Encyclopedia of

ETHICS
This page intentionally left blank
Encyclopedia of
ETHICS
 Board of Consulting Editors

Harold Alderman Raymond Geuss Onora O’Neill

Julia E. Annas Alan Gewirth Derek L. Phillips
Annette C. Baier Mary Gibson Tom Regan
Kurt Baier Kenneth E. Goodpaster Abdulaziz Sachedina
Marcia W. Baron Russell Hardin John Sallis
Sissela Bok R. M. Hare Thomas M. Scanlon, Jr.
R. B. Brandt Virginia Held Samuel Scheffler
David Braybrooke Paul Helm J. B. Schneewind
Hsueh-li Cheng Terence Irwin Robert L. Simon
Antonio S. Cua Joseph J. Kockelmans Holly M. Smith
Eliot Deutsch Christine M. Korsgaard Hillel Steiner
Cora Diamond Norman Kretzmann Jeffrey Stout
Alan Donagan David Lyons Laurence Thomas
Gerald Dworkin Henry John McCloskey Susan Wolf
Abraham Edel Howard McGary David B. Wong
William K. Frankena Martha Nussbaum Allen W. Wood
 Encyclopedia of
ETHICS
Second Edition

Lawrence C. Becker and Charlotte B. Becker

Editors

Volume I
A–G

Routledge
New York and London
 To G.S.K.

Published in 2001 by
Routledge
711 Third Avenue,
New York, NY 10017

Published in Great Britain by

Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park,
Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

All other content and compilation, copyright © 2001 by Lawrence C. Becker and
Charlotte B. Becker.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First edition published by Garland Publishing, New York, 1992.

Portions of Derk Pereboom’s “free will” were drawn from his introduction to Free Will,
edited by Derk Pereboom, Indianapolis: Hackett, ©1997, all rights reserved.
“deceit” © 2001 by Sissela Bok
“etiquette” © 2001 by Judith Martin and Gunther Stent
“moral terms,” “prescriptivism,” “slavery,” “universalizability,” and “weakness of will”
© 2001 by R. M. Hare

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Encyclopedia of ethics / Lawrence C. Becker and Charlotte B. Becker, editors. — 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-93672-1 (set : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-415-93673-X (vol. 1 : alk. paper) —
ISBN 0-415-93674-8 (vol. 2 : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-415-93675-6 (vol. 3 : alk. paper)
1. Ethics — Encyclopedias. I. Becker, Lawrence C. II. Becker, Charlotte B., 1944 –

BJ63 .E45 2001

170'.3 — dc21
2001019657
 Contents

Volume I

Introduction and Acknowledgments vii

Note on Use ix
List of Entries xi
Contributors and Editors xix

A–G Entries 1

Volume II

H–O Entries 643

Volume III

P–W Entries 1267

Subject Index 1833

Citation Index 1955
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 Introduction and Acknowledgments

In this new edition, the Encyclopedia of Ethics has been substantially revised, and it
has been expanded by more than 30 percent. Its intended audience remains the same:
scholars, university students, and readers with a serious interest in philosophy. Its aims
with respect to subject matter remain the same: coverage of ethical theory as pursued
among English-speaking philosophers. Its 326 distinguished contributors (see the list
of Contributors and Editors) are authorities in their fields. The Encyclopedia’s content
(see List of Entries) was again designed through wide consultation, and its 581 signed
entries were peer reviewed. In addition, the encyclopedic apparatus has been improved
in various ways, most notably by the inclusion of references to other entries, set in
SMALL CAPITAL LETTERS, within the text of each entry. There are two indexes: a subject
index and a citation index.
The emphasis in this edition, as in the first, is on ethical theory. But as before, there
are entries on metaethics, applied ethics, and ethical issues that are especially important
to theory, as well as biographical entries on figures who have made significant contri-
butions to theory. There are thus entries on abortion, animals, blackmail, homicide, the
Holocaust, racism, rape, sexuality, slavery, and many other contemporary moral issues
that have become crucial test cases for theory, but not on the whole panoply of topics
one might find in a work devoted to applied ethics. There are entries on various religious
traditions, and survey entries on the history of ethics, but again these entries were
commissioned and written with an eye to themes that are especially important to ethical
theory.
Since the publication of the first edition in 1992, the number of new reference works
in philosophy has grown exponentially. There is now a large assortment of dictionaries,
companions, and even encyclopedias devoted to various areas of philosophy, and of
course there is now the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. However, the original
aims and coverage of the Encyclopedia of Ethics have not been duplicated in any of
those new works. The treatment of ethical theory in this work, for example, is densely
populated with rather narrowly focused entries (e.g., pride, humility), many of which
are accompanied by broadly conceived surveys (e.g., virtue ethics, virtues).
As before, however, the scope of this encyclopedia is considerably broader than the
term “ethical theory” might suggest. Readers will find lengthy survey entries on the
history and current status of philosophical ethics in other areas of the world; major
traditions in religious ethics; the relation of philosophical ethics to technology, religion,
law, literature, and social, political, and economic systems and theories; the relation of
philosophical ethics to important contemporary social/political movements and prob-
lems; and the relation of philosophical ethics to other fields of philosophy. Moreover,
the editors have given careful attention to theories of rational choice and economic
analysis; feminist ethics; virtue theory; and moral psychology. The encyclopedia also

vii
Introduction and Acknowledgments

includes a twelve-part, multi-authored, 60,000-word history of ethics from the pre-

Socratics through the twentieth century.
Our aims in producing this new edition were not to expand the scope of the work,
but rather to deepen and otherwise improve its original design. In doing this, the editors
once again had the assistance of an outstanding Board of Consulting Editors. In con-
structing the new table of entries, we surveyed the authors who contributed to the first
edition and incorporated suggestions about the second edition from correspondence
and reviews concerning the first.
Almost all of the 435 entries from the first edition have been retained, but many
have been substantially revised, and all of them have been reviewed for needed revi-
sions. A few entries from the first edition have been dropped, but only because coverage
of their topics has been reorganized by a set of newly commissioned entries. Most of
the original entries have been revised in at least minor ways, and, where appropriate
and possible, their bibliographies have been updated. Peer reviewing of these revised
entries was done by the editors, and in a few cases where the authors are now deceased,
the editors have supplied updated bibliographies.
For the 150 new entries, the process of selecting topics and authors began with a
circular to the contributors to the first edition, asking for judgments about the list of
additional entries proposed by the editors, as well as suggestions for other entries and
authors. A strong consensus was reached fairly quickly. Once again the most serious
divergence of opinion concerned which living philosophers should have biographical
entries, and once again there was virtually no support for the editors’ view (no doubt
a selfish one) that the best policy would be to include no such entries. All new entries
were peer reviewed, either by one of the editors, by one or more of the consulting
editors, or by a larger pool of critics. In one case, on the author’s initiative, an entry
was circulated to several hundred specialists for comment.
The idea for this new edition, as for the first one, came from Gary Kuris, then of
Garland Publishing. He has since moved on to a grander position, Garland has been
acquired by Taylor & Francis and subsequently merged with Routledge, and the En-
cyclopedia of Ethics now appears under their distinguished imprint, much revised and
much expanded.
As they did with the first edition of the Encyclopedia of Ethics, the contributors,
peer reviewers, and consulting editors have made these volumes possible. We owe them
all a debt of gratitude. We handled the remainder of the pre-production work, assisted
by the cheerful and efficient efforts of Sharon Durham. The detailed, perceptive, and
elegant subject index was prepared by Cynthia Crippen.
All of us who have worked on this project hope for astute readers. They will under-
stand that no encyclopedia in philosophy can be complete or definitive, nor should it
try to be, for that would mean trying to stop the philosophical enterprise itself. They
will understand that no encyclopedia in philosophy should be used as a substitute for
philosophy, or as a substitute for a direct encounter with the work it describes. And
they will not fail, at the end of the first entry they read, to follow the references into
the labyrinth.
Charlotte B. Becker
Lawrence C. Becker

viii
 Note on Use

Unlike the first edition, the entries in this revised edition are listed in word-by-word
alphabetical order. Spaces between the words in titles matter. Thus, for example, the
entry on Mo Tzu appears before the entry on motives. The List of Entries gives a con-
venient overview of the arrangement.
The dates given for people and events have been checked against standard biograph-
ical and bibliographical sources. Where standard sources differ from each other or from
the results of more recent scholarship, however, we have followed what appears to be
the prevailing view in recent sources, unless advised otherwise by our authors. This is
especially applicable to the entries on Greek and Chinese antiquity, where we have often
used approximate dates even though precise dates are listed in some sources. For the
modern era, such problems are fewer, but even here the reader should be wary. Sources
differ in minor ways. We are reliably informed, for example, that Richard Cumberland’s
year of birth was 1632, as we have given it, and not 1631 as many sources report.
We have not given birth dates for living figures, except in the titles of entries devoted
to them. But otherwise it has been our policy to insert birth and death dates at the first
mention of a historical person’s name in each entry. For works we have typically sup-
plied the date of first publication or, where that is not applicable, the date of composition
for nonrecent works. Some authors have naturally protested the resulting typographical
clutter, but we think readers will find the information worth the added reading effort.
Following general practice for encyclopedias, there are no footnotes, and parentheti-
cal references in the text have been kept to a minimum. In those few places where
citations are necessary, the page references are given in the relevant listing in the bib-
liography.
Within the text of an entry, a word or phrase set in SMALL CAPITAL LETTERS indicates
that there is an entry of that title elsewhere in the Encyclopedia. It does not constitute
a claim that the referenced entry is directly relevant to the topic under discussion. See
also references are included in a paragraph immediately following the entry’s text, prior
to the bibliography.
The choice of headwords for both topical and biographical entries is often problem-
atic. Where there is cause for confusion, the editors have provided appropriate cross-
references. In reference works, consistency in choosing headwords and then adhering
to them is of the utmost importance. Unfortunately, the consistent implementation of
one such choice fell through the safety net: the entry for Ibn Sı̄nā is listed under the
Anglicized form of his name (Avicenna), with a cross-reference from the transliterated
Arabic form, while the reverse is true of his fellow Islamic philosophers. The reader is
directed to the List of Entries for an overview of headwords and cross-references.
The Subject Index is an analytical index of topics and persons discussed in the text
of the entries. The Citation Index gives an author-by-author listing of writers, and some
editors, cited in the bibliographies of all 581 entries.

ix
This page intentionally left blank
 List of Entries

Abelard, Peter Aquinas, see Thomas Aquinas

abortion Arendt, Hannah
absolutes, see moral absolutes arete, see excellence; virtues
absurd, the Aristotelian ethics
Abunaser, see Farabi, al- Aristotle
academic ethics atheism
academic freedom attention, see moral attention; moral perception
action Augustine, Saint
acts, see voluntary acts authenticity
acts and omissions authority
additivity problems autonomy of ethics
Adler, Felix autonomy of moral agents
aesthetics Averroes, see Ibn Rushd
Africa Avicenna
agency and disability Ayer, A. J.
agent-centered morality bad faith
agents, see autonomy of moral agents; idealized Baier, Kurt E. M.
agents Balguy, John
agnosticism bargaining
agricultural ethics Barry, Brian (M.)
akrasia, see weakness of will Beauvoir, see de Beauvoir
al-Farabi, see Farabi, al- Beccaria, Cesar [Bonesana], Marchesi di
alienation beneficence
altruism benefit-cost analysis, see cost-benefit analysis
American moral philosophy benevolence
amnesty and pardon Bentham, Jeremy
analogical arguments bioethics
analytic philosophy and ethics biological theory
anger blackmail
animals, treatment of Bradley, F[rancis] H[erbert]
Anscombe, G. E. M. Brandt, Richard B.
Anselm, Saint Brentano, Franz Clemens
anthropology bribery
anti-realism, see metaphysics and epistemology; Buber, Martin
moral realism; moral relativism Buddha
applied ethics Buddhist ethics

Note: Cross-references are in italics.

xi
List of Entries

Burke, Edmund consequentialism

business ethics conservation ethics
Butler, Joseph conservatism
Calvin, John constructivism
Cambridge Platonists contraception, see reproductive technologies
Camus, Albert contractarianism
capital punishment contracts
care conventions
casuistry cooperation, conflict and coordination
categorical and hypothetical imperatives cooperative surplus
causation and responsibility coordination, see cooperation, conflict and
censorship coordination
character correctional ethics
charity corruption
cheating cosmopolitan ethics
children and ethical theory cost-benefit analysis
China courage
choice, see deliberation and choice; rational choice cradle arguments
Christian ethics critical theory
Chu Hsi cruelty
Chuang Tzu Crusius, Christian August
Cicero, Marcus Tullius Cudworth, Ralph
circumstances of justice, see justice, circumstances cultural studies
of Cumberland, Richard
civic duties, see civil rights and civic duties Cynics
civic good and virtue Cyrenaics
civil disobedience Darwin, Charles
civil rights and civic duties de Beauvoir, Simone
civility death
Clarke, Samuel deceit
coercion definition, see persuasive definition
cognitive science deliberation and choice
coherentism democracy
collective responsibility Democritus
commensurability deontology
common good Descartes, René
common sense moralists desert, see merit and desert
communitarianism desire
community, see moral community, boundaries of determinism, see freedom and determinism
comparative ethics deterrence, threats and retaliation
competition Dewey, John
compromise dignity
computers dilemmas, see moral dilemmas
confidentiality, see secrecy and confidentiality dirty hands
conflict, see cooperation, conflict and coordination; disability, see agency and disability
international justice: conflict discounting the future
Confucian ethics discrimination
Confucius distributive justice, see justice, distributive
conscience Donagan, Alan
consent double effect

xii
 List of Entries

Duns Scotus, John fittingness

Durkheim, Émile Foot, Philippa
duty and obligation forgery
Dworkin, Ronald forgiveness
economic analysis formalism
economic liberty, see liberty, economic forms of consciousness
economic systems Foucault, Michel
education, see moral education Frankena, William Klaas
Edwards, Jonathan free will
egoism freedom and determinism
elite, concept of, freedom of the press
Emerson, Ralph Waldo friendship
emotion Fuller, Lon
emotivism future generations
Engels, Frederick Gadamer, Hans-Georg
engineering ethics game theory
entitlements Gandhi, Mohandas Kamarchand
environmental ethics Gassendi, Pierre
envy gay ethics
Epictetus generosity
Epicureanism genetic engineering
Epicurus genocide
epistemology, see metaphysics and epistemology Gert, Bernard
equality Gewirth, Alan
ethical egoism, see egoism Godwin, William
ethical naturalism, see naturalism golden rule
ethics, see autonomy of ethics; history of Western good, theories of the
ethics government, ethics in
ethics and morality gratitude
etiquette Green, Thomas Hill
eudaimonia, -ism Grotius, Hugo
euthanasia groups, moral status of
evil guilt and shame
evolution Habermas, Jürgen
excellence happiness
excuses Hare, R. M.
existential ethics harm and offense
exploitation Hart, H. L. A.
externalism and internalism Hartmann, Nicolai
fairness hate
family hedonism
Farabi, al- Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
fate and fatalism Heidegger, Martin
feminist ethics Hindu ethics
Fénelon, François historiography
Feuerbach, Ludwig history of Western ethics: 1. presocratic Greek
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb history of Western ethics: 2. classical Greek
fidelity history of Western ethics: 3. Hellenistic
fiduciary relationships history of Western ethics: 4. Roman
final good history of Western ethics: 5. early Medieval

xiii
List of Entries

history of Western ethics: 6. later Medieval intention

history of Western ethics: 7. Renaissance interests
history of Western ethics: 8. seventeenth and internalism, see externalism and internalism
eighteenth centuries international justice: conflict
history of Western ethics: 9. nineteenth-century international justice: distribution
British intolerance, see toleration
history of Western ethics: 10. nineteenth-century intransitivity
Continental intuitionism
history of Western ethics: 11. twentieth-century Islam
Continental Islamic business ethics
history of Western ethics: 12. twentieth-century Islamic ethics
Anglo-American Islamic medical ethics
Hobbes, Thomas Jainism
Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry James, William
Holocaust Japan
homicide Jefferson, Thomas
homosexuality Jesus of Nazareth
honor Jewish ethics
hope journalism
Hsün Tzu justice, circumstances of
human rights justice, distributive
humanism justice, international, see international justice:
Hume, David conflict; international justice: distribution
humility justice, rectificatory
Husserl, Edmund Kant, Immanuel
Hutcheson, Francis Kantian ethics
hypocrisy karma
hypothetical imperative, see categorical and Kierkegaard, Søren
hypothetical imperatives killing and letting die
Ibn Rushd King, Martin Luther, Jr.
Ibn Sı̄nā, see Avicenna land ethics
Ibn Tufayl Lao Tzu
ideal observer law and ethics, see legal ethics; legal philosophy
idealist ethics legal ethics
idealized agents legal philosophy
imagination, see moral imagination legitimacy
immoralism Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm
impartiality Leopold, Aldo
imperative, see categorical and hypothetical lesbian ethics
imperatives Levinas, Emmanuel
incontinence, see weakness of will Lewis, Clarence Irving
India liberalism
individualism libertarianism
inequality liberty
infanticide liberty, economic
information professions, see library and library and information professions
information professions life and death
innocence life, meaning of
institutions life, right to
integrity literature and ethics

xiv
 List of Entries

Locke, John moral psychology

logic and ethics moral purity
love moral realism
loyalty moral reasoning
luck, see moral luck moral relativism
Lucretius moral rules
Luther, Martin moral saints
lying, see deceit moral sense theorists
Machiavelli, Niccolò moral status of groups, see groups, moral status of
MacIntyre, Alasdair C. moral terms
Maimonides, Moses morality, see ethics and morality
Malebranche, Nicolas mortality
Mandeville, Bernard motives
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus multiculturalism
marriage, see children and ethical theory; family; murder, see homicide
love; personal relationships Murdoch, Iris
Marx, Karl Murphy, Arthur Edward
Marxism mysticism
Marxism and Soviet communism, see Soviet ethics Nāgārjuna
mass media narrative ethics
materialism natural law
Mead, George Herbert naturalism
medical ethics naturalistic fallacy
medical ethics, historical nature and ethics
Mencius needs
mercy negligence
merit and desert neo-Kantian ethics
metaethics neo-Stoicism
metaphysics and epistemology neutral principles
military ethics Niebuhr, Reinhold
Mill, James Nietzsche, Friedrich
Mill, John Stuart nihilism
Mo Tzu non-human animals, see animals, treatment of
Montaigne, Michel de non-violence, see pacifism; violence and non-
Montesquieu, baron de violence
Moore, G. E. norms
moral absolutes Nozick, Robert
moral agents, see autonomy of moral agents; nuclear ethics
idealized agents nursing ethics
moral attention obedience to law
moral community, boundaries of Objectivism
moral development obligation, see duty and obligation
moral dilemmas Ockham, see William of Ockham
moral education offense, see harm and offense
moral imagination omissions, see acts and omissions
moral luck oppression
moral norms, see norms organic unity
moral perception ought implies can
moral pluralism pacifism
moral point of view pain and suffering

xv
List of Entries

Paine, Thomas proportionality

Paley, William Protagoras of Abdera
pardon, see amnesty and pardon prudence
partiality psychoanalysis
Pascal, Blaise psychology
passion public and private morality
paternalism public goods
Paul, Saint public health policy
peace, see war and peace public policy
Peirce, C. S. public policy analysis
perception, see moral perception Pufendorf, Samuel
perfectionism punishment
Perry, Ralph Barton puritanism
person, concept of purity, see moral purity
personal relationships racism and related issues
persuasive definition racism, concepts of
phenomenology Rand, Ayn
philosophical anthropology rape
philosophy of law, see legal philosophy rational choice
philosophy of religion rationality vs. reasonableness
phronesis Rawls, John
plagiarism realism, see moral realism
Plato reasonableness, see rationality vs. reasonableness
pleasure reason[ing], see moral reasoning; practical
Plotinus reason[ing]; rationality vs. reasonableness
pluralism, see moral pluralism reasons for action
police ethics reciprocity
political correctness rectificatory justice, see justice, rectificatory
political philosophy, see social and political reflective equilibrium
philosophy Reid, Thomas
political systems, evaluation of relationships, see friendship; personal relationships
pornography relativism, see moral relativism
possibilism religion
postmodernism religion, philosophy of, see philosophy of religion
power reproductive technologies
practical reason[ing] resentment
practical wisdom responsibility
pragmatism responsibility, collective, see collective
praxis responsibility
precedent retaliation, see deterrence, threats and retaliation
prescriptivism retributive justice, see justice, rectificatory
Price, Richard revenge
Prichard, H. A. revolution
pride Ricoeur, Paul
principlism right, concepts of
privacy right holders
private morality, see public and private morality rights
professional ethics rights, human, see human rights
promises risk
property risk analysis

xvi
 List of Entries

risk aversion sport

Ross, W. D. Staël, Madame de
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques stakeholder analysis
Royce, Josiah Stevenson, Charles L.
Russell, Bertrand Stewart, Dugald
saints, moral, see moral saints Stoicism
Santayana, George strategic interaction
Sartre, Jean-Paul Suarez, Francisco
scepticism, see skepticism in ethics; skepticism in subjectivism
ancient ethics suffering, see pain and suffering
Scheler, Max suicide
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Sunnism
Schiller, Friedrich von supererogation
Schopenhauer, Arthur sympathy
Schweitzer, Albert Taoist ethics
Scotus, John Duns, see Duns Scotus, John Taylor, Charles
secrecy and confidentiality technology
self and social self technology and nature
self-control teleological ethics
self-deception temperance
self-defense terrorism
self-esteem theism
self-knowledge theological ethics
self-ownership theory and practice
self-respect Thomas Aquinas, Saint
Seneca Thomasius, Christian
sexual abuse and harassment Thomson, Judith Jarvis
sexuality and sexual ethics Thoreau, Henry David
Shaftesbury, 3rd Earl of threats, see deterrence, threats and retaliation
shame, see guilt and shame toleration
Shi’ism torture
Sidgwick, Henry tragedy
Singer, Marcus G. transcendentalism
situation ethics transitivity, see intransitivity
skepticism in ancient ethics trust
skepticism in ethics Tufts, James Hayden
slavery universalizability
slippery slope arguments utilitarianism
Smith, Adam value, concept of
social and political philosophy value, theory of
social contract vices, see virtues
social psychology violence and non-violence
social self, see self and social self virtue ethics
sociobiology, see biological theory virtues
sociology Vitoria, Francisco de
Socrates Voltaire
Sophists voluntarism
Soviet ethical theory voluntary acts
Spencer, Herbert Walzer, Michael
Spinoza, Baruch de Wang Yang-ming

xvii
List of Entries

war and peace Williams, Bernard

weakness of will wisdom
Weber, Max Wittgenstein, Ludwig
Weil, Simone Wittgensteinian ethics
welfare rights and social policy Wolff, Christian
Westermarck, Edward Wollaston, William
Whewell, William Wollstonecraft, Mary
wickedness women moral philosophers
William of Ockham work

xviii
 Contributors and Editors
Mitchell Aboulafia. Professor and Chair of Philosophy,
University of Colorado at Denver. Author, The Medi-
ating Self: Mead, Sartre, and Self-Determination, and
other works in social theory and American and Conti-
nental philosophy. Editor, Philosophy, Social Theory
and the Thought of George Herbert Mead. MEAD.
E. M. Adams. Kenan Professor of Philosophy Emeritus,
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Author, Eth-
ical Naturalism and the Modern World-View; Philos-
ophy and the Modern Mind; The Metaphysics of Self
and World; and A Society Fit for Human Beings. AU-
TONOMY OF ETHICS; LEWIS; NATURALISM.
Harold Alderman. Professor of Philosophy Emeritus,
Sonoma State University. Author, Nietzsche’s Gift, and
other works in ethics, aesthetics, and continental phi-
losophy. Consulting editor. ELITE, CONCEPT OF; LIFE,
RIGHT TO; MACINTYRE; NIETZSCHE.
Ernest Alleva. Philosophy, Smith College and Hampshire
College. MORAL DEVELOPMENT.
Roger T. Ames. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Hawaii. Author, books in Chinese and comparative
philosophy; translator of classical texts; editor, Philos-
ophy East and West. CHUANG TZU; LAO TZU; TAOIST
ETHICS.
Julia Elizabeth Annas. Regents Professor, Department of
Philosophy, University of Arizona. Recent works in-
clude Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind; The Morality of
Happiness; Platonic Ethics Old and New. Consulting
editor. ETHICS AND MORALITY; FINAL GOOD; SKEPTICISM
IN ANCIENT ETHICS.
Kwame A. Appiah. Professor of Afro-American Studies
and Philosophy, Harvard University. Author, Assertion
and Conditionals; For Truth in Semantics; Necessary
Questions; and In My Father’s House: Essays in the
Philosophy of African Cultures. AFRICA; ANTHROPOL-
OGY.
Richard J. Arneson. Professor of Philosophy, University
of California, San Diego. Author of works on political
philosophy. EXPLOITATION.
John D. Arras. Porterfield Professor of Bioethics and Pro-
fessor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia. Au-
thor of articles on bioethics; co-editor of Ethical Issues
xix
in Modern Medicine (5th ed.); editor of Bringing the
Hospital Home. NARRATIVE ETHICS; SLIPPERY SLOPE
ARGUMENTS.
John E. Atwell (1934–1995). Late Professor of Philoso-
phy, Temple University. Author, Ends and Principles in
Kant’s Moral Thought; Schopenhauer: The Human
Character; Schopenhauer on the Character of the
World: The Metaphysics of Will. General editor, Series
in Occupational Ethics. BRADLEY.
Annette C. Baier. Professor of Philosophy Emerita, Uni-
versity of Pittsburgh. Author, Postures of the Mind; A
Progress of Sentiments: Reflections on Hume’s “Trea-
tise”; Moral Prejudices: Essays on Ethics; and The
Commons of the Mind: The Paul Carus Lecture Series
19. Consulting editor. HUME; PASSION.
Kurt Baier. Distinguished Service Professor of Philoso-
phy Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh. Author, The
Moral Point of View; The Rational and the Moral Or-
der; and Problems of Life and Death. Consulting editor.
MORAL REASONING.
Marcia W. Baron. Philosophy, Indiana University. Author,
Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology; and articles
on crime and culpability, Kantian ethics and Hume’s
ethics. Consulting editor. LOYALTY; SUPEREROGATION.
Brian Barry. Arnold A. Saltzman Professor of Philosophy
and Political Science, Columbia University. Works in-
clude Political Argument; Theories of Justice; Justice as
Impartiality; and Culture and Equality. EQUALITY; PO-
LITICAL SYSTEMS.
Margaret P. Battin. Distinguished Professor of Philoso-
phy, University of Utah. Author, Ethical Issues in Sui-
cide; Ethics in the Sanctuary; The Least Worst Death.
Co-author, Puzzles About Art and Ethical Issues in the
Professions. Co-editor, John Donne’s Biathanatos. SUI-
CIDE.
Charlotte B. Becker. Former music, catalog, and biblio-
graphic instruction librarian. Author of general interest
articles and reviews. Co-editor.
Lawrence C. Becker. Kenan Professor in the Humanities
and Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, College of Wil-
liam and Mary; Fellow, Hollins University. Works in-
clude Property Rights: Philosophic Foundations; Reci-
Contributors and Editors
procity; A New Stoicism. Co-editor. GODWIN; MORAL
LUCK; NOZICK; PRIDE; PROPERTY; RECIPROCITY; SOCIAL
CONTRACT; WOLLSTONECRAFT.
Hugo Adam Bedau. Austin Fletcher Professor of Philos-
ophy Emeritus, Tufts University. Author, Making Mor-
tal Choices; Thinking and Writing About Philosophy;
Death is Different. Editor, The Death Penalty in Amer-
ica: Current Controversies; Civil Disobedience. APPLIED
ETHICS; BECCARIA; CAPITAL PUNISHMENT; CASUISTRY;
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE.
Charles R. Beitz. Professor of Government and Legal
Studies, Bowdoin College. Works include Political
Theory and International Relations; Political Equality:
An Essay in Democratic Theory. Editor, International
Ethics. Editor of the journal, Philosophy & Public Af-
fairs. INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE: CONFLICT.
Martin Benjamin. Professor of Philosophy, Michigan
State University. Author, Splitting the Difference: Com-
promise and Integrity in Ethics and Politics. Co-author,
Ethics in Nursing. COMPROMISE; NURSING ETHICS.
Robert Benne. Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion, Ro-
anoke College. Author, The Paradoxical Vision: A Pub-
lic Theology; Ordinary Saints: An Introduction to the
Christian Life. LUTHER; NIEBUHR.
Robert Bernasconi. Moss Professor of Philosophy, The
University of Memphis. Author, The Question of Lan-
guage in Heidegger’s History of Being; Heidegger in
Question. Co-editor, The Idea of Race; The Provoca-
tion of Levinas; and Rereading Levinas. HUMANISM;
LEVINAS.
Lawrence Blum. Professor of Philosophy, Distinguished
Professor of Liberal Arts and Education, University of
Massachusetts, Boston. Author, Friendship, Altruism,
and Morality; Moral Perception and Particularity. Co-
author, A Truer Liberty: Simone Weil and Marxism.
ALTRUISM; CARE; PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS; WEIL.
James Bohman. Danforth Professor of Philosophy at
Saint Louis University. Author, Public Deliberation:
Pluralism, Complexity and Democracy; New Philoso-
phy of Social Science: Problems of Indeterminacy;
other work in critical theory, the philosophy of social
science, and political philosophy. CRITICAL THEORY.
Sissela Bok. Formerly, Professor of Philosophy, Brandeis
University. Author, Lying; Secrets; A Strategy for Peace;
Common Values; Mayhem; and Alva Myrdal: A
Daughter’s Memoir. Consulting editor. DECEIT.
E. J. Bond. Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Queen’s
University, Kingston, Ontario. Author, Reason and
Value and other works in ethics, value theory, aesthet-
ics, and epistemology. GOOD, THEORIES OF THE; MA-
TERIALISM; PURITANISM; VALUE, CONCEPT OF.
Bernard R. Boxill. Professor of Philosophy, University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Author, Blacks and Social
Justice and other works in moral philosophy. CIVIL
xx
RIGHTS AND CIVIC DUTIES; KING; RACISM AND RELATED
ISSUES.
R. B. Brandt (1910–1997). Late Professor of Philosophy
Emeritus, University of Michigan. Works include Eth-
ical Theory; A Theory of the Good and the Right; and
Hopi Ethics. Consulting editor. IDEAL OBSERVER.
David Braybrooke. Centennial Commission Professor in
the Liberal Arts, Professor of Government and Profes-
sor of Philosophy, University of Texas. Fellow, Royal
Society of Canada. Works include Philosophy of Social
Science; Meeting Needs; Moral Objectives, Rules, and
the Forms of Social Change; Natural Law Modernized.
Co-author, Logic on the Track of Social Change. Con-
sulting editor. COMMON GOOD; CORRUPTION; INTER-
ESTS; NEEDS.
Richard Bronaugh. Professor of Philosophy Emeritus and
Adjunct Professor of Law, University of Western On-
tario. Co-founder and Senior Editor, Canadian Journal
of Law and Jurisprudence. CONTRACTS; PROMISES.
John Broome. White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy,
University of Oxford. Author, Weighing Goods; Ethics
Out of Economics; Counting the Cost of Global Warm-
ing. DISCOUNTING THE FUTURE; ECONOMIC ANALYSIS.
Taft Broome, Jr. Professor of Engineering, Howard Uni-
versity. Works include “Engineering the Philosophy of
Science” and “Engineering Responsibility for Hazard-
ous Technologies.” ENGINEERING ETHICS.
Charlotte Brown. Associate Professor of Philosophy, Il-
linois Wesleyan University. Author of articles on David
Hume’s Ethics and on the British moralists. BALGUY;
MORAL SENSE THEORISTS; PALEY; STEVENSON; WOL-
LASTON.
Jacques Brunschwig. Professor Emeritus, University of
Paris—I. Author, Papers in Hellenistic Philosophy. Co-
editor, Le Savoir grec and Passions and Perceptions.
CRADLE ARGUMENTS.
Allen Buchanan. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Arizona. Author, Marx and Justice; Ethics, Efficiency
and the Market; Secession: The Morality of Political
Divorce. Co-author, The Ethics of Surrogate Decision
Making; From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice.
JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE.
Ann Bumpus. Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Dart-
mouth College. Author of “Actors Without Intentions:
The Double Phenomenon View” and “Aiming and In-
tending.” INTENTION.
Charles Butterworth. Professor of Government and Poli-
tics, University of Maryland. Author, Between the State
and Islam; “The Political Teaching of Avicenna.” Edi-
tor and translator, Averroës’ Middle Commentary on
Aristotle’s Poetics. AVICENNA; FARABI, AL-; IBN RUSHD;
IBN TUFAYL.
Steven M. Cahn. Professor of Philosophy, City University
of New York Graduate School. Works include Saints

and Scamps: Ethics in Academia. Editor, Morality, Re-
sponsibility, and the University: Studies in Academic
Ethics. General editor, Issues in Academic Ethics. AC-
ADEMIC ETHICS.
Cheshire Calhoun. Professor of Philosophy, Colby Col-
lege. Author, Feminism, the Family, and the Politics of
the Closet: Lesbian and Gay Displacement. Editor,
What is an Emotion? POLITICAL CORRECTNESS.
J. Baird Callicott. Professor of Philosophy and Religious
Studies, University of North Texas. Works include In
Defense of the Land Ethic; Beyond the Land Ethic;
Earth’s Insights; and book chapters and journal arti-
cles. CONSERVATION ETHICS; ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS;
LEOPOLD.
James Campbell. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Toledo (Ohio). Author, Understanding John Dewey;
Recovering Benjamin Franklin; and other works in
social philosophy and the history of American Philos-
ophy. TUFTS.
Richmond Campbell. Professor of Philosophy, Dalhousie
University (Nova Scotia). Author, Illusions of Paradox;
Self-Love and Self-Respect. Co-editor, Paradoxes of
Rationality and Cooperation. An editor of Canadian
Journal of Philosophy. EGOISM.
Claudia Card. Professor of Philosophy, University of Wis-
consin, Madison. Author, Lesbian Choices and The
Unnatural Lottery: Character and Moral Luck. Editor
of Feminist Ethics; Adventures in Lesbian Philosophy;
On Feminist Ethics and Politics; and the forthcoming
Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir. FIDEL-
ITY; LESBIAN ETHICS; MERCY.
Thomas L. Carson. Professor of Philosophy, Loyola Uni-
versity of Chicago. Author, The Status of Morality; and
Value and the Good Life. Co-Editor of Morality and
the Good Life; and Moral Relativism. BRIBERY.
Hsueh-li Cheng. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Hawaii, Hilo. Author, Empty Logic and Exploring Zen.
Translator and commentator, Nagarjuna’s Twelve Gate
Treatise. Co-editor, New Essays in Chinese Philosophy.
Editor-in-chief, International Review of Chinese Reli-
gion and Philosophy. Consulting editor. BUDDHA; BUD-
DHIST ETHICS; JAINISM; NAGARJUNA.
James F. Childress. Kyle Professor of Religious Studies
and Professor of Medical Education, University of Vir-
ginia. Author, Practical Reasoning in Bioethics. Co-
author, Principles of Biomedical Ethics. PRINCIPLISM.
Roderick M. Chisholm (1916–1999). Late Professor of
Philosophy Emeritus, Brown University. Author, Franz
Brentano and Intrinsic Value; Theory of Knowledge;
Perceiving; Person and Object; The First Person; and
On Metaphysics. Translator of Brentano. BRENTANO.
Thomas Christiano. Associate Professor of Philosophy,
University of Arizona. Author, Rule of the Many: Fun-
damental Issues in Democratic Theory, and articles on
xxi
Contributors and Editors
theories of justice, democratic theory, and foundations
of moral philosophy. DEMOCRACY.
Maudemarie Clark. George Carleton, Jr., Professor of
Philosophy, Colgate University. Author, Nietzsche on
Truth and Philosophy. Co-editor, Nietzsche’s Day-
break; Co-editor and co-translator, Nietzsche’s On the
Genealogy of Morality. IMMORALISM.
S. R. L. Clark. Professor of Philosophy, University of Liv-
erpool. Author, The Political Animal; Biology and
Christian Ethics; Civil Peace and Sacred Order; and
other works on Aristotle, animals, philosophy of reli-
gion, philosophical psychology, and neo-Platonism.
PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY.
C. A. J. (Tony) Coady. Gibson Professor of Philosophy
and Deputy Director of the Centre for Applied Philos-
ophy and Public Ethics, University of Melbourne. Au-
thor, Testimony: A Philosophical Study, and other
works on political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of
mind, epistemology. DIRTY HANDS; TERRORISM.
John M. Cooper. Stuart Professor of Philosophy, Prince-
ton University. Author, Reason and Human Good in
Aristotle; Reason and Emotion: Essays on Ancient
Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory. Editor, Plato:
Complete Works. FRIENDSHIP; HISTORY 2: CLASSICAL
GREEK.
David Copp. Professor of Philosophy, Bowling Green
State University (Ohio). Author, Morality, Normativ-
ity, and Society. Co-editor, The Idea of Democracy;
Morality, Reason and Truth; and Pornography and
Censorship. METAETHICS; SKEPTICISM IN ETHICS.
John Cottingham. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Reading. Author, Philosophy and the Good Life; Des-
cartes; The Rationalists; “Varieties of Retribution”;
“Partiality and the Virtues”; “The Ethical Credentials
of Partiality”; and other works on history of philosophy,
ethics, and philosophy of law. JUSTICE, RECTIFICATORY.
Antonio S. Cua. Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Cath-
olic University of America. Author, Dimensions of
Moral Creativity; Ethical Argumentation: A Study in
Hsun Tzu’s Moral Epistemology; Moral Vision and
Tradition: Essays in Chinese Ethics. Co-editor, Journal
of Chinese Philosophy. Consulting editor. CONFUCIAN
ETHICS; HSUN TZU; WANG YANG-MING.
Garrett Cullity. Lecturer in Moral Philosophy, University
of St. Andrews. Author of essays in normative and
meta-ethics. Co-editor, Ethics and Practical Reason.
PUBLIC GOODS.
Randall Curren. Associate Professor, Philosophy and
Education, University of Rochester. Author, Aristotle
on the Necessity of Public Education, and other works
in ancient, moral, legal, political, and educational phi-
losophy. Editor, A Companion to the Philosophy of
Education (forthcoming). MORAL EDUCATION.
Norman Daniels. Professor of Philosophy, Tufts Univer-
sity. Author of Just Health Care; Am I My Parents’
Contributors and Editors
Keeper?; Justice and Justification: Reflective Equilib-
rium in Theory and Practice; and other works on ethics
and public policy. PUBLIC HEALTH POLICY; REFLECTIVE
EQUILIBRIUM.
Stephen L. Darwall. Professor of Philosophy, University
of Michigan. Author, Impartial Reason; The British
Moralists and the Internal ‘Ought’; and other works on
moral theory and on the foundations and history of
ethics. CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS; CUDWORTH; HUTCH-
ESON; SHAFTESBURY.
G. Scott Davis. Booker Professor of Religion and Ethics,
University of Richmond. Author, works on medieval
and early modern ethics, ethics and religion, and the
just war tradition. HISTORY 5: EARLY MEDIEVAL; MYS-
TICISM.
N. Ann Davis. Professor of Philosophy, Pomona College.
Works include articles on abortion and self-defense,
the doctrine of double effect, deontology, utilitarian-
ism, and rights. ABORTION.
John Deigh. Associate Professor of Philosophy, North-
western University. Author, The Sources of Moral
Agency; and articles on moral and political philosophy.
Editor, Ethics. GUILT AND SHAME; INNOCENCE.
Maurizio Passerin d’Entrèves. Chair of Philosophy, Uni-
versity of Cape Town. Author, Modernity, Justice and
Community and The Political Philosophy of Hannah
Arendt. Co-editor, Habermas and the Unfinished Pro-
ject of Modernity and Public and Private. COMMUNI-
TARIANISM.
Ronald de Sousa. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Toronto. Author, The Rationality of Emotion. Interests
include Greek philosophy, cognitive science, ethics,
philosophy of biology. EMOTION.
Eliot Deutsch. Professor of Philosophy, University of Ha-
waii, Manoa. Editor, Philosophy East and West. Works
include Personhood, Creativity and Freedom and Stud-
ies in Comparative Aesthetics. Translator of the Bha-
gavad Gita. Consulting editor.
Lewis Anthony Dexter (1915–1995). Held Visiting Pro-
fessorships at several universities and state government
positions in Massachusetts. Author, “Scandals and
Scandalization” (Encyclopedia of American Political
History). CORRUPTION.
Cora Diamond. William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Phi-
losophy, University of Virginia. Author, The Realistic
Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind. Editor,
Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of Mathe-
matics. Consulting editor. ANSCOMBE; INTEGRITY;
WITTGENSTEIN; WITTGENSTEINIAN ETHICS.
Mary G. Dietz. Professor, Political Science, University of
Minnesota. Works include, Between the Human and
the Divine: The Political Thought of Simone Weil. Ed-
itor, Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory. CIVIC GOOD
AND VIRTUE.
xxii
Alan Donagan (1925–1991). Late Doris and Henry
Dreyfuss Professor of Philosophy, California Institute
of Technology. Works include Choice: The Essential
Element in Human Action and Spinoza. Consulting
editor. CONSCIENCE; DELIBERATION AND CHOICE; HIS-
TORY 12: 20TH CENTURY ANGLO-AMERICAN; SPINOZA;
WHEWELL.
Thomas Donaldson. Mark O. Winkleman Professor, Pro-
fessor of Legal Studies, and Director, Wharton Ethics
Program, The Wharton School, University of Pennsyl-
vania. Co-author, Ties That Bind. JUSTICE, CIRCUM-
STANCES OF.
John Doris. Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University
of California, Santa Cruz. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY.
Gerald Dworkin. Professor of Philosophy, University of
California, Davis. Author, The Theory and Practice of
Autonomy; Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Sui-
cide. Editor, Mill’s ‘On Liberty’. Consulting editor.
PATERNALISM.
Abulfadl Mohsin Ebrahim. Professor of Islamic Studies,
School of Religion and Culture, University of Durban-
Westville (South Africa). Author, Abortion, Birth Con-
trol and Surrogate Parenting: An Islamic Perspective;
Organ Transplantation: Islamic Ethico-Legal Perspec-
tives. ISLAMIC MEDICAL ETHICS.
Abraham Edel. Research Professor of Philosophy, Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania; Distinguished Professor of Phi-
losophy Emeritus, City University of New York. Works
include Method in Ethical Theory; Science, Ideology,
and Value; Aristotle and His Philosophy. Consulting
editor. NATURE AND ETHICS; PERRY; VALUE, THEORY OF.
Paul Edwards. New School University; Professor of Phi-
losophy Emeritus, Brooklyn College. Author, The Logic
of Moral Discourse; Heidegger and Death; Reincar-
nation: A Critical Examination. Editor-in-Chief, The
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1967). Editor, Voltaire’s
Philosophical Writing and Immortality. RUSSELL; VOL-
TAIRE.
Rem B. Edwards. Lindsay Young Professor of Humani-
ties Emeritus, University of Tennessee. Author, Bio
Ethics; Religious Values and Valuations; What Caused
the Big Bang? EDWARDS; JEFFERSON.
Gerard Elfstrom. Professor of Philosophy, Auburn Uni-
versity. Author, Moral Issues and Multinational Cor-
porations; New Challenges for Political Philosophy;
and International Ethics: A Reference Handbook. Co-
author, Military Ethics. COSMOPOLITAN ETHICS; HONOR;
MILITARY ETHICS.
Anthony Ellis. Professor of Philosophy, Virginia Com-
monwealth University. Author of articles in a wide area
of philosophy, including political philosophy and phi-
losophy of law. PUNISHMENT.
Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson. Lecturer in Philosophy, Uni-
versity of Iceland. Author, Plotinus on Sense-
Perception: A Philosophical Study. PLOTINUS.

Gertrude Ezorsky. Brooklyn College, City University of
New York, Emerita. Author, Racism and Justice: The
Case for Affirmative Action, and other publications in
ethics and social philosophy. Editor, Philosophical Per-
spectives on Punishment and Moral Rights in the
Workplace. DISCRIMINATION.
Joel Feinberg. Regents Professor of Philosophy and Law
Emeritus, University of Arizona. Author of The Moral
Limits of the Criminal Law. HARM AND OFFENSE.
Fred Feldman. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Massachusetts, Amherst. Author, Utilitarianism, He-
donism, and Desert; Doing the Best We Can: An Essay
in Informal Deontic Logic; and Confrontations With
the Reaper. HEDONISM; LOGIC AND ETHICS.
John Martin Fischer. Professor of Philosophy, University
of California, Riverside. Author, The Metaphysics of
Free Will: An Essay on Control. Co-author, Responsi-
bility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility.
Editor, Moral Responsibility and God, Foreknowledge,
and Freedom. Co-editor, Ethics: Problems and Princi-
ples. DEATH; FATE AND FATALISM; FREEDOM AND DE-
TERMINISM.
James Fishkin. Professor and Chair, Department of Gov-
ernment, and Darrell K. Royal Regents Chair in Ethics
and American Society, University of Texas at Austin.
Director, Center for Deliberative Polling. Author of
“Tyranny and Legitimacy”; “Democracy and Delibera-
tion”; “The Dialogue of Justice”; and other works in
political theory and political behavior. BARRY.
Richard E. Flathman. George Armstrong Kelly Memorial
Professor of Political Science, The Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity. Works include Willful Liberalism; Thomas
Hobbes, Skepticism, Individuality and Chastened Poli-
tics; Reflections of a Would-Be Anarchist; The Philos-
ophy and Politics of Freedom; and Toward a Liberal-
ism. LIBERALISM.
Elizabeth Flower (1913–1995). Late Professor Emerita
of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania. Author of
works in moral and legal philosophy. Co-author, A His-
tory of Philosophy in America and Morality, Philoso-
phy and Practice. STEWART.
Thomas R. Flynn. Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of
Philosophy, Emory University. Author of Sartre and
Marxist Existentialism; Sartre, Foucault and Historical
Reason; and other works on contemporary continental
philosophy. ABSURD, THE; AUTHENTICITY; BAD FAITH;
DE BEAUVOIR; SARTRE.
Nicholas Fotion. Professor of Philosophy, Emory Univer-
sity. Author, Military Ethics: Looking Toward the Fu-
ture, and works in medical ethics, ethical theory, and
philosophy of language. Co-author, Military Ethics:
Guidelines for Peace and War. HONOR; MILITARY
ETHICS.
William K. Frankena (1908–1994). Late Professor Emer-
itus of Philosophy, University of Michigan. Author of
xxiii
Contributors and Editors
books and papers in moral and educational philosophy,
including Ethics; Thinking about Morality; and Per-
spectives on Morality. Consulting editor.
Allie M. Frazier. Professor of Philosophy and Religion
Emeritus, Hollins University. Past President, Associa-
tion of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs. Editor,
Eastern Religious Thought. FEUERBACH; KARMA.
Alfred J. Freddoso. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Notre Dame. Translator, Ockham’s Quodlibeta sep-
tem; Part II of Ockham’s Summa logicae; Francisco
Suarez, On Creation, Conservation, and Concurrence;
Francisco Suarez, On Efficient Causality. Author, ar-
ticles on Ockham. WILLIAM OF OCKHAM.
Michael Freeman. Reader in Government, and Associate
Director, Human Rights Centre, University of Essex.
Author, Edmund Burke and the Critique of Political
Radicalism and other works on democratic theory, rev-
olutions, human rights, and genocide. BURKE; OPPRES-
SION.
Samuel Freeman. Professor of Philosophy and Law, Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania. Editor and contributor, The
Cambridge Companion to John Rawls (forthcoming);
Editor, John Rawls’s Collected Papers. Author, articles
in political and legal philosophy. DEONTOLOGY; RAWLS.
R. G. Frey. Professor of Philosophy, Bowling Green State
University. Author, Interests and Rights; Rights, Killing,
and Suffering. Co-author, Euthanasia and Physician-
Assisted Suicide. Editor, Utility and Rights and Liabil-
ity and Responsibility. ACTS AND OMISSIONS; HARE;
MANDEVILLE; TORTURE.
Marilyn Friedman. Professor of Philosophy, Washington
University. Author, What Are Friends For? Feminist
Perspectives on Personal Relationships and Moral The-
ory; Autonomy, Gender, Politics (forthcoming). Co-
author, Political Correctness: For and Against. PARTI-
ALITY.
Manfred S. Frings. Emeritus Professor of Philosophy,
DePaul University. Works include: Max Scheler; The
Mind of Max Scheler: The First Comprehensive Guide
Based on the Complete Works. Editor, The Collected
Works of Max Scheler. Co-editor, The Collected Works
of M. Heidegger. SCHELER.
Thomas J. Froehlich. Professor, Library and Information
Science, Kent State University. Author, Survey and
Analysis of the Major Ethical and Legal Issues Facing
Library and Information Services. LIBRARY AND INFOR-
MATION PROFESSIONS.
Jack Fruchtman, Jr. Professor of Political Science, Tow-
son University. Author, Thomas Paine and the Religion
of Nature; Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom; studies
of Joseph Priestley, Richard Price, Thomas Reid,
Thomas Hardy, Thomas Spence, and Helen Maria Wil-
liams. PAINE.
Contributors and Editors
Dwight Furrow. Philosophy, San Diego Mesa College.
Author, Against Theory: Continental and Analytic
Challenges in Moral Philosophy. POSTMODERNISM.
J. L. A. Garcia. Professor, Philosophy Department, Rut-
gers University, New Brunswick. MORAL ABSOLUTES;
PROPORTIONALITY; RACISM, CONCEPTS OF.
Newton Garver. Distinguished Service Professor of Phi-
losophy, State University of New York at Buffalo. Au-
thor, This Complicated Form of Life and Derrida and
Wittgenstein. Co-editor, Naturalism and Rationality
and Justice, Law and Violence. CIVILITY; GANDHI; PAC-
IFISM; SCHWEITZER.
Bernard Gert. Stone Professor of Intellectual and Moral
Philosophy, Dartmouth College. Author, Morality: Its
Nature and Justification. Co-author, Bioethics and Mo-
rality and the New Genetics. ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY
AND ETHICS; CHEATING; GENETIC ENGINEERING; IMPAR-
TIALITY; MORAL RULES.
Joshua Gert. Visiting Assistant Professor, University of
Missouri at Columbia. Author of articles on rationality
and reasons. REASONS FOR ACTION.
Raymond Geuss. Professor of Political Science, Colum-
bia University. Author, The Idea of a Critical Theory
and other works on ethics and political and social phi-
losophy. Consulting editor.
Alan Gewirth. Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Ser-
vice Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago.
Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Works
include Reason and Morality; Human Rights; The Com-
munity of Rights; and Self-Fulfillment. Consulting editor.
RATIONALITY VS. REASONABLENESS; RIGHTS.
Mary Gibson. Associate Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers
University. Author, Workers’ Rights; “Contract Moth-
erhood: Social Practice in Social Context.” Editor, To
Breathe Freely: Risk, Consent, and Air. Consulting ed-
itor. RISK.
Joseph J. Godfrey. Associate Professor of Philosophy,
Saint Joseph’s University. Author, A Philosophy of Hu-
man Hope, and works on hope and trust. HOPE.
Alan H. Goldman. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Miami. Author, Moral Knowledge; The Moral Foun-
dations of Professional Ethics; Justice and Reverse Dis-
crimination; Empirical Knowledge; Aesthetic Value;
and Practical Rules. PRECEDENT; PROFESSIONAL ETHICS.
Alvin Goldman. Regents’ Professor of Philosophy, Uni-
versity of Arizona. Author, A Theory of Human Action;
Epistemology and Cognition; Liaisons: Philosophy
Meets the Cognitive and Social Sciences; and Knowl-
edge and the Social World. Co-editor, Values and Mor-
als. ACTION.
Kenneth E. Goodpaster. Koch Professor of Business
Ethics, University of St. Thomas. Works include, Per-
spectives on Morality; Ethics and Problems of the 21st
Century; Policies and Persons; “Can a Corporation
xxiv
Have a Conscience?”; “Business Ethics and Stake-
holder Analysis”; “Conscience and its Counterfeits in
Organizational Life.” Consulting editor. BUSINESS ETH-
ICS; STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS.
Samuel Gorovitz. Professor of Philosophy and of Public
Administration, Syracuse University, and Faculty
Scholar in Bioethics, State University of New York
Upstate Medical University. Works include Doctors’
Dilemmas and Drawing the Line: Life, Death, and Eth-
ical Choices in an American Hospital. BIOETHICS.
J. C. B. Gosling. Retired Principal, St. Edmund Hall, Uni-
versity of Oxford. Works include Pleasure and Desire;
Plato; Plato’s Philebus; The Greeks on Pleasure; and
Weakness of the Will. PLEASURE.
James Gouinlock. Emeritus Professor of Philosophy,
Emory University. Works include John Dewey’s Phi-
losophy of Value; Excellence in Public Discourse: John
Stuart Mill, John Dewey, and Social Intelligence; and
Rediscovering the Moral Life. Past President, Society
for the Advancement of American Philosophy. DEWEY.
Carol C. Gould. Professor of Philosophy, Stevens Insti-
tute of Technology, and Adjunct Professor of Interna-
tional Affairs, Columbia University. Author, Marx’s
Social Ontology and Rethinking Democracy. Editor,
Beyond Domination and The Information Web. Co-
editor, Women and Philosophy. SELF AND SOCIAL SELF.
Timothy Gould. Philosophy, Metropolitan State College
of Denver. Works include essays on Kant’s ethics and
aesthetics; on Romantic and feminist accounts of cul-
ture; on Mill, Emerson, and Nietzsche; and Hearing
Things: Voice and Method in the Writing of Stanley
Cavell. EMERSON; THOREAU; TRANSCENDENTALISM.
James M. Gustafson. Professor Emeritus, Emory Univer-
sity. Works include Ethics from a Theocentric Perspec-
tive; Intersections: Science, Theology, Ethics; Protes-
tant and Roman Catholic Ethics. CHRISTIAN ETHICS;
JESUS OF NAZARETH; SITUATION ETHICS.
Paul Guyer. Florence R.C. Murray Professor in the Hu-
manities, University of Pennsylvania. Author, Kant and
the Claims of Taste; Kant and the Claims of Knowl-
edge; Kant and the Experience of Freedom; and Kant
on Freedom, Law, and Happiness. Editor, Cambridge
Companion to Kant and Kant’s Groundwork of the
Metaphysics of Morals: Critical Essays. Co-translator
of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of the
Power of Judgment. SCHILLER; WOLFF.
Knud Haakonssen. Professor of Philosophy, Boston Uni-
versity. Author, The Science of a Legislator and Natural
Law and Moral Philosophy. Editor, Thomas Reid’s
Practical Ethics; Enlightenment and Religion; and Tra-
ditions of Liberalism. CUMBERLAND; GROTIUS; NATU-
RAL LAW.
Philip P. Hallie (1922–1994). Late Griffin Professor,
Emeritus, of Philosophy and Humanities, Wesleyan

University. Works include Cruelty and Lest Innocent
Blood be Shed. CRUELTY.
Alan Hamlin. Professor of Economics, University of
Southampton (England). Author, Ethics, Economics
and the State. Co-author, Democratic Devices and De-
sires. Co-editor, The Good Polity. ECONOMIC SYSTEMS.
Jean Hampton (1954–1996). Late Professor of Philoso-
phy, University of Arizona. Author, Hobbes and the
Social Contract Tradition, and articles on social con-
tract theory, punishment, moral culpability, and liber-
alism. Co-author, Forgiveness and Mercy. HOBBES.
Russell Hardin. Professor of Politics, New York Univer-
sity. Author, Collective Action; Morality Within the
Limits Of Reason; One For All: The Logic Of Group
Conflict; and Liberalism, Constitutionalism, and De-
mocracy. Consulting editor. COOPERATION, CONFLICT
AND COORDINATION; GAME THEORY; RATIONAL CHOICE;
STRATEGIC INTERACTION; TRUST.
John E. Hare. Professor of Philosophy, Calvin College.
Author, Plato’s Euthyphro; The Moral Gap. Co-author,
Ethics and International Affairs. Congressional Fellow,
American Philosophical Association, 1981–83. GOV-
ERNMENT, ETHICS IN.
R. M. Hare. Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University
of Florida, Gainesville. Formerly White’s Professor of
Moral Philosophy, Oxford. Works include The Lan-
guage of Morals; Freedom and Reason; Moral Think-
ing; Sorting Out Ethics; and Objective Prescriptions.
Consulting editor. MORAL TERMS; PRESCRIPTIVISM; SLAV-
ERY; UNIVERSALIZABILITY; WEAKNESS OF WILL.
George W. Harris. Chancellor Professor of Philosophy,
College of William and Mary. Author, Dignity and Vul-
nerability: Strength and Quality of Character; Agent-
Centered Morality: An Aristotelian Alternative to Kan-
tian Internalism. ARISTOTELIAN ETHICS; SELF-ESTEEM;
SELF-KNOWLEDGE.
Ross Harrison. Reader in Philosophy, University of Cam-
bridge. Author, Democracy; Bentham. WILLIAMS.
Joseph Heath. Professor of Philosophy, University of To-
ronto. Author, Communicative Action and Rational
Choice. TAYLOR.
Virginia Held. Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at
the City University of New York, Graduate School and
Hunter College. Works include Feminist Morality:
Transforming Culture, Society, and Politics; Rights and
Goods: Justifying Social Action; The Public Interest
and Individual Interests. Consulting editor. MASS ME-
DIA; MORAL PLURALISM.
Paul Helm. Reader in Philosophy, University of Liver-
pool. Author, The Varieties of Belief; Eternal God;
other works in the philosophy of religion and episte-
mology. Consulting editor. CALVIN; RELIGION.
Barbara Herman. Professor of Philosophy, University of
California at Los Angeles. Author, The Practice of
xxv
Contributors and Editors
Moral Judgment, and other works in ethics and Kan-
tian moral theory. DESIRE; MOTIVES.
Steven Hetcher. Assistant Professor, Vanderbilt Univer-
sity School of Law. Works include “Creating Safe So-
cial Norms in a Dangerous World” and “Burning
Chrome from the One-way Mirror: The Emergence of
Website Privacy Norms.” NORMS.
Thomas E. Hill, Jr. Professor of Philosophy, University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Works include Autonomy
and Self-Respect and Dignity and Practical Reason.
AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; SELF-RESPECT.
Margaret Holland. Associate Professor of Philosophy,
University of Northern Iowa. Author of “Touching the
Weights: Moral Perception and Attention” and “What’s
Wrong with Telling the Truth? An Analysis of Gossip.”
MORAL ATTENTION; MORAL PERCEPTION; MURDOCH.
Helen Bequaert Holmes. Independent scholar. Research
interests include assessment of new technology in re-
productive medicine. Editor, Feminist Perspectives in
Medical Ethics; Issues in Reproductive Technology.
REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES.
Sarah Holtman. Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Uni-
versity of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Works include articles
on moral, legal, and political philosophy, in particular
on Kant’s theory of justice. FIDUCIARY RELATIONSHIPS.
Brad Hooker. Philosophy, University of Reading (En-
gland). Author, Ideal Code, Real World: A Rule-
Consequentialist Theory of Morality. SUBJECTIVISM.
Jasper Hopkins. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Minnesota. Co-translator and commentator, Anselm’s
works; translator of Nicholas of Cusa’s works. Au-
thored works include Hermeneutical and Textual Prob-
lems in the Complete Treatises of St. Anselm and A
Companion to the Study of St. Anselm. ANSELM.
Laurence D. Houlgate. Professor of Philosophy, Califor-
nia Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Au-
thor, Family and State: The Philosophy of Family Law;
The Child and the State: A Normative Theory of Juve-
nile Rights; Morals, Marriage and Parenthood: An In-
troduction to Family Ethics. CHILDREN AND ETHICAL
THEORY.
John Howes. President, Learningguild (Brunswick, Vic-
toria, Australia). Formerly, Senior Lecturer in Philos-
ophy, University of Melbourne, and Professor of Phi-
losophy, Cape Town. Works include Making Up
Sentences and articles on Plato and Mill. CICERO;
GREEN; SENECA.
Donald C. Hubin. Associate Professor of Philosophy,
Ohio State University. Works include “Parental Rights
and Due Process”; “The Moral Justification of Benefit/
Cost Analysis”; “What’s Special About Humeanism”;
and “Hypothetical Motivation”. COST-BENEFIT ANALY-
SIS.
Contributors and Editors
Paul M. Hughes. Associate Professor of Philosophy,
and Chair, Department of Humanities, University of
Michigan-Dearborn. Author, “Temptation and the Ma-
nipulation of Desire”; “Paternalism, Battered Women,
and the Law”; “Moral Anger, Forgiving, and Condon-
ing.” ANGER; HATE.
Lester H. Hunt. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Wisconsin. Author, Nietzsche and the Origin of Virtue;
Character and Culture; and articles on ethics, philos-
ophy of law, and philosophy in literature. ENVY; GEN-
EROSITY.
Thomas Hurka. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Calgary. Author, Perfectionism; Virtue, Vice, and
Value; and articles on punishment, future generations,
and value theory. FUTURE GENERATIONS; PERFECTION-
ISM.
Kenneth K. Inada. Emeritus Professor of Philosophy,
State University of New York, Buffalo. Author, Nagar-
juna, and other works on Asian and comparative phi-
losophy. Translator, The Logic of Unity. General editor,
Guide to Buddhist Philosophy. JAPAN.
Terence Irwin. Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy
and Humane Letters, Cornell University. Works in-
clude Aristotle’s First Principles; Classical Thought;
Plato’s Ethics; translations with notes of Plato’s Gor-
gias and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Consulting
editor. ARISTOTLE; PLATO; SOCRATES.
John Claiborne Isbell. Department of French and Italian,
Indiana University, Bloomington. Author, The Birth of
European Romanticism. STAEL.
Alison M. Jaggar. Professor of Philosophy and Women’s
Studies, University of Colorado at Boulder. Author,
Feminist Politics and Human Nature; Living With
Contradictions: Controversies In Feminist Ethics. Co-
editor, Feminist Frameworks. FEMINIST ETHICS.
Deborah G. Johnson. Professor, Director of the Program
in Philosophy, Science and Technology, School of Pub-
lic Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology. Author,
Computer Ethics. Co-editor, Computers, Ethics and So-
cial Values; editor, Ethical Issues in Engineering. COM-
PUTERS.
Edward Johnson. Professor of Philosophy, University of
New Orleans. Author, “Treating the Dirt: Environmen-
tal Ethics and Moral Theory”; “Inscrutable Desires”;
“Media Ownership”; other works on environmental
ethics, philosophy of technology, philosophy of edu-
cation, and philosophy of sex and love. AGENT-
CENTERED MORALITY.
Mark L. Johnson. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Oregon. Author, The Body in the Mind and Moral
Imagination. Co-author, Metaphors We Live By and
Philosophy in the Flesh. COGNITIVE SCIENCE.
David H. Jones. Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Col-
lege of William and Mary. Author, Moral Responsibility
xxvi
in the Holocaust and other works in ethics and philos-
ophy of mind. HOLOCAUST; HOMICIDE; INFANTICIDE.
Albert R. Jonsen. Department of Medical History and
Ethics, School of Medicine, University of Washington.
MEDICAL ETHICS, HISTORICAL.
Robert Welsh Jordan. Associate Professor of Philosophy,
Colorado State University. Author of essays on phe-
nomenological value theory, Kafka’s and Brentano’s
ethics, historicality in Husserl’s works, and philosophy
of social sciences. HARTMANN.
Lynn S. Joy. Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre
Dame. Author, Gassendi the Atomist and articles in the
philosophy of science and the history of ethics. GAS-
SENDI.
Charles H. Kahn. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Pennsylvania. Author, Anaximander and the Origins of
Greek Cosmology; The Verb ‘Be’ in Ancient Greek; The
Art and Thought of Heraclitus; Plato and the Socratic
Dialogue. HISTORY 1: PRESOCRATIC GREEK.
Morris B. Kaplan. Associate Professor of Philosophy,
Purchase College in the State University of New York.
Author, Sexual Justice: Democratic Citizenship and the
Politics of Desire; “Intimacy and Equality: The Ques-
tions of Lesbian and Gay Marriage”; and Sodom on the
Thames: Policing Male Desire in Late Victorian Lon-
don (forthcoming). GAY ETHICS.
Gregory S. Kavka (1947–1994). Late Professor of Phi-
losophy, University of California, Irvine. Author, works
on Hobbes, nuclear ethics. BRANDT; DETERRENCE,
THREATS AND RETALIATION; NUCLEAR ETHICS.
John Kekes. Professor of Philosophy, State University of
New York, Albany. Author, Against Liberalism; A Case
for Conservatism; Pluralism in Philosophy: Changing
the Subject. BENEVOLENCE; CONSERVATISM; HAPPINESS;
LIFE, MEANING OF; MORAL IMAGINATION; WISDOM.
Douglas Kellner. George Kneller Chair in Philosophy of
Education, University of California at Los Angeles. Au-
thor, Critical Theory, Marxism and Modernity; Televi-
sion and the Crisis of Democracy; Media Culture. Co-
author, Camera Politica. CULTURAL STUDIES.
John Kelsay. Professor, Department of Religion, Florida
State University. Author, Islam and War. Co-editor and
contributor, Just War and Jihad and Cross, Crescent,
and Sword. ISLAMIC ETHICS.
Kenneth Kipnis. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Hawaii. Author, Legal Ethics; “Confessions of an Ex-
pert Ethics Witness”; and other works in practical
ethics. Co-editor, Property: Cases, Concepts, Critiques.
Editor of various works in legal and social philosophy.
BARGAINING.
Eva Feder Kittay. Professor of Philosophy, State Univer-
sity of New York, Stony Brook. Author, Metaphor;
Love’s Labor: Essays on Women; Equality and Depen-
dency; and other works on philosophy of language, nor-

mative ethics, and feminist theory. Co-editor, Frames,
Fields, and Contrasts and Women and Moral Theory.
HYPOCRISY.
Ted Klein. Professor of Philosophy, Texas Christian Uni-
versity. Co-translator of works by Husserl and Heideg-
ger. Author, articles on Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Ri-
coeur, hermeneutical ethics, legal reasoning and analogy.
ANALOGICAL ARGUMENT.
John Kleinig. Professor of Philosophy, John Jay College of
Criminal Justice, City University of New York. Works
include Punishment and Desert; Paternalism; and Val-
uing Life. CONSENT.
George L. Kline. Milton C. Nahm Professor Emeritus of
Philosophy, Bryn Mawr College. Works include, Spi-
noza in Soviet Philosophy and Religious and Anti-
Religious Thought in Russia. SOVIET ETHICAL THEORY.
Charles H. Koch, Jr. Dudley Warner Woodbridge Profes-
sor of Law, College of William and Mary. Works in-
clude: Administrative Law and Practice, second; Ad-
ministrative Law: Cases and Materials; and law journal
articles. COOPERATIVE SURPLUS.
Joseph J. Kockelmans. Distinguished Professor of Philos-
ophy, Emeritus, Pennsylvania State University. Works
include, On the Truth of Being and Heidegger on Art
and Art Works. Editor, books on European philosophy.
Consulting editor. CAMUS; HUSSERL; PHENOMENOL-
OGY.
Marvin Kohl. Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, State
University of New York, College at Fredonia. Author,
The Morality of Killing. Editor, Beneficent Euthanasia
and Infanticide and the Value of Life. BENEFICENCE;
EUTHANASIA; LIFE AND DEATH.
Christine M. Korsgaard. Arthur Kingsley Porter Profes-
sor of Philosophy, Harvard University. Author of The
Sources of Normativity; Creating the Kingdom of Ends;
and articles on practical reason and the self in ethics
and the history of ethics. Consulting editor. KANT;
PRICE; RAWLS.
Jill Kraye. Reader in the History of Renaissance Philos-
ophy, Warburg Institute (London). Editor, Cambridge
Translations of Renaissance Philosophical Texts. Co-
editor, Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy. Ed-
itor, Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Human-
ism. HISTORY 7: RENAISSANCE; NEO-STOICISM.
David Farrell Krell. Professor of Philosophy, DePaul Uni-
versity. Author, Contagion; Archeticture; The Good Eu-
ropean; Lunar Voices; Infectious Nietzsche; and Dai-
mon Life. MORTALITY; NIHILISM; SCHELLING.
Norman Kretzmann (1928–1998). Late Susan Linn Sage
Professor of Philosophy, Cornell University. Principal
editor, The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Phi-
losophy. Editor, The Philosophical Review. Consulting
editor.
xxvii
Contributors and Editors
John Lachs. Centennial Professor of Philosophy, Vander-
bilt University. Author, Intermediate Man; The Rele-
vance of Philosophy to Life; In Love with Life. AMER-
ICAN MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
Berel Lang. Professor of Humanities, Trinity College
(Connecticut). Works include Act and Idea in the Nazi
Genocide; The Future of the Holocaust; Holocaust
Representation: Art Within the Limits of History and
Ethics. GENOCIDE; MAIMONIDES.
Judith Lichtenberg. Associate Professor of Philosophy,
and Research Scholar, Institute for Philosophy and
Public Policy, University of Maryland. Editor, Democ-
racy and the Mass Media. Author of essays in moral
theory, media ethics, and international ethics. FREEDOM
OF THE PRESS; JOURNALISM.
Ralph Lindgren. William Wilson Selfridge Professor of
Philosophy Emeritus, Lehigh University. Editor, The
Early Writings of Adam Smith. Author, The Social Phi-
losophy of Adam Smith. Co-author, The Law of Sex
Discrimination. SMITH.
Shu-hsien Liu. Research Fellow, Institute of Chinese Lit-
erature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, Taipei.
Emeritus Professor, The Chinese University of Hong
Kong. Author, Understanding Confucian Philosophy:
Classical and Sung-Ming, and works on Chu Hsi and
Huang Tsung-hsi. Editor, Harmony and Strife: Contem-
porary Perspectives, East & West. CHU HSI.
Loren E. Lomasky. Professor of Philosophy, Bowling
Green State University (Ohio). Author, Persons, Rights,
and the Moral Community. PERSON, CONCEPT OF.
A. A. Long. Professor of Classics, and Irving Stone Pro-
fessor of Literature, University of California, Berkeley.
Author, Hellenistic Philosophy and other works on
Greek philosophy and literature. CYNICS; CYRENAICS;
HISTORY 3: HELLENISTIC; HISTORY 4: ROMAN.
David Luban. Frederick Haas Professor of Law and Phi-
losophy, Georgetown University Law Center. Author,
Lawyers and Justice: An Ethical Study, and other
works on political and legal philosophy and on law.
ARENDT; LEGAL ETHICS; SECRECY AND CONFIDENTIAL-
ITY.
Steven Lukes. Professor of Sociology, New York Univer-
sity. Author, Émile Durkheim, His Life and Work: A
Historical and Critical Study; Essays in Social Theory;
Individualism; and Marxism and Morality. DURKHEIM;
INDIVIDUALISM; POWER.
David Lyons. Professor of Law and of Philosophy, Boston
University. Works include Forms and Limits of Utili-
tarianism; Ethics and the Rule of Law; Moral Aspects
of Legal Theory; and Rights, Welfare, and Mill’s Moral
Theory. Consulting editor. UTILITARIANISM.
Jim MacAdam. Professor Emeritus, Philosophy, Trent
University. Works include “What is Prichard’s Intui-
tionism?”; “Obligations: From Common to Uncommon
Contributors and Editors
Morality, The Latimer Case”; Prichard, Harold Arthur,
(Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy). PRICHARD.
Scott MacDonald. Professor of Philosophy, Cornell Uni-
versity. Author of articles on ancient and medieval
ethics, metaphysics, and theory of knowledge. Editor,
Being and Goodness and Aquinas’s Moral Theory. HIS-
TORY 6: LATER MEDIEVAL.
Alasdair MacIntyre. Research Professor of Philosophy,
University of Notre Dame. Works include A Short His-
tory of Ethics and After Virtue. VIRTUE ETHICS.
Eric Mack. Professor of Philosophy, Tulane University.
Author, “Deontic Restrictions are not Agent-Relative
Restrictions” and “In Defence of the Jurisdiction The-
ory of Rights.” Editor, Spencer’s The Man Versus the
State. LIBERTY, ECONOMIC; SPENCER.
Douglas MacLean. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Maryland, Baltimore County. Editor, Values at Risk.
RISK ANALYSIS; RISK AVERSION.
Jeffery E. Malpas. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Tasmania. Author, Place and Experience; Donald Da-
vidson and the Mirror of Meaning. Editor, Philosoph-
ical Papers of Alan Donagan. DONAGAN.
Rudolf Malter (1937–1994). Late Professor of Philoso-
phy, University of Mainz. Author of works on theory
of knowledge, metaphysics, aesthetics, Luther, Kant,
and Schopenhauer. SCHOPENHAUER.
William E. Mann. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Vermont. Author of articles in the philosophy of reli-
gion and medieval philosophy. EVIL; PHILOSOPHY OF
RELIGION; VOLUNTARISM.
Joseph Margolis. Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philoso-
phy, Temple University. Works include The Truth about
Relativism and The Persistence of Reality. PSYCHO-
ANALYSIS; PSYCHOLOGY.
John Marshall. Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Uni-
versity of Virginia. Author, Descartes’s Moral Theory.
FENELON; KANTIAN ETHICS.
Judith Martin. Works include the “Miss Manners” books
and syndicated column; the novels, Gilbert and Style
and Substance; and the essay, “Common Courtesy”.
ETIQUETTE.
Mike W. Martin. Professor of Philosophy, Chapman Uni-
versity. Works include Self-Deception and Morality;
Love’s Virtues; Meaningful Work: Rethinking Profes-
sional Ethics. SELF-DECEPTION.
Gareth B. Matthews. Professor of Philosophy, University
of Massachusetts at Amherst. Author, Thought’s Ego
in Augustine and Descartes; The Philosophy of Child-
hood; Socratic Perplexity and the Nature of Philoso-
phy. Co-translator of Ammonius’s On Aristotle’s Cate-
gories. AUGUSTINE; MORAL DEVELOPMENT.
Larry May. Professor of Philosophy, Washington Univer-
sity. Author, The Morality of Groups; Sharing Respon-
xxviii
sibility; The Socially Responsive Self; Masculinity and
Morality. Co-author, Praying for a Cure. Co-editor,
Collective Responsibility. COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY;
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY.
William L. McBride. Professor of Philosophy, Purdue
University. Co-founder of the Sartre Society of North
America. Works include The Philosophy of Marx; So-
cial Theory at a Crossroads; Sartre’s Political Theory;
Philosophical Reflections on the Changes in Eastern
Europe. PRAXIS.
Thomas McCarthy. Professor of Philosophy, Northwest-
ern University. Works include The Critical Theory of
Jürgen Habermas and Ideals and Illusions: On Recon-
struction and Deconstruction in Contemporary Critical
Theory. Series editor, Studies in Contemporary Ger-
man Social Thought. HABERMAS.
Henry John McCloskey (1925–2000). Late Emeritus
Professor, La Trobe University. Works include Meta-
Ethics and Normative Ethics; John Stuart Mill; God
and Evil; Derechos y sociedad en la filosófica analı́tica;
and Ecological Ethics and Politics. Consulting editor.
PAIN AND SUFFERING.
Mary A. McCloskey. Senior Associate in Philosophy, Mel-
bourne University. Works include Kant’s Aesthetic.
GRATITUDE.
Howard McGary. Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers, The
State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick. Au-
thor, Race and Social Justice. Co-author, Between Slav-
ery and Freedom: Philosophy and American Slavery.
Consulting editor. GROUPS, MORAL STATUS OF.
Ralph M. McInerny. Director, Jacques Maritain Center,
and Grace Professor of Medieval Studies, University of
Notre Dame. Works include Boethius and Aquinas
and First Glance at St. Thomas Aquinas. ABELARD;
THOMAS AQUINAS.
Dennis McKerlie. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Calgary. INEQUALITY.
Chrisopher McMahon. Professor of Philosophy, Univer-
sity of California, Santa Barbara. Author of works on
moral, political, and social philosophy. AUTHORITY.
John McMurtry. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Guelph. Author, The Structure of Marx’s World-View;
Understanding War; Unequal Freedoms: The Global
Market as an Ethical System; The Cancer Stage of
Capitalism; and other works in value theory and social
philosophy. COMPETITION; FORMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
Alfred R. Mele. Professor of Philosophy, Florida State
University. Works include Irrationality; Springs of
Action; Autonomous Agents; and Self-Deception Un-
masked. SELF-CONTROL; TEMPERANCE.
Susan Mendus. Professor of Political Philosophy, and Di-
rector of the Morrell Studies in Toleration Program,
University of York. Works include Toleration and the
Limits of Liberalism. Editor, Justifying Toleration. Co-

editor, John Locke’s Letter on Toleration in Focus. TOL-
ERATION.
Michael J. Meyer. Associate Professor of Philosophy,
Santa Clara University. Co-editor, The Constitution of
Rights: Human Dignity and American Values. Author
of works in ethics and political philosophy. DIGNITY.
Mary Midgley. Formerly Senior Lecturer, University of
Newcastle-on-Tyne. Author, Beast and Man; Wicked-
ness; Heart and Mind; Wisdom, Information and Won-
der; Animals and Why They Matter; Can’t We Make
Moral Judgements? WICKEDNESS.
Richard W. Miller. Professor of Philosophy, Cornell Uni-
versity. Works include Fact and Method; Analyzing
Marx; Moral Differences; and articles on justice, moral
realism, Marx, and explanation and confirmation in the
sciences. MARXISM; MORAL REALISM.
Seumas Miller. Professor of Social Philosophy, and Di-
rector, Special Research Centre in Applied Philosophy
and Public Ethics, Charles Sturt University, Canberra,
Australia. Author, Social Action. Co-author, Police
Ethics. CONVENTIONS.
Phillip Mitsis. Professor of Classics, and Director, Alex-
ander S. Onassis Program in Hellenic Studies, New
York University. Works include Epicurus’ Ethical The-
ory: The Pleasures of Invulnerability. EPICUREANISM;
EPICURUS; LUCRETIUS.
Richard D. Mohr. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Illinois, Urbana. Works include The Platonic Cosmol-
ogy and Gays/Justice: A Study of Ethics, Society, and
Law. HOMOSEXUALITY.
Arthur P. Monahan. Professor of Philosophy Emeritus,
Saint Mary’s University (Halifax, Nova Scotia). Au-
thor, Consent, Coercion and Limit and From Personal
Duties Towards Personal Rights. Translator of medie-
val political works. COMMON GOOD.
Edward F. Mooney. Professor of Philosophy, Sonoma State
University. Author, Selves in Discord and Resolve: Kier-
kegaard’s Moral-Religious Psychology; Knights of Faith
and Resignation: Reading Kierkegaard’s “Fear and
Trembling.” Editor, Wilderness and the Heart; other
works on Kierkegaard, ethics, and philosophy in litera-
ture. SYMPATHY.
Kathleen Dean Moore. Professor of Philosophy, Oregon
State University. Author, Pardons: Justice, Mercy, and
the Public Interest; Reasoning and Writing; and Hold-
fast. AMNESTY AND PARDON.
Ebrahim Moosa. Professor of Islamic Thought, Stanford
University and the University of Cape Town. Author,
“Languages of Change in Islamic Law: Redefining
Death in Modernity”; “Allegory of the Rule (Hukm):
Law as Simulacrum in Islam.” Editor, Revival and Re-
form in Islam: A Study of Islamic Fundamentalism.
SHI-ISM; SUNNISM.
xxix
Contributors and Editors
Christopher Morris. Professor of Philosophy, Bowling
Green State University. Author, An Essay on the Mod-
ern State and essays on contractarian ethics and other
topics. Editor, The Social Contract Theorists: Critical
Essays on Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. CONTRAC-
TARIANISM.
Mary Mothersill. Professor of Philosophy, Barnard Col-
lege, Columbia University. Author, Beauty Restored.
FITTINGNESS.
Janice Moulton. Philosophy, Smith College. Co-author,
Ethical Problems in Higher Education; Scaling the
Dragon; and The Organization of Language. ACADEMIC
FREEDOM; PLAGIARISM.
Amy Mullin. Associate Professor of Philosophy, Univer-
sity of Toronto. Author of works in feminist philoso-
phy, the history of philosophy, and aesthetics. MORAL
PURITY.
Jeffrie G. Murphy. Regents Professor of Law and Philos-
ophy, Arizona State University. Author, Retribution,
Justice and Therapy; Character, Liberty and Law. Co-
author, The Philosophy of Law and Forgiveness and
Mercy. FORGIVENESS; LEGAL PHILOSOPHY.
Steven Nadler. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Wisconsin, Madison. Author, books and articles in the
history of early modern philosophy, including Spinoza:
A Life. MALEBRANCHE.
Jan Narveson. Professor of Philosophy, University of Wa-
terloo (Ontario). Author, Morality and Utility; The Lib-
ertarian Idea; and Moral Matters. ENTITLEMENTS.
Daniel Nelson. Senior Associate Dean of the College,
Dartmouth College. Author of works on virtue theory
and on Thomas Aquinas. PRUDENCE.
Mark T. Nelson. Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Univer-
sity of Leeds. Co-editor, Christian Theism and Moral
Philosophy. Author of works in ethics, philosophy of
religion, epistemology and philosophy of mind. THE-
ISM.
James W. Nickel. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Colorado, Boulder. Author, Making Sense of Human
Rights; “Group Agency and Group Rights”; “Economic
Liberties.” HUMAN RIGHTS.
Kai E. Nielsen. Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Uni-
versity of Calgary. Works include Marxism and the
Moral Point of View; Philosophy and Atheism; Ethics
Without God; and After the Demise of the Tradition.
ATHEISM; ENGELS; MORAL POINT OF VIEW; MURPHY;
REVOLUTION.
Michael Nill. Head of School, Brooklyn Friends School
(Brooklyn). Author, Morality and Self-Interest in Pro-
tagoras, Antiphon, and Democritus. DEMOCRITUS;
PROTAGORAS; SOPHISTS.
Martha Nussbaum. Ernst Freund Distinguished Service
Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chi-
cago. Works include The Fragility of Goodness; Love’s
Contributors and Editors
Knowledge; The Therapy of Desire; Poetic Justice; Cul-
tivating Humanity; Sex and Social Justice; and Women
and Human Development. Consulting editor. CHAR-
ACTER; LITERATURE AND ETHICS; TRAGEDY.
Timothy O’Connor. Associate Professor of Philosophy,
Indiana University. Author, Persons and Causes: The
Metaphysics of Free Will, and articles in metaphysics,
philosophy of mind, and philosophy of religion. CAU-
SATION AND RESPONSIBILITY.
Onora O’Neill. Newnham College, Cambridge. Author,
Faces of Hunger: An Essay on Poverty, Justice, and De-
velopment; Constructions of Reason: Explorations of
Kant’s Practical Philosophy; Towards Justice and Vir-
tue; Bounds of Justice. Consulting editor. CHARITY;
DUTY AND OBLIGATION; FORMALISM; INTERNATIONAL
JUSTICE: DISTRIBUTION.
Gene Outka. Dwight Professor of Philosophy and Chris-
tian Ethics, Yale University. Author, Agape: An Ethical
Analysis. Co-editor, Prospects for a Common Morality;
Norm and Context in Christian Ethics; Religion and
Morality. KIERKEGAARD; LOVE.
Richard D. Parry. Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Philos-
ophy, Agnes Scott College. Works include, Plato’s Craft
of Justice; “The Unique World of the Timaeus”; “The
Uniqueness Proof of Forms in Republic X”; “Morality
and Happiness: Book IV of Plato’s Republic”; and “The
Craft of Justice.” EUDAIMONIA, -ISM.
Terence Penelhum. Professor Emeritus of Religious Stud-
ies, University of Calgary. Author, God and Skepticism;
Themes in Hume; Survival and Disembodied Exis-
tence; Religion and Rationality; Butler. BUTLER.
Derk Pereboom. Professor and Chair, Department of Phi-
losophy, University of Vermont. Author of Living With-
out Free Will. FREE WILL.
Philip Pettit. Professor of Social and Political Theory, The
Australian National University. Author, The Common
Mind: From Intentional Psychology to Social and Po-
litical Theory; Republicanism; The Fundamentals of
Freedom. Co-author, Not Just Deserts: A Republican
Theory of Criminal Justice. INSTITUTIONS.
Derek L. Phillips. Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Univ-
ersiteit van Amsterdam. Works include Toward a Just
Social Order and Looking Backward. Consulting edi-
tor. SOCIOLOGY; WEBER.
Roger Pilon. Vice President for Legal Affairs, B. Kenneth
Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies, and Director,
Center for Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute. Au-
thor of works in law and legal theory. GEWIRTH.
Edmund L. Pincoffs (1919–1991). Late Professor Emer-
itus of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin. Works
include The Rationale of Legal Punishment and Quan-
daries and Virtues: Against Reductivism in Ethics.
MORAL COMMUNITY, BOUNDARIES OF; VIRTUES.
xxx
Gerald J. Postema. Cary C. Boshamer Professor of Phi-
losophy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Ed-
itor, Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Law; former
Fellow, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. Au-
thor, Bentham and the Common Law Tradition; and
Jeremy Bentham: Moral, Political and Legal Philoso-
phy. BENTHAM.
George Proctor. Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Son-
oma State University. Author of works on the history
and philosophy of science. DUNS SCOTUS.
Susan M. Purviance. Associate Professor of Philosophy,
University of Toledo (Ohio). Works include “The
Moral Self and the Indirect Passions”; “The Facticity of
Kant’s Fact of Reason”; “Social Meliorism, Virtue, and
Vice: Bernard Mandeville”; and other articles on ethi-
cal theory, the history of ethics, and health care ethics.
JAMES MILL.
Ruth Anna Putnam. Professor of Philosophy, Emerita,
Wellesley College. Works include “Perceiving Facts
and Values”; “Some of Life’s Ideals”; “Why Not a Femi-
nist theory of Justice?”; Neither A Beast Nor a God.
Editor, The Cambridge Companion to William James.
JAMES; PRAGMATISM.
Andrew Pyle. Lecturer, Department of Philosophy, Uni-
versity of Bristol. Author, Atomism and Its Critics. Ed-
itor, Agnosticism: Contemporary Responses to Spencer
and Huxley. General Editor, Dictionary of Seventeenth
Century British Philosophers. AGNOSTICISM.
Philip L. Quinn. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy, Uni-
versity of Notre Dame. Author, Divine Commands and
Moral Requirements. Co-editor, A Companion to Phi-
losophy of Religion and The Philosophical Challenge
of Religious Diversity. THEOLOGICAL ETHICS.
James Rachels. University Professor of Philosophy, Uni-
versity of Alabama at Birmingham. Works include The
End of Life: Euthanasia and Morality and Created
From Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism.
KILLING AND LETTING DIE; THEORY AND PRACTICE.
Stuart Rachels. Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Uni-
versity of Alabama. Articles include “Counterexamples
to the Transitivity of Better Than”, “Is it Good to Make
Happy People?”, and “Is Unpleasantness Intrinsic to
Unpleasant Experiences?” INTRANSITIVITY.
Diane C. Raymond. Professor of Philosophy and Women’s
Studies, Simmons College. Author, Existentialism and
the Philosophical Tradition; Looking at Gay and Les-
bian Life. Editor, Sexual Politics and Popular Culture.
WORK.
Andrews Reath. Professor of Philosophy, University of
California at Riverside. Works include articles on the
history of ethics, in particular on Kant’s moral philos-
ophy. CATEGORICAL AND HYPOTHETICAL IMPERATIVES;
CONSTRUCTIVISM; ROUSSEAU.
Tom Regan. Professor of Philosophy, North Carolina
State University. Works include: The Case for Animal

Rights; Bloomsbury’s Prophet: G. E. Moore and the
Development of his Moral Philosophy; and The Thee
Generation. Consulting editor. ANIMALS, TREATMENT
OF; MOORE; ROSS.
Frank Reynolds. Professor of History of Religious and
Buddhist Studies, the Divinity School and the Depart-
ment of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, Uni-
versity of Chicago. Co-editor, Cosmogony and Ethical
Order. HINDU ETHICS.
David A. J. Richards. Edwin D. Webb Professor of Law,
New York University School of Law. Works include:
Identity and the Case for Gay Rights; Italian American:
The Racializing of an Ethnic Identity; Free Speech and
the Politics of Identity; A Theory of Reasons for Action;
Toleration and the Constitution; and Foundations of
American Constitutionalism. CENSORSHIP.
Norvin Richards. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Alabama. Works include Humility; “Forgiveness”;
“Luck and Desert”; and “Criminal Children.” HUMIL-
ITY.
Henry Richardson. Associate Professor of Philosophy,
Georgetown University. Author, Practical Reasoning
about Final Ends; “Specifying Norms as a Way to Re-
solve Concrete Ethical Problems”; “Beyond Good and
Right: Towards a Constructive Ethical Pragmatism.”
COMMENSURABILITY.
John Robertson. Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Syr-
acuse University. Works include “Internalism about
Moral Reasons” and “Hume on Practical Reason”. EX-
TERNALISM AND INTERNALISM.
George Robinson. Psychology, Smith College. Co-author,
Ethical Problems in Higher Education; Scaling the
Dragon; and The Organization of Language. ACADEMIC
FREEDOM; PLAGIARISM.
Sandra B. Rosenthal. Provost Distinguished Professor of
Philosophy, Loyola University, New Orleans. Author,
Speculative Pragmatism; Charles Peirce’s Pragmatic
Pluralism; Time, Continuity, and Indeterminacy; and
other works on pragmatism and on the relation be-
tween pragmatism and phenomenology. PEIRCE.
William L. Rowe. Professor of Philosophy, Purdue Uni-
versity. Author, Thomas Reid on Freedom and Moral-
ity. CLARKE; REID.
Sara Ruddick. Faculty emerita, Eugene Lang College,
New School for Social Research. Works include Ma-
ternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace, and arti-
cles in ethics and social and political philosophy. VIO-
LENCE AND NON-VIOLENCE; WAR AND PEACE.
William Ruddick. Professor of Philosophy and Adjunct
Professor of Psychiatry, New York University. Author:
“Parenthood: Three Concepts and a Principle”; “Hope
and Deception”; “Do Doctors Undertreat Pain?”; and
other essays on parenthood and medical ethics. Editor:
Philosophers in Medical Centers. Co-editor, Having
xxxi
Contributors and Editors
Children: Philosophical and Legal Reflections on Par-
enthood. FAMILY; MEDICAL ETHICS.
Michael Ruse. Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Phi-
losophy. Florida State University. Works include Mo-
nad to Man; Sociobiology: Sense or Nonsense?; Taking
Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Approach to Philos-
ophy. DARWIN; EVOLUTION.
Abdulaziz Sachedina. Professor of Religious Studies,
University of Virginia. Author, The Islamic Roots of
Democratic Pluralism; The Just Ruler in Shı̄ite Islam;
and Islamic Messianism. Co-author, Human Rights
and the Conflict of Cultures: Western and Islamic Per-
spectives on Religious Liberty. Consulting editor. IS-
LAM; ISLAMIC BUSINESS ETHICS.
Mark Sagoff. Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy,
University of Maryland. Author, The Economy of the
Earth. PUBLIC POLICY ANALYSIS.
John Sallis. Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy
at The Pennsylvania State University. Author of Force
of Imagination; Chorology: On Beginning in Plato’s
“Timaeus”; Shades—Of Painting at the Limit; and
other books on continental philosophy, philosophy of
art, and history of philosophy. Consulting editor.
FICHTE; GADAMER.
Geoffrey Sayre-McCord. Bowman and Gordon Gray Pro-
fessor of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill. Author of a variety of papers on metaeth-
ics, moral theory, the history of ethics and epistemol-
ogy. COHERENTISM.
Thomas M. Scanlon, Jr. Alford Professor of Natural Re-
ligion, Harvard University. Author, What We Owe to
Each Other. Consulting editor.
Richard Schacht. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Author, Alienation; Hegel
and After; Nietzsche; Making Sense of Nietzsche; and
The Future of Alienation. ALIENATION; HISTORY 10:
19TH CENTURY CONTINENTAL.
Samuel Scheffler. Class of 1941 World War II Memorial
Professor of Philosophy and Law, University of Cali-
fornia, Berkeley. Author, The Rejection of Consequen-
tialism; Human Morality. Editor, Consequentialism
and its Critics. Consulting editor.
Naomi Scheman. Professor of Philosophy and Women’s
Studies, University of Minnesota. Author of Engender-
ings: Constructions of Knowledge, Authority, and Privi-
lege; and editor of the forthcoming Feminist Interpre-
tations of Wittgenstein: Re-Reading the Canon. RAPE;
SEXUAL ABUSE AND HARASSMENT.
J. B. Schneewind. Professor of Philosophy, The Johns
Hopkins University. Author, Sidgwick’s Ethics and Vic-
torian Moral Philosophy and The Invention of Auton-
omy. Editor, Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to
Kant, and other studies in the history of ethics. Con-
sulting editor. COMMON SENSE MORALISTS; CRUSIUS;
Contributors and Editors
HISTORY8: 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES; MONTAIGNE;
THOMASIUS.
Ferdinand D. Schoeman (1945–1992). Late Professor of
Philosophy, University of South Carolina. Author, Pri-
vacy and Social Freedom and other studies in respon-
sibility and privacy. PRIVACY.
William R. Schroeder. Associate Professor of Philosophy,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Author, Sar-
tre and his Predecessors: The Self and the Other; “Con-
tinental Ethics”; and other works on continental ethics
and philosophy of mind. Editor, The Blackwell Com-
panion to Continental Philosophy. HISTORY 11: 20TH
CENTURY CONTINENTAL; RESENTMENT.
Chris Matthew Sciabarra. Visiting Scholar, Department
of Politics, New York University. Author, Total Free-
dom: Toward A Dialectical Libertarianism; Ayn Rand:
The Russian Radical; Marx, Hayek, and Utopia. Co-
editor of Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand and of
The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. OBJECTIVISM; RAND.
Jorge Secada. Associate Professor of Philosophy, Univer-
sity of Virginia, and regularly Visiting Professor at the
Graduate School of the Universidad Catolica del Peru
in Lima. Author, Cartesian Metaphysics: The Scholas-
tic Origins of Modern Philosophy; “Berkeley y el ideal-
ismo”; “Ontologia de la obra de arte”; and other arti-
cles. HISTORIOGRAPHY; SUAREZ; VITORIA.
Michael Seidler. Professor of Philosophy, Western Ken-
tucky University. Author of articles on German natural
law theory and other early modern topics. Translator,
The Political Writings of Samuel Pufendorf; editor and
translator, Samuel Pufendorf’s “On the Natural State
of Men.” PUFENDORF.
George Sher. Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Philosophy,
Rice University. Author of Desert; Beyond Neutrality:
Perfectionism and Politics; Approximate Justice: Stud-
ies in Non-Ideal Theory; and essays in metaphysics,
ethics, and social and political philosophy. MERIT AND
DESERT; NEUTRAL PRINCIPLES.
Nancy Sherman. Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown
University. Author, The Fabric of Character; Making a
Necessity of Virtue; and other works on the history of
moral philosophy, the emotions, and moral psychology.
Editor, Aristotle’s Ethics: Critical Essays. EXCELLENCE;
PRACTICAL WISDOM.
Charles M. Sherover. Professor Emeritus of Philosophy,
Hunter College, City University of New York. Works
include Heidegger, Kant and Time; Time, Freedom, and
the Common Good; The Human Experience of Time;
and “Royce’s Pragmatic Idealism and Existential Phe-
nomenology”. HEIDEGGER; ROYCE.
Kristin Shrader-Frechette. O’Neill Family Professor of
Philosophy and Concurrent Professor of Biological Sci-
ences, University of Notre Dame. Author of books and
articles on philosophy of science, environmental ethics,
and ethical/scientific problems in quantitative risk as-
xxxii
sessment. AGRICULTURAL ETHICS; LAND ETHICS; TECH-
NOLOGY.
Henry Shue. Professor of Ethics and Public Life, Cornell
University. Works include Basic Rights. Editor, Nuclear
Deterrence and Moral Restraint. PUBLIC POLICY; WEL-
FARE RIGHTS AND SOCIAL POLICY.
Kwong-loi Shun. Professor of Philosophy, University of
California, Berkeley. Author of works on Chinese ethics
and contemporary Anglo-American moral philosophy.
CHINA; CONFUCIUS; MENCIUS.
Anita Silvers. Professor of Philosophy, San Francisco
State University. Co-author, Disability, Difference,
Discrimination: Perspectives on Justice in Bioethics
and Public Policy; and Puzzles About Art. Co-Editor,
Americans With Disabilities: Exploring Implications of
the Law for Individuals and Institutions; Physician-
Assisted Suicide; and Health Care and Social Justice
(forthcoming). AGENCY AND DISABILITY.
A. John Simmons. Commonwealth Professor of Philoso-
phy, University of Virginia. Author, Moral Principles
and Political Obligations; The Lockean Theory of
Rights; On the Edge of Anarchy; and Justification and
Legitimacy. FAIRNESS; LEGITIMACY; OBEDIENCE TO
LAW.
Robert L. Simon. Professor of Philosophy, Hamilton Col-
lege. Author, Neutrality and The Academic Ethic;
Sports and Social Values; and other works on ethics,
philosophy of sport, and political and social philoso-
phy. Co-author, The Individual and the Political Order.
Consulting editor. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY;
SPORT.
Marcus G. Singer. Professor of Philosophy Emeritus,
University of Wisconsin, Madison. Author, Generaliza-
tion in Ethics. Editor, Morals and Values and Reason,
Reality, and Speculative Philosophy. ADLER; GOLDEN
RULE; HISTORY 9: 19TH CENTURY BRITISH; SIDGWICK.
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. Professor of Philosophy, Dart-
mouth College. Author, Moral Dilemmas. Co-author,
Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Infor-
mal Logic. Co-editor, Moral Knowledge? New Read-
ings in Moral Epistemology. GERT; INTUITIONISM;
MORAL DILEMMAS; OUGHT IMPLIES CAN.
John E. Sisko. Assistant Professor of Philosophy, College
of William and Mary. Author of articles on Ancient
Greek Philosophy. PHRONESIS.
Quentin Skinner. Regius Professor of Modern History,
University of Cambridge. Works include The Founda-
tions of Modern Political Thought; Machiavelli; Rea-
son and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes; Liberty
Before Liberalism. MACHIAVELLI.
R. C. Sleigh, Jr. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Massachusetts. Author, Leibniz and Arnauld: A Com-
mentary on Their Correspondence. Co-editor, The Yale
Leibniz. LEIBNIZ.

Michael A. Slote. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Maryland, College Park. Author, Goods and Virtues;
From Morality to Virtue; Morals from Motives;
Common-Sense Morality and Consequentialism; and
Beyond Optimizing. CONSEQUENTIALISM; TELEOLOGI-
CAL ETHICS.
Saul Smilansky. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Haifa, Israel. Author of Free Will and Illusion. BLACK-
MAIL.
Holly M. Smith. Professor of Philosophy, and Dean, So-
cial and Behavioral Sciences, University of Arizona.
Author of articles on moral theory, utilitarianism, and
medical ethics. Consulting editor. ACTION; EXCUSES;
IDEALIZED AGENTS; NEGLIGENCE; POSSIBILISM.
Alan Soble. University Research Professor and Professor
of Philosophy, University of New Orleans. Author, Por-
nography; The Structure of Love; Sexual Investiga-
tions; The Philosophy of Sex and Love. Editor, Sex,
Love, and Friendship; The Philosophy of Sex; Eros,
Agape, and Philia. SEXUALITY AND SEXUAL ETHICS.
Moshe Z. Sokol. Professor and Chairman, Philosophy
Department, Touro College. Author, works on Jewish
ethics and philosophy. Editor, Personal Autonomy and
Rabbinic Authority and Tolerance, Dissent and De-
mocracy. JEWISH ETHICS.
Wm. David Solomon. Professor of Philosophy, University
of Notre Dame. Co-author, The Synoptic Vision: The
Philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars. Co-editor, Abortion and
Social Policy. DOUBLE EFFECT.
André Spies. Associate Professor of History, Hollins Uni-
versity. Author, Opera, State and Society in the Third
Republic, 1875-1914. MONTESQUIEU.
T. L. S. Sprigge. Professor Emeritus and Endowment Fel-
low, University of Edinburgh. Works include Santay-
ana; The Vindication of Absolute Idealism; Theories of
Existence; The Rational Foundations of Ethics; and
James and Bradley: American Truth and British Real-
ity. AYER; IDEALIST ETHICS; NATURALISTIC FALLACY;
ORGANIC UNITY; SANTAYANA.
Hillel Steiner. Professor of Political Philosophy, Univer-
sity of Manchester. Author, An Essay on Rights; A De-
bate Over Rights: Philosophical Enquiries; and other
works on rights, justice, and liberty. Editor, Left-
Libertarianism and Its Critics. Consulting editor. LIB-
ERTARIANISM; LIBERTY.
Gunther S. Stent. Professor Emeritus of Neurobiology,
University of California, Berkeley. Works include Na-
zis, Women and Molecular Biology; Paradoxes of Pro-
gress. Editor, Norton Critical Edition of J. D. Watson’s
The Double Helix: Morality as a Biological Phenome-
non. ETIQUETTE.
Calvin Stewart. Philosophy, Santa Clara University. THOM-
SON.
xxxiii
Contributors and Editors
Robert M. Stewart. Professor of Philosophy, California
State University, Chico. Co-author, Moral Philosophy:
A Comprehensive Introduction. Editor, Readings in So-
cial and Political Philosophy; Philosophical Perspec-
tives on Sex and Love. FRANKENA.
Michael Stocker. Professor of Philosophy, Syracuse Uni-
versity. Works include Plural and Conflicting Values.
EXTERNALISM AND INTERNALISM.
Jeffrey Stout. Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion,
Princeton University. President, editorial board, Jour-
nal of Religious Ethics. Works include, The Flight from
Authority and Ethics after Babel. Consulting editor.
Gisela Striker. Professor of Classical Philosophy, Harvard
University. Author, Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology
and Ethics. EPICTETUS; MARCUS AURELIUS; STOICISM.
Timothy Stroup. Professor of Philosophy, John Jay Col-
lege of Criminal Justice, City University of New York.
Author, Westermarck’s Ethics. Editor, Edward Wester-
marck; co-editor, Police Ethics. Co-founder, Criminal
Justice Ethics. CORRECTIONAL ETHICS; POLICE ETHICS;
WESTERMARCK.
Nicholas L. Sturgeon. Professor of Philosophy, Cornell
University. Author of works on the metaphysical and
epistemological foundations of morality. METAPHYSICS
AND EPISTEMOLOGY.
John A. Taber. Associate Professor of Philosophy, Uni-
versity of New Mexico. Author, Transformative Philos-
ophy: A Study of Sankara, Fichte, and Heidegger; and
other works in Asian and comparative philosophy.
INDIA.
Larry S. Temkin. Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers Uni-
versity. Author, Inequality and other works on equality,
rationality, transitivity, additivity, and the good. ADDI-
TIVITY PROBLEMS.
Laurence Thomas. Professor of Philosophy and Professor
of Political Science, Syracuse University. Author, Liv-
ing Morally: A Psychology of Moral Character; Vessels
of Evil: American Slavery and the Holocaust; and other
works in moral and social philosophy. Consulting edi-
tor. BAIER; MORAL PSYCHOLOGY.
Mark Timmons. Professor of Philosophy, University of
Memphis. Author, Morality without Foundations: A
Defense of Ethical Contextualism. Co-editor, Moral
Knowledge? New Readings in Moral Epistemology.
Editor, Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals: Interpretive Es-
says (forthcoming). SINGER.
James Tully. Professor and Chair, Department of Political
Science, University of Victoria (Canada). Author,
Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of
Diversity; An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke
in Contexts. FOUCAULT; LOCKE.
Suzanne Uniacke. Associate Professor of Philosophy,
University of Wollongong. Author, Permissible Killing:
Contributors and Editors
The Self-Defense Justification of Homicide. REVENGE;
SELF-DEFENSE.
J. O. Urmson. Emeritus Professor, Stanford University;
Emeritus Fellow, Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Au-
thor, Philosophical Analysis; Emotive Theory of Ethics;
Berkeley; and Aristotle’s Ethics. EMOTIVISM.
Peter Vallentyne. Professor of Philosophy, Virginia Com-
monwealth University. Author of works on consequen-
tialism, moral dilemmas, egalitarian theories of justice,
and left-libertarianism. SELF-OWNERSHIP.
Harry van der Linden. Professor of Philosophy, Butler
University. Author, Kantian Ethics and Socialism and
articles on Kant, Marx, Marburg neo-Kantianism, and
international relations. NEO-KANTIAN ETHICS.
Donald VanDeVeer. Professor of Philosophy, North Caro-
lina State University. Author, Paternalistic Intervention.
Co-editor of works including Health Care Ethics; AIDS:
Ethics and Public Policy; People, Penguins, and Plastic
Trees; And Justice for All; The Environmental Ethics and
Policy Book. PORNOGRAPHY.
Aram Vartanian (1922–1997). Late Kenan Professor of
French Literature, Emeritus, University of Virginia.
Author, Diderot and Descartes: A Study of Scientific
Naturalism in the Enlightenment and Lamettrie’s
‘L’Homme Machine’: A Study in the Origins of an Idea.
HOLBACH.
Allen D. Verhey. Blekkink Professor of Religion, Hope
College. Works include The Great Reversal: Ethics and
the New Testament. PAUL.
Candace Vogler. Philosophy, University of Chicago. Au-
thor of Reason in Action; John Stuart Mill’s Delibera-
tive Landscape; and articles on ethics, social and po-
litical philosophy, feminism, sex, gender and culture
studies. FOOT.
Mary Ellen Waithe. Professor of Philosophy, and Direc-
tor, Bioethics Program, Cleveland State University.
Founder, Project on the History of Women in Philoso-
phy. Author of A History of Women Philosophers.
WOMEN MORAL PHILOSOPHERS.
Douglas N. Walton. Professor of Philosophy, University
of Winnipeg. Author, Courage: A Philosophical Inves-
tigation; Informal Logic. Co-author, Commitment in
Dialogue: Basic Concepts of Interpersonal Reasoning.
COURAGE; PERSUASIVE DEFINITION; PRACTICAL REA-
SON[ING].
Georgia Warnke. Professor of Philosophy, University of
California, Riverside. Author, Gadamer: Hermeneu-
tics, Tradition and Reason; Justice and Interpretation;
and Legitimate Differences: Interpretation in the Abor-
tion Controversy and other Public Debates. MULTICUL-
TURALISM; WALZER.
Richard A. Watson. Professor of Philosophy, Washington
University. Works include The Breakdown of Cartesian
xxxiv
Metaphysics. DESCARTES; PASCAL; TECHNOLOGY AND
NATURE.
Stephen H. Watson. Professor of Philosophy, University
of Notre Dame. Works include articles on continental
philosophy. RICOEUR.
Carl Wellman. Hortense and Tobias Lewin Distinguished
Professor Emeritus, Washington University. Works in-
clude Welfare Rights; A Theory of Rights; Real Rights;
An Approach to Rights. RIGHT, CONCEPTS OF; RIGHT
HOLDERS.
Alan Wertheimer. McCullough Professor of Political Sci-
ence, University of Vermont. Author, Coercion; Ex-
ploitation. Co-editor, Majorities and Minorities. CO-
ERCION.
Henry R. West. Professor of Philosophy, Macalester Col-
lege. Author, “Utilitarianism” (Encyclopaedia Britan-
nica); “Mill’s ‘Proof’ of the Principle of Utility”; and
other works on Mill’s utilitarianism. Co-editor, Moral
Philosophy. JOHN STUART MILL.
Forrest Williams. Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Uni-
versity of Colorado, Boulder. Associate Editor, Conti-
nental Philosophy. Author of essays on twentieth cen-
tury French and German philosophers; translator of
writings by Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Foucault. EX-
ISTENTIAL ETHICS.
Patricia A. Williams. Independent Scholar. Author, Do-
ing without Adam and Eve: Sociobiology and Original
Sin. Co-editor, Evolution and Human Values. BIO-
LOGICAL THEORY.
Kenneth Winston. Lecturer in Ethics and Assistant to the
Dean for Special Projects on International Ethics and
Diversity, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
University. DWORKIN; FULLER; HART.
Susan Wolf. Duane Peterson Professor of Ethics, The
Johns Hopkins University. Author, Freedom Within
Reason and other works on ethics and the philosophy
of mind. Consulting editor. MORAL SAINTS.
David B. Wong. Professor of Philosophy, Duke Univer-
sity. Author, Moral Relativity and other works in ethi-
cal theory, Chinese philosophy, and the history of phi-
losophy. Consulting editor. COMPARATIVE ETHICS; MO
TZU; MORAL RELATIVISM.
Allen W. Wood. Professor of Philosophy, Stanford Uni-
versity. Author, Karl Marx; Hegel’s Ethical Thought;
Kant’s Ethical Thought. Translations include Kant’s
writings on religion and rational theology, and Critique
of Pure Reason. Editor: Hegel’s Elements of the Phi-
losophy of Right. Consulting editor. HEGEL; MARX.
Robert E. Wood. Professor and Chair, Department of Phi-
losophy, University of Dallas. Author, Martin Buber’s
Ontology; A Path into Metaphysics; Placing Aesthetics:
 Contributors and Editors

Reflections on the Philosophic Tradition. Editor, Amer-
ican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly. BUBER.
Michael Wreen. Professor of Philosophy, Marquette Uni-
versity. Author, works in ethics, aesthetics, argumen-
tation theory, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and
action theory. AESTHETICS; FORGERY.
Michael J. Zimmerman. Professor of Philosophy, Univer-
sity of North Carolina, Greensboro. Author, An Essay
on Human Action; The Concept of Moral Obligation;
An Essay on Moral Responsibility; The Nature of In-
trinsic Value; and other works on ethics. RESPONSIBIL-
ITY; VOLUNTARY ACTS.

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 A
Abelard, Peter (1079–1142)
Peter Abelard lived a life which could be called in
its entirety what he called a portion of it: the story
of his calamities. From the moment of his arrival in
the logic schools of Paris, he was a figure of contro-
versy. He successfully challenged the doctrines of his
teacher William of Champeaux (1071–1121) and,
when he turned to the study of theology, almost im-
mediately challenged his teacher Anselm of Laon (d.
1117). Abelard reached the apex of his career in his
late thirties when he was master of the cathedral
school of Notre Dame. It was then that he met He-
loise (1101–1164), became a boarder in her uncle’s
house, where she lived, and seduced her under the
guise of tutoring her in logic. When she became
pregnant, he took her to Brittany, where she bore
him a son. Against her wishes—self-effacingly, she
feared what marriage would do to his career—they
married, but secretly. Her uncle’s attempts to pub-
licize the marriage ended in an attack on Abelard
during which he was castrated. Eventually, Heloise
repaired to a convent and Abelard became a monk.
In the course of his career, he was twice condemned
for heresy, and attempts on his life were made by his
monks when he was abbot. He ended his life in an
edifying way at Cluny, having fallen ill on his way to
Rome to appeal his second condemnation for heresy.
Among the writings of Abelard is an ethical work
called Nosce teipsum (Know Thyself ). Abelard did
not clearly distinguish between philosophical and
1
theological discourse. What we shall call Abelard’s
ethics is clearly the work of a Christian who is con-
cerned with the precise nature of sin, that is, with
moral fault as an offense against God. The Nico-
machean Ethics would be translated into Latin
shortly after Abelard’s death and exercised no influ-
ence on his thought. Far more relevant to under-
standing his approach are contemporary manuals
for confessors. And indeed his book ends—it would
be better to say that it stops, since it is an unfinished
work—with discussions of reconciliation and sac-
ramental confession. Nonetheless, the work has in-
terest for moral philosophers and moral theologians,
not least because of its suggestion as to precisely
what makes an action wrong.
Abelard spends some time distinguishing willing
from willing sinfully, and evil DESIRE from CONSENT,
and a very long time establishing that PLEASURE is
not as such sinful. The principal interest in Abelard’s
discussion lies in what he has to say about the rela-
tion between desire and consent, on the one hand,
and the external act, on the other. His aim is to locate
the source of moral wrong in the INTENTION with
which the act is done and to reject the notion that it
is the external act as externally described, without
attention to the intention of the agent, that is suffi-
cient. This leads him to say that the prohibitions of
the Decalogue bear on internal consent and not on
the objective deed. His reason is that the same ex-
ternal act can be performed by a good agent and a
bad agent. Their difference as morally good and bad
Abelard, Peter
cannot then lie in the deed they both do, but rather
in the intention with which they do it. The examples
he uses suggest why he attracted censure. Christ was
delivered up by Judas to be crucified, but also by
God the Father. In the former case it is unjust, in the
latter just, so the deed done cannot decide the moral
matter. The position toward which Abelard moves
is that moral worth lies in the intention of the agent
and not in the deed done.
While he is not at all consistent in this, sometimes
speaking of deeds themselves as unfitting, what he
seems clearly to want to say is that intention is the
sole source of moral value, a bad intention making
an act bad, a good intention making it good.
That what would otherwise be a good act can be
morally vitiated by the intention with which it is
done is clear enough. One might help another in or-
der to lull him into a condition in which he can more
easily be exploited. Then helping him is no longer
praiseworthy. Moreover, there are what will come to
be called indifferent acts (e.g., waggling one’s fin-
gers), which when performed are either good or bad
because of the intent with which they are done. To
waggle one’s fingers in order to signal to an assassin
that his victim is approaching is considerably differ-
ent from waving good-bye to one’s spouse or bid-
ding at an auction. In all these cases we have to
know the intent with which the deed is done in order
to know whether it is morally good or bad. But just
when Abelard’s position shows its value, its spong-
iness also reveals itself.
If it is a bad intention that makes the doing of the
deed bad, in what does a bad intention consist?
There are reasons to think Abelard might have an-
swered, when the intention is to disobey God it is
wrong. This would put him securely in the Divine
Command camp. The truth is, Abelard has taken
away the only thing that finally can make an inten-
tion bad. A bad intention has to be the intention to
perform a bad action, to do a deed that is reprehen-
sible. But if there are no criteria for a bad action
other than intention, the account becomes vacuous.
An unsurprising corollary of his position is the de-
nial that the actual doing of the external deed adds
to the good or EVIL of the intention.
Although we do not find a clear-cut distinction
between philosophy and theology in Abelard, he was
a champion of pagan philosophers. He was able to
argue for the justification of pagans by appeal to
NATURAL LAW, relying on PAUL’s (C.E. 5?–67?)
2
Epistle to the Romans (2:13). He also looked for
evidence of Trinitarian beliefs in the pagans, how-
ever, which got him into rough waters theologically.
See also: AGENT CENTERED MORALITY; AUTONOMY
OF MORAL AGENTS; CHRISTIAN ETHICS; CONSENT;
DESIRE; EVIL; EXTERNALISM AND INTERNALISM; FIT-
TINGNESS; FREE WILL; KANT; NATURAL LAW; PHILOS-
OPHY OF RELIGION; SELF-KNOWLEDGE; THEOLOGI-
CAL ETHICS; VOLUNTARISM.
Bibliography
Works by Abelard
Historia calamitatum. Translated by J. T. Muckle. P.I.M.S.:
Toronto, 1954.
Peter Abelard’s Ethics. Translated by D. E. Luscombe. Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1971. Contains useful introduc-
tion and notes.
Works about Abelard
Luscombe, David. The School of Peter Abelard. Cam-
bridge, 1969.
Proceedings of the International Conference, 1971. Peter
Abelard. The Hague, 1974.
Williams, Paul. The Moral Philosophy of Peter Abelard.
Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1980.
Ralph McInerny
abortion
Abortion can be defined as the intentional termina-
tion of in utero fetal life after conception and before
birth. The question of when, if ever, abortion is per-
missible has been widely discussed and fiercely de-
bated in academic circles, in the media, and on side-
walks outside abortion clinics across the United
States. The 1973 Supreme Court decision that le-
galized abortion, Roe v. Wade, increased both the
volume and the heat of this discussion, and more
recent Court decisions that have clarified or re-
stricted abortion rights have added fuel to an already
roaring fire. Both debates about the morality of
abortion and discussions of PUBLIC POLICY have
been polarized, notoriously acrimonious, and, some
would say, futile. Perhaps the only point of agree-
ment among the various factions lies in the recog-
nition that abortion is one of the least tractable is-
sues in applied ethics and one of the most troubling
public policy issues of the late twentieth century.

The Views Characterized
Those who discuss the morality of abortion can
be divided into three groups: Restrictives (who are
often characterized as Conservatives or as ‘Pro-life’);
Permissives (who are often characterized as Liberals
or as ‘Pro-choice’); and Moderates.
Restrictives believe that abortion is rarely if ever
morally permissible. Most Restrictives regard the fe-
tus as a full moral person from very early on in its
development (perhaps as early as conception) and
believe that it is entitled to the same sorts of moral
protections that postfetal persons enjoy, most nota-
bly the stringent protections against being killed that
many take to be conferred by persons’ possession of
rights to life. Extreme Restrictives allow no excep-
tions, but most Restrictives permit abortion when it
is deemed necessary to save the pregnant woman’s
life or when the continuation of the pregnancy pre-
sents a serious and immediate threat to her health.
In such cases, Restrictives think, although the killing
of the fetus is indeed the killing of a person, it may
be a permissible form of killing in SELF-DEFENSE.
Permissives hold the view that abortion is rarely
if ever morally impermissible. Many of the Permis-
sives who describe themselves as feminists maintain
that recognition of female EQUALITY requires ac-
knowledgment of substantive reproductive rights,
including a woman’s right to decide whether or not
her pregnancy will be brought to term. Other Per-
missives focus more on the issue of personal auton-
omy or self-determination: overruling a woman’s re-
productive choices is seen as inconsistent with
respect for her as an autonomous or full moral per-
son. Though most Permissives acknowledge some
moral constraints on the termination of fetal life in
utero, all believe that there are morally relevant
asymmetries between the fetus and the pregnant
woman. Because a fetus lacks at least some of the
psychological and affective properties that Permis-
sives take to be essential to moral personhood (for
example, the capacities for self-consciousness, self-
initiated activity, communication, or interaction),
Permissives regard the fetus as less a person than
the pregnant woman or—if personhood is an all-or-
nothing matter—as not a person at all. They thus
maintain that, although abortion involves the ter-
mination of fetal life, it does not involve the killing
of a full moral person.
Moderates believe that abortion is sometimes
3
abortion
morally permissible and sometimes not. Moderates
differ widely in their views, both normatively and
theoretically. Some take the permissibility of abor-
tion to turn on the stage of fetal development, and
would thus allow abortion only in the earlier stages
of pregnancy. Others regard the future or potential
child’s health or welfare prospects as critical, and
thus would permit the abortion of a severely dam-
aged fetus in circumstances in which they might dis-
allow the abortion of a normal fetus. Some focus on
the projected effects of the continued pregnancy and
birth on the woman, her FAMILY, and the community
of which she is a part. And some hold the permis-
sibility of abortion to turn on assessments of how
much RESPONSIBILITY the woman bears for becom-
ing pregnant, or assessments of how good or bad her
reasons are for seeking an abortion. If, for example,
a woman is pregnant owing to RAPE, fraud, or con-
traceptive failure, then she bears less responsibility
for becoming pregnant than she would if she had
become pregnant owing to a reckless failure to em-
ploy contraception in the first place, and her deci-
sion to abort may be seen in a different light. Mod-
erates may also assess differently an indigent
fifteen-year-old’s desire not to continue with a preg-
nancy that is the result of intercourse with her uncle,
and an affluent married twenty-five-year-old’s desire
to postpone childbearing to a more opportune time.
Public opinion polls indicate that most Americans
regard themselves as Moderates, and that it is a
woman’s reasons for seeking abortion, the stage of
fetal development, and a fetus’s prospects for future
well-being that most strongly affect their views of
abortion’s permissibility. A significant majority of
Americans regard abortion as morally defensible in
case of a threat to the woman’s life or health, rape,
incest, or severe fetal deformity.
Discussions about the morality of abortion have
usually focused on two connected issues: the ques-
tion of when (or whether) the fetus becomes a per-
son, and the nature and scope of the moral protec-
tions, obligations, and liberties that members of the
moral community possess.
Personhood
Questions about fetal personhood—perhaps
most notably the question of when a developing hu-
man being becomes a person, and hence a full mem-
ber of the moral community—are notoriously slip-
abortion
pery and contentious ones. As observation of
discussions of the issue makes clear, disagreements
about when one becomes a person generally reflect
radically different understandings of what it is to be
a person, and disagreements about what it is to be
a person are quite intractable. Restrictives who lo-
cate the onset of personhood very early in fetal
development tend to see personhood as an all-or-
nothing matter, and to understand personhood
largely in biological or structural terms. They tend
to stress both the fact that the fetus is a unique hu-
man being and the fact that human biological de-
velopment is a continuous process. Because there is
no point in fetal development that is importantly dis-
continuous with any other, there is no ‘magic mo-
ment’ at which a fetus who was not already a person
can be said to turn into one. Birth is rejected as an
implausible dividing line between persons and not-
yet-persons, for it is thought to allow us to attribute
personhood to the premature neonate who is born
after eight months’ gestation while denying that
status to the fetus who is still in utero at nine
months. Since there may be no relevant develop-
mental or structural differences between an eight-
month-old fetus who is still in utero and one who
has just been born, those who understand person-
hood largely in biological or structural terms regard
birth as too late and too arbitrary a dividing line
between persons and not-yet-persons.
Those who locate the onset of personhood later
in fetal development tend to have a very different
understanding of personhood. Permissives who see
personhood as less a matter of biological humanity
or structural development and more a matter of the
development of the psychological capacities that en-
able one to be a self-conscious, and eventually, at
least minimally self-determining, individual tend to
locate the onset of personhood at birth, or later.
Though a fetus that belongs to the species Homo
sapiens (rather than to any other) is biologically hu-
man, Permissives do not think that this is sufficient
or perhaps even necessary for personhood. If it is
the possession of psychological, social, or moral ca-
pacities that is critical to personhood, then there
may be Homo sapiens who are not persons, and per-
sons who are not Homo sapiens. Neonates who are
anencephalic (lacking an upper brain) and individ-
uals who are profoundly mentally retarded may all
count as humans who are not persons, while extra-
terrestrial beings who were not Homo sapiens, but
4
possessed a psychology, intellect, and social organi-
zation comparable to ours, would indeed be moral
persons.
Permissives who emphasize social, interactive, or
conventional aspects of personhood may regard a
neonate’s potential for social interaction with a va-
riety of other members of the community as critical.
They may thus be quite willing to attribute person-
hood to a premature neonate while denying it to the
nine-month fetus that remains in utero. For the child
who is born prematurely at eight months is in a po-
sition to interact with other individuals, and hence,
even though their physical development may be com-
parable, the ‘younger’ neonate and ‘older’ fetus have
relevantly different relationships to other individuals,
as well as an altogether different sort of relationship
to the woman who is the biological mother.
Finally, those who think that the psychological ca-
pacities that are essential to being a self-conscious
individual are ones that do not develop until later in
infancy (or early childhood) may think that even a
normal neonate is not properly counted as a person.
Usually, those who espouse such a view maintain
either that personhood is a matter of degree, rather
than an all-or-nothing matter, or that neonates pos-
sess some important properties that distinguish
them morally from fetuses. Either supposition al-
lows them to assert that it may be wrong to kill neo-
natal proto-persons even though they are not yet
(full) persons.
Most Moderates are not content with either Re-
strictive or Permissive conceptions of personhood.
Many people believe that there are points in fetal
development that are importantly morally discontin-
uous with others: some believe that the end of the
embryonic stage—when all the organ systems are
present in the developing organism—marks a mor-
ally significant boundary; others think that neuro-
logical developments, and in particular, those asso-
ciated with the beginnings of sentience, are what is
critical (though there is disagreement about when
sentience occurs). Still others hold that the onset of
viability, the point at which the fetus could survive
on its own if born prematurely, is what marks the
all-important moral boundary.
The Moral Community
Though much of the discussion of the morality of
abortion has centered on the question of fetal per-

sonhood, people have increasingly come to believe
that issues about the morality of abortion cannot be
resolved by arguing about the personhood of the fe-
tus; any hope of progress requires a change of strat-
egy. Some people arrive at this position as a prag-
matic matter. They believe that disagreements about
the nature of moral personhood, and the methods
by which it can be discovered or conferred, are log-
ically irresolvable, and hence futile. Some of the peo-
ple who draw this conclusion regard it as showing
that hopes for resolution of conflict about the mo-
rality of abortion lie in shifting the discussion to
other moral issues, while others take it to show that
discussions about the morality of abortion should be
suspended in favor of discussions about public
policy.
Some people favor a change of strategy not be-
cause they suppose that disagreement about the na-
ture of personhood must be intractable, but because
they believe that the issue is largely moot: the rights
and protections that go along with personhood are
not as strong, or as important, as discussants of
abortion have generally supposed them to be. On the
one hand, even if the fetus is deemed a person and
thus the bearer of strong rights, including rights to
life, killing may be permissible in a wide range of
circumstances. Judith THOMSON has forcefully ar-
gued that rights to life cannot be intelligibly re-
garded as absolute protections against ever being
killed, but must instead be seen as protections
against being unjustly killed, and she presents a
number of cases in which it would not be obviously
unjust to kill someone, even when the individual in
question is incontrovertibly a person. If—as Thom-
son argues—there are many different sorts of cir-
cumstances in which killing the fetus would not be
unjust, then abortion may not violate a fetus’s rights,
even if it is regarded as the killing of a person.
On the other hand, even if the fetus is deemed a
nonperson, it does not follow that it is usually per-
missible to kill it. Many of those who have discussed
the moral claims of nonhuman animals have argued
persuasively that creatures who are not (and may
never be) persons may nevertheless have INTERESTS,
and are thus entitled to some moral protection. De-
pending on what sorts of interests a fetus is taken to
possess, and what weight those interests are thought
to carry, one might maintain that the fetus is not a
person and yet think that abortion is often wrong.
For one might believe that, although the pregnant
5
abortion
woman has reproductive rights and is entitled to re-
spect as an autonomous individual, the fetus has in-
terests that are morally considerable. Those inter-
ests—in the avoidance of pain, or the continuation
of life, for example—may be thought to counter-
balance the pregnant woman’s interest in personal
or reproductive autonomy except in quite extreme
circumstances.
There are also other grounds for thinking that
the issue of fetal personhood cannot be decisive. The
relationship between the pregnant woman and the
developing fetus, and the nature of the dependency
of the fetus upon the woman are, in many important
respects, unique: they do not have clear analogues
in the relationships—even the closest, and most
one-sided, dependencies—between postfetal per-
sons. Because of this, one may be unhappy with ei-
ther the assertion of fetal personhood or its denial.
For the uniqueness of the fetus/woman relationship
may be thought to undermine one of abortion dis-
cussants’ favorite strategies, that of attempting to
determine the morality of abortion by modeling po-
tential conflicts of interest between the fetus and the
pregnant woman on those that occur between post-
fetal persons. Though many of those who believe
that the morality of abortion does not turn on the
ascription (or denial) of fetal personhood are Mod-
erates, this belief can be consistent with Permissive
or Restrictive views as well.
If the killing of the fetus may often be permissible
even if it is a person from the point of conception,
or impermissible even if personhood is seen as be-
ginning at birth or later, then the question of fetal
personhood is indeed moot. But how, then, should
issues concerning the morality of abortion be ap-
proached? It is tempting to suppose that discussions
of fetal personhood can be gainfully bypassed in fa-
vor of incursions into moral theory, in particular, di-
rect discussion about the nature and scope of the
rights, liberties, and obligations that members of the
moral community possess. But this strategy may
prove to possess many of the defects that the focus
on fetal personhood does. For reflection on the in-
tractability of discussions of fetal personhood sug-
gests that disagreements about the morality of abor-
tion are both deeper and broader than much of the
polarized, black-or-white discussion suggests. It
seems plausible to suppose that disagreements about
what it is to be a person are not isolated metaphys-
ical disagreements, but rather ones that reflect dif-
abortion
ferent understandings of moral community and hu-
man relationship, and hence different views of
individuals’ obligations to and responsibilities for
each other. But if this is so, then disagreements
about the morality of abortion may be less local
normative disagreements about when the life of
a person begins, or comes to merit special protec-
tion, than broad and pervasive differences in world
view. Though moral theory may be able to help us
articulate these differences, and spell out their im-
plications, it is doubtful whether it can provide a
basis for resolving—or even harmonizing—such
differences.
See also: ANIMALS, TREATMENT OF; AUTONOMY OF
MORAL AGENTS; DEATH; DOUBLE EFFECT; ENTITLE-
MENTS; EUTHANASIA; FAMILY; FEMINIST ETHICS; GE-
NETIC ENGINEERING; HOMICIDE; HUMAN RIGHTS; IN-
FANTICIDE; INNOCENCE; KILLING/LETTING DIE; LIFE
AND DEATH; LIFE, RIGHT TO; MEDICAL ETHICS;
MORAL COMMUNITY, BOUNDARIES OF; PERSON, CON-
CEPT OF; PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY; PUBLIC
HEALTH POLICY; PUBLIC POLICY; RAPE; REPRODUC-
TIVE TECHNOLOGY; RIGHT HOLDERS; SELF-DEFENSE;
SEXUALITY AND SEXUAL ETHICS; SLIPPERY SLOPE AR-
GUMENTS; THOMSON; WELFARE RIGHTS AND SOCIAL
POLICY.
Bibliography
Bondesman, William B., et al., eds. Abortion and the
Status of the Fetus. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983. Essays on
moral, legal, medical, and religious issues about
personhood.
Brody, Baruch. Abortion and the Sanctity of Human Life:
A Philosophical View. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1975.
Defense of a restrictive view.
Butler, J. Douglas, and David F. Walbert. Abortion, Med-
icine, and the Law. 3d ed. New York: Facts on File,
1986. Medical, legal, and ethical questions.
Callahan, Sidney, and Daniel Callahan, eds. Abortion: Un-
derstanding Differences. New York: Plenum, 1984.
Philosophical, social science, and social services
perspectives.
Devine, Phillip E. The Ethics of Homicide. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1978. Restrictive view de-
fended in the larger context of a discussion of the mo-
rality of killing.
Feinberg, Joel. “Abortion.” In Matters of Life and Death,
edited by Tom Regan. 2d ed. New York: Random
House, 1986. An overview.
———, ed. The Problem of Abortion. 2d ed. Belmont,
CA: Wadsworth, 1984. Broad spectrum of views.
6
Among them: “Abortion and the Concept of a Person”
by Jane English argues that the concept of a person
cannot take the weight that the abortion controversy
has put on it. “A Defense of Abortion” by Judith Jarvis
Thomson (orig. pub. Philosophy and Public Affairs,
vol. 1, 1971) is a classic and widely cited paper criti-
cizing the restrictive view. “On the Moral and Legal
Status of Abortion” by Mary Anne Warren defends the
permissive view.
Garfield, Jay L., and Patricia Hennessey, eds. Abortion:
Moral and Legal Perspectives. Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1984. Includes a summary of
relevant legal decisions. See especially “Abortion and
Self-Defense” by Nancy Davis (orig. pub. Philosophy
and Public Affairs, vol. 13, 1984), which discusses
some of the difficulties of applying self-defense argu-
ments to the abortion context.
Luker, Kristin. Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Socio-
logical analysis of the abortion debate in the United
States.
Mohr, James C. Abortion in America. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1978. Classic historical sourcebook.
Petchesky, Rosalind Pollack. Abortion and Woman’s
Choice. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1985.
Comprehensive discussion of abortion in the context
of reproductive rights.
Sachdev, Paul. International Handbook on Abortion. New
York: Greenwood, 1988. Comprehensive assembly of
demographic data relating to abortion.
Sumner, Wayne. Abortion and Moral Theory. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1981. Defense of a mod-
erate view.
Tooley, Michael. Abortion and Infanticide. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1983. Comprehensive defense of
a permissive view.
(Nancy) Ann Davis
absolutes
See moral absolutes.
absurd, the
The classic formulation of the “philosophy of the
absurd” is found in Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus
(1942), where he writes: “I don’t know whether this
world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know
that I do not know that meaning and that it is im-
possible for me just now to know it. I can under-
stand only in human terms. What I touch, what re-
sists me—that is what I understand. And these two
certainties—my appetite for the absolute and for

unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to
a rational and reasonable principle—I also know
that I cannot reconcile them.” This necessary but
futile search for ultimate meaning constitutes absurd
existence in its fundamental form. It finds imagina-
tive expression in the Theater of the Absurd with
works of authors like Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
and Eugene Ionesco (1912–1994) and it enters
theological discourse with the negative theologies of
the mystics and the theology of paradox of Søren
KIERKEGAARD (1813–1855) as well as in the works
of authors from the voluntarist and fideist traditions.
In other words, the absurd need not be synonymous
with NIHILISM, even if the two terms have been
closely associated since the nineteenth century.
The philosophy of the absurd has become syn-
onymous with atheistic existentialism beginning
with Friedrich NIETZSCHE (1844–1900) and cul-
minating in the writings of Albert CAMUS (1913–
1960). Camus translated Nietzsche’s famous “death
of God” proclamation into the premise of a philos-
ophy of life that is neo-Stoic in tone and anticipates
a thesis of many postmodernist thinkers with its
counsel to persevere in living despite the abandon-
ment of HOPE for ultimate meaning in life. “The only
hope is to know there is no [ultimate] hope.” (Myth
of Sisyphus.) As the narrator in his novel The Plague
(1947) observes, it is only those who seek limited
HAPPINESS who can be satisfied; the idealist in search
of the absolute is condemned to a lifelong futile
quest. Correspondingly, moral values are to be cre-
ated, not discovered in some metaphysical system.
This Nietzschean theme is echoed by Jean-Paul SAR-
TRE (1905–1980) in his prescription from Existen-
tialism Is a Humanism (1946): “You are free, there-
fore choose, that is, invent!” Although he too denies
an absolute meaning prior to human existence, Sar-
tre avoids nihilism by his commitment to human
freedom as itself the supreme value and source of all
other values. And he does not subscribe to the “lim-
ited happiness” thesis that, many Marxist critics
claim, seems to align Camus (and Michel FOUCAULT
[1926–1984], so it has been argued by Jürgen HA-
BERMAS and others) with a reformist, if not a neo-
conservative camp.
From a nonexistentialist perspective, Thomas Na-
gel argues that our philosophical sense of absurdity
arises from “the collision between the seriousness
with which we take our lives and the perpetual pos-
sibility of regarding everything about which we are
7
absurd, the
serious as arbitrary or open to doubt.” Though this
thesis seems close to that of Camus, it differs by fo-
cusing entirely on the “collision within ourselves” of
two attitudes rather than on the tension between our
attitude and the world. Nagel likens the absurdist
belief to epistemological skepticism in that both po-
sitions, on his account, recognize the futility of seek-
ing a noncircular defense of our system of beliefs. In
the case of absurdism, “we continue to take life
largely for granted while seeing that all our decisions
and certainties are possible only because there is a
great deal we do not bother to rule out.” (“The Ab-
surd.”) What results in either case, he concludes, is
a new attitude toward knowledge and life, namely, a
certain resignation mixed with irony.
Perhaps the difference between these approaches
to the absurd is best reflected emotionally in the con-
trast between irony and anguish (Angst). The French
existentialist supports a chastened hope that has
fallen away from the utopian dream of a Revolution
that had assumed mythic proportions, whereas the
American philosopher counsels a more pragmatic
way of dealing with life’s pressing but unanswerable
mysteries.
Absurdist theater, of which Beckett’s Waiting for
Godot (1952) is the paradigm, articulates this at-
mosphere of abandonment and ultimate hopeless-
ness in which one cries “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”
(The Unnamable [1953].) Like Camus’s Sisyphus,
condemned for eternity to push the stone repeatedly
up the hill only to see it roll back again, Beckett’s
characters are making the best of what might other-
wise be called a “bad deal,” except that there is no
possibility of a better deal in the offing. If the only
serious problem in our day, consequently, is SUICIDE,
that too becomes an absurd decision. As Camus ex-
plains: “The final conclusion of absurdist reasoning
is, in fact, the repudiation of suicide and the accep-
tance of the desperate encounter between human in-
quiry and the silence of the universe. . . . But it is
obvious that absurdism hereby admits that human
life is the only necessary good since it is precisely life
that makes this encounter possible and since, with-
out life, the absurdist wager would have no basis.”
(The Rebel [1951].)
Mystics, negative theologians, and fideists of vari-
ous stripes have profited from the absurdity of our
condition which the shipwreck of total rationality
seems to entail in order to direct our attention toward
an entirely other dimension of meaning and/or
absurd, the
existence. This is the point of Tertullian’s (c. C.E.
160–220) credo quia absurdum est (I believe be-
cause it is absurd), which Kierkegaard cites when
appealing to the “paradox” of the Christian’s belief
in the divinity of Christ. Such theological “absurd-
ism” resembles much philosophical skepticism: a
strategic move to disarm the power of a destroying
rationality in defense of traditional values or NORMS.
Where philosophy and theology overlap on the
matter of absurdity is in the problem of moral EVIL.
The questions—which cannot be answered ade-
quately—“Why do bad things happen to good peo-
ple?” and more specifically, “Why do good people
suffer at the hands of others?” have been common
objections to the idea of a God that cares (Provi-
dence). Though this need not lead to the conclusion
that the universe is not only indifferent but mean-
ingless, it often does—so close, in the eyes of many,
is the conceptual link between “it all making sense”
and the existence of a personal God.
In the wake of postmodernist critiques of a mono-
lithic “Enlightenment Reason” and the concomitant
claim that “the fission of meaning” is the philosoph-
ical “sign of our times”, much as the revolutionary
enthusiasm for freedom was the sign (die Begeben-
heit) of history in KANT’s (1724–1804) day, a cer-
tain absurdist specter seems to linger on the horizon
of contemporary thought.
See also: ATHEISM; CAMUS; EVIL; EXISTENTIAL
ETHICS; FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM; KIERKE-
GAARD; LIFE, MEANING OF; METAPHYSICS AND EPIS-
TEMOLOGY; MORAL IMAGINATION; MYSTICISM; NEO-
STOICISM; NIETZSCHE; NIHILISM; POSTMODERNISM;
RATIONALITY AND REASONABLENESS; SARTRE; SKEP-
TICISM IN ETHICS; SUICIDE; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS;
VOLUNTARISM.
Bibliography
Beckett, Samuel. The Unnamable. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1997. Tr. of L’Innommable [1953].
———. Waiting for Godot. New York: Grove Press, 1954.
Tr. of En attendant Godot [1952].
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays.
Translated by Justin O’Brien. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1995.
———. The Plague. Translated by Stuart Gilbert. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948. Tr. of La peste [1947].
———. The Rebel. Translated by Anthony Bower. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954. Tr. of L’Homme révolté
[1951].
8
Crosby, Donald A. The Specter of the Absurd: Sources and
Criticisms of Modern Nihilism. Albany, NY: State Uni-
versity of New York Press, 1988.
Lyotard, Jean-François. “The Sign of History.” In his The
Differend: Phrases in Dispute, translated by Georges
Van Den Abbeele, 151–81. Minneapolis, MN: Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press, 1988.
Nagel, Thomas. Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1979. Chapter 2, “The Ab-
surd,” 11–23.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Translated by
Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Humanities Press, Philo-
sophical Library, 1956. Tr. of L’Être et le néant [1943].
———. “Existentialism Is a Humanism.” In Existentialism
from Dostoevsky to Sartre, edited by Walter Kaufmann,
287–311. Cleveland, OH: World Publishing, Meridian
Books, 1956. Tr. of L’Existentialism est un humanisme
[1946].
Thomas R. Flynn
Abunaser
See Fārābı̄, al-.
academic ethics
Academic life generates a variety of moral issues.
These issues may be faced by students, staff, admin-
istrators, trustees, or even alumni, but most often
revolve around the obligations of the faculty. Its in-
formed judgments lie at the heart of the educational
process, and the study of its critical role is the central
focus of academic ethics.
The essence of the professor’s life is the pursuit
of knowledge. To ensure that this search is not ob-
structed on political, religious, or any other grounds,
faculty members are protected by ACADEMIC FREE-
DOM, the right of professionally qualified persons to
seek, teach, and publish the truth as they see it
within their fields of competence.
Academic freedom is imperiled whenever an
ideological test is imposed to determine who will be
appointed to the faculty, whenever a school adopts
an official stance on issues unrelated to its educa-
tional mission, or whenever a presentation by some
campus speaker is interfered with on the grounds
that the views expressed are unpalatable. Some have
argued that such actions may occasionally be justi-
fied on the grounds that they achieve a greater good,
such as preventing the spread of racial or religious

bigotry, but it is generally accepted that the onus lies
on those who would subordinate academic freedom
to a supposedly higher end. Faculty autonomy, how-
ever, does not imply the absence of RESPONSIBILITY.
Teaching, scholarship, and service all have an ethical
dimension.
Teaching
Professors are authorities, experts in their fields,
and in virtue of superior knowledge they are as-
signed AUTHORITY to guide the educational process.
Mishandled, however, the use of authority can de-
generate into authoritarianism, guidance can be-
come domination, and education can turn into in-
doctrination. These crucial distinctions need to be
drawn with care.
Professors are expected to judge fairly the extent
of each student’s accomplishment. Examinations
and grades are traditionally used to achieve this goal.
Yet examinations have been criticized for stifling
students’ creativity, and grades, it has been said, are
inherently inaccurate devices which, in attempting
to measure people, succeed only in traumatizing and
dehumanizing them. A critical challenge is to for-
mulate methods of evaluation that can withstand
such criticisms.
Fair evaluation requires the absence of PARTIAL-
ITY. But FRIENDSHIP, unlike friendliness or goodwill,
implies favoritism. How, then, can professors be
friends with those they are supposed to evaluate?
If friendship between professor and student is in-
appropriate, so, a fortiori, is romance. Furthermore,
given the POWER and prestige of the faculty, students
are especially vulnerable to sexual EXPLOITATION.
When an unscrupulous professor is known to have
used cajolery or COERCION to take advantage of a
student, faculty colleagues are thereby challenged to
make an appropriate ethical judgment and take suit-
able action.
Evaluating Teaching
Virtually every empirical study of alternative
methods of judging teachers has concluded that peer
review is a major component of any sound evalua-
tion. Yet many schools rely almost entirely on stu-
dent opinion. What are the appropriate limits to this
practice, given that students, by definition, do not
know the subjects they are studying? And how can
9
academic ethics
student views be solicited without exposing the
teacher to intimidation?
Scholarship
Professors profess the worth of their subjects, and
no subject can thrive in the absence of new contri-
butions. Publications, then, ought to result from a
faculty member’s commitment to the advance of a
discipline. In addition, those instructors expected to
provide original perspectives in the classroom ought
to have their abilities to do so evaluated periodically
in accordance with rigorous standards set and main-
tained by peers who referee works for publication
and comment on materials when they appear.
Yet it has been argued that emphasis on publish-
ing can lead to neglect of teaching. To what extent
are the two activities complementary, and what is the
appropriate balance between them?
All researchers are bound by common ethical
principles. Chief among these is the axiom that in-
dividuals should not claim credit for work they have
not done. In addition, they are obligated to study
available literature carefully, provide accurate cita-
tions, not distort opposing views, and not overstate
their own conclusions.
It seems to follow directly that research findings
should be made public, so that they are available for
use by the community of scholars. But suppose a
funding agency insists that it will finance a study
only if the results are kept confidential or remain
entirely under its control. Given a university’s com-
mitment to an open atmosphere of unrestricted in-
quiry, when, if ever, is a researcher justified in ac-
cepting support under conditions of secrecy?
Service
Scholars are engaged in a cooperative enterprise
and ought to treat each other with amity and INTEG-
RITY. In offering evaluations of research they should
not indulge in captious criticism; in providing letters
of recommendation they should not offer exagger-
ated praise.
An additional professorial duty is to take on a fair
share of the sundry, day-to-day tasks that are an in-
escapable part of the institution’s life. Failure to join
in this work unfairly burdens colleagues.
Faculty members are also obliged to ensure that
individuals deserve the degrees they are awarded.
academic ethics
For example, students granted liberal arts degrees
should actually have obtained the essentials of a lib-
eral education. Suitable requirements should be es-
tablished to guarantee the worth of a diploma, and
these should be examined regularly and modified
appropriately.
Personnel Decisions
Appointments to a faculty ought to be made only
after a widespread search has been carried out with
scrupulous attention to proper procedures. At every
stage of the process, ethical issues may arise. These
frequently call for balancing an applicant’s RIGHTS
and an institution’s INTERESTS. For example, to what
extent is it appropriate to ask candidates questions
about their personal life?
Other issues relate to decision procedures in mat-
ters of appointment or promotion. Who is entitled
to vote, and should individual judgments be kept
secret?
The most crucial personnel decision is the award-
ing of tenure. This prerogative protects academic
freedom by providing professors an extraordinary
degree of latitude and security. Yet such privilege
leads into an ethical thicket, for how can unprofes-
sional conduct be deterred without undermining
faculty autonomy?
A university is morally committed to harbor dis-
sent, nonconformity, and even the most unpopular
of heresies. What ought never be tolerated is pro-
fessorial malfeasance.
See also: ACADEMIC FREEDOM; AUTHORITY; COER-
CION; EXPLOITATION; FAIRNESS; FRIENDSHIP; IMPAR-
TIALITY; INSTITUTIONS; PATERNALISM; PERSONAL RE-
LATIONSHIPS; PLAGIARISM; POWER; PROFESSIONAL
ETHICS; RESPONSIBILITY; SEXUAL ABUSE AND HA-
RASSMENT.
Bibliography
American Association of University Professors. “State-
ment on Professional Ethics.” Academe 73 (1987): 49.
Brown, William R. Academic Politics. Birmingham: Uni-
versity of Alabama Press, 1982.
Cahn, Steven M. Saints and Scamps: Ethics in Academia.
Rev. ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994
[1986].
———, ed. Morality, Responsibility, and the University:
Essays in Academic Ethics. Philadelphia: Temple Uni-
versity Press, 1990.
10
———, gen. ed. Issues in Academic Ethics. Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefield, 1993–. Ten volumes have
been published; ten are in preparation.
Robinson, George M., and Janice Moulton. Ethical Prob-
lems in Higher Education. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Pren-
tice Hall, 1985.
Shils, Edward. The Calling of Education. Chicago and
London: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Steven M. Cahn
academic freedom
The freedom to teach and do research in any schol-
arly discipline without constraint; to discover and
promulgate new ideas no matter how controversial.
Like other accepted freedoms, academic freedom re-
quires individuals, authorities, and governments not
only to allow scholars to work without restraint but
also to prevent any interference with this freedom.
In addition, academic freedom seems to require
something more: that society provide conditions in
which new ideas can be generated, nurtured, and
freely exchanged.
Historical examples show the need for academic
freedom. SOCRATES (c. 470–399 B.C.E.) was put to
death for corrupting the youth of Athens with his
ideas. Galileo (1564–1642) was sentenced to life
imprisonment for advocating the Copernican view
of the solar system. DESCARTES (1596–1650) sup-
pressed his own writing to avoid similar trouble.
Teachers were fired for telling their students about
DARWIN’s (1809–1882) views. The ideas of these
great thinkers have survived, but we will never know
how many others were completely suppressed. Rec-
ognizing the need to protect controversial ideas,
nineteenth-century German universities affirmed the
ideal of academic freedom. During the modern era,
the United States Supreme Court reaffirmed aca-
demic freedom in Sweezey v. New Hampshire
(1957): “to impose any straitjacket upon the intel-
lectual leaders in our colleges and universities would
imperil the future of the nation.”
Academic freedom can be justified in two ways.
First, one can appeal to a higher value—the pursuit
of truth—to argue that we must protect ideas that
may be unpopular, controversial, or without imme-
diate practical benefit in order to support truth. Sec-
ond, one can argue that academic freedom is nec-
essary to benefit human welfare, which depends on
the discovery and propagation of new knowledge.

Since we cannot predict which knowledge will be
helpful in the future, all new knowledge should be
protected.
The first justification seems to be the simpler. If
we take the pursuit of truth as a higher value, then
no knowledge should be suppressed. Even harmful
truths are truths nonetheless. But there is a problem.
If the discovery and promulgation of truth is our
primary aim, it might be acceptable or even desirable
to suppress false information that threatens to dis-
place true information. The problem is the difficulty
in determining what new information is true. Who
decides what is true and what is false? Historically,
those who tried to suppress new information usually
believed they were trying to preserve the truth. Now
we know that they were mistaken. We might assume
that, given enough intellectual scrutiny, true infor-
mation will eventually defeat false information.
Then we can decide the best policy is to suppress no
information. However, there is no guarantee that
true information will always displace false or that
this system is an efficient way to establish truth.
Consider now the second justification: that hu-
man welfare is primary. This justification seems to
allow limits on academic freedom. Some things that
are discovered and taught might be harmful, might
even endanger the future of our species. False infor-
mation is more likely to be harmful, but true infor-
mation might also be harmful. Some argue that ac-
ademic freedom must be limited when there is a
serious threat to human welfare. They cite examples
such as the danger caused by radioactivity from nu-
clear weapons research or the danger of biological
“wildfire” from accidents in recombinant genetic
engineering.
Even if we take human welfare to be primary, we
can still defend the principle of academic freedom.
It is too difficult to anticipate what knowledge will
turn out to be harmful. It is too dangerous to allow
some people to decide what may be studied and
what may not, what information should be available
and what should be suppressed. In general, the
larger benefit of supporting the principle of uncon-
strained research and teaching seems to be worth the
risk of occasional harmful effects. Therefore, we
should support the principle of academic freedom.
Academic Freedom: Privilege or Right
The exercise of academic freedom depends on re-
sources that are not available to everyone. Teaching
11
academic freedom
requires access to students; research requires librar-
ies, laboratories, and other facilities. Modern schol-
ars need access to photocopy machines, computer
databases, colleagues to consult, journal and book
editors willing to publish their work. These re-
sources are limited. Not everyone can be accom-
modated. The difficulty of deciding how to distrib-
ute these limited resources raises serious questions
about academic freedom.
Educational institutions are the primary provid-
ers of scholarly resources. Therefore the protection
of academic freedom is usually thought to be the
responsibility of colleges and universities. However,
academic institutions are meritocracies, not democ-
racies. They make no attempt to distribute their re-
sources to everyone. Instead, they try to reserve
these resources for people who they judge can best
make use of them. But how do educational institu-
tions judge who is most suitable?
The freedom to develop and teach new ideas can
be encouraged or discouraged in many ways. The
most prominent way that educational institutions
encourage academic freedom is the granting of ten-
ure. Tenure provides job security for teachers and
scholars. It is usually granted after a period of pro-
bation, as a symbol of merit. This reinforces the idea
that academic freedom is a privilege.
The tenure system has been criticized because it
can be easily abused. People with tenure can hold
their positions and do very little work. They cannot
be fired for being lazy teachers, poor researchers, or
uncooperative employees. Defenders of the tenure
system, like defenders of other protective systems,
argue that protecting the work of original, unpopu-
lar thinkers is more important than preventing the
“deadwood” in academic departments from slack-
ing off.
Tenure has also been criticized because its pro-
tection of academic freedom is withheld from the
people who may need it the most—younger scholars
who are more likely to innovate and to challenge
established paradigms. Unless their senior col-
leagues support them enthusiastically, untenured
scholars may be fired no matter how excellent or
original their teaching or research. Junior scholars
may lose their jobs because their senior colleagues
do not approve of their research or the material they
teach, regardless of its quality.
There is usually a six-year probationary period be-
fore tenure is granted at the university level; it is
academic freedom
often shorter for secondary school teachers. In
higher education the average period a junior scholar
must work before receiving tenure is increasing in
length as the supply of academic jobs decreases.
Many scholars go from one untenured position to
another. Scholars who do get tenure may wait twelve
or more years. During this time they work under
conditions of restricted academic freedom. They
must be cautious about expressing scholarly or per-
sonal views that may offend senior faculty members
and cost them their jobs. The pressure to “publish
or perish” also discourages innovation because in-
novation requires taking chances that may not result
in publication. Many of those who are finally granted
tenure after this long period have learned to avoid
daring or controversial research and teaching. Ironi-
cally, those who finally receive tenure’s protection of
academic freedom may be the ones who need it least.
Some hold that tenure should be restricted, that
full academic freedom is a privilege to be granted
only after the new scholar demonstrates a record of
extraordinary contributions. Untenured status is an
apprenticeship that allows the university to identify
the most talented scholars. The more untenured
scholars an institution has, the more easily it can
replace them with people who have new ideas. Un-
fortunately, this view offers no protection to unten-
ured scholars who have new ideas that displease se-
nior colleagues or that fall outside established
paradigms.
Others believe that it is young scholars with new
ideas who are most in need of protection. They see
scholars who do original work being dismissed for
irrelevant reasons and want junior scholars to have
the same job security as their seniors. They argue
that the quality of research and teaching would be
improved if working conditions were more secure
and the POWER differences between tenured and un-
tenured faculty members were lessened. This system
is generally followed in Great Britain and some other
countries. Opponents point out that in countries
where job security is granted to new scholars, there
are fewer academic jobs available and fewer scholars
can find any academic employment. To compromise,
institutions might give longer contracts to all schol-
ars but eliminate tenure.
Many who have discussed academic freedom
equate it with tenure. Yet the job security that tenure
provides is not enough. Tenure may increase the ac-
ademic freedom of some scholars, but it does not
12
guarantee the ability to teach or study freely. Ten-
ured faculty members have been fired for their po-
litical beliefs or private indiscretions. Tenured fac-
ulty members with controversial ideas have been
given undesirable teaching assignments, burdened
with tedious administrative jobs, or denied research
facilities. While tenure is the main formal protection
for academic freedom offered by educational insti-
tutions, not all institutions offer it. Educational in-
stitutions have the power to foster academic free-
dom in many ways besides tenure: for example,
reducing teaching loads, or granting travel funds
and sabbatical leaves so that faculty members can
develop new ideas and exchange ideas with col-
leagues at other institutions. Many institutions ex-
tend the academic freedom of their students by al-
lowing a wide choice of courses. They extend
academic freedom outside the institution by giving
members of the public access to their libraries and
some research facilities.
In some fields, other resources are more impor-
tant to academic freedom than tenure—access to ar-
tifacts, special libraries, private collections, labora-
tory space, and equipment. These resources can be
denied to scholars whose views threaten the people
who control access. And even if the research is suc-
cessfully completed, it still needs to be made public.
Journal editors and referees are less likely to rec-
ommend publication of articles that challenge their
own ideas. Publishing houses have been pressured
by academics not to produce certain books. Librar-
ies and bookstores have been pressured to withdraw
offending books from circulation. Government and
industry keep secret the results of research done un-
der their auspices, even when conducted in institu-
tions of higher education.
Teachers, especially those whose evaluations are
based on class size and student opinion surveys, feel
pressure to please their audiences, sometimes at the
expense of educational goals. Teaching curricula are
affected by ideology, politics, and current intellec-
tual fashions. Researchers feel pressure to focus on
subjects supported by grants from government, in-
dustry, and foundations.
Research and teaching will always be constrained
by outside pressures. The means for exercising aca-
demic freedom—tenure, research support, and pub-
lication space—will always be relatively scarce re-
sources. We should evaluate how these resources are
distributed. We must consider who should choose

the recipients of these resources. It may seem that
those who have demonstrated competence in a
scholarly discipline are best able to make the deci-
sions. However established scholars are intellectu-
ally, emotionally, and financially invested in certain
theories, approaches, and dogma. Given human na-
ture, it is difficult for judges to accept a new idea
that challenges what they themselves believe, espe-
cially when they know that their views are shared by
other leading scholars in a field. We should recog-
nize the dangers of self-perpetuating paradigms and
try to discover ways of overcoming them.
We can look beyond tenure for means of preserv-
ing academic freedom and ask whether the resources
for academic freedom should be distributed more
widely or more narrowly; whether these resources
should be distributed to encourage merit, diversity,
or some other property; and whether the creative
thinking and hard work that results in new knowl-
edge is more likely to be inspired by the pressure of
regular evaluation or by freedom from job insecurity.
See also: ACADEMIC ETHICS; AUTHORITY; CENSOR-
SHIP; DESCARTES; ELITE, CONCEPT OF; GOVERNMENT,
ETHICS IN; LIBERTY; LIBRARY AND INFORMATION PRO-
FESSIONS; MERIT AND DESERT; POLITICAL CORRECT-
NESS; PROFESSIONAL ETHICS; SOCRATES.
Bibliography
Atherton, M., S. Morgenbesser, and R. Schwartz. “On
Tenure.” Philosophical Forum 10 (1979): 341–52.
Junior scholars need protection, too.
Brubacher, J. S. On the Philosophy of Higher Education.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1977. Chapter 3 presents
a thorough discussion of academic freedom, its justi-
fication, limits, and relation to other rights.
Cahn, S. M. Education and the Democratic Ideal. Chi-
cago: Nelson-Hall, 1979. Argues that tenure is neces-
sary to protect academic freedom but that it should be
granted less often and terminated more frequently.
Hook, Sidney. In Defense of Academic Freedom. New
York: Pegasus, 1971. Student challenges to university
traditions in the 1960s are seen as a threat to academic
freedom.
Hook, Sidney, P. Kurtz, and M. Todorovich. The Ethics of
Teaching and Scientific Research. Buffalo, NY: Pro-
metheus, 1977. Hook argues that academic freedom
(which he equates with tenure) is a privilege. Kurtz
examines claims that some scientific research should
not be done because of dangers or possible misuses.
Jaggar, Alison. “Tenure, Academic Freedom and Profes-
sional Competence.” Philosophical Forum 10 (1979):
13
action
360–70. Political and personal factors affect judg-
ments of who deserves tenure.
Robinson, G. M., and J. Moulton. Ethical Problems in
Higher Education. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
1985. Chapter 3 treats the hiring and evaluation of fac-
ulty; chapter 5 covers ethical problems in teaching.
Schneewind, Jerome. “On ‘On Tenure’.” Philosophical Fo-
rum 10 (1979): 353–59. A defense of the tenure
system.
George Robinson
Janice Moulton
action
Moral judgments ostensibly presuppose that there
are actions, or acts, since it is precisely acts, or
deeds, that are frequently called right or wrong.
While the existence of acts remains slightly contro-
versial among metaphysicians, more intense contro-
versy concerns what they are.
Types and Tokens
First, we must distinguish act types from act to-
kens. An act type is a kind of action, like whistling
or mailing a letter. An act token is a particular ac-
tion, performed by a particular person, at a partic-
ular time. When speaking of acts as right or wrong,
usually act tokens are in question; the specific deed
done by Jones in a particular context is said to be
wrong, even if other deeds of the same type might
not be wrong. It is also possible to hold, however,
that an act type is wrong, meaning perhaps that any
token of the type is wrong.
Act Individuation
The main controversies in action theory concern
act tokens. Suppose that Sally opens her hand,
thereby releasing a plastic cup, thereby littering the
highway, and thereby violating a statute. Presumably
each of the following is an act token: (a) Sally’s
opening her hand; (b) her releasing the cup; (c) her
littering the highway; and (d) her violating a statute.
Are these one and the same act token, or four dis-
tinct act tokens?
The first answer, that they are the same act token,
has been defended by G. E. M. ANSCOMBE (1919–
2001) and Donald Davidson, the latter’s defense be-
ing partly based on his account of the logical form
of action sentences. According to Davidson’s ac-
action
count, the sentence “Sally opened her hand” is
(roughly) equivalent to: “There was an event E such
that E was a hand opening and E was performed by
Sally.” The same event can also be described in terms
of its effects, namely, the release of the plastic cup,
litter being on the highway, and a statute being vi-
olated. Hence, this event was the releasing (by Sally)
of the cup, and was the littering of the highway and
was the violating of a statute. Call this the unity ap-
proach to act individuation.
Although intuitively appealing, the unity ap-
proach faces ostensibly damaging problems. Some
of these concern causal properties of the act(s). As
Alvin Goldman observes, it looks true to say that
Sally’s opening her hand caused the release of the
cup, but false to say that Sally’s littering the highway
caused the release of the cup. How does this square
with the alleged fact that the highway littering is the
hand opening? A second problem, posed by Judith
THOMSON and others, involves temporal properties.
Booth killed Lincoln by shooting him. Can the kill-
ing be identical with the shooting, as the unity ap-
proach claims? The time of the killing surely
stretches until the time of death, which in this case
occurred well after the shooting. If the shooting were
the killing, however, they would occupy the same
time interval.
Unity theorists try to reply to these problems, but
other theorists opt for a pluralist approach. In each
example, they claim, there is a multiplicity of distinct
(though possibly overlapping) acts. One version
construes each causative act as a sequence or fusion
of events: an initial act plus a chain of its causal
consequences. Booth’s killing Lincoln is a whole of
which his shooting is just a part (a view endorsed by
Thomson, Irving Thalberg, Lawrence Davis, and
Fred Dretske). A second variant of pluralism has
been advanced by Jaegwon Kim for events generally
and by Goldman for actions. This is the property
exemplification approach, which in the action case
identifies an act token with the exemplifying of an
act type (a property) by an agent at a specific time
(cf. Jonathan Bennett’s “trope” theory). Exemplify-
ings of distinct act types are distinct act tokens, even
if their agent and time are the same. How does this
approach accommodate the intuition that groups of
such acts are intimately related? They are related, it
says, via the “by” relation, the relation holding be-
tween action pairs when one is done by doing the
other.
14
Doing versus Undergoing
When you are “seized” by a sneeze or cough, or
when you sweat, you do not act; you do not do any-
thing. What is the difference? One theory here is
causalism: a piece of behavior qualifies as action if
it is caused by an appropriate mental event, such as
an INTENTION, a volition, a trying, or a set of desires
and beliefs. This is related to theories claiming that
reasons explanations are causal explanations. It goes
a bit further in claiming a “reduction” of the notion
of action to the notions of behavior, event causation,
and selected mental events. A principal difficulty for
this view is the existence of “deviant” causal chains
between inner events and behavior, chains that don’t
render the resulting behavior an action. Opposed to
causalism are two views. The agency theory (of
Richard Taylor and Roderick Chisholm [1916–
1999], for example) claims that an action is some-
thing produced by a particular kind of subject, an
agent, who is something like an unmoved mover.
The exact nature of such a being, however, and its
mode of operation are obscure. A second and com-
plementary approach, teleologism, claims that doing
something for a purpose, or in order to achieve an
end, is a primitive and irreducible notion.
Basic and Nonbasic Acts
It seems natural to distinguish acts that are “di-
rectly” versus only “indirectly” within our power.
Curling a finger and smiling fall in the first category;
starting a revolution falls in the second. Members of
the first category are basic acts. A basic act type
might be explained as a property that a person can
exemplify at will, even without specialized means-
ends knowledge (or belief).
With respect to act tokens, the unity theorist has
no need to distinguish basic from nonbasic, because
all act tokens would be (identical to) basic ones. The
pluralist, by contrast, standardly insists on this dis-
tinction. Every act token is either basic or arises
from a basic act token via the “by” relation. In Gold-
man’s theory, the “by” relation (dubbed level gen-
eration) spawns an action “tree” from each basic act
token. A token on such a tree is intentional if the
agent has a plan featuring that token (either as a goal
or a means) and the plan causes (in the “right” way)
its own realization, or at least partial realization.

Sources and Plans of Action
There are many theories about the springs of ac-
tion. One controversy is whether all sources of ac-
tion include desire-like elements (the Humean ap-
proach), or whether there are REASONS FOR ACTION,
such as respect for duty, that have a different char-
acter (the Kantian approach). A second controversy
concerns the logical and temporal structure of PRAC-
TICAL REASONING. How do intentions and plans for
action change in response to new MOTIVES and in-
formation, and how is it rational for these to
change?
The Moral Status of Actions
How does moral status attach to acts? In the lan-
guage of the unity theory, does it attach to whole
“concrete” actions or only to some descriptions
thereof? In pluralist terms, must all acts on an act
tree have the same moral status, or can their status
differ? Differences seem possible. If X does Y a fa-
vor, but in a fashion that causes Z harm, the first
act, but not the second, seems meritorious. How-
ever, there may be a principle of “inheritance” dic-
tating that whenever one act on an act tree has a
certain moral status, lower acts on the tree inherit
that status. Or perhaps acts on the same tree can
differ in prima facie rightness or wrongness but not
in overall rightness or wrongness. A satisfactory the-
ory of moral status should address this issue.
See also: ACTS AND OMISSIONS; ANSCOMBE; AUTON-
OMY OF MORAL AGENTS; CAUSATION AND RESPON-
SIBILITY; CONSEQUENTIALISM; DELIBERATION AND
CHOICE; DESIRE; DOUBLE EFFECT; FREEDOM AND DE-
TERMINISM; INTENTION; INTRANSITIVITY; METAETH-
ICS; MORAL ABSOLUTES; MOTIVES; PRACTICAL REA-
SON[ING]; RATIONAL CHOICE; REASONS FOR ACTION;
RESPONSIBILITY; THOMSON; VOLUNTARY ACTS;
WEAKNESS OF WILL.
Bibliography
Anscombe, G. E. M. Intention. Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1957.
Bennett, Jonathan. Events and Their Names. Indianapolis,
IN: Hackett, 1988.
Brand, Myles. Intending and Acting. Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1984.
Bratman, Michael. Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987.
15
acts and omissions
Chisholm, Roderick. “Freedom and Action.” In Freedom
and Determinism, edited by Keith Lehrer. New York:
Random House, 1966.
Davidson, Donald. Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1980.
Davis, Lawrence. Theory of Action. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1979.
Dretske, Fred. Explaining Behavior. Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1988.
Goldman, Alvin. A Theory of Human Action. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1970.
Hornsby, Jennifer. Actions. London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1980.
Kim, Jaegwon. “Events as Property Exemplifications.” In
Action Theory, edited by Myles Brand and Douglas
Walton. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1976.
Taylor, Richard. Action and Purpose. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice Hall, 1966.
Thalberg, Irving. Perception, Emotion and Action. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.
Thomson, Judith Jarvis. Acts and Other Events. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1977.
Alvin Goldman
Holly Smith
acts
See voluntary acts.
acts and omissions
Very broadly, the act/omission distinction is that
between acting and failing to act, between a doing
or a doing-something and a not-doing or a doing-
nothing. Further refinement is clearly necessary,
however, since not all failures to act are omissions.
A nonsurgeon who fails to save a child who can be
saved only through surgery would seem a case in
point. Moreover, when one is doing something, e.g.,
reading a book, one is not doing a number of other
things, e.g., mowing the lawn or cooking a meal, and
some way is needed of telling which of those things
one is not doing counts as an omission.
At a minimum, three conditions are necessary for
turning a failure to act into an omission. First, one
must have the ability to do whatever is in question.
A nonsurgeon lacks the ability to save the child, just
as a nonswimmer lacks the ability to swim out and
save a drowning person. Second, one must have the
opportunity to do whatever is in question. If a swim-
acts and omissions
mer never comes across a drowning person or if a
firefighter never encounters people trapped in a
burning building, then they do not omit to save
someone. To this second condition, a restriction
might be appended, namely, that the opportunity to
save a life must occur in circumstances that are not
themselves life threatening or otherwise represent
catastrophic loss to the agent. A firefighter who can
save someone only by going into an out-of-control,
raging inferno would seem to fall under this restric-
tion. Third, one is or will be expected to do whatever
is in question. When we say that surgeons or fire-
fighters “omitted” to save someone, we in part allude
to the fact that they are or may be expected to save
them. This helps to deal with the many things sur-
geons and firefighters do not do (at a time when they
are doing something), things which we do not treat
as omissions on their parts. At a minimum, then,
ability, opportunity, and expectation are elements re-
quired in order to turn a failure to act into an
omission.
Each of these elements can be controversial.
Thus, ability can take the form, not of having a kind
of technical expertise, but of having a resource, such
as a dollar. Suppose one buys a newspaper: are all
the other things one does not do with one’s dollar
omissions? If so, then it is comparatively easy to
charge people with a great number of omissions at
every moment of their lives. This in turn seems to
drain the notion of its significance: it merely refers
to all the things one is not doing, when one is doing
something. Again, over opportunity, it can be un-
clear what represents catastrophic loss to agents.
Loss of life clearly counts; but what about loss of
dollars to spend? Can one deny that one has omitted
to save famine victims by arguing that loss of these
dollars would, though not severely, nevertheless sig-
nificantly affect how one lives? (More on the expec-
tation condition follows below.)
Plainly, not all omissions are immoral/illegal
ones: in failing to turn out the light upon leaving the
room, one is not usually held to be guilty of an im-
moral/illegal omission. To obtain this result, we
need to add, for instance, that the agent is under a
moral and/or legal duty to do whatever is in ques-
tion. (Our knowledge that the agent is under such a
duty helps explain why we expect the agent to do
something in the situation.) Jobs such as surgeon,
firefighter, and lifeguard are in part defined in terms
of the duties they impose on their holders, and hold-
16
ers who fail to discharge these duties can be held,
absent some excusing condition, to be guilty of an
immoral/illegal omission.
Of course, something other than duty can explain
why one is expected to act in the situation, though
the line of argument to an immoral/illegal omission
may be less clear. Is a man who habitually mows his
neighbor’s lawn guilty of an immoral omission, if he
does not mow it this time? Certainly, his past be-
havior has led his neighbor to expect him to mow.
But is his failure to meet his neighbor’s expectations
in this regard a moral matter? Whereas, if he is un-
der a duty, say, as the result of promising to mow
throughout the summer, the neighbor’s expectations
arise as the result of a moral undertaking on the
agent’s part.
If a lifeguard walks past a drowning person, then,
absent some excusing condition, she is guilty of an
immoral omission. If the child of the drowning per-
son walks past, some might want to claim that there
is a moral duty of RECIPROCITY or of GRATITUDE be-
tween children and parents and so claim that the
child is guilty of an immoral omission. What if a
stranger walks past? Here, some have wanted to ap-
peal to a general moral duty of rescue (there may no
prescribed general legal duty of rescue in the legal
code in question) or to a moral duty to render mu-
tual aid in order to hold the stranger guilty of an
immoral omission. Precisely because the moral cases
for these last alleged duties are still contested, it is
not clear how persuasive general moral claims for
rescue are. Moreover, if there is such a general moral
duty, then one’s liberty to spend one’s dollar on a
newspaper constantly runs up against one’s duty to
feed the starving poor. Do duties always trump lib-
erties? Or can some of one’s liberties defy a duty,
say, to aid others?
If the duty view enables us to identify which fail-
ures to act on the agent’s part are immoral/illegal
omissions, it also enables us to characterize an omis-
sion as the failure of the discharge of the duty to
occur, where the discharge of the duty would be, so
to speak, the completed act. In other words, once
we know what the completed act would be, i.e.,
what the discharge of the duty would be, we know
what an omission or failure to achieve the completed
act would be; we then construe the latter in terms
of the former. If the lifeguard jumps in, she dis-
charges her duty and saves a person from drowning;
if she does not jump in, she fails to discharge her

duty and so fails to save a person from drowning.
We understand her omission—not saving a life—by
first understanding what the completed act—saving
a life—would be, if she discharged her duty.
With this duty view of immoral/illegal omissions,
of course, complications can arise and, on occasions,
of a peculiar kind. What if the drowning man’s son
is required by some duty to aid or to show gratitude
to jump in after his father but is required as a doctor,
at the same time, to perform the serious operation
he is scheduled to perform? Since he cannot do
both, is he guilty of an immoral omission, whichever
act he fails to perform? The mere claim that the son
is confronted with a conflict of duties and must de-
cide in the circumstances which is more stringent
provides no answer. For this simply tells us how the
son is to decide what to do; it does not show that,
should he decide to save his father, he is under no
duty to operate. If, then, the decision of stringency
does not extinguish the other duty, is the son guilty
of an immoral omission, whichever way he decides?
Certainly, even though the conditions of the duty
view have been satisfied, it seems harsh to suggest
that he is; equally, however, those conditions are sat-
isfied, and life, it might be thought, often has a way
of making us “damned if we do and damned if we
don’t.”
Is the act/omission distinction morally signifi-
cant? On the whole, consequentialists deny that it
is, since so many of the consequences of, say, killing
a man and of omitting to feed him and letting him
starve to death are the same. Others, including vir-
tually all deontologists, typically find a moral differ-
ence between acting and omitting, which in contem-
porary moral debate is often construed as the
distinction between killing and letting die, though
deontologists differ on what this difference is. Sug-
gestions include distinguishing between: (1) intend-
ing a death, and “allowing” or “permitting” a death;
(2) actively intervening and killing, and passively let-
ting “nature” or some causal sequence run its course;
(3) causing a death, and not preventing a death;
(4) positing a negative duty to avoid harm and a
positive duty to aid, and claiming that the former is
more stringent than the latter; and (5) trying to sepa-
rate the moral guilt of an agent for an outcome from
his (guiltless) presence in a situation of tragic cir-
cumstances. These distinctions themselves are con-
troversial, in how they are drawn, in their implica-
tions, morally, and in the fundamental claim that
17
acts and omissions
they are attempts to capture and support. This
claim—that, if we think of the act/omission distinc-
tion in terms of that between killing and letting die,
killing is morally worse than letting die—is strongly
disputed by consequentialists and on a number of
counts. Yet its defense is of the utmost importance
to the character of the deontological positions that
many of their opponents espouse and find compat-
ible with (what they take to be) “ordinary” or “com-
monsense” morality.
In short, current controversies over the KILLING/
LETTING DIE distinction and over the doctrine of
DOUBLE EFFECT have brought the act/omission dis-
tinction to great prominence in ethics and have
made it, and the issues that surround it, one source
of major disagreement between consequentialists
and their opponents.
One of these surrounding issues that has proved
absorbing and important in its own right is whether
omissions are causes. If one omits to save a drown-
ing man, and if the man dies, then it is not only
consequentialists to whom it may well appear that
one’s omission plays a causal role in the man’s death.
Deontologists have generally rejected any such sug-
gestion, insisting, among other things, that killing
and letting die have different causal structures as-
sociated with them. In killing, one is the direct agent
of death; in “allowing” or “permitting” to die, one is
not the direct agent of death. In medical cases, e.g.,
it will be the underlying illness or disease that is said
to kill the patient. So, are omissions causes?
The question “What caused the fire?” can be bro-
ken down into other, more specific questions. For
example, it can be construed as asking “How did the
fire come to start?” Construed this way, the answer
we give focuses upon Jack’s playing with matches; it
was his dropping lighted matches on the porch that
began the fire. The question can also be construed,
however, as asking “How did the fire, given matches
were struck, spread?” Here, we might mention the
high winds. Equally, though, the question can also
be construed as asking “How did the house, given
that matches were struck and that high winds were
present, come to be consumed by the flames?” Here,
we might mention the sprinkler system’s failure to
operate and Jill’s failure to act in alerting the fire
department.
Any one of these three construals would be an
appropriate answer to the question “What caused
the fire?” Which one we choose to give depends
acts and omissions
upon how narrowly or how broadly we want to treat
the question, and how we treat the question de-
pends, among other things, upon our purpose in
raising the question in the first place. A board of
inquiry will not be satisfied with a narrow construal
of the question, since that construal may not pick
out significant, distinctive features present in the
case that contributed to or helped to produce or
bring about the destruction of the house. In other
words, the board is going to construe the question
“What caused the fire?” to be asking “What brought
about the destruction of the house by the flames?”,
and it would be wrong to give as the answer to this
question only Jack’s playing with matches.
Thus, while the three construals are all appropri-
ate construals of the question “What caused the
fire?”, it is not true that the answer to any specific
construal is the same in all three cases. If asked what
brought about the spreading of the fire, the answer
that Jack was playing with matches would not be
right; for it would not take into account the high
winds that were present, even though it did account
for how the flames initially got started. Similarly, if
asked what brought about the destruction of the en-
tire house, it would not be right to mention only
Jack’s playing with matches and the high winds; for
significant, distinctive features of the case are the
failure of the sprinkler system and Jill’s failure to act.
Which of the construals we adopt depends upon our
purpose in asking the causal question, and if one’s
purpose, in retrospect, is that of a board of inquiry,
i.e., to cast a broad net over the factors that helped
to bring about the destruction of the house by the
flames, then narrow construals of the question are
clearly not going to be selected.
When we ask the question “What caused the
fire?”, one of the things we are often interested in is
outcomes and what produced them. In the above
case, the outcome is that the house is entirely de-
stroyed by fire, so that what we are in fact asking
about is what factors helped to bring about this out-
come. This is why it can be misleading, on a billiard
ball view of causality, to speak of the fire as cause
and the destruction of the house as effect; for there
is no straight line of active agency that runs from
Jack’s playing with matches to the destruction of the
house. Rather, certain factors which do not share in
active agency are present, viz., the sprinkler’s system
failure to operate and Jill’s failure to act, that Jack’s
playing with matches and the high winds combine
18
with to help produce or bring about the outcome.
We regard and treat omissions as causes just because
they can and do combine with active agency to help
bring about outcomes, and a person who operates
with a billiard ball view of causality, who maintains
that omissions do not share in active agency, does
not rebut this point.
Are, then, omissions causes? No, they are not, if
billiard ball causality is the only view of causality one
will accept; yes, they are, if we focus upon what
brought about the outcomes that interest us.
See also: ACTION; AGENCY AND DISABILITY; CAUSA-
TION AND RESPONSIBILITY; CONSEQUENTIALISM; DE-
ONTOLOGY; DOUBLE EFFECT; DUTY AND OBLIGATION;
KILLING/LETTING DIE; OBEDIENCE TO LAW; RESPON-
SIBILITY; SITUATION ETHICS; SUPEREROGATION.
Bibliography
D’Arcy, Eric. Human Acts. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1963.
Denton, F. E. “The Case Against a Duty to Rescue.” Ca-
nadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 4 (1991):
101–32.
Dworkin, G., R. G. Frey, S. Bok. Euthanasia and Physician-
Assisted Suicide. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998.
Feinberg, Joel. Harm to Others. Chapter 4. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1984.
Frey, R. G. “Killing and the Doctrine of Double Effect.”
In his Rights, Killing, and Suffering. Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1983. Pp. 118–40.
Kamm, Frances. “Actions, Omissions, and the Stringency
of Duties.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review
142 (1994): 1493–1512.
Leavens, Arthur. “A Causation Approach to Criminal
Omissions.” University of California Law Review 76
(1988): 547–91.
Moore, Michael. Act and Crime. Chapters 2, 4, and 5.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.
Simester, A. P. “Why Omissions Are Special?” Legal The-
ory 1 (1995): 311–35.
Steinbock, Bonnie, ed. Killing and Letting Die. Engle-
wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1980.
Williams, Bernard. “Acts and Omissions, Doing and Not
Doing.” In his Making Sense of Humanity. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. 56–64.
R. G. Frey

additivity problems
Additivity has long been associated with UTILITARI-
ANISM, and has often been thought to underlie some
of its deepest problems. Yet additivity is not a spe-
cific concept peculiar to utilitarianism; rather it is a
cluster or “family” of concepts which frequently play
an integral role in nonutilitarian views. Additive as-
sumptions are natural and plausible, but unfortu-
nately their importance and pervasiveness is largely
unrecognized, and it is far from clear to what extent
they are justified.
Utilitarianism and Additivity
Classical utilitarians and their modern descen-
dants believe in maximizing total utility where this
is determined by adding together individual utilities.
At the core of this view is an additive assumption
regarding the goodness of outcomes.
Many standard objections to utilitarianism in-
volve its additive assumption, including problems of
aggregation, distribution, incommensurability, and
interpersonal utility comparisons. For example, on
total utilitarianism the best outcome has the greatest
aggregate utility. Correspondingly, no matter how
large or well-off a population might be, there must
be some possible population, sufficiently large,
which would be better even though all its members
had lives barely worth living (cf., Derek Parfit’s Re-
pugnant Conclusion). Similarly, since utilitarianism
focuses on how much utility obtains rather than its
distribution, it would approve large inequalities for
slight gains in utility. Moreover, utilitarianism’s ad-
ditivity assumes that all values can be put on a com-
mon scale. Yet many believe some values—like the
pain of TORTURE and the PLEASURE of eating cake—
are incommensurable. Finally, since utilitarianism
adds different people’s utilities, it requires mean-
ingful interpersonal utility comparisons. Yet many
argue these are both conceptually and practically im-
possible (intrapersonal intertemporal utility com-
parisons raise analogous worries).
Nonutilitarianism and Additivity
Nonutilitarians implicitly invoke additivity in nu-
merous ways, including the following.
1. Nonutilitarians deny that only utility mat-
ters. But, like W. D. ROSS (1877–1971),
19
additivity problems
many accept that utility (or BENEFICENCE)
is one ideal, among others, of moral signif-
icance. Accordingly, in assessing outcomes
many accept that how good a situation is
regarding utility is an additive function of
its individual utilities.
2. Additive principles involve two natural and
plausible assumptions: (a) given any two
situations, the best situation regarding
some factor F will be the one in which the
most F obtains if F is desirable, and where
the least F obtains if F is undesirable, and
(b) to determine how much F obtains in a
situation one need only sum the magnitude
of the individual instances of F. Hence, non-
utilitarians may invoke additive principles
for ideals besides utility. For example, it is
likely additive assumptions underlie the
claims that, ceteris paribus, it is better to
prevent as much injustice or INEQUALITY as
possible, or to minimize infractions of basic
RIGHTS or liberties.
3. Many arguments—named contrast argu-
ments by Shelly Kagan—assess the moral
relevance of a given factor by constructing
two cases alike in all relevant respects ex-
cept the one at issue. Our judgments about
such cases are then taken to be evidence
regarding the intrinsic moral relevance of
the factor in question. Intuitively, people as-
sume that since everything else is held con-
stant, any preference in such cases must be
due to the additional reason provided by
the factor in question; while indifference
must show the factor lacks intrinsic signif-
icance, as it does not add any reason for
choosing even between (otherwise) equiv-
alent alternatives. Here, as elsewhere, the
assumption is that how good a situation is,
all things considered, is an additive func-
tion of how good it is regarding each mor-
ally relevant factor.
4. Philosophers often construct simple, “pure”
examples which purposely abstract from
the world’s messy complexity in order to
test the moral significance of particular
factors. In doing this, they assume their re-
sults can be legitimately employed to shed
light on complex real situations. Such an
approach implicitly assumes that morally
additivity problems
relevant factors can be understood and as-
sessed independently and additively com-
bined, after giving each its due weight, to
yield an overall judgment about outcomes.
(Note, the methodology of “transporting”
results from simple experiments or models
to complex situations is a staple of the so-
cial sciences.)
5. Additivity also underlies many standard as-
sumptions about rationality. The very met-
aphors of “weighing” or “balancing” rea-
sons suggest an additive model. Reasons,
like stones, are thought to contribute a fixed
weight to any situations where they occur.
For example, suppose increasing Daniel’s
wealth is a reason for doing A, then if doing
B would increase Daniel’s wealth the same
amount there would be an equally strong
reason for doing B whatever other reasons
favor A or B. Similarly, people assume if the
reasons supporting A and B are identical ex-
cept for one extra (or stronger) reason sup-
porting A, then A would be more rational
than B, and, moreover, the extent to which
this was so would be exactly proportional
to the strength of the extra (or differential)
reason supporting A. Here, again, the
model is additive.
Questions about Additivity
Additive assumptions are natural and plausible,
and they underlie many views about morality and
rationality. But in addition to the standard objections
usually leveled against utilitarianism, serious ques-
tions abound as to whether factors can be treated
and valued independently and then added together
in overall judgments. The view in question is op-
posed by G. E. MOORE’s (1873–1958) doctrine of
ORGANIC UNITY, by gestalt PSYCHOLOGY, and by the
Hegelian and hermeneutic traditions (which see
each part as inextricably connected with the whole’s
totality).
On more particular issues, there is a sense in
which many would claim (even) the (intrinsic) bad-
ness of pain is context-dependent. For example, Im-
manuel KANT (1724–1804) and G. W. F. HEGEL
(1770–1831) would contend pain is bad when un-
deserved, but good when meted out proportionally
to guilt. Similarly, some contend that whether in-
20
equality is (intrinsically) bad depends on whether it
benefits the worse-off. In addition, where the value
of human lives is concerned, some—such as Kant
and John Taurek—reject the notion that numbers
count. While even those who generally believe that,
ceteris paribus, it is better to save more lives rather
than fewer may resist the additive model’s implica-
tion that saving five lives would be five times better
than saving one, or that the difference between an
outcome where 7 million and one die and one where
7 million die is as great as the difference between an
outcome where one dies and an outcome where
none dies.
In conclusion, additive assumptions are perva-
sive, but they raise many worries. It is unclear when,
if ever, additive assumptions are defensible. But how
to think about morality and rationality in the ab-
sence of such assumptions is even less clear.
See also: CASUISTRY; COMMENSURABILITY; CONSE-
QUENTIALISM; EQUALITY; INTRANSITIVITY; LOGIC
AND ETHICS; MOORE; MORAL REASONING; ORGANIC
UNITY; PROPORTIONALITY; ROSS; UTILITARIANISM.
Bibliography
Anscombe, G. E. M. “Who Is Wronged?” Oxford Review
5 (1967). Denies the additive model for the value of
human lives.
———. “Modern Moral Philosophy.” Philosophy 33/124
(1958): 1–19. Challenges the additivity of utilitarian
thinking.
Bennett, Jonathan. “Morality and Consequences.” In vol.
2 of The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, edited by
Sterling McMurrin, 45–116. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1981. Many examples of contrast
arguments.
Bentham, Jeremy. An Introduction to the Principles of
Morals and Legislation. 1780. Bentham’s “hedonic cal-
culus” has been the subject of much discussion. See
especially chapters 1, 4, and 5.
Dreyfus, Hubert L. “Holism and Hermeneutics.” Review
of Metaphysics 34, no. 1 (1980): 3–23.
Hegel, G. W. F. Logic: Being Part One of the Encyclopedia
of the Philosophical Sciences. Translated by William
Wallace. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975 [1830]. See,
for example, paragraph 15, one of many places where
Hegel discusses the relation of part to totality, and phi-
losophy as a “circle of circles.”
———. The Philosophy of Right. Translated by T. M.
Knox. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969 [1821].
Kagan, Shelly. “The Additive Fallacy.” Ethics 99, no. 1
(1988): 5–31. A germinal article; the best direct dis-
cussion of additivity.

Kamm, Frances Myrna. “Killing and Letting Die: Meth-
odology and Substance.” Pacific Philosophical Quar-
terly (Winter 1983): 297–312. Interesting and useful
discussion of contrast arguments.
Kant, Immanuel. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Mor-
als. 1785. Kant’s theory is deeply nonadditive; his
views regarding the infinite value of persons are a no-
table manifestation of this.
———. The Philosophy of Law. Translated by W. Hastie,
T. T. Clark. Edinburgh, 1887 [1797]. Translation of
“Metaphysische Anfangsgrunde der Rechtslehre” (part
1 of Die Metaphysik der Sitten).
Katz, David. Gestalt Psychology: Its Nature and Signifi-
cance. Translated by Robert Tyson. New York, 1950.
A useful introductory text.
Kohler, Wolfgang. The Place of Value in a World of Facts.
New York: Live Right, 1966 [1938]. A standard work
in gestalt psychology; chapter 8 contains a discussion
of organic fitness.
Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. 1861.
Moore, G. E. Principia Ethica. 1903.
Nozick, Robert. Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1981. See parts 1 and 3 of
chapter 5 for discussions of organic unity, and the
weighing and balancing of moral reasons.
Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1984. Part 4 raises many fascinating issues rele-
vant to additivity.
Philips, Michael. “Weighing Moral Reasons.” Mind 96
(1987): 367–76.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1971. See his discussion of the dif-
ference principle for a view in which the (intrinsic)
value of equality seems to depend on whether it bene-
fits the worst-off.
Ross, W. D. The Right and the Good. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1930. See the discussion of prima facie reasons.
Sen, Amartya, and Bernard Williams, eds. Utilitarianism
and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1982. Contains discussions of many objections to util-
itarianism; extensive bibliography.
Sidgwick, Henry. The Methods of Ethics. 7th ed. London:
Macmillan, 1907 [1st ed., 1874]. See book 2, chapters
2, 3; book 3, chapter 14; book 4.
Smart, J. J. C., and Bernard Williams. Utilitarianism: For
and Against. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1973. See the last paragraphs of section 2 in Williams’s
“A Critique of Utilitarianism.”
Taurek, John. “Should the Numbers Count?” Philosophy
and Public Affairs 6, no. 4 (1977): 293–316. A classic
which has spawned a cottage industry of articles re-
garding the moral appropriateness of adding human
lives.
Temkin, Larry. “Intransitivity and the Mere Addition Par-
adox.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 16, no. 2 (1987):
21
Adler, Felix
138–87. Parts 2 and 3 raise many questions relevant
to additivity.
———. “Inequality.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 15,
no. 2 (1986): 99–121. An additive principle of equality
is discussed.
Larry S. Temkin
Adler, Felix (1851–1933)
American moralist, ethical philosopher, social phi-
losopher and reformer, philosopher of education,
and ethical leader. Adler’s greatest accomplishment
was his founding of the Ethical Culture Movement,
a humanistic-secular religion founded on ethical
principles, a movement that spread rapidly through-
out the United States and Europe and attracted a
number of outstanding moral philosophers, such as
William JAMES (1842–1910), Josiah ROYCE (1855–
1916), and Henry SIDGWICK (1838–1900), as lead-
ers of local ethical societies. This movement, inter-
national in scope, with branches in England, Ger-
many, France, Japan, New Zealand, and elsewhere,
continued expanding until the advent of World War
I; even today there are Ethical Culture Schools and
Societies in various places in the United States. Ad-
ler was an active ethical reformer, leader of an in-
ternational ethical movement, and also a consider-
able philosopher who had profound original ideas
about ethics, MORAL EDUCATION, and social reform.
Adler regarded the practical or applied side of ethics
as of the greatest importance, and his discussions of
these matters inevitably led him to develop an ethi-
cal philosophy, though he viewed theoretical ethics
as having as its overriding object improvements in
human life and well-being.
Adler was born in Germany and brought to the
United States in 1857. He studied at Columbia Uni-
versity and at the Universities of Berlin and Heidel-
berg, receiving a Ph.D. from Heidelberg in 1873. In
1874–1876 he was Professor of Hebrew and Ori-
ental Literature at Cornell University, but, despite
his popularity as a lecturer, he was forced to leave
that post because his rationalistic interpretation and
criticism of the Bible generated so much controversy,
especially among the trustees. He then founded the
New York Society for Ethical Culture, on the invi-
tation of a number of civic leaders, at which point
the ethical culture movement spread rapidly. In
1902 Adler was appointed Professor of Social Ethics
Adler, Felix
at Columbia University and in this capacity he came
into contact with a number of extraordinary students
and protégés, as well as a number of distinguished
colleagues, such as John DEWEY (1859–1952).
Adler lectured constantly at the regular meetings
of the ethical societies, wrote about 1,500 lectures
and essays in addition to thirteen books. His philo-
sophically most important work is An Ethical Phi-
losophy of Life (1919). Morris Cohen (1880–1947),
once one of Adler’s protégés, recorded these obser-
vations on it: “The appearance of a book which for-
mulates a distinct philosophy of life is a rare and
noteworthy event. . . . Professor Adler has shown us
anew that it is possible to combine the insight of
practical experience with the discipline of philo-
sophical reflection, to mix with one’s fellow citizens
in the market place in such activities as tenement-
house reform and child-labor committees, and yet
retire at times to the mountain to pray and survey
one’s work, the needs of the multitudes, and our
cosmic background, with that time-conquering vi-
sion which is the essence of all genuine philoso-
phy. . . . Professor Adler’s conception of ethical life
as an exercise of human energy provides a basis for
a truly emancipating philosophy of conduct.” And
Cohen went on to speak of “the radical and revolu-
tionary character of . . . Adler’s contribution to
ethics.”
Adler’s thought was stimulated by such concrete
and widespread evils as poverty, misery, OPPRESSION,
and injustice, and in this respect he was the polar
opposite of such philosophers as G. E. MOORE
(1873–1958), whose philosophical thought was
stimulated only by the writings of other philoso-
phers. He was unusual among moral philosophers
in both generating fundamental criticisms of estab-
lished INSTITUTIONS and devising programs for im-
proving or reconstructing these institutions and the
wider society. For Adler philosophy was to be not
just the guide of life but also instrumental in im-
proving society and the human condition in accord
with essential human DIGNITY. Starting from a solid
foundation in the philosophies of Immanuel KANT
(1724–1804) and G. W. F. HEGEL (1770–1831),
Adler formulated an original and stimulating moral
philosophy which both developed and transformed
his starting points.
Adler rejected Kant’s metaphysics while accept-
ing Kant’s emphasis on the dignity and intrinsic
worth of the person, and he combined a supreme
22
moral principle something like Kant’s with an ideal
of self-realization that he worked out in considerable
detail. He constantly emphasized the free develop-
ment of the human person in relation to communal
concerns and human fellowship. Well before Dewey,
Adler concerned himself with the “problems of men”
rather than with the technical problems of philoso-
phers. Although Adler’s thought had certain affini-
ties to PRAGMATISM, he was not a pragmatist; he was
rather an ethical idealist with great practical reform-
ing zeal, and he advanced an idealistic form of moral
PERFECTIONISM. Yet he was also realistic and not in
the least a sentimentalist, holding that “many a man
has done . . . evil, and done it most deliberately,
knowing evil as evil.” Little could he know in 1918
how far this would extend to the rest of the century,
and how much evil would be committed in it.
In Adler’s ethics we find an unusual combination
of appeal to universal principles with moral particu-
larism, which emphasizes the uniqueness of each
person and each set of circumstances and under-
standing the situation as a whole. Thus Adler em-
phasized the importance and indispensability of gen-
eral principles and also of careful consideration of
concrete circumstances in their full particularity. For
Adler, since everyone is unique, no moral law can
apply identically to different persons, even though
moral principles apply to all. “Kant,” he said, “at-
tempts to deduce out of an empty formula a worth
while object. Kant’s formula is: Treat man never
merely as a means, but also as an end per se. But
how far man may be treated as a means, and what
the relation of the means to the end may be is un-
determined.” Adler set out to determine this: “For
the formula ‘not merely as a means but also as an
end’ I would substitute: Treat every [person] as a
spiritual means to thine own spiritual end and con-
versely.” This formula is elaborated and explained in
his writings.
Adler maintained that “a genuine philosophy of
life can only be reached by the ethical approach to
the problems of life,” thus insisting on the primacy
of ethics. He defined “an ultimate principle . . . as
one which is presupposed in every attempt to ac-
count for it.” His first principle of ethics he formu-
lated thus: “Act as a member of the ethical manifold
(the infinite spiritual universe); Act so as to achieve
uniqueness (complete individualization . . .); [and]
Act so as to elicit in another the distinctive, unique
quality characteristic of him as a fellow-member of

the infinite whole.” “The ethical end [is] the main-
tenance and development of personality” and “a rule
is ethical when the conduct prescribed is instrumen-
tal to the development of personality.” “The supreme
ethical rule” is “So act as to elicit the unique per-
sonality in others, and thereby in thyself,” or “Act so
as to elicit the best in others and thereby in thyself.”
By this means “both egoism and altruism are tran-
scended.” Adler held that “the ethical principle must
run like a golden thread through the whole of a [per-
son’s] life,” and since he took his ethical principles
seriously, Adler applied them in his own life and
teachings. He argued that virtue is and must be its
own reward, else it is not virtue, and characterized
a virtuous act as one “in which the ends of self and
of the other are respected and promoted jointly.”
Thus Adler attempted to coordinate a Kantian uni-
versalistic imperative ethics with a form of PERFEC-
TIONISM. But, despite his emphasis on a self-reali-
zation that must also enhance the self-realization of
others, Adler was no consequentialist. He regarded
CONSEQUENTIALISM, in the form of UTILITARIANISM,
as an attempt to impose a totally inappropriate
quantitative measure on that which is essentially
qualitative. “The quantitative standard implied in
such phrases as ‘the greatest good of the greatest
number’ is out of place [in] ethical relations, which
in their very nature are qualitative.”
Adler’s contemporary judgments still have rele-
vance today. His assessment of the evils and future
consequences of colonialism was acute and turned
out to be prescient. He argued that moral progress
lies in “extending the sense of responsibility so as to
cover the indirect taking of life. . . . [and that] the
use of poisonous substances in industry, bad sani-
tation, and inadequate fire protection must be stig-
matized as indirect murder.” This was quite pene-
trating for the time, and still is. And his claim that
“The root disease that afflicts the world at the pres-
ent day is the supremacy of the commercial point of
view,” if true at beginning of the twentieth century,
was no less true at its end.
See also: AUTONOMY OF ETHICS; AUTONOMY OF
MORAL AGENTS; CHILDREN AND ETHICAL THEORY;
COMMUNITARIANISM; CONSEQUENTIALISM; DEWEY;
EXPLOITATION; FAMILY; GOLDEN RULE; HUMANISM;
IDEALIST ETHICS; INDIVIDUALISM; JAMES; LIBERAL-
ISM; LIFE, MEANING OF; MORAL EDUCATION; OPPRES-
SION; PERFECTIONISM; PRACTICAL REASONING; PRAG-
23
Adler, Felix
MATISM; PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY; ROYCE;
SITUATION ETHICS; UTILITARIANISM; WELFARE
RIGHTS AND SOCIAL POLICY.
Bibliography
Works by Adler
The Moral Instruction of Children. New York: Appleton,
1892.
The World Crisis and its Meaning. New York: Appleton,
1915.
An Ethical Philosophy of Life. New York: Appleton, 1919.
Quotations are from pp. 172, 100, 139, 132, 112, 117,
185, 197, 208, 220, 56, 214, 317, 180, 337.
The Reconstruction of the Spiritual Ideal. New York. Ap-
pleton, 1924. Hibbert Lectures delivered at Oxford in
1923. Second in importance only to An Ethical Philos-
ophy of Life.
“Ethics and Culture.” The Ethical Record 1 (1888): 1–12.
“The Problem of Teleology.” International Journal of
Ethics 14 (1904): 265–80.
“The Relation of the Moral Ideal to Reality.” International
Journal of Ethics 22 (1922): 118.
“A Critique of Kant’s Ethics.” Mind n.s. 11 (1902): 162–
95.
“Personality: How to Develop it in the Family, the School,
and Society.” In Essays in Honor of John Dewey on the
Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, October 20, 1929.
New York: Holt, 1929. Reprinted, New York: Octagon,
1970.
Works about Adler
Cohen, Morris Raphael. “An Ethical Philosophy of Life.”
In his The Faith of a Liberal, 78–84. New York: Henry
Holt, 1946. Reprinted, Freeport, NY: Books for Li-
braries, 1970. Originally appeared in The New Repub-
lic, 1919. Quotations from pages 78–79, 83.
Fite, Warner. “Felix Adler’s Philosophy of Life.” Journal
of Philosophy Psychology and Scientific Methods 16
(1919): 141–51.
Friess, Horace L. “Adler, Felix.” Dictionary of American
Biography, vol. 21, supp. 1, 13–14. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1944. The best brief biographical
account.
———. Felix Adler and Ethical Culture. New York: Co-
lumbia University Press, 1981. A biography, and a
good one, with a bibliography of Adler’s books and
pamphlets.
Guttchen, Robert S. “Felix Adler’s Concept of Worth.”
Journal of the History of Philosophy 11 (1973): 213–
27. An excellent paper, by far the best on Adler’s moral
philosophy.
———. Felix Adler. New York: Twayne, 1974. Unfortu-
Adler, Felix
nately a posthumous work. Guttchen had much to
contribute.
Radest, Howard B. Toward Common Ground: The Story
of the Ethical Societies in the United States. New York.
Frederick Ungar, 1969. Contains a useful chronology
and a good bibliography.
———. “Work and Worth: Felix Adler.” Journal of the
History of Philosophy 16 (1978): 71–81.
Singer, Marcus G. “The Place of Felix Adler in American
Philosophy.” Journal of Humanism and Ethical Reli-
gion 1 (1988): 13–36. Contains a number of citations.
This whole issue is devoted to Adler.
Sleeper, R. W. “Felix Adler and John Dewey: From Ideal-
ism to Pragmatism.” Journal of Humanism and Ethical
Religion 1 (1988): 65–82.
Thilly, Frank. “The Kantian Ethics and its Critics.” The
Philosophical Review 27 (1918): 646–50.
———. Review of An Ethical Philosophy of Life. The Phil-
osophical Review 27 (1918): 651–59.
Marcus G. Singer
aesthetics
The relations between aesthetics and ethics are
many and mysterious. One useful way to get at sim-
ilarities and differences between them is to distin-
guish three different “levels” of value theory—sub-
stantive issues, normative theory, and meta-theory—
and to see how the two work in concert, or are in
conflict, or interrelate in some other way on each
level.
Substantive Issues
Prima facie, it would seem that although many
substantive ethical issues have no aesthetic dimen-
sion at all (e.g., ABORTION), and many aesthetic is-
sues likewise no ethical dimension (e.g., criteria for
judgments of elegance), some issues are naturally
given to both kinds of evaluation. Among prominent
issues of this sort are PORNOGRAPHY, CENSORSHIP,
and the FORGERY of works of art. Since these issues
and others of a like sort, e.g., PLAGIARISM, are cov-
ered elsewhere in this Encyclopedia, they need not
be discussed here.
Normative Theory
While at first glance “many substantive ethical is-
sues have no aesthetic dimension at all, and many
aesthetic issues likewise no ethical dimension,” both
of these propositions have been challenged. On the
24
one hand, some have contended that moral values
rest, at base, on ideals, ultimate decisions, or fun-
damental commitments that are aesthetic or at least
aesthetic-like in nature. Somewhat less extreme (or
perhaps somewhat more extreme) is a view, some-
times called aestheticism, which does recognize a
basic difference between aesthetic and moral values,
but claims that artworks and people’s actions
shouldn’t be appraised from the MORAL POINT OF
VIEW but only from the aesthetic one, or that aes-
thetic values always override moral values. At times
Friedrich NIETZSCHE (1844–1900) seems to advo-
cate the first of these “less extreme” views, and
Theophile Gautier (1811–1872), Walter Pater
(1839–1894), and Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
sometimes give voice to the second. Nietzschean
aestheticism, however, is an inchoate theory and one
difficult to interpret, and no other form of aestheti-
cism has been systematically worked out or de-
fended. Many of the nonphilosophical expressions
of aestheticism—for instance, in the passionate de-
scription of the “beauty” of a bomb exploding in a
crowd of unarmed civilians (a description tendered
by Mussolini’s son-in-law)—are not just without
philosophical substance but, more importantly,
blood-curdling.
On the other hand—at the other extreme—are
the view that all or some aesthetic values rest upon
or are reducible to moral values, and the somewhat
less extreme set of views, sometimes called moral-
ism, which does recognize a definite difference be-
tween the two sorts of values, but claims that art-
works and people’s actions shouldn’t be appraised,
or primarily appraised, from the aesthetic point of
view, or that moral values always override aesthetic
ones. Late in his life, Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)
seems to have advocated the first of these views, par-
ticularly in the form that aesthetic values simply re-
duce to moral ones, and many Marxists subscribe to
one of the “less extreme” views. In contrast to ex-
treme forms of aestheticism, both forms of moralism
have attracted adherents and been systematically
worked out and defended.
Tolstoy. Vehemently rejecting the view that art
has to do with beauty (a quality defined in terms of
PLEASURE), Tolstoy defines art as “a human activity
consisting in this, that one man consciously by
means of certain external signs, hands on to others
feelings he has lived through, and that others are
infected bv these feelings and also experience them.”

