratics and commentary on relevant fragments, by a foremost
historian of Greek philosophy.
Werner Jaeger. The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers. Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1947. An old but enduring treatment of the Pre-Socratic think-
ers, written (in opposition to Burnet) from a metaphysical, theological
perspective.
G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield. The Presocratic Philosophers: A
Critical History with a Selection of Texts. Second ed. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1984. The most up-to-date, comprehensive, and author-
itative discussion, providing Greek text, English translation, and com-
mentary on the most relevant Pre-Socratic fragments.
Alexander P. D. Mourelatos (ed.). The Pre-Socratics: A Collection of Critical
Essays. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1974. A hefty volume of scholarly
essays on a variety of topics concerning Pre-Socratic philosophy.
Catherine Osborne. Presocratic Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Intended for novices, this book
introduces major Pre-Socratic thinkers and themes of the period.
*In addition, see the relevant articles (“Pre-Socratic Philosophy,” “Heraclitus,”
etc.) in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig (London:
Routledge, 1998), and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato
.stanford.edu.
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CHAPTER 3

THE IDEA
OF FORM

P
hilosophy really came of age with Plato (427–347 B.C.). Here we
encounter the first full-fledged philosophical system. By a philosophi- Plato, the first
cal system we mean a fundamental idea or theory that is worked out “systematic”
for all aspects of experience. Thus Plato’s philosophy addresses everything philosopher
from reality, to knowledge, to ethics, to art, to religion, to cosmology, and so
on. So encompassing and magnificent is Plato’s philosophy that Alfred North
Whitehead called all subsequent philosophy a series of footnotes to it!

PLATO AND SOCRATES

Plato, who is sometimes called the finest writer of ancient Greece, expressed
his philosophy in numerous “dialogues.” In the earlier dialogues Plato Platonic dialogues
develops the ideas of his teacher Socrates through portrayals of Socrates’
discussions with his contemporaries, discussions that proceed by questions
and answers. Socrates is usually represented as asking in one way or
another, What is X? His respondent’s answer is then subjected to a searching
analysis that generates still more and better answers.
A good example is the early dialogue Euthyphro. Here Socrates raises
with Euthyphro the question “What is holiness?” The following excerpts
show how Socrates deals with two of Euthyphro’s answers. Notice the char-
acteristic Socratic comment “Come, then, and let us scrutinize what we are
saying,” and the final bewilderment of the hapless Euthyphro, who com-
plains that nothing seems to stay put. Incidentally, Socrates’ question “Is
51
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52 what is holy holy because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because
THE QUESTION
it is holy?” is one of the most famous in the history of philosophy. If you
OF REALITY agree with the first, then God’s will seems to be arbitrary; if you agree with
the second, then God’s will seems to be determined by something beyond
God himself.

SOCRATES: At present try to tell me more clearly what I asked you a

little while ago, for, my friend, you were not explicit enough before when
I put the question. What is holiness? . . .
EUTHYPHRO: Well, then, what is pleasing to the gods is holy, and what
is not pleasing to them is unholy.
SOCRATES: Perfect, Euthyphro! Now you give me just the answer that
I asked for. Meanwhile whether it is right I do not know, but obviously
you will go on to prove your statement true.
EUTHYPHRO: Indeed, I will.
SOCRATES: Come, now, and let us scrutinize what we are saying. What is
pleasing to the gods, and the man that pleases them, are holy; what is
hateful to the gods, and the man they hate, unholy. But the holy and unholy
are not the same; the holy is directly opposite to the unholy. Isn’t it so?
EUTHYPHRO: It is.
SOCRATES: And the matter clearly was well stated.
EUTHYPHRO: I accept it, Socrates; that was stated.
SOCRATES: Was it not also stated, Euthyphro, that the gods revolt and
differ with each other, and that hatreds come between them?
EUTHYPHRO: That was stated.
SOCRATES: Hatred and wrath, my friend—what kind of disagreement
will produce them? Look at the matter thus. If you and I were to differ
about numbers, on the question which of two was the greater, would a
disagreement about that make us angry at each other, and make enemies
of us? Should we not settle things by calculation, and so come to an
agreement quickly on any point like that?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, certainly.
SOCRATES: And similarly if we differed on a question of greater length
or less, we would take a measurement and quickly put an end to the
dispute?
EUTHYPHRO: Just that.
SOCRATES: And so, I fancy, we should have recourse to scales, and
settle any question about a heavier or lighter weight?
EUTHYPHRO: Of course.
SOCRATES: What sort of thing, then, is it about which we differ, till, unable
to arrive at a decision, we might get angry and be enemies to one another?
Perhaps you have no answer ready, but listen to me. See if it is not the
following—right and wrong, the noble and base, and good and bad. Are
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not these the things about which we differ, till, unable to arrive at a deci- 53
sion, we grow hostile, when we do grow hostile, to each other, you and I THE IDEA
and everybody else? OF FORM

EUTHYPHRO: Yes, Socrates, that is where we differ, on these subjects.

SOCRATES: What about the gods, then, Euthyphro? If, indeed, they have
dissensions, must it not be on these subjects?
EUTHYPHRO: Quite necessarily.
SOCRATES: Accordingly, my noble Euthyphro, by your account some gods
take one thing to be right, and others take another, and similarly with
honorable and the base, and good and bad. They would hardly be at vari-
ance with each other, if they did not differ on these questions. Would
they?
EUTHYPHRO: You are right.
SOCRATES: And what each one of them thinks noble, good, and just, is
what he loves, and the opposite is what he hates?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, certainly.
SOCRATES: But it is the same things, so you say, that some of them think
right, and others wrong, and through disputing about these they are at
variance, and make war on one another. Isn’t it so?
EUTHYPHRO: It is.
SOCRATES: Accordingly, so it would seem, the same things will be hated
by the gods and loved by them; the same things would alike displease
and please them.
EUTHYPHRO: It would seem so.
SOCRATES: And so, according to this argument, the same things, Euthy-
phro, will be holy and unholy.
EUTHYPHRO: That may be.
SOCRATES: In that case, admirable friend, you have not answered what
I asked you. I did not ask you to tell me what at once is holy and unholy,
but it seems that what is pleasing to the gods is also hateful to them. . . .

Euthyphro then regroups his thoughts and advances another definition:

Holiness is what is loved by all the gods.

SOCRATES: Then what are we to say about the holy, Euthyphro? Accord-
ing to your argument, is it not loved by all the gods?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
SOCRATES: Because it is holy, or for some other reason?
EUTHYPHRO: No, it is for that reason.
SOCRATES: And so it is because it is holy that it is loved; it is not holy
because it is loved.
EUTHYPHRO: So it seems.
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54 SOCRATES: On the other hand, it is beloved and pleasing to the gods

THE QUESTION
just because they love it?
OF REALITY EUTHYPHRO: No doubt of that.
SOCRATES: So what is pleasing to the gods is not the same as what is
holy, Euthyphro, nor, according to your statement, is the holy the same
as what is pleasing to the gods. They are two different things.
EUTHYPHRO: How may that be, Socrates?
SOCRATES: Because we are agreed that the holy is loved because it is
holy, and is not holy because it is loved. Isn’t it so?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
SOCRATES: Whereas what is pleasing to the gods is pleasing to them
just because they love it, such being its nature and its cause. Its being
loved of the gods is not the reason of its being loved.
EUTHYPHRO: You are right.
SOCRATES: But suppose, dear Euthyphro, that what is pleasing to the
gods and what is holy were not two separate things. In that case if holi-
ness were loved because it was holy, then also what was pleasing to the
gods would be loved because it pleased them. And, on the other hand,
if what was pleasing to them pleased because they loved it, then also the
holy would be holy because they loved it. But now you see that it is just
the opposite, because the two are absolutely different from each other, for
the one [what is pleasing to the gods] is loved because it is of a sort to
be loved. Consequently, Euthyphro, it looks as if you had not given me
my answer—as if when you were asked to tell the nature of the holy, you
did not wish to explain the essence of it. You merely tell an attribute of
it, namely, that it appertains to holiness to be loved by all the gods. What
it is, as yet you have not said. So, if you please, do not conceal this from
me. No, begin again. Say what the holy is, and never mind if gods do
love it, nor if it has some other attribute; on that we shall not split. Come,
speak out. Explain the nature of the holy and unholy.
EUTHYPHRO: Now, Socrates, I simply don’t know how to tell you what
I think. Somehow everything that we put forward keeps moving about
us in a circle, and nothing will stay where we put it.1

In the dialogues, which were composed over many years, Plato gradu-
ally introduced his own (and more developed) ideas in place of those of
the historical Socrates, though he continued to employ Socrates as the mouth-
The Socratic piece of these ideas. It is, of course, a problem to know where the real
Problem Socrates leaves off and Plato’s own ideas begin. This is called the Socratic
Problem. For the purpose of our discussion here we will not concern our-
selves with this problem and will simply speak of the philosophy embodied
in the dialogues as Plato’s philosophy.

1
Plato, Euthyphro, 6D, 7A–8B, 10D–11B, in On the Trial and Death of Socrates, tr. Lane Cooper
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1941).
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55
THE IDEA
PLATONIC DIALOGUE OF FORM

“Plato presented philosophy in an entirely spontaneous form, not as ponderous

treatises but in dramatic dialogues between friends, in which Socrates figured as the
presiding genius. He invented the form to make his concepts intelligible to the
layman, and never was philosophy graced with more beauty; this first attempt to
humanize knowledge was warm, personal, fresh, and frequently humorous, an
intoxicating mixture of poetry and hard thought.”

Felix Marti-Ibanez, Tales of Philosophy (New York: Potter, 1964), p. 31.

THE TWO WORLDS: APPEARANCE AND REALITY

Many philosophers have found it necessary to conceive of reality in two spheres
or levels: what appears to be real, and what is real. Already in the beginning The two-layer
stages of the history of philosophy Plato introduced this two-layer view of real- view of reality
ity. For Plato, too, it is the difference between Appearance and Reality, though
he expressed it also by means of the terms Becoming and Being. With such talk
Plato affirms his conviction that in addition to the ever-changing world around
us (Becoming), there is another world, an eternal and unchanging reality (Being).
Why would one believe in an additional world such as this?
Plato had many reasons for believing in a transcendent world—that is,
a reality lying beyond space and time. We will limit ourselves to two of
these reasons, but perhaps the two most important.
First, Plato’s view of reality is a reaction to that of his predecessor, Protagoras.
Protagoras, a Sophist2 who was active in about 425 B.C., was responsible for
one of the most famous lines ever uttered: “Man is the measure of all things.”
His meaning is clear from a more accurate and complete quotation:

A man is the measure of all things; of the things that are, that they are, and of
the things that are not, that they are not.3

This means that the individual—each and every person—is the criterion unto Protagoras: “A man
himself or herself as to what exists and what doesn’t. The thought was is the measure
expanded, of course, to include truth and morality. Whatever you perceive as of all things”
true or false is true or false, and whatever you think is good or bad is good or

2
The Sophists (literally, “wise men”) were the first to teach wisdom for a fee, something that
irked Socrates. Actually, the Sophists may not have been as wise as they were clever with
words, and they were accused of “making the stronger argument appear to be the weaker,
and the weaker argument appear to be the stronger.” But in the days of Athenian democracy,
when an individual was required to defend himself in the law courts, the Sophists’ “wisdom”
was, understandably, much in demand!
3
Protagoras, Fragment 1, tr. Ed. L. Miller.
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56 bad. This is known as relativism or subjectivism because it makes the most

THE QUESTION
important things relative to and dependent upon the individual (or community,
OF REALITY society, etc.), or because it asserts that the subject (an individual, community,
society, etc.) is the source and standard of being, truth, and goodness.
For Plato (and for most philosophers since) it was absurd to say that
being, truth, and morality are “up for grabs” and can be or mean whatever
an individual wishes! This would mean the immediate collapse of not only
all serious talk about what’s real and unreal, and what’s true and false, but
also all talk about moral responsibility, praise, blame, punishment, and so
on. No, says Plato. Our understanding of being, truth, and goodness must—
Plato’s rejection if it is to be really meaningful—be anchored in some objective (that is, it exists
of subjectivism outside of our own minds), independent (it is not dependent on anything else
for its existence), and absolute (it does not come or go or otherwise change)
Reality. There must then exist above our minds and beyond this world
another world, a world of Reality (Being).
Second, Plato’s view of reality is a reaction to still another of his predeces-
sors, the Pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus. Heraclitus went about saying
things like, “The sun is new every day” and “We are and we are not.” These
are ways in which Heraclitus expressed his view—a very famous view—that
everything is constantly changing, nothing stands still for a moment, the world
and everything in it are in a ceaseless movement, activity, coming and going,
Heraclitus: “All ebbing and flowing. In fact, “All things flow” caught on as a Heraclitean
things flow” slogan, and Heraclitus himself appears to have likened the fluctuating uni-
verse to a river: “You can’t step twice into the same river.” The idea is that by
the time you have put a foot into the water, different water is flowing there.
What did this colorful and dynamic view of the world have to do with the
development of Plato’s conception of reality? Just as Protagoras’ relativism,
says Plato, leads to impossible conclusions, so does Heraclitus’ doctrine of
flux: If all reality is constantly changing, then all discourse is impossible, and
the same is true for knowledge itself. Why is this? For the answer, read on.
Plato inherited from still another Pre-Socratic philosopher, Parmenides, the
idea that genuine knowledge and discourse must be about what is, not what
is not—after all, you can’t think about, talk about, or have any knowledge of

TRANSCENDENT REALITY
. . . in philosophy usually means reality that transcends or lies beyond space and
time. Thus God, as represented in classical theology, is a transcendent being,
and true Reality, for Plato, is transcendent. Can you imagine a transcendent being
in the sense of forming a mental image? The answer is No, for images are bound
by spatiotemporal conditions, such as size, color, shape, motion, and the like.
Can you conceive of a transcendent being? The answer is Yes, if by that you
mean that you can have an idea or concept of that being. Thus you cannot
imagine God, though you may have an idea of him.
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57
THE IDEA
HOW TO AVOID PAYING YOUR DEBTS OF FORM

It appears that the playwright Epicharmus, a contemporary of Heraclitus, spoofed

Heraclitus’ doctrine of the ever-changing nature of things: You will have difficulty
making me pay back money I borrowed from you because everything changes
and I am no longer the one who borrowed it!

what isn’t, can you? (The word “nothing” does not denote something, but
rather the negation or absence of something.) Furthermore, what is (Being)
must be one and unchanging. Do you see why Being must be one and unchang-
ing? Do not multiplicity and change involve difference, absence, relativity, and
degrees? And do not these in turn involve various sorts of nonbeing? Now
since a thing cannot both be and not be (the Law of Non-Contradiction), it is
logically impossible that what is could also be what is not. How then could
that which is involve multiplicity and change? True Being is therefore one and
unchanging. And only this can be an object of knowledge and discourse.
Now consider again Heraclitus’ world of flux. What is it that you refer to The implications
when you comment on that table over there in the corner? “Why,” you say, “just of Heraclitean flux
that table over there in the corner.” But in the Heraclitean view there is no table
over there in the corner: By the time you say “that table” it is no longer that
table but has already become a different table. Likewise for everything in the
Heraclitean world of flux. If then, says Plato, knowledge and talk about tables,
chairs, dogs, cats, justice, and anything else are about anything real, it must be
because there is more to reality than the sensible world of multiplicity and
change. There must be a world of Being in addition to the world of Becoming.
In his dialogue Timaeus, Plato himself poses the distinction between the
two worlds, the worlds of Being and Becoming, and the corresponding dif-
ference between knowledge and opinion, as clearly as one could hope for:

. . . we must make a distinction and ask, What is that which always is and has no
becoming, and what is that which is always becoming and never is? That which
is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same state, but that
which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason is
always in a process of becoming and perishing and never really is.4

Transcendent world
of BEING

Space-time
world of BECOMING

4
Plato, Timaeus, 27D–28A, tr. Benjamin Jowett, in Plato: The Collected Dialogues.
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58 The same distinction is strikingly posed in the Republic, where Plato clearly
THE QUESTION represents the world of Becoming as a “twilight” zone or “half-way region”
OF REALITY between reality and unreality:

. . . we have discovered that the many conventional notions of the mass of mankind
about what is beautiful or honourable or just and so on are adrift in a sort of
twilight between pure reality and pure unreality.
We have.
And we agreed earlier that, if any such object were discovered, it should
be called the object of belief and not of knowledge. Fluctuating in that halfway
region, it would be seized upon by the intermediate faculty.
Yes.
So when people have an eye for the multitude of beautiful things or of just
actions or whatever it may be, but can neither behold Beauty or Justice itself nor
follow a guide who would lead them to it, we shall say that all they have is
beliefs, without any real knowledge of the objects of their belief.
That follows.
But what of those who contemplate the realities themselves as they are for ever
in the same unchanging state? Shall we not say that they have, not mere belief,
but knowledge?
That too follows.
And, further, that their affection goes out to the objects of knowledge, whereas
the others set their affections on the objects of belief; for it was they, you remem-
ber, who had a passion for the spectacle of beautiful colours and sounds, but
would not hear of Beauty itself being a real thing.
I remember.
So we may fairly call them lovers of belief rather than of wisdom—not philosophi-
cal, in fact, but philodoxical. Will they be seriously annoyed by that description?
Not if they will listen to my advice. No one ought to take offence at the truth.
The name of philosopher, then, will be reserved for those whose affections are
set, in every case, on the reality.
By all means.5

THE THEORY OF THE FORMS

Grasping the distinction between the two worlds is the first step toward an
understanding of Plato’s theory of reality. The next step is to grasp that for
Plato the transcendent world, the world of Being, is populated by realities
called Forms, which are the causes of the particular things that exist beneath
them, like tables, chairs, dogs, cats, circles, human beings, instances of beauty,
examples of justice, and so on for every different kind of thing there is.
We are ready, then, to consider Plato’s theory of the Forms—at least that
is what it is usually called. It is also sometimes called the theory of Ideas.
But here we must be on guard not to confuse these Ideas (capital I) with

5
Plato, The Republic, 479D–480A, tr. Francis MacDonald Cornford (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1941).
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59
THE IDEA
PLATO OF FORM

P
lato was born in Athens in 427 B.C. According to one tradition he was originally
named Aristocles but came to be called Plato (from the Greek platus, “wide”)
because of his broad shoulders. He came from an aristocratic family and no
doubt received a very cultured education. He was at first bent on a career in poli-
tics, but was soon captivated by Socrates and his philosophy, and the fate of
Socrates at the hands of the Athenian democracy (he was present at Socrates’ trial)
further sealed Plato’s revulsion at such politics. From Socrates Plato learned to fix
his attention not on the fluctuating objects of sense experience, but on the fixed
and abiding essence of things as the only possible objects of true knowledge.
When he was about 40, Plato visited Italy, possibly to engage the Pythagoreans
there and to see the volcanoes. In Italy he became friends with Dion, the brother-
in-law of Dionysus I, tyrant of Syracuse. Dionysus I, however, disliked Plato and
had him sold as a slave. He was recognized by an acquaintance, who ransomed
him and had him sent back to Athens. There, in 388 B.C., he founded his school,
the Academy, sometimes called the first European university. At the Academy Plato
produced many elegant dialogues and lectured on many different topics (the
lectures are lost), including rhetoric, biology, mathematics, astronomy, and, of
course, philosophy—the pursuit of the highest reality and truth. Plato was intensely
interested in political philosophy, and it was his desire to experiment with his ideal
of the Philosopher-King that led him to return to Syracuse, where Dionysus I had
been succeeded by his nephew, Dionysus II. Intrigues within the court spoiled
Plato’s philosophical education of Dionysus II, and the project was a failure.
Plato presided over the Academy until his death in 347 B.C. In the meantime,
however, a pupil had matriculated at the Academy by the name of Aristotle.
Plato is universally regarded as one of the finest writers of Greek literature. His
numerous and polished dialogues include the Apology, Euthyphro, Phaedo, Phaedrus,
Meno, Republic, Symposium, Theaetetus, Sophist, Timaeus, Statesman, and Laws.
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60 the ideas (lowercase i) that exist merely in our minds. We will see that while
THE QUESTION
our ideas have no existence apart from our minds, the Platonic Ideas exist
OF REALITY objectively and absolutely: They would exist even if everything else were
Forms of Ideas to disappear. In any case, it is useful to employ capital F and I to remind
us of the unique status of the Platonic Forms and Ideas.
Why the word “Form”? It translates the Greek word eidos, which does,
Why the word in fact, mean “form” in the ordinary, usual sense: shape, structure, appear-
“Form”? ance. As will shortly be seen, Plato certainly does not mean something
visible. Still, it is easy to see why Plato took over this word for his own
purpose. After all, a Platonic Form does have everything to do with what
a thing is, and thus even with its physical structure, shape, or appearance.
But if it helps, there are many expressions one could substitute for the word
“Form”: essence, nature, essential structure, object of a definition, and so
on. Again, they all designate what a thing is, its “whatness.”
It may be helpful, further, to outline the main features of Forms. They
may be characterized as

Six features of Forms • Objective. They exist “out there” as objects, independently of our minds
or wills.
• Transcendent. Though they exist “out there,” they do not exist in space
and time; they lie, as it were, above or beyond space and time.
• Eternal. As transcendent realities they are not subject to time and there-
fore not subject to motion or change.
• Intelligible. As transcendent realities they cannot be grasped by the senses
but only by the intellect.
• Archetypal. They are the models for every kind of thing that does or could
exist.
• Perfect. They include absolutely and perfectly all the features of the
things of which they are the models.

Perhaps now we are ready for a more explicit statement of the theory of
The theory the Forms: It is the belief in a transcendent world of eternal and absolute
of the Forms beings, corresponding to every kind of thing that there is, and causing in
particular things their essential nature.
More generally, for every particular and imperfect thing in the world of
Becoming (a table, a chair, an instance of justice, an example of beauty, a
circle) there is a corresponding reality that is its absolute and perfect essence
or Form in the world of Being (Table, Chair, Justice, Beauty, Circle). The
particular and imperfect thing, though imperfect, is what it is by virtue of its
corresponding Form, which imparts to it, or causes in it, its essence or general
nature. Because something has an essence or general nature it is an imperfect
something. On the other hand, it is an imperfect something because, while it
reflects being from above, it is invaded and contaminated by nonbeing from
below: The changeless is set in motion, the one is multiplied into many, the
absolute is relativized, the universal is particularized.
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61
THE IDEA
THE THEORY OF THE FORMS OF FORM

. . . lies at the center of the whole Platonic philosophy. It portrays every changing,
multiple, imperfect thing of a certain kind in the sensible world (a Many) as
caused by an eternal and ideal essence, or Form, in the transcendent world (a
One). It is Plato’s resolution to the ancient problem of the One and the Many,
which we encountered at the beginning of Chapter 2.

In view of all of this, the following passage from Plato’s Euthyphro should
make a lot of sense. Here Socrates has asked Euthyphro about the meaning
of holiness. Euthyphro responded with examples of holiness.

SOCRATES: . . . try to tell me more clearly what I asked you a little while
ago, for, my friend, you were not explicit enough before when I put the
question. What is holiness? You merely said that what you are now doing
is a holy deed—namely, prosecuting your father on a charge of murder.
EUTHYPHRO: And, Socrates, I told the truth.
SOCRATES: Possibly. But, Euthyphro, there are many other things that
you will say are holy.
EUTHYPHRO: Because they are.
SOCRATES: Well, bear in mind that what I asked of you was not to tell
me one or two out of all the numerous actions that are holy; I wanted
you to tell me what is the essential form of holiness which makes all
holy actions holy. I believe you held that there is one ideal form by which
unholy things are all unholy, and by which all holy things are holy. Do
you remember that?
EUTHYPHRO: I do.
SOCRATES: Well then, show me what, precisely, this ideal is, so that,
with my eye on it, and using it as a standard, I can say that any action
done by you or anybody else is holy if it resembles this idea, or, if it
does not, can deny that it is holy.6

This brief passage expresses or embodies many of the things we have just
explained. Notice for example, (1) Plato’s use of words or phrases like
“essential form” and “ideal” for the essence in the world of Being; (2) the
contrast between the one essence in the world of Being (in this case Holiness)
and the many instances of it in the world of Becoming (numerous holy acts);
(3) the way in which the Form is said to be the cause of its many sensible

6
Plato, Euthyphro, 6C–E.
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62 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF FORMS AND THINGS

THE QUESTION objective
OF REALITY transcendent
FORMS
eternal
in the world of
intelligible
BEING
archetypal
perfect

subjective
spatiotemporal
THINGS
changeable
in the world of
sensible
BECOMING
copied
imperfect

BEING
Table Justice Human

This here Trail by Bill Sean

BECOMING

table jury Sally

Civil Rights
That there Act
table Janet

instances; (4) the Form referred to as a standard for judgment; and (5) the
way in which the particular instance is said to resemble the model.
The relation of forms This last point leads us further. We have said above that particular things
to particular things have a nature or essence because they stand in some sort of relation to their
Forms. But what, exactly, is this relation? How does the Form impart essence
to the particular thing? This is a troublesome question, and Plato seems to
have been bothered by it, though he never resolved it. Until now, we have
been representing the Form as the model, and the sensible instance of the
Form as a copy or imitation of it. This is the most common way of repre-
senting Plato’s theory at this point. But Plato actually resorts to two expla-
nations (really, metaphors) of how the Form gives essence to particular
things. Sometimes, as in the above passage in the Euthyphro, he talks as if
sensible things are copies or imitations of the Forms, and at other times he
talks of a participation of the sensible thing in its Form. Thus a table is a
table because it imperfectly reflects or is an imperfect copy of its pattern or
model, the Form Tableness, or it is a table because it participates in the
Form Tableness. The following passage from the Phaedo is useful not only
because it makes explicit (though ambiguous) reference to a Form’s relation
to its sensible instances—he speaks of the Form’s “presence in it or asso-
ciation with it”—but also because it shows that Plato did not concern him-
self with a rigorous explanation of this point:

It seems to me that whatever else is beautiful apart from absolute beauty is beautiful
because it partakes of that absolute beauty, and for no other reason. Do you accept
this kind of causality?
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SPECIFICITY
AMONG FORMS
63
THE IDEA
OF FORM
Apples

Red apples

Jonathon red apples

Wallingford Jonathon
red apples

Yes, I do.
Well, now, that is as far as my mind goes; I cannot understand these other
ingenious theories of causation. If someone tells me that the reason why a given
object is beautiful is that it has a gorgeous color or shape or any other such
attribute, I disregard all these other explanations—I find them all confusing—and
I cling simply and straightforwardly and no doubt foolishly to the explanation that
the one thing that makes that object beautiful is the presence in it or association
with it, in whatever way the relation comes about, of absolute beauty. I do not go
so far as to insist upon the precise details—only upon the fact that it is by beauty
that beautiful things are beautiful. This, I feel, is the safest answer for me or for
anyone else to give, and I believe that while I hold fast to this I cannot fall; it is
safe for me or for anyone else to answer that it is by beauty that beautiful things
are beautiful. Don’t you agree?7

We will see later that Plato’s failure to be precise on the nature of the Form’s
relation to the particular is exactly what Aristotle seized as the Achilles’
heel of Plato’s whole theory.
Another important matter: Things can participate in more than one
Form. This can happen in two ways. First, Forms themselves “blend” with The “blending”
one another, so that by imitating or participating in one Form, a thing may of Forms
actually be sharing in many Forms. Is this not necessary, since the Forms
of both X and Y may hold some essential feature in common? For example,
if it is the essence of trees, dogs, cats, and humans to live, then however
their Forms may otherwise differ, they must at least all blend with the Form
Life; if apples, cherries, bananas, and oranges are all by nature sweet, then
whatever else each of their Forms involves, they must all encompass Sweet-
ness. Plato does not, however, believe that blending can go on forever as
if we could just keep throwing in new ingredients to explain more and
more specialized kinds of things. There must be a last, most specific defini-
tion in order to account for the ultimate difference of things.

7
Plato, Phaedo, 100C–E, in The Last Days of Socrates, tr. Hugh Tredennick (Harmondsworth:
Penguin Classics, 1954).
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64 But what about a feature that is not properly part of a thing’s essence?
THE QUESTION
Ink does not have to be blue in order to be ink, does it? This brings us to
OF REALITY the second way things can imitate or participate in more than one Form.
The Form Ink involves whatever it means to be ink, including having color.
Accidental features Now if this happens to be blue, then in addition to imitating or participat-
ing in the essential Form of Ink, including color, this ink must also par-
ticipate in the Form Blue. Ask yourself: Is a certain feature of a thing part
of that thing’s very essence? If so, then that feature is one of the Forms that
blend to make up the Form of that thing. If not, then that thing participates
in this particular feature or Form accidentally or “on its own,” as it were.

DEGREES OF REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE

So far we have been speaking as if Plato distinguished between two layers
or levels of reality: Being and Becoming, Forms and their sensible copies. But
Plato’s theory of reality is somewhat more complicated than that. Here his
famous image of the Divided Line, from the Republic, is helpful—Plato must
have known that a picture is worth a thousand words.

The Divided Line . . . take a line divided into two unequal parts, one to represent the visible order,
the other the intelligible; and divide each part again in the same proportion,
symbolizing degrees of comparative clearness or obscurity. Then (A) one of the
two sections in the visible world will stand for images. By images I mean first
shadows, and then reflections in water or in close-grained, polished surfaces, and
everything of that kind, if you understand.
Yes, I understand.
Let the second section (B) stand for the actual things of which the first are
likenesses, the living creatures about us and all the works of nature or of human
hands.
So be it.
Will you also take the proportion in which the visible world has been divided
as corresponding to degrees of reality and truth, so that the likeness shall stand
to the original in the same ratio as the sphere of appearances and belief to the
sphere of knowledge?
Certainly.
Now consider how we are to divide the part which stands for the intelligible
world. There are two sections. In the first (C) the mind uses as images those actual
things which themselves had images in the visible world; and it is compelled to
pursue its inquiry by starting from assumptions and travelling, not up to a prin-
ciple, but down to a conclusion. In the second (D) the mind moves in the other
direction, from an assumption up towards a principle which is not hypothetical;
and it makes no use of the images employed in the other section, but only of
Forms, and conducts its inquiry solely by their means.
I don’t quite understand what you mean.
Then we will try again; what I have just said will help you to understand. (C)
You know, of course, how students of subjects like geometry and arithmetic begin
by postulating odd and even numbers, or the various figures and the three kinds
of angle, and other such data in each subject. These data they take as known;
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and, having adopted them as assumptions, they do not feel called upon to give 65
any account of them to themselves or to anyone else, but treat them as self-evident.
THE IDEA
Then, starting from these assumptions, they go on until they arrive, by a series of OF FORM
consistent steps, at all the conclusions they set out to investigate.
Yes, I know that.
You also know how they make use of visible figures and discourse about them,
though what they really have in mind is the originals of which these figures are
images: they are not reasoning, for instance, about this particular square and
diagonal which they have drawn, but about the Square and the Diagonal; and
so in all cases. The diagrams they draw and the models they make are actual
things, which may have their shadows or images in water; but now they serve in
their turn as images, while the student is seeking to behold those realities which
only thought can apprehend.
True.
This, then, is the class of things that I spoke of as intelligible, but with two
qualifications: first, that the mind, in studying them, is compelled to employ
assumptions, and, because it cannot rise above these, does not travel upwards
to a first principle; and second, that it uses as images those actual things which
have images of their own in the section below them and which, in comparison
with those shadows and reflections, are reputed to be more palpable and valued
accordingly.
I understand: you mean the subject-matter of geometry and of the kindred arts.
(D) Then by the second section of the intelligible world you may understand me
to mean all that unaided reasoning apprehends by the power of dialectic, when it
treats its assumptions, not as first principles, but as hypotheses in the literal sense,
things “laid down” like a flight of steps up which it may mount all the way to
something that is not hypothetical, the first principle of all; and having grasped
this, may turn back and, holding on to the consequences which depend upon it,
descend at last to a conclusion, never making use of any sensible object, but only
of Forms, moving through Forms from one to another, and ending with Forms.
I understand, he said, though not perfectly; for the procedure you describe
sounds like an enormous undertaking. But I see that you mean to distinguish the
field of intelligible reality studied by dialectic as having a greater certainty and
truth than the subject-matter of the “arts,” as they are called, which treat their
assumptions as first principles. The students of these arts are, it is true, compelled
to exercise thought in contemplating objects which the senses cannot perceive; but
because they start from assumptions without going back to a first principle, you
do not regard them as gaining true understanding about those objects, although
the objects themselves, when connected with a first principle, are intelligible. And
I think you would call the state of mind of the students of geometry and other
such arts, not intelligence, but thinking, as being something between intelligence
and mere acceptance of appearances.
You have understood me quite well enough, I replied. And now you may take,
as corresponding to the four sections, these four states of mind: intelligence for
the highest, thinking for the second, belief for the third, and for the last imagin-
ing. These you may arrange as the terms in a proportion, assigning to each a
degree of clearness and certainty corresponding to the measure in which their
objects possess truth and reality.
I understand and agree with you. I will arrange them as you say.8

8
Plato, The Republic, 509D–511E.
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66 There is no end to what could be said about Plato’s philosophy on the

THE QUESTION
basis of the Line. Here we will summarize the most important points.
OF REALITY To begin with, note that the Line is not divided into equal parts but
unequal parts, and likewise the bottom and top segments of the Line are
divided in the same ratio. This is Plato’s way of suggesting that as we
proceed from the bottom to the top of the Line we attain greater and
greater degrees of reality and certainty. The first and major division of
the Line represents, obviously, the distinction between the world of Being
and the world of Becoming. By now we are certainly familiar with this
distinction. But now each of the resulting lines, below and above, is in
turn divided. This results in a sort of ladder of reality (on the meta-
physical side of the Line) and a ladder of knowledge (on the epistemo-
logical side). The ladder of reality extends from mere images of sensible
things (reflections in pools of water, photographs, paintings, memories,
etc.) to the sensible things themselves (actual tables, chairs, humans,
instances of justice or beauty, etc.), to the Forms that these sensible things
copy. If the Form or essence includes a specific and concrete physical
embodiment (Table, Circle, Human), then the Form is a “lower Form”; if
the Form has no specific and concrete physical embodiment (Justice,
Beauty), then it is a “higher Form.” Corresponding to this ladder of real-
ity is the ladder of knowledge. This extends from mere imagination
(which grasps images) to perception (which grasps actual sensible things)
to reason (which is a rational and deductive way of grasping the lower
Forms) to understanding (which grasps the higher Forms in a direct and
intuitive way).

PLATO'S DIVIDED LINE

Metaphysics Epistemology

Higher Forms Understanding

BEING KNOWLEDGE

Mathematical
Reason
forms

Sensible
Perception
objects

BECOMING OPINION

Images Imagination
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THE GOOD, THE SUN, AND THE CAVE 67

THE IDEA
But there is more. It turns out that there is something above even the OF FORM
Forms themselves, something we must situate at the very top of the Line.
In the Republic Plato calls it the “essential Form of the Good.” Why must
we believe in something even above the Forms, a sort of Form of the
Forms? The answer is this: Just as the many images—say, in a pool of
water—must derive their relative being from some one thing above them,
like an actual table, and actual tables must derive their relative being from
some one thing above them, the Form Table, so must the Forms (both lower
and higher) derive their being from a source that is above them: the Form The Good: Form
of the Good. And just as it is above all realities and is their ultimate source, of the Forms
so it is above all knowledge and is its ultimate source. Of course, in order
to be the source of being and knowledge, it itself cannot be a being or a
thing known. That is why Plato says of the Good that it is beyond being and
knowledge.
In a well-known analogy, Plato likens the essential Form of Goodness to
the sun. The Good is to the intelligible world, or the world of Being, as the
sun is to the visible world, or the world of Becoming:
First we must come to an understanding. Let me remind you of the distinction The Analogy
we drew earlier and have often drawn on other occasions, between the multi- of the Sun
plicity of things that we call good or beautiful or whatever it may be and, on
the other hand, Goodness itself or Beauty itself and so on. Corresponding to
each of these sets of many things, we postulate a single Form or real essence,
as we call it.
Yes, that is so.
Further, the many things, we say, can be seen, but are not objects of rational
thought; whereas the Forms are objects of thought, but invisible.
Yes, certainly.
And we see things with our eyesight, just as we hear sounds with our ears
and, to speak generally, perceive any sensible things with our sense-faculties.
Of course.
Have you noticed, then, that the artificer who designed the senses has been
exceptionally lavish of his materials in making the eyes able to see and their
objects visible?
That never occurred to me.
Well, look at it in this way. Hearing and sound do not stand in need of any
third thing, without which the ear will not hear nor sound be heard; and I think
the same is true of most, not to say all, of the other senses. Can you think of one
that does require anything of the sort?
No, I cannot.
But there is this need in the case of sight and its objects. You may have the
power of vision in your eyes and try to use it, and colour may be there in the
objects; but sight will see nothing and the colours will remain invisible in the
absence of a third thing peculiarly constituted to serve this very purpose.
By which you mean—?
Naturally I mean what you call light; and if light is a thing of value, the sense
of sight and the power of being visible are linked together by a very precious
bond, such as unites no other sense with its object.
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68 No one could say that light is not a precious thing.

And of all the divinities in the skies is there one whose light, above all the
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY rest, is responsible for making our eyes see perfectly and making objects perfectly
visible?
There can be no two opinions: of course you mean the Sun.
And how is sight related to this deity? Neither sight nor the eye which contains
it is the Sun, but of all the sense-organs it is the most sun-like; and further, the
power it possesses is dispensed by the Sun, like a stream flooding the eye. And
again, the Sun is not vision, but it is the cause of vision and also is seen by the
vision it causes.
Yes.
It was the Sun, then, that I meant when I spoke of that offspring which the
Good has created in the visible world, to stand there in the same relation to vision
and visible things as that which the Good itself bears in the intelligible world to
intelligence and to intelligible objects.
How is that? You must explain further.
You know what happens when the colours of things are no longer irradiated
by the daylight, but only by the fainter luminaries of the night: when you look at
them, the eyes are dim and seem almost blind, as if there were no unclouded
vision in them. But when you look at things on which the Sun is shining, the
same eyes see distinctly and it becomes evident that they do contain the power
of vision.
Certainly.
Apply this comparison, then, to the soul. When its gaze is fixed upon an object
irradiated by truth and reality, the soul gains understanding and knowledge and
is manifestly in possession of intelligence. But when it looks towards that twilight
world of things that come into existence and pass away, its sight is dim and it
has only opinions and beliefs which shift to and fro, and now it seems like a
thing that has no intelligence.
That is true.
This, then, which gives to the objects of knowledge their truth and to him who
knows them his power of knowing, is the Form or essential nature of Goodness.
It is the cause of knowledge and truth; and so, while you may think of it as an
object of knowledge, you will do well to regard it as something beyond truth
and knowledge and, precious as these both are, of still higher worth. And, just
as in our analogy light and vision were to be thought of as like the Sun, but not
identical with it, so here both knowledge and truth are to be regarded as like
the Good, but to identify either with the Good is wrong. The Good must hold a
yet higher place of honour.
You are giving it a position of extraordinary splendour, if it is the source of
knowledge and truth and itself surpasses them in worth. You surely cannot mean
that it is pleasure.
Heaven forbid, I exclaimed. But I want to follow up our analogy still further.
You will agree that the Sun not only makes the things we see visible, but also
brings them into existence and gives them growth and nourishment; yet he is not
the same thing as existence. And so with the objects of knowledge: these derive
from the Good not only their power of being known, but their very being and
reality; and Goodness is not the same thing as being, but even beyond being,
surpassing it in dignity and power.9

9
Plato, The Republic, 507A–509B.
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It may be useful to spell out exactly the various elements in the analogy: 69
The sun is analogous to the Form of the Good; the visible world is analo- THE IDEA
gous to the intelligible world (the world of Forms); Light is analogous to OF FORM
Truth; the objects of sight are analogous to the objects of knowledge (the
Forms); and sight is analogous to knowledge. Or perhaps a more visual
summary will help.10

SUN GOOD

in in

VISIBLE WORLD INTELLIGIBLE WORLD

by its by its
Analogous
LIGHT to TRUTH

cause of cause of

SIGHT KNOWLEDGE

and existence of objects and existence of objects

of sight of knowledge (Forms)

The two main points of the analogy are: First, just as the sun lights up
the world and makes physical objects visible to our eyes, so does the Good
illuminate intelligible objects (Forms) and render them knowable by the
mind. Second, and closely related, just as the sun actually causes things in
the world to exist and sustains them—without the light of the sun, the
world would wither away—so does the Good cause in the Forms their very
being and truth.
In Plato’s theory of reality, the Good is, then, the ultimate principle of
reality and truth. Any degree or instance of being, truth, unity, harmony,
beauty, or intelligibility found anywhere, either in the world of Becoming
or in the world of Being, is traceable finally to the Good. This is, some
would say, the closest thing in Plato to traditional conceptions of God, both
Western and Eastern.
The Good is also the ultimate object of the soul’s progress. And now we
are ready for the Allegory of the Cave, one of the most famous passages in
all literature. In this allegory Plato asks us to picture men imprisoned in an
underground cavern who mistake the shadowy figures and echoes reflected
on the wall facing them for reality. But how deluded they are! It is only by
forcing them (and that is what it would take to dislodge them from their
comfortable and familiar setting) out of the cave and into the upper world
that, though temporarily dazzled and blinded by the true light, they would
eventually recognize their former delusion. But read it for yourself.

10
The chart is based on R. C. Cross and A. D. Woosley, Plato’s Republic: A Philosophical Com-
mentary (London: Macmillan, 1966), pp. 202, 231.
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70 . . . here is a parable to illustrate the degrees in which our nature may be enlight-
ened or unenlightened. Imagine the condition of men living in a sort of cavernous
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY chamber underground, with an entrance open to the light and a long passage all
down the cave. Here they have been from childhood, chained by the leg and also
The Allegory by the neck, so that they cannot move and can see only what is in front of them,
of the Cave because the chains will not let them turn their heads. At some distance higher up
is the light of a fire burning behind them; and between the prisoners and the fire
is a track with a parapet built along it, like the screen at a puppet-show, which
hides the performers while they show their puppets over the top.
I see, said he.
Now behind this parapet imagine persons carrying along various artificial
objects, including figures of men and animals in wood or stone or other materi-
als, which project above the parapet. Naturally, some of these persons will be
talking, others silent.
It is a strange picture, he said, and a strange sort of prisoners.
Like ourselves, I replied; for in the first place prisoners so confined would have
seen nothing of themselves or of any other, except the shadows thrown by the
fire-light on the wall of the Cave facing them, would they?
Not if all their lives they had been prevented from moving their heads.
And they would have seen as little of the objects carried past.
Of course.
Now, if they could talk to one another, would they not suppose that their words
referred only to those passing shadows which they saw?
Necessarily.
And suppose their prison had an echo from the wall facing them? When one
of the people crossing behind them spoke, they could only suppose that the sound
came from the shadow passing before their eyes.
No doubt.
In every way, then, such prisoners would recognize as reality nothing but the
shadows of those artificial objects.
Inevitably.
Now consider what would happen if their release from the chains and the
healing of their unwisdom should come about in this way. Suppose one of them
were set free and forced suddenly to stand up, turn his head, and walk with eyes
lifted to the light; all these movements would be painful, and he would be too
dazzled to make out the objects whose shadows he had been used to seeing.
What do you think he would say, if someone told him that what he had formerly
seen was meaningless illusion, but now, being somewhat nearer to reality and
turned towards more real objects, he was getting a truer view? Suppose further
that he were shown the various objects being carried by and were made to say,
in reply to questions, what each of them was. Would he not be perplexed and
believe the objects now shown him to be not so real as what he formerly saw?
Yes, not nearly so real.
And if he were forced to look at the fire-light itself, would not his eyes ache,
so that he would try to escape and turn back to the things which he could see
distinctly, convinced that they really were clearer than these other objects now
being shown to him?
Yes.
And suppose someone were to drag him away forcibly up the steep and rugged
ascent and not let him go until he had hauled him out into the sunlight, would he
not suffer pain and vexation at such treatment, and, when he had come out into
miL86561_ch03_051-082.indd Page 71 1/22/08 4:48:07 PM epg1 /Users/epg1/Desktop/08-01-08/Pride

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is one of the most famous passages in all literature. This artist’s
rendering of Plato’s cave may be helpful as you read the story.
71
THE IDEA
OF FORM

Ascent to
sunlight

Fire
Diffused
sunlight
Roadway where
puppet showmen
Shadows cast perform
on wall

Prisoners

the light, find his eyes so full of its radiance that he could not see a single one of
the things that he was now told were real?
Certainly he would not see them all at once.
He would need, then, to grow accustomed before he could see things in that upper
world. At first it would be easiest to make out shadows, and then the images of men
and things reflected in water, and later on the things themselves. After that, it would
be easier to watch the heavenly bodies and the sky itself by night, looking at the
light of the moon and stars rather than the Sun and the Sun’s light in the daytime.
Yes, surely.
Last of all, he would be able to look at the Sun and contemplate its nature,
not as it appears when reflected in water or any alien medium, but as it is in
itself in its own domain.
No doubt.
And now he would begin to draw the conclusion that it is the Sun that produces the
seasons and the course of the year and controls everything in the visible world, and
moreover is in a way the cause of all that he and his companions used to see.
Clearly he would come at last to that conclusion.11

The point of the story should be obvious. We, like the prisoners in the
cave, are deluded about reality. We mistake the unreal for the real, and only

11
Plato, The Republic, 514A–516C.
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72 with the greatest difficulty can we be turned, and indeed we might have
THE QUESTION
to be forced, in the direction of truth and reality. But we must be turned in
OF REALITY that direction, and we must ascend into the upper regions of truth and real-
ity. Why? Because rationality is the essence of humanity. Thus our nature
is fulfilled in the contemplation and knowledge of reality. And this means
happiness or well-being. Even in this life, as much as possible we must be
liberated and detached from the darkness of the sensible world of Becom-
ing and opinion and live as much as possible in the enjoyment of Being
and knowledge. At death, however, the soul will be freed forever from the
distractions and imperfections of Becoming and can enjoy absolutely and
without interruption the knowledge of Being. That is why, says Plato, the
real philosopher—lover of wisdom—looks forward to death.

ARISTOTLE’S CRITICISM OF PLATO

As Plato was a student of Socrates and developed his ideas, so Aristotle
was the student of Plato and developed his ideas. Less charitably, Aristotle
ruthlessly criticized his master’s theory of the Forms and propounded a
quite different one.
Toward the beginning of his Metaphysics, Aristotle provides his own
summary of the Socratic-Platonic theory:

Aristotle on Plato . . . [Plato], having in his youth first become familiar with Cratylus12 and with the
Heraclitean doctrines (that all sensible things are ever in a state of flux and there
is no knowledge about them), these views he held even in later years. Socrates,
however, was busying himself about ethical matters and neglecting the world of
nature as a whole but seeking the universal in these ethical matters, and fixed
thought for the first time on definitions; Plato accepted his teaching, but held
that the problem applied not to sensible things but to entities of another kind—
for this reason, that the common definition could not be a definition of any sensible
thing, as they were always changing. Things of this other sort, then, he called
Ideas, and sensible things, he said, were all named after these, and in virtue of
a relation of these; for the many existed by participation in the Ideas that have
the same name as they.13

Later Aristotle criticizes this view with a long string of objections; in fact,
some have counted twenty-five or more. Not all of Aristotle’s objections are
as important as others, as when he twits Plato for creating an additional
world of things, as if we did not already have enough to explain!
More important is Aristotle’s so-called Third-Man Argument. It goes like
this. In order to explain the similarity between (1) a first man and (2) a
second man, we must posit (3) a third man, the Ideal Man or Form. But then

12
Cratylus was a follower of Heraclitus but pushed the teaching of his master even further,
for he said that one could not step into the same river even once!
13
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 987a–b, tr. W. D. Ross, in Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon
(New York: Random House, 1941).
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there will have to be a similarity between (1) the first two men and (2) the 73
third man posited, the Form of Man. How do we now explain this similarity? THE IDEA
We must again posit (3) a third and “higher” man. But then there will be a OF FORM
similarity between (1) all the previous men and (2) this third man. How do
we explain this similarity? According to Aristotle, the process of positing a
“third man” will have to go on forever, but in that case, the original similar- The Third-Man
ity is never explained. Is this a fair argument against Plato? Some have coun- Argument
tered that the argument will work only if you think the original third man, the
Form of Man, is itself actually a man and possessing the features particular
men possess. Would Plato agree to this? Is the Form of Man itself two-legged
and rational? This is a difficult question, and much ink has been spilt trying
to explain just how Plato viewed the Forms in this respect. Be that as it may,
this is still not Aristotle’s main objection to Plato.
The main problem, for Aristotle, is the problem of the chōrismos, a Greek
word that means “separation.” Aristotle correctly represents Plato as hav-
ing placed the ultimate causes of things (the Forms) in a transcendent world
and thus separated from the things they are supposed to be the causes of.
But this gives rise immediately to two very big questions, as Aristotle
shows in the following:

Above all one might discuss the question what on earth the Forms contribute to The Problem
sensible things, either to those that are eternal or to those that come into being of the chōrismos
and cease to be. For they cause neither movement nor any change in them. But
again they help in no wise either towards the knowledge of the other things (for
they are not even the substance of these, else they would have been in them), or
towards their being, if they are not in the particulars which share in them; though
if they were, they might be thought to be causes, as white causes whiteness in a
white object by entering into its composition. . . .
But, further, all other things cannot come from the Forms in any of the usual
senses of “from.” And to say that they are patterns and the other things share in
them is to use empty words and poetical metaphors. . . .
Again, it would seem impossible that the substance and that of which it is the
substance should exist apart; how therefore, could the Ideas, being the substances
of things, exist apart? In the Phaedo the case is stated in this way—that the Forms
are causes both of being and of becoming; yet when the Forms exist, still the
things that share in them do not come into being, unless there is something to
originate movement.14

One question Aristotle poses is: How can the Forms be the causes of the
natures or “whatnesses” of things without being in those things? His
answer: They can’t. Another question Aristotle poses is: How do Plato’s tran-
scendent and unchanging Forms account for the most evident fact about the
things around us—namely, their coming into being and their motion and
change? His answer: They don’t. In sum, the chōrismos, or separation,
between the Forms and particular sensible things, like a great gulf fixed,
makes it impossible for the Forms to do anything for those things at the most

14
Ibid., 991a–b.
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74 critical points. That is bad enough. What is worse, when Plato attempts to
THE QUESTION
explain how the Forms are related to sensible things, he provides no really
OF REALITY rigorous philosophical explanation but resorts to “empty words and poetical
metaphors” such as participation and imitation.
In fairness to Plato, it should be noted that many of Aristotle’s specific
criticisms (for example, the Third-Man Argument) were anticipated and
discussed by Plato himself. More generally, in the Timaeus Plato did account
for motion and change in the world, and as for his attempt to bridge the
two worlds with “empty words and poetical metaphors,” we saw in an
earlier passage from the Phaedo that Plato freely granted the difficulty of
language at this point.

ARISTOTLE’S VIEW OF FORM

One must not conclude from the above that Aristotle rejected Plato’s theory
of reality for a radically different one. Aristotle too believed absolutely in
Forms. As with Plato, so with Aristotle: Only by means of Forms, the objec-
tive essences of things, can we account for the order around us, both in
nature and in morality, and only because of Forms is knowledge of any-
thing possible. The difference lies in their views of how the Forms are related
to particular things.
It should be clear from the above quotation that Aristotle rejected Plato’s
idea of transcendent Forms in favor of an idea of immanent Forms—that is, a
Aristotle: Forms view of Forms as existing within particular sensible things. He overcomes
must be in things Plato’s unbridgeable chasm between Forms and sensible things by asserting
that Forms can be causes of things only if they are in those things. But under-
stand: There is no abstract “tableness” out there any more than there is any
unimaginable formless matter or formless “stuff.” What is out there are par-
ticular tables—this table, that table, and other tables. The Form or essence
Table exists only as individualized or particularized (that is, turned into a
concrete, particular thing) by some wood, glue, and varnish. And likewise
with everything. The Form (which accounts for the essence or whatness of a
thing) combined with matter (which gives that essence a concrete and par-
“No form without ticular expression) is what is real. As one slogan puts it, “No form without
matter, no matter matter, and no matter without form.” For those who prefer a more technical
without form” expression, this view or idea is called hylomorphic composition (from the
Greek hylē, “matter,” and morphē, “form”): Everything in the natural world

HYLOMORPHIC COMPOSITION
Although Aristotle himself never used this expression, it was eventually coined to
represent the Aristotelian emphasis on the necessary twofold composition, material
and formal, of everything in the natural world.
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Plato and Aristotle, from “The School of Athens” (detail) by

Raphael. In this representation, Plato and Aristotle are
75
distinguishable from one another in several respects. How THE IDEA
many of them can you identify? OF FORM

is composed of both form and matter; there can be no instances of unformed

matter or “unmattered” form.
Thus it is with everything in the natural world. With respect to God, the
situation is quite different. The matter in a thing provides for its change-
ability and movement, since matter is the potential in a thing to change or
become something different. Think of a table. It can be chopped into bits,
burned into ashes, or dismantled and turned into a chair, only because there
is wood there. But there can be no matter, or potential for change and motion,
in God, who is the Unmoved Mover. God, the immutable source of all
motion, must himself be utterly devoid of matter. He is Pure Form. God: Pure Form
All of this so far may sound rather technical and bland. But the whole
show is considerably enlivened when the teleological side of this theory of
reality is stressed. And it should be stressed because it is a major feature
of the Aristotelian perspective.
“Teleology” comes from the Greek word telos, “end” or “goal,” and means Teleology
the study of, or the belief in, principles that give rise to the order and pur-
pose that pervade all reality. (We will see momentarily that these principles
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76 are otherwise called “final causes.”) The conviction that reality is infused
THE QUESTION
and governed by teleological principles is not new with Aristotle, though
OF REALITY he thought it was. It is an obvious feature of the Platonic philosophy too,
and it is clearly discernible in some of the Pre-Socratics. Still, it received
with Aristotle perhaps the strongest expression in the whole history of phi-
losophy. For Aristotle, there is, so to say, both an “inside” and an “outside”
story. The inside story concerns the way in which anything, say, an acorn,
is propelled naturally, by the form within, into a full-fledged, giant oak tree.
What is immanent, then, is more than a static form—it includes a power
that develops the thing into its full reality. As for the outside story: The oak
tree is nourished by the nutrients in the ground, is dependent on the change
of seasons, and otherwise stands in a complex relation to the rest of
nature—using it for its own purposes, maintaining its own structure in the
face of perturbances, and producing more acorns. The whole of nature is,
in fact, a network of intimately related things, conspiring, as it were, upon
the production of the efficient, harmonious, beautiful, and value-laden uni-
verse that confronts our sense at every turn.
The real difference between Plato’s idea of transcendent Forms and Aris-
Aristotle vs. Plato totle’s idea of immanent Forms shows up very vividly in their discussions
on art of art. In the last parts of the Republic, Plato argued that art is “thrice removed”
from reality: A painting is an imperfect representation or copy of a man who
himself is an imperfect copy of the real thing, Man; likewise a drama imper-
fectly represents people and things that are themselves imperfect copies of
their Forms. For these reasons Plato advocated banishing the arts—at least
the representative arts—from the ideal society. Aristotle, with his view of
immanent Forms, draws exactly the opposite conclusion. It is because the
essence and ideal of things are embodied in those things that the artistic
representation brings us closer to reality. As Aristotle says in a helpful passage
in his Poetics, what the artist does is represent things in their universality, to
use Aristotle’s term, and that is why the artist’s work is more philosophical
than, say, the historian’s work, which represents things merely in their
particularity.

. . . the poet’s function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind
of thing that might happen, i.e. what is possible as being probable or necessary.
The distinction between historian and poet is not in the one writing prose and
the other verse—you might put the work of Herodotus into verse, and it would
still be a species of history; it consists really in this, that the one describes the
thing that has been, and the other a kind of thing that might be. Hence poetry is
something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements
are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars. By
a universal statement I mean one as to what such or such a kind of man will
probably or necessarily say or do—which is the aim of poetry, though it affixes
proper names to the characters; by a singular statement, one as to what, say,
Alcibiades did or had done to him.15

15
Aristotle, Poetics, 1451a–b, tr. Ingram Bywater, in Basic Works of Aristotle.
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Two final points: First, although we have dwelt upon form and matter, 77
according to Aristotle there are actually four principles, or “causes,” that THE IDEA
are necessarily involved in the constitution or explanation of a thing: OF FORM

• Material cause Aristotle’s Four

• Formal cause Causes
• Efficient cause
• Final cause

The material cause is the matter, or “stuff,” something is made out of; the
formal cause is its essence, or whatness; the efficient or moving cause is what brings
the thing into being; and the final cause is the end, or purpose, of the thing.
Can you identify the four causes of, say, a table? It may be noticed that the
last three causes are closely related, and Aristotle himself suggests that they
may be lumped together under the formal cause, leaving us with the gen-
eral twofold distinction: material cause/formal cause. Thus the key terms
in the constitution and explanation of things are matter and form. Second,
Aristotle stressed even more strongly than Plato the difference between
“substantial” Forms and “accidental” Forms. Fido necessarily involves the Substantial and
Form Dog; it is of Fido’s very nature or substance to be a dog. But it is only accidental Forms
an accident that Fido involves the forms Shaggy, Brown, and Short-legged;
it is not part of Fido’s essence that he possesses these features—he might
or might not, and still be a dog.

AFTER PLATO AND ARISTOTLE

Aristotle provides, thus, a criticism of Plato’s theory of reality. But his own
theory, after all, is not really all that different. For both Plato and Aristotle
the true reality of something is identified with its Form. And this general
view, often called realism, was propagated throughout subsequent centuries, Realism
mainly through the Christian thinkers St. Augustine (d. 430), who taught
more or less the Platonic version, and St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1275), who
taught more or less the Aristotelian version.
Obviously, this kind of philosophy is radically different from all those
approaches that reject Form as sort of philosophically superstitious. It was,
in fact, against this very idea that William of Ockham (d. 1349?) formulated
the principle known as Ockham’s Razor, in an attempt to cut away all unnec- Ockham’s Razor
essary principles and realities: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem,
“Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity.” The resulting view was
known as nominalism (from the Latin nomen, “name”), the view that Forms Nominalism
or universals (such as Animal, Whiteness, etc.) have no external or indepen-
dent existence, but are merely names or words by which we group together
things that possess similar features.
Nominalism will perhaps appear to you as a very simple and clean
approach: away with all that silly and needless talk about substantial forms,
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78
THE QUESTION “I can see the horse, Plato, but not horseness.”
OF REALITY
—Antisthenes

accidental forms, metaphysical causes, and the like! On the other hand, we
must not forget about the problems that spawned the belief in Forms in the
first place: Without objective Forms, or essences, how, for example, are real
knowledge, rational discourse, and moral judgment possible?
Conceptualism Or perhaps you would like a compromise. A third option is conceptual-
ism. This is a philosophical halfway house between realism and nominalism
inasmuch as it holds that there are universals but they are mind-made. Cat-
ness, for example, has no existence outside the mind, but it certainly does
exist within the mind—a mental entity—and is employed for the sake of
meaningful thought and discourse about reality.
It should not be thought that the realist-nominalist debate is just an anti-
quated piece in the Museum of Philosophical Ideas. The issue yet exercises
contemporary thinkers. A good example is Willard V. Quine, one of the most
influential English-speaking philosophers of the twentieth century, who relates
What is mathematics the issue to mathematics. What is mathematics about? Is it about anything?
about? There are three possible answers. First, you can say, as logicism does, that
mathematics is about mind-independent objects, and this would commit you
to a belief in something like Platonic or Aristotelian Forms, or realism. Second,
you can say, with formalism, that mathematics isn’t about anything, really; it
is a formal game similar to chess where the pieces have no significance apart
from the board, other pieces, the rules, and so on; and this would be to take
a nominalist view. Third, there is an intermediate position, intuitionism, accord-
ing to which mathematics is about mental constructs, and this, of course,
corresponds to conceptualism. Quine himself (at least the later Quine) is the
sort of philosopher who, in trying to answer the question of what exists, tries
as much as possible to keep both feet in the physical world and appeals to
the fewest abstract entities required to do the job. Nonetheless, he finds him-
self having to appeal to abstract or mind-independent entities, and thus he
turns out to be a kind of mathematical Platonist.
Be that as it may, in the following extract from “On What There Is,”
Quine states how the very old problem of universals is alive and well
(“ontology” is the theory of what is, and a “bound variable” is a formal
logician’s equivalent to a pronoun).

Classical mathematics . . . is up to its neck in commitments to an ontology of abstract

entities. Thus it is that the great mediaeval controversy over universals has flared
up anew in the modern philosophy of mathematics. The issue is clearer now than
of old, because we now have a more explicit standard whereby to decide what
ontology a given theory or form of discourse is committed to: a theory is committed
to those and only those entities to which the bound variables of the theory must be
capable of referring in order that the affirmations made in the theory be true.
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79
THE IDEA
REALISM, NOMINALISM, CONCEPTUALISM OF FORM

• Realism: The doctrine that Forms, or essences, possess objective reality.

• Nominalism: The doctrine that Forms, or universals, are merely universal names
by which we group together things that possess similar features.
• Conceptualism: The doctrine that universals are mental constructs, and as such
really exist in the mind.

Because this standard of ontological presupposition did not emerge clearly in

the philosophical tradition, the modern philosophical mathematicians have not on
the whole recognized that they were debating the same old problem of universals
in a newly clarified form. But the fundamental cleavages among modern points of
view on foundations of mathematics do come down pretty explicitly to disagree-
ments as to the range of entities to which the bound variables should be permitted
to refer.
The three main mediaeval points of view regarding universals are designated
by historians as realism, conceptualism, and nominalism. Essentially these same three
doctrines reappear in twentieth-century surveys of the philosophy of mathematics
under the new names logicism, intuitionism, and formalism.16

CHAPTER 3 IN REVIEW
SUMMARY
“Form” is one of the most important words in the history of philosophy.
In fact, when the first full-blown philosophies came on the scene, those of
Plato and Aristotle, they were built almost entirely around this concept.
In an important sense, the idea of Form is an answer to many philoso-
phies, such as those of Heraclitus (as Plato understood him) and Protago-
ras, that dissolve everything into a flux of relativity. According to Plato and
other Form-philosophers, we must believe in an objective basis for the
things existing around us, for knowledge and for value judgments. This
basis is the Form, or essence, which constitutes the real being of a thing. As
being, the Form must be one, immutable, ideal, transcendent, and the like,
and this being is imperfectly represented in particular, sensible things by
“participation” or “imitation.” Plato conceives all reality as a ladder or scale
and, corresponding to this, knowledge too (the image of the Divided Line).
But the basic distinction is between the sensible world of Becoming and the
transcendent or intelligible world of Being, with the essential Form of

16
Willard Van Orman Quine, “On What There Is,” in From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-
Philosophical Essays, second ed., rev. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 13f.
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80 Goodness ranging over all (the Analogy of the Sun). The practical point is
THE QUESTION
to make our way, as much as possible in this life, into the higher realm of
OF REALITY the intelligible and to enjoy the illumination of reality and truth (the Allegory
of the Cave).
Aristotle belongs to this philosophical tradition too, but represents an
important variation. He criticized Plato’s theory of the Forms in several
ways, but mainly because of the gap it leaves between the Forms and the
things they are the Forms of: the problem of the chōrismos. Instead, Aristotle
insisted that although we must believe in the Forms or objective essences
of things, they cannot be separated from those things. This is Aristotle’s
doctrine of immanent (rather than transcendent) Forms: The Forms must be
in things. His conception of matter as potentiality and therefore providing
for change, and his doctrine of the Four Causes, are also important features
of his thought.
In subsequent centuries the realist metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle
received Christian reinterpretations and restatements, most notably at the
hands of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. On the other hand, it was
also attacked by nominalist philosophers, such as Ockham, for whom the
Forms were merely general or universal terms that lump similar things into
classes. The debate between realism (Forms have objective reality), nomi-
nalism (Forms are universal terms), and conceptualism (Forms are mental
entities) is a fundamental and continuing one.

BASIC IDEAS
• “Systematic” philosophy
• The nature of a Platonic dialogue
• The Socratic Problem
• The problem with Protagorean subjectivism
• The problem with Heraclitean flux
• The distinction between the worlds of Becoming and Being
• The meaning of “Form”
• Six features of Platonic Forms; they are:
Objective
Transcendent
Eternal
Intelligible
Archetypal
Perfect
• Platonic metaphors for the Form’s relation to the particular
Imitation
Participation
• Two ways in which something can share in more than one Form
• The Divided Line: Degrees of reality and knowledge
• The Good as the Form of Forms
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• The Analogy of the Sun 81

• The Allegory of the Cave THE IDEA
OF FORM
• Aristotle’s main criticism of Plato’s theory: The problem of the chōrismos,
“separation”
• Aristotle’s conception of immanent Forms
• Hylomorphic composition
• Aristotelian teleology
• Aristotle’s Four Causes
Material
Formal
Efficient
Final
• Substantial and accidental Forms
• Ockham’s Razor
• Realism, nominalism, and conceptualism
• Quine: a mathematical Platonist

TEST YOURSELF
1. True or false: Plato believed that “a man is the measure of all things.”
2. According to Plato, the sun is to the _____ as the Good is to the _____.
3. What did Heraclitus and Parmenides contribute to Plato’s theory of the
Forms?
4. How does Quine figure in this chapter?
5. True or false: Aristotle’s efficient cause is the agent through which
something comes into being.
6. What is the point of the Allegory of the Cave?
7. Aristotle believed not in transcendent Forms but in _____ Forms.
8. Plato taught that Forms are related to particular things by means of
(a) the final cause, (b) participation, (c) hylomorphic composition,
(d) imitation.
9. True or false: Aristotle was a nominalist.
10. Plato’s and Aristotle’s theories of reality were preserved, in a Christian
version, by_____ and _____, respectively.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• Plato’s philosophy is sometimes called a rather “poetic” one. What does
this mean? Is it good or bad? What is to be made of the fact that Plato
anticipated Aristotle’s criticisms but did not regard them as decisive?
• If one rejects every philosophy of Forms, such as that of Plato or Aristotle,
what then? What about the problems that sparked such philosophies in
the first place?
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82 • Is it necessary to accept, say, Plato’s philosophy in its entirety and detail

THE QUESTION
in order to be a “Platonist”? Is it possible to distinguish the central and
OF REALITY essential idea of a philosophy from the particular, relative, and even
mistaken trappings in which it was originally expressed? What is the
perspective that characterizes any Platonic philosophy?

FOR FURTHER READING

Julia Annas. An Introduction to Plato’s Republic. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1981. Chs. 8–10. An up-to-date discussion of Plato’s theory of knowledge,
theory of the Forms, and the Sun, Line, and the Cave.
Frederick Copleston. A History of Philosophy. Baltimore: Newman Press,
1946–1974. I, Parts 3 and 4. Readable and indispensable accounts of both
Plato’s and Aristotle’s theories of reality and their relation to one another
by an esteemed historian of philosophy.
G. M. A. Grube. Plato’s Thought. London: Methuen, 1935. Ch. 1. A long and
excellent chapter titled “The Theory of the Forms” in an old but useful
work.
G. E. R. Lloyd. Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of His Thought. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1968. A classic work that describes Aristotle’s
intellectual development as well as major themes in his work.
William J. Prior. Unity and Development in Plato’s Metaphysics. LaSalle, IL:
Open Court, 1985. A recent scholarly analysis of texts, showing the con-
tinuity and progress of Plato’s metaphysical ideas throughout the most
relevant of his dialogues.
David Ross. Aristotle. Fifth ed. London: Methuen, 1949. Ch. 6. Discussion
of Aristotle’s doctrines of substance, matter, form, and other topics from
an old but still standard work on Aristotle.
A. E. Taylor. Plato: The Man and His Work. London: Methuen, 1926. A stan-
dard work that provides an overview of Plato’s philosophy and brief,
running commentaries on his dialogues.
Gregory Vlastos (ed.). Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays, I. Garden City,
NY: Anchor Books, 1971. Scholarly and sometimes technical discussions
by Plato specialists on a variety of metaphysical and epistemological
issues in Plato’s philosophy.
Nicholas White. A Companion to Plato’s Republic. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub-
lishing Co., 1979.
*In addition, see the relevant articles (“Plato,” “Aristotle,” “Universals,”
etc.) in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig (London:
Routledge, 1998), and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato
.stanford.edu.
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CHAPTER 4

MIND AND
MATTER

I
f you were to meet someone on the street and ask what he or she
thinks reality is, you might get a response something like this:

Well, I know that I have a mind (or soul, or whatever you want to call it),
and I know that in addition to my mind—and presumably other minds too—
there is a world of material things like my own body, and tables and chairs,
and all the other things “out there.” And, well, I guess there is a real differ-
ence between mind and matter such that my mind might exist even apart
from matter.

This view of reality, mind-matter dualism, is a very common one, held by A common theory
many who have never heard its name or have never even heard of meta- of reality
physics. It is called a dualism because it reduces everything to two basic
realities—in this case, mind and matter. As a genuine philosophical posi-
tion, however, it is considerably more complex than the opinion expressed

DUALISM
The metaphysical view that all things are reducible to two different realities.

83
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84 by our friend on the street. For its most forceful expression we turn to the
THE QUESTION
French thinker René Descartes1 (1596–1650).
OF REALITY

DESCARTES: THE FATHER OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY

In addition to being a mathematician and scientist (he invented analytic
geometry and made numerous contributions to physics), Descartes was a
philosopher and has been called, in fact, the father of modern philosophy.
Everything changed with Descartes, and nearly all modern philosophies
may be traced back, in one way or another, to his.
In a sense, modern philosophy originated in a dream, or a series of
dreams, in which a new approach to knowledge was revealed to Descartes.
It is not known exactly what “came” to Descartes in these dreams, but it
appears that it had something to do with the unity of all branches of knowl-
edge and perhaps the method of achieving this unity. In his Discourse on
Method, Descartes tells of his disillusionment with traditional philosophy:

. . . seeing that it has been cultivated for many centuries by the best minds that
have ever lived, and that nevertheless no single thing is to be found in it which is
not subject of dispute, and in consequence which is not dubious, I had not enough
presumption to hope to fare better there than other men had done. And also, con-
sidering how many conflicting opinions there may be regarding the self-same matter,
all supported by learned people, while there can never be more than one which is
true, I esteemed as well-nigh false all that only went as far as being probable.2

On the other hand, he was much struck by the certainty of mathematical

procedures:

Most of all was I delighted with mathematics because of the certainty of its dem-
onstration and the evidence of its reasoning.3

He determined that if philosophy too was to be successful, it must annex

Descartes’ to itself something like a “geometrical method” so that its starting points
“geometrical and conclusions might be as certain as those of geometry.
method” It will be best to consider Descartes’ conception of philosophical knowl-
edge in Part Two, “The Question of Knowledge.” Here it should be enough
to say only that Descartes turned his back on the doubtful truths delivered
through the senses, and turned rather to what could be known with cer-
tainty through reason alone—an “inside-out” philosopher rather than an
“outside-in” philosopher. In the intellect he found, as in geometry, two fun-
Intuition and damental, foolproof operations: intuition and deduction. Through intuition
deduction

1
Pronounced Day-cart’.
2
René Descartes, Discourse on Method, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, tr. Elizabeth
S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), I, 85–86.
3
Ibid., I, 85.
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Title page of the English translation of the

Discourse on Method
85
MIND AND
MATTER

he could know certain basic and undoubtable truths, and through deduction
he could draw from these basic truths still further truths. Through both of
them together he believed that he could construct a whole philosophy.
Armed with his geometrical method, Descartes set out to formulate a
new and certain and definitive philosophy. The best expressions of this
philosophy may be found in Descartes’ Discourse on Method (especially Part
Four) and his Meditations on First Philosophy. It may be helpful to anticipate
a bit by saying that Descartes’ philosophy unfolds in three major stages:
first, the knowledge of the mind; second, the knowledge of God; and third,
the knowledge of matter.

“WHAT CAN I KNOW FOR CERTAIN?”

We have already noted that Descartes was disillusioned with earlier phi-
losophies because of their contradictions and muddledness. This distress
was genuine (one may even detect an element of personal crisis in it) and
probably reflected certain recent upheavals in the medieval view of the
world. We can imagine him peering out his window and exclaiming, “If I
cannot be certain that the sun moves across the sky (a major debate of the
time because of Copernicus)—something I can see with my own eyes—then
of what can I be certain?” Descartes thus resolved, first, to doubt anything
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86 and everything that was doubtable, in hopes of discovering something,

THE QUESTION
even one thing, that was not doubtable, something certain, something
OF REALITY unshakable, some indubitable truth that might serve as a secure foundation
of his philosophy. In this respect, Descartes likened himself to the ancient
Archimedes, who said in relation to his newly discovered principle of the
fulcrum, “Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world!” Descartes
said, in effect, “Give me just one certain truth, and I will build upon it an
entire philosophy!”
Systematic doubt Thus Descartes embarked on his process of systematic doubt—that is, the
process of doubting everything that can be doubted to see if there is any-
thing that cannot be doubted. Since our senses sometimes deceive us, Des-
cartes supposed that perhaps the world of sense experience was not at all
as it seems to be. Since people make the simplest mistakes in reasoning, he
rejected as false all the demonstrations he had previously accepted. Noticing
the similarities between waking life and dreams, he even ventured that
nothing was more real than dreams. And noticing that two plus three equals
five even when dreaming, he went so far as to devise the hypothesis of an
“evil genius” bent upon constantly deceiving Descartes even about mathe-
matical truths. Descartes documents his progress in the Meditations:

I shall proceed by setting aside all that in which the least doubt could be sup-
posed to exist—just as if I had discovered that it was absolutely false; and I shall
ever follow in this road until I have met with something which is certain, or at
least, if I can do nothing else, until I have learned for certain that there is nothing
in the world that is certain. Archimedes, in order that he might draw the terres-
trial globe out of its place, and transport it elsewhere, demanded only that one
point should be fixed and immoveable; in the same way I shall have the right to
conceive high hopes if I am happy enough to discover one thing only which is
certain and indubitable.
I suppose, then, that all the things that I see are false; I persuade myself that
nothing has ever existed of all that my fallacious memory represents to me. I con-
sider that I possess no senses; I imagine that body, figure, extension, movement
and place are but the fictions of my mind. What, then, can be esteemed as true?
Perhaps nothing at all, unless that there is nothing in the world that is certain.4

THE INTUITION OF MIND

In this way Descartes sought to erase, as it were, everything from the chalk-
board of human knowledge. Finally, he found himself exactly opposite to
the naive realist who thinks that things are exactly as they appear. Descartes
could doubt everything—except for one thing. In all of this doubting and
Cogito ergo sum: erasing, one thing finally presented itself as undoubtable and unerasable. As
“I think, therefore he expressed it in the famous line from the Principles of Philosophy: Cogito
I am.” ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am.” After all, if I am mistaken about this,
then there is no “I” to be mistaken!

4
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, I, 149.
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87
MIND AND
DESCARTES’ METHOD OF DOUBT MATTER

As a way to find a new foundation for knowledge, Descartes set out to system-
atically doubt everything. He found, however, that he couldn’t doubt his own
existence. Why? To doubt my existence presupposes my existence. In short, to
doubt requires a doubter. Doubting is a form of thinking, and to think I must exist.
Therefore, Descartes’ famous conclusion: “I think, therefore I am.”

. . . whilst I thus wished to think all things false, it was absolutely essential that the
“I” who thought this should be somewhat, and remarking that this truth “I think,
therefore I am” was so certain and so assured that all the most extravagant sup-
positions brought forward by the sceptics were incapable of shaking it, I came
to the conclusion that I could receive it without scruple as the first principle of the
Philosophy for which I was seeking.5

Here, then, is rock-bottom certitude, unshakable even by the most radical

doubt, a place for Descartes to stand as he sought to build a philosophy.
“I think, therefore I am.” But what am I? What is mind? What is soul?
What is my spirit? (Descartes uses all of these terms interchangeably.)
Descartes’ answer in the Discourse: It is “a substance the whole essence or Mind: a substance
nature of which is to think,”6 or for short, a thinking substance. But here we the essence of which
must make our terms clear. We have a good idea what Descartes means by is to think
“thinking”; it means all the intellectual operations, such as affirming, deny-
ing, imagining, doubting, reflecting, inferring, and the like. We may have
more trouble with the word “substance.” Some readers may find themselves
almost hopelessly afflicted with the idea that substance means some con-
crete, physical thing. But the word itself (from the Latin substantia) means,
literally, “that which stands under” or “that which upholds” something. To
use Descartes’ own example, consider a ball of wax. It may be hard or soft
and have a certain color, odor, and texture, and these may change from time
to time, but then there is the wax itself, the substance of these qualities. Can
you imagine texture or shape existing without something that is textured
and shaped? Can you imagine thinking without something that does the
thinking? Just as in grammar there could be no predicate without a subject, so
in the world of sensible things there could be no qualities without a material

5
Descartes, Discourse on Method, I, 101.
6
Ibid.

COGITO ERGO SUM

“I think, therefore I am.” Descartes’ famous conclusion to his doubting.
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88
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY RENÉ DESCARTES

R
ené Descartes was born in Touraine, France, in 1596. His mother died in
giving him birth, and from her he appears to have inherited a frail consti-
tution. At eight years old he was enrolled in the Jesuit school at La Flèche,
where his poor health won for him certain privileges, including sleeping late, a
habit that Descartes cherished throughout his life. At La Flèche, he displayed the
inclination for mathematics and geometry that later exerted such an influence
over his whole philosophy.
(continued on next page)

substance, and in the intellectual world no thinking activities without a

mental substance. But it is not just that there is no thinking apart from
mind—mind is thinking, a thinking substance. It may affirm, deny, doubt,
reflect, imagine, infer, and so on, but it must think.
In the Meditations, Descartes provides a summary of this first stage of
his reasoning: (1) It is certain that I exist, and (2) I am a mind or thinking
substance.

. . . I was persuaded that there was nothing in all the world, that there was no
heaven, no earth, that there were no minds, nor any bodies: was I not then likewise
persuaded that I did not exist? Not at all; of a surety I myself did exist since I per-
suaded myself of something [or merely because I thought of something]. But there is
some deceiver or other, very powerful and very cunning, who ever employs his inge-
nuity in deceiving me. Then without doubt I exist also if he deceives me, and let him
deceive me as much as he will, he can never cause me to be nothing so long as I
think that I am something. So that after having reflected well and carefully examined
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89
At 16, Descartes left La Flèche and journeyed to Paris, where, provided by MIND AND
his father with a valet and money, he especially enjoyed gambling. (His friends MATTER
attributed his gambling successes to the fact that he bet according to his
unusual knowledge of mathematics rather than to chance.) In Paris, he made
the acquaintance of the celebrated mathematician Mydorge. A certain restless-
ness and eagerness to learn from “the book of the world,” as he put it, caused
Descartes, in 1617, to go to Holland, where he enlisted as a volunteer without
pay in the army of Prince Maurice of Nassau. He was not much of a soldier,
though it was during this stint that he discovered analytic geometry, thus ensur-
ing his niche in the history of mathematics. In 1619, the Thirty Years War broke
out, and Descartes joined the Catholic forces and found himself eventually in
Prague. On November 10, 1619, Descartes had his famous three dreams in
which a way of unifying all knowledge was revealed to him. Tired of soldiering,
he returned to Paris (which he found too hectic), and then, in 1628, he went to
the Netherlands, where his serious philosophical and scientific activity and writ-
ing got under way, as well as other things: Here he had a mistress who bore
him a daughter. It was during this period that Descartes published his major
philosophical works, though, noting the fate of Galileo, he suspended the pub-
lication of a book on cosmology.
In time he was repeatedly entreated by Queen Christina of Sweden (a robust
and masculine woman) to tutor her in his philosophy. Because of his physical
condition he hesitated, but eventually accepted the invitation in 1649. Upon his
arrival he learned to his horror that the queen insisted on receiving philosophy
lessons at five o’clock in the morning! This first winter was especially severe, and
Descartes quickly caught pneumonia and died. To the end of his life he professed
the Catholic faith. He is buried in Ste. Geneviève du Mont in Paris.
Some of Descartes’ more important works are Rules for the Direction of the
Mind, Discourse on Method, Meditations on First Philosophy, Optics, Geometry,
Meteorology, and Principles of Philosophy.

all things, we must come to the definite conclusion that this proposition: I am, I exist,
is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it. . . .
But what am I, now that I suppose that there is a certain genius which is extremely
powerful, and, if I may say so, malicious, who employs all his powers in deceiving
me? Can I affirm that I possess the least of all those things which . . . pertain to the
nature of body? I pause to consider, I revolve all these things in my mind, and I find
none of which I can say that it pertains to me. It would be tedious to stop to enumer-
ate them. Let us pass to the attributes of soul and see if there is any one which is in
me. What of nutrition or walking. . .? But if it is so that I have no body it is also
true that I can neither walk nor take nourishment. Another attribute is sensation. But
one cannot tell without body, and besides I have thought I perceived many things
during sleep that I recognized in my waking moments as not having been experi-
enced at all. What of thinking? I find here that thought is an attribute that belongs
to me; it alone cannot be separated from me. I am, I exist, that is certain. But how
often? Just when I think; for it might possibly be the case if I ceased entirely to think,
that I should likewise cease altogether to exist. I do not now admit anything which
is not necessarily true: to speak accurately I am not more than a thing which thinks,
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90
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY SUBSTANCE
“Substance” is popularly thought to be a physical thing. But the term was used
by Descartes and subsequent thinkers in quite a different way, and with its original
sense of “that which stands under” and thus “upholds” something (from the Latin
substantia). For Descartes and others, mind is the substance that underlies mental
activities, as matter is the substance underlying and upholding physical qualities.

that is to say a mind or a soul, or an understanding, or a reason, which are terms

whose significance was formerly unknown to me. I am, however, a real thing and
really exist; but what thing? I have answered: a thing which thinks.7

Thus we are led to the first of Descartes’ three major metaphysical conclu-
sions: There is mind.
But that is not the only important thing that has been learned. Through
reflection on the character of this primary certainty—I exist—Descartes has
discovered what he can take as the hallmark or criterion of any indubitable
Clear and distinct and certain idea: clarity and distinctness.
ideas as the
foundation of After this I considered generally what in a proposition is requisite in order to be
further knowledge
true and certain; for since I had just discovered one which I knew to be such,
I thought that I ought also to know in what this certainty consisted. And having
remarked that there was nothing at all in the statement “I think, therefore I am”
which assures me of having thereby made a true assertion, excepting that I see
very clearly that to think it is necessary to be, I came to the conclusion that I
might assume, as a general rule, that the things which we conceive very clearly
and distinctly are all true—remembering, however, that there is some difficulty in
ascertaining which are those that we distinctly conceive.8

THE DEDUCTION OF GOD

On the basis of mind as a thinking substance, along with the criterion of
clear and distinct ideas, Descartes leads us to a further consideration: God.
He provides two proofs for the existence of God, both of them rooted in
the thinking self, both of them employing clear and distinct premises, and
both of them involving the idea of perfection.
The first of these two proofs has no particular name, so we may propose
Descartes’ for convenience the label Eidological Argument for God, from the Greek
Eidological word for “idea.” Descartes’ reasoning is that God must exist in order to
Argument for God account for our idea of perfection. Descartes discovered in his mind the idea

7
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, I, 150, 151–152.
8
Ibid., I, 101–102.
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91
MIND AND
DESCARTES’ EIDOLOGICAL PROOF FOR GOD MATTER

If I have an idea of perfection, then there must actually exist a perfect being
as its cause.
I have an idea of perfection.

Therefore, there must actually exist a perfect being.

of a being more perfect than himself—after all, he doubted, and it is a greater

perfection to know than to doubt—but where did this idea of something
more perfect come from? Now it is absurd that this idea might have come
from nothing, for I have a clear and distinct notion that nothing comes from
nothing. Nor could it have come from myself, since it is no less absurd that
the more perfect should come from the less perfect than that something
should come from nothing. We are driven rationally to the only conclusion:
The idea of perfection has been placed in our minds by a perfect being. This
proof comes out best in the Discourse:

Following upon this, and reflecting on the fact that I doubted, and that consequently
my existence was not quite perfect (for I saw clearly that it was a greater perfec-
tion to know than to doubt), I resolved to inquire whence I had learnt to think of
anything more perfect than I myself was; and I recognised very clearly that this
conception must proceed from some nature which was really more perfect. As to
the thoughts which I had of many other things outside of me, like the heavens, the
earth, light, heat, and a thousand others, I had not so much difficulty in knowing
whence they came, because, remarking nothing in them which seemed to render
them superior to me, I could believe that, if they were true, they were dependen-
cies upon my nature, in so far as it possessed some perfection; and if they were
not true, that I held them from nought, that is to say, that they were in me because
I had something lacking in my nature. But this could not apply to the idea of a
Being more perfect than my own, for to hold it from nought would be manifestly
impossible, and because it is no less contradictory to say of the more perfect that
it is what results from and depends on the less perfect, than to say that there is
something which proceeds from nothing, it was equally impossible that I should
hold it from myself. In this way it could but follow that it had been placed in me
by a Nature which was really more perfect than mine could be, and which even
had within itself all the perfections of which I could form any idea—that is to say,
to put it in a word, which was God.9

It should be noted that this is a causal argument for God; that is, it argues
that God must exist as the only adequate cause of something—in this case,
the cause of the idea of perfection. We are reminded, though, how seriously
Descartes takes mind and ideas. Even an idea is some sort of reality or thing

9
Descartes, Discourse on Method, I, 102.
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92 (though obviously not a physical thing), and a thing the existence of which
THE QUESTION
needs explaining no less than tables or chairs or worlds or galaxies.
OF REALITY Descartes’ second proof for God is a version of the Ontological Argument.
As with the first, this one too is stated in the Discourse, though it is developed
Descartes’ further in the Meditations. And like the first, it begins with the idea of perfec-
Ontological tion or the idea of a most perfect being. Descartes observed that the very
Argument for God concept of God implies his real existence. For what does “God” mean? It
means a being who is a supremely perfect being, and who therefore possesses
the sum of all possible perfections. Thus, to name a few, God must be—
omniscient (for that is a perfection), God must be omnibenevolent (for that
is a perfection), and God must exist (for that too is a perfection). Is not real
existence just as necessary to a supremely perfect being as any other of
these perfections? Could God be the absolutely perfect being if he were not
omnipotent? Could God be the absolutely perfect being if he did not even
exist? Of course it does not follow from the fact that you cannot separate the
idea of a mountain from the idea of a valley that there are any mountains or
valleys. But that is because existence is not part of what it means to be a
mountain or valley. But it is part of what it means to be God. On this reason-
ing, as soon as you get hold of the idea of God as a supremely perfect being,
you get hold of a God who exists. When we come to Part Three, “The Ques-
tion of God,” we will have to consider the Ontological Argument more care-
fully, and there we will give Descartes’ own statement of it. For now we
simply let it stand, along with his first argument for God, as bringing us to
Descartes’ second main conclusion: There is a God.

THE DEDUCTION OF MATTER

On the basis of God, and some other clear and distinct ideas, Descartes
leads us to a further consideration: the world of material objects.
According to Descartes, it is only through the belief in God that we may
be assured of the existence of the external world and the things in it: tables,
chairs, dogs, cats, the earth, stars, our own bodies, and so on. How does
Descartes arrive at this thesis? Surely, says Descartes, we can doubt the
existence of such things. Aside from the inevitable distortions and misrep-
resentations of our senses, is it not at least possible that we are now dream-
ing, and that the world “out there” is not at all as we perceive it, or even
that it is not at all—period? Apart from God, it is possible. But with God,
God, the guarantor it is not possible. Why not? Because we have “a very great inclination to
of clear and believe” that the material world exists and that God, a supremely perfect
distinct ideas being and the author of all good, is by his divine nature incapable of creat-
ing in us false or misleading ideas. And even if he could, he wouldn’t, since
deception is clearly a moral defect, whereas God is the supremely perfect
being—can you imagine God being a deceiver?
To be sure, many of our ideas may be confused, obscure, or false, but that
is because they have become contaminated with nothingness, “from below,”
as it were, whereas as created and implanted in us by God, “from above,”
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they cannot fail to be true. And, to be sure, many of our judgments are 93
mistaken. But that is because of a misuse of our will (also given by God) MIND AND
whereby because of passion, prejudice, or haste, we affirm as true or deny MATTER
as false an idea that is not clear and distinct. If you look at the sun and
judge it to be about two feet across, your decision has overstepped the How errors occur
boundaries of your clear and distinct ideas, and that is your problem, not
God’s. Descartes summarizes:

. . . as often as I so restrain my will within the limits of my knowledge that it

forms no judgment except on matters which are clearly and distinctly represented
to it by the understanding, I can never be deceived; for every clear and distinct
conception is without doubt something, and hence cannot derive its origin from
what is nought, but must of necessity have God as its author—God, I say, who
being supremely perfect, cannot be the cause of any error; and consequently we
must conclude that such a conception [or such a judgment] is true.10

Thus God is the guarantor of our knowledge:

. . . so I very clearly recognise that the certainty and truth of all knowledge depends
alone on the knowledge of the true God, in so much that, before I knew Him,
I could not have a perfect knowledge of any other thing. And now that I know
Him I have the means of acquiring a perfect knowledge of an infinitude of things,
not only of those which relate to God Himself and other intellectual matters, but
also of those which pertain to corporeal nature. . . .11

And we are now in a position to reintroduce into our picture of reality

what Descartes originally found it necessary to exclude: the external world
of material objects.
Do we not have a clear and distinct idea of an external world? A world of Knowledge of the
tables, chairs, dogs, cats, the earth, stars, and our own bodies existing out- external world
side our minds and independently of us? Is not the “externality” of such a
world and such things clearly and distinctly evident from the passivity of
our sense perceptions? That is, we do not wish or imagine or dream up this
world. It is just there, imposing itself on us, independently of our wills. Fur-
thermore, is it not evident that just as it was required in the world of mind
to believe in a substance that upholds and supports the various intellectual
activities, so also in the external world there must be a substance that upholds
and supports the various physical qualities we experience—colors, tastes,
shapes, and the like? We will call this substance material substance. And
is it not evident that extension (to use Descartes’ expression), or the ability Matter: a substance
to occupy space or possess dimensions (to use our own), is the very essence the essence of which
of material substance? We observed earlier that minds (or thinking sub- is to be extended
stances) may deny, affirm, imagine, remember, and so on, but think they
must. Likewise, we may say of material objects that they may be red, or blue,
or rectangular, or hard, or sweet, and so on, but extended they must be. Of
10
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, I, 178.
11
Ibid., I, 185.
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94 course, says Descartes, the things “out there” may not be entirely as they
THE QUESTION
are represented to us by our senses, but they must at least possess the geo-
OF REALITY metrical features that we clearly and distinctly perceive (such as length,
breadth, and depth).
How many of the ideas in the above paragraph can you find substanti-
ated in the following paragraph from the Meditations?

I further find in myself faculties employing modes of thinking peculiar to themselves,

to wit, the faculties of imagination and feeling, without which I can easily conceive
myself clearly and distinctly as a complete being; while, on the other hand, they can-
not be so conceived apart from me, that is without an intelligent substance in which
they reside, for [in the notion we have of these faculties, or, to use the language
of the Schools] in their formal concept, some kind of intellection is comprised, from
which I infer that they are distinct from me as its modes are from a thing. I observe
also in me some other faculties such as that of change of position, the assumption
of different figures and such like, which cannot be conceived, any more than can
the preceding, apart from some substance to which they are attached, and conse-
quently cannot exist without it; but it is very clear that these faculties, if it be true
that they exist, must be attached to some corporeal or extended substance, and not
to an intelligent substance, since in the clear and distinct conception of these there
is some sort of extension found to be present, but no intellection at all. There is
certainly further in me a certain passive faculty of perception, that is, of receiving
and recognising the ideas of sensible things, but this would be useless to me [and I
could in no way avail myself of it], if there were not either in me or in some other
thing another active faculty capable of forming and producing these ideas. But this
active faculty cannot exist in me [inasmuch as I am a thing that thinks] seeing that
it does not presuppose thought, and also that those ideas are often produced in me
without my contributing in any way to the same, and often even against my will;
it is thus necessarily the case that the faculty resides in some substance different
from me in which all the reality which is objectively in the ideas that are produced
by this faculty is formally or eminently contained, as I remarked before. And this
substance is either a body, that is, a corporeal nature in which there is contained
formally [and really] all that which is objectively [and by representation] in those
ideas, or it is God Himself, or some other creature more noble than body in which
that same is contained eminently. But, since God is no deceiver, it is very manifest
that He does not communicate to me these ideas immediately and by Himself, nor
yet by the intervention of some creature in which their reality is not formally, but
only eminently, contained. For since He has given me no faculty to recognise that
this is the case, but, on the other hand, a very great inclination to believe [that
they are sent to me or] that they are conveyed to me by corporeal objects, I do
not see how He could be defended from the accusation of deceit if these ideas
were produced by causes other than corporeal objects. Hence we must allow that
corporeal things exist. However, they are perhaps not exactly what we perceive
by the senses, since this comprehension by the senses is in many instances very
obscure and confused; but we must at least admit that all things which I conceive
in them clearly and distinctly, that is to say, all things which, speaking generally,
are comprehended in the object of pure mathematics, are truly to be recognised
as external objects.12

12
Ibid., I, 190–191.
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Thus we have arrived at Descartes’ third conclusion: There is matter. And 95

we have progressed from our knowledge of mind to a knowledge of God, MIND AND
and from our knowledge of God to a knowledge of matter. MATTER
The essential movement in Descartes’ philosophy and the three pivotal
ideas may be represented by a simple diagram:

God

Mind Matter

SOME OBJECTIONS
For all its importance and influence, Descartes’ theory of reality has hardly
escaped criticism. We may mention a few of these, first some lesser ones
and then one very big one.
First of all, there is the question of Descartes’ method. Few philosophers
would align themselves with such a rigorous exclusion of sense experience
as a legitimate means of acquiring knowledge; indeed many, quite opposite
to Descartes, have admitted only sense experience as the source of knowl-
edge, and with the result that they have arrived at quite different conclu-
sions about reality. We will speak of this again in Part Two. Here it must
suffice to say that there are more ways to begin a philosophy than with a
cogito. And, speaking of the cogito, are we very sure that thinking requires
a thinker? What would result if we simply denied the necessity of mental
substance, or any substance? Why not let there be simply intellectual activ-
ities and physical qualities? We will see that some have in fact argued for
just this view. Also, it has often been charged that Descartes has committed
the informal fallacy of Petitio Principii, or circular reasoning. Upon his
reflection on the Cogito ergo sum, Descartes is willing to accept any clear
and distinct idea as indubitable; he uses such ideas in his proofs for God,
but then insists that it is God who ensures the reliability of these clear and
distinct ideas.
And regarding Descartes’ proofs for God: In his first proof, some have
stumbled over the notion that ideas are things, that they possess some sort
of objective reality, and thus that they must be caused in a way similar to
tables and chairs. And are we sure that the idea of God could not be devised
without God actually existing? This, however, brings us to the Ontological
Argument for God, and that will be best treated in Chapter 12.

THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM

Now we must address the really big problem posed by Descartes’ phi-
losophy. If we leave God aside and focus our attention on only the natural
world (including ourselves as part of it), then Descartes’ view of reality
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96
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
If the mind and body are essentially different substances, then how can there be
any causal connection between them?

may appropriately be called dualistic: There are two essentially different

substances, mind and matter, that constitute the “stuff” of this world. This
is, in fact, how Descartes’ theory of reality is usually represented, and as
such it poses one of the most vexing problems in the history of philosophy:
the mind-body problem.
The mind-body problem simply stated is this: Once we define mind and
matter as essentially different substances, which means that they can have
nothing in common, no bridge between them, no causal connection, then
how do we get them back together again? And we must get them back together
again, for there clearly is some sort of connection between them. Obviously,
our bodily states can affect our mental states. We are familiar with all sorts
of ways in which physics and chemistry can affect the mind. Just think of
the mental effects of caffeine, drugs, old age, the alteration of brain states,
and the like, and if someone beats you over the head long enough, you will
become depressed! On the other hand, it is also obvious that mental states
can give rise to bodily states. Everyday events like willing myself to get up
in the morning before I physically get out of bed demonstrate this. Or, have
you ever felt physically ill because of some idea—like the prospect of fail-
How can mind and ing a course? That the mind and body stand in a causal relation to each
body be causally other appears to be a fact. The question is how, if they are absolutely dif-
connected? ferent in nature from each other:

Mind Matter
Incorporeal substance Corporeal substance
the essence of which the essence of which
is to think is to be extended

So far we have represented the problem in terms of causality. But it may

be represented in yet other ways. In the following, the contemporary phi-
losopher John Searle suggests four aspects of our mental life that appear
unconnectable (we might say) with the material world: (1) consciousness,
(2) intentionality—but be careful, it does not mean what you may think,
(3) subjectivity, and, of course, (4) causation.
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There are four features of mental phenomena which have made them seem impos- 97
sible to fit into our “scientific” conception of the world as made up of material
MIND AND
things. . . . MATTER
The most important of these features is consciousness. I, at the moment of
writing this, and you, at the moment of reading it, are both conscious. It is just a
plain fact about the world that it contains such conscious mental states and events,
but it is hard to see how mere physical systems could have consciousness. How
could such a thing occur? How, for example, could this grey and white gook
inside my skull be conscious?. . .
The second intractable feature of the mind is what philosophers and psycholo-
gists call “intentionality,” the feature by which our mental states are directed at,
or about, or refer to, or are of objects and states of affairs in the world other
than themselves. . . . Now the question about intentionality is much like the ques-
tion about consciousness. How can this stuff inside my head be about anything?
How can it refer to anything?. . .
The third feature of the mind that seems difficult to accommodate within a sci-
entific conception of reality is the subjectivity of mental states. This subjectivity is
marked by such facts as that I can feel my pains, and you can’t. I see the world
from my point of view; you see it from your point of view. I am aware of myself
and my internal mental states, as quite distinct from the selves and mental states
of other people. . . .
Finally, there is a fourth problem, the problem of mental causation. We all sup-
pose, as part of common sense, that our thoughts and feelings make a real difference
to the way we behave, that they actually have some causal effect on the physical
world. I decide, for example, to raise my arm and—lo and behold—my arm goes
up. But if your thoughts and feelings are truly mental, how can they affect anything
physical?. . . These four features, consciousness, intentionality, subjectivity, and mental
causation are what make the mind-body problem seem so difficult. . . .13

But back to Descartes and the specifically causal issue involved in the
mind-body problem. Descartes himself was not oblivious to the difficulty.
The solution he proposed has been called interactionism. It is simply the view Descartes’ solution:
that there is, after all, some kind of interaction between the two essentially interactionism
different substances.

Nature also teaches me by these sensations of pain, hunger, thirst, etc., that I
am not only lodged in my body as a pilot in a vessel, but that I am very closely
united to it, and so to speak so intermingled with it that I seem to compose with
it one whole. For if that were not the case, when my body is hurt, I, who am
merely a thinking thing, should not feel pain, for I should perceive this wound by
the understanding only, just as the sailor perceives by sight when something is
damaged in his vessel; and when my body has need of drink or food, I should
clearly understand the fact without being warned of it by confused feelings of
hunger and thirst. For all these sensations of hunger, thirst, pain, etc. are in truth
none other than certain confused modes of thought which are produced by the
union and apparent intermingling of mind and body.14

13
John Searle, Minds, Brains and Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984),
pp. 15–17.
14
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, I, p. 192.
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98 Where does this “union” and “intermingling” of mind and body take
THE QUESTION
place? Descartes’ answer: the pineal gland, in the center of the brain. Appar-
OF REALITY ently he thought that the pineal gland was a likely candidate for this honor
because it is the most inward part of the brain and perhaps, too, because it
appeared to Descartes to be the only thing in the body without a double or
counterpart. (It is reported that Descartes would secure discarded carcasses
from the local butcher for the purpose of dissection and examination.)
It has seemed to many that Descartes’ solution was, of course, no solu-
tion at all. It only moved the question one step further back, and the ques-
tion now becomes, How do mind and matter interact in the pineal gland?
Nonetheless, interactionism as a solution to the mind-body problem is here
to stay. After all, what constitutes a causal connection even between like
substances is no easy matter. And who is to say outright what substances
can or cannot do? Further, talk of an unbridgeable “gap” between mind
and matter is strange inasmuch as mind is not conceived as spatial at all.
On the other hand, mind is in space and time in some sense: Does not your
mind exist right here and right now? At least in some way, then, mind and
matter do occupy a common ground.
There have been other proposed solutions. Before mentioning two radical
solutions, we shall mention three traditional ones. No sooner had Descartes
presented the world with the mind-body problem than the French thinker
Occasionalism Malebranche (1638–1715) proposed occasionalism as a solution: On the occa-
sion of bodily stimuli or impressions, God creates the appropriate idea and
response in the mind. The German philosopher Leibniz (1646–1716) pro-
Preestablished posed a preestablished harmony, according to which bodily and physical states
harmony have been preordained by God to correspond at every point with appropriate
mental states, like two clocks synchronized and set to ticking at the same
time. The Dutch philosopher Spinoza (1632–1677) proposed what has been
The double-aspect called the double-aspect theory. In this view there is only one reality, unknown
theory to us except through its attributes of mind and matter, two of the infinite
number of aspects of this one reality.
The more radical There is, however, a much more radical approach to the mind-body prob-
solution lem. Like some forms of radical surgery, which cut out the disease by cutting
out the organ, this approach cuts out the problem by cutting out one or the
other of the substances. But which has to go? How you answer that may
determine whether you go the way of idealism or the way of materialism, the
topics of Chapters 5 and 6.

MIND: A SET OF DISPOSITIONS OR FUNCTIONS

In the meantime, however, we should consider looking at the issue in an
entirely different way, involving some recent and analytic-style philoso-
phizing. We mention here two important developments in philosophical
psychology—critical thinking about mind and mental states—both of which
nullify the mind-body problem. Notice we said “nullify” (not “solve”), for
these approaches regard the mind-body problem itself, as traditionally
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Diagrams from a work on physiology by Descartes showing the brain

and the pineal gland. Descartes believed this gland to be the locus
99
of the soul and its point of contact, or interaction, with the body. MIND AND
MATTER

posed in “substance”-talk, to be misguided, or a pseudoproblem, or a mis-

taken and misleading way of representing the situation.
This is the view of the recent British philosopher Gilbert Ryle and a long
line of thinkers influenced by him. His 1949 book, The Concept of Mind, had
the effect of an exploding bombshell in the sphere of philosophical psychol-
ogy. Ryle said that the mind-body problem, like so many philosophical
problems, is not a real problem, but results rather from linguistic and con- Linguistic and
ceptual confusion. That is, it is a problem that results from our misunder- conceptual
standing and misuse of language and concepts. He begins by sketching the confusion
“official doctrine”:

There is a doctrine about the nature and place of minds which is so prevalent
among theorists and even among laymen that it deserves to be described as the
official theory. Most philosophers, psychologists and religious teachers subscribe,
with minor reservations, to its main articles and, although they admit certain
theoretical difficulties in it, they tend to assume that these can be overcome with-
out serious modifications being made to the architecture of the theory. It will be
argued here that the central principles of the doctrine are unsound and conflict
with the whole body of what we know about minds when we are not speculat-
ing about them.
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100
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY PHILOSOPHERS: PEOPLE OF MANY FIELDS
(SOMETIMES)
Many of the greatest philosophers have been geniuses in more than one field.
Descartes is a good example. Besides his philosophical contributions, Descartes
contributed many valuable mathematical and scientific insights, theories, and
discoveries.
In addition to Descartes’ invention of analytic geometry (the most important
advance in mathematics since the Greeks), one scholar has summarized his
achievements in optics as follows: the statement of the wave theory of light, the
vector analysis of motion, the law of sines in refraction, the first theoretical account
of farsightedness and nearsightedness, the first adequate account of space per-
ception, the first adequate account of the theory of lenses, the first recognition
of spherical aberration and of the method of correcting it, the determination of
light-gathering power of a telescope, the principle of the iris diaphragm, the
draw-tube, the telescopic finder, the use of illuminating equipment in conjunction
with the microscope, and the parabolic mirror.
Likewise, his contributions to the field of meteorology may be summarized as
the rejection of divine intervention as the explanation of events; the kinetic theory
of heat and the concept of specific heat; the first outline of a scientific meteorol-
ogy in his treatment of winds, clouds, and precipitation; a correct and accurate
description and explanation of the primary, secondary, and reflection rainbows;
a description of the division of white light into colors by a prism; and the appa-
ratus of the slit spectroscope.*

*Cf. Laurence J. Lafleur, Introduction to René Descartes: Discourse on Method, 2d ed., tr.
Laurence J. Lafleur (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956), pp. xvii f.

The official doctrine, which hails chiefly from Descartes, is something like this.
With the doubtful exceptions of idiots and infants in arms every human being has
both a body and a mind. Some would prefer to say that every human being is
both a body and a mind. His body and his mind are ordinarily harnessed together,
but after the death of the body his mind may continue to exist and function.
Human bodies are in space and are subject to the mechanical laws which
govern all other bodies in space. Bodily processes and states can be inspected by
external observers. So a man’s bodily life is as much a public affair as are the lives
of animals and reptiles and even as the careers of trees, crystals and planets.
But minds are not in space, nor are their operations subject to mechanical laws.
The workings of one mind are not witnessable by other observers; its career is
private. Only I can take direct cognisance of the states and processes of my own
mind. A person therefore lives through two collateral histories, one consisting of
what happens in and to his body, the other consisting of what happens in and to his
mind. The first is public, the second private. The events in the first history are events
in the physical world, those in the second are events in the mental world.15

15
Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson, 1949), pp. 11–12.
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But what, exactly, is the confusion that Ryle sees in this “official doc- 101
trine”? Ryle said that Descartes and most people after him were guilty of MIND AND
a category mistake, as he called it. This is the mistake of treating a concept MATTER
as if it belonged to one system or category of ideas when, in fact, it belongs
to another. An example will help. Imagine yourself showing a visitor around The category
the campus. Your friend asks you to point out the library, and you point at mistake
a building and say, “Over there.” He then asks to see the student union,
and you take him to another building. He then asks to be shown the
humanities building, and you show it to him. Then he asks to see the col-
lege. But you are puzzled by this request because your friend appears to
think that the college is something you can see. You might say to him:
“What do you mean, ‘Show me the college’? The college is not a building
or a thing, it is an organization of various departments and faculties. You
have confused the idea of a college with things, such as buildings.” Ryle
makes the application:

I shall often speak of [the “official doctrine”] with deliberate abusiveness, as “the
dogma of the Ghost in the Machine.” . . . It is not merely an assemblage of particu-
lar mistakes. It is one big mistake and a mistake of a special kind. It is, namely,
a category-mistake. It represents the facts of mental life as if they belonged to
one logical type or category (or range of types or categories), when they actually
belong to another. The dogma is therefore a philosopher’s myth.16

Surely we have minds and these minds display mental characteristics.

This is not what Ryle objects to. He objects to the “official doctrine” of the
Ghost in the Machine, the representation of mind as a kind of great, non-
physical blob. Where did Descartes (and all the other proponents of the
“official doctrine”) go wrong? Right at the start, when he began thinking
about the mental world in terms that were appropriate only for the physi-
cal world: “thing,” “stuff,” “attribute,” “state,” “process,” “change,” “cause,”
and “effect.” It was, says Ryle, a colossal category mistake to employ thing-
language in the attempt to throw light on the world of mind.
We cannot give here a full account of Ryle’s more positive theory of
mind. But is not mind more like a college than a building? Is it not, rather,
a way of representing the organization, interrelationships, and activities of

16
Ibid., p. 16.

CATEGORY MISTAKE
The mistake of employing a concept (e.g., mind) within a conceptual system to
which it is inappropriate (substance, causality, etc.).
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102
THE QUESTION “In ordinary life . . . we seldom use the noun ‘mind’ or the adjective ‘mental’ at all.
OF REALITY
What we do is talk of people, of people calculating, conjuring, hoping, resolving,
tasting, bluffing, fretting, and so on. Nor, in ordinary life, do we talk of ‘matter’ or
of things being ‘material.’ What we do is to talk of steel, granite, and water; of
wood, moss, and grain; of flesh, bone, and sinew. The umbrella-titles ‘mind’ and
‘matter’ obliterate the very differences that ought to interest us.”
—Gilbert Ryle

faculties—in this case mental faculties? Furthermore, and more important,

would it not be truer to our actual evidence and experience to represent
Mind: a set of mental states as dispositions? As an “ordinary language analyst,” Ryle asks
dispositions us to pay attention to and to take our cue from the way in which we usu-
ally speak about such matters, and the way we usually speak betrays noth-
ing at all of some private, concealed, sealed-off domain of mental processes,
or any “ghost in the machine.” What are we actually referring to when we
speak of a person’s thoughts, desires, convictions, moods, and inclinations?
In our interpretation of such mental states do we not invariably include
references to some relevant bodily and publicly accessible facts? What is a
thought, desire, conviction, mood, or inclination apart from some accom-
panying physical states such as facial expressions, shrugs, weeping, speak-
ing, gesturing, or other bodily and witnessable activity? Mental states
would seem to have discernible meaning and real content only in relation
to bodily states. And the task of the Rylean philosophers becomes, then,
one of inquiring not into the spooky world of Cartesian minds, but into
capacities, propensities, habits, and tendencies—in a word, dispositions—
evident in what persons do.
One might be tempted to see here a form of materialism, but that
would be a mistake. Ryle’s point was not a metaphysical one involving
the reduction of mind to matter, or mental states to bodily states, but
rather an analytic-logical point: an attempt to clarify the logical status of
the idea of mind, and to go from there—though certainly it can’t be back
to Descartes!
Functionalism A second, related, and still more recent development is functionalism. It
is, in fact, at present all the rage among those dealing with the philosophy
of mind—which has become an ever-enlarging circle, including not only
people from philosophy but also people from the fields of psychology,
cybernetics, and linguistics, as well as many working in the areas of artifi-
cial intelligence and computational theory. All of this together is sometimes
called cognitive science, which is the attempt to understand, from all rel-
evant perspectives and on the basis of all possible data, the nature of know-
ing. We will encounter functionalism again, in Chapter 6 on materialism,
though it is appropriate here to provide a sketch, especially since it is in
some ways the current philosophical heir to Ryle’s work.
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It is not called “functionalism” for nothing. Again, our attention is shifted 103
from traditional Cartesian substance-talk to a radically different way of MIND AND
talking about the mind: The mind and its various states are to be under- MATTER
stood in terms of function. You do not give a definition of a coffeepot when
you tell what it is made of (plastic, metal, rubber, etc.) but when you
describe how it is put together and what it does (contains water, percolates,
filters the water through a batch of ground coffee beans, etc.). Likewise, say
the functionalists, when we address and assess the significance of mental
states, it is not a question of what they are made of—that is irrelevant—but
what they do. More specifically, the definition of a mental state, such as a
belief, should delineate what it does, what role it plays, how it relates to
and what contribution it makes to input, output, and other mental states—
such language naturally suggests that mental states, in the functionalist
view, may be likened to the program of a computer. Still better is the con-
cise statement (plus example) by Paul M. Churchland, a major figure in the
field of cognitive science:

According to functionalism, the essential or defining feature of any type of men-

tal state is the set of causal relations it bears to (1) environmental effects on
the body, (2) other types of mental states, and (3) bodily behavior. Pain, for
example, characteristically results from some bodily damage or trauma; it causes
distress, annoyance, and practical reasoning aimed at relief; and it causes winc-
ing, blanching, and nursing of the traumatized area. Any state that plays exactly
that functional role is a pain, according to functionalism. Similarly, other types
of mental states (sensations, fears, beliefs, and so on) are also defined by their
unique causal roles in a complex economy of internal states mediating sensory
inputs and behavioral outputs.17

But why functionalism? What consideration compels us to adopt this Why functionalism?
view? What problem does it solve? Here is where the issue is best consid-
ered in terms of Chapter 6, except to say that the total evidence from a
variety of perspectives (such as those mentioned above) urges upon the
functionalist a nonreductivist view of the mind that accommodates features
that cannot be reduced to bodily states, behavior, or environment. Still leav-
ing aside the metaphysical question as to the nature of mind, it is nonethe-
less surely not these things pure and simple.

CHAPTER 4 IN REVIEW
SUMMARY
Although the metaphysical theory known as mind-matter dualism has been
widely held, it has nowhere received a more powerful expression than in
Descartes, the father of modern philosophy.

17
Paul M. Churchland, Matter and Consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy
of Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984), p. 36.
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104 Descartes unfolds a complete philosophy starting from reason alone (we
THE QUESTION
will have more to say about his theory of knowledge in Part Two) and
OF REALITY arrives, specifically, at a certain knowledge of the essentially different sub-
stances, mind (“a substance the essence of which is to think”) and matter
(“a substance the essence of which is to be extended”), with considerable
help from his idea of God. He found that it was impossible to doubt the
existence of the self—otherwise, the very activity of doubting would be
impossible. Thus one of the best-known pronouncements in the history of
philosophy: “I think, therefore I am.” Armed with this fundamental certi-
tude, Descartes then proceeded to demonstrate the existence of God from
the presence in our minds of the idea of a perfect being (most notably, the
Ontological Argument). On the basis of both our passivity to what must be
external objects and the impossibility that God, the perfect being, should
deceive us with respect to our faculty of clear and distinct ideas, we may
also rest assured as to the existence and at least relative nature of the rad-
ically different world of material substances outside us. The main moves
may be represented simply as: Mind → God → Matter.
However, any version of mind-matter dualism that portrays mind and
matter as essentially different faces a tremendous problem: If they are so dif-
ferent, how can they relate to each other (as they obviously do) and therefore
be in some necessary way the same? Traditionally, solutions were proposed
in the form of interactionism, occasionalism, a preestablished harmony, and
the double-aspect theory. More recently, however, it has been suggested
that the whole problem stems from a mistaken concept of the mind. Ryle,
for example, has argued that to view mind as if it were a substance under-
lying various activities is to import an inappropriate model: a category
mistake.

BASIC IDEAS
• Dualism
• Descartes’ method
• Two fundamental operations of the intellect
Intuition
Deduction
• Descartes’ procedure of systematic doubt
• Cogito ergo sum
• Descartes’ conception of mind
• Substance
• The nature and role of clear and distinct ideas
• Descartes’ arguments for God
Eidological Argument
Ontological Argument
• God as the source of clear and distinct ideas
• How errors occur
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• How we acquire knowledge of the external world 105

• Descartes’ conception of matter MIND AND
MATTER
• Various objections to Descartes’ philosophy
• The mind-body problem
• Some traditional solutions to the mind-body problem
Interactionism
Occasionalism
Preestablished harmony
Double-aspect theory
• Radical solutions to the mind-body problem: materialism and idealism
• The category mistake
• Mind as a set of dispositions
• Functionalism

TEST YOURSELF
1. Why is Descartes’ method called a “geometrical” method?
2. In Descartes’ view, mind is to doubting as matter is to (a) God, (b) color,
(c) the pineal gland, (d) substance.
3. What is so important in Descartes’ philosophy about Cogito ergo sum?
4. True or false: Descartes says that we have an immediate intuition of the
external world.
5. What is Descartes’ definition of mind? of matter?
6. True or false: Descartes’ arguments for God are not based in any way on
the sensible world.
7. According to Searle, what is the fourfold problem in the mind-body
problem?
8. Descartes’ own solution to the mind-body problem is called ______.
9. What did Gilbert Ryle contribute to the discussion in this chapter?

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• At the beginning of the chapter it was asserted that mind-matter dualism
is a very common metaphysical theory. Do you think so? Would you
have answered the question of reality along these lines? What would have
been your answer?
• It is sometimes observed that Descartes’ way of viewing mind and its
activities was too easily influenced by a prevailing way of talking about
things in the external world in terms of substance and qualities. Would
this in itself make Descartes’ view of mind wrong? Might this be the
origin of the category mistake that Ryle talks about?
• If you do maintain the mind-matter dualist position, what do you do
about the mind-body problem?
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106 FOR FURTHER READING

THE QUESTION C. D. Broad. The Mind and Its Place in Nature. London: Routledge & Kegan
OF REALITY
Paul, 1925. Ch. 3. Treatment of “The Traditional Problem of Body and
Mind” in an old but enduring work.
David J. Chalmers. Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. A collection of important
essays that cover major themes in philosophy of mind.
Frederick Copleston. A History of Philosophy. Baltimore: Newman Press,
1946–1974. IV, Chs. 3–5, 9, 11, 17. Chapters dealing with Descartes’ dual-
istic theory of reality, his theory of interactionism, and the response of
Leibniz and Spinoza, by a recognized historian of philosophy.
William Doney (ed.). Descartes: A Collection of Critical Essays. Garden City,
NY: Anchor Books, 1967. Hefty essays by well-known philosophers on
various aspects of Descartes’ philosophy.
A. C. Ewing. The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy. New York: Collier, 1962.
Ch. 6. Commonsensical discussion of “The Relation of Matter and Mind.”
Owen J. Flanagan, Jr. The Science of Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984.
A thorough and critical discussion of the central issues in contemporary
cognitive science, including dualism, introspection, functionalism, and
so on.
Antony Flew (ed.). Body, Mind, and Death. New York: Macmillan, 1964.
Selections from traditional and contemporary philosophers with a good
introduction by a well-known philosopher of the analytic style.
Colin McGinn. The Character of Mind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of
Mind. Second ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Provocative
discussions of the nature of mind, including chapters on “Mind and Body”
and “The Self.”
John Searle. Mind: A Brief Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press,
2004. A lucidly written overview of the mind-body problem from a giant
in the field.
Jerome A. Shaffer. Philosophy of Mind. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
1968. Chs. 3–4. Student-oriented treatments of consciousness, its relation
to the body, the mind-body problem, dualism, and so on.
P. F. Strawson. Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics. Garden City,
NY: Anchor Books, 1959. An influential work that, like Ryle, reflects the
mind-body problem as a pseudoproblem, emphasizing the basic unity
of the individual.
Richard Taylor. Metaphysics. Third ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
1983. Chs. 1–2. Student-oriented discussions on “Persons and Bodies”
and “Interactionism.”
*In addition, see the relevant articles (“Mind-Body Problem,” “Descartes,”
etc.) in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig (London:
Routledge, 1998), and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato
.stanford.edu.
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CHAPTER 5

IDEALISM

O
ne way—a very radical way—of solving the mind-body problem A radical solution
is simply to deny the reality of matter. If all there is is mind, then to the mind-body
there can hardly be a problem of relating it to something essen- problem
tially different, for there isn’t anything different. It is just a matter of doing
away with one-half of Descartes’ mind-matter dualism (matter) and exalting
the other half (mind) as the sole reality.

WHAT IS IDEALISM?
To a beginner in philosophy it must sound remarkably strange to say that
reality is mind. But this thesis is one of the most important in the history of
philosophy and has had many advocates. In fact, there is a whole tradition in
From mind-matter dualism two radically
different theories of reality may be hatched
depending on which idea is suppressed. If
the idea of matter is suppressed, then idealism
may be hatched.

Mind-Matter Dualism

Idealism Materialism

107
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108
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY IDEALISM
The metaphysical theory that all things are constituted by mind and its ideas.

“Idealism”: its philosophy called idealism. As with so many other philosophical terms, this
popular and one too needs some explaining. By “idealism” we do not mean, as is often
technical meanings meant, a sort of utopianism or optimism about things. As used here, “idealism”
is a metaphysical theory, a theory of reality, a theory about the ultimate nature
of things. As a general definition we may say that idealism is the metaphysical
view that mind (in some sense) is ultimate and that all things are thus reduc-
ible to mind and ideas. (If it helps, think of idealism as “idea-ism.”)
As was said above, idealism has had many advocates. It has also had
many variations. In the interest of simplicity, though, we will divide all
Objective and idealists into two camps: the objective idealists and the subjective idealists.
subjective idealism An objective idealist believes that all things are made out of mind and
ideas, but that things exist nonetheless objectively—that is, “out there”—
independently of our perceiving or knowing them; they would continue to
exist even if we did not. A subjective idealist, on the other hand, believes
that all things are made out of mind and ideas, but that these things have
no existence apart from perception of them; they would cease to exist if all
perceivers did. One way of getting a hold on this idea is to think again of
Plato. Do you see that in a sense Plato was an objective idealist? He believed
that reality was intelligible (that is, of the nature of ideas and apprehensible
only by the mind) but also that it existed outside our minds. In this chapter
it is not objective but subjective idealism that interests us. Surely it is one of
the most fascinating views in the whole history of philosophy.

BERKELEY AND LOCKE

To many it will surely sound crazy to be told that things exist if and only
if1 they are perceived, that things cease to exist if they are not being at that
moment experienced! We are all familiar with the question about whether
a tree falling over on an uninhabited desert island would make any noise.
But could we doubt that the tree itself and the whole island would disappear
if no one were there to observe it? The Irish philosopher Bishop George
Berkeley2 (1685–1753) did doubt it. In fact, he was certain of it. And his argu-
ments for it are not to be laughed off.

1
Philosophers are fond of insisting on distinctions that would never occur to normal people.
Thus philosophers often find it important to distinguish among “if,” “only if,” and “if, and
only if.” These terms do, in fact, have three quite different meanings. Think about these expres-
sions until you see the differences.
2
Pronounced Barkly.
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Idealism 109
All things are mind and ideas IDEALISM

Objective Idealism Subjective Idealism

Things (ideas) exist Things (ideas)

apart from our depend on
perception of them perception for their
existence

As with most other philosophies it is hardly possible to grasp Berkeley’s

theory of reality except against the background of what had gone before.
Certainly Descartes lies in this background, but more important is the English
philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), Berkeley’s immediate predecessor.
Here we must emphasize three features of Locke’s philosophy, all of which
had everything to do with Berkeley’s radically new view.
First. Locke, like Descartes, believed in substance. This was conceived as Three features of
an underlying something that upholds the physical qualities of sensible things Locke’s philosophy:
(such as size, shape, color, position, sound, and movement), and a something (1) Two substances,
that likewise underlies and upholds intellectual activities (such as thinking, mind and matter
willing, denying, and doubting). In the first case the something is matter,
and in the second case it is mind. And since he believed that these are the
only substances, at least in the natural world, Locke was, like Descartes, a
mind-matter dualist.
Second. Locke expressed better than anyone else the view that has some- (2) Ideas as the
times been called epistemological dualism, a view we will encounter again in objects of knowledge
Chapter 10. As you can guess from the label, it had to do with knowledge
(“epistemological”) and with two things (“dualism”). Specifically, it is the
view that two main things are involved in the act of knowing: the knower
and the known. But do not be misled here. While it is obvious that the thing
that knows is the mind, the thing known is not the object “out there” in the
external world such as a table. What is actually known must be something
akin to the mind and in the mind. And what is in the mind and known by
the mind is certainly not the table itself—that exists out there—but rather a
mental representation or idea of the table: brown, rectangular, smooth, flat,
and four-legged. What is important here is that according to Locke what the
mind directly knows are ideas that themselves correspond to things in the
external world. (3) Primary and
Third. We mentioned above that Locke believed in matter as an underly- secondary qualities
ing “something” that upholds the sensible qualities of a thing. Now what
about these sensible qualities? Like many before him, Locke says that we
must divide these qualities into two kinds: primary and secondary qualities.
This will take a bit of explaining. A primary quality is a quality that exists
independently of a perceiver; that is, it would exist even if no perceiver
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110 were present. Examples of primary qualities include size, position, shape,
THE QUESTION
and movement. A secondary quality is a quality that depends for its existence
OF REALITY on a perceiver; that is, it would cease to exist were no perceiver present.
Examples of secondary qualities are color, sound, texture, and taste. Gener-
ally, we could say that primary qualities of things are objective (they exist
in the object), whereas secondary qualities are subjective (they exist in the
knowing or perceiving subject).
The distinction between primary and secondary qualities is an important
one and has figured recurringly in philosophical discussions. Why would
The basis for the one draw this distinction? What is the evidence for it? The evidence takes
distinction two forms. (1) Our perceptions, or ideas, of primary qualities resemble those
qualities. For example, our perception or idea of triangularity resembles the
shape of a triangle; our idea of motion resembles something in motion. But
colors, sounds, and tastes do not resemble anything “out there”: Red is the
perception, loud is the perception, sweet is the perception. (2) Secondary
qualities, unlike primary qualities, vary with perceivers and are therefore
relative. What color is the beach ball? Well, it depends on whether you are
color-blind, the way the sunlight and shadows are striking it, how far you
are from it, and your sunglasses. Is the lemonade sweet enough for you?
It depends on whether you have been sucking on a green persimmon. Was
the thunderclap loud? It depends on how close you were and the condition
of your ears. In the case of secondary qualities everything is relative to and
thus dependent on the subject: the status of one’s sense organs, one’s per-
spective, one’s position, and so on. No perceiver—no perception. Not so
with primary qualities. Shape, motion, and extension, for example, are what
they are irrespective of perceivers.
We are back to the tree falling over on a desert island. Do you see that
it can make no sound and have no color or taste (secondary qualities),
though it must have size, shape, and motion (primary qualities)? Of course,
it depends on what you mean, for example, by “color” or “sound.” Here
these refer to perceptions, which exist in the perceiver, and not to color fre-
quencies or sound waves, which exist in the external world. Note, however,
that sound actually has both primary qualities (physical sound waves) and
secondary qualities (a listener’s perception of the sound).

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES

• Primary qualities: Those qualities of a thing that exist independently of a perceiver.
They have objective existence. Examples: shape, size, position, and motion.
• Secondary qualities: Those qualities of a thing that depend for their existence
on a perceiver. They have only subjective existence. Examples: color, sound, and
taste.

What is the basis for this distinction? Why should one accept it?
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BERKELEY’S VIEW: ESSE EST PERCIPI 111

IDEALISM
Berkeley himself focused his theory of reality in a three-word Latin sentence:
Esse est percipi, “To be is to be perceived.” We just saw that Locke and others Esse est percipi:
accepted this principle as applied to secondary qualities of things, but Berkeley “To be is to be
means it absolutely. To be is to be perceived, period. Everything is dependent perceived”
for its existence upon perception, and apart from a perceiving or knowing
subject, nothing exists. In the absence of a perceiver, not only the tree’s sound,
color, taste, and other secondary qualities but also its sound waves, color
frequencies, shape, motion, extension, coconuts, the sand, mountains, and the
entire island cease to exist!
Berkeley summarizes his strange-sounding view: Summary of
Berkeley’s position
Wood, stone, fire, water, flesh, iron, and the like things which I name and discourse
of are things that I know. And I should not have known them, but that I perceived
them by my senses; and things perceived are immediately perceived; and things
immediately perceived are ideas; and ideas cannot exist without the mind; their
existence therefore consists in being perceived; when therefore they are actually
perceived, there can be no doubt of their existence.3

Do you see the argument contained here? We may recast it as a simple

syllogism:

Ideas exist only in minds.

All things are ideas.

Therefore, all things exist only in minds.

