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Can a Moral Man Raise the Question, “Should I Be Moral?”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Frank Snare
Frank Snare*
Affiliation:
Australian National University
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Extract

Let it be allowed, though virtue or moral rectitude does indeed consist in affection to and pursuit of what is right and good, as such; yet, that when we sit down in a cool hour, we can neither justify to ourselves this or any other pursuit, till we are convinced that it will be for our happiness, or at least not contrary to it.

—Butler, Sermon XI

There are a number of different grounds on which philosophers have argued that the question “Should I be moral?” is unintelligible or at least somewhat odd. Some evidently are unable to understand ‘should’ in any other way than ‘morally ought’, with the consequence that the question can admit of no answer but the affirmative. Others, influenced by the later Wittgenstein, hold that, although ‘should ’-questions have a role within the moral language game, the ‘should’ in the question above has no real function, it is like a ‘machine idling,’ and we can attribute no real sense to it. Now I consider neither of these arguments to be successful or even very plausible, but I do wish to consider a further argument which is logically independent of the above and which appears, initially at least, to be quite plausible.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , March 1975 , pp. 499 - 507
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1975

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References

1 See, for example, Toulmin, An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (Cambridge, 1952), p. 162.Google Scholar

2 Generalization in Ethics (New York, 1961), pp. 319–320, 325, 327, 339.

3 Ethical Studies (2nd ed. rev.; Oxford, 1962), Essay II, p. 61.

4 Ibid.

5 We might distinguish two questions here: (1) Would I be better off (for certain non-moral reasons) with certain dispositions and desires than without them. (2) If I don't in fact have such dispositions and desires already and even if I grant that they are worth having, is it worth my while to undergo the expense of trying to acquire them? Leslie Stephens makes a distinction like this in The Science of Ethics (London, 1907), ca. p. 390. Scriven, Michael also makes this distinction in Primary Philosophy (New York, 1966), p. 249.Google Scholar

6 Scriven, Michael op. cit., pp. 229–301Google Scholar, discusses the possibility that a selfish man might reasonably conclude that he has good (self-interested) reasons for acquiring altruistic desires and motivations and that he might attempt to change his state of character, if this is possible, and acquire new (other-directed) desires.

7 In the literature one sometimes finds it said that a criterion of a man's having a moral code is that he takes it to be overriding or supreme or at least terribly important. Some examples of such philosophers are: Falk, W. D. “Morality, Self, and Others,” in Morality and the Language of Conduct, ed. Castaneda, Hector-Neri and Nakhnikian, George (Detroit, 1965), pp. 25–66Google Scholar; Frankena, William K. “The Concept of Morality,” Journal of Philosophy, LXIII, 668–696Google Scholar; Hart, H. L. A. The Concept of Law (Oxford, 1961), p. 180Google Scholar; Ladd, John The Structure of a Moral Code (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), pp. 103–104Google Scholar; Mayo, B. Ethics and the Moral Life (London, 1958), pp. 152ff., 169ff.Google Scholar; Monro, D. H. Empiricism and Ethics (Cambridge, 1967), p. 127Google Scholar; Wilson, John Introduction to Moral Education (Baltimore, 1967), p. 77.Google Scholar

8 Baier, Kurt in The Moral Point of View (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1958), Chap. XIIGoogle Scholar, is in effect distinguishing the question of whether moral reasons are to be supreme from the question of what sort of reasons we appeal to in deciding the former question.

9 To show that being moral is worthwhile in itself one need not argue that it is the state of being moral which is worthwhile in itself; one could argue that activity which flows from the dispositions involved in being moral is what is worthwhile in itself. That is to say, it is activity in accordance with virtue which is worthwhile in itself. This is the Aristotelian approach.