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Motive and Obligation in the British Moralists*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2009
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My aim in what follows is to sketch with a broad brush fundamental changes involving the concept of obligation in British ethics of the early modern period, as it developed in the direction of the view that obligatory force is a species of motivational force – an idea that deeply informs present thought. I shall also suggest, although I can hardly demonstrate it conclusively here, that one important source for this view was a doctrine which we associate with Kant, and which it may seem surprising to find in British ethics, especially of the early modern period, viz., that rational agents are obligated by motives available through a form of practical thinking necessary for rational autonomy.
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References
1 Sidgwick, Henry, Outlines of the History of Ethics for English Readers (with additional chapter by Widgery, Alban G.) (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), p. 190.Google Scholar
2 Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L.A., 2nd. ed., revised by P.H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), pp. 468–69.Google Scholar Hereinafter referred to as Treatise. Cf. Hutcheson: “The word MORAL GOODNESS, in this treatise, denotes our idea of some quality apprehended in actions, which procures approbation, attended with desire of the agent's happiness. MORAL EVIL denotes our idea of a contrary quality, which excites condemnation or dislike.” (An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, 4th ed. (1738), introduction; reprinted in Raphael, D.D., British Moralists, 1650–1800 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), vol.i, p. 261.)Google Scholar Hereinafter referrred to respectively as Inquiry and British Moralists.
3 Cooper, Anthony Ashley, Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. Robertson, John M., introduction by Stanley Grean (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1964), vol. i, p. 251Google Scholar; reprinted in British Moralists, vol. i, p. 172. Hereinafter Characteristics. For the first use of‘moral sense’, see Characteristics, i. 262.
4 The term “natural good” is Hutcheson's, and he uses it to refer to pleasure generally. Hume is also a hedonist about what he calls “good and evil,” but does not use the qualifier ‘natural’. Nonetheless, like Hutcheson, he distinguishes a species of obligation based on the agent's nonmoral good which he calls “natural” (Treatise, p. 498). As we shall see, the idea that there is such a species of obligation derives directly from Shaftesbury.
Although Hume follows Hutcheson in the early parts of Book III of the Treatise in arguing that moral good and evil consist in an object's capacity to evoke a “peculiar” or “particular” pleasure, the “moral sentiment,” he expresses doubts later in the book (pp. 606f.) about whether the moral/nonmoral distinction is anything other than purely verbal. He repeats this theme in Appendix IV of the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd ed., revised by P.H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), pp. 312–23. Hereinafter Enquiry. That it was not a purely verbal distinction was perhaps Hutcheson's most fundamental position. Every notion in Hutcheson's moral system is defined, ultimately, in terms of what he considered to be the simple moral ideas of approbation and condemnation. And it was because morality contains its own simple ideas that he speaks of a “moral sense.” Thus, for Hutcheson, moral obligation and right, as well as the sense of ‘morally good to elect’ that led to his first formulation of the utilitarian formula “the greatest happiness of the greatest numbers,” are all derivative from these fundamental simple ideas.
What underlay this difference between Hutcheson and Hume, I think, was that Hume's use of sympathy to explain why, as he believed, all virtues are either immediately agreeable or useful to those who have them or to others required the conclusion that the disinterested pleasure felt when contemplating traits likelier to be considered moral virtues is not essentially different from that felt in contemplating other useful or immediately agreeable characteristics such as wit. Hutcheson would have rejected both the phenomenon that Hume was hoping to explain as well as his explanation.
5 Treatise, p. 574. Since Hutcheson believed it a fact of psychology that only benevolence in its various forms ever produces, upon contemplation, approbation and love towards the agent, he believed, unlike Hume, that all virtues are natural. Artifice may channel benevolence, but it cannot, he thought, affect the moral value of action and character, which depends entirely on whether it involves a form of benevolence or not.
6 ibid., p. 469.
7 Characteristics, i.260. My emphasis. An important element in Shaftesbury's thought here is that morality cannot consist in conformity to externally imposed rules, as Locke had held in the Essay (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Nidditch, P.H. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 351)).Google Scholar Hereinafter Essay. On this point, see below, Section V.