You will note that this reasoning is perfectly valid; that is, if the premises
are true, the conclusion must be true. The question is whether the premises
are true.
Everything here depends on what Berkeley means by the word “idea.” In
fact, though, Berkeley means by “idea” what most everyone means, includ-
ing probably you yourself and John Locke: the mental representation of
something in the external world, say, a table, composed of all the qualities
that make up that thing, such as brown, rectangular, smooth, flat, and four-
legged. If so, then we can hardly object to Berkeley’s first premise, ideas exist Berkeley’s first
only in minds. It is, in fact, by its very conception; that is, it must be true by premise
virtue of the very meaning of the terms involved. Well, what about the sec-
ond premise? Must we accept that all things are ideas? With this claim Berkeley Berkeley’s second
clearly rejects his predecessors’ view that ideas represent or correspond to premise
material objects in the external world: Those realities are ideas. Surely it is
this premise that raises the real problems; in fact, we tend instinctively to
reject it as fantastic and absurd.

3
George Berkeley, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, ed. Colin M. Turbayne (Indian-
apolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1954), p. 76.
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112
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY BISHOP GEORGE BERKELEY

G
eorge Berkeley was born in 1685 in the habitable part of the ruins of Dysert
Castle, not far from Kilkenny, Ireland. He studied mathematics and classics
at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was also instructed in the philosophies
of Descartes and Locke. Berkeley conceived his subjective idealism when he was
22. Apparently its basic principles burst upon him in a sort of revelatory manner,
not unlike Descartes’ discovery of analytic geometry.
(continued on next page)

BERKELEY’S ARGUMENT
Ideas exist only in minds.
All things are ideas.

Therefore, all things exist only in minds.

We will see, though, that Berkeley himself regarded his subjective ideal-
ism as the most commonsensical view. He develops it in both his Treatise
Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues between
Hylus and Philonous.
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113
In 1707, Berkeley became a tutor at Trinity and later junior lecturer. About this time IDEALISM
too he embarked upon his career as an Anglican churchman, being ordained as a
deacon and then a priest. From this period comes his Essay towards a New Theory
of Vision and his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge.
The year 1713 found Berkeley in London. The years following included writing
(most notably, the Dialogues) and traveling. During this time he visited the French
philosopher Malebranche, who may have suffered a premature death on account
of Berkeley. The story goes that Malebranche, ill with pneumonia, argued with
Berkeley so violently and loudly as to cause an inflammation of the lungs resulting
in his death!
In 1720, Berkeley returned to Dublin. There he was awarded the BD and DD
degrees by Trinity College and was made senior lecturer and university preacher.
During this period he inherited a handsome sum and had a sort of vision of a
better society. He obtained a charter from King George I and set out for Bermuda
to found a college for educating the clergy and converting Indians. In September
1728 he set sail for the New World along with his bride. A navigational error
brought them instead to Newport, Rhode Island. He remained there for two years,
but the failure of promised funds to materialize made it impossible for him to
realize his dream.
Back in Ireland, in 1734 Berkeley was made bishop of Cloyne in County Cork.
Twenty years were now spent in episcopal duties. In poor health he moved in
1752 to be near his son, who had matriculated in Oxford. He suffered from gall-
stones and died suddenly in January 1753.
Berkeley conceived of his theory of reality, as contained in the Principles and
the Dialogues, as the first part of a plan including, second, psychology and ethics,
third, physics, and fourth, mathematics. He made headway only into the second,
and even this was lost.
Berkeley’s three most important works are Essay towards a New Theory of Vision,
Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, and Three Dialogues
between Hylas and Philonous.

FIVE PROOFS FOR SUBJECTIVE IDEALISM

Berkeley’s often ingenious defense of his thesis may be reduced to five
distinct lines of reasoning.4
First Proof: The Discontinuity of Dualism. The first argument brings us back
to the mind-body problem and some comments we made at the beginning
of this chapter. Berkeley inherited from Locke, who inherited it from
Descartes, the view that all reality (at least in the natural world) is reducible
to two essentially different substances, mind and matter. But, as we have
now observed repeatedly, such a view of reality gives rise to the metaphysi-
cal problem of explaining how these two essentially different substances can Can mind and
matter be related?

4
The following fivefold way of organizing Berkeley’s arguments, as well as some of the ter-
minology, is suggested by the useful outline in John Herman Randall, Jr., and Justus Buchler,
Philosophy: An Introduction (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1942), pp. 210–212.
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114 relate to each other. Obviously, Berkeley’s idealism overcomes this problem
THE QUESTION
by simply denying the existence of material substance: There is one reality,
OF REALITY mind and its ideas.
Likewise, mind-matter dualism gave rise to an epistemological problem:
How can mind know reality if reality is utterly unlike mind and its ideas?
If the external world and the things in it are essentially unlike our ideas of
them, how can our ideas represent or be like them? Again, with one stroke
Berkeley cuts away the problem, for reality is ideas and is therefore of the
same nature as mind. Closely related to this, Berkeley’s idealism overcomes
the skepticism, or doubt, about the external world implicit in epistemo-
logical dualism. In that view, how could we ever know that our ideas correctly
represent or correspond to the external world? Are we not forever bound
to our ideas of it? For Berkeley, such doubts could never arise because there
is no difference between our ideas and reality. Esse est percipi.
Second Proof: Matter as a Meaningless Idea. A second argument directs our
attention to the very idea of a material substance and asks whether it is
even meaningful.
Is “matter” a It could be asked, first, whether “matter” does not turn out to be an
meaningless word? empty and meaningless word. Philosophers such as Descartes and Locke
felt compelled to posit a substance underlying and upholding physical
qualities, but what could they really say about it? In this respect, Locke
likened himself to the Indian who was asked what held up the earth and
answered that it was supported by a great elephant who stood on the back
of an ancient tortoise. But when asked what held up the tortoise, he
answered: “Something I know not what.” This, in fact, was the best that
Locke could say about the nature of material substance: “It is something I
know not what.” In this way, those who talk big about some underlying
material substance in the end do not know what they are talking about!
But it is not just that they don’t know what they’re talking about—they
can’t know what they’re talking about. For the very idea of matter is an
inconsistent one. This is Berkeley’s real point here. It is not even possible to

“Berkeley brought the manuscript of the Dialogues with him to London in January,
1713. Three years earlier he had published in Dublin The Principles of Human
Knowledge. It had been most unfavorably received. In London, particularly, it had
been immediately ridiculed. A physician argued that its author must be mad. A
bishop pitied Berkeley for seeking notoriety by trying to start something new. A
third critic said that Berkeley was not as far gone as another thinker who denied
not only the existence of matter, but of persons. Many factors may have led to
the failure of the Principles. To read it through required a great deal of intellectual
effort. Moreover, the paradox that matter does not exist, which Berkeley advanced,
was a bold one.”

Turbayne, Three Dialogues, pp. vii–viii.

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frame a meaningful idea of matter, because matter itself is devoid of any 115
qualities (since it is said to underlie all qualities), and it is only by means IDEALISM
of the qualities of something that we can have an idea of it, and we cannot
know or talk about something we have no idea of. Esse est percipi.
Third Proof: The Unexperienced as Inconceivable. This point can be broadened. Can the
It is true not only in the case of matter, but in the case of anything, that it unexperienced
cannot be conceived except as experienced. If you doubt this, try to think of be thought?
something that is not experienced. Can you? No. This is because the second
you frame an idea of something (with its various qualities, such as red, cir-
cular, rough, loud, and bitter) you are thereby experiencing it. To say this in
another way: You cannot think of something without thinking of its qualities,
and to think of qualities is to perceive or experience them. Esse est percipi.
Fourth Proof: The Inseparability of Primary and Secondary Qualities. In the
fourth argument we return to the distinction between primary and second-
ary qualities.
It will be recalled that everyone accepts the subjectivity of secondary
qualities. That is not the question. But consider now that primary qualities Can primary and
can no more be separated from secondary qualities than secondary qualities secondary qualities
be separated?
can be separated from primary qualities. They rise and fall together. The
proof of this is simple. Try to conceive of primary qualities apart from sec-
ondary qualities. Try to think of a colorless shape. Imagine, for example, a
beach ball. Of course it possesses a shape—it is round. And what color is it?
Red, yellow, blue, alternating green and orange bands? Now in your imagi-
nation try to remove all color from the shape. It is impossible. Even a vague,
dull gray is a color! And if some wiseacre announces that his beach ball is
transparent, we would only ask him to tell us what are the colors of the things
that he sees through the transparent sphere of the beach ball and thus fill the
shape with colors. Similarly with other primary qualities. They cannot be
conceived except as inseparably bound up with secondary qualities.
So what has this to do with esse est percipi? The answer is that since sec-
ondary qualities are accepted as subjective and requiring a perceiver, and
since primary qualities must go the same way as secondary qualities, primary
qualities too must be subjective. With respect, then, to all we can know about
a table (its shape, texture, sound, weight, motion, color, etc.), esse est percipi.
Fifth Proof: The Relativity of All Qualities. The last argument also depends
on the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. But whereas
the previous argument reasoned that primary qualities must be subjective
because secondary qualities are, here the argument is that primary qualities
considered in themselves must be subjective.
We saw earlier that a decisive argument for the subjectivity of secondary
qualities, or that they exist in the perceiver, is that they are relative to per-
ceivers. This is the only way to account for the fact that colors, tastes, sounds, Are primary
and the like vary with perceivers, or are perceived differently by different qualities relative
perceivers. But now Berkeley asks whether it is not the same with primary too?
qualities. Are they not every bit as relative to perceivers?
We have a natural tendency to think that though colors, sounds, and
tastes disappear with the perceiver, qualities like shape, size, and motion
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116
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY BERKELEY’S FIVE PROOFS
FOR SUBJECTIVE IDEALISM
1. Discontinuity of dualism.
2. Matter as a meaningless idea.
3. Unexperienced as inconceivable.
4. Inseparability of primary and secondary qualities.
5. Relativity of all qualities.

Title page bearing the full title

of Berkeley’s Treatise

continue even when unperceived. But take shape, for example. Is there really
anything such as a perception of a rectangle? In fact, do two people ever
perceive the same shape? Is not every shape relative to and dependent upon
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the perceiver’s perspective? Consider a large rectangle drawn on a chalk- 117

board or the rectangular surface of a table in the front of the room: IDEALISM

You think it's a rectangle. You call it a rectangle. But you do not actually
perceive a rectangle. What do you perceive? Well, depending on your
perspective, you may actually perceive this,

or this,

The relativity of
perception

or this,

or any one of an infinite number of other shapes, since there is an infinite

number of viewpoints or perspectives. Even if you were to suspend yourself
from the ceiling, centered directly over the surface of the table, you would
perceive not a rectangle but something like this:

As for the other primary qualities, like size, position, and motion, just a
moment’s reflection should reveal that these too are relative to the perceiver,
and that makes them perceptions or ideas. There is, then, no difference between
primary and secondary qualities. All qualities are ideas in the mind of the
perceiver. Esse est percipi.
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118 This painting by M.C. Escher illustrates the relativity

of perception. What do you see in this picture?
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY

HYLAS AND PHILONOUS

You will be able to appreciate some of the above points in the following
extracts from the Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. Hylas (from the
Greek hyle, “matter”) argues for the reality of material substance, whereas
Philonous (from philos and nous) is the “friend of mind” and thus represents
Berkeley’s position.

PHILONOUS: You are still then of opinion that extension and figures are inherent in
external unthinking substances?
HYLAS: I am.
PHILONOUS: But what if the same arguments which are brought against second-
ary qualities will hold good against these also?
HYLAS: Why then I shall be obliged to think they too exist only in the mind.
PHILONOUS: Is it your opinion the very figure and extension which you perceive
by sense exist in the outward object or material substance?
HYLAS: It is.
PHILONOUS: Have all other animals as good grounds to think the same of the
figure and extension which they see and feel?
HYLAS: Without doubt, if they have any thought at all.
PHILONOUS: Answer me, Hylas. Think you the senses were bestowed upon all
animals for their preservation and well-being in life? Or were they given to men
alone for this end?
HYLAS: I make no question but they have the same use in all other animals.
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PHILONOUS: If so, is it not necessary they should be enabled by them to perceive 119
their own limbs and those bodies which are capable of harming them?
IDEALISM
HYLAS: Certainly.
PHILONOUS: A mite therefore must be supposed to see his own foot, and things
equal or even less than it, as bodies of some considerable dimension, though at the
same time they appear to you scarce discernible or at best as so many visible
points?
HYLAS: I cannot deny it.
PHILONOUS: And to creatures less than the mite they will seem yet larger?
HYLAS: They will.
PHILONOUS: Insomuch that what you can hardly discern will to another extremely
minute animal appear as some huge mountain?
HYLAS: All this I grant.
PHILONOUS: Can one and the same thing be at the same time in itself of different
dimensions?
HYLAS: That were absurd to imagine.
PHILONOUS: But from what you have laid down it follows that both the extension
by you perceived and that perceived by the mite itself, as likewise all those perceived
by lesser animals, are each of them the true extension of the mite’s foot; that is to
say, by your own principles you are led into an absurdity.
HYLAS: There seems to be some difficulty in the point.
PHILONOUS: Again, have you not acknowledged that no real inherent property of
any object can be changed without some change in the thing itself?
HYLAS: I have.
PHILONOUS: But, as we approach to or recede from an object the visible exten-
sion varies, being at one distance ten or a hundred times greater than at another.
Does it not therefore follow from hence likewise that it is not really inherent in
the object?
HYLAS: I own I am at a loss what to think.
PHILONOUS: Your judgment will soon be determined if you will venture to think
as freely concerning this quality as you have done concerning the rest. Was it
not admitted as a good argument that neither heat nor cold was in the water
because it seemed warm to one hand and cold to the other?
HYLAS: It was.
PHILONOUS: Is it not the very same reasoning to conclude there is no extension
of figure in an object because to one eye it shall seem little, smooth, and round,
when at the same time it appears to the other great, uneven, and angular?
HYLAS: The very same. . . .
PHILONOUS: “Material substratum” call you it? Pray, by which of your senses
came you acquainted with that being?
HYLAS: It is not itself sensible; its modes and qualities only being perceived by
the senses.
PHILONOUS: I presume then it was by reflection and reason you obtained the
idea of it?
HYLAS: I do not pretend to any proper positive idea of it. However, I conclude it
exists because qualities cannot be conceived to exist without a support.
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120 PHILONOUS: It seems then you have only a relative notion of it, or that you
conceive it not otherwise than by conceiving the relation it bears to sensible
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY qualities?
HYLAS: Right.
PHILONOUS: Be pleased, therefore, to let me know wherein that relation consists.
HYLAS: Is it not sufficiently expressed in the term “substratum” or “substance”?
PHILONOUS: If so, the word “substratum” should import that it is spread under
the sensible qualities or accidents?
HYLAS: True.
PHILONOUS: And consequently under extension?
HYLAS: I own it.
PHILONOUS: It is therefore somewhat in its own nature entirely distinct from
extension?
HYLAS: I tell you extension is only a mode, and matter is something that sup-
ports modes. And is it not evident the thing supported is different from the thing
supporting?
PHILONOUS: So that something distinct from, and exclusive of, extension is sup-
posed to be the substratum of extension?
HYLAS: Just so.
PHILONOUS: Answer me, Hylas, can a thing be spread without extension, or is
not the idea of extension necessarily included in spreading?
HYLAS: It is.
PHILONOUS: Whatsoever therefore you suppose spread under anything must
have in itself an extension distinct from the extension of that thing under which
it is spread?
HYLAS: It must.
PHILONOUS: Consequently, every corporeal substance being the substratum of
extension must have in itself another extension by which it is qualified to be a
substratum, and so on to infinity? And I ask whether this be not absurd in itself
and repugnant to what you granted just now, to wit, that the substratum was
something distinct from and exclusive of extension?
HYLAS: . . . The word “substratum” is used only to express in general the same
thing with “substance.”
PHILONOUS: Well then, let us examine the relation implied in the term “sub-
stance.” Is it not that it stands under accidents?
HYLAS: The very same.
PHILONOUS: But that one thing may stand under or support another, must it not
be extended?
HYLAS: It must.
PHILONOUS: Is not therefore this supposition liable to the same absurdity with
the former?
HYLAS: You still take things in a strict literal sense; that is not fair, Philonous.
PHILONOUS: I am not for imposing any sense on your words; you are at liberty
to explain them as you please. Only, I beseech you, make me understand some-
thing by them. You tell me matter supports or stands under accidents. How? Is it
as your legs support your body?
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HYLAS: No; that is the literal sense. 121

PHILONOUS: Pray let me know any sense, literal or not literal, that you understand IDEALISM
it in.—How long must I wait for an answer, Hylas?
HYLAS: I declare I know not what to say. I once thought I understood well enough,
what was meant by matter’s supporting accidents. But now, the more I think on it,
the less can I comprehend it; in short, I find that I know nothing of it.
PHILONOUS: It seems then you have no idea at all, neither relative nor posi-
tive, of matter; you know neither what it is in itself nor what relation it bears to
accidents?
HYLAS: I acknowledge it.
PHILONOUS: And yet you asserted that you could not conceive how qualities
or accidents should really exist without conceiving at the same time a material
support of them?
HYLAS: I did.
PHILONOUS: That is to say, when you conceive the real existence of qualities,
you do withal conceive something which you cannot conceive?
HYLAS: It was wrong I own. . . .
PHILONOUS: . . . if I understand you rightly, you say our ideas do not exist
without the mind, but that they are copies, images, or representations of certain
originals that do?
HYLAS: You take me right.
PHILONOUS: They are then like external things?
HYLAS: They are.
PHILONOUS: Have those things a stable and permanent nature, independent of
our senses, or are they in a perpetual change, upon our producing any motions in
our bodies, suspending, exerting, or altering our faculties or organs of sense?
HYLAS: Real things, it is plain, have a fixed and real nature, which remains the
same notwithstanding any change in our senses or in the posture and motion of our
bodies; which indeed may affect the ideas in our minds, but it were absurd to think
they had the same effect on things existing without the mind.
PHILONOUS: How then is it possible that things perpetually fleeting and variable
as our ideas should be copies or images of anything fixed and constant? Or, in
other words, since all sensible qualities, as size, figure, color, etc., that is, our
ideas, are continually changing upon every alteration in the distance, medium, or
instruments of sensation—how can any determinate material objects be properly
represented or painted forth by several distinct things each of which is so different
from and unlike the rest? Or, if you say it resembles some one only of our ideas,
how shall we be able to distinguish the true copy from all the false ones?
HYLAS: I profess, Philonous, I am at a loss. . . .
PHILONOUS: But neither is this all. Which are material objects in themselves—
perceptible or imperceptible?
HYLAS: Properly and immediately nothing can be perceived but ideas. All mate-
rial things, therefore, are in themselves insensible and to be perceived only by
their ideas.
PHILONOUS: Ideas then are sensible, and their archetypes or originals insensible?
HYLAS: Right.
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122 PHILONOUS: But how can that which is sensible be like that which is insensible?
Can a real thing, in itself invisible, be like a color, or a real thing which is not
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY audible be like a sound? In a word, can anything be like a sensation or idea,
but another sensation or idea?
HYLAS: I must own, I think not.5

Along such lines as these, then, Berkeley defends his thesis that all things
are ideas. What he says of a cherry he could say of all things: It is nothing
more than a collection of perceptions:

PHILONOUS: . . . I see this cherry, I feel it, I taste it, and I am sure nothing cannot
be seen or felt or tasted; it is therefore real. Take away the sensations of softness,
moisture, redness, tartness, and you take away the cherry. Since it is not a being
distinct from sensations, a cherry, I say, is nothing but a congeries of sensible impres-
sions, or ideas perceived by various senses, which ideas are united into one thing
(or have one name given them) by the mind because they are observed to attend
each other. Thus, when the palate is affected with such a particular taste, the sight
is affected with a red color, the touch with roundness, softness, etc. Hence, when I
see and feel and taste in sundry certain manners, I am sure the cherry exists or is
real, its reality being in my opinion nothing abstracted from those sensations. But if
by the word “cherry” you mean an unknown nature distinct from all those sensible
qualities, and by its “existence” something distinct from its being perceived, then,
indeed I own neither you nor I, nor anyone else, can be sure it exists.6

What is the upshot of all this? Berkeley strains to get you to accept the
simplicity of his claim. Consider the table again. What is it that you are
considering? Well, the perceptions of brown, rectangularity, smooth surface,
four-legged, at rest, five feet long, and the like. Why not just let the table
be those things? Why insist on some mysterious, unknowable, and, indeed,
incoherent notion of a material “something” beyond those perceptions?
Why not allow the table to be just what it is perceived to be—namely, a
bundle of different perceptions or ideas? Berkeley believed that such a view
would immediately strike one as the most commonsensical, once the reason-
ing is followed and our built-in prejudices about “matter” are laid aside.

SOLIPSISM OR GOD?
Solipsism It will appear to some readers that Berkeley must be a solipsist. Solipsism is
the belief that only one thing exists, the solipsist himself. Everything else,
including other people, exists only in his mind. One wonders, of course, what
would happen if two solipsists were introduced to one another! It would be
something like the gingham dog and the calico cat, who got into a fight and
left only scraps of themselves behind since they ate each other up.

5
Berkeley, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, pp. 28–30, 38–41, 47–48.
6
Ibid., p. 97.
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123
IDEALISM
SOLIPSISM
Solipsism (from the Latin solus, “alone”) is the belief in one reality, the solipsist
himself, upon whose thought and perceptions all other things depend for their exis-
tence. It has been observed that if you ever meet a solipsist, you had better take
good care of him, for when he goes we all go!

Berkeley certainly was not a solipsist. Like all other people in their right
minds, Berkeley acknowledged the reality of things outside one’s own
mind. The simple and sole and sufficient evidence for the reality of things
outside ourselves is the passivity of perception. Leaving our imagination out The passivity
of it (by which in an instant we can create castles and fortunes) it is obvious of perception
that our senses respond passively to things outside us. For example, when
you enter a room you do not conjure up blackboards, chairs, people, and
light fixtures, you do not will them into existence, you do not say, “Let there
be blackboards. . . .” They are simply there. What you wish or will or say has
nothing to do with it. (We encountered this idea in Chapter 4.)
But, now, does not Berkeley have a tremendous problem on his hands?
Has he not maintained two incompatible theses? He argues on the one
hand that all things are ideas existing only in minds, but he argues also
that things do in fact exist outside our minds. How can he possibly recon-
cile these two incompatible and mutually exclusive claims? Two Incompatible
A clue to the answer lies in noting that Berkeley has not said that all claims
things exist in our minds but only that they exist in some mind. A further
clue lies in the full title of his Dialogues: Three Dialogues between Hylas and
Philonous, in Opposition to Skeptics and Atheists. For those who still cannot
guess the answer, the following verses (adapted from Ronald Knox’s well-
known limerick) will remove all doubt:

There once was a young man who said, “God

Must think it exceedingly odd
To find that his tree
Won’t continue to be
When there’s no one about in the quad.”

“Dear Sir:
Your astonishment’s odd.
For I am always about in the quad.
And that’s why my tree will continue to be
Since observed by
Yours faithfully,
God.”
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124
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY

In fact, Berkeley’s entire reasoning is, in a sense, a gigantic proof for the
existence of God. For only on the hypothesis of God as an infinite Mind
God: the perceiver that constantly perceives all things can we believe both that all things are
of all things ideas existing in mind, and that they continue to exist even when unper-
ceived by us. Berkeley puts the matter thus:

PHILONOUS: . . . You indeed said the reality of sensible things consisted in an

absolute existence out of the minds of spirits, or distinct from being perceived. And,
pursuant to this notion of reality, you are obliged to deny sensible things any real
existence; that is, according to your own definition, you profess yourself a skeptic.
But I neither said nor thought the reality of sensible things was to be defined after
that manner. To me it is evident, for the reasons you allow of, that sensible things
cannot exist otherwise than in a mind or spirit. Whence I conclude, not that they
have no real existence, but that, seeing they depend not on my thought and have
an existence distinct from being perceived by me, there must be some other mind
wherein they exist. As sure, therefore, as the sensible world really exists, so sure
is there an infinite omnipresent Spirit, who contains and supports it.
HYLAS: What! this is no more than I and all Christians hold; nay, and all others,
too, who believe there is a God and that He knows and comprehends all things.
PHILONOUS: Aye, but here lies the difference. Men commonly believe that all
things are known or perceived by God, because they believe the being of a God;
whereas I, on the other side, immediately and necessarily conclude the being of
a God, because all sensible things must be perceived by him.
HYLAS: But so long as we all believe the same thing, what matter is it how we
come by that belief?
PHILONOUS: But neither do we agree in the same opinion. For philosophers,
though they acknowledge all corporeal beings to be perceived by God, yet they
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attribute to them an absolute subsistence distinct from their being perceived by any 125
mind whatever, which I do not. Besides, is there no difference between saying, there
IDEALISM
is a God, therefore He perceives all things, and saying, sensible things do really
exist; and if they really exist, they are necessarily perceived by an infinite mind:
therefore there is an infinite mind, or God? This furnishes you with a direct and
immediate demonstration, from a most evident principle, of the being of a God.7

Again, it may be helpful to formulate this part of Berkeley’s philosophy as

a simple argument:

The sensible world exists if, and only if, it is perceived by a mind.
The sensible world exists unperceived by human minds.
Therefore, the sensible world must be perceived by a nonhuman mind.8

It should be noted that Berkeley’s view of God and the world involves
a quite different notion of creation than the usual one. In the popular view, Berkeley’s idea
God created the world (bang!) so many years ago. But in Berkeley’s view, of creation
creation is something that goes on constantly. At this moment, as at every
moment, God is creating and sustaining the world by his continuing per-
ception of it. Most theologians have not shared Berkeley’s view of esse est
percipi with its peculiar implications for God’s existence. But they have,
usually, shared the idea that God’s creation of the world is such that the
world depends at every moment upon the creative act of God.
We have tried to show throughout this chapter why and how Berkeley
denies the reality of material substance (or matter) and claims that there is only
one kind of reality: mental substance (mind) and ideas. But now we are in a
position to understand the full meaning of Berkeley’s claim. Esse est percipi
commits us to a belief in (1) sensible things as ideas, (2) minds that are finite
and created mental substances and that might or might not perceive those
sensible things, and (3) a Mind that is an infinite mental substance and that
perceives all sensible things at all times and creates finite minds to perceive
them, too. As with Descartes, we know our own finite minds through intro-
spection and an immediate self-intuition. But peculiar to Berkeley is the belief
that we know the infinite and absolute Mind as a necessary condition for the
continued existence of sensible things unexperienced by finite minds.

SOME OBJECTIONS
In spite of Berkeley’s insistence that his idealist theory of reality is really the
most commonsensical, it has always struck most people as fantastic, to say the
least. As was noted above, during his own lifetime Berkeley was thought by
some to be mad, and nearly everyone since has had a built-in resistance to his
theory. You yourself probably instinctively object: “This just can’t be true!”

7
Ibid., pp. 55–56.
8
Cf. Turbayne, in ibid., p. xx.
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126 Before we comment on possible criticisms of Berkeley, a word of caution.

THE QUESTION
To what degree is the acceptance or rejection of a philosophical view a
OF REALITY matter of psychology? William James said that the history of philosophy is
“a clash of temperaments,” which of course involves differing tastes, styles,
Are your objections inclinations, and desires. This is no doubt inevitable, and it may even be
philosophically or helpful to the philosophical enterprise. But, again, it is the job of the phi-
psychologically
losopher (which means you, too) not to confuse temperament with reason.
rooted?
And how much more must we be on guard against blind and uncritical
prejudice! It is probably truer in the case of Berkeley’s philosophy than most
others that it runs almost exactly counter to our deeply rooted biases and
preconceived notions concerning the way things must be. But this is hardly
grounds for its rejection. If you do reject Berkeley’s philosophy, make sure
that it is, as much as possible, a philosophical rejection.
Even though Berkeley (especially in the third Dialogue) anticipated and
Common criticisms treated nearly all objections to his view, they persist: Berkeley denies the
reality of sensible things; he abuses the ordinary meanings of language; he
destroys the distinction between real things and ideas of them; he makes
God the author of immoral and evil acts; he fails to account for the nature
of illusory ideas; he makes it impossible for more than one person to expe-
rience the same thing; and so on. Surely the most famous refutation of
Berkeley—and geared especially to his appeal to common sense—was that
of Samuel Johnson, who repeatedly kicked against a stone and, rebounding
from the thuds, exclaimed: “I refute him thus!”
Many, or even most, objections of this kind misfire. They sometimes
involve an inattentive reading of Berkeley, or a failure really to listen and
to hear what Berkeley says. For example, no one who really understood
Berkeley’s theory could really believe that the hardness of a stone is a con-
tradiction to it. Do you see this? And do you see how Berkeley would
answer some of the other criticisms too? In evaluating criticisms of Berkeley’s
Has Berkeley denied theory we must above all keep in mind that Berkeley did not deny the
the reality of things? reality of things, but their materiality. He insists over and over:

The question . . . is not whether things have a real existence out of the mind of
this or that person, but, whether they have an absolute existence, distinct from
being perceived by God, and exterior to all minds.9

Three further issues Still, three further lines of criticism may be mentioned.
First, what about imagining and conceiving? Does Berkeley do justice to
this distinction? He says that you cannot conceive the unexperienced. But
surely we can conceive many things that we cannot experience. For to con-
ceive something is to define it without contradiction. Thus we can define
infinity, a thousand-sided figure, and even God, though we cannot picture
any of them. Such conceptualizations, or pure concepts, would seem to be
absolutely necessary to our thinking and knowing, but they are excluded
by Berkeley’s “sensationalist” view of ideas. This in turn raises the question

9
Ibid., pp. 81–82.
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whether knowledge and ideas can so simply be equated with sensations. 127
What if one simply began with a quite different view of knowledge—such IDEALISM
as Plato’s, or Descartes’?
Second, we can raise here an objection that we raised against Descartes.
Berkeley, though he denied the reality of material substance, nevertheless
continued to affirm the reality of mental substance. But why not simply
dissolve mind itself into a bundle of ideas? We will see in Chapter 9 that
this is exactly what the philosopher Hume did, taking some of Berkeley’s
arguments against the reality of matter and applying them also to mind.
Third, the objections posed by Ryle against Descartes’ idea of mental
substance may be raised here too. Is it even meaningful to talk about mind
as if it were a sort of blob of something, or a thing? Would it be, again, a
category mistake to view mind as a substance and having attributes, causing
things, being in certain states, and so on? Would it be like confusing a
building on the campus with the university?
As you may guess, though, the most radical rejection of any idealist phi-
losophy turns it exactly on its head: It denies the reality of mind and exalts
matter as the essential “stuff” of all things, and this brings us to Chapter 6.

CHAPTER 5 IN REVIEW
SUMMARY
Idealism is the monist view that all reality is, in some way or another, mind.
The most striking version of idealism is subjective idealism, and the most
influential subjective idealist was Berkeley.
Berkeley propounded what to most ears would seem to be a preposterous
idea: Esse est percipi, “To be is to be perceived.” According to this principle,
nothing exists except as an object of perception or experience, and that
means everything that exists is an idea in the mind and nothing exists out-
side mind. Berkeley defended this thesis with several considerations: (1) the
impossibility of having ideas that are similar to realities that are essentially
different from ideas; (2) the impossibility of framing any meaningful idea of
material substance; (3) the impossibility of thinking of something that is
unexperienced; (4) the impossibility of separating primary qualities from
secondary qualities, which makes primary as well as secondary qualities
subjective, or “idea-istic”; (5) the impossibility of absolutizing even primary
qualities, which thus turn out to be as relative as secondary qualities.
However, Berkeley, no less than others, had to reckon with the passivity
of our perceptions, which leads us to posit objects that are, after all, outside
us and independent of us. He thus introduced God, an infinite Mind, who
perceives all things at all times. This preserves the reality of the world exter-
nal to us (passivity of perception) but internal to God (esse est percipi).
In spite of Berkeley’s insistence that subjective idealism is the most com-
monsensical of philosophies, many objections are bound to be raised. One of
these should not be that Berkeley has denied the reality of things; his concern
is, rather, for the nature of things—specifically, the mental nature of things.
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128 BASIC IDEAS

THE QUESTION • Idealism (popular sense)
OF REALITY
• Idealism (metaphysical sense)
Objective idealism
Subjective idealism
• Epistemological dualism
• Primary and secondary qualities
• Esse est percipi
• Berkeley’s basic argument
• The discontinuity of dualism
• Matter as a meaningless idea
• The unexperienced as inconceivable
• The inseparability of primary and secondary qualities
• The relativity of all qualities
• Solipsism
• The passivity of perception
• The necessity of God as the perceiver of all things
• Berkeley’s idea of creation
• The difference between psychologically and philosophically grounded
criticisms

TEST YOURSELF
1. What is the difference between an objective idealist and a subjective
idealist?
2. Who are Hylas and Philonous?
3. True or false: Colors, sounds, tastes, shapes, and sizes are, for Berkeley,
all examples of subjective qualities.
4. What is the simple argument that expresses Berkeley’s subjective idealism?
5. One of Berkeley’s proofs for the subjectivity of everything perceived is
based on the inseparability of ______ and ____.
6. Is Berkeley a monist? Why or why not?
7. Solipsism is the belief in (a) one God, (b) one mind, (c) material sub-
stance, (d) continual creation.
8. According to Berkeley, how big is a mite’s foot?
9. According to Berkeley, the existence of an all-knowing God solves what
very big problem?
10. True or false: Berkeley says that the concept of matter is empty and useless.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• As a theory of reality Berkeley’s subjective idealism certainly is a radical
departure from the ordinary view of things. But what practical difference
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does it make? Can you think of any sphere of actual life and practice 129
that would be much altered (if at all) by the adoption of this theory? IDEALISM
• In spite of its apparent radicalness, Berkeley views his theory of reality
as the most commonsensical. How would you defend this claim in your
own words? In the end, is it really commonsensical?
• As in Descartes’ philosophy, God plays a central role in Berkeley’s. What
exactly is the role? Is it a more crucial role than in Descartes’ philosophy?
Could Berkeley’s theory of reality be construed as a gigantic proof for
the existence of God?

FOR FURTHER READING

Frederick Copleston. A History of Philosophy. Baltimore: Newman Press,
1946–1974. V, Chs. 12–13. Summary of Berkeley’s metaphysical ideas by
an eminent historian of philosophy.
A. C. Ewing. The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy. New York: Collier
Books, 1962. Chs. 4–5. Brief discussions of the concepts of matter and
mind, involving many points raised in our chapter.
A. C. Ewing. Idealism: A Critical Survey. Third ed. London: Methuen, reprint
1974. A most useful and complete treatment of the various forms and
problems of idealism.
Robert Fogelin. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Berkeley and the Principles
of Human Knowledge. London: Routledge, 2001. A very short introduction
to the life and work of George Berkeley.
A. A. Luce. Berkeley’s Immaterialism. New York: Russell & Russell, 1945.
Commentary on Berkeley’s Treatise, addressing all aspects of Berkeley’s
basic principles.
C. B. Martin and D. M. Armstrong (eds.). Locke and Berkeley: A Collection of
Critical Essays. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1968. Contains weighty
articles by well-known philosophers on primary and secondary qualities
of matter, Berkeley’s relation to Locke, and so on.
G. E. Moore. Philosophical Studies. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1922.
Ch. 1. “The Refutation of Idealism,” a classic essay and point of reference
for the study of idealism.
G. J. Warnock. Berkeley. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1953. A standard survey
of Berkeley’s whole philosophy, with special emphasis on his subjective
idealism.
Kenneth P. Winkler. Berkeley: An Interpretation. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989. A contemporary and compelling defense of Berkeley’s idealism.
Kenneth P. Winkler. The Cambridge Companion to Berkeley. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005. A collection of essays on Berkeley’s thought by
leading scholars.
*In addition, see the relevant articles (“Idealism,” “Primary and Secondary
Qualities,” “Berkeley,” etc.) in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed.
Edward Craig (London: Routledge, 1998), and Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu.
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CHAPTER 6

MATERIALISM

M
aterialism is actually a form of naturalism, and it might be best Materialism
first to get an idea of this larger metaphysical perspective. All and naturalism
naturalisms share a repudiation of any supernatural or spiritual
reality. The claim is: All that exists can, at least in principle, be investigated
scientifically. And just as believers in the supernatural or the spiritual are
often given to faith, dogma, intuition, authority, and the like, so naturalists
are generally given to observation, experimentation, and healthy doses of
skepticism.
But we must distinguish between a narrower and a wider naturalism,
corresponding to a narrower and a wider view of nature itself. The narrower
view defines nature as the physical world and may be called materialism.
The wider naturalism, on the other hand, defines nature more broadly so as
to include matter as only one of many dimensions or aspects of nature. In this
chapter we will focus our attention on materialism.

WHAT IS MATERIALISM?
As with the word “idealism,” the word “materialism” also has a popular and “Materialism”:
a more technical sense. In popular usage materialism means a preoccupation its popular and
with earthly goods (such as money, ski chalets, and sailboats), and a materi- technical meanings
alist in this sense is one whose life revolves around the pursuit of such things.
But here we intend “materialism” in its more technical and metaphysical
sense: Matter with its motions and qualities is the ultimate reality of all
131
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132
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY MATERIALISM
The metaphysical doctrine that matter with its motions and qualities is the ultimate
reality of all things.

things. More generally, this means that everything in the universe—from

subatomic particles, to tables, chairs, dogs, and cats, to thoughts, feelings,
perceptions, and ideals—everything is reducible to matter with its motions
and qualities, to physical states, to a position in space and time, to what can
be quantified.
There are few forks on the philosophical road that are more unmistakable
than the one where idealism and materialism veer off from each other. We
saw in our last chapter that one radical solution to the mind-body problem is
simply to do away with matter. The result is idealism, the view that there is
only one reality, and that is mind and its ideas. Materialism takes exactly the
opposite course and denies the reality of mind, or at least reduces it (along
Materialism as a with everything else) to matter. As a radical solution to the mind-body prob-
radical solution lem materialism is certainly as effective as idealism, for it too overcomes
to the mind-body entirely the old problem of relating two essentially different substances, for
problem
there is no other substance, only matter. In the same way that Descartes, with
his mind-matter dualism, unwittingly spawned modern idealism, so did he
spawn modern materialism. This is not to say that the only reason for adopt-
ing materialism is that it is a way of avoiding the mind-body problem. As
with idealism, materialism too has still other advantages. Advantages aside,
certainly as a theory of reality it is in some respects the starkest and the most
hard-headed.
Materialism, an old Materialism is actually a very old philosophy. Already among the Pre-
philosophy Socratics, Democritus and Leucippus taught that all things, including the
soul, are made of indivisible particles or atoms. This idea was adopted by
the Greek philosopher Epicurus (about 300 B.C.). He concluded from the

From mind-matter dualism two radically different

theories of reality may be hatched, depending on
which idea is suppressed. If the idea of mind is
suppressed, then materialism may be hatched.

Mind-Matter Dualism

Idealism Materialism
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materialistic nature of the soul that upon death its parts disperse, and there- 133
fore there can be no life after death—so eat, drink, and be merry! After MATERIALISM
Epicurus, the Roman poet Lucretius (about 60 B.C.) wrote as if he himself
were even then providing a materialistic (and atomistic) response to Descartes’ Lucretius: an early
mind-body problem: defender of
materialism
I now declare that mind and soul are joined
together, and form one single entity,
but the head so to speak, that rules in all the body,
is counsel, mind, and intellect, as we say,
and this is placed midway within the breast.
For here leap terror and panic, this spot feels
sweet joy; here, then, are intellect and mind.
The rest of the soul, dispersed through all the body,
obeys the mind and moves to its command.
For mind thinks its own thoughts, knows its own pleasures,
when nothing has stimulated soul or body.
And as when injury attacks our head
or eye, they hurt, but we’re not agonized
all over, thus the mind sometimes feels pain
or joy and strength, and when other parts of soul
in limb and joint have felt no novel impulse.
But when the mind is deeply stirred by terror,
all through the body we see the soul affected;
we pale, and over all the body sweat
pours out, the tongue stumbles, voice goes awry,
eyes are befogged, ears ring, the knees give way,
yes, from sheer terror of mind we often see
men fall in a faint; thus readily we perceive
the union of soul and mind, for soul, when struck
by mind, in turn strikes body and makes it move.
This argument also proves that soul and mind
are physical things. Clearly, they move our limbs,
arouse the body from sleep, change our expression,
and guide and govern the man in all his being.
Yet without touch, we see, such things can’t happen,
nor touch without matter; must we not then admit
the soul and mind in act are physical things?
Besides, we see that in our bodies, soul
and body act and react in sympathy.
If a bristling spear has driven deep, exposing
sinew and bone, and yet not taking life,
still faintness follows and sweet swooning down
to earth, and there a sense of rocking motion,
sometimes with vaguely felt desire to rise.
And so the soul must be a physical thing,
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134 since physical weapon and wound can make it suffer.

THE QUESTION I’ll now proceed to argument and proof
OF REALITY of what makes up the soul, and what its substance.
To begin, I say the soul is subtly built
of infinitesimal atoms. You may see
and learn that this is so from what’s to come.
Nothing whatever, we see, can move as fast
as the mind when it conceives and starts an action;
thus nothing whose nature clearly lies within
our range of vision moves faster than the mind.
But whatever is so mobile must be made
of very round and very tiny atoms,
so that the slightest impulse starts them moving.
Yes, just a touch makes water move and flow:
it’s made, you see, of small-sized shapes that roll.
But the nature of honey tends to be more stable;
its fluid is thicker and less disposed to move.
For all the atoms of its substance cling
more closely, being of particles less smooth,
you see, and not so delicate or so round.
Take poppyseed: a gentle puff of air
at the top will blow a tall heap helter-skelter,
but not, on the other hand, a heap of stones
or grain. According, then, as particles
are smallest and smoothest, they will move with ease.
But on the other hand, as some are found
rougher and heavier, so are they more stable.
Now since the soul has been revealed to be
uncommonly mobile, we must grant it made
of atoms very tiny, smooth, and round.
Take this to heart, good friend; in many ways
you’ll find it a useful, helpful thing to know.
This fact, too, tells the nature of the soul,
how fine its fabric, and in how small a space
it could be held, if it were all rolled up:
when once the carefree peace of death has seized
a man, and the substance of soul and mind has left him,
from his whole body you’d see nothing lost
in appearance or in weight; death leaves him all
but the humid heat and sentience that mean life.
The entire soul, then, must consist of tiny
atoms, strung out through sinews, vitals, veins,
since, when it all has gone from all the body,
the outer dimensions of body-parts remain
unaltered, and not an ounce of weight is lost.
It’s such as when bouquet of wine floats off,
or breath of perfume is wafted to the winds,
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or when from a substance flavor dies away; 135

to the eye, the physical thing appears no smaller MATERIALISM
for all of that, and suffers no loss of weight.
Why? Because many minuscule atoms make
flavors and scents throughout the range of things.
Thus you may know the substance of the mind
and soul, I insist, is formed of most minute
atoms, for slipping away, it steals no weight.1

In the modern period, the seventeenth-century English philosopher A modern statement

Thomas Hobbes expressed the materialist thesis with a theistic twist: The
notion of spirit, as opposed to matter or body, should be reserved for God
alone.

From these Metaphysics, which are mingled with the Scripture to make School
Divinity, we are told, there be in the world certain Essences separated from Bodies,
which they call Abstract Essences, and Substantial Forms: For the Interpreting of
which Jargon, there is need of somewhat more than ordinary attention in this place.
Also I ask pardon of those that are not used to this kind of Discourse, for applying
my self to those that are. The World (I mean not the Earth only, that denominates
the Lovers of it Worldly men, but the Universe, that is, the whole mass of all things
that are) is Corporeal, that is to say, Body; and hath the dimensions of Magnitude,
namely, Length, Breadth, and Depth: also every part of Body, is likewise Body, and
hath the like dimensions; and consequently every part of the Universe, is Body; and
that which is not Body, is no part of the Universe: And because the Universe is All,

Thomas Hobbes, a modern materialist

1
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, III, 136–230, tr. Frank O. Copley (New York: Norton, 1977).
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136 that which is no part of it, is Nothing; and consequently no where. Nor does it
follow from hence, that Spirits are nothing: for they have dimensions, and are
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY therefore really Bodies; though that name in common Speech be given to such
Bodies only, as are visible, or palpable; that is, that have some degree of Opacity:
But for Spirits, they call them Incorporeal; which is a name of more honour, and
may therefore with more piety be attributed to God himself; in whom we consider
not what Attribute expresseth best his Nature, which is Incomprehensible; but what
best expresseth our desire to honour Him.2

Such a view of reality has taken several forms. No doubt the harshest is
mechanistic materialism.

MAN A MACHINE
Mechanistic The key to understanding mechanistic materialism lies in the word “mecha-
materialism nistic,” which means “machinelike.” According to this theory of reality, not
only are all things reducible to matter and motion and locatable in space and
time, but all things happen and have their particular features according to a
finite number of fixed physical laws. That is to say, the world and everything
in it is a machine.
Some roots of the Mechanistic materialism really took shape as a philosophical position
mechanistic view (and in some ways even as a philosophical movement) soon after Descartes.
The thinkers advocating this idea were very much influenced by the “new
science,” and were especially captivated by Sir Isaac Newton’s Three Laws
of Motion, the basis of Newtonian mechanics. They were also influenced
by Descartes himself, who believed that—at least with respect to the matter
part of his dualism—the world is ordered by fixed laws, and that animals,
like everything else in the external world, are mechanisms.

2
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. A. D. Lindsay (New York: Dutton, 1950), chap. 46 (slightly
edited).

NEWTON’S THREE LAWS OF MOTION

1. A body remains at rest or in motion with a constant velocity unless acted on
by an outside force.
2. The sum of the forces acting on a body is equal to the product of its mass
and acceleration.
3. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

How do these laws play into the hands of mechanistic materialism? Can you think
of concrete examples?
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137
mech • a • nism (mek⬘ • niz⬘ m) n. 1. The parts or arrangement of parts of a
e e MATERIALISM
machine: the mechanism of a watch. 2. Something similar to a machine in the
arrangement and working of its parts: The human body is a magnificent mech-
anism. 3. The process or technique by which something works or produces an
action or effect: the complicated mechanism of democracy. 4. The technique
or the mechanical method of execution of an artist, writer, etc. 5. A theory that
all natural phenomena can be explained by the laws of chemistry and physics.
6. Psychol. The mental processes, conscious or unconscious, by which certain
actions or results are effected. Abbr. mech.
mech • a • nist (mek⬘ • nist) n. 1. A mechanician. 2. A believer in mechanism
e
(def. 5).—adj. Mechanistic.
mech • a • nis • tic (mek⬘ • nis⬘tik) adj. 1. Of, pertaining to, or of the nature of me-
e
chanics. 2. Pertaining to or based on mechanism (def. 5).—mechⴕa • nisⴕti •
cal • ly adv.

It is important not to miss the full force of the claim that the universe is a
machine. It is not just that all things (and everything about all things) are
caused. We all believe that. It is, rather, that everything is caused in such a
way that it could not have been otherwise. This pen, this desk, that paperclip in
just that position, the smoke curling upward from this pipe, everything that

One cannot overestimate Sir Isaac Newton’s influence on subsequent science

and philosophy. It is not difficult to see how Newtonian mechanics, specifically,
played into the hands of materialistic philosophy.
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138 is and is going on in this room, in all rooms, in all the world, in all worlds—
THE QUESTION everything in the universe down to the minutest detail is, in this view,
OF REALITY exhaustively predetermined by infinitely long and converging chains of blind,
irrational antecedent causes. One of the most concise expressions of this
Are all things
predetermined? mechanist point of view was provided by the French astronomer and math-
ematician Laplace:

We ought then to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its anterior
state and as the cause of the one which is to follow. Given for one instant an intelli-
gence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the
respective situation of the beings who compose it—an intelligence sufficiently vast to
submit these data to analysis—it would embrace in the same formula the movements
of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atom; for it, nothing
would be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes.3

That is, in the mechanistic view of things, if you could somehow know the
exact status of every detail in the universe at one point as well as all the
laws of nature, then you could know perfectly every detail in the universe
at any point in the past or the future.
Even so, it is still possible that some may fail to note the full implications
of the mechanistic claim. If everything in the universe is matter in motion
and is governed by mechanistic laws, then so is man. And then so is his
thinking, feeling, purposing, valuing, and willing. Man too, through and
through, is a machine.
Is man a machine? “Man a Machine” was in fact the title of a remarkable little volume
published in 1748 by the French physician and agnostic La Mettrie. (He has
been called “the scapegoat of eighteenth-century materialism.”) Like many
others before and after him, La Mettrie argued for a purely materialistic
basis of human consciousness. Thoughts, sensations, and emotions are all
a matter of organs, nerves, impulses, reflex movements, pumping blood,
and the like. These in turn are physiological counterparts of springs, cogs,
wheels, wire, and so on, so it all reduces to physics and chemistry. In such
a view, as someone has said, the brain secretes thought in the same way
that the liver secretes bile! A few passages from La Mettrie:

Man is so complicated a machine that it is impossible to get a clear idea of the

machine beforehand, and hence impossible to define it. . . .

3
Pierre Simon de Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, tr. Frederick Wilson Truscott
and Frederick Lincoln Emory (New York: Dover, 1951), p. 4.

MECHANISM
The view that conceives of the universe and everything in it as a machine—that
is, something whose motions are completely determined by unalterable laws.
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Title page of La Mettrie’s Man a Machine. The verse

by Voltaire: Where is this reason, essence supreme,
139
which so luminously is painted? Where is this spirit MATERIALISM
outliving us? It is born with our senses. And with the
senses waxes and wanes. Alas, it too will die.

But since all the faculties of the soul depend to such a degree on the proper
organization of the brain and of the whole body, that apparently they are but this
organization itself, the soul is clearly an enlightened machine. . . .
The soul is therefore but an empty word, of which no one has any idea, and
which an enlightened man should use only to signify the part in us that thinks.
Given the least principle of motion, animated bodies will have all that is necessary
for moving, feeling, thinking, repenting, or in a word for conducting themselves
in the physical realm, and in the moral realm which depends upon it. . . .
Grant only that organized matter is endowed with a principle of motion, which
alone differentiates it from the inorganic (and can one deny this in the face of the
most incontestable observation?) and that among animals, as I have sufficiently
proved, everything depends upon the diversity of this organization: these admis-
sions suffice for guessing the riddle of substances and of man. It [thus] appears that
there is but one [type of organization] in the universe, and that man is the most
perfect [example]. . . .
Let us then conclude boldly that man is a machine, and that in the whole universe
there is but a single substance differently modified. This is no hypothesis set forth
by dint of a number of postulates and assumptions; it is not the work of prejudice,
nor even of my reason alone; I should have disdained a guide which I think to be
so untrustworthy, had not my senses, bearing a torch, so to speak, induced me to
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140
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY MAN, A COMPUTER?
Especially with the rise of computer technology, the temptation to create man in
the image of a computer has sometimes been irresistible.

“Each human being is a superbly constructed, astonishingly compact, self-

ambulatory computer. . . .”
—Carl Sagan

follow reason by lighting the way themselves. Experience has thus spoken to me in
behalf of reason; and in this way I have combined the two.
. . . Need I say that I refer to the empty and trivial notions, to the pitiable and
trite arguments that will be urged (as long as the shadow of prejudice or of super-
stition remains on earth) for the supposed incompatibility of two substances which
meet and move each other unceasingly? Such is my system, or rather the truth,
unless I am much deceived. It is short and simple. Dispute it now who will.4

Amid all the rest, do not fail to notice La Mettrie’s concluding claim for
his materialistic-mechanistic theory: “It is short and simple.” Here again is
the appeal to simplicity as a criterion of a better explanation that we with
enconntered Ockham’s Razor. In fact, it is often urged by materialists that
the economy or simplicity of their theory decisively enhances its explanatory
power over, say, dualistic theories.

THE NEW MATERIALISM

If you have the impression that the conception of man as a machine is just
an idle piece displayed in the historical museum of philosophical ideas, your
impression is quite wrong. It is true that the La Mettrie and pre-La Mettrie
type of mechanism was based on the “billiard-ball” model of the universe
(everything happens according to strict laws and direct or indirect physical
contacts), and that the billiard-ball model is now “out.” And even the classi-
cal Newtonian mechanics has now been succeeded by complicated things
like quantum mechanics and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, according to
which there is no observable causal determinism at the level of atomic and
The subatomic particles. How this latter involves a “dematerialization” of matter
“dematerialization” is described by the scientist and philosopher N. R. Hanson:
of matter
Matter has been dematerialized, not just as a concept of the philosophically real,
but now as an idea of modern physics. Matter can be analyzed down to the level

4
Julien Offray de La Mettrie, Man a Machine, tr. Gertrude C. Bussey et al. (La Salle, IL: Open
Court, 1912), pp. 18, 89, 140–141.
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of fundamental particles. But at that depth the direction of the analysis changes, and 141
this constitutes a major conceptual surprise in the history of science. The things
MATERIALISM
which for Newton typified matter—e.g., an exactly determinable state, a point
shape, absolute solidity—these are now the properties electrons do not, because
theoretically they cannot, have. . . .
The dematerialization of matter . . . has rocked mechanics at its foundations. . . .
The 20th century’s dematerialization of matter has made it conceptually impossible
to accept a Newtonian picture of the properties of matter and still do a consistent
physics.5

Nonetheless, the materialistic perspective thrives. Consider, for example,

the materialism of the Australian philosopher J. J. C. Smart. Under the sway
of contemporary physics he rejects complete causal determinism but asserts,
nevertheless, a purely physicalistic theory of mind. More specifically, he
asserts what is called the Identity Thesis, which claims that mental states The Identity Thesis
are nothing more (or less) than brain states. According to the Identity Thesis,
our thoughts, feelings, emotions, dreams, and so on are all reducible to
physical processes inside the brain. There are, according to Smart, no non-
physical entities as he describes in the passage below:

First of all let me try to explain what I mean by “materialism.” I shall then go on to try
to defend the doctrine. By “materialism” I mean the theory that there is nothing in the
world over and above those entities which are postulated by physics (or, of course,
those entities which will be postulated by future and more adequate physical theories).
Thus I do not hold materialism to be wedded to the billiard-ball physics of the nineteenth
century. The less visualizable particles of modern physics count as matter. Note that
energy counts as matter for my purposes: indeed in modern physics energy and matter
are not sharply distinguishable. Nor do I hold that materialism implies determinism. If
physics is indeterministic on the micro-level, so must be the materialist’s theory. I regard
materialism as compatible with a wide range of conceptions of the nature of matter
and energy. For example, if matter and energy consist of regions of special curvature
of an absolute space-time, with “worm holes” and what not, this is still compatible with
materialism: we can still argue that in the last resort the world is made up entirely of
the ultimate entities of physics, namely space-time points.
. . . [M]y definition will in some respects be narrower than those of some who
have called themselves “materialists.” I wish to lay down that it is incompatible with
materialism that there should be any irreducibly “emergent” laws or properties, say
in biology or psychology. According to the view I propose to defend, there are no
irreducible laws or properties in biology, any more than there are in electronics.
Given the “natural history” of a superheterodyne (its wiring diagram), a physicist is
able to explain, using only laws of physics, its mode of behavior and its properties
(for example, the property of being able to receive such and such a radio station
which broadcasts on 25 megacycles). Just as electronics gives the physical explana-
tion of the workings of superheterodynes, etc., so biology gives (or approximates to
giving) physical and chemical explanations of the workings of organisms or parts
of organisms. The biologist needs natural history just as the engineer needs wiring
diagrams, but neither needs nonphysical laws.

5
N. R. Hanson, “The Dematerialization of Matter,” in The Concept of Matter, ed. Ernan McMullen
(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1963), pp. 556–557.
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142 It will now become clear why I define materialism in the way I have done above.
I am concerned to deny that in the world there are nonphysical entities and non-
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY physical laws. In particular I wish to deny the doctrine of psychophysical dualism. (I also
want to deny any theory of “emergent properties,” since irreducibly nonphysical
properties are just about as repugnant to me as are irreducibly nonphysical entities.)
Popular theologians sometimes argue against materialism by saying that “you
can’t put love in a test tube.” Well you can’t put a gravitational field in a test tube
(except in some rather strained sense of these words), but there is nothing incompat-
ible with materialism, as I have defined it, in the notion of a gravitational field.
Similarly, even though love may elude test tubes, it does not elude material-
istic metaphysics, since it can be analyzed as a pattern of bodily behavior or,
perhaps better, as the internal state of the human organism that accounts for this
behavior. (A dualist who analyzes love as an internal state will perhaps say that
it is a soul state, whereas the materialist will say that it is a brain state. It seems
to me that much of our ordinary language about the mental is neither dualistic
nor materialist but is neutral between the two. Thus, to say that a locution is not
materialistic is not to say that it is immaterialistic.)
But what about consciousness? Can we interpret the having of an afterimage or
of a painful sensation as something material, namely, a brain state or brain process?
We seem to be immediately aware of pains and after-images, and we seem to be
immediately aware of them as something different from a neurophysiological state or
process. For example, the after-image may be green speckled with red, whereas the
neurophysiologist looking into our brains would be unlikely to see something green
speckled with red. However, if we object to materialism in this way we are victims
of a confusion which U. T. Place has called “the phenomenological fallacy.” To say
that an image or sense datum is green is not to say that the conscious experience
of having the image or sense datum is green. It is to say that it is the sort of experi-
ence we have when in normal conditions we look at a green apple, for example.
Apples and unripe bananas can be green, but not the experiences of seeing them.
An image or a sense datum can be green in a derivative sense, but this need not
cause any worry, because, on the view I am defending, images and sense data are
not constituents of the world, though the processes of having an image or a sense
datum are actual processes in the world. The experience of having a green sense
datum is not itself green; it is a process occurring in grey matter. The world contains
plumbers, but does not contain the average plumber; it also contains the having of
a sense datum, but does not contain the sense datum. . . .
It may be asked why I should demand of a tenable philosophy of mind that it
should be compatible with materialism, in the sense in which I have defined it. One
reason is as follows. How could a nonphysical property or entity suddenly arise
in the course of animal evolution? A change in a gene is a change in a complex
molecule which causes a change in the biochemistry of the cell. This may lead to
changes in the shape or organization of the developing embryo. But what sort of

IDENTITY THESIS
Mental states ⫽ Brain states
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chemical process could lead to the springing into existence of something nonphysi- 143
cal? No enzyme can catalyze the production of a spook! Perhaps it will be said
MATERIALISM
that the nonphysical comes into existence as a by-product: that whenever there is a
certain complex physical structure, then, by an irreducible extraphysical law, there is
also a nonphysical entity. Such laws would be quite outside normal scientific concep-
tions and quite inexplicable: they would be, in Herbert Feigl’s phrase, “nomological
danglers.” To say the very least, we can vastly simplify our cosmological outlook if
we can defend a materialistic philosophy of mind.6

ARE THE MIND AND BODY IDENTICAL?

Two major criticisms of materialism center on (1) the claimed identity of mind
and body and (2) the claimed universality of strict determinism. A little later,
in our discussion of B. F. Skinner, we will address the second of these. For the
moment, consider the first.
All forms of materialism involve a physicalistic interpretation of mind.
In the case of Smart, we have just seen that this takes the form of the Iden-
tity Thesis, so-called because it views the mind (including thoughts, percep-
tions, emotions, etc.) as identical with brain states (nerve cells, electrical
impulses, etc.):

Brain States = Mind

Electrical-chemical reactions Thoughts

Alpha and beta waves Sensations
Gray matter Consciousness

One of the most common objections to this view has already been antici- Problems with the
pated by Smart. Are not the differences between mental states and brain Identity Thesis
states so great that no amount of empirical or scientific analysis can bridge
them? For example, consider a surgeon who completes his last delicate and
precise penetration into an innermost recess of the brain. What does he see
there—red or affection? No. He sees more nerves, brain tissue, blood, cells,
and so on. It’s a serious question: Do the sensations of red, the idea of a table,
the feeling of repulsion, and the desire for food sit right there in the brain
alongside veins and synapses, waiting to be exposed?
Some are not satisfied that Smart and others have successfully laid this
objection to rest. The American philosopher Richard Taylor presses the dif-
ference between mind and body by raising logical problems with identity-
talk: I can be blamed, but can my body be blamed? I can be religious, but
can my body be religious? My thoughts can be true or false, but can my
brain be true or false?

6
J. J. C. Smart, “Materialism,” Journal of Philosophy, 22 (October 1963), pp. 651–653, 660.
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144 By “identity” the materialist must mean a strict and total identity of himself and his
body, nothing less. Now to say of anything, X, and anything, Y, that X and Y are
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY identical, or that they are really one and the same thing, one must be willing to
assert of X anything whatever that he asserts of Y, and vice versa. This is simply a
consequence of their identity, for if there is anything whatever that can be truly
asserted of any object X, but cannot be truly asserted of some object Y, then it
logically follows that X and Y are two different things, and not the same thing. In
saying, for instance, that the British wartime prime minister and Winston Churchill
are one and the same person, one commits himself to saying of either whatever he
is willing to say of the other—such as, that he lived to a great age, smoked cigars,
was a resolute leader, was born at Blenheim, and so on. If there were any state-
ment whatever that was true of, say, Mr. Churchill, but not true of the wartime prime
minister, then it would follow that Mr. Churchill was not the wartime prime minister,
that we are here referring to two different men, and not one.
The questions can now be asked, then, whether there is anything true of me that
is not true of my body, and vice versa. There are, of course, ever so many things
that can be asserted indifferently of both me and my body without absurdity. For
instance, we can say that I was born at such and such place and time, and it is
not the least odd to say this of my body as well. Or we can say that my body now
weighs exactly so many pounds, and it would be just as correct to give this as my
weight; and so on.
But now consider more problematical assertions. It might, for instance, be true
of me at a certain time that I am morally blameworthy or praiseworthy. Can we
then say that my body or some part of it, such as my brain, is in exactly the same
sense blameworthy or praiseworthy? Can moral predicates be applied without
gross incongruity to any physical object at all? Or suppose I have some profound
wish or desire, or some thought—the desire, say, to be in some foreign land at
a given moment, or thoughts of the Homeric gods. It seems at least odd to assert
that my body, or some part of it, wishes that it were elsewhere, or has thoughts
of the gods. How, indeed, can any purely physical state of any purely physical
object ever be a state that is for something, or of something, in the way that my
desires and thoughts are such? And how, in particular, could a purely physical
state be in this sense for or of something that is not real? Or again, suppose that
I am religious, and can truly say that I love God and neighbor, for instance. Can
I without absurdity say that my body or some part of it, such as my foot or brain,
is religious, and loves God and neighbor? Or can one suppose that my being
religious, or having such love, consists simply in my body’s being in a certain state,
or behaving in a certain way? If I claim the identity of myself with my body, I must
say all these odd things; that is, I must be willing to assert of my body, or some
part of it, everything I assert of myself. There is perhaps no logical absurdity or
clear falsity in speaking thus of one’s corporeal frame, but such assertions as these
are at least strange, and it can be questioned whether, as applied to the body, they
are even still meaningful.
The disparity between bodily and personal predicates becomes even more
apparent, however, if we consider epistemological predicates, involved in statements
about belief and knowledge. Thus, if I believe something—believe, for instance, that
today is February 31—then I am in a certain state; the state, namely, of having
a certain belief which is in this case necessarily a false one. Now how can a physi-
cal state of any physical object be identical with that? And how, in particular, can
anything be a false physical state of an object? The physical states of things, it would
seem, just are, and one cannot even think of anything that could ever distinguish
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one such state from another as being either true or false. A physiologist might give 145
a complete physical description of a brain and nervous system at a particular time,
MATERIALISM
but he could never distinguish some of those states as true and others as false, nor
would he have any idea what to look for if he were asked to do this. At least, so
it would certainly seem.7

An objection to the Identity Thesis has also been raised by the functional- Functionalism again
ists. We introduced functionalism at the end of Chapter 4, though we have
put off until now an account of one of its major appeals. Functionalism is,
quite simply, an alternative to the Identity Thesis, which it regards as utterly
implausible. Why? The Identity Thesis insists on drawing straight lines, as
it were, from specific mental states to specific brain states; it argues that all
mental states of a given type—for example, being in pain—must be identified
with a physical state of a certain type—for example, a C-fiber firing. But,
the functionalist charges, could not many other physical systems be in pain
without being in just the physical state we happen to be in when we are in
pain? Through a well-known and imaginative device, Paul M. Churchland
shows how this one-to-one correspondence of mental states to brain states
need not hold.

Imagine a being from another planet, says the functionalist, a being with an alien
physiological constitution, a constitution based on the chemical element silicon, for
example, instead of on the element carbon, as ours is. The chemistry and even
the physical structure of the alien’s brain would have to be systematically different
from ours. But even so, that alien brain could well sustain a functional economy
of internal states whose mutual relations parallel perfectly the mutual relations that
define our own mental states. The alien may have an internal state that meets all
the conditions for being a pain state, as outlined earlier. That state, considered
from a purely physical point of view, would have a very different makeup from
a human pain state, but it could nevertheless be identical to a human pain state
from a purely functional point of view. And so for all of his functional states.
If the alien’s functional economy of internal states were indeed functionally iso-
morphic with our own internal economy—if those states were causally connected
to inputs, to one another, and to behavior in ways that parallel our own internal
connections—then the alien would have pains, and desires, and hopes, and fears
just as fully as we, despite the differences in the physical system that sustains or
realizes those functional states. What is important for mentality is not the matter
of which the creature is made, but the structure of the internal activities which that
matter sustains.
If we can think of one alien constitution, we can think of many, and the point
just made can also be made with an artificial system. Were we to create an elec-
tronic system—a computer of some kind—whose internal economy were functionally
isomorphic with our own in all the relevant ways, then it too would be the subject
of mental states.
What this illustrates is that there are almost certainly many more ways than one
for nature, and perhaps even for man, to put together a thinking, feeling, perceiving
creature. And this raises a problem for the identity theory, for it seems that there is

7
Richard Taylor, Metaphysics, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974), pp. 13–15.
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146 no single type of physical state to which a given type of mental state must always
correspond. Ironically, there are too many different kinds of physical systems that
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY can realize the functional economy characteristic of conscious intelligence. . . . The
prospects for universal identities, between types of mental states and types of brain
states, are therefore slim.8

BEYOND FREEDOM AND DIGNITY: SKINNER

Probably the best recent example of one who asserts both a physicalistic
view of mind and a pervasive causal determinism was not a philosopher
but the behaviorist psychologist B. F. Skinner.
Behaviorism: What is behaviorism? Generally, behaviorism is a school of psychology that
soft and hard emphasizes observable human behavior as the proper object of psycho-
logical study. Now here we have to draw a distinction. For there is a big dif-
ference between (1) the view that the description of observable behavior is
the psychologist’s task, which we may call descriptive or soft behaviorism, and
(2) the view that observable behavior is all there is, which we may call hard
behaviorism. Obviously, soft behaviorism is not our concern here inasmuch as
it makes no claim at all about reality or human nature itself. Hard behaviorism,
however, most certainly does involve a claim about reality—specifically a claim
about the nature of human nature itself. This form of behaviorism is, therefore,
at a certain level inseparable from a metaphysical perspective, and the perspec-
tive is a materialistic and mechanistic one. It is therefore appropriate to con-
sider this form of behaviorism in a chapter on materialism, especially since,
through Skinner’s book Beyond Freedom and Dignity, it has enjoyed a renewed
and far-reaching impact in recent years.

Behaviorism
The school of psychology that emphasizes
observable behavior as the proper object of
psychological study.

Soft Behaviorism Hard Behaviorism

The form of The form of
behaviorism that behaviorism that
limits itself to the extends itself beyond
description of the task of describing
observable behavior. behavior to the claim
that there is nothing
beyond behavior.

8
Paul M. Churchland, Matter and Consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of
Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984), pp. 36f.
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There can be no doubt about the physicalistic and mechanistic character 147
of Skinner’s appraisal of the human person. Though Skinner’s physicalism, MATERIALISM
or reduction of the total person to physical states, underlies and pervades
Skinner’s work everywhere, it is nowhere really argued, at least not with any
rigor. Rather, it is treated as an assumption that any enlightened twentieth-
century person would surely embrace, in contrast to earlier and “prescien-
tific” notions that uncritically employ ideas such as mind, transcendence, free
will, and the like. Our interest in Skinner is not, therefore, so much with his
defense of physicalism (because he gives none) but with what he does with
it as the foundation of his proposed “technology of behavior,” a program of
psychological engineering, or manipulation of human nature in the interest
of the improvement and progress of the species.

Almost all our major problems involve human behavior, and they cannot be solved
by physical and biological technology alone. What is needed is a technology of
behavior, but we have been slow to develop the science from which such a technol-
ogy might be drawn. One difficulty is that almost all of what is called behavioral
science continues to trace behavior to states of mind, feelings, traits of character,
human nature, and so on. Physics and biology once followed similar practices and
advanced only when they discarded them. The behavioral sciences have been
slow to change partly because the explanatory entities often seem to be directly
observed and partly because other kinds of explanations have been hard to find.
The environment is obviously important, but its role has remained obscure. It does
not push or pull, it selects, and this function is difficult to discover and analyze.
The role of natural selection in evolution was formulated only a little more than
a hundred years ago, and the selective role of the environment in shaping and
maintaining the behavior of the individual is only beginning to be recognized and
studied. As the interaction between organism and environment has come to be
understood, however, effects once assigned to states of mind, feelings, and traits
are beginning to be traced to accessible conditions, and a technology of behavior
may therefore become available. It will not solve our problems, however, until it
replaces traditional prescientific views, and these are strongly entrenched. Freedom
and dignity illustrate the difficulty. They are the possessions of the autonomous
man of traditional theory, and they are essential to practices in which a person is
held responsible for his conduct and given credit for his achievements. A scientific
analysis shifts both the responsibility and the achievement to the environment. It
also raises questions concerning “values.” Who will use a technology and to what
ends? Until these issues are resolved, a technology of behavior will continue to be
rejected, and with it possibly the only way to solve our problems. . . .
A child is born a member of the human species, with a genetic endowment
showing many idiosyncratic features, and he begins at once to acquire a repertoire
of behavior under the contingencies of reinforcement to which he is exposed as an
individual. Most of these contingencies are arranged by other people. They are, in
fact, what is called a culture, although the term is usually defined in other ways. Two
eminent anthropologists have said, for example, that “the essential core of culture
consists of traditional (i.e., historically derived and selected) ideas and especially
their attached values.” But those who observe cultures do not see ideas or values.
They see how people live, how they raise their children, how they gather or cultivate
food, what kinds of dwellings they live in, what they wear, what games they play,
how they treat each other, how they govern themselves, and so on. These are the
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148 customs, the customary behaviors, of a people. To explain them we must turn to the
contingencies which generate them.
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY Some contingencies are part of the physical environment, but they usually work
in combination with social contingencies, and the latter are naturally emphasized
by those who study cultures. The social contingencies, or the behaviors they gener-
ate, are the “ideas” of a culture; the reinforcers that appear in the contingencies
are its “values.”
A person is not only exposed to the contingencies that constitute a culture, he
helps to maintain them, and to the extent that the contingencies induce him to do so
the culture is self-perpetuating. The effective reinforcers are a matter of observation
and cannot be disputed. What a given group of people calls good is a fact: it is
what members of the group find reinforcing as the result of their genetic endowment
and the natural and social contingencies to which they have been exposed. Each
culture has its own set of goods, and what is good in one culture may not be good
in another. To recognize this is to take the position of “cultural relativism.” What
is good for the Trobriand Islander is good for the Trobriand Islander, and that is
that. Anthropologists have often emphasized relativism as a tolerant alternative to
missionary zeal in converting all cultures to a single set of ethical, governmental,
religious, or economic values. . . .
It is the nature of an experimental analysis of human behavior that it should
strip away the functions previously assigned to autonomous man and transfer
them one by one to the controlling environment. The analysis leaves less and less
for autonomous man to do. But what about man himself? Is there not something
about a person which is more than a living body? Unless something called a self
survives, how can we speak of self-knowledge or self-control? To whom is the
injunction “Know thyself” addressed?
It is an important part of the contingencies to which a young child is exposed
that his own body is the only part of his environment which remains the same
(idem) from moment to moment and day to day. We say that he discovers his
identity as he learns to distinguish between his body and the rest of the world.
He does this long before the community teaches him to call things by name and
to distinguish “me” from “it” or “you.”
A self is a repertoire of behavior appropriate to a given set of contingencies. A
substantial part of the conditions to which a person is exposed may play a dominant
role, and under other conditions a person may report, “I’m not myself today,” or,
“I couldn’t have done what you said I did, because that’s not like me.” The identity
conferred upon a self arises from the contingencies responsible for the behavior.
Two or more repertoires generated by different sets of contingencies compose two
or more selves. A person possesses one repertoire appropriate to his life with his
friends and another appropriate to his life with his family, and a friend may find
him a very different person if he sees him with his family or his family if they see
him with his friends. The problem of identity arises when situations are intermingled,

“. . . B. F. Skinner has profoundly changed the world—and for the better—even

if much of the world does not know it. He is, it seems to me, a rare kind of
prophet, one who is in possession of both facts and vision.”
—John A. Weigel
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The late B. F. Skinner, the most influential

behaviorist, and advocate of a
149
“technology of behavior” MATERIALISM

as when a person finds himself with both his family and his friends at the same
time.
Self-knowledge and self-control imply two selves in this sense. The self-knower is
almost always a product of social contingencies, but the self that is known may come
from other sources. The controlling self (the conscience or superego) is of social origin,
but the controlled self is more likely to be the product of genetic susceptibilities to
reinforcement (the id, or the Old Adam). The controlling self generally represents the
interests of others, the controlled self the interests of the individual.
The picture which emerges from a scientific analysis is not of a body with a per-
son inside, but of a body which is a person in the sense that it displays a complex
repertoire of behavior. The picture is, of course, unfamiliar. The man thus portrayed
is a stranger, and from the traditional point of view he may not seem to be a man
at all. “For at least one hundred years,” said Joseph Wood Krutch, “we have been
prejudiced in every theory, including economic determinism, mechanistic behaviorism,
and relativism, that reduces the stature of man until he ceases to be man at all in any
sense that the humanists of an earlier generation would recognize.” Matson has argued
that “the empirical behavioral scientist . . . denies, if only by implication, that a unique
being, called Man, exists.” “What is now under attack,” said Maslow, “is the ‘being’
of man.” C. S. Lewis put it quite bluntly: Man is being abolished.
There is clearly some difficulty in identifying the man to whom these expressions
refer. Lewis cannot have meant the human species, for not only is it not being
abolished, it is filling the earth. (As a result it may eventually abolish itself through
disease, famine, pollution, or a nuclear holocaust, but that is not what Lewis meant.)
Nor are individual men growing less effective or productive. We are told that what
is threatened is “man qua man,” or “man in his humanity,” or “man as Thou not It,”
or “man as a person not a thing.” These are not very helpful expressions, but they
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150
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY REVEALING EXPRESSIONS FROM SKINNER
• “technology of behavior”
• explanation by “antecedent physical events”
• person as “a repertoire of behavior”
• values as “social contingencies”
• good and bad as “positive” and “negative” reinforcement
• “responsibility and achievement” of “the environment”
• “experimental analysis”
• “beyond freedom and dignity”

supply a clue. What is being abolished is autonomous man—the inner man, the
homunculus, the possessing demon, the man defended by the literatures of freedom
and dignity.
His abolition has long been overdue. Autonomous man is a device used to
explain what we cannot explain in any other way. He has been constructed from
our ignorance, and as our understanding increases, the very stuff of which he is
composed vanishes. Science does not dehumanize man, it de-homunculizes him, and
it must do so if it is to prevent the abolition of the human species. To man qua man
we readily say good riddance. Only by dispossessing him can we turn to the real
causes of human behavior. Only then can we turn from the inferred to the observed,
from the miraculous to the natural, from the inaccessible to the manipulable.9

The above selections from Skinner emphasize several overlapping

themes: the denial of free will and all human transcendence; a reinterpreta-
tion of values as being dependent on social contingencies or conditions; a
purely physicalistic interpretation of all levels of human activity; the impor-
tance of the environment for the shaping of human nature. In sum, he
argues for the abolition of man as traditionally conceived, and for a technol-
ogy of human nature as conceived along “hard” behavioristic lines.
Is man a machine for Skinner? Although Skinner explicitly represents
man as a “machine,” in the following paragraph he appears to want to soften
the blow.

Man is not made into a machine by analyzing his behavior in mechanical terms.
Early theories of behavior, as we have seen, represented man as a push-pull
automaton, close to the nineteenth-century notion of a machine, but progress has
been made. Man is a machine in the sense that he is a complex system behav-
ing in lawful ways, but the complexity is extraordinary. His capacity to adjust to
contingencies of reinforcement will perhaps be eventually simulated by machines,

9
B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2002), pp. 24–25, 127–128,
198–201.
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151
Behaviorism is “a monumental triviality.” It represents “question-begging on a MATERIALISM
heroic scale.”
—Arthur Koestler

Behaviorism is guilty of “innate naivete, intellectual bankruptcy, and half-deliberate

cruelty.”
—Peter Gay

but this has not yet been done, and the living system thus simulated will remain
unique in other ways.10

Nevertheless, many think that Skinner’s conception of human nature is

essentially indistinguishable from the old-fashioned mechanistic one. Surely
if there is any recurring theme in Skinner’s work, it is the rejection of human
autonomy and the invocation of a universal and strict causal determinism.
And this brings us to the second major problem with materialism.

ARE ALL THINGS DETERMINED?

It should be apparent by now that while not every form of materialism
embraces causal determinism (think of Smart), the two often do go hand in
hand (as in Skinner). If all things are reducible to physical states, then all things
must be causally determined. But for many philosophers causal determinism,
especially as regards human activity, is extremely problematic.
It is important to recall an earlier point. The trouble is not over the prin-
ciple of universal causality, pure and simple. Almost everyone believes that Causality vs.
every event must have a cause; from nothing, nothing comes; or for every- determinism
thing that happens there must be a necessary (it couldn’t happen without
it) and sufficient (it can happen with it) condition. The problem arises with
the further assertion that everything is causally determined; that is, for any-
thing that happens, it could not have happened otherwise. To put it another
way: There is a big difference (do you see it?) between saying (1) D could
not occur without A, B, and C, and (2) Given A, B, and C, D must occur. It
is, of course, this second claim, the principle of universal determination,
that is so vexing.
In the first place, it is vexing from the standpoint of the belief in moral
responsibility. If it is true that nothing can happen otherwise than it does, Determinism and
then this must apply also to our willing and choosing. And this means the moral responsibility
denial of free will. On the other hand, is it not clear—so the argument goes—
that morality presupposes free will? that ought implies can? Is it right to

10
Ibid., p. 202.
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152
THE QUESTION
OF REALITY CAUSALITY AND DETERMINISM
• Principle of universal causality: Everything that comes into being is caused.
• Principle of universal determinism: Everything that comes into being is caused
in such a way that it could not have been otherwise.

assign praise and blame if one cannot choose and act freely? Is it not always
relevant, when trying to establish blame or guilt or responsibility on the
part of someone, to ascertain whether that person was forced, drugged, or
suffering from some compulsion? Free will would seem to be a condition
for moral respensibility.
More generally it may be asked whether the ideas of moral good and
evil are even meaningful within the materialistic/determinist view of things.
For in that view things just are, and they can’t be otherwise. Whence, then,
comes any ought? If you start with a morally neutral determined universe,
how do you account for objective values or ideals or universally binding
rights and wrongs? Or maybe something can come from nothing. Or maybe
values aren’t universal and objective, but, as Skinner says, they’re just by-
products of environment and accidental social conditions. But is this what
you mean by genuine morality? (These questions will have to be considered
again in Chapter 14.)
Determinism In the second place, some think that determinism is downright incompatible
and intellection with genuine thinking, using the word to cover a broad range of intellectual
activities. Setting aside such intellectual experiences as intuition, flashes of
insight, and creative imagination, which some think transcend the flux and
flow of blind and mechanical causation, is not the determinist caught in a
hopeless if not self-contradictory position? For we are told that all things are
causally determined, could not be otherwise, and so on, and yet we are told
also to think hard, to scrutinize, to evaluate, to analyze. But this puts the intel-
lect in the position of judging things, which means that the intellect is different
from, and higher than, those that it judges. That is, if your mind and intellectual
processes themselves are but an example of physical and chemical processes,
then how can your mind frame a theory about physics and chemistry? And
what is truth?
But there may be worse. We are told by the determinist that all things are
causally determined. But, then, that very statement too, as well as everything

“The problem is to induce people not to be good but to behave well.”

—Skinner

But is it not good to behave well?

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153
MATERIALISM
TWO MAJOR PROBLEMS FOR DETERMINISM
• Is moral experience compatible with universal causal determinism?
• Is cognitive experience compatible with universal causal determinism?

else the determinist maintains, is itself causally determined. As in the case of

determining moral responsibility, does not intellectual responsibility mean
freedom from constraints such as drug-inducement, compulsions, force,
and the like?
Inevitably, someone will counter with the analogy of computers: Are not
human minds supercomplex and glorified computers? The proper answer
is, of course, that computers—even the most supercomplex—do so well
only because they are programmed by something essentially different, a
noncomputer—namely, a human mind.
It is all a question of transcendence: Do you believe that the categories of Transcendence?
materialism and/or determinism are adequate to your total experience as
a human being, especially your moral and intellectual experience? Or must
there be some reality or dimension of human nature, however dimly per-
ceived and understood, that stands outside and above matter, motion, and
causal determination?

CHAPTER 6 IN REVIEW
SUMMARY
The radical alternative to idealism is materialism, which entirely does away
with mind (or mental substance) and affirms matter, with its motions and qual-
ities, as the sole underlying reality of all things. This is a very old philosophical
perspective with roots, as we have seen, even in the Pre-Socratic period.
An extreme form of materialism is mechanistic materialism, which
imports the further principle that the motions in the universe are deter-
mined by fixed and unalterable laws: The universe and everything in it is
a machine. But, then, so are human beings, as La Mettrie announced in his
book Man a Machine. Of course, the image of a person as consisting of
wheels, springs, cogs, and bolts is out of date, as the idea of matter itself
has become considerably refined. Nonetheless, the physicalistic conception
of mind persists, as in the Identity Thesis of Smart: Mental states are iden-
tical with brain states.
In recent times, something very much like mechanistic materialism has
surfaced in conjunction with the behavioristic psychology of Skinner. We
have called it “hard” behaviorism precisely because it assumes the truth of
materialism as a theory of reality and a theory of human nature. Skinner’s
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154 main purpose in Beyond Freedom and Dignity is to envision and advocate a
THE QUESTION “technology of human behavior,” a manipulation of human behavior and
OF REALITY transformation of values in accordance with the progress and ideals of the
evolutionary process.
As materialism, and certainly mechanistic materialism, bears on human
nature and life, it poses great problems. Specifically, if all things are exhaus-
tively determined, and man is a machine, then what becomes of moral and
cognitive experience? Many philosophers believe that moral responsibility
and authentic thinking are immediately rendered impossible in the deter-
minist view of things. This is to say nothing of the alleged self-refuting
character of this thesis: If everything is causally determined, then so is this
very claim, but then why pay any attention to it? And Taylor has pointed
out some problems with the Identity Thesis.
In the end, the question becomes, Is it possible to live with the intellectual
and practical implications that follow from the denial of human transcendence?

BASIC IDEAS
• Naturalism
• Materialism
• Materialism as a solution to the mind-body problem
• Mechanism
• The “dematerialization” of matter
• The Identity Thesis
• Objections to the Identity Thesis
• Behaviorism
Soft behaviorism
Hard behaviorism
• Technology of behavior
• Causality versus determinism
• Objections to causal determinism
• The question of transcendence

TEST YOURSELF
1. By what simple maneuver does materialism solve the mind-body problem?
2. True or false: Mechanism is compatible with both soft and hard
behaviorism.
3. What thinker talks about a “technology of behavior”? What does he mean?
4. To many, complete causal determinism seems to be incompatible with
______ and _______.
5. How does the Roman poet Lucretius figure in the discussion in this
chapter?
6. What fault does Taylor find with the Identity Thesis?
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7. La Mettrie and Skinner hold in common that (a) human behavior is in 155
theory entirely predictable, (b) moral decisions are not subject to causal MATERIALISM
determinism, (c) God is behind the mechanisms of nature.
8. True or false: Newton’s Laws of Motion aided and abetted the mecha-
nistic view of the world.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• We will have occasion to look again at the problem of determinism in
Chapter 14, but consider now: How serious a threat do you really think
determinism is to morality and knowledge? How might materialists and/
or determinists counter the charge that their position undermines moral-
ity and knowledge? And even if it does, so what? And just what does
“transcendence” mean in this context, anyway? Is it a philosophically
coherent and responsible concept?
• At the beginning of this chapter it was noted that some philosophers opt
for a “wider naturalism,” according to which both physical and mental
reality should be subsumed under a higher nature, or regarded as dimen-
sions of a single reality. Does this strike you as a plausible approach?
Does it solve any problems? Does it create any new ones?

FOR FURTHER READING

John V. Canfield. Purpose in Nature. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966.
Essays by various thinkers, including “Behavior, Purpose, and Teleology”
and “Comments on a Mechanistic Conception of Purposefulness.”
Hubert L. Dreyfus. What Computers Can’t Do: The Limits of Artificial Intelligence.
Revised ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. A critical account of work in
artificial intelligence, arguing for the uniqueness of human cognition.
Gerald Dworkin (ed.). Determinism, Free Will, and Moral Responsibility. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970. Essays by several thinkers on the topics indi-
cated in the title.
Owen J. Flanagan, Jr. The Science of Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984. A
thorough and critical discussion of the central issues in contemporary cognitive
science, including behaviorism, Identity Theory, functionalism, and so on.
Antony Flew (ed.). Body, Mind, and Death. New York: Macmillan, 1964. Tradi-
tional and contemporary statements on mind and body, including some
discussion of behaviorism and consciousness as brain processes.
Robert Kane. A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2005. An accessible introduction to issues in the free-will debate.
Robert Kane. Free Will, Blackwell Readings in Philosophy. Malden, MA:
Blackwell, 2001. An anthology of landmark essays about free will and
determinism.
John McLeish. The Development of Modern Behavioral Psychology. Calgary:
Detselig, 1981. A complete account of the historical roots and continuing
development and interaction of the several branches of behaviorism.
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156 John O’Conner (ed.). Modern Materialism: Readings on Mind-Body Identity.

THE QUESTION New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969. Essays by well-known think-
OF REALITY ers on mind and brain processes, materialism in relation to the mind-
body problem, mechanism, identity theories, and more.
David Rosenthal. Materialism and the Mind-Body Problem. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971. Good treatment of the mind-body problem and
its contemporary solutions, including the materialistic.
Richard Taylor. Metaphysics. Third ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
1983. Chs. 3–5. Brief, student-oriented discussions on “The Mind as a
Function of the Body,” “Freedom and Determinism,” and “Fate.”
John A. Weigel. B. F. Skinner. Boston: Twayne, 1977. A brief and very useful
volume that argues that Skinner is a “good and true prophet” whose
ideas have been misunderstood and maligned.
*In addition, see the relevant articles (“Materialism,” “Mechanism in
Biology,” “Naturalism,” “Behaviorism,” etc.) in Routledge Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig (London: Routledge, 1998), and Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosphy, http://plato.stanford.edu.
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PA R T T W O

THE QUESTION
OF KNOWLEDGE

I
n our introductory note to Part One we said that the question of real-
ity may be in some ways the most basic question. But a similar claim
could be made for the question of knowledge.
It is true that our answers to the question of reality will largely determine our
answers to many other questions. But we cannot really answer any questions at
all, not even the question of reality, until we have become clear on the still prior
question of knowledge. Think about this until you see it: Judgments about real-
ity, morality, art, society, religion, politics, science, or anything else presuppose
judgments about knowledge itself—whether we can know, how we can know, and
what we can know. Take, for example, your knowledge that “In fourteen hundred
and ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” How did you arrive at this
piece of knowledge? In your claim to “know” this there are surely contained
already many implicit judgments about epistemological issues such as

• The limits of reason.

• The role of sense experience.
• The relevance of intuition.
• The assurances of historical investigation.
• The nature and criterion of truth.
• The nature and authority of “facts.”
• The possibility of certainty.
• Degrees of certainty.

159
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If such a welter of considerations is necessarily involved in such a harm-

less claim as “In fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the
ocean blue,” then how much more attention must we give the epistemo-
logical underpinnings of claims about reality, value, moral responsibility,
society, and God?

160
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CHAPTER 7

SKEPTICISM

W
e may begin with skepticism, a fitting place inasmuch as it calls The meaning
into question, in various ways and degrees, the very possibil- of “skepticism”
ity of knowledge. The word “skepticism” comes from a Greek
word that means “to reflect on,” “consider,” or “examine,” so it is not sur-
prising that it is usually associated with doubting or suspending judgment. A
glance at the dictionary shows that, beyond being doubters, skeptics come
in many varieties. We, however, wish to distinguish just three types or
levels of skepticism.

VARIETIES OF SKEPTICISM
If a skeptic is someone who at one time or another had doubts or who sus-
pends judgment about something, then all of us are skeptics. None of us can
know everything, and you yourself would surely be skeptical about someone
who claimed that he or she did. A dose of commonsense skepticism is indeed Commonsense
probably healthy for us. For one thing, it is a corrective to gullibility, supersti- skepticism
tion, and prejudice. All of us should rightfully be skeptical of the claim that
a vast herd of giraffes is at this moment roaming the White House, or of
certain promises made by politicians running for office. Skepticism is also an
antidote to intellectual arrogance and presumption.
Clearly, skepticism in this form poses no problem—if anything it stimu- Philosophical
lates and enhances philosophical activity. But with philosophical skepticism skepticism

161
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162
THE QUESTION skep • tic (skep⬘tik) n. 1. One who doubts, disbelieves, or disagrees with generally
OF KNOWLEDGE
accepted conclusions in science, philosophy, etc. 2. One who by nature doubts
or questions what he or she hears, reads, etc. 3. One who questions the funda-
mental doctrines of a religion, especially the Christian religion. 4. Sometimes
cap. An adherent of any philosophical school of skepticism. Also spelled sceptic.
[⬍F sceptique ⬍L scepticus or directly ⬍LGk. skeptikos reflective ⬍ skeptesthai
to consider]
—Syn. Skeptic, freethinker, atheist, unbeliever, and agonistic denote one
who denies or doubts some prevailing religious or philosophical doctrine. Skep-
tic is a general term, and refers to a person who does not feel that the state of
human knowledge, or the evidence available, is sufficient to establish the doc-
trine. A freethinker is one who refuses to accept a doctrine, especially a reli-
gious doctrine, simply on authority, and demands empiric proof. Atheist de-
scribes one who denies the existence of God; an unbeliever may also lack
religious faith, but the word is more often applied to one whose faith is different
from that of the speaker. An agnostic rejects a doctrine because he or she be-
lieves that human knowledge is, and always will be, incapable of determining
its truth or falsity.
Skep • tic (skep⬘tik) n. In ancient Greek philosophy, a member of a school of skep-
ticism, especially that of Pyrrho of Elis. [⬍SKEPTIC]
skep • ti • cal (skep⬘ti • k l) adj. 1. Doubting; questioning; disbelieving. 2. Of, per-
e
taining to, or characteristic of a skeptic or skepticism. Also spelled sceptical.—
skepⴕti • cal • ly adv.—skepti • cal • ness n.
skepti • cism (sk p⬘t • siz⬘ m) n. 1. A doubting or incredulous state of mind; dis-
e e e
believing attitude. 2. Philos. The doctrine that absolute knowledge is unattain-
able and that judgments must be continually questioned and doubted in order
to attain approximate or relative certainty; opposed to dogmatism. Also spelled
scepticism.—Syn. See DOUBT.

the plot thickens. By philosophical skepticism we do not mean any par-

ticular position or movement in philosophy, but the tendency of some
philosophers to deny or doubt the more cherished philosophical claims.
What are some of these claims? It depends, of course, on the particular
philosopher, but at one time or another it has been denied or doubted that
every event must have a cause, that God exists, that there are underlying
substances, that the external world is as we perceive it to be, and the like.
These issues, of course, are the really big ones in philosophy, and skepti-
cism over such issues immediately marks out the boundaries of philo-
sophical battlefields.
Absolute skepticism Still more troublesome is what we might call absolute skepticism. What
is denied or doubted here is the very possibility of knowledge itself. Believe
it or not, there have been some thinkers (not many, but some) who have
denied that we can know anything at all.
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PYRRHO: THE CLASSIC SKEPTIC 163

SKEPTICISM
Surely the best example of this was Pyrrho of Elis (about 300 B.C.), who
founded a school of philosophers who called themselves the Skeptics. Pyrrho
appealed to the example of Socrates, who, in spite of his insistence on abid-
ing truths, was always asking questions, and Plato, who, aside from his belief
in the transcendent Forms, believed that our knowledge of the world about
us was really only an approximation or opinion. A more legitimate source of
Pyrrho’s skepticism was the Sophists with their view that all knowledge is
subjective and relative, and therefore that there is no absolute or common
knowledge at all. Recall Protagoras: “A man is the measure of all things.”
And long before Pyrrho ever came on the scene, the Sophist Gorgias of
Leontini (about 525 B.C.) expounded a skepticism about as absolute as could
be imagined. His position—or nonposition—is expressed in his three theses: Gorgias’ three theses
(1) nothing exists, (2) if something did exist, we could never know it, and
(3) if we could know it, we could never express it.
Pyrrho and his followers taught that nothing whatsoever is certain, and
therefore the wise man will suspend judgment on all matters or, at best,
simply announce, “The matter appears to be thus and so.” As with Protago-
ras, the evidence for the Skeptics that nothing whatsoever can be known Nothing is certain
with certainty amounts to an extended argument from the relativity of rea-
son, sense perception, and custom. Just consider how different our thoughts

Pyrrho, the absolute skeptic, denied that we

can know anything whatsoever.
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164
THE QUESTION
OF KNOWLEDGE

and our sense perceptions can be about the same things! Did two people ever
see the same rainbow? How does an onion taste? And if disagreements and
contradictions rage over ordinary things “out there,” like rainbows and
onions, how much more do they rage over intellectual and moral percep-
The argument tions? The differences and contradictions stemming from our time, place,
for skepticism age, condition, perspective, sense faculties, intellectual faculties, social situa-
tions, inclinations, desires, purposes—all of these added up, for the Skeptics,
to gigantic doubt and led to a suspension of judgment concerning everything.
Much of what we know about Pyrrho we know through the ancient philo-
sophical biographer Diogenes Laertius. In the following from Diogenes’
Lives of Eminent Philosophers, he states the radicalness of Pyrrhonic skepti-
cism and then summarizes the famous Ten Modes (or “ways”) leading to
skepticism.

The Skeptics . . . were constantly engaged in overthrowing the dogmas of all

schools, but enunciated none themselves; and though they would go so far as to
bring forward and expound the dogmas of the others, they themselves laid down
nothing definitely, not even the laying down of nothing.
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The Ten Modes of Doubt 165

I. Based on the Variety in Animals SKEPTICISM
The first mode relates to the differences between living creatures in respect of those
things which give them pleasure or pain, or are useful or harmful to them. By this it
is inferred that they do not receive the same impressions from the same things, with
the result that such a conflict necessarily leads to suspension of judgment. . . . Some
are distinguished in one way, some in another, and for this reason they differ in
their senses also, hawks for instance being most keen-sighted, and dogs having a
most acute sense of smell. It is natural that if the senses, e.g., eyes, of animals differ,
so also will the impressions produced upon them. . . .

II. Based on the Differences in Human Beings

The second mode has reference to the natures and idiosyncrasies of men; for in-
stance, Demophon, Alexander’s butler, used to get warm in the shade and shiver in
the sun. Andron of Argos is reported by Aristotle to have travelled across the water-
less deserts of Libya without drinking. Moreover, one man fancies the profession of
medicine, another farming, and another commerce; and the same ways of life are
injurious to one man but beneficial to another; from which it follows that judgment
must be suspended.

III. Based on the Different Structures of the Organs of Sense

The third mode depends on the differences between the sense-channels in different
cases, for an apple gives the impression of being pale yellow in color to the sight,
sweet in taste and fragrant in smell. An object of the same shape is made to ap-
pear different by differences in the mirrors reflecting it. Thus it follows that what ap-
pears is no more such and such a thing than something different.

IV. Based on the Circumstantial Conditions

The fourth mode is that due to differences of condition and to changes in general;
for instance, health, illness, sleep, waking, joy, sorrow, youth, old age, courage,
fear, want, fullness, hate, love, heat, cold, to say nothing of breathing freely and
having the passages obstructed. The impressions received thus appear to vary ac-
cording to the nature of the conditions. . . .

V. Based on the Disciplines and Customs and Laws,

the Legendary Beliefs and the Dogmatic Convictions
The fifth mode is derived from customs, laws, belief in myths, compacts between
nations and dogmatic assumptions. This class includes considerations with regard
to things beautiful and ugly, true and false, good and bad, with regard to the gods,
and with regard to the coming into being and the passing away of the world of
phenomena. Obviously the same thing is regarded by some as just and by others
as unjust, or as good by some and bad by others. . . . Different people believe in
different gods; some in providence, others not. In burying their dead, the Egyptians
embalm them; the Romans burn them; the Pœonians throw them into lakes. As to
what is true, then, let suspension of judgment be our practice.

VI. Based on Intermixtures

The sixth mode relates to mixtures and participations, by virtue of which nothing ap-
pears pure in and by itself, but only in combination with air, light, moisture, solidity,
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166 heat, cold, movement, exhalations and other forces. For purple shows different tints
in sunlight, moonlight, and lamplight; and our own complexion does not appear the
THE QUESTION
OF KNOWLEDGE same at noon and when the sun is low. Again, a rock which in air takes two men to
lift is easily moved about in water, either because, being in reality heavy, it is lifted
by the water or because, being light, it is made heavy by the air. Of its own inher-
ent property we know nothing, any more than of the constituent oils in an ointment.

VII. Based on Positions and Intervals and Locations

The seventh mode has reference to distances, positions, places and the occupants
of the places. In this mode things which are thought to be large appear small,
square things round; flat things appear to have projections, straight things to be
bent, and colorless colored. So the sun, on account of its distance, appears small,
mountains when far away appear misty and smooth, but when near at hand
rugged. Furthermore, the sun at its rising has a certain appearance, but has a dis-
similar appearance when in mid-heaven, and the same body one appearance in a
wood and another in open country. The image again varies according to the posi-
tion of the object, and a dove’s neck according to the way it is turned. Since, then,
it is not possible to observe these things apart from places and positions, their real
nature is unknowable.

VIII. Based on the Quantities and Formations

of the Underlying Objects
The eighth mode is concerned with quantities and qualities of things, say heat or
cold, swiftness or slowness, colorlessness or variety of colors. Thus wine taken in
moderation strengthens the body, but too much of it is weakening; and so with
food and other things.

IX. Based on the Frequency or Rarity of Occurrence

The ninth mode has to do with perpetuity, strangeness, or rarity. Thus earthquakes
are no surprise to those among whom they constantly take place; nor is the sun, for
it is seen every day.

X. Based on the Fact of Relativity

The tenth mode rests on inter-relation, e.g., between light and heavy, strong and
weak, greater and less, up and down. Thus that which is on the right is not so by
nature, but is so understood in virtue of its position with respect to something else;
for, if that change its position, the thing is no longer on the right. Similarly father
and brother are relative terms, day is relative to the sun, and all things relative to
our mind. Thus relative terms are in and by themselves unknowable. These, then,
are the ten modes of perplexity.1

IS ABSOLUTE SKEPTICISM A COHERENT POSITION?

Actually, there have been relatively few absolute skeptics. It is not hard to
see why. Critics of this position have been quick to charge that it is imprac-
tical and impossible. It is impractical because, from the purely practical

1
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, IX, 74, 79–88, tr. R. D. Hicks (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1925), II. I have supplied the headings from the longer account of
Sextus Empiricus.
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167
SKEPTICISM
SELF-REFUTING PROPOSITIONS
Propositions make claims, of course, about many things. When, however, a propo-
sition is itself one of the things it makes a claim about, it sometimes turns out to
be self-refuting. This means that if the proposition is taken seriously, then it backfires
on itself—if it’s true it must be false!
A well-known example of a self-refuting proposition is: “All generalizations are
false.” If all generalizations are false, then the claim itself, which is a generalization,
must be false. Especially puzzling is the proposition

The sentence in this box is false.

If it’s false, then it must be true; if it’s true, it must be false! Is the claim of the
absolute skeptic, “We can be certain of absolutely nothing,” another example of
a self-refuting proposition?

standpoint of getting along in the world, no one in his or her right mind
can actually live on such a premise. Our daily lives are pervaded by what
we take to be (whether they actually are or not) assurances, certainties, and Is absolute
in a word, all kinds of knowledge. Why, for that matter, are you reading this skepticism
book, studying philosophy, or studying anything, if not because you think impractical?
that something can be learned, understood, known? And where, on the
skeptical view, is there any place for responsible actions or serious commit-
ments and decisions?
More specifically, according to the critics, all absolute skeptics founder Is absolute
sooner or later on the utter impossibility of their position. It is impossible for skepticism even
possible?
several reasons. First, must not even the staunchest skeptic admit that some
things at least are certain? For example, that 2 ⫹ 2 ⫽ 4, and that whether or
not our senses deceive us about the actual world, we are at least certain of
the impressions? Second, does not the very assertion that we cannot know
anything actually necessitate that we do know some things? For example,
that we, who claim to know nothing, exist, and that the Law of Non-
Contradiction, without which nothing—not even the skeptic’s claim—can
be asserted at all, is certain?
Finally, and still more decisive, is the charge that the absolute skeptics’
assertion that they know nothing is strictly self-contradictory or self-refuting.
For they maintain, with the greatest assurance, that we cannot maintain any-
thing. Otherwise stated: If we cannot know anything, then how do we
know that? You might think of it as a self-destructing proposition. Stated
again: If absolute skepticism is true, then it must be false!
Pyrrho himself anticipated the similar criticism that his position implied
its own falsehood. He retorted (as some skeptical-type readers will be An infinite regress
tempted to retort) that he was not, in fact, even certain that he was not of ignorance
certain of anything. But, of course, that kind of talk could go on forever:
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168 We cannot know anything.

THE QUESTION We cannot know that we cannot know anything.
OF KNOWLEDGE
We cannot know that we cannot know that we cannot know anything.
.
.
.

Is it not necessary that there be at some point a basis for one’s claims? We
may, of course, argue over what counts as legitimate starting points—some
have called them “properly basic beliefs”—but must we not have some? Did
not Aristotle teach us a long time ago that an infinite regress of claims nulli-
fies all of them?
One of the best-known refutations of skepticism comes from St. Augustine
in the medieval period. He directs himself to the “Academicians,” a school of
skepticism in Augustine’s day led by Carneades. Against these skeptics,
Augustine argues for the certitude of logical truths, mathematical truths, the
reality of the world, and one’s own immediate perceptions. Which of these
counterattacks can you identify in the following extract from Augustine’s
Against the Academicians?

You say that nothing can be apprehended in philosophy and, in order to spread
your opinion far and wide, you make use of the disputes and contentions of philoso-
phers and you think that these dissensions furnish arms for you against them. . . .
I hold as certain either that there is or is not one world; and if there is not one,
there are either a finite or an infinite number of worlds. Carneades would teach
that that opinion resembles what is false. I likewise know that this world of ours has
been so arranged either because of the nature of bodies or by some providence,
and that it either always was and will be or that it began to exist and will by no
means cease existing, or that it does not have its origin in time but will have an
end, or that it has started to remain in existence and will remain but not forever,
and I know innumerable physical phenomena of this type. For those disjunctions
are true nor can anyone confuse them with any likeness to what is false. But take
something for granted, says the Academician. I do not wish to do so; for that is to

THE GREEK SKEPTICS

“The Greek Skeptics are known to us only in fragments of their writings, particu-
larly in references of them by their opponents. Pyrrho, the reputed founder of the
school, composed no writings, perhaps esteeming silence the becoming attitude
for a Skeptic. Yet Aenesidemus, nearly four hundred years later, wrote ‘eight books’
in summary of Pyrrho’s alleged teachings. Pyrrho is a peg on which Skeptics
generally hang their witty sayings, so that the word Pyrrhonism has come to be
used almost interchangeably with excessive Skepticism.”

Sterling P. Lamprecht, Our Philosophical Traditions (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts,

1955), pp. 92–93.
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say: abandon what you know; say what you do not know. But opinion is uncertain. 169
Assuredly it is better that it be uncertain than that it be destroyed; it surely is clear;
SKEPTICISM
it certainly now can be called false or true. I say that I know this opinion. Prove
to me that I do not know them, you who do not deny that such matters pertain to
philosophy and who maintain that none of these things can be known; say that
those disjunctive ideas are either false or have something in common with what is
false from which they cannot altogether be distinguished.
Whence, he says, do you know that this world exists if the senses are untrust-
worthy? Your methods of reasoning have never been able to disprove the power of
the senses in such a way as to convince us that nothing is seen and you certainly
have never dared to try such a thing, but you have exerted yourself to persuade
us urgently that (a thing) can be otherwise than it seems. And so I call this entire
thing, whatever it is, which surrounds us and nourishes us, this object, I say, which
appears before my eyes and which I perceive is made up of earth and sky, or what
appears to be earth and sky, the world. If you say nothing is seen by me, I shall
never err. For he is in error who rashly proves what seems to him. For you say that
what is false can be seen by those perceiving it; you do not say that nothing is seen.
Certainly every reason for arguing will be removed when it pleases you to settle the
point, if we not only know nothing but if nothing is even seen by us. If, however,
you deny that this object which appears to me is the world, you are making it a
controversy in regard to a name since I said that I called it the world. . . .
It now remains for us to inquire whether the senses report the truth when they
give information. Suppose that some Epicurean should say: “I have no complaint to
make in regard to the senses; for it is unjust to demand more of them than they can
give; moreover whatever the eyes can see they see in a reliable manner.” Then is
what they see in regard to an oar in the water true? It certainly is true. For when
the reason is added for its appearing thus, if the oar dipped in the water seemed
straight, I should rather blame my eyes for the false report. For they did not see
what should have been seen when such causes arose. What need is there of many
illustrations? This can also be said of the movement of towers, of the feathers of
birds, of innumerable other things. “And yet I am deceived if I give my assent,”
someone says. Do not give assent any further than to the extent that you can
persuade yourself that it appears true to you, and there is no deception. For I do
not see how the Academician can refute him who says: “I know that this appears
white to me, I know that my hearing is delighted with this, I know that this has an
agreeable odor, I know that this tastes sweet to me, I know that this feels cold to
me.” Tell us rather whether the leaves of the wild olive trees, which the goat so
persistently desires, are by their very nature bitter. O foolish man! Is not the goat
more reasonable? I do not know how they seem to the goat, but they are bitter
to me. What more do you ask for? But perhaps there is also some one to whom
they do not taste bitter. Do you trouble yourself about this? Did I say they were
bitter to everyone? I said they were bitter to me and I do not always maintain this.
For what if for some reason or other a thing which now tastes sweet to a person
should at another time seem bitter to him? I say this that, when a person tastes
something, he can honestly swear that he knows it is sweet to his palate or the
contrary, and that no trickery of the Greeks can dispossess him of that knowledge.
For who would be so bold as to say to me when I am longing for something with
great pleasure: Perhaps you do not taste it, but this is only a dream? Do I offer
any opposition to him? But still that would give me pleasure even in my sleep.
Therefore no likeness to what is false obscures that which I have said I know, and
both the Epicurean and the Cyrenaics may say many other things in favor of the
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170
THE QUESTION
OF KNOWLEDGE “KNOWING” IS NOT A SIMPLE MATTER
When you claim to “know” something, is it perfectly clear what you are claiming?
Actually, “to know” can mean many different things, and consequently there are
many different types of knowledge.
Knowing or knowledge falls into at least three broad categories: (1) knowledge
as personal acquaintance, as in the statement “I know Howard”; (2) knowledge as
mastery of information or data, as in “I know German”; and (3) knowledge as
involved in the claim that something or other is true (true-claims), as in “I know that
in fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”

Knowledge

Knowledge as Knowledge as Knowledge as

personal mastery of truth-claims
acquaintance data

Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, is concerned by and large (though

not exclusively) with problems posed by knowledge as truth-claims.

senses against which I have heard that the Academicians have not said anything.
But why should this concern me? If they so desire and if they can, let them even
do away with the argument with my approbation. Whatever argument they raise
against the senses has no weight against all philosophers. For there are those who
admit that whatever the mind receives through a sense of the body, can beget
opinion, but they deny (that it can beget) knowledge which, however, they wish to
be confined to the intellect and to live in the mind, far removed from the senses.
And perhaps that wise man whom we are seeking is in their number.2

Thus, at least, it has seemed to most philosophers: Whatever we may

think of other forms of skepticism, absolute skepticism, or the denial of the
very possibility of knowledge itself, must be rejected at the start. If so, the
question becomes not whether we can know, but what, how, and how much
we can know.

RORTY AND FRIENDS: HISTORICISM AND PLURALISM

Very different from the rather standard forms of skepticism mentioned
above is the sort—not so bombastic, but very influential these days—that calls
into question the very nature of the philosophical enterprise as traditionally

2
St. Augustine, Against the Academicians, III, 23–26, tr. Sister Mary Patricia Garvey (Milwaukee,
WI: Marquette University Press, 1957).
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practiced. More specifically, this skepticism challenges the presumption of 171

philosophy in conceiving itself to be a sort of umbrella discipline that sets SKEPTICISM
the epistemological rules and agenda for other disciplines. This challenge
presses for a much more restrained and modest role for the philosopher. The
challenge has been delivered most forcefully by the contemporary philoso-
pher Richard Rorty, aided and abetted by the contributions of other phi-
losophers, such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacques
Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas, and Paul Ricoeur.3
Actually, what we have here is a kind of philosophical version, or expres-
sion, of a more general movement called “postmodernism.” This larger Postmodernism
movement involves participants not only from philosophy “proper,” but
also from philosophy of science, religious studies, intellectual history, liter-
ary criticism, social theory, feminist criticism, and the like. What ties them
all together in a sort of common cause may be summarized in four points:
First is the wholistic manner in which they approach their agenda. Where
others see and emphasize distinctions and dichotomies, these thinkers see
connections and continuities—between subject and object, between theory
and practice, between fact and value, between areas of study, between
domains of culture. Second is their pragmatic insistence on the greater
importance of the practical over the theoretical. As Marx said, “Philoso-
phers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to
change it”; or as Nietzsche said, the ultimate test of a philosophy is whether
one can live by it; or, as Dewey said, the measure of the overall value of a
philosophy is whether it illuminates our ordinary life experiences and pre-
dicaments and makes our dealings with them more fruitful. Third, we have
the insistence on the relativity of vocabularies to historical periods and
traditions. Otherwise stated, this is the awareness and confession that our
perspectives, doctrines, intuitions, sensibilities, vision, paradigms, and
explanations are thoroughly conditioned by our Sitz in Leben, situation in
life, or, more idiomatically, “where we’re coming from.” Finally, fourth is
the rejection of the superscientific conception of facts as somehow neutral,
uninterpreted, and simply given. Rather, everything in our experience is
interpreted and “theory-laden” as soon as we experience it.
But back to Rorty. In spite of his reputation as one who has said farewell
to philosophy in general and epistemology in particular, he does indeed
have a philosophy. Or at least a metaphilosophy—that is, a philosophy about
philosophy. That he is a participant in the movement we have just charac-
terized is evident because his philosophy has been described as, historicist,
and pluralist. Let’s take a closer look at Rorty’s historicism and pluralism.
Historicism insists on the necessity of putting fundamental distinctions, Rorty’s historicism
values, and starting points within the historical contexts in which they first
appear, in order to understand what point or purpose they initially served
and to see whether they might illuminate our own thought and life and
alternatives. This is, obviously, a contextual approach. One important payoff

3
In the discussion that follows, I am greatly indebted to an unpublished paper by my col-
league, Professor Robert Rogers, “Rorty and Friends.”
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172 for Rorty is the rejection of foundationalism, an idea mentioned already in

THE QUESTION
Chapter 1 and exemplified in many places throughout this book. Founda-
OF KNOWLEDGE tionalism is the traditional attempt to find some ultimate ground or basis
for knowledge, choice, action, and criticism that lies outside all that is merely
contingent upon human practice, culture, and convention. Examples would
include Platonic Forms, Aristotelian essences, God’s revealed Word, Carte-
sian clear and distinct ideas, a priori truths, fundamental intuitions, and the
like. The truth is, says Rorty, that such attempts to escape history and con-
tingency to find some foundational, immutable point of departure merely
raise to the level of the universal and necessary some practice, standard, or
metaphor that happens to be dominant or suggestive at a particular time and
place. To be historicist, then, is to be skeptical about any possibility of getting
beyond the contingent and merely human. Traditional Philosophy—with a
capital “P”—must be replaced by the much more modest enterprise of
philosophy—with a lowercase “p.” The latter, as Rorty says in quoting Wil-
fred Sellars, is “an attempt to see how things, in the broadest possible sense
of the term, hang together, in the broadest possible sense of the term.”4
Rorty’s pluralism Closely related to Rorty’s historicism is his pluralism. As with his his-
toricism, this is a metaphilosophical thesis. According to pluralism (in
Rorty’s sense), there is no neutral ground from which one might judge
competing philosophical starting points. At the level of the most ultimate
disagreements, there is no refutation of radical skepticism that does not beg
the question; nor is there any neutral ground, acceptable to all parties, from
which we might resolve the differences between the realist and the prag-
matist, or the differences between the liberal and the totalitarian. Each of

Richard Rorty, advocate of

“edifying philosophy”

4
Wilfred Sellars, Science, Perception, and Reality (London: Routledge, 1976), p. 19.
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these competing positions is a genuine option; everything is up for grabs. 173

Nor, of course, will there be any point, according to philosophical pluralists, SKEPTICISM
in maintaining that nonetheless there is some truth here, whether or not
one can establish that truth in a neutral way. Such a claim could only be
that certain of these positions correctly represent the world, or human
nature—the way it really is—whether or not we are able to show that it is
that way, so what’s the point? Any such appeal to representationalism—the
view that the mind is a kind of mirror that captures and reflects what is
“really out there”—has no real explanatory force.
So, what’s left to do? Rorty’s answer: Philosophy’s job is to “keep the
conversation going” and to “muddle through.” To keep the conversation
going is not merely to keep talking, of course, but to keep introducing new
idioms, new metaphors, new readings of texts, and so on. In so doing, in
practicing what Rorty calls “edifying philosophy,” we attempt to keep phi- “Edifying
losophy and criticism from settling down into one language accepted as philosophy”
canonical, a fixed common framework for all philosophical inquiry. From
Rorty’s pluralistic point of view, it would be just as deplorable for philosophy
to settle down within one generally accepted vocabulary, defined and sanc-
tioned by the profession, as it would be—and at times has been—for the art
of painting, say, to become confined within the approved canons of some
religious—or governmentally—sponsored framework. No, what we have to
do is play off certain basic commitments against others, trying to show the
overall superiority of our own, but without the ability to appeal to principles
and values accepted by all parties to the debate.
Rorty’s best-known book is called Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Its
thesis is that the traditional image of the mind as able to reflect and repre-
sent accurately the reality “out there” is misguided and must be replaced
by an image that does justice, for example, to the points made above. Some
of these points are suggested in the following extract from Rorty’s book,
though the main point concerns the distinction between mainstream, con-
structive, “systematic” philosophy, centered in the traditional epistemology,
and the peripheral, reactive, “edifying” philosophy that is suspicious of
epistemology and exemplifies a very different and less pretentious
approach—and a desire for “open space.”

On the periphery of the history of modern philosophy, one finds figures who, without
forming a “tradition,” resemble each other in their distrust of the notion that man’s
essence is to be a knower of essences. Goethe, Kierkegaard, Santayana, William
James, Dewey, the later Wittgenstein, the later Heidegger, are figures of this sort.
They are often accused of relativism or cynicism. They are often dubious about
progress, and especially about the latest claim that such-and-such a discipline has
at last made the nature of human knowledge so clear that reason will now spread
throughout the rest of human activity. These writers have kept alive the suggestion
that, even when we have justified true belief about everything we want to know, we
may have no more than conformity to the norms of the day. They have kept alive
the historicist sense that this century’s “superstition” was the last century’s triumph of
reason, as well as the relativist sense that the latest vocabulary, borrowed from the
latest scientific achievement, may not express privileged representations of essences,
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174 but be just another of the potential infinity of vocabularies in which the world can
be described.
THE QUESTION
OF KNOWLEDGE The mainstream philosophers are the philosophers I shall call “systematic,” and
the peripheral ones are those I shall call “edifying.” These peripheral, pragmatic
philosophers are skeptical primarily about systematic philosophy, about the whole
project of universal commensuration. In our time, Dewey, Wittgenstein, and Hei-
degger are the great edifying, peripheral, thinkers. All three make it as difficult
as possible to take their thought as expressing views on traditional philosophical
problems, or as making constructive proposals for philosophy as a cooperative
and progressive discipline. They make fun of the classic picture of man, the picture
which contains systematic philosophy, the search for universal commensuration in
a final vocabulary. They hammer away at the holistic point that words take their
meanings from other words rather than by virtue of their representative character,
and the corollary that vocabularies acquire their privileges from the men who use
them rather than from their transparency to the real.
. . . Great systematic philosophers are constructive and offer arguments. Great
edifying philosophers are reactive and offer satires, parodies, aphorisms. They
know their work loses its point when the period they were reacting against is
over. They are intentionally peripheral. Great systematic philosophers, like great
scientists, build for eternity. Great edifying philosophers destroy for the sake of
their own generation. Systematic philosophers want to put their subject on the
secure path of a science. Edifying philosophers want to keep space open for
the sense of wonder which poets can sometimes cause—wonder that there is
something new under the sun, something which is not an accurate representation
of what was already there, something which (at least for the moment) cannot be
explained and can barely be described.5

Rorty’s “deconstruction” of philosophy has been criticized in various

ways. We mention here three. First, there are many philosophers who share
Rorty’s historicist and antifoundationalist bent but who don’t think that the
Is the attack on consequences are all that great: The end of foundationalism would hardly
foundationalism mean the end of philosophic problems. Take, for example, the traditional
relevant? problem of free will and determinism. The historicist-antifoundationalist
might say that this problem can be formulated only within certain concep-
tual schemes, such as the modern period, when the concepts of causality
and universal determinism became available, or in the Christian context,
with its idea of divine foreknowledge. Likewise, according to this view, it
is possible that at some point in the future the problem will no longer be
demanding or even intelligible. But surely it does not follow from any of
this that the problem is not a forceful and demanding one—an important
and real one—for us, at our point in history, confronted as we are with the
interpretation of our world and our experience, which is necessarily differ-
ent from that of another age and culture.
The second criticism involves Rorty’s rejection of necessary truths, or
nonnegotiable, nonarguable, universally binding affirmations. Historicism
and antifoundationalism may not themselves necessarily lead to a denial

5
Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1979), pp. 367–370.
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175
SKEPTICISM
POSTMODERNISM: “STAR TREK,
THE NEXT GENERATION”
“Modernity has been under attack since Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) lobbed
the first volley in the late nineteenth century. But the full-scale frontal assault did
not begin until the 1970s. The immediate impulse for the dismantling of the Enlight-
enment project came from the rise of deconstruction as a literary theory, which
influenced a new movement in philosophy.
“Deconstruction arose in response to a theory in literature called ‘structuralism.’
Structuralists theorized that cultures develop literary documents—texts—in an
attempt to provide structures of meaning by which people can make sense out of
the meaninglessness of their experience. Literature, therefore, provides categories
with which we can organize and understand our experience of reality. Further, all
societies and cultures possess a common, invariant structure.
“The deconstructionists (or poststructuralists) rejected the tenets of structural-
ism. Meaning is not inherent in a text itself, they argued, but emerges only as the
interpreter enters into dialogue with the text. Consequently, the meaning of a text
depends on the perspective of the one who enters into dialogue with it, so there
are as many interpretations of a text as readers (or readings).
“Postmodern philosophers applied the theories of the literary deconstructionists
to the world as a whole. Just as the meaning of a text depends on the reader,
so also reality can be ‘read’ differently depending on the perspectives of the
knowing selves that encounter it. This means that there is no one meaning of the
world, no transcendent center to reality as a whole.
“On the basis of ideas such as these, the French philosopher Jacques Derrida
called for the destruction of ‘onto-theology’ (the attempt to set forth ontological
descriptions of reality) as well as the ‘metaphysics of presence’ (the idea that a
transcendent something is present in reality). Because nothing transcendent
inheres in reality, all that emerges in the knowing process is the perspective of
the self who interprets reality.
“Michel Foucault added a moral twist to Derrida’s call. Every interpretation is
put forward by those in power, he theorized. Because ‘knowledge’ is always the
result of the use of power, to name something is to exercise power and hence
to do violence to what is named. Social institutions do violence by imposing their
own understanding on the centerless flux of experience. Thus, in contrast to
Bacon, who sought knowledge in order to gain power over nature, Foucault
claimed that every assertion of knowledge is an act of power.
“Richard Rorty, in turn, jettisoned the classic conception of truth as either the
mind or language mirroring nature. Truth is established neither by the correspon-
dence of an assertion with objective reality nor by the internal coherence of the
assertions themselves. Rorty argued that we should simply disband the search for
truth and be content with interpretation. Hence, he proposed to replace classic
‘systematic philosophy’ with ‘edifying philosophy,’ which ‘aims at continuing a con-
versation rather than at discovering truth.’
“The work of Derrida, Foucault, and Rorty reflects what seems to have become
the central dictum of postmodern philosophy: ‘All is difference.’ This view sweeps
(continued on next page)
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176
THE QUESTION away the ‘uni’ of the ‘universe’ sought by the Enlightenment project, the quest for
OF KNOWLEDGE
a unified grasp of objective reality. The world has no center, only differing view-
points and perspectives. In fact, even the concept of ‘world’ presupposes an
objective unity or a coherent whole that does not exist ‘out there.’ In the end, the
postmodern world is merely an arena of dueling texts.
“Although philosophers such as Derrida, Foucault, and Rorty have been influ-
ential on university campuses, they are only a part of a larger shift in thinking
reflected in Western culture. What unifies the otherwise diverse strands of
postmodernism is the questioning of the central assumptions of Enlightenment
epistemology.
“In the postmodern world, people are no longer convinced that knowledge is
inherently good. In eschewing the Enlightenment myth of inevitable progress, post-
modernism replaces the optimism of the last century with a gnawing pessimism. It
is simply not the case that ‘each and every day in each and every way we are
getting better and better.’ For the first time in many years, members of the emerging
generation do not share the conviction of their parents that we will solve the enor-
mous problems of the planet or that their economic situation will surpass that of
their parents. They know that life on the earth is fragile, and the continued exis-
tence of humankind is dependent on a new attitude which replaces the image of
conquest with cooperation.
“The new emphasis on wholism is related to the postmodern rejection of the
second Enlightenment assumption, namely, that truth is certain and hence purely
rational. The postmodern mind refuses to limit truth to its rational dimension and
thus dethrones the human intellect as the arbiter of truth. Because truth is non-
rational, there are other ways of knowing, including through the emotions and the
intuition.
“Finally, the postmodern mind no longer accepts the Enlightenment belief that
knowledge is objective. Knowledge cannot be merely objective, because the
postmodern model of the world does not see the universe as mechanistic and
dualistic, but historical, relational, and personal. The world is not simply an objective
given that is ‘out there,’ waiting to be discovered and known. Instead it is relative,
indeterminate, and participatory.
“In rejecting the modern assumption of the objectivity of knowledge, the post-
modern mind likewise dismisses the Enlightenment ideal of the dispassionate,
autonomous knower. Knowledge is not eternal and culturally neutral. Nor is it
waiting to be discovered by scientists who bring their rational talents to the given-
ness of the world. Rather, knowledge is historically and culturally implicated, and
consequently, our knowledge is always incomplete.
“The postmodern world view operates with a community-based understanding
of truth. Not only the specific truths we accept, but even our understanding of truth,
are a function of the community in which we participate. This basis in community,
in turn, leads to a new conception of the relativity of truth. Not only is there no
absolute truth; more significantly, truth is relative to the community in which we
participate. With this in view, the postmodern thinker has given up the Enlighten-
ment quest for the one, universal, supracultural, timeless truth. In its place, truth is
what fits within a specific community; truth consists in the ground rules that facilitate
the well-being of the community in which one participates.
(continued on next page)
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177
“The postmodern perspective is reflected in the second ‘Star Trek’ series, ‘The SKEPTICISM
Next Generation.’ The humans who make up the original Enterprise are now joined
by humanoid life forms from other parts of the universe. This change represents
the broader universality of postmodernity: humans are no longer the only advanced
beings operative throughout the cosmos. More importantly, the understanding of
the quest for knowledge has changed. Humankind is not capable of completing the
mandate alone; nor does the burden of the quest fall to humans alone. Hence, the
crew of the Enterprise symbolizes the ‘new ecology’ of humankind in partnership
with the universe. Their mission is no longer ‘to boldly go where no man has gone
before,’ but ‘where no one has gone before.’
“In ‘The Next Generation,’ Data replaces Spock. In a sense, Data is Spock, the
fully rational thinker capable of superhuman intellectual feats. Despite his seemingly
perfect intellect, rather than being the transcendent human ideal Spock embodies,
he is an android—a subhuman machine. His desire is not only to understand what
it means to be human, but also to become human. However, he lacks certain
necessary aspects of humanness, including a sense of humor, emotion, and the
ability to dream (at least until he learns that his maker programmed dreaming into
his circuitry).
“Although Data often provides valuable assistance in dealing with problems, he
is only one of several who contribute to finding solutions. In addition to the master
of rationality, the Enterprise crew includes persons skilled in the affective and
intuitive dimensions of human life. Especially prominent is Counselor Troi, a woman
gifted with the ability to perceive the hidden feelings of others.
“The new voyages of the Enterprise lead its varied crew into a postmodern uni-
verse. In this new world, time is no longer simply linear, appearance is not neces-
sarily reality, and the rational is not always to be trusted. In contrast to the older
series, which in typical modern fashion generally ignores questions of God and
religious belief, the postmodern world of ‘The Next Generation’ also includes the
supernatural, embodied in the strange character “Q.” Yet its picture of the divine is
not simply that of traditional Christian theology. Although possessing the classical
attributes of divine power (such as omniscience), the godlike being ‘Q’ is morally
ambiguous, displaying both benevolence and a bent toward cynicism and self-
gratification.”