Art, then, is essentially the successful communica-
tion of feeling from one person to another by means
of an external object, the artwork. “In the limited
sense,” though, art does “not mean all human activ-
ity transmitting feelings but only that . . . which we
for some reason select . . . and to which we attach
special importance.” The “special importance,” he
says, comes from “feelings flowing from . . . reli-
gious perceptions.” Even if, in the broad sense and
in general, “the stronger the infection, the better the
art” regardless of the kind of feeling conveyed, in
the narrow sense of the term, art is necessarily reli-
gious in nature, and the “infectiousness” of religious
feeling of an artwork an “indubitable sign” that it is
“real art” (good art) as opposed to “counterfeit” art
(bad art). Finally, since the “purpose of art” is to
replace “feelings less kind and less necessary for the
well-being of mankind . . . by others kinder and
more needful for that end,” and since “religions have
always furnished [a] guide” for moral progress of
just that sort, a moral-cum-religious criterion of ar-
tistic or aesthetic value is arrived at. Good art is art
that transmits the best moral feelings with a high
degree of infectiousness, with religion telling us
what the best moral feelings are. In our own age,
Christianity provides the moral beacon to guide us
and details the moral ideal we should strive for, viz.,
the brotherhood of man. Good art is thus Christian
and moral in nature, and unites men with each other
and with God. Art that does not do that, either be-
cause it conveys the wrong feelings or conveys the
right ones with a very low degree of infectiousness,
is bad art. It is on this basis that Tolstoy condemns
the bulk of Western art, including the plays of
Shakespeare, the symphonies of Beethoven, and al-
most all of his own work.
Obviously this view has its problems.
Marxism. In its simplest form, a Marxist theory
of aesthetic value identifies, in a way similar to Tol-
stoy’s theory, aesthetic value with values that pro-
mote certain political and moral ideals, such as the
overthrow of the bourgeois state. More commonly,
however, Marxist theories don’t begin, or even end,
with such a reduction, but see artistic activity in the
context of, and ultimately based on, production and
productive relations in society in general, and take
art to be a historically located product of a certain
social class. Art, like the great majority of social ac-
tivities, is part of a culture’s superstructure and re-
flects a class ideology, while the superstructure itself
25
aesthetics
is determined historically, and especially by the eco-
nomic relations between the classes that compose it.
Since the nature, and thus the value, of an artwork
is inextricably tied to the socioeconomic conditions
under which it was produced, an artwork cannot be
understood and properly evaluated until its socio-
economic and historical place is fixed. Art is thus
always a reflection of reality—which is to say that it
is always a reflection of socioeconomic, historical re-
ality—and so art cannot be devoid of ideological
content.
Although Karl MARX’s (1818–1883) own view
of art allowed for the production of great art in so-
cieties in which the “general [level of societal] de-
velopment” was not high—he mentions ancient
Greece as an example—many later Marxists weren’t
as flexible. Proper political content—meaning the
promotion of revolutionary goals—increasingly
came to be regarded as the sole criterion of the ac-
ceptability of an artwork, with aesthetic values
brushed aside as unimportant or denigrated as the
lingering effects of bourgeois capitalism. Eventually,
a simple and rigid “socialist realism” became the of-
ficial creed of the Soviet Union and other countries
of “real socialism.” But that’s now largely a thing of
the past. Artistic experimentation and art criticism
which view art as something more than mere prop-
aganda with decorative trimmings are tolerated, and
even encouraged (within limits), in virtually all
countries today.
In fact, sophisticated Marxists—Marx, Vladimir
Lenin (1870–1924), Frederick ENGELS (1820–
1895), and Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), among
many others—have always allowed the aesthetic
value of an artwork to be relatively independent of
its ideological content (Marx himself thought very
highly of Shakespeare, Balzac, and Goethe, none of
whom waved a red flag, or even a pink one), and
have accounted for the fact in a number of ways.
Among them are: (1) By arguing that the superstruc-
ture (which includes art) interacts dialectically with
the historicoeconomic base, and so art, and its aes-
thetic value, aren’t simply epiphenomena of the
base; (2) by recognizing that art, perhaps more than
other parts of the superstructure, develops at least
in part in accordance with laws of its own, that is,
with some degree of autonomy, and so has to be
judged accordingly; (3) by embracing, as one crite-
rion of aesthetic value, a realism that emphasizes
“typicality” and “reflectivity,” that is, the accurate
aesthetics
depiction of historically realistic and typical mem-
bers of a social class, regardless of the work’s po-
litical leanings; (4) by drawing a distinction between
the “conscious” and “unconscious” dimensions of an
artwork, the former having to do with the work’s
explicit ideological content, the latter with what it
actually reveals, perhaps despite itself. In this way,
typical Marxists have avoided reductionism and al-
lowed art and aesthetics some private property of
their own, even if they haven’t allowed them to own
or control the means of production. And that they
certainly haven’t allowed, for when revolutionary
push comes to counterrevolutionary shove, it is
dulce which yields to utile. Aesthetic value is dear
to Marxists, but dearer still is the REVOLUTION —
that is, their political, social, and ethical values.
Thus even sophisticated Marxists hold that artworks
shouldn’t be primarily appraised—and, in some
cases, shouldn’t be appraised at all—from the aes-
thetic point of view. In the long run, the aesthetic is
subservient to the political, even if the leash it’s kept
on is very long. The possibility of an intrusive mor-
alism, and perhaps even censorship, is part and par-
cel of even the most sophisticated forms of
MARXISM.
Other Views. On the level of normative theory,
the central question is simply how independent
moral and aesthetic values are or should be. Between
the two extreme positions discussed above are any
number of others. Two which merit consideration
are that the two realms are wholly independent—
neither kind of value is reducible to or overlaps with
the other, and perhaps in addition, neither automat-
ically takes precedence over the other (“art for art’s
sake,” the slogan of the artistic movement some-
times called aestheticism, is sometimes interpreted
this way)—and that there is a partial, but only a
partial, overlap between the two—aesthetic criteria
have some, but only some, place in moral assess-
ment, and/or moral criteria have some, but only
some, place in aesthetic assessment. A staunch val-
uational separatism of the first sort might be argued
for on the basis of the desirability of the indepen-
dence and autonomy of a plurality of realms of
value. In a sense, the argument here would parallel,
on a different plane, that for the separation of
church and state. The second view could marshal
evidence of a more direct sort, drawing on, for ex-
ample, seemingly aesthetic criteria used in the moral
assessment of acts of certain sorts (e.g., in judging
26
an act to be one of SUPEREROGATION, or in judging
Mother Teresa to be a beautiful person) and/or
seemingly moral criteria used in the aesthetic as-
sessment of artworks (e.g., in judging a novel to be
aesthetically bad because its main thesis is the eu-
genic necessity of exterminating people with an IQ
less than 85).
Meta-theory
Questions of substantive issues and normative
theory would be easier to resolve if answers on the
level of meta-theory were available. On this level,
the central questions are, What is an aesthetic judg-
ment? and What is a moral judgment? If we knew
what made a moral judgment a moral judgment, and
what made an aesthetic judgment an aesthetic judg-
ment, we could tell how independent the realms are.
One complication that sets in at the start is that
the term “moral,” more accurately “ethical,” is used
in at least two very different ways, and thus delimits
two realms of value, realms which are not co-
extensive. In one sense (a sense that dates back to
ancient Greece), the term circumscribes what might
be called all-things-considered value: the ethically
right (to focus on a central concept) is what ought to
be done all things, all points of view, considered. Eth-
ical value is simply the sum of all values, properly
weighted, and so by definition is overriding value.
The question, Why ought I to be ethical? is self-
answering on this conception of morality, and the
view that ethical (moral) values always override aes-
thetic ones similarly an analytic truth. On the other
hand, the question isn’t self-answering and the view
not analytically true if “ethical” or “moral” is con-
strued, as it more commonly is, as delimiting (at least
prima facie) a distinct kind of value that, logically
speaking (again, prima facie), is on a par with other
kinds of value, such as legal, economic, or prudential
value. It is when “moral” is used in this way that some
of the more puzzling questions about the relations
between ethics and aesthetics arise.
Hampshire. A radical view that some have ad-
vanced is that there are no relations between them,
because there is no such subject as aesthetics. There
is ethics, the philosophical study of problems of
human conduct, according to Stuart Hampshire, a
proponent of this position, but there can be no phil-
osophical study of art and beauty, aesthetics. “Aes-
thetic judgments,” Hampshire thinks, “are not com-

parable in purpose with moral judgments, and . . .
there are no problems of aesthetics comparable with
the problems of ethics”; hence the systematic study
known as ethics is possible, while that known as aes-
thetics is not. Hampshire advances a number of ar-
guments for a sharp contrast between moral and aes-
thetic judgments, with most of them resting on an
alleged difference of practical necessity between the
two. His argument is basically as follows.
No matter what situation a person is in, he must
act; choices always confront us. Choice is thus im-
posed; and choice is the solution to a practical prob-
lem, itself imposed. Now human life being what it
is, the problems of human conduct are recurring
problems, and rational people seek a general method
to solve recurring problems. But a method inevitably
yields rules and principles; thus to moralize—to cite
reasons in support of a line of conduct—is neces-
sarily to generalize. System, generality, and reason-
giving in a situation of forced choice characterize
morality.
But they certainly don’t characterize aesthetics. A
work of art is gratuitous; “it is not essentially the
answer to a question or the solution of a presented
problem.” Moreover, “if something is made or done
gratuitously, and not in response to a problem posed,
there can be no question of preferring one solution
to another.” Aesthetic judgments need not be
made—no one need choose between artworks—
and any judgments that are made needn’t be sup-
ported with reasons, that is, justified on the basis of
general principles. Not the general but the particu-
lar—this unique object—is the proper object of the
critic’s scrutiny. The critic’s job is to direct attention
on particular features of the object, features that
make it beautiful, sublime, ugly, harmonious, or
whatever, and the purpose of doing so is to make
others see those features, “not simply to lead them
to say: ‘That’s good.’” Ultimately, then, “everyone
needs a morality to make exclusions in conduct; but
neither an artist nor a critical spectator unavoidably
needs an aesthetic; and when in Aesthetics one
moves from the particular to the general, one is trav-
elling in the wrong direction.”
A detailed discussion of this provocative argu-
ment isn’t possible here (but see Zemach), but, as
might be expected, aestheticians haven’t been con-
vinced. Specifics aside, Hampshire seems to have an
unduly restrictive, and even a distorted, view of both
27
aesthetics
moral and aesthetic judgments. Let me briefly dis-
cuss problems on the moral side.
Moral evaluation is not only of actions, but of
desires, intentions, tendencies, emotions, beliefs,
character traits, states of affairs, and people, none
of which are chosen in any simple sense; and even
when we judge actions, no problem of real or imag-
ined immediacy need be present. We can judge
purely hypothetical actions, or actions in the distant
past or in situations which we know we could never
be in, and we can judge another’s actions in terms
of moral problems (e.g., the deep disgrace to her
family that her action would occasion) that wouldn’t
or couldn’t occur to her. In fact, it may not even be
that all moral judgments in situations of immediacy
are practical, in Hampshire’s sense of calling for ac-
tion. Judgments of supererogation in such circum-
stances don’t seem to be. In addition, the question
arises why the practical problems that never stop
confronting us are to be labeled “moral problems.”
(I assume that Hampshire doesn’t mean “moral” in
the broad sense indicated a few paragraphs back.)
Why are they moral rather than, say, prudential? For
that matter, why is talk of “problems” even in place?
I, for one, don’t seem to be constantly confronting
problems of any sort, or even sorts. The applicability
of the concept of a problem, a linchpin notion in
Hampshire’s argument, thus needs to be explained
and justified. But that just points up the deepest
problem with the argument: the question of what a
moral and aesthetic judgment is, what makes a judg-
ment one or the other or neither, is never clearly
addressed by Hampshire. What we’re told is what
such judgments—or rather one sort of them, moral
judgments—are used for, namely, to solve practical
problems. That doesn’t tell us what their nature is
even if their nature is solely a function of their use
(something Hampshire doesn’t argue for or even
mention), for it doesn’t distinguish moral judgments
from other judgments respecting the solution of
practical problems, such as prudential judgments.
Thus Hampshire’s argument is, at best, incomplete.
Kant. In order to know the exact relations be-
tween ethics and aesthetics, we need to know the
nature of moral and aesthetic judgments. Unfortu-
nately, although theories of both are rife—especially
theories of moral judgment—there is no consensus
on either. A number of philosophers have discussed
both, however, usually in an attempt to construct a
unified and comprehensive theory of value, or a uni-
aesthetics
fied and comprehensive philosophical system. One
very prominent example is Immanuel KANT (1724–
1804).
KANT and KANTIAN ETHICS need not be discussed
here. His much less well-known aesthetics is both a
distinct and important branch of his critical philos-
ophy (of which his moral philosophy also forms a
major part) as well as a completion, of sorts, of it.
In his third critique, the Critique of Judgment
(1790), he considers the nature and status of aes-
thetic judgments. Aesthetic judgments can concern
the merely agreeable, the beautiful, or the sublime,
according to Kant, but judgments of the first sort
(such as “This is pleasant”), since they make no
claim to universal validity, are relatively unimpor-
tant, philosophically speaking. Judgments of the sec-
ond and third sorts do make a claim to universal
validity, however, but since judgments of the sub-
lime, though both important and importantly differ-
ent in some respects from those of the beautiful,
don’t add anything distinctive to judgments of
taste—that is, judgments of the beautiful—as far as
our present purposes are concerned, they won’t be
considered here.
Judgments of taste are logically singular (in
proper form, they take a singular term, and perhaps
a demonstrative singular term, as their subject) and,
at the level of grammar, attribute a property, beauty,
to an object. A typical judgment of taste would be
“This flower is beautiful.” But beauty isn’t a prop-
erty, Kant thinks, for it doesn’t exist independently
of a relation to a subject’s feelings. Since judgments
of taste make a claim to universal validity, how-
ever—that is, to everyone’s considered assent—the
particular feeling in question, though undoubtedly
one of pleasure, must not be the pleasure of the
merely agreeable, i.e., pleasure that, logically speak-
ing, is a function of a subjective make-up that may
not be universally shared. “Beautiful is what, with-
out a concept, is liked universally”—which isn’t an
empirical claim, and doesn’t entail that everyone
will, as a matter of fact, like any particular object.
The universal validity of judgments of taste is sub-
jective, not objective, in nature, according to Kant,
but such judgments are distinguished from judg-
ments of agreeableness by being disinterested, that
is, not informed with an interest in the existence of
the object as related to sense. Rather, they are re-
flective judgments and are contemplative, but they
are not, in contrast to “logical” judgments (e.g.,
28
“This is a square”) and practical judgments (e.g.,
“This is good”), cognitive, since they don’t formulate
or connect concepts at all. Granted, we speak as
though such judgments were cognitive—that is, in-
volve subsumption under a concept—and beauty a
property; that can be accounted for by noting the
disinterested character of such judgments and their
transcendental ground. For the power of judgment,
in trying to find a concept to subsume the particular
(“this flower”) under, and no determinate concept
(e.g., “red”) being available, we make use of an in-
determinate concept, an indeterminate concept
which, of necessity, is supplied by the power of judg-
ment itself. This is the concept of “nature’s subjec-
tive purposiveness,” or nature’s purposiveness for
the power of judgment. In essence, this is the inde-
terminate concept of nature’s lending itself to judg-
ment, so far as its empirical particulars (individual
objects) are concerned. What constitutes this con-
cept is the idea of lawfulness in general (not in
particular, for that would make it a determinate con-
cept). As such, it is a concept that exactly corre-
sponds to the understanding as such (that is, the
understanding as indeterminate, considered inde-
pendently of any particular concept), and so also ex-
actly corresponds to the imagination as such, since
the imagination must harmonize with the under-
standing in order to “produce” cognition. In judg-
ments of taste, then, there is purposiveness, but it is
not based on a concept; hence the idea of purpo-
siveness without a purpose characterizes such judg-
ments, in fact is the nature of such judgments. Imag-
ination and understanding harmonize without the
usual constraint of a determinate concept; they play
with each other, so to speak, rather than work with
another. Aesthetic awareness (in the case of judg-
ments of taste) thus doesn’t involve a cognition—
the requisite determinate concept is absent—and so
can only be experienced in nonconceptual or “felt”
form, as pleasure. This awareness/feeling is precisely
a nonconceptual awareness of the apprehended
form’s purposiveness for cognition as such. Beauty,
then, though not a property, is given an analysis that,
though not a cognitive one, essentially involves the
productive faculties of cognition as such, and thus
can claim a universal validity in application, even
though it is a subjective determination.
But Kant’s aesthetic goes beyond this to forge an
explicit link with morality. Although the details of
Kant’s conception of moral judgment cannot be pur-

sued here, suffice it to say that morality is conceptual
on his account, and thus fully cognitive (though
linked to PRACTICAL REASON, not pure reason). Now,
grounding the universality of judgments of taste is
the idea of an intelligible—that is, a supersensible—
underlying nature’s purposiveness for our cognitive
powers; taste has this supersensible “in view” in
judging as it does, and reference to such a supersen-
sible is needed in order to resolve the antinomy of
taste. (The antinomy of taste is roughly the paradox
that judgments of taste aren’t based on concepts
[since if they were, disputes about taste would be
possible; but there is no disputing about taste], and
judgments of taste are based on concepts [since if
they weren’t, quarreling about judgments of taste
wouldn’t be possible, because general assent
couldn’t be demanded].) The supersensible that the
idea in question points to has various aspects, and
thus can be “identified” in various ways: (1) as the
supersensible as just described, namely, the super-
sensible underlying nature’s purposiveness for our
cognitive powers; (2) as the substrate of objects and
of ourselves as subjects; and (3) as the supersensible
that the concept of freedom “contains practically.”
The first aspect is needed to resolve the antinomy of
taste, but the last is more important for our pur-
poses. Conceived under this last aspect, the super-
sensible in question, concerned as it is with practical
reason, links the “morally good” and “moral feel-
ings” with beauty and taste, and thus unites ethics
and aesthetics, integrates the two into a comprehen-
sive whole. That said, it must be admitted that the
whole in question is rather loosely jointed, and, in-
deed, must be rather loosely jointed, since the bridge
from beauty to morality must be through an aspect
of the supersensible that does not resolve the antin-
omy of taste, else, contrary to Kant’s repeated
claims, judgments of taste would be practical, and
thus cognitive and conceptual. Beauty is the “sym-
bol” of morality, Kant says, and morality can, at best,
provide taste with guidance—not standards of jus-
tification or criteria. In the end, then, despite the
linkage between the two, beauty doesn’t borrow
from morality, nor morality from beauty, and the do-
mains remain relatively autonomous.
Schiller. Not satisfied with this conclusion, but
nonetheless very influenced by Kant, Friedrich
SCHILLER (1759–1805) tried to draw aesthetics and
ethics closer together. Accepting what is basically a
Kantian conception of dual human nature—people
29
aesthetics
have essentially both sensuous and rational im-
pulses—he attempts to reconcile the duality and re-
integrate the human being. This has to be done,
Schiller thinks, in the aesthetic, and through aes-
thetic education.
The sensuous impulse binds us to nature and the
continuing passage of time, according to Schiller,
and presses for the “reality of existence, for some
content in our perceptions and for purposes in our
actions.” The formal or rational impulse is basically
the demand of the free rational self “to bring har-
mony into the diversity of manifestations [appear-
ances].” The former is associated with our empirical
and embodied nature, the latter with our rational
and moral nature. In effect, Schiller’s entire aes-
thetic theory turns on a number of dualities system-
atically related to the sensuous impulse-formal im-
pulse duality: material-spiritual, multiplicity-unity,
content-form, inclination-duty, phenomena-nou-
mena, subjective-objective, passive-active, contin-
gent-necessary. All such dualities characterize the
fractured condition of modern humanity, and all are
basically derived from the more fundamental sen-
suous impulse-formal impulse duality. The problem
is how to keep the dualities from splitting us apart;
the problem is how to integrate fragmented human-
kind.
Schiller’s answer is that the sensuous and formal
impulses can be overcome or reconciled by being
lifted to a higher plane in a synthesis he calls the
play impulse. Since the sensuous impulse seeks out
life as its object, and the formal impulse shape, the
play impulse seeks out and responds to living shape.
This Schiller identifies with beauty. So construed,
beauty is, in contrast with Kant, an objective quality.
Like Kant, however, Schiller evidently thinks of play
as the harmonious working of our cognitive facul-
ties. Unlike Kant once again, though, he gives the
notion much more content in stressing, in play, a
blend of freedom and necessity in voluntary submis-
sion to rules for the sheer joy of it, something which
surely characterizes play in the ordinary sense of the
term. Such play is a meeting ground for the ra-
tional—there are clear echoes of Kant’s views on
practical reason in the play impulse—and the sen-
suous—again, there are clear echoes of Kant’s views
on sensation, pleasure, and beauty in the play im-
pulse. Play is thus the essence of fully developed hu-
man behavior; the play impulse is the impulse to be
fully human. As Schiller says in a famous passage:
aesthetics
“Man plays only when he is in the full sense of the
word a man, and he is only wholly Man when he is
playing.”
This special sort of play is itself characterized by
Schiller as a condition of “utter rest and extreme
movement . . . at the same time a relaxing and a
tightening effect.” Some “play” tends to invoke a
“melting” effect, while other “play” is more “ener-
gizing.” Aesthetic experience itself is “the highest en-
joyment . . . freedom of spirit in the vivacious play
of all its powers.” In short, the aesthetic is more than
the symbol of the moral; it’s also what makes us
whole as human beings, what unites the moral or
rational—freedom and the supersensible realm—
with the worldly and empirical—nature and the sen-
suous realm.
But more than that, only beauty or the aesthetic
makes social life possible, in the highest sense of the
term: “Beauty alone can confer on [man] a social
character,” Schiller says. “Taste alone brings har-
mony into society, because it establishes harmony in
the individual. All other forms of perception divide
a man, because they are exclusively based on the
sensuous or on the intellectual part of his being; only
the perception of Beauty makes something whole of
him, because both his natures must accord with it.”
Aesthetic education is thus necessary for social life,
and is, in a sense, the most basic of all forms of
education.
Eloquent and provocative as Schiller’s philoso-
phy is, there are problems with it. Not the least im-
portant difficulty is the elaborate but undeveloped
and undefended transcendental machinery that
Schiller borrows from Kant, together with the large
number of associated dualities that that machinery
pulls in train. If the Kantian apparatus is questioned
or called into doubt, many of Schiller’s views would
be as well (as would Kant’s, of course).
That rather large problem aside, there is also a
crucial ambivalence in the development of Schiller’s
thought. Schiller’s initial question is, How can man
pass from the sensuous to the rational or moral con-
dition? He argues that art makes this possible by
providing an intermediate condition in which the
two are combined. In the intermediate condition, the
play impulse is given free rein, and there is delight
in appearance but detachment from the world of
sense: both the sensuous and the rational are given
their due in a single experience. This, however, isn’t
so much uniting the aesthetic and the moral as it is
30
using the aesthetic to unite the human being in a
quest for “the higher self,” the rational self. The aes-
thetic is simply the means for passing from the sen-
suous condition to the moral condition, and in the
final analysis the two conditions have to remain dis-
tinct if that’s to be effected. The moral and aesthetic
are thus not united in any meaningful, ultimate way,
even if there is a necessary connection between
the two.
There is, however, a different strand of argument
that’s also developed by Schiller, that of the aesthetic
not as a step toward a higher state but as a constit-
uent of it, as a final value. According to this line of
argument, the aesthetic is itself the, or at least a,
condition of the higher self. The FINAL GOOD is the
whole human being, and a human being “is only
wholly man when he is playing.” Here the moral and
aesthetic are truly inextricably united, with the aes-
thetic as the dominant valuation mode, even if con-
ceptually and ontologically dependent on the moral.
It’s worth noting that as far as the sense of the eth-
ical as all-in-value, as that which conduces to or con-
stitutes human flourishing is concerned, Schiller’s
second aesthetic project identifies the ethical and the
aesthetic, even if, in the other sense of the term “eth-
ical,” it subordinates the ethical to the aesthetic. In
any case, this ambivalence of purpose is never re-
solved by Schiller.
Beardsley. Much more empirical and less theory-
dependent in his approach is Monroe Beardsley. Tak-
ing works of art to be essentially “aesthetic objects,”
Beardsley asks whether “aesthetic objects have in-
herent effects that are themselves of great worth.”
His slightly tentative answer is that they do, for four
distinct reasons: aesthetic experience (1) “relieves
tensions and quiets destructive impulses” (a reason
that dates back to ARISTOTLE [384–322 B.C.E.], as
Beardsley notes), (2) “resolves lesser conflicts within
the self, and helps to create an integration, or har-
mony” (a reason reminiscent of Schiller, but without
the metaphysical or transcendental baggage), (3) “re-
fines perception and discrimination” (a reason that
philosophers who embrace cognitive theories of
art—Nelson Goodman being prominent among
them—have stressed), and (4) “develops the imag-
ination, and along with it the ability to put oneself
in the place of others” (a reason that, in a less meta-
physical and transcendental way, is once again rem-
iniscent of Schiller). Moreover, if aesthetic experi-
ence does have inherent effects of the four sorts

noted, three other, more remote effects might also
be expected. It might well also (5) be “an aid to men-
tal health,” (6) “foster mutual sympathy and under-
standing,” and (7) “offer an ideal for human life”
(all three reasons here once more having echoes in
Schiller).
As Beardsley is attempting to justify the aesthetic
by invoking something outside it, something con-
cerning the whole canvas of human life, his is an
ethical justification of the aesthetic, in the broader
sense of the term “ethical,” and a justification that
integrates the aesthetic with the ethical. His first
four reasons, however, stand or fall on whether cer-
tain causal connections obtain, and the evidence, as
Beardsley himself knows, might not be with him.
Indeed, the cathartic effect of art, reason (1), seems
rather minimal, and in general, stronger and more
effective tension-relievers are readily available in the
form of exercise, drugs, conversation with friends,
and therapy. One wonders why the aesthetic would
be necessary or very useful, given the alternatives.
Similar considerations apply to the second reason,
concerning the resolution of conflicts, and even, mu-
tatis mutandis, to the third and fourth reasons.
There are more direct and effective ways to refine
perception and discrimination and to improve the
imagination than studying and appreciating art, even
a lot of art. In fact, it might even be wondered
whether art refines the perception and discrimina-
tion of anything other than art. The experiences of
auto mechanics and laboratory technicians, for ex-
ample, refine their perception and discrimination of
engines, cells, tissues, and the like, but have little
carry-over into the other areas of life. Why should it
be any different with art? The same holds for the
imagination. The cultivation of a vivid and active
scientific imagination seems to have little or no ef-
fect on the imagination in other areas of life, or to
make a person more able and willing to put herself
in the place of others. Worse still as far as this con-
sideration is concerned, many Nazis had a keen ap-
preciation of art and a developed aesthetic imagi-
nation, but were extremely insensitive and cruel.
Their moral imagination was severely lacking.
Many of the points of the preceding paragraph
also bear on Beardsley’s fifth and sixth reasons (the
aesthetic as an aid to mental health, and the aesthetic
as fostering SYMPATHY and understanding), with all
six facing two general objections: (1) empirical sup-
port is lacking in each case, and commonsense ob-
31
aesthetics
servations even seem to count against some of them;
(2) even if all six were empirically well supported,
similar effects are more easily attained by other
means, means having nothing to do with art or the
aesthetic. If, in reply to this second objection, it’s
said that the aesthetic alone can bring about all six
effects, the correct response is, Why is that impor-
tant, philosophically speaking? If a single wonder
pill could accomplish all six effects, it would have
little philosophical significance, and there would be
no felt need to explore the relations between the
realm of pill-values and the realm of ethical values,
much less to integrate the two. In fact, as the analogy
makes clear, there aren’t really two realms of value
present at all: aesthetic value, as a distinct kind of
value, has dropped out of Beardsley’s account. His
first six reasons integrate aesthetics and ethics and
provide a justification for the aesthetic, by subsum-
ing it under ethics, as means to end. In brief, there
is nothing distinctly and irreducibly aesthetic about
any of the six causal effects Beardsley claims for aes-
thetic objects.
Not so with his seventh reason, the aesthetic as
an ideal of human life. The connection between the
aesthetic and the moral isn’t contingent or causal,
according to this reason, but much closer, concep-
tually speaking. Kant expresses a similar sentiment
in calling beauty the symbol of morality, as does
Nietzsche in speaking of a life as a work of art, and
Schiller in speaking of man being fully man—which
includes being fully ethical—only when engaged in
the aesthetic. Even if there’s a shared root in these
and other philosophers, what direction such a com-
mon element will grow in very much depends on
how it’s integrated into a more comprehensive phi-
losophy, including not just ethics and aesthetics but
METAPHYSICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY as well. This is
evident in Kant and Schiller (and also Nietzsche,
whose philosophy hasn’t been discussed here), but
it’s also true of Beardsley. Influenced by John DEWEY
(1859–1952), he stresses the integration of means
and end. “If some of the satisfyingness of the end
could be brought into the means,” he says, “and the
means at every stage felt as carrying the significance
of the end, we should have in life something more
of the quality of aesthetic experience itself.”
Other philosophers, however, develop the idea of
art as a model for, ideal for, symbol of, or full reali-
zation of the ethical in very different directions, and
no detailed answer can be given to how ethics and
aesthetics
aesthetics are related without an even more detailed
examination of each such philosophy. In short, there
is no very complete, satisfying, or enlightening an-
swer to the question of the relation of aesthetics and
ethics, or art and morality, outside of the context of
a comprehensive view of people and their relation
to the world. On what some may consider a more
positive or cheerful note, though, it can also be said
that any truly comprehensive view of people and
their relation to the world will have something to
say about both aesthetics and ethics, will probably
bring the two together, and may well express and
develop the sentiment common to Kant, Schiller,
Nietzsche, and Beardsley.
See also: AUTONOMY OF ETHICS; CENSORSHIP; CRITI-
CAL THEORY; DEWEY; EMOTION; EMOTIVISM; ETHICS
AND MORALITY; ETIQUETTE; FITTINGNESS; FORGERY;
FORMALISM; HISTORIOGRAPHY; HUMANISM; IDEAL
OBSERVER; IDEALIST ETHICS; INTUITIONISM; KANT;
KANTIAN ETHICS; LITERATURE AND ETHICS; MARX;
MARXISM; METAETHICS; METAPHYSICS AND EPISTE-
MOLOGY; MORAL PERCEPTION; MORAL REALISM;
MORAL REASONING; MORAL TERMS; MYSTICISM; NAT-
URALISM; NATURE AND ETHICS; NIETZSCHE; PLAGIA-
RISM; PLEASURE; PORNOGRAPHY; PRACTICAL REA-
SON[ING]; PRESCRIPTIVISM; RELIGION; SCHILLER;
SKEPTICISM IN ETHICS; SPORT; SYMPATHY; TRAGEDY;
VALUE, THEORY OF.
Bibliography
Avron, Henri. Marxist Aesthetics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1970. A short and clear general
survey.
Bates, Stanley. “Tolstoy Evaluated: Tolstoy’s Theory of
Art.” In Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology, edited by
George Dickie and Richard Sclafani. New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1977.
Beardsley, Monroe. Aesthetics: Problems in the Philoso-
phy of Criticism. 2d ed. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett,
1981. See chapters 11 and 12 for a discussion of aes-
thetic value and art and morality.
———. “The Aesthetic Point of View.” In his The Aes-
thetic Point of View. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1983. Grounding the aesthetic.
Beardsmore, R. W. Art and Morality. London: Macmillan
Press, 1971. Short and suggestive.
Cohen, Ted, and Paul Guyer, eds. Essays in Kant’s Aes-
thetics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Important papers and a full bibliography.
Coleman, Francis X. J. The Harmony of Reason: A Study
32
in Kant’s Aesthetics. Pittsburgh: University of Pitts-
burgh Press, 1974.
Crawford, Donald W. Kant’s Aesthetic Theory. Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1974.
Eagleton, Terry. Marxism and Literary Criticism. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1976. Short and
readable.
Eaton, Marcia Muelder. Aesthetics and the Good Life.
Rutherford, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1980.
Chapter 7.
Foot, Philippa. “Nietzsche: The Revaluation of Values.” In
Nietzsche: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by
Robert Solomon. South Bend, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1980.
Gautier, Theophile. “Preface to Mademoiselle de
Maunin.” Translated by A. Sumichrast. In Paths to the
Present: Aspects of European Thought from Romanti-
cism to Existentialism, edited by Eugen Weber. New
York: Dodd, Mead, 1960. A biting statement of Gau-
tier’s aestheticism.
Goldmann, Lucien. The Hidden God: A Study of Tragic
Vision in the Pensées of Pascal and the Tragedies of
Racine. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964. A
major Marxist critical work.
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Taste. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1979.
Hampshire, Stuart. “Logic and Appreciation.” Originally
published in The World Review (1952). In Art and Phi-
losophy, 2d ed., edited by William Kennick. New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 1979.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgment. Translated by Wer-
ner Pluhar. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1987. Part One
is on aesthetic judgments. An excellent translation, in-
troduction, bibliography, and index.
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich. Articles on Tolstoy. Moscow: For-
eign Languages Publishing House, 1951.
Lukács, Georg. Studies in European Realism: A Socio-
logical Survey of the Writings of Balzac, Stendhal,
Zola, Tolstoy, Gorki, and Others. New York: Howard
Fertig, 1998 [1964]. An important work by a leading
Marxist critic.
Marx, Karl, and Fredrick Engels. On Literature and Art.
Edited by Lee Baxandall and Stefan Morawski. New
York: International General, 1973. A full collection of
Marx and Engels’s writings on art.
Morawski, Stefan. Inquiries into the Fundamentals of
Aesthetics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974. A col-
lection of essays by a leading Marxist aesthetician.
Mothersill, Mary. Beauty Restored. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1984. Contains interesting discussions of
a number of philosophers, including Hume, Kant, and
Hampshire.
Nehamas, Alexander. Nietzsche: Life as Literature. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1985.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated
by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Press, 1966.

Nietzsche’s aestheticism is actually scattered through-
out a number of his writings.
Parsons, Kathryn Pyne. “Nietzsche and Moral Change.” In
Nietzsche: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by
Robert Solomon. South Bend, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1980.
Pater, Walter. The Renaissance. Chicago: Academy Press,
1978. The “Conclusion” is many times taken to be a
classic statement of aestheticism.
Plato. Ion. The Republic, Books II, III, and X. Many trans-
lations. Plato’s views on art and its effects on morality.
Some of the earliest arguments for extensive
censorship.
Schaper, Eva. Studies in Kant’s Aesthetics. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1979.
Schiller, Friedrich. On the Aesthetic Education of Man.
Translated by Reginald Snell. New York: Fredrick Un-
gar, 1974.
Sircello, Guy. A New Theory of Beauty. Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 1975. Sections 23–26 discuss
beauty and morality.
Tolstoy, Leo. What Is Art? Translated by Aylmer Maude.
Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960.
Trotsky, Leon. Literature and Revolution. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1971. An important and
intelligent discussion.
Wilde, Oscar. The Artist as Critic. Edited by Richard Ell-
mann. New York: Vintage Books, 1968. See especially
“Intentions” and “Preface to The Picture of Dorian
Gray” for Wilde’s aestheticism.
Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1977.
Zemach, Eddy. “Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Ethics-
Aesthetics Parallelism.” The Journal of Aesthetics and
Art Criticism (1971): 391–98. A sustained critique of
Hampshire.
Michael J. Wreen
Africa
Africa is extremely culturally diverse; linguists sug-
gest that well over a thousand languages are spoken
on the continent. Africa’s fifty modern states include
peoples descended from literally hundreds of pre-
colonial societies, ranging in their degree of political
organization from the acephalous hunter-gathering
!Kung of central southern Africa, through the hier-
archical states of Buganda—in the east—or the Yo-
ruba—in the west—to the Islamic emirates and
monarchies of the Sahel and northwest Africa.
Sub-Saharan African cultures can be seen as the
product of the interaction of so-called traditional
systems of thought with Islam and Christianity. (Eth-
33
Africa
ical theory in the Maghreb, however, which has been
part of the literate Islamic world for more than a
millennium, needs to be considered as part of Is-
lamic ethics. Similar reasons rule out consideration
here of Ethiopia’s literate philosophical traditions,
which are also quite distinctive, and those of South
Africa’s white population, whose moral ideas are a
European legacy. This article consequently deals
with sub-Saharan Africa, excluding Ethiopia and
[white] South Africa.) If we start with traditional
cultures, we may say that ethnography suggests a
number of broad generalizations about the ethical
dimensions of such systems (in that generous sense
of “ethical” that takes in all the central features of
PRACTICAL REASON). We may begin with a number
of formal features.
Formal Features
First of all, it is widely agreed that these tradi-
tional societies were essentially communitarian or
communalistic in their ethical ideas, holding both
that RIGHTS of many sorts inhere not in individuals
but in various corporate groups—families, lineages,
villages, societies; and that what is good is the flour-
ishing of certain corporate interests, to which the
projects of individuals ought to be subsidiary. Thus,
in many cultures PROPERTY rights—the claim for
some period to exclusive use of an area of land for
farming, say—were assigned by chiefs to lineages,
with the head and senior members of each such
group allocating both responsibilities and crops to
members of the group and managing profits from
any sales to cover the needs of individual members.
In many cultures marriage (and what is seen as the
attendant obligation to raise and support children)
is a relationship between families, in which control
of children (and their correlative obligation to obe-
dience) belongs to the family of one spouse, a fact
which is symbolically acknowledged by payments of
bride-price or dowry.
A second significant feature of traditional ethical
thought is an effect of taking FAMILY or clan as a
basis for practical reflection. This produces a struc-
ture of thought that is anti-universalizing: “because
she’s my kinswoman” is an essentially indexical rea-
son—referring back in its essence to a historical re-
lation to the agent—and is not consonant with the
Kantian demand for universality. (It is a familiar idea
that obligations to family members do not depend
Africa
on their general qualities; we are not supposed to
care more for our siblings than for strangers for
some extrinsic reason.)
Third, traditional religious ideas were largely nat-
uralistic—conceiving of gods, spirits, and ancestors
as continuous with and continually operative within
the natural world. These beings were supposed to be
concerned to varying degrees with the flourishing of
certain specific groups: again, often the people of
certain places or lineages. Ritual practice in associ-
ation with cult for spirits and ancestors very gener-
ally involved the observance of taboos, for which the
sanctions were usually misfortunes—a hunting ac-
cident, disease, failed crop—visited upon the indi-
vidual (or, as likely, some group to which he or she
belonged). Questions of avoiding harm of this sort
loomed large in PRACTICAL REASONING; and there
was rarely an articulated notion of doing right that
was distinct from doing what conformed to custom
and PRUDENCE (and thus, in particular, violated no
taboos) or was distinct from what was “seemly.” In-
deed, one of the highest terms of commendation for
conduct in many African societies was also used to
describe physical beauty or “aesthetic” appeal in ar-
tifacts. (This notion can perhaps be understood by
analogy with Greek notions of kalokagathia, a vir-
tue that unites beauty and goodness.)
In this sense, fourthly, there is often no clearly
differentiated and distinctively moral vocabulary, as
opposed to a vocabulary of aesthetic or technical
commendation, a fact that is itself reflective of the
relatively low degree of linguistic division of labor
within most preliterate communities.
A further consequence of regular involvement
with lineage spirits and spirits of place is that, in that
overwhelming majority of cultures which recognize
a high God, associated with the heavens, it is usually
a deus remotus, whose interest in the detailed every-
day affairs of men and women is minimal. The no-
tion that conduct should be aimed at affecting one’s
state in an afterlife is unusual, and concern for af-
fairs after one’s death seems usually to focus on
questions of having descendants to do cult for one
as an ancestor and having a reputation that “lives
on.” In that sense, such systems of thought are often
profoundly—this is a fifth, broadly formal charac-
teristic—anthropocentric or humanistic, centered
on the contemporary concerns of human beings (in-
cluding ancestors) rather than on otherworldly
considerations.
34
Ethical Education
The transfer of ethical ideas between generations
in preliterate societies was accomplished not only by
admonition and correction but also by the following
means: recounting the history of one’s own people
in terms that underwrote current social arrange-
ments (“history” rather than myth, because in con-
temporary usage “myth” connotes fictional status,
and these narrations are usually told as true); ritual
enactment of these histories; performing folk tales—
stories told as fictions, often with an “Aesopian”
moral; and proverbs (which are themselves often
shorthand references back to history and folk tale).
In some cultures young people undergo special pe-
riods of education prior to the transition to adult
status, often removed from the community; and in
these periods of training religious and ethical ideas
may be a central object of study.
Contrasts with Contemporary Euro-American
Ethical Theories
At the level of content, there is, as one would
expect, less detailed similarity among African tra-
ditions than at the level of the rather abstract formal
features catalogued above. But the basically com-
munitarian and anti-universalist character of ethical
thought means that, in most traditional African sys-
tems of ideas, public questions of practical reason—
as they arise, for example, in courts or in family de-
cision making—rarely focus on the enforcement of
individual rights, concentrating rather on individual
needs and a concern for corporate harmony. This is,
of course, in striking contrast to formal juridical
practice in contemporary literate societies.
Another major item of contrast is that in tradi-
tional African systems of thought, propriety, repu-
tation, and status are central to practical reasoning.
This is striking because in Euro-American culture
these questions are all usually seen as having to do
only with the surface of ACTION, and a concern with
them is generally seen as shallow or superficial, in
ways that contrast with genuinely moral concerns.
Anyone familiar with European or Asian moral
philosophy will want to ask how such public ethical
discourse relates to the “inner” language of private
decision; but there is a major difficulty in under-
standing this relationship since our access to such
information in those cultures is a consequence of

literacy. Not only, in preliterate societies, is there no
recording of ethical views except through the collec-
tive sphere of oral traditions, but there are also no
generic conventions—such as that of the confession
(on the model of St. AUGUSTINE [354–430]) or the
Protestant diary (as the record of an individual CON-
SCIENCE)—to provide models of organized reflec-
tion on questions outside the public sphere. More
than this, such central genres as the novel provide
us with models of interiority in moral life that do not
occur in the major genres of orature. To the extent
that a nuanced language of private moral reflection,
distinct from the discourse of collective decision
making, is the product of the kind of PRIVACY made
possible through the conventions that constitute
genres of writing such as autobiography and novel,
we may say that there is no such private morality in
the largely preliterate cultures of precolonial Africa.
It is facts such as these that lead anthropologists
to speak of cultures of (external) shame as opposed
to (internal) guilt. In using such a classification, one
should remember that shame, like guilt, requires one
to share the values that one has failed to live up to—
it is not just a question of embarrassment; so that it
would be quite misleading to think of African cul-
tures without developed discourses of individualized
“private” morality as being governed by the notion
that only what is publicly known is of any real ethical
significance.
It should be stressed, finally, that there is little
reason to think that the features we have identified
in contrasting African ethical ideas and those of
Euro-America distinguish African ethical ideas from
those of many other traditional peoples from outside
the areas of influence of the literate ethical culture
of the monotheistic world religions.
Contemporary Trends
Against this background, it is possible to under-
stand the very substantial ethical crises associated,
on the one hand, with the growth of literacy, the
development of the African novel, and access to
Western literary forms; and, on the other, with ur-
banization and the growth of commodity production
and wage labor. Each of these changes contributes
to undermining the fit between traditional ethical
ideas—of kinship and community—and contem-
porary practical life. The problem of political cor-
ruption in many modern African states, for example,
35
Africa
is best seen as arising, in part, from the fact that state
officials in the modern sector are paid salaries that
are intended to support a family unit closer to a
Euro-American “nuclear” model, while inheriting—
or, at least, believing that they inherit—obligations
to corporate groups—lineages, hometowns, and so
on—that they cannot sustain. The question of “nep-
otism” or “tribalism” should be seen in the context
of a conflict between formal rights-based notions of
the role of state agents, on the one hand, and tra-
ditional corporate obligations, on the other.
When we come to consider contemporary sub-
Saharan ethical discourse, the influence of Islamic
and Christian theory is very evident, as are Marxist
and liberal political and moral ideas introduced
through European colonial education. These latter
secular traditions are not distinctively different from
their Euro-American counterparts. So far as these
major religious traditions are concerned, the con-
trast between traditional and contemporary ideas is,
perhaps, less striking in Islamic areas. This is be-
cause, in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, Islam
was well established before the period of European
colonialism and existed for a long period as a literate
tradition alongside the popular culture of a largely
nonliterate populace. There was, in consequence, a
fairly substantial mutual accommodation of Islamic
ideas and the ethical thought of the pre-Islamic cul-
tures into which they were introduced. Nevertheless,
just as Islam in other parts of the contemporary
Muslim world has developed both new secularizing
traditions and new forms of “fundamentalism,” so
this has happened in Africa. Secularization has
tended to be the response of a literate intelligentsia
with substantial familiarity with European culture,
while fundamentalism has had a more popular—
though usually also literate—base. One conse-
quence of the increasing flow of information,
through broadcast media as well as through literacy,
is that public ethical discourse in sub-Saharan Is-
lamic Africa may now be closer to that in the rest of
the Muslim world than it has been since the early
period of African Islam.
The effect of Christianity has been to challenge
the content of traditional ethical thought in many
places—for example, through objections to polyg-
amy, to caste-like hereditary status systems, and to
appeal to the ancestors and other spirits. Further-
more, Christian otherworldliness and individualistic
notions of merit and RESPONSIBILITY (the latter
Africa
probably deriving as much from contemporary eco-
nomic relations) have penetrated many cultures.
Nevertheless it is fair to say that the ethical thought
of most contemporary African Christians is closer to
that of the precolonial period—especially in its com-
munalism—than it may sometimes appear. And, of
course, to the extent that African Christians partici-
pate in formal literate ethical discourse, they do so—
with the significant exception of Coptic churches in
Egypt and Ethiopia—largely within contemporary
traditions that belong to European Christianity.
See also: ANTHROPOLOGY; CHILDREN AND ETHICAL
THEORY; COMMUNITARIANISM; CULTURAL STUDIES;
FAMILY; GUILT AND SHAME; INDIVIDUALISM; ISLAMIC
ETHICS; MORAL EDUCATION; NARRATIVE ETHICS; PUB-
LIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY.
Bibliography
Floistad, Guttorm, ed. Contemporary Philosophy: A New
Survey. Vol. 5. Amsterdam: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987.
Contains useful articles.
Forde, Daryll, ed. African Worlds: Studies in the Cosmo-
logical Ideas and Social Values of African Peoples.
London, New York: Published for the International Af-
rican Institute by Oxford University Press, 1954. Ox-
ford University Press, 1954.
Gyekye, Kwame. An Essay on African Philosophical
Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Mbiti, John S. African Religions and Philosophy. New
York: Praeger, 1969.
p’Bitek, Okot. African Religions in Western Scholarship.
Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau, 1970.
Wright, Richard A., ed. African Philosophy: An Introduc-
tion. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America,
1977. Contains useful articles.
Kwame A. Appiah
agency and disability
Disability
In its original usage, a disability is a limitation
suffered by individuals because they belong to a
class regarded as incompetent to exercise at least
some of the RIGHTS people normally enjoy. Children,
for instance, are disabled in respect to entering into
CONTRACTS, purchasing alcoholic beverages, and
protecting their PRIVACY. Women once were dis-
36
abled from voting, owning PROPERTY, and retaining
custody of their own children because they were
imagined to be too biologically fragile and emo-
tional, and consequently too dependent, to bear the
RESPONSIBILITY of doing so. Feminist emancipatory
politics explicitly pursued legislation to eliminate
such “women’s disabilities.” In a similar vein, to ab-
rogate the bans racist disparagement of their civic
and commercial competence constructed against
them, African Americans embraced juridical strate-
gies to establish that race and color are not disabil-
ities under the law.
Today, having a physical, sensory or cognitive im-
pairment is the condition most commonly equated
with disability. In this recent narrower usage, and in
its broader original meaning as well, disability raises
a number of issues for moral theory, especially in
respect to equitability and inclusiveness. Theories
that emphasize dependency rather than agency are
challenged to explain how individuals whose bio-
logical differences appear to limit their powers can
be of equal status with fully capable persons. The-
ories that accentuate agency are challenged to em-
brace people whose biological differences impede
their executing the activities through which moral
agency is exercised.
Agency
Who counts as a person for purposes of com-
manding equitable treatment and respect? John
RAWLS proposes that “a person is someone who can
be a citizen, that is, a fully cooperating member of
society over a complete life” but adds that “for our
purposes . . . I leave aside permanent physical dis-
abilities or mental disorders so severe as to prevent
persons from being normal and fully cooperating
members of society in the usual sense.” In response
to Rawls’s conceptualization, Ruth Anna Putnam
asks, “are we to conclude that a permanently dis-
abled human being is not a person, or at any rate
not a citizen?” From an agency-focused moral per-
spective, such an individual’s status will be relativ-
ized to whatever physical, sensory, or cognitive per-
formances are designated as crucial expressions of
moral activity. The less replete and flexible the rep-
ertoire of instrumentally valuable performances, the
less inclusive the theory will be in attributing full
moral agency to individuals whose powers to per-
form differ from the normal or customary range.

We can see why this is so by way of an example.
Seyla Benhabib urges that humans capable of speech
and action are to be considered equal from a MORAL
POINT OF VIEW. In the context of this or similar di-
alogical accounts of morality, what is the status of
deaf individuals who communicate through sign lan-
guage rather than speech? In practice, whether such
individuals are afforded fully equitable treatment
and respect turns on whether they can communicate
with whomever the theory takes to be the morally
significant interlocutor(s).
When sign language was developed in the eigh-
teenth century, manual signing was believed to be
based on natural, self-interpreting symbols that en-
gaged the intelligence directly and lucidly and facili-
tated the moral sense. For this reason, deaf people
who signed rather than spoke were considered to be
insulated from the transient fashions of conven-
tional conversation, and therefore to be less cor-
ruptible. Signing thus was considered a respectable,
effective activity conducive to the purest communi-
cation with, and about, God, whose significant role
in moral conversation was a given.
But, by the late nineteenth century, relationships
among humans had become more significant for the
propitious ordering of society than ties between hu-
mans and God were made out to be. Where once
language’s highest function had been to engage in-
dividuals with transcendent sources of right belief
and right conduct, it now most importantly engaged
people with one another in productive commercial
and civic interaction. Furthermore, as priority
shifted from personal to social improvement, the
ideal of communal participation by people who
functioned in a common dialogical mode in the pub-
lic sphere superseded that of individualized moral
perfection. Eventually, individuals who signed in-
stead of speaking were diagnosed as being in deficit
of the powers that distinguish humans and their so-
cieties from lesser primates. On account of their di-
alogical difference, deaf individuals were made le-
gally inferior and vulnerable by being decreed
incompetent to own property and to retain custody
of their children (especially of their hearing
children).
In response, deaf rights advocates now urge that
sign language be recognized as the language of a mi-
nority community with its own identifiable history
and culture, and that deaf people be accorded the
same moral and political status as other cultural mi-
37
agency and disability
norities. Whether doing so isolates, or instead ele-
vates, those who sign rather than speak remains a
subject of considerable controversy. For whether the
inability to speak to the majority of other people, and
not just to a minority similar to one’s self, compro-
mises an individual’s moral agency turns on whether
the spoken word is theorized as being essential, or
instead as serendipitous, to whatever dialogical
functions are crucial to human flourishing.
Similar considerations pertain to most other mor-
ally relevant physical, sensory, and cognitive func-
tioning. For example, the theologian John Hull di-
agnoses the isolation his blindness occasions by
explaining that “the main point about [sighted peo-
ple’s practice in relating to the blind] is its lack of
reciprocity.” What prompts this remark is his reflec-
tion on the difference between the ways in which
blind and sighted people are aware of each others’
presence and, consequently, in how they attend to
one another: “a common deterioration of mutuality
takes place when a blind . . . person believes . . . they
are in a face-to-face situation but in fact you, the
sighted one, are looking out of the window.” Hull
observes that “the mere fact that blind and sighted
people cannot watch things together . . . deprives
them of a major field of togetherness.”
So it is not the inferiority of personal powers, but
rather the nonmutuality of social practice, that
erodes EQUALITY between individuals who cannot
see and those who can at the level of personal con-
nectedness. In this regard, the Americans With Dis-
abilities Act (1990) traces disablement to social ar-
rangements intolerant of physical, sensory, or
cognitive difference rather than to the functional in-
adequacies of individuals. From the viewpoint rep-
resented by this “social” model of disability, when-
ever having such differences diminishes a person’s
agency, injustice, not incompetence or biological def-
icit, is most likely at blame.
Despite its increasing political influence, how-
ever, this model of disability is susceptible to a lim-
iting case, namely, that in which no reform of social
practice, nor improvement in environment or situ-
ation, can enable an impaired individual to become
self-determining. Robert Veatch, for one, holds that
some people whom justice urges be compensated
for their disabilities “are not competent, rational
decision-makers,” so, for them, the equality implicit
in the principle of self-determination is not an
achievable component of justice. The literature of-
agency and disability
fers at least two competing ways of addressing their
circumstance. The first argues that dependency
rather than agency is a definitive attribute of morally
engaged individuals, while the second expands how
agency is recognized so as to increase the number of
those who are considered capable of being morally
engaged.
Dependency
Some feminists and some communitarians insist
that the importance of agency has been magnified
misleadingly, promoted by a parochial paradigm of
self-determination. Feminists associate self-deter-
mination with self-sufficiency and independence and
then condemn it for being nothing more than an ex-
trapolation from the paradigmatic male relationship
between nonintimate equals that disregards the
common female circumstance of being intimately
connected to others of very different POWER or
status. Communitarians associate self-determination
with INDIVIDUALISM, complaining that it invites in-
dividuals to operate as idiosyncratic atomistic arbi-
ters of value who abjure traditional understandings
about the COMMON GOOD.
A criticism commonly levied from both these
camps is that self-determination constitutes a hope-
less and therefore an unfairly imposed goal for peo-
ple who are powerless and vulnerable, and especially
so for the disabled. To be inclusive of individuals too
frail or otherwise compromised to conform to this
paradigm, they argue, moral theory should promote
relationships that bond powerless to more powerful
people. Annette Baier, for example, contends that
the INEQUALITY manifested in dependence connects
care giver and care recipient morally by exposing
them to mutual RISK. For the relationship to work,
each gives up control because each is, figuratively, a
hostage to the other’s role; this mutuality of depen-
dence constitutes the paradigmatic moral bond.
But modeling moral connectedness on how de-
pendence links people of greatly differing powers
still fails to be responsive to some of the perfor-
mance limitations that impairment can occasion. For
example, people with autism and people with cog-
nitive deficits such as those characteristic of certain
stages of senile dementia are individuals whose im-
pairment compromises their empathizing and trust-
ing, and thereby limits their ability to rely on others.
And many more people, evidencing very different
38
kinds of impairments, are forestalled from assuming
trusting relationships by a social environment hos-
tile to, unreliable for, or dismissive of individuals
like themselves.
It is often assumed that those free of impairment
have an obligation to care for the disabled, regard-
less of whether the latter can reciprocate. This claim
is a commonplace of social welfare theory, but it is
not so commonly implemented, and with good rea-
son, for what it appears to call for is a moral econ-
omy that privileges neediness. Such schemes noto-
riously call for determining who is better and who
worse off, so as to decide whose private assets to
transform into common resources, and whom to
supply from the latter.
Further, the price extracted to be eligible for such
benefits makes them of dubious advantage, for the
social NORMS that shape our patterns of obligation
to those classified as unable to care for themselves
can be harmfully confining to whoever finds herself
occupying the dependent’s role. If the respect ac-
corded able-bodied individuals is influenced by oth-
ers’ perceptions of the extent of their caring, people
with disabilities face being coerced into dependence
so as to permit unimpaired associates to display how
well they care. Similarly, if a community’s virtue is
advanced when ill and disabled people are cared for
in it, community members viewed as weak must put
themselves in the hands of those who seem strong
so as to facilitate the community’s collective pro-
gression toward virtue. But surely no one should be
obligated to receive whatever benefits are thrust
upon her. Nor is it liberating to position individuals
whose social options are unusually limited so that
their choosing to disconnect from someone else is
condemned as disruptive because it obstructs the so-
ciety’s prospects for being virtuous.
Interdependence and Self-Determination
Those who would benefit from assistance should
not lose this autonomy. Immanuel KANT (1724–
1804) advises any prospective benefactor to “show
that he is himself put under the obligation by the
other’s acceptance or honored by it” so as to fore-
bear from placing the recipient of help in an inferior
position. Kant’s example illustrates how, in the con-
text of reciprocally constraining practice, individuals
can be interdependent, yet self-determining. Inter-
dependence thus can be accepted as integral to hu-

man life without being magnified into a social ideal
that imposes heteronomy on people whose physical
or cognitive functioning is not species-typical.
As Kant suggests, drawing individuals of differ-
ent powers together in a mutually binding moral
space is facilitated when, regardless of how needy
one is for assistance by the other, social practice
maintains RECIPROCITY between them. Of course,
where practice divides humanity into the weak and
the strong—those who can’t climb a flight of stairs
and those who can, those who can’t see printed text
and those who can, those who can’t hear a telephone
and those who can—such mutuality either does not
happen or is curtailed. This indicates why inflating
their dependency, and discounting their agency, at-
tenuates the moral connectedness people with dis-
abilities can achieve.
Moral Status
Some people question assigning full moral status
to individuals incapable of agency as, for instance,
the most severely retarded and demented humans
seem to be. Peter Singer, for one, draws the moral
line at sentience, arguing that anencephalic neonates
are of lower moral rank than smart nonhuman ani-
mals. Singer assigns similar moral standing to hu-
mans and any other animals positioned alike in re-
spect to the line established by the capacity for
responsiveness.
Doubting whether very severely impaired hu-
mans have full moral status may appear to run
counter to our strong intuition that we have a higher
duty to safeguard humans, whatever their deficits
may be, than to protect the cleverest nonhuman ani-
mals. But one need not be obligated to an individual
to be obligated in regard to that individual. Human
neonates lack agency but are linked by history and
affection to adults on whom they are dependent.
When an individual’s extended dependency imposes
an unfairly heavy burden of care giving on which-
ever capable agent is closest, our duty to distribute
burdens as well as benefits equitably obligates us to
provide relief to the unfairly encumbered care
givers. Discharging this duty to care givers is imple-
mented through taking positive action toward those
for whom they care. Hence, our duty to care for hu-
mans incapable of agency exhibits the character of
an obligation to persons with full moral status, but
it is with their care givers rather than themselves
39
agency and disability
that the relevant mutuality has been achieved. Safe-
guarding humans with disabilities because they are
human entails no duties to extend moral respect or
social inclusion to them.
Whether individuals whose execution of major
life activities is compromised can command these
latter duties (as distinct from being the objects of
duty) turns on whether social practice permits them
to be perceived as mutually engaged with others in
morally important enterprises. Charles TAYLOR sees
the development of liberal morality as being an ex-
pansion of our views about who can do so and in-
terprets the claim to equal status as having been
extended even to “people who through some circum-
stance that has befallen them are incapable of real-
izing their potential in the normal way—handi-
capped people . . . for instance.” Unfortunately, this
way of putting things deconstructs the egalitarian
project by intimating that all “handicapped” people
are equal only derivatively or fictionally because they
do not function normally.
According to data collected in 1994/95 by the
United States Department of Commerce for the Sur-
vey of Income and Program Participation, more than
50 million Americans reported being so seriously
impaired as to be precluded from one or more nor-
mal modes of functioning. So centering agency, or
the potential for it, on normal performance of social
activities forestalls acknowledging the DIGNITY of a
vastly greater number of people than just the most
profoundly intellectually impaired. For this reason,
advocates for individuals with physical, sensory, or
cognitive impairments now adopt strategies reminis-
cent of the previous liberatory movements that ad-
vanced women and people of color. They declare
that equating competent agency with modes of per-
formance typical of or familiar to the current socially
dominant class is itself disabling.
See also: AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; BENEFI-
CENCE; BENEVOLENCE; CARE; CHARITY; CHILDREN
AND ETHICAL THEORY; CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIC DU-
TIES; COERCION; COMMUNITARIANISM; CONTRACTS;
DIGNITY; DISCRIMINATION; EQUALITY; EUDAIMONIA,
-ISM; EUTHANASIA; FAMILY; FEMINIST ETHICS; GEN-
EROSITY; GRATITUDE; INEQUALITY; INFANTICIDE; IN-
TERESTS; JUSTICE [entries]; NEEDS; PATERNALISM;
PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS; PRIDE; PRIVACY; PUBLIC
AND PRIVATE MORALITY; PUBLIC HEALTH POLICY;
PUBLIC POLICY; RACISM AND RELATED ISSUES; RAWLS;
agency and disability
RECIPROCITY; RESPONSIBILITY; RIGHT HOLDERS;
RIGHTS; SELF AND SOCIAL SELF; SELF-OWNERSHIP;
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY; SUICIDE; THE-
ORY AND PRACTICE; WELFARE RIGHTS AND SOCIAL
POLICY.
Bibliography
Baier, Annette. “The Need for More than Justice.” In Sci-
ence, Morality and Feminist Theory, edited by Marsha
Hanen and Kai Nielson. Calgary: University of Calgary
Press, 1987. Why the concept of justice doesn’t do jus-
tice to the nuances of moral connectedness.
Baynton, Douglas. Forbidden Signs: American Culture
and the Campaign against Sign Language. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Becker, Lawrence C. “The Good of Agency.” In Americans
with Disabilities: Exploring Implications of the Law for
Individuals and Institutions, edited by Leslie Francis
and Anita Silvers. New York: Routledge, 2000. Argues
that disability rights are implicit in long-held, funda-
mental commitments about the value of human life,
especially our acknowledgment of the value of human
agency.
Benhabib, Seyla. “In the Shadow of Aristotle and Hegel:
Communicative Ethics and Current Controversies in
Practical Philosophy.” Philosophical Forum 21 (1989):
77–95. Moral agency and its applications in the con-
text of dialogical theory.
Francis, Leslie Pickering, and Anita Silvers, eds. Ameri-
cans with Disabilities: Exploring Implications of the
Law for Individuals and Institutions. New York: Rout-
ledge, 2000.
Funk, Robert. “Disability Rights: From Caste to Class in
the Context of Civil Rights.” In Images of the Disabled,
Disabling Images, edited by Alan Gartner and Tom Joe,
7–30. New York: Praeger, 1987. Emergence of social
model of disability in United States case law and im-
plications for jurisprudence, especially civil rights.
Hull, John. On Sight and Insight: A Journey into the World
of Blindness. Oxford: One-World Publications, 1997.
Quoted from p. 107.
Kant, Immanuel. The Metaphysics of Morals. Part 2, The
Doctrine of Virtue. Translated and edited by Mary
Gregor. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991
[1797]. See sections 31 and 32.
Morris, Jenny. Pride Against Prejudice. Philadelphia: New
Society Publishers, 1991. Introduces feminist perspec-
tives to disability studies.
Putnam, Ruth Anna. “Why Not a Feminist Theory of
Justice?” In Women, Culture and Development: A
Study of Human Capabilities, edited by Martha Nuss-
baum and Jonathan Glover. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1995. Pp. 298–331. Quoted from p. 304.
Rawls, John. “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphys-
40
ical.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 (1985): 223–
51. Quotation from pp. 233–34.
Silvers, Anita. “Disability Rights.” In The Encyclopedia of
Applied Ethics, edited by Ruth Chadwick. San Diego:
Academic Press, 1997.
———. “Reconciling Equality to Difference: Caring (F)or
Justice for People with Disabilities.” Hypatia 10, no. 1
(1995): 30–55. Argues that substituting care ethics for
justice ethics marginalizes people with disabilities;
shows how justice ethics should respond to people with
physical, sensory, and cognitive differences.
———. “Rights of People with Disabilities.” In The Ox-
ford Handbook of Practical Ethics, edited by Hugh
LaFollette. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcom-
ing. Reviews and evaluates various philosophical ap-
proaches to justice for people with disabilities.
Silvers, Anita, David Wasserman, and Mary Mahowald.
Disability, Difference, Discrimination: Perspectives on
Justice in Bioethics and Public Policy. Point/Counter-
point. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998.
Explores how formal, distributive, and feminist ap-
proaches to justice address issues raised by disability
in the fields of bioethics and public policy. Afterword
by Lawrence C. Becker.
Singer, Peter. Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of
Our Traditional Ethics. New York: St. Martin’s, 1996.
A bio-utilitarian approach to disability, focusing on suf-
fering and other quality of life issues.
Taylor, Charles. Multiculturalism and “The Politics of
Recognition”: An Essay by Charles Taylor with Com-
mentary. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
Commentary by Amy Gutmann (editor), Stephen
Rockefeller, Michael Walzer, and Susan Wolf.
United States Department of Commerce, Census Bureau.
“Americans with Disabilities: 1994–95,” by John
McNeil. Household Economic Studies. Current Popu-
lation Reports, P70–61, August 1997.
Veatch, Robert. The Foundation of Justice: Why the Re-
tarded and the Rest of Us Have Claims to Equality.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Wendell, Susan. The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosoph-
ical Reflections on Disability. London: Routledge,
1996. Introduces disability perspective to feminist
theory.
Anita Silvers
agent-centered morality
Morality is called agent-centered, or agent-relative,
insofar as it appeals to moral considerations whose
force is tied to the projects, values, relationships, or
perspectives of the moral agent. Commonsense
moral practice is often thought to embody agent-

relative considerations, though much traditional
moral theory has required agents to (try to) act from
a purely impartial, even impersonal, point of view.
“I would have the dearest friend I have to know,”
said Jeremy BENTHAM (1748–1832), the architect of
classical UTILITARIANISM, “that his interests, if they
come in competition with that of the public, are as
nothing to me.” Though such a remark would speak
well for the integrity of a public official, it might call
into question the speaker’s INTEGRITY as a friend.
Some philosophers, most influentially Bernard WIL-
LIAMS, have attacked the adequacy of utilitarianism
precisely because it seems to compromise the integ-
rity of the moral agent’s CHARACTER in regard to
PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS and to other values and
projects which give the agent’s life meaning. Wil-
liams’s sustained critique began in the early 1970s,
shortly after John RAWLS had argued that utilitari-
anism fails to take the difference between people se-
riously, and shortly before Robert NOZICK was to
introduce the notion of nonutilitarian “side con-
straints,” suggesting that though utilitarianism might
be a good enough moral theory for nonhuman ani-
mals, people require some form of DEONTOLOGY.
Varieties of Agent-Relativity
How are such agent-relative considerations to be
characterized? A variety of ordinary intuitions have
appeared to be in tension with the demands of agent-
neutral morality. Thomas Nagel, for example, iden-
tifies three kinds of agent-relativity: “Common sense
suggests that each of us should live his own life (au-
tonomy), give special consideration to certain others
(obligation), have some significant concern for the
general good (neutral values), and treat the people he
deals with decently (deontology).” Amartya Sen—
distinguishing among “doer-relativity”, “viewer-
relativity”, and “self-evaluation-relativity”—argues
that deontological values can be accommodated by
some forms of consequence-based evaluation
(though not by utilitarianism). Sen has gone on to
develop his concept of “positional objectivity,” in
terms of which he sees “no basic conflict between
consequential ethics and agent-relativity.”
But how is the force of agent-relative considera-
tions to be understood? Three questions can be
distinguished.
41
agent-centered morality
Intrinsic versus Instrumental Relativity
Are agent-relative considerations intrinsically
relative, or are they to be taken as instrumentally
subordinate to higher-level agent-neutral consider-
ations? An instrumentalist analysis, as found in con-
sequentialist apologists such as R. M. HARE, deflates
the significance of agent-relative moral considera-
tions as objections to CONSEQUENTIALISM —which is
of course the point of such an analysis.
Prerogatives versus Restrictions
Do agent-relative considerations merely permit
moral agents, under certain circumstances, to ignore
the impersonal demands of morality? Or do they re-
quire that such demands be ignored? Samuel Schef-
fler has defended a “hybrid view” which recognizes
an agent-centered prerogative—permitting agents,
within limits, to pursue their own projects even
when this would not produce the best overall out-
come (as defined by impersonal considerations)—
but resists recognizing agent-centered restrictions
which would require agents to act on agent-centered
considerations rather than produce the best state of
affairs. Scheffler’s critics have questioned the via-
bility of this “hybrid,” wondering whether the pre-
rogatives and the restrictions do not stand or fall
together.
Alternatives to Agent-Relativity
Which moral views do agent-relative considera-
tions call into question? Bernard Williams’s original
target was utilitarianism. But he, and others, have
gone on to question the impersonal demands of Kan-
tian theories of moral duty as well. Thus, the issues
about agent-centered morality may be deeper than
the debate between consequentialism and deontol-
ogy. Samuel Freeman has proposed that the idea of
agent-neutral reasons presupposes the (teleological)
notion of a single ultimate good, as against the (de-
ontological) recognition of an irreducible plurality
of intrinsic goods.
The problem of determining the limits of moral-
ity’s claims remains. The flourishing of an individual
life in its necessary social context (what ARISTOTLE
[384–322 B.C.E.] called eudaimonia) may be viewed
either (1) as requiring virtue-or-excellence (arete),
agent-centered morality
as EUDAIMONISM suggests; or (2) as setting a limit
to the impersonal demands the morally responsive
agent must endure. On the latter view, a morality
which precluded all possibility of personal fulfill-
ment in the agent’s life would simply demand too
much. If moral virtue goes with human flourishing,
then how can agents be called upon to sacrifice what
is vital to that flourishing? On the other hand, if
flourishing is not possible apart from the life of vir-
tue, how can even the most stringent demand of mo-
rality be subverted in the name of self-interest?
Scheffler has argued (against the view that mo-
rality is “stringent” and against the opposed view
that it is merely coincident with self-interest) that
morality is in fact “moderate”—an attempt to do
justice both to the idea that all INTERESTS have equal
intrinsic importance and to the idea that each per-
son’s interests have a personal significance “out of
proportion to their importance from an impersonal
standpoint.” On his version of agent-relativity, mo-
rality takes our partialities seriously, but also forms
part of a complex social and psychological reality in
which it becomes possible for moral considerations
to acquire a motivating force independent of our
personal desires. “Not only does morality itself aim
in part to accommodate the interests of the agent,
but at the same time agents who acquire moral mo-
tives try, in effect, to shape their own interests in
such a way as to avoid conflict with morality.” This
subtle and perceptive account of, as Scheffler puts
it, human morality deserves better than the disdain-
ful sniff it would doubtless receive from Bentham.
See also: AUTONOMY OF ETHICS; AUTONOMY OF
MORAL AGENTS; CHARACTER; CONSEQUENTIALISM;
DEONTOLOGY; DESIRE; DUTY AND OBLIGATION;
EQUALITY; EUDAIMONIA, -ISM; FEMINIST ETHICS; IM-
PARTIALITY; INTEGRITY; INTUITIONISM; KANTIAN
ETHICS; MORAL POINT OF VIEW; MORAL RELATIVISM;
MOTIVES; PARTIALITY; PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORAL-
ITY; REASONS FOR ACTION; RESPONSIBILITY; SELF
AND SOCIAL SELF; SUBJECTIVISM; UTILITARIANISM;
WILLIAMS.
Bibliography
Brink, David O. Moral Realism and the Foundations of
Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Includes critique of Scheffler.
Brook, Richard. “Agency and Morality.” Journal of Phi-
losophy 88 (1991): 190–212. Critique of Scheffler.
42
Buchanan, Allen. “Justice as Reciprocity versus Subject-
Centered Justice.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 19
(1990): 227 – 52. Unusual in applying “subject-
centered” (and, more narrowly, “agent-centered”) to
theories which make moral status depend on features
of the subject other than power to affect the well-being
of others. This engages a set of issues different from
those discussed here.
Darwall, Stephen. “Agent-Centered Restrictions from the
Inside Out.” Philosophical Studies 50 (1986): 291–
319.
Freeman, Samuel. “Utilitarianism, Deontology, and the
Priority of Right.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 23
(1994): 313–49.
Hare, R. M. Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method, and
Point. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. Utilitar-
ianism defended.
Harris, John. Violence and Responsibility. London: Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul, 1980. Consequentialist negative
responsibility defended.
Hurley, Paul. “Agent-Centered Restrictions: Clearing the
Air of Paradox.” Ethics 108 (1997): 120–46.
Kagan, Shelly. The Limits of Morality. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1989. Consequentialism defended.
Kamm, F. M. “Non-Consequentialism, The Person as an
End-in-Itself, and the Significance of Status.” Philoso-
phy and Public Affairs 21 (1992): 354–89.
Korsgaard, Christine M. “The Reasons We Can Share: An
Attack on the Distinction between Agent-Relative and
Agent-Neutral Values.” Social Philosophy and Policy
10 (January 1993): 24–51. Reprinted in her Creating
the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge University Press,
1996), chapter 10.
Lippert-Rasmussen, Kasper. “Moral Status and the Im-
possibility of Minimizing Violations.” Philosophy and
Public Affairs 25 (1996): 333–51.
Mack, Eric. “Personal Integrity, Practical Recognition, and
Rights.” Monist 76 (1993): 101–18. See also other ar-
ticles by Mack cited therein.
McNaughton, David, and Piers Rawling. “Deontology and
Agency.” Monist 76 (1993): 81–100.
Nagel, Thomas. The View from Nowhere. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1986. Chapter 9 discusses three kinds
of agent-relativity. Reprinted in Scheffler.
———. Equality and Partiality. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1991.
Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York:
Basic Books, 1974. Chapter 3 introduces nonutilitarian
“side constraints.” Extracted in Scheffler.
Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1984. Argues that our reasons for acting
should become more impersonal.
Raz, Joseph. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1986.
Scheffler, Samuel. The Rejection of Consequentialism.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. The “hybrid”
theory.
———. Human Morality. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1992. A subtle, humane discussion.
———. “Relationships and Responsibilities.” Philosophy
and Public Affairs 26 (1997): 189–209.
———, ed. Consequentialism and Its Critics. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1988. Invaluable anthology.
Sen, Amartya. “Rights and Agency.” Philosophy and Pub-
lic Affairs 11 (1982): 3–39. Especially Sections 5–7.
Reprinted in Scheffler.
———. “Positional Objectivity.” Philosophy and Public
Affairs 22 (1993): 126–45. Especially Section 9.
Slote, Michael. Common-Sense Morality and Consequen-
tialism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985.
Stewart, Robert M. “Agent-Relativity, Reason, and Value.”
Monist 76 (1993): 66–80. Critique of Scheffler and
Nagel.
Unger, Peter. Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of
Innocence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Williams, Bernard. “A Critique of Utilitarianism.” In Util-
itarianism: For and Against, by J. J. C. Smart and Ber-
nard Williams, 75–150. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1973. The place to start. Extracted in
Scheffler.
———. Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981. Especially chapters 1 and 3, which elab-
orate and extend the attack on impersonal morality.
———. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1985.
———. Making Sense of Humanity. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1995.
Wilson, Catherine. “On Some Alleged Limitations to
Moral Endeavor.” Journal of Philosophy 90 (1993):
275–89.
Edward Johnson
agents
See autonomy of moral agents; idealized agents.
agnosticism
The term ‘agnosticism’ was coined by the English
biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)
around 1869, but the position itself is far more an-
cient: there have doubtless been agnostics ever since
people first began to think seriously about the gods.
The agnostic is a sort of partial or limited sceptic.
He or she is quite happy to accept that we have
knowledge of the world of phenomena, obtained
first by ordinary sense experience and then extended
43
agnosticism
by the methods of the sciences. Any attempt to ex-
tend this knowledge beyond the phenomena, and to
make claims about a God or gods is, however, dis-
missed as presumptuous. With regard to the exis-
tence and properties of a God or gods, the agnostic’s
creed is not just the modest and unassuming “I don’t
know” but the much more challenging “we can’t
know,” i.e., there is some reason of principle why
such knowledge is unattainable for us.
Agnosticism became a widely accepted doctrine
among the intellectuals of late Victorian Britain, as
the implications for epistemology of the work of
HUME (1711–1776) and KANT (1724–1804) be-
came assimilated. Although their philosophies differ
in fundamental respects, both Hume and Kant pro-
duced accounts of human knowledge which saw it
as necessarily confined to the realm of appearances
or phenomena. For Kant, there is a noumenal realm
of things-in-themselves behind the phenomena, but
we can say nothing positive about this realm; for
Hume, it is a real possibility that there are only the
appearances. Both men rejected the traditional ar-
guments for the existence of God, whether a priori
or empirical, as inconclusive. The traditional argu-
ment to design, however, survived their critique, and
was widely employed in the first half of the nine-
teenth century as a proof of a wise and benevolent
designer God. It was only after the publication of
DARWIN’s (1809–1882) Origin of Species (1859)
that atheists and agnostics could give a convincing
reply to this argument, citing Darwin’s theory as
proof that the functional adaptation of the parts of
plants and animals need not be taken as evidence of
intelligent design.
The main agnostic writers—Spencer, Tyndall,
Huxley, Stephen, and Clifford—never formed a
closed group with an agreed body of doctrine. One
crucial question which divided them was whether
agnosticism was essentially a positive or a negative
doctrine. For Herbert SPENCER (1820–1903), the
agnostic has a positive belief in ‘The Unknowable’,
and should even redirect his or her religious emo-
tions toward it. Religion, he argues, spontaneously
evolves into agnosticism as it replaces more primi-
tive and anthropomorphic conceptions of God with
more sophisticated and abstract ones. The Irish
physicist John Tyndall (1820–1893) shared this
view, arguing that agnosticism is hostile only to dog-
matic theology, not to RELIGION as such. For Huxley,
however, agnosticism is a much more negative doc-
agnosticism
trine: in his article “Agnosticism,” he characterizes
it simply in terms of adoption of a critical, sceptical
attitude toward religious and metaphysical claims,
and dismisses with some scorn the suggestion that
it could become itself a sort of surrogate religion
with its own creed. The great Victorian man of let-
ters Leslie Stephen (1832–1904), and the mathe-
matician William Kingdom Clifford (1845–1879),
shared this negative, more Humean conception of
agnosticism.
The implications of agnosticism for ethics are ba-
sically the same as those of ATHEISM. Even if there
is a God or a pantheon of gods, if we can know
nothing about him, her, it, or them, it follows that
we can know nothing about whatever moral prop-
erties the God or gods may possess, or what sorts of
conduct he, she, it, or they may command or pro-
hibit. In practice, therefore, the agnostic must adopt
a purely secular view of ethics. He or she might con-
sistently adopt a utilitarian moral theory, or a Kan-
tian one. In point of historical fact, however, several
prominent agnostics adopted the evolutionary-
naturalist account of ethics championed by Herbert
Spencer in his Data of Ethics. On this account,
MORAL RULES seem intuitive and a priori to the in-
dividual, but have been ‘learned’ by the race, in the
sense that communities of humans with such moral
intuitions have tended, over the course of evolution-
ary history, to flourish at the expense of others. On
this theory, the PHENOMENOLOGY of individual
moral experience and moral judgment is intuition-
istic, but the theory of EVOLUTION explains how we
came to be the sort of beings who have such moral
‘intuitions.’
A distinctive feature of the controversy over ag-
nosticism was the issue of the ethics of belief. Over
the centuries, the defenders of established religions
have sought to represent faith as a virtue and doubt
as a vice. For agnostics like Huxley, Stephen, and
Clifford, exactly the opposite is the case. They ap-
peal explicitly to such moral VIRTUES as frankness,
honesty, and humility in their defence against cleri-
cal opponents. If there are some things we humans
simply can’t know, they argue, surely it is better
freely to admit as much, rather than to try to defend
old exploded creeds by increasingly sophistical ar-
guments? This argument is most forcefully ex-
pressed in Clifford’s famous essay, “The Ethics of
Belief,” which portrays honest doubt as a moral duty
and blind faith as a dangerous and anti-social vice:
44
“It is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to
believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” A per-
son who believes something without adequate evi-
dence is, for Clifford, like the carrier of a plague
virus—an argument that has been repeated in our
own time by Richard Dawkins. This seizing of the
moral high ground by the anti-clerical party repre-
sents a turning point in intellectual history. Until this
point, the high ground had always seemed to belong,
as if by divine right, to the clerics, who never ceased
to portray the freethinkers as dangerous and im-
moral rogues. Now the freethinkers could turn the
tables, claiming that they at least were honest and
sincere searchers after truth, willing to confess their
ignorance where evidence is lacking, and portraying
their clerical opponents as standing for little more
than pride and prejudice.
Opponents of agnosticism were thus faced with
a simple choice. They could either insist that the ag-
nostics were wrong about the epistemology—that
there was evidence, after all, for the existence of a
God with some knowable properties. Or they could
take issue with the agnostics about the ethics of be-
lief and defend faith against Clifford’s attack. It is
not hard to find champions of each of these ap-
proaches. The Jesuit Charles Coupe (1853–1910),
for example, argues, against Huxley, that God “has
not left Himself without witness” in the world, and
that the agnostics’ profession of ignorance is disin-
genuous and therefore culpable. Another Catholic
priest, William Barry (1849–1930), argues that Dar-
winism only overthrows the crudest versions of the
argument to design, and that more sophisticated ver-
sions are still defensible. A disciple of Newman
(1801–1890), John Bernard Dalgairns (1818–
1876), argues that even if the natural world shows
no evidence of God, human moral and spiritual ex-
perience furnishes all the evidence we require. De-
fenders of the virtue of faith include W. H. Mallock
(1849–1923) and the American pragmatist William
JAMES (1842–1910), whose famous essay “The Will
to Believe” is in large part a reply to Clifford.
See also: ABSURD, THE; ATHEISM; EVOLUTION; HU-
MANISM; INTUITIONISM; METAPHYSICS AND EPISTE-
MOLOGY; MORAL RULES; NATURALISM; PHENOME-
NOLOGY; PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION; RELIGION;
SKEPTICISM IN ETHICS; SPENCER; THEISM; THEOLOG-
ICAL ETHICS.

Bibliography
Clifford, William Kingdom. Lectures and Essays. Edited
by L. Stephen and F. Pollock. London: Macmillan,
1879. Contains the famous essay “The Ethics of
Belief.”
Flint, Robert. Agnosticism. Edinburgh: Blackwoods,
1903. A weighty and substantial account of Victorian
agnosticism. Very thorough, but tends to assimilate ag-
nosticism too closely to scepticism in general.
Huxley, Thomas Henry. Science and the Christian Tradi-
tion. London: Macmillan, 1897. This volume, number
six of Huxley’s collected essays, contains the famous
article “Agnosticism” (first published in The Nine-
teenth Century in 1889) and other relevant essays.
Lightman, Bernard. The Origins of Agnosticism. Balti-
more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. The best
modern study, stressing the positive aspect of Victorian
agnosticism.
Pyle, Andrew, ed. Agnosticism: Contemporary Reactions
to Spencer and Huxley. Bristol: Thoemmes Press,
1995. Valuable collection of essays by the agnostics
and their critics.
Spencer, Herbert. First Principles. London: Williams and
Norgate, 1862. The classic statement of ‘positive’ ag-
nosticism, with ‘the Unknowable’ coming to take the
place of God.
———. The Data of Ethics. London: Williams and Nor-
gate, 1879. The classic statement of evolutionary
ethics.
Stephen, Leslie. An Agnostic’s Apology and Other Essays.
London: Smith, Elder, 1893. Contains the famous es-
say, “An Agnostic’s Apology,” first published in The
Fortnightly Review in 1876.
———. The Science of Ethics. London: Smith, Elder,
1882. Reprinted Bristol: Thoemmes, 1991. Another
important statement of the evolutionary-naturalist
ethics favoured by the agnostics.
A. J. Pyle
agricultural ethics
Almost all persons have benefited from “the green
revolution,” from agricultural progress that has cre-
ated high-yield hybrids, fertilizers, pesticides, and
preservatives for our food. In the United States, ag-
riculture has been so successful that fewer than 4
percent of us are able to grow enough food both to
feed the other 96 percent and to export significant
surpluses.
Responses to “the green revolution,” to the luxury
of abundant, inexpensive food created by technolog-
ical and economic advances, however, have been
mixed. Nostalgic romantics and persons concerned
45
agricultural ethics
about health yearn for home-grown, chemical-free
food, while representatives of the agribusiness and
chemicals industries boast that their technical ad-
vances have helped reduce hunger and starvation.
The debate over agricultural ethics focuses on at
least six issues. These concern (1) agricultural
threats to public health and safety (e.g., pesticides);
(2) government RESPONSIBILITY for controlling ag-
ricultural resource depletion (e.g., loss of prime crop
land to developers); (3) agricultural contributions to
ecological disturbance (e.g., topsoil losses); (4) gov-
ernment responsibility for preserving the family,
rather than the corporate, farm (e.g., on the grounds
that it contributes to DEMOCRACY, self-reliance, and
environmental stewardship); (5) problems with fac-
tory farming and animal husbandry (e.g., subjecting
animals to unnecessary suffering); and (6) monop-
olistic control of food production by agribusiness in-
dustries (e.g., petrochemical industries’ thwarting
the development of safer biological means of pest
control). We shall discuss each of these issues in
order.
Agricultural Threats to Public Health
and Safety
Modern agriculture has increased the use of food
preservatives, fertilizers, and pesticides. Many phi-
losophers have questioned the ethical justifiability of
employing these chemicals. Claiming that use of ag-
ricultural toxins violates citizens’ rights to bodily
security, equal protection, and due process, philos-
ophers such as Alan GEWIRTH and Kristin Shrader-
Frechette use deontological arguments to show that
farmers are ethically wrong to employ chemicals that
cause cancer and genetic damage.
Representatives of the agriculture industry re-
spond, however, that use of chemical pesticides, fer-
tilizers, and preservatives lowers the price of food
and hence makes good nutrition more widely avail-
able. Pesticide promoters claim that, on a utilitarian
balance, agricultural chemicals create more benefit
than harm. Moreover, they point out that use of pes-
ticides and fertilizers is necessary because per capita
amounts of crop land are decreasing worldwide. The
only way to increase crop yields and decrease crop
acreage is with chemical assistance. But this raises
the issue of whether government ought to protect
valuable agricultural lands.
agricultural ethics
Ought Government to Prevent Agricultural
Resource Depletion?
Proponents of regulation to protect agricultural
land, like Lester Brown, argue that the United States
annually loses 3 million acres of prime crop land to
other uses. This is a loss, they claim, that will even-
tually interfere with our ability to feed ourselves.
They argue that, for the sake of the common good,
government ought to restrict PROPERTY rights to
crop land so as to protect agricultural acreage and
prevent resource depletion.
Opponents of using zoning, regulation, and tax-
ation to protect agricultural land claim that such
practices amount to a “taking” without just compen-
sation since they typically cause a reduction in the
market value of land and hence unjustly restrict
property rights. Opponents of protecting farmland
also say that agricultural zoning is exclusionary.
They claim that it violates the equal-protection and
due-process rights of low-income people who need
land for housing.
Sustainable Agriculture and Ecologically
Sound Farming
Farmland is not threatened, however, merely by
developers who want acreage for other purposes,
like housing. As Wendell Berry shows, it is also jeop-
ardized by ecologically unsound agricultural man-
agement. Brown estimates that the world annually
loses 23 billion tons of soil from crop lands in ex-
cess of new soil formation. Many agricultural tech-
niques encourage topsoil loss (e.g., failure to ter-
race, maximum-till practices, overgrazing). Some
moral philosophers, like William Aiken, argue for
a government duty to regulate this commons (soil)
in a way that will not bankrupt members of FUTURE
GENERATIONS.
Opponents of government regulation of agricul-
tural land claim that markets, not governments, are
better regulators of resources. They say that when
erosion and use of pesticides become so destructive
that farmers are hurt financially, they will change
their ecologically unsound practices. They also argue
that the countries with the most government control
of farming, e.g., the former Soviet Union, have the
worst record of agricultural abuse of the land. Hence
they claim that strengthening property rights to
land, not increasing government constraints on
46
those rights, is the best way to provide economically
and ecologically sustainable agriculture. Debates
among proponents of government-regulated, versus
private, agriculture also focus on (a) acceptable
levels of environmental degradation; (b) the cost-
benefit trade-off between ecological disturbance and
agricultural productivity; and (c) whether coercive,
versus incentive, regulatory programs are more ac-
ceptable from an ethical point of view.
The Ethical and Political Desirability of the
Family Farm
One proposed solution to the problem of agri-
cultural degradation is to provide government sup-
port for the family farm, on the grounds that owners
of small, private farms exercise more stewardship
over land resources than do hired workers on large
corporate farms. Proponents of family farms argue
that, in addition to conserving the soil, family farms
have higher yields per acre. They also provide a
strong foundation for self-reliance and for a Jeffer-
sonian notion of democracy based on economically
independent, and therefore politically free, farmers.
Opponents of government incentives for family
farming maintain that these farms are inefficient, be-
cause they do not have the advantage of economies
of scale. They also claim that a Jeffersonian agrarian
society is excessively idealistic. Belief in “antiquated
farming methods” is unrealistic, says Keith Camp-
bell, because chemically intensive, highly technolog-
ical, and automated agriculture is necessary if food
prices are to remain low enough to enable the poor
to have access to adequate food. Hence, on balance,
they claim that the benefits of corporate farming out-
weigh those of family farming.
Factory Farming and Animal Rights
One of the main components of corporate farm-
ing is an animal husbandry designed to maximize
milk, meat, or egg yield. In the name of economic
efficiency, factory farmers often keep animals in
darkness or cage them so closely that they cannot
move. They defend their procedures, as Campbell
and R. G. Frey do, by claiming that their efficiencies
are able to make meat available to virtually everyone
and at low prices. For them, factory farming pro-
duces the greatest good for the greatest number of
people. Other moral philosophers, like Hugh Leh-

man, argue that there are cases in which, even if
animals have RIGHTS, it is morally acceptable to kill
them for food or scientific experimentation.
Philosopher critics of factory farming fall into
two categories. Whether utility-oriented, like Peter
Singer, or rights-oriented, like Tom Regan, they ar-
gue that because animals feel pain, they deserve to
have their INTERESTS taken into account. Singer
claims that there is an ethical imperative to be a veg-
etarian because of the necessity to recognize the in-
terests of animals normally eaten as food. Other
philosophers do not go so far as promoting vegetar-
ianism, but they argue that causing animals any un-
necessary suffering is ethically indefensible.
Oligopoly and Agribusiness
For proponents of factory farming, however,
causing animal suffering is a small price to pay for
meeting human needs. Accepting the proposition
that humans are superior to other animals, they con-
clude that factory farming is not unethical in any
important sense. Indeed, agriculturalists like Camp-
bell claim that factory farming is ethical in that it
uses economies of scale to provide inexpensive meat
to a great many people. In other words, “big” agri-
culture, accounting for one-fourth of the gross na-
tional product in the United States by means of food
production, processing, and merchandising, is able
to democratize nutrition by making inexpensive pro-
tein widely available.
Not everyone agrees that “big” agriculture is good
agriculture, however. Just as it produces the abuses
of factory farming, big agriculture allegedly exem-
plifies other ethical and social problems typical of
any industry that has monopolistic control of the
economy in a given area. Robert van den Bosch ar-
gues, for example, that because agribusiness is so
powerful, it is able to subvert and manipulate even
attempted pesticide regulation done on behalf of the
COMMON GOOD. The result, he argues, is that ordi-
nary citizens, in practice, lose their equal-protection
and due-process rights, as well as their rights to con-
sent to agricultural risks affecting them. To the de-
gree that agriculture is agribusiness, accomplished
through large corporate farms that exercise monop-
olistic control over certain crops and oligopolistic
control over government, agricultural ethics deals
with some of the same issues as BUSINESS ETHICS.
47
agricultural ethics
See also: ANIMALS, TREATMENT OF; APPLIED ETHICS;
BIOETHICS; BUSINESS ETHICS; COMMON GOOD; CON-
SENT; CONSERVATION ETHICS; COOPERATIVE SUR-
PLUS; COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS; ECONOMIC ANALYSIS;
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS; EQUALITY; FUTURE GEN-
ERATIONS; GENETIC ENGINEERING; GOVERNMENT,
ETHICS IN; JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE; LAND ETHICS; LE-
GAL ETHICS; LIBERTARIANISM; LIBERTY, ECONOMIC;
NATURE AND ETHICS; PROPERTY; PUBLIC HEALTH
POLICY; PUBLIC POLICY; RISK; TECHNOLOGY; TECH-
NOLOGY AND NATURE.
Bibliography
Aiken, William. “Ethical Issues in Agriculture.” In Earth-
bound, edited by Tom Regan, 247–88. New York: Ran-
dom House, 1984. Excellent overview of issues.
Aiken, William, and Hugh LaFollette, eds. World Hunger
and Moral Obligation. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1977. Ethical obligations regarding hunger.
Berry, Wendell. The Unsettling of America. San Francisco:
Sierra Club, 1977. Argues for sustainable agriculture.
Blatz, Charles, ed. Ethics and Agriculture. Moscow, ID:
University of Idaho Press, 1991. Collected essays on
ethical issues in agriculture.
Brown, Lester, ed. State of the World 1985; . . . 1986. New
York: W. W. Norton, 1985; 1986. See his articles: “Re-
ducing Hunger,” pp. 53–73 of the 1985 volume (sur-
veys agricultural reforms needed to reduce hunger);
and “Conserving Soils,” pp. 23–41 of the 1986 volume
(surveys agricultural reforms to reduce topsoil losses).
Burkhardt, Jeffrey. “Agribusiness Ethics.” Journal of Busi-
ness Ethics 5 (1986): 333–45. Reviews the major busi-
ness ethics issues applicable to agriculture.
Busch, Lawrence, and William Lacy, eds. The Agricultural
Scientific Enterprise. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1986. Is
agricultural research ethically biased?
Campbell, Keith. Food for the Future. Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1979. Defends progressive, large-
scale, high-technology, chemical-intensive agriculture.
Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Cambridge, MA: Riverside,
1962. Classic analysis of the hazards of pesticide use.
Frey, R. G. Rights, Killing, and Suffering. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1983. Ethical defense of meat eating and
animal husbandry.
Gewirth, Alan. “Human Rights and the Prevention of Can-
cer.” American Philosophical Quarterly 17 (1980):
117–26.
Hurnik, J., and Hugh Lehman. “Ethics and Farm Animal
Welfare.” Journal of Agricultural Ethics 1, no. 4
(1988): 305–18. Ethical obligations in animal hus-
bandry.
Kunkel, H. “Agricultural Ethics.” Agriculture and Human
Values 1 (1984): 20–23. Survey of issues in agricul-
tural ethics.
agricultural ethics
Lehman, Hugh. “On the Moral Acceptability of Killing
Animals.” Journal of Agricultural Ethics 1, no. 2
(1988): 155–62. Analysis of situations in which it is
ethically defensible to kill animals.
Regan, Tom, and Peter Singer, eds. Animal Rights and
Human Obligations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1976. Classic anthology on ethical arguments re-
garding animal treatment and factory farming.
Shrader-Frechette, Kristin. “Agriculture, Ethics, and Re-
strictions on Property Rights.” Journal of Agricultural
Ethics 1, no. 1 (1988): 21–40. Arguments for restrict-
ing property rights in order to promote the family farm,
ensure equal opportunity, and discourage agribusiness
monopolies.
———. Environmental Ethics. Second edition. Pacific
Grove, CA: Boxwood, 1991. “Pesticide Toxicity: An
Ethical Perspective” argues that use of broad-spectrum
pesticides is ethically indefensible.
Steiner, Frederick, and John E. Theilacker, eds. Protecting
Farmlands. Westport, CT: AVI, 1984. Discussion of ar-
guments for protecting farmland.
Thompson, Paul. “Ethics in Agriculture Research.” Jour-
nal of Agricultural Ethics 1, no. 1 (1988): 11–20. Sur-
vey and an analysis of key ethical issues in agricultural
research.
van den Bosch, Robert. The Pesticide Conspiracy. New
York: Doubleday, 1978. Reprinted, Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1989.
Kristin Shrader-Frechette
akrasia
See weakness of will.
al-Fārābı̄
See Fārābı̄, al-.
alienation
The English term “alienation,” like its French and
German counterparts, has long had a number of
uses. Prior to HEGEL (1770–1831), however, these
terms had no significant employment in philosophy.
Hegel made important use of the concept of alien-
ation (Entfremdung), in ways that were seized upon
and adapted by Karl MARX (1818–1883); but little
notice was taken of any of this until Marx’s early
writings were published and began to attract atten-
tion in the 1930s.
This led both to the rediscovery of Hegel’s dis-
48
cussion and to a wide variety of further adaptations
and applications of the notion, not only within
Marxist circles but also in existential philosophy and
theology, in SOCIOLOGY and social psychology, and
in critiques of modern life and society. Consequently,
while one may speak of “the phenomenon of alien-
ation” in Hegel, and of “the alienation syndrome” in
Marx, the term today no more designates anything
specific than does the term “separation,” with which
it is now roughly synonymous.
Alienation in Hegel and Marx
Hegel introduced the notions of alienation and
self-alienation in the context of his scheme of the
self-actualizing development of Geist (spirit). This
process, as he conceived of it, involves a repeated
three-stage pattern in which some form of objectiv-
ity is established, and with it an associated form of
consciousness that is initially at one with it. This
gives way to a stage in which consciousness comes
to experience that objectivity as an alien reality, with
which it ceases to identify. The third stage involves
the overcoming of this separation, as consciousness
discovers the objectivity to be an expression (or ob-
jectification and realization) of its own nature, and
so reidentifies itself with it. Hegel characterized the
second-stage withdrawal or absence of identification
in terms of alienation. He further took it to have the
significance of self-alienation, by which he meant
both that, in the absence of such identification,
something with which one’s self is bound up has
become alien to one, and that an essential element
of one’s full self-realization as Geist is thus lacking.
The most salient instance of such alienation and self-
alienation in Hegel is that associated with the ex-
perience of the “substance” of one’s society as an
alien reality.
Inspired in part by Ludwig FEUERBACH (1804–
1872) and his critique of Hegel, Marx appropriated
these Hegelian notions and gave them a different
application and explication. For Marx, “alienation”
retained its basic Hegelian meaning and use in con-
nection with our relation to our self-objectifying and
self-developing activity. However, he made its focus
the concrete practical activity of productive labor,
and took the inability to identify with one’s labor
and the products of one’s labor (under the condi-
tions prevailing in capitalist society) to be the fun-
damental forms of alienation. While Marx also ex-

tended the application of the notion to encompass
several associated forms of separation of human be-
ings from each other, he curiously made no use of it
(as Hegel and many others have) in connection with
our relation to social and cultural formations. He
did, however, follow Hegel in employing the notion
of “self-alienation” to refer to human existence that
falls short of full human self-realization, as he
(rather differently from Hegel) understood it, and
likewise considered such self-alienation to be linked
to the specific forms of alienation he discusses.
Subsequent Uses of “Alienation”
The ways in which these notions have subse-
quently been construed and applied are legion.
While some of the phenomena specified may be re-
lated to each other, all of them cannot possibly be
supposed to be connected in any significant way. In-
terpersonal relationships admit of various sorts of
separations to which the term has been applied, as
do one’s relations to God, nature, one’s own prod-
ucts, the products of others, social structures, po-
litical INSTITUTIONS, cultural formations, prevailing
NORMS and values, events one does not comprehend,
processes one does not control, and one’s own labor,
actions, and body. Such “forms” of alienation have
in common only that they may be characterized as
separations of some sort, in contrast to some prior,
possible, or merely conceivable forms of unity.
Generally speaking, forms or conceptions of
alienation pertain to relations in which one may
stand to something other than oneself, while self-
alienation has to do with one’s relation to one’s own
(true) self or nature. In some conceptions of alien-
ation, the basic idea is that of the experience of the
radical otherness of something, in contrast to a feel-
ing of identification or unity with it. In others, the
basic idea is that of a condition of the absence of
unity with these things, regardless of how (if at all)
one regards or experiences them. The notion of self-
alienation, conceived in terms of a disparity between
one’s actual condition and one’s true (or truly hu-
man) nature, is a special case of this sort.
Normative-Evaluative Import
The idea of alienation owes much of its contem-
porary appeal to the normative-evaluative force it is
commonly understood to convey. It is often sup-
49
alienation
posed to signify not merely that a separation of some
sort has come to obtain, but moreover that some-
thing is wrong with the separation, which therefore
should be overcome if it can be, and is to be la-
mented if it cannot. The most interesting of such
conceptions of alienation designate certain relations
of separation in which one may stand to aspects of
one’s society (social, cultural, and political alien-
ation), the world of nature and things (world alien-
ation), God (religious alienation), other people (in-
terpersonal alienation), one’s labor and products
(WORK alienation), and one’s “self” or true nature
(self-alienation).
Not all such separations, however, are intrinsi-
cally and indisputably undesirable. Indeed, in some
contexts certain of them may actually have positive
rather than negative significance. If it is possible for
individuals to preserve or achieve relations of iden-
tification, harmony, community, integration or ac-
cordance with something they confront, produce,
do, or are, and if such relations do not obtain, the
contrasting separations may be described in terms
of “alienation.” Further argument is needed, how-
ever, to determine whether and why any of these re-
lations are objectionable. The fact that such sepa-
rations may be termed forms of alienation by itself
neither establishes that something is wrong with
them, nor indicates what it is that is wrong with
them, nor implies anything about what would be
preferable to them. The burden of doing so falls on
the interpretive-evaluative theory in the context of
which the notion is thus employed.
See also: ATHEISM; AUTHENTICITY; CAMUS; COMMU-
NITARIANISM; CRITICAL THEORY; CULTURAL STUDIES;
EXISTENTIAL ETHICS;FEUERBACH; HEGEL; HEIDEG-
GER; INTEGRITY; INTERESTS;
MARX; MARXISM;
NEEDS; PERSON, CONCEPT OF; PERSONAL RELATION-
SHIPS; POSTMODERNISM; PRAXIS; SARTRE; SELF-
KNOWLEDGE; SOCIOLOGY; WORK.
Bibliography
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. Translated by Justin
O’Brien. New York: Vintage, 1959 [1942]. A classic of
the alienation literature that does not use the word, by
the author of The Stranger.
Feuer, Lewis. “What Is Alienation? The Career of a Con-
cept.” New Politics 1, no. 3 (1962): 116–34. A critique
and lament.
Feuerbach, Ludwig. Principles of the Philosophy of the
Future. Translated by Manfred H. Vogel. Indianapolis,
alienation
IN: Hackett, 1986. Criticism of Hegel, on alienation
and more generally.
Fromm, Erich. Escape from Freedom. New York: Avon,
1941. Along with his The Sane Society (London: Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul, 1955), the book that popular-
ized the concept of alienation.
Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by
A. V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977 [1807].
Especially chapter 6B. Where it all began.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John
Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper
and Row, 1962 [1927]. See especially sections 38, 51,
and 68. The book that launched existential philosophy,
featuring alienation in connection with inauthenticity.
Josephson, Eric, and Mary Josephson, eds. Man Alone:
Alienation in Modern Society. New York: Dell, 1962.
Anthology of alienation literature.
Keniston, Kenneth. The Uncommitted: Alienated Youth in
American Society. New York: Harcourt, Brace and
World, 1965. Why Johnny drops out.
Marx, Karl. “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of
1844.” In The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Robert
Tucker. 2d edition, 66–125. New York: W. W. Norton,
1978. After Hegel, the locus classicus. Also see other
early writings of Marx in this volume.
Petrovic, Gajo. Marx in the Mid-Twentieth Century. Gar-
den City, NY: Doubleday, 1967. Especially part 2. A
Marxist-humanist’s interpretation. Alienation as
dehumanization.
Schacht, Richard. Alienation. Garden City, NY: Double-
day, 1970. A critical analysis of the literature from He-
gel onward.
———. The Future of Alienation. Urbana and Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 1994. A reconsideration of
these central themes.
Seeman, Melvin. “On the Meaning of Alienation.” Amer-
ican Sociological Review 24, no. 6 (1959): 783–91. A
useful survey of sociological uses.
Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology, vol. II. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1957. Self-alienation in exis-
tentialist theology.
Richard Schacht
altruism
In some form altruism has been a perennial concern
of moral philosophy, and more recently of PSYCHOL-
OGY, economics, SOCIOLOGY, and biology as well. Is
altruism possible, and if it is, is it a good or a bad
thing, are questions familiar from the time of PLATO
(c. 430–347 B.C.E.). Yet the assessment of altruism
depends on its definition; and in this area much con-
fusion still remains.
50
Definition
Some social psychologists tend to define altruism
in terms of action intentionally aimed at helping oth-
ers. But since such action could be engaged in for
purely self-interested reasons, philosophers have
wanted to define altruism as involving in addition
some other-directed motivation—a regard for the
well-being of others for its own sake. Even so, con-
fusion remains about the definition of altruism. Some
use it implicitly or explicitly to refer to any such re-
gard for others; some restrict it to a placing of the
INTERESTS of others ahead of those of oneself. The
latter seems to correspond more to ordinary usage,
while the former has become the definition of choice
for most philosophers and many psychologists.
A further definitional issue concerns unconscious
motivation. Anna Freud (1895–1982) describes a
patient—a governess—who seems to care genuinely
and selflessly for her friends and the children in her
charge; but Freud diagnoses her as being animated
on an unconscious level by a vicarious living out of
long-suppressed self-centered desires for affection,
romance, and success. Standard philosophic defini-
tions of altruism would seem unproblematically to
count this as altruism, since there does seem to be
some conscious level on which Freud’s patient cares
for others and acts on their behalf. Nevertheless, one
might at least provisionally want to distinguish dif-
ferent levels of altruism, saying that someone can be
consciously altruistic but unconsciously egoistic.
One might also take a step further to inquire
whether the governess’s concern manifests a genu-
ine understanding of the other person, or whether,
by contrast, she seems to be attributing to her
friends and the children desires and NEEDS they do
not have, desires and needs which the governess her-
self has but cannot acknowledge. The latter situation
might make us more hesitant to say flatly that the
woman is altruistic, on any level, at least without
some of the qualifications discussed below. In any
case, these issues of unconscious motivation, largely
ignored by philosophers, cannot be avoided in a dis-
cussion of altruism.
This motivational question is raised also by the
contribution of sociobiology to an understanding of
altruism. Sociobiology sees the risk-taking or self-
sacrificing behavior of various animal and even in-
sect species—for example, birds giving warning

cries at the appearance of a predator, and in doing
so risking revealing their own location—as contrib-
uting to the survivability of that species. Thus socio-
biologists see what they call “altruism” as having
evolutionary significance for natural selection. Some
adherents of this perspective, most notably E. O.
Wilson and Richard Dawkins, draw the inference
that the behavior in question is not in fact altruistic
since it is simply the species’ gene pool’s—or even
the individual agent’s genes’—way of perpetuating
itself. As with unconscious motivation, deep prob-
lems arise here concerning the level of analysis on
which altruism is being defined. But critics, such as
Mary Midgley, point out that showing the evolution-
ary origins of human altruistic concern in animals
hardly shows it not actually to be altruism.
Whether altruism really exists, or whether all
seemingly altruistic acts are really motivated by self-
interest, has been a matter of great controversy
within the history of moral philosophy. Bishop Jo-
seph BUTLER (1692–1752) demonstrated to the sat-
isfaction of many that concern for the well-being of
particular other persons cannot be assimilated to
concern for one’s own well-being. But the contro-
versy continues, and the assumption that all human
motivation is egoistic still animates important
strands within psychoanalytic and empirical psy-
chology, as well as moral philosophy.
Value of Altruism
Some commentators, such as Arthur SCHOPEN-
HAUER (1788–1860), regard altruism as the corner-
stone of ethics; and some Christian ethical thought,
such as that elaborated by Søren KIERKEGAARD
(1813–1855) in Works of Love, lends support to
this position. Yet the ethical views of Plato and AR-
ISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) entirely lack a concept of
altruism, and others see altruism as only one among
many equally important virtues. Friedrich NIE-
TZSCHE (1844–1900) even condemned altruism,
seeing it as grounded in RESENTMENT and in escape
from the self and from those higher values (such as
COURAGE and spiritual strength) which only the self
can create.
Altruism and Self-Negation
Some of these differences on the centrality of al-
truism to ethics are the product of confusions in the
51
altruism
definition of altruism, as mentioned earlier. If altru-
ism is defined as requiring suppression, negation, or
belittling of the self—as involved in valuing of the
other above the self—it is more open to Nietzsche’s
criticisms than if it merely means concern for others.
SCHELER (1874–1928), while affirming Nietzsche’s
view that concern for others can be a product of self-
disvalue and self-escape, pointed out that a concern
for others can also be rooted in a strong and confi-
dent self, one which can attend to the plight of oth-
ers and react with fellow feeling or compassion pre-
cisely because it is able to take care of its own needs
without great self-absorption and continual bolster-
ing of its sense of self-worth.
Many philosophers have understood human mo-
tivation in such a way that any altruistic action is
always at the expense of the self; the thought is that
in every situation one must choose between the good
of others or of oneself (except when they fortunately
coincide). This mistaken view lends support to the
definition of altruism as always involving self-
negation, and thereby leaves it open to Nietzsche’s
criticisms. Butler preceded Scheler in seeing that al-
truistic action need entail no loss to the self, and the
development of depth psychology in the twentieth
century has supported the view that a healthy atten-
tion to self and a healthy concern for others, far from
being at odds, often tend to reinforce one another.
This is not to deny that altruism can involve great
personal RISK or sacrifice, as seen, for example,
among Righteous Gentiles in the Holocaust (non-
Jewish rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe), studied in
depth by Samuel and Pearl Oliner. Nevertheless,
even in many of these cases it is psychic health and
SELF-ESTEEM which enable these individuals to en-
gage in such risk.
Yet questions about the value of altruism still re-
main. Certainly one basis on which to assess altru-
ism as good or bad (whether this is strictly a moral
basis is unclear) has to do with whether the altruism
is healthy for the agent herself. Following on Nie-
tzsche’s, Scheler’s, and Anna Freud’s insight, one
may say that if the agent’s altruism (toward some
individual, or even in general) helps maintain an un-
healthy (e.g., dependent, un-self-knowing) structure
of CHARACTER or mode of life, then even if it is per-
fectly genuine the altruism is unhealthy and in that
respect bad.
altruism
Altruism and the Good of the Other
A second basis has to do with the effect of the
altruism on the good of the other person. If altruism
is defined solely in terms of a desire for another’s
good, there is no guarantee that the good of the
other is actually served by the altruism. Perhaps the
agent has no understanding of the other’s good, and
his action subverts that good rather than furthering
it. Iris MURDOCH rightly notes that understanding a
(specific) other person is often a difficult task and a
morally significant one. Perhaps one could build in
such an understanding as part of the definition of
altruism. For it could be argued that if the agent is
truly concerned with the other’s good, then she must
be concerned to understand that good; if she does
not, this is evidence that she is not really concerned,
and hence not truly altruistic.
Yet in many cases we acknowledge altruistic con-
cern as itself genuine and authentic even when the
agent shows little understanding of the other. If we
adhere to a definition of altruism which makes it
distinct from understanding of the other, then we
can at least say that altruism combined with under-
standing is more clearly a good than mere altruism
per se. A seemingly more systematic problem with
altruism, related to the issue of the good of the other
(and often associated particularly with CHARITY), is
that while one can genuinely care about the other
and succeed in meeting that person’s need, some-
times it can be better not to help but to allow the
person to meet his or her own need. Too much help
can cause or reinforce a sense of dependency, which
undermines the other’s capacities for self-help and
autonomous need satisfaction. Nevertheless, this
worry can be overstated, as, for example, SIDGWICK
(1838–1900) does in affirming that it is better that
each adult have the general expectation that he him-
self rather than others will meet his needs. As KANT
(1724–1804) said, we are dependent beings and
need to rely on one another for all sorts of things;
needing to receive from others is not as a general
rule something to seek to avoid.
Still, meeting an individual’s needs at the expense
of her autonomy could turn out to be on the whole
a bad rather than a good thing for her; and, in some
situations, letting others remain in distress or sink
into a personal morass can be the best thing to do
for them. Regard for the autonomy of others can
perhaps be included as part of the overall good for
52
which an agent can have altruistic concern, though
the agent may recognize this need for autonomy
while having no genuine (altruistic) concern for the
other person at all. Thus we need not accept ordi-
nary language’s seeming association (present in
much philosophical usage as well) of altruism with
active intervention in another person’s situation. We
can rather accept Milton Mayeroff’s and Nel Nod-
dings’s concept of an active enabling—a giving to
the other of space to find her own way to knowing
and meeting her own needs—as a way of picturing
an altruism which takes seriously the other’s auton-
omy as part of her overall good.
Types of Altruism
Even without the implication of self-sacrifice, and
with autonomy and the knowledge of others built
into the definition of altruism itself, the notion of
altruism as concern for others is not a unified phe-
nomenon but encompasses distinct phenomena,
which might be differently evaluated. The definition,
for example, would seem to include LOVE for one’s
relations (either kin or friends), since presumably
one cares for them for their own sakes. But this is a
very different phenomenon from being concerned
about a stranger. One difference is that one’s own
specific good is bound up with one’s relations in a
way it is not with strangers; so acting on one’s
friend’s behalf, out of concern, is inevitably bound
up with the good of that relationship to oneself (even
if not done with the goal of sustaining that good).
For this reason some are reluctant to call such action
“altruistic” at all, insofar as they take altruism en-
tirely to exclude intrinsic connection to a good to
the self.
Consider also cooperation, construing it here as
meaning more than merely adhering to rules of mu-
tual self-protection and self-interest. Let us assume
it to include a valuing of the cooperative endeavor
for its own sake and to include TRUST in the other
person or persons involved in the endeavor. One im-
plication of this trust is that one restrains the pursuit
of one’s own interest out of regard for that of the
other with whom one is cooperating. But this is far
from the active concern for the other’s good which
is more generally associated with the concept of al-
truism; in fact, trust and cooperation can be seen as
having their own specific kind of value precisely be-
cause they do not require active concern for the good

of others. They require only a limited regard, which
is internal to and bounded by the cooperative en-
deavor itself, while that endeavor as a whole (though
not each individual act within it) is seen as a good
to the individual participant. Yet, as in the analogous
case of FRIENDSHIP mentioned above, this motiva-
tion is covered by the general definition of altruism
as including action taken out of regard for another’s
good.
Thus while concern for strangers, concern for
friends, and cooperative activity all fall within the
general rubric of altruism, they are significantly dis-
tinct psychic and moral phenomena.
Is Altruism Rational?
A further issue also related to the value of altru-
ism—one which has particularly engaged the atten-
tion of Anglo-American philosophers in the last sev-
eral decades—is whether altruism is rational, that
is, whether the good of another itself supplies a rea-
son for an agent to further that good. Some affirm
the traditional “ethical egoist” position that ration-
ality involves taking only one’s own interests as REA-
SONS FOR ACTION (though one may happen to take
such an interest in another person’s interests).
Others, such as Thomas Nagel, affirm the ration-
ality of altruism on the grounds that reason requires
us to recognize that we are only one person among
others, and that this recognition must be reflected in
‘agent-neutral’ reasons for action. It is not entirely
clear whether this view rationally requires altruism,
or only declares it (contrary to some versions of eth-
ical EGOISM) rationally intelligible. This ambiguity in
turn yields an ambiguity in the view’s implications
for the moral status—and more generally the moral
value—of altruism.
In either case, little attention has been given to
the connection between this rational altruism and
altruism as a psychological phenomenon. For ex-
ample, does rational altruism supply its own moti-
vational force, and how motivationally efficacious is
that force? Nor has rational altruism been placed
within the wider context of value within which al-
truism as a whole must be evaluated.
See also: AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; BENEVO-
LENCE; BIOETHICS; BIOLOGICAL THEORY; BUTLER;
CARE; CHARITY; COOPERATION, CONFLICT AND CO-
ORDINATION; EGOISM; EVOLUTION; FAMILY; FRIEND-
53
altruism
SHIP; INTERESTS; MOTIVES; NEEDS; PERSONAL RE-
LATIONSHIPS; PSYCHOLOGY; RATIONALITY VS.
REASONABLENESS; REASONS FOR ACTION; RECIPROC-
ITY; RISK; SCHOPENHAUER; SELF AND SOCIAL SELF;
SELF-ESTEEM; SELF-KNOWLEDGE; SOCIAL PSYCHOL-
OGY; SOCIOLOGY; SYMPATHY.
Bibliography
Blum, Lawrence. Friendship, Altruism, and Morality. Lon-
don: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980. Discussion of
nature of altruism as emotion-based phenomenon, and
its importance for morality.
Butler, Joseph. Five Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel.
Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983 [1726]. Classic defense of
possibility of altruism against Hobbes’s version of psy-
chological egoism.
Freud, Anna. “A Form of Altruism.” Chapter 10 in her
The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. Rev. ed. New
York: International Universities Press, 1966 [1936].
Important discussion in psychoanalytic tradition.
Kierkegaard, Søren. Works of Love. Translated by Howard
and Edna Hong. New York: Harper and Row, 1962
[1847]. Important disquisition on nature of Christian
love.
Mayeroff, Milton. On Caring. New York: Harper and Row,
1971. Discussion of connection between altruism and
understanding of the other person’s good.
Midgley, Mary. Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Na-
ture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978. Good
discussion of implications of sociobiology, and biology
more generally, for understanding of altruism.
Monroe, Kristen Renwick. The Heart of Altruism: Percep-
tion of a Common Humanity. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1996. General theory of altruism and
critique of self-interest models of behavior based on
study of Holocaust rescuers.
Nagel, Thomas. The Possibility of Altruism. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1970. Argues that altruism is rational.
Oliner, Samuel P., and Pearl M. Oliner. The Altruistic Per-
sonality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe. New York:
The Free Press, 1988. Important empirical-theoretical
study of altruism, especially in extreme situations.
Scheler, Max. The Nature of Sympathy. Translated by Pe-
ter Heath. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954
[1913]. Important discussion of relation of altruism to
self-worth and self-negation.
Schopenhauer, Arthur. On the Basis of Morality. Trans-
lated by E. F. J. Payne. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,
1965 [1842]. Argues that altruism in the form of com-
passion is the basis of morality.
Thomas, Lawrence. Living Morally: A Psychology of
Moral Character. Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1989. A theory of moral character built around
altruism—its biological substratum, what it sustains
altruism
intrapersonally and socially, and how it is bound up
with individual flourishing.
Williams, Bernard. “Egoism and Altruism.” In his Prob-
lems of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1973.
Lawrence Blum
American moral philosophy
National designations can function only as short-
hand for characteristics that are pervasive but nei-
ther universal nor unique. We may speak of German
idealism and French positivism so long as we re-
member that there are German positivists and
French idealists, and that Germans who lose their
idealism do not forfeit their national identity.
This is the only sensible spirit in which we can
discuss American moral philosophy. For every major
position in ethics is well represented in American
thought, and none can be dignified as uniquely ex-
pressive of the American psyche. Yet certain themes
and approaches appear prevalent in the works of
major thinkers, and we find surprising similarities in
ethics among philosophers whose positions in other
fields lead us to expect differences.
A general characterization of American moral
philosophy is most easily developed by considering
the views of such major thinkers of the classical pe-
riod as William JAMES (1842–1910), John DEWEY
(1859–1952), and George SANTAYANA (1863–
1952). When Ralph Waldo EMERSON (1803–1882)
called on American scholars to develop and cele-
brate “an original relation” to the world, he set ex-
perience as the standard of philosophical thought
and gave voice to the significance of immediacy.
He and such other powerful representatives of the
American spirit as Walt Whitman desired to over-
come what they believed were the artificial dichot-
omies of their European forebears. They refused to
acknowledge an ultimate difference between the in-
terests of individuals and those of their communi-
ties. They rejected a sharp distinction between hu-
mans and the natural world. They embraced a view
of human nature that depicted mind, will, emotions,
and spirit as continuous with the body.
These articles of faith made a profound impres-
sion on the great philosophers who flourished be-
tween 1880 and 1950. Their moral views focused
on the good as it is derived from DESIRE and need,
54
and on individuals who can attain fulfillment only in
community. They stressed the significance of dem-
ocratic processes, affirmed the possibility of moral
progress, and celebrated the multiplicity of values
that coexist in a pluralist society.
William James’s “The Moral Philosopher and the
Moral Life” (1891) is a classical statement of plu-
ralist DEMOCRACY in the world of moral values. He
insists that nothing can be good without some con-
scious being demanding or desiring it. All such de-
mands are legitimate, all must be considered, and all
impose obligations on everyone who can help. In the
final analysis, of course, some claims may have to
remain unmet, but only because they get in the way
of attaining greater satisfactions.
James adopted from C. S. PEIRCE (1839–1914)
the idea of an open future that invites experimen-
tation. He laments “a certain blindness” in human
beings that prevents them from appreciating the
commitments and enjoyments of others. He believes
that we cannot determine what is truly good “until
the last man has had his say.” In the meantime, how-
ever, we can improve life by channeling human ag-
gressive energies into “moral equivalents” to war.
The 1910 essay introducing this idea served as an
inspiration for founding the Peace Corps (estab-
lished 1961). James’s is a morality of caring whose
aim is to contribute to the maximization of valuable
experiences.
Josiah ROYCE (1855–1916), though an idealist,
is no less experimental and empirical in ethics than
his Harvard colleague James. His eloquent book,
The Philosophy of Loyalty, depicts individuals as ca-
pable of achieving fulfillment only by wholehearted
devotion to their chosen causes. The cause must
reach beyond the individual and encompass the
community, but it always remains a matter of revok-
able choice open to improvement through consci-
entious experimentation.
Loyalty to LOYALTY, Royce thinks, is the highest
principle of morality and captures the truth of both
the GOLDEN RULE and KANT’s (1724–1804) cate-
gorical imperative. It amounts to the tolerant and
democratic value of choosing only those causes that
enable others to pursue their own. Royce did not
draw a sharp line between the consequentialist bene-
fits that flow from energetic pursuit of worthy goals
and the soul-making value of persons attaining vir-
tue through resolve and sacrifice.
A disagreement between James and Royce sheds

interesting light on a certain ambivalence in the
American psyche. An unfailing advocate of the Prot-
estant ethic, Royce believes that we can never do
enough to meet our obligations. “Woe unto them
that are at ease in Zion,” he thunders, calling for the
greatest exertions in pursuit of the right and the
good.
James, by contrast, argues for the legitimacy of
“moral holidays,” suggesting that we must allow
ourselves the luxury of taking care of our own affairs
or of occasionally enjoying a break from doing good.
Though by no means self-indulgent, James’s attitude
affirms the virtue of respite from the cares of the
world. But, revealingly, even James believes that
such moral holidays must support our “strenuous
mood.” They ought not to be more than breaks in
the necessary activities of helping others and devel-
oping ourselves.
Santayana and Dewey present a similarly inter-
esting contrast. Both view the good as connected to
the natures of those who seek it, but Santayana
thinks that such natures can be understood by ref-
erence to individuals alone. So the good is whatever
truly satisfies the cravings of the private soul, leaving
the social maximization of satisfactions as an op-
tional community goal. His stress on the insular in-
dividual brings Santayana close to being an Ameri-
can existentialist, though his appreciation of a
disinterested spectatorial stance points to a connec-
tion with SCHOPENHAUER’s (1788–1860) aesthetic
transcendence and to Stoic thought.
For Dewey, by contrast, individuals cannot be un-
derstood apart from their social context. Borrowing
from Aristotle, he maintains that morality must be
built on a platform of habits that render life in a
community rich and satisfying. The only reliable
means of constructing such habits is education de-
signed to enhance intelligence. The function of in-
telligence is to assess the conditions and conse-
quences of our actions, so that we may attain our
ends more effectively or reconstruct our desires to
accord with what is possible.
Both means and ends are, therefore, open to ra-
tional examination. We assess means by reference to
their tendency to conduct us to our ends, and ends
in relation to other objectives whose attainment they
advance or impede. Resisting an absolute distinction
between means and ends, Dewey calls attention to
those remarkable times in life when every experience
is both useful and delightful.
55
American moral philosophy
This union of the “instrumental” and the “con-
summatory” constitutes moments of human control
and satisfaction that make existence glow. Dewey’s
ultimate ideal of growth must be understood as the
concurrent expansion of means and ends by which
human satisfactions become more widely shared,
more diversified, and more secure.
Although Dewey’s position appears similar to
UTILITARIANISM, he is anxious to distance himself
from that view. He argues that the utilitarian tradi-
tion is burdened with a monistic conception of the
good, a simplistic idea of motivation, and too sharp
a distinction between means and ends. He main-
tains, instead, that the good is constructed in the
process of converting the satisfying into the
satisfactory.
Satisfaction is a mere fact of nature. It becomes
normative when we direct human effort to sustain-
ing it and find that it continues to satisfy over time
in a broad social context of experience. The future,
the community, and the critical balancing of values
become, in this way, inseparably involved in the
good life of any individual. DESIRE, intelligent effort,
control over consequences, and sustained fulfillment
are thus the socially conditioned elements that,
properly related, constitute the good.
Though lacking elaborate technical details,
Dewey’s moral thought presents a fully worked out
naturalistic ethics. He has little sympathy for
RIGHTS, but his commitment to democratic EQUAL-
ITY makes him take the demands of justice seriously.
His view is a celebration of social intelligence and
cooperation as they lead to the gradual improvement
of human life. Although critical of the dehumanizing
aspects of industrial life, Dewey is in full agreement
with the energetic optimism of the American spirit.
He thinks our efforts can move us in the direction
of what Santayana calls “a life of reason” by estab-
lishing salutary habits, harmonizing desires, and in-
creasing the satisfactions of as many persons as
possible.
American moral philosophy has too many varie-
ties to be reduced to a single type. Yet Dewey’s
thought comes near to serving as its paradigm. R. B.
PERRY’s (1876–1957) general theory of value, C. I.
LEWIS’ (1883–1964) work in ethics, and many cur-
rent versions of American naturalism reflect
Dewey’s influence or display striking similarities to
his views. Even John RAWLS shares his love of LIB-
ERTY and concern for the disadvantaged, though
American moral philosophy
Dewey would have profound misgivings about the
individualistic foundations of Rawls’s system and
about the role rights and intuitions play in his
thought.
Much that goes by the name of “neo-pragma-
tism,” however, appears to have lost contact with the
vital impulse to improve the human condition. Rich-
ard Rorty’s solidarity is anemic by comparison with
James’s stress on enriching life and Dewey’s efforts
at public critique and reform. The true heirs of the
American tradition of moral philosophy are think-
ers, such as John McDermott, who continue to ex-
plore the crisis points of life in industrial society and
philosophers who bring the insights of PRAGMATISM
to bear on environmental problems and difficult is-
sues in health care.
See also: ADLER; BRANDT; DEWEY; DWORKIN; ED-
WARDS; EMERSON; FRANKENA; FULLER; GERT; GE-
WIRTH; JAMES; JEFFERSON; KING; LEOPOLD; LEWIS;
MACINTYRE; MEAD; MURPHY; NOZICK; PAINE;
PEIRCE; PERRY; RAND; RAWLS; ROYCE; SANTAYANA;
SINGER; STEVENSON; TAYLOR; THOMSON; THO-
REAU; TUFTS; WALZER. Also see: BIOETHICS; COM-
MUNITARIANISM; DEMOCRACY; ENVIRONMENTAL
ETHICS; EQUALITY; EXISTENTIAL ETHICS; GOLDEN
RULE; INDIVIDUALISM; INTUITIONISM; LIBERTY; LOY-
ALTY; MORAL PLURALISM; MULTICULTURALISM; NAT-
URALISM; NEO-STOICISM; PRAGMATISM.
Bibliography
Dewey, John. The Middle Works of John Dewey. See De-
mocracy and Education, vol. 8, and Human Nature
and Conduct, vol. 14. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1976.
———. The Later Works of John Dewey. See Experience
and Nature, vol. 1, and The Quest for Certainty, vol.
4. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press,
1988.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The American Scholar.” In his
Essays, First and Second Series. Franklin Center, PA:
Franklin Library, 1981 [1837].
Gouinlock, James. Rediscovering the Moral Life. Buffalo,
NY: Prometheus Books, 1993.
James, William. “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral
Life,” “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings,” and
“The Moral Equivalent of War.” In The Writings of Wil-
liam James, edited by John J. McDermott. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1977 [1891; 1899; 1910].
Lewis, C. I. The Ground and Nature of the Right. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1955.
56
———. Values and Imperatives. Edited by John Lange.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1969.
McDermott, John. The Culture of Experience. New York:
New York University Press, 1976.
———. Streams of Experience. Amherst, MA: University
of Massachusetts Press, 1986.
McGee, Glenn. Pragmatic Bioethics. Nashville, TN: Van-
derbilt University Press, 1999.
Perry, Ralph B. General Theory of Value. New York: Long-
mans Green, 1926.
Royce, Josiah. The Philosophy of Loyalty. Nashville, TN:
Vanderbilt University Press, 1997.
———. The World and the Individual. Gloucester: Peter
Smith, 1976.
Santayana, George. Reason in Common Sense. New York:
Dover, 1980.
———. Winds of Doctrine. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons,
1926.
John Lachs
amnesty and pardon
Amnesty and pardon are official acts of clemency
that exempt a person from some or all of the punitive
consequences of a criminal conviction. Granting
amnesty or pardon ensures that the person to whom
it is given will not suffer all the PUNISHMENT the law
inflicts for the crime charged.
Although the distinction between amnesty and
pardon can be difficult to draw in practice, amnesty
has been defined as an act of oblivion, by which an
offender is granted immunity to prosecution. Usu-
ally granted before a trial takes place and often be-
fore offenders have been charged with specific
crimes, amnesties are usually granted to groups of
people, often unnamed members of a class defined
by a particular, often political, offense. However,
amnesty can also be granted to individuals, usually
as a step toward reconciliation after a war or politi-
cal upheaval.
Like amnesty, the pardon can take many forms.
Pardons can be full or partial, absolute or condi-
tional. They can be individual or general—a fact that
complicates the distinction between amnesty and
pardon. Although there are famous exceptions, in
typical cases in the United States the pardon is
granted only after an offender has been convicted
and sentenced, in which case it prevents further pun-
ishment; most often, the pardon is granted only after
the offender has completed the sentence and a sub-
sequent waiting period, when a pardon helps the of-

fender regain civil rights lost as a consequence of a
criminal conviction.
The Exercise of Clemency Powers
Amnesty and pardon are common to all cultures
and all periods of history. With the exception of
China, all nations claim a pardoning power of some
sort. Under Article II, Section 2 of the United States
Constitution, the president has the “Power to grant
Reprieves and Pardons for offenses against the
United States, except in cases of impeachment.” For
violations of state law—the bulk of all offenses, in-
cluding murder—the power to pardon rests with the
governor or an executive pardoning board. In most
nations, pardon and amnesty powers are not subject
to legal restriction or review.
The exercise of clemency powers has historically
been justified by considerations of public interest,
justice, and MERCY. The authors of the U.S. Consti-
tution, for example, recognized that the public in-
terest is sometimes better served by forgoing pun-
ishment than by exacting the full measure of
punishment allowed by law. Alexander Hamilton
(1755–1804) wrote, “In seasons of insurrection or
rebellion, there are often critical moments when a
well-timed offer of pardon . . . may restore the tran-
quility of the commonwealth,” a tranquility that
President Gerald Ford also cited in defending his
pardon (1974) of Richard Nixon (1913–1994).
In addition to advancing the public interest, clem-
ency powers can be justified by considerations of
justice. A pardon may correct an injustice done by
the courts, as when evidence indicates that a con-
victed person is innocent or, while not legally inno-
cent, morally blameless or morally justified. Legal
systems make mistakes, and the clemency powers
offer a last chance to ensure that only those who
deserve punishment are punished and only so much
as they deserve.
Pardon and amnesty also serve to soften the
harshness of the law. “The criminal code of every
country partakes so much of necessary severity that
without an easy access to exceptions in favor of un-
fortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance
too sanguinary and cruel,” Hamilton wrote. FOR-
GIVENESS is, after all, a virtue, and the pardoning
power is a way to respond to pain with a simple act
of kindness.
57
amnesty and pardon
Amnesty and Pardon in Western History
The history of amnesty and pardon is as old as
the history of punishment. In Genesis, God granted
what amounts to a conditional pardon to Cain, the
world’s first murderer, banishing him to the Land of
Nod. Ancient Athens granted pardons on the vote
of 6,000 citizens, and the Romans had a detailed and
sophisticated system of pardoning. The practice of
decimation, for example, was a form of clemency:
rather than execute an entire army after a mutiny,
the commander would order his men to count off,
pardoning the first nine and killing each tenth sol-
dier. Probably the most famous Roman pardon was
granted by Pontius Pilate who, following Passover
custom, released a murderer named Barabbas rather
than the prisoner named Jesus.
From the end of the Roman Empire to the En-
lightenment, rival authorities struggled for the
power to pardon, a power correctly recognized as at
least as great as the power to punish. The right to
pardon was claimed by everyone who claimed a right
to punish—earls, kings, archbishops, clan chiefs,
priests, mobs, legislatures, and courts. In the harsh
penal systems of the time, there was good reason for
the liberal use of the pardon power; but many par-
dons were granted instead for military, political, per-
sonal, and financial reasons. Selling pardons (or in-
dulgences, in the case of the church) became a
dependable source of income for church and state.
Frequent use and abuse of the pardoning power
met harsh criticism: Since all government was pre-
sumed to come from God, all crimes were crimes
against God. God can forgive offenses against Him-
self, critics argued, but civil governments should not
usurp the divine prerogative. Eighteenth-century at-
tacks on the abuses of the great monarchies brought
a parallel argument: In a DEMOCRACY, a crime
against the state is a crime against the people, and
only the people have a right to forgive offenses
against them. English jurist Sir William Blackstone
(1723–1780) declared that in democracies, “this
power of pardon can never subsist,” and the par-
doning power was swept away by the French Rev-
olution in 1789.
In 1795, Immanuel KANT (1724–1804) pub-
lished, in The Metaphysical Elements of Justice, a
powerful polemic against pardon. “The law concern-
ing punishment is a categorical imperative, and woe
to him who rummages around in the winding paths
amnesty and pardon
of a theory of happiness looking for some advantage
to be gained by releasing the criminal from punish-
ment or reducing the amount of it.” People who dis-
obey the law do the other members of the commu-
nity a comparative injustice by exercising freedoms
they are not willing to grant to others, Kant argued.
Punishment limits the freedom of the offender and,
by that means, removes the injustice of the act.
Nothing less than like for like will restore EQUALITY.
If a state is to act justly, it has not only the right, but
the duty, to punish.
Jeremy BENTHAM (1748–1832), the utilitarian re-
former, also argued against the unrestrained use of
pardons, but on very different grounds. Following
the Principle of Utility, he argued, punishment
should be imposed when it bestows some benefit
that outweighs its harm. In Bentham’s view, the
overriding benefit of punishment is deterrence, and
a penal system that hopes to deter crimes cannot
tolerate exceptions. So mercy is seldom beneficial on
balance, and punishment should always be imposed,
unless it is “inefficacious . . . , groundless . . . , need-
less . . . or too expensive”—the limited circum-
stances that call for clemency.
Contemporary Debates about
Amnesty and Pardon
Debates about pardon and amnesty faded from
philosophical discussions during much of the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries, and pardons them-
selves gradually became less and less common in the
United States, to be replaced to some extent first by
the indeterminate sentence and then by a rigid get-
tough-on-crime stance. But in the later half of the
twentieth century, the unpopular pardon of Richard
Nixon, controversial amnesties granted to Vietnam
War draft evaders, and the process of truth and rec-
onciliation taking place following radical changes of
government in South Africa, Latin America, and
elsewhere have reopened discussion of amnesty and
pardons and revealed just how morally complicated
clemency is.
The pardoning power in the United States is a
direct descendent of English pardoning practices,
which were reputedly patterned after God’s. Ac-
cordingly, pardons have long been thought of as acts
of mercy akin to divine grace, a view affirmed by the
Supreme Court in United States v. Wilson (1833).
This view makes pardons supererogatory; pardons
58
are gifts that are undeserved, unfathomable, and not
subject to examination or critique. They are rooted
in the virtues of BENEVOLENCE and a forgiving spirit.
However, philosophers and jurists alike point out
that mercy without good reason is a kind of immor-
ality. In any given case, if a court has mandated a
sentence that is, in fact, just, then exacting less than
the deserved sentence works a retributive injustice,
since the offender does not receive the punishment
deserved; and it works an additional comparative
injustice, since the reduced punishment will be less
than that imposed on other, similar offenders. It
would seem that the merciful act of granting relief
from a just sentence is virtuous and unjust at the
same time. As the twentieth century draws to a
close, the paradox plays out on an international
stage, as nations attempting to use amnesty and par-
dons as means of national reconciliation find that the
competing claims of mercy and justice make clem-
ency decisions painful and complex.
See also: BENEVOLENCE; CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE; COR-
RECTIONAL ETHICS; DETERRENCE, THREATS AND RE-
TALIATION; EQUALITY;
FAIRNESS; FORGIVENESS;
GUILT AND SHAME;HART; INNOCENCE; JUSTICE, CIR-
CUMSTANCES OF; JUSTICE, RECTIFICATORY; LEGAL
PHILOSOPHY; MERCY; OBEDIENCE TO LAW; POLICE
ETHICS; PUNISHMENT; REVOLUTION; SYMPATHY;
UTILITARIANISM.
Bibliography
Barnett, J. “The Grounds of Pardon.” Journal of Criminal
Law, Criminology, and Political Science 17 (1926):
490–530. A thorough discussion of the grounds on
which pardons may properly be granted.
Bentham, Jeremy. The Principles of Morals and Legisla-
tion. Darien, CT: Hafner, 1948 [1780]. See especially
pages 171–77. A utilitarian justification for pardon un-
der specified conditions.
Card, Claudia. “On Mercy.” Philosophical Review 81
(1972): 182–207. A careful argument about the rela-
tion between justice and mercy.
“Clemency and Pardons Symposium.” University of Rich-
mond Law Review 27 (1993). A symposium on clem-
ency which includes articles by Anaya, Bedau, Kobil,
Ledewitz and Staples, MacFarlane, Moore, Radelet
and Zsembik, and Vandiver.
Humbert, W. H. The Pardoning Power of the President.
Washington, DC: The American Council on Public Af-
fairs, 1941. A fascinating compilation of information
about the pardons presidents have granted and the rea-
sons they have given.

Kalt, Brian C. “Pardon Me?: The Constitutional Case
against Presidential Self-Pardons.” The Yale Law Jour-
nal 106 (1996): 779–809. An argument that presi-
dents cannot pardon themselves.
Kant, Immanuel. The Metaphysical Elements of Justice.
New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965 [1797]. See especially
page 100. Kant’s famous argument against the abuse
of the pardoning power.
Kobil, Daniel T. “The Quality of Mercy Strained: Wresting
the Pardoning Power from the King.” Texas Law Re-
view 64 (1991): 569–641. A consideration of the
proper rules of clemency in the American justice
system.
Moore, Kathleen Dean. Pardons: Justice, Mercy, and the
Public Interest. New York: Oxford University Press,
1989. A history and analysis of the moral justification
for pardoning.
Murphy, Jeffrie. “Mercy and Legal Justice.” Social Philos-
ophy and Policy 4 (1986): 1–14. An attempt to address
the paradox of mercy, i.e., to be merciful is, perhaps,
to be unjust.
Roberts, H. R. T. “Mercy.” Philosophy 66 (1971): 352–
53. A paper that proposes that merciful acts are either
unjust or they are a kind of justice.
Sebba, L. “The Pardoning Power: A World Survey.” Jour-
nal of Criminal Law 78 (1977): 83–121. A survey of
pardoning practices around the world.
Smart, Alwynne. “Mercy.” Philosophy 43 (1968): 345–
59. The first essay in the contemporary debate about
when pardon can be justified.
U.S. Presidential Clemency Board. Report to the Presi-
dent. Washington, DC: GPO, 1975. A history of the
Anglo-American heritage of amnesty and pardon.
Legal Cases
Biddle v. Perovich, 274 U.S. 480 (1926). Oliver Wendell
Holmes’s opinion, defending the view that a pardon is
not an act of grace, but a tool for the public good.
United States v. Wilson, 32 U.S. (7 Pet.) 150 (1833).
Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion that a pardon is
an act of grace.
Kathleen Dean Moore
analogical argument
Analogical thinking is perhaps the most basic and
common rational process. It is so frequently em-
ployed in everyday thought that we scarcely notice
it, until something goes wrong. We routinely use and
encounter it in law and morality as well as in science.
Perhaps the best-known case of analogical thinking
in science is the discovery of the structure of DNA,
as told by James D. Watson in The Double Helix
(1968). It is the story of how analogies were drawn
59
analogical argument
between the observed structure of things like spiral
staircases and the unobserved structure of DNA, the
fundamental genetic material; and how inferences
were made based on such analogies. This article will
focus on analogical thinking in law and morality, but
models developed in one area of employment should
fit others as well.
A characteristic feature of our legal system is its
dependence on PRECEDENT. The requirement of pre-
cedent calls for deciding similar cases similarly.
Much legal reasoning, especially in appellate courts,
is devoted to showing that the case in question is (or
is not) analogous to some earlier case which was
decided in a favorable way. An excellent case of
analogical reasoning in both law and morality is
Kenneth F. Schaffner’s “Philosophical, Ethical, and
Legal Aspects of Resuscitation Medicine. II: Rec-
ognizing the Tragic Choice: Food, Water, and the
Right to Assisted Suicide.”
In “Tragic Choice,” a paper on physician-assisted
SUICIDE, Schaffner reviews the moral foundations of
decisions to suspend life-sustaining medically sup-
plied nutrition and hydration for seriously ill and
permanently comatose patients. He also examines
three crucial legal cases in this area: Barber, Bouvie,
and Brophy. As a philosopher of science, Schaffner
is interested in causation, and he finds that the cause
of such patients’ deaths, according to the consensus
at the time (1988), is the underlying illness. He criti-
cizes that view, and argues that the “responsible
cause” in such cases is typically the physician’s de-
cision to suspend medical nutrition and hydration,
a decision made with the deliberate authorization of
the patients, families, and sometimes the courts. The
most challenging analogical argument in his paper
is that, with proper safeguards, this is both a morally
justifiable policy and one that ought to be inter-
preted as “a general surrogate” for rational, medi-
cally assisted suicide. This essay is already a central
part of the literature of BIOETHICS on the issue, and
it should become a standard case for reflection on
analogical thinking. It will be so used here, as far as
constraints allow.
Another good case for analysis of analogical rea-
soning is found in “Genetic Encores: The Ethics of
Human Cloning” by Robert Wachbroit. Molecular
biologists took over from botanists the term
“clone”—which meant, as a noun, the multiple iden-
tical descendants of a single cell—to describe a cul-
ture of bacteria grown up to multiply transplanted
analogical argument
genes. They speak of making copies of a gene in or-
der to have enough to study. The term is also used
as a verb to refer to the process of copying genes,
cells, or now biological individuals. Dr. Ian Wilmut,
a Scottish scientist, reported the successful cloning
in 1997 of an adult sheep from its somatic (rather
than germ) cells. Since then clones of adult cows
(several calves) have been born, produced by a tech-
nique similar to that used to produce Dolly, the
sheep. Many articles in the scientific as well as pop-
ular media are claiming that the cloning of humans
is now not only technologically possible but practi-
cally inevitable. The question of its ethics is open for
discussion, and Wachbroit does a good job of ori-
enting the discussion.
First of all, there is room for serious misconcep-
tions in using the term “human cloning.” The pro-
cess (cloning) is a kind of “copying”; but the product
(the clone) is from the somatic cells of an adult and
is not initially an adult human being: it is an embryo,
fetus, infant, and so on. If it grows into a human
adult, its growth takes the same length of time as
normal human development (unlike what happened
in the 1996 film Multiplicity, in which several iden-
tical grown men were produced almost at the same
time).
Wachbroit does a good job of clarifying the con-
cepts as well as the facts of cloning. If adult humans
are cloned, the genetic material of the donor and
resulting individual will be identical. They will have
the same genome. Will the new individual be a “car-
bon copy” (perhaps we need to recognize another
technological change and begin to call it a “photo
copy”) of the earlier individual? Only if we accept
genetic determinism, and there is an overwhelming
scientific consensus that such a theory is false. The
clone will be an exact copy of the cloned only to the
extent that identical twins are. They have the same
DNA but become distinct individuals. Here we en-
counter a key analogy in this discussion. Is the clone
an “offspring” or a “sibling” of the adult from whom
it was cloned? Does it have one biological parent
(the adult from which it was cloned), or two (the
same two as the donor of its DNA)? Much of the
moral debate turns on inferences made from the
analogies given in answer to these questions. A
closely related set of analogies tries to identify clon-
ing with either REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES (such
as in vitro fertilization or artificial insemination) or
GENETIC ENGINEERING technologies (such as genetic
60
enhancement through genetic surgery). If there were
a moral consensus in favor of the use of reproductive
technologies but against the use of genetic engineer-
ing, the result of seeing cloning as analogous with
one rather than the other is obvious. However,
which analogy we should draw, and how we can jus-
tify inferences from it, are not so obvious. That is
the focus of the rest of this article.
We draw analogies and make inferences based on
them in law, morality, science, and everyday life.
Most of us do these things very well. That is not to
say, however, that we understand how we do it or
know explicitly the criteria we use to judge whether
it has been done well or not. According to a stock
example of this sort of thing, it is fairly easy to ride
a bicycle, but rather difficult to describe how it is
done. So it is with analogical inference. There is both
a problem of description and a problem of justifi-
cation concerning this common practice. Setting
aside for this article questions concerning the draw-
ing of analogies, how should we describe our prac-
tice of making analogical inferences? What are the
conditions under which they are reliable?
First, let us try to solve the problem of describing
analogical inferences. Their content is a clue: they
are all based on analogies. One entity, A, is known
to have attributes a, b, c, and d. Another entity, B,
is known to have attributes a, b, and c, but it is not
known whether it also has attribute d. On the basis
of the known similarity or analogy, it is inferred that
B also probably has attribute d. Entities A and B, in
this abstract and idealized model of analogical in-
ference, might be forgoing medically supplied nutri-
tion and hydration on the one hand, and medically
assisted rational suicide, on the other, as in the
Schaffner article cited above; and attribute d then
would be recognizing a moral and legal right to both.
Likewise, the model fits the Wachbroit case of ar-
guments about cloning humans and the birth of
identical twins. The moral LEGITIMACY of the former
based on acceptance of the latter is attributed.
Arguing by analogy may be based on a compari-
son of attributes of more than two entities, so a vari-
ation on the above model would be:
Entities A, B, C, and D all have attributes a,
b, and c.
Entities A, B, and C also have attribute d.
Therefore, entity D probably has attribute d
as well.

In recent arguments about cloning humans, the
technology for cloning is sometimes said to be anal-
ogous to either reproduction technologies (artificial
insemination, semen donation, ova donation, in
vitro fertilization, etc.) or genetic engineering tech-
nologies (genetic surgery, control of gene expression
by the use of anti-sense nucleic acids, and other ge-
netic therapies). The various technologies are
known to be alike in several aspects, and claimed to
be alike in crucial moral respects, such as being mor-
ally permissible.
A slight modification of this model results in a
statistical one.
N percent of type I entities having attributes
a, b, and c also have attribute d.
A is a Type I entity having attributes a, b,
and c.
Therefore, the probability is N percent that A
has attribute d as well.
Analogical arguments of each of these three
forms are common. The content is the same gener-
ally, in each form: an analogy is the basis of the in-
ference. The difference is between an inference
based on similarities known to hold between two
entities or between more than two. Does basing the
inference on more than two instances increase its
reliability? It might seem to, in view of common
sense and logical theory concerning inductive or
nondeductive inferences. Analogical arguments are
not purely deductive. The premises are not said to
support the conclusion in such a way that it is im-
possible for the premises to be true and the conclu-
sion to be false. When this deductive feature of an
argument form is absent, let us call that sort of ar-
gument nondeductive. Surely, the premises of an an-
alogical argument could all be true and yet the con-
clusion could be false.
An interesting question concerning the form of
analogical arguments, raised by ARISTOTLE (384–
322 B.C.E.) and C. S. PEIRCE (1839–1914), as well
as by such recent logicians as David Kelley and Pat-
rick Hurley, asks whether they are purely nonde-
ductive. Kelley joins Aristotle and Peirce in consid-
ering them to be a mixed form, while Hurley sees
them as purely nondeductive. In this brief article we
cannot consider the details on which their decisions
are based to a great extent, but we can grasp the
issue.
61
analogical argument
In Book II, Chapter 24, of Prior Analytics, Aris-
totle discusses argument by “example” in a way
which connects more directly with our arguments by
analogy than with what is today often called “induc-
tive generalization,” or argument based on a sample.
His case has to do with “making war against neigh-
bors.” If we wish to argue that war by Athenians
against Thebans is an evil, we use the analogy with
war by Thebans against Phoenicians. It was a war
between neighbors, and an evil. War between Athe-
nians and Thebans is also a war between neighbors,
and probably evil as well. Aristotle’s remark,
“Clearly then an example stands neither as part to
whole, nor as whole to part, but rather as part to
part, when both are subordinate to the same term,
and one of them is familiar,” is in need of extensive
interpretation. Aristotle seems to characterize ar-
gument by example or analogy as a mixture of in-
duction (war A was between neighbors, and was an
evil; therefore all wars between neighbors are prob-
ably evils) and deduction (all wars between neigh-
bors are probably evils, and this war is between
neighbors; therefore it is probably an evil).
Peirce’s model of analogical argument is also a
mixture of deduction and induction. His general for-
mula for analogy is
t is P⬘, P⬙, and P⵮
S⬘, S⬙, and S⵮ are q;
Therefore t is q. (1932, 2.512)
We might interpret this form, according to Schaff-
ner’s argument, to the moral permissibility of med-
ically assisted suicide as
t ⳱ medically assisted suicide
S⬘ ⳱ Barber
S⬙ ⳱ Bouvie
S⵮ ⳱ Brophy
P⬘ ⳱ deaths due to removal of life support in
S⬘
P⬙ ⳱ deaths due to removal of life support in
S⬙
P⵮ ⳱ deaths due to removal of life support
in S⵮
q ⳱ legally and morally acceptable or
permissible.
Peirce says that such an argument is “double,” as it
contains both of these arguments:
analogical argument
(1)
S⬘, S⬙, S⵮ are taken as being P⬘, P⬙, P⵮,
S⬘, S⬙, S⵮ are q;
Therefore (inductively) P⬘, P⬙, P⵮ is q.
t is P⬘, P⬙, P⵮;
Therefore (deductively) t is q.
(2)
S⬘, S⬙, S⵮ are, for instance, P⬘, P⬙, P⵮,
t is P⬘, P⬙, P⵮;
Therefore (by hypothesis) t has the common
characteristics of S⬘, S⬙, S⵮,
S⬘, S⬙, S⵮ are q;
Therefore (deductively) t is q.
He further comments that “Owning to its double
character, analogy is very strong with only a mod-
erate number of instances.”
This mixed model is opposed by most recent lo-
gicians, represented by Hurley. He considers analog-
ical reasoning to depend on a comparison of in-
stances, as in my first version of the model of
analogical arguments given above, and further con-
siders them as closely related to generalizations. He
reverses the way Aristotle and Peirce represent these
two forms of argument. In generalization, Hurley
thinks the arguer begins with one or more instances
and then draws a conclusion about all of the mem-
bers of a class. He may then apply the generalization
to one or more members of this class that were not
noted earlier. Thus there is an initial inductive stage,
and a second deductive one. In contrast, he thinks
that in a argument from analogy, the arguer moves
directly from one or more individual instances to a
conclusion about another individual instance with-
out appealing to an intermediate generalization.
Thus, analogical argument is purely inductive, or
nondeductive.
Among contemporary logicians, Kelley seems to
be the lone continuer of the Aristotle-Peirce tradi-
tion. His provisional description of analogical infer-
ence is similar to Hurley’s:
A and B have property S.
A has property P.
Therefore, B has property P.
Interpret this according to the above arguments con-
cerning medically assisted suicide or cloning hu-
mans. The question arises: What is the relationship
62
between S and P? Of course, it involves analogy, but
more needs to be said in order to see why such rea-
soning is reliable and under what conditions. The
premises in an analogical argument assert that some
similarity exists between the data objects and the
inference object, but why should similarity in one
respect give us reason to infer similarity in another?
After all, everything is similar to everything in some
respect. Kelley’s insight, in the tradition of Aristotle
and Peirce, is that the connection between the ob-
served similarity and the inferred similarity should
be made explicit. He does this by modeling it as rest-
ing on an implicit generalization. Perhaps this re-
construction of one argument for human cloning ex-
presses the point:
IVF (in vitro fertilization) is a reproductive
technology.
IVF is morally acceptable.
Therefore all reproductive technologies are
morally acceptable.
Cloning humans is a reproductive technology.
Therefore cloning humans is morally
acceptable.
The first step, Kelley says, is inductive: a gener-
alization. The second is deductive, a categorical syl-
logism. Any argument by analogy can, he claims, be
described in this way, once we have identified the
common property (S) which makes A and B similar.
Thus his model is:
A is S Ⳮ A is/is not P
f
All/no S is P (inductive generalization)
B is S
B is/is not P (categorical syllogism)
To describe the practice this way makes the criti-
cal analysis of such an argument mainly a matter of
finding the common property S which functions as
a middle term in the deductive step. To evaluate the
argument, the main task is to evaluate the inductive
step. The deductive step will always be valid.
As it turns out, evaluation on Kelley’s model is
not very different from evaluation on Hurley’s. The
step Kelley calls inductive in his model seems to be
as suspect as the inference in Hurley’s model.
Let us turn to the problem of justifying analogical
inferences. Under what conditions are we justified

in relying on analogical arguments? There are two
basic conditions, which need to be further specified
to be useful in evaluating inferences. The degree of
analogy on which the inference is based must be suf-
ficient, and the relevance of the analogy mentioned
in the premises to the conclusion must also be suf-
ficient. Since the reliability of nondeductive argu-
ments is a matter of degree, the criterion of suffi-
ciency cannot be quantified precisely. The measure
will vary, depending on such pragmatic considera-
tions as the seriousness of the consequences of re-
lying on the conclusion.
First, the degree of analogy must be high. Can we
be more specific about the degree of analogy be-
tween cloning humans and reproductive technolo-
gies such as in vitro fertilization? Yes. The number
of similarities is a specification of degree of analo-
gies. Both technologies can be seen as ways of pro-
viding a couple with a biological child which they
might otherwise be unable to have. That seems to
be an important similarity, but alone it does not seem
to be sufficient to support the inference to the moral
acceptability of cloning humans. Are there other
similarities? The child produced in each of these
ways will become a unique individual, if genetic de-
terminism is rejected (as scientific consensus today
says it should be). The liabilities to harm seem to be
about the same for children produced in these ways.
A case can be made for a high degree of analogy in
the sense of a large number of similarities between
the two technologies.
A second specification involves the nature and
number of dis-analogies. In vitro fertilization, when
sperm and ova come from the couple who will raise
the child, is clearly a technology which produces an
“offspring” with two parents. But a clone is the prod-
uct of one of the couple, probably the female. The
child is not clearly her “offspring,” but may better
be considered her “sibling.” Cloning, in this per-
spective, is a sort of “delayed twinning.” This seems
to weaken the analogy. However, the child produced
by cloning does have, arguably, two parents: the
same two as the woman from whom she was cloned.
The importance of this has to do with lineage iden-
tified responsibilities, as Wachbroit points out. The
analogy is strengthened again when we are told that
some assisted reproductive technologies raise simi-
lar questions about lineage and identity.
The number of similarities can be further speci-
fied. Call assisted reproductive technologies the
63
analogical argument
“data instances,” or “primary analogates” (Hurley).
The greater the number of them, the higher the de-
gree of analogy, roughly. There seem to be enough
different technologies of this sort to make the degree
of analogy fairly high. They are also rather diverse
within the type. Some, like IVF, involve genetic ma-
terial from both nurturing parents, while others, like
sperm or ova donation, involve material from only
one. Thus, number and diversity of data instances
are added conditions specifying number of similar-
ities, which specifies degree of analogy.
The second main condition for reliable analogical
inferences is the relevance of the analogies men-
tioned in the premises to the one in the conclusion.
The similarities mentioned in the premises of some
arguments for cloning humans include the purpose
of providing a couple with a biological child which
they would otherwise be unable to have. How is that
relevant to the conclusion that it is morally accept-
able? The ends are the same, to be sure, but are the
means? One could argue that they are properly de-
scribed as being very different. IVF is more closely
analogous to the more common fertilization of an
ovum by sperm as a result of a couple’s sexual in-
tercourse than cloning is, since cloning does not in-
volve sperm or ova at all, but uses somatic cells.
Many people think that common ends do not nec-
essarily justify diverse means. Thus, the condition of
relevance in this sort of argument is open for dis-
cussion. The same is true of the relevance of simi-
larities between cases of withdrawing medical nu-
trition and hydration, on the one hand, and cases of
medically assisted suicide on the other, to a conclu-
sion about the moral and legal acceptability of the
latter based on that of the former.
This condition of relevance has been discussed so
far in terms of the purely nondeductive model of
analogical arguments (Hurley). In terms of the
mixed model (Kelley), it can be restated in terms of
the relevance of the connection between S and P. I
leave this to the reader.
In this article we have considered the problems
of describing and justifying our common practice of
making inferences based on analogies. The inconclu-
siveness of these considerations should show that—
contrary to claims that in logic things are “cut and
dried” (as is tobacco raising!)—there is much left to
be thought through about analogical argument.
See also: BIOETHICS; CASUISTRY; GENETIC ENGINEER-
ING; LEGAL PHILOSOPHY; LEGITIMACY; LITERATURE
analogical argument
AND ETHICS; LOGIC AND ETHICS; MEDICAL ETHICS;
MORAL REASONING; NARRATIVE ETHICS; PERSON,
CONCEPT OF; PRECEDENT; RATIONAL CHOICE; REPRO-
DUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES; UNIVERSALIZABILITY.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Prior Analytics. In The Complete Works of Ar-
istotle, edited by Jonathan Barnes, vol. l. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1984. A classic work in
logic, which treats argument by “example” (analogy)
as a mixture of deduction and induction.
Churchill, Robert Paul. Logic: An Introduction. 2d ed.
New York: St. Martin’s, 1990. A widely used contem-
porary textbook, discussed in the Klein and Wertz ar-
ticle. Includes a good discussion of legal and moral
reasoning.
Conway, David A., and Ronald Munson. The Elements of
Reasoning. 2d ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1997. A
recent elementary textbook, which offers two main
conditions for the reliability of analogical arguments:
degree and relevance of analogy.
Hurley, Patrick J. A Concise Introduction to Logic. 6th ed.
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1997. A widely used con-
temporary textbook, which treats analogical argument
as purely nondeductive, but generalization as a mixture
of deduction and induction.
Kelley, David. The Art of Reasoning. 2d, expanded ed.
New York: W. W. Norton, 1994. A contemporary text-
book which differs from the majority in interesting
ways, including treating analogical argument as a mix-
ture of induction and deduction.
Klein, Ted, and S. K. Wertz. “Legal Reasoning and Ana-
logical Argument: Two Models.” Contemporary Philos-
ophy 13, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1990): 3–6. An article dis-
cussing the conflict of interpretation of analogical
argument between Churchill and Kelley.
Peirce, Charles Sanders, Elements of Logic. In The Col-
lected Works of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by
Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, vol. 2. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1960. The logical writings of
the great American pragmatist, in which he gives a
model for analogical argument with both inductive and
deductive stages.
Salmon, Merrilee H. Introduction to Logic and Critical
Thinking. 3d ed. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace,
1995. A widely used textbook which offers a model of
induction and set of conditions of reliability similar to
those in this article.
Schaffner, Kenneth F. “Philosophical, Ethical and Legal
Aspects of Resuscitation Medicine. II: Recognizing the
Tragic Choice: Food, Water and the Right to Assisted
Suicide.” Critical Care Medicine 16, no. 10 (Oct.
1988): 1063–68. An article which uses analogical ar-
gument in law and morality on the issue of medically
assisted suicide.
64
Wachbroit, Robert. “Genetic Encores: The Ethics of Hu-
man Cloning.” Report from the Institute for Philosophy
and Public Policy 17, no. 21 (Fall 1997): 1–7. An ar-
ticle on cloning humans which makes clear many of the
analogies, and inferences based on them, involved in
this issue.
Ted Klein
analytic philosophy and ethics
It has been claimed that SOCRATES (c. 470–399
B.C.E.) practiced analytic philosophy, and certainly
he was interested in ethics; but for the purposes of
this article analytic philosophy in relationship to
ethics begins with G. E. MOORE’s (1873–1958)
Principia Ethica (1903) and ends fifty-five years
later with Kurt BAIER’s The Moral Point of View
(1958). It was only during this period that there was
a distinctive approach to ethics that deserves to be
marked off and given special attention.
Although there is a direct line from JOHN STUART
MILL (1806–1873) through Henry SIDGWICK
(1838–1900) to G. E. Moore, Moore spent much
more time than did his predecessors explicitly ex-
amining the meaning of the terms we use when mak-
ing moral judgments. Even more important, Moore
was the catalyst for those who, unlike Moore him-
self, were primarily interested in the meaning of
MORAL TERMS rather than in substantive moral
questions.
Although analytic philosophy has continued since
the publication of Baier’s book, there is no longer
any clear movement in ethics which can labeled as
analytic. Analytic philosophers are now more likely
to put forward substantive ethical views (e.g.,
Hobbesian, Kantian, or utilitarian) than they are to
view their analyses of ethical terms as having no nor-
mative implications. The distinction between con-
cern with analyzing the terms or concepts involved
in moral discourse and concern with substantive
moral problems has largely disappeared. It is now
generally held that analysis of moral concepts will
yield substantive moral conclusions, even by many
of those who earlier thought that analyses of ethical
concepts had no normative implications whatsoever.
In the very first paragraph of Principia Ethica,
Moore says, “In the vast majority of cases, where we
make statements involving any of the terms ‘virtue,’
‘vice,’ ‘duty,’ ‘right,’ ‘ought,’ ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ we are
making ethical judgments; and if we wish to discuss

their truth, we shall be discussing a point of Ethics.”
Although any reasonably close examination of news-
papers and magazines, or even reflection on what
we ourselves say, shows Moore to be completely
mistaken about the majority of cases in which we
use these terms, the philosophers who criticized
Moore’s account of the meaning of these terms never
challenged his claim that statements involving their
use are moral judgments. Moore and his critics seem
to have forgotten that they themselves recom-
mended, condemned, and praised music, novels,
wines, meals, athletes, or moves in games, and did
not use the terms “right,” “ought,” “good,” and
“bad” only when making ethical judgments.
Whatever the explanation, analytic philosophers
in the first half of the twentieth century took ethics
to be the study of moral judgments, and they re-
garded as paradigm cases of moral judgments those
which used the terms “good,” “bad,” “right,”
“wrong,” and “ought.” Moore claimed that the
“question, how ‘good’ is to be defined is the most
fundamental question in all Ethics.” And much of
analytic philosophy for the next fifty-five years con-
sisted in refutations of Moore’s account of the mean-
ing of “good” and attempts to provide alternatives.
Moore was regarded by many as having already
shown the inadequacy of the several naturalistic def-
initions of “good,” including a utilitarian definition,
i.e., “good” means “pleasure” and various subjectiv-
ist definitions, i.e., “good” means “I approve of this,”
or “My society approves of this.” He did this by
means of what is called the open-question argument.
Moore claimed that if we ask, “Is pleasure good?”
or “Is what I (my society) approve(s) of good?”, we
will immediately see that these are genuine or open
questions, not ones that can be answered simply by
looking at the meaning of the words involved.
Moore concluded that “good” is indefinable and
claimed that “good” refers to a simple property just
as “yellow” does, although in all other respects good-
ness is quite a different kind of property than
yellowness.
On the basis of his examination of the meaning
of the word “good,” Moore put forward what he
himself called a “nonnatural” property of goodness.
Although Moore was not the last nonnaturalist, an-
alytic philosophers universally rejected nonnatural-
ism. (ARISTOTLE’s [384–322 B.C.E.] rejection of
PLATO’s [c. 430–347 B.C.E.] account of goodness as
involving the Form of the Good provides an inter-
65
analytic philosophy and ethics
esting parallel.) Most agreed with Moore that
“good” did not refer to any complex property as pro-
posed by the subjectivists, but all denied that it re-
ferred to some simple nonnatural property as pro-
posed by Moore. One result was that many denied
that “good” referred to anything, claiming that
“good” was not a referring word. This led to the rec-
ognition that language is not always used to describe
the world, but it has many other uses (a fact that
HOBBES [1588–1679], sometimes regarded as a
founder of analytic philosophy, had explicitly
pointed out three centuries earlier).
The first account offered by those who rejected
the view that “good” refers came to be known as
“emotivism” or the emotive theory of ethics. There
is some dispute as to who put this theory forward
first: Some claim that it was Ogden and Richards in
The Meaning of Meaning (1923), but clearly the
most influential early statement of this view was pre-
sented by A. J. AYER (1910–1989) in his classic,
Language, Truth and Logic (1935). In the sixth
chapter of that book Ayer claimed, “in every case in
which one would commonly be said to be making
an ethical judgment, the function of the relevant eth-
ical word is purely ‘emotive.’ It is used to express
feeling about certain objects, but not to make any
assertion about them.” Ayer goes on to claim that
“ethical terms do not serve only to express feeling.
They are calculated also to arouse feeling, and so to
stimulate action.”
Ayer’s points were developed in much greater de-
tail by Charles STEVENSON (1908–1979) in Ethics
and Language (1944). Stevenson and others recog-
nized that ethical judgments are primarily made in
order to influence others, so that what came to be
known as “prescriptivism” or the imperative theory
replaced the emotive theory. However, these theories
were often regarded as complementary rather than
conflicting, it being recognized that the same judg-
ment can be used both to express one’s feelings and
to prescribe actions to others. PRESCRIPTIVISM was
developed in great detail by R. M. HARE in a number
of books, including The Language of Morals (1952)
and Freedom and Reason (1963). Hare pointed out
that there can be logical relationships between im-
peratives. Much of his moral philosophy involved an
examination of MORAL REASONING. Thus, although
prescriptivism and EMOTIVISM both denied that eth-
ical terms refer to any properties and that ethical
judgments describe any facts, there were important
analytic philosophy and ethics
differences between the two views. According to
prescriptivism, the primary subject matter of ethical
judgments had to be behavior, whereas according to
emotivism, there was no limit on the content of
moral judgments.
Although Hare shared the common assumption
that moral judgments were to be identified by their
containing words like “good,” “bad,” and “ought,”
he recognized that not all judgments using these
words were moral judgments. Hare claimed that
moral judgments were prescriptive judgments that
were both universalizable and overriding. But, like
most analytic philosophers who did what was called
“metaethics,” Hare denied that there was any limit
to the content of moral judgments; any prescriptive
judgment that any person was prepared to univer-
salize and accept as overriding was a moral judg-
ment. Hare also denied that there was any way to
show that the moral judgments of such a person
were mistaken. (In his most recent books, e.g.,
Moral Thinking [1981], Hare seems to have
changed some of his views.)
During the 1950s the analyses of moral judg-
ments became more sophisticated; philosophers
pointed out that judgments containing the ethical
terms were used in many different ways—some-
times to express and arouse emotions; sometimes to
advise, commend, or prescribe ways of acting; and,
surprisingly, sometimes even to describe. Much
more attention was paid both to the different con-
texts in which judgments were made and to the dif-
ferent functions that they perform. However, it also
came to be realized that this linguistic analysis of
moral judgments left out much of what had been
discussed by moral philosophers prior to the twen-
tieth century.
Stephen Toulmin, for example, in The Place of
Reason in Ethics (1950), explicitly tried to get away
from examination of the so-called ethical terms and
to replace it with an examination of moral reasoning,
but he did not emphasize the difference between
moral judgments and other kinds of value judg-
ments. Kurt Baier, in The Moral Point of View
(1958), made the distinction between moral judg-
ments and other value judgments a central part of
his account of morality. He tried to show that moral
judgments were supported by reasons that involved
taking an impartial point of view. Baier’s attempt to
use his analyses of rationality, IMPARTIALITY, and
morality to arrive at substantive moral conclusions
66
marked the end of a distinctive analytic approach to
ethics. By making clear that the terms “right,”
“ought,” “good,” and “bad” were primarily related
to rationality, not morality, e.g., that we offer reasons
for choosing and doing many things in addition to
those related to morality, Baier convinced many that
concentration solely on the use of these terms could
not reveal much of significance about ethics. Anal-
yses of those concepts and others peculiar to ethics
came to be routinely combined with substantive dis-
cussion of moral issues.
Of course, the present discussion vastly oversim-
plifies what actually went on in the first half of this
century. However, there is no question that the pri-
mary effect of analytic philosophy on ethics was to
divert attention away from substantive moral prob-
lems. The analytic philosophers were primarily in-
terested in the uses of language or in the analyses of
concepts. Insofar as they thought they could have
any practical effect, it was simply the effect of help-
ing people become clear about what they were say-
ing and the implications of what they said. It some-
times seems as though the analytic philosophers
thought that all they were doing was what is now
called values clarification.
In ethics, as in all other fields of philosophy, an-
alytic philosophers thought of themselves as sharp-
ening the tools of thought. Their sole task was to
make our concepts as clear and precise as possible;
they wanted to have nothing to do with using these
concepts to arrive at substantive conclusions. How-
ever, as the tools of thought became sharper, the
temptation to use them became almost irresistible.
Analytic philosophers, benefiting from work in other
areas of philosophy, especially philosophy of lan-
guage, clarified many ethical concepts and did sig-
nificantly raise the level of moral philosophy. But af-
ter two world wars and fifty-five years of analysis of
concepts, most moral philosophers went back to
their traditional task, trying to use their new under-
standing of the concepts related to morality to per-
suade their readers to act morally.
See also: AYER; BAIER; EMOTIVISM; GOOD, THEORIES
OF THE; HARE; HISTORY OF WESTERN ETHICS,
TWENTIETH-CENTURY ANGLO-AMERICAN; HOBBES;
IMPARTIALITY; LOGIC AND ETHICS; METAETHICS;
JOHN STUART MILL; MOORE; MORAL REASONING;
MORAL TERMS; NATURALISM; NORMS; PRACTICAL
REASON[ING]; PRESCRIPTIVISM; RATIONALITY VS.

REASONABLENESS; RUSSELL; STEVENSON; SUBJECTIV-
ISM; THEORY AND PRACTICE; UNIVERSALIZABILITY;
UTILITARIANISM; WITTGENSTEINIAN ETHICS.
Bibliography
Ayer, A. J. Language, Truth and Logic. London: Dover,
1936. See Chapter 6.
Baier, Kurt. The Moral Point of View. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1958. Abridged under same title,
New York: Random House, 1965.
Hare, R. M. The Language of Morals. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1952.
Moore, G. E. Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1903.
Schlick, Moritz. The Problem of Ethics. New York, Pren-
tice Hall, 1938.
Stevenson, Charles L. Ethics and Language. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1944.
Toulmin, Stephen Edelston. The Place of Reason in
Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950.
Bernard Gert
anger
Philosophy has always been concerned with human
nature. Since emotions play a large role in human
experience, philosophers have devoted a consider-
able amount of attention to answering three key
questions about them: What is an emotion? How do
we distinguish between different emotions? And
what is the relationship between emotions and a
morally good life? These queries may also be used
to structure an investigation into specific emotions
such as anger, which is the purview of this article.
Although there is disagreement about how to
conceive of emotions (are emotions feelings, sensa-
tions, cognitions, physiological conditions, behav-
ioral patterns, tendencies, or some combination of
these?), I shall assume for the sake of this article
both that emotions inhere in agents (contrary to the
view in some cultures that emotions occur not in but
between agents), and that many emotions linked to
morality (e.g., guilt, PRIDE, and RESENTMENT) are
combinations of feelings and cognitions. This latter
view I shall label “cognitivism,” which in one form
or another is the prevailing paradigm among con-
temporary theorists of emotions. Cognitivism is
(generally) the view that beliefs, evaluations, prop-
ositional attitudes, or other such cognitions are par-
67
anger
tially constitutive of complex emotions like shame,
regret, and ENVY, and that such emotions are rec-
ognizable on the basis of the different cognitions in-
volved in their production. So, angry emotions such
as indignation, scorn, and contempt are distinguish-
able in virtue of the cognitions that partially consti-
tute them. Though not without its problems, this
cognitivist framework offers a useful and straight-
forward way of delineating the angry emotions and
their relation to morality. In the remainder of this
article I shall use “beliefs” as the cognitions which
combine with feelings to produce such emotions.
Anger admits of three forms, the first of which
corresponds to what Joseph BUTLER (1692–1752)
has called “hasty and sudden” anger, a kind of anger
connected to the impulse for self-preservation. This
is the sort of anger persons and animals may expe-
rience when feeling tormented or trapped. The sec-
ond sense, “settled and deliberate” anger, is anger
constituted in part by an agent’s beliefs about how
she is perceived and treated by others. P. F. Straw-
son’s notion of a “reactive attitude” helps amplify
this sense of anger. For Strawson, reactive attitudes
involve personal feelings which “depend upon, or
involve” our beliefs about the attitudes, intentions,
and actions of others toward us. Thus, for example,
resentment is a reactive attitude typically felt toward
another you believe intended to wrong you. Indeed,
resentment is ordinarily defined as taking offense,
umbrage, or exception to the perceptions or deeds
of others, and such notions as “taking umbrage” or
“offense” presuppose moral judgments (i.e., moral
beliefs). By contrast, resentment is not typically felt
toward those who harm you accidentally or inadver-
tently, for such harms do not reveal another’s wrong-
ful feelings, intentions, or actions toward you. Con-
sequently, resentment is a paradigm of moral anger
because of the nature of the beliefs involved in it.
Instinctive anger and anger as a reactive attitude are
typically episodic, whereas some forms of anger are
relatively fixed dispositions. This third form of an-
ger, of which such postures as irritability, sullenness,
or churlishness are examples, link anger more to
character traits than to instincts or cognitions. Of
these general types of anger, episodic anger involv-
ing cognitions and dispositional anger are clearly re-
lated to morality, though in different ways. The two
main ways in which angry emotions connect with
moral concerns are that, on the one hand, some an-
gry emotions are “moral” by their very nature, in-
anger
sofar as they are partially constituted by moral be-
liefs. On the other hand, we can inquire about the
moral status of the presence and expression of epi-
sodic and dispositional anger in a person’s life. I
shall discuss these in turn.
Using resentment as a model, we can clarify the
way in which some angry emotions are moral by
their very nature. As noted, resentment ordinarily
involves the belief that you have been wronged, and
this is a moral belief. This belief, in turn, implies
both that the object of resentment must be perceived
as a moral agent, for only moral agents can commit
wrongs, and that the subject of resentment (i.e.,
those on whose behalf such anger is stimulated) be
a moral subject. Since resentment is a paradigmatic
instance of moral anger, we may conjecture that the
belief that oneself or some other moral subject has
been wronged will be characteristic of all forms of
moral anger, and so moral anger of any sort is a re-
active attitude felt toward another you believe has
wronged a moral subject. To refer to anger as
“moral” in this sense is to describe the moral content
of such feelings, not to judge them as praiseworthy
or blameworthy, virtuous or vicious.
Since moral anger can be aroused only on behalf
of a moral subject, and a moral subject is anything
that has moral standing (i.e., anything that is vested
with moral RIGHTS, INTERESTS, or claims to respect),
then persons, individually and collectively, animals,
and perhaps other parts of the natural environment,
are appropriate subjects of moral anger. We might
then say that when moral anger is generated pri-
marily on behalf of oneself, it is personal moral an-
ger; when aroused primarily for the sake of other
moral subjects, it is vicarious moral anger. The dis-
tinction between personal and vicarious moral anger
further enables us to classify the various forms of
moral anger such as resentment, indignation, scorn,
and contempt based on the beliefs typical of those
emotions. For instance, if I react with anger over an
injustice done to a stranger, then since the consti-
tutive belief of my anger is that a moral subject other
than myself has been wronged, my anger is more
plausibly regarded as indignation or some other
form of moral anger other than resentment, which
is personal moral anger.
Beyond personal and vicarious moral anger we
need to acknowledge the reality of collective anger,
for it is important to note that anger may reside
within and across persons simultaneously, often mo-
68
tivating group action such as riots, revolutions, and
political boycotts. MARX’s (1818–1883) effort to in-
spire the violent overthrow of capitalism by appeal-
ing to the anger of the working class is an example,
as is the late-twentieth-century feminist claim to
have “appropriated” anger (heretofore an essentially
male emotion) as the emotion of choice for fueling
the struggle against sexism. Many other ongoing po-
litical and moral struggles (e.g., anti-abortion ef-
forts, the fight for animal rights, etc.) are also
grounded, at least in part, in moral outrage. And
collective anger takes formal institutional expres-
sions as well, as when a society imposes sanctions
for the violation of its legal rules.
In addition to questions regarding the nature of
different forms of anger, and the manner in which
we distinguish between varieties of moral anger,
such as resentment, indignation, and scorn, is the
general concern about the place of anger in a morally
good life. What relation does anger bear to such cen-
tral ethical concerns as SELF-RESPECT, RESPONSIBIL-
ITY, LOVE, and FORGIVENESS, and virtue and vice in
general? Though a brief essay cannot adequately
summarize all the views related to these concerns, I
will close with a selective overview of some of the
more important general positions on the moral
status of the presence and expression of various
forms of anger.
The ancient Greek view of demonstrations of an-
ger was that, in general, such expressions were man-
ifestations of intemperance, which is a vice. PLATO’s
(428–348 B.C.E.) tripartite division of the soul into
reason, PASSION, and thumos, with passion (and
thus anger) requiring the control of reason in order
for a person to be just, is echoed in more recent
views such as that of Freud (1856–1939), who
viewed the strong emotions as explosive, volatile,
and dangerous. Common sense supports this view,
regarding those who are consumed by REVENGE or
who wallow in an ecstasy of rage as being in the grip
of a morally dubious emotional state. This is consis-
tent with ARISTOTLE’s (384–322 B.C.E.) contention
that the person who is angry “at the right things and
towards the right people, and also in the right way,
at the right time and for the right length of time” is
morally praiseworthy. Aristotle’s view implies that
anger is rationally assessable, and thus that it makes
sense to evaluate anger as reasonable or unreason-
able, justified or unjustified.
That anger and its expression can and should be

controlled by reason is a view supported by KANT
(1724–1804), who contends that vengeance is vi-
cious because it is “excessive anger,” that is, anger
disproportionate to the adequate defense of one’s
DIGNITY. Kant’s view of vengeance occurs in a con-
text in which he argues that the person who fails to
become angry at injustices done to him is one who
lacks dignity or “manhood,” a view reminiscent of
HUME’s (1711–1776) claim that since anger and ha-
tred are passions “inherent in our very frame and
constitution,” the lack of them is sometimes evi-
dence of “weakness and imbecility.” Resentment,
our paradigm of moral anger, also asserts the value
of self-respect, since its focus is, directly or indi-
rectly, the self. Thus, expressions of anger controlled
by or at least prominently involving reason have
come to be seen as manifesting virtue, while the lack
of anger, or the absence of the governing influence
of rationality in expressing it, have come to be
viewed as morally unacceptable.
But three contrary views should be mentioned.
First, NIETZSCHE’s (1844–1900) conception of “res-
sentiment” as sublimated anger/envy directed at the
noble man suggests the interesting idea that at least
some forms of dispositional anger such as irascibility
or bitterness may be manifestations of weakness, not
strength. More interesting still is the idea that even
episodic resentment or indignation may be ignoble,
insofar as such emotions implicitly concede power
to others by revealing one’s vulnerability to injury.
But the truly noble are thought to have, in some
sense, no such vulnerabilities.
Second, some late-twentieth-century popular
views suggest that the uninhibited expression of
even rage is a good thing, insofar as such venting is
cathartic. But on consequentialist grounds alone it
seems clear that controlling intense anger rather
than its unfettered venting is closer to what a good
life requires, for though anger may sometimes be
enabling (e.g., in motivating changes to unjust or
otherwise unhappy circumstances), its indiscrimi-
nate expression is more likely to be disabling, both
for those expressing it and for those around them.
The difference between anger and rage has often
been remarked on by psychologists and (less so) by
philosophers, with the latter emotion associated
more closely with destructive violence than with mo-
tivating constructive solutions to personal or politi-
cal problems. This is partly because rage tends to
fester and influence a person’s perception of events
69
anger
and others that are essentially unrelated to the
causes of one’s rage. It is well known, for instance,
that enraged people fly off the handle and strike out
at others in ways disproportionate to the severity of
the wrong done them; and enraged persons are more
likely to inflate the importance of minor inconven-
iences or problems (e.g., being cut off in traffic) as
a pretext for venting their rage.
These last remarks echo a third dissenting view,
that of the Stoic SENECA (c. 4 B.C.E.– C.E. 65), which
maintains that all forms of anger are inconsistent
with the good life because they dispose us to CRU-
ELTY and vengeance, which passions encourage us
to see other people as less than fully human. On this
view, the person of virtue is one who strives to ex-
tirpate, mot merely control, anger.
Other questions pertaining to the morality of an-
ger include whether there are any intrinsically good
or evil forms of anger, whether and in what sense
people can be held responsible for their anger or
perhaps even, as SARTRE (1905–1980) suggests,
choose to be angry, and whether some forms of an-
ger are logically or causally necessary for the exis-
tence of certain sorts of goods like forgiveness and
MERCY.
See also: CRUELTY; EMOTION; EMOTIVISM; ENVY;
GUILT AND SHAME; HARM AND OFFENSE; HATE; IN-
TENTION; PASSION; PRIDE; RESENTMENT; REVENGE;
REVOLUTION; SELF-CONTROL; SELF-DEFENSE; VIO-
LENCE AND NON-VIOLENCE.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Terence Ir-
win. Hackett, 1985. A rich source of insight into dif-
ferent types of anger and their relation to personal
character, moral virtue, and vice.
Butler, Joseph. Fifteen Sermons Preached at Rolls Chapel.
(1726) Sermon VII, “Upon Resentment.” Offers an im-
portant distinction between a kind of instinctive non-
moral anger linked to the impulse of self-preservation,
and “settled and deliberate” anger which is connected
to our beliefs about others, much as are the “reactive
attitudes” discussed by P. F. Strawson.
Deigh, John. “Cognitivism in the Theory of Emotions.”
Ethics 104 (July 1994): 824–54. A detailed overview
of the origins of contemporary cognitivist theories of
emotion, differences between them, and shortcomings
of various versions.
Goleman, Daniel. “On Rage.” In his Emotional Intelli-
gence. New York: Bantam Books, 1995. Reprinted in
Vice and Virtue in Everyday Life: Introductory Read-
anger
ings in Ethics, 4th ed., edited by Christina Hoff Som-
mers, 445–55. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace, 1997.
Hughes, Paul M. “Moral Anger, Forgiving, and Condon-
ing.” Journal of Social Philosophy 26, no. 1 (Spring
1995): 103–18. Types of moral anger and moral un-
happiness are distinguished and related to forgiveness,
toleration, and condonation.
Jacoby, Susan. Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge.
New York: Harper and Row, 1983.
Murphy, Jeffrie. “Forgiveness, Mercy, and the Retributive
Emotions.” Criminal Justice Ethics 7 (1988): 3–14.
Murphy, Jeffrie, and Jean Hampton. Forgiveness and
Mercy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Discusses such topics as the nature and value of re-
sentment and moral hatred and their relation to moral
responses to wrongdoing such as forgiveness, mercy,
and condonation.
Nussbaum, Martha. The Therapy of Desire: Theory and
Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1994.
Seneca. Moral Essays. Translated by John W. Basore.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958.
Strawson, Peter F. Freedom and Resentment, and Other
Essays. London: Methuen, 1974. See especially pp.
10–11. Articulates a theory of reactive attitudes, their
nature, and their relation to the attitudes, intentions,
and actions of others toward us.
Woodward, Kathleen. “Anger . . . and Anger: From Freud
to Feminism.” In Freud and the Passions, edited by
John O’Neill, 73–95. University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1996.
Paul M. Hughes
animals, treatment of
How we talk about one another is symptomatic of
the morally precarious position other animals have
occupied in the history of Western thought. To be
called a pig, sloth, snake in the grass, bitch, or vul-
ture, for example, is hardly a compliment. But the
symptoms of moral precariousness go deeper. In our
speech habits “we” are humans while “they”—well,
“they” are animals. That we humans are animals, it
seems, is something we would like to forget.
Certainly this is true of most of our major ethical
theorists. Intent, as they are, in finding an unbridge-
able gulf between the moral principles that prescribe
how we must treat human beings and how we may
treat (mere) animals, these thinkers tend either to
ignore or to underestimate the importance of the
biological and other ties that bind all animals
together.
Pre-Darwinian moralists may be forgiven for not
70
knowing the common themes (chance variation and
adaptation to an ever-changing environment, for ex-
ample) that characterize the EVOLUTION of all spe-
cies of animals, our own included. Yet some of these
thinkers display at least a partial understanding of
our animality. ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) is one.
Along with plants, in his view, humans and other
animals seek nourishment and reproduce. But unlike
plants, humans and other animals share additional
capacities: sensation, DESIRE, memory, and imagi-
nation, for example. On Aristotle’s account, only
when we consider the ability to reason do we find a
capacity that distinguishes humans from the rest of
the animal kingdom. For it is “man” (and “man”
alone) among all the animals who is said to be
rational.
It is difficult to exaggerate the importance Aris-
totle and legions of other Western moralists attach
to rationality. As different as Aristotle’s ethic is from
Immanuel KANT’s (1724–1804), or THOMAS AQUI-
NAS’s (1225?–1274) from John RAWLS’s, they are
in one respect the same: the possession of this par-
ticular capacity—reason—affords its possessor a
morally exalted status. Why this is so, and what it
implies, can be explained by distinguishing between
direct and indirect duties.
Direct and Indirect Duties
Duties of the former (the direct) kind are duties
owed to identifiable individuals, and those to whom
they are owed are prima facie entitled to demand
compliance. If, as is commonly thought, direct du-
ties have correlative RIGHTS, then this entitlement
can be expressed in terms of individual rights. That
Antony has a duty to speak the truth to Cleopatra,
for example, goes hand-in-glove with Cleopatra’s
having a right to demand truthfulness from Antony.
Indirect duties differ. These duties involve certain
individuals or things, but they are not duties owed
to them. The duty to respect another’s PROPERTY is
a duty of this kind. For we have no duty to the prop-
erty in question; rather, the duty involves the prop-
erty, but the duty is owed to the owner, not to the
thing owned.
This distinction—between direct and indirect du-
ties—can be used to define the moral community.
On this account the moral community consists of all
and only those individuals (a) who have direct duties
or (b) to whom direct duties are owed. Anything or

anyone standing outside the moral community at
most can be involved in duties owed to individuals
belonging to this community (and thus figure in
some indirect duty), but nothing and no one outside
the community either can be owed a direct duty or
can possess a correlative right.
The Rationalist Tradition
The question “Who belongs to the moral com-
munity?” is therefore fraught with both theoretical
and practical significance, and it is hardly unimpor-
tant that Aristotle and the many other thinkers who
are part of what we might term the “rationalist tra-
dition” answer this question by insisting that the ca-
pacity to reason is decisive. Given this answer, and
given the further thesis that it is humans and humans
alone (among terrestrial creatures) who have this ca-
pacity, the theoretical exclusion of other animals
from the moral community is guaranteed.
We have, then, according to the rationalist tra-
dition, no direct duties to other animals. There is
nothing we owe them, no wrong we can do to them.
At the very most we can be prohibited from treating
other animals in certain ways because of what we
owe to rational beings, ourselves or others. A venge-
ful person, who sets fire to a neighbor’s dog in order
to get even, does nothing wrong to the dog; it is the
harm done to the neighbor’s property, or the neigh-
bor’s psyche, or the agent’s moral CHARACTER that
explicates what is wrong. As strange as it may seem,
the wrong done in a case like this, given the ration-
alist tradition, differs in no essential respect from the
wrong done if the person bent on revenge sets fire
to the neighbor’s car or shrubbery.
Not a few moralists find this more than strange;
they find it plainly false. For there are important dif-
ferences between burning a dog and burning a car
or a bush. A car feels nothing, while a dog is capable
of experiencing not only pain but also fear, and
whereas the destruction of a plant ends the plant’s
life, there is no reason to believe either that the plant
is aware of anything or that its death is something
that matters to the plant. True, some philosophers—
René DESCARTES (1596–1650) in particular—
maintain that nonhuman animals are totally devoid
of mind. On this (astonishing) view, gorillas and cats
are just as psychologically impoverished as BMWs
and holly bushes. Few people are even momentarily
tempted to side with Descartes, a reassuring sign of
71
animals, treatment of
the capacity of common sense to withstand the ex-
cesses of philosophical theory.
The Sentientist Tradition
In view of the morally relevant differences that
separate cabbages and garter belts from sparrows
and mice, critics of the rationalist tradition seek an
alternative to the capacity to reason as the criterion
for admission to the moral community. Jeremy BEN-
THAM (1748–1832), JOHN STUART MILL (1806–
1873) and, among contemporary utilitarians, Peter
Singer argue forcefully for the inclusion of other ani-
mals in the moral community. It is, they think, sen-
tiency (that is, the capacity to experience PLEASURE
and pain) that determines who does, and who does
not, belong. As Bentham writes, in an oft-quoted
passage, “The question is not, can they [that is, non-
human animals] reason? Nor, can they talk? But can
they suffer?”
If sentiency serves as the test for admission, then
the moral landscape is radically transformed. At
least some of our duties regarding nonhuman ani-
mals emerge as direct duties—duties we owe to
these animals themselves, not to some human being
who happens to be an interested third party. In par-
ticular, the general duty of nonmaleficence applies
directly to our dealings with sentient beings if, as is
generally assumed, pain is intrinsically evil. Prima
facie, that is, we have a direct duty not to cause any
sentient being pain, regardless of the species to
which the individual belongs.
To resist this extension of direct duties to animals
other than human beings, on the ground that non-
human animals do not belong to the species Homo
sapiens, thus emerges as a moral prejudice cut from
the same defective moral cloth as racism and sexism.
Like these latter prejudices this newly recognized
one—speciesism, as it is commonly called—at-
tempts to justify moral differences simply on the ba-
sis of biological differences. However, just as the
color of one’s skin and the gender of one’s sex
should not determine one’s membership in the
moral community, so the classification of one’s spe-
cies should be similarly impotent. At the most fun-
damental moral level, all sentient animals are equal.
The egalitarianism central to what might be called
“the sentientist tradition,” when coupled (as it cus-
tomarily is) with utilitarian theory, gives rise to re-
sults many find counterintuitive. For example, the
animals, treatment of
murder of innocent human beings seems to be per-
mitted by the theory, if the aggregate balance of good
mental states over bad mental states is thereby
achieved—as well it may be in particular cases. Such
an outcome cannot bode well for the protection non-
human animals are afforded by utilitarians operating
within the sentientist tradition. Given this approach
there is nothing wrong with a matador’s painfully
draining the life from a bull, for example, provided
only that enough people find the spectacle suffi-
ciently pleasant. To protest that it is immoral to take
pleasure in such a barbarous custom is an objection
that is unavailable to utilitarians since whether this
is immoral is itself an open question, given utilitar-
ian theory. In short, when it comes to how humans
treat other animals, utilitarian theory seems better
suited to defending rather than reforming the sta-
tus quo.
Utilitarians offer a variety of replies to these and
other objections, and it must be said that, whatever
the shortcomings of the theory, its champions are
exceptional for their resourcefulness and tenacity.
Nevertheless, many thinkers find the position inade-
quate, some because of the meager protection it af-
fords nonhuman animals. While acknowledging the
improvement sentiency represents over rationality
as a criterion of membership in the moral commu-
nity, and while agreeing that, as the sentientist tra-
dition implies, humans have some direct duties to
nonhuman animals, these latter critics of UTILITAR-
IANISM seek a moral theory that retains the strengths
of the sentientist tradition while shedding its
weaknesses.
Inherentism
Inherentism is one form such a theory can take.
Like the sentientist tradition, inherentism is egali-
tarian in spirit. But unlike this former tradition, in-
herentism identifies individuals, not mental states as
the locus of ultimate value. The kind of value indi-
viduals possess is modeled after Kant’s idea of “end
in itself.” Individuals who have inherent value have
a morally significant value in themselves, apart from
their possible usefulness to others and indepen-
dently of the episodic or overall value of their mental
states.
But inherentism differs from the position of Kant
and his followers in a fundamental respect. Whereas
Kantians deny that nonhuman animals exist as ends
72
in themselves (or have inherent value), inherentists
maintain that other animals have this same moral
status. Moreover, inherentism’s advocates see them-
selves as offering a philosophical foundation of hu-
man and animal rights, arguing that those individ-
uals who have inherent value, whether humans or
not, also possess the basic moral right to be treated
with respect (or, alternatively, to be treated as ends
in themselves).
Thus, to the extent that the equal value of the
individual plays a dominant role in the rationalist
tradition, inherentism makes use of an important
idea from this tradition. And to the extent that non-
speciesism plays a dominant role in the sentientist
tradition, inherentism makes use of an important
idea from this tradition, too. In view of the key
points of resemblance between inherentism, on the
one hand, and the rationalist and sentientist tradi-
tions, on the other, it is reasonable to say that inher-
entism is the attempt to synthesize what, according
to its advocates, are the best features of these two
widely divergent philosophical traditions.
How successful inherentism is in this regard is
very much open to debate. At least some of the dis-
agreement is occasioned, not by the logic of the po-
sition, but by what many view as its “radical” impli-
cations. And it is true that, when compared with the
status quo, inherentism’s practical implications do
seem “radical.” For example, inherentism categori-
cally prohibits not only such blood sports as bull-
fighting and recreational hunting, it takes a similar
stance against using nonhuman animals in science
or raising them for purposes of human commerce or
gustatory delight. In all these instances (and more),
inherentism sees some individuals being treated as
mere means by other individuals, something the the-
ory’s most basic principle condemns uncondition-
ally. At the level of practice, therefore, inherentism
is an abolitionist philosophy.
Not a few people are anxious to refute this “ex-
treme” view, often for the worst of reasons. Surpris-
ingly—perhaps—even otherwise astute philoso-
phers commit fallacies worthy of the most unbridled
sophomore, arguing, for example, that the very idea
of “animal rights” is absurd because dogs and cats
cannot vote (and so cannot have a right to vote),
cannot learn calculus and geography (and so cannot
have a right to an education), and so on. However,
it is implausible to assume that an individual must
have every right in order to have any right. This is

not a standard we insist on in the case of human
beings. We do not, for example, maintain that a re-
tarded child who cannot learn calculus or geometry
has no right to medical care or, more basically, can-
not have a right to be treated respectfully. This much
granted, it cannot be logical to deny all rights to non-
human animals because, like this child, they cannot
have every right.
Similarly deficient, and for similar reasons, is the
attempt to deny all rights to these animals on the
grounds that they cannot understand what a right is
or, alternatively, that they themselves cannot claim,
waive, exercise, etc. their rights. Many humans are
similarly disadvantaged yet do not for this reason
necessarily lack every right. And as for certain theo-
logical bases for attributing rights to all humans
while denying them to every other animal (for ex-
ample, the view that all and only human beings have
souls), these turn out to be more controversial in
their major assumptions than the ideas they are en-
listed to combat.
However, even if inherentism is able to defend
itself against these sorts of criticism, its own major
teachings are far from settled. Among the questions
it must address, one concerns the criteria for pos-
sessing inherent value. Because inherentists are in-
clined to answer this question by making reference
to possessing a fairly rich psychology, a psychology
that includes not only beliefs and desires but also
the ability to act intentionally, proponents of this
view are faced with daunting challenges in the phi-
losophy of mind. Moreover, difficult line-drawing
problems arise concerning which animals actually
are as psychologically rich as inherentists require,
even assuming that some are. And there are, finally,
vexing questions posed by some environmental phi-
losophers about inherentism’s difficulties in ac-
counting for the value of nonanimate nature gener-
ally and of species in particular, and still other
challenges emanating from feminist thinkers who
discern a patriarchal bias in the rights/duties tradi-
tion at the heart not only of inherentism but of West-
ern moral theory generally. Clearly, even if animals
are not part of their daily bread, the inherentist’s
plate is loaded with difficult questions.
Beyond Ridicule
Whether or not inherentists have the wherewithal
to defend their abolitionist philosophy, one thing is
73
animals, treatment of
certain: The question of the moral status of nonhu-
man animals has attained a respectability and stay-
ing power few people would have thought possible
even as recently as twenty years ago. When Mill
writes that “all great movements go through three
stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption,” those who
are active in the animal rights movement under-
standably hope he speaks prophetically of their
cause. How far this movement will advance, no one
can know. What is known, is that philosophers have
forced the issue of animal rights beyond the stage of
ridicule to that of serious discussion. In this respect,
and for this reason, all moral philosophers can take
comfort in knowing that moral philosophy some-
times does make a difference.
See also: ABORTION; ARISTOTLE; BENTHAM; BIOETH-
ICS; BIOLOGICAL THEORY; DUTY AND OBLIGATION;
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS; EUTHANASIA; EVOLUTION;
EXPLOITATION; FEMINIST ETHICS; GOOD, THEORIES
OF THE; HARM AND OFFENSE; HUMANISM; INFANTI-
CIDE; KANT; JOHN STUART MILL; MORAL COMMU-
NITY, BOUNDARIES OF; NATURE AND ETHICS; PAIN
AND SUFFERING; PLEASURE; RIGHT HOLDERS; RIGHTS;
SOCIAL CONTRACT; SPORT; UTILITARIANISM; VALUE,
THEORY OF.
Bibliography
Callicott, J. Baird. In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in
Environmental Philosophy. Albany: SUNY Press, 1988.
Clark, Stephen. The Moral Status of Animals. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1977.
———. The Nature of the Beast. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1983.
Fox, Michael Allen. The Case for Animal Experimenta-
tion. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
Frey, R. G. Interests and Rights: The Case against Ani-
mals. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.
———. Rights, Killing and Suffering: Moral Vegetarian-
ism and Applied Ethics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983.
Godlovich, Stanley, Roslind Godlovich, and John Harris,
eds. Animals, Men and Morals. London: Gollancz,
1972.
Linzey, Andrew. Animal Rights: A Christian Assessment.
London: SCM Press, 1976.
———. Christianity and the Rights of Animals. London:
SPCK; New York: Crossroad, 1988.
Magel, Charles. A Bibliography on Animal Rights and Re-
lated Matters. Washington, D.C.: University Press of
America, 1981.
———. Keyguide to Information Sources on Animal
Rights. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1989.
animals, treatment of
Midgley, Mary. Animals and Why They Matter: A Journey
Around the Species Barrier. Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1984.
———. Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature. Ith-
aca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978.
Miller, Harlan, and William Williams, eds. Ethics and Ani-
mals. Clifton, NJ: Humana Press, 1983.
Paterson, David, and Richard Ryder, eds. Animals’ Rights:
A Symposium. Fontwell, Sussex: Centaur, 1979.
Regan, Tom. All Who Dwell Therein: Essays on Animal
Rights and Environmental Ethics. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1982.
———. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1983.
———. Defending Animal Rights. Champaign: University
of Illinois Press, 2001.
Regan, Tom, and Peter Singer, eds. Animal Rights and
Human Obligations. 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1989 [1976].
Regan, Tom, and Carl Cohen. The Animal Rights Debate.
Towata, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001.
Rollin, Bernard. Animal Rights and Human Morality. Buf-
falo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1981.
Salt, Henry. Animal Rights. Fontwell, Sussex: Centaur,
1980 [1892].
Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation. 1983 [1975]. Various
publishers.
———. Practical Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1979.
———, ed. In Defence of Animals. Oxford: Basil Black-
well, 1985.
Tom Regan
Anscombe, G[ertrude]
E[lizabeth] M[argaret]
(1919–2001)
Anscombe made significant contributions not only
to ethics but also to philosophy of mind, metaphys-
ics, philosophy of logic and language, and the history
of philosophy. She studied at Cambridge with Lud-
wig Wittgenstein after taking a degree at Oxford.
ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) and WITTGENSTEIN
(1889–1951) are the most important philosophical
influences on her thought, which has also been
shaped by the Roman Catholicism which she ac-
cepted while in her teens.
Anscombe’s work on ethics has from the start
been distinguished by its critical distance from the
dominant modes of thought of the age. She called to
74
attention deeply questionable assumptions charac-
terizing moral philosophy as it has been taught and
thought about; she also criticized prominent fea-
tures of nonacademic thought about ethics, Catholic
as well as non-Catholic. This distance from the
modes of thought of the age distinguishes also her
writings on metaphysics; here too she brings to at-
tention and criticizes the “cast of mind . . . charac-
teristic of our whole culture.” Cultural criticism and
philosophical criticism are joined in her work, which
is thus set apart from most analytic philosophy. (The
philosopher most clearly influenced by her way of
bringing together cultural and philosophical criti-
cism is Alasdair MACINTYRE.)
Her most influential contribution to ethics has
been “Modern Moral Philosophy” (in Anscombe
1981; originally published in 1958), a principal aim
of which was to let people see modern moral phi-
losophy as not the only, the obvious, the self-evident
way in which the subject might be done. She wanted
to reveal the state of moral philosophy to be thor-
oughly unsatisfactory, dependent on incoherent con-
cepts and unrecognized assumptions; and she ar-
gued that, in the form in which it was then practiced,
it should be given up. In the course of her argument
she stated and defended three theses, each of which
has been important in the subsequent development
of philosophical ethics.
The first of her theses was that moral philosophy
could not profitably be done without an adequate
philosophy of PSYCHOLOGY, and that it should be
put aside in the meantime. Thus, for example,
HUME’s (1711–1776) famous argument about the
relation between “is” and “ought” concerns the kind
of influence on action which various sorts of consid-
eration are capable of having, but the discussion of
that issue in Hume’s own writings and in post-
Humean philosophy reflects great unclarity about
how NEEDS and wants are related to other sorts of
facts and to reasoning about what to do. An-
scombe’s argument for the importance to moral phi-
losophy of philosophical psychology stimulated a re-
vival of interest in such topics as ACTION, INTENTION,
PRACTICAL REASON, MOTIVES, and DESIRE. But her
thesis concerning the importance to moral philoso-
phy of such discussion is still controversial. While
the acceptance of her idea is reflected in the orga-
nization of this encyclopedia (see, for example, the
entries on action; character; deliberation and choice;
emotion; motives; pleasure; practical reason[ing];

voluntary acts; weakness of will), its rejection is
plain in the organization of the Blackwell Compan-
ion to Ethics, which contains no article on any topic
in philosophical psychology, even those of obvious
relevance to moral philosophy. Anscombe’s own
contributions to philosophical psychology include
her monograph, Intention (1957). In it she discusses
questions about intention, action, and practical
thought (practical reasoning and practical knowl-
edge). She rejected the prevalent philosophical idea
of intention as a kind of mental state or event, and
developed instead an account of intentional action
in terms of the applicability to such action of a kind
of question asking for the agent’s reason. She was
thus able to show the importance of conceptions of
good in practical thought. Her later writings take
further the question how practical thinking and
goodness are related, and thus bear closely on the
question how actions may be evaluated as good or
bad. (See especially her “Von Wright and Practical
Inference,” 1989.)
Anscombe’s second thesis was that the concepts
of moral duty, moral obligation, and the moral
“ought” should, if possible, be abandoned; they were
survivals of a divine law conception of ethics that
had been given up and were unintelligible outside
that framework of thought. Anscombe has been ac-
cused of failing to recognize the distinction between
moral obligation and requirements established
through some sort of convention, the idea being that
only in the latter sort of case might an authoritative
source of the obligation be necessary (see Baier). But
she does herself distinguish between obligations de-
pendent and those not dependent on convention.
The idea that the distinction undercuts her argument
may rest on some confusion about what she was ar-
guing; she has not held that whether an act is good
or bad, just or unjust, is a matter of the promulga-
tion of a divine law. She has held that the idea of a
supposed moral sense of “ought” can lead to cor-
ruptions of thought, as when we wonder whether, in
some difficult circumstances, we “morally ought” to
do some admittedly unjust act.
Anscombe’s discussion of her second thesis has
been more influential than the thesis itself, which
has not been widely accepted. In arguing for the the-
sis, she made a contrast between forms of ethics de-
pendent on the suspect concepts and Aristotle’s
ethics, in which those concepts have no role. Her
account of the contrast, and of the role of the notion
75
Anscombe, G. E. M.
of a virtue in Aristotle’s thought, helped to turn the
attention of philosophers to the VIRTUES and to the
possibility of forms of moral thought in which the
concept of a virtue is central.
The third thesis was that English moral philoso-
phers from Sidgwick on differ only in superficial
ways. However different the details of their theories,
such moral thinkers as SIDGWICK (1838–1900),
MOORE (1873–1958), ROSS (1877–1971), Nowell-
Smith, and HARE all hold that that action is right
which produces the best possible consequences, in-
cluding among consequences the intrinsic values
which theorists like Ross believe we should pro-
mote. Anscombe introduced the term CONSEQUEN-
TIALISM for the shared view; what consequentialists
deny is that there is anything prohibited simply in
virtue of its being describable as such-and-such kind
of action, like murder, say, or adultery. It is this de-
nial that is central to the similarity averred in her
thesis. (That is, someone who held that the motive
of duty had supreme value might argue that murder
would not be prohibited if done from duty; this view,
though not explicitly consequentialist, would fall
into the group of views which Anscombe was ar-
guing were only superficially different from each
other.) The third thesis has been very influential in
one regard, but much less so in another. That is, the
term “consequentialism” has entered the general
philosophical vocabulary; the debate between con-
sequentialists and anti-consequentialists is now part
of philosophical curricula, a topic for anthologies
and symposia. But the third thesis itself—the thesis
of superficial differences—has not had much seri-
ous attention. The question she wanted her audi-
ence to think about concerned the cast of mind of
a culture—the philosophical culture and the larger
culture. But, with few exceptions, analytic philos-
ophers have not followed Anscombe in reflecting
on such issues. It seems, indeed, that the sting of
Anscombe’s third criticism has been drawn by the
transformation of her issue into a debate which
could be integrated into the academic culture
which she was criticizing. What suggests this most
clearly is the regular use, in the debate, of a type of
argument in which we are asked, for example,
whether it would not be our duty to boil one baby
if by doing so a thousand deaths could be averted
(see 1981, III, 65); but the use of such examples is
itself an expression of the cast of mind with which
the third thesis was concerned.
Anscombe, G. E. M.
Throughout her life, Anscombe was greatly inter-
ested in particular moral questions, like those con-
cerning EUTHANASIA, war, and contraception. Her
approach to these issues and her concerns are well
illustrated by the three essays on war in Anscombe
1981 (“The Justice of the Present War Examined,”
“Mr Truman’s Degree,” “War and Murder,” origi-
nally dating, respectively, from 1939, 1957, and
1961). All three essays reflect her understanding of
the importance for ethics of clarity about the con-
cepts of action and intention; in all three An-
scombe’s reasoning depends on the principle of
DOUBLE EFFECT, which is explicitly discussed in two
of the essays; all three are concerned with ways in
which moral thought may be corrupted. The second
and third essays treat the conception of murder as
central. Both these essays attack PACIFISM as a doc-
trine which is both false and harmful, harmful in
that it contributes to a loss of understanding in con-
temporary thought of what murder is; both these
essays discuss also the AUTHORITY of the state. An-
scombe’s essays on war thus lead into some wider
topics, to each of which she devoted further atten-
tion: murder, the authority of the state, and the prin-
ciple of double effect. Much of this work is not in-
cluded in Anscombe 1981 and is not widely known;
the most significant essays are “Prolegomenon to a
Pursuit of the Definition of Murder: The Illegal and
the Unlawful” (1979), “Action, Intention and ‘Dou-
ble Effect’”(1982), and “Murder and the Morality of
Euthanasia: Some Philosophical Considerations”
(1994). These essays develop her earlier views (for
example, on double effect); they constitute together
a powerful argument for the importance in moral
thought of the concept of murder, and an incisive
criticism of contemporary thought about LIFE AND
DEATH.
See also: ACTION; ARISTOTLE; CHARACTER; COMPAR-
ATIVE ETHICS; CONSEQUENTIALISM; CONVENTIONS;
DELIBERATION AND CHOICE; DESIRE; DOUBLE EFFECT;
DUTY AND OBLIGATION; EMOTION; EUTHANASIA;
HARE; HOMICIDE; HUME; INTENTION; LIFE AND
DEATH; MACINTYRE; METAPHYSICS AND EPISTEMOL-
OGY; MOORE; MORAL PSYCHOLOGY; MOTIVES;
OUGHT IMPLIES CAN; PACIFISM; PLEASURE; PRACTICAL
REASON[ING]; PRACTICAL WISDOM; ROSS; SIDGWICK;
VIRTUE ETHICS; VIRTUES; VOLUNTARY ACTS; WAR AND
PEACE; WEAKNESS OF WILL; WITTGENSTEIN.
76
Bibliography
Works by Anscombe
Intention. Oxford: Blackwell, 1957.
“Prolegomenon to a Pursuit of the Definition of Murder:
The Illegal and the Unlawful.” Dialectics and Human-
ism no. 4 (1979): 73–77.
Collected Philosophical Papers. Oxford: Blackwell, 1981;
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981. Vol.
III, Ethics, Religion and Politics, contains most of An-
scombe’s pre-1979 writings on ethics.
“Action, Intention and ‘Double Effect.’” Medalist’s Ad-
dress. In Proceedings of the ACPA, 1982, 12–25. Im-
portant discussion of action; clarification of issues con-
cerning intended and unintended killing.
“Von Wright and Practical Inference.” In The Philosophy
of Georg Henrik von Wright, edited by Paul Arthur
Schilpp and Lewis Edwin Hahn, 377–404. La Salle,
IL: Open Court, 1989. Reprinted under the title “Prac-
tical Inference,” in Virtues and Reasons, edited by Ros-
alind Hursthouse et al., 1–34. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1995.
“Murder and the Morality of Euthanasia: Some Philo-
sophical Considerations.” In Euthanasia, Clinical
Practice and the Law, edited by Luke Gormally, 37–
51. London: Linacre Centre for Health Care Ethics,
1994.
“Who is Wronged?” Oxford Review 1967: 16–17. Con-
troversial discussion of whether a person acts badly in
choosing to save a smaller rather than a larger number
of people.
Works about Anscombe
Baier, Kurt. “Radical Virtue Ethics.” In Midwest Studies
in Philosophy, vol. XIII, 126–35. Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1988. Criticism of the
second thesis of “Modern Moral Philosophy.”
Conant, James. “Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Anscombe
on Moral Unintelligibility.” In Religion and Morality,
edited by D. Z. Phillips, 250–98. New York: St. Mar-
tin’s Press, 1996. Discussion of the second thesis of
“Modern Moral Philosophy.”
Diamond, Cora. “The Dog that Gave Himself the Moral
Law.” In Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. XIII,
161–79. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1988. On the second thesis of “Modern Moral
Philosophy.”
Diamond, Cora, and Jenny Teichman, eds. Intention and
Intentionality: Essays in Honour of G. E. M. An-
scombe. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1979; Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1979. Contains essays on An-
scombe’s discussions of intention in war and in sex,
and of topics from her Intention.
Haber, Joram Graf, ed. Absolutism and its Consequen-
tialist Critics. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield,

1994. On questions connected with the third thesis of
“Modern Moral Philosophy.”
Richter, Duncan. Ethics after Anscombe: Post “Modern
Moral Philosophy.” Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1999.
Winch, Peter. “Professor Anscombe’s Moral Philosophy.”
In Commonality and Particularity in Ethics, edited by
Lilli Alanen, et al., 177–96. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1997. Critical discussion of “Modern Moral Phi-
losophy” in relation to two of Anscombe’s later papers.
Cora Diamond
Anselm, Saint (1033–1109)
Abbot of the monastery at Bec-Hellouin in Nor-
mandy; Archbishop of Canterbury. In his first phil-
osophical work, the Monologion, Anselm indicates
that the ability to make value judgments is the very
essence of rationality: “for a rational nature to be
rational is nothing other than for it to be able to
discriminate what is just from what is not just, what
is true from what is not true, what is good from what
is not good, what is more good from what is less
good” (chap. 68). Anselm’s emphasis on rationality
is so strong that one would expect him to present a
theory of natural-law ethics. Yet he never explicitly
moves in that direction—except for stating, in Cur
Deus homo I, 20, that “[human] nature teaches you
to deal with your fellow-servant . . . as you would
want to be dealt with by him and teaches that anyone
who is unwilling to give of what he has ought not to
receive what he does not have.”
A major task of Anselm’s ethical theory, generally,
is to ascertain the relationship that obtains between
reason and will. Anselm has no doubt about the fact
that all rational beings are motivated in terms of an
inalienable inclination toward HAPPINESS. In Adam
this inclination was accompanied by an inclination
toward iustitia—i.e., justice, in the sense of right-
eousness—so that originally Adam took delight
both in doing the right thing and in doing it for the
right reason, viz., because it is right. With an eye to
Adam’s original state Anselm defines a just will as
one that adheres to moral rectitude for its own sake;
and he makes clear, in De veritate 12, that he means
adhering to moral rectitude for its own sake only and
not in order to procure, or to increase, happiness. In
Cur Deus homo I, 21, Anselm implies that each hu-
man being has an obligation to act virtuously and in
accordance with God’s will even if doing so were to
77
Anselm, Saint
conduce to external conditions that did not promote
happiness—indeed, even if doing so were to result
in the destruction of the present world. Similarly,
both in De libertate arbitrii 5–6 and in De concordia
I, 6, in which he alludes hypothetically to someone’s
choice between telling a lie or being killed, he inti-
mates that the lie ought not to be told. Cur Deus
homo II, 18–19, cites the instance of Christ, who,
according to Anselm’s point of view, allowed him-
self to be put to death rather than mendaciously
deny that he was the Son of God. Such commitment
to truth Anselm views as both exemplary and
meritorious.
Anselm conceives of morally upright actions as
actions approved by God. But he presumes that we
can determine which actions are moral and which
are immoral other than by direct insight, as it were,
into the mind of God. Although God’s will is always
ultimately determinative of moral rightness and
wrongness, God’s will is never arbitrary; rather,
whatever God wills he wills for a reason; and in
discerning something of these reasons we are able
to appeal to them as the basis for our moral obli-
gations (Cf. Cur Deus homo I, 8).
Clearly, Anselm’s conception of morality is fun-
damentally related to his theological position. In ac-
cordance with his theology he points out that as a
result of the Fall human beings have lost the original
inclination for justice. Accordingly, the relationship
between intellect and will has become distorted, so
that within the moral domain there is now a ten-
dency for fallen human beings to will that which ex-
ceeds the moderating requirements of iustitia. Even
when fallen human beings will that which is objec-
tively right, they do not (apart from the special as-
sistance of grace) successfully do so for the right
reason. This theological consideration leads Anselm
to refer to moral EVIL as itself a privation, for it is
the absence of justice where justice should be pres-
ent—viz., in the will. Anselm distinguishes evil-that-
is-injustice from evil-that-is-detriment (e.g., pain),
and he claims that only the former evil is privation.
His use of the term “privation” gives emphasis both
to his belief that moral evil results from the lack of
uprightness in the will and to his belief that only
such a deficiency is evil per se.
The moral basis articulated by Anselm vis-à-vis
his theory of the Atonement has often been studied.
Central to it are the notions of satisfaction, compen-
sation, and HONOR —as well as the presuppositions
Anselm, Saint
that only a service performed by a descendant of
Adam could make satisfaction for the wrongdoings
of Adam and his race, and that apart from such a
meritorious service God’s honor could be preserved
only by punishing, and not by forgiving, members of
the human race. In De conceptu virginali Anselm
insists that no descendants of Adam will be held ac-
countable for Adam’s sin but only for their own sins,
even though because of Adam’s personal sin his nat-
ural descendants inherit a sinful nature that predis-
poses them to sin personally. Anselm’s moral and
theological perspectives require the metaphysical
view that just as Adam’s personal action contami-
nated his nature, so his descendants’ respective na-
ture contaminates their respective persons, even be-
fore they sin personally.
Though Anselm teaches that fallen human beings
who reach the age of accountability inevitably
choose at some time to do evil, he nowhere supposes
that their choice is other than free. Yet his intriguing
view of freedom is problematical since it depends on
an objectionable construal of the claim that people
have FREE WILL insofar as they cannot be compelled
to will anything against their will—i.e., insofar as
their will cannot be forced: “A man can be bound
against his will, because he can be bound when he
is unwilling to be bound. . . . But a man cannot will
against his will, because he cannot will if he is un-
willing to will. For everyone-who-wills wills that he
will” (De libertate arbitrii 5). Insofar as Anselm con-
ceives of willing something against one’s will as will-
ing it unwillingly, and conceives of this latter as self-
contradictory, he makes compulsion of the will
logically impossible and freedom of the will logically
necessary. In the end, then, his theory of freedom
seems question-begging and therefore unconducive
to legitimating the moral practices of blaming and
praising.
In the Proslogion Anselm attempts to show that
there is no conflict between the notions of justice
and of MERCY as they apply to God. His attempted
harmonization consists of the ingenious strategy of
deriving mercy from justice, by way of considera-
tions of goodness. Glimpses of Anselm’s practical
thinking about the VIRTUES may be gathered from
De similitudinibus and from the Vita Anselmi of
Eadmer (1060–1124).
All in all, Anselm’s conception of morality—
though never systematically expounded by him—
commands our respect. Assuredly, it cannot reason-
78
ably be either dismissed as a mere remnant of feudal
thinking or relegated exclusively to the sphere of
theology.
See also: CHRISTIAN ETHICS; EVIL; FORGIVENESS;
FREE WILL; FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM; GOLDEN
RULE; GOOD, THEORIES OF THE; MERCY; METAPHYS-
ICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY; MOTIVES; NATURAL LAW;
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION; PUNISHMENT; RATIONAL
CHOICE; RATIONALITY VS. REASONABLENESS; RELI-
GION; RIGHT, CONCEPTS OF; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS;
VIRTUES.
Bibliography
Works by Anselm
The Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises of
Anselm of Canterbury. Translated by Jasper Hopkins
and Herbert Richardson. Minneapolis, Banning Press,
2000.
Memorials of St. Anselm. Edited by R. W. Southern and
F. S. Schmitt. London: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Contains De similitudinibus.
Opera omnia anselmi. Edited by F. S. Schmitt. 2 vols.
Stuttgart: F. Frommann, 1968.
Works about Anselm
Crouse, Robert. “The Augustinian Background of St. An-
selm’s Concept of Justitia.” Canadian Journal of The-
ology 4 (1958): 111–19.
Eadmer. The Life of St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Edited and translated by R. W. Southern. New York:
Thomas Nelson, 1962.
Fairweather, Eugene. “Truth, Justice and Moral Respon-
sibility in the Thought of St. Anselm.” In Actes du pre-
mier congrès international de philosophie médiévale:
L’homme et son destin, 385–91. Louvain: Nauwe-
laerts, 1960.
Gombocz, Wolfgang L. “Anselm von Aosta als Schrecken
der ‘europäischen’ Anthropologie? Anmeldung der
philosophischen Pflicht, ‘Cur Deus Homo’ zu durch-
kreuzen.” In Entwicklungslinien mittelalterlicher Phi-
losophie, edited by Gerhard Leibold and Winfried Löff-
ler. Vorträge des V. Kongresses der Österreichischen
Gesellschaft für Philosophie. Teil 2, 73–86. Vienna:
Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1999.
Heyer, George S., Jr. “St. Anselm on the Harmony between
God’s Mercy and God’s Justice.” In The Heritage of
Christian Thought: Essays in Honor of Robert Lowry
Calhoun, edited by Robert E. Cushman and Egil Gris-
lis. New York: Harper and Row, 1965.
Hopkins, Jasper. “Anselm of Canterbury.” In Routledge
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward Craig, general ed-

itor. Vol. 1, 283–97. London and New York: Rout-
ledge, 1998.
Hufnagel, Alfons. “Anselm und das Naturrecht.” In Ana-
lecta Anselmiana, edited by Helmut Kohlenberger, vol.
5, 189–94. Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1976.
Kane, G. Stanley. “Elements of Ethical Theory in the
Thought of St. Anselm.” In Studies in Medieval Cul-
ture, vol. 12, 61–71. The Medieval Institute. Kalama-
zoo: Western Michigan University, 1978.
McIntyre, John. St. Anselm and His Critics: A Reinterpre-
tation of the Cur Deus homo. Edinburgh: Oliver and
Boyd, 1954.
Pouchet, Robert. La rectitudo chez saint Anselme: un
itinéraire augustinien de l’âme à Dieu. Paris: Etudes
augustiniennes, 1964.
Sheets, John R. “Justice in the Moral Thought of St. An-
selm.” The Modern Schoolman 25 (January 1948):
132–39.
Torrance, Thomas F. “Ethical Implications of Anselm’s De
veritate.” Theologische Zeitschrift 24 (September–
October 1968): 309–19.
Vuillemin, Jules. “Justice anselmienne et bonne volonté
kantienne: essai de comparison,” pp. 361–75 in D. E.
Luscombe and G. R. Evans, editors, Anselm: Aosta,
Bec and Canterbury. Sheffield, England, Sheffield Ac-
ademic Press, 1996.
Jasper Hopkins
anthropology
The ethical question most frequently raised by an-
thropology is that of relativism, the term “cultural
relativism” having been widely propagated in Amer-
ican cultural anthropology by Melville Herskovits.
But many other ethical issues are raised both in and
by the practice of anthropology.
Information and Informants
Anthropologists often explore topics related to
RELIGION, sexuality, and social POWER —topics that
are extremely sensitive in the societies they write
about. To reveal the sources of information about
these topics—or the information itself—would of-
ten have a catastrophic impact on individuals or on
the community. Such information could be used by
people both within those societies and from outside
to threaten, manipulate, or embarrass; and revealing
a source may put her at risk of anything from ostra-
cism to assault. Not only may the publication of in-
formation have bad consequences, there may also
79
anthropology
be, as many people hold, a general obligation to re-
spect rights to PRIVACY in the human sciences, even
when the resulting harm over and above mere ex-
posure is not great or amounts simply to embar-
rassment.
Anthropology thus often raises a sharp conflict
between the scholarly concern for truth and verifi-
ability and the moral concern for the potential uses
of the information one makes available. Professional
norms rightly require anthropologists to maintain
adequate field notes and to deposit copies of them
in archives—including in the country where the re-
search is carried out—so that later researchers can
examine them for such scholarly, and broadly epi-
stemic, purposes as confirming the anthropologist’s
linguistic competence, honesty, and reliability; ex-
ploring alternative interpretations; and developing
analyses of material not published by the original
researcher. But if, for example, information provided
by an informant is embarrassing to the government
(or some powerful elite) of that informant’s country,
and that government or elite regularly uses force
against individuals who “slander the state,” then it
is clear that such purposes may have to be overrid-
den by the researcher’s obligations to the safety and
well-being of the informant.
Some of these issues are questions of maintaining
professional confidences: if information is provided
to a researcher on the understanding that its source
will not be revealed (or that it will not be revealed
during the informant’s lifetime), there is a very
strong presumption that the researcher ought to
maintain those confidences. Further, since anthro-
pologists are usually outsiders, they ought generally
to seek guidance from their informants as to what
dangers the publication of information might cause.
But just as, in many cases, anthropologists may be
unaware of the risks associated with revealing their
sources, so their informant may be unaware of the
risks. The obligation to one’s informants cannot be
discharged by getting their permission to release in-
formation in circumstances where they have no clear
sense of the risks.
Respect and Autonomy
Such cases raise delicate questions about the
wider issue of respect for the autonomy of peoples
in other cultures and respect for their cognitive and
moral views. Anthropologists very generally do not
anthropology
share the central beliefs—in gods, in witchcraft, or
in oracles, say—of the societies in which they work.
At the same time they make it their business to un-
derstand these views. This makes it possible for
them to manipulate the people whose culture they
are studying; for example, to get them to provide
information under false pretenses of one kind or
another. Manipulation of this kind involves using
people as means rather than ends in the way that
Immanuel KANT (1724–1804) would rule out by re-
spect for their autonomy.
But the differences between what the anthropol-
ogist knows and what people in the culture know
also raise questions of PATERNALISM. What duties,
for example, does an anthropologist, who is working
in a culture not her own, have toward people she
knows are in danger from the practices they engage
in? If an anthropologist fails to persuade such peo-
ple of these dangers, because they have radically dif-
ferent theories of how the world works, does respect
for autonomy require the anthropologist to allow the
people to proceed unhindered? Or does the fact that
these people are not properly informed allow over-
riding their autonomy in ways that seem appropriate
in other cases: for example, with children? That chil-
dren are the obvious model here indicates that mak-
ing these decisions raises substantial risks of eth-
nocentrism. But what if the people in question are
children, and the beliefs that threaten them are those
of their parents?
Anthropologists influenced by Herskovits—un-
like Herskovits himself—have sometimes held that
it is always wrong to intervene in such cases, appar-
ently on the basis of the argument that the truth of
MORAL RELATIVISM requires it. While this seems a
poor argument, it is certainly true that interventions
by outsiders who are insufficiently informed are of-
ten counterproductive—there is an argument here
from epistemic modesty; and that considerations of
respect for autonomy strongly argue against over-
ruling the decisions of any agent in circumstances
where they flow in the normal way from her beliefs
and values.
Exploitation
Finally, there are ethical issues raised by the fact
that anthropologists have by and large come from
rich nations and institutions and worked in poor
nations among poor people. Some of the most press-
80
ing ethical issues in anthropology are those that arise
from the considerable asymmetries of power and
wealth between the individuals and institutions of
the European and American academy and those of
the Third World. Anthropologists may, for example,
find themselves able to take advantage of their rela-
tive wealth to pay informants for information the
informants would not willingly give without pay-
ment. In circumstances of extreme poverty such pay-
ments are plainly exploitative.
It has also been argued recently that anthropol-
ogists have displayed too little sensitivity to issues of
acknowledgment. Failing to acknowledge the con-
tribution of theorists who are members of the cul-
ture under study, when such help would certainly be
acknowledged if it came from a Western student or
colleague, also constitutes a form of EXPLOITATION.
See also: AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; CULTURAL
STUDIES; EXPLOITATION; MORAL RELATIVISM; PATER-
NALISM; PROFESSIONAL ETHICS; SECRECY AND
CONFIDENTIALITY.
Bibliography
Van Olden, J. F. “Anthropology and Ethics: Annotated
Bibliography.” Sociologische Gids 19, no. 5–6 (Sept.–
Dec. 1972): 404–19.
Kwame A. Appiah
anti-realism
See metaphysics and epistemology; moral realism;
moral relativism.
applied ethics
Conceived broadly, applied ethics is the application
of ethical considerations—reasons, principles, val-
ues, ideals—to any policy or practice—personal or
social—for the purpose of evaluating (and thus en-
dorsing or rejecting) that policy or practice on eth-
ical grounds. Thus, applied ethics is the branch of
PRACTICAL REASONING in which ethical (as opposed
to prudential or selfish) considerations are employed
to guide individual and collective conduct.
Applied ethics is to be contrasted with other phil-
osophical undertakings in ethics, notably META-
ETHICS (the analysis of ethical concepts and ethical

reasoning), normative ethics (the study of the
NORMS used in making ethical judgments), and eth-
ical theory (the comprehensive investigation of eth-
ical problems, concepts, principles, reasoning, and
judgments, their interconnections and justification).
History
Applied ethics has attracted at least the passing
attention of the greatest thinkers, from SOCRATES’
(c. 470–399 B.C.E.) defense of his refusal to escape
from undeserved PUNISHMENT to Bertrand RUS-
SELL’s (1872–1970) defense of CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
to protest deploying atomic weapons. Other exam-
ples include LOCKE (1632–1704) on religious TOL-
ERATION, HUME (1632–1704) on SUICIDE, KANT
(1724–1804) on lying to prevent HARM to the in-
nocent, BENTHAM (1748–1832) on the French Dec-
laration of the Rights of Man, JOHN STUART MILL
(1806–1873) on EQUALITY between the sexes,
NIETZSCHE (1844–1900) on punishment, DEWEY
(1859–1952) on DEMOCRACY in America, and
SARTRE (1905–1980) on GENOCIDE in Vietnam.
As a study of these examples will confirm, no one
style of investigation and argument is practiced by
philosophers in the field of applied ethics. Hetero-
geneity is one of the hallmarks of applied ethics—
its problems, methods, and results. Applied ethics
also offers opportunities for philosophers to apply
theory to concrete cases; Bentham’s attack on the
“anarchical fallacies” of the French Declaration of
1789, for example, is a vivid case study of his posi-
tivistic UTILITARIANISM.
Related Fields
Applied ethics includes traditional CASUISTRY —
the application of ethical reflection to cases of prac-
tical concern. Like casuistry, applied ethics is typi-
cally situational rather than abstract, in the sense
that the reflective task is focused on an actual prob-
lem rather than on any broader issue. However, in-
sofar as casuistry has a distinctive method (“the
method of cases”), is confined to cases where MORAL
RULES apparently conflict, and is designed to assist
some actual agent in deciding what to do, applied
ethics is much broader and less well defined.
Applied ethics also includes PROFESSIONAL
ETHICS, the reflection on the ethical aspects of issues
and problems that arise within particular vocations
81
applied ethics
(medicine, business, JOURNALISM, etc.). Applied
ethics is more inclusive, however, since not all prac-
tical problems requiring ethical reflection fall con-
veniently within the domain of any recognized pro-
fession or vocation.
Applied ethics is a part, perhaps the major part,
of applied philosophy generally; and the terms ‘ap-
plied ethics’ and ‘applied philosophy’ are often used
as synonyms. Taken strictly, however, the two fields
are distinct. Insofar as applied philosophy addresses
problems in art, education, law, politics, etc., and
insofar as these problems are not solely ethical, ap-
plied philosophy is much the broader field.
The Role of Theory
The proper role of ethical theory in applied ethics
is controversial. Indeed, what that role should be
constitutes the principal problem in the theory of
applied ethics.
At the one extreme are those philosophers who
argue, in effect as PLATO (c. 430–347 B.C.E.) does,
that unless applied ethics is clearly and adequately
rooted in ethical theory, it is no better than a re-
sourceful defense of prejudice. The very term ‘ap-
plied ethics’ suggests a top-down application of eth-
ical theory or of an ethical norm to a practical
problem. On this view, a major problem is which
ethical theory or norm to apply, since there is more
than one and the practical dictates of the various
theories and norms are not identical in all cases.
Thus, a utilitarian and a Kantian might agree that it
is wrong to lie, even in a good cause, but their rea-
soning would be quite different. In other cases, e.g.,
whether murderers ought to be punished with death,
both the reasoning and the conclusions reached by
a Kantian and a utilitarian are likely to be different.
At the other extreme are those who argue, as AR-
ISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) in effect does, that—since
no known ethical system is complete and ade-
quate—no independent theoretical fulcrum exists
on which to turn practical arguments one way or the
other. Instead, an ethical theory must itself be tested
for its adequacy by its practical implications and not
the other way around. The main danger here is that
uncriticized moral intuitions (e.g., the principles un-
reflectively accepted that underlie the prevailing so-
cial practices of this or that subculture) may come
to dominate more systematic and principled
thinking.
applied ethics
In recent years, under the influence of John
RAWLS, a third alternative has emerged. On this view,
we should seek a reciprocal interaction between ab-
stract theory (which provides the method for choos-
ing principles; in Rawls’s case they will be principles
chosen in the original position behind a veil of igno-
rance) and considered judgments about actual cases
(which serve as provisional fixed points for our sub-
stantive judgments, e.g., that the murder of innocent
children is a grave wrong), with the aim of obtaining
a wide REFLECTIVE EQUILIBRIUM between the two.
Philosophers have used wide reflective equilibrium
mainly to justify choice of ethical or political princi-
ples, but it can also be used to reach solutions to
practical problems in a manner superior to either the
Platonic or Aristotelian methods described above.
Methods
The simplest method of reasoning in applied
ethics is to give advice or render a judgment based
on the application of an accepted norm to the prob-
lem case: If lying is wrong, and someone is about to
tell a lie, then what that person is about to do is
wrong. This turns applied ethics into an exercise in
deductive reasoning from two premises: one that ex-
presses the sole relevant ethical consideration (rule,
principle, ideal, etc.), and the other that character-
izes the case at hand in such a manner as to enable
the ethical considerations to be applied to it.
A more complex example with these same basic
features appears in the standard argument for phy-
sician assistance in dying: On the assumption that
patient autonomy ought to be protected and re-
spected, and that the patient in question is dying and
wants medical help to ease the passage to death,
medical personnel ought to provide such assistance.
In each of the cases above, simplicity is achieved by
assuming that exactly one norm applies and that it
applies without exceptions.
However, most actual cases—whether of interest
to the ordinary person or to the philosopher, so far
as neither is in the rigid grip of a normative theory—
are much more complex. The diversity of problems
and approaches to them can be illustrated by con-
sidering three very different kinds of examples that
involve ethical decision making.
According to the Bible (I Kings 3:17–28), Solo-
mon had to decide which of two women claimants
was the “real” mother of the infant. Unable in the
82
nature of the case to determine which woman was
the biological parent, he proposed dividing the in-
fant and giving half to each claimant. Immediately
one of the women waived her claim in favor of the
other. Then Solomon in his wisdom awarded the
baby to the first woman; she had provided the best
evidence of a readiness to sacrifice for the welfare
of the infant, as a true mother (whether the biologi-
cal parent or not) would do. Solomon’s genius lay
in adopting a stratagem for discovering which claim-
ant was worthy of maternal responsibility. Modern
GAME THEORY nicely vindicates Solomon’s shrewd
behavior. But rarely do we have such a clear-cut
method to achieve the ethically preferred outcome;
the paradigm case of fair division between two per-
sons, in which one of them cuts and the other
chooses, has few applications or parallels in real life.
Triage during wartime (or other) disaster consti-
tutes a familiar strategy for allocating scarce re-
sources. The task is to classify casualties for appro-
priate treatment, aiming both to conserve medical
resources and preserve the effectiveness of the army
in the field. Sorting casualties into three (not two and
not four or more) categories will suffice: those whose
wounds will cause them to die; those who can be
saved but only by major hospitalization; and those
less seriously wounded. The first group should re-
ceive only pain medication. The second should be
sent to the rear for further attention. For the remain-
der, they should be treated immediately and returned
to their units as quickly as possible. A utilitarian
would see such triage as a strategy to maximize fight-
ing potential and minimize suffering and so the best
thing to do. A Kantian would view triage as giving
equal consideration to each of the wounded soldiers,
followed by treatment fairly apportioned in the cir-
cumstances. Soldiers behind a veil of ignorance ought
to accept the treatment allotted for each category, no
matter into which category they individually might
fall were they to be wounded.
Argument over ABORTION is more complex. First,
it is clear that no one moral rule applies with decisive
consequences. For example, causing the DEATH of a
nonviable human embryo does not obviously violate
the moral rule against murder. On the other hand,
the principle that one may do as one pleases with
one’s own PROPERTY (including the contents of one’s
body) hardly applies with dispositive force, either.
Yet each of these considerations points to relevant
concerns, albeit with opposite effect: respect for hu-

man life and respect for women’s autonomy. Second,
deciding what are the relevant facts to which a prin-
ciple can be attached is controversial: Is it the fact
that the embryo or fetus is alive, or that it is human
progeny, or that it is a potential person (assuming
normal development) that matters? Or is what mat-
ters whatever concerns the impact of the pregnancy
and subsequent responsibilities that would fall to the
woman in question? Several principles and various
facts all seem relevant, and perhaps none is decisive.
Interdisciplinary Tendencies
In actual controversial cases (e.g., Ought CAPITAL
PUNISHMENT be abolished? Was the Gulf War a just
war? Ought affirmative action be abolished? Does
FAIRNESS require a flat tax?), it is often extremely
difficult to obtain an accurate and complete account
of all the relevant facts.
In addition, the necessary factual information can
often be obtained only by practitioners in the field
and by using the methods of the social sciences (sta-
tistics, survey research, etc.). As a result, philoso-
phers engaged in applied ethics must rely on experts
in the pertinent fields to provide them with the rele-
vant data, or they must develop the skills to gather
their own data. Applied ethics independent of em-
pirical information is like Hamlet without the Prince
of Denmark.
Ethicists as Experts
Philosophers who study and teach applied ethics
(often now called “ethicists,” especially in the field
of biomedical ethics) have begun to play a profes-
sional role as consultants and investigators, provid-
ing expert advice, evidence, and testimony in many
different institutional settings. Since the 1970s, phi-
losophers have served as members of various com-
missions (primarily on issues of MEDICAL ETHICS),
testified before legislative committees and PUBLIC
POLICY panels, and have performed other duties in
which their ability to identify and evaluate the ethi-
cal impact of various policies and practices has been
utilized.
Research Centers
In recent years, the study and practice of applied
ethics has been concentrated at research centers
83
applied ethics
through their publications, conferences, and work-
shops. Pioneering the field is The Hastings Center
(New York), founded in 1969 with a focus on BIO-
ETHICS. Most such centers are affiliated with univer-
sity departments of philosophy, such as the Center
for Philosophy and Public Affairs (University of
Maryland, 1976), the Center for the Study of Values
(University of Delaware, 1977), the Center for Val-
ues and Social Policy (University of Colorado,
1979), and the Social Philosophy and Policy Center
(Bowling Green State University, Ohio, 1981).
Journals and Encyclopedias
Although articles in applied ethics have from time
to time appeared in almost every professional jour-
nal in philosophy (notably, in Ethics, founded in
1890), the desire to provide a regular forum for
those interested primarily in this field has led to the
founding of several quarterlies devoted to problems
in applied ethics: Social Theory and Practice
(1970–), Philosophy and Public Affairs (1971–),
Social Philosophy and Policy (1983–), Journal of
Applied Philosophy (1984–), and Public Affairs
Quarterly (1987–). A comprehensive account of is-
sues, problems, and methods can be found in the
Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, three volumes,
1977. Biomedical issues have their own comprehen-
sive treatment in Encyclopedia of Bioethics, 2d,
1995.
See also (in addition to the many articles on specific
moral issues): ACADEMIC ETHICS; AGRICULTURAL
ETHICS; ANIMALS, TREATMENT OF; BIOETHICS; BUSI-
NESS ETHICS; CASUISTRY; CHILDREN AND ETHICAL
THEORY; CONSERVATION ETHICS; CORRECTIONAL
ETHICS; ENGINEERING ETHICS; ENVIRONMENTAL
ETHICS; GOVERNMENT, ETHICS IN; INTERNATIONAL
JUSTICE; JOURNALISM; LAND ETHICS; LEGAL ETHICS;
LIBRARY AND INFORMATION PROFESSIONS; MASS ME-
DIA; MEDICAL ETHICS; NUCLEAR ETHICS; NURSING
ETHICS; POLICE ETHICS; PRINCIPLISM; PROFESSIONAL
ETHICS; PUBLIC POLICY; REFLECTIVE EQUILIBRIUM;
SEXUALITY AND SEXUAL ETHICS; SITUATION ETHICS;
SLIPPERY SLOPE ARGUMENTS; SPORT; THEORY AND
PRACTICE; WELFARE RIGHTS AND SOCIAL POLICY.
Bibliography
Bedau, Hugo Adam. Making Mortal Choices: Three Ex-
ercises in Moral Casuistry. New York: Oxford Univer-
applied ethics
sity Press, 1997. Close scrutiny of three cases (two of
them hypothetical) involving life-and-death choices.
Brams, Stephen. Biblical Games: A Strategic Analysis of
Stories in the Old Testament. Cambridge: MIT Press,
1980. Application of game theory to various biblical
stories, including Solomon’s judgment in awarding the
infant.
Daniels, Norman. Justice and Justification: Reflective
Equilibrium in Theory and Practice. New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1996. A detailed discussion of
the method of wide reflective equilibrium and appli-
cation to several problems in health care. Bibliography.
DeMarco, Joseph P., and Richard M. Fox, eds. New Di-
rections in Ethics: The Challenge of Applied Ethics.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986. Nineteen
essays by contemporary authors on the nature of ap-
plied ethics and related issues.
Rosenthal, David M., and Fadlou Shehadi, eds. Applied
Ethics and Ethical Theory. Salt Lake City: University
of Utah Press, 1988. Essays by contemporary writers
exploring the tasks of applied ethics, its usefulness, fea-
sibility, and relation to theory.
Singer, Peter, ed. Applied Ethics. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1986. Reprints fourteen essays on as many
topics, including two classics (Hume on suicide, J. S.
Mill on the death penalty). Bibliography.
Hugo Adam Bedau
Aquinas
See Thomas Aquinas, Saint.
Arendt, Hannah (1906–1975)
Born in Königsberg, East Prussia (now Kaliningrad,
Russia); emigrated to France, 1933, and to the
United States, 1941.
Before 1960, Arendt was best known for two
books. In The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) she
analyzed “the burden of our time”: the thorough-
going eradication of political freedom by totalitarian
regimes, accomplished through ideology and terror.
The Human Condition (1958) elaborated her re-
sponse to that “burden,” a revival of the Greek idea
that political action is the freest, most characteris-
tically human, and most meaningful form of activity.
Though morally motivated, Arendt’s classical con-
ception of politics was a nonmoralized one. She was
concerned to vindicate the value of political action
as such, not just good political action; she quotes
with approval Pericles’s boast that Athens’s great
84
deeds, both good and evil, would win immortal
fame.
Though she never explicitly renounced her earlier
nonmoral conception of political action, Arendt’s
later works, beginning with the controversial Eich-
mann in Jerusalem (1963), amount in fact to a sus-
tained effort to remoralize the theory of political ac-
tion. They thus mark a break with her own earlier
work; they also form one of the twentieth century’s
most distinguished bodies of writing on MORAL PSY-
CHOLOGY. In Eichmann Arendt developed her most
famous concept, the “banality of evil.” She discov-
ered in Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) a “banal”
mass murderer moved by no monstrous intentions,
ideological convictions, or insanity. Eichmann’s
moral infirmity lay in an inability to think from the
point of view of others, and therefore to think at all.
From this infirmity arose, on the one hand, Eich-
mann’s striking lack of psychological and even per-
sonal identity over time, and, on the other hand, his
lack of moral judgment.
Arendt developed both sides of this argument in
the important essay “Thinking and Moral Consid-
erations” (1971). She identifies the capacity for
thought with the ability to divide one’s point of view
and conduct an internal dialogue. It is this capacity,
she claims, that makes possible both consciousness
and CONSCIENCE —personal identity and moral judg-
ment. But she admits puzzlement about how think-
ing works to insulate us from bad judgment. This
question motivates her final work in moral psychol-
ogy, the incomplete Life of the Mind (1978) and the
posthumously assembled Lectures on Kant’s Politi-
cal Philosophy (1982).
Arendt laid special emphasis on the faculty of
judgment—the capacity to assess actions without
appealing to rules. It seemed clear to her that sound
judgment, and not faithfulness to MORAL RULES or
to a procedure of moral assessment, is the key to
decency. (Throughout her writing she insists that
concrete stories, not theories, are the source of
meaning for us.) She hoped to elaborate on Imman-
uel KANT’s (1724–1804) thought that judgment
arises from an “enlarged mentality” whereby one se-
rially adopts representative standpoints (Critique of
Judgment, Sect. 40). But she died with only the title
and epigraphs of her book on judgment written.
Arendt has had little influence on Anglo-American
ethical theory. This is to be regretted. Arguing as she
does that personal identity requires the capacity to

adopt external standpoints, Arendt is close to phi-
losophers such as Thomas Nagel and Derek Parfit
who have examined related theories. And her em-
phasis on the priority of moral judgment over sys-
tematic morality places her work in natural sympa-
thy with the many contemporary philosophers who
share her interests in CHARACTER, judgment, and
the importance of concrete narratives for moral
philosophy.
See also: CHARACTER; CONSCIENCE; EXTERNALISM
AND INTERNALISM; KANT; LIBERTY; MORAL PSY-
CHOLOGY; MORAL REASONING; NARRATIVE ETHICS;
PRACTICAL REASON[ING]; SELF-KNOWLEDGE; SOCIAL
AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY; SYMPATHY.
Bibliography
Works by Arendt
Arendt published 140 articles and 9 books (in English)
during her lifetime; 4 more books appeared posthumously
as have several volumes of her correspondence. Listed
here are only those most important for her moral
philosophy.
Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political
Thought. Rev. ed. New York: Viking, 1968 [1961].
Crises of the Republic. New York: Harcourt Brace Jova-
novich, 1972.
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.
Rev. ed. New York: Viking, 1965 [1963].
The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1958.
Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Edited and with
an interpretive essay by Ronald Beiner. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1982.
The Life of the Mind. Edited by Mary McCarthy. New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.
Men in Dark Times. New York: Harcourt, Brace and
World, 1968.
“Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture.” Social
Research 38 (1971): 417–46.
Works about Arendt
Of the dozens of works on Arendt, many recent, the fol-
lowing are particularly crucial for understanding her con-
tributions to ethics.
Beiner, Ronald. “Hannah Arendt on Judging.” In Lectures
on Kant’s Political Philosophy, 89–156. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1982.
Bernstein, Richard J. “Judging—The Actor and the Spec-
tator.” In his Philosophical Profiles: Essays in a Prag-
matic Mode, 221–37. Philadelphia: University of Penn-
sylvania Press, 1986.
85
Aristotelian ethics
Hinchman, Lewis P. and Sandra K. Hinchman, eds.
Hanna Arendt: Critical Essays. Albany, NY: SUNY
Press, 1994.
Kateb, George. Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience,
Evil. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983. Con-
tains a bibliography of works about Arendt.
Villa, Dana Richard. The Cambridge Companion to Han-
nah Arendt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000.
Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth. Hannah Arendt: For Love of the
World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. Con-
tains a complete bibliography of Arendt’s works.
David Luban
arete
See excellence; virtues.
Aristotelian ethics
Much of current moral theorizing is spent in an ef-
fort to tailor the moral theories of historically
prominent thinkers or schools of thought to the
complexities of the contemporary human condi-
tion. Fueling this is a conviction that very real
moral gains are to be achieved by bringing the his-
tory of ethics to bear on modern life. As a result,
we have neo-Aristotelianism, NEO-STOICISM, neo-
Kantianism, and neo-Hegelianism. We have not yet
seen a revival of EPICUREANISM, perhaps because we
are not yet that far removed from the popular culture
of the 1960s when being “laid back” was a crude
substitute for ataraxia. Nor does it seem that there
is that much movement on the UTILITARIANISM
front, a view thatby its very name discourages nos-
talgia and by its method any robust need for history.
What is it, then, that has led many to look back to
thinkers of the past to find the key to the future re-
garding ethics, and what must any view with his-
torical roots in Aristotle (or the Stoics, or Kant, or
Hegel) provide if it is to be adequate to the lives of
contemporary persons? Finally, is there anything
that might favor Aristotelian prospects over opti-
mistic competitors or pessimistic postmodernists?
One way to focus debate is in terms of PRACTICAL
REASON: What is it for contemporary persons to be
practically rational in regard to the complex prob-
lems of modernity? First, posing this question ex-
plains why there is an inquiry in the first place. Mod-
ern persons seem to be groping for a way to think
Aristotelian ethics
rationally about the complexities of their lives, and
a major part of the problem seems to be a conflict
of frameworks. Some of our moral history regarding
practical reason has a lineage to ARISTOTLE (384–
322 B.C.E.) and the pre-Hellenistic Greeks; other as-
pects go back through KANT (1724–1804) and
Christianity to the Stoics. Still others seem to find
their home in medieval Christianity. Hence all the
competitors are conservative in regard to postmod-
ernist options: they all think that the key to modern
reason lies in realizing how to adjust the insights of
the past to the complexities of the present. Second,
focusing the debate in this way explains why, to date,
the major competitors are Aristotelian and Kantian
(though the Stoics are beginning to mount an of-
fense). Why? Because both Aristotle and Kant had
developed views on practical reason.
The most pressing complexities to be addressed
by any updated version of either Aristotle or Kant
include at least two crucial matters: the relationship
between partial and impartial concerns—between
near and distantly related persons—and the need to
acknowledge adequately the tragic dimensions of
life. Contemporary persons are, by and large, cos-
mopolitan by necessity rather than choice. It is sim-
ply quite difficult to remain parochial in one’s moral
concerns given that the complexities of our daily
lives present us with the necessity of recognizing the
value of others who are much different from us and
who are not related to us through various personal
bonds, such as familial affection, FRIENDSHIP, and
community or cultural LOYALTY. On the other hand,
however cosmopolitan we are in our concerns, the
ties of love of FAMILY, of friends, of community must
be robust for most of us to have any reasons to live
at all. Without these ties, ALIENATION seems the
more likely result than either rationality or libera-
tion. Much the same can be said for the value of
aesthetic activity, meaningful activity that we find
interesting, fascinating, captivating, and the like, in-
dependent of its service to humanity or to our loved
ones. Life has to be interesting to some degree to be
worth living, and any theory of practical reason that
is indifferent to these nonsocial concerns is simply
overly moralized.
In regard to the issue of the relationship between
the personal and the impersonal, Kant would seem
to offer more of a solution to the problems of the
cosmopolitan self and Aristotle more regarding the
problems of the personal self. In this regard, the task
86
for neo-Aristotelians is constructing a view from Ar-
istotle that is adequate to the contemporary person’s
cosmopolitan values. The task for neo-Kantians is
constructing a view from Kant that is adequate to
the contemporary person’s personal values.
Viewed from this perspective, some neo-Aristo-
telian attempts seem doomed to failure, simply be-
cause they do not make sufficient place for those
beyond personal borders. At least, this seems to be
a widely held opinion of the fate of Alasdair MAC-
INTYRE’s project. Aristotelian communitarianism
seems too cloistered to house our cosmopolitan
needs and aspirations. Other forms of COMMUNITAR-
IANISM, such as Charles TAYLOR’s, seem to suffer
similar difficulties, though they are more traceable
to HEGEL (1770–1831) than to Aristotle. But even
if these views fail for their inability to address our
cosmopolitan concerns, they nonetheless pose a
challenge to more cosmopolitan-oriented theories,
such as are found in Kant and the Stoics and their
progeny. Our social values place too high a premium
on the values of family, friendship, and community
to be subsumed in some way under a concern for
universal justice or BENEVOLENCE.
Moreover, MacIntyre seems to have won an im-
portant part of the debate, namely, that practical rea-
son is narratival, which requires that in order for an
agent’s actions to be comprehensible as options they
must be placed within a context that is thickly de-
scribed in a way that makes essential reference to a
meaningful life from the agent’s own point of view.
The evidence that MacIntyre (and Bernard WIL-
LIAMS and others) have won this part of the debate
is that contemporary Kantians are now concerned to
show that Kant can and must be understood to allow
for this requirement. In this sense, contemporary
Kantians are less concerned to maintain as radical a
distinction between kinds of moral schemes as either
Kant himself or the early RAWLS were. By abandon-
ing the notion that the right is prior to the good and
by accepting the narratival nature of practical rea-
son, contemporary Kantians think they can provide
both a satisfactory cosmopolitanism and a concep-
tual scheme rich in personal values.
So construed, the Aristotelian victory is less than
ultimate because it requires only a reshaping of Kan-
tian boundaries so that what is right in Aristotle can
be annexed into Kantian territory; it does not require
Kantians to abandon the field. Indeed, the ultimate
victory belongs to Kant, or so the story goes.

