EJPAP_2010_2_II cavell

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PRAGMATISM AND AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY COPYRIGHT 2009 ASSOCIAZIONE PRAGMA

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Jeremy Millington

Man as the Measure of All Things:Thoughts on Moral Perfection, Finitude, and Metaethics

Abstract. What is the purpose of metaethics in relation to ethical theory and ethical prac-tice in contemporary philosophical practice? Metaethics is preoccupied with (at least) three particularly fundamental concepts: (1) moral properties, (2) systematization (in Moores sense, but also in the sense of law), and (3) the finitethis latter concept may only be evident incidentally but is fatally neglected. What is needed for a rounder phi-losophical picture is an account of three complementary concepts: (1) moral character, (2) the spirit of law, and (3) the infinite. Streams of thought are emerging from neglected tra-ditions, particularly those of pragmatism and early American transcendentalism, that offer a means for reconciling these two sides. This paper brings together elements of these tra-ditions in a sort of initiatory conversation, one that takes seriously the need for an inte-grated conceptual framework. This process of reconciliation allows for a liberal narrative that begins with Protagoras notion of man as the measure of all things and ends with a quasi-Cavellian notion of moral perfection.

W.H. Auden stated that the only sensible procedure for a critic is to keep silent about works which he believes to be bad, while at the same time vigorously campaigning for those which he believes to be good, especially if they are being neglected or underestimated by the public.1

The metaethical field, in particular, can feel something like this. Its original purpose, so far as I can tell, was to produce a systematic understanding of what goes on in ethical theory such that ethics might produce fruit. I have in mind here something like G.E. Moores science of ethics found in the Principia Ethica: the place a number of contempo-rary ethical readers begin.

Following a similar metacritical theme, he goes on to remark that the way to educate a man about his poor eating habits is not to tell him his diet is poor, but to pro-vide him with a healthier alternative. Such metacritical advice moves against the grain of some contemporary philosophic practice, which seems to revolve around philosophic meals starting to grow rot.

2

I am sympathetic to Audens critical methodology, but there is a certain professional re-sponsibility that demands addressing current trends in ethical debate (i.e. the metaethical

Perhaps, however, this is already claiming too much for me-taethics as it now stands; perhaps its goal is more distantly connected to ethical practice and moral issues. But should such a distancing between practice, theory, and meta-theory cause concern? On the one hand, the narrowness of metaethical work aims to produce a genuine philosophic understanding without conflating its subject or method with that of ethical theory and practice. On the other hand, whether or not we have theories to justify or illumi-nate such practices, they carry on nonetheless. That is, the exercise of moral and ethical practice imposes itself upon life, in the way that hunger does. Has metaethics fed our mor-al-theoretical hunger?

1 W.H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays, New York: Vintage (1989), p. 10. 2 G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications (2004).

JEREMY MILLINGTON MAN AS THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS

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debate), as well as their genealogy. I am inclined at once to participate in this exchange of criticism encompassed by the metaethical narrative and to abandon it altogether for alterna-tive pictures. Given this tension, I propose a sort of conversation that brings into the fold some notions borrowed from the debate in metaethics along with those outside itsome contemporary and some classical, some philosophic and some poetic.

Admittedly, such a conversation will feel foreign to the analytic-argumentative styles found in (at least) some metaethical debate. It will have its own inherent limitations, as well: a certain informality and a long line of contingent propositions, in particular. Howev-er, I hope such a strategy will provide a framework for identifying some weak genes in the metaethical lineage, while simultaneously offering a more diverse, and thus a healthier, partner for the moral theorizing.

The structure of the discussion will follow these very broad lines, starting with Protago-ras notion of man as the measure of all things: If man is the measure of all things, we must consider what man is. Amongst other things, man is flux in a finite world, which means that he3

A Foot.

changes as a measuring stick (evolves, if you like). If man is the measure of all things, including moral questions, which picture can we use to orient ourselves? One intuition is that developing a moral practice in light of mans shifting horizon demands a similar flex-ibility, one that adapts. What are the conditions and criteria for adjusting practice then? My suggestion is that moral perfection, which is what adjustments to practice seek to accom-modate, comes from exemplary figures, to the degree to which such figures embody an ideal, fixed standard without transcending so far beyond the reality of a finite, evolving ex-istence as to alienate man from himself. Moral perfection bears what may be called a family resemblance to Cavells notion of moral perfectionism, which itself grows out of an Emer-sonian picturean unattained but attainable self. Aristotle is, likewise, perhaps a family member a couple steps removed, but certainly part of the lineage. But, like all family re-semblances, there are important differences.

At least initially, this line of thought bears only a loose connection to the metaethical debate. The fundamental difference here is between the question of moral properties, which dominates metaethics in many ways, and that of moral character. The two relate in impor-tant ways: neglecting one at the expense of the other would diminish the project as a whole and on either side of the divide.

If it is true, as Protagoras seems to have claimed, that man is the measure of all things, we might ask, how does one use such a measuring tool? All measurements depend upon a relation, a stretch of space from beginning to end, from lowest to highest, and from one to another. As we survey man as measure, we consider all things, but we also consider the measuring stick itself. What sort of measuring stick is man? As a ruler, it may be useful to consider the history of the instrumenta Ruleras a sort of analogous narrative. It is in-structive, however mythical, to consider the notion of a foot, in particular, as the most basic measuring tool. The foot is that point at which the human makes firm contact with the world. We might even mythologize such a development further along evolutionary lines, by which the rise of bipedal man eliminated the unity (or conflict?) between hand and foot,

3 I will move away from gender specific pronouns, though, for the moment, I would like to preserve some-

thing of the poetic, alliterative quality in the phrasing as a gesture toward the papers orientation.


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leaving only the latter as the surest useful measure of earthly space. The distance from be-ginning to end thus becomes the distance from heel to toe. As a standard of measurement, its objectivity fluctuates in accordance with that of the rulerthe imperial footprint, as one legend suggests. Such a scale may strike us as irrational elitism, but its principle remains: man, as an embodied measure, reveals no consistent, uniformly objective standardhe has many sized feet.

If man embodies no easy, fixed and reliable rule by which to measure all things, to measure reality, reality will appear similarly dynamic. Locke states, The obvious portions of Extension, that affect our Senses, carry with them into the Mind the Idea of Finite.4

4 John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, New York: Oxford UP (2008), p. 126.

The finite is a concept easily grasped and seen in the world, as it dominates our experience. It is also perhaps unsurprising that we should seek to tame and order such a world: conceptually, scientifically, politically, militaristically, philosophically, and so forth. The world becomes an ultimately threatening place to inhabit. Its beauty and mystery are admirable and awe-inspiring but poised for consumption, for remission into the individualbeauty leaves the world and retreats into the eye of the beholder. The world must be possessed and dominated in some way. The move towards concreteness becomes literally and figuratively realthe garden of Eden is paved over. If we cannot provide some fixed standard, perhaps reality and nature can do the job for us (e.g. the laws of nature, via physics, Romanticism, Tho-reau). We can then graft ourselves onto this permanencelive lives free of change, free of risk, free of mystery.

So many projects rest upon this tension between the fixed and the unfixed (objectivity and subjectivity, transcendence and immanence, infinitude and finitude). The tension be-tween the two is a major thread of Hegels unfolding of the concept of Spirit, as well as Kants understanding of God, reason and faith. Reconciling such tensions is certainly a phi-losophical project, if not a moral and religious one, too.