Stanley J. Grenz, “Star Trek and the Next Generation: Postmodernism and the Future of
Evangelical Theology,” CRUX 30 (March 1994), pp. 24–32.

of the existence of necessary truths. What they insist on is a plurality of

possible starting points for philosophy, a plurality of basic language games
or conceptual schemes. Insofar as his historicism and antifoundationalism
are concerned, Rorty might have freely granted a whole host of truths that Does Rorty himself
are necessary truths. His particular version of pragmatism, for example, invoke necessary
insists on a rather thoroughgoing wholism, within which there seems to be truths?
little place for necessary truths. Ironically, however, many of the points that
Rorty himself insists on have at least the appearance of being, if true, then
necessarily true.
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178 Consider, for example, his claims that there is no neutral ground from
THE QUESTION
which one might decide the issues between pragmatism and realism; that
OF KNOWLEDGE “there is no epistemological difference between truth about what ought to
be and truth about what is”; that there is no single, right way to speak
about nature; that we need to give up the idea that “intellectual or political
progress is rational, in any sense of rational which is neutral between
vocabularies”; and that “there is no noncircular theoretical backup for the
belief that cruelty is horrible.” Whether or not one agrees with these posi-
tions, one has to agree that they at least appear to be necessarily true, if
true at all. Rorty’s wholism, however, doesn’t seem able to provide for such
necessary truths. Furthermore, contrary to the character of his whole cri-
tique, not only does his philosophy contain a great many such statements,
so central to his whole outlook, but many of them are clearly epistemo-
logical in nature. Nor are they all merely negative in form, as in his claim
that new metaphors extend the realm of possibilities. In spite of Rorty’s
best efforts, then, the critic concludes that epistemology, of some sort, and
maybe even a traditional sort, appears to be an important part of Rorty’s
own philosophy.
Is Rorty really Third, it is understandable that Rorty has been perceived and repre-
a relativist? sented by many as a relativist. We have seen already that skepticism is fed
by the relativity of reason, sense perception, and custom. In the case of
Rorty and friends, however, the conclusion seems to be not only that we
can have no absolute knowledge of anything but, at the same time, that we
can have absolute knowledge of everything—all propositions must be true.
As Alvin Plantinga says, this follows from Rorty’s well-known definition,
“Truth is what my peers will let me get away with saying.”

One widely popular version of relativism is Richard Rorty’s notion that truth
is what my peers will let me get away with saying. On this view what is
true for me, naturally enough, might be false for you; my peers might let me
get away with saying something that your peers won’t let you get away with
saying: for of course we may have different peers. (And even if we had the
same peers, there is no reason why they would be obliged to let you and
me get away with saying the same things.) Although this view is very much
au courant and with-it in the contemporary intellectual world, it has conse-
quences that are peculiar, not to say preposterous. For example, most of us
think that the Chinese authorities did something monstrous in murdering those
hundreds of young people in Tiananmen Square, and then compounded their
wickedness by denying that they had done it. On Rorty’s view, however, this
is an uncharitable misunderstanding. What the authorities were really doing, in
denying that they had murdered those students, was something wholly praise-
worthy: they were trying to bring it about that the alleged massacre never
happened. For they were trying to see to it that their peers would let them
get away with saying that the massacre never happened; that is, they were
trying to make it true that it never happened; and who can fault them for
that? The same goes for those contemporary neo-Nazis who claim that there
was no holocaust; from a Rortian view, they are only trying to see to it that
such a terrible thing never happened; and what could be more commendable
than that? This way of thinking has real possibilities for dealing with poverty
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and disease: if only we let each other get away with saying that there isn’t 179
any poverty and disease—no cancer or AIDS, let’s say—then it would be true
SKEPTICISM
that there isn’t any; and if it were true that there isn’t any, then of course
there wouldn’t be any. That seems vastly cheaper and less cumbersome than
the conventional methods of fighting poverty and disease. At a more personal
level, if you have done something wrong, it is not too late: lie about it, thus
bringing it about that your peers will let you get away with saying that you
didn’t do it, then it will be true both that you didn’t do it, and, as an added
bonus, that you didn’t even lie about it.6

Here Plantinga defends objective truth from the skepticism of Rorty and
other postmodernists. But getting beyond skepticism is only the first
step; then we must figure out the basis of knowledge, which is where we
turn next.

CHAPTER 7 IN REVIEW
SUMMARY
Skepticism means a doubting or incredulous state of mind. It comes in
many levels of intensity, and all of us are skeptical about something or other
at one time or another. A dash of skepticism is surely healthy inasmuch as
it serves as an antidote to gullibility. As with gullibility, however, overdoses
of skepticism can be detrimental to one’s philosophical health.
It is useful to distinguish between commonsense skepticism, philosoph-
ical skepticism, and absolute skepticism. The latter, which denies that we
can know anything whatsoever, was exemplified in the ancient Pyrrho and
his school. The arguments for skepticism are usually based on the relativity
(or differences of opinion) in reason, sense perception, and custom. Amid
such disagreements, what can one do but suspend judgment and abandon
all hope of knowledge?
Not so fast, say those who charge that, at least, absolute skepticism is
both impractical and impossible. It is impractical, they say, because no one
can live a coherent life except on the assumption that some things can be
known. It is impossible not only because we surely have certainty about
such things as our own existence and impressions, but also because the
absolute skeptics affirm with complete conviction their thesis that nothing can
be known and are therefore hopelessly self-contradictory. Similar reasoning
is employed by St. Augustine, whose attack on skepticism is perhaps one
of the best known.
Richard Rorty represents the mood of postmodernism, and along with
that, a broader kind of skepticism. Here, the traditional image of the mind
as a reflector of reality is challenged in favor of the more modest image of

6
Alvin Plantinga, “The Twin Pillars of Christian Scholarship,” in The Stob Lectures of Calvin
College and Seminary, 1989–1990 (Grand Rapids, MI: Calvin College: 1989) (pamphlet).
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180 the mind as always struggling toward the truth, employing whatever sug-
THE QUESTION
gestive tools it possesses, and conditioned by the culture of a particular
OF KNOWLEDGE time and place. In such a view, philosophy should both divest itself of
grandiose illusions about its role among the disciplines and settle for a kind
of “knowledge” that is much less knowledge in the traditional sense and
much more in the nature of an ongoing conversation.

BASIC IDEAS
• The meaning of “skepticism”
• Three kinds of skepticism
Commonsense skepticism
Philosophical skepticism
Absolute skepticism
• Pyrrho as an example of absolute skepticism
• Historical sources of Pyrrhonic skepticism
• The main argument for skepticism
• Pyrrho’s Ten Modes
• Arguments against absolute skepticism
Absolute skepticism as impractical
Absolute skepticism as impossible
• Self-refuting propositions
• Augustine’s refutations of skepticism
• General features of postmodernism
• Rorty’s historicism
• Rorty’s pluralism
• “Edifying philosophy”
• Three criticisms of Rorty

TEST YOURSELF
1. Why is a certain amount of ordinary skepticism a healthy sign?
2. The main argument for skepticism rests upon relativity. What does this
mean? Give some examples from the Ten Modes.
3. Which of the following does not fit into Rorty’s view: (a) wholism,
(b) nonnegotiable, certain truths, (c) metaphilosophical ideas, or (d) his-
torical relativity of truth?
4. True or false: Aristotle was a skeptic.
5. One philosopher who argued, against the Skeptics, that it is certain that
the world either exists or does not exist was______.
6. Why do some claim that absolute skepticism is self-refuting?
7. True or false: By “pluralism,” Rorty means that there is no neutral ground
on which we may evaluate various views.
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QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION 181

• St. Augustine has been quoted here as a great opponent of skepticism. SKEPTICISM
In another work, entitled On the Advantages of Believing, he argues that
no practical or intellectual progress can be expected from one who is
unwilling ever to accept certain claims on the authority of others. What
do you think of this position? What might be said for it and against it?
• How do you come out on the question of skepticism? If you are per-
suaded by the arguments against skepticism, then what is the relevance,
for epistemology, of the relativity of reason, perception, and custom?

FOR FURTHER READING

Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes. The Modes of Scepticism: Ancient Texts and
Modern Interpretations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. An
“introduction to sceptical philosophy” by means of a historical survey
of the Greek skeptics and chapters on each of the Ten Modes.
D. M. Armstrong. Belief, Truth, and Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1973. Ch. 11. A somewhat advanced discussion of “The
Infinite Regress of Reasons,” emphasizing the several possible responses
to the problem.
A. J. Ayer. The Problem of Knowledge. London: Macmillan, 1958. Ch. 2. An
instructive and readable account of “Skepticism and Certainty,” con-
cerned primarily with “philosophical skepticism,” by the best-known
logical positivist.
Christopher Butler. Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2002. Accessible and fair-minded overview of
postmodern thought.
Lawrence E. Cahoone. From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology. Sec-
ond ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002. A collection of landmark essays on
the development of postmodern philosophy.
Frederick Copleston. A History of Philosophy. Baltimore: Newman Press,
1946–1974. II, Ch. 4. A brief but authoritative account of St. Augustine’s
theory of knowledge, including his attack against skepticism.
A. C. Ewing. The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy. New York: Collier
Books, 1962. Ch. 1. An introductory chapter on the nature of philosophy,
containing a short section on “Scepticism” that argues simply and force-
fully against radical skepticism.
N. L. Gifford. When in Rome: An Introduction to Relativism and Knowledge.
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1983. A popular-level
examination and refutation of epistemological relativism.
Alan R. Malachowski (ed.). Reading Rorty: Critical Responses to “Philosophy
and the Mirror of Nature” (and Beyond). Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2002.
Arne Naess. Scepticism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968. Discussion
of all aspects of skepticism, including a sympathetic chapter on specifically
Pyrrhonic skepticism.
Michail A. Slote. Reason and Scepticism. London: George Allen & Unwin,
1970. A refutation of specifically epistemological skepticism.
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182 Peter Unger. Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.
THE QUESTION A contemporary and sustained defense of a general form of skepticism,
OF KNOWLEDGE concluding with a chapter on “The Impossibility of Truth.”
Michael Williams. Groundless Belief: An Essay on the Possibility of Epistemology.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977. Chs. 1 and 3. Considers
“radical skepticism” and the problem of an infinite regress of justification
in relation to contemporary epistemological issues.
*In addition, see the relevant articles (“Skepticism,” “Sociology of Knowledge,”
etc.) in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig (London:
Routledge, 1998), and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato
.stanford.edu.
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CHAPTER 8

THE WAY
OF REASON

W
here does knowledge come from? What is the basis of knowl-
edge? The question of the origin of knowledge is one of the most
important questions of philosophy. In fact, it is a crucial question. A crucial question:
As we have said already in the introduction to Part Two, how you answer this What is the basis
question will have everything to do with the rest of your philosophy. of knowledge?

TWO MAIN THEORIES

ABOUT THE BASIS OF KNOWLEDGE
Throughout the history of philosophy, thinkers have generally answered
this question in two ways. On the one side, we have those philosophers
who, in one way or another and in varying degrees, have emphasized reason
as the source of knowledge (“inside-out” philosophers). On the other side,
we have those philosophers who, in one way or another and in varying
degrees, have emphasized experience as the source of knowledge (“outside-in”
philosophers). The position stressing the role of the intellect or reason is
called rationalism, and those holding to this position are called rationalists Empiricism
(from the Latin word ratio, “reason”). The position stressing the role of sense and rationalism
experience is called empiricism, and those holding this view are called
empiricists (from the Greek empeiria, “experience”).
A special note is in order regarding the labels “rationalism” and “ratio-
nalist” because these terms, like so many other important terms, bear more
183
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184 than one meaning. Here again we must distinguish between a loose and
THE QUESTION
a stricter sense of these terms. We have already encountered the loose
OF KNOWLEDGE sense of “rationalism” in the Introduction. There we said that rationalism
is a dominating interest in reasoning, reflecting, criticizing, examining, and
so on. This is what we meant when we defined philosophy as the attempt
to provide, within limits, an essentially rational interpretation of reality as
a whole, and when we characterized all philosophers as rationalists. Now,
however, in the stricter or more technical sense of the word, rationalism
is an epistemological theory, specifically a theory about the basis of knowledge.
Note, then, that while a rationalist in the strict sense is necessarily a ratio-
nalist in the loose sense, it is not necessarily the case that a rationalist in
the loose sense will be a rationalist in the strict sense—he or she may,
rather, be an empiricist. As a term designating a theory about the basis of
knowledge, rationalism is on a par with empiricism. Both empiricism and
rationalism (in this technical sense) answer the question What is the basis
of knowledge?, though in radically different ways.

REASON AS THE BASIS OF KNOWLEDGE

Rationalism: a more We will begin with rationalism. Above we said that rationalism emphasizes
accurate definition reason as the source of knowledge. This may now be refined somewhat:
Rationalism is the belief that at least some knowledge about reality can be
acquired through reason, independently of sense experience.
It is important here to stress, first, that the rationalist believes that some
Knowledge about knowledge about reality can be acquired through reason alone. Few rationalists
reality . . . have ever insisted that sense experience plays absolutely no role whatsoever
in the acquisition of knowledge. We will say more about this later, but for the
moment just consider: Even if you are a strict rationalist, how do you know
that swans are white? That in fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus
sailed the ocean blue? Obviously there is much about the world that we could
not possibly know apart from making observations, lighting Bunsen burners,
taking field trips, and so on. The staunchest rationalists admit this. What they
insist on is that at least some of the truths about reality (and usually the most
important truths about reality) are known apart from sense experience.
. . . through reason Second, we must stress that for rationalists reason is the source of at least
some of our knowledge about reality. We do have, after all, knowledge that
is not about reality. For example, we know that all barking dogs bark; that
a triangle has three sides, that all bachelors are unmarried; and in short,
that any statement of the form “A is A” is true. Such statements, as we will
emphasize later, are absolutely and universally and necessarily true. But
that is because they are true by definition—denying the statement involves
a contradiction. As such they have no bearing on reality; they neither affirm
nor deny the existence of anything; they must be true no matter what. Such
truths do not depend upon sense experience; all you have to do is look at
the proposition to see that it must be true. The rationalist, though, claims
that at least some propositions that are about reality—that affirm or deny
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185
THE WAY
HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOU KNOW? OF REASON

Epistemology is concerned primarily with the kind of knowledge involved in truth-

claims—that is, when the truth or falsity of something is asserted.
But truth-claims come in many colors, and, therefore, so does this kind of knowledge.
Consider, for example, the following claims. In each of them something is claimed to
be “known,” but the “knowing” in each is quite different from all the others.

• I know that in fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
• I know that I exist.
• I know that God exists.
• I know that all swans are white.
• I know that this table exists.
• I know that my Redeemer liveth.
• I know that every event must have a cause.
• I know that you are suffering.
• I know that all barking dogs bark.
• I know that it will rain tomorrow.

Obviously, the kind of knowledge involved in a straightforward historical claim

like “I know that in fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean
blue” is quite different from the kind of knowledge delivered through an introspec-
tive intuition, as in “I know that I exist.” And both of these are quite different from
the knowledge involved in the religious assertion “I know that my Redeemer
liveth.” And so on.
To see that these claims really involve quite different meanings of “know,” just
ask yourself in each case “how” that particular thing would be known—what sorts
of considerations should be brought to bear, and so on.

the existence of something—may be known independently of sense experi-

ence, through reason alone.
Do you yourself possess any universal and certain knowledge about
reality? Think of some possible examples:

• Every event must have a cause.

• It is morally wrong to kill people for the fun of it.
• All individuals are endowed with basic rights.

Can you derive such universal and certain knowledge from the limited,
fluctuating, and relative evidence of sense experience? Where, then, does
such knowledge come from?
As two classic examples of rationalism we may mention Plato and
Descartes. We have, of course, already dealt with the metaphysical doctrines
of these thinkers in Part One, where we discussed Plato’s theory of the Forms
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186
THE QUESTION
OF KNOWLEDGE RATIONALISM (THE STRICT SENSE)
The theory that some knowledge about actual existing things is delivered by
reason rather than sense experience.

and Descartes’ mind-matter dualism. But now we consider the epistemo-

logical side of their philosophies.

THE RATIONALISM OF PLATO

Along with many other Greek philosophers, Plato believed that the reason,
which distinguishes humans from the lower animals, comprises the essen-
tial nature of the human being. (The classical definition of man as “a ratio-
nal animal” comes from these Greek philosophers.) Human good and
happiness, therefore, lie in the activity and fulfillment of the rational fac-
ulty. That is, they lie in contemplation and knowledge. On the other hand,
it will be recalled from our earlier discussion that Plato believed that the
only proper object of knowledge, or the only thing that can really be known,
is Being. This means that we can have no real knowledge of the world about
us, the relative and fluctuating world of Becoming. Of this world we have
only opinion, not knowledge.
Now, Plato has Socrates announce in the Phaedo that not only do real
philosophers have no fear of death, but they actually desire and look for-
ward to it. In fact, real philosophers view their lives as lifelong preparations
Why philosophers for death. Why? Because as long as we are in this world we are held back
desire death from the attainment of real knowledge and therefore happiness. And why
is this? For one thing, our bodies are a constant distraction from the higher
pursuit of knowledge. The pursuit of knowledge does, after all, require
some time and attention, but it seems that most of our time is taken up by
the body: We must feed it, clothe it, cleanse it, and pay all sorts of attention
to it. For another, and this is more important for the present point, as long
as our souls are imprisoned in our bodies they have a natural tendency (if
not necessity) to peer out, as it were, through the only windows of the
prison, the five senses. As a result, our souls become contaminated by the
distortions, illusions, and relativities of the sensible world.
Bodily hindrances Plato himself represents the twofold problem posed by the body as follows:
to knowledge
Now take the acquisition of knowledge. Is the body a hindrance or not, if one takes
it into partnership to share an investigation? What I mean is this. Is there any certainty
in human sight and hearing, or is it true, as the poets are always dinning into our
ears, that we neither hear nor see anything accurately? Yet if these senses are not
clear and accurate, the rest can hardly be so, because they are all inferior to the first
two. Don’t you agree?
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Certainly. 187
Then when is it that the soul attains to truth? When it tries to investigate any-
THE WAY
thing with the help of the body, it is obviously led astray. OF REASON
Quite so.
Is it not in the course of reflection, if at all, that the soul gets a clear view of
facts?
Yes.
Surely the soul can best reflect when it is free of all distractions such as hear-
ing or sight or pain or pleasure of any kind—that is, when it ignores the body
and becomes as far as possible independent, avoiding all physical contacts and
associations as much as it can, in its search for reality.
That is so.
Then here too—in despising the body and avoiding it, and endeavoring to
become independent—the philosopher’s soul is ahead of all the rest.
It seems so.
Here are some more questions, Simmias. Do we recognize such a thing as
absolute uprightness?
Indeed we do.
And absolute beauty and goodness too?
Of course.
Have you ever seen any of these things with your eyes?
Certainly not, said he.
Well, have you ever apprehended them with any other bodily sense? By “them”
I mean not only absolute tallness or health or strength, but the real nature of any
given thing—what it actually is. Is it through the body that we get the truest percep-
tion of them? Isn’t it true that in any inquiry you are likely to attain more nearly
to knowledge of your object in proportion to the care and accuracy with which you
have prepared yourself to understand that object in itself?
Certainly.
Don’t you think that the person who is likely to succeed in this attempt most
perfectly is the one who approaches each object, as far as possible, with the
unaided intellect, without taking account of any sense of sight in his thinking, or
dragging any other sense into his reckoning—the man who pursues the truth by
applying his pure and unadulterated thought to the pure and unadulterated object,
cutting himself off as much as possible from his eyes and ears and virtually all
the rest of his body, as an impediment which by its presence prevents the soul
from attaining to truth and clear thinking? Is not this the person, Simmias, who
will reach the goal of reality, if anybody can?
What you say is absolutely true, Socrates, said Simmias.
All these considerations, said Socrates, must surely prompt serious philosophers to
review the position in some such way as this. It looks as though this were a bypath
leading to the right track. So long as we keep to the body and our soul is contami-
nated with this imperfection, there is no chance of our ever attaining satisfactorily to
our object, which we assert to be truth. In the first place, the body provides us with
innumerable distractions in the pursuit of our necessary sustenance, and any diseases
which attack us hinder our quest for reality. Besides, the body fills us with loves and
desires and fears and all sorts of fancies and a great deal of nonsense, with the
result that we literally never get an opportunity to think at all about anything. Wars
and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires.
All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth, and the reason why we have
to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service. That is why,
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188 on all these accounts, we have so little time for philosophy. Worst of all, if we do
obtain any leisure from the body’s claims and turn to some line of inquiry, the body
THE QUESTION
OF KNOWLEDGE intrudes once more into our investigations, interrupting, disturbing, distracting, and
preventing us from getting a glimpse of the truth. We are in fact convinced that if
we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and
contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself.1

O happy day, then, when the soul will finally be set free from the body by
death! Only then will it come into the uninterrupted enjoyment of absolute
knowledge of that other world, the world of truth and reality. In the mean-
time, we must minimize as much as possible the contaminations of the
senses.

It seems, to judge from the argument, that the wisdom which we desire and upon
which we profess to have set our hearts will be attainable only when we are dead,
and not in our lifetime. If no pure knowledge is possible in the company of the body,
then either it is totally impossible to acquire knowledge, or it is only possible after
death, because it is only then that the soul will be separate and independent of the
body. It seems that so long as we are alive, we shall continue closest to knowledge
if we avoid as much as we can all contact and association with the body, except
when they are absolutely necessary, and instead of allowing ourselves to become
infected with its nature, purify ourselves from it until God himself gives us deliverance.
In this way, by keeping ourselves uncontaminated by the follies of the body, we shall
probably reach the company of others like ourselves and gain direct knowledge
of all that is pure and uncontaminated—that is, presumably, of truth. For one who
is not pure himself to attain to the realm of purity would no doubt be a breach of
universal justice.2

Here then is a clearly rationalist view of knowledge. Sense experience is

disdained as a hindrance to real knowledge. And true reality, by its very
nature as transcendent and nonsensible, can be grasped adequately by the
intellect alone.
But Plato’s rationalism becomes clear in yet another way. Even in this
world, knowledge—insofar as it is knowledge—is possible only because
The theory it is innate—that is, inborn. The theory of innate ideas is a popular one
of innate ideas among rationalists. But it is important not to confuse innate ideas with
instinct. Instinct is not a result of a cognitive activity; rather, it is the sub-
cognitive and purely mechanistic behavior that enhances survival. Further,
in none of its forms does the doctrine of innate ideas mean that the infant
child is born into the world with its mind burgeoning with Einstein’s
theory of relativity. It usually means that fundamental ideas or principles
are built right into the mind itself and require only to be developed and
brought to maturity.

1
Plato, Phaedo, 65A–66E, in The Last Days of Socrates, tr. Hugh Tredennick (Harmondsworth:
Penguin Classics, 1954).
2
Ibid., 66E–67B.
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In contrast to his friends, Socrates is glad at the prospect of his death,

for death is the liberation of the soul from the body, and this means the fulfillment
189
of his lifelong philosophical goal: knowledge. THE WAY
OF REASON

Plato himself sought to prove the immortality of the soul, or, more accu-
rately, the preexistence of the soul, on the grounds that we have in our minds
certain ideas that we could not possibly have derived from sense experience
alone. Such an idea is that of equality. Where, Plato asks, did we acquire
this and similar ideas? Certainly not from the sensible world around us,
for there is no instance of absolute equality to be found anywhere in this
world. Of course the sensible world is full of things that are more or less
equal, but you will search this world over, or any other world in space and
time, and never come across an instance of absolute equality. We are back
in the world of Heraclitus, where everything flows, and in Plato’s world of
Becoming, which is populated by imperfect copies or mere approximations
to the true Realities, the eternal Forms.
Plato concludes that the only way to account for this knowledge is to
believe that prior to its embodiment in this world, the soul was in the pres-
ence of the Forms, where it acquired knowledge of the Realities, including
knowledge of Equality. This knowledge was lost or forgotten through the
trauma of birth, though to some degree “recollected” subsequent to birth on Knowledge
the occasion of our experiences with more-or-less-equality—that is, Equality as recollection
as it is encountered imperfectly in the sensible world. It is important to note
that Plato’s theory of knowledge as recollection, although it certainly empha-
sizes the innateness of our fundamental ideas, also accords some role to
sense experience after all. At least in this life, no knowledge could be enjoyed
at all were it not for the initial stimulation of the senses. The role of sense
As a possible theory of innate knowledge, you might find Plato’s doctrine experience
of recollection a bit silly. On the other hand, one should always be cautious
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190 in judging as silly the ideas of those who have exerted enormous influence
THE QUESTION
on the way we ourselves think today. Plato’s theory is both historically and
OF KNOWLEDGE philosophically interesting, and his own statement of it is worthy of close
attention:
We admit, I suppose, that there is such a thing as equality—not the equality of stick
to stick and stone to stone, and so on, but something beyond all that and distinct
from it—absolute equality. Are we to admit this or not?
Yes indeed, said Simmias, most emphatically.
And do we know what it is?
Certainly.
Where did we get our knowledge? Was it not from the particular examples that
we mentioned just now? Was it not from seeing equal sticks or stones or other equal
objects that we got the notion of equality, although it is something quite distinct
from them? Look at it in this way. Is it not true that equal stones and sticks some-
times, without changing in themselves, appear equal to one person and unequal to
another?
Certainly.
Well, now, have you ever thought that things which were absolutely equal were
unequal, or that equality was inequality?
No, never, Socrates.
Then these equal things are not the same as absolute equality.
Not in the least, as I see it, Socrates.
And yet it is these equal things that have suggested and conveyed to you your
knowledge of absolute equality, although they are distinct from it?
Perfectly true.
Whether it is similar to them or dissimilar?
Certainly.
It makes no difference, said Socrates. So long as the sight of one thing suggests
another to you, it must be a cause of recollection, whether the two things are alike
or not.
Quite so.
Well, now, he said, what do we find in the case of the equal sticks and other
things of which we were speaking just now? Do they seem to us to be equal in the
sense of absolute equality, or do they fall short of it in so far as they only approxi-
mate to equality? Or don’t they fall short at all?
They do, said Simmias, a long way.
Suppose that when you see something you say to yourself, This thing which I
can see has a tendency to be like something else, but it falls short and cannot
be really like it, only a poor imitation. Don’t you agree with me that anyone who
receives that impression must in fact have previous knowledge of that thing which
he says that the other resembles, but inadequately?
Certainly he must.
Very well, then, is that our position with regard to equal things and absolute
equality?
Exactly.
Then we must have had some previous knowledge of equality before the time
when we first saw equal things and realized that they were striving after equality,
but fell short of it.
That is so.
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And at the same time we are agreed also upon this point, that we have not and 191
could not have acquired this notion of equality except by sight or touch or one of
THE WAY
the other senses. I am treating them as being all the same. OF REASON
They are the same, Socrates, for the purpose of our argument.
So it must be through the senses that we obtained the notion that all sensible
equals are striving after absolute equality but falling short of it. Is that correct?
Yes, it is.
So before we began to see and hear and use our other senses we must some-
where have acquired the knowledge that there is such a thing as absolute equality.
Otherwise we could never have realized, by using it as a standard for comparison,
that all equal objects of sense are desirous of being like it, but are only imperfect
copies.
That is the logical conclusion, Socrates.
Did we not begin to see and hear and possess our other senses from the moment
of birth?
Certainly.
But we admitted that we must have obtained our knowledge of equality before
we obtained them.
Yes.
So we must have obtained it before birth.
So it seems.
Then if we obtained it before our birth, and possessed it when we were born,
we had knowledge, both before and at the moment of birth, not only of equal-
ity and relative magnitudes, but of all absolute standards. Our present argument
applies no more to equality than it does to absolute beauty, goodness, uprightness,
holiness, and, as I maintain, all those characteristics which we designate in our
discussions by the term “absolute.” So we must have obtained knowledge of all
these characteristics before our birth.
That is so.
And unless we invariably forget it after obtaining it we must always be born
knowing and continue to know all through our lives, because “to know” means simply
to retain the knowledge which one has acquired, and not to lose it. Is not what
we call “forgetting” simply the loss of knowledge, Simmias?
Most certainly, Socrates.
And if it is true that we acquired our knowledge before our birth, and lost it
at the moment of birth, but afterward, by the exercise of our senses upon sensible
objects, recover the knowledge which we had once before, I suppose that what

INNATE IDEAS
Rationalists, who believe that we can have existential knowledge (knowledge of
the actual existence or nonexistence of things) apart from sense experience, are
surely obligated to account for this knowledge. One way is through a doctrine of
innate ideas. “Innate” means “inborn”; thus theories of innate ideas are theories
that teach that the mind in some way possesses at least fundamental ideas or
intellectual structures from birth. The mind at birth is not a “blank tablet.”
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192
THE QUESTION “Most of all I was delighted with Mathematics because of the certainty of its
OF KNOWLEDGE
demonstrations and the evidence of its reasoning.”
—Descartes

we call learning will be the recovery of our knowledge, and surely we should be
right in calling this recollection.3

THE RATIONALISM OF DESCARTES

Another classic example of a rationalist philosopher is Descartes. As with
Plato, we have already considered Descartes’ theory of reality and thus have
already been introduced to at least something of his theory of knowledge.
It will be recalled that Descartes was repelled by the contradictions he
discovered among philosophers, but was attracted by the certainties he
The model discovered in mathematics:
of mathematics
Most of all was I delighted with Mathematics because of the certainty of its demon-
strations and the evidence of its reasoning; but I did not yet understand its true use,
and, believing that it was of service only in the mechanical arts, I was astonished
that, seeing how firm and solid was its basis, no loftier edifice had been reared
thereupon.4

This preoccupation with mathematics immediately betrays Descartes’ ratio-

nalist bent. For the reason the truths of mathematics and the proofs of geom-
etry are certain is that they are untainted by the tentativeness and fluctuations
and relativities and illusions of sense experience. They are certain—rationally
certain. Under the spell of mathematics, Descartes thus turned away from
sense experience and toward reason alone as the source of philosophical cer-
Descartes’ tainty. And he conceived of a “geometrical method” for philosophy.
“geometrical The essence of this new philosophical method may be found in Descartes’
method” (again) Rules for the Direction of the Mind. In Rule IV he stresses the absolute neces-
sity of having a method and then explicitly defines it.

Rule IV. There is Need for a Method for Finding Out the Truth
So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their
minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely
being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there.
As well might a man burning with an unintelligent desire to find treasure, continuously
roam the streets, seeking to find something that a passer-by might have chanced to
drop. This is the way in which most Chemists, many Geometricians, and Philosophers

3
Ibid., 74A–75D.
4
René Descartes, Discourse on Method, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, tr. Elizabeth
S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), I, 85.
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193
THE WAY
DESCARTES’ RULES OF REASON

In his Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Descartes presents a long list of rules
that, if followed, ensure that the intellect will eventually grasp all that can be
known. These rules are collapsed into four short paragraphs in the better-known
Discourse on Method:

The first of these was to accept nothing as true which I did not clearly recog-
nise to be so: that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitation and prejudice in
judgments, and to accept in them nothing more than what was presented to
my mind so clearly and distinctly that I could have no occasion to doubt it.
The second was to divide up each of the difficulties which I examined into
as many parts as possible, and as seemed requisite in order that it might be
resolved in the best manner possible.
The third was to carry on my reflections in due order, commencing with
objects that were the most simple and easy to understand, in order to rise
little by little, or by degrees, to knowledge of the most complex, assuming an
order, even if a fictitious one, among those which do not follow a natural
sequence relatively to one another.
The last was in all cases to make enumerations so complete and reviews
so general that I should be certain of having omitted nothing.

Descartes’ optimism about the practice of these rules, as well as the mathemat-
ical character of his method, is evident from the continuing comment:

Those long chains of reasoning, simple and easy as they are, of which geome-
tricians make use in order to arrive at the most difficult demonstrations, had
caused me to imagine that all those things which fall under the cognizance of
man might very likely be mutually related in the same fashion; and that, provided
only that we abstain from receiving anything as true which is not so, and always
retain the order which is necessary in order to deduce the one conclusion from
the other, there can be nothing so remote that we cannot reach to it, nor so
recondite that we cannot discover it.*

*Descartes, Discourse on Method, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, I, 92.

not a few prosecute their studies. I do not deny that sometimes in these wanderings
they are lucky enough to find something true. But I do not allow that this argues
greater industry on their part, but only better luck. But however that may be, it were
far better never to think of investigating truth at all, than to do so without a method.
For it is very certain that unregulated inquiries and confused reflections of this kind
only confound the natural light and blind our mental powers. . . . Moreover by a
method I mean certain and simple rules, such that, if a man observe them accurately,
he shall never assume what is false as true, and will never spend his mental efforts
to no purpose, but will always gradually increase his knowledge and so arrive at a
true understanding of all that does not surpass his powers.5

5
Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, I, 9.
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194
THE QUESTION
OF KNOWLEDGE WHAT ABOUT EMOTION?
A FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF RATIONALISM
Though not everyone is a rationalist like Plato and Descartes, all philosophers
value reason. In fact, being rational—in the loose sense of relying on reason—was
used in Chapter 1 as one of the defining features of philosophy. But what about
emotion? What role do emotions play in the acquisition of knowledge? In the fol-
lowing excerpt, Alison Jaggar argues that, though ignored by most philosophers,
emotions are essential to human life.

Western epistemology has tended to view emotion with suspicion and even
hostility. This derogatory western attitude toward emotion, like the earlier west-
ern contempt for sensory observation, fails to recognize that emotion, like
sensory perception, is necessary to human survival. Emotions prompt us to
act appropriately, to approach some people and situations and to avoid others,
to caress or cuddle, fight or flee. Without emotion, human life would be unthink-
able. Moreover, emotions have an intrinsic as well as an instrumental value.
Although not all emotions are enjoyable or even justifiable, life without any emo-
tion would be life without any meaning.
Jaggar’s critique of rationalism doesn’t stop here, however. She goes on to argue
that focusing exclusively on reason and devaluing emotion has been a tool for
oppression of women and people of color.

Feminist theorists have pointed out that the western tradition has not seen every-
one as equally emotional. Instead, reason has been associated with members
of dominant political, social, and cultural groups and emotion with members of
subordinate groups. Prominent among those subordinate groups in our society
are people of color, except for supposedly “inscrutable orientals,” and women.
Although the emotionality of women is a familiar cultural stereotype, its
grounding is quite shaky. Women appear more emotional than men because
(continued on next page)

According to these last lines, anyone who follows Descartes’ method

would, in principle, be led to all possible knowledge. But what, more
exactly, does this method consist in? Descartes reduces it, as we saw in
Chapter 4, to two operations of the intellect: intuition and deduction. This,
of course, is why Descartes’ method has been called a “geometrical” method.
As in geometry, it begins with fundamental and irreducible truths, and
from these it deduces more truths. But now the notions of intuition and
deduction require further comment.
Intuition The word “intuition” is used in many ways, and we must be careful to
distinguish it here from anything like “woman’s intuition.” In philosophy
intuition means, usually, a direct and immediate knowledge of something.
When we say that it is direct and immediate knowledge, we mean that it is
not, like much of our other knowledge, mediated, or passed along through
something else—say, through sense experience or through other ideas. An
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195
they, along with some groups of people of color, are permitted and even THE WAY
OF REASON
required to express emotion more openly. In contemporary western culture,
emotionally inexpressive women are suspect as not being real women,
whereas men who express their emotions freely are suspected of being
homosexual or in some other way deviant from the masculine ideal. Modern
western men, in contrast with Shakespeare’s heroes, for instance, are required
to present a facade of coolness, lack of excitement, even boredom, to express
emotion only rarely and then for relatively trivial events, such as sporting
occasions, where expressed emotions are acknowledged to be dramatized
and so are not taken entirely seriously. Thus, women in our society form the
main group allowed or even expected to feel emotion. A woman may cry in
the face of disaster, and a man of color may gesticulate, but a white man
merely sets his jaw. . . .
Although there is no reason to suppose that the thoughts and actions
of women are any more influenced by emotion than the thoughts and
actions of men, the stereotypes of cool men and emotional women con-
tinue to flourish because they are confirmed by an uncritical daily experi-
ence. In these circumstances, where there is a differential assignment of
reason and emotion, it is easy to see the ideological function of the myth
of the dispassionate investigator. It functions, obviously, to bolster the
epistemic authority of the currently dominant groups, composed largely of
white men, and to discredit the observations and claims of the currently
subordinate groups including, of course, the observations and claims of
many people of color and women. The more forcefully and vehemently the
latter groups express their observations and claims, the more emotional
they appear and so the more easily they are discredited. The alleged
epistemic authority of the dominant groups then justifies their political
authority.*

*Alison Jaggar, “Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist Epistemology,” Inquiry 32, no. 2,
1989, pp. 151–176.

example of mediated knowledge is our knowledge that X is red, mediated or

passed along through our sense experience of X and its color; or our knowl-
edge that C is D, mediated or passed along through our prior understanding
that if A is B then C is D, and A is B. In intuition, however, the truth or
knowledge in question is grasped immediately by a direct awareness—it is
just there. It is important to emphasize, though, that the intuitionist claims to
know directly not only logical truths, as in “A is A,” but truths about reality,
as in our earlier examples: “Every event must have a cause”; “It is morally
wrong to kill people for the fun of it”; and “All individuals are endowed with
basic rights.” As a theory about the basis of knowledge, intuitionism is the
view that such truths may be known immediately and with certainty.
It is understandable why a doctrine of innate ideas has also been attrib-
uted to Descartes. Did he take, as it were, the Platonic Forms, place them
in the mind, and then announce that we know them directly? Or does he
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196
THE QUESTION
OF KNOWLEDGE INTUITIONISM
The view that direct awareness of at least some fundamental ideas of reality as
universally and necessarily true is either the basis of knowledge or one of its bases.

believe that what is innate is a sort of disposition of the mind, or a structure

by which universal and necessary truth about reality can be developed? Of
course the latter would better explain why infants do not appreciate Ein-
stein. In any event, what is really important is that for Descartes something
is innate, and intuition is the faculty of direct awareness by which knowl-
edge is derived from the mind alone. Although Descartes made a big thing
of intuition, many other philosophers too have appealed to intuition as an
important and even necessary epistemological tool.
But, Descartes continues, our knowledge is not limited to intuitions. For it
Deduction is possible, says Descartes, to deduce further ideas and truths from our intuited
ones. You already have an idea of deduction from our discussion of logic in
Chapter 1. You will recall that it consists in the necessary inference of one
statement from others; in valid deductive reasoning, if the premises are true,
the conclusion must be true. It is, thus, by the faculty of deduction that from
the original intuitions we are enabled to expand our knowledge indefinitely—
but without any loss of certainty. In Chapter 4 on mind and matter we saw,
in fact, how much Descartes deduced from his single intuition “I think.”
In the following, again from the Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Des-
cartes emphasizes and clarifies intuition and deduction as the basic tools
of knowledge.

Rule III. In the Subjects We Propose to Investigate, Our Inquiries

Should be Directed, Not to What Others Have Thought, Nor to
What We Ourselves Conjecture, But to What We Can Clearly and
Perspicuously Behold and with Certainty Deduce, for Knowledge
is Not Won in Any Other Way.

. . . we shall here take note of all those mental operations by which we are able,
wholly without fear of illusion, to arrive at the knowledge of things. Now I admit
only two, viz. intuition and deduction.
By intuition I understand, not the fluctuating testimony of the senses, nor the mis-
leading judgment that proceeds from the blundering constructions of imagination,
but the conception which an unclouded and attentive mind gives us so readily and
distinctly that we are wholly freed from doubt about that which we understand.
Or, what comes to the same thing, intuition is the undoubting conception of an
unclouded and attentive mind, and springs from the light of reason alone; it is more
certain than deduction itself, in that it is simpler, though deduction, as we have
noted above, cannot by us be erroneously conducted. Thus each individual can
mentally have intuition of the fact that he exists, and that he thinks; that the triangle
is bounded by three lines only, the sphere by a single superficies, and so on. Facts
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197
THE WAY
DESCARTES’ TWOFOLD BASIS OF KNOWLEDGE OF REASON

• Intuition: The faculty by which truths are grasped immediately, without the inter-
vention of sense experience or other ideas.
• Deduction: The faculty by which subsequent truths are known with necessity
from intuited truths, or from intuited truths taken together with other deduced
truths.

of such a kind are far more numerous than many people think, disdaining as they
do to direct their attention upon such simple matters.
This evidence and certitude, however, which belongs to intuition, is required not
only in the enunciation of propositions, but also in discursive reasoning of whatever
sort. For example consider this consequence: 2 and 2 amount to the same as 3
and 1. Now we need to see intuitively not only that 2 and 2 make 4, and that
likewise 3 and 1 make 4, but further that the third of the above statements is a
necessary conclusion from these two.
Hence now we are in a position to raise the question as to why we have, besides
intuition, given this supplementary method of knowing, viz. knowing by deduction,
by which we understand all necessary inference from other facts that are known
with certainty. This, however, we could not avoid, because many things are known
with certainty, though not by themselves evident, but only deduced from true and
known principles by the continuous and uninterrupted action of a mind that has a
clear vision of each step in the process. It is in a similar way that we know that
the last link in a long chain is connected with the first, even though we do not take
in by means of one and the same act of vision all the intermediate links on which
that connection depends, but only remember that we have taken them successively
under review and that each single one is united to its neighbour, from the first even
to the last. Hence we distinguish this mental intuition from deduction by the fact that
into the conception of the latter there enters a certain movement or succession, into
that of the former there does not. Further deduction does not require an immediately
presented evidence such as intuition possesses; its certitude is rather conferred upon
it in some way by memory. The upshot of the matter is that it is possible to say that
those propositions indeed which are immediately deduced from first principles are
known now by intuition, now by deduction, i.e. in a way that differs according to
our point of view. But the first principles themselves are given by intuition alone,
while, on the contrary, the remote conclusions are furnished only by deduction.
These two methods are the most certain routes to knowledge, and the mind
should admit no others. All the rest should be rejected as suspect of error and
dangerous. But this does not prevent us from believing matters that have been
divinely revealed as being more certain than our surest knowledge, since belief
in these things, as all faith in obscure matters, is an action not of our intelligence,
but of our will. They should be heeded also since, if they have any basis in our
understanding, they can and ought to be, more than all things else, discovered
by one or other of the ways above-mentioned. . . . 6

6
Ibid., I, 5–8.
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198 A CONTEMPORARY VERSION: CHOMSKY

THE QUESTION
OF KNOWLEDGE It is true that modern and contemporary philosophy has been dominated not
by rationalist but, rather, by empiricist epistemology—this probably has not
a little to do with the ascendancy of the physical sciences and the scientific
method beginning in the sixteenth century—and that theories of innate ideas
and the like are looked upon as quaint leftovers from our philosophical past.
Everything was given a new twist, however, in the work of the linguist-
philosopher Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
and the philosophical world had to take note. How did Chomsky’s work
suddenly derail the empiricist approach that for so long controlled the phil-
osophical scene? How has it resulted in an unexpected new lease on life for
the rationalist?
The answer has to do with Chomsky’s contributions to philosophical
linguistics—philosophical analyses, problems, and implications of language.
More specifically, his original contribution was called transformational gram-
mar, which attempts to relate the “surface” structure of sentences, or what
is actually heard, and the “deep” structure of the sentences, what is meant.
This, however, has already become out of date and unfashionable, and has
been superseded by Chomsky’s newer and more comprehensive idea of
generative grammar, which supplements the earlier ideas with talk about
“principles and parameters” of language.
The word “principle” here signals the belief that there are certain universal
principles inherent in all languages—that is, features of language that we are
born with. We may call these principles “language universals.” This claim
may strike you as a sweeping generalization, but it appears to Chomskyites
to be demonstrated conclusively by an in-depth analysis of, say, relative
clauses and the referents of pronouns in English, as well as in a dozen or so
of the other four thousand languages of the world. “Parameters” refers to
what appears to be a universal grammar in the form of basic linguistic options
that precede the learning of a language and are enacted or not in view of the
demands of that particular language—you might think of them as hard-wire
switches, built right into the mind, which are turned on or off at various
points depending on the language being learned.
This is exceedingly difficult stuff, but what is important at the moment
is this. The commonsensical model of language acquisition has always been
an empirical one: A child acquires language through stimulus-response, con-
ditioning, trial and error, and so on. But in this major development of con-
temporary philosophy of language, with Chomsky leading the way, it is
argued that the phenomenon of language is impossible except on the pos-
Innate structures tulation of innate intellectual structures. The implications for epistemology,
as conditions and specifically for rationalism, are too obvious to miss, as Chomsky himself
for language points out in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax:

On the basis of the best information now available, it seems reasonable to sup-
pose that a child cannot help constructing a particular kind of transformational
grammar to account for the data presented to him, any more than he can control
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Noam Chomsky, whose linguistic studies have proven

relevant for the doctrine of innate knowledge
199
THE WAY
OF REASON

his perception of solid objects or his attention to line and angle. Thus it may well
be that the general features of language structure reflect, not so much the course
of one’s experience, but rather the general character of one’s capacity to acquire
knowledge—in the traditional sense, one’s innate ideas and innate principles.7

The position is spelled out further in the following, from his essay “Lan-
guage and the Mind.” Note especially his rejection of empiricist explana-
tions of language acquisition, the recurring emphasis on innate structures
as conditions for language, and, again, the relevance of this view of language
for still other spheres of knowledge.

As far as language learning is concerned, it seems to me that a rather convincing

argument can be made for the view that certain principles intrinsic to the mind pro-
vide invariant structures that are a precondition for linguistic experience. . . .
The study of language, it seems to me, offers strong empirical evidence that
empiricists’ theories of learning are quite inadequate. Serious efforts have been made
in recent years to develop principles of induction, generalization, and data analysis
that would account for knowledge of a language. These efforts have been a total
failure. The methods and principles fail not for any superficial reason such as lack
of time or data. They fail because they are intrinsically incapable of giving rise to
the system of rules that underlies the normal use of language. What evidence is now
available supports the view that all human languages share deep-seated properties
of organization and structure. These properties—these linguistic universals—can be

7
Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965), p. 59.
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200
THE QUESTION “What evidence is now available supports the view that all human languages share
OF KNOWLEDGE
deep-seated properties of organization and structure. These properties—these
linguistic universals—can be plausibly assumed to be an innate mental endow-
ment rather than the result of learning.”
—Chomsky

plausibly assumed to be an innate mental endowment rather than the result of learn-
ing. If this is true, then the study of language sheds light on certain long-standing
issues in the theory of knowledge. Once again, I see little reason to doubt that what
is true of language is true of other forms of human knowledge as well.
There is one further question that might be raised at this point. How does
the human mind come to have the innate properties that underlie acquisition of
knowledge? Here linguistic evidence obviously provides no information at all. The
process by which the human mind has achieved its present state of complexity
and its particular form of innate organization are a complete mystery, as much of
a mystery as the analogous questions that can be asked about any other complex
organism. It is perfectly safe to attribute this to evolution, so long as we bear in
mind that there is no substance to this assertion—it amounts to nothing more than
the belief that there is surely some naturalistic explanation for these phenomena.
There are, however, important aspects of the problem of language and mind that
can be studied sensibly within the limitations of present understanding and technique.
I think that, for the moment, the most productive investigations are those dealing
with the nature of particular grammars and with the universal conditions met by all
human languages. I have tried to suggest how one can move, in successive steps
of increasing abstractness, from the study of percepts to the study of grammar to the
study of universal grammar and the mechanisms of learning.
In this area of convergence of linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, we can
look forward to much exciting work in the coming years.8

But there are problems. In spite of the allegedly scientific character of

Chomsky’s procedure, it appears at bottom to be founded on intuitions. For
example, it is not clear to everyone, as it is to Chomsky, just what does and
does not count as a “sentence” in English—making for great cocktail party
fights and lifelong feuds! More generally, it is certainly relevant to pose two
Two questions questions. First, how does the mind come to possess this structure in the
first place? Chomsky answers, as you just saw, that it is a “complete mys-
tery,” and he doesn’t see at the moment that any purely naturalistic expla-
nation (he cites evolutionary development) is any better than any other.
Another question, and certainly more epistemologically relevant: However
it got there, what is the relation of this innate intellectual structure to truth?
Are we driven to a view of knowledge as arbitrarily determined by a purely
accidental endowment within the brain? Or can we believe in some sort of

8
Noam Chomsky, “Language and the Mind,” in Readings in Psychology Today (Del Mar, CA:
C. R. M. Books, 1969), pp. 282, 286.
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201
THE WAY
REVEALING PHRASES IN CHOMSKY OF REASON

• “principles intrinsic to the mind”

• “deep-seated properties of organization and structure”
• “an innate mental endowment”

preestablished harmony whereby this intellectual endowment is made to cor-

respond to reality? Are we driven to something like Plato’s doctrine of the
preexistence of the soul? Or perhaps our experienced reality is itself determined
by our innate intellectual structures? Or maybe you can think of some other
way out? Certainly the problem is an important one and worthy of serious
discussion. In fact, it will crop up again in Chapter 10.
We have considered three rationalist conceptions of knowledge from three
different periods. We do not raise here specific objections to these theories,
because, in a way, the whole next chapter is itself a colossal challenge to
them. Empiricism, with its doctrine that the mind is at birth a “blank tablet,”
rejects the very starting point of rationalism.

CHAPTER 8 IN REVIEW
SUMMARY
One of the most basic questions of epistemology, and therefore a basic
question of all philosophizing, is What is the origin of knowledge? Phi-
losophers have answered this question in two radically different ways.
According to empiricism, all knowledge (at least “existential” knowledge,
which informs us about existence) is derived from the five senses. Rational-
ism, on the other hand, teaches that at least some knowledge can be acquired
apart from sense experience, through the intellect or reason alone.
In this chapter we have considered three ways in which rationalists have
argued for their theories. We are already familiar with Plato’s theory of real-
ity (from Chapter 3), and we should recall that his image of the Divided Line
represents as much a conception of knowledge as a conception of reality. The
object of authentic knowledge is what is, as opposed to what is becoming.
Such knowledge is hardly possible in this life, where the soul is imprisoned
in the body, and where the body itself is a constant hindrance to the acquisi-
tion of knowledge. When the soul is liberated from the body at death, the
soul comes into the possession of absolute knowledge. Until that time all we
can do is cultivate as much as possible the innate truths that the mind is born
with, but which, as they are “recollected,” are invariably distorted by the
world of Becoming, resulting in mere opinions, or relative knowledge.
Likewise, Descartes’ theory of knowledge was anticipated in Chapter 4.
Descartes, too, seeks to develop at least the foundation of his philosophy
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202 apart from the input of the senses. He saw in mathematics an especially
THE QUESTION
good model for philosophical reasoning and adopted intuition and deduc-
OF KNOWLEDGE tion as the principles of his philosophical method. He believed that, in
principle, it would be possible to unfold a complete system of knowledge
by the rigorous practicing of this method. As with Plato, it is important to
see that with Descartes every attempt is made to exclude or minimize the
illusory and deceitful intrusions of the senses.
Rationalist theories of knowledge are regarded by many as a bit naive
and quaint. However, the critics have been given something of a jolt in
recent years. The psycholinguistic research of Chomsky in particular has
resurrected the theory of innate ideas. Specifically, his work has brought
to light the presence of universal and innate intellectual structures that
underlie all language and that explain the process of language acquisition
better than the empirically oriented model of learning. Thus psycholin-
guistics (which is concerned with the connection between the mind and
language) has emerged as an unexpected ally of the rationalist theory of
knowledge.

BASIC IDEAS
• Empiricism
• Rationalism (strict sense)
• Plato: why philosophers desire death
• Two bodily hindrances to knowledge
• Innate ideas
• Knowledge of recollection
• Descartes’ “geometrical method”
• Intuitionism
• Descartes’ two operations of the mind
Intuition
Deduction
• The empirical theory of language acquisition
• Chomsky’s generative grammar
Principles
Parameters

TEST YOURSELF
1. True or false: Plato taught that we bring our ideas into this world from a
previous existence in an ideal world.
2. Rules for the Direction of the Mind was written by _________.
3. According to Plato, how does sense experience help us to “recollect”
ideas?
4. True or false: By “intuition” Descartes meant a feeling or hunch about
something.
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5. The phrase “linguistic universals” is employed by ________. What does 203

it mean? THE WAY
6. True or false: To know something immediately is to know it through sense OF REASON

experience.
7. According to Plato, why is absolute knowledge impossible in this life?
8. Why was Descartes especially attracted to mathematics?

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• Does Plato’s doctrine of recollection seem far-fetched or even bizarre?
Even if it does, to what degree does it detract from his basic theory of
knowledge? Is it itself basic? In evaluating philosophers’ positions, is
there a danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater?
• Both Plato and Descartes decry the illusions and distortions of sense expe-
rience. Can you provide your own evidence and examples of this? Can
you think of any sense representation that is not, as it were, “contami-
nated”? Is it possible to overdo this point? Or, with the rationalists, are we
at some point driven to some “purer” faculty than sense perception?
• Think about these propositions: “Every event must have a cause”; “It is
morally wrong to kill people for the fun of it”; “All individuals are
endowed with basic rights.” Would you say that you know or are certain
of these claims? Are any of them universally true? What, if anything, does
sense experience contribute to this knowledge?

FOR FURTHER READING

Robert R. Ammerman and Marcus G. Singer (eds.). Belief, Knowledge, and
Truth: Readings in the Theory of Knowledge. New York: Scribners, 1970. A
collection of traditional, recent, and important statements on all aspects
of knowledge, including some encountered in our chapter (e.g., the a
priori, intuition, etc.).
Bruce Aune. Rationalism, Empiricism, and Pragmatism: An Introduction. New York:
Random House, 1970. Ch. 1. A discussion on “Descartes and Rationalism.”
Roderick M. Chisholm. Theory of Knowledge. Third ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1989. Ch. 5. A beginner’s chapter on “The Truths of Reason,”
dealing briefly with the most important issues and problems concerning
the rationalist view of knowledge.
Frederick Copleston. A History of Philosophy. Baltimore: Newman Press,
1946–1974. I, Ch. 19, and IV, Ch. 3. Authoritative accounts of Plato’s and
Descartes’ theories of knowledge by a respected historian of philosophy.
Willis Doney (ed.). Descartes: A Collection of Critical Essays. Garden City, NY:
Anchor Books, 1967. An anthology of advanced essays, including discus-
sions of epistemological issues in Descartes.
A. C. Ewing. The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy. London. Routledge, Kegan
& Paul, 1985. Ch. 2. A lucid chapter on “The ‘A Priori’ and the Empirical,”
which considers the nature and necessity of knowledge acquired apart from
sense experience.
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204 Anthony Kenny. Descartes: A Study of His Philosophy. New York: St. Augus-
THE QUESTION tine Press, 1993. Ch. 8. A brief and clearly presented chapter on Des-
OF KNOWLEDGE cartes’ conception of “Reason and Intuition.”
Paul K. Moser (ed.). Empirical Knowledge: Readings in Contemporary Episte-
mology. Second ed. Sowage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996. A student-
oriented anthology of fifteen essays by prominent philosophers on issues
and trends in contemporary epistemology.
A. Radford. Transformational Syntax: A Student’s Guide to Chomsky’s Extended
Standard Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. A useful
entrance into the obtuse and, for the beginner, seemingly inaccessible
world of Chomsky’s linguistic-epistemological theory.
Geoffrey Sampson. “Noam Chomsky and Generative Grammar.” In Schools
of Linguistics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1980. A fairly
simple overview with some criticisms of Chomsky’s intuitions.
Tom Sorell. Descartes: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2001. Intended for novices, this short and clear introduction
situates Descartes’ writings in the intellectual debates of his time.
Gregory Vlastos (ed.). Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays. Garden City,
NY: Anchor Books, 1971. An anthology of advanced essays on Plato’s
metaphysics and epistemology, including a discussion on “Learning as
Recollection.”
Catherine Wilson. Descartes’ Meditations: An Introduction, Cambridge Intro-
ductions to key Philosophical Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003. A thorough examination of Descartes’ most famous work by
a leading scholar in the field.
*In addition, see the relevant articles (“Rationalism,” “A Priori and A Poste-
riori,” “Innate Ideas,” etc.) in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward
Craig (London: Routledge, 1998), and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
http://plato.stanford.edu.
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CHAPTER 9

THE WAY OF
EXPERIENCE

W
e turn next to the second general view of the basis of knowl-
edge: empiricism. It was said earlier that empiricism is the view
that emphasizes experience as the source of knowledge. We
must now explain more carefully what we mean here by “experience.”

WHAT IS EMPIRICISM?
There are many different sorts of experience, such as mystical experience,
moral experience, aesthetic experience, lonely experience, and wild experi-
ence. But here we mean sense experience—that is, perceptions derived from Sense experience
the five senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. When empiricists say as the source of
that experience is the basis of our knowledge, they mean sense experience, knowledge
and therefore that the five senses are the foundation of all our knowledge.
As with rationalism, empiricism comes with varying emphases and in
varying degrees. But as a general definition we may say that empiricism is
the view that all knowledge of reality is derived from sense experience. This
may be livened up somewhat by the empiricist metaphor of the tabula rasa, Empiricism: the
or “blank tablet.” It is a shorthand way of expressing the empiricist denial mind as a tabula rasa
that any ideas or even intellectual structure is inscribed on the mind from
birth—the mind is at birth a blank tablet, devoid even of watermarks. The
implication is, of course, that anything “written” on the tablet is written by
the five senses.
205
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206
THE QUESTION
OF KNOWLEDGE EMPIRICISM
The theory that all knowledge of actual, existing things is delivered through the
five senses.

CLASSICAL EMPIRICISM: ARISTOTLE AND ST. THOMAS

We will consider several forms of empiricism, beginning with the classical
empiricism of Aristotle and St. Thomas. When we call the empiricism of
Aristotle and St. Thomas classical empiricism, we not only reflect its Greek
roots (Aristotle) but also distinguish it from various forms of empiricism
in the modern period.
Plato vs. Aristotle It will be recalled from Chapter 3 that Aristotle rejected Plato’s theory of
the Forms. This was because Plato had created a great gulf between the
Forms and the particular things they were the Forms of. We saw that
Aristotle countered that the Form must be in the thing of which it is the
Form: The Form, or essence, of the table or chair must be right there, along
with the matter of the table or chair, constituting it. He insisted on this for
many reasons, and one of them was epistemological: How can the Form—that
which is knowable about the table or chair—make the table or chair know-
able if it is not in the table or chair? It is therefore no surprise that Aristotle,
quite unlike Plato, believed that knowledge comes through our sense expe-
rience of particular things in the world—like tables or chairs. And he was
one of the first to employ the empiricist comparison of the mind to a tabula
rasa, or blank tablet.
Let us close in on this a bit more. Like Plato, Aristotle believed that knowl-
The necessity of edge necessarily involves general or universal ideas—man, dog, table, chair,
universal ideas and the like. Think about this. Where would thinking, speaking, and know-
ing be without such concepts? Is it possible to think or say or know anything
apart from such ideas? “Socrates is a man.” “In fourteen hundred and
ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” “This table is rectangular.”
Are not general concepts like man, ocean, table, rectangularity, and so on,
necessary for thinking, speaking, and knowing? Now where do these ideas

“[The Platonic Forms] help in no wise . . . towards the knowledge of the other
things (for they are not even the substance of these, else they would have been in
them), or towards their being, if they are not in the particulars which share in them;
though if they were they might be thought to be causes, as white causes white-
ness in a white object by entering into its composition.”
—Aristotle
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come from? Unlike Plato, Aristotle answered that they come from our experi- 207
ence of particular men, tables, chairs, dogs, oceans, and so on. THE WAY OF
The problem for such an approach is, of course, the same problem that EXPERIENCE
bothered Plato: How do we arrive at universal ideas on the basis of our
limited and fluctuating experience of particular things?
Aristotle’s answer is that the universal and necessary elements of Aristotle:
knowledge—the foundations of all subsequent reasoning—are built up in universal ideas
the mind through induction. This means, for Aristotle, that a wider and from experience
and induction
wider generalization is derived from repeated experiences of particular
things until a general or universal concept is established in the mind: From
the experience of the particular man Callias, the man Socrates, the man
James, the man Tad, the man Bill . . . the intellect derives the general or
universal idea of man—that is, man as such. From the experience of the
particular dog Fido, the dog Lassie, the dog Rover, the dog Flip . . . the
intellect derives the universal idea dog. And the universal ideas—man, dog,
and innumerable other concepts derived from experience in the same
manner—become the tools and building blocks of all reasoning. They then
make it possible to say and know, “Socrates is a man,” “In fourteen hun-
dred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue,” and so on.
Aristotle likens the process by which the universal concepts are estab-
lished in the intellect to a company of soldiers retreating in disarray until
a first soldier halts and makes a stand, then a second, then a third, and
finally the whole company is put in order and established:

We conclude that these states of knowledge are neither innate in a determinate

form, nor developed from other higher states of knowledge, but from sense-
perception. It is like a rout in battle stopped by first one man making a stand
and then another, until the original formation has been restored. The soul is so
constituted as to be capable of this process.
. . . When one of a number of logically indiscriminable particulars has made a
stand, the earliest universal is present in the soul: for though the act of sense-
perception is of the particular, its content is universal—is man, for example, not the
man Callias. A fresh stand is made among these rudimentary universals, and the
process does not cease until the indivisible concepts, the true universals, are estab-
lished: e.g. such and such a species of animals is a step towards the genus animal,
which by the same process is a step towards a further generalization.
Thus it is clear that we must get to know the primary premisses by induction; for
the method by which even sense-perception implants the universal is inductive.1

This conception of the origin of knowledge was passed from Aristotle to

St. Thomas, the dominant Christian philosopher of the thirteenth century. It
may be helpful to see how St. Thomas expresses the matter.
We saw that Aristotle taught that the mind is a blank tablet waiting to be
written upon by the senses. St. Thomas expresses the same empiricist idea

1
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 100a–100b, tr. G. R. G. Mure, in Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard
McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941).
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208 with the words (everything sounds more profound in Latin) Nihil in intel-
THE QUESTION lectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu, “Nothing is in the intellect which was not
OF KNOWLEDGE first in the senses.” For St. Thomas, as for Aristotle, the essences of things
are locked inside the particular things of which they are the essences—
individual human beings, animals, tables, chairs, dogs, and cats. The intel-
lect, however, is able to liberate the essence in particular things and thus to
“see” the universal idea of their common, essential nature: human, animal,
table, chair, dog, and cat.
The intellectual faculty by which the essential or formal or universal ele-
ment of particular things is unlocked and “seen” by the mind is called by St.
St. Thomas: Thomas abstraction. “To abstract” means to remove or separate something
universal ideas from something else. In this epistemological context, what is being abstracted
from experience is a common nature, and that from which it is being abstracted are the par-
and abstraction
ticular and varying instances of it. When we abstract the universal human
being from Callias, Socrates, James, Sue, Bill, and Sally, their individual and
peculiar features are left behind (Socrates is bald and snub-nosed; James is
tall, blue-eyed, and hairy; Bill has a nose shaped like an eagle’s beak and is
short; etc.) and their common and essential nature is grasped: human being.
It remains to stress that for both Aristotle and St. Thomas we can say,
think, or know anything only because of universal ideas derived from expe-
rience. It is only by such ideas and truths as man, animal, equality, red, that
every event is caused, that the intellect can be guided amid the particu-
larities, relativities, deceptions, and fluctuations of the sensible world. We
begin, then, with the particular things we encounter in the sensible world.
From these we derive universal concepts and principles. With our universal
concepts and principles we are enabled to return to the sensible world and
speak of it, think about it, and know it: “Socrates is a human being.” These
three stages of knowledge, according to Aristotle and St. Thomas, may be
represented more vividly:

II
Universal concept in
the mind:

Human being

I III
Particular things in Knowledge of the world
the sensible world: utilizing universal
concept:
Callias, Socrates,
Bill, Sally "Socrates is a human
being"
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209
“What the mind thinks must be in it just as characters may be said to be on a THE WAY OF
EXPERIENCE
writing-tablet on which as yet nothing actually stands written.”
—Aristotle

“Nothing is in the intellect which was not first in the senses.”

—St. Thomas

The following, from St. Thomas’ Summa Theologiae, is brief but not easy.
Try to see in it some of the above ideas at work, especially the movement:
singular → universal → proposition. (In this quotation, “intelligible species”
means the essence of a thing, and “phantasms” are the mental images of
things.)

Our intellect cannot know the singular in material things directly and primarily. The
reason for this is that the principle of singularity in material things is individual
matter; whereas our intellect understands by abstracting the intelligible species
from such matter. Now what is abstracted from individual matter is universal.
Hence our intellect knows directly only universals. But indirectly, however, and as
it were by a kind of reflexion, it can know the singular, because . . . even after
abstracting the intelligible species, the intellect, in order to understand actually,
needs to turn to the phantasms in which it understands the species. . . . Therefore
it understands the universal directly through the intelligible species, and indirectly
the singular represented by the phantasm. And thus it forms the proposition,
“Socrates is a man.”2

MODERN EMPIRICISM: LOCKE

It was the English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) who laid the foun-
dations of modern empiricism in his monumental Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, published in 1690. Like Descartes, Locke was distressed over
the muddles and uncertainties in metaphysics, theology, and moral phi-
losophy. But unlike Descartes, who took the rationalistic method of geom-
etry as his epistemological model, Locke took as his model the experimental
methods of the new sciences, such as physics, astronomy, and medicine.
Locke begins on a negative note: a lengthy indictment of any theory of Locke’s rejection
innate ideas. According to Locke, few philosophical theories are more firmly of innate ideas
entrenched than the theory of innate ideas, which he characterizes as the
belief that “there are in the understanding certain innate principles; some
primary notions, koinai ennoiai [Greek: universal ideas], characters, as it were
stamped upon the mind of man, which the soul receives in its very first

2
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Pt. I, Qu. 86, Art. 1, in Basic Writings of Saint Thomas
Aquinas, ed. Anton C. Pegis (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1977), I.
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210 being, and brings into the world with it.”3 He rejects the innateness of both
THE QUESTION
“speculative” and “practical” principles, another way of saying “truths per-
OF KNOWLEDGE taining to reality and morality.” In a word, Locke refutes the theory of innate
ideas by charging that the arguments cited in support of it do not actually
prove it, and that those who cite them do not pay sufficient attention to an
altogether different and simpler explanation of the source of our ideas.
In the following excerpt he focuses on speculative principles, showing
how innateness cannot be claimed even for the most certain of these, the
Law of Identity and the Law of Non-Contradiction: Such principles are not
universally agreed to, nor are they known by children, nor are they the
products of reason. As with much of the quoted matter in this book, the
following passages from Locke are classic statements and worthy of thought-
ful scrutiny.

General Assent the Great Argument.

There is nothing more commonly taken for granted, than that there are certain prin-
ciples, both speculative and practical (for they speak of both), universally agreed
upon by all mankind; which therefore, they argue, must needs be the constant
impressions which the soul of men receive in their first beings, and which they bring
into the world with them, as necessarily and really as they do any of their inherent
faculties.

Universal Consent Proves Nothing Innate.

This argument, drawn from universal consent, has this misfortune in it, that if it were
true in matter of fact, that there were certain truths wherein all mankind agreed, it
would not prove them innate, if there can be any other way shown, how men may
come to that universal agreement in the things they do consent in; which I presume
may be done.

“What Is, Is,” and “It Is Impossible for the Same Thing to Be,
and Not to Be,” Not Universally Assented to.
But, which is worse, this argument of universal consent, which is made use of to
prove innate principles, seems to me a demonstration that there are none such;
because there are none to which all mankind give an universal assent. I shall
begin with the speculative, and instance in those magnified principles of demon-
stration: “Whatsoever is, is,” and “It is impossible for the same thing to be, and
not to be,” which, of all others, I think, have the most allowed title to innate. These
have so settled a reputation of maxims universally received, that it will, no doubt,
be thought strange if any one should seem to question it. But yet I take liberty to
say, that these propositions are so far from having an universal assent, that there
are a great part of mankind to whom they are not so much as known.

Not on the Mind, Naturally Imprinted, Because Not Known

to Children, Idiots, Etc.
For, first, it is evident, that all children and idiots have not the least apprehension or
thought of them: and the want of that is enough to destroy that universal assent,

3
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, I, 2, 1, ed. A. S. Pringle-Pattison
(London: Oxford University Press, 1924).
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Title page of Locke’s Essay. The influence of this

work on modern philosophy was monumental.
211
THE WAY OF
EXPERIENCE

which must needs be the necessary concomitant of all innate truths: it seeming to me
near a contradiction to say, that there are truths imprinted on the soul which it per-
ceives or understands not; imprinting, if it signify anything, being nothing else but the
making certain truths to be perceived. No proposition can be said to be in the mind
which it never yet knew, which it was never yet conscious of. . . . If truths can be
imprinted on the understanding without being perceived, I can see no difference there
can be between any truths the mind is capable of knowing in respect of their original:
they must all be innate, or all adventitious; in vain shall a man go about to distinguish
them. He therefore that talks of innate notions in the understanding, cannot (if he
intend thereby any distinct sort of truths) mean such truths to be in the understanding
as it never perceived, and is yet wholly ignorant of. For if these words “to be in the
understanding” have any propriety, they signify to be understood. If therefore these
two propositions: “Whatsoever is, is,” and “It is impossible for the same thing to be,
and not to be,” are by nature imprinted, children cannot be ignorant of them; infants,
and all that have souls, must necessarily have them in their understandings, know the
truth of them, and assent to it.
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212 That Men Know Them When They Come to the Use of Reason,
Answered.
THE QUESTION
OF KNOWLEDGE To avoid this, it is usually answered, that all men know and assent to them, when
they come to the use of reason, and this is enough to prove them innate. To apply
this answer with any tolerable sense to our present purpose, it must signify one
of these two things; either, that as soon as men come to the use of reason, these
supposed native inscriptions come to be known and observed by them; or else,
that the use and exercise of men’s reasons assists them in the discovery of these
principles, and certainly makes them known to them.

If Reason Discovered Them, That Would Not Prove Them Innate.

If they mean that by the use of reason men may discover these principles, and that
this is sufficient to prove them innate, their way of arguing will stand thus: viz. That
whatever truths reason can certainly discover to us, and make us firmly assent to,
those are all naturally imprinted on the mind; and by this means there will be no
difference between the maxims of the mathematicians and theorems they deduce
from them: all must be equally allowed innate, they being all discoveries made by
the use of reason, and truths that a rational creature may certainly come to know,
if he apply his thoughts rightly that way.

It Is False That Reason Discovered Them.

But how can these men think the use of reason necessary to discover principles that
are supposed innate, when reason (if we may believe them) is nothing else but the
faculty of deducing unknown truths from principles or propositions that are already
known? That certainly can never be thought innate which we have need of reason
to discover, unless, as I have said, we will have all the certain truths that reason
ever teaches us, to be innate. We may as well think the use of reason necessary
to make our eyes discover visible objects, as that there should be need of reason,
or the exercise thereof, to make the understanding see what is originally engraven
in it. And I think those who give this answer will not be forward to affirm, that the
knowledge of this maxim, “That it is impossible for the same thing to be, and not
to be,” is a deduction of our reason. For this would be to destroy that bounty of
nature they seem so fond of, whilst they make the knowledge of those principles
to depend on the labour of our thoughts. For all reasoning is search and casting
about, and requires pains and application. And how can it with any tolerable
sense be supposed, that what was imprinted by nature, as the foundation and
guide of our reason, should need the use of reason to discover it?
Those who will take the pains to reflect with a little attention on the operations
of the understanding, will find that this ready assent of the mind to some truths,
depends not either on native inscription, or the use of reason, but on a faculty of
the mind quite distinct from both of them, as we shall see hereafter.4

On the positive side, Locke is as explicit as one could hope for as to the
The source of ideas: actual origin of the ideas that undeniably exist in our minds: experience. But
experience the next step is a little more subtle. For this experience takes two forms. First,
there is what we might call the “external” experience by which objects in the
external world, outside our minds, enter our minds through sensation—for

4
Ibid., I, 2, 2–11.
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example, hot, cold, red, yellow, hard, soft, sweet, and bitter. Second, there is 213
the “internal” experience we have of the operations of our minds, or reflec- THE WAY OF
tion—for example, thinking, willing, believing, doubting, affirming, denying, EXPERIENCE
and comparing. Both of these are kinds of experience—reflection on what is
going on inside no less than sensation of what is going on outside—and they Two kinds
are the two and only two means by which ideas become inscribed on the of experience:
blank tablets of our minds. And just as the absence of ideas in infants is sensation, reflection
evidence against any doctrine of innate ideas, so the gradual development
of ideas in children, corresponding to the development of their experience,
is evidence for the empiricist doctrine that ideas originate in experience.

Idea Is the Object of Thinking.

Every man being conscious to himself that he thinks, and that which his mind is applied
about whilst thinking being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt that men have in
their minds several ideas, such as are those expressed by the words, “whiteness,
hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drunkenness,” and others.
It is in the first place then to be enquired, How he comes by them? I know it is a
received doctrine, that men have native ideas and original characters stamped upon
their minds in their very first being. This opinion I have at large examined already;
and, I suppose, what I have said in the foregoing . . . will be much more easily
admitted, when I have shown whence the understanding may get all the ideas it has,
and by what ways and degrees they may come into the mind; for which I shall appeal
to every one’s own observation and experience.

All Ideas Come from Sensation or Reflection.

Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters,
without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast
store, which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost
endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this
I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE; in that all our knowledge is founded,
and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation, employed either about
external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived
and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all
the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence
all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring.

The Objects of Sensation One Source of Ideas.

First, our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into
the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways
wherein those objects do affect them; and thus we come by those ideas we have
of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and all those which we call
sensible qualities; which when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they
from external objects convey into the mind what produces there those perceptions.
This great source of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses,
and derived by them to the understanding, I call, SENSATION.

The Operations of Our Minds the Other Source of Them.

Secondly, the other fountain, from which experience furnisheth the understanding
with ideas, is the perception of the operations of our own minds within us, as it is
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214 employed about the ideas it has got; which operations when the soul comes to reflect
on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of ideas which could
THE QUESTION
OF KNOWLEDGE not be had from things without: and such are perception, thinking, doubting, believ-
ing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds;
which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into
our understanding as distinct ideas, as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This
source of ideas every man has wholly in himself: and though it be not sense, as
having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly
enough be called internal sense. But as I call the other Sensation, so I call this
REFLECTION, the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on
its own operations within itself. By Reflection, then, in the following part of this
discourse, I would be understood to mean that notice which the mind takes of its
own operations, and the manner of them, by reason whereof there comes to be
ideas of these operations in the understanding. These two, I say, viz., external mate-
rial things as the objects of Sensation, and the operations of our own minds within
as the objects of Reflection, are, to me, the only originals from whence all our ideas
take their beginnings. The term operations here, I use in a large sense, as compre-
hending not barely the actions of the mind about its ideas, but some sort of passions
arising sometimes from them, such as is the satisfaction or uneasiness arising from
any thought.

All Our Ideas Are of the One or the Other of These.

The understanding seems to me not to have the least glimmering of any ideas which
it doth not receive from one of these two. External objects furnish the mind with the
ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different perceptions they produce in
us; and the mind furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own operations. These,
when we have taken a full survey of them, and their several modes, combinations,
and relations, we shall find to contain all our whole stock of ideas; and that we
have nothing in our minds which did not come in one of these two ways. Let any
one examine his own thoughts, and thoroughly search into his understanding, and
then let him tell me, whether all the original ideas he has there, are any other than
of the objects of his senses, or of the operations of his mind considered as objects
of his reflection; and how great a mass of knowledge soever he imagines to be
lodged there, he will, upon taking a strict view, see that he has not any idea in his
mind but what one of these two have imprinted, though perhaps with infinite variety
compounded and enlarged by the understanding, as we shall see hereafter.

Observable in Children.
He that attentively considers the state of a child at his first coming into the world,
will have little reason to think him stored with plenty of ideas that are to be the
matter of his future knowledge. It is by degrees he comes to be furnished with them:
and though the ideas of obvious and familiar qualities imprint themselves before the
memory begins to keep a register of time and order, yet it is often so late before
some unusual qualities come in the way, that there are few men that cannot recol-
lect the beginning of their acquaintance with them: and if it were worth while, no
doubt a child might be so ordered as to have but a very few even of the ordinary
ideas till he were grown up to a man. But all that are born into the world being
surrounded with bodies that perpetually and diversely affect them, variety of ideas,
whether care be taken about it or no, are imprinted on the minds of children. Light
and colours are busy and at hand everywhere when the eye is but open; sounds
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and some tangible qualities fail not to solicit their proper senses, and force an 215
entrance to the mind; but yet I think it will be granted easily, that if a child were
THE WAY OF
kept in a place where he never saw any other but black and white till he were a EXPERIENCE
man, he would have no more ideas of scarlet or green, than he that from his child-
hood never tasted an oyster or a pineapple has of those particular relishes.5

So far we have considered only the passive side of the mind, wherein it The mind: both
receives what Locke will now call the simple ideas contributed by sensation passive and active
and reflection. It also has an active side, whereby it constructs complex
ideas out of the simple ones, by means of combining, comparing, and
abstracting.

Uncompounded Appearances.
The better to understand the nature, manner, and extent of our knowledge, one
thing is carefully to be observed concerning the ideas we have; and that is, that
some of them are simple, and some complex.
Though the qualities that affect our senses are, in the things themselves, so united
and blended that there is no separation, no distance between them; yet it is plain
the ideas they produce in the mind enter by the senses simple and unmixed. For
though the sight and touch often take in from the same object at the same time
different ideas; as a man sees at once motion and colour, the hand feels softness
and warmth in the same piece of wax; yet the simple ideas thus united in the
same subject are as perfectly distinct as those that come in by different senses.
The coldness and hardness which a man feels in a piece of ice being as distinct
ideas in the mind as the smell and whiteness of a lily, or as the taste of sugar
and smell of a rose; and there is nothing can be plainer to a man than the clear
and distinct perception he has of those simple ideas; which, being each in itself
uncompounded, contains in it nothing but one uniform appearance or conception
in the mind, and is not distinguishable into different ideas.

The Mind Can Neither Make Nor Destroy Them.

These simple ideas, the materials of all our knowledge, are suggested and fur-
nished to the mind only by those two ways above mentioned, viz., sensation and
reflection. When the understanding is once stored with these simple ideas, it has
the power to repeat, compare, and unite them, even to an almost infinite variety,
and so can make at pleasure new complex ideas. But it is not in the power of
the most exalted wit or enlarged understanding, by any quickness or variety of
thought, to invent or frame one new simple idea in the mind, not taken in by the
ways before mentioned; nor can any force of the understanding destroy those
that are there. The dominion of man in this little world of his own understanding,
being much-what the same as it is in the great world of visible things, wherein his
power, however managed by art and skill, reaches no farther than to compound
and divide the materials that are made to his hand, but can do nothing towards the
making the least particle of new matter, or destroying one atom of what is already
in being. The same inability will every one find in himself, who shall go about to
fashion in his understanding any simple idea not received in by his senses from

5
Ibid., II, 1, 1–6.
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216 external objects, or by reflection from the operations of his own mind about them.
I would have any one try to fancy any taste which had never affected his palate,
THE QUESTION
OF KNOWLEDGE or frame the idea of a scent he had never smelt: and when he can do this, I
will also conclude, that a blind man hath ideas of colours, and a deaf man true
distinct notions of sound. . . .

[Complex Ideas] Made by the Mind Out of Simple Ones.

We have hitherto considered those ideas, in the reception whereof the mind is only
passive, which are those simple ones received from sensation and reflection before
mentioned, whereof the mind cannot make one to itself, nor have any idea which
does not wholly consist of them. [But as the mind is wholly passive in the reception
of all its simple ideas, so it exerts several acts of its own, whereby out of its simple
ideas, as the materials and foundations of the rest, the others are framed. The acts
of the mind wherein it exerts its power over its simple ideas are chiefly these three:
(1) Combining several simple ideas into one compound one; and thus all complex
ideas are made. (2) The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex,
together, and setting them by one another, so as to take a view of them at once,
without uniting them into one; by which it gets all its ideas of relations. (3) The third
is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence;
this is called abstraction: and thus all its general ideas are made. This shows man’s
power and its way of operation to be much-what the same in the material and
intellectual world. For, the materials in both being such as he has no power over,
either to make or destroy, all that man can do is either to unite them together, or to
set them by one another, or wholly separate them. I shall here begin with the first
of these in the consideration of complex ideas, and come to the other two in their
due places.] As simple ideas are observed to exist in several combinations united
together, so the mind has a power to consider several of them united together as
one idea; and that not only as they are united in external objects, but as itself has
joined them. Ideas thus made up of several simple ones put together I call complex;
such as are beauty, gratitude, a man, an army, the universe; which, though compli-
cated of various simple ideas or complex ideas made up of simple ones, yet are,
when the mind pleases, considered each by itself as one entire thing, and signified
by one name.

Made Voluntarily.
In this faculty of repeating and joining together its ideas, the mind has great power
in varying and multiplying the objects of its thoughts infinitely beyond what sensa-
tion or reflection furnished it with: but all this still confined to those simple ideas
which it received from those two sources, and which are the ultimate materials of
all its compositions. For simple ideas are all from things themselves; and of these
the mind can have no more nor other than what are suggested to it. It can have
no other ideas of sensible qualities than what come from without by the senses,
nor any ideas of other kind of operations of thinking substance than what it finds
in itself: but when it has once got these simple ideas, it is not confined barely
to observation, and what offers itself from without; it can, by its own power, put
together those ideas it has and make new complex ones which it never received
so united.6

6
Ibid., II, 2, 1–2; II, 12, 1–2.
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The essential points in all of this may be summarized visually: 217

THE WAY OF
Experience EXPERIENCE

Sensation Reflection The passive mind

Simple Ideas

The active mind

Complex Ideas

For Locke there are no innate ideas, of course, but there are innate faculties,
powers of thinking, that work on simple ideas through combining, abstract-
ing, and other processes to form complex ideas. Locke’s theory of knowledge
gets much more complicated, but this will suffice to show its empirical char-
acter and how it all gets off the ground.
Yet it is necessary to mention further features of Locke’s theory. Perhaps
more than anyone else, Locke emphasized what is sometimes called episte-
mological dualism, an idea that we encountered in our discussion of Berkeley’s Epistemological
theory of reality. You will recall that this is the view that there are two fac- dualism
tors involved in knowing: the mind, which does the knowing, and its ideas,
which are known. That this is Locke’s view is clear from repeated state-
ments such as, “. . . the mind, in all its thoughts and reasonings, hath no
other immediate object but its own ideas. . . .”7 But, of course, there is a
third factor—namely, the object in the external world that is known by
means of ideas. That Locke blithely believed that our ideas represent those
objects, and therefore really inform us about the external world, is clear
from statements such as this:

. . . simple ideas are not fictions of our fancies, but the natural and regular produc-
tions of things without us, really operating upon us; and so carry with them all the
conformity which is intended, or which our state requires; for they represent to us
things under those appearances which they are fitted to produce in us: whereby
we are enabled to distinguish the sorts of particular substances, to discern the
states they are in, and so to take them for our necessities, and apply them to our
uses. And this conformity between our simple ideas and the existence of things is
sufficient for real knowledge.8

Thus we have also what is sometimes called representative perception, the Representative
theory that our ideas correspond to and faithfully represent objects in the perception
external world.
So far so good. The trouble arises when we ask about this relation, or cor-
respondence, of the perceived idea to anything “out there” in the external
world. Any representative theory of knowledge, according to which the
7
Ibid., IV, 1, 1.
8
Ibid., IV, 4, 4.
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218
THE QUESTION
OF KNOWLEDGE THE EGOCENTRIC PREDICAMENT
Some philosophers claim that all we can know is our own ideas. But in this view
we are trapped in the world of our own egos (or selves) and ideas. We could
never get outside ourselves to verify whether ideas correspond to anything in the
external world.

objects of the external world are represented to us by our ideas, immediately

Problem: the falls prey to the egocentric predicament, our hopeless inability to get outside
egocentric our own minds and ideas. If all we can directly know is our own ideas
predicament (epistemological dualism), then how could we ever know whether our ideas
correspond to anything, or even approximate anything, “out there” (repre-
sentative theory of ideas)? Obviously, there is no standpoint from which we
could look at an object in the external world and then look at our ideas in
our minds, and announce: “Ah! They correspond. Our ideas really do repre-
sent things in the external world!” For in Locke’s view, all we can perceive
are our own ideas. That there is an external world we know from the passiv-
ity of our perceptions—our ideas simply confront us independently of our
will. The question is: How do we know what it is like? Does this general
theory end in a dismal skepticism about the things in the external world?
How is the gap between the external world and our ideas of it to be over-
come? This is a serious problem for anyone who holds both that all we can
know is our own ideas and that our ideas represent the external world.
Berkeley was the immediate successor to Locke, and we saw in an earlier
discussion how Berkeley solved this problem by means of his thoroughly
idealist philosophy: We don’t have to worry about any correspondence
between ideas and things, because things are ideas; we don’t have sensa-
tions of a table; the table is a sensation, or bundle of sensations, and there
is no material substance, but only mental substance or mind. As before, this
may strike you as an extreme position, but it is still not as extreme as what
we are led to by the successor of Berkeley, David Hume.

RADICAL EMPIRICISM: HUME

The forms of empiricism that we have looked at so far might be called
“mild” forms. In spite of their emphasis on sense experience, both Aristotle
and St. Thomas believed that from experience we can nonetheless derive
knowledge that is certain and universal, as with the principle of causality
(every event must have a cause). Locke believed this also and, similar to
Descartes, he believed that we can have a direct intuition of our own minds.
Not so mild is the empiricism of the Scottish philosopher David Hume
(1711–1776). It is, in fact, appropriately called radical empiricism.
It is important to follow the road from Locke to Berkeley to Hume: the
three “British empiricists.” Locke believed, as did Descartes, in two basic
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David Hume, who carried British empiricism

to its skeptical conclusion
219
THE WAY OF
EXPERIENCE

substances, mind and matter, though he confesses that while we have to

believe in matter as something “out there” upholding the sensible qualities
of things, we really cannot know what it is in itself; it is, Locke said, “some-
thing, I know not what.” Berkeley followed Locke, but with his thorough-
going idealist philosophy denied utterly the existence of matter, leaving
only mind and its ideas. It remained for Hume to bring these ideas full
circle to a kind of epistemological dead end.
Hume’s understanding of how knowledge arises is similar to Locke’s, but
the terminology is somewhat different. All we have are perceptions. These, how- Perceptions ⫽
ever, are to be divided between impressions, which are vivid or lively sensations, impressions ⫹ ideas
or the immediate data of experience, and ideas, which are sort of pale copies
of impressions, and which provide the material for thinking. Hume goes on
to distinguish between simple and complex perceptions (both impressions and
ideas), but insists in any case on the priority of impressions over ideas: First,
we have sensations, and then, second, we have ideas that are based on these
sensations. The crucial point is that we have no ideas unless they are derived
from impressions, and this brings us to the crunch. For in the derivation of all
our ideas from sense data, Hume was much more rigorous or consistent or
radical than either Locke or Berkeley. This radicalism shows up, first, in Hume’s
treatment of the idea of substance, both material substance in the external world
and mental substance in the internal world.
It is natural to believe that there is Something, some mental substance, that Hume’s analysis
underlies our intellectual activities: How can there be thinking and the like of substance
without something that does the thinking? Likewise, it is natural to believe
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220
THE QUESTION Hume’s “radical” empiricism is so-called because he applied the empiricist crite-
OF KNOWLEDGE
rion of knowledge rigorously, consistently, and exclusively. Unlike previous empir-
icists, he allowed no rationalistic cracks or back doors: Our knowledge can extend
absolutely no further than what is actually disclosed in sense experience.

that there is Something, some material substance, that underlies the sensible
qualities in the external world: How can there be qualities without some-
thing that is qualified? But a “natural belief,” as Hume calls it, for all its
practical importance, is something very different from rational knowledge
based on experience. Since we have no sense impressions whatsoever of
substance, either external material substance or internal mental substance,
we have no rational grounds at all for talk about matter or mind! Just as
Berkeley dissolved Locke’s material substance into a bundle of ideas (color,
sound, taste), so Hume now dissolves Berkeley’s mental substance, the “I,”
into a bundle of ideas. As Hume says, the dissolution of the one paves the
way for the dissolution of the other. From A Treatise of Human Nature:

Philosophers begin to be reconcil’d to the principle, that we have no idea of external

substance, distinct from the ideas of particular qualities. This must pave the way for
a like principle with regard to the mind, that we have no notion of it, distinct from
the particular perceptions. . . .
There are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately
conscious of what we call our SELF; that we feel its existence and its continuance
in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of
its perfect identity and simplicity. The strongest sensation, the most violent passion,
say they, instead of distracting us from this view, only fix it the more intensely, and
make us consider their influence on self either by their pain or pleasure. To attempt
a farther proof of this were to weaken its evidence; since no proof can be deriv’d
from any fact, of which we are so intimately conscious; nor is there any thing, of
which we can be certain, if we doubt of this.
Unluckily all these positive assertions are contrary to that very experience, which
is pleaded for them, nor have we any idea of self, after the manner it is here
explain’d. For from what impression cou’d this idea be deriv’d? This question ’tis
impossible to answer without a manifest contradiction and absurdity; and yet ’tis a
question, which must necessarily be answer’d, if we wou’d have the idea of self
pass for clear and intelligible. It must be some one impression, that gives rise to
every real idea. But self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our
several impressions and ideas are suppos’d to have a reference. If any impression
gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same,
thro’ the whole course of our lives; since self is suppos’d to exist after that manner.
But there is no impression constant and invariable. Pain and pleasure, grief and
joy, passions and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the same
time. It cannot, therefore, be from any of these impressions, or from any other, that
the idea of self is deriv’d; and consequently there is no such idea.
But farther, what must become of all our particular perceptions upon this hypoth-
esis? All these are different, and distinguishable, and separable from each other,
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and may be separately consider’d, and may exist separately, and have no need of 221
any thing to support their existence. After what manner, therefore, do they belong to
THE WAY OF
self; and how are they connected with it? For my part, when I enter most intimately EXPERIENCE
into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of
heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch
myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the
perception. When my perceptions are remov’d for any time, as by sound sleep;
so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And were all
my perceptions remov’d by death, and cou’d I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor
love, nor hate after the dissolution of my body, I shou’d be entirely annihilated, nor
do I conceive what is farther requisite to make me a perfect non-entity. If any one
upon serious and unprejudic’d reflexion, thinks he has a different notion of himself,
I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may
be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular.
He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu’d, which he calls himself;
tho’ I am certain there is no such principle in me.
But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of
the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different
perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a
perpetual flux and movement. Our eyes cannot turn in their sockets without varying
our perceptions. Our thought is still more variable than our sight; and all our other
senses and faculties contribute to this change; nor is there any single power of the
soul, which remains unalterably the same, perhaps for one moment. The mind is a
kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass,
re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There
is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different; whatever natural
propension we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity. The comparison
of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that
constitute the mind; nor have we the most distant notion of the place, where these
scenes are represented, or of the materials, of which it is compos’d.9

What am I? I look within, in search of some enduring, stable reality—a

self, an ego, an “I.” But all I can come up with is a passing parade of per-
ceptions. We have come a long way from Descartes’, Locke’s, and Berkeley’s
introspective intuition of mind, the mental substance!
But Hume is not through. The implications of his relentless and radical
empiricism touch every aspect of philosophy. A second important example
is the concept of causality. Again, do we not have a natural belief in a causal Hume’s analysis
connection that binds things together in our experience? Is it not a univer- of causality
sal and certain principle that every event must have a cause? Hume answers
again: natural belief, Yes; rational knowledge, No. Look at your experience
once more. What do you actually perceive? What are your impressions? Is it
true that in a supposed causal relation, such as A causing B, we have a
perception of A coming before B, and we have a perception of A standing
next to B (or next to something that stands next to B), but none of this is
sufficient to explain a real causal connection between A and B: A could be

9
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (London: Oxford University
Press, 1888), pp. 251–253, 635.
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222 THE BRITISH EMPIRICISTS ON SUBSTANCE

THE QUESTION
OF KNOWLEDGE mental substance
Locke
material substance

Berkeley mental substance

Hume

before B, and be next to B, but still not be the cause of B. What is required,
in addition to temporal succession and spatial proximity, is a necessary con-
nection. And that we don’t perceive. It is a metaphysical figment without
any rational justification whatsoever.

The idea, then, of causation must be deriv’d from some relation among objects;
and that relation we must now endeavour to discover. I find in the first place, that
whatever objects are consider’d as causes or effects, are contiguous; and that noth-
ing can operate in a time or place, which is ever so little remov’d from those of its
existence. Tho’ distant objects may sometimes seem productive of each other, they
are commonly found upon examination to be link’d by a chain of causes, which are
contiguous among themselves, and to the distant objects; and when in any particular
instance we cannot discover this connexion, we still presume it to exist. We may
therefore consider the relation of CONTIGUITY as essential to that of causation; at
least may suppose it such, according to the general opinion, till we can find a more
proper occasion to clear up this matter, by examining what objects are or are not
susceptible of juxtaposition and conjunction.
The second relation I shall observe as essential to causes and effects, is not so
universally acknowledg’d, but is liable to some controversy. ’Tis that of PRIORITY of
time in the cause before the effect. Some pretend that ’tis not absolutely necessary
a cause shou’d precede its effect; but that any object or action, in the very first
moment of its existence, may exert its productive quality, and give rise to another
object or action, perfectly co-temporary with itself. But beside that experience in most
instances seems to contradict his opinion, we may establish the relation of priority
by a kind of inference or reasoning. ’Tis an establish’d maxim both in natural and
moral philosophy, that an object, which exists for any time in its full perfection with-
out producing another, is not its sole cause; but is assisted by some other principle,
which pushes it from its state of inactivity, and makes it exert that energy, of which
it was secretly possessed. Now if any cause may be perfectly co-temporary with its
effect, ’tis certain, according to this maxim, that they must all of them be so; since
any one of them, which retards its operation for a single moment, exerts not itself
at that very individual time, in which it might have operated; and therefore is no
proper cause. The consequence of this wou’d be no less than the destruction of that
succession of causes, which we observe in the world; and indeed, the utter annihila-
tion of time. For if one cause were co-temporary with its effect, and this effect with
its effect, and so on, ’tis plain there wou’d be no such thing as succession, and all
objects must be coexistent.
If this argument appear satisfactory, ’tis well. If not, I beg the reader to allow
me the same liberty, which I have us’d in the preceding case, of supposing it such.
For he shall find, that the affair is of no great importance.
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Having thus discover’d or suppos’d the two relations of contiguity and succession 223
to be essential to causes and effects, I find I am stopt short, and can proceed no
THE WAY OF
farther in considering any single instance of cause and effect. Motion in one body is EXPERIENCE
regarded upon impulse as the cause of motion in another. When we consider these
objects with the utmost attention, we find only that the one body approaches the other;
and that the motion of it precedes that of the other, but without any sensible interval.
’Tis in vain to rack ourselves with farther thought and reflexion upon this subject. We
can go no farther in considering this particular instance.
Shou’d any one leave this instance, and pretend to define a cause, by saying it
is something productive of another, ’tis evident he wou’d say nothing. For what does
he mean by production? Can he give any definition of it, that will not be the same
with that of causation? If he can; I desire it may be produc’d. If he cannot; he here
runs in a circle, and gives a synonimous term instead of a definition.
Shall we then rest contented with these two relations of contiguity and succes-
sion, as affording a complete idea of causation? By no means. An object may be
contiguous and prior to another, without being consider’d as its cause. There is a
NECESSARY CONNEXION to be taken into consideration; and that relation is of
much greater importance, than any of the other two above-mention’d.
Here again I turn the object on all sides, in order to discover the nature of this
necessary connexion, and find the impression, or impressions, from which its idea
may be deriv’d. When I cast my eye on the known qualities of objects, I imme-
diately discover that the relation of cause and effect depends not in the least on
them. When I consider their relations, I can find none but those of contiguity and
succession; which I have already regarded as imperfect and unsatisfactory.10

Hume’s position is appropriately called phenomenalism. This is the view Phenomenalism

that all we can actually know is the phenomena or appearances (phenomenon
means, literally, “an appearance”) that are presented to us in our percep-
tions. For the time-honored view that substance (both material and mental)
is a metaphysical entity and that causality is a metaphysical connection, the
phenomenalist substitutes the view that they are no more than bundles of
perceptions: colors, sounds, pains, pleasures, location, succession, and the
like. These two pillars of traditional philosophizing now lay in dust before
the chisel of Hume’s phenomenalism.
If you find yourself thinking of Hume as a skeptic, you are right. Specifi-
cally, his is the sort of skepticism that denies that knowledge of metaphysical
principles and relations is possible, or what we called in Chapter 7 “philo-
sophical skepticism.” Perhaps the best way of summarizing Hume’s anti-
metaphysical skepticism is by means of his own derivation of all possible
knowledge from two, and only two, sources: “relations of ideas” and “matters
of fact.” The following two paragraphs from Hume’s Enquiry Concerning “Relations of ideas”
Human Understanding should be studied until the distinction is appreciated: and “matters of fact”

All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds,
to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of Fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of
Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic; and in short, every affirmation which is either
intuitively or demonstratively certain. That the square of the hypothenuse is equal to

10
Ibid., pp. 75–77 (slightly edited).
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224 Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature was first published in 1739. The
disappointed Hume described it as having fallen “still-born from
THE QUESTION the press,” so poor was the response to it. It was followed
OF KNOWLEDGE by the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

the square of the two sides, is a proposition which expresses a relation between
these figures. That three times five is equal to the half of thirty, expresses a relation
between these numbers. Propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere opera-
tion of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe.
Though there never were a circle or triangle in nature, the truths demonstrated by
Euclid would for ever retain their certainty and evidence.
Matters of fact, which are the second objects of human reason, are not ascer-
tained in the same manner; nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a
like nature with the foregoing. The contrary of every matter of fact is still possible;
because it can never imply a contradiction, and is conceived by the mind with the
same facility and distinctness, as if ever so comformable to reality. That the sun will
not rise to-morrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contra-
diction than the affirmation, that it will rise. We should in vain, therefore, attempt to
demonstrate its falsehood. Were it demonstratively false, it would imply a contradic-
tion, and could never be distinctly conceived by the mind.11
11
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, in Hume’s Enquiries, ed. L. A.
Selby-Bigge, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), pp. 25–26.
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225
THE WAY OF
PHENOMENALISM EXPERIENCE

The view that we have no rational knowledge beyond what is disclosed in the
phenomena of perceptions. Mind, as far as it can be rationally known, is therefore
merely a collection of perceptions.

Our knowledge is either based on relations of ideas, in which case it is

certain but has no connection with reality, as with “three times five is equal
to half of thirty,” which, though absolutely certain, is absolutely certain
independently of anything in the world of reality; or our knowledge is
based on matters of fact, in which case it does inform us about the world of
reality, as with “the sun will rise tomorrow,” but can never be certain
because it is derived from a limited and passing parade of perceptions.
(“Relations of ideas” is a strange-sounding phrase. If it helps, draw the
distinction between “matters of logic” and “matters of fact.”)
This same skeptical and antimetaphysical distinction is restated in the
celebrated outburst with which Hume concluded the Enquiry:

When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we
make? If we take in our hand any volume, of divinity or school metaphysics, for
instance; let us ask, “Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity
or number?” No. “Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter
of fact and existence?” No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain noth-
ing but sophistry and illusion.12

It is difficult to overstate the depth of Hume’s skepticism about knowl-

edge. But note that he is only following empiricism to its logical conclusion.
If all knowledge of reality must come from experience, then there are only
two options. Either our ideas are certain but uninformative, or they are
informative but never certain. And there we are stuck. But not for long.

12
Ibid., p. 165.

HUME’S TWO BASES OF KNOWLEDGE

• Relations of Ideas: Ideas that simply by virtue of their meanings and relations
are necessarily or logically true, but therefore irrelevant for the world of reality;
for example, “The sum of the angles of a triangle equals 180 degrees.”
• Matters of Fact: Ideas that bear upon and inform us about the world of reality,
but that can never be certain because they are derived from specific experiences;
for example, “Water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit.”
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226 CHAPTER 9 IN REVIEW

THE QUESTION
OF KNOWLEDGE SUMMARY
Empiricism is the epistemological claim that the mind at birth is a “blank
tablet” and that all knowledge (exclusive of logical and mathematical
knowledge) is derived ultimately from sense experience. In the previous
chapter we considered three versions of rationalism, and in the present
chapter we considered three versions of empiricism.
Classical empiricism has its origin in Greek philosophy and is most nota-
bly associated with Aristotle and, later, St. Thomas Aquinas. It will be
recalled that Aristotle’s is a Form-philosophy, wherein the object of knowl-
edge is identified with the abiding essence of things. Unlike Plato, Aristotle
believed that this essence is in particular things, and thus that it is with
particular things that we must begin. From the particulars the mind is able
to form a universal concept, which corresponds to the common essence in
the particulars, and which guides knowledge and discourse amid the flux
and multiplicity of the sensible world. St. Thomas introduced the intellec-
tual faculty of abstraction, whereby the mind is enabled to lift the universal
features from particulars, leaving behind in the particulars all that is not
essential to them.
In some ways Locke is the giant of all empiricists, and certainly the one
who set the empiricist agenda for the modern period. He began his famous
Essay Concerning Human Understanding with a scathing rebuttal to the doc-
trine of innate ideas. In place of innate ideas Locke substitutes experience.
This comes in two forms: sensation, our experience of external objects, and
reflection, our experience of the internal workings of our minds. From sen-
sation and reflection we form simple ideas, and from simple ideas the mind
compounds complex ideas. In all of this the active and passive functions
of the mind should be distinguished. Very important is Locke’s epistemo-
logical or representative dualism, whereby our ideas are held to convey to
us a likeness of the realities external to our minds: the perception of a tree,
and the actual tree “out there.” This, however, involves a great problem
known as the egocentric predicament: If all we can know directly is our
own ideas, how can we ever know whether they correspond to anything
that is not an idea?
Locke believed in material and mental substance; Berkeley believed
at least in mental substance; but Hume’s radical empiricism pushes
everything further. All we have are perceptions, divided into lively
impressions and pale ideas; that’s all we have. The time-honored con-
cept of underlying but unperceived substance is, therefore, an unjusti-
fied figment, as is also the concept of causality, which, in its pre-Humean
form, was thought to involve some unperceived metaphysical necessity.
Hume’s phenomenalism, which reduces knowledge to phenomena or
appearances or “bundles of ideas,” represents a serious skepticism:
Either a proposition is a mere relation of ideas (“A is A”), which says
nothing about reality itself, or it is a matter of fact (“Swans are white”),
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which can never be known with certitude because of the limitations of 227
our perceptions. THE WAY OF
EXPERIENCE

BASIC IDEAS
• Empiricism
• Tabula rasa
• Universal concepts
• Intellectual abstraction
• Aristotle and St. Thomas: three stages of knowledge
• Locke’s arguments against innate ideas
• Locke: experience, sensation, and reflection
• Simple and complex ideas
• The mind as passive and active
• Epistemological dualism, or the representative theory of knowledge
• The egocentric predicament
• Hume: perceptions, impressions, and ideas
• Hume’s analysis of substance
• Hume’s analysis of causality
• Phenomenalism
• Relations of ideas and matters of fact

TEST YOURSELF
1. True or false: Fido is an abstraction.
2. The impossibility of escaping the world of our own ideas is called _____.
3. Why does Hume have little time for talk about, say, “necessary connec-
tions” or substances?
4. Name a few of Locke’s arguments against innate ideas.
5. Why, for St. Thomas, is the singular prior to the universal in one way,
but the universal prior to the singular in another way?
6. What is the empiricist’s attitude toward a claim such as “All barking
dogs bark”?
7. What role does induction play in Aristotle’s view of knowledge?
8. Who wrote A Treatise of Human Nature?
9. Why is Hume’s empiricism called radical empiricism?
10. True or false: Locke, like Descartes, believed in mind or mental substance.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• When considering thinkers who belong to the same traditions, such as the
empiricist tradition, be able to identify what they hold in common and where
they differ. Can you compare in this way the thinkers in this chapter?
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228 • What do you yourself make of the egocentric predicament? Is it a genu-

THE QUESTION
ine problem? If not, why not? If so, how do you propose to escape the
OF KNOWLEDGE skepticism inherent in it?
• What do you think about Hume’s rejection of mind (as a mental sub-
stance) or causality (as a metaphysical connection)? Does it make any
difference to your philosophical perspective? To your practical life?

FOR FURTHER READING

Robert R. Ammerman and Marcus G. Singer (eds.). Belief, Knowledge, and
Truth: Readings in the Theory of Knowledge. New York: Scribners, 1970. A
collection of traditional, recent, and important statements on all aspects
of knowledge, including some encountered in our chapter.
Bruce Aune. Rationalism, Empiricism, and Pragmatism: An Introduction. New
York: Random House, 1970. Chs. 2–3. Discussions oriented to beginners
on “Hume and Empiricism” and “Contemporary Empiricism.”
V. C. Chappel (ed.). Hume: A Collection of Critical Essays. Garden City, NY:
Anchor Books, 1966. An anthology of advanced essays on Hume’s phi-
losophy, including issues considered in our chapter.
Frederick Copleston. A History of Philosophy. Baltimore: Newman Press,
1946–1974. I, Ch. 29; II, Ch. 38; V, Chs. 4–6 and 14–15. Authoritative
accounts of the empiricist epistemologies of Aristotle, St. Thomas, Locke,
and Hume, by a recognized historian of philosophy.
John Dunn. Locke: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2003. The major historian of Locke provides a summary of his life
and works.
A. C. Ewing. The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy. New York: Collier
Books, 1962. Ch. 2. A beginner’s discussion of the issue between rational-
ism and empiricism (“The ‘A Priori’ and the Empirical”) by an intuition-
ist philosopher.
Antony Flew. Hume’s Philosophy of Belief: A Study of His First Inquiry.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961. A standard treatment of the
issues in Hume’s Enquiry, including relations of ideas and matters of
fact, the nature of empirical belief, the idea of necessary connection,
and so on.
Etienne Gilson. The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. L. K. Shook.
New York: Random House, 1956. Part II, Chs. 5–7. Technical treatments
of St. Thomas’s theory of knowledge, by a foremost Thomas authority.
E. J. Lowe. Locke. London: Routledge, 2005. Describes major problems in
interpreting Locke’s writing.
E. J. Lowe. The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Locke on Human Understand-
ing. London: Routledge, 1995. A balanced and thorough introduction to
Locke’s theory of knowledge.
C. B. Martin and D. M. Armstrong (eds.). Locke and Berkeley: A Collection of
Critical Essays. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1968. An anthology that
includes advanced discussions of some of Locke’s positions encountered
in our chapter.
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Harold Morick (ed.). Challenges to Empiricism. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub- 229

lishing Co., 1980. Twelve contemporary thinkers criticize the fundamen- THE WAY OF
tal empiricist thesis in relation to ontology, science, and linguistics. EXPERIENCE
Robert J. Swartz (ed.). Perceiving, Sensing, and Knowing. Garden City, NY: Anchor
Books, 1965. A book of sometimes difficult readings from twentieth-century
thinkers on perception and its role in the acquisition of knowledge.
*In addition, see the relevant articles (“Empiricism,” “Phenomenalism,”
“Causation,” “Aristotle,” “Hume,” etc.) in Routledge Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig (London: Routledge, 1998), and Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu.
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C H A P T E R 10

THE PROBLEM
OF CERTAINTY

W
e began this part of the book with a chapter on doubt, and it
is fitting to conclude with a chapter on certainty. To see that
certainty really does pose a problem, just ask yourself whether
you are certain of any of the following propositions, and whether you are
certain about them in different ways:

• 2 ⫹ 2 ⫽ 4.
• In fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
• I exist.
• You exist.
• The sun will rise tomorrow.
• Right now I am perceiving this page.
• Barking dogs bark.
• Humans have evolved from lower animals.
• Every event must have a cause.

As you can see, the idea of certainty is not a simple one. In this chapter we
will consider the problem in only one of its aspects, but, philosophically, a
very basic one. Still more specifically, we will discuss one philosopher’s
attempt to account for certainty, especially in light of the preceding chapter.
A warning: This may not be easy going, and the quoted material will be a
good challenge.
231
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232 KANT AND HUME

THE QUESTION
OF KNOWLEDGE “I openly confess my recollection of David Hume was the very thing which
many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave my inves-
tigations in the field of speculative philosophy a quite new direction.”1
Thus spoke the German philosopher Immanuel Kant2 (1724–1804), who
marks a turning point in modern epistemology.
Kant observed that there must be something radically wrong with the
whole way of thinking that led finally to the phenomenalism and skepti-
cism of Hume. For, Kant says, I am certain of some of the truths that
Hume called “matters of fact.” He cites, as an example from natural
science, Newton’s Third Law of Motion, that in all motion action and
reaction must always be equal; and from metaphysics he cites the prin-
ciple of causality, that every event must have a cause. For Kant it was not
a question of whether we possess such knowledge but how. In his explana-
tion of how propositions can be at once genuinely informative about real-
ity and absolutely certain, Kant signals an altogether different approach
to the problem, provides us with a sort of halfway point between rationalism
and empiricism, and establishes himself as one of the greatest epistemol-
ogists of all time.

SOME IMPORTANT TERMINOLOGY

But, to begin at the beginning, it is necessary to study some terminology
that Kant himself introduced into philosophical discussion.
A priori and First is the distinction between a priori knowledge and a posteriori knowl-
a posteriori edge. You can pretty much guess the meaning of these Latin terms just by
knowledge looking at them. A priori knowledge is knowledge that comes before (prior
to) sense experience and is therefore independent of sense experience. This,
of course, is the emphasis of the rationalist. A posteriori knowledge is knowl-
edge that comes after (posterior to) sense experience and is therefore depen-
dent on sense experience. This is the empiricist emphasis.

Knowledge

a priori a posteriori

Derived independently Derived through sense

of sense experience experience

1
Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, tr. Lewis W. Beck (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1950), p. 8.
2
Rhymes with font.
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Knowledge 233
THE PROBLEM
OF CERTAINTY
analytic synthetic

True by definition, but Not logically certain,

not bearing on reality but bearing on reality

E.g., "Rectangles E.g., "It is snowing in

have four sides." Anchorage, Alaska."

Second, we have the distinction between analytic and synthetic knowl- Analytic and
edge. Analytic knowledge is another way of expressing Hume’s “relation of synthetic knowledge
ideas.” When this kind of knowledge is expressed in a proposition, the
predicate is contained already in the subject. Examples are: “The sum of the
angles of any triangle is 180 degrees”; “All bachelors are unmarried”; or any
proposition where the predicate is contained already in the subject. Now all
such knowledge or propositions “have to be true.” For they are true by
definition, or to say the same thing, they are logically true, and this means
that you could not deny them without self-contradiction. (Such statements
are sometimes called tautologies or redundancies.) Now no one questions
the absolute truth of analytic propositions. Rationalists and empiricists alike
agree that such propositions must be true no matter what. On the other
hand, it is important to see that such truths do not really tell us anything
about reality. They neither affirm nor deny the actual existence of anything.
The proposition “All barking dogs bark” is necessarily true whether or not
there are any dogs, or, for that matter, whether or not there is anything. A
statement like “All barking dogs bark” only means “If there are any barking
dogs, then they bark.” The truth of these propositions is, then, a priori and
utterly independent of sense experience and of the sensible world itself.
Synthetic knowledge, on the other hand, corresponds to Hume’s “mat-
ters of fact.” In synthetic propositions, the predicate adds something to the
subject, and thus two ideas are “synthesized” in the proposition. Examples
are: “Water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit”; “Dogs bark”; and any prop-
osition where the predicate amplifies the subject. In this way a synthetic
proposition affirms or denies the existence of something (and is therefore
sometimes called an “existential” proposition); it informs us about things;
it really does tell us something about the actual universe.

IS THERE SYNTHETIC A PRIORI KNOWLEDGE?

Now we have just seen that everyone, rationalists and empiricists both,
accepts the absolute truth of analytic propositions as a priori certain. It is
also clear that few rationalists have ever insisted that sense experience plays
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234 absolutely no role whatsoever in the acquisition of synthetic knowledge. Just

THE QUESTION consider: Even if you are the staunchest rationalist, how do you know that
OF KNOWLEDGE swans are white? That in fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed
the ocean blue? Obviously there is much about the actual world that we could
not possibly know except in an a posteriori way: making observations, lighting
Bunsen burners, taking field trips, and the like. Everyone admits this.
It turns out then that both rationalists and empiricists accept analytic prop-
ositions as a priori certain, and that they both accept at least some synthetic
propositions as a posteriori probable. The real question and the real issue
between rationalists and empiricists is this: Can we possess any knowledge
that is both a priori certain and synthetically informative? Is there such a thing
as synthetic a priori knowledge? This is a crucial question, and how you answer
it will make all the difference to your general philosophical perspective.
As we already have seen, Kant answered the question of synthetic a priori
knowledge with a resounding Yes. But his explanation is hardly what tra-
ditional rationalists would have expected—or accepted. Kant turned the
epistemological world upside down. In fact, he likened his contribution to
the Copernican revolution, which, by radically shifting our viewpoint (the
sun does not go around the earth, but the earth goes around the sun),
resulted immediately in a superior explanation of the phenomena to be
Kant’s Copernican explained. Kant’s “Copernican revolution” consisted, similarly, in the star-
revolution: tling announcement that ideas such as substance and causality do not make
experience their way into our minds through experience, but are “a priori categories of
dependent on
concepts the understanding” that mold and shape and, in fact, constitute our experi-
ence. That is, substance and causality (along with ten additional categories)
are part of what we mean by experience. Indeed, even space and time, in
which substances standing in causal relations are enabled to appear at all,
are contributed by our intellects. Space and time too, therefore, are a priori
conditions of experience.
Kant’s epistemology, then, was a complete reversal of previous theories.
No longer do we form concepts based on our experience; rather, the con-
cepts exist first and shape all of our experience.
In this way Kant redeems such principles as those of causality and sub-
stance from the skeptical clutches of Hume. As far as the world of appear-
ance goes, “Every event must have a cause,” for example, is a synthetic truth
but also possesses a priori universality and necessity. We don’t have any
choice about it: We have to experience things as causally related because that

SYNTHETIC A PRIORI, A CRUCIAL QUESTION

One of the questions that divide philosophers into two different camps is the ques-
tion of synthetic a priori knowledge: Is it possible to know synthetic propositions
with a priori certainty? Are there any nonanalytic truths that are, nonetheless,
universally and necessarily true?
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235
THE PROBLEM
KANT’S COPERNICAN REVOLUTION OF CERTAINTY
IN PHILOSOPHY
“. . . the pure concepts of the understanding . . . do not derive from experience,
but experience derives from them.”

is one of the ways our minds create experience; if we’re all wearing rose-
colored glasses, everything must appear to be rose colored—to all of us. In
the same way, for Kant, we all view the world through the mental categories
of our understanding (such as causality), which shape how we see the world
or experience it.
Kant’s major work, the Critique of Pure Reason, was first published in
1781. In the following excerpts from the Introduction, Kant begins to
explain in his own way the ideas we have already outlined. (1) He distin-
guishes between empirical or a posteriori knowledge derived from sense
experience and pure or a priori knowledge, which is completely indepen-
dent of experience, and he raises the question whether such pure knowl-
edge exists; (2) he establishes the two identifying marks by which pure or
a priori knowledge may be recognized and distinguished from empirical
or a posteriori knowledge:

• Necessity
• Universality

(3) he distinguishes between analytic and synthetic propositions, and explains

the nature of synthetic a priori knowledge both as being existentially informa-
tive and as bearing the marks of necessity and universality, something unac-
countable for on the basis of experience.

Of the Difference Between Pure and Empirical Knowledge

That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt. For how
should the faculty of knowledge be called into activity, if not by objects which affect
our senses, and which either produce representations by themselves, or rouse the
activity of our understanding to compare, to connect, or to separate them; and thus
to convert the raw material of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge of objects,
which we call experience? In respect of time, therefore, no knowledge within us is
antecedent to experience, but all knowledge begins with it.
But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it
arises from experience. For it is quite possible that even our empirical experience
is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and of that which
our own faculty of knowledge (incited only by sensuous impressions), supplies from
itself, a supplement which we do not distinguish from that raw material, until long
practice has roused our attention and rendered us capable of separating one from
the other.
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236 It is therefore a question which deserves at least closer investigation, and cannot
be disposed of at first sight, whether there exists a knowledge independent of experi-
THE QUESTION
OF KNOWLEDGE ence, and even of all impressions of the senses? Such knowledge is called a priori,
and distinguished from empirical knowledge, which has its sources a posteriori, that
is, in experience.

We Are in Possession of Certain Cognitions A Priori,

and Even the Ordinary Understanding Is Never Without Them
All depends here on a criterion, by which we may safely distinguish between pure
and empirical knowledge. Now experience teaches us, no doubt, that something
is so or so, but not that it cannot be different. First, then, if we have a proposition,
which is thought, together with its necessity, we have a judgment a priori; and if,
besides, it is not derived from any proposition, except such as is itself again consid-
ered as necessary, we have an absolutely a priori judgment. Secondly, experience
never imparts to its judgments true or strict, but only assumed or relative universal-
ity (by means of induction), so that we ought always to say, so far as we have
observed hitherto, there is no exception to this or that rule. If, therefore, a judgment
is thought with strict universality, so that no exception is admitted as possible, it is
not derived from experience, but valid absolutely a priori. . . . Necessity, therefore,
and strict universality are safe criteria of knowledge a priori, and are inseparable
one from the other. . . .
That these really exist in our knowledge such necessary, and in the strictest
sense universal, and therefore pure judgments a priori, is easy to show. If we
want a scientific example, we have only to look to any of the propositions of
mathematics; if we want one from the sphere of the ordinary understanding, such
a proposition as that each change must have a cause, will answer the purpose;
nay, in the latter case, even the concept of cause contains so clearly the concept
of the necessity of its connection with an effect, and of the strict universality of the
rule, that it would be destroyed altogether if we attempted to derive it, as Hume
does, from the frequent concomitancy of that which happens with that which pre-
cedes, and from a habit arising thence (therefore from a purely subjective neces-
sity), of connecting representations. It is possible even, without having recourse
to such examples in proof of the reality of pure propositions a priori within our
knowledge, to prove their indispensability for the possibility of experience itself,
thus proving it a priori. For whence should experience take its certainty, if all
the rules which it follows were always again and again empirical, and therefore
contingent and hardly fit to serve as first principles? For the present, however,
we may be satisfied for having shown the pure employment of the faculty of our
knowledge as a matter of fact, with the criteria of it.
Not only in judgments, however, but even in certain concepts, can we show
their origin a priori. Take away, for example, from the concept of a body, as
supplied by experience, everything that is empirical, one by one; such as colour,
hardness or softness, weight, and even impenetrability, and there still remains the
space which the body (now entirely vanished) occupied: that you cannot take
away. And in the same manner, if you remove from your empirical concept of
any object, corporeal or incorporeal, all properties which experience has taught
you, you cannot take away from it that property by which you conceive it as a
substance, or inherent in a substance (although such a concept contains more
determinations than that of an object in general). Convinced, therefore, by the
necessity with which that concept forces itself upon you, you will have to admit
that it has its seat in your faculty of knowledge a priori. . . .
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Of the Distinction Between Analytical and Synthetical Judgments 237

In all judgments in which there is a relation between subject and predicate (I speak THE PROBLEM
of affirmative judgments only, the application to negative ones being easy), that OF CERTAINTY
relation can be of two kinds. Either the predicate B belongs to the subject A as
something contained (though covertly) in the concept A; or B lies outside the sphere
of the concept A, though somehow connected with it. In the former case I call the
judgment analytical, in the latter synthetical. Analytical judgments (affirmative) are
therefore those in which the connection of the predicate with the subject is conceived
through identity, while others in which that connection is conceived without identity,
may be called synthetical. The former might be called illustrating, the latter expanding
judgments, because in the former nothing is added by the predicate to the concept
of the subject, but the concept is only divided into its constituent concepts which
were always conceived as existing within it, though confusedly; while the latter add
to the concept of the subject a predicate not conceived as existing within it, and
not to be extracted from it by any process of mere analysis. If I say, for instance,
All bodies are extended, this is an analytical judgment. I need not go beyond the
concept connected with the name of body, in order to find that extension is connected
with it. I have only to analyze that concept and become conscious of the manifold
elements always contained in it, in order to find that predicate. This is therefore an
analytical judgment. But if I say, All bodies are heavy, the predicate is something
quite different from what I think as the mere concept of body. The addition of such
a predicate gives us a synthetical judgment. . . .
Empirical judgments, as such, are all synthetical; for it would be absurd to found
an analytical judgment on experience, because, in order to form such a judgment,
I need not at all step out of my concept, or appeal to the testimony of experience.
That a body is extended, is a proposition perfectly certain a priori, and not an
empirical judgment. For, before I call in experience, I am already in possession
of all the conditions of my judgment in the concept of body itself. I have only to
draw out from it, according to the principle of contradiction, the required predicate,
and I thus become conscious, at the same time, of the necessity of the judgment,
which experience could never teach me. But, though I do not include the predicate
of gravity in the general concept of body, that concept, nevertheless, indicates an
object of experience through one of its parts: so that I may add other parts also of
the same experience, besides those which belonged to the former concept. I may,
first, by an analytical process, realise the concept of body, through the predicates of
extension, impermeability, form, etc., all of which are contained in it. Afterwards I
expand my knowledge, and looking back to the experience from which my concept
of body was abstracted, I find gravity always connected with the before-mentioned
predicates, and therefore I add it synthetically to that concept as a predicate. It is,
therefore, experience on which the possibility of the synthesis of the predicate of
gravity with the concept of body is founded: because both concepts, though neither
of them is contained in the other, belong to each other, though accidentally only,
as parts of a whole, namely, of experience, which is itself a synthetical connection
of intuitions.
In synthetical judgments a priori, however, that help is entirely wanting. If I want
to go beyond the concept A in order to find another concept B connected with it,
where is there anything on which I may rest and through which a synthesis might
become possible, considering that I cannot have the advantage of looking about in
the field of experience? Take the proposition that all which happens has its cause.
In the concept of something that happens I no doubt conceive of something existing
preceded by time, and from this certain analytical judgments may be deduced. But
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238 the concept of cause is entirely outside that concept, and indicates something differ-
ent from that which happens, and is by no means contained in that representation.
THE QUESTION
OF KNOWLEDGE How can I venture then to predicate of that which happens something totally differ-
ent from it, and to represent the concept of cause, though not contained in it, as
belonging to it, and belonging to it by necessity? What is here the unknown x, on
which the understanding may rest in order to find beyond the concept A a foreign
predicate B, which nevertheless is believed to be connected with it? It cannot be
experience, because the proposition that all which happens has its cause represents
this second predicate as added to the subject not only with greater generality than
experience can ever supply, but also with a character of necessity, and therefore
purely a priori, and based on concepts. . . .3

Later in the Critique, Kant proposes how synthetic a priori knowledge is

possible. Pay close attention to his insistence on the role of a priori concepts
as conditions of experience and the epistemological consequences of this,
as in the statement “If by them only it is possible to think any object of
experience, it follows that they refer by necessity and a priori to all objects
of experience.” (By “intuition” Kant means the perception of objects as they
are represented by the intellect.)

Two ways only are possible in which synthetical representations and their objects
can agree, can refer to each other with necessity, and so to say meet each other.
Either it is the object alone that makes the representation possible, or it is the rep-
resentation alone that makes the object possible. In the former case their relation is
empirical only, and the representation therefore never possible a priori. This applies
to phenomena with reference to whatever in them belongs to sensation. In the latter
case, though representation by itself (for we do not speak here of its causality by
means of the will) cannot produce its object so far as its existence is concerned,
nevertheless the representation determines the object a priori, if through it alone it
is possible to know anything as an object. To know a thing as an object is possible
only under two conditions. First, there must be intuition by which the object is given
us, though as a phenomenon only, secondly, there must be a concept by which an
object is thought as corresponding to that intuition. From what we have said before it
is clear that the first condition, namely, that under which alone objects can be seen,
exists, so far as the form of intuition is concerned, in the soul a priori. All phenomena
therefore must conform to that formal condition of sensibility, because it is through it
alone that they appear, that is, that they are given and empirically seen.
Now the question arises whether there are not also antecedent concepts a priori,
forming conditions under which alone something can be, if not seen, yet thought as
an object in general; for in that case all empirical knowledge of objects would nec-
essarily conform to such concepts, it being impossible that anything should become
an object of experience without them. All experience contains, besides the intuition
of the senses by which something is given, a concept also of the object, which is
given in intuition as a phenomenon. Such concepts of objects in general therefore
must form conditions a priori of all knowledge produced by experience, and the
objective validity of the categories, as being such concepts a priori, rests on this very
fact that by them alone, so far as the form of thought is concerned, experience

3
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. F. Max Müller (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books,
1966), pp. 2–5, 7–9.
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becomes possible. If by them only it is possible to think any object of experience, 239
it follows that they refer by necessity and a priori to all objects of experience.
THE PROBLEM
There is therefore a principle for the transcendental deduction of all concepts OF CERTAINTY
a priori which must guide the whole of our investigation, namely, that all must
be recognised as conditions a priori of the possibility of experience, whether of
intuition, which is found in it, or of thought. . . .4

Kant emphasizes that these innate concepts are essential for experience
and are working prior to any sense experience. There can be no meaningful
experiences without the concepts to filter, categorize, and even synthesize
the raw material of the senses.
Kant goes on immediately to contrast his own theory of knowledge with
that of his empiricist predecessors, Locke and Hume, and to show where
they went wrong: Locke correctly recognized the existence of pure (necessary Where Locke and
and universal) concepts but mistakenly sought them from sense experience Hume went wrong
and, at the same time, applied them beyond sense experience (for example,
every event must have a cause, and God, a transcendent being, is the cause
of the world); Hume, on the other hand, correctly saw that such concepts
(necessary and universal) could not be derived from sense experience, and
mistakenly denied that they are, after all, necessary and universal. Now, says
Kant, neither Locke’s “extravagance” nor Hume’s “skepticism” squares with
the epistemological facts (the givenness of synthetic a priori knowledge),
whereas his own theory does account for the facts by steering a middle
course between the false alternatives of his misguided predecessors.

Locke, for want of this reflection, and because he met with pure concepts of the
understanding in experience, derived them also from experience, and yet acted so
inconsistently that he attempted to use them for knowledge which far exceeds all limits
of experience. David Hume saw that, in order to be able to do this, these concepts
ought to have their origin a priori; but as he could not explain how it was possible
that the understanding should be constrained to think concepts, which by themselves
are not united in the understanding, as necessarily united in the object, and never
thought that possibly the understanding might itself, through these concepts, be the
author of that experience in which its objects are found, he was driven by necessity
to derive them from experience (namely, from a subjective necessity, produced by
frequent association in experience, which at last is wrongly supposed to be objec-
tive, that is, from habit). He acted, however, very consistently, by declaring it to be
impossible to go with these concepts, and with the principles arising from them,
beyond the limits of experience. This empirical deduction, which was adopted by
both philosophers, cannot be reconciled with the reality of our scientific knowledge
a priori, namely, pure mathematics and general natural science, and is therefore
refuted by facts. The former of these two celebrated men opened a wide door to
fantastic extravagance, because reason, if it has once established such pretensions,
can no longer be checked by vague praises of moderation; the other, thinking that
he had once discovered so general an illusion of our faculty of knowledge, which
had formerly been accepted as reason, gave himself over entirely to scepticism.5

4
Ibid., pp. 72–73.
5
Ibid., pp. 74–75.
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240
THE QUESTION “. . . although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that
OF KNOWLEDGE
it arises from experience.”
—Kant

THE LIMITS OF REASON

It is important to note, however, the high price that must be paid for syn-
thetic a priori knowledge. One of the implications of Kant’s analysis is that
The noumenal and we can know nothing of reality as it is in itself (what Kant calls the noume-
phenomenal worlds nal world) but only as it appears to us through experience (he calls this the
phenomenal world). The reason is clear: The a priori categories or concepts
of the understanding are, as we have said, constitutive of our experience,
and therefore they have no legitimate application beyond experience. Cau-
sality, for example, applies only to objects of possible experience. And when
we try to apply such concepts beyond experience, what results is nonsense
and absurdities.
This necessary limitation of the concepts of the understanding to the phe-
nomenal world comes out well in the following from Kant’s Prolegomena to
Any Future Metaphysics, published in 1783 as a simplified version of the Cri-
tique of Pure Reason. (In these paragraphs, “intuition” again refers to what we
normally might call perceptions, and the “Aesthetic” refers to a section of
the Critique.)