The Kantian reconstruction of Aristotle (so argue
the revisionists) must and can be expressed narra-
tively in terms of the flourishing of a rational agent,
and the structure of Kantian narrative, which is
thick with the personal and broad with the cosmo-
politan, is roughly as follows. Rational human be-
ings come to the task of practical reason with a va-
riety of ends, some of which are subordinate to
others but nonetheless are valued as ends rather
than as mere means. But there is one end that is of
a different value and more central to the flourishing
of a rational agent than any other value. This is the
value of our rational nature or rational agency,
which is our ability to set ends for ourselves in a way
that is consistent with the equal value of any other
rational being to set ends for him- or herself. All
other ends, on this view, are subordinate to this end
in the sense that the value of our rational nature
regulates all our other ends: in cases of conflict we
never compromise on the value of our rational
agency. The capacity for a good will is what gives us
our DIGNITY, and this dignity is absolutely inviolable
in regard to other values. Thus, whatever personal
values we have need not be derived from the value
of human dignity—they can have their own inde-
pendent irreducible value—but the place they have
in our lives when we flourish as rational agents must
be regulated by the concern for respect for human
dignity as an absolute and inviolable value.
So morality is roughly divided into perfect and
imperfect duties. Perfect duties take priority over
imperfect duties and are more strict in the actions
they require than imperfect duties. Keeping prom-
ises and CONTRACTS, telling the truth, avoiding SUI-
CIDE, gaining and honoring CONSENT, not interfering
with autonomous choices, and considerations of jus-
tice are salient duties of this sort. Here the notion is
that some aspects of the value of rational agency are
so fundamental that they leave little room for indi-
vidual latitude about what is to be done and they are
lexically prior to other considerations of agency.
Considerations of humanity in the cosmopolitan
sense reign supreme. Imperfect duties, on the other
hand, commit us to certain obligatory ends: perfect-
ing our CHARACTER, developing our talents, and con-
tributing to the HAPPINESS of others. And it is under
these obligatory ends that we have obligations that
apply more to the personal, less cosmopolitan as-
pects of human dignity.
There is an extensive literature that tries to show
87
Aristotelian ethics
that, within this framework, we can assimilate what-
ever is salvageable from Aristotle to Kant. Hence,
we can have both the personal and the cosmopoli-
tan, thickness of character and a morally expansive
will, within a Kantian framework.
The prospects for a contemporary Aristotelian
view that resists assimilation by this neo-Kantian
program must demonstrate the ways in which it dif-
fers from the Kantian view and its structure of du-
ties; it must establish a plausible cosmopolitanism
without sacrificing the real value of the personal;
and it must establish itself as a better alternative
than postmodernist alternatives.
Perhaps the most visible attempt at an Aristote-
lian solution to the cosmopolitan problem is made
by Martha Nussbaum. The project begins with an
attempt to isolate a set of what she calls nonrelative
virtues that have their foundation in the fact that we
are human beings rather than gods or beasts. Both
eudaimonia (living well) and virtue are understood
in terms of basic capacities, which are functional ca-
pacities of an organism that are central to its living.
A basic capacity for a god is one thing; for a beast,
another; and for a human being, something else en-
tirely. Accordingly, accounts of eudaimonia and the
virtues internal to a way of life for a particular kind
of organism depend on whether the organism is a
god, a beast, or a human. The hope of this approach
is that there is some set of basic capacities that hu-
man beings have in virtue of being human rather
than being divine or beastly that will serve as the
basis for a set of nonrelative virtues.
Specification of the content of any virtue included
in a set of virtues proceeds from the thinnest account
of human capacities to thicker accounts. The thin-
nest account is one that applies most broadly to hu-
mans as humans rather than as beasts or as gods.
But even when the thinnest set is isolated, the con-
tent of these virtues is specified at different levels of
concreteness. Typically Aristotelian virtues like
COURAGE, moderation, justice, for example, are
likely to be in the thinnest set because unlike gods
humans must have the capacity to control fear in the
face of danger and to moderate their appetites, and
unlike either beasts or gods they must cooperate
with others in the expression of their sociality. The
content of virtues, however, is specified more locally
in cultural and historical context.
What the mean is regarding any virtue, say, cour-
age, moderation, or magnanimity, is specified not
Aristotelian ethics
just in terms of being human rather being beastly or
divine, but also in terms of humanly contingent fac-
tors like being a parent rather than childless, being
female rather than male, or being Chinese rather
than American. These thicker specifications of the
content of particular virtues are all various functions
of our being human understood in terms of more
generalized descriptions of our basic capacities but
concretely tailored in their expression to specific his-
torical and cultural contexts.
The basis for an Aristotelian cosmopolitanism is
the understanding that the thicker, more local spec-
ifications of the content of a set of virtues are all
functions of a common humanity. Thus we see same-
ness in diversity and difference. The idea then is to
spell out a conception of minimal human worth
based on the notion of basic human capacities. A
successful account should yield a result that distin-
guishes the Kantian agent from the Aristotelian
agent. This will mean that the Aristotelian concep-
tion of the worth of persons as a function of dis-
tinctively human capacities will not reduce to the
Kantian notion of the value of autonomy. The rec-
ognition of the worth of persons as having certain
basic capacities will regulate the place of more local
specifications of what we think is good character
and good living in a way that is analogous to the way
in which respect for autonomy regulates our more
personal commitments on the Kantian view. By thin-
ning the basis for the worth of persons, Nussbaum
hopes to avoid some of the problems charged by
postmodernists that any cosmopolitan view is in the
end a form of parochialism. Should such a project
succeed there could be little room for postmodernist
charges of cultural imperialism in the guise of uni-
versal morality as there is when Kantians insist on
ideals of autonomy against cultural ideals that place
less value than the Kantian scheme can allow.
Nussbaum is also concerned to address the issue
of TRAGEDY, and it is not yet clear how the tragic
aspect of life is depicted on the Aristotelian scheme
she is ultimately going to endorse, but it is nonethe-
less a central concern of her project. One very im-
portant aspect of the problem of tragedy for her will
be the nature of practical reason when cosmopolitan
values come into irresolvable conflict with the per-
sonal, as they surely can, even on her view. Whether
and to what extent this kind of project will succeed
is a story now in the telling.
Other appeals to Aristotle make use of the notion
88
of relative rationality and differ from Nussbaum in
being more agnostic or skeptical about nonrelative
rationality or virtue. Henry Richardson develops a
conception of practical reason that is Aristotelian in
spirit that accommodates the capacity within prac-
tical reason to deliberate about final and even ulti-
mate ends. Richardson argues that in order for de-
liberation about final ends to be possible, the
regulative relationships among practical ends must
be bidirectional. Moreover, he argues that there can
be conflicts among our ends that are incommensu-
rable. This requires a construction of an Aristoteli-
anism according to which eudaimonia is not a com-
mensurans for the ordering of ends in cases of
conflict. Rather, the ends of practical reason are mu-
tually supporting, none of which are immune to re-
vision in the deliberative attempt to further specify
our ends.
If Richardson is correct that relative rationality
begins with a set of ends and proceeds with refining
a conception of those ends through the employment
of practical reason in concrete particular situations
that require ACTION, then human dignity cannot be
the kind of end Kantians claim that it is. For it is a
crucial feature of the Kantian view that the value of
rational agency is an end that is not subject to revi-
sion through deliberation. It is not an end that is
bidirectionally related to other ends. Richardson’s
conception of mutually supportable ends that are bi-
directionally related leaves open the possibility that
we can revise our ends in such a way that we care a
great deal about those who do not stand within our
personal borders and the central focus of our lives
is more personal and local in orientation. The Aris-
totelian task, then, is to start where we are (with
relative rationality) and see if the project of a ra-
tional specification of our ends yields an equilibrium
of mutually supporting ends that reflects both a ro-
bust cosmopolitanism and a thickly personal life. So
unlike Nussbaum’s strategy, Richardson builds from
the bottom up, from the thick ends that we do have
to the possibility of a more expansive concern for
humanity. Whereas, Nussbaum’s strategy is top
down: she first articulates a set of nonrelative vir-
tues and then attempts to show how a person hav-
ing that set is culturally sensitive to more local con-
cerns. Both recognize tragic, rationally irresolvable
conflicts.
Another attempt to develop an Aristotelian con-
ception of relative rationality (Harris 1999) begins

with a specific conception of good character and
provides an account of practical reason within it,
with the concept of INTEGRITY playing a central role.
Presented in the second person to emphasize the
agent-centeredness of practical reason, the account
conceives of practical reason as an integrative psy-
chological function that allows you (the agent) to
integrate in a coherent way the various practical con-
cerns and commitments you have.
In any particular concrete situation, the task of
practical reason is to find a way to integrate the vari-
ous concerns and commitments you have so that you
can see a coherent way into the future either with
your commitments intact or with a revised set of
commitments. Otherwise, integrity cannot be main-
tained. Hence, this integration test is the ultimate
test for an acceptable account of practical reason.
Normative beliefs, then, are rational insofar as they
resolve for the person of integrity what PEIRCE
(1839–1914) and DEWEY (1859–1952) called
“problematic situations,” situations that involve
complex integration problems.
As with any conception of relative rationality, the
kinds of integration problems you face depend on
the kinds of concerns and commitments you start
out with, and your starting point says something
about the kind of person you are. It is in this sense
that practical reason is character-relative. The ac-
count diverges in its structure from the accounts of
both Nussbaum and Richardson, because unlike
Nussbaum’s, it does not start with a commitment to
a nonrelative account of practical reason and virtue,
and unlike Richardson’s, it does not simply begin
with concrete situations and reason up to a set of
mutually supporting ends. Rather, it asks, what kind
of character would a person have who had both cos-
mopolitan concerns and a robust personal life with
more local concerns? What thicker description
could we give of you if we were to describe you as
such a person?
The thicker description given in the account,
called the thick conception of integrity, is as follows:
you would be a respectful and sympathetic person
regarding those with whom you are not personally
or specially attached; you would be a loving person
in a variety of ways—(possibly and probably) a lov-
ing parent, a loving friend, and a loving neighbor;
you would be a person who takes aesthetic delight
(in a broad sense) in an extensive range of activities
valued for their own sake; and you would be a per-
89
Aristotelian ethics
son committed to EXCELLENCE at what you do. The
task, then, is to provide an account of practical rea-
son fitted to this thick conception of integrity that is
a competitor to recent Kantian accounts. For on the
Kantian view, a good person would be described as
person who fits the description of the thick concep-
tion of integrity.
Juxtaposed, then, are both recent Kantian ac-
counts and the proposed Aristotelian alternative:
both attempt to account for how such a person could
rationally integrate all the concerns that a person of
integrity in the thick sense would have in various
kinds of problematic situations. Similarly juxta-
posed are Kantian accounts and a proposed Aristo-
telian account of practical deliberation. It is argued
that a conception of practical reason in which all its
NORMS are symmetrical (bidirectional in Richard-
son’s sense) in their regulative functions requires
that human dignity cannot be treated as the kind of
value Kantians claim that it is for a person of this
sort and the conception be able to pass the integra-
tion test. Moreover, the proposed account, wherein
the norm of human dignity is treated as symmetri-
cally related in its regulative functions within prac-
tical reason to other more local normative concerns
(family, friends, work, and culture), can pass the in-
tegration test, while providing a more plausible ac-
count of the latitude of practical reason than the ac-
count of perfect and imperfect duties found in the
Kantian literature. The Aristotelian criteria of final-
ity and self-sufficiency are given direct roles in prac-
tical deliberation and are employed to bring coher-
ence to what Barbara Herman has called an agent’s
deliberative field—better, it is argued, than the best,
most recent interpretations of the Kantian Categor-
ical Imperative. A theory of personality disintegra-
tion is presented that serves as an empirical con-
straint on whether the integration test has been met.
Both Kantian and Aristotelian alternatives are tested
across a broad range of practical contexts as they are
faced by a person who fits the thick description. Fi-
nally, by addressing issues of incommensurability in
concrete deliberative contexts, the account illus-
trates both some of the ineliminably tragic aspects
of life that face human deliberation and some of the
limits of the unity of practical reason, a topic central
to an adequate response to POSTMODERNISM.
Concessions of some sort to postmodernist views
seem in order from any plausible historically ori-
ented theory, whether it is Aristotelian, Kantian,
Aristotelian ethics
Stoic, or whatever. Both Aristotle and Kant, for ex-
ample, held rather strong views regarding the unity
of the virtues and the unity of practical reason. What
we now know about the brain alone makes it un-
likely that these views can be sustained through
further inquiry. But admitting this is a far from
conceding some of the more extreme views of self-
fragmentation portrayed by some postmodernists.
Moreover, our increasing understanding of incom-
mensurable values through the work of thinkers like
Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) requires a rethinking of
the nature of tragedy, something perhaps neither Ar-
istotle nor Kant understood well enough to ade-
quately address postmodernist worries. The issue,
however, is whether it is best to adjust these his-
torical conceptions of ethics to what we now know
and to what we now face in life, or do we in facing
the future come to that task with a fragmented array
of irreconcilable cultural relics?
There are many other Aristotelian projects related
to issues in contemporary ethics of a less systematic
scope than the ones explicitly discussed here, some
of which are dealt with in the works listed in the
bibliography. Also, Thomas Hurka’s version of Ar-
istotelian PERFECTIONISM is not discussed here be-
cause there is an independent entry on that subject
by Hurka himself.
See also: ARISTOTLE; AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS;
COMMUNITARIANISM; COSMOPOLITAN ETHICS; CUL-
TURAL STUDIES; DIGNITY; DUTY AND OBLIGATION;
EUDAIMONIA (ISM); IMPARTIALITY; INTEGRITY; KANT;
KANTIAN ETHICS; LIFE, MEANING OF; MORAL COM-
MUNITY, BOUNDARIES OF; MORAL RELATIVISM; MUL-
TICULTURALISM; NARRATIVE ETHICS; NEO-KANTIAN
ETHICS; NEO-STOICISM; PARTIALITY; POSTMODERN-
ISM; PRACTICAL REASON[ING]; RATIONAL CHOICE;
RATIONALITY VS. REASONABLENESS; SELF-KNOWL-
EDGE; SELF-RESPECT; STOICISM; TAYLOR; WILLIAMS.
Bibliography
Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1993.
Baron, Marcia. Kantian Ethics Almost without Apology.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.
Becker, Lawrence C. A New Stoicism. Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 1998.
Berlin, Isaiah. The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters
in the History of Ideas. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1997 (1991).
90
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George W. Harris
Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.)
Born in Stagira (Macedon), lived in Athens 367–
347, then in Lesbos, and in Macedon, before re-
turning to Athens. Student of PLATO (c. 430–347
B.C.E.); founder of the Lyceum school in Athens.
Aristotle’s Ethical Works
Aristotle’s ethical theory is mostly contained in
three treatises: the Magna Moralia (MM), the Eu-
demian Ethics (EE), and the Nicomachean Ethics
(EN). Some questions about the relation between
these works are still unsettled: (1) The MM is widely
agreed not to have been written by Aristotle. Some
believe, however, that it is authentic in substance—
that it contains a student’s notes on an early course
of lectures by Aristotle. Others believe (less plausi-
bly) that it is a post-Aristotelian compilation based
on the EE and EN. (2) The EE is widely agreed to
be authentic. It is generally, but not universally,
taken to be earlier than the EN. (3) Three books (EN
v–vii and EE iv–vi) are assigned by the manuscripts
to both the EE and the EN. They are fairly generally
believed to have been originally written for the EE;
but many critics believe they were partly rewritten
to fit the EN.
Though the differences between the ethical works
are not trivial, the area of agreement is very large.
This article ignores the differences, and is based
largely on the EN (all references refer to it unless
indicated otherwise).
In his ethical arguments Aristotle normally fol-
lows the method of dialectic (Topics i 2, EE i 3, 6,
EN 1145b2–7). He examines the puzzles (aporiai)
raised by common beliefs (endoxa), and tries to find
a general principle that will resolve the puzzles, and
justify most, or the most important, of the common
beliefs. His method is closely related to the Socratic
dialogue, without the overt form of a dialogue.
Aristotle conceives ‘ethics’ (MM 1181a24–
1182a1) as a part of political science; it is the part
concerned with finding the good for an individual
and a community (EN 1094b5–10). He treats the
91
Aristotle
EN and the Politics as parts of a single inquiry (EN
1181b12–23).
An account of the human good, in Aristotle’s
view, ought to show (a) what the VIRTUES of CHAR-
ACTER are, and why they are virtues; (b) why Plato
in the Republic is right to claim that we are always
better off if we have justice and the other virtues;
and (c) how we should acquire the virtues. On these
questions Aristotle’s views are closer to Plato’s than
to SOCRATES’ (c. 470–399 B.C.E.) (MM 1182a15–
30, EE 1216b3–25, EN 1104b11–13, 1145b23–
31). (He criticizes Plato, however, for introducing
the Form of the Good into ethical argument; he re-
jects the Theory of Forms in general, and thinks it is
in any case inappropriate to ethics [EN i 6].)
The Human Good
Aristotle argues that a human being has an ulti-
mate good, an end that we want for its own sake,
and for the sake of which we want other things
(1094a18–19). This ultimate end is HAPPINESS, EU-
DAIMONIA (1095a14–20), for the sake of which all
of us do all the other things (1102a2–3). If it is to
be an ultimate end, happiness must be complete (or
‘final’, teleion) and self-sufficient (1097a15–b21).
For if it is reasonable for us to choose everything for
the sake of happiness, and happiness for the sake of
nothing else, then we must have reason to believe
that no genuine intrinsic good lies outside happi-
ness; for if there were any such good, then it would
not be clear why happiness (rather than happiness
plus this further good) should be our ultimate end.
Aristotle takes happiness to be comprehensive,
insofar as he claims that a self-sufficient good must,
all by itself, make life lacking in nothing. He de-
scribes a test that implies the comprehensiveness of
happiness: if we think some good G is to be identi-
fied with happiness, but then find that we can add
some further good H to G, so that the total of G Ⳮ
H is a greater good than G alone, then G cannot be
identified with happiness.
These general criteria for happiness do not by
themselves imply that some definite kind of life
achieves happiness. But Aristotle thinks we can
reach a more definite account of happiness by atten-
tion to the human function (ergon), the character-
istic activity that is essential to a human being, in
the same way as a purely nutritive life is essential
to a plant, and a life guided by sense-perception
Aristotle
and DESIRE is essential to an animal (1097b32–
1098a18). Since a human being is essentially a ra-
tional agent, the essential activity of a human being
is a life guided by PRACTICAL REASON. Now the good
life for a human being must be good for a being with
the essential activity of a human being; hence it must
be a good life guided by practical reason, and hence
it must be a life in accordance with virtue (EXCEL-
LENCE; aretê). Aristotle therefore defines the human
good as an actualization of the soul in accordance
with complete virtue in a complete life (1098a16–
20). A life that is not guided by reason might be
good for some other sort of creature, but not for a
human being.
In speaking of a life in accordance with reason,
Aristotle does not exclude all animal or vegetative
activities from the life that achieves happiness. He
assumes only that rational activity is the distinctive
and essential feature of the human soul, and that this
organizes the human being’s other activities. He
does not thereby advocate any exclusive attachment
to thinking as opposed to ACTION. (See also below.)
He claims that a life that does not essentially include
the rational control of action cannot be good for a
human being.
Different Conceptions of Happiness
Though Aristotle recognizes that this is only an
outline of happiness (1098a20–2), he thinks it is
definite enough to guide our further deliberation in
the right direction.
1. It rules out the life devoted purely to PLEA-
SURE (1095b19–20). This life is incomplete
because it allows no essential role to ra-
tional activity; and mere pleasure without
rational activity is not the good for a ra-
tional agent (1174a1–4). Since a life of
pleasure can be improved on in this way,
pleasure cannot be the good (1172b28–
32). Hence Aristotle rejects HEDONISM
(later accepted by the CYRENAICS, and, in a
form perhaps modified in an attempt to
meet Aristotle’s objections, by EPICURUS
[341–270 B.C.E.]).
2. The Socratic view (later accepted by the
CYNICS, and in some form by the Stoics),
that virtue is sufficient for happiness, con-
flicts with common beliefs (1096a2). This
92
Socratic view fails to describe a suitably
complete and self-sufficient life; for exter-
nal misfortunes impede rational activity
(1100b29–30), and take away happiness
(1100a5–9).
3. Though virtue is insufficient for happiness,
it is nonetheless its dominant component.
No matter what we have to lose as a result
of being virtuous, we still have better rea-
son to choose virtue than we have to choose
any combination of other goods that are in-
compatible with it (1100b30–1101a8). Ar-
istotle agrees with Plato’s Republic on the
relation of justice to happiness.
4. From the general conception of happiness
Aristotle infers the general features of a vir-
tue of character (êthikê aretê; sometimes,
and not unreasonably, rendered “moral vir-
tue”) (i 13). Since (following Plato) he rec-
ognizes both rational and nonrational de-
sires, he argues that the excellent and
virtuous condition of the soul will be the
one in which the nonrational elements co-
operate with reason. Human beings fulfill
their function well and in accordance with
complete virtue, insofar as their nonra-
tional desires are guided by their rational
desires.
Virtue of Character
A virtue of character is defined as “a state involv-
ing decision, lying in a mean, a mean that is relative
to us, a mean defined by reason, and by the reason
by which the wise person would define it”
(1106b36–1107a2). The different elements in this
definition deserve discussion.
1. A virtue is a state (hexis), not simply a ca-
pacity or a feeling, though it involves both
capacities and feelings (ii 5). I may have a
capacity without using it properly on the
right occasions; for example, I may have
medical skill, even if I do not bother to use
it at all, or I use it to poison my patients.
But I am not a generous person simply be-
cause I know how to give money on the
right occasions; GENEROSITY requires an ac-
tual desire and disposition to give the
money (Metaphysics 1025a1–13).

2. In insisting on a state, rather than a pattern
of behavior, Aristotle shows that he is con-
cerned with virtues as something more than
means to virtuous action. Actions may be
virtuous even though they are not done for
the virtuous person’s reasons (1105a26–
b9, 1144a11–20). But agents are not vir-
tuous unless they do the virtuous action be-
cause they have decided to do it for its own
sake. Aristotle assumes that in praising and
valuing virtuous people we do not value
simply their reliable tendency to produce
virtuous actions, but also value the state of
character that they display in their actions.
On this point he agrees with KANT (1724–
1804) (in the contrast between doing what
duty requires and acting from duty; Grund-
legung, Akad. pp. 397–98).
3. In arguing that a virtue of character must
be a “mean” or an “intermediate” state, Ar-
istotle is not necessarily recommending
“moderation” in actions or in feelings. He
does not mean, for example, that if we
achieve the mean in relation to ANGER we
will never be more than moderately angry;
on the contrary, the virtuous person will be
extremely angry on the occasions when ex-
treme anger is called for. Still, Aristotle’s
doctrine is more than the trivial advice that
we should do what is appropriate to the oc-
casion. Possible treatments of nonrational
impulses would be these: (a) indulgence,
leaving them completely unchecked; (b)
suppression, as far as possible (1104b24–
26); (c) control or continence (cf. 1102b13–
20), as far as possible; (d) harmony and
agreement with the rational part. In treat-
ing a virtue as a mean, Aristotle signals his
adherence to the last solution, as opposed
to any of the first three. He thinks it should
be intermediate between the extremes of
excess (leaving anger, say, totally un-
checked) and the extreme of deficiency
(complete suppression of anger).
4. The task of MORAL EDUCATION, therefore,
is not merely to subject the nonrational part
of the soul to practical reason. Virtuous
people allow reasonable satisfaction to
their appetites; they do not suppress all
their fears; they do not disregard all their
93
Aristotle
feelings of PRIDE or shame or RESENTMENT
(1126a3–8), or their desire for other peo-
ple’s good opinion. Brave people are appro-
priately afraid of serious danger (1115b10–
20), and if the cause is not worth the danger
they withdraw; but when the cause justifies
their standing firm, their fear is not so strong
that they have to struggle against it.
5. In claiming that the virtuous person makes
a decision (prohairesis, discussed in iii
2–3) to do the virtuous action for its own
sake, Aristotle implies that a certain pattern
of desire and deliberation (which are the
origins of a prohairesis, 1113a2–12,
1139a21–b5) is characteristic of the virtu-
ous person. In claiming that the mean is de-
termined by the wise (phronimos) person,
he refers to the intellectual virtue that is re-
sponsible for good deliberation (1140a24–
31). These aspects of his definition of virtue
of character imply that it is inseparable
from virtue of intellect.
Wisdom and Virtue
But while Aristotle clearly sees a crucial role for
WISDOM and practical reason in virtue of character,
it is less clear what the precise role is. For if correct
decision and wisdom are expressed in action on
good deliberation, then the special role of practical
reason in virtue seems to be its role in deliberation.
But deliberation in Aristotle seems to have a rather
narrow scope, insofar as it is concerned with what
“promotes” an end (to pros to telos). If “x promotes
y” is interpreted as “x is an instrumental means to
y” (i.e., x causally contributes to y, without being
part of y—as shopping for food contributes to eating
our dinner), then Aristotle claims that deliberation
and wisdom are concerned only with instrumental
means to ends. They will tell us how to find the
means to happiness, but they will not tell us anything
about what happiness is. In that case Aristotle seems
to anticipate HUME’s (1711–1776) view that prac-
tical reason is subordinate to nonrational desires
(Hume, Treatise ii 3.3).
Aristotle need not, however, restrict the scope of
practical reason in this way, if “x promotes y” is not
confined to instrumental means. He also uses the
phrase for cases where x is a part or component of
y, or doing x partly constitutes doing y (as, for ex-
Aristotle
ample, serving partly constitutes playing tennis, or
eating the soup is part of eating the meal). If he al-
lows deliberation about components of ends, Aris-
totle is entitled to claim that wisdom is especially
concerned with deliberation about what promotes
happiness. For wisdom finds the actions that pro-
mote happiness insofar as they are parts of the happy
life. Such actions are (a) to be chosen for their own
sake, as being their own end, rather than (b) to be
chosen simply as instrumental means to some fur-
ther end. Aristotle identifies (a) as praxis (“action”
or “activity”) and (b) as poiêsis (“production”)
(1140b4–7). He draws a closely connected distinc-
tion between energeia (“activity”) and kinêsis (“pro-
cess”) (1174a14–b14).
The wide scope of deliberation makes it clearer
why decision is an essential element in virtue and
why Aristotle claims—surprisingly at first sight—
that we can decide on an action for its own sake,
even though decision is always about what promotes
an end. For the virtuous person’s decision is the re-
sult of deliberation about the composition of hap-
piness; and this deliberation results in specific claims
about which actions are non-instrumentally good
components of happiness. These are the actions that
the virtuous person decides on, both for their own
sakes and for the sake of happiness.
In claiming that wisdom involves deliberation,
Aristotle also emphasizes the importance of its
grasping the relevant features of a particular situa-
tion, since this is necessary if deliberation is to re-
sult in a correct decision about what to do here
and now. The right moral choice requires experience
of particular situations, since general rules cannot
be applied mechanically to particular situations
(1103b34–1104a11); and Aristotle describes the
relevant aspect of wisdom as a sort of perception or
intuitive understanding of the right aspects of par-
ticular situations (1143a32–b5).
Voluntary Action and Responsibility
In his general account of virtue of character Ar-
istotle includes an account of voluntary action and
conditions for moral RESPONSIBILITY. This is rele-
vant to his main concerns, because he wants to show
how his account of the nature of virtue supports the
common belief that we are justly praised and blamed
both for virtuous and vicious actions and for being
virtuous and vicious people. He agrees that the
94
proper objects of praise and blame are the things
that we ourselves, rather than necessity or fortune,
are responsible (aitios) for (EE 1223a9–15), and he
tries to show that we are responsible for our virtuous
and vicious actions and characters. Aristotle does
not explicitly confront the questions raised by Epi-
cureans and Stoics about the relation between causal
determinism and responsibility; and his claims
might seem to give support to more than one of the
views developed by his successors. But he clearly
sees the relevance of issues about responsibility to
questions about virtue and character.
He claims that we are open to praise and blame
for our voluntary (hekousia) actions, and that vol-
untary actions are those that are caused neither by
force nor ignorance, but have their “origin in us,”
insofar as we know the particular circumstances of
the action (1111a22–24). These actions are the ap-
propriate objects of praise and blame.
These criteria for voluntary action imply, accord-
ing to Aristotle, that nonrational animals also act
voluntarily (1111a24–26). These nonrational agents,
however, are not open to praise or blame. Hence the
criteria for voluntariness do not seem sufficient for
praise and blame.
Aristotle need not face this objection, however, if
the implications of his demand for the origin “in us”
(1110a17–18, 1111a22–24, 1113b20–21) are made
clearer. If the origin is in us, then it must involve us
as essentially rational agents (that is why a mere
bodily process, such as aging, over which we have
no rational control, does not have its origin “in us”).
Hence voluntary action is significant insofar as its
origin is in our control as rational agents, and since
it is in our control, we are justly praised and blamed
for it. (Though the voluntary action of a nonrational
animal has its origin in the animal, it is not in the
control of the animal’s [nonexistent] rational agency,
and so the animal is not praised and blamed for it.)
Even if we act without deliberation and premedita-
tion on a sudden impulse of EMOTION or appetite,
the origin is still in our character and decision; for
the presence or strength of our desire is the result
of the character and decisions we have formed.
It follows that we are held responsible for our
actions insofar as they reflect our character, deci-
sions, and hence (given the previous account of
practical reason) our deliberation about the good.
For similar reasons, Aristotle believes that our char-
acter and outlook are also open to justified and ef-

fective criticism (1114a4–9); for it is in our rational
control (when, presumably, we pass beyond the pure
habituation of early childhood) to affect the way our
character develops. Rational deliberation and deci-
sion are the source of responsibility for character no
less than for action.
Pleasure
Aristotle’s demand for the virtuous person to de-
cide on the virtuous action for its own sake is con-
nected with two further claims: First, the virtuous
person must take pleasure in virtuous action as such
(1099a7–21, 1104b3–11). Second, in doing so, the
virtuous person has the most pleasant life. In these
claims Aristotle relies on his views about the nature
of pleasure and its role in happiness.
To begin with, Aristotle identifies the life of plea-
sure with the life devoted (as the comment on Sar-
danapallus suggests, 1095b21–2) to the life of
rather gross sensual pleasures. This is not Aristotle’s
last word on pleasure in the Nicomachean Ethics.
Book vii (EE vi) and Book x contain quite elaborate
(and on some points apparently different) discus-
sions of the nature of pleasure and the different
value of different types of pleasure; and Aristotle
believes that true judgments about pleasure imply
that the virtuous person’s life is also the most pleas-
ant life.
He rejects the view that pleasure is some uniform
sensation to which different kinds of pleasant action
are connected only instrumentally (in the way that
the reading of different kinds of books might in-
duce the same feeling of boredom). Instead he ar-
gues that the specific pleasure taken in x rather than
y is internally related to doing x rather than y, and
essentially depends on pursuing x for x’s own sake.
(The pleasure of lying on the beach in the sun and
the pleasure of solving a crossword puzzle are not
two instances of the same sensation that just happen
to have different causes.) In Aristotle’s terms, plea-
sure is a “supervenient end” (1174b31–33) result-
ing from an activity that one pursues as an activity
(PRAXIS or energeia) rather than a mere process or
production (kinêsis or poiêsis); and he insists (fol-
lowing Plato in the Philebus) that the value of the
pleasure depends on the value of the activity on
which the pleasure supervenes (1176a3–29). Hence
he infers both that the virtuous person has the most
pleasant life and that the most pleasant life cannot
95
Aristotle
be the one devoted exclusively to the pursuit of
pleasure.
The Reciprocity of the Virtues
Aristotle’s views on the role of reason, feeling,
and pleasure in virtue define the area of agreement
and disagreement with Socrates. With Plato, he re-
jects Socrates’ belief in the unity of the virtues (i.e.,
that all the virtues are really one and the same vir-
tue), since he denies that knowledge of the good is
sufficient for virtue. Different virtues require the
training of different feelings, and Socrates was
wrong to leave out these noncognitive aspects of
virtue.
On the other hand, Aristotle accepts the reci-
procity of the virtues (again agreeing with Plato),
because he believes that each virtue requires wis-
dom, and that wisdom requires all the virtues
(1144b32–1145a2). We may mistakenly reject the
reciprocity of the virtues if we confuse “natural vir-
tue” with “full virtue.” People with merely natural
virtue have natural tendencies to do the brave or
generous actions; but without wisdom they will not
reliably find the best actions (1144b9), and so will
not have a full virtue.
Aristotle assumes that each virtue will be subject
to the direction of wisdom, because the point of each
virtue is to achieve what is best, and each will accept
the judgment of wisdom about that. In some cases,
for example, a decision about the generous action to
do for my friend requires some grasp of the require-
ments of justice (since generosity does not require
me to steal from a beggar to give a present to my
rich friend). To find the appropriate action in the
sphere of one virtue we need the cooperation of the
other virtues. That is why the mean in which a virtue
lies must be determined by the sort of reason by
which the wise person would determine it (1107a1–
2). Aristotle rejects any suggestion that two different
virtues could prescribe incompatible actions in the
same situation (MM 1199b36–1200a11); for each
fully developed virtue must focus on what is best
overall.
Incontinence
Aristotle also disagrees with Socrates over the
possibility of incontinence; since he assumes an ir-
reducible difference between rational and nonra-
Aristotle
tional desires, he rejects Socrates’ view that only ig-
norance of what is better and worse underlies
apparent incontinence; he asserts that the Socratic
view evidently conflicts with the appearances
(1145b27–28).
In Aristotle’s view, incontinents make the right
decision (1152a17), and act against it (1148a13–
17, 1151a5–7). Their failure to stick to their deci-
sion is the result of strong appetites; in Aristotle’s
example, we recognize that we ought to avoid eating
this sweet thing, but our recognition that it is sweet
actually triggers our appetite for sweet things, which
causes us to eat it after all.
Still, Aristotle agrees with Socrates, against com-
mon sense, in believing that an appeal to ignorance
is an important part of the explanation of inconti-
nence. Though he admits that incontinents have the
right decision and act against it because of appetite,
he believes it is impossible for them to act against a
correct decision that they fully accept at the very
moment of incontinent action (1147b15–17).
Aristotle therefore claims that incontinent peo-
ple’s appetite causes them to lose part of the reason-
ing that formed their correct decision. They retain
the right general principles, but they fail to see how
these apply to their present situation, and even
though they say they know they are wrong to do
what they are doing, they are just saying the words
without really meaning them (1147b9–12). To this
extent Aristotle thinks Socrates is right to appeal to
ignorance—though he disagrees with Socrates
about the kind of ignorance that is relevant.
The Scope of the Virtues
The virtues of character recognized by Aristotle
include some that seem largely self-regarding (e.g.,
TEMPERANCE, magnanimity), some that seem to in-
volve good manners (e.g., truthfulness [about one’s
own merits] and wit), and some that concern the
good of others to some degree (bravery, mildness,
generosity). Only one virtue—justice (in its general
form)—is clearly focused on the good of others in
its own right (1129b25–1130a5). This rather broad
conception of a virtue sometimes encourages the
view that these Aristotelian virtues are really not
moral virtues at all—on the assumption that genu-
inely moral virtues are essentially concerned with
the good of others.
Aristotle insists, however, that the virtuous per-
96
son decides on the virtuous action because it is “fine”
(kalon) and for its fineness (1115b13). He assumes
that the fine systematically promotes the good of
others, and he regards fine action as a necessary con-
dition for finding the mean that is characteristic of
a virtue (1122b6–7). It is reasonable, therefore, that
he thinks justice is nothing beyond the other virtues
of character, since they already involve the appro-
priate concern for others.
To justify concern for the good of others, Aristotle
appeals to human nature. A human being, he claims,
is a political animal insofar as human capacities and
aims are completely fulfilled only in a community;
the individual’s happiness must involve the good of
fellow members of a community (1097b8–11,
1169b16–19).
Aristotle defends this claim in his discussion of
FRIENDSHIP. His term philia, usually rendered by
“friendship,” actually covers many more cooperative
relations (as, for example, between business part-
ners, allies, members of families) than we find it nat-
ural to regard as friendships; and Aristotle’s classi-
fication recognizes the many varieties of philia. All
three of the main types of friendship (for pleasure,
for advantage, and for the good) are concerned with
the good of the other person; but only the best sort
of friendship—friendship for the good between vir-
tuous people—involves A’s concern for B’s good for
B’s own sake and for B’s essential character
(1156b7–12).
In the best sort of friendship the friend is “another
self,” so that if A and B are friends, A takes the sorts
of attitudes to B that A also takes to A (1170b5–7).
Aristotle uses this feature of friendship to explain
why friendship is part of a complete and self-suffi-
cient life (1170b14–19). Friendship involves living
together (that is, sharing the activities one counts as
especially important in one’s life), and especially the
sharing of reasoning and thinking (1170b10–14).
Friends cooperate in deliberation, decision, and ac-
tion; and the thoughts and actions of each provide
reasons for the future thoughts and actions of the
other. If A regards B as another self, then A will be
concerned about B’s aims and plans, and pleased by
B’s successes no less than by A’s own. The cooper-
ative aspects of friendship with B more fully realize
A’s own capacities as a rational agent, and so pro-
mote A’s happiness more fully.
For this reason Aristotle thinks that the full de-
velopment of a human being requires concern for

the good of others. He defends his claim initially for
friendship between individuals, but also for the type
of friendship that forms a political community (a po-
lis), the “complete community” (Politics 1252a1–7,
b27–30) that achieves the complete life that is iden-
tified with happiness.
Two Conceptions of Happiness?
Though one direction of argument leads Aristotle
to emphasize the other-regarding, social aspects of
happiness, his argument also seems to lead in a rad-
ically different direction. In EN x he has also some-
times been taken to identify happiness exclusively
with pure intellectual activity (or “study,” theôria)—
the contemplation of scientific and philosophical
truths, apart from any attempt to apply them to prac-
tice. Plato is sometimes attracted by this view of a
person’s good, and suggests that the philosopher
will be wholly absorbed in the contemplation of
Forms. EN x provides strong evidence to suggest
that Aristotle seems to share Plato’s contemplative
ideal, without the Platonic Forms.
Aristotle argues that the contemplative life meets
the general criteria for happiness (1177a18-b26),
and he especially focuses on two criteria. (1) The
connection between the human function and human
happiness supports contemplation. For contempla-
tion is the highest fulfillment of our nature as ra-
tional beings; it is the sort of rational activity that
we share with the gods, who are rational beings with
no need to apply reason to practice. (2) Contempla-
tion is the activity that best fulfills the demand for a
self-sufficient life. For it does not require many re-
sources outside it, whereas virtuous activity is vul-
nerable to external misfortunes that may prevent it
from resulting in happiness.
These advantages of contemplation lead Aristotle
to suggest that it is the happiest life available to us,
to the extent that we have the rational intellects we
share with gods, and that the life of virtuous activity
is a second-best form of happiness (1177b26–
1178a10).
Though the evidence suggesting that Aristotle
holds this purely contemplative conception of hap-
piness is strong, it is not conclusive. He does not
clearly claim that contemplation fully satisfies these
criteria for happiness, and therefore he does not in-
fer that by itself it is sufficient for happiness. (1) If
we were pure intellects with no other desires and no
97
Aristotle
bodies, contemplation would be the whole of our
good (as it is for an immortal soul, as Plato conceives
it in the Phaedo). Still, we are not in fact merely
intellects (1178b3–7); and Aristotle recognizes that
the good must be the good of the whole human be-
ing. In his considered view, contemplation is the
highest and best part of our good, but not the whole
of it. (2) Though contemplation is the single most
self-sufficient activity, insofar as it is the single ac-
tivity that comes closest to being self-sufficient, this
degree of self-sufficiency does not justify the iden-
tification of contemplation with happiness. For Ar-
istotle has argued that happiness must be complete,
and for this reason he argues that neither virtue
alone nor pleasure alone can be happiness. He should
not, then, agree that contemplation is happiness just
because it is invulnerable and self-contained. For con-
templation is not the complete good; we can think of
other goods (e.g., virtue and HONOR) that could be
added to it to make a better good than contemplation
alone.
Aristotle does not explain how we should decide
on particular occasions whether to pursue contem-
plation or to prefer one of the other components of
happiness; and decisions of this sort raise some dif-
ficulties for his general position. But the difficulties
do not seem insuperable; and Aristotle’s claims
about contemplation do not require any drastic
modification of his general conception of happiness
as a compound of rational activities that assigns a
central and dominant place to the moral virtues.
See also: ARISTOTELIAN ETHICS; CHARACTER; CYN-
ICS; CYRENAICS; DELIBERATION AND CHOICE; DESIRE;
EPICUREANISM; EUDAIMONIA, -ISM; EXCELLENCE; FI-
NAL GOOD; FRIENDSHIP; GOOD, THEORIES OF THE;
HAPPINESS; HEDONISM; MORAL EDUCATION; PHRO-
NESIS; PLATO; PRACTICAL REASON[ING]; PRACTICAL
WISDOM; PRAXIS; RESPONSIBILITY; SOCRATES; STOI-
CISM; VIRTUE ETHICS; VIRTUES; VOLUNTARY ACTS;
WEAKNESS OF WILL; WISDOM.
Bibliography
Works by Aristotle
Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Trans-
lation. Edited by J. Barnes. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1984.
L’Ethique a nicomaque. Translated and edited by R. A.
Gauthier and J. Y. Jolif. 2d ed. 4 vols. Louvain: Nau-
welaerts, 1970.
Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Terence Irwin. 2nd
ed. Indianapolis, IN.: Hackett, 1999.
Aristotle: Eudemian Ethics I, II, VIII. Translated and ed-
ited by M. J. Woods. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
Works about Aristotle
Ackrill, J. L. “Aristotle’s Distinction between Energeia
and Kinesis.” In New Essays on Plato and Aristotle,
edited by R. Bambrough, 121–41. London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1965.
Barnes, J. “Aristotle and the Methods of Ethics.” Revue
Internationale de Philosophie 34 (1981): 490–511.
Barnes, J., M. Schofield, and R. Sorabji, eds. Articles on
Aristotle. 2 vols. London: Duckworth, 1977. See es-
pecially “Thought and Action in Aristotle,” by G. E. M.
Anscombe (chapter 6); and “Aristotle on the Volun-
tary,” by D. Furley (chapter 5).
Broadie, S. W. Ethics with Aristotle. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1991.
Charles, D. Aristotle’s Philosophy of Action. London:
Duckworth, 1984.
Cooper, John M. Reason and Human Good in Aristotle.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975.
———. Reason and Emotion. Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1998.
Dahl, N. O. Practical Knowledge, Aristotle, and Weakness
of Will. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1984.
Engberg-Pederson, T. Aristotle’s Theory of Moral Insight.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983.
Gosling, J. C. B., and C. C. W. Taylor. The Greeks on Plea-
sure. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982. See chapters
11–17.
Hardie, W. F. R. Aristotle’s Ethical Theory. 2nd ed. Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1980.
Irwin, Terence. Aristotle’s First Principles. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1988. See especially chapters 15–21.
———. “Aristotle’s Methods of Ethics.” In Studies in Ar-
istotle, edited by D. O’Meara, 193–223. Washington,
D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1981.
Kraut, Richard. Aristotle on the Human Good. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1989.
Rorty, Amelie, ed. Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1980. See especially
“Aristotle on Eudaimonia,” by J. L. Ackrill (pp. 15–
34); “Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean,” by J. O. Urm-
son (157–70); “Aristotle on Learning to be Good,” by
M. F. Burnyeat (69–92); “Deliberation and Practical
Reason,” by D. Wiggins (221–40); “Reason and Re-
sponsibility in Aristotle,” by Terence Irwin (117–56);
and “Aristotle on Friendship,” by John M. Cooper
(301–40).
Whiting, J. “Human Nature and Intellectualism in Aris-
98
totle.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 68
(1986): 70–95.
T. H. Irwin
atheism
Atheism (the belief that neither God nor any other
supernatural phenomena exist) was once thought to
be a form of madness. As late as the seventeenth
century even such a progressive thinker as John
LOCKE (1632–1704) thought atheism to be beyond
the pale of intellectual and moral respectability. But
by the end of the twentieth century, particularly
among the intelligentsia, atheism had become com-
monplace. There is no distinctive ethical theory that
goes with atheism, though atheists will typically
have the spectrum of values characteristic of the En-
lightenment. Atheists are frequently utilitarians; but
some are deontologists or perfectionists. In META-
ETHICS atheism fits well with either ethical NATU-
RALISM or noncognitivism. While religious thinkers
tend to be cognitivists and intuitionists, the link,
however, is not tight. Henry SIDGWICK (1838–
1900), G. E. MOORE (1873–1958), and C. D.
Broad (1887–1971) were distinguished intuition-
ists, one might say the most distinguished intuition-
ists. Yet they were either atheists or agnostics.
The key problem for atheists vis-à-vis morality is
not to work out a distinctive ethical theory providing
the unique fit for atheism but to meet the challenge
thrown out by religious believers and even by some
existentialist atheists—CAMUS (1913–1960) and
SARTRE (1905–1980)—that if God is dead nothing
matters, or at least nothing really ultimately matters.
Or, more moderately, atheists need to meet the claim
of some religious moralists that a secular ethic must
be inadequate when compared with at least a prop-
erly nuanced religious morality.
In our societies moral perplexity runs deep and
cynicism or at least ambivalence about moral belief
is extensive. A recognition of this situation is com-
mon ground between reflective and informed athe-
ists and believers. Atheists will argue that there is
no reason to lose our nerve and claim that we must
have religious commitments in order to make sense
of morality. Torturing human beings is wrong, CRU-
ELTY to human beings and animals is wrong, treating
one’s PROMISES lightly or being careless about the
truth is wrong, exploiting or degrading human be-

ings is vile. If we know anything to be wrong, we
know these things to be wrong and to be just as
wrong in a godless world as in a world with God.
God’s not existing has no effect on their moral status
or on our moral standing.
There is a philosophical problem about how we
know these things to be wrong, but that is as much
a problem for the believer as for the atheist. For if
any person, believer and nonbeliever alike, has an
understanding of the concept of morality, has an un-
derstanding of what it is to take the MORAL POINT
OF VIEW, than that person will eo ipso have an un-
derstanding that it is wrong to harm others, that
promises are to be kept and truth is to be told. This
does not mean that such a person will be committed
to the belief that a lie can never be told, that a prom-
ise can never be broken, or that a human being in
no circumstance whatsoever can rightly be harmed.
But if there is no understanding that such acts al-
ways require special justification and that the pre-
sumption of morality is always against them, then
there is no understanding of the concept of morality.
But this understanding is not logically bound up
with a belief in God or adherence to a religious point
of view.
Divine Command Theory
Defenders of Divine Command Theory, one of the
major types of religious ethical theories, maintain
that such an understanding does imply at least some
minimal knowledge of God because we know things
to be wrong only when we know they are against
God’s will. Something is good only because God
wills it, and wrong only because He prohibits it. That
is the central claim of the Divine Command Theory.
Setting aside skeptical questions about how we
can know what God does and does not will, the old
conundrum arises—something as old as PLATO (c.
430–347 B.C.E.): Is something good simply because
God wills it, or does God will it because it is good?
Leaving God aside for the moment, what is evident
is that something is not good simply because it is
willed or commanded. A military officer can com-
mand his troops to take no prisoners, or a father can
command his son to lie to his mother. Neither of
these things becomes good or in any way morally
acceptable simply in virtue of being commanded. In-
deed, something is not even morally speaking a good
thing to do simply because it is willed or com-
99
atheism
manded by an omnipotent and perfectly intelligent
being. Unless we wish to reduce morality to PRU-
DENCE, to take the will of such a being as our moral
law is to reduce morality to POWER worship. Might,
even omnipotence, doesn’t make right; a perfectly
intelligent being could be evil through and through.
However, to this criticism of the Divine Com-
mand Theory it is not implausible to respond that it
is God’s commanding that makes all the difference,
for God, after all, is the supreme, perfect good. In
turn, it can be asked how we know that. If we say
we know it through studying the scriptures and
through the example of Jesus where his goodness is
manifest, then we know it only by virtue of our own
quite autonomous moral appreciation of his good-
ness. In Bible stories we read about behavior which
we take to be morally exemplary. However, it is
through our own appreciation of what goodness is,
our own at least rudimentary conception of good-
ness, that we can appreciate morally exemplary be-
havior. Understanding something of what morality
is, we feel the moral force of the story of Jesus dying
on the cross to save humankind. Moral understand-
ing is not grounded in a belief in God; just the re-
verse is so. An understanding of the religious signif-
icance of Jesus and the scriptures presupposes a
logically independent moral understanding.
If alternatively we claim that we do not come to
understand that God is the supreme and perfect
good in that way, but instead understand it as a nec-
essary truth like ‘puppies are young dogs’ (some-
thing which is true by definition), then we still
should ask, how do we understand that putatively
necessary proposition? But again we should recog-
nize that it is only by having an understanding of
what goodness is that we come to have some glim-
mering of the more complex and extremely perplex-
ing notions of supreme or perfect goodness. Only if
we understand what a good meal is can we possibly
have any inkling of what a wonderfully good meal
is. Only if we understand what a sacrifice is can we
understand what a supreme sacrifice is.
The crucial thing to see is that there are things
which we can come to appreciate on reflection to be
wrong, God or no God. Whatever foundational ac-
count of morality we give, or indeed whether we can
give one or need to give one at all, we can be far
more confident we are right in claiming that tortur-
ing, lying, or breaking faith with people is wrong
than we can be in claiming any rational belief in God
atheism
or knowledge of his order or of what he requires of
us. There are primitive moral certainties that are
vastly more certain than any religious belief, and
these certainties are not at all undermined by ‘the
death of God.’
God, Morality, and the Causal Order
Someone might respond to the above critique of
Divine Command Theory by maintaining that since
God, assuming there is a God, is the cause of every-
thing, there could be (if the Judeo-Christian cos-
mological story is true) no goodness or anything else
if there were no God. Given the truth of that tale,
without God there would be nothing, and thus there
would be no valuable somethings. But this confuses
causes with reasons: confuses questions about
bringing something into existence causally and sus-
taining and justifying its existence. If God exists and
if he is what the scriptures say he is, everything caus-
ally depends on him. However, even if there were no
God who made the world, it still would be vile to
torture little children. Even if God had not created
people and thus there were no people to be kind, it
would still be timelessly true that kindness is a good
thing. The goodness of kindness does not become
good or cease to be good by God’s fiat or anyone
else’s, or even because of the fact that there happen
to be kind people. In terms of its fundamental ratio-
nale, morality is utterly independent of belief in
God. Atheists can respond to the religious claim that
if God is dead nothing matters by asserting that to
make sense of our lives as moral beings there is no
need to make what may be an intellectually stulti-
fying blind leap of religious faith. Such a moral un-
derstanding, as well as a capacity for moral response
and action, is available to us even if we are utterly
without religious faith. There is no reason the atheist
should be morally at sea.
Religious versus Secular Morality
There are religious moralists who would ac-
knowledge this and yet still maintain that there are
religious moralities which are (morally speaking)
more adequate than anything available to atheists.
We are religious beings in need of rituals and saving
myths. Without belief in God and immortality, our
lives remain fragmented and meaningless. A secular
morality can afford us no sense of providential care,
100
while a Jewish, Christian, or Islamic morality can.
God, on such conceptions, is taken to be a creator
who is the supreme source of CARE, protection, and
moral guidance. At least in certain vital respects we
will be, if our faith is strong, free of anxiety and fear.
With a firm belief in God, we have the reassurance
that, if we orient our will to God, we will be saved,
EVIL will not ultimately triumph, and our moral
struggles will not be in vain because the evil in the
world will not prevail and overwhelm us. In belief
in God we can find peace and reassurance that all
is not hopeless. Jews, Christians, and Moslems can,
if their faith is strong, have a confident, future-
oriented view of the world. Such a view would af-
firm that there is a purpose to life, that we are crea-
tures of God made for a purpose in which ultimately
there will be human liberation in a life of bliss. There
is, the claim goes, a hope and moral promise arising
from faith that no secular morality can match.
At this stage in the argument the viability of the
truth-claims of religion become important in a way
that is not the case in arguing about the Divine Com-
mand Theory. If, as atheists claim, we cannot know
or even reasonably believe what religious people
claim we know or can reasonably take on faith, we
should not crucify our intellects, and try to rely on
a religious morality. Moreover, the religious moralist
portrays things in a godless world as being much
grimmer than they actually are. There is no good
reason to think life without God is senseless or with-
out point. There are purposes in life even if there is
no purpose to life. And to be made for a purpose as
the religious story maintains is not so morally un-
problematic, for at the very least it seems to rob us
of our autonomy. An atheist need not be limited to
small, rather personal purposes in life. There are also
larger, rather impersonal things that can perhaps be
realized through political and social struggle, things
that we can make our own purposes by our own
deliberate acts. At a minimum, we can fight the
plague; maximally, we can struggle to transform the
world. Such efforts afford plenty of meaning in life
and prevent the threat of meaninglessness.
Morality, it should be added, still has a funda-
mental function in a godless world, just as much as
in any other kind of world: namely, its function to
adjudicate in a fair way the conflicts of INTERESTS
between persons. Atheists as well as religious people
might very well come reflectively to desire that
something like a kingdom of ends will obtain. An

atheist, just as well as the religious person, can re-
spect persons simply because they are persons. Athe-
ists, as others, will recognize SELF-RESPECT to be a
fundamental good. This will lead them to a respect
for others, for as moral agents we will recognize, if
we think at all carefully, that if self-respect is a good
for ourselves as individuals it will be a good for ev-
eryone else as well. UNIVERSALIZABILITY and FAIR-
NESS require us to go beyond ourselves and at least
acknowledge the appropriateness of a world in
which respect for persons plays center stage. Similar
things should be said for the relief of human suffer-
ing. If we can know anything to be bad we can know
that suffering is bad. (It may sometimes be instru-
mentally good but it is never intrinsically good.)
Where there is some reasonable expectation that we
can, at least without extensive sacrifice, do some-
thing about suffering, we have, God or no God, an
obligation to relieve it.
Again, a religious moralist can acknowledge the
truth of at least a number of the points raised above
and still respond that there are morally relevant
NEEDS that religious morality responds to that sec-
ular morality does not. But it is also true that there
are needs that a secular morality responds to that
religious morality does not. There is a question of
choices and of trade-offs. With a religious morality
there is a hope for immortality and a belief in a world
of providential care in which we can have at least
the putative guarantee that our moral efforts will not
be defeated. If religious beliefs, including belief in
immortality, are held to be reasonably plausible, that
might be enough to tip the scale in favor of a reli-
gious morality; but if, as atheists believe, belief in
the existence of God and immortality is highly im-
plausible, then a religious ethic becomes less attrac-
tive, for it appears that to adhere to it there must be
a crucifixion of the intellect which, pace Kierke-
gaard, is not such a plainly desirable thing. In such
a circumstance, moral INTEGRITY is a threat to or at
least a problem for a religious morality. Atheists will
argue that there is something to be said for the per-
son who can hold steadily on course in the moral
world without telling herself fairy tales or feeling the
need to believe things which are wildly implausible,
perhaps even incoherent. Moral integrity, fraternity,
and love of humankind are worth subscribing to
without a thought to whether such virtues will be
rewarded in heaven or will predominate in our
world.
101
atheism
There are trade-offs here, and the trade-offs athe-
ists will make are not, to put it circumspectly, obvi-
ously mistaken or indicative of a shallow worldview
with a shallow morality and conception of life. The
atheist’s view is that there is no need to make an
arbitrary Kierkegaardian leap of faith and believe to
make sense of one’s life, including one’s moral life,
in what one admittedly takes to be absurd. What
should be had by way of moral belief and commit-
ment is not independent of the probabilities here.
Atheists believe, and not unreasonably, that the
probabilities go very much against religious belief.
To have a robust moral conception of life one need
not go against those at least putative probabilities.
See also: ABSURD, THE; AGNOSTICISM; ALIENATION;
AUTONOMY OF ETHICS; AUTONOMY OF MORAL
AGENTS; CHRISTIAN ETHICS; DEONTOLOGY; EVIL;
FAIRNESS; GOOD, THEORIES OF THE; HUMANISM; IN-
TEGRITY; ISLAMIC ETHICS; JEWISH ETHICS; METAETH-
ICS; MORAL POINT OF VIEW; NATURALISM; NIHILISM;
PERFECTIONISM; PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION; RELI-
GION; THEISM; UNIVERSALIZABILITY; VOLUNTARISM.
Bibliography
Frankena, William, and J. Granrose, eds. Introductory
Readings in Ethics, 94–111. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1974. Clear exchange between secular
and religious-based moralities.
Hauerwas, Stanley, and Alasdair MacIntyre, eds. Revi-
sions: Changing Perspectives in Moral Philosophy. No-
tre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983.
Challenges the more standard treatments of ethics and
religion.
Idziak, Janine, ed. Divine Command Morality: Historical
and Contemporary Readings. New York: Edwin Mel-
len, 1979. Good collection of historical writings on the
Divine Command Theory.
Mitchell, Basil. Morality: Religious and Secular. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1980.
Nielsen, Kai. Ethics without God. Rev. ed. Buffalo, NY:
Prometheus Books, 1989. A defense of secular ethics.
———. Naturalism and Religion. Amherst, NY: Prome-
theus Books, 2000.
———. Naturalism without Foundations. Amherst, NY:
Prometheus Books, 1996.
Outka, Gene, and John Reeder, eds. Religion and Moral-
ity. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1973. Wide-
ranging collection.
Pojman, Louis, ed. Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology.
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1987. See pp. 493–537 for
clear exchange between secular and religiously based
moralities.
atheism
Quinn, Philip. Divine Commands and Moral Require-
ments. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. Careful discus-
sion of Divine Command Theory.
Kai E. Nielsen
attention
See moral attention; moral perception.
Augustine, Saint (354–430)
Aurelius Augustinus, bishop of Hippo and Christian
church father, was born in Thagaste, Northern Af-
rica (modern Souk Ahras, Algeria). He was trained
in rhetoric in Thagaste and Carthage and, except for
five years in Rome and Milan, from 383–388, he
lived his life in North Africa and died in Hippo
(modern Annaba, Algeria) in 430.
Augustine had nothing that one could properly
describe as formal training in philosophy, nor did he
ever enjoy the company of another philosopher as
good, or even nearly as good, as he was. He was
trained in rhetoric and he became a teacher of rheto-
ric. His studies led him to become a great admirer
of CICERO (106–43 B.C.E.). Augustine’s study of
Cicero’s works influenced more than his writing
style; through a careful and extensive reading of him,
Augustine got much of his education in philosophy,
as well as much of his early enthusiasm for the sub-
ject. Of the various philosophical schools known to
him, neo-Platonism influenced him the most. But he
took the skepticism of the New Academy seriously
enough to try to answer it in brief discussions scat-
tered throughout his writings. His most celebrated
response to the skeptic’s challenge, “What if you are
dreaming?”, includes the assertion, “If I am mis-
taken, I am” (si fallor, sum, in City of God 11.26),
which foreshadows DESCARTES’s (1596–1650) even
more famous saying, cogito, ergo sum (“I think,
therefore I am”).
Only the earliest of Augustine’s voluminous
writings are explicitly philosophical. But in virtu-
ally everything Augustine wrote, including the let-
ters, the sermons, and the biblical commentaries,
he displays characteristically philosophical preoc-
cupations along with his theological and pastoral
concerns. One often finds a philosophically inter-
esting paragraph tucked away in a sermon or letter
102
that is otherwise devoted to biblical exegesis or pas-
toral advice.
Heresy
Among the Christian church fathers, Augustine
is, perhaps, the leading definer of heresy, and hence,
of Christian orthodoxy. In particular, he wrote ex-
tensively to define and reject Pelagianism, Mani-
cheanism, and Donatism. In the case of each of these
heresies, both Augustine’s own view and the view
he rejects have implications for ethics.
Pelagianism denies that “in Adam’s sin we sinned
all,” and puts forward instead the notion that human
beings have it within their natural power to be with-
out sin. Pelagianism affirms the dictum, known to
modern philosophers through KANT (1724–1804),
OUGHT IMPLIES CAN. Through his formulation and
defense of the doctrines of original sin and human
depravity, Augustine denies human perfectibility
and maintains that inability to perform an action
unaided by the unearned grace of God does not free
an agent from the obligation to perform that action.
Early in his adult life Augustine was himself a
Manichee; thus, he supposed there to be a principle
of EVIL, or darkness, roughly coequal with the prin-
ciple of goodness, or light. In rejecting Manichean-
ism he took on the burden of showing how the ex-
istence of an all-good and all-powerful god is
compatible with the existence of evil (the classic
“problem of evil”). (For a statement of the problem
in Augustine, see Confessions 7.5.)
Among Augustine’s many responses to the prob-
lem of evil is the neo-Platonic suggestion that evil is
a privation, so that “whatever is, is good” (Confes-
sions 7.12). The idea seems to be that if, strictly
speaking, evil does not exist, there can be no prob-
lem about how the existence of evil is compatible
with there being an all-good and all-powerful god.
Another influential Augustinian response to the
problem of evil is the suggestion that evil, or sin, is
like a dark color in a beautiful painting—in itself,
ugly, but in context something that contributes to the
beauty and goodness of the whole (City of God
11.23). He also suggested, though left undeveloped,
the idea that FREE WILL is a good of sufficient value
that an all-good and all-powerful being would want
to create it, even at the risk of the evil that has re-
sulted from it (De libero arbitrio 1.18.186).
Donatism is the view that the Christian sacra-

ments are not valid unless the priest who adminis-
ters them is in a state of grace. In rejecting Dona-
tism, Augustine sought to free communicants from
having to make moral judgments about their priests
in the hope of finding in them good works that might
be a sign of grace. “The conscience of a man is often
unknown to me,” he writes (In Answer to the Letters
of Petillian 1.7–8), “but I am certain of the mercy
of Christ.” More broadly, the rejection of Donatism
makes the importance of the Church as an institu-
tion largely independent of whether her clergy, as
individuals, are morally or religiously upright.
Intentionalism
Augustine was an extreme intentionalist in ethics.
In his Commentary on the Lord’s Sermon on the
Mount (1.12.34) he identifies the necessary and suf-
ficient conditions for committing a sin as (a) receiv-
ing an evil suggestion; (b) taking PLEASURE in the
evil act or thought suggested; and (c) consenting to
accept the thought or undertake the action. If this is
right, then whether one commits a sin is not in any
way dependent on whether one actually performs a
bodily ACTION as a result of the evil suggestion, plea-
sure, and CONSENT. And where an action does result,
it will be the INTENTION (understood as suggestion,
pleasure, and consent), rather than the conse-
quences of the action, that give it its immoral
character.
Weakness of the Will
Augustine’s Confessions is the first important au-
tobiography in Western culture. It includes extensive
passages of reflection on, and assessment of, his own
motivation. In Augustine there is no sign of a Pla-
tonic or Aristotelian worry (see, for example, Aris-
totle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book vii) about how
akrasia, or WEAKNESS OF WILL, is possible; that is,
how it can ever be that one is doing what one knows
one ought not to be doing. In recounting the child-
hood prank of stealing pears with a gang of his
friends, he confesses that he didn’t do it for the
pears; he had, he says, better pears at home. It was
simply doing something he knew to be wrong, he
says, that motivated the action. “The evil in me was
foul, but I loved it” (Confessions 2.4).
103
Augustine, Saint
Free Will
In the early dialogue, De libero arbitrio, there is
extensive discussion of how there can be such a
thing as free will. As Augustine maintains in the City
of God (5.9), unless there is free will, praise and
exhortation is vain, and there is no justice in reward
or PUNISHMENT. In both City of God and On Free
Choice of the Will, Augustine sought to disarm the
threat to human free will that God’s foreknowledge
seems to pose by suggesting that God can foreknow
that we will do something by the power of our own
will, that is, of our own free will. His idea is that
such foreknowledge, instead of being incompatible
with free will, actually guarantees it (De libero ar-
bitrio 3.3.33–5; City of God 5.9–10).
Lying
Among Augustine’s contemporaries the question
as to whether lying might ever be morally or reli-
giously permissible, perhaps even obligatory, was
hotly debated. Augustine addressed this issue in
many of his works, and devoted two treatises wholly
to the topic of lying. In both of them he condemns
lying, even when the lie might have been thought to
bring about some greater good. He bases his con-
demnation on the commandment, “You shall not
bear false witness,” and in both treatises he views
lying as a kind of self-defilement.
The first of the two treatises devoted solely to this
topic, De mendacio, begins with a philosophically
provocative discussion of the nature of lying. Au-
gustine is inclined to suppose that a person, A, lies
in saying that p, if, and only if, the following con-
ditions are fulfilled:
1. it is in fact false that p;
2. A believes it is false that p; and
3. A says that p with the intention of deceiving
someone.
But against the necessity of these conditions he
considers:
(a) the case of someone who believes false
what is in fact true, so that the first con-
dition is not fulfilled, though there is still
an intention to deceive;
(b) the case of someone who, hoping and ex-
Augustine, Saint
pecting to be disbelieved, says what is false
to get someone to believe the truth; and
(c) the case of someone who, expecting to be
disbelieved, tells the truth in order to de-
ceive another (like the fabled traveling
salesman in old Russia, whose competitor
charges, “You’re just telling me you’re go-
ing to Minsk so that I’ll think you’re going
to Pinsk; but you really are going to Minsk,
you liar!”).
Augustine seems uncertain about what to do with
these putative counter-examples. He contents him-
self with insisting that the three conditions are
jointly sufficient and leaves undecided whether they
are severally necessary (De mendacio 4.5).
This discussion of lying illustrates two important
features of Augustine’s thought. First, he empha-
sizes the “inner man” (homo interior), an emphasis
that leads to the intentionalism in ethics mentioned
above. Second, he holds fast to the truth of certain
tenets, especially biblical claims and religious doc-
trines with a strong basis in scripture, even when
key notions in those tenets are highly problematic
and seemingly recalcitrant to satisfactory philosoph-
ical analysis. This second feature of his thought pre-
figures the tendency of certain twentieth-century an-
alytic philosophers to suppose that the deliverances
of natural science, or of common sense, are true,
whether or not a philosopher can give them a sat-
isfactory analysis.
Moral Dream Problem
Like PLATO (c. 430–347 B.C.E.) before him (Re-
public 571C) and Descartes after him (Letter to
Elizabeth, 1 September 1642), Augustine is con-
cerned about whether one does something morally
wrong by doing something immoral in a dream
(Confessions 10.30). His anti-Pelagianism removes
for him the excuse that, since ought implies can and
he can’t prevent himself from acting immorally in
his dreams, he is not morally or religiously respon-
sible for what he does in them. According to Au-
gustine, ought does not imply can; or better, ought
does not imply that one can do anything without the
gratuitous assistance of God. And, of course, Au-
gustine is not really free to justify his immoral
dreams with the complaint that God has not granted
him enough gratuitous assistance.
104
A second possibility for exculpation might be to
say that, after all, what happens only in a dream does
not really happen. But Augustine’s strong intention-
alism makes this excuse unavailable to him. On Au-
gustine’s view, in dreaming an immoral dream (say,
a dream in which one commits adultery), one has
really done something—indeed really done the cru-
cial thing—since one has formulated the intention
to do something immoral. Augustine’s discussion of
Jesus’ warning, “Whoever looks at a woman to lust
after her, has already committed adultery with her
in his heart” (Commentary on the Lord’s Sermon on
the Mount 1.12.33–34) makes clear that, in his view,
physical copulation is not required for the sin of
adultery to have taken place.
Finally, Augustine’s concession to radical skepti-
cism removes for him the excuse that, after all, I am
not my dream self. Thus in his Contra academicos,
when he offers “I know that I taste a sweet taste” as
a claim immune to skepticism and considers the
skeptic’s taunt, “What if you are only dreaming?”,
he responds: “Still that would give me pleasure even
in my sleep” (3.11.26). Consistent with that reply to
the skeptic’s challenge, Augustine cannot deny that
he is his dream self. Unlike Plato and Descartes, Au-
gustine continued to show concern for this problem
throughout much of his life.
Vice
Augustine distinguishes between things desirable
in themselves and things desirable for the sake of
something else by saying that things of the first sort
are to be enjoyed (frui), whereas those of the second
are to be used (uti). Using this uti-frui distinction he
then characterizes vice as wanting to use what is
meant to be enjoyed and to enjoy what is meant
merely to be used (De diversis quaestionibus
LXXXIII 30).
Virtue
Augustine follows Ambrose (d. 397) in adding
the four cardinal VIRTUES of Greek antiquity to the
distinctively Christian virtues of faith, HOPE, and
LOVE. Not only does he follow St. PAUL (5?–67?) in
assigning primacy to love (caritas, or agape, not cu-
piditas, or eros), but he even suggests an interpre-
tation of the original four virtues that makes them
expressions of love, too—in fact, expressions of the

love of God. Thus he says that TEMPERANCE is “love
keeping itself whole and incorrupt for God”; forti-
tude is “love bearing everything readily for the sake
of God”; justice is “love in serving God alone and
therefore ruling everything else well”; and PRUDENCE
is “love making the right distinction between what
helps one toward God and what hinders one” (De
moribus ecclesiae catholicae 15.25). In this way he
can insist that virtue is nothing other than the per-
fect love of God. And in this way he provides a
Christian analogue to the old Platonic idea (cf. Pro-
tagoras 329CD) that the many virtues are really only
one.
See also: CHARITY;CHRISTIAN ETHICS; CICERO;
COURAGE; DECEIT; EVIL; FREE WILL; FREEDOM AND
DETERMINISM; GOOD, THEORIES OF THE; INTENTION;
KANT; KANTIAN ETHICS; LOVE; OUGHT IMPLIES CAN;
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION; PRUDENCE; RESPONSIBIL-
ITY; SKEPTICISM IN ANCIENT ETHICS; TEMPERANCE;
THEOLOGICAL ETHICS; VIRTUE ETHICS; VIRTUES;
WEAKNESS OF WILL.
Bibliography
Works by Augustine
Complete Works. In vols. 32–47 of Patrologia Latina, ed-
ited by J. P. Migne. Paris, 1844–64. The Maurist edi-
tion; in Latin.
Works. In A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers, edited by Philip Schaff. New York: Scribner’s,
1892. The largest collection of Augustine’s works in
English translation.
English translations of many of Augustine’s works are to
be found scattered throughout these two ongoing se-
ries: Ancient Christian Writers (Westminster, MD:
Newman Press); and Fathers of the Church (Washing-
ton, D.C.: Catholic University Press).
The first English-language translation of Augustine’s com-
plete works is currently being published in forty-six vol-
umes, edited by John E. Rotelle. Brooklyn, NY: New City
Press, in conjunction with the Augustinian Heritage
Institute.
Works about Augustine
Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1967.
Clark, Mary T. Augustine. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown
University Press, 1994.
Elshtain, Kean Bethke. Augustine and the Limits of Poli-
tics. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press,
1995.
105
authenticity
Gilson, Etienne. The Christian Philosophy of St. Augus-
tine. New York: Random House, 1960 [1943].
Kirwan, Christopher. Augustine. Arguments of the Philos-
ophers. London: Routledge, 1989.
Matthews, Gareth B. Thought’s Ego in Augustine and
Descartes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992.
———, ed. The Augustinian Tradition. Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1999.
Rist, John M. Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Wetzel, James. Augustine and the Limits of Virtue. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Wills, Garry. Saint Augustine. New York: Viking Press,
1999.
Gareth B. Matthews
authenticity
The term, introduced into existentialist philosophy
by Martin HEIDEGGER (1889–1976), was popular-
ized by Jean-Paul SARTRE (1905–1980). Although it
has come to denote the chief, if not the only, exis-
tentialist “virtue,” Heidegger insisted he was not us-
ing it in a moral sense. But implying, as it does, such
key existentialist values as autonomy, commitment,
individual RESPONSIBILITY, and finite freedom, it is
clearly an evaluative term for all thinkers in the so-
called existentialist tradition.
The Heideggerian term “eigentlich,” translated
“authentic” or “proper,” denotes that mode of com-
porting oneself that individualizes and distinguishes
one human way of being (Dasein) from all others.
Since it is one’s finitude, temporality, and ultimately
one’s DEATH that so distinguishes Dasein, authentic
existence consists in resolutely accepting and living
one’s being-unto-death as one’s proper possibility.
“Authenticity” in the Heideggerian sense, therefore,
refers to the ultimate focus of one’s concerns in the
finite context established by one’s being-unto-death.
Inauthenticity, conversely, consists in the flight
from this finitude, the loss of this focus, the dissi-
pation of one’s resoluteness in the “average every-
day” of mass culture and superficial concerns. From
a moral point of view, inauthenticity would show
itself in the grasping after pat formulae or ready
guarantees to relieve the anguish of pursuing one’s
unique path of finite existence. The Nietzschean
challenge of moral creativity is refused by the inau-
thentic individual, who prefers the security of think-
ing and acting as “they” would have one do. Tol-
authenticity
stoy’s (1828–1910) Ivan Ilych (in The Death of Ivan
Ilych, 1886) exemplifies this inauthentic state by
seeking to live his life “comme il faut.” The relation
between failure to choose and loss of self that
“proper” sets in relief is captured most graphically
in Either/Or (1843) by KIERKEGAARD (1813–1855)
who compares the one who fails to choose to the
captain of a ship who, in hesitating to shift direction,
is all the while moving forward: “because others
have chosen for him, because he has lost himself”
(2:164, translation modified).
Sartre’s moral usage is more straightforward than
Heidegger’s. He introduces the term in Being and
Nothingness (1943), where he promises an ethic of
authenticity as the sequel to his ontological master-
work. In the posthumously published notes for that
ethic, he characterizes “authentic existence” as the
tensive feature of the human project’s being both
radically gratuitous and reflexively willed (see Note-
books for an Ethics). If it is our finitude that Hei-
deggerian authenticity resolutely chooses to live, it
is our contingency that is the focus of Sartrean
choice. Whatever human reality (Sartre’s translation
of “Dasein”) may be, it is in the manner of not-being
it, that is, in the manner of being at an inner distance
from its predicates, its intentions, its very self. This
nonself-coincidence is the ground of our freedom.
Authenticity is to choose to live this freedom; in-
authenticity, or BAD FAITH, is to flee it by trying to
coincide with ourselves (with our self-image, for ex-
ample, or with that image which others have of us).
Simone DE BEAUVOIR (1908–1986), though she
does not use the term, appropriates the idea when
she insists: “it is a matter of reconquering freedom
on the contingent facticity of existence, that is, of
taking the given, which, at the start, is there without
any reason, as something willed by man” (The Ethics
of Ambiguity, 1947). Likewise, Albert CAMUS
(1913–1960) holds up for emulation the “decision”
of Sisyphus as he returns to the foot of the hill to
begin rolling the rock to the top yet again: “One
must imagine Sisyphus happy” (The Myth of Sisy-
phus and Other Essays, 1942). The similarity be-
tween these attitudes and that of NIETZSCHE’s
(1844–1900) Zarathustra is more than coinciden-
tal. The latter’s inversion of Christian salvation
reads: “To redeem those who lived in the past and
to recreate all ‘it was’ into a ‘thus I willed it’—that
alone should I call redemption” (Thus Spoke Zara-
thustra, 1885). In such instances one is affirming the
106
brute contingency (facticity) of existence by making
it one’s own and constituting one’s individuality in
the process.
Others in this tradition, such as Jose Ortega y
Gasset (1883–1955), Karl Jaspers (1883–1969),
and Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973), have a similar
sense of the anguish that accompanies our radical
freedom and the resultant inclination to flee this
freedom/responsibility for inauthentic (uncreative)
existence. Ortega underscores the creative choice of
the authentic individual; such a one is an artist. For
Jaspers, authenticity is a function of my unique, his-
torical self (Existenz) in the face of Transcendence.
For Marcel, it entails being “faithful” to the recol-
lected presence of absolute being in oneself and in
the other; but such FIDELITY is likewise “creative.”
From the many writers, both philosophical and
literary, who have advocated authenticity as a moral
value, several common features emerge. Authentic-
ity denotes practical consistency, a kind of truth-to-
oneself, however that “self” may be conceived. This
in turn implies an ontological understanding of hu-
man nature and/or the human condition, focused
on finitude, creative freedom, and responsibility.
Whether one “makes of [one’s] life a work of art”
(Nietzsche) or “dwells poetically” in the world (Hei-
degger), the model of the authentic individual is the
creative artist. Even Kierkegaard, for whom the poet
was paradigmatically inauthentic, advocates in the
choice of faith the typically artistic superiority of the
individual over the universal. The sometimes pro-
found differences between these thinkers—whether
this creativity, for example, is a “doing,” a “respond-
ing,” or a “letting be”—are functions of their re-
spective ontologies.
Authenticity thus belongs to that ethical tradition
which insists one “become what one is.” But what
distinguishes it from more conservative forms of this
position is its view of “what one is” as unique, open-
ended, transcending one’s circumstances and crea-
tive of values. It thus resembles some forms of
PRAGMATISM. But it likewise risks dismissal as con-
stituting an ethical style, not a content; of warranting
any sort of commonly acknowledged immoral activ-
ity (racism or rape, for example) so long as one acts
in full awareness of the freedom of the decision and
owns the consequences of the act. So the challenge
to any existentialist ethics is to flesh out the imper-
ative of authenticity so that one may exclude certain
acts that could scarcely be conceived as authentic.

Finally, the term seems to find its proper place either
in a SITUATION ETHICS or as the complement to any
number of ethical theories that demand a corrective
to their excessively impersonal rules and principles.
See also: AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; BAD FAITH;
BUBER; CAMUS; DE BEAUVOIR; EXISTENTIAL ETH-
ICS; FIDELITY; HEIDEGGER; INDIVIDUALISM; LIBER-
TARIANISM; KIERKEGAARD; NIETZSCHE; RAND;
RESPONSIBILITY; SARTRE; SELF-DECEPTION; SELF-
KNOWLEDGE; SITUATION ETHICS.
Bibliography
Adorno, Theodore. The Jargon of Authenticity. Evanston,
IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973. Neo-Marxist
critique of Heidegger.
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays.
New York: Vintage Books, 1955 [1942]. Authenticity
as revolt.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. New York: Harper
and Row, 1962 [1927]. Classic statement of authentic-
ity in the context of fundamental ontology.
Jaspers, Karl. Reason and Existenz. Translated by William
Earle. New York: Noonday Press, 1955 [1935]. Au-
thentic existence elucidated.
Kierkegaard, Søren. Either/Or. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1987 [1843]. Choice and self-
constitution.
———. Two Ages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1978 [1846?]. Inauthentic forms of existence.
———. Sickness unto Death. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1980 [1849]. Choice of self in a re-
ligious context.
Marcel, Gabriel. The Mystery of Being. Chicago, IL: Reg-
nery, 1950–51. Definitive exposition of his thought in
the Gifford lectures.
Martin, Mike W. Self-Deception and Morality. Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 1986. Discussion of the
“authenticity tradition”; bibliography.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 1883–85.
The “overman” versus the last man.
Ortega y Gasset, Jose. Meditations on Quixote. New York:
Norton, 1961 [1914]. The authentic individual as
artist.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Anti-Semite and Jew. New York:
Schocken, 1948. His classic analysis of authenticity/
inauthenticity.
———. Notebooks for an Ethics. Translated by David Pel-
lauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Ex-
tensive treatment of authenticity, including a discus-
sion of authentic love. (Written 1946–47; published
posthumously as Cahiers pour une morale.)
———. Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr. New York: George
Braziller, 1963 [1952]. Authenticity exemplified.
107
authority
Taylor, Charles. The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1992. Excellent study, by a
nonexistentialist, of the ethical value of authenticity.
Zimmerman, Michael E. Eclipse of the Self. 2d, rev. ed.
Athens: Ohio University Press, 1986. The development
of Heidegger’s concept of authenticity.
Thomas R. Flynn
authority
Accounts of the concept of authority often begin
with an etymological point. The word comes from
the same root as “author.” This suggests that a
holder of authority is a source of something, in par-
ticular, the decisions or judgments of the people over
whom authority is exercised. But in the modern
world, where hierarchy is not taken for granted, the
concept of authority is probably best understood by
focusing not on those who hold authority but on
those potentially subject to it. Regarded in this way,
the essence of authority is deference. Those subject
to authority defer to the communications of the
holders of authority. Two main questions arise about
this deference: How is it to be understood? And how
is it to be justified?
Discussion of both these points is facilitated by
making two distinctions. The first distinction is be-
tween de facto authority and justified or legitimate
authority. De facto authority obtains when people
are in fact prepared to defer to the communications
emanating from some source. Authority is legitimate
when this deference is justified, in the sense that
there is good reason, from the standpoint of those
displaying deference, to do so.
The second distinction is between subordinating
authority and expert authority. De facto subordinat-
ing authority involves uncoerced deference to direc-
tives. These enjoin an agent to perform a certain ac-
tion in a certain situation. Presumably, the agent is
capable of making up her own mind about what
course of action is appropriate in that situation, of
deciding for herself what all the relevant consider-
ations require. But if she accepts the authority of
some source of directives, she regards these direc-
tives as taking precedence over her own judgment
concerning what to do. Joseph Raz has employed the
concept of preemption to characterize the relation
between the communications of an authority and the
judgments of those subject to it. To accept the au-
thority of some source of directives is to allow its
authority
directives to displace the reasons that would other-
wise determine judgment. This has the effect of mak-
ing the directives decisive REASONS FOR ACTION.
To justify subordinating authority to an individual
is to provide her with a rationale for the preemption,
by the putative authority’s directives, of her judg-
ments concerning what to do (in situations of the
kind at issue). This raises the most philosophically
intriguing problem about authority. How can there
be good reason for an agent to set aside an all-things-
considered judgment regarding what there is good
reason to do? Obviously we need to make a distinc-
tion. The preempted judgment is based on all the
relevant substantive considerations, but there must
be further considerations of a different sort that jus-
tify its preemption. What might they be?
Historically, perhaps the most important way of
justifying subordinating authority has employed a
promise to obey—or CONSENT having promissory
force. It is doubtful, however, whether this approach
is generally applicable. If it is to justify subordinating
authority, a promissory obligation must have pre-
emptive force relative to the reasons that would oth-
erwise determine what to do. This is, perhaps, pos-
sible when the other reasons are nonmoral, for
example, reasons of self-interest. But a promissory
obligation cannot plausibly be regarded as preempt-
ing other moral considerations. It is just a further
substantive moral reason for action, which must
compete with the moral considerations that would
otherwise guide an agent, and may be defeated by
them. So this method cannot reliably justify author-
ity when agents have moral reasons for disobeying.
To understand how subordinating authority
could be vindicated when agents have moral reasons
for disobeying, we must consider how the displace-
ment of a judgment encompassing even moral con-
siderations might be justified. One possibility is that
the agent’s own reasoning is defective, or at any rate,
not as accomplished as the reasoning of the desig-
nated authority. He is likely to do better by comply-
ing with the directives of an authority, where doing
better is understood as better satisfying the very
same reasons the force of which he would try to cap-
ture in an all-things-considered judgment. Of
course, this presupposes that the holder of authority
undertakes to base her directives on these reasons.
This way of justifying subordinating authority re-
quires that the subordinates have available to them
a sound basis for regarding those issuing directives
108
as more competent reasoners. When subordinating
authority is justified in this way, it shades into expert
authority.
When a subordinating authority directs people to
behave cooperatively, the justification of the pre-
emption that it involves can also be understood an-
other way. We can regard the reasoning that is pre-
empted as reasoning concerning how an agent can,
as an individual, maximize the satisfaction of the
considerations that he regards as reasons for action.
As is well known, maximizing reasoning of this sort
can dictate free riding, and when generally followed
in a group, leads to the breakdown of cooperation.
If a source of directives that has de facto authority
in a group directs cooperative behavior instead, each
subordinate will find that his compliance is matched
by that of others, with the result that the consider-
ations he takes as reasons for action are better sat-
isfied than they would be in the situation of general
noncooperation. This is a second way of regarding
those who accept subordinating authority as doing
better in terms of the very considerations, including
moral considerations, that ground the preempted
judgments.
Expert authority involves the displacement of an
all-things-considered judgment not by a directive,
but by the assertion of a putative expert. Deference
to expert authorities is a sensible social response to
the proliferation of specialized knowledge. No one
can master it all, and thus general social perfor-
mance will be defective if people try to answer on
their own all the questions germane to modern life.
A better—though obviously not foolproof—policy
involves a division of labor in which some become
experts on matters of a particular sort, and everyone
else defers to the assertions of these people in the
areas of their expertise. Here, too, we can distin-
guish between de facto and legitimate authority. An
individual’s assertions may in fact be decisive in de-
termining the beliefs of the members of some group,
whether this is justified or not. What, then, justifies
expert authority?
Again, the justifying reason cannot be a substan-
tive consideration that has somehow been left out of
an all-things-considered judgment. The justification
must be that the expert is better at assessing the
force of all the applicable substantive considera-
tions. Typically, this is established inductively, by a
history of successful judgment. It becomes appro-
priate for the members of a group to defer to some-

one’s sincere assertions when they have repeatedly
compared her judgments with their own and found
hers better. One prominent case is that in which an
individual is more successful in predicting what will
happen next in situations of a certain type. In such
cases, the authority may employ a form of reasoning
that is completely inaccessible to those who defer to
her. To have a good reason for deferring, they need
only be able to observe whether her predictions are
more accurate than their own. In other cases, how-
ever, expert authority is based on a difference in the
degree of some shared competence. A given individ-
ual can reason more efficiently or creatively, about
matters of a particular sort, than other people. The
deference characteristic of authority becomes justi-
fied when, after a number of trials in which those
whose thinking is more cumbersome eventually as-
certain that the designated individual is correct, in-
ductive reasoning supports simply accepting her fu-
ture assertions. Expert authority in moral matters
would be of this sort. But given the ubiquity of moral
disagreement, it is doubtful that anyone could dem-
onstrate superior moral competence to most of the
members of a large community.
The phenomenon of authorization should also be
mentioned. We sometimes say that an individual acts
by the authority of another, in the sense of being
authorized by him to perform the actions in ques-
tion. For example, the agent of a principal acts by
the authority of the principal. This use of the concept
of authority is also connected with the idea of au-
thorship highlighted by etymological considerations.
However, deference need not be at issue. To act by
the authority of another is to act by his RIGHTS.
Sometimes rights can be transferred from one per-
son to another. But there is also room for the idea
that an individual can consent, in the normative
sense that involves incurring obligations, to the ex-
ercise of his rights by another, while still retaining
these rights himself. In such cases, we speak of the
second person as acting by the authority of the first.
See also: CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE; COERCION; CONSENT;
CONTRACTS; COOPERATION, CONFLICT AND COORDI-
NATION; DUTY AND OBLIGATION; ELITE, CONCEPT OF;
EXCELLENCE; FREEDOM OF THE PRESS; GOVERNMENT,
ETHICS IN; INEQUALITY; JOURNALISM; LEGAL ETHICS;
LIBRARY AND INFORMATION PROFESSIONS; LOYALTY;
MASS MEDIA; MEDICAL ETHICS; OBEDIENCE TO LAW;
PATERNALISM; POWER; PROFESSIONAL ETHICS; PROM-
109
autonomy of ethics
ISES; REASONS FOR ACTION; RELIGION; SOCIAL AND
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS;
TRUST.
Bibliography
Arendt, Hannah. “What Was Authority?” In Authority,
edited by Carl Friedrich for the American Society for
Political and Legal Philosophy, 81–112. Nomos 1.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958.
Coleman, James. The Foundations of Social Theory. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1990.
Dan-Cohen, Meir. “In Defense of Defiance.” Philosophy
and Public Affairs 23 (1994): 24–51.
De George, Richard. The Nature and Limits of Authority.
Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1985.
Friedman, Richard. “On the Concept of Authority in Po-
litical Philosophy.” In Authority, edited by Joseph Raz,
56–91. New York: New York University Press, 1990.
Green, Leslie. The Authority of the State. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1988.
McMahon, Christopher. Authority and Democracy: A
General Theory of Government and Management.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Peters, R. S. “Authority.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society Suppl. vol. 32 (1958): 207–24.
Raz, Joseph. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1986.
———, ed. Authority. New York: New York University
Press, 1990.
Soper, Phillip. “Legal Theory and the Claim to Authority.”
Philosophy and Public Affairs 18 (1989): 209–37.
Christopher McMahon
autonomy of ethics
More has been written explicitly on the autonomy of
some other areas of culture, especially art and RE-
LIGION, than on the autonomy of ethics as such; but
autonomy issues in regard to ethics have been writ-
ten about and discussed extensively.
Different things have been meant by the “auton-
omy” of an area of the culture or of a discipline.
Goran Hermeren distinguishes twelve different the-
ses meant by “autonomy” of art. Any one of at least
seven theses may be meant by “autonomy” of ethics:
(1) Ethics is not subject to being explained biologi-
cally, psychologically, or sociologically; (2) ethics is
not dependent on, or derived from, religion; (3) eth-
ical concepts are not reducible to, or definable in
terms of, nonethical concepts; (4) the justification of
autonomy of ethics
ethical judgments does not depend exclusively on
nonethical beliefs; (5) ethics is a language game
grounded in a form of life rather than in objective
values or normative structures in the external world;
(6) ethical judgments are not determinant judg-
ments (they are not determined by, or accountable
to, any objective truth or principle); and (7) philo-
sophical ethics is independent of other philosophical
disciplines, such as epistemology, metaphysics, and
philosophy of mind.
Thomas Nagel argues for thesis 1. His attack is
on a biological theory of ethics, but his argument
would apply equally to psychological and sociologi-
cal theories as well. Nagel maintains that if ethics is
“a theoretical inquiry that can be approached by ra-
tional methods, and that has internal standards of
justification and criticism,” then biology can no
more explain ethics than it can explain mathematics
or physics; and he argues that ethics is, in fact, such
an enterprise. If ethics is a rational discipline, and
the evidence seems to support Nagel on this, then
moral experiences, ethical judgments and argu-
ments, and human actions in general do not have
the appropriate categorial structure to be subject to
scientific description and explanation, whether in bi-
ology, psychology, or sociology.
With regard to thesis 2, many claim that ethics is
dependent on, and derivable from, religion; and
that, in a secular culture, ethics, deprived of its foun-
dation in religion, tends toward dissolution. Others
(e.g., Falk) contend that ethics, as a rational disci-
pline, is grounded in selfhood, rational agency, or
reflectively living a human life, or in cooperative en-
deavors and social organization; that, while religion
may reinforce ethics, ethics is more basic than, and
can stand apart from, religion; and that religions of-
ten lag behind the developing moral consciousness
of humankind. It seems obvious that rational dia-
logue across cultures is more fruitful on ethical mat-
ters than on religious issues. THOMAS AQUINAS
(1225?–1274) and other Christian philosophers of
the Middle Ages agreed with the Greeks and Ro-
mans that there is an independent rational basis for
ethics; and since the seventeenth century it has been
widely accepted by philosophers that ethics is epis-
temologically independent of religion.
Theses 3–6 have been at the center of the contro-
versies in moral philosophy in the modern age (see
E. M. Adams). Thesis 3 holds that ethics is seman-
tically autonomous; that ethical terms either locate
110
some uniquely ethical property or structure (à la
G. E. MOORE [1873–1958] and other moral real-
ists) or are devoid of cognitive meaning (à la logical
positivists, existentialists, or prescriptivists). Thesis
4 holds (à la HUME [1711–1776], KANT [1724–
1804], and others) that no ethical conclusion fol-
lows logically from purely factual premises; and, fur-
thermore, that no set of factual beliefs alone can
justify an ethical judgment. Some claim that an eth-
ical premise or commitment is always presupposed
in justifying an ethical judgment with factual state-
ments. Others have invoked an emotive response to
the comprehended facts to account for the move-
ment from factual premises to an ethical conclusion;
some have spoken of ethical rules of inference, some
of social conventions, and some of a special (but
optional) point of view that justify ethical conclu-
sions from factual premises; E. M. Adams has ar-
gued for the perception of objective normative re-
quirements. There is wide agreement with Hume,
Kant, and Moore (although the opposition has been
strong) that ethical terms are semantically different
from nonvalue terms and that the justification of
ethical judgments is different from that of factual
beliefs.
Ronald DWORKIN is a prominent advocate of the-
sis 5. He holds that the objectivity and truth of an
ethical judgment are an internal matter for the par-
ticular ethical language game and form of life of
which it is a part. A judgment is objective and has a
truth-value not by virtue of its relationship to an ex-
ternal, independent reality, but by virtue of the fact
that it is embedded in a theory or practice with suf-
ficient complexity for it to generate logical tensions
within the system. This position is countered by all
the arguments for MORAL REALISM, whether natu-
ralistic or nonnaturalistic.
Thesis 6 invokes a sense of “autonomy” intro-
duced in Kant’s Critique of Judgment (1790). Kant
held that aesthetic judgments of taste and teleolog-
ical judgments about nature are autonomous in that
they are not determined by any objective truth or
principle but rather by reflection on the appropri-
ateness of some object to one’s own sensibility or
intellectual powers. Friedrich SCHILLER (1759–
1805), Ralph Waldo EMERSON (1803–1882), and
others (see Richard Smyth) have claimed that ethical
judgments are autonomous in this sense. This, too,
is countered by all the arguments for moral objec-
tivism and realism.

Thesis 7, the independence of moral philosophy
from other philosophical disciplines, is more as-
sumed in practice than argued for by moral philos-
ophers. Dworkin, however, argues explicitly that no
skeptical argument about morality and no argument
for the objectivity of morality can be other than a
moral argument. John RAWLS claims that moral the-
ory, the analysis of substantive moral concepts and
their relationship to our moral sensibility and natu-
ral attitudes (which he acknowledges is not the
whole of moral philosophy), is independent of epis-
temological and metaphysical considerations. How-
ever, a case can be made (see Adams) for the claim
that most theories of ethics are in response to phil-
osophical skepticism about ethics that is generated
by epistemological and metaphysical positions
reached independently of moral philosophy, and that
these epistemological and metaphysical positions
may distort moral theory.
See also: INTUITIONISM; METAETHICS; METAPHYSICS
AND EPISTEMOLOGY; MORAL REALISM; MORAL REA-
SONING; MORAL SENSE THEORISTS; NATURAL LAW;
NATURALISM; PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION; PRESCRIP-
TIVISM; RELIGION.
Bibliography
Adams, E. M. Ethical Naturalism and the Modern World-
View. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1960.
———. Philosophy and the Modern Mind. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1975. Reprint.
Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1985.
See chapters 4 and 5.
Alston, William P. “The Christian Language-Game.” In
The Autonomy of Religious Belief, 128–62. Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981.
Collingridge, David. “The Autonomy of Evaluation.” Jour-
nal of Value Inquiry 14 (1980): 119–28.
Dworkin, Ronald. A Matter of Principle. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1985. See especially pp.
167–77.
Falk, W. D. “Morals without Faith.” In Ought, Reasons,
and Morality: The Collected Papers of W. D. Falk,
163–79. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986.
Hermeren, Goran. “Autonomy of Art.” In Essays on Aes-
thetics, edited by John Fisher, 35–49. Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1983.
Myers, David B. “Marxism and the Autonomy of Critical
Thought.” International Philosophical Quarterly 19
(1979): 213–26.
Nagel, Thomas. “Ethics as an Autonomous Theoretical
111
autonomy of moral agents
Subject.” In Morality as a Biological Phenomenon, ed-
ited by Gunther Stent, 198–205. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1980.
Rawls, John. “The Independence of Moral Theory.” Pro-
ceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical
Association 48 (1974): 5–22.
Smyth, Richard. “Voyages to Syracuse: Adams, Schiller,
Emerson.” In Mind, Value, and Culture, edited by Da-
vid Weissbord. Altascadero: Ridgeview, 1989.
E. M. Adams
autonomy of moral agents
The idea of autonomy (from autos, self, and nomos,
rule or law) applied initially to states that were self-
governing, as opposed to colonies and conquered
peoples that were ruled by others. In modern times
the idea has been extended in various ways to char-
acterize individuals. The general description of auton-
omous agents as self-governing or self-determining,
in some sense, is common to all accounts, but phi-
losophers differ widely in their interpretations of this
general idea and in the value they place on it. Like
many philosophical terms of art, “autonomy” gets its
specific meaning in the context of various theories,
and these have developed in response to somewhat
different philosophical issues. (See Christman, 1988;
Dworkin; Feinberg, 1986; and T. Hill.)
Many writers, in discussing the foundations of
ethics, treat autonomy as a basic condition of moral
agency. Prominent among these is Immanuel KANT
(1724–1804), whose conception of autonomy may
be seen as an ancestor of many contemporary con-
ceptions which differ significantly from his. In The
Social Contract (1762) ROUSSEAU (1712–1778)
had set himself the task of finding a form of political
union that would preserve to each citizen “moral lib-
erty,” which he understood as being subject only to
laws that one gives to oneself. Adopting this idea for
ethics, Kant maintained that, contrary to all previous
moral theories, the crucial condition for being a
moral agent is having “autonomy of the will.” Nega-
tively, this means that principles cannot acquire
moral force simply by being demanded by something
external to the rational agent, such as God, secular
AUTHORITY, tradition, or natural instinct. Positively,
it means that one imposes moral constraints on one-
self through one’s own reason.
Kant argues that autonomy of the will is a positive
autonomy of moral agents
freedom inseparable from freedom conceived nega-
tively, and together these apparently imply: (a) being
able to act on principles without one’s act being
causally determined; (b) being able to act for reasons
other than to satisfy inclinations; (c) having and be-
ing able to act on principles that are rational, do not
merely prescribe means to given ends, and are in
some sense rationally self-imposed rather than bind-
ing by virtue of one’s desires or the commands of
others. Kant attributed this property to the will of
all rational agents, as a necessary and (with sensi-
bility) a sufficient condition of moral agency; but he
held that only acts actually motivated by respect for
such rational principles manifest one’s autonomy
and thereby have moral worth. Kant argued for the
autonomy of all rational moral agents not on empir-
ical grounds but as a necessary presupposition of
moral obligation and PRACTICAL REASON in general.
He argued, further, that any rational agent with au-
tonomy is necessarily committed to the Categorical
Imperative, the supreme moral principle, and from
this he attempted to justify some of the more specific
moral principles that contemporary writers often
classify as RIGHTS and duties of autonomous
persons.
Following Kant with modifications, John RAWLS,
in A Theory of Justice (1971), holds that the prin-
ciples of justice are whatever principles would be
adopted by rational and free agents in an idealized
choice situation. Rawls stipulates that persons in
this “original position” be mutually disinterested,
motivated to acquire certain “social primary goods,”
but excluded by a “veil of ignorance” from consult-
ing their individual goals, loyalties, and conceptions
of the good life. Thus the perspective from which
Rawls derives the principles of justice is partially
analogous to the point of view of Kant’s rational
agents with autonomy of will. Though Rawls seeks
to avoid the extreme metaphysical commitments as-
sociated with Kant’s ethics, in both theories rational
agents adopt or acknowledge moral constraints in
detachment from the particular ends they desire;
and acting autonomously is construed as acting from
principles that one would consent to as a free and
equal rational being. A significant difference, how-
ever, is that Kant holds that all rational agents, by
virtue of their autonomy of will, necessarily ac-
knowledge the moral law as rationally binding even
when they fail to conform. Rawls, by contrast, does
not claim that every rational agent is committed to
112
principles that would be adopted in his original
position.
Some moral theorists who treat autonomy as a
fundamental feature of moral agency conceive of au-
tonomy quite differently from Kant and Rawls. On
some accounts, for example, moral agents have the
autonomy, or freedom, to adopt moral principles, or
to make moral decisions, for themselves without be-
ing constrained by Kantian rationality, a Rawlsian
“original position,” objective moral truths, or any
substantive standards. Some versions of this view
are held by R. M. HARE, Aiken, SARTRE (1905–
1980), and others. Like Kant, these philosophers re-
ject the idea that morally binding principles are to
be “discovered” in nature, tradition, or theology; but
they also deny that such principles are commands of
reason or constructs of RATIONAL CHOICE. Moral
agents are “free” to adopt their own principles, lim-
ited only by requirements such as sincerity, consis-
tency, thinking for oneself, and willingness to apply
the same principles to others. Such procedural re-
quirements do not guarantee that all rational moral
agents will adopt the same moral principles, though
how often and how deeply they will disagree is an
empirical question. The autonomy, or moral free-
dom, in question here is obviously not (as for Kant)
freedom from the influence of inclination and per-
sonal desire. Assuming one is sincere, consistent,
etc., one is “self-governing” in moral conduct when
one lives by principles one actually accepts for one-
self as the particular individual one is, not by virtue
of conforming to universal principles that one would
adopt if choosing with Kantian autonomy or from
Rawls’s original position. The theories in question
attribute to all moral agents the freedom to adopt
one’s own moral principles (within the limits men-
tioned); and this is generally seen as an implication
of the theories’ conception of morality, not as a
metaphysical claim or an empirical observation.
However, whether a particular individual exercises
that freedom, and so lives autonomously, may de-
pend on the empirical facts about whether the per-
son makes and lives by his or her moral commit-
ments with the requisite sincerity, independence,
consistency, etc.
Many contemporary writers construe autonomy
not as a basic condition of all moral agents but as a
feature of persons who are especially self-controlled,
independent, or authentic. The typical context for
this conception is discussion of VIRTUES and ideals

rather than the source of moral obligation. Some ar-
gue, for example, that an ideal for education is to
develop autonomous individuals rather than blind
conformists. Others condemn sexist and manipula-
tive practices on the ground that they undermine a
person’s ability to make autonomous decisions. Au-
tonomy as self-control, in contrast to “wanton” and
addictive behavior, is sometimes presented as an at-
tainable sort of “free will” compatible with causal
determinism.
These writers generally agree that not everyone
satisfies the ideal of autonomy and that one can be
autonomous to various degrees. How to define the
ideal, however, remains a matter of controversy. Sev-
eral have attempted to characterize it as control over
one’s first-order desires and preferences by higher
order desires or evaluations resulting from deliber-
ation (Frankfurt; Watson). This strategy prompts
questions about how to distinguish autonomously
formed higher-order desires from manipulated ones
and whether an infinite regress can be avoided. An-
other controversial issue is whether autonomous
persons can choose to be ruled by others. Kuflick,
for example, argues that autonomy is inalienable,
but Dworkin argues that autonomy requires merely
procedural and not substantive independence from
others. In order to make autonomy compatible with
“loyalty, objectivity, commitment, and love,” Dwor-
kin offers a “content-free” definition of autonomy as
“a second-order capacity of persons to reflect criti-
cally upon their first-order preferences, desires,
wishes, and so forth and the capacity to accept or
attempt to change these in the light of higher-order
preferences and values.”
A rather different conception of individual auton-
omy is suggested by the analogy with autonomous
states that have the right to govern their own internal
affairs. Similarly, many believe, individuals have a
moral right to make their own decisions with regard
to a wide range of matters concerning their lives.
That is, individuals, at least those sufficiently ra-
tional and responsible to qualify for the right, are
seen as “sovereign authorities” over questions such
as how to dress, what to read, when to refuse sexual
advances, whether to worship, sell their PROPERTY,
pursue this or that lawful career, and so forth. The
right to make such decisions for oneself may be con-
strued as a right against individuals or against the
state, but the point in either case is that others would
be wrong to use COERCION, manipulation, decep-
113
autonomy of moral agents
tion, etc., to interfere with an agent’s efforts to make
and carry out these decisions. Authors differ about
the range and definition of the right of autonomy,
but none would deny that what one may decide for
oneself is limited by others’ autonomy and perhaps
further moral considerations (e.g., PROMISES, non-
injury, and justice). Appeals to the individual’s right
of autonomy are common in criticisms of UTILITAR-
IANISM and, more specifically, of PATERNALISM in
MEDICAL ETHICS. Some feminist writers have argued
that sexist and gender stereotypes violate women’s
right to autonomy or undermine their capacity to
exercise it.
Important questions arise about how these vari-
ous conceptions of autonomy are related. For ex-
ample, is Kantian or Rawlsian autonomy the ground
for the autonomous individual’s right to make self-
regarding decisions without interference? If so, what
is the argument that makes the connection? Is it a
necessary condition of having the right of autonomy
that one fully satisfy the ideal of rational self-control,
AUTHENTICITY, and independence, or does the right
extend to all who are autonomous to some minimal
threshold degree? If ideal autonomy is necessary,
only a relatively few elite will have the right; but if
a lower threshold suffices, then this minimum needs
to be specified and justified. Finally, if moral agents
are free to adopt their own moral principles subject
only to the procedural restrictions of Hare, Aiken,
and others, is there any common ground for holding
that we have a right of autonomy or that it is an ideal
to be an autonomous person?
A variety of objections have been raised against
theories which stress the importance of autonomy.
For example, communitarians in political theory
criticize the Kantian and Rawlsian conceptions of
autonomy as excessively metaphysical and individ-
ualistic. These conceptions, they contend, identify
one’s “true self” as an abstract rational being iso-
lated from the community values that make one who
one is. Theories of the sort advocated by Hare, Ai-
ken, and Sartre have drawn many objections, most
prominently perhaps the complaint that the sup-
posed freedom to choose our own moral principles
(with minimal restrictions) is incompatible with the
objectivity of morals. Ideals of autonomy as self-
control, independence, etc., are suspected of cul-
tural (and male) bias. More choice, some argue, is
not always better than less, and LOYALTY, commit-
ment, and compassion may be more important than
autonomy of moral agents
living autonomously. The supposed right of auton-
omy invites the objections that, if broadly extended,
it protects decisions that are foolish and contrary to
the general welfare and, if narrowly restricted to ide-
ally autonomous persons, it gives little guidance for
the real problems that arise, for example, in medical
ethics.
Further objections come from feminists who be-
lieve that traditional ethical theories have overem-
phasized autonomy to the neglect of compassion and
PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS. Carol Gilligan’s influen-
tial study of moral development in young women
suggested that women and men typically see moral
problems from different perspectives, the character-
istic values of men being autonomy, independence,
and emotional detachment, while women are more
concerned with caring, personal relationships. This
work has inspired hopes for new feminist theories
that articulate women’s moral perspectives as alter-
natives to autonomy-based theories sometimes seen
as reflecting the values of male-dominated societies.
Unfortunately, most contemporary discussions of
autonomy to date have been brief or incidental to
other projects. A challenge for future work would
be to attempt to develop a unified account of auton-
omy that is sensitive both to the critics’ objections
and to the best of the diverse ideas that have passed
as autonomy.
See also: AGENCY AND DISABILITY; AGENT-CENTERED
MORALITY; AUTHENTICITY; AUTHORITY; CARE; CAT-
EGORICAL AND HYPOTHETICAL IMPERATIVES; COER-
CION; COMMUNITARIANISM; CONSENT; DECEIT; DE-
LIBERATION AND CHOICE; DUTY AND OBLIGATION;
FEMINIST ETHICS; FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM;
HARE; IDEALIZED AGENTS; KANT; LIBERTY; LOVE;
LOYALTY; OPPRESSION; PATERNALISM; PRACTICAL
REASON[ING]; RATIONAL CHOICE; RAWLS; ROUS-
SEAU; SELF-CONTROL; SELF-RESPECT; SEX AND SEX-
UAL ETHICS; SOCIAL CONTRACT.
Bibliography
Aiken, Henry. Reason and Conduct. New York: Knopf,
1962. See “The Concept of Moral Objectivity.”
Berlin, Isaiah. Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1969. See “Two Concepts of Liberty,”
pp. 118–72.
Christman, John. “Constructing the Inner Citadel: Recent
Work on the Concept of Autonomy.” Ethics 99, no. 1
(1988): 109–24.
114
———, ed. The Inner Citadel: Essays on Individual Au-
tonomy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Downie, R. S., and E. Telfer. “Autonomy.” Philosophy 46
(1971): 296–301.
Dworkin, Gerald. The Theory and Practice of Autonomy.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. For
quoted passage, see p. 20.
Feinberg, Joel. Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980. See
“The Idea of a Free Man,” pp. 3–29. Reprinted from
Educational Judgments, ed. by James F. Doyle (Lon-
don: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973).
———. The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law. 3 vols.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984–88. See vol. 3,
Harm to Self, chapter 18.
Frankfurt, Harry G. “Freedom of the Will and the Con-
cept of a Person.” Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971):
829–39.
———. “Identification and Wholeheartedness.” In Re-
sponsibility, Character and the Emotions, edited by F.
Schoeman, 27–45. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987.
Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1982.
Hare, R. M. Freedom and Reason. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1963.
Haworth, Lawrence. Autonomy: An Essay in Philosophi-
cal Psychology and Ethics. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1986.
Hill, Sharon Bishop. “Self-Determination and Autonomy.”
In Today’s Moral Problems 3d ed., edited by Richard
Wasserstrom, 118–33. New York: Macmillan, 1985.
Hill, Thomas E., Jr. Autonomy and Self-Respect. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Mor-
als. Translated by H. J. Paton. New York: Harper and
Row, 1964 [1785].
Kittay, Eva, and Diana Meyers, eds. Women and Moral
Theory. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1987.
Kuflick, Arthur. “The Inalienability of Autonomy.” Philos-
ophy and Public Affairs 13 (1984): 271–98.
Meyers, Diana. Self, Society, and Personal Choice. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1989.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1971.
———. “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory.” Jour-
nal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 515–35.
Richards, David A. J. “Rights and Autonomy.” Ethics 92
(1981): 3–20.
Scanlon, T. M. “A Theory of Freedom of Expression.” Phi-
losophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972): 204–26.
Watson, Gary. “Free Agency.” Journal of Philosophy 72
(1975): 205–20.

Young, Robert. Personal Autonomy: Beyond Negative and
Positive Liberty. New York: St. Martin’s, 1986.
Thomas E. Hill Jr.
Averroës
See Ibn Rushd.
Avicenna [Ibn Sı̄nā] (980–1037)
Abū ÛAlı̄ al-Husayn ibn ÛAbd Allāh ibn Sı̄nā, or
Avicenna. Of all the medieval Islamic philosophers,
we are best acquainted with the life of Avicenna
thanks to the efforts of his devoted pupil and long-
time companion, al-Jūzjānı̄, who preserved some-
thing resembling an autobiography along with his
own biographical appendix. We learn from it that
Avicenna was an assiduous and devoted learner
from the days of his youth to his death.
Having proved himself in the study of the Quran
and related works of literature by the age of ten, he
turned to Indian mathematics and Islamic jurispru-
dence, then to the study of philosophy. Afterward,
he set about reading Porphyry’s (c. 234–305) Isa-
goge, logic in general, Euclid (fl. c. 300 B.C.E.), Ptol-
emy’s (second cent. C.E.) Almagest, and eventually
undertook the natural sciences and metaphysics. For
the latter two pursuits, he claims to have read both
the original texts—presumably ARISTOTLE (384–
322 B.C.E.)—and the commentaries. Such theoreti-
cal inquiries soon gave way to more practical ones
as he focused his attention on medicine. Having
thoroughly mastered the forms of the syllogisms and
their various premises by sixteen, he moved on to
metaphysics. These studies occupied Avicenna until
the age of eighteen, at which time he found an oc-
casion to present himself as a physician to the ailing
ruler of Bukhara and gained access to this ruler’s
well-stocked library.
In the first chapter of the introductory volume to
the logical part of his famous Healing, the logical
part being at the same time the beginning part,
Avicenna explains the general order of the whole
work. After the part on logic is another part devoted
to natural science. It is followed by a third part that
sets forth mathematics, and the whole compendium
concludes with Avicenna’s explanation of the divi-
sions and aspects of the science pertaining to meta-
physics. From this account of its scope, one might
115
Avicenna [Ibn Sı̄nā]
think that Avicenna’s Healing was devoted solely to
theoretical philosophy or science, that it had nothing
to say about practical philosophy or science. Indeed,
it is not until the very end of his discussion of meta-
physics that he speaks of the practical sciences or
arts of ethics and politics. As he puts it, this “sum-
mary of the science of ethics and of politics” is
placed there “until I compose a separate, compre-
hensive book about them.”
Avicenna’s fuller teaching reveals, however, that
ethical and political science belong after divine sci-
ence intrinsically and not provisionally. Indeed, they
are the human manifestation of divine science—its
practical proof. They testify to divine providence for
humankind and thus to the truth of revelation more
clearly than any of the other sciences investigated in
the Healing. Yet because the correctness of what
they teach can also be verified by Aristotelian or pa-
gan reasoning processes, Avicenna must elucidate
the relationship he discerns between pagan philos-
ophy and the revelation accorded the Prophet
Muh. ammad.
Avicenna’s description of PLATO’s (c. 430–347
B.C.E.) Laws as a treatise on prophecy provides a
clue to how interrelated he deems philosophy and
revelation. Indeed, with one exception, he consis-
tently presents the revelation of ISLAM in terms that
admit rational defense. The exception concerns the
question of ultimate HAPPINESS. Even here, however,
he preserves philosophy’s role, never insisting on the
character of that happiness.
Similarly, the attention he gives to the political
aspects of prophecy and divine law leads to reflec-
tion on the most fundamental political questions: the
nature of law, the purpose of political community,
the need for sound moral life among the citizens, the
importance of providing for divorce as well as for
marriage, the conditions for just war, the consider-
ations that lay behind penal laws, and the end of
human life. Although he does not address the origin
of private PROPERTY any more than he explains how
future successors to the prophet-lawgiver might be
raised so that they will have the moral habits and
character traits suitable to such a position, he pro-
vides the basic principles for readers to pursue these
issues on their own. In this respect, Avicenna’s po-
litical teaching is propaedeutic rather than provi-
sional: it provides an introduction to the fundamen-
tals of political science and alerts readers to the need
to think carefully about the strong affinity between
Avicenna [Ibn Sı̄nā]
the vision of political life set forth by the pagan
Greek philosophers and that exceptional individual
who surpasses philosophic virtue by acquiring pro-
phetic qualities.
See also: ARISTOTLE; CIVIC GOOD AND VIRTUE;
DEATH; ISLAM; ISLAMIC ETHICS; ISLAMIC MEDICAL
ETHICS; LEGAL PHILOSOPHY; MEDICAL ETHICS, HIS-
TORICAL; PLATO; WAR AND PEACE.
Bibliography
Works by Avicenna
The Life of Ibn Sina. Edited and translated by William E.
Gohlman. Albany: SUNY Press, 1974.
Healing: Metaphysics X. Translated by Michael E. Mar-
mura. In Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook,
edited by Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi, 98–111.
New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1963.
Works about Avicenna
Butterworth, Charles E. “Medieval Islamic Philosophy and
the Virtue of Ethics.” Arabica 34 (1987): 221–50.
Marmura, Michael E. “Avicenna on Primary Concepts in
the Metaphysics of his al-Shifā.” In Logos Islamikos:
Studia Islamica in Honorem Georgii Michaelis Wick-
ens, edited by Roger M. Savory and Dionisius A. Agius,
219–40. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 1984.
Charles E. Butterworth
Ayer, A[lfred] J[ules]
(1910–1989)
A. J. Ayer wrote little in philosophical ethics, but it
was not without importance. His position differs
only marginally from the more elaborately worked
out EMOTIVISM of Charles L. STEVENSON (1908–
1979).
In his notorious first book, Language, Truth and
Logic (1936), Ayer’s main concern was to provide
an account of ethical statements which was com-
patible with the logical positivist doctrine of which
it was the main British exposition. According to the
positivist’s verification principle as there formulated
there were only two types of meaningful factual
statement: analytic statements and empirically test-
able hypotheses. All necessary truths, such as those
of logic and of mathematics, were analytic, that is,
116
formulations of linguistic rules or their conse-
quences; as such, they provided no information, just
a reminder how to use language consistently. All
other meaningful statements were predictions about
what would be observed under certain empirically
identifiable circumstances and it was only such
statements which, if true, provided genuine factual
information, or, if they were false, misinformation.
The point of this doctrine was to distinguish sense
from nonsense. All traditional metaphysical state-
ments, such as statements about the Absolute, were
thereby supposed to be exhibited as meaningless,
and so were theological statements as advanced by
most modern believers. (Belief in visible gods, such
as those the Greeks believed were living on Mount
Olympus, was simply false.) The meaninglessness of
all such statements, on their criterion, was no prob-
lem for the logical positivist since it was expressly
designed to show this. But ethical statements were
rather more problematic for, while a society which
had no use for metaphysics, theology, or religion was
much to their liking, they were not quite happy to
urge a society emptied of all moral thought and con-
cern (though some critics took this to be the upshot
of their doctrine).
Moritz Schlick (1882–1936), the founder of the
Vienna Circle, had interpreted ethical statements as
informative about the effects on human HAPPINESS
of various forms of behaviour. To call an action
“right” was to say that it promoted human happiness
while to call it “wrong” was to say that it did the
opposite.
Ayer, however, could not accept this, for he be-
lieved that G. E. MOORE (1873–1958) had shown,
with his doctrine of the NATURALISTIC FALLACY, that
it could never be an analytic truth that actions with
certain empirically identifiable consequences (such
as an increase or decrease of human happiness) were
right, or were wrong, since in applying these ethical
predicates to such actions one was evidently engag-
ing in something other than mere tautology. Ayer’s
alternative view was that ethical statements were
factually meaningless but served to express our fa-
vourable or unfavourable feelings toward some-
thing. They were no more true or false than such
exclamations as “Hooray for English beer” or
“Down with English cooking”; in fact some typical
ethical “statements” were virtually equivalent to
such exclamations as “Hooray for capital punish-
ment” or “Down with adulterers.” This emotivist

analysis of ethical statements was sharply distin-
guished from the subjectivist analysis according to
which they asserted something about the speaker’s
feelings, since that would make them mere state-
ments of psychological fact and render ethical dis-
agreement impossible (since what I say about my
feelings cannot contradict the truth of what you say
about yours).
From the point of view of his later cooler reflec-
tions Ayer thought it a mistake to have treated the
alleged meaninglessness of theological and of ethical
statements as on a par. For while he wished to dis-
miss theology and religion as nonsense to be avoided
he did not really wish so to dismiss moral thinking
or morality. The essential doctrine was formulated
more satisfactorily in his article “On the Analysis of
Moral Judgements” (1949). Here it is attitudes
rather than feelings which are expressed by moral
judgements, and it is suggested that “moral attitudes
consist in certain patterns of behaviour, and that the
expression of a moral judgement is an element in the
pattern.” Likewise the role of moral argument is up-
graded, though our “reasons” for our moral views
are simply the considerations which prompt them in
ourselves and to which we refer in the effort to per-
suade others to share them. Thus when I say that an
action is wrong I am committing myself and urging
others to avoid such actions, but there is no factual
truth about the matter. “True” and “false” may, in-
deed, be used to show agreement or disagreement
with a moral position, but their use is logically
misleading.
This is completely different, argues Ayer, from the
MORAL RELATIVISM which asserts that what is right
or wrong varies from society to society or that any-
thing goes which the agent himself thinks right.
There is nothing logically or philosophically suspect
in someone holding that TORTURE is absolutely
wrong, independently of whether any society con-
117
Ayer, A. J.
dones it or not. For to say that torture is wrong in
all circumstances is to express and attempt to arouse
in others an unfavourable attitude to it wherever and
whenever practised. The emotivist is not saying that
there is nothing right or wrong but thinking makes
it so. For to say that is to express the rather peculiar
attitude of favouring all actions which the agent re-
gards as morally satisfactory—for example, the per-
secution of the Jews by the Nazis, something unlikely
to be endorsed by the emotivist philosopher. An as-
similation of emotivism to ethical relativism is a still
worse mistake than its confusion with SUBJECTIVISM
as characterised above.
Emotivism was a metaethical analysis of ethical
language, not the expression of a moral position.
And Ayer held that the expression of moral opinions
had no role in philosophy proper, as philosophical
argument had no bearing on their acceptability. Ayer
did, however, give some expression to his own eth-
ical outlook which might be described as qualified
desire-fulfilment UTILITARIANISM. Though favoura-
bly disposed to Jeremy BENTHAM’s (1748–1832)
greatest happiness principle he drew back from its
complete endorsement for such reasons as that it
might justify the persecution of minorities to fulfil
the desires of the majority.
See also: ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS; EMO-
TIVISM; LOGIC AND ETHICS; MOORE; MORAL RELA-
TIVISM; NATURALISTIC FALLACY; RELIGION; STEVEN-
SON; SUBJECTIVISM; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS.
Bibliography
Ayer, A. J. Language, Truth and Logic. Rev. ed. London:
Victor Gollancz, 1946 [1936]. Chapter 6.
———. Philosophical Essays. London: Macmillan, 1954.
Essays 10 and 11.
Timothy L. S. Sprigge
 B
bad faith
One of the lasting contributions of Jean-Paul SARTRE
(1905–1980) to the philosophical vocabulary is the
expression “bad faith” (la mauvaise foi). In common
parlance it has become synonymous with SELF-
DECEPTION, insincerity, or both. There is some truth
to each claim yet none exhausts its proper usage in
the Sartrean sense. As one might expect from its au-
thor, the term carries meanings that are at once on-
tological, epistemological, psychological, and moral.
Introduced in his masterwork, Being and Noth-
ingness (1943; subtitled “An Essay in Phenomeno-
logical Ontology”), the term presupposes that one
and the same human individual is radically divided
between domains of spontaneity and inertia (being-
for-itself and being-in-itself). The resultant “inner
distance” that characterizes human reality is the on-
tological condition for the phenomenon of bad faith.
Because it is conscious, human reality is never fully
identical with itself; it is always “other” than itself
in its temporal dimensions and in the relation of in-
ternal negation that Sartre calls “nihilation” which
distances the human individual from other individ-
uals and from its very own self. This is the ontolog-
ical source of Sartrean freedom: Human reality is
free because it is not a self (which would constitute
thing-like inertia) but a presence-to-self. This duality
is the reason an individual can exist in a state of self-
deception. Without appeal to an unconscious, which
he explicitly denies (the Freudian censor, he believes,
118
is itself in bad faith since it both knows and does not
know what to allow into consciousness), Sartre re-
lies instead on two dimensions of a totally translu-
cent consciousness: thetic or reflective conscious-
ness, and nonthetic or prereflective consciousness.
The latter is the direct consciousness that we have
before we advert to the fact that we are conscious.
In fact, throughout many of his subsequent writings
and at greatest length in his existentialist psychoan-
alyses of Jean Genet (1910–1986) and Gustave
Flaubert (1821–1880), we find Sartre ascribing to
a nonthetically conscious subject intentions and re-
sponsibilities that Freudians would have attributed
to the unconscious. If lying to another requires no
special ontology, lying to oneself clearly does, espe-
cially when this self-deception occurs within the
unity of a single, translucent consciousness. What
keeps bad faith from being a “cynical lie” is that it
occurs at the level of prereflective consciousness. On
the other hand, for that reason, it may resemble what
is often described as crass or supine ignorance—one
suspects there may be better evidence to the contrary
but doesn’t bother to investigate.
Epistemologically, the “faith” of “bad faith” pre-
sumes a readiness to rest content with “nonpersua-
sive evidence.” Sartre has a very Husserlian notion
of evidence as “the intuitive possession of the ob-
ject,” minus Husserl’s epistemic nuances. The origi-
nal project of bad faith is a decision in bad faith on
the nature of faith, namely, to be persuaded by in-
adequate evidence. This is not a reflective, voluntary

decision but a spontaneous determination of our
way of existing, a determination of which we are
prereflectively aware. “One puts oneself in bad faith
as one goes to sleep and one is in bad faith as one
dreams” (Being and Nothingness). An entire world-
view of bad faith can ensue from this attitude. In
fact, Sartre’s lengthy description of society in Sec-
ond Empire France could be read as an example of
such a Weltanschauung.
Epistemology and ontology overlap when bad
faith is seen as a fundamental denial of our ontolog-
ical condition, namely, the denial that the human be-
ing is both facticity (in-itself as the given of our sit-
uation) and transcendence of this facticity (for-itself
as project). “Bad faith seeks to affirm their identity
while preserving their differences.” The most com-
mon form of bad faith seeks to identify with our past
or with the image others have formed of us. In other
words, it collapses our transcendence into our fac-
ticity. Such is the condition of the “perfect waiter”
who wishes to be a waiter in full self-identity, a futile
gesture because consciousness disturbs any would-be
identity by the otherness it necessarily introduces.
But our ambivalent condition also enables us to live
in denial of our facticity and to project ourselves
entirely into our possibilities. This is the bad faith of
James Thurber’s (1894–1961) character Walter
Mitty, who exists in a phantasy world with no ac-
knowledged link to his factical existence. Every act
of bad faith is first of all a lie about our human con-
dition of nonself-coincidence and the freedom and
RESPONSIBILITY that this entails. It is an attempt to
overcome rather than to live positively with this
“metastable” condition of presence-to-self that Sar-
tre describes famously as “being what one is not and
not-being what one is.” This is why Sartre can claim
that sincerity, the supposed antithesis of bad faith
understood as “insincerity,” is itself in bad faith to
the extent that the agent claims to be sincere (or
identical with any other state or quality) “the way a
stone is a stone.” One can be sincere only in the
manner of not-being it, that is, as being at least pre-
reflectively aware that this situation is both precar-
ious and sustained by an ongoing project.
Psychologically, bad faith entails the flight from
the freedom and responsibility of our ambivalent
condition. For Sartre, consciousness, because of its
destabilizing character, conceals in its being a per-
manent risk of bad faith. In fact, all faith is “trou-
bled” in Sartre’s view from the moment that it is
119
bad faith
reflected on because of the “otherness” that infects
every act of reflection: “To believe is to know [re-
flectively] that one believes, and to know that one
believes is no longer to believe” (Being and Noth-
ingness). Such is the circle of spontaneity and inertia
that pervades human reality at every turn.
Morally, bad faith is often seen along with inau-
thenticity, with which it is sometimes identified, as
the primary existential vice. And yet Sartre, in his
lecture “Existentialism Is a Humanism” (delivered
1945), remarks that anyone who seeks to excuse
himself by appeal to some deterministic doctrine is
a self-deceiver. He then asks himself: “But why
should he not chose to deceive himself?”, and re-
plies: “It is not for me to judge him morally, but I
define his bad faith as an error.” This seems to con-
firm Sartre’s remark that while HEIDEGGER’s
(1889–1976) term AUTHENTICITY (Eigentlichkeit),
despite the author’s objections, carries a clearly
moral denotation, “bad faith” does not. The latter is
simply an error of judgment. But this stands in such
contrast with Sartre’s evaluative use of the expres-
sion throughout his work, not to mention its em-
ployment in ordinary language, that one has the
right to be skeptical about Sartre’s interpretation of
this term in his own work. Since prereflective con-
sciousness is aware of our nonself-coincidence and
hence of the self-deception of bad faith, “we are
without excuse.” In a well-known footnote at the
conclusion of the chapter in Being and Nothingness
on bad faith, Sartre explains:
If it is indifferent whether one is in good or
bad faith, because bad faith re-apprehends
good faith and slides to the very origin of the
project of good faith, that does not mean that
we can not radically escape bad faith. But
this supposes a self-recovery of being which
was previously corrupted. This self-recovery
we shall call authenticity, the description of
which has no place here.
See also: AUTHENTICITY; DE BEAUVOIR; DECEIT; EX-
ISTENTIAL ETHICS; FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM; HU-
MANISM; HUSSERL; INTENTION; METAPHYSICS AND
EPISTEMOLOGY; PHENOMENOLOGY; PROMISES; PSY-
CHOANALYSIS; PSYCHOLOGY; RESPONSIBILITY; SAR-
TRE; SELF-CONTROL; SELF-DECEPTION; SELF-KNOWL-
EDGE; SITUATION ETHICS; WEAKNESS OF WILL.
bad faith
Bibliography
Catalano, Joseph. Good Faith and Other Essays: Perspec-
tives on a Sartrean Ethics. Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1996.
Fingarette, Herbert. Self-Deception. London: Routledge,
1969.
Gordon, Lewis R. Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism. At-
lantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1995.
Klemke, E. D., ed. The Meaning of Life. New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1981.
Manser, Anthony. “A New Look at Bad Faith.” In Sartre:
An Investigation of Some Major Themes, edited by
Simon Glynn. Brookfield, VT: Gower, 1987.
Martin, Mike W. Self-Deception and Morality. Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 1986.
———, ed. Self-Deception and Self-Understanding. Law-
rence: University Press of Kansas, 1985.
Mele, Alfred R. Irrationality: An Essay on Akrasia, Self-
Deception, and Self-Control. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1985.
Santoni, Ron. Bad Faith, Good Faith, and Authenticity in
Sartre’s Early Philosophy. Philadelphia: Temple Uni-
versity Press, 1995.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Anti-Semite and Jew. Translated by
George J. Becker. New York: Schocken, 1995 [1945].
———. Being and Nothingness. Translated by Hazel E.
Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library, 1948. Tr. of
L’Être et le néant [1943].
———. Notebooks for an Ethics. Translated by David Pel-
lauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Tr.
of Cahiers pour une morale (published posthumously;
written 1946–47).
Thomas R. Flynn
Baier, Kurt E. M. (1917– )
Born and raised in Austria, Kurt Baier studied law
at the University of Vienna from 1935 to 1938. He
first pursued a career as a foreign correspondent. He
was based in England during the Nazi revolution
and was interned there in 1940. He was able to es-
cape to Australia, where he began his formal train-
ing in philosophy, taking the B.A. and M.A. degrees
(1944, 1947) at the University of Melbourne; there
he was appointed lecturer in philosophy. In 1949,
however, Baier decided to return to England in order
to receive more formal philosophical training at Ox-
ford University, where he studied with John Austin
(1911–1960), H. L. A. HART (1907–1992), Gilbert
Ryle (1900–1976), and Stephen Toulmin. He re-
ceived his D. Phil. from Oxford in 1952 and re-
turned to Australia in 1955, where shortly thereafter
120
he was appointed senior lecturer at Melbourne. In
1957, he moved to Canberra University College
(now Australian National University) to become
foundation professor. Then in 1962, he moved to the
United States, where he became chair of the De-
partment of Philosophy at the University of Pitts-
burgh, which in recent decades has been one of the
foremost departments in the analytical tradition.
In 1958, Baier published his major work, The
Moral Point of View. This work established him as
one of the three or four leading voices in the school
of thought known as the good-reasons approach to
ethics. Considered a master of ordinary language us-
age, Baier is credited with explicating the concept of
a reason with great insight and rigor. For an account
of the difference between reason as an excuse, a jus-
tification, or an explanation, there is perhaps none
better than Baier’s.
Writing in the Hobbesian tradition, but without
invoking the role of Thomas HOBBES’s (1588–1679)
famous Sovereign, Baier’s main objectives in the
book are (a) to show the supremacy of moral reasons
over all other reasons and (b) to show that reasons
to act morally can be derived from self-interested
reasons alone. Much of the excitement of the project
is owing to the fact that its success would entail that
ethical EGOISM (roughly: an act is right if and only
if it maximizes a person’s own HAPPINESS) is irra-
tional. The project attempts a kind of moral magic.
The validity of self-interested reasons is not denied
at all. What is denied, rather, is that the soundness
of ethical egoism follows from such reasons. A non-
egoistic morality is claimed to follow instead. Inter-
estingly, Baier does not take his position to be that
there is one true morality, but rather that there are
true moralities. This position makes him au courant
with theses advanced in the field of scholarship now
known as literary criticism.
The influence of The Moral Point of View spans
more than three decades, with writers in ethics as
different in their philosophical inclinations as David
Gauthier, Alan GEWIRTH, Derek Parfit, and John
RAWLS acknowledging its influence. Few would
claim that Baier succeeded in his project. To varying
degrees, this project has been attempted by others—
some who have buttressed their arguments with the
theoretical machinery and rigor of RATIONAL CHOICE
theory; yet it is not clear that others have been any
more successful. It seems that either the project will
succeed as Baier formulated it or it will not succeed

at all. And this is perhaps a great testimony to the
clarity of Baier’s thought and the depth of his
insight.
Baier remains convinced that his project can suc-
ceed. As he continues to defend it with characteristic
clarity, he continues to contribute to our understand-
ing of the notion of a good reason, having recently
observed that a theory can satisfy the formal con-
ditions of rationality and yet be unreasonable. This
he thinks is true of ethical egoism.
Kurt Baier retired as Distinguished Service Pro-
fessor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of
Pittsburgh. He is the author of over seventy articles,
including influential ones in the philosophy of mind
and political theory and on the topic of AUTHORITY
especially.
See also: ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS;
AUTHORITY; CRITICAL THEORY; EGOISM; EXCUSES; GE-
WIRTH; HISTORY OF WESTERN ETHICS 12: TWENTIETH-
CENTURY ANGLO-AMERICAN; HOBBES; IMPARTIAL-
ITY; MORAL POINT OF VIEW; MORAL REASONING;
MORAL RULES; RATIONAL CHOICE; RATIONALITY VS.
REASONABLENESS; RAWLS; REASONS FOR ACTION;
VIRTUE ETHICS.
Bibliography
Works by Baier
The Rational and the Moral Order: The Social Roots of
Reason and Morality. Chicago: Open Court, 1995.
The Moral Point of View: A Rational Basis of Ethics. Ith-
aca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1958. Abridged un-
der the same title, New York: Random House, 1966.
“Rationality, Reason, and the Good.” In Morality, Reason
and Truth: New Essays on the Foundations of Ethics,
edited by David Copp and David Zimmerman, 194–
211. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985.
“The Social Source of Reason.” Proceedings and Ad-
dresses of the American Philosophical Association 51
(1978): 707–22.
Works about Baier
Darwall, Stephen. Impartial Reason. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1983.
Hospers, John. Human Conduct: Problems of Ethics. 2d
ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972. In
this undergraduate textbook, some of Baier’s central
themes receive a thorough discussion.
Narveson, Jan. Morality and Utility. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1967.
121
Balguy, John
Richards, David A. J. A Theory of Reasons for Action.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.
Thomas, Laurence, ed. Kurt Baier Festschrift. In Synthese
72 (1987). Essays by Stephen L. Darwall, David Gau-
thier, James P. Sterba, David A. J. Richards.
Laurence Thomas
Balguy, John (1686–1748)
English moral philosopher and theologian. Balguy
defended a rationalist view of ethics, influenced by
Samuel CLARKE (1675–1729), against the moral
sense theories of SHAFTESBURY (1671–1713) and
HUTCHESON (1694–1746). Balguy’s most important
ethical work is his highly polemical Foundations of
Moral Goodness, published in two parts. In Part I
(1728), he criticizes Hutcheson’s moral sense theory
and responds to criticisms Hutcheson brought
against earlier rationalist theories in his An Inquiry
concerning Moral Good and Evil (1726) and Illus-
trations on the Moral Sense (1728). Hutcheson, in
turn, responds to Balguy in later editions of the Il-
lustrations. In Part II (1729), Balguy responds to
forty queries put by a follower of Hutcheson. Be-
cause of the polemical nature of his writings, Bal-
guy’s exposition of his rationalism is not systematic;
it emerges in a piecemeal way in his criticisms of and
responses to the sentimentalists.
Balguy is important because he signals a shift in
the direction of the British moralist debate. The de-
bate is now between the sentimentalists and the ra-
tionalists. There is agreement between Balguy and
Hutcheson, against HOBBES (1588–1679), on key
issues: Benevolent affections are an original part of
human nature; the motivation and approval of virtue
is disinterested; morality is not artificial, the result
of a compact, nor is it to be identified with the posi-
tive laws of a sovereign. They also agree, against le-
galistic theological theories, that the standard of
right and wrong conduct is not to be grounded in
God’s will. Theories that ground morality in God’s
will, positive law, or a compact were taken by critics
as implying that morality is something created
wholly by positive means. If morality is created, it is
arbitrary and so not real. Morality must be grounded
in nature, if it is to be real and worth pursuing.
Both Hutcheson and Balguy agree that virtue con-
sists in following nature; but Hutcheson, Balguy
says, thinks we should follow our instinct rather
Balguy, John
than reason. On Hutcheson’s view, as Balguy reads
him, we should follow instinct in two ways: Right
actions are those motivated by benevolent affections
(virtue is identified with BENEVOLENCE), and what
makes them right is a moral sense, implanted in us
by God, that approves of them. Balguy thinks that
while Hutcheson is correct in attempting to ground
morality in nature, he mistakenly identifies our na-
ture with instinct and so the attempt does not suc-
ceed. Balguy’s central criticism is that morality is as
positive on Hutcheson’s view as on the others. The
fact that God gives us benevolent affections and a
moral sense that approves of them is just a way for
God to create morality by positive means. In the case
of benevolence, Balguy argues that either benevo-
lence is virtuous in itself or it is not real. If moral
goodness consists in benevolent instincts implanted
in us by God, why did God choose benevolence and
not some other affection, for example, malice?
Hutcheson’s reply that God’s perfect goodness con-
sists in his benevolence, and so he prefers benevo-
lence, just pushes the problem back one step. Why
is God’s benevolence virtuous? Balguy argues that
either a reason can be given, which is then the real
ground of virtue, or God’s goodness is groundless.
If groundless, virtue is arbitrary because God could
have constituted our affectionate natures differently,
for example, with malicious affections. Virtue is not
necessarily good. The same argument applies to the
moral sense. God could have constituted our moral
sense differently, making us approve of ingratitude,
malice, and so on, and then those acts would be
right. Either actions are intrinsically and so neces-
sarily right, or rightness is arbitrary. Balguy con-
cludes that virtue and rightness no more depend on
affections or a moral sense than they do on positive
law. There must be something in actions absolutely
good or right antecedent to both affections and law.
Balguy, following Clarke, claims that moral good-
ness is a necessary relation between an action and
its situation discoverable by means of reason (e.g., a
relation of agreement or fitness holds between GRAT-
ITUDE and kindness; disagreement or unfitness be-
tween ingratitude and kindness). Balguy also makes
a distinction between external, natural obligation,
and internal, moral obligation. He insists that gen-
uinely virtuous actions not only conform to what is
morally right but also are motivated by the rational
perception of their rightness. He thus claims, against
Hutcheson, that justifying reasons may be exciting
122
reasons and that actions motivated by benevolent
affections are not morally worthy. Many of Balguy’s
criticisms and points were taken up and developed
more systematically by later rationalists (PRICE
[1723–1791] and REID [1710–1796]). Unlike later
rationalists such as Price, Balguy never directly criti-
cizes Hutcheson’s Lockean epistemological frame-
work, nor does he provide a rival moral epistemol-
ogy.
See also: BENEVOLENCE; CLARKE; FITTINGNESS;
HOBBES; HUME; HUTCHESON; MORAL SENSE THEO-
RISTS; PRICE; RATIONAL CHOICE; RATIONALITY VS.
REASONABLENESS; REASONS FOR ACTION; REID;
SHAFTESBURY.
Bibliography
Works by Balguy
A Collection of Tracts Moral and Theological. London,
1734. J. Pemberton collected and published most of
Balguy’s works, arranging them in the order in which
they were first published. This collection (with dates
for the first editions) contains the following: Letter to
a Deist Concerning the Beauty and Excellency of Moral
Virtue, and the Support and Improvement which it Re-
ceives from Christian Religion (1726), a criticism of
Shaftesbury; The Foundation of Moral Goodness, Parts
I (1728) and II (1729); Divine Rectitude: or, A Brief
Inquiry Concerning the Moral Perfections of the Deity,
Particularly in Respect of Creation (1730); A Second
Letter to a Deist, Concerning a Late Book, Entitled
“Christianity as old as the Creation,” more particularly
that Chapter which relates to Dr. Clarke (1731); The
Law of Truth, or The Obligations of Reason Essential
to all Religion (1733).
Works about Balguy
Monro, D. H. A Guide to the British Moralists. London:
Wm. Collins Sons, 1972.
Price, Richard. A Review of the Principal Questions in
Morals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948
[1787]. Reprint, with critical introduction by D. D.
Raphael, of the 3d edition (1787).
Selby-Bigge, L. A. British Moralists. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1897. See the introduction, volume 1.
Silvester, Tipping. Moral and Christian Benevolence: A
Sermon Containing Reflections upon Mr. Balguy’s Es-
say on Moral Goodness. London, 1734.
Charlotte Brown

bargaining
Bargaining is a social practice involving at least two
parties, each of whom seeks agreement on some ad-
vantageous form of cooperation. As a central feature
of markets, bargaining has been studied by econo-
mists, some of whom have developed theoretical
models of it. As a preamble to contract, bargaining
is typified in the familiar rituals of marketplace dick-
ering and real estate transactions: inspection of
goods, offer, rejection, concession, counteroffer, and
so on until walkout or acceptance. Though buyers
characteristically prefer agreement at a lower price
and sellers at a higher one, barring deadlock, the
parties will settle at a price acceptable to both.
Bargaining, presupposing a diversity of legitimate
INTERESTS among the actors, may be distinguished
from two closely related notions. On one side of the
concept, the give-and-take of negotiation shades into
reasoned discussion. There is no need for concession
where the parties take themselves to have common
interests: it is rather a question of how to secure or
maximize some collective good. On the other side,
bargaining can subtly intensify into conflict. Where
the parties take themselves to have mutually incom-
patible, nonnegotiable interests, the ensuing threats
and acts of force are characteristically intended to
bring about submission rather than cooperation.
As a social practice, bargaining derives appeal
from its voluntary character, from its implicit ac-
knowledgment of the diversity of human interests,
and from its contribution to economic efficiency in
the social distribution of goods. It is voluntary in
that either party can break off negotiations, settle-
ment requires mutual CONSENT, and agreement will
be vitiated by COERCION and fraud. The goods
sought through free exchange are as varied as hu-
man DESIRE itself. And, as economists like to stress,
each party can be expected to emerge from agree-
ment better off. For where an offer is advantageous
enough to make (the only kind a rational person will
make) and attractive enough to accept (the only kind
a rational person will accept), both parties will im-
prove on the endowments of their initial bargaining
positions by settling.
Assuming that the legitimate claims of nonparti-
cipants are respected, it would appear that the com-
munity that facilitates bargaining, respecting vol-
untary exchanges of ENTITLEMENTS and relying on
the market for distributing goods, can, to the ex-
123
bargaining
tent that it does, enjoy a higher level of preference-
satisfaction and welfare than communities that do
not. But this presumption in favor of bargaining and
market systems of distribution is challenged by sev-
eral types of consideration. Depending on the issue,
the community may act to void the legal effects of
bargained-for agreements, to place special obliga-
tions on would-be bargainers, to prosecute or hold
civilly liable one or both of the participants, or to
substitute or add other social mechanisms for con-
ferring entitlement (e.g., rationing).
Children and the demented, for example, who
lack stable preferences reasonably congruent with
their welfare, who do not exhibit an adequate grasp
of the world and the consequences of their behavior,
are appropriately excluded from many forms of bar-
gaining. One can expect bargains to make partici-
pating parties better off only if they have the capacity
to act in their own interests. Consent is vitiated
where that capacity is lost or undeveloped.
Consent may also be questioned when a party is
ignorant of or mistaken about material facts. While
requirements of disclosure are often low in what
lawyers call “arms’-length” relationships, they are
often higher where lay people must entrust impor-
tant matters to hired specialists. In medicine and
law, for example, professionals typically have a fi-
duciary obligation, beyond the mere prohibition of
fraud, to disclose risks associated with their services.
Like small children in a strange world, the patient
and the defendant may need instruction—reasoned
discussion on the client’s interests as a collective
good—if they are to choose wisely. Similarly, legally
mandated warning labels on cigarette advertising,
package inserts enclosed with prescription drugs,
waiting periods on door-to-door sales contracts,
and prohibitions on tampering with automobile
odometers all have the softly paternalistic effect of
improving the lay consumer’s capacity for RATIONAL
CHOICE.
Hard PATERNALISM would impose controversial
and often odious restrictions on bargained-for ex-
changes even where participants are competent, ad-
equately informed, and have had ample opportunity
to deliberate. Nonphysicians, for example, may not
perform surgery even when patients choose the ser-
vices voluntarily and in full understanding of the
risks and benefits of available alternatives. Compa-
rable bargains involving the sale of bodily organs,
drugs, or sexual services, selling oneself into SLAV-
bargaining
ERY, and assistance in SUICIDE have been opposed
on the heatedly contested grounds that the transac-
tions are objectively bad for one or both parties.
Closely related are restrictions imposed in the in-
terests of securing certain collective goods. Though
some workers might benefit by negotiating with em-
ployers as individuals, union contracts intended to
benefit all employees characteristically impose pro-
hibitions on separate arrangements that undercut
the terms of collectively bargained agreements. Sim-
ilarly, inalienable RIGHTS —e.g., the right to declare
bankruptcy, to file for divorce, and the right to trial
by jury—are precisely those that may not be given
up as part of an enforceable contractual agreement.
Though these restrictions on bargaining are some-
times defended on paternalistic grounds (see the
preceding paragraph), justification can rest on the
overall desirability of certain social practices. DE-
MOCRACY, for example, cannot survive when citi-
zens bargain away the right to vote for candidates
of their choice.
Much like voters in a democracy, judges, prose-
cuting attorneys, university admissions committees,
purchasing agents, tax assessors, building inspec-
tors, and so on, all occupy roles in preeminently cor-
ruptible INSTITUTIONS. Those who occupy such po-
sitions characteristically have obligations to exercise
their discretionary POWER in the proper interests of
the institution. BRIBERY and extortion are prohibited
even where all the actors welcome such exchanges.
A good deal of attention has been given to a com-
plex of problems involving what have been called
“coercive offers.” Consider the following heavily de-
bated cases:
Case 1. Swimmer is drowning near Bystander
who is uniquely and easily able to effect a
rescue. Bystander offers to save Swimmer
in exchange for $10,000.
Many would find such agreements void in virtue of
Swimmer’s hard-pressed circumstance: having to
choose between death and a substantial financial
burden. But consider:
Case 2. Patient is close to death as a
consequence of a medical condition that
only Doctor can cure. Doctor offers to
treat Patient in exchange for $10,000.
124
Like Swimmer, Patient must also choose between
death and an equivalent indebtedness. And yet few
would routinely permit patients, on that basis, to
void their bills for vital medical services.
There are several standard ways to ease the ten-
sion here. Some—libertarians, for example—would
honor both agreements. Bystander and Doctor are
not threatening to impose harm, the offers do not
make Swimmer and Patient any worse off than they
were in their preproposal situations, nor are the two
of them somehow entitled to the services they need.
Others would press us to acknowledge the special
entitlements of the vulnerable. It shocks the CON-
SCIENCE not to recognize a duty to intervene in the
easy-rescue cases; it is scandalous not to have a right
to desperately needed medical services. If bystanders
had clear legal obligations to shoulder minimal in-
conveniences in order to effect rescues, and if doc-
tors worked within a national health service, neither
would be permitted to extort tribute from the pre-
cariously placed.
Still others would focus, neither on the fact of
agreement nor on the vulnerability of the bargainer,
but on the terms of the bargains themselves. While
$10,000 is plainly an excessive price for modest as-
sistance out of the water, it may not be unreasonable
to have to pay $10,000 for $10,000 worth of critical
medical care. This third approach requires that we
distinguish the subjective value of a good (what one
might agree to pay for it under the press of circum-
stance) from its objective value, a variation on the
medieval theme of the just price. Bystander and
Doctor should receive a fair amount for their efforts,
a price approximating objective value. But no one is
entitled to unjust enrichment acquired through EX-
PLOITATION of the vulnerable.
Under capitalism, the social practice of bargain-
ing is close to the heart of economic life. In at least
some respects, our assessment of the quality of fun-
damental institutions can turn on how we under-
stand the proper place of bargaining transactions
and the constraints and limitations that should be
imposed on them.
See also: BAD FAITH; BLACKMAIL; BUSINESS ETHICS;
CHEATING; COERCION; COMPROMISE; CONSENT; CON-
TRACTS; COOPERATION, CONFLICT, AND COORDINA-
TION; CORRUPTION; DECEIT; DETERRENCE, THREATS,
AND RETALIATION; DISCOUNTING THE FUTURE; ECO-
NOMIC ANALYSIS; ECONOMIC SYSTEMS; ENTITLE-

MENTS; EXPLOITATION; FAIRNESS; FIDUCIARY RELA-
TIONSHIPS; HONOR; INTEGRITY; INTERESTS; JUSTICE,
CIRCUMSTANCES OF; JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE; LEGAL
ETHICS; LIBERALISM; LIBERTARIANISM; MEDICAL
ETHICS; MORAL COMMUNITY, BOUNDARIES OF;
NEEDS; PATERNALISM; PROFESSIONAL ETHICS; RA-
TIONAL CHOICE; RIGHT HOLDERS; RIGHTS; RISK; VOL-
UNTARY ACTS.
Bibliography
Frankfurt, Harry G. “Coercion and Moral Responsibility.”
In Essays on Freedom of Action, edited by Ted Hon-
derich, 65–86. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1973. Coercive offers.
Gauthier, David. Morals by Agreement. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1986. Bargaining theory as a basis for
ethics.
Golash, Deirdre. “Exploitation and Coercion.” Journal of
Value Inquiry 15 (1981): 319–28. Develops a concep-
tion of objective value.
Goodin, Robert E. Protecting the Vulnerable: A Reanaly-
sis of Our Social Responsibilities. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1985. Argues for obligations to the
vulnerable.
Kipnis, Kenneth. “Criminal Justice and the Negotiated
Plea.” Ethics 86 (1976): 93–106. Assessment of plea
bargaining.
Lyons, David. “The Last Word on Coercive Offers . . . ?”
Philosophy Research Archives, 393–414. Bowling
Green, OH: Philosophy Documentation Center, 1983.
A review of the area.
Nozick, Robert. “Coercion.” In Philosophy, Politics and
Society: 4th Series, edited by Peter Laslett, W. G. Run-
ciman, and Quentin Skinner, 101–34. New York:
Barnes and Noble, 1972 [1969]. Influential early anal-
ysis of coercion.
Postow, B.C. “Coercion and the Moral Bindingness of
Contracts.” Social Theory and Practice 4 (1976): 75–
91. Economic necessity, capitalism, exploitation.
Scanlon, Thomas M. “Liberty, Contract, and Contribu-
tion.” In Markets and Morals, edited by Gerald Dwor-
kin, Gordon Bermant, and Peter G. Brown, 43–67.
New York: Halsted, 1977. Discusses limiting the mar-
ket to prevent political domination through control of
essential goods.
VanDeVeer, Donald. Paternalism. Princeton, NJ: Prince-
ton University Press, 1987.
Wertheimer, Alan. Coercion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1987. Comprehensive discussion of
blackmail, duress, necessity, coercive proposals, ex-
ploitation, etc.
Young, Oran R., ed. Bargaining. Urbana: University of
125
Barry, Brian (M.)
Illinois Press, 1975. Instructively presented anthology
of classical papers in the theory of bargaining.
Kenneth Kipnis
Barry, Brian (M.)
Peripatetic and prolific, Brian Barry is an Anglo-
American political theorist who has been influential
for his work on theories of justice and DEMOCRACY.
Barry has taught at Essex, Oxford, University of Brit-
ish Columbia, University of Chicago, California In-
stitute of Technology, the London School of Eco-
nomics, and, beginning in 1998, at Columbia
University in New York.
Barry’s first major work, Political Argument
(1965), called for a research program in the analyt-
ical study of politics. This research would result
from the “marriage” of “analytical philosophy” with
its analysis of concepts and values, and “analytical
politics” with its empirical models. The aspiration
was for “a certain degree of analytical rigor” in
studying the forms of INSTITUTIONS that might
achieve the values identified. In the four decades
since that work was started, Barry’s writings have
set an example for that kind of analytical political
theory.
If there is a theme running through all of Barry’s
diverse writings, it is the prospects and limitations
of “rationality” both for normative evaluation and
for empirical explanation. In Political Argument, he
defended the possibility of making consistent nor-
mative judgments, despite what he argued to be the
inevitable pluralism and ultimate incommensurabil-
ity of political principles. He provided a vocabulary
that has been widely used for classifying kinds of
political principles—distinctions between principles
that are “want-regarding” or “ideal regarding,” those
that are “public regarding” or “private regarding,”
and those that are “aggregative” or “distributive.”
Barry argued that these distinctions identify kinds of
principles that are ultimately incommensurable.
Nevertheless, we can establish a basis for rational
consistency in our evaluations by employing an “in-
difference curve” analysis akin to that employed in
economics. Just as economists will chart the com-
binations of grapes and potatoes that people are in-
different between, Barry illustrated trade-offs be-
tween efficiency and equity which a rational person,
under certain assumptions, would be indifferent be-
Barry, Brian (M.)
tween. This analysis nicely illustrated the complex
structures that MORAL PLURALISM and complexity
could take, while conforming to some fairly sim-
ple and straightforward notions borrowed from
economics.
In Sociologists, Economists and Democracy
(1970), Barry took note of the flowering of the an-
alytical study of politics. Political theory “had for
many years been regarded as something that had oc-
curred in the past, but could hardly be expected to
happen nowadays—rather like the Church of Eng-
land’s view of miracles.” But now the “academic
study of politics” has “shown signs of becoming a
theoretical subject.” Barry set out one fruitful area
for this development—the connections between in-
dividual choice and collective decision. The ration-
ality of voting and political behaviour, of individual
contributions to collective goods, and of collective
decisions resulting from individual voting decisions
were all explored, both in Sociologists, Economists
and Democracy and in Rational Man and Irrational
Society? (1982). In the latter volume, Barry (and his
co-editor, Russell Hardin) decried the notion that
“rationality has displaced both truth and morality as
the ultimate criterion for judging both belief and
conduct.” They argued that we needed to lower ex-
pectations for the research program that held that
“truth is what it is rational (in ideal conditions) to
believe, and that principles of justice are what it is
rational (in ideal conditions) to adopt.” They con-
cluded “the concept of rationality cannot be ex-
tended indefinitely to solve all problems of conduct
and evaluation.”
Yet by the time of the three-volume Treatise on
Social Justice (vol. 1, 1989; vol. II, 1995; volume III
in preparation) Barry offered his theory of “justice
as impartiality” as an assertion of the “possibility of
putting forward a universally valid case in favour of
liberal egalitarian principles.” His theory was an ex-
tension of “the ‘Enlightenment project’ of address-
ing the reason of every human being of sound mind.”
He rejected the notion that such aspirations were an
error. Otherwise how could violations of HUMAN
RIGHTS be condemned in countries that had no tra-
ditions of respecting them?
Despite these enlightenment aspirations, a key
factor in Barry’s theory of justice is the “need for
scepticism,” by which he means scepticism about
theories of the good. Barry holds “that no concep-
tion of the good can justifiably be held with a degree
126
of certainty that warrants its imposition on those
who reject it.” Barry is attempting to employ a more
modest version of John RAWLS’s famous “original
position,” one which does not employ the famous
device of a RATIONAL CHOICE behind a “veil of ig-
norance.” Among other reasons for doing away with
the Rawlsian original position, Barry questions
whether “the concept of rationality is strong enough
to generate a unique solution.” Instead, Barry de-
velops a more modest version, which he calls the
“circumstances of impartiality” and which builds on
work originally suggested by T. M. Scanlon (and de-
veloped independently by Scanlon in What We Owe
to Each Other, 1999). The circumstances of justice
differ from the original position in two essential
ways. First, “the parties are aware of their identities
and hence of their own interests” and second, they
are no longer merely self-interested, but motivated
by the “desire for reasonable agreement.”
However, as Barry admits, the Rawlsian version
of a choice situation for principles of justice, by ab-
stracting from all elements that might lead to differ-
ent outcomes, at least was designed to lead to a def-
inite conclusion. The looser version which Barry
proposes may lead to different results depending on
what preferences people have, what information
they have, and what motivations they have. How-
ever, Barry conceives of a partly a priori and partly
“empirical” strategy for dealing with this problem.
A priori reasoning can narrow the range of accept-
able solutions. After that, there is room for an em-
pirical investigation. “Suppose we observe that a
rule of a certain kind is found only in societies that
approximate the circumstances of justice. The more
often it is found in those societies, the more confi-
dent we can be that it would emerge from a Scan-
lonian original position.” While Barry illustrates this
strategy with issues of economic INEQUALITY, he is
really launching a research agenda that is partly a
priori and partly empirical in its possible application
to a host of issues. In doing so, he is exemplifying
the aspiration to combine philosophical analysis and
the empirical study of politics with which he started
his career.
See also: ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS; COL-
LECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY; COMMENSURABILITY; COM-
MON GOOD; COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS; DEMOCRACY;
ECONOMIC ANALYSIS; EQUALITY; FUTURE GENERA-
TIONS; GOOD, THEORIES OF THE; IMPARTIALITY; IN-

DIVIDUALISM; INTERESTS; JUSTICE, CIRCUMSTANCES
OF; LIBERALISM; LIBERTY, ECONOMIC; MORAL PLU-
RALISM; NEEDS; POLITICAL SYSTEMS; PUBLIC AND PRI-
VATE MORALITY; PUBLIC POLICY ANALYSIS; RA-
TIONAL CHOICE; RATIONALITY VS. REASONABLENESS;
RAWLS; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY; SOCIAL
CONTRACT; TRUST.
Bibliography
Works by Barry
Political Argument. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1965.
Sociologists, Economists and Democracy. London: Collier-
Macmillan, 1970.
The Liberal Theory of Justice. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1973.
A Treatise on Social Justice. Vol. 1, Theories of Justice.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Vol. 2,
Justice as Impartiality. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
Essays in Political Theory. Vol. I. Democracy, Power and
Justice. Vol. II. Liberty and Justice. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1989; 1991.
Barry, Brian, and Russell Hardin, eds. Rational Man and
Irrational Society? An Introduction and Sourcebook.
Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1982.
Work about Barry
Kelly, P. J., ed. Impartiality, Neutrality and Justice: Re-
reading Brian Barry’s ‘Justice as Impartiality.’ Edin-
burgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998.
James S. Fishkin
Beauvoir, Simone de
See de Beauvoir, Simone.
Beccaria, Cesare [Bonesana],
Marchesi di (1738–1794)
Marchese Cesare Beccaria Bonesana was born in
Milan and studied law at the University of Pavia.
With the leisure his family’s wealth provided, he de-
voted himself to literary and intellectual pursuits.
Challenged by the suggestion of a friend to write a
brief critical study of criminal justice, he produced
in 1764 his chief work, Dei delitti e delle pene (On
Crimes and Punishments). Within months the slim
volume was the subject of impassioned discussion
127
Beccaria, Cesare
in Italy; after its translation into French, it was read
all over Europe. The first of many English-language
editions appeared in London in 1767. No other trea-
tise on the subject so well captured the spirit of the
continental Enlightenment.
Beccaria argued for reform of the criminal law
from two basic principles. One is that the AUTHOR-
ITY of government is derived from “expressed or
tacit compacts” among the governed. Thus Bec-
caria’s conception of political obligation is in the
contractarian tradition of HOBBES (1588–1679),
LOCKE (1632–1704), and ROUSSEAU (1712–1778).
Second, under the influence of Claude Helvetius
(1715–1771), he adopted “the greatest happiness of
the greatest number” as the sole criterion for eval-
uating laws and social practices.
BENTHAM (1748–1832) acknowledged that it
was from Beccaria that he learned this slogan, later
popularized by J. S. MILL (1806–1873) and other
utilitarians. However, Beccaria also appealed to “the
rights of man,” and it is characteristic of the rather
superficial quality of his philosophy that he evi-
dences no concern over whether the results of his
avowed UTILITARIANISM and his rights-based think-
ing diverge or clash.
Beccaria’s treatise was best known in its day for
its attack on the prevailing practices of the death
penalty and TORTURE. Against torture, his central
objection was that it can be guaranteed only to elicit
false testimony from the weak. It is absurd to make
“pain . . . the crucible of truth.” As to PUNISHMENT
generally, its sole purpose is “to instill fear in other
men.” Retribution should play no role in justifying
punishment or in apportioning punishments to
crimes. Important though deterrence is, it is a func-
tion not only of the severity of a punishment but
also of the celerity and certainty with which it is
administered.
Against the death penalty, Beccaria argued as fol-
lows: (1) Society has no right to punish anyone by
DEATH, because rational egoistic contractors cannot
and would not transfer to the state their natural right
to life. (2) The death penalty is “neither useful nor
necessary” for the protection of society. The only
possible exception is the offender whose imprison-
ment would not eliminate his capacity to foment
“dangerous revolution.” (3) The prospect of long-
term imprisonment (“penal slavery”) is a better de-
terrent than the threat of death; a life in prison may
be—and should be perceived to be—far more
Beccaria, Cesare
“cruel” than a death on the scaffold. Executions
present an “example of barbarity,” thereby under-
mining respect for lawful authority.
Save for a brief visit to Paris in 1766 at the height
of his fame, Beccaria spent his entire life in his native
Lombardy. He devoted his adult years to a career in
local public administration; none of his subsequent
writings added appreciably to his fame or influence.
He died in relative obscurity.
See also: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT; CONTRACTARIANISM;
CORRECTIONAL ETHICS; DETERRENCE, THREATS, AND
RETALIATION; LIFE, RIGHT TO; SOCIAL CONTRACT;
TORTURE; UTILITARIANISM.
Bibliography
Editions of Beccaria’s Dei delitti:
Dei delitti e delle pene. Leghorn, 1764. The original Ital-
ian edition was published anonymously. Best recent
text is the one edited by Franco Venturi (Turin: Ei-
naudi, 1965).
On Crimes and Punishment. Translated by Henry Pao-
lucci. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963. The most
widely used modern English translation.
On Crimes and Punishments. Translated by David Young.
Indianapolis: Hackett, 1986. A new translation and re-
ordering of the text, based on the sixth and final (1766)
edition as approved by Beccaria himself. Bibliography.
On Crimes and Punishments and Other Writings. Trans-
lated by Richard Davies with Virginia Cox and Richard
Bellamy, and edited by Richard Bellamy. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995. Introduction, bib-
liography and biographical glossary. The best and most
recent edition.
Works about Beccaria
Hart, H. L. A. “Bentham and Beccaria.” In his Essays on
Bentham: Jurisprudence and Political Theory, 40–52.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
Maestro, Marcello. Cesare Beccaria and the Origins of Pe-
nal Reform. Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1973. The standard biography in English. Includes
bibliography.
Sellin, Thorsten. “Beccaria’s Substitute for the Death Pen-
alty.” In Criminology in Perspective: Essays in Honor
of Israel Drapkin, edited by Simha F. Landau, and Les-
lie Sebba, 3–9. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1977.
Hugo Adam Bedau
128
beneficence
The principle of beneficence in its simplest form is
that we ought to do good or, if expressed as an ob-
ligation, that there is an obligation to help others. A
more substantial version is that human beings ought
to be taught to be strongly benevolent and benefi-
cent; where ‘benevolence’ signifies “a wish or dis-
position to help others”; where ‘beneficence’ signi-
fies “actually producing good”; where by helping
others is meant more than helping one’s children,
FAMILY, friends, or country; and, where the degree
to which we ought to help as well as the question
whether the relevant normative statement is best ex-
pressed as a virtue, definite or indefinite duty, rule,
or cooperative project is left to the particular theory
to specify.
One of the most sustained arguments against the
principle is as follows: There is no good reason why
we, as, moral agents, ought to be beneficent outside
our own bailiwick, i.e., outside our children, spouse,
in lesser degree friends, and in time of danger our
country. A rational person must first address herself
to her own survival. Unless she duly cares for her-
self, her CARE for others is quickly ended by DEATH.
Moreover, when there are more resources than nec-
essary for subsistence, she should use them to attain
the best possible life. If there is an even greater sur-
plus, she should put it away as a form of protection,
as insurance against loss. Expressed differently: In
the case of bare subsistence or grinding poverty
there is little to distribute; in situations of abun-
dance, beneficence—or at least that special form of
beneficence called kindliness (intended helpfulness
toward someone in need, not in return for anything,
nor for the advantage of the helper herself)—is not
conducive to her own welfare. It is not conducive
because rational living requires that we live well be-
fore giving to others which, in turn, demands ade-
quate savings or its like.
A few preliminary points need to be made before
considering how some influential moral theories
may be able to parry or meet this objection. First, it
is necessary to distinguish between ALTRUISM and
extreme altruism. Extreme altruism requires that we
sacrifice our own good for the good of others. Typ-
ically, it does not place limits on what morality or a
principle of beneficence can legitimately demand.
Altruism, or to be more accurate, an altruistic the-
ory, requires only that we contribute to the welfare

of other persons, where ‘other person’ denotes
more than one’s children, family, friends, or coun-
trymen. It follows that all forms of the more sub-
stantial version of the principle of beneficence are
part of altruistic theory; but not that all theories of
altruism must have an explicit formulation of the
principle of beneficence. It also follows that altru-
ism, per se, does not require sacrifice. Sometimes
sacrifice is involved; but often it is not. Thomas Na-
gel correctly observes that sometimes altruistic ac-
tion involves neither self-sacrifice nor nobility—as
when we tell someone he has a flat tire, or a wasp
on his hamburger. Second, it is necessary to avoid
the quagmire concerning the role of justice. Justice
is often viewed as being synonymous with social jus-
tice or with morality as a whole. It also may be in-
terpreted more narrowly as giving each person his
due according to a rather stringent interpretation of
merit and dis-merit. Given the latter, proponents of
beneficence neither believe justice has the sufficient
normative power a moral theory requires nor do they
believe that when a benefit is conferred as not being
due, it is gratuitous. Third, not all advocates of be-
neficence formulate their position in terms of the
principle of beneficence. It is true that modern
thinkers tend to do so. But others often begin from
a larger or different frame of reference, viz., the per-
spective of God’s law, the law of LOVE, compassion
viewed in its broadest sense, or, as in the empiricist
tradition, from role played by sentiment and
EMOTION.
Traditional Judaism
Perhaps the most influential formulation of the
principle of beneficence, one often referred to as the
GOLDEN RULE, occurs in Leviticus 19:17–18. We are
told: “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart.
. . . thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” In the
same chapter we find the additional injunction that
thou shalt love the stranger as thyself (verse 34).
These passages contain two elements: First, they
mandate altruism; second, they instruct us to attach
a prima facie, if not actual, weight to the well-being
of another individual that is exactly equal to our
own. In addition, there are other definite duties.
These include leaving the gleanings of the grain
fields and orchards and vineyards for the poor and
for the stranger (Leviticus 19:9–10); allowing the
products of the seventh year, when the fields lie fal-
129
beneficence
low and the vineyards are not to be pruned, to be
freely shared by all members of the community in
order that the poor of your people may eat (Exodus
23:11, Leviticus 25:27); and canceling all debts at
the end of the seventh year (Deuteronomy 15:2).
More general formulations of this duty include the
injunction to open one’s hand to one’s poor and
needy brother (Deuteronomy 15:11) and to relieve
the oppressed (Isaiah 1:17).
Traditional Judaism, conceived of as knowledge
of divine law, commands and commends benefi-
cence to the poor. It insists that there is a general
duty of BENEVOLENCE, beneficence, and specific du-
ties of kindliness. Beneficence is considered the sa-
cred duty of the individual who must return part of
what he has received from God. It is the sacred duty
of the community as well to protect its members
against the basic vicissitudes of life; and to the extent
that the community is rational, it recognizes that un-
less help and care are effectively institutionalized,
the hopes of the poor and the needy will be in vain.
In other words, beneficence is rational because it is
part of the ideal way we are required to live in the
world. It is rational because we are required neither
to sacrifice to the point of, or even close to the point
of, death, nor are we required to enrich our fellow
man. We are only required to maintain life, to live
more simply in order that others may live.
A Christian View
Christianity, or at least a Thomist (THOMAS AQUI-
NAS [1225?–1274]) interpretation of it, differs. It
stresses the redemptive role of Jesus, the definitive
AUTHORITY of the Church, and the importance of
practical beneficence in all its forms, by exalting love
as the root of all virtue. It also is largely responsible
for explicating certain distinctions. Jesus declared
the love of one’s neighbor to be the second great
commandment besides the love of God which is the
first (Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27).
Combining this with the light of reason, we come to
understand that the first principle of morality is the
love of God. Because CHARITY is the efficient cause
which unites man with God, it is a good which is of
prime importance. Beneficence, doing good to some-
one, is an act of charity. It, therefore, follows that
every act of beneficence brings us closer to God. Ev-
erything which is a duty is good; but the converse is
not true—good is not always a duty. An obligation
beneficence
is imposed by reason and binds the FREE WILL to
perform that act which is necessary for the attain-
ment of the last and absolute end. Supererogatory
acts, on the other hand, are desirable (as, for ex-
ample, acts of exceptional goodness or heroism), but
not mandatory. It is in this vein that the story of Jesus
speaking to the rich young man and telling him to
sell all that he has and distribute it to the poor (Mat-
thew 19:16–30; Mark 10:17–31; Luke 18:18–30)
is understood by the fathers of the Church as coun-
sel, not precept.
To be worthy of full respect, beneficence cannot
be autonomous. It must work from a system of NAT-
URAL LAW and rules, including rules other than the
injunction to be beneficent. Yet the authority of nat-
ural law does, indeed, mandate a general duty of
charity and sometimes a definite duty of beneficence.
We are not required to do good to every single per-
son since that is impossible; but each one of us is
bound to do good in some particular case; for charity
binds us, not actually to do good to someone, but to
be prepared to do good to anyone if we have time
and the resources to spare. Whether a particular act
is a duty is determined by comparing the relative
needs of self and others, and requires the judgment
of a prudent person. Some thinkers provide a more
canonical formulation and conclude that one is mor-
ally required to help when a neighbor is in imminent
peril of deadly EVIL to soul or body and is unable to
help himself, when the act of help is neither a venial
sin nor an exposure to the proximate occasion of sin,
and when by helping one would not be so similarly
imperiled.
Kant
Immanuel KANT (1724–1804) also maintains
that we have the duty to relieve the fortuitous dis-
tress of others when we can do so without great in-
convenience to ourselves. The difficult question is
whether he held more than this. He admits that the
grounds for the duty of beneficence lie, in part, in
the fact that human beings are in need of mutual
help, and that only by means of mutual help can the
systematic harmony of their purposes be attained.
Kant often talks as though duty requires a person to
share with others less fortunate than himself, right
up to the point when all good fortune is equally di-
vided. He maintains that it is a duty of every man to
be beneficent (i.e., to be helpful to people in need
130
according to one’s means, for the sake of their HAP-
PINESS and without hoping for anything in return).
He also explains why the altruistic maxim of benef-
icence toward those in need is a universal duty. The
reason is that all men are to be regarded as fellow
men, i.e., as needy rational beings, united in one
dwelling place for mutual aid. However, he does not
conclude from this that we have a strict (inflexible)
duty to help others. His reasons appear to be: first,
that it is not within our powers to further the ends
of all men equally, and that this “law” holds only for
maxims, not for definite actions; and second, that
we ought to regard the duty of beneficence only as
a laxer (meritorious) duty because raising it to a
stricter duty would deprive some men of their free-
dom, their autonomy as ends in themselves, and this
simply will not do. In other words, because we re-
spect and wish to preserve the SELF-ESTEEM of other
human beings, and because undiscriminating benef-
icence may humiliate or encourage them to be less
self-helpful than they would otherwise be, we cannot
legislate that men must always be helpful to other
men.
Mill and Sidgwick
JOHN STUART MILL (1806–1873) distinguishes
between the virtue and obligation of beneficence,
and in the latter sphere, between the obligations of
the individual and of the state. Professor Warnock
suggests that Mill’s thesis, that “actions are right in
proportion as they tend to promote happiness,
wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of hap-
piness,” where happiness “is not the agent’s own
greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of hap-
piness altogether” (Utilitarianism), reduces to “the
contention that beneficence is really the sole and suf-
ficient moral virtue.”
The question of obligation is, of course, more
complex. Mill maintains that there are “many posi-
tive acts for the benefit of others” which a person
may “rightly be compelled to perform.” Among
these he includes certain acts of individual benefi-
cence, such as saving a fellow creature’s life or in-
terposing to protect the defenseless against ill us-
age—things which whenever it is obviously a man’s
duty to do he may rightly be made responsible to
society for not doing. He also adds that a person may
cause evil to others not only by his actions but his

inaction and in either case he is justly accountable
to them for the injury.
Mill does not say only that it is our duty to render
aid because by not doing so, we harm another. Nor
does he formulate a principle of beneficence that re-
quires each person to perform the action, of those
available, that will make the best outcome. What he
does say is that it is our duty to render aid in certain
circumstances, when if by not doing so we will harm
others, and when we have evaluated that harm ac-
cording to the principle of utility. Nor is Mill con-
flating the notion of having a moral obligation with
having a legal one. There are many acts which, being
directly injurious only to the agent himself or inju-
rious to society only in the short run, ought not be
legally interdicted. Rather, the ability to help oneself
which may thereby accrue, more often than not, has
overriding utility. He concludes that “a State which
dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more doc-
ile instruments in its hands even for beneficial pur-
poses—will find that with small men no great thing
can really be accomplished” (On Liberty). Thus, we
are left with a principle of beneficence which in part
reads: society has an actual duty to aid others when
by not rendering aid that omission is a causal factor
in the harm fortuitously suffered by another, and
when that harm would not be outbalanced by the
general utility, the felicific beneficence, of having a
society of autonomous, self-respecting, and often
creative human beings.
In The Methods of Ethics, Henry SIDGWICK
(1838–1900) admits that, although this duty is
more or less unhesitatingly laid down by common
sense, it is difficult or impossible to extract from it,
so far as it is commonly accepted, any clear and pre-
cise principles for the determining the extent of the
duty. What may be of more value is his implemen-
tation of the distinction between principle and
method, and his fastidious exploration of the prob-
lem of how to reconcile rational self-interest and
duty. Sidgwick is convinced that commonsense mo-
rality embodies different ultimate principles and that
one of them is benevolence. Since benevolence (not
in Aristotle, but in modern times) is frequently held
to be a supreme and architectonic virtue, he believes
this sufficient to give it the first place after the virtue
of WISDOM. In his polemic against Kant, Sidgwick
insists on the importance of the affection of (the
emotional element contained in) love and kindness.
Not only does benevolence demand at least the cul-
131
beneficence
tivation of these feelings and the disposition to act
lovingly, but there is a duty to cultivate them so far
as it is possible to do. His discussion implies a dis-
tinction between having the strict duty to feel an
emotion (which he admits is problematic) and the
duty to inculcate these sentiments in such a way so
that they will excite, when appropriate, love in both
the helper and the individual helped, to the mutual
benefit of both. He reminds us that UTILITARIANISM
does not prescribe that we love everyone equally, but
that we should aim at happiness “generally as our
ultimate end, and so consider the happiness of any
one individual as equally important with the equal
happiness of any other, as an element of this total;
and should distribute our kindness so as to make this
total as great as possible, in whatever way this result
may be obtained.” Then, because of considerations
of PRACTICAL REASON, he retreats from this formu-
lation and seems unclear as to how it is to be best
formulated. One attempt reads that the utilitarian
doctrine “is that each man ought to consider the
happiness of any other as theoretically of equal im-
portance with his own, and only of less importance
practically, in so far as he is better able to realize the
latter.”
One may respond that this and similar formula-
tions represent an overaccommodation to practical
reason or mistake PRUDENCE for morality. Prudence
may say that we are entitled to give greater weight
to our own INTERESTS and purposes simply because
they are our own, but morality does not always. Al-
though Peter Singer’s formulation may be vulnerable
to what Liam Murphy calls “the over-demandedness
objection,” Singer maintains (in his essay “Rich and
Poor”) that there is a relatively unqualified obliga-
tion to assist others. “Helping is not, as convention-
ally thought, a charitable act which it is praiseworthy
to do, but not wrong to omit; it is something that
everyone ought to do.” One formulation of the ob-
ligation to assist others is this: “if it is in our power
to prevent something very bad [as, for example, fam-
ine] from happening, without thereby sacrificing
anything of comparable moral significance, we
ought to do it.” He is aware of the charge that this
may be too strong a formulation. Nonetheless he
contends that, given the extreme evil of people starv-
ing to death, the more conventionally accepted stan-
dards are too weak and, therefore, are not as plau-
sible as his own. He concludes the chapter with a
tithing suggestion, namely, that there may be some-
beneficence
thing to be said for contributing a round percentage
of one’s income, like 10 percent. This suggestion
serves to remind us that compassion, when limited
to working directly with the needy, is often self-
defeating and is definitely so in the case of famine
and similarly complex social problems. In this aspect
Singer’s utilitarianism invites comparison with one
of the most important practical insights of Judaism
and Christianity: as meritorious as acts of an indi-
vidual (directly) helping are, unless help and care
are effectively institutionalized, the hopes of the
poor and needy will be in vain.
John Rawls
RAWLS’s arguments are similar to Kant’s. The
duty of mutual aid is a reasonable requirement be-
cause it is not rational for a person to assume that
she will not need help during her lifetime and that
she will not be better off in a society where everyone
is prepared to render aid, when needed and when
they can easily do so. But he also draws a distinction
between actual beneficence and the sense of security,
confidence, and TRUST which depends on knowing
that one can count on others to come to one’s aid.
As such, a decisive rational advantage is gained. For
“the primary value of the principle is not measured
by the help we actually receive but rather by the
sense of confidence and trust in other men’s good
intentions and the knowledge that they are there if
we need them” (A Theory of Justice).
Rawls acknowledges that his definition and ar-
rangement of this duty is untidy and that he has
failed to deal with their more detailed specification
and with questions of priority. Part of the explana-
tion is that “there are no obvious rules for settling
these questions.” Other thinkers make a stronger
claim and say that there are not (and, in principle,
cannot be) any rules for making generic forms of the
principle more substantial or for explicating how to
adjudicate conflicts of principles or conflicts in par-
ticular cases. In their dispute with Clouser and
GERT, Beauchamp and Childress suggest that their
“open” formulation may be the best one can do, that
we may be able to say only that the principle of be-
neficence expresses an obligation to help others fur-
ther their most important and legitimate interests by
preventing and removing harm, and an obligation to
weigh and balance possible goods against possible
harms of an action. What this, in part, means is that
132
the principle of beneficence is a prima facie obliga-
tion. It is always binding unless it conflicts with ob-
ligations expressed in another moral principle, in
which case a balancing of the demands of the two
principles is necessary.
Most important, Rawls’s discussion of this duty
occurs in the context of his discussion of the nature
and duty of mutual SELF-RESPECT. Parties in the
original position (where free and equal persons must
choose to govern in terms of their cooperation)
know that in a society they need first and foremost
to be assured by the esteem of their associates and,
therefore, understand that everyone benefits from
living in a society where the duty of mutual respect
is honored. Similarly, in Political Liberalism, he
writes that the fundamental “importance of self-
respect is that it provides a secure sense of our own
value, a firm conviction that our determinate con-
ception of the good is worth carrying out. Without
self-respect nothing may seem worth doing, and if
some things have value for us, we lack the will to
pursue them.” Thus, self-respect as well as other
forms of protection seem to be confirmed, if not
most effectively encouraged and supported, by the
duty of mutual aid.
Finally, it should be noted that not all altruistic
theories can be reduced to, or should be interpreted
solely in terms of, moral principles. A principle of
beneficence, even if it is combined with other prin-
ciples, seems to make little sense, as far as many
altruistic thinkers are concerned. Bertrand RUSSELL
(1872–1970) argues that, since there is no conceiv-
able way of making people do things they do not
wish to do, being a moral person is less a matter of
knowing correct principles, and more a matter of
having right dispositions. Since the only way to mo-
tivate people is by ethical education, by strengthen-
ing certain desires and weakening others, what
should be inculcated is a feeling of benevolence, not
a principle of beneficence. Lawrence Blum suggests
that the duty of beneficence, if it exists, must be re-
garded as encompassing only a small area of the po-
tential aid we may bring to others. Instead of being
content to solve problems by seeking principles that
have universal applicability, a growing ethics of care
movement (inspired in part by the writings of Carol
Gilligan) stresses the need to develop altruistic dis-
positions and a sense of a broader self as well as the
need to approach problems situationally, using the
voice of RESPONSIBILITY and relationships.

The sentiment here being expressed is that a mo-
rality that effectively curbs the egoistic or antisocial
tendencies of human beings cannot be achieved by
means of moral principles alone or by placing the
primary emphasis on such principles. Stated posi-
tively: The first step is to open the windows of wis-
dom and morality as wide as is reasonably possible
by assisting human beings to feel more benevolent
and to extend the scope of their beneficence beyond
their own compatriots. If benevolent/beneficent
people, when they have the power and are reason-
ably informed, produce more good than people mo-
tivated by other attitudes, then it may follow that we
should employ the best means to achieve this end,
including ideals and ideology, ethics and law, atti-
tudes and emotions.
See also: ALTRUISM; BENEVOLENCE; CARE; CAUSA-
TION AND RESPONSIBILITY; CHARITY; CHRISTIAN
ETHICS; COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY; DUTY AND OB-
LIGATION; EMOTION; FINAL GOOD; GOLDEN RULE; IN-
STITUTIONS; INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE: DISTRIBUTION;
JEWISH ETHICS; JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE; KANT; LOVE;
JOHN STUART MILL; MORAL COMMUNITY, BOUND-
ARIES OF; PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS; PRUDENCE;
RAWLS; SELF-ESTEEM; SIDGWICK; SUPEREROGATION;
SYMPATHY; THEORY AND PRACTICE; THOMAS AQUI-
NAS; UTILITARIANISM; VIRTUE ETHICS; VIRTUES.
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Marvin Kohl
benefit-cost analysis
See cost-benefit analysis.
benevolence
In the ethical theories of Christianity, the moral
sense school, SCHOPENHAUER (1788–1860), and
UTILITARIANISM, benevolence has central impor-
tance. By contrast, KANT (1724–1804) explicitly
warns against relying on it as a source of ethical mo-
tivation, because, like other feelings, it is fickle. The
classical eudaimonistic theories of PLATO (c. 430–
347 B.C.E.), ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.), and the
Epicureans and Stoics occupy an intermediate po-
sition between these two extremes. This dispute
about the importance of benevolence is a symptom
of a deeper one about the respective roles feelings
and reason have or should have in ethics. Kant de-
nies the importance of benevolence, partly because
he believes that ethics requires that reason should
dominate over feelings. Those who give benevolence
the pride of place in ethics do so on the ground that
the ultimate source of ethics is feelings and the role
of reason is merely to prevent feelings from going
astray. The claim that benevolence is the ethically
most important feeling rests on the supposition that
it is the indispensable motive for acting for the good
of others.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “benevo-
lence” as a “disposition to do good, kindness, gen-
erosity, charitable feeling (toward mankind).” To
this list may be added the cognate expressions of
ALTRUISM, humaneness, compassion, and LOVE (un-
derstood as agape or caritas). In what follows, both
the precise boundaries between benevolence and its
cognates and the distinction between it and BENEF-
ICENCE, the tendency to act for the good of others,
will be ignored. Benevolence then is a virtue, an eth-
ically desirable CHARACTER trait, because it fosters
134
conformity to one main requirement of ethics: to act
for the good of others. However, some VIRTUES, like
justice, TEMPERANCE, COURAGE, and WISDOM, are
important to good lives, others, such as cheerfulness
and tact, are not. Although the distinction between
important and unimportant virtues cannot be
sharply drawn, as a rule of thumb, virtues are more
important if they are needed by good lives whatever
forms they may take, and less important if good lives
can be lived without them. One main question, then,
is whether or not benevolence is among the most
important virtues.
Benevolence is composed of emotive, cognitive,
and motivational elements. Among them, the emo-
tive one is dominant, for the fundamental source of
benevolence is the feeling that leads agents to care
about the good of others. This feeling ranges from
rejoicing if others flourish, through many varied and
intermediate stages, to being distressed by the suf-
fering of others. It is just a fact about human beings
that, in the absence of overriding considerations,
they are inclined to care about the welfare of others.
They care whether lightning strikes a tree or a per-
son, or whether a boulder has someone pinned un-
der it. Benevolent feelings need to be controlled and
directed of course, and that is the task of the cog-
nitive component of benevolence. It directs the feel-
ing toward appropriate objects, it aims to resolve
conflicts between benevolence and justice, duty,
RIGHTS, and so forth; and it controls the actions be-
nevolence prompts. This last introduces the moti-
vational component of benevolence, for it is a dis-
position to act so as to increase the welfare or
decrease the suffering of others.
Interpreted in this way, benevolence is said to be
a basic element of human nature. As HUME (1711–
1776) put it, benevolence is a natural virtue. There
is no doubt a causal explanation of why it is basic,
but understanding benevolence does not require de-
ciding whether the explanation is evolutionary, theo-
logical, or psychological. Benevolence then has the
following characteristics: (1) it is primarily an emo-
tive disposition to care about the good of others;
(2) it is an ethically desirable character trait, hence
a virtue; (3) its dominant emotive element is cogni-
tively guided and it motivates action; and (4) it is a
basic component of human nature found in all nor-
mal human beings. The conjunction of these char-
acteristics defines limited benevolence, but there is
also general benevolence.

The difference between limited and general be-
nevolence is the addition of universality and IMPAR-
TIALITY to the four characteristics just noted. Lim-
ited benevolence is supposed to be universally
possessed by all normal human beings, but general
benevolence goes beyond this in being directed uni-
versally toward all human beings. Champions of
general benevolence do not hold the obviously false
view that all normal human beings have a disposi-
tion to foster the welfare of all other human beings.
Their view is that, as a matter of fact, all human
beings have limited benevolence, and, as a matter of
ethics, they ought also to transform limited into gen-
eral benevolence. According to them, ethical prog-
ress consists in expanding limited benevolence until
it embraces all human beings.
The universality of benevolence, however, does
not fully express the ethical vision of its defenders,
for universality is compatible with unequal benevo-
lence, provided everybody receives some of it. The
ethical vision also requires benevolence to be im-
partial. The underlying assumption is that from an
ethical point of view all human beings are equal and
hence they deserve to be cared for equally. General
benevolence, therefore, has the four characteristics
of limited benevolence and two additional ones:
(5) it is universal, in being directed toward all hu-
man beings; and (6) it is impartial, in being directed
toward all human beings equally.
Benevolence being natural and basic does not, of
course, exclude the presence of other natural and
basic elements of human nature. One central ques-
tion about benevolence is how it is related to these
other elements. The question is central because one
of these other elements is self-concern, benevolence
may conflict with it, and it has far-reaching ethical
implications how particular ethical theories cope
with their conflict. Utilitarians and Kantians agree
that benevolence and self-concern often conflict and
that the task of reason is to resolve their conflict.
But utilitarians think that the resolution depends on
strengthening the feeling of benevolence by expand-
ing it from its limited to general form and thereby
subordinating the feeling of self-concern to it,
whereas Kantians think that ethics requires reliance
on reason, not on feelings of whatever kind.
It is an important difference between ancient and
modern ethical theories that many of the former deny
that benevolence may conflict with self-concern. Per-
haps the most influential view of this kind is Aris-
135
benevolence
totle’s, who treats benevolence (the various forms of
philia) as one expression of self-concern. Rational
agents care about the good of others because a good
life necessarily involves various relationships with
other people, and these would be impossible without
caring for the good of those to whom the agents are
thus related. The Stoics reject this Aristotelian view
on the grounds that there are numerous benevolent
and ethically commendable actions that cannot plau-
sibly be assimilated to self-concern. They argue that
self-concern and benevolence are irreducibly differ-
ent sources of human motivation, that self-concern
develops first and benevolence only later, and that
both are guided, but neither is created, by reason.
The Stoics may be seen, therefore, as occupying in
this respect a position in between Aristotle, on the
one hand, and utilitarians and Kantians, on the
other.
Part of the significance of this dispute is its effect
on how the role of reason in ethics is conceived. On
the Aristotelian view, part of the role of reason is to
remove obstacles from the way of natural and basic
dispositions. On the Stoic and utilitarian views, part
of the role of reason is to develop natural and basic
dispositions in the direction of universality and im-
partiality. On the Kantian view, part of the role of
reason is to motivate agents to follow universal and
impartial principles, regardless of what feelings they
happen to have. These views are not logically incom-
patible, but they nevertheless point in different
directions.
It exacerbates these disputes that the ethical im-
portance of both limited and general benevolence is
open to serious questions. Doubts about general be-
nevolence may be formulated by noting that the nat-
ural sphere of limited benevolence is the agents’ im-
mediate context, including their FAMILY, friends,
and perhaps some other people to whom they are
personally connected. General benevolence requires
the expansion of this sphere to include everyone
equally. But as agents go from those they know and
understand toward the vast majority of human be-
ings whom they do not know and whose MOTIVES
and outlooks they could understand, if at all, only
with great effort, so their benevolence peters out.
The idea that people have the same obligation to
foster the welfare of total strangers as they do of
people to whom they are tied by love, fellowship, or
custom is widely unrealistic. It is also dangerous be-
cause it diverts their ethical concern from their own
benevolence
context in which their responsibilities are usually
clear and difficult enough to discharge. The more
general benevolence becomes, the less room it leaves
for private relationships and obligations stemming
from them in which universality and impartiality
play no role. Limited benevolence cannot simply be
extended to general benevolence because they are
incompatible with each other.
Defenders of general benevolence respond to
these doubts by asking: suppose that it is known of
remote strangers that they undeservedly suffer and
resources to help them are available, is there not
then an obligation to care about them? The critics’
response is to acknowledge the obligation, but deny
that its existence constitutes a defense of the ethical
claims of general benevolence, for the ground of this
obligation may be justice, duty, or rights. The dis-
pute, therefore, leads back to limited benevolence
and to the question of whether it has the ethical im-
portance its defenders claim. If it does, then it may
indeed be the motivation underlying the claims of
justice, duty, or rights.
Doubts about the importance of limited benevo-
lence may be put by granting its motivational force
and ethical value, while pointing out that exagger-
ating its importance is incompatible with ethical
considerations whose motivational force is as strong
and as valuable as those of limited benevolence. One
such consideration arises from ethical conflicts.
Limited benevolence may conflict with justice, duty,
or rights. It may prompt FORGIVENESS, while justice
may require PUNISHMENT. The frequency of such
conflicts shows that as a matter of fact limited be-
nevolence cannot be the ethically most important
motive because justice, duty, and rights often moti-
vate ethically commendable but contrary actions. If
defenders of limited benevolence deny this, then
they need an argument to support their claim. Such
an argument must appeal to some motives deeper
than either limited benevolence or whatever con-
flicts with it. But, then, the most important ethical
motive would be that deeper one and the importance
attributed to limited benevolence would have to be
correspondingly reduced.
A second consideration pointing to the same con-
clusion has to do with the various forms and
strengths of blame occasioned by the violation of
ethical requirements. Blame is certainly not benev-
olent: it is not directed at the good of the person
blamed. It may be said, however, that it is benevolent
136
in the long run, for it protects ethics. But ethics itself
may require blaming wrongdoers, expressing public
condemnation, or punishing wrongdoing regardless
of whether any good may come of it. Insofar as
agents are motivated by limited benevolence, they
will be disinclined to engage in nonbenevolent
blame. The ethical importance of limited benevo-
lence must be demoted to allow for this type of non-
benevolent motivation, or else a significant part of
ethics is excluded by exaggerating the importance of
limited benevolence.
Defenders of limited benevolence may respond to
these objections by arguing that the part of ethics
that is excluded by their emphasis ought to be ex-
cluded because ethics ought to be composed only of
benevolent elements. But this claim is itself an eth-
ical one, and it conflicts with ethical claims that at-
tribute fundamental importance, not to benevo-
lence, but to justice, duty, or rights. It appears
therefore that the defense of the ethical importance
of limited benevolence presupposes the framework
of a particular ethical theory: utilitarianism. If utili-
tarianism is correct, benevolence is fundamentally
important; if not, not.
See also: ALTRUISM; BENEFICENCE; BUTLER; CARE;
CHARACTER; CHARITY; CHRISTIAN ETHICS; DUTY AND
OBLIGATION; EGOISM; EMOTION; EUDAIMONIA, -ISM;
FAMILY; FRIENDSHIP; HUME; HUTCHESON; IMPARTI-
ALITY; LOVE; MORAL SENSE THEORISTS; MOTIVES;
PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS; RATIONALITY VS. REA-
SONABLENESS; SCHOPENHAUER; SYMPATHY; UNI-
VERSALIZABILITY; UTILITARIANISM; VIRTUES; VIRTUE
ETHICS.
Bibliography
Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1993. See chapters 11–12 for
ancient controversies about benevolence.
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by W. D. Ross,
revised by J. O. Urmson. In The Complete Works of
Aristotle, edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 1984. See Books 8 and 9 for the
discussion of philia.
Brandt, Richard B. “The Psychology of Benevolence and
Its Implications for Philosophy.” Journal of Philosophy
73 (1976): 429–53. A survey of the psychological
literature.
Butler, Joseph. Fifteen Sermons. London: Bell, 1953
[1726]. Combined Christian and moral sense school
account.

Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by
L. A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford: Clarendon, 1960 [1737]. A
classic defense of the fundamental moral importance
of benevolence.
Kekes, John. “The Sentimentalism of Benevolence.” In
Against Liberalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1997. Criticism of ethical theories based on
benevolence.
Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. Indianapolis: Hackett,
1979 [1861]. A classic statement of the utilitarian
position.
Outka, Gene. Agape. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1972. A contemporary Christian account.
Roberts, T. A. The Concept of Benevolence: Aspects of
Eighteenth-Century Moral Philosophy. London: Mac-
millan, 1973. Account of the moral sense school as re-
flected in the writings of Hutcheson, Butler, and Hume.
Schopenhauer, Arthur. On the Basis of Morality. Trans-
lated by E. F. J. Payne. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,
1965. Tr. of Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik
[1841]. Argument for benevolence as the foundation
of ethics.
Sidgwick, Henry. The Methods of Ethics. Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1981 [1874]. A classic utilitarian account.
Smart, J. J. C. Essays Metaphysical and Moral. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1987. A contemporary utilitarian account.
See essays 22 and 23.
Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Indianap-
olis: Liberty Classics, 1976 [1759]. A classic account
of the basis of virtues in benevolence.
Social Philosophy and Policy 4, no. 2 (1987). Special is-
sue containing important contemporary articles on be-
nevolence and beneficence.
Taylor, Richard. Good and Evil. New York: Macmillan,
1970. Contemporary view of ethics as based on
benevolence.
John Kekes
Bentham, Jeremy (1748–1832)
Bentham articulated the first secular version of UTIL-
ITARIANISM and laid the philosophical foundations
of modern legal positivism. He was born in London
and lived most of his life there. After studying law
at Lincoln’s Inn, he turned to a career of radical criti-
cism and reform of English law, society, and politics.
By the early nineteenth century, the influence of his
work had spread throughout Europe, India, and
Latin America. Although caricatured as a doctrine
of cold-hearted calculation (Disraeli labeled it “bru-
tilitarianism”), his views proved a major source of
progressive social reform in Victorian England. Ben-
tham was a powerful advocate of prison reform, the
137
Bentham, Jeremy
abolition of CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, relief for the poor,
representative DEMOCRACY, birth control, sexual lib-
eration, and the humane treatment of animals.
A self-declared son of the Enlightenment (follow-
ing VOLTAIRE [1694–1778], d’Alembert [1717–
1783], BECCARIA [1738–1794], and Helvetius
[1715–1771]), Bentham believed that established
patterns of legal and political thought, which fos-
tered superstition, acquiescence, and CORRUPTION,
were major obstacles to improvement of the lot of
humankind. He sought to destroy the established
patterns and build in their place a structure of prac-
tical thought and discourse that was rational, deter-
minate, and accessible to all. To this end he sought
to purge language—especially the language of law,
morality, and politics—of all illusory fictions. Fol-
lowing the lead of LOCKE (1632–1704), he devel-
oped an elaborate theory of language that grounded
all discourse in terms that refer only to “real,” i.e.,
publicly observable, entities. His theory remarkably
anticipates much of contemporary philosophy of
language in the tradition of Bertrand RUSSELL
(1872–1970).
Bentham argued, for example, that talk of moral
right and wrong can be given substantial meaning
only if it is tied to the consequences of actions for
human HAPPINESS, which itself must be understood
in terms of empirically observable PLEASURE and the
absence of pain. Similarly, he argued that our talk of
laws, RIGHTS, and obligations is illusory nonsense
unless it is rooted in reference to canonically for-
mulated, verbal expressions of will of recognized
lawmakers and backed by credible sanctions. Unlike
the “fictions” of common law or NATURAL LAW the-
ories, “real laws” are rules the existence, content,
and AUTHORITY of which depend strictly on these
publicly accessible empirical facts and not on indi-
vidual judgments of the reasonableness, justice, or
even utility of the rules. On this essentially Hobbes-
ian basis, Bentham developed a very sophisticated
theory of law and adjudication.
Inspired by Helvetius, Bentham sought to artic-
ulate a utilitarian “science of legislation”—a set of
rational principles in terms of which laws and social
reform proposals could be assessed. Two basic prop-
ositions ground this science: (a) the master norma-
tive principle, the “principle of utility”; and (b) a
basic generalization about human nature, the “self-
preference principle.”
Bentham, Jeremy
The Principle of Utility
The view that utility provides the only rational
basic standard of moral evaluation can be found in
the systems of THEOLOGICAL ETHICS of Richard
CUMBERLAND (1631–1718) and Francis HUTCHE-
SON (1694–1746). It was also embraced in one form
or another in the secular works of such Enlighten-
ment figures as HUME (1711–1776), Beccaria, Hel-
vetius, and Priestly (1733–1804). While Hutcheson
introduced the phrase “greatest happiness of the
greatest number” (Inquiry Concerning Moral Good
and Evil, 1726), Bentham seems to have encoun-
tered it first in Beccaria’s Dei delitti e della pene
(1764). Bentham, however, articulated and clarified
the principle in its secular version and applied it
more extensively and systematically than any of his
predecessors or contemporaries.
Philosophical Defense. Bentham typically treated
the principle of utility simply as an axiom of his en-
terprise in need of no defense. But, as Harrison
noted, Bentham suggested a line of defense that re-
veals much about his understanding of it. He ob-
served, first, that moral judgments demand justifi-
cation. Justification is possible, he argued, only if the
language of morality is a public language, accessible
to all members of the community—that is, only if
the reasons offered in justification appeal to publicly
accessible considerations rather than to merely sub-
jective opinions. Pleasures and pains are publicly ob-
servable facts, accessible to everyone. So the lan-
guage of pleasures and pains alone provides the
necessary public basis for moral judgments. This
necessary public basis, he continues, also forces us
to recognize that, from the MORAL POINT OF VIEW,
everyone’s happiness is equally significant. My hap-
piness, of course, is of great importance to me, but
it is not likely to carry such weight with Smith, who
may accord that importance only to his happiness.
These assessments, appropriate enough from our pe-
culiar, subjective points of view, cannot hope to win
general public approval. Thus if moral judgments
are to meet the test of publicity, they cannot be made
from any subjective point of view but only from a
suitably public or impartial point of view. From this
impartial point of view, the happiness of any one
person is no more or less important than that of any
other (John Stuart Mill expressed this in the princi-
ple “each is to count for one and no one for more
than one”). Our moral concern for human happi-
138
ness, he concludes, must take the shape of the great-
est happiness principle, for this principle alone gives
equal weight to the happiness of each person.
Formulation. Bentham’s principle of utility is an
ordering of two complementary principles: (1) “the
greatest happiness principle” and (2) “the happiness
enumeration principle.” According to 1, the only
proper ultimate end of action is the greatest happi-
ness of each member of the community. This leading
principle sets the tone and direction of utilitarian
deliberation. Principle 2 comes into play when
agents are forced by conflicts among the INTERESTS
they must consider to choose the good of some at
the expense of others. In those cases, 2 requires the
agent to seek the greatest happiness of the greatest
number. Bentham makes clear that on his principle
of utility human beings are not merely “receptacles”
into which pleasure or pain are poured. The focus
of his utilitarian concern is not on happiness as some
abstract good but rather on the concrete happiness
of each individual person.
This emphasis is underscored by Bentham’s last
known gloss on the principle of utility. We must first
seek the greatest happiness of all members “without
exception in so far as possible,” he insists, but we
must seek “the greatest happiness of the greatest
number of them on every occasion on which the na-
ture of the case renders the provision of an equal
quantity of happiness for every one of them impos-
sible.” This strongly suggests that the basic utilitar-
ian aim is the greatest equal happiness in the com-
munity, and, where trade-offs of the happiness of
some for the happiness of others are unavoidable,
that alternative which most closely approximates
greatest equal happiness must be chosen.
It is not clear how seriously to take this late, egal-
itarian formulation of the principle of utility. It may
represent Bentham’s final attempt to solve an objec-
tion to the “greatest happiness of the greatest num-
ber” principle which troubled him greatly. Accord-
ing to this objection, the principle requires only that
the agent choose that alternative which would get
the largest number of votes were the choice put to
all those affected by the action, allowing the agent
to ignore the degree of loss suffered by the minority.
Bentham’s last formulation, by counseling the agent
to approximate equal distribution of happiness,
forces the agent to accord moral significance to the
sacrifices of the minority as well as the gains of the
majority. Some critics claim that Bentham’s princi-

ple of utility requires one to choose that action
which produces the greatest amount of happiness,
no matter how it is distributed, but this view fails to
recognize the sensitivity and complexity of the prin-
ciple. Concern for the distribution of happiness
played an important role in Bentham’s formulation
and defense of his principle.
Equality. Distribution of the means of happiness
also played an important though more ambiguous
role in Bentham’s political theory. He clearly artic-
ulated the now standard utilitarian argument for
economic arrangements that approximate equality
of income and wealth. Human psychology is such
that the ability of wealth to produce happiness de-
creases as the amount of wealth one already pos-
sesses increases (the marginal utility of wealth di-
minishes), he observed. For example, other things
being equal, more happiness can be produced by dis-
tributing a marginal $100 to a person who has only
$1,000 than to a person who has $100,000. Thus
the distribution of wealth that most closely approx-
imates EQUALITY is likely to produce the greatest
happiness for the greatest number, if other things are
equal. However, as he was quick to point out, con-
ditions are seldom equal. In order to protect general
“security” and “subsistence” and promote “abun-
dance” (economic productivity), INEQUALITY of
wealth is often necessary. Since equality is subordi-
nate to these other goals, in Bentham’s view, in-
equality of wealth can often be justified on utilitarian
grounds. In contrast, inequality of political power,
he argued, is seldom justified. Equality of POWER
does not threaten subsistence or abundance and is
absolutely necessary for security—especially secu-
rity against depredation of the many by the ruling
few. On this basis, Bentham mounted a powerful ar-
gument for representative democracy and nearly
universal franchise.
Scope. Although it has been the subject of recent
debate, most commentators now agree that Ben-
tham’s principle of utility instructs each agent to
maximize the happiness not only of all humankind
but of all sentient creation. The proper question to
ask of any potential objects of moral concern, says
Bentham, is not “Can they reason?” or “Can they
talk?” but “Can they suffer?” On another matter,
commentators still disagree about whether Ben-
tham intended his principle to be consulted in every
case or only when agents wish to determine what
laws and rules to follow (i.e., they dispute whether
139
Bentham, Jeremy
Bentham was a direct- or act-utilitarian or an
indirect- or rule-utilitarian). The evidence is mixed.
There is no doubt that Bentham concentrates
largely on utilitarian grounds for legislation. How-
ever, in his account of utilitarian judicial reason-
ing, where one would expect a clear statement of
indirect-utilitarianism, Bentham seems to have em-
braced a direct-utilitarian reading.
Hedonism and Egoism
Bentham’s theory of human nature draws directly
on the Empiricist tradition from HOBBES (1588–
1679) to Hume and Hartley (1705–1757). It also
inherited some of the confusion typical of this tra-
dition. Bentham clearly embraced psychological he-
donism, the view that every human action is caused
by the agent’s desire for some pleasure or aversion
to some pain. This frequently led him to express a
position very close to psychological egoism, the view
that human beings act only in pursuit of their own
private interest. In fact, occasionally he claims that
every human agent acts only to maximize his or her
net happiness. When he is careful, however, Ben-
tham admits that human beings, even the most sav-
age, can be moved by SYMPATHY with the good or
ill of others (even at the expense of their private in-
terests). But his HEDONISM leads him to insist even
here that they are moved by their own pleasure,
since sympathy is just the pleasure one takes in the
good others enjoy, as malice is the pleasure one takes
in the evil others suffer. While this may be so, it does
not follow that the pleasure human beings derive
from the well-being of others is the operative motive
of their actions.
It is unlikely that Bentham firmly held the strong
psychological egoist view that it is not possible for
human beings to act contrary to their present judg-
ment of their own best interest. Occasionally, he
states clearly that what he means by the claims that
“of action the sole efficient cause is interest” is just
that action is caused by the motive or desire which
is at the moment “most forcibly influencing,” regard-
less of whether it is self-regarding or other-regarding.
But he often trades on the ambiguity of his use of
“interest” in ways that create confusion about what
his view really is.
This confusion aside, however, Bentham did
clearly and consistently advocate a strategic version
of the egoist doctrine. He claimed that human beings
Bentham, Jeremy
are more likely in any particular case to be moved
by considerations of their own private interest than
by any other motive, especially when they exercise
power over others. Thus the only safe assumption
for the legislator or political constitution writer to
make is that people will act only to advance their
private (“sinister”) interests. The aim of law and so-
cial morality more generally, according to Bentham’s
“duty-and-interest-junction principle,” is to provide
individuals with adequate MOTIVES, through the
threat of sanctions, to comply with the dictates of
the utility principle, thereby securing artificially a
convergence of individual self-interest and utilitar-
ian duty.
The clearest application of this principle is Ben-
tham’s utilitarian deterrence theory of PUNISHMENT.
Punishment is justified not by appeal to desert or
retribution but by the fact that public knowledge of
the punishment of some violators is likely to deter
others from socially harmful behavior, because the
course of that behavior will then appear too costly
to the agent. Behavior in the interest of the com-
munity as a whole is thereby made consistent with
the self-interest of each individual member.
In his constitutional theory Bentham seems to
have given the artificial identification of interests a
slightly different form. A recent commentator has
argued that proper adjudication under law, in Ben-
tham’s theory, depends heavily on the enlightened
utilitarian judgment of judges. The aim of Ben-
tham’s complex constitutional arrangements is not
to supply each judge with sufficiently strong self-
interested reasons for doing what utility requires,
but rather to filter out or neutralize all sources of
possible conflicts of interest, thereby freeing up the
“moral aptitude” of the judge for the task of disin-
terested utilitarian deliberation.
Private Deontology
Unlike recent utilitarian theories, the focus of
Bentham’s utilitarianism was primarily social and in-
stitutional. Personal or private morality was never
more than marginal to his interests. (Harrison has
shown that Bentham’s claim that, given equal quan-
tities of pleasure, push-pin—the children’s game
“pin the tail on the donkey”—is as good as poetry,
was addressed to the question of what importance
the state should attach to various activities when de-
ciding which of them to support. It was not, as J. S.
140
MILL [1806–1873] assumed, a claim about the
place of these activities in a general view of human
good.) Designed as a framework to guide the legis-
lator who seeks rationally and humanely to restruc-
ture social behavior and INSTITUTIONS, the theory
has a decidedly technocratic character. However,
when Bentham belatedly turned his attention to per-
sonal morality in his Deontology, the technocratic
character remained. Bentham coined the word DE-
ONTOLOGY, but his use of it is directly opposite cur-
rent usage inspired by Kant. The ultimate aim of
“deontology,” as of legislation, is to motivate behav-
ior that maximizes community happiness. But while
the law’s basic technique is to alter the shape of in-
dividual interests with threats of punishment, the
technique of deontology is to mobilize reasons of
private (though perhaps hidden or long-range) in-
terest already available to the agent. While recent
utilitarian theories have abandoned Bentham’s he-
donism and ambivalent egoism, they still cling in
some fashion to this dubious Benthamite legacy.
See also: ANIMALS, TREATMENT OF; CAPITAL PUNISH-
MENT; CORRECTIONAL ETHICS; DEMOCRACY; EGOISM;
EQUALITY; GOOD, THEORIES OF THE; HEDONISM;
HUME; IMPARTIALITY; INDIVIDUALISM; JUSTICE, DIS-
TRIBUTIVE; LEGAL PHILOSOPHY; MILL, JAMES; MILL,
JOHN STUART; PAIN AND SUFFERING; PLEASURE; PUN-
ISHMENT; RATIONALITY VS. REASONABLENESS; SYM-
PATHY; UTILITARIANISM.
Bibliography
Selected Works by Bentham
Bentham’s Theory of Fictions. Edited by C. K. Ogden. Pat-
erson, NJ: Littlefield, Adams, 1959. Bentham’s writ-
ings on language, logic, ontology, and epistemology.
Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. Edited by J. H.
Burns, J. R. Dinwiddy, and F. Rosen. London: Athlone
Press; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968–. In
progress; twenty-two volumes published to date. When
completed, this will be the definitive edition of Ben-
tham’s writings. Works of philosophical interest al-
ready published in this series are A Comment on the
Commentaries [1775] and A Fragment on Government
[1776], edited by Burns and H. L. A. Hart, London,
1977; An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation [1789], edited by Burns and Hart, London,
1970, 2nd edition with new introduction by Hart, New
York: Methuen, 1982; Constitutional Code [1830],
volume 1, edited by Rosen and Burns, Oxford, 1983;
Deontology [1834] together with A Table of the Springs
of Action and The Article on Utilitarianism, edited by

A. Goldworth, Oxford, 1983; First Principles Prepa-
ratory to Constitutional Code, edited by P. Schofield,
Oxford, 1989; ‘Legislator of the World’: Writings on
Codification, Law, and Education, edited by P. Scho-
field and Jonathan Harris, Oxford, 1998; Of Laws in
General [1782], edited by Hart, London, 1970.
Parliamentary Candidate’s Proposed Declaration of Prin-
ciples. London, 1831.
Works of Jeremy Bentham. Edited by J. Bowring. 11 vols.
New York: Russell and Russell, 1962. First published
in Edinburgh, 1838–43. An inferior edition, but indis-
pensable until the Collected Works is completed.
Works about Bentham
The Bentham Committee. The Bentham Newsletter. Lon-
don: The Committee, 1978–88. Published scholarly es-
says on all aspects of Bentham’s thought and times.
Included a running bibliography of recent Bentham
scholarship.
Dinwiddy, John. Bentham. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1989. Very useful, short introduction to Ben-
tham’s moral and political theories.
Halevy, Elie. The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism.
Translated by M. Morris. London: Faber and Faber,
1972 [1928]. Extensive bibliography of classical stud-
ies of Bentham and his era.
Harrison, Ross. Bentham. London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1984. The best available general assessment of
Bentham’s philosophical doctrines. Useful bibliography.
Hart, H. L. A. Essays on Bentham: Jurisprudence and Po-
litical Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982. Critical
discussions of Bentham’s contributions to jurispru-
dence and political theory.
Kelly, Paul J. Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jer-
emy Bentham and the Civil Law. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1990.
Long, Douglas G. Bentham on Liberty. Toronto: Univer-
sity of Toronto Press, 1977.
Lyons, David. In the Interest of the Governed. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1973.
Parekh, Bhikhu. Jeremy Bentham: Ten Critical Essays.
London: Frank Cass, 1974.
Postema, Gerald J. Bentham and the Common Law Tra-
dition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.
———, ed. Jeremy Bentham: Moral, Political, and Legal
Philosophy. 2 vols. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001.
Rosen, Fred. Jeremy Bentham and Representative De-
mocracy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983.
Steintrager, James. Bentham. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univer-
sity Press, 1977.
Utilitas. 1989–. Interdisciplinary studies of classical and
contemporary utilitarian thought.
Gerald J. Postema
141
bioethics
bioethics
Bioethics, a complex domain of inquiry, debate, and
decision making, has emerged over the past several
decades, with most commentators dating its origins
to the 1960s. In that decade, vital decisions about
the allocation of scarce, newly developed dialysis
machines received national attention in the public
press. The medical community was reassessing the
ethical integrity of American research with human
subjects. New treatment capacities prompted recon-
sideration of the traditional relationship between
doctors and patients and raised new concerns about
the difficulty of distinguishing between saving life
and prolonging death. Bioethics is the critical ex-
amination—both for theoretical and for practical
purposes—of the moral dimensions of decisions
made about such matters.
Bioethics now includes, but only as a part, a dis-
tinct and idiosyncratic academic discipline—com-
plete with a largely agreed-upon but evolving subject
matter; an identifiable and increasingly organized
group of practitioners; a set of conditions of profes-
sional admissibility that is still contested; and an un-
usually diverse academic and public following. Spe-
cialized bioethics research centers have proliferated
from the early 1970s, when the newly founded In-
stitute for Society, Ethics, and the Life Sciences (The
Hastings Center) and the Kennedy Center for Bio-
ethics were the only such sites, to the late 1990s in
which dozens of such sites flourish around the
United States and abroad. The literature of bioeth-
ics, at first an occasional scattering of articles and
editorials, now includes an extensive array of jour-
nals and books of various levels of distinction, an
encyclopedia of bioethics in its second edition, and
even a recently published, comprehensive, and finely
crafted historical analysis.
Throughout its history medicine has reflected on
ethical aspects of clinical responses to illness and
injury, and debate about issues like ABORTION and
EUTHANASIA have been perennial. But modern bio-
ethics took shape when writers from various tradi-
tional disciplines and from the public press devoted
increasing attention to the proliferating moral chal-
lenges associated with technologically sophisticated
contemporary medical care and biological and medi-
cal research. That attention, on the part of physi-
cians, scientists, lawyers, journalists, philosophers,
theologians, sociologists, economists, and others, re-
bioethics
flected growing professional and public recognition
that in modern health care new factors require de-
cisions—by individuals, institutions, and society—
that are not simply medical or legal in nature, but
depend fundamentally on ethical reasoning and eth-
ical choice. These factors include the rapidly ex-
panding base of scientific knowledge; the conse-
quently increased effectiveness of medical and
scientific procedures; resulting challenges to our
understanding of basic notions of life, death, sick-
ness, and health; the greater visibility through the
MASS MEDIA of scientific knowledge and the possi-
bilities both of its practical applications and its
abuse; and changing and conflicted societal expec-
tations regarding health care.
Activity with bioethical content takes many
forms. Academic bioethicists teach in various set-
tings, contribute to the professional literature, and
address practical applications of their work in vari-
ous kinds of service activities. Members of institu-
tional review boards assess the adequacy of protec-
tion of human and animal research subjects, and
institutional ethics committees in hospitals, nursing
homes, and health plans consult on specific cases,
address matters of institutional policy, and provide
educational programs. Thousands of such people, in
addition to academic bioethicists, participate ac-
tively in bioethical deliberations as part of their pro-
fessional responsibilities. Their need for related con-
tinuing education has helped expand demand for
workshops, meetings, and conferences in bioeth-
ics—of which there were perhaps a few each year
two decades ago, and which occur now almost
weekly.
Initially, the term ‘bioethics’ to many was synon-
ymous with ‘medical ethics’, despite the existence of
nonmedical ethical issues in the biological sciences.
Later, ‘biomedical ethics’ addressed a broader range
of issues in ethics and the life sciences. Now, finer
distinctions are commonly made, such as among
clinical ethics (e.g., MEDICAL ETHICS and NURSING
ETHICS), research ethics (e.g., the proper use of hu-
man and animal subjects, the propriety of genetic
screening for low-penetrance genetic markers for
untreatable diseases, or the release of genetically al-
tered agents into the environment), and health pol-
icy ethics (e.g., protection of the PRIVACY of genetic
information, or health system reform to address the
lack of universal coverage in the United States—
142
alone among the developed nations in having a large
uninsured population).
Bioethics remains thoroughly interdisciplinary, al-
though those who pursue it at the highest levels of
quality tend to do so from the perspective of a solid
grounding in one of the traditional disciplines—typ-
ically law, literature, philosophy, religious studies,
and sociology of medicine—or in the professional
ethos of clinical practice. Indeed, bioethics is atypi-
cal as an academic domain in that many of its prac-
titioners try (often with little success) to distance
themselves from the term ‘bioethicist’, preferring to
retain professional identification with the discipline
which provides their intellectual grounding. Only re-
cently have scholars and teachers emerged who
identify themselves primarily as bioethicists, and the
notion of bioethics as an independent discipline re-
mains controversial.
Many issues addressed by bioethics are theoreti-
cal, speculative, and abstract; many others are di-
rectly connected with matters of immediate practical
concern. Bioethics is thus a major component of
what is called APPLIED ETHICS, which brings to bear
on practical ethical problems the sort of ethical anal-
ysis that had its origins in theoretical endeavors, es-
pecially in philosophical ethics and in the ethical
analyses of religious traditions. Initially, the most in-
fluential perspectives were from the analytic West-
ern philosophical tradition emphasizing personal
autonomy, respect for individuals, justice, and BE-
NEFICENCE, and from such Western religious tradi-
tions as CASUISTRY and Talmudic scholarship. Fur-
ther influences have come from constitutional law
and narrative theory and, more recently, feminist
and non-Western thought.
Because of their practical dimensions, and be-
cause of widespread public interest in health-related
matters, bioethical questions have been the concern
of presidential and congressional commissions; con-
gressional hearings; state legislatures, commissions,
and task forces; and other public forums at national
and, more recently, international levels. Bioethics is
now widely and regularly covered by the print and
electronic media and is even a recurrent theme in
mass-market entertainment. Relations between the
media and professionals in bioethics have them-
selves become the focus of analysis and dispute as
bioethicists reflect and debate about their role in
public education, judicial proceedings, and policy
formation.

Some additional questions on the agenda of bio-
ethics concern treatment of chronically ill patients
and of very frail elderly patients; regulation of health
care; defining the scope of medical prerogative—
e.g., clarifying the extent to which a patient’s life-
style choices are a physician’s proper concern; TRUST
and respect in the relationship between provider and
patient; decision making on behalf of decisionally
incompetent patients; controlling the use of genetic
information and manipulation; and the justifiability
and regulation of technologically assisted human re-
production. Addressing such questions unavoidably
raises fundamentally philosophical issues—about
autonomy, dependency, equity, RESPONSIBILITY, in-
tergenerational justice, the social nature of the hu-
man condition, and more.
In pursuit of these matters, bioethics has brought
together scholars and practitioners who otherwise
would have had little exposure to one another’s dis-
ciplines. Their interactions, at times baffling or con-
tentious, have typically been mutually enriching.
Reactions to work in bioethics—not merely to in-
dividual works but to the enterprise as a whole—
have ranged from admiration to disdain, and diverse
expectations, disappointments, and criticisms have
surrounded it even as it has grown in scope, accep-
tance, and influence.
Among the most prominent criticisms of bioeth-
ics are that: it is not serious, well-grounded schol-
arship; it has no well-defined and clear methodology;
it lacks any solid conceptual foundation but is based
instead on the shifting sands of moral sentiment; it
is too abstractly removed from the realities of clini-
cal practice to merit being taken seriously; it is un-
teachable because morality depends on CHARACTER
rather than on intellect; it pursues unanswerable
questions; its utility has not been demonstrated; it
absorbs valuable time, distracting health care pro-
viders, policy makers, and researchers from dealing
directly with the problems they face; and it is itself
ethically problematic, because it either implicitly en-
dorses traditional values that ought to be challenged
or undermines traditional values that ought to be
advocated and reinforced. Many such criticisms
have contributed to the development of the field, as
bioethicists have refuted some and responded con-
structively to others.
Bioethics is now well established in the curricu-
lum of most colleges and universities and plays a role
in the training of health care students of many kinds,
143
bioethics
health law specialists, and hospital house officers. It
is also pursued by some scholars who profess little
interest in practical decision making, but who see
the biological and health care contexts as concep-
tually rich fields for theoretical philosophical, theo-
logical, or other scrutiny. Some philosophers have
even argued that the focus on issues in medicine has
so enriched the study of ethics as to have saved it
from a loss of all human relevance, by forcing a ster-
ile tradition of moral inquiry to confront real moral
issues as they are experienced in people’s lives.
The maturation of bioethics has been reflected in
the establishment and solidification of professional
organizations devoted to its pursuit. Most recently
(1998), in the United States, the American Society
for Bioethics and Humanities emerged from the con-
solidation of the American Association for Bioeth-
ics, the Society for Health and Human Values, and
the Society for Bioethics Consultation, thereby cre-
ating a unifying forum for discussion within the pro-
fession. The American Society for Law and Medicine
continues to emphasize legal aspects of bioethics.
At the global level, the International Association
of Bioethics both constitutes a network of commu-
nication across national boundaries and facilitates
an understanding of the global nature of many of the
substantive problems in health care ethics. For ex-
ample: increased international trade spreads infec-
tious diseases to new areas; the aggressive marketing
of American tobacco products in Asia, in ways pro-
hibited at home, will increase the burden of disease
in developing countries; and clinical trials of new
pharmaceutical products often take place in multiple
countries with differing standards of ethical scrutiny
for clinical research. And health-related information
flows at the speed of light around the world. Such
issues prompt bioethicists to consider the moral sig-
nificance of national boundaries, to investigate the
possibility of international standards, and to worry
about the perils of moral imperialism.
Specific bioethical issues such as the medical
plight of refugees or political prisoners have long
been acknowledged by various international profes-
sional associations. A sharply increased recognition
of bioethics at the global level, however, is reflected
in its explicit incorporation into the agendas of or-
ganizations such as the European Community and
the World Health Organization. The WHO-related
Council for International Organizations of Medical
Sciences, for example, initiated an ongoing dialogue
bioethics
on Health Policy, Ethics, and Human Values at an
international meeting in Athens in 1984, and has
since catalyzed or conducted much additional in-
quiry into bioethical issues that have substantial in-
ternational dimensions.
Further, as more is understood about the range of
factors influencing health status in populations—
not just sanitation and adequate nutrition, but fac-
tors such as literacy, economic stability, opportuni-
ties for women, other aspects of respect for human
rights, and a sense of capacity to influence one’s own
destiny—the concern with ethical issues related to
health care shades into concern with a much broader
range of ethical aspects of human affairs. Just as clar-
ity about the scope of medical matters is elusive, the
scope of bioethics is also hard to discern sharply, and
itself becomes a subject for bioethical inquiry.
Although the agenda of bioethics has expanded
greatly as it has encompassed questions about health
status and about the ethics of organizational deci-
sions, it also has intensified its focus on more sharply
defined domains, such as ethical issues as they per-
tain to specific populations—for instance, those
with disabilities, or who have AIDS and are preg-
nant, or who seek genetic testing for untreatable dis-
eases. Feminist perspectives, too, have enriched bio-
ethics, both by calling overdue attention to issues
that affect women differentially and by deepening
the profession’s understanding of interpersonal and
social issues as they affect all people.
Each of the ways in which bioethics has changed
has placed new demands on its practitioners. It
quickly became valuable—some would say essen-
tial—for bioethicists concerned with medical ethics
to have clinical exposure, because interacting with
real patients, providers, and family members in
medical settings facilitates understanding more
deeply the clinical realities as they are experienced
by those involved. Such understanding is necessary
for those who seek to be credible and helpful in ad-
dressing actual clinical cases. Similarly, it has be-
come essential for bioethicists, depending on the fo-
cus of their attention, to learn about such matters as
health economics, molecular genetics, radiation ex-
periments, health status in refugee camps, and hu-
man rights policies and politics, in order to pursue
their inquiries with rigor and persuasiveness.
Perhaps because bioethics reflects such diversity
of focus and of disciplinary grounding, addresses is-
sues about which ordinary people have strong feel-
144
ings, and joins debates in so many contexts, it has
also become an unusually self-critical and reflective
discipline. Its nature, purposes, and legitimacy have
become a recurrent theme for inquiry.
Bioethics has catalyzed discourse in many settings
about the foundations of social policy and the ap-
propriate modes of address—academic, political,
professional, and public—to contested issues about
which people feel deeply and differently. It has for
that reason come to be viewed as a provocative and
instructive model for civil deliberation in a context
of diversity of values and perspectives.
As they consider the full spectrum of issues re-
lated to the achievement and maintenance of health
and the associated problems of resource allocation,
the forums of PUBLIC POLICY have called increasingly
on professionals in bioethics to assist in their delib-
erations. Health care has changed fundamentally in
recent years: we recognize now the unavoidable
need to develop wisdom about the imposition of lim-
itations; we see the organizational structures of
health care transforming in ways we do not like yet
cannot seem to control; we know that new genetic
knowledge and capacities will have powerful con-
sequences we cannot fully anticipate. Each of these
phenomena, and others, generates renewed energy
for bioethical deliberations.
Thus, the transformation of information handling
capacities has had a profound impact on bioethics,
as on other intellectual domains. Electronic data-
bases raise substantive questions about the tension
between concerns for privacy and opportunities for
valuable research or improved patient care. Public
access to thousands of Web sites about health-
related matters, from the authoritative through
the iconoclastic to the fraudulent, confront health
care providers with the challenge of patients arriv-
ing with new kinds of expertise, superstition, or
demand.
The professional practice of bioethics has also
been changed by the Internet. A recently established
electronic bioethics discussion group has created an
international conversation among hundreds of pro-
fessionals in bioethics that facilitates research and
helps shape the agenda of inquiry. Participants
sometimes provide information that others might
value, such as a notice of impending legislation, or
raise specific questions about where to find a refer-
ence or what the status is of a current case, law, or

bill. Typically, someone answers such questions al-
most immediately.
Mostly, however, the content of the postings is
substantive exchange. A review of the topics ad-
dressed over the few weeks prior to this writing pro-
vides a useful overview of issues at the center of
contemporary bioethical discussion. Some of the
content has been about foundational or general
questions: what can be said to those who question
whether there is a rational basis for ethical decisions;
do health care providers have any special responsi-
bility to work in behalf of social justice in health
care, and if so how might that be integrated with
their clinical responsibilities; how can a balance be
found between societal and individual benefits in
making health care decisions; what counts as medi-
cal in an era of concern with preventive and public
health measures?
Other topics are more explicitly clinical: how phy-
sicians should reply to inquiring patients who ask
about the physician’s health; how to manage post-
death ventilation while awaiting the arrival of sur-
vivors of the deceased; when if ever it is appropriate
to treat a patient for the benefit of someone else;
how nurses ought to respond, in the process of treat-
ment already under way, when challenged by a le-
gitimate surrogate. And in addition to perennial
matters in clinical ethics, such as how much to tell
a fragile patient who appears not to want to know
the truth about his condition, there is increasing
concern with the changing organizational contexts
within which health care is provided: is health care
ethics facilitated or impeded by the need for corpo-
rate compliance with the external requirements of
bodies such as accrediting agencies; what ethical
problems are faced by health care administrators
specifically in their capacity as administrators?
Many topics explicitly concern matters of law:
what requirements of legal discovery apply to hos-
pital ethics committee consultations; what protec-
tions against financial responsibility do health care
surrogates have; how have different states developed
priority lists for the selection of surrogate decision
makers; what federal measures might be needed to
protect genetic privacy adequately, especially given
the prospect of a national database in which each
person has a health identifier number? Pedagogical
matters, too, are frequent: can an enlightened ethical
inquiry be based on a code of ethics such as that of
the American Medical Association; what readings
145
bioethics
might be effective in illuminating problems related
to the need to limit health care; are there ethical risks
in requiring health care students to practice certain
procedures on one another—such as pelvic exami-
nations done by female nursing students on one an-
other, with neither uncoerced consent nor assur-
ances of confidentiality regarding the findings?
New directions in bioethics include an expanding
body of empirical inquiry into the ways in which val-
ues are honored or violated in health care contexts
and into the consequences of public policy decisions
that have been shaped by bioethical arguments. Al-
though bioethics will sustain controversy as it con-
tinues to evolve, its rapid rise to intellectual promi-
nence and practical influence, and the certainty that
continued developments in the medical and biologi-
cal sciences will raise or accentuate ethical issues,
ensure that it will remain active and vital.
See also: ABORTION; AGENCY AND DISABILITY; ANI-
MALS, TREATMENT OF; APPLIED ETHICS; AUTONOMY
OF MORAL AGENTS; BIOLOGICAL THEORY; CHARAC-
TER; COMPUTERS; CONSENT; ENVIRONMENTAL
ETHICS; EUTHANASIA; FEMINIST ETHICS; FUTURE GEN-
ERATIONS; GENETIC ENGINEERING; HARM AND OF-
FENSE; ISLAMIC MEDICAL ETHICS; KILLING/LETTING
DIE; LIBRARY AND INFORMATION PROFESSIONS; LIFE
AND DEATH; LIFE, RIGHT TO; MEDICAL ETHICS, HIS-
TORICAL; NARRATIVE ETHICS; NUCLEAR ETHICS;
NURSING ETHICS; PAIN AND SUFFERING; PRINCIPLISM;
PRIVACY; PUBLIC HEALTH POLICY; PUBLIC POLICY; RE-
PRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES; TECHNOLOGY; THEORY
AND PRACTICE; TRUST.
Bibliography
The literature of bioethics has, in thirty years, grown from
almost nothing to tens of thousands of items. These few
illustrative resources can provide an efficient route into
that literature.
Council for International Organizations of Medical Sci-
ences. Geneva: World Health Organization. Various re-
ports and proceedings published over more than
twenty years addressing issues of values in medicine,
medical research, and health policy from international
perspectives.
Hastings Center Report. The leading journal in bioethics
for nearly three decades; see especially the section “In
the Literature” which provides briefly annotated no-
tices of important publications in the field from many
sources.
Jonsen, Albert R. The Birth of Bioethics. New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1998. The only comprehensive
bioethics
overview of the development of bioethics over the past
thirty years. Excellent bibliographical references.
Moreno, Jonathan D. Deciding Together: Bioethics and
Moral Consensus. New York: Oxford University Press,
1995. Explores ethical decisions by groups of people,
such as hospital committees, whose individual values
or judgments may diverge.
New York State Task Force on Life and the Law. Ten re-
ports from an influential state commission published
since 1986, including Assisted Reproductive Technol-
ogies: Analysis and Recommendations for Public Pol-
icy (1988).
President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems
in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research.
11 vols. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Of-
fice, 1981–83. An influential collection of reports from
a federal commission.
Rachels, James. “When Philosophers Shoot from the Hip:
A Report from America.” Bioethics 5 (1991): 67–71.
A comment on the role of bioethicists in addressing the
public.
Reich, Warren T., ed. Encyclopedia of Bioethics. Rev. ed.
5 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1995. Revised edition of
a standard four-volume reference first published in
1978.
Sherwin, Susan. No Longer Patient: Feminist Ethics and
Health Care. Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1992. An early and influential presentation of feminist
perspectives on medical ethics.
Silvers, Anita, David Wasserman, and Mary Briody Ma-
howald. Disability, Difference, Discrimination: Per-
spectives on Justice in Bioethics and Public Policy. Lan-
ham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998. Interchanges
among the authors on a cluster of issues only recently
receiving a sustained focus of attention.
Samuel Gorovitz
biological theory
The classical term for efforts to connect biological
theory with ethics is “evolutionary ethics.” However,
evolutionary ethics has progressed far enough that
dividing it into three parts clarifies the issues. Here,
then, the term “evolutionary ethics” is restricted to
attempts to use the theory of EVOLUTION, or parts of
it, as an important component of ethical theories.
“Evolved ethics” applies to attempts to uncover
evolved human dispositions relevant to ethics and,
typically, to justify such dispositions as truly ethical.
Evolved ethics is a subdivision of the modern field
of sociobiology. “Religion and ethics” refers here to
the influence of evolutionary ethics and evolved
ethics on RELIGION.
146
Evolutionary Ethics
The most popular approach to evolutionary ethics
is to claim that natural selection, the mechanism
largely responsible for evolution, results in ethically
valuable products. Since this is so, people should not
interfere with natural selection. We might even pro-
mote it. This form of evolutionary ethics results in
“Social Darwinism,” the belief that the “struggle for
existence” is good. Since it is good, government in-
terference in the struggle is wrong. There should be
no welfare state. We might even establish eugenics
programs to promote natural selection.
There are major difficulties with Social Darwin-
ism. The most obvious is its brutality, a particularly
objectionable attribute for an ethical theory. On
these grounds, T. H. Huxley (1825–1895) suggests
we ought to combat natural selection rather than
promote it. Another difficulty is that Social Darwin-
ists understand Charles DARWIN’s (1809–1882)
phrase “struggle for existence” literally, whereas
Darwin explicitly says he is using “struggle” meta-
phorically.
Moreover, natural selection does not appear to
culminate in ethically valuable products. Indeed, we
do not know where it culminates. It may operate on
Earth for another 3 billion years, and we do not
know what it has produced on other planets. If nat-
ural selection does not culminate in ethically valu-
able products, the Social Darwinists have commit-
ted the logical fallacy first noted by David HUME
(1711–1776) of deriving an “ought” from an “is.”
Herbert SPENCER (1820–1903) is the classical ex-
ponent of another version of evolutionary ethics.
This version rests on the idea that, whatever the evo-
lutionary mechanism may be, the history of life is
progressive, ascending like a ladder to its final goal.
Spencer thinks HAPPINESS and heterogeneity are its
goals. A twentieth-century follower of Spencer’s,
E. O. Wilson, sees the human mind as its goal.
This version of evolutionary ethics also has prob-
lems. The first is empirical. The history of life is not
demonstrably progressive. The applicable metaphor
is not a ladder but a bush with its top severed by a
horizontal plane representing the present. On this
plane lie the human mind, the bee’s sting, and the
mold’s slime, with nothing to indicate which is most
valuable. The second difficulty is logical. This ar-
gument commits the NATURALISTIC FALLACY first

named by G. E. MOORE (1873–1958), the error of
equating natural properties with ethical ones.
Recently, James Rachels has developed a new var-
iant of evolutionary ethics. His version rests on the
central thesis of evolution, that species evolve from
one another. Before Darwin, people thought bio-
logical species immutable and variations within
them unimportant. Darwin stood this idea on its
head. Species are mutable, and the variations within
them essential, for without variations, natural selec-
tion would have nothing to select. As a result, Dar-
win considered the divisions biologists draw among
species arbitrary. The Darwinian picture places in-
dividual organisms at the center of biology and rel-
egates species to the sidelines.
Rachels next argues that traditional Western
ethics rests on the pre-Darwinian view of the cen-
trality of species. Traditionally, Western ethics has
lifted our species to the pinnacle of ethical impor-
tance while treating all other organisms as our ser-
vants and slaves. But if species are arbitrary and in-
dividuals and their variations central, the old ethics
rests on false foundations. Rachels calls for a new
ethical foundation, with individuals and their vari-
ations central. He calls his new ethics “moral
individualism.”
Rachels develops the ethical side of his theory
from the ancient moral and legal principle that equal
cases should be treated equally. We argue that we
should not torture people because people feel pain,
TORTURE is painful, and pain a moral EVIL. Other
animals also feel pain. Under Rachels’s reasoning, if
they feel pain as we do, then we should not torture
them, for equal cases should be treated equally.
Rachels applies his theory to a wide range of
cases. He discusses the value of life, with its issues
of SUICIDE, EUTHANASIA, and vegetarianism, and he
reflects on the use of animals in psychological, medi-
cal, pharmacological, and cosmetic experiments. His
theory does important work in clarifying ethical is-
sues. Rooted in the center of biology, it has firm
foundations.
Critics have attacked Rachels’s theory on two
grounds. Philosophers who reject the use of empir-
ical facts in ethical theories see Rachels as breaking
Hume’s law or committing the naturalistic fallacy.
However, Rachels violates neither. He never argues
that Darwin’s theory is ethically good, only that it
describes the organic world accurately. And, he ar-
gues, Darwin’s description matters to ethics because
147
biological theory
it says we can no longer validly claim that all mem-
bers of our species are radically separated from all
other organic beings morally, just because of species
membership.
On the other hand, people steeped in biology and
committed to versions of evolved ethics criticize Ra-
chels for reaching beyond biology into reason for the
justification of ethical arguments. However, reason
provides justifications, and attempts to develop eth-
ical theories totally within biology have difficulties
with justification.
Evolved Ethics
Theories of evolved ethics claim the human ca-
pacity for ethics and/or particular ethical disposi-
tions evolved. Versions that try to justify following
these dispositions assert that we ought to do what
we evolved to do.
When Darwin’s contemporaries read his On the
Origin of Species (1859), some saw its implications
for human beings and argued that the moral and
spiritual aspects of humanity lie outside the reach of
natural selection. In Chapter III of The Descent of
Man (1871), Darwin attempts to counteract this re-
sponse by demonstrating that the human moral
sense (conscience) could have evolved.
He begins by claiming that other animals have
altruistic dispositions of SYMPATHY and LOVE to-
ward their kin and their social group. These dispo-
sitions are social, not distinctively moral. What is
distinctively moral is CONSCIENCE, our sense of duty.
Conscience evolves at the individual and social
level. Individually, conscience develops because our
memory, foresight, and intelligence lead to inner
conflicts between our immediate passions and our
enduring altruistic dispositions. When we compare
the two, we feel a duty to follow our enduring dis-
positions, thereby resolving the conflict. Socially,
conscience derives from the praise and blame of oth-
ers and from reason. Praise and blame heighten con-
science while reason enables us to realize the justice
of others’ judgments.
Darwin argues that, as people come to live in
larger groups, reason suggests they expand their
sympathies to the larger group. People attain the
highest morality when reason extends sympathy to
all humanity and beyond, to all sentient beings.
Darwin’s ideas on the evolution of ALTRUISM and
conscience are still influential. They acquired new
biological theory
depth in 1964 when William Hamilton revolution-
ized the study of altruism by explaining animal al-
truistic behavior mathematically as a branch of be-
havioral genetics. Hamilton’s work marks the
beginning of sociobiology—the genetical study of
animal social behavior—and of modern evolved
ethics.
His basic idea is simple. The evolutionary goal of
all organisms is to have as many copies of their own
genes survive in the next generation as possible. The
direct way to do this is to produce offspring and, if
they need care, to care for them. However, close kin
who are not offspring also carry copies of the organ-
ism’s genes, and if they need help, the organism will
increase copies of its genes in the next generation by
helping them. The help is “altruism,” and the mech-
anism “kin selection.” Altruism evolved in numerous
organisms, including us. While the evolution of al-
truism is not yet an ethical theory, it lays the grounds
for many efforts to derive ethics from evolution.
The most viable of these efforts is Peter Singer’s.
Like Darwin, Singer argues that kin and group se-
lection have resulted in altruism in us. But altruism
is not distinctly ethical. Ethics develops as a mode
of reasoning in a group context when conflicts occur
between individuals. According to Singer, successful
reasoners must reason impartially, considering
equally the interests of all parties to disputes. Be-
cause reason is impartial, it also helps us expand our
caring beyond immediate kin to all people and, even-
tually, to all sentient beings. However, because our
evolved altruism focuses on kin and clan, reason
alone is not likely to overcome our parochialism. We
need to develop rules and INSTITUTIONS to help us
extend our sympathies.
Knowledge of the narrowness of our evolved al-
truism is helpful. It facilitates critiques of the ethics
of kin and clan and undermines ethical justifications
based on NATURAL LAW. R. D. Alexander has devel-
oped these critiques most fully.
Michael Ruse and E. O. Wilson (together and
separately) and Robert J. Richards claim that certain
ethical imperatives evolved and we ought to follow
them. Richards deliberately borrows from Darwin’s
descriptive ethics, emphasizing group selection. He
asks us to assume that natural selection produces
dispositions in us to act for the good of the group
and to believe such altruistic dispositions moral.
From these two empirical assumptions, he derives
148
the moral proposition, “People ought to act
altruistically.”
Richards claims he has not committed the natu-
ralistic fallacy because we use the same rule when
we say, “Thunder ought to follow lightning,” and
when we declare, “People ought to act altruistically.”
If each sentence uses “ought” causally, we do use the
same rule. However, both these “oughts” entail
causal determinism. Thunder must follow lightning
because lightning causes thunder. People must act
altruistically because genes cause altruistic behavior.
But, philosophers do not consider deterministic be-
havior moral. Moral behavior must be freely chosen.
Richards attempts to avoid this problem by con-
struing the second sentence as a moral one prescrib-
ing behavior. But if the second sentence is moral,
Richards slides illegitimately from causal use of
“ought” to a moral use, thereby committing the fal-
lacy of ambiguity as well as the naturalistic fallacy.
The problem of determinism plagues Ruse’s and
Wilson’s theories also. Like Richards, Ruse and Wil-
son argue that human morality rests ultimately on
human sentiments, and that our moral sentiments
evolved. They derive the moral “ought” from the fac-
tual “is” on prudential grounds by emphasizing the
power of our biology to constrain us. If we try to
contravene the “dictates” of our evolved moral sen-
timents, we will suffer psychological and social
stress. However, this places Ruse and Wilson on the
horns of a dilemma. If the dictates of our sentiments
determine our behavior so strongly we cannot dis-
obey, we are not free creatures and, so, not moral
ones. If we can disobey, we can make MORAL RULES
opposing our evolved sentiments.
Their dilemma forces Ruse and Wilson to justify
their theory by default. They claim our moral senti-
ments provide the only justification for our moral
beliefs and actions. Rachels, Singer, and even Dar-
win demonstrate the falsehood of this claim.
Moreover, Ruse’s and Wilson’s version of evolved
ethics provides no way to resolve moral conflicts if
our moral sentiments clash. Robert Trivers success-
fully argues that natural selection produces conflict-
ing moral sentiments.
Francisco Ayala has developed a theory of
evolved ethics in explicit contrast to Ruse and Wil-
son. Ayala claims general intelligence evolved in hu-
man beings because of its adaptive advantage, and
that morality is a by-product of general intelligence.

Further, he argues that only the proclivity to judge
actions right or wrong evolved, not moral NORMS.
The central strength of Ayala’s argument is that
the conditions necessary for general intelligence are
the same conditions required for morality, namely,
the capacity to anticipate consequences, to make
value judgments, and to choose between alternative
courses of action. Its weakness is empirical. Those
who study intelligence have demonstrated convinc-
ingly that we do not possess general intelligence. In-
stead, we have separate intelligences, for example,
mathematical, linguistic, and musical. Neurobiology
supports the idea of diverse intelligences by showing
that our brains contain modules specialized for vari-
ous functions.
Moreover, general intelligence without values is
helpless. Without values, we may be able to list all
the consequences of an action, but we cannot choose
which action is best. We function well because our
basic values are built in. And, if our basic values are
built in and we evolved, they evolved.
Religion and Ethics
Both evolutionary ethics and evolved ethics im-
pact religion, which is itself intimately connected
with ethics for most people. Below are three argu-
ments from evolutionary and evolved ethics under-
mining religion, followed by three supporting it.
First, natural selection, the main mechanism of
evolution, is morally nasty. For natural selection to
function, more organisms must be born than can
survive to reproduce. Selection selects some for sur-
vival and reproduction, and all the others die, some-
times horribly. This poses a very serious problem for
belief in a God who is benevolent, omniscient, om-
nipotent, and who planned and created the universe.
If natural selection is part of God’s plan, the plan
looks ugly. If selection is not part of God’s plan, God
is either not omniscient or not omnipotent, or both.
The workings of natural selection make the philo-
sophical problem of evil even more difficult to solve
than it has been traditionally.
Second, as Rachels argues, the bare fact that spe-
cies evolve from one another means our species is
not unique, and species’ divisions are arbitrary. We
must compare individuals when we ask ethical ques-
tions. Individually, it may happen that an adult chim-
panzee has a more valuable life than a human infant,
especially an infant who will never attain adult hu-
149
biological theory
man capacities, for example, one born without a
neocortex. As evolved creatures, we must be judged
along with other animals, and some of us will be
found wanting.
Third, in an issue of the journal Zygon devoted
to evolved ethics and CHRISTIAN ETHICS, the general
conclusion is that Christian ethics is untenable in the
light of evolution. Presented by Ruse, the main ar-
gument rests on the evolution of altruism through
kin selection. Kin selection promotes altruism to-
ward kin and clan. Christian ethics demands that we
love all equally. Thus, Christian ethics may be im-
possible to live by. If our ethics stem from our
evolved sentiments, Christian ethics may even ap-
pear to us to be “morally perverse.”
These are the main negative arguments. On the
positive side, it is possible that the human capacity
for religion, and even for communion with God,
evolved. The universality of religion suggests that
our religious dispositions are products of evolution.
Neurobiological work has uncovered particular ar-
eas in our brains suited to contemplation. Perhaps
these areas evolved in response to the presence of
God much as our vision evolved in response to light.
If so, God exists as objectively in our environment
as light does. If so, this has ethical implications.
The second argument looks at creation from a
cosmological perspective in addition to a biological
one. Cosmology explains the origin, structure, and
motion of atoms, molecules, planets, stars, and gal-
axies without invoking God’s action. It discloses an
autonomous cosmos, free of God’s intervening su-
pervision. Autonomy develops and increases within
the cosmos after natural selection begins to operate,
for organisms capable of making choices evolve.
With human evolution, creatures appear who make
extremely complex choices both as individuals and
in groups, increasing autonomy once more. Many of
these choices involve ethics.
A cosmological perspective also reveals an in-
crease of complexity, variety, and creative synergy in
the cosmos from the Big Bang forward, which nat-
ural selection within the cosmos again serves to en-
hance. Rather than being a separate, morally nasty
mechanism for biological evolution, natural selec-
tion is subsumed under the general development of
the universe toward positive qualities. And because
we are the most complex, creative, and autonomous
creatures on Earth, we can find our meaning and
value in these qualities.
biological theory
Finally, Darwin’s and Singer’s work points to-
ward a positive connection between the evolution of
altruism and the Christian ethical commandment to
love all equally. Altruism springs from love of kin
and clan. It makes human sociality possible. Without
it, life would be nasty, brutish, and short. But since
we are symbol-wielding, institution-building crea-
tures, altruism need not be limited to literal kin. We
say, symbolically, that all people are brothers and sis-
ters. We apply terms like “daughter” to those unre-
lated to us, calling them “daughters-in-law.” We es-
tablish institutions that demand we treat all equally
and condemn nepotism. In doing these things, we
can and do extend our capacity to love beyond kin
and clan to embrace all humanity, and even all-
sentient beings.
Yet, Singer is correct when he says extending our
altruism is difficult. With the best of intentions, we
stumble and fall. The distance between our evolved
altruism and our ideals may give us a new under-
standing of the Christian doctrine of original sin,
that side of our nature leading us to egocentricity
and nepotism. Moreover, the difficulty of loving be-
yond kin and clan also implies that we need a God
such as Christianity posits, one who forgives.
As increasing numbers of people have explored
the relationship between biological theory and
ethics, they have uncovered significant connections.
Rachels argues that the arbitrary nature of species
means we need to focus on individuals when we
think morally. Darwin and Ayala find our aptitude
for ethics has evolved. Kin selection says our capac-
ity for love and altruism has also evolved. Ruse and
Wilson claim some of our specific ethical disposi-
tions evolved.
Evolutionary and evolved ethics are relevant to
the problem of evil and the moral status of our spe-
cies. They help elucidate our capacity for religion
and our ability to follow the Christian ethical com-
mand to love all equally. Although there is no in-
eluctable causal or logical connection between bio-
logical theory and ethics, ethics can no longer be
done adequately without considering the contribu-
tions of biology to our understanding of our place in
the universe, our attraction to religion, our capacity
for doing moral philosophy, and the evolution of our
ethical sentiments, particularly our altruism.
See also: ALTRUISM; ANIMALS, TREATMENT OF; AU-
TONOMY OF ETHICS; COMPETITION; CONSCIENCE;
150
COSMOPOLITAN ETHICS; DARWIN; EVOLUTION; FAM-
ILY; GENETIC ENGINEERING; GROUPS, MORAL STATUS
OF; IMPARTIALITY; INDIVIDUALISM; LIFE, MEANING
OF; MORAL COMMUNITY, BOUNDARIES OF; MORAL
PSYCHOLOGY; NATURAL LAW; NATURALISM; NATURE
AND ETHICS; PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY; PHI-
LOSOPHY OF RELIGION; RECIPROCITY; RELIGION; SO-
CIAL CONTRACT; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; SYMPATHY;
TECHNOLOGY AND NATURE; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS.
Bibliography
Alexander, Richard D. Darwinism and Human Affairs.
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979.
Bradie, Michael. The Secret Chain, Evolution and Ethics.
New York: State University of New York Press, 1994.
History and criticism of evolutionary and evolved
ethics, including their relevance to animal rights.
Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species. London: John
Murray, 1859. The beginning of it all.
———. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to
Sex. 2 vols. London, 1871. Darwin’s ethical theory.
Hamilton, William D. “The Genetical Evolution of Social
Behaviour I and II.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 7
(1964): 1–51. The beginning of sociobiology.
Nitecki, Matthew H., and Doris V. Nitecki, eds. Evolu-
tionary Ethics. Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1993. A well-balanced collection of new essays
by leaders in the fields of evolutionary and evolved
ethics.
Rachels, James. Created from Animals: The Moral Impli-
cations of Darwinism. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1991. Excellent short account of the theory of
evolution, Darwinism and religion, speciesism, and
moral individualism. The book to read.
Richards, Robert J. Darwin and the Emergence of Evolu-
tionary Theories of Mind and Behavior. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1987. Evolutionary ethics,
Darwin’s ethical theory, Richards’s ethical theory, criti-
cisms, bibliography.
Rolston, Holmes, ed. Biology, Ethics, and the Origins of
Life. Boston: Jones and Bartlett, 1995. Wide-ranging
collection of new essays from the cosmos to a global
Earth ethic.
Ruse, Michael. Taking Darwin Seriously. Oxford: Black-
well, 1986. Spencer, social Darwinism, Wilson,
bibliography.
Ruse, Michael, and E. O. Wilson. “Moral Philosophy as
Applied Science.” Philosophy 61 (1986): 173–92. A
seminal early essay in evolved ethics.
Singer, Peter. The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Socio-
biology. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981.
Thompson, Paul, ed. Issues in Evolutionary Ethics. Al-
bany: State University of New York Press, 1995. Col-

lection of previously published seminal essays in
evolved ethics.
Trivers, Robert L. “Parent-Offspring Conflict.” American
Zoology 14 (1974): 249–64.
Wesson, Robert, and Patricia A. Williams, eds. Evolution
and Human Values. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995. Col-
lection of new essays in evolutionary ethics, evolved
ethics, religion, and social implications.
Williams, Patricia A. “Christianity and Evolutionary
Ethics: Sketch toward a Reconciliation.” Zygon: Jour-
nal of Religion and Science 31 (1996): 253–68. A re-
sponse to Zygon 29, no. 1.
———. Doing without Adam and Eve: Sociobiology and
Original Sin. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2001. Ex-
planations of theory of evolution and sociobiology. Ap-
plication of evolved ethics to Christianity and the prob-
lem of evil.
Wilson, E. O. On Human Nature. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1978. Evolved ethics; annotated bib-
liography in the “Notes.”
Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 29, no. 1 (1994).
Issue devoted to Christianity and evolutionary and
evolved ethics.
Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 34, no. 3 (1999).
Issue devoted to evolved ethics and religion.
Patricia A. Williams
blackmail
The issue of blackmail involves a significant element
of paradox, and brings up in novel ways central top-
ics such as the permissibility of threats and offers,
the relations between morality and the law, the role
of consequentialist and nonconsequentialist ethical
considerations, and the limits of freedom. Its relative
neglect by philosophers is therefore unfortunate.
The notion of blackmail is often applied loosely,
owing to confusion or an attempt to use its strong
pejorative implication rhetorically. Here it will be
considered in a narrow sense, which includes the
following features: (a) a declaration of INTENTION to
act (or refrain from acting) in a legally permissible
(and nonobligatory) way which the target of black-
mail would (it is thought) find unwelcome; ac-
companied by (b) an offer not to carry out the in-
tention on condition of receiving legally permissible
compensation.
The paradigmatic example is Q threatening to
tell Z’s wife about Z’s involvement with another
woman, unless Z pays him a large sum of money. Let
us call this “ordinary blackmail”. It is legal to ask for
money, and likewise it is not illegal to tell another
151
blackmail
person’s wife about her husband’s infidelity, or to
threaten to do so. The ethical analogue to the legal
issue is less clear, but it suffices for our purposes to
note that, taken individually, none of the compo-
nents of “ordinary blackmail” is normally thought to
be morally odious in a way which approaches the
common attitude toward blackmail. Hence the no-
tion of blackmail used here is set apart from “extor-
tion”, a coercive request accompanied by a threat to
carry out an illegal act (for example, the threat to
beat someone up); and also from the threat to spread
false information, which might fall under the notion
of “defamation”. Likewise, we are assuming that the
blackmailer’s advantage did not come about illicitly
(e.g., through wire-tapping). Requests to pay the
blackmailer in unacceptable “currency” (e.g., that
the person being blackmailed perform an immoral
or illegal act) also lie outside of blackmail in the
sense which concerns us. We must distinguish “or-
dinary blackmail” from these different cases if we
are to consider its inherent difficulties, since these
cases bring up different issues. Finally, it is impor-
tant to realise that the narrow notion of blackmail
that we are considering is not limited to the threat-
ening use of information (as in Q’s blackmailing Z).
If, for example, one asked all shops of a certain kind
to pay one a monthly retainer for not carrying out
the credible threat of opening a competing shop
nearby, problems might arise which fall within our
area of concern.
It has been claimed that the idea of “ordinary
blackmail” gives rise to two paradoxes, which will
now be addressed.
The Conceptual Paradox of Blackmail
The first difficulty with the common view of
blackmail is that all its components—the asking for
goods, the threat to do what one is permitted to do,
and the carrying out of the act itself—are in them-
selves permissible; so where does the powerful ob-
jection to blackmail come from? We have no similar
difficulty with understanding common attitudes to-
ward extortion, for if one is not allowed to beat peo-
ple up then it is understandable that one is not al-
lowed to threaten to do so, let alone demand
payment for desisting. It has been countered that in
“ordinary blackmail” the request for money is
backed up by a threat, and that this combination
brings forth something new, which is the focus of
blackmail
concern. Thus there is nothing paradoxical about the
fact that in themselves the elements which make up
the practice of blackmail are permissible.
The ethical significance of combined acts may in-
deed transcend the significance of their individual
elements, so that if the first paradox is taken as for-
mal it can be dismissed. However, the way in which
the “alchemy” of the novel emergence of badness or
wrongness operates in this case remains somewhat
mysterious, and noting the innocuous nature of the
elements of “ordinary blackmail” helps bring this
out. If one may threaten to do what one is allowed
to do, offering not to do so in return for limited mon-
etary compensation does not seem to bring forth
such radical and novel heinousness. And this sense
of dissatisfaction is increased when we reflect on
other factors. For example, the person being black-
mailed would in fact often prefer to be offered the
option of paying the blackmailer, and would accept
if offered. Allowing the would-be blackmailer to sell
news of the affair to the press but not allowing him
to sell his silence to Z would not be welcomed by Z.
Such concerns are substantive, and hence point us
in the direction of the second paradox.
The Substantive Paradox
The Substantive Paradox represents the main
philosophical difficulty with blackmail. It follows
from the apparent similarity between cases of “or-
dinary blackmail” and common practices in social
and economic life, which are not taken to be ex-
tremely reprehensible by morality, and are not pro-
hibited by law. Many examples of this sort in fact
conform to the explication of the two features of
blackmail elucidated above. In many labour disputes
workers legally threaten to cease work, while em-
phasising the damage they can inflict, in order to
gain higher salaries; and employers similarly
threaten to close down operations or hire other
workers if their demands are not accepted. In di-
vorce cases the partners can threaten to prolong the
proceedings if the settlement does not go their way.
Boycotts of goods or services may be threatened as
backing for various sorts of demands. People may
ask for money in order not to raise fences unpleasant
or even harmful to their neighbours. Victims may
threaten to sue companies under tort law, thereby
bringing them adverse publicity, unless compensa-
tion is forthcoming. Politicians indirectly threaten to
152
cut funds for groups who do not support them. And
the threat to use force or economic sanctions is a
common staple in international relations. Perhaps
many instances of pushing up prices of scarce goods
or services in effect constitute monetary demands
backed by threats. Why are all of these fundamen-
tally different from blackmail, from a moral point of
view?
One way of approaching the philosophical diffi-
culty of blackmail is to assume that our common
intuitions are correct. Under this interpretation the
puzzle merely becomes one of how to justify the
status quo. Even then we still have our philosophical
work cut out. But a true philosophical attitude will
seek to question more deeply whether common in-
tuitions are justified at all. One of the effects of
thinking deeply about the Substantive Paradox is to
call into question basic assumptions about RIGHTS
and moral limits. Note that the consequences of the
Substantive Paradox threaten to spread in both di-
rections. We may come to feel that we need to take
a more tolerant moral stance toward “ordinary
blackmail” and decriminalize it. But alternatively
common practices which resemble blackmail may be
seen as the moral equivalents of blackmail, and
therefore less tolerable morally and legally. In any
case the prospect is disconcerting.
A number of attempts to solve the Substantive
Paradox have appeared in the literature. First, it is
possible to offer a cynical explanation of common
attitudes. One such explanation is that the thought
of being blackmailed in the ordinary ways is fright-
ening to the rich and powerful in society, who may
be less concerned with, say, the threats of employers
or politicians. That “ordinary blackmail” be taken so
seriously is therefore just what one would expect.
But the cynical sort of explanation does not provide
justification, and we should attempt to go beyond it.
It is possible to concede that in MORAL TERMS the
similarity between “ordinary blackmail” and the
threatened social practices is great, but still perceive
the possibility for legal justification of common prac-
tice, thereby explaining away the paradox. For ex-
ample, difficulties with enforcement may justify a
divergent legal attitude, without deep underlying
moral differences. This approach is problematic,
however. First, although the issue of blackmail in-
herently involves both moral and legal matters, the
case for paradox can be limited to the moral side. It
would be hard to deny that we hold blackmailers to

be morally despicable, irrespective of any legal sanc-
tion. Such a severe negative attitude is not com-
monly expressed toward those who (say) engage in
sharp economic BARGAINING. Even our strictly eth-
ical intuitions seem to tolerate practices which, on
closer inspection, may seem indistinguishable from
“ordinary blackmail”. Second, arguing by way of a
firm distinction between the moral and the legal is-
sues would involve a high price. If our difficulties
with blackmail engendered a huge gap between the
two, this in itself would be a surprising and disturb-
ing result. Finally, the moral and the legal seem par-
ticularly entwined in the matter of blackmail: eth-
ical disapproval is an integral feature of its legal
circumscription.
A third way in which philosophers and jurists
have tried to deal with the Substantive Paradox is
by seeking to identify a feature of “ordinary black-
mail” which distinguishes it ethically from rough so-
cial practices which seem so similar. This route is
the most alluring, because it would diffuse the Sub-
stantive Paradox: once you look closely “ordinary
blackmail” and the threatened practices may turn
out to be substantially different. However, it has not
proved easy to formulate such a “litmus test”. The
candidates considered have included, among others,
coerced versus uncoerced choices, the invasion of
PRIVACY, the rights of third parties, the idea of EX-
PLOITATION, and the distinction between harming
and not benefitting. The specific discussions are
complex and intriguing, but have not been mani-
festly successful. The suggestions offered seem to
succeed only in limited types of cases, or to beg the
question by making crucial moral assumptions as to
what is morally disallowed which are shown to be
contentious by the issue of blackmail. For example,
the gutter press may invade a person’s privacy and
exploit her weaknesses in order to make money out
of her in a way that is similar to blackmail, and a
threat to raise a fence on one’s land to the detriment
of one’s neighbour, unless the latter pay, would seem
to be a case of coerced choice and outright harming;
and yet neither practice would be viewed in the same
way as “ordinary blackmail”.
Finally, perhaps it is not that “ordinary blackmail”
and the practices discussed are inherently ethically
very different, but rather that there are merely fur-
ther reasons to allow the other practices to continue.
“Ordinary blackmail” is singled out, not because its
bad features are unique, but because there is nothing
153
blackmail
good about it to overcome the badness. This ap-
proach requires the specific justification of the given
practices. Consequentialist, rights-oriented, con-
tractual, and virtue-based ethics approaches may all
be able to contribute here, but the first seems to ac-
quire a particular authority if this philosophical di-
rection is taken. For example, the nastiness of using
information might be increased through its appear-
ance in the gutter press, but there are other good
reasons to maintain a free press. The use of threats
and offers in “quasi-blackmail” form in economic
bargaining may likewise be justified because of its
economic efficiency or by virtue of the right both to
offer and withhold one’s labour or employment. But
no equivalent saving graces can be found in “ordi-
nary blackmail”. “Ordinary blackmail” is coercive,
exploitative, invasive, etc., like many other social
practices, but the point is that there is very little
good about it. Decriminalizing “ordinary blackmail”
would cause widespread social discomfort, gener-
ating fear for individual privacy as invasion becomes
commercially viable. Moreover, an atmosphere
would prevail in which each person constitutes a po-
tential enemy. Yet few benefits can be expected.
See also: BAD FAITH; BARGAINING; BRIBERY; BUSINESS
ETHICS; CENSORSHIP; COERCION; CONSENT; CONSE-
QUENTIALISM; CONTRACTS; CORRUPTION; CORREC-
TIONAL ETHICS; DECEIT; DETERRENCE, THREATS, AND
RETALIATION; ENVY; EXPLOITATION; FORGERY; FREE-
DOM OF THE PRESS; HOMOSEXUALITY; INTENTION; IN-
TERNATIONAL JUSTICE: CONFLICT; LEGAL PHILOSO-
PHY; POLICE ETHICS; PORNOGRAPHY; PRIVACY; PUBLIC
AND PRIVATE MORALITY; REVENGE; RIGHTS; SECRECY
AND CONFIDENTIALITY; TERRORISM; TRUST; WAR
AND PEACE.
Bibliography
Clark, Michael. “There Is No Paradox of Blackmail.” Anal-
ysis 54 (1994): 54–61. The case against the Formal
Paradox.
Feinberg, Joel. “The Paradox of Blackmail.” Ratio Juris 1
(1988): 83–95. A careful investigation of the difficul-
ties, with a legal orientation, particularly trying to dis-
tinguish the different types of blackmail.
Fletcher, George P. “Blackmail: The Paradigmatic Crime.”
University of Pennsylvania Law Review 141 (1993):
1617–38. A good critical explication of the Substan-
tive Paradox and attempts to solve it. This paper ap-
pears in a volume devoted to blackmail, and many of
the other articles are helpful as well.
blackmail
Gorr, Michael. “Liberalism and the Paradox of Blackmail.”
Philosophy and Public Affairs 21 (1992): 43–66. Dis-
tinguishing various forms of blackmail and exploring
the pragmatic difficulties of criminalizing similar
practices.
Lindgren, James. “Unraveling the Paradox of Blackmail.”
Columbia Law Review 84 (1984): 670–717. A fine
critical survey of legal scholarship, particularly of at-
tempts to distinguish blackmail from similar practices
that are legal.
Mack, Eric. “In Defence of Blackmail.” Philosophical
Studies 41 (1982): 273–84. The strongest case for le-
galising blackmail.
Murphy, Jeffrie G. “Blackmail: A Preliminary Inquiry.” The
Monist 63 (1980): 156–71. A good introduction to the
problem and a thoughtful investigation, particularly in
trying to find factors distinguishing blackmail from
similar practices.
Smilansky, Saul. “May We Stop Worrying about Black-
mail?” Analysis 55 (1995): 116–20. The case for the
Substantive Paradox, also considering blackmail which
is not information-based.
Saul Smilansky
Bradley, F[rancis] H[erbert]
(1846–1924)
Bradley’s father was a well-known preacher who, by
two successive wives, fathered twenty children. An
older half-brother became headmaster at Marlbor-
ough (a school Bradley attended for two years), and
a younger full brother, A. C. Bradley, achieved re-
nown as a literary scholar and critic. In 1865, Brad-
ley entered University College, Oxford, where he did
not distinguish himself in philosophically oriented
subjects; but he persevered, receiving a fellowship
(to be terminated only upon marriage) from Merton
College in 1870. Bradley never married, and he re-
mained a Fellow for fifty-four years. Extremely con-
servative in political matters (he hated even the
name of Gladstone) and highly eccentric in personal
practices (he allegedly prowled the grounds of his
college at night, shooting cats), Bradley became a
central figure of late-nineteenth-century British ide-
alism and, accordingly, a relentless and often insight-
ful critic of the prevailing “School of Experience”
(empiricism). Largely because of weak health, be-
ginning as early as 1871, he was a near recluse,
though he traveled frequently to the warmer climate
of southern France. A few months before his death,
Bradley was awarded the Order of Merit by King
George V.
154
Bradley’s sole work on moral philosophy is Eth-
ical Studies (1876), a second edition of which, with
additional notes, appeared in 1927; it was reprinted
in 1962 and again in 1988. The work ranges from a
discussion of “the vulgar notion of responsibility”
(which requires, among other things, an enduring
self—something, Bradley claims, the philosophical
theories of both determinism and indeterminism
cannot, to their detriment, allow for) to an account
of the relation between morality and RELIGION (in
which it is said that morality leads into religion and
that no truly religious person can be immoral). In
between, the work contains a negative critique of
both hedonistic UTILITARIANISM and the doctrine of
“duty for duty’s sake” (for both are one-sided or “ab-
stract,” hence, for Bradley, inadequate), and it pre-
sents a spirited defense of self-realizationist ethics,
which finds significant though not final expression
in “my station and its duties.”
Bradley introduces the heart of his ethics in essay
II, “Why Should I Be Moral?” This question, he
claims, is improper because it presupposes, gener-
ally, that whatever is good is good as a means—
hence either everything is good (relative to some-
thing or other) or nothing is good (in itself)—and
because it presupposes, specifically, that being moral
or virtuous is at best good merely as a means to a
nonmoral end—which is repugnant to “the moral
consciousness.” But the question is proper if under-
stood as posing these and similar questions: Is mo-
rality an end in itself? If so, how or in what way?
Are morality and the end for humankind contro-
vertible notions, or is morality only one part, aspect,
or side of the whole end for humanity? The very
formulation of these questions shows that Bradley’s
entrance into ethics is guided more by ARISTOTLE
(384–322 B.C.E.) than by HEGEL (1770–1831),
though once Bradley finds himself within ethics, his
position takes a decidedly Hegelian turn.
The end in itself, Bradley claims, is self-realization.
This end is not something that the moral agent,
through some activity, produces in the sense of a
product that exists outside the agent and outside her
activity (as with, say, a painting by an artist); thus it
is not something that the agent can in turn receive
from without and feel (as states of PLEASURE are).
The end in itself is to be realized in the moral agent
through her activity, such that it may be called an
end “internal to” the activity. In sum, the moral end
is the morally good or virtuous self, or, in the idiom

of KANT (1724–1804), the good will (which is good
through its willing alone). But now, as Bradley sees
it, Kant must be left behind: “Realize yourself” does
not mean merely to “be a whole” in the Kantian
sense, that is, in the sense of consistency (“it is no
human ideal to lead the ‘life of an oyster’”); it is to
“be an infinite whole,” which apparently means (fol-
lowing Hegel’s notion of Sittlichkeit) to become a
member of a social whole such that you desire to do
only what you, as a member of a social whole, ought
to do—in which case, you experience no limit or
restriction from without, this being a central mean-
ing of infinity. In the course of this convoluted bit of
reasoning, Bradley corrects Goethe’s admonition,
“Be a whole or join a whole,” by saying, “You can
not be a whole unless you join a whole.”
As hinted at already, Bradley denies that the self
to be realized is the self presupposed by hedonism
(i.e., the “feeling self”) or the self of the doctrine of
“duty for duty’s sake” (i.e., the purely formal self)
whose “morality” (it is said, following Hegel again)
lacks all matter or content. The self to be realized is,
first of all, the social self, and it is realized (indeed,
it is real) only by carrying out the duties of one’s
station in society. In response to the objection that
this position is “mere rhetoric,” “a bad metaphysical
dream,” because it assumes the “priority” of the state
or society over the individual, Bradley uses his typ-
ical ploy: He argues that this objection presupposes
something—here, the notion of “the individual”—
that cannot be justified—an abstraction, a fiction, a
nonentity. Reference might be made at this point to
Bradley’s distinctive style, which T. S. Eliot (1888–
1965) once called “perfect,” as illustrated perhaps
by these remarks: “The child is not fallen from
heaven”; “he is not born into a desert, but into a
living world.” While jettisoning the notion of the in-
dividual, Bradley also rejects the theory of natural
rights—largely on grounds resembling those of very
recent advocates of VIRTUE ETHICS and communitar-
ian ethics. (It is surprising that these recent move-
ments recognize no significant debt to Bradley.)
Bradley’s account of “my station” can be summed
up in two statements: “To be moral is to live in ac-
cordance with the moral tradition of one’s country”
(which Bradley quotes from Hegel), and, “There is
nothing better than my station and its duties, nor
anything higher or more truly beautiful” (said in re-
sponse to the person who would improve upon the
morality of his society and who, Bradley remarks, is
155
Bradley, F. H.
“already on the threshold of immorality”). But Brad-
ley recognizes the problems and limitations of the
ethics of “my station”; for one thing, the community
of a person may be “in a confused or rotten condi-
tion”; for another, and this statement must be added
to the two cited just above, “You can not confine a
man to his station and its duties.” These thoughts
lead Bradley to the essay on “ideal morality,” which
deals with the nonsocial self, that is, the self that
finds it obligatory to search for beauty and truth:
“Man is not man at all unless social, but man is not
much above the beasts unless more than social.”
Even within “my station” there can occur a level of
morality higher than that of merely carrying out my
duties as a possessor of various stations or roles; it
is (I think) the constant manifestation of a good
moral character in all aspects of life, including (and
these Bradley mentions) eating, sleeping, walking.
(Perhaps he has in mind the idea from Aristotle that
the truly noble man manifests his nobility in even his
gait.)
To the charge that his ethics contradicts absolute
morality (the “right in itself” thesis), thereby making
morality relative and therefore nonexistent, Bradley
counters that “unless morals varied, there could be
no morality”; the ethics of any state in human EVO-
LUTION is justified (hence, in a sense, absolute) for
that state, but to demand an ethics justified for all
ages is futile. Moral philosophy, Bradley stresses, is
not to reform the world but to provide an account
of what, at any given time, morality amounts to. Nor
is it to instruct us as to what is right and wrong in
particular cases: “The decision rests with percep-
tion.” No moral theory, including that of “my sta-
tion,” can eliminate all “collisions of duties,” and to
expect otherwise, Bradley insists, is to be deluded.
Moreover, every act can be considered right and
wrong, since, Bradley notes, from at least one “side”
it can be “subsumed under a good rule” and from at
least one other counted as violating a good rule. (To
point this out to ordinary people, Bradley says, is
likely to “debauch” and “corrupt” them.) Finally, full
realization of the self reaches beyond even “ideal”
morality (within which there is always a “something
to be done”) to religion (where, somewhere and
somehow, “all is done”). This suggests the mystical
notion that the individual self can achieve satisfac-
tion (and become truly “what it is”) only in the
“world self,” the Absolute—but on this note we
have gone far beyond ethics.
Bradley, F. H.
See also: COMMUNITARIANISM; HEGEL; IDEALIST
ETHICS; SELF AND SOCIAL SELF; VIRTUE ETHICS.
Bibliography
Selected Works by Bradley
Appearance and Reality. London, 1893; 2d ed., 1897. Ap-
pearance is contradictory, and reality is consistent, ex-
periential, and all-inclusive (the Absolute).
Collected Essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935.
Essays on Truth and Reality. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1914.
Ethical Studies. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988 [1876].
A reissue of the 1962 edition, edited and introduced
by Richard Wollheim.
Principles of Logic. 2d ed. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1922 [1883]. Bradley attacks traditional subject-
predicate logic and the inductive logic of J. S. Mill.
Works about Bradley
Manser, Anthony, and Guy Stock, eds. The Philosophy of
F. H. Bradley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. Con-
tains two essays explicitly on Bradley’s ethics: one by
David Bell and one by Crispin Wright.
Nicholson, Peter P. The Political Philosophy of the British
Idealists: Selected Studies. New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1990. Defense of Bradley on social mo-
rality and self-realization.
Wollheim, Richard. F. H. Bradley. Baltimore: Penguin
Books, 1959. A very helpful commentary, though only
part of one chapter deals with Bradley’s ethics.
John Atwell
Brandt, Richard B. (1910–1997)
In a series of influential works, Brandt has developed
a sophisticated form of rule-utilitarianism and has
applied it to such topics as ABORTION, SUICIDE, the
rules of war, and welfare rights. This article focuses
on his most systematic work, A Theory of the Good
and the Right (1979).
In his theory of the good, Brandt applies a twist
to the familiar account of a person’s good as the
satisfaction of her desires. He allows only rational
desires to count, where the criterion of rationality is
whether the desire would survive maximum expo-
sure to facts and logic in a process of cognitive psy-
chotherapy. This proposal has two virtues: It dis-
counts most desires based on defective processes of
acquisition, while allowing that the same desire may
156
be rational for one agent and irrational for another.
An unresolved problem is that faulty acquisition of
a desire, and its extinction by exposure to evidence,
will not necessarily go together (e.g., if early trauma
produces an aversion that withstands cognitive
psychotherapy).
Brandt’s theory of the right concerns the moral
code for society that people would choose if fully
rational, in the following sense. Individuals remove
all desires that are irrational according to the cog-
nitive psychotherapy test. Then, while fully aware of,
and attentive to, all relevant information (including
facts about themselves and the INSTITUTIONS of their
society), they choose a common code to live under.
As a utilitarian, Brandt would like to be able to
assert the strong conclusion that a happiness-maxi-
mizing code definitely would emerge from such a
process. But he realizes that persons varying in the
degree or scope of their BENEVOLENCE would not all
arrive at the same code. So he settles for weaker
conclusions: (1) Since impartial benevolence is not
irrational, some people would choose a happiness-
maximizing code. (2) Even pure egoists would ben-
efit from a code containing the familiar happiness-
promoting rules (of, for example, nonaggression);
hence, even they would select a code that overlaps
a happiness-maximizing code in many of its core
elements. (3) Somewhat benevolent people would
choose codes that overlap even more with happiness-
maximizing codes.
Why doesn’t Brandt derive the strong conclusion
by stipulating impartial benevolence as a feature of
those who choose a moral code? He feels that moral
theory should be capable of justifying a code to peo-
ple with various motivations. Showing a code is ra-
tional, in his sense, should incline even an egoist to
favor it. Such a person would not be moved by a
demonstration that the code would be chosen by im-
partially benevolent people.
As it is rational for at least some people to favor
a happiness-maximizing moral code, Brandt outlines
what such a code is like. It consists of a plurality of
rules that are simple enough to be learned, together
with procedures for dealing with conflicts among the
rules. The content of these rules resembles that of
traditional morality, except when certain precepts of
the latter derive from false beliefs or social condi-
tions that no longer hold. Brandt also argues that a
happiness-maximizing code would be economically
egalitarian (because of the declining marginal utility

of income), with departures from EQUALITY allowed
to provide incentives and take care of special NEEDS.
Perhaps the most novel idea here is Brandt’s use
of a pragmatic criterion to deal with rule complexity
and rule conflict. The appropriate level of complex-
ity, and the correct procedure of conflict resolution,
is determined by what would produce the most HAP-
PINESS, given the cognitive and motivational limita-
tions of those who will live under the rules. This
suggestion may solve, for utilitarians, some of the
problems arising from the fact that any act falls un-
der a multitude of accurate descriptions and a mul-
titude of possible rules.
See also: BENEVOLENCE; DESIRE; EXCUSES; GOOD,
THEORIES OF THE; HAPPINESS; IMPARTIALITY; META-
ETHICS; MORAL RULES; NORMS; PSYCHOANALYSIS;
PSYCHOLOGY; RATIONAL CHOICE; SOCIAL CONTRACT;
UTILITARIANISM; WELFARE RIGHTS AND SOCIAL
POLICY.
Bibliography
Selected Works by Brandt
“The Concept of a Moral Right and Its Function.” Journal
of Philosophy 80 (1983): 29–45.
“The Concepts of Obligation and Duty.” Mind 73 (1964):
374–93.
“The Definition of an ‘Ideal Observer’ Theory in Ethics.”
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 15 (1954):
407–13.
Ethical Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1959.
Hopi Ethics: A Theoretical Analysis. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1954.
“Moral Philosophy and the Analysis of Language.” The
Lindley Lecture, Department of Philosophy, University
of Kansas, 1963, pp. 1–24. Published by the Depart-
ment of Philosophy, University of Kansas.
“Rational Desires.” Proceedings and Addresses of the
American Philosophical Association 43 (1970): 43–64.
“Some Merits of One Form of Rule-Utilitarianism.” Uni-
versity of Colorado Studies in Philosophy 3 (1967):
39–65.
A Theory of the Good and the Right. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1979.
“Toward a Credible Form of Utilitarianism.” In Morality
and the Language of Conduct, edited by Hector-Neri
Castañeda and George Nakhnikian, 107–43. Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 1963.
“Traits of Character: A Conceptual Analysis.” American
Philosophical Quarterly 7 (1970): 23–37.
157
Brentano, Franz Clemens
“A Utilitarian Theory of Excuses.” Philosophical Review
78 (1969): 337–61.
“Utilitarianism and the Rules of War.” Philosophy and
Public Affairs 1 (1972): 145–65.
Brandt, Richard, and Jaegwon Kim. “Wants as Explana-
tions of Actions.” Journal of Philosophy 60 (1963):
425–35.
Gregory S. Kavka
Brentano, Franz Clemens
(1838–1917)
A German philosopher and psychologist, Brentano
taught at the universities of Würzburg and Vienna.
His most influential philosophical work was the Psy-
chologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (1874), in
which he emphasized the importance of the concept
of intentionality. His principal ethical writings were
the Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889) and Grund-
legung und Aufbau der Ethik (1952), the latter pub-
lished posthumously.
Brentano’s theory of value is based on the analogy
he believed to hold between intellectual and emotive
phenomena. As did DESCARTES (1596–1650), Bren-
tano assumed that all mental phenomena are di-
rected on the objects of our ideas. We may take an
intellectual stand toward such objects, thereby hav-
ing a belief about them; and we may take an emo-
tional stand toward these objects. In each case, the
attitude is either positive or negative: We may affirm
or deny the object of the idea; and we may love or
hate that object. And the emotive attitudes, like the
intellectual attitudes, may be correct or incorrect.
Brentano’s theory is primarily a theory of intrinsic
value, a theory of what is good or bad “in itself” or
“as an end.” To say that a thing is intrinsically good,
according to him, is to say that it is correct to love
that thing as an end; and to say that a thing is in-
trinsically bad is to say that it is correct to hate that
thing as an end. Brentano believed that we can be
immediately aware of the correctness of certain of
our emotive attitudes, just as we can be immediately
aware of the correctness (i.e., the truth) of certain
of our intellectual attitudes. In each case, the cor-
rectness consists in a relation of appropriateness or
FITTINGNESS between the attitude and its object.
Brentano’s theory of intrinsic value is pluralistic.
He constructed a hierarchy of values in which PLEA-
SURE plays a subordinate role. The only bearers of
intrinsic value, according to Brentano, are conscious
Brentano, Franz Clemens
states. And every conscious state, as a conscious
state, contains some part that is intrinsically good.
Every correct judgment is intrinsically good; so, too,
is every correct emotion and every enrichment of our
intellectual life. Since every intrinsic EVIL is itself a
conscious state, there can be no intrinsic evil that
does not include some intrinsic good. Among the
things that are “predominately bad” are error, pain,
every unjustified act of HATE (especially the hatred
of that which is good), and every unjustified act of
LOVE (especially the love of that which is bad). Sen-
sory pleasure is, as such, intrinsically good.
Brentano stressed the importance of what G. E.
MOORE (1873–1958) was to call “the principle of
organic unities.” Such unities are illustrated by
“pleasure in the bad” and “displeasure in the good.”
The intrinsic value of the whole is not a function
merely of the intrinsic value of its parts. Brentano
appealed to organic unities in dealing with the prob-
lem of evil.
His ethics is based on his theory of value. He for-
mulated the “supreme ethical maxim” this way:
“Choose the best that is attainable.” According to
one plausible interpretation, the maxim tells us that
if the agent is justified in believing that the conse-
quences of his act are intrinsically better than those
of any alternative act, then the act is right.
See also: EMOTIVISM; FITTINGNESS; GOOD, THEORIES
OF THE; INTENTION; VALUE, THEORY OF.
Bibliography
Works by Brentano
The Foundations and Construction of Ethics. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973 [1952].
The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right in Wrong. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969 [1889].
Works about Brentano
Chisholm, Roderick M. Brentano and Intrinsic Value.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Kraus, Oskar. Die Werttheorien: Geschichte und Kritik.
Brünn: Rudolf M. Rohrer, 1937.
McAlister, Linda. The Philosophy of Brentano. London:
Duckworth, 1976.
Roderick M. Chisholm
158
bribery
Bribery has long been a topic of interest to legal
scholars, but serious work on the topic by philoso-
phers is of very recent date.
Analysis of the Concept
The following are all clear instances of bribery:
1. A gambler gives a professional boxer a new
car in exchange for the boxer’s losing a
fight.
2. A defendant pays a judge or juror to decide
a case in her favor.
3. A businessman pays a purchasing agent to
purchase products from his company.
In all of these cases, an individual (the briber) pays
another individual (the bribee) something of value
in exchange for the bribee’s doing something that
violates a special duty or special obligation that at-
taches to an office occupied, or a role or practice
participated in, by the bribee. To be bribed is to ac-
cept a payment that compromises a special duty or
special obligation that one has. Paying someone to
violate a moral duty that holds for all human beings
regardless of their particular circumstances—for ex-
ample, the duty not to murder others—is not an in-
stance of bribery.
All of the philosophers who have proposed defi-
nitions of bribery endorse the outlines of the analysis
sketched above. However, there is considerable dis-
agreement about the nature of the special duties in-
volved in bribery. Some contend that these must be
duties owed to specific third parties for whom one
is an employee or agent. Others contend that the
bribee’s special duties need not be derived from be-
ing the employee or agent of a third party. This dis-
pute about the proper analysis of the concept has
important consequences for the normative assess-
ment of bribery. In nonslave, noncaste societies, peo-
ple assume the duties of office, employment, and
agency of their own FREE WILL. And it is plausible
to claim that one has an implicit promise or contract
to fulfill the duties of one’s office or position.
Any satisfactory account of bribery must be able
to distinguish between bribery and extortion. Very
roughly, extortion involves threatening another with
harm unless she pays one something of value. For
example, the threat by a foreign official to cease do-

ing business with a company unless it pays him large
sums of money is a case of extortion rather than brib-
ery. Many of the payments forbidden by the anti-
bribery provisions of the United States Foreign Cor-
rupt Practices Act constitute extortion payments
rather than bribery payments. Bribery must also be
distinguished from practices that are tantamount to
tipping. In some countries, government officials
and businesspeople expect nominal payments in ex-
change for performing routine tasks (e.g., passing
goods through customs). When such payments are
openly condoned as a means for officials to supple-
ment their incomes, and do not secure special favors
incompatible with the duties attaching to the offi-
cials’ positions, the payments should not be viewed
as bribes but rather as tips.
What’s Wrong with Bribery?
The moral status of accepting a bribery payment
to violate special duties or obligations that one owes
depends crucially on the moral status of the special
duties or obligations in question. In cases in which
one’s special duties derive from one’s voluntary par-
ticipation in offices or roles whose goals are morally
permissible, there are typically several kinds of rea-
sons for thinking it morally wrong to accept bribes
to violate those duties. (1) Violating the duties in
question is tantamount to a breach of promise or
breach of contract. For, by hypothesis, one has vol-
untarily adopted an office or role to which specific
duties attach; one has agreed or consented to fulfill
those duties. (2) Acceptance of the bribes and sub-
sequent failure to fulfill the duties in question often
have very bad consequences. For example, if a busi-
nessperson accepts a bribe to purchase a product or
service that is either inferior to or costlier than some-
thing that he could have purchased, then he is ham-
pering the efficiency of his company. Acceptance of
the bribe also harms the competitors of the firms he
is being paid to favor. The acceptance of bribes by
government officials may lead to such undesirable
consequences as the pollution of the environment,
the endangerment of the health and safety of work-
ers, or the noncollection of taxes. Bribery also has
indirect bad consequences in that it tends to dimin-
ish public TRUST in the political, legal, and/or eco-
nomic system(s).
The moral obligations appealed to here are only
prima facie or presumptive obligations and can be
159
bribery
overturned by weightier moral considerations.
Weighty financial obligations (e.g., the need to fund
life-saving surgery) might override the ordinary pre-
sumption against accepting bribes. Moreover, some
institutional obligations arise within organizations
whose very aims are immoral (e.g., the Gestapo).
The existence of these obligations prompts us to ask
whether there is any kind of prima facie moral duty
to fulfill institutional duties that promote immoral
ends. Does the Gestapo agent who freely promises
to obey the Führer thereby incur a prima facie (albeit
clearly overridden) moral duty to help murder Jews?
The foregoing does not address the moral status
of offering bribes. Bribers sometimes have special
duties and obligations of their own that would be
violated by the offer of a bribe. For example, it might
be contrary to the explicit policies of a person’s em-
ployer to promote sales by offering bribes to pro-
spective buyers. The wrongness of offering a bribe
may also be partly accounted for by something like
the following principle: It is prima facie wrong to
cause or induce another person to do something that
is morally wrong, all things considered. Conversely,
in at least some cases in which it would be morally
permissible, all things considered, for someone to
accept a bribe to do X (e.g., paying a guard in a
concentration camp to allow someone to escape),
there may be no moral presumption whatever
against offering her a bribe to do X.
There are other significant moral questions relat-
ing to bribery; among them are the following: the
moral status of extortion payments and threats, and
the extent (if any) to which the recipients of bribery
payments are morally obligated to do the things they
have been paid to do.
See also: AUTHORITY; BUSINESS ETHICS; COERCION;
CONTRACTS; CORRUPTION; CULTURAL STUDIES; DE-
CEIT; DETERRENCE, THREATS AND RETALIATION;
DUTY AND OBLIGATION; ECONOMIC SYSTEMS; FIDU-
CIARY RELATIONSHIPS; GOVERNMENT, ETHICS IN;
INSTITUTIONS; MULTICULTURALISM; PARTIALITY; PO-
LICE ETHICS; POLITICAL SYSTEMS; PROMISES; RECI-
PROCITY; RESPONSIBILITY.
Bibliography
Carson, Thomas L. “Bribery, Extortion, and ‘The Foreign
Corrupt Practices Act.’” Philosophy and Public Affairs
14 (1985): 66–90. Defends the view that accepting a
bribe involves the violation of an implicit promise or
bribery
agreement. Argues that many of the payments prohib-
ited by the FCPA are extortion payments and questions
the legitimacy of the FCPA’s prohibition on extortion
payments. Includes references to legal scholarship on
the FCPA.
———. “Bribery and Implicit Agreements: A Reply to
Philips.” Journal of Business Ethics 6 (1987): 123–25.
Danley, John. “Toward a Theory of Bribery.” Business and
Professional Ethics Journal 2 (1984): 19–39. Defines
bribery as follows: the offering or giving or promising
to give something of value with the corrupt intent to
induce a person to violate the duties of his or her role
or office. Argues that accepting bribes is not always
prima facie wrong.
DeAndrade, Ken. “Bribery.” Journal of Business Ethics 4
(1985): 239–49. Defends the view that bribery in-
volves the “alienation of agency.”
Donaldson, Thomas, and Patricia Werhane, eds. Ethical
Theory in Business. 3d ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Pren-
tice Hall, 1988. See “Ethics and the Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act” by Mark Pastin and Michael Hooker, pp.
48–53 (argues that many of the payments prohibited
by the FCPA are extortion payments and questions the
legitimacy of the FCPA’s prohibition on extortion pay-
ments); and “Moral Dimensions of the Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act: Comments on Hooker and Pastin” by
Kenneth D. Alpern, pp. 54–59 (argues that the FCPA,
in particular its prohibition of payments which consti-
tute extortion payments rather than bribes, is morally
defensible).
Fremantle, Adam, and Sherman Katz. “The Foreign Cor-
rupt Practices Act Ammendment of 1988.” Interna-
tional Lawyer 23 (1989): 755–67.
Noonan, John T. Bribes. New York: Macmillan, 1984. A
monumental historical study with many interesting an-
ecdotes by a distinguished legal scholar.
Philips, Michael. “Bribery.” Ethics 94 (1984): 621–36.
Defines bribery as follows: “P accepts a bribe from R
if and only if P agrees for payment to act in a manner
dictated by R rather than doing what is required of him
as a participant in his practice.” Argues that accepting
bribes is not always prima facie wrong.
———. “Bribery, Consent and Prima Facie Duty: A Re-
joinder to Carson.” Journal of Business Ethics 6
(1987): 361–64.
Thomas L. Carson
Buber, [Mordekhai] Martin
(1878–1965)
Born in Vienna, Buber was influenced as a child by
the Hasidic mystical piety of joy in the everyday and,
as a student, by Ludwig FEUERBACH’s (1804–1872)
notion of the relation of Ich und Du (I and thou).
Widely learned in languages, he translated Friedrich
160
NIETZSCHE (1844–1900) into Polish and, with
Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929), the Hebrew Bible
into German. His thought underwent development
from a mystical phase stimulated by Meister Eck-
hardt (1260–1327) and by Indian thought, through
German idealism, on to Taoism and existentialism,
ending in the dialogical philosophy of I and Thou
(1923). During the early days of Nazism when Jews
were expelled from the public schools in Germany,
Buber helped develop a separate Jewish educational
system. In 1933 he emigrated to Israel where he
taught and worked for Arab-Jewish unity until his
death.
The central concept of Buber’s thought is con-
tained in the title of his major work: I and Thou (Ich-
Du), a concept he contrasts with the I-It (Ich-Es).
“Thou” suggests something personal, “It” something
impersonal. But the I-Thou relation is not confined
to the interpersonal sphere. For Buber there are also
I-Thou relations possible with things found in nature
and with “spiritual beings” or “forms of the spirit”
(geistige Wesenheiten), the sources and products of
inspiration in the realms of art, philosophy, and
RELIGION.
I-It constitutes the world of orientation which
comprises the everyday world as well as the special
worlds of knowledge, both theoretical and practical,
which are familiar to us. Whatever we meet is fitted
into the framework of what we already know and
evokes routinized responses, each of which involves
only an aspect of our own being. But genuine meet-
ing with a “Thou” involves a call of greater or lesser
depth to reorganize that world. It gathers our whole
self and pours inspiration into the forms the reor-
ganization takes. I-Thou involves respons-ibility, a
capacity to respond to the call to change, to renew,
to convert our attention.
The primordial distance (Urdistanz) characteris-
tic of human beings directs us beyond the functional
circle of the senses and the routinized worlds of un-
derstanding and response to the wholeness of each
thing within the whole of being. This structural fea-
ture of humanness is lived through most deeply
when a meeting with a Thou furnishes a glimpse
through to the eternal Thou. In Genesis, this expe-
rience culminates when each thing is perceived as a
word addressed by JHWH, whose speech makes
things to be.
Ethical RESPONSIBILITY is ultimately linked to
such experience. But in the course of time, the

“Thou shalt” expressed, for example, in the Ten
Commandments, which addresses us personally and
situationally, is transformed into the impersonal and
abstract “One should.” All such ethical abstractions
must be led back to the concrete meeting with the
Thou. When they are not, then “there is nothing that
can so hide from us the face of our fellow-man as
morality can,” just as “religion can hide from us as
nothing else can the face of God.”
See also: EXISTENTIAL ETHICS; FEUERBACH; HISTORY
OF WESTERN ETHICS, 10, 11: NINETEENTH- AND
TWENTIETH-CENTURY CONTINENTAL; INDIA; JEWISH
ETHICS; LEVINAS; MYSTICISM; NIETZSCHE; RELIGION;
RESPONSIBILITY; TAOIST ETHICS.
Bibliography
Works by Buber
Between Man and Man. Translated by R. G. Smith. Bos-
ton: Beacon, 1961 [1936]. A collection of essays, sev-
eral of which deal with ethical themes.
Eclipse of God. New York: Harper, 1952. Contains an im-
portant chapter on religion and ethics.
Good and Evil. New York: Scribner’s, 1953 [1952]. A
biblical exploration.
I and Thou. Translated by W. Kaufmann. New York:
Scribner’s, 1970 [1923]. Buber’s central work.
Der Jude und seine Judentum. Koln: Melzer, 1963. A col-
lection of essays spanning Buber’s career.
The Knowledge of Man. Translated by M. Friedman. New
York: Harper and Row, 1965. Collection of later
essays.
Werke. 3 vols. München: Kosel, 1962–3. I. Schriften zur
Philosophie—II. Schriften zur Bibel—III. Schriften
zum Chassidismus. This and Der Jude contain the texts
selected from the four areas of his completed works
Buber thought worthy of republication.
Works about Buber
Friedman, Maurice. Martin Buber’s Life and Work. 3 vols.
New York: Dutton, 1981–83. Authoritative biography
by the major English translator of Buber’s works.
Friedman, Maurice, and Paul Schilpp, eds. The Philoso-
phy of Martin Buber. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1967.
Essays on Buber’s thought from various perspectives,
with a reply by Buber.
Wood, Robert E. Martin Buber’s Ontology. Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press, 1969. Select commen-
tary on I and Thou drawing on all of Buber’s works.
Robert E. Wood
161
Buddha
Buddha (6th century B.C.E.)
(Also: Gautama Buddha; Siddhārtha; the Enlight-
ened.) The founder of Buddhism, born in the village
of Lumbini, southern Nepal. His personal name was
Siddhārtha, family name Gautama. As the son of a
ruler of the Sākya clan, he was also known as Sāk-
yamuni. Siddhārtha is said to have renounced his
well-to-do life at home at the age of twenty-nine after
becoming aware of suffering in the world, including
the sufferings of old age, sickness, and death. For six
years he wandered the Ganges River Valley studying
traditional religious teachings. For a time he joined
ascetics in their rigorous lifestyle. Later, however, he
repudiated the overelaborate ceremonialism of tra-
ditional religion and discounted both theistic beliefs
in various gods and philosophical commitment to
absolute reality, including concepts of Ātman and
Brahman. For the remaining forty-five years of his
life, he propagated his new Dharma, or truth, and
formed the San̄gha or Buddhist organization and
monastic order.
The Buddha’s main concern was how to remove
suffering and EVIL from life. His teachings aimed to
obtain nirvān. a, or salvation, in a sorrowful world.
During his life he is said to have avoided the discus-
sion of purely theoretical or metaphysical issues. He
sought to enlighten people on the most urgent and
important problems of suffering, its origin, its ces-
sation, and the way leading to its cessation. These
teachings are called the Four Noble Truths of
Buddhism.
The First Noble Truth states that suffering is uni-
versal. All life includes the sufferings of birth, old
age, and DEATH. The Buddha did not deny that we
do experience PLEASURE and HAPPINESS in life, but
he stressed that all things, including happiness, are
conditioned and transitory. In essence, happiness is
also relative and entails unhappiness.
For whatever exists there must be a cause of its
existence. The Second Noble Truth discusses the
causes of suffering. The Buddha pointed out that
suffering has its source in craving and ignorance, an
analysis that has both psychological and epistemo-
logical aspects. These aspects are interrelated: Crav-
ing and ignorance originate interdependently. Hu-
man beings may appear to be free, but in reality they
are bound by blind PASSION and unconscious
DESIRE.
In this analysis, life is suffering, but it is not hope-
Buddha
less. The last two Noble Truths provide the Buddha’s
gospel of HOPE. Since whatever exists would cease
to exist if its cause disappeared, the Third Noble
Truth holds that suffering can be eliminated by elim-
inating craving and ignorance. The extinction of suf-
fering is described as the state of nirvān. a. The
Fourth Noble Truth shows the way leading to the
cessation of suffering. This way is called the Eight-
fold Path and consists of maintaining right view,
right aspiration, right speech, right conduct, right
livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right
concentration. WISDOM, morality, and mental dis-
cipline together lead one to nirvān. a.
Morality plays an important role along the path
to nirvān. a. To become enlightened, one should
speak, act, and live ethically and kindly. Right speech
advises one to shun gossip, slander, harsh words,
and foolish talk. Right conduct teaches the avoid-
ance of killing, stealing, lying, adultery, and intoxi-
cation. Right livelihood means that one should en-
gage in WORK that does not injure other living
beings. The Buddhist is expected to lead a life of
service and loving kindness rather than one focused
on profit and indulgence. This moral life has much
to do with compassionate motivation since external
behavior springs from an inner mental state. So the
enlightened life depends on right effort, right mind-
fulness, and right concentration to purify one’s men-
tal state. Morality, according to the Buddha, is not
merely a matter of EMOTION but has noetic or intel-
lectual aspects; it involves the right view or under-
standing of oneself and the world.
Buddhist ethics counsels against a hedonistic way
of life but does not advocate an ascetic lifestyle. The
Buddha himself tried and abandoned asceticism. In
his first sermon to five mendicants after his enlight-
enment, he taught that devoting oneself to ascetic
practices with an exhausted body only made the
mind more confused. It would not even produce a
worldly knowledge. The Buddha compared asceti-
cism to trying to light a lamp with water; there
would be no chance of dispelling the darkness. The
Eightfold Path is truly a middle way, which re-
nounces the extremes of both HEDONISM and
asceticism.
Buddhism as the middle way became very impor-
tant in different parts of Asia after the Buddha’s
death. Early Buddhism developed in a scholastic di-
rection and then into Mahāyāna (Great Vehicle)
Buddhism. During this historical expansion, Sid-
162
dhārtha Gautama was mythologized and even dei-
fied. The question, “Who was the Buddha?” has
arisen. Was he a man or a divine being, and does he,
even today, represent absolute reality?
Different Buddhists have held different view-
points. Hı̄nayāna or Theravāda Buddhists showed a
tendency to portray the Buddha, even during his
early life, as going beyond the phenomenal into the
transcendental realm and as a transcendent figure.
With the rise of Mahāyāna Buddhism, the Buddha
was regarded both philosophically and religiously as
supramundane and transcendent. The Buddha is
said to have a threefold body, termed Trikāya. The
three bodies are described as the body of truth or
Dharmakāya; the body of bliss or Sambhogakāya;
and the body of transformation, Nirmānakāya.
When the Buddha is viewed as a man, he is the Nir-
mānakāya, the historical Siddhārtha Gautama who
was born at Lumbini. When the Buddha is viewed
as divinely enlightened, he is the Sambhogakāya, a
teacher to the bodhisattvas to help them in their
work of saving sentient beings. And when viewed
from a metaphysical and universal point of view, he
is the transcendent Dharmakāya, ultimate reality.
The historical Buddha is understood as the incar-
nation of the transcendent Buddha who takes incar-
nations for the salvation of sentient beings. Ulti-
mately, certain Buddhists believe, everything in the
world, although distinct in nature and activity, is one
in essence and manifests Buddha’s nature.
See also: BUDDHIST ETHICS; DESIRE; EMOTION; EVIL;
HAPPINESS; HEDONISM; HOPE; PAIN AND SUFFERING;
PASSION; RELIGION; THEISM; WISDOM.
Bibliography
Ch’en, Kenneth K. S. Buddhism, the Light of Asia. Wood-
bury, NY: Barron’s Educational Series, 1968.
Cheng, Hsueh-li. Empty Logic: Mādhyamika Buddhism
from Chinese Sources. New York: Philosophical Li-
brary, 1984; 2d ed., Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1991.
Conze, Edward. Buddhism, Its Essence and Development.
New York: Harper and Row, 1951.
De Bary, William Theodore, ed. The Buddhist Tradition in
India, China and Japan. New York: Random House,
1969.
Jayatilleke, K. N. The Message of the Buddha. Edited by
Ninian Smart. New York: Free Press, 1975.
Kalupahana, David J. Buddhist Philosophy: A Historical
Analysis. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1976.

Rahula, Walpola. What the Buddha Taught. New York:
Grove Press, 1959.
Robinson, Richard H. Buddhist Religion. Belmont, CA:
Dickenson, 1970.
Thomas, E. J. The Life of the Buddha as Legend and His-
tory. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949.
Hsueh-li Cheng
Buddhist ethics
I. Ethics seems to have played a more important role
in Buddhism than in many other world religions. Un-
like Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, Buddhism
does not believe in the existence of a god as the cre-
ator and governor of all things. Buddhist scriptures
seldom discuss divine providence or the problem of
creation. For Buddhists, salvation or nirvān. a rests
not so much with divine mediation as with human
effort. Human beings will be responsible for what
they do and will reap what they sow. Moral culti-
vation, rather than faith, worship, and sacrifice to a
supreme being, dictates human destiny. Moral dis-
cipline and practice are at the core of Buddhism,
whose message is succinctly stated as “Avoid evil,
do good and purify the mind: this is the teaching of
the Buddhas” (Dhammapada, verse 183).
So, to be a Buddhist is to be a moral person. A
good person, according to the Buddha, should ob-
serve five basic precepts: (1) do not kill, (2) do not
steal, (3) do not commit adultery, (4) do not speak
falsely, and (5) do not take intoxicating liquors.
These are the minimal requirements for a lay Bud-
dhist to follow. Their perfect observance is seen as
a storehouse of virtue.
The first four Buddhist precepts are similar to the
last four of the Ten Commandments in the Christian
Bible; they are also found in Hindu moral law. All
these religions teach that religious men should live
lives pure of heart and honest of INTENTION. They
urge us to avoid indulgence in sensory pleasures and
urge us to be kind to our fellows. However, Buddhist
morality seems to have treasured the value of life
much more than Christian and HINDU ETHICS. Most
religions have encouraged believers to sacrifice and
offer animals as a part of religious worship. But in
Buddhism, loving kindness is not limited to human
beings, but is extended to all sentient beings. Fore-
most among Buddhist virtues is to abstain from tak-
ing any animal or human life.
163
Buddhist ethics
To be a moral person, one should be attentive to
good deeds. But taking intoxicating liquors may
cause mental confusion and sluggishness, and some-
times physical violence. Therefore the fifth precept
warns against intoxication. This precept concerns
the soundness of both bodily and mental states.
From an unsound psychological state, good behavior
can scarcely result. Today, alcohol and drugs are of-
ten at the root of crime in society. Buddhism is
keenly aware of these problems and asks its adher-
ents to refrain from alcohol and drugs.
These five precepts are obligatory for most Bud-
dhists; they are duties all Buddhist laymen ought to
observe. Their practice is not without utilitarian
benefits in the Buddhist understanding. In the first
place, the virtuous person may be able to obtain
great wealth through his industry. Second, the rep-
utation of his deeds will spread abroad. Third, what-
ever society he enters, he enters confident and self-
possessed. Fourth, he will die without anxiety.
According to some Buddhist schools, he will be re-
born in the heavenly realm after DEATH. Thus there
is a fivefold benefit for the moral person who prac-
tices virtue.
In addition to the five precepts, there are many
more precepts to be followed by the serious Buddhist.
They are designed to bring the Buddhist nearer to the
ideal of religious life. The monk or bhikkhu has to
observe 227 precepts. Generally speaking, these pre-
cepts aim at simplifying life. Living a simple life, one
will not be distracted by worldly affairs and can de-
vote oneself whole-heartedly to spiritual discipline.
Laymen are encouraged to live more like monks by
observing some of these precepts, such as (1) absti-
nence from taking life; (2) abstinence from taking
what is not given; (3) abstinence from sexual un-
cleanness; (4) abstinence from speaking falsely;
(5) abstinence from drinking intoxicating liquors;
(6) abstinence from eating at forbidden times; (7) ab-
stinence from dancing, singing, playing music, and
seeing shows; (8) abstinence from using garlands,
perfumes, unguents, or taking a high seat. While the
Buddhist layman should keep the five precepts
throughout his life, he may follow these eight pre-
cepts on particular occasions. The eighth, four-
teenth, and fifteenth days of every half lunar month
are considered to be holy days. During these holy
times the Buddhist layman might fast or take no
meals after noon; refrain from dancing, singing,
and seeing shows; and avoid using garlands, per-
Buddhist ethics
fumes, or taking a high seat. Those actions are be-
lieved to make ordinary persons as holy as religious
men.
In Buddhism moral actions depend on the mind;
they depend on motive as well as the ACTION itself.
The Buddhist moral code is designed for the entire
person. Several precepts concern talking, and sev-
eral others, attitude. For example, (1) do not lie,
(2) do not slander, (3) do not abuse, (4) do not talk
foolishly, (5) do not be covetous, (6) do not be ma-
licious, and (7) do not be skeptical or harbor erro-
neous ideas. Thus the moral person would avoid
slander, harsh speech, frivolous chatter, covetous-
ness, malevolence, and error.
Buddhists have grouped the various transgres-
sions found in human activity into three groups.
There are four sins of speech (lying, abuse, slander,
and idle talk), three sins of the body (murder, theft,
and adultery), and three sins of mind and thought
(covetousness, hatred, and error). Silent meditation
is regarded as an effective way to avoid these trans-
gressions. In meditation one controls one’s breath,
body, mind, and thought, and hence the ten trans-
gressions would not occur.
Of all transgressions, covetousness or craving is
considered the most monstrous. It is called the EVIL
of all evils, and is said to be the root cause of suf-
fering. The elimination of this evil amounts to extin-
guishing all the others. One who is free from craving
is a Buddha, and an extinction of covetousness is
another name for nibbāna. For the Buddhists, at-
tachment is the source of wrongdoing, while detach-
ment and the elimination of DESIRE and craving lead
to goodness.
II. Since desire or craving is the root cause of evil,
feeling or EMOTION has an important place in ethics.
But for Buddhists, morality is not merely a matter of
feeling. In Buddhist ethics, PSYCHOLOGY and epis-
temology are intimately related. How one behaves
depends on how and what one thinks as well as what
one feels. Moral judgment is not merely an expres-
sion of emotion, but has cognitive elements. The in-
timate relation between ethics and understanding is
such that “From morality comes wisdom and from
wisdom morality . . . Like washing one hand with
the other . . . so is morality washed round with wis-
dom and wisdom with morality” (Digha-nikāya, I.
124).
A righteous or good person, according to the
Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path, will first have right
164
view and right thought. Secular people may live he-
donistic lifestyles because they believe sensory plea-
sures are valuable. They do not know that the more
they pursue their cravings, the more suffering they
will experience. They become the slaves of their pas-
sions and desires.
On the other hand, traditional Hindus live the
ascetic life, failing to realize that worldly things are
not without value. The ideal religious life, for the
Buddha, should be as simple as possible, but it
should not be equated with rigorous asceticism.
Goodness is not the same as renouncing one’s ma-
terial welfare. One should recognize and treasure
the value of human life and HAPPINESS. For the Bud-
dha, what is good (kusala) is what is wholesome and
can contribute to the happiness, welfare, and free-
dom of human beings.
Realizing the value of life and happiness, the Bud-
dha advocated a middle way in moral behavior,
avoiding the extremes of self-indulgence and self-
mortification. For him, certain actions are good and
ought to be undertaken because they lead to detach-
ment and produce happiness, welfare, and freedom.
On the other hand, some actions are bad and ought
not to be done because they will lead to attachment
and are conducive to suffering and ill health.
The Buddhist lifestyle as a middle way is based
on understanding that a human being is neither
merely a physical body nor merely a spiritual sub-
stance (ātman). For the Buddha, the ethical ques-
tion, “What should one do?” was really related to
the epistemic awareness of what a human being is
or “Who am I?” In looking for the ideal way of life,
he devoted himself to apprehending the essence of
existence. For him, a most common false view
among religious men was the belief that there is an
abiding and eternal soul in man, which persists
through physical change, exists before birth and af-
ter death, and remains from one life to another. In
traditional Indian religion this spiritual entity is
known as ātman. It is believed to exist apart from
our bodily senses and is the real essence of humans.
The ultimate goal of traditional Indian religious life
is to seek and care for this permanent soul. What is
most real and valuable is spirit, and salvation means
to free the soul from its bondage to the material
world. Asceticism, for the Buddha, is the outcome
of this false viewpoint.
The Buddha claimed that nothing has selfhood,
that ātman is illusory. One should not foolishly live

for the illusory soul. When asked whether the soul
was identical with the body and whether saints exist
after death, he remained silent. Those questions
were, according to the Buddha, meaningless. They
were as senseless as the question, “In which direc-
tion has the fire which has run out of fuel gone—
east or west, north or south?” The question is non-
sensical because it assumes that fire is a separate
entity which can exist without fuel. Just as there can-
not be fire without fuel, so it is unintelligible to in-
vestigate whether the soul is identical with the body
and whether saints exist after death. These questions
illegitimately assume a soul which is a separate
entity.
The Buddha urged one to discard popular reli-
gious notions based on the idea of the immortal soul.
His ethics was concerned neither with a belief in
God nor with the immortal soul. He sought to en-
lighten people on the practical and urgent problem
of suffering in life. His morality concerns suffering
in the sense that what is bad leads to suffering, and
what is good leads to the elimination of suffering.
Moral judgment, for a Buddhist, is not merely an
expression of emotion. Ethics comes from correctly
apprehending the nature of man and the world. Eth-
ical terms and concepts, according to Buddhists, are
cognizable and definable. There are criteria for
moral decisions. Early Buddhist scriptures gave
these definitions: “Whatever action, bodily, verbal,
or mental, leads to suffering for oneself, for others
or for both, that action is bad. Whatever action,
bodily, verbal or mental, does not lead to suffering
for oneself, for others or for both, that action is
good” (Majjhima-nikāya, I).
As a general moral principle, Buddhists who de-
cide to do something may ask whether their action
meets this standard. For instance, one should know
that traditional asceticism is bad or wrong because
it brings suffering to oneself by tormenting oneself.
Therefore it ought to be rejected. Killing brings suf-
fering to others by taking away their lives. So one
should not kill. Indulgence in desire and mere sen-
sory pleasure ultimately harms oneself and may also
cause others to suffer, and hence is bad. Therefore
an ethics based on HEDONISM would be repudiated.
III. As we have seen, Buddhist precepts are ex-
pressed in negative forms; e.g., abstinence from kill-
ing, lying, or stealing. The Buddhist moral life as a
middle path is also described in negative ways, for
example, rejecting both self-indulgence and self-
165
Buddhist ethics
mortification. Buddhism advises one to eliminate all
cravings. Thus, Buddhist morality seems at first to
be an ethics of withdrawal and negativity. But the
negative ethical expressions and statements of Bud-
dhism really have positive moral connotations.
Viewed logically, the negative and positive ethical
expressions in Buddhism often embody the same
moral principle. The negative prohibition is also a
statement of a positive virtue. For instance, killing
is wrong because saving life is right and good; lying
is wicked because telling the truth is right and good;
and so on. Avoiding evil really involves doing good
in Buddhism. Therefore, one who avoids the ten
transgressions engages in the ten good actions.
Also, if not taking what is not given is a virtue,
then giving what one has is also a virtue; if not
speaking falsely is a virtue, then speaking truthfully
is a virtue. While the moral discipline of Buddhism
causes one to abstain from doing evil, it nourishes
positive moral attitudes, especially LOVE and com-
passion for others. In Buddhism the cultivation of
morality performs this function not merely because,
logically, the negative and positive precepts may re-
fer to the same principle, but also because the VIR-
TUES are manifestations of right mind and right
body. Morality is not viewed abstractly, and ulti-
mately it comes from within. A person with whole-
some thoughts, a healthy body and pure mind will
not harm himself or others, and will naturally be-
have appropriately in his dealings with others. A
moral action becomes a negative and positive ad-
venture to display these qualities in one’s life.
Besides right view and right thought, the Noble
Eightfold Path advises one to cultivate right speech,
right action, and right livelihood in daily life. But
these good aspects cannot be achieved unless they
spring from a right mental state. Therefore, the No-
ble Eightfold Path teaches right effort, right mind-
fulness, and right concentration. Thus, WISDOM
(prajñā), conduct (śila), and mental discipline (sa-
mādhi) should all be cultivated at the same time.
One cannot be obtained without the others. In Bud-
dhist ethics, fact, value, and behavior are interre-
lated. How one behaves depends on how one un-
derstands and feels. A virtuous action is an outcome
of wisdom and meditative exercise.
IV. Both philosophically and historically, Bud-
dhism has been divided into Theravāda, or Hı̄na-
yāna, and Mahāyāna schools. The division partly
stems from differences of outlook on such issues as
Buddhist ethics
whether the merits of moral behavior are transfer-
able to others, what the ideally moral person can
achieve, and how moral life ultimately relates to
spiritual life. Ethical differences in the two schools
reflect different metaphysical views about who the
Buddha was, what nibbāna ought to be, and how
saṁsāra, this mundane world, is related ontologi-
cally to nibbāna. There are also different epistemo-
logical understandings of the nature and function of
prajñā.
Generally speaking, conservative Theravāda Bud-
dhists hold that one can cultivate and accumulate
only one’s own merits; no merit for moral behavior
is transferable to others, even though morality
means to love or be compassionate toward others.
Theravādins maintain that only oneself will reap the
reward of one’s karma, good or evil. One has to
achieve enlightenment and nibbāna by oneself, how-
ever strenuous the effort may be. In this task SYM-
PATHY and compassion are of no avail. Thus a moral
person should love others, and yet cannot help them
obtain salvation. For Theravāda Buddhists, there is
only one historical Buddha, who is the founder of
Buddhism, and everyone should follow and imitate
his good deeds. The ideal that a moral person can
achieve is the life of arahant, a good disciple of the
Buddha who obtains salvation for himself by his
own effort.
According to Theravāda Buddhism, saṁsāra, or
this world as we know it, is ontologically different
from nibbāna. Saṁsāra is the world of relative con-
cerns, and nibbāna the world of absolute transcen-
dent value. The chief goal of a Buddhist life is not
to be attached to saṁsāra, but to enter into nibbāna,
the supremely good. In the process of transforming
from saṁsāra to nibbāna, one needs morality. One
should avoid evil, do good, and purify the mind.
Gradually, one will be able to achieve the virtues of
loving kindness, compassion, joyful sympathy, and
equanimity. Once there is equanimity, the concern
for moral intentions begins to disappear. After en-
tering into nibbāna, one goes beyond morality, be-
yond cultivating precepts. Nibbāna is seen as a state
of peace, happiness, and deathlessness. It is de-
scribed as unborn, unoriginated, uncreated, and un-
formed, and it can be realized only by those who
have passed beyond distinctions between existence
and nonexistence.
In search for nibbāna, each person must travel
the way for himself, beginning with the practice of
166
the plain moralities up to the supramundane state
beyond good and evil. By his own effort, the truly
spiritual person attains the nibbānic life. He is said
to have reached the mental condition where there is
no consciousness of moral, aesthetic, or logical dis-
tinctions. Conventional ideas of good and bad, beau-
tiful and ugly, valid or invalid, are no longer part of
his thought and action. Thus, for Theravāda Bud-
dhists, the saintly life is almost amoral in nature.
Later liberal Mahāyāna Buddhists advocate that
there is not just one Buddha but many. Ontologically,
everyone has buddha-nature, and hence in principle
each person can become a buddha. One of the dis-
tinctive characteristics of Buddhahood is compas-
sion. The ideal is to become not merely an arahant
but a bodhisattva, a buddha-to-be, who has great
compassion for the world of mortals, and after at-
taining salvation for himself, helps others attain sal-
vation. In Mahāyāna Buddhism compassion (ka-
run. ā) does not merely mean that one should be
kindly to others, but also that one should sacrifice
oneself to assist others in achieving enlightenment
and nirvān. a. Unlike an arahant, a bodhisattva
would not seclude himself in the blissful state of nir-
vān. a. Instead he would remain in this sorrowful
world helping liberate beings from the bondage of
ignorance and suffering, because he knows that the
merits of good deeds can be transferred to others
and also because he wishes to turn over (parivarta)
his own good KARMA toward relieving the evil and
suffering in the world.
What is important in the bodhisattva’s life is to
exemplify the Buddha or buddha-nature. The Bud-
dha here is often understood as the buddha-mind or
the mind of enlightenment (bodhicitta). Ethically
speaking, it is a compassionate or unselfish mind.
With this mind, the bodhisattva sacrifices himself
for the sake of sentient beings.
Metaphysically, karun. ā is considered to spring
naturally from the inner heart of a human being. A
moral life manifests and activates this innate human
nature, and hence the self-sacrifice of a bodhisattva
is not harmful to himself, but rather fulfills his hu-
manity. For Mahāyāna Buddhists, this understand-
ing is not a dogmatic assertion, nor is it an expres-
sion of emotion. Epistemologically, karun. ā is the
outcome of an unattached insight (prajñā) that all
things are interdependent and hence are devoid of
own being or selfhood. It is the practice of this wis-
dom that if the interest of the whole is protected, the

interest of an individual will be preserved, and that
if it is right to promote one’s own goodness, it is also
right to promote the goodness of others. As prajñā
helps people realize the emptiness of the self, human
beings will be emptied of egoistic motives and will
love one another. Therefore, karun. ā is really the
practicing side of prajñā, and prajñā is the cognitive
element of karun. ā. A bodhisattva should possess
both these virtues.
Unlike Theravāda Buddhists, Mahāyāna Bud-
dhists do not make a sharp distinction between saṁ-
sāra and nirvān. a. The main purpose of their moral
discipline is not to stay away from the samsaric
world and to enter into an other worldly state. Ma-
hāyāna ethics is a middle way between the alterna-
tives of a strictly samsaric life and a strictly nirvanic
life. For Mahāyānists, to view samsāra as the only
world is an extreme; to view nirvān. a as the only
reality is also an extreme. According to Mahāyānism,
saṁsāra is nirvān. a, and vice versa. The spiritual
person lives within both worlds. A true Buddhist
monk will not forget to perform the routine duties
of his daily affairs in this world. After enlighten-
ment, the spiritual person still belongs to this world.
In Zen Buddhism, which is a branch of Mahāyāna,
“Everyday-mindedness is Tao” and “Every day is a
good day.”
Sometimes Mahāyāna masters claim that one
should go beyond good and evil, but they are not
abandoning morality. What they are discarding is ab-
stract conceptualization and a legalistic practice of
moral virtue. These teachings aim to free one from
intellectual and emotional attachments to many
things, including conventional moral values. Pai-
chang (749–814), a great Zen master, taught “to
cling to nothing, to crave for nothing.” He said,
“When you forget the good and the nongood, the
worldly life and the religious life and all other dhar-
mas, and permit no thoughts relating to them to
arise, and when you abandon body and mind—then
there is complete freedom.” This freedom, according
to Pai-chang, leads to moral practice which is spon-
taneous and creative.
An enlightened man will not ignore karmic con-
sequence, or cause and effect; he will value life in
his daily works, including labor. Pai-chang himself
set an example of this and lived by the simple and
dynamic principle of “A day without work—a day
without eating.” He is said to have continued to
work on a farm even at an advanced age. When his
167
Buddhist ethics
disciples, out of respect for his age and concerned
for his welfare, hid away his tools, he would not eat
until he could work again. Thus, Zen Buddhism is
sometimes said to embody a work ethic.
V. Most Theravāda and Mahāyāna schools stress
the importance of moral discipline and place confi-
dence in human ability to obtain salvation by WORK.
But in fact, many sentient beings are weak morally.
Although they determine to do good and are willing,
they often still have failings. How many people can
be perfect? If the Buddha-mind is a compassionate
mind, is there not an easier and better way for or-
dinary sentient beings to achieve nirvān. a? Pure
Land Buddhism, a new Mahāyāna school estab-
lished in China during the sixth century, has ques-
tioned the validity of traditional Theravāda and Ma-
hāyāna ethics and ideals. Pure Land Buddhists
contend that traditional Theravāda and some Ma-
hāyāna Buddhist schools are too optimistic about
mankind and fail to see the weakness of the human
mind.
Prajñā and karun. ā are indeed good and great vir-
tues. But how many people are wise and compas-
sionate enough to persevere them? Might Buddhism
then become a religion of a sage and elite? To be
sure, Mahāyāna Buddhism regards the merit of a
pure life as transferable, but still, how many will be
able to transfer their wisdom to all sentient beings?
Moreover, if a moral life is a life of doing good and
avoiding evil, one would tend to worry over one’s
actions—are they good or evil, right or wrong?
This would make the spiritual life tense or even
despairing.
Pure Land Buddhists claim that the compassion-
ate Buddha taught a way other than the practice of
moral precepts to achieve nirvān. a. For them, all
Buddhist teachings can be classified into the difficult
way and the easy way. The so-called difficult way is
to obtain salvation by moral discipline, and the easy
way is to receive salvation by faith or devotion.
NĀGĀRJUNA (c. 113–213) is said to have discovered
the Buddha’s original teaching of the way of faith,
and has been revered as the First Patriarch of Pure
Land Buddhism.
It is debatable whether Nāgārjuna, who founded
the Mādhyamika School of Mahāyāna Buddhism,
advocated the easy way of faith. But Nāgārjuna did
question the validity of the traditional principle of
karma, cause and effect. He argued for the empty
nature of all things, including good, evil, right, and
Buddhist ethics
wrong. Both traditional Hindu and Buddhist ethics
assume the doctrine of karma. According to this
doctrine, an individual’s present existence is the ef-
fect of the past, and the future will be the effect of
the present. All beings are born again and again in
different spheres of life, driven by karmic forces. As
similar have similar effects, and vice versa, good
deeds must produce good results, and bad deeds
must have negative consequences.
The universal principle of causation and karma
is, Nāgārjuna argued, neither rationally justifiable
nor empirically verifiable. Necessary connections be-
tween good deeds and rewards, and bad deeds and
PUNISHMENT cannot be intelligently established.
Universal causal laws and karmic forces can be un-
derstood as subjective projections of the mind. From
the conventional standpoint, there is causality, right
and wrong, but ultimately notions of karma, good
and evil, and right and wrong are all empty. Nāgār-
juna contended that all conceptual views are erro-
neous. The truth is not any one right view, but rather
the absence of views. Prajñā, to Nāgārjuna’s under-
standing, is the avoidance of such conceptualization.
Nāgārjuna’s philosophy of emptiness as the re-
pudiation of any system of views seemed to suggest
that our reason and effort could not be used to know
the mystery of the world, or to find true wisdom and
obtain nirvān. a. Ultimately, it might not only be er-
roneous but also nonsensical to try to do good and
avoid evil. Although Nāgārjuna was not the direct
founder of Pure Land movement, his critical ap-
proach did provide a philosophical foundation for
T’an-luan (476–524), a great Chinese Pure Land
master, who condemned the idea of salvation by self-
effort and who reevaluated the meaning of tradi-
tional Buddhist virtues.
For T’an-luan and his followers, practitioners of
the difficult path of self-power appear to be moral
in life, but are actually insensitive to actual situa-
tions and to the needs of common people who are
often unable to follow moral precepts. Further, some
spiritual practitioners become confident and proud
about their religious life, until they are arrogant. Al-
though such practitioners claim to have eliminated
ego-clinging, they have cultivated their own egos. In
this sense, their ethics could become unethical.
For T’an-luan, the Buddha’s dharma taught that
even people who have committed the most desperate
evil can be saved. Salvation for this school lies not
so much in observing moral precepts as in calling on
168
the name of Amida Buddha. Pure Land Buddhists
proclaim that even wicked persons can be emanci-
pated from a burden of sin by reciting the name of
Amida Buddha. Thus Nembutsu (Nien-to), reciting
the name of Amida Buddha, has become the most
important activity in Pure Land Buddhist ethics.
This simple act treasures and displays the virtues of
sympathy, repentance, gentleness, and loving kind-
ness. For Shan-tao (613–681), a prominent Chinese
Pure Land master, Buddhists are not the saints who
diligently observe moral precepts, but those who sin-
cerely believe that they are sinful, lowly persons, al-
ways involved in error and shut off from salvation.
This new Buddhist ethics has been popular not
only in China, but it has been a major movement in
Japan since the twelfth century. Shinran (1173–
1262), a founder of the Japanese Jodo-Shin school,
claimed that reciting Nembutsu should be regarded
neither as an act of moral practice nor as a means
to salvation. It is rather an outcome of salvation.
According to Shinran, mankind appears to be intel-
ligent and virtuous in outward behavior, but in-
wardly is deluded with desire, hatred, and igno-
rance. Human nature is really unable to distinguish
right from wrong, and although there are claims for
little deeds of love and compassion, many strive
mainly for name and gain. Any rigorous religious
discipline is therefore futile because it cannot sub-
due this faulty nature. It is only through the power
and grace of Amida Buddha that an individual can
enter into nirvān. a. Salvation is Amida Buddha’s gift.
Nembutsu is an expression of our GRATITUDE for the
compassion and MERCY of Amida Buddha.
In the truest sense, religious life is not a life of
doing only good, avoiding evil, and purifying the
mind. It also means acknowledging one’s ignorance
and desire, appreciating others’ kindness, and ex-
pressing gratitude. A Buddhist does not constantly
struggle after moral EXCELLENCE, and Buddhist
ethics does not seek to force people to perform im-
possible tasks of perfection. The Buddha’s dharma
proclaims that although saṁsāra is inherently suf-
fering, there is also in this world HOPE, mercy, kind-
ness and nirvān. a. Thus the virtuous characteristics
of a Buddhist life are HUMILITY, FORGIVENESS, loving
kindness, faith, perseverance, and joy.
See also: BUDDHA; CAUSATION AND RESPONSIBILITY;
CHINA; DESIRE; EGOISM; EMOTION; ENVY; FORGIVE-
NESS; HEDONISM; HINDU ETHICS; HUMILITY; INDIA;

JAPAN; KARMA; MERCY; NĀGĀRJUNA; NEO-STOICISM;
PAIN AND SUFFERING; PASSION; PSYCHOLOGY; RELI-
GION; STOICISM; SYMPATHY; WISDOM; WORK.
Bibliography
Anesaki, M. “Ethics and Morality (Buddhist).” S.v., vol. 5
Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, edited by James
Hastings, 447–55. Edinburgh: Clark, 1961.
Bloom, Alfred. Shinran’s Gospel of Pure Grace. Tucson:
University of Arizona Press, 1977.
Cheng, Hsueh-li. Exploring Zen. New York: Peter Lang,
1991 and 1996.
Jayatilleke, K. N. The Message of the Buddha. New York:
Free Press, 1975.
King, Winston L. In Hope of Nibbāna: An Essay on Ther-
avāda Buddhist Ethics. LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1964.
Saddhatisa, Hammalawa. Buddhist Ethics. London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1987.
Tachibana, S. The Ethics of Buddhism. London: Curzon
Press, 1975.
Wijesekara, O. H. de A. “Buddhist Ethics.” In Pathways
of Buddhist Thought, edited by Nyanaponika Mahath-
era. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1971.
Hsueh-li Cheng
Burke, Edmund (1729–1797)
Statesman and philosopher. Born in Ireland, Burke
moved to England in 1750. In 1757, he published
an important treatise on aesthetics, A Philosophical
Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime
and the Beautiful. He entered Parliament in 1765
and became famous for his eloquent attacks on mo-
narchical power and governmental policies, espe-
cially those toward the American colonists. He also
denounced the Protestant Ascendancy over the
Catholics in Ireland and sought to have Warren Has-
tings (1732–1818) impeached for his mistreatment
of the peoples of India. In November 1790, he pub-
lished his most famous work, Reflections on the Rev-
olution in France, an elaborate and impassioned at-
tack on the French Revolution.
Burke is the preeminent conservative thinker of
the English-speaking world. He has been identified
with both the utilitarian and natural law traditions.
Elements of both are present in his thought. How-
ever, he was a politician who believed that, although
policies should be based on principles, abstract the-
ory could be dangerous if applied directly to prac-
tical problems. Consequently, although his political
169
Burke, Edmund
ideas exhibit a broad consistency, he did not produce
a systematic political philosophy.
The principles of true politics, Burke held, were
those of morality enlarged. There were no discov-
eries to be made in morals, and natural sentiment
was a better guide to good conduct than refined rea-
soning. In the Reflections, Burke emphasized natu-
ral sentiments of respect for AUTHORITY; but he also
believed it was natural for the oppressed to resent
their OPPRESSION and therefore that it was unwise
as well as unjust for rulers not to respect the RIGHTS
of the ruled.
Burke defended ‘rational’ LIBERTY and ‘real’
rights while denouncing claims to absolute liberty
and universal rights, which he attributed to the
French revolutionaries. People were entitled to
rights in virtue of their belonging to society, and
therefore their rights had to be restricted, balanced,
and subordinated to certain social goods, such as
order and wise government, which were precondi-
tions of real liberty. Also, all humans are sinners,
moved by antisocial passions, and for these reasons,
too, their liberty had to be restrained.
Burke’s CONSERVATISM had an epistemological
basis. He believed that individuals could achieve lit-
tle WISDOM or virtue on the basis of their own rea-
son. Virtue required knowledge, but the kind of
knowledge that came primarily from practical ex-
perience. The greatest stock of wisdom available to
politicians had accumulated through the collective
experience of many generations as they confronted
practical problems. This wisdom was embodied in
custom and established INSTITUTIONS. Such institu-
tions were necessarily imperfect because they were
slow to adapt to changing circumstances. Reform
was therefore sometimes appropriate, but it should
always be addressed to real rather than to specula-
tive grievances. Institutions should not be judged by
their degree of conformity to abstract principles and,
when practically defective, should be corrected with
caution and respect.
Burke has been admired by persons of diverse
ideological inclinations for his rhetoric, for his in-
sights into human nature and politics, and, as a con-
sequence of the tendency of the French and later
revolutions to lead to tyrannical rule, for his analysis
of revolutionary politics. His lack of interest in the
systematic exploration of fundamental philosophical
problems has led to his failure generally to be placed
in the first rank of philosophers.
Burke, Edmund
See also: AUTHORITY; CONSERVATISM; LIBERALISM;
NATURAL LAW; OPPRESSION; PRACTICAL WISDOM;
REVOLUTION; RIGHT HOLDERS; RIGHTS; SOCIAL AND
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY; THEORY AND PRACTICE;
UTILITARIANISM.
Bibliography
Works by Burke
There is no satisfactory edition of Burke’s complete works.
The following editions are those most commonly used
by scholars.
The Correspondence of Edmund Burke. Edited by Tho-
mas W. Copeland. 10 vols. Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1958–78. A splendid edition of Burke’s correspon-
dence.
Reflections on the Revolution in France. Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, 1969 [1790]. An inexpensive edition
of Burke’s most important political work.
The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke. 12
vols. Boston: Little Brown, 1881.
The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke. Edited by
Paul Langford. 5 vols. to date. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1981–.
Works about Burke
Ayling, Stanley. Edmund Burke: His Life and Opinions.
London: John Murray, 1988. Biography.
Canavan, Francis P. The Political Reason of Edmund
Burke. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1960.
Emphasizes “prudence” as key concept of Burke’s
thought.
Chapman, Gerald W. Edmund Burke: The Practical Imag-
ination. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967.
Burke’s response to practical problems.
Cobban, Alfred. Edmund Burke and the Revolt against the
Eighteenth Century. 2d ed. Reprint. London: Allen and
Unwin, 1960. Burke linked with Romantic movement.
Courtney, C. P. Montesquieu and Burke. Oxford: Black-
well, 1963. Charts similarities between the two
thinkers.
Freeman, Michael. Edmund Burke and the Critique of Po-
litical Radicalism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1980. Explores
Burke’s conservatism.
Hampsher-Monk, Iain. “Edmund Burke.” In his A History
of Modern Political Thought. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
Includes useful bibliography.
Lock, F. P. Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in
France. London: Allen and Unwin, 1985. Thorough
study of Burke’s most famous text.
Macpherson, C. B. Burke. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1980. Marxist reading.
170
O’Brien, Conor C. The Great Melody: A Thematic Biog-
raphy of Edmund Burke. Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1992.
O’Gorman, Frank. Edmund Burke: His Political Philoso-
phy. London: Allen and Unwin, 1973. Sets Burke in
his political context.
Parkin, Charles W. The Moral Basis of Burke’s Political
Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1956. Systematic presentation of Burke’s thought, em-
phasizing natural law elements.
Pocock, J. G. A. “Burke and the Ancient Constitution.”
Historical Journal 3 (1960): 125–43. Reprinted in his
Politics, Language, and Time: Essays on Political
Thought and History. London: Methuen, 1972. Relates
Burke to tradition of thought about the English
constitution.
Stanlis, Peter J. Edmund Burke and the Natural Law. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1958. Natural law
reading.
White, Stephen K. Edmund Burke: Modernity, Politics,
and Aesthetics. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994. Re-
lates Burke’s aesthetics to his politics and draws im-
plications for his modern relevance.
Wilkins, Burleigh Taylor. The Problem of Burke’s Political
Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967. Appraisal
of the natural law interpretation.
Michael Freeman
business ethics
“Ethics” most often refers to a domain of inquiry, a
discipline, in which matters of right and wrong,
good and EVIL, virtue and vice, are systematically
examined. “Morality,” by contrast, is most often
used to refer not to a discipline but to patterns of
thought and ACTION that are actually operative in
everyday life. In this sense, morality is what the dis-
cipline of ethics is about. And so business morality
is what business ethics is about.
A Field Both Old and New
Interest in the subject matter of business ethics
has, by most accounts, grown dramatically during
the second half of the twentieth century, not only in
the United States but in Europe and Asia as well.
Business executives, academicians, and the general
public have come to appreciate in new ways the im-
portance of the relationship between economic rea-
soning and ethical judgment. There is speculation,
of course, as to what factors have accelerated this
interest: the civil rights movement (1950s and

1960s), the Vietnam War (United States involve-
ment, 1964–75), institutional self-examination after
Watergate (1972–74), the environmental move-
ment, concern over employee RIGHTS and employ-
ment security, the increased number of working
women, affirmative action regarding minorities and
women, challenges to health and safety posed by new
technologies, the globalization of business COMPETI-
TION, and so on. While none of these factors provides
a sufficient explanation, jointly they explain a lot.
Many of the concerns that are now being ad-
dressed under the rubric of business ethics were ad-
dressed during earlier decades under different
names: “business and society,” “human relations in
organizations,” “business-government relations,”
and others. There is, therefore, some topical conti-
nuity and history to what is now called business
ethics.
If there is a new twist, it began with a more sus-
tained and systematic effort in the 1970s and 1980s
to apply to business decision making the tools and
concepts of the humanities. Whereas in previous dec-
ades, it was largely the social sciences (PSYCHOLOGY,
SOCIOLOGY, economics, and political science) to
which management studies turned, we saw during
the last quarter of the twentieth century more atten-
tion by management to disciplines such as philoso-
phy, theology, and literature. A consensus seems to
have developed that there are as many untapped re-
sources in the disciplines that focus on frameworks
for ethical thought as in those that focus on individ-
ual and group behavior.
Terminology
The phrases “corporate social responsibility” and
“the social responsibility of business” are sometimes
used as though they were synonymous with business
ethics. But this can be misleading if it is taken to
imply that business ethics deals exclusively with the
relationships between business organizations and
what have come to be called their “external constit-
uencies” (such as consumers, suppliers, government
agencies, community groups, and host countries).
For while these relationships define a large and very
important subdomain of business ethics, they do not
exhaust the field. There remain equally important
“internal constituencies” (employees, stockholders,
boards of directors, managers) as well as ethical is-
sues that do not lend themselves to “constituency”
171
business ethics
or “stakeholder” analysis: What is the evolving na-
ture of the employment contract? What is the rela-
tionship between ethics and ideology? How can the
business system itself be given a moral justification?
In what respects might the morality of organizations
resemble the morality of individuals? Thus, business
ethics is a more embracing field of inquiry than cor-
porate social RESPONSIBILITY, even though it in-
cludes the latter.
Three Levels of Analysis
While business ethics includes questions about
whether organizations, like individuals, can and
should be on the receiving end of moral considera-
tion (Do corporations have rights?), primary atten-
tion has focused on moral responsibilities, obliga-
tions, and VIRTUES in business decision making. The
three most common concerns have been the choices
and characters of persons, the policies and cultures
of organizations, and the arrangements and ideolo-
gies of entire social systems (such as democratic
capitalism). In each case, questions about the moral
sufficiency of market-based and law-based reason-
ing are examined.
The subject matter of business ethics, then, is
multileveled. At the level of the individual (“the
ethics of business persons”), attention is paid to the
values by which self-interest and other motives are
balanced by concern for FAIRNESS and the COMMON
GOOD, both within and outside the company. At the
level of the organization (“The ethics of a business
enterprise”), the focus is on the spoken or unspoken
group CONSCIENCE that every company has, either
by design or by default, as it pursues its economic
objectives. Finally, at the level of society itself (“the
ethics of the business system”), business ethics ex-
amines the pattern of cultural, political, and eco-
nomic forces that drive individuals and firms, val-
ues that define democratic capitalism in a global
environment.
Like ecology, therefore, business ethics is not
about “just one thing.” The idea that there are sev-
eral distinct but interrelated levels of business ethics
is not only an expository convenience. It suggests
that each of the levels presents us with appropriate
subjects or objects for ethical inquiry. This in turn
implies that there is some degree of freedom or dis-
cretion to be found at each level, i.e., that the ethical
values found at one level are not merely determin-
business ethics
istic functions of the other levels. As philosophers
since KANT (1724–1804) have pointed out,
“oughts” at any level imply “cans.” The use of moral
categories (or any other normative categories, such
as “strategic” imperatives) implies that the agent or
system in question is capable of operating differently
(e.g., better or worse). If the focus is the organiza-
tion, for example, a background assumption is that
the values of the organization are not a simple or
straightforward function of either the values of the
surrounding system or the values of the individuals
in the organization. If the values of the organization
were completely determined by either the individ-
uals in it or the social system surrounding it (or
both), then one would have to apply one’s ethical
prescriptions to them, and not to the organization.
Attributing multiple levels of analysis to the field of
business ethics, therefore, carries a presumption
(one that can, of course, be debated) that the levels
are prima facie distinct and do not collapse into one
another, even if there are significant causal relation-
ships among them.
Three Kinds of Inquiry
Cutting across these multiple levels of analysis in
business ethics, there are several distinct ways in
which one might take an interest in the subject mat-
ter at each level: descriptively, normatively, and an-
alytically. A descriptive interest seeks to identify the
actual moral beliefs of business persons or groups.
A public opinion researcher, for example, might
gather descriptive ethical data to measure social
trends.
While descriptive ethical information may not in
itself entail normative or prescriptive conclusions
about right and wrong, it can be valuable in other
Types of Inquiry and Levels
of Analysis in Business Ethics
systemic
issues
Levels
organizational
of
issues
Analysis
personal
issues
ways. A business decision maker concerned about
public reactions to a contemplated decision (such as
whether to follow local labor practices in certain de-
veloping countries) might heed the ethical views of
various parties, whatever their validity. The focus
would be on what people think is right or wrong.
For since ethical convictions often guide behavior,
they become important to enlightened management
decision making.
Second, taking a normative interest in business
ethics means searching for a defensible set of ethical
norms (virtues, values) to guide individual or insti-
tutional decision making. Unlike descriptive ethics,
normative ethics is not neutral about right and
wrong. While descriptive considerations about the
ethical climate may be important to a business de-
cision maker, his or her choices will in the end be
guided by implicit or explicit normative principles
(such as honesty, LOYALTY, promise-keeping, avoid-
ance of injury, and fiduciary obligation).
A normative interest in business ethics can take
either of two paths. On the one hand, the search can
escalate toward an ethical criterion, one or more
characteristics which all and only morally responsi-
ble acts have by virtue of which they are morally
responsible. Philosophers have historically taken
this approach in developing various goal-based,
rights-based, duty-based, and virtue-based frame-
works. On the other hand, the search might “de-
escalate” toward a decision guide, a management
process for steering individual or institutional judg-
ment in ethical matters. Practitioners usually prefer
this approach because it offers more direct assis-
tance in decision making.
While these two paths are not, logically speaking,
incompatible—both could be explored simulta-
neously—there is a practical sense in which they
Types of Inquiry
descriptive normative analytical
ethics ethics ethics
172

tend to diverge. Philosophers naturally point out
that without a normative criterion, any decision
guide must remain intuitive and tentative. Managers
might reply that if they awaited philosophical con-
sensus on a criterion, they could end up with a con-
struct that was either too general or too late. A third
course may be to adopt a provisional criterion (or
set of prima facie criteria) along with a decision
guide that can be improved on if and when philo-
sophical reflection indicates a need to do so.
Finally, taking an analytical interest in business
ethics means reflecting on moral values and their
relationships to such action-guides as religion, law,
cultural norms, economic competitiveness, self-
interest, etc. How is one to understand (and how
does one justify) moral and nonmoral judgments re-
garding business behavior? Are moral claims over-
riding, for example, when they conflict with the
achievement of economic objectives? Are there
moral values that span cultural differences in the
context of international business? Analytical ethics
(sometimes called metaethics) concerns itself with
thinking conceptually about both descriptive and
normative ethics.
It is useful to distinguish these three kinds of in-
quiry, not only to maintain precise terminology, but
also because discussions that ignore their differences
create confusion. A comment like “For Americans,
bribery is unethical, but for others not so,” illustrates
how such confusion can arise. If the INTENTION is
descriptive, the speaker would (correctly or not) be
claiming that there are as a matter of fact differences
in moral beliefs about BRIBERY across societies. If the
intention is normative, the speaker would be ex-
pressing a conviction about the unacceptability of
bribery, at least for Americans. Finally, if the inten-
tion is analytical, the speaker would (again, cor-
rectly or not) be saying something about the lack of
an objective or cross-cultural ethical standard. Any
agreement or disagreement that one might have with
the speaker would depend significantly on how one
understood the comment.
Almost all recent research in business ethics can
be classified as descriptive, normative, or analytical
with respect to issues on or between the three levels
(person, organization, system). The problem of
“whistle-blowing,” for example, illustrates the ethics
of the person in relation to organizational norms,
and might be examined descriptively, through case
studies (How and to whom does it become an is-
173
business ethics
sue?); normatively, through moral arguments (When
is it right and when is it wrong?); or analytically,
through inquiries into meaning and justification
(Can we define and defend it as a practice?).
Like whistle-blowing, other issues between the
individual and the organization have to do with em-
ployee rights, interests, and responsibilities: PRI-
VACY, drug testing, freedom of speech, health and
safety in the workplace, equality of opportunity for
women and minorities, and due process.
Concerns about product safety, honesty in mar-
keting, fair competition, and environmental protec-
tion illustrate the ethics of the organization in rela-
tion to external stakeholders and, again, can be
investigated along descriptive, normative, and ana-
lytical lines. Related to this set of issues is the inter-
nal context that influences a company’s response to
stakeholders, such as the composition and respon-
sibility of its board of directors, the management of
culture and shared values within the firm, and the
ethical dimensions of management incentive systems.
Finally, the ethics of the social system itself comes
under scrutiny in relation to international business
practices like questionable payments, exports of haz-
ardous substances, and employment security. The
most embracing questions in this domain revolve
around the capacity of democratic capitalism to se-
cure (better than alternative forms of political econ-
omy) such values as economic well-being and social
justice.
Comparative Business Ethics:
Bridging East and West
During the 1980s and 1990s, the field of business
ethics expanded not only in general research and
teaching activity, but particularly in relation to cross-
cultural issues in a global marketplace. Professional
associations, like the International Society for Busi-
ness, Economics and Ethics (ISBEE), the Society
for Business Ethics (SBE) in the United States, the
European Business Ethics Network (EBEN), and ex-
ecutive initiatives, like the Caux Roundtable Prin-
ciples for Business, have promoted research, dia-
logue, and action. The work of the Group of Lisbon,
a team of international economists, has been cau-
tionary in its approach, emphasizing the problems
associated with global competition.
While some observers have emphasized impor-
tant differences between Eastern and Western ethi-
business ethics
cal thought in APPLIED ETHICS, others have argued
that there is a broad congruence and have invoked
the metaphor of a bridge. European and American
discussions of issues like employment security and
whistle blowing often display differences of outlook,
but their core ethical frameworks, under the um-
brella concept of the MORAL POINT OF VIEW, overlap
considerably. This umbrella concept has been com-
pared and contrasted with overarching Asian ethical
ideals, such as the Japanese notion of kyosei (“living
and working together for the common good”). Like
the moral point of view, kyosei goes beyond conven-
tional business thinking (which relies on the logics
of the market and the law) to a more comprehensive
aspiration for HAPPINESS, justice, and community. In
practice, this means tempering individual, organi-
zational, and national self-interest by concern for
more embracing “common goods” while also bal-
ancing the assertion of individual rights and ENTI-
TLEMENTS by a recognition of communitarian obli-
gations and virtues.
The most challenging ethical issues that business
organizations from both traditions find themselves
facing in the twenty-first century include work force
reductions and retraining, quality of work life in
both more developed and less developed countries,
distributive justice in an increasingly global com-
munity, environmental protection, and in general, at-
tention to spiritual and social as well as technologi-
cal and material progress.
Perhaps as Eastern moral thought seeks to redis-
cover the individual in its traditional affirmation of
the common good or the social whole, Western moral
thought may rediscover the social whole in its tradi-
tional affirmation of the individual. The basis for
bridge-building may lie in such a complementarity.
As business ethics has entered the mainstream of
management education and corporate policy, it has
become increasingly clear that the field requires
cross-cultural research along both axes of the grid
described above. Studies of individuals, organized
groups, and social systems need to be integrated
while a concurrent appreciation of the distinctions
among descriptive, normative, and analytical inquir-
ies needs to be maintained. These efforts call for the
combined resources of ethical theory, psychology,
the social sciences, and business administration.
See also: APPLIED ETHICS; BRIBERY; COMMON GOOD;
COMMUNITARIANISM; COMPETITION; CONSCIENCE;
174
CONTRACTS; CULTURAL STUDIES; DUTY AND OBLI-
GATION; ECONOMIC ANALYSIS; ECONOMIC SYSTEMS;
ENTITLEMENTS; ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS; FAIRNESS;
FIDUCIARY RELATIONSHIPS; GROUPS, MORAL STATUS
OF; INDIVIDUALISM; INSTITUTIONS; JUSTICE, DISTRIB-
UTIVE; METAETHICS; MORAL POINT OF VIEW; MULTI-
CULTURALISM; NEGLIGENCE; NUCLEAR ETHICS; OUGHT
IMPLIES CAN; PRIVACY; PROFESSIONAL ETHICS; PSY-
CHOLOGY; PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY; RESPON-
SIBILITY; SOCIOLOGY; STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS; TECH-
NOLOGY; WORK.
Bibliography
Andrews, Kenneth R., ed. Ethics in Practice: Managing
the Moral Corporation. Boston: Harvard Business
School Press, 1989.
Barnard, Chester. The Functions of the Executive. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1938. 30th Anniver-
sary Edition, 1968. A classic reflection on both busi-
ness effectiveness and human values.
Beauchamp, Thomas, and Norman Bowie, eds. Ethical
Theory and Business. 6th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall 2001. Contemporary essays and theo-
retical overview.
The Caux Round Table Principles for Business. The Caux
Round Table, 1994. Copies can be obtained from the
CRT website: 具http://www.cauxroundtable.org典.
DeGeorge, Richard T. “The Status of Business Ethics: Past
and Future.” Journal of Business Ethics 6 (1987): 206–
11. Comprehensive overview of the field; extensive
bibliography.
———. Competing with Integrity in International Busi-
ness. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Donaldson, Thomas. The Ethics of International Busi-
ness. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Em-
pirical and philosophical discussion of business ethics
in the context of international commerce and cultural
differences.
Donaldson, Thomas, and P. Werhane, eds. Ethical Issues
in Business: A Philosophical Approach. 6th ed. Engle-
wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999. Classical and con-
temporary philosophical readings; current essays and
case studies from other sources.
Freeman, R. Edward, and Daniel R. Gilbert. Corporate
Strategy and the Search for Ethics. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice Hall, 1988. Discussion of business ethics
in the language of management studies.
French, Peter. Collective and Corporate Responsibility.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. Logical
and metaphysical foundations of corporate responsi-
bility.
Fukuyama, Francis. Trust: The Social Virtues and the
Creation of Prosperity. New York: Free Press, 1995. A

comparative analysis of the ethical and cultural factors
that lie behind global economic competition.
Goodpaster, Kenneth, and Laura Nash, eds. Policies and
Persons: A Casebook in Business Ethics. 3d ed. New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1998. Comprehensive casebook in
the Harvard Business School style.
The Group of Lisbon. Limits to Competition. Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1995.
Hartman, Edwin M. Organizational Ethics and the Good
Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. A phil-
osophical discussion of the foundations of business
ethics in the broader context of organizational ethics.
Novak, Michael. The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982. Historical and
theological defense of capitalism from Adam Smith to
Milton Friedman.
———. The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
New York: The Free Press, 1993.
Regan, Tom. Just Business: New Introductory Essays in
Business Ethics. New York: Random House, 1984.
Philosophical essays that provide an overview of
themes in business ethics.
Selznick, Philip. Leadership in Administration. New York:
Harper and Row, 1957. A brief but powerful discus-
sion of leadership and enduring human values, well
ahead of its time.
Stone, Christopher. Where the Law Ends: The Social Con-
trol of Corporate Behavior. New York: Harper and
Row, 1975. Legal perspective on corporate responsi-
bility.
Velasquez, Manuel. Business Ethics: Concepts and Cases.
4th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998.
Combines systematic discussion of business ethics with
case studies.
Walton, Clarence. The Moral Manager. Cambridge, MA:
Ballinger, 1988. Discussion of managerial ethics from
a social and cultural perspective.
Kenneth E. Goodpaster
Butler, Joseph (1692–1752)
Bishop of Durham; Lord Bishop of Bristol. Though
educated as a Presbyterian, Butler joined the Church
of England as a young man and rose through royal
patronage to be Bishop of Bristol and Bishop of Dur-
ham. A quiet, retiring thinker and a conscientious
priest, he owed his eminence to his great intellectual
and spiritual merits. He is known to philosophers
through two works, Fifteen Sermons Preached at the
Rolls Chapel (1726) and The Analogy of Religion,
Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and
Course of Nature (1736). The former is now recog-
nized as a classic of moral philosophy. The latter,
175
Butler, Joseph
now largely neglected, was a systematic attempt to
show contemporary Deists, who believed in God but
rejected Christian revelation, that their rejection was
mistaken on both theoretical and practical grounds.
The Analogy has two appendixes, of which the sec-
ond, “A Dissertation of the Nature of Virtue,” adds
important clarifications to the ethical arguments of
the Sermons.
Butler’s writing shows an obsessive concern with
clarity and displays acute psychological observation.
Butler’s intent is always practical: he wants to bring
his readers to the practice of “virtue and religion”;
any concern with theory is subordinate to this. He
is anxious to refute those theories, like psychological
EGOISM, that place obstacles in the path of the vir-
tuous life or offer excuses for neglecting it.
Virtue and Human Nature
Butler’s central ethical claim is that virtue con-
sists in following nature and vice in deviating from
it. To show this, he presents an analysis of human
nature as a system containing a variety of “internal
principles.” (1) There are the “particular passions,
appetites, and affections”; these are the desires and
emotions, which are “particular” in being directed
toward particular objects. (2) There is the “general
affection of self-love,” which is the desire for one’s
own long-term interest (or HAPPINESS) and the
power to guide one’s choices toward it. (3) There is
the “natural principle” of BENEVOLENCE —a term
Butler uses as a general name both for those partic-
ular desires that serve the good of others and for the
power to calculate the means to that good. In the
wider sense, Butler equates benevolence with the love
of neighbor. (4) Most important, there is CON-
SCIENCE: “a principle of reflection in men, by which
they distinguish between, approve and disapprove
their own actions.”
Our nature does not merely contain these internal
principles. It is a system in which the principles are
hierarchically ordered in a manner unique to human
nature. This makes it possible for us to act both nat-
urally and unnaturally, when other creatures cannot.
If an animal enters a baited trap, its action is natural,
for it has no capacity to refrain from following the
strongest inclination of the moment. But a human
being who knowingly incurs ruin through the grati-
fication of a desire acts in a way “disproportionate
to his nature.” For the human has the power to rec-
Butler, Joseph
ognize when, however strong the desire, its present
satisfaction will jeopardize his chances of happiness.
This example shows the natural superiority of self-
love over particular inclinations. The superiority of
one principle over another is distinct from its
strength; hence unnatural actions are common and
are due to the greater present strength of a naturally
inferior principle.
Prudent conduct is thus natural, and imprudent
conduct is not; but it does not follow that virtue is
natural and vice is unnatural. To show this, Butler
argues for two theses: that of the real efficacy of be-
nevolence, and that of the supremacy of conscience.
The former is needed to refute the fashionable view
that we are able to pursue only our own interest, not
that of others. The latter is needed to show that our
nature is fitted for a life of just and right conduct,
not merely for one of selfish, or even altruistic,
conduct.
The Reality of Benevolence
Butler’s celebrated arguments against selfish the-
ories of human nature are mostly directed against
Thomas HOBBES (1588–1679). (1) The obvious fre-
quency of actions done to give PLEASURE or happi-
ness to others has to be interpreted by the egoist in
a manner that forces the facts to fit a theory “to
which the appearance of good-will could not other-
wise be reconciled.” (2) Selfish actions are done
from self-love, whereas countless human choices are
made to satisfy particular desires, from which self-
love is distinct. This argument has limited power,
since the popular concept of selfishness seems wider
than Butler’s concept of self-love. (3) Psychological
HEDONISM is false because the object of a desire
will be the thing desired, not the pleasure derived
from it.
The Supremacy of Conscience
Conscience is a rational faculty that approves or
disapproves our actions and MOTIVES. It judges them
“in themselves”: that is, as right or wrong in virtue
of the kinds of acts they are, not in the light of their
consequences. Conscience makes its judgments
“magisterially”: that is, it intrudes them unasked and
claims to override all other principles. It can there-
fore be the sole motive for an action; but Butler does
not suppose that it supplants other motives when it
176
approves acts that other motives have generated. So
Butler does not identify virtue with conscientious-
ness; he identifies virtue with acting in accordance
with conscience, which we can do from many
motives.
Butler believes that conscience has little trouble
discerning right from wrong. His main concern is to
answer those who wonder whether we should al-
ways do what conscience tells us. The core of his
answer is the claim that the supremacy of conscience
is a law of our nature. This has generally been taken
to be an emphatic reminder of conscience’s claim to
override other considerations, and an assertion that
there is no sense to the suggestion that we could ever
have good reason to disobey it. (See, for example,
Duncan-Jones and Penelhum.) But Millar has argued
very effectively that Butler is offering an indepen-
dent reason for obeying conscience: that humans are
constitutionally adapted to virtuous living, and that
conscience is the faculty that guides us toward be-
havior that best reflects this adaptation. So it does
make sense to question conscience, but the question
“carries its own answer” because resistance to con-
science violates the constitution of the one who
asks it.
Butler also has an additional, though connected,
answer: in the end, there is no conflict between con-
science and self-love. Following conscience is in our
long-term interest. This is undeveloped in the Ser-
mons, but in chapters 3–5 of Part I of the Analogy,
he argues that our natures are evidence that God
governs the world morally, so that virtue is not
merely natural but probably advantageous, here or
hereafter.
Ethics and Theology
The Sermons, despite their title, do not base
ethics on theology. Butler’s view of conscience in-
volves a rejection of any suggestion that we need
special revelation to tell right from wrong, or that
rightness derives from divine commandment rather
than the reverse. But his ethics do have theological
implications. He assumes agreement from his audi-
ence that our natures are created by God for a pur-
pose. In the Analogy, he argues that this purpose is
the free practice of virtue, which fits us for ultimate
happiness. Conscience tells us enough for moral
practice, so we must leave it to God’s wisdom to
ensure that such practice will lead to our own wel-

fare and to the general good. So although Butler is
clearly a deontological moralist, his DEONTOLOGY
presupposes a setting in which God is a supreme util-
itarian (see Schneewind). Butler therefore represents
a fusion of the Aristotelian tradition that grounds vir-
tue in human nature and the duty-centered ethic later
found in KANT (1724–1804). Neither should be
stressed at the expense of the other when one reads
him.
Butler’s Status and Influence
Butler has enjoyed the esteem and affection of
many later English-speaking moralists, who often try
to preserve his insights without accepting his unde-
servedly neglected theology (see Penelhum). When
HUME (1711–1776) claims justice to be an artificial
virtue, he is trying to account for its psychological
status without leaning on Butler’s theistic teleology.
Rule-utilitarians attempt to preserve the supremacy
of conscience over benevolence without leaning on
divine omniscience. Butler’s implied view that con-
science is intuitive is found unacknowledged in
PRICHARD (1871–1947) and ROSS (1877–1971),
who detach it entirely from its teleological setting.
His refutations of psychological egoism and hedo-
nism have stood without serious challenge.
See also: ALTRUISM; BENEVOLENCE; CHRISTIAN
ETHICS; COMMON SENSE MORALISTS; CONSCIENCE;
DEONTOLOGY; DESIRE; EGOISM; EMOTION; HEDO-
NISM; HOBBES; INTUITIONISM; MORAL SENSE THEO-
RISTS; MOTIVES; NATURAL LAW; NATURE AND ETHICS;
PRUDENCE; RELIGION; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS; TELE-
OLOGICAL ETHICS; VIRTUE ETHICS.
Bibliography
Works by Butler
Fifteen Sermons. Edited by T. A. Roberts. London:
S.P.C.K., 1970 [1726]. Good text of the ethical writ-
ings, with useful introduction.
177
Butler, Joseph
Five Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel and a Disser-
tation upon the Nature of Virtue. Edited by Stephen L.
Darwall. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983. The most easily
accessible reprinting.
The Works of Bishop Butler. Edited by W. E. Gladstone.
2 vols. Oxford, 1897. Slightly more obtainable in li-
braries than Bernard but marred by Gladstone’s alter-
ations of Butler’s original paragraphing.
The Works of Joseph Butler. Edited by J. H. Bernard. 2
vols. London: Macmillan, 1900. The best complete
text, well edited.
Works about Butler
Broad, C. D. Five Types of Ethical Theory. London: Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul, 1930. Chapter 3 is the best short
treatment of Butler’s ethics.
Cunliffe, Christopher, ed. Joseph Butler’s Moral and Re-
ligious Thought: Tercentenary Essays. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1992. Seven of the fourteen essays in this
volume deal with aspects of Butler’s ethics.
Duncan-Jones, Austin. Butler’s Moral Philosophy. Har-
mondsworth: Penguin, 1952. High-quality discussion
of the main aspects of Butler’s moral philosophy.
Millar, Alan. “Following Nature.” The Philosophical
Quarterly 38 (1988): 165–85. Important new insights
into Butler’s claim that virtue consists in following
nature.
Mossner, Ernest Campbell. Bishop Butler and the Age of
Reason. New York: B. Blom, 1971. Excellent study of
Butler’s intellectual setting and influence. Valuable
bibliography.
Penelhum, Terence. Butler. London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1985. An attempt to evaluate both Butler’s ethics
and his philosophical theology in contemporary terms.
Bibliography.
Schneewind, J. B. “The Divine Corporation and the His-
tory of Ethics.” In Philosophy in History, edited by R.
Rorty, J. B. Schneewind, and Q. Skinner, 173–92.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Excel-
lent treatment of the key concept of divine governance
in Butler and other moralists.
Terence Penelhum
 C
Calvin, John (1509–1564)
From a humanist background and destined for a le-
gal career, Calvin was converted to Reformed Chris-
tianity in 1533–34. After a period of intense study,
the brilliantly gifted young man was constrained by
the Reformer Guillaume Farel (1489–1565) to live
in Geneva and further the Reformation there. Apart
from one brief period when he was expelled, Calvin
remained in Geneva until his death, making the city
the center of the Reformation, receiving and sending
students all over Europe.
Calvin’s ethical teaching cannot be separated
from his view of the Christian life. In bondslavery to
sin, people become Christians by divine grace
through faith in Christ’s atonement. In this condi-
tion, they are ‘free’ from the law in the sense that
they no longer hope for justification before God by
keeping it. Instead, they strive to keep the law of
God with a love for righteousness, in submission to
God and in imitation of Christ. Such teaching pro-
duced in Calvin and in many who thought like him
a moral COURAGE born out of an assurance both of
God’s eternal love and of the fact that he would en-
able them to persevere in the Christian path until
the end. Paradoxically, Calvin’s focus on the world
to come reinforced his commitment to duties in this
world.
Calvin was a predestinarian, yet it is a mistake to
think that predestination was an axiom from which
he derived the remainder of his theology in geomet-
178
ric fashion. While maintaining that every event is
predestined by God, Calvin also held that God is not
the author of sin; he is not morally tainted. Individ-
uals do not have the power to please God unaided
by his grace; nevertheless they are responsible for
their actions.
The intellectual situation in which Calvin wrote
was such that he was not required to provide a phil-
osophical defence of the consistency of these claims
beyond clarifying their meaning. For a defence, he
appealed to the sovereign right of God over his crea-
tures and the unfathomable character of his decrees.
It would appear that Calvin is committed to a ver-
sion of causal determinism, though some Calvin
scholars deny this.
Although a voluminous writer, Calvin wrote no
separate work on ethics. The chapters in his Insti-
tutes (1559) on ‘the life of the Christian man’ are
most representative. While he holds that the basis
of ethics is the moral law as revealed in the Ten Com-
mandments and as endorsed by Christ, Calvin is far
from being the self-righteous legalist he is sometimes
portrayed to be. In ethics, human reason is needed
neither to discover nor to establish moral truths,
which are revealed by God in Scripture, but to think
through their implications for everyday living. And
living such a life is a continual battle as the prevail-
ing new nature opposes the remaining old nature.
This is not the conflict of body against spirit, but the
internal conflict of a godly with a godless character.
Although the moral law was revealed by God to

Moses, its rudiments are recognized by all people.
So Calvin endorsed a form of NATURAL LAW ethics,
though he was not optimistic about the ability of
people to adhere to what that law prescribes. Rather,
Calvin stressed the sovereignty of God both in re-
vealing the law and in giving strength to keep it, yet
he was not a theological voluntarist. ‘We do not ad-
vocate the fiction of “absolute might”’; rather, the
nature of the divine law is based on the character of
God and of man as made in the image of God.
Calvin fully supported the morally rigorous, but
not ascetic, government of Geneva, though there
were continual conflicts for supremacy between the
magistracy and the ecclesiastical consistory. The
government of Geneva was somewhat oppressive;
however, the international influence of Calvin has
been in the opposite direction. His followers in
France, Holland, and especially England dissented
from their respective religious establishments, and
they fought for and won the legal right to worship
in accordance with their consciences (a right later
withdrawn in France in a policy of bloody persecu-
tion). Thus the rudiments of religious TOLERATION
were born, based not on HUMAN RIGHTS in the ab-
stract but on the specific right to worship in accor-
dance with CONSCIENCE. The Puritan work ethic,
with its stress on diligence, simplicity, and enter-
prise—noted by Max WEBER (1864–1920) and
R. H. Tawney (1880–1962)—is also largely the
product of Calvin’s influence.
See also: CHRISTIAN ETHICS; CONSCIENCE; FREE
WILL; FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM; NATURAL LAW;
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION; PURITANISM; RATIONAL-
ITY VS. REASONABLENESS; RELIGION; RESPONSIBIL-
ITY; TOLERATION; VOLUNTARISM.
Bibliography
Works by Calvin
The Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by F. L.
Battles. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961 [1536].
The best English translation of the standard, 1559 edi-
tion of the classic statement of Calvin’s theology and
the basis of all his other writings.
Works about Calvin
Hopfl, H. The Politics of John Calvin. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1985. A pioneering scholarly
treatment of Calvin’s political views and policies as
well as the political background in Geneva.
179
Cambridge Platonists
Wallace, Ronald S. Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life.
Edinburgh; London: Oliver and Boyd, 1959. A sym-
pathetic account of Calvin’s ethics.
Wendel, François. Calvin. Glasgow: Collins, 1963. A stan-
dard treatment of Calvin’s life and thought, edited and
translated by Philip Mairet. Originally published Paris,
1950.
Paul Helm
Cambridge Platonists
The name given to a group of moralists, philoso-
phers, and divines associated with Cambridge Uni-
versity in the middle to late seventeenth century, the
most prominent of whom were Benjamin Whichcote
(1609–1683), John Smith (1618–1652), Ralph
CUDWORTH (1617–1688), and Henry More (1614–
1687). They were known primarily for their advo-
cacy of LIBERALISM in theology and in ethics—for
stressing independence of judgment and a loving
CHARACTER rather than any doctrine or creed. In this
they were instrumental in a shift away from volun-
tarist theories of NATURAL LAW, which dominated
much of the seventeenth century, and toward the
major trends of eighteenth-century British ethics—
the ethics of character and moral sense, as well as
rational INTUITIONISM. They were also responsible
for reintroducing to the modern scene the ideas of
ancient Greek ethics—especially of SOCRATES (c.
470–399 B.C.E.), PLATO (c. 430–347 B.C.E.), PLO-
TINUS (205–270), and the Stoics.
Sometimes referred to as “latitude men,” the
Cambridge Platonists championed broad tolerance
and discussion on religious matters and rejected any
doctrinal test of piety. RELIGION is embodied less in
any received set of tenets, they thought, than in the
perfection of a kind of character or temper that is
natural and requires the acceptance of no particular
doctrine. Influenced by Plotinus, they believed that
God’s subjects participate in his divinely rational
LOVE, and that true religion consists in understand-
ing and expressing this. The religious person obeys
God, but not in the sense that he must be told what
to do by a superior AUTHORITY who justifiably de-
mands obedience or whose superior POWER can
command it. The religious person obeys God in fol-
lowing the “deiform” principle in which he himself
participates and which he finds within himself: ra-
tional love. God’s authority derives not from his su-
perior will; even God’s will subserves the source of
Cambridge Platonists
his authority, divine love. Insofar as his subjects par-
ticipate in this, they have the same authoritative
source within. “The Spirit of a Man,” Whichcote
writes, “is the Candle of the Lord.”
The Platonists argued that a doctrine, especially
one accepted through blind faith, is not only not nec-
essary for true religion, but it is antithetical to it.
“Nothing spoils human Nature more,” Whichcote
says, “than false Zeal. . . . [B]ecause I may be Mis-
taken, I must not be dogmatical and confident, per-
emptory and imperious. I will not break the certain
Laws of Charity, for a doubtful Doctrine.”
Since the Platonists did not distinguish between
religion and ethics, these same ideas carried over to
their moral philosophy. They opposed voluntarisms
of both a secular (Hobbesian) and a theological
(Calvinist) sort. Cudworth’s arguments were the
most important here. “Nothing is morally good or
evil, just or unjust,” he wrote, “by mere will without
nature.” Where the will of a sovereign obligates, it
is because of his authority, “founded in natural jus-
tice and equity” independently of his will. Justice and
goodness are “eternally” and “immutably” part of
the nature of their possessors. A particular action
might, of course, have had a different nature, but
given its nature, its justice or injustice is immutable.
Indeed, all “things are what they are, not by will but
by nature,” and “omnipotence itself cannot by mere
will make a body triangular, without having the na-
ture and properties of a triangle in it.”
Although Cudworth’s arguments were taken by
eighteenth-century writers such as Samuel CLARKE
(1675–1729) and Richard PRICE (1723–1791) to
point in the direction of a Platonistic rational intui-
tionism, Cudworth’s own metaphysics were more
Plotinist and idealist. Eternal and immutable es-
sences do not exist independently of mind, most par-
ticularly, of God’s perfect mind, and in knowing
them the mind grasps its own form—all knowledge
is SELF-KNOWLEDGE. Thus, while morality does not
depend on God’s will, it does depend on his mind—
but not, Cudworth is careful to point out, his purely
“intellectual forms and notional ideas.” Rather, it de-
pends on an element of perfect practical mind—a
motive that intellectual being has: perfectly rational
love.
That the ethical life engages a principle of rational
love in the moral agent, which is simultaneously a
source of judgment and motivation, was common
180
ground for the Platonists. Even Henry More, who
preferred to speak of a “boniform faculty,” makes it
clear enough that he means nothing independent
from “intellectual love.” Thus, to the ethics of law
common in the seventeenth century, the Platonists
opposed an ethics of autonomous love. To an ethic
of duty, they contrasted an ethic of character and
motive. And to the idea of moral requirement as a
constraint imposed from outside the agent by an-
other, superior will, the Platonists opposed the no-
tion that moral obligation is self-imposed. For Cud-
worth especially, but also implicitly for Whichcote,
moral agents are subject to obligation by virtue of a
capacity for self-determination through a form of
practical thinking which, if properly engaged, will
raise sufficient motive to act as obligated.
Cambridge Platonism profoundly influenced the
major strands of eighteenth-century British ethical
thought. Much of the general shape of HUME’s
(1711–1776) and HUTCHESON’s (1694–1746)
ethics of virtue derives directly from SHAFTESBURY
(1671–1713) but indirectly from the Platonists. To
the Platonists they owe the overall emphasis on mo-
tive and character as well as the specific focus on
love, which Hutcheson secularizes as BENEVOLENCE
and Hume transforms into SYMPATHY. Rational in-
tuitionists such as Clarke and Price, on the other
hand, were indebted to the Platonists, specifically to
Cudworth, for arguments demonstrating the irre-
ducibility of moral features to what is empirically
observable and for providing an alternative, ration-
alist epistemology, even if they neglected to notice
that his rationalism, like KANT’s (1724–1804), was
one of practical reason. Finally, the Platonists took
some of the first steps in the modern period in the
direction of a conception of moral autonomy, and
toward the view Kant would advance over a century
later that moral obligation is autonomously self-
imposed through PRACTICAL REASON.
See also: AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; BENEVO-
LENCE; CHARACTER; CLARKE; CONSCIENCE; CUD-
WORTH; FREE WILL; HUME; HUTCHESON; INTUITION-
ISM; LIBERALISM; LOVE; MORAL SENSE THEORISTS;
NATURAL LAW; NEO-STOICISM; PLATO; PLOTINUS;
PRACTICAL REASON[ING]; PRICE; RELIGION; SELF-
KNOWLEDGE; SHAFTESBURY; SOCRATES; STOICISM;
SYMPATHY; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS; TOLERATION; VIR-
TUE ETHICS; VOLUNTARISM.

Bibliography
Works by the Cambridge Platonists
Cragg, Gerald R., ed. The Cambridge Platonists. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1968. An anthology of
selections; bibliography.
Cudworth, Ralph. A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Im-
mutable Morality. New York: Garland, 1976 [1731].
Facsimile edition.
———. A Treatise of Freewill. Edited by John Allen. Lon-
don, 1838. From one of Cudworth’s manuscripts on
freedom of the will (British Museum, MS no. 4978).
———. The True Intellectual System of the Universe. New
York: Garland, 1978 [1678]. Facsimile edition.
More, Henry. Philosophical Writings of Henry More. Ed-
ited by Flora Isabel MacKinnon. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1925. Selections; bibliography of
More’s works.
———. Enchiridion ethicum. New York: Facsimile Text
Society, 1930 [1667]. Later translated by Edward
Southwell and published as An Account of Virtue, Lon-
don, 1690.
Patrides, C. A., ed. The Cambridge Platonists. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1980. Selections; bibli-
ography.
Smith, John. Select Discourses. New York: Garland, 1978
[1660]. Facsimile edition.
Whichcote, Benjamin. Moral and Religious Aphorisms.
London, 1753.
———. Select Sermons. Edinburgh, 1742.
Works about the Cambridge Platonists
Cassirer, Ernst. The Platonic Renaissance in England.
Translated by James P. Pettegrove. Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1953.
Darwall, Stephen L. The British Moralists and the Internal
‘Ought’: 1640–1740. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1995. See chapter 5.
De Pauley, W. C. The Candle of the Lord. New York: Mac-
millan, 1937.
Lichtenstein, Aharon. Henry More: The Rational Theol-
ogy of a Cambridge Platonist. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1962.
Muirhead, John Henry. The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-
Saxon Philosophy. London: G. Allen and Unwin,
1931.
Passmore, John. Ralph Cudworth: An Interpretation.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951.
Schneewind, J. B. The Invention of Autonomy: A History
of Modern Moral Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998. See chapter 10.
Tulloch, John. Rational Theology and Christian Philoso-
181
Camus, Albert
phy in England in the Seventeenth Century. Edinburgh
and London, 1872. See Volume II.
Stephen L. Darwall
Camus, Albert (1913–1960)
French novelist, playwright, and philosopher. Ca-
mus was born in Mondovi, Algeria, on November 7,
1913, and died on January 4, 1960, near Sens in
France in a car accident. He received the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1957.
Camus is usually, but incorrectly, classed as an
atheistic existentialist. He was not, however, an ac-
tive member of any of the leading twentieth-century
intellectual movements; he worked at the margin of
these important movements and devoted his entire
life and work to serious reflection on the human
condition.
According to Camus himself, his work consists of
two cycles of publications. The first comprises Ca-
ligula, The Stranger, The Myth of Sisyphus, and The
Misunderstanding; this cycle is devoted to the notion
of absurdity. The second cycle includes The Plague,
State of Siege, The Just Assassins, and The Rebel;
this cycle is devoted to the notion of revolt. In both
cycles Camus maintains the position that the human
condition is inherently contradictory: Humankind
desires to find a meaningful world but is unable to
find meaning. In his view, it makes no sense to try
to overcome this contradiction by means of an act
of faith in God (Christianity), in a totalitarian state
(MARXISM), or in the promises of existentialism. It
makes no sense, either, to try to overcome the con-
tradiction by appealing to some metaphysical system
such as HEGEL’s (1770–1831). The contradiction
shows itself in the tensions between LIFE AND
DEATH, freedom and POWER, good and EVIL, HOPE
and despair, light and darkness, meaning and lack of
meaning. These “contradictions” and “tensions” de-
fine the notion of absurdity and motivate the act of
revolt. They are described emphatically in The
Wrong Side and the Right Side (1937) as well as in
Exile and the Kingdom (1952).
Camus realized that it would be difficult to derive
a genuine moral theory from his absurdist position,
and he began in his second cycle to focus on revolt.
The notion of absurdity can lead only to an ethics of
quantity; what is needed from that point of view is
Camus, Albert
not a better life but simply more life. On the other
hand, the ethics of rebellion is one of quality and
values. Yet this ethics, too, can never appeal to a
transcendent element or power. Furthermore, it
must be a nonformal ethics and, thus, must be able
to go beyond the formal ethics of KANT (1724–
1804). It also must be a typically human ethics,
which respects the limits of the human condition in
both the individual and the community. This ethics
finally must be built on the human condition and
lead to respect for each human being as a person.
What is to be overcome is the human situation in
its actual state. One must move to a state in which
the basic RIGHTS of each person are respected by all:
the right to live, the right to be free, the right to live
in a just order. Camus thus advocates the following
virtues: justice, lucidity and transparency, COURAGE,
solidarity, and hope. He condemns SUICIDE as an im-
moral act. He maintains that there is always room
for hope, even though there is no God and no after-
life. As Camus sees it, the actual situation is absurd
and for that reason also immoral. Every genuine act
of revolt has a positive quality and is in that sense
an act of virtue.
While Camus believed in the possibility of sanc-
tity and salvation, he held that neither THEISM, Ju-
daism, nor Christianity are believable options. Yet it
is true that during the last twenty years of his life
Camus tried to develop a theory of human action
and practice that maintains whatever in our Judeo-
Christian heritage and our Greek tradition appears
to promote the typical conception of man and notion
of life that are at the root of ethical HUMANISM.
The kind of life that Camus actually advocates—
a life of mutual LOVE and respect, solidarity, justice,
and hope—is precisely the kind of life promoted in
the Judeo-Christian and Greek traditions.
See also: ABSURD, THE; ATHEISM; COURAGE; EXIS-
TENTIAL ETHICS; HOPE; HUMANISM; LIFE AND DEATH;
LIFE, MEANING OF; PERSON, CONCEPT OF; POWER;
REVOLUTION; SARTRE.
Bibliography
Works by Camus
Caligula and Three Other Plays. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1958. Includes The Misunderstanding, State of
Siege, and The Just Assassins.
182
Exile and the Kingdom. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1958. Tr. of L’Exile et le royaume, Paris, 1957.
The Fall. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. Tr. of La
Chute, Paris, 1956.
A Happy Death. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. Tr. of
La Mort heureuse, Paris, 1971.
La Révolte dans les Asturies: Essay de création collective.
Algiers: Charlot, 1936.
Lyrical and Critical Pieces. Edited by Philip Thody. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968. Includes several philo-
sophically important essays: “The Wrong Side and the
Right Side,” “Prometheus in the Underworld,” “Sum-
mer,” “The Minotaur, or, Stopping in Oran,” and “In-
telligence and the Scaffold.”
The Myth of Sisyphus. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955.
Tr. of Le Mythe de Sisyphe, Paris, 1945.
Oeuvres complètes. 2 vols. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale
Sauret, 1961–62.
The Plague. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. Tr. of La
Peste, Paris, 1947.
The Rebel. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954. Tr. of
L’Homme révolté, Paris, 1951.
Resistance, Rebellion and Death. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1961. Relevant essays include “Letters to a
German Friend,” “Reflections on the Guillotine,” and
selections from Actuelles: Chroniques.
The Stranger. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946. Tr. of
L’Étranger, Paris, 1942.
Works about Camus
Brée, Germaine. Camus. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 1961.
Cruickshank, John. Albert Camus and the Literature of
Revolt. London: Oxford University Press, 1959.
Hoy, Peter C. Camus in English. Paris: Lettres Modernes,
1971. Subtitle: an Annotated Bibliography of Albert
Camus’ Contributions to English and American Peri-
odicals and Newspapers (1945–68).
Neuwöhner, Walter. Ethik im Widerspruch. Frankfurt:
Lang, 1985. A study of The Myth of Sisyphus and The
Rebel.
Roemig, R. F. Camus: A Bibliography. Madison: Univer-
sity of Wisconsin Press, 1968.
Vasil, Dean. The Ethical Pragmatism of Albert Camus.
New York: Lang, 1985.
Joseph J. Kockelmans
capital punishment
The death penalty became subject to serious criti-
cism with the rise of humanistic thought in Euro-
pean culture during the Enlightenment. Natural
rights thinkers from LOCKE (1632–1704) to KANT

(1724–1804) agreed that the foremost of “the rights
of man” is the right to life. However, they also ar-
gued that crime violates these RIGHTS, that a mur-
derer “forfeits” his own life and therefore deserves
to die.
The principal objections to the death penalty thus
arose not from natural rights thinkers but from so-
cial critics, such as BECCARIA (1738–1794) and
VOLTAIRE (1694–1778), and utilitarian reformers,
notably BENTHAM (1748–1832) (but not J. S. MILL
[1806–1873]). The chief issue of utilitarian concern
has always been whether the death penalty is a more
effective means of preventing crime than the alter-
native of imprisonment.
Incapacitation
The popular defense of the death penalty on anal-
ogy with the right of self-defense depends on
whether lethal force is the least restrictive means
available to society in preventing recidivist capital
offenses. Both those who favor the death penalty (re-
tentionists) and those who oppose it (abolitionists)
concede that execution is a perfectly incapacitative
PUNISHMENT. How much this affects the crime rate
is disputed. The issue turns on whether persons who
have been executed would have committed further
offenses if they had not been executed, and whether
persons convicted and imprisoned for capital crimes
will commit further offenses in prison or if released.
Understandably, no direct evidence is available on
the first question. Incarceration and postconviction
records relevant to the second question indicate that
a small percentage of capital offenders commit sub-
sequent capital crimes. Retentionists argue that it is
inexcusable for society not to take measures guar-
anteeing that a convicted murderer cannot repeat his
crime. Abolitionists reply that the alternatives open
to society, if it abandons present incarceration and
release practices, are even worse: Either all con-
victed murderers must be executed, or all convicted
murderers must be imprisoned until their natural
death. Both alternatives are objectionable on several
grounds, one of them being that adequate social de-
fense requires neither.
Deterrence
Still more important and controversial is the
status of the death penalty as a general deterrent.
183
capital punishment
Abolitionists have always argued that there is no
convincing evidence of any superior deterrent effect
associated with the death penalty. In the 1970s, this
conclusion was challenged by researchers using
methods borrowed from econometrics; they claimed
that between 1930 and 1969, each execution in the
United States had prevented between eight and
twenty murders. Subsequent investigators, however,
argued that the alleged deterrent effect was an arti-
fact of arbitrary statistical methods. A panel of the
National Academy of Science (1978) went even fur-
ther and expressed extreme skepticism about the re-
sults of all available research studies; none, the panel
said, provided any useful evidence on the deterrent
effect of capital punishment.
Quite apart from whatever the evidence may in-
dicate, an appeal to deterrence or to incapacitation
is virtually unavoidable if the death penalty is to be
defended for crimes other than murder.
Retribution
Like Kant and HEGEL (1770–1831), many con-
temporary retentionists rest their position on prin-
ciples of retributive justice and the appropriateness
of society’s moral indignation at murder, which they
believe can be expressed adequately only by punish-
ing that crime by death. Most abolitionists do not
dispute the principle that convicted offenders de-
serve to be punished, or the principle that a suitable
punishment is some form of deprivation or harsh
treatment, or the principle that the severity of the
punishment should be proportional to the gravity of
the offense. What they do dispute is whether the last
of these principles requires the death penalty for
murder (or other crimes) or whether death is merely
consistent with such a punishment. If the latter, then
the further step in favor of death as the best penalty
can be taken only by relying on other considerations.
Making the punishment fit the crime in any literal
sense is either impossible or morally repugnant,
given the horrible nature of many crimes. Interpret-
ing the third principle according to lex talionis (“a
life for a life”) thus verges on begging the question.
As a result, the focus of controversy among those
who agree in arguing the issue primarily on grounds
of retributive justice is over how closely punish-
ments should be modeled on the crimes for which
they are meted out, and why.
capital punishment
Human Rights
Recent abolitionists, under the influence of the
HUMAN RIGHTS doctrines advocated by the United
Nations, have argued that the death penalty violates
human rights because its administration inevitably
entails arbitrary practices; erroneous executions are
an irrevocable and irremediable violation of the
right to life; and there are less severe and equally
effective alternative punishments. In addition, it is
argued that the death penalty, as it is actually used
in contemporary criminal justice systems, is biased
against certain races or classes, so much so that a
self-respecting civilized society cannot afford to em-
ploy it.
Retentionists have replied that capital laws are
(or should be) color blind and impose equal liability
on all persons regardless of the race, color, class, or
gender of offender or of victim. Also, since justice
requires that all murderers be sentenced to death
and executed, some class or racial bias (if there is
any) in the day-to-day administration of capital pun-
ishment is merely another case of the regrettable but
tolerably imperfect enforcement of just laws. Finally,
the deterrent and incapacitating effects of execu-
tions provided by even a somewhat arbitrary or bi-
ased death penalty are better for society than the
results of a less potent (even if less biased) alterna-
tive mode of punishment.
The Burden of Proof
Abolitionists claim their opponents have the bur-
den of proof, since they advocate the more severe
and irreversible penalty. Retentionists claim the re-
verse, arguing that their opponents favor increasing
the risk for society in order to reduce the severity of
punishments.
See also: BECCARIA; CORRECTIONAL ETHICS; DEATH;
DETERRENCE, THREATS, AND RETALIATION; HOMI-
CIDE; HUMAN RIGHTS; JUSTICE, RECTIFICATORY; KILL-
ING/LETTING DIE; LIFE AND DEATH; PUNISHMENT;
RAPE; REVENGE; SOVIET ETHICAL THEORY.
Bibliography
Acker, James R., Robert M. Bohm, and Charles S. Lanier,
eds. America’s Experiments with Capital Punishment:
Reflections on the Past, Present, and Future of the Ul-
184
timate Penal Sanction. Durham, NC: Carolina Aca-
demic Press, 1998.
Amnesty International. The Death Penalty. London: Am-
nesty International, 1989. A worldwide survey of prac-
tices; argues that the death penalty violates human
rights.
Baird, Robert M., and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, eds. Punish-
ment and the Death Penalty: The Current Debate. Am-
herst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995. Reprints twenty
essays, fourteen of them on the death penalty.
Beccaria, Cesare. On Crimes and Punishments. Translated
by Henry Paolucci. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963
[1764]. Chapter 16 presents the first important and
influential criticism of the death penalty. Argues for life
imprisonment as a better deterrent.
Bedau, Hugo Adam. “Bentham’s Utilitarian Critique of
the Death Penalty.” Journal of Criminal Law and Crim-
inology 74 (1983): 1033–66. Evaluates Bentham’s life-
long criticism of the death penalty in light of current
thinking.
———. Death Is Different: Studies in the Morality, Law,
and Politics of Capital Punishment. Boston: North-
eastern University Press, 1987. Bibliography.
———, ed. The Death Penalty in America. 3d ed. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1982 [1964]. A com-
prehensive survey of empirical evidence as well as a
reprint of leading essays in criminology, constitutional
decisions, and opinions pro and con. Bibliography.
———, ed. The Death Penalty in America: Current Con-
troversies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Contains over thirty essays, legal opinions, and re-
search reports, all published since 1990, including six
essays specially written for this book. Bibliography.
Bedau, Hugo Adam, and Chester M. Pierce, eds. Capital
Punishment in the United States. New York: AMS Pub-
lishing, 1976. Reprints twenty-five research studies by
legal scholars, doctors, and social scientists.
Berger, Raoul. Death Penalties: The Supreme Court’s Ob-
stacle Course. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1982. Argues that the United States Supreme Court
has no authority to reject the death penalty on consti-
tutional grounds.
Berns, Walter. For Capital Punishment: Crime and the
Morality of the Death Penalty. New York: Basic Books,
1979. Presents a retributivist defense of the death
penalty.
Black, Charles A. Capital Punishment: The Inevitability
of Caprice and Mistake. 2d ed. New York: W. W. Nor-
ton, 1976. Criticizes the death penalty as administered
in the United States as inherently in violation of the
rule of law.
Davis, Michael. Justice in the Shadow of Death: Rethink-
ing Capital and Lesser Punishments. Lantham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefield, 1996. Essays on a variety of
neglected issues in the death penalty debate. Bibliog-
raphy.
Dolinko, David. “Foreword: How to Criticize the Death

Penalty.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 72
(1986): 546–601. Argues that procedural and utilitar-
ian attacks on the death penalty are insufficient.
Hood, Roger. The Death Penalty: A World-Wide Perspec-
tive. Rev. ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Provides
data on the status of the death penalty in every nation.
House, H. Wayne, and John Howard Yoder. The Death
Penalty Debate. Dallas, TX: Word Publishing, 1991.
Two Christian theologians argue over the morality and
theology of the death penalty. Bibliography.
Hurka, Thomas. “Rights and Capital Punishment.” Dia-
logue 21 (1982): 647–60.
Kant, Immanuel. The Metaphysical Elements of Justice.
Translated by John Ladd. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,
1965 [1797]. The classic defense of the death penalty
on retributive grounds (see 99–107).
Koosed, Margery B., ed. Capital Punishment. 3 vols. New
York: Garland Publishing, 1996. Reprints 1,500 pages
of legal, statistical, and argumentative material on all
sides of the controversy.
Megivern, James J. The Death Penalty: An Historical and
Theological Survey. Mahway, NJ: Paulist Press, 1997.
Focuses on the history of Christian thought and prac-
tice. Bibliography.
Mill, John Stuart. “Speech in Favor of Capital Punish-
ment.” In Philosophical Perspectives on Punishment,
edited by Gertrude Ezorsky. Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1972 [1868]. Presents a modified
utilitarian defense of the death penalty for murder.
Nathanson, Steven. An Eye for an Eye: The Morality of
Punishing by Death. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Little-
field, 1987. Criticizes the death penalty on both utili-
tarian and retributive grounds.
Pojman, Louis P., and Jeffrey Reiman. The Death Penalty:
For and Against. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Little-
field, 1998. The debaters diverge, especially over what
retributivism entails.
Primorac, Igor. “On Capital Punishment.” Israel Law Re-
view 17 (1982): 133–50. Criticizes abolition on retrib-
utive grounds.
Radelet, Michael L., and Margaret Vandiver, eds. Capital
Punishment in America: An Annotated Bibliography.
New York: Garland, 1988. Abstracts and evaluates
over 1,000 research studies and leading constitutional
cases.
Reiman, Jeffrey. “The Justice of the Death Penalty in an
Unjust World.” In Challenging Capital Punishment:
Legal and Social Science Approaches, edited by Ken-
neth C. Hass and James A. Inciardi, 29–48. Beverly
Hills, CA: Sage, 1988. Argues that in an ideal world,
murderers would deserve to die, but not in this world.
Schabas, William A. The Abolition of the Death Penalty
in International Law. 2d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997.
Sellin, Thorsten. The Punishment of Death. Beverly Hills,
CA: Sage, 1980. A leading criminologist reviews the
185
care
empirical evidence; argues for abolishing the death
penalty.
Sorrell, Thomas. Moral Theory and Capital Punishment.
Oxford: Blackwell, 1988. Defends the death penalty on
retributive grounds.
Van den Haag, Ernest. Punishing Criminals: Concerning
a Very Old and Painful Question. New York: Basic
Books, 1974. Combines utilitarian and retributive
views in defending capital punishment.
Wasserstrom, Richard. “Capital Punishment: Some Theo-
retical Issues and Objections.” Midwest Studies in Phi-
losophy 7 (1982): 473–502.
Hugo Adam Bedau
care
In contrast to justice, right conduct, and principles,
care has a short history within moral philosophy
(though there are historical antecedents); it is pri-
marily a late-twentieth-century interest. Care is a
distinct moral sentiment—an emotional attitude
embedded in a relationship with another person—
yet it is also seen by some theorists as structuring an
entire moral outlook. While ideas, animals, and IN-
STITUTIONS can be objects of care, from an ethical
standpoint the primary objects are particular other
persons.
Caring for another individual involves a concern
for the other’s well-being. Though “care” does not
name a specific, unitary emotion, the concern it de-
notes has a necessarily affective dimension. Unless
one is taken up with, or engrossed in, the object—
“feels with” the person; is pleased and relieved when
the person is doing better; feels concerned, worried,
or anxious when things are going badly for the per-
son—one does not really care. Yet caring has a cog-
nitive dimension as well. It involves at least a puta-
tive knowledge or understanding of the other
person’s NEEDS, welfare, situation. It is not a mere
feeling of concern.
Caring about someone involves DESIRE or incli-
nation; one directly wants good for the other. In this
way caring is distinct from the simple recognition of
a duty toward another or of a reason to help another,
though of course caring can coexist with these more
purely intellectually based benevolent states of
mind. At the same time, in caring for another, one
takes on the other’s problems and burdens as one’s
own (in some sense), and this may involve acting
against one’s own desires in the situation at hand:
care
Because I care for Jim, I choose to undertake an un-
pleasant but helpful task. But the sense of desire
present in caring has moral significance only when
it involves concern for the other’s good. Thus the
sense of “care for” that exclusively implies a roman-
tic desire or interest in the other is not morally sig-
nificant caring.
Nel Noddings, who has given the fullest account
of caring, argues that caring is more than an attitude
of concern toward another. If the agent has a pre-
defined view of what the other needs but that view
is wrong, then he or she may fail really to care. Care
involves a receptivity or openness—a responsive-
ness—toward the other; one must attend to the
other as other, not assuming that one knows what
the other’s good consists in but being ready to guide
one’s actions and views by the other’s own reality.
Persons, behaviors, and attitudes can be (mor-
ally) criticized as “uncaring”; but as a moral stan-
dard, care does not prescribe specific actions in the
way an ethic of rules or decision procedures strives
or claims to do. The value of care lies in the attitude
it expresses as well as in the good-promoting actions
to which it leads; nevertheless, in some circum-
stances failure to act can be a sign of an absence of
caring, despite profession, or even sincere belief, to
the contrary.
Many proponents of the moral importance of hu-
man care see care as not encompassable within most
traditional moral theories. Care’s “engrossment”
(Noddings’s term) in the other’s situation contrasts
with the emphasis on detachment and impersonality
that are central features of many forms of Platonism,
Kantianism, and UTILITARIANISM. Care’s focus on
the specific individual (as the object of care) con-
trasts with an emphasis on universal principle com-
mon to many modern approaches to ethics. Yet some
philosophers, including many who agree that care is
a significant moral phenomenon, still see care as
posing no real challenge to most traditional theories.
Cutting across this dispute is the distinction between
those who see care as simply one important moral
phenomenon among others, and those who see it as
constituting an entire coherent moral approach or
outlook. Among the latter are Noddings, who sees
care as the fundamental ethical phenomenon, and
Carol Gilligan, who sees care as forming one of
(only) two fundamentally distinct moral outlooks
(the other being “justice”).
Traditional theories of moral sentiment, BENEV-
186
OLENCE, and SYMPATHY, such as Joseph BUTLER’s
(1692–1752), David HUME’s (1711–1776), and
Adam SMITH’s (1723–1790), are antecedents of a
morality of care. Yet care as understood in late-
twentieth-century ethics cannot be identified with
benevolence or sympathy. It is a sentiment both
deeper and much more particularized. Caring re-
quires a more encompassing involvement with an-
other specific individual and his or her situation than
does either sympathy or benevolence. Caring is di-
rected toward individuals in their particularity, while
sympathy, and especially benevolence, are directed
toward humanity in general and toward individuals
primarily in light of their shared humanity. Perhaps
a philosophically closer antecedent is Arthur SCHO-
PENHAUER’s (1788–1860) theory of compassion as
the fundamental moral phenomenon.
Carol Gilligan and others argue that women more
than men tend to embody a morality or moral out-
look based on caring. This view is often associated
with a feminist criticism of many traditional ethical
theories grounded in rationality, impersonal princi-
ple, and/or RIGHTS. But these two positions are dis-
tinct. For some argue that both men and women are
(perhaps equally) capable of care, and both are
bound by the moral standard of care; and yet these
same observers agree that there has been a “mas-
culinist” bias in much traditional theory. Feminist
attention has centered on, among other things, the
moral significance of women’s greater involvement
in the domestic and personal realms of life and on
the apparent exclusion of these realms from much
moral theorizing. Such issues have been important
sources of interest in caring as a moral phenomenon,
for care can be seen as a moral phenomenon espe-
cially appropriate to that “personal” domain.
In response to Gilligan’s view, many fear that an
implication of anything like a deep difference
(whether biologically innate or not) between men and
women in relation to morally significant character-
istics is too reminiscent of a superiority-inferiority
framework, which has been used to suppress
women. Others resist the suggestion that one group
of persons could have any kind of moral advantage
over another in relation to VIRTUES; such commen-
tators believe that moral capacities must be entirely
equal. This latter view is itself a restatement of a
Kantian (though widely assumed) outlook, which
some care theorists are challenging. Both objections
could be met, however, by accepting a general