There is more to be explored in man as the measure of all things, room to inject some further qualifications. What could this look like? If we survey the great historical immensi-ty that constitutes man, we come away with a frameless picture: contradictory, confusing, and complex in a variety of ways. It resembles something like a monumental Rothko paint-ing with its foggy fields of color. The closer I stand to such a picture, the more in touch I am with its physical presence, its rich texture, its concrete reality. A stage of determinable but indeterminate action presents itself. Paradoxically, the closer I get, the more I distance myself from its boundaries, from the possibility of measurement, of a certain kind of under-standing. Man, or as he should be called (in line with the maxim as originally written), hu-manity, presents a similar puzzleof distance and measurement, of subjectivity and fini-tude. Humanitys history demonstrates both tremendous destructive and violent possibili-ties and acts of exceptional love and empathy, as well as complex moments that seem to question such a distinction altogether. If we are to measure all thingshumanity in-cludedby such a standard, what picture of humanity are we to work with? It would seem nave at best and dangerous at worst to exclude some picture or another, however extreme. I am suggesting, ultimately, one take into account both the foot of the king and the sole of the people.


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Some Questions of Finitude

Before considering how moral questions relate to finite, fluctuating existence, it will be of some use to consider the notion of finitude more generally. What does it mean to say that human beings and the world they occupy is a finite one? Is it a finite world? And if it is, what role does infinity play, if any?

Zenos dichotomy paradox describes a story along the following lines according to Aristotles account. Imagine that a hundred yards away, there is a bus you must catch. Be-ing a fast runner, you catch the bus just in time. It seems clear enough that in the act of catching the bus, you passed a halfway point between the starting point and the bus. Be-tween that halfway point and your starting position, we can imagine another halfway pointa quarter of the full distance. Between the quarter distance and your start point lies another halfway point. If we carry this process out, halving each half, there seems to be a potentially infinite number of halfway points between your starting position and the bus. This suggests that you crossed an infinite distance in order to reach the bus since the num-ber of half way points can be measured indefinitely. How can one cross an infinite amount of measurable space? One can no more count to infinity than traverse such a distance. To count, to measure, is to posit a finitude.

There are a variety of solutions and conclusions one can draw from this illustration. Ze-no suggests that motion is an illusionwe never actually move anywhere or traverse any distance. Conversely, the illustration might suggest that the world, the material world at least, is not an ideal realm, in the way that numbers are. So long as the world is measurable, it is finite. The ideal, the perfect, the infinite, belongs to another realm.

Locke covers similar territory in contrasting a positive versus a negative idea of the infinite:

We can, I think, have no positive Idea of any Space or Duration, which is not made up of, and commensurate to repeated Numbers of Feet or Yards, or Days and Years. And therefore, since an Idea of infinite Space or Duration must needs be made up of infinite Parts, it can have no other Infinity, than that of Number capable of still farther Addition; but not an actual positive Idea of a Number infinite. For, I think, it is evident, that the Ad-dition of finite things together can never otherwise produce the Idea infinite.5

5 Locke, op. cit., pp. 129-130.

. Locke thus demonstrates the discrepancy between extensions of actual infinite dura-

tion and those merely moving toward it, the latter being only a negative idea of infinity. Returning to the bus illustration, imagine measuring the distance covered in order to

compare your speed to others. The distance measures out to a number of stick lengths12.5 sticks. Does 12.5 describe the distance ideally, or positively in the Lockean sense? If it were exactly 12.5 sticks, then the same problem as before emerges. Within 12.5, there are an infinite number of halves, which must be measured.

The numbers that such measurements rely upon are descriptive of the distance but not perfectly equivalent. Zenos paradox points to a discrepancy between those numbers and the physical reality to which they point. Numbers, used in this way, work as a sort of theo-retical model, an approximation. Does this cease to make them useful? Measuring the dis-tance at 12.5 sticks allows for comparisons, such as the amount of time it takes one to run 12.5 sticks under various conditions. The numerical values provide a certain framework for understanding. They are approximations of a physical reality.


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William James made an analogous observation early in his development of pragmatism. He stated that as the sciences have developed farther, the notion has gained ground that most, perhaps all, of our laws are only approximations.6

To measure is to fall short, for there is always a higher number. A challenge of ethical theory, as such, is to account for the discrepancy between the finite and the infinite. Stanley Cavell describes this discrepancy, between the world of sense and the intelligible world, as a disappointment with the world.

Furthermore, we might say that some approximations are better than others.

Numbers, like other theoretical tools, are useful in a sort of reverse sense as well. Rather than merely corresponding descriptively to some physical phenomenon, they help reveal possibilities (e.g. practical, technological, etc.). In sports, athletes and coaches, use mea-surements to assess the success of training programs. By measuring the time it takes a play-er to run some particular distance down to a tenth of a second, a coach will know if that player is capable of racing past the opposition.

However, there is a point at which the exactness of distinctions ceases to have value. It is possible to measure a sprint down to the trillionth of a second. But in the context of a game, it is in the tenths of a second that significant differences occur. This is not an inhe-rent feature of sprint times. It is contingent upon the structure of the game and the ways in which players play it. It could be otherwise, depending on the game.

Physics provides a number of examples in which such long and incomprehensible mea-surements do matter. They mark the difference between life on Earth and no Earth at all. The Earth must be a particular distance from the sun and be of a particular mass in relation to the sun, such that the atmosphere will produce and hold oxygen and gravity will be not too strong or too weak. It must be a sufficiently safe distance from other planets. It must have a makeup of particular atmospheric gases and surface rock. All of these measure-ments, some argue, come down to degrees of incredible precision and interconnection.

7 In cases of law, or ultimate perfection,8

Methods for Morals and Objectivity

the stan-dard becomes incommensurable. Embracing approximations seems equally unsatisfying, however. So either the standardthe lawtranscends too far beyond the reality of finite being or it remains finite and ephemeral. The task becomes the discovery of useful measur-ing tools and an appropriate standard of perfection that reconciles the two in some sensible fashion.

The difference between verse and prose is self-evident, but it is a sheer waste of time to look for a definition of the difference between poetry and prose9

In the above quotation, I take Auden to be expressing what G.E. Moore expresses in the debate over the definability of good. Moore argues that good is not definable, though we can know what it is.

.

10

6 William James, Pragmatism and Other Means, Ed. Giles B. Gunn, New York: Penguin (2000), p. 29. 7 Stanley Cavell, Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral Life, Cambridge, MA:

Belknap of Harvard UP (2004), pp. 1-2. 8 Ibid., p. 3. 9 Auden, op. cit., p. 23. 10 See Andrew Fisher and Simon Kirchin, Arguing about Metaethics, Oxon: Routledge (2006).

The mistake that philosophers have made up to the time of his writ-ing, Moore says, is that they mistake good for some other, natural property, like pleasure. If systematic, philosophical ethics stands any chance, pleasure must be allowed to be plea-sure, and good good. In response, critics ask, how do we know that the words we use dis-


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tinctly for good and pleasure are not actually referring to the same thing, be it natural or non-natural? How do we determine the difference without either assuming it or denying it from the beginning?

Moores essay sparked a series of papers concerned with moral properties and definabil-ity. Consequently, some of the debate in metaethical theory focuses on the moral realm as a sort of quasi-naturalized science (or fully naturalized in some cases)11, in which the philo-sopher qua scientist looks for moral properties, either literally in the physical world or as non-natural properties, floating about the metaphysical realm waiting for minds to appre-hend them.12 Essentially two sides emerge from this debate, one motivated by attempts to show that morality is fixed (imposed from without), the other motivated by attempts to show that morality is relative, the product of preference or whim (created from within)and never the twain shall meet13

Which things are genuinely subjective and which things are genuinely objective is diffi-cult to parse out, and often at the heart of the ethical and metaethical debate: are moral properties objective or subjective, universal, absolute or relative? Perhaps this is not an ei-ther/or question, though. An illustration about flowers may demonstrate some of the com-

. The first side in the moral properties debate tries to proclaim objectivity and the latter

subjectivity. These terms carry a lot of baggage. They have (at least) two possible mean-ings. In the first sense, objectivity and subjectivity are contrasted in terms of truth. Some-thing is true objectively if it is true independent of human thought and experience. It is ob-jectively true, for example, that General Sherman, a giant sequoia in Californias Sequoia National Park, is the largest tree in the world. In contrast, something is subjective if it is contingent upon a subject. The experience of color is thought to be subjective (though the subjective experience itself can then be objectified; the experience is the object in that case, not the actual color). Subjectivity may be called relative in that the correct answer to a question is thought to be relative to individual subjects; correspondingly, objectivity may be called universal. So if you want to prepare the best meal for a world leader (president, prime minister, etc.), there is no flatly universal, best meal; the best meal is relative to the individual leader.