Since the oldest days of philosophy, inquirers into pure reason have conceived,
besides the things of sense, or appearances (phenomena), which make up the sen-
sible world, certain beings of the understanding (noumena), which should constitute
an intelligible world. And as appearance and illusion were by those men identified
(a thing which we may well excuse in an undeveloped epoch), actuality was only
conceded to the beings of the understanding.
And we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances,
confess thereby that they are based upon a thing in itself, though we know not
this thing as it is in itself but only know its appearances, namely, the way in which
our senses are affected by this unknown something. The understanding, therefore,
by assuming appearances, grants the existence of things in themselves also; and
to this extent we may say that the representation of such things as are the basis
of appearances, consequently of mere beings of the understanding, is not only
admissible but unavoidable.
Our critical deduction by no means excludes things of that sort (noumena), but
rather limits the principles of the Aesthetic to this, that they shall not extend to all
things—as everything would then be turned into mere appearance—but that they
shall hold good only of objects of possible experience. Hereby, then, beings of the
understanding are granted, but with the inculcation of this rule which admits of no
exception: that we neither know nor can know anything at all definite of these pure
beings of the understanding, because our pure concepts of the understanding as
well as our pure intuitions extend to nothing but objects of possible experience,
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241
• What we gain through Kant’s theoretical reason: a priori certainty and universality THE PROBLEM
OF CERTAINTY
of fundamental concepts, such as causality and substance.
• What we lose through Kant’s theoretical reason: the possibility of any theoretical
knowledge of reality beyond objects of possible experience.

consequently to mere things of sense; and as soon as we leave this sphere, these
concepts retain no meaning whatever.6

Thus, if we have gained a priori certainty and universality for synthetic

knowledge, it has been at the cost of giving up any knowledge of reality
beyond space and time. We will see in Chapter 11 that for Kant this included,
naturally, God. Though seemingly a big loss, Kant actually saw this limita-
tion on reason as good news, not bad. It is precisely the absence of knowl-
edge of the noumenal world, including God and the divine, that makes
room for faith. In his famous Critique of Pure Reason, Kant says it explicitly:
“I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make
room for faith.”7 Kant believed that in addition to the “theoretical” reason, The “theoretical”
which is guided and limited by the a priori concepts of the understanding, and the “practical”
there is open to us the “practical” reason, which builds on the entirely dif- reason
ferent foundation of moral experience, and which does give us, in a way,
knowledge of God, freedom, and immortality. In Chapter 12, we will
encounter Kant’s Moral Argument for God.

CHAPTER 10 IN REVIEW
SUMMARY
In Chapter 9 we saw how the skeptical Hume brought traditional thinking
about knowledge to a sort of dead end. This is precisely where Kant began.
Unlike Hume, Kant was certain of many truths of the sort Hume rejected—
for example, that every event must have a cause. According to Kant, the
universality and necessity that characterize such truths cannot be accounted
for on empiricist, or a posteriori, grounds and require, rather, an a priori origin.
On the other hand, such truths are not analytic, or empty redundancies, but
synthetic, or existential. But how is synthetic a priori knowledge possible? Kant
himself rightly regarded his answer as a revolution in epistemology, and even
now one frequently encounters the expressions “pre-Kantian” and “post-
Kantian” as demarcations of a watershed in the history of philosophy.
Kant distinguished between things as they are in themselves (the nou-
menal world) and things as they appear to us (the phenomenal world).

6
Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, pp. 61–62.
7
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965).
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242 Things-in-themselves are wholly unknown to us. Things-as-they-appear (that

THE QUESTION
is, experience) are made possible first of all by the a priori conditions of space
OF KNOWLEDGE and time, and then by the a priori categories of the understanding, which
further structure our experience into the world that we apprehend. It is cru-
cial to see how Kant, with this reinterpretation of the origin and nature of
knowledge, accounts for synthetic a priori knowledge. For example, every
event must have a cause, because that is the only way in which our intellects
work. On the other hand, this means that our “theoretical” reason, operating
with substance, causality, and the like, has proper application only to objects
of possible experience. And this means that we can have no theoretical knowl-
edge of anything beyond experience. For such knowledge we must have
recourse to an entirely different kind of reason, the “practical” reason, which
begins not with experiential categories but with moral categories.

BASIC IDEAS
• Kant’s rejection of Humean skepticism
• A priori and a posteriori knowledge
• Analytic and synthetic knowledge
• Synthetic a priori knowledge
• Kant’s “Copernican revolution” in philosophy
• Space and time as a priori conditions of experience
• The categories of the understanding as conditions of experience
• The noumenal and phenomenal worlds
• The theoretical reason and the practical reason
• The limitations of theoretical reason

TEST YOURSELF
1. How did Hume awaken Kant out of his “dogmatic slumbers”?
2. Which of these is an analytic claim? (a) It is wrong to kill someone for
the fun of it; (b) It is wrong to murder someone. Why?
3. True or false: Kant believed that “Every event must have a cause” is an
example of a synthetic a priori proposition.
4. In what way was Kant’s revolution in epistemology similar to Coperni-
cus’ revolution in astronomy?
5. True or false: In Kant’s terminology, the “theoretical” reason is limited
to objects of sense experience.
6. What is a “category of the understanding”? An obvious example is ______.
7. How did Kant account for synthetic a priori knowledge?

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• It would be a mistake to call Kant either a rationalist or an empiricist. Do
you see why? On the other hand, he effected a sort of synthesis of the two.
What is the rationalist element? What is the empiricist element?
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• With his doctrine of the a priori conditions of experience, Kant sought to 243
explain how we enjoy certitude of certain important claims. What are THE PROBLEM
some of these claims? Are you certain of them? If not, are you a skeptic? OF CERTAINTY
If so, how do you account for the certainty?

FOR FURTHER READING

Henry E. Allison. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense.
Revised edition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004. A robust
defense of Kant’s theory of knowledge.
Frederick Copleston. A History of Philosophy. Baltimore: Newman Press,
1946–1974. VI, Chs. 11–12. An authoritative account of Kant’s theory of
knowledge, by a recognized historian of philosophy.
A. C. Ewing. Idealism: A Critical Survey. London: Methuen, 1934. Ch. 3. A
good summary account of Kant’s metaphysics and epistemology, includ-
ing his solution to the problem of synthetic a priori knowledge.
A. C. Ewing. A Short Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Second
ed. London: Methuen, 1950. A comprehensible commentary on an incom-
prehensible book, along with a highly instructive introduction.
Paul Guyer. Kant, The Routledge Philosophers. London: Routledge, 2006.
Interpretation and analysis covering the full range of Kant’s philosophical
system.
Justus Hartnack. Kant’s Theory of Knowledge. Tr. M. Holmes Hartshorne.
New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967. A highly useful and lucid
summary of the Critique of Pure Reason.
H. A. Prichard. Kant’s Theory of Knowledge. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909. An
old but useful exposition of Kant’s epistemology, with special reference to
the Critique of Pure Reason, by an important twentieth-century philosopher.
Roger Scruton. Kant: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001. An accessible introduction to the philosophy of this challenging
thinker.
W. H. Werkmeister. Kant: The Architectonic and Development of His Philosophy.
La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1980. Ch. 5. A recent, learned, concentrated, and
understandable treatment of Kant’s theory of knowledge, by an esteemed
Kant scholar.
Robert Paul Wolff. Kant: A Collection of Critical Essays. Garden City, NY:
Anchor Books, 1967. An anthology of advanced discussions of various
aspects of Kant’s philosophy, including epistemological issues.
Allen W. Wood. Kant, Blackwell Great Minds. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. A
concise and insightful overview of Kant’s life and work by a major scholar.
*In addition, see the relevant articles (“Certainty,” “Synthetic and Analytic
Statements,” “Kant,” etc.) in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed.
Edward Craig (London: Routledge, 1998), and Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu.
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PA R T T H R E E

THE QUESTION
OF GOD

W
hen Mark Twain was once traveling abroad he received news of
a mistaken obituary back in the United States giving notice of
his death. He sent back the message: “Reports of my death are
greatly exaggerated.” In the last century the German philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche boldly proclaimed, “God is dead.” Again in the 1960s the proclama-
tion was issued by the Death of God theologians. They were not the only ones
(nor will they be the last) to give, in one way or another, notice of the demise
of the deity, but many would insist that in every case the report has been
greatly exaggerated. As the well-known piece of graffiti expresses it:

GOD IS DEAD!
—Nietzsche
NIETZSCHE IS DEAD!
—God

Certainly it is true that God is alive and well if the continuing interest in
and discussion of God are any indication.
Still, some may sense a difference with the question of God. It has something
to do with the fact that our society is such a melting pot of religious and anti-
religious views. Even under “Churches” the yellow pages list, side by side,
everything from Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, and Catholics, to the Congre-
gation of the Kindred Spirits, the Church of Good Science, and the Homosexual
Church of the Universe. The difference also has to do with the sometimes pas-
sionate nature of belief or disbelief. How many times have we all heard it said

245
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that friends should never talk about religion or politics lest they suddenly find
themselves friends no longer? It is true that arguments over religion can become
the most heated and can bring out the worst in all participants—atheists no
less than believers. This is just to say that here, perhaps more than anywhere
else, a special plea must be issued for identifying and laying aside (as best we
can) prejudices, mental blind spots, and wishful thinking.
What we have called here “the question of God” actually includes much
more than just God. The following are only some of the issues that are
usually encompassed in what is known as “philosophy of religion” or, per-
haps better, “philosophical theology”:

• What does “God” mean?

• Can the existence of God be proven?
• What is the relation between God and morality?
• How does philosophical knowledge of God relate to divine revelation?
• What are the nature and relevance of religious faith?
• Does God care about the world?
• Are religious experiences relevant data for the existence of God?
• Can an all-powerful and all-loving God be reconciled with the evil in
the world?
• Do we have immortal souls?
• What are the special features of religious language?

Obviously such issues overlap with metaphysical and epistemological

issues. Nonetheless, there is here an identifiable core of connected issues.
At the center lies the specific question of God, and radiating from that, all
sorts of related questions. And a whole history of philosophy could be
written around the question of God and related matters, which only shows
that it must be one of the questions that matter.

246
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CHAPTER 11

GOD AND
THE WORLD

I
t makes sense, of course, that the question of God’s existence should
come first in discussions concerning God and related matters. For,
as St. Thomas Aquinas says near the beginning of his multivolumed
Summa Contra Gentiles, if we don’t first establish that he at least exists, then
there is no point in going on:

Now, among the inquiries that we must undertake concerning God in Himself, we
must set down in the beginning that whereby His Existence is demonstrated, as
the necessary foundation of the whole work. For, if we do not demonstrate that
God exists, all consideration of divine things is necessarily suppressed.1

In this chapter and the next, we too will raise the question of God’s existence,
and we will consider some of the best-known arguments, pro and con.

NATURAL THEOLOGY
Before really getting into the arguments for God, the idea of natural theology
must be introduced. First, what is theology? “Theology” comes from the
Greek word theos, which means “God.” Theology is therefore the study or

1
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, I. 9, 5, tr. and ed. Anton C. Pegis (South Bend,
IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1955), I.

247
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248 science or knowledge of God. What then is natural theology? Caution: It

THE QUESTION does not mean the study or science or knowledge of God through nature. It
OF GOD is true that some of the arguments for God are based on the physical world,
but we will see too that many are not. Natural theology is the study or sci-
What is ence or knowledge of God through the natural intellect. This means the intel-
natural theology? lect in its natural state, unaided by any special or supernatural input. It may
be helpful to know that natural theology is sometimes known also by the
less ambiguous labels philosophical theology and rational theology.
Natural theology is therefore to be distinguished from revealed theology,
which means the knowledge of God through special revelation, such as the
Bible, the Church, Moses, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the like. If it is not
Humanity in search overly simplistic, we may say that in natural theology people attempt
of God, and God in through their own natural faculties to approach God, whereas in revealed
search of humanity theology God has in his own special way approached humanity:

Natural Theology Revealed Theology

God God

Humanity Humanity

It is important to note, though, that those who accept both natural and
revealed theology do not confuse what people do in natural theology with
what God does in revealed theology. Natural theology, if successful, delivers
some basic knowledge of God that may bear on people’s philosophical life,
such as knowledge of God’s existence and perhaps something of his nature.
But revealed theology, if true, delivers a knowledge that bears on human
salvation. This was the point of the quip by Søren Kierkegaard (Danish phi-
losopher of about 1850) that “to stand on one leg and prove God’s existence
is a very different thing from going on one’s knees and thanking him,” or
from the exclamation of Tertullian (Church Father of about 200), “What has
Athens to do with Jerusalem? What has the Academy to do with the Church?”
or the distinction made by Blaise Pascal (French philosopher of about 1650)
between “the God of the philosophers, and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and

Theology

Revealed Theology Natural Theology

Knowledge of God Knowledge of God

by means of by means of
a special revelation the natural intellect
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249
GOD AND
SOME DIFFERING CONCEPTIONS OF FAITH THE WORLD

Hebrews 11:1
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
(King James Version)
Random House Dictionary
“Confidence or trust in a person or thing.”*
Søren Kierkegaard
“An objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation-process of the most pas-
sionate inwardness.Ӡ
Paul Tillich
“Faith as the ultimate concern is an act of the total personality.”‡
John Locke
“Faith . . . is the assent to any proposition, not . . . made out by the deductions of
reason, but upon the credit of the proposer, as coming from God, in some extraor-
dinary way of communication.Ӥ
St. Thomas
“. . . an act of the intellect assenting to the truth at the command of the will.”||
Blaise Pascal
“It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason. This, then, is faith:
God felt by the heart, not by reason.”#
William James
“. . . our right to adopt a believing attitude in religious matters, in spite of the fact
that our merely logical intellect may not have been coerced.”**
A schoolboy
“Faith is believing what you know ain’t true.”

*Random House Dictionary of the English Language, College Edition (New York: Random
House, 1968).
†
Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, tr. David F. Swenson and Walter
Lowrie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), p. 182.
‡
Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1957), p. 4.
§
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Alexander Campbell Fraser
(New York: Dover, 1959) II, 416.
||
St. Thomas, Summa Theologiae, II–II, Qu. 4, Art. 5, in Basic Writings of St. Thomas
Aquinas, ed. Anton C. Pegis (New York: Random House, 1945), II.
#
Blaise Pascal, Pensées, tr. W. F. Trotter (London: Dent, 1908), no. 278.
**William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays (New York: Longmans, Green &
Co., 1896), p. 1.

Jacob.” Indeed, a whole string of thinkers has repudiated as irrelevant if not

misguided the philosophical or rational approach to God in favor of the
approach through faith. (By the way, what is faith anyway?)
As usual, however, such a distinction as that between natural and
revealed theology is not as neat and tidy as one might wish, and in the
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250
THE QUESTION
OF GOD IS BELIEF IN GOD “PROPERLY BASIC”?
Some recent philosophers (including Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, Nicholas
Woltersdorff, and others) have introduced what they call “reformed epistemology”
and have argued that belief in God is a “properly basic” belief—that is, a belief
that may be accepted immediately, without evidence, as with “2 ⫹ 2 ⫽ 4,” “The
world has existed for longer than five minutes,” “I had breakfast this morning,”
and “It is wrong to kill people for the fun of it.” This of course does not mean that
belief in God can be arbitrary or unjustified any more than any other properly
basic beliefs, and this is where reformed epistemology comes in. These thinkers
find in the sixteenth-century Protestant reformer John Calvin an account of a
possible and appropriate ground for the properly basic belief in God:

There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness
of divinity. . . . God himself has implanted in all men a certain understanding of
his divine majesty. . . . men one and all perceive that there is a God and that
he is their maker.*

Belief in God may be embraced apart from rational evidence, and at the same
time be justified as a natural disposition implanted in the soul by God himself.

*John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, tr. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: West-
minster Press, 1960), I, 43–44.

actual history of philosophy and theology they have tended to blur into
one another. This is not surprising in view of the fact that most philoso-
phers who have propounded arguments for God’s existence have already
believed in divine revelation while at the same time believing that it is
useful to demonstrate and understand through reason what they had
already accepted through faith. Still, the distinction is an important and
helpful one, and natural theology must be distinguished and understood.
For, as we have seen, natural theology is itself a philosophical problem.
Further, while some have rejected such (natural) knowledge of God, it has
obviously not been rejected by those who have presented philosophical
arguments for God’s existence. Which brings us to . . .

THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

Many arguments for the existence of God have been formulated over the
centuries. Here we will consider four of them, surely the most important:
A priori and the Cosmological, Teleological, Ontological, and Moral Arguments for the
a posteriori existence of God. It is convenient, further, to divide these into two groups:
arguments The Cosmological and Teleological Arguments are a posteriori, and the
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Title page of a Latin Bible printed in Basel, and bearing

the handwritten notations of Martin Luther, the great
251
sixteenth-century reformer, who took a very dim view GOD AND
of natural theology, knowledge of God through reason. THE WORLD
Many who believe in revealed theology find the
revelation in sacred scriptures, such as the Bible.

Ontological and Moral Arguments are a priori. From earlier encounters with
these expressions we know immediately that the first two arguments will
attempt to demonstrate the existence of God by means of sense experience,
whereas the second two arguments will attempt to demonstrate God inde-
pendently of sense experience—that is, through reason alone. In this chapter
we will consider the a posteriori proofs.
The most familiar attempts to prove the existence of God are variations
of the Cosmological Argument. How many times have you heard something The Cosmological
like this: “There has to be a God, because, well, the universe couldn’t just Argument stated

Natural Theology

A Posteriori Arguments A Priori Arguments

Cosmological Ontological
Teleological Moral
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252 happen. Do you think things just popped into being from nowhere? There
THE QUESTION must be a first cause of everything.” This may not be the most sophisticated
OF GOD reasoning in the world, but it is a thumbnail expression of the Cosmologi-
cal Argument. Why is this argument called “cosmological”? Because it is
based on the kosmos, the Greek word for world. Of course, “world” means
here not just the earth but the whole physical universe, or the sum total of
space and time. It is also called, for short, the First-Cause Argument, since
it attempts to show that there must be a first cause of the world.
The Cosmological Argument has been propounded by numerous think-
ers and in various forms down through the ages, but most formulations of
it involve the following reasoning:

1. Here is the world, or space and time.

2. It could not be the cause of itself.
3. It could not come from nothing.
4. It could not be an effect in an infinite series of causes and effects.
5. Therefore, it must be caused by something outside space and time, some-
thing uncaused and ultimate.

Stated in this way, it begins with the fact of the physical world and then
by a process of elimination arrives at the only possible explanation for it:
God, or the First Cause. But why cannot something be the cause of itself?
Why cannot something come from nothing? Why cannot something be the
final effect in an infinite series of causes and effects?
These are, indeed, difficult questions. They are addressed, or at least
involved, in the most famous proofs for God ever formulated, the “Five
Ways” of St. Thomas Aquinas. He presents them in his Summa Theologiae:

The “Five Ways” The existence of God can be proved in five ways.
of St. Thomas The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and
evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is
moved is moved by another, for nothing can be moved except it is in potentiality to
that towards which it is moved; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act. For
motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But
nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state
of actuality. Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood, which is potentially
hot, to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it. Now it is not possible that
the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but
only in different respects. For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially
hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same
respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e., that it
should move itself. Therefore, whatever is moved must be moved by another. If that
by which it is moved be itself moved, then this also must needs be moved by another,
and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would
be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover, seeing that subsequent movers
move only inasmuch as they are moved by the first mover; as the staff moves only
because it is moved by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover,
moved by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.
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253
GOD AND
THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT THE WORLD

All Cosmological Arguments for God may be expressed as follows:

All contingent (or caused) being depends for its existence on some
uncaused being.
The cosmos is a contingent being.

Therefore, the cosmos depends for its existence on some uncaused being.
As always, no conclusion in a deductive argument can be stronger than the
premises. What questions, doubts, or challenges might be raised against the
premises here? And does the “being” of the conclusion have to mean God ?

The second way is from the nature of efficient cause. In the world of sensible
things we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither
is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself;
for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is
not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order,
the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause
of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or one only.
Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no
first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate,
cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no
first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate
efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a
first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.
The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find
in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be
generated, and to be corrupted, and consequently, it is possible for them to be
and not to be. But it is impossible for all things which are, to be of this sort,2 for
that which can not-be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything can not-be, then
at one time there was nothing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there
would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist begins to exist
only through something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was
in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist;
and thus even now nothing would be in existence—which is absurd. Therefore,
not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence
of which is necessary. But every necessary thing either has its necessity caused
by another, or not. Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things
which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in
regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but admit the existence of some
being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but
rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.
The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings
there are some more and some less good, true, noble, and the like. But “more” and

2
I have emended the translation in accordance with the best textual reading of this line: Impos-
sibile est autem omnia quae sunt, talia esse.
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254
THE QUESTION
OF GOD ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

S
t. Thomas Aquinas was born at the end of 1224 or the beginning of 1225
in a castle near Naples. His aristocratic father was the count of Aquino. He
received his earliest education in the Benedictine monastery of Monte
Cassino, where he was placed by his parents when he was five, and at fourteen
he went to the University of Naples. In Naples he was attracted to the Dominican
(continued on next page)

“less” are predicted of different things according as they resemble in their different
ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according
as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is
truest, something best, something noblest, and, consequently, something which is most
being, for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written
in Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus, as
fire, which is the maximum of heat, is the cause of all hot things, as is said in the
same book. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause
of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.
The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things
which lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident
from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain
the best result. Hence it is plain that they achieve their end, not fortuitously, but
designedly. Now whatever lacks knowledge cannot move towards an end, unless
it is directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the
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255
brothers and entered the Dominican Order. His family disapproved of this move, GOD AND
and Thomas’ brothers kidnapped him during a journey to Bologna. His father, THE WORLD
who was a military man and no doubt advocated the ideals of “breeding, leading,
and bleeding,” had Thomas imprisoned in a tower. He tried to draw Thomas back
to sanity, even tempting him with a woman. But, faithful to his commitment,
Thomas escaped after a year and traveled to Paris.
In Paris and then in Cologne, Thomas was the pupil of St. Albert the Great,
whose interest in adapting the philosophy of Aristotle to Christianity was decisive
for the direction of Thomas’ own work. During this time Thomas was taunted as
“the Dumb Ox” by his fellow students. (Thomas was exceedingly quiet and was
immensely fat, with a frame not unlike a wine cask.) But Albert the Great
announced: “You call our brother Thomas a dumb ox, do you? I tell you that
someday the whole world will listen to his bellows.” In 1252, Thomas returned to
Paris, where he resumed his formal education at the university there, receiving
his licentiate and his master’s degree and lecturing as well.
In 1259, he returned to Italy, where he taught theology at the papal court in
Rome and was commissioned by Pope Urban IV to compose the liturgy of the
feast of Corpus Christi. During the years 1268–1272 he was once again lecturing
in Paris. He was then sent to Naples to establish a Dominican Studium Generale,
where he remained until 1274, when he was called by Pope Gregory X to par-
ticipate in the Council of Lyons. It was on the journey to Lyons that Thomas died,
on March 7, 1274.
There is a tradition that toward the end of his life Thomas enjoyed mystic
experiences that made all he had previously written “seem as straw worthy to be
burned.” He became known as the Angelic Doctor and was canonized in 1323.
In 1879 Pope Leo XIII proclaimed Thomism as the official philosophy of the
Roman Catholic Church. St. Thomas bellowed loudly indeed.
St. Thomas was a prolific writer. In addition to many commentaries on the works
of Aristotle, commentaries on biblical books, and works on specific philosophical and
theological topics, he produced two of the most influential and majestic works of the
entire history of philosophy: Summa Theologiae and Summa Contra Gentiles.

arrow is directed by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom
all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.3

It should be noted what all of the Five Ways have in common. Each of
them begins in an a posteriori way with the created world, and each of them
presupposes the metaphysical principle ex nihilo, nihil fit, “from nothing,
nothing comes.” More specifically, St. Thomas shows in the Second Way
why something cannot be the cause of itself (it would have to exist before
it exists), and the impossibility of an infinite series of causes and effects is “First” Cause in
explicitly argued in the first three Ways. But here is a surprise. When St. the sense of
Thomas argues against an infinite series of causes and effects, he is not ultimate cause

3
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Pt. 1, Qu. 2, Art. 3, in Basic Writings of Saint Thomas
Aquinas, ed. Anton C. Pegis (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1997), I.
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256 thinking of a temporal series, or one that stretches infinitely backward in time,
THE QUESTION but rather a hierarchical series, or one that extends infinitely upward in being.
OF GOD This is a crucial point for understanding St. Thomas’ argument, and a pic-
ture may be worth a thousand words:

ULTIMATE CAUSE OF THE UNIVERSE

Infinite
∞ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . temporal
series
. .∞

That is, every moment in the universe, even if the universe has always
been here, is dependent for its existence, at that moment, upon an ultimate
cause. Although he believed, on the basis of Genesis 1:1, that the world,
and therefore time, had a beginning, for the sake of his proofs for God he
grants that the world has always existed. After all, he reasons, if we can
show that God must exist to account for a world that has always been here,
how much more must he exist to account for a world that hasn’t?

The most efficacious way to prove that God exists is on the supposition that the
world is eternal. Granted this supposition, that God exists is less manifest. For, if
the world and motion have a first beginning, some cause must clearly be posited
to account for this origin of the world and of motion.4

Although each of the Five Ways assumes the eternity of the world, this is
most evident in the Third Way. There it is argued that not all things are merely
possible, or can not-be, for that would mean that even now nothing would
exist; for, given enough time all possible states, including the possible nonbeing
of things, would come about, and such a state at some point in the infinite
past must have by now come about; but from such a state of nothingness,
nothing could possibly come (ex nihilo, nihil fit); but right now there is a world,
and therefore it was wrong at the start to think that all things are merely pos-
sible; so there must be something necessary, and ultimately something neces-
sary of itself. Stay with this until you see how this argument cannot possibly
work except on the assumption that the world has always existed.
St. Thomas really thought of his Five Ways as variations on a single idea,
which is the substance of all of them: We know from experience that the
world is contingent; that is, it depends on something outside itself for its
existence. And this would be true even if the world has always been here,
for an infinite collection of contingent things is no less contingent than a
finite one. But there must be some unconditional, ultimate being upon which
the world depends; otherwise, it would have no final basis for existence.
There is, of course, a more obvious and more popular version of the argu-
ment. In philosophical circles this is sometimes called the Kalam Cosmological

4
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 1, 13, 30.
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257
GOD AND
THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT: THE WORLD
THOMISTIC FORM
Any form of the Cosmological Argument for God reasons, in one way or another,
from the contingency of the world’s being to the necessity of God’s being. Accord-
ing to St. Thomas’ version, no matter how long the world has existed—or even if
it has always existed—it is contingent, or dependent, upon something else for its
existence, and, finally, on Something that is not dependent. By its nature, this
Something must be a transcendent (outside space and time) and ultimate being.

Argument (kalam is Arabic for “rational”) because of its prominence in medi-

eval Arabic philosophy, though it certainly has had its advocates in the Judeo-
Christian tradition as well. Here, the infinite series of causes and effects is
conceived as a temporal one stretching backward in time; it is denied that this
series could be infinite, and it is concluded that God must exist as the “First”
Cause—that is, the originator of this temporal series. We saw that even though “First” Cause
St. Thomas accepted this as an article of faith (Genesis 1:1), from a purely in the sense of
philosophical standpoint he left the question open, and actually argued as if the original cause
world had no beginning. Others believe that it is philosophically necessary to
believe in a beginning of the world. The reasoning goes like this. If the world
has always existed, then an infinite number of years (or months, minutes, or
whatever) has already gone by. But surely this is a self-contradictory claim. For
an infinite series of years (or whatever) can never (by its very nature as being
infinite) go by or be completed. How can one claim that prior to this moment
(what lies in the future is irrelevant) the world has passed through an infinite
number of years? Of course, you can think of an infinite number of years, but Did the world
you can’t count them; you can entertain the idea of an infinite series, but you have a temporal
can’t actually pass through one and come out the other end. Or try this: If the beginning?
universe has always existed, then it has taken forever to reach this point. But
then it could never reach this point. But here we are! So it didn’t take forever.

THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT:

POPULAR FORM
Whereas the Thomistic version of the Cosmological Argument is interested only
in the nature of the world (as contingent), the more popular version is more
interested in its age. According to this reasoning, it is impossible that the world
has always existed, for that would mean that an infinite number of years (or
whatever) has already gone by, but that is impossible because it is self-
contradictory. Time must therefore have a beginning. And the cause of time must
itself be Something transcendent (outside space and time) and ultimate.
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258 According to the medieval picture of the

universe, the earth is at the center, partly
THE QUESTION covered by water, surrounded by air and fire;
OF GOD then come the heavenly spheres, which carry
round the moon, sun, and planets, followed by
the primum mobile, the “first moved”; beyond
this is “the Dwelling of God and all the Saints.”
Is St. Thomas’ argument for God as the
Unmoved Mover dependent on this picture of
the universe?

It will be noted that this argument for the beginning of the world is purely
rational or logical. Some have enlisted further and very different evidence
Cosmological from cosmology, the study of the origin and nature of the physical universe.
evidence for the You may be familiar with the theory of the “Big Bang.” According to this
beginning? theory, the present “expanding universe,” or the recession of galaxies at
unimaginable velocities, points to a moment, about fifteen billion years ago,
when all the matter in the universe was condensed into something like a
superdense atom, and exploded. Understandably, it is a temptation for some
to identify this Big Bang with the origin of the universe. Others point to the
Second Law of Thermodynamics: It is universally accepted that the energy
in the universe is, at least on the large scale, irreversibly and evenly being
distributed throughout—the universe is cooling down. But if the universe is
running down, like a clock, must it not have once been wound up?
Thus Robert Jastrow, a well-known astronomer, on the implications of
the Big Bang:

When an astronomer writes about God, his colleagues assume he is either over
the hill or going bonkers. In my case it should be understood from the start that
I am an agnostic in religious matters. However, I am fascinated by some strange
developments going on in astronomy—partly because of their religious implica-
tions and partly because of the peculiar reactions of my colleagues.
The essence of the strange developments is that the Universe had, in some sense,
a beginning—that it began at a certain moment in time, and under circumstances
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259
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
GOD AND
—Genesis 1:1 THE WORLD

that seem to make it impossible—not just now, but ever—to find out what force
or forces brought the world into being at that moment. Was it, as the Bible says,
that “Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth, and
the heavens are the work of thine hands?” No scientist can answer that question;
we can never tell whether the Prime Mover willed the world into being, or the cre-
ative agent was one of the familiar forces of physics; for the astronomical evidence
proves that the Universe was created twenty billion years ago in a fiery explosion,
and in the searing heat of that first moment, all the evidence needed for a scientific
study of the cause of the great explosion was melted down and destroyed.
This is the crux of the new story of Genesis. It has been familiar for years
as the “Big Bang” theory, and has shared the limelight with other theories, Implications of the
especially the Steady State cosmology; but adverse evidence has led to the Big Bang
abandonment of the Steady State theory by nearly everyone, leaving the Big
Bang theory exposed as the only adequate explanation of the facts.
The general scientific picture that leads to the Big Bang theory is well known.
We have been aware for fifty years that we live in an expanding Universe, in
which all the galaxies around us are moving apart from us and one another
at enormous speeds. The Universe is blowing up before our eyes, as if we are
witnessing the aftermath of a gigantic explosion. If we retrace the motions of the
outward-moving galaxies backward in time, we find that they all come together,
so to speak, fifteen or twenty billion years ago.
At that time all the matter in the Universe was packed into a dense mass, at
temperatures of many trillions of degrees. The dazzling brilliance of the radiation
in this dense, hot Universe must have been beyond description. The picture sug-
gests the explosion of a cosmic hydrogen bomb. The instant in which the cosmic
bomb exploded marked the birth of the Universe.
Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the
origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomi-
cal and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading
to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash
of light and energy. . . .
For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story
ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about
to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted
by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.5

THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

Closely related to the Cosmological Argument is the Teleological Argument.
Obviously, this argument will have to do with teleology (from the Greek word
telos: “purpose, design”) and is called, for short, the Design Argument.

5
Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York: Warner Books, 1978), pp. 1–4, 115–116.
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260
“God does not play dice with the universe.”
THE QUESTION
OF GOD —Einstein

The Teleological This argument is closely associated with the Cosmological Argument, and
Argument stated it will be recalled that St. Thomas listed it as the Fifth Way, alongside the other
four. As with the Cosmological Argument, the Teleological Argument is an a
posteriori reasoning that employs the idea of causality. In this case God is
posited as the only adequate explanation for the apparent order, purpose,
unity, harmony, and beauty of the cosmos. It may go beyond the Cosmologi-
cal Argument, however, in further identifying the ultimate cause as a rational
cause: The rationality displayed in the cosmos must be the product of mind.
One of the best-known, though now out-of-date, statements of this argu-
ment is provided by the Anglican divine William Paley (1743–1805). In his
famous watch analogy, Paley argued that the human eyeball demands an intel-
ligent creator no less than a watch, and the reasoning should recall our discus-
sion of inductive arguments by analogy in Chapter 1. From Paley’s Natural
Theology:

In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone and were asked how
the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer that for anything I knew to the
contrary it had lain there forever, nor would it, perhaps, be very easy to show the
Paley’s watch absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and
analogy it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly
think of the answer which I had before given, that for anything I knew the watch
might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as
well as for the stone; why is it not as admissible in the second case as in the first?
For this reason, and for no other, namely, that when we come to inspect the watch,
we perceive—what we could not discover in the stone—that its several parts are
framed and put together for a purpose, e.g., that they are so formed and adjusted
as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the
day; that if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, or
placed after any other manner or in any other order than that in which they are
placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none
which would have answered the use that is now served by it. To reckon up a few
of the plainest of these parts and of their offices, all tending to one result: we see
a cylindrical box containing a coiled elastic spring, which, by its endeavor to relax
itself, turns round the box. We next observe a flexible chain—artificially wrought
for the sake of flexure—communicating the action of the spring from the box to the
fusee. We then find a series of wheels, the teeth of which catch in and apply to
each other, conducting the motion from the fusee to the balance and from the bal-
ance to the pointer, and at the same time, by the size and shape of those wheels,
so regulating that motion as to terminate in causing an index, by an equable and
measured progression, to pass over a given space in a given time. We take notice
that the wheels are made of brass, in order to keep them from rust; the springs of
steel, no other metal being so elastic; that over the face of the watch there is placed
a glass, a material employed in no other part of the work, but in the room of which,
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In 1802 William Paley, an English clergyman,

published his Natural Theology, in which he
261
argued for God’s existence on the basis of GOD AND
design in the cosmos. From this work comes THE WORLD
the famous watch analogy: The world is to
God as a watch is to a watchmaker.

if there had been any other than a transparent substance, the hour could not be
seen without opening the case. This mechanism being observed—it requires indeed
an examination of the instrument, and perhaps some previous knowledge of the
subject, to perceive and understand it; but being once, as we have said, observed
and understood—the inference we think is inevitable, that the watch must have had a
maker—that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other,
an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to
answer, who completely comprehended its construction and designed its use. . . .
Were there no example in the world of contrivance except that of the eye, it
would be alone sufficient to support the conclusion which we draw from it, as to the
necessity of an intelligent Creator. It could never be got rid of, because it could not be

ARGUMENTS BY ANALOGY
You may remember from our brief discussion of logic in Chapter 1 that analogies
are commonly used in inductive arguments. Paley’s Teleological Argument for
God uses such an analogy, comparing the world to a watch and arguing that if
we need a watchmaker, then surely we must also need a worldmaker. Can you
think of other arguments by analogy?
In such an argument, one argues from an allegedly obvious example to a less
clear one by comparing similar cases. When evaluating arguments by analogy, we
must ask first about the strength of the analogy. Are the two cases relevantly similar?
Or are there significant differences between them that weaken the argument? Apply
these questions to Paley’s analogy to evaluate the strength of the argument.
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262
THE QUESTION
OF GOD THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
Most versions of the Teleological Argument are arguments from analogy and take
some such form as
Watches, houses, ships, machines, and so on all exhibit design, and they are
planned and produced by intelligent beings.
The universe exhibits design.

Therefore, the universe was planned and produced by an intelligent being.

accounted for by any other supposition which did not contradict all the principles we
possess of knowledge—the principles according to which things do, as often as they
can be brought to the test of experience, turn out to be true or false. Its coats and
humors, constructed as the lenses of a telescope are constructed, for the refraction
of rays of light to a point, which forms the proper action of the organ; the provision
in its muscular tendons for turning its pupil to the object, similar to that which is
given to the telescope by screws, and upon which power of direction in the eye the
exercise of its office as an optical instrument depends; the further provision for its
defense, for its constant lubricity and moisture, which we see in its socket and its lids,
in its glands for the secretion of the matter of tears, its outlet or communication with
the nose for carrying off the liquid after the eye is washed with it; these provisions
compose altogether an apparatus, a system of parts, a preparation of means, so
manifest in their design, so exquisite in their contrivance, so successful in their issue,
so precious, and so infinitely beneficial in their use, as, in my opinion, to bear down
all doubt that can be raised upon the subject. And what I wish, under the title of the
present chapter, to observe is that, if other parts of nature were inaccessible to our
inquiries, or even if other parts of nature presented nothing to our examination but
disorder and confusion, the validity of this example would remain the same. If there
were but one watch in the world, it would not be less certain that it had a maker. If
we had never in our lives seen any but one single kind of hydraulic machine, yet if
of that one kind we understood the mechanism and use, we should be as perfectly
assured that it proceeded from the hand and thought and skill of a workman, as if
we visited a museum of the arts and saw collected there twenty different kinds of
machines for drawing water, or a thousand different kinds for other purposes. Of
this point each machine is a proof independently of all the rest. So it is with the
evidences of a divine agency. The proof is not a conclusion which lies at the end
of a chain of reasoning, of which chain each instance of contrivance is only a link,
and of which, if one link fail, the whole fails; but it is an argument separately sup-
plied by every separate example. An error in stating an example affects only that
example. The argument is cumulative in the fullest sense of that term. The eye proves
it without the ear; the ear without the eye. The proof in each example is complete;
for when the design of the part and the conduciveness of its structure to that design
is shown, the mind may set itself at rest; no future consideration can detract anything
from the force of the example.6

6
William Paley, Natural Theology: Selections, ed. Frederick Ferré (New York: Bobbs-Merrill,
1963), pp. 3–4, 32–33.
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263
GOD AND
THEISTIC EVOLUTION THE WORLD

The belief that God uses natural evolutionary processes to bring about his desired
effect.

Paley’s watch analogy is striking but considerably less powerful since

1859, the year in which Darwin published the Origin of Species. Paley, as The effect of Darwin
well as almost everyone of his time, believed in a special creation of the
universe and humans all at once, once upon a time, as a watchmaker makes
a watch. Darwin, with his doctrine of the gradual and evolutionary devel-
opment of humans over an untold number of years, dealt a serious blow
to any Paleyan type of teleology. In the place of a God directly and imme-
diately fashioning, say, the human eye, evolution substituted long and pro-
gressive sequences of natural causes and effects. It became possible to
explain the human species, and everything about it, as well as much of the
rest of the biological and physical universe, in purely naturalistic terms. To
be sure, the name of Darwin is often associated with atheism, but this is a
mistake. Darwin (whose sole earned academic degree was in theology) did
not himself turn his theory of evolution against the existence of God but
against only a certain view of how God created things, the Paleyan view.

Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species

in 1859 and his Descent of Man in 1871. His
theory of evolution held revolutionary
implications for many fields of thought—not the
least of which was theology.
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264 Indeed, though Darwin’s theory of evolution dealt a blow to Paleyan

THE QUESTION
teleology, it hardly dealt the deathblow to God. Enter theistic evolution. Is it
OF GOD not possible to reconcile evolution with a theistic interpretation of the
world? Might not evolution itself be viewed as an instrument by which
Theistic evolution God has brought about, and is bringing about, his purpose in the cosmos?
Many have answered Yes, including F. R. Tennant (1866–1957), one of the
most persuasive of theistic evolutionists.
Tennant, who was himself a scientist before he was a philosopher and
theologian, laid aside previous and, as he regarded them, dubious
approaches to God, and set out in an “empirically-minded” and scientific
way. He asks us whether it is not possible in this way to establish a “rea-
sonable belief” in God that is as respectable as what any scientific theory
can deliver. He asks us further whether the evidence does not cause us to
set aside once and for all the narrow teleology of Paley and to adopt a wider,
or cosmic, teleology. He asks us to shift our attention from specific instances
of design to the design of the whole, and to appreciate natural processes and
laws, including evolution, as “conspiring,” as it were, upon the production
of an intelligible universe, and upon humanity—the bearer of moral and
aesthetic values—as its crowning glory.

The empirically-minded theologian adopts a different procedure. He asks how the

world, inclusive of man, is to be explained. He would let the Actual world tell its
own story and offer its own suggestions: not silence it while abstractive specula-
tion, setting out with presuppositions possibly irrelevant to Actuality, weaves a
system of thought which may prove to conflict with facts. . . .
. . . [he] sets out from facts and inductions; its premisses are as firmly established
and as universally acknowledged as any of the stable generalisations of science.
Here there is at least common ground, as distinct from private certitude, from
which argumentation may proceed. Coercive demonstration being confessedly
unattainable, it is to be inquired what kind of justification for reasonable belief
natural theology can afford. And the first step is to set forth the facts and gener-
alisations which collectively constitute our data or premisses.
The forcibleness of Nature’s suggestion that she is the outcome of intelligent
design lies not in particular cases of adaptedness in the world, nor even in the
multiplicity of them. It is conceivable that every such instance may individually
admit of explanation in terms of proximate causes or, in the first instance, of
explanation other than in terms of cosmic or “external” teleology. And if it also
admits of teleological interpretation, that fact will not of itself constitute a rigorous
certification of external design. The forcibleness of the world’s appeal consists
rather in the conspiration of innumerable causes to produce, by their united and
reciprocal action, and to maintain, a general order of Nature. Narrower kinds
of teleological argument, based on surveys of restricted spheres of fact, are much
more precarious than that for which the name of “the wider teleology” may be
appropriated in that the comprehensive design-argument is the outcome of synop-
sis or conspection of the knowable world.
. . . So long as organisms were believed to have originated, in their present
forms and with all their specialised organs “ready made,” the argument that
adaptation of part to whole, of whole to environment, and of organ to function,
implied design, was forcible. But its premiss became untenable when Darwin
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265
GOD AND
PALEY’S REVENGE? THE WORLD
THE INTELLIGENT DESIGN MOVEMENT
For many people, Darwin’s theory of evolution spelled the death of the teleo-
logical argument and particularly the special creation inherent in Paley’s watch
analogy. But a new movement called “Intelligent Design” is seeking to overturn
Darwinism. In the excerpt below, William A. Dembski, one of the leading schol-
ars of this movement, explains how the theory works:

What then is Intelligent Design? Intelligent Design begins with the observation
that intelligent causes can do things which undirected natural causes cannot.
Undirected natural causes can place scrabble pieces on a board, but cannot
arrange the pieces as meaningful words or sentences. To obtain a meaningful
arrangement requires an intelligent cause. This intuition, that there is a funda-
mental distinction between undirected natural causes on the one hand and
intelligent causes on the other, has underlain the design arguments of past
centuries. . . .
Within biology, Intelligent Design is a theory of biological origins and devel-
opment. Its fundamental claim is that intelligent causes are necessary to
explain the complex, information-rich structures of biology, and that these
causes are empirically detectable.
To say intelligent causes are empirically detectable is to say there exist
well-defined methods that, on the basis of observational features of the world,
are capable of reliably distinguishing intelligent causes from undirected natu-
ral causes. Many special sciences have already developed such methods for
drawing this distinction—notably forensic science, cryptography, archeology,
and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (as in the movie Contact).
Whenever these methods detect intelligent causation, the underlying entity
they uncover is information. Intelligent Design properly formulated is a theory
of information. Within such a theory, information becomes a reliable indicator
of intelligent causation as well as a proper object for scientific investigation.
Intelligent Design thereby becomes a theory for detecting and measuring
information, explaining its origin, and tracing its flow. Intelligent Design is
therefore not the study of intelligent causes per se, but of informational path-
ways induced by intelligent causes.
As a result, Intelligent Design presupposes neither a creator nor miracles.
Intelligent Design is theologically minimalist. It detects intelligence without
speculating about the nature of the intelligence.*

*William A. Dembski, “The Intelligent Design Movement,” Cosmic Pursuit, Spring 1998.
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/dembski/docs/bd-idesign.html#

shewed that every organic structure had come to be what it now is through a
long series of successive and gradual modifications. Gradualness of construc-
tion is in itself no proof of the absence of external design: it is not at this
point that Darwinism delivered its alleged death-blow to teleology. The sting of
Darwinism rather lay in the suggestion that proximate and “mechanical” causes
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266
THE QUESTION
OF GOD BLACK ELK ON THE ONENESS OF NATURE
One of the salient features of the Western religious tradition is its emphasis on
the distinction between nature and the supernatural, and the human being’s
essential connection with the latter. This emphasis stands in stark contrast with
other traditions. For example, Native American traditions stress humanity’s unity
with nature, as is evident in the following excerpt from Black Elk Speaks:

My friend, I am going to tell you the story of my life, as you wish; and if it
were only the story of my life I think I would not tell it. . . .
It is the story of all life that is holy and is good to tell, and of us two-leggeds
sharing in it with the four-leggeds and the wings of the air and all green things;
for these are children of one mother and their father is one Spirit. . . .
So I know that it is a good thing I am going to do; and because no good
thing can be done by any man alone, I will first make an offering and send a
voice to the Spirit of the World, that it may help me to be true. See, I fill this
sacred pipe with the bark of the red willow; but before we smoke it, you must
see how it is made and what it means. These four ribbons hanging here on
the stem are the four quarters of the universe. The black one is for the west
where the thunder beings live to send us rain; the white one for the north,
whence comes the great white-cleansing wind; the red one for the east,
whence springs the light and where the morning star lives to give men wisdom;
the yellow for the south, whence come the summer and the power to grow.
But these four spirits are only one Spirit after all, and this eagle feather here
is for that One, which is like a father, and also it is for thoughts of men that
should rise high as eagles do. Is not the sky a father and the earth a mother,
and are not all living things with feet or wings or roots their children? And this
hide upon the mouthpiece here, which should be bison hide, is for the earth,
from whence we came and at whose breast we suck as babies all our lives,
along with all the animals and birds and trees and grasses. And because it
means all this, and more than any man can understand, the pipe is holy. . . .
(continued on next page)

were sufficient to produce the adaptations from which the teleology of the
eighteenth century had argued to God. Assignable proximate causes, whether
mechanical or not, are sufficient to dispose of the particular kind of teleologi-
cal proof supplied by Paley. But the fact of organic evolution, even when the
maximum of instrumentality is accredited to what is figuratively called natural
selection, is not incompatible with teleology on a grander scale: as exponents
of Darwinism were perhaps the first to recognise and to proclaim. Subversive
of Paley’s argument, it does not invalidate his theistic conclusion, nor even his
view that every organism and organ is an end as well as a means. Indeed
the science of evolution was the primary source of the wider teleology current
for the last half century, as well as the main incentive to the recovery of the
closely connected doctrine of divine immanence. This kind of teleology does
not set out from the particular adaptations in individual organisms or species
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267
Now I light the pipe, and after I have offered it to the powers that are one GOD AND
THE WORLD
Power, and sent forth a voice to them, we shall smoke together. Offering the
mouthpiece first of all to the One above—so—I send a voice:
Hey hey! hey hey! hey hey! hey hey!
Grandfather, Great Spirit, you have been always, and before you no one
has been. There is no other one to pray to but you. You yourself, everything
that you see, everything has been made by you. The star nations all over the
universe you have finished. The four quarters of the earth you have finished.
The day, and in that day, everything you have finished. Grandfather, Great
Spirit, lean close to the earth that you may hear the voice I send. You towards
where the sun goes down, behold me; Thunder Beings, behold me! You where
the White Giant lives in power, behold me! You where the sun shines continu-
ally, whence come the day-break star and the day, behold me! You where the
summer lives, behold me! You in the depths of the heavens, an eagle of power,
behold! And you, Mother Earth, the only Mother, you who have shown mercy
to your children!
Hear me, four quarters of the world—a relative I am! Give me the strength
to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that is! Give me the eyes to see and
the strength to understand, that I may be like you. With your power only can
I face the winds.
Great Spirit, Great Spirit, my Grandfather, all over the earth the faces of
living things are all alike. With the tenderness have these come up out of the
ground. Look upon these faces of children without number and with children
in their arms, that they may face the winds and walk the good road to the day
of quiet.
This is my prayer; hear me! The voice I have sent is weak, yet with earnest-
ness I have sent it. Hear me!*

*Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, as told
through John G. Neihardt (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), pp. 1–6.

so much as from considerations as to the progressiveness of the evolutionary

process and as to the organic realm as a whole. . . .
In an exposition of the significance of the moral order for theistic philosophy,
the first step is to point out that man belongs to Nature, and is an essential
part of it, in such a sense that the world cannot be described or explained as
a whole without taking him and his moral values into account. Prof. Pringle-
Pattison, especially, has elaborated the doctrine that, as he expresses it, “man
is organic to the world.” What precisely this, or the similar phrase “man is the
child of Nature,” should mean, if either is to be more than a half-truth, needs
to be made clear. In so far as man’s soul, i.e. man as noümenon, or (in the
language of spiritualistic pluralism) the dominant monad in the empirical self, is
concerned, we are not authorised by known facts to regard man as organic to
Nature, or as the child of Nature, in the sense that he is an emergent product of
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268
THE QUESTION
OF GOD NARROW VERSUS WIDER TELEOLOGY
• Paley: The world is full of particular instances of design—for example, the
human eye. Each of these is an evidence for the direct creating and designing
activity of God.
• Tennant: Particular instances of design, such as the human eye, can be ade-
quately explained by natural causes, such as evolution. These natural causes,
however, have produced a world that as a whole is an overwhelming evidence
for the creating and designing activity of God.

cosmic evolution. We are rather forbidden by psychology to entertain any such

notion. But, this proviso being observed—it must qualify all that is further said in
the present connexion—we can affirm that man’s body, with all its conditioning of
his mentality, his sociality, knowledge and morality, is “of a piece” with Nature;
and that, in so far as he is a phenomenal being, man is organic to Nature, or a
product of the world. And this fact is as significant for our estimation of Nature
as for our anthropology. If man is Nature’s child, Nature is the wonderful mother
of such a child. Any account of her which ignores the fact of her maternity is
scientifically partial and philosophically insignificant. Her capacity to produce man
must be reckoned among her potencies, explain it how we may. And man is no
monstrous birth out of due time, no freak or sport. In respect of his body and the
bodily conditioning of his mentality, man is like, and has genetic continuity with,
Nature’s humbler and earlier-born children. In the fulness of time Nature found
self-utterance in a son possessed of the intelligent and moral status. Maybe she
was pregnant with him from the beginning, and the world-ages are the period
of her gestation. As to this anthropocentric view of the world-process, and its
co-extensiveness with teleological interpretation, more will presently be said. But
in the light of man’s continuity with the rest of the world we can at once dismiss
the view that Nature suddenly “stumbled” or “darkly blundered” on man, while
“churning the universe with mindless motion.” The world-process is a praeparatio
anthropologica, whether designedly or not, and man is the culmination, up to the
present stage of the knowable history of Nature, of a gradual ascent. We can-
not explain man in terms of physical Nature; conceivably Nature may be found
explicable—in another sense of the word—in terms of man, and can be called
“the threshold of spirit.” Judging the genealogical tree by its roots, naturalism once
preached that Darwin had put an end to the assumption that man occupies an
exceptional position on our planet; apparently implying that there is no difference
of status between man and the primordial slime because stages between the two
are traceable. But if we judge the tree by its fruits, Darwin may rather be said to
have restored man to the position from which Copernicus seemed to have ousted
him, in making it possible to read the humanising of Nature in the naturalising
of man, and to regard man as not only the last term and the crown of Nature’s
long upward effort, but also as its end or goal.7

7
F. R. Tennant, Philosophical Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930), II, 78–79,
84, 100–102.
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THE PROBLEM OF CAUSALITY 269

GOD AND
Both the Cosmological and the Teleological Arguments for God have been THE WORLD
criticized in many ways. Here we can mention only a few of the objections.
Inevitably someone will ask: “If everything has to have a cause, then
what caused God?” But this is to miss the point. It is not that every thing What caused God?
must have a cause, but that every event, or everything that comes into being,
must have a cause. Now is God an event or something that comes into
being? Of course not. How could he be, if he is the cause of events or things
that come into being? It is hopeless confusion to try to think of God, who
is by his nature transcendent and ultimate, as a being that comes into being
or passes away. Similarly, some smart aleck might ask: “What was God
doing before he created the world?” To this, one is tempted, with some
ancients, to answer: “What was God doing before he created the world?
Why, he was preparing hell for people who pry into divine mysteries!” More
seriously, how can there be a “before” without creation? Apart from creation
there is no time and therefore no “before.” We must, in a word, take abso-
lutely seriously the idea of God as a transcendent and absolute being.
Another objection questions whether the world even needs a cause. Just
because everything in the universe is contingent, must the universe itself
be contingent? The Cosmological and Teleological Arguments assume that
the world needs an external explanation, but perhaps, critics argue, the
world as a whole is not contingent and has always existed. Simply because
the world we perceive is composed of entities that come into being does
not necessarily mean that the whole is itself contingent. And isn’t it pos-
sible that the apparent order in the universe is somehow innate, that mat-
ter is self-organizing? David Hume raises this possibility partially to illus-
trate the limits of our knowledge. Based on our experience, we simply don’t
know if the world requires an external cause, critics argue.
Even if the world has a cause, can we be certain that it is the God of the
Bible, or even any god at all, that is this ultimate cause? St. Thomas ends
each of his Five Ways with “this being we call God,” but is that really what
the argument shows? Critics point out that Aquinas argues for an uncaused
first cause or designer but says nothing about the loving, personal God
associated with Christianity. While establishing the need for a transcendent
being is not to be underestimated, must theists take the next step to connect
this first cause to the attributes of a particular deity?
Finally, we must raise what is probably the most troublesome feature of the
Cosmological and Teleological Arguments for the existence of God. We have
seen repeatedly that central to both of the arguments is the principle of causality:
“From nothing, nothing comes,” or “Every event must have a cause.” But the
concept of causality is far and away one of the most difficult in all philosophy.
And this is especially true when it is applied to God’s relation to the world.
We have already seen how both Hume and Kant in different ways
destroyed the traditional concept of causality. Now we are in a better posi-
tion to emphasize the implications for metaphysics, and specifically for
discussions of God. In a way, Hume and Kant make the same criticism: The
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270 concept of causality cannot be legitimately extended beyond the objects of possible
THE QUESTION sense experience, and therefore cannot be extended to God. On the other hand,
OF GOD it is crucial to appreciate that Hume and Kant would interpret and justify
this claim in radically different ways.
Can causality be Hume. Aside from Hume’s skepticism about causality as such (after all,
applied to God? we have no basis in experience for the claimed universality and necessity
Hume’s criticism
of the cause-effect relation) he raises a further question: Are we not limited
by our experience to a small part of reality? What possible basis do we have
for thinking that the causal relation holds for anything beyond our experi-
ence? Our idea of causality—insofar as we possess one—is based on our
experience of causes (for example, carpenters) and effects (for example,
houses) joined together over and over again right before our eyes. But
surely God’s creation of the world is hardly an object of possible experi-
ence, and is totally without analogy in the universe we know.
This is Hume’s main and recurring point in the following passage from
his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, in which, more or less, his own
position is represented by Philo, who speaks the following:

That all inferences, Cleanthes, concerning fact are founded on experience, and
that all experimental reasonings are founded on the supposition that similar causes
prove similar effects, and similar effects similar causes, I shall not at present much
dispute with you. But observe, I entreat you, with what extreme caution all just rea-
soners proceed in the transferring of experiments to similar cases. Unless the cases
be exactly similar, they repose no perfect confidence in applying their past obser-
vation to any particular phenomenon. Every alteration of circumstances occasions
a doubt concerning the event; and it requires new experiments to prove certainly
that the new circumstances are of no moment or importance. A change in bulk,
situation, arrangement, age, disposition of the air, or surrounding bodies—any of
these particulars may be attended with the most unexpected consequences. And
unless the objects be quite familiar to us, it is the highest temerity to expect with
assurance, after any of these changes, an event similar to that which before fell
under our observation. The slow and deliberate steps of philosophers here, if any-
where, are distinguished from the precipitate march of the vulgar, who, hurried on
by the smallest similitude, are incapable of all discernment or consideration.
But can you think, Cleanthes, that your usual phlegm and philosophy have
been preserved in so wide a step as you have taken when you compared to
the universe houses, ships, furniture, machines, and, from their similarity in some
circumstances, inferred a similarity in their causes? Thought, design, intelligence,
such as we discover in men and other animals, is no more than one of the springs
and principles of the universe, as well as heat or cold, attraction or repulsion,
and a hundred others which fall under daily observation. It is an active cause
by which some particular parts of nature, we find, produce alterations on other
parts. But can a conclusion, with any propriety, be transferred from parts to the
whole? Does not the great disproportion bar all comparison and inference? From
observing the growth of a hair, can we learn anything concerning the generation
of a man? Would the manner of a leaf’s blowing, even though perfectly known,
afford us any instruction concerning the vegetation of a tree?
But allowing that we were to take the operations of one part of nature upon
another for the foundation of our judgment concerning the origin of the whole
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(which never can be admitted), yet why select so minute, so weak, so bounded 271
a principle as the reason and design of animals is found to be upon this planet?
GOD AND
What peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call thought, THE WORLD
that we must thus make it the model of the whole universe? Our partiality in our
own favour does indeed present it on all occasions, but sound philosophy ought
carefully to guard against so natural an illusion.
So far from admitting, continued Philo, that the operations of a part can afford
us any just conclusion concerning the origin of the whole, I will not allow any one
part to form a rule for another part if the latter be very remote from the former.
Is there any reasonable ground to conclude that the inhabitants of other planets
possess thought, intelligence, reason, or anything similar to these faculties in men?
When nature has so extremely diversified her manner of operation in this small
globe, can we imagine that she incessantly copies herself throughout so immense
a universe? And if thought, as we may well suppose, be confined merely to
this narrow corner and has even there so limited a sphere of action, with what
propriety can we assign it for the original cause of all things? The narrow views
of a peasant who makes his domestic economy the rule for the government of
kingdoms is in comparison a pardonable sophism. . . .
A very small part of this great system, during a very short time, is very imper-
fectly discovered to us; and do we thence pronounce decisively concerning the
origin of the whole?
Admirable conclusion! Stone, wood, brick, iron, brass, have not, at this time, in
this minute globe of earth, an order or arrangement without human art and contriv-
ance; therefore, the universe could not originally attain its order and arrangement
without something similar to human art. But is a part of nature a rule for another
part very wide of the former? Is it a rule for the whole? Is a very small part a
rule for the universe? Is nature in one situation a certain rule for nature in another
situation vastly different from the former?
And can you blame me, Cleanthes, if I here imitate the prudent reserve of
Simonides, who, according to the noted story, being asked by Hiero, What God
was? desired a day to think of it, and then two days more; and after that manner
continually prolonged the term, without ever bringing his definition or description?
Could you even blame me if I had answered, at first, that I did not know, and was
sensible that this subject lay vastly beyond the reach of my faculties? You might cry
out sceptic and rallier, as much as you pleased; but, having found in so many other
subjects much more familiar the imperfections and even contradictions of human
reason, I never should expect any success from its feeble conjectures in a subject
so sublime and so remote from the sphere of our observation. When two species
of objects have always been observed to be conjoined together, I can infer, by
custom, the existence of one wherever I see the existence of the other; and this I
call an argument from experience. But how this argument can have place where
the objects, as in the present case, are single, individual, without parallel or specific
resemblance, may be difficult to explain. And will any man tell me with a serious
countenance that an orderly universe must arise from some thought and art like
the human because we have experience of it? To ascertain this reasoning it were
requisite that we had experience of the origin of worlds; and it is not sufficient,
surely, that we have seen ships and cities arise from human art and contrivance.8

8
David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Henry D. Aiken (New York: Hafner,
1948), pp. 20–23.
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272
THE QUESTION
OF GOD DOES CAUSALITY APPLY TO GOD?
• Hume: No. Causality is limited to the sensible world because we know it only
through sense experience. We have no grounds for applying it to a transcen-
dent God.
• Kant: No. Causality is limited to the sensible world because it is constitutive of
sense experience, it is part of what experience means. It therefore has no
possible application to a transcendent God.

Do you see, then, just what Hume, the radical empiricist, would mean
by the charge that the Cosmological and Teleological Arguments involve
an unjustified application of the concept of causality to God?
Kant’s criticism Kant. But Kant would mean something very different. We saw earlier
how Kant, contrary to Hume, did believe in “Every event must have a
cause” as a certain and universal principle, but only because it is a way in
which our minds necessarily grasp and represent reality. Do you recall the
rose-colored glasses from our earlier discussion of Kant? We cannot help
but experience things as standing in cause-effect relations, because causal-
ity is one of the ways in which our mind organizes or makes possible
experience itself. But then, of course, causality can have no possible bearing
on anything outside our sense experience, such as God.
In the following extract from the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant calls the
Cosmological Argument a “transcendental illusion,” and lists four lines of
objection. The first of these concerns explicitly the proper, and limited,
application of the principle of causality, though the limitation of the theo-
retical reason to objects of possible experience is a theme that otherwise
recurs throughout.

There are so many sophistical propositions in this cosmological argument, that it

really seems as if speculative reason had spent all her dialectical skill in order to
produce the greatest possible transcendental illusion. . . .
I said before that a whole nest of dialectical assumptions was hidden in
that cosmological proof, and that transcendental criticism might easily detect and
destroy it. I shall here enumerate them only, leaving it to the experience of the
reader to follow up the fallacies and remove them.
We find, first, the transcendental principle of inferring a cause for the acci-
dental. This principle, that everything contingent must have a cause, is valid in
the world of sense only, and has not even a meaning outside it. For the purely
intellectual concept of the contingent cannot produce a synthetical proposition like
that of causality, and the principle of causality has no meaning and no criterion
of its use, except in the world of sense, while here it is meant to help us beyond
the world of sense.
Secondly. The inference of a first cause, based on the impossibility of an infi-
nite ascending series of given causes in this world of sense, an inference which
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the principles of the use of reason do not allow us to draw even in experience, 273
while here we extend that principle beyond experience, whither that series can
GOD AND
never be prolonged. THE WORLD
Thirdly. The false self-satisfaction of reason with regard to the completion of
that series, brought about by removing in the end every kind of condition, without
which, nevertheless, no concept of necessity is possible, and by then, when any
definite concepts have become impossible, accepting this as a completion of our
concept.
Fourthly. The mistaking the logical possibility of a concept of all united real-
ity (without any internal contradiction) for the transcendental, which requires a
principle for the practicability of such a synthesis, such principle however being
applicable to the field of possible experience only, etc.9

As with Hume, Kant charges that the Cosmological and Teleological

Arguments involve an illegitimate extension of the idea of causality to a
sphere where it has no proper application. But Kant means something very
different: It is not just that we have no basis for such an application of
causality (Hume), but that causality could not possibly apply to God.
It must be seen that Hume’s and Kant’s criticisms of these theistic argu-
ments follow from their respective views of knowledge. In both cases, it
is important to appreciate this connection, and to appreciate, therefore,
the importance of the starting point. And that takes us back to Chapters
9 and 10.

CHAPTER 11 IN REVIEW
SUMMARY
Some of the most interesting and instructive phenomena in the history of
philosophy are the arguments for God’s existence. Natural theology means
knowledge of God acquired through our natural faculties of reason and/or
experience. The best examples of this are the traditional arguments for the
existence of God. We have considered two of these in this chapter:

• The Cosmological Argument

• The Teleological Argument

These are a posteriori arguments in that they attempt to demonstrate the

existence of God on the basis of sense experience.
More specifically, the Cosmological Argument (First-Cause Argument)
concludes that a transcendent and absolute being must exist as the only
possible cause of the contingent universe. Actually there are two forms of
this argument. If one grants that the world must have had a temporal
beginning (as in the more common, or popular, version), then God is

9
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. F. Max Müller (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books,
1966), pp. 405–408.
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274 posited as the first cause of the cosmos in the sense of its originator at a
THE QUESTION
definite point in the past. If, on the other hand, one grants that the cosmos
OF GOD has always existed (as in the Thomistic version), then God is posited as
the first cause of the cosmos in the sense of the ultimate being upon whom
it depends at every moment in its (even infinite) existence. It is important
to see that in either case, the world is regarded as contingent and therefore
dependent upon something beyond itself, and finally upon something
ultimate, for its existence.
The Teleological Argument (Design Argument) concludes that there must
exist a transcendent and intelligent being as the only possible cause of the
order and design in the universe. This argument also assumes two forms. In
the older version of Paley, God is regarded as the direct cause of specific
designs—say, the human eye. In the more recent version by Tennant, who was
much influenced by the theory of evolution, God is responsible for the design
of the whole, which he has achieved by long sequences of innumerable natu-
ral processes. This latter view involves theistic evolution, the idea that evolu-
tion itself is one of the natural processes instituted by God and employed as
an instrument for his production of humanity and human values.
Numerous complaints have been filed against these arguments, but the
most critical have to do with the concept of causality. Aside from the intrin-
sic problems with this concept (is it really a metaphysical certainty that
“From nothing, nothing comes” or that “Every event must have a cause”?),
some important philosophers (for example, Hume and Kant) have charged
that whatever its application may be to the sensible world, it is certainly
less clear how the concept of causality may relate to anything beyond the
sensible world. According to Hume, we have no rational right to ascribe to
some transcendent being the attributes and activities, such as causal activity,
that we know only from our limited experience of the sensible world
around us. According to Kant, it is not even possible that a concept of cau-
sality could be ascribed to God, since by its nature it is a principle of sense
experience and therefore has no application beyond sense experience.

BASIC IDEAS
• Natural theology
• Revealed theology
• A posteriori/a priori arguments for God
• The Cosmological Argument
Thomistic version
Popular version
• St. Thomas’ Five Ways
• Two meanings of “First” Cause
• Big Bang theory of the universe
• Second Law of Thermodynamics
• The Teleological Argument
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• Teleology 275
• Paley’s watch analogy GOD AND
THE WORLD
• Special creation versus evolution
• Theistic evolution
• Narrow versus wider teleology
• Miscellaneous objections to the a posteriori proofs
• Causality as the central problem
• Hume’s criticism of divine causality
• Kant’s criticism of divine causality

TEST YOURSELF
1. True or false: St. Thomas’ argument for God presupposes a temporal
beginning of the universe.
2. Knowledge of God by means of a special divine self-disclosure is
called theology.
3. Why do both Hume and Kant reject the Cosmological Argument on
the basis of their differing conceptions of causality?
4. How did Charles Darwin figure in the discussion in this chapter?
5. St. Thomas’ Five Ways are all (a) a posteriori, (b) presented in his Summa
Theologiae, (c) involved with the principle of causality, (d) based on the
Bible.
6. Paley was a proponent of (a) wider teleology, (b) narrow teleology,
(c) evolution, (d) theistic evolution.
7. Who was F. R. Tennant?
8. Some claim that there is scientific evidence for the temporal beginning
of the cosmos. What is it?
9. True or false: Theistic evolution is the belief that God created the world
and then abandoned it to its own course.
10. Paley claimed that ____ is to the ____as a ____ is to a ____.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• It is often observed that there is an essential difference between meta-
physical and scientific reasoning. Do you agree with this? Can scientific
theories, such as the Big Bang theory, hold any real relevance for meta-
physical questions, such as the question of God? Can a scientific claim
also be a metaphysical claim?
• It is sometimes said that St. Thomas’ Five Ways are really five different
expressions of the same argument. Do you see any truth in this? How
might you defend it?
• For some people, the idea of “theistic evolution” is a contradiction in
terms. But is evolution in itself necessarily atheistic? What does “evolu-
tion” mean? Does God work through nature in other respects? What,
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276 suddenly, becomes so important about the interpretation of religious lan-

THE QUESTION
guage, the use of symbols, and so on (think of the first chapters of the
OF GOD Bible)?
• If you were St. Thomas, would you feel devastated by either Hume’s or
Kant’s attacks on your arguments for God? If not, why not?

FOR FURTHER READING

Donald R. Burrill (ed.). The Cosmological Arguments. Garden City, NY: Anchor
Books, 1967. A useful collection of the standard statements both classical
and contemporary, both positive and critical, on the Cosmological and
Teleological Arguments.
William Lane Craig. The Kalam Cosmological Argument. New York: Barnes &
Noble, 1977. A modern proposal of a medieval Arabic form of the
Cosmological Argument (the “popular” version), and involving discus-
sions of contemporary physics, mathematics, philosophy, and theology.
Brian Davies. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. Third ed. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2003. A critical and thoughtful examina-
tion of fundamental questions posed by religious belief, including argu-
ments for the existence of God.
Lecomte du Noüys. Human Destiny. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.,
1947. One of the best known of modern versions of the Teleological
Argument, arguing from the infinitesimal odds against the chance occur-
rences required for the production of life.
Anthony Kenny. Five Ways: St. Thomas Aquinas’ Proofs of God’s Existence.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969. Commentary on the Five Ways
of St. Thomas in an analytic style.
J. L. Mackie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of
God. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982. Chs. 5, 8. Heavy-duty treatments of
the Cosmological and Teleological Arguments by an eminent contempo-
rary philosopher, tying together traditional and recent moves.
Jacques Maritain. Approaches to God. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1954.
Readable chapters reflecting the Thomistic approach to God (especially
Ch. 2) by a recent and esteemed Catholic thinker.
Hugo A. Meynell. The Intelligible Universe: A Cosmological Argument. New
York: Barnes & Noble, 1982. A redevelopment of an earlier version of the
Cosmological Argument, taking into account critical discussions of recent
years.
Ed. L. Miller. God and Reason: An Invitation to Philosophical Theology. Sec-
ond ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1995. Chs. 1, 3–4. Intro-
ductory discussions of natural theology and the Cosmological and
Teleological Arguments, reflecting standard historical and recent posi-
tions, pro and con.
Alvin Plantinga. God, Freedom, and Evil. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974.
Part 2, a–b. Brief and logically tight discussions and rejection of the
Cosmological and Teleological Arguments by an influential contempo-
rary philosopher of religion.
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William L. Rowe. The Cosmological Argument. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni- 277
versity Press, 1975. A somewhat advanced discussion on all aspects of GOD AND
the subject, especially the principle of causality. THE WORLD
Jagjit Singh. Great Ideas and Theories of Modern Cosmology. New York: Dover,
1961. Ch. 16. Brief and mildly critical consideration of the cosmological-
astronomical evidence for God.
Richard Swineburne. The Existence of God. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.
Chs. 7–8. Discussions in an analytic style, concluding that the Cosmo-
logical and Teleological Arguments hold no deductive validity though
they do contribute inductive support.
Richard Taylor. Metaphysics. Third ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
1983. Ch. 10. Recent and readable treatments of the issues involved in
the Cosmological and Teleological Arguments, reflecting a sympathetic
approach.
*In addition, see the relevant articles (“Cosmological Argument,” “Teleo-
logical Argument,” etc.) In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed.
Edward Craig (London: Routledge, 1998), and Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu.
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C H A P T E R 12

GOD AND
REASON

I
n Chapter 11 we looked at two arguments for God, both of them a
posteriori—that is, based on sense experience. In this chapter we will
consider two that are a priori—that is, based not on sense experience but
on reason alone. Specifically, the first, the Ontological Argument, is based
on the mere idea of God. The second, the Moral Argument, is based on the
idea of moral law.

THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

The Ontological Argument begins with the definition of God as the greatest
being possible, or, if you prefer, as the most perfect being, the unlimited
being, a being no greater than which is conceivable, and so on. It is impor- God, the greatest
tant to see that it is not the linguistic symbol “God” that we are interested being, must exist
in, but rather the idea (of the greatest being possible) that most people, even
atheists, mean by it. The simplest version of this argument then asks us:
What is greater: to exist as a mere idea in the mind, or to exist in reality
too? Obviously, so the argument goes, it is greater to exist objectively, in
reality. (Wouldn’t you rather have millions of real dollars than mental
ones?) But, then, God must actually exist, because if he didn’t, he would
not be the greatest being possible. To say it another way: It is logically
absurd to deny the existence of God, for you would be denying the exis-
tence of what must exist to be the thing you are talking about!
279
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280 The first and most famous statement of the Ontological Argument was
THE QUESTION
provided by St. Anselm (1033–1109) in his Proslogium. He takes as his def-
OF GOD inition of God “that than which nothing greater can be conceived,” and
concludes from this that God must, in fact, exist.

Truly There Is a God, Although the Fool Hath Said in His Heart,
There Is No God
And so, Lord, do thou, who dost give understanding to faith, give me, so far as
thou knowest it to be profitable, to understand that thou art as we believe; and
that thou art that which we believe. And, indeed, we believe that thou art a being
than which nothing greater can be conceived. Or is there no such nature, since the
St. Anselm’s version fool hath said in his heart, there is no God? [Ps. 14:1]. But, at any rate, this very
fool, when he hears of this being of which I speak—a being than which nothing
greater can be conceived—understands what he hears, and what he understands
is in his understanding; although he does not understand it to exist.
For, it is one thing for an object to be in the understanding, and another to
understand that the object exists. When a painter first conceives of what he will
afterwards perform, he has it in his understanding, but he does not yet understand
it to be, because he has not yet performed it. But after he has made the painting,
he both has it in his understanding, and he understands that it exists, because he
has made it.
Hence, even the fool is convinced that something exists in the understanding,
at least, than which nothing greater can be conceived. For, when he hears of
this, he understands it. And whatever is understood, exists in the understanding.
And assuredly that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in
the understanding alone. For, suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then
it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater.
Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, exists in
the understanding alone, the very being, than which nothing greater can be
conceived, is one, than which a greater can be conceived. But obviously this
is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a being, than which
nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and
in reality.

God Cannot Be Conceived Not to Exist

And it assuredly exists so truly, that it cannot be conceived not to exist. For, it
is possible to conceive of a being which cannot be conceived not to exist; and
this is greater than one which can be conceived not to exist. Hence, if that, than
which nothing greater can be conceived, can be conceived not to exist, it is not
that, than which nothing greater can be conceived. But this is an irreconcilable
contradiction. There is, then, so truly a being than which nothing greater can be
conceived to exist, that it cannot even be conceived not to exist, and this being
thou art, O Lord, our God.
So truly, therefore, doest thou exist, O Lord, my God, that thou canst not be
conceived not to exist; and rightly. For, if a mind could conceive of a being better
than thee, the creature would rise about the Creator; and this is most absurd. And,
indeed, whatever else there is, except thee alone, can be conceived not to exist.
To thee alone, therefore, it belongs to exist more truly than all other beings, and
hence in a higher degree than all others. For, whatever else exists does not exist
so truly, and hence in a less degree it belongs to it to exist. Why, then, has the
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281
GOD AND
THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT REASON

God is the greatest or most perfect being.

A being who exists is greater or more perfect than a being who does not exist.

Therefore, God must exist.

fool said in his heart, there is no God, since it is so evident, to a rational mind,
that thou dost exist in the highest degree of all? Why, except that he is dull and
a fool?1

Another statement is provided by Descartes, in his Meditations. He

defines God as “the most perfect being,” and concludes that as sum of all
perfections, God must possess not only the attributes of omnipotence,
omniscience, omnibenevolence, and so on, but also the attribute of
existence.

. . . now, if just because I can draw the idea of something from my thought, it fol-
lows that all which I know clearly and distinctly as pertaining to this object does
really belong to it, may I not derive from this an argument demonstrating the
existence of God? It is certain that I no less find the idea of God, that is to say, Descartes’ version
the idea of a supremely perfect Being, in me, than that of any figure or number
whatever it is; and I do not know any less clearly and distinctly that an [actual
and] eternal existence pertains to this nature than I know that all that which I am
able to demonstrate of some figure or number truly pertains to the nature of this
figure or number, and therefore, although all that I concluded in the preceding
Meditations were found to be false, the existence of God would pass with me as
at least as certain as I have ever held the truths of mathematics (which concern
only numbers and figures) to be.
This indeed is not at first manifest, since it would seem to present some appear-
ance of being a sophism. For being accustomed in all other things to make a dis-
tinction between existence and essence, I easily persuade myself that the existence
can be separated from the essence of God, and that we can thus conceive God
as not actually existing. But, nevertheless, when I think of it with more attention,
I clearly see that existence can no more be separated from the essence of God
than can its having its three angles equal to two right angles be separated from
the essence of a [rectilinear] triangle, or the idea of a mountain from the idea
of a valley; and so there is not any less repugnance to our conceiving a God
(that is, a Being supremely perfect) to whom existence is lacking (that is to say,
to whom a certain perfection is lacking), than to conceive of a mountain which
has no valley.
But although I cannot really conceive of a God without existence any more than
a mountain without a valley, still from the fact that I conceive of a mountain with

1
St. Anselm, Proslogium, in St. Anselm: Basic Writings, tr. S. N. Deane (LaSalle, IL: Open Court,
1903), pp. 7–9.
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282 a valley, it does not follow that there is such a mountain in the world; similarly
although I conceive of God as possessing existence, it would seem that it does
THE QUESTION
OF GOD not follow that there is a God which exists; for my thought does not impose any
necessity upon things, and just as I may imagine a winged horse, although no
horse with wings exists, so I could perhaps attribute existence to God, although
no God existed.
But a sophism is concealed in this objection; for from the fact that I cannot
conceive a mountain without a valley, it does not follow that there is any mountain
or any valley in existence, but only that the mountain and the valley, whether
they exist or do not exist, cannot in any way be separated one from the other.
While from the fact that I cannot conceive God without existence, it follows that
existence is inseparable from Him, and hence that He really exists; not that my
thought can bring this to pass, or impose any necessity on things, but, on the
contrary, because the necessity which lies in the thing itself, i.e., the necessity of
the existence of God determines me to think in this way. For it is not within my
power to think of God without existence (that is of a supremely perfect Being
devoid of a supreme perfection) though it is in my power to imagine a horse
either with wings or without wings.2

In either St. Anselm’s or Descartes’ version of the Ontological Argument,

the essential point is the same: It is impossible to think of God—or at least
of the greatest being—without thinking of him as existing.

IS EXISTENCE A PREDICATE?
You probably have the uneasy feeling that the Ontological Argument is
putting something over on you. If so, you are not alone. No sooner had
A misguided St. Anselm shown why the atheist is a fool than a fellow monk, Gaunilo,
criticism? wrote a rebuttal entitled On Behalf of the Fool. Among other things, Gaunilo
asked how we could possibly derive the real existence of something from
a mere idea of it. We might as well conclude from our idea of a lost,
perfect, desert island (Gaunilo’s example) that such an island actually
exists! This is a very obvious criticism, but some think that it misses the
point. Of course it does not follow from our idea of an island—even a
perfect island—or a unicorn or a hundred dollars that these really exist,
but that is because none of these is the greatest being, and therefore they
do not have to exist in order to be that thing. The difference is between
the greatest of a kind—Gaunilo’s perfect island—and that than which
nothing greater can be conceived—Anselm’s definition of God. Only in
the case of the greatest being, or the most perfect being in this latter sense,
must it be said that it must exist. One more time: It is not part of the con-
cept of a unicorn or other creature that it exists, but it is part of the idea
of the greatest being:

2
René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, tr.
Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), 1,
180–182.
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283

e
tenc
GOD AND
REASON

nipo
Om
ce
c ien
nis
Om
God
The Greatest
Being Omnibenevolence
The Sum of All
Perfections

Ex
ist
en
ce

Or is it? Whereas the Ontological Argument clearly takes existence as a

defining property, attribute, or predicate of God, many have charged that this
is a mistake. In fact, the single most recurring attack against the Ontological
Argument has consisted in the claim that existence is not a predicate.
Of course, existence is a predicate in a purely grammatical sense: In the
sentence “God exists,” “God” is the subject and “exists” is the predicate.
But in a logical sense, existence is not a predicate in that it in no way adds
anything, subtracts anything, or in any way modifies the concept of the
subject. To see that this is so, in your imagination start building up the
concept of a unicorn by supplying the appropriate predicates:

A unicorn is shaped like a horse.

A unicorn is white.
A unicorn has an ivory horn.
.
.
.

Every time you introduce a predicate, the subject becomes in some way
changed and augmented. However, when we finally add,

A unicorn exists.

you see immediately that nothing has been added whatsoever. A unicorn that
doesn’t exist is no less a unicorn than one that does. Naturally, there is a
difference between the nonexistent unicorn and the existent unicorn (try to
ride the nonexistent one!), but the difference has nothing whatsoever to do
with the idea or concept of the unicorn.
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284 Kant was one of the first to press this attack on the Ontological Argu-
THE QUESTION
ment. In the following paragraphs from the Critique of Pure Reason, he
OF GOD attempts to show that the being or existence of God stands in a different
relation to God than his regular attributes, such as omnipotence, and that,
specifically, being or existence is not a predicate at all. (By an “identical
judgment” Kant means an analytic judgment or a judgment of the form
“A is A.”)

If in an identical judgment I reject the predicate and retain the subject, there arises
a contradiction, and hence, I say, that the former belongs to the latter necessarily. But
Kant: existence is if I reject the subject as well as the predicate, there is no contradiction, because
not a predicate there is nothing left that can be contradicted. To accept a triangle and yet to reject
its three angles is contradictory, but there is no contradiction at all in admitting
the nonexistence of the triangle and of its three angles. The same applies to the
concept of an absolutely necessary Being. Remove its existence, and you remove
the thing itself, with all its predicates, so that a contradiction becomes impossible.
There is nothing external to which the contradiction could apply, because the thing
is not meant to be externally necessary; nor is there anything internal that could be
contradicted, for in removing the thing out of existence, you have removed at the
same time all its internal qualities. If you say, God is almighty, that is a necessary
judgment, because almightiness cannot be removed, if you accept a deity, that is,
an infinite Being, with the concept of which that other concept is identical. But if
you say, God is not, then neither his almightiness, nor any other of his predicates
is given; they are all, together with the subject, removed out of existence, and
therefore there is not the slightest contradiction in that sentence. . . .
Being is evidently not a real predicate, or a concept of something that can
be added to the concept of a thing. It is merely the admission of a thing, and of
certain determinations in it. Logically, it is merely the copula of a judgment. The
proposition, “God is almighty”, contains two concepts, each having its object,
namely, God and almightiness. The small word “is”, is not an additional predi-
cate, but only serves to put the predicate in relation to the subject. If, then, I
take the subject (God) with all its predicates (including that of almightiness), and
say “God is”, or there is a God, I do not put a new predicate to the concept
of God, but I only put the subject by itself, with all its predicates, in relation to
my concept, as its object. Both must contain exactly the same kind of thing, and
nothing can have been added to the concept, which expresses possibility only,
but my thinking its object as simply given and saying, it is. And thus the real
does not contain more than the possible. A hundred real dollars do not contain
a penny more than a hundred possible dollars. For as the latter signify the con-
cept, the former the object and its position by itself, it is clear that, in case the
former contained more than the latter, my concept would not express the whole
object, and would not therefore be its adequate concept. In my financial position
no doubt there exists more by one hundred real dollars, than by their concept
only (that is their possibility), because in reality the object is not only contained
analytically in my concept, but is added to my concept (which is a determination
of my state), synthetically; but the conceived hundred dollars are not in the least
increased through the existence which is outside my concept.
By whatever and by however many predicates I may think a thing (even in
completely determining it), nothing is really added to it, if I add that the thing
exists. Otherwise, it would not be the same that exists, but something more than
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was contained in the concept, and I could not say that the exact object of my 285
concept existed. . . .
GOD AND
Time and labour therefore are lost on the famous ontological (Cartesian) proof REASON
of the existence of a Supreme Being from more concepts; and a man might as
well imagine that he could become richer in knowledge by mere ideas, as a
merchant in capital, if, in order to improve his position, he were to add a few
noughts to his cash account.3

That seemed, and still seems, to many to be a decisive refutation of the

Ontological Argument. But this argument for God has a most inconvenient
way of not staying dead, and it continues even yet to be a center of philo-
sophical controversy.
One of the most pivotal of recent discussions is that of Norman Malcolm,
who, in the early 1960s, published an essay entitled “Anselm’s Ontological
Arguments.” Note the plural. Malcolm emphasized that we have in St.
Anselm not one but two arguments. Look again at St. Anselm’s formulation Anselm’s two
of his argument in Proslogium, Chapter 1, and his different formulation in Ontological
Chapter 2 (both quoted above). The first formulation revolves around the Arguments
notion that God is a greater being if he exists than if he does not: God’s
existence is one of his attributes, or predicates. But the second formulation
revolves around the notion that God is a greater being if he cannot not-
exist: Necessary existence is a divine predicate.
With respect to the first of these, Malcolm agreed entirely with the
Kantian criticism, which he restates and clarifies in his own way:

The doctrine that existence is a perfection is remarkably queer. It makes sense

and is true to say that my future house will be a better one if it is insulated than
if it is not insulated; but what could it mean to say that it will be a better house
if it exists than if it does not? My future child will be a better man if he is honest
than if he is not; but who would understand the saying that he will be a better
man if he exists than if he does not? Or who understands the saying that if God
exists He is more perfect than if He does not exist? One might say, with some
intelligibility, that it would be better (for oneself or for mankind) if God exists than
if He does not—but that is a different matter.
A king might desire that his next chancellor should have knowledge, wit, and
resolution; but it is ludicrous to add that the king’s desire is to have a chancellor
who exists. Suppose that two royal councilors, A and B, were asked to draw up
separately descriptions of the most perfect chancellor they could conceive, and
that the descriptions they produced were identical except that A includes existence
in his list of attributes of a perfect chancellor and B did not. (I do not mean
that B put non-existence in his list.) One and the same person could satisfy both
descriptions. More to the point, any person who satisfied A’s description would
necessarily satisfy B’s description and vice versa! This is to say that A and B did
not produce descriptions of necessary and desirable qualities in a chancellor.
A only made a show of putting down a desirable quality that B had failed to
include.

3
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. F. Max Müller (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books,
1966), pp. 399–403.
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286 I believe that I am merely restating an observation that Kant made in attacking
the notion that “existence” or “being” is a “real predicate.”. . . Anselm’s ontologi-
THE QUESTION
OF GOD cal proof of Proslogion 2 is fallacious because it rests on the false doctrine that
existence is a perfection (and therefore that “existence” is a “real predicate”). It
would be desirable to have a rigorous refutation of the doctrine but I have not
been able to provide one. I am compelled to leave the matter at the more or less
intuitive level of Kant’s observation.4

With respect to St. Anselm’s second formulation, however, the situation

is, says Malcolm, quite different. Necessary existence may, indeed, be prop-
erly construed as a predicate, and he formulates his own version of this
form of the argument, which he thinks is absolutely sound.

What Anselm has proved is that the notion of contingent existence or of contingent
nonexistence cannot have any application to God. His existence must either be
logically necessary or logically impossible. The only intelligible way of rejecting
Malcolm: Anselm’s claim that God’s existence is necessary is to maintain that the concept of
necessary existence God, as a being a greater than which cannot be conceived, is self-contradictory
is a predicate or nonsensical. Supposing that this is false, Anselm is right to deduce God’s neces-
sary existence from his characterization of Him as a being a greater than which
cannot be conceived.
Let me summarize the proof. If God, a being a greater than which cannot be
conceived, does not exist then He cannot come into existence or have happened
to come into existence, and in either case He would be a limited being, which
by our conception of Him He is not. Since He cannot come into existence, if He
does not exist His existence is impossible. If he does exist He cannot have come
into existence (for the reasons given), nor can He cease to exist, for nothing
could cause Him to cease to exist nor could it just happen that He ceased to
exist. So if God exists His existence is necessary. Thus God’s existence is either
impossible or necessary. It can be the former only if the concept of such a being
is self-contradictory or in some way logically absurd. Assuming that this is not so,
it follows that He necessarily exists.5

4
Norman Malcolm, “Anselm’s Ontological Arguments,” The Philosophical Review, Vol. LXIX, No. 1
(January 1960), in Norman Malcolm, Knowledge and Certainty: Essays and Lectures (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 143–144.
5
Ibid., pp. 149–150.

MALCOLM’S ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

God is an unlimited being.
The existence of an unlimited being is either impossible or necessary.
The concept of an unlimited being is not self-contradictory, so such a being
is not impossible.

Therefore such a being is necessary.

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The above paragraphs deserve careful study, not only for the sake of the 287
Ontological Argument but also for the sake of the instructive philosophical GOD AND
ideas and maneuvers involved. It is especially critical to see that the reason- REASON
ing depends on what we might call the Consistency Principle: A logically
consistent proposition could be true, but a self-contradictory proposition The Consistency
could not. Examples: The proposition, “A vast herd of giraffes is at the Principle
moment roaming through the White House” is, of course, an outrageous
claim, but it is at least logically consistent and therefore could be true. But
the proposition “There are barking dogs that do not bark when they are
barking” is to be rejected at the start. It is impossible because it is logically
incoherent. Be sure you understand how Malcolm arrives at the twofold
conclusion that either God’s existence is impossible or it is necessary, and
how it can only be impossible if it is logically absurd—which, says Malcolm,
it is not, leaving only the alternative that God exists, and exists necessarily.

THE MORAL ARGUMENT

Yet another argument for God must be considered. After the Ontological Sense experience
Argument you may have the feeling of being brought back down to earth, and moral
as this last argument bases itself on experience again. However, it is not experience
sense experience but moral experience that is now in view. This means not
our experience of empirical reality—such as tables and chairs and dogs and
cats—but our experience of moral reality, our confrontation with moral
law.
In a famous passage from his Critique of Practical Reason, Kant gives
eloquent expression to our confrontation with, and the distinction between,
the two worlds: the sensible world and the moral world.

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener
and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral
law within me. I do not merely conjecture them and seek them as though obscured
in darkness or in the transcendent region beyond my horizon: I see them before me,
and I associate them directly with the consciousness of my own existence.6

And in spite of his rejection of the other arguments for God, Kant himself
found it necessary to formulate a version of the Moral Argument for God.
As with the other arguments for God, there are several versions of the
Moral Argument. But they all reduce to the same essential reasoning: They
begin with the givenness of morality and conclude that there must be a
Lawgiver that originates and stands behind moral law.
But what, exactly, is meant by “moral law”? It is important to distinguish
between “moral laws” and “moral law.” The former refers to our various Moral laws versus
and changing perceptions and codifications of morality, and the latter refers moral law

6
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, tr. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-
Merrill, 1956), p. 166.
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288 C. S. Lewis, Oxford professor of medieval

English literature, is most widely known for his
THE QUESTION rational and popular defenses of Christianity.
OF GOD

to morality as it is in itself. To be sure, some have argued that there are at

least some universally recognized moral laws. Moral laws (in the plural)
are not a matter of choice and chance, and they must be grounded in an
adequate cause or source: a Lawgiver. This is the view of the late C. S.
Lewis, a popular and effective defender of Christian ideas. From Mere Chris-
tianity (first published in 1943):

I know that some people say the idea of a Law of Nature or decent behaviour
known to all men is unsound, because different civilisations and different ages
have had quite different moralities.
But this is not true. There have been differences between their moralities, but
these have never amounted to anything like a total difference. If anyone will take
the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Baby-
lonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks, and Romans, what will really strike him will
be how very like they are to each other and to our own. Some of the evidence
for this I have put together in the appendix of another book called The Abolition
of Man; but for our present purpose I need only ask the reader to think what
a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were
admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of doublecross-
ing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to
imagine a country where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards
what people you ought to be unselfish to—whether it was only your own family,
or your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you
ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men have
differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have always
agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked.7

7
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1976), p. 19.
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Of course, some anthropologists and sociologists would have a field day 289
with such claims, playing down cultural and moral similarities and playing GOD AND
up cultural relativities and differences. No matter. The point of departure REASON
for the Moral Argument is not so much the universality of moral laws (in
the plural) as of the moral law (in the singular), not so much the universal-
ity of moral conscience as of moral consciousness, not so much that everyone
has the same moral opinions but that everyone has some moral opinions,
not that everyone thinks that certain things are right or wrong but that
everyone thinks that something is right or wrong. We may disagree and be
confused about moral laws, but we all acknowledge moral law. And we
recognize it as being objective (existing independently of our own interests
or wills) and absolute (universally binding). Don’t we? Why spend so much
time and energy in reviewing, testing, and purifying our moral laws? Isn’t
it because we think that to some degree and however imperfectly they can
embody the absolute moral law?
This, then, is the first premise in the Moral Argument for the existence
of God: There is an objective and absolute moral law. The next step is to
argue that such a moral law cannot be, as it were, just floating about out
there like something accidental or capricious. No, if it is really a morally
binding law, then it must have a rational and abiding basis. And just as it
is absurd to think of fluctuating and finite moral laws and ideals as existing
apart from our own minds, so is it absurd to think of an absolute moral law From the moral law
as existing apart from an absolute mind. Think about this. Ideals and values, to an absolute mind
unlike tables, chairs, dogs, cats, and light fixtures, exist by their nature in
minds. But what or whose mind is an adequate source for ideals and values?
Bridget’s mind? But her mind is constantly changing. How could it be the
source of unchanging and universally binding ideals? Henry’s mind? But
we all know how fickle and limited his mind is. How could any finite and
changeable human mind be the basis of the moral law? Thus, the second
premise: An absolute moral law requires an absolute mind as its adequate
foundation. And the conclusion is, by now, obvious: There must exist an
absolute mind. It remains only to unpack the full meaning of “absolute
mind.” What could an “absolute” mind be, except one that is unchanging,
eternal, transcendent, ultimate, and so on? And what could this be, except
what most people call “God”?
This version of the Moral Argument is summarized by the English theo-
logian and philosopher Hastings Rashdall (1858–1924) in his book The
Theory of Good and Evil:
We say that the Moral Law has a real existence, that there is such a thing as an
absolute Morality, that there is something absolutely true or false in ethical judg-
ments, whether we or any number of human beings at any given time actually
think so or not. Such a belief is distinctly implied in what we mean by Morality.
The idea of such as unconditional, objectively valid, Moral Law or ideal undoubt-
edly exists as a psychological fact. The question before us is whether it is capable
of theoretical justification. We must then face the question where such an ideal
exists, and what manner of existence we are to attribute to it. Certainly it is to
be found, wholly and completely, in no individual human consciousness. Men
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290
THE QUESTION
OF GOD MORAL LAWS AND MORAL LAW
• Moral laws are the particular, changing, and (to some degree) relative views
that human beings formulate about morality. Our moral conscience reflects
such views.
• Moral law, on the other hand, denotes the objective and absolute moral prin-
ciples that are imperfectly expressed in moral laws. Our moral consciousness
reflects the belief in morality itself, apart from our views of it.

actually think differently about moral questions, and there is no empirical reason
for supposing that they will ever do otherwise. Where then and how does the
moral ideal really exist? As regards matters of fact or physical law, we have no
difficulty in satisfying ourselves that there is an objective reality which is what it is
irrespectively of our beliefs or disbeliefs about it. For the man who supposes that
objective reality resides in the things themselves, our ideas about them are objec-
tively true or false so far as they correspond or fail to correspond with this real
and independent archetype, though he might be puzzled to give a metaphysical
account of the nature of this “correspondence” between experience and a Reality
whose esse is something other than to be experienced. In the physical region the
existence of divergent ideas does not throw doubt upon the existence of a real-
ity independent of our ideas. But in the case of moral ideals it is otherwise. On
materialistic or naturalistic assumptions the moral ideal can hardly be regarded
as a real thing. Nor could it well be regarded as a property of any real thing: it
can be no more than an aspiration, a product of the imagination, which may be
useful to stimulate effort in directions in which we happen to want to move, but
which cannot compel respect when we feel no desire to act in conformity with
it. An absolute Moral Law or moral ideal cannot exist in material things. And it
does not (we have seen) exist in the mind of this or that individual. Only if we
believe in the existence of a Mind for which the true moral ideal is already in
some sense real, a Mind which is the source of whatever is true in our own moral
judgements, can we rationally think of the moral ideal as no less real than the
world itself. Only so can we believe in an absolute standard of right and wrong,
which is as independent of this or that man’s actual ideas and actual desires as
the facts of material nature. The belief in God, though not (like the belief in a
real and an active self) a postulate of there being any such thing as Morality at
all, is the logical presupposition of an “objective” or absolute Morality. A moral
ideal can exist nowhere and nohow but in a mind; an absolute moral ideal can
exist only in a Mind from which all Reality is derived. Our moral ideal can only
claim objective validity in so far as it can rationally be regarded as the revelation
of a moral ideal externally existing in the mind of God.
We may be able, perhaps, to give some meaning to Morality without the postu-
late of God, but not its true or full meaning. If the existence of God is not a postulate
of all Morality, it is a postulate of a sound Morality; for it is essential to that belief
which vaguely and implicitly underlies all moral beliefs, and which forms the very
heart of Morality in its highest, more developed, more explicit forms. The truth that
the moral ideal is what it is whether we like it or not is the most essential element
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in what the popular consciousness understands by “moral obligation.” Moral obliga- 291
tion means moral objectivity. That at least seems to be implied in any legitimate use
GOD AND
of the term: at least it implies the existence of an absolute, objective moral ideal. REASON
And such a belief we have seen imperatively to demand an explanation of the
Universe which shall be idealistic or at least spiritualistic, which shall recognize the
existence of a Mind whose thoughts are the standard of truth and falsehood alike
in Morality and in respect of all other existence. In other words, objective Morality
implies the belief in God. The belief in God, if not so obviously and primarily a
postulate of Morality as the belief in a permanent spiritual and active self, is still a
postulate of a Morality which shall be able to fully satisfy the demands of the moral
consciousness. It may conveniently be called the secondary postulate of Morality.8

8
Hastings Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), II, 211–213.

BEYOND REASON: PASCAL’S WAGER

Many religious people (including many philosophers) have rejected the idea that
it is possible to provide rational proof for their belief in God. One of the most
famous was the French philosopher Blaise Pascal. Pascal argued that we should
gamble on God’s existence even though we can’t prove it. We must, Pascal
claimed, make a choice, and the benefits of believing and being right are much
greater than the cost of any other option. So why not “wager” that God exists?
Consider Pascal’s “argument”:

“Either God is or he is not.” But to which view shall we be inclined? Reason

cannot decide this question. Infinite chaos separates us. At the far end of this
infinite distance a coin is being spun which will come down heads or tails.
How will you wager? Reason cannot make you choose either, reason cannot
prove either wrong.
Do not then condemn as wrong those who have made a choice, for you
know nothing about it. “No, but I will condemn them not for having made this
particular choice, but any choice, for, although the one who calls heads and
the other one are equally at fault, the fact is that they are both at fault: the
right thing is not to wager at all.”
Yes, but you must wager. There is no choice, you are already committed.
Which will you choose then? Let us see: since a choice must be made, let us
see which offers you the least interest. You have two things to lose: the true and
the good; and two things to stake: your reason and your will, your knowledge
and your happiness; and your nature has two things to avoid: error and wretch-
edness. Since you must necessarily choose, your reason is no more affronted
by choosing one rather than the other. That is one point cleared up. But your
happiness? Let us weigh up the gain and the loss involved in calling heads that
God exists. Let us assess the two cases: if you win you win everything, if you
lose you lose nothing. Do not hesitate then: wager that he does exist.”*

*Blaise Pascal, Pensées, tr. A.J. Krailsheimer (Baltimore and Harmondsworth: Penguin
Books, 1966).
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292 An important note: If you do, in fact, accept the reality of an objective
THE QUESTION
and universally binding morality, but balk at the claimed implications of
OF GOD this for the existence of God, well, has not the Moral Argument accom-
plished its real objective anyway? For you would, then, believe in a tran-
scendent, independent, and absolute reality—namely, the moral law. But
does not that commit you, if not to God, at least to a definitely spiritualist
and sort of theistic view of things? A view that posits, behind the fluctuat-
ing and relative world of experience and opinions, an invisible and eternal
Reality that confronts us and demands rightness from us? And is this so
different from God? Does it matter all that much what you call it?

IS THERE A MORAL LAW?

If anything is clear about the Moral Argument it is that it cannot possibly
Is morality absolute work except with the belief in objective and absolute morality. If one rejects
or relative? this, well, the axe has been laid to the root of this tree.
Objective or Certainly there are those who do deny that morality is anything more than
subjective?
the perceptions, desires, inclinations, or tastes of the individual—an indi-
vidual person, community, society, or whatever. The issue between moral
absolutism (morality is independent of the individual) and moral relativism
(morality is relative to the individual) is better treated in Chapter 14,
“Challenges to Morality.” Here we only summarize a few points.
Moral relativism: The major evidence for relativism is the wide variety of differences and
pro and con disagreements that do, in fact, exist from person to person and culture to
culture. On the other hand, as Lewis asked, are the differences all that
great? In any event, we have already distinguished between our varying
opinions of morality and morality itself. Furthermore, even if some, or even
most, of our ideas have been learned or culturally instilled, it hardly follows
that they therefore should be rejected as false! Finally, if the relativist is
right, how could one ever be morally mistaken? Would not every moral
opinion have to be correct for the individual holding it? And whatever one
says about moral relativism, can he or she actually live (praise, blame, argue,
vote, crusade, judge, etc.) except on the belief that values are real and bind-
ing on everyone?

THE MORAL ARGUMENT

There is an absolute moral law.
An absolute moral law must have an absolute mind as its basis.

Therefore, there must be an absolute mind as the basis of the moral law.
How might one defend the two premises of this argument?
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Such issues, pro and con, are clearly focused in the following selection 293
from a lively debate originally broadcast over the BBC. The participants are GOD AND
two English philosophers: Bertrand Russell, who here defends the relativist REASON
position, and Fr. Frederick C. Copleston, who defends the absolutist posi-
tion and its implications for the existence of God.

COPLESTON: . . . what’s your justification for distinguishing between good

and bad or how do you view the distinction between them?
RUSSELL: I don’t have any justification any more than I have when I dis-
tinguish between blue and yellow. What is my justification for distinguish-
ing between blue and yellow? I can see they are different.
COPLESTON: Well, that is an excellent justification, I agree. You distin-
guish blue and yellow by seeing them, so you distinguish good and bad
by what faculty?
RUSSELL: By my feelings.
COPLESTON: By your feelings. Well, that’s what I was asking. You think
that good and evil have reference simply to feeling?
RUSSELL: Well, why does one type of object look yellow and another
look blue? I can more or less give an answer to that thanks to the
physicists, and as to why I think one sort of thing good and another evil,

The English philosopher Bertrand Russell was very

influential in a wide range of philosophical issues, and
more activistic and outspoken than most. He was
especially antireligious, and once wrote a book entitled
Why I Am Not a Christian.
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294 probably there is an answer of the same sort, but it hasn’t been gone
THE QUESTION into the same way and I couldn’t give it to you.
OF GOD COPLESTON: Well, let’s take the behavior of the Commandant of
Belsen. That appears to you as undesirable and evil and to me too. To
Adolf Hitler we suppose it appeared as something good and desirable.
I suppose you’d have to admit that for Hitler it was good and for you
it is evil.
RUSSELL: No, I shouldn’t quite go so far as that. I mean, I think people
can make mistakes in that as they can in other things. If you have
jaundice you see things yellow that are not yellow. You’re making a
mistake.
COPLESTON: Yes, one can make mistakes, but can you make a mistake
if it’s simply a question of reference to a feeling or emotion? Surely
Hitler would be the only possible judge of what appealed to his
emotions.
RUSSELL: It would be quite right to say that it appealed to his emotions,
but you can say various things about that among others, that if that sort
of thing makes that sort of appeal to Hitler’s emotions, then Hitler makes
quite a different appeal to my emotions.
COPLESTON: Granted. But there’s no objective criterion outside feeling
then for condemning the conduct of the Commandant of Belsen, in your
view?
RUSSELL: No more than there is for the color-blinded person who’s in
exactly the same state. Why do we intellectually condemn the color-
blinded man? Isn’t it because he’s the minority?
COPLESTON: I would say because he is lacking in a thing which normally
belongs to human nature.
RUSSELL: Yes, but if he were in the majority, we shouldn’t say that. . . .
COPLESTON: Well, do you think that the word “ought” simply has an
emotional connotation?
RUSSELL: No, I don’t think that, because you see, as I was saying a
moment ago, one has to take account of the effects, and I think right
conduct is that which would probably produce the greatest possible bal-
ance in intrinsic value of all the acts possible in the circumstances, and
you’ve got to take account of the probable effects of your action in con-
sidering what is right.
COPLESTON: Well, I brought in moral obligation because I think that one
can approach the question of God’s existence in that way. The vast major-
ity of the human race will make, and always have made, some distinction
between right and wrong. The vast majority I think has some conscious-
ness of an obligation in the moral sphere. It’s my opinion that the percep-
tion of values and the consciousness of moral law and obligation are best
explained through the hypothesis of a transcendent ground of value and
of an author of the moral law. I do mean by “author of the moral law”
an arbitrary author of the moral law. I think, in fact, that those modern
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atheists who have argued in the converse way “there is no God; therefore, 295
there are no absolute values and no absolute law,” are quite logical. GOD AND
REASON
RUSSELL: I don’t like the word “absolute.” I don’t think there is anything
absolute whatever. The moral law, for example, is always changing. At
one period in the development of the human race, almost everybody
thought cannibalism was a duty.
COPLESTON: Well, I don’t see that differences in particular moral judg-
ments are any conclusive argument against the universality of the moral
law. Let’s assume for the moment that there are absolute moral values;
even on that hypothesis it’s only to be expected that different individu-
als and different groups should enjoy varying degrees of insight into
those values.
RUSSELL: I’m inclined to think that “ought,” the feeling that one has
about “ought” is an echo of what has been told one by one’s parents
or one’s nurses.
COPLESTON: Well, I wonder if you can explain away the idea of the
“ought” merely in terms of nurses and parents. I really don’t see how it
can be conveyed to anybody in other terms than itself. It seems to me
that if there is a moral order bearing upon the human conscience, that
that moral order is unintelligible apart from the existence of God.
RUSSELL: Then you have to say one or other of two things. Either God
only speaks to a very small percentage of mankind—which happens to
include yourself—or He deliberately says things that are not true in talking
to the consciences of savages. . . .
COPLESTON: It seems to me to be external customs and taboos and
things of that sort which can most easily be explained simply through
environment and education, but all that seems to me to belong to what I
call the matter of the law, the content. The idea of the “ought” as such
can never be conveyed to a man by the tribal chief or by anybody else,
because there are no other terms in which it could be conveyed. It seems
to me entirely—[Russell breaks in].
RUSSELL: But I don’t see any reason to say that—I mean we all know
about conditioned reflexes. We know that an animal, if punished habitu-
ally for a certain sort of act, after a time will refrain. I don’t think the
animal refrains from arguing within himself, “Master will be angry if I do
this.” He has a feeling that that’s not the thing to do. That’s what we can
do with ourselves and nothing more.
COPLESTON: I see no reason to suppose that an animal has a conscious-
ness of moral obligation; and we certainly don’t regard an animal as
morally responsible for his acts of disobedience. But a man has a con-
sciousness of obligation and of moral values. I see no reason to suppose
that one could condition all men as one can “condition” an animal, and
I don’t suppose you’d really want to do so even if one could. If “behav-
iorism” were true, there would be no objective moral distinction between
the emperor Nero and St. Francis of Assisi. I can’t help feeling, Lord
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296 Russell, you know, that you regard the conduct of the Commandant of
THE QUESTION Belsen as morally reprehensible, and that you yourself would never under
OF GOD any circumstances act in that way, even if you thought, or had reason
to think, that possibly the balance of the happiness of the human race
might be increased through some people being treated in that abomi-
nable manner.
RUSSELL: No. I wouldn’t imitate the conduct of a mad dog. The fact that
I wouldn’t do it doesn’t really bear on this question we’re discussing.
COPLESTON: No, but if you were making a utilitarian explanation of
right and wrong in terms of consequences, it might be held, and I sup-
pose some of the Nazis of the better type would have held that although
it’s lamentable to have to act in this way, yet the balance in the long run
leads to greater happiness. I don’t think you’d say that, would you? I
think you’d say that that sort of action is wrong—and in itself, quite apart
from whether the general balance of happiness is increased or not. Then
if you’re prepared to say that, then I think you must have some criterion
of right and wrong, that is outside the criterion of feeling, at any rate. To
me, that admission would ultimately result in the admission of an ultimate
ground of value in God. . . .9

Try to understand every move made by the participants. Does it help

you make your own decision about the Moral Argument for God?

IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE EVIDENCE FOR GOD?

Naturally, many will balk at arguments for the existence of God right from
the start. Nor will they necessarily be atheists. Some of the critics will be
themselves believers, objecting that somehow such proofs are irrelevant or
inappropriate to the overpowering majesty of God. “No,” they will say,
“God is not known in this way. Just as he transcends the world and our
reason, so is he known in a way that transcends our ordinary knowledge.”
It is just as silly to think that God can be captured by an argument as it is
to think that he can be confined to Solomon’s Temple: “Even heaven and
the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have
built!” (I Kings 8:27). On the more human side, do not religious experiences
come first, and the arguments and rationalizations second? The French con-
templative philosopher Simone Weil10 thought so:

When we are eating bread, and even when we have eaten it, we know that
it is real. We can nevertheless raise doubts about the reality of the bread. Phi-
losophers raise doubts about the reality of the world of the senses. Such doubts

9
Bertrand Russell and F. C. Copleston, “The Existence of God: A Debate Between Bertrand
Russell and Father F. C. Copleston,” in Bertrand Russell, Why I am not a Christian (London:
Allen & Unwin, 1967).
10
Pronounced vay.
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are however purely verbal, they leave the certainty intact and actually serve 297
only to make it more obvious to a well-balanced mind. In the same way he to
GOD AND
whom God has revealed his reality can raise doubts about this reality without REASON
any harm. They are purely verbal doubts, a form of exercise to keep his intel-
ligence in good health.11

Enter the nonrational approach to God, the approach of religious experience

in its various and sundry forms.
It is important to review an earlier point: the distinction between nonra-
tional and irrational. That which is irrational is in some way contrary to or
incompatible with reason. Certainly this is not intended by those who press
for a nonrational approach to God. On the contrary, they intend a knowl-
edge of God that is other than rational, and, indeed, they usually mean a
knowledge that is higher than, or superior to, what is knowable through
ordinary reason or experience.

Natural Theology

Nonrational approach Rational approach Rational versus

nonrational
Forms of religious interpretations
experience of religion

These nonrational experiences are familiar in most religious traditions as

well as in the lives of many of our friends and family. Think of the biblical
stories of Moses and the burning bush or Paul blinded on the road to
Damascus. Perhaps less well known are the traditions of mysticism that
run through Christianity, Judaism, and other religious traditions, particu-
larly in monastic orders. Not to mention the central role played by nonra-
tional experiences in Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism.
Closer to home, do you know anyone who claims to have been touched by
God or heard the voice of God? Haven’t we all heard of individuals who
experience a light or tunnel or some other contact beyond this world dur-
ing a near-death experience?
While a careful analysis of such experiences would take a separate course
(or a lifetime!), the question for us is this: Is religious experience evidence
for the existence of God? The answer, clearly, is both Yes and No. Obviously,
it is evidence for the one who has enjoyed such an experience. And, for such The directness of
an individual it is an evidence for the existence of God that, far and away, religious experience:
surpasses any other evidence: “Seeing is believing.” And such individuals a plus
have “seen” more directly and personally than they possibly could by means
of any abstract argument. In fact, even if all the rational evidence were
against the existence of God, the person who has had a religious experience

11
Simone Weil, Waiting for God, tr. Emma Craufurd (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), p. 212.
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298
THE QUESTION
OF GOD RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: PERSONAL AND PRIVATE
The personalness of religious experience renders it decisive for the participant.
But the privacy of religious experience renders it sterile as an objective and
investigable evidence for God. Or does it?

would hardly be swayed. The immediacy and personalness of his or her

religious experience would no doubt be decisive.
The privacy of But, of course, this is exactly the problem. The individual or private
religious experience: nature of such experiences is, some skeptics would say, just what makes
a minus them philosophically irrelevant. All the outsider has is the claim of those
who have had such experiences. From what standpoint can one possibly
compare the claim with reality? Are not such claims, by their nature, insu-
lated against any objective investigation or verification? In some sense this
is surely true, but maybe not entirely so. C. D. Broad, a contemporary phi-
losopher who is as hard-nosed as they come, has argued that there may be,
in fact, some considerations that could tip the scales in favor of the integrity
of, say, mystical experience:

When there is a nucleus of agreement between the experiences of men in different

places, times, and traditions, and when they all tend to put much the same kind of
interpretation on the cognitive content of these experiences, it is reasonable to ascribe
this agreement to their all being in contact with a certain objective aspect of reality
unless there be some positive reason to think otherwise. The practical postulate which
we go upon everywhere else is to treat cognitive claims as veridical unless there
be some positive reason to think them delusive. This, after all, is our only guarantee
for believing that ordinary sense-perception is veridical. We cannot prove that what
people agree in perceiving really exists independently of them; but we do always
assume that ordinary waking sense-perception is veridical unless we can produce
some positive ground for thinking that it is delusive in any given case. I think it would
be inconsistent to treat the experiences of religious mystics on different principles. So
far as they agree they should be provisionally accepted as veridical unless there be
some positive ground for thinking that they are not. So the next question is whether
there is any positive ground for holding that they are delusive.12

Notice Broad’s important proviso: “. . . unless there be some positive

ground for thinking that they are not.” Certainly many have argued that
such grounds may, indeed, be cited. It is sometimes charged, for example,
that such experiences may be explained (away) as manifestations of phys-
iological problems, sexual hang-ups, psychological abnormalities, and the
like. In a very lively passage in his The Varieties of Religious Experience (first

12
C. D. Broad, Religion, Philosophy, and Psychical Research (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.,
1953), p. 197.
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published in 1902), William James takes on precisely this accusation and, 299
in turn, accuses it of simple-mindedly confusing the “facts of mental his- GOD AND
tory” with “their spiritual significance.” That is, what is important is not REASON
how person X got that way, but whether what he or she says is worthy,
true, and so on. He asks, furthermore, why any other state of mind—for
example, that of the skeptic or the atheist—should be exempt from the same
trivializing explanation: What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
Pay close attention to his indictment of “medical materialism”:

Perhaps the commonest expression of this assumption that spiritual value is undone
if lowly origin be asserted is seen in those comments which unsentimental people
so often pass on their more sentimental acquaintances. Alfred believes in immor-
tality so strongly because his temperament is so emotional. Fanny’s extraordinary
conscientiousness is merely a matter of overinstigated nerves. William’s melan-
choly about the universe is due to bad digestion—probably his liver is torpid.
Eliza’s delight in her church is a symptom of her hysterical constitution. Peter would
be less troubled about his soul if he would take more exercise in the open air,
etc. A more fully developed example of the same kind of reasoning is the fashion,
quite common nowadays among certain writers, of criticizing the religious emo-
tions of showing a connection between them and the sexual life. Conversion is a
crisis of puberty and adolescence. The macerations of saints, and the devotion
of missionaries, are only instances of the parental instinct of self-sacrifice gone
astray. For the hysterical nun, starving for natural life, Christ is but an imaginary
substitute for a more earthly object of affection. And the like.
We are surely all familiar in a general way with this method of discrediting
states of mind for which we have an antipathy. We all use it to some degree
in criticizing persons whose states of mind we regard as overstrained. But when
other people criticize our own more exalted soul-flights by calling them “nothing
but” expressions of our organic disposition, we feel outraged and hurt, for we
know that, whatever be our organism’s peculiarities, our mental states have their
substantive value as revelations of the living truth; and we wish that all this medi-
cal materialism could be made to hold its tongue.
Medical materialism seems indeed a good appellation for the two simple-minded
systems of thought which we are considering. Medical materialism finishes up Saint
Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the
occipital cortex, he being an epileptic. It snuffs out Saint Teresa as an hysteric,
Saint Francis of Assisi as an hereditary degenerate, George Fox’s discontent with
the shams of his age, and his pining for spiritual veracity, it treats as a symptom
of a disordered colon. Carlyle’s organ-tones of misery it accounts for by a gastro-
duodenal catarrh. All such mental overtensions, it says, are, when you come to the
bottom of the matter, mere affairs of diathesis (auto-intoxications most probably),
due to the perverted action of various glands which physiology will yet discover.
And medical materialism then thinks that the spiritual authority of all such
personages is successfully undermined.
Let us ourselves look at the matter in the largest possible way. Modern psy-
chology, finding definite psycho-physical connections to hold good, assumes as
a convenient hypothesis that the dependence of mental states upon bodily condi-
tions must be thoroughgoing and complete. If we adopt the assumption, then of
course what medical materialism insists on must be true in a general way, if not
in every detail: Saint Paul certainly had once an epileptoid, if not an epileptic
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300 William James’ Varieties of Religious

Experience is a classic of religious philosophy,
THE QUESTION and the chapters dealing with mysticism are
OF GOD perhaps the most frequently consulted
discussions of the subject.

seizure; George Fox was an hereditary degenerate; Carlyle was undoubtedly

auto-intoxicated by some organ or other, no matter which—and the rest. But now,
I ask you, how can such an existential account of facts of mental history decide
in one way or another upon their spiritual significance? According to the general
postulate of psychology just referred to, there is not a single one of our states
of mind, high or low, healthy or morbid, that has not some organic process as
its condition. Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as reli-
gious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should
doubtless see “the liver” determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively
as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul. When
it alters in one way the blood that percolates it, we get the Methodist, when in
another way, we get the atheist form of mind. So of all our raptures and our
drynesses, our longings and pantings, our questions and beliefs. They are equally
organically founded, be they religious or of non-religious content.
To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation
of its claim to possess superior spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary, unless
one has already worked out in advance some psycho-physical theory connecting
spiritual values in general with determinate sorts of physiological change. Otherwise
none of our thoughts and feelings, not even our scientific doctrines, not even our
dis-beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for every one of them
without exception flows from the state of its possessor’s body at the time. . . .
In the natural sciences and industrial arts it never occurs to anyone to try to
refute opinions by showing up their author’s neurotic constitution. Opinions here
are invariably tested by logic and by experiment, no matter what may be their
author’s neurological type. It should be no otherwise with religious opinions. Their
value can only be ascertained by spiritual judgments directly passed upon them,
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301
GOD AND
“MEDICAL MATERIALISM” REASON

A term that William James contemptuously applies to the attempts to undermine

the religious and spiritual significance of religious experiences by attributing them
to disorders of a psychological or even physiological nature.

judgments based on our own immediate feeling primarily; and secondarily on

what we can ascertain of their experiential relations to our moral needs and to
the rest of what we hold as true.
Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness, and moral
helpfulness are the only available criteria. Saint Teresa might have had the ner-
vous system of the placidest cow, and it would not now save her theology, if the
trial of the theology by these other tests should show it to be contemptible. And
conversely if her theology can stand these other tests, it will make no difference
how hysterical or nervously off her balance Saint Teresa may have been when
she was with us here below.13

Surely James is right about the epistemological irrelevance of medical

materialism’s criticism of religious claims. On the other hand, that does not
make those claims true. As he himself insists in the last two paragraphs
above, those claims, like others, must satisfy some tests before they are
accepted: They must be philosophically reasonable, and they must cohere
with and advance the rest of our moral and intellectual life. And here is
James’ more positive contribution to the discussion. James was a major con-
tributor to Pragmatism, a philosophy that stressed practicality, workability, The pragmatic value
usefulness, and consequences or results as the criteria of true beliefs. And of religion
he did, in fact, believe that the claims advanced by the world’s great reli-
gious or theological personalities satisfy the test—at least when reduced to
their common, universal essence. Following his indictment of medical mate-
rialism, the main part of the Varieties of Religious Experience is an extended
consideration of the relevance and worthiness of various religious claims
and perspectives, and at the end, he states clearly his positive assessment.
In the following brief extract from his Postscript, James sets himself squarely
against the prevailing “current” and votes in favor of a religious reality (by
“piecemeal supernaturalism” James means a conception of the supernatural
that envisions it as actually intruding into and affecting our world).

. . . the current of thought in academic circles runs against me, and I feel like
a man who must set his back against an open door quickly if he does not wish
to see it closed and locked. In spite of its being so shocking to the reigning intel-
lectual tastes, I believe that a candid consideration of piecemeal supernaturalism
and a complete discussion of all its metaphysical bearings will show it to be the

13
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.,
1902), pp. 10–18.
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302 hypothesis by which the largest number of legitimate requirements are met. That of
course would be a program for other books than this; what I now say sufficiently
THE QUESTION
OF GOD indicates to the philosophic reader the place where I belong.
If asked just where the differences in fact which are due to God’s existence
come in, I should have to say that in general I have no hypothesis to offer beyond
what the phenomenon of “prayerful communion,” especially when certain kinds of
incursion from the subconscious region take part in it, immediately suggests. The
appearance is that in this phenomenon something ideal, which in one sense is part
of ourselves and in another sense is not ourselves, actually exerts an influence, raises
our centre of personal energy, and produces regenerative effects unattainable in
other ways. If, then, there be a wider world of being than that of our every-day
consciousness, if in it there be forces whose effects on us are intermittent, if one
facilitating condition of the effects be the openness of the “subliminal” door, we have
the elements of a theory to which the phenomena of religious life lend plausibility. I
am so impressed by the importance of these phenomena that I adopt the hypothesis
which they so naturally suggest. At these places at least, I say, it would seem as
though transmundane energies, God, if you will, produced immediate effects within
the natural world to which the rest of our experience belongs.14

14
Ibid., pp. 523–524.

IS RELIGION AN ILLUSION?
One of the most famous attacks on religion was that of Sigmund Freud, who explained
it away as the result of various psychological needs and complexes. But it is often
observed that his attack involved a gigantic informal fallacy. What was it?

. . . we turn our attention to the psychical origin of religious ideas. These, which
are given out as teachings, are not precipitates of experience or end-results
of thinking: they are illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest and most
urgent wishes of mankind. The secret of their strength lies in the strength of
those wishes. As we already know, the terrifying impression of helplessness
in childhood aroused the need for protection—for protection through love—
which was provided by the father; and the recognition that this helplessness
lasts throughout life made it necessary to cling to the existence of a father,
but this time a more powerful one. Thus the benevolent rule of a divine Prov-
idence allays our fear of the dangers of life; the establishment of a moral
world-order ensures the fulfillment of the demands of justice, which have so
often remained unfulfilled in human civilization; and the prolongation of earthly
existence in a future life provides the local and temporal framework in which
these wish-fulfillments shall take place. Answers to the riddles that tempt the
curiosity of man, such as how the universe began or what the relation is
between body and mind, are developed in conformity with the underlying
assumptions of this system.*

*Sigmund Freud. The Future of an Illusion, tr. W. D. Robson-Scott, rev. and ed. James
Strachey (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1964), pp. 47–48.
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James aside, many are drawn at least to a more general conclusion: It is 303
true that the world is full of kooks, liars, and deluded persons, and surely GOD AND
this should put us on guard against accepting, willy-nilly, every claim to REASON
direct experience with God. On the other hand, isn’t it a bit nervy to scoff
at such claims when they are made by some of the finest, most articulate,
and most positively influential people the world has ever known?

CHAPTER 12 IN REVIEW
SUMMARY
In this chapter we have considered two further arguments for the existence
of God:

• The Ontological Argument

• The Moral Argument

It is important to appreciate that whereas the other arguments began with

the world, these attempt to demonstrate the existence of God through
something given in the reason alone.
The Ontological Argument is an excellent example of completely a
priori reasoning. Nowhere is there any reference to sense experience or
the physical world. Rather, it attempts to show from a consideration of
the idea of God (or most perfect being, unlimited being, etc.) that such a
being, by virtue of being the greatest, must actually exist. Can such a being
lack the attribute or perfection of existence any more than it can lack the
attribute or perfection of omniscience, omnipotence, love, or justice? Or,
as Descartes asks, can the existence of God (that he is) be separated from
his essence (what he is) any more than a mountain can be separated from
a valley?
But it is just with such talk of existence as an attribute or predicate that
the Ontological Argument runs afoul of the most important objection. Kant
observed that existence does not, in fact, actually add anything to the con-
tent of any concept; that is, existence is not a real predicate of anything,
including the greatest thing. On the other hand, some, such as the contem-
porary philosopher Malcolm, have conceived a version of this proof that
sidesteps the complaint that existence is not a predicate, and have formu-
lated an Ontological Argument on the ground that necessary existence is a
predicate, and that necessary existence is part of what “greatest being”
must mean. Discussion of the Ontological Argument has raged for centuries
and still rages. There is surely a lesson in this for those who think that this
argument for God involves some simple-minded mistake.
The Moral Argument shifts our attention to our idea of moral law or, to
say it differently, to our moral consciousness. If you believe in an objective
and absolute morality, then how do you explain or justify it apart from an
objective and absolute lawgiver? It is important to distinguish between
believing in moral law and knowing what it is. The Moral Argument
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304 requires only the former. The relativity of moral opinions might not, there-
THE QUESTION
fore, be relevant here: I may be hopelessly confused about the content of
OF GOD the moral law but still be constrained to believe in it.
But, of course, that is the problem. Why should one believe in the first place
in an objective and absolute morality? Some would answer, among other
things, that the alternative—namely, ethical relativism or subjectivism—turns
out on reflection to be philosophically indefensible (Is it not possible to be
morally mistaken?) and certainly impossible to put into practice (Can one live
apart from the practice of ideals and values?).
Knowledge of God by way of religious experience is, in contrast to the
rational and argumentative approach, nonrational or suprarational. And this
means, for the proponent of religious experience, a directness and person-
alness about this knowledge.
Although the participant in religious experience will have no interest in
skeptical attacks on its validity (“He who sees, sees, and he who does not
see, does not see”), the directness and personalness (or subjectivity) of the
experience are exactly what make for great difficulties in treating it as an
evidence for God.

BASIC IDEAS
• The Ontological Argument
St. Anselm’s version (two forms)
Descartes’ version
• Existence as a predicate
• Kant’s rejection of existence as a predicate
• Malcolm: necessary existence as a predicate
• The Consistency Principle
• The Moral Argument
• Distinction between moral conscience and moral consciousness (moral
laws and the moral law)
• Moral objectivism (absolutism)/moral subjectivism (relativism)
• Subjectivism: reasons for and against
• The nonrational approach to God
• Religious experience as evidence for God: pro and con
• “Medical materialism”
• The pragmatic value of religion

TEST YOURSELF
1. Who said it? “I don’t have any justification [for distinguishing between
good and bad] any more than I have when I distinguish between blue
and yellow.”
2. Norman Malcolm (a) defended the Moral Argument against Bertrand Rus-
sell, (b) believed that necessary existence is a predicate of God, (c) was a
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scholar of Renaissance and medieval literature, (d) argued that morality 305
is purely relative. GOD AND
3. Who extolled “the starry heavens above me and the moral law within REASON

me”?
4. True or false: “A vast herd of giraffes is at the moment roaming through
the White House” is a logically consistent claim.
5. What, exactly, is the difference between moral laws and the moral law?
6. How does Hastings Rashdall figure in the discussion in this chapter?
7. Knowledge of God based on moral consciousness is (a) an instance
of special revelation, (b) propounded by Bertrand Russell, (c) a priori,
(d) refuted by Kant.
8. True or false: St. Anselm’s and Descartes’ versions of the Ontological
Argument construe existence as a predicate or attribute of God.
9. What is the problem with religious experience as evidence for the reality
of god?