(though not universal nor necessarily inevitable)
gender difference in relation to care but denying any
overall evaluative or moral difference between men
and women. The shape of such a view of “difference
without superiority or inferiority” has yet to be
worked out.
Caring as an ethic is generally understood to ap-
ply primarily in the domain of personal relations, or
at least of one-to-one encounters. But some care the-
orists have made tentative moves toward applying a
standard of care in the more public and impersonal
worlds of social policy and politics.
See also: ALTRUISM; BENEVOLENCE; DUTY AND OB-
LIGATION; EMOTION; FAMILY; FEMINIST ETHICS;
FRIENDSHIP; INTERESTS; MORAL DEVELOPMENT;
MORAL PSYCHOLOGY; NEEDS; PERSONAL RELATION-
SHIPS; PUBLIC POLICY; RESPONSIBILITY; SOCIAL AND
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY; SYMPATHY.
Bibliography
Bowden, Peta. Caring: Gender-Sensitive Ethics. New
York: Routledge, 1997. Discussion of care ethics
through exploration of four caring practices—moth-
ering, friendship, nursing, citizenship.
Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory
and Women’s Development. Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1982. Argues on partly empirical
grounds that care is a moral “voice” distinct from jus-
tice, and that it tends to be found more in women than
men.
Grimshaw, Jean. “The Idea of a Female Ethic.” Chapter 7
in her Philosophy and Feminist Thinking. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1986. Good discussion
of the issues, and critique of Noddings and Gilligan.
Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. Runs many
articles on different facets and criticisms of the ethics
of care.
Larrabee, Mary Jeanne, ed. An Ethic of Care. New York:
Routledge, 1993. Collection of many of the most influ-
ential articles on care ethics.
Noddings, Nel. Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics
and Moral Education. Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press, 1984. Develops in great detail an ethic of
caring.
Mayeroff, Milton. On Caring. New York: Harper and Row,
1971. Earlier, brief statement of philosophy of care for
persons and ideas.
Tronto, Joan. Moral Boundaries. New York: Routledge,
1993. Politically-sensitive critique and defense of a
care ethic.
Lawrence Blum
187
casuistry
casuistry
The term is derived from casus, the Latin for “case,”
and means the study of individual “cases of CON-
SCIENCE” in which either no or more than one settled
moral principle applies. More broadly, casuistry is
the use of the “method of cases” in the attempt to
bring ethical reflections to bear on problems requir-
ing the decision and ACTION of some agent. A casuist
is one who is trained to provide such counsel. Ac-
cordingly, casuistry is a branch of APPLIED ETHICS.
Since the seventeenth century, however, the term has
often been used in a derogatory sense, as though
casuistry were a species of sophistical reasoning by
means of which almost any conduct could appar-
ently be deemed permissible, provided only that one
is ingenious enough in exploiting exceptions and
special circumstances.
The Method of Cases
For the casuist, the solution to a morally problem-
atic case is obtained by comparing and contrasting
its features with various paradigm cases whose
moral status is settled. Solutions to the problem
cases rely both on moral principles or maxims that
express the received WISDOM concerning such par-
adigms and on analogies to them. The plurality of
principles is the source of their actual or possible
conflict, but their general reliability otherwise is
taken for granted. Hence, casuistry as a method of
practical reasoning tends to rely on some form of
INTUITIONISM as well as on some set of moral NORMS
more or less beyond dispute.
The governing idea of casuistry is expressed in the
second order maxim that “circumstances alter
cases.” As THOMAS AQUINAS (1225?–1274), in
Summa Theologica (1275), wrote: “The human act
ought to vary according to diverse conditions of per-
sons, time and other circumstances: this is the entire
matter of morality.” The method of cases is designed
to take these “diverse conditions” into account. This
is to be contrasted both with mechanical application
of rigid rules of conduct and with the attempt to
ground moral decision making in some grand theory
of the good or the right.
Aristotelian Background
Casuistry is a natural outgrowth of three features
of Aristotelian ethics. First, ARISTOTLE (384–322
B.C.E.) took it for granted that persons have a grasp
casuistry
of the principles of right conduct, based on their so-
cialization as members of a human community. Ar-
istotle also argued that it is impossible to secure
theoretical precision in practical matters, and so eth-
ical reasoning should not aspire to the rigor appro-
priate to a true science. Finally, PRACTICAL WISDOM
(Aristotelian phronesis) is essential to right conduct;
it can be obtained only by critical reflection on actual
experience in confronting the diverse problems that
human life presents.
Ciceronian Rhetoric
Casuistry (though not under that name) was
taught for centuries as part of Greco-Roman rheto-
ric. A standard exercise required the student to pro-
pose and defend a solution to a practical problem by
means of arguments and counter arguments in
which various moral principles and solutions to
analogous cases would be integrated for maximum
persuasive effect. CICERO’s (106–43 B.C.E.) De of-
ficiis (c. 44 B.C.E.) provided later generations with a
partial catalog of famous cases in which either a con-
flict of duties or a conflict between duty and expe-
diency needed to be resolved. Thus, later casuistry
can be seen as a systematic approach to ethical prob-
lems derived from Ciceronian rhetoric.
Legal and Clerical Influences
Rabbinic pilpul and Roman common law also in-
fluenced moral casuistry independently of classical
rhetoric. Weighing relevant principles, arguing from
paradigm cases, distinguishing apparently contrary
conclusions in prior cases—all are familiar methods
both in the resolution of disputes through the com-
mon law and in Talmudic commentary and interpre-
tation. Among Christians, the need to reconcile the
Mosaic law with the examples and counsels in the
Gospels in order to provide guidance for daily life
made the development of casuistical reasoning by
the clergy all but inevitable. These legal and pastoral
elements were combined in the development of
canon law and penitential discipline during the Mid-
dle Ages.
The Heyday of Casuistry
From 1200 through 1650, the teaching and prac-
tice of casuistry flourished in Europe. The Summa
de sacramentis et animae conciliis (c. 1191) by Pe-
ter Cantor of Paris was perhaps the first true casu-
188
istic treatise. With the founding of the Society of
Jesus (1534), casuistry dominated pastoral (moral)
theology. Treatises in which hundreds (even thou-
sands) of cases were presented and discussed be-
came commonplace. One of the most influential was
the Enchiridion (1556) of Martin Navarrus. In
1600, the Jesuit Juan Azor published his Institu-
tionum Moralium, nearly 4,000 pages long, in which
he declared “all questions of conscience are briefly
treated.” The monumental Resolutiones morales by
Antonius Diana (1586–1663), “the Prince of Ca-
suists,” discussed some 20,000 cases in ten volumes
(published 1629–1659).
Probabilism
A principal factor in the decline of casuistry, lead-
ing to its worst abuses, was the doctrine that if a
practical opinion or counsel is probably true, it is
licit to follow it, even though it is more probable that
the opposite opinion is true. This thesis, know sub-
sequently as “probabilism,” was first enunciated by
Bartolomé Medina (1527–1580) in 1577. Hitherto,
the predominant view had been the obvious one that
where there were divergent opinions on how to act,
differing in their likelihood of being correct, the path
of prudentia (PRACTICAL REASON) was to follow the
more probable opinion. This was the via tutior, “the
safer way.”
In practice, probabilism often meant that if a per-
son wanted to act in a manner contrary to the best
counsels, he was free to do so (i.e., he did not violate
any moral duty) if there was any plausible ground
for doubting that he really was forbidden to act in
the manner in question. Such a ground could be ei-
ther “extrinsic,” based on the opinion of some au-
thoritative moral thinker, or “intrinsic,” based on a
good reason or argument whatever its source.
The underlying purpose of probabilism has been
said to be “to lighten the burden of conscience on
the scrupulous and troubled” (Jonsen and Toulmin).
But the less scrupulous could use probabilism to
serve selfish interests, thus deservedly incurring the
charge of “laxism” and thereby bringing the very
practice of casuistry itself into disrepute.
The Decline of Casuistry
The disappearance of penitential discipline under
Protestantism, combined with the criticism of laxism
from within the Roman church itself, weakened the

practice and authority of casuistry. But the truly fatal
blow was delivered by Blaise PASCAL (1623–1662)
in his Lettres Provinciales (1656–57). As a Jansen-
ist, convinced that the path of Christian rectitude
involved strict compliance with the pure spirit of the
Gospels, Pascal was hostile to the probabilist casu-
istry taught by the more worldly Jesuits. Writing
anonymously, he mocked it unmercifully and ex-
posed to ridicule the moral laxity of its diverse
counsels.
However unfair a caricature of the actual meth-
ods and principles of casuistry Pascal’s attack may
have been, it succeeded in discrediting the entire
practice. Henceforth, little more than faint echoes of
casuistry would be found in the ethical writings of
the leading philosophers outside the clerical tradi-
tion, such as KANT (1724–1804) and J. S. MILL
(1806–1873). By the end of the nineteenth century,
with ethical pluralism and intuitionism on the de-
fensive generally, Henry SIDGWICK (1838–1900)
could write 500 pages on The Methods of Ethics and
dismiss casuistry in a sentence. However, thanks to
the growing importance in the 1970s of applied
ethics and of PROFESSIONAL ETHICS in particular, a
“new casuistry” has appeared in which the old
“method of cases” has been revived and modified.
See also: APPLIED ETHICS; INTUITIONISM; MORAL PLU-
RALISM; MORAL REASONING; PRACTICAL REASON;
PRACTICAL WISDOM; PROFESSIONAL ETHICS; SITUA-
TION ETHICS.
Bibliography
Bedau, Hugo Adam. Making Mortal Choices: Three Ex-
ercises in Moral Casuistry. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1997.
Cahn, Edmond. The Moral Decision: Right and Wrong in
the Light of American Law. Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 1956. An exploration of moral problems
in the spirit of casuistry.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. De officiis [On Moral Obligation].
Translated by John Higginbotham. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1967. A modern translation; Book
III, chapters 12–13, 23–26 are the principal classical
sources of casuistic examples.
Fletcher, Joseph. Situation Ethics: The New Morality.
Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966. Defends a
Christian, contextual, circumstantial approach to eth-
ical problems with affinities to classic casuistry.
Gowans, Christopher W., ed. Moral Dilemmas. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Reprints four-
teen essays (most by contemporary analytic philoso-
189
categorical and hypothetical imperatives
phers), each focused on abstract aspects of the central
problem in traditional casuistry. Bibliography.
Jonsen, Albert R., and Stephen Toulmin. The Abuse of
Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1988. Indispensable
both for its detailed historical accounts and for its de-
fense of “the new casuistry” as having “a legitimate and
central part to play in practical ethics.” See page 168.
Notes and bibliography.
Keenan, James F., and Thomas A. Shannon, eds. The Con-
text of Casuistry. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Uni-
versity Press, 1995.
Kirk, Kenneth E. Conscience and Its Problems: An Intro-
duction to Casuistry. London: Longmans, Green,
1927. One of the few early twentieth-century books
outside the Roman Catholic tradition in which the
methods of casuistry are sympathetically applied.
Leites, Edmund, ed. Conscience and Casuistry in Early
Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988. Essays by historians, philosophers, and
political theorists on thinkers from Luther and Hobbes
to Grotius and Kant.
Miller, Richard B. Casuistry and Modern Ethics: A Poetics
of Practical Reasoning. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1996. Bibliography.
Pascal, Blaise. The Provincial Letters. Translated by A. J.
Krailsheimer. New York: Penguin Books, 1967 [1656–
57]. Pascal’s attack on Jesuit casuistry is concentrated
in letters 5–10.
Potts, Timothy. Conscience in Medieval Philosophy. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Hugo Adam Bedau
categorical and hypothetical
imperatives
The term “categorical imperative” was introduced
into moral philosophy by Immanuel KANT (1724–
1804). The concept is central to his moral theory,
and if he is right, it is central to moral thought and
has far-reaching implications for the nature of PRAC-
TICAL REASON. As we shall see, Kant understood a
categorical imperative to be a requirement of reason
applying with necessity to any rational agent, the au-
thority of which is not based on appeal to any par-
ticular desires or INTERESTS in an agent. The rational
authority of a categorical imperative is uncondi-
tional. Kant thought it a deep-seated feature of or-
dinary morality, in particular of the ordinary concept
of duty, that moral requirements are categorical im-
peratives in this sense. One aim of his moral theory
is to substantiate and defend this aspect of ordinary
moral thought by tracing moral requirements to
categorical and hypothetical imperatives
their origin in reason. He carries this project out by
articulating and establishing the authority of a gen-
eral principle termed “the Categorical Imperative,”
which he takes to be the fundamental principle un-
derlying moral thought. This article will explain how
Kant develops the concept of a categorical impera-
tive and will then consider contemporary reactions
to the thesis that moral requirements are categorical
imperatives.
By an “imperative,” Kant meant a conclusion of
practical reasoning stating that one has reason to act
in a certain way, expressed as a claim about how one
ought to act—for example, that one ought to exer-
cise for the sake of health, or that one ought to keep
one’s agreements. Claims about how one has reason
to act take the form of imperatives when addressed
to imperfect or ‘finite’ rational beings (as Kant char-
acterizes human beings). Such agents are responsive
to standards of practical reason, but since they ex-
perience MOTIVES that can conflict with reason and
since there are limitations on their rational capaci-
ties, they do not conform to these standards always
or without effort. For this reason finite rational
agents experience practical reasons as constraints.
The term “ought” expresses this aspect of constraint
or necessitation.
To understand the concept of a categorical im-
perative, one must grasp the basic distinction that
Kant draws between hypothetical imperatives and
categorical imperatives. A hypothetical imperative
represents an action as good or necessary as a means
to some desired end or interest; it says that one
ought to perform the action as a means to this end
or the fulfillment of this interest. A categorical im-
perative, by contrast, represents an action as good
or necessary in itself, without reference to any fur-
ther end beyond the action, in which the agent is
presumed to have an interest; it says that one ought
to perform a certain action for its own sake, regard-
less of one’s desires and interests. At the most gen-
eral level, this amounts to a distinction between im-
peratives whose validity is conditional on one’s
having certain ends, interests, or values that are ra-
tionally optional (i.e., that an agent could lack with-
out irrationality) and imperatives whose validity is
unconditional.
The following are examples of hypothetical im-
peratives: (a) “If you want a scenic view and have
the time, you ought to take Route 2.” (b) “If you are
interested in a career in government, you ought to
190
consider a law degree.” (c) “One ought to exercise
for the sake of health.” (d) “One ought to be honest
to maintain a good reputation.” All claim that one
has reason to act in a certain way because doing so
will further certain ends or interests. If you do not
have that end or interest—or do, but are willing to
forgo it—you have no reason to perform the action.
(For example, regarding (a), if you don’t care about
scenery, or do but are in a hurry, you have no reason
to take Route 2.) One can satisfy a hypothetical im-
perative either by performing the prescribed action
or by giving up the end. The latter might be the sen-
sible response if the prescribed means are too bur-
densome, or if they conflict with other interests and
values. The validity of a hypothetical imperative is
thus conditional in different senses: it applies only
to those with certain ends and interests, and it can
be dismissed even by these agents if they give up the
end. Note here that (d) offers no reason to be honest
to someone who does not care about or need a good
reputation, or whose reputation will not be harmed
by a dishonest act. In that sense it does not present
honesty as a requirement.
Underlying particular ought-judgments of this
sort is a formal principle that one might call “the
Hypothetical Imperative,” to the effect that if one
wills an end, one ought to will some necessary and
available means to that end, or abandon the end. The
Hypothetical Imperative is the general principle of
rationality which is needed to derive specific hypo-
thetical imperatives (ought claims) from facts about
an agent’s interests, ends, and circumstances.
A categorical imperative says that one ought to
perform a certain action whether one wants to or
not, without regard to how it serves one’s interests,
thus setting out an inviolable requirement on action.
In contrast to (d) above, a categorical imperative of
honesty would claim that one ought to choose hon-
esty for its own sake, whether or not it serves one’s
reputation. There are several senses in which cate-
gorical imperatives apply unconditionally. The valid-
ity of a categorical imperative is independent of an
agent’s particular desires and interests. For that rea-
son they are thought to be rationally necessary and
inescapable: that one has no interest in an action or
end prescribed by a categorical imperative does not
exempt one from the requirement. Moreover the rea-
sons expressed by a categorical imperative are over-
riding relative to other sorts of reasons. When an
action serving one’s personal interests or values, or

promoting certain social values, conflicts with a cat-
egorical imperative, the latter takes priority and can
require abandoning or acting against the former. Be-
cause of their desire-independence, categorical im-
peratives are thought to be universally valid: they
apply to any rational agent in a situation covered by
the principle and express judgments about how one
ought to act that any agent can accept as having ra-
tional authority. Kant thought that moral require-
ments, or the judgment that one has a duty to act in
a certain way—that one ought to help a certain per-
son in need, that it would be wrong to press one’s
advantage, that it would be wrong to withhold the
information, that one ought to make amends for
what one has done, etc.—must be understood as
categorical imperatives. Ordinary moral thought
takes duties to be desire-independent requirements
that take priority over one’s desires and interests,
and over desirable social consequences. To preserve
these features of duty, they must be represented as
categorical imperatives.
One can find many examples of nonmoral prin-
ciples of action that appear to have the characteris-
tics of categorical imperatives. For example, rules of
ETIQUETTE, rules of religious practices, aesthetic and
cultural values can all lead to judgments about how
one ought to act that don’t appear be desire-based
or to prescribe means to one’s ends, and that set
overriding constraints on the satisfaction of desires
and interests. But such judgments would not count
as categorical imperatives for Kant, since there is a
further sense in which their authority is conditional:
they are reason-giving only for agents who accept
certain sources of AUTHORITY which can be rejected
reasonably and without irrationality. (The validity of
rules of etiquette appears to be independent of
agents’ desires, but these rules may apply only to
members of a certain social group and not to those
outside that group. The rules of religious observance
may be viewed as absolute and inviolable, but apply
only to those who accept certain religious authori-
ties. An individual may accord overriding impor-
tance to aesthetic values, but one need not do so.)
Categorical imperatives, as Kant understands them,
are unconditionally valid in that the they apply in
virtue of commitments that are intrinsic to or con-
stitutive of rational agency and presuppose no values
or sources of authority that a rational agent need not
accept.
Kant thinks that from the concept of a categorical
191
categorical and hypothetical imperatives
imperative, or an unconditional requirement on ac-
tion, one can derive the fundamental principle of
morality by which we determine what our duties are.
This principle is the Categorical Imperative, and his
major works in ethics are devoted to exploring dif-
ferent formulations of this principle (that he takes
to be equivalent). Two main formulations of the Cat-
egorical Imperative are “Act only from such a maxim
as you can at the same time will as universal law”
and “Act so as to treat humanity, in your own person
or in the person of another, as an end-in-itself and
never simply as a means.”
We noted above that a categorical imperative rep-
resents an action as necessary, without reference to
any further end beyond the action, in which the
agent has an interest. Kant wrote that a categorical
imperative “immediately commands a certain con-
duct without having as its condition any further pur-
pose to be achieved by it” and “is not concerned with
the matter of the action and its intended result, but
rather with the form of the action and the principle
from which it follows” (Grundlegung 416). In what
sense are categorical imperatives (as understood by
Kant) not concerned with ends or with the results
of actions? Certainly a categorical imperative can di-
rect one to pursue an end, e.g., to help someone in
need. Kant thought that every action has an end.
Thus if an action is judged to be necessary, so is its
end. But in this case the end of providing help is just
the immediate aim of the action, not some further
end to which the helping action is a means. Like-
wise, most interpreters deny that Kant’s moral view
tells one to ignore the consequences of one’s actions.
The projected consequences of an action may appear
in the maxim of action and can be relevant in decid-
ing whether an action is rationally willed. Kant’s
point is that in cases where helping is a duty, the
judgment that one ought to help does not presup-
pose an interest in helping, or an interest in some
state of affairs that one’s action might achieve, that
is independent of one’s acceptance of the relevant
principles. The reasons for helping do not presup-
pose a prior interest in helping (or in some further
end beyond one’s action), but come from the fact
that as a rational agent, one necessarily wills the rele-
vant principle of BENEFICENCE. If the reason to help
presupposed a rationally optional interest in an end
that is independent of one’s moral commitments, the
claim that one ought to help would be a hypothetical
categorical and hypothetical imperatives
imperative that gives an agent without that interest
no reason for helping.
Kant marks another important contrast between
hypothetical and categorical imperatives by claiming
that the Hypothetical Imperative, and by extension
particular hypothetical imperatives, are analytic,
while the Categorical Imperative and particular cat-
egorical imperatives are synthetic a priori principles.
A brief comment on this distinction will point to
some issues about the nature of practical reason
raised by Kant’s views about categorical impera-
tives.
The Hypothetical Imperative is analytic of ration-
ally willing an end because willing an end commits
one to willing some necessary means to that end.
Willing an end commits one to bringing it about, and
that is a commitment to taking some necessary
means to the end. Otherwise put, reasons for willing
the means follow from or are contained in one’s rea-
sons for willing the end. Since the Hypothetical Im-
perative is analytic, understanding how this kind of
rational constraint is possible presents no particular
difficulties. Categorical imperatives are synthetic a
priori because they advance a claim not derived from
any of an agent’s prior interests or ends that it is
necessary to perform a certain action. As Kant
writes, “this is a practical proposition which does
not analytically derive the willing of an action from
some other willing already presupposed . . . but
which connects the willing of an action immediately
with the concept of the will of a rational being as
something which is not contained in this concept”
(Grundlegung 420n). For this reason the possibility
of categorical imperatives raises special problems
that lead into deep issues about the nature of prac-
tical reason. If moral requirements are categorical
imperatives, then reason by itself must generate sub-
stantive principles of conduct with motivational
force. Kant tries to support the view that moral re-
quirements are in this way requirements of reason
by arguing that the Categorical Imperative is a prin-
ciple that is constitutive of autonomous rational vo-
lition, and thus a principle which any rational agent
with a will has reason to endorse as its fundamental
principle of action.
Whether moral requirements are categorical im-
peratives remains a subject of debate. Modern DE-
ONTOLOGY standardly treats moral requirements as
inviolable and nonoverridable constraints on the
pursuit of individual well-being and of desirable so-
192
cial consequences. Many philosophers agree that
moral requirements are categorical imperatives,
though they may hesitate to endorse all the measures
that Kant took to demonstrate the possibility of cat-
egorical imperatives. By the same token, many phi-
losophers reject this claim. The contemporary de-
bate involves several issues about the nature of
morality and moral motivation, but tends to focus
on these questions: whether moral requirements
present desire-independent reasons that override all
other kinds of reasons, and whether moral require-
ments are requirements of reason that any rational
agent must acknowledge. We will close by consid-
ering some challenges to the thesis that moral re-
quirements are categorical imperatives.
The claim that moral considerations are overrid-
ing is the claim that moral considerations are to be
given priority in any situation in which nonmoral
considerations conflict with an all things considered
moral judgment. That is, one is always to act as mo-
rality requires. Theorists divide over the plausibility
of this claim. One’s views about this question may
be affected by views about how demanding moral
requirements are, how often conflicts arise between
moral reasons and nonmoral or personal values, or
by how much weight nonmoral or personal values
are accorded in moral deliberation.
Likewise, there is disagreement over whether
moral requirements are based on principles that all
rational agents must recognize simply in virtue of
possessing reason. In this respect, disputes about
whether moral requirements are categorical imper-
atives can stem from disagreements about the nature
of practical reason and motivation. Kantians must
hold that reason by itself generates practical princi-
ples—that is, that reason can generate principles
that judge certain ways of acting to be good in them-
selves, the rational acceptance of which does not de-
pend on facts about one’s given desires and ends or
the means to their satisfaction. Furthermore, they
must hold that rational agents can be motivated sim-
ply by their accepting or understanding the basis of
such principles. However, many theorists are skep-
tical of such attempts to base moral requirements in
reason. Modern empiricists, for example, believe
that practical reason has only an instrumental use
and is concerned with the optimal satisfaction of
given desires and interests, whose ultimate basis is
nonrational. They deny that reason by itself gener-
ates substantive principles of action, and hold that

all motivation is desire-based. In essence, they be-
lieve that only hypothetical imperatives are possible,
and thus must ground moral motivation on normally
present interests and attachments. Likewise, natu-
ralists with broader conceptions of rationality tie
moral motivation to interests, attachments, altruistic
concerns or other complex psychological structures,
and argue that they, not reason, are what gives moral
requirements their hold on us. It may follow from
these views that agents without these interests or
forms of motivation lack a reason to accept moral
constraints, without being defective in rationality,
though it need not follow that they are immune from
moral assessment.
Still other theorists have argued that moral re-
quirements are best understood as non–desire-based,
though without being requirements of reason. For
example, one can argue that moral considerations
exert influence through agents’ conceptions of their
circumstances of action, so that virtuous agents are
motivated by their seeing their circumstances in cer-
tain ways. Since moral reasons are grasped through
the exercise of a perceptual capacity, their normative
force is not conditional on the presence of a desire
or interest. But if the perceptual capacity is not part
of rationality, the reason would not be available to
any agent simply qua rational. Alternatively, one
could argue that moral considerations have norma-
tive force for an agent through a complex psycho-
logical structure such as the internalization of an
ideal set of principles or values, which leads the
agent to take certain considerations (e.g., the fact
that a person is in need, that fact that one has made
an agreement, etc.) as authoritative REASONS FOR
ACTION. Because the internalization of these princi-
ples leads the agent to give moral considerations im-
mediate and overriding deliberative weight, the rea-
sons they provide are desire-independent. But moral
considerations have this normative force only for
agents with this psychological structure. Whether an
agent has internalized this structure is a psycholog-
ical fact about that agent. Since this psychological
structure is not present in all agents simply in virtue
of possessing reason, the normative force of moral
considerations is still conditional on facts about an
agent’s psychology.
The challenge to theorists who defend the view
that moral principles are requirements of reason is
to articulate a sufficiently rich conception of prac-
tical reason or rational agency, show how basic
193
categorical and hypothetical imperatives
moral principles can be derived from this concep-
tion, and provide the requisite psychology of
motivation.
See also: ACTION; AUTONOMY OF ETHICS; AUTONOMY
OF MORAL AGENTS; DELIBERATION AND CHOICE; DE-
ONTOLOGY; DESIRE; DUTY AND OBLIGATION; EXTER-
NALISM AND INTERNALISM; INTERESTS; KANT; MORAL
ABSOLUTES; MORAL PERCEPTION; MORAL PSYCHOL-
OGY; MORAL REASONING; MOTIVES; NEEDS; OUGHT
IMPLIES CAN; PRACTICAL REASON[ING]; RATIONALITY
VS. REASONABLENESS; REASONS FOR ACTION.
Bibliography
Darwall, Stephen, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton.
Moral Discourse and Practice. Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press, 1994. Part IV contains arti-
cles relevant to this topic.
Foot, Philippa. “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Im-
peratives.” In her Virtues and Vices. Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1978. (Reprinted in Darwall,
et al., Moral Discourse and Practice.) Challenges the
claim that moral requirements are categorical impera-
tives.
Hill, Thomas E., Jr. Dignity and Practical Reason. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1990. See especially chapters
1 and 7. Discusses many features of Kant’s ethics, in-
cluding views about the nature of practical reason and
the distinction between hypothetical and categorical
imperatives.
Kant, Immanuel. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten.
[1785] Vol. 4 in Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften, edition
of the Prussian (later German) Academy of Sciences,
Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1900. Translated by H. J.
Paton as Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals,
New York: Harper, 1964; by Lewis White Beck as
Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Indianap-
olis: Library of Liberal Arts, 1959; by James Ellington
as Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, Indianap-
olis: Hackett, 1983; and by Mary J. Gregor as the
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997. Kant’s classic work
in moral philosophy which argues that moral require-
ments must be understood as categorical imperatives
and gives his treatment of the Categorical Imperative.
Citations are to pages in the Academy edition.
McDowell, John. “Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical
Imperatives?” In his Mind, Value and Reality. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. Argues along
Aristotelian lines that moral requirements are non-
desire-based, but without holding that they must be
recognized by all rational agents.
Nagel, Thomas. The Possibility of Altruism. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1978. A contemporary at-
categorical and hypothetical imperatives
tempt to show that moral requirements are categorical
imperatives.
O’Neill, Onora. Constructions of Reason. Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. See es-
pecially chapters 1–2, 5–7. Important treatment of
Kant’s views about reason and of the Categorical
Imperative.
Scheffler, Samuel. Human Morality. Oxford, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1992. See especially chapters
4–5. Takes up the issues of whether morality is over-
riding and whether motivation by categorical impera-
tives can be given a naturalistic basis.
Wiggins, David. “Categorical Requirements: Kant and
Hume on the Idea of Duty.” The Monist 74 (1991):
83–107. Discusses how both Hume and Kant repre-
sent moral requirements as categorical.
Williams, Bernard. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985. See es-
pecially chapters 4 and 10. Expresses skepticism about
the view that morality generates unconditional rational
requirements.
Andrews Reath
causation and responsibility
The concepts of responsibility and causation are en-
tangled at various points. Different considerations
arise depending on whether one focuses on respon-
sibility for one’s very actions, or on the conse-
quences of one’s actions which are partly the result
of many factors outside one’s control. I will consider
these issues in turn.
Causation and Responsibility for Actions
It is not generally appreciated that a philosopher’s
account of the metaphysics of causation exerts a
heavy influence on his theory of morally responsible
ACTION. David HUME (1711–1776) was most cen-
trally responsible for a tradition of thought, promi-
nent to this day, that contends that the concept of
causation is reducible to more basic concepts. On
Hume’s own view, causation consists in certain un-
broken lawlike patterns of regularity among actual
events. More recent variations would exchange
counterfactual for actual regularity, and allow for
less than perfect correlations, so that deterministic
causation would merely be the limiting case of in-
deterministic causation of varying degrees of
strength. Any version of the broad position leads al-
most ineluctably to a deterministic theory of respon-
sible action, or something approximating it, on
194
which events bound up with one’s having reasons
for performing a certain action are among those fac-
tors that deterministically cause it. The reason is
this: the notion of control over one’s behavior
(‘agent control’), a crucial ingredient in the idea of
RESPONSIBILITY itself, is a causal notion. The natural
candidate events within a person to play such a
causal role are one’s coming to appreciate reasons
for acting. Since the causal ‘connection’, on the Hu-
mean view, consists in the pattern, or covariation, of
cause and effect, the limiting case of constant co-
variation would seem to afford the greatest measure
of control.
It is no coincidence, then, that as the Humean
tradition on causation is being strongly challenged
in recent philosophy, so, too, is the presumption that
a deterministic theory of action is the obvious ac-
count of responsible action. The general position
which denies that we can reductively analyze cau-
sation (“causal realism”) allows for a wider possible
range of understandings of agent control. Two
prominent realist accounts of causation will be con-
sidered here.
The first is the traditional “causal powers” view,
a view which accepts as ontologically basic the
causal dispositions or tendencies of objects, dispo-
sitions which need not be deterministic and which
are associated with the object’s intrinsic properties.
(See Harré and Madden.) The second view, which is
very recent in origin, is an attempt to steer a middle
course between Humean reductionism and a com-
mitment to dispositions as a fundamental feature of
things. (Since many of its main advocates are Aus-
tralians, we may dub the view “Australian realism.”
See Armstrong and Tooley.) On it, laws of nature are
contingent, second-order relations among property-
types, or universals (schematically, F and G). In a
deterministic world, F-ness necessitates G-ness. In a
nondeterministic world, F-ness raises the probability
of G-ness. These laws of nature are held to govern
causal relations between first-order states of affairs
(object a’s being F causes b’s being G).
Now, for either view, whether the laws of nature
are deterministic or not, there is no basic difference
in what it is for a particular event to cause another.
(The question of determinism is merely the question
of whether an object’s or system’s dispositions, or
the laws governing the causation, are probabilistic.)
If agent control resides in a causal relation between
one’s mental states and subsequent behavior, the sta-

tistical character of causal laws is not relevant to
whether it obtains. So if one doubts the compatibil-
ity of freedom of action with determinism, one can
suppose that responsible action requires the causal
efficacy of one’s reasons in producing one’s action,
but also requires that the operative dispositions, or
the laws governing that instance of causation, be
merely probabilistic.
The main virtue of this ‘causal indeterminist’
view of the metaphysical condition on responsibility
for action is that it can harmonize acceptance of the
powerful argument for the incompatibility of FREE-
DOM AND DETERMINISM with the most straight-
forward way of understanding the place of human
beings in nature. Human beings operate, in funda-
mental metaphysical terms, just as do other parts of
nature. What is distinctive of responsible action is
simply the kind of events—reasons—that are causes
of the processes they undergo.
One issue that complicates this harmonization is
the ontological status of mental states vis-à-vis their
“underlying” physical states. Many hold that token
mental states (such as my state of believing right
now that philosophy of mind is a difficult subject)
are identical to complex token neurophysiological
states, though no such identity relation holds for cor-
responding mental and physical state types. A token
state is a mental state, not in virtue of its intrinsic
physical properties, but in virtue of its functional
role within the economy of the organism, and tokens
of any number of physical state types might play the
requisite mental state role. Some (e.g., Kim) suggest
this threatens the causal efficacy of the mental (“the
problem of mental causation”): it seems that token
mental states have the effects they do in virtue of
their intrinsic, physical properties, rather than any
extrinsic, functional-role properties, so that, with re-
spect to their mental properties, they are epiphe-
nomenal. Whether this worry is well founded is cur-
rently much disputed. (See, e.g., Baker.) If it is, a
satisfactory causal indeterminist view—or, for that
matter, determinist view—of control over one’s own
actions will require that one reject this popular ac-
count of the nature of mental states. Doing so might
well push one in the direction of holding that token
mental states are ontologically sui generis, irreduci-
ble to token physical states, a position that would
remove one apparent advantage of the causal inde-
terminist view of agent control over a rival view
(agent causation) discussed below.
195
causation and responsibility
Another complication for the causal indetermin-
ist view is to specify just what kind of causal path
must obtain between reasons and bodily move-
ments. Not just any circuitous path will do, as is
easily shown by examples of ‘wayward causal
chains’ that proceed through unintended interme-
diaries. Giving an adequate account of the ‘right’
kind of causal chains has proven elusive. (For a so-
phisticated recent proposal, see Mele.) This issue is
not unique to the causal indeterminist view, how-
ever. Even those views (to be discussed below) that
understand agent control in terms of a special kind
of choice or volitional event must still deal with po-
tential nonstandard causal links between choice and
bodily movement.
Two final worries, however, go right to the heart
of the causal indeterminist theory. First, given that
freedom of action is understood in terms of the
probabilistic character of the causal relation be-
tween reason and action, should one then say that
freedom varies inversely with the prior probability
that the action would occur? That has the odd con-
sequence that performing an action that was exceed-
ingly improbable is when I am most free. But if we
deny this inverse link, then how do we deal with a
possible case where my performing an action is ex-
ceedingly probable (i.e., 0.9999)? Here it does seem
natural to say that my freedom of action is negligible.
Yet how are we to account for that fact on the pro-
posed theory? The second worry is a related one.
The problem that many see with our actions’ being
causally determined to occur by prior factors, even
where these include our reasons, is that we would
lack a certain variety of control—“autonomous con-
trol.” But retaining the same basic account of action
and merely modifying the strength of the governing
disposition does not seem to add any variety of con-
trol missing on the deterministic picture. On the
causal indeterminist account of Robert Kane, for ex-
ample, the central feature that confers autonomy is
an indeterminate process of making an effort of will
to sort out one’s priorities. Apart from the indeter-
minacy, however, such protracted periods of difficult
deliberation can occur in a deterministic world. And
this is unsatisfying to some. They argue that respon-
sible action cannot simply require a range of avail-
able alternatives as a stand-alone condition: it must
be that such alternatives are a precondition of some
feature of control that is characterizable in positive
terms.
causation and responsibility
One candidate account of this feature holds that
agent control is not fundamentally a causal notion
at all (though appropriate causal links are required
in the account of nonbasic actions). Instead, I con-
trol a basic action such as willing to type the letter
“i” in virtue of the intrinsic, qualitative character of
this mental action. On the version of Ginet, the
view’s most prominent recent defender, a basic act
of willing is controlled by me because it is my action,
and what makes it something I did, rather than
something that merely occurred within me, is that it
has the phenomenal quality we might describe as “its
seeming to me as if I directly produced it.” It has,
we might say, an ‘actish phenomenal quality,’ one
which differs intrinsically from the passive quality of
unbidden mental occurrences such as thoughts that
just “pop into my head.” Even if one countenances
in this way the notion of a special, noncausal form
of control exhibited by responsible agents, one must
recognize that the causal influence of mechanistic
factors could potentially override this sort of control
by directly producing an agent’s volitions with the
requisite qualitative character. (Given a direct, ex-
ternal cause of the agent’s volition, we would not
say that the agent controlled its occurrence.) So con-
trol turns out not to be entirely a matter of an ac-
tion’s intrinsic character after all. We must instead
say that an agent controls his action if its core voli-
tion has an actish phenomenal character and noth-
ing else caused the volition to occur. This is not only
conceptually inelegant, it is also empirically implau-
sible that human actions generally lack such causal
antecedents. (Note that if one is a Humean reduc-
tionist about causation, this problem may be less de-
cisive: the notion of control that a Humean would
ground in the brute fact of an event’s falling under
a broad lawlike pattern is quite a deflated one. In
the order of analysis, which factors ‘cause’ a given
event is a consequence of the general distribution of
occurrences themselves—causes do not, in any in-
teresting sense, constrain future possibilities. The
simple indeterminist who is also a Humean, there-
fore, might claim that philosophical analysis reveals
the surprising conclusion that external causes of
one’s act do not nullify one’s own control of it.)
A final account of agent control that is motivated
by the view that free, responsible action requires a
sort of control that would not be exhibited by caus-
ally determined agents turns on a notion of distinc-
tively personal, or ‘agent,’ causation. According to
196
this view, an agent is responsible for an act only if
he himself directly produced it. One generally has
reasons for any action one performs, and it is quite
plausible that they make it more or less probable
that one will follow a particular course of conduct.
But a responsible agent, it is claimed, must have
brought about his own action and have been capable
of not so acting. Such an account of responsible
agency waned considerably through the twentieth
century, although its popularity is reviving modestly
in the wake of renewed attention to issues in tradi-
tional metaphysics. (See Clarke, and O’Connor
2000.) The coherence of the idea of nonmechanistic,
personal causation—causation by a substance
rather than a state or change the substance is un-
dergoing—appears to depend on the causal powers
account of causation (though see Clarke for a dis-
senting view) and on some form of substance/prop-
erty ontology. Its empirical realization further de-
pends on a strong type of nonreductionism about
human agents that is often thought to be implausi-
ble, even if not currently refuted.
Beginning with an essay by Harry Frankfurt, some
concede that determinism is incompatible with the
freedom to act otherwise than one does while main-
taining that it is nonetheless compatible with moral
responsibility (a position dubbed “semicompatibil-
ism”). This view is motivated by a range of examples
involving hidden agents “waiting in the wings” who
are poised to force an agent to perform some action
if he does not freely choose to perform it. If the
agents do perform the desired action without inter-
ference, then (it is argued) they are responsible for
it despite the fact that they could not have done
otherwise. (For a criticism of this view, see van In-
wagen; for a defense, see Fischer.)
Causation and Responsibility for
Consequences of Actions
When one turns from actions to their conse-
quences, the question of the conditions on respon-
sibility become considerably more complex, as the
agent’s control over consequences of her action is
dependent on, and to varying degrees diminished by,
factors in the environment beyond her control. One
issue that needs to be addressed straightaway is the
ontological category to which the ‘consequences’ in
question belong. Are they concrete events (the injury
of Smith in the park that happened yesterday), or

are they aspects of those events (abstract states of
affairs such as Smith’s having been stabbed)? The
identity conditions under counterfactual circum-
stances on these different kinds of entities are doubt-
less rather different. Hence, one needs to clarify
which type is in view before assessing the plausibility
of examples that purport to show that responsibility
may be present in the absence of alternative possi-
bilities for the agent.
A second issue—and one that has been less well
analyzed to date—is how to assess individual or
COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY for agents who sepa-
rately act on the same situation. Consider three dif-
ferent types of cases. (1) Cases discussed above in
which one agent’s action preempts another’s. Were
the effective agent not to have acted, the other would
have done so to much the same (identical?) effect.
(2) Cases in which a consequence is overdetermined
by multiple causal factors initiated separately (e.g.,
the simultaneous arrival of bullets from a firing
squad, each of which is sufficient for the victim’s
death at a given time). (3) Cases in which the con-
sequences of actions of multiple agents become en-
tangled. (John Mackie introduced an example in
which two desert travelers separately decide to kill
a third companion. One poisons the victim’s water
canteen during the night. Subsequently, another
spills the contents of the canteen, thinking it to be
life-preserving water. The victim goes off on a trek
the following day and dies of dehydration.) The first
two kinds of examples pose difficulties for certain
counterfactual conditions that some would place on
individual responsibility, such as the following: if it
would have been the case that p no matter what free
choices or decisions an agent made, then she is not
morally responsible for the fact that p. (See van In-
wagen.) The third kind of case challenges all extent
analyses, insofar as it is difficult to assess with any
confidence: it can easily seem that neither agent is
responsible for the victim’s death (conceived as an
event or abstract state of affairs), yet it is hardly an
accident that he dies!
See also: ACTION; AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS;
COGNITIVE SCIENCE; COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY;
CONSEQUENTIALISM; DELIBERATION AND CHOICE;
DIRTY HANDS; DOUBLE EFFECT; EXCUSES; EXTERNAL-
ISM AND INTERNALISM; FREE WILL; FREEDOM AND DE-
TERMINISM;HUME; INTENTION; METAPHYSICS AND
EPISTEMOLOGY; MORAL REALISM; REASONS FOR AC-
197
censorship
TION; RESPONSIBILITY; VOLUNTARISM; VOLUNTARY
ACTS.
Bibliography
Armstrong, David. What Is a Law of Nature? Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Baker, Lynn Rudder. Explaining Attitudes. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Clarke, Randolph. “Toward a Credible Agent-Causal Ac-
count of Free Will.” (1993) In Agents, Causes, and
Events: Essays on Indeterminism and Free Will, edited
by Timothy O’Connor, 201–15. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995.
Fischer, John. The Metaphysics of Free Will. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1994.
Frankfurt, Harry. “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Re-
sponsibility.” Journal of Philosophy 46 (1969): 829–
39.
Ginet, Carl. On Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990.
Harré, R., and E. H. Madden. Causal Powers: A Theory
of Natural Necessity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975.
Kane, Robert. The Significance of Free Will. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1996.
Kim, Jaegwon. Supervenience and Mind. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Mele, Alfred. Springs of Action. New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1992.
O’Connor, Timothy. Persons and Causes: The Metaphys-
ics of Free Will. New York: Oxford University Press,
2000.
———, ed. Agents, Causes, and Events: Essays on Inde-
terminism and Free Will. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1995.
Tooley, Michael. Causation: A Realist Approach. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1987.
van Inwagen, Peter. An Essay on Free Will. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1983.
Timothy O’Connor
censorship
Censorship is the practice of official supervision of
the content of all books, journals, performances,
movies, and the like to assure that they contain noth-
ing immoral, heretical, or offensive to the govern-
ment. The condemnation of censorship has been one
of the central normative claims of liberal political
and legal thought and practice from John Milton
(1608–1674) to JOHN STUART MILL (1806–1873)
to John RAWLS. If LIBERALISM is in part defined by
censorship
its condemnation of censorship, liberal legal and po-
litical theory is naturally preoccupied with the defi-
nition of the scope of the condemnation and its jus-
tification. In United States constitutional law, the
guarantees of free speech and press in the First
Amendment have made these issues of liberal po-
litical theory central to the constitutional interpre-
tation of the First Amendment.
Scope of Condemnation
(Before and After Publication)
Liberal condemnation of censorship originally
centered on the condemnation of licensing, the
POWER in state officials to inspect all books, for ex-
ample, before publication and to forbid publication
if they contained content that was immoral, hereti-
cal, or offensive to the government. Condemnation
of licensing did not apply to criminal sanctions (e.g.,
imprisonment or fines) by the state or to civil com-
pensatory remedies (e.g., money damages) sought by
private parties for harms from published material on
the ground that the material was heretical, immoral,
or offensive. Liberal political and legal thought to-
day construes the condemnation of censorship to ap-
ply, in principle, to any exercise of state power solely
actuated by the content of material the state deems
immoral, heretical, or offensive, including the use of
criminal and civil laws to exercise such power.
Scope of Condemnation
(Political vs. Nonpolitical)
It is rather more controversial what kinds of state
judgments are counted as censorship and forbidden
by liberal principles. There is consensus, consistent
with the TOLERATION required by the religion
clauses of the First Amendment, that the state may
not make any judgments about the truth or value of
religious beliefs as such; however, there is continu-
ing dissension over the legitimacy of state judgments
in political and nonpolitical areas. Should liberal
principles condemn only judgments made by the
state to entrench its power during political cam-
paigns, or should they condemn state judgments
concerned with politics in general? Should the prin-
ciples extend as well to censorship of nonpolitical
forms of artistic expression, even to hard-core POR-
NOGRAPHY? United States constitutional law has in
recent years given a broader interpretation to the
198
scope of constitutional protections against political,
artistic, and ideological censorship, but it has con-
tinued to recognize legitimate state interests in reg-
ulating defamatory libel, commercial advertising,
breach of PRIVACY and copyright, and certain kinds
of hard-core pornography. None of these interpre-
tive questions can, however, be regarded as settled.
Burden of Justification on State
Liberal condemnation of censorship forbids, in
principle, the exercise of political power actuated
solely by official judgments about the political, phil-
osophical, religious, or ideological worth or value of
communicative material. Therefore, when the state
abridges availability of communicative materials,
liberal principles impose a very demanding burden
of justification on the state in order to ensure that
such regulation does not rest on forbidden censori-
ous judgments. Under current United States consti-
tutional law, that burden is met only when the state
can show that the abridgment in question was nec-
essary to avoid a clear and present danger of a sec-
ular harm, that is, a highly probable and very grave
harm the effects of which cannot be rebutted by de-
bate in the normal course. The current interpreta-
tion of this test is very demanding. For example, the
state could not meet this test when it attempted to
forbid Nazis from marching in the heavily Jewish
community of Skokie, Illinois.
Rationale for Liberal Condemnation
of Censorship
Competing philosophical justifications for the lib-
eral condemnation of censorship arise from argu-
ments from DEMOCRACY, from UTILITARIANISM, and
from contractualism.
The argument from democracy is that the kind of
electoral choice fundamental to a working democ-
racy requires that choice be exercised in the light of
the widest range of critical views about the state’s
performance. Free speech guarantees the electorate
this kind of informed choice by limiting the capacity
of state officials to censor critical debate about their
performance, a censorship often motivated by a con-
scious or unconscious will to retain power. But the
legitimate scope of democratic debate may be inter-
preted either narrowly or broadly. The narrow inter-
pretation limits such debate to the issues directly in

controversy among the main contenders for major-
itarian political power; the broader interpretation
construes such debate as extending to any issue of
possible debate, including the very legitimacy of po-
litical power in general and democracy in particular.
There are difficulties on both sides: The narrow in-
terpretation reduces the scope of free speech to the
measure of consensus politics, and thus it excludes
from free speech protection the dissenting discourse
most crucial to central issues both of justice and of
the COMMON GOOD. The broader interpretation
seems itself to compromise democratic LEGITIMACY
because it would protect attacks on the very foun-
dations of such legitimacy, including attacks on free
speech itself. If such attacks should be protected, as
current law requires, it seems that such a justifica-
tion must rest on independent political principles,
which all governments, including democracies, must
respect.
Utilitarian arguments for free speech maintain
that this policy promotes the greatest net balance of
PLEASURE over pain among all sentient creatures.
But such argument affords no clear protection of
free speech of the sort that United States constitu-
tional law now contemplates. The net aggregate of
pleasure over pain is often advanced, not frustrated,
by the abridgment of speech: Large populist major-
ities often relish the repression of outcast dissenters;
the numbers and pains of dissenters are by compar-
ison small; and there is seldom an offsetting future
net aggregate of pain over pleasure to make up the
difference.
Contractualist arguments for free speech derive
from a rights-based conception of political legiti-
macy that reserves certain RIGHTS (in particular, the
right to CONSCIENCE) from state power. Conscience
is an inalienable human right because it is the right
that enables persons, on terms of equal respect, to
be the sovereign moral critics of value in living, in-
cluding political values like the legitimacy of gov-
ernment, (i.e. whether the government respects HU-
MAN RIGHTS and pursues the public good in a way
that justifies obedience). The protection of speech,
correlative to such protection of such conscience,
removes from state power the enforcement of any
censorious judgment of the worth or value of speech
by which the government violates this inalienable
right. On this view, censorship is illegitimate be-
cause the state imposes its own suspect judgments
about the legitimate terms of debate about issues of
199
censorship
conscience in place of the reasonable exercise of
judgment over these issues by free people.
See also: ACADEMIC ETHICS; ACADEMIC FREEDOM;
AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; BLACKMAIL; CIVIL
DISOBEDIENCE; CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIC DUTIES; CON-
SCIENCE; DEMOCRACY; FREEDOM OF THE PRESS; GOV-
ERNMENT, ETHICS IN; HUMAN RIGHTS; INDIVIDUAL-
ISM; JOURNALISM; LIBERALISM; LIBERTY; LIBRARY
AND INFORMATION PROFESSIONS; MASS MEDIA; JOHN
STUART MILL; OBEDIENCE TO LAW; OPPRESSION; PO-
LITICAL CORRECTNESS; PORNOGRAPHY; POWER; PRI-
VACY; RACISM AND RELATED ISSUES; RAWLS; SEXU-
ALITY AND SEXUAL ETHICS; SOCIAL CONTRACT;
TOLERATION; UTILITARIANISM.
Bibliography
Meiklejohn, Alexander. Political Freedom. New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1965. Argument from democ-
racy against censorship.
Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. Edited by Alburey Castell.
New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1947 [1859].
Classic utilitarian argument for free speech.
Milton, John. Areopagitica. In The Prose of John Milton,
edited by J. Max Patrick, 265–334. Garden City, NY:
Anchor, 1967 [1644]. Classic argument against
licensing.
Rawls, John. “The Basic Liberties and Their Priority.” In
Liberty, Equality, and the Law, edited by Sterling M.
McMurrin, 3–87. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987. Further elaboration of Rawls’s earlier ar-
gument with special focus on issues of free speech.
———. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1971. Contractualist argument for liberty of
conscience.
Richards, David A. J. Toleration and the Constitution.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Contrac-
tualist account of United States constitutional law of
religious liberty, free speech, and constitutional
privacy.
Scanlon, T. M. “Freedom of Expression and Categories of
Expression.” University of Pittsburgh Law Review 40
(1979): 519. Reconsideration and revision of Scan-
lon’s earlier autonomy-based view.
———. “A Theory of Freedom of Expression.” Philosophy
and Public Affairs 1 (1972): 204–26. Autonomy-based
theory of free speech.
Schauer, Frederick. Free Speech: A Philosophical Enquiry.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Review
of American law.
David A. J. Richards
character

character of interlocutors in various Platonic dialogues. Most

often, asked to define some part of good character,
A person’s character is a group of relatively stable
Socrates’ interlocutors immediately specify the per-
traits connected with practical choice and ACTION.
formance of a certain sort of action. Early Greek
These traits—such as, for example, COURAGE, mod-
legal concepts also tended to focus on the evaluation
eration, and justice—are usually taken to involve a
of actions, apart from the patterns of motivation and
complex interweaving of beliefs, motivational de-
response that accompanied them. Aristotle argues
sires, and emotional responses. They are considered
that motivational and reactive feelings are so closely
to be not arbitrary personal idiosyncrasies, but traits
linked to the proper evaluation of actions that we
that any normal human being can cultivate, given an
cannot determine (for example) whether a certain
appropriate MORAL EDUCATION and personal effort.
action is or is not a just action, without first ascer-
The word “character” is derived from the Greek
taining what the agent’s MOTIVES were in doing it,
charaktēr, originally a mark impressed on a coin,
whether the agent was stably disposed to choose
later, more broadly, of a distinctive mark by which a
such actions, and what reactive feelings accompa-
thing is distinguished from others. The philosophical
nied the action. An action is excellent only if it is
use of the English word “character,” however, usu-
(a) chosen for its own sake (and not, for example,
ally translates the Greek word ēthos (importantly
through fear of PUNISHMENT or hope of reward);
distinct from ēthos, “habit”). And the expression
(b) chosen not by accident or on a whim, but as the
“excellence of character” renders the Greek expres-
result of a stable and reliable pattern of choice and
sion ēthikē aretē (sometimes also translated as
DESIRE; and (c) chosen with enthusiasm, without re-
“moral virtue”).
gret or internal struggle. This account also makes it
ARISTOTLE’s (384–322 B.C.E.) discussion of char-
clear that character, for Aristotle, cannot be simply
acter, the starting point for all subsequent major
a style or manner of acting, or simply a feeling, or
philosophical discussions, begins by dividing the ex-
simply an innate natural power—alternative views
cellences of the human being (the traits in virtue of
mentioned and criticized by Aristotle in working out
which a human being performs well the character-
his own account.
istic functions of a human life) into two groups: the
The settled state is concerned with choice: that
excellences of character and the excellences of in-
is, character aims at actions, and finds its natural
tellect. It later emerges that the two groups are in
expression in action. Aristotle uses this idea to argue
some cases closely related: for the intellectual excel-
that a life in which one’s traits of character are cut
lence of PRACTICAL WISDOM is necessary for full ex-
off from activity is an incomplete and incompletely
cellence of character, and one cannot have practical
flourishing life. Unlike the later Greek Stoics, who
wisdom without a good character. Aristotle then
held that character traits all by themselves were suf-
works out a general account of what an excellence
ficient for a fully good human life (for EUDAIMONIA),
of character is, before investigating specific parts of
Aristotle insists that activity, too, is required. Thus
good and bad character. His final definition is:
he introduces an element of luck into the good life:
for activity, as he points out, has material and social
Excellence of character is a settled state necessary conditions.
(hexis) concerned with choice, situated in a The idea that excellence of character is “in a
mean relative to us, this being determined by mean” (meson) is frequently taken to imply that all
reasoning, the reasoning that a person of good character traits are in a safe middle ground,
practical wisdom would use to determine it. concerned with the choice of modestly nonextreme
(NE 1106b36–1107a2) feelings. Aristotle’s detailed discussions, however,
make it plain that the notion of the “mean” is, in-
Each part of this definition needs elucidation, if Ar- stead, a notion of appropriateness. In every situa-
istotle’s notion of character is to be understood. tion, a person of good character will select actions
By calling excellence of character a settled state and have responses that are neither excessive nor
or hexis, Aristotle is taking a stand in a debate that defective for that situation, but are appropriate to
can be reconstructed both from his own critical ar- its particular nature. This does not, however, imply
guments and from an examination of the responses that such a person will never, for example, become

200

extremely angry or act and feel in some other intense
manner. He or she will do so, if that is what the
situation calls for. And, unlike his Hellenistic suc-
cessors (Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics), Aristotle
does not prize freedom from strong EMOTION, or re-
pudiate intensity. Where ANGER is concerned, for ex-
ample, he argues that a person of good character will
not be angry over things that really have little im-
portance (such as money or reputation), and will
not, in general, be overly prone to take violent RE-
VENGE. On the other hand, not to become angry
when something important in one’s life is damaged
is, in his view, a deficiency of character, showing a
“slavish” inability to stand up for oneself and what
one cares about.
The mean, Aristotle stresses, is concerned with
both actions and feelings. He believes that a good
person can reasonably aim to cultivate both. He
holds that emotions are not merely blind surges of
affect, but intelligent and discriminating elements of
moral agency that are based on judgments and edu-
cated through an education of judgment. He adds
that the mean is “relative to us”—meaning, proba-
bly, that the choices of a person of good character
take into account that person’s own history, traits,
and specific situation. He points out, for example,
that what would be a moderate choice of food for
Milo the wrestler would be gluttonous for most
people.
Finally, Aristotle insists that the choice of the
mean follows reasoning—so good character is not
simply a matter of mindless behavioral conditioning
and response. The reasoning in question, however,
cannot be fully captured in any extremely general
schematic account. We can only point to exemplary
agents and say that good choice follows the para-
digms exemplified in their procedures. In his ac-
count of practical wisdom, Aristotle insists that, like
medicine and navigation, it cannot be exhaustively
summarized in a system of principles, but involves
an ability to size up a concrete situation that cannot
be fully learned from a rule book, and involves some-
thing like “improvisation.” Just as a navigator who
went by the book in a storm of unexpected intensity
would be deficient, so too would be an ethical agent
who viewed a new situation simply as the occasion
for applying some previously learned rules. From
concrete ethical experience agents learn the ability
to respond resourcefully to what is at hand, using
general guidelines (such as those presented in Aris-
201
character
totle’s ethical writings), but cultivating a “percep-
tion” of particular people and situations.
Four distinct conditions of character are identi-
fied in Aristotle’s account: EXCELLENCE or “virtue”
(aretē), deficiency or “vice” (kakia), SELF-CONTROL
(enkrateia) and weakness (akrasia). For each excel-
lence there are usually two corresponding deficien-
cies: one a stable trait concerned with excessive
choice and response, the other with deficient choice
and response. Thus, for example, corresponding to
the excellence of moderation are both the defective
tendency to overindulgence and also a rarer trait, a
deficiency of interest in bodily pleasures. (Since both
actions and responses are being evaluated, more
complex combinations are also possible, and the
simple two-deficiency scheme does not fit all the
cases in Aristotle’s concrete analysis.) The self-
controlled person reliably performs the correct
actions, but only with struggle against rebellious
feelings. Aristotle, unlike many later writers on char-
acter—who are influenced, probably, by Christian
ideas of original sin—believes such self-control to
be a corrigible type of immaturity of character. A
person who behaves fairly to others, but only with
great inner struggle in each case, is a person whose
commitment to FAIRNESS is incomplete, or incom-
pletely internalized. The condition of this person’s
character is immature, and further effort would be
required to bring about the harmony that is char-
acteristic of excellence.
Akrasia, or weakness, is not strictly parallel to the
other three conditions, since Aristotle defines it not
as a condition of the character, but as a type of be-
havior: doing the worse despite knowing the better.
But a person who characteristically shows this sort
of weakness in actions could be diagnosed as suffer-
ing from a still greater degree of ethical immaturity
than that of the self-controlled person. Aristotle’s
account seems to suggest that such a person’s com-
mitment to good ends is underdeveloped and un-
steady, in such a way that the individual does not
succeed in acknowledging the particular moral fea-
tures of her situation.
For Aristotle, character encompasses many traits
that modern theorists might view as parts of “per-
sonality” rather than character—traits, that is, that
are parts of a person’s idiosyncratic and more or less
unchangeable makeup, and therefore not appropri-
ate for ethical assessment. Thus he includes not only
obvious and traditional ethical excellences, such as
character
courage, moderation, and justice, but also traits con-
nected with the proper conduct of social life, traits
such as GENEROSITY, mildness of temper, a proper
sense of humor, being hospitable, friendliness, and
appropriate (but not undue) modesty. He includes
all these because he believes that they are susceptible
of deliberate cultivation through an appropriate
scheme of moral education.
Character, Aristotle argues, is developed by ha-
bituation more than by nature or teaching: habitu-
ation, in fact, makes “more or less all the difference.”
Habituation is a complex process that relies on the
emotional bonds within the FAMILY and the larger
community, and that involves cognitive and emo-
tional training, tightly woven together. Aristotle be-
lieves that any normal human child who makes
enough effort can become good in character if given
appropriate LOVE and CARE. On the other hand,
communities often fail to provide character with the
appropriate educational support, as his many criti-
cisms of various cities in the Politics indicate.
An ethical view based on the idea of character
differs in several salient ways from other ethical
views—for example, those based on ideas of duty-
following, or of utilitarian calculation. An emphasis
on character means that the focus of ethical evalu-
ation will be the entire person over a complete life,
including the overall shape of the life; such an eval-
uation will include the inner life of thought and emo-
tion, as well as external actions. Furthermore, the
Aristotelian emphasis on the particularity of good
choice means that the content of the norm cannot
be completely captured in a set of general principles,
but is best seen by looking to the lives of exemplary
people. These two features make it natural for such
a view to take a keen interest in narrative, and in
literary character, as a source of examples of the sort
of lifelong moral effort good character involves.
Finally, an ethical view based on character can
easily acknowledge the possibility of conflicting at-
tachments and obligations, and serious MORAL DI-
LEMMAS. For each trait of character has its own dis-
tinctive attachments and commitments that are not
reducible to those belonging to any other trait; and
a good person has a rich plurality of character traits
with the range of distinctive commitments these en-
tail. Such commitments may in some circumstances
generate conflicting requirements. The requirements
of justice, for example, may in some cases pull
against those of FRIENDSHIP, those of moderation
202
against those of generosity. The morality of character
implies that in such circumstances a good person
will feel pain and remorse: for being forced to act
against a part of one’s character (even for the sake
of another part) is being forced to violate commit-
ments one has made in a deep ongoing way, com-
mitments cherished for their own sake.
See also: AGENCY AND DISABILITY; ARISTOTLE; AU-
TONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; COURAGE; DESIRE;
EMOTION; EUDAIMONIA, -ISM; EXCELLENCE; FAIR-
NESS; FITTINGNESS; FRIENDSHIP; GENEROSITY; LIT-
ERATURE AND ETHICS; MORAL DEVELOPMENT;
MORAL EDUCATION; MORAL LUCK; MOTIVES; NAR-
RATIVE ETHICS; PLATO; PRACTICAL REASON[ING];
PRACTICAL WISDOM; REASONS FOR ACTION; SELF-
CONTROL; SITUATION ETHICS; STOICISM; TEMPER-
ANCE; VIRTUE ETHICS; VIRTUES; WEAKNESS OF WILL.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Good translations are by
W. D. Ross or T. H. Irwin.
———. Eudemian Ethics. Translated by M. Woods. Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1982. Includes commentary by
Woods. See especially I, II, VIII. In the Clarendon Ar-
istotle Series.
———. Politics. Translated by B. Jowett. Edited by S. Ev-
erson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. De Finibus (On the Ends). Trans-
lated by H. Rackham. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press. In the Loeb Classical Library.
———. De Officiis (On Duties). Translated by W. Miller.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1913. In the
Loeb Classical Library.
Murdoch, Iris. The Sovereignty of Good. London: Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul, 1970.
Nussbaum, Martha C. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck
and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
———. Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Lit-
erature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Plato. Charmides. Laches. Meno. Protagoras. Gorgias.
Republic.
Rorty, Amélie, ed. Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1980.
Schofield, M., and G. Striker, eds. The Norms of Nature:
Essays on Hellenistic Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1986.
Sherman, Nancy. The Fabric of Character. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1989.
Stocker, Michael. Plural and Conflicting Values. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1990.
Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of the

Modern Identity. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1989.
Martha C. Nussbaum
charity
Gk. agápē, Lat. caritas, often translated love. The
third and greatest of the Christian “theological vir-
tues.” The canonical texts are Saint PAUL’s (C.E. 5?–
67?): “And now abideth faith, hope and charity, . . .
but the greatest of these is charity” (I Cor. 13:13).
In Christian thought, charity is divinely supported
LOVE both for God and for others. It is the funda-
mental spiritual orientation of Christian life, and is
epitomized in a number of New Testament texts and
parables. Christian commentators contrast the un-
selfish, unconditional and universal character of
charity with the self-seeking, indeed possessive (if
potentially spiritual) character of Platonic eros, the
this-worldly acquisitiveness of cupiditas (denounced
by AUGUSTINE [354–430]), and the nonpossessive
yet conditional and restrictive character of Aristo-
telian philia. Christian charity is not possessive. In
St. Paul’s words: “charity vaunteth not itself . . .
seeketh not her own” (I Cor. 13:4–5). It is uncon-
ditional: “[charity] beareth all things . . . and . . .
never faileth” (I Cor. 13:7–8). And, as is shown in
the parable of the Good Samaritan, charity is not
restricted to kin or compatriots. Throughout the
New Testament the spiritual character of Christian
charity—the New Law of the Gospel—is contrasted
with the Old Law, which is depicted as rule-bound,
hence conditional and restricted in its concerns.
(Similar criticisms of narrowly external accounts of
charity are to be found within Jewish and other tra-
ditions.) Charity is not to be equated with specific
works of charity: “though I bestow all my goods to
feed the poor . . . and have not charity, it profiteth
me nothing” (I Cor. 13:3).
For Christians the theological virtues are more
fundamental than, and provide the mold or matrix
for, the moral and intellectual virtues. THOMAS
AQUINAS (1225?–1274), the greatest systematizer
of Christian thought, affirms that “faith hope and
charity are virtues directing us to God” (Summa
theologica, IaIIae, 62, 1), that “in the order of per-
fection charity precedes faith and hope . . . charity
is the mother and root of all the virtues inasmuch as
it is the form of them all” (IaIIae, 62, 4), that “he
203
charity
that has charity has all the moral virtues” (IaIIae,
65, 3) and that perfect “moral virtue cannot be with-
out charity” (IaIIae, 65, 2). Even justice, which
Aquinas thinks “the most excellent of moral virtues”
(IaIIae, 66, 4), is subordinate to charity. Aquinas
also details a more specific list of works of charity
by which Christians may meet the material and spir-
itual NEEDS of others; however, these are seen as out-
ward and visible fruits of the all-important under-
lying spiritual orientation. Although works of
charity are obligatory for Christians, their specific
form cannot be laid down in advance, as it can with
the more strictly specified duties of justice. These
practical manifestations of charity too have close an-
alogues in Jewish and Islamic thought, and less close
analogues in all societies in which giving and GEN-
EROSITY (not always to the needy) are seen as ethi-
cally important.
When the writers of the early modern period
questioned the theological framework which placed
charity at the apex of the virtues, the foundations of
all the virtues were simultaneously undermined. At-
tempts at reconstruction were generally selective.
The SOCIAL CONTRACT theorists detached justice
from theological foundations and proposed alter-
native, humanistic vindications for it; many philos-
ophers in the empiricist tradition offered naturalistic
accounts of the social virtues, construing them as
passions and sentiments which arise naturally and
secure social bonds, at least among limited groups.
Others suggested that the social virtues were less
vital for public life than had previously been sup-
posed: private vices might be public virtues; greed,
which had formerly counted as a sin against charity,
was legitimated as the motor of economic growth.
The social background against which these changes
took place was one of increased separation between
the lives of rich and poor and of increasing economic
action-at-a-distance. The decline of feudalism meant
the emergence of mobile poverty; the colonial em-
pires created a global economy in which the wealthy
“North” affects lives in the distant and poverty-
stricken “South.” Traditional Christian accounts of
charity had never confronted these problems, and
the new ethical theories too had little to say about
the relief of distanced need and poverty.
In the words of the New Catholic Encyclopaedia
(1967), charity had “gone down in the world.” In-
creasingly the term refers only to works of philan-
thropy, especially the relief of poverty, undertaken
charity
by individuals working either alone or through non-
governmental organizations. Such works of charity
are seldom adequate to meet massive needs, and are
seldom seen as manifestations of love. They are of-
ten stigmatized as degrading, and are accused of cre-
ating and preserving a “culture of dependency.” The
warmth of Christian charity contrasts sharply with
condescending forms of philanthropy that have
made the biting phrase “cold as charity” a byword.
Contemporary debates about philanthropy are less
about charity in its older sense than about the limits
of justice. Libertarians think that justice requires
that public bodies do nothing for the relief of pov-
erty. They think works of charity permissible, pro-
vided they are acts of free choice by donors, but fear
the creation of dependence. Advocates of welfare
rights insist that justice demands that states take re-
sponsibility for the relief of poverty at least within
their own boundaries. They do not regard works of
charity as wrong, but hope that a just social order
will make them unnecessary, since they too regard
dependency as degrading. Despite their misgivings,
both libertarians and the advocates of welfare rights
often pay lip service to the older status of charity by
speaking of it as “supererogatory.” Yet they do not
offer convincing accounts of why they judge acts
that they do not regard as obligatory as morally ad-
mirable. Utilitarians are on easier ground: since they
evaluate all action by its results, they view works of
charity as required and admirable if, but only if, they
increase aggregate HAPPINESS more than alternative
courses of action. By making BENEFICENCE the sole
ethical demand, they blur the boundaries between
the perfect, claimable duties of justice and the im-
perfect, unclaimable duties of philanthropy, al-
though they often deploy these traditional terms.
Many contemporary ethical debates have rela-
tively little to say about the wider issues with which
discussions of charity were concerned. Outside
THEOLOGICAL ETHICS and VIRTUE ETHICS there is al-
most no discussion of giving, generosity, need, or
poverty. In part this reflects the general rejection of
accounts of the good for man that could anchor
strong conceptions of human needs or of the virtues;
in part it reflects the prominence of theories which
take RIGHTS as the fundamental ethical category, so
can give an account of the ‘perfect’ duties of justice,
to which rights correspond, but can say little about
the traditional ‘imperfect’ duties to which no rights
correspond.
204
The diminished part played by charity (and other
virtues) in contemporary ethical discussions has re-
cently been challenged by various advocates of the
social virtues, and more specifically by the emer-
gence of care as a common topic of ethical discus-
sion (by, for example, HEIDEGGER [1889–1976],
Carol Gilligan, ‘other voice’ feminism, MEDICAL
ETHICS). Both etymologically, and sometimes in in-
spiration, CARE is the contemporary, but diminished,
descendent of charity. It is generally characterized as
concern for the needs of others that takes full ac-
count of others’ particularity, rather than treating
them merely in accord with the abstract rules of jus-
tice. However, these discussions are mainly about
the importance of care in face-to-face relationships.
While phrases such as “caring society,” “community
care,” or “commitment to care” have become clichés
of contemporary public debate, the foundations,
structure, and demands of care, its relations to jus-
tice, and its import in a world of mediated social
relations where need and poverty are often at a dis-
tance from those who could reduce them have not
yet been convincingly elaborated.
See also: ALTRUISM; BENEFICENCE; BENEVOLENCE;
CARE; CHRISTIAN ETHICS; COMMON GOOD; FEMINIST
ETHICS; GENEROSITY; INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE: DIS-
TRIBUTION; ISLAMIC ETHICS; JEWISH ETHICS; JUSTICE,
DISTRIBUTIVE; LIBERALISM; LIBERTARIANISM; LOVE;
NEEDS; PAUL; PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS; PUBLIC
GOODS; SUPEREROGATION; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS;
THOMAS AQUINAS; UTILITARIANISM; VIRTUE ETHICS;
VIRTUES; WELFARE RIGHTS AND SOCIAL POLICY.
Bibliography
Brock, Gillian, ed. Necessary Goods: Our Responsibilities
to Meet Others’ Needs. Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1998.
Buchanan, Alan. “Justice and Charity.” Ethics 97 (1987):
558–75.
Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory
and Women’s Dependence. Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1982; 2d ed., 1993.
Hirschmann, Albert. The Passions and the Interests: Po-
litical Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977.
New Catholic Encyclopaedia. S.v. “charity”. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1967.
Nygren, Anders. Eros and Agape. Translated by Philip S.
Watson. London: Society for the Propagation of Chris-
tian Knowledge, 1982.

O’Neill, Onora. Towards Justice and Virtue: A Construc-
tive Account of Practical Reasoning. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1996.
Paul, Ellen Frankel, et al. Beneficence, Philanthropy and
the Public Good. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987.
Paul, the Apostle. I Corinthians.
Thomas Aquinas. Summa theologica. In Basic Writings of
Saint Thomas Aquinas, edited by Anton C. Pegis. New
York: Random House, 1945 [1266–1273].
Onora O’Neill
cheating
Cheating is often taken as a paradigm of an immoral
act, thus it is somewhat surprising that the concept
of cheating has been almost completely neglected by
philosophers. This may be due to the false belief that
cheating, like lying, is simply a subclass of deception
or it may be mistakenly thought that cheating is a
special case of breaking one’s promise. Although
most cheating does involve deception and cheating
often involves the breaking of an implicit promise,
cheating is conceptually distinct from both decep-
tion and breaking a promise.
Cheating in its basic form takes place only in a
voluntary activity with a built-in goal, such as a
game. The rules of this activity can be drawn up
explicitly, as in most games, or simply grow out of
custom, as in generally agreed-upon practices in
buying and selling. Cheating involves the intentional
violation of the rules of this activity in order to gain
this built-in goal, and the activity, at least initially,
includes no explicit penalty for the violation except
perhaps expulsion from the activity. Prominent ex-
amples of cheating involve athletes, including Olym-
pic athletes, trying to improve their chances of win-
ning by taking prohibited performance-enhancing
drugs.
Since cheating is intentionally violating the rules
of an activity in order to obtain its built-in goal, a
person who cheats generally will try to conceal his
or her cheating from others. Most people participat-
ing in an activity will not allow a cheater to gain the
built-in goal of that activity when he or she has not
abided by its rules. This explains why cheating al-
most always involves deception. People who know
that a person has cheated are generally not going to
allow him or her to benefit by doing so.
That a person entering into an activity such as a
game knows that the other participants expect ev-
205
cheating
eryone entering into that activity to abide by its rules
may explain why some regard cheating as breaking
an implicit promise. However, PROMISES, even gen-
uine implicit promises, are always made to a partic-
ular person or group of persons. A person can cheat,
however, never having come into contact with any-
one who can claim that a promise, implicit or ex-
plicit, was made to him. Cheating depends on a so-
cial setting rather than on personal interaction; it
involves violating the rules of an activity that all par-
ticipants are expected to obey. Although cheating is
not reducible to either the breaking of a promise or
deceiving, all three of them might be classified as a
violation of TRUST or faith. However, this is not a
useful classification, for “violation of trust or faith”
is being used in an enlarged technical sense just so
it can include cheating, deceiving, and breaking a
promise.
The fact that it is so natural to talk about cheating
at solitaire shows that cheating is more closely re-
lated to breaking the rules of a game than to either
deceiving or breaking a promise. But since cheating
at solitaire does not involve any other people, it is
not a basic case of cheating and so is not conclusive.
However the example of the boss who openly and
regularly cheats while playing golf with his subor-
dinates shows that someone may cheat without de-
ceiving or making any kind of promise to abide by
the rules. He may not count missed strokes, or he
may remove the ball from the rough without taking
a penalty. Of course, if he cheats too much, it might
be said that he is not really participating in that ac-
tivity or playing that game. But in a sense, cheating
just is “not playing the game,” and so this is not a
serious objection. One need only notice the reac-
tions of his subordinates to realize that they do not
consider themselves to be playing a different game.
Recognition that cheating involves trying to gain
the built-in goal of an activity without abiding by its
rules not only explains why those who commit adul-
tery are regarded as cheating on their spouses, it also
clarifies the concept of marriage in contemporary
Western society. Adultery in Western societies is im-
moral because marriage in these societies involves
participating in a practice requiring one to be an ex-
clusive sexual partner in order to gain the goal of
exclusive possession of a sexual partner. Of course,
marriage in these societies is supposed to involve
much more than this and usually does, but exclusive
sexual activity is central to it. Adultery involves gain-
cheating
ing the goal of marriage, an exclusive sexual partner,
without abiding by the standards of that activity, be-
ing an exclusive sexual partner.
Cheating, unlike either deceiving or breaking
promises, must be intentional. Although one can un-
intentionally deceive or break a promise, there is no
such thing as unintentional cheating. That cheating
occurs in a voluntary activity and is intentional may
explain why there seem to be no examples of justi-
fied cheating. But although examples of justified
cheating may be rare, they are certainly possible.
Playing cards with someone who will kill one’s fam-
ily if he wins certainly justifies cheating. (If he will
kill them if he loses, letting him win is not cheating.)
Students do not normally regard cheating on ex-
ams in the same way that they regard cheating in a
game because they do not regard taking exams, ex-
cept at the more advanced levels, as a voluntary ac-
tivity. In fact, cheating on an exam is in many re-
spects like cheating on one’s income tax; it is more
like breaking the law than it is like the paradigm
cases of cheating in a game. But cheating on a test
is like the paradigm cases of cheating in that gaining
the built-in goal of the activity, the benefits of pass-
ing the exam or getting an A on it, depends on other
people abiding by the rules. Indeed, even cheating
on one’s income tax has a close family resemblance
to other forms of cheating, for the cheater counts on
others to obey the law.
A person who benefits from a practice, but does
not do what is required for that practice to be main-
tained, could be regarded as cheating, but is more
often described as acting unfairly. He is not abiding
by the rules that everyone who benefits from the
practice is expected to follow. What is sometimes
referred to as the problem of the free rider arises, in
part, because not all activities have clear rules gov-
erning the behavior of participants. People who re-
gard others as not bearing their fair share of the bur-
den believe that there are clear, if implicit, rules
governing that activity and regard the free rider as
violating these rules. Often, however, calling some-
one unfair is often simply a way of expressing moral
disapproval, even though there is usually a sugges-
tion that this involves not playing by the accepted
rules.
Whether or not a person is cheating or acting
fairly is most easily determined with respect to
games, for most games have clear and explicit rules
and there is usually no doubt about whether or not
206
a person is abiding by these rules. But there are many
social practices where the rules governing that prac-
tice are not quite so clear. To talk about a person
acting fairly, in the basic sense when acting fairly is
opposed to cheating, presupposes that she is par-
ticipating in some practice with rules that all partic-
ipants are expected to follow. A person in charge of
hiring counts as acting fairly if she hires people in
accordance with the stated criteria for hiring. It is a
mistake to regard the criteria for hiring as fair or
unfair unless there is a practice that governs the set-
ting of criteria for hiring. FAIRNESS in the basic sense
presupposes some practice, and at some point one
will arrive at a practice that cannot itself be accu-
rately described as fair or unfair.
Basketball gives an advantage to those who are
taller, but there is nothing unfair about that. That
advantage can be minimized by various rule
changes, but that would not make the game fairer,
only less advantageous to those who are taller. Of
course, if a game is supposed to be a test of some
skills, and it has rules that provide an advantage to
some players independent of their having those
skills, it will not be as good a test of those skills as
another game that does not provide such an advan-
tage. But that does not make one game less fair than
the other. Only when some players are given an ad-
vantage unrelated to the standard rules of the game
can a game be correctly viewed as unfair. The clear-
est example of a game not being fair is one in which
some persons are not playing by the rules, as when
the dice are loaded or the cards are marked, so that
a player has an advantage that he is not supposed to
have by the rules of that game. Enlarging the concept
of fairness by applying it to the making of the rules
is to invite confusion.
Although “fair” is now often used as a synonym
for “morally acceptable,” fairness in its basic sense
is playing by the rules of a voluntary activity, an ac-
tivity that it is possible to quit. Morality is not vol-
untary, a moral agent cannot simply decide not to
participate in morality, for others will continue to
judge his behavior morally. But there is an extra-
ordinary parallel between cheating and immoral AC-
TION in general that helps explain why cheating
seems the paradigm case of an immoral action. In-
deed, although cheating has not been explicitly dis-
cussed by philosophers, many have taken cheating
to be the model for all immoral action. Although
they are not generally aware of it, all those who make

fairness central to morality are using cheating as the
model of immoral action. Similarly, cheating pro-
vides the model of immoral action for SOCIAL CON-
TRACT theorists. Their talk of promises, especially
implicit promises, becomes more plausible if break-
ing an implicit promise is regarded as a way of re-
ferring to breaking the rules of a voluntary activity,
that is, as cheating. Their effort to view society as a
voluntary association also becomes more under-
standable.
However, despite the close parallel between
cheating and immoral action in general, to use cheat-
ing as the model of immoral action would have bad
effects, such as overemphasizing the notion of vol-
untary participation. It might even result in the un-
tenable view that one can perform an immoral ac-
tion only with regard to those who are participating
in the same voluntary practice. Coupled with the
view that only people in the same society are par-
ticipating in the same voluntary practice, the conclu-
sion would follow that one can be immoral only with
regard to someone in one’s own society. Taking
cheating as the model for all immoral action might
therefore lead some people to accept ethical relativ-
ism. Another serious fault with using cheating as the
model of immorality is the trivialization of morality.
Cheating generally results only in the less significant
harms that morality prohibits causing. Although
fairness is now often taken as IMPARTIALITY or
EQUALITY, those who make fairness central to mo-
rality or who put forward a social contract theory,
such as John RAWLS, need to be wary of taking
cheating as the model of immoral action.
See also: BRIBERY; CONTRACTS; DECEIT; EQUALITY;
EXPLOITATION; FAIRNESS; FORGERY; GERT; HONOR;
IMMORALISM; IMPARTIALITY; INTENTION; JUSTICE,
DISTRIBUTIVE; HOBBES; IMPARTIALITY; LOCKE;
MORAL RELATIVISM; OBEDIENCE TO LAW; PLAGIA-
RISM; PROMISES; RAWLS; RECIPROCITY; ROSS; SO-
CIAL CONTRACT; SPORT; TRUST; VOLUNTARISM.
Bibliography
Gert, Bernard. Morality: Its Nature and Justification. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998. See especially
chapters 6 and 8.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Indianapolis, Hackett. 1994
[1651].
Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. Edited by Pe-
207
children and ethical theory
ter Laslett. 2d, critical ed. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1967 [1689].
Rawls, John. “Justice as Fairness.” Philosophical Review
67 (1958): 164–94.
———. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1971.
Richards, David A. J. A Theory of Reasons for Action. Ox-
ford, Oxford University Press, 1971.
Ross, W. D. The Right and the Good. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1930.
Toulmin, Stephen. The Place of Reason in Ethics. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950.
Bernard Gert
children and ethical theory
The distinction between “child” and “adult” is made
in every society and the practice of treating children
differently than adults is universal, although the na-
ture and scope of this practice varies significantly
from culture to culture. Studies of the phenomenon
known as childhood, the development of children,
the social role of the child, and the varying ways in
which societies treat and justify their treatment of
children are an important part of PSYCHOLOGY, SO-
CIAL PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY, history, and AN-
THROPOLOGY.
In the history of ethics, references to children are
infrequent and usually appear as subsidiary parts of
discussions of MORAL DEVELOPMENT, virtue, MORAL
EDUCATION, moral RESPONSIBILITY, the ascription of
RIGHTS and duties, PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS, and
the FAMILY. With respect to virtue, both PLATO (c.
430–347 B.C.E.) and ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.)
raised the questions “What kind of person shall we
raise our children to be, and how are we to accom-
plish this?” because they were both convinced that
the cultivation of virtuous traits of CHARACTER is
one of the primary functions of morality. Plato de-
fended the notion that the education of children is
primarily a matter of the training of character rather
than the acquisition of information and skills. With
respect to the acquisition of good character, Aris-
totle argued that children must acquire not merely
the right moral beliefs but they must come to possess
the desire and the will to put these beliefs into prac-
tice, and this can be attained only through virtuous
conduct. Hence, he argued against the Socratic the-
sis that virtue is knowledge, that is, that knowledge
of virtue is sufficient to produce virtuous action.
children and ethical theory
Concerns about moral education are also to be
found in the writings of ANSELM (1033–1109),
Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU (1712–1778), John LOCKE
(1632–1704), and Immanuel KANT (1724–1804).
During the Hellenistic period, the ancient Stoics
disputed the Epicurean account of the way that chil-
dren developed into adults motivated by universal
moral principles. These disputes are called “CRADLE
ARGUMENTS,” and they were quite common in Hel-
lenistic ethics. CICERO (106–43 B.C.E.), for example,
argued against the Epicureans that it is love of self,
not PLEASURE, which supplies the infant’s primary
impulse to action. Through a psychological process
which the ancient Stoics called oikeiosis, (endear-
ment, attachment) the infant’s interest in and affec-
tion for things that serve her self-interest eventually
become the child’s interest in and affection for such
things independent of whether they serve those im-
pulses, which eventually will become an affection for
morally appropriate behavior. Among the modern
philosophers, JOHN STUART MILL (1806–1873) en-
dorsed the Epicurean position that a child’s original
desire of or motive to virtue is its conduciveness to
pleasure. Rousseau took no position on this dispute,
although he endorsed the idea, implicit in the Stoic
account, that children pass through several age-
related stages in their moral development.
Philosophical discussions of the nature of moral
responsibility refer to children in the attempt to de-
velop theories about the mental conditions neces-
sary for holding persons morally blameworthy. For
example, Jeremy BENTHAM (1748–1832) contended
that since infants have “not yet attained that state or
disposition of mind” in which “the whispers of sim-
ple morality” will influence their future conduct, we
ought not to blame them for their untoward behav-
ior. Concerns about the mental capacity of children
also arise in discussions about the ascription of
moral rights. Writers such as Locke, Mill, and John
RAWLS have tied the justification for denying to chil-
dren so-called liberty rights (the right to freedom
from the interference of others in making choices
that affect only oneself) to their lack of reason or to
the immaturity of their mental faculties. Others such
as Herbert SPENCER (1820–1903) countered that all
persons should have complete freedom to exercise
whatever faculties they possess. The fact that chil-
dren are intellectually immature means only that
they have faculties that are less mature than those
208
of an adult; it does not entail that their liberty right
to exercise those faculties is or should be restricted.
Most of the pre–twentieth-century philosophical
discussions of children have been about their role in
the family. In marked contrast to recent philosoph-
ical concerns about children, the central question
was not about their rights but about the nature and
scope of their (filial) duties: What obligations do
children have toward their parents and how do these
obligations arise? THOMAS AQUINAS (1225?–1274)
contended that children owe GRATITUDE to their
parents because their parents give them nurture and
protection. Thomas HOBBES (1588–1679) claims
that a child’s duty is obedience because the child has
tacitly agreed to obey the parents out of fear of being
killed or abandoned by them. Later writers appear
to accept the position that the child’s duty to the
parent is obedience, but they disagree that this is
grounded on a contract or an agreement between
parent and child. Thus, Locke traces filial obligation
to the parents’ right to govern their children. Rous-
seau grounds filial obligation on the fact that it is
necessary for children to obey their parents if they
are to survive their minority.
Although references to children sometimes occur
in the context of discussions of particular topics
(e.g., moral responsibility), those who have pro-
posed ethical theories have, by and large, ignored
children. Philosophical claims about those persons
who have obligations toward others and those per-
sons toward whom one has obligations have usually
been restricted to adults and to strangers. This is
unfortunate because facts about children and paren-
tal love may be relevant to the content and appli-
cation of those ethical principles that comprise the
theory. For example, Locke argues that a fundamen-
tal principle of obligation is to refrain from doing
those acts that would violate the natural rights of
others. However, the “others” that Locke has in
mind are adults, not children, and the “natural
rights” are usually assumed to be the “negative”
rights to noninterference in their life, liberty, or
PROPERTY. Suppose, however, that children are in-
cluded in the class of those who have natural rights.
Then there seems to be a strong argument for in-
cluding at least some “positive” rights to protection
and CARE in the list of rights. If one does not include
these rights, then the theory has the counterintuitive
result that an unwed mother whose unplanned and
unwanted baby has died of starvation because of her

neglect has done nothing morally wrong so long as
she can show that she has neither promised to feed,
clothe, or shelter this particular infant, nor inter-
fered with its “attempts” to acquire its own food or
shelter. On the other hand, if one does include posi-
tive rights among the list of natural rights, then ei-
ther adults have the same rights to protection and
care as those accorded to children, or an argument
must be produced to show why adults are to be ac-
corded only negative rights.
Parental love for their children also poses a dif-
ficulty for ethical theory. A recurring theme of West-
ern ethics is that morality requires us to be impartial.
Thus, John Stuart Mill urged that, when weighing
the interests of different people, we should be “as
strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent
spectator.” But this idea conflicts with parental love.
Parental love is not only thoroughly partial, but most
people think that PARTIALITY toward one’s child is a
parent’s moral duty.
In addition to the preceding, the most compelling
philosophical problems that arise when ethicists
take children into account when developing their
theories are these:
The nature of childhood. What do we mean by
the concept of “child”? When philosophers raise this
question, their interest is usually in the normative,
not the conventional use of the term. Their question
is: “What is a child for the purpose of ascribing
rights and duties?” not “What is a child according
to custom or legal tradition?” Answers to the former
question have varied. Mill said that children are hu-
man beings who are not “in the maturity of their
faculties,” and are “still in a state to require being
taken care of by others.” Others have emphasized
the child’s lack of capacity to make rational deci-
sions and the ability to be self-sufficient (Kant). This
raises several secondary questions: What is ration-
ality, maturity, self-sufficiency? How relevant are
these capacities to the ascription of rights and du-
ties? Is there any correspondence between the con-
ventional concept of children, based on chronolog-
ical age, and the normative concept suggested by the
philosopher? What is the extent of childhood (how
long does it last)? What is the significance of the
differences that are found in the qualities that are
attributed to the child and to the adult?
Do children have moral rights? This question is
a logically “closed” question if one means by the
term “child” one who lacks the capacity to have
209
children and ethical theory
moral rights. However, few seem to have gone so far
as to suggest that children have no moral rights at
all, including, e.g., the right not to be injured or
killed, although some have suggested that newborns
may lack this right (because they are not capable of
having an interest in their own future existence), and
thus INFANTICIDE is morally justifiable.
What legal liberty rights should be extended to
children? Most of the contemporary philosophers
who have discussed children’s rights have been par-
ticularly interested in the legal right to liberty, that
is, the right to noninterference by others with one’s
self-regarding behavior. “Liberationists” are those
who argue that children should have all the rights
that adults currently possess, for example, the right
to vote, to work, to own property, to choose one’s
own guardian, to make sexual choices. “Caretakers,”
on the other hand, are those who would deny chil-
dren these rights. Leaving aside the preceding ques-
tion about the normative definition of childhood,
when one enters the debate between liberationists
and caretakers, it is important to determine whether
competence can be correlated with particular age-
groups. The remaining questions are: What (if any)
are the mental capacities necessary to the possession
of liberty rights? Assuming that one can possess
more or less of a particular mental capacity, then
how much of that capacity is required to possess the
liberty right? Shall we distinguish between particu-
lar liberty rights (e.g., the right to play with a toy, to
play in the street, to work) and say that some of them
but not others are predicated on the possession of
particular mental capacities? Should competence al-
ways be required of a RIGHT HOLDER (if I am not
competent to do something, e.g., tie my shoes,
should I be denied the right to do it)?
The paradox of self-determination. One of the
rights that some writers have argued that children
possess is the right to have their future options kept
open until they are fully formed adults capable of
deciding among them. But this presents a vicious
regress. It is said that those persons who are fully
autonomous are those who have shaped their own
lives and character. This in turn implies that they
already are capable of determining their own life. It
seems impossible for them to have this capacity on
their own, for they would have had to have a fully
formed self to do that, and so on ad infinitum. Is
there a way to break this regress? Second, if there is
a right of self-determination that children have or
children and ethical theory
will come to possess, then what constraints does this
place on how their parents can treat them now?
Grown children and filial duties. Do grown chil-
dren owe anything to their elderly parents? Some
philosophers have argued that grown children owe
their parents HONOR and respect because their par-
ents have reared them to adulthood. Others argue
that grown children owe nothing to their parents be-
cause child-rearing is not a favor but a voluntary
sacrifice of time and money for the child’s benefit.
A parent’s voluntary sacrifice for her child does not
make him indebted, although it may provide the
ground for a future friendship between them.
Some philosophers have argued that there is no
grounding for filial duties in current ethical theories.
Others have argued that there may be reasons other
than duty for doing things for one’s parents (for ex-
ample, friendship). Still others have contended that
the problem with grounding filial duty in current
moral theory is symptomatic of problems embedded
in the theories themselves, located particularly in the
impartial ethical principles that comprise these the-
ories, principles derived from and appropriate to re-
lationships between strangers, not those in personal
relationships. Recent feminist suggestions that
women differ from men in approaching ethical di-
lemmas and social problems from a “care” rather
than a “justice” perspective may point the way to an
ethical theory that is better equipped to account for
ethical relationships between children and their
parents.
See also: CARE; CHARACTER; CRADLE ARGUMENTS;
CULTURAL STUDIES; DUTY AND OBLIGATION; EPICU-
REANISM; FAMILY; FEMINIST ETHICS; GRATITUDE; IM-
PARTIALITY; INFANTICIDE; MORAL DEVELOPMENT;
MORAL EDUCATION; NEGLIGENCE; PARTIALITY; PA-
TERNALISM; PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS; PROPERTY;
RECIPROCITY; RESPONSIBILITY; RIGHT HOLDERS;
RIGHTS; SELF-OWNERSHIP; STOICISM; VIRTUE ETHICS;
WORK.
Bibliography
Archard, David. Children: Rights and Childhood. New
York: Routledge, 1993.
Aries, Phillipe. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History
of Family Life. New York: Vintage, 1962.
Blustein, Jeffrey. Parents and Children: The Ethics of the
Family. New York: Oxford, 1982. Includes extensive
bibliography of classic and contemporary sources.
210
English, Jane. “What Do Grown Children Owe Their Par-
ents?” In Having Children: Philosophical and Legal
Reflections on Parenthood, edited by Onora O’Neill
and William Ruddick, 351–56. New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1979.
Houlgate, Laurence D. The Child and the State: A Nor-
mative Theory of Juvenile Rights. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1980. Chapters 4–7 on pa-
ternalism in ethical theory.
———. Morals, Marriage, and Parenthood: An Introduc-
tion to Family Ethics. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1999.
Jecker, Nancy. “Are Filial Duties Unfounded?” American
Philosophical Quarterly 26 (1989): 73–80.
Kittay, Eva, and Diana Myers, eds. Women and Moral
Theory. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1987.
Kleinig, John. “Mill, Children and Rights.” Educational
Philosophy and Theory 8 (1976): 1–15.
Rachels, James. “Morality, Parents, and Children.” In Per-
son to Person, edited by George Graham and Hugh
LaFollette. Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1989.
Schoeman, Ferdinand. “Rights of Children, Rights of Par-
ents, and the Moral Basis of the Family.” Ethics 91
(1980): 6–19.
Simmons, A. John. The Lockean Theory of Rights. Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 1992. See chapter 4.
Laurence D. Houlgate
China
The following account provides a historical sketch
of Chinese ethics and highlights the distinctive char-
acteristics of ethical traditions through a discussion
of representative thinkers and texts. Dynasties re-
ferred to include Chou (middle of eleventh century
to 249 B.C.E.), Ch’in (221 to 206 B.C.E.), Han (206
B.C.E. to C.E. 220), Wei (220 to 265), Chin (265 to
420), Sui (581 to 618), T’ang (618 to 907), Sung
(960 to 1279), Ming (1368 to 1644), and Ch’ing
(1644 to 1912). The history of Chinese ethics is di-
vided into three overlapping periods: to early Han,
from Han to T’ang, and from T’ang to the present.
First Period: To Early Han
After the Chou people conquered the Shang in
the middle of the eleventh century B.C.E., early Chou
kings ruled by letting feudal lords govern vassal
states. As their powers grew, feudal lords fought
each other and resisted the Chou king, until the state
of Ch’in conquered all other states in 221 B.C.E. A

number of ethical and political thinkers lived in the
period from the sixth to the third century B.C.E., in-
cluding CONFUCIUS (sixth to fifth century B.C.E.),
MO TZU (fifth century B.C.E.), Yang Chu (fifth to
fourth century B.C.E.), MENCIUS (fourth century
B.C.E.), CHUANG TZU (fourth century B.C.E.), HSÜN
TZU (third century B.C.E.), and Han Fei Tzu (third
century B.C.E.). Texts traditionally ascribed to this
period include the Lao Tzu, Ta-hsüeh, and Chung-
yung. These thinkers and texts are discussed in three
sections, the first on classical Confucianism (Con-
fucius, Mencius, Hsün Tzu, Ta-hsüeh, Chung-yung),
the second on classical Taoism (Chuang Tzu, Lao
Tzu), and the third on Mohism (Mo Tzu), Yangism
(Yang Chu), and Legalism (Han Fei Tzu).
Classical Confucianism. After the Chou con-
quest, the Chou deity t’ien (Heaven) gradually re-
placed the Shang deity ti (Lord) as the primary ob-
ject of devotion, while sacrifices continued to be
offered to ancestral and other spirits. The story was
told that the mandate (ming) to rule comes from
Heaven, and that the mandate had been transferred
from late Shang kings to early Chou kings because
the former were wicked while the latter were wise
and good. Retention of the mandate depends on the
ruler’s te (virtue, moral power), a quality involving
proper religious sacrifices and such attributes as self-
sacrificial GENEROSITY and nonassertiveness, as well
as a psychic power of attraction and transformation
associated with the quality. Evolution of this idea
signified a growing emphasis on proper human
CHARACTER and conduct outside of a purely reli-
gious context. The trend is also seen in the evolution
of the use of the concept li (rites, ritual), from ref-
erence to rites in religious sacrifices conducted by
rulers, to reference to NORMS governing proper con-
duct between people generally.
The move toward a more general concern with
proper human character and conduct continued in
Confucius’s teachings as recorded in the Lun Yü
(Analects). While still engaged in sacrifices to an-
cestors, he turned aside such questions as whether
spirits exist and instead emphasized the function of
such sacrifices in expressing and reinforcing a rev-
erential attitude to ancestors. And while still holding
Heaven in awe, he did not engage in speculations
about the nature of Heaven but instead devoted him-
self to spelling out a specific conception of the ideal
human life. This conception was later defended by
Mencius (Meng Tzu) and Hsün Tzu. They and Con-
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fucius were the three most important classical Con-
fucian thinkers.
The Confucian way of life was characterized in
terms of tao (Way) and te. Originally meaning road
or way, “tao” had by Confucius’s time come to refer
to the ideal way of life, as well as to teachings about
that way of life. By this time, “te” was used not just
in connection with rulers but had come to refer to
the quality/power by virtue of which people in gen-
eral can tread the Way. The two concepts were used
by other schools in connection with different ideals,
but the Confucians further explicated their concep-
tion of tao and te in terms of jen, yi, and li. “Jen”
(humanity, BENEVOLENCE) was used sometimes (es-
pecially in the Lun Yü) to refer to the highest ethical
ideal encompassing all desirable attributes, and
sometimes to refer to that aspect of the ideal con-
sisting of an affective concern for others, the nature
and degree of which vary depending on how others
relate to oneself. The general observance of li was
also emphasized, the character “li” by now referring
to all the traditional norms governing proper con-
duct. To avoid leading to inappropriate action, an
affective concern for others has to be regulated by a
sense of what is right, and departing from li in un-
usual situations or revising li in altered social cir-
cumstances also calls for an assessment of what is
right. The concept yi (rightness, duty, FITTINGNESS)
was therefore also emphasized. Mencius distin-
guished between four VIRTUES: jen (LOVE with dis-
tinction), yi (a commitment to rightness), li (a dis-
position to observe li), and chih (knowing and
approving/disapproving of the right/wrong). Culti-
vation of virtue was regarded as the basis of ideal
government. A ruler with virtue will care for the
people and will have a noncoercive transforming ef-
fect on them; people will admire and be attracted to
him, and they will be inspired to model their way of
life on his. Edicts and PUNISHMENT are secondary
and ideally to be dispensed with, since they can at
best secure behavioral conformity without true self-
reform.
An important difference between Mencius and
Hsün Tzu concerns the way they justify the Confu-
cian ideal. Mencius believed that the human mind
or heart (hsin) possesses by nature certain attitudes
(e.g., love for parents and respect for elders) and
emotional reactions (e.g., compassion and shame in
certain situations), reflection on which has implica-
tions for one’s behavior and feelings in various con-
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texts. The nature (hsing) of human beings is consti-
tuted by the direction of development indicated by
these attitudes and reactions, one fully realized in
the Confucian virtues; human nature is good in that
it already has a moral direction. These attitudes and
reactions are endowed by Heaven (t’ien), and one
knows and serves Heaven by reflecting on and fully
realizing them.
By contrast, Hsün Tzu conceived of t’ien as non-
purposive, and he held that only premoral desires
but no moral inclinations pertain to human nature.
Unregulated pursuit of the satisfaction of such de-
sires leads to strife and chaos; in this sense human
nature is evil. The ancient sages were aware of this,
and invented the Confucian rites and standards of
rightness (li-yi), the general observance of which
allows both avoidance of strife and maximal satis-
faction of human desires. Ordinary people can un-
derstand this function of the rites and standards,
and they can transform and regulate their desires
accordingly. Thus, while Mencius regarded self-
cultivation as a full realization of human nature and
emphasized reflection on the natural moral inclina-
tions, Hsün Tzu regarded self-cultivation as a trans-
formation of human nature and emphasized the
need to learn and let oneself be transformed by the
Confucian rites and standards.
A number of Confucian themes occur in the Ta-
hsüeh (Great Learning) and Chung-yung (Doctrine
of the Mean), two chapters from the Li Chi (Book
of Rites). Traditionally ascribed, respectively, to
Confucius’s disciple Tseng Tzu and grandson Tzu
Ssu, the two texts probably date as late as Ch’in or
early Han. They emphasize that self-cultivation is
ideally the basis of government, and they discuss the
cultivation process in detail. The Ta-hsüeh describes
it in four stages: investigation of things (ko wu); ex-
tension of knowledge (chih chih); making the will
sincere (ch’eng yi); and rectifying the mind (cheng
hsin). Interpretation of these stages, especially the
first two, became a major point of disagreement
among Sung-Ming Confucians. The Chung-yung de-
scribes chung (centrality) as the state of mind prior
to activation of the emotions and ho (harmony) as
their appropriate activation; the task of cultivation
is to realize chung and ho, as a result of which one
attains ch’eng (sincerity, truthfulness). Moreover, it
describes nature as what is endowed (ming) by
Heaven and the Way as what accords with one’s na-
ture. By cultivating ch’eng, one not only realizes
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one’s own nature but also will seek to benefit others
and help them realize their nature, thereby partici-
pating in the nourishing activities of Heaven.
Classical Taoism. The two major classical Taoist
texts are the Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu (or Tao Te
Ching), both probably composite. Portions of the
Chuang Tzu represent the teachings of Chuang Tzu
of the fourth century B.C.E., while the Lao Tzu is
dated sometime between the sixth and third century
B.C.E. The texts emphasize making one’s functioning
continuous with that of the natural order, free from
the restrictive influence of social norms, moral doc-
trines, and desires of certain kinds. The exact nature
of the Taoist ideal, often characterized in terms of
wu-wei (nonaction, no doing/making), is subject to
different interpretations. Some regard it as involving
a withdrawal from ordinary social life and a contem-
plative attitude toward the natural order. Others re-
gard it as involving primarily a relaxation of one’s
concern with ordinary human goals, a relaxation
compatible with ordinary human conduct. Other in-
terpretations have been offered, and some have de-
tected both a ‘conventional’ and a ‘radical’ kind of
ideal in different parts of the Chuang Tzu. Also, at-
tainment of the Taoist ideal is associated with certain
powers, which can further personal ambitions and
serve political purposes. It is possible to advocate
the ideal for such purposes, and some have detected
such a ‘purposive’ element in the Taoist texts, es-
pecially in the Lao Tzu, which considers at length
the method of government.
The two texts differ in the way they present and
defend the Taoist ideal. According to the Chuang
Tzu, there is no neutral ground for adjudicating be-
tween opposing judgments made from different
perspectives. Realization of this ‘relativism’ should
lead to a relaxation of the importance one attaches
to such judgments and to such distinctions as that
between right and wrong, LIFE AND DEATH, or self
and others. The mind will then react freely and spon-
taneously to situations it confronts, in the way a mir-
ror or still water reflects without preconception
whatever is brought up to it. According to the Lao
Tzu, reflection on the natural order shows that ‘re-
versal’ describes its operation and ‘weakness’ its
function. That is, anything which has gone far in one
direction will move in the opposite direction, and so
to be in a state of ‘weakness’ is also to be in a state
in which one will thrive. Modeling their way of life
on the natural order, human beings should dwell in

a state of ‘weakness,’ that is, be nonassertive and
avoid striving after worldly goods. The ideal ruler
should keep people simple in desires and ignorant
of moral doctrines and should practice nonaction, in
the sense of avoiding any further intervention, such
as preaching moral ideals in the way Confucians do.
In presenting these ideas, the Lao Tzu sometimes
treats tao as a metaphysical entity which is the
source of all things and which is characterized by
wu (nonbeing, nothing), and te as that which a thing
gets from tao when it comes into being and which
explains the way it is.
While the Lao Tzu influenced Han Fei Tzu’s view
that the ideal ruler should govern by nonaction (in-
terpreted differently), the Chuang Tzu influenced
Hsün Tzu’s conception of the mind (and probably
also his naturalistic conception of t’ien). For Hsün
Tzu, the mind should ideally be free from the ob-
scuration which results from obsessive preoccupa-
tions or intellectual one-sidedness. Like Chuang
Tzu, he described that state of mind as resembling
still water; unlike Chuang Tzu, that state of mind is
not regarded as uncommitted but is supposed to en-
able one to distinguish correctly between right and
wrong and thereby comprehend the correctness of
the Confucian way.
Mohism, Yangism, and Legalism. Two other in-
fluential schools of thought existed between the time
of Confucius and that of Mencius and Chuang Tzu:
Mohism, originating with Mo Tzu; and Yangism, as
represented by Yang Chu. Mo Tzu, who regarded the
material good of the public as the primary ethical
consideration, directly criticized the Confucians. He
opposed their musical activities and ritual practices
on the ground that they are detrimental to the public
good. He regarded any inequalities in one’s affection
for others as the source of fighting and chaos, and
instead advocated an equal love for all, this suppos-
edly reflecting the will of Heaven. In government, he
emphasized the need to impose a uniform standard
of rightness (yi) and to institute systems of reward
and punishment to ensure compliance.
Yangist teachings can be glimpsed from parts of
the Lü-shih ch’un-ch’iu and Chuang Tzu and are to
be distinguished from ideas in the “Yang Chu Chap-
ter” of the Lieh Tzu (compiled in the third century
C.E.) which scholars now believe not to represent
Yang Chu’s teachings. The Yangist advocated keep-
ing intact one’s Heaven-endowed nature, which con-
sists in living a long and healthy life, one with
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HONOR and with appropriate satisfaction of sensory
desires. Unlike the “Yang Chu Chapter,” which ad-
vocated pursuit of immediate sensory pleasures
without regard to long-term interest, the Yangist
held that sensory pursuits should be regulated be-
cause indulgence is harmful to the body. Also, no
part of the body should be sacrificed for any external
possession, not even for the throne of the empire.
Though social and political involvement may some-
times be compatible with the good of the body,
Yangist teachings generally favor withdrawal from
such involvement to avoid the associated dangers.
This shift of attention from social and political re-
sponsibilities to preservation of the self has been re-
garded as a precursor to Taoist thought.
Mencius’s thinking and parts of the Chuang Tzu
provide, respectively, a Confucian and a Taoist re-
sponse to Mohism and Yangism. According to Men-
cius, the Mohist, in his exclusive concern with the
material good of the public, has failed to see that the
ideal way of life is partly determined by certain at-
titudes and emotional reactions natural to human
beings. Musical activities and ritual practices help
express and fully develop such attitudes and reac-
tions, while love with distinction is justified by nat-
ural feelings we have toward those bearing special
relations to us. The Yangist, in favoring regulation
of sensory pursuits to ensure health and longevity,
acknowledges that the ideal way of life involves the
setting of priorities. But he has set the priorities
wrong by making health and longevity the primary
considerations. People would give up life when sur-
vival requires violating certain standards of right-
ness (yi), and this shows that even health and lon-
gevity should be subordinated to such standards.
According to the Chuang Tzu, in rigorously attack-
ing the position of the other party both the Confu-
cian and the Mohist have attached a false signifi-
cance to moral judgments as a result of failing to
realize their ‘relativism.’ But even the Yangist is
not free from such error since, in advocating health
and longevity, he has attached a false significance
to life and to the body. Probably in reaction to Yang-
ist teachings, parts of the Chuang Tzu describe
a reconciliatory attitude toward death and bodily
mutilation.
Another school of thought especially influential
in the political realm was legalism, one of its main
exponents being Han Fei Tzu, whose thinking was
influenced by his teacher, Hsün Tzu, and by the text
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Lao Tzu. Following Hsün Tzu, Han Fei Tzu re-
garded human beings as self-seeking by nature, but,
unlike Hsün Tzu, he did not think that they can be
transformed by education. Addressing himself pri-
marily to the ruler, he denied that effective govern-
ment can be based on moral example or education
and instead advocated a clearly propagated system
of laws that apply to officials and the people. Any
violation is to be strictly punished, and officials are
also to be rewarded or punished according to
whether their performance coincides with their of-
ficial duties and the plans they propose. Since every-
one is self-seeking and cannot be trusted, the ruler
should withdraw himself, shunning contact with
subordinates to avoid breeding familiarity and con-
cealing his likes and dislikes to avoid their being ex-
ploited. Ideally, having properly set up the machin-
ery of government and exercising effectively the
“two handles” of reward and punishment, the gov-
ernment will run smoothly with minimal personal
intervention by the ruler, who will then be able to
practice wu-wei in government.
Second Period: From Han to T’ang
Philosophical thought during the Han (206 B.C.E.
to C.E. 220), Wei (220 to 265), and Chin (265 to
420) was generally syncretic in nature, often involv-
ing a mixture of Confucian and Taoist ideas along
with such ancient cosmological ideas as that of the
complementary forces/elements, yin and yang. Eth-
ical thinking of this period is discussed in two sec-
tions: Han Confucianism and views about human
nature, and Wei-Chin development of Taoist thought.
A third section is on Buddhism, which became ex-
tremely influential during the Sui (581 to 618) and
T’ang (618 to 907).
Han Confucianism and views about human na-
ture. An important text of the Han is the I Ching
(Book of Change). It includes a main text, which is
an ancient diviner’s manual already existing in early
Chou, and commentaries inserted within the text, as
well as independent remarks appended to it. Tradi-
tionally ascribed to Confucius, the commentaries
and appended remarks probably had different au-
thors from different times, down to the Han. Re-
garded by many as primarily of Confucian origin
(though also seen by some as of Taoist inspiration),
they present a cosmology with the Great Ultimate
(t’ai chi) giving rise to the two forces, yin and yang,
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and eventually to the multiplicity of things. The Way
is constituted by the operation of yin and yang; what
issues from it is goodness, and what realizes it is
nature. The purpose of divination is to enable one
to know the future in order to know how one should
conduct oneself to fulfill one’s nature.
Han Confucian thinkers include Tung Chung-shu
(c. 179–c. 104 B.C.E.), Yang Hsiung (53 B.C.E.–
C.E. 18), and Hsün Yüeh (148–209); though self-
professed Confucians, they also drew on Taoist and
yin-yang cosmological ideas. Tung Chung-shu re-
garded Heaven as purposive and as manifesting jen
in its action, its love for all being seen from the way
it produces and nourishes everything. Human be-
ings, having Heaven as their source, should likewise
practise jen, and rulers should make jen the basis of
government. Yang Hsiung and Hsün Yüeh likewise
defended the Confucian virtues and regarded them
as the basis of government. Another important Han
thinker is Wang Ch’ung (first century C.E.), often
referred to as a ‘naturalist.’ He is noted for his criti-
cal spirit, and he believed that doctrines should be
supported by evidence. He was opposed to various
superstitious beliefs and practices, and he saw no
consciousness or purpose in the natural order.
One distinctive contribution by these thinkers is
on the subject of human nature (hsing). The subject
was rarely discussed in the Lun Yü, though there are
passages to the effect that people are close by nature
while diverging through practice and that only the
most intelligent and most stupid are unchangeable.
Different views of human nature were reported by
the time of Mencius; added to these are Mencius’s
view that human nature is good and Hsün Tzu’s
view that human nature is evil.
Tung Chung-shu sometimes wrote that “nature”
refers to something only in the average person, but
he did not emphasize this distinction between types
of people. He argued against Mencius that human
nature is not yet good since people are born not per-
fectly good but only with incipient moral inclina-
tions. Another argument is that, just as the operation
of Heaven involves yin and yang, human beings are
born with both humanity (jen) and greed. Although
one can trace humanity to nature (in a narrow sense)
and greed to emotions (ch’ing), emotions are also
endowed by birth and hence are part of nature (in a
broad sense). Accordingly, nature (in a broad sense)
encompasses emotions which are supposedly bad,
and so it cannot be described as good. Just as Heaven

subordinates yin to yang in its operation, human be-
ings should subordinate emotions to nature (in the
narrow sense), and the ruler should use education
to guide people to goodness, regarding as secondary
the use of law and punishment to restrain the bad
elements.
Yang Hsiung merely asserted without elaboration
that human nature is a mixture of good and evil, and
that the kind of person one becomes depends on
which of the two components is developed. Wang
Ch’ung surveyed the main views on human nature
and concluded that Mencius’s view is true of those
above the average, Hsün Tzu’s view is true of those
below the average, and Yang Hsiung’s view is true
of the average person. The way he interpreted Men-
cius’s and Hsün Tzu’s positions is such that people
above/below average are supposed to be born with
a perfectly good/evil nature, though they can be-
come evil/good as a result of education and environ-
mental influence. His emphasis is that no one is un-
changeable though people may be born differently.
Hsün Yüeh introduced the well-known idea of
three grades of people, not directly in connection
with nature but in connection with what Heaven has
endowed (t’ien ming) and what human beings can
accomplish. Having in mind Confucius’s remarks on
the subject, he claimed that the higher and lower
people are unchangeable, while the average people
have a similar endowment (ming) and human activ-
ities can make them diverge. The endowment of the
average person contains both good and evil, and
moral cultivation requires developing the good and
suppressing the evil elements. Against Tung Chung-
shu, he held that the opposition between the good
and evil elements is not an opposition between na-
ture and emotions, since emotions are just a mani-
festation of nature. While still emphasizing educa-
tion to guide people to goodness, he insisted that this
guidance has to be supplemented by law and pun-
ishment designed to suppress the evil elements.
The overlap between these views of human na-
ture is obvious—Tung, Wang, and Hsün all distin-
guished between different types of people, and
Yang’s idea of a mixed nature appears also to be a
description of the average person considered by the
other three. There are, however, important differ-
ences. For example, the distinction between three
types of people is less emphasized by Tung, and
Hsün but not Wang regarded people of the higher
and lower types as unchangeable. The Han preoc-
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cupation with human nature is related to their con-
cern with the nature of moral cultivation and proper
government, and this preoccupation persisted in
later Confucianism.
Wei-Chin development of Taoist thought. De-
spite the predominantly Confucian character of Han
thought, in Han times there also were texts primarily
Taoist in nature, such as the Huai-nan Tzu, com-
posed in the second century B.C.E. Wei-Chin ethical
thinking, though still syncretic in nature, became
primarily Taoist in orientation. One important text
is the Lieh Tzu, compiled in the third century C.E.,
which takes up the NATURALISM of Taoism but in-
terprets it in deterministic terms. Certain parts ad-
vocate an attitude of resignation, while the “Yang
Chu Chapter” advocated a form of HEDONISM.
Among the thinkers who built their thinking on a
study of Taoist texts, Juan Chi (210–263) and Hsi
K’ang (223–262) lived a life of disregard for social
CONVENTIONS and values, advocating identification
with the universe and transcendence of all distinc-
tions. Ho Yen (d. 249) put forward a metaphysics
with tao as the ultimate reality; the operation of tao
is characterized in terms of tzu-jan (self-so, natural)
and wu-wei, and the sage is supposed to be someone
who similarly operates. The two better-known think-
ers were Wang Pi (226–249), who wrote a com-
mentary on the Lao Tzu (and also one on the I
Ching), and Kuo Hsiang (d. 312), who wrote a com-
mentary on the Chuang Tzu, either borrowing from
or building on a commentary by Hsiang Hsiu (fl.
250). The following account summarizes the main
ideas of these two important commentaries.
Following the Lao Tzu, Wang Pi regarded Tao as
the ultimate reality, which transcends all distinctions
and conceptualization. Its substance is wu (nonbe-
ing) and its function wu-wei (nonaction). That is, it
does not create or do anything but just lets things
follow tzu-jan, the natural course. Embodied in all
facts or things (shih) is li* (principle, pattern), a
concept probably having the ancient meaning of
“put in order,” “good order,” or “inner structure”
and understood by Wang Pi as a principle or pattern
underlying but transcending all phenomena, one
which should be followed and by which things can
be understood.
Just as nonbeing is the substance and nonaction
the function of tao, vacuity is the substance and non-
action the function of the sage. The sage is vacuous
in that he has eliminated all attachments of the self,
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and he operates by nonaction in that he lets every-
thing follow its natural course, without intervening
by devising and imposing a way of life on himself or
others. Such a person still engages in ordinary daily
affairs, and, since emotions are also natural, he is
not without emotions though not burdened by them.
Having understood tzu-jan perfectly, he goes along
with it and, like a mirror, responds appropriately to
situations he is confronted with. While regarding the
Confucian way of jen-yi as something preached only
when the true Way has been lost, Wang Pi also re-
garded Confucius as someone who had attained the
highest Taoist ideal. Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu still
discussed wu because they had not personally at-
tained it; Confucius, on the other hand, had person-
ally attained wu and manifested it in his daily life.
Kuo Hsiang shared the view that the fictionalized
Confucius is superior to Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu.
For Kuo Hsiang, the natural order has no further
source, and its operation is not governed by any-
thing. It has no beginning or end and is in a constant
state of change, with individual things coming into
and going out of existence and operating spontane-
ously. The ideal person simply follows the nature of
himself and of things. Such a life is compatible with
ordinary activities like the use of animals (to ride a
horse, in contrast to using a horse to plough, is to
follow the nature of horses) or the building of houses
(this is as natural as birds building nests); it is even
compatible with such complex activities as setting
up social norms and INSTITUTIONS (it being in the
nature of human beings to set up norms and insti-
tutions that facilitate their following their nature).
So, for Kuo Hsiang, the Taoist ideal is compatible
with ordinary ways of life, including social and po-
litical activities, and even with one’s being a ‘sage’
in some more ordinary sense, such as that advocated
by Confucians. This itself is not objectionable, be-
cause it is in the nature of some to be such a ‘sage.’
But not everyone has such talents, and it is objec-
tionable to exhort everyone to be such a ‘sage’ or to
try to attain such ‘sagehood’ when it is not in one’s
nature to do so. One should simply be the kind of
person suited to one’s natural talents, and ideal gov-
ernment should encourage people to so live, without
imposing ideals of some other kind.
Buddhism. Chinese translations of Buddhist
scriptures from INDIA were known to exist as early
as the second century. The influence of Buddhism
grew gradually, reaching its peak during the Sui and
216
T’ang dynasties. Basic teachings, traced to the BUD-
DHA (sixth century B.C.E.), regard the world as one
of universal suffering resulting from ignorance and
craving. Salvation requires a right view of the nature
of human beings and the world, as well as certain
kinds of practices, such as observing moral precepts,
practicing compassion, living a simple life, and fol-
lowing meditative practices. Later Mahāyāna Bud-
dhism differs from earlier Theravāda (Hinı̄yāna)
Buddhism in holding that everyone has Buddha-na-
ture and so can become a buddha, in urging the help-
ing of others to attain buddhahood, and in empha-
sizing that the ideal person does not withdraw from,
but continues to perform, various duties in the or-
dinary world. Though both Theravāda and Mahā-
yāna scriptures were initially translated, it was mainly
Mahāyāna teachings that became influential and
were further developed in China.
The more influential schools of Mahāyāna Bud-
dhism in China include the San-lun, Wei-shih, T’ien-
t’ai, Hua-yen, Ching-t’u, and Ch’an schools. The first
two were further developments of existing schools
in India. Of the other four, the most influential
among the laity was the Ching-t’u (Pure Land)
school, which teaches an easy way to salvation, one
of devotion to the Buddha Amita who is supposed
to rule over the sphere of Pure Land in the west. The
other three schools were influential among intellec-
tuals, and Sung-Ming Confucians were influenced by
some of their metaphysical ideas. One example is the
T’ien-t’ai idea that all phenomena are manifestations
of a universal Mind and that each manifestation is
itself the Mind in its totality. Another example is the
Hua-yen distinction between principle (li*) and facts
or things (shih), the former being unchanging and
without form and character, the latter changing and
having form and character.
The school most influential among intellectuals is
probably the Ch’an (Zen) school. Its founding has
been attributed to Boddhidharma (fifth–sixth cen-
tury C.E.), but it was established largely through the
efforts of Hung-jen (601–674), his disciples Shen-
hsiu (605?–706) of the northern school and Hui-
neng (638–713) of the southern school, and Hui-
neng’s disciple Shen-hui (670–762?). To provide an
example of a form of Buddhist thought, the follow-
ing account summarizes the main ideas of the Plat-
form Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, which records
Hui-neng’s teachings and which greatly influenced
later Confucian thought.

According to the Platform Sutra, all human be-
ings have the Buddha-nature, characterized in terms
of a mind which is empty or pure in that it tran-
scends all distinctions and has no specific character.
The mind, in being conscious, has thoughts and
draws distinctions, and as a result ascribes charac-
ters to things. It can become attached in the process,
the attachment taking such forms as erroneous
thoughts and clingings, and the Buddha-nature
thereby becomes defiled in the way that the sun may
be obscured by clouds or a mirror by dust. This leads
to suffering, and the goal is to transcend the suffer-
ing by eliminating the attachment.
As reported in the Platform Sutra, Shen-hsiu of
the northern school taught meditative practices and
precepts that concerned avoiding evil and doing
good, aimed at removing the defilements of the mind
and restoring the original purity of the Buddha-
nature. One must constantly remove erroneous
thoughts and clingings to keep the mind undefiled,
in the way that one must constantly polish a mirror
to avoid dust collecting. This ‘gradual teaching’ is
contrasted with the ‘sudden teaching’ of the south-
ern school. While Hui-neng sometimes seemed to
say that the gradual teaching is for people with shal-
low capacity while the sudden teaching is for people
with sharp intelligence, he sometimes spoke as if the
‘gradual teaching’ is simply misguided and is ac-
cepted only by deluded people. The objection ap-
pears to be that the ‘gradual teaching’ is accepted
only by those still attached both to the idea of a mind
retaining its purity behind the defilement and to the
goal of restoring its purity. By contrast, Hui-neng did
not teach the rigid observance of precepts, medita-
tive practices, or other methods for attaining en-
lightenment. Rather, enlightenment is attained the
moment one attains the right view. Teachers can use
various devices to help broaden the student’s vision
and sensitize the student’s mind to prepare for direct
insight. But since one can attain the right view on
one’s own, teachings, as well as scriptural studies or
meditative practices, are dispensable.
The state of enlightenment is characterized in
terms of ‘no thought,’ ‘no character,’ and ‘no at-
tachment,’ but this does not mean that one ceases
thinking and stops ascribing characters to things.
Rather, one continues to think and ascribe charac-
ters to things, but, having attained the right view,
one is no longer attached to things and is no longer
bound by one’s thoughts or the characters of things.
217
China
This leads to a total alteration of one’s perspective
on life, which is compatible with one’s being in the
midst of ordinary daily affairs.
Third Period: From T’ang to Present
Although Buddhist thought was dominant in the
T’ang, a number of T’ang thinkers attacked Bud-
dhism and defended Confucian values. Confucian-
ism eventually regained dominance, yielding such
major figures as CHU HSI of the Sung (960 to 1279)
and WANG YANG-MING of the Ming (1368 to 1644).
Confucians of the Ch’ing (1644 to 1912) reacted
against Sung-Ming Confucianism and taught a dif-
ferent kind of Confucian thought. The following dis-
cussion of Confucianism is in three sections: Con-
fucianism in T’ang and early Sung; Chu Hsi and
Wang Yang-ming; Confucianism in late Ming and
Ch’ing. A fourth section briefly surveys contempo-
rary Chinese ethical and political thought.
Confucianism in T’ang and early Sung. T’ang
Confucian thinkers include Han Yü (768–824) and
Li Ao (eighth–ninth century). Han Yü rigorously
opposed Buddhism, criticizing it for neglecting fa-
milial, social, and political responsibilities. While re-
garding Mencius as the true transmitter of Confu-
cius’s teachings, he defended a view of human
nature different from Mencius’s. Like Hsün Yüeh,
he distinguished between three grades of human na-
ture: The higher people have an unchangeable good
nature, which can be developed by education; the
lower people have an unchangeable evil nature,
which can be restrained by law and punishment; and
the intermediate people have such a nature that they
can become either good or evil. He then further sub-
divided people of the intermediate grade, in a way
resembling Wang Ch’ung’s view of human nature.
According to him, Mencius’s, Hsün Tzu’s, and Yang
Hsiung’s views all describe the intermediate people.
Mencius described those who begin with a good na-
ture but can become evil, Hsün Tzu described those
who begin with an evil nature but can become good,
and Yang Hsiung described those who begin with a
mixed nature and can become either good or evil.
Unlike Han Yü, Li Ao maintained that human na-
ture is good, and he distinguished between nature
(hsing) and emotions (ch’ing) in a way similar to
Hsün Yüeh’s. Emotions are manifested in the acti-
vation of nature, and whether one is manifestly
moral depends on whether the activation of nature
China
is of the right kind. (Compare the Chung-yung dis-
cussion of chung and ho.) If not of the right kind,
the emotions will be ‘impure,’ and this explains how
one may not be manifestly moral despite having a
good nature. The relation between nature and emo-
tions is like that between water and sediments; water
itself is pure, though different degrees of impurity
can result from pollution by sediments. Just as water
can become pure again by stilling it, the purity of
nature can be restored by avoiding deliberation and
thought of certain kinds (drawing on the I Ching).
This will lead to sincerity (ch’eng), which unites hu-
man beings and the universe (drawing on the Chung-
yung).
It is of interest to note how Mencius’s idea about
the goodness of human nature was reinterpreted in
the Han and T’ang. Mencius himself regarded hu-
man nature as a direction of development implicit in
certain moral inclinations endowed by birth and in
need of nourishment to be fully realized. Wang
Ch’ung and Han Yü, however, took the Mencian
idea to mean that human beings are born perfectly
good, though they can be subsequently corrupted.
Li Ao, on the other hand, took it to mean that human
beings have a perfectly good nature which can be
hidden but is never lost. Li Ao’s interpretation,
along with the view that Mencius was the transmit-
ter of the true Confucian tradition, became generally
accepted by Sung-Ming Confucians.
Also influential on Sung-Ming Confucianism
were teachings of the early Sung Confucians, the five
most prominent being Shao Yung (1011–1077),
Chou Tun-i (1017–1073), Chang Tsai (1020–
1077), and the brothers Ch’eng Hao (1032–1085)
and Ch’eng I (1033–1107). Shao Yung devoted
comparatively less attention to ethical and political
issues and was not included by Chu Hsi in his outline
of a line of transmission of the Confucian tradition.
Chou Tun-i regarded all things as originating from
the Great Ultimate, which is perfectly good and
which is present in all human beings as their nature.
Human nature is characterized in terms of the Con-
fucian virtues of jen and yi, in terms of the Chung-
yung idea of ch’eng (sincerity), and even in terms of
the Taoist idea of wu yü (no desire). But the idea of
wu yü is interpreted differently from the Taoists’. It
is taken to mean that, prior to the distortive influ-
ence of certain human desires, human nature will
react spontaneously in a manner constitutive of jen
and yi. The arising of certain human desires can
218
disturb the activity of nature, and the task of self-
cultivation is to restore the original undisturbed
state of mind. Chang Tsai’s cosmology regarded ch’i
(material force, ether) as the sole reality of existence;
the world consists of this material force, which is
constantly changing, integrating or disintegrating to
produce or end the existence of things. The task of
human beings is to comprehend this process of
change and harmonize their actions with it. This re-
quires the realization that everything in the universe
is one (since all are composed of ch’i), a realization
resulting in jen, understood as a universal concern
for all creatures.
Two basic concepts for the Ch’eng brothers are
li* (principle, pattern) and ch’i (material force,
ether). Li* was already a central philosophical con-
cept in Wang Pi’s thinking and in Hua-yen Bud-
dhism. For the Ch’eng brothers, li* is abstract, runs
through everything, and is both that which explains
why things are as they are and that to which the
behavior of things should conform. Applied to the
human realm, it includes all norms of human behav-
ior. Ch’i is the concrete stuff of which things are
composed, and it is supposed to be fluid, freely mov-
ing, and active. Each thing is composed of li* and
ch’i; while li* is the same in all things, the endow-
ment of ch’i differs, accounting for the differences
between things. Li* in human beings is identical
with the Confucian virtues, but a person can be not
manifestly moral because li* in him has been ob-
scured by impure ch’i. According to Ch’eng I, self-
cultivation involves recovering awareness of li* in
oneself by means of ko wu (from the Ta-hsüeh), in-
terpreted to mean arriving at (ko) li* of things (wu)
via the study of the classics and of human affairs,
past and present. According to Ch’eng Hao, self-
cultivation involves not the study of the classics or
other such inquiries, but ko wu interpreted to mean
directly correcting (ko) the activities of the mind
(wu). Both brothers regarded jen as the goal of cul-
tivation, and Ch’eng Hao especially emphasized that
jen is a state in which one forms one body with, and
is therefore sensitive to and concerned with the well-
being of, all things.
Sung-Ming Confucianism retained various ideas
from the early Sung Confucians. One example is the
interpretation of jen, by Chang Tsai and the Ch’eng
brothers (especially Ch’eng Hao), as one’s forming
one body with all living and nonliving things. An-
other example is the idea of a single reality (Great

Ultimate for Chou Tun-i, li* for the Ch’eng brothers)
that transcends the multiplicity of phenomena. A
third example is the metaphysical idea of li* high-
lighted by the Ch’eng brothers; the notion of li* be-
came so central that Sung-Ming Confucianism is of-
ten referred to as li*-hsüeh (study of li*).
Confucianism in Sung and Ming: Chu Hsi and
Wang Yang-ming. The most influential Confucian
thinker of the Sung is Chu Hsi (1130–1200), who
put together the Lun Yü, Meng Tzu, Chung-yung,
and Ta-hsüeh as the Four Books. He established the
idea of a line of transmission of the Confucian tra-
dition, running from Confucius to his disciple Tseng
Tzu and grandson Tzu Ssu (supposed authors of the
Ta-hsüeh and Chung-yung), then to Mencius, and
then to Chou Tun-i, Chang Tsai, and the Ch’eng
brothers. He synthesized ideas from these different
sources, drawing so heavily on Ch’eng I’s thinking
that scholars often speak of a Ch’eng-Chu school.
Opposition to Chu Hsi came from his contemporary
Lu Hsiang-shan (1139–1193). Though Lu’s influ-
ence was not comparable to Chu’s, his teachings in-
spired Wang Yang-ming (1472–1529), and scholars
also speak of a Lu-Wang school. Chu’s and, later,
Wang’s teachings had great influence, and the fol-
lowing account summarizes their main ideas.
Chu Hsi adopted the metaphysics of li* and ch’i,
and li* is supposed to be present in human beings
as their nature. That is, human beings are born with
a mind that knows or has insight into li*, and, when
free from distortive influences, such knowledge
guides and is sufficient for moral action. So, nature
(identical with li*) is good, and human beings are
born fully virtuous. However, their endowment of
ch’i can be impure, such impure ch’i taking the form
of thoughts and especially desires of certain distor-
tive kinds; this obscures nature. Self-cultivation in-
volves ko wu and chih chih (from the Ta-hsüeh),
interpreted (following Ch’eng I) to mean arriving at
(ko) li* in human affairs (wu), in order to expand
(chih) one’s manifest knowledge of li* (chih). This
in turn involves one’s examining daily affairs and
studying the classics and historical records; after ex-
panding one’s manifest knowledge of li* and acting
on it, one will at a certain point regain the insight
into li* that one originally had.
Like Chu Hsi, Wang Yang-ming regarded human
beings as already fully virtuous owing to the pres-
ence of li*, though the fully virtuous disposition, re-
ferred to as innate knowledge (liang chih, from the
219
China
Meng Tzu), has been obscured by selfish desires. In
conscious opposition to Chu, Wang defended “the
unity of knowledge and action.” When innate
knowledge operates without being obscured, there
is (as in Chu) no knowledge without action, but (in
contrast to Chu) knowledge does not guide action.
Rather, when confronted with any situation, innate
knowledge yields a certain reaction which moves
one to act in certain ways and which is accompanied
by a certain judgment, without the judgment’s ex-
plaining either the reaction or the action. A useful
analogy is our taste for food, which Confucians such
as Mencius assumed to be natural to and similar for
all human beings. Having tasted a certain piece of
food, our taste yields a certain reaction (e.g., liking
the food) which moves one to act in certain ways
(e.g., continuing to consume the food) and which is
accompanied by a certain judgment (e.g., that the
food is delicious), but the judgment does not explain
either the reaction or the action.
This analogy illustrates two other ideas of
Wang’s. Just as our taste for food leads to certain
reactions without relying on general rules about
what is delicious, our innate knowledge yields ap-
propriate responses to any situation without relying
on general rules about human conduct. Also, just as
our knowledge of what is delicious is derived ulti-
mately from the way our taste inclines us to react,
our knowledge of li* is derived ultimately from the
way innate knowledge inclines us to react. This idea
Wang puts by saying that there is no li* outside the
mind, or even that “mind is identical with li*,” an
idea he regarded as opposed to Chu Hsi’s belief that
li* resides in everything and can be known by ex-
amining human affairs and by study.
Accordingly, Wang regarded the method of cul-
tivation advocated by Chu Hsi as unnecessary and
as a misdirection of one’s attention. Since li* is al-
ready in the mind, self-cultivation should involve
one’s directly attending to the mind, constantly
watching out for and eliminating selfish desires. Ko
wu is interpreted to mean the correcting (ko) of the
activities of one’s mind (wu), and chih chih as al-
lowing full application (chih) of one’s innate knowl-
edge (chih). In response to a disagreement between
two disciples, Ch’ien Te-hung (1496–1574) and
Wang Chi (1498–1583), on the interpretation of his
‘Four Sentence Teaching,’ Wang introduced a dis-
tinction similar to the Ch’an Buddhist distinction be-
tween a gradual and a sudden teaching. Directed to
China
people of shallow capacity is the teaching that cul-
tivation requires a constant process of distinguishing
between good and evil and of eliminating evil, while
directed to people of sharp intelligence is the teach-
ing that self-cultivation does not require such effort
but involves only direct insight into the nature of
innate knowledge.
Confucianism in late Ming and Ch’ing. The
above account illustrates how Sung-Ming Confu-
cianism had diverged from classical Confucianism,
presumably under Taoist and especially Buddhist in-
fluence. Classical Confucians worked with an ac-
count of what people are like prior to social influ-
ence, and on its basis they justified an account of
what the self should ideally be like. Self-cultivation
involves a fundamental change of the self rather than
a restoration of some original state. On the other
hand, Taoist and Buddhist teachings worked largely
with an idea of an original state of the self, which is
free from attachments of certain kinds. The actual
human situation involves such attachments and is
seen as a degeneration, and self-cultivation involves
eliminating such attachments to restore the original
state. Li Ao and later Sung-Ming Confucians worked
with a similar picture. Reinterpreting the Mencian
idea that human nature is good, they held that each
human being already has a perfectly good nature
which has been obscured by certain distortive influ-
ences, and that self-cultivation is a process of re-
storing the original nature. They even illustrated this
idea with analogies from Taoist and Buddhist texts,
such as that of the sun obscured by clouds or the
mirror obscured by dust.
Other aspects of Sung-Ming Confucianism show-
ing possible Buddhist influence include, for exam-
ple, the preoccupation with metaphysical specula-
tions. Possible Ch’an Buddhist influence is seen in
Wang’s attitude toward the role of study in self-
cultivation and in his distinction between two kinds
of teachings directed to people of different capaci-
ties. One development of Wang’s teachings by dis-
ciples has even been labeled the “Mad Ch’anist
School.” It regarded innate knowledge as transcend-
ing all distinctions between good and evil; to make
it fully manifest, no moral effort is necessary, and
one need only rid oneself of conventional morality
and respond freely to the promptings of innate
knowledge. An extreme proponent of such ideas is
Li Chih (1527–1602), who went so far as to hold
220
Confucian authorities in contempt and to scoff at
traditional Confucian values.
Confucians in late Ming and Ch’ing reacted
against such radical developments and against what
they saw as Taoist and Buddhist elements in Sung-
Ming Confucianism. In opposition to the Mad
Ch’anist school, the Tung-lin school (late sixteenth
to early seventeenth century) emphasized social re-
sponsibilities and the need for moral effort in culti-
vating Confucian virtues, and it urged the careful
study of Confucian classics through sound scholar-
ship. Confucians witnessing the transition from
Ming to Ch’ing, such as Huang Tsung-hsi (1610–
1695), Ku Yen-wu (1613–1682), Wang Fu-chih
(1619–1692), and Yen Yüan (1635–1704), dis-
tanced themselves from metaphysical speculations
and instead emphasized more concrete studies, in-
cluding, besides the classics, philological, scientific,
and technical subjects. Both Wang Fu-chih and Yen
Yüan explicitly rejected the conception of li* as
something abstract and transcending ch’i; they re-
garded it instead as just the order of concrete
things, the pattern along which they should oper-
ate. They criticized the opposition between li* and
human desires as misleadingly suggesting that all
human desires are bad and to be suppressed, and
instead regarded li* as the correct ordering of hu-
man desires.
This opposition to metaphysical speculations and
emphasis on breadth and practicality of study con-
tinued in the school of Han Learning (late seven-
teenth to eighteenth century) of the Ch’ing. It em-
phasized the careful and critical study of Confucian
classics. The study of Han commentaries was pre-
ferred to the study of works by Sung-Ming Confu-
cians on the grounds that Han commentaries were
closer in time and hence more reliable guides to the
classics. This emphasis on textual studies led to great
advances in such disciplines as philology, textual and
historical criticism, epigraphy, and phonetics.
Tai Chen (1724–1777), one of the most impor-
tant Confucians of the Ch’ing, inherited these tech-
niques and regarded them as a means to recapturing
the true meaning of classical Confucianism, espe-
cially that of the teachings of Mencius. He regarded
li* as the proper ordering of ch’i, which can be dis-
cerned through a critical and objective study of hu-
man affairs. According to him, what is natural to
human beings are certain desires (yü) and emotions

(ch’ing), as well as a capacity to know (chih). By the
application of a form of GOLDEN RULE, one can come
to know how one’s own and other people’s desires
can be appropriately satisfied and the emotions ap-
propriately expressed. Having made sure that what
one concludes from such a procedure agrees with
the conclusions of others, one can be sure that one’s
result is a grasp of li* and not mere opinion. Sup-
plementary evidence comes from one’s sense of ease
or unease to the extent one acts according to or in
conflict with li* (a Mencian idea).
So, for Tai, li* allows appropriate satisfaction of
human desires and expression of human emotions,
and so it is a full realization of what is natural (tzu
jan). It is (in criticism of Sung-Ming Confucians) not
something already in the mind, obscured but to be
restored, and is not opposed to human desires and
emotions. Nature is good not in the sense that li* is
already in the mind, but in the sense that li* is a
‘completion’ of natural emotions and desires and is
something the mind can know and in which the
mind takes pleasure. Having acquired knowledge of
li*, this knowledge will (like Chu Hsi) guide one’s
action. Moral failure is due to desires being selfish
and knowledge being obscured, not in the sense that
one already has knowledge of li* that is obscured by
selfish desires, but in the sense that certain distortive
desires and thoughts can prevent one from acquiring
such knowledge. One remedy is learning (also em-
phasized by Chu Hsi), which involves a careful study
of classics.
Contemporary ethical and political thought.
Late Ch’ing witnessed Western impact both in the
form of military defeat by Western powers and the
concession of territories, and in the form of the in-
troduction of Western scientific, philosophical, so-
cial, and political ideas. In response to the immedi-
ate social and political concerns, some, such as
Chang Chih-tung (1837–1909), K’ang Yu-wei
(1858–1927), T’an Ssu-t’ung (1865–1898), and
Liang Ch’i-ch’ao (1873–1929), advocated reforms
of various degrees. These ranged from learning
Western techniques as a means to upholding the tra-
ditional Confucian way of life (Chang) to radically
transforming the Chinese way of life by popular edu-
cation (Liang). Others, such as Sun Yat-sen (1866–
1925), saw the need for REVOLUTION and the over-
throw of the Ch’ing monarchy. At the same time,
Marxist ideas were advocated by, for example, Ch’en
221
China
Tu-hsiu (1879–1942) and Li Ta-chao (1888–1927).
Various social and political ideals were defended.
For example, K’ang Yu-wei, drawing on the Li Chi
(Book of Rites), put forth an evolutionary, three-
staged view of human history as moving gradually
from an age of chaos to one of Small Peace and fi-
nally to one of Great Unity. In the state of Great
Unity, there are no national or provincial bound-
aries, and life is totally communal and egalitarian,
tied together by jen understood to mean an undif-
ferentiated feeling of humankindness. Other exam-
ples include Communist ideals, as well as Sun Yat-
sen’s idea of the “Three People’s Principle” of
nationalism, DEMOCRACY, and livelihood.
In philosophical circles, translation of Western
philosophical works began with Yen Fu’s (1853–
1921) translation of Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–
1895) and then of JOHN STUART MILL (1806–1873),
Herbert SPENCER (1820–1903) and others. Some
Chinese thinkers assimilated Western ideas and de-
fended Western systems of thought, while others de-
fended reconstituted Chinese philosophical systems.
Among the first group, Chang Tung-sun (1886–
1962) advocated a form of Kantianism, Hu Shih
(1891–1962) defended a form of PRAGMATISM, and
Chin Yüeh-lin attempted to construct a metaphysics
on the basis of his work in logic, while Fang Tung-
mei (1899–1977) and Yin Hai-kuang (1919–1969)
also did substantial work on Western thought.
Among the second group, Ou-yang Ching-wu
(1871–1943) and Abbot T’ai-hsü (1899–1947) de-
fended a kind of Buddhism; Liang Shu-ming (1893–
1988), T’ang Chün-i (1909–1978), Mou Tsung-san,
and the early Fung Yu-lan defended Confucian
thought; while the thought of Hsiung Shih-li (1885–
1968) involves a blending of Confucianism and
Buddhism.
See also: BENEVOLENCE;BUDDHA; BUDDHIST
ETHICS; CHARACTER; CHU HSI; CHUANG TZU; COM-
PARATIVE ETHICS; CONFUCIAN ETHICS; CONFUCIUS;
CONVENTIONS; CRADLE ARGUMENTS; DESIRE; EMO-
TION ; ETIQUETTE; FITTINGNESS; GENEROSITY;
GOLDEN RULE; HONOR; HSÜN TZU; IDEALIST ETHICS;
INDIA; LAO TZU; MENCIUS; MO TZU; MORAL DEVEL-
OPMENT; MORAL PURITY; MORAL RELATIVISM; NAT-
URALISM; NORMS; RIGHT, CONCEPTS OF; SELF-
KNOWLEDGE; SITUATION ETHICS; SYMPATHY; TAOIST
ETHICS; VIRTUES; WANG YANG-MING.
China
Bibliography
Chan, Wing-tsit, trans. and comp. A Source Book in Chi-
nese Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1963. English translations of primary sources.
Creel, Herrlee G. Chinese Thought from Confucius to Mao
Tse-tung. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953.
De Bary, William Theodore, Wing-tsit Chan, and Burton
Watson, eds. Sources of Chinese Tradition. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1960. English translations
of primary sources.
Fu, Charles Wei-hsun, and Wing-tsit Chan, eds. Guide to
Chinese Philosophy. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1978. De-
tailed annotated bibliography, mostly of secondary lit-
erature in English.
Fung, Yu-lan. A History of Chinese Philosophy. Translated
by Derk Bodde. 2 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1952–53. Originally published in Pei-
ping, 1937.
Graham, A. C. Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argu-
ment in Ancient China. La Salle, IL: Open Court,
1989.
Journal of Chinese Philosophy. Dordrecht, Holland: D.
Reidel.
Munro, Donald J. The Concept of Man in Early China.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1969.
Nivison, David S. The Ways of Confucianism: Investiga-
tions in Chinese Philosophy. Chicago; La Salle, IL:
Open Court, 1996.
Philosophy East and West. Honolulu: University of Ha-
waii Press.
Schwartz, Benjamin I. The World of Thought in Ancient
China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985.
Kwong-loi Shun
choice
See deliberation and choice; rational choice.
Christian ethics
To abstract particular moral teachings in Christian-
ity from religious beliefs and experiences is to distort
a proper understanding of Christian ethics. Beliefs
about God and God’s relations to nature, humans,
historical events, and the final end of all things play
crucial roles. Beliefs about the person and work of
Jesus Christ affect not only the authority of moral
222
teachings but also judgments about the human con-
dition and its prospects. Statements about sin, its
depth and extent, have effects. Doctrines that define
the nature and purposes of the Church influence
ethics. Theological doctrines support ethical pre-
scriptions, human values, and ends; but attempts to
reduce Christian ethics to the logic of these relation-
ships exclude the experiential dimensions of (for ex-
ample) faith or TRUST in God, faithfulness or LOY-
ALTY to God and/or Christ, LOVE for God, and guilt
and FORGIVENESS. Thus issues in theology and ethics
and the relations between theological and moral
propositions are distinct from issues in RELIGION
(faith or piety) and morality (the being and actions
of people). Judgments about the relations between
beliefs and actions are different in the different iden-
tifiable traditions within Christianity as well as in the
works of different authors. Different central themes
provide the principle of coherence around which be-
liefs and experiences are organized in different au-
thors and traditions. There are, arguably, functional
equivalents to the doctrinal and experiential aspects
of Christian ethics in comprehensive nonreligious
ethical systems (e.g., metaphysical assumptions and
views of individuals as agents); and both have cen-
tral themes that provide coherence. In the Christian
traditions, however, the authority of the Bible, var-
iously interpreted, grounds both doctrine and ex-
perience.
The pluriform character of the Bible itself makes
possible different developments in the traditions.
For example, there are bases for understanding God
both as an intentional agent immediately directing
human and natural events, and as a remote reality
largely impervious to human life. There are claims
that Christ’s work is life-healing and that it heals
moral faults, and there are passages which empha-
size the limits of such healing. Some doctrines based
on biblical texts claim that Christ is cosmically sig-
nificant; other doctrines claim that he is a historical
person to whose deeds, teachings, attitudes, and ac-
tions Christians are to conform. Some passages as-
sume the existence of a natural moral law, and other
passages stress the particularistic claims of faithful-
ness to Jesus. Within the New Testament, there are
debates over ritual—for example, Paul’s espousal of
freedom from customary Jewish ritual versus the ex-
pectations of the Jerusalem Christians. (This debate
had implications for the relations of law to freedom
that went far beyond cultic concerns.) And since the

canon was closed before the Christian community
confronted many public issues, moral doctrine had
to develop in response to such issues. (The just war
tradition is often interpreted as such a develop-
ment.)
Thus it is necessary to view Christian moral doc-
trines as historical phenomena: they are developed
in part out of a history which is known in the Bible;
they continue to develop in relation to events and
ideas current in the places in which they are formed.
Even statements which claimed universality, or at
least concordance between the biblical revelation
and some purely rational justifications, are related
to particular historic and cultural circumstances. No
systematic, normative account of doctrine has won
universal support within the churches, just as no one
system of secular ethics has gained unanimous sup-
port from philosophers.
While variations in historic development oc-
curred in Judaism and Islam, the other great reli-
gions grounded in a sacred text, the number of var-
iations in Christian doctrine surpasses them. One
variant common to all three is in the concept and
institutional practices of moral AUTHORITY: the lo-
cation of the right to draw the line between orthodox
and heterodox or heretical moral beliefs and prac-
tices differs both among these traditions and within
them. Another variant is in the significance of per-
suasive religious leaders: Christianity, particularly
after the fifteenth century, has given birth to more
innovators. In the Protestant tradition, even with its
stated belief in biblical authority, variation is espe-
cially extensive.
The Christian ethical tradition has absorbed vari-
ous philosophical influences during different periods
and in different regions. Stoic influences found in
the New Testament clearly affected the ethical and
theological development of early Christianity. Neo-
Platonism provided the framework for AUGUSTINE’s
(354–430) theology and ethics; debates between
nominalists and realists in the Middle Ages affected
positions on how God’s moral will was known; AR-
ISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) influenced not only
THOMAS AQUINAS (1225?–1274), but Roman Ca-
tholicism generally as well as Protestants such as
Melanchthon (1497–1560); Eastern Orthodox
ethics has maintained a Platonic flavor through his-
tory; Protestant ethics in the nineteenth and twen-
tieth centuries came to grips with KANT (1724–
1804) in one way or another; in recent decades
223
Christian ethics
existentialism, PHENOMENOLOGY, linguistic analy-
sis, process philosophy, MARXISM, and hermeneuti-
cal theory have informed various authors.
This diversity in Christian ethical theory can be
further illustrated by some very general historical
characterizations.
Major Traditions
Eastern Orthodoxy. The central theological eth-
ical theme of Eastern Christianity is theosis, a pro-
cess of the divinization not only of human lives but
also of the entire cosmos. This theme is grounded in
the doctrines, liturgies, and spiritual ethos and prac-
tices of the first eight centuries of Christianity, par-
ticularly in the East. Even current scholarship is in-
formed by the works of early church fathers more
than by Western or modern works. The theology
conforms to the early ecumenical creeds; profoundly
Trinitarian and Incarnational, it is also suffused with
mystery. Through the medium of the liturgy, the
faithful participate in divine energies, the presence
of God, and the divine mystery. This participation
opens the faithful to divinization, to becoming
more and more God-like. The concept of self-
determination, however, is negligible; those who do
not act in accord with the divine energies and pur-
poses can be alienated from God and harm the hu-
man good. But the faithful can cooperate with the
divine presence. This allows them to approach union
or communion with God, and leads to a virtuous life
that in turn results in morally right and good actions.
As in all of the Christian traditions, morality is never
an end in itself; rather, it serves God’s purposes for
all of creation (and in the Eastern tradition, that in-
cludes the cosmos) and orients believers toward
their salvific end, communion with God.
The Eastern religious framework impeded the
trend to legalism that developed in Western Chris-
tian traditions. The transformation of life is central;
ethics, centered more on VIRTUES and ends than on
rules, is the realization of the good. Rules and other
action guides aid in discerning which actions and
orders of life are right and good. The mystical ele-
ment is strong; sharing in a profoundly spiritual
ethos provides direction for life. In the judgment of
some Western critics this blunts the socially critical,
prophetic aspects of Christian ethics.
Western Catholicism. Like the Eastern tradition,
the Western Catholic tradition is profoundly teleo-
Christian ethics
logical in its framework. Its ethics was deeply influ-
enced primarily by two theologians: Augustine and
Thomas Aquinas. The teleological framework stems
more from classic sources than anything biblical: hu-
mans are naturally oriented toward their good, ul-
timately their supernatural end. Conduct is de-
scribed largely in terms of pursuing objects of love:
God is the ultimately proper object; other objects are
to be ordered appropriately in relation to God. As
Augustine states, disordered lives and social ar-
rangements stem from persons being curved in upon
themselves and from excessive love for apparent
goods. The fundamental human fault is disorienta-
tion; it is deep and inevitable as a result of sin; grace
helps direct lives toward God and the valuing of all
things in proper proportions. Conformity to moral
laws is not an end in itself; it keeps believers on the
right path to their temporal and supernatural good.
Sin does not utterly destroy human capacities to
know the temporal good, but it is only through rev-
elation and grace that one knows God and can be
oriented toward communion with God.
Thomas Aquinas, in effect, interposed his inter-
pretation of Aristotle and early Christian STOICISM
into the neo-Platonic scheme (all things come from
and return to God). Thus in his work there is a more
philosophically developed MORAL PSYCHOLOGY in
the doctrine of habits and a more fully developed
theory of NATURAL LAW. His work continues to be
the foundation for modern Roman Catholic ethics.
It is important to interpret Western Catholic
ethics in the contexts of theology and religious prac-
tice. For example, Aquinas’s “Treatise on Law” is
part of his account of humans’ return to God; it does
not stand as an independent philosophical treatise.
The moral law of nature is given in creation as a
grace; conformity to it not only realizes temporal
good but also contributes to the believer’s super-
natural ends. It is a criterion for grading and enu-
merating sins as mortal or venial and thus serves the
sacrament of penance. In his “Treatise on Habits,”
Aquinas, like Aristotle, explores virtue and vice in a
philosophical mode; but the “Treatise” is primarily
meant to serve his theology and the concern for sal-
vation. Thus he shows how the “infused” virtues of
faith, HOPE, and CHARITY add to and affect the moral
virtues.
A few other important themes and trends in West-
ern Catholicism should be mentioned. The imitation
of Christ continued as an important motif; it nour-
224
ished a deep asceticism in Franciscan pietism and
other monastic movements. This imitation was
judged as supererogatory; it was not normative for
all Christians. Celtic Christianity formulated peni-
tential disciplines and nourished casuistic trends
which were developed for centuries. Nominalists de-
fended a divine command theory of ethics that never
gained dominance. The concern to avoid the seven
deadly sins governed a great deal of popular moral
behavior. There were debates on issues concerning
FREE WILL and about the human capacity to coop-
erate with grace in developing a moral life. Pelagi-
anism (earning salvation by good works) was to be
avoided.
Later developments inherited the legacy of pre–
sixteenth-century Western Christian ethics; the leg-
acy continues in current Roman Catholic ethics and
moral theology. For example: Discussion about jus-
tified wars continues to draw on Augustine, Aqui-
nas, and later Catholic authors. While natural law
continues to ground universal morality, debates still
go on over the relationship of natural law to the au-
thority of biblically particularistic ethics. Moral
theologians continue casuistic procedures both in
assessing moral faults and in prescribing right ac-
tions. There is a powerfully neo-Thomistic thread in
the tradition of social encyclicals from Pope Leo XIII
(1810–1903; r. 1878–1903) to the present. The
most significant changes in recent times, in both of-
ficial pronouncements and in theological scholar-
ship, show a deeper appropriation of various biblical
themes and the influences of phenomenology and
Marxism.
Protestant traditions. The Reformation was not
about ethics, but about theology and religious life;
its changes set both ethical thought and moral life
in a different context. Nor was it a unified move-
ment; from the beginning, there were debates over
theology, ethics, and modes of religious and moral
life. For example, claims that the power of the Spirit
to inform action led to social radicalism were coun-
tered by claims that the Spirit had to be governed
by the “Word.” This tempered revolutionary tenden-
cies. While “scripture alone” was the dominant au-
thority, some interpretations of the Bible made a
place for natural law; for Richard Hooker (1553 or
15544–1600) and Anglican scripture, tradition and
reason were combined in a distinctive way. When
Continental European Protestants rejected the sac-
rament of penance, CASUISTRY lost much of its im-

portance; there was no longer a need to enumerate
and grade sins. For all their diversity, however, Prot-
estant reformers agreed about such significant theo-
logical concepts as the person and work of Christ,
salvation by grace, and the need for redemption.
Lutheran ethics. Lutheran theological ethics was
based in two realms: law and gospel. Martin LU-
THER’s (1483–1546) primary concern was salva-
tion. The experiential locus of the human problem
was the terrified CONSCIENCE: How can persons be
made right with God? For Luther, the law had two
principal uses: When it could not be obeyed, it con-
victed the conscience and thus drove believers to
repentance. In its civic role, it provided order in so-
ciety. Freedom from the terrified conscience came
through trusting in God’s MERCY and righteousness
effected through Christ: God’s redeeming work was
the gift of the heavenly realm or the gospel. The
moral outcome was an inner freedom that enabled
people to love their neighbors and meet their deep-
est NEEDS. Thus in the personal sphere there was an
ethic of disposition or INTENTION. However, since
sin (basically the mistrust of God and the conse-
quent morally bad fruits) continued, daily repen-
tance was necessary.
In the earthly realm, the civic use of the law fol-
lowed from God’s creative and governing work. It
grounded social INSTITUTIONS and roles, such as
FAMILY and parenthood, government, and magistery.
Life had to be ordered because of the way it was
created and in order to form a dike against chaos
and the devil. In its civic use the law could be known
by all, Christians and others; justice and the GOLDEN
RULE governed civic practices. The duties of one’s
office had to be carried out, whether one was a
prince or a shoemaker; every office was a calling in
which people served God’s ordering work. Warfare
and CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, for example, were re-
quired in some circumstances. All these things were
“strange works” of love; they were ethics under the
law. Christians in these social roles were to be mo-
tivated by love and not assume that their social ac-
tivities counted toward salvation. Thus, in an official
role, the Christian prince could order killing when
the intention was one which furthered the benefits
proper to the principality.
Luther rejected “scholasticism” in both his the-
ology and ethics basically because natural law and
virtue theories tempted people to self-satisfaction. In
many respects, he continued the received moral tra-
225
Christian ethics
dition. For example, his “orders of creation” had
functional affinities with natural law, but he used
different language and argument forms to justify
them.
Radical Reformation ethics. The “radical wing”
of the Reformation embraced many different
groups; to subsume them under one term, e.g. Ana-
baptists, is misleading and an accurate generaliza-
tion is elusive. For example, leaders range from
Thomas Munzer (c.1489–1525), whose confidence
in the empowering and informing Spirit led to sup-
port of revolutionary violence, to those who viewed
the Christian community as necessarily pacifist.
Even groups that otherwise had a great deal in com-
mon differed in certain particulars. For example,
there was not wide agreement with the Hutterites’
belief in the community of economic goods.
The central theme of Anabaptist ethics was that
the lives of individuals and the life of the Christian
community as a whole ought to conform to the Gos-
pels’ witness to Jesus’s life and teachings. Thus they
stressed, more than had the major reformers, the dis-
continuities between the Old and New Testaments;
from the Old they frequently emphasized accounts
of how the community was corrupted by compro-
mises with its environs. FIDELITY to Jesus and his
teachings issued in a radical nonconformity to the
“world”: baptism marked entry into the church, and
communal discipline marked its life. Believers must
adhere to stringent teachings of Jesus without equiv-
ocation. Thus Jesus’s prohibition of swearing was
not qualified by other biblical passages that author-
ized oaths nor by the presumed requirements of civic
order. Nor could love of enemies be qualified by
scholastic distinctions. Christians could not be mag-
istrates or soldiers since these offices required deeds
contrary to faithfulness to Jesus. Anabaptists exer-
cised strict discipline, and dissidents were banned
until they repented.
Like the monastic movements, the Anabaptists
represented a distinctive Christian morality, but
such rigorous claims were not reserved to those with
special callings. Faithfulness required self-denial in
the service of others, and could lead to suffering and
death. The Anabaptists are the historical basis for
what Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923) called the “sect-
type” movement, in contrast to the “church-type”
movement represented by Catholicism and the ma-
jor reformers. To Luther and John CALVIN (1509–
1564), these groups were “enthusiasts”: their views,
Christian ethics
as much as the views of the “scholastics,” were
benchmarks against which the major reformers mea-
sured their ideas.
Calvinist ethics. Two important themes of Cal-
vin’s ethics are the ordering of all of life according
to the law of God, and, for Christians, a requirement
of deep self-denial. Calvin agreed with Luther that
salvation came by grace and faith, but he empha-
sized the moral tasks in which Christians would be
engaged. One mark of this is in Calvin’s use of the
law. In addition to Luther’s two uses (as a motive
for repentance, and as a basis for social order), Cal-
vin had a third, and primary use: Law is to goad
believers to a moral activity which strives for per-
fection. Like Aquinas, Calvin believed in a natural
moral law that was also revealed in the Decalogue.
Unlike Aquinas, he was convinced that human be-
ings are so corrupt they are unable to know and con-
form to natural law, and that revelation in the Bible
was the surer source of moral knowledge. Calvin
stressed the continuities between the two testa-
ments; unlike the Anabaptists, he believed that the
moral significance of Christ was that he made
known the deepest intent of the Decalogue and nat-
ural law. An effort to conform life to God’s law took
historic form in Calvin’s Geneva.
The “sum” of Calvinist life was self-denial; there
was a deeper ascetic flavor to Calvin’s ethics than to
Luther’s. But in contrast to Catholic tradition, there
was no SUPEREROGATION, no difference between
commands and counsel; all Christians were called to
be “cross-bearing.” In this respect, Calvin’s themes
are similar to Anabaptist themes. As with most of
the other Christian traditions, the justice of God re-
quired that the sufferings of morally righteous Cal-
vinists in this life would be compensated in the next
life.
Anglican ethics. Anglican ethics, like Anglican
theology, followed a middle path between the Cath-
olic and Reformation practices. A combination of
scripture, tradition, and reason characterized the
earliest comprehensive account, given by Richard
Hooker. He sought to avoid the biblicism of the con-
tinental reformers in part by echoing the major
themes of Catholic natural law doctrines. Thus in
theology and in ethics there were less radical differ-
ences with pre–sixteenth-century Christianity. With
variations on each of the three sources, there is a
thread of continuity in Anglican moral theology
from the Reformation to modern times.
226
In conclusion, developments in each of these
Protestant traditions occurred which are too numer-
ous to be developed here. For example, pietism and
Wesleyanism, with their emphasis on subjective re-
ligious experience, claimed profound moral effects
for conversion, as in a different way the liberal theo-
logian, F. D. E. Schleiermacher (1768–1834) did.
Strong traces of each of the Protestant traditions can
be found in modern theology; various combinations
and emendations, however, make for great variation
in presentation.
Crucial Choices in Christian Ethics
Every identifiable tradition and every comprehen-
sive and coherent treatise on Christian ethics reflects
important judgments on various factors.
One of these is the organizing theme around
which theological and ethical concepts cohere, as in-
dicated above. A modern example is H. Richard Nie-
buhr’s (1894–1962) “ethics of responsibility.” Ac-
cording to it, people are responsive and responsible;
God is active in all actions; individuals are to re-
spond to God’s actions as interpreted by theological
symbols; ethics are kathekontic more than teleolog-
ical or deontic. For Paul Ramsey, agape (love), the
supreme moral principle, was backed by an inter-
pretation of the Bible which sustained a deontic
view of ethics. Christian ethics, he argued, was “in-
principled” love applied as a rule to complex issues
such as war or the practice of medicine.
Comprehensive interpretations of Christian
ethics normally take into account various bases or
points of reference. One is theology proper: How
God and God’s relations to the world, and particu-
larly to human beings, are interpreted makes a dif-
ference in ethics. Ethics grounded, for example, in
Whiteheadian or Hartshornian process theology is
different from ethics based on a view of a divinely
created, immutable, eternal moral order. Theologies
that prefer personalistic language about God, e.g.,
God commands or God acts, introduce an ethics of
obedience or response; these are different from
ethics based on an analogy of being where obedience
is to law rather than discrete commands.
Doctrines of the person and work of Christ have
varied emphases. If Christ reveals that God is over-
whelmingly gracious, and if this God is one who “ad-
dresses” humans in particular circumstances, as in
the work of Karl Barth (1886–1968), then the ethics

is an ethics of “thou mayest” more than “though
mayest not”; EVIL is ultimately unreal. If the focus is
on the centrality of the crucifixion in the Gospels,
an ethic of discipleship becomes a call to self-denial
and, if necessary, suffering for the sake of others. If
the focus is on the teachings of Jesus, ethics become
procedures for applying these to diverse events. If
the work of Christ “sanctifies,” efficaciously trans-
forming us toward saintliness, then ethics is descrip-
tive of how we live in the Kingdom of God, as in
Schleiermacher’s works.
The symbols, concepts, or myths used to interpret
events also affect Christian ethics. For example, the
Exodus story can be used as a paradigm of the Di-
vine purpose, an interpretation of forms of OPPRES-
SION and liberation from them; the result is often a
kind of political ethics. If the idea of human sin and
the depth of CORRUPTION takes primacy over the
idea of the power of grace and redemption, then
events can be viewed in terms of threatening powers
of evil and the response is to take realistic action
against them. If the Kingdom of God is entirely in
the future, it provides only a ground for ultimate
hope; if it is described as a community of love par-
tially realized in history, it becomes a basis for infer-
ences about actions that approximate it.
A view of human action is implied, if not explic-
itly developed, in all Christian ethics. If actions are
determined by desires, as in the works of Augustine
or Jonathan EDWARDS (1703–1758), the resulting
ethical theory is different from those which empha-
size greater freedom of the will. The extent to which
different authors believe the “image of God” is re-
tained in persons who are sinners affects their de-
gree of confidence in how effectively human ration-
ality can be applied to moral matters.
Christian thinkers usually pay attention to the
procedures and content of prescriptive or normative
ethics; this is affected by important choices. There
are Christian teleologists, deontologists, and conse-
quentialists. Concepts of God as the Good and the
end, or God as divine commander, or God as one
whose aim is “humanization” (Paul Lehmann) each
support different arguments in PRACTICAL REASON-
ING. If God addresses or acts in very particular oc-
casions, practical reasoning requires an interpreta-
tion of circumstances and a decision that is fitting
to them.
The sources on which traditions and authors
draw vary, and are open to crucial judgments about
227
Christian ethics
their authority. In general, the sources are the Bible
and its tradition, philosophical principles and meth-
ods, science and other sources of knowledge of life
and the world, and a broad conception of human
experience. Authors determine which of these
sources is relevant and why, which is to be decisive
when there are tensions between them, what is to be
taken and what is to be ignored from each of them
and why, and how this content is to be interpreted
and why.
Different judgments occur not only about how
definitive the authority of the Bible is, but also about
which aspects of the biblical material are central, as
was noted above. For some authors the importance
of the Bible is more theological than ethical; that is,
it informs about God (and ethics is informed by that
theology) more than it provides a revealed morality.
Appeals to tradition are based on the authoritative-
ness of authors.
There are frequent discussions about whether
philosophical choices are in the service of theologi-
cally determined ethics, or whether they are primary
and thus shape theology and ethics. For example,
biblically oriented Protestants often charge that in
Aquinas and the Catholic tradition the philosophical
choice of a metaphysics of being determines both the
theology and the ethics. But there are no Christian
ethical writings that cannot be analyzed with refer-
ence to implied, if not explicit philosophical judg-
ments of several sorts—for example, the authority
of rationality, the fundamental morphology of an
ethical system, or the decision procedures that are
recommended.
Like other exercises of practical reason, those in
the Christian tradition rely on various sources of
knowledge about the world and events in which
people act. For example, Marxist interpretations of
economic and social life yield Christian social ethics
different from those based on libertarian interpre-
tations, or those based on an organic metaphor that
accents the COMMON GOOD. In understanding phe-
nomena such as HOMOSEXUALITY, explanations of
the tendency and activity that are used make a dif-
ference in how they are judged morally.
One finds many descriptions and accounts of ex-
perience that support interpretations of human life:
novels, dramas, the plastic arts, and myths as well
as various scientific accounts. The religious and
moral outlooks of authors reflect the sources on
which they draw. Paul Tillich (1886–1965), for ex-
Christian ethics
ample, found a revelatory power in Picasso’s “Guer-
nica” that struck a chord with the existentialist
themes in his own outlook.
Christian ethics can be analyzed and criticized
philosophically in various dimensions. One task is
to develop further the kind of analytic description of
the structure of traditions and treatises outlined
above. It is possible to test the coherence of posi-
tions; in almost all cases, various points of reference
cluster around a center of gravity. It is also possible
to examine the justifications for their adequacy, if
not their sufficiency. All the issues raised by philos-
ophers of religion are pertinent to Christian ethics
since some position on the nature of religious knowl-
edge or truth claims is made or assumed.
See also: ABELARD; AGNOSTICISM; ALIENATION; AN-
SELM; ATHEISM; AUGUSTINE; BUDDHIST ETHICS;
CALVIN; CASUISTRY; DUNS SCOTUS; EDWARDS; EX-
ISTENTIAL ETHICS; FREE WILL; FREEDOM AND DETER-
MINISM; FINAL GOOD; HISTORY OF WESTERN ETHICS;
ISLAMIC ETHICS; JAINISM; JESUS OF NAZARETH; JEW-
ISH ETHICS; KIERKEGAARD; LUTHER; MORAL RULES;
MORAL SAINTS; MYSTICISM; NIHILISM; PHILOSOPHY
OF RELIGION; PURITANISM; RELIGION; SHI’ISM; STO-
ICISM; SUFISM; SUNNISM; TAOIST ETHICS; THEISM;
THEOLOGICAL ETHICS; THOMAS AQUINAS; TRAN-
SCENDENTALISM; WILLIAM OF OCKHAM.
Bibliography
Beach, Waldo, and H. Richard Niebuhr, eds. Christian
Ethics. 2d ed. New York: Ronald Press, 1973. Selec-
tions from history with introductions to each.
Childress, James F., and John Macquarrie, eds. The West-
minster Dictionary of Christian Ethics. Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1986.
Gustafson, James M. Christ and the Moral Life. New York:
Harper and Row, 1968. Analysis of literature.
Kirk, Kenneth E. The Vision of God. London: Longmans,
Green, 1931. Historical study of the Christian view of
summum bonum.
Long, Edward L. A Survey of Christian Ethics. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1967.
———. A Survey of Recent Christian Ethics. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1982.
Mahoney, John. The Making of Moral Theology: A Study
of the Roman Catholic Tradition. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1987.
Niebuhr, H. Richard. Christ and Culture. New York:
Harper, 1951. A typology of views drawn from authors
throughout the tradition.
Noonan, John T. Contraception: A History of Its Treatment
228
by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1965. Exemplary
historical case study, showing how a particular moral
teaching developed.
Nygren, Anders. Agape and Eros. London: S.P.C.K., 1931.
Influential thematic study up to the sixteenth century.
Osborn, Eric. Ethical Patterns in Early Christian Thought.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Outka, Gene. Agape: An Ethical Analysis. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1972. Philosophical analysis of
the theme of love.
Troeltsch, Ernst. The Social Teachings of the Christian
Churches. 2 vols. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1949
[1912]. Remains one of the most decisive interpreta-
tions of the history of Christian ethics.
James M. Gustafson
Chu Hsi (1130–1200)
Commonly regarded as the greatest Neo-Confucian
philosopher, Chu Hsi lived in the Sung Dynasty (960
to 1279). His mentor was Ch’eng I (1033–1107),
hence the so-called Ch’eng-Chu School, in contrast
to the Lu-Wang School represented by Lu Hsiang-
shan (1139–1193), Chu’s younger contemporary,
and WANG YANG-MING (1472–1529), who lived in
the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644). Chu Hsi’s most
radical innovation was to select and group the An-
alects, the Book of Mencius, the Great Learning, and
the Doctrine of the Mean (the latter two are chapters
of the Book of Rites) as the Four Books. He wrote
commentaries on them, interpreted them in new
lights, and made them the foundation of his moral
and social philosophy. His and Ch’eng I’s interpre-
tation of the Confucian classics were officially held
as the orthodox doctrines; in fact, the Four Books
were the basis of the civil service examinations from
1313 to 1905. They thus exerted profound influence
on the Chinese literati until the examination system
was abolished in 1905.
Chu Hsi had a great synthetic mind and is often
compared to ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) or
THOMAS AQUINAS (1225?–1274). He attempted to
synthesize insights of CONFUCIUS (551–479 B.C.E.),
MENCIUS (372?–289? B.C.E.), and Han cosmology,
emphasized the discipline of the mind, and devel-
oped a sophisticated theory of human nature in re-
sponse to the challenges from Buddhism and Neo-
Taoism. In his moral theory, he takes jen (humanity,
human-heartedness) to be the most fundamental vir-
tue and identifies jen with sheng (creativity). In his

famous treatise on jen, he says that the mind of
Heaven and Earth is to produce things, and human
beings receive the mind of Heaven and Earth as their
mind. The qualities of the mind of Heaven and Earth
are four: origination, flourishing, advantage, and
firmness, and the principle of origination unites and
controls them all. There are also four qualities in the
mind of a human being: jen, righteousness, propri-
ety, and WISDOM, and jen embraces them all. Thus
jen in its narrower sense is only one of the VIRTUES,
while in its broader sense it is the virtue of virtues.
In sum, jen is the character of the mind and the prin-
ciple of LOVE. For Chu Hsi, there is clearly a corre-
lation between the microcosm and macrocosm. He
further elaborates his thought as follows: Jen, as
constituting the Way (tao), consists of the fact that
the mind of Heaven and Earth to produce things is
present in everything. Before the feelings are
aroused, this substance is already existent in its com-
pleteness. After feelings are aroused, its function is
infinite. If we can truly practice love and preserve it,
then we have in it the spring of all virtues and the
root of all good deeds. This is why, in the teachings
of the Confucian school, the student is always urged
to exert anxious and unceasing effort in the pursuit
of jen. There is apparently no dichotomy between
teleology and deontology in Chu’s thought; what is
good and what is right spring out of the same origin,
even though their manifestations are different.
Chu Hsi advocated a metaphysics of li (principle)
and chi (material force). Li is incorporeal, one, eter-
nal and unchanging, always good; chi is physical,
many, transitory and changeable, involving both
good and evil. They are not to be mixed with each
other, and they are not to be separated from each
other. Things are composed of both li and chi. Chu
identifies hsing (human nature) as li, and ch’ing
(feelings and emotions) as chi. Hsin (mind/heart) is
taken to be chi of the subtlest kind, which comprises
principles (manifestations of the same Principle in
the way the moon shines over different rivers). Chu
believes that one should always act according to
principles. He interprets ko-wu in the Great Learn-
ing to mean investigation of things: Only when
things are investigated will knowledge be extended.
But Chu also wants to emphasize preservation of the
mind before it reacts to things. He faithfully follows
Ch’eng I’s dictum: “Self-cultivation requires seri-
ousness (ching), the pursuit of learning depends on
229
Chu Hsi
the extension of knowledge.” These two are like two
wheels of a cart or two wings of a bird.
At his best, Chu pays attention to both moral cul-
tivation and accumulation of empirical knowledge.
But he is not beyond criticism. He himself admitted
that he had a tendency to put more emphasis on
“following the path of study and inquiry” than on
“honoring the moral nature.” His rival, Lu Hsiang-
shan, challenged him from the perspective of moral
discipline by saying, “If one does not know how to
honor his moral nature, how can he talk about fol-
lowing the path of study and inquiry?” Lu would
rather put exclusive emphasis on the commitment to
the way from the very beginning. It appears that Chu
failed to make a clear distinction between moral
knowledge (liang-chih) on the one hand and empir-
ical knowledge on the other hand. The controversies
between the Ch’eng-Chu and Lu-Wang lasted sev-
eral hundred years, and the issues are still hotly de-
bated among Neo-Confucian scholars today.
See also: BUDDHIST ETHICS; CHINA; CONFUCIAN
ETHICS; CONFUCIUS; MENCIUS; TAOIST ETHICS; VIR-
TUES; WANG YANG-MING.
Bibliography
Works by Chu Hsi
Chu Tzu ta-ch’uan. SPPY ed. 12 vols. Taipei: Chung Hwa,
1970. Complete Literary Works of Chu Hsi. In Chi-
nese. Letters, official documents, short essays, poems,
etc.
Chu Tzu yü-lei. 8 vols. Peking: Chung Hwa, 1986 [1473].
Classified Conversations of Chu Hsi. In Chinese. Re-
corded conversations between Chu Hsi and his disci-
ples, compiled by Li Ching-te in 1473. This is the latest
edition with punctuation of the text.
Learning to Be a Sage: Selections from the Conversations
of Master Chu, Arranged Topically. Translated by Dan-
iel K. Gardner. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1990.
The Philosophy of Human Nature. Translated by J. Percy
Bruce. London: Probsthain, 1922. One of the earliest
translations of Chu Hsi into English.
Reflections on Things at Hand: The Neo-Confucian An-
thology. Translated by Wing-tsit Chan. New York: Co-
lumbia University Press, 1967. Compiled with Lu Tsu-
ch’ien. Neo-Confucianism in a nutshell; the most
important book in China for the last 750 years.
Annotated.
Chu Hsi
Works about Chu Hsi
Bruce, J. Percy. Chu Hsi and His Masters. London:
Probsthain, 1923. One of the earliest studies on Chu
Hsi in English.
Chan, Wing-tsit. Chu Hsi: New Studies. Honolulu: Uni-
versity of Hawaii Press, 1989. Results of Professor
Chan’s lifelong study of Chu Hsi.
———, ed. Chu Hsi and Neo-Confucianism. Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1986. Collection of essays
presented by leading Chu Hsi scholars at an interna-
tional conference on Chu Hsi in Honolulu, 1982.
———, trans. and comp. A Source Book in Chinese Phi-
losophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963.
Rich with cross-references and bibliography.
Ch’ien, Mu. Chu Tzu hsin-hsüeh-an. 5 vols. Taipei: San-
min, 1971. A New Study of Chu Hsi. In Chinese. A
major study, showing solid historical scholarship.
Liu, Shu-hsien. Understanding Confucian Philosophy:
Classical and Sung-Ming. Westport, CN, and London:
Greenwood Press; Praeger (pbk.), 1998. At the time of
publication, the only book in English written on the
Confucian tradition from a contemporary Neo-Confu-
cian perspective. Three chapters on Chu Hsi; his ideas
are discussed in depth and his relationship with Con-
fucius, Mencius, and other Neo-Confucian philoso-
phers is thoroughly examined and clearly defined.
———. Chu Tzu che-hsüeh ssu-hsiang ti fachen yü wan-
ch’eng. 3d, rev. and enlarged, ed. Taipei: Student Book
Co., 1995. The Development and Completion of Mas-
ter Chu’s Philosophical Thought. In Chinese. A more
recent study; balanced emphasis on both historical
scholarship and philosophical reflection.
———. “The Function of the Mind in Chu Hsi’s Philoso-
phy.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 5 (1978): 195–
208.
———. “On Chu Hsi’s Understanding of Hsing (Nature).”
Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, New Series 17
(1985): 127–48.
———. “A Philosophic Analysis of the Confucian Ap-
proach to Ethics.” Philosophy East and West 22
(1972): 417–25. Liu’s articles provide important back-
ground material and analysis of Chu Hsi’s moral
philosophy.
Mou, Tsung-san. Hsin-t’i yü hsing-t’i. 3 vols. Taipei:
Cheng-chung, 1968–69. Mind and Nature. In Chinese.
A monumental work on Sung-Ming Neo-Confucian
philosophy with depth in philosophical reflection.
Munro, Donald J. Images of Human Nature: A Sung Por-
trait. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. In-
cluding a study of Chu Hsi from a fresh angle.
Shu-hsien Liu
230
Chuang Tzu
(fourth century B.C.E.)
Master Chuang, also known as Zuangzi or Chuang
Chou, is generally associated with the Taoist text
named for him, the Chuang Tzu. Scholarly consen-
sus, encouraged by the recent research of A. C. Gra-
ham, regards the thirty-three chapters of this text to
be composite, containing passages that offer differ-
ent and at times even inconsistent interpretations of
basic Taoist tenets. The opening seven “inner chap-
ters” are traditionally thought to be from the hand
of Master Chuang himself, while the remaining
“outer” and “miscellaneous” chapters are taken to
be later elaborations and commentary by members
of what retrospectively can be called a Master
Chuang school.
The difference between the Lao Tzu, the other
core Taoist classic, and the Chuang Tzu tends to be
one of emphasis rather than substance. As a text, the
Chuang Tzu is for the most part addressed to the
project of personal spirituality and enlightenment,
while the Lao Tzu is concerned with the social and
political consequences of this higher state of
consciousness.
The consummate human being in Chuang Tzu is
the “Authentic Person” (chen jen), and consummate
“ethical” concerns have to do with one’s contribu-
tion to the ethos or total character of one’s world.
INSTITUTIONS and CONVENTIONS —generally associ-
ated with Confucianism—are regarded as nothing
more than artificial structures established by human
beings as an apparatus for giving expression to the
accommodation, contribution, and enjoyment that
constitute the fabric of an integrated human exis-
tence. The Chuang Tzu’s quarrel is not with the con-
ventions per se, but with an overriding concern for
and attachment to these abstract conventions at the
expense of the expression of one’s own particular
genuineness—one’s self-disclosure (tzu-jan). When
we say “self-disclosure,” we must bear in mind that
“self” is always “in context,” a particular focus in the
ongoing process of existence (tao) which is spon-
sored by, and ultimately reflects in itself, the full con-
sequence of existence. One’s self-disclosure im-
presses itself on and conditions the tao, just as the
tao conditions the expression of one’s particularity.
Among the Chuang Tzu’s central concerns is hu-
man creativity. Creativity can be compromised, how-

ever, where one attempts to express one’s unique
particularity in a “dis-integrative” way that fails to
accommodate the mutuality and interdependence of
things. This obstacle to creativity can be brought
about either by interpreting one’s environment re-
ductionistically through one’s own fixed conceptual
structures and values, thereby impoverishing con-
text in service to self, or by allowing oneself to be
shaped wholly by context without contributing one’s
own uniqueness, thereby abnegating self in service
to context. To be fully integrative, individuals must
overcome the sense of discreteness and discontinuity
with their environment, and they must contribute
personally and creatively to the emerging pattern
and regularity of existence called tao.
Throughout the Chuang Tzu, there is consider-
able discussion of “overcoming ego-selfhood” (wu
sang wo) and becoming free of disintegrative con-
duct (wu-wei), free of fixed conceptual patterns
(wu-chih), and free of attachments (wu-yü). This
dissolution of the dichotomy of self and other has
the effect of making the “Authentic Person” differ-
ent from others in the quality of the relationships
that are cultivated. The “Authentic Person’s” activity
is characterized by flexibility, efficacy, and noncon-
tention—one collaborates with one’s social and nat-
ural environments, serving as frictionless ground for
their self-disclosure, and they reciprocally for one’s
own. Because one recognizes one’s continuity with
the whole process, one is calm and imperturbable.
One exists beyond the plethora of disintegrative du-
alisms—self and other, creator and creature, LIFE
AND DEATH, reality and appearance—and achieves
immortality not by escape to some more “real”
world, but by coming to realize and to celebrate
the mutually entailing continuity between self and
world.
See also: AUTHENTICITY; CHINA; COMPARATIVE
ETHICS; LAO TZU; SELF AND SOCIAL SELF; TAOIST
ETHICS.
Bibliography
Works by Chuang Tzu
The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. Translated by Burton
Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968.
Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables
231
Cicero, Marcus Tullius
of Chuang Tzu. Translated by Victor H. Mair. Hono-
lulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998.
The Seven Inner Chapters and Other Writings from the
Book, ‘Chuang-tzu’. Translated by A. C. Graham. Lon-
don: Allen and Unwin, 1981.
Works about Chuang Tzu
Ames, Roger T., ed. Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi.
Albany: SUNY Press, 1998.
Graham, A. C. “How Much of Chuang-tzu Did Chuang
Tzu Write?” In Studies in Chinese Philosophy and
Philosophical Literature. Singapore: Institute of East
Asian Philosophies, 1986.
Kjellberg, Paul, and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds. Essays on Skep-
ticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi. Albany:
SUNY Press, 1996.
Hall, David L., and Roger T. Ames, Thinking from the
Han: Self, Truth, and Transcendence in Chinese and
Western Culture. Albany: SUNY Press, 1998.
Roger T. Ames
Cicero, Marcus Tullius
(106–43 B.C.E.)
Although the primary contribution of Cicero to
ethics has been that of a Latinizer and so a trans-
mitter of Greek schools of thought, he was a suffi-
ciently penetrating thinker and vivid writer to add
not only, as he claimed (De finibus I.6), appraisal
and arrangement, but also aptness of illustration and
pungency. His ethical works were written, with
astonishing speed and verbal dexterity, between Feb-
ruary 45 and November 44 B.C.E., when he had de-
spaired of Roman political life (De officiis II.2–6).
His most valuable treatise is the De finibus (Ul-
timates among Goods and Evils). No other extant
work of ancient philosophy, and no subsequent
work, is so largely concerned with surveying and
criticizing answers to the question “which of the
goods is the ultimate and final one . . . such that all
things have to be considered in relation to it,
whereas it does not have to be considered in relation
to anything further” (I.29).
Book I presents an exposition of the Epicurean
view that PLEASURE is the summum bonum, the
chief good, and it emphasizes that the state which
was given the Latin name ‘voluptas’ and the Greek
‘hedone’ was predominantly, for EPICURUS, that of
ataraxia, serenity or freedom from disturbance. In
Cicero, Marcus Tullius
Book II, Cicero criticizes that view, with an excellent
combination of linguistic and normative work. Stoic
ethics is put into the mouth of Cicero’s contempo-
rary, Cato (95–46 B.C.E.), in Book III. Book IV offers
more criticism of a similar kind, in which Stoic
ethics is charged with employing an unrealistic vo-
cabulary and failing to do justice to the full range of
human nature. In Book V, an ethical system is pre-
sented as that of the so-called Old Academy, the
school of Antiochus of Ascalon (d. 68 B.C.E.), whom
Cicero had heard as a student in Athens. That body
of doctrine, which fits quite well with positions es-
poused or implied in Books II and IV, is briefly
praised and criticized by Cicero, who could not help
admiring the consistency of the Stoics.
Cicero’s critical admiration for both STOICISM
and the schools derived from PLATO (c. 430–347
B.C.E.) and ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) befits his
allegiance to the so-called New Academy, which en-
couraged skepticism and the willingness to give ten-
tative assent to whatever seemed most probable (De
officiis II.7f, III.33).
The De finibus is notable not only for its discus-
sion of the supreme good and of the criterion or cri-
teria for regarding someone as beatus (“happy”; Gk.
eudaimon, i.e., worthy of an ultimate congratula-
tion), but also for its accounts of the VIRTUES and
those who have shown them amid great difficulties.
Books II and IV taken together give an excellent ac-
count of an ethic that emphasizes the development
of the moral, intellectual, and physical capacities of
human beings, and in particular the implications of
the four cardinal virtues: WISDOM, COURAGE, mod-
eration, and justice (see especially II.45–7, IV.3f,
32–43).
Soon after, Cicero wrote the Tusculan Disputa-
tions, again in five books. He discusses attitudes to-
ward death, pain, distress, and other disorders of the
soul. In Book V, he turns once more to the question
of the beata vita, the life that deserves to be counted
“happy,” and asks whether moral virtue is sufficient
for it. The discussion, though interesting, is vitiated
by a failure to distinguish two questions: “What is
the indispensable good in human life?” and “What
kind of life should one seek for oneself and for oth-
ers, at least under normal circumstances?” These are
very different questions, even though one’s answer
to the second must incorporate one’s answer to the
first. As with ‘eudaimon,’ ‘beatus’ is made to do too
much work.
232
Like Plato, Cicero sometimes relies (as one must
in moral argument) on the vivid portrait of what an
unacceptable kind of life can involve and thus offers
a practical reductio ad absurdum of its underlying
principles. He does this in Tusculan Disputations
with the lifestyle of Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse
(V.57–63). He tells the famous story of Dionysius’
response to the flattery of Damocles, and describes
the tyrant’s reaction to the INTEGRITY shown by, re-
spectively, Damon and Phintias:
How much he longed for friendships, though
he feared the inconstancy of such as he had,
he made plain in the case of the two
Pythagoreans. One of them he had accepted
as a surety for the return of the other for
execution; and that other was there at the set
time, so as to release the first. “Would that I
were joined to you,” he said, “as a third
friend!” How wretched it was for him,
particularly as he had been educated from
boyhood and was trained in the liberal arts,
to be without companionship, or fellowship
in a way of life, or any intimate conversation
at all.
Cicero’s last work was the De officiis (Obligations).
He largely follows the Stoic Panaetius (c. 180–110
B.C.E.) for two books, discussing the honestum (the
honorable, the morally right) and then the utile (the
expedient). In the third, he considers the cases
where they have been thought to conflict, and holds
that nothing that conflicts with the honestum can
ultimately be utile. He appeals (36f) not to the pos-
sibility of being found out but to the intrinsic penalty
of turpitude itself, much as Socrates asks Polus in
Plato’s Gorgias to recognize how serious is the ad-
mission that injustice is aischron, base or shameful.
There follows a fascinating passage on Plato’s story
of Gyges’ ring (Republic 359f). Cicero insists that it
is totally irrelevant to say, as some philosophers do,
that one could never in fact have a device which
freed one from fear of detection. The story provides
a test whether its hearer does or does not grant that
“all shameful things are in themselves to be re-
jected.” The third book shows us Cicero when he is
not presenting or criticizing schools of thought.
There is more reliance on Roman examples of integ-
rity, notably Regulus (99–111), and of dishonorable
behavior; there is less philosophical analysis.

Cicero’s influence has been very great in the de-
velopment of Europe’s moral vocabulary and
through the doctrine and illustrations of, in partic-
ular, the De officiis, which became very well known
especially from the sixteenth to the eighteenth cen-
tury. Klaus Reich has shown the influence of that
work on KANT (1724–1804). The De finibus re-
mains an excellent introduction to the ends and mo-
tives of morality.
See also: COURAGE; EPICUREANISM; EUDAIMONIA,
-ISM; FINAL GOOD; FRIENDSHIP; HAPPINESS; HEDO-
NISM; HISTORY OF WESTERN ETHICS, 4: ROMAN;
HONOR; MORAL DEVELOPMENT; NEO-STOICISM;
PLEASURE; SKEPTICISM IN ANCIENT ETHICS; STOICISM;
TEMPERANCE; VIRTUES; WISDOM.
Bibliography
Works by Cicero
Academica. Translated by J. S. Reid. London, 1885. Ex-
cellent introductory sections on Cicero’s philosophical
studies and approach, and on the aims and nature of
his works.
Cicero on Moral Obligation. Translated by John Higgin-
botham. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.
Contains De officiis, plus a discussion of Cicero’s in-
fluence as a moral philosopher.
De finibus. Translated by J. S. Reid. Cambridge, 1883. See
also his editions of Books I and II. Cambridge, 1925.
De finibus; De officiis; Tusculan Disputations. See the
Loeb editions.
Works about Cicero
Douglas, A. E. “Cicero the Philosopher.” In Cicero, edited
by T. A. Dorey. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1964.
Hunt, H. A. K. The Humanism of Cicero. Melbourne:
Melbourne University Press, 1954.
Martyn, J. R. C., ed. Cicero and Virgil. Amsterdam: Hak-
kert, 1972.
Reich, Klaus. “Kant and Greek Ethics (II).” Mind 48
(1939): 446–63.
John Howes
circumstances of justice
See justice, circumstances of.
233
civic good and virtue
civic duties
See civil rights and civic duties.
civic good and virtue
Taken together, these terms refer to the political
ends conducive to the health of the body politic and
to the kind of life or conduct necessary for achieving
and securing them. Civic good prescribes a pattern
of life or culminating purpose for a society—for ex-
ample, peace, HAPPINESS, national glory, obedience
to a divine power, or the protection of individual
LIBERTY —that can command public allegiance and
support. In practice, however, few societies are dom-
inated by a single supreme purpose, and civic good
carries different meanings for different persons.
Civic VIRTUES are those dispositions a people should
strive to exhibit as citizens, with the primacy of the
patria in mind, and with an aim toward being moral
or excellent in a public, political sense. Civic virtues
can be distinguished from the moral or religious vir-
tues of the private individual, although they are not
necessary antithetical to them.
In most cases, the articulation of civic virtues pre-
supposes a mutually agreed-on and rationally vin-
dicable conception of civic good. Without some con-
sensus on “what is to be done,” no agreement would
be possible concerning which civic virtues should be
developed to sustain the quest for the good, and
which modes of conduct rejected as detrimental to
it. So, the positing of civic good guides the expres-
sion of civic virtues and the fashioning of civic
CHARACTER.
In political thought the terms “civic good” and
“civic virtues” are also usually considered separately.
For while not all political theories emphasize civic
virtues or advance a substantive conception of vir-
tuous citizenship, nearly all have some implicit or
explicit conception of a civic good at their core. De-
termining which civic good is paramount is a central
issue in political theory and is as analytically open-
ended as the history of ideas itself.
Whose good is the civic good is narrowly circum-
scribed, especially relative to the notion of civic vir-
tues. Although the civic good can be associated with
the putative ruler of the community, in many (es-
pecially democratic) political theories, the civic good
is conceived of as the people’s affair (res publica).
The virtues necessary for sustaining this good are,
civic good and virtue
in turn, attributes of the populace, not just the char-
acteristics of nobility, gentry, or monarchy. The idea
that the civic good is the people’s affair found its
highest expression in Roman republican thought,
but ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) provides its inspi-
ration. In the Politics, Aristotle contended that “the
good in the sphere of politics is justice; and justice
consists in what tends to promote the common in-
terest” (1282b 14–23). He also held that the polity
is the civic body wherein citizens share in the pursuit
of the common interest, and in the “administration
of justice and the holding of office” (1274b 32–
1275a 23).
For the Greeks, being free (hoi eleutheroi) in-
volved participating as equals and peers in political
decision making. A necessary condition for EUDAI-
MONIA, or happiness, was active participation in the
discussion of what civic good the polis should pur-
sue. Thus, basic to the issue of civic good and its
determination was citizenship and the demos itself.
In formalizing these ideas in the Politics and Nico-
machean Ethics, Aristotle also advanced a theory of
the virtues necessary for the achievement of eudai-
monia and living the good life. These virtues in-
cluded both moral attributes such as COURAGE,
PRUDENCE, agreeableness and GENEROSITY, and in-
tellectual virtues, primarily PHRONESIS, or PRACTI-
CAL WISDOM of the sort associated with choice and
deliberation in politics. The moral and intellectual
virtues Aristotle distinguished are those qualities ap-
propriate to the life of the “good man” and citizen,
and to the life of the city as well. That is, they are
indisputably civic. An individual is virtuous only as
a member of the polis (zoon politikon); likewise, the
polis draws its identity from the character and char-
acteristics of the citizens who inhabit it. This recip-
rocal relationship between the virtuous soul and the
virtuous polity underlies most classical Greek
thought, and can be distinguished from modern the-
ories which detach virtue from its earlier political
and civic meanings.
That the civic good is the people’s affair becomes
more explicit in the thought of Marcus Tullius CIC-
ERO (106–43 B.C.E.), and is intricately interwoven
with arguments concerning republics and constitu-
tional forms of government. The basic tenet of clas-
sical republicanism, res publica est res populi (the
people’s good is the public good), was vital to Cic-
ero’s account of justice. Like Aristotle, Cicero em-
phasized the nature of man as homo politicus and
234
heralded the participation of (male) citizens in pub-
lic affairs. But Ciceronian theory also identified the
Roman republic as the paradigm of political liberty,
and the Roman citizen as exemplary of virtue de-
voted to the public good. Hence, with Cicero, the
language of republican virtue embraced a more
pragmatic political vocabulary rooted in appeals to
civitas, libertas, patria, and virtus. Civic virtues
came to signify the practice (or preconditions of the
practice) of EQUALITY among citizens devoted to the
civitas and to upholding particular republican con-
stitutional arrangements. The civic virtues Cicero
lauded— FRIENDSHIP, liberality, prudence, and jus-
tice among them—were thus enlisted to sustain a
particular form of government and were rendered
with political purposes and strategies in mind.
Although there are political theorists of civic vir-
tue who do not make republics or the vivere civile
their focal points (HOBBES [1588–1679] is one no-
table example), arguments about civic good and vir-
tues are generally associated with what is variously
termed classical republican, civic humanist, or, more
specifically, Renaissance republican thought. The
latter reached its pinnacle in the writings of Niccolò
MACHIAVELLI (1469–1527) and Francesco Guiccar-
dini (1483–1540). Inspired by the Roman model,
Renaissance republicanism elevated liberty, lasting
glory, and nondespotic government as primary civic
goods. The republicans argued that these goods
could be best assured not simply by effective INSTI-
TUTIONS and PROPERTY ownership, but by inculcat-
ing a sense of civic virtù or public-spirit within the
citizenry as a whole. The notion of civic virtù—
rooted in the Latin vir and evoking manliness,
strength, and valor—became central to the Renais-
sance republican tradition. The list of component
civic virtues included those character traits that en-
couraged civic fraternity and induced the individual
to subordinate personal gain for the sake of the city.
Republican virtues entailed masculine and military
qualities appropriate to the arms-bearing citizen and
the defense of a republic’s liberty: prudenza, the ef-
fective calculation of chances and outcomes; animo,
courage; ostinazione, persistence and determination
in the face of adversity. The virtues also encom-
passed a set of decidedly secular, non-Christian, po-
litical attributes appropriate to a moderate, self-
governing citizenry. They included modestia and
ordine—dispassionate balance and TEMPERANCE in
the conduct of civic affairs. Machiavelli sought to

undermine the relationship between civic virtues
and Christian faith by arguing that Christian virtues
are incompatible with a vigilant defense of citizen
liberty and the safety of the republic. Thus the doc-
trine of civic good and virtues in Renaissance re-
publicanism distanced itself from the Christian scale
of values as the standard for judging political affairs,
and also downplayed some of the (pagan) Aristote-
lian and Ciceronian virtues—notably justice, liber-
ality, and generosity.
Some central themes emerge from the tradition
of classical republicanism as it developed during the
Renaissance and more or less ended with Jean-
Jacques ROUSSEAU (1712–1778). Among them are
issues concerning the conditions most conducive to
the survival of republics, the causes of CORRUPTION,
the virtues best suited to civic patriotism, and what
their exercise elicits or entails. Almost all of the lead-
ing thinkers associated with post-Renaissance re-
publican theories—James Harrington (1611–1677),
MONTESQUIEU (1689–1755), and Rousseau—ad-
dressed these issues and expanded on or modified
Machiavellian civic virtù. Thus, while continuing to
praise republican forms of government as the high-
est expression of political liberty, the post-
Renaissance theorists challenged the status of the
Roman republican model, fashioned alternative con-
ceptions of virtue fit for newly developing societies,
and probed the relationship between civic virtue, the
decaying ethic of HONOR, and a newly ascendant
commercial spirit attuned to “interests.” Rousseau
considered the lure of luxury a direct threat to the
achievement of civic virtue. In perhaps the last sys-
tematic apologia for the classical republican ideal,
The Social Contract (1762), he advanced the city-
states of antiquity as the models of the virtuous po-
litical community. The patriotic virtues he espoused
and labeled amour de soi-même were designed to
counter the corruption of existing civil society, en-
courage a passionate patriotism, and promote the
collective, unselfish expression of the General Will.
Concepts of classical republican virtue and civic
goods proliferated throughout the eighteenth cen-
tury alongside a very different but equally resilient
jurisprudential vocabulary of civil and NATURAL
LAW. Within the rubric of law, the citizen was con-
ceived not as the source of civic virtù, but as a bearer
of RIGHTS and, increasingly, as homo economicus,
property owner, and marketeer. As J. G. A. Pocock
argues, the ideas of classical republican virtue on the
235
civic good and virtue
one side and commercial society on the other could
not be easily reconciled. Hence, with the defense of
commercial society, civic virtue came to be redefined
not in relation to the civitas and the equality of rul-
ing and being ruled, but with the aid of the concept
of “manners” and an emphasis on social, not politi-
cal relations. For some time, as is most evident in
the writing of the American Federalists, the rhetoric
of classical republicanism continued. Beneath it,
however, lay a new perspective that exhibited “the
end of classical politics.” The civic good of govern-
ment “of, by, and for the people” began to be viewed
in terms of the representation of particular INTER-
ESTS, not as active participation by a virtuous citi-
zenry in pursuit of a civic good. As is evident in the
writings of James Madison (1751–1836), discussion
of the proper arrangement of representative insti-
tutions began to eclipse the notion of civic virtue
within the body politic. The “people” were increas-
ingly perceived as an electorate rather than the pur-
suers of their own civic good. Thus the vocabulary
of civic good and virtues began to fade from political
discourse, as republicanism was superceded by the
vocabulary of political legislation, administration,
and management.
On a purely analytical level, theories of civic vir-
tue (whether civic republican or not) can be readily
distinguished from liberal notions of political soci-
ety, where the content of the citizens’ way of life and
the positing of a mode of conduct are not at issue.
In almost all of its varieties, LIBERALISM is reluctant
to articulate a substantive vision of a shared political
life and the virtues that sustain it, preferring instead
to underscore the formal equality of individuals and
the primacy of justice in the distribution of goods
and resources. The problem of civic good, has,
therefore, some connection or distant family resem-
blance to the problem of “public goods” in liberalism
and RATIONAL CHOICE theory, but the connection is
tenuous. Whereas the idea of the civic good pre-
scribes a pattern of life or substantive societal pur-
pose and carries an explicitly moral and evaluative
content, the notion of public goods raises the ques-
tion of the exchange and distribution of commodi-
ties, funds, services, or benefits within the commu-
nity. Thus the fair distribution of public goods as
items of exchange may be, but is not necessarily, a
component of the broader theoretical question of
what constitutes civic good in general.
In short, the language of liberalism on the one
civic good and virtue
hand, and the language of civic virtue on the other,
distinguish two very different vocabularies of politi-
cal thought. Much scholarship in contemporary po-
litical theory is concerned both to trace the historical
trajectories of these vocabularies and to investigate
their epistemological, moral, and political founda-
tions. The “civic turn” in recent political thought—
especially notable in the writing of so-called com-
munitarian theorists—has rekindled scholarly
interest in classical republicanism and reinvigorated
the discussion of liberalism as well.
See also: ARISTOTLE; CHARACTER; CICERO; CIVIL
DISOBEDIENCE; CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIC DUTIES; CI-
VILITY; COMMON GOOD; COMMUNITARIANISM; COUR-
AGE; DELIBERATION AND CHOICE; EQUALITY; EUDAI-
MONIA, -ISM; GENEROSITY; GOOD, THEORIES OF THE;
INSTITUTIONS; JUSTICE (various entries); LIBERALISM;
LIBERTY; MACHIAVELLI; MONTESQUIEU; MORAL
COMMUNITY, BOUNDARIES OF; NATURAL LAW; OBE-
DIENCE TO LAW; PHRONESIS; POLITICAL INSTITU-
TIONS, EVALUATIONS OF; PRACTICAL WISDOM; PRU-
DENCE; PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY; PUBLIC
POLICY; RATIONAL CHOICE; RIGHT HOLDERS; ROUS-
SEAU; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY; VIRTUE
ETHICS; VIRTUES; WELFARE RIGHTS AND SOCIAL
POLICY.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. New York: Bobbs-Merrill,
1962.
———. The Politics. Edited by Ernest Barker. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1948.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. On the Commonwealth. Trans-
lated by George Sabine and Stanley Smith. New York:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1924.
Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Discourses. Translated by L.
Walker. Edited by B. Crick. Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1970 [1519].
MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue. Notre Dame, IN: Uni-
versity of Notre Dame Press, 1981.
Montesquieu, Charles Louis. The Spirit of the Laws.
Translated by T. Nugent. Edited by F. Neumann. New
York: Hafner, 1949 [1748].
Pocock, J. G. A. The Machiavellian Moment. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract with Geneva
Manuscript and Political Economy. Edited by R. D.
Masters. New York: St. Martin’s, 1978 [1762; 1755].
Sandel, Michael. Liberalism and Its Critics. New York:
New York University Press, 1984.
Skinner, Quentin. The Renaissance. Vol. 1 of The Foun-
236
dations of Modern Political Thought. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1978.
Wood, Gordon. The Creation of the American Republic,
1776–1787. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1969.
Mary G. Dietz
civil disobedience
The term was coined by American naturalist Henry
David THOREAU (1817–1862) in 1848 to refer to
his own non-violent, conscientious refusal to pay
taxes because the revenue was being used, however
indirectly, to violate “the rights of man” by support-
ing war against Mexico, the return of fugitive slaves
to their Southern masters, and the mistreatment of
American Indians.
Campaigns of mass civil disobedience in South
Africa and INDIA, led by Mohandas K. GANDHI
(1869–1948), and in the United States during the
civil rights movement and the Vietnam War gave
publicity to the term and to the idea of trying to
change law and PUBLIC POLICY through the methods
of non-violent disobedience.
Definition
Civil disobedience must involve illegal conduct.
Thus, picketing and petitioning—where they are
lawful—do not normally qualify as civil disobedi-
ence. In any given case, however, it may be unclear
whether the protesters’ chosen tactics really are law-
ful. For example, many commentators argued that
the civil disobedience tactics used by Martin Luther
KING, Jr. (1929–1968) to strike down segregation
and Jim Crow laws were legal because the local or-
dinances and court orders being violated were them-
selves unconstitutional.
Civil disobedience should be distinguished from
conscientious disobedience. The difference turns
mainly on whether the intention of the illegal act is
political—to influence a change in law and policy,
or whether it is personal—to refuse to obey a law
judged to be contrary to one’s conscientious convic-
tions. If political, then the act must be carried out in
public because it is part of the community’s political
life. Thoreau’s own understanding of his conduct,
however, makes it most plausibly understood as per-
sonal rather than political. The intention informing
his “civil disobedience” was closer to the pacific dis-

obedience to military authority counseled by Leo
Tolstoy (1828–1910) than to the resistance cam-
paigns organized by Gandhi. Also relevant is
whether the protesters themselves are victims (or
perpetrators) of the unjust law. Only those in such
a situation are in a position to protest on conscien-
tious grounds.
Although paradigm cases of civil disobedience—
like the conduct of Thoreau, Gandhi, and King—
are unquestionably non-violent, it is controversial
how necessary this feature really is. Some argue that
civil disobedience permits violence, as long as it is
confined to PROPERTY damage (as in the case of the
Boston Tea Party of 1773). Others argue that non-
violence is not a defining property of civil disobe-
dience; rather it is a justifying property, on the
ground that non-violent protest is usually less harm-
ful to society than violence, even in a just cause. Yet
others argue that it is neither. Disagreement also
arises over whether the civil disobedient must accept
whatever PUNISHMENT is meted out by the courts for
the illegal act (as with traditional religious “passive
obedience”), or whether the disobedient may resist
arrest, and plead not guilty in court. Much turns on
whether the intention of the civil disobedient is to
challenge the existing constitution (as Gandhi did)
or to work within its general framework (as King
did).
Justification
The justification of an act of civil disobedience
depends on both appropriate principles and ques-
tions of fact. Regarding the latter, two are para-
mount:
1. Is the act of civil disobedience likely to
(help) change the law or policy under at-
tack, by influencing the CONSCIENCE of the
majority? If not, then the cost to society of
the social disruption caused by the illegal
protest probably makes the act a futile ges-
ture and thus unjustified.
2. Is the act of civil disobedience a direct re-
sistance to the very law the protesters deem
to be unjust, or is it only indirectly con-
nected to the unjust law and thus involves
the protester in breaking some other law
not itself deemed to be unjust (as in Tho-
reau’s case)? Other things being equal, it is
237
civil disobedience
more difficult to justify indirect than direct
civil disobedience, because the connection
between the law being broken and the tar-
get of protest may be quite remote.
The principles invoked to justify civil disobedience
have been quite varied. At one extreme there are
various “higher law” doctrines, to the effect that cer-
tain laws are so unjust that they are not really lawful,
and so there is no obligation to obey them (except,
as THOMAS AQUINAS [1225?–1274] argued, where
obedience is required to “avoid scandal”). Sopho-
cles’s (c. 496–c. 405 B.C.E.) Antigone presents one
of the earliest examples of a claim to justify unlawful
conduct on grounds of “higher law.” King argued
against segregation laws on the same ground. At an-
other extreme is act-utilitarianism, which holds that
breaking the law is justified if and only if doing so
is reasonably calculated to produce more good than
harm for all concerned.
John RAWLS has made an elaborate and influen-
tial attempt to state the principles on which the jus-
tification of civil disobedience depends. He argues
that, within the framework of constitutional DEMOC-
RACY, civil disobedience is justified provided the act
is non-violent, the protesters submit to the lawful
punishment, and there is a reasonable prospect that
the act will succeed in correcting the injustice. To
these provisions he adds three further conditions:
First, lawful means of protest and political change
(such as public meetings, petitions, elections, lob-
bying) must have been tried and proved fruitless.
Second, the target of protest must be a major injus-
tice, such as denial of the right to vote. Third, the
protesters must acknowledge that others in the so-
ciety who may find themselves with a comparable
grievance of their own are also entitled to protest by
similar tactics. These conditions, particularly the
first, assume that there is some obligation (perhaps
only prima facie) to obey the law, whatever it is.
The result is that disobedience of the law, not obe-
dience, always carries the burden of justification.
Such an assumption is typical, but it is not neces-
sary (Thoreau probably rejected it) and its status
turns on more general considerations of morality
and law.
See also: AMNESTY AND PARDON; CIVIL RIGHTS AND
CIVIC DUTIES; CONSCIENCE; GANDHI; HUMAN
RIGHTS; KING; NATURAL LAW; OBEDIENCE TO LAW;
civil disobedience
POLICE ETHICS; PUNISHMENT;
RAWLS; RIGHTS; THO-
REAU; VIOLENCE AND NON-VIOLENCE.
Bibliography
Bayne, David Cowan. Conscience, Obligation, and the
Law: The Moral Binding Power of the Civil Law. Chi-
cago: Loyola University Press, 1966. A Roman Cath-
olic viewpoint.
Bedau, Hugo Adam, ed. Civil Disobedience: Theory and
Practice. New York: Pegasus, 1969. Essays by Thoreau,
King, Rawls, Russell, and others; the role of civil dis-
obedience in the civil rights and antiwar movements.
———. Civil Disobedience in Focus. London and New
York: Routledge, 1991. Essays by Plato, Thoreau,
King, Rawls, and other recent philosophical critics.
Childress, James F. Civil Disobedience and Political Ob-
ligation: A Study in Christian Social Ethics. New Ha-
ven: Yale University Press, 1971.
Cohen, Carl. Civil Disobedience: Conscience, Tactics, and
the Law. New York: Columbia University Press, 1971.
Comprehensive survey illustrated with historical
examples.
Crawford, Curtis, ed. Civil Disobedience: A Case Book.
New York: Thomas Crowell, 1973. Essays by Plato,
Hobbes, Locke, Burke, Thoreau, Gandhi, others.
Fortas, Abe. Concerning Dissent and Civil Disobedience.
New York: New American Library, 1968. Former U.S.
Supreme Court justice presents a popularized defense
of nonrevolutionary non-violent civil disobedience. See
Zinn, below.
French, Peter A., ed. Conscientious Actions: The Revela-
tion of the Pentagon Papers. Cambridge, MA: Schenk-
man, 1974. A case study of civil and conscientious
disobedience.
Goldwin, Robert A., ed. On Civil Disobedience: American
Essays, Old and New. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969.
Authors include Lincoln, Thoreau, King.
Greenwalt, Kent. Conflicts of Law and Morality. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1986. Defends civil disobe-
dience within the framework of larger issues.
Haksar, Vinit. Civil Disobedience, Threats and Offers:
Gandhi and Rawls. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1986. Explains and defends Gandhian civil disobedi-
ence as non-violently coercive.
Harris, Paul, ed. Civil Disobedience. Lanham, MD: Uni-
versity Press of America, 1989. Contemporary essays
by philosophers; bibliography.
Morreal, John. “The Justifiability of Violent Civil Disobe-
dience.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 6 (1976):
35–47.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1971. Civil disobedience and related
topics, chapter 6.
Singer, Peter. Democracy and Disobedience. Oxford: Clar-
238
endon Press, 1973. Criticizes Rawls from a utilitarian
perspective.
Smart, Brian. “Defining Civil Disobedience.” Inquiry 21
(1978): 249–69. Applies ideas of H. P. Grice to defi-
nitions of civil disobedience.
Thomas Aquinas. The Political Ideas of St. Thomas Aqui-
nas. Edited by Dino Bigongiari. New York: Hafner,
1953 [1266–73]. Summa Theologica, QQ 90–97. See
Q. 96, article 4, “Whether human law binds a man in
conscience.”
Tolstoy, Leo. On Civil Disobedience and Non-Violence.
New York: Bergman, 1967. Essays defend conscien-
tious objection to war and military service; bibliog-
raphy.
Van den Haag, Ernest. Political Violence and Civil Dis-
obedience. New York: Harper and Row, 1972. Conser-
vative viewpoint.
Weber, David R., ed. Civil Disobedience in America: A
Documentary History. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1978. Selections span three centuries.
Whittaker, Charles E., and William Sloane Coffin. Law,
Order, and Civil Disobedience. Washington, D.C.:
American Enterprise Institute, 1967. A debate.
Zashin, Elliot M. Civil Disobedience and Democracy. New
York: Free Press, 1972. Defends the role of civil dis-
obedience for disenfranchised groups.
Zinn, Howard. Disobedience and Democracy: Nine Fal-
lacies on Law and Order. New York: Vintage, 1968.
Reply to Fortas (see above) from a radically democratic
viewpoint.
Zwiebach, Burton. Civility and Disobedience. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1975. Liberal, noncon-
tractarian defense of civil disobedience within a “cul-
ture of civility.”
Hugo Adam Bedau
civil rights and civic duties
Civil rights are usually defined as the RIGHTS which
a state guarantees its citizens through its constitu-
tion and laws. There is a considerable dispute over
which rights ought to be civil rights. One school of
thought maintains that civil rights should include
only rights to such civil liberties as freedom of move-
ment and expression, nonsubjection to arbitrary ar-
rest, and equal protection of the laws; and political
rights like the right to vote and participate in gov-
ernment. The opposing school of thought maintains
that civil rights should also include economic and
social rights—for example, the rights to WORK, to
social security, to health care, and to education.
In liberal democracies especially, the term “civil
rights” sometimes is used to refer to rights to the

traditional civil liberties and to political participa-
tion. This is because the constitutions of liberal de-
mocracies naturally include the right to vote, and the
natural rights defended by the founders of LIBER-
ALISM, which are mainly rights to LIBERTY. It does
not follow, however, that civil rights are necessarily
restricted to civil liberties and political participation.
The dispute about which rights a state ought to
guarantee its citizens is at the basis of two debates
of immense practical importance, one international,
the other domestic. The international debate arose
after World War II when the United Nations was
assigned the task of ensuring that the HUMAN RIGHTS
of all people were respected. A commission on Hu-
man Rights was appointed, and soon prepared a list
of human rights. This became known as the Univer-
sal Declaration of Human Rights, and was pro-
claimed by the General Assembly of the United
Nations in 1948. There was, however, considerable
disagreement about the list. The commission had
tried to construct it so as to reflect broad differences
between different kinds of human rights. The first
twenty articles list rights to the traditional civil lib-
erties; Article 21 states that everyone has a right to
political participation; and Articles 22–28 list vari-
ous economic and social rights. Some critics, how-
ever, maintained that only rights to the traditional
civil liberties and to political participation—those
found in the first twenty-one articles of the Decla-
ration—were genuine human rights, and that social
and economic rights fell into another category.
This complicated the task of preparing the legally
binding covenants which were supposed to follow
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In or-
der to oblige those who believed that social and eco-
nomic rights were not human rights, the commission
drafted two covenants, one concerning rights to the
civil liberties and political participation, and the
other concerning the social and economic rights. Re-
flecting the tendency mentioned earlier to use the
term “civil rights” to refer to the civil liberties, the
first covenant is called the “Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights,” and the second is called the “Cov-
enant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.”
The commission, however, did not mean to imply by
this that states were not obliged to guarantee eco-
nomic rights to their citizens.
One early objection against the view that human
rights included social and economic rights focused
on the somewhat fanciful nature of certain of the
239
civil rights and civic duties
economic rights listed in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights—for example, the right to peri-
odic holidays with pay. Some writers thought it ob-
vious that periodic holidays with pay were not im-
portant enough to be classified as a human right.
Another early objection was that economic rights
could not be human rights because many countries
were too poor to guarantee their citizens such rights.
This was contrasted with rights to such civil liberties
as the rights to life and security. According to the
objection, governments can always guarantee citi-
zens these rights since all this requires is that laws
be passed against murder and mayhem.
The failure of the first argument is plain. While it
is true that the objects of human rights must be su-
premely important, and that the right to periodic
holidays with pay fails this test, it is false that all
economic rights fail the test. Subsistence, for ex-
ample, seems to be of paramount importance.
The second argument is more interestingly
flawed. It depends on the well-known claim that
rights are correlated to duties. If this is so, then hu-
man rights are correlated to duties. If A has a human
right to X, then various B’s have duties to A with
respect to X. In particular, if the inhabitants of poor
countries have economic rights to social security, for
example, then some person or group of persons has
a duty to guarantee them social security. If no person
or group can guarantee them social security, then no
person or group has a duty to guarantee them social
security, and consequently they cannot have rights
to social security. Finally, since all persons have hu-
man rights, it follows that rights to social security
cannot be human rights.
Even if this argument is valid, it fails to show that
rights to social security are not human rights. Al-
though the government of the country in question
may not be able to guarantee its citizens social se-
curity, it does not follow that no person or group
can. Other, richer countries may be able to do what
the poor country itself cannot do. Of course, this
does not imply that richer countries have duties to
help guarantee social security to citizens of poor
countries. The ability to do something, even some-
thing good, does not imply a duty to do it. To draw
such a conclusion we need some further argument.
Such arguments have been urged for the case at
hand, though they remain controversial. Even if the
arguments succeed, however, it may seem that civil
rights should not include economic and social rights
civil rights and civic duties
in states which are too poor to fully guarantee their
citizens such rights. This argument assumes that a
state must be able to fully guarantee a right to all
citizens before that right can be a civil right. This
requirement is too stringent. If it were valid, few
rights could be civil rights including rights to the
civil liberties. Many states are too poor to realisti-
cally guarantee these rights to all their citizens.
Guaranteeing such rights does not merely require
the passage of appropriate laws, as the objection na-
ively assumes. It also requires that these laws be en-
forced, and this takes adequate policing and law
courts which many countries may be too poor to
pay for.
The international debate does not exactly mirror
the domestic debate. The international debate con-
cerns which rights are human rights and thus de-
serve to be protected by the constitution and laws
of every state. The domestic debate is broader. De-
pending on their circumstances, certain states may
be obliged to do more than satisfy the minimum re-
quirement of guaranteeing their citizens’ human
rights. Further, the domestic debate over which
rights a state ought to make civil rights does not
necessarily presuppose that there are human rights.
A theorist may deny that there are human rights, but
argue that a state should guarantee that all its citi-
zens have rights to certain goods.
In the United States the most heated debates over
civil rights probably concern race. These debates be-
gan with the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth
constitutional amendments of the 1860s, and con-
tinue to the present day. These amendments ac-
corded fundamental citizenship rights to blacks, and
the Civil Rights Act of 1875 required “full and equal
enjoyment” of accommodations and public facilities.
These advances were, however, quickly undone; the
Supreme Court began to undo civil rights legislation
as early as 1875, and in 1883 it held that the Civil
Rights Act of 1875 was invalid. During this period,
certain prominent blacks like Booker T. Washington
(1856–1915) expressed skepticism about the value
of civil rights. Perhaps the low point was reached in
1896 when the Supreme Court upheld the “separate
but equal” doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson. Progress
finally began during the 1930s, culminating in
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas in
1954, when the Supreme Court ruled that separate
educational facilities were inherently unequal and
therefore unconstitutional. This decision started a
240
mass movement led by Martin Luther KING, Jr.
(1929–1968), to try to end racial segregation. Fi-
nally, ten years after Brown, Congress enacted the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 which banned racial DIS-
CRIMINATION in public accommodations, and in fed-
erally assisted programs and employment; promised
federal assistance to states in desegregating public
schools; and required reforms in voting registration.
In thus setting regulations for public accommo-
dations, education, and employment, the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 created civil rights which go be-
yond rights to the traditional civil liberties. Not sur-
prisingly, it also is the subject of an intense debate.
Like the international debate over human rights, this
debate is not merely theoretical. Passage and rigor-
ous implementation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
did not appreciably improve the social and economic
condition of many black people. Indeed, a sizable
proportion of the black population is chronically un-
employed and desperately poor. It is now usually re-
ferred to as the “black underclass.” Whether its cir-
cumstances can be improved by further justifiable
civil rights legislation is a matter of great moment.
Those who favor the view that civil rights should
include rights only to the civil liberties and to po-
litical participation argue that the social and eco-
nomic rights created by the act’s ban on discrimi-
nation are an unjustifiable violation of the liberty of
individuals. This libertarian view is ready to allow
that racial discrimination in the areas in question is
usually both morally wrong and economically dis-
advantageous. And it is also ready to allow that the
various agencies of government should be legally
prohibited from engaging in racial discrimination.
But it insists that the owners of industry and public
accommodations should be free to discriminate on
racial grounds. Advocates of this view, among whom
are a few black theorists, argue that the black un-
derclass poses a problem whose solution goes be-
yond further civil rights legislation, requiring instead
self-help measures, the dismantling of the welfare
state, and perhaps the help of the black middle class.
A more moderate view favors the act’s ban on
discrimination in employment and education, but
opposes the affirmative action programs apparently
based on Title VII of the act. One well-known com-
plaint is that while citizens may have civil rights to
equal opportunities in education and employment,
affirmative action programs presuppose that citizens
have rights to equal results. Advocates of this view

argue that there is further room for civil rights leg-
islation to expand and equalize opportunities, but
insist that affirmative action programs which hire
persons who are less qualified to meet some criterion
of race or gender are always morally wrong.
Opposing both these views, the radicals argue
that civil rights legislation must go beyond creating
rights to liberties and to opportunities to compete.
They note that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 created
many such rights, but that these rights mainly served
the interests of well-to-do blacks, and did little for
the poorest blacks. Echoing Booker T. Washington,
a few sometimes even depreciate the value of the
rights won by the civil rights revolution. This is a
mistake. As W.E.B. Dubois (1868–1963) argued in
his debate with Booker T. Washington at the turn of
the century, it is important to blacks’ self-respect
that their rights to the traditional civil liberties and
to political participation be recognized legally. Still,
the radicals’ point is well taken: having legal recog-
nition of the right to vote and to free speech is prob-
ably small comfort to the chronically unemployed.
Thus they urge that civil rights should include a right
to decent employment, where this means not merely
the right to an equal opportunity to compete for
work, but a socially guaranteed chance to work if
one chooses to. The radicals argue that there can be
little hope for the underclass unless government rec-
ognizes such a right and actively intervenes in the
economy to see that it can be exercised.
Civic Duties
Civil rights can be correlated to civic duties. Ar-
ticle 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights affirms that “Everyone has duties to the com-
munity in which alone the free and full development
of his personality is possible.” These civic duties in-
clude the obligation not to interfere with others’ en-
joyment of their civil rights. These are duties which
each citizen can fulfill directly. Civic duties also in-
clude, although this is controversial, duties to pro-
tect others’ enjoyment of their civil rights, or to en-
sure that they can enjoy their civil rights. These are
duties which citizens usually fulfill indirectly by pay-
ing taxes. The civic duties can also be understood
more broadly to include the duty to support and up-
hold the state, and to ensure its smooth and proper
functioning by, for example, voting, standing for
public office, and speaking out on issues of public
241
civil rights and civic duties
concern when one has something true or useful to
say. One civic duty with well-known important con-
sequences is the duty to respect the law. This duty
acts as a restraint on disobedience of even unjust
laws, and requires that civil disobedience be con-
ducted in a certain way. It seems reasonable to add
that this duty is conditional on official establishment
and regular governmental protection of one’s civil
rights. Other civic duties like the duty to bear arms
in the defense of one’s country, or the duties asso-
ciated with patriotism, are more controversial.
See also: CIVIC GOOD AND VIRTUE; CIVIL DISOBEDI-
ENCE; CIVILITY; COMMUNITARIANISM; COMPETITION;
DEMOCRACY; DISCRIMINATION; DUTY AND OBLIGA-
TION; ECONOMIC SYSTEMS; EQUALITY; FEMINIST
ETHICS; FREEDOM OF THE PRESS; GOVERNMENT,
ETHICS IN; HUMAN RIGHTS; INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE
entries; JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE; JUSTICE, RECTIFICA-
TORY; KING; LIBERALISM; LIBERTARIANISM; LIBERTY;
LIFE, RIGHT TO; OBEDIENCE TO LAW; OPPRESSION;
POLICE ETHICS; POLITICAL SYSTEMS; PUBLIC HEALTH
POLICY; PUBLIC POLICY; RACISM AND RELATED IS-
SUES; RACISM, CONCEPTS OF; RIGHT HOLDERS;
RIGHTS; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY; VIO-
LENCE AND NON-VIOLENCE; WELFARE RIGHTS AND
SOCIAL POLICY; WORK.
Bibliography
Bell, Derrick, ed. Civil Rights: Leading Cases. Boston: Lit-
tle, Brown, 1980.
Brotz, Howard, ed. Negro Social and Political Thought,
1850–1920. New York: Basic Books, 1966.
Fullinwider, Robert K., and Claudia Mills. The Moral
Foundations of Civil Rights. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1986.
Gewirth, Alan. “Moral Foundations of Civil Rights Law.”
The Modern Schoolman 64 (1987): 235–55.
Greenwalt, Kent. Discrimination and Reverse Discrimi-
nation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.
Martin, Rex. “Human Rights and Civil Rights.” Philo-
sophical Studies 37 (1980): 391–403.
Raphael, David Daiches, ed. Political Theory and the
Rights of Man. 1967.
Sowell, Thomas. Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality. New
York: Morrow, 1984.
Bernard R. Boxill
civility
civility
Civility, a distinctly secular notion, signifies etymo-
logically the actions and dispositions necessary to
the smooth functioning of a civil society, and also
the state of being civilized, as in Samuel Johnson’s
definition of it as “the state of being civilized; free-
dom from barbarity.” The circumstances that call for
civility are both those of conflict and disagreement,
when violence and vituperation are likely, and those
of casual or routine interaction, when haste and in-
difference may occur. Incivility needs to be sharply
distinguished from disagreement, as civility needs to
be distinguished from custom and conformity. If
people never met, or if they had no feelings or always
agreed, there would be no need for civility. Among
accommodating behaviors civility is minimalist;
kindness, compassion, BENEVOLENCE, collegiality,
solidarity, HONOR, decency, and even table manners
all aim at a richer sense of community than civility.
Civility, like diplomatic protocol, aims at not giving
offense while engaging in conflicts, disagreements,
and other social frictions; it minimizes risks of vio-
lence and ugliness but not of friction and disagree-
ment. Civil behavior avoids intolerance, indiffer-
ence, domination, “dissing” (being disrespectful
toward), and deliberate CRUELTY, but it is compati-
ble with harsh judgment, sharp disagreement, and
lack of compassion. In circumstances of conflict, ci-
vility is a polar opposite of confrontational stances
such as pugnacity, bellicosity, and ideological
intransigence.
Civility was originally a political concept. There
are thirteen senses for ‘civility’ listed in the OED,
nine of which are grouped together as “obsolete
senses, connected with citizenship and civil polity.”
(The use examples for these obsolete senses range
in date from 1382 to 1758.) The Merriam-Webster
New Collegiate Dictionary (7th edition, 1972), on
the other hand, mentions none of these senses and
for the current use of the word gives only the syno-
nyms ‘politeness’ and ‘courtesy’. At the end of the
twentieth century political uses of the concept are
reemerging. The sense of ‘civility’ as the virtue of
citizenship is evident in RAWLS’s remark that “we
have a natural duty of civility not to invoke the faults
of social arrangements as a too ready excuse for not
complying with them, nor to exploit inevitable loop-
holes in the rules to advance our interests.” Al-
though Rawls is a liberal, we can see in his remark
242
how civility comes to be invoked to restrain both
reason and LIBERALISM, through appeal to tradition.
The title of Barker’s book, Traditions of Civility,
brings together the two ideas. The importance of re-
spect for INSTITUTIONS and traditions, as well as for
persons, is a theme that runs through many discus-
sions of civility, especially those of Barker, Nicolson,
Shils, Carter, and even Martin.
Shils is unusual in focusing on ideology as the
principal opposite of civility. This results in a pow-
erful political conception of civility. Shils is conser-
vative politically, in that the ideologies he rejects are
leftish, but an insistence on civility cuts across or-
dinary political lines. While such a heavily political
conception of civility is unusual, his discussion is
useful in making clear how and why civility eludes
characterization in terms of the most familiar moral
or political concepts.
A key element of civility is respect for other per-
sons. It is such respect that leads one to listen and
not interrupt, to be courteous to strangers, to apolo-
gize for injuries and offenses, and so on. Respect for
others is, however, also central for understanding
ETIQUETTE and morality. It is hardly possible to read
George Washington’s 110 rules of civility without
sensing a convergence of etiquette, civility, and mo-
rality, all taking their cue from a respect for other
persons. Besides those already mentioned, opposites
of civility include rudeness, bullying, temper, what
is colloquially called “attitude,” righteous indigna-
tion, intransigence, aggressiveness, inconsideration,
litigiousness, pugnacity, bellicosity, and dogmatic
ideology. Some of these opposed characteristics oc-
cur primarily in personal interactions, some are po-
litical, and some are both.
It might be helpful to distinguish civility from
both etiquette and morality as well as from decency,
but this is not easily accomplished, certainly not with
rigor. Roughly, etiquette might be said to deal with
social graces and other superficialities of high soci-
ety, civility with formal respect and recognition where
more serious business is at stake, decency with be-
havior where gentleness and compassion override
formality, and morality with the special requirements
of goodness, justice, and CHARACTER. These charac-
terizations are, however, so rough as to leave large
areas of both overlap and indeterminateness.
Since respect for persons is a first principle of
civility, it is not surprising that we find ourselves led
back to KANT (1724–1804). One of the functions

of civility is to foster and maintain a minimal sense
of community, a public space for the inevitable con-
flicts and disagreements of human society. Any ra-
tional disagreement requires some underlying com-
mon understanding. Kant proposes three “maxims
of common human understanding” for promoting
this sensus communis through stretches of disagree-
ment, a proposal recently revived and discussed by
O’Neill. The first maxim is “to think for oneself,”
which Kant characterizes elsewhere as “the very
motto of enlightenment.” Respecting the other per-
son or persons in a dialogue requires weighing what
the others say, something that is frustrated by either
party mouthing formulas or dogmas. Not being
treated civilly by a bureaucrat or ideologue is often
the result of receiving a pat formula or a dogma.
Kant’s second maxim is “to think from the stand-
point of everyone else,” which he calls “the maxim
of enlarged thought.” The point of this maxim is not
to adopt an Olympian or transcendental perspective
but rather to augment “the subjective personal con-
ditions” of one’s judgment by seeing one’s words
and deeds from the perspective of others. As O’Neill
puts it, “Practices of toleration that include respect
for others and their no doubt partial and private
understanding are as fundamental to communica-
tion as is self-respect.” Kant’s third maxim, “always
to think consistently,” he regarded as the hardest to
achieve. The point of this maxim is twofold. On the
one hand it serves to strengthen and bring together
one’s various thoughts, a process which is no doubt
endless and exceedingly difficult. On the other hand
it serves to strengthen the SELF-RESPECT required by
the first maxim and to focus the TOLERATION re-
quired by the second. By working together with the
other two maxims, the maxim of consistency fosters
the central feature of civility, a public space within
which there can be disputes and disagreements
within an evolving community.
Etiquette is sometimes ridiculed as having to do
with silly things such as which fork to use with the
hors d’oeuvres and which for the salad, or how to
curtsy to the queen. But the crux of good manners,
of not giving offense, is acknowledging and paying
close attention to other people, which is never sim-
ple nor merely formal. Saying “please” changes my
wish from a command to a request, thereby recog-
nizing the will of the person addressed as a factor to
be reckoned with. Saying “thank you” acknowledges
the service as coming from a person rather than a
243
civility
thing or a slave. Apologizing when you step on a
person’s toes has a similar role in publically recog-
nizing the significance of the injured person. As
Deborah Tannen says, “Apologies are powerful.
They resolve conflicts without violence, repair
schisms between nations, allow governments to ac-
knowledge the suffering of their citizens, and restore
equilibrium to personal relationships.”
Civility, in the ordinary nonpolitical sense, is a
feature of parliamentary debate, and here again eti-
quette seems indistinguishable from civility. Parlia-
mentary etiquette requires members of the House or
Senate to refer to other members as “honorable” and
to refrain from disparaging or derogatory character-
izations of them. This etiquette has both the intent
and the effect of substituting a measure of civility
for hot-headed vituperation, even in the course of
highly partisan debates. No such etiquette governs
electoral campaigns, however, despite persistent
calls for civility. This anomaly often leads in popular
discussion to a rather ironical distinction between
politics and government, implacable foes in the for-
mer domain becoming working colleagues in the lat-
ter. One can see in this vulgar distinction between
politics and government both the uses and the lim-
itations of civility.
We see in Rawls’s discussion of the duty of civility
and in Tannen’s discussion of apology that a civil
society depends as much on the exercise of judgment
and restraint as on the enforcement of RIGHTS and
rules, in part because insistence on the letter of the
law can be as erosive to civility as arrogance or in-
sensitivity. It might seem that such restraint would
rule out civility in crusades for justice, but a host of
examples proves the contrary, from John Woolman
(1720–1772) to GANDHI (1869–1948), Martin Lu-
ther KING, Jr. (1929–1968), and Nelson Mandela in
recent times. The part of civility that merges with
morality consists in putting oneself out for the sake
of others, simply out of respect for them, and ac-
cepting certain hardships or minor injustices, be-
cause of the limits imposed by the circumstances of
human life and the imperfections of democratic in-
stitutions. The leaders of the prominent non-violent
campaigns for justice have characteristically com-
bined such civility with steadfast crusading. The
restraint required for civility need not become
resignation.
See also: ANGER; BENEVOLENCE; CARE; CHARACTER;
CIVIC GOOD AND VIRTUE; COMMON GOOD; COMPRO-
civility
MISE; CONVENTIONS; COOPERATION, CONFLICT, AND
COORDINATION; DIGNITY; ETIQUETTE; FAIRNESS; FIT-
TINGNESS; GENEROSITY; GRATITUDE; GOVERNMENT,
ETHICS IN; HARM AND OFFENSE; HONOR; IMPARTIAL-
ITY; INSTITUTIONS; MORAL COMMUNITY, BOUND-
ARIES OF; PACIFISM; PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS; PO-
LITICAL CORRECTNESS; PRIVACY; RATIONALITY VS.
REASONABLENESS; SELF AND SOCIAL SELF; SELF-
CONTROL; SELF-RESPECT; TEMPERANCE; TOLERA-
TION; VIOLENCE AND NON-VIOLENCE.
Bibliography
Barker, Ernest. Traditions of Civility. London: Cambridge
University Press, 1948.
Buss, Sarah. “Appearing Respectful: The Moral Signifi-
cance of Manners.” Ethics 109 (1999): 795–826. Care-
ful analysis and argument leads to the conclusion that
there is greater convergence between civility and mo-
rality than generally conceded.
Caldwell, Mark. A Short History of Rudeness: Manners,
Morals, and Misbehavior in Modern America. New
York: Picador, 1999. Full of interesting tales and useful
notes but weak on analysis.
Carter, Stephen L. Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Et-
iquette of Democracy. New York: Basic Books, 1998.
Useful for its special range of surprising material but
deeply flawed in its disdain of secular perspectives and
obvious sources.
Margalit, Avishai. The Decent Society. Translated by Na-
omi Goldblum. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1996. Argues for a compassionate alternative to a civil
society.
Martin, Judith. Miss Manners Rescues Civilization: From
Sexual Harassment, Frivolous Lawsuits, Dissing, and
Other Lapses in Civility. New York: Crown Publishers,
1996. Etiquette from a syndicated manners column
merges with civility and morality.
Nicolson, Harold. Good Behavior: Being a Study of Cer-
tain Types of Civility. London: Constable, 1955.
O’Neill, Onora. Constructions of Reason: Explorations of
Kant’s Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989. The first two essays are par-
ticularly useful for reviving and explicating Kant’s
maxim of common human understanding.
Shils, Edward. The Virtue of Civility: Selected Essays on
Liberalism, Tradition, and Society. Edited by Steven
Grosby. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1997. Civil politics
is advocated as an alternative to ideological politics and
to interest-based politics.
Tannen, Deborah. “Contrite Makes Right.” Civilization
(April–May 1999): 67–70. One of a set of useful short
essays on apologizing.
Washington, George. Rules of Civility: The 110 Precepts
that Guided Our First President in War and Peace. Ed-
244
ited by Richard Brookhiser. New York: The Free Press,
1997.
Newton Garver
Clarke, Samuel (1675–1729)
Born in Norwich, England, and educated at Cam-
bridge, Clarke entered the established church on
graduation, serving for a time as chaplain to Queen
Anne (1665–1714, r. 1702–1714), and spending
the last twenty years of his life as rector of St. James,
Westminster.
Clarke wrote extensively on controversial theo-
logical issues—the doctrine of the trinity, the im-
mortality of the soul, and freedom of the will, among
others. His most philosophical works are his Boyle
lectures of 1704 (The Being and Attributes of God)
and 1705 (Evidences of Natural and Revealed Re-
ligion), in which he attacked the views of HOBBES
(1588–1679), SPINOZA (1632–1677), and some
proponents of deism, and his 1715–16 correspon-
dence with LEIBNIZ (1646–1716), in which he de-
fended Newton’s (1642–1727) views of space and
time and charged Leibniz with holding views incon-
sistent with FREE WILL. In these works, Clarke main-
tains a position of extreme rationalism, contending
that the existence and nature of God can be conclu-
sively demonstrated, that the basic principles of mo-
rality are necessarily true and immediately know-
able, and that the existence of a future state of
rewards and punishments is assured by our knowl-
edge that God will reward the morally just and pun-
ish the morally wicked.
The basic propositions of morality are grounded,
Clarke argued, in the “necessary relations of things.”
From these different relations necessarily holding
among different kinds of things, there follows, he
argued, a “fitness or unfitness” of various actions of
these things in various circumstances. For example,
the relation of complete dependence of the creature
on the infinitely powerful and good creator gives rise
to the fitness of the creature’s worship of and obe-
dience to the infinitely powerful and good creator.
By its “fitness” Clarke likely meant the morally oblig-
atory character of a certain sort of action in certain
circumstances. Morality, therefore, is grounded nei-
ther in human nor in divine AUTHORITY; rather, it is
grounded in certain necessary and eternal relations