The question of what is true independent of human thought and experience presents some complications. Contingency commonly allies itself with subjectivity. If something is thought to be dependent on certain conditions, then it is not universal in an absolute sense. In moral questions, such an alliance poses a great deal of confusion. Because something could be different says nothing about whether or not it is. Objectivity, in the sense just out-lined, need not necessarily feel threatened by contingency.

The second sense in which objectivity and subjectivity occur is closely related though perhaps more slippery. If something is objective in this sense, it has a real, material pres-encesomething that is potentially accessible to independent subjects under certain pre-conditions (e.g. functioning sensory organs). Moral realists typically fall into the category of moral objectivists, though the manner in which moral properties exist objectively varies from one realist to the next. Moore is a realist, and thus objective about moral properties, though not in the material sense. Others adopt a quasi-realist stance, though this ultimately proves to fall flat on the real issues at stake.

11 See John R. Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind, Cambridge, MA: MIT (1994). 12 See Dallas Willard, Naturalisms Incapacity to Capture the Good Will, The Nature of Nature: An Inter-

disciplinary Conference on the Role of Naturalism in Science, Baylor University, Waco, TX (April 2000). 13 There are nuances to these positions that bear genuine significance but are, in the end, gradients on the

same spectrum. See Fisher and Kirchin (2008).


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plexities involved, while hopefully unloading some of the baggage that comes with specifi-cally moral questions.

How much is a lot? If I need a lot of flowers, is it clear how many flowers I am look-ing for? Is a lot objective or subjective? Imagine a series of circumstances in which you request a lot of flowers. In the first case, you are planning a wedding with a thousand guests. The ceremony will take place in a monumental and sparsely decorated space. In the second case, you made some unfortunate comment that insulted a dear friend, and you would like to make amends. In the third and final case, you are a botanist looking to dis-cover some particular feature that distinguishes the Mexican poppy flower from the Cali-fornia poppy flower. What counts as a lot? Is it the same in each case? The first case seems to demand more than second case clearly enough. Though, we can imagine more specific circumstances that could threaten that assumption, too. If the offended friend was a figure of some tremendous sensitivity and, furthermore, particularly immune to gestures of apology that demand little investment of time and money, then only the most extravagant effort would truly make amends. In conjunction, if the bride and groom in the first scenario lived lives of urban isolation, having made few if any trips to the florally rich countryside, a lot might mean something different. Does this mean that just any amount meets the standard for a lot? Or that a lot is not objective in some way? Yes and no. In terms of a lot counting as objective in some strict, material sense, that seems to have little promise: what counts as a lot is relative to particular situations. Similarly, it is contingent upon spe-cific details.

Does contingency rule out objectivity in the softer sense? In each of these scenarios, there is a sense in which a lot is contingent upon some greater purpose and set of details. Not every detail matters but some do, which must be worked out in individual cases. For the botanist, as for the wedding planner and offending friend, there will be particular amounts of flowers that will not sufficiently qualify as a lot. One will not be enough and two likely will not suffice either. If we try to reduce the amount that counts as a lot to some rigid material quantity (i.e. a thousand), we lose the point. For the botanist, one flower will not suffice, but it is not clear that fifty or fifty-one will generate much discre-pancy (both are closer to a lot than one). Will six, fifteen, or twenty-seven count? We can recognize the difference in extremes possibly, but measuring the precise moment where a quantity changes to a lot is difficult to pin down without some further set of qualifica-tions.

Objectivity seems to be threatened here. But imagine a further situation. What if I show the botanist the case of the offending friend and the wedding planner and say: Look, a lot of different quantities can count as a lot, so any amount I give you could count as a lot. Take these three flowers and be on your way. The botanist may walk away perplexed and offended, possibly eliciting another complicated situation demanding the assessment of a lota lot of explaining and apologizing. In the given situation, a lot of flowers meant something quite specific and certainly concrete: not just any number would do.

When thinking about moral objectivity and subjectivity, I suggest we follow similar lines, a line of thought that, not coincidently, also appears in Emerson. He states:

There is a man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world,as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances14

14 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays, New York: Penguin (2003), p. 180.

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This passage follows another passage in which Emerson states that good and bad are

but names very readily transferable to that or this15. On the surface, such a proclamation may seem to suggest that good and bad are not objective in either sense outlined. Good and bad fluidly and arbitrarily fix and unfasten themselves. However, comparing these two passages together with a later one clarifies his position in line with a softer objectivity. He states: Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every mo-ment16. Character manifests good and bad, it places it in the world. So what counts as mor-al cannot rigidly or blindly be reduced to some material action or property. Hume, a para-gon of the empiricist model, provides valuable insight here. In moral matters, he states: The external performance has no merit. We must look within to find the moral quality. This we cannot do directly; and therefore fix our attention on actions, as on external signs. But these actions are still considered as signs17

Questions of Perfection

. One of the gaps in Moores theory, and subsequent papers responding both positively

and critically to his position, is the ability to generate some method for identifying moral properties. Moore suggests bringing good before the mind. An admirable suggestion, I think, but limited in its ability to generate the sort of systematic understanding of ethical practice he envisioned. And presumably the goal of this would be to aid theories of ethical practice so that decisions warranting ethical deliberation could be subject to some kind of test: does this object, act, thing, etc., possess the property of goodness, thus conferring mor-al worth? If the metaethical debate rests on the identification of moral propertiestheir real, emotive, natural or non-natural existencebut fails to generate a method for identifi-cation, perhaps alternative strategies offer something more substantive. It is, after all, not the cataloging of specific quantities of flowers that constitute a lot in various cases that tells me how much a lot will be in future cases.

Though a work of literature can be read in a number of ways, this number is finite and can be arranged in a hierarchical order; some readings are obviously truer than others, some doubtful, some obviously false, and some, like reading a novel backwards, ab-surd18

It will help to recount the course of the discussion thus far to see how the pieces fit to-gether. First, we take the premise that human beings are the measure of all things, which means that ethical questions ought to be considered in light of what humans are (and how they change). Second, humans are, amongst other things, finite beings in a finite world, which means they are not a fixed, complete thing. A shortcoming of much metaethical de-bate stems from its emphasis upon objectivity and subjectivity in terms of moral properties. Such an emphasis on moral properties leaves out the human element, failing to generate methods that inform practice. Part of that failure, I contend, arises from neglecting how a finite being operates in relation to ideals, which are of a different, perfect nature. Rather

.

15 Ibid., p. 179. 16 Ibid., p. 184. 17 This point was brought to my attention in Willards Naturalisms Incapacity to Capture the Good Will

(see note 12 above). David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, Sioux Falls, SD: NuVision Publications (2008), p. 341.

18 Auden, op. cit., p. 4.


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than searching for moral properties outside human being (in the infinite), or dismissing them altogether (reducing them to the finite), perhaps we can look for models that reconcile the two. I further suggest that such a model is better conceived in terms of character rather than properties: exemplars of moral character can generate a practice that accommodates fluctuations in experience and human being as they take on evolving shapes.