8 Even Hutcheson and Hume, who rejected this distinction for the species of obligation they called “moral obligation,” felt the need to establish a further obligation to morality. See Hume, Treatise, p. 498, and Hutcheson, Inquiry, vii.i (reprinted in British Moralists, i.293).
9 Characteristics, i.280 (reprinted in British Moralists, i,175).
10 ibid., i.336–37. My emphasis.
11 Enquiry, p. 278; Inquiry, vii. l (reprinted in British Moralists, i.293).
12 What follows is obviously only the sketch of an argument that requires a great deal more detail. While I am convinced this detail can be given, I can now only express an intention to do so on another occasion.
13 Cumberland, A Treatise of the Laws of Nature, trans. John Maxwell [originally De Legibus Naturae disquisitio philosophica, 1672] (London: 1727), p. 233. Hereinafter Treatise of the Laws. Selections from this are included in British Moralists.
14 Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace, trans. Francis W. Kelsey [De Juri Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres, 1625] (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1925), p. 38.
15 Although I cannot show it here, Culverwell and Locke (though not Pufendorf) continued the Grotian idea that what is obligatory is what is in conformity with rational nature.
16 Locke, John, Essays on the Law of Nature, Ed. Von Leyden, W. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 185.Google Scholar Von Leyden's introduction contains an excellent discussion of the development of Locke's ideas about natural law.
17 Samuel Pufendorf, De Jure Naturae et Gentium ed. C.H. Oldfather [1672] (Oxford: Oxford University Press), I.vi.5, p. 91, and I.vi.12, p. 101. For a general account of Pufendorf on obligation to which I am much indebted, see Schneewind, J.B., “Pufendorf's Place in the History of Ethics,” Synthese, vol. 72 (1987), pp. 123–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see esp. pp. 143–48.
18 Locke, John, A Second Treatise of Government. For Culverwell's view, see An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature, ed. Greene, Robert A. and Hugh MacCallum (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), pp. 39–52.Google Scholar
19 Here I mean Locke's writings after Essays on the Law of Nature through the first edition of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. This includes “Of Ethick in General,” in Peter King, The Life of John Locke, with extracts from his Correspondence, Journals, and Common-place Books (London: Henry Colburn, 1829).
20 See Tuck, Richard, Natural Rights Theories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Here I rely primarily on Tuck's discussion of Selden. It is remarkable that Selden is not even mentioned in Raphael's “Bibliographical Note of Some British Writers” at the end of v. ii of British Moralists; nor does Sidgwick mention him in Outlines.
21 “Of Ethick in General,” p. 309.
22 Note that a motive can be unavoidable in the relevant sense without being determining, “all things considered.”
Selden also requires that the will be a “superior power.” “An equal cannot bind me, for we may untie one another.” (Selden, Opera Omnia, v. iii, ed. D. Wilkins (London: 1726)). Tuck discusses this passage at p. 92 but leaves out a crucial part.
23 Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. Michael, Oakeshott (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1960), p. 65.Google Scholar
24 For a defense of the view that this is the core of Hobbes's view of obligation, see Barry, Brian, “Warrender and His Critics,” Philosophy, vol. 43 (1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gauthier, David, The Logic of Leviathan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969).Google Scholar
25 Leviathan, p. 84.
26 ibid.,
27 De Cive: The English Version Entitled, in the First Edition, Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society, ed. Howard, Warrender (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), p. 52.Google Scholar
28 ibid., p. 25. And see p. 20: “By this imposition of names, some of larger, some of stricter signification, we turn the reckoning of the consequences of things imagined in the mind, into a reckoning of the consequences of appellations.” Cf. also Hobbes's description of “regulated thoughts” as thinking from causes to effects and effects to causes (p. 15).
29 ibid., p. 104.
30 ibid., p. 187. This is the relation we stand in to God. It is presumably on these grounds that Hobbes claims that the laws of nature create obligations when they are viewed as commands of God. See Leviathan, pp. 104–5.