that hold among kinds of things. To deny a moral
truth so grounded is tantamount to contradiction.
In addition to our duty toward God, Clarke ar-
gued that we have a twofold duty toward other per-
sons and a duty to preserve our own lives. With re-
spect to other persons, our duty is (1) to “so deal
with every man as in like circumstances we could
reasonably expect he should deal with us,” and
(2) “to promote the welfare and HAPPINESS of all
men.” In each instance, Clarke sought to establish
these duties in terms of the necessary relations that
hold among kinds of things.
It was important to Clarke to hold that the knowl-
edge of duty is itself a motive to act in accordance
with duty. For it was only on this basis that he was
able to prove the infinite goodness of God: “[I]t is
as natural and (morally speaking) necessary that the
will should be determined in every action by the rea-
son of the thing and the right of the case, as it is
natural and (absolutely speaking) necessary that the
understanding should submit to a demonstrated
truth.” Since God knows perfectly the principles of
duty, and since he has no needs that might conflict
with his acting in accordance with duty, he always
does what is best and, therefore, is perfectly good.
So far as human persons are concerned, Clarke
viewed blameworthy deviations from duty as due to
culpable ignorance or evil DESIRE. This view was
qualified, however, by his recognition of the impor-
tance of rewards and punishments as MOTIVES for
action. Although he insisted that duty deserves to be
chosen regardless of personal gain or loss, he al-
lowed that it is “not truly reasonable” that someone
should follow duty at great personal cost if there is
no future state in which justice is rewarded.
See also: CUDWORTH; FITTINGNESS; FREE WILL;
GOLDEN RULE; INTUITIONISM; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS.
Bibliography
Works by Clarke
Clarke, Samuel. The Works of Samuel Clarke. 4 vols. New
York: Garland, 1978 [1738].
Selby-Bigge, L. A., ed. British Moralists. Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1897. Volume 2 contains Clarke’s writings
in moral philosophy.
245
coercion
Works about Clarke
Ferguson, James P. The Philosophy of Dr. Samuel Clarke
and its Critics. New York: Vantage Press, 1974. A use-
ful account of Clarke’s philosophy.
Sidgwick, Henry. Outlines of the History of Ethics. Lon-
don: Macmillan, 1954 [1886]. Includes a careful dis-
cussion of Clarke’s moral theory.
William L. Rowe
coercion
Roughly speaking, there are two philosophical ques-
tions about coercion: (1) What counts as coercion?
And (2) when are individuals, the society, or the
state justified in using coercion? The second ques-
tion is one of the central problems of political phi-
losophy and is addressed elsewhere in this encyclo-
pedia. This entry will deal primarily with the first
question.
Understanding what counts as coercion is impor-
tant for several reasons. First, we do not typically
hold individuals responsible for actions that are the
product of coercion. A coerced promise is not mor-
ally binding, a legal contract is voidable if made
under duress, a coerced guilty plea is not valid, a
defendant is not guilty if he was coerced into per-
forming a crime. But what sort of coercion invali-
dates an agreement or excuses wrongdoing? To an-
swer that question, we must know what counts as
coercion.
Second, our understanding of coercion underlies
our view of various social practices. Surrogate
motherhood contracts have been criticized on the
grounds that the surrogates are likely to be ex-
tremely poor and that such poverty effectively co-
erces them into such contracts. The United States
Supreme Court has had to decide whether the prac-
tice of plea bargaining, in which defendants are of-
fered a more lenient sentence in exchange for a guilty
plea, effectively coerces them into waiving their
right to a trial. To determine which practices coerce
and which do not, we need to know what counts as
coercion.
Third, an entire social theory may be predicated
on an account of coercion. Capitalist theory, for ex-
ample, typically assumes that market transactions
are uncoerced and voluntary, even if they are made
against a background of economic necessity. The vi-
ability of that assumption, and hence the view that
coercion
capitalism is a system of “free enterprise,” seems to
rest on an account of coercion.
The problem, of course, is that it is not always
clear when or why we are entitled to say that some-
one is coerced, even in the clearest cases. Consider
the paradigmatic “gunman” example. A (a gunman)
says to B (a victim), “Your money or your life.” B
turns over his wallet. A says, “You don’t have
enough money, but I’ll spare your life if you sign this
contract to pay me $1,000 next week.” B signs. It is
clear that B has been coerced and that B is neither
morally nor legally bound to pay $1,000 to A. But
why is it proper to say that B has been coerced?
What makes this contract coerced? Is it A’s threat
to harm B? If so, does that mean one cannot be co-
erced by a well-meaning friend? Quick answers to
these seemingly simple questions all run into
difficulty.
Empirical and Moralized Views
There are two principal views about what counts
as coercion, although there are variations within
each. One view maintains that the truth conditions
of a coercion claim are essentially empirical—that
they rest on facts of an ordinary sort. On an empir-
ical view, for example, it is the fact that the gunman
puts a victim under great psychic pressure or leaves
him with no other RATIONAL CHOICE that establishes
coercion. A second view maintains that the truth
conditions of a coercion claim are fundamentally
moralized. On a moralized view, the crucial issue is
typically one of RIGHTS rather than threats: B is co-
erced because the gunman has no right to make the
proposal, or because B has a right to recover his
money should he first succumb. By extension, if A
has a right to make the proposal, he does not coerce
B, even if the proposal puts B under great psychic
pressure and even if B has no reasonable alternative
but to agree. The first and most important task is to
determine which of these general views about co-
ercion is correct.
Coercion claims. A coercion claim is any state-
ment which implicitly or explicitly asserts “A coerces
B to do X.” The task of developing an account of
coercion is complicated by the fact that coercion
claims are not univocal. Whereas the gunman case
exemplifies a coercion claim that serves to bar or
mitigate the ascription of RESPONSIBILITY, coercion
claims (broadly construed, so as to include related
246
expressions such as “duress” and “force”) can be
used to make different sorts of statements about the
world and can have quite different sorts of moral
force—indeed, in some of these cases we would be
reluctant to use the word “coercion.” Consider the
following sorts of coercion claims, none of which
necessarily serves to bar or mitigate the ascription
of responsibility.
1. A coercion claim may explain or justify
what might otherwise be a puzzling or crit-
icizable action—“I had to testify because I
otherwise would have lost the case.” These
sorts of coercion claims serve to note that
B has only one prudent or reasonable
choice.
2. A coercion claim may convey that one is not
happy about one’s action, that one acts re-
luctantly—“I didn’t want to vote for X, but
I had no other choice.”
3. A coercion claim may denote the range of
someone’s options. We may say “she was
forced to become a prostitute” to stress the
absence of welfare support or decent job
opportunities.
4. A coercion claim may simply note that the
state has required some behavior as a mat-
ter of law or that one will suffer harm if one
does not perform some act. Such coercion
claims are often purely descriptive. We may
say “New York coerces people into wearing
seat belts” without indicating whether we
think such laws are justifiable.
The difference between these sorts of coercion
claims is important because the truth conditions of
a coercion claim may vary with their moral force. It
is possible, for example, that the truth conditions of
coercion claims which do not serve to bar or mitigate
responsibility (as in claims 1–4) may be (roughly)
empirical. The interesting question is whether the
truth conditions of coercion claims which do serve
to bar or mitigate responsibility (as in the gunman
case) are empirical or moralized.
No choice. It is frequently said, particularly by
those who advocate an empirical view of coercion,
that B is coerced when B has no choice but to do
what A proposes. What might that mean? Suppose
B has two apparent options, X and Y, and X is the
more attractive (given B’s preferences). Could there

be any structural features of B’s choice situation that
make it plausible to say that B has no choice and is
therefore coerced? There are two possibilities.
Whether B has a choice might be a function of the
distance between the alternatives, or it might be a
function of their attractiveness to B. Let us consider
each.
We often say that B has no choice only when B
believes that one option is vastly superior to the
other. Is such distance important? It seems not. If
an unemployed B has to choose between a wonder-
ful job and a merely good one, whereas an unem-
ployed B⬘ has to choose between two good jobs, it
would be odd to say that B is not bound by his em-
ployment contract (because he had no other rational
choice than to take the wonderful job and was there-
fore coerced into making that choice), but that B⬘ is
bound by her employment contract because she did
have another rational choice. By itself, distance
seems irrelevant.
Does attractiveness matter? B may feel that he
has a greater choice when both options are reason-
ably attractive, but that there is no choice when one
or both options are extremely unattractive. Would
this be of moral significance? It is doubtful. If B con-
sents to have his leg amputated in order to avoid
dying from gangrene, B cannot subsequently claim
that the consent is not genuine and that the surgeon
has therefore committed battery merely because B
regarded the other option (death) as unacceptable.
Although we can say that B is “forced” to consent
to the surgery, it is not the sort of no-choice situation
that removes B’s responsibility for his act.
Coercive proposals. Rather than concentrate on
structural features of B’s choice situation, a more
promising approach is to focus on the character of
A’s proposal. Simply put, that view maintains that
threats coerce but offers do not. And the crux of the
distinction between threats and offers is that A
makes a threat when B will be worse off in relation
to some relevant baseline position if B does not ac-
cept A’s proposal, but that A makes an offer when
B will be better off in relation to some relevant base-
line position if B accepts A’s proposal.
If this is right, the key to coercion is to establish
B’s baseline, for the distinction between better and
worse off always requires some account of B’s base-
line. It is always to say “better (or worse) off than
.” And while we often have an uncontro-
versial account of B’s baseline, Robert NOZICK’s
247
coercion
seminal article “Coercion” shows that fixing B’s
baseline is not always unproblematic. It also shows
why the moralized view of coercion may be on the
right track. Consider one of Nozick’s examples
(which I condense).
The drowning case. A comes upon B, who is
drowning. A proposes to rescue B if B agrees to pay
A $10,000. A and B both know that there are no
other potential rescuers. B agrees to pay and is res-
cued by A. Let us distinguish between an “empirical
test” and a “moral test” of B’s baseline. Under the
empirical test, whether A is making an offer or a
threat to B will depend on what is “normal” in their
society. Under a moral test, whether A is making an
offer or a threat will depend on whether A is morally
required to rescue B. If A is morally required to res-
cue B, then B’s baseline includes A’s beneficial in-
tervention, A’s proposal is therefore a threat, and B
may not be bound to pay A the $10,000. On the
other hand, if A is not morally required to rescue B,
then A’s proposal is an offer, and B may be bound
to pay.
The moral test for B’s baseline can explain why
the gunman’s proposal is a coercive threat, whereas
the employer’s proposal may be a noncoercive of-
fer—even if an unemployed B has “no choice” but
to accept A’s proposal. Because the gunman A has
no right to make his proposal, he proposes to make
B worse off than B would be in the relevant baseline
position, that is, B’s situation prior to A’s proposal.
On the other hand, because employer A has a right
to propose to give B a salary only if B agrees to work
for A, A proposes to make B better off than B would
be in the relevant baseline position, that is, where B
is unemployed.
From coercive proposals to coercion. Under-
standing what counts as a coercive proposal is not,
however, the whole story of coercion. For it seems
that some coercive proposals do not actually coerce
B to do X. The point is this: Given A’s coercive pro-
posal, B is sometimes entitled to succumb to A’s pro-
posal and then be released from the normal moral
or legal consequences of his act. Other times, it
seems that B either should stand his ground or, if he
chooses to succumb to A’s proposal, should not ex-
pect to be released from the consequences of the act.
Consider two examples from the law: (1) A contracts
with B to do X in exchange for amount Y. A then
threatens not to do X unless B agrees to pay Y Ⳮ Z.
B pays Y Ⳮ Z and then tries to recover the excess
coercion
(Z) on the grounds that he paid Z under duress. A
court may hold that B was not coerced because B
could have sued A for breach of contract rather than
pay Y Ⳮ Z. Given that B had a reasonable alternative
to paying Y Ⳮ Z, B is not entitled to recover now.
(2) A threatens to break B’s arm unless B kills C. B
kills C and then claims that he is not guilty because
he killed C under duress. A court might hold that
although A’s proposal is coercive, B is not coerced
because B should refuse to kill C, even at the risk of
having his arm broken. B is therefore guilty.
If the previous analysis is roughly correct, then an
account of coercion claims requires two sorts of
moral principles: (1) moral principles which allow
us to set B’s baseline so as to establish if A’s proposal
is coercive, and (2) moral principles which will en-
able us to determine when B is entitled to succumb
to A’s coercive proposal.
Some Additional Issues
There are many additional issues which a full ac-
count of coercion must consider. For example, it may
be argued that offers as well as threats can coerce.
That argument can take several forms. First, A’s pro-
posal may be so attractive that B may have no ra-
tional choice but to accept it. Without something
further, however, very attractive offers do not seem
to coerce in any morally relevant sense. Second, B
may lack the psychological capacity to resist A’s of-
fer, as when A offers B a drink. But even if B does
act involuntarily in accepting A’s offer, it does not
follow that A’s offer is coercive. Third, A may make
an exploitative offer, one which takes unfair advan-
tage of B’s situation, as when A offers to fix B’s car
for an exorbitant fee because B is stranded. Even
though A’s proposal actually enhances the options
available to B, it may be argued that such an offer
coerces B nonetheless.
Although the standard cases of coercion involve
specific interpersonal threats, it may be thought that
one can also be coerced by one’s circumstances,
whether those circumstances are produced by nat-
ural events or by the unintended effects of others’
actions. It may be said, for example, that market
forces may coerce workers into selling their labor
even if no one actually threatens the workers.
It is generally assumed that A’s coercion compro-
mises the voluntariness of B’s act. That claim can be
denied. Recall the gunman example. It may be said
248
that B could, after all, refuse to turn over his money
to A, and that it is false to say that B acts involun-
tarily, even if we grant that B is coerced in such a
way that B is entitled to recover his money.
See also: BAD FAITH; BARGAINING; BLACKMAIL; BRIB-
ERY; CAUSATION AND RESPONSIBILITY; COLLECTIVE
RESPONSIBILITY; COMPROMISE; CONSENT; CON-
TRACTS; CORRECTIONAL ETHICS; CORRUPTION; DE-
CEIT; DELIBERATION AND CHOICE; DETERRENCE,
THREATS, AND RETALIATION; DOUBLE EFFECT; EX-
PLOITATION; FREE WILL; FREEDOM AND DETERMIN-
ISM; GOVERNMENT, ETHICS IN; HARM AND OFFENSE;
INTENTION; JUSTICE, CIRCUMSTANCES OF; LIBERTY,
ECONOMIC; MOTIVES; NOZICK; OBEDIENCE TO LAW;
PATERNALISM; POLICE ETHICS; POWER; PROMISES;
PRUDENCE; PUNISHMENT; RAPE; RAWLS; REASONS
FOR ACTION; RESPONSIBILITY; SELF-DEFENSE; SITUA-
TION ETHICS; SOCIAL CONTRACT; TERRORISM; TOR-
TURE; VOLUNTARY ACTS.
Bibliography
Feinberg, Joel. Harm to Others. Vol. 1 of The Moral Limits
of the Criminal Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1984.
Frankfurt, Harry. “Coercion and Moral Responsibility.” In
Essays on Freedom of Action, edited by Ted Honderich.
London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973.
Corrected reprint published 1978.
Haksar, Vinit. “Coercive Proposals.” Political Theory 4
(1965): 65–79.
Nozick, Robert. “Coercion.” In Philosophy, Science, and
Method: Essays in Honor of Ernest Nagel, edited by
Sidney Morgenbesser, et al. New York: St. Martin’s,
1969.
Pennock, J. Roland, and John Chapman, eds. Coercion.
Nomos XIV. New York: Aldine-Atherton, 1972.
Wertheimer, Alan. Coercion. Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1987.
———. Exploitation. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1996.
Zimmerman, David. “Coercive Wage Offers.” Philosophy
and Public Affairs 10 (1981): 121–45.
Alan Wertheimer
cognitive science
The question whether the cognitive sciences have
any particular relevance to ethics has been hotly de-
bated. There have long been two radically opposed
camps on this question. The champions of cognitive

science hold that the empirical study of all aspects
of cognitive functioning is essential to an adequate
theory of ethics, especially to our understanding of
moral judgment and deliberation. In this vein, many
moral philosophers from ARISTOTLE (384–322
B.C.E.) to Thomas HOBBES (1588–1679) to John
DEWEY (1859–1952) have drawn heavily on the
best science of their day in crafting their views of
MORAL REASONING and moral value. The opposing
tradition maintains that the normative component
of any moral theory cannot be derived via empirical
methods of inquiry, and so the results of scientific
research about the mind are mostly irrelevant to the
prescriptive aspect of moral philosophy.
The principal arguments against the relevance to
moral theory of the empirical sciences of mind as-
sume a radical distinction between facts and values.
On this view, science concerns the description and
explanation of what is (fact), whereas morality is
about what ought to be (value). The cognitive sci-
ences might provide a sound MORAL PSYCHOLOGY,
describing how people are motivated and what they
desire, but this would be tangential to the task of
articulating normative prescriptions for ACTION.
This alleged “is-ought” dichotomy is most famously
attributed to David HUME (1711–1776), but there
are many contemporary versions of it, such as Vir-
ginia Held’s claim that “ethics is normative, rather
than descriptive” and that, consequently, “cognitive
science has rather little to offer ethics, and that what
it has should be subordinate to rather than deter-
minative of the agenda of moral philosophy.” Held’s
underlying assumption is that cognitive science can
provide only causal explanation, and so it cannot tell
us what is morally correct or justifiable. Cognitive
science, she argues, must serve the needs of ethics
by “finding a conception of mind compatible with
what we understand and have good reason to believe
about moral experience. If this conception of mind
is incompatible with cognitive science, so much the
worse for cognitive science.”
The idea that ethics and moral reason are radi-
cally autonomous has been challenged by a number
of philosophers and psychologists who argue that
research on cognition establishes empirical con-
straints on an adequate theory of morality and may
even provide substantial moral insight and guidance.
Against the AUTONOMY OF ETHICS thesis, Owen
Flanagan argues for a “Principle of Minimal Psycho-
logical Realism: Make sure when constructing a
249
cognitive science
moral theory or projecting a moral ideal that the
character, decision processing, and behavior pre-
scribed are possible, or are perceived to be possible,
for creatures like us” (Flanagan, 1991). Flanagan fo-
cuses primarily on research in cognitive, develop-
mental, and SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY to identify a num-
ber of constraints that are placed on moral theory
by what we are learning about CHARACTER traits,
identity formation, conceptions of goods, MORAL
DEVELOPMENT, and gender differences. For example,
Flanagan explains how recent research has chal-
lenged Lawrence Kohlberg’s famous studies of
stages of moral development, which have been re-
garded by many as supporting a Kantian view that
morality is a system of rationally derived universal
MORAL RULES governing how people ought to act.
Kohlberg’s six stages of moral development range
from the child’s obedience to parental commands
out of fear of PUNISHMENT or hope for reward all the
way up to the pinnacle of guidance by universal
moral principles for their own sake, independent of
external sanction or motivation. Flanagan surveys
research that questions Kohlberg’s conception of six
homogeneous and discrete stages and that chal-
lenges the assumption that later stages are necessar-
ily higher, better, or independent of earlier stages.
He argues that a more psychologically realistic view
would recognize the interdependence and coexis-
tence of more than a single stage. It would also un-
dermine the exclusive focus on morality as princi-
pally concerned with rule following.
In a similar vein, Flanagan summarizes available
empirical evidence on the role of gender in moral
cognition. Carol Gilligan’s influential contrast of a
morality of RIGHTS and justice versus an ethics of
CARE and RESPONSIBILITY has spawned arguments
that males are typically conditioned to the former
orientation while females are socialized more to-
ward the “care” orientation. Surveying the relevant
experimental evidence available at the end of the
twentieth century, Flanagan concludes that, al-
though future research will most likely resolve cer-
tain issues about the role of gender differences, there
does not yet exist sufficient evidence to validate,
for example, anything as simple as a basic two-
orientation scheme of morality.
Flanagan’s work attempts to show why and how
empirical research in psychology should play a cen-
tral role in moral theory. This kind of cognitive sci-
ence does not claim to generate moral prescriptions;
cognitive science
rather, it demands that we have a psychologically
realistic view of all aspects of human cognition and
development when we formulate our understanding
of what morality is and of how we ought to behave.
Beyond cognitive and developmental psychology,
there are other kinds of cognitive science that have
been seen as relevant to ethics. In particular, a grow-
ing body of empirical research on human concep-
tualization and reasoning appears to bear directly on
how we should understand moral deliberation. Mark
Johnson has argued against the view of morality as
a system of rationally derived rules, on the basis that
the view of concepts and reasoning required by such
a rule theory is incompatible with what we are learn-
ing about conceptual structure and patterns of rea-
soning. The picture of moral reasoning as the correct
application of preexisting moral laws to concrete sit-
uations requires moral concepts capable of corre-
sponding directly to entities and situations in the
world. For this model to work, the basic moral con-
cepts must specify a set of features that must be pres-
ent for a concept to apply to a given situation. How-
ever, Lakoff’s (1987) massive survey of empirical
research on categorization reveals that this classical
model of concepts is seldom appropriate for actual
human thought, which involves prototypes, exem-
plars, radial categories, metaphors, and other non-
literal and nonunivocal conceptual structures. Lak-
off and Johnson provide analyses of a large number
of the moral concepts that make up traditional West-
ern views of morality, showing that they are typically
defined by sets of multiple, inconsistent metaphors
and prototypes. Consequently, we do our moral rea-
soning on the basis of such metaphors and proto-
types and not primarily from literal concepts. For
example, one important view of human well-being
is conceptualized metaphorically as “wealth.” This
gives rise to a system of “moral accounting” in which
good deeds done establish moral credit while bad
deeds create a moral debt to others and to society.
Johnson argues that the complex, nondimensional,
nonliteral nature of ethical concepts and of our pat-
terns of reasoning undermines the widely accepted
view of morality as rule-following and requires, in-
stead, a morality built on various structures of imag-
ination and empathy.
In a way that is compatible with research on the
imaginative structure of moral understanding, Paul
Churchland has suggested that connectionist neural
models might be developed to account for certain
250
aspects of moral learning. Childhood experiences
would generate prototypes of fair exchange, PROP-
ERTY, GENEROSITY, etc., which would be continually
revised and elaborated into our more abstract con-
ceptions of justice, rights, kindness, and so on.
Learning mechanisms of this sort would be crucial
to any naturalistic ethics that wants to explain how
values, VIRTUES, and ideals emerge empirically from
our embodied social interactions.
The empirical work in the cognitive sciences dis-
cussed so far argues, negatively, against the idea of
a pure, autonomous reason and against the ade-
quacy of a rule-based view of morality, and it estab-
lishes constraints on an adequate theory of morality.
This raises the question of whether the cognitive sci-
ences might have a more positive and constructive
role to play in the development of a cognitively re-
alistic theory of ethics.
One important recent development is the redis-
covery of the crucial role of EMOTION in moral rea-
soning. This is not the “emotivist” view popular in
the first half of the twentieth century, according to
which moral judgments were thought to be expres-
sions of emotion calculated to arouse feeling and to
stimulate action. Rather, the new research suggests
that affect and emotion are essential to reason itself.
Based on work in cognitive neuroscience, especially
brain-lesion studies, Antonio Damasio argues that
“certain aspects of the process of emotion and feel-
ing are indispensable for rationality.” Damasio’s re-
search challenges the rationalist ideal of a pure prac-
tical autonomous reason that supposedly generates
moral principles for action. Instead, he shows how
the body’s monitoring of its own internal states (and
thereby of its relation to its environment), via emo-
tion, is necessary for various types of social and
PRACTICAL REASONING. It follows that moral sensi-
tivity requires just as much the cultivation and re-
finement of our feeling capacities and our affective
selves as it does the perfection of our inferential
capacities.
Another interesting body of work is Michael
Hoffman’s studies of the role of empathy in moral
development, motivation, and reasoning. He exam-
ines the way children learn to respond empathically
in a manner that shows that they understand how
other people in distress are feeling. Such empathy
becomes the basis, via imaginative projection, for
SYMPATHY with others who are not directly present.
This, in turn, reinforces certain forms of caring and

also supports moral IMPARTIALITY, not as a require-
ment of some allegedly pure reason, but rather as a
consequence of empathic understanding.
There is, as yet, no consistent monolithic picture
of morality emerging from the cognitive sciences.
One thing does seem clear. Given what the cognitive
sciences are discovering about the complexities of
human thought and action, it is highly unlikely that
any single model of human nature, reasoning, or
value could ever provide an adequate understanding
of moral experience. A realistic empirically based
understanding of mind reveals that morality cannot
be reduced simplistically to the application of moral
rules to situations, to mere affective response, or to
cultivation of virtue alone. It must be all of those
things and more, given the vast complexity of human
cognition and behavior, as we are coming to under-
stand it via the sciences of mind.
It must be acknowledged that the constraints
placed by the cognitive sciences on the form and
content of morality do not add up to a strong set of
prescriptions for action. A naturalistic approach to
ethics understands all values and principles as based
on our nature as embodied, social, historical crea-
tures who interact with particular physical and cul-
tural environments. As Flanagan observes: “With re-
gard to the alleged is-ought problem, the smart
naturalist makes no claims to establish demonstra-
tively moral norms. He or she points to certain prac-
tices, values, virtues, and principles as reasonable
based on inductive and abductive reasoning” (Flan-
agan, 1996). The result is that neither philosophy
nor cognitive science can give us a set of absolute
principles or rules for action, since human concepts
and reasoning do not work that way. Rather, to-
gether they can give us moral ideals and moral guid-
ance that are firmly grounded in our best empirical
understanding of what it means to be human. Cog-
nitive science teaches us that we must learn to live
with a limited MORAL PLURALISM that emerges from
the complexity of human thought, the variety of hu-
man goods, and the multiple ways in which meaning
and value can be developed. Dewey summed this up:
“moral science is not something with a separate
province. It is physical, biological, and historic
knowledge placed in a humane context where it will
illuminate and guide the activities of men.”
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the ap-
plication of cognitive science to ethics is still in its
infancy, in part because cognitive science is still in
251
cognitive science
its infancy. No one who takes cognitive science se-
riously thinks that it will somehow replace moral
philosophy. Rather, they claim that, as John Dewey
argued eighty years ago, no view of morality can be
adequate unless it appropriates the best empirical
understanding of mind that is possible using all
available sources and methods of inquiry.
See also: AUTONOMY OF ETHICS; DELIBERATION AND
CHOICE; DESIRE; EMOTION; EMOTIVISM; FEMINIST
ETHICS; GOOD, THEORIES OF THE; KANTIAN ETHICS;
LITERATURE AND ETHICS; MORAL DEVELOPMENT;
MORAL IMAGINATION; MORAL PLURALISM; MORAL
PSYCHOLOGY; MORAL REALISM; MORAL REASONING;
MORAL RULES; MOTIVES; NARRATIVE ETHICS; NATU-
RALISM; PRACTICAL REASON[ING]; PRACTICAL WIS-
DOM; PRESCRIPTIVISM; PSYCHOLOGY; RATIONAL
CHOICE; RATIONALITY VS. REASONABLENESS; SITUA-
TION ETHICS; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; VALUE, THEORY
OF.
Bibliography
Churchland, Paul. “Neural Representation of the Social
World.” In Mind and Morals: Essays on Ethics and
Cognitive Science, edited by Larry May, Marilyn Fried-
man, and Anthony Clark, 91–108. Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1996.
Damasio, Antonio. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason,
and the Human Brain. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
1994. Quote from p. xiii.
Dewey, John. Human Nature and Conduct. Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1988 [1922]. Quoted
from pp. 204–5.
Flanagan, Owen. “Ethics Naturalized: Ethics as Human
Ecology.” In Mind and Morals: Essays on Ethics and
Cognitive Science, edited by Larry May, Marilyn Fried-
man, and Anthony Clark, 19–43. Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1996. Quoted from p. 23.
———. Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psy-
chological Realism. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1991. Quoted from p. 32.
Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory
and Women’s Development. Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1982.
Held, Virginia. “Whose Agenda? Ethics versus Cognitive
Science.” In Mind and Morals: Essays on Ethics and
Cognitive Science, edited by Larry May, Marilyn Fried-
man, and Anthony Clark, 67–87. Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1996. Quoted from pp. 67, 73.
Hoffman, Michael. “The Contribution of Empathy to
Justice and Moral Judgment.” In Readings in Philoso-
phy and Cognitive Science, edited by Alvin I. Goldman,
647–80. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993.
cognitive science
Johnson, Mark. Moral Imagination: Implications of Cog-
nitive Science for Ethics. Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1993.
Kohlberg, Lawrence. Essays on Moral Development. 2
vols. New York: Harper and Row, 1981, 1984.
Lakoff, George. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things:
What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1987.
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Philosophy in the
Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to West-
ern Thought. New York: Basic Books, 1999.
May, Larry, Marilyn Friedman, and Andy Clark, eds. Mind
and Morals: Essays on Ethics and Cognitive Science.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.
Mark L. Johnson
coherentism
Considerations of coherence play three distinct roles
in moral theory: epistemological, structural, and
methodological. In all three, coherence is seen as re-
quiring consistency and then as increasing as con-
nectedness and comprehensiveness increase. Thus a
set of beliefs or principles can be coherent only if
they are logically consistent. But mere consistency
doesn’t really constitute coherence. Rather coher-
ence comes into play as the beliefs or principles are
connected by finding support from one another—
that is, by justifying or being justified by other mem-
bers of the set. Coherence increases not only as their
connectedness increases but also as the set of beliefs
or principles becomes more comprehensive by cov-
ering its subject (virtue, or justice, or RIGHTS, or BE-
NEVOLENCE . . .) more completely. As a result, co-
herence comes in degrees, and any two sets of beliefs
or principles might cover a single subject area more
or less completely with principles that support one
another to a greater or lesser extent.
In its epistemological role, coherence has been
important to moral theory as a measure of how jus-
tified people are in holding a set of beliefs or in em-
bracing a set of principles. Consistency and con-
nectedness have been especially significant in these
contexts. For an inconsistency among one’s com-
mitments reveals immediately that something has
gone wrong: one of the beliefs is false or one of the
principles is unacceptable as it stands. And the less
connected a set of beliefs or principles, the less a
person can offer by way of justification for particular
commitments. Recognizing the epistemological im-
252
portance of coherence helps to explain a great deal
about how and why particular moral positions are
challenged and defended. Even a little attention to
moral argument brings out the extent to which peo-
ple are held responsible not only for avoiding or
eliminating inconsistency but also for identifying
and defending general principles that might serve to
unify and justify specific moral judgments they are
inclined to embrace. Indeed, people concerned
about holding justified moral views regularly, and
seemingly inevitably, seek a REFLECTIVE EQUILIB-
RIUM that brings together particular moral judg-
ments with more general principles to form a single
coherent set. A challenge either to the consistency
or to the connectedness of the set is ipso facto a
challenge to the claim that one can fully justify the
views one holds.
Moral theorists have commonly regarded coher-
ence as an essential feature of any moral theory that
might lay claim to being fully adequate. In this role
coherence serves to characterize the structure of the
ideal moral theory. The standard view is that such a
theory, in virtue of its coherence, will ultimately ap-
peal to a single ultimate principle from which all
other legitimate principles and true particular judg-
ments will follow. The particular judgments might
cover only single, peculiar, cases, yet they will derive
moral (as opposed to epistemic) justification from
low-level, locally applicable, principles, that will
themselves be morally justified by more general prin-
ciples . . . on up until a single universal principle
(that justifies and accounts for limitations on more
local principles) is reached. This ultimate princi-
ple—say, the principle of utility, or the categorical
imperative, or a unified conception of the VIRTUES —
is then seen as articulating how the otherwise het-
erogeneous range of moral considerations interre-
late and as thereby inducing coherence by ensuring
consistency, connectedness, and completeness. In
contrast, any theory that finds itself with a plurality
of “first principles” will, apparently, be committed
to a view of morality as fragmented and crucially
incomplete.
In its methodological capacity, coherence comes
in not as a measure of epistemic justification nor as
an ideal feature of a fully articulated moral theory
but as an active constraint on, or at least a model
for, the construction and acceptance of a set a prin-
ciples that might be used to justify one’s choices. The
coherence method involves adjusting the various

moral judgments one is initially inclined to make and
the more or less abstract theoretical principles one
is considering as justifications for those judgments,
and altering one or the other (and often both) so as
to bring them in line with one another. The aim is
to increase coherence by eliminating inconsistencies
and articulating principles that would justify and
systematically unify one’s commitments. As things
progress, some initial judgments will no doubt have
to be put aside as ill-informed, misguided, or other-
wise suspect (perhaps because there seems to be no
plausible way to defend them), and new commit-
ments will come on board thanks sometimes just to
expanding experience, and other times to seeing
what is implicit in, or required by, what else one
believes.
We inevitably start with whatever attitudes, con-
victions, and beliefs we have, and must rely on them
in adjusting our opinions. Yet, as the method would
have it, we should not rest content with things as
they stand, but should instead subject our evaluative
attitudes to the pressures of reflection—doing what
we can to render systematic, by providing general
principles for, the hodgepodge of convictions with
which we begin.
By trying to articulate principles that would un-
derwrite, elaborate, or refine the various judgments
we’re already inclined to make we often uncover
(what we take to be) reasons for thinking the initial
judgments were insufficiently subtle, or excessively
parochial, or distressingly unsupportable. We often
find as well that various judgments we remain con-
fident of, and can now support by appeal to more
general principles, have implications we hadn’t rec-
ognized and wouldn’t have taken account of but for
the attempt to understand what reason we might
have for accepting them. Engaging in the attempt to
establish a reflective equilibrium often leads us not
just to change our initial judgments but to change
them, as we think, for the better.
The question naturally arises: In what sense are
our judgments better? One answer is simply that
they are not better, at least not in any important
sense. After all, the thought might go, any method
that simply starts with the beliefs one happens to
have and then works to generate a set of principles
consistent, so far as possible, with those beliefs, is
at best a recipe for a set of coherent principles that
have no claim to our interest. Admittedly, if we had
some independent reason for thinking our initial
253
coherentism
views accurately reflected the nature of morality, or
that the coherence of a set of beliefs was reason to
think them true, then we might have some reason to
use the method. But we have no reason to think
these things.
Against this answer, one might defend the method
and its results on epistemic grounds, arguing that as
one approaches a (wide) reflective equilibrium one
thereby increases the extent to which the beliefs one
holds are epistemically justified. On this view, what
recommends the method is that using it is one and
the same with trying to proportion one’s beliefs to
the available evidence: The method, successfully
used, results in beliefs that are better because better
justified. Since actually achieving wide reflective
equilibrium is a matter of embracing a fully coher-
ent—and so, in light of the coherence theory, well
justified—set of beliefs, the method has conspicu-
ous attractions for anyone who thinks that the co-
herence theory of justification can be defended.
While adopting the method makes obvious sense
for anyone who accepts a coherence theory of epi-
stemic justification, many have found the method
attractive on other grounds. Some have recom-
mended the coherence method as a useful way of
discovering justified beliefs, despite their holding
that the justification of those beliefs turns on some-
thing other than their cohering well with the variety
of considerations the method brings to bear. This
heuristic account of the value of the method of re-
flective equilibrium retains the view that the
method’s use results in a collection of beliefs that
might be epistemically justified. What it rejects is the
coherence theory’s account of their justification as
being mutually dependent and turning on their rela-
tive coherence.
Others who have found the method attractive
trace its appeal not to the epistemic value of the re-
sulting beliefs but to the moral importance of acting
on principles one can, on reflection, consistently em-
brace. The underlying idea here is that one counts
as having acted on principle only if the principle in
question is such that one is willing to endorse its
implications for cases other than those at hand. And
one does that only when, in effect, the principle
stands in reflective equilibrium both with one’s
other principles and with one’s other judgments
about particular cases, actual and possible, beyond
those one happens to face. To claim to be acting on
some principle, only to disown its implications for
coherentism
other cases, is to belie one’s allegiance to the prin-
ciple and to forfeit the backing it would otherwise
offer for one’s action. While views of this sort offer
a reason to value the coherence method, the reason
offered is squarely moral; and while we might be
tempted to ask why we should believe true the claim
that we have such a reason, the claim itself is not an
epistemic one. If people do have a moral reason to
act only on a set of principles that stand in reflective
equilibrium, then using the method, and restricting
one’s actions to those endorsed by the resulting set
of convictions, would make good sense even as it
leaves aside completely questions of whether the be-
liefs are epistemically justified.
Yet another way to defend the method, again
without appealing to its epistemic value, is to argue
that its use has significant practical advantages. Just
as all sorts of advantages are secured by requiring
that judges make explicit the rationale behind their
decisions, so too, we might think, practical consid-
erations require something similar of ordinary peo-
ple. After all, moral thought and reflection obviously
play a crucially important role in social life; to the
extent this role might best be served by people being
able to articulate and defend the principles on which
they act, using and recommending the method of
reflective equilibrium would seem eminently reason-
able. Not least of the advantages is that successful
deployment of the method puts one in a good posi-
tion to offer (either to oneself or to others) a coher-
ent set of principles that might be open to scrutiny
and evaluation. Widespread use of the method of
reflective equilibrium, individually, or perhaps col-
lectively, might even give us hope of our developing
a coherent public morality—the advantages of
which may have nothing to do with truth.
The practical value of the method is reflected in
the fact that most effective forms of moral argumen-
tation appear to work by revealing to people that
their own views need shoring up or changing if those
views are to cohere with others they are unwilling
to jettison. Threats and promises might get people
to change what they say, but when it comes to getting
people actually to change their minds little works so
well as showing them that, on balance, the views
they already accept recommend the position one is
defending. Of course, we should not exaggerate the
effectiveness of this approach or its relative impor-
tance as a way of getting people to change their
views. Clearly, its effectiveness is significantly con-
254
strained by their willingness either to refuse to see
the consequences of what they accept or, when they
do, to accept those consequences no matter how im-
plausible they are. And its relative importance needs
to be measured with a steady eye on the frequency
with which people change their views as a result of
experience and exposure, imagination and empathy,
rather than reflection and argumentation. Neverthe-
less, when we do work to change someone’s view or
to see whether our own might be improved, the con-
siderations we bring to bear regularly play precisely
the role the coherence method would recommend.
Needless to say, whether coherence really ought
to be given the epistemic, structural, or methodo-
logical roles it has taken on is controversial. Still,
the overall significance of coherence to moral theory
finds striking support from its apparent contribution
to our understanding the nature and justification of
moral reflection.
See also: ADDITIVITY PROBLEMS; ANALOGICAL AR-
GUMENT; CASUISTRY; COMMENSURABILITY; CON-
STRUCTIVISM; DELIBERATION AND CHOICE; FIT-
TINGNESS; HYPOCRISY; IMPARTIALITY; INTEGRITY;
INTRANSITIVITY; LEGITIMACY; LOGIC AND ETHICS;
METAETHICS; METAPHYSICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY;
MORAL REALISM; MORAL REASONING; NEUTRAL PRIN-
CIPLES; PERSUASIVE DEFINITION; POSSIBILISM; PRIN-
CIPLISM; PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY; RATIONAL
CHOICE; REFLECTIVE EQUILIBRIUM; SLIPPERY SLOPE
ARGUMENTS; THEORY AND PRACTICE.
Bibliography
Brink, David. Moral Realism and the Foundations of
Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Daniels, Norman. “Reflective Equilibrium and Archime-
dean Points.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 10
(1980): 83–103.
———. “Wide Reflective Equilibrium and Theory Accep-
tance in Ethics.” Journal of Philosophy 76 (1975):
256–82
DePaul, Michael. Balance and Refinement. London: Rout-
ledge, 1993.
Dworkin, Ronald. “The Original Position.” In Reading
Rawls, edited by Norman Daniels, 15–53. New York:
Basic Books, 1975.
Lyons, David. “Nature and Soundness of Contract and Co-
herence Arguments.” In Reading Rawls, edited by Nor-
man Daniels, 141–67. New York: Basic Books, 1975.
Rawls, John. “Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics.”
Philosophical Review 60 (1951): 177–97.

———. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1971.
Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey. “Coherence and Models for
Moral Theorizing.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 66
(1985): 170–90.
———. “Coherentist Epistemology and Moral Theory.” In
Moral Knowledge?, edited by Walter Sinnott-
Armstrong and Mark Timmons, 137–89. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1996.
Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, and Mark Timmons, eds.
Moral Knowledge? New York: Oxford University
Press, 1996.
Geoffrey Sayre-McCord
collective responsibility
Collective responsibility is a highly contested subject
in moral, political, and LEGAL PHILOSOPHY. In these
debates, ‘collective’ refers to some sort of grouping
or assembling of several things into a single unit; and
‘responsibility’ refers to some form of accountability
(moral, legal, political, etc.) to another party for
what the unit has done. Collective responsibility can
be either distributive, referring to aggregated indi-
vidual responsibilities, or nondistributive, referring
to the RESPONSIBILITY of a group itself. Some au-
thors use “collective responsibility” to refer to both
distributive and nondistributive senses; other au-
thors use “collective responsibility” to refer only to
the nondistributive sense, and use “shared respon-
sibility” to refer to the distributive sense.
When collective responsibility is used in its dis-
tributive sense, it is not thought to be especially
problematic. If I am responsible for what I have
done, and you are responsible for what you have
done, then when you and I act together we are re-
sponsible for what we have done. I am responsible
for my part and you for yours. Difficulties arise when
it is not possible to pry apart what each of us has
contributed. In that case, there is a temptation to say
that we are responsible in a nondistributive sense:
the unit, the ‘we,’ is responsible for what the unit
has done.
Many authors follow H. D. Lewis in thinking that
the nondistributive conception of collective respon-
sibility is a primitive, tribal notion that is quite bar-
barous in modern societies. The contrast seems
clear, if one endorses anything like collective respon-
sibility then one diminishes personal, individual re-
sponsibility. By blaming the organization, corpora-
255
collective responsibility
tion, university, or even “the system,” one thereby
relieves the members of various groups of their per-
sonal responsibility for what they have done. Blam-
ing the ‘group’ becomes a way for the individual to
shield him- or herself from responsibility. Nonethe-
less, several strategies have been proposed to justify
the ascription of collective responsibility.
Justifying Collective Responsibility
First, and most commonly, groups such as cor-
porations and nation-states are said so greatly to re-
semble individual persons, because of their decision-
making structures, that they can properly be treated
as if they were individuals. Peter French, for in-
stance, thinks that corporations have an internal de-
cision structure that allows us to redescribe what the
corporation’s members do as properly actions of the
corporation, just as a human person’s mental func-
tioning coordinates the acts of the various parts of
the body. Indeed, some groups may be more
“person-like” than individual human beings. If
groups can act, then it seems that they can also be
responsible for what they do.
Second, the common INTERESTS or NEEDS of
group members, such as exist in families or mobs, is
said to produce sufficient solidarity to allow the
members to engage in collective action and appro-
priately to feel PRIDE or shame for the group’s con-
duct. When members of a FAMILY pitch in to set up
for a family picnic, or to help out a family member
whose partner has died, there can be coordination
without a coordinator because each member is
driven to act due to a common perception of what
is needed to be done. Even though there is no formal
decision procedure for the group, the group can act
nonetheless. And if the group can act as a unit, then
it can be responsible for what it does. (See May
1987.)
Third, some claim that the benefits that accrue to
members of certain groups, as a result of group
membership, create certain costs such as being ap-
propriately held responsible for what one’s group
does. This view does not depend on coordinated
group behavior. Rather it depends on there being
enough of a commonality among group members so
that benefits distribute throughout the group. In this
sense the group need only be sufficiently structured
to be the passive recipient of various benefits that
are, or cannot but be, distributed among its mem-
collective responsibility
bers. From a pragmatic standpoint, if there is
enough of a group to be benefited then there is
enough of a group to be responsible as well. (See
May 1992.) The defenders of a strong INDIVIDUAL-
ISM still decry any attempt to talk about group con-
cepts. (See Kekes.) But many are coming to the
conclusion that we do not have to eliminate individ-
ual responsibility, or even diminish it, when we as-
cribe collective responsibility. (See Feinberg, Held,
Mellema.)
Law, Ethics, and Politics
Various forms of collective responsiblity have
been recognized in law, ethics, and politics. In prim-
itive legal systems, “the unit is not the individual but
the kin. The individual is but part of the kin. If he
be slain, it is the kin which is injured. If he be slain,
it is the blood of the kin that has been shed, and the
kin is entitled to compensation or to vengeance”
(Hartland). In modern times, collective responsibil-
ity turns up in criminal and tort actions. The doc-
trine of criminal conspiracy allows individuals to be
held liable for what other individuals did when both
individuals were acting in concert. Vicarious liability
in tort law allows employers to be held liable for
what their employees did, and for corporations to be
held liable for what their members did. Class action
suits continue to proliferate, and have been a com-
mon practice in Anglo-American law for hundreds
of years. (See Yeazell.) Thus, even in that most in-
dividualistic field of law, collective responsibility is
not unknown.
In politics, the concept of collective responsibility
is routinely employed, especially in international re-
lations. The units of international politics, the rights-
bearers and the liability-bearers, are normally
nation-states. Indeed, when pressed to describe an
actually existing state of nature Thomas HOBBES
(1588–1679) looked to the relations among nations.
War crimes tribunals have attempted to hold nations
responsible for GENOCIDE as well as to hold army
units responsible for various atrocities. Most signifi-
cantly, wars are fought and treaties are made on the
basis of a straightforward notion that the nation-
state is collectively responsible for what its citizens
do. (See Wasserstrom.)
In Western societies there is an ongoing debate
about whether groups are morally responsible for
what their members have done. As in law, because
256
of the individualistic orientation of most moral the-
ories, collective responsibility has been controver-
sial. Consequentialism, especially UTILITARIANISM,
has sometimes embraced this concept, and also has
been widely criticized for doing so. Indeed, Jeremy
BENTHAM (1748–1832) talks about the justifiability
of holding one innocent person responsible for what
others have done. Karl Jaspers, from the standpoint
of an existential CONSEQUENTIALISM, defends a no-
tion of collective guilt. (Also see Morris.)
In certain areas of APPLIED ETHICS, collective re-
sponsibility is more discussed than in other areas.
There is a good bit of discussion in business and
PROFESSIONAL ETHICS about whether corporations
or professions are responsible for what their mem-
bers do. (See French, 1984.) In MEDICAL ETHICS
there is some discussion of whether hospitals or
managed care organizations are responsible for vari-
ous harms to patients. In MILITARY ETHICS, we find
the most elaborate discussion of collective respon-
sibility, as debates rage over whether army units are
responsible for various atrocities instead of, or in
addition to, the responsibility of the members. (See
French, 1972.) The Nuremberg trials (1945–1946)
at the end of World War II and the My Lai massacre
(1968) in the Vietnam War were occasions for this
largely scholarly debate to be brought before public
consciousness.
Reconciliation, Forgiveness, and Punishment
Since the Nuremberg trials there has been much
discussion of what form of reconciliation or FOR-
GIVENESS is appropriate for harms produced by col-
lective efforts. When a group is collectively respon-
sible for a harm it seems intuitively appealing to look
for some kind of collective remedy. Reconciliation
typically involves two groups coming back together
after a period of voluntary or forced separation.
When a subgroup of a larger society engages in
harmful conduct against other members of that so-
ciety, it seems appropriate to try to reconcile the sub-
group with the larger group. The subgroup that is
collectively responsible might begin this process by
expressing remorse or regret and by asking the larger
group for forgiveness. (See Arendt and Jaspers.) If
the larger unit engaged in collectively harmful ac-
tions against a subgroup, it may be that the larger
unit is the one to ask for forgiveness, as was true
when the United States government publicly apolo-

gized and asked for forgiveness for unjustly incar-
cerating Japanese Americans during World War II.
The notion of collective apology or group for-
giveness is at least as fraught with problems as the
notion of collective responsibility from which they
arise. This is also true of such phenomena as collec-
tive pride or shame as a reaction when a group is
collectively responsible for a given result. (See
Walsh.) In all these cases, there is no aspect of the
group which can express these emotions; rather, the
members must express these emotions on behalf of
the group. Unlike collective action, collective EMO-
TION cannot be analyzed nondistributively. Collec-
tive shame, pride, apology, remorse, and regret can
be expressed only by the members and understood
to be “of the group” distributively. (See Swinburne.)
Collective responsibility can sometimes warrant
some form of collective PUNISHMENT or penalty. In
ancient times, whole towns were punished for their
collective guilt. In more recent times, Germany and
Japan were each punished for their part in provoking
World War II and committing various atrocities. The
charge of unfairness is often made when a group is
collectively punished, for it is almost always true
that the members of a group do not all act in the
same guilty way, or at all. Collective punishment
though makes no exceptions and in effect forces all
of the members to suffer the consequences for what
some have done. (See Corlett.)
The main response to the charge of unfairness is
that while it is rare for all of the members of a group
to be equally guilty, it is also rare that a given mem-
ber of the group was powerless to prevent the group
from so acting, or at least to distance him- or herself
from the harmful effects of the collective action.
Some argue that only if a member has clearly dis-
tanced him- or herself from the harmful group ac-
tion does it then becomes unfair to punish or penal-
ize all of the members. (See May, 1992.) Others have
argued, though, that if any of these distanced mem-
bers nonetheless continue to benefit from, or iden-
tify with, the group’s harmful behavior then it is not
inappropriate for these members to feel, or be made
to feel, guilt. (See Gilbert.)
See also: APPLIED ETHICS; BUSINESS ETHICS; CIVIL
DISOBEDIENCE; CONSEQUENTIALISM; CORRECTIONAL
ETHICS; FAMILY; FORGIVENESS; GENOCIDE; GOVERN-
MENT, ETHICS IN; GROUPS, MORAL STATUS OF; GUILT
AND SHAME; HOLOCAUST; INDIVIDUALISM; INTER-
257
collective responsibility
NATIONAL JUSTICE: CONFLICT; JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE;
JUSTICE, RECTIFICATORY; LEGAL PHILOSOPHY; MERCY;
MILITARY ETHICS; MORAL COMMUNITY, BOUNDARIES
OF; POLICE ETHICS; PROFESSIONAL ETHICS; PUNISH-
MENT; REVOLUTION; RIGHT HOLDERS; SOCIAL AND PO-
LITICAL PHILOSOPHY; WAR AND PEACE.
Bibliography
Arendt, Hannah. “Organized Guilt and Universal Respon-
sibility.” In Jewish Frontier, 1948, 19–23. Reprinted in
May and Hoffman, infra, 273–83.
Bentham, Jeremy. An Introduction to the Principles of
Morals and Legislation. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1948
[1789].
Corlett, J. Angelo. “Corporate Responsibility and Punish-
ment.” Public Affairs Quarterly 2, no. 1 (1988): 1–16.
Feinberg, Joel. “Collective Responsibility.” In his Doing
and Deserving: Essays in the Theory of Responsibility,
225–51. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1970. Reprinted in May and Hoffman, infra, 53–76.
French, Peter. Collective and Corporate Responsibility.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.
———, ed. Individual and Collective Responsibility: The
Massacre at My Lai. Cambridge: Schenkman, 1972.
Gilbert, Margaret. “Group Wrongs and Guilt Feelings.”
The Journal of Ethics 1, no. 1 (1997): 65–84.
Hartland, E. Sidney. Primitive Law. Port Washington, NY:
Kennikat Press, 1970 [1924]. Quotation from p. 48.
Held, Virginia. “Can a Random Collection of Individuals
be Morally Responsible?” Journal of Philosophy 68,
no. 14 (1970): 471–81. Reprinted in May and Hoff-
man, infra, 89–100.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Edited by C. B. Macpher-
son. New York: Penguin Books, 1968 [1651]. Chap.
13.
Jaspers, Karl. The Question of German Guilt. New York:
Capricorn Books, 1961 [1947].
Kekes, John. “Collective Responsibility.” In his Against
Liberalism, 69–87. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1997.
Lewis, H. D. “Collective Responsibility.” Philosophy 24,
no. 83 (1948): 3–18. Reprinted in May and Hoffman,
infra, 17–34.
May, Larry. The Morality of Groups. Notre Dame, IN: Uni-
versity of Notre Dame Press, 1987.
———. Sharing Responsibility. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1992. Especially chap. 8.
May, Larry, and Stacey Hoffman, eds. Collective Respon-
sibility: Five Decades of Debate in Theoretical and Ap-
plied Ethics. Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield,
1991.
Mellema, Gregory. Collective Responsibility. Amsterdam;
Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1997.
Morris, Herbert. “Shared Guilt.” In his On Guilt and In-
collective responsibility
nocence: Essays in Legal Philosophy and Moral Psy-
chology, 111–38. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1976.
Swinburne, Richard. Responsibility and Atonement. Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
Walsh, W. H. “Pride, Shame, and Responsibility.” The
Philosophical Quarterly 20, no. 78 (1970): 1–13.
Wasserstrom, Richard A. “Conduct and Responsibility in
War.” In his Philosophy and Social Issues: Five Studies,
152–87. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1980. Reprinted in May and Hoffman, supra,
179–96.
Yeazell, Stephen. “Group Litigation and Social Context:
Toward a History of the Class Action Suit.” Columbia
University Law Review 77 (1977): 866–96.
Larry May
commensurability
Questions of value commensurability or incommen-
surability occupy a crossroad where value meta-
physics or semantics, the theory of PRACTICAL REA-
SONING, and the philosophy of ACTION meet. Partly
because discussions of value commensurability have
been embedded in quite diverse conceptions of prac-
tical reason and value or goodness, “commensura-
bility” has been used to mean quite different things.
Leave aside the sort of (in)commensurability that is
a possible feature of pairs of conceptual schemes, as
first suggested by Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy of sci-
ence, and concentrate on (in)commensurability as a
feature of sets of objects of (nonscientific) choice.
These may be conceived, variously, as bearers of
value, goods, ends, actions worth doing, etc. The
question of value commensurability concerns the
ways in which it is possible to compare the consid-
erations bearing on choices involving these objects.
The root meaning of the term, as well as the his-
torical origins of philosophical concern with com-
mensurability, suggests that it implies the existence
of a common measure or standard of comparison.
Thus, the Pythagoreans’ discovery of the incommen-
surability of a square’s diagonal with its side, which
set them on their collective ear, had to do not with
brute comparability (for the diagonal is obviously
longer), but with the inadequacy of rational num-
bers as a precise measure of comparison. “Measure-
ment,” of course, can mean very different things. In
the sphere of value or practical decision, economists
have got us used to the idea of simply ordinal rank-
ings, which do not even yield proportional or inter-
258
val information. The idea of a standard of measure-
ment, then, need not imply that measurement is
quantitatively precise.
Recently, however, some philosophers discussing
value commensurability have cut it entirely loose
from any reference to a basis of measurement. An
example is Joseph Raz. In his usage, two items are
incommensurable just in case neither is better (or
more valuable) than the other and they are also not
equally good (of equal value). Unless there is some
fourth possibility such as “rough equality” (James
Griffin) or “being on a par” (Ruth Chang), incom-
mensurability of this kind would mean that the two
objects are incomparable with respect to goodness
(or value). Indeed, “incomparability” would be a
more straightforward name for this state of affairs.
Whether about incomparability or about incom-
mensurability proper, there are three kinds of ques-
tions to pursue: (1) What is its theoretical or phil-
osophical interest? (2) Does it exist? And, (3), in
cases where it exists, does it block RATIONAL
CHOICE?
Incomparability
The possibility that some items are incomparable
raises nice puzzles for the metaphysician and phil-
osophical semanticist. John Broome, for instance,
pursues the question whether incomparability is re-
ducible to ordinary vagueness. Asking us to think of
incomparability as a kind of zone of indeterminacy
as to comparisons of items ranged along a contin-
uum with a fixed item called the “standard,” he ex-
plores various possibilities for the semantics of “this
point is Fer than the standard” and “the standard is
Fer than this point.” He argues that there is a zone
of “hard indeterminacy,” not reducible to ordinary
vagueness, in cases for which the right semantics for
this zone declares both these statements false; how-
ever, he suggests, most incomparability arising in the
application of ordinary English comparatives does
not take this hard form. From this perspective, then,
the study of incomparability offers a perspective on
the boundaries of vagueness, one whose interest de-
pends not at all on the possible interpretation of
“Fer” as “better” or “more valuable.”
Much the same set of mathematical variations on
the possibilities of covariance and continuity may be
approached more metaphysically, and with more in-
trinsic connection to value theory, by pursuing ques-

tions about what G. E. MOORE (1873–1958) used
to call “organic wholes.” As Chang has put it more
recently, we may be interested in comparing items
according to some broad evaluative category—job
candidates with respect to philosophical merit, for
example—and still be aware that there are many
contributory features that go toward philosophical
merit and may be valued as components of it. We
quickly become aware that there is seldom any sim-
ple linear function that takes these components as
arguments and yields an overall index value. There
are many discontinuities, interactive effects, and
contextual shifts that make a linear model implau-
sible. The possibility that, say, two candidates might
be either incomparable as to philosophical merit, or
instead “roughly equal” in this respect, adds a fur-
ther challenge to any effort to model the relation
between contributory valued features and value un-
der the more general category. While it seems un-
likely that philosophy will ever generate detailed
models of this kind, accounting for this possibility
of incomparability imposes some discernible con-
straints on the metaphysics of value.
While the notion of (in)comparability may be de-
fined for any comparative, let alone any evaluative
dimension, what would seem most significant in
practice and for moral theory is (in)comparability
with respect either to overall evaluative comparison,
as in Raz’s definition, above, or with respect to in-
trinsic goodness. Certainly, once instrumental value
is admitted, it comes as no surprise that everything
is comparable to everything else in some valued re-
spect. My umbrella makes a better fishing rod than
my pen. It is equally obvious that not all items are
comparable in every valued respect. When offered
either a pen or an umbrella for dessert, I would
throw up my hands. More interesting, then, would
be incomparability with respect to all-things-
considered or intrinsic value or goodness.
Is there incomparability of this more global kind?
Raz, Michael Stocker, and Elizabeth Anderson are
among those who think the answer is clearly yes. Yet
how is the existence of incomparability with respect
to goodness to be differentiated from our mere in-
ability to arrive at a well-grounded opinion about
such a comparison? Defending the latter possibility,
Donald Regan has resurrected both G. E. Moore’s
view that “good” is the name of a nonnatural, in-
definable property and his INTUITIONISM about how
we arrive at knowledge about goodness. On Regan’s
259
commensurability
view, there is never any real incomparability of good-
ness, only lack of sufficient knowledge to make the
relevant comparisons.
If there were incomparability as to goodness or
intrinsic value, would this imply severe limitations
on rational choice? One’s answer, predictably
enough, depends on one’s view of the role of overall
goodness in rational choice. For philosophers such
as Moore and Regan, who hold that rational choice
proceeds from a direct intuition of overall goodness,
incomparability therein would pose a direct obstacle
to rationality. In contrast, Kantians and pluralist per-
fectionists, among others (including Raz and An-
derson) argue that rational choice need not invoke
the notion of overall goodness. A further possibility,
suggested by Elijah Millgram, is that comparability
of overall goodness is indeed essentially connected
to rational choice, but only in the following way:
once rational choices have been arrived at, they will
reveal or induce an ordering in terms of overall
goodness. Returning from such overall comparisons
to the more general case for a moment, there re-
mains the question whether comparability with re-
spect to some valued feature is necessary for rational
choice. To this, some, such as Anderson and Stocker,
have noted that some decisions are arrived at in ways
that are not comparative, or not overtly so. It may
here be helpful simply to note an ambiguity in the
term “choice.” If what is meant is “choosing one op-
tion rather than another” (electio), then it would
seem that choice is inherently comparative. Some-
times, however, philosophers use “choice” to refer
to the willed outcome of deliberation—what Aris-
totle called “deliberative desire,” which stands in
contrast to reflex or unreflective actions. It is not
obvious that choice in this latter sense need be com-
parative. As this ambiguity shows, the precise con-
tours of philosophy of action, and the way evaluative
questions get embedded in it, will affect the plausi-
bility of claims of incomparability. Whether val-
ues—or normative demands—are comparable also
affects the ways we may attempt to make sense
of apparent MORAL DILEMMAS. Walter Sinnott-
Armstrong, for instance, has argued that a range of
value incomparability helps explain the existence of
some irresolvable moral dilemmas.
Incommensurability
It is hard to imagine what considerations might
bear decisively on metaphysical claims as specula-
commensurability
tive as Moorean intuitionism or its denial. When we
shift to how claims about comparability might mat-
ter in moral practice, what counts is not so much
whether these metaphysical doctrines are true as
how it is that overall comparison in terms of good-
ness may or may not become available to the de-
liberating agent. From this somewhat more prag-
matic—though still philosophical—perspective, it
is crucial to settle whether the agent may reasonably
expect to work from intuitions about overall good-
ness, or rather, as Millgram argues, can generate
conclusions about overall goodness only as a by-
product of deliberating on some other basis. The al-
ternative basis, obviously, is to assess proposals or
alternatives in light of other, more specific consid-
erations. What we are now asking about, then, is the
relationship, in deliberation, between these more
specific considerations and overall assessment. It is
here that the notion of (in)commensurability,
proper, arises. Is there some overall standard by
which to measure or appraise the contributions of
the various more specific considerations, for the pur-
poses of arriving at a choice (or overall evaluation),
or not?
Philosophical views about the possibilities of ra-
tional choice have long cast their shadow across this
question about whether values are commensurable
in this sense. Both PLATO (c. 430–347 B.C.E.) (in the
Protagoras) and ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) (in De
Anima) argue that ranging conflicting considera-
tions under a single heading is crucial to choosing
rationally. Much of their concern is with issues in
the philosophy of action, such as the possibility of
WEAKNESS OF WILL (akrasia). The connection be-
tween incommensurability and akrasia has also been
explored recently, e.g., by Wiggins, Nussbaum, and
Stocker. Akrasia may be modeled in terms of war-
ring specific value commitments that have not been,
and could not have been, adequately represented in
the agent’s overall decision in terms of some single
standard. If they have not been, then they may re-
main sufficiently unsatisfied to interfere with its
execution.
The ancient arguments leave open the possibility
that any commensurability involved is only what Da-
vid Wiggins calls the “weak” variety, which implies
only that for each choice there is some standard
(such as “philosophical merit”), not the stronger
claim that there is one standard that serves for every
choice. Further, by remaining quite metaphorical
260
about what “weighing” or “measurement” by refer-
ence to the single standard might mean, they also
leave open the more subversive possibility that the
very interpretation of the standard must wait on a
thorough examination of the more specific consid-
erations. This might be the case, for instance, if a
consideration of the various philosophical merits of
job candidates, in terms of argumentative clarity, im-
portance of original insight, and so on, provided
grounds for revising one’s conception of philosoph-
ical merit. As noted above, we should be quite flex-
ible about what “measurement” means, leaving open
the possibility that the standard provides only an or-
dinal ranking (as well, perhaps, as declaring some
pairs of items to be on a par). Nonetheless, there
remains a fundamental difference between whether
the standard provides a relatively fixed basis for
making overall assessments (of the relevant kind),
or rather remains subject to fundamental reinterpre-
tation reasonably induced by the very considerations
whose significance it purports to be able to “weigh.”
(John Finnis uses “commensurability” simply to in-
dicate the existence of a single, overall outline ac-
count of the good, whether or not it is subject to
further interpretation on the basis of more specific
considerations. Although this broader usage is not
unreasonable, it does not get at the important issues
pertaining to the relation between specific consid-
erations and overall assessment.)
Value commensurability, then, in some way in-
volves the in-principle availability of a “single met-
ric”—again, without implying a cardinal or even a
proportional scale. There are many possible varia-
tions of a definition of value commensurability along
these lines. Here is a definition adapted from
Richardson:
Weak commensurability obtains if and only if
all the considerations for and against
choosing any option in any situation may be
adequately arrayed prior to the choice (for
purposes of deliberation) simply in terms of
the greater or lesser satisfaction of some
single norm (or instantiation of some good).
This definition contains some vague terms. It may
be possible to be more explicit. Recently, Wiggins
has put forward a series of definitions of value com-
mensurability along the same lines. In lieu of the
condition that the considerations be “adequately ar-

rayed” in terms of the standard, he requires that
comparisons in terms of the standard “reflect a
proper regard for every choice-relevant feature” of
the contending items. In lieu of simply demanding
that the arraying be possible “prior to the choice,”
he requires that any correct account of the compar-
ison (and the way it is based on the specific consid-
erations?) be “unitary, projectible, explanatory,
and/or potentially predictive.” While there presum-
ably is no simple standard for determining which is
the best way to go in spelling out the definition of
value commensurability, it should be clear that these
clauses address two main concerns. First, it is of no
interest that one might decide to adopt a given stan-
dard as the basis of choice, if that standard is not,
in fact, responsive to the actual force of the specific
considerations that also bear on the choice. In John
Barth’s novel The End of the Road (1958), the in-
decisive protagonist is given three all-purpose rules
of decision by his psychiatrist: choose the one on the
left, the one that comes first, and the one that is
earlier in the alphabet. Any one of these rules can
induce quite a complete ordering of alternatives, but
does so arbitrarily and in a way that is totally insen-
sitive to the considerations that should bear on
choice. Clauses about “adequately arraying” or “re-
flecting a proper regard” for the specific considera-
tions are meant to rule out this sort of possibility.
Second, there is the possibility, obvious in axiomatic,
preference-based utility theory and flagged by Mill-
gram with regard to overall goodness, that one may
construct an overall standard or dimension reflect-
ing the considerations pertaining to choice, but in
principle only after and on the basis of decisive de-
liberation. Hence, the requirement either (a) directly
that the standard be available prior to choice or
(b) that it be constructible in a general and projec-
tible form such that, in principle, it would be avail-
able prior to choice.
Are there items that are incommensurable, in this
sense? Of course, any evidence that there are items
incomparable in terms of values or goods important
in deliberation lends support to the claim that there
are incommensurable values, for anything that can-
not be ranked cannot, a fortiori, be ranked prior to
deliberation. Further, as Nussbaum and Richardson
have argued, tragic conflicts also evidence value in-
commensurability, for if all the considerations were
possible to array on a single dimension for the pur-
poses of choosing, these choices would not present
261
commensurability
the sorts of psychological difficulty they in fact do.
(Conversely, Bernard WILLIAMS and others have
noted that value incommensurability may make
sense of the irresolvability of value conflicts.) Yet as
with the case of the Moorean reaction to incompa-
rability claims, it is always possible for a priori com-
mitments to lead philosophers to set aside even quite
compelling experiential evidence. In this case, the
principal a priori obstacle to recognizing value in-
commensurability is the following schematic argu-
ment: value commensurability is a prerequisite of
rational choice when different values conflict; we are
able to choose rationally when different values con-
flict; hence, values must be commensurable. Ac-
cordingly, persuasively to answer the question of
whether value incommensurability exists requires
one also to take a position on whether commensu-
rability is a prerequisite of rational choice.
Building more elaborate claims on the basis of
Plato’s and Aristotle’s beginnings, other philoso-
phers, notably Immanuel KANT (1724–1804), JOHN
STUART MILL (1806–1873), and Henry SIDGWICK
(1838–1900), have argued that a thoroughgoing
value commensurability is a prerequisite of rational
choice. Kant’s claim to this effect was limited to
the domain of material goods, among which, he
thought, rational choice was possible only because
our desires for them are, at bottom, all manifesta-
tions of one and the same life-force. Mill’s and Sidg-
wick’s arguments are more general. These utilitarian
philosophers employ the simile of a highest court of
appeal. Critically, they assume that when consider-
ations conflict, appeal must be had to a further con-
sideration that is at once (a) more general and
(b) more authoritative than either of them. While
(as Richardson has shown) this premise does gen-
erate a powerful argument that commensurability is
a prerequisite of rational choice, the premise itself is
questionable. If more specific considerations are
worth paying attention to at all, then appeal to them,
either via inductive inference (Millgram) or via
coherence-based specification of the considerations
in play (Wiggins, Richardson), may sometimes pro-
vide an alternative basis for a rational resolution of
practical conflicts. Therefore, if commensurability is
in fact not a prerequisite of rational choice, the prin-
cipal theoretical commitment standing in the way of
recognizing that there are incommensurable values
disappears. This enables us to examine the evidence
for value incommensurability more forthrightly and
commensurability
invites us to explore nonmaximizing modes of prac-
tical reasoning that do not depend on employing a
single standard of assessment.
See also: ACTION; COHERENTISM; COMPARATIVE
ETHICS; COOPERATION, CONFLICT, AND COORDINA-
TION; DELIBERATION AND CHOICE; ECONOMIC ANAL-
YSIS; GAME THEORY; GOOD, THEORIES OF THE; KANT;
MERIT AND DESERT; METAPHYSICS AND EPISTEMOL-
OGY; JOHN STUART MILL; MOORE; MORAL DILEM-
MAS; NORMS; PRACTICAL REASON[ING]; RATIONAL
CHOICE; SIDGWICK; UTILITARIANISM; VALUE, THE-
ORY OF; WEAKNESS OF WILL; WILLIAMS.
Bibliography
Anderson, Elizabeth. Value in Ethics and Economics.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. See es-
pecially chapter 3. Stresses that certain goods should
not be traded off against each other.
Aristotle. De Anima. See especially III.11 on deliberative
imagination.
Chang, Ruth, ed. Incommensurability, Incomparability,
and Practical Reason. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1997. This collection provides a useful overview
of the issues, especially with regard to incomparability.
Contains the work by Anderson, Broome, Chang, Mill-
gram, Raz, Regan, Finnis, and Wiggins referred to
above, as well as essays by Charles Taylor, Steven
Lukes, Cass R. Sunstein, and James Griffin (whose
published debates with Raz have done much to spark
interest in incomparability).
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason. See espe-
cially I.I.i.3 (Akademie Edition, p. 23). [1788]
Mill, John Stuart. A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and
Deductive. 8th ed. London: Longman’s Green, 1911
[1881; 1st ed., 1843]. See especially VI.12 (the final
chapter).
Nussbaum, Martha. The Fragility of Goodness. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. See espe-
cially chapters 2–4. Explores the reciprocal connec-
tions between tragedy and value incommensurability.
Richardson, Henry S. Practical Reasoning about Final
Ends. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
See especially chapters 5 and 6 on commensurability.
The book develops a noninstrumentalist, nonmaxim-
izing approach to practical reasoning.
Sidgwick, Henry. The Methods of Ethics. 7th ed. India-
napolis: Hackett, 1981 [1907; 1st ed., 1874]. For a
reconstruction of his argument that commensurability
is a prerequisite of rational choice, see sec. 18 of
Richardson.
Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter. Moral Dilemmas. Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1988. See especially pp. 58–71.
Stocker, Michael. Plural and Conflicting Values. Oxford:
262
Oxford University Press, 1990. Undercuts the impor-
tance of overall comparisons of goodness.
Wiggins, David. “Weakness of Will, Commensurability,
and the Objects of Deliberation and Desire.” In his
Needs, Values, Truth: Essays in the Philosophy of
Value. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987 [1980].
Williams, Bernard. “Conflicts of Values.” In his Moral
Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980, 71–82. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981 [1979].
Henry S. Richardson
common good
More can be made of the notion of the Common
Good than ethical theorists in the twentieth century
usually allow, more indeed than NATURAL LAW doc-
trine, before its eclipse in the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries, troubled to make explicit. Worked
out with due amplification, the notion does not just
accommodate the goods in which people have a
common interest; it indicates how the pursuit of
such goods can avoid setting people at odds; and the
indication is more promising than anything UTILI-
TARIANISM or CONTRACTARIANISM has to offer.
St. THOMAS AQUINAS (1225?–1274), to whom
we look as a standard source for the medieval con-
ception of the Common Good, did not confront util-
itarianism or contractarianism; nor have latter-day
exponents of a stereotyped Thomism distinguished
the notion thoroughly from the ultimate standards
for social policy invoked in these theories. Putting
together the clues that St. Thomas has left, however,
shows that the Common Good specifically rules out
a number of prospects licensed by utilitarianism and
insists on things that contractarianism at best brings
in as contingent super-additions to the basic plan of
justice. It agrees more with utilitarianism than with
contractarianism in concerns not restricted to hu-
man beings in any subset of the human race. Yet it
roots ethics and social policy in attitudes and MO-
TIVES about mutual aid to which utilitarianism,
though making a demand in some respects more
sweeping for personal sacrifices, is not entitled so
long as it accepts personal utility functions varying
every which way. For its part and to its ultimate em-
barrassment contractarianism, requiring no more
than self-regarding calculation, allows these atti-
tudes and motives to be put aside during the choice
of principles of justice. The Common Good de-
mands much more in commitment than this.

In the traditional doctrine of natural law, laws are
authentic and morally obliging only when they ac-
cord with the Common Good. The community, un-
der such laws, offers the sole milieu for attaining the
fullest personal HAPPINESS. St. Thomas says, “As
parts of the full life of a community, all human be-
ings fall into subordination to the common happi-
ness in a way properly expressed in law.” This is
clearly incompatible with the individualistic reck-
oning required by contractarianism. It takes as set-
tled, moreover, a question that utilitarianism delib-
erately leaves open to determination by contingent
facts. Though they are familiar with antisocial be-
havior, theorists of the Common Good refuse, for
purposes of working out an ethics, to contemplate
the possibility that human beings might be fully
happy apart from the subordination asserted. Yet
they do not, as utilitarianism is commonly under-
stood to do, require personal sacrifices whenever a
net gain in happiness benefiting only other people
can be had. Utilitarianism, in its own way opening
up too much room for calculation without fellow-
feeling, also prescribes that individuals maximize
their self-regarding benefits whenever doing so leads
to a net addition to happiness in the group. The
Common Good might often endorse the results of
such a calculation, but only when, like the calcula-
tion itself, they reflect the CHARACTER of a person
already fully socialized. Not only can social training
produce such persons (though training sometimes
fails), ethics must have them.
The Common Good is a notion strictly correlative
to this conception of human beings as social in ori-
entation. It does not require any hypothetically prior
calculation of the benefits of life inside some com-
munity as compared with life outside any; nor does
it require justification by such a calculation. Com-
mitment to it springs not just from mutual need and
interdependence, but from the combination of these
things with FRIENDSHIP. “Greater love than this no
one has than to lay down their life for their friend.”
The friend may refuse the sacrifice; or contend to
make it herself. In any case, commitment to the
Common Good requires personal sacrifices only
when these are indispensable to the maintenance of
an organized community. However, the commitment
excludes continually scanning the horizon to see if
leaving would increase one’s value-income, and it
stands firmly against cutting and running when the
community faces calamity.
263
common good
Vikings are coming up the river, and there is only
a fighting chance the villagers will be able to with-
stand them; nevertheless every villager is bound to
stay. Nor, important as such military cases have been
in history, does the Common Good require people
to run such risks only in war. Floods and pestilence
supply equally compelling occasions for common ef-
forts. In other cases the RISK disappears, but a per-
sonal sacrifice is still in order. Consider a community
in great need of sanitary engineering, with only one
young person likely to get through an engineering
course. She would rather spend her life piecing
quilts and mothering children. The Common Good
forbids such self-indulgence. Though it is a means
to benefits essential to their happiness, it is also an
end that all members of the community must pro-
mote; it thus calls for individual assignments to
WORK that make the best of their capacity to help
the community thrive.
Here a notion developed in twentieth century eco-
nomics is helpful, which only ROUSSEAU (1712–
1778), of all the great exponents of the Common
Good, came close to making explicit, though it fits
smoothly into the tradition. In all the examples just
given, in which the Common Good gives results that
rival notions do not give, or cannot guarantee, PUB-
LIC GOODS —preserving the village, eliminating
sources of infection—are visible, the enjoyment of
which by one person does not preclude equal con-
sumption by others. With private goods, on the
other hand, consumption by one person thus far pre-
vents consumption by another—if Eve had eaten the
whole apple Adam could not have consumed even a
part. Can we define the Common Good as consisting
simply of the public goods open to pursuit by the
community? In the cases illustrated, the goods all
answer to what from time immemorial have been
recognized as basic human NEEDS; in this, as in other
respects, the Common Good has universal rele-
vance. Its relevance extends, in a sentiment that ech-
oes the Acts of the Apostles (4:32–36) and reflects
monastic practice at its best, to the furthest point of
Marxist doctrine: “From one and all according to
their ability, to one and all according to their need.”
To define the Common Good properly in full ac-
cordance with this sentiment, however, there must
be a greater break with INDIVIDUALISM. Everyone
derives a personal benefit from a public good—their
share, not interfering with others’ shares, of public
safety, for example; and conceivably this benefit
common good
could suffice with some people to incite the pursuit
of the good. For St. Thomas, however, the Common
Good implies a commitment understood as tran-
scending individualism in several dimensions. Un-
derstanding the community to be the natural and
necessary vehicle for pursuing public goods and
meeting members’ needs, every member under-
stands that every other has the same commitment to
stick with the community even in times of exigency;
at least everyone takes the others’ commitments into
account in the sense of taking them for granted, as
each may take their own. Perhaps again without for-
mulating the thought consciously, everyone under-
stands that for human beings life in a community
with such mutual commitments and expectations is
a precondition—a necessary condition, though not
a sufficient one, which circumstances may not al-
low—of personal happiness. At any rate, according
to St. Thomas, following ARISTOTLE (384–322
B.C.E.), all this is the way things will turn out if the
members substantially realize the program of moti-
vation and ACTION laid before them by nature and
expressed in natural law—a program at once for in-
dividual members and for the community, which can
thrive in a way attractive to all of them only by man-
ifesting and drawing upon such mutual commit-
ments and expectations. Thus the Common Good is
by definition common in its mode of pursuit as well
as in the character of its object.
Aristotle’s account of the Common Good empha-
sizes friendship, by which he meant something
closer to the intensity of blood brotherhood than the
looser modern meaning of the term, and makes
friendship the supreme virtue of social and political
life. St. Thomas enlarged this view in a direction
away from sex-bias and sharp divisions between
friends and others by connecting friendship with the
Christian virtue, love of God and neighbor: Loving
one entails loving the other. Moreover, God is the
embodiment of the Common Good in a community
large enough to incorporate all human beings. Here
God serves St. Thomas as a conceptual resource that
functions theologically as both the supreme value for
human beings and the spiritual energy generating
community feeling, as well as the ultimate AUTHOR-
ITY prescribing natural law. A secular account must
depend on community feeling as something readily
cultivated by suitable training. It is not perhaps
much worse off for that, however, since believers
like St. Thomas would regard the training, which
264
includes the educative function of human law, as in-
dispensable, and would treat its success as evidence
of God’s assistance.
Besides the attractions of the public goods that it
embraces, the Common Good gains some attrac-
tions from private goods that inseparably accom-
pany the public ones—besides the village saved with
its shared communal life, one’s own house saved
from the torch along with the village; besides a com-
munity spared pestilence, one’s own cup filled with
pure water. It will not impair the definition—or
strain its connection with friendship and mutual
commitment—to include these private goods. More-
over, some private goods find their way into the
Common Good without requiring the company of
specific public ones. Mutual concern that members
have enough in private goods to meet their needs
will be one expression of their mutual commitments
and their friendship. Another will be mutual concern
that work, whether on public or on private goods
and earning in either case justly proportional ENTI-
TLEMENTS to private goods, be steady work under
decent conditions (with, for example, regular days
of rest). In these two concerns taken together, the
members discover another public good—the com-
munity as an instrument for fulfilling humane pur-
poses respecting needs, work, and entitlements. As
such, it is an aspect of the Common Good for those
who are in need and helped; it is so, too, for those
who want the help to occur though they are not in
need themselves. Here, full attachment to the Com-
mon Good rises far above self-interest. People fully
attached rejoice to have laws and INSTITUTIONS that
meet the needs of their fellow citizens. They rejoice,
too, in the attachment of other citizens to the Com-
mon Good, and not merely because it is useful to
themselves to have those others so attached. They
value the attainment through that attachment at
once of happiness and virtue by the others. They
rejoice in living in a community that thrives by their
sharing commitment, attachment, and rejoicing with
the other members. (On these points, the present
account visibly converges with points about the
Common Good emphasized by T. H. GREEN [1836–
1882] and Jacques Maritain [1882–1973]).
The Common Good may in these connections re-
quire personal sacrifices to provide private goods to
other people, but such sacrifices will always also
work toward providing public goods, as when, giv-
ing up proteins and vitamins to infants, adults try to

ensure that the community continues. Friends and
relations may go beyond the sacrifices required of
them by the Common Good of the overall commu-
nity. The Common Good of a FAMILY or of a set of
friends may have components more intimate than
anything to be sought overall; and these intimate
components may vary with the variation in life plans
that the Common Good of the overall community
would, given a suitably liberal interpretation, en-
courage. Indeed, acknowledging the variation in hu-
man temperaments, the Common Good, understood
as it must be to favor personal happiness whenever
circumstances permit, may insist that there be room
for this variation in plans. Here the Common Good
has a formal character to be specified by autono-
mous personal decisions, possibly very divergent
ones. The decisions, to be sure, would have to be
consistent with attaining the public goods that the
friends and the family members have at stake with
other people in the overall community. Clearly life
plans for persons or sets of persons that ran counter
to the Common Good would have to drop out; but
so would some have to drop out in deference to the
Greatest Happiness or to contractarian principles of
justice. There is no reason to think that the Common
Good could not consort, just as well as the goals
sought by these alternative doctrines, with a rich di-
versity of life plans.
Can the same view of the Common Good be
reached simply by generalizing upon the goods that
a set of people hold and use in common along with
the goods that answer to needs which they have in
common? The first correspond to the public goods
on which the present account puts so much weight.
The second correspond to private goods, but only
roughly, since the two sets of goods intersect: Some
basic needs are met by public goods, as the need for
peace and security is met by having a system of law
enforcement. The present account accommodates
both sorts of goods, the first directly, the second, by
way of the mutual commitments of the citizens to
one another’s welfare, and the associated public
good of having some system under which the citi-
zens can meet their needs for private goods. Given
the mutual commitments, moreover, the accommo-
dation has built-in safeguards against familiar sorts
of conflict. The fact that people have a certain need
in common does not by itself prevent them from
struggling against one another to meet it. People can
even come into conflict about which public goods to
265
common good
fund, and at what levels. Do they want to have pub-
lic broadcasts of classical music? What level of po-
lice protection do they need? The present account
makes paramount the principle that such issues are
to be settled by making sure that the community
thrives in a way attractive to all its members, at once
drawing upon and reinforcing their mutual commit-
ments. Thus the Common Good coordinates per-
sonal objectives relating to needs, including the need
for work, along with personal life plans, and rec-
onciles these personal objectives in some general
plan of cooperation for the community—or at least
narrows the choice to a set of such plans.
It would be a doubtful departure from tradition
to try elaborating the standard offered by the Com-
mon Good so fully as to settle all such issues in ad-
vance. If people are to have the choice of a rich va-
riety of life plans—and not only for this reason—
they will do well to keep open room for attention to
specific opportunities in specific contexts. Even
without further elaboration, however, it is clear that
the Common Good moves in a direction that neither
contractarianism nor utilitarianism may take, and
settles some issues that they settle differently. The
Common Good considers all the sources of happi-
ness that utilitarianism allows for, without accepting
that it has to deal with all the aggregative patterns
of happiness that utilitarianism licenses. For utili-
tarians the Greatest Happiness is the supreme good
even when aggregated over a miscellany of individ-
uals each isolated in a pleasure cell. Adherents of
the Common Good hold that human beings, given
their nature, can expect to be fully happy only within
a community of multiple mutual concern. On the
other hand, adherents can accept in the main the
contractarian insistence on personal autonomy and
meet contractarians halfway in setting up guaran-
tees against personal sacrifices. They achieve these
guarantees in reverse order, however, making sure
of community first, erecting barriers to sacrifices
afterward.
See also: ARISTOTLE; CARE; COMMUNITARIANISM;
CONTRACTARIANISM; COOPERATION, CONFLICT, AND
COORDINATION; ECONOMIC ANALYSIS; ENTITLE-
MENTS; FAMILY; FRIENDSHIP; GREEN; GROUPS, MORAL
STATUS OF; HAPPINESS; INDIVIDUALISM; INTERESTS;
MORAL COMMUNITY, BOUNDARIES OF; MORAL EDU-
CATION; NATURAL LAW; NEEDS; PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
MORALITY; PUBLIC GOODS; PUBLIC HEALTH POLICY;
common good
PUBLIC POLICY;ROUSSEAU; THOMAS AQUINAS; UTIL-
ITARIANISM; WELFARE RIGHTS AND SOCIAL POLICY.
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friendship. Politics, 1.1–2. 1252a1–1252b40, on sub-
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Finnis, John. Natural Law and Natural Rights. Oxford:
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Head, John G. Public Goods and Public Welfare. Durham,
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Maritain, Jacques. Scholasticism and Politics. Translated
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dividual and person to show both subordination to
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———. The Person and the Common Good. Translated
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Nemetz, A. “Common Good.” In New Catholic Encyclo-
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Nicholson, Peter P. The Political Philosophy of the British
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266
entries in this bibliography for Braybrooke and
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Hobbesian statement of natural law theory and need
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———. Summa theologiae. Translated and edited by
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David Braybrooke
Arthur P. Monahan
common sense moralists
In philosophical arguments about morality, it is now
fairly common to attribute substantial importance to
the specific moral judgments people make indepen-
dently of philosophical ethics. Some philosophers
make the strong claim that for daily life no substan-
tive principles other than those which unphilosoph-
ical common sense possesses are needed or can be
found. Many think that at least one test of a theory
is how well it systematizes our commonsense judg-
ments. And most contemporary philosophers would
think a theory gravely defective if it led to moral
conclusions deeply at odds with commonsense or
“pretheoretical” judgments on central issues. Even
those who hold that theoretical principles are indis-
pensable and that commonsense judgments as such
carry no weight for theory tend to try to minimize
conflict between those judgments and the implica-
tions of their own principles.
Social and political as well as epistemological
considerations are involved in any position about the
authority of commonsense morality. If ordinary mo-
rality cannot be considered adequate without theo-

retical supplementation or guidance, it seems pos-
sible that moral experts must be found or educated
to guide daily life. If on the other hand our com-
monsense convictions are to be taken as authorita-
tive, it seems as if a conservative or even prejudiced
standpoint is being made immune from rational
challenge. Some defenders of common sense have
explained the ability of the ordinary person to know
what morality requires by appeal to intuitive abilities
everyone has. Critics have replied by denying that
there can be any such powers; and sometimes, as in
the cases of Jeremy BENTHAM (1748–1832), JOHN
STUART MILL (1806–1873), and R. M. HARE, they
have argued this partly on the grounds that to admit
the existence of such intuitive ability is to give up on
the possibility of moral reform.
Until the late seventeenth century, commonsense
beliefs about morality were generally given much
less weight, and paid far less attention, than has be-
come common since then.
PLATO (c. 430–347 B.C.E.) believed that the prop-
erly educated philosopher possesses special moral
knowledge and is consequently an expert on what is
valuable. He did not think that ordinary people can
have a full understanding of the good. The philoso-
pher is needed precisely to rescue them from their
prevalent mistakes about values. ARISTOTLE (384–
322 B.C.E.) accorded more weight to commonsense
beliefs and to the opinions of those with PRACTICAL
WISDOM. His general philosophical view led him, un-
like Plato, to think that human nature points all of
us toward truth, so that it is improbable that widely
held views should be false. Philosophy may go be-
yond these beliefs, he held, but it must take account
of them and accommodate them in some way. His
concern for common sense was not retained in later
Greco-Roman moral philosophy. Among the Stoics
and Epicureans, it simply dropped out. The later
Skeptics taught that we should conform to conven-
tional morality, but unlike Aristotle, they attributed
no cognitive value to it.
In the NATURAL LAW tradition of the later medi-
eval period, it was held that there is an agreement
of peoples, or consensus gentium, about the moral
laws God has laid down for us. Any proposed theo-
retical statement of moral principles would have to
be shown to accord with this consensus. But the
views of ordinary folk were not involved. THOMAS
AQUINAS (1225?–1274) and his followers held that
although God promulgates his laws, through CON-
267
common sense moralists
SCIENCE, to all men, not all are equally capable of
noting them. Some very simple basic principles are
evident to everyone. Guidance in daily affairs comes
not from these, however, but from a multiplicity of
more specific principles. And though these are also
available through conscience, it is the learned and
the wise who are best able to articulate and apply
them. Theirs is the agreement that counts. The re-
vised forms of natural law theory produced in the
seventeenth century by secular writers such as Hugo
GROTIUS (1583–1645) and his followers generally
retained the Thomistic view of the plurality of usable
moral principles as well as the belief that only some
people have the ability to understand all that mo-
rality requires. Many religious thinkers taught that
original sin had severely diminished humankind’s
ability to guide itself by conscience. The social cor-
relate was that the many would always need to be
morally taught and guided by the few.
It was not until the late seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries that efforts began to be made
to show that commonsense morality is fully ade-
quate. One strategy, used by Francis HUTCHESON
(1694–1746) and Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU (1712–
1778), was to claim that moral judgment, so-called,
is really a matter of feeling. Feelings, on this view,
are natural and operate spontaneously in everyone
alike. They give us adequate moral guidance without
the complex thinking philosophers and natural law-
yers held to be necessary. The other philosophical
strategy, used by Bishop Joseph BUTLER (1692–
1752) and C. A. CRUSIUS (c. 1715–1775), was to
extend the scope of the intuitive ability of con-
science, traditionally admitted in much natural law
thinking and in Christian teaching generally. Con-
science, they held, can give us not just abstract prin-
ciples but sufficient guidance to enable us to decide
about particular actions; and even the most ordinary
people possess an effective conscience. Hutcheson
and Rousseau were in different ways and to different
degrees interested in increasing the social and po-
litical freedom of individuals; Butler and Crusius
aimed to defend a strong view of the ultimate RE-
SPONSIBILITY of each individual before God for all
of his or her actions. Their concerns combined to
allow commonsense morality more authority than it
had previously been granted.
Immanuel KANT (1724–1804) was influenced by
Crusius and Hutcheson, but it was Rousseau espe-
cially who convinced him that the ordinary person’s
common sense moralists
moral judgment—which he did not take to be
wholly emotional—gives adequate guidance in all
cases. Kant thought the principle he proposed as
fundamental to morality simply articulates what all
people have always known, and that it would lead
to judgments matching those which common sense
would make spontaneously. Kant’s point was that
the ordinary person has a fully adequate moral
“compass” and so can be a self-directing agent as
well as a critic of the corruptions apt to invade civ-
ilization. HEGEL (1770–1831) argued against this,
claiming that Kant’s abstract moral principle could
not give us any guidance whatever. The accepted
morality of any given society and period is the only
substantial guide available. Individuals are so
shaped by the morality of their time and place that
they do not have a standpoint outside it from which
to criticize it. Commonsense beliefs are thus more
usable than any abstract theoretical principle, but
they have no absolute cognitive weight. If the He-
gelians avoided relativism, it was only because of
their belief in the genuine progress of the universe,
including morality, toward an ever-increasing grasp
of the ultimate truth. In most matters, Hegelians are
not considered defenders of common sense, but in a
peculiar way they champion it in morality.
A more direct commitment to common sense de-
veloped in Britain. Thomas REID (1710–1796), an
avowed follower of Butler, aimed to defend common
sense particularly against the general skepticism and
anti-Christian hedonism of HUME (1711–1776). He
argued explicitly that commonsense judgments must
be the test of the adequacy of any theory about
widely held beliefs, whether concerning causality or
concerning morals. No single principle, he held,
could fully encapsulate all our commonsense moral
beliefs. Hence he claimed that there must be a plu-
rality of principles, intuitively evident and equally
fundamental. This substantive pluralism—an inher-
itance from the natural law tradition—has generally
accompanied a strong belief in the cognitive content
of commonsense morality, though—as the case of
Kant shows—not always.
Reid had disciples who constituted themselves as
an anti-empiricist school of commonsense philoso-
phy—not least of moral philosophy—in nineteenth-
century Scotland, and he influenced two of the most
important English moralists of the period. William
WHEWELL (1794–1866) saw Butler and Reid as de-
fending a Christian common sense against hedonis-
268
tic views, and he continued their work. He elabo-
rated an intuitionist moral epistemology, connected
with a Platonistic metaphysics; and he argued,
against the utilitarians, that morality could not be
reduced to a single principle. The utilitarians did not
find a plausible position about commonsense moral
beliefs until John Stuart Mill argued that those be-
liefs represent the “wisdom of the ages” about the
good and bad consequences of action. This enabled
him to maintain the utilitarian principle while allow-
ing that commonsense morality makes it unnecessary
for individuals to do difficult utilitarian calculations
before acting. Henry SIDGWICK (1838–1900) did
not accept this move of Mill’s. But he tried to show
that intuitionist pluralism and utilitarian monism
could be united in a different way. Following Reid,
he held that commonsense beliefs must be accepted
as the data for ethical theory, and he argued that a
self-evident version of the utilitarian principle gives
the best systematization of them. Commonsense be-
liefs are thereby shown to be rational. Moreover,
they are all we have to go by until we can use utili-
tarian calculations to make them better. It is there-
fore justifiable in utilitarian terms to stick with them,
and utilitarian arguments also show that it will only
rarely be possible to improve them. Sidgwick thus
gave a moral as well as an epistemological justifi-
cation of commonsense morality, and allowed room
for criticism of ordinary moral belief—but not for
very much.
In the early twentieth century, common sense
spoke out against ethical monism in the deliberately
simplistic intuitionism of H. A. PRICHARD (1871–
1947), who argued powerfully that all single-
principle theories, both utilitarian and Kantian, col-
lapse in the face of unshakable but theoretically
indigestible pretheoretical moral convictions. If we
are perplexed about what act would be right, Prich-
ard held, all we can do is to put ourselves fully into
the situation that perplexes us and look again: no
principle will help. While his followers, especially
W. D. ROSS (1877–1971), elaborated his views,
they had no adequate defense against the claim,
made by logical positivists, that there is no differ-
ence between their alleged “intuitions” and mere
feelings. Intuitionist appeals to common sense there-
fore made morality untestable; and that meant, so
the positivists claimed, that it could have no status
as knowledge.
Thereafter the debate began to turn away from

the question of the adequacy of common sense
moral beliefs and toward the elucidation of ordinary
moral language. Emotivists developed the positivist
thesis that moral language primarily expresses feel-
ing. Some analysts of ordinary language replied that
there are defensible rules of MORAL REASONING em-
bedded in common moral discourse. They hoped
thereby to rebut the charge that moral language is
nonsensical or merely expressive, not cognitive; but
like the emotivists they tended to hold that their the-
ories implied nothing about whether commonsense
moral beliefs were sound or not.
Commonsense morality came back into philo-
sophical discussion largely through two develop-
ments. One was the work of John RAWLS. Agreeing
with Sidgwick that an adequate moral theory must
at least systematize our pretheoretical judgments, he
argued that a Kantian principle can do this for our
shared convictions about social and political justice.
Rawls does not propose his principle as grounding
a complete moral theory. But he thinks that his anti-
utilitarian position does a far more adequate job of
unifying and developing a central section of our
commonsense moral beliefs than any utilitarian
principle could, and he takes this as a serious criti-
cism of UTILITARIANISM. If he is right, his view also
rebuts the pluralistic intuitionist’s view that no
higher-level principle can systematize our ordinary
convictions. Rawls says that he makes no episte-
mological claims about our pretheoretical convic-
tions. He is simply trying, he insists, to show that by
conceptualizing them in a new way we can get better
guidance from them about difficult questions of
policy.
The development of APPLIED ETHICS has also
stimulated renewed interest in commonsense mo-
rality. The problems addressed in this kind of work
arise from widely held if often inarticulate convic-
tions about the wrongness of some specific policy or
widespread practice. Whether or not commonsense
morality is assumed by those in applied ethics to
have an independent cognitive status, it is certainly
granted moral weight; and it often seems that ab-
stract principles are not much help in resolving the
issues thus raised. These studies may thus give rea-
son to conclude, not from argument but from prac-
tical results, that commonsense morality does not
need the kind of abstract principle that moral theo-
rists have often taken it as their task to present.
269
communitarianism
See also: ARISTOTLE; BUTLER; CONSCIENCE; CRU-
SIUS; EMOTION; EMOTIVISM; GROTIUS; HUME; KANT;
JOHN STUART MILL; MORAL PLURALISM; MORAL
RELATIVISM; MORAL SENSE THEORISTS; NATURAL
LAW; PRACTICAL REASON[ING]; PRACTICAL WISDOM;
PRICHARD; RATIONALITY VS. REASONABLENESS;
RAWLS; REID; ROUSSEAU; SIDGWICK; THOMAS
AQUINAS; WHEWELL; WISDOM.
Bibliography
For further reading see the articles in this volume on the
authors and schools of thought mentioned in this entry.
J. B. Schneewind
communitarianism
A doctrine in moral and political theory, communi-
tarianism holds that the individual can flourish as a
moral being and as a political agent only within the
context of a community.
The doctrine can be traced back to ARISTOTLE
(384–322 B.C.E.), who argued in the Nicomachean
Ethics and in the Politics that moral and political
virtue could be achieved only in the polis. In the
nineteenth century, HEGEL (1770–1831), in The
Philosophy of Right (1821), stressed the importance
of various forms of community, such as the FAMILY,
the corporations, and the state, for the full realiza-
tion of the moral and political capacities of human
beings.
The doctrine of communitarianism has more re-
cently been associated with the critique of two influ-
ential liberal traditions in moral and political theory,
UTILITARIANISM and Kantianism. Communitarian
thinkers have criticized the conception of rationality
and the understanding of human agency articulated
by these two traditions. They claim that utilitarians
reduce rationality to the instrumental calculation of
costs and benefits and view the agent as a maximizer
of utility. Kantians, they claim, conceive rationality
in purely formal and procedural terms and consider
the agent in abstraction from any concrete historical,
social, or political context. In contrast with utilitar-
ianism, communitarian thinkers have advocated a
more substantive conception of rationality that em-
phasizes the role of reflection, deliberation, and ra-
tional evaluation. In contrast with Kantians, they
view human agency as situated in a concrete moral
communitarianism
and political context and stress the constitutive role
that communal aims and attachments assume for a
situated self.
A number of contemporary thinkers have articu-
lated the doctrine of communitarianism. Among
them are Alasdair MACINTYRE, Michael Sandel,
Charles TAYLOR, Roberto Unger, and Michael WAL-
ZER. Their critiques of liberal moral and political
theory have focused on four central issues: the lib-
eral conception of the self; the liberal understanding
of community; the nature and scope of distributive
justice; and the priority of the right over the good.
Conception of the Self
Taylor, Sandel, and MacIntyre have given the
most forceful critiques of the liberal conception of
the self. Taylor has argued that much of contempo-
rary liberal theory is based on an atomistic concep-
tion of the person and on a view of human agency
which focuses almost exclusively on the will and on
freedom of choice. Against the atomistic conception,
which is expressed most clearly in the writings of
Robert NOZICK, Taylor has articulated and defended
a relational, intersubjective conception of the self
that stresses the social, cultural, historical, and lin-
guistic constitution of personal identity. Against the
voluntaristic conception of human agency, Taylor has
formulated a cognitive conception that emphasizes
the role of critical reflection, self-interpretation, and
rational evaluation.
Advancing a number of similar arguments, San-
del has stressed the constitutive role of community
in the formation of personal identity, shown the in-
adequacy of the disembodied and unencumbered
conception of the self that underlies RAWLS’s theory
of justice, and highlighted the cognitive dimensions
of reflection and deliberation for a theory of human
agency.
MacIntyre has defended a teleological conception
of human nature and a contextualist view of human
agency. According to the teleological conception,
moral conduct is characterized not by the consci-
entious adherence to rules and principles (deontol-
ogy), but by the exercise of the VIRTUES which aims
at the realization of the good. Such good may be
attained through what MacIntyre calls the “narrative
unity” of a human life. According to the contextual-
ist view of human agency, no agent can properly lo-
cate, interpret, and evaluate actions except within
270
the boundaries of a moral tradition or those of a
moral community. For MacIntyre, the great fault of
the Enlightenment project of providing a rational
foundation to morality and politics has been to re-
ject both the teleological conception of human na-
ture and the contextualist understanding of human
agency, thus leaving individuals with no criteria to
adjudicate between competing values and without a
moral context within which their actions could be
rendered meaningful and coherent.
Conception of Community
MacIntyre is the major advocate of a strong con-
ception of community. He has argued that the moral
life and its attendant virtues can flourish only within
local forms of community united around a shared
conception of the good. One of the principal draw-
backs of modern liberal theory, according to Mac-
Intyre, is the absence of an adequate theory of com-
munity as constitutive of moral CHARACTER and as
the locus of moral practice. Kantian and utilitarian
moral theories both fail in this respect, the former
because of its abstract and formal conception of
community, the latter because it views community
in purely instrumental terms.
Sandel, another advocate of community, has ar-
gued that community should be understood in a con-
stitutive sense. He has distinguished instrumental,
sentimental, and constitutive conceptions of com-
munity, and has argued that only the third provides
the basis for a politics centered on FRIENDSHIP, SELF-
KNOWLEDGE, and the cultivation of moral character.
Walzer has stressed the way in which community
not only shapes moral character, but is constitutive
of our various conceptions of justice. According to
him, the just distribution of social goods depends on
the shared understandings that members have of
these goods; these understandings depend, in turn,
on the nature of the community that members in-
habit. For Walzer, membership in a community is
itself the most important good, since it shapes our
understandings of social goods and determines our
various conceptions of justice.
Unger, another important defender of commu-
nity, has formulated two distinct conceptions of
community. The first, centered on the notion of “or-
ganic groups,” aims at overcoming the antinomies
of liberal thought, such as the opposition between
reason and EMOTION, fact and value, individual and

community. The theory of organic groups overcomes
these antinomies by reconciling the particular and
the universal within the context of an open and egal-
itarian community. Unger’s second formulation con-
centrates on the idea of “formative contexts,” and
attempts to overcome the strict opposition between
autonomy and dependence and between piecemeal
and revolutionary change. Revising the formative
contexts and making them open to institutional
change can overcome such oppositions and enable
the establishment of new forms of democratic
community.
Nature and Scope of Distributive Justice
The question of justice has been at the center of
recent communitarian critiques. Walzer, Taylor, and
Sandel have argued that the liberal conception of
justice, especially the version articulated by Rawls,
is deficient in several respects. Walzer has main-
tained that there can be no single principle of dis-
tributive justice applicable to all social goods.
Rather, different social goods ought to be distributed
for different reasons and according to different cri-
teria, which are derived from the different under-
standings that members have of the social goods
themselves. Since for Walzer the most important
good is membership in a political community, dis-
tributive principles must be commensurate with the
nature and purpose of community and of the social
goods that are attained through it.
Taylor, on the other hand, has argued that modern
liberal democratic societies operate on the basis of
different and at times mutually exclusive principles
of distributive justice (for example, RIGHTS, desert,
need, membership, and contribution). We should
therefore abandon the search for a single principle
of distribution. Distributive arrangements should in-
stead be based on and evaluated by independent and
mutually irreducible principles of distributive jus-
tice. Both Taylor and Walzer argue that the search
for a single overarching principle of distributive jus-
tice, applicable to different goods and across differ-
ent spheres, appears plausible to contemporary lib-
erals only because they start form the perspective of
the autonomous self as bearer of rights, and proceed
to frame the issue of distributive justice in terms of
the conflicting rights-claims of sovereign individ-
uals. If the framework adopted starts instead from a
social conception of the individual and from the ac-
271
communitarianism
knowledgment of the primacy of community, then it
is possible to argue that principles of justice must be
pluralistic in form, and that different principles of
distributive justice articulate different conceptions
of the good and different understandings of the
value of human association.
Sandel has challenged the primacy of justice over
the claims of community and has argued in favor of
an understanding of politics that stresses the values
of friendship, mutual knowledge, and the attainment
of the COMMON GOOD. In his view, Rawls’s claim for
the priority of justice over the common good can be
sustained only if the parallel claim for the priority of
the self over its ends is valid. Sandel maintains that
this conception of the person is incoherent because
it fails to account for the constitutive role of our
communal aims and attachments. By formulating an
alternative conception of the person that takes into
account these constitutive aims and attachments,
Sandel claims that we may be governed by the com-
mon good rather than by the principles of right and
justice. According to his communitarian conception
of politics, the claims of justice would still have a
limited application, but they would no longer have
primacy over the values of community or the re-
quirements of the common good.
Priority of the Right Over the Good
One of the central claims of Rawls’s Theory of
Justice (1971) is that a just society does not seek to
promote any specific conception of the good, but
provides instead a neutral framework of basic rights
and liberties within which individuals can pursue
their own values and life-plans, consistent with a
similar LIBERTY for others. A just society must there-
fore be governed by principles that do not presup-
pose any particular conception of the good. What
justifies these principles is that they conform to the
concept of right, a moral category which is prior to
the good and independent of it. The right is prior to
the good, then, in the sense (a) that individual rights
cannot be sacrificed for the sake of welfare or the
general good; and (b) that the principles of justice
that specify these rights cannot be premised on any
particular conception of the good, but must be in-
dependently derived form the concept of right.
Sandel, Taylor, and MacIntyre have questioned
this strict priority of the right over the good. Sandel
has argued that the priority of the right over the
communitarianism
good rests on a conception of the self as always prior
to its ends, values, and attachments, a conception
that he finds implausible because we cannot con-
ceive ourselves as wholly detached from our com-
munal ends and values. To acknowledge the consti-
tutive dimension of our communal ends means to
challenge the strict priority of the right over the
good, and to question the neutrality of the principles
of justice with respect to different conceptions of the
good.
Taylor, on the other hand, has maintained that
every conception of the right and of justice presup-
poses a conception of the human good and of the
good of human association. In his view Rawls’s
claim of the priority of right cannot be sustained,
since it is itself premised on a prior conception of
the human good (the exercise of free moral agency)
and of the good of human association (securing the
conditions for the full development and exercise of
our moral powers).
MacIntyre has argued that there can be no neutral
justification of principles of justice, since every con-
ception of justice is located within a tradition and
articulates its specific conception of the good. The
good is thus always prior to the right, and the ques-
tion is whether the conception of the good articu-
lated by the liberal democratic tradition can be
shown to be rationally superior to others.
See also: ARISTOTLE; AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS;
COMMON GOOD; COOPERATION, CONFLICT AND CO-
ORDINATION; DEMOCRACY; EUDAIMONIA, -ISM; FAM-
ILY; GOOD, THEORIES OF THE; HEGEL; INDIVIDUAL-
ISM; INSTITUTIONS; JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE; KANTIAN
ETHICS; LIBERALISM; LIBERTY; MACINTYRE; MORAL
COMMUNITY, BOUNDARIES OF; MORAL DEVELOP-
MENT; MORAL PLURALISM; NATURAL LAW; PHILO-
SOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY; POLITICAL SYSTEMS,
EVALUATION OF; RATIONALITY VS. REASONABLENESS;
RAWLS; RIGHT, CONCEPTS OF; ROUSSEAU; SOCIAL
AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY; SELF-KNOWLEDGE; SO-
CIAL PSYCHOLOGY; TAYLOR; UTILITARIANISM; WAL-
ZER; WELFARE RIGHTS AND SOCIAL POLICY.
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Bell, Daniel. Communitarianism and its Critics. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1993.
272
Delaney, C. F., ed. The Liberalism-Communitarianism
Debate: Liberty and Community Values. Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefield, 1994.
Dworkin, Ronald. Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1977.
———. A Matter of Principle. Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1985.
Frazer, Elizabeth, and Nicola Lacey. The Politics of Com-
munity: A Feminist Critique of the Liberal-
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vester Wheatsheaf, 1993.
Galston, William. Liberal Purposes. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1991.
Kymlicka, Will. Liberalism, Community, and Culture. Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
Larmore, Charles. Patterns of Moral Complexity. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Macedo, Stephen. Liberal Virtues. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1990.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue. Notre Dame, IN: Uni-
versity of Notre Dame Press, 1981. (2d ed. pub.
1984).
———. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988.
Mulhall, Stephen, and Adam Swift. Liberals and Com-
munitarians. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992 (2d ed. pub.
1996).
Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York:
Basic Books, 1974.
Phillips, Derek L. Looking Backward: A Critical Appraisal
of Communitarian Thought. Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1993.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1971.
———. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1993.
Reynolds, Charles H., and Ralph V. Norman, eds. Com-
munity in America. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1988.
Sandel, Michael. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
———, ed. Liberalism and Its Critics. New York: New
York University Press, 1984.
Taylor, Charles. Philosophical Papers. 2 vols. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1985 and 1989. Vol. I,
Human Agency and Language. Vol. II, Philosophy and
the Human Sciences.
Unger, Roberto M. Knowledge and Politics. New York:
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———. Politics: A Work in Constructive Social Theory. 3
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Walzer, Michael. Spheres of Justice. New York: Basic
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Maurizio Passerin d’Entrèves

community
See moral community, boundaries of.
comparative ethics
The comparative study of the ethical practices and
beliefs of different cultures remains a field mined by
relatively few ethicists. Part of the explanation is the
very ethnocentrism that comparative study is meant
to combat. Another part is the difficulty of doing
comparative ethics in ways that bear on the prob-
lems addressed within any philosopher’s home tra-
dition and that meet the standards of depth of un-
derstanding and scholarly accuracy applied within
that tradition. Those who persist in comparative
study point to the promise of fresh and illuminating
perspectives on the central ethical issues of their
home traditions, including the issue of ethical rela-
tivism. What follows is a discussion of the kinds of
comparisons made, the difficulties in making them,
and the potential benefits to be gained. The discus-
sion provides a sample of the issues, a sample that
is inevitably biased to a certain degree given the au-
thor’s specific interest in comparing Asian (espe-
cially Chinese) and Western ethical traditions. An-
thropologists and a few philosophers have done
interesting comparative work on cultures all over the
world, while some of the work on diverse traditions
falling under the rubric ‘Western’ is as comparative
in nature as any to be discussed below.
Cross-Cultural Differences Over
Central Values
Many comparative issues arise from apparently
striking differences in values between cultures. One
such apparent difference is the emphasis on individ-
ual RIGHTS that is embodied in the ethical culture of
the modern West and that seems absent in tradi-
tional cultures found in AFRICA, CHINA, JAPAN, and
INDIA. The content of duties in such traditional cul-
tures seems organized around the central value of a
COMMON GOOD that consists in a certain sort of ideal
community life, a network of relationships partially
defined by social roles which are, again, ideal but
imperfectly embodied in ongoing existing practice.
The ethical ideal for members of the community is
composed of various VIRTUES that enable them,
given their place in the network of relationships, to
273
comparative ethics
promote and sustain the common good. Confucian-
ism, for example, makes the FAMILY and kinship
groups the models for the common good, with larger
social and political entities taking on certain of their
features, such as benevolent leaders who rule with
the aim of cultivating virtue and harmony among
their subjects. Moralities based on such central val-
ues would seem to differ significantly from those
based on individual rights to LIBERTY and to other
goods, if the ground for attributing such rights to
persons does not seem to lie in their conduciveness
to the common good of a shared life but rather in a
moral worth independently attributed to each
individual.
The apparent contrast between an ethic of the
common good and the ethic of rights raises several
issues typical of those that emerge in comparative
ethics. The first issue is whether the contrast is real.
Some have claimed that Confucian ethics in effect
recognizes individual rights, arguing that it accords
individuals the freedom to do as they please within
the boundaries drawn by certain moral constraints.
The debate then shifts to questions about the nature
and the extent of the constraints under Confucian-
ism, and to the question whether individuals can be
said to have greater latitude of action under the
modern Western tradition. Relevant to the debate is
another theme frequently found in ethics of the com-
mon good—that individuals find their realization as
human beings in promoting and sustaining the com-
mon good. Given this assumption of fundamental
harmony between the highest good of individuals
and the common good, one might expect the con-
straints on freedom to be broader and more perva-
sive when compared to constraints in a tradition in
which no such fundamental harmony between in-
dividual and common goods is assumed.
The relevance of cross-cultural differences to
relativism. If the contrast between the two types of
ethics is real, it raises the question whether one type
of ethic is truer or more justified than the other. The
argument for a relativistic answer may start with
the claim that each sort of ethic focuses on a good
that may reasonably occupy the center of an ethical
ideal for human life: On the one hand, there is the
good of belonging to and contributing to a com-
munity; on the other, there is the good of respect
for the individual apart from any potential contri-
bution to community. It would be surprising, the
argument goes, if there were just one justifiable
comparative ethics
way of setting a priority with respect to the two
goods. The lesson that comparative ethics has to
teach us is about the diversity and richness of what
human beings may reasonably prize and about the
impossibility of reconciling all they prize in just one
single ethical ideal.
Examining an ethic in the context of its sup-
porting theories. On the other side, it may be ar-
gued that the two sorts of ethics are surrounded by
a web of other beliefs about human nature and
about other aspects of our world that make accep-
tance of each separate ethic more plausible. Even
if there is a deep difference between the two ethics,
we are left with means for judging their truth or
justifiability with respect to each other. An ethic of
the common good, for example, will typically carry
with it belief in the social nature of human beings.
Among the multiplicity of meanings associated
with this belief is the claim that human beings are
of such a nature that they can flourish only if they
enter into certain kinds of relationships with each
other. Critics may claim that rights-centered ethics
ignores the social nature of humanity and possesses
a mistakenly “atomistic” or “individualist” concep-
tion of persons. But whether all kinds of rights-
centered ethics can be accused of a false conception
of human nature depends, of course, on which
meanings of the social-nature belief are in fact true
and on whether rights-centered ethics necessarily
denies these true meanings.
An ethic of the common good also may carry with
it distinctive metaphysical visions of the universe
and of the place of human beings in it. In Hindu and
CONFUCIAN ETHICS, for example, we find the theme
that the ideal ethical order for human affairs is an
instance of the larger natural order pervading the
universe. The human virtues display a right order
within the human being that replicates right order
between the basic elements of the universe. One
consequence of such an organismic metaphysics is
that the hierarchies of ethical AUTHORITY involving
traditional social positions are regarded as natural
and as corresponding to hierarchies within nature.
It might be argued, then, that if we have reason to
reject those visions of natural hierarchies, we can
avoid the conclusion of relativism. The situation,
however, is complicated by the possibility that the
metaphysical vision is separable from the explicitly
ethical claims. While it certainly is true that the
metaphysical framework intertwines with the theme
274
of the common good in both Confucian and Hindu
ethics, this does not settle the question whether they
need to be so bound together or whether an ethic of
the common good might stand without the support-
ing framework of cosmic hierarchies. An analogy in
the Western tradition might be the way in which an
ethic of the EQUALITY of all human beings was orig-
inally intertwined with the idea of equality before
God but was later detached and set in a secular con-
text, especially in academic philosophy.
The question of cultural differences in what it is
rationally acceptable to believe further complicates
the situation. In the Chinese tradition, again, we
rarely find an appreciation for discovering the way
things really are divorced from all questions of how
such a discovery would fit into a desirable way of
life. Such an observation raises the possibility that a
pragmatic conception of truth may have been oper-
ative within at least some traditions that are domi-
nated by an ethic of the common good. Truth may
not have been understood as correspondence with
an independent reality, for example, but judged in
accordance with its contribution to a flourishing of
human life. The general lesson is that questions of
relativism in comparative ethics intertwine with is-
sues concerning a more general epistemic relativism.
The different ways in which the human being is
“parsed” by traditions provide another interesting
comparison. Classical Confucian ethics contains no
division between the rational, the emotional, and the
appetitive parts comparable to the division that
played such a large role in ancient Greek ethics, for
example, and that in some form or another contin-
ues to play a role in the Western tradition. There
consequently is nothing comparable in Confucian
ethics to the theme of the need for the primacy of
reason within the psychic economy. This is not to
say that “reasoning” is lacking in Confucian philos-
ophy; but the boundaries between reasoning, want-
ing, and feeling are not drawn sharply, and an issue
is not made of whatever division is possible. The
absence of such sharp distinctions may relate to the
oft-noted fact that much of Confucian philosophy
contains little argument of the sort to which Western
philosophers are accustomed. For those philoso-
phers who look for alternatives to the divisions
between the rational, the appetitive, and the emo-
tional, or for alternatives to the primarily argumen-
tative paradigm that has come to dominate Anglo-

American ethics, the comparative study of other
traditions offers fertile ground for exploration.
Differences in metaphysical, epistemological, and
psychological premises also enter into the compar-
ative evaluation of the ethics associated with Taoist,
Buddhist, and Hindu philosophies. These philoso-
phies contain a radical skepticism about the power
of discursive rationality to provide access to ultimate
reality, combined with a belief that this reality, which
comprehends all that is in an organic whole, may be
intuitively apprehended. Such a metaphysics sup-
ports an ethic with the aim of attaining an intuitive
grasp of the ultimate reality and of living in accor-
dance with that apprehension. Beliefs about human
nature are again relevant, and in particular the belief
that the discrete and stable individual self does not
correspond to the ultimate reality. Desires and ends
that presuppose such an individual self are rejected,
or at least subordinated so they do not interfere with
attainment of intuitive apprehension. Desires for
worldly goods and even the desire for life fall into
this category in Buddhism.
The theme of a unity underlying the apparent di-
versity of things, combined with skepticism about
the power of discursive rationality to grasp that
unity, can lead to the further ethical concept of the
fundamental equality of all things. This theme takes
more concrete form in the injunction, found in Bud-
dhism, against violence against any living thing. This
theme contrasts with much of Western ethics, which
embodies the idea of human dominion over all other
life on earth in virtue of what is conceived to be
unique or special to humanity—rationality, for ex-
ample. Another typical consequence of the Eastern
metaphysical framework—again, one that contrasts
in important respects with Western thought—is the
desirability of transcending discursive conceptions
of right and wrong, good and bad, because such eth-
ical conceptions can no more lead to the reality of
things than nonethical conceptions. So LAO TZU
(sixth century B.C.E.) and CHUANG TZU (fourth cen-
tury B.C.E.) portray the Taoist sage as innocent of
the very distinctions between right and wrong, good
and bad. But the theme of transcendence appears
paradoxical: How can it be desirable to rid oneself
of discursive conceptions, when declaring such a
state to be desirable would itself seem to entail fall-
ing back on discursive conceptions? And what of the
apparent recommendations to free oneself from DE-
SIRE? Is the desire for liberation exempt from such
275
comparative ethics
recommendations? Are the recommendations inco-
herent? Are they recommendations after all? Much
of the driving energy behind Ch’an Buddhism (the
Chinese name) or Zen (the Japanese name) derives
from the attempt to deal with this apparent paradox.
Finding cross-cultural similarities. The meta-
physical elements of such ethical systems should not
be completely unfamiliar to Western philosophers.
David HUME’s (1711–1776) skeptical doubts about
the unitary and stable self would have fit nicely with
Buddhist and Taoist themes. The theme of the in-
tuitive apprehension of reality as a unity underlying
sensible diversity is of course found in mystical lit-
erature of the Christian and Jewish traditions. Part
of the value of doing comparative ethics may, in fact,
lie not in confronting some totally alien system of
thought but in recognizing how themes that are not
currently dominant in one’s own tradition are com-
bined in unfamiliar ways and given enduringly dom-
inant places in other traditions. And recurrent ethi-
cal themes found across cultures, such as the duties
of RECIPROCITY, also bear on the issue of relativism,
this time as evidence against the more extreme forms
of relativism.
It is also good to keep in mind that most of the
traditions worth studying are complex and to a sig-
nificant degree heterogeneous. Generalizations about,
for example, the ways in which such Asian traditions
as the Confucian and the Buddhist differ from the
ancient Greek or the modern Western European are
at best generalizations about the ways in which dom-
inant or frequently accepted themes differ. Themes
that sound strangely familiar can emerge from the
most exotic traditions. For example, a significant
internal counterpoint to the dominant Confucian
theme of nature as containing ethical qualities is
HSÜN TZU’s (third century B.C.E.) conception of na-
ture as neutral to human aspirations and as a thing
to be understood and used for the sake of satisfying
these aspirations.
Pitfalls for the comparative ethicist. A major pit-
fall of doing comparative ethics, in fact, is the ten-
dency to take a few major thinkers as wholly or
straightforwardly reflective of the cultures of their
times. The danger is greatest with respect to the
other traditions with which one is comparing one’s
home tradition: There is the danger, for example, of
a contemporary North American philosopher taking
CONFUCIUS (sixth to fifth century B.C.E.) or the Bha-
gavadgita as wholly informative of their respective
comparative ethics
ethical cultures. Moreover, the desire to make sig-
nificant comparisons may lead to distortion and
oversimplification of one’s own tradition. Western
philosophers who easily contrast a social or “or-
ganic” conception of the self with a “atomistic” con-
ception they attribute to their own culture write as
if Thomas HOBBES (1588–1679) were the wholly
representative philosopher of their culture on this
issue.
Finally, much work in comparative ethics is vul-
nerable to the charge of having exported conceptual
frameworks from the authors’ home traditions,
frameworks which are then arbitrarily applied to
other ethical cultures. The complementary fallacy is
an extreme form of contextualism, under which any
attempt to note broad similarities of theme across
cultures is condemned as an unacceptable distortion
of meaning uprooted from the surrounding web of
belief and practice. The possibility of doing compar-
ative ethics occupies what space remains between
these two fallacies. A central issue in this regard is
whether it is always right to say that another culture
has a morality or an ethical code at all.
To write of the “morality” of another culture that
gives central place to the concept of a common good
can be grossly misleading if the implication is that
all the crucial concepts present in a rights-centered
ethics are to be found there. Yet to refuse the word
‘morality’ may be equally misleading if it implies the
absence of important similarities in certain kinds of
duties. The rejection of ethical distinctions in Tao-
ism and Zen gives rise to the question of whether
these philosophies embody moralities. But what of
the fact that these philosophies seem to prize a cer-
tain way of life that in many respects coincides with
what we might call moral behavior? A possible re-
sponse to such difficulties is to widen one’s concep-
tion of the moral. Another is to keep the narrower
conception but to recognize a broader meaning for
“the ethical.” Still another is to hold to a certain kind
of relativism with respect to the concept of the moral
or the ethical. Finally, it is possible to come to a new
recognition of complexity within one’s own con-
ception of the moral on finding that apparently ex-
otic themes have their analogs within one’s own
tradition.
Comparative ethics remains a relatively neglected
and therefore immature field at this time, the poten-
tial of which has hardly been tapped. Despite the
difficulties of doing comparative ethics well, this ne-
276
glect is surprising in a discipline that requires its
practitioners to challenge their most basic assump-
tions and to look for alternatives to those assump-
tions. Why this should be so is a sociological ques-
tion, but it is also a philosophical and a moral
question.
See also: AFRICA; BUDDHIST ETHICS; CHINA; CHRIS-
TIAN ETHICS; COMMON GOOD; CONFUCIAN ETHICS;
CONVENTIONS; COSMOPOLITAN ETHICS; CULTURAL
STUDIES; EMOTIVISM; HINDU ETHICS; INDIA; INDIVID-
UALISM; INTUITIONISM; ISLAMIC ETHICS; JAINISM; JA-
PAN; JEWISH ETHICS; MORAL PLURALISM; MORAL REL-
ATIVISM; MULTICULTURALISM; MYSTICISM; RIGHTS;
RELIGION; TAOIST ETHICS; VIRTUE ETHICS.
Bibliography
Benedict, Ruth. Patterns of Culture. New York: Penguin,
1934. A classic anthropological work in comparative
ethics, with an argument for relativism based on the
diversity of human goods.
Brandt, Richard B. Hopi Ethics: A Theoretical Analysis.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954. A philos-
opher’s study of Hopi ethics, with a discussion of
whether it is legitimate to say the Hopi have an ethical
code.
Hegel, Georg W. F. Lectures on the History of Philosophy.
Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1983
[1833–36]. An example of how comparative ethics
and philosophy enter into a great philosopher’s system.
Though not to be read for accurate portrayals of Asian
thought, it was typical and influential in its judgments
of the inferiority of this thought.
Journal of Chinese Philosophy. Dordrecht, Holland: D.
Reidel, 1973–. Quarterly. This journal, and the two
mentioned below, have explicitly comparative inten-
tions.
Journal of Indian Philosophy. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Rei-
del, 1970–. Frequency varies.
Ladd, John. The Structure of a Moral Code. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1957. A philosopher’s study
of Navajo ethics, with implications for drawing the
boundaries of the concept of morality.
Larson, Gerald James, and Eliot Deutsch, eds. Interpreting
Across Boundaries: New Essays in Comparative Phi-
losophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
Some good examples of recent comparative philosophy
done with greater awareness of its pitfalls.
Moore, Charles A., ed. Philosophy and Culture—East and
West. The Chinese Mind: Essentials of Chinese Philos-
ophy and Culture. The Indian Mind: Essentials of In-
dian Philosophy and Culture. The Japanese Mind: Es-
sentials of Japanese Philosophy and Culture. The
Status of the Individual in East and West. Honolulu:

East-West Center Press, University of Hawaii Press,
1962, 1967, 1967, 1967, 1968. Useful collections of
essays gathered from conferences in comparative phi-
losophy. Some of the work tends to engage in overly
holistic comparisons of cultures.
Munro, Donald, ed. Individualism and Holism: Studies in
Confucian and Taoist Values. Ann Arbor: Center for
Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1985. Essays
with strong comparative emphasis on the themes of
individualism and holism in Chinese philosophy, meta-
physical and ethical.
Nakamura, Hajime. Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples:
India, China, Tibet, Japan. Edited by P. P. Wiener. Rev.
Eng. version. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
1964. Many broad generalizations, but stimulating. Re-
printed, New York: Kegan Paul International, 1997.
Philosophy East and West. Honolulu: University of Ha-
waii Press, 1951–. Quarterly journal.
Westermarck, Edward. The Origin and Development of
the Moral Ideas. London: Macmillan, 1912. Compar-
ative study based on anthropological work, with an ar-
gument for relativism. Early and influential book on the
issue of relativism.
Wong, David B. Moral Relativity. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1984. Comparison of rights-centered
ethics with ethics centered on the notions of virtue and
a common good. Argument for relativism based on that
comparison.
David B. Wong
competition
As the sea is to the fish, so competition is to life. It
is the formative medium through which life moves,
reproduces, and dies. If we ask what form or bearer
of life is not the result of competition, we are hard
pressed to find an exception. Competition is like
time: we seem unable to exist outside of it.
It is not surprising, then, that both biologists and
economists presuppose that life is, at bottom, driven
by competition. Oddly, ethical investigation has not
exposed this assumption to critical investigation.
Unlike other basic categories of existence, competi-
tion seems always to be presupposed—either in a
reductionist way by thinkers like HOBBES (1588–
1679) and NIETZSCHE (1844–1900), or as a brute
given, beneath philosophical notice. Yet competition
admits of profound differences of ethical form. The
struggle against injustice, competing claims of right,
and wars between nations, for example, are distinct
problem sites of moral deliberation; all are forms of
contest. More deeply, the very framework of sub-
277
competition
stantive moral issues as right versus wrong, or good
against bad, implies an agonistic metastructure of
ethical thought itself.
This metastructure is still more graphically ap-
parent in religious belief systems. An ultimate con-
flict is invariably posited between good and EVIL,
with rewards for the victors and punishments for the
wicked. The Adversary who repels the choice of
good is conceived in the Judeo-Christian tradition as
Satan (the terms are identical in Hebrew), and cor-
relatives can be found in every other major religion
except Taoism—Mara the Tempter in Mahāyāna
Buddhism, Ahriman in Zoroastrianism, the mani-
fold of Asuras in Hinduism, the Infidel in ISLAM, and
so on. In the eternal battle between the forces of
Light and those of Darkness—a theme holding
across Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism,
Hinduism, Buddhism, and Shinto—interim victo-
ries and defeats are the defining coordinates of life’s
moral journey.
The heroic and tragic stories of peoples across
time are also governed by an inner logic of conquest
and defeat, whether the dramatic conflicts of ancient
Greek epics and tragedies, the legends and myths of
the Norse and Babylonians, or the REVENGE tales of
the medieval feud and the modern Western. Unify-
ing the diverse tales across cultures is a single theme:
Always the hero must enter the crucible of testing
challenge and prevail in triumph, or lose legitimacy
by failure to measure up to the adversary he is con-
fronted with. Even the origins of modern justice are
found in trials by battle and ordeal, in which win or
loss determines right, a tradition which continues
into the present in still hidden ways. Consider, for
example, the function of PUNISHMENT, which can
find no plausibly consistent justification except the
public defeat of the transgressor by the sovereign.
We may think a realm beyond contest exists
where we are not constrained to struggle against the
forces of nature or rivals, the realm of our “free
time.” But we discover on closer examination that
this realm too is ruled by the same master principle
expressing itself in a myriad of competitive games.
What is different about the competitions of leisure
is that oppositions are contrived artificially to com-
pete against. They are not posed against us by actual
circumstance. They are generated by rules which
create opposition where none existed before. When
an opposition is not there, we construct one.
Homo contendens is not a category applied to the
competition
human species, but if we miss this substructure of
what we think and do, we may miss the ethical sub-
structure of our lives. Moral theorists may argue that
because competitors are partial to their cause while
moral agents are not, competition cannot be truly
moral. But there seems no form of competition in
which the approbation or reproval of being recog-
nized as the “winner” or “loser” does not, in fact,
imply ethical content, the demonstration of some su-
periority which we ought to aspire to or admire.
Even the competitions of the contemporary coli-
seum are typically construed as contests of good ver-
sus bad, with entire cities feeling morally vindicated
or defeated by the competition’s outcome. As terms
of “winner” and “loser” increasingly substitute for
traditional ethical terms as signifiers of worth, we
may wonder whether this competitive ordering of
life has sedimented as an ultimate framework of
value.
But what, exactly, does competition mean? We
may see its phenomena everywhere, but its meaning
remains interred in assumption across fields of dis-
course. The category “competition” is not listed in
the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and is not explained
as a general category in any established encyclopedia
of the humanities or social sciences. Even philoso-
phy, whose vocation is to lay bare such universal
infrastructures of thought, has remained mute on
the question. One reason for this silence may be that
philosophical method itself is presupposed as a con-
testing of arguments and argument owners, and so
this competing of positions is assumed a priori as a
condition of doing philosophy. Another reason may
be that competition is so deep a structure of the re-
gimes of social POWER surrounding philosophy that
opening it to question poses the danger of challeng-
ing received structures of legitimacy.
Whatever the reason, philosophy shows no his-
torical case of investigation of competition at the
highest level of abstraction, nor any recognition of
the primary distinctions among its alternative nor-
mative types. Instead, we find monocomprehensions
of competition’s varied fields, each of which as-
sumes a socially dominant form of competition as all
of it, and then posits this as a given which is closed
to further question. This unexamined fixity of as-
sumption indicates the kind of profound confusion
that philosophers seek to expose in prereflective un-
derstanding elsewhere.
This is not to say that philosophers do not ad-
278
vance colourfully diverse positions on the form of
competition they presuppose as given. LAO-TZU
(sixth century B.C.E.) conceived of competition
among humans as a form of life that was partial in
principle and of ruinous disvalue. He saw no good
in it, concluding his timeless Tao-te Ching with the
counsel, “The way of the sage is to act but not com-
pete.” Heraclitus of the same period, in contrast,
thought that war was the ruling principle of exis-
tence and in his Fragment LXXXI attacks Homer
for even regretting “the conflicts among gods and
men.” The Mahabharata and its Song of God, the
Bhagavadgita, suppose military war as the medium
through which moral order must be won, although
ahimsa or peace is the objective of the war. Hobbes
saw competitiveness as the expression of a law of
nature which propels humanity in a “perpetual and
restless desire of power after power that ceases only
in death.” But Hobbes sought to end the bellum om-
nium contra omnes by the absolute AUTHORITY of
the Leviathan state whose nature is precisely that it
must not be contested against. ROUSSEAU (1712–
1778) in the Discourse on Inequality condemned
the vain corruptions of competitive self-love or
amour-propre which makes the impossible demand
that others should prefer us to themselves. Yet he
retained civil competition for offices in his Social
Contract. HEGEL (1770–1831) glorified the waging
of international wars as “the health of nations,” but
ultimately sought the contradictory goal of “univer-
salized unification under Right and Law” as the
highest realization of Reason. MARX (1818–1883)
proposed the emancipation of society from compe-
tition by projecting the end of class struggle in a
future of communist relations. Yet every step of the
progression he described is characterized as a con-
quest of nature and of opposition classes by human
productive forces. Nietzsche affirmed the desire to
overcome the other as the “universal will to power,”
which he affirmed as much in the reduction of the
greater part of humanity to SLAVERY as in the im-
position of creative forms on matter. Contemporary
game theorists have, perhaps most naively of all,
presupposed the calculating contests of self-
maximizers as the very structure of rationality. The
conceptualization of competition in the history of
philosophy is, in short, symptomatic of thought
which has not yet critically examined its deepest
assumptions.
Despite these opposing positions on the ethical

meaning of competition, one underlying principle is
assumed: namely, that competition is an activity in
which an object of desire, which cannot go to all
who want it, goes to one or some. This principle
picks out not only what is in common among phi-
losophers’ conceptions, but also what is in common
among the diverse fields of competition with which
we are separately familiar—biological competition
for survival and reproduction, market competition
for profit, military and political competition for state
power, athletic competition for prizes, and academic
competition for grades and rank. This principle also
subsumes regulated as well as natural competition
and, relatedly, competition which is and is not time-
limited.
Such unitary meaning across the many orbits of
competition provides, despite WITTGENSTEIN (1889–
1951), a necessary step to understanding the con-
cept philosophically. But an unfamiliar question un-
dercuts our definition. Are there forms of competi-
tion which this criterion does not cover, forms of
competition in which one’s victory does not entail
another’s loss, even if both are competing for a
scarce good? This question is unasked because it
contradicts the dominant understanding of what
competition means. But there may be no more far-
reaching question in ethics.
Consider humanity’s archetypal form of seeking
the Good in which the victory of overcoming barriers
to life’s freer realization is the goal which is fought
for—“to fight for truth,” “to conquer disease,” “to
battle against oppression,” and so on. One can sub-
stitute any adversary to life in the logical space of
what is contested against in such value quests, and
discover that this structure of competing does not
entail loss to other humans, or to any other verte-
brates. The extent to which contending against ad-
versaries to life covers what stands in the way of our
moral enterprises indicates the generality of this
structure of competing. In such a higher order of
competition, all may benefit and none need lose by
the win. What loses is the old self, the beast, the
disease invasion, the falsehood, or whatever the op-
ponent to life’s more comprehensive vital range may
be. Insofar as competition can be of this nonpartial
kind, it reverses the loss to others which is entailed
by competition as we now understand it.
In corporate market competition that now regu-
lates global society, a moral critic might ask: “Who
wants a world in which global competitiveness
279
competition
means ever more sacrifices to losers so as to lower
money costs for winners?” Although such a struc-
ture of competition may seem implied by a market
order, it is profoundly false to believe that such sac-
rifices follow from the nature of competition itself.
Once we open to the inclusionary forms of com-
petition, horizons of possibility emerge into light
which are consistent with the deep-lying structure of
competitive motivation. But does a common ground
of meaning for both partial and impartial forms of
competition still remain? The answer may be that
whether competition is partial or impartial in its pay-
offs, there is always: (1) the sustained intention of
the competing parties to win against an opposition
confronting them; and (2) an unpredictable outcome
of the competing. The first condition refers to what
tests those who compete; and the second condition
refers to what distinguishes competition from other
oppositional processes such as dialectics: namely,
that competition ceases to be such to the extent that
its results can be known beforehand.
Once conception is released from confinement to
the traditionally dominant form of competition, it
can be seen to admit of fateful moral choices as well
as unpredictable outcomes. It not only admits of eth-
ically opposed kinds, but by its nature reorders the
world in new ways. Its most peculiar depth may be
that the more the win which is sought is not biased
toward pay-off to the self or to time-limited results,
the more the impartial competitor cannot lose.
See also: ACADEMIC ETHICS; BIOLOGICAL THEORY;
COOPERATION, CONFLICT, AND COORDINATION; COR-
RECTIONAL ETHICS; CORRUPTION; DETERRENCE,
THREATS, AND RETALIATION; ECONOMIC ANALYSIS;
ECONOMIC SYSTEMS; EVOLUTION; EXCELLENCE;
GAME THEORY; IMPARTIALITY; INEQUALITY; INTER-
NATIONAL JUSTICE: CONFLICT; MILITARY ETHICS;
OPPRESSION; PERFECTIONISM; PHILOSOPHY OF RELI-
GION; POLICE ETHICS; POWER; PUNISHMENT; REPRO-
DUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES; REVENGE; REVOLUTION;
SLAVERY; SPORT; VIOLENCE AND NON-VIOLENCE;
WAR AND PEACE.
Bibliography
Acton, H. B. The Morals of Markets. London: Longman’s,
1971. A rare philosophical analysis of competition ad-
dresses counterarguments against competition from a
pro-market standpoint.
Bhagavadgita. In A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy,
competition
translated and edited by Sarvapelli Radhakrishnan and
Charles A. Moore. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1957. The dialogue between Krishna and Ar-
juna, in particular verses 45–53, articulates from a the-
istic ground the ethical position of waging an impartial
war: “To action alone hast thou a right, and never at
all to its fruit” (verse 47).
Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species. Facsimile edi-
tion. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964
[1859]. Darwin and Darwinians draw from Malthus
the principle of animal populations multiplying faster
than their means of subsistence, which puts their mem-
bers into competition. This single idea of competition
is first formulated by Adam Smith, who observed that
with the human as well as other species, propagation
of “the inferior ranks” exceeds means of subsistence,
and their supply, accordingly, adjusts to market de-
mand by starvation (see Smith, Adam, below).
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Philosophy of His-
tory. Translated by J. Sibree. New York: Dover Publi-
cations, 1956 (translation first published 1899). He-
gel’s dialectical principle of development through
conflict approaches most closely to competition in in-
ternational war, which Hegel affirms as a necessary me-
dium of the Spirit’s worldly progression toward “self-
comprehending totality.” The master-slave dialectic of
Part B IV A of the Phenomenology of Spirit is revealing
in its account of self-dissolving dread in the face of life-
and-death contest, and of the transcendental con-
sciousness it generates.
Hobbes, Thomas. The Leviathan. Edited by Oskar Piest.
New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1958 [1651]. See es-
pecially p. 86.
Kant, Immanuel. “Universal History from a Cosmopolitan
Point of View.” [1784] In Theories of History: Readings
from Classical and Contemporary Sources, edited by
Patrick Gardiner, Propositions Four Through Seven.
Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959. Competitive conflict is
seen as the way in which life’s capacities are required
to develop, but by the brutality and devastation of its
consequences eventually drives peoples and nations to-
ward “perfect civil union.”
Kohn, Alfie. The Case Against Competition. Boston:
Houghton-Mifflin, 1986. Various purported values of
competition are robustly argued against, and a non-
competitive society is advocated.
Lao Tzu. Tao-te Ching. Translated by Wing-tsit Chan, in
A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1963. See especially chap-
ter 80, p. 176.
McMurtry, John. “How Competition Goes Wrong.” Jour-
nal of Applied Philosophy 8, no. 2 (1991): 201–10.
Competition in which pay-offs external to the activity
go to one party at the expense of others is distinguished
from competition in which no structure of extrinsic
pay-offs is imposed on the action.
———. Understanding War: A Philosophical Inquiry. To-
ronto: Science for Peace and Samuel Stevens, 1989.
280
The underlying principles of military war are excavated
and analysed, with alternative forms of war examined.
Moulton, Janice. “A Paradigm of Philosophy: The Adver-
sary Method.” In Discovering Reality: Feminist Per-
spectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics and Philoso-
phy of Science, edited by Sandra Harding and Merrill
B. Hintikka, 149–64. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1983. The
adversary method of philosophical reasoning is criti-
cized, and a cooperative, nonadversarial alternative is
advocated.
Michael Murphy. Golf in the Kingdom. New York: Dell,
1972. The philosophy of India’s Aurobindo Ghose is
applied to “the inner game” of golf, with competition
construed as a journey of the self’s awakening.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil: A Prelude to
the Philosophy of the Future. Translated by Helen Zim-
mern. London: Allen and Unwin, 1967 [1886]. Sec-
tions 257 to 259 are particularly relevant to under-
standing the savagery of Nietzsche’s concept of the
agon. Nietzsche’s polymorphic concept of the “will to
power” here and elsewhere can be decoded as an in-
choate philosophy of competition.
O’Neill, Onora. “Consistency in Action.” In her Construc-
tions of Reason: Explorations of Kant’s Practical Phi-
losophy, 102–3. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1989. Common policies for economic and sport-
ing competition are rebutted for violating the categor-
ical imperative.
Ong, Walter. Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality and Con-
sciousness. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981.
This multilevelled and literary investigation of com-
petition considers gender, academia, and reflective con-
sciousness as rooted in contest.
Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations. The
Harvard Classics, Volume 10. New York: P. F. Collier
and Sons, 1909 [1776]. Smith justifies the principle of
unlimited market competition within the circum-
stances of the late eighteenth century. For theoretical
anticipation of Darwinism, see especially Book I, Part
VIII (p. 84) and Book V, Part II (p. 534).
John McMurtry
compromise
Central to compromise is the idea of making con-
cessions or scaling back goals or principles. In a
purely prudential compromise, a single party mod-
erates its aims or commitments in the face of over-
whelming opposition. The more common two-party
compromise involves mutual concession for the sake
of mutual gain. Here ‘compromise’ refers both to a
characteristic process for accommodating conflict
and to the outcome of this process. Two-party com-
promise is unproblematic when restricted to con-

flicts of equally legitimate interests as, for example,
a buyer and seller compromising on the final price
of a house. Moral compromise—where opposing
positions are each grounded in ethical principle or
conviction—is more controversial.
First, moral compromise seems incompatible
with the virtue of acting on principle. Many of our
moral exemplars—SOCRATES (c. 470–399 B.C.E.),
Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), Henry David THO-
REAU (1817–1862), Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–
1902), and Martin Luther KING Jr. (1929–1968)—
are individuals who refused to compromise basic
principles or convictions. To compromise one’s prin-
ciples or convictions, some argue, is to betray them
and to betray oneself (or others). How, then, can
moral compromise be reconciled with moral INTEG-
RITY? Second, moral compromise presumes the ex-
istence of rationally irreconcilable moral conflict.
Yet rationalist theories like Kantianism or UTILITAR-
IANISM deny the (in principle) possibility of such
conflicts. Properly applied, such theories maintain,
moral reason yields one and only one right answer
to any ethical question. Moral compromise is there-
fore unnecessary.
Moral Compromise
We must, in addressing these difficulties, distin-
guish a strict from a loose sense of ‘compromise.’ If,
after give-and-take discussion, parties initially hold-
ing opposing ethical positions A and B jointly em-
brace a third position S (a synthesis that combines
the strengths of A and B while avoiding their weak-
nesses), the outcome is not, strictly speaking, a com-
promise. Neither party concedes anything. Each re-
linquishes what it now regards as a defective view
(A or B) for a better one (S). The outcome may be
called a compromise in a loose sense of the term—
something intermediate between two poles—but it
is more accurately characterized as a synthesis.
Compromise in this sense is compatible with both
acting on principle and rationalist moral theory.
If, however, the parties remain wedded to their
opposing ethical positions but find themselves in cir-
cumstances requiring a nondeferrable joint decision,
mutually respectful give-and-take discussion may
eventually lead to a compromise position, C, which
more or less splits the difference between them.
Each party will, in this event, make concessions for
the sake of agreement on a single course of action
281
compromise
that seems to have some independent validity and to
capture as much of one polar position as it does of
the other. The matter is not, however, fully settled;
there is no closure, no final harmony. Strictly speak-
ing, moral compromise is not resolution. It makes
the best of what both parties regard as a bad situa-
tion; each may subsequently try to persuade the
other of the superiority of its initial position or to
see that the same situation does not arise again. It is
the discrepancy between the belief in the superiority
of A or B and then acting in accord with C that raises
philosophical difficulties. If my attachment to either
A or B is a matter of ethical principle or conviction,
how can I compromise without compromising my
integrity?
Integrity
One possibility is that the parties’ commitment to
mutual respect and their reluctance to settle matters
by rank or force are at least as important to them,
ethically, as their commitment to either A or B. In
this event the conflict between the parties is accom-
panied by conflicts within each of them. The parties
must distinguish between what they believe ought to
be done, disregarding the fact that they disagree, and
what they believe ought to be done all things con-
sidered, when the things to be considered include
mutual respect, the extent to which the issue admits
of reasonable differences, the importance of peace-
ful, noncoercive agreement, and so on. These con-
siderations reflect principles that many of us hold
dear and that partially determine who we are and
what we stand for. We must, therefore, take them
into account in trying to preserve our integrity. Thus,
integrity may not only be compatible with a certain
amount of compromise, but it may also in some cir-
cumstances actually require it. To impose or insist
on a particular position, A or B, at the expense of
one’s other important principles and convictions
may, in some circumstances, be less integrity-
preserving than agreeing to a compromise posi-
tion, C.
Pluralism
Underlying this suggestion is some version of
MORAL PLURALISM —the view that values and prin-
ciples true to the complexity of human life are not
fully compatible and that integrity is a correspond-
compromise
ingly complex notion that cannot be reduced to a
simple, narrow consistency. This may explain why
compromise has been neglected by ethical theorists.
If the goal of ethical theory is to devise a single, con-
sistent, comprehensive set of principles that rec-
ommends itself to all rational beings and that will
resolve all moral conflicts and disagreements with-
out remainder, then moral compromise will be re-
garded as, at best, a temporary expedient or stopgap.
If, however, theories of this kind are currently quite
rudimentary or, as some suggest, a will-o’-the-wisp,
perhaps we should intensify our study of compro-
mise. For if philosophical reasoning cannot resolve
many of our deepest ethical disagreements, it may,
through compromise, help us contain them peace-
fully.
Like fire and secrecy, moral compromise may be
both necessary and dangerous to human life. Were
we never to compromise, we would cut ourselves off
from many whose moral convictions, though in
some aspects different from our own, do not violate
well-grounded, widely shared ethical principles. On
the other hand, were we always to compromise, we
would be cut off or alienated from ourselves. A
deeper understanding of the nature, limits, and jus-
tification of moral compromise may thus tutor judg-
ment and help us compromise more wisely.
Further Investigation
We must develop more complex and realistic ac-
counts of integrity and examine the extent to which
they are compatible with, or require, intrapersonal
as well as interpersonal compromise. We should see,
too, what can be learned from social scientific work
in BARGAINING and negotiation. Other important
questions involve whether we may deliberately over-
state the intensity or scope of our ethical convictions
in the hope of arriving at a compromise more favor-
able to our own partisan position (a question of
ethics in compromise), and whether people who
value their integrity may commit themselves to the
vocation of politics if, as a matter of course, it oc-
casionally requires compromise on matters of per-
sonal ethical conviction. Related to the latter are
conflicts between private CONSCIENCE and public
morality and the problem of ‘DIRTY HANDS.’
See also: BARGAINING; CONSCIENCE; COOPERATION,
CONFLICT, AND COORDINATION; CORRUPTION; DE-
282
MOCRACY; DIRTY HANDS; EQUALITY; FAIRNESS; GOV-
ERNMENT, ETHICS IN; INTEGRITY; JUSTICE, CIRCUM-
STANCES OF; LIBERALISM; MORAL PLURALISM;
NURSING ETHICS; PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS; PRAC-
TICAL WISDOM; PRAGMATISM; PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
MORALITY; RECIPROCITY; STRATEGIC INTERACTION;
TOLERATION.
Bibliography
Benjamin, Martin. Splitting the Difference: Compromise
and Integrity in Ethics and Politics. Lawrence: Univer-
sity Press of Kansas, 1990. Theory and detailed case
studies.
———. “Conflict, Compromise, and Moral Integrity.” In
Duties to Others, edited by Courtney S. Campbell and
B. Andrew Lustig, 261–78. Dordrecht: Kluwer Aca-
demic Publishers, 1994. Intrapersonal conflict, inter-
nal compromise, and the complexity of integrity.
Berlin, Isaiah. “The Pursuit of the Ideal.” In his The
Crooked Timber of Humanity, 1–19. New York: Vin-
tage Books, 1990. Concise defense of moral pluralism
and the need to compromise.
Crick, Bernard. In Defense of Politics. 2d ed. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1972. Compromise as es-
sential to politics.
Day, J. P. “Compromise,” Philosophy 64 (1989): 471–85.
Illuminating conceptual analysis.
Lenin, Vladimir. “Left Wing” Communism, An Infantile
Disorder. New York: International Publishers, 1940
[1920]. Prudential compromise.
Luban, David. “Bargaining and Compromise: Recent
Work on Negotiation and Informal Justice.” Philoso-
phy and Public Affairs 14 (1985): 397–416. Critical
review of social scientific literature.
McConnell, Terrance. “Permissive Abortion Laws, Reli-
gion, and Moral Compromise.” Public Affairs Quar-
terly 1 (1987): 95–109. Catholics cannot compromise
with integrity on abortion.
Pennock, J. Roland, and John W. Chapman, eds., Compro-
mise in Ethics, Law, and Politics. New York: New York
University Press, 1979. Important articles by M. P.
Golding, T. M. Benditt, A. Kuflik, and J. H. Carens.
Rand, Ayn. The Virtue of Selfishness. New York: Signet,
1964. Against moral compromise.
Sher, George. “Subsidized Abortion: Moral Rights and
Moral Compromise.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 10
(1981): 361–72. Integrity-preserving compromise on
abortion.
Wong, David. “Coping with Moral Conflict and Ambigu-
ity.” Ethics 102 (1992): 763–84. Articulation and de-
fense of accommodation as an important moral value.
Martin Benjamin

computers
New technologies often raise moral concerns be-
cause they create new possibilities for human ac-
tion—both individual action and collective or insti-
tutional behavior. The new possibilities need to be
evaluated morally, as well as in other ways. So it is
with computers and information technology. The in-
troduction of computers into our society has created
possibilities for individual and institutional behavior
that were not available before. We could not have
reached the moon without computers, nor could we
have the kind of global communication systems we
now have via the Internet. Even the Human Genome
Project would not be possible without computer
technology. But we now also have a greater capacity
to track and monitor individuals without their
knowledge, to develop more devastating weapons
systems, to eliminate the need for human contact in
many activities, and so on.
While the two are interrelated, a distinction can
be drawn between sociological and ethical questions
raised by computers. Sociological questions are con-
cerned with the impact of computers on society.
How have computers changed our society already?
How are they likely to change the world in the fu-
ture? Ethical questions arise because these changes
affect human relationships and social INSTITUTIONS
in ways that challenge our ordinary moral notions,
especially our conceptions of individual RIGHTS and
responsibilities, and sometimes our ideas about the
goods we seek and strategies embodied in our social
institutions.
In an early work on computer ethics, James H.
Moor (1985) pointed out that because of computers
we have new choices, but there are policy vacuums
relevant to these choices. “A central task of com-
puter ethics,” he wrote, “is to determine what we
should do in such cases.” Early examples of policy
vacuums include the lack of rules concerning access
to electronically stored data, the lack of policies
about the ownership of software, and the lack of
conventions about the privacy of electronic mail.
These policy vacuums have now been filled with leg-
islation or social conventions. Nevertheless, new
vacuums continue to arise with new applications of
computer technology. For example, there are now
many policy vacuums surrounding the Internet. As
yet there are no clear policies with regard to free
speech online, how much surveillance can take place
283
computers
on the Internet, and which law enforcement agencies
will have authority in various Internet activities.
This view of how computers create ethical issues
might lead one to think that all we have to do to fill
policy vacuums is to apply standard ethical theories
or moral NORMS to the new situations. Moor, how-
ever, is quick to point out that this will not work
because computer technology creates conceptual
muddles. A good example of this is the case of com-
puter software. It is certainly true that a complex
body of law regarding ownership of new inventions
and proprietary rights to new creations already ex-
isted when computers came on the scene. Hence,
one might think that we could simply have applied
the existing legal principles to this new entity. The
problem was not so simple, however, because it was
not clear what software is. For example, should
those who create software be seen as providing a
service or producing a product? Or should a com-
puter program be seen as the expression of an idea—
a form of intellectual property for which copyright
law is appropriate? Or is a program a process for
changing the internal structure of a computer? Or
is it a series of “mental steps” capable, in principle,
of being thought through by a human, and therefore
not appropriate for ownership? The answers given
to these questions determine which legal principles
apply.
A current conceptual muddle has to do with ju-
risdiction and the Internet. Suppose an individual
sits in front of a computer located in one state and
views material on the World Wide Web—material
that is illegal to possess in that state. Suppose further
that the material has been posted from a location
where it is not illegal to possess such material. Has
the individual viewing the material violated the law?
This situation challenges our ordinary notion of ju-
risdiction; that is, the law has never had to deal with
individuals who are physically located in one place
viewing material that is, in some sense, located in
another place.
Moor seems to be right, then, both in identifying
the policy vacuums regarding computers and in em-
phasizing that conceptual muddles prevent a me-
chanical application of familiar ethical norms and
principles. Still, it would be misleading to give the
impression that computers are used in a moral
vacuum. Computers are used in a broad variety of
contexts. They are brought into businesses, homes,
criminal justice systems, educational institutions,
computers
laboratories, government agencies, etc. In each of
these environments, individuals acted, prior to the
introduction of computers, in accordance with rules,
CONVENTIONS, and policies. The introduction of
computers may change the way individuals act in
these environments, or, at least, may change the
scale and speed of transactions, but the preexisting
rules—and the values and principles embodied in
those rules—cannot be ignored. Working out poli-
cies regarding computers calls for extending, modi-
fying, or adapting extant rules (and the principles
and values embodied in those rules).
Perhaps the most important thing about com-
puter technology is its malleability, and because of
this malleability, it can be used as much to change
things as to keep things the same. When computers
enter a new environment, we tend, initially at least,
to map the way we had been doing things onto the
new computer system. Hence, we may look at the
way we had been doing accounting, or communi-
cating, or manufacturing, and then create programs
which allow us to do essentially the same thing, only
better or faster.
This means that, in working out the ethical issues
surrounding computers, it is important to under-
stand the nature of the human relationships and in-
stitutional purposes involved, and the norms of be-
havior that have been operative. Consider, for
example, the case of employers monitoring the be-
havior of workers. Using computers, employers can
now have a record of everything an employee does
during the day while working at a computer termi-
nal. The employer can tell how much time a worker
spends on each task, how many errors are made be-
fore a programmer gets a program to work, how
many and how long are the worker’s breaks from
work at the terminal, what the worker says in letters
or online forums. Should employers be allowed to
do this kind of monitoring? Here we have a vacuum
in Moor’s sense. However, to determine what the
policies ought to be, we must look to the nature
of the work, other policies on employee rights, and
the underlying basis of the employer-employee
relationship.
When we do this we discover, not a vacuum, but
a complex mixture of values and ideals. If we try to
model the case on other employer-employee issues,
we find similarities and dissimilarities with other
cases. Computerized monitoring resembles using
polygraphs to check the honesty of workers and lis-
284
tening in on workers’ telephone conversations. But
it is also comparable to supervisors observing work-
ers while they work. Which analogy should we use
to think through the computer case? Whichever we
use, the point is that in one sense, there is a policy
vacuum, and in another sense, there is just the op-
posite—complexity, conflicting values and INTER-
ESTS on both management and employee sides, and
confusion over whether we ought to base our treat-
ment of the case on what we did in other cases or
on what we did in the same case before computers.
The ethical issues raised by computer technology
can be sorted in a number of different ways. They
can be organized by the type of environment in
which computers are used; for example, there are
important issues in medicine, education, business,
criminal justice, government. Another approach is
to organize the issues around broad topics that per-
sist across diverse environments. The most impor-
tant of these issues concern PRIVACY, POWER, PROP-
ERTY, and accountability.
Privacy
Privacy is probably the issue that has received the
most public attention. Computer technology makes
possible a magnitude of data collection (storage, re-
tention, and exchange) never imagined before.
While much public concern focuses on the use and
abuse of personal information by government agen-
cies and private institutions (such as banks, insur-
ance companies, credit agencies, criminal justice
agencies), the privacy issues surrounding computers
have become more diverse and complicated. They
range from the integrity of electronic mail, to work-
place monitoring (mentioned earlier), to the poten-
tials of computerized devices used by intelligence or-
ganizations. Perhaps the most important area of
concern currently is with transaction generated in-
formation (TGI). Every time an individual uses a
credit card, makes a telephone call, pays a highway
toll electronically, or uses the Internet, records are
created, records that may be stored and have the
potential to be matched with other records to create
a portfolio of a person. This information may then
be put together with information about other indi-
viduals and “mined” to find patterns of behavior
among groups of individuals. This allows organiza-
tions to predict how individuals will behave in the
future.

While new policies have already been created to
deal with some of the information gathering made
possible by computer technology, more will be nec-
essary in the future. The issues are particularly com-
plex because privacy is an elusive concept. The phil-
osophical literature on what privacy is and why we
value it is rich and complex as well as controversial,
though there is some indication that privacy protec-
tion would fare better in policy debates if the con-
cept of privacy and its importance were better
understood.
Many of the privacy issues raised by computer
technology may be better understood as power is-
sues. Large bureaucracies (both in government and
in the private sector) are increasingly able to dra-
matically affect the lives of individuals. Insurance
companies, credit agencies, educational institutions,
and government agencies all make decisions based
on information about individuals, but individuals do
not have control over that information and, hence,
do not know whether these agencies are making de-
cisions on the basis of accurate or appropriate
information.
Power
The power issues raised by computers are the
most subtle and intractable. Computers are intro-
duced into environments in which a distribution of
power already exists, and insofar as computers are
powerful tools, they can affect that distribution.
When computers were first being used, there was
some fear that they would cause much more cen-
tralization of power as those in power became more
powerful. Later, as the technology developed to pro-
vide smaller, less expensive machines and software,
some thought that computers would decentralize
and democratize—that computers would give many
individuals access to huge quantities of data.
Today the global distribution of power is being
enormously affected by the Internet. The Internet
allows companies to do business on a global scale,
and this intensifies interaction between countries.
This makes the issue of access to the Internet a criti-
cal question for global justice. The Internet has the
promise of providing information to more and more
people, but if developing nations have less access
than industrialized nations, the gap between haves
and have-nots will be widened by the Internet.
Just what computer technology does to the dis-
285
computers
tribution of power is an extremely complex issue. As
in the case of privacy, this question leads to deeper
questions about the power relationships that already
exist and whether these are as they should be.
Property
As computers have developed into the powerful
tools that they are, the financial stakes involved in
designing hardware, software, and databases have
gotten larger and larger. But while the interest in
ownership has escalated, attempts to claim owner-
ship of these inventions have challenged our legal
and moral notions of property.
The issue that has received the most attention
concerns the ownership of software. While Western
legal systems have developed property laws which
encourage invention by granting rights to inventors,
there are provisions against ownership of the fun-
damental building blocks of science and TECHNOL-
OGY because this will interfere with progress in the
technological arts and sciences. Hence, there are
copyrights which protect only the expression of
ideas, not the ideas themselves, and patents are
granted only on uses or applications of laws of na-
ture, abstract ideas, and mathematical formulas, not
on the ideas or laws themselves.
Initially judges were reluctant to grant ownership
of computer software for fear that in doing so, they
might, in effect, grant ownership of numerical se-
quences or mental steps. In 1980 the United States
Congress extended copyright to include software.
Since then the Patent Office has also issued patents
on software inventions.
These decisions have not, however, completely
clarified what can and cannot be owned. Instead,
there has been an endless array of court cases which
challenge the copyrightability and patentability of
various aspects and applications of computer soft-
ware. Many lawyers and computer scientists now ar-
gue for creation of a special form of legal protection
just for computer software on grounds that copy-
right and patent are not well suited for computer
software (Davis, et al.).
Just what aspects of computer software should
and should not be owned is a fascinating conceptual
issue and an issue that has important implications
for the development of computer technology. Much
of the challenge arises because it is so easy to copy
software.
computers
These ethical issues surrounding property rights
in computer software are addressed by the philo-
sophical basis for any property right. What should
be owned? What entitles one to own something?
Are there things which should never be privately
owned?
Accountability
Computer technology has also raised a variety of
complex accountability issues. Broadly, because the
technology is so complex, just how ordinary notions
of responsibility and liability apply is not always ob-
vious. Who, for example, is responsible or should be
held accountable when computer technology fails?
Generally, we think those who produce and/or sell
a product are responsible for those things that a rea-
sonable buyer might expect. Of course, if the seller
has explicitly stated the limitations of the product,
then liability may be diminished. In the case of com-
puter technology, such matters as what can reason-
ably be expected and how much can be disclaimed
are not so easy to determine. Software systems are
often so complex that no single individual could un-
derstand the entire system, and errors can occur de-
spite the fact that the manufacturer has thoroughly
tested the product.
One particularly interesting manifestation of this
problem centers around expert systems. Suppose an
individual buys software designed to assist in pre-
paring income tax returns or in making investment
decisions. Or suppose a company uses an expert sys-
tem to calculate the creditworthiness of loan appli-
cants. But then suppose that those who rely on these
expert systems get in trouble because the systems are
flawed: the income tax return system leads to an in-
accurate return being filed; the investment decisions
lead to major losses in the stock market; the com-
pany is sued because its credit decisions are shown
to be racially biased. Should those who produced the
software bear any responsibility or liability for the
losses that are incurred as a result of using their soft-
ware? This is an ethical issue insofar as the distri-
bution of liability should be fair and have utility.
Just how responsibility and liability should be dis-
tributed was a major issue when it came to the “year
2000 problem” (popularly, the “Y2K problem”).
Early computers had a limited amount of storage
space, thus the information stored had to be limited.
The decision was made to limit the code for year
286
dates to two digits, with “19” in the year designation
(e.g., 1972) being assumed. As the year 2000 ap-
proached, it became clear that many computer sys-
tems might interpret the “00” of “2000” as “1900,”
or they might simply crash. Consequently many
computer systems have had to be modified or re-
placed. The fact that the problem arose in the first
place, and then went unaddressed for so long, has
raised serious questions about who is responsible
(and should be held liable) for mistakes in computer
programming.
Professional Ethics
The year 2000 problem also points to broader
questions about the social responsibilities of com-
puter professionals. Computer professionals possess
special knowledge and they often use this knowledge
to contribute to projects having an enormous impact
on the world. The public stands to benefit if com-
puter professionals take responsibility for the effects
of their work. Those who work on projects such as
the Strategic Defense Initiatives, automated voting
machines, computer monitoring devices, and edu-
cational software should inform themselves and
make the public aware of the risks as well as the
benefits of these systems. They should tell us what
these systems cannot do as well as what they can do.
See also: BUSINESS ETHICS; CENSORSHIP; COLLECTIVE
RESPONSIBILITY; LIBRARY AND INFORMATION PRO-
FESSIONS; MASS MEDIA; PLAGIARISM; POWER; PRI-
VACY; PROFESSIONAL ETHICS; PROPERTY; TECHNOL-
OGY; TERRORISM; WORK.
Bibliography
Baase, S. A Gift of Fire: Social, Legal, and Ethical Issues
in Computing. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall,
1997. A textbook covering a wide range of issues.
Bynum, Terrell Ward, and S. Rogerson, eds., Global In-
formation Ethics. Science and Engineering Ethics 2
(1996): 129–256. A set of conference papers on a va-
riety of topics in the field of computer ethics.
Davis, R., et al. “A New View of Intellectual Property and
Software.” Communication of the ACM 39 (1996):
21–30. Argues for a new form of intellectual property
specifically designed for computer software.
De George, R. “Computers, Ethics and Business.” 1997–
98 Philosophic Exchange, pp. 45–55. Discusses the
moral responsibility of computer professionals for the
year 2000 problem.
Johnson, Deborah G. Computer Ethics. 2d ed. Englewood

Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1994. Chapters on profes-
sional ethics, privacy, property, power, and account-
ability surrounding computer and information tech-
nology.
Johnson, Deborah G., and H. Nissenbaum, eds. Comput-
ers, Ethics, and Social Values. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1995. An anthology of readings on a va-
riety of topics in the field of computer ethics.
Moor, James H. “What Is Computer Ethics?” Metaphilo-
sophy 16, no. 4 (October 1985): 266–75. A seminal
piece on the nature of computer-ethical issues.
Reiman, J. H. “Driving to the Panopticon: A Philosophical
Exploration of the Risks to Privacy Posed by the High-
way Technology of the Future.” Santa Clara Computer
and High Technology Law Journal 11 (1995): 27–44.
Starting with intelligent highways that record the
movements of drivers, this article provides a com-
prehensive account of the importance of individual
privacy.
Spinello, R. A. Ethical Aspects of Information Technology.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995. A textbook
covering a broad range of topics.
Tavani, H. “A Computer Ethics Bibliography.” Computers
and Society 25 (1995): no. 2, 8–18; no. 3, 25–37; no.
4, 9–38. A thorough bibliography of books and articles
in the field of computer ethics.
Deborah G. Johnson
confidentiality
See secrecy and confidentiality.
conflict
See cooperation, conflict, and coordination; inter-
national justice: conflict.
Confucian ethics
Because of its primary ethical orientation and influ-
ence on traditional Chinese life and thought, Con-
fucianism occupies a preeminent place in the history
of Chinese philosophy. The core of Confucian ethics
lies in the teachings of CONFUCIUS (sixth–fifth cen-
tury B.C.E.) contained in the Analects, along with the
brilliant and divergent contributions of MENCIUS
(fourth century B.C.E.) and HSÜN TZU (third century
B.C.E.), the Great Learning (Ta Hsüeh), the Doctrine
of the Mean (Chung Yung), originally chapters in the
Book of Rites (Li Chi). Significant and original de-
velopments, particularly along a quasimetaphysical
287
Confucian ethics
route, are to be found in the works of Chou Tun-i
(1017–1073), Chang Tsai (1020–1077), Ch’eng
Hao (1032–1085), Ch’eng I (1033–1107), Chu Hsi
(1130–1200), Lu Hsiang-shan (1139–1193), and
WANG YANG-MING (1472–1529). Li Kou (1009–
1059), Wang Fu-chih (1619–1692), and Tai Chen
(1723–1777) have also made noteworthy contri-
butions to the critical development of Confucian
ethics. In the twentieth century, the revitalization
and transformation of Confucian ethics have taken
a new turn in response to Western philosophical tra-
ditions. Important advances have been made by
Fung Yu-lan, T’ang Chün-i, Thomé H. Fang, and
Mou Tsung-san. Most of the recent works in critical
reconstruction are marked by a self-conscious con-
cern with analytic methodology and the relevance of
existentialism, PHENOMENOLOGY, and hermeneu-
tics. Still lacking is a comprehensive and systematic
Confucian theory informed by both the history and
the problems of Western moral philosophy.
A student or scholar of moral philosophy, in ap-
proaching the classical core of Confucian ethics for
the first time, is likely to confront a major difficulty:
the lack of systematic exposition of the basic Con-
fucian notions such as jen, li, and yi and their inter-
connection. Unlike major Western philosophers,
Confucian thinkers in general are not concerned
with definitions. William Theodore de Bary justly re-
marks that “for the Chinese the idea is not so much
to analyze and define concepts precisely as to expand
them, to make them suggestive to the widest possi-
ble range of meaning. Generally, the more crucial or
central the idea, the greater the ambiguity.” This per-
vasive feature of Confucian discourses, from the
point of view of contemporary moral philosophy,
may appear to be an anomaly, given the classical em-
phasis on the right use of terms (cheng-ming). A se-
rious student of the works of Hsün Tzu, the one
classical Confucian generally considered to be the
most rationalistic and systematic philosopher, will
be frustrated in the attempt to find definitions, in
the sense of necessary and sufficient conditions, for
the application of basic Confucian terms. This fact
is all the more surprising in view of Hsün Tzu’s re-
current employment of certain definitional locutions
or quasidefinitional formulas for explaining his the-
ses on human nature and the mind. In general, Hsün
Tzu, like most major Confucians, has a pragmatic
attitude toward the use of language. That is, the
uses of terms that require explanation are those
Confucian ethics
that are liable to misunderstanding in the context
of particular discourse. The Confucian explana-
tions of the use of ethical terms are context depen-
dent, addressed to a particular rather than univer-
sal audience.
Two different assumptions underlying this atti-
tude toward language may account for the absence
of Chinese interest in context-independent expla-
nation of the use of ethical terms. First, there is an
assumption of the primacy of practice implicit in the
Confucian doctrine of the unity of knowledge and
ACTION (chih-hsing ho-i). Definition, in the sense of
meaning explanation, is a matter of practical rather
than theoretical necessity. This assumption does not
depreciate the importance of theoretical inquiry but
rather focuses on its relevance to the requirements
of practice, particularly those that promote unity
and harmony among people in the community. Such
requirements vary in time and place. A viable ethical
theory is thus subject to pragmatic assessment in the
light of changing circumstances. In general, ethical
requirements cannot be stated in terms of absolute
or fixed principles or rules. It is this assumption of
the primacy of practice that renders plausible Don-
ald Munro’s claim: “The consideration important to
the Chinese is the behavioral implications of the be-
lief or proposition in question. What effect does ad-
herence to the belief have on people? What impli-
cations for social action can be drawn from the
statement? . . . In Confucianism, there was no
thought of ‘knowing’ that did not entail some con-
sequence for action.”
Related to the primacy of practice is the assump-
tion that reasoned discourse may legitimately appeal
to what Nicholas Rescher calls “plausible presump-
tions,” that is, an appeal to shared knowledge, belief,
or experience, as well as to established or operative
standards of discourse. For Confucian thinkers, most
of these presumptions, among the well-educated, rep-
resent the shared understanding of a common cul-
ture, a living cultural heritage. These presumptions
are often suppressed and mainly form the back-
ground of discourse. Thus Confucian reasoning and
argumentation appear to be highly inexplicit. From
the Aristotelian point of view, Confucian reasoning
is “rhetorical,” as it frequently involves enthymemes
and arguments from examples.
Given the assumptions of the primacy of practice
and appeal to plausible presumptions, any attempt
at introducing Confucian ethics to students of West-
288
ern ethical theory involves a basic task in philosoph-
ical reconstruction. This is an exploratory task in
constructive interpretation, not only in providing a
general characterization but also in reshaping the
basic notions and concerns of Confucian ethics in
response to some problems of moral philosophy.
Such an exploration serves two important and con-
nected aims: (1) a plausible explication of the Con-
fucian outlook in philosophically relevant idioms,
and (2) a critical development of Confucian ethical
thought. Drawing freely, though selectively, from the
contributions of major Confucianists and current
philosophical scholarship, this entry focuses on
some problems of conceptual interpretation and on
issues in classical Confucian ethics.
An Ethics of Virtue: Tao and Te
While major Confucianists (e.g., Mencius and
Hsün Tzu) differ in their conceptions of human na-
ture in relation to conduct, most of them accept
Confucius’s ideal of a well-ordered society based on
good government. Good government is responsive
to the basic needs of the people, to issues of wise
management of natural resources, and to just distri-
bution of burdens and benefits. In this vision of so-
ciopolitical order, special emphasis is put on har-
monious human relationships (lun) in accord with
te, VIRTUES or standards of EXCELLENCE. This vision
is often called tao, a term that has been appropriated
by different classical schools of Chinese thought, for
example Taoism and Legalism. In the Analects (Lun
Yü), tao is sometimes used as a verb, meaning “to
guide”; sometimes it is used as a concrete noun,
meaning literally “road.” In the latter sense, it can
be rendered as “way.” But in distinct Confucian eth-
ical usage, as commonly acknowledged by commen-
tators, it is tao as an abstract noun that is meant,
and more especially in the evaluative rather than de-
scriptive sense, that is, as referring to the ethical
ideal of a good human life as a whole.
Throughout its long history, Confucianism has
stressed CHARACTER formation or personal culti-
vation of virtues (te). Thus it seems appropriate to
characterize Confucian ethics as an ethics of virtue,
not an ethics of rules or principles. To avoid mis-
understanding, two explanations are in order. In
the first place, the Confucian focus on the central-
ity of virtues assumes that the notion of te can be
rendered as “virtue.” In the second place, this fo-

cus does not depreciate the importance of rule-
governed conduct.
Sinologists differ in their interpretation of the
Confucian use of te. Some insist that te should be
construed as “power,” “force,” or “potency” and, in
Confucian usage, should be qualified as moral in
contrast to physical force. Others argue for “virtue”
in the distinctively ethical sense, as pertaining to ex-
cellence of a character trait or disposition. Interest-
ingly, these two construals of te are not incompatible
in the light of some English uses of “virtue.” The first
sense is found in the sixth definition of “virtue” in
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary: “an
active quality or power whether of physical or of
moral nature: the capacity or power adequate to the
production of a given effect.” And in the fifth defi-
nition, we find “a characteristic, quality, or trait
known or felt to be excellent.” Both these senses of
“virtue” are found in the classical Chinese uses of te.
There is, of course, the value-neutral sense of te that
leaves open the question whether personal traits or
qualities merit ethical approval. And this question is
reflected in the distinction, still current in modern
Chinese, between mei-te and e-te. The former per-
tains to “beautiful” or “commendable” te and the
latter to its contrary. Mei-te are those traits that are
acquired through personal cultivation. The Encyclo-
pedic Dictionary of the Chinese Language offers the
following two entries for te in the ethical sense, one
suggested by an interpretation of its homophone,
meaning “to get” or “to obtain,” found in the Book
of Rites: (1) “That which is obtained in the mind/
heart as a result of personal cultivation,” and (2) “The
nature that is formed after successful personal cul-
tivation.” Both these entries involve mei-te, com-
mendable, acquired qualities or traits of character,
much in the sense of HUME’s (1711–1776) “per-
sonal merits.”
Also important is the sense of te as POWER or
force, in view of the Confucian notion of chün-tzu
(ethically superior or paradigmatic individuals). A
chün tzu who exercises the virtues possesses the
power of attraction or influence indicative of effec-
tive agency. Thus the chün-tzu, equipped with the
virtues (te), has the power or capacity to influence
the course of human affairs. This interpretation is
suggested by two remarks of Confucius: “Virtue (te)
never stands alone. It is bound to have neighbors,”
and, “The virtue (te) of the gentleman (chün-tzu) is
like the wind; the virtue (te) of the small man is like
289
Confucian ethics
grass. Let the wind blow over the grass and it is sure
to bend.” In sum, the Confucian notion of te can be
properly construed as ethical virtues that possess a
dual aspect: (1) an achieved condition of the self
through personal cultivation of commendable char-
acter traits in accordance with the ideal tao; (2) a
condition that is deemed to have the peculiar po-
tency or power of efficacy in influencing the course
of human life. The difficult problem is to present the
Confucian tao and te as an ethics of virtue with a
coherent conceptual scheme.
Basic Notions and the Problem of
Conceptual Unity
The Analects, commonly considered the main and
reliable source of Confucius’s teachings, bequeath
to the Chinese a complex ethical vocabulary. This
vocabulary contains a large number of virtue (te)
terms with implicit reference to the Confucian ideal
of tao. Terms such as jen, li, and yi seem to occupy
a central position, both in the Analects and through-
out the history of Confucianism. Until recent times,
few philosophical scholars of Confucianism at-
tended to the problem of conceptual explication and
the unity of these basic notions, that is, their pre-
sumed interconnection or interdependence in the
light of tao, the ideal unifying perspective. While
most Confucian terms for particular virtues can be
rendered into English without the need of elaborate
explanation (e.g., filiality, COURAGE, faithfulness,
WISDOM, kindness, courtesy, respectfulness), the ba-
sic Confucian notions (jen, li, and yi) are not ame-
nable to the simple expedience of translation and
thus pose a problem for conceptual analysis and in-
terpretation. Moreover, existing translations of these
terms inevitably embody the writer’s interpretation,
a sort of compendious statement of an implicit com-
mentary, representing the writer’s preunderstanding
of the translated texts.
Likewise, an explication of basic Confucian no-
tions involves philosophical commentary. However,
the attempt is beset by a formidable difficulty, es-
pecially in elucidating the notion of jen. As Wing-
tsit Chan has shown, jen has a long history of
conceptual evolution and wide divergence of inter-
pretation in both contemporary Chinese and West-
ern scholarship. Recent philosophical writings (e.g.,
those of Herbert Fingarette, David Hall, and Roger
Ames) are devoted to the Analects and display no
Confucian ethics
explicit concern with the problem of conceptual ex-
plication of Confucian ethics as a form of VIRTUE
ETHICS. For approaching this problem, we are in-
debted to the works of Ch’en Ta-ch’i, particularly on
the Analects, Hsün Tzu, and Mencius. In his pio-
neering work on the Analects, Ch’en focuses on
three conceptual problems: (1) the identification of
basic or core concepts; (2) the relation of these basic
concepts to one another; and (3) the relation of the
basic concepts to those that pertain to particular vir-
tues (e.g., filiality and respectfulness), to the Con-
fucian conception of ideal ethical character, and to
politics and government. Ch’en’s thesis on the five
basic concepts (tao, te, jen, li, and yi) is well sup-
ported by their recurrent and fundamental impor-
tance throughout the history of Confucianism. Our
earlier remarks on tao and te owe much to Ch’en.
Although Ch’en is not concerned with the relevance
of Confucius’s teachings to moral philosophy, his
treatment of the second and third conceptual prob-
lems in the context of both the Analects and Hsün
Tzu provides a useful guide. The following discus-
sion presents a sketch of a philosophical reconstruc-
tion, which is essentially a conceptual experiment.
The sketch offers a general characterization of Con-
fucian ethics as a form of virtue ethics and provides
a sample of how such basic notions as li and yi can
be shaped in response to questions deemed impor-
tant for the development of a Confucian moral
philosophy.
The Confucian Scheme
The Confucian ethical framework comprises the
five basic notions: tao, te, jen, li, and yi. The best
approach is to regard them initially, with a minimum
of interpretation, as “focal notions,” that is, terms
that function like focal lenses for conveying distinct,
though not unrelated, centers of ethical concern. As
generic terms, focal notions are amenable to speci-
fication in particular contexts, thus acquiring spe-
cific or narrower senses. This distinction is an ad-
aptation of Hsün Tzu’s. But it must be noted that,
in general, a term may be used as a specific term
(pieh-ming) in one context, and yet in another con-
text it may be used as a generic term (kung-ming)
subject to further specification. In other words, the
use of a term in either the generic or the specific
sense is entirely relative to the speaker’s purpose on
a particular occasion, rather than to any theory con-
290
cerning the intrinsic characters of terms or the es-
sential attributes of things.
As earlier noted, tao is an evaluative term. Its fo-
cal point of interest lies in the Confucian vision of
the good human life on the whole, or the ideal of
human excellence. Commonly rendered as “the
way,” tao is functionally equivalent to the notion of
the ideal way of life. Unlike other basic terms, tao is
most distinctive as an abstract, formal term in the
highest generic sense, that is, subject to general
specification by way of such virtue (te) words as jen,
li, and yi. Recall that te is an individual achievement
through personal cultivation. Thus when a person
succeeds in realizing tao, he or she has attained such
basic te as jen, li, and yi. The specification of te,
apart from jen, li, and yi can take a variety of forms,
such as filiality, respectfulness, or trustworthiness.
In this sense, te is an abstract noun like tao, but it
depends on tao for its distinctive ethical character.
Te is thus functionally equivalent to ethical virtue.
With its emphasis on tao and te, Confucian ethics is
properly characterized as an ethics of virtue, but
more informatively as an ethics of jen, li, and yi,
since te requires these terms for specification. Fol-
lowing Ch’en, we consider jen, li, and yi, relative to
terms for particular virtues (e.g., filiality, respectful-
ness, trustworthiness), as generic, focal terms: like-
wise, jen, li, and yi are specific terms relative to tao
as a generic term. Differently put, Ch’en’s account
points to a distinction between basic, interdepend-
ent virtues (jen, li, and yi) and dependent virtues
(filiality, trustworthiness). The latter are dependent
in the sense that their ethical import depends on di-
rect or indirect reference to one or more of the basic,
interdependent virtues. For example, filiality, re-
spectfulness, and trustworthiness are dependent vir-
tues of jen, li, and yi, respectively.
While jen has a long history of conceptual evo-
lution, as a focal notion it centers the ethical interest
on LOVE and CARE for one’s fellows, that is, an af-
fectionate concern for the well-being of others—the
one persistent idea in the Confucian ethical tradi-
tion. Thus jen is felicitously rendered as “human-
heartedness” or “humanity”—a concrete specifica-
tion of the abstract ideal of tao. This core meaning
of jen as fellow feeling is found in the Analects. It is
reported that Confucius once said to Tseng Tzu, “My
tao has one thread that runs through it.” Tseng Tzu
construed this tao to consist of chung and shu, an
interpretation widely acknowledged as a method for

pursuing jen. While the relation between chung and
shu has a divergence of interpretation, chung may
be rendered as “doing one’s best” and shu as con-
sideration (of other people’s feelings and desires). In
this light, Confucian ethics displays a concern for
both self-regarding and other-regarding virtues.
However, the acquisition of these virtues presup-
poses a locus in which these particular dependent
virtues are exercised. Thus among dependent vir-
tues, filiality and fraternity are considered to be pri-
mary, for the FAMILY is considered to be the home
and the basis for the extension of jen affection. In
this way, the method of realizing jen, that is, chung
and shu, presupposes its practice in the family. In
Sung and Ming Confucianism (e.g., Wang Yang-
ming), tao is sometimes used interchangeably with
jen. In this manner, jen has attained the status of a
supreme ethical ideal of extensive affection. Confu-
cius’s vision of a well-ordered human society is now
transformed into the vision of the universe as a
moral community of concern and care for all existent
things, both human and nonhuman.
The notion of li focuses on the ritual code. For
this reason, it is commonly rendered as “rites,” “rit-
ual propriety,” or “ceremonials.” The ritual code is
essentially a set of formal prescriptions for proper
behavior, a set of rules of proper conduct pertaining
to the manner or style of performance. For Confu-
cius and his followers, the li represent an enlight-
ened tradition, but its living significance depends on
compliance in the spirit of jen. As Confucius once
said, “If a man has no jen, what has he to do with
li.” Since the ritual code represents a customary
practice, the early Confucians, particularly Hsün
Tzu and the writers of some chapters in the Li Chi
(Book of Rites), were concerned with providing a
rational justification for complying with these tra-
ditional rules of proper conduct.
The notion of yi, in part, is an attempt to provide
a rationale for the acceptance of li. Yi focuses prin-
cipally on what is right or fitting. The equation of yi
with its homophone meaning “appropriateness” is
explicit in the Doctrine of the Mean and generally
accepted by the Confucianists (e.g., Hsün Tzu, Li
Kou, and Chu Hsi). However, since what is right and
reasonable depends primarily on judgment, yi may
be understood as reasoned judgment concerning the
right thing to do, more especially in particular exi-
gencies. In relation to li, yi has a dual significance:
(1) that the li are the right sorts of rules to regulate
291
Confucian ethics
conduct, and (2) that the li require reasoned judg-
ment for their application to particular cases. Since
the li embody a tradition, their acceptability depends
on the exercise of yi. Where the li conform to yi,
they may be accepted as reasonable rules of conduct.
Moreover, as we shall see later regarding the prob-
lem of rules and exceptions, yi has a central role in
resolving ethical perplexities.
In light of the foregoing, we may state the inter-
dependence of basic notions in this way. Given tao
as the ideal of the good human life as a whole, jen,
li, and yi, the basic Confucian virtues (te), are con-
stitutive rather than mere instrumental means to its
actualization. In other words, the actualization of
tao requires the co-satisfaction of the standards ex-
pressed in jen, li, and yi. Since these focal notions
pertain to different foci of ethical interest, we may
also say that the actualization of tao requires a co-
ordination of three equally important centers of eth-
ical interest and endeavor. The connection between
these foci is one of interdependence rather than sub-
ordination. Thus, in the ideal case, jen, li, and yi are
mutually supportive and adherent to the same ideal
of tao. When tao is in fact realized, jen, li, and yi
would be deemed constituents of this condition of
achievement. When, on the other hand, one attends
to the prospect of tao-realization, jen, li, and yi
would be regarded as complementary foci and
means to tao as an end. In sum, jen, li, and yi are
complementary foci of human interest.
The Scope and Functions of Li
Because of its distinctive character and role in
Confucian ethics and its pervasive influence in tra-
ditional China and contemporary critique, the no-
tion of li requires special attention. Implicit in the
notion of li is an idea of rule-governed conduct. In
the Li Chi (Book of Rites), the subject matter ranges
from formal prescriptions (henceforth, ritual rules)
concerning mourning, sacrifices, marriage, and com-
munal festivities to the more ordinary occasions re-
lating to conduct toward ruler, superior, parent, el-
der, teacher, and guest. Because of its emphasis on
the form or manner of behavior, li is often translated
as “religious rites, ceremony, deportment, decorum,
propriety, formality, politeness, courtesy, etiquette,
good form, good behavior.” These renderings are
misleading without understanding the different
functions of li. At the outset, it is important to note
Confucian ethics
that for Confucians the li are an embodiment of a
living cultural tradition, that is, they are subject to
modification in response to changing circumstances
of society. Thus some writers of the Li Chi point out
that the li are the prescriptions of reason, that any
ritual rule that is deemed right and reasonable (yi)
can be considered a part of li. On one plausible in-
terpretation, the traditional ritual code represents no
more than a codification of ethical experiences based
on the concern with jen and yi. In this light, the li
are in principle subject to revision or replacement.
In the spirit of Chu Hsi, we may say that a Confucian
must reject ritual rules that are burdensome and su-
perfluous and accept those that are practicable and
essential to the maintenance of a harmonious social
order. However, any reasoned attempt to revise or
replace li presupposes an understanding of their
functions. It is this understanding that distinguishes
the Confucian scholar from a pedant, who may have
a mastery of rules without understanding their un-
derlying rationales. For elucidation, we rely mainly
on a reconstruction of Hsün Tzu’s view, since we
find in some of his essays the most articulate concern
for and defense of li as an embodiment of a living,
cultural tradition.
With any system of rules governing human con-
duct, one can always raise questions concerning its
purpose. In Confucian ethics, the li, as a set of for-
mal prescriptions for proper behavior, have a three-
fold function: delimiting, supportive, and ennobling.
The delimiting function is primary, in that the li are
fundamentally directed to the prevention of human
conflict. They comprise a set of constraints that de-
lineate the boundaries of pursuit of individual
NEEDS, desires, and INTERESTS. The li purport to set
forth rules of proceeding in an orderly fashion, ul-
timately to promote the unity and harmony of hu-
man association in a state ruled by a sage king im-
bued with the spirit of jen and yi. This orderliness
consists of social distinctions or divisions in various
kinds of human relationships (lun), namely, the dis-
tinctions between ruler and minister, father and son,
the eminent and the humble, the elder and the
younger, the rich and the poor, and the important
and unimportant members of society. In abstraction
from the connection with jen and yi, the delimiting
function of li may be compared to that of negative
MORAL RULES or criminal laws. Like rules against
killing, stealing, or lying, the li impose constraints
on conduct. They create, so to speak, paths of ob-
292
struction, thus blocking certain moves of agents in
the pursuit of their desires or interests. The li, in
effect, stipulate the conditions of the eligibility or
permissibility of actions. They do not prejudge the
substantive character or value of individual pursuit.
They provide information on the limiting conditions
of action but no positive guidance as to how one’s
desires may be properly satisfied. Put differently, the
li tell agents what goals not to pursue, but they do
not tell agents how to go about pursuing goals
within the prescribed limits of action.
Apart from the delimiting function, the li have
also a supportive function; that is, they provide con-
ditions or opportunities for satisfaction of desires
within the prescribed limits of action. Instead of sup-
pressing desires, the li provide acceptable channels
or outlets for their fulfillment. In an important sense,
the supportive function of li acknowledges the in-
tegrity of our natural desires. So long as they are
satisfied within the bounds of propriety, we accept
them for what they are whether reasonable or un-
reasonable, wise or foolish, good or bad. The main
supportive function of li is the redirection of the
course of individual self-seeking activities, not the
suppression of the motivating desires. Just as the de-
limiting function of li may be compared with that of
criminal law, their supportive function may be com-
pared with that of procedural law, which contains
rules that enable us to carry out our wishes and de-
sires (e.g., the law of contracts). The li, like these
procedural rules, aid the realization of desires with-
out pronouncing value judgments.
The focus on the ennobling function of li is a dis-
tinctive feature of Confucian ethics and traditional
Chinese culture. The keynote of the ennobling func-
tion is “cultural refinement,” the education and
nourishment (yang) of emotions or their transfor-
mation in accord with the spirit of jen and yi. The
characteristic concern with the form of proper be-
havior is still present. However, the form stressed is
not just a matter of fitting into an established social
structure or set of distinctions, nor is it a matter of
methodic procedure that facilitates the satisfaction
of the agent’s desires and wishes; rather, it involves
the elegant form (wen) for the expression of ethical
character. In other words, the ennobling function of
li is directed primarily to the development of com-
mendable or beautiful virtues (mei-te). The “beauty”
(mei) of the expression of an ethical character lies
in the balance between emotions and forms. What

is deemed admirable in the virtuous conduct of an
ethically superior person (chün-tzu) thus is the har-
monious fusion of elegant form and feelings. In the
ideal case, a li-performance may be said to have an
aesthetic dimension. In two different and related
ways, a li-performance may be said to be an object
of delight. In the first place, the elegant form is
something that delights our senses. It can be con-
templated with delight quite apart from the ex-
pressed emotional quality. In the second place, when
we attend to the emotion or emotional quality ex-
pressed by the action, which we perceive as a sign
of an ethical virtue or character, our mind is de-
lighted and exalted, presuming, of course, that we
are also agents interested in the promotion of ethical
virtues in general. Doing justice to the ennobling
function of li requires a complex characterization
and evaluation, quite beyond the scope of this entry.
The general idea is aptly stated by Thomé H. Fang:
li is “cultural refinement, bodying forth either in the
prudence of conduct, or the balance of emotion, or
the rationality of knowledge, or the intelligent work-
ing of order. Especially, it is blended with the excel-
lent spirit of fine arts such as poetry and music. In
short, what is called Li in Chinese is a standard of
measurement for the general cultural values, accord-
ing to which we can enjoy the beauties of life in the
rational order of political societies.”
Problems of Rules and Exceptions
and Justification
Appreciating the rationale of the li in terms of
delimiting, supportive, and ennobling functions
does not entail that the li provide sufficient guidance
in resolving ethical perplexities. However, the prob-
lem of rules and exceptions is not a genuine problem
in Confucian ethics, for the notion of yi can be em-
ployed in dealing with dilemmas concerning what
one ought to do in a particular situation. For clas-
sical Confucians like Mencius and Hsün Tzu, per-
plexities arise largely from unanticipated, changing
circumstances of human life. As Hsün Tzu suc-
cinctly reminds his readers, one must use yi in re-
sponding to exigent or changing circumstances.
Hard cases for deliberation are those that can be
resolved by an appeal not to an established rule of
li but to one’s reasoned judgment of what is the right
or fitting thing to do. Mencius particularly empha-
sizes ch’üan (weighing of circumstances) in coping
293
Confucian ethics
with exigent situations. When queried as to what a
person ought to do when his sister-in-law is drown-
ing, given the li-requirement that male and female
are not to touch one another in giving or receiving
anything, Mencius appeals to ch’üan rather than to
rule compliance. This appeal has nothing to do with
building an exception to a rule of proper conduct
but has to do instead with one’s sense of rightness
in exigent situations. In light of the crucial function
of yi, a rule may be judged to be irrelevant to an
ethical perplexity, not because it has no authoritative
status but rather because the li as a set of formal
prescriptions for proper behavior are not intended
to cover all circumstances of human life. It is yi that
responds to ethical perplexities. More explicitly, Chu
Hsi, perhaps following Li Kou, considers yi as a de-
cisive judgment as to what is appropriate (to the sit-
uation at hand) and also as the courage to carry it
out. In view of its emphasis on yi, the characteriza-
tion of Confucian ethics as an ethics of flexibility is
quite apt. Moreover, there are grounds in the Ana-
lects for this flexible attitude toward changing cir-
cumstances. It is recorded, for example, that Con-
fucius once said of himself, “I have no preconception
about the permissible and the impermissible.”
Quite naturally, one may raise the question of jus-
tification for such judgments in exigent circum-
stances. In normal situations, the li are quite suffi-
cient for action guidance insofar as they are
informed by a concern for jen. The problem of rea-
soned justification for such judgments has not re-
ceived attention from most Confucian thinkers, ex-
cept Hsün Tzu. However, even in the works of Hsün
Tzu we do not find any articulate answer to this
problem, though his works do provide materials for
constructing a response. In the first place, Hsün Tzu
is explicit that any discussion is valuable because
there exist certain standards for assessment, and
these standards pertain principally to conceptual
clarity, to respect for linguistic practices and evi-
dence, and to the requirement of consistency and
coherence in discourse. A philosophical reconstruc-
tion along the lines of the theory of argumentation
presents an interesting Confucian view of justifica-
tion in terms of rational and empirical standards of
competence, along with certain desirable qualities of
participants in ethical discourse. In this reconstruc-
tion of Hsün Tzu’s works, ethical justification is a
phase of discourse, preceded by explanatory efforts
in the clarification of normative claims responsive to
Confucian ethics
a problem of common concern among participants,
which in turn presupposes that queries concerning
the proper uses of terms are understood by partici-
pants in ethical argumentation. As widely noted by
contemporary writers on Confucian ethics, the Con-
fucians are fond of appeal to historical events and
paradigmatic individuals. This ethical use of histori-
cal knowledge and beliefs is a pervasive feature of
early Confucianism.
In closing, it may be noted that Confucian ethics,
like any normative system, presents conceptual
problems of interpretation and reconstruction. In
this article, attention centers on the Confucian
scheme of basic notions and their interdependence
in order to characterize some of the distinctive con-
cerns of classical Confucianism. Doing full justice
to the range of Confucian concerns also involves a
critical consideration of divergent views on such
topics as the relation of the basic notions to human
nature; the role of emotions in ethical deliberation
and justification; the place of law in an ideal social,
political union; and the metaphysical grounding of
tao, particularly on the connection of the human
and the natural orders. A serious student of Con-
fucian ethics must consider these problems with
reference both to the divisive efforts and tension
within the history of Chinese philosophy and to the
significance of these efforts in light of Western eth-
ical theories.
See also: CARE; CASUISTRY;
CHINA; CHU HSI; COM-
PARATIVE ETHICS;
CONFUCIUS; EXISTENTIALISM;
FAMILY; FITTINGNESS; HSÜN TZU; JUSTICE, CIRCUM-
STANCES OF; MENCIUS; MO TZU; MORAL DILEMMAS;
PHENOMENOLOGY; PRESCRIPTIVISM; SITUATION
ETHICS; TAOIST ETHICS; VIRTUES; WANG YANG-
MING.
Bibliography
Allinson, Robert, ed. Understanding the Chinese Mind:
The Philosophical Roots. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989.
Chan, Wing-tsit. “Chinese and Western Interpretations of
Jen (Humanity).” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 2
(1975): 107–29
———. “The Evolution of the Confucian Concept Jen.”
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Chang, Carsun. The Development of Neo-Confucian
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———. Kung Tzu hsüeh-shuo. Taipei: Cheng-chung,
1976.
———. P’ing-fan te tao-te kuan. Taipei: Chung-hua,
1977.
Cheng, Chung-ying. The New Dimensions of Confucian
and Neo-Confucian Philosophy. Albany: SUNY Press,
1991.
Confucius. The Analects. Translated by D.C. Lau. New
York: Penguin, 1979.
Cua, A. S. “Concept of Li in Confucian Moral Theory.” In
Allinson, Understanding the Chinese Mind.
Cua, A. S. Dimensions of Moral Creativity: Paradigms,
Principles, and Ideals. University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1978.
———. Ethical Argumentation: A Study in Hsün Tzu’s
Moral Epistemology. Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1985.
———. Moral Vision and Tradition: Essays in Chinese
Ethics. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 1998.
———. “Uses of Dialogues and Moral Understanding.”
Journal of Chinese Philosophy 2, no. 2 (1975): 131–
48.
———. “Dimensions of Li (Propriety): Reflections on an
Aspect of Hsün Tzu’s Ethics.” Philosophy East and
West 29 (1979): 373–94.
———. “Ethical Uses of History in Early Confucianism:
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(1983): 133–56.
———. “Confucian Vision and the Human Community.”
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38.
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Mary Ellen Tucker. New York: Crossroads, 2000.
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Fehl, N. E. Rites and Propriety in Literature and Life: A
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A. S. Cua
Confucius
(fifth–sixth century B.C.E.)
Chinese philosopher, whose full name was K’ung
Ch’iu or K’ung Chung-ni, and who was also known
as K’ung Tzu or K’ung Fu Tzu (Master K’ung). Con-
fucius sought political office in an attempt to put his
ethical and political ideal into practice, but he never
attained an influential position in government. He
was much more influential as a teacher. What we
now know of his teachings is based on the Analects
(Lun Yü), a collection both of sayings by him and
by disciples and of conversations between him and
his disciples. The collection was compiled long after
his death, and it is likely that parts of it were later
295
Confucius
insertions into the main body of the text. Different
versions existed in the second century B.C.E., and
eclectic versions were later put together and circu-
lated. The version we now have has twenty books,
each consisting of a number of short passages.
Scholars disagree on the extent to which the text
contains authentic reports of his teachings, and this
poses difficulties for a reconstruction of his thinking.
Even if we take the whole text as it is, the fact that
the passages contain mostly brief comments, often
devoid of context, makes the text open to radically
different interpretations.
Two of the most important concepts in the Ana-
lects are jen (humanity, goodness, BENEVOLENCE)
and li (rites, rituals). When occurring in pre-
Confucian texts, the character “jen” probably meant
the distinctive quality of human beings or the kind-
ness of rulers to subjects. In the Analects, it is used
occasionally to refer to a particular desirable attri-
bute of human beings but more usually to refer to
the highest ethical ideal, which encompasses all the
individual desirable attributes. This ideal includes
an affective concern for the well-being of others; it
also includes attributes (e.g., filial piety and respect
for elders) within familial, social, and political IN-
STITUTIONS, as well as other character traits such
as COURAGE and an ability to endure adverse
circumstances.
The character “li” originally referred to rites of
sacrifice to spirits and ancestors conducted by rul-
ers; it then broadened in meaning to refer also to
NORMS governing ceremonious behavior in social
and political contexts, such as the reception of en-
voys. By the time of Confucius, li came to refer to
all the traditional and customary norms governing
conduct between people of different social positions.
The original connotation of sacredness had been re-
tained, and one is supposed to observe the norms
not mechanically but with a reverential attitude to-
ward other human beings.
Confucius sought to transmit the cultural heritage
of the past as embodied in li, and he regarded the
general observance of li as an important part of the
ideal of jen. However, the actual nature of his con-
ception of the relation between jen and li has been
given different interpretations. On one extreme is an
interpretation that regards jen as an attribute intel-
ligible independently of the observance of li, and the
observance of li as a contingent means to cultivating
and expressing jen. On the other extreme is an in-
Confucius
terpretation that regards jen as identical with the
general observance of li and regards Confucius’s ad-
vocacy of the jen ideal as expressive of an extreme
conservatism toward the traditional norms. It is
likely that Confucius’s view of the matter is best cap-
tured by an interpretation that lies between the two
extremes, one which regards the ideal of jen as
shaped by the traditional norms but which also al-
lows room for a critical assessment of them; this as-
sessment may justify departure from such norms in
exceptional circumstances or revision of them in re-
sponse to social changes. A useful analogy is the
ideal of a good parent: While the ideal is not intel-
ligible independently of certain normative expecta-
tions associated with parenthood in society, advo-
cacy of the ideal still leaves room for critical
assessment of such expectations.
Such an attitude toward the traditional norms ex-
plains Confucius’s emphasis on two complementary
aspects of the process of moral cultivation. One is
learning (hsüeh) our cultural heritage as embodied
in li, not just in the sense of knowing about it, but
in the sense of letting it shape our way of life. The
other is critical reflection (ssu) on the traditional
norms, which provides the basis for departing from
or revising them as justified by circumstances. The
emphasis on reflection is related to Confucius’s view
that one should not abide by fixed rules in one’s be-
havior, but should be sensitive to the actual circum-
stances and aim at yi (rightness, righteousness, du-
tifulness), that is, what is morally fitting to such
circumstances.
Closely related to the concepts of jen and li are
the concepts chung (LOYALTY, commitment, doing
one’s best) and shu (consideration, RECIPROCITY).
Confucius once observed that there was one thread
running through his way of life, and a disciple de-
scribed the one thread as constituted by chung and
shu. Shu is characterized in the Analects as not do-
ing to another person what one would not have
wished to be done to oneself if one were in the
other’s position, and Confucius occasionally ex-
plained jen in terms of this idea. It is less clear what
chung involves and how chung and shu are related.
On one interpretation, chung involves doing one’s
best in, or a commitment to, having one’s behavior
guided by shu. On another interpretation, chung is
a commitment to observing the norms of li, while
the practice of shu, by making possible an awareness
of other human beings as human beings, adds a flex-
296
ibility to and makes more humane the observance of
such norms. Chung and shu complement each other
in that the former makes human community possible
while the latter makes such community humane. On
a third interpretation, chung and shu complement
each other as attitudes directed toward different
groups of people. Chung involves being strict to-
ward oneself in observing one’s duties to superiors
or equals, while shu involves a considerateness to-
ward inferiors or equals, thereby humanizing and
adding a flexibility to the application of rules gov-
erning one’s conduct toward them.
There are other desirable human attributes, such
as WISDOM (chih), courage (yung), and living up to
one’s words (hsin), all of which are subsumed under
the all-encompassing ideal of jen. The ideal is within
the reach of everyone, and one should constantly try
to copy what is good in others and reflect on and
correct what is bad in oneself. People who have ap-
proximated the ideal will have a noncoercive trans-
forming effect on other people; others will admire
and be attracted to them and will be inspired to em-
ulate their ways of life. This transforming effect
should ideally provide the basis for government.
Edicts and punishments can at best secure behav-
ioral conformity; but, if a ruler has approximated the
ideal, people will be inspired to reform themselves.
It is evident from the Analects that Confucius had
an elaborate vision of an ideal ethical and political
order which has not been fully and unambiguously
spelt out in the text. Later Confucians, in attempting
to spell out and defend that ideal, developed it in
different directions. Divergent interpretations were
found among disciples who sought to preserve and
transmit his teachings after his death. Later, MEN-
CIUS (fourth century B.C.E.) and HSÜN TZU (third
century B.C.E.), while both professing to transmit
Confucius’s teachings, justified the Confucian ideal
in different ways and emphasized different aspects
of the process of moral cultivation. Mencius re-
garded the Confucian way of life as a realization of
certain incipient moral inclinations natural to hu-
man beings, and he emphasized the need to reflect
on and fully develop such inclinations. Hsün Tzu
regarded it as a way of optimizing the satisfaction of
premoral human desires and emphasized the need
to learn li and let it transform and regulate the pur-
suit of satisfaction of such desires.
Different kinds of Confucian thought continued
to evolve, yielding such major thinkers as Tung

Chung-shu (second century B.C.E.) and Han Yü (C.E.
768–824). Han Yü regarded Mencius as the one
through whom Confucius’s teachings were correctly
transmitted, and this view eventually became gen-
erally accepted, largely through the efforts of CHU
HSI (1130–1200). The Mencian school of Confu-
cian thought continued to be developed in different
ways by such major figures as Chu Hsi, WANG
YANG-MING (1472–1529), and Tai Chen (1723–
1777), who differed on such issues as the role learn-
ing plays in the process of moral cultivation and the
metaphysics undergirding the Confucian ideal. De-
spite the divergent development of his ideas, Con-
fucius continued to be revered within the Confucian
tradition of thought as its first and most important
thinker.
See also: BENEVOLENCE; CHARACTER; CHINA; CHU
HSI; COMPARATIVE ETHICS; CONFUCIAN ETHICS;
CONVENTIONS; COURAGE; ETIQUETTE; FAMILY; FIT-
TINGNESS; GOLDEN RULE; HONOR; HSÜN TZU; IDE-
ALIST ETHICS; INSTITUTIONS; LOYALTY; MENCIUS;
NORMS; PRACTICAL WISDOM; RECIPROCITY; VIRTUES;
WANG YANG-MING; WISDOM.
Bibliography
English Translations of the Analects
Lau, D. C. Confucius: The Analects. New York: Penguin
Books, 1979. Translation with introduction.
Legge, James. Confucius: Confucian Analects, The Great
Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean. New York:
Dover, 1971. Reprint of the 2d edition of vol. I of the
The Chinese Classics, Oxford, 1893; translation with
Chinese text and exegetical notes.
Waley, Arthur. The Analects of Confucius. London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1938. Translation with an-
notations and introduction.
Works about Confucius
Cheng, Chung-ying. “On Yi as a Universal Principle of
Specific Application in Confucian Morality.” Philoso-
phy East and West 22 (1972): 269–79.
Creel, H. G. Confucius and the Chinese Way. New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1960. Originally published 1949
as Confucius: The Man and the Myth.
Cua, Antonio S. “Confucian Vision and Human Commu-
nity.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 11 (1984): 227–
38.
———. Dimensions of Moral Creativity. University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978.
297
conscience
Dawson, Raymond. Confucius. New York: Hill and Wang,
1981.
Fingarette, Herbert. Confucius: The Secular as Sacred.
New York: Harper and Row, 1972.
———. “Following the ‘One Thread’ of the Analects.”
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 47, no.
3 (Thematic Issue S 1980): 373–405.
Fu, Charles Wei-hsun. “Fingarette and Munro on Early
Confucianism: A Methodological Examination.” Phi-
losophy East and West 28 (1978): 181–98.
Hall, David L., and Roger T. Ames. Thinking Through
Confucius. Albany: State University of New York Press,
1987.
Lin, Yü-sheng. “The Evolution of the Pre-Confucian
Meaning of Jen and the Confucian Concept of Moral
Autonomy.” Monumenta Serica 31 (1974–75): 172–
204.
Nivison, David S. “Golden Rule Arguments in Chinese
Moral Philosophy.” In his The Ways of Confucianism:
Investigations in Chinese Philosophy. Chicago; La
Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996.
Roetz, Heiner. Confucian Ethics of the Axial Age: A Re-
construction Under the Aspect of the Breakthrough To-
ward Postconventional Thinking. Albany: State Uni-
versity of New York Press, 1993.
Tu, Wei-ming. “The Creative Tension between Jen and Li.”
Philosophy East and West 18 (1968): 29–39. Re-
printed in his Humanity and Self-Cultivation: Essays
in Confucian Thought. Berkeley, CA: Asian Humani-
ties Press, 1979.
Kwong-loi Shun
conscience
‘Conscience’—in the sense it has in such sentences
as “Nobody can in good conscience tell damaging
falsehoods about a neighbor”—derives from a sense
of the Latin word conscientia introduced by the me-
dieval Christian scholastics. Primarily, it stands for
the consciousness human individuals sometimes
have that a specific action they either have done or
propose to do is morally required or forbidden; and,
secondarily, for their disposition (habitus) to be thus
conscious. An agent’s conscience is restricted to that
agent’s own actions: one’s conscience cannot make
one conscious that somebody else ought to do
something.
Agents can make mistakes both about the facts
of their situation, and about what it is morally right
to do in it, with the result that they may either do
what is in fact wrong in good conscience, or do what
is in fact right with a bad conscience. Although
conscience
Huckleberry Finn, as Mark Twain depicts him,
would have despised himself if he had betrayed the
runaway slave Jim, he had a bad conscience when
(rightly in fact) he did not betray him, having been
brought up as an anti-abolitionist. Did he incur
moral guilt (theologically, did he commit sin) by
doing right with a bad conscience? Would he have
incurred it if he had done wrong with a good
conscience?
Questions of this sort, while marginal to moral
philosophy, are central to Christian moral theology;
and their solution has been largely the work of theo-
logians. The medieval scholastics early arrived at a
twofold consensus: that, on one hand, acting con-
trary to conscience is always sinful (incurs moral
guilt), because even if what one does is in fact right,
one intends in doing it to do wrong; and that, on the
other hand, if no culpable mistake has been made in
reaching a conscientious judgment, acting according
to it cannot be sinful, because there has been no
moral fault in deciding so to act.
Attention therefore turned to how conscientious
judgments are reached, and to the conditions on
which they are culpable. THOMAS AQUINAS (1225?–
1274), whose critical synthesis of his predecessors’
work became the standard treatment, was realistic
about how they are reached. As a philosopher, he
denied that conscience is a distinct human faculty.
Most human beings’ conscientious judgments, he
held, depend on their upbringing; but they could not
respond to moral upbringing unless they were in
some measure capable (a) of grasping fundamental
moral principles (a capacity he called synderesis);
(b) of inferring specific moral precepts from those
principles by conceiving specific cases falling under
them; and (c) of discerning how those precepts ap-
ply to individual actions, done or contemplated. As
a theologian, he accepted that the Church, by divine
AUTHORITY, corrects whatever moral errors the
faithful may fall into in employing these natural
capacities.
Aquinas would have left little for later philosophy
to do in the theory of conscience had he not (for
complicated theological reasons) endorsed the ac-
cepted medieval doctrine that nobody, Christian or
pagan, even if ignorant of the teaching of the Church
in moral matters, can inculpably differ from it.
Given that doctrine, virtually all errors of conscience
are culpable except those arising from innocent mis-
takes about the facts of one’s situation. The conse-
298
quence is dire. Those who are conscientiously mis-
taken either about specific moral precepts or about
their application are ‘perplexed secundum quid’:
that is, are caught in a trap in which they commit
sin whether they act according to their erroneous
conscience (for their mistakes are sins) or contrary
to it (for they intend to sin, even though they do not
succeed). They can escape only by renouncing their
errors.
In the three centuries since the Protestant Ref-
ormation, the doctrine of culpable moral error has
been revised in both Catholic and Protestant theol-
ogy: while it is still affirmed that moral truth can be
found both by reason and by revelation, it is now
conceded that, whichever way it is sought, inculpa-
ble mistakes can be made. Of course it does not fol-
low that all such mistakes are inculpable: the early
nineteenth-century pro-slavery literature in the
United States abounds in examples to the contrary.
Yet there are crucial cases of moral error which can-
not be shown to arise from any moral fault.
Does an inculpably erroneous conscientious con-
viction that you are morally required to do some-
thing give you the right to do it? It is sometimes
answered “No” on the muddled ground that error
has no RIGHTS. Neither truth nor error has rights,
because only persons do. Do persons whose con-
sciences err, although inculpably, have rights against
those whose consciences do not? Prima facie, they
do. Since any action contrary to conscience, being
morally wrong in INTENTION, incurs moral guilt, I
cannot set out to coerce you into acting contrary to
your inculpable conscience without willing that you
incur a guilt you would not but for my COERCION.
For this reason, all branches of Christianity now
acknowledge that they were morally wrong when
they attempted to compel infidels and heretics to ac-
cept their versions of Christian orthodoxy. Those in
honest religious error have rights. Also, most dem-
ocratic states now respect some conscientious ob-
jections to military service. For example, in the
United States, objections of strict pacifists (e.g.,
Quakers) are respected, but not those of just war
theorists (e.g., some Catholics). It is obscure how
this discrimination could be morally justified.
Yet the rights of those whose consciences are in-
culpably mistaken certainly have limits. Some Mus-
lims are conscientiously convinced that it is their
duty to kill blasphemers, but it would be morally
wrong to stand idly by as they prepare to act on that

conviction, instead of taking measures to frustrate
them, and punishing them as murderers if those
measures fail. How can that be justified? Presum-
ably because the rights of those whose consciences
are inculpably mistaken are limited to actions that
are not wrongs which everybody is in fact morally
obliged to prevent if possible. This topic, however,
has not yet been adequately treated.
Although the main problems about conscience
have to do with inculpable error, some post-
Reformation theorists have revived the doctrine, re-
jected by the medieval scholastics, that conscience
is an independent mental faculty. Thus Joseph BUT-
LER (1692–1752) maintained that conscience is a
“moral approving and disapproving faculty” about
which it is not doubtful in general what it approves
and what it disapproves; for it is “that, which all ages
and all countries have made profession of in public.”
More recently, H. A. PRICHARD (1871–1947) went
further, and declared that the sovereign remedy for
moral doubt is to get into a situation in which action
is called for, and let one’s moral capacities do their
work. The faculty of conscience thus postulated is
both superfluous and objectionable: superfluous, be-
cause it is not needed to explain what civilized moral
codes have in common; and objectionable, because
if there were such a faculty people could not inculp-
ably disagree about major moral questions—as they
do, although Butler and Prichard largely ignore it.
See also: BUTLER; CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS; CASU-
ISTRY; CHRISTIAN ETHICS; CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE; EX-
CUSES; GUILT AND SHAME; INNOCENCE; INTENTION;
INTUITIONISM; MERIT AND DESERT; MORAL SENSE
THEORISTS; PACIFISM; PRICHARD; THEOLOGICAL
ETHICS; THOMAS AQUINAS.
Bibliography
Audi, Robert. “The Ethics of Advocacy.” Legal Theory 1,
no. 3 (1995): 251–81.
Butler, Joseph. Fifteen Sermons and a Dissertation Upon
the Nature of Virtue. Edited by W. R. Matthews. Lon-
don: Bell, 1949 [1722].
D’Arcy, Eric. Conscience and Its Right to Freedom. New
York: Sheed and Ward, 1961.
Donagan, Alan. The Theory of Morality. Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1977. See especially chapter 4.
Neuhouser, Frederick. “Ethical Life and the Demands of
Conscience.” Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great
Britain 37–38 (1998): 35–50.
Potts, Timothy C. “Conscience.” In The Cambridge His-
299
consent
tory of Later Medieval Philosophy, edited by N. Kretz-
mann, A. Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, 686–704. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Reliable
survey of the development of the medieval theory; good
bibliography.
Prichard, H. A. Moral Obligation. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1949. Paper 1 resuscitates the conception of
conscience as a faculty; paper 2 examines the impli-
cations for conscience of errors of fact.
Thomas Aquinas. Summa theologiae. (1266–73) See I,
79, 11–13; I–II, 19, 5–8. Quaestiones disputatae de
veritate. (1256–69) See 16–17.
Wallace, James D. Virtues and Vices. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1978. Especially chapter 4; a search-
ing examination of many issues about conscience.
Alan Donagan
consent
Although LIBERALISM has given consent a pivotal
role in the moral legitimation of certain kinds of in-
terpersonal conduct, its general importance has long
been recognized. For even where relationships have
been characterized by AUTHORITY, consent of the au-
thority figure has been required to approve conduct
over which the authority figure has been deemed to
have jurisdiction. Thus it used to be the case that a
suitor had to obtain the prospective father-in-law’s
consent before receiving the daughter’s hand in mar-
riage. Consent enabled him to have normative access
otherwise denied him. Liberal society, though less
given to notions of natural authority between per-
sons, has not thereby dispensed with consent. In-
deed, now that each person is, as LOCKE (1632–
1704) put it, “absolute Lord of his own Person and
Possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to no
Body,” consent has assumed a central role in the le-
gitimation of many social and interpersonal trans-
actions. The consent of a prospective father-in-law
may no longer be needed, but that of the prospective
spouse most surely is.
Yet despite its evident importance in legitimation,
moral and otherwise, there is fundamental unclarity
about the precise character of consent, the norma-
tive framework within which it functions, and its
necessity or sufficiency for the justifiability of the
transactions in which it is appealed to.
The Character of Consent
The etymology of “consent” (L. consentire: to
feel/think together with) may suggest that it refers
consent
simply to a state of mind, attitude, or belief. But
etymology is here misleading. Although consent fre-
quently involves, inter alia, a concurrence of minds
or an attitude of accord with others, such mental
states (pace Siegler) are neither necessary nor suf-
ficient for consent. And where consent is accompa-
nied by some such accord, it is sometimes appropri-
ate to qualify it as “wholehearted” or “unreserved”
to distinguish it from cases in which, though no less
valid, it is appropriately qualified as “grudging,”
“thoughtless,” “guilty,” or “halfhearted.”
Psychological accord can be seen to be unneces-
sary in those cases in which a person, having some
authority with respect to others and possessing the
POWER to deny their requests, nevertheless consents
to their doing what it is believed would be unwise
for them to do. Parents may sometimes consent to
their children’s requests, believing it better that they
learn from their mistakes than that they be pater-
nalistically protected. Psychological accord is insuf-
ficient for consent because, although we may be in
strong SYMPATHY with what others are doing, our
accord may do nothing to alter their normative sit-
uation. Our approval of the activities of an overseas
protest group does not constitute consent to what it
does. Unless we thereby bring about some change in
the group’s normative situation, it is not appropriate
to think of what is felt or believed as constituting
consent.
Consent is an act in which one person alters the
normative relations in which others stand with re-
spect to what they may do. Normative relations are
those governed by RIGHTS, duties, obligations, privi-
leges, and so on. Typically, when person X consents
to Y’s doing act A, Y has no or only a qualified en-
titlement to do A absent X’s consent (or the consent
of someone else in X’s position). Usually, what X
consents to is some initiative on Y’s part, or at least
something that Y can be presumed to want to do.
Such consent (pace Kleinig) does not generally con-
sist only in facilitating or allowing: if X allows Y to
enter a room into which Y is in any case entitled to
come, X’s act does not thereby constitute consent.
Unless there is some normative change brought
about by X’s act, it does not qualify as consent. The
situation may be complicated by the variety of nor-
mative relations that can obtain in cases in which
legal ENTITLEMENTS are more extensive than moral
entitlements; consent may be sought to give moral
legitimacy to what is already legally permissible.
300
The normative change that is brought about by
consent is variously characterized:
1. Consent as a kind of promise. If X consents to
give a lecture, X’s consent is sometimes taken to
constitute a promise to that effect. This analysis of
consent seems to work on some occasions, but it will
not do as a general characterization. If X consents
to Y’s performing a surgical operation on him, this
waiver/conferral of rights is not to be taken as a
promise—or even as a promise not to stand in Y’s
way (for X may withdraw the consent at any time).
In any case, we are not usually taken to have prom-
ised without explicit reference to it: we signify prom-
ising by “promising.”
2. Consent as a self-assumed obligation. On this
broader account, consent is an undertaking that in-
volves, at the very minimum, noninterference with
the relatively determinate conduct of another. Some
writers (e.g., Simmons and Weale) have seen the ob-
ligation as only secondary—as generated only by the
act of inducing another’s reliance on one. But it is
more plausible to see the obligation as directly as-
sumed than as the indirect consequence of inducing
reliance. Nevertheless, this account, like (1) above,
does not adequately accommodate those cases in
which consent serves to confer rights on another.
3. Consent as authorization or permission. If X
consents to Y’s doing act A, this may be interpreted
as X’s authorizing or approving or permitting Y to
do A. This takes account of those cases in which
consent involves the waiver of rights or the conferral
of rights on another. However, it fails to do justice
to instances in which consent functions more like a
promise. If X consents to assist Y, it does not help
to claim that X has authorized anything.
4. Consent as a normative transaction. A better
approach to consent is to see it as the genus of which
these other characterizations are species. When X
consents to Y’s doing A, X exercises a normative
resource that he or she has so as to provide Y with
an otherwise unavailable normative resource. What
Y previously had at best a problematic or qualified
claim to or right to do, Y now may freely claim
or do.
Consent, as an act, is signified in some way. Al-
though saying “I consent” is one conventional way
of signifying consent, other conventions also exist—
for example, signing, voting, raising one’s hand. In
some circumstances, silence may signify consent. In
the latter case, we may speak of the consent as being

tacit. However, what often goes for “tacit consent”
(pace Locke) should not be termed “consent” at all:
Remaining in a country and accepting the gratui-
tously provided benefits of its government are not to
be taken as consent to its authority.
When X consents to Y’s doing A, X does not
thereby divest herself of RESPONSIBILITY for A. In
many cases, consent extends the responsibility for A
rather than merely transfers it. Consent is an act for
which we may be held accountable. X’s consent to
Y’s borrowing her gun, knowing him to be up to no
good, may render her particeps criminis. Pontius Pi-
late’s hand washing is an unconvincing symbolic
gesture.
Conditions for Valid Consent
Consent, as an act that brings about some nor-
mative change in X’s relations to Y (and, perhaps,
through that to Z), in which responsibility for A
comes to be shared, must, if it is to be valid, meet
certain conditions for responsibility. Generally
speaking, it must be uncoerced, informed, and com-
petent. Each of these conditions raises its own clus-
ter of problems.
1. The absence of coercion. Where a person sig-
nifies consent (i.e., assents) as a result of COERCION,
compulsion, or duress, her act can no longer be con-
sidered voluntary—or at least sufficiently voluntary
to hold her responsible for her agreement. Such as-
sent does not express a valid consent.
However, it is not always easy to determine
whether the pressures under which people signify
consent are coercive to the point of invalidating the
normative transaction involved. Decisions on such
matters may have to take into account not only the
magnitude and credibility of the threat in relation to
the demand but also the vulnerability of the assenter,
and, in some situations, social expectations.
Problem cases include the following:
a. Coercive offers. Here Y puts it to X that if X
consents/does not consent to A, there will be a rea-
sonable probability that B will happen, where A is
undesirable to X and B is desirable to X. If B is a
benefit that X has reason to expect from Y on less
costly terms than consent to A, then Y’s offer might
be seen as coercive (again, in varying degrees). A
coercive offer might exert sufficient pressure to
undermine the validity of consent, even though it
promises a benefit not otherwise available. This will
301
consent
almost always be the case where Y has created the
circumstances of X’s vulnerability.
b. Exploitative offers. These overlap with co-
ercive offers and encompass situations in which Y
uses some discovered vulnerability of X as a basis
for extracting from X what X would otherwise not
desire to give. Insofar as these are offers in which Y
has not created X’s vulnerability and X has no rea-
son to expect Y’s offer, any assent might seem to
constitute a valid consent. However, some exploit-
ative offers are likely to be coercive in effect, even
though the offerer may not be acting in violation of
the other’s rights.
c. Unequal bargaining power. In transactions
between people, liberal ideology generally presumes
some rough equality of “bargaining power.” Fre-
quently that equality does not exist, and the validity
of the consent of the weaker party may be called into
question. Not every inequality, however, is of such a
kind or magnitude to undermine the validity of con-
sent, but is only such as to render the agreement
“unconscionable.” Is unconscionability a function of
“unfairness” (Murphy) or “coerciveness/deceptive-
ness” (Feinberg)? Probably the latter: Unless X lacks
other vital options, the unfairness of the proposal is
more appropriately characterized as “outrageous”
than as “unconscionable.”
d. Extortion and blackmail. Whenever Y exacts
A from X by means of threat, extortion is involved,
though sometimes this term is used more narrowly
to refer to the actions of public officials or others in
authority to extract more than is their due. In BLACK-
MAIL, the threat usually involves some reputation-
damaging disclosure. Although extortion and black-
mail may vary in their coerciveness, the fact that they
involve Y’s taking advantage of greater power or of
X’s dependence or vulnerability, to cause X to hand
over A to Y, generally serves to invalidate any con-
sent that is signified.
2. The knowledge condition. Consent is generally
quite determinate. Thus, where nonspecific (carte
blanche) consent is signified, or specific consent is
indicated in ignorance of certain features of what is
consented to, it may be vitiated. The lack of knowl-
edge may concern what is being assented to or cer-
tain relevant background facts or outcomes, and it
may result from some form of ignorance or mistake
or from deception. Whether or not the lack of
knowledge serves to invalidate consent will depend
on the assenter’s duty to take precautions, the duty
consent
of others to inform or explain, and the character of
that which is consented to.
The knowledge condition is central to the medical
demand for “informed consent”—though what spe-
cific items should be conveyed, and whether the
standard should be subjective or objective, is a mat-
ter of ongoing debate (Faden and Beauchamp). Gen-
erally, patients need to know what the procedure in-
volves, its costs and risks, alternatives to it, and the
prognosis, if their agreement to a particular medical
invasion is to be valid. For their consent to be in-
formed, however, it is not necessary that they know
everything, only that, beyond the general items re-
ferred to, whatever additional questions they have
are fairly addressed.
The knowledge condition is also critical in com-
mercial transactions, in which the doctrine of caveat
emptor needs to be balanced against certain duties
on the part of a seller. Generally, a buyer’s obligation
to be informed about general background facts
needs to be matched by the seller’s willingness to
provide data relating to the particular purchase. A
problematic area concerns the information sellers
should be expected to disclose on their own initia-
tive as against the information that needs disclosure
only if and when requested. There is often a fine line
to be drawn between fraud—which vitiates con-
sent—and intentional nondisclosure.
In law, different kinds of ignorance may have dif-
ferent legal consequences, and sometimes these have
a morally paradoxical quality about them. This is
particularly true of the distinction between “fraud in
the factum” and “fraud in the inducement” as it has
been applied to various forms of sexual EXPLOITA-
TION (Perkins and Boyce). If X is led to believe that
she is undergoing a gynecological examination when
it is in fact sexual intercourse, her doctor, Y, is guilty
of fraud in the factum and may be charged with rape.
But if X agrees to have intercourse with Y because
she has been fraudulently led to believe that it is
therapeutically necessary, Y is guilty only of fraud in
the inducement, and he may not be charged with
RAPE. Here it is said that the deception relates only
to some “collateral matter” and that the consent,
though not fully voluntary, is not completely vitiated
as in rape. What, then, do we say of the situation in
which X gets into bed in the dark and submits to
intercourse with Y, falsely believing Y to be her hus-
band? Is the deception here limited to something
that is merely collateral? Feinberg has suggested that
302
whether or not some feature of a situation is “merely
collateral” will depend on the magnitude of the harm
or wrong. A woman who does not appreciate at the
time that her gynecologist is having intercourse with
her is likely to be more seriously wronged than one
who submits to intercourse with her psychiatrist be-
cause he has falsely claimed that it is therapeutically
necessary; and a woman who knowingly submits to
intercourse in the false belief that the man in her bed
is her husband is likely to be more seriously wronged
than a prostitute who is paid for intercourse with
counterfeit money. Such judgments, however, show
how dependent the distinction is on normative con-
siderations that may—as in these cases—embody
cultural or gender biases.
3. The competence requirement. A person suffer-
ing from certain kinds of mental impairment or lack
of cognitive development may not be capable of giv-
ing valid consent. The reasons for such noncompe-
tence are diverse. Potentially temporary impair-
ments caused by drunkenness, consuming pain or
EMOTION, or insanity, or more permanent conditions
such as retardation or a persistent vegetative state,
may, along with immaturity, undermine a person’s
capacity to give or even signify consent. A rather
different source of incompetence is jurisdictional.
There are some matters about which only a partic-
ular person or officeholder may give consent and to
which others have no competence to consent.
Except in cases of jurisdictional incompetence,
incompetence is not usually an all-or-nothing matter.
Someone not competent to consent to some matters
may be competent to consent to others. Where a
person is incompetent to consent to some matter for
which consent is generally expected, that consent
may be provided by some proxy. Two standards for
proxy decision makers predominate. The first, the
“substituted judgment standard,” requires that prox-
ies estimate, from their knowledge of the incompe-
tent’s settled desires, values, and life plans, the de-
cision the incompetent person would have come to
had he or she been in a position to make it. The
second, the “best interest standard,” most appropri-
ately invoked where a substituted judgment is not
possible, requires that proxies decide on the basis of
either some standard of basic human welfare which
it can be presumed each human being aspires to or
seeks to maintain, or some conception of what av-
erage human beings would seek or choose for
themselves.