In Cities of Words, Cavell explores the idea of moral perfectionism, tracing its appear-ance and evolution through Emerson, Plato, and American film, amongst other strange bed-fellows. The idea of moral perfectionism, he claims, begins with a sense of disappointment about the world, a difference between the world I converse with and the world I think, in Emersons words19. He then poses the following question: But if the world is disappointing and the world is malleable and hence we fell ourselves called upon for change, where does change begin, with the individual (with myself) or with the collection of those who make up my (social, political) world?20

I said of moral perfectionism that the issues it assesses are typically not front-page news, not, for example, issues like abortion, euthanasia, capital punishments, whistle-blowing, plagiarism, informing, bribery, greed, scapegoat, torture, treason, rape, spousal abuse, child neglect, genital mutilation, and so on. But not every fateful moral choice, every judgment of good and bad or right and wrong, is a matter for public debate.

This represents a subtle shift toward questions of moral character and away from questions of moral properties. I have suggested that questions of moral properties are embedded in a moral discourse that emphasizes a sort of quasi-scientific or empirical search for properties in particular actions and objects, while the for-mer demands an acknowledgement of what generates their appearance in actions and ob-jects. Interestingly, the moral-property discourse develops out of a practice tangentially connected to discourse, while the latter, as Cavell notes, makes discourse the cornerstone. When Cavell begins to discuss The Philadelphia Story (Cukor 1939), he observes:

21

Cavell claims that the Kantian project attempts to manage this divide between a sen-suous world (the finite, the imminent), in which we are bound, and the intelligible world (the infinite, the transcendent), in which we are free

His suggestion is that such issues become moral issues as they develop out of the lives

of people. The public/private divide has an obvious correlate in the sense of media coverage (in the context of the film), but it also conceptually corresponds with a divide between the ideal world and one that is manifest in the finite world: what gets worked out internally, within the realm of character, comes out into the world embodied and measured. This is not to say that the actions that spring forth out of character, like abortion, euthanasia, etc., do not come to possess either objective or subjective moral properties in the end, but such questions are secondary to the primary question of what sort of person one wishes to be, that one is capable of being.

22

Earlier in the book, Cavell suggests that Emersonian perfectionism specifically sets it-self against any idea of ultimate perfection.

. The failure of Kant, according to Ca-vell, is to make the intelligible world an overbearing task master that asks me to abandon or ignore the sensuous world, which he identifies with inclination. It creates a standard of ac-tion beyond what the measured, finite self is capable of achieving.

23

19 Cavell (2004), p. 18. 20 Ibid., p. 3. 21 Ibid., p. 38. 22 Ibid., p. 32. 23 Ibid., p. 3.

He goes on to state further, To live a moral


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life should not require that we become Socrateses or Buddhas or Christs, all but unprovok-able24

Bridging the divide between Kants position and Cavells, Stephen Mulhall points to a profoundly important development in the transcendent conception of God after Kant. In putting God in his placethat is, removed from the finite worlda genuine frame of reference for human character is eliminated

. This is itself too harsh, however. It denies each of these figures a dynamic realitya humanityand signals a departure too far in the opposite direction. He is right to absolve us of the demand for some ultimate perfection, but only with certain qualifications not of-fered in his reading. If Kants position is too heavily rooted in the external, the public, and what the transcendent (the infinite) demands, Cavells position is perhaps overly rooted in the internal, the private, and what the subjective (the individual, the finite) demands.

25. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard inherit the conse-quences of this divide. Mulhall points out, What is at stake is a matter of orientation, of the acknowledgement or denial of a frame of reference or horizon of significance capable of informing the course of a human life26

Christ is the presentation of the infinite in the finite; he is not a finite messenger or natural proxy for an essentially transcendent Being, but rather transcendence incarnate. The fact of his existence tells us that Gods transcendence is such that it is not only able but will-ingeven that it deeply desiresfully to inhabit finitude. And this utterly changes our sense of what transcendence (hence finitude, and hence moral existence) might be

. Following the lead of Kant, and perhaps more significantly, Hegel, we might take the

figure of Christ as an exemplar for the concept of ethical character established thus far, conceptually and practically. I leave open the possibility of alternative exemplars of a simi-lar character, however. The example of Christ, as such, will be just that, an example.

Picking up this thread, Mulhall draws us back to a reconciled image of Christ that makes moral perfection not an impossibly abstract, transcendent law, either imposed upon humanity or far removed from it, but a means for correcting and developing moral charac-ter. He states:

27

One of the problems of metaethics I belabored early in this paper is its failure to gener-ate reasonable guidelines for ethical practice, or even an understanding of it. In one of the prominent threads in metaethics, Richard T. Garner outlines J.L. Mackies position in in-itiating his own conversation about ethics, [Mackie] described a second order moral view as a view about the status of moral values and the nature of moral valuing, about where and how they fit into the world (my emphasis)

. What this further suggests is that the finite nature of Christ is essential to making the re-

ality of his character attainable for human being.

28

24 Ibid., p. 26. 25 Stephen Mulhall, The Presentation of the Infinite in the Finite: The Place of God in Post-Kantian Philosophy, The Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy, Eds. Brian Leiter and Michael Rosen. Oxford:

Oxford UP (2007), p. 504. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid., p. 497. 28 Richard T. Garner, On the genuine queerness of moral properties and facts, Arguing About Metaethics,

Eds. Andrew Fisher and Simon Kirchin, Oxon: Routledge (2006), p. 97.

. The orientation with which Garner starts his paper already frames the moral picture in favor of a view that makes the grounding of moral questions dependent upon the discovery of moral properties in the world. The philo-sophic dialogue then proceeds along somewhat expected lines in which some fail to find moral values (or properties) while others do. The disconnect between this particular philo-


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sophic horizon and ethical practice may seem surprising at first, but it is less so in light of the prescribed narrative, which, we might say, focuses on falling apples instead of gravity.

The model of Christ is one I think needs some recovering, such that we are no longer focused just on the laws of gravity or the apples it fells. We are inclined to imagine, as we do with most saintly figuresthe Socrateses, Buddhas, and Christsthat their achievement says nothing as to what is possible for human beings generally.

Answerable Questions

It might be of some use to consider what it is that moral questions ask of us, and how we might go about answering the call of morality. That is, more generally, what sort of questions are genuinely answerable? Some questions in mathematics, for example, seem solvable under certain conditions that we can intelligibly articulate. Some other questions seem solvable or answerable though perhaps with less obvious rigor. This range of ques-tions may vary from more complicated math problems to, say, solving a crime, like who stole the bakers truck? The methods for solving both have been developed through partic-ular social and cultural histories. These methods for answering questions develop out of a tradition and a practice. How do these practices develop? What faculties do we make use of in accommodating alterations in our methods? Such changes are, firstly, motivated by the goal in question (e.g. to solve the equation or crime). If a practice or method fails to gener-ate the actual culprit of a crime or at least a line-up of likely suspects, we adjust the method. Such an adjustment requires an understanding of what good answers look like and that some grounds are available for re-orienting our method to produce such answers. If we de-ny the ability to sense the ground, there is no use speculating about its location or features. Of course, it does not seem clear that one can deny such an ability without appealing to one. What we come to discover in, say, science is indeed of a different character in some impor-tant way from what we might come across in moral deliberation. That we are using funda-mentally different mental faculties in science and ethical question answering is not clear: reason, rationality, experience, memory, intuition, observation, thought, etc.

The same reasons offered for discounting the conditions for moral knowledge are equal-ly incriminating toward empirical-sense experience. That questions of science have become answerable in productive ways says nothing of the relatively recent development of particu-lar practices, and even less of the degree to which such knowledge generating systems are limited and likely subject to substantial future correction. Our approximations will change and, preferably, improve. Small gains, which current scientific practices achieve, will only come to seem smaller and more limited, or partial, as the practice grows and adjusts in ac-cordance with the questions it fails to answer, which are infinitely more abundant than the range of questions seemingly answered.