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• Whether or not you accept the Ontological Argument, it is important to
understand it. Specifically, can you reproduce with understanding Mal-
colm’s version? Bearing in mind that Malcolm is not a fool, can you find
any flaws in it?
• Do you see the distinction between believing in morality and knowing
what it consists in? Do you think that how many people affirm a certain
value or ideal is relevant? Who do you think was the victor in the
Copleston-Russell debate on the Moral Argument? Why?
• In the last two chapters we have seen that while Kant rejected the a
posteriori arguments, he himself formulated a version of the Moral Argu-
ment. Can you explain the epistemological basis of this? Do you recall
from Chapter 10 Kant’s distinction between the noumenal and phenom-
enal worlds? the limitations of the theoretical reason and the possibilities
of the practical reason? What is the application here?
• What is your own honest evaluation of the claims of religious experi-
ence? Do the subjectivity and privacy of such experiences render them
irrelevant as evidence for an unseen reality? Can you think of any con-
sideration pro or con not mentioned in the text?

FOR FURTHER READING

Frederick Copleston. A History of Philosophy. Baltimore: Newman Press,
1946–1974. II, Ch. 15, and IV, Ch. 3. Accounts of St. Anselm’s and
Descartes’ Ontological Proofs for the existence of God by a recognized
historian of philosophy.
Brian Davies. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2003. Chs. 4, 7, and 10. Nontechnical, brief, but suggestive
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306 accounts of the Ontological Argument, religious experience, and the rela-
THE QUESTION
tion of morality and religion.
OF GOD Charles Hartshorne. Anselm’s Discovery. LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1962. A
reexamination of St. Anselm’s Ontological Argument, by a contemporary
and influential advocate of a form of this argument.
J. L. Mackie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of
God. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982. Chs. 3, 6, and 10. Readable though
sometimes heavy discussions of the Ontological and Moral Arguments
and religious experience, concluding with their rejection.
Ed. L. Miller. God and Reason: An Invitation to Philosophical Theory. Second
ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1995. Chs. 2, 5, and 6. Introduc-
tory discussions of the Ontological and Moral Arguments, representing
points pro and con, as well as the role of religious experience.
H. P. Owen. The Moral Arguments for Christian Theism. London: George Allen
& Unwin, 1965. An attempt to show that theism is reasonable if not
demonstrable in light of morality, with special reference to the Christian
tradition.
Alvin Plantinga. God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of
Belief in God. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967. Chs. 2–3. A crit-
ical and sometimes technical discussion of the Ontological Argument,
including Malcolm’s version.
Alvin Plantinga (ed.). The Ontological Argument: From St. Anselm to Contem-
porary Philosophers. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965. A compendium of
relevant statements on the Ontological Argument pro and con, with a
brief but very useful introduction by Richard Taylor.
Richard Swinburne. The Existence of God. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.
Ch. 13. An excellent discussion of religious experience (five types) in
terms of contemporary issues, concluding that it possesses “considerable
evidential force.”
*In addition, see the relevant articles (“Ontological Argument for the Exis-
tence of God,” “Moral Arguments for the Existence of God,” “Anselm,
St.,” “Ethical Relativism,” etc.) in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed.
Edward Craig (London: Routledge, 1998), and Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu.
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C H A P T E R 13

GOD AND EVIL

O
ne might easily imagine that just as the theists are able to line
up their evidence for the existence of God, say the traditional
arguments, the atheists likewise are able to marshal a long list
of arguments against the existence of God. But this is not quite the case. If
you stop and reflect, you will probably agree that you have seldom heard
anyone really propound an argument against the existence of God. What
you probably have heard are many arguments against the arguments for
the existence of God. That is, the atheist, unable to present any positive
disproof of God’s existence, is usually content, or forced, to find flaws in
the theist’s position. There is, of course, one notable exception to this: the
argument against the existence of God on the basis of the evil in the world. But Evil: the most
this alone has wrought plenty of havoc for the theist. notorious evidence
against God

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

What is meant by “evil”? Two things. First, we have natural evil, or the evil Two kinds of evil
that results from natural causes. This is otherwise known as the evil of suf-
fering. Starvation, cancerous pain, physical deformity, disease—these and
innumerable other sources of undeserved anguish are, rightfully, called evils
in our world. Second, we have moral evil, the evil that results from personal
depravity. Torture, murder, war, cheating, exploitation—these too, though
very different from natural evils, are certainly evils. Either one or both of
these types of evil figure in the “problem of evil.”
307
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308
THE QUESTION
OF GOD NATURAL EVIL AND MORAL EVIL
• Natural evil: The evil or suffering that springs from natural causes. Think of
Hurricane Katrina, AIDS, the great San Francisco earthquake, the sinking of
the Titanic, and so on.
• Moral evil: The evil that springs from the human will. Think of the Nazi death
camps, genocide in Rwanda, tortured prisoners of war, and the like.

But what is the problem? The problem is how to reconcile the evil in
the world with a God who is at once omnipotent (all-powerful) and
Theodicy omnibenevolent (all-loving). The problem is also called theodicy, which
means, literally, “the justification of God.” The idea here is, How can God,
in the traditional sense of the word, be justified or vindicated in the face
of all, or even any, of the evil in the world?
Hardly a more powerful statement of the problem may be found than
in the outburst of the English philosopher John Stuart Mill, for whom the
impossibility of reconciling God and evil played an important role in his
rejection of Christianity:

Not even on the most distorted and contracted theory of good which ever was
framed by religious or philosophical fanaticism, can the government of Nature be
made to resemble the work of a being at once good and omnipotent.1

A more extended statement may be cited from Hume’s Dialogues Con-

cerning Natural Religion, from which we have already noted the attack on
God’s causal ordering of the world. Note how both natural and moral evil
figure in his “catalogue of woes.”

The whole earth, believe me, Philo, is cursed and polluted. A perpetual war is kin-
dled amongst all living creatures. Necessity, hunger, want stimulate the strong and
courageous; fear, anxiety, terror agitate the weak and infirm. The first entrance

1
John Stuart Mill, Three Essays on Religion (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1874), p. 38.

THEODICY
From two Greek words meaning, literally, “the justification of God,” theodicy is the
attempt to reconcile the traditional view of God with the evil in the world. How
can God be vindicated in the face of evil?
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into life gives anguish to the new-born infant and to its wretched parent; weak- 309
ness, impotence, distress attend each stage of that life, and it is, at last finished
GOD AND EVIL
in agony and horror.
Observe, too, says Philo, the curious artifices of nature in order to embitter the
life of every living being. The stronger prey upon the weaker and keep them in
perpetual terror and anxiety. The weaker, too, in their turn, often prey upon the
stronger, and vex and molest them without relaxation. Consider that innumerable
race of insects, which either are bred on the body of each animal or, flying about,
infix their stings in him. These insects have others still less than themselves which
torment them. And thus on each hand, before and behind, above and below,
every animal is surrounded with enemies which incessantly seek his misery and
destruction.
Man alone, said Demea, seems to be, in part, an exception to this rule. For
by combination in society he can easily master lions, tigers, and bears, whose
greater strength and agility naturally enable them to prey upon him.
On the contrary, it is here chiefly, cried Philo, that the uniform and equal
maxims of nature are most apparent. Man, it is true, can, by combination, sur-
mount all his real enemies, and become master of the whole animal creation;
but does he not immediately raise up to himself imaginary enemies, the demons
of his fancy, who haunt him with superstitious terrors and blast every enjoyment
of life? His pleasure, as he imagines, becomes in their eyes a crime; his food
and repose give them umbrage and offence; his very sleep and dreams furnish
new materials to anxious fear; and even death, his refuge from every other ill,
presents only the dread of endless and unnumberable woes. Nor does the wolf
molest more the timid flock than superstition does the anxious breast of wretched
mortals.
Besides, consider, Demea: This very society by which we surmount those wild
beasts, our natural enemies, what new enemies does it not raise to us? What woe
and misery does it not occasion? Man is the greatest enemy of man. Oppres-
sion, injustice, contempt, contumely, violence, sedition, war, calumny, treachery,
fraud—by these they mutually torment each other, and they would soon dissolve
that society which they had formed were it not for the dread of still greater ills
which must attend their separation.
But though these external insults, said Demea, from animals, from men, from
all the elements, which assault us form a frightful catalogue of woes, they are
nothing in comparison of those which arise within ourselves, from the distempered
condition of our mind and body. How many lie under the lingering torment of
diseases? Hear the pathetic enumeration of the great poet.
Intestine stone and ulcer, colic-pangs,
Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,
Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence.
Dire was the tossing, deep the groans: Despair
Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch.
And over them triumphant Death his dart
Shook: but delay’d to strike, though oft invok’d
With vows, as their chief good and final hope.
The disorders of the mind, continued Demea, though more secret, are not
perhaps less dismal and vexatious. Remorse, shame, anguish, rage, disappoint-
ment, anxiety, fear, dejection, despair—who has ever passed through life without
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310
THE QUESTION
OF GOD THE SIMPLEST STATEMENT
OF THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
“Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not
willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?”
—Hume

cruel inroads from these tormentors? How many have scarcely ever felt any better
sensations? Labour and poverty, so abhorred by everyone, are the certain lot of
the far greater number; and those few privileged persons who enjoy ease and
opulence never reach contentment or true felicity. All the goods of life united would
not make a very happy man, but all the ills united would make a wretch indeed;
and any one of them almost (and who can be free from every one?), nay, often
the absence of one good (and who can possess all?) is sufficient to render life
ineligible.
Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would show him, as a
specimen of its ills, an hospital full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefac-
tors and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcases, a fleet floundering in
the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny, famine, or pestilence. To turn the
gay side of life to him and give him a notion of its pleasures—whither should I
conduct him? To a ball, to an opera, to court? He might justly think that I was
only showing him a diversity of distress and sorrow.
There is no evading such striking instances, said Philo, but by apologies which
still further aggravate the charge. Why have all men, I ask, in all ages, com-
plained incessantly of the miseries of life? . . .
And is it possible, Cleanthes, said Philo, that after all these reflections, and infi-
nitely more which might be suggested, you can still persevere in your anthropomor-
phism, and assert the moral attributes of the Deity, his justice, benevolence, mercy,
and rectitude, to be of the same nature with these virtues in human creatures? His
power, we allow, is infinite; whatever he wills is executed; but neither man nor any
other animal is happy; therefore, he does not will their happiness. His wisdom is
infinite; he is never mistaken in choosing the means to any end; but the course of
nature tends not to human or animal felicity; therefore, it is not established for that
purpose. Through the whole compass of human knowledge there are no inferences
more certain and infallible than these. In what respect, then, do his benevolence
and mercy resemble the benevolence and mercy of men?
Epicurus’ old questions are yet unanswered.
Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not
willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?2

Pay special attention to the concluding lines of the above quotation.

These questions embody the best-known and simplest expression of the

2
David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Henry D. Aiken (New York: Hafner,
1948), pp. 62–64.
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problem of evil. Note also that it isn’t simply some evil but the specific evils 311
and the amount of evil that must be explained to address the problem. GOD AND EVIL

SOME SOLUTIONS
The believer who seriously confronts this dilemma might appreciate the say-
ing “There are many ways to skin a cat, but whatever way you choose, don’t
expect the cat to cooperate.” That is, the problem is indeed a difficult one, and
the believer should be cautioned against any glibness or overconfidence. There
are no easy answers. Still, the bottom line is this: It is clear to most theists that
neither God’s omnipotence nor his omnibenevolence can be given up.
Or can they? Mill himself resorted to just this “radical surgery”: Let us
simply deny, flat out, that God is omnipotent. Mill states this rather star- God is limited
tling thesis in his Three Essays on Religion (1874):

It is not too much to say that every indication of Design in the Kosmos is so
much evidence against the Omnipotence of the Designer. For what is meant by
Design? Contrivance: the adaptation of means to an end. But the necessity for
contrivance—the need of employing means—is a consequence of the limitation
of power. Who would have recourse to means if to attain his end his mere word
was sufficient? The very idea of means implies that the means have an efficacy
which the direct action of the being who employs them has not. Otherwise they
are not means, but an incumbrance. A man does not use machinery to move his
arms. If he did, it could only be when paralysis had deprived him of the power of
moving them by volition. But if the employment of contrivance is in itself a sign of
limited power, how much more so is the careful and skilful choice of contrivances?
Can any wisdom be shown in the selection of means, when the means have no
efficacy but what is given them by the will of him who employs them, and when
his will could have bestowed the same efficacy on any other means? Wisdom
and contrivance are shown in overcoming difficulties, and there is no room for
them in a Being for whom no difficulties exist. The evidences, therefore, of Natural
Theology distinctly imply that the author of the Kosmos worked under limitations;
that he was obliged to adapt himself to conditions independent of his will, and
to attain his ends by such arrangements as those conditions admitted of.
And this hypothesis agrees with what we have seen to be the tendency of the
evidences in another respect. We found that the appearances in Nature point
indeed to an origin of the Kosmos, or order in Nature, and indicate that origin
to be Design but do not point to any commencement, still less creation, of the two
great active elements of the Universe, the passive element and the active element,
Matter and Force. There is in Nature no reason whatever to suppose that either
Matter or Force, or any of their properties, were made by the Being who was
the author of the collocations by which the world is adapted to what we consider
as its purposes; or that he has power to alter any of those properties. It is only
when we consent to entertain this negative supposition that there arises a need
for wisdom and contrivance in the order of the universe. The Deity had on this
hypothesis to work out his ends by combining materials of a given nature and
properties. Out of these materials he had to construct a world in which his designs
should be carried into effect through given properties of Matter and Force, work-
ing together and fitting into one another. This did require skill and contrivance,
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312 and the means by which it is effected are often such as justly excite our wonder
and admiration: but exactly because it requires wisdom, it implies limitation of
THE QUESTION
OF GOD power, or rather the two phrases express different sides of the same fact.3

The believer will find this thesis considerably more than “startling.” Mill’s
statement involves an interesting piece of reasoning and is well worth
digesting. But, some would say, the idea of a limited or finite God is as
absurd as that of a malevolent or evil God. There must be another way.
We are stuck, then, with these two claims:

1. There is an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God.

2. There is evil.

That these two propositions seem to be incompatible is clear. But the first
question to be asked is whether the incompatibility here is a logical
incompatibility—that is to say, a logical contradiction. If the two proposi-
tions are logically incompatible, well, that is the end of the matter—one of
them must be false. And since we can hardly deny the existence of evil, we
must deny the existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God. But
are they logically incompatible? It would seem not. However difficult it
may be to reconcile the two propositions, there is nothing in the concept of
an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God that logically excludes there being
evil in the world. If so, it is at least possible for both propositions to be true,
and the traditional believer’s job is to show how.
One of the most popular proposals is to involve the transcendence and
God’s ways inscrutability of God: God lies so far above us that it is impossible to under-
are inscrutable stand his ways and purposes, and presumptuous even to try. Was this not
God’s own answer to the suffering Job?

Then the LORD answered Job

out of the whirlwind:
“Who is this that darkens counsel
by words without
knowledge?
Gird up your loins like a man,
I will question you, and you
shall declare to me.

“Where were you when I laid the

foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have
understanding.
Who determined its
measurements—surely you
know!

3
John Stuart Mill, Three Essays on Religion, pp. 176–178.
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Or who stretched the line upon 313

it? GOD AND EVIL
On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone
when the morning stars sang
together
and all the heavenly beings
shouted for joy?
“Or who shut in the sea with
doors
when it burst out from the
womb?—
when I made the clouds its
garment,
and thick darkness its swaddling
band,
and prescribed bounds for it,
and set bars and doors,
and said, ‘Thus far shall you
come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves
be stopped’?”
Job 38:1–11 (New Revised Standard Version)

And what does he say in Isaiah?

For my thoughts are not your

thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways,
says the LORD.

For as the heavens are higher than

the earth,
so are my ways higher than
your ways
and my thoughts than your
thoughts.
Isaiah 55:8–9 (NRSV)

But though this may be an appropriate and satisfying approach from a

religious standpoint, from a philosophical standpoint it is a retreat, and issues
a carte blanche for ignorance and uncritical reflection on the most urgent of
issues.
Some other attempted resolutions may be mentioned. Closely related to
the last is the emphasis on the goodness of the whole: If everything could The goodness
be viewed from the divine standpoint, then it would immediately be appre- of the whole
ciated how everything, even evil, actually contributes to the unity, harmony,
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314
THE QUESTION
OF GOD SOME SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
• God is not omnipotent after all.
• God’s plan for the world is inscrutable.
• All things, including evil, actually contribute to the goodness of the whole.
• A perfect world is a logical impossibility.
• Evil is a necessary by-product of nature.

beauty, and, in a word, goodness of things considered as a totality. A quite

different angle was proposed by Leibniz, who taught that it would in fact
A perfect world is be logically impossible to have a world without evil: Anything created by
logically impossible God would have to be less than God just by virtue of being dependent on
him, and this means immediately that it must be less than perfect, and this
means immediately the presence of various sorts of imperfections. How
could God create something that was perfect, and therefore independent,
and therefore uncreated? It is logically impossible. Similar is the view of
Tennant. In an earlier chapter we saw that he emphasized the presence of
order in the world. But even Tennant saw that unfortunate and unhappy
Evils as necessary things are inevitable by-products of nature. It is impossible (logically impos-
by-products sible?) to have a physical cosmos, with its multiplicity, change, and natural
of nature processes, and not also have mishaps, accidents, disease, famines, and the
like.
Some of these solutions to the problem of evil may strike you as more
relevant than others, but each of them deserves, at least, to be understood
and weighed. Two further views, however, must be considered somewhat
more carefully: the privation theory of evil and the therapy theory of
evil.

EVIL AS A PRIVATION OF GOODNESS

The first of these has a long tradition, but is most notably associated with
the medieval Christian philosopher and theologian St. Augustine (354–430).
It is our natural tendency to think of evil as some kind of thing, a “stuff,”
a substance, or a blob. However, Augustine and many others have argued,
Evil is not a “thing” exactly counter to this grain, that evil is no thing at all. It is, rather, the
absence or privation of something—namely, of being and goodness. And
this is true both of natural evil and of moral evil. It is true that when God
created the world and the human race he said, “It is good.” But he did not
mean—could not mean—that they were absolutely good or good in the same
way that God is. How could they be? For then they would not be created
things, but God himself.
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St. Augustine was a Christian Platonist, though as a Christian he cer- 315

tainly disagreed with much of Plato’s philosophy. But he did hold broadly GOD AND EVIL
to the Platonic idea that the world is necessarily a mixture, as it were, of
being and nonbeing: It is becoming. And one of the hallmarks of the rela-
tive nonbeing in the world is its multiplicity and change—the absence of
full being along with its unity and unchangeableness. But this multiplicity
and change give rise to natural processes, and these in turn give rise to
famines, disease, plagues, and the like, and these in turn give rise to suf-
fering, which St. Augustine believed is visited on human beings as a just
punishment for their sins. But, then, what about sin? Moral evil, or sin,
likewise may be traced to an absence of goodness. It results when some-
thing goes wrong with the will; when it breaks down; when it falls short;
when it fails to will the good; when it is derailed and turns aside from the
good; when it is corrupted. As disease is the absence of health in the body,
so sin is the absence of health in the will.
The basic idea here may not be easy to get hold of, but if you think about
it enough it might come to you in a sort of intuitive flash. Perhaps Augus-
tine’s own statements will help. The general principle of evil as a privation
of goodness is explained in the following extract from The Enchiridion on
Faith, Hope, and Love:

What Is Called Evil in the Universe Is But the Absence of Good

. . . in the universe, even that which is called evil, when it is regulated and put
in its own place, only enhances our admiration of the good; for we enjoy and
value the good more when we compare it with the evil. For the Almighty God,
who, as even the heathen acknowledge, has supreme power over all things,
being Himself supremely good, would never permit the existence of anything evil
among His works, if He were not so omnipotent and good that He can bring good
even out of evil. For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good?
In the bodies of animals, disease and wounds mean nothing but the absence of
health; for when a cure is effected, that does not mean that the evils which were
present—namely, the diseases and wounds—go away from the body and dwell
elsewhere: they altogether cease to exist; for the wound or disease is not a sub-
stance, but a defect in the fleshly substance—the flesh itself being a substance,
and therefore something good, of which those evils—that is, privations of the good
which we call health—are accidents. Just in the same way, what are called vices
in the soul are nothing but privations of natural good. And when they are cured,
they are not transferred elsewhere: when they cease to exist in the healthy soul,
they cannot exist anywhere else.

All Beings Were Made Good, But Not Being Made Perfectly
Good, Are Liable to Corruption
All things that exist, therefore, seeing that the Creator of them all is supremely
good, are themselves good. But because they are not, like their Creator, supremely
and unchangeably good, their good may be diminished and increased. But for
good to be diminished is an evil, although, however much it may be diminished,
it is necessary, if the being is to continue, that some good should remain to
constitute the being. For however small or of whatever kind the being may be,
the good which makes it a being cannot be destroyed without destroying the
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316
THE QUESTION
OF GOD EVIL AS A PRIVATION OF GOODNESS
One of the most enduring solutions to the problem of evil is to interpret evil, both
natural and moral, not as a positive substance but as the absence of being and
goodness. The world and human souls are seen as created by the highest being
(who is goodness) “from above,” but at the same time as corruptible by nonbe-
ing (or evil) “from below.” God is, thus, responsible for the isness and goodness
in the world, not the nonbeing and evil.

being itself. An uncorrupted nature is justly held in esteem. But if, still further,
it be incorruptible, it is undoubtedly considered of still higher value. When it
is corrupted, however, its corruption is an evil, because it is deprived of some
sort of good. For if it be deprived of no good, it receives no injury; but it does
receive injury, therefore it is deprived of good. Therefore, so long as a being is
in process of corruption, there is in it some good of which it is being deprived;
and if a part of the being should remain which cannot be corrupted, this will
certainly be an incorruptible being, and accordingly the process of corruption
will result in the manifestation of this great good. But if it does not cease to be
corrupted, neither can it cease to possess good of which corruption may deprive
it. But if it should be thoroughly and completely consumed by corruption, there will
then be no good left, because there will be no being. Wherefore corruption
can consume the good only by consuming the being. Every being, therefore, is
a good; a great good, if it cannot be corrupted; a little good, if it can; but in
any case, only the foolish or ignorant will deny that it is a good. And if it be
wholly consumed by corruption, then the corruption itself must cease to exist, as
there is no being left in which it can dwell.4

The principle is further explained and applied specifically to sin in the fol-
lowing from On Free Choice of the Will:

Because the will is moved when it turns from an immutable good to a changeable
one, you may perhaps ask how this movement arises. For the movement itself is
certainly evil, although the free will must be numbered among the goods, because
without it no one can live rightly. Even if this movement, that is, the turning of
the will from the Lord God, is without doubt a sin, we cannot say, can we, that
God is the cause of sin? This movement will not be from God, but what then is
its origin? If I should answer your question by saying that I do not know, you
would perhaps be disappointed; yet that would be the truth, for that which is
nothing cannot be known. Only hold to your faith, since no good thing comes
to your perception, understanding, or thought which is not from God. Nothing of
any kind can be discovered which is not from God. Wherever you see measure,
number, and order, you cannot hesitate to attribute all these to God, their Maker.
When you remove measure, number, and order, nothing at all remains. Even if the

4
St. Augustine, The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love, tr. J. F. Shaw, ed. Henry Paolucci
(Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1961), pp. 12–13.
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317
GOD AND EVIL
ST. AUGUSTINE

T
he main writers of the early centuries of the Christian church are called
the Church Fathers. The last and greatest of these was St. Augustine.
He was born in a Roman province on the north coast of Africa in 354.
His father was a pagan, and his mother, who wielded a great deal of influence
over him, was a Christian: St. Monica. He did not particularly excel at his early
studies, though eventually he became expert in rhetoric when he moved as a
student in 370 to Carthage. The loose morals of the city, however, undermined
the Christian morals of this impressionable young man, and he gradually fell
away from Christianity. He took a mistress, by whom he had a son during his
second year in Carthage.
(continued on next page)
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318
During this time, Augustine rejected not only Christian morals but also Christian
THE QUESTION
OF GOD doctrines. He was especially troubled by the failure of Christianity to explain how
a good God could be responsible for a world with so much evil in it. He turned
to the materialistic ideas of Manichaeism, the doctrine that the world is dominated
by two eternal and opposed principles, good and evil, light and darkness. In 383
Augustine traveled to Rome, where he opened his own school of rhetoric, but he
had so much trouble getting his students to pay their tuition that he moved to
Milan. This was decisive for Augustine. His commitment to Manichaeism was by
this time wavering anyway, and his discovery of certain “Platonic writings” (prob-
ably the writings of the Neoplatonist Plotinus, who lived about A.D. 200) introduced
him to an altogether different and superior idea of things: a spiritual and tran-
scendent conception of God, and the view that evil is a privation of goodness.
This discovery, along with the influence of the sermons of St. Ambrose, bishop
of Milan, and Augustine’s own study of the New Testament, set the stage for his
conversion to Christianity in the summer of 386. On Holy Saturday, 387, he was
baptized by St. Ambrose, and in the autumn of 388 he departed for Africa.
Back in Africa, Augustine was ordained as a priest by the bishop of Hippo, a
seaport city about 150 miles west of Carthage, and he himself became bishop
of that city in 396. During this period his literary output continued and included
three of the most important theological and philosophical works ever written: the
Confessions (the world’s first autobiography), the City of God (the first philosophy
of history), and On the Trinity. At the same time, he was combating the heresies
of Manichaeism, Donatism (which claimed to be the only true church), and Pela-
gianism (which overemphasized the role of free will in man’s salvation), and devel-
oping further his own philosophy of Christian Platonism. Augustine died on August
28, 430, as the Vandals laid siege to Hippo, and as he was reciting the Peniten-
tial Psalms.
In addition to being one of the world’s greatest philosophers and theologians,
Augustine was one of the world’s great authors. Besides the Confessions, the City
of God, and On the Trinity, he wrote innumerable commentaries on biblical books
and a prodigious number of works on various topics and against various heresies.

beginning of some form were to remain, where you do not find order or measure
or number (since wherever these exist, form is complete), you must remove even
that very beginning of form which seems to be the artisan’s raw material. If the
completion of form is a good, there is some good even in the rudimentary begin-
ning of form. Thus, if all good is completely removed, no vestige of reality persists;
indeed, nothing remains. Every good is from God. There is nothing of any kind
that is not from God. Therefore, since the movement of turning away from good,
which we admit to be sin, is a defective movement and since, moreover, every
defect comes from nothing, see where this movement belongs: you may be sure
that it does not belong to God.
Yet since this defect is voluntary, it lies within our power. You must not be will-
ing to fear this defect, for if you do not desire it, it will not exist. What greater
security can there be than to live a life where what you do not will cannot hap-
pen to you? Since a man cannot rise of his own will as he fell by his own will,
let us hold with firm faith the right hand of God, Jesus Christ our Lord, which is
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stretched out to us. Let us wait for Him with steadfast hope; let us love Him with 319
burning love.5
GOD AND EVIL

Is it clear? While God, who is the highest being, is the cause of all
lesser being, he is not, nor can he be, the cause of the relative nonbeing
in the world, for nonbeing is nothing at all. The advocate of the evil-is-
a-privation-of-goodness position might therefore exclaim: “Rather than
blame God for the relative nonbeing present in the world, and least of
all for the wickedness that people themselves freely introduce, praise him
for the relative beauty, harmony, goodness, and being in the world which
he has introduced!”
One very big caution is in order. In view of this talk about evil as a
privation or absence of goodness, you may be tempted to think that the
reality of evil is simply being denied. But that would be to miss an impor-
tant point. Who in his or her right mind would care to deny the reality of
evil? What is involved here is a question not about the reality of evil, but,
rather, about the nature of evil. And though St. Augustine denied that evil Evil: not a
is a substance and called it the absence of goodness, few have been more substance, but real
sensitive to its awful reality. nonetheless

THE FREE-WILL DEFENSE

You may have a nagging feeling that at least the moral evil in the world is
not God’s fault but rather is due to the free choices and acts of human
beings. And you might suspect that moral evil is just the price that has to
be paid if there is to be any genuine moral responsibility and human good-
ness in the world. All of this suggests, in fact, an important angle to the
problem of God and evil, and raises at the same time a host of difficult
questions:

• Why did God endow humans with free will, knowing they would abuse
it?
• Is free will a condition for real humanhood?
• Does God’s foreknowledge of what we will do mean that what we do
is actually predetermined?
• Could God have made us free and unable to sin?

Some of these issues you will have to ponder or discuss on your own.
Others, however, will have to be considered, along with that “important
angle” mentioned above.
Note Augustine’s reference, in the last passage quoted above, to the “vol-
untary” defection of human beings from the good. He is very emphatic on

5
St. Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will, tr. Anna S. Benjamin and L. H. Hackstaff (Indianapolis:
Library of Liberal Arts, 1964), pp. 83–84.
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320 the necessity of free will as a condition of morality and as the source of
THE QUESTION
moral evil in the world. In another place in the same work he says explic-
OF GOD itly that “no righteous act could be performed except by free choice of the
will, and I asserted that God gave it for this reason.”6 Actually, Augustine
Free will as a means that God gave Adam and Eve free will. Adam and Eve misused (note
condition for again the negative tone) their free will, and sin thus made its entry into the
morality world. Everyone after Adam and Eve has inherited the effects of the Fall,
and this includes a loss of free will and a consequent “bondage of the will.”
Nonetheless, at least in the case of the first human beings, Adam and Eve,
free will was a condition of authentic humanhood, though it also meant
the possibility of sin. Leaving aside the difficult question of Adam and
Eve’s fall and its consequences for their descendants, this view is essentially
what is nowadays called the Free-Will Defense.
The contemporary American philosopher Alvin Plantinga summarizes
the idea:

. . . among good states of affairs there are some that not even God can bring
about without bringing about evil: those goods, namely, that entail or include
evil states of affairs. The Free Will Defense can be looked upon as an effort to
show that there may be a very different kind of good that God can’t bring about
without permitting evil. There are good states of affairs that don’t include evil;
they do not entail the existence of any evil whatever; nonetheless God Himself
can’t bring them about without permitting evil.
So how does the Free Will Defense work? And what does the Free Will
Defender mean when he says that people are or may be free? What is relevant
to the Free Will Defense is the idea of being free with respect to an action. If a
person is free with respect to a given action, then he is free to perform that action
and free to refrain from performing it; not antecedent conditions and/or causal
laws determine that he will perform the action, or that he won’t. It is within his
power, at the time in question, to take or perform the action and within his power
to refrain from it. Freedom so conceived is not to be confused with unpredictability.
You might be able to predict what you will do in a given situation even if you
are free, in that situation, to do something else. If I know you well, I may be able
to predict what action you will take in response to a certain set of conditions;
it does not follow that you are not free with respect to that action. Secondly, I
shall say that an action is morally significant, for a given person, if it would be
wrong for him to perform the action but right to refrain or vice versa. Keeping
a promise, for example, would ordinarily be morally significant for a person, as
would refusing induction into the army. On the other hand, having Cheerios for
breakfast (instead of Wheaties) would not normally be morally significant. Further,
suppose we say that a person is significantly free, on a given occasion, if he is
then free with respect to a morally significant action. And finally we must distin-
guish between moral evil and natural evil. The former is evil that results from free
human activity; natural evil is any other kind of evil.
Given these definitions and distinctions, we can make a preliminary statement
of the Free Will Defense as follows. A world containing creatures who are sig-
nificantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable,

6
Ibid., p. 78.
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all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God 321
can create free creatures, but He can’t cause or determine them to do only what
GOD AND EVIL
is right. For if He does so, then they aren’t significantly free after all; they do not
do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He
must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can’t give these creatures
the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so.
As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the free creatures God created went
wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil. The fact
that free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against God’s
omnipotence nor against His goodness; for He could have forestalled the occur-
rence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good.7

To this, however, an objection is frequently heard: But is there a real

contradiction in the idea that God might have so constituted his creatures
that they always choose the right? This is the point made by the late British
philosopher J. L. Mackie:

If God has made men such that in their free choices they sometimes prefer what
is good and sometimes what is evil, why could he not have made men such that
they always freely choose the good? If there is no logical impossibility in a man’s
freely choosing the good on one, or on several occasions, there cannot be a
logical impossibility in his freely choosing the good on every occasion. God was
not, then, faced with a choice between making innocent automata and making
beings who, in acting freely, would sometimes go wrong: there was open to him
the obviously better possibility of making beings who would act freely but always
go right. Clearly, his failure to avail himself of this possibility is inconsistent with
his being both omnipotent and wholly good.8

Now, many who are “incompatibilists” (people who believe that genu-
ine free will is logically incompatible with determinism) have an immedi-
ate intuition that there is something wrong with the idea that God can so

7
Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1977).
8
J. L. Mackie, “Evil and Omnipotence,” in The Philosophy of Religion, ed. Basil Mitchell (London:
Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 92.

THE FREE-WILL DEFENSE

By means of the Free-Will Defense, many thinkers, ancient and modern, have
undertaken to defend God from the charge that he is responsible for moral evil:
In order for human beings to be truly capable of moral goodness, they must also
be capable of moral evil; but this means that with respect to good and evil they
must have genuine free choice; but this means the real possibility (or inevitability?)
of the introduction of moral evil into the scheme of things.
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322
THE QUESTION
OF GOD WHAT EVEN GOD CANNOT DO
“Nothing which implies contradiction falls under the omnipotence of God.”
—St. Thomas

constitute us that we always freely choose to do good. It is true that there

is no logical contradiction in the proposition

1. All people always freely choose to do good.

But there is a contradiction in the proposition

2. God so constitutes all people that they always freely choose to do good.

because that entails 1, plus the proposition

3. No one can do otherwise than choose to do good.

which is incompatible with 1.

Similarly, Plantinga himself asks us to consider the Mackie-type claim

that God can bring about a world in which everyone freely chooses to do
good. Is this really a coherent idea? Virtually everyone has accepted that
even an omnipotent Being must be bound by the laws of reason—it is a
mark of God’s perfect nature and unlimited power that he is prevented from
creating irrational things like four-sided triangles and dogs that don’t bark
while they’re barking—in fact, these latter “things” can’t be things at all,
right? Now, Plantinga asks, how can God bring about a world in which all
people freely choose to do good, a world that must, at least in part, be
brought about by someone else—namely, those people he creates to freely
bring it about?! It is, even for God, an impossible state of affairs. Thus the
debate can become very sticky, and even more so if we take seriously God’s
omniscience. If God knows everything and stands outside of time, then does
God know what I will “freely” choose to do tomorrow? If he does, then do
I really have free will? Suffice it to say that free will is not as simple as it
first appears.

EVIL AS THERAPY
Alongside the theory of evil as a privation of goodness we may mention
another very important theory: evil as therapy. To call evil “therapeutic”
may strike you as being not only a bit odd but also silly or trivializing. But
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you must bear in mind that “therapy” involves more than aches, pains, 323
exercise, and massages. It means, literally, healing: a healing power applied GOD AND EVIL
to physical and psychological disabilities and disorders. Thus, to press the
therapeutic character of evil as a way of solving the problem of evil is to
argue that evil is the instrument by which God has determined to correct,
purify, and instruct his creatures—in a word, to bring them to spiritual health Evil: a means
and maturity. of growth
This view, too, is both a very old and a very modern one. One of its most
ardent advocates is the contemporary philosopher of religion John Hick. In
his important book Evil and the God of Love, Hick enlists an early example
of this approach in the ancient Christian writer Irenaeus9 (130?–202?),
bishop of Lyons. Irenaeus emphasized the development that goes on in
human beings, as well as the whole human race, and the methods God has
chosen to bring this development about. The experience of evil is a neces-
sary part of this “soul-making” activity of God. From Irenaeus’ Against
Heresies:

Man has received the knowledge of good and evil. It is good to obey God, and
to believe in Him, and to keep His commandment, and this is the life of man;
as not to obey God is evil, and this is his death. Since God, therefore, gave [to
man] such mental power man knew both the good of obedience and the evil
of disobedience, that the eye of the mind, receiving experience of both, may
with judgment make choice of the better things; and that he may never become
indolent or neglectful of God’s command; and learning by experience that it is
an evil thing which deprives him of life, that is, disobedience to God, may never
attempt it at all, but that, knowing that what preserves his life, namely, obedi-
ence to God, is good, he may diligently keep it with all earnestness. Wherefore
he has also had a twofold experience, possessing knowledge of both kinds, that
with discipline he may make choice of the better things. But how, if he had no
knowledge of the contrary, could he have had instruction in that which is good?
For there is thus a surer and an undoubted comprehension of matters submitted
to us than the mere surmise arising from an opinion regarding them. For just
as the tongue receives experience of sweet and bitter by means of tasting, and
the eye discriminates between black and white by means of vision, and the ear
recognizes the distinctions of sound by hearing; so also does the mind, receiving
through the experience of both the knowledge of what is good, become more
tenacious of its preservation, by acting in obedience to God; in the first place,
casting away, by means of repentance, disobedience, as being something dis-
agreeable and nauseous; and afterwards coming to understand what it really is,
that it is contrary to goodness and sweetness, so that the mind may never even
attempt to taste disobedience to God. But if any one do shun the knowledge of
both these kinds of things, and the twofold perception of knowledge, he unaware
divests himself of the character of a human being.
. . . If, then, thou are God’s workmanship, await the hand of thy Maker which
creates everything in due time; in due time as far as thou art concerned, whose
creation is being carried out. Offer to Him thy heart in a soft and tractable state,
and preserve the form in which the Creator has fashioned thee, having moisture

9
Pronounced eye-ray-neé-us.
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324 John Hick, an advocate of a contemporary

Irenaean theodicy
THE QUESTION
OF GOD

in thyself, lest, by becoming hardened, thou lose the impressions of His fingers.
But by preserving the framework thou shalt ascend to that which is perfect, for
the moist clay which is in thee is hidden [there] by the workmanship of God.
. . . If, then, thou shalt deliver up to Him what is thine, that is, faith towards
Him and subjection, thou shalt receive his handiwork, and shalt be a perfect
work of God.10

Hick provides a useful summary of the differences between the Irenaean

and Augustinian theodicies, and stresses (he calls it a “significant fact”) the
antiquity of the Irenaean.

There is thus to be found in Irenaeus the outline of an approach to the problem

of evil which stands in important respects in contrast to the Augustinian type of
theodicy. Instead of the doctrine that man was created finitely perfect and then
incomprehensibly destroyed his own perfection and plunged into sin and misery,
Irenaeus suggests that man was created as an imperfect, immature creature who
was to undergo moral development and growth and finally be brought to the
perfection intended for him by his Maker. Instead of the fall of Adam being pre-
sented, as in the Augustinian tradition, as an utterly malignant and catastrophic
event, completely disrupting God’s plan, Irenaeus pictures it as something that
occurred in the childhood of the race, an understandable lapse due to weak-
ness and immaturity rather than an adult crime full of malice and pregnant with

10
Irenaeus, Against Heresies, IV, 39, 1–2, tr. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, in The
Ante-Nicene Fathers, I (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979).
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perpetual guilt. And instead of the Augustinian view of life’s trials as a divine 325
punishment for Adam’s sin, Irenaeus sees our world of mingled good and evil as
GOD AND EVIL
a divinely appointed environment for man’s development towards the perfection
that represents the fulfillment of God’s good purpose for him.
Irenaeus was the first great Christian theologian to think at all systematically
along these lines, and although he was far from working out a comprehensive
theodicy his hints are sufficiently explicit to justify his name being associated with
the approach that we are studying in this part. It is true that Irenaeus’ name does
not belong to this type of theodicy as clearly and indisputably as Augustine’s name
belongs to the predominant theodicy of Western Christendom; it is also true that
within Irenaeus’ own writings there are cross-currents and alternative suggestions
that I have left aside here. Nevertheless, to speak of the Irenaean type of theodicy
is both to name a tradition by its first great representative and at the same time
to indicate the significant fact that this mode of responding to the problem of evil
originated in the earliest and most ecumenical phase of Christian thought.11

It is not hard to see how natural evil, with its sufferings and hardships,
may contribute to the development of a mature and virtuous soul, but what
about moral evil? And how do the innocent victims of murder and torture
fit into the picture? We are back to the Free-Will Defense. At this point Hick Back to the
adopts the same sort of reasoning as Augustine: Free will is a condition of Free-Will Defense
humanhood, and sin enters the world through human free will. And he
provides his own response to the Mackie-type view that God could have
so made humans that they would freely but always choose the right. Hick’s
position is that while there may be no contradiction in God so making his
creatures that they always act freely but rightly, there is a contradiction in
God so constituting his creatures that they freely respond to him in a lov-
ing, trusting, and faithful relationship. Why? Because such a relationship is
two-sided, and if the freely proffered love, trust, or faith of the one party is,
as it were, programmed by the other party, then for that party it could not
possibly be a relationship of love, trust, or faith, at least not authentic love,
trust, or faith, to use Hick’s word. Free will and independence from the Cre-
ator are, in this way, marks of genuine humanity. But, of course, this makes
for the possibility of disobedience, and that means sin.
Hick’s argument for this version of the Free-Will Defense is especially
effective because of his analogy involving posthypnotic suggestion.

Is it logically possible for God so to make men that they will freely respond to
Himself in love and trust and faith?
I believe that the answer is no. The grounds for this answer may be presented
by means of an analogy with posthypnotic suggestion, which Flew uses in this
connection. A patient can, under hypnosis, be given a series of instructions, which
he is to carry out after waking—say, to go at a certain time to a certain library
and borrow a certain book—and he may at the same time be told that he will
forget having received these instructions. On coming out of the hypnotic trance he

11
John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, rev. ed. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978),
pp. 214–215.
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326 will then be obediently unaware of what transpired in it, but will nevertheless at
the prescribed time feel an imperious desire to go to the library and borrow the
THE QUESTION
OF GOD book, a desire that the ordinary resources of the educated intellect will find no
difficulty in rationalizing. The patient will thus carry out the hypnotist’s commands
whilst seeming both to himself and to others to be doing so of his own free will
and for his own sufficient reasons. In terms of the definition of a free act as one
that is not externally compelled but flows from the character of the agent, the
actions of one carrying out post-hypnotic suggestions are free actions and the
patient is a free agent in his performance of them. Nevertheless, taking account
of the wider situation, including the previous hypnotic trance, we must say the
patient is not free as far as these particular actions are concerned in relation to
the hypnotist. In relation to the hypnotist he is a kind of puppet or tool. And if
the hypnotist’s suggestion had been that the patient would agree with him about
some controversial matter or, coming closer to an analogy with our relationship
with God, trust the hypnotist, or love him, or devotedly serve him, there would
be something inauthentic about the resulting trust, love, or service. They would
be inauthentic in the sense that to the hypnotist, who knows that he has himself
directly planted these personal attitudes by his professional techniques, there would
be an all-important difference between the good opinion and trust and friendship
of the patient and that of someone else whose mind has not been conditioned
by hypnotic suggestion. He would regard and value the two attitudes in quite
different ways. His patient’s post-hypnotic friendship and trust would represent a
purely technical achievement, whereas the friendship and trust of the other would
represent a response to his own personal qualities and merits. The difference
would be that between genuine and spurious personal attitudes—genuine and
spurious, not in respect of their present observed and felt characters but in respect
of the ways in which they have come about. For it is of the essential nature of
“fiduciary” personal attitudes such as trust, respect, and affection to arise in a
free being as an uncompelled response to the personal qualities of others. If trust,
love, admiration, respect, affection, are produced by some kind of psychological
manipulation which by-passes the conscious responsible centre of the personality,
then they are not real trust and love, etc., but something else of an entirely differ-
ent nature and quality which does not have at all the same value in the contexts
of personal life and personal relationship. The authentic fiduciary attitudes are
thus such that it is impossible—logically impossible—for them to be produced by
miraculous manipulation: “it is logically impossible for God to obtain your love-
unforced-by-anything-outside-you and yet himself force it.”. . .
. . . It would not be logically possible for God so to make men that they could
be guaranteed freely to respond to Himself in genuine trust and love. The nature
of these personal attitudes precludes their being caused in such a way. Just as
the patient’s trust in, and devotion to, the hypnotist would lack for the latter the
value of a freely given trust and devotion, so our human worship and obedience
to God would lack for Him the value of a freely offered worship and obedience.
We should, in relation to God, be mere puppets, precluded from entering into
any truly personal relationship with Him.12

Thus Hick, renewing the therapy thinking of Irenaeus and pressing a

new version of the Free-Will Defense, argues that this mortal existence, with

12
Ibid., pp. 308–310.
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its authentic freedoms and its disciplining and healing and maturing envi- 327
ronment, is “a vale of soul-making.” Some readers will of course respond GOD AND EVIL
with an incredulous outburst: “How naive can you be? This is obviously
not a vale of soul-making but a vale of soul-breaking! Are we supposed to Soul-making
believe, to take just one example, that the Nazi death camps were divinely or soul-breaking?
appointed means of spiritual progress?” And if it is answered that some-
how the position holds true at least for the race as a whole, the second
response will immediately be: “Small consolation for those individuals
whose innocent lives were snuffed out in the gas chambers.” Naturally,
Hick’s actual view is much richer than what we have been able to recount
here, and naive it certainly is not. Nonetheless, the point is well taken. And
it leads to the next section.

EVIL IS IRRATIONAL
We have now mentioned several attempts to reconcile evil with God. In
spite of their differences, they all have in common at least a faith in the
ability of reason to unravel to some degree the mystery of evil. They all
say, in one way or another: “If only we think hard about the matter—draw
the right distinctions, introduce the relevant concepts, and so on—we are
able to see that the problem of good and evil is not as desperate as we
thought.” Not all are so optimistic. In fact, some abandon all hope of
explaining evil and see it, rather, as the supreme evidence of the ultimate
irrationality of human existence.
We are, of course, now in the presence of a radically different philo-
sophical perspective. It is not only an atheistic one but also, in some sense,
a nihilistic one. “Nihilism” means, literally, “nothingism” (from the Latin Nihilism
nihil, “nothing”). As a label, nihilism usually refers specifically to values
and ideals and is the denial that they have any objective reality. It is under-
standable how, for such a perspective, evil is the most vivid expression of
our finally hopeless situation.
If we take nihilism to mean the utter and absolute rejection of all value
and meaning, then there have not been very many nihilists. And, if there
ever was one, he or she should have just sat down and died. For even
the barest pursuit of one’s life is an affirmation of some value and mean-
ing, isn’t it? But with some philosophers the irrationalist or absurdist
position takes a truly interesting turn. First, these philosophers are athe-
ists or humanists. Humanism, as one could guess from the word, is the
exaltation of humanity itself as the ultimate reality. Second, for these
thinkers the problem of evil becomes one of reconciling evil not with God
(there is no God) but, rather, with man—not theodicy, but, if you will,
anthropodicy.
One way in which this may be done is suggested in certain strains of
atheistic or humanistic existentialism. We will have more to say about exis-
tentialism in Chapter 14. For now, we just say that existentialism, which
was renewed by the horrors of the world wars, generally rejects most
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328
THE QUESTION
OF GOD NIHILISM
The rejection of values as having any objective validity. Life is ultimately mean-
ingless.

philosophizing as abstract and irrelevant, and emphasizes the concrete

business of living authentically. The late French writer Albert Camus is a
good example:

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental
question of philosophy. All the rest—whether or not the world has three dimen-
sions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories—come afterwards. These
are games. . . . I have never seen anyone die for the ontological argument. . . .
the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.13

But what about evil, specifically? Camus, the atheist, says that we must
The defiance of evil recognize it in all its horror and irrationality, but we must not accept it.
Human dignity lies precisely in our struggle against evil, in living in con-
stant revolt against its reign. This comes out well in Camus’ novel The
Plague. In this novel the plague itself may be understood on several levels.
But on the most basic level it represents evil, and at least one of the char-
acters in the novel expresses vividly the absence of God and the necessity
of defiance as the only meaningful response to evil.

“. . . since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn’t it be better for
God if we refuse to believe in Him and struggle with all our might against death,
without raising our eyes toward heaven where He sits in silence.”
Tarrou nodded.
“Yes. But your victories will never be lasting; that’s all.”
Rieux’s face darkened.
“Yes, I know that. But it’s no reason for giving up the struggle.”
“No reason, I agree. Only, I now can picture what this plague must mean for
you.”
“Yes. A never ending defeat.”
. . .
“Who taught you all this, doctor?”
The reply came promptly:
“Suffering.”14

13
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, tr. Justin O’Brien (New York: Vintage
Books, 1955), pp. 3–4.
14
Albert Camus, The Plague, tr. Stuart Gilbert (New York: Modern Library, 1948),
pp. 117–118.
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And in his The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, Camus juxtaposes the 329
two most extreme possible responses to the human condition: suicide, GOD AND EVIL
which is “giving in,” and conscious revolt. It is already clear which path
Camus urges us to follow.

Now I can broach the notion of suicide. It has already been felt what solution
might be given. At this point the problem is reversed. It was previously a ques-
tion of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It
now becomes clear, on the contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has
no meaning. Living an experience, a particular fate, is accepting it fully. Now,
no one will live this fate, knowing it to be absurd, unless he does everything to
keep before him that absurd brought to light by consciousness. Negating one of
the terms of the opposition on which he lives amounts to escaping it. To abolish
conscious revolt is to elude the problem. The theme of permanent revolution is
thus carried into individual experience. Living is keeping the absurd alive. Keep-
ing it alive is, above all, contemplating it. Unlike Eurydice, the absurd dies only
when we turn away from it. One of the only coherent philosophical positions is
thus revolt. It is a constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity. It
is an insistence upon an impossible transparency. It challenges the world anew
every second. Just as danger provided man the unique opportunity of seizing
awareness, so metaphysical revolt extends awareness to the whole of experi-
ence. It is that constant presence of man in his own eyes. It is not aspiration,
for it is devoid of hope. That revolt is the certainty of a crushing fate, without
the resignation that ought to accompany it.
This is where it is seen to what a degree absurd experience is remote from
suicide. It may be thought that suicide follows revolt—but wrongly. For it does
not represent the logical outcome of revolt. It is just the contrary by the consent
it presupposes. Suicide, like the leap, is acceptance at its extreme. Everything is
over and man returns to his essential history. His future, his unique and dread-
ful future—he sees and rushes toward it. In its way, suicide settles the absurd. It
engulfs the absurd in the same death. But I know that in order to keep alive, the
absurd cannot be settled. It escapes suicide to the extent that it is simultaneously
awareness and rejection of death. It is, at the extreme limit of the condemned
man’s last thought, that shoelace that despite everything he sees a few yards
away, on the very brink of his dizzying fall. The contrary of suicide, in fact, is
the man condemned to death.
That revolt gives life its value. Spread out over the whole length of a life, it
restores its majesty to that life. To a man devoid of blinders, there is no finer sight
than that of the intelligence at grips with a reality that transcends it. The sight of
human pride is unequaled. No disparagement is of any use. That discipline that
the mind imposes on itself, that will conjured up out of nothing, that face-to-face
struggle have something exceptional about them. To impoverish that reality whose
inhumanity constitutes man’s majesty is tantamount to impoverishing him himself.
I understand then why the doctrines that explain everything to me also debilitate
me at the same time. They relieve me of the weight of my own life, and yet I
must carry it alone. At this juncture, I cannot conceive that a skeptical metaphysics
can be joined to an ethics of renunciation.
Consciousness and revolt, these rejections are the contrary of renunciation.
Everything that is indomitable and passionate in a human heart quickens them, on
the contrary, with its own life. It is essential to die unreconciled and not of one’s
own free will. Suicide is a repudiation. The absurd man can only drain everything
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330 Through novels, plays, and essays, Albert Camus

addressed the futility of the human situation.
THE QUESTION
OF GOD

to the bitter end, and deplete himself. The absurd is his extreme tension, which
he maintains constantly by solitary effort, for he knows that in that consciousness
and in that day-to-day revolt he gives proof of his only truth, which is defiance.
This is a first consequence.15

Such a stance is not without problems. Our discussion of the denial

of moral law in Chapter 12 is relevant here, and our discussion in Chap-
Can there be real ter 14 will also be to the point. For the moment, we may reiterate: Any
values in an philosophy that rejects the objective reality of values will surely have a
irrational universe? hard time when it turns right around and argues passionately for certain
values. In the case of Camus, it might be asked: In a universe devoid of
real values, what is it that justifies and gives value to the life of revolt?
Why is the revolt itself a value? Of course Camus might just as easily
respond, “There you go again with your academic questions! Don’t you
understand that in a world such as this it is not reasoning but acting that
is called for?”
Be that as it may. With the emphasis on evil as the supreme evidence for
the ultimate irrationality of the world, we appear to have come full circle:
God may be dead, but the Devil is very much alive! And now the theist
might attack:

15
Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 39–41.
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331
GOD AND EVIL
THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS
“The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top
of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had
thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile
and hopeless labor.
“. . . Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is, as much through his passions as
through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion
for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted
toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for the pas-
sions of this earth. Nothing is told us about Sisyphus in the underworld. Myths
are made for the imagination to breathe life into them. As for this myth, one sees
merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it and
push it up a slope a hundred times over; one sees the face screwed up, the
cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the
foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security
of two earth-clotted hands. At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless
space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches
the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will
have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain.
“It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that
toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down
with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never
know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his
suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when
he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is
superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.
“If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would
his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?
The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this
fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes
conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious,
knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of dur-
ing his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time
crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
“If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take
place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning
toward his rock, and the sorrow was in the beginning. When the images of
earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too
insistent, it happens that melancholy rises in man’s heart: this is the rock’s
(continued on next page)

THEIST: You atheists are always attacking us theists on the ground that
we cannot show how evil in the world can be reconciled with an all-
powerful, and all-loving God. You call it “the problem of evil.”
ATHEIST: Right!
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332
THE QUESTION
victory, this is the rock itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These
OF GOD are our nights of Gethsemane. But crushing truths perish from being acknowl-
edged. Thus, Oedipus at the outset obeys fate without knowing it. But from
the moment he knows, his tragedy begins. Yet at the same moment, blind and
desperate, he realizes that the only bond linking him to the world is the cool
hand of a girl. Then a tremendous remark rings out: “Despite so many ordeals,
my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is
well.” Sophocles’ Oedipus, like Dostoevsky’s Kirilov, thus gives the recipe for
the absurd victory. Ancient wisdom confirms modern heroism.
“One does not discover the absurd without being tempted to write a man-
ual of happiness. “What! by such narrow ways—?” There is but one world,
however. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are
inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs
from the absurd discovery. It happens as well that the feeling of the absurd
springs from happiness. “I conclude that all is well,” says Oedipus, and the
remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches
that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who
had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile sufferings. It
makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.
“All Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock
is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment,
silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad
wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret call, invitations
form all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. There is
no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man
says yes and his effort will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate,
there is no higher destiny, or at least there is but one which he concludes is
inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of
his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life,
Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that
series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate, created by him, combined
under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the
wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows
that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.
“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden
again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises
rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a mas-
ter seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral
flake of that nightfilled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward
the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus.

THEIST: But don’t you have a similar problem? Why is it any more dif-
ficult to have evil with God than to have goodness without him? On your
atheistic view, how can you account for all the goodwill, generosity, and
self-sacrifice in the world? Call it “the problem of goodness.”
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ATHEIST: But all those good things come from human beings! 333
THEIST: Well, I doubt it. But even so, I will insist just as emphatically GOD AND EVIL
that sin also comes from humans.
ATHEIST: But if your God is all-powerful, he could have prevented men
from sinning.
THEIST: I invoke the Free-Will Defense.
ATHEIST: Oh. But what about natural evil? Your Free-Will Defense will
not explain that.
THEIST: You’re right. But I have all sorts of other ideas about it—I’ll tell
you about them sometime. In the meantime, what’s your explanation for
natural evil? Isn’t it as big a problem for you as for me? Give a little and
take a little!

CHAPTER 13 IN REVIEW
SUMMARY
The presence in the world of evil, both natural and moral, is surely the
biggest stumbling block to belief in an all-powerful and all-loving
God.
Many attempts have been made on the theistic side to overcome this
difficulty. We have considered several of them, but especially two. One of
the most enduring is the view of evil as a privation, or absence, of good.
Associated most notably with St. Augustine, this view emphasizes that
God is responsible for the creation of things, not no-things. But evil is a
no-thing; it is the absence of being and goodness. It cannot therefore be
attributed to God. Natural evil has its origin in the (necessary) relative non-
being of the natural world, and moral evil has its root in the relative
nonbeing of the will. The denial that evil is a substance should not be
confused with the denial that evil is real. Very different, but also enduring,
is the therapeutic view of evil. Here the emphasis is primarily on natural
evil, which is seen to be conducive to the development and strengthening
of individuals and the race. Thus John Hick calls this mortal existence “a
vale of soul-making.”
Both of these positions make use, in their own ways, of the Free-Will
Defense, which has figured prominently in recent philosophical discus-
sions: If individuals are to be genuinely capable of doing what is right, they
must also be capable of doing what is wrong. That is, human free will is a
logically necessary limitation of God’s power if moral creatures are to
exist.
In contrast to those theists who attempt to reconcile evil with God,
there are those atheists who simply, as it were, abandon the world to
evil. God is dead, and the world is ultimately irrational. Camus provides
one possible stance: We can at least recover something of human dignity
by defying the irrational forces that will, finally “do us in.” But theists
want to know why this belief in the world as ultimately irrational is,
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334 philosophically, any less distasteful and problematic than their own belief
THE QUESTION
in God.
OF GOD

BASIC IDEAS
• Natural evil and moral evil
• The problem of evil
• Theodicy
• Hume’s statement of the problem
• Some standard solutions
A limited God
An inscrutable God
The goodness of the whole
The logical impossibility of a perfect world
Evil as the necessary by-product of nature
• Evil as a privation of goodness
• The Free-Will Defense: for and against
• Evil as therapy
• Soul-making versus soul-breaking
• Evil as irrational
• Nihilism
• Anthropodicy
• The dignity of defiance

TEST YOURSELF
1. True or false: Alvin Plantinga believes that God could make a world in
which everyone would always freely choose the good.
2. Why, according to some philosophers, is a perfect world logically
impossible?
3. Mill solved the problem of evil simply by denying that God is_____.
4. Who is the source of the following? “. . . so long as a being is in process
of corruption, there is in it some good of which it is being deprived.”
5. Albert Camus taught that in the face of evil one ought to (a) commit
suicide, (b) revolt, (c) resign oneself, (d) philosophize about it.
6. How did the ancient Christian writer Irenaeus figure in the discussion
in this chapter?
7. St. Augustine’s theory of evil as the absence of goodness is based on
______ ’s metaphysics.
8. What has Camus’ novel The Plague to do with the problem of evil?
9. What would St. Augustine reply to the charge that his denial of evil as
a substance renders evil unreal?
10. True or false: John Hick advocates both the therapy theory of evil and
the Free-Will Defense.
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QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION 335

• Do you think that the standard solutions to the problem of evil tend to GOD AND EVIL
trivialize the problem, or do any of them have real merit?
• Can you explain how St. Augustine’s position on evil has its roots in a
particular metaphysical view? By contrast, how would you characterize
the metaphysical perspective that underlies Camus’ position?
• Is it possible that what one feels about the problem of evil depends
largely on one’s prior beliefs on the existence of God? Isn’t it likely
that a theist will find a solution to the problem? Isn’t it likely that an
atheist will see it as disproving God’s existence? What side of the
fence are you on concerning the question of God’s existence, and
what difference does it make in your own view of the problem of
evil?
• The Free-Will Defense always figures strongly in discussions about the
problem of evil. Can you argue the Free-Will Defense back and forth?
What do you make of this maneuver?

FOR FURTHER READING

John Cruickshank. Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1959. A lucid treatment of Camus’ idea of revolt in
relation to his life, politics, and literature, and prefaced by a summarized
and highly instructive “tribute” to Camus.
Brian Davies. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1982. Ch. 3. A brief, student-oriented chapter, raising
relevant issues and concluding that evil is not a decisive evidence against
God.
Austin Farrer. Love Almighty and Ills Unlimited. New York: Doubleday, 1961.
A treatment of evil along specifically Augustinian lines, by a well-known
philosopher.
Antony Flew. Hume’s Philosophy of Belief: A Study of His First Inquiry. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961. Ch. 9. A thorough discussion of Hume’s
critical position on “the religious hypothesis.”
Etienne Gilson. The Christian Philosophy of St. Augustine. Tr. L. E. M. Lynch.
New York: Random House, 1960. Part II, sec. 3, and passim. A brief but
helpful elucidation of Augustine’s privation theory of evil, by a renowned
medieval scholar.
Walter Kaufmann. The Faith of a Heretic. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959. A
lively rejection of the attempt to resolve the problem of evil from a biblical
standpoint.
C. S. Lewis. The Problem of Pain. New York: Macmillan, 1962. A lucid and
popular treatment of the problem of suffering (including animal suffer-
ing) by a foremost Christian apologist.
J. L. Mackie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of
God. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982. Ch. 9. Hefty discussions of standard
and continuing issues pertaining to the problem of evil (survey of
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336 solutions, Free-Will Defense, divine omnipotence, etc.), with generally

THE QUESTION
negative conclusions.
OF GOD Ed. L. Miller. God and Reason: An Invitation to Philosophical Theology. Engle-
wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1995. Ch. 8. A discussion, for beginners,
of the problem of evil, with special reference to the Augustinian position.
Michael Peterson. Evil and the Christian God. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1982.
An Evangelical’s attempt to reconcile evil with the God of the Bible and
of classical theism, with special reference to the argument from gratu-
itous evil.
Michael Peterson et al. Reason and Religious Belief: An Introduction to the
Philosophy of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Ch. 6.
An introductory but sophisticated treatment of the problem of evil,
reflecting current and influential options.
Nelson Pike (ed.). God and Evil: Readings on the Theological Problem of Evil.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964. A much-used collection of
seven enduring statements, traditional and contemporary.
Alvin Plantinga. God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of
Belief in God. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967. Chs. 5–6 and 7,
Part II. A sometimes technical discussion of God and evil, emphasizing
recent debates concerning, for example, the Free-Will Defense and prob-
lems of divine omnipotence.
James F. Ross. Philosophical Theology. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969.
Chs. 5–6. An approach to the problem of evil along Thomistic-analytic
lines.
Richard Swinburne. The Existence of God. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.
Ch. 11. A clear account of relevant issues (traditional approaches, Free-
Will Defense, quantity of evil, etc.) rejecting evil as evidence against
God.
R. A. Tsanoff. The Nature of Evil. New York: Macmillan, 1931. A complete
history of the philosophical problem of evil and proposed solutions.
*In addition, see the relevant articles (e.g., “Evil, the Problems of”) in Routledge
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig (London: Routledge, 1998),
and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu.
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PA R T F O U R

THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY

A
s was explained in Chapter 1, value-theory raises the question of
value in general. The value of filets mignons, human deeds, works
of art, political ideologies—all values are the concern of value-
theory. It is not possible to consider all spheres of value, but it would seem
necessary to consider at least two of them. In this part o f our book we will
examine ethical or moral values, those values that define personal decisions
and actions as good or evil, moral or immoral. In the final part we will look
at social and political values, the values that determine the principles and
institutions of our life together in society and the state.
Talk of moral and political values probably brings immediately to mind
all sorts of exciting and dramatic issues, such as abortion, capital punish-
ment, animal rights, feminism, the environment, war, sex, politics, minor-
ity rights, genetic engineering, and euthanasia. And rightfully so. All such
issues presuppose, involve, and imply many kinds of values. But while it
is expected, also rightfully, that value-theory must in the end illuminate
such problems, it is usually not with these problems that value-theory
directly concerns itself. More specifically, as a theoretical endeavor, moral
philosophy or ethics is concerned with the clarification of fundamental
ethical concepts, the elucidation of principles, and the critical discussion
of positions and perspectives. It should be apparent that these tasks are,
after all, much more important than the excited arguments about specific
issues (such as those mentioned above), which all too often proceed with-

339
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out due regard for more fundamental questions. In the case of ethics, such
questions are:

• What is moral goodness?

• Is morality relative or absolute?
• Are all moral values derived from an ultimate value?
• What are the epistemological bases of the ethical theories?
• Is there a distinction between what is and what ought to be?
• Does moral responsibility require free will?
• What is the relation between the private and the public good?

The truth is, of course, that even with its theoretical concerns, the philo-
sophical question of morality stands more obviously related to concrete
situations and practical questions than do the other fields of philosophy.
And it is, therefore, here, with the question of morality (and again in Part
Five, with the question of society), that philosophical activity will seem to
many to be most related to the question of living.

340
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C H A P T E R 14

CHALLENGES
TO MORALITY

B
efore we consider some of the more important ways philosophers
have answered the question of morality, we must consider the prior
question: Is morality, or at least traditional morality, even possible?
Some have, indeed, maintained for various reasons that morality, as it is
usually conceived, is not possible. First, we have the relativists or subjectiv-
ists, who argue that morality is a matter of individual judgment and that
there are no common or universal moral obligations. Second, we must con-
front the determinist, who denies free will and asks, “If all things, includ-
ing our choices, are completely predetermined, then how can there be any
basis for moral responsibility?” Third, the psychological egoists claim that
all actions are inevitably motivated by self-interest, and thus the unself-
ish acts of traditional morality are impossible. Finally, we have to reckon
with the existentialists, who locate the basis of morality in evolving human
nature itself.

THE CHALLENGE OF RELATIVISM

Probably the most serious challenge to morality is posed by ethical relativ-
ism. We have already encountered the idea of ethical relativism in the per-
son of Protagoras. In fact, he provided this view with a motto for all time
when he said that “a man is the measure of all things.” Though Protagoras “A man is the
himself did not limit his statement to moral claims, it was natural that it measure of all
was in the realm of morality that it was most obviously applied. things”

341
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342
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY ETHICAL RELATIVISM
Ethical relativism, or ethical subjectivism, denies any absolute or objective moral
values that are common to all, and affirms, rather, that the individual (a person,
community, society, etc.) is the source and criterion of moral judgments.

Ethical relativism holds that the criterion of the truth or falsity of moral
claims is the individual—the individual’s perceptions, opinions, experiences,
inclinations, and desires. This sort of relativism can take different forms,
depending on what is meant by “individual.” It might make ethical truth
relative to the individual person, or the individual society, or community,
or nation, or culture, or even the whole human race. But any form of ethi-
Are moral values cal relativism denies that there are common or universal or objective moral
relative or absolute? values. It insists, rather, that moral values are private, individual, or subjec-
Subjective or tive. Hence, ethical relativism versus ethical absolutism may be expressed
objective?
also as ethical subjectivism versus ethical objectivism. However it is
expressed, the issue is the same: What is the source or foundation of moral
values and ideals? Are ethical values relative and subjective, or absolute
and objective? Are they dependent upon the individual, or do moral values
and ideals exist irrespective and independent of the individual? Is morality
a matter of “different strokes for different folks”?
For those who embrace ethical relativism, more often than not it is the
Cultural relativism particular or individual culture that is said to define morality. We have
encountered an instance of this already in B. F. Skinner’s Beyond Freedom
and Dignity:

What a given group of people calls good is a fact; it is what members of the
group find reinforcing as the result of their genetic endowment and the natural
and social contingencies to which they have been exposed. Each culture has its
own set of goods, and what is good in one culture may not be good in another.
To recognize this is to take the position of “cultural relativism.” What is good for the
Trobriand Islander is good for the Trobriand Islander, and that is that. Anthropologists
have often emphasized relativism as a tolerant alternative to missionary zeal
in converting all cultures to a single set of ethical, governmental, religious, or
economic values.1

One such anthropologist was Ruth Benedict, author of the much-read

Patterns of Culture. In her essay “Anthropology and the Abnormal,” she,
like Skinner, equates cultural relativism and ethical relativism:

Every society, beginning with some slight inclination in one direction or another,
carries its preference farther and farther, integrating itself more and more completely

1
B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2002), p. 128.
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upon its chosen basis, and discarding those types of behavior that are unconge- 343
nial. Most of those organizations of personality that seem to us most incontrovert-
CHALLENGES
ibly abnormal have been used by different civilizations in the very foundations of TO MORALITY
their institutional life. Conversely the most valued traits of our normal individuals
have been looked on in differently organized cultures as aberrant. Normality, in
short, within a very wide range, is culturally defined. It is primarily a term for the
socially elaborated segment of human behavior in any culture; and abnormality, a
term for the segment that that particular civilization does not use. The very eyes
with which we see the problem are conditioned by the long traditional habits of
our own society.
It is a point that has been made more often in relation to ethics than in relation
to psychiatry. We do not any longer make the mistake of deriving the morality
of our own locality and decade directly from the inevitable constitution of human
nature. We do not elevate it to the dignity of a first principle. We recognize that
morality differs in every society, and is a convenient term for socially approved
habits. Mankind has always preferred to say, “It is morally good,” rather than “It
is habitual,” and the fact of this preference is matter enough for a critical science
of ethics. But historically the two phrases are synonymous.
The concept of the normal is properly a variant of the concept of the good.
It is that which society has approved. A normal action is one which falls well
within the limits of expected behavior for a particular society. Its variability
among different peoples is essentially a function of the variability of the behav-
ior patterns that different societies have created for themselves, and can never
be wholly divorced from a consideration of culturally institutionalized types of
behavior.
Each culture is a more or less elaborate working-out of the potentialities of the
segment it has chosen. In so far as a civilization is well integrated and consistent
within itself, it will tend to carry farther and farther, according to its nature, its
initial impulse toward a particular type of action, and from the point of view
of any other culture those elaborations will induce more and more extreme and
aberrant traits.
Each of these traits, in proportion as it reinforces the chosen behavior pat-
terns of that culture, is for that culture normal. Those individuals to whom it is
congenial either congenitally, or as the result of childhood sets, are accorded
prestige in that culture, and are not visited with the social contempt or disap-
proval which their traits would call down upon them in a society that was differ-
ently organized. On the other hand, those individuals whose characteristics are
not congenial to the selected type of human behavior in that community are the
deviants, no matter how valued their personality traits may be in a contrasted
civilization.2

Why would one be an ethical relativist? Why would one ever assert with
Protagoras that in matters of morality, “a man is the measure of all things”?
Well, there is one gigantic but two-sided argument that relativists give over One big argument
and over again. And, in fact, it is the argument that Protagoras himself for ethical relativism
gave. The argument is, first, that ethical views, opinions, and exhortations
are largely or even completely conditioned by our circumstances. Obviously,

2
Ruth Benedict, “Anthropology and the Abnormal,“ Journal of General Psychology 10 (1934),
pp. 72–74.
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344 whether you think that X is right and Y is wrong is very much dependent
THE QUESTION
upon—relative to—when and where you were born, your upbringing, your
OF MORALITY education, your religious instruction, and maybe even your skin color and
your height. Do you really think that you would hold the same moral
opinions if your fundamental circumstances had been radically different?
Second, and aside from our circumstances, relativists usually take very seri-
ously the differences, disputes, and downright confusion that reign every-
where in the area of morality.
When both of these lines of observations are put together they suggest
strongly (maybe decisively) to some that there are no common or universal
or objective values, and that morality is relative.
Probably the most powerful (and most popular) version of this argument
for relativism points to the varying moral beliefs of different cultures. While
many cultures think that eating dog meat is a delicacy, Americans are hor-
rified by the practice and decry it as immoral. Or consider that some groups
see nothing wrong with infanticide whereas most cultures view it as
immoral. This might be called the cultural differences argument and can be
expressed as follows:

1. Different cultures have different moral codes.

2. Therefore, there is no objective truth in morality. Right and wrong are
only matters of opinion, and opinions vary from culture to culture.3

Such a position is not without its problems. For one thing, does not the
Many arguments argument for ethical relativism misfire? Surely it does not follow from the
against ethical fact that one’s moral opinions are conditioned or learned that they are there-
relativism fore merely subjectively or relatively true. We have learned all sorts of things
that, nonetheless, we believe to be true, and true for everyone: In fourteen
hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue; 2  2  4; it is
wrong to beat your spouse, starve your children, and torture your pets; and
so on. And how do disagreements about morality destroy its objectivity? We
may disagree also about the nature of the universe, but we would hardly
conclude from that that the universe has no nature! On the contrary, what
is the point of disagreeing at all, unless we believe there is some real truth
involved? It is important, then, to distinguish between our opinions of moral-
ity and morality itself. Certainly our opinions about morality differ, and cer-
tainly they are conditioned by and relative to all sorts of things. But in no
other sphere would we so simple-mindedly confuse our opinions of the
truth with the truth itself. Why here, where the implications are far more
consequential?
Furthermore, if the individual is the basis of moral truth, then none of
us could ever be mistaken in our moral opinions, for whatever we believe
must be true. Or, in the larger interpretation of “individual,” such as an
individual group, morality would reduce to what happened to be believed

3
This specific formulation of the argument comes from James Rachels, The Elements of Moral
Philosophy, 2d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993).
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345
CHALLENGES
THE GOLDEN RULE: TO MORALITY
A UNIVERSAL MORAL PRINCIPLE?
“What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.”
—Confucius (SIXTH CENTURY B.C.)

“Hurt not others with that which pains yourself.”

—Buddha (FIFTH CENTURY B.C.)

“In happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard all creatures as
we regard our own self, and should therefore refrain from inflicting upon others
such injury as would appear undesirable to us if inflicted upon ourselves.”
—Jainism (FIFTH CENTURY B.C.)

“Do not do to others all that which is not well for oneself.”
—Zoroastrianism (FIFTH CENTURY B.C.)

“May I do to others as I would that they should do to me.”

—Plato (FOURTH CENTURY B.C.)

“Do nothing to others which if done to you would cause you pain.”
—Hinduism (THIRD CENTURY B.C.)

“What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man.”

—Hillel (FIRST CENTURY B.C.)

“Whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you even so to them.”
—Jesus of Nazareth (FIRST CENTURY A.D.)

“Treat others as you would be treated yourself.”

—Sikhism (SIXTEENTH CENTURY A.D.)

by the largest number of people. Both of these seem to many to be neces-

sary but absurd implications of the relativist or subjectivist position.
Some have even charged that ethical relativism not only misfires but
backfires inasmuch as it involves a sort of practical contradiction. It is the Is ethical relativism
contradiction between saying one thing and living another. You may know practically
someone who claims to be an ethical relativist, but do you know anyone contradictory?
who lives as one? Do we not all, in one way or another, impose our ideas
of morality on others? Do we not hold others responsible for their actions?
Do we not judge others as morally wrong or reprehensible? Do we not vote,
crusade for causes, and make sacrifices for various ideals? But clearly all
such actions are meaningful only on the assumption of an objective and
common morality. In a word, this objection charges that there is really no
such thing as a consistent subjectivist.
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346
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY ETHICAL ABSOLUTISM
Ethical absolutism, or ethical objectivism, affirms that moral values are indepen-
dent of individual opinions and ascribes to them an abiding and fixed reality
common to all.

It should be noted, finally, that if you accept the above criticisms of

ethical relativism, then you must be an ethical objectivist or absolutist.
For either ethical relativism is true or ethical absolutism is true; there is
no third alternative. If ethical relativism is false, then ethical absolutism
must be true. Or, at least, so it seems to many. How does it seem to
you?

THE CHALLENGE OF DETERMINISM

Another difficulty for morality is posed by the determinist. In fact, some
would say that determinism renders morality (as most of us understand
the word) impossible. We saw in an earlier discussion (in Chapter 6) that
determinism is the view that all things are causally conditioned such that
they could not be otherwise. We also considered some of the problematical
implications of this view, though we must now consider more adequately
its implications for morality.
What are these implications? If it is true that all things are causally deter-
mined, then this must apply also to our willing and choosing. And this
means the denial of free will. And this means the end of moral responsibility.
At least according to many. For is it not clear, they would insist, that moral
responsibility presupposes free will? What sense is there in praise and blame
and holding individuals accountable if one could not have done otherwise?
If one does not choose and act freely? Is it not always relevant, when trying
to establish blame or guilt or responsibility on the part of someone, to
ascertain whether that person was forced, drugged, or suffering from some
compulsion? Thus free will has seemed to many to be a condition for
responsible, moral action.
William James explains the moral problem with the determinist position
in a slightly different way in his essay “The Dilemma of Determinism.”
James focuses on the existence of “judgments of regret” after we have com-
mitted certain actions that we think are wrong. In a deterministic world,
however, such judgments are impossible, as James explains:

When murders and treacheries cease to be sins, regrets are theoretic absurdities
and errors. The theoretic and the active life thus play a kind of see-saw with
each other on the ground of evil. The rise of either sends the other down. Murder
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347
“. . . it is certain that if there is no free will there can be no morality.” CHALLENGES
TO MORALITY
—W. T. Stace

and treachery cannot be good without regret being bad; regret cannot be good
without treachery and murder being bad. Both, however [on the deterministic
model], are supposed to have been foredoomed; so something must be fatally
unreasonable, absurd, and wrong in the world. It must be a place of which either
sin or error forms a necessary part. From this dilemma there seems at first sight
no escape. Are we then so soon to fall back into the pessimism from which we
thought we had emerged? And is there no possible way by which we may, with
good intellectual consciences, call the cruelties and treacheries, the reluctance and
the regrets, all good together?4

Your decision between determinism, or the belief that everything, includ- Determinism
ing your will, is causally determined, and indeterminism, the belief that or indeterminism?
some things, and therefore possibly the will, are not determined, may be a
crucial one. And you cannot have it both ways—either determinism or
indeterminism.
But we must not move too fast here. Determinism itself must be viewed
in two lights: hard-determinism and soft-determinism.
The hard-determinist believes not only that all things are determined, Hard-
but that they are determined ultimately by purely external factors, factors determinism. . .
outside yourself and over which you have no control. Why did you choose
X? Ultimately because of things like the circumstances of your birth, upbring-
ing, education, environment, genetic structure—in a word because of every-
thing that has contributed in any way to the shaping and placing of your
person and those of all of your ancestors. To say it another way, you chose
X because_____: Fill in here the uncountable causes that, extending as it
were from the infinite past, converge at this moment on the movement of
your will in favor of X.
Is hard-determinism compatible with morality? According to the hard- . . . and morality
determinists themselves, the answer is both Yes and No. On the yes side, the
hard-determinist, no less than anyone else, decries murder, theft, and the tor-
turing of starving children. The fact that people have no control over their
actions, whether good or evil, has no bearing on those actions being, neverthe-
less, good or evil. The desire to torture starving children, like cancer, is an evil
to be recognized as such and to be dealt with—as you would deal with can-
cer. Now you do not punish a cancer; you try to treat it and heal it. (Echoes
of Skinner?) But this brings us to the no side of the answer. If morality implies
the possibility of praise, blame, and punishment, then the hard-determinist

4
William James, “The Dilemma of Determinism,” in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in
Popular Philosophy (Cambridge, MA.: University Press, 1896), pp. 163–164.
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348 can scarcely accommodate morality. Certainly there is little room for praise,
THE QUESTION
blame, and punishment in a view of things according to which no one is
OF MORALITY responsible for his or her condition in general, which means also his or her
moral condition in specific. One is not responsible, period.
Soft-determinism. . . It is precisely to the issue of responsibility that soft-determinism speaks.
The soft-determinist is, of course, a determinist, and holds, like the hard-
determinist, that because of antecedent causes our choices could not be
otherwise. But in contrast to the hard-determinist, the soft-determinist shifts
our whole attention to the causes that lie within the individual. Our actions
and choices are determined—by our desires, inclinations, attitudes, or, in a
word, our character.
In this way, the soft-determinists see determinism not only as compatible
. . . and morality with morality but as necessary for morality. For, they say, your choices or
actions can be judged moral or immoral, or you can be held accountable
for them, only if they actually reflect your intentions, desires, attitudes, and
so on. Would you hold someone responsible for an action that did not really
spring from his or her character? Would you hold me morally accountable
for hitting you in the face if it was the result of a sudden and uncontrol-
lable muscle spasm? If, however, my hitting you in the face was the result
of (or was caused by) my attitude toward you and my intention to cause
you pain, isn’t that a quite different situation? a situation in which I am
responsible for my action? a moral situation? How then can there be moral
behavior and moral judgment without determinism—character-determinism
or self-determinism, as the position is also called?
David Hume provides a good statement of how praise and blame are
possible only if the deeds that are praised or blamed are rooted in, or

The famous attorney Clarence Darrow to the prisoners of the Cook County Jail:

There is no such thing as a crime as the word is generally understood. I do

not believe there is any sort of distinction between the real moral conditions
of the people in and out of jail. One is just as good as the other. The people
here can no more help being here than the people outside can avoid being
outside. I do not believe that people are in jail because they deserve to be.
They are in jail simply because they cannot avoid it on account of circum-
stances which are entirely beyond their control and for which they are in no
way responsible. . . . There are people who think that everything in this world
is an accident. But really there is no such thing as an accident. . . . There are
a great many people here who have done some of these things (murder, theft,
etc.) who really do not know themselves why they did them. It looked to you
at the time as if you had a chance to do them or not, as you saw fit; but still,
after all you had no choice. . . . If you look at the question deeply enough
and carefully enough you will see that there were circumstances that drove
you to do exactly the thing which you did. You could not help it any more than
we outside can help taking the positions that we take.
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caused by, the doer’s character. From An Enquiry Concerning Human 349
Understanding: CHALLENGES
TO MORALITY
The only proper object of hatred or vengeance is a person or creature, endowed
with thought and consciousness; and when any criminal or injurious actions excite
that passion, it is only by their relation to the person, or connexion with him.
Actions are, by their very nature, temporary and perishing; and where they pro-
ceed not from some cause in the character and disposition of the person who
performed them, they can neither redound to his honour, if good; nor infamy, if
evil. The actions themselves may be blameable; they may be contrary to all the
rules of morality and religion: But the person is not answerable for them; and as
they proceed from nothing in him that is durable and constant, and leave nothing
of that nature behind them, it is impossible he can, upon their account, become
the object of punishment or vengeance. According to the principle, therefore, which
denies necessity, and consequently causes, a man is as pure and untainted, after
having committed the most horrid crime, as at the first moment of his birth, nor is
his character anywise concerned in his actions, since they are not derived from
it, and the wickedness of the one can never be used as a proof of the depravity
of the other.
Men are not blamed for such actions as they perform ignorantly and casually,
whatever may be the consequences. Why? but because the principles of these
actions are only momentary, and terminate in them alone. Men are less blamed
for such actions as they perform hastily and unpremeditately than for such as
proceed from deliberation. For what reason? but because a hasty temper, though
a constant cause or principle in the mind, operates only by intervals, and infects
not the whole character. Again, repentance wipes off every crime, if attended
with a reformation of life and manners. How is this to be accounted for? but
by asserting that actions render a person criminal merely as they are proofs of
criminal principles in the mind; and when, by an alteration of these principles,
they cease to be just proofs, they likewise cease to be criminal. But, except upon

THE PROBLEM OF FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM

Determinism Indeterminism
The view that all things, including The view that some things, and
the will, are causally determined. therefore possibly the will, are
free of causal determination.
(a) Hard-determinism
The will is determined ultimately
by exterior factors beyond the
responsibility of the individual.

(b) Soft-determinism
The will is determined by the
character of the individual, and
thus individuals are responsible
for their choices.
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350 the doctrine of necessity, they never were just proofs, and consequently never
were criminal.
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY It will be equally easy to prove, and from the same arguments, that liberty . . .
is also essential to morality, and that no human actions, where it is wanting, are
susceptible of any moral qualities, or can be the objects either of approbation or
dislike. For as actions are objects of our moral sentiment, so far only as they are
indications of the internal character, passions, and affections; it is impossible that
they can give rise either to praise or blame, where they proceed not from these
principles, but are derived altogether from external violence.5

But the indeterminists, or free-willists, are still unsatisfied. They raise an

obvious question: It may be that my choice or action is determined by my
own character, but how did I acquire this character—these particular atti-
tudes, inclinations, desires, likes, and dislikes? Is not my character ultimately
determined, again, by factors outside me, antecedent to me, and quite beyond
Does my control? Does not soft-determinism have to give way, finally, to hard-
soft-determinism determinism with its denial of moral responsibility? As far as responsibility
reduce to goes, is there really any final difference between soft- and hard-determinism?
hard-determinism?
A clearer reduction of soft-determinism to hard-determinism could hardly be
found than that of Baron D’Holbach (1723–1789), an atheistic and mechanis-
tic materialist. In the following, from The System of Nature, Holbach applies
his mechanistic principle specifically to the question of morality, and con-
cludes that all of our moral dispositions, no less than anything else about us,
reduce, finally, to necessary determinations.

The ambitious man cries out: you will have me resist passions; but have they not
unceasingly repeated to me that rank, honours, power, are the most desirable
advantages in life? Have I not seen my fellow citizens envy them, the nobles of
my country sacrifice every thing to obtain them? In the society in which I live, am
I not obliged to feel, that if I am deprived of these advantages, I must expect to
anguish in contempt; to cringe under the rod of oppression?
The miser says: you forbid me to love money, to seek after the means of acquir-
ing it: alas! does not every thing tell me that, in this world, money is the greatest
blessing; that it is amply sufficient to render me happy? In the country I inhabit,
do I not see all my fellow citizens covetous of riches? but do I not also witness
that they are little scrupulous in the means of obtaining wealth? As soon as they
are enriched by the means which you censure, are they not cherished, consid-
ered and respected? By what authority, then, do you defend me from amassing
treasure? What right have you to prevent my using means, which, although you
call them sordid and criminal, I see approved by the sovereign? Will you have
me renounce my happiness?
The voluptuary argues: you pretend that I should resist my desires; but was I
the maker of my own temperament, which unceasingly invites me to pleasure?
You call my pleasures disgraceful; but in the country in which I live, do I not
witness the most dissipated men enjoying the most distinguished rank? Do I not
behold that no one is ashamed of adultery but the husband it has outraged? Do

5
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, in Hume’s Enquiries, ed. L. A.
Selby-Bigge, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), pp. 98–99.
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not I see men making trophies of their debaucheries, boasting of their libertinism, 351
rewarded with applause?
CHALLENGES
The choleric man vociferates: you advise me to put a curb on my passions, TO MORALITY
and to resist the desire of avenging myself: but can I conquer my nature? Can I
alter the received opinions of the world? Shall I not be forever disgraced, infallibly
dishonoured in society, if I do not wash out in the blood of my fellow creatures
the injuries I have received?
The zealous enthusiast exclaims: you recommend me mildness; you advise me to
be tolerant; to be indulgent to the opinions of my fellow men; but is not my tempera-
ment violent? Do I not ardently love my God? Do they not assure me, that zeal is
pleasing to him; that sanguinary inhuman persecutors have been his friends? As I
wish to render myself acceptable in his sight, I therefore adopt the same means.
In short, the actions of man are never free; they are always the necessary
consequence of his temperament, of the received ideas, and of the notions, either
true or false, which he has formed to himself of happiness; of his opinions,
strengthened by example, by education, and by daily experience. . . .
If he understood the play of his organs, if he were able to recall to himself all
the impulsions they have received, all the modifications they have undergone, all the
effects they have produced, he would perceive that all his actions are submitted to
that fatality, which regulates his own particular system, as it does the entire system
of the universe: no one effect in him, any more than in nature, produces itself by
chance; this, as has been before proved, is word void of sense. All that passes in
him; all that is done by him; as well as all that happens in nature, or that is attributed
to her, is derived from necessary causes, which act according to necessary laws,
and which produce necessary effects, from whence necessarily flow others.
Fatality, is the eternal, the immutable, the necessary order, established in nature;
or the indispensable connexion of causes that act, with the effects they operate.6

The indeterminist agrees with this but draws the opposite conclusion: not
that there is no basis for praise, blame, responsibility, and virtuous conduct,
but that determinism must be false! That is, the indeterminist can simply turn
the tables: If someone says that since our wills are determined, there can be
no morality, the indeterminist may answer that inasmuch as morality is a
fact, our wills must not be determined! And, of course, the indeterminists
have it in their favor that, as a matter of fact, we do—all of us, always, and Morality
unavoidably—live our lives on the assumption that there is free will and that as a fact of life
people are responsible. Thus, according to the indeterminists, the determinists
are a little like the relativists, who, as we saw in the last section, might claim
their position to be true, but cannot live as if it were true. In fact, determinists
turn out so much to be free-willists that W. T. Stace has concluded that the
determinism–free-will problem can hardly be a real problem at all; rather, it
must simply involve a misunderstanding in our philosophical language:

It is to be observed that those learned professors of philosophy or psychology who

deny the existence of free will do so only in their professional moments and in their
studies and lecture rooms. For when it comes to doing anything practical, even of

6
Baron D’Holbach, The System of Nature, tr. H. D. Robinson (Boston: Mendum, 1869),
pp. 94–95, 102.
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352
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY WILLIAM JAMES ON “CHANCE”
One of the objections to indeterminism is that it leaves us with a world of pure
chance. As William James points out, however, the idea of chance may not pose
the threat that is often feared.

The stronghold of the deterministic sentiment is the antipathy to the idea of

chance. As soon as we begin to talk indeterminism to our friends, we find a
number of them shaking their heads. This notion of alternative possibility, they
say, this admission that any one of several things may come to pass, is, after
all, only a roundabout name for chance; and chance is something the notion
of which no sane mind can for an instant tolerate in the world. What is it, they
ask, but barefaced crazy unreason, the negation of intelligibility and law? And
if the slightest particle of it exist anywhere, what is to prevent the whole fabric
from falling together, the stars from going out, and chaos from recommencing
her topsy-turvy reign?
Remarks of this sort about chance will put an end to discussion as quickly
as anything one can find. I have already told you that “chance” was a word
I wished to keep and use. Let us then examine exactly what it means, and
see whether it ought to be such a terrible bugbear to us. I fancy that squeez-
ing the thistle boldly will rob it of its sting.
The sting of the word “chance” seems to lie in the assumption that it means
something positive, and that if anything happens by chance, it must needs be
something of an intrinsically irrational and preposterous sort. Now chance
means nothing of the kind. It is a purely negative and relative term, giving us
no information about that of which it is predicated, except that it happens to
be disconnected with something else—not controlled, secured, or necessi-
tated by other things in advance of its own actual presence.
As this point is the most subtle one of the whole lecture, and at the same
time the point on which all the rest hinges I beg you to pay particular attention
to it. What I say is that it tells us nothing about what a thing may be in itself
to call it “chance.” It may be a bad thing, it may be a good thing. It may be
lucidity, transparency, fitness incarnate, matching the whole system of other
things, when it has once befallen, in an unimaginable perfect way. All you
mean by calling it “chance” is that this is not guaranteed, that it may also fall
out otherwise, for the system of other things has no positive hold on the
(continued on next page)

the most trivial kind, they invariably behave as if they and others were free. They
inquire from you at dinner whether you will choose this dish or that dish. They will
ask a child why he told a lie, and will punish him for not having chosen the way
of truthfulness. All of which is inconsistent with a disbelief in free will. This should
cause us to suspect that the problem is not a real one; and this, I believe, is the
case. The dispute is merely verbal, and is due to nothing but a confusion about the
meanings of words. It is what is now fashionably called a semantic problem.7

7
W. T. Stace, Religion and the Modern Mind (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1952), pp. 279–280.
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353
chance-thing. Its origin is in a certain fashion negative: it escapes, and says, CHALLENGES
Hands off! coming, when it comes as a free gift, or not at all. . . . TO MORALITY
Nevertheless, many persons talk as if the minutest dose of disconnectedness
of one part with another, the smallest modicum of independence, the faintest
tremor of ambiguity about the future, for example, would ruin everything, and
turn this goodly universe into a sort of insane sand-heap or nulliverse—no uni-
verse at all. Since future human volitions are as a matter of fact the only ambig-
uous things we are tempted to believe in, let us stop for a moment to make
ourselves sure whether their independent and accidental character need be
fraught with such direful consequences to the universe as that.
What is meant by saying that my choice of which way to walk home after the
lecture is ambiguous and a matter of chance as far as the present moment is
concerned? It means that both Divinity Avenue and Oxford Street are called, but
that only one, and that either one, shall be chosen. Now, I ask you seriously to
suppose that this ambiguity of my choice is real; and then to make the impos-
sible hypothesis that the choice is made twice over, and each time falls on a
different street. In other words, imagine that I first walk through Divinity Avenue,
and then imagine that the powers governing the universe annihilate ten minutes
of time with all that it contained, and set me back at the door of this hall just as
I was before the choice was made. Imagine then that, everything else being the
same, I now make a different choice and traverse Oxford Street. You, as passive
spectators, look on and see the two alternative universes—one of them with me
walking through Divinity Avenue in it, the other with the same me walking through
Oxford Street. Now, if you are determinists you believe one of these universes to
have been from eternity impossible: you believe it to have been impossible
because of the intrinsic irrationality or accidentality somewhere involved in it. But
looking outwardly at these universes, can you say which is the impossible and
accidental one, and which the rational and necessary one? I doubt if the most
iron-clad determinist among you could have the slightest glimmer of light on this
point. In other words, either universe after the fact and once there would, to our
means of observation and understanding, appear just as rational as the other. . . .
But what a hollow outcry, then, is this against a chance which, if it were
present to us, we could by no character whatever distinguish from a rational
necessity! I have taken the most trivial of examples, but no possible example
could lead to any different result.*

*William James, “The Dilemma of Determinism,” in The Will to Believe and Other Essays
in Popular Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: University Press, 1896), pp. 153–157.

It must be admitted, though, that the indeterminists are in an awkward

spot too. They deny determinism as being incompatible with morality. But
what do they replace it with? Actions and choices that are uncaused? But
this would seem to make our actions and choices utterly spontaneous,
capricious, irrational, and arbitrary. And certainly this is just as incompat-
ible with morality and responsibility as is determinism. Something is
beyond one’s control, and therefore not an object of praise or blame, as
much whether it happened by pure chance as whether it was completely
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354 necessitated. But what, then, lies in this mysterious zone between pure
THE QUESTION
chance and pure necessity? What might the indeterminist or free-willist
OF MORALITY mean by “uncaused” choices or “free” will? Some indeterminists or free-
willists would withdraw at this point with a quiet, “I really don’t know.
But there must be some such. For it is certainly a bigger problem to reject
morality than not to have a clear and coherent idea of free will. Take your
choice. But do you really have one?”
Others, of a somewhat more analytic strain, have sought for clarification
of our terms. We have seen that the whole determinism–free-will contro-
versy is bound up with talk about causality, the principle that every event
must have a cause. But is an act of the will really an “act” in any obvious
or clear sense? And is a decision really an “event”? It has been suggested,
not without merit, that maybe the language in which the whole problem
has been posed is inappropriate from the start. Has it been something like
a category mistake again? In any event, William K. Frankena’s exhortation
is well taken:

. . . I think that moral philosophers cannot insist too much on the importance
of actual knowledge and conceptual clarity for the solution of moral and social
problems. The two besetting sins in our prevailing habits of ethical thinking are
our ready acquiescence in unclarity and our complacence in ignorance—the
very sins that Socrates died combatting over two thousand years ago.8

THE CHALLENGE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM

A third challenge to morality comes from psychological egoism. The psy-
chological egoist claims that all actions are inevitably motivated by self-
interest. Regardless of appearances to the contrary, we are all selfish.
When I stop to help an old lady cross the street, it might appear that I
am being unselfish, but not so, says the psychological egoist. There is
Selfish motives some selfish motive lurking beneath the surface that is the real motiva-
tion. Perhaps I want others to think highly of me or maybe I hope that
she’ll reward me with money.
In its strongest form, psychological egoism claims that all of us, all the
time, with all of our actions are pursuing nothing but our own self-interest.
And we cannot do otherwise.
This last statement—“we cannot do otherwise”—is really the key; it
helps us to understand both the theory and how it poses a challenge to
morality. It shows, first, that this is a psychological theory, a claim about
human nature rather than a theory of morality. Psychological egoism
makes a claim about what we can (and cannot) do, not what we should

8
William K. Frankena, Ethics, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), p. 13.
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355
When someone says, “Everything is determined by antecedent causes and could CHALLENGES
TO MORALITY
not have been otherwise,” is that statement itself determined? Do you usually pay
much attention to utterances that could not have been different, such as that of
someone acting out a posthypnotic suggestion?

(and should not) do. As a result, it is really another form of determinism

claiming that the selfishness of human behavior is determined.
The way that psychological egoism poses a challenge to morality is
summed up best in the phrase “ought implies can.” Immanuel Kant argued “Ought implies can”
that it makes no sense to say that a person has a duty to do something—she
ought to do it—unless the person is capable of committing the action—she
can do it. In other words, you cannot be morally obligated to do X if it is
impossible for you to do X. Thus to say that one ought to be unselfish
implies that one is capable of acting on motives other than self-interest. But
it is precisely this last statement that psychological egoism denies.
While few philosophers defend psychological egoism in a direct way, it
is a common view and one that requires a response. David Hume described
psychological egoism as the principle of “self-love,” claiming that it has
been “much insisted on by philosophers, and has been the foundation of
many a system.”9
All psychological egoists acknowledge that people appear to be con-
cerned for others, but are they really? Or is it just a façade hiding a deeper
selfishness? Though not an egoist himself, Hume expresses the alleged hid-
den selfishness beautifully.

. . . whatever affection one may feel, or imagine he feels for others, no passion
is, or can be, disinterested; the most generous friendship, however sincere, is a
modification of self-love; and even unknown to ourselves, we seek only our own
gratification, while we appear the most deeply engaged in schemes for the liberty
and happiness of mankind.10

9
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. J. B. Schneewind (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1983), p. 89.
10
Ibid.

OUGHT IMPLIES CAN

To say that you ought (morally) to do something implies that it must be possible
for you to do it (i.e., you can do it). In other words, you cannot be morally obli-
gated to do something it is literally impossible for you to do.
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356
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM
The theory of human nature asserting that all actions are motivated exclusively
by self-interest.

The most common response to psychological egoism—you’ve perhaps

already started to do this in your own mind—is to point to certain actions
Counterexamples as clear counterexamples. The fireman running into the burning building,
to egoism the soldier who jumps on a grenade to save his friends, the mother who
sacrifices everything for her children—aren’t these obvious examples of
unselfishness? Don’t they clearly show that some actions are motivated by
something other than self-interest?
Not for the psychological egoist they don’t. These actions may seem to
be altruistic, they say, but if we truly understood the motives, we’d see the
selfishness deep inside. Consider the following story attributed to Abraham
Lincoln, where he defends the psychological egoist view.

Mr. Lincoln once remarked to a fellow-passenger on an old-time mud coach that

all men were prompted by selfishness in doing good. His fellow-passenger was
antagonizing this position when they were passing over a corduroy bridge that
spanned a slough. As they crossed this bridge they espied an old razor-backed
sow on the bank making a terrible noise because her pigs had got into the slough
and were in danger of drowning. As the old coach began to climb the hill,
Mr. Lincoln called out, “Driver, can’t you stop just a moment?” Then Mr. Lincoln
jumped out, ran back, and lifted the little pigs out of the mud and water and
placed them on the bank. When he returned, his companion remarked: “Now,
Abe, where does selfishness come in on this little episode?” “Why, bless your
soul, Ed, that was the very essence of selfishness. I should have had no peace of
mind all day had I gone on and left that suffering old sow worrying over those
pigs. I did it to get peace of mind, don’t you see?”11

Reinterpreting Lincoln’s strategy here is to reinterpret the motives that appear on the
motives surface. It appears to be an unselfish act until we reinterpret the motives
in a selfish direction. This is a common strategy for psychological egoists,
and it demonstrates why this is such a difficult challenge. For any counter-
example you provide, someone can reinterpret the motives in an egoistic
direction. And since motives are private—we cannot independently know
what motivates the actions of another—there is no way to refute the psy-
chological egoist theory.

11
Quoted from the Springfield (Illinois) Monitor by F. C. Sharp in his Ethics (New York: Appleton-
Century, 1928), p. 75.
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357
“Of the voluntary actions of every man, the object is some good to himself.” CHALLENGES
TO MORALITY
—Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes used this strategy of reinterpreting motives in dissecting

supposedly unselfish feelings such as pity and benevolence. Take, for exam-
ple, what he says about charity:

There can be no greater argument to a man, of his own power, than to find
himself able not only to accomplish his own desires, but also to assist other men
in theirs: and this is that conception wherein consisteth charity.12

Although psychological egoism is a powerful challenge to morality, it

has drawn equally strong responses. Here we will limit our discussion to
three of the most common objections.
First, one of the most common defenses of psychological egoism involves
some confusion that obscures an important distinction relating to motives.
It’s often said that people are simply “doing what they want to do” and Some objections
thus acting selfishly. But this is a mistake. To say that one “wants” to do
something is ambiguous and does not necessarily support psychological

12
Thomas Hobbes, On Human Nature in Body, Man, and Citizen, ed. Richard S. Peters (New
York: Collier, 1962).

PLATO’S RING OF GYGES

In The Republic, Plato provides a thought experiment that seems to support
psychological egoism.* He tells the story of a magical ring—the Ring of Gyges—
that makes the wearer invisible when turned a certain way. In the story, the one
who finds the ring uses it to commit adultery and injustice. The moral of the story
is that once freed from the threat of being caught, people will take whatever
actions fit their self-interest with no thought for justice or morality. Thus humans
are inherently selfish and act morally or consider the interests of others only
because they fear the consequences of doing otherwise.
What would you do if you had such a ring? How do you think others would act
if they could become invisible and be free from any consequences of their
actions? Does the Ring of Gyges shed any light on the challenge of psycho-
logical egoism?

*Plato is not defending psychological egoism but simply expressing what he claims is a
commonly held view to which he must respond in investigating the concept of justice. The
story is found at the beginning of Book II of The Republic.
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358 egoism. When we say that a person “does what she wants to do” this is
THE QUESTION
not at all equivalent to the claim that she is acting selfishly. The first is a
OF MORALITY claim about the source of the motivation—it is hers—the second describes
the content—it is selfish or unselfish. It is the latter claim that the psycho-
logical egoist must defend, and asserting that people always do what they
want to do is no help.
Second, and more important, is there not a difference—a big difference—
between saying that an act is motivated out of self-interest and saying that
it is attended by self-interest? One may derive self-satisfaction, and rightfully
so, from rescuing a drowning child from an icy river. But should we not
distinguish this self-gratifying aspect of the act from the motivation of the
act? The psychological egoist must claim not only that this good feeling
exists, but also that it is the sole motivation for the act.
Finally, we must return to the matter of reinterpreting motives. As we
said earlier, this strategy is irrefutable because of the private nature of
motives. But this turns out to be an Achilles’ heel of psychological egoism.
If the theory is irrefutable, if it is impossible to show that it is false, then
what meaning does it have? If nothing can count as evidence against the
theory, then likewise nothing is evidence for it. We are left with an empty
statement of intention rather than a claim about the world. The psycho-
logical egoist is announcing his intentions to interpret all motives as selfish.
But there is no reason the rest of us must follow suit, especially in light of
the implications of psychological egoism for morality.

THE CHALLENGE OF EXISTENTIALISM

Our final challenge to morality—existentialism—is a bit different from the
others. It is not so much a challenge to all morality as it is a challenge to
traditional morality, the rules and ways of thinking that we normally associ-
ate with right and wrong. This is especially true for anyone who associates
morality with religious texts or rules—such as the Ten Commandments—or
any sort of transcendent values. Existentialism is a clear challenge to these
traditions, as we will soon discover.
We have already encountered the philosophy known as existentialism,
and Albert Camus was cited in Chapter 13 as responding in an existen-
tialist way to the problem of evil. It is difficult to say just what exis-
tentialism is, because the existentialists are so varied in their points of
view. But that they represent, in different ways, challenges to traditional
morality is evident.
For example, the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)
taught the “teleological suspension of the ethical,” according to which the
individual is enabled to transcend ordinary ethical norms and receive his
or her commandments immediately from God. The German Friedrich
Nietzsche (1844–1900) rejected Christianity as involving a “slave-morality”
and called for a “transvaluation of values” according to which “the will to
power” as the basic principle of life will lead to the development of a higher
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type of humanity. Surely the best-known existentialist is the contemporary 359

French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980). In addition to CHALLENGES
authoring works with ponderous titles such as Being and Nothingness, he TO MORALITY
wrote an essay entitled, simply, “Existentialism.” This little work is often
regarded as the best introduction to existentialism, and certainly it repre-
sents yet another existentialist’s challenge to traditional morality.
According to Sartre, existentialism turns on its head any philosophy
(think especially of Plato) that teaches that everything is what it is by virtue
of a transcendent essence: Essence precedes existence. No, says Sartre. We
begin with the individual, the concretely existing human being, the subject.
The central tenet of existentialism, in any of its forms, is that existence pre- “Existence precedes
cedes essence. What is first given is the existence of a particular person; only essence”
after that does the essence appear. Or, to say it another way, subjectivity must
be the starting point. However, in its atheistic form, which Sartre himself
espouses, existentialism finds nothing outside, above, or beyond the indi-
vidual to which the individual can leap for its essence, definition, or mean-
ing. God is dead, all objective and transcendent values have disappeared
with him, and the individual is alone. This is the meaning of Sartre’s famous
pronouncement that we are “condemned to be free.” Here, to be “free” We are “condemned
means to be unconditioned by any moral law or eternal values. to be free”
What then do we do? Answer: We must accept the full burden of our
freedom, and through our choices and commitments contribute to the

Friedrich Nietzsche was a classical philologist

turned philosopher. Among his many works is
one with the revealing title Beyond Good and
Evil. His ideas about the “will to power” and
the Übermensch (“superman”) were later
misappropriated by the Nazi party. Nietzsche
died insane.
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360
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY HUMANISM
As is evident from the word itself, humanism is the exaltation of humanity as the
source and criterion of all value and meaning.

evolving essence of humanity. What we choose for ourselves, that we

become. And what we become, that we contribute to the definition or
essence of humanity, for each of us is part of humanity. If, then, we care
about the essence of humanity—what it is and will become—we must have
a care about our own individual commitments. This sense of aloneness and
personal responsibility is the source of the emphasis by Sartre and other
existentialists on the anxiety, dread, and despair of the “conscious” indi-
vidual, the individual who knows the score.
You may be tempted to see here just another version of relativism, but
there is a difference. In its crassest form, relativism denies that any value
or idea is any better than another. Clearly Sartre is not saying this. It is true
that there is no divine or transcendent foundation of values, and that is
precisely why Sartre shifts the responsibility to individuals. Human beings
in their freedom (in Sartre’s existentialist sense) are themselves the basis of
values, and in this sense values are real—evolving, developing, on the
move, but real. In place of God or a transcendent source of values, ideals,
Humanism meaning, and the like, this philosophy is truly humanistic, in that humanity
stands center stage as the criterion of all meaning and value. It is important
to see how this differs from the sort of relativism or subjectivism we con-
sidered earlier. That philosophy denied any objective or common values,
locating them instead in individuals. This philosophy, on the other hand,
affirms objective values, but locates them in humanity. The difference
between subjectivism and humanism is caught by the two claims

• A man is the measure of all things.

• Man is the measure of all things.

In the following, from his essay “Existentialism,” Sartre explains the general
nature of this philosophy and the moral implications of his version of it.

What is meant by the term “existentialism”?

Most people who use the word would be rather embarrassed if they had to
explain it, since, now that the word is all the rage, even the work of a musician
or painter is being called existentialist. A gossip columnist in Clartés signs himself
The Existentialist, so that by this time the word has been so stretched and has
taken on so broad a meaning, that it no longer means anything at all. It seems
that for want of an advance-guard doctrine analogous to surrealism, the kind of
people who are eager for scandal and flurry turn to this philosophy which in
other respects does not at all serve their purposes in this sphere.
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Actually, it is the least scandalous, the most austere of doctrines. It is intended 361
strictly for specialists and philosophers. Yet it can be defined easily. What compli-
CHALLENGES
cates matters is that there are two kinds of existentialist; first, those who are Chris- TO MORALITY
tian, among whom I would include Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel, both Catholic;
and on the other hand the atheistic existentialists, among whom I class Heidegger,
and then the French existentialists and myself. What they have in common is that
they think that existence precedes essence, or, if you prefer, that subjectivity must
be the starting point.
Just what does that mean? Let us consider some object that is manufactured, for
example, a book or a paper-cutter: here is an object which has been made by an
artisan whose inspiration came from a concept. He referred to the concept of what
a paper-cutter is and likewise to a known method of production, which is part of the
concept, something which is, by and large, a routine. Thus, the paper-cutter is at once
an object produced in a certain way and, on the other hand, one having a specific
use; and one can not postulate a man who produces a paper-cutter but does not
know what it is used for. Therefore, let us say that, for the paper-cutter, essence—that
is, the ensemble of both the production routines and the properties which enable it
to be both produced and defined—precedes existence. Thus, the presence of the
paper-cutter or book in front of me is determined. Therefore, we have here a techni-
cal view of the world whereby it can be said that production precedes existence.
When we conceive God as the Creator, He is generally thought of as a supe-
rior sort of artisan. Whatever doctrine we may be considering, whether one like

The French writer and thinker Jean-Paul Sartre

is probably the best-known existentialist. He
was the author of numerous novels (including
one entitled Nausea), plays, and political and
philosophical works. A Marxist and atheist,
Sartre locates the full responsibility for human
meaning in the commitments and choices of
individuals themselves.
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362 that of Descartes or that of Leibnitz, we always grant that will more or less follows
understanding or, at the very least, accompanies it, and that when God creates
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY He knows exactly what He is creating. Thus, the concept of man in the mind of
God is comparable to the concept of paper-cutter in the mind of the manufacturer,
and, following certain techniques and a conception, God produces man, just as
the artisan, following a definition and a technique, makes a paper-cutter. Thus, the
individual man is the realization of a certain concept in the divine intelligence.
In the eighteenth century, the atheism of the philosophes discarded the idea of
God, but not so much for the notion that essence precedes existence. To a certain
extent, this idea is found everywhere; we find it in Diderot, in Voltaire, and even
in Kant. Man has a human nature; this human nature, which is the concept of the
human, is found in all men, which means that each man is a particular example
of a universal concept, man. In Kant, the result of this universality is that the wild-
man, the natural man, as well as the bourgeois, are circumscribed by the same
definition and have the same basic qualities. Thus, here too the essence of man
precedes the historical existence that we find in nature.
Atheistic existentialism, which I represent, is more coherent. It states that if God
does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a
being who exists before he can be defined by any concept, and that this being
is man, or, as Heidegger says, human reality. What is meant here by saying
that existence precedes essence? It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up,
appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the exis-
tentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only
afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be.
Thus, there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it. Not only is
man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself
to be after this thrust toward existence.
Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. Such is the first principle
of existentialism. It is also what is called subjectivity, the name we are labeled
with when charges are brought against us. But what do we mean by this, if not
that man has a greater dignity than a stone or table? For we mean that man
first exists, that is, that man first of all is the being who hurls himself toward a
future and who is conscious of imagining himself as being in the future. Man is
at the start a plan which is aware of itself, rather than a patch of moss, a piece
of garbage, or a cauliflower; nothing exists prior to this plan; there is nothing in
heaven; man will be what he will have planned to be. Not what he will want to
be. Because by the word “will” we generally mean a conscious decision, which
is subsequent to what we have already made of ourselves. I may want to belong
to a political party, write a book, get married; but all that is only a manifestation
of an earlier, more spontaneous choice that is called “will.” But if existence really
does precede essence, man is responsible for what he is. Thus, existentialism’s first
move is to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibil-
ity of his existence rest on him. And when we say that a man is responsible for
himself, we do not only mean that he is responsible for his own individuality, but
that he is responsible for all men.
The word subjectivism has two meanings, and our opponents play on the two.
Subjectivism means, on the one hand, that an individual chooses and makes
himself; and, on the other, that it is impossible for man to transcend human sub-
jectivity. The second of these is the essential meaning of existentialism. When we
say that man chooses his own self, we mean that every one of us does likewise;
but we also mean by that that in making this choice he also chooses all men.
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In fact, in creating the man that we want to be, there is not a single one of our 363
acts which does not at the same time create an image of man as we think he
CHALLENGES
ought to be. To choose to be this or that is to affirm at the same time the value TO MORALITY
of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the
good, and nothing can be good for us without being good for all.
If, on the other hand, existence precedes essence, and if we grant that we
exist and fashion our image at one and the same time, the image is valid for
everybody and for our whole age. Thus, our responsibility is much greater than
we might have supposed, because it involves all mankind. If I am a workingman
and choose to join a Christian trade-union rather than be a communist, and if by
being a member I want to show that the best thing for man is resignation, that
the kingdom of man is not of this world, I am not only involving my own case—I
want to be resigned for everyone. As a result, my action has involved all human-
ity. To take a more individual matter, if I want to marry, to have children; even
if this marriage depends solely on my own circumstances or passion or wish, I
am involving all humanity in monogamy and not merely myself. Therefore, I am
responsible for myself and for everyone else. I am creating a certain image of
man of my own choosing. In choosing myself, I choose man.
This helps us understand what the actual content is of such rather grandiloquent
words as anguish, forlornness, despair. As you will see, it’s all quite simple. . . .
When we speak of forlornness, a term Heidegger was fond of, we mean only
that God does not exist and that we have to face all the consequences of this. The
existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain kind of secular ethics which would like
to abolish God with the least possible expense. About 1880, some French teachers
tried to set up a secular ethics which went something like this: God is a useless and
costly hypothesis; we are discarding it; but, meanwhile, in order for there to be an
ethics, a society, a civilization, it is essential that certain values be taken seriously
and that they be considered as having an a priori existence. It must be obligatory,
a priori, to be honest, not to lie, not to beat your wife, to have children, etc., etc.
So we’re going to try a little device which will make it possible to show that values
exist all the same, inscribed in a heaven of ideas, though otherwise God does
not exist. In other words—and this, I believe, is the tendency of everything called
reformism in France—nothing will be changed if God does not exist. We shall find
ourselves with the same norms of honesty, progress, and humanism, and we shall
have made of God an outdated hypothesis which will peacefully die off by itself.
The existentialist, on the contrary, thinks it very distressing that God does not
exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears
along with Him; there can no longer be an a priori Good, since there is no
infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. Nowhere is it written that the Good
exists, that we must be honest, that we must not lie; because the fact is we are
on a plane where there are only men. Dostoievsky said, “If God didn’t exist,
everything would be possible.” That is the very starting point of existentialism.
Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is
forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to.
He can’t start making excuses for himself.
If existence really does precede essence, there is no explaining things away
by reference to a fixed and given human nature. In other words, there is no
determinism, man is free, man is freedom. On the other hand, if God does not
exist, we find no values or commands to turn to which legitimize our conduct.
So, in the bright realm of values, we have no excuse behind us, nor justification
before us. We are alone, with no excuses.
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364 That is the idea I shall try to convey when I say that man is condemned to be
free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet, in other respects is free;
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.13

Simone de Beauvoir14 (1908–1986) was a colleague and companion of

Sartre. She was a major contributor to the Sartrean strain of contemporary
existentialism, but was in her own right an original philosopher and a
founding contributor to a major social and intellectual movement—femi-
nism. Certainly the most famous and influential of her works is the land-
mark book The Second Sex, first published in French in 1949 (two volumes).
A propos of recent and continuing feminist concerns, the extract below dis-
plays an application of her ideas to a concrete situation.
Special attention should be given to the French expression en soi, which,
along with pour soi, occurs often in Sartrean literature. In fact, they are
“In itself”/“for fundamental to the whole perspective. En soi means, literally, “in itself,”
itself” and in Sartrean contexts has reference to nonconscious being; this is con-
trasted with pour soi, literally, “for itself,” which has reference to conscious
being along with the taking of responsibility for one’s choices. In respect
of the situation of women specifically, de Beauvoir’s thought is this. We

Simone de Beauvoir, who is often called the

“mother of modern feminism,” applied
existentialist ideas to the situation of
contemporary women.

13
Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism,” tr. Bernard Frechtman, in Existentialism and Human Emo-
tions (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957), pp. 12–18, 21–23.
14
Pronounced Bow-vwar’.
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365
CHALLENGES
FEMINIST ETHICS TO MORALITY

As we have seen throughout the book, women have often been excluded from
mainstream philosophy, a point made repeatedly by feminist thinkers. Ethics is
certainly no exception. Feminist philosophers have written widely about the need
for and shape of a specifically feminist ethics. In the following selection from
Alison Jaggar, she lays out some “minimum conditions of adequacy” for any
feminist ethics.

Feminist approaches to ethics are distinguished by their explicit commitment

to rethinking ethics with a view to correcting whatever forms of male bias it
may contain. Feminist ethics, as these approaches are often called collectively,
seeks to identify and challenge all those ways, overt but more often and more
perniciously covert, in which western ethics has excluded women or rational-
ized their subordination. Its goal is to offer both practical guides to action and
theoretical understandings of the nature of morality that do not, overtly or
covertly, subordinate the interests of any woman or group of women to the
interests of any other individual or group.
While those who practice feminist ethics are united by a shared project,
they diverge widely in their views as to how this project may be accomplished.
These divergences result from a variety of philosophical differences, including
differing conceptions of feminism itself, a perennially contested concept. The
inevitability of such disagreement means that feminist ethics cannot be identi-
fied in terms of a specific range of topics, methods or orthodoxies. For exam-
ple, it is a mistake, though one to which even some feminists occasionally
have succumbed, to identify feminist ethics with any of the following: putting
women’s interests first; focusing exclusively on so-called women’s issues;
(continued on next page)

need the other’s “look” on us to know ourselves. But the other’s “look”
can also objectify us, in the sense of reducing us to things, stultifying our
freedom to project our own possibilities, thus confining us to the state of
en-soi. The “look” of the patriarchy (our male-dominated tradition) on
women has projected her as an object (note the reference to “the brutish
life of subjection to given conditions”), thus denying her own transcen-
dence, or pour-soi. In The Second Sex, de Beauvoir is recalling women to their
existence as free projections of possibilities—called here “transcendence.”
It should be apparent that in all of this we are still talking about what we
earlier called “existential freedom.”

. . . those who are condemned to stagnation are often pronounced happy on

the pretext that happiness consists in being at rest. This notion we reject, for our
perspective is that of existentialist ethics. Every subject plays his part as such
specifically through exploits or projects that serve as a mode of transcendence;
he achieves liberty only through a continual reaching out toward other liberties.
There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an
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366
THE QUESTION accepting women (or feminists) as moral experts or authorities; substituting
OF MORALITY
“female” (or “feminine”) for “male” (or “masculine”) values; or extrapolating
directly from women’s experience.
Even though my initial characterization of feminist ethics is quite loose, it
does suggest certain minimum conditions of adequacy for any approach to
ethics that purports to be feminist.

1. Within the present social context, in which women remain systematically

subordinated, a feminist approach to ethics must offer a guide to action that
will tend to subvert rather than reinforce this subordination. Thus, such an
approach must be practical, transitional and nonutopian, an extension of
politics rather than a retreat from it. . . .
2. Since so much of women’s struggle has been in the kitchen and the bed-
room, as well as in the parliamentary chamber and on the factory floor, a
second requirement for feminist ethics is that it should be equipped to han-
dle moral issues in both the so-called public and private domains. It must
be able to provide guidance on issues of intimate relations, such as affection
and sexuality, which, until quite recently, were largely ignored by modern
moral theory. . . .
3. Finally, feminist ethics must take the moral experience of all women seriously,
though not, of course, uncritically. Though what is feminist will often turn out
to be very different from what is feminine, a basic respect for women’s moral
experience is necessary to acknowledging women’s capacities as moralists
and to countering traditional stereotypes of women as less than full moral
agents, as childlike or “natural.”*

*Alison M. Jaggar, “Feminist Ethics: Some Issues for the Nineties,” Journal of Social
Philosophy 20, nos. 1–2 (Spring/Fall 1989).

indefinitely open future. Every time transcendence falls back into immanence,
stagnation, there is a degradation of existence into the “en-soi”—the brutish life
of subjection to given conditions—and of liberty into constraint and contingence.
This downfall represents a moral fault if the subject consents to it; if it is inflicted
upon him, it spells frustration and oppression. In both cases it is an absolute evil.

EXISTENTIALISM
The philosophy that emphasizes the existing individual, as opposed to abstrac-
tions or principles, as the point of departure for authentic philosophizing. Two
existentialist slogans from Sartre:

• Existence precedes essence.

• Subjectivity must be the starting point.
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Every individual concerned to justify his existence feels that his existence involves 367
an undefined need to transcend himself, to engage in freely chosen projects.
CHALLENGES
Now, what peculiarly signalizes the situation of woman is that she—a free and TO MORALITY
autonomous being like all human creatures—nevertheless finds herself living in a
world where men compel her to assume the status of the Other. They propose to
stabilize her as object and to doom her to immanence since her transcendence is
to be overshadowed and forever transcended by another ego (conscience) which
is essential and sovereign. The drama of woman lies in this conflict between the
fundamental aspirations of every subject (ego)—who always regards the self as
the essential—and the compulsions of a situation in which she is the inessential.
How can a human being in woman’s situation attain fulfillment? What roads are
open to her? Which are blocked? How can independence be recovered in a state
of dependency? What circumstances limit woman’s liberty and how can they be
overcome? These are the fundamental questions on which I would fain throw some
light. This means that I am interested in the fortunes of the individual as defined
not in terms of happiness but in terms of liberty.15

We have already distinguished Sartre’s humanistic existentialism from

subjectivism. Nonetheless, Sartre’s position has been attacked with criticisms A familiar objection
similar to those we saw leveled against subjectivism. After all, if individual
existence precedes the essence of humanity, and nothing at all precedes or
conditions the individual’s choices, then what is to prevent those choices
from being purely arbitrary and, thus, the evolving essence of man as well?
That is, if you don’t begin with any meaning, how can you end with any?
This is the point of one of Sartre’s loudest critics, Gabriel Marcel (1889–
1973), whom Sartre mentioned as a Christian existentialist in the above
selection. (That Marcel is called an existentialist by Sartre himself, and yet
attacked the very basis of Sartre’s philosophy, reminds us of what a variety
there is among existentialists.) Marcel represents the way in which one
might be faithful to the existentialist thesis that subjectivity must be the
starting point but, beginning with subjectivity or the concreteness of per-
sonal existence, might move to a theistic or transcendent basis of value and
meaning. This, says Marcel, is exactly what we must do, for values are not
chosen but discovered. They are given. They are objective. According to Mar-
cel, the Sartrean approach bogs down in a hopeless contradiction: It claims
that outside our own commitments there is no basis for moral choices, but
then turns right around and insists that some choices are better than others.
You cannot have it both ways, and you cannot give up (can you?) the view
that some choices are better than others. We must, says Marcel, grant the
givenness of values and meaning. And given by whom, except God? From
Marcel’s The Philosophy of Existentialism:

From [Sartre’s] standpoint, values cannot be anything but the result of the initial
choice made by each human being; in other words, they can never be “recognised”
or “discovered.” “My freedom,” he states expressly, “is the unique foundation of

15
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, tr. and ed. H. M. Parshley (New York: Vintage Books,
1952), pp. xxxiii–xxxiv.
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368 values. And since I am the being by virtue of whom values exist, nothing—absolutely
nothing—can justify me in adopting this or that value or scale of values. As the
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY unique basis of the existence of values, I am totally unjustifiable. And my freedom is
in anguish at finding that it is the baseless basis of values.” Nothing could be more
explicit; but the question is whether Sartre does not here go counter to the exigen-
cies of that human reality which he claims, after all, not to invent but to reveal.
Not to deal exclusively in abstractions, let us take a concrete case. Sartre has
announced that the third volume of his Les Chemins de la Liberté [The Ways of
Freedom] is to be devoted to the praise of the heroes of Resistance. Now I ask
you in the name of what principle, having first denied the existence of values or at
least of their objective basis, can he establish any appreciable difference between
those utterly misguided but undoubtedly courageous men who joined voluntarily the
[Nazi] Anti-Bolshevik Legion, on the one hand, and the heroes of the Resistance
movement, on the other? I can see no way of establishing this difference without
admitting that causes have their intrinsic value and, consequently, that values are
real. I have no doubt that Sartre’s ingenuity will find a way out of this dilemma; in
fact, he quite often uses the words “good” and “bad,” but what can these words
possibly mean in the context of his philosophy?
The truth is that, if I examine myself honestly and without reference to any
preconceived body of ideas, I find that I do not “choose” my values at all, but
that I recognise them and then posit my actions in accordance or in contradiction

Edvard Munch’s The Shriek (1895) is sometimes

associated with the philosophy of existentialism
because of the emphasis in that philosophy
on the isolation and despair of the individual.
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with these values, not, however, without being painfully aware of this contradic- 369
tion. . . . It should perhaps be asked at this point if it is not Nietzsche who, with
CHALLENGES
his theory of the creation of values, is responsible for the deathly principle of TO MORALITY
error which has crept into speculation on this subject. But although I am the last
to underrate the objections to Nietzsche’s doctrine, I am inclined to think that his
view is less untenable than that of Sartre, for it escapes that depth of rationalism
and materialism which is discernible, to me as to others, in the mind of the author
of L’Etre et le Néant [Being and Nothingness].
I would suggest in conclusion that existentialism stands to-day at a parting of
the ways: it is, in the last analysis, obliged either to deny or to transcend itself.
It denies itself quite simply when it falls to the level of infra-dialectical material-
ism. It transcends itself, or it tends to transcend itself, when it opens itself out to
the experience of the suprahuman, an experience which can hardly be ours in a
genuine and lasting way this side of death, but of which the reality is attested by
mystics, and of which the possibility is warranted by any philosophy which refuses
to be immured in the postulate of absolute immanence or to subscribe in advance
to the denial of the beyond and of the unique and veritable transcendence.16

CHAPTER 14 IN REVIEW
SUMMARY
In this chapter we have considered four basic questions that may be thought
of as threatening or undermining the very idea of morality:

• Is morality purely relative?

• Are moral actions determined?
• Are all actions motivated by self-interest?
• Do values originate in human experience?