Incompetence to consent may not always relieve
a person of responsibility for the consequences of
what he agrees to. Where the incompetence has been
voluntarily brought about—for example, as a result
of intoxication—a person may sometimes be
deemed to have assumed the standard risks associ-
ated with his conduct.
The Moral Force of Consent
As a normative transaction, consent operates
against a background of prerogative, in which one
party has access to normative resources not pos-
sessed by others, resources that consent may make
available to them. What those normative resources
will be will depend on considerations external to a
theory of consent. Hierarchical no less than egali-
tarian conceptions of human being can give a legit-
imizing role to consent.
Within liberal society, the normative background
to consent can be broadly characterized as follows.
Individual human beings (or, perhaps, persons) are
choosers—that is, they are self-aware centers of
REASONS FOR ACTION, capable of determining for
themselves, on the basis of rational considerations,
what course of action or path of life they should fol-
low. Being a chooser is believed to ground a nor-
mative claim that individuals have to be permitted
to go about their lives without the interference of
others. Only if what they choose to do will compro-
mise the INTERESTS of others is there reason to in-
terfere with them.
Liberals differ in what they consider will compro-
mise the interests of others. For the most part these
differences resolve into differences about the nature
of the relevant interests and the extent to which
those interests are embedded in communal relations
of a certain kind. Some accounts refer to conscious
“stakes,” whereas others refer more generally to the
components of individual welfare. And though, for
some liberals, individuals are conceived essentially
as independent centers of rational consciousness, for
others individuality is not only grounded in but is
also an expression of significant social interdepen-
dence and interrelatedness.
Within this general liberal framework of respect
for choosers, consent functions to alter the bound-
aries within which others may legitimately act. If
we—as we sometimes can—think of chooser status
as surrounding an individual with normative (pri-
303
consent
vate) spaces to which others may not normally have
access, then consent can be construed as the opening
of a gate whereby others—or selected others—may
be given legitimate access to one or more of those
private spaces.
Given that consent possesses some moral force,
what are its limits? Is it always necessary? Is it al-
ways sufficient? Questions about the necessity of
consent before intrusions can be justified are raised
when individuals engage in self-injurious conduct.
“Soft paternalism,” in which circumstances prevent
the securing of a valid consent, does not usually gen-
erate serious moral difficulties. “Hard paternalism,”
however, does not sit easily with liberalism, unless
it is given a perfectionist twist (see Raz). Questions
about the sufficiency of consent are raised when
what is consented to will be harmful— DEATH (as
risked in Russian roulette), mutilation, and non-
coercive exploitation. Even if the consenter will not
be wronged, it may sometimes be permissible to pre-
vent the consented-to conduct from occurring.
See also: ABORTION; AUTHORITY; BAD FAITH; BAR-
GAINING; BIOETHICS; BLACKMAIL; CHEATING; COER-
CION; COMPROMISE; CONTRACTS; DECEIT; DETER-
RENCE, THREATS, AND RETALIATION; EXPLOITATION;
FAIRNESS; GENETIC ENGINEERING; JOURNALISM; LE-
GAL ETHICS; LIBERALISM; MEDICAL ETHICS; OPPRES-
SION; PATERNALISM; PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS;
POWER; PROMISES; RAPE; REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOL-
OGIES; SELF-OWNERSHIP; SEXUAL ABUSE AND HA-
RASSMENT; VOLUNTARY ACTS.
Bibliography
Archard, David. “Exploited Consent.” Journal of Social
Philosophy 25 (1994): 92–101.
Beran, Harry. The Consent Theory of Political Obligation.
Beckenham, Kent: Croom Helm, 1986. Political theory.
Brock, Dan. “Moral Prohibitions and Consent.” In Action
and Responsibility, edited by Myles Brand and Michael
Bradie. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State Uni-
versity Press, 1980.
Faden, Ruth R., and Tom L. Beauchamp. A History and
Theory of Informed Consent. New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1986.
Feinberg, Joel. The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law. 4
vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984–88.
See chapters 21–26, 31, 32. A thorough exploration of
consent and its imperilment.
Kleinig, John. “Consent as a Defence in Criminal Law.”
Archiv fur Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie 65 (1979):
consent
329–46. An examination of the limits of volenti non
fit injuria.
———. “The Ethics of Consent.” Canadian Journal of
Philosophy 8, suppl. (1982): 91–118. A general
exploration.
Murphy, Jeffrie G. “Blackmail: A Preliminary Inquiry.” The
Monist 62 (1980): 22–37.
———. “Consent, Coercion, and Hard Choices.” Virginia
Law Review 67 (1981): 79–95.
Perkins, Rollin M., and Ronald N. Boyce. Criminal Law.
3d ed. Mineola, NY: Foundation Press, 1982. See p.
214–17; 422–24.
Raz, Joseph. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1986. See chapter 4. A perfectionist theory.
Simmons, John. Moral Principles and Political Obliga-
tions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.
Political theory.
Snare, Frank. “Consent and Conventional Acts in John
Locke.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 13
(1975): 27–35.
Weale, Albert. “Consent.” Political Studies 26 (1978):
65–77.
John Kleinig
consequentialism
The term “consequentialism” seems to have first
been used in its present sense by G. E. M. ANSCOMBE
(1919–2001) in her 1958 article, “Modern Moral
Philosophy.” It primarily refers to moral views or
theories which base their evaluations of acts solely
on consequences. In contemporary philosophical us-
age, the term is most often used to refer to “act-
consequentialism,” which is the view that the right-
ness (or obligatoriness) of an act depends on whether
its consequences are at least as good as (or better
than) those of any alternative act available to the
agent. (Some deontological views give moral weight
to consequences but allow that other factors may out-
weigh the goodness or badness of consequences.)
Act-utilitarianism is the most familiar but not the
only possible form of act-consequentialism. The act-
utilitarian is an act-consequentialist who holds, in
addition, that HAPPINESS, PLEASURE, well-being, util-
ity, or some combination of these are the only factors
that automatically make for the goodness of conse-
quences. But act-consequentialists who consider
other things to be intrinsically good—e.g., unappre-
ciated beauty, the FAIRNESS of the way happiness is
distributed, the possession of truth or HONOR —are
usually not regarded as utilitarians (though in an
304
older, now moribund usage, such philosophers are
called ideal—as opposed to hedonistic or eudaimo-
nistic—utilitarians).
This characterization of consequentialism is too
narrow, however, in at least three different ways. For
example, rule-consequentialists claim that the mo-
rality of actions is determined not directly by those
actions’ own consequences but in terms of whether
the actions accord with a set of rules the acceptance
of which (or obedience to which) leads to conse-
quences as good as those any alternative set of rules
would lead to.
In addition, the term “consequentialism” can be
used more broadly than we have suggested above,
because not only acts but also MOTIVES, character
traits, and possibly other factors can be directly eval-
uated in terms of their own consequences. Motive-
consequentialism is the view that the goodness of a
motive depends on how good its overall conse-
quences are. (Notice that so understood, motive-
consequentialism, unlike rule-consequentialism, says
nothing about what makes acts right, but most
motive-consequentialists are also act-consequential-
ists and so are not rule-consequentialists.)
The term “act-consequentialism” can be used more
broadly than indicated above. Act-consequentialism
is sometimes predicated of views that characterize
the rightness of acts in terms of the probability of
their having good consequences or, more formally,
in terms of the notion of expectable utility rather
than in terms of the goodness or utility of actual
consequences. On the actual-consequences version,
an act may be right even if done with the hope and
expectation of horrible consequences as long as the
consequences accidentally turn out to be highly fa-
vorable, whereas expectabilist act-consequentialism
and act-utilitarianism can treat such actions as
wrong, thus putting themselves in greater alignment
with common moral opinion. But agreement with
commonsense is not much valued by most act-
utilitarians and act-consequentialists, and in fact to-
day a majority of writers on consequentialism seem
to prefer the actualist to the expectabilist version of
the doctrine.
So much, then, for the formulation of various
kinds of consequentialism. Act-consequentialism
has been the focus of most recent interest in conse-
quentialism. One particular version of it, act-
utilitarianism, has been historically the most signifi-
cant form of the doctrine, with Jeremy BENTHAM

(1748–1832), Henry SIDGWICK (1838–1900), and
G. E. MOORE (1873–1958) putting their major ef-
forts into the defense of act-utilitarian consequen-
tialism. But act-consequentialism and act-utilitari-
anism, though they are major competitors in the
field of substantive ethical theory, can be attacked
on a number of different fronts. Sidgwick saw the
two main competitors of (act-)utilitarianism to be
commonsense morality and EGOISM, but egoism is
now regarded more as a theory of RATIONAL CHOICE
than as a specifically moral conception. In the very
recent literature of ethics, the most significant criti-
cism of UTILITARIANISM as a moral theory has come
from commonsense or intuitionistic morality.
(Act-)consequentialism claims that an act is mor-
ally obligatory if and only if its consequences are
better than those of any alternative open to the
agent, and an act is morally right or permissible if
and only if its consequences are as good as those of
any available alternative. (Some versions of conse-
quentialism say merely that right acts must have
good consequences or good enough consequences,
but this is very much a minority view.) It should be
noted, however, that “good consequences” here
means overall good consequences, rather than con-
sequences good for, or good from the point of view
of, the agent or any other particular person. Conse-
quentialists and utilitarians are committed to eval-
uating actions (or motives) in a way that gives equal
weight to (the welfare of) every person, and the com-
mitment to such agent-neutrality leads to some of
the sharpest differences between commonsense in-
tuitive morality and the dictates of consequentialist
views.
According to consequentialism, the agent must
give no fundamental preference to herself, or her
friends and family, over other people; if the agent
can do more good by sacrificing her own or her fam-
ily’s goals than by acting on these personal concerns,
she has an obligation to do so. Standard consequen-
tialism thus seems to require more personal sacrifice
from agents than our intuitive standards of morality
seem committed to. In commonsense moral terms,
an agent may permissibly put greater weight on her
own well-being and that of her family than on the
well-being of strangers. From the standpoint of such
intuitive morality, consequentialism has been criti-
cized as too demanding, as requiring personal sac-
rifices that go beyond anything it is fair to demand
of moral agents.
305
consequentialism
In another respect, however, consequentialism
can seem intuitively too permissive, because of its
exclusive emphasis on good consequences. If a sur-
geon is trying to save five accident victims, each in
need of a different bodily organ, it seems, in com-
monsense terms, to be morally wrong for her to kill
and cut up some innocent person whose organs can
be used to save the five others. From an impersonal
or disinterested standpoint, it may be objectively
better for five accident victims to be saved while one
innocent bystander is killed, than for the bystander
to be left alone while the five die; moreover, it may
be possible for the surgeon to kill the bystander se-
cretly so that the results of killing the bystander re-
ally are overall better than those of not killing him.
But it nonetheless seems morally heinous to us to
kill in such circumstances and for such a reason,
even though act-consequentialism, to the extent it
subscribes to the above judgments about compara-
tive costs and benefits, usually declares such killing
to be morally permissible and even morally oblig-
atory.
We can summarize the above two disagreements
between commonsense morality and act-consequen-
tialism by saying (1) (utilitarian) act-consequential-
ism requires everyone to realize the same goal of
producing overall best consequences, whereas or-
dinary moral thinking deems it permissible for each
person to pursue his own personal projects or
concerns in some (though not all) circumstances
where doing so will not produce overall best con-
sequences. (Commonsense permissions are thus
“agent-relative,” whereas consequentialism always
remains “agent-neutral.”) (2) Commonsense views
forbid doing certain kinds of acts even if such acts
will produce overall best consequences, whereas this
is precisely what act-consequentialism requires.
(The denial of permission to act for the best is the
heart of DEONTOLOGY.)
Clearly, consequentialism clashes with important
elements of our ordinary thinking about morality.
Consequentialists typically defend themselves from
commonsense criticism both by questioning the
force of intuition in moral theory construction and
by claiming that consequentialism is theoretically
preferable as a view of right and wrong, because it
replaces a hodgepodge of commonsense moral re-
quirements with a single understandable principle of
right action. (In addition, some recent critics have
argued that common sense itself gives rise to dis-
consequentialism
turbing kinds of unintuitiveness, and even possibly
to paradox.)
However, a great deal of the debate between con-
sequentialists and their commonsense critics has fo-
cused on whether consequentialism does not under-
cut itself through being forced to advocate its own
suppression as a guide to moral behavior. Since Ben-
tham, consequentialists have sometimes argued that
there are or might be good consequentialist reasons
to suppress consequentialism and to prefer that
commonsense standards of right and wrong should
govern people’s behavior in their daily lives. Some
critics have derided this self-suppressing tendency
by arguing that if consequentialism, for consequen-
tialist reasons, should not be accepted, then one may
have reason to conclude that consequentialism is
also an unacceptable, that is, incorrect, moral theory.
But consequentialists have replied to such criticism
by insisting on a distinction between consequential-
ism as the correct standard for (what counts as)
right action and consequentialism as providing a
useful action-guiding rule for ordinary life. If, as
JOHN STUART MILL (1806–1873) put it, we do not
expect sailors to guide themselves by the fundamen-
tal laws of astronomy but rather by more practical
guides, so too should we not expect the fundamental
standard of right and wrong to be useful in the hurly-
burly of everyday life. If people tried always to cal-
culate the overall goodness of an act’s total conse-
quences, they might be subject to temptations,
miscalculations, and wasted efforts which could be
avoided if standards other than the ultimately cor-
rect ones were used in ordinary life; and if better
results might therefore be expected from the use of
such other principles, there would indeed be con-
sequentialist grounds to prefer that the ultimate
standard of right and wrong not be used in ordinary
life. But COMMON SENSE MORALISTS and others such
as Immanuel KANT (1724–1804) and John RAWLS,
who regard an action-guiding role as a primary func-
tion of valid standards of right and wrong, will cer-
tainly balk at the consequentialist idea of a valid but
self-suppressing moral view or theory. At present,
there is a considerable amount of controversy on this
issue.
By way of conclusion, three points of clarification
about the notion of (good) consequences are in or-
der. Consequentialists want to treat the good inher-
ent in a given act or motive as relevant to the eval-
uation of that act, but instead of speaking of the
306
good inherent in an act and in its consequences, they
simplify terminology by counting any act or motive
as among its own consequences.
Second, anything that would not have occurred
if a given act had not been performed counts, for
consequentialism, as among the consequences of
that act. Thus when an agent who can do otherwise
simply refrains from saving a certain person’s life,
the death of the latter is included among the con-
sequences of the agent’s inaction, even though in
ordinary terms we would not say that the agent
caused that death.
Third, in most recent discussions the notion of
consequences is given a quite particular gloss, ac-
cording to which the consequences of an act are
taken to include not only the act itself but all the
states of affairs that ever result from the act. I men-
tion this feature of recent consequentialism because
it contrasts with earlier formulations of utilitarian
consequentialism by such figures as Sidgwick and
Bentham. Recent consequentialism holds that an act
is right if it leads to as good an overall state of affairs
as any other act the agent could have performed;
utilitarian consequentialists hold, in addition, that
the goodness of a state of affairs is a function of the
balance of happiness over unhappiness in the state
of affairs. But Bentham and Sidgwick do not talk
about states of affairs as consequences whose eval-
uation is relevant to that of actions. Earlier utilitar-
ians held a principle of utility according to which an
act is right if and only if it leads to the greatest over-
all amount or sum of human (or sentient) pleasure,
benefit, or happiness. Here, “happiness,” “benefit,”
and “pleasure” seem to be treated as “mass terms,”
with the happiness and unhappiness, benefit and
harm, pleasure and unpleasure of different people
being treated as quantitatively measurable. There is
no explicit mention of the goodness of states of af-
fairs here, and so it is perhaps anachronistic to view
earlier consequentialists as having exactly the same
idea of consequentialism as is nowadays most prev-
alent. To be sure, both earlier and current conse-
quentialists would agree that a right act must pro-
duce consequences at least as good as any alternative
would, but this verbal agreement masks a difference
in tendency to invoke the notion of a state of affairs
in clarification of what a (good) consequence is. For
earlier consequentialists, good consequences are re-
sultant benefits, advantages, or personal goods; in
contemporary terms, they are resultant good states

of affairs. The break between these two ways of
thinking of consequences seems to come in the work
of Moore, where a notion of a state of affairs oper-
ates in a way that is not apparent in the major earlier
works of utilitarianism. But despite, or perhaps even
partly because of, this historical evolution in con-
sequentialism, consequentialist ideas are very much
in the forefront of contemporary ethical discussions,
and the ultimate philosophical fate of consequen-
tialism is very much an open question.
See also: ANSCOMBE; ARISTOTLE; BENTHAM; COM-
MENSURABILITY; COMMON SENSE MORALISTS; COST-
BENEFIT ANALYSIS; DEONTOLOGY; DUTY AND OB-
LIGATION; FAIRNESS; GOOD, THEORIES OF THE;
IMPARTIALITY; INTRANSITIVITY; INTUITIONISM; JOHN
STUART MILL; MOORE; MORAL RULES; MOTIVES;
POSSIBILISM; RATIONAL CHOICE; RAWLS; SIDGWICK;
TELEOLOGICAL ETHICS; UTILITARIANISM.
Bibliography
Anscombe, G. E. M. “Modern Moral Philosophy.” Philos-
ophy 33 (1958): 1–190.
Bentham, Jeremy. An Introduction to the Principles of
Morals and Legislation. [1780]
Darwall, Stephen L. “Rational Agent, Rational Act.” Phil-
osophical Topics 14 (1986): 33–57.
Lyons, David. Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1965.
Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. 1861.
Moore, G. E. Principia Ethica. 1903.
Scheffler, Samuel, ed. Consequentialism and its Critics.
New York: Clarendon Press, 1988.
———. The Rejection of Consequentialism. 1982.
Sen, Amartya. “Utilitarianism and Welfarism.” Journal of
Philosophy 76 (1979): 463–89.
Sidgwick, Henry. The Methods of Ethics. 1874.
Slote, Michael. Common-sense Morality and Consequen-
tialism. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985.
Michael Slote
conservation ethics
The practice of nature conservation is immemorial
in human experience. Medieval British and Japanese
forest-use laws amply document the practice of na-
ture conservation in premodern Europe and Asia.
An articulate nature conservation ethic, however, is
recent and predominantly North American. The Old
World regime of restrictions on the harvest of forest
307
conservation ethics
products and game animals was both harsh and un-
democratic. Of the many freedoms to be enjoyed in
the New World, free hunting, fishing, and tree felling
ranked with the more abstract religious and political
liberties. In the fledgling United States, up until the
end of the nineteenth century, nature conservation
would therefore have seemed to be about as counter-
revolutionary and un-American as a state religion or
a Yankee monarch—if anyone had seriously sug-
gested mandating it. With the completion of the
transcontinental railroad, the slaughter of the bison
herds, and the subjugation of the Plains Indians—
all in the last quarter of the nineteenth century—the
North American frontier palpably closed and the
need for nature conservation became apparent. Thus
did conservation ethics emerge in North America
about a century ago.
George Perkins Marsh (1801–1882) was most
concerned about the adverse effects of deforestation
on climate, soil stability and fertility, and stream
flow. His conservation ethic was grounded in biblical
ideas: man is created in the image of God and given
dominion over the Earth; dominion entails RESPON-
SIBILITY as well as privilege; people have the right to
use plants and animals, soils, and waters for our own
purposes, but we also have the responsibility to pre-
serve the INTEGRITY of the world that God created
and to pass it on intact to FUTURE GENERATIONS for
their use and enjoyment. “Man,” wrote Marsh, “has
too long forgotten that the earth was given him for
usufruct alone, not for consumption, still less for
profligate waste.”
Ralph Waldo EMERSON (1803–1882) and Henry
David THOREAU (1817–1862) articulated their con-
servation ethic in terms more metaphysical than
conventionally theological. Nature can be a temple,
Emerson enthused, in which to draw near and to
commune with God or the “Oversoul.” Too much
civilized refinement, Thoreau argued, can overripen
the human spirit; just as too little can coarsen it. “In
wildness,” he wrote, “is the preservation of the
world.”
John Muir (1838–1914) made the TRANSCEN-
DENTALISM of Emerson and Thoreau the basis of a
national, morally charged campaign for the appre-
ciation and preservation of wild nature. The natural
environment, especially in the New World, was vast
enough and rich enough, he believed, to satisfy our
deeper spiritual NEEDS as well as our more manifest
material needs. Muir strongly condemned prodigal
conservation ethics
destruction of nature in the service of profligate ma-
terialism and greed. People going to forest groves,
mountain scenery, and meandering streams for reli-
gious transcendence, aesthetic contemplation, and
healing rest and relaxation put these resources to a
“better”—i.e., morally superior—use, in Muir’s
opinion, than did the lumber barons, mineral kings,
and captains of industry.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Gifford
Pinchot (1865–1946) formulated a materialistic Re-
source Conservation Ethic reflecting the general ten-
ets of utilitarianism. America’s vast biological capi-
tal had been notoriously plundered and squandered
not for the benefit of all its citizens, but for the profit
of a few. Without direct reference to JOHN STUART
MILL (1806–1873), Pinchot crystallized the Re-
source Conservation Ethic in a maxim—“the great-
est good of the greatest number for the longest
time”—that echoes Mill’s. He reduced the transcen-
dentalist’s “Nature” to “natural resources.” Indeed,
Pinchot insisted that “there are just two things on
this material earth—people and natural resources.”
He even equated conservation with the systematic
EXPLOITATION of natural resources. “The first great
fact about conservation,” Pinchot insisted, “is that it
stands for development.”
The first principle of the Resource Conservation
Ethic is equity—the just or fair distribution of the
fruits of natural resources exploitation among pres-
ent and also future generations of consumers. Its
second moral principle, equal in importance to the
first, is efficiency—a natural resource should not be
wastefully exploited. Just slightly less obvious, the
principle of efficient resource utilization involves the
concepts of best or “highest use” and “multiple use.”
Efficient resource exploitation requires a sound sci-
entific foundation. The Resource Conservation Ethic
thus became wedded to the eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century scientific world view in which
nature is conceived to be a collection of bits of mat-
ter, assembled into a hierarchy of externally related
chemical and organismic aggregates, which can be
understood and successfully manipulated by analytic
and reductive methods.
The Resource Conservation Ethic is also wedded
to the correlative social science of economics, the
science of self-interested rational monads pursuing
“preference satisfaction” in a free market. However,
because the market does not take account of “exter-
nalities”—certain costs of doing business: soil ero-
308
sion, for example, and environmental pollution—
and because standard economic calculations
discount the future monetary value of resources in
comparison with present monetary value, the free
market cannot be relied on to achieve the most ef-
ficient, and certainly not the most prudent, use of
natural resources. Pinchot persuasively argued,
therefore, that government ownership and/or regu-
lation of natural resources and resource exploitation
is a necessary remedy. Because the Resource Con-
servation Ethic was based so squarely on Newtonian
science and liberal social philosophy and rhetorically
associated with utilitarianism, it triumphed politi-
cally and became institutionalized in twentieth-
century government conservation agencies, first in
the United States and eventually throughout the
Western world. The nonconsumptive uses of nature
by aesthetes, transcendentalists, and wilderness re-
creationalists could be accommodated by assigning
them a contingent market value or “shadow-price.”
In some circumstances such uses may turn out to be
the highest or most efficient allocation of a given
“resource.”
The notorious schism in the traditional American
conservation movement between the Resourcists
and the Preservationists was thus, in the final anal-
ysis, a matter of differing ethics. Both the Resource
Conservation Ethic and the Nature Preservation
Ethic are anthropocentric: only people possess in-
trinsic value; nature possesses merely instrumental
value. The primary difference is that the Preserva-
tionists posited a higher transcendental reality above
and beyond the physical world and privileged the
psychospiritual use of nature over against its mate-
rial use. The Resourcists were more materialistic and
insisted, democratically, that all competing uses of
resources should be weighed impartially and that the
fruits of resource exploitation should be distributed
broadly and equitably.
Although Muir’s popular campaign for the appre-
ciation and preservation of nature was cast largely
in terms of the putative superiority of the human
spiritual values served by contact with undeveloped,
wild nature, he also seems to have been the first con-
servationist to advance the proposition that nature
itself possessed intrinsic value—value in and of it-
self—quite apart from its human utilities (no matter
whether of the more spiritual or more material va-
riety). To articulate this nonanthropocentric intui-
tion Muir, like Marsh, used biblical ideas: God cre-

ated man and all the other creatures from the same
substance; each of his creatures—man included, but
not man alone—and the creation as a whole are
“good” in his eyes (i.e., they have intrinsic value);
hence, to eradicate a species or to efface nature is to
undo God’s creative work and to subtract so much
divinely imbued inherent goodness from the world.
More radically than most contemporary exponents
of the by-now-familiar Judeo-Christian Stewardship
Environmental Ethic, which Marsh anticipated,
Muir insisted that people are just a part of nature on
a par with other creatures and that all creatures
(people included) are valued equally by God, for the
contribution we and they make to the whole of his
creation. In Muir’s own inimitable prose, “From the
dust of the earth, from the common elementary
fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the
same material He has made every other creature,
however noxious and insignificant to us. They are
our earth-born companions and fellow mortals . . .
are part of God’s family, unfallen, undepraved, and
cared for with the same species of tenderness and
love as is bestowed on angels in heaven and saints
on earth. . . . Why should man value himself as more
than a small part of the one great unit of creation?
And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the
pains to make is not essential to the completeness of
that unit—the cosmos? The universe would be in-
complete without man; but it would also be incom-
plete without the smallest transmicroscopic crea-
ture that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and
knowledge.”
The Resource Conservation Ethic’s close alliance
with science proved to be its undoing. During the
first half of the twentieth century, ecology began to
give shape to a radically different scientific paradigm
than that which lay at the very foundations of Pin-
chot’s philosophy. From an ecological perspective,
nature is more than a collection of externally related
useful, useless, and noxious species furnishing an el-
emental landscape of soils and waters. It is, rather,
a vast, intricately organized and tightly integrated
system of complex processes. As Aldo LEOPOLD
(1887–1948) expressed it, “Ecology is a new fusion
point for all the sciences. . . . The emergence of ecol-
ogy has placed the economic biologist in a peculiar
dilemma: with one hand he points out the accumu-
lated findings of his search for utility, or lack of util-
ity, in this or that species; with the other he lifts the
veil from a biota so complex, so conditioned by
309
conservation ethics
interwoven cooperations and competitions, that no
man can say where utility begins or ends.”
The anthropological assumptions of the Resource
Conservation Ethic are also suspect. The portrait of
human beings in economic models of resource al-
location—as rational egoists single mindedly pur-
suing preference satisfaction—is a gross caricature.
From an evolutionary point of view, moreover, the
radical distinction between people and natural re-
sources drawn by Pinchot is untenable. People are,
rather, a part of nature. Expressing in more secular,
scientific terms, the intuitions first expressed by
Muir in biblical terms, Leopold argued that human
beings are “members of a biotic team . . . ; plain
members and citizens of the biotic community” to-
gether with other species. Leopold’s affirmation that
plants and animals, soils and waters are entitled to
full citizenship as fellow-members of the biotic com-
munity is tantamount to the recognition that they
too have intrinsic, not just instrumental, value. An
evolutionary and ecological world view, in short, im-
plies a land ethic.
The Nature Preservation Ethic is largely unin-
formed by any scientific paradigm whatsoever. Both
Thoreau and Muir made signal scientific contribu-
tions to natural history, Thoreau in phytogeography
and Muir in geology. But the scientific aspect of their
work had little influence on the Preservationist con-
servation agenda. Most areas targeted for preserva-
tion were selected on the basis of such qualities as
monumental, sublime, or picturesque scenery; or be-
cause they offered opportunities for outdoor recre-
ation; or simply because they were so rugged and
remote that they weren’t good for much else. They
were not selected because they harbored endangered
species, or contained an extraordinary variety of spe-
cies, or quintessentially exemplified native biotic
communities, or performed vital ecological services
especially well. And exported to the rest of the
world, the Nature Preservation Ethic proved to be,
if anything, more pernicious than the Resource Con-
servation Ethic. In long-inhabited and densely set-
tled regions of the globe—such as the Indian sub-
continent and equatorial Africa—American-style
wilderness parks were created by dispossessing and
forcibly relocating the indigenous inhabitants who
had been living sustainably for many generations in
scenic hinterlands.
In sum, three distinct conservation ethics are dis-
cernible: the Nature Preservation Ethic, the Re-
conservation ethics
source Conservation Ethic, and the Leopold Land
Ethic. Conservation policy and the conservation pro-
fession reflect them all—thus giving rise to internal
conflict and, from an external point of view, the ap-
pearance of confusion. The public agencies are still
very much ruled by the turn-of-the-century Resource
Conservation Ethic; some of the most powerful and
influential private conservation organizations are
steadfastly loyal to the even older Nature Preserva-
tion Ethic; while contemporary conservation biology
is clearly inspired and governed by the Leopold
Land Ethic.
At the present turn of the century, we face a sit-
uation analogous to that faced by our forebears at
the previous one. Then, what had once appeared to
be an effectively boundless and superabundant New
World suddenly had palpable limits. Now, our gen-
eration is pressing hard against the ecological limits,
not just of a continent or hemisphere, but of the
entire planet. We are witnessing the extension of the
industrial juggernaut into every corner of the globe.
Soils are washing into the sea; toxic chemicals are
polluting surface and ground waters; chainsaws and
bulldozers are wreaking havoc in tropical forests,
and coincidentally exterminating a significant por-
tion of the Earth’s complement of species; chloro-
fluorocarbons are eroding the planet’s protective
ozone shield; and fossil fuel consumption is loading
the Earth’s atmosphere with carbon dioxide, con-
tributing to global climate change. Because Leo-
pold’s Land Ethic is fully informed by and firmly
grounded in evolutionary and ecological biology, it
may well supplant its nineteenth-century antece-
dents as our moral anchor in the midst of a wors-
ening environmental crisis.
The Preservationist-Resourcist schism left us in
an unfortunate “zero-sum” dilemma: either preserve
pristine nature or efficiently and fairly develop it. As
a third alternative Leopold advocated a “win-win”
philosophy of conservation, looking for ways of in-
habiting and using nature that are at the same time
ecologically benign. As he put it, “the impulse to
save wild remnants is always, I think, the forerunner
of the more complex task of mixing a degree of wild-
ness with utility.” Accordingly, Leopold defined con-
servation in the following terms: as “a universal sym-
biosis with land, economic and esthetic, public and
private”; as “a protest against destructive land use”;
as “a positive exercise of skill and insight, not merely
a negative exercise of abstinence and caution”; and
310
finally as “a state of harmony between men and
land.”
See also: ANIMALS, TREATMENT OF; COST-BENEFIT
ANALYSIS; DISCOUNTING THE FUTURE; EGOISM; EM-
ERSON; ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS; EXPLOITATION; FU-
TURE GENERATIONS; INTEGRITY; JUSTICE, DISTRIBU-
TIVE; LAND ETHICS; LEOPOLD; JOHN STUART MILL;
NATURE AND ETHICS; RIGHT HOLDERS; THEOLOGICAL
ETHICS; THOREAU; TRANSCENDENTALISM; UTILITAR-
IANISM; VALUE, CONCEPT OF.
Bibliography
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Nature. Boston: James Munroe,
1836.
Flader, Susan, and J. Baird Callicott, eds. The River of the
Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.
Fox, Stephen. John Muir and His Legacy: The American
Conservation Movement. Boston: Little, Brown, 1981.
Hays, Samuel P. Conservation and the Gospel of Effi-
ciency: The Progressive Conservation Movement. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1959.
Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches
Here and There. New York: Oxford University Press,
1949.
———. For the Health of the Land: Previously Unpub-
lished Essays and Other Writings by Aldo Leopold. Ed-
ited by J. Baird Callicott and Eric T. Freyfogle. Wash-
ington, DC: Island Press, 1999.
———. Round River: From the Journals of Aldo Leopold.
Edited by Luna Leopold. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1953.
Marsh, George P. Man and Nature; Or Physical Geogra-
phy as Modified by Human Action. New York: Charles
Scribner, 1864.
Meffe, Gary K., and C. Ronald Carroll, eds. Principles of
Conservation Biology. 2d ed. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer
Associates, 1997.
Muir, John. A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1916.
———. Our National Parks. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1901.
Peterken, G. F. Woodland Conservation and Manage-
ment. London: Chapman and Hall, 1981.
Pinchot, Gifford. Breaking New Ground. New York: Har-
court, Brace, 1947.
Thoreau, Henry David. Excursions. Boston: Tichnor and
Fields, 1863.
J. Baird Callicott

conservatism
Conservatism is a political morality. It is political be-
cause it is a view about the political arrangements
that make a society good, and it is moral because it
takes it to be the justification of political arrange-
ments that they foster good lives. Conservatism has
different versions because their advocates disagree
with each other about what political arrangements
ought to be conserved. There is no disagreement
among them, however, that the reasons for or
against particular political arrangements are to be
found in the history of the society whose members
make the arrangements. This view commits conser-
vatives to denying that the reasons are to be derived
from a contract that fully rational people might
make in a hypothetical situation; or from an imag-
ined ideal society; or from what is supposed to be
most beneficial for the whole of humanity; or from
the prescriptions of some sacred or secular book. In
preference to these alternatives, conservatives look
to their history because it exerts a formative influ-
ence on how they live now and how it is reasonable
for them to want to live in the future. Yet their at-
titude is not one of unexamined prejudice in favor
of the traditional arrangements of their society. They
aim to conserve only those arrangements that history
has shown to be conducive to good lives. To under-
stand different versions of conservatism it is neces-
sary to understand the different kinds of reasons that
conservatives weigh in evaluating political arrange-
ments. (Representatives of these versions are iden-
tified in the bibliography.) The strongest version of
conservatism will emerge from the context of four
distinctions in which these reasons may be found.
The first distinction is between conservatives who
look beyond their history for the reasons that deter-
mine what political arrangements they ought to fa-
vor, and those who do not. Conservatives agree that
history is the appropriate starting point. Some of
them believe, however, that it is not a contingent fact
that certain political arrangements have historically
fostered good lives. They believe that there is a meta-
physical explanation for the historical success of
various political arrangements. The explanation is
that there is a moral order in reality and only politi-
cal arrangements that conform to it foster good lives.
The importance of history is that it points beyond
itself toward this moral order. Metaphysically in-
clined conservatives disagree whether the order is
311
conservatism
providential, a Platonic chain of being, a Hegelian
unfolding of the dialectic of clashing forces, or one
reflected by NATURAL LAW. These disagreements
notwithstanding, such conservatives are convinced
that the ultimate reasons for or against specific po-
litical arrangements are to be found by understand-
ing the moral order in reality, and they take disagree-
ments to reflect human fallibility.
The historical record of societies whose political
arrangements were metaphysically inspired is most
alarming. They tended to impose their certainties on
unwilling or indoctrinated people, they often made
their lives miserable, all the while promising great
improvements just after the present crisis, which
usually turned out to be permanent. If the twentieth
century has a moral achievement, it is the realization
that proceeding in this way is morally and politically
dangerous.
Skeptical conservatives are opposed to metaphys-
ical politics. Their skepticism, however, may take an
extreme or a moderate form. The extreme form of
skepticism is fideism. It involves reliance on faith
and the repudiation of reason. Fideists reject all
forms of reasoning as a guide to political arrange-
ments on the grounds that they are ultimately based
on assumptions that must be accepted on faith.
Their rejection of reason, however, leaves fideists
with the problem of deciding what political arrange-
ments they ought to favor. Their solution has been
to be guided by faith or to perpetuate the existing
arrangements simply because they are familiar. The
dangers of both solutions are historically as evident
as the dangers of the metaphysical approach. Faith
breeds dogmatism, the persecution of those who re-
ject it, and it provides no ground for regarding any
political arrangement as better or worse than con-
trary ones. And the perpetuation of the status quo
on account of its familiarity makes it impossible to
improve the existing political arrangements.
Between the dangerous extremes of metaphysical
politics and the fideistic repudiation of reason there
is skepticism. Conservatives who hold this view
need not deny that there is a moral order in reality,
but only that reliable knowledge of it can be had.
Skeptical conservatives are far more impressed by
human fallibility than by the success of efforts to
overcome it. They think that the claims that some
truths are revealed, that some texts are canonical,
that some knowledge embodies eternal verities are
only as credible as the reasons that are adduced to
conservatism
support them. But the reasons are no less question-
able than the claims that they are meant to support.
It is far more reasonable, therefore, to look to the
history of various political arrangements than to en-
deavor to criticize or justify them by appealing to
metaphysical considerations that are bound to be
less reliable than the historical record. Skepticism
does not oblige conservatives to deny that it is pos-
sible to evaluate political arrangements by adducing
reasons for or against them; they must only deny that
the reasons are metaphysical, absolute, and eternal.
Skepticism, therefore, is not a global doubt about
the possibility and desirability of being reasonable.
It leads conservatives to derive reasons for or against
political arrangements from the experiences of the
people who are subject to them. Because these ex-
periences are unavoidably historical, it is reasonable
to look to history for reasons supporting them.
The second distinction is between two views
about the diversity of values. Absolutists believe that
the diversity of values is apparent, not real. They
concede that there are many values, but they think
that there is an objective standard that can be ap-
pealed to in evaluating their respective importance.
Absolutists prefer some political arrangements over
others because they conform more closely to the ob-
jective standard than the alternatives. Absolutism
often has a metaphysical basis. For the most fre-
quently offered reason in favor of the objectivity of
the standard is that it reflects the moral order of
reality. Nevertheless, the connection between abso-
lutism and metaphysics is not a necessary one. Stan-
dards can be objective even if they are not meta-
physically sanctioned. If, however, their advocates
eschew metaphysics, then they must provide some
other reason for regarding the standard they favor
as objective. It is a considerable embarrassment to
absolutists that the candidates for objective stan-
dards are also diverse, and thus face the same prob-
lems as the values whose diversity is supposed to be
diminished by them. Absolutists acknowledge this,
and explain it in terms of failings that prevent people
from recognizing the objective standard. The history
of religious wars, revolutions, left- and right-wing
tyrannies, and persecutions of countless unbelievers,
all aiming to rectify human shortcomings, testifies to
the dangers inherent in this explanation.
Opposed to absolutism is relativism. Relativists
regard the diversity of values as real: there are many
values and there are many ways of combining and
312
ranking them. There is no objective standard that
could be appealed to in resolving disagreements
about values. A good society, however, requires
some consensus about what is to be valued in it. The
political arrangements of a good society reflect this
consensus, and the arrangements change as the con-
sensus does. What counts as value is what is valued
in a particular context. This is not to say that values
and the political arrangements that reflect them can-
not be justified or criticized. They can be, but the
reasons that are given for or against them count as
reasons only in a particular context. The reasons ap-
peal to the prevailing consensus, and they will not
and are not meant to persuade those who are not
part of the consensus. The ultimate appeal of rela-
tivists is to point at their arrangements and say: this
is what we value here. If relativism takes a conser-
vative form, it often results in a romantic celebration
of national identity, of the spirit of a people and an
age, of the shared landscape, historical milestones,
ceremonies, stylistic conventions, manners, and rit-
uals that unite a society.
Just as absolutism is naturally allied to metaphys-
ics, so relativism is readily combined with fideism.
If there is no discernible moral order in reality, then
the best guide to the political arrangements that fos-
ter good lives is history. But the history of one society
is different from the history of another. It is only to
be expected therefore that political arrangements
will correspondingly differ. Relativists appear to
have the advantage of avoiding the dangers of dog-
matism and repression that so often engulf absolut-
ism. But in fact relativism is equally prone to them.
First, because the world is full of people and socie-
ties whose values are hostile to those of the relativ-
ists’ society, there is much the more reason to guard
jealously their own values. Second, because the jus-
tification of values is the consensus that prevails in
the society, any value becomes justifiable just so long
as many people in the society favor it. SLAVERY, fe-
male circumcision, the maltreatment of minorities,
child prostitution, the mutilation of criminals, blood
feuds, BRIBERY, and many awful political arrange-
ments may thus become sanctioned by relativists on
the ground that that is what happens to be valued
in that context.
These pitfalls of absolutism and relativism make
them unreliable sources of reasons for evaluating
political arrangements. It is with some relief then
that conservatives may turn to pluralism as an inter-

mediate position between these dangerous extremes.
According to pluralists, there is an objective stan-
dard, but it is applicable only to values that must be
recognized by all political arrangements that foster
good lives. The standard is not sufficiently objective,
however, to apply to all the many diverse values that
may contribute to good lives. The standard is a min-
imal one. It underdetermines the nature of good
lives. It regards some political arrangements as nec-
essary for good lives, and it allows for a generous
plurality of possible political arrangements beyond
the necessary minimum. The standard thus accom-
modates part of the universalistic aspiration of ab-
solutism and part of the historicist orientation of rel-
ativism. Absolutism prevails in the realm of moral
necessity; relativism prevails in the realm of moral
possibility.
The source of this standard is human nature.
Good lives depend on the satisfaction of basic phys-
iological, psychological, and social needs: for nutri-
tion, shelter, and rest; for companionship, SELF-
RESPECT, and the hope for a good or better life; for
the division of labor, justice, and predictability in
human affairs; and so forth. The satisfaction of these
needs is an objective requirement of all good lives,
whatever the social context may be in which they are
lived. If the political arrangements of a society foster
their satisfaction, that is a reason for having and con-
serving them; if the political arrangements hinder
their satisfaction, that is a reason for reforming
them. Pluralists think that beyond this minimum
there is a plurality of values, ways of ranking them,
and conceptions of a good life embodying these val-
ues and rankings. This is why they think that human
nature underdetermines the content of good lives.
Pluralism shapes conservatism in two important
ways. First, it provides an objective reason in favor
of political arrangements that protect the minimum
requirements and against those that violate them. It
gives direction to justified reforms. It makes it pos-
sible to draw reasonable comparisons among differ-
ent societies on the basis of how well or badly they
protect the conditions all good lives need. Pluralistic
conservatism thus avoids the objection to relativism
that it sanctions any political arrangement that a
wide enough consensus supports. Second, it makes
conservatives receptive to the view that the best
guide to the political arrangements that a society
ought to have beyond the minimum level is the his-
tory of the society. It is that history, rather than any
313
conservatism
metaphysical consideration, that is most likely to
provide the relevant considerations for or against
the political arrangements that present themselves
as possibilities in a society. It is thus that pluralistic
conservatism avoids the dangers of dogmatism and
repression that beset absolutism.
The third distinction is between individuals and
the society in which they live. Human nature is es-
sentially social. The individual and social constitu-
ents of human lives are inextricably mixed. That,
however, leaves it open which constituent should be
dominant. If the individual constituent dominates
over the social one, the desirable political arrange-
ments will foster autonomy at the expense of AU-
THORITY. If the social constituent is dominant, the
favored political arrangements will place authority
over autonomy.
Putting autonomy before authority assumes that
good lives cannot involve the submission of individ-
uals to some form of social authority. If this were so,
no military or devoutly religious life, no life in static,
traditional, hierarchical societies, no life, that is, that
involves the subordination of the individual’s will
and judgment to what is regarded as a higher pur-
pose, could be good. This would require regarding
as bad the vast majority of lives that fail to conform
to a recent and local Western ideal. The mistake is
to slide from the reasonable view that autonomous
lives may be good to the unreasonable view that a
life cannot be good unless it is autonomous. More-
over, if a good society fosters the good lives of the
individuals who live in it, then giving precedence to
autonomy over authority cannot be right because au-
tonomous lives may be bad. The most casual reflec-
tion on history shows that authority often has to pre-
vail over the autonomy of fanatics, criminals, fools,
and crazies, if a society is indeed dedicated to fos-
tering good lives.
The problems of letting authority override auton-
omy are no less serious. Lives cannot be good just
because some authority pronounces them to be
such. Whether they are good must ultimately be
evaluated by the individuals who live them. Their
evaluations may of course be influenced by the pre-
scriptions of an authority. But no matter how strong
that influence is, it cannot override the ultimate au-
tonomy of individuals in evaluating what is good for
them. As the lamentable historical record shows,
this has not prevented countless authorities from
stigmatizing individuals who reject their prescrip-
conservatism
tions as heretics, infidels, class enemies, malad-
justed, living with false consciousness, or in a state
of sin. The result is a repressive society whose dog-
matism is reinforced by specious moralizing.
Which constituent of good lives should then be
regarded decisive? The answer, as before, is to es-
chew the extremes and look for an intermediate po-
sition that accommodates the salvageable portions
of both. Autonomy and authority are both necessary
for good lives. Instead of endlessly arguing about
their comparative importance, it is far more illumi-
nating to try to understand the connection between
them. That connection is that they are parts of two
interdependent aspects of the same underlying ac-
tivity: individuals trying to make good lives for
themselves. The two aspects of this activity are the
individual and the social; autonomy and authority
are their respective parts; and the connecting link
between them is tradition. The intermediate position
that is reasonably favored by conservatives may
therefore be called traditionalism.
A tradition is a set of customary beliefs, practices,
and actions that has endured from the past to the
present and attracted the allegiance of people so that
they wish to perpetuate it. Traditions may be reli-
gious, horticultural, scientific, athletic, political, sty-
listic, moral, aesthetic, commercial, medical, legal,
military, educational, architectural, and so on. They
permeate human lives. When individuals form their
conceptions of a good life, what they are to a very
large extent doing is deciding which traditions they
should participate in. The decisions may reflect
thoughtful choices, thoughtless conformity to famil-
iar patterns, or something in between. The bulk of
the activities of individuals concerned with living in
ways that strike them as good is composed of par-
ticipation in the various traditions of their society.
As they participate in them, they of course exer-
cise their autonomy. But they do so in the frame-
works of various traditions which authoritatively
provide them with both the relevant choices and the
standards that within the tradition determine what
choices are reasonable or unreasonable. Their exer-
cise of autonomy is the individual aspect of their
conformity to the authority of their traditions that is
the social aspect of what they are doing. They act
autonomously by following the authoritative pat-
terns of the traditions to which they feel allegiance.
To understand their conduct in terms of autonomy
is as one-sided as it is to do so in terms of authority.
314
Both play an essential role, and understanding what
is going on requires understanding both the roles
they play and what makes them essential.
Traditionalism rests on this understanding, and it
is a political response to it. The response is to main-
tain political arrangements that foster the partici-
pation of individuals in the various traditions that
have historically endured in their society. The reason
for fostering them is that good lives depend on par-
ticipation in a variety of traditions. Traditions are
not independent of each other. They overlap, form
parts of each other, and problems and questions oc-
curring in one are often resolved in terms of another.
Most traditions have legal, moral, political, aes-
thetic, stylistic, managerial, and a multitude of other
aspects. Furthermore, people participating in one
tradition necessarily bring with them the beliefs, val-
ues, and practices of many other of the traditions in
which they also participate. Changes in one tradi-
tion, therefore, are most likely to produce changes
in others. That is why changes in one tradition are
like waves that reverberate throughout the other tra-
ditions of a society. Some of these changes are for
the better, others for the worse. Most of them, how-
ever, are complex, have consequences that grow
more unpredictable the more distant they are, and
thus tend to escape from human control. Since these
changes are changes in the traditions on which good
lives depend, conservative traditionalists regard
changes with extreme caution. They want them to
be no greater than what is necessary for remedying
some specific defect. They are opposed to experi-
mental, general, or large changes because of their
uncertain effects on good lives.
Changes, of course, are often necessary because
traditions may be vicious, destructive, stultifying,
nay-saying, and thus not conducive to good lives. It
is part of the purpose of the prevailing political ar-
rangements to draw distinctions among traditions
that are unacceptable, suspect but tolerable, or wor-
thy of encouragement. Traditions that violate the
minimum requirements of human nature should be
prohibited. Traditions that have historically shown
themselves to make questionable contributions to
good lives should be tolerated but not encouraged.
Traditions whose historical record testifies to their
importance for good lives should be cherished.
It follows that a conservative society that is skep-
tical, pluralistic, and traditionalist will be in favor of
limited government. The purpose of its political ar-

rangements will not be to impose on people some
conception of a good life. The political arrangements
of a limited government will interfere as little as pos-
sible with the many indigenous traditions that flour-
ish among the people subject to it. The purpose of
its arrangements will be to enable people to live as
they please, rather than to force them to live in a
particular way. One of the most important ways of
accomplishing this is to have a wide plurality of tra-
ditions as a bulwark between individuals and the
government that has power over them.
The fourth distinction is between the perfectibil-
ity and CORRUPTION of human nature. As before,
conservatives occupy an intermediate position be-
tween these extremes. Conservatives tend to be pes-
simists because they take a dim view of progress.
They do not foolishly deny that science, TECHNOL-
OGY, medicine, communication, management, edu-
cation, and so forth have changed human lives for
the better. But they have also changed them for the
worse. The stock of human possibilities has been
enlarged, but with more possibilities come more
evils. Conservatives tend to be pessimistic because
they doubt that more possibilities will make lives on
the whole better. Their doubt is based on what they
believe are permanent conditions that stand in the
way of significant improvement in the human
condition.
Conservatism has been called the politics of im-
perfection. This rightly suggests that conservatives
reject the idea of human perfectibility. But it is worse
than a bad joke to call world wars, the GENOCIDE of
numerous peoples, tyrannies, systematic TORTURE,
and other horrors imperfections. Conservatives are
much more impressed by the prevalence of EVIL than
this label implies. They think that its prevalence is a
permanent condition that cannot be significantly al-
tered because the imperfection is in human beings.
Conservatives think that human beings are respon-
sible for much evil. To stop here, however, would be
shallow because the prevalence of evil reflects not
just a human propensity, but also a contingency that
influences what propensities human beings have and
develop. It influences human affairs independently
of human intentions. The human propensity for evil
is itself a manifestation of this deeper and more per-
vasive contingency, which operates through genetic
inheritance; environmental factors; the confluence
of events that places people at certain places at cer-
tain times; the crimes, accidents, pieces of fortune
315
conservatism
and misfortune that happen or do not happen; the
historical period, society, and family into which they
are born; and so forth.
The view of thoughtful conservatives, however, is
not one of human corruption, according to which
contingency makes human nature evil rather than
good. Their view is rather a realistic pessimism that
holds that whether the balance of good and evil pro-
pensities and their realization in people tilts one way
or another is a contingent matter over which human
beings and their political arrangements have insuf-
ficient control. The right sort of political arrange-
ments will help, of course; just as the wrong sort will
make matters worse. But even under the best con-
ceivable political arrangements contingency re-
mains, and it places beyond human control much
good and evil. The chief reason for this is that efforts
to control contingency are themselves subject to the
very contingency they aim to control. And that, of
course, is the fundamental reason why conservatives
are pessimistic and skeptical about the possibility of
a steady and overall improvement in the human
condition.
If the choice of political arrangements is governed
by this conservative attitude, it will result in arrange-
ments that look toward fostering what is taken to be
good and toward hindering what is regarded as evil.
Conservative political arrangements that aim to fos-
ter the good are committed to a familiar list of val-
ues: justice, freedom, the rule of law, order, EQUAL-
ITY, prosperity, CIVILITY, peace, HAPPINESS, and so
forth. There need be no significant difference be-
tween the conservative list and the ones liberals, so-
cialists, or others may draw up. There will still be
two significant differences, however, between con-
servative politics and the politics of others.
The first is that conservative politics is genuinely
pluralistic, whereas alternative approaches are not.
Liberals, socialists, and others are committed to re-
garding some few values on the above list as over-
riding. What makes them liberals, socialists, or
whatever is their claim that when the few values they
favor conflict with the less favored ones on the list,
then the ones they favor should prevail. Conserva-
tives reject this approach. Their commitment is to
the conservation of the whole system of values of a
society. Its conservation sometimes requires favor-
ing a particular value over another, sometimes the
reverse. And they hold this to be true for each of the
values. Conservatives differ from others in refusing
conservatism
to make an a priori commitment to the overriding-
ness of any particular value or small number of
values.
The second significant difference between con-
servative politics and most current alternatives to it
is the stress conservatives place on political arrange-
ments that hinder evil. This difference is the direct
result of the pessimism of conservatives and the op-
timism of others. Their optimism is revealed by the
assumption that the prevalence of evil is the result
of bad political arrangements. If people were not
poor, oppressed, exploited, discriminated against,
and so forth, they optimistically suppose, then they
would be naturally inclined to live good lives. The
prevalence of evil, they assume, is the result of the
political corruption of human nature. What is
needed, therefore, are political arrangements that
foster the good. Conservatives do not think that evil
is prevalent merely because of bad political arrange-
ments. They think that one reason that political ar-
rangements are bad is that those who make them
have evil propensities. Political arrangements, after
all, are made by people and they are bound to reflect
the propensities of their makers. Since the propen-
sities are subject to contingencies over which human
control is insufficient, there is no guarantee what-
soever that political arrangements can be made
good. Nor that, if they were made good, they would
be sufficient to remain so and to hinder evil.
Conservatives insist, therefore, on the importance
of political arrangements that hinder evil: MORAL
EDUCATION, the enforcement of morality, the treat-
ment of people according to their moral merits or
demerits, the need for swift and severe PUNISHMENT
for serious crimes, and so on. They oppose the pre-
vailing attitudes that lead to agonizing over the crim-
inal and forgetting the crime, to perpetuating the
absurd fiction of a fundamental moral equality be-
tween habitual evil-doers and their victims, to guar-
anteeing the same freedom and welfare rights to
good and evil people, and so forth.
Political arrangements that are meant to hinder
evil are liable to abuse. Conservatives know and care
about the historical record that testifies to the dread-
ful things that have been done on the many occa-
sions when such arrangements have gone wrong.
The remedy, however, cannot be to refuse to make
the arrangements; it must be to learn from history,
improve existing arrangements, and try hard to
avoid their abuse. Conservatives know that in this
316
respect, as in all others, contingency will cause com-
plete success to elude all societies. But this is pre-
cisely the reason why political arrangements are nec-
essary for hindering evil. Their pessimism will lead
conservatives to expect the worst and try to deny
scope to it.
The strongest version of conservatism, then, is a
political morality that favors political arrangements
that reflect skepticism, pluralism, traditionalism,
and pessimism on the ground that that they are more
likely to foster good lives than alternatives to them.
See also: AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; AUTHOR-
ITY; CONVENTIONS; COSMOPOLITAN ETHICS; CUL-
TURAL STUDIES; DEMOCRACY; GOVERNMENT, ETHICS
IN; HISTORIOGRAPHY; HUMAN RIGHTS; HUMANISM; IN-
DIVIDUALISM; LIBERALISM; LIBERTARIANISM; MARX-
ISM; MERIT AND DESERT; METAPHYSICS AND EPISTE-
MOLOGY; MORAL ABSOLUTES; MORAL PLURALISM;
MORAL REALISM; MORAL RELATIVISM; MULTICULTUR-
ALISM; NATURAL LAW; NATURALISM; OPPRESSION;
POLITICAL SYSTEMS; PRESCRIPTIVISM; REVOLUTION;
SKEPTICISM IN ETHICS; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOS-
OPHY; SOCIAL CONTRACT; TOLERATION.
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version of conservatism.
———. Conservative Texts. New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1991. Anthology of conservative writings with a
bibliography.
Stephen, James Fitzjames. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
317
constructivism
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967. Con-
servative criticism of liberalism.
John Kekes
constructivism
A constructivist moral or political theory is a kind
of normative theory that derives the basic content of
its moral or political conception from a procedure
of construction that incorporates appropriate stan-
dards of PRACTICAL REASON. The key to constructiv-
ism is the notion of a procedure of construction and
the use of such a procedure to specify or derive the
content of a normative view. A procedure of con-
struction in this context is a hypothetical and ideal-
ized process of rational deliberation, choice, or
agreement, in which an agent, or group of agents, in
a specified set of circumstances, arrives at the ele-
ments of a normative conception—for example, by
choosing or agreeing on a set of fundamental moral
principles or principles of right action. The construc-
tivist holds that this procedure of construction is the
final criterion of what is right. That is, the basic prin-
ciples of right are those that result from the proce-
dure of construction, and there is no criterion in-
dependent of this procedure for determining the
principles of right. The outcome of this procedure,
whatever it is, defines what is right. As we shall see,
the constructivist denies the existence of a mind-
independent moral reality or order of moral facts,
and holds that moral principles are generated by
practical reasoning.
The idea of constructivism was introduced into
recent moral and political theory by the work of John
RAWLS. He first used the term in his 1980 paper
“Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” and de-
veloped the idea further in subsequent publications.
Rawls has focused on Kantian forms of constructiv-
ism, of which he discusses two examples—KANT’s
(1724–1804) moral theory and Rawls’s own theory
of justice. Both illustrate the basic feature of con-
structivism with which we began—the use of a pro-
cedure of construction to specify the content of a
moral or political conception.
In Kant’s moral theory, the Categorical Impera-
tive is the basis of a procedure of rational delibera-
tion through which conscientious agents can assess
the moral permissibility of their actions and estab-
lish claims about duty. What determines the moral
constructivism
status of an action is whether one can reasonably
will its maxim, or underlying principle—that is,
whether an agent can adopt the maxim as a result
of a process of deliberation that meets the standards
of practical reason, which include both the Hypo-
thetical Imperative and the Categorical Imperative.
Schematically, a conscientious agent deliberating
about how to act formulates a maxim that satisfies
the criteria of rationality expressed by the Hypo-
thetical Imperative. The Categorical Imperative is
then used to apply a further standard of universal
validity: one asks whether one can rationally and
without inconsistency adopt one’s maxim while at
the same time willing the maxim as a universal law.
If one’s maxim can rationally be willed as universal
law, it is permissible; if not, it must be rejected. In
this way, a complex procedure of rational delibera-
tion which includes a standard of universal validity
(the universalization of the maxim) specifies, or con-
structs the content of, the moral view by establishing
the status of particular maxims of action. Moreover,
this procedure determines what is right: what makes
a maxim permissible (or impermissible) is the fact
that it can (or cannot) be willed as universal law.
Arriving at sound moral principles is thus not the
discovery of an independent order of moral truths;
rather it is a question of determining what principles
of action it is reasonable to will.
Rawls’s theory of justice uses the device of the
choice made by the parties in the original position
as a construction for deriving two principles of so-
cial justice. The original position is designed to rep-
resent conditions that it is reasonable to impose on
principles of justice that regulate the basic structure
of society, and thus establish the basic terms of social
cooperation in a modern constitutional DEMOC-
RACY. In the original position, agents who possess
two moral powers—a capacity for a sense of justice
and a capacity to develop and pursue a conception
of the good, and who are moved by an interest in
advancing their own conception of the good are
placed behind a veil of ignorance. There they are
given the task of ranking competing conceptions of
social justice. The veil of ignorance in particular en-
sures that the original position represents a fair
choice between free and equal persons. Within these
constraints, the agents are free to rank alternative
conceptions of justice in terms of what is to their
individual advantage, choosing the conception that
offers the highest share of social primary goods.
318
Here it is important to note that the original position
incorporates two distinct notions of practical rea-
son, what Rawls terms the “reasonable” and the “ra-
tional.” Rationality is represented by the fact that the
parties are moved to secure their own INTERESTS and
rank alternative conceptions of justice in terms of
what is to their individual advantage. The use of the
veil of ignorance to set up a fair choice between free
and equal persons ensures that the choice is reason-
able and that the resulting principles are justifiable
to all citizens.
Rawls argues that it would be rational for the
agents in the original position to choose his two
principles over alternatives. In this way, the content
of social justice is established by determining what
it is rational for agents in the original position to
choose. Assuming that the original position incor-
porates the conditions that are reasonably imposed
on the choice of principles, including all the relevant
standards of practical reason, whatever the parties
would choose is the most reasonable conception of
justice for citizens of a modern democratic state.
Kant’s and Rawls’s constructivisms have differ-
ent aims: Kant develops a general conception of
right action, while Rawls is concerned to specify
principles for the basic structure of society that can
be the basis of a political conception of justice. But
their theories share structural similarities. For ex-
ample, in both, a conception of the person as moved
by two different forms of practical reason—the rea-
sonable and the rational—and a conception of a so-
ciety of such persons provide part of the basis of the
procedure of construction and play a role in gener-
ating the content of the normative conception. Both
theories represent the resulting principles as the
principles that persons conceived in a certain way
would choose for the domain in question.
Different constructivist theories are possible de-
pending on what is constructed, and how the pro-
cedure of construction is conceived. In addition to
constructivist accounts of basic moral requirements
and of principles of social justice, constructivist ac-
counts of the good are also possible. Likewise, the-
orists might employ procedures of construction
which incorporate different characterizations of the
agent or agents of construction, their interests and
aims, the circumstances of choice or deliberation,
and so on. The theories discussed so far are Kantian
forms of constructivism, but forms of constructiv-
ism that incorporate different conceptions of the

person and assumptions about practical reason are
possible. For the sake of simplicity, in the balance of
this entry we limit our attention to Kantian construc-
tivist accounts of basic moral principles.
Constructivist theories employ a distinctive ap-
proach to the justification of moral principles. As we
have seen they try to generate and to establish the
rational acceptability of a set of principles by show-
ing that they are the outcome of an appropriate pro-
cedure of construction. By incorporating suitable
starting points for moral theorizing (such as views
about the nature of persons or about the role of
moral principles in practical reasoning) and stan-
dards of practical reason, a procedure of construc-
tion is a representation of an ideal reasoner in this
sense: it represents the ideal application, from as-
sumptions that we accept, of the standards of prac-
tical reason to the task of specifying a set of moral
principles. The aim of the theory is to justify and
produce agreement on a set of moral principles by
showing us what principles we are committed to, or
would arrive at through correct and conscientious
reasoning from these assumptions. The construction
is thus a device used by a theorist to support or pro-
duce agreement on a moral conception. To be fully
‘constructive’ the theory must not simply describe
some idealized choice situation, but must use the
construction to generate a set of moral principles.
As Rawls has stressed, some of the distinctive fea-
tures of constructivism are most clearly seen by con-
trasting it with rational INTUITIONISM and MORAL
REALISM. Certain forms of moral realism are com-
mitted to a moral reality that is prior to and inde-
pendent of human attitudes and cognitive activity,
and thus take moral properties or facts to be mind-
independent features of the world. They thus con-
ceive the task of moral theory as the discovery of
moral truths, which is to be accomplished through
an exercise of theoretical reason. Objectivity in
ethics is rooted in this independent order of moral
facts, and moral judgments are correct when they
accurately represent these facts. In contrast, con-
structivists do not accept the existence of an inde-
pendent order of moral facts, but hold that moral
values and principles are constituted by human prac-
tical reasoning and cognitive activity. The way in
which principles are derived from the construction
provides a model of the way in which moral princi-
ples are grounded in practical reason and our self-
conception as persons.
319
constructivism
This contrast suggests two further features of
constructivism. First, constructivism provides a dis-
tinctive and appealing account of objectivity in
moral judgment which does not rely on a metaphys-
ically problematic order of moral facts. Objectivity
is secured by the standards of practical reasoning:
correct moral judgments are those arrived at
through the correct application of the standards of
practical reason that are incorporated into the pro-
cedure of construction. Second, for the constructiv-
ist the task of justification in moral theory is, as
Rawls says, a practical problem, not an epistemo-
logical problem. The aim is not to discover the truths
about right conduct or an independently existing or-
der of values. Rather, it is to arrive at moral princi-
ples that it is reasonable to endorse, or which can
be the object of reasonable agreement or consensus.
The need to agree on principles that a plurality of
agents can reasonably accept, or that best articulate
the shared self-conception or value commitments of
such agents, sets a task which is achieved through
the exercise of practical reason.
Some potential misunderstandings of the idea of
constructivism need to be addressed. First, the con-
structivist holds that basic moral principles are in
some sense generated by practical reasoning. How-
ever that is not to say that moral principles are a
human invention, or are the product of preferential
choice. Constructivism does not lead to SUBJECTIV-
ISM, but rather is standardly committed to some
form of objectivity in normative thought. Indeed, the
use of a construction to derive moral principles is a
way of providing an objective basis for morality. Sec-
ond, the constructivist does not conceive of princi-
ples as resulting from an actual agreement or choice.
The construction is a hypothetical agreement or
choice of IDEALIZED AGENTS, which the theorist may
use as a device for achieving consensus among
agents on a set of principles, or showing that they
are reasonably endorsed.
In order to make sense of the idea of a construc-
tion, one must be able to distinguish the elements
that go into the procedure of construction from the
principles that are its result. For example, since the
procedure is a device for determining what it is rea-
sonable for agents of a certain kind to choose or
agree on, it may incorporate certain normative stan-
dards, such as a standard of universal validity, or
other standards of practical rationality; one must be
able to distinguish the norms and standards that are
constructivism
built into the procedure from the substantive moral
principles that result, and to see how the latter are
arrived at through the former. This point raises sev-
eral questions. First, since the procedure of con-
struction must use certain elements, where do they
come from? The procedure of construction cannot
play its intended justificatory role unless the as-
sumptions and elements on which it is based are
themselves supported. In setting up the procedure
of construction, the theorist must employ standards
of practical reason and other notions (e.g., concep-
tions of the person, or of the social or practical role
of moral principles) that are deeply rooted in the
standpoint of practical deliberation, or that in some
other way have a wide currency that makes them a
suitable basis for deriving substantive moral princi-
ples. Furthermore, does the constructivist’s reliance
on standards of practical reason to ground objectiv-
ity in moral thought introduce an independent order
of moral truth, and thus, in the end, lead to a form
of moral realism? The constructivist can respond
that the standards of practical reason that provide
the basis of the procedure of construction do not
represent a moral reality or order of moral facts that
is independent of our cognitive capacities and self-
conception as persons. The constraints on choice
that are incorporated into the construction are based
on a conception of agency or of the person that is
operative in ordinary deliberation. In Kant’s theory,
for example, these constraints are taken to be con-
stitutive of rational agency. Thus there is no appeal
to an externally given order of moral facts.
See also: ACTION; CATEGORICAL AND HYPOTHETICAL
IMPERATIVES; COHERENTISM; CONTRACTARIANISM;
DELIBERATION AND CHOICE; DEMOCRACY; DUTY AND
OBLIGATION; FAIRNESS; IDEALIZED AGENTS; IMPAR-
TIALITY; KANT; KANTIAN ETHICS; MORAL REALISM;
MORAL RULES; NORMS; PRACTICAL REASON[ING]; RA-
TIONAL CHOICE; RATIONALITY VS. REASONABLENESS;
RAWLS; REFLECTIVE EQUILIBRIUM; RIGHT, CONCEPTS
OF; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
Bibliography
Barry, Brian. A Treatise on Social Justice. Vol. I: Theories
of Justice. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of Califor-
nia Press, 1989. See especially chapter 7.
Darwall, Stephen, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton. “To-
wards Fin de siècle Ethics: Some Trends.” Philosophi-
cal Review 101, no. 1 (1992): 115–89. Reprinted in
320
Moral Discourse and Practice, edited by Darwall et al.
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Gauthier, David. “Political Contractarianism.” Journal of
Political Philosophy 2 (1997): 132–48.
Hill, Thomas E., Jr. Dignity and Practical Reason. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1992. See especially chapters
10–11.
———. “A Kantian Perspective on Moral Rules.” In Phil-
osophical Perspectives. Vol. 6: Ethics, edited by James E.
Tomberlin. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview, 1992. Re-
printed in Hill’s Respect, Pluralism and Justice: Kant-
ian Perspectives. Oxford; New York: Oxford University
Press, 2000.
Korsgaard, Christine M. The Sources of Normativity.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1996.
Milo, Ronald. “Contractarian Constructivism.” Journal of
Philosophy 92, no. 4 (1995): 181–204.
O’Neill, Onora. Constructions of Reason: Explorations of
Kant’s Practical Philosophy. Cambridge and New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
———. Towards Justice and Virtue: A Constructive Ac-
count of Practical Reasoning. Cambridge and New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
———. “Constructivism in Rawls and Kant.” In The Cam-
bridge Companion to Rawls, edited by Samuel Free-
man. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2001.
Rawls, John. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1993; paperback edition, 1996.
———. “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory.” Jour-
nal of Philosophy 77, no. 9 (1980): 515–72. Reprinted
in John Rawls: Collected Papers. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1999.
———. “Themes in Kant’s Moral Philosophy.” In Kant’s
Transcendental Deductions, edited by Eckart Förster.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989. Reprinted
in John Rawls: Collected Papers, Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1999.
Andrews Reath
contraception
See reproductive technologies.
contractarianism
Contractarianism is a family of views which seek to
justify morality or political INSTITUTIONS by refer-
ence to rational agreement. We are, according to this
tradition, to think of morality or of legitimate states
as objects of some sort of SOCIAL CONTRACT. The
general idea is that a morality or a form of political
organization is to be justified by being shown to be

the outcome of the rational agreement of the indi-
viduals over whom it has AUTHORITY. This general
idea may take many different forms, and we need to
distinguish between different sorts of contractarian
theory, as well as between different purposes to
which it may be put.
Forms of Contractarianism
Contractarianism may be moral or political or
both. Moral contractarianism, we shall say, is the
attempt to justify morality, or part of morality (e.g.,
justice), by reference to agreement. Political con-
tractarianism is a normative—usually, but not nec-
essarily, moral—theory of political institutions (e.g.,
the state, law). Thomas HOBBES (1588–1679), John
LOCKE (1632–1704), and Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU
(1712–1778) are usually thought of as political con-
tractarians, transforming a late medieval tradition of
political thought that sought the basis for political
rule in agreement between ruler and ruled. But while
Locke explicitly invokes a noncontractarian, NATU-
RAL LAW conception of morality, Hobbes and Rous-
seau have been interpreted as moral as well as po-
litical contractarians. And some find contractarian
elements in David HUME’s (1711–1776) account of
justice and PROPERTY.
Moral contractarianism, our main concern in this
entry, is the older tradition. It appears to have been
a view defended by many of the Greek SOPHISTS,
and it is best known to contemporary philosophers
through PLATO’s (c. 430–347 B.C.E.) Glaucon in the
Republic, who challenges Socrates to rebut the com-
mon understanding of justice. The view Glaucon ex-
presses is that justice consists in NORMS and CON-
VENTIONS (nomoi) securing a mutually beneficial
COMPROMISE between people with conflicting aims
or INTERESTS. And the same idea can also be found
in EPICURUS (341–270 B.C.E.), who asserts justice
to be “a pledge of mutual advantage to restrain men
from harming one another and save them from being
harmed . . . a kind of compact.”
The contemporary revival of moral contractari-
anism is due in no small part to the influence of the
American philosopher John RAWLS. In his classic pa-
per, “Justice as Fairness” (1958), and later in his in-
fluential book, A Theory of Justice (1971), Rawls
develops a basically contractarian account of justice,
understood as a virtue of social institutions. In the
book he explains that his
321
contractarianism
aim is to present a conception of justice
which generalizes and carries to a higher
level of abstraction the familiar theory of the
social contract as found, say, in Locke,
Rousseau, and Kant. In order to do this we
are not to think of the original contract as
one to enter a particular society or to set up a
particular form of government. Rather, the
guiding idea is that the principles of justice
for the basic structure of society are the
object of the original agreement. They are the
principles that free and rational persons
concerned to further their own interests
would accept in an initial position of equality
as defining the fundamental terms of their
association. These principles are to regulate
all further agreements; they specify the kinds
of social cooperation that can be entered into
and the forms of government that can be
established.
Justice, on this view, consists of those principles that
rational people would propose and acknowledge,
with limited knowledge, behind “a veil of igno-
rance,” as appropriate for the adjudication of dis-
putes that arise in a society or system of practices.
Rawls argues that two distinctively nonutilitarian
principles would be chosen in “the original posi-
tion,” taking issue with John Harsanyi who thinks
that this sort of construction would favor a utilitar-
ian principle. The debate between Rawls and Har-
sanyi may be understood to be one regarding the
nature and content of basic moral principles, the dis-
agreement being Rawls’s argument favors his fa-
mous two principles of justice while Harsanyi’s simi-
lar construction favors a type of UTILITARIANISM.
While the main issues between them may appear to
concern somewhat technical questions about RA-
TIONAL CHOICE under (complete) uncertainty, we
may think of their common contractarianism as a
method for adjudicating between their two concep-
tions of the demands of morality. Contractarianism
here is a type of decision procedure, a method for
determining the nature and content of fundamental
moral or political principles. The Canadian philos-
opher David Gauthier also views contractarian the-
ory in this way, frequently invoking Rawls’s remark,
“The theory of justice is a part, perhaps the most
significant part, of the theory of rational choice.”
Gauthier favors different principles than either
contractarianism
Rawls or Harsanyi. The quarrel between these con-
tractarians, then, may be understood in part to be
one regarding the nature and content of the princi-
ples that would be chosen, under specified ideal con-
ditions, by rational agents. The three disagree as well
about the “ideal conditions” that should frame the
choice of moral principles, so the quarrel between
them is not merely a seemingly technical one about
rational choice. Rather, it reflects complex disagree-
ments about the nature and purpose of contractarian
moral theory.
We may think, then, of contractarianism first of
all as a decision or discovery procedure; we are to
determine what morality (or the polity) asks of us
by ascertaining what we would agree to under cer-
tain conditions. Rawls’s remark, now disowned, that
moral or political theory is part of the theory of ra-
tional choice, however, suggests another possible
aim or purpose of contractarianism, one that is ex-
plicit in Gauthier’s writings, as well as in much of
late medieval and early modern political contractar-
ianism. If the theory of rational choice instructs as
to how it is rational to choose or to act, and if moral
theory is part of rational choice theory, then moral
theory also determines how it is rational to choose
or to act. On this view, moral theory instructs agents
as to REASONS FOR ACTION. Specifically, the fact that
certain principles or practices are determined by
rational agreement is thought to be a reason for ac-
cepting and abiding by them. We contrast, then, con-
tractarianism as (1) a decision or discovery proce-
dure for moral theory and contractarianism as (2) a
way to provide reasons for the acceptance of and
compliance with morality.
If one wishes to understand the differences be-
tween the various forms of contemporary contrac-
tarianism, it is important to see that these aims are
not the same. Both aims may be understood to pre-
suppose a view of morality or of political society as
a cooperative venture for mutual advantage, to use
another of Rawls’s phrases, but one aim may be met
without the other. It may be that the outcome of
hypothetical rational agreement determines the na-
ture and content of fundamental moral principles
without agents necessarily being provided thereby
with reasons for action. Compliance may be another
matter, for ideally rational agreement will not always
suffice to ensure that individuals in certain situations
have reason to act in accord with mutually advan-
tageous principles. Specifically, the “free-rider prob-
322
lem”—the temptation of rational agents in certain
situations to take advantage of the cooperative be-
havior of others—remains. By contrast, other theo-
rists think that rational agreement can provide rea-
sons for compliance; this seems to have been the
view of Hobbes in his answer to the Foole, and it
certainly is the view of Gauthier. The two aims of
contractarianism are independent, and one does not
entail the other. Gauthier would espouse both aims.
Rawls and Harsanyi seem to invoke contractarian
agreement only as a discovery procedure.
Having discussed the aims of moral contractari-
anism, we should consider next the nature of the
rational agreement that is at the center of the ac-
count, where a number of distinctions need to be
made. First, we must distinguish between actual and
hypothetical agreement. Most contemporary con-
tractarians suppose the agreement that founds mo-
rality (or political society) to be hypothetical; we are
not to imagine that people actually gather and con-
tract. However, if we expand somewhat our under-
standing of a “social contract,” then many moral
conventionalists are contractarians of a kind, iden-
tifying morality with actual agreements of various
kinds. In The Nature of Morality (1977), Gilbert
Harman, invoking Hume, thinks of morality as con-
sisting in conventions “reached through a process of
implicit bargaining and mutual adjustment.” Theo-
rists like Rawls and Gauthier, who suppose that mo-
rality or justice are determined by a one-time agree-
ment involving all (or most) parties tend to be
hypothetical contractarians. Conventionalists like
Harman claim instead that tacit, nonhypothetical
agreements determine morality. Hume’s conven-
tionalist views on justice and property may be read
in this way as a species of actual moral contractari-
anism.
A social contract, whatever it is exactly, is sup-
posed to be a kind of agreement. As just noted, it
may be actual or hypothetical. Agreement here turns
out to be ambiguous, which leads us to another im-
portant distinction between types of contractarian
theories. Agreement can be a species of CONSENT or
it can be something else. It is hard to see how hy-
pothetical agreement could count as genuine con-
sent. Actual agreement, suitably constrained (e.g.,
the absence of force or fraud), will normally count
as consent, but hypothetical “consent” does not en-
gage the will in the requisite manner; it is not an act
of the person. Hypothetical agreement, while not

consensual, can often be, just like actual consent,
evidence of advantage; what is agreed to serves the
agent’s interests or ends. Especially if the hypothet-
ical agreement is informed and otherwise con-
strained—e.g., the agents reason prudently or
nonaltruistically—the outcome may be considered
mutually advantageous. Agreement, then, can be a
species of consent, perhaps committing agents to
principles or courses of actions, or it can merely be
evidence of advantage, establishing that the out-
come of agreement is mutually beneficial. The dis-
tinction between (actual) agreement as consensual
and (hypothetical) agreement as evidence of benefit
is important, for many criticisms of contractarianism
apply only if agreement is understood to be a form
of consent, and consequently, only if agreement is
actual.
An act of consent usually commits or binds an
agent only if certain conditions obtain, for instance,
the absence of force or fraud. Further, the normative
properties of consent, stemming from the capacity
of agents to create duties or obligations by consen-
sual acts, seem to presuppose prior moral (or legal)
norms. If agreement is to obligate in ways analogous
to PROMISES (or CONTRACTS), certain moral (or le-
gal) practices must exist. Only theories that con-
strain agreement morally can understand it as con-
sensual in this way. An obvious distinction between
Hobbes and Locke’s political contractarianisms is
that for the latter contractarian agreement is morally
constrained (by natural law), whereas for the former
it is not (or so his theory is often read). That is, for
Locke consent can generate obligations only if the
constraints imposed by the laws of nature are re-
spected, which is to say only if certain moral con-
straints are not violated. For Hobbes, at least on this
familiar reading, there are no moral conditions that
constrain the sort of consent that can create obli-
gations. Rawls has made it clear that his theory is to
be understood as one where agreement is morally
constrained. By contrast, Gauthier’s theory is a mor-
ally unconstrained form of contractarianism. As the
examples show, this distinction applies equally to
moral as to political forms of the theory. So contrac-
tarian agreement may be morally constrained or un-
constrained. This means that it cannot be claimed
that the former’s project is less ambitious than the
latter’s. For Rawls’s kind of contractarianism, agree-
ment cannot be the ground of all of morality, insofar
as it presupposes moral constraints that are prior to
323
contractarianism
and independent of agreement, whereas for Gau-
thier morality is to be constructed entirely from non-
moral (yet normative) elements.
The Appeal of Contractarianism
There are a number of reasons for the popularity
of contractarianism in contemporary moral and po-
litical thought. The possible advantages, theoretical
and practical, of the approach to morals are several.
First of all, recalling one of our distinctions, con-
tractarianism may offer a decision or discovery pro-
cedure for ethics (and political theory). The content
of part, possibly all, of morality may be determined
by asking what we would agree to under certain con-
ditions. Such a procedure, it may be argued, makes
certain perennial disputes about ethics more trac-
table. Contractarianism is thus a possible response
to scepticism about moral knowledge. Second, con-
tractarianism, understood as an attempt to provide
reasons for compliance, proposes an answer to the
familiar question, Why be moral? It may thus also
be a response to scepticism about reasons for acting
morally.
Third, the answers contractarianism provides to
questions regarding the nature and content of mo-
rality do not seem to presuppose very demanding
conceptions of reason or value. For instance, some
of the normative properties assumed by certain re-
alist accounts may be eschewed. It may be thus
thought that contractarianism has distinct meta-
physical advantages. However, given the complexity
of the debate over MORAL REALISM, it is not easy to
determine if contractarianism offers clear advan-
tages here. It seems more important to stress that
contractarianism may be equally compatible with a
number of different positions on the nature of value
and of normative properties. Sometimes it is said
that contractarianism is committed to subjectivist
and instrumentalist conceptions of PRACTICAL REA-
SON. But this sort of claim does not survive exami-
nation of the variety of contemporary contractarian
theories. While some contractarians follow Hobbes
and Hume in denying that practical reason can de-
termine the ends of action, others seem comfortable
with nonsubjectivist accounts of reason and value.
Similarly, it is often said that contractarianism is
committed to a (falsely) self-interested conception
of humans. While it is true that Rawls and Gauthier
assume, at least in some presentations of their ac-
contractarianism
counts, that hypothetical deliberators are mutually
disinterested, the approach generally seems to as-
sume only that agents have ends and that these per-
mit mutually beneficial cooperative arrangements.
So the approach seems compatible with a variety of
different views about value and practical reason.
Some Criticisms and Concerns
Criticisms of the contractarian tradition abound.
A problem with the formulation and assessment of
these, however, has been that it has not always been
clear which variant they target. With the distinctions
drawn in the first section, this task should be some-
what simpler. We shall enumerate, very briefly, some
of the standard worries.
One common criticism of moral contractarian-
ism, traceable to Hume, is that it begs the question.
Sometimes the argument is flat-footed: if contrac-
tarians reach moral conclusions, they must have im-
plicitly introduced moral premises. The more serious
versions of this criticism purport to discover moral
elements in the contractarian argument. Some con-
tractarians like Rawls admit moral elements in their
construction. Others like Gauthier deny any and
would regard the discovery of genuine moral ele-
ments in a particular contractarian construction as
a reason to reject it. For the latter the discovery of
moral elements in all such constructions would be
evidence for moral scepticism.
In recent years the most frequent criticism made
of contractarian theories is that some of their impli-
cations are counterintuitive. Typically, this criticism
takes one of two forms, owing to the structure of
contractarianism. The first may go as follows. Con-
tractarianism would have us derive our moral prin-
ciples and norms from rational agreement; then
these will reflect whatever determines that agree-
ment. For instance, if the parties are unequal in some
(independently) objectionable way, the outcome—
that is, the principles or norms—will also be (in-
dependently) objectionable. Different contractarian
theories address this worry differently, some impos-
ing moral or nonmoral constraints on the differences
between parties that may be taken into considera-
tion in the basic agreement, others constraining
agreement by modeling the original position as one
of uncertainty or RISK. Rawls, for instance, imposes
“a veil of ignorance” preventing parties to the agree-
ment from knowing their identities; Harsanyi would
324
have us suppose that we could be any one of the
people in society and that, given that we have no
knowledge of the relevant likelihoods, we should as-
sume that there is an equal chance that we are any
one particular individual. The desired effect of these
devices is to filter out the apparently objectionable
features of the pre-agreement position. If we do not
know who we are, or what positions we might oc-
cupy, then the agreement should not reflect these
features or be unduly biased in various ways. Other
contractarians, however, do not think that there are
independent substantive standards for determining
what outcomes of agreement are objectionable and
do not impose any of these devices on choice in the
original position.
The second form typically taken by the accusation
of counterintuitiveness is due to the manner in
which contractarianism determines what might be
called scope or membership. According to this tra-
dition, moral principles—or at least principles of
justice—bind only (or principally) those who are
parties to the basic agreement. The question, then,
is who is a member of this original agreement? Many
theories slide over this important question. One an-
swer tacitly given is all rational persons or all mem-
bers of a society; however, this seems question-
begging. Another is all rational persons in “the
circumstances of justice.” These are the conditions
that give rise, it is claimed, to the particular virtue
of justice. They include two sorts of conditions:
(1) rough EQUALITY of physical and mental pow-
ers, vulnerability to attack, moderate scarcity; and
(2) consciousness of the latter, and awareness of
conflict as well as of some identity of interest. Mod-
erate scarcity is relative to the ends of people and is
understood to include variability of supply, thus al-
lowing the possibility of mutually beneficial coop-
eration. Humans presumably find themselves most
of the time in the circumstances of justice, that is,
in situations where cooperative, constrained behav-
ior is mutually beneficial, given their preferences.
Many objections to contractarianism stem from
the limited scope of moral norms that appears to be
entailed by this doctrine of the circumstances of jus-
tice. We must distinguish two questions of scope:
determining the set of individuals who have duties
and determining the set of individuals (or entities)
to whom duties are owed. If we think of moral
standing as the state of being owed (some) moral
consideration, then we may reformulate these con-

cerns as follows: contractarianism is objectionable
either because it does not recognize the moral stand-
ing of some individuals (e.g., the infirm and helpless,
nonhumans) or it wrongly accords different individ-
uals different degrees of moral standing (e.g., chil-
dren, fetuses, the unproductive).
Critics, however, have not generally noted one of
the most interesting and perhaps most unusual fea-
tures of the manner in which contractarian theories
are led to understand moral standing. Insofar as
these theories generate (rather than presuppose)
moral relations between individuals from agreement
in the circumstances of justice, then, assuming a cer-
tain degree of variety in the conditions in which peo-
ple find themselves, moral relations between people
will be many-faceted and overlapping. That is, moral
standing is likely to be a pairwise or many-place
relation, binding different people to each other in
different ways. The contrast is with the implicit univ-
ocal understanding of moral standing in the contem-
porary literature, especially APPLIED ETHICS, where
it is tacitly assumed that it is like egalitarian citizen-
ship—namely, a single, equivalent state that does
not permit differentiation of status. Contractarian-
ism, however, may call this assumption into ques-
tion. Also, depending on the multiplicity of moral
relations between people and groups, the indeter-
minacy of many contractarian accounts may frus-
trate those who look to moral theory for guidance
on practical questions.
Beyond the general idea of rational agreement as
determining or justifying (part of) morality, it is not
clear how much contractarian accounts need have
in common, especially if certain conventionalist the-
ories are included in the family. Perhaps for this rea-
son it may be best to think of contractarianism as an
approach to moral theory rather than a distinctive
theory in itself.
See also: BARGAINING; COMPROMISE; CONSENT; CON-
TRACTS; CONVENTIONS; COOPERATION, CONFLICT,
AND COORDINATION; DELIBERATION AND CHOICE;
FAIRNESS; GOVERNMENT, ETHICS IN; HOBBES; HUME;
IDEAL OBSERVERS; INSTITUTIONS; JUSTICE, CIRCUM-
STANCES OF; NATURAL LAW; NORMS; POLITICAL
SYSTEMS; PRACTICAL REASON[ING]; PROMISES; PROP-
ERTY; RATIONAL CHOICE; RAWLS; ROUSSEAU; SKEP-
TICISM IN ETHICS; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSO-
PHY; SOCIAL CONTRACT.
325
contractarianism
Bibliography
Diggs, B. J. “A Contractarian View of Respect for Per-
sons.” American Philosophical Quarterly 18 (1981):
273–83.
Epicurus. “Principal Doctrines.” In The Stoic and Epicu-
rean Philosophers, edited by W. Oates. New York: Ran-
dom House, 1940. See especially paragraph XXXI.
Gauthier, David. Morals by Agreement. Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1986. The major statement of the author’s
neo-Hobbist moral theory.
———. Moral Dealing. Ithaca and London: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1990. The essay, “Justice as Social
Choice” (1984), reprinted as chapter 9, is an accessible
statement of the author’s theory.
Grice, Geoffrey Russell. The Grounds of Moral Judge-
ment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.
Harman, Gilbert. The Nature of Morality. New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1977. See especially chapter 9.
Harsanyi, John. Essays on Ethics, Social Behavior, and
Scientific Explanation. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1976. See
especially the two early reprinted articles, “Cardinal
Utility in Welfare Economics and the Theory of Risk
Taking” (1953) and “Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic
Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility”
(1955).
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Edited by Edwin Curley. In-
dianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1994 (1651).
Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. 2d ed. edited
by L. A. Selby-Bigge, with text revised and variant
readings by P. H. Niddich. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1978 [1740]. See Book III, Part II.
Kavka, Gregory S. Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.
Plato. Republic. Translated by G. M. A. Grube. Indianap-
olis: Hackett, 1974. See especially 358e2–359b1.
Rawls, John. “Justice as Fairness.” Philosophical Review
67 (1958): 164–94. An early statement of the author’s
view of justice.
———. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1971. See esp. pp. 11, 16.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. On the Social Contract. Trans-
lated by Judith R. Masters, edited by Roger D. Masters.
New York: St. Martin’s, 1978 [1762].
Scanlon, Thomas. “Contractualism and Utilitarianism.” In
Utilitarianism and Beyond, edited by Amartya Sen and
Bernard Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982.
———. What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998. See
esp. chapter 5, “The Structure of Contractualism.”
Christopher W. Morris
contracts
contracts
The commonsense moral basis for the modern com-
mon law of contracts is found in the value placed on
keeping agreements made. An agreement—initially
understood here as an exchange of PROMISES —is
something of greater moral significance than merely
the coexistence of freestanding promises made by
two people each one to the other. Although every
promise prima facie ought to be kept, welching, as
it were, is worse than failing to deliver on a bare
promise. The moral difference can be shown by
comparing a victim’s permissible response to a
breach of each kind. Outside an agreement, one
ought to perform one’s own promise whatever the
other person does about his own, and one should
not answer back by breaking one’s own promise
even though one has suffered a breach. However, the
moral consequence of an agreement broken is that
the victim is under no necessity still to perform (con-
tent aside) and would feel additionally betrayed if
she already has. In other words, from within an
agreement, nonperformance by the innocent party is
not tainted as retaliation and a regretted perfor-
mance is not colored by resentment. If this is true,
then it reveals the idea that, other things being equal,
breaching an agreement is more culpable than
breaking a promise. ‘Gift promises’—as they are
called in law—make less of a prima facie moral de-
mand on their agents than do ‘bargained-for’ prom-
ises. But why should this be? The idea is that one’s
right to a performance (measured against counter-
vailing reasons) becomes stronger because one has
given one’s own promise as that which secures the
other’s promise. My duty becomes more stringent
for me when you have given back your promise (or
act) for the promise that I gave (or do give). A kind
of mutual indebtedness arises and thus promises
made within agreements ‘perfect’ the positions of
the parties, i.e., yield stronger RIGHTS. That kind of
augmentation—all else being equal—has not oc-
curred when the promises are made to render gra-
tuities, as it were, to one another. It will mean that
within an agreement actions otherwise of small mo-
ment become obligatory. One might even suggest
that an agreement often converts a matter of mere
ETIQUETTE into a matter of ethics, fully bolstering
the conduct independently of its normally neutral
content. It would appear clear therefore that the fact
of exchange is morally significant.
326
The common law of contracts (excluding so-
called contracts under seal, which are not of interest
here) has followed moral commonsense to this de-
gree by seeking to enforce only those promises
grounded on an exchange; other promises standing
alone are said to lack ‘consideration’. Finding that a
contract does have consideration simply means, at
its most abstract, that there has been an exchange.
This exchange consists of either promises each for
the other or of an act for a promise. The former is
called a ‘bilateral contract’ (the plainest case of ‘an
agreement’) and the latter is called ‘unilateral’; both
these forms need to be understood for they appear
within commonsense morality as well as law. In an
established bilateral agreement, each party is a
promisee as each also is a promiser; indeed, by an
offeree’s act of promising what an offeror requests,
he makes himself into a promisee of that party,
because acceptance ‘activates’ the promise of the of-
feror (to the offeree). In the case of unilateral agree-
ments, on the other hand, one receives a nonprom-
issory act, satisfying the condition on one’s promise
set with respect to it. (I offer another a sum of money
should he repair a car I’ve asked him to. My accep-
tance, and consequent duty to pay, does not exist
prior to the job’s completion; the other’s failure
would not be a breach of contract, because he did
not promise to repair it. But once he does fix the car,
my promise to pay is triggered and the mechanic can
speak of ‘the agreement that we had’).
Given that the notion of an agreement or an ex-
change is so general and abstract, the courts have
felt compelled to say—as a matter of theory if not
practice—that they will not assess the substantive
or comparative value of the content of the promises
made; this is the so-called issue of adequacy of con-
sideration. While receiving back something volun-
tarily for what one gives stamps an added impor-
tance per se on the relationship, the effects of this
differ between law and morality. The fact that an
exchange occurred is sufficient but not necessary to
make a moral difference to a promise (a difference,
of course, that need not determine the final moral
judgment), and the presence of an exchange is nec-
essary but not sufficient—as we shall see—to make
a legal difference to a promise (its existence as such
cannot determine a legal outcome). In the case of
the bare or ‘gift’ promise one’s claim to a perfor-
mance—this again is significance without regard to
substantive promissory content—is weaker morally

and nonexistent legally because one had not altered
one’s position to get the promise. It is also worth
noting that in forming (creating) a legal contract,
one does not ‘alter one’s position’ by doing that
which gives another a legal right to one’s perfor-
mance; putting oneself under that sort of legal lia-
bility is a consequence of having made a contract,
not an element in its formation. (That contract ex-
perts at one time made this mistake about consid-
eration was called by one great contracts lawyer ‘a
secret paradox of the common law’ [Pollock]. It is
similar to the problem in SOCIAL CONTRACT theory
of grounding the original Contract on the obligation
of promises and then securing all duties, including
promissory obligation, upon the basis of the Con-
tract.) Furthermore, that a promisee may have ac-
tively counted on the performance is not relevant
(according to common law doctrine) to the question
of whether a contract was formed; reliance on a con-
tract cannot occur in advance of the contract’s ex-
istence. Depending on the background of the situa-
tion, injurious reliance on a contract-yet-to-be might
be actionable in tort or restitution and it would be
sympathetically regarded in morality.
Much of the bulk of contract law is about when
one is not bound by the agreements one common-
sensically made or seems to have made. So having
established consideration through an exchange is
only one essential step, despite its theoretic central-
ity. To achieve what is sufficient in law is mainly a
matter of avoiding various vitiating factors. Perhaps
the contract is of a kind that (by statute) needs to
be in writing, for example, as with the sale of land.
Here the common law had said the unwritten con-
tract is ‘valid but unenforceable.’ This was a way of
declaring that writing is never required to achieve
validity of a contract but it may be required, as in
this case, if a court is to enforce it. (‘Enforcement’
is remedying the breach. One should note here that
this does not often mean ordering the defecting side
to do what it had promised to do—that is the so-
called remedy of specific performance. The usual
remedy is money damages.) Behind the recognition
of various flaws which vitiate contracts will often
lurk moral concerns. In the case of ‘unenforceable’
contracts for land, it was the effort to ward off fraud-
ulent claims, claims less easily made when there is
writing. There are the obvious examples of void con-
tracts over immoral or illegal subjects, or contracts
that might seek to take advantage of infirmities or
327
contracts
legal infancy, or involve misrepresentations over
contract terms. But moral concern is not the only
issue in questions of vitiation.
Whether an agreement exists is simply concep-
tually interesting. This shows up in the area of Mis-
take, and requires a full analysis of the concept of
an agreement. Various misunderstandings are pos-
sible which reveal that the parties were not in agree-
ment. Must they have been in agreement to have an
agreement? (Such issues may not be often recog-
nized, say, by those who discuss BARGAINING.) Of
course considerations of what would be just for a
court to do will enter in when trying to sort out the
effects of innocent miscommunication. Some other
issues are these. Must the ‘accepter’ know of the
contract offer to bring a contract into existence? If
so, then those who deliver up lost children while in
ignorance of a reward’s being offered have no legal
claim to the money. Or, what happens in the case of
fraudulent misrepresentations of personal identity?
Must the party who accepts always be the party ad-
dressed in the offer? Certain aspects of these prob-
lems seem strictly conceptual, though they attract
interest because of the harms generated.
Were the requirement of exchange treated as le-
gally sufficient (and not merely necessary) for a
binding contract, many agreements would entail un-
wanted liabilities, e.g., casual social bargains be-
tween friends, family arrangements meant to bind in
affection only, etc. These kinds of agreement may be
completely free of the usual vitiating elements and
will unquestionably satisfy the requirement of con-
sideration. Why should they not be actionable? The
common law answered that both parties did not in-
tend their arrangement to create legal relations—
despite the suit mounted by the plaintiff who must
perforce claim otherwise. This ‘no legal intentions’
formula, understood subjectively, is obviously too
broad because no one can escape a straightforward
business contract even if it were actually proved to
be true that neither party ever intended at the time
to go to court to seek enforcement. (This might be
altered if there is a written contract declaring the
arrangement to be binding in honor only.) The gen-
eral key, if it exists, is in being able to distinguish a
private realm of association from a public one, and
restrict law enforcement to the public realm. This
kind of distinction must necessarily involve issues of
morality and policy since the public/private distinc-
tion is hardly a matter of brute fact.
contracts
The law of contracts is often characterized as at-
tending a quintessentially individualist moral view-
point by resting obligation on the will of the parties.
And common law courts said they would not make
(or unmake) people’s bargains for them when free
of force and fraud. It is a nice problem then to ex-
plain those occasions when common law courts have
not ignored the community’s moral ends. The com-
mon law is said to embed a principle that will un-
make a bargain entered into legally should there
have been a gross imbalance of bargaining power, as
between a bank and hapless farmer. The common
law could place upon potential contractors some re-
quirement of a moral kind (existing prior to the act
of contract formation) that will affect the legal
standing of the agreement itself once it does exist.
Or by means of a sword known as ‘promissory es-
toppel’ (mainly wielded in the United States), a con-
tract of sorts can be found which is grounded by the
plaintiff’s reasonable reliance on the other party’s
careless promises regarding a contract-that-never-
comes-to-be. Obviously, this is not a contract within
the understanding of the common law, yet one is
found. (Damages may be limited to reliance losses.)
When promissory estoppel, on the other hand, is
said to be used as a shield one means that a defen-
dant is able to cite her reasonable reliance against
the plaintiff’s claim. The plaintiff had made a ‘gift’
promise to forgo certain valid rights, e.g., in debt,
which he held against the defendant. Having relied
on this promise, the defendant promisee now finds
that the plaintiff has reneged and seeks to enforce
those very rights, contrary to his original promise.
For reasons of FAIRNESS the plaintiff is estopped
from citing the fact that the defendant had given
back no consideration. It is then found by the
court—given the defendant’s reasonable reliance—
that the plaintiff’s promise to forgo the right is bind-
ing; the shield has been successful and the attempt
to collect upon the original promise must now fail.
The ‘gift’ promise stands as if there had been no
consideration for it. Because the shield was success-
ful, the plaintiff’s suit must fail and the ‘gift’ promise
stands. This seems to be a good example of a counter-
attack on extreme INDIVIDUALISM from the stand-
point of collective standards. Exemption clauses and
‘boilerplate’ contracts are a fact of modern contrac-
tual life, as when one is faced with a sheet of fine
print devoted to freeing the dominant party from all
manner of RESPONSIBILITY for failures on its side.
328
While standing at a counter in a noisy terminal, one
reads the contract only in search of the place to sign
it. Exemption clauses have come under legislative
scrutiny; there are various statutes about ‘unfair
terms’. In business, people often will accept less
money than they are strictly owed and are glad to
get it. The common law’s position that a promise to
accept less is not binding (for lack of fresh consid-
eration) was harsh. Here statute makers have inter-
vened again to make the express act of accepting the
money ‘in full satisfaction’ a binding commitment as
such. True gift promises, as to charities, may be en-
forceable if the legislature passed a law to that effect.
The upshot of these observations about the statute
book is that it works upon contract law in especially
morally sensitive ways which take one beyond the
individualistic confines of agreement, bargain, and
exchange.
See also: BAD FAITH; BARGAINING; BRIBERY; BUSI-
NESS ETHICS; COMPROMISE; CONTRACTARIANISM;
DUTY AND OBLIGATION; ENTITLEMENTS; FIDUCIARY
RELATIONSHIPS; HONOR; INTEGRITY; PROMISES; PUB-
LIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY; RECIPROCITY; RESPON-
SIBILITY; RIGHTS; SOCIAL CONTRACT.
Bibliography
Atiyah, Patrick. The Rise and Fall of Freedom of Contract.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.
Bronaugh, Richard. “A Secret Paradox of the Common
Law.” Law and Philosophy 2 (1983): 193–232.
Collins, Hugh. The Law of Contract. London: Weidenfeld
and Nicolson, 1986.
Fried, Charles. Contract as Promise. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1981.
Gordley, James. The Philosophical Origins of Modern
Contract Doctrine. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.
Hillman, Robert A. The Richness of Contract Law. Dor-
drecht: Kluwer Academic, 1997.
Kronman, Anthony T., and Richard A. Posner. The Eco-
nomics of Contract Law. Boston: Little, Brown, 1979.
Richard Bronaugh
conventions
Conventions play a large part in our collective lives.
When we exchange money for goods, we do so in
conformity to conventions. Our mode of dress and
manner of eating is largely determined by conven-
tion. When we perform linguistically our actions are

governed by conventions. The ubiquity of conven-
tions suggests that an analysis of the concept of a
convention would have an important place in the
attempt to understand social phenomena.
We find that philosophers (in particular) have
used the idea of a convention freely and widely. His-
torically, the so-called SOCIAL CONTRACT theorists,
such as HOBBES (1588–1679) and LOCKE (1632–
1704), invoked the notion of a convention, and re-
lated notions of an agreement or contract, to provide
the moral justification for obedience to government
and the law. ROUSSEAU (1712–1778) put the prop-
osition that political INEQUALITY depended on a kind
of convention. More recently, philosophers have of-
fered conventionalist accounts of, for example, an-
alytic truths, and rival theorists of speech acts have
argued about whether speech acts are essentially
conventional (or rule-constituted).
So philosophers have employed the notion of a
convention to make substantive claims, where the
truth of these claims turned crucially on what exactly
that notion of a convention was. It is difficult to see
how these substantive claims could be satisfactorily
adjudicated without an adequate account of conven-
tions. As it happens, philosophers and others have
propounded a number of accounts or theories of
conventions. I will consider four of these.
Four Theories of Conventions
Explicit agreement theory. The first theory may
be termed the explicit agreement theory. This theory
is associated with the social contract theorists such
as Thomas Hobbes. According to this theory, what
makes a regularity in behaviour a convention is the
fact that at some stage in the past people joined to-
gether and agreed to perform a certain type of action
in certain circumstances. They now perform the con-
ventional action in question because they are bound
by their PROMISES to do so. Aside from the problems
of locating such a promise, and of descendants of
the promise makers being bound by the promises of
the forefathers, there is the problem of circularity
involved in such an account. Promises or explicit
agreements are made in some language, but lan-
guages, and for that matter the INSTITUTION of
promising, themselves involve conventions.
The explicit agreement theory might be weakened
to an implicit or tacit agreement theory. The invo-
cation of the notion of a tacit agreement is associated
329
conventions
with John Locke. On the tacit agreement theory
there has been no actual promise; rather things are
as if people had joined together and made promises.
But more needs to be known about this tacit agree-
ment, i.e. what constitutes the way in which it is as
if promises had been made? Also what is to count
as having entered into a tacit agreement? Nonresis-
tance to doing an action could not, for example,
count as having tacitly agreed to do it. In any case
the weakening of the explicit agreement theory still
leaves standing the intuitively implausible idea that
conventions are followed, and ought to be followed,
because the parties are morally obliged to do so hav-
ing (in some sense) agreed or promised to do so.
Rule theory. A second theory of convention is
what we might term the rule theory of convention.
Here rules are analysed in terms of commands. This
theory has been propounded by Alf Ross. A conven-
tion is expressible as a command of the form ‘Do x
in circumstances c’—a command backed by sanc-
tions (since otherwise what differentiates the ‘com-
mand’ from, say, a request?). But if conventional ac-
tions are actions performed in order to obey a
command, then it can legitimately be asked who is-
sued the command. Perhaps society issued it. But
there is no such ‘issuer’ in other than a highly meta-
phorical sense. Second, if these commands exist,
then where are they formulated? Many conventions
are not written down anywhere. Indeed, if they were
written down, then they would already exist in a con-
ventional (linguistic) mode. But in that case the rule
analysis of conventions would be circular; for it
would presuppose the existence of conventions.
Finally, it seems that conventions are not neces-
sarily backed by sanctions, and where they are, this
is not necessary to their being conventions. People
do not drive on the left if everyone else does because
they’ll be fined if they do not; though in fact they
might be fined if they do not. Rather, people drive
on the left, if others do, because they want to avoid
collisions; it would be irrational not to do so.
Again, if a less strict definition of rule in the rule
theory of convention is what is required, what is this
less strict definition? Can the theory be weakened
so as to avoid these objections, but at the same time
retain its essential properties? It is not obvious how
this could be done.
Coordination accounts. A third theory of con-
ventions is that propounded by David Lewis.
Lewis’s theory of convention is in terms of, first, reg-
conventions
ularities in action rather than rules, and second, cer-
tain types of psychological attitude, namely, condi-
tional preferences for action and expectations about
the actions of others. Conventions according to
Lewis are the solutions to coordination problems.
We can see straightaway that Lewis’s theory avoids
the problems which beset the explicit agreement and
rule theories of conventions. Since Lewis’s theory is
in terms of psychological attitudes rather than prom-
ises or commands, i.e., rather than acts which al-
ready look conventional, there is no threat of cir-
cularity. Second, for Lewis convention following
becomes a rational activity—conventional action
solves a certain sort of problem—rather than one
based (implausibly) on moral obligations or threats.
Evidently there are different types of coordination
problems. The first type, and the type which pro-
vides Lewis with his guiding light, is ‘defined’ infor-
mally by recourse to paradigms. Here are some ex-
amples of some such paradigms. They are Lewis’s.
Meeting at A/B: We wish to meet. There are two
possible places, namely A and B. Neither of us cares
much whether we meet at A or B, so long as we
meet. If we both go to A the convention is to go to
A, the conventional alternative is to go to B, and we
have solved the coordination problem. If one went
to A and the other of us to B, we would have failed
to solve it.
Driving on the left/right: We wish to avoid auto
collisions and we do so by all driving on the left (or
all on the right, it doesn’t matter so long as we stick
to the same side of the road).
So informal coordination problems have the fol-
lowing elements:
1. There exists a common interest.
2. There are at least two mutually exclusive
types of action, either one of which solves
the coordination problem, e.g., driving on
the left as opposed to driving on the right.
The problem is to coordinate our actions so
that one or other of the types of action is
performed.
3. Each of these alternative action-types would
be, if it were performed generally, the con-
ventional action.
4. The performing of any conventional action
is rational in the sense that the agent acts
in accordance with his preferences and in
the light of the likely actions of other
330
agents. His action of, say, driving on the left,
is rational because he prefers to drive on the
left, and he expects others to drive on the
left. This expectation is in turn based on
common knowledge of past conformity to
the convention.
An informal coordination problem, then, is the
problem of choosing between more or less equally
viable but mutually exclusive alternatives. It is im-
portant to note that the alternatives are equally
conventions.
Lewis’s account is problematic for the reason that
many conventions are not solutions to coordination
problems. Suppose circumstances are such that ei-
ther we meet at A, or we meet at B, or we make no
attempt to meet, e.g., perhaps some of us stay at
home, perhaps others visit their mums and dads.
What distinguishes the latter combination of ac-
tions—to simplify matters I will refer to it as every-
one going their separate ways—from the former
two? The combination in which each goes his sepa-
rate way is a nonconventional alternative to a con-
vention. The combination such that everyone goes
to A, is a conventional alternative to the combina-
tion such that everyone goes to B, and vice versa. In
general for any given convention there will be a non-
conventional alternative to that convention. Thus,
the situation in which there is chaos on the roads is
the not-conventional alternative to the situation in
which each drives on the left-hand side of the road.
(The situation in which each drives on the right is a
conventional alternative.)
Now the problem for Lewis is that many conven-
tions do not have a conventional alternative, but
only a nonconventional alternative. Accordingly,
these conventions are not the solutions to coordi-
nation problems. Consider Rousseau’s famous ex-
ample of a convention, stag hunting. Either we can
individually hunt rabbits or we can jointly hunt the
stag. The convention is to hunt the stag. But indi-
vidually hunting rabbits is not a conventional alter-
native to the convention; it is a nonconventional al-
ternative. Again consider the social contract or
convention whereby we obey the sovereign or con-
form to the laws of the land. Here the fundamental
problem is not that of choosing between conven-
tional alternatives, but rather of choosing between
the convention and the nonconventional alternative,
namely, the state of nature.

Collective ends. A fourth theory of conventions
takes conventions to be the solutions to a variety of
collective action problems, including coordination
problems. On this account the notion of a collective
end is needed to adequately explicate conventions.
Roughly speaking, a convention is a regularity in ac-
tion which realises a collective end. So driving on
the left is a convention in virtue of being a regularity
in action which realises the collective end of avoid-
ing collisions. Again, each hunting the stag is a reg-
ularity in action which realises the collective end of
killing the stag. However, each individually hunting
rabbits is not a convention because there is no col-
lective end, only a set of individual ends.
The notion of a collective end enables us to dif-
ferentiate between conventions and nonconven-
tional alternatives to conventions. Moreover, it also
enables us to distinguish between conventional al-
ternatives to conventions and nonconventional al-
ternatives. A conventional alternative to a conven-
tion is an alternative which realises the collective
end realised by the convention. A nonconventional
alternative is a regularity which does not realise that
collective end. Accordingly, driving on the right is a
conventional alternative to driving on the left, be-
cause it is a regularity which realises the same col-
lective end, namely, the avoidance of collisions.
However, driving on whichever side of the road one
likes is not a conventional alternative, but rather a
nonconventional alternative; it is an alternative
which does not realise the collective end.
This theory relies on the notion of a collective
end. But what is a collective end? The notion of a
collective end is a construction out of the prior no-
tion of an individual end. First, a collective end is an
individual end more than one agent has, and which
is such that, if it is realised, it is realised by all, or
most, of the actions of the agents involved, and is
not realised by only one of those actions. So each
driver has the end of avoiding a collision, but this
end cannot be realised by any one of the drivers act-
ing alone. Second, a collective end is an individual
end which is such that if it is adopted by a set of
agents then those agents mutually truly believe that
it has been adopted. So each driver mutually believes
that all drivers have the end of avoiding collisions
on the road.
So much for our four theories of convention. In
what remains of this discussion I will consider two
residual issues.
331
conventions
Regularities or Procedures?
The first issue concerns the notion of a regularity.
Here I need to invoke the notion of what I will term
a procedure. In the case of procedures—but not or-
dinary actions or regularities in action—there is a
single decision to perform many future actions. For
example, an agent might decide today that hence-
forth he will get up early.
In the case of an ordinary nonprocedural action,
the agent decides to perform the action and imme-
diately performs it. There are cases of action in
which an agent decides today to perform an action
tomorrow. In that case there is time for him to re-
verse his decision. Call such a decision reversible.
The decision to adopt a procedure is at least partially
reversible. Many, if not all, of the actions the agent
has decided to perform may in fact not be per-
formed, and not performed as a result of a reversal
some time later of the original decision. Again, the
set of actions thus decided on in the adoption of the
procedure is open-ended. The decision to adopt a
procedure is a decision to perform a type of action
in a certain kind of circumstance, indefinitely into
the future. Further, the decision to adopt the pro-
cedure is conditional. The condition is that the basic
purpose or end for following the procedure has not
ceased to exist. Finally, adopting a procedure does
not necessarily involve an act or process of con-
scious decision making; procedures can be tacitly
adopted.
Perhaps conventions are not regularities in action
as such; rather they are procedures. Parties to a con-
vention to, say, greet one another by uttering the
word, ‘Hello’, have adopted a procedure; they do not
make a decision anew on every occasion on which
they meet someone. Moreover, in the case of con-
ventions, the end or purpose of the procedure could
be a collective end. For example, the collective end
realised by the procedure of driving on the left, is
the avoidance of collisions.
Conventions versus Social Norms
The second residual matter concerns the distinc-
tion between conventions and social NORMS. Social
norms have a normative dimension in the sense that
the participating agents believe or feel that they
ought to, or more often, ought not to, perform the
actions prescribed, or proscribed, by the norm. This
conventions
normative dimension is not, at least prima facie, pru-
dential in character—agents do not conform be-
cause they believe it is in their self-interest—nor
does it, prima facie, simply consist of feelings of
SYMPATHY for others. The fundamental kind of so-
cial norms are norms with (felt) moral or ethical
content. Such norms include norms prohibiting mur-
der, assault, theft, child molestation, and RAPE —such
norms are typically enshrined in the criminal law—
norms governing business practices, and norms of
LOYALTY to one’s group or nation. They also include
norms of HONOR and norms of REVENGE.
Social norms need to be distinguished from con-
ventions. For one thing, many conventions are not
also social norms. For these conventions do not have
moral normative force. Consider the convention to
use chopsticks rather than a knife and fork, or the
convention to wear a black tie at certain formal en-
gagements. Second, many social norms are not also
conventions. The existence of social norms proscrib-
ing such actions as murder and torture is sufficient
to demonstrate this.
On the other hand many conventions are also so-
cial norms in virtue of having moral normative force.
In such cases the parties to a convention have for
one reason or another come to incur moral obliga-
tions. Perhaps one reason that parties to a conven-
tion might incur moral obligations is the possibility
of free-riding. Consider what happens if individuals
fail to do their part to conform to a convention when
on some occasion it is not in their interest to do so.
Such free-riding will typically attract moral disap-
probation in virtue of the perceived unfairness of the
failure to conform. An example of this is queue
jumping. Note that the requirement not to jump the
queue derives from the unfairness of receiving the
benefit provided by the particular convention of
queuing, not from the mere fact that there is some
convention or other in force. In the film The Life of
Brian, a queue was formed for the purpose of dis-
tributing crosses. The bearer of the cross was then
nailed to his cross! Presumably, no one would object
to someone queue jumping in this situation.
A second reason might be the moral unaccepta-
bility of a failure to realise the collective end of the
convention. Consider the example of driving on the
left-hand side of the road in Australia. This is a con-
vention—a regularity in action which realises a col-
lective end. However, drivers are considered to be
under a moral obligation to conform to this conven-
332
tion in virtue of the threat to their own lives and the
lives of others if they do not.
See also: AUTHORITY; COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY;
COMMON GOOD; CONTRACTS; COOPERATION, CON-
FLICT, AND COORDINATION; CULTURAL STUDIES; ETI-
QUETTE; GROUPS, MORAL STATUS OF; INSTITUTIONS;
INTERESTS; MORAL COMMUNITY, BOUNDARIES OF;
MORAL RELATIVISM; NORMS; OBEDIENCE TO LAW; PO-
LITICAL CORRECTNESS; PROMISES; PUBLIC GOODS;
SOCIAL CONTRACT; SYMPATHY.
Bibliography
Gilbert, Margaret. On Social Facts. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1992. A sophisticated modern ver-
sion of the agreement theory of conventions.
Hobbes, Thomas. The Leviathan. [1651?] Hobbes is
associated with the explicit agreement theory of con-
ventions.
Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. [1739] See
especially Book III, Part II 2. Hume offered an account
of conventions in terms of a regularity in action which
served a common interest. Many of his examples are
regularities which solve coordination problems.
Lewis, David. Convention: A Philosophical Study. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1968. A highly so-
phisticated and influential account of conventions as
regularities which solve coordination problems.
Locke, John. Treatises on Government: Book 2: An Essay
Concerning the True Original Extent and End of Civil
Government. [1689] See especially VII and VIII. Locke
is notable for his attempt to complicate the notion of
an explicit agreement account of political obligation by
recourse to the notion of a tacit agreement.
Miller, Seumas. “On Conventions.” Social Action: A Teleo-
logical Cooperation Model. New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2001. This account makes use of the no-
tions of a collective end and of a procedure.
Raz, Joseph. Practical Reason and Norms. London:
Hutchinson, 1975. An analysis of rules and conven-
tions in terms of reasons for action. Raz introduced the
notion—akin to procedures—of second-order reasons
to refrain from acting for a first-order reason.
Ross, Alf. Directives and Norms. London: Routledge,
1968. A rule-based account of conventions, and a com-
mand theory of rules.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract [1762];
Discourse on the Origins of Inequality [1755]. Classic
texts on social contracts. The latter discusses the
proposition that political inequality is based on con-
vention.
Russell, Bertrand. Analysis of Mind. Lecture X. London:
 cooperation, conflict, and coordination

Allen and Unwin, 1921. Russell makes a famous cri- get an intermediate sentence. If both refuse to con-
tique of the explicit agreement theory of conventions. fess, they get a mild sentence for a lesser crime, such
Seumas Miller as illegal possession of a firearm. If they have no
prior binding agreement, each is better off confess-
ing no matter what the other does. The Prisoner’s
Dilemma is interesting not because it mirrors that
story but because it represents the payoff structure
cooperation, conflict, and
of many other interactions. It is the payoff structure
coordination and the rules of play that define the game, not this
Problems of cooperation, conflict, and coordination dismal tale of American justice.
are at the core of ethics. These terms are often used These three classes of interaction are represented
in the vernacular with substantial variation and in games 1–3. In each game matrix, the payoffs to
vagueness in meaning. With the advent of GAME the two players, Row and Column, are ordinal—the
THEORY, we may sensibly distinguish them accord- most preferred payoff is ranked first, or 1. The first
ing to the following characteristic strategic struc- payoff in each cell goes to Row, the second to Col-
tures. In social interactions we encounter two basic umn (in the usual RC convention).
or pure strategic structures. We may conflict with
another or others, or we may coordinate with them.
That is, we may have conflicting INTERESTS or pref- column
erences in some broad sense, or we may have con-
row I not help 1, 2
gruent interests or preferences.
More often, our interactions may not have either row II help 2, 1
of these pure strategic structures because we may
have partially conflicting and partially congruent in- Game 1: Pure Conflict
terests. For example, in a potential exchange rela-
tionship, you have x and I have y when you would
rather have y and I would rather have x. To this column I: column II:
extent, we have congruent interests in making an yield x keep x
exchange. However, each of us may prefer to have
both x and y, and to this extent we have conflicting row I: yield y 2, 2 4, 1
interests. With these preferences or interests, our in- row II: keep y 1, 4 3, 3
teraction has the payoff structure of the Prisoner’s
Dilemma. The category of interactions with a com- Game 2: Prisoner’s Dilemma
bination of conflict and coordination, called mixed-
motive games, is vast and includes many other
games in addition to Prisoner’s Dilemma. None of
column I column II
these nor even all of them together have evoked as
much interest as the Prisoner’s Dilemma, which may row I 1, 1 2, 2
be uniquely important not only theoretically but also
row II 3, 3 1, 1
in our daily experience.
The game was discovered around 1950 by two Game 3: Coordination
experimenters at the Rand Corporation, who found
it analytically fascinating but did not grasp its em-
pirical relevance. A. W. Tucker, a mathematical
Coordination
game theorist at Princeton University, thought of an
example, from which its catchy but unfortunately For moral theory the simplest of these interac-
misleading name derives: Two prisoners are inter- tions is coordination. In a pure coordination inter-
rogated separately and each is offered a plea bargain. action that is independent of other considerations
If one confesses, he gets off without a sentence while we may all agree on what actions all of us should
the other gets a harsh sentence. If both confess, they take, as in game 3. In such an interaction, the usual

333
cooperation, conflict, and coordination
difficulty of maximizing over many functions simul-
taneously is overcome by the fact that each player
has the same function over all outcomes. Hence, it
might seem that coordination issues would be of lit-
tle interest in moral theory unless they are con-
founded with conflict.
In common usage, ‘cooperation’ is applied to
both mixed-motive and pure coordination interac-
tions. The notion of cooperation, however, also car-
ries with it a connotation of active agreement in act-
ing together. Pure coordination interactions can
often be resolved without active agreement. It sim-
ply becomes established that virtually everyone acts
in a certain way and then it is in everyone’s interest
to act in that way, so that we resolve our coordina-
tion interaction by convention, which may be de-
fined as the stable resolution of a repeated coordi-
nated interaction. For example, we all may tend to
walk to our right in order to avoid collisions in hall-
ways or on walkways. In a pure coordination, al-
though cooperation is not morally problematic,
there may be obstacles of information and commu-
nication that might be readily overcome through the
working of a norm or moral rule. In such a case, the
moral rule per se need be no more motivating than
relevant information would be. I will speak of ‘co-
operation’ only in cases in which there are mixed
MOTIVES, so that the greatest obstacle to cooperation
is an element of conflicting interests. For such cases,
MORAL RULES might be genuinely motivating so that
we might expect substantially different behavior
from the moral than from the self-interestedly ra-
tional person.
Conflict
Pure conflict interactions are generally the most
difficult of these categories for moral theory and are,
indeed, the central concern of much of moral theory.
BENEFICENCE and distributive justice generally in-
volve the relationship represented in game 1. In many
moral theories, resolutions of such relationships re-
quire some to yield their interests in favor of others’
interests. Principles of EQUALITY, FAIRNESS, and over-
all welfare enhancement and motivations of SYMPA-
THY are all concerned with such relationships or with
conflictual elements in more complex relationships.
Most utilitarian theorists are willing to make
brute comparisons of the well-being of those who
334
are very well off and those who are much less well
off, and to recommend actions, policies, or INSTI-
TUTIONS to redress the inequalities. They base their
recommendations on such claims as that there are
diminishing marginal utilities of various goods,
wealth, and opportunities. Hence, sharing these
more equally enhances overall utility. Critics of UTIL-
ITARIANISM note that this concern for equality turns
on the contingent facts of decreasing marginal util-
ities and relative similarity among individuals in
their capacity to convert goods and so forth into util-
ity. Because the utilitarian concern for equality is de-
rivative from overall welfare, it might countenance
grievous inequalities. Indeed, it might even counte-
nance redistribution from the least to the most well
off. (Other critics of the utilitarian program object
to the interference with individual choice or auton-
omy entailed in a brute redistributive policy.)
We might avoid brute redistribution. Many theo-
ries of redistributive justice may be read as efforts to
redefine the transfer of benefits from one class to an-
other as somehow being mutually beneficial, so that
the redistribution becomes a matter of mutual ad-
vantage as in an exchange relationship. Such a move
is central, for example, to the theory of John RAWLS.
Much of moral theory and even more of political
theory is concerned with the regulation of conflictual
aspects of human interactions. Thomas HOBBES’s
(1588–1679) political theory is commonly sup-
posed to regulate the more destructive aspects of our
conflicts in order to allow us to benefit individually
and collectively from social organization. Most of
consequentialist moral theory, whether welfarist or
distributive, is necessarily concerned with regulating
conflicts of interest. Even much of moral theory that
might seem to be directed strictly at the moral actor,
hence not at conflictual interactions, is at some level
motivated by concern with such interactions. For ex-
ample, deontological rules for individual behavior in
potentially conflictual interactions may derive from
more general principles, such as Immanuel KANT’s
(1724–1804) categorical imperative. Similarly, much
of virtue theory may specify individual VIRTUES, but
these may be derived from a functional understand-
ing of the interactive nature of particular roles or the
conflictual nature of humans more generally. Hence,
conflict and its management are very important in
virtually any moral theory and they are the central
subject of some moral theories.

Cooperation
In game 2, the Prisoner’s Dilemma, both parties
would rather move to the outcome (2, 2) than stay
at the outcome (3, 3), so that there is a strong ele-
ment of coordination for mutual benefit. But Row
would most like to be at the outcome (1, 4), which
is Column’s least preferred outcome, so that there is
also a strong element of conflict of interest. Analyt-
ically and practically, the most important category of
mixed-motive interaction may be the game theorist’s
Prisoner’s Dilemma of game 2.
In its two-person variant, the Prisoner’s Di-
lemma has the interest structure of simple ex-
change, as outlined in the opening paragraphs
above. In its many-person variant the n-person Pris-
oner’s Dilemma has the structure of commonplace
problems of collective provision of some benefit
that all may enjoy even if only some contribute to
its provision. Hence, most of us might prefer to let
others contribute. Mancur Olson, Jr., calls this the
logic of collective action.
From at least PLATO (c. 430–347 B.C.E.) forward
there has been frequent recognition of the pecu-
liarly mixed motive involved in many collective ac-
tions. Plato briefly seems to suggest that the prob-
lem of PROPERTY and order is itself essentially a
problem of general cooperation in a collective pro-
vision, a universal Prisoner’s Dilemma. In this pro-
vision, each of us would rather take advantage of
the order created by the cooperation of others if we
could do so without risk of being caught in the act.
As Glaucon asserts in the Republic, book 2, each
of us (we seem to be all men) would like to have
the ring of Gyges to enable us to become invisible
in order to rape and plunder at will. Hobbes sees
the problem of making mutually beneficial ex-
changes as a—perhaps the—chief justification for
coercive political order. Exchange in the state of
nature is likely to be generally unreliable if, as must
often happen, one of us must perform before the
other reciprocates, so that the one who is to per-
form later may no longer have incentive to keep the
initial bargain. There are differences here. Glaucon
sees the Prisoner’s Dilemma problem in obeying
well-established law if evasion is easy for some per-
son. Hobbes sees it first in a state of nature without
law and he therefore wants strong law to make ex-
change reliable.
335
cooperation, conflict, and coordination
In addition to their direct effect on general wel-
fare or other consequential results, problems of col-
lective action are of interest in moral theory because
they confound the analysis of causal relations in
bringing about consequences. Commonplace causal
views of RESPONSIBILITY do not easily fit social out-
comes that are necessarily the product of many con-
tributors’ actions. We may speak of corporate re-
sponsibility for some result but have no way to
translate the corporate action into individually caus-
ally responsible actions.
Mutual Advantage
In coordination and mixed-motive interactions
there may be the possibility of coordination to make
everyone better off in some one outcome than in
some other. Hence, we may speak of the mutual ad-
vantage of making some choices over making others.
Brian BARRY distinguishes two great lines of justi-
fication in theories of justice: mutual advantage and
fairness. David HUME (1711–1776) and Hobbes
generally ground claims of justice in mutual advan-
tage. For example, Hobbes supposes we coordinate
on a powerful sovereign in order to enable us to en-
ter mutually advantageous exchanges. Traditional
SOCIAL CONTRACT theories have similarly been
grounded in considerations of mutual advantage, al-
though it is possible that people would contract for
normative reasons rather than for self-interest.
Many contemporary theorists are more con-
cerned with fairness. Rawls tries to blend the two
considerations. He supposes, as many would agree,
that the social product is, as the term implies, social,
not individual. Hence, its distribution should be
jointly determined. Rawls implicitly defines the
problem as one of double maximization over the two
basic concerns that may roughly be characterized as
total social product and degree of equality of its dis-
tribution. We cannot generally maximize over two
independent functions at once. Rawls compromises
with his difference principle that blends concerns
with distribution and production.
Such blending or some other move is necessary
in general because considerations of mutual advan-
tage are unlikely to give a univocal recommendation.
The problems we face may be mixed-motive in that
they involve coordination for mutual advantage but
conflict over two or more possible such coordina-
cooperation, conflict, and coordination
column I column II
row I 3, 3 2, 1
row II 1, 2 3, 3
Game 4: Unequal Coordination
tions. Consider the unequal coordination of game 4.
Both players prefer coordination on either the (2, 1)
or the (1, 2) outcome to being stuck in either of the
(3, 3) outcomes. But Row clearly prefers (1, 2) and
Column prefers (2, 1). If Row and Column are broad
economic classes in our society, Rawls’s difference
principle stipulates that we settle on the (1, 2) out-
come if Row would be worse off in that outcome
than Column would be, in which case Row is also
worse off than Column in the (2, 1) outcome. With-
out some additional normative principle, we cannot
say that one mutual advantage outcome is better
than another that some of us prefer.
If we pay careful attention to the details of social
interactions, we must generally conclude that major
claims in moral and political theory are often based
on simplifications of the interactions at issue. For
example, we might be able to agree with Hobbes that
we want central authority to regulate our relations.
But we may not at all agree on which or what kind
of central authority we want. Hence, coordination
and conflict are both central to moral and political
philosophy not least because the most difficult prob-
lems we face combine elements of both.
See also: AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; BARGAIN-
ING; BENEFICENCE; BENEVOLENCE; CATEGORICAL
AND HYPOTHETICAL IMPERATIVES; COERCION; COL-
LECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY; COMMON GOOD; COMPRO-
MISE; CONSENT; CONSEQUENTIALISM; CONVENTIONS;
COOPERATIVE SURPLUS; DEMOCRACY; ECONOMIC
ANALYSIS; EQUALITY; FAIRNESS; GAME THEORY; IN-
DIVIDUALISM; INEQUALITY; INTERESTS; INTERNA-
TIONAL JUSTICE: DISTRIBUTION; JUSTICE, DISTRIBU-
TIVE; MORAL RULES; MOTIVES; NEEDS; NORMS;
PUBLIC POLICY ANALYSIS; RATIONAL CHOICE; RA-
TIONALITY VS. REASONABLENESS; RECIPROCITY; RE-
SPONSIBILITY; REVOLUTION; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY; SOCIAL CONTRACT; STRATEGIC INTER-
ACTION; SYMPATHY; UTILITARIANISM; WELFARE
RIGHTS AND SOCIAL POLICY.
336
Bibliography
Axelrod, Robert. The Evolution of Cooperation. New
York: Basic Books, 1984. On the possibilities of estab-
lishing cooperative relations in dyadic interactions in
large societies.
Barry, Brian. Theories of Justice. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1989. Distinguishes two main classes
of theory of distributive justice: mutual advantage and
fairness.
Hardin, Russell. Collective Action. Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press for Resources for the Future,
1982. Game theoretic treatment of Prisoner’s Di-
lemma, collective action, and convention; substantial
bibliography.
———. Morality within the Limits of Reason. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1988. Presents a game
theoretic typology of the problems of moral and politi-
cal theory.
Lewis, David K. Convention. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1969. Defines convention as the
spontaneous resolution of a repeated coordination
interaction.
Olson, Mancur, Jr. The Logic of Collective Action. Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965. The origi-
nal presentation of the problem of collective action.
Regan, Donald H. Utilitarianism and Cooperation. Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1980. Argues that for a
society of utilitarians all interactions reduce to coor-
dination problems.
Taylor, Michael. The Possibility of Cooperation. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. On coop-
eration for spontaneous collective action without a
powerful state.
Ulmann-Margalit, Edna. The Emergence of Norms. Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Argues that the
main classes of moral norms arise to regulate Prisoner’s
Dilemma and coordination interactions.
Russell Hardin
cooperative surplus
The term “cooperative surplus” describes a social
advantage from participating in a political society. It
suggests how a political society increases the stock
of primary goods— RIGHTS, POWER, wealth, etc.
(Rawls)—so that each participant has a claim to
more of those goods. It explains the apparent irony
that, by ceding some primary goods to society, in-
dividuals actually increase their potential stock of
such primary goods. Moreover, it suggests that no
matter the resolution of the distributive questions,
individuals benefit from participation in even an im-
perfectly just society.

How is the surplus created? The idea develops
from the advantages observed by economists regard-
ing the gain from participating in trade (Hirshleifer)
and generalizes to describe the gain from participat-
ing in a cooperative venture. Although social inter-
action creates nearly infinite arrangements, a simple
two-party transaction will suffice to demonstrate
how such an interaction creates value. If a philoso-
pher produced an ethics encyclopedia that he values
at $100 and he finds a reader who values the book
at $150, an exchange would increase the value of
the book by $50. Both the writer and the reader have
the opportunity to increase their wealth by cooper-
ative behavior: the interaction creates a “surplus.”
While the surplus may be divided unequally, perhaps
because of economic or political power, each partic-
ipant is still made better off through the interaction,
so long as the outcome stays within the surplus.
(Note that dollars mean opportunities gained or
given up, e.g., the reader gains the opportunity to
use the encyclopedia but gives up the opportunity to
contribute to the ACLU, and the writer gains the
opportunity to buy a wedding gift but loses the op-
portunity to offer the encyclopedia to someone who
values it more.)
The creation of this surplus requires an initial co-
operation even though after that commitment to co-
operation the parties may each act totally self-
interested. This cooperation, however, may face one
of two major obstacles identified by economics:
transaction costs and strategic behavior. The cost of
engaging in the interaction may be so great (i.e.,
larger than the surplus or larger than the advantage
one party expects) that the mutually beneficial co-
operation will not take place. Or one party might
refuse even the initial cooperation in an effort to ob-
tain some special advantage. Thus the mutual ad-
vantage of the interaction may be lost.
Suppose a bully, say a federal judge, was in a po-
sition to force the writer and the reader to cooperate,
and provided the instrumentality for that coopera-
tion. If the bully made sure the interaction took
place, the two parties would be benefited by the
bully’s action. (Indeed, such forced cooperation is
one possible solution to the “prisoners dilemma,”
discussed in the entry COOPERATION, CONFLICT, AND
COORDINATION.) Thus, by ceding some freedom and
power, the parties are made to interact for the ben-
efit of each.
If the bully demanded some compensation, the
337
cooperative surplus
parties would still be better off so long as the de-
mand did not exceed the surplus. If the bully was
somewhat beneficent and assured that the interac-
tion was just, the party who was prohibited from
using her advantage would still be better off so long
as she received value in excess of her initial position.
If the bully was even more beneficent and distrib-
uted some share of surplus to those who had neither
produced an encyclopedia nor had the means to ob-
tain one, the parties would still be made better off
by the interaction. (As would potential readers and
society since the writer would receive his expected
value and hence continue to be motivated to pro-
duce encyclopedias. See Johnsen.) The bully in a po-
litical society is the government.
Cooperative surplus created from participating in
a political society conveys to moderns the notion of
the COMMON GOOD as understood by our founding
society. Marc Raeff observed that the founding so-
ciety assumed that the state had an obligation not
merely to maintain order and administer justice, but
to aggressively foster “the productive energies of so-
ciety and provid[e] the appropriate institutional
framework for it.” The constitutional grant of police
power must be interpreted in light of the fact that
“‘police’ stood for new efforts on behalf of a dy-
namic state to marshal resources and promote a
well-ordered community devoted to the public hap-
piness and public good” (Novak). This conception
of political society contrasts with twentieth-century
liberal notions wherein government’s task is to pre-
vent insular individuals from imposing “externali-
ties” on each other. For our founding society, the
community is not at base a zero-sum game but a
primary good-generating instrument in which mu-
tual behavior creates a (substantial) net benefit, a
cooperative surplus.
Thus, cooperative surplus suggests a plausible as-
sertion of acceptance in contractarian explanations.
RAWLS, for example, requires some consensus
among participants. For him, society is a cooperative
venture between free and equal individuals for their
mutual advantage. Acceptance is either uselessly ab-
stract or totally unlikely given a just society in which
the holders of primary goods must jeopardize them
under Rawls’s two principles: either primary goods
must be equally distributed or unequally distributed
so that the greatest benefit goes to the least ad-
vantaged. It is much more plausible to assert that
participants will, or even should, accept such dis-
cooperative surplus
tributive principles as to any mutual advantage, “co-
operative surplus,” but need not accept community
demands on primary goods over which they claim
some ownership either through industry or initial
advantage. On the other hand, cooperative surplus
suggests that participants should rationally accept
even an imperfectly just society, although they need
not accept all the particulars, so long as they obtain
some share of the mutual advantage. This explana-
tion may support the “overlapping consensus,” or
whatever acceptance, Rawls and other contractari-
ans need.
See also: COMMON GOOD; COMMUNITARIANISM;
CONTRACTARIANISM; COOPERATION, CONFLICT, AND
COORDINATION; DISCOUNTING THE FUTURE; ECO-
NOMIC ANALYSIS; ECONOMIC SYSTEMS; ENTITLE-
MENTS; FIDUCIARY RELATIONSHIPS; GAME THEORY;
GOVERNMENT, ETHICS IN; INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE:
DISTRIBUTION; JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTION; LIBERALISM;
POLITICAL SYSTEMS; POWER; PROPERTY; PUBLIC
GOODS; RIGHTS; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSO-
PHY; SOCIAL CONTRACT; STRATEGIC INTERACTION.
Bibliography
Hirshleifer, Jack. Price Theory and Applications. 6th ed.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997. One of the
most important principles in economics: “Voluntary
trade is mutually beneficial.” Trade creates both “con-
sumer surplus” and “producer surplus.”
Johnsen, D. Bruce. “Wealth Is Value.” Journal of Legal
Studies 15 (1986): 270. Criticizing both economic lib-
erals and their adversaries for concentrating on distrib-
utive efficiency and ignoring productive efficiency.
Koch, Charles Jr. “Cooperative Surplus: The Efficiency
Justification of Active Government.” William and
Mary Law Review 31 (1990): 431. Countering the as-
sertion that active government creates a deadweight
loss on society and observing that government actually
creates social value.
Novak, William. “Common Regulation: Legal Origins of
State Power in America.” Hastings Law Journal 45
(1994): 1061.
Raeff, Marc. “The Well-Ordered Police State and the De-
velopment of Modernity in Seventeenth- and
Eighteenth-Century Europe: An Attempt at a Compar-
ative Approach.” American Historical Review 80
(1975): 1221.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1971.
338
———. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1993. Expanding on A Theory of Justice.
Charles H. Koch Jr.
coordination
See cooperation, conflict, and coordination.
correctional ethics
The corrections system consists of INSTITUTIONS,
varying by purpose, governmental level, method,
and size, that exercise AUTHORITY over individuals
who have been found guilty of committing crimes or
who await judicial determination of possible guilt.
Correctional ethics is the branch of APPLIED ETHICS
that treats the moral issues presented by the correc-
tions system.
There is a long and rich tradition of fiction about
prison life, often by prisoners themselves, that ex-
plores ethical issues of incarceration. To this can be
added a substantial practical and scholarly literature
by prison officials and social scientists. However,
with the exception of providing theoretical analyses
of PUNISHMENT, contemporary philosophers have
been far less interested in corrections than in the
allied criminal justice fields of the law and the police.
This has not always been the case. Jeremy BEN-
THAM (1748–1832), for example, not only grounded
his theoretical discussion of punishment in UTILI-
TARIANISM, offering a set of specific rules to govern
the infliction of such pain, but he also engaged him-
self for many years in the design of a model prison.
Becoming more architect than philosopher, Ben-
tham claimed grandiose effects for his “panopticon”
prison: “Morals reformed—health preserved—in-
dustry invigorated—instruction diffused—public bur-
dens lightened.” More recently, Michel FOUCAULT
(1926–1984) has likened Bentham’s vision to
seventeenth-century measures to contain a plague,
with punitive procedure being transformed into pen-
itentiary technique. Through surveillance and con-
trol, the improved exercise of POWER generates more
efficient discipline, creates “the disciplinary individ-
ual.” But the notion of punishing is diminished in
the process.

Models of Correction
While the justification of the penal sanction usu-
ally rests on some variant of a SOCIAL CONTRACT,
the models for administering that sanction differ
greatly. One commentator has observed that the job
of corrections is “impossible to do in ideal terms,”
to which it could be added that there is little agree-
ment about what those ideal terms might be. The
first and largest issue of correctional ethics is thus
which model of corrections is best: retribution; de-
terrence; rehabilitation and reform; or reintegration
of the inmate into society. Despite sometimes heated
rhetoric to the contrary, a single model need not be
relied on exclusively in determining how to handle
those in custody; however, only the third of these
models directly attacks the problem of “correcting”
individuals, and the empirical evidence is discour-
aging about its success. (CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, the
ultimate expression of the retribution and deter-
rence models, is discussed elsewhere in this
encyclopedia.)
The retribution model views punishment as
meted out because it is deserved. According to
whether the penal sentence is determinate or inde-
terminate, it reflects either the gravity of the offense
or the nature of the offender. Inherent to retribution
are these claims: that only individuals who have vi-
olated the laws of society are proper targets of penal
sanctions; that punishment, when inflicted in pro-
portion to the nature of the crime, in some sense
“fits” and neutralizes any gain by the criminal; that
the state is the legitimate instrument for imposing
punishments for infractions; and that the criminal,
in those formulations that stress expiation, has a
right to be punished. Although retribution may fo-
cus and relieve society’s desire for vengeance, and
thus has encouraged at times horrible excesses of
punishment, it also can have more humane elements
in stressing the correlation between punishments
and crimes. Unlike the utilitarian formula, this
model prohibits using individuals, innocent as well
as guilty, as scapegoats for implementing public pol-
icies of crime control. Unfortunately for proponents
of retribution, there is much disagreement about
what constitutes the appropriate amount and type of
punishment for any given crime.
The deterrence model may be of two sorts. Gen-
eral deterrence issues a warning to society at large
that violations of law have penal consequences, in
339
correctional ethics
the hope that the frequency and severity of crime
will thus be reduced. Specific deterrence seeks to
reduce criminal activity by discouraging individual
offenders, who are made directly and immediately
aware of penal consequences; in addition, while in
confinement prisoners are incapacitated from com-
mitting crimes against those “outside.” One problem
with deterrence is that the severity of punishment
relates not so much to the gravity of the offense as
to the corrigibility of criminals and the general pop-
ulace. Additionally, the evidence indicates that gen-
eral deterrence is less efficacious than its proponents
would hope. Many citizens would not commit cer-
tain crimes even if there were no sanctions, and all
those who are justly convicted or who “get away
with it” have committed crimes despite sanctions.
Nor is specific deterrence always successful even
among those who are its most immediate audi-
ence—the incarcerated—as witness the continued
existence of violence and CORRUPTION among
inmates.
The rehabilitation model focuses on treatment,
with the goal of remedying the internal causes that
impel individuals to become criminal offenders. This
model resembles the deterrence model in looking
forward to a lowered incidence of crime, in contrast
to the retributive emphasis on retaliating against the
past commission of a crime. However, unlike the
deterrence model’s reliance on punishment itself to
affect the future, treatment stresses a variety of posi-
tive methods for inducing change, including psycho-
logical counseling, education, and vocational train-
ing. This model has suffered at the practical level in
those instances where it has degenerated into a re-
liance on drugs, surgery, and various types of ther-
apeutic and other medical experimentation, and crit-
ics have also contested empirically the ability of
rehabilitative efforts to prevent recidivism. There is
a more powerful theoretical objection still: in using
the offender’s treatment needs as a criterion for re-
lease, predictive restraint may lengthen confine-
ment, result in unequal treatments for the same
crime, and permit the abuse of official discretion.
Whatever the merits of the rehabilitation model, it
is at present on the retreat in many jurisdictions in
the face of public impatience manifested in cries to
stop “coddling criminals.”
The reintegration model stresses the constructive
absorption of the offender into the community, ei-
ther after a period of confinement or directly after
correctional ethics
sentencing. In both cases reintegration overlaps with
rehabilitation, but it differs most dramatically with
respect to probation, which is an alternative to in-
carceration. For all the attention given to prisons, it
is easy to ignore the fact that in the United States,
for example, three times as many people are on pro-
bation as in prison. The reintegration model views
average offenders not as inherently evil, but as rela-
tively ordinary individuals who on occasion have vi-
olated the law. Whereas prison can be a brutalizing
school for crime, reintegration seeks to reestablish
social bonds that will lessen further criminal activity
by the offender; it combines surveillance with social
work functions. More realistically, probation is a so-
lution of choice when budgetary constraints make
incarceration impossible. Even were reintegration to
achieve its goals, however, retributive and deterrent
critics would still question whether its “punishment”
is sufficient. Concerns could also be raised as to the
class, racial, and gender biases of probationary sen-
tences, as well as to the scope for discretion by both
judges and probation officers. Furthermore, there is
an increasing segment of the population that op-
poses reintegration even after incarceration, typi-
cally in the case of sex offenders or other violent
criminals.
In recent years, drawing on a long history of rep-
aration as the appropriate response to crime, a fifth
model has been advanced, that of restorative justice.
Here the central idea is that the offender owes, and
the victim deserves, restitution for the harm caused
by the offense. Insofar as this model relates to the
offender, it may fall more properly under the rubrics
of other models; insofar as it relates to the victim, it
becomes more compensation than punishment.
Compensation by the offender can be made specifi-
cally to the victim or more generally to the com-
munity itself, and its rationale can incorporate both
retributive and deterrent elements.
Given that these various models can overlap as
well as conflict, it may be time to redraw the cate-
gorical maps. In this connection, it may also be
asked to what extent crime reduction must be based
on a penology of punishing offenders rather than on
a policy of rewarding the well-behaved, and what
this very question implies for theories of human na-
ture. As Benedict de SPINOZA (1632–1677) put it,
“laws should in every government be so arranged
that people should be kept in bounds by the hope of
340
some greatly-desired good, rather than by fear, for
then everyone will do his duty willingly.”
Whichever model is used, and regardless of the
extent to which the very term may be a misnomer,
corrections has become a boom industry, at least in
the United States. In the past twenty-five years, the
rate of incarceration has quadrupled, as has the rate
of persons under probation and parole. A corre-
sponding level of attention by philosophers to cor-
rectional issues has yet to occur, but the problems
offer fertile territory. Although the MORAL DILEM-
MAS faced often coincide, it is useful to distinguish
between the activities of correctional officers inside
prisons and those of parole and probation officers in
the field.
Applied Ethics and Correctional Officers:
Inside
Correctional officers, more traditionally called
guards, share many moral issues with their siblings
in the criminal justice system, the police. Yet the
contexts are strikingly different. For police the pri-
mary concerns are to prevent crime, protect law-
abiding citizens, and arrest suspected offenders. For
correctional officers the primary concern is to con-
trol those who have been found guilty of breaking
the law or who await trial (and hence must be pre-
sumed innocent). Police can get individual law-
breakers off their hands fairly quickly, but correc-
tional officers have to coexist with inmates for
extended periods.
Given the wide range of prisons in the world—
from hells on earth to models of benign rehabilita-
tion—and of prisoners—including career criminals,
situational offenders, political detainees, etc.—it
may seem difficult to generalize about the ethical
duties and rights of correctional officers. A fruitful
approach is to distinguish the characteristics of an
ideal officer and then to analyze the many ways in
which individuals can and do fall short of the ideal.
Historically, officers have been supposed to be role
models to inmates. Although such a goal may seem
naive, Jocelyn Pollock notes that, from the stand-
point of both officers and inmates, there is much
empirical agreement as to which traits are to be
prized: the model officer is one who “treats all in-
mates fairly with no favoritism, but who does not
always follow rules to the letter. Discretion is used
judicially. . . . A good officer is not quick to use

force, nor afraid of force if it becomes necessary. A
good officer treats inmates in a professional manner
and gives them the respect they deserve as human
beings.” Unfortunately the temptations that work
against the ideal are myriad, of which only three may
be discussed here.
Force. Deprivation of LIBERTY, in itself a use of
force, is a defining characteristic of incarceration.
The important question is what the limits of force
should be, given that inmates (and officers as well)
may exhibit violence, hostility, fear, and ALIENATION.
Inmate-inmate violence and inmate-officer violence
pose less intricate moral problems than officer-
inmate violence. The usual response to the latter is
that the amount of force employed must be “neces-
sary” to the circumstances, but like the prohibition
of “cruel and unusual punishments” in the United
States Constitution, this standard is inherently
vague. In Hudson v. McMillian (1992), a supervisor
cautioned his guards “not to have too much fun” in
beating a prisoner; the Supreme Court held that ma-
licious and sadistic use of force always violates “con-
temporary standards of decency,” even when serious
injury is not suffered. Correctional officers often be-
lieve that the courts undermine their authority and
safety, yet controls are needed to prevent abuses
when self-regulation fails.
Corruption. On some theories of management, a
prison should maintain an equality of economic re-
sources that only radical egalitarians would propose
for the outside world. Prisoners should not benefit
from differences in wealth, status, or personal amen-
ities. In reality, such uniformity is undermined by
permitted gifts from outside and earnings from
prison industries, leading to a distinct prison econ-
omy. And where an economy exists corruption fol-
lows, affecting officers as well as inmates. Indeed,
with respect to officers, Bernard McCarthy has cited
four major categories of corrupt practices in prison:
theft, trafficking in contraband, embezzlement, and
misuse of authority (chiefly as it relates to financial
gain, but for sexual reward as well). Since such be-
havior is arguably unjustifiable in all instances, phil-
osophical complexities yield to questions of individ-
ual CONSCIENCE and management controls.
Discretion. Within a correctional institution, dis-
cretion is a tool that can either facilitate the exercise
of authority, if used wisely, or undermine it if abused.
Both the officer who decides whether to report a
particular infraction and the disciplinary committee
341
correctional ethics
that determines whether to impose a sanction for
misbehavior must balance FAIRNESS and EQUALITY
of treatment against a too-rigid application of regu-
lations that may paradoxically impair discipline. The
relationship between officers and inmates is ulti-
mately based on controls backed by force, but there
are elements of RECIPROCITY, cooperation, and un-
derstanding as well that are fostered by reasonably
selective invocations of authority and power. Abu-
sive discretion, whether based on favoritism toward
specific inmates, racial or ethnic prejudice, or per-
sonal self-aggrandizement by officers, should be re-
pudiated both morally and pragmatically.
It should be noted that the above discussion re-
lates to ethical issues faced by correctional officers.
The dilemmas of treatment professionals within
prisons must be relegated to the study of applied
ethics in those fields, such as PSYCHOLOGY and
counseling. But there is one other set of actors in a
prison that deserves attention, the prisoners them-
selves. What RIGHTS should prisoners have? It is
useful to distinguish between legal rights that may
be provided by legislation and court decisions, and
moral rights that may derive from a general theory
of natural or HUMAN RIGHTS. To what extent should
there be limits on speech, religion, receipt of outside
materials, access to treatment, electronic surveil-
lance, overcrowding, etc.? In the United States, for
example, statutes and constitutions, both state and
federal, provide some protection for the INTERESTS
of prisoners. Philosophers, on the other hand, have
not much entered the fray, although Hugo Bedau has
explored the notion of prisoners’ rights within the
context of theories of Thomas HOBBES (1588–1679)
and John LOCKE (1632–1704). He observes that
“advocacy of prisoners’ rights is and can be expected
to remain a difficult, controversial, and uphill
struggle.”
Applied Ethics and Correctional Officers:
Outside
Although in the popular mind corrections is
chiefly synonymous with prisons, in reality proba-
tion and parole officers supervise a much larger
population of lawbreakers. Probation and parole
consist of the conditional release of offenders into
the community, before and after incarceration, re-
spectively. Sometimes these functions are combined
into one agency, since both emphasize the rehabili-
correctional ethics
tation of offenders, and such a merger may promote
efficiency and professionalism. But there are notable
differences in these functions: probation involves, in
addition to supervision, a considerable investigative
function before sentencing, and parole usually has
the more intractable clients. Both functions raise
many issues of applied ethics, of which three will be
discussed by way of example.
Authority. Probation and parole officers, while
they may in some jurisdictions have the right to
make arrests, are less prone than police or correc-
tional officers, by the nature of their jobs, to engage
in excessive force. A more central ethical issue con-
cerns the imposition of authority despite constraints
on power. Authority may in practice be largely psy-
chological, based on officers’ abilities to identify and
communicate realistic goals to their clients. In part,
the officers’ role resembles that of social workers,
and many of the ethical concerns of both professions
revolve around balancing service to the client with
the needs of the community. But there is inherently
less scope in probation and parole for developing the
autonomy of the client, given the centrality of su-
pervision and the involuntary nature of the relation-
ship between officer and client.
Discretion. In the absence of generally accepted
canons of supervision, the role of discretion in pro-
bation and parole is enhanced. Individual judgment
and latitude in execution may occur in the pre-
sentence investigative report (which may or may not
even be seen by the offender), in developing strate-
gies of rehabilitation, in balancing client PRIVACY
with societal demands for disclosure, and in rec-
ommending revocation. Discretionary disparities
from officer to officer in treating offenders may lead
to demands for more uniform standards, as hap-
pened with sentencing reform. For example, it may
be asked how serious a violation must be in order
to result in revocation. Should technical violations,
activities that would be legal for the general popu-
lace, have this result? How rigid must guidelines be
in order to eliminate discretionary abuse, and is this
rigidity worth it? Also, from the standpoint of the
offender, what rights to due process in complaining
about arbitrariness should exist?
Accountability. Questions of accountability arise
dramatically in the fields of probation and parole,
because the criminal justice system bestows TRUST
in its supervisory officers to perform their duties re-
sponsibly. The consequences of lapses and errors of
342
judgment may be enormous. Notorious cases of of-
fenders under supervision committing atrocious acts
have galvanized some jurisdictions to restrict dras-
tically the use of probation and parole when public
outrage is substituted for the effective management
of punishment. In the case of individual officers, to
what extent should they be legally liable for further
offenses by those in their charge? Rieser v. District
of Columbia (1977) indicates that courts have found
such liability to exist when the community suffers
harm as the result of inadequate performance of su-
pervisory duties.
Administrative, Commercial, and Political Issues
In Whitley v. Albers (1986), the United States Su-
preme Court held that prison administrators “should
be accorded wide-ranging deference in the adoption
and execution of policies and practices” necessary to
order and discipline. Perhaps because of this lati-
tude, the development of policies is no easy task. As
Todd Clear and George Cole have noted, the various
clients of the correctional system have different
needs and expectations: “offenders want fairness, le-
niency, and assistance; the public wants protection
from and punishment of criminals; government
agencies want cooperation and coordination.” It is
impossible here to do more than list some of the
ethical issues that arise in the management of pris-
ons. These include questions about prisoner disci-
pline, priorities in budget allocations, balancing ac-
cess and security, dealing with inmate violence and
riots, responses to whistleblowing, combating ra-
cism and sexual harassment, training and educating
correctional officers (and any corresponding ethical
component in such training), treatment of women
inmates, affirmative action in hiring, inmate self-
governance, codes of ethics, unionization and work-
load, political activities of employees, etc.
One issue that cuts across both management and
political spheres concerns the private ownership and
operating authority of prisons, with four possibili-
ties: public control of both, private control of both,
public ownership and private operation, and private
ownership and public operation. Because prisons
have rarely been self-sufficient, there has long been
some connection between them and private enter-
prise, which J. Robert Lilly terms the “corrections-
commercial complex.” The argument for private cor-
rections is essentially grounded in claims of greater

efficiency, providing savings to the state and profit
for the entrepreneur. However, measuring costs and
quality is no simple matter, especially when “true”
or hidden costs are taken into account. Also, prison
businesses will naturally tend to siphon off the “best
of the worst,” leaving the most intractable and ex-
pensive prisoners to the state. The argument against
private corrections emphasizes that the administra-
tion of justice—the dispensing of authority and the
need for accountability—is properly a government
function: the duty of the state to punish and the right
of prisoners to be punished by the state should not
be trumped by private gain. Indeed, state responsi-
bility and commercial benefit can obviously work at
cross purposes, with the elasticity of the criminal
supply encouraging overemphasis on prison con-
struction. If prisons are profitable, then more of
them is an economic good, but more prisons may
represent a failure of social policy.
Finally, some of the most basic questions about
corrections are political in nature. They concern the
vision a community has of itself and of those who
transgress its rules, and they rest on competing con-
ceptions of morality, law, and human nature. How
and to what extent are offenders different from other
citizens? Can offenses be attributed to evil individ-
uals, defects in the social fabric, or some combina-
tion of the two? Which model of punishment is the
correct one? How much punishment and imprison-
ment is acceptable in a society? How benign or op-
pressive should conditions in prisons be? What is
the proper balance between prison and alternatives
to prison?
As Albert Cohen has expressed the matter, “We
must acknowledge that prisons contain a lot of peo-
ple morally prepared and by experience equipped to
take advantage of opportunities to dominate, op-
press, and exploit others. The problem of the
prison—to construct a system of governance that
reconciles freedom with order and security—is also
the problem of civil society.”
See also: ALIENATION; AMNESTY AND PARDON; AU-
THORITY; BECCARIA; BENTHAM; CAPITAL PUNISH-
MENT; COERCION; COOPERATION, CONFLICT, AND CO-
ORDINATION; CORRUPTION; CRUELTY; DETERRENCE,
THREATS AND RETALIATION; FORGIVENESS; GOVERN-
MENT, ETHICS IN; GUILT AND SHAME; HARM AND OF-
FENSE; HART; HUMAN RIGHTS; INNOCENCE; INSTITU-
TIONS; JUSTICE, RECTIFICATORY; LIBERTY; MERCY;
343
correctional ethics
OBEDIENCE TO LAW; POLICE ETHICS; POWER; PSY-
CHOLOGY; PUBLIC POLICY; PUNISHMENT; RACISM AND
RELATED ISSUES; RAPE; RECIPROCITY; RESPONSIBIL-
ITY; REVENGE; SEXUAL ABUSE AND HARASSMENT; SO-
CIAL CONTRACT; SOCIOLOGY; TORTURE; UTILITARI-
ANISM; VIOLENCE AND NON-VIOLENCE.
Bibliography
Beccaria, Cesare. On Crimes and Punishment. Translated
by Henry Paolucci, 6th ed. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-
Merrill, 1977 [1764].
Bedau, Hugo. “Prisoners’ Rights.” Criminal Justice Ethics
1 (1982): 26–41.
Bentham, Jeremy. The Panopticon Writings. London:
Verso, 1995 [1791].
Clear, Todd R., and George F. Cole. American Corrections.
5th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company,
1999. An excellent text alert to the ethical dimensions
of corrections.
Cohen, Albert K. “Prison Violence.” In Prison Violence,
edited by Albert K. Cohen, George F. Cole, and Robert
G. Bailey. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1975.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Translated by A.
Sheridan. New York: Pantheon, 1977 [1975].
Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1 (1992).
Johnson, Robert. Hard Time: Understanding and Reform-
ing the Prison. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing
Company, 1996.
Kauffman, Kelsey. Prison Officers and Their World. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1988.
Lilly, J. Robert. “The Corrections-Commercial Complex.”
Crime and Delinquency 39 (1993): 150–66.
Lippke, Richard L. “Thinking about Private Prisons.”
Criminal Justice Ethics 16 (1997): 26–38.
McCarthy, Bernard J. “Patterns of Prison Corruption.”
Corrections Today 46 (1984): 88ff. Analysis of types of
corruption based on a case study.
Morris, Norval. The Future of Imprisonment. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1974.
Pollock, Jocelyn M. “The Ethics of Punishment and Cor-
rections” and “Ethics for Correctional Professionals.”
In her Ethics in Crime and Justice, 3d ed., 257–86 and
287–324. Belmont, CA: West/Wadsworth, 1998. One
of the fullest accounts by a philosopher of correctional
ethics.
Rieser v. District of Columbia. 21 Cr.L. 2503 (1977).
Spinoza, Benedict de. A Theological-Political Treatise
[1670]. In The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza,
vol. 1. Translated by R. H. M. Elwes. New York: Dover
Publications, 1951. See p. 74.
Whitley v. Albers. 475 U.S. 312 (1986).
Timothy Stroup
corruption
corruption
In its now-prevailing sense, corruption covers some
misconduct in the free professions, but it refers most
often to misconduct involving the deflection of of-
ficials from duties to INSTITUTIONS (e.g., govern-
ments, firms, unions, and churches), especially du-
ties to provide services without personally profiting
from them. This has, understandably, a bad name,
and few philosophers have thought that there was
anything to say for it.
To be sure, little could be said for corruption in
older senses, one of which concerned warping peo-
ple’s lives by leading them, especially when young,
into evil ways. This sense, at issue in the trial of SOC-
RATES (c. 470–399 B.C.E.), has fallen out of fashion:
Progressive thinkers do not easily entertain the idea
that anyone corrupts others by making them skep-
tics or teaching them the arts of persuasion. More-
over, what was once sin, the symptom and effect
of corruption, now often figures as just another
lifestyle.
Corruption in another, older sense, of decay from
a fully realized form of life, was, when applied to
regimes, a vigorous theme of political thought from
the writing of PLATO’s (c. 430–347 B.C.E.) Republic,
Book VIII, to the founding of the United States. In
notions about dysfunctions in social systems it has
left some traces in current social theory. In popular
thought, corruption as decay survives only in refer-
ences, commonly delusive, to “the good old days” of
healthier institutions and incorruptible officials.
An account of corruption in its now-prevailing
sense must be as subtle as the practice. When people
offer favors to officials, they do not always expect
an immediate quid pro quo. The object is sometimes
merely to induce an official to be partial toward the
people doing the corrupting. The PARTIALITY may
not come about; but officials will often be counted
as corrupted if they simply accept the favors. (They
sometimes cannot refuse without offense.)
Given these points, one may hold that C corrupts
an official O of an institution I when C supplies O
with favors in the hope that to C’s benefit O will
disregard to some extent duties to I, or at least in-
terpret the interest of I in ways more favorable to C
than O might have interpreted it otherwise. Either
C or O may initiate the corruption, even in those
cases in which without favors from C, O might re-
fuse to perform a service that duty prescribes.
344
The attention to mere possibility shows the affin-
ity of “corruption” to “conflict of interest.” In both
cases, of course, there would be nothing to worry
about if there were not frequent, indeed frequently
spectacular, instances of actions taken by Os (by
gangs of Os) that impair the institutions I which they
have undertaken to serve.
Yet the account given does not entail that either
C or O has done wrong, much less that criminal pro-
ceedings should apply against either of them. Any
account that did entail this would run into trouble
immediately about what is to be objected to under
the head of favors. Money? Holidays without charge
in Acapulco? Suppose the money is a campaign con-
tribution or an honorarium for addressing, in Aca-
pulco, the assembled chemical manufacturers of
North America. It is not just that “corruption” is a
vague term with borderline cases, though that is (in-
evitably) true, too. Even favors that are prototypical
of corruption may deserve support in some connec-
tions. A Nazi official demands a bribe to allow some
Jews or gypsies to escape; he needs the money to
cope with the reprisals that may befall him and his
family.
Some favors cannot be proceeded against without
grossly interfering with social life or with the ex-
pression of legitimate INTERESTS. An elite circle (in
which everyone is cultivated, witty, attractive, and
emancipated) deliberately pursues a young member
of Congress. Is a newcomer to Washington to have
no friends? Unless a very restrictive view is taken of
favors, the definition of corruption given above will
apply broadly to many of the familiar practices of
lobbying. Should the definition be narrower? If it
were, it would fail to reflect grounds for being con-
tinually uneasy about lobbying even when they are
often not grounds urgently calling for making a fuss.
It may be unwise to proceed against the people
involved, even when it is clear that corruption has
occurred and that there is no redeeming feature in
the actions induced. It is often better to have a cor-
rupt person in office than an incompetent one.
Sometimes, without waiting for favors from others,
officials corrupt themselves; they divert to personal
projects the resources of their institutions. Marlbor-
ough (1650–1722) was thus corrupt; were there
other generals equally victorious? Equally humane
in their treatment of soldiers? It is not just a matter
of coincidence. One has to watch out for contexts in
which incorruptibility gives reason to expect incom-

petence. Corrupt politicians at least understand that
nothing can be accomplished in politics without ac-
commodation and COMPROMISE. They may also have
learned to distinguish acutely matters of LIFE AND
DEATH from minor moral issues (e.g., fixing parking
tickets or overlooking after-hours drinking), and
(though not all corrupt politicians are compassion-
ate) they may have learned some lessons in compas-
sion. Lincoln Steffens’s (1866–1936) argument for
political machines in American cities recognized
that the other side of corruption may be readiness
to meet NEEDS (e.g., to provide coal, a basket of gro-
ceries, or a job) that incorruptible officials—per-
suaded, perhaps, of the moral truth of classical LIB-
ERALISM —refuse to meet.
Corruption, it may be held, is also better than eco-
nomic stagnation and better than obstructing the
operations of the market. Approached nonjudgmen-
tally, corruption becomes the marketing of public
functions; so economists may be able to argue that
on occasion corruption leads to a more efficient bal-
ance between the law and the ambitions (taken to-
gether) of entrepreneurs and officials, hence to pro-
moting everyone’s well-being. It is a commonplace
(sometimes exaggerated) in some quarters that
corruption facilitates economic and political devel-
opment. Is liquidating millions of peasants who
stand in the way of development a more attractive
strategy?
Let the presumption that corruption is evil stand.
If the moralist asks in vain for a moral politics, Carl
Friedrich allows, he can reasonably ask for a good
deal of moral improvement; and, in doing so, he can
check excesses where corruption and other doubtful
practices go beyond being functional “aids to con-
structive change and necessary transformation.” The
presumption should not, however, stand in the way
of giving delicate attention to the particularities that
in some instances make corruption defensible.
See also: BLACKMAIL; BRIBERY; BUSINESS ETHICS;
CIVIC GOOD AND VIRTUE; COERCION; COMMON
GOOD; COMPROMISE; DECEIT; DEMOCRACY; DIRTY
HANDS; DUTY AND OBLIGATION; EVIL; FAIRNESS;
GOVERNMENT, ETHICS IN; HONOR; HYPOCRISY; IM-
PARTIALITY; INSTITUTIONS; INTEGRITY; INTERESTS;
NEEDS; PARTIALITY; PROFESSIONAL ETHICS; PROM-
ISES; PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY; PUBLIC GOODS;
PUBLIC POLICY; RESPONSIBILITY; SECRECY AND CON-
FIDENTIALITY; TRUST.
345
corruption
Bibliography
Anechiarico, Frank, and James B. Jacobs. The Pursuit of
Absolute Integrity: How Corruption Control Makes
Government Ineffective. Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1996.
Banfield, Edward C. The Case of the Handcuffed Sheriff.
Case Studies in American Politics. Chicago: American
Foundation for Continuing Education, 1957. Political
patronage sometimes obstructs organized crime.
Dexter, L. A. “Scandal and Scandalization in American
Political History.” In Encyclopedia of American Politi-
cal History. New York: Garland, 1990. Treats accusa-
tions of corruption as a species of political tactics.
Friedrich, Carl J. Pathology of Politics: Violence, Betrayal,
Corruption, Secrecy, and Propaganda. New York:
Harper and Row, 1972. Corruption is unavoidable and
within limits functional. A standard treatment.
Heywood, Paul, ed. Political Corruption. Special issue of
Political Studies 43, no. 3 (1997). Current survey of
the subject in a variety of articles, taking a variety of
approaches.
Johnston, Michael. Political Corruption and Public Policy
in America. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1982. Sur-
veys definitions of corruption; holds that it is system-
atically inevitable, though it may impair confidence in
democratic institutions.
Oliver, F. S. The Endless Adventure. Vol. 2. London: Mac-
millan, 1930–31. Walpole’s corruption assisted free-
dom and civilization in eighteenth-century Britain.
Pocock, J. G. A. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine
Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradi-
tion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975.
Corruption in all three senses a theme of political
thought preceding the foundation of the American
republic.
Rose-Ackerman, Susan. Corruption: A Study in Political
Economy. New York: Academic Press, 1978. Economic
models for corruption and the control of corruption;
holds that corruption is always “a second-best
solution.”
Scott, James C. Comparative Political Corruption. Engle-
wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1972. Current discus-
sion most influential among political scientists.
Steffens, Joseph Lincoln. The Autobiography of Lincoln
Steffens. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968 [1931].
Van Klaveren, Jakob. “Die historische Erscheinung der
Korruption, in ihrem Zusammenhang mit der Staats
und Gesellschaftstruktur betrachtet.” Vierteljahrschrift
für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 44–45 (1957–
59): 289–324, 433–504, 204–31. Landmark in ap-
proach to corruption as market behavior.
Venkatappian, D. B. “Misuse of Office.” In International
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 11:272–76. New
York: Macmillan/Free Press, 1966. Effective state-
ment, from a point of view characteristic of the British
civil service, of the standard case against corruption.
corruption
Waquet, Jean-Claude. De la corruption: Morale et pouvoir
à Florence aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Paris: Fayard,
1984. More general in treatment than title indicates;
balances ethics and social science. Vivid illustrations.
Lewis Anthony Dexter
David Braybrooke
cosmopolitan ethics
The foundation principles of cosmopolitan ethics are
deceptively simple, namely: all human beings, every-
where in the world, have the same moral stature, and
individual human beings have greater moral impor-
tance than human associations. From these princi-
ples cosmopolitan ethics draws the implication that
each person has the same moral claims on all others.
So, a starving child in Nepal has the same moral
claim on Americans and their resources as a starving
child huddled on an American doorstep, and the se-
vere restrictions on women’s activities by the Tali-
ban rulers of Afghanistan should be of concern to
people in all parts of the world. From the perspective
of cosmopolitan ethics, differences in nationality,
ethnic identification, citizenship, or geographical lo-
cation, make no necessary difference to the moral
claims which any human being has on any other hu-
man being.
Cosmopolitan ethics is commonly employed in
service of efforts to broaden the range of acknowl-
edged moral ties human beings have with one an-
other by, for example, endorsing unimpeded emi-
gration and immigration, global HUMAN RIGHTS
enforcement mechanisms, or global redistribution of
economic resources. Its principles are also deployed
to combat beliefs which aim to restrict the reach of
human beings’ moral ties to one another and beliefs
which discount the moral claims of those outside a
particular group or legal domain. Thus, it is used to
rebut the view that a nation’s citizens have broader
and stronger obligations to one another than to non-
citizens. In this context, cosmopolitan principles
might be used to contest the belief that alien resi-
dents of the United States are not entitled to enjoy
the social services, supported by tax dollars, that
governments in the United States provide their cit-
izens. Also, it is employed to oppose the view that
national governments’ sovereignty should be invio-
lable. Rather, the implication of cosmopolitan ethics
is that national borders and national governments’
346
claim to ultimate legal AUTHORITY within their bor-
ders have no great moral significance. Hence, out-
siders may well be justified in intervening in a nation
to assist people who are being persecuted there.
Something like this principle prompted many of the
world’s nations and people to believe that they were
morally obliged to intrude in the affairs of the sov-
ereign state of South Africa to combat its policy of
apartheid, the array of draconian restrictions on the
civil rights and liberties the South African govern-
ment inflicted on its black population from the late
1940s to the early 1990s. Moreover, from the per-
spective of cosmopolitan ethics, the ties binding in-
dividuals within ethnic, religious, or ideological
groups neither enhance the claims of individual
members on other members nor discount the moral
claims of those outside the group. In the case of the
ethnic turmoil in Bosnia, cosmopolitan principles
imply that the members of the Muslim, Serb, and
Croat ethnic groups acknowledge the same array of
human rights for members of other ethnic groups
that they wish to claim for themselves. Finally, cos-
mopolitan ethicists oppose views that the citizens of
a nation enjoy a vastly stronger claim to the wealth
generated within their borders or the benefits of ex-
ploiting natural resources within their borders than
do aliens. From the cosmopolitan perspective, North
Americans, who enjoy abundant and inexpensive
supplies of food because of the continent’s temper-
ate climate, fertile soil, and skilled farmers, would
not be justified in asserting that starving people else-
where in the world have less moral entitlement to
American food supplies than do Americans.
The origins of cosmopolitan ethics are both an-
cient and recent. Its intellectual foundation was laid
during the era of the Roman Empire when the Stoics
devised a conception of NATURAL LAW, a belief that
a single, universal moral order exists, accessible to
the unaided reason of all human beings and com-
posed of an array of principles, duties, and obliga-
tions which all human beings owe one another.
Noted Stoics, such as SENECA (c. 4 B.C.E.– C.E. 65)
and the Roman emperor MARCUS AURELIUS (121–
180), also endorsed the idea of the “world citizen”
and argued that, while each human is a member of
both a local community and the world community,
the world community is the source of our most fun-
damental values and obligations. Early Christianity
also contributed to the heritage of cosmopolitan
ethics when, at the Council of the Apostles in Jeru-

salem in 50 C.E., St. PAUL (C.E. 5?–67?) successfully
argued that it should reach out to all human beings,
Gentiles as well as Jews. Previously, most religions
were affiliated with a particular ethnic group. In
contrast, St. Paul’s belief that Christianity should be
universal implies that all human beings are worthy
to be part of it. He says in his letter to the Ephesians
(2:12–22), who were Gentile converts to Christian-
ity, Christianity’s message is that there should be no
hostility or division between Gentile and Jew; rather,
all human beings should unite in harmony in a single
religious movement. In the same era, the Roman
Empire contributed to the intellectual foundations
of cosmopolitan ethics by endorsing the idea that
citizenship is not intrinsically tied to ethnic back-
ground. Previously, the predominant conception was
that citizenship resulted from birth into a particular
ethnic group and could no more be changed than
ethnic identity.
International law, focused for most of its history
on laws of war, also nurtures cosmopolitan ethics.
Hugo GROTIUS (1583–1645) and others who for-
mulated international laws of warfare drew on the
intellectual resources of natural law theory, and their
efforts served to highlight the conception that all hu-
man beings, even those locked in mortal combat,
have moral claims on one another. Despite the car-
nage of the American Civil War and Europe’s wars,
or, perhaps because of it, the nineteenth century was
the scene of fevered development of an international
law of war, culminating in the series of Geneva
Conventions which codified the principles of land
warfare.
The array of beliefs and movements dedicated to
the ideal of a global community of nations also nur-
tures cosmopolitan ethics. These ideas can be traced
to Enlightenment views of the common humanity of
all peoples and hopes to end war and strife by cre-
ating a collegial association of nations. Appearing
near the end of the Enlightenment period, Immanuel
KANT’s (1724–1804) essay “To Perpetual Peace, a
Philosophical Sketch” (1795) remains one of the
fundamental documents of the cosmopolitan move-
ment. Kant argued that humanity can expect to
achieve permanent peace only when the world’s
nations become republics and unite themselves in a
loose federation bound by the principle of respect
for the DIGNITY of each individual. This stream
shrank in the face of the spasms of nationalism of
the nineteenth century, but, soon after the twentieth
347
cosmopolitan ethics
century dawned, it was revived by Woodrow Wil-
son’s (1856–1924) campaign to establish a com-
munity of nations. The fruit of Wilson’s aspiration,
the League of Nations, was short-lived and ineffec-
tual. However, his dream was revived during World
War II when the United Nations was planned.
Though never as efficient or potent as its founders
hoped, the United Nations has created some of the
structures and practices required for a genuine com-
munity of nations. Most importantly, however, it rat-
ified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(1948), a compendium of the moral ENTITLEMENTS
of all human beings. The Declaration has served as
a point of reference for efforts to combat abuse of
persons by their governments or their fellow citizens
and for efforts to found a genuine global community
of nations and human beings.
The intellectual movement termed ‘cosmopolitan
ethics’ arose during the latter part of the 1970s, and
may have received a portion of its inspiration from
several nations’ endorsement of global human
rights. It was also fed by revulsion at the conduct of
the United States during the war in Vietnam and by
that decade’s conflicts between the world’s wealthy
nations and its impoverished nations. The latter,
more vigorously than before, asserted moral claims
on behalf of their citizens against the wealthy and
powerful nations of the world.
Following a period of quiescence in the 1980s,
cosmopolitan ethics flowered with the demise of the
Cold War. During the Cold War (which lasted from
the end of World War II to about 1990), the conflict
between the United States and the then Soviet Union
exerted powerful influence on international rela-
tions, and most global issues were focused through
its lens. When the Cold War sputtered to a halt,
many hoped that a new era of genuine international
cooperation could begin. To a modest degree, that
promise was fulfilled. The United Nations was in-
vigorated and the world’s major powers began to
cooperate with greater enthusiasm than before. In
addition, advances in communication and transpor-
tation, fueled by the inexorable spread of multi-
national commerce, worked to create vastly greater
interdependence and mutual endeavor. These devel-
opments in turn inspired a burst of intellectual in-
terest in issues of cosmopolitan ethics.
Though cosmopolitan ethics is resurgent, it re-
mains under attack by several well-established in-
tellectual traditions. One takes inspiration from
cosmopolitan ethics
Thomas HOBBES’s (1588–1679) skepticism about
the possibility of any viable ethic lacking sovereign
POWER to give it force. Hobbes believed that no
moral constraints bind national governments be-
cause no institution is able to enforce moral stan-
dards on nations. Hobbes’s current-day heirs es-
pouse a position termed ‘realism’, the view that
nations will act only from self-interest, and they can-
not be expected to bind themselves with moral con-
straints. They would assert that ultimately the only
reason the nations of the world would support the
United Nations or sign the treaty banning the use of
land mines is a belief that this activity will advance
their national interest. If they claim to be motivated
by moral scruple, they are being naive at best. If cor-
rect, this position is devastating for cosmopolitan
ethics both because national governments must of-
ten be the agents of international moral activity and
because the efforts of individuals to act in accor-
dance with cosmopolitan principles will be thwarted
if national governments do not cooperate.
A second avenue of attack builds on the conten-
tion that present global conditions do not support
the creation of a genuine cosmopolitan ethic. A vi-
able cosmopolitan ethic would require substantial
agreement on, and commitment to, a body of moral
principles and values, a common society in which
they can take root, and INSTITUTIONS for inculcating
these values and enforcing them. Some assert that
none of these requirements for a global cosmopoli-
tan ethic currently exists, and that they are unlikely
to emerge in the future. Danilo Zolo, a stout critic
of cosmopolitanism, contends that the various ar-
rays of international RIGHTS are too vague and too
disconnected from the actual practice of states to
genuinely serve as moral guideposts. Further, he as-
serts that, in order to maintain their predominance
in global affairs, the wealthy and powerful nations
of the world will block the creation of effective mea-
sures for enforcing international law.
Yet another line of assault is pursued by those
who endorse the idea that sovereign states have an
autonomy and moral stature which is analogous to
those individual human beings enjoy. In fact, some
proponents of this view assert that sovereign states
embody the collected will and authority of their cit-
izens and are morally obliged to serve as the agents
of their citizens’ will. From this perspective, sover-
eign states have the inalienable obligation to repre-
348
sent the INTERESTS of their citizens in the interna-
tional arena and to look after citizens’ interests
domestically. Hence, neither intervention from out-
side nor the belief that aliens could have obligations
to a nation’s citizens equal to that of their own gov-
ernments can be justified.
A final front of attack is mounted by the various
theorists who argue that human moral ties are al-
ways bounded and are never universal in scope. One
branch of this attack is developed by those who as-
sert that the strongest and most pervasive moral ob-
ligations human beings have to one another always
emerge from particular relationships or offices.
Hence, parents have vastly greater responsibilities
for their own children than for other children.
Elected officials must serve the interests of their con-
stituents and would violate the TRUST bestowed on
them if they gave equal weight to the concerns of
nonconstituents. From this perspective, cosmopoli-
tan ethics must be a sham, since it asserts that people
have the same moral obligations to those human be-
ings with whom they have no special ties as those
who are their neighbors, FAMILY, or constituents.
The second prong of this attack is mounted by
communitarians, a diverse lot who nonetheless
share the belief that genuine moral commitments
and shared moral standards can develop only within
specific human cultures. Hence, they argue that
there must always be a profound difference in moral
status separating those who share a given culture
from those outside. They are sharp critics of Sen-
eca’s ideal of the world citizen, arguing that individ-
uals gain their identity and values only from the so-
cieties in which they are born and mature. Their
values and allegiances cannot be detached from their
circumstances, and they can never hope to share the
perspectives, or endorse the ideals and values, of
those nurtured in different societies. As a result, they
would assert that the global moral commitment en-
visaged by cosmopolitan ethics is impossible to
achieve.
Recently, many Americans have been distressed
to learn that some of their most cherished consumer
products may have been produced by foreign labor-
ers working under extraordinarily harsh conditions
and for very low wages. Considerable numbers, as a
result, concluded that they should act to remedy
these conditions, and came to believe that it is mor-
ally wrong for them to benefit from the EXPLOITA-

TION of remote people in vastly different cultures.
This controversy may serve as an emblem of the
present age: People in one portion of the globe have
discovered that they have close ties to those in dis-
tant lands and have come to the conclusion that they
are morally responsible for those distant people. The
array of human ties resulting from global commerce
is only a portion of the picture. Advances in tech-
nology and communications have drawn human be-
ings closer together in various ways. For example,
the vicious civil war in Bosnia aroused the concerns
of people across the world in significant portion be-
cause of televised broadcasts of atrocities. Also, re-
vulsion against crimes against humanity by combat-
ants in Bosnia’s civil war, the vicious ethnic conflict
in Rwanda, and the outrages of the Khmer Rouge
leaders of Cambodia during the 1970s has prompted
many to urge that permanent international legal
bodies be established to investigate, try, and punish
those suspected of perpetrating crimes against hu-
manity. Human beings appear destined to contend
with an ever-widening array of issues of this sort in
coming years, in part because they are becoming
more closely connected with one another, in other
part because humanity as a whole is confronted with
a bewildering array of problems which are global in
scope—from the possibility of global plague, to the
worry of global pollution, and even global crime—
and in another part because many contemporary dif-
ficulties can be adequately addressed only by hu-
manity as a whole. To the extent that these issues
remain and continue to cause concern, cosmopoli-
tan ethics will continue to be a focus of intense
discussion.
See also: AUTHORITY; CHRISTIAN ETHICS; CIVIL
RIGHTS AND CIVIC DUTIES; COMMUNITARIANISM; CO-
OPERATION, CONFLICT, AND COORDINATION; CUL-
TURAL STUDIES; DIGNITY; DISCOUNTING THE FUTURE;
DUTY AND OBLIGATION; ECONOMIC SYSTEMS; ENTI-
TLEMENTS; EQUALITY; EXPLOITATION; FUTURE GEN-
ERATIONS; GOVERNMENT, ETHICS IN; GROUPS,
MORAL STATUS OF; HOBBES; HUMAN RIGHTS; IMPAR-
TIALITY; INSTITUTIONS; INTERESTS; INTERNATIONAL
JUSTICE: DISTRIBUTION; MASS MEDIA; MILITARY
ETHICS; MORAL COMMUNITY, BOUNDARIES OF; MUL-
TICULTURALISM; NATURAL LAW; NEEDS; PARTIALITY;
PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS; POWER; PUBLIC POLICY;
349
cost-benefit analysis
RIGHTS; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY; WAR
AND PEACE.
Bibliography
Beitz, Charles. Political Theory and International Rela-
tions. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.
———, et al., eds. International Ethics. Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 1985.
Brown, Chris, ed. Political Restructuring in Europe: Eth-
ical Perspectives. London and New York: Routledge,
1994.
Brown, Peter G., and Henry Shue, eds. Boundaries: Na-
tional Autonomy and Its Limits. Totowa, NJ: Rowman
and Littlefield, 1981.
Elfstrom, Gerard. Ethics for a Shrinking World. London
and New York: Macmillan and St. Martin’s, 1990.
Kant, Immanuel. Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on
Politics, History and Morals. Translated by Ted Hum-
phrey. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1982 [1795].
Mapel, David R., and Terry Nardin, eds. International So-
ciety: Diverse Ethical Perspectives. Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 1998.
Shue, Henry. Basic Rights. 2d ed. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1996.
Tesón, Fernando. A Philosophy of International Law.
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998.
Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars. New York: Basic
Books, 1977.
Zolo, Danilo. Cosmopolis: Prospects for World Govern-
ment. Translated by David McKee. Cambridge, UK:
Polity Press, 1997.
Gerard Elfstrom
cost-benefit analysis
Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA), also referred to as
Benefit-Cost Analysis, is sometimes described so
broadly that any formal attempt to consider the ad-
vantages and disadvantages of a proposal would
count as an example. Alternatively, it is sometimes
characterized with such artificial precision and ide-
alization that practically nothing that has ever been
done could qualify as an instance. Neither approach
is helpful in understanding the concept as it is ac-
tually employed.
‘Cost-Benefit Analysis’, as the term is now gen-
erally understood, refers to a family of techniques of
normative welfare economics employed for the for-
mal evaluation of the social costs and benefits of a
proposal. The core features that unite the central in-
cost-benefit analysis
stances of this family are several. First, CBA is com-
mitted to the existence of precise accounts of and
formal methods of measuring individual benefits
and costs. Furthermore, it requires a method for the
aggregation of these costs and benefits across indi-
viduals, over time, and over varying levels of cer-
tainty. More must be said to avoid the error of over-
generality, but a brief look at the history of CBA will
be helpful first.
Brief History of Cost-Benefit Analysis
CBA has its conceptual roots in the work of the
French economist and engineer Jules Dupuit (1804–
1866), who, in 1844, identified the concept of con-
sumer surplus and employed it to evaluate the utility
of public works. These conceptual roots produce lit-
tle practical fruit until the passage in 1936 of the
United States Flood Control Act, which declared
that the benefits ‘to whomsoever they may accrue’
of federal projects must exceed the costs. While the
act did not offer any guidance for achieving this goal
and certainly showed no awareness of Dupuit’s
work or the concept of consumer surplus, attempts
by economists to comply with the directive devel-
oped into what we now recognize as CBA. In 1952,
the United States Bureau of the Budget published
guidelines, in Budget Circular A-47, that served to
standardize official cost-benefit analyses for the next
decade. In publications from the Water Resources
Council in 1962 (Policies, Standards, and Proce-
dures in the Formulation, Evaluation, and Review
of Plans for Use and Development of Water and Re-
lated Land Resources) and then 1973 (Principles,
and Standards for Planning Water and Related Land
Resources), the practices of CBA for the govern-
ment evaluation of water-use projects was authori-
tatively detailed. The latter publication detailed the
‘multiple-objective framework’ for project evalua-
tion—this specified keeping separate accounts for
such various objectives as national economic devel-
opment, local economic development, environmen-
tal quality, and social well-being. In 1971, President
Ronald Reagan issued Executive Order 12291
which mandated that ‘[r]egulatory action shall not
be undertaken unless the potential benefits to soci-
ety from the regulation outweigh the potential costs
to society’ and required that such evaluation em-
ploy the single criterion of ‘maximizing aggregate
net benefits to society’. This rejects a ‘multiple-
350
objective’ approach, relying only on the criterion of
overall economic benefit.
International employment of CBA grew through
this period and the technique was relied on heavily
by the World Bank. The increasing reliance on CBA,
both nationally and internationally, spurred impor-
tant theoretical work both in the foundations and
the applications of CBA.
The Cost-Benefit Analysis Model
Standard versions of CBA measure benefits and
costs of a proposal for an individual in terms of the
individual’s willingness to pay (WTP) for the pro-
posed change and the individual’s willingness to ac-
cept compensation (WTA) for the proposed change,
respectively. While it is sometimes suggested that
these measures constitute the very meaning of ‘in-
dividual benefit’ and ‘individual cost’, they can per-
haps more charitably be interpreted as imperfect
measures of individuals’ estimations of their subjec-
tive preference satisfaction. Such an interpretation
introduces an additional source of error in measur-
ing costs and benefits by employing market behavior
or subjective surveys, but it has the advantage of
tying the definition of ‘costs’ and ‘benefits’ to fea-
tures of the world that are arguably of intrinsic
moral significance. WTP/WTA information is ex-
pressed in monetary values and these values form
the basis for aggregation across individuals, times,
and certainty levels.
Central to the aggregation procedure of any cost-
benefit analysis is the concept of a potential Pareto
improvement (PPI). One state, s1, represents a PPI
over another, s2 , just in case, (roughly) there exists
in principle some way to redistribute the benefits in
s1 so as to achieve a third state, s3 , which is Pareto
superior to s2 . (The ‘in principle’ method of redis-
tributing need not take account of transfer costs.)
‘Pareto superiority’ is defined as follows: A state, s1,
is Pareto superior to another, s2 , if and only if no
one is worse off in s2 than in s1 and at least one person
is better off in s2 than in s1. Roughly, PPIs can be
thought of as instances in which the improvements
to those benefited by the proposal exceed the costs
imposed on those harmed by the proposal. However,
unlike earlier, utilitarian standards of social effi-
ciency, CBA’s reliance on the concept of a potential
Pareto improvement and WTP/WTA measures of
costs and benefits avoids direct, interpersonal com-

parisons of utility, itself; costs and benefits are ‘mon-
etized’ according the individual’s own utility func-
tion and these monetized values are employed to
measure aggregated social costs and benefits.
The standard process of cost-benefit analysis re-
quires the analyst to: (1) identify the effects of a
project; (2) quantify those effects; (3) monetize the
quantified effects of the project; (4) aggregate the
monetized values over individuals, time, and cer-
tainty levels; and, (5) perform a “sensitivity analysis”
to determine the sensitivity of the results to the input
data.
Philosophically Based Criticisms of CBA
Cost-benefit analysis has been the subject of many
and diverse criticisms. A variety of technical and ep-
istemic problems arise at each step of the process of
performing a CBA. Obviously, limitations on our
understanding of the effects of our projects in both
qualitative and quantitative terms limits the confi-
dence we can have in the results of a CBA. Among
the most troubling methodological problems to
those involved in CBA are those of the assignment
of monetary values to items for which no market
exists, the assessment and weighing of future costs
and benefits—especially those accruing to distant
FUTURE GENERATIONS —and the weighing of cata-
strophic risks all raise serious technical and meth-
odological problems. These issues remain hotly con-
tested and the way in which they are resolved has
important implications for the moral justification of
engaging in CBA and the moral significance we
should attach to a CBA recommendation.
Much criticism of CBA has been directed at its
perceived philosophical foundations. CBA’s ground-
ing in normative welfare economics gives it histori-
cal roots in utilitarian moral theory, and the current
practice of CBA has an obvious utilitarian interpre-
tation. Many critics have focused on deficiencies in
utilitarian theory and applied these to the assess-
ment of CBA. However, CBA’s grounding in utili-
tarian moral theory is not as secure as it might orig-
inally appear. Those utilitarians who embrace a
“subjective preference satisfaction theory of the
good” will, perhaps, have the most obvious attrac-
tion to CBA. Those who accept a hedonistic, eudai-
monistic, or idealistic theory of intrinsic good will
be less likely to find CBA’s reliance on WTP/WTA
measures of costs and benefits to be well grounded.
351
cost-benefit analysis
But even ‘preference satisfaction utilitarians’ will
have concerns about CBA’s reliance on these mea-
sures; because the willingness to pay for a change
is bounded by the ability to pay, and both the will-
ingness to pay and the willingness to accept com-
pensation for a change is influenced by current
endowments, one may reasonably doubt that these
measures provide reliable information about the
aggregate expected satisfaction of subjective pref-
erences.
Clearly, those who accept nonutilitarian moral
theories will sometimes (or often) find further
grounds for objecting to the recommendations of
CBA—not the least of which will be the indifference
that standard versions of CBA have toward distri-
butional considerations. However, the existence of
moral criticisms of the recommendations of CBA is
neither a theoretical nor a practical criticism of CBA
itself. Few defenders of the use of CBA have held
that it issues ‘all things considered’ moral direc-
tives—that it constitutes BENTHAM’s (1748–1832)
dream of an ‘unabashed arithmetic of morals’. It is
typically advocated as a reasonable attempt to quan-
tify and aggregate those effects of a project that are
amenable to quantification and aggregation. To the
degree that CBA represents itself only as providing
informational input into a broader political decision
process, objections that CBA overlooks morally im-
portant factors, even if sustained, do not vitiate
CBA. At the very best, and setting aside the problem
of how current endowments influence WTP/WTA,
CBA yields a measure of the overall social satisfac-
tion of intrinsic preferences. To the degree that this
measure is not all that is relevant to moral value and
that moral value is not all that is relevant to the
moral evaluation of projects, CBA fails to give a
complete moral evaluation of projects.
More to the point in challenging CBA itself, some
have suggested that the morally relevant information
contained in a CBA recommendation is of little value
in reaching morally informed decisions. This could
either be because the inputs to CBA are not of moral
significance or because the process of quantifying
and aggregating this information loses or distorts the
morally significant input. To the degree that WTP/
WTA information reveals a reasonable expectation
of intrinsic preference satisfaction, it is plausible to
regard this information as being of moral signifi-
cance. However, doubts persist about the degree to
which WTP/WTA information does reflect, without
cost-benefit analysis
distortion, a reasonable expectation of intrinsic pref-
erence satisfaction. These doubts can be based on
doubts about the degree to which agents’ WTP/
WTA represents informed choices, the influence of
current endowments on WTP/WTA, or on other
considerations. Because CBA aggregates the WTP/
WTA information in the way it does, it faces the
charge that it ‘throws away’ morally significant in-
formation: the reduction of individual costs and
benefits to a single, ‘bottom line’ social cost and ben-
efit arguably loses information that is relevant to
considerations of distributive FAIRNESS and to indi-
vidual RIGHTS. If these charges are sustained, the
CBA is challenged even as a source of information
input into a larger, social decision process.
See also: CONSEQUENTIALISM; COOPERATIVE SUR-
PLUS; DISCOUNTING THE FUTURE; ECONOMIC ANAL-
YSIS; ECONOMIC SYSTEMS; ENTITLEMENTS; ENVIRON-
MENTAL ETHICS; FIDUCIARY RELATIONSHIPS; FUTURE
GENERATIONS; GOOD, THEORIES OF THE; GOVERN-
MENT, ETHICS IN; INTERESTS; INTERNATIONAL JUS-
TICE: DISTRIBUTIVE; JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE; NEEDS;
PUBLIC POLICY; PUBLIC POLICY ANALYSIS; RATIONAL
CHOICE; RATIONALITY VS. REASONABLENESS; RISK;
RISK ANALYSIS; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY;
UTILITARIANISM; VALUE, THEORY OF; WELFARE
RIGHTS AND SOCIAL POLICY.
Bibliography
Economics
Eckstein, Otto. Water Resource Development: The Eco-
nomics of Project Evaluation. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1958. An important early discussion
and application of CBA to public policy evaluation.
Freeman III, A. Myrick. The Measurement of Environ-
mental and Resource Values: Theory and Methods.
Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future, 1993. A
comprehensive discussion of the meaning and mea-
surement of ‘nonmarket’ values and the controversies
surrounding these values and their role in CBA.
Little, Ian Malcolm David, and James A. Mirrlees. Project
Appraisal and Planning for Developing Countries.
London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1974. An
application of CBA to international development
concerns.
Mishan, E. J. Cost-Benefit Analysis. New York: Praeger,
1976. A comprehensive and widely used manual on
CBA.
Sen, Amartya. Collective Choice and Social Welfare. San
Francisco: Holden Day, 1970. A collection of the au-
352
thor’s papers dealing with foundational issues in CBA
including the concept of a potential Pareto improve-
ment and aggregation methods.
Philosophy
Bowie, Norman. Ethical Issues in Government. Philadel-
phia: Temple University Press, 1981. Part 3 consists of
four useful articles on the moral adequacy of CBA.
Copp, David. “The Justice and Rationale of Cost-Benefit
Analysis.” Theory and Decision 23 (1987): 65–87. A
sophisticated critique of CBA, presenting reasons for
doubting the moral significance of a CBA recommen-
dation.
Hubin, Donald. “The Moral Justification of Benefit/Cost
Analysis.” Economics and Philosophy 10 (1994): 169–
94. Defends the use of CBA for providing information
input into a social decision process from a variety of
ethical perspectives.
MacLean, Douglas, ed. Values at Risk. Totowa, NJ: Row-
man and Allanheld, 1986. A variety of helpful articles
on CBA and related issues.
Sagoff, Mark. “Ethics and Economics in Environmental
Law.” In Earthbound, edited by Tom Regan, 147–78.
New York: Random House, 1984. Provides a wide-
ranging and broad-based criticism of CBA.
Donald C. Hubin
courage
An ACTION is courageous if done in order to achieve
a highly worthwhile and important goal, despite
danger, personal RISK, and/or painful difficulties in-
volved in carrying out the action. Courage is the vir-
tue, or personal quality of CHARACTER, that lies be-
hind and makes possible the carrying out of a
courageous action. A fine line often exists between
an act that is truly courageous and an act that could
be rightly judged to be foolish, fanatical, or reckless.
For an act to be truly courageous, the agent must
reasonably judge that the goal is worth the risk or
danger. Hence a means-end judgment of the worth
of a line of action relative to the danger of a partic-
ular situation is always involved in any judgment of
an action as courageous (or cowardly).
Moral courage is sometimes contrasted with
physical courage when the threat is primarily the
danger of physical injury. Morally courageous acts
involve a threat to one’s social standing or financial
prospects, the approval of one’s peers, and so forth,
when the risk is not primarily one of physical danger.