Moral questions proceed along somewhat analogous lines, I believe. The development of character is something that demands a perpetual process of education from one genera-tion to the next. Or, as Cavell notes in Pursuits of Happiness, from one individual to the next29

29 Stanley Cavell, Pursuits of Happiness: the Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage, Cambridge, MA: Harvard

UP (2003).

. We are all in need of conversational partners that educate us. Dewey demonstrates something along these lines in terms of the very survival and continuation of a society. All communities and the individuals that constitute them rely upon a set of practices that a


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community (family, state, tribe, church) must share30

Moral practice in the sense outlined here is not some special activity engaged in from time to time, but it is what orients our lives as a whole, even in the moments when we en-gage in activities of a different nature: creative, political, philosophic, or otherwise. Echoing Emerson again, we must see that the virtue or vice emit a breath every mo-ment

. Answering moral questions in terms of specific acts is something like trying to achieve complete scientific knowledge outside of a practice that offers grounds for correcting the practice which generates such knowledge in the first place. A good scientific practice is capable of going about answering any questions within a certain range with a particular set of skills that lead to promising answers. Ethical deliberations and related actions will not make sense divorced from the ability to evaluate methods for answering moral questions.

If you adopt the knowledge of science and its system without understanding how that system workswhy it has developed along the lines it has, the spirit of that systemyou forfeit the ability to identify facts and features of reality in future cases. What I think exem-plary human characters offer us in the development of ethical theory is a grounding for what is possible for guiding practice, as well as a picture of the relation between the world of the infinite, which is indeed free, and that of the finite, which is measurable and bounded. Subsequently, metaethical theory may benefit from a slightly more liberal prag-matic approach. Pragmatic in the sense of identifying the reality of human being and the need to accommodate fluctuations in experience.

31

30 See John Dewey, Democracy and Education: an Introduction to the Philosophy of Education, Charleston,

SC: Forgotten (2009). 31 Emerson, p. 184.

.

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PRAGMATISM AND AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY COPYRIGHT 2009 ASSOCIAZIONE PRAGMA

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Sarin Marchetti

William James on Truth and Invention in Morality

Abstract. In what follows I shall investigate how the notions of truth and invention inform our moral life. William James explored at depth this theme in his seminal essay The Mor-al Philosopher and the Moral Life (MPML). I will claim that the dialectics of the essay cannot be apprehended independently from the understanding of the moral psychology and epistemology James elaborates in his writings on pragmatism and the philosophy of mind. In fact, once framed in the relevant perspective, the essay conveys a very different and more radical position that the one usually acknowledged. In MPML James engages in an inquiry into the nature of moral thought and its ability to meet the difficulties of the moral life it should address. The essay criticizes a certain image of moral reflection by questioning its underlying assumptions about the nature of mindedness and the place of truth in the moral life. I shall thus articulate the discussion of James essay along two di-rections, one methodological and one substantive. They are, respectively, the anti-foundational and anti-theoretical character of moral reflection, and the rethinking of the relationship we have with our interiority that is relevant for ethics as informed by the no-tion of truth.

[t]he moral tragedy of human life comes al-most wholly from the fact that the link is rup-tured which normally should hold between vi-sion of the truth and action, and that this pun-gent sense of effective reality will not attach to certain ideas. The Principles of Psychology vol. II p. 547

I.

In what follows I shall investigate how the notions of truth and invention inform our moral life. In particular, I will show how this idea has been explored by William James in his se-minal essay The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life (MPML), by far his most clear-cut piece of moral philosophy. I will claim that the dialectics of the essay cannot be appre-hended independently from the understanding of the moral psychology and epistemology James elaborates in his writings on pragmatism and the philosophy of mind. In fact, once framed in the relevant perspective, the essay conveys a very different and more radical po-sition that the one usually acknowledged. In MPML James engages in an inquiry into the nature of moral thought and its ability to meet the difficulties of the moral life it should ad-dress. The essay criticizes a certain image of moral reflection by questioning its underlying assumptions about the nature of mindedness and the place of truth in the moral life. I shall thus articulate the discussion of James essay along two directions, one methodological and one substantive. They are, respectively, the anti-foundational and anti-theoretical character of moral reflection, and the rethinking of the relationship we have with our interiority that is relevant for ethics as informed by the notion of truth

Sarin Marchetti William James on Truth and Invention in Mo-rality

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II.

MPML is at the same time the most quoted and yet the most misunderstood of James pa-pers a record it shares with The Will to Believe. My critical target is a received view of James moral philosophy as a piece of utilitarian moral theory. Such a reading is the result of a superficial analysis of the rhetoric of the essay, together with a reductive and unima-ginative understanding of James theory of truth underlying it. It is my ambition to show that, once viewed in the proper light, the dialectic of the essay will reveal its real stakes: namely, an exercise of conceptual criticism of the very image of moral reflection aimed at showing the dangerousness of conceiving ethics in the old-fashioned absolute sense, that is as dogmatically made up in advance in splendid isolation from the human beings inha-biting it. James is neither interested in advancing any theory of morality whatsoever, nor in individuating the principles of human nature on which such an ethics should be erected. His interest is rather that of showing the shape moral reflection should take to meet the difficul-ties of the moral life it should address instead of castling itself behind a moral theory or some metaphysical picture of human beings. Moral reflection, according to James, should have an exhortative character, its point being that of gesturing toward the varieties of ways in which we can be or fail to be touched by situations that prompt our sensibility and un-derstanding to respond ethically. In MPML James explores the various aspects of our moral life, and shows how a deceptive picture of moral psychology and epistemology hinders us from resolving some of its difficulties. Consequently, if moral reflection aspires to have a genuine grasp of the moral life, it should rethink its very credentials and investigate in the first instance what relationship it should entertain with the varieties of moral experiences articulating our moral life.

Placing James considerations in the wider context of his conception of truth and min-dedness will allow us to see the richness of this text as well as to appreciate its anti-foundational inspirations. I will be very selective in my use of James, although these themes pervade his whole philosophy and find their most distinctive voice in his master-piece The Principle of Psychology, which will linger in the background of my investiga-tions. In his writings on pragmatism and the mind James struggles to articulate his insights about the interconnectedness of a refutation of a theoretical as opposed to a practical understanding of our mental lives with a refutation of a picture of truth as copying and re-presentation. These two insights are pivotal for the understanding of James moral philoso-phy as a whole, and the essay under examination in particular, since in it James complains about the narrow understanding of moral reflection as driven by a distorted intellectualistic characterization of our mindedness and worldliness. My claim will be that, if we frame MPML in this broader context, a much richer image of moral thought one very instructive for the contemporary debate will emerge.

III.

James wrote MPML in 1891 as an address to the Yale Philosophical Club. Given the aca-demic setting of the lecture, James interest was that of showing the limits and point of a philosophical account of morality. The aim of the lecture-essay is not in fact the advance-ment of any moral theory, but the investigation into its very possibility. This point has been


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surprisingly overlooked in the critical literature on James. A notable exception is the book by Sergio Franzese on James moral philosophy, in which the author advances a reading of MPML on these lines, that is, as a critical inquiry into the very nature and feasibility of moral reflection. Franzese traces back the deceiving interpretation of the essay to the popu-lar account that Ralph Barton Perry gave of James moral philosophy in his monumental The Thought and Character of William James, in which James protge, by failing to ap-preciate the leitmotiv of the essay, advanced a very biased reading of his mentors moral thought. Franzese argues that a more attentive inquiry will reveal how

[t]he essay of 1891 does not work as an outline of a moral theory because it was certainly not intended to be one. On the contrary, it was intended to show the futility of that tradi-tional philosophical task, which is perhaps why philosophers have intended not to read it too closely[t]he The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life is a critical analysis of the validity of any moral theory, in the terms of its relation to the moral philosopher, rather than presenting another specific moral theory1

According to Franzese, MPML has been variously read as a moral system advancing a theory of goods and values, whereas James was interested in showing the futility of such an approach to moral reflection and its prescriptive pretensions. Franzese proceeds in tracing the roots of James innovative inquiry in the Wundtian school of psychology and its bear-ings for the debate about the axiological crisis that characterized the end of XIX century and invested the discourse about the statute of philosophical accounts of morality. Alterna-tively, here I want to explore at some depth the philosophical motives internal to James thought that prompted such a characterization. Once freed from these misplaced attributions and returned to its proper fieldwork, an opposite picture of moral reflection will be revealed through the lines of the essay. I shall claim that the reading of James moral thought as a defense of utilitarianism commits a categorical mistake, since not only is James very criti-cal of utilitarianism

.