It has seemed to some that if the answer to any of these is Yes, then moral-
ity, at least in a more or less traditional sense, is rendered impossible from
the very start.
The most serious challenge to morality comes from relativism: Values
are purely relative, possessing no objective or absolute or real status beyond
the individual’s own notions. (Remember that “individual” may mean an
individual person or an individual group.) The objectivist freely grants that,
of course, our views or opinions about morality are largely relative (to cir-
cumstances of birth, upbringing, education, etc.), but that morality itself is
the unconditioned reality that lies behind and makes ultimate sense of our
moral quests and even our moral disputes.
Another threat is posed by the determinist, who says that since every-
thing is predetermined, so are our own moral choices and decisions. The
soft-determinist seeks to soften this blow with the explanation that our
choices are determined, but by our own character, and that that is exactly

16
Gabriel Marcel, The Philosophy of Existentialism, tr. Manya Harari (New York: Philosophical
Library, 1956), pp. 86–88.
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370 why we are responsible for them. It is important to ask whether this does
THE QUESTION
not lead right back to hard-determinism, inasmuch as our character has been
OF MORALITY shaped largely beyond our own control (or has it?). In any event, the free-
willist is often fond of turning the whole challenge on its head: Since moral-
ity is a nonnegotiable fact of our experience, and since it is unintelligible
apart from free will, the will must be (in whatever obscure way) free.
Psychological egoism was the third challenge we considered. All actions are
motivated solely by self-interest, according to the psychological egoist, so tra-
ditional morality is impossible. This theory of human nature poses a challenge
similar to determinism since it denies the very possibility of being moral. One
strategy the psychological egoist employs is reinterpreting motives, explaining
supposedly selfless actions by the agent’s desire for glory or self-satisfaction.
Critics charge that such reinterpretation renders the theory meaningless and
point to the difference between the source and content of motivations.
Finally, we considered the challenge delivered by existentialism. Here we
have looked specifically at the perspective of Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre sum-
marizes all existential philosophies as teaching that existence precedes
essence. According to Sartre’s own atheistic view, there is no value, mean-
ing, or definition of humanity apart from that which human beings them-
selves inject into the picture. Here, “Man is the measure of all things,” and
it matters what we choose and what we thereby make of humanity. On the
other hand, this is just what bothers the critics: How can it matter if there
is no justification outside us for our acts and commitments?
It is interesting, isn’t it, that although none of these challenges is par-
ticularly new, the actual give-and-take world of morality goes right on as
if nothing happened? Does morality ever actually succumb to any of these
(largely theoretical) challenges?

BASIC IDEAS
• Relativism or subjectivism
• Absolutism or objectivism
• Cultural relativism
• Relativism as impractical
• Determinism
• Hard-determinism
• Soft-determinism (self-determinism)
• Indeterminism
• The obscurity of “free will”
• Determinism as impractical
• Psychological egoism
• Ought implies can
• Strategy of reinterpreting motives
• Plato’s Ring of Gyges
• Source versus content of motivation
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• Sartre: existentialism 371

Existence precedes essence CHALLENGES
Subjectivity TO MORALITY
Freedom as the basis of values
• “In itself”/“for itself”
• Marcel’s critique of Sartre

TEST YOURSELF
1. What is the big argument for ethical relativism?
2. In what way is ethical relativism said to “backfire”?
3. What did David Hume contribute to the discussion of free will versus
determinism?
4 Characterize the general philosophical outlook of Simone de Beauvoir.
5. Recalling the discussion of B. F. Skinner in Chapter 6, is the following
true or false? Hard-behaviorists are also hard-determinists.
6 Gabriel Marcel was (a) a modern proponent of ethical relativism, (b) a critic
of Sartre’s idea of freedom, (c) an emotivist, (d) a critic of determinism.
7 Why is determinism a challenge to traditional morality?
8. What is the meaning of Sartre’s statement that “man is condemned to
be free”?

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• Do you believe that the determinist’s challenge to traditional morality is
successful? If so, your problem is to give a coherent account of morality
that can accommodate at the same time the denial of free will. If you
don’t think the challenge is successful, your problem is to give a coher-
ent account of free will itself: It’s easy to say what it isn’t, but what is
it? Is it necessary, for the sake of morality, simply to postulate an unknown
something? Would that be so bad?
• Can you give a good account of the difference between Sartre’s idea of
freedom and the idea of freedom involved in the debate between free
will and determinism?

FOR FURTHER READING

Hazel Barnes. Sartre. London: Quarlet Books, 1973. A compact introduction to
the philosophical-literary contribution of Sartre, by a leading authority.
Simon Blackburn. Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001. A short but very insightful introduction to the
history of ethics and the process of moral deliberation.
Richard B. Brandt. Ethical Theory: The Problems of Normative and Critical Ethics.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1959. Chs. 9, 11, and 20. Textbook
discussions of emotivism, relativism, and determinism.
miL86561_ch14_338-372.indd Page 372 2/1/08 9:50:04 PM santosh /Volumes/208/MHSF007/mhmiL0%0/ch14

372 Frederick Copleston. Contemporary Philosophy: Studies of Logical Positivism

THE QUESTION and Existentialism. Paramus, NJ: Newman Press, 1956. Extended readable
OF MORALITY discussions of these two dominating philosophical perspectives, by a
noted historian of philosophy.
Frederick Copleston. A History of Philosophy. Baltimore: Newman Press,
1946–1974. IX, Chs. 16–17. An overview of Sartre’s existentialist philosophy
with special reference to freedom as the basis of value.
Gerald Dworkin (ed.). Determinism, Free Will, and Moral Responsibility. Engle-
wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970. A collection of twelve essays, tradi-
tional and contemporary, on various aspects of the free-will/moral
responsibility issue.
A. C. Ewing. Ethics. New York: Free Press, 1953. Chs. 7–8. Beginning but
insightful treatments of various forms of subjectivism and the problems
of morality and free will.
Joel Feinberg. “Psychological Egoism.” In Reason and Responsibility: Readings
in Some Basic Problems in Philosophy, ed. Joel Feinberg. Ninth ed. Belmont,
CA: Wadsworth, 1996. A clear explanation of psychological egoism and
convincing refutation.
Jonathan Glover. Responsibility. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970. A
full discussion of the problem of free will and moral responsibility, with
special reference to the criminal responsibility of the mentally ill.
John Macquarrie. Existentialism. New York: World, 1972. An excellent intro-
duction to existentialist philosophy, with numerous references to Sartre.
Richard Norman. The Moral Philosophers: An Introduction to Ethics. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1983. A chronological survey of the major his-
torical figures in Western philosophical ethics.
James Rachels. Elements of Moral Philosophy. Second ed. New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1986. One of the very best short introductions to ethics.
Peter Singer (ed.). A Companion to Ethics. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1991. A
comprehensive collection of articles on all major topics in ethics.
Paul Taylor (ed.). Problems of Moral Philosophy: An Introduction to Ethics.
Belmont, CA: Dickenson, 1967. Chs. 2 and 6. Traditional and contem-
porary readings on relativism and moral responsibility in relation to
free will.
Mark Timmons. Moral Theory: An Introduction. Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2002. A systematic review of major moral theories, both his-
torical and contemporary.
W. H. Werkmeister. Theories of Ethics: A Study in Moral Obligation. Lincoln,
NE: Johnsen, 1961. Chs. 1–2. A closely documented account and critique
of the two main forms of emotivism.
Bernard Williams. Morality: An Introduction to Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1972. An intelligent and concise discussion of relativ-
ism and amoralism.
*In addition, see the relevant articles (“Ethical Relativism,” “Determinism,”
“Sarte, Jean-Paul,” etc.) in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward
Craig (London: Routledge, 1998), and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
http://plato.stanford.edu.
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C H A P T E R 15

UTILITARIANISM

I
f, in spite of the countercriticisms, you find that any of the foregoing
challenges to morality is successful, then you will have to face up to
the question whether there can be any genuine, or at least traditional,
morality at all. On the other hand, if you believe, say, that moral truths
have an objective basis and that individuals are morally responsible, then
we had best get on with the task of considering the various and sometimes
radically different views of morality.

THE QUESTION OF CONSEQUENCES

That theories of morality may go in very different directions becomes appar-
ent when we raise the question: Do the consequences of our actions matter? Do consequences
Obviously, they matter in some sense. When you vote, pull the trigger of a matter?
gun, feed the starving, bail out of an airplane, study for an exam, or perform
an infinite number of other actions, the action is done for the sake of something.
But do the consequences of our actions matter morally? That is, can our
actions be judged moral or immoral on the basis of their consequences?
It will seem to many of you that the answer is obviously Yes. And a great
many philosophers will agree with you. This type of ethical theory is called
a teleological or consequentialist theory. We saw in an earlier chapter that teleol- Teleological and
ogy is the belief in purposes, ends, or goals in the universe. As you might deontological
guess, then, a teleological theory of morality is one that stresses the conse- theories of morality
quences of actions, and even makes the consequences of actions the criterion,
373
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374 Ethics
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY
Teleological Deontological

Emphasis on the Emphasis on the

results of actions as performance of duty,
the test of their rightness rather than results, as
the sign of right action

or test, of their rightness. An action is judged right or wrong, moral or immoral,

depending on what happens as a result of it, its “payoff.” Quite different from
this type of ethical theory—in fact, directly opposed to it—is the deontological
type. An important clue as to what this means lies in the Greek word from
which it comes: deō, “to bind.” On the deontological view, the will is bound
to duty. That is, what makes an action right or wrong is the actor’s conformity
to his or her duty. And what the actor’s duty is has nothing to do with what
might or might not happen as a result of the action.
Later, in Chapter 16, we will consider the most influential deontological
theory of morality. But first we will look at the most important teleological
theory: utilitarianism.

WHAT IS UTILITARIANISM?
For many people, utilitarianism is just an eminently commonsensical phi-
losophy. What is more natural, when confronted with a moral dilemma,
than to ask something like: “What should I do to bring about the most
happiness to the most people?” Whenever this has been your criterion of
behavior, you have been a practicing utilitarian.
The actual application of the utilitarian criterion is, however, often a dif-
ficult and sometimes a dramatic affair. Consider this true scene:

He saw a lifeboat sitting about three hundred yards off. It was a small craft,
manned by half a dozen sailors. They were scanning the ship carefully.
“Help!” Hudson cried out, “Help me. Over here.”
A flashlight winked. Its beam played along the stern of the Andrea Doria.
Guided by Hudson’s screams, the light focused on the desperate sailor clinging
to the net.
“Help me!” Hudson yelled again. “Quickly. Hurry.”
Hudson waited for the men to clasp their oars. He fought against the swift
current, energized now by the sight of his rescuers.
But the lifeboat did not move.
“Help!” Hudson called once more. “Hurry. Please!”
Still the lifeboat lay quietly in the water. The flashlight again blinked in Hudson’s
eyes. They saw him. They heard him. Why would they not come? My God! Hudson
realized, the ship is going down . . . now! In his merchant marine training Hudson
had been taught that a lifeboat must sit off at least three hundred yards to avoid
being pulled under by a sinking ship. That was where the lifeboat lay. . . .
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He lay silent for a time, riding the swells, waiting for the end. An orange globe 375
of sun rose behind him, the fresh beginning of the day mocking the tragedy it
UTILITARIANISM
revealed. The Andrea Doria lay more horizontal than vertical. Deck chairs, suit-
cases, random bits of clothing, and splintered wood swayed in the waves. Hudson
climbed one notch higher on the net as it slowly sank lower into the sea.
His will returned. “Help!” he screamed. “Please come get me. You can’t let
me die.”
He could see the men watching him from the lifeboat. But they did not reach
for their oars.
The desperate man resorted to cursing once more. Then he prayed, not to God
but to the men in the lifeboat. He cried. He begged.1

It’s a simple problem: Should the lives of several be jeopardized in order

possibly to save one more? Is it really a simple problem?
We can get at the real nature of utilitarianism in three stages. First, at the
heart of utilitarianism lies the Principle of Utility. The word “utility” simply The Principle
means “usefulness,” but the utilitarians employ it to mean that which pro- of Utility
moted the greatest balance of good over evil. Thus utilitarianism is

1. The doctrine that we ought to act so as to promote the greatest balance

of good over evil.

But there must be more, for we have not yet been told what the good is.
In fact, second, utilitarianism has always gone hand in hand with hedonism, Utilitarianism
which certainly does specify the nature of the good. Hedonism is the doc- as hedonism
trine that pleasure is the highest good and that production of pleasure is the
criterion of right action. Thus, utilitarianism is

2. The doctrine that we ought to act so as to promote the greatest balance

of pleasure over pain.

But there is more, for we have not yet been told whose pleasure is to be
maximized. In fact, third, utilitarianism (as the word is usually used) has
always gone hand in hand specifically with social hedonism, the theory Utilitarianism as
that we should promote the good of society or the pleasure of all people. social hedonism
Thus utilitarianism is not motivated out of self-interest but out of an inter-
est for the greatest possible number of persons and aims at their satisfac-
tion. Utilitarianism relies on the Benevolence Principle: Happiness is to be The Benevolence
distributed as widely and as equally as possible among all people. Thus, Principle
utilitarianism is, finally,

1
William Hoffer, Saved! The Story of the “Andrea Doria”—The Greatest Sea Rescue in History (New
York: Summit Books, 1979), pp. 180–182.

Hedonism ⫹ Benevolence principle ⫽ Social hedonism or utilitarianism

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376
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY UTILITARIANISM
The ethical doctrine that an action is right if, and only if, it promotes the greatest
happiness for the greatest number of people.

3. The doctrine that we ought to act so as to promote the greatest happiness

for the greatest number.

Utilitarianism: Utilitarianism is, obviously, a political perspective as well as a philo-

A political and sophical one. As a democratic point of view it has often been, over the
philosophical view years, the basis of legislative and judicial advances, social reforms, welfare
movements, and egalitarian ideals. Not surprisingly, then, the most famous
of the utilitarian philosophers have also usually been deeply involved in
social and political issues—on the liberal side, naturally.

BENTHAM’S VERSION: QUANTITY OVER QUALITY

Historically, social utilitarianism is identified with the English philosophers
Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. (We realize that we are dealing here
with remarkable men when we learn that Bentham was studying Latin when
he was eight, and Mill was studying Greek at three!) These two thinkers,
however, represent two different forms of utilitarianism, though the differ-
ence reduces to a matter of emphasis: in the one case an emphasis on quan-
tity of happiness, and in the other an emphasis on quality of happiness.
The founder of modern utilitarianism was Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832).
For Bentham, the process of making moral decisions is really quite simple. All
you do is this: First, consider the various courses of action open to you; then,
taking into account all the persons affected, and counting yourself as only one
of them, calculate the pleasures and pains involved; then, choose the course
of action that will result in the greatest balance of pleasure over pain.
As already indicated, when Bentham presses for the greatest balance of
pleasure over pain, his idea of pleasure is a purely quantitative one. The
The greatest greatest pleasure for the greatest number means for Bentham the most plea-
means the best sure. That Bentham’s really is a purely quantitative notion of pleasure is
apparent from his well-known statement:

Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences
of music and poetry. If the game of push-pin furnish more pleasure, it is more
valuable than either.2

2
Jeremy Bentham, The Rationale of Reward, in The Works of Jeremy Bentham (Edinburgh: Tait,
1838–43), II, i, 253.
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Jeremy Bentham (shown here as a youth), a

utilitarian philosopher who stressed the
377
quantity over the quality of happiness UTILITARIANISM

How do we determine the most pleasure? The idea of calculating pleasures

and pains was formulated most explicitly in Bentham’s idea of a hedonic The hedonic calculus
calculus. According to Bentham, in attempting to calculate a pleasure, we
must, as it were, measure or weigh it in seven ways, taking into account its

1. Intensity, or how strong it is.

2. Duration, how long it will last.
3. Certainty, how likely it is to occur.
4. Propinquity, how near at hand it is.
5. Fecundity, its ability to produce still further pleasures.
6. Purity, its freedom from ensuing pains.
7. Extent, the number of people affected by it.

Bentham suggested the following verse as a prod to “lodging more effec-

tively, in the memory, these points, on which the whole fabric of morals
and legislation may be seen to rest”:

Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure—

Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure.
Such pleasures seek, if private be thy end:
If it be public, wide let them extend.
Such pains avoid, whichever be thy view:
If pains must come, let them extend to few.3
3
Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. J. H. Burns and
H. L. A. Hart (London: Athlone, 1970), p. 38.
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378
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY BENTHAM ON ANIMAL RIGHTS
“The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights
which never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.
The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason
why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a
tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of the legs,
the villoscity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally
insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that
should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the fac-
ulty of discourse? But a full grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more
rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week,
or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The
question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk ? but, Can they suffer ?”

Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1907), Ch. XVII.

By applying these seven criteria—someone has likened them to a moral

thermometer—we ought to be able to grind out, like a machine, what
course of action would deliver the most pleasure. Bentham himself speaks
of “summing up all the values of all the pleasures.” Not that we always
would, could, or should indulge in this kind of precise hedonistic arithme-
tic. On the other hand, do not all of us in fact employ some such method,
however roughly, every time we consider and weigh the pleasurable and
painful consequences of a projected act?
A further note: Bentham realized that there is a difference between know-
ing what we ought to do and doing it. This is especially true in those situ-
ations where the happiness of others means self-sacrifice and pain for you.
Bentham’s Four (To use our earlier term, Bentham was a psychological egoist.) Here Ben-
Sanctions tham’s doctrine of the Four Sanctions is relevant: nature, law, opinion, and
God. By “sanctions” Bentham means something like binding forces or
threats, but it will do to think of these Four Sanctions as motivations for
ethical behavior. If, in fact, we fail to do what we should, well, natural laws,
civil laws, public or personal opinion, and God himself will make it unpleas-
ant for us—in either this life or the next, or in both! Nature, law, opinion,
and God “persuade” us to overcome our perverse inclinations and to act
in accordance with social utility. Bentham also labeled the Four Sanctions
as the physical, the political, the moral, and the religious. But he provided
an example that, in any case, makes his meaning clear:

A man’s good, or his person, are consumed by fire. If this happened to him by what
is called an accident, it was a calamity; if by reason of his own imprudence (for
instance, from his neglecting to put his candle out) it may be styled a punishment of
the physical sanction; if it happened to him by the sentence of the political magistrate,
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a punishment belonging to the political sanction; that is, what is commonly called 379
a punishment; if for want of any assistance which his neighbour withheld from him
UTILITARIANISM
out of some dislike to his moral character, a punishment of the moral sanction; if
by an immediate act of God’s displeasure, manifested on account of some sin com-
mitted by him or through any distraction of mind, occasioned by the dread of such
displeasure, a punishment of the religious sanction.
As to such of the pleasures and pains belonging to the religious sanction, as
regard a future life, of what kind these may be we cannot know. These lie not
open to our observation.4

MILL’S VERSION: QUALITY OVER QUANTITY

Though Bentham was the founder of modern utilitarianism, his successor was
certainly the most famous utilitarian of all: John Stuart Mill (1806–1873).
Mill’s little volume with the simple title Utilitarianism is a classic of phil-
osophical literature. Furthermore, a clearer expression of the philosophy of
the greatest happiness for the greatest number could hardly be imagined.
Consider his statement of its hedonistic nature:

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals “utility” or the “greatest hap-
piness principle” holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote
happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is
intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation
of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much
more requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain
and pleasure, and to what extent this is left an open question. But these supplemen-
tary explanations do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is
grounded—namely, that pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desir-
able as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian
as in any other scheme) are desirable either for pleasure inherent in themselves or
as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.5

And consider his statement of its socialistic nature:

I must again repeat what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom have the justice
to acknowledge, that the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what
is right in conduct is not the agent’s own happiness but that of all concerned. As
between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as
strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of
Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. “To do as you
would be done by,” and “to love your neighbor as yourself,” constitute the ideal
perfection of utilitarian morality. As the means of making the nearest approach
to this ideal, utility would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should
place the happiness or (as, speaking practically, it may be called) the interest of

4
Ibid., p. 36.
5
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, ed. Oskar Piest (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957),
pp. 10–11.
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380
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY ACT-UTILITARIANISM/RULE-UTILITARIANISM
Some philosophers these days are fond of distinguishing between act-utilitarianism
and rule-utilitarianism. An obvious clue to what this distinction implies is con-
tained in the words “act” and “rule.” When you hear or see the word “act” you
think immediately of something particular: a particular deed done in this situ-
ation. On the other hand, the word “rule” brings to mind something general:
types of deeds to be done in every situation. For the act-utilitarian the question
is, What particular action should be done in this situation to bring about the
greatest happiness for the greatest number? For the rule-utilitarian the question
is, What rule should be followed in this situation to bring about the greatest
happiness for the greatest number?
A concrete example may help. The Gestapo is pounding on the door
demanding to know whether Jews are hidden in the attic. We know that Jews
are hidden in the attic, and we also know their fate—and maybe ours too—if
this should be found out. The question is whether or not to tell the truth. Act-
utilitarians will ask themselves, What particular action in this situation will pro-
duce the greatest happiness for the greatest number? And they may well
decide to lie in order to save the Jews and thwart the Gestapo’s evil intent.
Rule-utilitarians, on the other hand, will ask, What general rule applied here
will produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number? And they might
well decide to tell the truth, persuaded that in spite of the unfortunate conse-
quences in this particular situation, truthfulness on the whole or generally
makes for the greatest happiness.
In the case of the classic utilitarians, such as Bentham and Mill, philosophers
are not agreed whether they were act- or rule-utilitarians. This may show that
the distinction, though useful in theory, is difficult to apply in practice, at least
in an either/or manner. Mill, in fact, seems to have espoused both act- and
rule-utilitarianism, though at different levels, which, after all, is probably a rather
commonsensical position. We cannot live without rules of conduct, and such
rules have been distilled through the experience and wisdom of the ages—they
should probably be honored as making for the greatest happiness for the
greatest number. On the other hand, some situations are so singular and
exceptional (or at least may seem to be at the time) as not to fall into any
general category or under any general rule. In such situations we may be
forced to act on the basis of what we see dictated there as fostering the great-
est happiness—though, admittedly, threats and the brandishing of guns, and
passionate embraces in the backseat of a car may not make for the most
objective moral judgments.
Some philosophers have also questioned whether rule-utilitarianism is truly a
viable position. Their doubts are probably best understood with a simple question.
If a person follows a rule in spite of the fact that breaking the rule would lead to
better consequences, then how does the rule maximize utility? As we will see in
the next chapter, following rules in spite of their consequences is a key element
of deontological moral theories.
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every individual as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the whole; 381
and, secondly, that education and opinion, which have so vast a power over
UTILITARIANISM
human character, should so use that power as to establish in the mind of every
individual an indissoluble association between his own happiness and the good
of the whole, especially between his own happiness and the practice of such
modes of conduct, negative and positive, as regard for the universal happiness
prescribes; so that not only he may be unable to conceive the possibility of hap-
piness to himself, consistently with conduct opposed to the general good, but also
that a direct impulse to promote the general good may be in every individual one
of the habitual motives of action, and the sentiments connected therewith may fill
a large and prominent place in every human being’s sentient existence.6

Bentham and Mill stand together on the Principle of Utility as augmented

by the Principle of Benevolence: Actions are right actions if, and only if,
they produce pleasure or happiness or satisfaction of needs, and this plea-
sure or happiness or satisfaction is to be distributed among as many people
as possible. With Bentham, Mill agreed also that the basic principles of Can the principles of
social utilitarianism cannot be proved, at least not in the usual sense: social utilitarianism
be proved?
. . . questions of ultimate ends do not admit of proof, in the ordinary acceptation
of the term. To be incapable of proof by reasoning is common to all first principles,
to the first premise of our knowledge, as well as to those of our conduct.7

In another sense, though, there is a proof:

The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible is that people
actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible is that people hear it; and
so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole
evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable is that people do
actually desire it.8

On the basis of the above quotation, some readers might think that Mill
lapses after all into ethical subjectivism: If someone did not desire happi-
ness, wouldn’t this mean that for him, at least, happiness is not desirable?
It should be clear that Mill would answer with another question: If some-
one did not see an object, would it mean that the object is invisible? Good-
ness is experienced as happiness, but it hardly follows that goodness has
no objective reality apart from the experience of it. Emphatically, Mill, as
well as Bentham and all other hedonists, is an objectivist in ethics. The real
problem in the above quotation lies elsewhere, as we will see.
Where Mill really split with Bentham was over Bentham’s purely quan-
titative view of pleasure. Without denying that quantity is a consideration
in the calculation of pleasure, Mill believed that it is not as important as The greatest means
the consideration of quality. the best

6
Ibid., pp. 22–23.
7
Ibid., p. 44.
8
Ibid., pp. 44–45.
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382 Now such a theory of life excites in many minds, and among them in some of
the most estimable in feeling and purpose, inveterate dislike. To suppose that
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY life has (as they express it) no higher end than pleasure—no better and nobler
object of desire and pursuit—they designate as utterly mean and groveling, as
a doctrine worthy only of swine, to whom the followers of Epicurus were, at a
very early period, contemptuously likened; and modern holders of the doctrine
are occasionally made the subject of equally polite comparisons by its German,
French, and English assailants.
When thus attacked, the Epicureans have always answered that it is not they,
but their accusers, who represent human nature in a degrading light, since the
accusation supposes human beings to be capable of no pleasures except those
of which swine are capable. If this supposition were true, the charge could not
be gainsaid, but would then be no longer an imputation; for if the sources of
pleasure were precisely the same to human beings and to swine, the rule of life
which is good enough for the one would be good enough for the other. The
comparison of the Epicurean life to that of beasts is felt as degrading, precisely
because a beast’s pleasures do not satisfy a human being’s conceptions of happi-
ness. Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites and,
when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which
does not include their gratification. I do not, indeed, consider the Epicureans to
have been by any means faultless in drawing out their scheme of consequences
from the utilitarian principle. To do this in any sufficient manner, many Stoic, as
well as Christian, elements require to be included. But there is no known Epi-
curean theory of life which does not assign to the pleasures of the intellect, of
the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments a much higher value
as pleasures than to those of mere sensation. It must be admitted, however, that
utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of mental over bodily
pleasures chiefly in the greater permanency, safety, uncostliness, etc., of the
former—that is, in their circumstantial advantages rather than in their intrinsic
nature. And on all these points utilitarians have fully proved their case; but they
might have taken the other and, as it may be called, higher ground with entire
consistency. It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize the fact
that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others.
It would be absurd that, while in estimating all other things quality is considered
as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasure should be supposed to depend on
quantity alone.9

For Mill, as for most, it hardly needs arguing that although push-pin may
be more fun than poetry, it yields an inferior happiness. And can the joy
of sex really compare with the joy of the intellect? (The answer is No.) Or
to use Mill’s language, wouldn’t you rather be a dissatisfied human than
a satisfied pig, or a dissatisfied Socrates than a satisfied fool? For Mill, as
for Bentham, the action is to be pursued that makes for the greatest hap-
piness for the greatest number. But whereas for Bentham “greatest” meant
most, for Mill it meant best.
Who says which Granted that two pleasures may differ in quality, who is to say which is
pleasures are the the best? Mill answers that the decision must rest with those who have
best? experienced both.
9
Ibid., pp. 11–12.
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383
JOHN STUART MILL UTILITARIANISM

J
ohn Stuart Mill was born in London in 1806. Although he never attended
school, his education was among the most remarkable ever. He was instructed
entirely by his father, James Mill, who had him learning Greek at the age of
three and Latin at eight. By the time he was fourteen he had read most of the
Greek and Latin classics (in the original languages) and had become expert in
widely differing fields, such as history and mathematics. His social and political
liberalism had also been shaped at an early age under the influence of his father
and his father’s associate, Jeremy Bentham. Regarding his reading of Bentham,
(continued on next page)

If I am asked what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes

one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being
greater in amount, there is but one possible answer. Of two pleasures, if there be
one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided prefer-
ence, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more
desirable pleasure. If one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted
with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing
it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for
any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified
in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality so far outweighing
quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account.10

10
Ibid., p. 12.
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384
THE QUESTION Mill said: “. . . the feeling rushed upon me, that all previous moralists were super-
OF MORALITY
seded, and that here indeed was the commencement of a new era of thought.”
In 1823, Mill became a clerk for the East India Company, where his father was
also employed. He remained with the company until 1858, eventually advancing
to a high position. In 1826, Mill fell into a deep depression, which, in his autobi-
ography, he likened to the lines of Coleridge:

A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,

A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet or relief
In word, or sigh, or tear.

After many months he rallied from this depression, aided by his own insight, “Ask
yourself whether you are happy, and you will cease to be so,” and by the poetry
of Wordsworth.
The woman in Mill’s life was Mrs. Harriet Taylor, whom he met when he was 25.
They sustained a Platonic relationship for twenty years. Three years after her hus-
band’s death, Mill married her, and when, in 1858 while they were touring France
together, she herself died, Mill bought a house in Avignon in order to be near her
grave. Mill called her “the most admirable person I have ever known,” and referred
to his relation to her as “the honor and chief blessing of my existence.” He also
attributed to her much of the inspiration and content of his writings.
Although Mill never held an academic position, over many years he frequently
contributed articles to journals and magazines and produced many volumes. His
philosophical magnum opus was the System of Logic, published in 1843. A great
champion of liberal causes and representative government, Mill was encouraged in
1865 to stand for election to Parliament. He refused to campaign, contribute to
expenses, or defend his views, and won. He was defeated in the next election, 1868,
and thereupon spent his time either in London or in Avignon, something of a recluse,
and cared for by his wife’s daughter, Helen. After a brief illness, he died in 1873.
Some of Mill’s more important works are System of Logic, Utilitarianism, Subjec-
tion of Women, Principles of Political Economy, On Liberty, Utility of Religion, and
Autobiography.

And those who have experienced both invariably opt for the higher or more
qualitative pleasures.

Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with
and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying both do give a most marked
preference to the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties. Few
human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for
a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast’s pleasures; no intelligent human
being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus,
no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they
should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with
his lot than they are with theirs. They would not resign what they possess more
than he for the most complete satisfaction of all the desires which they have in
common with him. If they ever fancy they would, it is only in cases of unhappiness
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385
UTILITARIANISM
PLEASURE: QUANTITY OR QUALITY?
• Bentham: “If the game of push-pin furnish more pleasure, it is more
valuable.”
• Mill: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.”

so extreme that to escape from it they would exchange their lot for almost any other,
however undesirable in their own eyes. A being of higher faculties requires more
to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and certainly
accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type; but in spite of these
liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade
of existence. . . . It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied;
better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig,
are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the
question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.11

Presumably, however, Mill is not inviting us to sample all possible pleasures!

Mill also differed somewhat with Bentham on the matter of moral sanc-
tions. He did not deny Bentham’s “external” sanctions of nature, law, opin-
ion, and God—motivations outside ourselves for certain behavior. Indeed, he
claimed that there is no reason why, for example, “hope of favor and the
fear of displeasure from our fellow creatures or from the Ruler of the uni-
verse,” and any other motivations for moral behavior, should not buttress
utilitarian action as well as other kinds of action. He adds, however, an
“internal” sanction, a motivation inside ourselves to behave in certain ways.
Mill calls this “a subjective feeling in our own minds” but it might just as
easily be called conscience. He also calls it the “ultimate” sanction or moti- Mill’s internal
vation of all moral behavior. sanction: conscience

The ultimate sanction, therefore, of all morality (external motives apart) being a
subjective feeling in our own minds, I see nothing embarrassing to those whose
standard is utility in the question, What is the sanction of that particular standard?
We may answer, the same as of all other moral standards—the conscientious
feelings of mankind. Undoubtedly this sanction has no binding efficacy on those
who do not possess the feelings it appeals to; but neither will these persons be
more obedient to any other moral principle than to the utilitarian one. On them
morality of any kind has no hold but through the external sanctions. Meanwhile
the feelings exist, a fact in human nature, the reality of which, and the great
power with which they are capable of acting on those in whom they have been
duly cultivated, are proved by experience. No reason has ever been shown why
they may not be cultivated to as great intensity in connection with the utilitarian
as with any other rule of morals.12

11
Ibid., pp. 12–14.
12
Ibid., p. 37.
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386
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY MORAL SANCTIONS: EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL
• External sanctions: Motivations or coercions for moral behavior that derive from
outside ourselves, such as respect for the natural order, fear of civil punish-
ment, fear of social disapproval, and fear of God’s judgment.
• Internal sanctions: Motivations or coercions for moral behavior that lie within
ourselves, such as conscience.

Where does this internal sanction, this “feeling in our own minds,” come
from? Even though Mill has just spoken of it as a fact of human nature, he
believes that it is not innate, but acquired and cultivated. On the other
hand, this makes it no less natural. As he himself says, we also speak,
reason, build cities, and cultivate the ground—activities natural to humans
but certainly acquired.
In discussions of morality, the distinction between what actually results
from one’s actions and why one did it is often and rightly raised. In the first
edition of Utilitarianism Mill took a fairly stark position: The moral right-
Motives and ness of an action is independent of the motive behind it. He was severely
intentions criticized for this, and in the second edition he added a footnote defending
and further explaining himself.

He who saves a fellow creature from drowning does what is morally right, whether
his motive be duty or the hope of being paid for his trouble; he who betrays the
friend that trusts him is guilty of a crime, even if his object be to serve another
friend to whom he is under greater obligations.*

*An opponent whose intellectual and moral fairness it is a pleasure to

acknowledge (the Rev. J. Llewellyn Davies), has objected to this passage, saying,

THE FIRST PARAGRAPH IN MILL’S

SUBJECTION OF WOMEN:
“The object of this Essay is to explain as clearly as I am able, the grounds of an
opinion which I have held from the very earliest period when I had formed any
opinions at all on social or political matters, and which, instead of being weak-
ened or modified, has been constantly growing stronger by the progress of reflec-
tion and the experience of life: That the principle which regulates the existing
social relations between the two sexes—the legal subordination of one sex to the
other—is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improve-
ment; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting
no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.”
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Mill was a great champion of what in his day were radical causes, including women’s
rights and the abolition of child labor and slavery. This cartoon (published in Punch,
387
March 30, 1867) suggests that Mill’s work on logic leads to women’s liberation. UTILITARIANISM

“Surely the rightness or wrongness of saving a man from drowning does depend
very much upon the motive with which it is done. Suppose that a tyrant, when
his enemy jumped into the sea to escape from him, saved him from drowning
simply in order that he might inflict upon him more exquisite tortures, would it
tend to clearness to speak of that rescue as ’a morally right action’? Or sup-
pose again, according to one of the stock illustrations of ethical inquiries, that a
man betrayed a trust received from a friend, because the discharge of it would
fatally injure that friend himself or someone belonging to him, would utilitarian-
ism compel one to call the betrayal ’a crime’ as much as if it had been done
from the meanest motive?”
I submit that he who saves another from drowning in order to kill him by torture
afterwards does not differ only in motive from him who does the same thing for
duty or benevolence; the act itself is different. The rescue of the man is, in the case
supposed, only the necessary first step of an act far more atrocious than leaving
him to drown would have been. Had Mr. Davies said, “The rightness or wrongness
of saving a man from drowning does depend very much”—not upon the motive,
but—“upon the intention,” no utilitarian would have differed from him. Dr. Davies,
by an oversight too common not to be quite venial, has in this case confounded
the very different ideas of Motive and Intention. There is no point which utilitarian
thinkers (and Bentham pre-eminently) have taken more pains to illustrate than this.
The morality of the action depends entirely upon the intention—that is, upon what
the agent wills to do. But the motive, that is, the feeling which makes him will so
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388 to do, if it makes no difference in the act, makes none in the morality: though
it makes a great difference in our moral estimation of the agent, especially if it
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY indicates a good or a bad habitual disposition—a bent of character from which
useful, or from which hurtful actions are likely to arise.13

Is Mill playing with words? squirming out of a legitimate criticism? Or is

his distinction between motives and intentions valid and important?

SOME OBJECTIONS
Some obvious We mention here some of the objections made against utilitarianism specifi-
complaints cally, and in the next section some objections to hedonism in all of its forms.
In Utilitarianism, Mill himself answers a whole string of rather obvious
charges against utilitarianism. For example: Utilitarianism is a pig-philosophy
that encourages the pursuit of base pleasures; it is a godless philosophy
that establishes a criterion of morality independent of the question of God’s
will; it is such a “calculating” philosophy as to chill our human feelings for
one another; it focuses attention on the consequences of actions to the exclu-
sion of their motives; it asks us to do the impossible—namely, to anticipate
endless chains of consequences from our actions. If you can’t see how Mill
would have answered such charges, the second chapter of Utilitarianism
makes good philosophical reading.
But some other problems may be mentioned.
Social hedonism First, it should be evident that utilitarianism sidesteps to some degree the
versus altruism charge that it is egoistic. On the other hand, neither is it purely altruistic,
focusing exclusively on the interests of others. Though it tells us to distrib-
ute happiness among as many people as possible, it also tells us never to
forget that each of us is one of those people. Whether or not this is a problem
depends on how strenuously you take the ideal of altruism. Perhaps social
hedonism goes far enough in its concern for the interests of others. But
maybe not. Did Jesus, Socrates, or St. Francis count himself even as one?

13
Ibid., p. 24.

How might a utilitarian reason about the rightness or wrongness of

• Capital punishment?
• Abortion?
• War?
• Minority rights?
• Euthanasia?
• Genetic engineering?
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Second, we have seen that all forms of hedonism, but especially Ben- 389
tham’s, employ some type of hedonic calculus, or computation of pleasures. UTILITARIANISM
Now this may look good on paper, but how practical is it? Is it really pos-
sible to measure and compare, say, the intensity of different pleasures in Is the hedonic
different people? Or even the same pleasure in the same person? Try it. calculus workable?
Further, the hedonic calculus is geared to produce certain sorts of results.
But though we may be able to foresee some of the consequences of our
actions, who can really foresee all of them, to say nothing of the conse-
quences of the consequences, and so on? We may grant that in certain very
general cases the implications of our actions are fairly obvious, but even if
we were utilitarians it is not in these situations that we would look for moral
guidance, is it? It’s when we aren’t clear about the consequences that we
need help.
Third, social hedonism results in some rather awkward puzzles. For Some embarrassing
example, we are told to act so as to promote the greatest happiness for the puzzles
greatest number. But is not ten parts of happiness distributed over two
people—five parts of happiness each—as much the greatest happiness for
the greatest number as ten parts of happiness distributed evenly to ten
people? It may be answered that this is where the Justice Principle comes in
with the idea that happiness is to be spread over as many people as pos-
sible. But then we have to ask constantly, Who has how much pleasure?
And, as one philosopher has observed, is it really meaningful to say that
person A is three-and-a-half times as happy as person B? And in any event,
would you be willing to dispatch someone to burn in hell forever even if
you could thereby secure the eternal happiness of every other person in the
world? Clearly, the utilitarian’s numbers game is a difficult one to play.
Fourth, it is often objected that utilitarianism (or, for that matter, hedo- Are there more
nism in general) is incompatible with the standards of morality that we basic ideals than
actually employ. We recognize, for example, the intrinsic rightness (that is, happiness?
rightness for its own sake and apart from its consequences) of acting fairly,
telling the truth, and keeping promises. Could you break a promise without
batting an eye, even if you knew it would promote happiness in general?
And what about the possible conflict between the claims of utility and the
claims of justice? Would you be willing to frame an innocent person if

FACTUAL JUDGMENTS AND VALUE JUDGMENTS

• A factual judgment is a judgment that describes some empirical state of affairs.
Examples: “In fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue,”
“Water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit,” and “Everyone seeks pleasure.”
• A value judgment is a judgment that evaluates something or judges its worth.
Examples: “Two heads are better than one,” “Honesty is the best policy,” and
“Pleasure is the highest good.”
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390
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
In the following scenario, Bernard Williams throws into clear relief what—in an admit-
tedly bizarre situation—would be expected of Jim if he were a consistent utilitarian.
At the same time, it will be clear to many that what is required on utilitarian grounds
is utterly unacceptable. Or is it? What would you do if you were Jim?

Jim finds himself in the central square of a small South American town. Tied
up against the wall are a row of twenty Indians, most terrified, a few defiant,
in front of them several armed men in uniform. A heavy man in a sweat-stained
khaki shirt turns out to be the captain in charge and, after a good deal of
questioning of Jim which establishes that he got there by accident while on
a botanical expedition, explains that the Indians are a random group of the
inhabitants who, after recent acts of protest against the government, are just
about to be killed to remind other possible protestors of the advantages of not
protesting. However, since Jim is an honoured visitor from another land, the
captain is happy to offer him a guest’s privilege of killing one of the Indians
himself. If Jim accepts, then as a special mark of the occasion, the other
Indians will be let off. Of course, if Jim refuses, then there is no special occa-
sion, and Pedro here will do what he was about to do when Jim arrived, and
kill them all. Jim, with some desperate recollection of schoolboy fiction, won-
ders whether if he got hold of a gun, he could hold the captain, Pedro and
the rest of the soldiers to threat, but it is quite clear from the set-up that noth-
ing of that kind is going to work: any attempt at that sort of thing will mean
that all the Indians will be killed, and himself. The men against the wall, and
the other villagers, understand the situation, and are obviously begging him
to accept. What should he do?*

*Bernard Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” in J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams,

Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 98f.

doing so would maximize utility? If a utilitarian argument in favor of

reinstating slavery succeeded in showing that the greatest happiness of the
greatest number would be thus served, would we feel obligated to do so?
Surely we do not really believe that it is right to pursue pleasure and hap-
piness, even of the greatest number, no matter what. In the end, our pursuit
of the general welfare appears to be conditioned by other and even more
basic ideals.
Finally, fifth, utilitarianism faces a criticism because it is a naturalistic
ethic—it takes its clue from nature, or from what is. In the case of utili-
tarianism, it is an appeal to human nature, and move specifically to the
natural human desire for pleasure. Consider Bentham’s claim that

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain
and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do.14

14
Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, p. 11.
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391
It is often pointed out that the following statement by Mill (in Utilitarianism) involves UTILITARIANISM
a simple logical fallacy. What is it?

“. . . each person’s happiness is a good to that person, and the general happi-
ness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons.”

UTILITARIANISM AND THE MORALITY OF MURDER

Utilitarianism tells us that the right action is the one that creates the greatest
happiness for the greatest number of people. But what about situations where
this requires killing another person? Is this still what utilitarianism requires? The
philosopher Tom Regan uses the following story about his Aunt Bea to illustrate
a powerful objection to the utilitarian approach to ethics.

My Aunt Bea is old, inactive, a cranky, sour person, though not physically ill.
She prefers to go on living. She is also rather rich. I could make a fortune if I
could get my hands on her money, money she intends to give me in any event,
after she dies, but which she refuses to give me now. In order to avoid a huge
tax bite, I plan to donate a handsome sum of my profits to a local children’s
hospital. Many, many children will benefit from my generosity, and much joy will
be brought to their parents, relatives, and friends. If I don’t get the money rather
soon, all these ambitions will come to naught. The once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity
to make a real killing will be gone. Why, then, not really kill my Aunt Bea? Oh,
of course I might get caught. But I’m no fool and, besides, her doctor can be
counted on to cooperate (he has an eye for the same investment and I happen
to know a good deal about his shady past). The deed can be done . . . profes-
sionally, shall we say. There is very little chance of getting caught. And as for
my conscience being guilt ridden, I am a resourceful sort of fellow and will take
more than sufficient comfort—as I lie on the beach at Acapulco—in contemplat-
ing the joy and health I have brought to so many others.
Suppose Aunt Bea is killed and the rest of the story comes out as told.
Would I have done anything wrong? Anything immoral? One would have
thought that I had. But not according to utilitarianism. Since what I did brought
about the best balance of totaled satisfaction over frustration for all those
affected by the outcome, what I did was not wrong. Indeed, in killing Aunt
Bea the physician and I did what duty required.
This same kind of argument can be repeated in all sorts of cases, illustrat-
ing time after time, how the utilitarian’s position leads to results that impartial
people find morally callous. It is wrong to kill my Aunt Bea in the name of
bringing about the best results for others. A good end does not justify an evil
means. Any adequate moral theory will have to explain why this is so. Utili-
tarianism fails in this respect and so cannot be the theory we seek.*

*Tom Regan, “The Radical Egalitarian Case for Animal Rights,” in In Defense of Animals,
ed. Peter Singer (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985).
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392 And Mill’s claim that

THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible is that people
actually see it. . . . In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible
to produce that anything is desirable is that people do actually desire it. . . . If
the opinion which I have now stated is psychologically true—if human nature is
so constituted as to desire nothing which is not either a part of happiness or a
means of happiness—we can have no other proof, and we require no other, that
these are the only things desirable.15

The objection to naturalistic ethics, often called the Naturalistic Fallacy,

is often posed in the form of a question: Can an ought be derived from
an is? Stated otherwise, it is the mistake of equating a factual judgment
with a value judgment. These utilitarian thinkers clearly try to derive an
ought from an is. Look at the two quotations above. Don’t factual judg-
ments seem to be mixed up with value judgments? What have our “natu-
ral masters,” pain and pleasure, got to do with “what we ought to do”?
And although what is psychologically true might have something to do
with what is actually desired, what has it got to do with what is desirable,
or worthy of desire, or right? This is exactly how G. E. Moore attacked this
very passage in Mill.

Well, the fallacy in this step is so obvious, that it is quite wonderful how Mill
failed to see it. The fact is that “desirable” does not mean “able to be desired” as
“visible” means “able to be seen.” The desirable means simply what ought to be
desired or deserves to be desired; just as the detestable means not what can be
but what ought to be detested and the damnable what deserves to be damned.
Mill has, then, smuggled in, under cover of the word “desirable,” the very notion
about which he ought to be quite clear. “Desirable” does indeed mean “what it is
good to desire”; but when this is understood it is no longer plausible to say that
our only test of that, is what is actually desired. Is it merely a tautology when the
Prayer Book talks of good desires? Are not bad desires also possible?16

And philosophers have been attacking Mill in the same way ever since.

CHAPTER 15 IN REVIEW
SUMMARY
One major way of distinguishing between moral philosophies is to raise the
question of consequences. Utilitarianism is a teleological ethic, emphasizing
the consequences of actions as the criteria of their moral worth. Also, it iden-
tifies pleasure or happiness as the specific consequence to be attained. It is
crucial to note, however, that it’s not the pleasure or happiness of the indi-
vidual but that of society: the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

15
Mill, Utilitarianism, pp. 44, 48–49.
16
George Edward Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903), p. 67.
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Bentham and Mill are, historically, the best representatives of the utilitar- 393
ian position. Bentham pressed for a quantitative interpretation of the UTILITARIANISM
“greatest” happiness and propounded a hedonic calculus to assist in its
determination. Mill pressed for a qualitative interpretation of the “greatest”
happiness and urged that it is only the widely experienced individual who
is in a position to extol the superiority of the qualitative pleasures—for
example, the pleasures of the mind.
Although utilitarianism escapes the charge of egoism, it is subject to
many of the complaints leveled against any hedonistic philosophy. Most
notably, utilitarianism is, finally, in some sense a naturalistic ethic, finding
its basis in what individuals actually, and naturally, desire and strive for.
As such it is an obvious target for critics who distinguish ought from is.

BASIC IDEAS
• Consequences and morality
• Teleological and deontological theories of morality
• The Principle of Utility
• The Benevolence Principle
• Utilitarianism as social hedonism
• Utilitarianism as a political position
• Bentham’s version of utilitarianism
• The hedonic calculus: seven criteria of the greatest pleasure
• Bentham’s Four Sanctions
Nature
Civil law
Opinion
God
• Mill’s version of utilitarianism
• The Principle of Utility as unprovable . . .
• . . . and provable
• Mill’s criterion of the best pleasures
• Mill’s internal sanction
• Mill on the difference between motives and intentions
• The Justice Principle
• The Naturalistic Fallacy

TEST YOURSELF
1. What is the basic difference between teleological and deontological theo-
ries of moralism?
2. Benevolence Principle ⫹ Hedonism ⫽ ? What is the Benevolence Prin-
ciple and how does it relate to hedonism?
3. Who formulated a sevenfold hedonic calculus in order to measure the
quantity of pleasure?
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394 4. According to Mill, what is the only proof that anything is desirable?
THE QUESTION 5. Who said it? “If the game of push-pin furnish more pleasure, it is more
OF MORALITY valuable.”
6. The big difference between Bentham’s and Mill’s versions of utilitarian-
ism concerns _____ versus _____.
7. Exactly why is utilitarianism a naturalistic ethics?
8. What was G. E. Moore’s objection to utilitarianism?
9. According to Mill, which of the following are relevant for the deter-
mination of a moral act? (a) number of people involved, (b) production
of happiness, (c) quality of pleasure involved, (d) external sanctions.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• What do you think of Mill’s justification of utilitarianism? What about
the Naturalistic Fallacy? Are there values to which even the greatest
happiness for the greatest number might be sacrificed? What is to say
that the greatest happiness for the whole human race is the highest
good? If the whole human race were suddenly to disappear, by virtue
of what could it then be said: “That’s too bad”?
• Here we have encountered the distinction between “higher” and “lower”
pleasures. What do you make of Mill’s evidence for the qualitative supe-
riority of the higher pleasures? Would you rather be an unsatisfied
Socrates than a satisfied pig? Why?
• Are you a utilitarian? Any form of utilitarianism asserts that the moral-
ity of any action is determined by the (intended) consequences. Is that
your belief?

FOR FURTHER READING

Michael D. Bayles (ed.). Contemporary Utilitarianism. Garden City, NY:
Anchor Books, 1968. A collection of ten essays, evaluating utilitarianism
from the standpoint of contemporary issues and perspectives.
Richard B. Brandt. Ethical Theory: The Problems of Normative and Critical Ethics.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1959. Ch. 15. A discussion of “Moral
Obligation and General Welfare,” with special treatment of act- and rule-
utilitarianism.
Frederick Copleston. A History of Philosophy. Baltimore: Newman Press,
1946–1974. VIII, Chs. 1–2. Chapters on “The Utilitarian Movement,” with
special treatment of Bentham’s and Mill’s ethical doctrines, by a noted
historian of philosophy.
A. C. Ewing. Ethics. New York: Free Press, 1953. Ch. 3. An introductory and
unsympathetic treatment of “The Pursuit of General Happiness.”
W. D. Hudson (ed.). The Is-Ought Question: A Collection of Papers on the Central
Problem in Moral Philosophy. London: Macmillan, 1969. Twenty-two essays
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by well-known thinkers on all aspects of the is-ought relation, with a help- 395
ful introduction by the editor. UTILITARIANISM
Philip Blair Rice. On the Knowledge of Good and Evil. New York: Random
House, 1955. Ch. 5. A chapter on Moore’s criticism of Mill (Naturalistic
Fallacy), somewhat sympathetic to the naturalist stance.
Henry Sidgwick. The Method of Ethics. London: Macmillan, 1907. An old
but enduring sophisticated and systematic defense of a version of
utilitarianism.
J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams. Utilitarianism: For and Against. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1973. A defense by Smart and an especially
compelling critique by Williams of act-utilitarianism.
W. H. Werkmeister. Theories of Ethics: A Study in Moral Obligation. Lincoln,
NE: Johnsen, 1961. Ch. 5. A closely documented critical account of “uni-
versalistic hedonism,” concentrating on Bentham’s and Mill’s versions.
*In addition, see the relevant articles (“Utilitarianism,” “Mill, John Stuart,”
etc.) in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig (London:
Routledge, 1998), and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato
.stanford.edu.
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C H A P T E R 16

THE ROLE
OF DUTY

E
ven aside from the objections mentioned, it has been charged that
there is something basically wrong with utilitarianism. Something
important has been left out. Aren’t some things just right or wrong
no matter what? Isn’t there such a thing as unconditional obligation? duty?
To be sure, it is precisely in its exaltation of duty, pure and simple, as the
foundation of moral actions, that the theory in the present chapter is radi-
cally different.

MORALITY AS UNCONDITIONAL
First, we must remind ourselves of the important distinction between
teleological and deontological ethics. We saw at the beginning of Chap-
ter 15 that a teleological theory of morality is one that emphasizes the
intended consequences or results of actions as the criteria of their right-
ness. And we considered the best example of this sort of ethical theory:
utilitarianism, where the criterion of right action was the promotion of
the general welfare. But however it may conceive the “good results,”
any teleological theory says, “Such-and-such is the right action because
it produces such-and-such results.” A theory like this is clear, straight-
forward, and commonsensical.
How odd it might sound, therefore, for someone to say, “The consequences The irrelevance
or results of your actions have nothing at all to do with their rightness or of consequences
wrongness!” This is a deontological conception of morality. You will recall that
397
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398 a deontological theory is one that sets up as the criterion of moral behavior
THE QUESTION
not what might or might not happen—or be intended to happen—as a result
OF MORALITY of one’s actions, but rather the intent to perform one’s duty through a certain
action.
This was exactly the thesis of Immanuel Kant, who, by the way, didn’t
think it a bit odd. In fact, he regarded it as the only possible way to conceive
of genuine moral behavior. Why? Kant’s answer is found, for the most part,
in his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. It is a small book, but, as the
Kant scholar H. J. Paton says, “one of the small books which are truly great:
it has exercised on human thought an influence almost ludicrously dispro-
portionate to its size.”1
For Kant, morality is a matter of ought, or obligation. Doesn’t any moral
theory tell us what we ought to do? This is not the problem. The problem
is that a distinction is not usually drawn between the conditional ought
and the unconditional ought. A conditional ought says, “You ought to do
X if you want something-or-other to happen.” The ought is conditioned
by something-or-other. But the unconditional ought says, “You ought to
do X, period.” For Kant, only the unconditional ought is the moral ought.
Why? Because, as we all recognize—don’t we?—morality must be neces-
sary and universal; that is, it must be absolutely binding, and absolutely
binding on everyone alike: Whoever you are, whatever your situation,
you ought to do X. But the conditional ought involves “ifs” and “in order
thats” and therefore gets mixed up with all sorts of particular circum-
stances, changing desires, personal inclinations, and so on. Any “moral-
ity” (Kant would put it in quotation marks) founded on the conditional
ought (“Do X if . . .” or “Do X, in order that . . .”) will therefore be relative
and particular rather than necessary and universal—but then it is not
real morality, is it?
This is not to say that in deciding what we ought to do—how to fulfill
our duty—we should never take the consequences of our actions into
account. Often it is necessary to consider the results of an action in order
to perceive whether it is our duty. But it is out of duty that we should act,
not for the sake of the consequences. Stay with this until it is clear to you,
or maybe consider an example. We borrow the following from yet another
Kant scholar, Lewis White Beck.

Imagine two soldiers who volunteer for a dangerous mission; because they see
a task they ought to undertake, they voluntarily assume the responsibility for it.
Certainly their act will have consequences; equally certain is the fact that they
desire certain consequences for their act. The most careful consideration of these
consequences, calculation as to how to achieve some desirable consequences and
avoid others less desirable, and an ardent desire to attain the goal do not in the
least detract from the morality of the men’s action if they are indeed acting on the

1
H. J. Paton, in the Preface to his translation of Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of
Morals, published as Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (New York: Harper & Row,
1964), p. 8.
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conviction that it is their duty to do these acts; their concern with the consequences 399
may be an essential part of their conduct, necessary for the fulfillment of the obliga-
THE ROLE OF DUTY
tion they have placed upon themselves. Now imagine that one of the men is killed
before reaching his destination, while the other is successful; what moral judgment
do we pass upon them? So far as we judge that their motives were equally good
(and of course, as Kant repeatedly says, we cannot be sure what anyone’s motives
really are), we judge them in the same way. Their acts are judged to be equally
moral, in spite of the fact that one succeeded and the other failed. Each did his
“best,” and what he earnestly attempted and the motives which led him to do what
he did are the proper objects of moral judgment; what he accomplishes lies to a
large extent beyond his control.2

Do you see that even with its possible interest in consequences this posi-
tion is quite unlike, say, utilitarianism? There the question was, Did you
act for the sake of promoting the general welfare? But here the question is,
Aside from what you accomplish or even tried to accomplish, did you act
out of duty?
But back to the main point. Another way Kant expresses his rejection of
conditioned morality is by his rejection of any and all naturalistic ethics. As The irrelevance
we explained earlier, a naturalistic ethics is one that bases its ought in some of nature
way on nature, say by an appeal to the physical world, or to psychology,
or to human nature, or to history. But such an ethics would be based on
what happens to be, or might be, or could be, whereas genuine morality is,
again, a matter of necessity and universality. Do you see that happiness, for
example, must for Kant be an impossible basis for moral laws?
This section is entitled “Morality as Unconditional.” Is it clear that for
Kant morality is not conditioned by (that is, not defined by, not bound by,
not relative to, not based on) anything outside the morality of the act itself?
Is it clear how, for Kant, the introduction of the empirical categories of
consequences and nature not only clouds but absolutely distorts the idea
of morality?
In the following, from the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant
emphasizes with a vengeance the absolute necessity of separating genuine
morality from all empirical considerations, and the necessity, instead, of
deriving it a priori from pure reason. (By “anthropology,” Kant means what
can be known empirically about human nature.)

2
Lewis White Beck, in the Preface to his translation of Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Meta-
physics of Morals (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), p. ix.

Kant objects to:

• Any teleological conception of moral action.
• Any naturalistic basis of moral action.
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400 Moses with the Ten Commandments. These divine imperatives are a classic
example of the deontological approach that has shaped Western morality.
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY

Since my purpose here is directed to moral philosophy, I narrow the proposed

question to this: Is it not the utmost necessity to construct a pure moral philosophy
which is completely freed from everything which may be only empirical and thus
belong to anthropology? That there must be such a philosophy is self-evident from
the common idea of duty and moral laws. Everyone must admit that a law, if it
is to hold morally, i.e., as a ground of obligation, must imply absolute necessity;
he must admit that the command, “Thou shalt not lie,” does not apply to men
only, as if other rational beings had no need to observe it. The same is true for
all other moral laws properly so called. He must concede that the ground of
obligation here must not be sought in the nature of man or in the circumstances
in which he is placed, but sought a priori solely in the concepts of pure reason,
and that every other precept which rests on principles of mere experience, even
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401
THE ROLE OF DUTY
IMMANUEL KANT

T
he historian of philosophy Frederick Copleston has described Kant’s life as
“singularly uneventful and devoid of dramatic incident.”
Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in Königsberg, East Prussia (now Russia),
on the Baltic Sea. Kant’s father, who immigrated from Scotland (and changed the
family name from Cant to Kant), was a saddler. The family was large, poor, and
religious. They were Pietists (something like Prussian Puritans), and the continuous
round of prayers, religious instruction, and observances is no doubt why Kant in
his adult years never attended public worship except on extraordinary occasions.
On the other hand, he embraced to the end the ethical principles of his early
religious upbringing.
In 1740, he entered the University of Königsberg, where he drank in a broad
survey of many fields: metaphysics, physics, algebra, geometry, psychology,
astronomy, and logic. At the conclusion of his studies he earned a sparse
livelihood by becoming a tutor to the Prussian gentry. It was during this time
that he was introduced to high society, though he soon withdrew into the ivory
tower of academic life. In 1755, he took what we would call a doctoral degree
and became a lecturer at the university. In 1770, he was made professor. He
taught and published first in science, anticipating Laplace’s nebular hypoth-
esis concerning the origin of the universe and Darwin’s theory of evolution.
But he turned gradually to metaphysics. Kant’s lectures were said to be lively
and even humorous—though one would never guess this from most of his
writings.
(continued on next page)
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402
THE QUESTION In 1781, at the ripe age of 57, he published the monumental Critique of Pure
OF MORALITY
Reason. This was followed by the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique
of Judgment. According to the German writer Herder, Kant spoke “the profound-
est language that ever came from the lips of man.” Profound perhaps, but per-
haps also the most exasperating. He gave the manuscript of his first Critique to
a colleague, Marcus Herz. Herz returned it half-read, with the explanation, “If I
finish it, I am afraid I shall go mad!”
Kant lectured at the university for over forty years. In all this time he never
traveled more than 60 miles from Königsberg, and for forty years did not
spend so much as a single night outside that city. Kant was a small man
(about five feet tall), extremely frail, and somewhat distorted in his frame. He
was meticulous about his health, verging on the neurotic. His daily routine was
extremely fixed, beginning every morning at 4:55. It is reported that his daily
walk was so regular that he strolled for exactly one hour, eight times up and
down the Linden Allee (which came to be nicknamed “The Philosopher’s
Walk”), and so punctual that the townspeople set their clocks by it. He never
married and was, in fact, something of a misogynist. He died in senile dementia
on February 12, 1804.
Kant’s most important philosophical works include Critique of Pure Reason,
Critique of Practical Reason, Critique of Judgment, Prolegomena to any Future
Metaphysics, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Metaphysical First Prin-
ciples of Natural Science, Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone, and On
Perpetual Peace.

a precept which is in certain respects universal, so far as it leans in the least on

empirical grounds (perhaps only in regard to the motive involved), may be called
a practical rule but never a moral law. . . .
But a completely isolated metaphysics of morals, mixed with no anthropology,
no theology, no physics or hyperphysics, and even less with occult qualities (which
might be called hypophysical), is not only an indispensable substrate of all theoreti-
cally sound and definite knowledge of duties; it is also a desideratum of the highest
importance to the actual fulfillment of its precepts. For the pure conception of duty
and of the moral law generally, with no admixture of empirical inducements, has
an influence on the human heart so much more powerful than all other incentives
which may be derived from the empirical field that reason, in the consciousness of its
dignity, despises them and gradually becomes master over them. It has this influence
only through reason, which thereby first realizes that it can of itself be practical. A
mixed theory of morals which is put together both from incentives of feelings and
inclinations and from rational concepts must, on the other hand, make the mind
vacillate between motives which cannot be brought under any principle and which
can lead only accidentally to the good and often to the bad.
From what has been said it is clear that all moral concepts have their seat and
origin entirely a priori in reason. This is just as much the case in the most ordi-
nary reason as in reason which is speculative to the highest degree. It is obvious
that they cannot be abstracted from any empirical and hence merely contingent
cognitions. In the purity of their origin lies their worthiness to serve us as supreme
practical principles, and to the extent that something empirical is added to them
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403
“We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.” THE ROLE OF DUTY

—Kant

just this much is subtracted from their genuine influence and from the unqualified
worth of actions.3

THE GOOD WILL

In this way, Kant eliminates from the start the least suggestion that morality
can be based on our natural states and inclinations. He does not begrudge
us, say, pleasure and happiness, but wants us to see that such “gifts of
nature” cannot be the foundation of morality as rationally conceived.
Consider, for example, what we might call the innate gifts of intelligence,
wit, and courage, or the accidental gifts of power, wealth, and honor. Does
it take any great insight to see that these are not absolute goods? that they
have no intrinsic or unconditional value? To see that this is so, just notice how
any one of them could be corrupted or turned into an evil. Well, then, is
there anything more basic than these that is absolutely and unconditionally
good? Kant says Yes. And it is, in fact, the very thing that these other things
depend on for their goodness, and without which they would become cor-
rupted and turned into evil. What is this absolute good, the necessary and
sufficient condition for all right action, the foundation of rational morality?
The good will. The good will as the
One of the most quoted passages in all philosophical literature is the basis for morality
opening sentence of the first section of the Foundations:

Nothing in the world—indeed nothing even beyond the world—can possibly be

conceived which could be called good without qualification except a good will.

Kant goes on immediately to show how the good will underlies any pos-
sible goodness of our natural gifts:

Intelligence, wit, judgment, and the other talents of the mind, however they may be
named, or courage, resoluteness, and perseverance as qualities of temperament, are
doubtless in many respects good and desirable. But they can become extremely bad
and harmful if the will, which is to make use of these gifts of nature and which in
its special constitution is called character, is not good. It is the same with the gifts
of fortune. Power, riches, honor, even health, general well-being, and the content-
ment with one’s condition which is called happiness, make for pride and even
arrogance if there is not a good will to correct their influence on the mind and on
its principles of action so as to make it universally comformable to its end. It need
hardly be mentioned that the sight of a being adorned with no feature of a pure

3
Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, pp. 5, 27–28.
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404 and good will, yet enjoying uninterrupted prosperity, can never give pleasure to a
rational impartial observer. Thus the good will seems to constitute the indispensable
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY condition even of worthiness to be happy.
Some qualities seem to be conducive to this good will and can facilitate its
action, but, in spite of that, they have no intrinsic unconditional worth. They rather
presuppose a good will, which limits the high esteem which one otherwise rightly
has for them and prevents their being held to be absolutely good. Moderation in
emotions and passions, self-control, and calm deliberation not only are good in
many respects but even seem to constitute a part of the inner worth of the person.
But however unconditionally they were esteemed by the ancients, they are far from
being good without qualification. For without the principle of a good will they
can become extremely bad, and the coolness of a villain makes him not only far
more dangerous but also more directly abominable in our eyes than he would
have seemed without it.
The good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes or
because of its adequacy to achieve some proposed end; it is good only because
of its willing, i.e., it is good of itself. And, regarded for itself, it is to be esteemed
incomparably higher than anything which could be brought about by it in favor
of any inclination or even of the sum total of all inclinations. Even if it should
happen that, by a particularly unfortunate fate or by the niggardly provision of a
stepmotherly nature, this will should be wholly lacking in power to accomplish its
purpose, and if even the greatest effort should not avail it to achieve anything of
its end, and if there remained only the good will (not as a mere wish but as the
summoning of all the means in our power), it would sparkle like a jewel in its own
right, as something that had its full worth in itself. Usefulness or fruitlessness can
neither diminish nor augment this worth. Its usefulness would be only its setting,
as it were, so as to enable us to handle it more conveniently in commerce or to
attract the attention of those who are not yet connoisseurs, but not to recommend
it to those who are experts or to determine its worth.4

Pore over the above paragraphs until they are digested. Still, even though
What is a good will? Kant here uses the phrase “good will” repeatedly, he does not say exactly
what it means. If we somehow miss this, then we miss the whole point.
For Kant a good will, or a pure will, is an intention to act in accordance
with moral law, and moral law is what it is no matter what anything else
is. To act out of a good will is, then, to do X because it is right to do X, and
for no other reason. This would be rational morality.
An important note: Kant stresses the difference between acting “out of”
duty and acting “in accordance with” duty. Obviously, we may do some-
thing that just happens to accord with what our duty is, but this would

4
Ibid., pp. 9–10.

“Nothing in the world—indeed nothing even beyond the world—can possibly be

conceived which could be called good without qualification except a good will.”
—Kant
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hardly make the action moral. In order to be really moral, our action 405
must be done out of duty—that is, with a good will or with respect for THE ROLE OF DUTY
the moral law. This may seem odd at first, but consider an example that
Kant used. What should we say about a shopkeeper who is always hon-
est with customers and never cheats them? Is he acting morally? Of
course not, Kant says, because he is merely acting in self-interest to avoid
losing business.

KANT’S CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE

At this point Kant presents us with one of the most famous and important
concepts in the history of ethics: the Categorical Imperative. The Categorical
For Kant, the Categorical Imperative is the fundamental principle of Imperative stated
morality. More accurately, it is a criterion or test by which we can make
sure our actions are moral—that is, that they are motivated by a good will
or performed out of duty. As Kant states it in its most general form, the
Categorical Imperative is this:

Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it
should become a universal law.5

That is to say, when you are about to do X, ask yourself whether it is possible
to will that everyone else act in the same way. If the answer is Yes, then, says
Kant, you may be assured that you are acting out of duty or with a good will.
Why is this? We will explain in a moment exactly how the Categorical Imper-
ative is a test of right action.
Sometimes the Categorical Imperative is referred to, for short, as the Prin-
ciple of Universalizibility, since it asks us whether we can “universalize” our
actions—that is, whether we could demand that everyone else in similar cir-
cumstances act in accordance with the same rule as we would. But we must
not miss the significance of Kant’s own—and more ponderous—expression.
What is an imperative ? It is a command. As a command, the Categorical Imper- What is an
ative addresses and constrains our will, which it recognizes might not always imperative?
(and often enough doesn’t!) gladly pursue what it ought. As a command, the
Categorical Imperative reckons with our natural perversity; in fact, Kant
believed, in his own way, in the traditional Christian doctrine of original sin.
But why is this imperative called, further, categorical? Here we encounter again
the distinction between doing something as a means of achieving some end and
doing something simply because it’s right. Kant says that all imperatives are
either hypothetical or categorical. A hypothetical imperative would command Hypothetical
you to do X if you wanted Y (notice the hypothetical form of the statement, and categorical
“if . . . then”). But a categorical imperative would command you to do X inasmuch imperatives
as X is intrinsically right—that is, right in and of itself, aside from any other
considerations—no “ifs,” no conditions, no strings attached.

5
Ibid., p. 39.
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406 Kant himself clearly draws the distinction between hypothetical and cat-
THE QUESTION
egorical imperatives:
OF MORALITY
All imperatives command either hypothetically or categorically. The former present
the practical necessity of a possible action as a means to achieving something else
which one desires (or which one may possibly desire). The categorical imperative
would be one which presented an action as of itself objectively necessary, without
regard to any other end.6

And Kant leaves no doubt as to which of these alone can have any bearing
on morality, and why:

. . . there is one imperative which directly commands a certain conduct without

making its condition some purpose to be reached by it. This imperative is categori-
cal. It concerns not the material of the action and its intended result but the form
and the principle from which it results. What is essentially good in it consists in the
intention, the result being what it may. This imperative may be called the impera-
tive of morality.7

It is important to grasp this. A hypothetical imperative is conditional on (“if”)

or subject to things, circumstances, goals, and desires; and these, of course,
change all the time, are relative to the individual, and so on. But a categorical
imperative is unconditional (no “ifs”) and independent of any things, circum-
stances, goals, or desires. It is for this reason that only a categorical imperative
can be a universal and binding law—that is, a moral law, valid for all rational
beings at all times.

THE TEST OF MORAL ACTIONS

Understandably, the Categorical Imperative, as the fundamental principle of
morality, may leave you cold. To be sure, there is no talk here about exciting
things like lying, stealing, and committing adultery. Instead, we are confronted
by rather abstract talk about maxims and laws, without any particular content.
It is true. Kant told us above—not in so many words, but at least in these
exact words—that his Categorical Imperative, the foundation of rational moral-
Kant’s “formalism” ity, is concerned not with the matter but with the form of morality. On the other
hand, its concern for the form is precisely for the sake of getting the matter
right. Let’s try to say this in several ways. The Categorical Imperative

• Isn’t concerned with what you do but how you do it, since if the how is right
the what will be right.
• Doesn’t address specific moral issues but the nature of morality itself.
• Doesn’t prescribe the rightness or wrongness of particular actions but
what makes any action right or wrong.

6
Ibid., p. 31.
7
Ibid., p. 33.
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407
THE ROLE OF DUTY
THE MURDERER AT THE DOOR
For Kant, consequences are irrelevant to morality, no matter what! Probably the
most famous example of the strictness of Kant’s stance comes with the case of the
murderer at the door. Imagine that your friend is hiding in your house and someone
comes to the door looking to murder her. Would it be morally acceptable to lie about
the whereabouts of your friend? While most of us would almost certainly say, Yes,
Kant is firm. Even to the murderer at the door, you must always tell the truth.

If by telling a lie you have in fact hindered someone who was even now plan-
ning a murder, then you are legally responsible for all the consequences that
might result therefrom. But if you have adhered strictly to the truth, then public
justice cannot lay a hand on you, whatever the unforeseen consequence might
be. It is indeed possible that after you have honestly answered Yes to the
murderer’s question as to whether the intended victim is in the house, the latter
went out unobserved and thus eluded the murderer, so that the deed would not
have come about. However, if you told a lie and said that the intended victim
was not in the house, and he has actually (though unbeknownst to you) gone
out, with the result that by so doing he has been met by the murderer and thus
the deed has been perpetrated, then in this case you may be justly accused
as having caused his death. For if you had told the truth as best you knew it,
then the murderer might perhaps have been caught by neighbors who came
running while he was searching the house for his intended victim, and thus the
deed might have been prevented. Therefore, whoever tells a lie, regardless of
how good his intentions may be, must answer for the consequences resulting
therefrom even before a civil tribunal and must pay the penalty for them, regard-
less of how unforeseen those consequences may be. This is because truthful-
ness is a duty that must be regarded as the basis of all duties founded on
contract, and the laws of such duties would be rendered uncertain and useless
if even the slightest exception to them were admitted.
To be truthful (honest) in all declarations is, therefore, a sacred and uncondi-
tionally commanding law of reason that admits of no expediency whatsoever.*

*Immanuel Kant, “On a Supposed Right to Lie because of Philanthropic Concerns,” sup-
plement to Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, tr. James W. Ellington (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1993 [1785]), p. 65.

But, of course, this is largely true of any theory of morality. All right,
then, we may state it even more strongly. According to Kant, when we seek
to make a moral judgment about a possible course of action, what we pri-
marily need to take into account has nothing to do with pleasure, pain, joy,
welfare, happiness, Jews hiding in the attic, threats, or the brandishing of
guns. Rather, it has to do with—what must seem exceedingly dull and
formal by comparison—the possibility of a contradiction in our action. The Categorical
And this brings us back to the way in which the Categorical Imperative is Imperative as a test
a test of moral actions. When embarking on a certain course of action, I must of moral action
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408 ask: Does the universalizing of the principle of my action result in a contradic-
THE QUESTION
tion? If so, the action fails the test and must be rejected as immoral. But it is
OF MORALITY important to see what is meant here by “contradiction.” It is not a logical
contradiction as often as a practical one. It might help to think of the latter sort
of self-contradictory action as a self-stultifying or self-defeating one.
Some examples Kant himself provides some concrete examples of how the application
of the Categorical Imperative might result in contradiction and backfire:

1. A man who is reduced to despair by a series of evils feels a weariness with life but
is still in possession of his reason sufficiently to ask whether it would not be contrary
to his duty to himself to take his own life. Now he asks whether the maxim of his
action could become a universal law of nature. His maxim, however, is: For love of
myself, I make it my principle to shorten my life when by a longer duration it threatens
more evil than satisfaction. But it is questionable whether this principle of self-love
could become a universal law of nature. One immediately sees a contradiction in a
system of nature whose law would be to destroy life by the feeling whose special
office is to impel the improvement of life. In this case it would not exist as nature;
hence that maxim cannot obtain as a law of nature, and thus it wholly contradicts
the supreme principle of all duty.
2. Another man finds himself forced by need to borrow money. He well knows
that he will not be able to repay it, but he also sees that nothing will be loaned him
if he does not firmly promise to repay it at a certain time. He desires to make such
a promise, but he has enough conscience to ask himself whether it is not improper
and opposed to duty to relieve his distress in such a way. Now, assuming he does
decide to do so, the maxim of his action would be as follows: When I believe myself
to be in need of money, I will borrow money and promise to repay it, although I
know I shall never do so. Now this principle of self-love or of his own benefit may
very well be compatible with his whole future welfare, but the question is whether it
is right. He changes the pretension of self-love into a universal law and then puts the
question: How would it be if my maxim became a universal law? He immediately
sees that it could never hold as a universal law of nature and be consistent with
itself; rather it must necessarily contradict itself. For the universality of a law which
says that anyone who believes himself to be in need could promise what he pleased
with the intention of not fulfilling it would make the promise itself and the end to be
accomplished by it impossible; no one would believe what was promised to him but
would only laugh at any such assertion as vain pretense.

THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE

• It is an imperative because it commands you to do something.
• It is categorical because it commands you to do something unconditionally—
that is, without regard to consequences or personal desires.

What the Categorical Imperative unconditionally commands is that in situation X

you act in such a way as you could will everyone in situation X to act. If you can
do that, then you stand a chance of acting from duty or out of a concern for what
is right.
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3. A third finds in himself a talent which could, by means of some cultivation, 409
make him in many respects a useful man. But he finds himself in comfortable cir-
THE ROLE OF DUTY
cumstances and prefers indulgence in pleasure to troubling himself with broadening
and improving his fortunate natural gifts. Now, however, let him ask whether his
maxim of neglecting his gifts, besides agreeing with his propensity to idle amuse-
ment, agrees also with what is called duty. He sees that a system of nature could
indeed exist in accordance with such a law, even though man (like the inhabitants
of the South Sea Islands) should let his talents rust and resolve to devote his life
merely to idleness, indulgence, and propagation—in a word, to pleasure. But he
cannot possibly will that this should become a universal law of nature or that it
should be implanted in us by a natural instinct. For, as a rational being, he neces-
sarily wills that all his faculties should be developed, inasmuch as they are given
to him for all sorts of possible purposes.
4. A fourth man, for whom things are going well, sees that others (whom he could
help) have to struggle with great hardships, and he asks, “What concern of mine
is it? Let each one be as happy as heaven wills, or as he can make himself; I will
not take anything from him or even envy him; but to his welfare or to his assistance
in time of need I have no desire to contribute.” If such a way of thinking were a
universal law of nature, certainly the human race could exist, and without doubt
even better than in a state where everyone talks of sympathy and good will, or
even exerts himself occasionally to practice them while, on the other hand, he cheats

HOW TO “OPERATIONALIZE” KANT’S TEST

FOR MORAL ACTION
The issue: Is act X morally permissible? And if so, is X an obligation?

Stage 1. Ask: "Can I will doing X universally, that is, everyone in similar
circumstances doing X ?"

No, it would result in Yes.

Y
a contradiction. =
= Doing X is morally permissible.
Doing X is wrong.

Stage 2. If "yes," ask: "Can I will to omit X universally, that is, no one
in similar circumstances doing X ?"

No. Yes.
Y
= =
Doing X is a moral X is a right action but
obligation. not an obligation.
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410
THE QUESTION How might a Kantian reason about the rightness or wrongness of
OF MORALITY
• Capital punishment?
• Women’s rights?
• Racial discrimination?
• War?
• The CIA?
• Abortion?

when he can and betrays or otherwise violates the rights of man. Now although it
is possible that a universal law of nature according to that maxim could exist, it is
nevertheless impossible to will that such a principle should hold everywhere as a
law of nature. For a will which resolved this would conflict with itself, since instances
can often arise in which he would need the love and sympathy of others, and in
which he would have robbed himself, by such a law of nature springing from his
own will, of all hope of the aid he desires.
The foregoing are a few of the many actual duties, or at least of duties we
hold to be actual, whose derivation from the one stated principle is clear. We
must be able to will that a maxim of our action become a universal law; this
is the canon of the moral estimation of our action generally. Some actions are
of such a nature that their maxim cannot even be thought as a universal law of
nature without contradiction, far from it being possible that one could will that it
should be such. In others this internal impossibility is not found, though it is still
impossible to will that their maxim should be raised to the universality of a law
of nature, because such a will would contradict itself.8

To this point we have spoken in the singular of the Categorical Impera-

tive. Actually, it should be added, Kant provided several formulations of
Categorical Imperatives, though these are really best thought of as different
versions of the same fundamental principle of morality. Certainly they
overlap with one another, and they suggest important and differing ways
in which the fundamental principle may be viewed and applied.9

Two versions 1. Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will
of the Categorical that it should become a universal law.
Imperative
2. Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of
another, always as an end and never as a means only.

While we have focused primarily on the first version of the Categorical

Imperative, the second is no less important. Here the focus is on how we
treat others and aims for universal respect for all persons. Martin Luther King,
Jr., explicitly referred to this version in denouncing racial segregation.
8
Ibid., pp. 39–42.
9
Ibid., pp. 39, 52.
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411
THE ROLE OF DUTY
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.,
ON THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE
“There must be a recognition of the sacredness of human personality. Deeply
rooted in our political and religious heritage is the conviction that every man is
an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth. . . .
“Segregation stands diametrically opposed to the principle of sacredness of
human personality. It debases personality. Immanuel Kant said in one formulation
of the Categorical Imperative that ‘all men must be treated as ends and never
as mere means.’ The tragedy of segregation is that it treats men as means rather
than ends, and thereby reduces them to things rather than persons. . . .
“But man is not a thing. He must be dealt with, not as an ‘animated tool,’ but as
a person sacred in himself. To do otherwise is to depersonalize the potential person
and desecrate what he is.”

Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Ethical Demands of Integration,” in A Testament of Hope: The
Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James Melvin Washington
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986), pp. 118–119.

SOME OBJECTIONS
The first objection might, rather naturally, focus on the moral law itself.
Kant assumes throughout that there is a moral law, a sort of moral rhyme
and reason to things, a “moral law within” that is just as given as the starry Is there a moral law?
heavens above, and that we can be in harmony with it by obeying the
Categorical Imperative. But what if someone were to throw up his or her
hands and exclaim, “There is no undergirding and overarching morality—
it’s all up for grabs!”? Does it not behoove Kant (and most other moral
philosophers, as well) to show that there is some objective morality that
moral philosophy reasons about? How this might be done has been con-
sidered in several places already. Do you recall the arguments against nihil-
ism, emotivism, and subjectivism?
Again, if Kant is clear about anything, it is that morality can in no way
be based on anything empirical or natural. But why can’t one, for instance
a naturalist, simply turn the tables and say that morality must be based on Back to naturalistic
nature—that is, defend naturalistic ethics? You will recall that this was pre- ethics?
cisely Mill’s position, and Mill followed Kant, not hesitating to thumb his
nose, as it were, at Kant’s a priorism. Can ethical naturalism be so obviously
wrongheaded as Kant made it out to be? But this brings us back to the
problems with metaphysical and ethical naturalism themselves.
Closely related, it has been charged that whatever Kant may have
intended, his radical distinction between the moral world and the natural
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412
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY A FEMINIST ALTERNATIVE: THE ETHICS OF CARE
One important response to Kant has come from feminist philosophers. They have
argued that traditional moral theories are inadequate because of their exclusive
focus on rationality (which is typically associated with masculinity). In particular
deontological theories such as Kant’s don’t adequately account for the moral
experience of most women. Feminists claim that rather than thinking of ethics in
terms of autonomous individuals and abstract principles, women think of morality
in terms of interpersonal relationships and connections. According to this theory,
which has been labeled the “ethics of care,” moral value resides in maintaining
and nurturing caring relationships.
The ethics of care has its roots in the research of Harvard psychologist Carol
Gilligan. Gilligan argued against the theory of moral development created by
Lawrence Kohlberg, a prominent moral psychologist. From his research, Kohlberg
had concluded that people go through different stages in their moral decision
making. The highest stage, according to Kohlberg’s theory, is very similar to
Kant’s version of moral reasoning. Women, however, almost never reached this
highest stage and tended to get “stuck” at a lower level where moral decisions
are based on norms from family and society.
Gilligan rejected the implications of Kohlberg’s research that women are morally
inferior to men. Her book, In a Different Voice, claimed that in their moral decision
making women use a type of moral reasoning that is equally mature, but different
from men’s. Gilligan’s research, using primarily women as subjects, led her to con-
clude that women tend to see ethics in terms of maintaining relationships and
personal moral responsibility rather than abstract principles of right and wrong. Men
tend to see a moral dilemma as a problem with a right or wrong answer, women
(continued on next page)

Downplaying the world may have the effect of rendering us morally neutral toward nature.
values of nature That is, it has the effect of stripping nature of its values and downplaying
any moral responsibility we may have toward it. This is an especially big
criticism in our day when philosophers have been quickened to the issues
of environmental ethics and animal rights.
The treatment of nonhuman animals provides a clear example. While
Kant argued that we should not be cruel to animals, the reason for this is
revealing: Kant had no concern for the animals themselves—since they are
not rational beings, they deserve no direct consideration, he argued. He
worried, however, that cruelty toward animals could lead to cruelty toward
our fellow humans. Thus Kant’s is an entirely anthropocentric (human–
centered) ethics that includes no obligations to nature.
Another question: Does Kant’s theory of morality presuppose a “faculty
Faculty psychology? psychology”? Faculty psychology is the view that divides the person’s
inner life into distinct and different faculties with their own respective func-
tions and powers. In Kant’s theory, desires and inclinations are distinct
from and subservient to the will, and the will is something different from
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413
commonly understand such a dilemma as an interpersonal conflict that needs THE ROLE OF DUTY
resolution.
In this excerpt from her book, Speaking from the Heart, Rita Manning expands
upon this approach to ethics:

An ethic of caring, as I shall defend it, includes two elements. First is a

disposition to care. This is a willingness to receive others, a willingness to give
the lucid attention required to appropriately fill the needs of others. In this
sense, an ethic of care is contextual; my actions must be guided by this lucid
attention. . . .
This disposition to care assumes a commitment to an ideal of caring; the
ethically preferred world is one in which creatures are caring and cared for. Its
institutions support and sustain caring while simultaneously reducing the need
for care by eliminating the poverty, despair, and indifference that create a need
for care.
Second, in addition to being sensitive to one’s place in the world and to
one’s general obligation to be a caring person, one is also obligated to care
for. (I am following Noddings in using “care for” to indicate caring as expressed
in action.) In the paradigm case, caring for involves acting in some appropriate
way to respond to the needs of persons and animals, but can also be extended
to responding to the needs of communities, values, or objects. . . .
I have often wondered if taking a class in moral philosophy was the best
way for students to become sensitive to moral concerns. It seemed to me that
a better way would be to have students work in soup kitchens or shelters for
the homeless.*

*Rita Manning, Speaking from the Heart (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
1992).

and subservient to reason. It is a good question whether the activities of

our inner lives can be split apart in this way.
Also, it may be objected to Kant’s “universalizing” that every law has
some exceptions. But a misunderstanding may be involved here. Kant The problem
never gave us any universal laws of action, but universal maxims of action. of exceptions
The emphasis is not on the what but the how. In spite of his own (unfortu-
nate?) example of having to tell the truth irrespective of the consequences,
his real point is that whether we tell the truth or not, we must act out of a
good will or duty and no exceptions to that!
Finally, we come to the problem that you may feel more strongly, and
that is probably because it is a more practical problem. The strict deontolo- Can consequences
gist has told us, perhaps more times than we care to hear, that consequences be ignored?
(or at least the values of various consequences) are irrelevant for moral
decision and action. Is this really practical advice? Who of us, knowing full
well that, say, telling a lie would result in cruel and innocent suffering,
would or could ignore this consequence? And is it not the case that some-
times we should wake up in the middle of the night worrying about the
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414 consequences of some act or other committed the day before? When the
THE QUESTION
chips are down, in a concrete existential situation, Kant’s “formalism”
OF MORALITY might be too formal for its own good. Man does not live by bare principles
alone. Does Kant demand of us that we be more rational than we can pos-
sibly be, or even should be?

CHAPTER 16 IN REVIEW
SUMMARY
In Chapter 15 we discussed an ethical theory that is both (1) teleological
and (2) naturalistic. In this chapter, we have discussed an ethical perspec-
tive that is diametrically opposite in both of these respects.
As we have seen, the best example of such a perspective is found in the
moral philosophy of Kant, who emphasized that if morality is to be truly
necessary and universal, it cannot be based on accidental and fluctuating
empirical considerations. That is why the consequences of actions are irrelevant
for the morality or immorality of an action, as are considerations such as his-
tory, human nature, and the like. In the place of any teleological or naturalis-
tic conception of morality, Kant substitutes a completely a priori conception:
Morality must have a purely rational basis. This a priori or rational basis of
morality is underscored by Kant’s well-known pronouncement that only a
good will is unconditionally good. That is, it is good in itself. On the other
hand, it is a condition for all moral behavior: Without good will anything else,
such as power or wealth, would be quickly abused or misappropriated.
What, more exactly, is the good or pure will? It is the intention to act in
accordance with moral law, or to act only out of respect for what is right
and not for any other reason. Kant formalizes this principle of all morality
in the Categorical Imperative: “Act only according to that maxim by which
you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” The
ability to universalize (apply to everyone) the rule by which we act in a
given situation is a sufficient guarantee of the morality of our action, or
that it is being done out of respect for the moral law alone.
As always, this philosophical position too is subject to many criticisms.
One of the most common is that it is characterized by a certain abstractness
or remoteness. To be sure, it may be difficult to bring to bear a rather life-
less and formal principle like the Categorical Imperative on the concrete
and often vivid moral dilemmas we are frequently confronted by. On the
other hand, that is just Kant’s concern. Do we too easily and quickly decide
these issues by obvious and immediate considerations that actually blind
us to the real and rational basis of moral action?

BASIC IDEAS
• Deontological ethics
• The conditional versus the unconditional ought
• Kant’s rejection of teleological ethics
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• Kant’s rejection of naturalistic ethics 415

• The good will as the basis for morality THE ROLE OF DUTY
• The Categorical Imperative
• Hypothetical versus categorical imperatives
• Kant’s “formalism”
• The Categorical Imperative as a test for moral action
• Two versions of the Categorical Imperative
• Ethics of care

TEST YOURSELF
1. True or false: Kant’s is a teleological ethics.
2. Which of the following is most relevant for Kant’s theory of morality?
(a) the well-being of society, (b) consequences of actions, (c) duty, (d) hypo-
thetical imperatives.
3. What do nature, history, sociology, anthropology, or, in a word, empirical
factors have to do with morality as Kant conceives it?
4. For Kant, the only truly good thing is a _____.
5. Why is Kant’s basic principle of morality called the “Categorical
Imperative”?
6. A moral proposition of the form “If you want X, then you should do Y”
is called a _____ imperative. Why?
7. True or false: The Categorical Imperative isn’t concerned with what you
do but how you do it.
8. How is the Categorical Imperative a test for moral actions?

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• What do you think of the effort to establish morality on a purely a priori
foundation? Do you believe in an objective moral law? Can such a law be
dependent on or conditioned by a posteriori factors? What is its relation
to the natural world?
• It is not quite right, is it, to say that for Kant the consideration of con-
sequences is utterly irrelevant for the determination of a moral act. Can
you explain both sides of Kant’s view of consequences?

FOR FURTHER READING

C. D. Broad. Five Types of Ethical Theory. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1930. Ch. 5. An exposition and critique of Kant’s moral philosophy, from
an old but standard work by a well-known philosopher.
Frederick Copleston. A History of Philosophy. Baltimore: Newman Press,
1946–1974. VI, Ch. 14. A clear and authoritative account of the essential
points in Kant’s moral philosophy.
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416 A. C. Ewing. Ethics. New York: Free Press, 1953. Ch. 4. A beginner-oriented
THE QUESTION chapter on the “Duty for Duty’s Sake,” a summary and (negative) evaluation
OF MORALITY of Kant’s ethics.
William K. Frankena. Ethics. Second ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
1973. Ch. 2. An elementary discussion of egoistic and deontological
theories, with some specific treatment of Kant’s ethics.
Carol Gilligan. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Develop-
ment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. A feminist classic
showing the differences in moral development between boys and girls.
Justus Hartnack. Immanuel Kant: An Explanation of His Theory of Knowledge
and Moral Philosophy. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1974. Ch. 3.
A brief, clear account of Kant’s ethical perspective in relation to his
philosophy of religion.
Stephen Körner. Kant. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1955. Ch. 6. A chapter on
Kant’s moral philosophy, from a standard work on Kant.
Ned Noddings. Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. A clear exposition of the
ethics of care by a leading proponent.
H. J. Paton. The Categorical Imperative: A Study in Kant’s Moral Philosophy.
London: Hutchinson, 1946. A complete and authoritative treatment of
Kant’s moral philosophy, by a foremost Kant scholar.
W. D. Ross. Kant’s Ethical Theory. London: Oxford University Press, 1954. A
full-scale study of Kant’s ethical theory.
W. H. Werkmeister. Theories of Ethics: A Study in Moral Obligation. Lincoln,
NE: Johnsen, 1961. Chs. 8–9. Closely documented and critical studies of
the deontological ethics of Kant and some recent revisions of Kantianism.
Robert Paul Wolff (ed.). Kant: A Collection of Critical Essays. Garden City, NY:
Anchor Books, 1967. Advanced discussions of aspects of Kant’s philosophy,
including his moral philosophy.
Robert Paul Wolff (ed.). Kant’s Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, with
Critical Essays. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969. A translation of Kant’s
most important moral work, with worthwhile studies of special issues
by nine Kantian scholars.
*In addition, see the relevant articles (“Deontological Ethics,” “Kant,
Immanuel,” etc.) in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig
(London: Routledge, 1998), and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://
plato.stanford.edu.
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C H A P T E R 17

VIRTUE

W
e have now seen two different theories of morality: utilitari-
anism and Kant’s ethics of duty. Although these approaches
to morality are different, they both share one common feature:
They focus on actions. Each theory gives us rules to determine which actions
are right and which wrong, and guidance on what actions we should take
and which we shouldn’t. Utilitarianism, for example, tells us that the right
action is the one that results in “the greatest good for the greatest number of
people.” Kant, on the other hand, argues that we must follow the Categorical
Imperative in judging actions. In this last chapter on morality, we will look
at a new approach. Actually, it’s a very old theory of morality dating back
over 2,000 years to the writings of Aristotle.

CHARACTER AND ACTION

Are actions the right focus for morality? That simple question is at the heart
of virtue ethics, the traditional approach to ethics favored by Aristotle that
has experienced renewed interest recently. Instead of looking at actions,
virtue theory focuses on the actor, the person who is acting and particularly Actor versus actions
the character of this person. Virtues are traits of character that manifest
themselves in action, but it’s the traits themselves that most interest virtue
theorists. These traits, they claim, tell us about the whole person, not just
individual actions, and this is where we must look for a more complete
understanding of morality.
417
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418 One way to illustrate the differences between moral theories is to look
THE QUESTION
at the questions they ask. Often the questions asked, even more than the
OF MORALITY answers given, point to the key differences. Utilitarians and deontologists
both ask similar questions: What separates right and wrong actions? What
Different theories rules should guide behavior? How do we determine the correct answer to
ask different individual moral dilemmas? But virtue ethicists are uncomfortable with
questions these questions. Instead of asking, Is this the right thing to do?, they focus
on other questions such as: What is a good person? What is the good of
human life? What traits of character will lead to a good life? How do we
acquire and cultivate these traits? Even when pushed for an answer on a
specific action, they still differ in approach. They ask, What would a virtu-
ous person do in this situation? Or how will the varying options affect one’s
character? None of these questions relate directly to actions. Instead they
point to people, to whole people, that is, and the traits that make us who
we are. To fully understand this different approach it’s best to start from
the beginning with Aristotle.

ARISTOTLE ON HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE

Of course Aristotle is not new to us: We encountered his critique of Plato
and unique theory of the Forms in Chapter 3; and we explored his empir-
icism in Chapter 9. Aristotle is one of the philosophical giants who left his
mark on nearly all areas of philosophy. But perhaps Aristotle’s greatest
philosophical work is his Nicomachean Ethics, where he lays out his theory
of the virtues. Aristotle doesn’t, however, start with the virtues. Instead he
Everything aims starts by talking about the good:
at the good
Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is said to aim
at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that
at which all things aim.

These famous beginning lines set the tone for Aristotle’s approach to moral-
ity, and it’s important to make sure that we understand what he is saying
and how it applies to ethics. If all things aim at some good, then what is
the good for human beings? Aristotle’s answer: eudaimonia, a Greek word
Eudaimonia ⫽ variously translated as happiness or well-being. Eudaimonia/happiness is
happiness the highest good because it is complete and self-sufficient; we seek it for
its own sake, not as a means to some other end. But Aristotle’s idea of
happiness might be different from yours, as you can see in this passage
from Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics:

What is always chosen as an end in itself and never as a means to something

else is called final in an unqualified sense. This description seems to apply to
happiness above all else: for we always choose happiness as an end in itself and
never for the sake of something else. Honor, pleasure, intelligence, and all virtue
we choose partly for themselves—for we would choose each of them even if no
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419
“The concepts of obligation and duty—moral obligation and moral duty, that is to VIRTUE
say—and of what is morally right and wrong ought to be jettisoned.”
—G. E. M. Anscombe

further advantage would accrue from them—but we also choose them partly for
the sake of happiness, because we assume that it is through them that we will
be happy. On the other hand, no one chooses happiness for the sake of honor,
pleasure, and the like, nor as a means to anything at all. . . .
We see then that happiness is something final and self-sufficient and the end
of our actions.
To call happiness the highest good is perhaps a little trite, and a clearer
account of what it is, is still required. Perhaps this is best done by first ascertain-
ing the proper function of man. For just as the goodness and performance of
a flute player, a sculptor, or any kind of expert, and generally of anyone who
fulfills some function or performs some action, are thought to reside in his proper
function, so the goodness and performance of man would seem to reside in
whatever is his proper function. Is it then possible that while a carpenter and a
shoemaker have their own proper functions and spheres of action, man as man
has none, but was left by nature a good-for-nothing without a function? Should we
not assume that just as the eye, the hand, the foot, and in general each part of
the body clearly has its own proper function, so man too has some function over
and above the functions of his parts? What can this function possibly be? Simply
living? He shares that even with plants, but we are now looking for something
peculiar to man. Accordingly, the life of nutrition and growth must be excluded.
Next in line there is a life of sense perception. But this, too, man has in common
with the horse, the ox, and every animal. There remains then an active life of
the rational element. The rational element has two parts: one is rational in that
it obeys the rule of reason, the other in that it possesses and conceives rational
rules. Since the expression “life of the rational element” also can be used in two
senses, we must make it clear that we mean a life determined by the activity, as
opposed to the mere possession, of the rational element. For the activity, it seems,
has a greater claim to be the function of man.
The proper function of man, then, consists in an activity of the soul in confor-
mity with a rational principle or, at least, not without it. In speaking of the proper
function of a given individual we mean that it is the same in kind as the function
of an individual who sets high standards for himself: the proper function of a
harpist, for example, is the same as the function of a harpist who has set high
standards for himself. The same applies to any and every group of individuals: the
full attainment of excellence must be added to the mere function. In other words,

“The good of man is an activity of the soul in conformity with virtue.”

—Aristotle
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420
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY ARISTOTLE

A
ristotle was born in 384 B.C. in Stagirus in the Greek Colony of Macedon.
His father, Nicomachus, was the Macedonian court physician. His father
died when Aristotle was 17, and he was sent to Athens to finish his studies.
There, Aristotle joined Plato’s Academy, where he studied and listened to Plato’s
lectures for 20 years.
At Plato’s death in 347 B.C., Aristotle left Athens for Assos and the court of his
friend, Hermeas, ruler of Assos and Atarneus. There he married the king’s niece
Pythias, and they had a daughter together. After the Persians killed Hermeas,
Aristotle left, first for Lesbos and then to Mytilene in Macedon. There he joined
the court of Phillip, the king of Macedon, to tutor his son, Alexander, who would
go on to become Alexander the Great. At his father’s death, Alexander took the
throne and Aristotle left Macedon for Athens. There he founded his own school
called the Lyceum, where he taught for 13 years.
After the death of his wife Pythias, Aristotle married a woman named Herphyllis,
and they had a son together, Nicomachus. Aristotle’s great work the Nicomachean
Ethics is named after his son. The death of Alexander the Great sparked a revolt
against anything Macedonian. Aristotle, having close ties to the Macedonian court,
was falsely accused of impiety. To escape execution Aristotle fled, “lest the Athenians
sin twice against philosophy,” a reference to the execution of Socrates in Athens.
Aristotle fled to Chalcis, where he died in 322 B.C. at the age of 62.
Aristotle wrote on many topics including politics, poetry, physics, astronomy,
biology, and philosophy. He was an incredibly prolific writer—the English transla-
tions of Aristotle’s existing works fill nearly 2,500 pages. This is, however, only a
portion of Aristotle’s writing, since many manuscripts have been lost. The books
that survive today are generally considered to be his lectures, not writings
intended for publication.
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the function of the harpist is to play the harp; the function of the harpist who has 421
high standards is to play it well. On these assumptions, if we take the proper
VIRTUE
function of man to be a certain kind of life, and if this kind of life is an activity
of the soul and consists in actions performed in conjunction with the rational ele-
ment, and if a man of high standards is he who performs these actions well and
properly, and if a function is well performed when it is performed in accordance
with the excellence appropriate to it; we reach the conclusion that the good of
man is an activity of the soul in conformity with excellence or virtue, and if there
are several virtues, in conformity with the best and most complete.
But we must add “in a complete life.” For one swallow does not make a spring,
nor does one sunny day; similarly, one day or a short time does not make a man
blessed and happy.1

Here Aristotle clearly shows the teleological basis of his theory. A telos is A teleological theory
the end or purpose of a thing. So the telos of a knife is to cut and the telos
of a pen is to write. But what is the telos of a human being? What is the
function or end or purpose of people? This is clearly not an easy question, telos ⫽ end/purpose
but it’s essential to the Aristotelian picture. What is it that people do
uniquely, that no other creature or thing does? Clearly growth, reproduc-
tion, movement, and other activities we share with other living creatures
are not the answer. We think and reason—that’s what we do that other
creatures do not.
So using our reason is the function of humans and acting in accord with
virtue is the highest good. But what is a virtue? It’s a character trait that
we show through our actions. We’re all familiar with traits such as honesty,
generosity, and the like and these are exactly the virtues that Aristotle had
in mind as well.
Let’s take a moment to recap Aristotle’s argument before talking more spe-
cifically about the virtues. Happiness or well-being is the highest good for
humans. But happiness is not a mood or emotion for Aristotle, it’s much more
than that. We can be happy only if we fulfill our basic purpose or function.
Humans, that is, must fulfill our telos; we must act as humans are supposed
to act. The one thing that separates humans from other living things, Aristotle
says, is reason. So humans will be happy only if we act according to reason.
This use of reason is a virtue. Thus happiness requires that we develop our Happiness requires
virtues. How do we develop virtues? In a word, habit, as Aristotle explains: virtue

Virtue, as we have seen, consists of two kinds, intellectual virtue and moral virtue.
Intellectual virtue, or excellence, owes its origin and development chiefly to teach-
ing, and for that reason requires experience and time. Moral virtue, on the other
hand, is formed by habit, ethos, and its name, ethike, is therefore derived, by
a slight variation, from ethos. This shows, too, that none of the moral virtues is
implanted in us by nature, for nothing which exists by nature can be changed by
habit. For example, it is impossible for a stone, which has a natural downward
movement, to become habituated to moving upward, even if one should try ten
thousand times to inculcate the habit by throwing it in the air; nor can fire be

1
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1097b–1098a, tr. Martin Ostwald (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill,
1962), pp. 15–18.
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422 made to move downward, nor can the direction of any nature-given tendency be
changed by habituation. Thus, the virtues are implanted in us neither by nature
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY nor contrary to nature: we are by nature equipped with the ability to receive
them, and habit brings this ability to completion and fulfillment.
Furthermore, of all the qualities with which we are endowed by nature, we are
provided with the capacity first, and display the activity afterward. That this is true
is shown by the senses: it is not by frequent seeing or frequent hearing that we
acquired our senses, but on the contrary we first possess and then use them; we do
not acquire them by use. The virtues, on the other hand, we acquire by first having
put them into action, and the same is also true of the arts. For the things which we
have to learn before we can do them we learn by doing: men become builders
by building houses, and harpists by playing the harp. Similarly, we become just by
the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous
by performing acts of courage. . . .
In a word, characteristics develop from corresponding activities. For that reason,
we must see to it that our activities are of a certain kind, since any variations in
them will be reflected in our characteristics. Hence it is no small matter whether
one habit or another is inculcated in us from early childhood; on the contrary, it
makes a considerable difference, or, rather, all the difference.2

There is one more piece of the puzzle that we must fill in before moving
on to talk about specific virtues. We know that humans should strive for
virtue, that virtues are character traits, and that they are acquired through
habit. But we won’t really understand Aristotelian virtue theory until we
recognize that virtues are means. At first this might sound strange: Virtues
are good things, and isn’t meanness the opposite of goodness? A mean in
this case is a middle or, better yet, a midpoint between two poles or extreme
positions. We might say that lukewarm is midway between hot and cold,
so it would be a mean.
Virtues as means Aristotle believed that all moral virtues are means because with any trait
between excess and it’s possible to have either an excess or a deficiency, and either will lead to a
deficiency vice. Take, for instance, the case of giving money to others, what we often call
charity. It’s possible, Aristotle says, to go wrong in two different directions: to
give either too much or too little. The excess we call being prodigal, and this
is a vice to be wasteful or recklessly extravagant in giving money to others.
On the other hand, far more people give little or nothing, and this too is a
vice that we might call stinginess. The virtue is the mean between these
extremes. The virtuous person is generous in giving her money, but not waste-
ful; she finds the midpoint and gives the right amount to the right people at
the right time.
Likewise with all moral virtues—they are means between extremes. As
always, it is best to let the philosophers speak for themselves:

Thus we see that an expert in any field avoids excess and deficiency, but seeks the
median and chooses it—not the median of the object but the median relative to us.
If this, then, is the way in which every science perfects its work, by looking to
the median and by bringing its work up to that point—and this is the reason why

2
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1103a 12–1103b 25, pp. 33–35.
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423
VIRTUE
VIRTUE
A good trait of character, manifested in habitual action.

it is usually said of a successful piece of work that it is impossible to detract from

it or to add to it, the implication being that excess and deficiency destroy success
while the mean safeguards it (good craftsmen, we say, look toward this standard
in the performance of their work)—and if virtue, like nature, is more precise and
better than any art, we must conclude that virtue aims at the median. I am referring
to moral virtue: for it is moral virtue that is concerned with emotions and actions,
and it is in emotions and actions that excess, deficiency, and the median are
found. Thus we can experience fear, confidence, desire, anger, pity, and generally
any kind of pleasure and pain either too much or too little, and in either case
not properly. But to experience all this at the right time, toward the right objects,
toward the right people, for the right reason, and in the right manner—that is the
median and the best course, the course that is a mark of virtue.
Similarly, excess, deficiency, and the median can also be found in actions. Now
virtue is concerned with emotions and actions; and in emotions and actions excess
and deficiency miss the mark, whereas the median is praised and constitutes success.
But both praise and success are signs of virtue or excellence. Consequently, virtue
is a mean in the sense that it aims at the median. This is corroborated by the fact
that there are many ways of going wrong, but only one way which is right—for
evil belongs to the indeterminate, as the Pythagoreans imagined, but good to the
determinate. This, by the way, is also the reason why the one is easy and the other
hard: it is easy to miss the target but hard to hit it. Here, then, is an additional proof
that excess and deficiency characterize vice, while the mean characterizes virtue:
for “bad men have many ways, good men but one.”
We may thus conclude that virtue or excellence is a characteristic involving choice,
and that it consists in observing the mean relative to us, a mean which is defined by
a rational principle, such as a man of practical wisdom would use to determine it. It
is the mean by reference to two vices: the one of excess and the other of deficiency.
It is, moreover, a mean because some vices exceed and others fall short of what is
required in emotion and in action, whereas virtue finds and chooses the median.
Hence, in respect of its essence and the definition of its essential nature virtue is a
mean, but in regard to goodness and excellence it is an extreme.3

3
Ibid., 1106b 5–1107a 8, pp. 42–44.

VIRTUE AS MEAN BETWEEN EXTREMES

Aristotle claims that all moral virtues are a midpoint or mean between excess and
deficiency, both of which are vices. For example, courage is the mean between
foolhardiness and cowardice.
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424 THE VIRTUES

THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY By now you should have the basics of the virtue approach to morality. But
understanding the general shape of virtue ethics is only half the picture.
And probably the least important half. What we need to round things out
is more details on specific virtues. What exactly does it mean to show toler-
ance, compassion, loyalty, or generosity? What did Aristotle mean by cour-
age, temperance, and the like? Obviously, there are many, many virtues and
it would be an impossibly large task to discuss them all. So here we’ll tackle
only a few, mostly traditional ones, but one with a new twist.
Courage Courage is the first virtue Aristotle discusses in the Nicomachean Ethics and
thus it is a good place for us to start as well. Courage is the virtue prescrib-
ing the proper attitude toward danger or fear, and like all virtues it is a mean
between extremes. An excess of fear is cowardice—the cowardly person
shrinks from any challenge and hides from all danger. At the opposite
extreme, the foolhardy person displays a deficient amount of fear, rushing
forward blindly (and foolishly) in the face of danger. To have courage is to
find the mean between these vices.
We often think of courage as a military virtue for obvious reasons—clearly
soldiers need courage when facing danger in battle. But courage goes far
beyond war and is important to all of us. We all face danger and must strive
for the right response, the proper balance of our fear. The courageous stu-
dent is willing to report cheating on an exam in spite of her fears about
what others will say. And it takes courage to stand up for one’s beliefs when
most others disagree.
Temperance Temperance was a crucial Aristotelian virtue, but it’s one that most of us
rarely consider. It’s the virtue associated with pleasures and pains, but par-
ticularly bodily pleasures such as eating, drinking, and sex. These appetites
are, as Aristotle notes, “shared with the other animals,” and missing the
mean nearly always involves excess. The glutton eats too much, the drunkard
drinks too much, both showing intemperance in their excessive behavior. But,
as Aristotle notes, people who are deficient in pleasures and enjoy them too
little are very rare. We don’t really even have a name for such a trait, though
we may call them insensitive.
Honesty Honesty is undoubtedly one of the most commonly discussed virtues.
But what exactly does it mean to be an honest person? Clearly there’s more
to it than always telling the truth, for that’s no different than Kant’s approach
based on the moral law. No, the virtue approach to truth-telling involves
both more and less than the injunction to always tell the truth. Consider a
case where I am intending to lie, but accidentally tell the truth because of
my ignorance. Does this show that I am an honest person? Of course not.
I’m a liar who made a mistake. Aristotle is clear that it’s not enough for
virtue simply to commit a good act. In addition, one must act for the right
reasons and from the proper state. The virtuous person must know that she
is acting virtuously, must decide on the action for its own sake, and must act
from a “firm and unchanging state.” The honest person not only tells the
truth, but does so as a matter of intention and habit.
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This is a crucial point in understanding virtues. It’s not simply the fact 425
that the virtuous person “does the right thing.” No, virtues involve a more VIRTUE
holistic understanding of the person—his intentions, thoughts, and atti-
tudes. This comes out clearly in looking at one’s attitude toward others—
human and nonhuman alike—that is, in the matter of humility.
Humility is commonly touted as a virtue. But, interestingly, Aristotle Humility
considered it to be a vice. He saw it as important that people take pride in
their accomplishments and not be modest regarding achievement. Aristotle
considered it to be a deficiency when someone was humble. But especially
in modern times, humility is seen as a mean between arrogance and low
self-esteem. To be humble is the mark, we say, of a fine character, one who
recognizes his place in society.
A lack of humility is also seen by many as the cause not only of indi-
vidual arrogance, but also of human destruction of other cultures, species,
and ecosystems. The environmental philosopher Thomas Hill, Jr., argues
that “destroyers of the environment lack an appreciation of their place in
the universe”:

So construed, the argument appeals to the common idea that awareness of

nature typically has, and should have, a humbling effect. The Alps, a storm at
sea, the Grand Canyon, towering redwoods, and “the starry heavens above”
move many a person to remark on the comparative insignificance of our daily
concerns and even of our species, and this is generally taken to be a quite fit-
ting response. What seems to be missing, then, in those who understand nature
but remain unmoved is a proper humility. Absence of proper humility is not the
same as selfishness or egoism, for one can be devoted to self-interest while still
viewing one’s own pleasures and projects as trivial and unimportant. And one
can have an exaggerated view of one’s own importance while grandly sacrific-
ing for those one views as inferior. Nor is the lack of humility identical with
belief that one has power and influence, for a person can be quite puffed up
about himself while believing that the foolish world will never acknowledge him.
The humility we miss seems not so much a belief about one’s relative effective-
ness and recognition as an attitude which measures the importance of things
independently of their relation to oneself or to some narrow group with which
one identifies. A paradigm of a person who lacks humility is the self-important
emperor who grants status to his family because it is his, to his subordinates
because he appointed them, and to his country because he chooses to glorify
it. Less extreme but still lacking proper humility is the elitist who counts events
significant solely in proportion to how they affect his class. The suspicion about
those who would destroy the environment, then, is that what they count important
is too narrowly confined insofar as it encompasses only what affects beings who,
like us, are capable of feeling.4

As Hill argues, the virtue of humility involves seeing one’s proper place
and one’s true worth. What is interesting here is that the virtue of humility
applies not simply to individuals but also to whole cultures and even our

4
Thomas E. Hill, Jr., “Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving the Natural Environment,”
Environmental Ethics 5 (1983).
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426
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY A FEW MORAL VIRTUES
Courage Justice
Temperance Humility
Generosity Tolerance
Magnificence Loyalty
Magnanimity Compassion
Mildness Civility
Friendliness Moderation
Honesty Self-discipline
Wit Tactfulness
Prudence Thoughtfulness

Humility ⫽ seeing species. Humility helps us to see that we are not the center of the universe
one’s proper place but are just one species among many. Such an attitude, if widely adopted,
would have dramatic effects on human actions. It would clearly prevent
any logging or mining, for example, that would push other species toward
extinction or permanently harm natural areas. Similarly, the person who
believes that his culture is superior to all others lacks proper humility, and
correcting this lack would go a long ways to remedying the lingering effects
of imperialism and cultural insensitivity. One strength of virtue theory is
its ability to extend beyond individual actions to these larger dimensions
of morality.

OBJECTIONS
In spite of its growing popularity, virtue ethics still has its problems. Most
critics focus on two points. First, they claim that the virtue approach does
not help in resolving moral dilemmas or mediating between conflicting
values. Second, critics charge that virtue ethics is an incomplete theory.
Let’s consider each argument a bit more closely.
One of the attractions of virtue theory is that it shifts attention away from
The virtues and moral conflicts and toward the neglected area of character. But does the
moral dilemmas pendulum swing too far? Does virtue theory end up ignoring action and
the tough questions of moral dilemmas? Undeniably, ethics involves the
question What should I do?, and one major objection to virtue ethics is that
it’s not helpful in answering this question. Knowing that courage, honesty,
and humility are important to the good life is little help when a teenage girl
is trying to decide whether or not to abort an unplanned pregnancy. Nor
does virtue seem helpful when a doctor is considering whether or not to
assist a terminally ill patient in committing suicide. In these cases and oth-
ers like them, the individuals want to know what to do, which action they
should take, what is the morally right path. It’s just not obvious, according
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to the critics, that virtue ethics can tell us how a person should act or how 427
to decide what to do in these cases. The claim that we should act virtuously VIRTUE
seems like little help in the face of a difficult and pressing decision. Further-
more, what do we do when we seen to have conflicting virtues? For example,
sometimes the virtues of honesty and compassion pull in opposite direc-
tions. If I hear students complaining about another class, honesty pushes me
to confront the teacher, but compassion will prevent me from telling it like
it is. Does virtue theory show us how to resolve these conflicts?
This leads directly to the second objection that virtue, while important,
is an incomplete theory. The charge here is that we need to look more Virtue theory
closely at what lies beneath the individual virtues. Why should one be as incomplete
courageous or honest or humble? Isn’t the ultimate answer going to rely
on other concepts or ideas of the good? Isn’t it here, in the reasons that
support virtues, that more work needs to be done?
There are, of course, responses to these objections, and the debate con-
tinues as more and more philosophers look back to Aristotle for guidance.
But there is one more tradition we must consider, which again draws its
inspiration from Aristotle.

IS THERE A NATURAL LAW?

One of Aristotle’s most important contributions was his insistence on
natural law as the foundation of our social, political, and ethical struc- Aristotle
tures and institutions. Already in his Ethics Aristotle distinguished on natural law
between conventional law, or law that is established by general agree-
ment, and natural law, which is derived directly from the natural order
of the world and from built-in tendencies of human nature. Here, too,
is an example of the close connection between the question of reality
and the question of value. Aristotle’s idea of natural law is part and
parcel of his metaphysical view (as you know it from Chapter 3) of
objective and fixed essences that define the rationality and orderedness,
or lawfulness, of things. As with all other fundamental principles, the
fundamental principles of our social and ethical life are discoverable in
the very nature of things. The basic principles of social existence and
institutions are not, therefore, “up for grabs”; rather, they are up for
rational discovery, expression, and application.
In the following paragraphs from Politics, Aristotle emphasizes that
social organization is derived from nature—that is, from the essential order
of things. Notice also that the state, “a creation of nature,” is prior to the
individual and necessary for the cultivation of human virtue.

“To act in conformity with virtue is nothing but acting, living, and preserving our
being as reason directs.”
—Spinoza
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428
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY NATURAL LAW
General and universal rules of conduct, both personal and social, derived ratio-
nally from nature.

Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature
a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a
state, is either a bad man or above humanity; he is like the

Tribeless; lawless, heartless one

whom Homer denounces—the natural outcast is forthwith a lover of war; he may

be compared to an isolated piece at draughts.
Now, that man is more of a political animal than bees or any other gregarious
animals is evident. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is
the only animal whom she has endowed with the gift of speech. And whereas
mere voice is but an indication of pleasure or pain, and is therefore found in
other animals (for their nature attains to the perception of pleasure and pain and
the intimation of them to one another, and no further), the power of speech is
intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the
just and the unjust. And it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense
of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living
beings who have this sense makes a family and a state.
Further, the state is by nature clearly prior to the family and to the individual,
since the whole is of necessity prior to the part; for example, if the whole body
be destroyed, there will be no foot or hand, except in an equivocal sense, as
we might speak of a stone hand; for when destroyed the hand will be no better
than that. But things are defined by their working and power, and we ought not
to say that they are the same when they no longer have their proper quality,
but only that they have the same name. The proof that the state is a creation of
nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-
sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole. But he who is
unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself,
must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state. A social instinct is
implanted in all men by nature, and yet he who first founded the state was the
greatest of benefactors. For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but,
when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice
is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with arms, meant to be used
by intelligence and virtue, which he may use for the worst ends. Wherefore, if
he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals, and
the most full of lust and gluttony. But justice is the bond of men in states, for the
administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle
of order in political society.5

5
Aristotle, Politics, 1253a–b, tr. Benjamin Jowett, in Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon
(New York: Random House, 1941).
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429
VIRTUE
ST. THOMAS: FOUR KINDS OF LAW
• Eternal law: God’s unalterable rule over all things.
• Natural law: Universal rules of conduct known from human nature.
• Human law: Statutes and legislation contrived by humans.
• Divine law: Specially revealed will of God for humanity’s supernatural or religious
end.

It has been seen already how St. Thomas took over much of Aristotle’s
philosophy and transformed it in a Christian light. Certainly this hap-
pened in the case of Aristotle’s idea of natural law, and St. Thomas’ Chris-
tianized version has become one of its most forceful expressions. Actually,
St. Thomas distinguished four kinds of law, and it is necessary to spell out St. Thomas: four
all of them if we are to appreciate the character and role of natural law in kinds of law
specific. (1) Eternal law is the governance of all things by the divine reason
and, by virtue of its foundation in God himself, is unalterable and eternal.
(2) Natural law refers to the eternal law as it is revealed specifically in
human nature and known by human reason, which is an offspring of the
divine reason; it provides direction for humanity’s natural end—that is, its
purpose in this world. (3) Human law refers to specific statutes and legisla-
tion contrived by humans in an attempt to express and apply the natural
law to concrete and practical situations. (4) Divine law provides the direc-
tion for humanity’s supernatural end—that is, its purpose for God and
eternity—and is known only through divine grace and special revelation
rather than through reason.
In St. Thomas’ thinking, all of these are inseparably related to one another.
Not to play down any of them, clearly the second and third hold the most
relevance for our present discussion. Eternal law is an interesting metaphysical
idea; divine law is an interesting religious or theological idea; but natural law
and human law bear directly on ethical and political issues. In the following,
from Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas comments especially on these:

. . . law, being a rule and measure, can be in a person in two ways: in one
way, as in him that rules and measures; in another way, as in that which is ruled
and measured, since a thing is ruled and measured in so far as it partakes of
the rule or measure. Therefore, since all things subject to divine providence are
ruled and measured by the eternal law, as was stated above, it is evident that
all things partake in some way in the eternal law, in so far as, namely, from its
being imprinted on them, they derive their respective inclinations to their proper
acts and ends. Now among all others, the rational creature is subject to divine
providence in a more excellent way, in so far as it itself partakes of a share of
providence, by being provident both for itself and for others. Therefore it has a
share of the eternal reason, whereby it has a natural inclination to its proper
act and end; and this participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is
called the natural law. Hence the Psalmist, after saying (Ps. iv. 6): “Offer up the
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430 St. Thomas Aquinas, not surprisingly, believed

that all law is rooted in God.
THE QUESTION
OF MORALITY

sacrifice of justice,” as though someone asked what the works of justice are, adds:
“Many say, Who showeth us good things?” in answer to which question he says:
“The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us.” He thus implies that
the light of natural reason, whereby we discern what is good and what is evil,
which is the function of the natural law, is nothing else than an imprint on us of
the divine light. It is therefore evident that the natural law is nothing else than the
rational creature’s participation of the eternal law.
. . . a law is a dictate of the practical reason. Now it is to be observed that
the same procedure takes place in the practical and in the speculative reason, for
each proceeds from principles to conclusions, as was stated above. Accordingly,
we conclude that, just as in the speculative reason, from naturally known indemon-
strable principles we draw the conclusions of the various sciences, the knowledge
of which is not imparted to us by nature, but acquired by the efforts of reason,
so too it is that from the precepts of the natural law, as from common and inde-
monstrable principles, the human reason needs to proceed to the more particular
determination of certain matters. These particular determinations, devised by human
reason, are called human laws, provided that the other essential conditions of law
be observed, as was stated above. Therefore Tully says in his Rhetoric that “justice
has its source in nature; thence certain things came into custom by reason of their
utility; afterwards these things which emanated from nature, and were approved
by custom, were sanctioned by fear and reverence for the law.”6

6
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Pts. I–II, Qu. 91, Arts. 2–3, in Basic Writings of St.
Thomas Aquinas, ed. Anton C. Pegis (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1997), II.
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431
“. . . the light of natural reason, whereby we discern what is good and what is VIRTUE
evil, which is the function of the natural law, is nothing else than an imprint on
us of the divine light.”
—St. Thomas

It is important to see that although St. Thomas’ doctrine of natural law

was all wrapped up in a Christian view of reality, one does not have to
be a Christian to believe in natural law: St. Thomas was, but Aristotle
wasn’t. What is required, however, is at least a general view of reality
(which Aristotle and St. Thomas did in fact share) such that value in gen-
eral, and moral and political values in specific, are seen as built right into
the world and human nature from the start, and can be, as we said before, Values in the world
rationally discovered, expressed, and applied. Thus, while this does not
presuppose a Christian perspective, it is no accident that the idea of natu-
ral law has been propounded mainly by thinkers of a religious or theistic
bent. For such people believe, for one reason or another, that the universe
is rational, that there is a rhyme and reason to things, and that values have
an objective and abiding foundation.
To sum up, a morality based on natural law requires three things: first,
a view of reality as a rational order with values built right into the world,
including into human nature; second, an interpretation of the laws of nature
such that they express not only what is the case, but also what ought to be;
and finally, an understanding of moral judgments as “dictates of reason.” Moral judgments are
Human reason is what allows us to discover natural laws and helps us to “dictates of reason”
discern the right course of action. No one was more adamant about this
point than St. Thomas, who argued that following reason and being a
Christian were one and the same.
As with all theories we’ve studied, natural law has its difficulties. Here Objections to
we will limit ourselves to two. First, many critics reject the metaphysical natural law
view on which natural law rests as inconsistent with the findings of mod-
ern science. Especially since Darwin, the idea that nature has values and
purposes and functions in an orderly way has been under attack. Rather,
critics say, things just happen more or less randomly. There is no plan or
order to the workings of nature, it is simply the blind actions of the indi-
vidual players. This is a serious charge since without a rational world
natural law is lost.

“To disparage the dictate of reason is equivalent to condemning the command

of God.”
—St. Thomas Aquinas
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432 A second criticism looks to the now familiar Naturalistic Fallacy. Nowhere
THE QUESTION
is the move from is to ought more direct than in natural law with its claims
OF MORALITY that the natural functions of organisms define morality. If Hume is correct
that you cannot derive values from facts, critics charge, then clearly we
cannot find our moral guidance in the laws of nature. But as always we
must be careful not to move too quickly here, especially with someone like
Aristotle. As we saw earlier, what virtue means for Aristotle is simply per-
forming our human function well. With this view the very distinction between
facts and values has disappeared and with it the Naturalistic Fallacy. The
critic, of course, has a response, but the time has come for us to move on to
the question of society.

CHAPTER 17 IN REVIEW
SUMMARY
In this final chapter on the question of morality we took a turn away from
actions and toward the character of the people acting. Virtue theory insists
that morality is not a matter of rules and principles, but rather traits of
character.
Aristotle’s teleology is the foundation of the virtues. He argues that the
purpose or good of humans is the use of reason to live a good life. Thus
happiness is the ultimate good for humans, the one thing that we seek
exclusively for its own sake and not as a means to other goods. The key to
this happiness, for Aristotle, is virtue, established traits of character that
manifest themselves in action. These virtues are means between the vices
of excess and deficiency. The virtue approach has been criticized for ignor-
ing tough moral choices and for its incompleteness.
We have already seen more than once how the Christian philosopher St.
Thomas Aquinas was influenced by Aristotle, and this connection shows
up again in their ethical and political ideas. Specifically, the important
notion of natural law has deep roots in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition.
Aristotle had already distinguished between conventional law (established
by agreement) and natural law (rationally apprehended from nature), and
St. Thomas elaborated the fourfold distinction: eternal law, natural law,
human law, and divine law. According to St. Thomas, God is the foundation
of all spheres of law, including natural law, which can be known rationally
and which expresses the will of God for human beings in this world, and
which is imperfectly expressed in human law, or legislation for our practi-
cal and social life together.

BASIC IDEAS
• Character versus action
• Aristotle on the good for humans
• Teleology
• Happiness
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• Virtue 433
• A mean between extremes VIRTUE
• Some virtues:
Courage
Temperance
Honesty
Humility
• Natural law
• Aristotle: the human being as a “political animal”
• St. Thomas’ four kinds of law:
Eternal law
Natural law
Human law
Divine law

TEST YOURSELF
1. What does Aristotle say is the function of human beings?
2. Courage is a mean between what two vices?
3. True or false: St. Thomas believed that natural law is the highest type of
law.
4. How might it be claimed that Aristotle’s doctrine of natural law is part
and parcel of his metaphysics?
5. Who said it? “. . . the natural is nothing else than the rational creature’s
participation of the eternal law.”

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• Virtue theory focuses on character rather than action, but obviously both
are important. Can you think of ways to combine the insights from dif-
fering approaches to morality? What do you see as the most important
elements of each theory, and how might we preserve the truth in each?
• What is the importance of the idea of natural law? How is it at once a
metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, and social-political concept? Do
you believe in it?

FOR FURTHER READING

Frederick Copleston. A History of Philosophy. Baltimore: Newman Press,
1946–1974. I, Ch. 31. A clear, succinct account of Aristotelian ethics
including his concept of virtue, from a standard work.
Philippa Foot. Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1978. A collection of essays by one of the
philosophers who brought virtue theory back to the mainstream.
Etienne Gilson. The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. Tr. L. K. Shook.
New York: Random House, 1956. Part III, Ch. 1, sect. 4. A short account
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434 of St. Thomas’ conception of law (eternal, natural, human), by a foremost

THE QUESTION
Thomist authority.
OF MORALITY Alasdair MacIntyre. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. South Bend, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1981. One of the most important con-
temporary defenses of the virtue tradition.
D. J. O’Connor. Aquinas and Natural Law. London: Macmillan, 1968. A good
introductory account of the theory of natural law.
James Rachels. The Elements of Moral Philosophy. Second ed. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1993. Chs. 4 and 12 on natural law and virtue. This little
book is an excellent introduction to ethics.
Daniel Statman. Virtue Ethics: A Critical Reader. Washington, DC: George-
town University Press, 1997. A collection of important essays on virtue
ethics with a clear, systematic introduction to this approach.
J. O. Urmson. Aristotle’s Ethics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988. The best short
introduction to the ethical thinking and writings of Aristotle.
*In addition, see the relevant articles (“Aristotle,” “Virtue,” “Natural Law,”
etc.) in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig (London:
Routledge, 1998), and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato
.stanford.edu.
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PA R T F I V E

THE QUESTION
OF SOCIETY

I
t is a fine line—if any exists at all—between the question of moral
values and the question of social and political values. Does not any
ethical theory hold immediate implications for the larger context of the
community or state? Can you imagine yourself in pursuit of your own good
in complete independence of your social context? in complete indifference
to it? Do not such issues as fairness, justice, freedom, and rights force them-
selves into the picture at some point? Consider the following list of sample
issues:

• Civil disobedience
• Welfare
• Nuclear armament
• Women’s rights
• Eugenics
• Racial discrimination
• Labor unions
• Pornography
• Abortion

Are these ethical issues? Are they social and political issues? Are they not
clearly both ethical and social-political issues? Look at each one until you

437
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can say exactly how it involves and poses both an ethical and a social-
political problem.
Another point: Social and political philosophy may appear to overlap at
times with the social sciences, such as sociology and political science, but
its task is really a different one. The social-political philosopher is not con-
cerned with descriptive or empirical questions (we might call these “surface”
questions), but with normative questions, or questions of value: What is the
public good? How should it be implemented? What is the basis for talk of
rights and justice?