31 For Hobbes to hold this view consistently with his Leviathan definition, he must hold that voluntarily laying down a right creates the requisite motives in the agent. Clearly, he accepts the burden of defending this in the case of the mutual transfer of right that empowers the Sovereign. It seems, however, that he also believes that there can be cases in the state of nature where an obligation to perform exists and where the existence of rationally conclusive motives emanating from overawing power is not obvious (for example, where a contract has been entered into and the other has already performed). See Leviathan, p. 95.
32 As A Treatise of Freewill, ed. John Allen (London: John W. Parker, 1838). Excerpts are collected in Raphael, British Moralists, i. 120–34. The remaining manuscripts are housed in the British Library. They are described in Passmore's, John appendix to his Ralph Cudworth: An Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951).Google Scholar Unfortunately, Passmore does not discuss this aspect.
33 Treatise of the Laws, p. 233.
34 ibid.
35 Though not only his own happiness: Cumberland also thinks that agents can and do directly seek the happiness of others. Moreover, he believes that only considerations concerning the happiness of oneself or others can be motivating. His direct answer to the question of “what can superinduce a necessity of doing or forbearing any thing, upon a human mind deliberating upon a thing future” is “propositions promising good or evil, to ourselves or to others, consequent upon what we are to do” (p. 233).
Here, however, his argument trades on the assumption that agents necessarily seek their own happiness: “Altho' I have suppos'd, that every one necessarily seeks his own greatest Happiness, yet I am far from thinking that to be the entire and adequate End of any one ” (p. 234).
36 ibid., p. 233.
37 ibid., p. 237.
38 ibid., p. 16.
39 Essay, p. 69.
40 ibid., p. 267.
41 ibid., p. 263. Locke, like Cudworth in his manuscripts on free will, generally reserves ‘judgment’ for the conclusion of a process of weighing and balancing.
42 ibid., p. 264.
43 ibid., pp. 263–64. Emphasis added, except to ‘examination’.
44 That Locke appears to be relating obligation and autonomy in a new way in his revision of Chapter 21 has also been noticed by Rapaczinski, Andrzej (Nature and Politics: Liberalism in the Philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 126–76).Google Scholar I cannot accept, however, many of the details of his account.
45 The most substantial difference is that, for Locke, free rational activity is characterized relative to what he takes to be its given end – the agent's own happiness. For Kant, any principle of the will grounded in this end cannot be regarded as a practical law, and any action determined by it will be counted heteronomous.
46 If, indeed, Locke ever did. I claim only that the view I have mentioned is implict in Locke's revision of Chapter 21, not that he actually held the view.
47 Certainly the dominant view in British ethics of the first half of the eighteenth century was that obligation was internal, and even when it was not directly tied to a self-imposed constraint of a rationally autonomous agent, there is sometimes an indirect connection made to the idea of free rational agency. Thus John Clarke: “the only sort of ties or obligations the mind of a free agent can be under, [are] the considerations of happiness or misery” (in An Examination of What Has Been Advanced Relating to Moral Obligation in a Late Pamphlet, Entitled, A Defence of the Answer to the Remarks Upon Dr. Clarke's Exposition of the Church Catechism (London, 1730), p. 23). The “Dr. Clarke” of the title is Samuel Clarke. John Clarke was the Master of the Public Grammar School in Hull and a fairly important contributor to early eighteenth-century British moral philosophy.
48 This will seem surprising to those whose exposure to Cudworth is only through the passages in Raphael, or in Selby-Bigge, (British Moralists, 2 vols. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1964)).Google Scholar
49 The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), vol. i, p. 575.
50 ibid., p. 569.
51 This comes from what Rand calls Shaftesbury's “Philosophical Regimen,” philosophical notebooks that Shaftesbury maintained from 1698 to 1712. (Benjamin, Rand, ed., The Life, Unpublished Letters, and Philosophical Regimen of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1900), p. 92.Google Scholar) Hereinafter Life of Shaftesbury. Cf. also p. 30, and Characteristics, i.80, 199, 243.