2

1 Franzese 2008: 3. Although I wholeheartedly agree with the above claim by Franzese, our readings of

MPML diverge in one important aspect: while for him the essay has only a negative aspiration namely, that of showing how all foundational projects are doomed to fail I think that it conveys a more positive message. Our disagreement amounts to the reading of the method of the essay. I will come back on this disagreement later in section 6.

2 It is important to notice that James was very critical of the Benthamite version of utilitarianism, while much more sympathetic to John Stuart Mills version, which was more attentive to the qualitative distinction between lower and higher pleasures. James debt to Mill runs deep into his intellectual biography, and is acknowledged in the dedication of his most important work Pragmatism to him.

as regards both its underlying moral psychology (an untenable ato-mistic picture of experiencing and a related narrow conception of consequence), and its te-leological aspirations (the sublimation of utility or pleasure as the only criteria of good-ness), but he is also skeptical about the very possibility of moral theory, be it utilitarian or not. In MPML James is interested in showing if, how, and to what extent our moral life can be pictured and understood by means of moral reflection. For this reason MPML represents a key text for the assessment of James whole moral philosophy: in it we can find the in-structions that will tell us how to read the ethical investigations pervading James writings. A misreading of MPML will thus convey a paltry understanding of the whole of Jamess moral philosophy. A good understanding of James moral philosophy will thus require the proper understanding of the place of MPML in respect to the widespread moral instructions James articulates in his other writings. However, it is not easy to characterize the connec-


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tion between James methodological considerations on the nature of morality as presented in MPML and the moral ideas as they are explored in his other works. As the vast majority of commentators have suggested, the character of James investigation was deeply ethical, so that most of his discussions about the mind, the world and the varieties of encounters be-tween the two were driven by ethical concerns. Even metaphysical discussions were for James au fond urged by moral constraints and permeated by moral interests. His assertion that the very question between monism and pluralism cannot be settled independently from considerations about the importance of the two options for ones moral life is well known. It is thus difficult to tell the difference between MPML, widely acknowledged as either his only or his clearest work in moral philosophy, and the widespread references to morality pervading his other writings3

A fistful of authors.

4

3 As an aside, whose full articulation would require much more investigation than I can pursue in the space of

this essay, I would like to remark that the matter is even more complicated, given the presence of an interesting entanglement internal to James own rhetoric about the nature of morality between the relationship of moral reflec-tion with the moral life it should address and the relationship of MPML with the moral investigations pervading his other writings. That is, James discourse in MPML about the nature of moral thought in respect to the moral life fosters the very same questionings about the place of this essay in the corpus of his writings. The very same intellectualistic understanding of the connection between moral reflection and the moral life affects also the under-standing of the connection between MPML and the moral instructions suffused in his other works. James was deeply upset about the poor response to his lecture essay, and the reason for this lies in his readers and listen-ers misunderstanding of both these entanglements. He lamented such a misreading with the very same force with which he complained about the misunderstandings of his conception of truth as he portrays it in his Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth. I suspect that, in his replies to these latter misunderstandings, James tried to give some instructions to remedy also the former misreading, and this is precisely because in order to appreciate the argu-ments advanced in MPML what is needed is a correct grasp of the picture of truth built into it. This shows, at least, how systematic and precise James reflection was, and how misled are those detractors who portray his philosophy as lacking of rigor in his thinking. The difficulty of appreciating James deep philosophical sensibility and preci-sion is due to its contrast with the elusiveness of the material worked on. The sharp mind and arguments of James look watered down by the nature of their very objects of inquiry, which are by their nature as variegated, fuzzy and motley as the lives in which they are experienced. Therefore, James chief, self-proclaimed goal, that is the re-instatement of the vague [and inarticulate] to its proper place in our mental life (James 1890a: 254), requires a work that is as much accurate as sophisticated, one easy to miss due to the flamboyant character of the trail it must follow to chase its raw materials. This lesson holds both for his treatment of ethics, and for the understanding of his overall conception of philosophical activity. A resourceful reading of James philosophical project that is atten-tive to these questionings is C. H. Seigfried (1990), in which the author engages in a thoughtful analysis of James claims to systematicity, of their difficulties, shortcomings and misunderstandings.

4 A rough list of which numbers in addition to the literature discussed or quoted along the essay J.K. Roth (1965), M.R. Slater (2009), B. Brennan (1961), A. Edel (1976), E. K. Suckiel (1982), G. H. Bird (1997) and J. Campbell (1981).

have strived for the understanding of this connection, but the ma-jority of the interpretations failed to appreciate the point due to their misreading of the tone and the aims of the essay altogether, since even if they rightly acknowledge the importance of the essay for the understanding of James moral philosophy, still they stuck with a read-ing of it as a defense of a peculiar moral theory. Since I am impatient to present my own reading, in the next section I will briefly sketch the essential structure of the two main fami-lies of readings so as to place my own understanding of James moral philosophy in con-text.


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IV.

As I have been arguing, a good reading of MPML represents the necessary conditions to grasp James conception of ethics, and either this essay has not been recognized as special at all, or its distinctiveness has been misplaced. Ralph Burton Perrys account falls into the first case. Perry, in his monumental work on James, does not appreciate the peculiarity of the essay and melts James writings together, losing in this way the asymmetry holding be-tween MPML and his other writings containing his moral ideas. In chapters LXV and LXVI of the book he insists on the moralistic and militant character of James moral reflection. Perry seems to acknowledge the distinctiveness of MPML by saying that the essay is James only published discussion of theoretical ethics. He claims that in it James addressed the question, raised a couple of years before in his essay titled The Sentiment of Rationality, What does the moral enthusiasm care for philosophical ethics? This question, raised in a paper in which James among other things investigates the peculiar frame of mind that prompts us to crave for rationality in our philosophical investigations, seems to fit suitably the purposes of MPML. In fact, it conveys the sense of the problematization James ad-dresses in his characterization of the relationship between ones own moral ideas or en-thusiasm and a reflective or philosophical ethics. However, although very encour-aging, Perrys account wastes its promises by reducing the reflective discourse about moral-ity to the discussion of the character of individual interests and demands and their relation with the social life in which their bearers partake. Moreover, Perry presents this discourse, which he characterizes as the center of vision of James conception of ethics, as a fallout of his personal biography. He writes

[t]here is an undeniable moral accent in the life as well as in the thought of William James. In view of the fact that he subordinated thought to action, and therefore in princi-ple accepted the Kantian doctrine of the primacy of practical reason, it is surprisingly that he wrote so little on moral philosophy. But this comparative inattention to the tradi-tional problems and theories of ethics was offset by the strength of his moral convictions. His total expression was infused with moral zeal his personal code was rigorous and unmistakable5

The quotation is very perspicacious. Instead of exposing the arguments given in MPML Perry engages in a very captivating survey of James moral ideas, as they are discussed by James in his other writings. Even if the texts and ideas he presents are of the utmost impor-tance and are deeply pertinent for the understanding of the themes tacked in MPML, Perry makes two related mistakes at once: he conflates the reflective with the purely descriptive, and characterizes both as the outcome of James eclectic personae. Even if the effort to show the deep entanglement of biography and philosophy in James is nothing but praise-worthy, since it is an aspect of his thought that should be remarked with great emphasis, Perrys account went so far as to reduce James philosophy to his biography, losing in this way the most interesting reflective dimension of his discourse

.