438
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C H A P T E R 18

LIBERTY

I
t is hardly possible to examine all of even the most relevant social-
political theories. To be sure, in the next chapter we will look fairly
carefully at democracy and the issues and perspectives that bear
most importantly on our own contemporary situation. Following that
we will raise the more general but fundamental idea of justice. For the
moment, though, we will look at liberalism, not only because of intrin-
sic interest but also because of the way it sets the stage for subsequent
developments.

THE LIBERAL PERSPECTIVE: LOCKE

When you see the word “liberal” you may think of something leftish or
socialistic—something opposite to “conservative.” In our present context,
however, the word refers to a general social-political theory that, indeed,
underlies our whole social and political system, including both liberals and
conservatives. We might better call it classical liberalism. The heart of liber- Classical liberalism:
alism in this sense is evident from the word itself. “Liberalism” comes from freedom
the Latin libertas, “liberty” or “freedom.” It insists on the freedom of the
individual: both freedom from undue external and governmental controls,
and freedom to pursue individual interests. Can you identify examples of
freedoms from and freedoms to, in the first ten amendments to the U.S. Con-
stitution? (They were ratified on December 15, 1791.)

439
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440
THE QUESTION
OF SOCIETY JOHN LOCKE

J
ohn Locke was born in 1632 in a small town near Bristol, England, lost his
mother at an early age, and was raised on Puritan principles by a stern father.
His childhood studies centered on grammar and languages (Greek, Latin,
Hebrew, and Arabic) and were so harsh as to cause Locke later to condemn
excessive discipline in schools. Out of these austere beginnings, in 1652 the
twenty-year-old Locke entered Oxford University. In spite of a distaste for Scho-
lastic philosophy, which he thought obscure and irrelevant, he received his BA in
1656, followed by his MA, and became a tutor at Oxford in Greek and Latin.
After his father’s death in 1661, which resulted in a small inheritance, Locke fell
under the spell of the new sciences, and his interest in experimental and empiri-
cal methods came alive. Indeed, he now chose for himself the medical profession,
though, as it turned out, he never actually practiced—except for delivering a baby
(continued on next page)

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or
the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for
a redress of grievances.

Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of
the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
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441
and removing a tumor from someone’s chest. He was sidetracked by Descartes, LIBERTY
who seemed to provide an impressive alternative to the still-dominant Scholastic
philosophy.
In 1667, a close association with Lord Ashley, later first earl of Shaftesbury,
thrust Locke into many political affairs and offices. He participated, for example,
in drafting the constitution of the Crown Colony of Carolina. Largely for reasons
of health, he spent 1675–1679 in France, where he pursued further his interest
in Descartes. Upon his return to England he found that the continuing struggle
against the divine right of kings lay somewhat closer to home. His friend
Shaftesbury was in deep trouble with King Charles II because of his promotion
of the common class against the king and nobles: He was dispatched to the
Tower of London, eventually tried for treason, and acquitted. And Locke’s own
position was none too certain either. It was guilt by association, and he too was
now denounced as a traitor. He fled to Holland in 1683 and hid in the house of
a physician friend. Here he continued work on his Essay Concerning Human
Understanding and produced several other pieces. The revolutionary plot of 1688
to place William of Orange on the English throne was successful, with some help
from Locke himself, and in February 1689 he returned to England, escort of the
princess of Orange, the future Queen Mary.
Locke’s two most influential books were published in 1690: the Essay and Two
Treatises of Civil Government; the first is a classic of empiricist epistemology, and
in the latter Locke attacked the divine right of kings and proposed his own liberal
political theory. During this time he continued to be actively occupied with the
affairs of state, his practical contributions being much in demand.
In 1691, the aging Locke settled permanently in Oates, at the home of his
friends Lord and Lady Marsham, continuing with his writing and participating
in the controversy surrounding his The Reasonableness of Christianity, pub-
lished in 1695. During his last and failing years he turned to biblical studies
and wrote commentaries on the epistles of St. Paul. He died on October 28,
1704, as Lady Marsham was reading to him from the Psalms. She wrote: “His
death was like his life, truly pious, yet natural, easy and unaffected.” He was a
giant in the history of philosophy, having contributed a monumental work on
epistemology and having been a decisive voice for individual freedom and
religious tolerance.
His major works include Essay Concerning Human Understanding, First Letter
Concerning Toleration, Two Treatises of Civil Government, Some Thoughts Con-
cerning Education, and The Reasonableness of Christianity.

Amendment III
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent
of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,
against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants
shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particu-
larly describing the place to be searched, and the person or things to be seized.
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442 Amendment V
THE QUESTION No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime,
OF SOCIETY unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in
the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War
or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice
put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any Criminal Case to
be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just
compensation.

Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public
trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been
committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be
informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the wit-
nesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining Witnesses in his favor,
and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value of controversy shall exceed twenty dollars,
the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be
otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the
rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and
unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to
deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited
by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.1

Classical liberalism may also be called individualism, inasmuch as it

affirms the individual over the state, which is seen not as the master but
as the servant of the individual, and as the guarantor of the individual’s
interests and rights.
The primary moving force of the classical liberal perspective was the
English philosopher John Locke, who, as we saw in Chapter 9, was also
one of the founders of modern empiricism. Several ideas are basic to an
understanding of Locke’s social-political theory.

1
William MacDonald (ed.), Documentary Source Book of American History, 1606–1926, 3rd ed.
(New York: Burt Franklin, 1926), pp. 229–230 (slightly edited).
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443
LIBERTY
CLASSICAL LIBERALISM
The social-political theory that stresses freedom from undue governmental inter-
ference and views the state as the guarantor of the basic liberties and rights of
the individual.

First, like many who preceded him, Locke believed that all private and
public good is based on the natural law that immediately displays fun- Natural law, again
damental rights and liberties. As with St. Thomas, the real foundation of
the natural law is God. And, as with St. Thomas, this natural and divine
law is “plain and intelligible to all rational creatures”—at least to as
many who will take the time and trouble. (Locke’s idea of natural law
was no more a contradiction to his empiricism than was St. Thomas’ idea
a contradiction to his empiricism. Knowledge, natural law, and all other
ideas as well result from reflection on experience.) Both of these ideas—
namely, that God is the objective source of natural law, and that this law
can be discovered rationally—are clear in the following lines from the
Essay Concerning Human Understanding:

The idea of a Supreme Being, infinite in power, goodness, and wisdom, whose
workmanship we are, and on whom we depend; and the idea of ourselves, as
understanding, rational beings, being such as are clear in us, would, I suppose,
if duly considered and pursued, afford such foundations of our duty and rules of
action as might place morality amongst the sciences capable of demonstration:
wherein I doubt not, but from self-evident propositions, by necessary consequences,
as incontestable as those in mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might
be made out, to any one that will apply himself with the same indifferency and
attention to the one as he does to the other of those sciences.2

Next is Locke’s idea of the state of nature. Others before him had stressed The “state of nature”
the state of nature as the only adequate starting point for the development
of a system of social and political life. For we must seek to understand what
the human situation really is, before this becomes possibly confused or dis-
torted by the imposition of the rules and regulations of civil government.
For example, it was very important for Locke, in his time, to question and
challenge the prevailing notion of the divine right of kings—that monarchs
are established by God, and that all others are, therefore, by nature subser-
vient to them. Locke asks whether this is justified by an analysis of human-
ity in its natural state. And he answers with a resounding No! The natural
state is governed by natural law, and natural law legislates freedom, equality,
and therefore inherent rights for all.

2
John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV, 3, 18, ed. A. S. Pringle-Pattison (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1924).
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444 The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone: and
reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that, being
THE QUESTION
OF SOCIETY all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty
or possessions.3

Such a conclusion may not seem so striking today. But that only shows how
deeply influenced our own values are by Locke’s ideas, which, in his time,
were certainly striking enough. It was a question of the divine right of royalty
and the divine royalty of right.
The theoretical state of nature is, thus, very important. But it is only
theoretical. In spite of its advantages of freedom and equality, we do not,
nor can we, actually live in such a state, at least not for long. In the selec-
tion below, Locke tells us why. For one thing, most people do not pay suf-
ficient attention to the rational dictates of natural law, and even if they did,
their selfish concerns would prevent an unbiased application of it. Second,
in such a state there would be no way of judging or arbitrating between
the differences that would inevitably arise. And even so, third, no such
judgment would have backing or authority so that it could be meaningfully
enforced. Locke mentions these specific problems, but you can easily imag-
ine others that would make life in a state of nature impossible from a
practical standpoint. The conclusion: Men are quickly driven into society.
The social contract Enter the idea of the social contract. As you know, any contract involves
giving up something and getting something in return. A social contract is
an agreement between members of a society according to which each for-
feits certain rights and privileges in order to preserve others. Thus I see
that it is much to my advantage to submit myself to government, to obey
laws, and so on, if thereby I can secure my fundamental freedoms and
rights, and especially if I, as one of the contractors, have a say, either directly
(pure democracy) or indirectly (as in representative democracy), in the
character of that government, its law, and the like.

3
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 6, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980).

LOCKE’S FOURFOLD BASIS

OF CLASSICAL LIBERALISM
• Natural law: The rationally knowable morality that is founded in God’s will for
his creatures.
• State of nature: The human condition of natural freedoms and rights prior to the
imposition of social organization and regulation.
• Social contract: The agreement among a group of people to establish social
organizations and regulations for the preservation of basic freedoms and rights.
• Tacit consent: The consent to and support of social organizations and regulations
by virtue of an individual’s continued participation in them.
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It is important to see that the order of (1) state of nature and (2) social 445
contract is a logical rather than a historical order. How many of us have ever LIBERTY
actually lived in a state of nature? Do we not, rather, just find ourselves
already members of some social system? No matter. That does not undermine
the idea of the social contract, for as long as we remain in such a system
(however we got there) we give tacit consent, says Locke, to that system. That “Tacit consent”
is, the social contract is not necessarily something that is drawn up “once
upon a time,” but rather all the time: By their participation in the system,
the members continually consent to, agree to, and support the contract.

Of the Beginning of Political Societies

Men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal, and independent, no one
can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, with-
out his own consent. The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural
liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to join
and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one
amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security
against any, that are not of it. This any number of men may do, because it injures
not the freedom of the rest; they are left as they were in the liberty of the state of
nature. When any number of men have so consented to make one community or
government, they are thereby presently incorporated, and make one body politic,
wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude the rest.
For when any number of men have, by the consent of every individual, made
a community, they have thereby made that community one body, with a power to
act as one body, which is only by the will and determination of the majority: for
that which acts any community, being only the consent of the individuals of it, and
it being necessary to that which is one body to move one way; it is necessary the
body should move that way whither the greater force carries it, which is the con-
sent of the majority: or else it is impossible it should act or continue one body, one
community, which the consent of every individual that united into it, agreed that it
should; and so everyone is bound by that consent to be concluded by the majority.
And therefore we see, that in assemblies, impowered to act by positive laws, where
no number is set by that positive law which impowers them, the act of the majority
passes for the act of the whole, and of course determines, as having, by the law of
nature and reason, the power of the whole.
And thus every man, by consenting with others to make one body politic under
one government, puts himself under an obligation, to every one of that society,
to submit to the determination of the majority, and to be concluded by it; or else
this original compact, whereby he with others incorporates into one society, would
signify nothing, and be no compact, if he be left free, and under no other ties than
he was in before in the state of nature. For what appearance would there be of
any compact? What new engagement if he were no farther tied by any decrees
of the society, than he himself thought fit, and did actually consent to? This would
be still as great a liberty, as he himself had before his compact, or anyone else in
the state of nature hath, who may submit himself, and consent to any acts of it if
he thinks fit.
For if the consent of the majority shall not, in reason, be received as the act
of the whole, and conclude every individual; nothing but the consent of every
individual can make anything to be the act of the whole: but such a consent
is next to impossible ever to be had if we consider the infirmities of health,
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446 and avocations of business, which in a number, though much less than that of
a common-wealth, will necessarily keep many away from the public assembly.
THE QUESTION
OF SOCIETY To which if we add the variety of opinions, and contrariety of interests, which
unavoidably happen in all collections of men, the coming into society be upon
such terms it will be only like Cato’s coming into the theater, only to go out
again. Such a constitution as this would make the mighty Leviathan of a shorter
duration, than the feeblest creatures, and not let it outlast the day it was born
in: which cannot be supposed, till we can think, that rational creatures should
desire and constitute societies only to be dissolved: for where the majority cannot
conclude the rest, there they cannot act as one body, and consequently will be
immediately dissolved again.
Whosoever therefore out of a state of nature unite into a community must be
understood to give up all the power, necessary to the ends for which they unite
into society, to the majority of the community, unless they expressly agreed in any
number greater than the majority. And this is done by barely agreeing to unite
into one political society, which is all the compact that is, or needs be, between
the individuals, that enter into, or make up a common-wealth. And thus that, which
begins and actually constitutes any political society, is nothing but the consent of
any number of freemen capable of a majority to unite and incorporate into such
a society. And this is that, and that only, which did, or could give beginning to
any lawful government in the world.

Of the Ends of Political Society and Government

If man in the state of nature be so free, as has been said; if he be absolute lord
of his own person and possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to no body,
why will he part with his freedom? why will he give up his empire, and subject
himself to the dominion and control of any other power? To which it is obvious to
answer, that though in the state of nature he hath such a right, yet the enjoyment
of it is very uncertain, and constantly exposed to the invasions of others: for all
being kings as much as he, every man his equal, and the greater part no strict
observers of equity and justice, the enjoyment of the property he has in this state
is very unsafe, very unsecure. This makes him willing to quit a condition, which,
however free, is full of fears and continual dangers: and it is not without reason,
that he seeks out, and is willing to join in society with others, who are already
united, or have a mind to unite, for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties
and estates, which I call by the general name, property.
The great and chief end, therefore, of men’s uniting into common-wealths, and
putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property. To which
in the state of nature there are many things wanting.
First, There wants an established, settled, known law, received and allowed by
common consent to be the standard of right and wrong, and the common measure
to decide all controversies between them: for though the law of nature be plain and
intelligible to all rational creatures; yet men being biased by their interest, as well
as ignorant for want of study of it, are not apt to allow of it as a law binding to
them in the application of it to their particular cases.
Secondly, In the state of nature there wants a known and indifferent judge,
with authority to determine all differences according to the established law: for
everyone in that state being both judge and executioner of the law of nature,
men being partial to themselves, passion and revenge is very apt to carry them
too far, and with too much heat, in their own cases; as well as negligence, and
unconcernedness, to make them remiss in other men’s.
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Thirdly, In the state of nature there often wants power to back and support 447
the sentence when right, and to give it due execution. They who by any injustice
LIBERTY
offended, will seldom fail, where they are able, by force to make good their injus-
tice; such resistance many times makes the punishment dangerous, and frequently
destructive, to those who attempt it.
Thus mankind, notwithstanding all the privileges of the state of nature, being but in
an ill condition, while they remain in it, are quickly driven into society. Hence it comes
to pass, that we seldom find any number of men live any time together in this state. The
inconveniences that they are therein exposed to, by the irregular and uncertain exercise
of the power every man has of punishing the transgressions of others, make them take
sanctuary under the established laws of government, and therein seek the preservation
of their property. It is this makes them so willingly give up everyone his single power
of punishing, to be exercised by such alone, as shall be appointed to it amongst them;
and by such rules as the community, or those authorized by them to that purpose, shall
agree on. And in this we have the original right and rise of both the legislative and
executive power, as well as of the governments and societies themselves. . . .
But though men, when they enter into society, give up the equality, liberty, and
executive power they had in the state of nature, into the hands of the society, to be
so far disposed of by the legislative, as the good of the society shall require; yet it
being only with an intention in everyone the better to preserve himself, his liberty
and property; (for no rational creature can be supposed to change his condition
with an intention to be worse) the power of the society, or legislative constituted

A page from Locke’s Concerning Education,

published in 1695
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448
THE QUESTION
OF SOCIETY THE INTERNATIONAL DECLARATION
OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN*
The Institute of International Law, considering that the juridic conscience of the
civilized world demands the recognition of the individual’s rights exempted from
all infringements on the part of the State;
That the Declarations of Rights inscribed in a great many constitutions and
notably in the American and French constitutions of the end of the eighteenth
century, enacted laws not only for the citizen, but for the human being;
That the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States declares
that no State shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due
process of the law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protec-
tion of the laws”;
That the Supreme Court of the United States, in a unanimous decision, ruled that,
by the terms of this amendment, it applied within the jurisdiction of the United States
“to all persons without distinction of race, color or nationality, and that the equal
protection of the laws is a guarantee of the protection of equal laws”;
That, moreover, a certain number of treaties explicitly provide for the recognition
of the rights of man;
That it is all important to spread throughout the entire world the international
recognition of the rights of man;
Proclaims:

ARTICLE I

It is the duty of every State to recognize for every individual the equal right to life,
liberty and property and to accord to every one on its territory the full and com-
plete protection of the law without distinction of nationality, sex, race, language or
religion. (continued on next page)

by them, can never be supposed to extend farther than the common good; but
is obliged to secure everyone’s property by providing against those three defects
above-mentioned that made the state of nature so unsafe and uneasy. And so
whoever has the legislative or supreme power of any common-wealth, is bound to
govern by established standing laws, promulgated and known to the people, and
not by extemporary decrees, by indifferent and upright judges, who are to decide
controversies by those laws; and to employ the force of the community at home,
only in the execution of such laws, or abroad to prevent or redress foreign injuries,
and secure the community from inroads and invasion. And all this to be directed
to no other end, but the peace, safety, and public good of the people.4

Locke: the spirit Much of this should have a familiar ring. It is not for nothing that Locke
behind the U.S. is called the spiritual father of the U.S. Constitution. Thomas Jefferson, who
Constitution in 1776 drafted the Declaration of Independence, declared outright that his

4
Ibid., pp. 95–99, 123–127, 131.
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449
ARTICLE II LIBERTY

It is the duty of every State to recognize for every individual the right to the free
exercise, both public and private, of every faith, religion or belief of which the
practice is not incompatible with public policy and good morals.

ARTICLE III

It is the duty of every State to recognize the right of every individual to the free
use of the language of his choice and for instruction in this language.

ARTICLE IV

No motive whatsoever based directly or indirectly on difference of sex, race,

language or religion can authorize a State to refuse to any of its nationals private
and public rights and especially the admission to institutions of public instruction
and the exercise of different economic activities, professions and industries.

ARTICLE V

The equality already provided is not to be nominal but really effective and
excludes all discrimination, direct or indirect.

ARTICLE VI

No State has the right to withdraw, except for reasons taken from its general leg-
islation, its nationality from those who for reasons of sex, race, language or religion
it might wish to deprive of the rights guaranteed by the preceding articles.

*A declaration published by the Institute of International Law during its session held in New
York on October 12, 1929.

intent was that it should embody the social and political principles of Locke
and like-minded theorists. Are not the ideas of natural law, social contract,
and individual rights apparent in the very first lines of the Declaration of
Independence? And is not the very language at times almost identical with
what we read above in Locke?

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to
assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which
the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel
them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these
are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Govern-
ments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
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450 governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Gov-
THE QUESTION
OF SOCIETY ernment, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such
form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.5

LIBERALISM AND CAPITALISM

Classical liberalism means many different kinds of freedom. One of these is
economic freedom, the freedom of the individual, either alone or (as with cor-
porations) in union with others, to own the means of production (land, tools,
factories, etc.) and to produce and sell goods for a profit. This is capitalism. That
Locke himself saw this as a legitimate aspect of his liberal and individualistic
The right of property vision is clear from the recurring references to “property” in the quotation from
his Second Treatise, as in the inherent right of the individual “to preserve himself,
his liberty and property” (compare the phrase from the Declaration of Indepen-
dence, “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”). One could argue, in fact,
that Locke regarded the right of property as the most important of natural rights.
Certainly he has already told us that it is primarily out of interest in personal
property that people enter into social contracts in the first place: “The great and
chief end, therefore, of men’s uniting into common-wealths, and putting them-
selves under government, is the preservation of their property.”
However, it was after the time of Locke, during the period of the Industrial
Revolution, that this economic implication of liberalism became most clearly
focused. More specifically, it was the Scottish writer Adam Smith (1723–1790)
who, in his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, gave
decisive expression to the rights of the individual in a free marketplace—that
is, capitalism. Smith’s watchword was laissez faire, French for “let it alone,”
“Hands-off” and often rendered as “hands off!” But it must be stressed that Smith and
economy the laissez faire economists were not advocating the principle of allow-the-
individual-complete-liberty-in-commerce-and-let-the-rest-be-damned. They
believed—and is not the idea still believed?—that a laissez faire approach to
economics would provide the best for everyone. The mechanisms involved in
supply and demand and free enterprise make for an efficient and satisfying
The “invisible hand” arrangement for all concerned: owner, merchant, worker, consumer. So, even
behind capitalism though Smith advocated a hands-off economy, he believed in an “invisible

5
MacDonald, Documentary Source Book of American History, 1606–1926, p. 191 (slightly edited).

CAPITALISM
The economic theory that advocates that the means of production, and the actual
production and exchange of goods and wealth, should be owned and imple-
mented by private individuals or corporations, with a view toward profit.
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The Scot Adam Smith was the author of The

Wealth of Nations, the classical statement of
451
the capitalist theory of economics. It was LIBERTY
published in 1776.

hand,” or the mechanisms we just spoke of, such that whatever the capitalist’s
own intention might be, the interest and good of a capitalist society as a
whole would be promoted. This comes out well in the following paragraph
from the Wealth of Nations:

. . . the annual revenue of every society is always precisely equal to the exchange-
able value of the whole annual produce of its industry, or rather is precisely the
same thing with that exchangeable value. As every individual, therefore, endeavours
as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry,
and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every
individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great
as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor
knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of
foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in
such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own
gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote
an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society
that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of
the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never
known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an
affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need
be employed in dissuading them from it.6

6
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Edwin Cannan
(New York: Modern Library, 1937), p. 423.
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452
THE QUESTION
OF SOCIETY LIBERTY AND UTILITY
We have already encountered the British philosopher John Stuart Mill in
Chapter 15 on utilitarianism as an ethical theory. Mill’s most famous work, On
Liberty, provides an argument for liberalism but from a very different starting
point than Locke’s theory of natural rights. Mill’s exploration of “the nature
and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over
the individual” is based purely on the consequences or utility of such a sys-
tem as he explains:

It is proper to state that I forego any advantage which could be derived

to my argument from the idea of abstract right as a thing independent of
utility. I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it
must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests
of man as a progressive being. Those interests, I contend, authorize the
subjection of individual spontaneity to external control only in respect to
those actions of each which concern the interest of other people. If anyone
does an act hurtful to others, there is a prima facie case for punishing him
by law or, where legal penalties are not safely applicable, by general
disapprobation.

Here we see not only Mill’s grounding of his liberalism in utilitarianism but also
his key distinction between those actions that affect others and those that are
entirely personal, affecting no one but yourself. It is this latter category, self-
regarding actions, that Mill describes as “the appropriate region of human liberty.”
Mill summarizes the point with his famous “harm principle.”

The object of this essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to
govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of
compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the
form of legal penalties or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle
is that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collec-
tively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-
protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised
over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm
to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.
He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better
for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions
of others, to do so would be wise or even right. These are good reasons for
remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreat-
ing him, but not for compelling him or visiting him with any evil in case he
do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him
must be calculated to produce evil to someone else. The only part of the
conduct of anyone for which he is amenable to society is that which concerns
others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of
right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is
sovereign.

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, ed. Elizabeth Rapaport (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978), pp. 9, 10.
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Is it relevant that the Wealth of Nations was published in 1776? For 453
better or for worse, these ideas have had everything to do with the shap- LIBERTY
ing of the American social-political-economic system. And now we are
in a better position to appreciate how the words “liberal” and “conserva-
tive” are used in contemporary political discussion. Both liberals and
conservatives embrace the twofold idea of classical liberalism: (1) indi-
vidual rights and (2) the social responsibility of the state. The difference
is that conservatives defend individual freedom against the encroach-
ment of the state, whereas liberals stress the responsibility of the state to
ensure individual rights.
But the real attack on the classical liberal perspective originates far to
the left of the liberals. And this brings us to the radical alternative and
challenge of Marxism.

A RADICAL RESPONSE: MARX

If the perspectives we are considering in this part of the book seek to address
actual, practical, social, and political life, then Marxism takes the prize. Per-
haps no philosophy has had more of a direct impact on the social and politi-
cal existence of untold numbers of people than that introduced by the German
thinker and social theorist Karl Marx (1818–1883). By its nature, the Marxist
program presses for change—radical and revolutionary change.
It is often the case that we must look for the roots of a philosophy in some
earlier philosophy. In some important ways, the roots of Marxism lie in the The influence
German idealist thinker G. W. F. Hegel7 (1770–1831). Hegel’s philosophy is of Hegel
an enormous intellectual monument, but a few basic points will suffice for
the moment. First, Hegel was an objective idealist. You will recall from
Chapter 5 that an objective idealist believes that reality is “idea-istic” or
spiritual in nature, but that it exists objectively or independently of us, “out
there.” Hegel himself believed in this way that reality was spirit, but, second,
that this spiritual reality is constantly on the move, changing, advancing, and
actualizing the ultimate state that he called Absolute Spirit, otherwise repre-
sented as the complete consciousness and freedom of reality. Finally, the
mechanism by which this historical-spiritual process is achieved is called
dialectic. In this context, “dialectic” means the give-and-take between oppo- Historical dialectic
site states resulting in always-emerging higher unities. More technically,
this process is represented as the synthesis (or unity) of thesis and antithesis

7
Rhymes with bagel.

“Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however,
is to change it.”
—Marx
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454 (opposite states), a process going on constantly in all spheres of existence,

THE QUESTION
and where, at any moment, a synthesis of opposites becomes itself an oppo-
OF SOCIETY site to be synthesized with another:

Synthesis (also new Thesis)

Synthesis (and new Thesis) Antithesis

Thesis Antithesis

What can this superspeculative and abstract conception have to do with

the superpractical and down-to-earth concerns of Marxism? How does
Hegel’s process of the historical dialectic bear on Marx’s political theory?
Marx took over the idea of the historical dialectic, but under the influ-
ence of another German philosopher, Feuerbach, gave it a materialistic
Marxism ⫽ twist. The result was dialectical materialism. This phrase was never used by
dialectical Marx himself. Nevertheless, it serves well enough to suggest the character
materialism of the philosophical principles underlying his whole social and political
program: Reality is matter, and its concrete expression and development
are governed by the dialectic of history. But this is given a further twist
when Marx focuses more specifically on matter as it reveals itself in eco-
nomics, which, as you know, concerns money, but more accurately concerns
the principles of production, distribution, and use of wealth and products.
And now we are in a position to say what Marx’s real concern was. It was
to aid and abet the class warfare that is the social and economic expression
of the historical dialectic: to achieve—even through revolutionary tactics—
a classless society in which private ownership of the means of production
(tools, factories, and so forth) would be abolished and wealth would be
Marxism and equitably distributed. This, of course, is communism, the social and eco-
communism nomic and political expression of dialectical materialism.
So far, all ideas and theories. What really propelled Marx were two facts
that stood in stark and dismal contradiction. First, Marx was a humanist.

MARXISM
• Dialectical materialism: The metaphysical view that reality is matter and motion,
and evolves historically in accordance with the dialectical principle of the syn-
thesis of opposite states.
• Communism: The economic theory that advocates the abolition of private own-
ership of the means of production and the revolutionary actualization of a class-
less society.
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Karl Marx, the father of modern communism 455

LIBERTY

His exalted view of humanity included a belief in the innate goodness of Human possibilities
persons, their perfectability, and their powers of self-realization. But, second, versus economic
this is overpowered and thwarted by their actual social and economic con- repression
dition. It must be remembered that Marx lived when the Industrial Revolu-
tion was playing right into the hands of capitalism. It was a time when
increased and frantic production meant the enslavement of the working
class (Marx called it the proletariat) to the owning class (the bourgeoisie); and
it meant the degradation of the working class through, for instance, squalid
working conditions, child labor, and a wage wholly determined by the own-
ers. In a word—and this is a most important word in Marxism—it meant
alienation.
“Alienation” means separation or estrangement. By alienation Marx Alienation
intended considerably more than just the bitter estrangement of the work-
ers from their capitalist superiors. In his Economic and Philosophical Manu-
scripts Marx explains the different kinds of alienation spawned by capitalist-
controlled labor: Workers become alienated (1) from the objects they
produce, (2) from themselves, (3) from their human nature, and (4) from
their fellows. It is important to understand these four forms of alienation
and to see exactly how labor, as Marx knew it, results in them. The fol-
lowing extract addresses specifically the way in which labor results in
self-alienation.

The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces and the more his pro-
duction increases in power and extent. The worker becomes an ever cheaper com-
modity the more goods he creates. The devaluation of the human world increases
in direct relation with the increase in value of the world of things. Labour does
not only create goods; it also produces itself and the worker as a commodity,
and indeed in the same proportion as it produces goods. . . .
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456 What constitutes the alienation of labour? First, that the work is external to the
worker, that it is not part of his nature; and that, consequently, he does not fulfil
THE QUESTION
OF SOCIETY himself in his work but denies himself, has a feeling of misery rather than well-
being, does not develop freely his mental and physical energies but is physically
exhausted and mentally debased. The worker, therefore, feels himself at home
only during his leisure time, whereas at work he feels homeless. His work is not
voluntary but imposed, forced labour. It is not the satisfaction of a need, but only
a means for satisfying other needs. Its alien character is clearly shown by the
fact that as soon as there is no physical or other compulsion it is avoided like
the plague. External labour, labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour of
self-sacrifice, or mortification. Finally, the external character of work for the worker
is shown by the fact that it is not his own work but work for someone else, that
in work he does not belong to himself but to another person.
Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of human fantasy, of the human
brain and heart, reacts independently as an alien activity of gods or devils upon
the individual, so the activity of the worker is not his own spontaneous activity. It
is another’s activity and a loss of his own spontaneity.
We arrive at the result that man (the worker) feels himself to be freely active only
in his animal functions—eating, drinking, and procreating, or at most also in his
dwelling and in personal adornment—while in his human functions he is reduced
to an animal. The animal becomes human and the human becomes animal.
Eating, drinking and procreating are of course also genuine human functions.
But abstractly considered, apart from the environment of human activities, and
turned into final and sole ends, they are animal functions.8

Marxism has undergone many changes, most notably through Marx’s

contemporary and compatriot Friedrich Engels and, later, the Russian rev-
olutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. But Marxism in any form begins with the
contradiction Marx saw between a high estimation of the human being and
the actual repressive and alienating conditions inflicted on the working
classes, and it seeks, through varying levels of revolutionary force, to tran-
scend the contradiction by means of communism. Its battle cry has been:

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!

YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS!

8
Karl Marx, Early Writings, tr. and ed. T. B. Bottomore (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964),
pp. 121–127.

A MESSAGE FROM MARTIN NIEMOELLER*

“First the Nazis went after the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not object.
Then they went after the Catholics, but I was not a Catholic, so I did not object.
Then they went after the Trade-Unionists, but I was not a Trade-Unionist, so I did
not object. Then they came after me, and there was no one left to object.”

*A German pastor imprisoned in Dachau by the Nazis.

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Out of this there eventually arose the communist revolution (led by Lenin) 457
in Russia in 1917; the revolutions since then in China (Mao Tse-Tung) and LIBERTY
Cuba (Castro); the Marxist agitations today in the Third World, such as
Latin America; and labor unions and socialist programs everywhere.

SOME OBJECTIONS
We have now looked at the two dominant political-economic theories that
competed in the twentieth century. Obviously, there are many objections to
both theories, but here we limit our consideration to two major objections
to each approach. Other objections and alternatives come out in the final
two chapters.
For Marxism, we must start by first speaking to a socioeconomic point: The socioeconomic
Some believe that Marxists are too harsh in their rejection of all other social question
systems as incapable of introducing important social change. Certainly the
situation now is different from what it was in Marx’s own time. Has not
even capitalism proved in some ways (never dreamed of by the early Marx-
ists) to be self-correcting? To be capable of being governed by its own
(though unending) dialectic of improvement? It is hardly necessary to be a
Marxist to have a social conscience, to believe in and strive for the general
welfare, to improve working conditions or to introduce child-labor laws,
and to change things. Of course, it may be answered: “But your program of
social change is too slow. We need radical change, and we need it now.
Revolution is the only way!” But the idea of literal revolution, with its
upheavals and probable bloodshed, is itself not unproblematic—unless you
believe that the end justifies the means.
Second, a moral issue: It is frequently heard that Marxism is naive and The moral question
over-optimistic in its own estimate of human nature: “Marxism is a won-
derful theory. Too bad that it can’t possibly work due to human nature.” Is
there any truth to the charge that the very repression of human values that
Marxists so deplore in other forms of government reveals itself even more
vividly in communist societies? Not to excuse other forms of government
for their own failures, but what of Stalin’s purges of the 1930s and 1950s?
The communist ideal was pursued in the USSR for over sixty years. Where
did it succeed in healing the alienation it so strongly denounces in other
systems? Where did it outstrip competing systems with respect to human
rights? Where did it maximize the self-actualization and full humanity that
it claimed for its own citizens?
As a matter of fact, it would appear that the Marxist chickens came home
to roost. Political-economic upheavals throughout Eastern Europe—beginning
with Lech Walesa’s Polish Solidarity movement and ending with the dis-
mantling of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the Soviet Union—testify to the
failure of Marxism in that part of the world. Some have even declared that
Marxism is dead. Well, no. In other parts of the world entirely different
cultural and economic circumstances still invite Marxism to make its case.
And what will happen remains to be seen.
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458
THE QUESTION GOODBYE MARXISM: SOVIETS GO CAPITALIST
OF SOCIETY
—Headline, Rocky Mountain News, Sept. 25, 1990

Returning to liberalism, we find that this seemingly victorious political

theory is certainly not immune to objections. In fact, the debate over liberalism
has been very heated in recent years, perhaps as a result of the difficulties
with Marxism. Here we limit our discussion to a pair of closely related criti-
cisms about individuals and community.
First, many object to liberalism for an excessive focus on individualism
they believe is ultimately grounded in an untenable metaphysical concep-
tion of humans. For liberals, remember, the individual is supreme and the
role of the state is to protect the conditions necessary for individuals to
control their own lives as much as possible. Critics contend that humans
are fundamentally social beings and thus our ties to others—friends, family,
co-workers, and so on—are as important, or even more important, than our
individual goals and interests. If this is true, if we are defined and guided
as much by our relationships as by our individualism, then doesn’t liberal-
ism err by focusing so much on individuals as autonomous beings and
ignoring social context?
A second objection builds off of this by pointing to the value of com-
munity as a shared value. Some critics look at the decline in community
through the past several decades and blame liberal policies that focus on
individuals. Is it surprising, they ask, that churches, schools, and other
community groups have suffered when we have a political system that puts
all the emphasis on individuals and their personal liberty? Instead, they
argue, we need to recognize that community is a social value that can and
will trump individual liberty in some cases. This is not to say that indi-
vidual rights don’t matter, only that the common good must also be con-
sidered in the mix.
In the next chapter we’ll see how these liberal values play out in democ-
racy, the political scheme most often associated with liberalism.

CHAPTER 18 IN REVIEW
SUMMARY
In this chapter we have looked at the two most important social-political
perspectives that have developed in modern times, which compete yet
today, and sometimes bitterly, for supremacy: liberalism and Marxism.
Liberalism is the ideology of freedom. We do not mean here some
starry-eyed and romantic idea but the concrete freedom of the individual
to pursue his or her interests, not only undeterred by undue governmental
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control, but also as guaranteed by government. In its most classical form 459
this doctrine was expressed by Locke, who believed that both the private LIBERTY
and public good are knowable from the natural law, which teaches plainly
the equality and independence of each individual in his or her “natural
state,” unperturbed by civil government. Social life (or life together)
requires, however, that individuals enter into a social contract or agree-
ment to a degree of organization and regulation for the sake of the pres-
ervation of their freedoms.
One of the most basic of these freedoms, or “inalienable rights,” is the
pursuit of property, and this establishes the connection between liberalism
and capitalism, the economic doctrine of the private ownership of the
means of production and exchange of goods. The capitalistic ideals of pri-
vate ownership and the free marketplace were most forcefully expressed
by Adam Smith’s economic slogan “hands off!” But this ideology, abetted
by the Industrial Revolution, led in actual practice to exploitation, monop-
olies, a growing division between the “haves” and “have-nots,” and the
radical reaction of Marxism.
Marx was deeply influenced by Hegel’s “dialectical” view of history,
according to which history develops through the confrontation and syn-
thesis of opposite states. Marx, interpreting this in a materialistic and eco-
nomic way, called for a social revolution to bring about a more equitable
distribution of wealth and the classless society, or communism. Only by
means of this radical solution can the human alienation fostered by capital-
ism be healed.

BASIC IDEAS
• Liberalism
• The distinction between freedoms from and freedoms for
• Individualism
• The state of nature
• The social contract
• Tacit consent
• Capitalism
• Laissez faire
• “Invisible-hand” economy
• Hegelian dialectic
• Dialectical materialism
• Communism
• The Marxist concept of alienation
• Criticisms of Marxism/communism
Socioeconomic
Moral
• Criticisms of liberalism
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460 TEST YOURSELF

THE QUESTION 1. Who wrote Second Treatise of Government?
OF SOCIETY
2. In 1776, the United States was founded and the book entitled ______ was
published. What was the connection between the two events?
3. Who was G. W. F. Hegel?
4. What is meant by saying that the order of (1) state of nature and (2) social
contract is a logical rather than a historical order?
5. Marx taught that labor (according to the capitalist conception) alienates
the worker from ______, from ______, from ______, and from ______.
6. Comment on Marxism as a theory of reality.
7. What is the relation of Marxism to communism?
8. True or false: Recalling the preceding chapter, communism has more in
common with Mill’s teaching than with Kant’s.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• In this book we have encountered several concepts of “freedom.” Can
you distinguish the freedom in the free-will–determinism debate, the
freedom in Sartre’s existential philosophy, and now the freedom involved
in liberalism?
• The idea of natural law has appeared again in this chapter. Can you
explain the exact connection of this idea with the rise of capitalism?
What do you make of the notion of certain “inalienable” rights? Do these
include the right of private property? Does this right sometimes involve
an infringement of others’ rights? Exploitation? Was Marx correct about
the alienating power of capitalism?
• Capitalism and communism are economic theories of existence. What
does this mean? Are such theories adequate to the totality of human
experience? Does each of them leave out something important?

FOR FURTHER READING

Jean Baechler. The Origins of Capitalism. Tr. Barry Cooper. New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1976. A useful discussion of the nature of capitalism and
its historical development, with an opening chapter on Marxism.
Carl Cohen (ed.). Communism, Fascism and Democracy. New York: Random
House, 1962. An anthology of statements that have contributed to the
development of communist and democratic perspectives.
Gerald A. Cohen. Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defense. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1978. An analytic reconstruction and defense
of an orthodox version of historical materialism.
Frederick Copleston. A History of Philosophy. Baltimore: Newman Press,
1946–1974. V, Chs. 7 and 19. Authoritative surveys of the political doc-
trines of Locke and Smith.
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John Dunn. Locke: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University 461
Press, 2003. An accessible entry to John Locke’s life and philosophical LIBERTY
ideas.
Joel Feinberg. Social Philosophy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973. A
student-oriented survey of the general issues.
Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman. Free to Choose. New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1980. A defense of capitalism, for a popular reading
audience, by a leading advocate of the capitalist system and his wife.
Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit (eds.). A Companion to Contemporary
Political Philosophy. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1993. A collection of essays
by major thinkers about a wide range of issues in political philosophy.
J. W. Gough. The Social Contract: A Critical Study of Its Development. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1936. A complete discussion of the concept of the social
contract from ancient to modern times, including a good account of
“Locke and the English Revolution.”
Jean Hampton. Political Philosophy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997. A
readable introduction to major topics in the field.
Michael Harrington. The Twilight of Capitalism. New York: Simon & Schuster,
1976. A critique of the capitalist system, by a well-known democratic
socialist.
John Hoffman. Marxism and the Theory of Praxis: A Critique of Some New Ver-
sions of Old Fallacies. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975. A critical
appraisal, with valuable historical information, of Marxism in its social
implementation.
Will Kymlica. Contemporary Political Philosophy. Second ed. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2001. Survey of recent work in political thought.
E. J. Lowe. Locke, The Routledge Philosophers. London: Routledge, 2005.
Interpretation and analysis covering the full range of Locke’s philosophi-
cal system.
Tibor Machan. The Libertarian Reader. Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield,
1982. A collection of 21 essays by contemporary philosophers, econo-
mists, political scientists, and the like in defense of libertarianism.
Douglas MacLean and Claudia Mills (eds.). Liberalism Reconsidered. Totowa,
NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1983. A collection of studies evaluating vari-
ous issues in liberalism: equality, rights, law, democracy, foreign policy,
and so on.
Vincente Medina. Social Contract Theory. Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield,
1990. A critical exposition of the leading representatives of the “contrac-
tarian” tradition, such as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Rawls.
G. H. R. Parkinson (ed.). Marx and Marxism. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1982. A collection of contemporary evaluations of issues
involved in Marxism: the state, science, justice, revolution, metaphysics,
and so on.
K. R. Popper. The Open Society and Its Enemies. Fourth ed. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1963. II. A historical and philosophical
account of the rise of Marxism and the aftermath.
miL86561_ch18_436-462.indd Page 462 2/4/08 7:12:08 PM gulab /tempwork/SUSHIL/MHSF007:Miller:208

462 Melvin Rader. Marx’s Interpretation of History. New York: Oxford University
THE QUESTION Press, 1979. A helpful, general exposition, emphasizing Marx’s humanistic
OF SOCIETY concerns.
Michael J. Sandel (ed.). Liberalism and Its Critics. New York: New York Uni-
versity Press, 1984. A collection of major essays by liberal and commu-
nitarian thinkers.
Michael J. Sandel. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Second ed. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998. A leading liberal outlines his criticism
of John Rawls.
Jules Steinberg. Locke, Rousseau, and the Idea of Political Obligation. Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 1978. A critical examination of the consent theory
of political obligation as employed in the liberal-democratic tradition,
with specific treatment of Locke.
Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (eds.). History of Political Philosophy. Third
ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. A comprehensive collec-
tion of essays on all the major thinkers in Western political thought.
Richard Taylor. Freedom, Anarchy, and the Law: An Introduction to Political
Philosophy. Second ed. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1982. A beginning-
level discussion of the central issues of political philosophy, written from
a libertarian standpoint.
David Thomas. The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Locke on Government.
London: Routledge, 1995. Approachable philosophical introduction to
Locke’s Second Treatise.
John Wild. Plato’s Modern Enemies and the Theory of Natural Law. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1953. A treatment primarily of Plato’s posi-
tion, but with general discussion of natural law and in relation to con-
temporary thinking.
*
In addition, see the relevant articles (“Social Contract,” “Liberalism,”
“Marx, Karl,” etc.) in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward
Craig (London: Routledge, 1998), and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
http://plato.stanford.edu.
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CHAPTER 19

DEMOCRACY

I
n Chapter 18 we focused on individual liberty as a foundation for
government or society. Here we turn our attention to the related ques-
tions of who governs and, more to the point, what provides legitimacy
to a governing authority. Probably everyone is familiar with “Might makes
right” as one statement of the view that authority comes from strength
or perhaps military power. Dictators use this as their source of authority.
Alternatively, the idea of the “divine right” of kings was very powerful
at times in history as a way of indicating that God gives some people the
right to rule. A third option, defended by Plato later in this chapter, is that
superior intelligence is the basis for ruling. While all of these options merit
consideration, democracy takes a different tack. It argues that the people, all
citizens, have the ultimate authority and that the government is legitimate
only when it has the support of the people. Let’s take a closer look at this
central idea in modern political thought.

GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE

Everyone is familiar with democracy, but as philosophers we must dig
deeper and ask, What do we really mean when we say that a society should
be “democratic”? To start, let’s distinguish, once again, between two differ-
ent meanings. In the same way we noted in Chapter 18 that the liberalism
that philosophers are concerned about is not the same as being liberal ver-
sus conservative, the democrats we’ll read about here are not members of
one political party. Both the Democratic and Republican parties in U.S.
politics are committed to democracy (and to our country as a republic, for
that matter); their differences lie elsewhere.
463
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464 Where do we start then in exploring democracy? As we’ve seen through-

THE QUESTION
out the book, one useful place to start is with the word itself, trying to
OF SOCIETY understand its roots and meaning. “Democracy” comes from two Greek
words, demos meaning “common people” and kratos meaning “rule.” Thus
The word
“democracy” democracy literally means rule by the people. We can see this quite clearly
in the opening words of the Declaration of Independence, the 1776 docu-
ment used to signal the intention of the original colonies to split from
Britain and the reasons behind this split.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these
are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Gov-
ernments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent
of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive
Rule by the of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to insti-
people tute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing
its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety
and Happiness.

It’s worth taking the time to examine carefully some of the key language
used by Thomas Jefferson, the chief author of the Declaration of Indepen-
dence, in making the case for independence. He talks about equality and
natural rights, familiar concepts from our study of John Locke in the pre-
ceding chapter. Jefferson had read Locke and was heavily influenced by
his writings. We should also note that liberalism and democratic govern-
ment often go hand in hand and the phrase “liberal democracy” is quite
common.
No idea is more important in this document, and to the basic idea of
Consent democracy, than consent. Democracy is based on the consent, or agreement,
of the people, and this is how the democratic society gains its legitimacy
and power. As we will see, this really is the defining feature and core idea
of democracy. The notion of consent, like everything in philosophy, is open
to criticism and debate as we will see soon enough. But first we must look
at how democracy comes out of the thinking of a key philosopher of the
French enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778).

ROUSSEAU’S SOCIAL CONTRACT

To say that democracy is government “by the people” and derives its power
from the agreement or consent of the people is a good start, but how does
this work? Who are “the people”? To what do they agree? And how does that
translate into government, law, and a stable society? These questions were
foremost in the minds of European thinkers in the modern period, as we
have seen with John Locke.
For Rousseau, like Locke, the central fact of human existence is freedom.
Humans are fundamentally free, and this freedom forms the starting point,
the foundation, for their relations with others and the formation of society.
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In one of the most famous first lines in philosophy, Rousseau starts his 465
landmark work, The Social Contract, with this seeming paradox: DEMOCRACY

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

Chains? What chains? Obviously Rousseau doesn’t mean that literally we

all are chained up in slavery. Instead he is referring to the way that all of
us have given up certain basic freedoms as part of our associations with
others, our belonging to groups, and our membership in society. Isn’t it
obvious that we are constrained and limited in many ways by the rules and
obligations of living in community with other people? Even in the “land of
the free” there are many things I cannot do. For example, when I drive my
car, my routes, my speed, and dozens of other things are ultimately con-
trolled by government regulations and social norms. I face penalties, many
of them quite severe, if I fail to follow the rules.
Rousseau rightly recognized that this is true of our lives more gener-
ally when we live in a country and under the rule of a government. He
was not trying to overturn governments and plunge us into anarchy, but
he was very interested in asking about the nature of these associations
that limit our freedom. What makes some restrictions on our freedom Restrictions
troublesome and others perfectly legitimate? The answer, Rousseau on freedom
thought, was fairly straightforward: consent. Legitimate restrictions on
my freedom, and thus legitimate government, is that to which I agree.
This is the foundation of the social contract, the main idea of Rousseau’s
democratic theory.
What is this social contract? It’s an agreement between individuals to The social
mutually limit their freedom in order to gain the benefits of community. contract
Think about it. If you were given the choice between living in perfect
freedom but isolation and fear, or agreeing to give up some freedom to
gain the security and benefits of community, which would you choose?
Rousseau argues that all rational people would opt for community. But
not just any community. I wouldn’t agree to a community where I was a
slave. No, it’s only some types of communal arrangements and certain
restrictions on freedom that individuals would consent to. These commu-
nities and the corresponding rules and laws are those that are legitimate,
according to Rousseau, because they have the consent of the governed.
In the following passage from The Social Contract, Rousseau provides
more details about the social contract and how it solves the problem of
legitimate government:
[4] “To find a form of association that will defend and protect the person and
goods of each associate with the full common force, and by means of which each,
uniting with all, nevertheless obey only himself and remain as free as before.” This
is the fundamental problem to which the social contract provides the solution.
[5] The clauses of this contract are so completely determined by the nature
of the act that the slightest modification would render them null and void; so
that although they may never have been formally stated, they are everywhere
the same, everywhere tacitly admitted and recognized; until, the social compact
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466 having been violated, everyone is thereupon restored to his original rights and
resumes his natural freedom while losing the conventional freedom for which he
THE QUESTION
OF SOCIETY renounced it.
[6] These clauses, rightly understood, all come down to just one, namely the
total alienation of each associate with all of his rights to the whole community:
For, in the first place, since each gives himself entirely, the condition is equal for
all, and since the condition is equal for all, no one has any interest in making it
burdensome to the rest.
[7] Moreover, since the alienation is made without reservation, the union
is as perfect as it can be, and no associate has anything further to claim: For
if individuals were left some rights, then, since there would be no common
superior who might adjudicate between them and the public, each, being
judge in his own case on some issue, would soon claim to be so on all, the
state of nature would subsist and the association necessarily become tyrannical
or empty.
[8] Finally, each, by giving himself to all, gives himself to no one, and since
there is no associate over whom one does not acquire the same right as one
grants him over oneself, one gains the equivalent of all one loses, and more force to
preserve what one has.
[9] If, then, one sets aside everything that is not of the essence of the social
compact, one finds that it can be reduced to the following terms: Each of us
puts his person and his full power in common under the supreme direction of the
general will; and in a body we receive each member as an indivisible part of
the whole.1

The closing lines of this excerpt introduce another key concept from
The general Rousseau’s theory of democracy: the general will. The general will, Rousseau
will tells us, is what we consent to and what provides “supreme direction” in
governing social life. While scholars debate Rousseau’s precise meaning
of the general will, the basic idea is quite simple. Just as each individual
has certain things that he or she wants, so a community of people has its
own goals as a community, which may or may not be identical to the will
of any of its members. It may sound strange to say that a group of people
has a will of its own, but think of any organization that you belong to.
Let’s say that you are a member of an orchestra. The will or goal of the
orchestra is to play music well, even though on a particular day some of
the individual musicians may be absent or distracted. Perhaps a violinist
is home with the flu, and a trumpet player would rather be outside walk-
ing in the sunshine, and a clarinetist wants to end the rehearsal so he can
have lunch, and so on. Indeed, perhaps no one really wants to be there.
Yet the orchestra, as an orchestra, nevertheless has the goal of playing
music well. Rousseau’s idea is that for a political community to flourish,
the individuals must subordinate their particular goals (or “private wills”)
to the good of the community (or the “general will”), just as for an orchestra
to succeed, the musicians must concentrate and play well even when they
don’t feel like it.

1
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, ed. Victor Goure-
vitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 49–50.
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467
DEMOCRACY
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva in 1712. His mother died soon after
his birth, and when he was a boy his father was expelled from the city for strik-
ing an army officer. Rousseau grew up in the care of an uncle who did not want
to pay for his education, so even though he went on to become a famous phi-
losopher, he had almost no formal schooling. In fact, he was so unhappy in
Geneva that he ran away from home when he was sixteen. For many years he
traveled as a vagabond through Italy and France, having many hilarious and
sometimes sad adventures, which he later chronicled in his famous autobiogra-
phy called Confessions. Eventually he settled in Paris, where he became friends
with many leading figures of the radical intellectual movement known as the
French Enlightenment.
Rousseau soon experienced one of the greatest literary and philosophical tri-
umphs ever recorded. Within the space of twelve years he published four of the
most important philosophical works of the Enlightenment: “Discourse on the Sci-
ences and Arts” (1750), “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality” (1755), a treatise
on education called Emile (1762), and his great work of political philosophy The
Social Contract (1762). During this period he also composed a popular opera,
The Village Soothsayer, as well as a novel, Julie, which some scholars have
calculated to be the best-selling book of the eighteenth century. In the space of
a decade, Rousseau went from being destitute and unknown to rivaling Voltaire
as the most famous author in the French language.
The good times did not last, however. Rousseau soon found himself in trou-
ble with the political and religious authorities. No one was surprised, because
in Emile and The Social Contract he published scathing criticism of the society
in which he lived. For example, he argued that people should make their own
laws and elect their own leaders, even though France at the time was governed
by a powerful hereditary monarchy. Furthermore, he denied the Christian idea
of “original sin” and the validity of the church’s sacraments as a means of
earning salvation, in spite of the fact that the Catholic Church in France had
the power to persecute dissenters. Chased by the police, Rousseau fled
France, yet his views were so radical that he found himself unwelcome every-
where he tried to settle.
The last years of Rousseau’s life were troubled. Although he was able to
return to France, he continually feared arrest. Furthermore, many of the great
thinkers of the Enlightenment turned on him because of his view that the arts
and sciences corrupt morality. Thus, alienated by the conservatives in the gov-
ernment and church, as well as by the radical philosophers of the Enlighten-
ment, he spent his last years as an outcast. Yet he continued to write, and
during these final years he produced two of his most celebrated works, Confes-
sions and Reveries of a Solitary Walker, the latter of which was left unfinished
at his death in 1778. Although some of his ideas were unpopular at the time,
he became celebrated again during the French Revolution, and he was one of
the strongest influences on the next generation of philosophers, including
Immanuel Kant.
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468 As always, we need to let the philosopher speak for himself on the
THE QUESTION
nature of the general will:
OF SOCIETY
[1] From the preceding it follows that the general will is always upright and always
tends to the public utility: but it does not follow from it that the people’s delibera-
tions are always equally upright. One always wants one’s good, but one does
not always see it: one can never corrupt the people, but one can often cause it
to be mistaken, and only when it is, does it want what is bad.
[2] There is often a considerable difference between the will of all and the
general will: the latter looks only to the common interest, the former looks to pri-
vate interest, and is nothing but a sum of particular wills; but if, from these same
wills, one takes away the pluses and the minuses which cancel each other out,*
what is left as the sum of the differences is the general will.
[3] If, when an adequately informed people deliberates, the Citizens had no
communication among themselves, the general will would always result from the
large number of small differences, and the deliberation would always be good.
But when factions arise, small associations at the expense of the large associa-
tion, the will of each one of these associations becomes general in relation to
its members and particular in relation to the State; there can then no longer be
said to be as many voters as there are men, but only as many as there are asso-
ciations. The differences become less numerous and yield a less general result.
Finally, when one of these associations is so large that it prevails over all the
rest, the result you have is no longer a sum of small differences, but one single
difference; then there is no longer a general will, and the opinion that prevails
is nothing but a private opinion.
[4] It is important, then, that in order to have the general will expressed well, there
be no partial society in the State, and every Citizen state only his own opinion.†
Such was the single sublime institution of the great Lycurgus. That if there are partial
societies, their number must be multiplied, and inequality among them prevented, as
was done by Solon, Numa, Servius. These are the only precautions that will ensure
that the general will is always enlightened, and that the people make no mistakes.

*Each interest, says the M[arquis] d’A[rgenson], has different principles. The agreement
between two individual interests is formed by opposition to a third party’s interest. He might
have added that the agreement between all interests is formed by opposition to each one’s
interest. If there were no different interests, the common interest would scarcely be sensible
since it would never encounter obstacles: everything would run by itself, and politics would
cease to be an art.
†
“In truth, says Machiavelli, some divisions harm Republics, and some benefit them;
harmful are those that are accompanied by factions and parties; beneficial are those that
do not give rise to factions and parties. Therefore, since the founder of a Republic cannot
prevent enmities, he must make the best provision possible against factions.” Hist[ory], of
Floren[ce], Bk. VII [ch. I].2

Note how Rousseau emphasizes the need for unity without factions
among people or division of the society into smaller units. He believes—Do
you think he’s right?—that under the right conditions there is a consensus
about the good for the whole community. This is not, we must be clear, to
say that everyone will agree about what to do, but rather that an identifiable

2
Ibid., pp. 59–60.
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469
DEMOCRACY
HOBBES ON HUMAN NATURE
In Chapter 6 we encountered the Englishman Thomas Hobbes as an example of
a materialist philosopher. But Hobbes is probably best known for his political
thinking. In fact, one short quote from his major work, Leviathan, is probably more
widely recognized than its author. Hobbes’ claim that life is “solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish and short” is one of those catchy phrases that people love to quote.
For Hobbes, like all of us, his thinking about society was shaped by his view
of human nature. Are humans naturally good, cooperative people? Or do we tend
to be selfish, restrained from evil only by societal pressures and the threat of
punishment? How we answer such questions plays a major role in what sort of
social organization we favor, how much power we think government should have,
and what is necessary for people to form a state.
Unlike Rousseau, who thought that altruism was possible, Hobbes saw humans
as inherently selfish. This is why he described the state of nature as a state of
war that pits “every man against every man.”
This difference in opinion about human nature—Is altruism possible or not?—
leads to radically different conclusions. Whereas Rousseau thinks citizens must
obey only the laws to which they consent, Hobbes argues for an all-powerful
sovereign whose authority is absolute. What is your view of human nature, and
how does it shape your thinking about politics and the government?

“The life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

—Hobbes

direction that benefits society and its members can be discerned through the
process of deliberation and voting. Then all individuals must agree to sub-
ordinate their personal desires and interests—their private wills—to the
good of the whole—the general will.
Let’s take a moment to recap before moving on to consider some objec-
tions to Rousseau in particular and democracy in general. Humans, accord-
ing to Rousseau, have perfect freedom but they voluntarily give up much
of that freedom when they live in community. What makes some laws—that
is, restrictions on freedom—legitimate is that individuals agree to them in
order to make their lives better. This agreement among individuals to live
in community is what Rousseau calls the social contract, since individuals
consent to a social arrangement. Ultimately it is the general will, or common
good, that governs the social contract and to which individuals agree.
Of course almost everyone would agree that, for a community to flourish,
its members must sometimes subordinate their own wishes to the needs of
the whole. In other words, citizens should obey the law even when they don’t
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470 want to. What is distinctive about Rousseau’s theory, and about democratic
THE QUESTION
theories in general, is the further claim that citizens are morally obligated to
OF SOCIETY obey the laws only when they have been given a say in making the law. It
is only the citizens’ consent that gives the rulers the right to rule and that
gives moral authority to the laws and government policies.
Let’s move on to consider three of the many objections to democracy.

SOME OBJECTIONS
The problem Perhaps the most common objection to democracy is often called the prob-
of consent lem of consent. If consent is the heart of democracy, it’s also a central prob-
lem for democracy. What makes a democratic state legitimate is that the
people consent, but how exactly do citizens give their consent? I certainly
don’t remember ever agreeing to the Constitution or the general structure
of our government. How about you? The objection here is really quite sim-
ple and applies not only to Rousseau’s social contract theory but also to
most defenses of democracy. How can consent be the basis of democratic
government when most citizens do not explicitly give their consent?
Implied The most common response here is to appeal to some notion of implied
consent or tacit consent. It’s not that we explicitly agree to the social contract, but
rather that our consent is assumed because of something we do, don’t do,
or the way we accept certain services. For example, some philosophers
argue that accepting the benefits of society—police protection, public
schools, postal service, and so on—effectively amounts to agreeing to the
basic structure and rules of society. Similarly, you might say that anyone
who votes in a public election is tacitly consenting to the rules of society.
Finally, some have argued that we agree to be part of society simply by not
leaving. I could, according to this argument, pick up and move if I wasn’t
willing to agree to the social contract of my democratic society. Since I don’t
leave, I am implying my consent.
But is it really clear that all citizens give their implied consent? Consider
David Hume’s response to the “love it or leave it” version of the implied
consent argument:

Can we seriously say that a poor peasant or artisan has a free choice to leave
his country, when he knows no foreign language or manners, and lives from day
to day, by the small wages he acquires? We may as well assert, that a man, by
remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master; though he
was carried on board while asleep, and must leap into the ocean, and perish,
the moment he leaves her.3

Similar concerns can be raised about the other ways citizens supposedly
give their consent. Voting seems great until we remember than more than
half the citizens never vote in many democracies (including the United

3
David Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis, IN: Lib-
erty Fund, 1985), p. 475.
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States). How about accepting public services? Needless to say, most people 471
aren’t agreeing to anything when they mail a letter or pay a parking ticket. DEMOCRACY
The basic problem remains: Without explicit agreements from all citizens it
is difficult to see how consent can truly be the foundation of a legitimate
society. One humorous way to sum up this objection is with the anonymous
quotation: “Implied consent isn’t worth the paper it isn’t written on.”
A second major objection to democracy relates to the majoritarian ele-
ment of the theory. Democracy is rule by the people, but it’s not all the
people who rule, only the majority. It’s an advantage—Isn’t it?—that the
majority rules in a democratic state. Well, it depends on whether or not you
are in the majority and on what the majority decides. In Chapter 18 we saw
how liberalism aims to protect the rights of all people, and fears about loss
of basic rights and liberties motivate this worry about democracy.
What happens if the majority decides that rap music should be banned,
but rap happens to be your favorite music? More generally, what rights do
citizens have when they are in the minority? This concern about democracy
is often referred to as the “tyranny of the majority.” If there is no person Tyranny of the
or group above the body of citizens themselves, then there is no check majority
against the majority if it wishes to exploit a minority. One sad example of
this is slavery. Many of the world’s monarchies outlawed slavery before the
supposedly democratic United States did. Alexis de Tocqueville noted this
very concern in his commentary, Democracy in America.
In my opinion, the main evil of the present democratic institutions of the United
States does not arise, as is often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but
from their irresistible strength. I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty
which reigns in that country as at the inadequate securities which one finds there
against tyranny. An individual or a party is wronged in the United States, to
whom can he apply for redress? If to public opinion, public opinion constitutes
the majority; if to the legislature, it represents the majority and implicitly obeys it;
if to the executive power, it is appointed by the majority and serves as a passive
tool in its hands. The public force consists of the majority under arms; the jury is
the majority invested with the right of hearing judicial cases; and in certain states
even the judges are elected by the majority. However iniquitous or absurd the
measure of which you complain, you must submit to it as well as you can.4

One solution to the tyranny of the majority is to strengthen the multiple

checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution to make it difficult for the
majority to exercise its will. For example, although the people could in
theory overturn the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlaws slavery, it
would be very difficult to do so because of the multiple procedural hurdles
along the way. Yet this is paradoxical because what are these hurdles except
instruments for preventing the people from expressing their will? And isn’t
the will of the people exactly what democracy celebrates and counts on?
One is left wondering whether the solution to the tyranny of the majority
isn’t simply the “tyranny of the minority.”
4
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, tr. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: The Library
of America, 2004), p. 290.
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472 Perhaps the strongest objection to democracy is simply that an alterna-

THE QUESTION
tive arrangement is better. Winston Churchill famously commented:
OF SOCIETY “Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have
been tried.” But certainly not everyone agrees. Plato, for one, thought
democracy was one of the worst forms of government and instead favored
rule by an elite. We began our study of philosophy with Plato, and we
return to him here at the end.

PLATO’S PHILOSOPHER KINGS

We end with Plato for two reasons. First, he vividly represents an important
alternative to democracy that we might call elitism, rule by a select few.
Second, he is an excellent example of the way in which philosophers have
conceived social-political issues not only as a necessary part of the philo-
sophical enterprise but also as closely connected with other philosophical
issues. It says something very important about Plato that his most famous
work, and indeed possibly the most famous work in the history of phi-
Plato’s losophy, was called the Republic. It was a book about the state. Well, yes
Republic and no. At least it was a book that showed how social-political issues can
be all bound up with other philosophical concerns, such as ethics, meta-
physics, epistemology, and even art.
We can be more specific. In Chapter 3 we provided some long quotations
from the Republic for the sake of explaining Plato’s theory of reality and
knowledge. Do you recall Plato’s Analogy of the Sun, the image of the
Divided Line, and the Allegory of the Cave? Now we can say just what all
of that had to do with the state. Plato certainly did have a particular (some
would say peculiar) view of the state, and a view that had everything to
do with his view of reality and knowledge.
Some degenerate In the Republic Plato considered several political theories of his own time
forms of and rejected them. Whether or not we too reject them, it will do us no harm
government to review them. Moving from bad to worse, Plato first rejected timocracy,
by which he meant the rule by those who are primarily motivated by ambi-
tion and honor. In such rulers, an inferior part of the soul, the spirited and
emotional part, has gained dominance. He also rejected oligarchy or plutoc-
racy, the rule by the rich. A preoccupation with wealth is even more base
than a preoccupation with honor, and, moreover, the rule by the wealthy
would inevitably bring about alienation and class warfare between “the
haves” and “the have-nots.” Next he rejected democracy, our interest here,
as yet a further degeneration of government, though he meant by this word
something different from what we today understand by it. For Plato, in a
smallish city-state like Athens, democracy meant the actual and equal par-
ticipation of every citizen in the affairs of state, rather than participation
by representation. But this is to reduce government to the lowest common
denominator—as Plato saw it, when we have majority rule we have mob
rule. Finally, and worst of all, Plato rejects despotism, or tyranny, or dictator-
ship, the absolute rule of a single individual. Of course there may be such
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473
Plato rejected: DEMOCRACY

• Timocracy
• Plutocracy
• Democracy
• Dictatorship

He advocated
• Aristocracy

But exactly what did Plato mean by these terms?

a thing as a “benevolent dictator” but, Plato believed, never for long.

According to Lord Acton’s famous saying, “All power corrupts; absolute
power corrupts absolutely.” Eventually, such a ruler will be ruled by the
very worst in himself, resulting in gross injustice and loss of the personal
liberty that government ought to ensure.
Well then, what? Plato’s answer: aristocracy. Again, however, Plato did not
mean by this term what is today usually meant. When we hear the word
“aristocracy” we think of the nobility class, as in the expression “the landed
aristocracy.” But the word itself simply means “rule of the best,” and that is
exactly what Plato favored—the rule of the best. And who are the best?
Those who are enlightened with regard to reality, truth, and goodness. And
who are these? Why, philosophers, of course—those who have emerged from “Philosophers
the darkness of the Cave and have beheld the Good. Plato himself calls this must be kings”
the central thesis of the Republic: “Philosophers must be kings.”
In the following passages from the Republic, Plato, through the mouth of
Socrates, announces this revolutionary social program and explains what it
is that makes the philosopher the “best” and makes him or her (it could
easily be a her for Plato) the most qualified to rule.

Unless either philosophers become kings in their countries or those who are
now called kings and rulers come to be sufficiently inspired with a genuine
desire for wisdom; unless, that is to say, political power and philosophy meet
together, while the many natures who now go their several ways in the one
or the other direction are forcibly debarred from doing so, there can be no
rest from troubles, my dear Glaucon, for states, nor yet, as I believe, for all
mankind; nor can this commonwealth which we have imagined ever till then
see the light of day and grow to its full stature. This it was that I have so
long hung back from saying; I knew what a paradox it would be, because it
is hard to see that there is no other way of happiness either for the state or
for the individual.
. . . Since the philosophers are those who can apprehend the eternal and
unchanging, while those who cannot do so, but are lost in the mazes of multiplicity
and change, are not philosophers, which of the two ought to be in control of a
state?
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474 I wonder what would be a reasonable solution.

To establish as Guardians whichever of the two appear competent to guard
THE QUESTION
OF SOCIETY the laws and ways of life in society.
True.
Well, there can be no question whether a guardian who is to keep watch
over anything needs to be keen-sighted or blind. And is not blindness precisely
the condition of men who are entirely cut off from knowledge of any reality, and
have in their soul no clear pattern of perfect truth, which they might study in every
detail and constantly refer to, as a painter looks at his model, before they proceed
to embody notions of justice, honour, and goodness in earthly institutions or, in
their character of Guardians, to preserve such institutions as already exist?
Certainly such a condition is very like blindness.
Shall we, then, make such as these our Guardians in preference to men who,
besides their knowledge of realities, are in no way inferior to them in experience
and in every excellence of character?
It would be absurd not to choose the philosophers, whose knowledge is per-
haps their greatest point of superiority, provided they do not lack those other
qualifications.
What we have to explain, then, is how those qualifications can be combined
in the same persons with philosophy.
Certainly.
The first thing, as we said at the onset, is to get a clear view of their inborn
disposition. When we are satisfied on that head, I think we shall agree that such
a combination of qualities is possible and that we need look no further for men
fit to be in control of a commonwealth. One trait of the philosophic nature we
may take as already granted: a constant passion for any knowledge that will
reveal to them something of that reality which endures for ever and is not always
passing into and out of existence. And, we may add, their desire is to know the
whole of that reality; they will not willingly renounce any part of it as relatively
small and insignificant, as we said before when we compared them to the lover
and to the man who covets honour.
True.
Is there not another trait which the nature we are seeking cannot fail to
possess—truthfulness, a love of truth and a hatred of falsehood that will not tolerate
untruth in any form?
Yes, it is natural to expect that.
It is not merely natural, but entirely necessary that an instinctive passion for
any object should extend to all that is closely akin to it; and there is nothing
more closely akin to wisdom than truth. So the same nature cannot love wisdom
and falsehood; the genuine lover of knowledge cannot fail, from his youth up, to
strive after the whole of truth.
I perfectly agree.
Now we surely know that when a man’s desires set strongly in one direction, in
every other channel they flow more feebly, like a stream diverted into another bed.
So when the current has set towards knowledge and all that goes with it, desire
will abandon those pleasures of which the body is the instrument and be concerned
only with the pleasure which the soul enjoys independently—if, that is to say, the
love of wisdom is more than a mere pretence. Accordingly, such a one will be
temperate and no lover of money; for he will be the last person to care about the
things for the sake of which money is eagerly sought and lavishly spent.
That is true.
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475
DEMOCRACY
ARISTOTLE’S DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACY
Aristotle rejected the communistic and bizarre features of Plato’s utopian state,
as well as his intellectual elitism. Even though Aristotle himself believed, in his
own way, in the rule of the best (not just anybody can occupy the highest offices),
and even though he rejected extreme democracy (mob rule, again), he did
believe, more commonsensically than Plato, that an adequate form of government
must accommodate the rank and file of the citizenry with its collective experience
and good sense, to say nothing of its greater stake in the political enterprise.

The principle that the multitude ought to be supreme rather than the few best
is one that is maintained, and, though not free from difficulty, yet seems to
contain an element of truth. For the many, of whom each individual is but an
ordinary person, when they meet together may very likely be better than the
few good, if regarded not individually but collectively, just as a feast to which
many contribute is better than a dinner provided out of a single purse. For each
individual among the many has a share of virtue and prudence, and when they
meet together, they become in a manner one man, who has many feet, and
hands, and sense; that is a figure of their mind and disposition. Hence the many
are better judges than a single man of music and poetry; for some understand
one part, and some another, and among them they understand the whole. There
is a similar combination of qualities in good men, who differ from any individual
of the many, as the beautiful are said to differ from those who are not beautiful,
and works of art from realities, because in them the scattered elements are
combined, although, if taken separately, the eye of one person or some other
feature in another person would be fairer than in the picture. Whether this prin-
ciple can apply to every democracy, and to all bodies of men, is not clear. Or
rather, by heaven, in some cases it is impossible of application; for the argument
would equally hold about brutes; and wherein, it will be asked, do some men
differ from brutes? But there may be bodies of men about whom our statement
is nevertheless true. And if so, the difficulty which has been already raised, and
also another which is akin to it—viz. what power should be assigned to the
mass of freemen and citizens, who are not rich and have no personal merit—are
both solved. There is still a danger in allowing them to share the great offices
of state, for their folly will lead them into error, and their dishonesty into crime.
But there is a danger also in not letting them share, for a state in which many
poor men are excluded from office will necessarily be full of enemies. The only
way of escape is to assign to them some deliberative and judicial functions. For
this reason Solon and certain other legislators give them the power of electing
to offices, and of calling the magistrates to account, but they do not allow them
to hold office singly. When they meet together their perceptions are quite good
enough, and combined with the better class they are useful to the state (just as
impure food when mixed with what is pure sometimes makes the entire mass
more wholesome than a small quantity of the pure would be), but each indi-
vidual, left to himself, forms an imperfect judgement.*

*Aristotle, Politics, 1281a–b, tr. Benjamin Jowett, in Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard
McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941).
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476 Again, in seeking to distinguish the philosophic nature, you must not overlook
the least touch of meanness. Nothing could be more contrary than pettiness to a
THE QUESTION
OF SOCIETY mind constantly bent on grasping the whole of things, both divine and human.
Quite true.
And do you suppose that one who is so high-minded and whose thought can
contemplate all time and all existence will count this life of man a matter of much
concern?
No, he could not.
So for such a man death will have no terrors.
None.
A mean and cowardly nature, then, can have no part in the genuine pursuit
of wisdom.
I think not.
And if a man is temperate and free from the love of money, meanness, pre-
tentiousness, and cowardice, he will not be hard to deal with or dishonest. So,
as another indication of the philosophic temper, you will observe whether, from
youth up, he is fair-minded, gentle, and sociable.
Certainly.
Also you will not fail to notice whether he is quick or slow to learn. No one
can be expected to take a reasonable delight in a task in which much painful
effort makes little headway. And if he cannot retain what he learns his forgetful-
ness will leave no room in his head for knowledge; and so, having all his toil
for nothing, he can only end by hating himself as well as his fruitless occupation.
We must not, then, count a forgetful mind as competent to pursue wisdom; we
must require a good memory.
By all means.
Further, there is in some natures a crudity and awkwardness that can only
tend to a lack of measure and proportion; and there is a close affinity between
proportion and truth. Hence, besides our other requirements, we shall look for a
mind endowed with measure and grace, which will be instinctively drawn to see
every reality in its true light.
Yes.
Well then, now that we have enumerated the qualities of a mind destined to
take its full part in the apprehension of reality, have you any doubt about their
being indispensable and all necessarily going together?
None whatever.
Then have you any fault to find with a pursuit which none can worthily follow
who is not by nature quick to learn and to remember, magnanimous and gracious,
the friend and kinsman of truth, justice, courage, temperance?
No; Momus himself could find no flaw in it.
Well then, when time and education have brought such characters as these to
maturity, would you entrust the care of your commonwealth to anyone else?5

It is difficult to say just how seriously one is to take Plato’s proposal,

though it is known that he himself tried to implement such a philosopher-
kingship in Syracuse. But taking it as seriously as we can, not everyone
will be thrilled with the announcement that philosophers must rule over

5
Plato, The Republic, 473C–E, 484B–487A, tr. Francis MacDonald Cornford (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1941).
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the rest. In the first place, not everyone shares a Platonic conception of 477
reality, truth, and the like, and thus not everyone could agree with Plato as DEMOCRACY
to just who the true philosophers are. Furthermore, any form of intellectual
aristocracy would fail to gain the consent of a large segment of a society Intellectual
that is always suspicious of the “egghead” elite. You may have heard the aristocracy?
pronouncement: “I would rather be governed by the first twenty names in
the Boston telephone directory than all the professors at Harvard.” Then,
too, not everyone would like other features of Plato’s social-political pro-
gram. It is true that he was one of the earliest advocates of women’s rights,
but he also proposed a program of eugenics, arranged marriages, commu-
nity of property and children, and censorship.

CHAPTER 19 IN REVIEW
SUMMARY
In this chapter we focused on the central idea of democracy, a concept that
is extremely important to our contemporary political situation. The word
democracy, we learned, means “rule by the people,” and central to any the-
ory of democracy is the idea of consent. According to democratic theory, it
is the agreement or consent of the people that makes for a legitimate gov-
ernment or law. We can easily see the central role of consent in the found-
ing documents of the United of States of America.
The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a pioneer in devel-
oping a theory of democracy. Rousseau took freedom as his starting point
but argued that all people give up much of that freedom in order to live
in society. While this giving up is crucial to the formation of a community,
the real story is that it is only those freedoms that humans voluntarily give
up that are legitimate government powers. Rousseau used this notion of
our consent to restrictions as the basis of a social contract, the implied
agreement that individuals have with one another to live together. The
shared interests that bring people together are summed up in the general
will, a phrase that describes the common good of all people, not just the
interest of the few. Rousseau’s theory, and democracy in general, are open
to many objections. In this chapter we focused on two: the problem of
consent and the tyranny of the majority. Democracy is based on consent,
but do citizens actually agree to anything? Even if they do, isn’t there a
danger of the majority imposing their will on a minority? In the end, the
best defense for democracy may be the pragmatic one that, despite its
flaws, it is the best system we have.
You may recall at the beginning of Chapter 3 we said that Plato was the
first systematic philosopher in the sense that he was the first to work out
the implications of a fundamental philosophical principle for all major
spheres of our experience. And we saw what his idea of Form meant for
his theory of reality, his theory of knowledge, and even his theory of art.
In this chapter we saw what it meant for his theory of the state. Plato’s
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478 thesis that “philosophers must be kings” follows from his view that only
THE QUESTION
philosophers are in touch with absolute truth and reality, and since this
OF SOCIETY means that only they know what the absolute good is, philosophers alone
are fit to rule over the rest of the people. Many will reject this aristocratic
conception of government as elitist, as did Plato’s student Aristotle. Aris-
totle shared Plato’s fears about mob rule, but he opted nonetheless for a
more democratic form of government that would reflect and represent the
common interest as seen by the citizenry itself.

BASIC IDEAS
• Rousseau on freedom
• Consent
• Social contract
• General will
• Problem of consent
• Tyranny of the majority
• Elitism
• Plato: degenerate forms of government
Timocracy
Plutocracy
Democracy
Dictatorship
• Aristocracy
• Plato: why philosophers must be kings
• Aristotle’s democracy

TEST YOURSELF
1. True or false: Plato rejected democracy, though he favored democracy
over tyranny.
2. Both Plato and Aristotle desired the rule of the best. But how did they
differ?
3. According to Plato, the best form of government is_____.
4. True or false: Rousseau argued for the divine right of kings.
5. The idea that government is based on the voluntary agreement of all
citizens is called_____.
6. What is the problem of consent?

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• If elitism means rule by a select few, is there anything to be said in its
favor? Does it matter why the elite are “select”? Would you not gladly
submit yourself to the elite (best trained, etc.) in other fields, say, medicine
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or education? Or would you rather be governed by the first twenty names 479
in the Boston phone book? What’s to be said for and against this view? DEMOCRACY
• If majority rule is the key to democracy, how do you protect against the
majority oppressing a minority? If we do this by limiting the power of
the majority, is it still a democracy?

FOR FURTHER READING

Julia Annas. An Introduction to Plato’s “Republic.” Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1981. A clear and systematic exposition of a work that is central in the
history of both philosophical and political thought.
Frederick Copleston. A History of Philosophy. Baltimore: Newman Press,
1946–1974. I, Chs. 24 and 32. Excellent accounts of the social-political
doctrines of Plato and Aristotle.
Edwin Curley. “Introduction to Hobbes’ Leviathan” in Leviathan. Indianapo-
lis: Hackett, 1994. A very accessible and clear explanation of the main
ideas in Hobbes’ greatest work, with special attention given to correcting
common misinterpretations.
Robert A. Dahl. Democracy and Its Critics. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1989. Influential survey of major problems in democratic theory.
Nicholas Dent. Rousseau, The Routledge Philosophers. London: Routledge,
2005. Comprehensive and sympathetic survey of Rousseau’s life and
works.
David Gauthier. The Logic of Leviathan. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1969.
G. M. A. Grube. Plato’s Thought. London: Methuen, 1935. Ch. 3. A lucid
discussion of Plato’s doctrine of “statecraft,” from a standard work.
David Held. Models of Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006. Carefully
analyzes types of democracies and associated problems.
G. E. R. Lloyd. Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of His Thought. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1968. Ch. 11. A readable overview of Aristotle’s
political ideas, with frequent references to his texts.
Roger D. Masters. The Political Philosophy of Rousseau. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1968. Classic study of Rousseau’s political
thought with emphasis on the social contract.
David Ross. Aristotle. Fifth ed. London: Methuen, 1949. Ch. 8. A chapter on
Aristotle’s politics, neatly divided into specific topics, from a standard
work.
Ian Shapiro. The State of Democratic Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 2003. Analysis of recent trends in the philosophical analysis
of democracy.
Gregory Vlastos (ed.). Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays. II. Garden City,
NY: Anchor Books, 1971. An anthology of advanced studies including
several on Plato’s political ideas.
John Wild. Plato’s Modern Enemies and the Theory of Natural Law. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1953. A full-scale study, defending Plato’s
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480 political theory from modern misrepresentations and misunderstand-

THE QUESTION
ings, and developing it (especially as a natural law philosophy) in its
OF SOCIETY historical context.
Robert Wokler. Rousseau: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2001. Engaging and brief overview of his philosophical ideas.
*In addition, see the relevant articles (“Rousseau,” “Plato,” “Democracy,”
etc.) in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig (London:
Routledge, 1998), and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato
.stanford.edu.
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CHAPTER 20

JUSTICE

I
t is appropriate that we conclude with some comment on what is prob-
ably the most basic idea of social and political philosophy: the idea of
justice. If only we could be clear about justice, how much easier would
our task be! But getting clear on justice may be more difficult than you think.
Upon reflection, does your own idea of justice turn out to be some vague
notion involving equality or fairness? But what constitutes equality or fairness?
Does it involve the distribution of goods? But how much, to whom, and on
what basis? Does it involve worthiness? But what is the basis of worthiness—
talent, power, productivity? Does it involve social responsibility? But how is
this to be measured?

THE PROBLEM
To be sure, various ideas of justice have already made their appearance,
explicitly or implicitly, in the moral and social-political theories we have
been discussing. Think of Plato’s identification of justice with the rule of
reason both in the individual and in the state; or Mill’s utilitarian idea of
a distribution of goods that would result in the greatest happiness of the
greatest number; or Marx’s definition: From each according to his ability,
to each according to his need. The problem is obviously a very big one.
Our purpose in this chapter is to focus on only a few, but very important,
recent contributions to the discussion.

481
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482 In his provocative book After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre sets forth the
THE QUESTION problem in one of the forms readily familiar to Americans:
OF SOCIETY
A, who may own a store or be a police officer or a construction worker, has
struggled to save enough from his earnings to buy a small house, to send his
children to the local college, to pay for some special type of medical care for his
parents. He now finds all of his projects threatened by rising taxes. He regards this
threat to his projects as unjust; he claims to have a right to what he has earned
and that nobody else has a right to take away what he acquired legitimately and
to which he has a just title. He intends to vote for candidates for political office
who will defend his property, his projects and his conception of justice.
B, who may be a member of one of the liberal professions, or a social worker,
or someone with inherited wealth, is impressed with the arbitrariness of the inequali-
ties in the distribution of wealth, income and opportunity. He is, if anything, even
more impressed with the inability of the poor and the deprived to do very much
about their own condition as a result of inequalities in the distribution of power.
He regards both these types of inequality as unjust and as constantly engender-
ing further injustice. He believes more generally that all inequality stands in need
of justification and that the only possible justification for inequality is to improve
the condition of the poor and the deprived—by, for example, fostering economic
growth. He draws the conclusion that in present circumstances redistributive taxa-
tion which will finance welfare and the social sciences is what justice demands.
He intends to vote for candidates for political office who will defend redistributive
taxation and his conception of justice. . . .
The logical incompatibility is not difficult to identify. A holds that principles of
just acquisition and entitlement set limits to redistributive possibilities. If the out-
come of the application of the principles of just acquisition and entitlement is gross
inequality, the toleration of such inequality is a price that has to be paid for justice.
B holds that principles of just distribution set limits to legitimate acquisition and
entitlement. If the outcome of the application of the principles of just distribution
is interference—by means of taxation or such devices as eminent domain—with
what has up till now been regarded in this social order as legitimate acquisition
and entitlement, the toleration of such interference is a price that has to be paid
for justice. We may note in passing—it will not be unimportant later—that in the
case of both A’s principle and B’s principle the price for one person or group of
persons receiving justice is always paid by someone else. Thus different identifi-
able social groups have an interest in the acceptance of one of the principles
and the rejection of the other. Neither principle is socially or politically neutral.1

Now there are two radically different ways in which the conflict between
A and B may be resolved, and these involve, of course, two radically differ-
ent views of justice. In recent years, these two different views have received
forceful and influential expression in John Rawls, whose major work, A The-
ory of Justice, argues in favor of B’s position, and Robert Nozick, whose major
work, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, argues in favor of A’s position. We will look
first at Rawls, then Nozick, and turn finally to a feminist notion of justice
that seeks to advance the discussion in still a different direction.
1
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1981), pp. 227–229.
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483
“Justice is the first virtue of social systems, as truth is of systems of thought.” JUSTICE

—Rawls

RAWLS: JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS

In his books Justice as Fairness and A Theory of Justice, as well as in other
writings, Rawls has propounded a theory of justice that has proven to be
extremely important. Some have even spoken of the “Rawlsmania” that has
seized recent discussions.
The attempt to combine both (1) the libertarian view of justice as consist-
ing in personal liberty and (2) the socialist view of justice as consisting in
the social equality is called (3) the liberal view of justice. Clearly, Rawls The liberal view
stands in the liberal tradition. He believes that it is not necessary to stall of justice
forever between the ideals of individual liberty on the one hand and a more
equitable distribution of goods on the other: He attempts to develop a con-
cept of justice that would unite the virtues of both the libertarian and the
egalitarian or socialist perspectives. The liberal view of justice can, how-
ever, take two different forms. These are (1) the contractual (think of Locke),
which involves an agreement between persons who willingly delimit cer-
tain of their freedoms in exchange for greater equality, say, equality of
wealth, opportunity, and the like, and (2) the utilitarian (think of Mill),
which involves the adoption of rules that would promote the maximization
of happiness. That Rawls espouses the contractual version of the liberal
view of justice we shall now see.
In the first reading below, Rawls expresses the heart of his theory in his
own words, but we may summarize the main points. Reminiscent of the
old-line social-contractors, Rawls starts out with his idea of the original posi- “The original
tion (Locke called it the state of nature), emphasizing that this is a purely position”

THREE VIEWS OF JUSTICE

Libertarian Socialist Liberal
Personal liberty is Equity of persons A combination of
the highest social is the highest liberty and equality is
ideal. social ideal. the highest social ideal.
(a) Contractual:
Trades off equality for
greater welfare.
(b) Utilitarian:
Accepts any kind of inequality
if it maximizes happiness.
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484 hypothetical or imaginary situation. In order to ensure that whatever principle

THE QUESTION
of justice we adopt is really fair to all concerned (hence his idea of “justice as
OF SOCIETY fairness”) we must try to imagine ourselves as stripped of all factors that
could possibly prejudice us in favor of one principle rather than another.
Obviously, if you are the president of Consolidated Steel, or a Wall Street
tycoon, or a shipping magnate, your interests will tempt you in a different
direction than if you are a Chicano migrant worker. It is as difficult as it is
The “veil necessary to adopt what Rawls calls a veil of ignorance, a veil that will cover
of ignorance” up, for the moment at least, what we very well know about our own vested
interests but need to forget if our principle is to be born in a climate of
objectivity—everybody in the same boat, everybody standing to lose or gain
the same things. The participants naturally will not be a party to any prin-
ciple that, when the veil is lifted, might mean a loss of their fair share of the
pie. On the other hand, neither will they be a party to any principle that
might grant them more than a fair share, since there is no guarantee that when
the veil is lifted they will be on the receiving end. These social-contractors
will all therefore favor a principle that will result in at least, but not more
than, a fair share for all. Approaching the matter in this way, we have a basis
for discussing and formulating a principle of justice in an impartial way, one
that is not tilted in the direction of any special interests.
Rationality In all of this Rawls presupposes a degree of rationality on the part of
the social-contractors. The whole enterprise will be doomed from the start
without an intuitive sense of fairness, without goodwill, and without an
honesty and realism about what agreements can actually be honored and
kept.
The Main Idea of the Theory of Justice
My aim is to present a conception of justice which generalizes and carries to a
higher level of abstraction the familiar theory of the social contract as found, say,
in Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. In order to do this we are not to think of the origi-
nal contract as one to enter a particular society or to set up a particular form of
government. Rather, the guiding idea is that the principles of justice for the basic
structure of society are the object of the original agreement. They are the prin-
ciples that free and rational persons concerned to further their own interests would
accept in an initial position of equality as defining the fundamental terms of their
association. These principles are to regulate all further agreements; they specify the
kinds of social cooperation that can be entered into and the forms of government
that can be established. This way of regarding the principles of justice I shall call
justice as fairness.
Thus we are to imagine that those who engage in social cooperation choose
together, in one joint act, the principles which are to assign basic rights and duties
and to determine the division of social benefits. Men are to decide in advance
how they are to regulate their claims against one another and what is to be the
foundation charter of their society. Just as each person must decide by rational
reflection what constitutes his good, that is, the system of ends which it is rational
for him to pursue, so a group of persons must decide once and for all what is
to count among them as just and unjust. The choice which rational men would
make in this hypothetical situation of equal liberty, assuming for the present that
this choice problem has a solution, determines the principles of justice.
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In justice as fairness the original position of equality corresponds to the state 485
of nature in the traditional theory of the social contract. This original position is
JUSTICE
not, of course, thought of as an actual historical state of affairs, much less as a
primitive condition of culture. It is understood as a purely hypothetical situation
characterized so as to lead to a certain conception of justice. . . .

The Veil of Ignorance

The idea of the original position is to set up a fair procedure so that any principles
agreed to will be just. The aim is to use the notion of pure procedural justice as a
basis of theory. Somehow we must nullify the effects of specific contingencies
which put men at odds and tempt them to exploit social and natural circumstances
to their own advantage. Now in order to do this I assume that the parties are
situated behind a veil of ignorance. They do not know how the various alternatives
will affect their own particular case and they are obliged to evaluate principles
solely on the basis of general considerations.
It is assumed, then, that the parties do not know certain kinds of particular
facts. First of all, no one knows his place in society, his class position or social
status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abili-
ties, his intelligence and strength, and the like. Nor, again, does anyone know
his conception of the good, the particulars of his rational plan of life, or even
the special features of his psychology such as his aversion to risk or liability to
optimism or pessimism. More than this, I assume that the parties do not know the
particular circumstances of their own society. That is, they do not know its eco-
nomic or political situation, or the level of civilization and culture it has been able
to achieve. The persons in the original position have no information as to which
generation they belong. These broader restrictions on knowledge are appropriate
in part because questions of social justice arise between generations as well as
within them, for example, the question of the appropriate rate of capital saving
and of the conservation of natural resources and the environment of nature. There
is also, theoretically anyway, the question of a reasonable genetic policy. In these
cases too, in order to carry through the idea of the original position, the parties
must not know the contingencies that set them in opposition. They must choose
principles the consequences of which they are prepared to live with whatever
generation they turn out to belong to. . . .
Thus there follows the very important consequence that the parties have no basis
for bargaining in the usual sense. No one knows his situation in society nor his
natural assets, and therefore no one is in a position to tailor principles to his advan-
tage. We might imagine that one of the contractees threatens to hold out unless the
others agree to principles favorable to him. But how does he know which principles
are especially in his interests? The same holds for the formation of coalitions: if
a group were to decide to band together to the disadvantage of the others, they
would not know how to favor themselves in the choice of principles. Even if they
could get everyone to agree to their proposal, they would have no assurance that
it was to their advantage, since they cannot identify themselves either by name or
description. . . .
The restrictions on particular information in the original position are, then, of
fundamental importance. Without them we would not be able to work out any
definite theory of justice at all. We would have to be content with a vague formula
stating that justice is what would be agreed to without being able to say much,
if anything, about the substance of the agreement itself. The formal constraints of
the concept of right, those applying to principles directly, are not sufficient for our
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486 purpose. The veil of ignorance makes possible a unanimous choice of a particular
conception of justice. Without these limitations on knowledge the bargaining problem
THE QUESTION
OF SOCIETY of the original position would be hopelessly complicated. Even if theoretically a solu-
tion were to exist, we would not, at present anyway, be able to determine it. . . .

The Rationality of the Parties

. . . There is one further assumption to guarantee strict compliance. The parties are
presumed to be capable of a sense of justice and this fact is public knowledge
among them. This condition is to insure the integrity of the agreement made in the origi-
nal position. It does not mean that in their deliberations the parties apply some
particular conception of justice, for this would defeat the point of the motivation
assumption. Rather, it means that the parties can rely on each other to understand
and to act in accordance with whatever principles are finally agreed to. Once
principles are acknowledged the parties can depend on one another to conform
to them. In reaching an agreement, then, they know that their undertaking is not
in vain; their capacity for a sense of justice insures that the principles chosen will
be respected. It is essential to observe, however, that this assumption still permits
the consideration of men’s capacity to act on the various conceptions of justice.
The general facts of human psychology and the principles of moral learning are
relevant matters for the parties to examine. If a conception of justice is unlikely
to generate its own support, or lacks stability, this fact must not be overlooked.
For then a different conception of justice might be preferred. The assumption only
says that the parties have a capacity for justice in a purely formal sense: taking
everything relevant into account, including the general facts of moral psychology,
the parties will adhere to the principles eventually chosen. They are rational in
that they will not enter into agreements they know they cannot keep, or can do
so only with great difficulty. Along with other considerations, they count the strains
of commitment. Thus in assessing conceptions of justice the persons in the original
position are to assume that the one they adopt will be strictly complied with. The
consequences of their agreement are to be worked out on this basis.2

The stage thus set, Rawls introduces his principle of justice, which is actu-
ally two principles. The first attempts to accommodate the libertarian ideal
of individual freedoms and rights, and is directed to that part of the social
structure that establishes such liberties: “Each person is to have an equal
right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty
The Principle for others.” This is called the Principle of Equal Basic Liberty for All. The
of Equal Basic second principle of justice is directed rather to the economic facts of social
Liberty for All
life and is more complicated. It attempts to accommodate the egalitarian
ideal of an equitable distribution of wealth while accommodating at the
same time a reasonable inequitable distribution. It accomplishes this by
insisting that such inequities result in an advantage for all and, most nota-
bly, for the least advantaged. Is it not to your advantage that your dentist
earns more than you do, if as a result you receive better dental care? Thus,
the second principle of justice: “Social and economic inequalities are to be
arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s

2
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 11–12,
136–137, 139–140, 145.
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advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all.” This is 487
called the Difference Principle. JUSTICE
As Rawls states, each of these principles embodies in different ways a
more general idea, the General Conception of Justice: “All social values—
liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect— The Difference
are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, Principle
of these values is to everyone’s advantage.”

Two Principles of Justice

I shall now state in a provisional form the two principles of justice that I believe
would be chosen in the original position. . . .
The first statement of the two principles reads as follows.
First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty
compatible with a similar liberty for others.
Second: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are
both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached
to positions and offices open to all. . . .
By way of general comment, these principles primarily apply, as I have said,
to the basic structure of society. They are to govern the assignment of rights and
duties and to regulate the distribution of social and economic advantages. As their
formulation suggests, these principles presuppose that the social structure can be
divided into two more or less distinct parts, the first principle applying to the one,
the second to the other. They distinguish between those aspects of the social sys-
tem that define and secure the equal liberties of citizenship and those that specify
and establish social and economic inequalities. The basic liberties of citizens are,
roughly speaking, political liberty (the right to vote and to be eligible for public
office) together with freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of conscience and
freedom of thought; freedom of the person along with the right to hold (personal)
property; and freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure as defined by the concept
of the rule of law. These liberties are all required to be equal by the first principle,
since citizens of a just society are to have the same basic rights.
The second principle applies, in the first approximation to the distribution of
income and wealth and to the design of organizations that make use of differences
in authority and responsibility, or chains of command. While the distribution of wealth
and income need not be equal, it must be to everyone’s advantage, and at the same
time, positions of authority and offices of command must be accessible to all. One
applies the second principle by holding positions open, and then, subject to this
constraint, arranges social and economic inequalities so that everyone benefits.
These principles are to be arranged in a serial order with the first principle
prior to the second. This ordering means that a departure from the institutions of
equal liberty required by the first principle cannot be justified by, or compensated
for, by greater social and economic advantages. The distribution of wealth and
income, and the hierarchies of authority, must be consistent with both the liberties
of equal citizenship and equality of opportunity.
. . . For the present, it should be observed that the two principles (and this
holds for all formulations) are a special case of a more general conception of
justice that can be expressed as follows.
All social values—liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases
of self-respect—are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any,
or all, of these values is to everyone’s advantage.
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488 Injustice, then, is simply inequalities that are not to the benefit of all. Of course,
this conception is extremely vague and requires interpretation.
THE QUESTION
OF SOCIETY As a first step, suppose that the basic structure of society distributes certain
primary goods, that is, things that every rational man is presumed to want. These
goods normally have a use whatever a person’s rational plan of life. For simplic-
ity, assume that the chief primary goods at the disposition of society are rights
and liberties, powers and opportunities, income and wealth. . . . These are the
social primary goods. Other primary goods such as health and vigor, intelligence
and imagination, are natural goods; although their possession is influenced by
the basic structure, they are not so directly under its control. Imagine, then, a
hypothetical initial arrangement in which all the social primary goods are equally
distributed: everyone has similar rights and duties, and income and wealth are
evenly shared. This state of affairs provides a benchmark for judging improve-
ments. If certain inequalities of wealth and organizational powers would make
everyone better off than in this hypothetical starting situation, then they accord
with the general conception.
Now it is possible, at least theoretically, that by giving up some of their fun-
damental liberties men are sufficiently compensated by the resulting social and
economic gains. The general conception of justice imposes no restrictions on what
sort of inequalities are permissible; it only requires that everyone’s position be
improved. We need not suppose anything so drastic as consenting to a condition
of slavery. Imagine instead that men forego certain political rights when the eco-
nomic returns are significant and their capacity to influence the course of policy
by the exercise of these rights would be marginal in any case. It is this kind of
exchange which the two principles as stated rule out; being arranged in serial
order they do not permit exchanges between basic liberties and economic and
social gains. The serial ordering of principles expresses an underlying preference
among primary social goods. When this preference is rational so likewise is the
choice of these principles in this order.3

It should be clear by now that Rawls has attempted to provide rational

grounds in support of B’s position as represented by MacIntyre at the
beginning of our chapter: He has argued, as it might be put generally, for
a principle of equality with respect to needs. That in the eyes of many he has
succeeded at least in something is evident from the way his work has been
hailed as a monumental contribution to social philosophy. But it has at the
same time provoked considerable criticism. One of his most effective adver-
saries is Robert Nozick, who, as we will see in the next section, represents
an altogether different perspective on justice and argues just as strongly in
support of A’s position. In the meantime, however, we may consider some
specific criticisms leveled against Rawls.
Much of the controversy has centered on Rawls’ proposal of the veil of
ignorance. For example, can we so easily draw the conclusion Rawls wants
us to from a premise we know to be false? If we were really operating
behind a veil of ignorance, that would be one thing. But, as it is, could one
really “think away” his or her wealth, beauty, talent, and general advan-
tage, for the sake of a principle that might immediately nullify them? The

3
Ibid., pp. 60–63.
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489
RAWLS’ TWO PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE JUSTICE

• The Principle of Equal Basic Liberty for All: Each person is to have an equal right
to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.
• The Difference Principle: Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged
so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage,
and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all.

RAWLS’ GENERAL CONCEPTION OF JUSTICE

According to Rawls, his two principles of justice are particular expressions of a
more general conception:
• All social values are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of
any, or all, of these values is to everyone’s advantage.

theory is, says the critic, very nice but very abstract and hypothetical by Is the veil of
comparison to the situation in which people actually find themselves— ignorance too
especially if they are, as Rawls hopes them to be, rationally self-interested. hypothetical?
Someone has suggested, for example, that if you own a painting you know
to be worth $5,000, you would not sell it for $100 simply because you might
if you didn’t know it was worth $5,000! Again, there is a big difference
between signing a contract and imagining that you have signed a contract.
When the chips are down, hypothetical or imaginary contracts can’t be
expected to enforce anything. Must not the implementability of Rawls’ view
depend on some deeper moral principle?
Similarly, it has been seen that Rawls’ theory depends for its life on our
desire in the state of ignorance (if we could cultivate such a state) to “mini-
mize the risk” of things turning out to our disadvantage in the actual world.
This, says Rawls, would be a rational approach. But why is it any more ratio-
nal to take the road of minimizing the risk than that of maximizing the gain? Why not maximize
To be sure, if it meant turning up penniless, diseased, ugly, and outcast, then the gain?
understandably one would take the minimizing road. But that is not usually
the choice, and one might reasonably gamble a so-so condition for a little more
advantage—wouldn’t one?
Further, it has been objected that, contrary to Rawls’ insistence, his prin-
ciples might run exactly opposite to our deepest intuitions about morality, Does Rawls’ theory
equality, society, and the like. This point (along with several others) is force- contradict our moral
fully made by William R. Marty: sensibilities?

. . . two men are shipwrecked on an island. One works hard. He plows the ground,
plants seed, weeds his field, chases the birds away, waters the crop through the
heat and dryness of summer, builds a shed to store the grain through the blizzards
of winter, builds himself a cabin to survive the cold, and then harvests the crop.
The other man, by happenstance formerly a hit man, acts differently. Through the
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490 hot summer he sits in the shade of the tree, swims in the pleasant lagoon, and
lives idly off the fat of the land for the living is easy, and besides, when winter
THE QUESTION
OF SOCIETY comes, he plans to knock the other man on the head while he sleeps and take his
grain, his shed, and his shelter. This man neither makes a crop, thereby earning
his keep, nor has he the good in his heart.
Now to whom, in this hypothetical situation, does that store of grain rightly
belong? Our intuitive sense is clear. It belongs to the one who by his planning,
effort, and sacrifice produced it, not to the one who sat by in deliberate and mali-
cious idleness in anticipation of gaining the grain without effort except for one foul
deed. In this case, all the grain clearly belongs to the one, and none to the other.
But, apply the Rawlsian technique for locating the just distribution: Take the two men
from the island, strip them of any knowledge of how or by whom the grain was
produced (put them, that is, behind the Veil of Ignorance), and let them then, on
the basis of rational calculation of self-interest, divide the grain, and how will they
divide it? They will divide it equally for, as Rawls asks us, why should either accept
less than half and why should either give up more than half?. . .
The Rawlsian method certainly provides a shrewd strategy about how to get
the pie cut equally, but is the result justice? That would depend on whether justice
requires, in all cases, or in particular cases, an equal division. But in some cases,
as the preceding example illustrates, justice clearly does not require or even allow
an equal division. Rawls’s distribution is faulty because it divorces distribution from
a number of things that can legitimately give a claim to a particular share of a
distribution. Thus allocation, à la Rawls, divorces distribution from contribution (who
bought or brought the pie makings?), effort (who baked it?), risk (what if there
are a number of pies from which to choose the one to divide, but one is booby-
trapped so that it will explode and kill the slicer?), need (what if some among
whom the pie is to be divided are fat and well-fed, but others are malnourished
or starving?), skill or excellence (what if two come to the party, each bringing a
pie, but one is a good cook and the other is not, how then should the pies be
divided?), or responsibility and performance (again two cooks, but one exercises
care to be clean and use sanitary ingredients while the other, sloppy in habits
and careless in cooking, is likely to have a pie that will make people ill?).
None of these—contribution, effort, risk, need, skill, excellence, responsibility, and
performance—is dealt with adequately by the Rawlsian scheme, except perhaps
need, and need only if an equal distribution will meet the needs of all, which
of course it won’t—consider the medical problems of people requiring a clotting
factor for their blood or a kidney machine. Either requires more expense than the
average income share of even the richest society on earth, hence in these cases
an equal division would be a fatal division. . . .
In particular, the Rawlsian structure fails because the same Veil of Ignorance
that was designed to hide from those in the Original Position their place in the
society-to-be in order to prevent them from rationalizing their self-interest and call-
ing it justice, also hides from them all the particular details that they must know if
they are to know what a just distribution is. Thus it hides from them who produced
the grain on that island and who did not, which makes it impossible for them to
know who earned that grain and who did not, and it hides from them all informa-
tion about individual efforts or lack of effort, about individual contributions or lack
thereof, about handicaps, choices, needs, duties fulfilled, or responsibilities not met.
It hides from them, in other words, precisely what they must know to distribute justly,
unless just distribution among individuals has absolutely nothing to do with what
those individuals choose or do or leave undone, and that is a patent absurdity
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that would make the whole concept of a just or unjust distribution meaningless. 491
Consequently, the Rawlsian scheme does not lead those in the Original Position
JUSTICE
(or us) to justice unless that hit man deserves as much as the hard worker. Analyti-
cally, the scheme cannot lead those in the Original Position to justice because it
blinds them to all the individual actions and choices that are the foundation of a
just distribution. Analogically, Rawls has given us Justice blindfolded to make her
impartial, but he has deprived her of the scales by which alone she can tell what
justice among individuals requires. . . .
The Rawlsian method for finding justice fails because its structure presupposes,
without proving, that an equal division is a fair division; because that same
structure makes us indifferent to whether justice is done; and because, even if
we cared, it hides from us all knowledge of the particular facts on which claims
to a particular share must rest. The Rawlsian strategy makes it to our self-interest
to choose a division contrary to our deepest intuitions of justice, and contrary to
previous teachings of justice. It can and does defend outrageously unjust divisions.
It simply fails as a serious means of locating justice.4

NOZICK: JUSTICE AS ENTITLEMENT

As we said above, however, it is necessary to consider the possibility that
Rawls’ whole enterprise is fundamentally misguided and that the true
nature of justice is to be sought along altogether different lines. Robert
Nozick takes this stance and argues that the truth of the matter lies not in
B’s position but A’s. He argues, that is, not for a principle of equality with
respect to needs, but rather a principle of equality with respect to entitlement.
With Nozick, as with Rawls, we are back to Locke and to talk about the
state of nature and the social contract, but now with a renewed emphasis on
individual rights and a decided turn in the direction of libertarianism. (Nozick
himself confesses that when he started out he was repelled by libertarian
views, but slowly became convinced of such views on unthwartable rational
grounds.) The two most obvious features of Nozick’s theory are his empha-
sis on the minimal state and his conception of justice as entitlement.
We begin with his emphasis on the minimal state. The tone of Nozick’s The minimal state
whole enterprise is sounded in the very opening lines of the preface to his
Anarchy, State, and Utopia:

Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them
(without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they
raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. How
much room do individual rights leave for the state? . . .
Our main conclusions about the state are that a minimal state, limited to the
narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts,
and so on, is justified; that any more extensive state will violate persons’ rights not
to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified; and that the minimal state is
inspiring as well as right. Two noteworthy implications are that the state may not

4
William R. Marty, “Rawls and the Harried Mother,” Interpretation 9 (1981), pp. 387–389,
393–395.
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492 use its coercive apparatus for the purpose of getting some citizens to aid others,
or in order to prohibit activities to people for their own good or protection.5
THE QUESTION
OF SOCIETY
Nozick otherwise labels his minimal state with the more descriptive
expression “night-watchman state.” What does this mean? It means that
the proper function of the state is like that of a night watchman whose task
it is to prowl about for the purpose of protecting the goods of those who
have hired him. In the case of the state—the minimal state—its purpose is,
and is only, to protect the rights and properties of its citizens, to enforce
contracts, and the like. Anything beyond this would be itself an infringe-
ment on individual rights. So, there are many things that the state cannot
do: It can’t tell you what you may or may not do with your own body; it
can’t make you pay taxes to support food stamps, or, for that matter, any
welfare programs; it can’t dictate what you may read, see, smoke, or snort;
it can’t make you pay a portion of your income for social security; it can’t
tell you whom to hire or fire; it can’t tell you to whom you may or may
not rent your apartment or sell your home; and so on.
But what is the justification of this conception of the state? Well, the
answer lies in the very opening words of the above quotation: “Individuals
have rights.”
Nozick follows the traditional Lockean idea that, in the state of nature,
we find ourselves endowed with certain inalienable rights. And, like Locke,
he believes (though he does not seek to demonstrate) that these rights are
inherent. On the other hand, whereas some of these rights are nontransfer-
able, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of property, others are transferable,
such as those rights we participants in the social contract voluntarily trans-
fer to the state in order to guarantee the preservation of the more basic
ones. One of the more basic ones, as we just said, is the right of the pursuit
of private property or goods. And this brings us to Nozick’s idea of justice
as entitlement.
The entitlement In a word, the entitlement theory is this: People are entitled to the prop-
theory erty they have acquired legitimately, and they are entitled to dispose of it
any way they want as long as this does not infringe on the rights of others.
More specifically, three issues underlie this view. The first concerns the
The Principle original acquisition of holdings—that is, the coming to be owned or the
of Justice in appropriation by someone of some previously unowned or unappropriated
Acquisition something. If such a something is appropriated when there is enough of
that something left over for everyone else, then such an acquisition is legit-
imate. This Nozick calls the Principle of Justice in Acquisition. The second
The Principle of issue concerns the transfer of holdings—that is, the process by which a
Justice in Transfer holding is acquired from someone who previously held it. When something
is held by an act of legitimate transfer from someone who acquired it by a
just, original acquisition, then such a holding is legitimate. This Nozick calls
the Principle of Justice in Transfer. The third issue concerns the unfortunate
fact that not all holdings are legitimate—that is, not all holdings have been

5
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), p. ix.
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493
JUSTICE
NOZICK’S THREE PRINCIPLES
OF JUSTICE IN HOLDINGS
• The Principle of Justice in Acquisition: An acquisition of something is just if the
something is previously unowned and the acquisition leaves enough to meet the
needs of others.
• The Principle of Justice in Transfer: A holding is just if it has been acquired
through a legitimate transfer from someone who has acquired it through a
legitimate transfer or through original acquisition.
• The Principle of the Rectification of Injustice in Holdings: An honest attempt
must be made to identify the sources of illegitimate holdings and to compensate
the victims.

acquired either by a just act of original acquisition or by a just act of trans-

fer: Just think of the holdings that have been acquired through fraud, intim-
idation, theft, and exploitation. Thus we need a principle by which to set
right the illegitimate and unjust intrusions into the practice of justice in
holdings. For Nozick this amounts to a kind of commonsensical attempt to
determine at what point the unjust intrusion occurred and to recompense
the subsequent victims for the violation of their holding rights. This Nozick The Principle
calls the Principle of the Rectification of Injustice in Holdings. of the Rectification
These points are expressed in Nozick’s own idiom in the following of Injustice in
Holdings
extract from his Anarchy, State, and Utopia:

If the world were wholly just, the following inductive definition would exhaustively
cover the subject of justice in holdings.
1. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principles of justice
in acquisition is entitled to that holding.
2. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principles of justice in
transfer, from someone else entitled to the holding, is entitled to the holding.
3. No one is entitled to a holding except by (repeated) applications of 1 and 2.

The complete principles of distributive justice would say simply that a distribution
is just if everyone is entitled to the holdings they possess under the distribution.
A distribution is just if it arises from another just distribution by legitimate
means. The legitimate means of moving from one distribution to another are
specified by the principles of justice in transfer. The legitimate first “moves” are
specified by the principle of justice in acquisition. Whatever arises from a just
situation by just steps is itself just. The means of change specified by the principles
of justice in transfer preserve justice. As correct rules of inference are truth-
preserving, and any conclusion deduced via repeated application of such rules
from only true premisses is itself true, so the means of transition from one situation
to another specified by the principle of justice in transfer are justice-preserving,
and any situation actually arising from repeated transitions in accordance with the
principle from a just situation is itself just. The parallel between justice-preserving
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494 transformations and truth-preserving transformations illuminates where it fails as

well as where it holds. That a conclusion could have been deduced by truth-
THE QUESTION
OF SOCIETY preserving means from premisses that are true suffices to show its truth. That from
a just situation a situation could have arisen via justice-preserving means does
not suffice to show its justice. The fact that a thief’s victims voluntarily could have
presented him with gifts does not entitle the thief to his ill-gotten gains. Justice
in holdings is historical; it depends upon what actually has happened. We shall
return to this point later.
Not all actual situations are generated in accordance with the two principles
of justice in holdings: the principle of justice in acquisition and the principle of
justice in transfer. Some people steal from others, or defraud them, or enslave them,
seizing their product and preventing them from living as they choose, or forcibly
exclude others from competing in exchanges. None of these are permissible modes
of transition from one situation to another. And some persons acquire holdings by
means not sanctioned by the principles of justice in acquisition. The existence of
past injustice (previous violations of the first two principles of justice in holdings)
raises the third major topic under justice in holdings: the rectification of injustice
in holdings. If past injustice has shaped present holdings in various ways, some
identifiable and some not, what now, if anything, ought to be done to rectify
these injustices? What obligations do the performers of injustice have toward those
whose position is worse than it would have been had the injustice not been done?
Or, than it would have been had compensation been paid promptly? How, if at all,
do things change if the beneficiaries and those made worse off are not the direct
parties in the act of injustice, but, for example, their descendants? Is an injustice
done to someone whose holding was itself based upon an unrectified injustice?
How far back must one go in wiping clean the historical slate of injustices? What
may victims of injustice permissibly do in order to rectify the injustices being done
to them, including the many injustices done by persons acting through their gov-
ernment? I do not know of a thorough or theoretically sophisticated treatment of
such issues. Idealizing greatly, let us suppose theoretical investigation will produce
a principle of rectification. This principle uses historical information about previous
situations and injustices done in them (as defined by the first two principles of
justice and rights against interference), and information about the actual course of
events that flowed from these injustices, until the present, and it yields a description
(or descriptions) of holdings in the society. The principle of rectification presumably
will make use of its best estimate of subjunctive information about what would have
occurred (or a probability distribution over what might have occurred, using the
expected value) if the injustice had not taken place. If the actual description of
holdings turns out not to be one of the descriptions yielded by the principle, then
one of the descriptions yielded must be realized.
The general outlines of the theory of justice in holdings are that the holdings of
a person are just if he is entitled to them by the principles of justice in acquisition
and transfer, or by the principle of rectification of injustice (as specified by the first
two principles). If each person’s holdings are just, then the total set (distribution)
of holdings is just.6

But how does all of this apply to the concrete, practical problem before
us in this chapter? What is the real payoff, as it were, with respect to the
problem of a just distribution of goods? The answer is given in the above
6
Ibid., pp. 151–153.
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495
THE COMPLETE PRINCIPLE JUSTICE

OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE
A distribution is just if everyone is entitled to the holdings they possess under
the distribution.

quotation in the unambiguous assertion that “. . . the complete principle of The complete
distributive justice would say simply that a distribution is just if everyone principle of
is entitled to the holdings they possess under the distribution.” Again, the distributive Justice
controlling idea is entitlement. We saw that for Rawls the key idea with
respect to the question of the just distribution of goods is fairness. For
Nozick it is entitlement. Thus, according to Nozick, the nonvoluntary redis-
tribution of income or goods to achieve, as he calls it, “equality of material
condition” is impermissible. It is impermissible because a state that forces
or coerces some to contribute to the welfare of others violates the rights of
those who are forced. If this statement seems to be weak, consider Nozick’s
claim that

your being forced to contribute to another’s welfare violates your rights, whereas
someone else’s not providing you with things you need greatly, including things
essential to the protection of your rights, does not itself violate your rights, even
though it avoids making it more difficult for someone else to violate them.7

Just as Nozick’s position is a response to Rawls’, so does Rawls’ position

pose the most obvious question to Nozick’s: But is it fair? Here we will not But is it fair?
rehearse the ins and outs of Rawls’ approach all over again; we only remind
ourselves of the deep differences between the sensibilities and intuitions of
A and B, with whom we began our discussion, or between Nozick and
Rawls, who represent more philosophically and argumentatively A and B.
Suffice it to say that those fundamental differences revolve around the
questions, as posed in biblical language, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” and
if so, to what degree does my brother have a claim on what I have acquired,
earned, or produced? Of course, it must be remembered that what is in

7
Ibid., p. 30.

“All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things: that it is better to be
alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than
a slave.”
—Bertrand Russell
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496 view here are structures and principles of the social and political order:
THE QUESTION
Being either a Rawlsian or Nozickian does not prevent you from selling
OF SOCIETY what you have and giving to the poor, but it does dictate what you think
you can legitimately be compelled to do. In this case, what do you perceive
to be the key terms—fairness or entitlement?
Related to the Is it fair? question is the following consideration. Accord-
ing to Nozick, the have-nots are put out with the haves not only because
they think that the wealth of the haves is not deserved but also because it
is deserved and earned—that is, a matter of resentment against the deserv-
ing rich. But surely this flies in the face of a most obvious fact. It is not
clear to all that the richest are the hardest working, the most talented, or
superior in character—in a word, the most deserving. Are the rich not, in
many instances at least, the laziest, the most exploitive, and the least deserv-
ing? So is it really just a matter of the poor being jealous of the rich? Do the
poor not have a legitimate complaint about a social structure wherein the
wealth is sometimes distributed with little regard to what a person deserves?
Of course, this simply challenges immediately the adequacy of entitlement
as a determinant of justice.
One of the most frequent complaints against Nozick concerns his empha-
Do natural rights sis on natural rights. To be sure, fundamental to Nozick’s whole position
need to be defined? is his appeal to the Lockean doctrine of such rights. But nowhere does one
find a sustained defense of this doctrine. Any social-political ideology that
begins with an appeal to intuited or self-evident principles is already vul-
nerable precisely at that point. Locke’s very point of departure was in this
way a weak one, and so is Nozick’s. Even so, there are other conceptions
of natural rights, and other social-political theories derived therefrom. After
all, doesn’t Rawls, too, rely heavily on the idea of natural rights?
Finally, when we suggested earlier some possible criticisms of Rawls, it
Does Nozick’s was asked whether his position doesn’t offend our moral sensibilities. But
theory contradict now the same may be asked of Nozick. For example:
our moral
sensibilities?
It is an extraordinary but apparent consequence of this view that for a government
to tax each of its able-bodied citizens five dollars a year to support cripples and
orphans would violate the rights of the able-bodied, and would be morally imper-
missible, whereas to refrain from taxation even if it meant allowing the cripples and
orphans to starve to death would be morally required governmental policy.8

Of course Nozick would hope that without taxation (God forbid!) such
unfortunate situations could be remedied through voluntary contributions,
but in the end the rights of the entitled must be upheld—the chips will just
have to fall where they fall. On the other hand, Nozick does grant the pos-
sibility that the moral “side of constraints” of his theory might have to be
set aside in order to avert a “catastrophic moral horror.” But apart from
this possible internal contradiction (Do the legitimately entitled have

8
Samuel Sheffler, “Natural Rights, Equality, and the Minimal State,” Canadian Journal of Phi-
losophy (March 1976), p. 62.
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inviolable rights or not?), the author just quoted asks how many cripples 497
and orphans would have to die to constitute such a horror. Until that ques- JUSTICE
tion is answered, the Nozickian concession to a catastrophic moral horror
is meaningless.

MACINTYRE: JUSTICE AS VIRTUE

Both the Rawlsian and Nozickian accounts of justice have been challenged
by Alasdair MacIntyre in his much-acclaimed After Virtue, on the grounds
that they both leave out something crucial:

. . . there is . . . an element in the position of both A and B which neither Rawls’s

account nor Nozick’s captures, an element which survives from that older, classical
tradition in which the virtues were central.9

From the reference to “that older, classical tradition” we leapfrog a long

way backward in philosophical history, and from the reference to “the vir-
tues,” we know that MacIntyre’s conception of justice is going to have
something to do with individual character or worth.
More specifically, MacIntyre plays up on the idea of desert—how deserv-
ing a person is—as the crucial component of justice, and the one that is
missing in both Rawlsian and Nozickian theories. If we return to our old
friends A and B, we see that desert plays a central role in their positions:
The hard-working A, it will be recalled, certainly saw himself as deserving
of what he has earned, and B emphasized that the poverty of the disad-
vantaged is an undeserved plight. But this idea of desert is exactly what
neither Rawls nor Nozick accommodates. MacIntyre explains why:

Neither Rawls’s account nor Nozick’s allows this central place, or indeed any
kind of place, for desert in claims about justice and injustice. Rawls. . . allows that
common sense views of justice connect it with desert, but argues first that we do
not know what anyone deserves until we have already formulated the rules of
justice (and hence we cannot base our understanding of justice upon desert), and
secondly that when we have formulated the rules of justice it turns out that it is
not desert that is in question anyway, but only legitimate expectations. He also
argues that to attempt to apply notions of desert would be impracticable.
Nozick is less explicit, but his scheme of justice being based exclusively on
entitlements can allow no place for desert. He does at one point discuss the
possibility of a principle for the rectification of injustice, but what he writes on
that point is so tentative and cryptic that it affords no guidance for amending
his general viewpoint. It is in any case clear that for both Nozick and Rawls a
society is composed of individuals, each with his or her own interest, who then
have to come together and formulate common rules of life. In Nozick’s case there
is the additional negative constraint of a set of basic rights. In Rawls’s case the
only constraints are those that a prudent rationality would impose. Individuals are
thus in both accounts primary and society secondary, and the identification of

9
MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 231.
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498 individual interests is prior to, and independent of, the construction of any moral
or social bonds between them. But . . . the notion of desert is at home only in the
THE QUESTION
OF SOCIETY context of a community whose primary bond is a shared understanding both of the
good for man and of the good of that community and where individuals identify
their primary interests with reference to those goods. Rawls explicitly makes it a
presupposition of his view that we must expect to disagree with others about what
the good life for man is and must therefore exclude any understanding of it that
we may have from our formulation of the principles of justice. Only those goods
in which everyone, whatever their view of the good life, takes an interest are to
be admitted to consideration. In Nozick’s argument too, the concept of community
required for the notion of desert to have application is simply absent.
. . . Rawls and Nozick articulate with great power a shared view which envis-
ages entry into social life as—at least ideally—the voluntary act of at least potentially
rational individuals with prior interests who have to ask the question ”What kind of
social contract with others is it reasonable for me to enter into?” Not surprisingly it
is a consequence of this that their views exclude any account of human community
in which the notion of desert in relation to contributions to the common tasks of that
community in pursuing shared goods could provide the basis for judgments about
virtue and injustice.10

Among other things, and most important, MacIntyre here charges that for
The community both Rawls and Nozick the interests of the individual are emphasized first
versus the and over against that of the community. It is the absence of the idea of
individual community in Rawls and Nozick that accounts for their failure to accom-
modate in their theories the idea of desert. For, as MacIntyre just told us,
“the notion of desert is at home only in the context of a community whose
primary bond is a shared understanding both of the good for man and of
the good of that community and where individuals identify their primary
interests with reference to those goods.” That is, the idea of desert—people
getting what they deserve—makes sense only when it is appreciated that
“we’re all in this together,” and that some do better than others in the
pursuit and maintenance of the common, shared goods.
The relevance A second way Rawls and Nozick rule out desert, says MacIntyre, is by
of the past excluding the past on which someone might otherwise base a claim to des-
ert. In the case of Rawls, it will be recalled, it is irrelevant how the needy
got into their present situation of need; all that matters is that right now a
just pattern of distribution be enacted. If so, it is pointless for the needy to
appeal to any past facts that might make them more deserving of a share
of the distribution than others. For Nozick, to be sure, it is the present pat-
tern of distribution that is irrelevant, since only what has been legitimately
acquired in the past is relevant; but by making legitimate entitlements the
only criterion for distribution, he fosters, as MacIntyre calls it, a “mythology
about the past” that excludes certain other relevant factors and factors that
bear upon desert. For, as MacIntyre explains in the following, if we go back
far enough in the past, many legitimate acquisitions dissolve more and more
into obviously illegitimate acquisitions.

10
Ibid., pp. 232–233.
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499
CRITERIA FOR DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE? JUSTICE

In his book Social Philosophy, Joel Feinberg argues that

Differences in a given respect are relevant for the aims of distributive justice
. . . only if they are differences for which their possessors can be held respon-
sible; properties can be the grounds of just discrimination between persons
only if those persons had a fair opportunity to acquire or avoid them.*

He then identifies and evaluates five possible criteria, under the “fair opportunity”
requirement, by which a distribution of goods may be called just:

• Equality (all people are at least human beings).

• Need (some people have greater needs than others).
• Merit (some people display greater merit—think of distinguished achievements—
than others).
• Contribution (some people contribute more to the social wealth than others).
• Effort (some people are more hardworking than others).

What are the pros and cons for each of these criteria? Do they exhaust the pos-
sibilities? Can more than one of them be applied at the same time?

*Joel Feinberg, Social Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), p. 108.

... central to Nozick’s account is the thesis that all legitimate entitlements can be
traced to legitimate acts of original acquisition. But, if that is so, there are in
fact very few, and in some large areas of the world no, legitimate entitlements.
The property-owners of the modern world are not the legitimate heirs of Lockean
individuals who performed quasi-Lockean (“quasi” to allow for Nozick’s emenda-
tions of Locke) acts of original acquisition; they are the inheritors of those who,
for example, stole, and used violence to steal the common lands of England from
the common people, vast tracts of North America from the American Indian, much
of Ireland from the Irish, and Prussia from the original non-German Prussians. This
is the historical reality ideologically concealed behind any Lockean thesis.11

In fairness to Nozick it will be recalled that he does sponsor the Principle

of the Rectification of Injustice in Holdings, which was intended to redress
such injustices as MacIntyre here speaks of. On the other hand, we saw also
that MacIntyre (quotation on p. 497) judges Nozick’s principle to be so
“tentative and cryptic” as to provide no real help.
Thus far our discussion of MacIntyre has been an essentially negative
one—we have spelled out his central objections to the Rawlsian and Nozick-
ian approaches to justice. We must now spell out more clearly what
MacIntyre intends to replace these with. The key word, as we have seen, is

11
Ibid., p. 234.
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500
THE QUESTION “Justice is the virtue of rewarding desert and of repairing failures in rewarding
OF SOCIETY
desert within an already constituted community. . . .”
—Alasdair MacIntyre

desert: Both A and B, in spite of their differences, appeal to desert, and this,
says MacIntyre, “exhibits an adherence to an older, more traditional, more
Aristotelian and Christian view of justice.”12 This older tradition is also
The tradition called the tradition of the virtues, which we studied in Chapter 17.
of the virtues Now, what has this to do with existence at the social level? It will be
recalled that for Aristotle (and now for MacIntyre too) man is a politikon
zoon, a “political animal.” It is no surprise, therefore, that the virtues play
a role not only in the life of the individual but also in social life. The polis,
or social community, is, after all, formed for the realization of a common
good and, as in the individual, the virtues are conducive to the good, but
Virtues and now the common good or well-being of the community. This of course
the community makes for the possibility of praise and blame for virtues and vices, those
qualities or practices that further or hinder the community’s shared vision
of the common good. Now the application of law, intended to regulate
behavior conducive to the common good, requires the virtue of justice,
which is the rewarding of desert (that idea again) and which, as a virtue,
involves judgment or insight kata to orthon logon, “in accordance with right
reason.”
This, then, is broadly both Aristotle’s and MacIntyre’s approach to social
justice, and it should be apparent that it is, both in spirit and in substance,
quite different from the contemporary approaches (think of both Rawls and
Nozick) that stress individual rights and needs.