52 Thus:
Whatsoever therefore is done which happens to be advantageous to the species through an affection merely towards self-good, does not imply any more goodness in the creature than as the affection itself is good. Let him, in any particular, act ever so well, if at the bottom it be that selfish affection alone which moves him, he is in himself still vicious. Nor can any creature be considered otherwise when the passion towards self-good, though ever so moderate, is his real motive in the doing that to which a natural affection for his kind ought by right to have inclined him.
53 Characteristics, i. 249. Certainly he was so regarded by Hutcheson and Butler. See Hutcheson, , Illustrations on the Moral Sense (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 174CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Butler, , Preface to the Sermons, [26], in The Works of Bishop Butler, ed. Bernard, J.H., vol. i (London: Macmillan, 1900), p. 11Google Scholar[also in Butler, , Sermons, ed. Darwall, S. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983), p. 17Google Scholar].
54 Characteristics, i.246.
55 Butler should be understood here as referring to virtuous pursuits in general, and not necessarily on particular occasions. This would also have been Shaftesbury's view. See Joseph Butler, Sermon XI.20, in Works, p. 151. [Sermons, p. 56].
56 Select Sermons of Dr. Whichcote (London: 1698). Benjamin Whichcote was a very influential member of the Cambridge Platonists.
57 This is what Kant, calls the “fact of reason” in The Critique of Practical Reason, ed. Beck, L.W. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1985), pp. 30, 43, 47.Google Scholar
58 Characteristics, i.253. See also i.251 and i.256–57.
59 ibid., i.256.
60 In this way, Kant's view recalls the natural law tradition's claim that obligation depends on law. However, according to him, the relevant law is one that a free rational being legislates for himself.
61 Characteristics, ii.272.
62 See note 51.
63 Life of Shaftesbury, p. 174.
64 ibid., p. 114. This passage actually occurs in the context of some personal reflections, but the general point is one Shaftesbury frequently makes.
65 Characteristics, i.192.
66 I refer here, of course, to Thomas Nagel's use of this notion. See, e.g., The View From Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
67 He needs a more objective standpoint than his own present standpoint, which may simply be in the grip of his desires, to grasp their nature, causes, and objects. However, the standpoint of rational choice for Shaftesbury is still the individual's own standpoint, albeit as existing through time, and as informed by an objective grasp of nature and his place in it; it is not the standpoint of one person among others, or the standpoint of the universe as a whole.
68 “Every reasoning or reflecting creature is by his nature forced to endure the review of his own mind and actions,” Characteristics, i.305. This passage suggests that objectification is entirely involuntary for rational agents, but Shaftesbury's whole point is that often taking a more objective standpoint is something the agent voluntarily does. Cf. “One would think there was nothing easier for us than to know our own minds, and understand what our main scope was …” (Characteristics, i. 113).
69 ibid., i.201.
70 ibid., i.218.
71 Life of Shaftesbury, p. 166.
72 Characteristics, i. 112.
73 For a measure of Epictetus's influence on Shaftesbury, compare the following from the Discourses: “For, just as Socrates used to tell us not to live a life unsubjected to examination, so we ought not to accept a sense-impression unsubjected to examination, but should say, ‘Wait, allow me to see who you are and whence you come’ …” (Epictetus, , The Discourses as Reported by Arrian, trans. Oldfather, W. A., v. ii (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 85.Google Scholar) Cf. also Epictetus's advice to “talk to yourself” (ii. 97) and to “become your own pupil and your own teacher” (ii. 349). And Shaftesbury: “By virtue of this soliloquy he becomes two distinct persons. He is pupil and preceptor” (Characteristics, i. 105–6). See Uehlein, Frederich A., Kosmos und Subjectivität (Freiburg/Munchen: Verlag Karl Alber, 1976)Google Scholar for a helpful discussion of Epictetus and Shaftesbury.
74 Characteristics, i. 123.
75 Life of Shaftesbury, p. 102; see also p. 270.
76 Characteristics, i. 112.
77 Life of Shaftesbury, p. 169; see also p. 171 (“the principal and commanding part”) and Characteristics, i. 122–23.