6

5 Perry 1935: 250.

. It is my claim that if we

6 An analogous move is made by some recent accounts of James philosophy. See, for example, L. Gunnars-son (2010) and D. W. Bjork (1988). Although very interesting both in their general point and for their insights into James conception of philosophy as therapy, without doubt a major theme in James intellectual biography, these readings tend to portray James reflective discourse to a mere outcome of his personal strivings and idiosyncrasies. Even though I think that a detailed acquaintance with James life represents a necessary element for the under-


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take James philosophical insights in their own terms, and try to understand them as the re-sult of reflective investigations, the very connection with the experiences from which such investigations at the same time spring and get transformed will be illuminated. These two aspects namely, biography and philosophy must be kept in contrastive tension, since the subordination of one to the other will bring us either to an aprioristic conception of philoso-phy or to the very opposite annihilation of it, a flattening of one on the other will obscure the nature of their connection. In the case we are examining, that is James moral philoso-phy, this tension is built into the very dialectic of MPML. In the essay James pictures the relationship between moral reflection and moral life neither as one of derivation nor of re-duction, but rather of mutual definition. Moral reflection emerges from our internal under-standing of the practical contingencies of our moral life, but cannot be reduced to them. Moral reflection makes sense on the background of some shared practices and ideas, and the rationality it expresses is internal to such practices and ideas. At the same time, by means of moral reflection we investigate the very conceivability of a certain moral idea or experience, so that its role is not merely descriptive. I will go back to this characterization in the next section. Let me now move to the other family of readings, namely the ones which misplace the distinctive voice of MPML.

Richard Gales book The Divided Self of William James, whose interpretation of James is remarkable in several ways, represents a good example of a reading mindful of the dis-tinctive place of MPML in James moral philosophy, but inattentive to its anti-theoretical inspiration. Gale tackles the question directly, arguing for a radical distance between James ethical theory and his normative moral ideas. Let me quote the passage in its entire-ty, since it is very rich and eloquent. He writes

[J]ames only published effort to develop an ethical theory is his 1891 essay on The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life[T]hat James never felt the need to publish any-thing further on ethical theory, either before or after 1891, is strong evidence that he ac-

standing of many of his ideas, I resist the reduction of the latter to the former. At least, some distinctions must be traced. In a nutshell, James broader considerations about the nature of philosophy and the motives for philoso-phizing the idea that ones temperament is a major factor in ones philosophical investigations recalls an im-mediate connection between biography and philosophy, so that it is fair to say that when he speaks about them it is not only the philosopher James speaking, but the very man and, moreover, he is not speaking only to philoso-phers, but to the flesh and blood human beings beneath them animating their thoughts. However, such anxieties are philosophical anxieties bearings on our lives and thus their discussion should proceed at a reflective level, even if their objects are the human beings with their questionings as they are expressed in their lives and practices. As regards James (slightly) more limited considerations about the nature of morality, mindedness and worldliness the connection between biography and philosophy must be complicated, and although it is fair to say that some hap-penings in James life prompted him to some reflections and shaped his way of seeing things, I resist this as mere-ly the last thing to say about them. There is an activity of reflective underpinning that is beyond the discussion of morality or the nature of the mind, which is both instigated by, and bears on, our concrete lives and biographies, but whose dialectic and investigations are philosophical through and through. Russell B. Goodman puts this idea beautifully by saying that James complaint that he was unfit to be a philosopher because at bottom he hates phi-losophy, especially at the beginning of a vacation, with the fragrance of the spruces and sweet ferns all soaking him through with the conviction that it is better to be than to define your being is itself of coursea philosophi-cal statement (Goodman 1990: 58). A similar concern is voiced by James Conant and Piergiorgio Donatelli about the understanding of the connection between biography and philosophy in Wittgenstein and in other great authors. See, Conant (2001) and Donatelli (1998: 179-85). It was Wittgenstein himself who, speaking with Maurice Drury about good philosophical works, responded to Drurys comment that I always enjoy reading William James. He is such a human person, by remarking Yes, that is what makes him a good philosopher; he was a real human being (Drury 1984: 121).


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cepted its position throughout, especially as there is nothing in his unpublished writings indicating any doubts or reservations, only further corroborations of the 1891 essay. The word theory is italicized so as to emphasize the contrast with the moralizing espousal of normative propositions, something that James did in profusion throughout his career. John Dewey failed to make this distinction when he said that William James did not need to write a separate treatise on ethics, because in its larger sense he was everywhere and al-ways the moralist. It will be seen that some of his moralizing had a distinctively deonto-logical tone that clashed with his maximizing ethical theory7

Such a reading, although having the merit of pointing to the special character of MPML, portrays MPML as advancing a utilitarian moral theory that would be at odds with the deontological principles suffusing his other moral writings. I contend that Gales reading of James moral philosophy as driven by an alleged clash between normative deontological propositions with maximizing ethical principles is the fallout of his reading of the underly-ing conception of truth and its bearings for ethics. The difference in our respective reading amounts thus to a difference in our different reading of his conception of truth. While Gale reads James as equating truth with usefulness, pushing him toward an utilitarian teleology whose chief principle says we are always morally obliged to act in a manner that maximis-es desire-satisfaction over desire-dissatisfaction among the actions available to us

.

8

7 Gale 1999: 26. 8 Gale 1999: 32. Gale mounts a very elegant and elaborate ladder argument, running through nearly half his

book, in which several variants of this principle are given as he brings into his initial practical syllogism different elements of James thought. I cant do justice to the complexity of his argument here, although I will indirectly go back to it later while presenting at more length my own reading of James characterization of truth. I will save a detailed analysis and confrontation with Gales powerful reading of James for another occasion, and I would like to thank prof. Gale for his very thoughtful advices and guidance during some very stimulating conversations on our disagreements.

, I read James as portraying truth as a peculiar state of mind an inventive one whose grounding lies in the relationship of interest our mind establishes with the world. Interest is for James a technical term, and unlike usefulness it has a normative grounding in how things are in the world, and not only in how we would like them to be. Its direction of fit is from the world to the mind, and yet the world that is relevant for ethics is one of our ordinary practices and shared values. Truth consists in what is interesting to notice, what is worth (and not merely useful) having and requires an active endorsement on the part of the sub-ject, who must pay attention to its moral experiencing as it is embedded in his ordinary practices of truth- and value-giving. Being grounded in this conception of truth, ethical val-ues do not need any teleological justification, and James discussion in MPML of the nature of values is not intended as a foundation but rather an elucidation of their place in our prac-tices. This aspect is connected with the refutation of Gales reading of MPML as James moral system: if read as a moral theory, MPML would appear rather incoherent since in it James holds a number of statements that at first blush seem incompatible. Gale would thus be right in claiming that James self was (morally) divided between a promethean pragmat-ist holding a maximizing principle of optimization of goods and an anti-promethean mystic struggling to make religious and spirituals ideals respectable again in a disenchanted world. However, the alleged moral aporias contained in MPML can be met by refusing to read James claims at face value, and investigating the rhetoric in which they are articulated. From such a reading it will emerge that James interest is not that of grounding values any-where, but rather that of portraying how our understanding of them is vitiated by miscon-


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ceptions about our mindedness and its bearings for our moral life. Through such an investi-gation, we could also re-interpret Gales claim that in other writings James employs deonto-logical principles that are not explicitly discussed in MPML, since it will emerge in which sense James moral instructions in the essay are directed precisely against the attempts to moralize morality and reduce moral reflection to the defense of a narrow and well-characterized picture of what counts as a moral experience.