[The] notion of the political community as a common project is alien to the modern
liberal individualist world. This is how we sometimes at least think of schools,
hospitals or philanthropic organizations, but we have no conception of such a
form of community concerned, as Aristotle says the polis is concerned, with the
whole of life, not with this or that good, but with man’s good as such.13

Rawls and Nozick In spite of their differences, both Rawls’ and Nozick’s conceptions of
versus MacIntyre justice are emphatically rooted in the Lockean tradition of individual rights.
Whether justice is conceived as fairness (Rawls) or entitlement (Nozick),
the orientation of their theories is to the individual—his or her needs and
rights—and to some sort of social contract that secures those rights. With
MacIntyre it is quite different. Our view is lifted from the individual and
focused on the larger community and the shared, common good to which
the individual participants in that community contribute through their

12
Ibid.
13
Ibid., p. 146.
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virtuous activity. This latter, and more classical, view is much less compart- 501
mentalized and more holistic than the former: In an authentic concept of JUSTICE
justice there is much more to be taken into account than individuals, their
needs, and their rights.
Though written before MacIntyre’s After Virtue, Joel Feinberg’s critique
of the merit criterion of distributive justice is certainly relevant for the justice-
as-virtue position. Feinberg raises four questions: Should a person be Some questions
rewarded for what he or she is rather than does? Is it practical to try to for MacIntyre
“police” moral defects in persons? Is it appropriate to reward virtuous
activity with economic prizes? Would such rewards provide an inappropri-
ate incentive for virtuous activity, which, by its nature, should be otherwise
motivated?

Those who would propose rewarding personal virtues with a larger than average
share of the economic pie, and punishing defects of character with a smaller
than average share, advocate assigning to the economic system a task normally
done (if it is done at all) by noneconomic institutions. What they propose, in
effect, is that we use retributive criteria of distributive justice. Our criminal law,
for a variety of good reasons, does not purport to punish people for what they
are, but only for what they do. A man can be as arrogant, rude, selfish, cruel,
insensitive, irresponsible, cowardly, lazy, or disloyal as he wishes; unless he does
something prohibited by the criminal law, he will not be made to suffer legal
punishment. At least one of the legal system’s reasons for refusing to penalize

RAWLS
A AND NOZICK VERSUS MACINTYRE

Justice as Justice as Justice as

fairness entitlement virtue

The Lockean tradition The Aristotelian

tradition

The individual is endowed The individual is a

with personal rights. political animal.

Participation in the social Virtuous participation

contract as security of in the shared vision
personal rights. of the common good.
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502 character flaws as such would also explain why such defects should not be listed
as relevant differences in a material principle of distributive justice. The apparatus
THE QUESTION
OF SOCIETY for detecting such flaws (a “moral police”?) would be enormously cumbersome
and impractical, and its methods so uncertain and fallible that none of us could
feel safe in entrusting the determination of our material allotments to it. We
could, of course, give roughly equal shares to all except those few who have
outstanding virtues—gentleness, kindness, courage, diligence, reliability, warmth,
charm, considerateness, generosity. Perhaps these are traits that deserve to be
rewarded, but it is doubtful that larger economic allotments are the appropriate
vehicles of rewarding. As Benn and Peters remind us, “there are some sorts of
‘worth’ for which rewards in terms of income seem inappropriate. Great cour-
age in battle is recognized by medals, not by increased pay.” Indeed, there is
something repugnant, as Socrates and the Stoics insisted, in paying a man to
be virtuous. Moreover, the rewards would offer a pecuniary motive for certain
forms of excellence that require motives of a different kind, and would thus tend
to be self-defeating.14

OKIN: JUSTICE, GENDER, AND THE FAMILY

Throughout this book we’ve seen how feminists often take a different
approach to major philosophical issues and debates. The question of justice
A feminist critique is no exception. Feminists have criticized all of the theories of justice we’ve
considered so far for focusing too much on men and ignoring the unique
experiences and concerns of women. Earlier we saw feminist alternatives
to traditional morality such as the ethics of care. Here we look at how one
feminist, Susan Moller Okin, takes justice in a new direction.
Traditionally, nearly all theories of justice have ignored certain realms of
human life, most notably the family. Justice has been seen as a matter for
the courtroom, the capital, and the relations between citizens, but not some-
thing that is relevant to the kitchen or bedroom or family matters. This is
definitely not a coincidence, feminists say, since most philosophers who
write about justice are men while the home and family have tended to be
primarily the female realm.
Feminists argue that this must change, that we must begin to see the
relevance of justice to these traditionally private realms. But how do we
make this change? More importantly, where do we begin? At least one
prominent feminist thinker suggests that we begin by taking a closer look
at justice within the family and by cultivating an increased awareness of
the effects of gender in our society.
Gender In Justice, Gender, and the Family, Susan Moller Okin argues that the main
problem with theories of justice is that they ignore gender. When Okin and
other feminists use the term “gender,” they don’t mean simply sex or the
biological differences between males and females. These differences are
normal, healthy, and undeniable. No, “gender” is a politically charged
term used by feminists to represent the inequality in our society and its

14
Joel Feinberg, Social Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), p. 113.
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treatment of women. Okin defines gender as “the deeply entrenched insti- 503
tutionalization of sexual difference,”15 a difference that is not real but JUSTICE
socially constructed.
Why is it that in all this discussion of justice women tend to be ignored?
Okin argues that a peculiar double standard regarding the family is at least
part of the story.

How can theories of justice that are ostensibly about people in general neglect
women, gender, and all the inequalities between the sexes? One reason is that
most theorists assume, though they do not discuss, the traditional, gender-structured
family. . . .
In the past, political theorists often used to distinguish clearly between “pri-
vate” domestic life and the “public” life of politics and the marketplace, claiming
explicitly that the two spheres operated in accordance with different principles.
They separated out the family from what they deemed the subject matter of
politics, and they made closely related, explicit claims about the nature of
women and the appropriateness of excluding them from civil and political life.
Men, the subjects of the theories, were able to make the transition back and
forth from domestic to public life with ease, largely because of the functions
performed by women in the family. When we turn to contemporary theories
of justice, superficial appearances can easily lead to the impression that they
are inclusive of women. In fact, they continue the same “separate spheres”
tradition, by ignoring the family, its division of labor, and the related economic
dependency and restricted opportunities of most women. The judgment that the
family is “nonpolitical” is implicit in the fact that it is simply not discussed in
most works of political theory today. In one way or another, almost all current
theorists continue to assume that the “individual” who is the basic subject of their
theories is the male head of a fairly traditional household. Thus the application
of principles of justice to relations between the sexes, or within the household,
is frequently, though tacitly, ruled out from the start. In the most influential of all
twentieth-century theories of justice, that of John Rawls, family life is not only
assumed, but is assumed to be just—and yet the prevalent gendered division
of labor within the family is neglected, along with the associated distribution of
power, responsibility, and privilege.
Moreover, this stance is typical of contemporary theories of justice. . . .
What is the basis of my claim that the family, while neglected, is assumed
by theorists of justice? One obvious indication is that they take mature, inde-
pendent human beings as the subjects of their theories without any mention of
how they got to be that way. We know, of course, that human beings develop
and mature only as a result of a great deal of attention and hard work, by
far the greater part of it done by women. But when theorists of justice talk
about “work,” they mean paid work performed in the marketplace. They must
be assuming that women, in the gender-structured family, continue to do their
unpaid work of nurturing and socializing the young and providing a haven
of intimate relations—otherwise there would be no moral subjects for them to
theorize about. But these activities apparently take place outside the scope of
their theories. Typically, the family itself is not examined in the light of whatever
standard of justice the theorist arrives at.

15
Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989), p. 6.
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504 The continued neglect of the family by theorists of justice flies in the face of
a great deal of persuasive feminist argument. Scholars have clearly revealed the
THE QUESTION
OF SOCIETY interconnections between the gender structure inside and outside the family and
the extent to which the personal is political. They have shown that the assignment
of primary parenting to women is crucial, both in forming the gendered identities
of men and women and in influencing their respective choices and opportunities in
life. Yet, so far, the simultaneous assumption and neglect of the family has allowed
the impact of these arguments to go unnoticed in major theories of justice.16

Okin provides a powerful critique and a persuasive one: Theorists both

ignore and assume the traditional, gendered family. As feminists have shown,
male bias pervades many areas of our society, so why should we think that
justice would be an exception? But critique is only half the equation; we also
need a remedy or at least a proposal for change. We need to know what a
feminist theory of justice would look like. For Okin, the key lies in striving
Humanist justice for what she calls “humanist justice,” which must include justice in the fam-
ily. The way to achieve humanist justice, Okin argues, is through eliminating
gender and establishing true equality among all people.

I have suggested that, for very important reasons, the family needs to be a just
institution, and have shown that contemporary theories of justice neglect women
and ignore gender. How can we address this injustice?
This is a complex question. It is particularly so because we place great value
on our freedom to live different kinds of lives, there is no current consensus on
many aspects of gender, and we have good reason to suspect that many of our
beliefs about sexual difference and appropriate sex roles are heavily influenced
by the very fact that we grew up in a gender-structured society. All of us have
been affected, in our very psychological structures, by the fact of gender in our
personal pasts, just as our society has been deeply affected by its strong influence
in our collective past. Because of the lack of shared meanings about gender, it
constitutes a particularly hard case for those who care deeply about both personal
freedom and social justice. The way we divide the labor and responsibilities in
our personal lives seems to be one of those things that people should be free to
work out for themselves, but because of its vast repercussions it belongs clearly
within the scope of things that must be governed by principles of justice. Which
is to say, in the language of political and moral theory, that it belongs both to
the sphere of “the good” and to that of “the right.”
Any just and fair solution to the urgent problem of women’s and children’s
vulnerability must encourage and facilitate the equal sharing by men and women
of paid and unpaid work, of productive and reproductive labor. We must work

16
Ibid., pp. 8–9.

“Family life as typically practiced in our society is not just, either to women or to
children. Moreover, it is not conducive to the rearing of citizens with a strong
sense of justice.”
—Susan Moller Okin
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toward a future in which all will be likely to choose this mode of life. A just future 505
would be one without gender. In its social structures and practices, one’s sex would
JUSTICE
have no more relevance than one’s eye color or the length of one’s toes. No assump-
tions would be made about “male” and “female” roles; childbearing would be so
conceptually separated from child rearing and other family responsibilities that it
would be a cause for surprise, and no little concern, if men and women were not
equally responsible for domestic life or if children were to spend much more time
with one parent than the other. It would be a future in which men and women
participated in more or less equal numbers in every sphere of life, from infant
care to different kinds of paid work to high-level politics. Thus it would no longer
be the case that having no experience of raising children would be the practical
prerequisite for attaining positions of the greatest social influence. Decisions about
abortion and rape, about divorce settlements and sexual harassment, or about any
other crucial social issues would not be made, as they often are now, by legislatures
and benches of judges overwhelmingly populated by men whose power is in large
part due to their advantaged position in the gender structure. If we are to be at all
true to our democratic ideals, moving away from gender is essential.17

CHAPTER 20 IN REVIEW
SUMMARY
In this chapter we have focused on the idea of justice as being in some way
fundamental to all social-political philosophy. And we have presented four
important and contemporary attempts to explicate this central concept and
apply it to the realities of the social-political world.
The first of these theories of justice, that of Rawls, tries to combine the
ideals of libertarianism with those of egalitarianism, and to provide prin-
ciples that would assure the implementation of justice conceived as fair-
ness. Echoing somewhat the old ideas of the state of nature and the social
contract, Rawls has argued that it should be possible to bracket out our
individual interests and advantages (the veil of ignorance) long enough to
perceive what would be fair and advantageous to all. More specifically, in
this original position we should be guided by Rawls’ two principles of
justice: (1) the Principle of Equal Basic Liberty for All and (2) the Difference
Principle. The first of these establishes equal liberty, and the second fosters
equal income and social position. These are geared to reducing inequities:
Differences in wealth and position would be fostered only when such dif-
ferences would contribute to the advantage of all.
If Rawls argues generally for a principle of equality with respect to needs,
Nozick argues for a principle of equality with respect to entitlement. Here
too we encounter an echo of Locke but with a libertarian emphasis on
individual rights. This is reflected in Nozick’s conception of the minimal or
“night-watchman” state, the role of which is solely to protect individual
rights, and his conception of justice as entitlement. This latter may be unpacked
in terms of Nozick’s three principles of justice in holdings: (1) the Principle

17
Ibid., pp. 170–172.
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506 of Justice in Acquisition, (2) the Principle of Justice in Transfer, and (3) the
THE QUESTION
Principle of the Rectification of Injustice in Holdings. These principles guar-
OF SOCIETY antee the legitimacy of the original acquisition of property through transfer
of legitimately acquired property, and an attempt to rectify violations of the
first two principles. With respect to the distribution of goods, Nozick’s
proposition is clear from his complete principle of distributive justice,
which identifies a just distribution as one in which each individual is enti-
tled to his or her holdings.
Both Rawls’ and Nozick’s theories of justice have been subjected to vari-
ous criticisms, but they are rejected by MacIntyre on the grounds that they
fail to accommodate the idea of desert, which in turn is bound up with
MacIntyre’s conception of justice as virtue. With this MacIntyre argues for a
return to an older, classical tradition, represented best by Aristotle, the tradi-
tion of the virtues, where virtue is understood as activity conducive to well-
being. Here (and in contrast to Rawls, Nozick, and the Lockean tradition)
the emphasis is shifted from the rights of the individual to the good of the
individual and, in the larger picture, to the common good of the community
in which the individual is necessarily a part. The individual’s virtuous (or
not) and deserving (or not) contribution to this shared vision is the basis for
a notion of justice as virtue: Justice is the rewarding of the virtuous activity
that enhances the common good of man, the “social animal.”
Feminists criticize all of these theories of justice for privileging male expe-
rience and ignoring gender bias and the family. Susan Moller Okin argues
that we must deal with the deeply entrenched effects of gender in society
before justice is even possible. We also need to extend the reach of justice
beyond the public realm and into the family. Justice in the gender-structured
family is necessary, Okin claims, for justice in society as a whole.

BASIC IDEAS
• Three views of justice
• “The original position”
• The “veil of ignorance”
• Rawls’ two principles of justice:
The Principle of Equal Basic Liberty for All
The Difference Principle
• Rawls’ general conception of justice
• Rawls’ theory of justice as a synthesis of libertarian and egalitarian
perspectives
• The minimal or “night-watchman” state
• Justice as entitlement
• Nozick’s three principles of justice in holdings:
The Principle of Justice in Acquisition
The Principle of Justice in Transfer
The Principle of the Rectification of Injustice in Holdings
• Nozick’s complete principle of distributive justice
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• MacIntyre’s emphasis on desert 507

• Individual rights versus the good of the community JUSTICE
• The relevance of the past for a just distribution
• Feinberg’s questions for MacIntyre
• Okin’s critique of traditional theories of justice
• Justice in the family
• Gender

TEST YOURSELF
1. True or false: Rawls’ first principle of justice is intended to promote
egalitarianism.
2. Nozick’s is a theory of “justice as ______.”
3. MacIntyre’s theory of justice has most in common with (a) Locke, (b) Marx,
(c) Aristotle, (d) the libertarians.
4. Why do some object to Rawls’ idea of the veil of ignorance?
5. Recalling previous chapters, Rawls’ idea of the original position has most
in common with (a) Aristotle, (b) Locke, (c) St. Thomas, (d) Rousseau.
6. True or false: Nozick proposes no principle aimed at the rectification of
injustice.
7. What is meant by the claim that MacIntyre’s is a more “holistic” concep-
tion of justice than Rawls’ or Nozick’s?
8. What thinkers in this chapter champion a social contract as providing
security for personal rights?

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• Does Rawls’ theory of justice succeed in combining the best of the libertar-
ian and egalitarian ideals? Why is such a distinction irrelevant for Nozick?
• What about the objection that Rawls’ theory is very attractive in principle
but has little hope of actual implementation? Does this objection apply
also to Nozick and MacIntyre? Is any social-political ideal or principle free
from this problem? Do you agree with the charge that the practice of any
of these theories might fly in the face of your intuitions about morality?
• Do you agree with Okin that justice is relevant not only to public affairs
but also to the private realm such as the family?
• How would you come to grips with the problem of justice? Do Rawls’,
Nozick’s, MacIntyre’s, or Okin’s theories provide you with any insights
and illumination?

FOR FURTHER READING

Kenneth Cauthen. The Passion for Equality. Savage, MD: Rowman & Little-
field, 1987. A historical survey of the concept of equality in America and
a proposal in the light of the contributions of Rawls and Nozick.
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508 Frederick Copleston. A History of Philosophy. Baltimore: Newman Press,

THE QUESTION 1946–1974. I, Ch. 31. A clear, succinct account of Aristotle’s ethics, includ-
OF SOCIETY ing his concept of virtue, from a standard work.
Norman Daniels (ed.). Reading Rawls: Critical Studies of “A Theory of Justice.” New
York: Basic Books, 1974. Fourteen essays representing and evaluating aspects
of Rawls’ theory, with a useful, summarizing introduction by the editor.
R. E. Ewin. Liberty, Community and Justice. Savage, MD: Rowman & Little-
field, 1987. An inquiry into the nature of individuals’ liberty in relation
to community, based on the work of Thomas Hobbes.
John Hospers. Human Conduct: An Introduction to the Problem of Ethics. New
York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961. Ch. 9. A textbook discussion of
justice, including its relation to the ideas of equality, reward, and punish-
ment, by a well-known social-political philosopher.
Louis I. Katzner. Man in Conflict: Traditions in Social and Political Thought.
Encino, CA: Dickenson, 1975. A student-oriented text on standard topics in
social philosophy (freedom, social contract, forms of government), includ-
ing a treatment specifically of justice with special reference to Rawls.
Kenneth Kipnis and Diana T. Meyers (eds.). Economic Justice: Private Rights
and Public Responsibilities. Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1985.
Twenty philosophers and social theorists on the economically just soci-
ety, in the context of the distributive justice versus property rights debate
spawned by Rawls and Nozick.
Rex Martin. Rawls and Rights. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985.
A complete appraisal of Rawls’ theory of justice, with special treatment
of his account of rights.
James W. Nickel. Making Sense of Human Rights. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1987. An account and defense of the idea of human
rights that has come to play a large role in contemporary liberalism.
Kai Nielsen. Equality and Liberty: A Defense of Radical Egalitarianism. Totowa,
NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985. A hefty but lively plea for radical egali-
tarianism, with extended treatment and criticism of Rawls and Nozick.
Susan Moller Okin. Justice, Gender, and the Family. New York: Basic Books, 1989.
Classic argument about the way liberalism discriminates against women.
Jeffrey Paul (ed.). Reading Nozick: Essays on “Anarchy, State, and Utopia.”
Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1981. A large collection of studies that
represent and criticize various aspects of Nozick’s position, with an
introduction that summarizes both Nozick and his critics.
Nicholas Rescher. Distributive Justice. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966. An
analysis of this single, important concept, from a utilitarian standpoint.
Michael Walzer. Spheres of Justice. New York: Basic Books, 1983. A wide-
ranging and influential discussion of liberty and the good.
Robert Paul Wolff. Understanding Rawls: A Reconstruction and Critique of “A
Theory of Justice.” Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977. A com-
plete commentary and severe criticism of Rawls’ theory.
*In addition, see the relevant articles (“Justice,” “Rights,” etc.) in Routledge
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig (London: Routledge, 1998),
and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu.
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POSTSCRIPT

What a man knows at fifty that he did not know at twenty is, for the most part,
incommunicable. The laws, the aphorisms, the generalizations, the universal truths,
the parables and the old saws—all of the observations about life which can be com-
municated handily in ready, verbal packages—are as well known to a man at
twenty who has been attentive as to a man at fifty. He has been told them all, he
has read them all, and he has probably repeated them all before he graduates from
college; but he has not lived them all.
What he knows at fifty that he did not know at twenty boils down to something
like this: The knowledge he has acquired with age is not the knowledge of formulas,
or forms of words, but of people, places, actions—a knowledge not gained by words
but by touch, sight, sound, victories, failures, sleeplessness, devotion, love—the
human experiences and emotions of this earth and of oneself and other men; and
perhaps, too, a little faith, and a little reverence for things you cannot see.1

1
Adlai E. Stevenson, What I Think (New York: Harper, 1956), p. 174.

509
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miL86561_dict_D1-D28.indd Page D-1 2/4/08 6:09:38 PM gulab /tempwork/SUSHIL/MHSF007:Miller:208/04:02:08

A (SHORT)
PHILOSOPHICAL
DICTIONARY

T
he following entries are geared specifically to the present text, though
the list is sufficiently comprehensive to assist any philosophy student.
The decision to enter noun forms on some occasions and adjectival
forms on others has not been arbitrary but determined by the way in which
the terms tend to be used in the text. Of course, many of the terms included
here are also (and perhaps otherwise) explained in the “running glossary”
found throughout the book. When terms in the entries are themselves
in some form separate entries, this is indicated, when appropriate, by the
use of boldface type. “Ca.” (abbreviation of Laatin, circa) ⫽ “approximately.”
When only one date is given, it is the presumed date at which the philoso-
pher was most active.

“Dictionaries are like watches. The best cannot be expected to go quite true, but
the worst is better than none.”
—Samuel Johnson

A posteriori: In epistemology, pertaining to knowledge derived from, or

posterior to, sense experience.
A priori: In epistemology, pertaining to knowledge acquired independently
of, or prior to, sense experience.
D-1
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D-2 Absolute: That which is independent of or unconditioned by anything out-

A (SHORT)
side itself.
PHILOSOPHICAL Abstraction (abstract idea): A general idea, an idea from which particular-
DICTIONARY
izing features of existing things have been removed (e.g., “table,” “dog,”
or “human”) or that results when what a number of particular things have
in common is abstracted (e.g., “redness” from various red things).
Accidental: In metaphysics, a feature or characteristic that does not belong
necessarily to the nature of a thing.
Actuality: In Scholastic philosophy, the state of being something in reality
as opposed to being something merely potentially.
Aesthetics: Philosophy of art, or philosophical reflection on the nature of
art and of our experience of beauty.
Albert the Great (Albert Magnus): (ca. 1193–1280) Dominican priest and
Scholastic philosopher of great breadth, who popularized much Aristo-
telian and Arabic philosophy and exerted a great influence on the philo-
sophical development of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Alienation: In Marxism, the estrangement, induced by capitalist exploita-
tion, of the worker from his or her product, self, human nature, and
neighbors.
Altruism: The belief that everyone ought as much as possible to seek the
good of others.
Ambrose, St.: (ca. 339–397) Bishop of Milan, staunch defender of Christian
orthodoxy, who was largely responsible for St. Augustine’s conversion.
Analogy, method of: In logic, a form of inductive reasoning in which a
conclusion is drawn about some feature of one member of a class on the
basis of a resemblance in some other respect to other members of the
class.
Analogy of the Sun: Plato’s comparison of the function of the sun in the
visible world to the function of the Good in the intelligible world: As
the sun illuminates sensible things with light and causes them to exist,
so the Good irradiates the Forms with truth and causes them to exist.
Analytic philosophy: An emphasis in twentieth-century philosophy (largely
British) on linguistic analysis, or the analysis of language, as a means
of identifying the sources of, and resolving, philosophical problems.
More generally, the emphasis on definition, logical scrutiny, conceptual
coherence, marshaling of evidence, and so on.
Analytic proposition: A proposition that is true by definition, or logically
necessary, as in “All triangles have three sides.”
Anaxagoras: (ca. 475 B.C.) Pre-Socratic philosopher of the Pluralist tradition
who identified reality with an infinite number of infinitely divisible
“seeds,” governed by Mind, and the first to claim that the sun and moon
were not gods but earthlike bodies.
Anaximander: (ca. 575 B.C.) Pre-Socratic philosopher of the Ionian tradition
who believed that reality originates from an indefinite mixture of opposing
sensible qualities, the Boundless.
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Anaximenes: (ca. 550 B.C.) Pre-Socratic philosopher of the Ionian tradition D-3
who taught that the ultimate reality is air, through rarefaction and con- A (SHORT)
densation of which sensible things have arisen. PHILOSOPHICAL
DICTIONARY
Anselm, St.: (1033–1109) Benedictine monk, eventually Archbishop of Can-
terbury, who advocated the rational defense of Christian ideas, and pro-
pounded the Ontological Argument for the existence of God.
Anthropomorphism: The representation of something nonhuman—for exam-
ple, God—in the likeness of human beings.
Archetype: A model, pattern, or paradigm.
Argument: An attempt to show that some claim is true (the conclusion) by
providing reasons for it (the premises).
Argumentum ad Hominem: “Appeal to the man”; an informal fallacy that
irrelevantly attacks the person making a claim rather than attacking the
claim itself (abusive form) or seeks to undermine a claim by calling atten-
tion to the (irrelevant) circumstances of the one making the claim.
Argumentum ad Ignorantiam: “Appeal to ignorance”; an informal fallacy that
affirms the truth of something on the basis of the lack of evidence to the
contrary.
Argumentum ad Populum: “Appeal to the crowd”; an informal fallacy that
seeks to strengthen a claim by emotional appeal to the passions and
prejudices of the listeners.
Aristocracy: As a theory of government, rule by the best or most noble,
usually rule by the nobility class.
Aristotle: (383–321 B.C.) Greek thinker who wrote on all philosophical and
many scientific topics, most notably metaphysics, ethics, and logic, and
a teleologist who rejected Plato’s separated Forms in favor of immanent
Forms—the Form “Dog” is not an essence existing apart from individual
dogs but rather inhering in each dog.
Atom: Literally, an “uncuttable,” regarded by some premodern materialists
as the ultimate building block of reality.
Attribute: Property or characteristic attributed to or predicated of something.
Augustine, St.: (354–430) Latin Church Father, Bishop of Hippo in North
Africa, who adapted Platonic (more specifically, Neo-Platonic) philosophy
to Christian theology.
Autonomous: The state of being self-controlling, independent, or free.

Beauvoir, Simone de: (1908–1986) French author and one of the leading
founders of the contemporary feminist movement, who applied the prin-
ciple of existential freedom to the oppressed woman.
Behaviorism: The school of psychology that, by defining psychological
terms (e.g., pain) in terms of observable behavior (e.g., sobbing), claims
that observable behavior is the proper object of psychological study.
Benedict, Ruth: (1887–1948) American cultural anthropologist (student of
Margaret Mead) whose investigations and writings have emphasized the
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D-4 diversity of cultural behavior patterns, which is taken by many (including

A (SHORT)
herself) as evidence for cultural relativism.
PHILOSOPHICAL Benevolence Principle: Happiness is to be distributed as widely and as
DICTIONARY
equally as possible among all people.
Bentham, Jeremy: (1748–1832) English ethicist and social philosopher,
founder of modern utilitarianism, who emphasized a quantitative con-
ception of the “greatest” pleasure in his definition of happiness.
Berkeley, George: (1685–1753) Anglican bishop and philosopher who theo-
rized about the nature of vision, but, most notably, denied the existence
of matter and propounded the most famous version of subjective idealism.
Big Bang theory: A cosmological model according to which the present
hypothesized expanding universe has resulted from an explosion of con-
centrated matter about 15 billion years ago.
Bourgeoisie: In Marxist theory, the owning or propertied class, standing in
opposition to the proletariat or nonpropertied working class.
Broad, C. D.: (1887–1971) English philosopher, contributor to many fields
including, most notably, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of science, and
psychical research.

Calvin, John: (1509–1564) French theologian and leader of the reformed (as
opposed to Lutheran) branch of the Protestant Reformation.
Camus, Albert: (1913–1960) French playwright, novelist, essayist, resistance
fighter, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, and a foremost atheistic
existentialist thinker.
Capital: Money, property, or goods having an exchange value, owned by
an individual or firm.
Capitalism: The economic theory that advocates that the means of produc-
tion, and the actual production and exchange of goods and wealth,
should be owned and implemented by private individuals or corporations
with a view toward profit.
Carneades: (ca. 150 B.C.) Leader of the “Academicians,” a school of skepti-
cism that developed out of Plato’s Academy.
Categorical Imperative: In Kant, the principle of moral conduct: “Act only
according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it
should become a universal law”; more generally, a moral command with
no “ifs” or “buts.”
Categorical proposition: A proposition that affirms or denies that one class
of things is included in another (e.g., “All U.S. presidents have been
males”).
Category mistake: The mistake of employing a concept within a conceptual
system to which it is inappropriate (e.g., “I see the carburetor, battery,
generator, pistons, etc., but where is the power?”).
Causality, principle of: Everything that comes into being is caused, or comes
into being by virtue of something outside itself.
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Cave, Allegory of the: Plato’s image whereby he likens the education and D-5
ascent of the soul to making one’s way out of a darkened cave, which is A (SHORT)
initially mistaken for reality, into the upper world illuminated by the sun. PHILOSOPHICAL
DICTIONARY
Chomsky, Noam: (b. 1928) American thinker who has argued on linguistic
grounds (specifically on the basis of generative grammar) for the existence
of innate intellectual structures.
Chōrismos: Greek for “separation” or “gap,” applied by Aristotle in criti-
cism of Plato’s theory of Forms which represented them as transcendent
and removed from (separated from) the things they are supposed to be
the cause of.
Clarification Principle: The clarity of an idea, distinction, and the like is
always more apparent after the idea has been clarified.
Cogito ergo sum: Latin expression employed by Descartes for the indubitable
starting point of philosophizing: “I think, therefore I am.”
Cognitive: Pertaining to the act or process of knowing.
Cognitive science: An interdisciplinary (psychology, philosophy, computer
sciences, linguistics) exploration of the processes that underlie thinking,
utilizing a computational (computerlike) model of mind.
Communism: In the Marxist variety, the economic-political theory that
advocates the abolition of private ownership of the means of production
and distribution, and the actualization of a classless society that practices
the principle “From each according to one’s ability; to each according to
one’s need.”
Complete principle of distributive justice: A distribution is just if everyone
is entitled to the holdings he or she possesses under the distribution.
Complex idea: An idea that combines several simple or unanalyzable ideas
(e.g., “apple” is compounded out of “red,” “sweet,” etc.) or other complex
ideas (e.g., “typewriter” is composed of keys, carriage, levers, etc.).
Conclusion: In an argument, the proposition that is supported by the
premises.
Conditional proposition: See Hypothetical proposition.
Conditioned: See Contingent.
Confucius: (5th–6th century B.C.) Chinese sage, teacher of practical and ethical
wisdom.
Consequentialism: See Teleological ethics.
Conservation of energy, principle of: The amount of energy in any closed
system (and therefore the universe) remains constant; that is, it can be of
itself neither created nor destroyed.
Consistency Principle: Any logically consistent proposition may be true,
but no self-contradictory proposition can be true.
Contiguity: The state of one thing being in spatial contact with or touching
another.
Contingent: The state of being dependent for existence on something
else.
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D-6 Copernicus, Nicholas: (1473–1543) Polish astronomer, advocate of the helio-

A (SHORT)
centric model of the universe, which locates the sun in the center.
PHILOSOPHICAL Copleston, Frederick C.: (b. 1907) English priest and defender of theism and
DICTIONARY
Thomism, author of a standard, multivolume history of philosophy.
Corporeal: Pertaining to what exists as a physical body and is apprehen-
sible by the senses.
Cosmological Argument: A proof for God’s existence: God must exist as
the ultimate cause of the contingent, physical universe; also called the
First-Cause Argument.
Cosmology: Study of the origin, nature, and principles constituting the
physical universe.
Cosmos: From the Greek kosmos, “ornament,” eventually designating the
world or universe.
Cratylus: (ca. 500 B.C.) Pre-Socratic thinker who maintained an extreme
interpretation of Heraclitus’ doctrine of flux.
Cultural relativism: The view that morality and other values are rooted in
the experience, habits, and preferences of a culture.

Darwin, Charles: (1809–1882) English naturalist and most influential pro-

ponent of biological evolution, which held far-reaching philosophical
implications.
Deculturalization Principle: It is necessary to distinguish the real substance
of a philosophy, theory, and the like, from the particular cultural forms
(e.g., cosmology) in which it is accidentally expressed.
Deductive reasoning: Reasoning in which the conclusion follows with
logical necessity from the premises.
Deity: God, the divinity, the divine nature.
Democracy: Literally, rule by the people; government in which the power
is vested in the body of citizens, either directly or through elected
representatives.
Democritus: (ca. 425 B.C.) Pre-Socratic philosopher who identified reality with
indivisible material particles (atoms) moving randomly in empty space.
Deontological ethics: The view that emphasizes the performance of duty,
rather than results, as the sign of right action.
Descartes, René: (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and physi-
cist, propounder of strict rationalism and mind-matter dualism, tradi-
tionally called the father of modern philosophy.
Design Argument: See Teleological Argument.
Despotism: See Dictatorship.
Determinism: The view that everything that comes into being is caused in
such a way that it could not have been otherwise.
D’Holbach, Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron: (1723–1789) German atheist, materialist,
mechanist, and relentless critic of organized religion, especially Catholicism.
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Dialectical: Pertaining to, or of the nature of, reasoning, argumentation, D-7

give-and-take, and the like. A (SHORT)
Dialectical materialism: The metaphysical view that reality is matter and PHILOSOPHICAL
DICTIONARY
motion and evolves historically in accordance with the dialectical principle
of the synthesis of opposite states.
Dictatorship: Absolute rule by a single individual who, usually, has
acquired power through unlawful means.
Diderot, Denis: (1713–1784) French deist, materialist, and finally pantheist,
and contributor to the French Encyclopédie, a controversial, irreverent,
multivolume compendium of French “philosophy.”
Difference Principle: Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged
so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advan-
tage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all.
Diogenes Laertius: (ca. 225) Author of Lives of Eminent Philosophers, the
source of much knowledge about ancient philosophers.
Disjunctive proposition: A proposition that poses alternatives indicated by
the words “either. . . or” (e.g., “Either the players’ shirts are red or they
are blue”).
Disjunctive syllogism: A syllogism in which one premise is a disjunctive
proposition (e.g., X or Y, not-X, therefore Y).
Dispositions (mental): Ryle’s term for the observable data by which mind
is best understood: capacities, proclivities, habits, and so on.
Distributive justice, complete principle of: A distribution is just if everyone
is entitled to the holdings he or she possesses under the distribution.
Divided Line, the: Plato’s image of a line bisected above and below to
represent, on one side, his conception of degrees of being and, on the
other, corresponding degrees of knowledge.
Divine law: God’s salvific intention for his creatures, known through divine
revelation.
Dostoievsky, Fyodor: (1821–1881) Russian novelist and thinker whose work
has influenced and expressed strains of existential philosophy.
Double-aspect theory: In Spinoza, the view that there is only one reality,
unknown to us except through its attributes of mind and matter, two of
the infinite number of aspects of this one reality.
Dualism: Metaphysically, the view that reality consists ultimately of two
fundamentally different entities.
Ducasse, C. J.: (1881–1969) American philosopher who contributed to and
wrote on all fields of philosophy, including symbolic logic and the “wild
facts” of ESP.

Economic determinism: The theory that all, or the most important, human
action results necessarily from economic factors alone, such as income,
prices, trade, or even the structure of the system itself.
Efficient cause: The agent through which something comes into being.
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D-8 Egoism: Literally, “I-ism,” the emphasis on the self as the ultimate reality, central
A (SHORT)
concern, and the like (not to be confused with egotism, i.e., selfishness).
PHILOSOPHICAL Egoistic hedonism: The doctrine that the pursuit and production of one’s
DICTIONARY
own pleasure are the highest good and the criterion of right action.
Eidological Argument: A proof for God that requires God as the cause of
our idea of perfection.
Eleatic: Pertaining to the school of philosophy founded by Parmenides of
Elea, in southern Italy.
Elitism: In political philosophy, rule by a select few.
Empedocles: (ca. 450 B.C.) Pre-Socratic philosopher of the Pluralist tradi-
tion who identified reality with the four elements (earth, water, air, fire),
which he viewed as combining and separating under the influence of
“Love” and “Strife” respectively.
Empiricism: The belief that knowledge about existing things is acquired
through sense experience.
En soi: French, “in itself,” used in Sartrean existentialism in reference to
nonconscious being.
Engels, Friedrich: (1820–1895) German socialist thinker; friend, follower,
and systematizer of Marx.
Environmental ethics: Application of principles of obligation or right action
to issues of the environment, such as pollution, conservation, treatment
of animals, and so on.
Epicharmus: (ca. 500 B.C.) Father of Greek comedy who wrote plays satiriz-
ing Pre-Socratic philosophers.
Epistemological dualism: The view that the act of knowing involves pri-
marily two components: the mind that does the knowing and its ideas(s)
that are known.
Epistemology: The study or theory of knowledge.
Equal Basic Liberty for All, Principle of: Each person is to have an equal
right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty
for others.
Esse: Latin, “to be,” and hence “being” or “act of being.”
Esse est percipi: Berkeley’s summary of expression of his subjective idealism:
“To be is to be perceived.”
Essence: The nature or “whatness” of something; that which makes some-
thing the kind of thing it is.
Eternal law: The unalterable governance of all things by the divine reason.
Ethical absolutism (Ethical objectivism): The view that moral values are inde-
pendent of human opinion and have a common or universal application.
Ethical relativism (Ethical subjectivism): The denial of any absolute or objec-
tive moral values, and the affirmation of the individual (person, com-
munity, culture, etc.) as the source of morality.
Ethics: The theory of good and evil as applied to personal actions, decisions,
and relations; moral values.
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Ethics of care: Feminist approach to ethics emphasizing women’s experience, D-9

especially the attitude and expression of caring. A (SHORT)
Evidentialism: The thesis that belief in God is wrong if not based on rational PHILOSOPHICAL
DICTIONARY
evidence.
Evil, the problem of: See Theodicy.
Evolution, theory of: In biology, the theory advanced by Charles Darwin that
present life forms have developed gradually from earlier, more primitive
forms by means of natural selection, which eliminates maladapted forms
while new forms are generated by spontaneous mutations.
Ex nihil nihil fit: Latin, Scholastic expression of the principle of causality:
“From nothing, nothing comes.”
Executive: In government, pertaining to the person or persons who carry
out and enforce the laws, policies, and the like of the government.
“Existence precedes essence”: A summary of the (especially atheistic) exis-
tentialist view that what the human being is, or human essence, is cre-
ated by choices made by existing subjects.
Existential freedom: The denial that values are imposed on humans from
without; human autonomy in the creation of values.
Existential meaning: The personal importance or relevance of an experi-
ence, idea, and so on.
Existential proposition: A proposition that affirms or denies the existence
of something.
Existentialism: A nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophical perspec-
tive that disdains abstractions and focuses on the concrete reality and
freedom of the existing individual.
Extension: The property of occupying space.
External sanctions: In Bentham, motivations lying outside us (e.g., law, opin-
ion, God) for behavior of a certain kind.
External world: The objects existing outside and independently of our
minds.

Fabian socialism: A doctrine originating in 1884 in England, advocating a

gradual and peaceful cultivation of socialism.
Factual judgment: A judgment that describes some empirical state of
affairs.
Faculty: An agent or power by which the mind or soul knows and acts
(e.g., memory, will, imagination).
Faculty psychology: An understanding of the mind that distinguishes its
several differing capacities and their respectively different functions.
Fallacy: Mistake in reasoning, due to a failure in following the rules for the
formal structure of valid arguments (formal fallacy) or carelessness
regarding relevance and clarity of language (informal fallacy).
Fatalism: See Determinism.
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D-10 Feinberg, Joel: (b. 1926) American philosopher, most noted for his contribu-
A (SHORT)
tions to legal and political philosophy, and especially his work on moral
PHILOSOPHICAL limits in the application of criminal law.
DICTIONARY
Feminism: Commitment to the abolition of male bias and domination in
society.
Feuerbach, Ludwig: (1804–1872) German naturalist and atheist who inter-
preted God and religion as human projections upon the universe.
Final cause: The end or purpose of a thing.
First-Cause Argument: See Cosmological Argument.
Fletcher, Joseph: (b. 1905) American theologian and ethicist who popular-
ized the notion of “situation ethics.”
Flew, Antony: (b. 1923) British analytic philosopher, Hume scholar, and
antagonist of theism and Christianity.
Form: In metaphysics, the essence, nature, or “whatness” of a thing.
Form philosophy: Any philosophy that posits Form or essence as a central
metaphysical category.
Formal cause: The essence or nature of a thing.
Formal fallacy: Mistake in reasoning due to failure in following the rules
for the formal structure of valid arguments.
Formalism, ethical: A characterization of Kant’s criterion of moral action,
which stresses not the content of the action but the conformity of the
will to moral principle.
Formalism, mathematical: The view that mathematical study is not about
any real entities, either outside the mind (logicism) or inside the mind
(intuitionism).
Forms, theory of the: The belief in transcendent essences that cause par-
ticular things, by “participation” or “imitation,” to have their general
natures.
Fortuitous: Happening accidentally or by chance.
Foundationalism: The belief that all knowledge rests ultimately on funda-
mental truths that are themselves not subject to any proof and are the
foundations of all other truths.
Francis of Assisi, St.: (1182–1226) Christian mystic, traditional example of
altruism, founder of the Franciscan monastic order.
Frankena, William K.: (b. 1908) American analytic philosopher, best known
for his contributions to ethical theory.
Free enterprise: See Capitalism.
Free-Will Defense: An attempted solution to the problem of moral evil:
Human beings are endowed with free will by God as a condition for
genuine morality, trust, love, and the like, though it also makes possible
the introduction of moral evil into the world.
Freud, Sigmund: (1856–1939) German father of psychoanalysis, whose doc-
trine of the unconscious, and similar concepts, has greatly influenced
some recent philosophers, such as Sartre.
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Functionalism: The idea, especially applied to mind, that the nature of some- D-11
thing is better understood in light of its function than what it is made of. A (SHORT)
PHILOSOPHICAL
DICTIONARY
Galileo, Galilei: (1564–1642) Italian physicist and astronomer whose helio-
centric model of the universe (following Copernicus) held far-reaching
philosophical and religious consequences.
Gaunilon: (ca. 1075) Benedictine monk of Marmoutier, critic of St. Anselm’s
Ontological Argument.
Gender: Term used by feminists to represent the inequalities arising from
the institutionalization of sexual difference.
Generalization, method of: A form of inductive reasoning in which a con-
clusion is drawn about some feature of all members of a class on the
basis of repeated observation of that feature in particular instances.
Generative grammar: A hypothetical set of rules that will produce all, and
only, the grammatical sentences of a language, usually associated with
a particular school of linguistics dominated by Chomsky.
Genetic fallacy: An informal fallacy that directs attention to the origin or
causes (sociological, psychological, etc.) of a belief rather than its rational
foundation.
Geometrical method: A method for philosophizing modeled on geometri-
cal procedures, most notably intuition and deduction.
Ghost in the Machine, the: Ryle’s characterization of Descartes’ influential
idea that the physical body is inhabited by a spiritual substance, mind.
Good, the Form of the: In Platonic philosophy, a characterization of the
Form of Forms, the ultimate principle of all Being and Knowledge.
Gorgias of Leontini: (ca. 525 B.C.) Extreme skeptic who denied the possibil-
ity of any knowledge of existing things.

Hanson, Norwood Russell: (1924–1967) Astronomer and physicist, who

addressed issues in the philosophy of science and advanced a post-
quantum mechanics analysis of matter.
Hard behaviorism: The form of behaviorism that extends itself beyond the
task of describing behavior to the claim that there is no “inner person”
beyond behavior.
Hard-determinism: The view that the will is determined ultimately by fac-
tors beyond the responsibility of the individual.
Hedonic calculus: The means of calculating the quantity of a pleasure by
applying criteria such as intensity, extent, duration, and so on.
Hedonism: The ethical doctrine that pleasure is the highest good, and the
production of pleasure is the criterion of right action.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: (1770–1831) German objective idealist
who viewed the world and history as unfolding by means of historical
dialectic toward the synthesis of all opposites, an ultimate state he referred
to as the Self-Consciousness of Absolute Spirit.
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D-12 Heidegger, Martin: (1889–1976) German philosopher, a central figure in

A (SHORT)
existentialist thought, who indicted contemporary persons for failing to
PHILOSOPHICAL address and assume responsibility for their nature as Dasein, sometimes
DICTIONARY
rendered “being-in-the-world.”
Heisenberg, Werner: (1901–1976) German physicist, pioneer in elementary
particle theory, and propounder of the uncertainty principle.
Heraclitus: (ca. 500 B.C.) Pre-Socratic philosopher of the Ionian tradition
who taught that fire is the ultimate reality, and that all things are in a
state of flux governed by a divine, cosmic Law.
Herder, Johann Gottfried von: (1744–1803) German philosopher and poet,
a religious humanist of undying faith in the natural and historical devel-
opment of the human species.
Hick, John: (b. 1922) English philosopher of religion, advocate of the character-
building or soul-making theory of evil (the experience of suffering is
conducive to development, maturity, etc.) and religious pluralism.
Historical (Hegelian) dialectic: The mechanism by which history is thought
to move toward its fulfillment, consisting of the continual and progres-
sive resolution of one state (thesis) and its opposite state (antithesis) into
a higher state (synthesis).
Historicism: The view that stresses the temporal and cultural conditioned-
ness of one’s perspectives, theories, and the like.
Hobbes, Thomas: (1588–1679) English thinker and writer who propounded
materialism and a social contract theory of justice.
Human law: Legislation conceived by humans for the purpose of applying
the natural law to specific situations.
Humanism: The view that human reality is the highest reality and value.
Hume, David: (1711–1776) Scottish philosopher whose defense of radical
empiricism led to skepticism and phenomenalism.
Hume’s fork: A way of representing Hume’s doctrine that there is no mid-
dle ground between necessary truths whose basis lies in the relations of
ideas, and contingent truths whose basis lies in some experience.
Huxley, Aldous: (1894–1963) English novelist and social critic.
Hylomorphic composition: Literally, matter-form composition, the view
that all natural things require for their existence both passive “stuff” and
active, determining essence.
Hypothetical proposition: A proposition in which the antecedent (“if . . .”)
conditions the consequent (“then . . .”).

Idealism: In metaphysics, the theory that all reality consists of mind and
its ideas.
Identical judgment: See Analytic proposition.
Identity, Law of: A thing is what it is; a true proposition is true.
Identity Thesis: The equation of mental states with brain states.
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Imitation, metaphor of: A metaphor by which Plato attempted to elucidate D-13

the relation between sensible things and their Forms: Sensible things are A (SHORT)
mere imitations or copies of their ideal essences. PHILOSOPHICAL
DICTIONARY
Immanence: The state of being within or inherent in something.
Immanent Forms: An expression of the Aristotelian claim, against Plato’s
doctrine of the separated Forms, that Forms are in the sensible things of
which they are the Forms.
Immutability: The state of being immovable, not subject to change.
Incompatibilism: The belief that genuine free will is logically incompatible
with determinism.
Indefinite Dyad: Literally, “Indefinite Two”; an ancient way of representing
the indeterminate plurality, stuff, or matter that is molded, ordered, or
determined by the One, which represents essence or definiteness.
Independence: In metaphysics, existence that is unconditioned by some-
thing outside itself.
Indeterminism: The view that some things, and therefore possibly the will,
are free of causal determination.
Individualism: See Liberalism, classical.
Indubitable: That which is not susceptible to any doubt.
Inductive reasoning: Reasoning in which the conclusion follows with prob-
ability from the premises.
Ineffable: Inexpressible in language.
Inference: The connection by which the conclusion of an argument follows
from the premises.
Infinite regress: A series of claims, explanations, elements, factors, and the
like, dependent successively on one another without end.
Informal fallacy: Mistake in reasoning due to carelessness regarding rele-
vance and clarity of language.
Inherent: Existing in something as an inseparable quality.
Innate ideas: The view that at least some ideas are inborn, present to the
mind at birth.
Inscrutability: The state of being incomprehensible or beyond understanding.
Instinct: A pattern of behavior that is inborn, invariable, and unique to a
particular species.
Intellectual consciousness: Awareness of pure (nonsensible) ideas in our
minds.
Intelligible: Pertaining to, or being of the nature of, thought (as opposed
to sense experience).
Intelligible species: A Scholastic way of referring to the general idea of
something, abstracted from its particular instances of sensible things.
Intentionality: The fact, sometimes posed as a problem for physicalists, that
mental states (such as beliefs, attitudes, etc.) are directed toward or are
about something or refer to things other than themselves.
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D-14 Interactionism: The view that mind and matter, in spite of their radical
A (SHORT) difference, stand in a reciprocal causal relation.
PHILOSOPHICAL Internal sanction: In Mill, a motivation lying within us (e.g., feeling or
DICTIONARY
conscience) for behavior of a certain kind.
Intrinsic: Belonging properly or naturally to a thing.
Intuition: The faculty by which truth is apprehended immediately, apart
from sense experience or other ideas; in Kant, perceptual awareness of
things.
Intuitionism: In epistemology, the view that we have direct awareness of
at least some fundamental ideas about reality as universally and neces-
sarily true.
Intuitionism, mathematical: The view that the objects of mathematical
study are mind-created mental entities.
“Invisible hand”: A way of representing how the interests of the capitalist
society are promoted by mechanisms of supply and demand and free
enterprise, aside from individual interests.
Irenaeus, St.: (ca. 130–ca. 202) Church Father and Bishop of Lyon, who
wrote (in Greek and Latin) chiefly against early Christian heresies, and
saw human suffering as a means of education and growth for the indi-
vidual and for the race.
Irrational: Pertaining to what is incompatible or in tension with the prin-
ciples of reason itself (strict sense), or with general experience, expecta-
tion, and the like (loose sense).

Jaggar, Alison: Contemporary, American philosopher writing on feminist

ethics and social justice.
Jainism: A sixth-century ascetic religion and discipline (fourteen stages of
perfection) founded in India in opposition to traditional Hinduism.
James, William: (1842–1910) American psychologist and philosopher who
was a major contributor to pragmatism and was sympathetic to religious
claims.
Jaspers, Karl: (1883–1969) German contributor to existentialism who
stressed that awareness of the limitations, ambiguities, and anguish of
human existence makes possible authentic philosophizing and, more
specifically, the exercise of authentic human freedom.
Justice in Acquisition, Principle of: An acquisition of something is just if
the something is previously unowned and the acquisition leaves enough
to meet the needs of others.
Justice in Transfer, Principle of: A holding is just if it has been acquired
through a legitimate transfer from someone who has acquired it through
a legitimate transfer or through original acquisition.
Justice Principle: Happiness is to be distributed among as many people as
possible.
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Kant, Immanuel: (1724–1804) German thinker, most notably epistemologist D-15

who conceived theoretical reasoning to be conditioned by a priori categories, A (SHORT)
and ethicist who identified morality with duty and the good will. PHILOSOPHICAL
DICTIONARY
Kierkegaard, Søren: (1813–1855) Danish Christian author and philoso-
pher who stressed the individual’s “subjectivity” or passionate commit-
ment as the most important truth; often called the “father of modern
existentialism.”

La Mettrie, Julien Offray de: (1709–1751) French physician and thinker who
propounded a strict mechanistic view of the universe, including animals
and humans.
Laissez faire: French, “hands off,” expressing the sort of economic policy in
which the market is completely free of government control.
Laplace, Pierre Simon de: (1749–1827) French astronomer and mathemati-
cian who propounded a mechanistic view of the universe.
Legislative: Pertaining to the function (usually of an elected body) of mak-
ing, changing, and repealing laws.
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm: (1646–1716) German mathematician and ratio-
nalist philosopher who taught that reality is a harmonious whole, math-
ematically and logically governed, consisting of an infinite number of
“monads” or spiritual atoms.
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich: (1870–1924) Marxist leader of the Russian Revolu-
tion of 1917.
Leucippus: (ca. 450 B.C.) Pre-Socratic philosopher of the Pluralist tradition
who identified reality with an infinite number of indivisible material
particles (atoms) moving randomly in empty space.
Lewis, C. S.: (1898–1963) Oxford scholar of medieval literature and popular
Christian apologist.
Liberalism, classical: The social-political theory that stresses freedom from
undue governmental interference and views the state as the guarantor
of the basic liberties and rights of the individual.
Libertarianism: The insistence on radical freedom with respect to both
private interests and enterprise, and on a purely protective role of
government.
Linguistic universals: Innate, fundamental features of structure and orga-
nization present in all languages.
Living option: An idea that, due to culture, environment, upbringing, and
the like, is familiar and believable.
Locke, John: (1632–1704) English thinker, most notably epistemologist who
inaugurated modern empiricism, and political philosopher who advo-
cated classical liberalism along with a social contract theory.
Logic: The formulation and study of the principles of correct reasoning.
Logicism: The view that the objects of mathematical study are objective,
extra-mental entities.
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D-16 Lucian: (ca. 175) Roman author who parodied philosophical doctrines in
A (SHORT)
his Sale of the Philosophers.
PHILOSOPHICAL Lucretius: (ca. 60 B.C.) Roman poet, author of The Nature of Things, a poetic
DICTIONARY
defense of materialism.
Luther, Martin: (1483–1546) German theologian, author, and Bible translator,
traditionally regarded as the father of the Protestant Reformation.

MacIntyre, Alasdair: (b. 1929) British philosopher (now teaching in the

United States) trained in the analytic tradition and presently advocating
an Aristotelian and Thomistic theory of ethics.
Mackie, J. L.: (1917–1983) British analytic philosopher and critic of theism.
Malcolm, Norman: (1911–1990) American analytic philosopher who con-
tributed much to the philosophy of mind and formulated an influential
version of the Ontological Argument.
Malebranche, Nicholas de: (1638–1715) French Cartesian philosopher
who attempted a solution to the mind-body problem by an appeal to
occasionalism.
Manichaeism: A synthesis of Zoroastrian and Christian ideas effected by
the Persian prophet Mani (died ca. 275), influential during the third to
seventh centuries, characterized by a radical dualism of two principles,
Good and Evil, conceived as ultimate realities locked in eternal struggle.
Marcel, Gabriel: (1889–1973) French Catholic existentialist, critic of Sartre,
and advocate of objective values.
Marx, Karl: (1818–1883) German thinker and social theorist, the father of
modern dialectical materialism and communism.
Material cause: The “stuff” something is made of.
Materialism: In metaphysics, the view that reality consists only of physical
entities with their physical properties.
Matter: In Aristotle and St. Thomas, that out of which something is made
and which is always potentially something different; in Descartes, a sub-
stance that is extended or occupies space; in modern philosophy, the
substance that underlies and upholds sensible qualities.
Matters of fact: Ideas that are derived from specific experiences (e.g., “Water
freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit”) and thus bear upon and inform us
about the world.
Mechanism: The view that conceives of the universe and everything in it
as a machine—that is, as governed by a fixed and finite number of laws.
Medical materialism: A label contemptuously applied to attempts to under-
mine the religious and spiritual significance of religious experiences by
attributing them to disorders of a psychological or even physiological
nature.
Metaphysics: The study or theory of reality; sometimes used more narrowly
to refer to transcendent reality—that is, reality that lies beyond the phys-
ical world and cannot therefore be grasped by means of the senses.
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Mill, John Stuart: (1806–1873) English philosopher who contributed to D-17

many fields, most notably ethics and social philosophy; most famous A (SHORT)
utilitarian who emphasized the qualitative conception of “greatest” PHILOSOPHICAL
DICTIONARY
pleasure.
Mind: In Descartes, a thinking substance, that which underlies and upholds
the various intellectual functions.
Mind-body problem: The difficulty of explaining the causal relation, sup-
posing there is one, between the mind and the body when they are
conceived as essentially different substances.
Mind-matter dualism: The view that all natural things reduce ultimately to
two irreducible and essentially different substances: mind and matter.
Minimal state: A conception of the state that limits its function to the pro-
tection of its citizens’ rights, properties, contracts, and the like.
Modified Sergeant Friday Principle: We should cultivate an awareness of what
a philosopher has actually said: “Just the text, ma’am, just the text.”
Monad: A basic metaphysical entity, the fundamental unit of some structure.
Monism: Metaphysically, the belief that reality is in some sense one, usu-
ally one in essence or nature.
Moore, G. E.: (1873–1958) English philosopher, one of the originators of the
analytic tradition, an ethical intuitionist who coined the term “Natural-
istic Fallacy.”
Moral Argument: Proof for God’s existence: God must exist as the only
adequate foundation of genuine (objective) morality.
Moral evil: The evil that springs from the human will, such as the Nazi
death camps, the Stalin purges, the Manson murders, the Spanish Inqui-
sition, and the Sand Creek Massacre.
Moral law: The objective and absolute moral principles that are imper-
fectly expressed in ethical codes, legislation, and the like.
Moral relativism: See Ethical relativism.
Morality: Belief in and conformity to principles of virtuous conduct.

Naive realism: The uncritical belief in an external world and in our ability
to know it.
Natural evil: Evil or suffering that springs from natural causes, such as ava-
lanches, droughts, the great San Francisco earthquake, and the Black Death.
Natural law: General and universal rules of conduct, both personal and
social, derived from nature, which is conceived as rationally ordered.
Natural theology: The systematic pursuit of a knowledge of God by means
of the natural intellect, unaided by special revelation.
Naturalism: In metaphysics, the view that only that exists which is, at least
in principle, susceptible to scientific investigation.
Naturalistic ethics: Theories of moral obligations based on and derived
from nature, including human nature.
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D-18 Naturalistic Fallacy: Mistake of equating a factual judgment with a value

A (SHORT) judgment, or confusing a natural property (e.g., pleasure) with a non-
PHILOSOPHICAL natural property (e.g., good).
DICTIONARY
Neo-Platonism: A later and more mystical version of Platonism, most nota-
bly associated with the Greek philosopher Plotinus (ca. 200).
Newton, Sir Isaac: (1642–1727) English mathematician, physicist, and phi-
losopher of a deistic character (God exists but is uninterested in his cre-
ation), and whose classical mechanics (cf. his laws of motion) greatly
influenced subsequent philosophy.
Nietzsche, Friedrich: (1844–1900) German existentialist author and phi-
losopher, severe critic of the “weak” values of traditional Christianity
and advocate of the virtues of “the will to power.”
Nihilism: Literally, “nothingism”; generally, the rejection of any transcen-
dent values or ultimate meaning.
Noetic: Pertaining to or conveying knowledge.
Nominalism: The doctrine that Forms, or universals, are merely names by
which things possessing similar features are grouped together.
Non-Contradiction, Law of: Nothing can both be and not be at the same
time and in the same respect.
Nonrational: Pertaining to what is other than or different from reason, such
as authority, intuition, mystical experience, and the like.
Noumenal world: In Kant, the world of things as they are in themselves,
as opposed to their appearances in sense experience.
Nozick, Robert: (b. 1938) American philosopher, most noted for his defense
of libertarianism, and who views philosophy as a sort of humanistic art
form in which many different positions may be legitimately embraced.

Objective idealism: The theory that things (ideas) exist independently of

our perception of them.
Objectivism (moral): See Ethical absolutism.
Objectivity: In metaphysics, existence that is independent or uncondi-
tioned.
Occasionalism: The view that on the occasion of bodily stimuli or impres-
sions God creates the appropriate idea and response in the mind, and
vice versa.
Ockham, William of: (ca. 1285–1349) English Scholastic and Franciscan,
one of if not the greatest philosopher of the fourteenth century, who
advocated nominalism and otherwise argued against St. Thomas’ theo-
logical rationalism, and is best known for “Ockham’s Razor,” directed
against the belief in the objective reality of universals.
Ockham’s Razor: An expression for the ideal of simplicity or economy in
explanation, attributed to the fourteenth-century Scholastic William of
Ockham: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (“Entities are
not to be multiplied without necessity”).
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Oligarchy: The rule by a few. D-19

Omnibenevolence: The state, usually attributed to God, of possessing A (SHORT)
unlimited love or complete benevolence. PHILOSOPHICAL
DICTIONARY
Omnipotence: The state, usually attributed to God, of possessing unlimited
power.
Omniscience: The state, usually attributed to God, of possessing unlimited
knowledge.
Ontological Argument: A proof for God’s existence: God must exist inas-
much as the attribute of existence (or, in some forms, necessary existence)
is part of his nature.
Original position: See State of nature.
Original sin: The traditional, orthodox Christian doctrine that the universal
sinfulness of humans is traceable to Adam’s initial sin.

Paley, William: (1743–1805) English philosopher, theologian, clergyman,

and, most notably, proponent of the Teleological Argument and “watch
analogy.”
Parmenides: (ca. 475 B.C.) Pre-Socratic philosopher of the Italian tradition,
founder of the Eleatic School, who taught that it is rationally necessary
that reality be one and immutable.
Participation, metaphor of: A metaphor by which Plato attempted to elu-
cidate the relation between sensible things and their Forms: Sensible
things participate or “share” in their ideal essences.
Pascal, Blaise: (1623–1662) French mathematician and apologist for Chris-
tianity who argued for the necessity of nonrational grounds for belief,
such as “the reasons of the heart.”
Passivity of perception: The experience in which external, sensible realities
impose themselves upon us, independently of our desire or will.
Pelagianism: Christian heresy, taught by Pelagius (early fifth century) and
combated by St. Augustine, which denied original sin with its bondage
of the will and stressed human capacity freely to do good.
Petitio Principii: “Begging of the question”; an informal fallacy that includes
the conclusion of an argument, usually disguised, in one of its premises;
also called circular reasoning.
Phantasm: In Scholastic terminology, the image, formed in the intellect, of
a sensible thing.
Phenomenal world: In Kant, the world of things as they appear to us in
sense experience, as opposed to how they are in themselves.
Phenomenalism: The view that we have no rational knowledge of any-
thing, including the mind, beyond what is disclosed in the phenomena
of perceptions.
Phenomenology: Philosophical perspective that emphasizes what is imme-
diately disclosed in consciousness as the proper object of philosophical
reflection.
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D-20 Phenomenon: Literally, an appearance; usually, an object of sense experience.

A (SHORT) Philodoxical: Pertaining to the love of (mere) opinions.
PHILOSOPHICAL
DICTIONARY
Philosophical theology: See Natural theology.
Philosophy: Literally, “the love of wisdom”; the attempt to give a rational
and coherent account of the most fundamental issues, through an exam-
ination and manipulation of relevant concepts.
Physicalism: See Identity Thesis.
Place, U. T.: (b. 1924) English philosopher and psychologist, early advocate
of the Identity Thesis.
Plantinga, Alvin: American philosopher of religion who has contributed
much to current discussion of the theistic arguments (advocating a ver-
sion of the Ontological Argument), the problem of evil (advocating a
version of the Free-Will Defense), and religious epistemology (advocat-
ing “reformed epistemology” and “properly basic beliefs”).
Plato: (427–347 B.C.) The first great systematic or synoptic philosopher
whose work survives in real quantity, propounder of transcendent Forms
(or essences) as the absolute realities, which are imperfectly mirrored by
things in the sensible world and are known through the intellect alone.
Plotinus: (ca. 200) Greek philosopher, originator of Neo-Platonism.
Pluralism: The view that holds that ultimate reality consists of many things,
and that usually emphasizes the disparateness or disconnectedness of
things; in Rorty, the emphasis on the “theory-laden” or nonneutral char-
acter of positions or views.
Plutocracy: Rule by the wealthy.
Postmodernism: A contemporary interdisciplinary movement stressing the
holistic, pragmatic, historically relative, and theory-laden character of
judgments and knowledge.
Potentiality: In Scholastic philosophy, the matter in a thing by virtue of
which it may be changed into something different.
Pour soi: French, “for itself,” used in Sartrean existentialism in reference
to conscious being.
Practical principle: In Kant and some other moral philosophers, truth or
claim pertaining to morality.
Practical reason: In Kant, the reasoning faculty that is inspired by aware-
ness of moral duties.
Praeparatio anthropologica: Latin, “preparation for humankind.”
Pragmatism (pragmatic theory of truth): An American philosophy that
identifies the meaning of concepts and the truth of propositions with
their practical bearing, consequences, results, and so on.
Preestablished harmony: The view that bodily and physical states have
been preordained by God to correspond at every point with appropriate
mental states.
Preexistence: Usually of the soul; the doctrine of an existence prior to
embodiment in this world.
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Premises: Propositions stating the reasons or evidence that support or D-21

establish the conclusion within an argument. A (SHORT)
Primary qualities: Those sensible qualities of a thing that exist indepen- PHILOSOPHICAL
DICTIONARY
dently of a perceiver (e.g., size, shape, motion).
Proletariat: In Marxist theory, the working class, standing in opposition to
the bourgeoisie, the propertied class that owns the means of production.
Proof: See Argument.
Properly basic belief: A belief that is reasonable to accept, though without
support from other propositions believed to be true.
Protagoras: (ca. 425 B.C.) A Sophist who taught the subjectivity or relativ-
ity of reality and truth.
Providence (divine): God’s general direction over the world and of history;
the realization of his purposes.
Psycholinguistics: The study of the mental processes underlying the acqui-
sition, production, and comprehension of language.
Psychological egoism: The belief that everyone by nature seeks his or her
self-interest.
Psychosomatic: Pertaining to the mind’s ability to induce physiological
states.
Pyrrho: (ca. 300 B.C.) Skeptic philosopher who emphasized the relativity
of all reason, perception, and custom; founder of the ancient school
called the Skeptics.
Pythagoras: (ca. 600 B.C.) Pre-Socratic philosopher of the Italian tradition who
identified reality with number (i.e., numerical ratios, harmonies, etc.).

Quality, sensible: A feature or characteristic that is apprehended by the

senses (e.g., color).
Quantum mechanics: The application of quantum theory (energy and other
measurable attributes of matter are transmitted in discrete units or
quanta) to the interaction of matter and energy and to the motions of
atomic particles.
Quine, Willard V.: (b. 1908) American philosopher of an empiricist and
analytic bent who has made major contributions to logic and the phi-
losophy of language.

Raison d’être: French, “reason for being.”

Rashdall, Hastings: (1858–1924) Anglican theologian, philosopher, and his-
torian, known most notably for his contributions to ethical theory.
Rational theology: See Natural theology.
Rationalism: The affirmation of reason in general, with its interest in evi-
dence, examination, and evaluation, as authoritative in all matters of
belief and conduct (loose sense); the belief that at least some truths about
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D-22 reality are acquired independently of sense experience, through reason

A (SHORT) alone (strict sense).
PHILOSOPHICAL Rawls, John: (b. 1921) American philosopher who has revived a social contract
DICTIONARY
approach (that of Locke, Rousseau, and Kant) to political philosophy.
Realism: In metaphysics, the doctrine that Forms, or essences, possess
objective reality.
Recollection, theory of: The theory that essential knowledge, or knowledge
of ultimate truths, was acquired in a former existence and is recalled in
the present life.
Rectification of Injustice in Holdings, Principle of the: An honest attempt
must be made to identify the source of illegitimate holdings and to com-
pensate the victims.
Reformed epistemology: An anti-evidentialist and Calvinist view, accord-
ing to which belief in God is a properly basic belief requiring no ratio-
nal justification.
Relations of ideas: In Hume, ideas such that, by virtue of their meanings
and relations, one cannot be had without the other, as in the idea of a
triangle and the idea of three sides; relations of ideas constitute the basis
for logically necessary truths, but bear not at all on beliefs or reasoning
concerning matters of fact.
Relativism: See Ethical relativism.
Relativity: In philosophy, the emphasis on the diversity (and thus nonab-
soluteness) of reason, perceptions, customs, morality, and the like.
Relativity of perception: The inevitable variation in different persons’ per-
ceptions of sensible qualities.
Religion: Usually, a set of beliefs, related rituals, and ethical principles,
centered on a conception of God, divine reality, or nature; more funda-
mentally, the commitment (involving belief and practice) to what is con-
ceived to be highest in worth, power, reality, meaning, and so on.
Representative democracy: Rule by the people through their elected repre-
sentative agents.
Representative perception: The view that our ideas represent or correspond
to objects in the external world.
Representative theory of ideas: See Representative perception.
Revealed theology: Knowledge of God based on special revelation, as in
divine self-disclosure in the Bible or by Jesus Christ.
Rorty, Richard: (b. 1931) American philosopher, associated with postmod-
ernism, who exemplifies a skeptical stance toward traditional epistemol-
ogy and who advocates a form of historicism and pluralism.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: (1712–1778) French author and social philosopher,
best known for his idea of the “noble savage” in a state of nature and
for his contributions to social contract theory.
Russell, Bertrand: (1872–1970) English philosopher, social critic, mathema-
tician, and Nobel Prize winner, who was influential in the development
of recent analytic philosophy.
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Ryle, Gilbert: (1900–1976) English analytic philosopher who sought to clarify D-23
the “logical geography” of our knowledge of mind, and, most notably, to A (SHORT)
dispel the Cartesian myth of the Ghost in the Machine as resting on a PHILOSOPHICAL
DICTIONARY
category mistake.

Saecula saeculorum: Latin, “ages of the ages,” usually rendered “world with-
out end.”
Sartre, Jean-Paul: (1905–1980) French author and philosopher, best-known
proponent of humanistic existentialism, Marxist advocate of political
causes, French resistance fighter in World War II, and winner of Nobel
Prize for literature.
Scholasticism: The predominant system or method of theological and phil-
osophical teaching during the Middle Ages, based largely on the Church
Fathers and Aristotle.
Science: An organized body of knowledge about the natural (i.e., sensible
or physical) world, together with a model that explains the world on
naturalistic principles and that is in principle testable by observation or
experiment.
Scientific method: The procedure by which scientific knowledge of the
natural world is acquired: (a) hypothesis or theory building, (b) predic-
tion of observable results, (c) experimental confirmation or falsification,
(d) modification of the theory, if required.
Searle, John: (b. 1932) American philosopher of language, cognitive scien-
tist, and physicalist who denies, however, that all aspects of the human
mind are duplicable by machines.
Second Law of Thermodynamics: The physical principle that entropy,
which is a measure of disorder, tends to increase with a result that energy
(heat) is being uniformly distributed throughout space.
Secondary qualities: Those sensible qualities pertaining to a thing that
depend for their existence and particular character on a perceiver and
the perceiver’s particular sense organs, brain, and related organs (e.g.,
color, taste, sound).
Second-order studies: Reflection on the history, nature, role, methodology,
language, and the like of a discipline or inquiry.
Self-determinism: See Soft-determinism.
Self-intuition: The immediate awareness we have of our own selves, con-
sciousness, mental states, and the like.
Sense datum: An object of sense experience as presented to the mind.
Sensible: In epistemology, the quality of being apprehensible by one or
more of the five senses.
Sensory consciousness: Awareness of images produced in our minds
through sense experience or sensible objects in the external world.
Simple idea: An idea that is unanalyzable into more basic ideas (e.g., red
and anger).
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D-24 Simplicity, principle of: One explanation is preferred over another by virtue
A (SHORT)
of its employment of fewer and/or simpler factors.
PHILOSOPHICAL Situation ethics: The view that morally right action is dictated not by gen-
DICTIONARY
eral rules but by immediate circumstances.
Skepticism: A doubting or disbelieving state of mind (loose sense); the
philosophical doctrine that absolute knowledge is unattainable (strict
sense).
Skinner, B. F.: (1904–1990) American psychologist, most noted for his con-
tributions to the theory and methodology of behaviorism, and who
interpreted the person as a “repertoire of behavior” to be improved
through technology.
Slave morality: Nietzsche’s contemptuous term for traditional Christian
ethics, with its “weak” virtues and incapacity to affirm life.
Smart, J. J. C.: (b. 1920) Australian analytic philosopher, materialist (advo-
cate of the Identity Thesis) and defender of act-utilitarianism.
Smartness Principle: Always assume that the philosopher is smarter than
you are—at least, for as long as possible.
Social contract: The agreement among a group of people to establish social
organizations and regulations for the preservation of basic freedoms and
rights.
Social hedonism: See Utilitarianism.
Socialism: The theory that advocates community ownership of land, capital,
and means of production.
Socrates: (ca. 470–399 B.C.) Philosophical “gadfly” of Athens, who turned
philosophical attention to definitions or the essences of things, and to
ethical and political issues.
Socratic problem: The difficulty of identifying in the Platonic dialogues the
authentic teachings of Socrates.
Soft behaviorism: The form of behaviorism that limits itself to the descrip-
tion of observable behavior.
Soft-determinism: The view that the will is determined by the character of
the individual, and thus individuals are responsible for their choices.
Solipsism: The belief in the existence of one’s mind alone, all other things
being simply its perceptions.
Sophism: An argument possessing merely the appearance of forcefulness.
Sophist: Literally, “wiseman”; historically, an ancient Greek philosopher
particularly adept in manipulative reasoning, sometimes accused of
being a philosophical charlatan who “made the weaker argument appear
to be the stronger, and the stronger argument to be the weaker.”
Sophistical: Possessing the mere appearance of argumentative forcefulness.
Sound argument: A deductive argument that is valid and whose premises
are true.
Sovereign: An individual authorized by the community to act on their
behalf to guarantee safety.
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Special creation: The view that the universe, including humans, was created D-25
immediately by God, all at once, in the form in which it now exists. A (SHORT)
Special revelation: A self-disclosure on the part of God whereby he explic- PHILOSOPHICAL
DICTIONARY
itly reveals himself in a book, person, event, and the like.
Species: A class of individuals possessing common characteristics or
qualities.
Speculative philosophy: The attempt to raise and to answer the ultimate
and most far-ranging questions and to make sense of reality and experi-
ence as a whole.
Speculative principle: A truth or claim pertaining to reality.
Spinoza, Benedict: (1632–1677) Dutch monist and pantheist, who conceived
all reality to be God, an infinite substance possessing infinite attributes,
two of which are known by us, mind and matter, which parallel one
another inasmuch as they are two aspects of the same substance.
State of nature: The human condition of natural freedoms and rights prior to
the imposition or development of social organizations and regulations.
Steady State theory: The cosmological model according to which hydrogen
atoms are continually coming into existence to fill the emptiness created
by receding galaxies, resulting in a universe that is always in the same
state.
Stoicism: Greek philosophical movement beginning in about 300 B.C.,
emphasizing the divine, cosmic plan and resignation to its various allot-
ments to individuals.
Subjective idealism: The theory that things (ideas) are dependent on per-
ception for their existence.
Subjectivism: See Ethical relativism.
Subjectivity: In existentialism, the concretely existing individual as the
point of departure for authentic philosophizing.
Substance: Literally, “that which underlies or upholds”; used in modern
philosophy to signify the foundation that underlies sensible qualities or
intellectual activities.
Substantial Form: A feature or characteristic that belongs necessarily to the
nature of a thing.
Substratum: Literally, “that which lies under” (see Substance).
Supernaturalism: The belief in a reality beyond the natural (space and
time) and (usually) upon which the natural is dependent for its
existence.
Syllogism: A common form of deductive argument consisting of two prem-
ises and a conclusion.
Synthetic a priori proposition: A proposition in which the predicate adds
something to the subject and the truth of which is known independently
of sense experiences.
Synthetic proposition: A proposition that is not logically necessary, the
predicate adding something to the subject.
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D-26 Systematic doubt: The process in which anything susceptible to doubt is

A (SHORT) doubted in the interest of discovering something indubitable.
PHILOSOPHICAL Systematic philosophy: A philosophy in which the central idea is worked
DICTIONARY
out for and unifies a broad range of areas such as metaphysics, ethics,
cosmology, and aesthetics.

Tabula rasa: Literally, “blank tablet”; used to express the empiricist idea that
at birth the mind is empty, awaiting the input of sense experiences.
Tacit consent: The consent to and support of social organizations and reg-
ulations by virtue of an individual’s continued participation in them.
Taylor, Richard: (b. 1919) American philosopher trained in the analytic tra-
dition, and who has applied those techniques to existential questions.
Technology of behavior: The use of tools and techniques for the alteration
and improvement of behavior.
Teleological Argument: A proof for God’s existence: God, an intelligent
being, must exist as the cause of the teleology (design, beauty, unity, har-
mony, etc.) of the physical universe; also called the Design Argument.
Teleological ethics: The view that emphasizes the results of actions as the
test of their rightness.
Teleological suspension of the ethical: Kierkegaard’s idea that in an imme-
diate relation with God, universal moral principles, or norms, are tran-
scended, and the individual acquires his or her injunction directly from
God.
Teleology: The study of ends, goals, and purposes, often in relation to the
physical universe.
Telos: Greek, end, goal, purpose.
Temporal: Pertaining to time.
Tennant, F. R.: (1866–1957) English scientist, philosopher, and theologian
who propounded a “scientific” version of the Teleological Argument
involving theistic evolution.
Teresa of Avila, St.: (1515–1582) Spanish mystic and reformer of the Car-
melite religious order, author of several works on Christian spirituality.
Tertullian: (ca. 160–ca. 225) African Church Father whose writings (Latin)
were germinal to the development of Christianity, and who is best known
for his insistence on special revelation as against the deceptions of per-
verse pagan philosophies.
Thales: (ca. 600 B.C.) Pre-Socratic philosopher of the Ionian tradition who
taught that water is the ultimate reality; traditionally called the first
philosopher.
Theism: The belief in God; usually one God, transcendent, creator, and
so on.
Theistic evolution: The belief that God uses natural evolutionary processes
to bring about his desired effect.
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Theodicy: From Greek, “justification of God”; the attempt to defend the D-27
traditional view of God’s existence and nature against the seemingly A (SHORT)
incompatible existence of evil in the world. PHILOSOPHICAL
DICTIONARY
Theology: The systematic pursuit of a knowledge of God.
Theoretical reason: In Kant, the reasoning faculty that employs and is limited
by the a priori concepts of the understanding.
Third-Man Argument: A criticism of the doctrine of Plato’s separated, tran-
scendent Forms as leading to an infinite regress of explanatory Forms.
Thomas Aquinas, St.: (ca. 1225–1274) The most famous representative of
Scholasticism, who drew largely upon the metaphysics and classical
empiricism of Aristotle in constructing a complete Christian philosophy,
including influential proofs for God’s existence.
Thomistic: Pertaining to the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Tillich, Paul: (1886–1965) German Protestant theologian who fled the Nazi
regime to continue his work in the United States, and taught that the
significance of Christianity lies with the existential power of its myths
and symbols and that the “Ground of Being” is “above” the God of
traditional theism.
Timocracy: Rule by the honorable, or at least honored.
Transcendence: Existence beyond, and thus unconditioned by, space and
time.
Transcendental: In Kant, pertaining to knowledge or thinking that is con-
ditioned by the mind’s a priori concepts.
Transformational grammar: An early version of Chomsky’s generative
grammar that attempted to account for the underlying relatedness of
certain types of sentences (e.g., active and passive) by proposing that all
sentences have an underlying abstract grammatical representation, or
deep structure, from which various structures are derived through a
series of transformations.
Tyranny: See Dictatorship.

Uncertainty principle: It is not possible in principle to know beyond a

degree of precision both the position and momentum (or any other pair
of observables similarly related) of atomic and subatomic particles.
Universal idea: An idea that expresses the common nature or essence of
things included in a class (e.g., table, dog, human).
Universalizability, Principle of: See Categorical Imperative.
Utilitarianism: The ethical doctrine that an action is right if, and only if, it
promotes the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.
Utility, Principle of: We are obligated to act so as to promote the greatest
balance of good over evil.
Utopian: Pertaining to social or political ideals, as in the utopian or ideal
society.
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D-28 Validity: The conformity of a deductive argument to a proper argument-

A (SHORT) form such that if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true.
PHILOSOPHICAL Value judgment: A judgment that evaluates something or judges its
DICTIONARY
worth.
Value-theory: The study of value in all of its manifestations.
Veil of ignorance: A metaphor for the need temporarily to forget, as it were,
our own vested interests with respect to considerations of justice.
Veridical: Corresponding to reality; true, genuine.
Virtue: An admirable trait of human character acquired through habit.
Virtue ethics: The theory that morality consists in striving to live a virtuous
life, not following rules of right action.
Voltaire (Françcois Marie Arouet): (1694–1778) French dramatist, historian,
essayist, philosopher of a deist bent, opponent of religious evils, and
contributor to the French Encyclopédie, a controversial, irreverent, multi-
volume compendium of French “philosophy.”

Watch analogy: An analogy introduced by Paley in evidence of God’s

existence: There must be a God who is to the universe as a watchmaker
is to a watch.
Weil, Simone: (1909–1943) French philosopher, revolutionary activist,
and mystic who died in England during World War II from self-imposed
malnutrition.
Will to power: The central idea of Nietzsche’s ethics, in which the “super-
man” transcends traditional, conventional values, regarded as weak and
life-denying, and celebrates creative and life-affirming values.

Xenophanes: (ca. 500 B.C.) Pre-Socratic philosopher in the Ionian tradition,

who identified the underlying reality with earth and water, and advanced
a rational and non-anthropomorphic conception of a single, supreme
deity.

Zeno of Elea: (ca. 440 B.C.) Pre-Socratic philosopher who defended the the-
sis of his master, Parmenides, that reality must be one and immutable,
by devising paradoxes that result from the claim that plurality and
motion are real: Zeno’s Paradoxes.
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CREDITS

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Dwight Reid Educational Foundation. Published by Heldref Publications, 1319
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Martin Luther King, Jr.: From “The Ethical Demands of Integration.” Reprinted by
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the Loeb Classical Library from Diogenes Laertius: Volume II, Loeb Classical
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Alvin Plantinga: From “The Twin Pillars of Christian Scholarship,” in Seeking Under-
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of Socrates: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo. Copyright © 1941 by Lane Cooper.
Copyright renewed 1968. Used by permission of the publisher, Cornell Univer-
sity Press. From The Republic of Plato, translated by Francis MacDonald Corn-
ford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941). By permission of Oxford University
Press.
John Rawls: Reprinted by permission of the publisher from A Theory of Justice by
John Rawls, pp. 11–12, 60–63, 136–137, 139–140, 145, Cambridge, Mass.: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1971, 1999 by the Pres-
ident and Fellows of Harvard College.
Tom Regan: From “The Radical Egalitarian Case for Animal Rights,” in In Defense
of Animals, edited by Peter Singer (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985). Reprinted by
permission of Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Richard Rorty: From Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. © 1979 Princeton University
Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: From The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings,
edited and translated by Victor Gourevitch. © Cambridge University Press 1997.
Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press.
Bertrand Russell and F. C. Copleston: From “The Existence of God: A Debate
between Bertrand Russell and Father F. C. Copleston,” from Why I Am Not a
Christian by Bertrand Russell. © 1957 by George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Reproduced
by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK.
Gilbert Ryle: From The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson, 1949), pp. 11–12, 16.
© 1949 by Gilbert Ryle. Reprinted by permission of Cengage Learning Services
Limited, on behalf of Taylor & Francis Books (UK).
Jean-Paul Sartre: From “Existentialism,” translated Bernard Frechtman. Copyright
1947 by The Philosophical Library, Inc. In Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and
Human Emotions (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957). Reprinted by permis-
sion of Philosophical Library, New York.
John Searle: Reprinted by permission of the publisher from Minds, Brains, and Sci-
ence by John Searle, pp. 15–17, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
Copyright © 1984 by John R. Searle.
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B. F. Skinner: From Beyond Freedom & Dignity. Copyright © 1971 by B. F. Skinner. C-5
Reprinted 2002 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., by arrangement with the
TEXT CREDITS
B. F. Skinner Foundation. Reprinted by permission of Hackett Publishing Com-
pany, Inc. All rights reserved.
J. J. C. Smart: From “Materialism,” Journal of Philosophy, 22 (October 1963), pp. 651–
653, 660. Reprinted by permission of Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Adlai E. Stevenson: Excerpt from p. 174 from What I Think by Adlai E. Stevenson.
Copyright 1954, © 1955, 1956 by R. Keith Kane, renewed © 1982, 1983, 1984 by
Adlai Stevenson, Borden Stevenson, and John Fell Stevenson. Reprinted by per-
mission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Richard Taylor: From Metaphysics, 2nd edition, by Richard Taylor, © 1974. Reprinted
by permission of Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ.
F. R. Tennant: From Philosophical Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1930), II. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press.
Bernard Williams: From “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” in J. J. C. Smart and Bernard
Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against. © Cambridge University Press 1973.
Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press.
Mark B. Woodhouse: From A Preface to Philosophy, 2nd edition, by Mark B. Woodhouse.
© 1980. Reprinted with permission of Wadsworth, a division of Thomson Learning:
www.thomsonrights.com. Fax 800-730-2215.
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Photo Credits
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of Art, Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1931 (31.45). Photograph
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New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. P. 244, “Sky-
watcher” by Susan Seddon Boulet, reproduced from her book Shaman, with permis-
sion from Pomegranate Artbooks, Petaluma, California, © Susan Seddon Boulet.
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C-6
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INDEX

A posteriori knowledge Analogy

Cosmological Argument as, 250–259 method of, 22
definition of term, 232 of sun, 67–69
Teleological Argument as, 259–268 Teleological Argument as, 261, 262
A priori knowledge watch, 260–264
definition of term, 232 Analytic geometry, 84
existentialism and, 363 Analytic knowledge, 233
Moral Argument as, 287–292 Analytical judgments, 237–238
Ontological Argument as, 279–282 Anaxagoras, 43, 44
synthetic, 233–239 Anaximander, 42
unconditional moral laws and, 400, 402 Anaximenes, 42, 44
Absolute skepticism, 162, 163–166 Andronicus, 7
Absolute Spirit, 453 Animal(s)
Absolutism modes of doubt and, 165
ethical, 344–346 rights, 378
moral, 292–296 Anscombe, G. E. M., 419
Abstraction, 208 Anselm, St., 280–281, 285–287
Academicians, 168–170 Anthropodicy, 327
Accidental Forms, 77 Anthropology, 400
Actions, excess and deficiency in, 423 Antisthenes, 78
Acton, Lord, 473 “Appeal to . . .” fallacies, 23
Actuality, Teleological Argument and, 264 Apology, 11–12
Act-utilitarianism, 380 Appearance, 55–58, 240
Ad hominem, 23 Archimedes, 86
Ad ignorantium, 23–24 Argument(s)
Ad populum, 23 fallacies and, 22–25
Aenesidemus, 168 Ontological, 92
Aesthetics, 8, 9, 240 overview of, 16–18
Albert the Great, St., 255 syllogisms as, 18–19
Alcibiades, 76 valid forms of, 19–22
Alexander the Great, 420 Aristocracy, 472–477
Alienation, 455–456 Aristophanes, 11
Allegory of the Cave, 69–72 Aristotle
Alston, William, 250 criticism of Plato, 72–74
Altruism, 388–389 democracy and, 475, 477
Ambrose, St., 318 empiricism and, 206–207, 226

I-1
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I-2 Aristotle (continued) Bentham, Jeremy

four sanctions of, 378–379
Forms and, 80, 74–77
INDEX formulates logic, 8 utilitarianism and, 376–379, 380, 393
life of, 420 views on animal rights, 378
Metaphysics of, 7 Berkeley, Bishop George
natural law and, 427–432 Esse est percipi and, 111–112, 127
on origins of philosophy, 12 five proofs for subjective idealism and,
on search for knowledge, 15 113–117
on tabula rasa, 209 idealism and, 108–110
on Thales’ definition of life of, 112–113
reality, 40–41 objections to, 125–127
radical empiricism and, 218 radical empiricism and, 218–219, 226
skepticism and, 168 solipsism and, 122–125
social justice and, 500 Three Dialogues of, 118–122
virtue and happiness and, 418–423 written works of, 114
virtues and, 424–426, 432 Bible, 251
Art Big Bang theory, 258–259
value theory and, 339 Black Elk, 266–267
Forms and, 76 Blank slate, 205, 209, 226
Ashley, Lord, 441 Body
Atheistic existentialism, 362, 370 analytic versus synthetic knowledge
Atomic theory, 43, 45 and, 237
Atomistic philosophy, 132, 135–138, 140 medical materialism and, 299–301
Augustine, St. mind and, 143–146
Free-Will Defense and, 319–320, 325–327 nature and, 268
Irenaean theodicy and, 324–325 rationalism and, 186–188
realism and, 77, 80 See also Mind-body problem
skepticism and, 168–170, 179 Bound variable, 78
views on evil of, 314–319 Bourgeoisie, 455–456
Autonomous man, 149–151 Broad, C. D., 298
Buddha, 345
Bacon, Sir Francis, 175
Beauty, evil and, 313–314 Calvin, John, 250
Beck, Lewis White, 398–399 Camus, Albert, 328–333, 358
Becoming Can, ought implies, 355
death and, 72 Capitalism, 450–453, 459
Forms and, 60 Care, ethics of, 412–413
in sun analogy, 67 Carlyle, Thomas 299, 300
problem of evil and, 315 Carneades, 168–170
overview of, 55–58 Castro, Fidel, 457
rationalism and, 189 Categorical imperative
“Begging the question,” 23 as test for moral actions,
Behavior 406–411
four sanctions for ethical, 378–379 objections to, 411–414
normal, 343 overview of, 405–406, 414
soft determinism and, 348–351 Category mistake, 101
ultimate sanction for moral, 385 Causality
Behaviorism a priori knowledge and, 234
determinism and, 151–153 definition of term, 221–223
morality and, 295–296 determinism and, 151–153,
overview of, 146–151 346–347
Being Hume and, 269–272
death and, 72 objections to, 269–273, 274
Forms and, 60 Teleological Argument and, 260
in sun analogy, 67 Causation, mental, 97
Ontological Argument and, 284 Causes of Aristotle, 77
overview of, 55–58 Cave, allegory of, 69–72
rationalism and, 186 Certainty
Beliefs, properly basic, 250 definition of term, 231
Belsen, Commandant of, 294, 296 evidence of God and, 297
Benedict, Ruth, 342–343 synthetic a priori knowledge and,
Benevolence Principle, 375, 381 233–241
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Chance, 352–353
Change
Cosmos, 45, 253, 260. See also Kosmos
Courage, 424
I-3
Heraclitus and, 56–57 Creation, 125, 269 INDEX
modes of doubt and, 165 Crime, 348
Character Cultural relativism, 342–343
actions and, 417–418 Culture
determinism and, 350, 369–370 influence of, 147–148
good will and, 403 modes of doubt and, 165
soft determinism and, 348 Cynicism, 173
Charity, 357
Chōrismos, 73–74 d’Argenson, Marquis, 468
Chomsky, Noam, 198–201, 202 D’Holbach, Baron, 350–351
Christina of Sweden, 27, 89 Darwin, Charles, 263–264
Church Fathers, 317 de Beauvoir, Simone, 364–367
Churchill, Winston, 472 de Tocqueville, Alexis, 471
Churchland, Paul M., 103 Death
Circular reasoning, 95 of Mark Twain, 245
Clarence Darrow, 348 views of Plato on, 72, 186–188
Clarification Principle, 26 Declaration of Independence, 448–450, 464
Classical empiricism, 206–209 Deconstruction, 174, 175
Classical liberalism, 439, 442, 443, 444 Deculturalization Principle, 26
Color, 115 Deduction
Commandant of Belsen, 294, 296 definition of term, 17–19
Communism, 454, 459 Descartes and, 196–197
Communist revolution, 457 of matter, 92–95
Community Defiance, dignity of, 328–333
desert and, 498 Dematerialism of matter, 140–141
general will and, 466–470 Dembski, William A., 265
justice and, 506 Democracy
justice and virtue and, 500 Aristotle and, 475
social contract and, 446, 465–466 consent in, 464
See also Society general will and, 466–470
Complete principle of distributive justice, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and, 464–470
494–495 objections to, 470–472
Computer, man as, 140 overview of, 463–464, 477
Conceptualism, 78, 79, 80 Plato and, 472–477
Conclusion signals, 16–17 Democritus, 43, 132
Conditions, modes of doubt and, 165 Deontological theory of morality, 374,
Confucius, 345 397–398
Conscience, 149, 385 Derrida, Jacques, 171, 175–176
Consciousness, 97 Descartes, René
Consent criticisms of, 95
idea of, 464 deduction of matter and, 92–95
implied, 470–471 Discontinuity of Dualism and, 113
Consequences doubting method, 85–86, 87
morality and, 373–374, 392 fields of study, 100
Ring of Gyges and, 357 intuitionism and, 194–197
truthfulness and, 407 life of, 88–89
unconditional duty and, 397–403 Locke and, 441
Consistency Principle, 287 method of, 192–194
Constitution of United States of America, mind-body problem and, 95–100
439–442, 448–450 modern empiricism and, 209
Copernican revolution of Kant, 234, 235 Ontological Argument and, 281–282
Copleston, Frederick C., 44–46, 293–296, 401 philosophical views, 84–85
Corruption, 315–316 proves existence of God, 90–92, 104
Cosmological Argument radical empiricism and, 218–219
Kalam, 256–257 rationalism and, 192–197, 201–202
objections to, 269–273 Rules for the Direction of the Mind and,
overview, 250–259 192–193
popular form, 257 views on existence, 86–90
review of, 273–274 views on matter, 114
Thomistic form, 257 Desert, 497–498, 506
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I-4 Design Argument. See Teleological Argument Empirical knowledge, 235–236

Empiricism
Despotism, 472–473
INDEX Determinism Aristotle and, 206–207
causal, 151–153 Chomsky and, 198
chance and, 352–353 classical, 206–209
free will and, 349, 351–354 definition of term, 183–184, 205–206
hard, 347–348 David Hume and radical, 218–225
historicism and, 174 Locke and modern, 209–218, 226
mechanistic materialism and, 350–351 St. Thomas and, 207–209
morality and, 369–370 synthetic a priori knowledge and,
overview of, 346–354 233–235
psychological egoism as form of, 354–358 En soi, 364–365
soft, 348–351 Engels, Friedrich, 456
Dialectic, historical, 453–454 Enlightenment, 176
Dialectic materialism, 454 Entailment, 16
Dictatorship, 472–473 Entitlement, 491–497
Difference Principle, 486–488, 505 Epicharmus, 57
Dignity of defiance, 328–333 Epicurus, 132–133, 382
Diogenes Laertius, 164 Epistemological dualism, 109, 217
Dion, 59 Epistemology, 7, 170, 185
Dionysus I, 59 Equality
Dionysus II, 59 innate knowledge and, 190–192
Discontinuity of Dualism, 113–114 natural law and, 443
Discourse on Method, 193 Rawls and, 483
Distributive justice, 499, 501–502, 506 Equivocation, 23
Divided Line, 64–66, 79 Esse est percipi, 111–112, 127
Divine law, 429 Essence
Divine right of royalty, 443–444 natural law and, 427
Donatism, 318 precedes existence, 359–360
Dostoievsky, 363 Eternal law, 429
Doubt, 85–86, 87, 165–166 Ethical absolutism, 344–346
Dualism Ethical relativism
definition of term, 83 arguments against, 344–345
Discontinuity of, 113–114 arguments for, 343–344
epistemological, 217 challenge of, 341–343
Ducasse, C. J., 3–4 Ethics
Duty categorical imperative and, 405–406
acting out of, 404–405 existentialist, 365–367
contradicting universal laws and, 408–410 feminist, 365–366
G. E. M. Anscombe on moral, 419 four sanctions for behavior and, 378–379
unconditional, 397–403 hypothetical imperative and, 405–406
naturalistic, 390–392, 411–412
Economics Nicomachean, 418–421
Adam Smith and, 450–451 objections to virtue, 426–427
Marxism and, 453–457 of care, 412–413
Edifying philosophers, 174 of utility, 379
Efficient cause, 77, 253 overview of, 7–8, 339–340
Egalitarianism, 483 rejection of naturalistic, 399–403
Egocentric predicament, 218 social-political, 437–438
Egoism virtue, 417–418
Bentham and psychological, 378 Eudaimonia, 418–421
humility and, 425 Euthyphro, 51–54, 61
psychological, 354–358, 370 Equal Basic Liberty for All, Principle of, 486,
Eidological Argument for God, 90, 104 487, 489, 505
Einstein, Albert, 260 Evil
Elitism, 472–477 Adam and Eve and, 320
Emotion as irrational, 327–333
Free-Will Defense and, 326 as therapy, 322–327, 333
medical materialism and, 299–301 good will and, 403
rationalism and, 194–195 Irenaeus and, 323–324
Empedocles, 42–43, 44 utilitarianism and, 375
Empirical judgments, 237 virtue and, 423
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Evil (and God)

as privation of goodness, 314–319, 333
ethics of care and, 412–413
existentialism and, 364–367
I-5
Free-Will Defense and, 319–322 justice and, 502–505, 506 INDEX
natural and moral, 307, 325, 333 rationalism and, 194–195
overview of, 307–311 Feuerbach, 454
simplest statement of problem of, Fields of philosophy, 6–9
310–311 Final cause, 77
solutions to problem of, 311–314 First-Cause Argument, 252, 257, 273
Evolution First-order questions, 9
Darwin and, 263–264 Five Ways, 252–257
F. R. Tennant and, 264–268 Flux, 56–57
theistic, 263 For itself, 364–365
Existence Force, 311
as predicate of God, 282–287 Formal cause, 77
Cosmological Argument for God’s, Formal fallacies, 22, 23
250–259 Formalism, 78, 414
Descartes’ views on, 86–90 Forms
essence precedes, 359–360 Aristotle’s criticism of, 72–74
Moral Argument for God’s, 287–292 Aristotle’s views on, 74–77, 80
necessary, 286–287 definition of term, 79
of God, 90–92, 104, 245–246, 247 degrees of, 64–66
of moral law, 292–298 discovery of, 46–47
of universe, 256–257 empiricism and, 206
Ontological Argument for God’s, 279–282 features of, 64, 80
Teleological Argument for God’s, nominalism and conceptualism and,
259–268 77–78
utilitarianism and, 384 of the Good, 67–72
Existential freedom, 365–367 souls preexist with, 189–192
Existentialism theory of, 59–63
atheistic, 362, 370 Foucault, Michel, 171, 175–176
ethics and, 365–367 Foundationalism, 13, 172
feminism and, 364–367 Frankena, William K., 354
humanistic, 327–328 Freedom, restriction of, 465–466
overview of, 358–369, 370 Free-Will Defense
Sartre and, 359–364 as solution to problem of evil, 316–322
subjectivism and, 362–363, 367 determinism and, 346, 349, 351–354, 370
Experience Hick’s argument for, 325–327
a priori knowledge and, 235–239 historicism and, 174
causality and, 270 review of, 333
empiricism and, 205–206 Freud, Sigmund, 302
external, 212–213 Functionalism, 102–103, 145–146
internal, 213
rationalism and, 186–188 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 171
See also Religious experience Gaunilo, 282
External experience, 212–213 Gay, Peter, on behaviorism, 151
Eyeball, 260–264 Gender, justice and, 502–505, 506
General Conception of Justice, 487–488, 489
Factual judgments, 389, 392 General will, 466–470
Faculty psychology, 412–413 Generalization, 22
Fairness, 482–491, 505–506 Generative grammar, 198–201
Faith, 249, 280 Geometrical method, 84–85
Fall, of Adam and Eve, 320 Gilligan, Carol, 412
Fallacies God
definition and types of, 22–25 as properly basic belief, 250
naturalistic, 390–392, 432 Big Bang theory and, 258–259
False dilemma, 24 causality and, 269
Family, justice and, 502–505, 506 compared to watchmaker, 260–264
Features, 80 Cosmological Argument for, 250–259
Feigl, Herbert, 143 Descartes proves existence of, 90–92, 104
Fienberg, Joel, 499, 501 divine law and, 429
Feminist philosophy Einstein on, 260
dualism and, 27–28 existence as predicate of, 282–287
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I-6 God (continued) Hege, G. W. F., 453

Heidegger, 361
existence of, 245–246, 247
INDEX existentialism and, 359, 362, 363 Heraclitus
inscrutable, 312, 314 Forms and, 79
limited, 311–312, 322 pre-Socratic traditions and, 42, 44
matter and, 75, 92–95 rationalism and, 189
modes of doubt and, 165 views on reality, 56–57
Moral Argument for, 287–292, 303–304 Hermeas, 420
natural law and, 443 Herodotus, 76
natural theology and, 247–250 Herphyllis, 420
necessary existence of, 286–287 Herz, Marcus, 402
Ontological Argument for, 279–282, 303 Hick, John
religious experience as evidence for, evil and, 333
296–302 Free-Will Defense and, 325–327
solipsism and, 122–125 Ireneaus and, 323–324
solutions to evil and, 311–314 on Augustinian and Ireneaen theodicies,
St. Thomas on contradiction and, 322 324–325
Teleological Argument for, 259–268 Higher Form, 66
understanding, 312–313 Hill, Thomas, Jr., 425
views of Thomas Hobbes on spirits and, Hillel, 345
135–136 Hinduism, 345
Golden Rule, 345, 379 Historical dialectic, 453–454
Good will, 403–405, 414 Historicism, 170–179
Good(ness) Hitler, Adolf, 294
evil and, 313–314, 323–324 Hobbes, Thomas, 135–136, 357, 469, 477
evil as privation of, 314–319, 333 Holiness, 51–54
Form of the, 67–72 Holmes, Sherlock, 20–21
function of man and, 419–421 Honesty, 424
utilitarianism and, 375, 381 Human beings
virtue and, 418 function of, 421
Government modes of doubt and, 165
democracy and, 463–464 Human law, 429, 430
Plato’s views on, 472–477 Human nature, 362, 370
Rousseau’s social contract and, 464–466 Humanism, 327, 360, 454–455
tacit consent and, 444–448 Humanist justice, 504
Gradation Humanistic existentialism, 327–328, 359–360
as proof of God’s existence, 253–254 Hume, David
evolution and, 264–265 causality and, 221–223, 269–272, 274
Grammar, generative, 198–201 implied consent and, 470
Greek skeptics, 168 Kant and, 232, 239, 241
Gregory X (Pope), 255 on evil, 308–310
Guthrie, W. K. C., 46–47 psychological egoism and, 355
Gyges, Ring of, 357 radical empiricism and, 218–225
skepticism and, 223–225
Habermas, Jürgen, 171 soft determinism and, 348–350
Habit, virtues and, 421–422 views on gaining knowledge, 219–221
Hanson, N. R., 140–141 Humility, 425–426
Happiness Hylas, 118–122, 124–125
Aristotle’s views on virtue and, 418–423 Hylomorphic composition, 74–76
basic ideals and, 389–390 Hypothetical imperative, 405–406
eudaimonia and, 418–421
good will and, 403–404 “I think, therefore I am,” 86–90
quality of, 379–388 Id, 149
quantity of, 376–379 Idealism
utilitarianism and, 374–376 Berkeley and Locke and, 108–110
Hard behaviorism, 146 definition of term, 107–108
Hard determinism, 347–348, 370 five proofs for subjective, 113–117
Harm principle, 452 materialism versus, 132
Hedonic calculus, 377–378, 389, 393 objections to, 125–127
Hedonism objective, 108
social, 388–389, 393 primary and secondary qualities in,
utilitarianism and, 375, 379 109–110
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solipsism and, 122–125

subjective, 108
Intuitionism
a priori knowledge and, 238
I-7
Three Dialogues and, 118–122 Chomsky and, 198–201 INDEX
Ideals, basic, 389–390 feminist critique of rationalism and,
Ideas 194–197
complex and simple, 214–216 mathematics and, 78
impressions and, 219–221 “Invisible-hand” economy, 450–451
innate, 189–192, 209–212 Ionian theories, 42
representative perception and, 217–218 Irenaeus, 323–325
sensation and reflection, 213–215 Irrational knowledge, 12–13, 297, 327–333
theory of, 58–63 Italian theories, 42
universal, 207
Identity Jaggar, Alison, 27, 194–195, 365–366
analytic versus synthetic knowledge and, Jainism, 345
237 James, William
effect of culture on, 148–149 determinism and, 346–347
Law of, 210 medical materialism and, 299–302
Identity Thesis, 141–143, 145–146 on chance and determinism, 352–353
Ignorance, veil of, 484, 485–486, 488–489 on faith, 249
Imperative on history of philosophy, 126
categorical, 405–406 Jaspers, 361
categorical, as test for moral actions, Jastrow, Robert, 258–259
406–411 Jefferson, Thomas, 448, 464
hypothetical, 405–406 Jesus of Nazareth, 345, 379
objections to categorical, 411–414 Johnson, Samuel, 126
Implied consent, 470–471 Judgments
Impressions, radical empiricism and, a priori knowledge and, 236
219–221 analytical and synthetical, 237–238
“In itself,” 364–365 empirical, 237
Incompatibilists, 321 factual and value, 389, 392
Indefinite Dyad, 43 moral, 398–399, 431
Indeterminism, 349, 350, 351, 352–353 state of nature and, 446–448
Individual Justice
classic liberalism and, 442 as entitlement, 491–497, 505–506
desert and, 498 as fairness, 482–491, 505
ethical relativism and, 342–346 as virtue, 497–502, 506
existentialism and, 359–360 criteria for distributive, 499
humility and, 425–426 distributive, 501–502, 506
justice and, 501–502, 506 feminism and, 502–505, 506
Mill’s views on, 452 General Conception of, 487
social contract and, 445–446 humanist, 504
utilitarianism and, 374–376, 379–381 liberal view of, 483–484
Individualism, 442, 458 libertarian view of, 483–484
Induction original position and, 483–485
a priori knowledge and, 236 problem of, 481–482
analogies and, 261 socialist view of, 483–484
deduction versus, 17–18 two principles of, 487–488
nature of, 20–22 veil of ignorance and, 484, 485–486
universal ideas and, 207 Justice in Acquisition, Principle of, 492–494,
Inference, 16 505–506
Informal fallacies, 22, 23 Justice in Transfer, Principle of, 492–494, 506
Innate ideas, 189–192, 209–212 Justice Principle, 389
Inseparability of Primary and Secondary
Qualities, 115 Kalam Cosmological Argument, 256–257
Instinct, 188 Kant, Immanuel
Institute of International Law, 448–449 categorical imperative of, 405–406
Intellectual virtue, 421 causality and, 272–273, 274
Intelligent Design, 265 conditional morality and, 398
Intentionality, 97 good will and, 403–405
Interactionism, 97–98 Hume and, 232, 241
Intermixtures, modes of doubt and, 165–166 life of, 401–402
Internal experience, 213 Moral Argument and, 287
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I-8 Kant, Immanuel (continued) Law(s)

absolute, 400–402
moral philosophy of, 414
INDEX objections to categorical imperative of, conventional, 427
411–414 divine, 429
objections to Ontological Argument of, eternal, 429
284–285 existence of moral, 292–298
Ontological Argument and, 303 human, 429, 430
psychological egoism and, 355 modes of doubt and, 165
rejects naturalistic ethics, 399–403 moral, 287–292
synthetic a priori knowledge and, natural, 427–432, 443
233–241 of Identity, 210
truthfulness and, 407 of motion, 136
Kata to orthon logon, 500 of Non-Contradiction, 167, 210
Kierkegaard, Søren St. Thomas’ four, 429–430
existentialism and, 358 universal, 408–410
on faith, 249 Leibniz, 98, 314
theology and, 248 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 456
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 410 Leo XIII (Pope), 255
Kirilov, 332 Leucippus, 43, 44, 132
Knowledge Lewis, C. S., 149, 288
a priori and a posteriori, 232 Liberal view of justice, 483–484
analytic and synthetic, 233 Liberalism
Aristotle’s empiricism and, 206–207 capitalism and, 450–453
categories of, 170 classical, 439
Cosmological Argument as a posteriori, democracy and, 464
250–259 Locke and, 439–450
epistemology as study of, 7 Locke’s fourfold basis of classical, 444
God and, 93 Marxism and, 453–457
innate, 189–192 objections to, 458
intuitionism and, 194–197 review of, 458–459
language and, 198–201 utilitarianism and, 452
Moral Argument as a priori, 287–292 Libertarianism, justice and, 483–484, 491
of good and evil, 323–324 Lincoln, Abraham, 356
Ontological Argument as a priori, Loaded language, 22–23
279–282 Location, modes of doubt and, 166
postmodernism and, 176 Locke, John
pure and empirical, 235–236 Declaration of Independence and, 464
radical empiricism and, 219–221 Discontinuity of Dualism and, 113
rationalism of Plato and, 186–192 empiricism and, 226
reality and, 159–161 idealism and, 109–110
reason as basis of, 184–186 Kant and, 239
synthetic a priori, 233–241 liberalism and, 439–450, 459
Teleological Argument as a posteriori, life of, 440–441
259–268 modern empiricism and, 209–218
theories about basis of, 183–184 natural law and, 443
See also Forms on faith, 249
Knox, Ronald, 123 radical empiricism and, 218–219
Koestler, Arthur, 151 social contract and, 444–448
Kohlberg, Lawrence, 412–413 state of nature and, 443–448
Kosmos U.S. Constitution and, 448–450
definition of term, 45, 252 views on matter, 114
solutions to problem of evil and, 311 Logic, 8, 15
See also Cosmos Logical fallacies, 22–25
Krutch, Joseph Wood, 149 Logicism, 78
“Look,” 365
La Mettrie, 138–140 Lower Form, 66
Labor, 455–456 Lucretius, 133–135
Laissez faire, 450–451 Luther, Martin, 251
Language Lycurgus, 468
Chomsky’s rationalism and, 198–201
universals, 198 Machiavelli, 468
Laplace, Pierre Simon de, 138 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 171, 482, 497–502, 506
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Mackie, J. L., 321

Majority, tyranny of the, 471
God and evil and, 308
Harriet Taylor and, 27
I-9
Malcolm, Norman, 285–287 liberalism and, 452 INDEX
Malebranche, 98, 113 on solutions to problem of evil, 311–312
Man utilitarianism and, 379–388, 393
abolishment of, 149–151 Mind
as computer, 140 body and, 143–146
as machine, 136–140 intuition of, 86–90
function of, 419–421 moral law and, 290
Hobbes’ views on nature of, 469 thinking and, 98–103
international declaration on rights of, Mind-body problem
448–449 Discontinuity of Dualism and, 113–114
modes of doubt and, 165 functionalism and, 102–103
Manichaeism, 318 idealism and, 107
Manning, Rita, 413 materialism and, 131–136
Many, the, 39 overview of, 95–99, 104
Mao Tse-Tung, 457 Ryle and, 99–102
Marcel, Gabriel, 361, 367–369 Mind-matter dualism, 83
Marquis d’Argenson, 468 Minimal state, 491–492, 505
Marsham, Lord and Lady, 441 Modern empiricism, 209–218
Marti-Ibanez, Felix, 55 Monica, St., 317
Marty, William R., 489–491 Monism, 40
Marx, Karl, 453 Moral Argument
Marxism, 453–457 C. S. Lewis and, 288
alienation and, 455–456 Hastings Rashdall and, 289–291
objections to, 457 Kant and, 287
overview of, 459 moral law and, 292–298
Maslow, 149 overview of, 287–288, 303–304
Material cause, 77 Moral evil
Materialism definition of term, 307, 308
behaviorism and, 146–151 Free-Will Defense and, 319–322
causal determinism and, 151–153 Hume on, 308–310
dialectic, 454 Moral law(s)
mechanistic, 136–140 as argument for God, 287–292
medical, 299–301 existence of, 292–298
mind and body and, 143–146 Moral philosophy, 3–4, 7–8, 339–340
morality and mechanistic, 350–351 Moral virtue, 421, 422–423
new, 140–143 Morality
overview of, 131–136 absolute and relative, 292–296
Ryle and, 102 categorical imperative and, 405–406
Mathematics categorical imperative as test for,
Descartes and, 84–85 406–411
rationalism of Descartes and, 192–194 challenges to, 369–370
realist-nominalist debate and, 78–79 consequences and, 373–374
Matson, 149 deontological theory of, 374, 397–398
Matter determinism and, 346–354
as element of universe, 311 existentialism and, 358–369
as Meaningless Idea, 114–115 good will and, 403–405
dematerialism of, 140–141 hard determinism and, 347–348
Forms and, 74–76 hypothetical imperative and, 405–406
God and, 92–95 internal and external sanctions for, 386
idealism and, 107 justice and, 501–502
materialism and, 131–136 Marxism and, 457
mind-body problem and, 95–100 natural law and, 427–432
mind-matter dualism and, 83 objective, 344–346
Three Dialogues and, 118–122 of murder, 391
Maurice of Nassau, 89 possibility of, 341
Mechanistic materialism, 136–410, 350–351 psychological egoism and, 354–358
Medical materialism, 299–301 Rawls’ principles of justice and,
Metaethics, 9 489–491
Metaphysics, 7, 108 relativism and, 341–346
Mill, John Stuart soft determinism and, 348–351
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I-10 Morality (continued) Obedience, evil as therapy and, 323–324

Objective idealism, 108
teleological theory of, 373–374, 397
INDEX unconditional, 397–403 Occasionalism, 98
universal, 414 Ockham, William of, 77, 80
utilitarianism and, 374–376 Oedipus, 332
Motion Okin, Susan Moller, 502–505, 506
as proof of God’s existence, 252 Old Adam, 149
laws of, 136 Oligarchy, 472
Motives One, the, 39, 43
defenses of psychological egoism and, Ontological Argument
357–358 as proof for God, 92
for moral behavior, 385 Descartes and, 281–282
interpreting, 356–357, 370 existence as predicate of God in,
Munch, Edvard, 368 282–287
Murder Kant’s objections to, 284–285
morality of, 391 Malcolm’s objections to, 285–287
truthfulness and, 407 overview of, 279–281
Mydorge, 89 review of, 303
St. Anselm and, 280–281
Nassau, Prince Maurice of, 89 Ontology, 78
Native Americans, 266–267 Orange, William of, 441
Natural evil, 307, 308–310 Original position, 483–485
Natural law Ought
existence of, 427–432 conditional and unconditional, 398
Locke and, 443 implies can, 355
objections to, 431–432 moral law and, 294–295
society and, 427–428
St. Thomas and, 429–430, 432 Pain, temperance and, 424
state of nature and, 443–448 Paley, William, 260–264, 266, 274
Natural rights, 496 Parmenides, 42, 44, 56
Natural theology, 247–250, 273 Pascal, Blaise
Naturalism, 131 argument for God of, 291
Naturalistic ethics, 399–403, 411–412 on faith, 249
Naturalistic Fallacy, 390–392, 432 theology and, 248–249
Nature Past, justice and, 498–499
causality and, 270–271 Paton, H. J., 398
Hobbes’ views on man’s, 469 Patriarchy, 365
human, 362, 370 Pelagianism, 318
Marxism and human, 457 Perception, 107–112, 221
Native American unity with, 266–267 Perfection, 90–92, 315–316, 324–325
state of, 443–448, 483–485 “Person who,” 23
Teleological Argument and, 264–268 Petitio Principii, 95
virtues given by, 421–422 Phenomenal world, 238, 240, 241
Necessity, as proof of God’s existence, 253 Phenomenalism, 225
Newton, Sir Isaac, 136, 232 Philonous, 118–122, 124–125
Nicomachean Ethics, 418–421 Philosopher kings, 472–477
Nicomachus, 420 Philosophical skepticism, 161–162
Niemoeller, Martin, 456 Philosophical theology. See Natural theology
Nietzsche, Friedrich Philosophy
existentialism and, 358–359, 369 C. J. Ducasse on moral, 3–4
on God, 245 definition of term, 5–6
skepticism and, 175 fields of, 6–9
Night-watchman state, 491–492, 505 universality of, 28–30
Nihilism, 327, 328 William James on history of, 126
Nominalism, 77–78, 79, 80 Physicalism, 147
Non-Contradiction, Law of, 210 Piecemeal supernaturalism, 301–302
Nonrational knowledge, 12–13, 297 Place, U. T., 142
Normal, 343 Plantinga, Alvin, 250
Noumenal world, 240, 241 Plato
Nozick, Robert Apology of, 11–12
justice and, 491–497, 505–506 Aristotle’s criticism of, 72–74
MacIntyre and, 497–502 biography, 59
Numa, 468 democracy and, 472–477
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Divided Line and, 64–66

empiricism and, 206–207
Propositions
analytic versus synthetic knowledge and,
I-11
explains Form of the Form, 67–72 236 INDEX
Form causes and, 77 causality and, 237
Forms and, 59–63, 79–80 Protagoras
Golden Rule and, 345 Forms and, 79
on philosophy, 15 Plato and, 55
psychological egoism and, 357 Pyrrho of Elis and, 163
Pyrrho of Elis and, 163 relativism and, 341, 343
rationalism and, 186–192 Psychological egoism
Socrates’ dialogues written by, 51–54 Bentham and, 378
St. Augustine and, 315 challenge of, 354–358, 370
theories on appearance and reality, Pure knowledge, 235–236
55–58 Pyrrho of Elis, 163–166, 167, 179
Pleasure Pyrrhonism, 168
calculating, 376–378, 389 Pythagoras, 5–6, 42
temperance and, 424 Pythias, 420
utilitarianism and, 375
Plotinus, 318 Quality, modes of doubt and, 166
Pluralism, 42–43, 170–179 Quantity, modes of doubt and, 166
Plutarchy, 472 Quine, Willard V., 78–79
Poetry, 76
Politics Radical empiricism, 218–225
beginning of, 445–446 Rarity, modes of doubt and, 166
ends of, 446–448 Rashdall, Hastings, 289–291
ethics and, 437–438 Rational theology. See Natural theology
family and, 503, 506 Rationalism
Marxism and, 453–457 Chomsky and, 198–201
natural law and, 427–428, 443 definition of term, 186
utilitarianism and, 376 Descartes and, 192–197
values in, 7–8 ethics of care and, 412–413
Politikon zoon, 500 feminist critique of, 194–195
Pope Gregory X, 255 knowledge and, 183–186
Pope Leo XIII, 255 philosophy and, 9–13
Pope Urban IV, 255 Plato and, 186–192
Position, modes of doubt and, 166 synthetic a priori knowledge and,
Possibility, as proof of God’s existence, 233–235
253 Rationality
Postmodernism, 175–177 justice and, 486
Pour soi, 364–365 original position and, 484–485
Pragmatism, 301 Rawls, John
Predicate, 283 justice and, 482–491, 505
Premise signals, 16–17 MacIntyre and, 497–502
Pre-Socratics Nozick and, 491–497
define reality, 42–46 Realism, 77, 79
discover form, 46–47 Reality
Primary qualities, 109–110, 115 Appearance and, 55–58
Principle of distributive justice, 494–495 Hegel’s views on, 453
Principle of Equal Basic Liberty for All, 486, idealism and, 107–108
487, 489, 505 metaphysics as study of, 7
Principle of Justice in Acquisition, 492–494, mind-matter dualism and, 83
505–506 pre-Socratic theories on, 42–43
Principle of Justice in Transfer, 492–494, 506 question of, 37–39
Principle of the Rectification of Injustice in See also Forms
Holdings, 506 Reason
Principle of Universalizibility, 405 as basis of knowledge, 184–186
Principle of Utility, 375, 381 as virtue, 421
Production, 455–456 Kant and, 240
Proletariat, 455–456 moral judgments and, 431
Properly basic beliefs, 250 Ontological Argument for God and, 279–
Property 282
justice and, 492–496 Plato and, 186–192
right to own, 450 Reasoning, logic as study of, 8–13
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I-12 Rectification of Injustice in Holdings,

498–499
Sherlock Holmes, 20–21
Sikhism, 345
INDEX Red herring, 24 Sin
Reflection, 214 Adam and Eve and, 320
Regan, Tom, 391 free will and, 316–319
Relativism Sisyphus myth, 331–332
as challenge to morality, 369 Skepticism
cultural, 148, 342–343 definition of term, 161
ethical, 341–346 historicism and, 170–179
existentialism and, 360 Hume and, 223–225
historicism and, 173 postmodernism and, 175–177
moral, 292–296 practicality of, 166–170
Plato and, 55–56 Pyrrho of Elis and absolute, 163–166
Rorty and, 178–179 types of, 161–162
Relativity Skinner, B. F.
of All Qualities, 115–117 behaviorism and, 146–151
modes of doubt and, 166 determinism and, 151–153
Religion on ethical relativism, 342
as illusion, 302–303 Smart, J. J. C., 141–143
existence of God and, 245–246 Smartness Principle, 26
natural law and, 431 Smith, Adam, 450–451
philosophy and, 14 Social contract
Religious experience, 296–302, 304 of Locke, 444–448, 459
Representative perception, 217–218 of Rousseau, 464–470
Revealed theology, 248 Social hedonism, 388–389, 393
Ricoeur, Paul, 171 Social values, 7–8
Rights Socialist view of justice, 483–484
natural, 496 Society
of Man, 448–449 beginning of, 445–446
Ring of Gyges, 357 democratic, 463–464
Rogers, Robert, 171 effecting change in, 456–457
Rorty, Richard, 170–180 ends of, 446–448
postmodernism and, 175–176 ethical relativism and, 342–346
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 464–470 ethics and, 437–438
Rules for the Direction of the Mind, 192–193 existentialism and, 359–360
Rule-utilitarianism, 380 Hobbes’ views on, 469
Russell, Bertrand, 293–296, 495 humility and, 425–426
Ryle, Gilbert, 99–102 justice and, 481–482
MacIntyre’s views on justice and,
Sacrifice, 356, 378 497–502
Sagan, Carl, 140 Marxism and, 453–457
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 359–360, 367–369, 370 natural law and, 427–428
Science, 14–15 Nozick’s views on justice and, 491–497
Searle, John, 96–97 Plato’s views on, 472–477
Second Law of Thermodynamics, 258 Rawls’ views on justice and, 482–491
Secondary qualities, 109–110, 115 tacit consent and, 444–448
Second-order questions, 9 utilitarianism and, 374–376, 379–381
Self, 148–149 See also Community
Self-control, 149 Socrates
Selfishness, 354–358, 425 life of, 10–12
Self-knowledge, 149 on life without philosophy, 15
Self-refuting proposition, 167 on unexamined life, 26
Sellars, Wilfred, 172 Plato and, 72
Sensation, 213 Plato writes dialogues of, 51–54, 61
Senses Pyrrho of Elis and, 163
a priori knowledge and, 235–236, 239 rationalism and, 186–188
as source of ideas, 213 views on death of, 189
empiricism and, 205–206 Soft behaviorism, 146
experience and, 186–188 Soft determinism, 348–351
modes of doubt and, 165 Solipsism, 122–125
St. Thomas on, 209 Solon, 468
Servius, 468 Sophists, 55
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Soul
mind and, 86–90
Sun, analogy of, 67–69
Superego, 149
I-13
nature and, 267–268 Supernaturalism, piecemeal, 301–302 INDEX
preexistence of, 189–192 Sweden, Christina of, 27, 89
“Soul-making,” 323–324, 333 Syllogism, 18–19
Space Synthetic knowledge, a priori, 233–239
a priori knowledge and, 241 Synthetical judgments, 237–238
Cosmological Argument and, 252 Systematic philosophers, 174
Spinoza, 98, 427
Spirit Tabula rasa, 205, 209, 226
Absolute, 453 Tacit consent, 444–448
mind and, 86–90 Taylor, Harriet, 27, 384
views of Hobbes on, 135–136 Taylor, Richard, 143–145
Sprague, Elmer, 6 Teleological Argument
St. Albert the Great, 255 objections to, 269–273
St. Ambrose, 318 overview of, 259–268, 274
St. Anselm, 280–281, 285–287 William Paley and, 260–264
St. Augustine Teleological theory of morality
Free-Will Defense and, 319–320, 325–327 overview of, 373–374, 397
Irenaean theodicy and, 324–325 utilitarianism and, 374–376
realism and, 77, 80 Teleology
skepticism and, 168–170, 179 definition of term, 75–76
views on evil of, 314–319 of Aristotle, 421
St. Monica, 317 Telos, 421
St. Thomas Temperance, 424
causality and, 269 Tennant, F. R., 264–268, 274, 314
empiricism and, 207–209, 226 Tertullian, 248
four laws of, 429–430, 432 Thales, 29, 40–41
natural law and, 443 Theistic evolution, 263
on contradiction and God, 322 Theodicy
on faith, 249 definition of term, 308
on senses, 209 of Ireneaus, 323–325
radical empiricism and, 218 of St. Augustine, 324–327
reason and natural law and, 431 Theology, natural, 247–250, 273
Teleological Argument and, 260 Therapy, evil as, 322–327, 333
St. Thomas Aquinas Thermodynamics, Second Law of, 258
Five Ways of, 252–257 Thinking, Descartes’ views on, 86–90
life of, 254–255 Third-Man Argument, 72–73
on existence of God, 247 Thomas, St.
realism and, 77, 80 causality and, 269
reason and, 431 empiricism and, 207–209, 226
Stace, W. T., 351–352 four laws of, 429–430, 432
State, minimal (night-watchman), 491–492, natural law and, 443
505 on contradiction and God, 322
State of nature, 443–448, 483–485 on faith, 249
Steady State cosmology, 259 on senses, 209
Straw man, 23 radical empiricism and, 218
Structuralism, 175 reason and natural law and, 431
Subjective idealism, 108, 113–117 Teleological Argument and, 260
Subjectivism Thomas Aquinas, St.
ethical, 342–346 Five Ways of, 252–257
existentialism and, 362–363, 367 life of, 254–255
overview of, 55–56 on existence of God, 247
realism and, 97 realism and, 77, 80
Substance reason and, 431
a priori knowledge and, 234 Thomism, 255
definition of term, 90 Tillich, Paul, 14, 249
Descartes and, 86–90 Time
evil as, 314, 333 a priori knowledge and, 241
radical empiricism and, 219–221 Cosmological Argument and, 252
Substantial Forms, 77 Timocracy, 472
Suffering, 315 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 471
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I-14 Tranformational grammar, 198

Transcendence, 56, 365–367
existentialism and, 359–360, 363
Marxism and, 457
INDEX Truth objective, 360, 367–369
empiricism and, 208–209 relativism and, 369
historicism and, 174–178 universal, 344
universal consent for, 210–212 Value-theory, 7–8, 339–340
Truthfulness, 407, 424 Veil of ignorance, 484, 485–486, 488–489
Twain, Mark, 245 Virtue
Tyranny Aristotle and, 432
of the majority, 471 Aristotle’s views on happiness and,
Plato rejects, 472–473 418–423
as mean between excess and deficiency,
Unconditional duty, 397–403 422–423
Understanding, Kant and, 240 courage as, 424
Unexperienced as Inconceivable, 115 honesty as, 424
Universal consent, 210–212 humility as, 425–426
Universal generalization, 22 intellectual and moral, 421
Universal ideas, 207 justice as, 497–502, 506
Universal laws, 408–410 temperance as, 424
Universalizibility, Principle of, 405 Virtue ethics, 417–418, 426–427
Universe Virtue theory, 432
Big Bang theory and, 258–259
causality and, 270–271 Walesa, Lech, 457
Einstein on, 260 Watch analogy, 260–264
existence of, 256–257 Water, 40–41
Matter and Force as elements of, 311 Weigel, John A., 148
Teleological Argument and, 262 Weil, Simone, 296
Urban IV (Pope), 255 William of Ockham, 77, 80
Utilitarianism William of Orange, 441
Bentham and quantity of happiness in, Williams, Bernard, 390
376–379 Woltersdorff, Nicholas, 250
hedonism and, 375 Women
liberalism and, 452 ethics of care and, 412–413
Mill and quality of happiness in, 379–388 existentialism and, 364–367
morality of murder and, 391 feminist philosophy and, 27–28
objections to, 388–392 justice and, 502–505, 506
overview of, 374–376, 392 Mill on, 386
socialistic nature of, 379–381 World
Utility, Principle of, 375, 381 causality and, 270–271
existence of, 256–257
Value judgments, 389, 392 governance of, 254–255
Values
culture and, 147–148 Xanthippe, 11, 27
ethical relativism and, 342