V.

I will argue, contra Perry, that it is not true that James was uninterested in the traditional problems and theories of ethics, since his interest was precisely a critique of their under-standing. His goal was that of showing the shortcomings and difficulties of characterizing the aim of moral reflection as the achievement of a normative moral system. However, this critique makes space for another conception of moral reflection sketched in MPML, one that has a distinctive reflective status that must not to be conflated with the moral ideas per-vading his other works, even if it entertains a close relationship with them. Instead, contra Gale, I will argue that in MPML James canvasses a precise picture of the entanglement be-tween moral reflection and moral life that is neither one of mutual incompatibility nor one of reduction one that does not lead to any utilitarian moral theory. In order to understand the nature of such an entanglement we must decrypt James assertion that the aim of moral reflection is the clarification, and not the foundation, of our moral life. As James argues, an ethics must be hortatory rather than prescriptive: it must convey the unsatisfactoriness or the adequacy of a certain moral idea or conduct, and the means by which it should do that is not by pointing to some alleged principle they violate or honor, but rather by describing the assumptions on which their endorsement rests and inviting us to challenge its validity. Moral reflection should thus be descriptive rather than prescriptive, and it should be articu-lated along the experiences and experimentations human beings endorse in their ordinary practices. This does not mean however that moral reflection consists in a descriptions devo-id of any normative element; in fact the dichotomy between the merely descriptive and normative, as well as that between facts and values, is refuted by James as a residuum of a Cartesian framework, inherited and developed in opposite directions but with same unsatis-factory results by both British empiricism and German rationalism. This refutation, whose articulation falls outside the scope of the present essay9, allows James to portray moral ref-lection as an activity that is at the same time descriptive of our moral life and normatively inspired10

9 For a discussion of this theme see Bernstein (1983), Rorty (1982), Putnam (1995) and Margolis (20072). 10 It is my interpretative claim that James has in mind the kind of normative descriptions Kant made of human

beings in his Anthropologie in Pragmatischer Hinsicht. There are some historical evidences for this claim collected by Perry in his masterwork on James life and thought according to which James began reading Kant in his late twenties and early thirties, and the Anthropologie was the very first book of Kant he read. The first to re-mark James (and Peirces) debt to Kant was Dewey (1908a & 1925). Whereas Pierces debt to Kant is much more widespread and documented, James relationship with Kant is more difficult to ascertain and characterize, espe-cially given James harsh criticism of Kant in his published works. However, as many biographers have docu-mented, Kants Anthropologie was a book James admired, and which was very helpful in his early struggles for the elaboration of his own pragmatic conception of human beings. A very interesting examination of James en-gagements with Kantian themes is given by T. Carlson (1997).

. The kind of descriptions James has in mind picture human beings as agents and their moral ideas as emerging from their experiences and practices. James is describing not


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what human beings are, but rather what human beings do. Furthermore, he is describing not what they do according to some principle of aiming at some result, but what they do of themselves when following a certain idea or responding to a certain experience.

James criticism of moral theories as pieces of moral reasoning attached from the out-side to the concrete life of human beings is precisely directed against the illusory comfort of an external standpoint11

[f]irst of all, what is the position of him who seeks an ethical philosophy? To begin with, he must be distinguished from all those who are satisfied to be ethical sceptics. He will not be a sceptic; therefore so far from ethical scepticism being one possible fruit of ethical philosophizing, it can only be regarded as that residual alternative to all philosophy which from the outset menaces every would-be philosopher who may give up the quest discour-aged, and renounce his original aim. That aim is to find an account of the moral relations that obtain among things, which will weave them into an unity of a stable system, and make the world what one may call a genuine universe from the ethical point of view

from which to assess our moral life. Moral reflection aims at the understanding of our moral experiences as they are displayed in our ordinary practices, and thus it must be as tentative and experimental as the moral life in which those practices take place. The criticism of a moral position cannot be made from a standpoint that is ex-ternal to the moral life in which it is embedded, but only from the internal, as a failure to meet its own standards of rationality. However, far from being a concession to relativism, this is a point about the kind or realism James is canvassing. Claiming that in order to critic-ize a certain moral position you must be embedded in a certain form of life, that is be able to see things in a certain way, does not commit us to picture moral criticism as beyond the limit of rational discourse, since being embedded in a certain form of life is precisely what our moral criticism is about. The inability to engage in this form of criticism is what James calls moral blindness, and it is connected with James characterization of how we picture the attainment of truth in morality. So its full articulation must wait till section 8, when the stage will be set with all the necessary elements.

A first indication into the anti-foundational motif of the essay is traceable in James few but significant considerations about moral skepticism. In the second paragraph of MPML he writes that moral skepticism, or rather the ethical skeptic, is not an acceptable moral po-sition which we can discuss at a reflective level, since by denying the very existence of a shared moral reality it cuts itself off from moral discourse altogether. He writes

12

Although James will characterize at more depth this provisional definition of ethical phi-losophy what here I am calling moral reflection in the course of the essay, here he is claiming that the appreciation of a shared moral life is a precondition on which moral ref-lection bears, and thus that moral skepticism falls outside of the scope of the aims of MPML. The moral skeptic avoids his responsibility to take part in the moral community, and thus his attitude raises other kinds of questions and considerations than those tackled in MPML.

.

13

11 Borrowing the expression used by Alice Crary and Rupert Read to describe Wittgensteins attitude toward

the possibility of external elucidations of our human practices. 12 James 1897: 141. 13 Here James has in mind skepticism as it is has been conceived in the modern, Cartesian, tradition. Howev-

er, there are some interesting connections also with Cavells characterization of skepticism. These are addressed by Russell Goodman (1990: ch. 1 & 3).

In fact, in the essay James is interested in carving out what moral reflection could


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look like from the very inside of its exercise, wary of the commonest mistakes committed by those philosopher who understand their own reflective activity as the imposition of some order of values whatever their nature on reality. He continues by saying that

[t]he subject matter of his study is the ideals he finds existing in the world; the purpose which guides him is this ideal of his own, of getting them into a certain form14

[J]ames commitment to lived experience brings with it a series of philosophical implica-tionsThe principal objective of radical empirical philosophy is to return to life; that is, to bring philosophical ideas and habits consciously to bear on our lives. Among the ir-reducible components of our lived experience is what we shall call moral experience. That is, our daily transactions with others and the world features a decidedly moral di-mension. Just as the world forces us to hold beliefs and thus to act, we are likewise com-pelled to make judgments, and the elements of experience that compel them, are as real as any other aspect of experience. Hence your visual experience of the ink spot on this page which comprise this very sentence is, on the view of the radical empiricist, on a par with your judgment that your favorite painting is a work of beauty, your feeling or regret at the remembrance of a missed opportunity to do good, and your repulsion to the idea of the unnecessary suffering of innocents. Unlike traditional philosophical systems, which at-tempt either to reduce moral experience to something more scientifically manageable such as pleasure and pain, or to elevate moral experience to something other-worldly, super-natural, and as such inexplicable, the radical empiricist bids us to confront the facts of ex-perience directly and on their own terms. This follows from the basic tenets of radical empiricism

.

The two ideals, the one(s) guiding moral reflection and the moral philosopher beyond it and the one(s) guiding the moral life and the moral subjects animating it are of different kinds, and thus the relationship between the two cannot be symmetrical. If in fact we were to throw the ideal of moral reflection inside those of the moral life it would suffocate them, smothering the moral life itself. Abstract principles of systematization, such as those ex-pressed in moral principles, violate the very tentative nature of moral facts and experiences, as they are articulated in our ordinary moral lives. Robert Talisse and Micah Hester have beautifully put

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