Many courageous acts, however, combine both
kinds of courage.
In ethics, courage is often identified with super-
erogatory actions—that is, acts which involve a sac-
rifice or involve the accomplishment of good beyond
the requirements of duty. However, some coura-
geous actions are done in the line of duty—for ex-
ample, rescue operations by professional fire fighters
or police officers. And it is often hard to judge
whether a particular action was beyond duty or in
line with the requirements of duty. Even so, many
acts of courage can best be understood as morally
excellent actions only on the grounds that they were
freely undertaken acts which express the personal
ideals and moral commitments of the agent, even
though no blame or lapse of duty would be attached
to failure to carry out the action. It seems then that
acts of courage are to be understood and justified as
good not primarily because they are universalizable
acts of duty that would apply to all moral agents in
a similar situation. Instead, courageous actions are
expressions of an extraordinary personal commit-
ment to strive exceptionally hard for good, beyond
what is normally required. Courage as an important
virtue seems to be common to many cultures. Civi-
lizations in all historical periods have attached im-
portance to decorations, awards, and sagas that cel-
ebrate exceptional acts of courage.
Courage is sometimes taken to be primarily or
exclusively a military virtue, but this presumption is
a kind of misconception. Some of the most striking
acts of courage in wartime have involved actions
that departed from, or even went against, military
orders. In the cases of soldiers who, in historical
hindsight, were perceived to be fighting for “the
wrong side,” perplexing ethical dilemmas arise
about whether their actions can be considered truly
courageous or not. Courageous acts arise in all kinds
of situations in which dangerous or painful circum-
stances exist and action is needed to overcome or
cope with the situation to achieve good or prevent
harm.
Both ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) and THOMAS
AQUINAS (1225?–1274) thought of courage as a vir-
tue which requires PRACTICAL REASONING to make
a sound judgment in a dangerous situation instead
of giving in to fear. For both, courage is the mod-
eration of a passionate response through reason,
which avoids the extremes of excessive confidence
or timidity. On these accounts, courage is different
353
courage
from boldness or daring, and it is not necessarily the
same thing as professional or military expertise.
Rather, it is a moral virtue aiming toward a noble
end through the use of judgment and moderation
which can be applied to any dangerous or truly fear-
ful situation.
According to a classification traceable to ancient
philosophy, WISDOM, justice, moderation, and cour-
age are said to be the four cardinal VIRTUES. The
Latin word cardo (hinge) indicates that the other
virtues “turn on” these four, as on a hinge, meaning
that these four are of fundamental importance, and
that the exercise of the other virtues requires them.
All moral virtues have to fulfill conditions of being
exercised with judgment, concern for everyone in-
volved, restraint, and firmness. Stemming from the
Aristotelian tradition, the kind of wisdom most
highly emphasized is that of PRACTICAL WISDOM
(phronesis). PHRONESIS involves the use of practical
reasoning and skills of judgment in assessing the
wisest course of action in a particular situation that
may be highly variable, and not susceptible to exact
calculation. On such practical questions, deciding
which action is reasonable may best be done by mak-
ing a case that carries conviction to persons who are
“prudent and understanding.” (See Jonsen and Toul-
min.) From this perspective, practical reasoning is
an important ingredient not only in courage but also
in all the virtues that hinge on the cardinal virtues.
A number of philosophical issues concern cour-
age. Most notable are the following:
The courage of the villain. There is fundamental
disagreement whether a good purpose in acting is
essential for an act to be truly courageous. Both Ar-
istotle and Aquinas held this requirement. But some,
like G. H. von Wright, have taken the opposite point
of view, claiming that the daring conduct displayed
by a burglar, even though it is detrimental to some-
one else’s welfare, could be described as courage.
Still others have compromised, saying that an im-
moral act could be brave, or show “guts,” even if it
cannot properly and unequivocally be described as
courageous. Another way out, taken by Philippa
FOOT, prefers the locution that an act of villainy
could take courage, even if we should hesitate to
describe it as a courageous act.
Courage as overcoming fear. Some think that
courage overcomes the emotion of fear or is an abil-
ity to overcome the emotion of fear. Others have
thought that courage is the ability to act appropri-
courage
ately or rationally in a situation in which the agent
correctly judges that there is grave danger, regard-
less of whether the agent feels fear or not.
Aquinas rejected the view that courage is the
same thing as fearlessness and even argued that fear-
lessness is a vice rather than a virtue, on the grounds
that people who do not fear DEATH at all must show
a lack of love of their own lives. Since this is a defect,
a too-consistent fearlessness would be more a vice
than a virtue.
According to Aristotle, the courageous man fears
a situation in which fear is appropriate, and then
reacts to that situation in a right manner. Thus, for
Aristotle, overconfidence is not courage: “The cou-
rageous are keen in action, but quiet beforehand”
(Nicomachean Ethics 1116a6). The person who
fears nothing at all could simply be a fool if the dan-
ger faced is truly fearful. According to Aristotle, vir-
tue is a kind of moderation, based on a reasoned
appreciation of the situation in question. Courage,
on this view, is characterized by the good judgment
that steers a middle way between excess and defi-
cient confidence in the face of a truly fearful danger.
Courage and cowardice as opposites. It is often
thought that courage and cowardice are opposites,
but there are grounds for questioning how strict the
nature of their opposition is. Reasons have been
given above that lead to the conclusion that the pres-
ence (or absence) of fear may not always be neces-
sary for the existence of an act of courage. Fear may
be a necessary ingredient of cowardice, however. For
it is generally agreed that an act of cowardice is an
act in which the agent fails to act properly precisely
because of his fear. If this is the case, courage and
cowardice may not be opposites. Without going into
a technical discussion of the meaning of the term
“opposite,” it may be enough to say that this failure
to be opposites may stem from the supererogatory
nature of courageous acts. A failure to undertake a
courageous action is most often not blameworthy
because of the optional, beyond-duty character cou-
rageous acts entail.
Personal ideals and aspirations. Because coura-
geous acts are so often beyond the requirements of
duty, their ethical basis transcends the morality of
RIGHTS and universal duties. They reflect personal
ideals and extraordinary efforts which place a spe-
cial value on prized goals important to an individ-
ual’s personal conception of what is fitting to risk in
a situation. An act of courage shows a special effort
354
that is unusual and therefore more valuable than
normally commendable actions. Some would there-
fore question the ethical basis of prizing acts of cour-
age, suggesting that they might even involve elitism
or fanaticism. Counterbalancing this, however, is the
argument that putting too much stress on the letter
of rights and duties overlooks the fact that situations
arise that can be contended with only if some indi-
viduals are willing and able to make a personal sac-
rifice beyond the normal requirements. Thus cou-
rageous acts are good acts that are especially
excellent because they arise out of the unexpected
exigencies of bad, dangerous, unpleasant, and un-
manageable situations that (regrettably) are a part
of the human condition.
In some cases, it is better for one individual to
suffer a risk, to take a loss or injury, or to face an
intimidating situation for the sake of someone else
who has no claim (of obligation) on her, even though
it would be unfair and unrealistic to make this de-
mand nonvoluntary. Because of individual differ-
ences of abilities, pluralisms of moral standards, and
the individualistic nature of judging what it is pos-
sible for a person to do in a particular situation, per-
sonal ideals of conduct fitting to a situation have an
ethical status apart from rights and obligations.
The role of practical reasoning. A courageous
action presupposes a framework in which an agent
reasonably considers he can do something highly
worthwhile despite a danger to his personal safety.
Suppose a man rushed into a burning building to
save a child. Even if the child dies anyway, or even
if there were no child in the building, still the act
could rightly be thought to be courageous if the man
had a good reason for thinking that his act was nec-
essary to save the life of another person, relative to
how he had judged the situation. Judging an act as
courageous or cowardly, therefore, does not require
that the person who committed the action was not
mistaken. But it does presuppose a framework of
practical rationality whereby the person acted in ac-
cord with a reasonable estimate of what was possible
in a particular situation both as he saw it at the time
and as far as we can later reconstruct the way he saw
it. Thus Aristotle and others have often stressed that
evaluating an act as courageous depends on a key
presumption that the person in question sized up a
situation with reasonably good—or in some cases
exceptionally good—judgment. This kind of judg-
ment involves the following elements:

1. Assessment of whether carrying out a goal
is possible in a particular situation;
2. Selection of a means that has no outweigh-
ing, negative side effects that could reason-
ably have been anticipated;
3. Weighing of possible alternative means,
where these are available; and
4. Assessment of the total situation, on the
known evidence, to balance risks against
competing goals (like personal safety).
Thus courage as a virtue presupposes not only good
intentions but also good judgment in attempting to
carry out those intentions in particular circum-
stances.
See also: CHARACTER; DUTY AND OBLIGATION; EX-
CELLENCE; FAIRNESS; FITTINGNESS; FOOT; INTEN-
TION; MILITARY ETHICS; PHRONESIS; PRACTICAL REA-
SON[ING]; PROPORTIONALITY; PRUDENCE; REASONS
FOR ACTION; RISK; RISK ANALYSIS; SITUATION ETH-
ICS; SUPEREROGATION; TEMPERANCE; THOMAS AQUI-
NAS; VIRTUE ETHICS; VIRTUES; WAR AND PEACE;
WISDOM.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. London: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1915.
Foot, Phillipa. Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in
Moral Philosophy. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1978.
Heyd, David. Supererogation. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1982.
Jonsen, Alfred R., and Stephen Toulmin. The Abuse of
Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1988. Cited at page 72.
Thomas Aquinas. Summa theologiae. London: Burns and
Oates, 1922 [1266–73].
Wallace, James. Virtues and Vices. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1978.
Walton, Douglas N. Courage: A Philosophical Investiga-
tion. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
Wright, G. H. von. The Varieties of Goodness. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963.
Douglas N. Walton
cradle arguments
“All the ancient philosophers, in particular those of
our school, turn to cradles, because it is in childhood
355
cradle arguments
that they think we can most easily recognize the will
of nature.” So said Piso, disciple and mouthpiece of
Antiochus of Ascalon in CICERO’s (106–43 B.C.E.)
De Finibus (V 55). Starting from this passage, typ-
ical of Antiochus’ syncretism, the phrase “Cradle Ar-
gument” (hereafter CA) has been put forward, and
often accepted, as a conventional label for a type of
argument frequently employed in the Hellenistic
ethical doctrines.
Roughly speaking, a CA involves two parts: (A) a
factual premise, purporting to describe the behav-
iour of newborn children (usually associated with
young animals); (B) a normative conclusion, claim-
ing to determine, on the basis of (A), the sovereign
good (telos, finis bonorum) of man.
As a matter of fact, some version of the CA occurs
in the very first lines of several surviving reports of
various, often dramatically contrasting doctrines,
most particularly those of the two major Hellenistic
schools, EPICUREANISM and STOICISM. The main
philosophical interest of the CA is probably here: the
same argumentative structure, typical of naturalistic
ethics, is used, with carefully different premises, in
support of vastly different conclusions.
In a way, the CA is but an episode in the long
struggle among ancient philosophical schools, each
one trying to secure for itself the prestigious flag of
“nature.” In Sophistic circles, “nature” (phusis) was
frequently opposed to “convention” (nomos); a life
of unlimited enjoyment was sometimes advocated as
consonant with “the law of nature” (e.g., by Callicles
in Plato’s [c. 430–347 B.C.E.] Gorgias). On the other
hand, upholders of VIRTUE ETHICS were themselves
quite happy to appeal to “nature” in support of their
doctrines; but the “nature” they invoked was that of
the adult rational man. (This was most clearly artic-
ulated by ARISTOTLE [384–322 B.C.E.]: “That which
each thing is when its growth is completed we speak
of as being the nature of each thing” [Politics I 2,
1252 b 32]). Consequently, if it is a fact that children
and animals are seeking after X (say, PLEASURE), this
fact was enough to disqualify X as a decent candi-
date, if not for being good, at any rate for being the
good (Speusippus, Plato’s nephew and successor,
quoted by Aristotle, EN VII 11,1152b20).
The CA is a way of taking up the challenge: tell
me what you were like in your cradle, and I’ll tell
you what nature itself makes you seek. Babies and
animals are the true specula naturae, “the mirrors
cradle arguments
of nature” (Cicero, Fin. II 32), not yet “denatured”
by education and culture.
What then are they seeking? To all appearances,
pleasure. No wonder, then, if the first, embryonic
versions of the CA come from hedonist thinkers, like
Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 390–c. 340 B.C.E.; quoted by
Aristotle, EN X 2, 1172 b 9) and the CYRENAICS
(Diogenes Laertius II 88). The first fully developed
version was worked out by EPICURUS (341–270
B.C.E.). In the authoritative account of Torquatus,
the Epicurean spokesman in Cicero’s De Finibus,
the two steps of the CA are neatly distinguished (I
30). First (A): “Every animal, as soon as it is born,
seeks pleasure and enjoys it as the chief good, while
shunning pain as the chief bad and averting it so far
as it can. And this it does before it can be perverted,
with nature itself the incorrupted and honest judge.”
Then (B): “Epicurus therefore denies that there is
any need for reasoning or argument as to why plea-
sure should be chosen and pain avoided. He thinks
that this is felt, in the way in which it is felt that fire
is hot, snow white, and honey sweet. None of these
needs to be proven by elaborate reasoning: it is
enough to draw attention to it.”
The strength of this argument lies in its apparent
simplicity: the primacy of pleasure looks as obvious
as the most immediate perceptive certainties. How-
ever, it raises various problems, both internal and
external to the Epicurean system.
First, what exactly is the logical link between (A)
and (B)? Is Epicurus guilty of undertaking the sup-
posedly thorny deduction from “is” to “ought”? Per-
haps not, if we point out that what he infers from
the factual statement (A) is not the normative state-
ment “Pleasure should be chosen,” but the metaeth-
ical statement “That pleasure should be chosen does
not need arguing.” But then, he seems to give an
argument, namely (A), in order to prove that his eth-
ical principle does not need any argument. Various
solutions of this difficulty, which we cannot examine
here in detail, have been suggested (see Brunschwig
and the powerful objections of Sedley).
There is also a problem about the ethical link be-
tween (A) and (B). The CA is addressed to adult
human beings; certainly Epicurus does not advise
them to behave like babies, pursuing only dynamic
(“kinetic”), bodily, short-term pleasures. In a later
step of his ethical system, he makes room for other
sorts of pleasures, namely stable (“katastematic”),
psychic, long-term ones, so as to advocate a rational
356
calculus of pleasures, in which the VIRTUES (includ-
ing other-directed ones, like justice and FRIENDSHIP)
play their part as instrumental to pleasure. Epicu-
rus’s opponents claimed that his version of the CA
was misconceived, because what it described as the
natural goal of newborn children was not identical
with what it gave as the ultimate good of adult hu-
man beings. But it is not certain that Epicurus was
really exposed to this objection, given the prelimi-
nary place of the CA in the structure of his ethics.
A much more frontal attack was launched by the
Stoics against the Epicurean premise (A). Is it fac-
tually true that what newborn babies and animals do
seek is pleasure as such? Taking up once more the
hedonistic challenge, the Stoics undertook to deny
this, and to propose an alternative reading of the
child’s behaviour. Cato’s report, still in Cicero’s De
Finibus (III 16), begins quite like the Epicurean ac-
count, and goes on very differently: “As soon as a
living being is born—for this must be the starting
point—it is appropriated to itself [conciliari, Greek
oikeiousthai] and led to preserve itself and to love
its own constitution and those things which preserve
its constitution, and to be alienated from its death
and from those things which seem to lead to death.
They prove that this is so from the fact that before
either pleasure or pain has affected them, infants
seek what preserves them and reject the opposite,
something which would not happen unless they
loved their own constitution and feared death. But
it cannot be the case that they desire anything unless
they have a sense of themselves and thereby love
themselves. Hence it must be realized that the prin-
ciple has been drawn from self-love.”
In order to substitute self-love and self-preserva-
tion for pleasure as the natural (i.e., native) goal,
and to present hedonism not only as morally repel-
lent but also as psychologically false, the Stoics were
led to make interesting observations and reflections
on child PSYCHOLOGY. They claimed, like in the text
just quoted, that the experience of pleasure is chron-
ologically posterior to, and psychologically super-
venient on, self-preserving activity; they also found
that the child’s development normally aims at actu-
alizing his inborn faculties, even at the price of pain
(e.g., when he begins to stand upright and to walk;
see Seneca, Ep. Luc. 121, 8). Acute observations
and arguments are also to be found in Hierocles’
(C.E. second century) Elementa moralia, especially
to the effect that self-consciousness, considered as a

necessary condition of self-love, is present as early
as the beginning of life.
Between the child still devoid of reason, who
cares only for himself, and the Stoic Sage, perfectly
rational and virtuous, the gap seems to be still
deeper than that between the hedonist child and the
hedonist (in his own way) Sage of Epicureanism.
The main Stoic tool for bridging the gap was their
essentially developmental conception of the human
being. For instance, as time elapses and reason
grows, the primitive self-directed attachment (oik-
eiosis) undergoes various extensions and transfer-
ences to persons other than the self, namely parents
and children, fellow citizens, human and rational be-
ings in general. Self-preserving activity is first di-
rected at getting “primary things in accordance with
nature,” and avoiding “primary things contrary to
nature”; but these things are progressively viewed as
simply preferred or dispreferred ceteris paribus.
What is of importance from the point of view of
morality and HAPPINESS, the genuine telos, becomes
the rational, orderly, consistent form of this selective
activity, even if Fate sometimes prevents the attain-
ment of its external goals. As Cato says (De Fin. III
23), nature gave us a letter of recommendation for
reason: often, we come to be more devoted to the
addressee of the letter than to its writer.
Thus, the Epicurean and Stoic versions of the CA
tried to carry out, each in its way, the same philo-
sophical tour de force: resting their view of wisdom
on the frail shoulders of the less than wise inmates
of the cradles.
See also: CHILDREN AND ETHICAL THEORY; CHINA;
CICERO; CONVENTIONS; CYRENAICS; EGOISM; EPI-
CUREANISM; EPICURUS; FINAL GOOD; HAPPINESS; HE-
DONISM; MORAL EDUCATION; MORAL DEVELOPMENT;
MORAL IMAGINATION; MORAL PERCEPTION; NATU-
RALISM; NATURALISTIC FALLACY; PAIN AND SUFFER-
ING; PLATO; SENECA; SOPHISTS; STOICISM; VIRTUE
ETHICS.
Bibliography
Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993. An important general survey of
ancient ethics, from Aristotle to the Hellenistic philos-
ophers, with a particular stress on the structure of eth-
ical doctrines and a comparison with modern theories.
Bastianini, Guido, and Anthony A. Long, eds. “Hierocles’
Elementa moralia.” In Corpus dei papiri filosofici greci
e latini. Parte I, vol. 1., 268–451. Florence: Leo L.
357
critical theory
Olschki, 1992. A new and excellent edition of this very
interesting text, preserved on papyrus. Rich bibliogra-
phy and thorough philological and philosophical
comments.
Brunschwig, Jacques. “The Cradle Argument in Epicure-
anism and Stoicism.” In The Norms of Nature, edited
by M. Schofield and Gisela Striker. Studies in Helle-
nistic Ethics. Cambridge, Paris: Cambridge University
Press, Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme,
1986.
Fortenbaugh, William W., ed. On Stoic and Peripatetic
Ethics. The Work of Arius Didymus. New Brunswick,
London: Transaction Books, 1983. A valuable collec-
tion of essays on an important document, which could
not be studied in the present entry: Arius Didymus’
exposition of Stoic ethics.
Inwood, Brad. Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoi-
cism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. A comprehen-
sive and detailed survey of the psychological and moral
aspects of Stoic ethics.
Long, Anthony A. Stoic Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996. A collection of previously pub-
lished papers, several of which bear on ethical
questions.
Long, Anthony A., and David N. Sedley. The Hellenistic
Philosophers. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1987. All of the relevant texts are edited,
translated, and richly commented on in this outstand-
ing book.
Pembroke, S. G. “Oikeiosis.” In Problems in Stoicism, ed-
ited by Anthony A. Long. London: Athlone Press,
1971. One of the most important studies on this basic
Stoic concept.
Sedley, David N. “The Inferential Foundations of Epicu-
rean Ethics.” In Epicureismo greco e romano, edited by
Gabriele Giannantoni and Marcello Gigante, 313–39.
Naples: Bibliopolis, 1995. Discusses some aspects of
Brunschwig.
Striker, Gisela. Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and
Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
A collection of previously published papers, several of
which bear on Stoic ethics.
Jacques Brunschwig
critical theory
Critical theory continued into the twentieth century
the Enlightenment project of rational criticism for
the purpose of human emancipation. The term
“critical theorist” refers specifically to a group of
philosophers and social scientists connected to the
Institute for Social Research; they are also called the
Frankfurt School (after the location of the Institute)
and include, among others, Theodor W. Adorno
critical theory
(1903–1969), Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), Her-
bert Marcuse (1898–1979), and more recently Jür-
gen HABERMAS. It represents perhaps the most sus-
tained and sophisticated effort to continue Karl
MARX’s (1818–1883) transformation of moral phi-
losophy into social and political critique, while at the
same time remaining within the western European
tradition of rejecting orthodox MARXISM as a
dogma. But more than a school or a particular type
of Marxism, critical theory is a way of doing philos-
ophy, of critically reflecting on questions that arise
at the intersection of ethics and social science, mo-
rality, and politics. Feminism, Latin American lib-
eration thought, and critical race theory clearly be-
long to critical theory in this broader sense as
philosophical reflection on struggles against OPPRES-
SION. They have not only added new methods and
forms of criticism, they have also analyzed new
forms of oppression. They have also shown that op-
pression is not a uniform phenomenon, even within
a type, as when critical race theorists argue that
there are many different racisms rather than one
Racism.
As Horkheimer developed the distinction be-
tween “traditional” and “critical” theories, a critical
theory is neither purely prescriptive nor descriptive,
neither a moral philosophy in the traditional sense
nor a naturalistic science of society in the positivist
sense. “The critical theory of society,” he wrote, “has
for its object human beings as producers of their
own historical way of life in its totality . . . its goal
is the emancipation of human beings from the rela-
tionships that enslave them.” While a critical theory
may uncover unconscious social forces by “radically
analyzing present conditions,” it is emphatically nor-
mative, oriented to a future society that is “rationally
constituted” so as to “satisfy human needs and pow-
ers.” As a form of normative-philosophical dis-
course, this mixture of descriptive and evaluative
elements, of social theoretical explanations and phil-
osophical reflection, is what makes critical theory
distinctive. Some critics find in critical theory—and
Marxism as a whole—a version of the NATURALISTIC
FALLACY, that is, of confusing is and ought, in its
very methodology. These criticisms are based on a
now suspect positivist philosophy of science and its
thesis of value neutrality, both of which critical the-
orists have taken pains to refute. More than that,
such objections underestimate how the future-
358
orientation of a critical theorist requires ideals that
transcend existing social conditions.
Critical theory also goes some way toward an-
swering this criticism in its rejection of the orthodox
Marxist criticism of morality as mere ideology or
false consciousness. Marx’s own statements about
morality are deeply ambiguous and usually negative,
tending toward an unrelenting criticism of morality
as “obsolete verbal rubbish” which will not exist in
socialism. Such claims, however, risk dissolving
critical consciousness by breaking down any gap be-
tween is and ought. Marx’s own critique of ALIEN-
ATION and EXPLOITATION has clear moral implica-
tions, despite his statements to the contrary, as do
some of his claims that resemble principles of jus-
tice, such as “to each according to his needs.”
Against both orthodox and many recent interpreta-
tions of Marx, critical theorists assert that the only
coherent view, and the only way to resolve Marx’s
ambiguities and thereby save his emancipatory ori-
entation, is to make some distinction between “ideo-
logical” and “emancipatory” morality, i.e., to distin-
guish those moral beliefs which justify existing
practices and relationships from those which make
possible their criticism and transformation (Lukes).
If a theory of ideology is to remain critical and
not blunt its edge by declaring everything to be ideo-
logical, then, as Horkheimer argued, “morality can-
not be completely rejected by materialism as pure
ideology, in the sense of false consciousness.” None-
theless, not all moral criticism is of equal value, or
even emancipatory. This problem calls for a further
distinction as part of critical theory’s contribution to
ethics, viz., that between “normative” and “moral”
criticism. In this sense, Marx was correct in his re-
jection of “moralizing” criticism for its abstract im-
position of external and ineffective categories like
moral values or imperatives. Rather, it is the nor-
mative aspects of rational practices and action that
permit criticism, even of morality itself. For exam-
ple, what Horkheimer finds positive in modern
moral theories, such as Kant’s categorical impera-
tive, is not their particular moral beliefs but their
strong normative demands for universality and re-
flexivity. Similarly, Habermas distinguishes norma-
tive and moral considerations. Whereas morality is
concerned with the justification of principles and
values, NORMS are concerned with alternative order-
ings for the satisfaction of NEEDS and INTERESTS,
such as the just distribution of social goods. The pri-

ority of norms is established by the fact that without
the proper normative orientations and structures in
society, universal morality remains but an unfulfill-
able demand that does not substantially determine
social life. Moral action depends on a just normative
order of collective life and is frustrated in an order
like capitalism, which is not oriented to generaliz-
able interests. This is the Hegelian element in the
ethics of critical theory: the attempt to go beyond,
yet complete, the task of morality within normative
critique and PRAXIS.
In attempting to locate its own normative task
between science and philosophy, critical theorists
have elaborated different models of critique to re-
place “moralistic” criticism. Marx, too, rejected the
“critical criticism” of Left-Hegelianism and the En-
lightenment, and attempted instead to develop a di-
verse set of critical tools. With the rejection of or-
thodox Marxist claims to be a “science” of history,
critical theorists had to develop a whole set of criti-
cal methods anew, by using contemporary social sci-
ence and modes of philosophical analysis. As op-
posed to external moralizing or scientific criticism,
they devised a sophisticated form of “immanent cri-
tique” modeled on the observing consciousness of
HEGEL’s (1770–1831) Phenomenology of Spirit
(1807). Immanent critique confronts “the existent
with the claim of its conceptual principles,” chal-
lenging ideas with reality. Such an immanent method
works well in criticizing universalistic claims, such
as claims of RIGHTS or EQUALITY. But when faced
with nonuniversalistic phenomena, it must be sup-
plemented by nonimmanent forms of criticism, like
the critique of ideology, crisis theories, and the de-
scription of systemic social structures.
Once the critic goes beyond immanent critique,
several burdens of proof emerge which are directly
related to ethics. Nonimmanent criticism must be
justified in two ways. First, the critical stance must
be justified theoretically and epistemologically.
Where does the critic stand so that he or she can
claim to know enough to criticize? Second, the criti-
cal norms employed must be practically and morally
justified. What makes the new standards better than
the old ones? Marx thought that historical materi-
alism could solve both problems at once: with its
theory of the progressive stages of social develop-
ment toward socialism, the critic stood in advance
of participants and could locate standards on a his-
torical continuum of progress. However, as histori-
359
critical theory
cal experiences like fascism called into question the
inevitable unfolding of a species subject and the
univocal value of progress itself, the philosophy of
history lost its justificatory force for criticism. With
the loss of this backing, many critical theorists
turned to other sources like the aesthetic experience
of “mimesis,” an area of life that resists the spread
of administrative and instrumental reason (Hork-
heimer and Adorno). Postmodernists criticize these
implausible “metanarratives” of critical theory (its
philosophies of history), even though since Adorno
and Horkheimer’s work they have been largely
abandoned.
Instead of rejecting historical materialism, as ear-
lier critical theorists did, Habermas proposes its “re-
construction.” “From the beginning,” Habermas
notes, “there was a lack of clarity concerning the
normative foundation of Marxian social theory.” Ha-
bermas’s clarification of these normative concepts
consists of two parts: a theory of “social evolution”
and a “minimal ethics,” each of which answers one
of the problems of nonimmanent social criticism.
The theory of social evolution treats certain forms
of social change as social learning processes, much
like learning processes in individuals, whereby each
stage marks the development of new cognitive and
normative structures. Morality here does not have a
secondary, ideological role, but is the “pacemaker of
social evolution”; it makes possible new forms of
problem solving. As part of a universally oriented
theory of rationality, the theory of social evolution
could permit comparative judgments of the ade-
quacy of cultural systems of belief and the reasons
justifying practices. However, such a theory may be-
come Eurocentric if it goes beyond the valid com-
parison of specific learning processes to make inva-
lid comparisons of cultures as a whole.
Habermas’s “minimal ethics” discusses the justi-
fication of any normative claim, including those of
critics (1989). Certainly, a noncognitivist or relativ-
istic ethics would be of no use, since both would
immunize moral claims from criticism. Rather, an
ethical theory supporting the task of social criticism
must be a cognitivist one: in order to be criticizable,
normative claims must be like truth claims and ad-
judicated in argumentation and discourse. A critical
moral theory must for this reason be “postconven-
tional,” in the sense that norms and values cannot
be treated as unalterable social facts but instead
must be subject to revision and interpretation. By
critical theory
deciding according to postconventional procedures
of unrestricted discourse, a consensus can emerge
which reflects “generalizable interests,” i.e., out-
comes that could be acceptable to all those affected
by them. This “discourse” ethics supplies the back-
ing for radically participatory democratic institu-
tions in which members of a society autonomously
decide the rules and goals of their common life, and
in so doing provides a basis for a critique of how
POWER and domination distort and undermine such
a process.
Habermas’s claims for moral theory are self-
consciously limited; in his view, it supports substan-
tive claims of justice only insofar as it sets out a ra-
tional procedure for settling normative questions.
Nonetheless, Habermas’s theory has been criticized
as being too formal and insufficiently utopian to do
the task of backing a critical theory whose goal is
emancipatory change (Benhabib). Habermas’s re-
sponse to this objection is that philosophical reflec-
tion in moral theory has only a limited role, that of
helping to distinguish genuine from de facto forms
of consensus; it cannot replace the empirical contri-
butions of the social sciences and of the interpreta-
tions of needs and norms by participants themselves.
Although not explicitly utopian, Habermas’s ethics
anticipates the full realization of democratic culture
in counterfactual constructions like the ideal speech
situation, a situation of unrestricted communication
which potentially includes all human beings.
Critical theory provides an important alternative
to debates about foundationalism and relativism.
While it holds that the moral actor is inextricably
tied to history and society, this involvement does not
undermine emphatic normative claims, now located
in possibilities of social learning and change. Critical
theory not only introduces new levels of moral re-
flection related to normative social criticism and to
the social sciences, but it also articulates and clari-
fies the Enlightenment ideals of human emancipa-
tion. With the emergence of new forms of critical
theory related to racism, sexism, and colonialism,
these ideals have been transformed as they are
brought to bear on new social movements and their
political demands.
See also: ALIENATION; ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND
ETHICS; CULTURAL STUDIES; EXPLOITATION; FEMINIST
ETHICS; HABERMAS; HEGEL; IDEALIST ETHICS; LIB-
360
ERTY; MARX; MARXISM; MORAL RELATIVISM; NAR-
RATIVE ETHICS; NATURALISTIC FALLACY; NORMS; OP-
PRESSION; POSTMODERNISM; PRAXIS; RACISM AND
RELATED ISSUES; RATIONALITY VS. REASONABLENESS;
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY; SOCIOLOGY;
THEORY AND PRACTICE.
Bibliography
Benhabib, Seyla. Critique, Norm and Utopia. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1986. Comprehensive
work on critical theory and ethics; defends the utopian
dimension.
Goldberg, David Theo, ed. Anatomy of Racism. Minne-
apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990.
Habermas, Jürgen. Rekonstruktion des historischen Ma-
terialismus. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976. Quoted from
p. 97. Develops theory of social learning and evolution.
Many of these essays translated in Communication and
the Evolution of Society, Boston: Beacon, 1979.
Quoted from p. 96.
———. The Theory of Communicative Action. 2 vols. Bos-
ton: Beacon, 1984; 1987. Habermas’s most important
work.
———. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989. Essays on ethics, includ-
ing his “discourse ethics.”
Held, David. Introduction to Critical Theory. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1980. Best introduction.
Horkheimer, Max. Eclipse of Reason. New York: Seabury
Press, 1974. Quoted from p. 181. Statement of later
views of the Frankfurt School.
———. Kritische Theorie. 2 vols. Frankfurt: Fisher, 1977
[1931–39]. Quoted from p. 79. Horkheimer’s impor-
tant essays on morality from the Institute’s journal.
Some essays translated in Critical Theory, New York:
Seabury, 1982. Quoted from pp. 244–46.
Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of
Enlightenment. New York: Seabury, 1982. Criticism of
Enlightenment and progress as basis for critical theory.
Lukes, Steven. Marxism and Morality. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1985. Defends normative, emanci-
patory interpretation.
McCarthy, Thomas. The Critical Theory of Jürgen Haber-
mas. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981. Analysis of Haber-
mas’s work.
James Bohman
cruelty
Cruelty is the activity of hurting sentient beings.
There are thinkers who hold that it is the paradig-

matic example of EVIL and that instances of cruelty
make a nightmare of history. Moreover, cruelty plays
important roles in literature, the arts, and RELIGION.
Nevertheless, there has been very little extended
study of cruelty in general. This may be so because
the term has a vast range of application: We use it
and its cognate forms in ordinary language as well
as in legal theory and practice. In any case, much
has been written about various aspects of the sub-
ject. Thinkers like Michel de MONTAIGNE (1533–
1592), the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814), and
Friedrich NIETZSCHE (1844–1900) give certain
kinds of cruelty great importance in their philoso-
phies. Students of jurisprudence have investigated
at length the claim that CAPITAL PUNISHMENT is
“cruel and unusual” under the Eighth Amendment
of the Constitution of the United States. Cruelty
does not occur only among human beings. Philoso-
phers like Peter Singer see cruelty to other animals
as a fundamental ethical issue. Because of the large
scope of the topic, this article will confine itself to a
general understanding of the cruelty people inflict
upon people.
The word derives from a group of Latin words
having to do with cruor, gore or spilled blood; dic-
tionaries usually define it with reference to inflicting
pain. Taken separately, neither of these two kinds of
meaning gives the necessary and sufficient condi-
tions for the correct application of the word. Cruelty
can happen without the spilling of blood. It happens
in quiet conversation, for example, and in non-
violent religious, racial, or ethnic despisal. In de-
scribing some kinds of cruelty, “pain” can be sim-
plistic and misleading because of the physicalistic
origins of the word. The crushing of a person’s SELF-
RESPECT often does not involve a localizable expe-
rience like the pain inflicted by a whip on bleeding
flesh. The depths of an understanding of cruelty of-
ten lie in the depths of an understanding of human
DIGNITY and of how one can maim without blood-
shed and without localizable pain.
Approaches to the subject. Many students of cru-
elty analyze it from the victimizer’s point of view.
Psychologists like Erich Fromm (1900–1980) em-
phasize the MOTIVES and character of the cruel
agent. The most prolific writer on erotic cruelty, the
Marquis de Sade, focuses his attention on the violent
passions and materialistic rationalizations of his
361
cruelty
cruel heroes and heroines. He sees their victims only
as appetizing, characterless stimuli.
Another way of understanding cruelty is by em-
phasizing the point of view of its victims. In The Life
and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892), the auto-
biography of a black American born into SLAVERY,
the physical pains and the mental miseries of the
slave are emphasized far more than the mentality of
the slaveholders. For example, Douglass (1817–
1895) found that what the slaveholder saw as an act
of kindness to a slave was usually, from the point of
view of the slave, a smug and condescending act of
cruelty. And in the Essays (c. 1580) of Montaigne,
the feelings of the victims are at the centers of his
analyses of cruelty.
Each of these two points of view contributes to
our understanding of the phenomenon of cruelty,
and so it is clear that cruelty is a perspectival matter,
an interaction, in fact a relationship. As such, both
of its relata are relevant to an understanding of it.
To neglect one perspective is to misunderstand the
whole interaction.
Types of cruelty. Closely allied to the distinction
between physical maiming and doing mental harm
is the distinction between personal and institutional
cruelty. Personal cruelty usually takes place in an all-
important, isolated “now” and has little or nothing
to do with public AUTHORITY. A Sadean orgy, or the
TORTURE of a family member by another family
member at a table or in a bedroom, is not a public
matter but a private one. On the other hand, insti-
tutional cruelty, like the long cruelty of slavery in
America, or like the systematic tortures and murders
that the German government inflicted on Jews and
other groups between 1933 and 1945, is a public
matter. Laws and customs condoned and even de-
manded the cruel institutions of slavery and perse-
cution. Personal cruelty is sometimes so intimate as
to be irrelevant to the law or even to custom, while
at other times it is in violation of the law. Such cru-
elty is usually evident to both victimizer and victim,
but institutional cruelty can endure over a long
enough period of time to become a matter of habit
to the victimizer, so that the victimizer hardly notices
the harm that is being done to the victim.
Of course, just as physical and mental harm often
happen together, personal and institutional cruelty
often happen together: There were sadistic slave-
holders, for example. Still, on the whole, institution-
cruelty
alized cruelty is a long-term matter usually ration-
alized by public authority, and personal cruelty is a
matter of the moment.
The anatomy of cruelty. The main difference be-
tween combat and cruelty is that combatants are
relatively equal in POWER, but people involved in
cruelty are not. An armed soldier’s seizing a child
from its mother’s arms and smashing the child
against a brick wall is an instance of cruelty, not of
combat, mainly because of the immense difference
in power between the people involved. This imbal-
ance of power (when “power” means the ability to
overcome resistance swiftly) takes different forms in
different types of cruelty. Sadean victimizers are usu-
ally physically more powerful than their victims,
while institutional cruelties usually involve a politi-
cally ascendant majority victimizing a politically
powerless minority.
Consequently, the mitigation of cruelty usually in-
volves a redressing of the relevant power imbalance.
Minorities, usually with the help of allies, may be-
come more powerful than they were, and a battered
child may find allies against a cruel parent. Not all
mitigations of cruelty involve force alone. Sensitive
counseling can diminish cruelty in a family, and in
the midst of slavery people can help educate and
encourage a Frederick Douglass. The power of sen-
sitive caring can help mitigate cruelty.
Problems. There are many nonparadigmatic in-
stances of harm-doing. In MEDICAL ETHICS, in juris-
prudence, in divorce cases under litigation, and in
many other contexts, finding the decisive point of
view (who is the victimizer, and who is the victim?)
can be moot. In some cases, whether cruelty is in
fact happening can be debatable; and in many cases,
whether it is necessary or unnecessary is also subject
to dispute. Still, there are many paradigmatic cases
of cruelty, and any full treatment of the concept of
evil must take serious account of cruel transactions.
See also: ANIMALS, TREATMENT OF; AUTHORITY; BE-
NEVOLENCE; CAPITAL PUNISHMENT; CARE; CORREC-
TIONAL ETHICS; DISCRIMINATION; EVIL; HARM AND
OFFENSE; HOLOCAUST; MONTAIGNE; NIETZSCHE; OP-
PRESSION; PAIN AND SUFFERING; PERSONAL RELA-
TIONSHIPS; POLICE ETHICS; POWER; PUBLIC AND PRI-
VATE MORALITY; PUNISHMENT; RACISM AND RELATED
ISSUES; RELIGION; SLAVERY; TORTURE; TRAGEDY.
362
Bibliography
Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the
Banality of Evil. New York: Viking, 1963. A classic
modern analysis of the perspective of a victimizer.
Bedau, Hugo Adam. “Thinking of the Death Penalty as a
Cruel and Unusual Punishment.” University of Califor-
nia Davis Law Review 18 (1985): 873–925. A concise
summary, with a useful bibliography on punishment
and cruelty.
Douglass, Frederick. The Life and Times of Frederick
Douglass: Written by Himself. New York: Collier, 1962
[1882]. The perspective of the victim of institutional
cruelty.
Fromm, Erich. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness.
Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1975. See Part 3, chapter 11,
for a psychological study of spontaneous and character-
bound modes of cruelty.
Hallie, Philip. Cruelty. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan Univer-
sity Press, 1982. A general study of cruelty in history,
literature, and ethics. Bibliography.
Montaigne, Michel de. The Complete Works of Mon-
taigne. Translated by Donald M. Frame. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1958. See especially the es-
says “Of Cruelty” and “Apology for Raymond Sebond,”
classic treatments of both personal and institutional
modes of cruelty.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. The Genealogy
of Morals. Translated by Frances Golffing. Garden City,
NY: Doubleday, 1956 [1872; 1887]. See the Genealogy
for a study of cruelty as essential to religion and ethics.
Peters, Edward. Torture. New York: Blackwell, 1985. On
suffering inflicted or condoned by public authority.
Sade, D. A. F. The Marquis de Sade. Edited by R. Seaver
and A. Wainhouse. New York: Grove Press, 1966. Se-
lection of Sade’s works. See “Philosophy in the Bed-
room” (1793) for the fullest brief treatment of Sade’s
grounds for advocating cruelty as the victimizer’s pre-
ferred way of living.
Shklar, Judith N. Ordinary Vices. Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1984. See especially chapter 1, “Putting
Cruelty First,” for an incisive study of the implications
and the difficulties in seeing cruelty as the greatest evil.
Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation. New York: The New
York Review, 1975. The wrongness, not necessarily of
killing animals, but of making animals suffer.
Philip P. Hallie
Crusius, Christian August
(c. 1715–1775)
German Lutheran philosopher, theologian, and pas-
tor. Crusius was the philosophical leader of the op-
ponents of Christian WOLFF (1679–1754) and his

school in the 1740s. Against Wolff’s early Enlight-
enment attempt to show that morality is independent
of divine command and that human self-governance
is possible through increase of knowledge, Crusius
defended an essentially conservative position, stress-
ing the total dependence of human beings on God.
In doing so, however, he introduced some important
innovations.
The first and most basic of his innovations was his
insistence that the will must have an innate structure
of its own. Wolff held that we are free when, from
our own clear knowledge of different degrees of per-
fection, we choose the most perfect option available.
Crusius thought this view deprived us of freedom,
making us automatic pursuers of the good. Real free-
dom is the ability to act or abstain no matter what
the circumstances. It must be self-determination,
not determination by perfections arising from the
natures of things. The will must therefore make its
own demands on action and provide its own MO-
TIVES for complying with them. Otherwise we are
not responsible.
There are for Crusius two aspects of the will’s
inherent structure. One is its demand for efficiency
in the use of means to our ends. The demand shows
itself in a number of laws imposing obligations of
PRUDENCE. We have an innate drive to obey these
laws, and when we freely act accordingly, we display
the virtue of prudence. The second aspect of the
will’s structure is its demand that we comply with
God’s law. God aims at the perfection of the uni-
verse, and his laws, known to all human beings
equally because innate in the will, show us our part
in bringing this perfection about. These laws impose
obligations of virtue. Since we have an innate drive
to comply with God’s laws, we are never without a
motive for obedience, even though we may not know
God’s ends or may not make them our own. If we
freely choose to obey his laws, we do so simply on
the formal ground that they come from God. The
laws and obligations of virtue constitute morality.
Since God created us with intellect and FREE WILL
as well as with a sensuous nature, His purpose for
us must involve not only our natural HAPPINESS but
also the perfection of our special faculties. Hence the
laws he lays down for us do not always seem to lead
to our happiness. Ultimately, however, virtue does
lead to happiness. It makes us worthy of it, and
God will reward the deserving. But the motivation
363
Cudworth, Ralph
through which we become entitled to eternal reward
must not be a concern for our own happiness. It
must be the motive of obeying God’s laws because
they are his laws. This alone shows our full recog-
nition of our dependence on him.
KANT (1724–1804), when young, read and ad-
mired Crusius. Elements of Crusius’s metaphysical,
epistemological, and ethical thought reappear, trans-
formed, in Kant’s mature work. Crusius is now stud-
ied mainly for this reason.
See also: CHRISTIAN ETHICS; FREE WILL; KANT; PER-
FECTIONISM; PRUDENCE; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS; VIR-
TUE ETHICS; VOLUNTARISM; WOLFF.
Bibliography
Works by Crusius
Anweisung vernünftig zu leben. Leipzig, 1744.
Entwurf der nothwendigen Vernunft-Wahrheiten. Leipzig,
1745.
Weg zur Gewissheit und Zuverlässigkeit der menschlichen
Erkenntnis. Leipzig, 1747.
Works about Crusius
Beck, Lewis White. Early German Philosophy. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1969. See pp. 394–
402.
Benden, Magdelen. Christian August Crusius. Bonn: Bou-
vier, 1972.
Schmucker, Josef. Die Ursprunge der Ethik Kants. Mei-
senheim am Glan: Verlag Anton Main Kg., 1961. Es-
pecially pp. 79–85.
Schneewind, J. B. The Invention of Autonomy. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Chapter 20.
Tonelli, Giorgio, ed. “Einleitung” to his ed. of Die philo-
sophischen Hauptwerken of Crusius, vol. 1. Reprint.
Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1969.
J. B. Schneewind
Cudworth, Ralph (1617–1688)
The most systematic of the group of mid-
seventeenth century thinkers at Cambridge Univer-
sity known as the CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS, Cud-
worth was best known during his lifetime for his
metaphysical writings, specifically for his compen-
dious True Intellectual System of the Universe, pub-
lished in 1678. Here he argued that the atomic the-
Cudworth, Ralph
ory of matter is the key to refuting the two main
atheistic metaphysics, as he saw them— MATERIAL-
ISM and hylozoism—since it shows matter to be es-
sentially passive. The source of all activity and mo-
tion must be incorporeal—ultimately God’s perfect
mind, although created minds also have “self-active”
powers.
In addition to writing about metaphysics, Cud-
worth wrote voluminously on ethics and MORAL PSY-
CHOLOGY, but none of these writings appeared dur-
ing his lifetime. A Treatise Concerning Eternal and
Immutable Morality was published posthumously in
1731, and even this concerned general epistemology
more than ethics. Cudworth’s biographer, Thomas
Birch (1705–1766), referred in 1743 to a work ti-
tled “A Discourse of Moral Good and Evil, in several
folios, containing near a thousand pages”; he also
mentioned other, equally lengthy manuscripts on
LIBERTY and necessity. Of these, only one of several
(still extant) manuscripts on freedom of the will has
ever been published (in 1838). The lengthy work on
ethics seems not to have survived.
Nonetheless, Cudworth’s Treatise had a substan-
tial impact on early eighteenth-century British
ethics, mostly because of its elegant critique of sec-
ular and theological voluntarisms—for its insistence
that “nothing is morally good or evil, just or unjust
by mere will without nature.” Where the will of a
sovereign obligates, it is because of the sovereign’s
authority, “founded in natural justice and equity” in-
dependently of his will. Justice and goodness are
“eternally” and “immutably” part of the nature of
their possessors. A particular action might, of
course, have had a different nature, but given its na-
ture, its justice or injustice is immutable. Indeed, all
“things are what they are, not by will but by nature,”
and “omnipotence itself cannot by mere will make a
body triangular, without having the nature and prop-
erties of a triangle in it.”
Much of the Treatise is given over to displaying
the absurdity of what Cudworth regarded as the op-
posing view—a general, Protagorean relativism—
and to demonstrating that knowledge cannot arise
through passive sense experience but requires the
active grasp by mind of immutable natures. These
points became major themes in the work of such
eighteenth-century British rationalists as Richard
PRICE (1723–1791).
At this juncture, Cudworth’s epistemology con-
nects with his idealist metaphysics. The immutable
364
natures the mind grasps are its own “intelligible no-
tions,” which, while they may exist independently of
any created mind, cannot exist independently of
God’s perfect mind. Thus, while morality does not
depend on God’s will, it does depend on His mind—
but not, Cudworth is careful to point out, His purely
“intellectual forms and notional ideas.” Rather, it de-
pends on an element of perfect practical mind—a
motive the intellectual being has as such. That mo-
tive is divine LOVE, the fundamental creative im-
pulse. This is what sets Cudworth apart from eigh-
teenth century rationalists such as CLARKE (1675–
1729), WOLLASTON (1660–1724), and Price, and
ties him to the other Cambridge Platonists. Ethics
arises from reason, but from a practical reason, most
perfectly realized in God’s love, of which all moral
agents in some measure partake. Thus Cudworth
combined an ethics of virtue, specifically of love,
with the idea that moral obligation derives from au-
tonomous PRACTICAL REASON. This synthesis did not
long survive, but its major elements deeply influ-
enced SHAFTESBURY (1671–1713) and, through
him, such writers as HUTCHESON (1694–1746),
BUTLER (1692–1752), and even HUME (1711–
1776).
See also: CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS; FREE WILL; LIB-
ERTY; MATERIALISM; METAPHYSICS AND EPISTEMOL-
OGY; MORAL PSYCHOLOGY; PRACTICAL REASON[ING];
PRICE; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS; VOLUNTARISM.
Bibliography
Works by Cudworth
A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality.
New York: Garland, 1976 [1731]. Facsimile edition.
A Treatise of Freewill. Edited by John Allen. London,
1838. One of Cudworth’s manuscripts on freedom of
the will (British Museum, MS. 4978).
The True Intellectual System of the Universe. New York:
Garland, 1978 [1678]. Facsimile edition. Cudworth’s
great metaphysical work.
Works about Cudworth
Darwall, Stephen L. The British Moralists and the Internal
‘Ought’: 1640–1740. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1995. See chapter 5.
Passmore, John. Ralph Cudworth: An Interpretation.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951.
Schneewind, J. B. The Invention of Autonomy: A History

of Modern Moral Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998. See chapter 10.
Stephen L. Darwall
cultural studies
The movement of cultural studies that has been a
global phenomenon of great importance over the
last decade was inaugurated by the University of Bir-
mingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
in 1963/64, led at the time by Richard Hoggart and
Stuart Hall. During this period, the Centre devel-
oped a variety of critical approaches for the analysis,
interpretation, and criticism of cultural artifacts.
Through a set of internal debates, and responding to
social struggles and movements of the 1960s and the
1970s, the Birmingham group came to focus on the
interplay of representations and ideologies of class,
gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality in cultural
texts, including media culture. They were among the
first to study the effects of newspapers, radio, tele-
vision, film, and other popular cultural forms on au-
diences. They also focused on how various audi-
ences interpreted and used media culture in varied
and different ways and contexts, analyzing the fac-
tors that made audiences respond in contrasting
ways to media texts.
The now classical period of British cultural stud-
ies from the early 1960s to the early 1980s initially
adopted a Marxian approach to the study of culture,
one especially influenced by Louis Althusser (1918–
1990) and Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937). (See
Hall, 1980.) Although members of the school of
British cultural studies usually omit the Frankfurt
school from their narrative, some of the work done
by the Birmingham group replicated certain classical
positions of the Frankfurt school in their social the-
ory and methodological models for doing cultural
studies, as well as in their political perspectives and
strategies. Like the Frankfurt school, British cultural
studies observed the integration of the working class
and its decline of revolutionary consciousness, and
studied the conditions of this process for the Marx-
ian project of REVOLUTION. Like the Frankfurt
school, British cultural studies concluded that mass
culture was playing an important role in integrating
the working class into existing capitalist societies
and that a new consumer and media culture was
forming a new mode of capitalist hegemony.
365
cultural studies
Both traditions focused on the intersections of
culture and ideology and saw ideology critique as
central to a critical cultural studies. Both saw culture
as a mode of ideological reproduction and hege-
mony, in which cultural forms help shape the modes
of thought and behavior that induce individuals to
adapt to the social conditions of capitalist societies.
Both also see culture as a form of resistance to cap-
italist society and both the earlier forerunners of
British cultural studies, especially Raymond Wil-
liams, and the theorists of the Frankfurt school see
high culture as forces of resistance to capitalist mo-
dernity. Later, British cultural studies would valorize
resistant moments in media culture and oppositional
audience interpretations and use of media artifacts,
while the Frankfurt school tended, with some excep-
tions, to see mass culture as a homogeneous and po-
tent form of ideological domination—a difference
that would seriously divide the two traditions.
From the beginning, British cultural studies was
highly political in nature and focused on the poten-
tials for resistance in various subcultures, first, val-
orizing the potential of working class cultures, then,
youth subcultures to resist the hegemonic forms of
capitalist domination. Unlike the classical Frankfurt
school (but similar to Herbert Marcuse [1898–
1979]), British cultural studies turned to youth cul-
tures as providing potentially new forms of opposi-
tion and social change. Through studies of youth
subcultures, British cultural studies demonstrated
how culture came to constitute distinct forms of
identity and group membership and appraised the
oppositional potential of various youth subcultures
(see Hebdige, and Hall and Jefferson). Cultural stud-
ies came to focus on how subcultural groups resist
dominant forms of culture and identity, creating
their own style and identities. Individuals who con-
form to dominant dress and fashion codes, behavior,
and political ideologies thus produce their identities
within mainstream groups, as members of specific
social groupings (such as white, middle-class con-
servative Americans). Individuals who identify with
subcultures, like punk culture, or black nationalist
subcultures, look and act differently from those in
the mainstream, and thus create alternative identi-
ties, defining themselves against standard models.
As it developed into the 1970s and 1980s, British
cultural studies successively appropriated feminism,
critical race theory, gay and lesbian theory, postmod-
ern theory, and other fashionable theoretical modes.
cultural studies
Thus, they turned to examining the ways that cul-
tural texts promoted sexism, racism, homophobia,
and other forms of OPPRESSION, or promoted resis-
tance and struggle against these phenomena. This
approach implicitly contained ethical and political
critiques of all cultural forms that promoted oppres-
sion and domination, while positively valorizing
texts and representations that produced a potentially
more just and egalitarian social order.
With a postmodern turn in cultural studies, there
was an increasing emphasis on the audience and
how audiences generate meanings and how cultural
texts produce both popular pleasures and forms of
resistance (see Ang; Fiske, 1993). Critics of this
phase of cultural studies claim that the project began
losing its critical edge, fell into a postmodern cul-
tural populism (McGuigan), and surrendered the
political radicalism and critical thrust of the original
project (Kellner, 1995). Defenders of the turn to-
ward cultural populism argue that the original more
critical model tended to be overly elitist and exces-
sively critical of popular pleasures, while neglecting
the complex ways that cultural texts can be appro-
priated and used.
Rather than focusing on ethics per se, British cul-
tural studies and its later variants highlight the poli-
tics of representation. Employing Antonio Gram-
sci’s model of hegemony and counterhegemony, its
adherents sought to analyze ‘hegemonic,’ or ruling,
social and cultural forces of domination and to seek
‘counterhegemonic’ forces of resistance and strug-
gle. The project aimed at social transformation and
attempted to specify forces of domination and resis-
tance in order to aid the process of political struggle
and emancipation from oppression and domination.
Their politics of representation thus entailed a cri-
tique of cultural representations that promoted ra-
cism, sexism, classism, or any form of oppression.
Any images or texts that promoted domination and
oppression were thus negatively valorized, while
representations that promoted egalitarianism, social
justice, and emancipation were positively valorized.
In this optic, ethics are subordinated to politics
and the moral dimension of culture tends to be un-
deremphasized or downplayed. Thus, one could ar-
gue for a cultural studies that more explicitly stresses
the importance of ethical analysis, scrutinizing cul-
tural texts for the specific ethical NORMS portrayed,
and evaluating the work accordingly. Or one could
explore in more detail and depth than is usually done
366
in cultural studies the moral and philosophical di-
mensions of cultural texts, the ways that they carry
out moral critiques of society and culture, or em-
body ethical concerns regarding good and EVIL, and
moral and immoral behavior or phenomena.
Yet ethical concerns were present in cultural stud-
ies from the beginning. Culture is, among other
things, a major transmitter and generator of values,
and a cultural studies sensitive to the very nature
and function of culture should be aware of the eth-
ical dimension to culture. Thus, concern with ethics,
with the moral aspects of cultural texts, should be a
central and fundamental focus of cultural studies, as
it was with non-formalist literary studies. While it is
unlikely that the texts of media culture have the eth-
ical depth and complexity of great literary texts, it is
clear that ethical concerns are of fundamental im-
portance to the sort of popular cultural artifacts that
have been the domain of cultural studies.
Finally, it should be noted that there are a great
heterogeneity and diversity of types of cultural stud-
ies today ranging from a cultural populism that cel-
ebrates the pleasures of popular cultural artifacts or
activities such as shopping or sports, to more critical
feminist, race theory–based, or poststructuralist
variants. Some works in contemporary cultural stud-
ies combine concern with gender, race, class, and
ethical values and add new ethical and political sub-
stance to the earlier project of cultural studies (see,
for example, hooks and Jeffords). Yet on the whole
ethical analysis has not been adequately thematized
and developed within the tradition of cultural stud-
ies. In regard of the global wave of cultural studies
in recent years that have greatly expanded the field,
the time is now ripe to make ethical analysis and
concern with values a fundmental part of a future
cultural studies.
See also: COSMOPOLITAN ETHICS; CRITICAL THEORY;
ELITE, CONCEPT OF; FEMINIST ETHICS; GAY ETHICS;
HOMOSEXUALITY; INSTITUTIONS; JOURNALISM; LES-
BIAN ETHICS; MARXISM; MASS MEDIA; MULTICUL-
TURALISM; OPPRESSION; POLITICAL CORRECTNESS;
POSTMODERNISM; RACISM AND RELATED ISSUES; RA-
CISM, CONCEPTS OF; REVOLUTION; SEXUALITY AND
SEXUAL ETHICS; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY;
SOCIOLOGY.
Bibliography
Ang, Ien. Watching Dallas. New York: Methuen, 1985.
Agger, Ben. Cultural Studies. London: Falmer, 1992.

Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies [University of
Birmingham]. On Ideology. London: Hutchinson,
1980.
During, Simon, ed. The Cultural Studies Reader. London
and New York: Routledge, 1993; 2d ed., 1998.
Fiske, John. “British Cultural Studies and Television.” In
Channels of Discourse, edited by R. C. Allen, 254–89.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
———. Power Plays, Power Works. New York and Lon-
don: Verso, 1993.
Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks
of Antonio Gramsci. New York: International Publish-
ers, 1971. Tr. of Quaderni del carcere by Quintin Hoare
and Geoffrey Nowell Smith.
———. Prison Notebooks. 2 vols. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1992, 1996. Tr. by Joseph A. Buttigieg
and Antonio Callari.
Grossberg, Lawrence. “The Formations of Cultural Stud-
ies: An American in Birmingham.” Strategies 22
(1989): 114–49.
Grossberg, Lawrence, et al., eds. Cultural Studies. New
York: Routledge, 1992.
Hall, Stuart, and Tony Jefferson, eds. Resistance through
Rituals: Youth Subculture in Post-War Britain. Lon-
don: Hutchinson, 1976.
Hall, Stuart, et al., eds. Culture, Media, Language: Work-
ing Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972/79. London:
Hutchinson, 1980. Especially see Hall’s essays, “Cul-
tural Studies and the Centre: Some Problematics and
Problems,” 15–47, and “Encoding/Decoding,” 128–
38.
Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. Lon-
don: Methuen, 1979. Reissue, London; New York:
Routledge, 1991.
Hoggart, Richard. The Uses of Literacy. New York: Ox-
ford University Press,1958.
hooks, bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Bos-
ton: South End Press, 1984. 2d ed. proposed for 1999.
———. Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics.
Boston: South End Press, 1990.
———. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Toronto:
Between the Lines, 1992.
Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of
Enlightenment. Translation of Dialektik der Aufklär-
ung by John Cumming. New York: Seabury, 1972
[1947].
Jeffords, Susan. The Remasculinization of America: Gen-
der and the Vietnam War. Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 1989.
———. Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Rea-
gan Era. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press,
1994.
Johnson, Richard. “What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?”
Social Text 16 (1986/87): 38–80.
Kellner, Douglas. Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Iden-
367
Cumberland, Richard
tity, and Politics between the Modern and the Post-
modern. London and New York: Routledge, 1995.
———. “Critical Theory and British Cultural Studies: The
Missed Articulation.” In Cultural Methodologies, ed-
ited by Jim McGuigan, 12–41. London; Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997.
McGuigan, Jim. Cultural Populism. London; New York:
Routledge, 1992.
O’Connor, Alan. “The Problem of American Cultural
Studies.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication
(December 1989): 405–13.
Turner, Graeme. British Cultural Studies: An Introduction.
New York: Unwin Hyman, 1990. 2d ed. London; New
York: Routledge, 1996.
Williams, Raymond. The Long Revolution. London:
Chatto and Windus, 1961.
———. Communications. London: Penguin, 1962.
Douglas Kellner
Cumberland, Richard
(1632–1718)
Educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, Cum-
berland became bishop of Peterborough as part of
the Revolution settlement of the Church of England.
Starting from a Baconian separation of science
and theology, Cumberland develops a number of in-
fluences, especially elements of Cartesian natural
philosophy and psychology and of Cambridge Pla-
tonism, into a distinctive “science” of morals, which
in modern times is often seen as a pioneering UTIL-
ITARIANISM (e.g., Albee and Sharp). The design of
Cumberland’s only work in moral philosophy, De
legibus naturæ (1672), is to refute HOBBES (1588–
1679) by showing that morals is in the “nature of
things,” and not the creation of a sovereign. He ar-
gues that only by serving the COMMON GOOD of the
universal moral community of God and humanity,
past, present, and future, will we serve our own
good. We have a natural inclination, BENEVOLENCE,
to do this, and we develop rational precepts to guide
this inclination. We will eventually appreciate that
benevolent behavior is also God’s will and thus see
that the rational precepts are laws of nature, the in-
clinations VIRTUES, and the common good not only
a natural but a moral good. It is debatable whether
our obligation to the basic law of nature about the
promotion of the common good is meant to have a
utilitarian foundation, or whether it arises from man
unifying his particular will with the general will of
God, who alone is capable of self-obligation.
Cumberland, Richard
Cumberland’s notion of the moral community as
ideally a harmonious system of interdependent in-
dividuals, analogous to DESCARTES’s (1596–1650)
full world, and his idea of the moral faculty were of
significance in subsequent moral thought. He was
also a pioneer of Enlightenment moral philosophy’s
‘empirical’ natural providentialism by combining re-
jection of innate ideas with the assertion on empir-
ical grounds of man’s moral community with God.
He set the pattern for the undermining of contrac-
tualism by making the duties of one’s station, or of-
fice, directly dependent on the law of nature. Finally,
by asserting—against Hobbes—mankind’s natural
sociability, he pointed to the independence of social
relations, including market-relations, from political
society.
See also: BENEVOLENCE;CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS;
COMMON GOOD; DESCARTES; HOBBES; NATURAL
LAW; VIRTUE ETHICS; UTILITARIANISM.
Bibliography
Works by Cumberland
De legibus naturae. London, 1672. Continuation of title:
Disquisitio philosophica, in qua earum forma, summa
capita, ordo, promulgatio and obligatio e rerum natura
investigantur; quinetiam elementa philosophiae Hob-
bianae, cum moralis tum civilis, considerantur and re-
futantur. New editions published in Lübeck and Frank-
fort, 1683 and 1694; Dublin, 1720.
A Treatise of the Laws of Nature. London, 1727. English
translation with lengthy introduction, appendix, notes
by John Maxwell. Reprinted New York: Garland, 1978.
Neither this nor the following are satisfactory transla-
tions.
A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Laws of Nature . . . Dub-
lin, 1750. Translation with extensive notes and appen-
dices by John Towers.
Traité philosophique des loix naturelles . . . Amsterdam,
1744. French translation; valuable notes by Jean Bar-
beyrac; 2d ed. Leyden, 1757. The best modern lan-
guage version.
[Cumberland, Richard,] and James Tyrrell. A Brief Dis-
quisition of the Law of Nature. London, 1692. Rev.
ed., London, 1701; reprinted Littleton, CO: Fred B.
Rothman, 1987. This contains too much of Tyrrell him-
self, and of Locke, to give an adequate picture of
Cumberland.
Works about Cumberland
Albee, Ernest. A History of English Utilitarianism. Lon-
don: George Allen and Unwin, 1901. 2d ed., 1957.
368
Darwall, Stephen. The British Moralists and the Internal
‘Ought’: 1640–1740. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1995. Chapter 4.
Haakonssen, Knud. Natural Law and Moral Philosophy:
From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
———. “The Character and Obligation of Natural Law
According to Richard Cumberland.” In English Philos-
ophy in the Age of Locke, edited by M. A. Stewart.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Kirk, Linda. Richard Cumberland and Natural Law:
Secularisation of Thought in Seventeenth-Century En-
gland. Cambridge: James Clarke, 1987.
Parkin, John. Science, Religion and Politics in Restoration
England: Richard Cumberland’s “De legibus naturae.”
Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Rochester, NY: The Boydell
Press for the Royal Historical Society, 1999. The major
modern study; supersedes much of the earlier litera-
ture.
Schneewind, Jerome B. “Voluntarism and the Origins of
Utilitarianism.” Utilitas 7 (1995): 87–96.
———. The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern
Moral Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998. Chapter 6.
Sharp, Frank C. “The Ethical System of Richard Cumber-
land and Its Place in the History of British Ethics.”
Mind 21 (1912): 371–98.
Knud Haakonssen
Cynics
In the Greco-Roman world Cynics were the “dog-
like” philosophers whose preaching and ascetic life-
style were originally inspired by Diogenes of Sinope
(d. c. 323 B.C.E.) a contemporary of PLATO (c. 430–
347 B.C.E.) and ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.). Di-
ogenes chose for himself or was given the nickname
kuon (the Greek word for dog) as a symbol of his
deliberate “shamelessness.” “Cynical” in modern us-
age betokens a disposition to question the sincerity
and INTEGRITY of officialdom and to challenge naive
optimism. Although this diffused sense of Cynicism
has recognizable continuity with the ancient image
of Diogenes, it is too superficial to count as a phil-
osophical attitude. Diogenes, however, and his im-
mediate followers made serious contributions to
ethics, as is chiefly evident in their decisive influence
on early STOICISM. As a young man Zeno of Citium
(342–270 B.C.E.), the founder of Stoicism, was in-
spired by the Cynic Crates of Thebes (fl. late fourth
century B.C.E.), who is said to have been pointed out
to him as a latter-day SOCRATES (c. 470–399 B.C.E.).

Under Cynic influence Zeno wrote his most famous
work, Republic. In this he sketched a utopian society
which dispensed with the standard CONVENTIONS of
Greek civic life and opted for ethical virtue as the
only value worth pursuing.
The anecdotal tradition, which is all that survives
for near-contemporary evidence of Diogenes’ phi-
losophy, presents him as a ribald exhibitionist, who
captured public attention by shock tactics of lan-
guage and behaviour. He is said to have masturbated
in public, lived in a wine jar, slept in temples, walked
barefoot on snow, and attempted to eat raw meat.
Statements attributed to him are no less bizarre and
memorable. Seeing temple officials arresting some-
one who had stolen a bowl belonging to the treas-
urers, he said: “The big thieves are arresting the little
thief.” Asked which beast has the worst bite, he said:
“Of wild ones, the sycophant, and of tame ones, the
flatterer.” He remarked that gold is pale because it
has so many people plotting against it.
What lay behind Diogenes’ shocking discourse
and lifestyle was a commitment, as he put it, to
“changing (or defacing) the currency.” Taking his
cue from Socrates and Socrates’ ascetic follower An-
tisthenes (c. 445–360 B.C.E.), Diogenes sought to
undermine nomos, “convention,” as the foundation
of values and replace it with physis, “nature.” His
primary concern was to isolate human nature, whose
essence he took to be rationality, from the incrusta-
tions of social practices and evaluations which could
not be justified in the light of reason. HAPPINESS,
conceived as freedom and self-mastery, was a viable
objective for anyone prepared to identify its only
necessary conditions with rigorous training of body
and mind. Persons so fortified would be able to live
as reason requires, indifferent to wealth, luxury, so-
cial status, or PLEASURE, contemptuous of public
opinion or mere conventions, and impervious to
changes of fortune.
A “natural” life, as Cynics conceived of it, resem-
bles the life of animals, in the sense that its material
needs are reduced to those that can be satisfied with-
out TECHNOLOGY and civilized amenities. Cynics ad-
vertised their self-sufficiency by wearing rough
clothes, doing without settled accommodation, liv-
ing off scraps or begging. Animals served them as
a model for the cult of “shamelessness,” but this
primitivist element does not imply rejection by the
Cynics of such ethical principles as justice or SELF-
CONTROL. Diogenes’ attested aphorisms include
369
Cynics
caustic attacks on thieves and adulterers. The
Cynic’s cultivation of reason includes the acquisition
of a moral CHARACTER, a training of emotions and
desires such that he has no motivation to act in ways
that do injury to others.
Cynic ethics, despite its distinctive “shameless-
ness,” belongs within the mainstream tradition of
Greek EUDAIMONISM. Its chief principles, though
not stated as such, may be formulated as follows:
Happiness is living in agreement with nature; hap-
piness is something that any person can acquire with
sufficient physical and mental training; the essence
of happiness is self-mastery, which manifests itself
in the ability to live well under even highly adverse
circumstances; self-mastery is equivalent to, or en-
tails, a life governed by reason; the happy person, as
so conceived, is the only person who is wise, virtu-
ous, kingly, and free; things conventionally deemed
necessary for happiness, such as wealth, fame, and
political power, have no value in nature; prime im-
pediments to happiness are false judgments of value
and the emotional disturbances and vicious charac-
ter arising from these.
Collectively, these seven propositions constitute
the account of eudaimonism which had paramount
appeal in Hellenistic philosophy. The Cynics were
more interested in preaching and cultivating them
than in justifying them by argument. That was their
weakness as philosophers. They never constituted an
official school, and professed scorn for traditional
education and scholarly research. What they none-
theless succeeded in doing was to dramatize a way
of life which was an effective challenge to conven-
tion, and to show its appeal and applicability to stan-
dard concerns of ordinary people. Thus as preachers
they typically dwelled on the values of acquiring in-
difference to adverse fortune, exile, poverty, and so
forth.
No writings by Diogenes have survived, but a
good idea of early Cynic discourse is provided by the
fragmentary poems of the Theban Crates, a wealthy
man who sold his lands and gave away the proceeds
to his fellow citizens. Here are two examples: “Hun-
ger puts an end to lust; if not, time does; but if you
can’t use these, a hang man’s rope”; and, “I don’t
have one country as my refuge, nor a single roof, but
every land has a city and house ready to entertain
me.” Later Cynics used fables, pithy sermons, and
vivid anecdotes or dialogues as ways of getting their
message across.
Cynics
The history of early Cynicism is difficult to write
because most of our evidence about it comes from
the Roman Empire. After it flourished under Diog-
enes, Crates, and others, the movement seems to
have been largely assimilated into Stoicism. A re-
vival occurred at the beginning of the Christian era,
and Cynic influence on early Christianity is evident.
The reasons for the renewal of Cynicism must have
much to do with the fact that by this time Stoicism
had become too respectable to proselytize the pun-
gent social criticism it had originally borrowed from
the Cynics. Some of the later figures who voiced
Cynic tenets were highly educated men, such as Dio
Chrysostom (c. C.E. 50–117); for them Cynicism has
become a literary device as well as an ethical atti-
tude. There were also a good many impostors, pro-
fessional rogues, and beggars who masqueraded un-
der the Cynics’ uniform of rough cloak, stick, and
wallet. For the history of ethics the Cynics are chiefly
important for their transmission to the Hellenistic
schools of the notion of the “sage,” answerable to
no one but himself, and equipped by his WISDOM to
withstand extreme privations and disturbances be-
cause he has reduced his needs to the minimum that
nature can regularly provide. These were radical
contributions to Greek ethics, and capable of being
fruitfully developed quite independently of the
Cynic’s way-out lifestyle.
See also: CHARACTER; CHRISTIAN ETHICS; CONVEN-
TIONS; DESIRE; EMOTION; EUDAIMONIA, -ISM; GUILT
AND SHAME; HAPPINESS; HISTORY OF WESTERN
ETHICS: 3 AND 4; NATURALISM; RATIONALITY VS.
REASONABLENESS; SELF-CONTROL; STOICISM; VIR-
TUES; WISDOM.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Diogenes Laertius. “Life of Diogenes.” In vol. 2 of Lives
of the Greek Philosophers, edited by R. D. Hicks. Loeb
Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1925. This second-century C.E. biography is the
best source of information on Diogenes; Greek text and
translation.
Giannantoni, G. Socratis et Socraticorum reliquiae. Na-
ples: Bibliopolis, 1990. See volume 2 for evidence on
Diogenes and the early Cynics.
Hense, O., ed. Teletis reliquiae. Tübingen, 1909. Early
Cynic sermons.
370
Kindstrand, J. F. Bion of Borysthenes. Uppsala, 1976. De-
tailed discussion of the third-century Cynic.
Malherbe, A. J., ed. and tr. The Cynic Epistles. Atlanta,
GA: Scholars Press, 1977. Fabricated correspondence
of the early Cynics.
For the later Cynics, see Dio Chrysostom, Orations, 4, 6,
8–10, 32, 72; Epictetus, Discourse, 3.22; Lucian, De-
monax, Peregrinus, Runaways, The Cynic, The Fisher;
Julian, Orations, 6, 7.
Secondary Sources
Branham, R. B., and M.-O. Goulet Cazé, eds. The Cynics.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Wide-
ranging collection of articles on the Cynic movement
in antiquity and its legacy.
Dudley, D. R. A History of Cynicism from Diogenes to the
6th Century A.D. London, 1937; repr. 1976. Outdated
in some respects, but still an excellent introduction.
Goulet-Cazé, M.-O. L’ascèse Cynique: Un commentaire
de Diogène Laerce VI, 70–71. Paris: Vrin, 1986. Ex-
cellent technical study.
Hoistad, R. Cynic Hero and Cynic King. Uppsala: Bloms,
1948. Useful supplement to Dudley, but unduly depen-
dent on late sources.
Niehues-Pröbsting, H. Der Kynismus des Diogenes und
der Begriff des Kynismus. Munich: Fink, 1979. Particu-
larly interesting for comparisons between ancient and
modern Cynicism, especially Nietzsche.
Sayre, F. The Greek Cynics. Baltimore, MD: 1948. A
rather unsympathetic account, which contains useful
evidence in translation.
A. A. Long
Cyrenaics
The Cyrenaics were the most radical proponents of
HEDONISM in Greek philosophy. Their name derives
from Cyrene, a North African Greek colony, which
was the birthplace of Aristippus (c. 435–356 B.C.E.),
an associate of SOCRATES (c. 470–399 B.C.E.). This
Aristippus (hereafter Aristippus Senior) was not the
official founder of what came to be known as the
Cyrenaic school. That was largely the work of his
grandson, Aristippus Junior (fl. c. 340 B.C.E.), whose
mother is also intriguingly included in ancient ge-
nealogies of Cyrenaic philosophers. Aristippus Jun-
ior may be assumed to have formulated the principal
Cyrenaic doctrines about the time 340–330 B.C.E.,
a generation before the beginnings of EPICUREAN-
ISM. Further developments were instigated by three
Cyrenaic contemporaries of EPICURUS (341–270
B.C.E.): Anniceris, Hegesias, and Theodorus, whose

names briefly stood for three subordinate schools.
The differences between them individually, and be-
tween them collectively and Epicurus, show that all
four philosophers offered rival interpretations of he-
donism. Eventually, Epicurus’s version won out, as
it deserved to do. By the middle of the third century
B.C.E., Cyrenaic philosophy was obsolete. It had suc-
ceeded, however, in provoking opposition from the
early Epicureans, while the doctrines of Anniceris,
Hegesias, and Theodorus, in their turn, include fea-
tures that are clear responses to Epicureanism. Al-
though evidence about the Cyrenaics is meagre, they
were probably the most prominent of the minor So-
cratic schools during the early Hellenistic period.
Cyrenaic hedonism in its original form is best
construed as a theoretical defense of Aristippus Sen-
ior’s sybaritic lifestyle. This idiosyncratic follower
of Socrates was famous as someone who “always
made the best of circumstances; for he derived plea-
sure from what was available, and did not labori-
ously pursue enjoyment of things not present” (Di-
ogenes Laertius, 2.66). Aristippus Senior was
perceived as someone for whom HAPPINESS consists
in the freedom to enjoy pleasurable sensations with-
out surrendering autonomy and rationality. It is this
latter element, the maintenance of self-mastery,
which connects him with Socrates.
As formulated by Aristippus Junior, Cyrenaic
ethics is chiefly notable for identifying the particular
PLEASURE of the moment with the supreme good or
goal of life. He downgraded long-term happiness,
the standard objective in Greek ethics, to the status
of an instrumental good, “desirable not for its own
sake but for the sake of particular pleasures.” This
striking claim may be interpreted as follows: Since
pleasure alone is good, happiness must consist of
pleasure; indeed it is to be defined as the “aggregate
of past, present and future pleasures.” However, the
Cyrenaics say, the past no longer exists and the fu-
ture is uncertain. Therefore it is pointless to aim at
any pleasures beyond those of the present. The rec-
ollected and anticipated pleasures constitutive of
happiness are valuable if and only if they contribute
to our present enjoyments.
This focus on the pleasure of the moment fits a
number of other standard Cyrenaic doctrines. They
characterized pleasure as a “smooth movement,”
specifically “of the flesh,” according to one source.
Thus pleasure persists only as long as the process in
which it occurs. When not enjoying pleasure, crea-
371
Cyrenaics
tures are either experiencing pain, “rough move-
ment,” or are in an intermediate “static” condition
which, though likened to a calm sea, is also com-
pared with a sleeper’s state. In addition, the Cyre-
naics defended a radically subjectivist epistemology,
according to which we can have no access to any-
thing beyond momentary perceptions and feelings.
All that securely exists is what we are currently ex-
periencing. Thus immediate feelings are the only
guide to what is genuinely valuable.
For defending their hedonism the Cyrenaics re-
lied on an argument, probably not original to them,
that from infancy living creatures pursue pleasure
and avoid pain. Something similar is attributed by
ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) to Eudoxus (408–353
B.C.E.). The supposed strength of this argument (and
also its obvious weakness) is the instinctual, unde-
liberated nature of this behaviour. Epicurus adopted
it, too, but in general his hedonism is in striking con-
trast to that of the Cyrenaics. For Epicurus, absence
of pain is pleasure, static pleasure is superior to ki-
netic pleasure, and mental pleasure is preferable to
pleasure of the body. The happy Epicurean life is
strongly constituted by pleasures of anticipation and
recollection. It also requires ethical virtue, FRIEND-
SHIP, and a correct understanding of physical reality
and theology. The Cyrenaics are interesting precisely
because they acknowledged that such things must
be subordinate at best in an ethical theory empha-
sizing the pleasure of the moment. Thus they are
said to have held that “nothing is just or honourable
by nature, but only by convention and custom.”
A Cyrenaic, on this view, will be an intelligent
user of immediate sources of pleasure; he will re-
spect other values only as PRUDENCE dictates. Yet,
as Epicurus clearly saw, so simple an ethical theory
is highly vulnerable. For Cyrenaicism as so formu-
lated to be at all plausible, immediate pleasures need
to be more accessible than human experience com-
monly finds them to be; in addition, many people
want much more from their lives than sensory grat-
ification. No doubt in response to such objections,
the latest Cyrenaics modified their radical hedonism
in various respects.
Anniceris allowed such values as friendship,
GRATITUDE, and honoring parents to be more than
conventional: a wise man, he said, would be willing
to give up pleasures for the sake of his friend, out of
“good will,” and would sometimes act for his coun-
try’s sake. Though described as an Aristippean he-
Cyrenaics
donist, Anniceris seems to have regarded pleasure
as the primary, rather than the only, good. His in-
novations look like rather feeble attempts to com-
bine traditional ethical values within a Cyrenaic
framework.
Still less of that framework persists in the modi-
fications attributed to Theodorus and Hegesias.
Theodorus treated mental pleasure, mediated by
WISDOM, as the supreme desirable, and distress, the
product of folly, as the supreme undesirable. Even
more remarkable in a Cyrenaic, he relegated bodily
pleasure and pain to a status intermediate between
wisdom and justice, which he treated as goods, and
their opposites, which he regarded as evils. Despite
this, he rejected conventional morality, on the
grounds that its only sanction was the worthless
prejudice of popular opinion. Theodorus’s position
is best interpreted as an effort to capitalize on the
success the CYNICS were now enjoying, while shift-
ing the emphasis of earlier Cyrenaic ethics from
bodily to mental pleasure.
Cynic influence is equally evident on Hegesias,
who claimed that external circumstances are quite
indifferent from one another in their capacity to gen-
erate pleasure or pain. Taking the final step away
from Aristippus, he reformulated the goal of life as
“living without bodily and mental pain.” He arrived
at this specification, more famously advanced by Ep-
icurus, from the gloomy assumption that it is a wise
man’s best policy, since happiness construed more
positively is impossible. Thus he reversed the origi-
nal impulse of Cyrenaic philosophy, arguing that
“death removes us from bad things, not from
goods.” Such negativity, not surprisingly, spelt the
end of the Cyrenaics.
372
See also: EPICUREANISM; EPICURUS; FRIENDSHIP;
GOOD, THEORIES OF THE; GRATITUDE; HAPPINESS;
HEDONISM; HISTORY OF WESTERN ETHICS: 3; PLEA-
SURE; SELF-CONTROL; SOCRATES; SUBJECTIVISM;
WISDOM.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Diogenes Laertius. “Life of Aristippus.” In vol. 1 of Lives
of the Greek Philosophers, edited by R. D. Hicks. Loeb
Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1925. No writings by any Cyrenaic philosopher
survive. This remains the primary evidence for Cyre-
naic philosophy.
Mannebach, E. Aristippi et Cyrenaicorum fragmenta. Lei-
den, 1961. Collection and discussion of the testimonia.
Giannantoni, G. Socratis et Socraticorum reliquiae. Na-
ples: Bibliopolis, 1990. See volume 2 for evidence on
the Cyrenaics.
Secondary Sources
Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1993.
Classen, C. J. “Aristippus.” Hermes 86 (1958): 182–92.
Döring, C. Der Sokratesschuler Aristipp und die Kyren-
aiker. Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der
Literatur, 1988.
Giannantoni, G. I Cirenaici. Florence: Sansoni, 1958.
Gosling, J. C. B., and C. C. W. Taylor. The Greeks on Plea-
sure. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
Tsouna, V. The Epistemology of the Cyrenaic School. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
A. A. Long
 D
Darwin, Charles (1809–1882)
Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury,
England, in 1809 and died in Downe Village, in the
county of Kent, England, in 1882. He is generally
known as the father of EVOLUTION, for in his great
work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in
the Struggle for Existence, it was he who established
the case for the natural origin of all organisms, living
and dead, by a slow process of development from
simple original forms. He also proposed a mecha-
nism for such change: natural selection. Drawing at-
tention to the fact that food and space can never
keep up with the ongoing inevitable population ex-
plosion among animals and plants, and that there
will consequently be a struggle for existence (and,
more particularly, for mates), Darwin suggested that
there will be a winnowing or natural form of selec-
tion (corresponding to the selection of animal and
plant breeders). Success in the struggle will come in
part because of the different characteristics of the
winners and progenitors of FUTURE GENERATIONS,
and hence given enough time there will be perma-
nent change. Moreover, this change will be in the
direction of adaptive function. The characteristics
picked on by natural theologians—the eye and the
hand, for instance—are the end result of natural
law–bound processes rather than the creative mi-
raculous product of an intervening Designer.
Intended at one point for a career as an Anglican
373
clergyman, Darwin was sidetracked after university
by the offer to join the HMS Beagle, a British war-
ship, as she mapped the coast of South America. It
was during this trip (1831–1836), which eventually
took him all the way around the globe, that Darwin
laid the foundations for his evolutionism. Particu-
larly influential was the visit paid to the Galápagos
archipelago, a group of islands on the equator in the
Pacific. There Darwin found that from island to is-
land the birds and the reptiles (notably giant tor-
toises) differed, and seeking an explanation he found
it in the gradual development and change of today’s
inhabitants from those original ancestors who first
colonised the island group. Darwin was not the first
ever to believe in organic evolution—he was pre-
ceded by his own grandfather Erasmus Darwin
(1731–1802) as well as by the well-known French
biologist Jean Baptiste de Lamarck (1744–1829)—
but it was he who realized that if evolution is to
become a fully accepted idea then one must find a
plausible causal mechanism. Appreciating that ani-
mal and plant breeders succeed in effecting change
by judicial selection, Darwin sought a natural ana-
logue. This he finally found when he read a conser-
vative political thesis by the Reverend Thomas Rob-
ert Malthus (1766–1834), who argued that state
welfare schemes are doomed to failure because food
supplies are always outstripped by population
growth. Turning this conclusion on its head, Darwin
used the central notion of struggle as a foundation
on which to construct his own mechanism of natural
Darwin, Charles
selection. That adaptation played so large a role in his
thinking was likewise a debt to an Anglican clergy-
man. Archdeacon William PALEY’s (1743–1805)
Natural Theology (1802), with its stress on the
design-like nature of organic characteristics, much
impressed Darwin when he was an undergraduate.
Darwin delayed publication of his ideas for many
years. Finally, stimulated by the arrival of an essay
from a young naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace
(1823–1913), who had hit on exactly the same ideas
as Darwin, the Origin made its appearance. Evolu-
tion through natural selection was public knowl-
edge. By this time, the mechanism had been em-
bedded within an overall unifying circumstantial
argument, one which is still important for evolution-
ists today. The Origin ranges right across the spec-
trum of biological thought: instinct, biogeography,
palaeontology, anatomy, systematics, embryology,
and more. Each of these areas is illuminated and
explained by evolution through selection—the Ga-
lápagos birds for instance—and then in turn each of
these areas supports the truth of the central mech-
anism. The argument is just as one uses in a court
of law: if the suspect is guilty then the clues are ex-
plained and the clues in turn point to the guilt of the
suspect.
In the Origin, Darwin deliberately said virtually
nothing about our own species, mentioning only that
light would certainly be thrown on our nature and
history. But he had always thought about Homo sa-
piens, including us in the overall evolutionary pic-
ture. Indeed, the first private speculations that we
have in one of Darwin’s notebooks about natural
selection (late 1838) are applying the mechanism to
humans, and to their intelligence and thinking pow-
ers in particular. Some twelve years after the Origin,
Darwin finally entered into a full discussion about
humankind. In 1871, in the Descent of Man, he
looked in detail at our simian origins as well as at
our biological nature as selection has fashioned us.
Much of the Descent focuses less on humankind
and its evolution and more on a secondary form of
evolutionary change: sexual selection. This is some-
thing which is caused by a struggle within the spe-
cies for mates and for reproductive success. Darwin
divided sexual selection into two types: that brought
on by male combat, as when two stags fight for the
harem and thus their line evolves ever larger and
stronger heads of antlers; and selection by female
choice, as when the peahen chooses the male with
374
the finest feather display, thus leading to the huge
tail fan that the peacock has when he displays. Dar-
win felt that he had to spend so many pages on what
was essentially a side issue to the main topic. In the
years after the Origin, Wallace, natural selection’s
co-discoverer, became increasingly enamoured of
spiritualism, arguing that many human features—
our large brain and our hairlessness, to name two—
simply cannot be the end result of selection. Savages
in the wild, for instance, just do not use all of their
brain power and hence selection cannot have been
an effective cause. Agreeing with Wallace’s argu-
ments but appalled by his nonscientific conclusions,
Darwin turned increasingly to sexual selection to ex-
plain humans’ distinctive features: large brains, for
instance, are apparently a function of male combat
and female choice—men compete for women and
women choose the brightest men.
Although never trained in philosophy, Darwin al-
ways had a keen interest in the subject. At university
and in the years just after the Beagle voyage he was
a particular friend and protégé of William WHEWELL
(1794–1866). Epistemology was his early field of
inquiry but later his thinking turned more to ques-
tions about our social nature and ethical inclina-
tions. Explaining these caused some considerable
angst, because Darwin always inclined to see selec-
tion as promoting adaptations of value only to the
individual, with the benefits to the group coming as
a consequent effect. In the case of social behaviour
however it would seem that individuals ignore their
own ends and NEEDS, putting their fellows first.
Eventually, Darwin decided that culture could over-
ride biology at this point, and that perhaps group
effects and needs can take precedence. But he was
ever uneasy about this decision and inclined to think
that perhaps some form of reciprocation is playing
a major role. I am nice to you less because it is of
general benefit to the group and more because, if I
am nice to you, then you are more likely to be nice
to me.
The precise nature of Darwin’s moral theory has
been the subject of dispute, probably because it is
not as clear as it might be. One can say unequivo-
cally that Darwin’s is an empiricist theory, and he
does seem more interested in questions of PSYCHOL-
OGY (where does morality come from and how does
it function?) than in questions of philosophy (what
justification can one give for morality?). Indeed, one
does get the impression that, if he were pressed, Dar-

win would probably argue that there are no ultimate
foundations to morality: he would be an ethical scep-
tic of some kind. Certainly, by the time of the De-
scent, this is the way that Darwin seems to treat
other ultimate questions. Morality itself (what phi-
losophers call substantive morality) seems to have
come through some general sense of SYMPATHY that
all organisms have for their fellows, which at some
level humans generalize to incorporate all of human-
kind. (Darwin had read his Hume.) He was not ter-
ribly keen on identifying himself with the utilitari-
ans, probably because he thought that PLEASURE was
a little too gross a motive for moral beings. Rather,
Darwin opted for some general sentiment for the
general good or well being. All organisms start in
biology but humans end ultimately in culture.
In respects, Darwin was happier with the details
than with the generalities. From a liberal family, he
was violently opposed to such practices as SLAV-
ERY —he had seen the ill effects of this when trav-
elling in South America—and he was equally op-
posed to the vile EXPLOITATION of people in
industrialised societies like Britain. Yet he was a rich
man whose family had done well out of the indus-
trial revolution—Darwin’s maternal grandfather
was Josiah Wedgwood the potter—and it is no sur-
prise to find Darwin strongly in favour of such prac-
tices as capitalism. In other respects also he was a
classic Victorian, endorsing the division of the sexes
for instance, with men assigned a more active role
and women relegated to the hearth and nursery.
Fond as he was of animals, he was nevertheless un-
equivocal in his support of vivisection for medical
ends. But here, as in other practical issues, although
Darwin’s voice carried much authority, he was more
a follower of others (his lieutenant, Thomas Henry
Huxley [1825–1895], particularly) than an innova-
tor in his own right.
By the time of his death, Darwin was one of the
most celebrated men of his day, his status recognized
by burial in that English Valhalla, Westminister Ab-
bey. His legacy today is if anything greater than it
has been at any point in the intervening years. And
not just in the scientific realm. Although there have
always been those (biologists particularly) who tried
to think about moral issues from a Darwinian per-
spective, professional philosophers have generally
pulled back from such activities. Now we find that
the end-of-the-twentieth-century enthusiasm for
NATURALISM extends to moral questions, and there
375
de Beauvoir, Simone
is intense interest both in Darwin’s own work and
in the ways in which it can be mined for help on
contemporary issues and problems.
See also: ALTRUISM; BIOLOGICAL THEORY; COMMON
GOOD; COMPETITION; CONSERVATION; ENVIRONMEN-
TAL ETHICS; EVOLUTION; FUTURE GENERATIONS; GE-
NETIC ENGINEERING; HISTORY OF WESTERN ETHICS,
12: TWENTIETH-CENTURY ANGLO-AMERICAN; HUME;
NATURAL LAW; NATURALISM; NATURE AND ETHICS;
RECIPROCITY; SYMPATHY; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS.
Bibliography
Works by Darwin
On the Origin of Species. London: John Murray, 1859.
The Descent of Man. London: John Murray, 1871.
Works about Darwin
Browne, J. Charles Darwin: Voyaging. Volume 1 of a Bi-
ography. New York: Knopf, 1995.
Richards, R. J. Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary
Theories of Mind and Behavior. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1987.
Ruse, Michael. The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red
in Tooth and Claw. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1979; 2nd ed., 1999.
Michael Ruse
de Beauvoir, Simone (1908–1986)
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
was a novelist, an early feminist, and one of the lead-
ing existentialist writers of the post–World War II
decades. Her lifelong companion was Jean-Paul
SARTRE (1905–1980). In her writing, de Beauvoir
broadened Sartre’s individualistic reflections to in-
clude social concerns, and extended his rather
narrow rationalistic philosophical PSYCHOLOGY to
respect the decisive influence of childhood experi-
ences—years before he addressed these topics him-
self.
The major theses of de Beauvoir’s philosophical
work were evident in her early but neglected Pyrrhus
et Cinéas (1944). The pivotal concept of her thought
is that of human existence conceived as the dynamic
transcendence of one’s situation. As with Sartre,
whose Being and Nothingness (1943) influenced her
de Beauvoir, Simone
so profoundly, she argues that we are radically free,
but that we are free “in situation,” not abstractly as
the Stoics maintain. Whatever meaning/direction
(sens) our situation possesses is a function of our
“choice,” our project, and hence is our basic RE-
SPONSIBILITY as well. The sole limit to my freedom-
transcendence is another freedom-transcendence.
But her treatment of the Other is more promising
for a social philosophy than is Sartre’s of the same
period. Although she too acknowledges the violence
and struggle endemic when freedoms transcend one
another, as well as the impossibility of any freedom’s
being completely totalized (justified) by another, she
argues that I can be truly human only among others,
whose freedom I respect and to whose freedom I
appeal, to give my acts and works their proper jus-
tification. Her nascent social theory arises from the
two conditions she sets down for such recognition:
there must exist a society where I am free to make
the appeal, where I have freedom of expression; sec-
ond, I must find myself before people who are really
able to respond to my appeal (PC 112–13). These
people must be my equals in this basic sense. She
concludes with a practical imperative: “I must en-
deavor to create for men situations such that they
can join me in my transcendence and surpass it” (PC
115). This entails their having the various social
goods, health, education, welfare, for example, that
we commonly associate with the modern state.
In her better-known Ethics of Ambiguity (1947),
de Beauvoir develops these earlier themes, but with
a clearer sense of the unresolvable tensions between
means and end, present and future, individual proj-
ect and the liberation of all. She defends existen-
tialism against the accusation of ethical solipsism
more successfully than does Sartre in his famous Ex-
istentialism Is a Humanism (1946). She also fleshes
out the “subjective and formal” aspect of freedom
by appeal to the “world-disclosing” nature of hu-
man existence and the “open future” implicit in any
act of willing oneself free, whereby I likewise will
that there be freedoms to continue endowing the
world with meaning and value in the future (EA
70–71, 82).
The work that brought her to the forefront of the
feminist movement was The Second Sex (1949).
Distinguishing sharply between sex (facticity) and
gender (our way of “transcending” that facticity),
she urges that women not yield to the socially im-
376
posed destiny of motherhood, “the eternal femi-
nine,” but consciously “choose” their manner of liv-
ing their sex, for “one is not born, but rather
becomes, a woman” (SS 267).
See also: AUTHENTICITY; EXISTENTIAL ETHICS; FEMI-
NIST ETHICS; HUMANISM; SARTRE; SELF-DECEPTION;
SITUATION ETHICS.
Bibliography
Works by de Beauvoir
The Ethics of Ambiguity. New York: Philosophical Library,
1948 [1947]. Translation of Pour une morale de
l’ambiguité. Often considered the official ethical com-
mentary on Sartre’s Being and Nothingness.
Pyrrhus et Cinéas. Paris: Gallimard, 1944. Selections
translated in Partisan Review 3 (1946): 430–37. First
extended statement of her philosophic thought.
The Second Sex. 2 vols. New York: Knopf, 1953 [1949].
Abridged translation of the feminist classic Le deux-
ième sex.
de Beauvoir, Simone, and Alice Schwarzer. After “The Sec-
ond Sex”: Conversations with Simone de Beauvoir.
New York: Pantheon, 1984. Reflections on contem-
porary feminism.
Works about de Beauvoir
Bergoffen, Debra. Gendered Phenomenologies, Erotic
Generosities: The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir.
New York: SUNY Press, 1996. Excellent example of
more recent feminist readings of de Beauvoir.
Francis, Claude, and Fernande Gontier, eds. Les écrits de
Simone de Beauvoir. Paris: Gallimard, 1979. Detailed
bibliography.
———. Simone de Beauvoir. New York: St. Martin’s,
1987. Thorough biography.
Fullbrook, Kate, and Edward Fullbrook. Simone de Beau-
voir and Jean-Paul Sartre: The Remaking of a
Twentieth-Century Legend. New York: Basic Books,
1994. Originated the recent controversy over who in-
fluenced whom in the days of vintage existentialism.
Vintges, Karen. Philosophy as Passion: The Thinking of
Simone de Beauvoir. Translated by Anne Lavelle.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Careful
study of the interrelation between de Beauvoir’s trea-
tises on ethics as an “art of living” and her own life
project. [Tr. of Filosofie als passie, 1992.]
Whitmarsh, Anne. Simone de Beauvoir and the Limits of
Commitment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981. Descriptive and critical analysis of major themes
in her thought.
Thomas R. Flynn

De Stael, Madame
See Stael, Madame de.
death
By definition, death is the cessation of life. It is clear
why it is rational to fear the process of dying and
why we may say that pain or disability can harm the
one who suffers it. But is it rational to fear death as
such? Is death itself a harm? And by extension, can
conduct such as breaking a will, destroying a repu-
tation, or desecrating a grave harm the dead? EPI-
CURUS (341–270 B.C.E.) framed a good deal of sub-
sequent philosophical discussion of these questions
by arguing bluntly that death cannot be a harm and
is nothing to fear. Since those issues have an obvious
connection to ethical concerns about murder, SUI-
CIDE, and EUTHANASIA, for example, it is important
to outline them.
Being the Subject of a Harm
In general, when one person harms another it is
clear who the subject of the harm is and when the
harm takes place. Further, in many cases of harm the
subject of the harm experiences it as in some way
bad or unpleasant. But if death is a harm (or bad
thing), who exactly is the subject of the harm (or
bad)? For, to paraphrase a point made by Epicurus,
when death occurs there is no person left to be the
subject of the misfortune, and when there exists a
person who could be the subject of the misfortune,
death has not yet occurred. Similarly, when exactly
does the harm of death take place? Can a harm to a
person take place after the person has ceased to ex-
ist? Finally, death is conceived of as an “experiential
blank,” an indefinitely long period without any con-
sciousness. But if so, and if all harms to a person
must be experienced as bad or unpleasant by the
person, then how can death harm a person? I shall
briefly sketch some possible responses given by
twentieth-century philosophers to these skeptical
worries about the ordinary view that death can be a
bad thing for a person.
Let us begin with the issue of whether there can
be harms to a person that are not experienced as
unpleasant by the person. It seems that there can in
fact be such harms. Suppose that the people whom
377
death
you believe are your friends actually ridicule and de-
spise you behind your back, and that you never dis-
cover this. Thomas Nagel argues that it is plausible
to think that your apparent friends’ actions of be-
trayal harm you, even though you never experience
these actions at all. Consider, similarly, a young,
highly intelligent scientist who has a stroke while
sleeping that reduces her to a mental vegetable. Ev-
idently, the stroke harms the scientist, although we
can suppose that she does not experience it as un-
pleasant or now has any regrets about its occur-
rence. It is apparent, then, that one can be harmed
by something even though one never experiences it
as bad or unpleasant, and it might be the case that
death is this sort of harm.
This still leaves the questions of who the subject
of the misfortune of death is and when the misfor-
tune takes place. As regards the first question, it ap-
pears that we can describe a person who is now dead
in two different ways: as he was at some point in his
life, and as he is now (i.e., as moldering in a grave
or nothing more than dust). In describing him in the
first way, we are describing (after his death) an
“antemortem person,” and in describing him in the
second way, we are describing (after his death) a
“postmortem person” (Pitcher). Whereas it is im-
plausible to think that the postmortem person—let
us say, dust—can be harmed at all, perhaps it is not
so unsettling to say that it is the antemortem person
who is the subject of the harm of death (Nagel;
Pitcher; Feinberg).
But if it is the antemortem person who is the sub-
ject of the harm of death, when does the harm take
place? One option would be to say that the harm
takes place at the time of death, but this would imply
that it is possible to harm something at a time at
which that thing does not exist. (Remember that
death is a harm over and above the process of dying:
indeed, one can be harmed by a sudden, painless
death.) Another option would be to say that the
harm of death does not take place at any specific
time (Nagel). And yet another option would be to
say that the harm of death occurs prior to death, for
example, at the time an individual acquires the IN-
TERESTS that make life worthwhile (Pitcher; Fein-
berg). None of these responses is entirely felicitous,
however, and they bring out the sense in which death
is a rather special sort of harm.
death
Death versus Prenatal Nonexistence
If death is nonexistence and an experiential blank,
why should we have asymmetric attitudes toward it
and prenatal nonexistence? It is a simple and evi-
dently deep fact that we regard death as a bad thing
in a way in which we do not regard prenatal non-
existence. But since both death and prenatal non-
existence are experiential blanks, should we not take
symmetrical attitudes toward them? I think this sim-
ple asymmetry in our attitudes deserves a simple ex-
planation: Death is an experiential blank which is
(or can be) a deprivation of good experiences, and
we have a (not obviously irrational) tendency to pre-
fer that our good experiences be in the future rather
than the past. If we are not temporally indifferent in
our attitudes toward past and future good experi-
ences, and death deprives us of future good experi-
ences, it might not be irrational to have asymmetric
attitudes toward prenatal and posthumous nonex-
istence (Brueckner and Fischer). Although death is
like a betrayal behind one’s back insofar as it is an
experiential blank, it is interestingly different from
a bad such as a betrayal behind one’s back because
death deprives one of certain good experiences.
Immortality
I have suggested that death can (although it need
not) be a bad thing for a person. This claim is sepa-
rate from the claim that it would be desirable to be
immortal. That is, one could hold that it would be a
bad thing for a vigorous and healthy thirty-year-old
to die, whereas it would not be a good thing to live
forever. Indeed, some philosophers, for example
Bernard WILLIAMS, argue that it would not be de-
sirable to possess immortality. They claim that the
finitude imposed by death is part of what gives
meaning to life, so that immortal life would not be
meaningful and worthwhile. Some even claim that
the immortal life of a person with a determinate
CHARACTER is inconceivable. Others, such as Glover,
argue that, whereas certain forms of immortality
would not be desirable, there are other kinds of im-
mortality that might be appealing. As Nagel puts it,
“If there is no limit to the amount of life that it would
be good to have, then it may be that a bad end is in
store for us all.”
378
See also: AGENCY AND DISABILITY; EPICURUS; EU-
THANASIA; HARM AND OFFENSE; KILLING/LETTING
DIE; LIFE AND DEATH; LIFE, MEANING OF; LIFE, RIGHT
TO; MORTALITY; PAIN AND SUFFERING; SUICIDE.
Bibliography
Brueckner, Anthony, and John Martin Fischer. “Why Is
Death Bad?” Philosophical Studies 50 (1986): 213–
21.
Epicurus. Letter to Menoeceus. In Diogenes Laertius, Life
of Epicurus.
Feinberg, Joel. Harm to Others. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1984.
Feldman, Fred. Confrontations with the Reaper: A Philo-
sophical Study of the Nature and Value of Death. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Glover, Jonathan. Causing Death and Saving Lives. Har-
mondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977.
Kamm, F. M. Death and Whom to Save from it. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1993.
Nagel, Thomas. “Death.” In Mortal Questions. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1984.
Pitcher, George. “The Misfortunes of the Dead.” American
Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984): 183–88.
Silverstein, Harry. “The Evil of Death.” Journal of Philos-
ophy 77 (1980): 401–23.
Williams, Bernard. “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on
the Tedium of Immortality.” In Problems of the Self.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.
Wollheim, Richard. The Thread of Life. Cambridge: Har-
vard University Press, 1984.
Yourgrau, Palle. “The Dead.” Journal of Philosophy 86
(1987): 84–101.
John Martin Fischer
deceit
The potential for deceit is present in all communi-
cation between human beings. The intentional effort
to mislead people—whether labeled deceit, fraud,
duplicity, or lying—constitutes the simplest and
most tempting way of making people act against
their will. In turn, it gives rise to the most common
reason for distrust. Everyone has had the experience
of being deceived and of deceiving others, of doubt-
ing someone’s honesty and of being suspected—
rightly or wrongly—of being a liar. Between FAMILY
members or friends, as between buyers and sellers,
professionals and clients, governments and citizens,

the moral questions of when, if ever, deceit is justi-
fiable and of whose word can or cannot be trusted
are of crucial importance.
Deceit has often been paired with violence, since
most forms of wrongdoing are perpetrated by means
of one or both. All societies, in consequence, as well
as all major religious, moral, and legal traditions,
have sought to constrain both violence and deceit.
At the same time, most have argued that there are
circumstances under which the recourse to violence
or deceit or both is justifiable. Lying is the more
tempting of the two, as it comes so easily and tends
to be more difficult to detect: one word spoken in-
stead of another, a document backdated or altered,
some figures falsified in a statistical analysis—these
do not call for the same physical effort or arouse the
same immediate suspicion as do overt acts of
violence.
The rich philosophical debate concerning deceit
has focused on issues of definition and justification,
and on line-drawing with respect to each. Are cer-
tain forms of exaggeration, say, or of omission, even
deceitful in the first place? Is deceit acceptable from
a MORAL POINT OF VIEW when it is intended to help
others? or when undertaken in SELF-DEFENSE? How
does one apply moral standards pertaining to hon-
esty in one’s own life? The same questions arise in
personal life as in working life, in domestic politics
as in international relations. In the academy, such
questions sometimes collide in especially problem-
atic ways with standards for scholarly INTEGRITY
and accuracy.
Definitions
Deception raises ethical problems only when
communication is intended to mislead. Human be-
ings are surrounded with innumerable sources of er-
roneous belief: Mirages may deceive us; our eyes and
ears deceive us all the time. It is only when human
beings purposely distort, withhold, or otherwise ma-
nipulate information reaching others so as to mis-
lead them that we speak of deceit or intentional de-
ception. Intentional deception may be nonverbal in
form, as when messages are conveyed by gestures or
false visual clues, or verbal. When a speaker makes
a statement in the belief that it is false and with the
INTENTION to mislead a listener, we speak of lies.
A false statement need not be a falsehood or lie.
Many confuse the vast domain of falsity with the
379
deceit
more restricted one of falsehood, just as they con-
fuse truth with truthfulness. When people convey
false information in the mistaken belief that it is
true, they are not intending to deceive and thus are
not lying. Their errors can result from having been
deceived in the first place, or from factors such as
ignorance, fatigue, bias, delusion, intoxication, or
language difficulties. At the receiving end, the same
factors may operate so that people end up being de-
ceived through no fault on the part of the person
who originated the message or passed it along.
Many intentionally false statements are not in-
tended to mislead listeners. Most people do not
think of a joke, for instance, or a rhetorical flourish
or work of fiction, as deceitful. What Samuel Cole-
ridge (1772–1834) called the “willing suspension of
disbelief” operates to place such statements in a dif-
ferent category.
Just as a false statement need not be deceitful, so
a true statement can sometimes be meant to deceive.
This is the case, for instance, when bureaucrats de-
liberately convey excessive or confusing informa-
tion, knowing that their listeners will not be able to
interpret it correctly; or when physicians give pa-
tients correct but partial information while with-
holding the full diagnosis from them so that they fail
to understand that they suffer from cancer.
Silence, while it cannot constitute a lie, can be
deceitful if it conveys a message intended to mislead.
Most of the time, silence is not intended to so de-
ceive and constitutes no distinct message. But a doc-
tor who subjects a patient to a dangerous experiment
with a new drug without informing the patient of
the risks or asking for CONSENT is deceiving the pa-
tient by remaining silent on these matters; so, like-
wise, are employers who, in hiring new employees,
purposely choose not to advise them about known
health hazards at the workplace.
“Mental reservation” involves speaking only a
partial but highly misleading truth with the intent to
deceive, while adding in one’s mind the missing
words that would render the statement nondecep-
tive: as, for instance, when a thief responds to an
inquiry about a theft the previous week by claiming
that had not stolen anything, adding silently “today.”
“Truthfulness” concerns both statements in-
tended by speakers not to constitute lies and the
character trait of persons who are scrupulous, to the
best of their knowledge, in avoiding lying. “Veracity”
is often used synonymously with truthfulness in the
deceit
above senses, but carries an additional stress on the
accuracy of what is stated; while a truthful statement
is intended to be accurate, it counts as such even if
the speaker is mistaken. “Honesty” characterizes a
person of integrity and trustworthiness who avoids,
not only lies, nor only intentional deception, but also
theft and other forms of betrayal. Conversely, “dis-
honesty” refers to the disposition to lie, deceive,
steal, cheat, and defraud more generally than “de-
ceitfulness,” which concerns primarily the disposi-
tion to deceive.
The philosophical and aesthetic debate regarding
how to define concepts such as “deception,” “de-
ceit,” “lying,” and “truthfulness” is rendered more
difficult by two factors. First, there is disagreement
about the definitions themselves. Thus some con-
sider all deceptive messages, whether intended or
unintended, true or false, verbal or nonverbal, to be
lies so long as they end up misleading recipients.
Others argue that the purpose of fiction is to deceive:
they may defend the practice, as did Oscar Wilde
(1854–1900) in “The Decay of Lying,” or deplore
it, as did SOCRATES (c. 470–399 B.C.E.) in PLATO’s
(c. 430–347 B.C.E.) Republic when he argued that
poets mislead their audiences in speaking, for in-
stance, of the gods as undignified or immoral. The
failure to sort out the underlying disagreements
about definitions will generate needless confusion in
any debate over the ethics of deceit and lying.
Second, however, even when these disagreements
have been illuminated, there will always be prob-
lems of line-drawing with respect to each concept.
Just where should the boundaries go between inten-
tional and unintentional deception? When, for in-
stance, is a practical joke or a rhetorical flourish in-
tended or not intended to deceive? When does the
transmission of false information—say by reporters
covering public officials—shade into complicity in
deceit? Regardless of intention, under what circum-
stances do such statements end up deceiving listen-
ers? What about the various forms of delusion or
SELF-DECEPTION in this regard? And when it comes
to silence or any form of withholding of information,
how does one estimate whether the omission helps
constitute a false message, and whether or not it is
intended as such?
Justification
In part because of such differences in defining
and delimiting concepts, the debate about when, if
380
ever, deceit is justified often focuses on clear-cut
cases of lying, about which there are fewer such dis-
agreements. Because lies are seen as morally prob-
lematic in all major traditions, the burden of proof
falls on those who would defend particular catego-
ries of lies—say to persons near DEATH or to ene-
mies in wartime.
Two positions have arisen within most major
moral traditions with respect to the justification of
lies. The first, absolutist position, expressed by,
among others, AUGUSTINE (354–430) and Imman-
uel KANT (1724–1804), holds that there can be no
sufficient justification for lying. According to Au-
gustine, lies could be ranked from the point of view
of their severity. Some lies may be more understand-
able than others, but even those, he insisted, are for-
bidden by God and should be avoided. Kant, while
also rejecting all lies as unjustifiable, refused to rank
lies as Augustine had done, insisting, instead, that
truthfulness is an unconditional duty which holds in
all circumstances. All who lie, he claimed, thereby
repudiate their own human dignity and contribute
to undermining the communication that is the foun-
dation of social intercourse.
The second position is shared by the many think-
ers who set forth certain types of justifiable lies.
Among them are followers of Augustine and Kant
who reject their absolutism as extremist, as well as
utilitarians and others. Some of them argue that lies
to certain kinds of people—children, the dying, the
mentally ill, slaves, or enemies in war—are justifia-
ble whenever the need to deceive them arises. There
is no need for complex MORAL REASONING in such
cases, these thinkers claim. Thus Hugo GROTIUS
(1583–1645) holds that falsehoods told to children
or to the insane show no disrespect for their liberty
of judgment, since they have no such LIBERTY in the
first place.
Jeremy BENTHAM (1748–1832) and JOHN STUART
MILL (1806–1873) argue, on utilitarian grounds,
that it is possible so to estimate the consequences of
particular lies as to sort out those few that would be
justifiable. Henry SIDGWICK (1838–1900), likewise,
concludes on such grounds that certain lies are jus-
tifiable—among them, those told to invalids where
the truth might prove a great shock to them. W. D.
ROSS (1877–1971) held that, while there is a prima
facie duty of FIDELITY, which includes that of verac-
ity, it can conflict with other prima facie duties such
as that of “not injuring others.”

Philosophers who see such justifiable exceptions
to a policy of complete truthfulness tend to agree
about the type of lie most likely to fall into such a
category: it is the lie that will prevent imminent and
otherwise unavoidable harm, as in saving an in-
tended victim from a murderer or in preventing a
terrorist attack. Lies to criminals more generally or
to enemies in wartime are often included among
falsehoods thus justified or at least seen as less rep-
rehensible than others. So-called white lies consti-
tute another category often seen as legitimate, as, for
instance, when they succeed in bringing PLEASURE
to a listener without seeming to have any harmful
consequences.
As with the questions of definition, however, so
do these issues of justification raise a great many
line-drawing difficulties. How should utilitarians
achieve accuracy in weighing the gains and losses
that will flow from a lie or from a deceptive practice?
Among these gains and losses, how does one weigh
the liar’s self-ascribed good intentions, the harm li-
ars do to themselves and to their reputations, and
the cumulative damage done to the general level of
trust and social cooperation? Is it possible to com-
pensate for the likelihood of bias in making such
judgments? How do Ross and others weigh conflict-
ing duties in marginal cases? What if the harm one
is trying to avert by lying is not imminent or entirely
unavoidable by other means? And what if the benefit
to be achieved by a white lie is itself achievable by
other means?
Efforts to perceive distinctions and to draw lines
with respect to the numerous disputed questions of
definition and of justification are central to moral
deliberation. Even though difficult cases and regions
of uncertainty will always remain, such efforts can
reduce them considerably. This is of special impor-
tance when it comes to adopting a moral stance with
respect to deceit and honesty. Philosophers and oth-
ers who have written on these issues may disagree
about how to weigh disputed questions. But they are
often united in stressing the corruption that flows
from practices of deceit—for individuals as for com-
munities—and the corresponding need to work
against the grain for greater truthfulness with self
and others.
See also: ACADEMIC ETHICS; APPLIED ETHICS; AU -
GUSTINE; BLACKMAIL; CASUISTRY; CHARACTER;
CHEATING; COERCION; CONSENT; DEATH; FIDELITY;
381
deceit
FORGERY; GOVERNMENT, ETHICS IN; HARM AND OF-
FENSE; INTEGRITY; INTENTION; JOURNALISM; KANT;
MORAL ABSOLUTES; MORAL POINT OF VIEW; MORAL
REASONING; NARRATIVE ETHICS; PRIVACY; PUBLIC
AND PRIVATE MORALITY; SECRECY AND CONFIDEN-
TIALITY; SELF-DECEPTION; SELF-DEFENSE; TRUST; VI-
OLENCE AND NON-VIOLENCE; WAR AND PEACE.
Bibliography
Arendt, Hannah. “Truth and Politics.” In Philosophy, Poli-
tics, and Society, 3d ser., edited by Peter Laslett, and
W. G. Runciman. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1967.
Augustine, Saint. “De mendacio [Of Lying]”; “Contra
mendacium [Against Lying].” Treatises on Various
Subjects. Vol. 16 of The Fathers of the Church: A New
Translation, edited by Roy J. Deferrari. New York: Fa-
thers of the Church, 1952. Pages 45–110; 111–79.
Bentham, Jeremy. “Division of Offenses.” Chapter 16 in
his An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation, 204–308. Hafner Library of Classics, vol.
6. New York: Hafner, 1948 [1780].
Bok, Sissela. Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private
Life. New York: Pantheon, 1978. Appendix has selec-
tions on lying from Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Gro-
tius, Kant, Sidgwick, Ross, others. The 3d ed., pub-
lished by Vintage, 1999, has an added preface.
Grotius, Hugo. On the Law of War and Peace. Translated
by Francis W. Kelsey. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill,
1925 [1625]. See book 3, chapter 1.
Kant, Immanuel. The Metaphysic of Morals. Pt. 2: The
Doctrine of Virtue. Translated by Mary Gregor. New
York: Harper and Row, 1964 [1797].
———. “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Benevolent
Motives.” In his The Critique of Practical Reason and
Other Writings in Moral Philosophy, translated by
Lewis White Beck, 346–50. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1949 [1788].
Montaigne, Michel de. “Des menteurs [On Liars].” In The
Complete Essays of Montaigne, edited by Donald M.
Frame. 1958 [1580–95]. See book I, chapter 9.
Ross, W. D. The Right and the Good. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1930.
Sidgwick, Henry. “Classification of Duties—Veracity.” 7th
ed. In his The Methods of Ethics. London: Macmillan,
1907 [1874].
Sissela Bok
definition
See persuasive definition.
deliberation and choice
deliberation and choice
‘Deliberation’ and ‘choice’ are translations of Aris-
totle’s names for the chief mental acts by which hu-
man beings advance from wishing for something to
doing something about it. According to ARISTOTLE
(384–322 B.C.E.), ACTION is behavior that is ex-
plained by choice (Gr. prohairesis); and a choice is
an appetitive attitude (Gr. orexis) that is explained
by the prior conjunction of an appetitive attitude of
wishing for an end (Gr. boulesis) with a cognitive
attitude of belief (Gr. doxa) arrived at by delibera-
tion (Gr. bouleusis). Most later theories of human
action are Aristotelian in structure: recent critics
who would jettison them as obsolete folk psychology
offer no presentable alternative.
Aristotle’s own theory of deliberation and choice
rests on a prior theory of the end (Gr. telos) all hu-
man beings pursue, while disagreeing about what it
is: namely, the kind of complete life it is rational to
wish for. According to that prior theory, the happy
few, having reflected dialectically on the kinds of life
open to the fortunate, reject not only the vulgar ends
of pleasure and wealth, but even the more plausible
one of public honor, and conclude that the life it is
rational to wish for is one of activity according to
human EXCELLENCE (Gr. arete). They consequently
form a general plan for leading such a life: a plan
covering a variety of activities—both social, e.g.,
those of family affairs, of FRIENDSHIP, of business,
of public life; and individual, e.g., those of intellec-
tual inquiry, of production, of physical exercise, and
so forth. Being general, such plans reserve for future
consideration many questions about how to carry
them out. Most people have at least a rough idea of
the life they wish to live, even if it is merely that of
“taking things as they come.” The Socratic ideal
of an examined life calls for planning more system-
atic than they ever attempt.
When, given their situation as they believe it to
be and the life they wish to lead, they wish to do
something that they either do not see how to do or
see several ways of doing, before they can choose
what to do they must deliberate about what it shall
be. “Having set the end,” according to Aristotle,
“they consider how and by what means it is to be
attained; and if it seems to be produced by several
means they consider by which it is most easily and
best produced, while if it is achieved by one only
they consider how it will be achieved by this and by
382
what means this will be achieved, till they come to
the first cause, which in the order of discovery is
last” (Eth. Nic. III, 1112b 15–19). Here, “the first
cause,” which is “last in the order of discovery,” is
the action to be chosen. It is the first cause, because
it is the first step to be taken in achieving the end,
and perhaps the only one. It is last in the order of
discovery, because the proposition identifying it ter-
minates the process of deliberation about how ac-
ceptably to cause the effect wished for.
Suppose that you wish to get rid of the bat that
has flown into your room. You deliberate and, re-
membering that, if unhindered, bats will fly out of a
room a human being has entered, you conclude that
you would get rid of it if you were to open the door
and stand aside; then, in view of that conclusion,
since you continue to wish to get rid of it, you choose
to open the door and stand aside. Aristotle is some-
times mistakenly taken to imply that you would not
so choose unless you believed that opening the door
and standing aside was either the only way of getting
rid of it or the best way there is. But that is gratui-
tous; the best way for you to do what you wish may
not be the best for others. If you have found an ac-
ceptable way of doing what you wish, and wish not
to trouble yourself by deliberating further, then you
believe you have found the way that is best for you.
Aristotle implies no more than that if you believe
that finding how best to do what you wish, according
to whatever standard of goodness you have in mind,
will repay the trouble of deliberating about it, you
will wish to take that trouble.
Two disputed questions now arise. Wishes and
choices are appetitive attitudes. But what are they
attitudes to (what are their objects)? And what sort
of appetition do they involve?
Although sentences by which wishes and choices
are typically described (e.g., “You wish to get rid of
the bat in your room,” and “You choose to open the
door and stand aside”) suggest by their grammatical
form that the objects of wishes and choices are
events, the objects of many cannot be; for often what
is wished and chosen does not happen. Furthermore,
since choices are explained by wishes together with
deliberative judgments, it is natural to suppose that
the objects of all three are of the same kind. Now
the objects of deliberative judgments, as of all be-
liefs, are propositions. And if, despite the seductions
of grammar, the objects of wishes and choices were
also taken to be propositions, problems about the

objects of unfulfilled wishes and unexecuted choices
would vanish. Wishes are unfulfilled and choices
unexecuted when the person whose attitudes they
are does not so act as to make the world such that
the propositions that are their objects are true, just
as beliefs are mistaken when the world is such that
the propositions that are their objects are not true.
Accordingly, the “direction of fit” required of cog-
nitive attitudes like beliefs is sometimes said to be
“mind-fits-world,” and that required of appetitive at-
titudes like wishes and choices to be “world-fits-
mind.” Sentences of the form “A wishes to do X”
thus have uncolloquial equivalents of the form “A
wishes that his wish (choice) result in its being true
that he do X”; and those of the form “A chooses to
do X by doing Y” have parallel ones.
Theories of deliberation and choice with an Ar-
istotelian structure are now commonly referred to as
“belief-desire” theories, thus insinuating that the ap-
petitive attitudes they postulate arise from feeling,
as desires (e.g., hunger) are usually taken to do. This
was, not unreasonably, the position of Thomas
HOBBES (1588–1679) and David HUME (1711–
1776), who reduced having cognitive attitudes to
having sensory images; but it is utterly implausible
if cognitive attitudes such as beliefs are not so re-
ducible, as is now generally agreed. Like beliefs,
wishes and choices may be accompanied by strong
feelings; but, also like beliefs, they are not those feel-
ings. Not all human appetites are felt: that is, not
all are desires as DESIRE is usually understood. Hu-
man beings are intellectually as well as sensitively
appetitive: they possess a capacity the Medieval Ar-
istotelians called voluntas (‘will’). Takings of intel-
lectual appetitive attitudes such as wishing and
choosing are specific varieties of willing.
Instead of confining deliberation to a causal in-
vestigation of how wished-for effects can be caused,
a number of recent theorists have proposed to re-
gard it as a process of “practical” inference from
wishes to choices, in which the premises are expres-
sions of wishes and of deliberative judgment, and
the conclusions are expressions of choices. Since not
only are their conclusions nonpropositional, but also
such of their premises as express wishes, such prac-
tical inferences must have a logic that is nonpropo-
sitional, too—a logic of whatever expressions of ap-
petitive attitudes are taken to be—imperatives,
prescriptives, or the like.
Although a variety of proposals for such a logic
383
deliberation and choice
have been canvassed, the semantical objections to
them have not been disposed of. An inference in
propositional logic is valid if and only if, given that
its premises have the semantic value true, its conclu-
sion has that same semantic value. In would be
otherwise with a valid nonpropositional inference:
since its conclusion is neither true nor false, it must
have a semantic value other than truth such that,
given that its nonpropositional premises have it and
that its propositional ones are true, it has that value
too. Unfortunately, no proposal for such a value has
proved plausible.
Nor could a nonpropositional logic of PRACTICAL
REASONING by itself explain why choices are ex-
plained by wishes and deliberative judgments. Logic,
like arithmetic, explains error as well as correctness.
Given that you persist in wishing for an end and in
believing that such and such is the best way for you
to bring it about, you plainly fall short as a human
agent if you do not choose to bring it about in that
way. Yet how do you fall short? WEAKNESS OF WILL
is a common phenomenon, and it is plausibly ana-
lyzed as the propensity to choose to indulge wishes
which you believe, all things considered, that it is
irrational to indulge; but, despite their irrationality,
choices made from weakness of will are explained
by wish and deliberation.
The theory that is needed is not about the con-
ditions on which action counts as rational and not
irrational, but about the conditions on which human
behavior counts as action, that is, as behavior ex-
plained by choices, which in turn are explained by
wishes, and beliefs. Nobody’s behavior can be so ex-
plained unless choices, wishes, and beliefs can be
ascribed to him, and there are conditions such as-
criptions must satisfy. One is that, for any proposi-
tion p, a belief that p cannot be ascribed to anybody
if belief that not-p, its direct contradictory, is also
ascribed to him. Belief that not-p is disbelief that p,
and to describe somebody as both believing and dis-
believing p, except as a dramatic way of indicating
that his cognitive attitude to p vacillates, is unintel-
ligible. Similar conditions must be satisfied by atti-
tudes of willing, such as wishing and choosing. If
the will (in this case a wish) that he do so-and-so in
an acceptable way is ascribed to somebody, then a
will (in this case a choice) that he not do so-and-so
in the way he judges acceptable cannot also be as-
cribed to him; for it is no more intelligible to de-
scribe him as both willing and not willing that p than
deliberation and choice
as believing and not believing it. These limitations
on the propositional attitudes that we can ascribe to
human beings derive from the concept of human ac-
tion itself. Human behavior is action only to the ex-
tent that it is caused by taking propositional atti-
tudes of certain kinds; and it can be so caused only
to the extent that the conditions on which those at-
titudes can be taken are satisfied.
The usual temporal sequence of events that cul-
minates in choice—wish–deliberation–judgment–
choice—is not a series of causes, in which the later
are effects of the earlier. The wish that initiates such
a sequence may be abandoned at any time during it,
with the result that deliberation is broken off before
a conclusion is reached, or a conclusion is reached
but the choice that is made does not accord with it.
Both the wish and the deliberative judgment that
explain a choice must persist up to the making of
that choice, and that they persist does not follow
from the fact that they were made earlier.
Until the early 1980s, so far as deliberation was
regarded as purely cognitive, it was not considered
seriously problematic, and the examples by which it
was illustrated, like that above of deliberating how
to rid a room of a bat, were so simple as to be jejune.
Thus, for the greater part of its history, the philo-
sophical study of deliberation and choice was pre-
occupied with the problem of how choice could be
explained by the combination of cognitive attitudes
(beliefs) and appetitive ones (wishes, sometimes
miscalled desires). That problem, it has been argued,
is now essentially solved, although difficulties have
been passed over, the solutions of which, while in
some cases complicated, are comparatively trivial:
for example, those posed by wishes and choices to
do something not at once, but during some interval
in the more or less remote future.
Since 1980, however, the theory of deliberation
has been transformed by paying attention to exam-
ples that are not jejune: for example, to deliberation
about how to end a currency inflation without a de-
structive depression, or about how to curb TERROR-
ISM without counterterrorism. The wishes generat-
ing such cases are both general and vague; and the
plans that result call not only for bringing about a
number of other general and vague effects and for
making further plans when what specifically those
effects turn out to be is known, but also for calcu-
lations about how far the plan for accomplishing one
wished-for end are compatible with that for accom-
384
plishing another. In treating such cases, the concept
of an appetitive attitude intermediate between those
of wish and choice, namely that of INTENTION (first
introduced by the medieval Aristotelians), is indis-
pensable.
Nor is that all. Deliberation itself may be willed,
and so explained by wishes and deliberative judg-
ments. However, those who wish to bring about the
humanly important ends in the above examples soon
find that they raise not only extremely difficult causal
problems but also problems that are not causal at
all. The causal problems are chiefly about coordi-
nating plans to accomplish different but not obvi-
ously incompatible ends, and they include problems
about whether the difficulties of coordination call
for modifying one or more of those ends. RATIONAL
CHOICE theory in economics and the social sciences
throws some light on them. The noncausal problems
are about the nature of the ends wished for, and are
ethical (for example, what distinguishes a destruc-
tive from a nondestructive business depression, or
legitimate attacks on terrorist targets from counter-
terrorism?). Here what is needed is something more
like Aristotle’s dialectical investigation of the ele-
ments of a good life than what he called ‘delibera-
tion’—inquiry into how to bring about some wished
for effect.
See also: ACTION;ARISTOTELIAN ETHICS; DESIRE;
EXCELLENCE; FINAL GOOD; INTENTION; LOGIC AND
ETHICS; PRACTICAL REASON[ING]; RATIONAL CHOICE;
RATIONALITY VS. REASONABLENESS; VOLUNTARY
ACTS; WEAKNESS OF WILL.
Bibliography
Anscombe, G. E. M. Intention. 2d ed. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1966 [1957]. The pioneering modern work.
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. See I (1094a1–1098a8);
III (1109b30–1115a6); VI (1140a24–1143b17); VII
(1145a15–1152a35).
Aune, Bruce. Reason and Action. Dordrecht: Reidel,
1977. Especially good on projects for a logic of prac-
tical reasoning.
Brand, Myles, and Douglas N. Walton, eds. Action Theory.
Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980. Contains valuable papers by
R. W. Brinkley, H.-N. Castañeda (on the logic of prac-
tical reasoning), R. M. Chisholm, and Irving Thalberg
(on volition), among others.
Bransen, Jan, and Stefaan E. Cuypers, eds. Human Action,
Deliberation and Causation. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1998.

Bratman, Michael E. Intention, Plans, and Practical Rea-
son. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.
A thorough investigation of deliberation.
Clark, Michael. “Moral Incapacity and Deliberation.” Ra-
tio 12, no. 1 (1991): 1–13.
Davidson, Donald. Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1980. A classic; see esp. essays 1–5.
De Moss, David J. “Acquiring Ethical Ends.” Ancient Phi-
losophy 10, no. 1 (1990): 63–79.
Donagan, Alan. Choice: The Essential Element in Human
Action. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987.
Doris, John. “Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics.”
Nous 32, no. 4 (1998): 504–30.
Pettit, Philip, and Michael Smith. “Backgrounding De-
sire.” Philosophical Review 99 (1990): 565–92.
Searle, John R. Intentionality. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983. Explores the internal structure
of choice (i.e., final intention to act).
Wright, G. H. von. Explanation and Understanding. Ith-
aca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971.
Alan Donagan
democracy
Definition
Democracy is an answer to the question, Who
does or should make a decision regarding how a
group of people should be organized or what actions
it should take? as opposed to, What is or ought to
be the decision made? Broadly speaking, it is a form
of decision making wherein many of the individuals
bound or affected by a decision have the opportunity
to play a roughly equal role at an essential stage in
the making of the decision. A democratic society is
one in which most such decisions are made regularly
in this way. For example, in Western democracies
nearly all adult members of the society may partici-
pate equally in the making of laws at some point,
namely, in voting for persons who have the ultimate
law-making AUTHORITY.
This vague definition gives us only a minimal
sense of what democracy is. “Democracy” is a range
term whose threshold is defined by this minimum.
It does not tell us what makes some societies or
groups more democratic than others. Hence, while
classical Athens is called a democracy, a substantial
majority of the population did not participate in the
governing of the state, and until the twentieth cen-
tury Western democracies also precluded most of
their populations from the vote. There are other di-
385
democracy
mensions along which groups are more or less
democratic:
Fullness of participation. Athens was more dem-
ocratic than modern societies in that it allowed cit-
izens to participate more fully in the making of laws
since they made the laws without the intermediary
of representatives.
Range of democratic decision making. More or
fewer aspects of the society can be decided demo-
cratically.
The robustness of the equality. A society may be
more democratic if, in addition to giving each person
an equal vote, it ensures that individuals have
roughly equal resources for influencing public opin-
ion and forming coalitions.
Openness. More or fewer alternative points of
view may be permitted a hearing in a society. Insofar
as there are many dimensions along which a society
may be considered more or less democratic, it is
sometimes hard to say which of two societies is the
more democratic.
Though now when most people describe a form
of government as a democracy they mean to express
some approval, “democracy” is not an inherently
normative or evaluative term like “justice.” Many
like PLATO (c. 430–347 B.C.E.) have criticized de-
mocracy as an inferior form of government, while
maintaining that justice is essentially some kind of
good. It is by virtue of the close connection of de-
mocracy with contemporary values of LIBERTY,
EQUALITY, and solidarity that it has acquired such a
good name in modern times.
“Democracy” is a dangerous term because of its
vagueness and the current esteem in which it is held.
While political philosophers must strive for clarity,
it is not worthwhile to look for a clear analysis of
this term nor ought we seek a theory of democracy
as we might have a theory of justice. The foremost
issue for the political philosopher must be to deter-
mine the correct standards or ideals by which to jus-
tify political and economic institutions, as well as
determine which if any of the forms of decision mak-
ing that go by the name of democracy can be justified
by these standards.
Foundations
There are two basic conceptions of democracy.
One conception is that democracy is a set of proce-
dures and INSTITUTIONS. Thus, for example, the fair
democracy
way of making decisions among five people in a rail-
way car concerning whether smoking should be per-
mitted is to give each person one vote and decide
the issue by means of majority rule. This would be
as opposed to a rule which gives the decision making
entirely over to one person, as in an absolute mon-
archy, or to a very small group of people distin-
guished somehow by birth, as in an aristocracy. We
might call this the conception of democracy as ma-
jority rule. However, public choice theorists have
challenged the claim that any actual or possible dem-
ocratic societies govern primarily by the procedures
of majority rule. They have shown that in any rea-
sonably complex society it is unlikely that there are
any clear majorities for any policy alternatives, and
that most decisions are made in nonmajoritarian
ways. They have joined Joseph Schumpeter (1883–
1950) in the claim that democracy should be iden-
tified with the procedures and institutions charac-
teristic of modern Western democracies.
More often, democracy has been thought of as a
set of standards for evaluating the process of deci-
sion making. Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU (1712–1778)
argued that the circumstances and the rules of de-
cision making should be structured so as to produce
decisions which are likely to be in accord with the
will of the people. For some decisions, he argued
that majority rule would be the best means, and for
others, special majorities. Others have argued that
procedures and institutions should be constructed
so as to make decisions in an egalitarian way, i.e.,
each person has overall equal POWER in determining
the outcome of decision making. Neither of these
standards requires any particular kind of procedural
rule, for the rules are designed differently in differ-
ent circumstances in order to satisfy a particular
standard.
There are different kinds of arguments for de-
mocracy. One may argue that a procedure or a stan-
dard for evaluating decision making is defensible
directly in terms of a set of ideals. This kind of jus-
tification defends democratic decision making in-
dependently of the quality of the decisions them-
selves. There have been two basic competing ideals
behind principles of democracy: equality and una-
nimity.
The ideal of equality is based on the inelimina-
bility of conflicts of INTERESTS, opinions, and con-
ceptions of collective purposes as well as on the
claim that the lives of the members of a society are
386
inseparably linked in various ways. When disagree-
ments arise, individuals ought to have equal input
into decisions affecting those aspects of their lives
which they share in common. This principle of
equality is based on an egalitarian principle of jus-
tice, which is thought of as solving conflicts of opin-
ion concerning justice or means to ends, or simple
conflicts of purpose concerning how the aspects of
a society which people share in common are to be
determined. Here the idea is that participation is an
exercise of power and a means to advance one’s in-
terests. The procedures and institutions by which
these decisions are made should give equal power to
each person.
The ideal of unanimity, on the other hand, is that
the laws of a state ought to be in accord with the
will or judgment of all those who are subject to
them. The reasons for the importance of unanimity
are various. The most frequently given is that a state
wherein laws are made unanimously or in accor-
dance with a unanimous will is the only kind con-
sistent with the liberty of all its members. Another
kind of justification has been that unanimity is an
ideal of rational justification. Hence a society which
approaches unanimity is most likely to have a system
of just legislation. The claim is that the discussion
and disagreement in democracies will eventually
tend to produce unanimity on the ideas of justice or
on the best means to achieve common ends. Here,
participation means that each person contributes a
judgment concerning what the best means to com-
mon purposes are or about what moral principles
ought to guide the organization of the society. Una-
nimity conceptions of democracy border on what are
below called instrumentalist arguments for democ-
racy since democratic decision making can only pro-
vide good evidence of the general will or produces
a second best solution to unanimity. These kinds of
views have been criticized as overestimating the
unity of purpose and underestimating the extent of
conflict in societies.
The instrumentalist way of arguing for democracy
has been as frequently used. The idea is that how
decisions are made should be evaluated in terms of
the likely quality of the decisions themselves. Utili-
tarians such as JAMES MILL (1773–1836) as well as
JOHN STUART MILL (1806–1873) defended demo-
cratic institutions by showing that democratically
made decisions are likely to have good conse-
quences. Democracies are less likely to produce ty-

rannical, abusive governments. They are more likely
to respond to the wishes of the members of the so-
ciety. Such theorists believe that rule by a benevolent
dictator could in principle be as good as or even
better than democratic rule but that it is very un-
likely, given human nature, that a dictator would
have the desire to satisfy the wants of the people or
the information necessary to know how to do it.
Only when regularly elected can political office-
holders be expected to be concerned with the inter-
ests of the people. This instrumentalist approach is
not limited to UTILITARIANISM. A set of democratic
institutions can be evaluated in terms of whether
they produce just legislation, or whether the ensuing
distribution of the burdens and benefits of society is
just, or whether the institutions tend to preserve
liberty.
Problem of Range
The foremost difficulty for democratic theories is
how to balance the concern for democratic decision
making with the quality of the decisions. One might
ask whether democratic decision making may be
permitted to limit or even destroy itself as in the case
of the Weimar Republic in the 1930s. ARISTOTLE
(384–322 B.C.E.) claimed that in a democracy the
poor, being in the majority, were likely to dispossess
the rich of all their PROPERTY. Whatever one’s con-
ception of justice is, democratic decision making
may produce unjust decisions. Many have argued
that to avoid this “tyranny of the majority” the range
of popular decision making may be limited by laws
based on principles of justice such as RIGHTS to vari-
ous liberties, or property, or equality. This idea that
the most fundamental principles of justice always
have priority over democratic principles is at the
core of constitutionalism. Others argue against lim-
iting democracy since part of the basis of democratic
decision making is the fact of disagreement over the
ideas of justice.
Moreover, even if the ends to be achieved by state
policy ought to be determined democratically, the
proper choice of means frequently can be made only
on the basis of expert opinion which most of the
citizens may not have. Thus, the argument goes, the
means to democratically chosen ends ought not to
be chosen democratically. But the problem is that it
is frequently unreasonable to make choices over
what ends to achieve without a knowledge of the
387
democracy
necessary means. It is virtually impossible to sepa-
rate the two kinds of choices, especially in the case
of complex social decisions.
Participation
A closely related issue is the problem of partici-
pation. In a democracy of any substantial size, the
participation of each individual does not amount to
much. For example, the chance that my vote for John
is actually going to help John defeat Mary when 10
million other people are voting is vanishingly small.
One might ask, Why should one vote in such a cir-
cumstance? That might be answered by saying that
voting is easy and habitual. However, given the com-
plexity of any issue it is unclear which alternative
will actually achieve the ends one wishes to achieve.
The more important question is, Why should one
spend the time and energy collecting the information
which is necessary to vote in an informed way?
Many will have an incentive to vote in an unin-
formed way, or in a way that is informed only by
information distilled by advocates, and the whole
process will be subject to varying degrees of manip-
ulation.
Discussion of these problems has led to a variety
of proposals for institutional arrangements: repre-
sentative democracy with competition among self-
restraining elites for the peoples’ votes (Schumpe-
ter); and/or the proliferation of small voluntary
organizations concerned with the public interest
which encourage discussion on the issues (Alexis de
Tocqueville [1805–1859]); or a marketplace of
ideas where all interested individuals and groups put
forth ideas in a competitive atmosphere wherein
only the best ideas survive. Here, however, the prob-
lem of the relative power or wealth of these orga-
nizations has been seen as a threat to democracy
insofar as some may have far more influence than
others. As a consequence, some have claimed that
equality in democratic decision making requires
some kind of economic equality (Rousseau).
Permanent Minorities
Most theorists of democracy are disturbed by the
difficulty of permanent minorities. The simplest case
of this occurs when a majority of the population is
in substantial agreement on all the issues and a mi-
nority of the population disagrees with the proposals
democracy
of the majority. The consequence of this is that the
minority of citizens will be permanently unable to
achieve its ends. This problem is distinct from the
difficulty of the tyranny of the majority, since a group
of citizens can be in a permanent minority without
being dispossessed of its rights of participation or its
political and economic rights. Societies which have
more than one very cohesive culture, such as Leba-
non, Belgium, or Spain, are particularly susceptible
to this problem. In some cases these groups of peo-
ple intermingle (as in Lebanon, where Christians
and Moslems and Druze live to a great extent in the
same areas). In the former kind of case some have
proposed the theoretical solution that not only
should individuals have equal power but also that
the outcomes of participation should reflect the va-
riety of groups. The laws reflect the majority’s and
the minority’s wishes in proportion to the sizes of
the groups. Aside from the problems of measure-
ment that this would involve, these solutions bring
out the tensions in democratic theory that are usu-
ally buried in phrases such as “equal say” or “equal
power” or “equal participation.” These purely
outcome-oriented approaches seem opposed to the
emphasis on participation in a democracy and might
curtail it. On the other hand, the claim that perma-
nent minorities have an equal say in the governing
of their state seems empty.
Related to this issue is the question of geograph-
ically separate minorities (as with the Basque coun-
try in Spain). A standard solution that these minor-
ities have proposed is secession from the larger
country. But since these smaller units are usually in-
timately connected with the larger country in such a
way that secession is likely to be harmful to both,
there is a serious question of what ought to be done.
One response is to determine who ought to decide
on the matter, the larger or the smaller unit. Since
this solution seems to beg the question, we need an
external criterion.
Problem of Scope
This question of minorities is related to a larger
issue—the question of the scope and size of democ-
racy. Is there an external standard which can be used
to determine the boundaries of a democratic state?
What criteria are we to use? One extreme solution
would be to make the world subject to a single dem-
ocratic authority, since all the parts of the world are
388
to some extent interlinked. This would give everyone
an opportunity to have a role in determining every-
thing that might have an effect on them. But then
the problem of permanent minorities would be
pushed to the extreme. Under such a regime, many
groups of people would find themselves utterly un-
able to affect their circumstances. On the other
hand, the smaller the units that are democratically
controlled, the less these units will be in control of
the things that affect them since they will be affected
by each other. If the units were to be as small as
cities, their political decision making will be far less
important for their lives. There is, unfortunately, an
inverse proportion between the likelihood of per-
manent minorities arising and the opportunities of
affecting what concerns people.
Finally, some have argued that democratic prin-
ciples ought to be applied to organizations which are
smaller and more voluntary than the state, such as
industry. They have argued that democracy in
smaller organizations would help promote democ-
racy in the state and also that the same principles
which apply to the state ought also to apply to
industry.
See also: AUTHORITY; CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIC DU-
TIES; COMMON GOOD; COMMUNITARIANISM; CONSER-
VATISM; CONTRACTARIANISM; COOPERATION, CON-
FLICT, AND COORDINATION; CULTURAL STUDIES;
ECONOMIC ANALYSIS; ECONOMIC SYSTEMS; ELITE,
CONCEPT OF; EQUALITY; GROUPS, MORAL STATUS OF;
INSTITUTIONS; LIBERALISM; LIBERTARIANISM; LIB-
ERTY; MORAL COMMUNITY, BOUNDARIES OF; MULTI-
CULTURALISM; POLITICAL SYSTEMS; POWER; PUBLIC
GOODS; PUBLIC POLICY; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHI-
LOSOPHY; SOCIAL CONTRACT; UTILITARIANISM.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Politics. Important arguments for and against
democracy.
Barry, Brian. “Is Democracy Special?” In Philosophy, Poli-
tics and Society, edited by Peter Laslett and James Fish-
kin, 155–96. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.
Philosophical survey of some serious institutional
problems.
Christiano, Thomas. The Rule of the Many. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1996.
Copp, David, John Roemer, and Jean Hampton, eds. The
Idea of Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993.
Dahl, Robert. Preface to Democratic Theory. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1956. A germinal work on
the nature and basis of contemporary democratic
institutions.
Downs, Anthony. An Economic Theory of Democracy.
New York: Harper and Row, 1957. One of the first and
most important works in the economic analysis of dem-
ocratic institutions.
Lindsay, A.D. Essentials of Democracy. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1935. A philosophical argument for
democracy.
Mill, James. “Essay on Government.” In Utilitarian Logic
and Politics, edited by Jack Lively and John Rees. Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1978 [1818?]. Utilitar-
ian defense of democracy.
Mill, John Stuart. Considerations on Representative Gov-
ernment. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956 [1861].
A utilitarian argument for democracy.
Nelson, William. On Justifying Democracy. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980. An overview of phil-
osophical discussions of democracy; presents a con-
tractarian argument.
Pateman, Carole. The Problem of Political Obligation: A
Critique of the Liberal Theory. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1985. A modern Rousseauist defense
of democracy; criticizes a number of contemporary
theories.
Riker, William. Liberalism Versus Populism. San Fran-
cisco: W. H. Freeman, 1982. An excellent overview of
the relation between social choice theory and demo-
cratic theory.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract and Dis-
courses. Translated by G. D. H. Cole. London: J. M.
Dent, 1973 [1762]. Classical defense of democracy.
Sartori, Giovanni. Democratic Theory Revisited. 2 vols.
Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1987. Major overview
of the main problems of democratic theory.
Schumpeter, Joseph. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democ-
racy. New York: Harper and Row, 1949. A fundamen-
tal work in the contemporary analysis of democratic
institutions.
Singer, Peter. Democracy and Disobedience. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1973. Egalitarian argument for
democracy.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Translated
by George Lawrence. New York: Anchor, 1969 [1835].
Classical social analysis of the effects of democratic
institutions.
Thomas Christiano
Democritus (c. 460–c. 370 B.C.E.)
Democritus was born in Abdera, a city in northeast
Greece. He is reported to have traveled widely, per-
haps even to Egypt, Persia, and Babylon. According
to ancient commentators, his interests and writings
389
Democritus
were encyclopedic, spanning such subjects as ethics,
physical science, mathematics, music, medicine, and
agriculture. Surprisingly he is never mentioned by
PLATO (c. 430–347 B.C.E.). Although he is best
known for his atomistic theory of matter, virtually
all 298 fragments ascribed to him consist of one- or
two-sentence gnomic statements about ethical mat-
ters. The fragments show that Democritus shared
many of the moral and political interests of the
SOPHISTS and in several respects transcended their
positions and even anticipated Plato.
Many scholars have doubted the authenticity of
these fragments, especially those preserved in the
Democrates (sic) collection (frags. 35–115). One
major reason for this doubt is that no ancient source
before the first century B.C.E. credits Democritus
with any interest in moral theory. Although the si-
lence of ancient sources has been plausibly ac-
counted for by Stewart and Voros, the issue of au-
thenticity will remain inconclusive in the absence of
additional evidence or a clear link between the eth-
ical fragments and Democritus’s physical theory.
The following account assumes their authenticity.
Legal Conception of Morality
Democritus clearly shared with PROTAGORAS (c.
490–c. 421 B.C.E.) and several other Sophists a be-
lief that laws (nomoi) are necessary for human har-
mony and survival and that these laws embody
moral requirements securing regard for the INTER-
ESTS of others (frags. 245, 248, 252, 255). He differs
from them in that he emphasizes the good for per-
sons, believing that agents would always find it in
their interests to obey the laws and act morally.
The Good for Persons
Democritus uses a number of terms for the high-
est human good, the most common one being eu-
thymia (often translated as cheerfulness), a word
designating the ideal condition or state of the soul.
Euthymia arises from a proper balance and moder-
ation of pleasures, the avoidance of disturbances in
the soul caused by excess or deficiency, and satisfac-
tion in things that are present or possible to attain
(frag. 191). The relationship between euthymia and
PLEASURE is a central component of Democritus’s
theory of human good. Although in frag. 188 (frag.
4) he argues that pleasure or its lack is the sign for
Democritus
what is advantageous or disadvantageous, he also
directs agents to accept only pleasures that are ad-
vantageous. To resolve this apparent contradiction,
some commentators have argued that Democritus
believed only spiritual/intellectual goods to be truly
pleasurable. Although he does on occasion seem to
argue for the superiority of these goods (frags. 171,
214, 235), his view of what can produce the good
life includes a wide variety of pleasures, including
those arising from external goods like wealth, pos-
sessions, and fame (frags. 77, 219). He stresses that
euthymia is not produced by maximizing specific
pleasures, but by possessing or pursuing a balance
of pleasures. However, since pleasures of sensation
and wealth are especially prone to cause dissatisfac-
tion and a continual DESIRE for more, they must be
pursued with particular caution (frags. 219, 235).
Although Democritus’s theory marks an advance
over Sophistic thought in internalizing the good for
persons, the pleasures and goods which produce eu-
thymia can be external.
Ethical Ideals and Reasons To Be Moral
It is clear that Democritus believes individuals
possessing euthymia would be moral. In fact, he ar-
gues that such individuals are impelled to acts that
are just and lawful (dikaia kai nomima), that is, acts
required by the moral requirements embodied in the
laws of the political community (frag. 174). So
strongly does he believe in the compatibility of mo-
rality and the pursuit of self-interest or euthymia
that he adopts (or anticipates) the Socratic claim
that committing an injustice does more harm to
one’s soul than suffering an injustice (frag. 45). He
also suggests that reason can persuade individuals
not to commit wrong even when they can escape
notice in doing so (frag. 181). Democritus’s argu-
ment for the compatibility of morality and euthymia
was probably based on two claims: (a) laws are im-
posed to prevent strife which has its origin in jeal-
ousy (frag. 245); and (b) jealousy and ENVY are in-
compatible with euthymia because they create
disturbances in the soul, cause dissatisfaction, and
make one an enemy to oneself (frags. 88, 191). This
argument is fairly strong insofar as euthymia in-
volves complete contentment with one’s present
goods (frag. 202, 224); but insofar as euthymia is
compatible with some dissatisfaction and a moder-
ate pursuit of additional goods (frag. 285), Democ-
390
ritus is on shakier ground. The fragments do not
provide the evidence needed to resolve this apparent
tension in his view of euthymia.
Democritus’s focus on an ideal inner state of the
individual agent moves moral theory in the direction
of SOCRATES (c. 470–399 B.C.E.) and Plato. Further
advances can be found in some of his moral ideals
or prescriptions. He suggests that justice requires
doing one’s best to ensure the PUNISHMENT of
wrongdoers (frags. 258–262) and perhaps even to
prevent another from doing a wrong if possible
(frag. 38). He also speaks approvingly of showing
GENEROSITY without the expectation of (any?) re-
turn (frag. 96); having pity for those who suffer mis-
fortune (frags. 255, l07a); and giving aid, if one is
wealthy and powerful, to the people in one’s political
community (frag. 255). Some of these prescriptions
could not be defended on the basis of self-interest.
If Democritus did give agents reasons to pursue
these ethical ideals, he probably did so on grounds
that ALTRUISM is a component of the good for per-
sons, and not on grounds of a duty-based theory of
ethics. The fragments can be plausibly interpreted
without attributing to him a theory that did not sur-
face in Greece until the Stoics.
See also: ALTRUISM; BENEVOLENCE; EPICUREANISM;
EUDAIMONIA, -ISM; GENEROSITY; GOOD, THEORIES
OF THE; IDEALIST ETHICS; MORAL RULES; OBEDIENCE
TO LAW; PLEASURE; PRESCRIPTIVISM; PROTAGORAS;
SOPHISTS; STOICISM.
Bibliography
Primary sources
Fragments. In vol. 2 of Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker,
edited by Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz. 6th ed.
Berlin: Weidmannsche, 1952. Contains the fragments
of Democritus in the original Greek.
Fragments. In Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A
Complete Translation of the Fragments in Diels, ‘Frag-
mente der Vorsokratiker’, translated and edited by
Kathleen Freeman. Oxford, 1948. Reprinted, Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1957.
Secondary sources
Cartledge, Paul. Democritus. London: Phoenix, 1997.
Colvin, Michael G. “A New Look at the Ethics of Democ-
ritus.” Dissertation, Indiana University, 1974. Includes
bibliography.
Kahn, Charles H. “Democritus and the Origins of Moral

Psychology.” American Journal of Philology 106
(1985): 1–31. Excellent recent analysis of Democri-
tus’s moral theory.
McGibbon, Donald. “Pleasure as the ‘Criterion’ in De-
mocritus.” Phronesis 5 (1960): 75–77.
Nill, Michael. Morality and Self-Interest in Protagoras,
Antiphon, and Democritus. Leiden: Brill, 1985. In-
cludes bibliography.
Stewart, Zeph. “Democritus and the Cynics.” Harvard
Studies in Classical Philology 63 (1958): 179–91.
Taylor, C. C. W. “Pleasure, Knowledge and Sensation in
Democritus.” Phronesis 12 (1967): 6–27.
Voros, F. K. “The Ethical Fragments of Democritus: The
Problem of Authenticity.” Hellenica 26 (1973): 193–
206.
———. “The Ethical Theory of Democritus: On Duty.”
Platon 26 (1974): 113–22.
———. “The Ethical Theory of Democritus: What Is the
‘Criterion’?” Platon 27 (1975): 20–25.
Michael Nill
deontology
The term “deontology” is a modern combination of
Classical Greek terms, and means the study or sci-
ence (logos) of duty, or more precisely, of what one
ought to do (deon). In contemporary moral philos-
ophy, “deontology” is used most commonly to refer
to moral conceptions which endorse several theses
regarding the nature of duty (the right), the nature
of value (the good), and the relationship between the
primary ethical concepts of the right and the good.
I. The Right: Right Conduct is Not what
Maximizes Ultimate Good
It seems a truism that, given the means, we ought
to maximally realize our ends, and given the ends,
we ought to take the means that best promote them.
Traditionally, philosophers have agreed that, how-
ever complex the idea of rationality, it involves, in
part, these maximizing imperatives. Many have
found the maximizing account of rationality also to
be sufficient: to be rational is simply to maximize
something. Assuming that ethical conduct is subject
to rational assessment, this leads to the idea that
conduct is morally right if and only if it maximizes
the Ultimate good inhering in states of affairs. Given
the means, total good is to be maximized; and given
the good, right conduct is any means that most ef-
fectively promotes it. A moral conception incorpo-
391
deontology
rating these prescriptions into its basic principles is
consequentialist.
“Deontology” is commonly used in moral philos-
ophy to refer to nonconsequentialist moral concep-
tions. The most distinctive feature of deontological
moral conceptions is that they define fundamental
principles of right and justice in terms other than
taking the most effective means to promote maxi-
mum good. KANT’s (1724–1804) moral philosophy
is a primary example of a deontological moral con-
ception. His Categorical Imperative implies: (1) a
strong deontological thesis, that duty is discernible
without reference to any particular end, but rather
by reference to prior and independent principles
(which Kant held to be implicit in practical reason);
(2) an “overridingness thesis,” that moral reasons
outweigh all other reasons; and (3) an inescapability
thesis, duty applies to all rational agents and gives
them reasons, whatever their particular ends. [(2)
and (3) are not peculiar to deontological views, and
(3), and perhaps (2), need not be endorsed by all of
them.] Other familiar deontological theories are the
pluralistic intuitionisms of W. D. ROSS (1877–
1971) and H. A. PRICHARD (1871–1947), John
Rawls’s “Justice as Fairness,” Robert NOZICK’s ac-
count of “side-constraints,” and T. M. Scanlon’s
contractualism.
To say deontological theory does not characterize
right or justice as conduct promoting the greatest
overall good does not mean deontology is oblivious
to consequences. Any moral conception which ei-
ther formulated its principles of right and justice,
ignoring their consequences, or which held that in-
dividuals are to obstinately observe MORAL RULES
without regard to the consequences of actions,
“would simply be irrational, crazy” (Rawls, p. 30).
Nothing intrinsic to deontological views excludes
means–end reasoning. What they hold, rather, is
that the rightness of actions and INSTITUTIONS can-
not simply be defined instrumentally, as what max-
imizes some (nonmoral) good; among the most basic
moral principles are nonmaximizing principles. In
this sense, deontological theories cover a wide range
of moral conceptions; they include all nonconse-
quentialist views.
In addition to moral conceptions, “deontology” is
also used to refer to moral principles, or to moral
rules, at all levels of generality. Deontological prin-
ciples are fundamental to deontological conceptions;
they specify certain basic moral reasons governing
deontology
ACTION (RIGHTS, duties, distributions, moral ends,
and the like), and do so other than in terms of what
promotes the greatest (nonmoral) good. Kant’s first
formulation of the Categorical Imperative—“Act
only on that maxim through which you can at the
same time will that it should become a universal
law”—is an example (Kant, Ak. 421). Other ex-
amples are many of W. D. Ross’s prima facie duties
(the duties of FIDELITY, reparation, justice, GRATI-
TUDE, and perhaps nonmaleficence). Ross also lists
two prima facie consequentialist duties, BENEFI-
CENCE and self-improvement, requiring agents to
promote the greatest good (others’ INTERESTS, and
one’s own self-perfection). Endorsing these conse-
quentialist principles does not make Ross’s moral
conception consequentialist, since he holds that to
decide one’s duty all things considered, the prima
facie duties are to be balanced against one another,
not by reference to what best promotes ultimate
good, but by intuition of their weights under the cir-
cumstances (Ross, pp. 21–27).
As deontological conceptions (like Ross’s) may
include consequentialist principles, so too might
consequentialist views include deontological prin-
ciples, so long as these are subordinated to the fun-
damental consequentialist principle of right. One ex-
ample is JOHN STUART MILL’s (1806–1873) indirect
UTILITARIANISM. Mill held that the principle of LIB-
ERTY —that people should have a basic right of equal
liberty to act as they choose, so long as they do not
harm the basic interests of others—should govern
political constitutions and social conventions with-
out exception. Mill conjectured it to be empirically
true that, by realizing this and other principles in its
social institutions, a society would best promote the
greatest overall utility.
A deontological rule or constraint is a moral im-
perative that commands action or inaction of a spe-
cific type in appropriate circumstances without ref-
erence to reasons, ends or consequences. (Examples:
“Do not kill, lie, cheat, or steal.” “Keep your prom-
ises and commitments.” “Honor thy father and
mother.”) Most ordinary moral rules are deontolog-
ical in form, which is only to say that they are for-
mulated as unqualified imperatives without refer-
ence to reasons or specific ends they may realize. The
reasons or ends that justify moral rules, or the qual-
ifications rules are subject to, may be understood as
implicit within them. The most important role of
moral rules and constraints lies in MORAL EDUCA-
392
TION. While commonsense moral rules appear to
command actions (or inactions) categorically, it is
difficult to formulate a sensible and learnable moral
rule that is without qualification. For example, “Do
not lie,” if taken as absolute or exceptionless (“Never
lie, whatever the consequences”) conflicts with
other moral rules and moral ends of equal or greater
importance (e.g., our deontological duty to protect
the innocent, or to rescue others in distress).
Consequentialists often take the fact that no
moral rule is without exception as evidence of the
truth of CONSEQUENTIALISM. The dire consequences
of following entrenched moral rules under extreme
circumstances are imagined, which challenges our
intuitions regarding prohibitions against killing or
violence to persons (e.g., lifeboat examples: throw-
ing one overboard to save five). It is not clear what
these examples prove (especially when people dis-
agree on their resolution), except that no ordinary
moral rule is absolute, and that consequences of ac-
tion often do matter in deciding what is the right
thing to do. Deontological conceptions can account
for standard exceptions to moral rules by incorpo-
rating exceptions into the rule; and most, if not all,
deontologists can avoid the implications of dire con-
sequences of action on the basis of their first prin-
ciples of right and the moral reasons these principles
incorporate. What deontological conceptions do not
do, however, is accommodate consequences in the
way consequentialists do, by maximizing overall
good as ascertained from an impersonal point of
view.
For example, if it is reasonable to reject a rule
(“never torture the innocent”) as applying to the
most extreme circumstances (when one’s nation is
facing nuclear destruction), then contractualism
provides a justification for this exception on the ba-
sis of nonconsequentialist principles and reasons;
namely, it would be unreasonable to expect people
to agree to this rule as absolute, observing it under
the most extreme circumstances, and reasonable for
them to reject it, when following the rule means that
nearly all that people value is to be obliterated. No
appeal is made in contractualist argument to the
greatest overall good impersonally construed as a
reason for rules, since it is unreasonable to expect
contractualist agents to sacrifice their interests to ag-
gregate good. Instead decision is based on reflection
on the consequences for each individual of action
according to rules, and asking whether, in light of

these consequences, it is reasonable to expect each
to accept or reject a proposed moral rule.
II. The Good: Basic Moral Values are not
Maximizable
A second feature endorsed by deontological con-
ceptions is also best understood by way of contrast
with consequentialism. Characteristic of consequen-
tialism is an optimization thesis: value (the good) is
maximizable, and total good is to be optimized. On
this account, (1) goodness is a property of states of
affairs that is scalar, admitting of quantitative judg-
ments (or at least judgments of more or less);
(2) what is ultimately good ought to be promoted as
the end of all action; and (3) to promote value is to
maximize its total.
For many, the optimization thesis seems apt, if not
compelling, in the case of certain goods, especially
PLEASURE and avoidance of pain. The values of HAP-
PINESS, knowledge, creativity, LOVE and FRIENDSHIP,
and (more controversially) desire-satisfaction have
also been seen as maximizable. It is not so clear that
all these goods sensibly allow maximization. For ex-
ample, while love and friendship are goods each per-
son ought to experience, it cheapens these goods to
maximize the number of one’s loves and friends;
moreover, given the importance of pursuing other
goods, it is questionable whether we ought even to
maximize love and friendship toward particular per-
sons. More importantly, even if some goods are sen-
sibly conceived as maximizable, others clearly are
not. Consider the intrinsic value of human life, or of
persons, their DIGNITY, and their autonomy. To say
human life has intrinsic value does not imply that
we ought to maximize population growth—quite
the contrary. It means that we are under a duty to
respect the lives of existing (and future) persons, by
recognizing (among other things) that all are owed
basic moral duties, and by affording all certain basic
HUMAN RIGHTS. Consequentialism, it is sometimes
argued, stems from the misconception that all value
is maximizable (c.f. Anderson, ch. 2; Scanlon, ch.
2–3). As a result it misconceives the value of human
life (c.f. Dworkin), of persons (Kant), and other val-
ues fundamental to morality.
The thesis that the fundamental values providing
reasons for morality are not maximizable is implicit
in Kant’s second formulation of his Categorical Im-
perative—“Always act in such a way that you never
393
deontology
treat humanity merely as a means, but always as an
end-in-itself” (Groundwork, K 429). This prescribes
the final end of moral action—the “humanity” of
persons. For Kant, the value of (the humanity of)
persons is incomparable, “beyond all price”; because
of their humanity, persons have a kind of value, their
dignity, which puts them beyond the domain of value
optimization. Moral principles and rules affecting
persons should then be formulated, not to maximize
personality or even personal interests, but in order
to respect the kind of value that persons possess. To
respect the value of persons is to respond appropri-
ately to their dignity, which Kant deemed persons
have by virtue of their moral and rational capacities
for PRACTICAL REASONING and autonomy. These val-
ues (the humanity, dignity, and autonomy of per-
sons) provide the basis for understanding Kant’s de-
ontological principles and clarifying the moral duties
we owe to one another. That these values are not to
be maximized by right conduct (whatever this might
mean) is evident from Kant’s claim that the second
formulation of the Categorical Imperative has the
same content as the first (cited above); to respect
the humanity of persons as an end-in-itself is real-
ized when agents act as if the rule of their action
were a universal law.
Kant is only one example of how a deontological
conception conceives of the basic values providing
ultimate moral reasons as nonmaximizable. Many
deontologists (e.g., Rawls, Scanlon, DWORKIN, Noz-
ick) resemble Kant in maintaining that the basic
moral attitude toward these values is respect, not
maximization. Others may advocate different non-
maximizing views of value (e.g., divine command
theories).
III. The Priority of Right over the Good
The third essential feature of deontological con-
ceptions follows on the first two; it describes the
relationship between principles of right (stating ab-
stract duties, rights, fair distributions, and other
moral reasons) and the pursuit of (nonmoral) goods.
In the course of practical or social reasoning about
what we (as individuals or as representatives of
groups) ought to do, principles of right have prior-
ity over considerations of (nonmoral) value (e.g.,
happiness, efficiency, or human EXCELLENCE). Con-
siderations of right have priority over the good in
two ways. First, principles of right limit the goods
deontology
that may be pursued: they rule out certain ends as
unworthy of pursuit (e.g., dominating others, or
harming them for pleasure), rendering them entirely
impermissible. Second, principles of right are instru-
mentally regulative: they constrain the means that it
may otherwise be rational (optimal) to adopt to
achieve permissible or obligatory ends (c.f. Rawls,
pp. 30–32, 564–66). The priority of right en-
ables a deontological moral conception to provide
an account of permissible conceptions of the good.
It is especially important to conceptions that value
agents’ rational autonomy, or freedom to determine
their good.
The priority of right does not necessarily mean
that particular moral reasons (e.g., having made a
promise) always outweigh reasons of PRUDENCE, or
other reasons of individual or social good. It may
well be permissible to breach relatively unimportant
commitments (e.g., to visit grandmother) for the
sake of realizing one’s own good (e.g., to realize a
crucial job opportunity), so long as there are other
moral reasons that excuse one from commitments
when important occasions or emergencies intervene.
The priority of right should not then be confused
with the more general claim that moral reasons over-
ride all other reasons (reasons of law, ETIQUETTE,
PROFESSIONAL ETHICS, and social custom, as well as
value). This claim, the finality or “overridingness”
thesis, says that moral reasons have priority over all
other considerations in practical reason, so that once
moral considerations have been taken into account,
practical reason has reached its conclusion and is
final—there are no higher reasons to appeal to. De-
ontologists also generally affirm the finality of moral
reasons, but then so too do most consequentialists.
Utilitarians, for example, contend that we are obli-
gated to revise our aims and restrict our actions, to
bring them in line with the demands of promoting
aggregate utility. But this does not mean that utili-
tarians affirm the priority of right. For notice what
overridingness implies within the context of conse-
quentialism’s maximizing understandings of the
right and the good. Consequentialism does not see
its principles simply as having regulative priority
over other legitimate practical principles; for strictly
speaking there are no other legitimate practical prin-
ciples that the duty to maximize could have priority
to. In effect, consequentialist principles occupy all
of deliberative space. To do anything except take the
most effective means to maximize ultimate good, or
394
to pursue a lesser end that is not a means to this
dominant good, is morally impermissible. It conflicts
with the controlling duty to always adopt means and
ends that maximize the one rational good. Since this
injunction always applies, there is no room left for
the free adoption of permissible ends or the pursuit
of particular interests, no place for a plurality of in-
trinsic goods, or for the free activity of practical
reasoning.
Because deontological views do not understand
the right and the good in maximizing terms, their
structure is quite different. Morality is conceived,
not as a constantly controlling injunction, but as
constantly regulative of deliberation and action ac-
cording to other legitimate principles (of prudence,
law, custom, etiquette, or instrumental rationality
generally) as one pursues permissible or obligatory
ends. Conjoined with the finality thesis, the “prior-
ity” of the priority of right means that deontological
principles of right have priority in the course of prac-
tical reasoning and judgment over all other consid-
erations of value and the principles and reasons in-
strumental to promoting them. Moral principles are
then supremely limiting and regulative conditions
on an agent’s pursuit of values. The priority of right
is characteristic of deontological moral conceptions
in so far as they constrain the adoption of ends,
means–end reasoning, and maximizing conduct by
prior nonmaximizing principles of right.
IV. The Independence of Moral Reasons and
the Moralization of Value
A moral conception, to be convincing, needs to
address such questions as why people should care
about doing what is right and just, whether doing
one’s duty is a valuable activity, whether morality is
compatible with human nature, and how it advances
human interests. Any moral conception lacking a
conception of the good would seem to have no an-
swer to these questions, and is at best incomplete.
Consequentialism, in part, is designed to respond to
these sorts of issues. Deontology is often depicted
as, and criticized for, being devoid of any conception
of the good. This criticism stems from many deon-
tologists’ rejection of a prior and independent con-
ception of value, or persons’ (nonmoral) interests,
as necessary to the definition of principles of right
(c.f. Prichard, Ross, Scanlon, and perhaps Kant).
This position is not common to all deontological

views (e.g., Rawls relies on a “thin theory” of the
good to define principles of justice). Still, deontol-
ogists agree that morality is not simply a matter of
promoting prior nonmoral interests (see thesis I).
Moral reasons carry their own justification. This sug-
gests a fourth feature of deontological conceptions,
the independence of moral reasons: moral reasons
apply independently of the good caused, and are
themselves sufficient to provide REASONS FOR
ACTION.
If moral principles are not definable as what best
promotes the good, what are the reasons deontolog-
ical theory provide for agents doing their duty? This
is one of the most controversial areas of deontology.
W. D. Ross argued that agents already have suffi-
cient reason to do their duty, simply because it is
right. But this only prompts a restatement of the ini-
tial question: what reason do agents have for doing
what is right? Simply because acts are right is not
sufficient reason for doing them, or for caring about
morality. Without such a reason, many contend, mo-
rality seems arbitrary and irrational. More generally
without an account of morality’s relation to the hu-
man good, morality, if not irrational, is still nonra-
tional, and rational people cannot consistently be
motivated to do what is right.
Most deontologists recognize these issues, and
contend that a moral conception does not need to
define moral principles in terms of what best pro-
motes nonmoral values or interests in order to pro-
vide sufficient reasons for acting, or to afford a con-
ception of the good. Morality itself is a good, not
just for others, but for the agent; for without it a
person’s life is severely diminished. We have reason
to do what is right for its own sake, not “simply
because it is right” (as Ross maintained), but be-
cause acting for moral reasons expresses an impor-
tant part of ourselves and our relations with others.
Scanlon’s contractualism provides one approach
to the independence of moral reasons. He argues
that we have sufficient reason to care about morality
for its own sake, since the desire to do what is right
is the same as the desire to justify ourselves to others
on terms that it would be unreasonable for them to
reject. By acting on rules it would be unreasonable
for others to reject, we act for reasons they can see
to be justified (insofar as they are reasonable), and
respect others as independent persons with the ca-
pacities to govern their lives according to reasons
(Scanlon [2], chapter 4). Similarly, Rawls insists the
395
deontology
will to do justice for its own sake is not arbitrary or
irrational, since morally motivated agents act from
principles all would agree to from an impartial po-
sition where all are equally represented (Rawls, pp.
477–78). Acting for these moral reasons is nonar-
bitrary, since by doing so we respect others as moral
persons with the rational and moral capacities for
practical reasoning, and treat them in ways moral
persons can see to be justified (Rawls, p. 586). Here
respect for persons is not a separate nonmoral value
that is promoted or “maximized” by acting on rea-
sons and principles. Instead people manifest respect
for others as (moral) persons by acting morally for
the sake of principles reasonable persons could
agree to. Respect for persons, like human dignity, is
a moral value that can only be described by reasons
which justify independently of nonmoral good.
This suggests another thesis held by many (if not
all) deontologists, the moralization of value: the
concept of the good (human or social) cannot be
fully characterized in nonmoral terms, without ref-
erence to prior, independent moral reasons and prin-
ciples. Kantians again provide good examples of
moralized conceptions of the good. They maintain
the essential human good can only be characterized
in terms of acting on and for the sake of moral prin-
ciples. Kant says, “The only thing good without
qualification is a Good Will.” A Good Will for Kant
is a steadfast proclivity to act on and for the sake of
the Moral Law. Since moral principles for Kant are
not empirically given, but are implicit in our (pure)
practical reasoning, to act from a Good Will is to
act from a law we “give to ourselves” out of our
reason, and this is to be autonomous. Somewhat
analogously, Rawls argues that having an effective
sense of justice is essential to a person’s good,
since by consistently acting justly for the sake of
justice, persons exercise and realize the moral pow-
ers of practical reasoning. These powers constitute
moral agents’ nature as free and equal, and reason-
able and rational. When agents realize the moral
powers by acting for the sake of principles of jus-
tice, they achieve the good of moral autonomy
(Rawls, sect. 86).
Finally, to relate this fourth feature of deontology
to the first mentioned: if the complete good cannot
be described without referring to antecedent moral
principles, then basic moral principles cannot be de-
fined, as consequentialists contend, simply in terms
of what maximizes the good. For prior moral prin-
deontology
ciples are already implicit in the good, and stand in
need of a different (nonmaximizing) specification
and justification. This indicates a flaw in so-called
rights-consequentialism as a moral conception,
which holds that it is right to maximize respect for
persons and their rights, and/or minimize violations
of rights (the implication being that we are obligated
to violate the rights of the few whenever this leads
to greater respect for others’ rights). While a moral
conception might incorporate this as a subordinate
consequentialist principle, it is difficult to see how a
moral conception could coherently have this maxi-
mizing norm as a basic principle. For prior nonmax-
imizing moral principles, which specify people’s
rights and imply duties of respect, are already part
of the maximand that is to be promoted.
A number of philosophers recently have ques-
tioned the classification of moral conceptions as de-
ontological. (See, e.g., Herman; or Korsgaard on
Kant in this encyclopedia.) Their general concern is
that nonconsequentialist views differ in so many
ways that the deontology classification is confusing
and often misleading. Particularly it is objected that
traditional deontological views are unconcerned
with questions of value, or are incapable of accom-
modating the moral good. In this section, I have sug-
gested ways deontological views might meet this
objection.
See also: ACTS AND OMISSIONS; AUTONOMY OF
MORAL AGENTS; CONSEQUENTIALISM; CONTRACTAR-
IANISM; DELIBERATION AND CHOICE; DUTY AND OB-
LIGATION; DWORKIN; ENTITLEMENTS; FINAL GOOD;
FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM; GOOD, THEORIES OF
THE; GRATITUDE; HUMAN RIGHTS; INSTITUTIONS; IN-
TUITIONISM; KANT; LIBERTY; JOHN STUART MILL;
MORAL ABSOLUTES; MORAL EDUCATION; MORAL REA-
SONING; MORAL RULES; MORAL SAINTS; NOZICK;
OUGHT IMPLIES CAN; PRACTICAL REASON[ING]; PRAC-
TICAL WISDOM; PRESCRIPTIVISM; PRICHARD; RATION-
ALITY VS. REASONABLENESS; RAWLS; RIGHT, CON-
CEPTS OF; RIGHTS; ROSS; TELEOLOGICAL ETHICS;
UTILITARIANISM; VALUE, CONCEPT OF.
Bibliography
Anderson, Elizabeth. Value in Ethics and Economics. Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. Argues
against consequentialist thesis that value is a property
inhering in states of affairs that is maximizable.
Dworkin, Ronald. Life’s Dominion. New York: Knopf,
396
1993. Esp. chapter 3. Rejects maximizing conception
of value as appropriate for the values of human life and
personhood; argues that equal concern and respect is
the appropriate attitude toward persons.
Frankena, William. Ethics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1963. Esp. pp. 13ff. Elaborates on deontology/
teleological (consequentialist) distinction.
Freeman, Samuel. “Utilitarianism, Deontology, and the
Priority of Right.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 23
(1994): 313–49. Clarifies deontology, priority of right,
and the moral good in context of Rawls’s conception
of justice.
Herman, Barbara. The Practice of Moral Judgment. Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. Chapter
10. Challenges traditional view of Kant as a deontolo-
gist, as well as deontology/consequentialist distinction.
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of
Morals. [1785].
———. Critique of Practical Reason. [1788].
Prichard, H. A. Moral Obligation. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1949. Advocates a deontological view, often
called “perceptual intuitionism,” which says that right
and wrong are properties inhering in situations, which
we come to know by intuition.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press, 1971. Sets forth a Kantian de-
ontological conception of justice; discusses deontol-
ogy/teleology distinction and idea of priority of right,
pp. 24ff, 30ff, 40.
Ross, W. D. The Right and the Good. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1930. Intuitionist view which contends that duty
is decided by applying various prima facie duties,
which are weighed against one another to decide one’s
duty all things considered.
Scanlon, T. M. “Contractualism and Utilitarianism.” In
Utilitarianism and Beyond. Edited by Amartya Sen and
Bernard Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982.
———. What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge: Har-
vard University Press, 1998. His contractualism holds
that conduct is wrong insofar as it violates rules that
could not be justified to reasonable persons.
Scheffler, Samuel, ed. Consequentialism and its Critics.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Good expla-
nation of consequentialism in introduction, followed
by articles for and against by Rawls, Scanlon, Bernard
Williams, Derek Parfit, Thomas Nagel, Robert Nozick,
Philippa Foot, and others.
Samuel Freeman
Descartes, René (1596–1650)
French philosopher and mathematician whose epis-
temological and metaphysical inquiries radically al-
tered the history of Western philosophy. Descartes

is not usually studied for his contribution to ethics,
but in his Discourse on Method (1637), he elabo-
rates “a provisional moral code” (later recom-
mended to Princess Elizabeth of the Palatine without
qualification) consisting of four maxims:
1. To obey the laws and customs of my coun-
try, holding constantly to the religion in
which by God’s grace I had been instructed
from my childhood, and governing myself
in all other matters according to the most
moderate and least extreme opinions—the
opinions commonly accepted in practice by
the most sensible of those with whom I
should have to live.
2. To be as firm and decisive in my actions as
I could, and to follow even the most doubt-
ful opinions, once I had adopted them, with
no less constancy than if they had been
quite certain.
3. To try always to master myself rather than
fortune, and change my desires rather than
the order of the world.
4. To . . . devote my whole life to cultivating
my reason and advancing as far as I could
in the knowledge of the truth, following the
method I had prescribed for myself. (CSM,
I, 122–24)
Descartes’s second major pronouncement on mo-
rality is in his Passions of the Soul (1649). He states
that the good is what is beneficial and EVIL is what
is harmful to us (PP 56; CSM, I, 350). We can pur-
sue the good because we possess FREE WILL. Des-
cartes insists that “we can reasonably be praised or
blamed only for actions that depend upon this free
will. It renders us in a certain way like God by mak-
ing us masters of ourselves” (PP 152; CSM, I, 384).
He says that “there is no soul so weak that it cannot,
if well-directed, acquire an absolute power over its
passions” (PP 50; CSM, I, 348). Then for virtuous
people, “everything that they think sufficiently valu-
able to be worth pursuing is such that its acquisition
depends solely on themselves” (PP 136F CSM, I,
385). Descartes’s ideal for a person is “true gener-
osity . . . [which] consists in his knowing that noth-
ing truly belongs to him but this freedom to dispose
his volitions, and that he ought to be praised or
blamed for no other reason than his using this free-
dom well or badly [and] in his feeling within himself
397
Descartes, René
a firm and constant resolution to use it well—that
is, never to lack the will to undertake and carry out
whatever he judges to be best” (PP 153; CSM, I,
384). What virtuous people believe is best is “doing
good to others and disregarding their own self-
interest” (PP 156; CSM, I, 385). Thus Descartes
concludes that “the fresh satisfaction we gain when
we have just performed an action we think good is
a passion—a kind of joy which I consider to be the
sweetest of all joys, because its cause depends only
on ourselves” (PP 190; CSM, I, 396). But he warns
against “those who believe themselves devout, but
are merely bigoted and superstitious [who some-
times commit] the greatest crimes that man can
commit, such as the betrayal of cities, the killing of
sovereigns, and the extermination of whole nations
for the sole reason that the citizens do not accept
their opinions” (PP 190; CSM, I, 396).
Descartes’s moral position is thus seen to be a
subtle combination of Stoic CONSERVATISM and ex-
treme optimistic voluntaristic INDIVIDUALISM. The
highest virtue in his universe, GENEROSITY, is a state
that combines SELF-KNOWLEDGE of one’s abilities
and attainments with SELF-CONTROL over one’s pas-
sions for the purpose of seeking useful knowledge
for the good of humanity. His position has Greek
roots in his belief that knowledge of what is good
and right leads to the desire and decision to pursue
it, and Christian roots in his assertion that every in-
dividual is of equal moral worth. But he profoundly
rejects the pessimism of both Stoic determinism and
the Christian doctrine of original sin, asserting that
each individual is essentially good, is capable of
earning his own salvation, and is to be judged solely
on the merits of his personal intentions and actions.
Most strikingly, Descartes’s third maxim—to
change one’s self rather than the world—is restric-
tive only in that it counsels people to have precise
knowledge of their limitations, just so they can—as
Descartes himself did—change the world to the best
of their abilities.
Descartes’s fourth maxim reflects his belief that
the highest moral goal is to seek truth and knowl-
edge, for we require knowledge to distinguish truly
good from evil. Thus Descartes assimilates doing
wrong to making errors, saying one should regard
“wrong-doing as due rather to lack of knowledge
than to lack of a virtuous will [which is] present, or
at least capable of being present, in every . . . per-
son” (PP 154; CSM, I, 384). But because we cannot
Descartes, René
always attain knowledge, right action for Descartes
requires pursuing not what we know to be good but
what we believe to be good after making the most
sincere and complete attempts that are practically
possible to know the good. Then we make resolute
decisions and act following the second maxim. Thus,
if we are assured that we have done our best, the
generous among us can rest content and be justified
in believing we have done the right thing.
Was Descartes a believing Catholic or a materi-
alist atheist? Is his ethics Christian or secular? In
line with his first maxim, Descartes said his religion
was that of his king and his nurse. He did not write
a theology. He exalted reason over faith; and, ignor-
ing grace, he gloried in the intellectual powers of
human beings, who he believed could master and
control nature. He loved life. He stood in diametric
opposition to Blaise PASCAL (1623–1662), who dis-
trusted both flesh and reason and who trembled in
the face of the universe and God. While based on
some of the more militant Christian VIRTUES (e.g.,
fortitude but not abject HUMILITY), Descartes’s
ethics is eminently practical and secular, as his sec-
ond maxim implies. Descartes has often been ac-
cused of being morally conservative and opportu-
nistic. On the contrary, as the quotations here show,
his moral code and moral ideal are profoundly lib-
eral and humanistic.
See also: CHARITY; DELIBERATION AND CHOICE; FREE
WILL; FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM; GASSENDI; GEN-
EROSITY; HISTORY OF WESTERN ETHICS 3: HELLENIS-
TIC; INDIVIDUALISM; INTENTION; LIBERALISM; META-
PHYSICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY; MORAL REASONING;
OBEDIENCE TO LAW; PERSON, CONCEPT OF; PAS-
SION; SELF-CONTROL; SELF-KNOWLEDGE; STOICISM;
VOLUNTARISM.
Bibliography
Works by Descartes
Oeuvres. Edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery. 11
vols. Paris: J. Vrin, 1964–1974.
Discourse on Method; Passions of the Soul. Vol. 1 of The
Philosophical Writings of Descartes, translated by John
Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch.
2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985
[1637; 1649].
398
Works about Descartes
Blom, John J. Descartes: His Moral Philosophy and Psy-
chology. New York: New York University Press, 1978.
Contains translations of Descartes’s letters to
Elizabeth.
Espinas, Alfred. Descartes et la morale. 2 vols. Paris: Bos-
sard, 1925.
Gueroult, Martial. The Soul and the Body. Vol. 2 of Des-
cartes’ Philosophy Interpreted According to the Order
of Reasons. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1985.
James, Susan. The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Phi-
losophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Lefèvre, Roger. L’humanism de Descartes. Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1957.
Marshall, John. Descartes’s Moral Theory. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1998.
Mesnard, Pierre. Essai sur la morale de Descartes. Paris:
Boivin, 1936.
Morgan, Vance C. Foundations of Cartesian Ethics. At-
lantic Highlands: Humanities Press International,
1994. A complete and excellent examination of Des-
cartes’s ethics.
Rodis-Lewis, Geneviève. La morale de Descartes. Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1970.
Richard A. Watson
desert
See merit and desert.
desire
In the most general sense, desire is a state of an or-
ganism which leads to action for an end or purpose.
ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) speaks of desire (or-
exis) as that which initiates movement. We say that
desires have objects (things or states of affairs) the
attainment of which “satisfy” desires. Other things
being equal, when an agent is in a desiring state and
the object of desire is known or recognized, a desire
causes the agent to act to acquire the thing or bring
about the state of affairs that satisfies it. Exactly
what causal role desire plays, and the range of pos-
sible desires there may be (especially in rational
agents), is a long-standing matter of dispute.
“Desire” is sometimes used to designate wants
and INTERESTS of all kinds. It more commonly refers
to those sources of ACTION that are related either to
the body (such as thirst or hunger) or to certain dis-

positions, as in desire for wealth or fame. Most sub-
stantive accounts of desire distinguish between basic
or ultimate desires and desires that are derived from
them. Accounts differ over whether the set of basic
desires contains one or many, and if many, of what
sort. The most common monism takes pleasure (or
satisfaction) to be what all desire is ultimately for;
desires for other things are reducible to desire for
PLEASURE. Many have questioned whether on this
view it can make any rational difference to an agent
what the source of pleasure is, if the object of all
desire is, ultimately, pleasure. A more widely ac-
cepted pluralist view associated with HUME (1711–
1776) holds that there is a small set of most basic
desires and many, more or less complexly derived,
secondary desires. On this view, desire leads to ac-
tion when by instinct or learning we are moved to
do or acquire what we expect will produce satisfac-
tion of that desire. At least one of the set of basic
desires figures in all complete explanations of action.
This claim is especially significant when the set of
basic desires is taken to be small.
A critical question in both ethics and the theory
of action is whether desire contains a cognitive or
evaluative component or whether it is more like a
blind urge to which experience attaches an appro-
priate object. There are really two questions here.
(1) Is a desire (such as thirst) desire for a kind of
object (drink), or is the object whatever experience
shows satisfies the desire we call thirst? (2) Is desire
an impulsion toward an object (drink), or is it a
practically effective perception that a possible object
of action (drink) is in some sense good (because it
will satisfy thirst and/or because the satisfaction of
thirst is good)? To the extent that desiring X in-
volves beliefs about X’s properties and its value, de-
sire itself can be mistaken or subject to rational criti-
cism. (This opposes Hume’s famous view that
desires, as passions, are nonrepresentational “origi-
nal existences,” and so neither true nor false, ra-
tional or irrational.) If, on the other hand, evaluation
and judgment are external to desire, then a special
account of their practical efficacy will be necessary.
EVOLUTION might coordinate the systems of desire
and evaluation, but the connection would be contin-
gent and could fail in important ways (as it is
thought to fail between desire and morality). And if
action depends on (or originates in) desire, then the
practical role for the normative systems of value and
399
desire
rationality will depend on the existence of desires for
goodness and rationality.
Some hold that unless desires are evaluative (de-
sire for x seen as in some sense good), it is hard to
see how desire itself can provide a reason for action
in the usual sense. That is, thirst gives a reason to
drink if thirst is a state of an organism in which drink
is represented as good. If desire were merely organic
agitation or discomfort it is not clear that having a
desire would give reason to drink rather than doing
whatever will extinguish the desire (so ending the
discomfort), if it gave reason even for that. If desires
are evaluative, we can understand their role in ini-
tiating a course of PRACTICAL REASONING that yields
an INTENTION to act in a way that will satisfy the
desire.
Even if desires are intrinsically evaluative, it does
not follow that belief that something is good entails
desire for it. Those who hold that the ultimate spring
of action must be in desire may accept that there are
desire-independent NORMS, but do not thereby sup-
pose that the Good or the Rational give reasons in-
dependent of contingent desire for them. By con-
trast, rationalist theories of action and ethics hold
that the Good is both independent of the contingent
desires that persons have and normative for them:
that is, a person can have a reason for action without
the support of desire. In KANT (1724–1804) this is
explained by the view that reason can by itself be
practical (able by itself to bring about action); in
Aristotle, one can have reason to do something that
one does not now desire in the sense that one has
reason (in virtue of the end of human life) to acquire
a desire to do it. PLATO (c. 430–347 B.C.E.), by con-
trast, identifies reason itself as an autonomous, de-
siring faculty, with the Good as its natural object.
The rationalist position about norms is opposed by
those who, following Hume, view reason as moti-
vationally inert.
See also: GOOD, THEORIES OF THE; HOPE; INTENTION;
INTERESTS; MORAL PLURALISM; MOTIVES; NEEDS;
PLEASURE; PRACTICAL REASON[ING]; REASONS FOR
ACTION; WEAKNESS OF WILL.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Especially books III and
VII.
Foot, Philippa. Virtues and Vices. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1978. See “Reasons for Action and
desire
Desires,” originally published in Proceedings of the Ar-
istotelian Society, suppl. vol. 46 (1972).
Hume, David. Treatise on Human Nature. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1978 [1737]. See II, iii.
Irwin, Terence. “Aristotle on Reason, Desire, and Virtue.”
Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975): 567–78.
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Mor-
als. New York: Harper and Row, 1956 [1785]. Sec. II.
Marks, Joel, ed. The Ways of Desire. Chicago: Precedent,
1986.
Morillo, C. R. “The Reward Event and Motivation.” Jour-
nal of Philosophy 88 (1990): 169–86.
Plato. The Republic. Bk. IV.
Schiffer, Stephen. “A Paradox of Desire.” American Phil-
osophical Quarterly 13 (1976): 195–203.
Stampe, Dennis W. “The Authority of Desire.” Philosoph-
ical Review 96 (1987): 335–81.
Barbara Herman
determinism
See freedom and determinism.
deterrence, threats and
retaliation
Sometimes we threaten retaliation to deter others
from doing what we do not want them to do. But
threats are morally questionable instruments. They
tend to produce fear and worsen relations between
the parties involved. When threats fail, typically
both parties suffer. One is harmed, then carries out
the threat against the other. Even when threats suc-
ceed, they may wrongfully infringe the LIBERTY of
the threatened party. Nonetheless, there are two
situations in which threats are often permissible:
(1) when they are an accepted feature of beneficial
rule-governed practices, such as BARGAINING be-
tween unions and employers, and (2) when they are
directed at unreasonable or immoral parties (e.g.,
criminals, children, international aggressors) who
cannot by other means be dissuaded from misbe-
having.
In recent decades, social scientists and philoso-
phers have noticed a particularly difficult problem
concerning threats made in certain situations of the
second kind. (While there is a version of the problem
that concerns rationality, I will here focus on the
moral version.) It seems natural to suppose that we
may threaten to do only what it would be permissible
400
to do. From a moral perspective, however, retalia-
tion and the threat of retaliation may be evaluated
differently because they have different effects. In
particular, if a threat succeeds in deterring a poten-
tial transgression, it avoids the harms inherent in
both the transgression and the retaliation. Due to
this feature of deterrent threats, there can arise “spe-
cial deterrent situations” with the following features:
We reasonably believe that threatening a potential
offender with a particular form of retaliation is very
likely both necessary and sufficient to prevent a very
harmful and unjust offense. But actually applying
this retaliation if the threat fails seems morally
wrong because such ACTION could not prevent the
offense and would have certain serious moral de-
fects. (Examples of such defects include harming in-
nocent bystanders and violating the offender’s moral
RIGHTS either by using him as a means to deter oth-
ers or by punishing him disproportionately.) Philos-
ophers have suggested that such practices as nuclear
deterrence and criminal PUNISHMENT may occur in
situations like these. Hence it is worth investigating
the problem by considering four different views
about the morality of threats in special deterrent
situations.
Bluffing. Bluffing, in a special deterrent situation,
involves insincerely threatening to retaliate if the of-
fense is committed without intending to so act
should the threat fail. Bluffing seems to provide the
advantage of the threat—potential deterrence—
while avoiding its moral disadvantage—the risk of
carrying out the retaliation. But it is a form of lying
and thus might be regarded as impermissible by cer-
tain strict deontological ethical theories. More im-
portant, there are special deterrent situations in
which bluffing is unlikely to succeed—for example,
when the threatening agent is a large group that de-
cides policy by open democratic procedures. Here,
bluffing may promise to produce considerably less
expected utility than would a sincere threat to retal-
iate, and bluffing will be judged the inferior policy
on utilitarian grounds.
Wrongful threats. This proposed solution is fa-
vored by many deontologists. It holds fast to the in-
tuitive principle that we may permissibly threaten
only what we may permissibly do. In a special de-
terrent situation, however, retaliation is impermis-
sible; hence threatening such retaliation is also
impermissible. Whatever their apparent good con-

sequences, threats to do wrongful acts are them-
selves wrong.
This proposal fails to give due weight to the pow-
erful utilitarian and deontological considerations
that may favor making deterrent threats. Imagine a
special deterrent situation in which the offense
would cause the deaths of some innocent people on
the threatened party’s side, and retaliation would
cause the deaths of many fewer innocent people on
the potential offender’s side. (Perhaps, during war,
a large and bloody invasion can be deterred by
threats of imprecise bombing raids on the invader’s
homeland.) Suppose that a sincere threat of retali-
ation would nearly certainly prevent the offense,
while any less drastic course of action would almost
certainly fail to do so. Here, powerful utilitarian rea-
sons, and strong deontological reasons derived from
the right of SELF-DEFENSE, point to the permissibility
of making the sincere deterrent threat. Yet the
wrongful threat position implies, quite implausibly,
that such a threat is impermissible.
Permissible retaliation. This proposal also starts
from the principle that a threat is permissible only
if it would be permissible to carry out. However, un-
like the wrongful threat position, it accepts that
making threats is permissible in some special deter-
rent situations. Thus this position concludes that,
should deterrence fail, retaliation must be permis-
sible, even if it involves harming the innocent, pun-
ishing the guilty disproportionately, and so forth.
The main difficulty with this view is that it seems
committed to the permissibility of some harmful and
pointless actions. Once deterrence has failed, one’s
original reason for making a deterrent threat—pre-
vention of the offense—no longer holds. And in
some special deterrent situations, there will be no
other significant reasons (such as deterrence of fu-
ture similar offenses) for retaliating. At the same
time, there may be strong moral reasons not to re-
taliate: It would reduce utility, it would violate the
rights of some of the victims, and it would hurt some
people without helping anyone. Under these circum-
stances, to retaliate, as the permissible retaliation
view says is appropriate, would be both irrational
and grossly immoral.
Paradoxical deterrence. A final alternative is to
reject the idea that the moral status of sincere de-
terrent threats must be the same as the moral status
of the threatened acts of retaliation. Instead, we say
that because the threats can have effects quite dif-
401
deterrence, threats and retaliation
ferent from those of the threatened acts, the two may
be evaluated differently. In particular, in special de-
terrent situations, making the threats may be per-
missible, though acting on them, should deterrence
fail, would not be. But there is a difficulty with this
view beyond the price of jettisoning an intuitively
attractive idea. For both conceptual and psycholog-
ical reasons, it may be difficult (or impossible) for a
fully rational moral agent in a special deterrent sit-
uation to sincerely threaten the required act of re-
taliation. For, being moral, how is one presently to
dispose oneself to do something that one knows
would be immoral when the time came to do it?
See also: BARGAINING; CHILDREN AND ETHICAL THE-
ORY; COERCION; COOPERATION, CONFLICT, AND CO-
ORDINATION; CORRECTIONAL ETHICS; DECEIT; DE-
ONTOLOGY; HARM AND OFFENSE; INNOCENCE;
INTENTION; INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE: CONFLICT; JUS-
TICE, RECTIFICATORY; NUCLEAR ETHICS; PERSONAL
RELATIONSHIPS; POLICE ETHICS; PUNISHMENT; RE-
VENGE; REVOLUTION; SELF-DEFENSE; SITUATION
ETHICS; STRATEGIC INTERACTION; UTILITARIANISM;
WAR AND PEACE.
Bibliography
Hodgson, D. H. Consequences of Utilitarianism. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1967. Criminal deterrence from a
utilitarian perspective.
Hoekema, David A. “The Moral Status of Nuclear Deter-
rent Threats.” Social Philosophy and Policy 3 (1985):
93–117. Some differences between threats and deter-
rent intentions.
Kavka, Gregory S. Moral Paradoxes of Nuclear Deter-
rence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Chapters 1–2 discuss paradoxical deterrence in special
deterrent situations.
Kenny, Anthony. The Logic of Deterrence. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1985. Chapter 5 defends the
wrongful threats view.
MacLean, Douglas, ed. The Security Gamble. Totowa, NJ:
Rowman and Allanheld, 1984. The articles by Gau-
thier, Lewis, and Sher, and the exchange between Gau-
thier (who defends permissible retaliation) and Kavka,
are relevant.
Miller, Richard B. Interpretations of Conflict: Ethics, Pac-
ifism, and the Just-War Tradition. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1991.
Quinn, Warren. “The Right to Threaten and the Right to
Punish.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 (1985):
327–73. Applies the permissible retaliation view to
criminal punishment.
Schelling, Thomas C. The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge,
deterrence, threats and retaliation
MA: Harvard University Press, 1960. A classic source
of the “rationality” version of the problem of paradox-
ical deterrence.
Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter. “The Wrongful Intentions
Principle.” Philosophical Papers (1991): 11–24.
Gregory S. Kavka
Dewey, John (1859–1952)
After Dewey received his bachelor’s degree from the
University of Vermont and his Ph.D. in Philosophy
from the Johns Hopkins University, he taught at the
University of Michigan and the University of Min-
nesota. He became head of the Department of Phi-
losophy, Psychology, and Pedagogy at the University
of Chicago, where he founded and directed the fa-
mous University Elementary School (popularly
known as the Dewey School). He left Chicago in
1904 to join the department of Philosophy at Co-
lumbia University, where he remained an active
member until his retirement in 1930.
Especially while at Columbia, Dewey was very ac-
tive in political affairs and social issues, accepting a
leading role in many activist associations, most of
which were devoted to the defense and improvement
of ACADEMIC FREEDOM and to the enhancement of
the democratic process. During this period he pub-
lished extensively in journals of opinion, such as The
Nation, Commentary, and The New Republic, where
he was a conspicuous voice in addressing the issues
of the times. He traveled to China, Japan, Russia,
Turkey, and Mexico to teach and lecture and to pro-
vide consultation on education. He published more
than 40 books and 700 articles in philosophy; deliv-
ered the Gifford Lectures, Carus Lectures, William
James Lectures, and Terry Lectures, among others;
and was awarded honorary degrees from several uni-
versities, including Harvard, Columbia, Yale, the
University of Pennsylvania, and the University of
Paris. He has had a profound influence on genera-
tions of philosophers.
Although Dewey wrote two books on ethics and
was co-author of a third (the revised edition of
which was virtually a new text), his ethical theory is
not an autonomous, isolated subject matter. His re-
flections on the moral life are embedded in a com-
prehensive philosophical worldview. He strove to
understand human life and aspiration in the context
of the natural continuities that give them meaning,
402
resource, and direction. His emphasis was always on
understanding and clarifying the conditions that
could be appropriated by human beings to aid them
in ordering their lives to make their experiences
richer and more harmonious. The following discus-
sion will attend to his analyses of the classic tradition
in philosophy, human nature and society, science,
and DEMOCRACY, insofar as they focus on ethical re-
flection and behavior.
One of Dewey’s primary objections to Western
philosophy was its vacillation between belief in per-
fect and changeless NORMS of conduct on the one
hand, and retreat to wholesale relativism on the
other. Platonists believe that the nature of being, or
of reason, is such that there are eternal and ration-
ally incontrovertible principles of moral action. For
his part, as articulated especially in Experience and
Nature (1925), Dewey believed that the universe is
in a process of nonteleological evolution, and that
the notion of fixed norms of conduct somehow or
somewhere embodied in it is mythical. The practical
upshot of the myth is that the putatively unassailable
norms represent the prejudice of the times disguised
in such a way as to keep them free of criticism and
change.
The recurrent embarrassments of a priori philos-
ophy call forth the opposite extreme: despair of there
being any rational means for us to order our lives
with some measure of concord and HAPPINESS. This
view also seemed premature to Dewey. As argued
systematically in Human Nature and Conduct
(1922) and Ethics (1932), natural existence pro-
vides behavior with a multiplicity of objective con-
straints and rewards. The security and abundance of
life require social cooperation, itself one of the most
precious forms of experience. A thoroughgoing rel-
ativism cannot be maintained in practice. In contrast
to these extremes of absolutism and relativism,
Dewey developed a form of ethical pluralism, which
was most tersely stated in “Three Independent Fac-
tors in Morals” (1930).
Just as he was critical of the notion of change-
lessness, he was antagonistic to the notion of the
human being as a fixed and separate substance,
whose nature was independent of inclusive natural
processes. He argued throughout his works that our
nature is a function of the interaction of organism
and environment. Human growth depends largely
on variations in natural surroundings, above all in
social relations. Accordingly, habits of moral delib-

eration and action are learned behavior—functions
of participation in schooling and social practice.
There being no inherently fixed nature of human-
kind, the prescription of fixed ends is in fact, Dewey
argued, an imposition on human possibilities. The
“end” of human nature is growth—an integrated,
socially responsible, ongoing development of the
varying potentialities that emerge in the course of
life. Fulfilling experience is not in the possession
of static ends but in the quality of the process of
growth. The good life is one of intelligent partici-
pation in processes of change.
Central to Dewey’s project was the rescue of the
moral life from the mystifications of philosophers.
Particularly in Human Nature and Conduct and in
Ethics, he analyzed various moral norms—such as
ends, RIGHTS, justice, or VIRTUES —as being deriva-
tive of social practice, useful only as social func-
tions. Moral principles alleged to originate in self-
certifying reason, intuition, cosmic forms, or divine
command are doubly misguided: there are no self-
certifying faculties or self-evident norms, and the al-
leged principles are conceived without explicit ref-
erence to their function as natural devices for social
action. Attentive to moral experience, Dewey be-
lieved there is an irreducible plurality of moral cri-
teria, and they cannot be fixed in a changeless pri-
ority. The attempt to make absolute one criterion,
such as rights or utility, is unwarranted. It is an at-
tempt to disinter the classic tradition, with all its
disabilities.
Evident in The Quest for Certainty (1929) and
Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938), as well as in
scores of other works, is Dewey’s deep attachment
to science in its function as a method of creative and
experimental inquiry, not a method of demonstrative
proof. Science cannot prove that we ought to adopt
certain norms or undertake specified actions. It
determines the correlations between processes of
change; it is thereby of great service in investigating
the conditions of desired values and in reliably pro-
jecting the consequences of proposed policies for ac-
tion. Moreover, just as scientists contrive hypotheses
that require the introduction of new relationships in
nature, those who study moral situations might de-
velop plans of action that would introduce unprec-
edented experiments in social action. Hence scien-
tific thinking can be used in the moral life to assist
us in directing contingent events to natural con-
summations. This is what Dewey called creative in-
403
Dewey, John
telligence. He was hopeful that we would formulate
experimental hypotheses for reconstructing prob-
lematic situations so that we could overcome or ad-
just their troubling features and create new integra-
tions of activity.
As urged, for example, in chapter 10 of The Quest
for Certainty, hypotheses for moral action would di-
rect conduct just as scientific hypotheses direct the
experimenter. Scientists predict that the introduc-
tion of certain conditions in definite circumstances
will have specific consequences; they then test the
hypothesis by undertaking the actions prescribed. In
like manner, moral agents would follow the plan
specified in a hypothesis pertinent to the problem-
atic conditions. The hypothesis directs conduct, not
by resort to moral rhetoric, but by prescribing the
changes to be made that will lead to a preferred
situation.
The procedure for formulating and accepting
such hypotheses is all-important. Isolated individ-
uals might contrive any kind of plan of action, de-
pending on their antecedent convictions; hence
there might well be a chaos of plans. Dewey’s urgent
recommendation is that the formation of hypotheses
for action be an explicitly social process. A moral
problem arises just because individuals or groups
are in conflict or disagreement. The typical way to
address such an impasse is to introduce a moral ab-
solute of some kind, but each side has its own ab-
solutes; so the impasse remains, or one side defeats
the other by means of superior POWER. A more
promising approach might be to abandon the pre-
tended absolutes and engage in a search for common
solutions. (This point is urged in many contexts. The
Public and its Problems [1927] is as systematic as
any.)
Individuals would not be arrayed against each
other in adversary relations. Moral deliberation
would be communicative. Individuals would consult
with one another, sharing their views about the na-
ture of their problem, exchanging their concerns
about the values at issue, proposing alternatives for
conduct, examining and modifying the analyses and
proposals, in an effort to create a consensus. This is
the process that Dewey alternately calls “social in-
telligence” or “democracy as a way of life.”
As he recognized, it is not an easy method. It be-
gins, indeed, just because serious disagreements al-
ready exist. Therefore, its practice requires consid-
erable virtue on all sides; and Dewey repeatedly
Dewey, John
addressed himself to the habits that are requisite to
democracy as a way of life. Concern with these hab-
its is the prime focus of his work on education,
above all Democracy and Education (1916), and el-
oquently summarized in “Creative Democracy—
The Task Before Us” (1940). We must learn to dis-
card our dogmatic and absolutist ways. The parties
to moral deliberation must be willing to communi-
cate, willing to be informed, to learn, to entertain
novel proposals, and to adjust. They must regard
each other with respect and be willing to modify
their judgments of their shared predicament and of
each other. Dewey was especially worried about
blind steadfastness to prejudice, and he believed ap-
propriate scientific training would be one of the sol-
vents to our propensity to regard ourselves as infal-
lible. All means of education should attend to the
ways in which “the liberal mind,” as he called it,
might prosper.
It might also be that the process of social intelli-
gence would from time to time have occasion to in-
corporate typically philosophic discourse. Although
philosophers have no title to legislate to moral
agents, democracy as a way of life welcomes useful
distinctions and cogent arguments. But social intel-
ligence would not function under the guidance of a
single norm, philosophic or otherwise. It respects
the irreducible variety of INTERESTS and norms gen-
erated in shared life. Concern for the general welfare
must incorporate concern for the plurality of moral
values actually cherished in life experience. The plu-
ralistic approach is not compatible with deliberately
hurtful or negligent behavior, however. Although the
democratic virtues do not entail specific rules of ac-
tion, they exclude forms of conduct generally detri-
mental to human welfare.
Social method is not a simple counting of heads,
which can well result in reprehensible decisions. It
is a procedure informed with moral and intellectual
virtue. Even then it has no guarantees of uniform
success or universal acceptance. Dewey did not sup-
pose that there is anything in our moral circum-
stance to support such assurances. On the other
hand, he was convinced that the methods of the clas-
sic tradition were proven failures. Hence he self-
consciously attempted to unite the norms of science
and democracy to address the problems that plague
the moral life.
His writings contain none of the protracted and
arduous arguments, typical of philosophers, in-
404
tended to establish definitive moral prescriptions.
He strove to clarify the nature of the moral life, its
limitations, instrumentalities, and promises in a
manner to place assumptions and methods at our
disposal so that we could contend with our charac-
teristic vexations and opportunities. He observed
that the point of philosophy is not to study philos-
ophy, but to address the problems of men. Accord-
ingly, his philosophy is appropriately judged by eval-
uating its adequacy for dealing with the actual
difficulties that beset our historical situation.
See also: DEMOCRACY; MORAL ABSOLUTES; MORAL
PLURALISM; MORAL REALISM; MORAL RELATIVISM;
NORMS; PRAGMATISM; PRESCRIPTIVISM; SOCIAL
PSYCHOLOGY.
Bibliography
Works by Dewey
John Dewey: The Early Works, 1882–1898; The Middle
Works, 1899–1924; The Later Works, 1925–1953.
Edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale: Southern Il-
linois University Press, 1961–90. Published in the
three sets indicated above; the sets are comprised of
five, fifteen, and seventeen volumes respectively.
The Moral Writings of John Dewey. Edited by James
Gouinlock. Rev. ed. Amherst, MA: Prometheus Books,
1994. Contains a pertinent selection of Dewey’s
writings.
Works about Dewey
Boydston, Jo Ann, ed. Guide to the Works of John Dewey.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970.
Addresses various areas of Dewey’s philosophy, includ-
ing his ethical thought. In each instance an essay and
relevant bibliography are provided by a distinguished
scholar. Very helpful.
Dykhuizen, George. The Life and Mind of John Dewey.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973.
The best biography to date.
Gouinlock, James. Excellence in Public Discourse: John
Stuart Mill, John Dewey, and Social Intelligence. New
York: Teachers College Press, 1986. Presents Dewey’s
theory of social intelligence.
———. John Dewey’s Philosophy of Value. New York:
Humanities Press, 1972. Sets forth the determining as-
sumptions of Dewey’s theory of the moral life. Re-
markably, there has yet been no full-scale study of
Dewey’s ethical theory.
Thomas, Milton Halsey. John Dewey: A Centennial Bibli-
ography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.

The most complete bibliography of works by and about
Dewey.
James Gouinlock
dignity
As a general term of evaluation, “dignity” can be
applied to animals (a thoroughbred race horse might
be said to move with dignity) or even objects (the
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel could be said to have
great dignity). However, it is in its application to hu-
man beings that the concept of dignity has attained
moral prominence. There are two senses in which
dignity is typically attributed to human beings. First,
usually through some action, human beings can be
said to express dignity. In this sense persons are said
to speak “with dignity,” or carry themselves “with
dignity.” In this respect dignity is a distinctive nor-
mative concept since it is not said that someone
speaks “with worth” or carries himself “with value.”
Second, human beings can be said to have dignity,
even though they are not, in the first sense, always
dignified in their behavior. Having dignity (an adjec-
tival rather than an adverbial use of “dignity”) is not
a way of presenting oneself to others but is rather
an attribution of a characteristic value to human be-
ings. It is the second sense of having or possessing
dignity that is philosophically and ethically most
fundamental.
What does it mean to say a human being has dig-
nity? First, someone may have dignity by occupying
a high rank in a social hierarchy (in this sense a king
or a cardinal has dignity). Second, human beings are
said to have dignity entirely independent of their po-
sition in any social hierarchy. This second concep-
tion of human dignity as a characteristic moral fea-
ture of human beings is the principal employment of
the concept of dignity as a moral ideal. One should
also note that having human dignity is not necessar-
ily the same as having a proper sense of dignity. Fail-
ing to have an adequate appreciation for one’s dig-
nity need not mean that one is lacking (human)
dignity.
Without doubt the most influential proponent of
the view that all human beings have human dignity
is Immanuel KANT (1724–1804). There is a note-
worthy Renaissance emphasis on human dignity—
usually associated with Giovanni Pico della Miran-
dola (1463–1494). Though in some respects part of
405
dignity
this tradition, Kant has given the idea of human dig-
nity its most explicit and characteristically modern
statement. Kant’s influential account stems from his
suggestion (in the Groundwork of the Metaphysic of
Morals) that all things have either a price or a dig-
nity. In short, Kant claims that when things have a
price this entails there is something for which it
would be morally acceptable to trade them. By con-
trast, a human being has dignity and there is nothing
else—neither POWER, nor PLEASURE, nor good con-
sequences for all of society—for which it is morally
acceptable to exchange any human being.
While Kant does speak of the dignity of the moral
law, or the “categorical imperative,” it is ultimately
the dignity of the source of that law (which Kant
identifies as autonomy or the human capacity for
PRACTICAL REASON) that is the focus of his account
of human dignity. In Kant’s view the human capacity
for moral ACTION —the ability to have one’s will di-
rected by reason and not by the inclination of the
moment—clearly distinguishes the moral worth of
humans from the value of other sentient creatures.
And since Kant insists it is not rationally conceivable
that anything other than the capacity for practical
reason be of comparable value, the categorical im-
perative requires that human dignity should never
be violated by treating human beings as if they were
solely a means to the ends of others.
Opponents of a Kantian conception of human
dignity might hold that: (1) humans do not have dig-
nity; or (2) humans are not the only creatures with
ultimate moral worth or dignity; or (3) while hu-
mans may be (the only) creatures with dignity, this
does not entail—as Kantians insist—that it is never
morally acceptable to violate human dignity. The
first group includes, among others, behaviorists like
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) who suggest a Kantian
account of autonomous, moral action is an illusion,
and we must thereby discard such ennobling visions
of humanity. The second group includes at least
some animal rights advocates who claim the idea
that humans have greater moral value than other
animals is a form of “speciesism”—which, like sex-
ism or racism, unfairly denies others full moral
standing on arbitrary grounds. Finally some oppo-
nents, including act utilitarians, would insist that no
action—even a gross violation of human dignity—
can be judged morally wrong independent of an as-
sessment of its consequences. Such utilitarians
would claim that a violation of human dignity (for
dignity
example, executing an innocent person to deter po-
tential criminals) is perhaps likely to be judged
wrong on the basis of its consequences. However, in
extreme situations such an action could possibly
have the highest utility and thereby be morally re-
quired. Such utilitarian counterexamples are espe-
cially poignant at times when it seems the only avail-
able actions are to sacrifice either the dignity of one
person or the dignity of each individual in a larger
group.
In spite of these various points of opposition the
idea of human dignity is widely regarded as of lasting
significance. In contemporary discussions the idea of
human dignity is often associated with HUMAN
RIGHTS (for example, in the United Nations’ Univer-
sal Declaration of Human Rights [1948]) or some
other conception of basic RIGHTS. In the law, the
idea of human dignity has been employed by those
who oppose CAPITAL PUNISHMENT as well as those
who insist on the fundamental moral value of PRI-
VACY. In MEDICAL ETHICS, the idea of dignity is often
employed in an attempt to discredit paternalistic
(hence autonomy-denying) treatment of terminally
ill patients. The idea that human beings have a basic
right to “die with dignity” has also been a center-
piece of contemporary debates about the morality
and the legality of EUTHANASIA. While generally
Kantian in their approach, these various contem-
porary uses of the concept of dignity are not always
conceptually unified. Nonetheless, the dominant
idea that the fundamental moral worth of human
beings is not to be judged on the basis of race, sex,
intelligence, talents, or other indicators of social po-
sition continues to give moral force to the powerful
but complex idea of human dignity.
See also: ANIMALS, TREATMENT OF; AUTONOMY OF
MORAL AGENTS; BIOETHICS; CAPITAL PUNISHMENT;
CATEGORICAL AND HYPOTHETICAL IMPERATIVES; DE-
ONTOLOGY; DISCRIMINATION; ELITE, CONCEPT OF;
EQUALITY; EUTHANASIA; HUMAN RIGHTS; INDIVIDU-
ALISM; KANT; KANTIAN ETHICS; MEDICAL ETHICS; PA-
TERNALISM; PRIVACY; RACISM AND RELATED ISSUES;
RIGHT HOLDERS; RIGHTS; SELF-CONTROL; SELF-
RESPECT; UTILITARIANISM.
Bibliography
Cantor, Norman L. Advanced Directives and the Pursuit
of Death with Dignity. Bloomington: Indiana Univer-
sity Press, 1993.
406
Dworkin, Ronald. Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1977.
———. Life’s Dominion. New York: Knopf, 1993.
Feinberg, Joel. “The Nature and Value of Rights.” In his
Rights, Justice and the Bounds of Liberty. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1980.
———. Social Philosophy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1973.
Gaylin, Willard. “In Defense of the Dignity of Being Hu-
man.” Hastings Center Report 14 (1984): 18–22.
Goodin, Robert E. “The Political Theories of Choice and
Dignity.” American Philosophical Quarterly 18 (1981):
91–100.
Harris, George W. Dignity and Vulnerability. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1997.
Hill, Thomas E. Autonomy and Self-Respect. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991.
———. Dignity and Practical Reason. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1992.
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Mor-
als. Translated and analyzed by H. J. Paton. New York:
Harper and Row, 1964. Translation of Grundlagung
zur Metaphysik der Sitten [1785].
———. The Metaphysical Elements of Justice. Translated
by John Ladd. Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1965. Trans-
lation of Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre,
Part I of Metaphysik der Sitten [1797].
———. Metaphysical Principles of Virtue. Translated by
James W. Ellington. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983.
Translation of Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Tu-
gendlehre, Part II of the Metaphysics of Morals [1797].
Lukes, Steven. Individualism. New York: Harper and
Row, 1973.
Kolnai, Aurel. “Dignity.” Philosophy 51 (1976): 251–71.
Melden, A. I. Rights and Persons. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1977.
Meyer, Michael J. “Kant’s Concept of Dignity and Modern
Political Thought.” History of European Ideas 8
(1987): 319–32.
———. “Dignity, Rights and Self-Control.” Ethics 99
(1989): 520–34.
———. “Dignity, Death and Modern Virtue.” American
Philosophical Quarterly 32 (1995): 45–55.
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. Oration on the Dignity of
Man. Translated by A. Robert Caponigri. Chicago:
Gateway, 1956.
Pritchard, Michael S. “Human Dignity and Justice.” Ethics
82 (1972): 106–13.
Rachels, James. Created from Animals. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1990.
Velleman, J. David. “A Right of Self-Termination?” Ethics
109 (1999): 606–28.
Michael J. Meyer

dilemmas
See moral dilemmas.
dirty hands
The category of “dirty hands” was invented, or at
least named, in contemporary philosophy by the
American political philosopher, Michael WALZER, in
the 1970s, essentially to dramatise and help under-
stand certain problems thrown up by the conduct of
war. Walzer generalised these problems to problems
of politics at large, and revived a certain interpre-
tation of MACHIAVELLI (1469–1527), with some
help from Max WEBER (1864–1920) and (what he
took to be) the tradition of the Catholic Church, to
try to show that there are occasions on which the
demands of the highest political imperatives may
run counter to the deepest moral constraints, and
yet it be necessary to act contrary to those con-
straints.
The Dirty Hands Debate
Most of Walzer’s examples are extreme, but not
unrealistic, for example, the terror bombing of Ger-
man civilian populations in World War II. Others
are equally real but more banal: the politician who
“must” make a dodgy deal with a dishonest ward
boss to deliver school building contracts in return
for electoral support (Walzer, 1973 and 1977).
The attempt to construct a new category of moral
description is aimed at making palatable the contra-
diction apparently inherent in saying that X is the
wrong thing to do but it is right to do it. This, after
all, is the form that a dirty hands situation seems to
take: it is wrong intentionally to kill civilians in war,
but it must be done; it is wrong to torture, but that
is what is “necessary” here.
The dirty hands category challenges the general
assumption that morality always provides the final
or “all-things-considered” verdict on how a human
being should act: morality decisively dictates one
course of action, but nonetheless the right thing to
do “all things considered” is to act against morality’s
dictates. In the tradition revived by Walzer, it is com-
monly treated as a problem principally, if not exclu-
sively, arising in the domain of politics. Both Mach-
iavelli and Walzer occasionally remark on its wider
applicability, but the general drift of their discus-
407
dirty hands
sion is overwhelmingly about politics and Weber is
explicitly concerned with the problem as one created
by politics alone. For Weber, the agony of the po-
litical vocation resides precisely in the conflict of
morality (especially religious morality) with political
RESPONSIBILITY. Endorsing Machiavelli’s praise of
those citizens who “deemed the greatness of their
native city higher than the salvation of their souls,”
Weber commented: “He who seeks the salvation of
the soul, of his own and of others, should not seek
it along the avenue of politics, for the quite different
tasks of politics can only be solved by violence.”
The Defusing Strategy
One simple way of objecting to this account is to
insist that morality remain dominant, but that what
the “dirty hands” story shows is that some version
of morality is defective or inapplicable to the context
under consideration. Morality is more complex,
more layered, more context sensitive, than is often
supposed. It seems that some version of morality
prohibits a course of action, but a fuller understand-
ing of the moral issues shows that the apparently
prohibited course is the morally correct one to pur-
sue. So “conventional morality,” “ordinary morality,”
“religious morality,” or “private morality” is over-
ruled by the weightier considerations of “political
morality” or “public morality.” Those who follow the
“dirty” course may feel uncomfortable, even dis-
tressed, but they are doing what is morally right. Call
this “the defusing strategy.”
It is perhaps significant, with regard to this de-
fusing manouevre, that Machiavelli sometimes puts
his position in terms of the inadequacy of Christian
morality for the conduct of princely affairs, but there
are other strands in his thought. In particular, he
sometimes writes as if the morality that the prince
must be skilled at discarding is the normal morality
of us all, and that what is discarded represents a real
loss: the category of “dirty hands” like the related
category of “moral dilemma” thus reveals the ele-
ment of TRAGEDY that sometimes haunts our moral
choices. (A MORAL DILEMMA is claimed to be a case
in which there is no right answer to the choice con-
fronting an agent so that whatever she does is mor-
ally wrong. By contrast, the dirty hands scenario is
one in which one choice is morally wrong but the
correct thing to do, whereas the other is morally
right but shouldn’t be done.)
dirty hands
In any case, the defusing strategy is one which
seeks to preserve the dominance of morality by shift-
ing our perspective on how it is dominant. It turns
out that it is right for some people (in certain roles,
perhaps) to lie, torture, or kill in certain circum-
stances because that is what a particular sort of vo-
cation (and a particular sort of ethic) requires. At
this point the strategy may branch in two directions.
The first preserves a certain unity to morality. What
justifies the dominance is still what can be recog-
nised or argued to be a moral justification, but the
justification operates at a more global level. This
seems to be the idea behind the invocation of a “di-
vision of moral labour”: where it would be wrong
for an ordinary citizen to use violence to keep the
peace, it is permissible for a policeman to do so be-
cause “we” have organised a division of social and
moral labour to make for an optimum moral out-
come. Unity will also be preserved by an act utili-
tarian response to the scenarios. Prohibitions on
TORTURE, murder, CHEATING, and lying are useful
rules of thumb because mostly they serve “the great-
est happiness of the greatest number,” but some-
times utility requires us to abandon them.
The second direction for the strategy is to insist
that there are separate moralities for the different
occupations or areas of life and that there is no over-
arching moral justification for them. Morality re-
mains dominant but disunited. At times, this seems
to be what Max Weber is recommending in his in-
fluential paper “Politics as a Vocation.” “We are
placed,” he writes, “into various life spheres, each of
which is governed by different laws.”
The Rejection of Absolutes
A different though related strategy would be to
see the “dirty hands” examples as challenging our
understanding of the common morality at some deep
level, e.g., the presence in it of absolute prohibitions
or the coherence of the idea of the unity of the vir-
tues. We cannot here discuss the unity of the virtues,
but some attention to absolute prohibitions will il-
lustrate the point. There exists a tradition of moral
thinking in which at least some moral constraints are
regarded as absolute, not only in the sense that they
are objectively valid, but also in the sense that they
bind unconditionally. Sometimes this feature is as-
sociated with outlooks that link morality to divine
commands, but it has nonreligious echoes, as in the
408
idea that some actions are simply “unthinkable.” In
any version, absolutism requires a total commitment
to observing a prohibition, “come what may,” and,
for the religious, any apparently dire consequences
of such FIDELITY can be left in the hands of God.
This version of defusing maintains dominance ei-
ther by denying that morality requires absolute con-
straints or by excluding them from specific areas of
life. Following the latter strategy, it might be argued
that it is feasible to have absolute rules against lying
in private life but not in the political arena, against
torture in private life but not in politics. There is a
point of connection here with Max Weber’s contrast
between “an ethic of ultimate ends” and “an ethic of
responsibility.” Although the terms in which Weber
frames the contrast tend to confuse rather than clar-
ify the issues, it is probable that one thing he has in
mind for the “ultimate ends” side of the conflict is
an ethic involving absolute prohibitions which he
sees as in tension with an outlook more geared to
counting consequences. As he puts it: “there is an
abysmal contrast between conduct that follows the
maxim of an ethic of ultimate ends—that is, in re-
ligious terms, ‘the Christian does rightly and leaves
the results with the Lord’—and conduct that follows
the maxim of an ethic of responsibility, in which case
one has to give an account of the foreseeable results
of one’s action.” The starkness of this contrast is one
source of confusion since absolutists are not totally
indifferent to consequences—not all of their ethic
consists of absolute prohibitions—and nonabsolut-
ists need not be obsessed only with consequences.
Those who reject absolute constraints, in whole
or in part, do not thereby mean to reject morality or
its objectivity. Nor need they be utilitarians. For
many, the moral constraints on lying, on torture, on
(especially) killing the innocent will remain very
powerful, but they will be defeasible in situations in
which the stakes are very high. Such theorists do not
think that mere calculations of overall good or utility
should lead to overriding the constraints, for that
would mean that they are not genuine constraints;
these theorists will override only when the stakes are
very high. What remains as a problem is determining
how high they have to be.
Absolutists need not, of course, think that all
moral constraints are absolute: they may hold that
some few serious moral constraints are absolute
everywhere—prohibitions on torture and murder,
for instance—but that many other serious restric-

tions—on lying, promise breaking, violating confi-
dentiality—may be overriden in emergencies. Even
in the cases that genuinely embody absolute prohi-
bitions, however, much will turn on the interpreta-
tion of terms like “murder” and “torture.” Brutally
beating a confession out of a terrorist is one thing,
leaving him to brood anxiously on what you may or
may not know about his activities is quite another.
Dirty Hands Beyond Politics
One thing strongly suggested by attempts to pre-
serve an hegemony for morality in some guise is that
the “dirty hands” problem cannot be quarantined as
a problem arising only in the political arena. If there
are moral divisions of labour they will require more
than the twofold division of the political and the
rest. If there are irreducibly different “life spheres,”
they will number more than two; if absolute prohi-
bitions are somehow unworkable in politics, they are
likely to be similarly unmanageable elsewhere; if the
VIRTUES are disunited, this will have implications be-
yond politics.
More generally, I suspect that any attempt to iso-
late the political arena and give it a special moral
status is bound to fail. Part of the problem lies in the
difficulty of defining the political. On some ac-
counts, the political will not encompass teachers,
public servants, soldiers, and the police. All these
can profess intelligibly that they are not “political”
and reject attempts to “politicise” them. On other,
wider definitions, all of the above and much else be-
sides will turn out to be political. We may do better
to concentrate on the contrast of public and private,
but here there are also notorious difficulties. Large
corporations like to think of themselves as part of
the “private” sphere, though they have massive pub-
lic significance and should be held publicly account-
able for much of their activities. It is indeed impor-
tant, for some purposes, to distinguish the public
from the private, but it is unclear whether a distinc-
tion made for those purposes will help restrict the
application of dirty hands considerations.
There may nevertheless be certain features of the
political that pose the dirty hands problem particu-
larly sharply. Walzer’s concerns arose largely from
perplexing moral problems created by warfare. Max
Weber explicitly links his sense of tragic choice to
the use of violence which he thinks distinctive of the
political. Writing at the very end of World War I,
409
dirty hands
with the shadows of that grisly conflict falling across
his pages, he insists: “The decisive means for politics
is violence.”
Without disparaging the seriousness of Weber’s
anguished concern for the intersection of politics
and violence, three qualifications need to be made.
One is that a great deal of politics has little to do
with violence; this is clear enough in politically
peaceful communities, but is even relevant to com-
munities disrupted by episodic political violence like
Northern Ireland. Second, there are professions
other than the political that must deploy and cope
with violence very directly: the police and the mili-
tary come readily to mind. Third, many contempo-
rary philosophers who write about “dirty hands” are
concerned about moral crises that do not directly
involve violence, even where violence is in the back-
ground. The necessity to lie, to cheat, to betray, all
these are or can be a focus for talk of “dirty hands”
and are explicitly discussed by Machiavelli.
Does Defusing Succeed?
The defusing strategies, to my mind, work to a
great degree to accommodate the phenomena that
give rise to the “dirty hands” label within the frame-
work of morality rather than as a standing rebuke to
its claims. But the question remains whether the de-
fusing strategies completely eliminate the challenge.
The answer to this seems to turn on a combination
of factors, some of which concern the effects of a
license to exercise dirty hands, others of which are
more concerned with the stringency appropriate to
prohibitions on lying, cheating, torturing, and killing
the innocent.
On the former, there is reason to be alarmed at
extending licenses to violate standard or absolute
moral constraints to any class of people, but espe-
cially to those who are, by dint of their callings, par-
ticularly prone to moral temptations and to seeing
“high stakes” everywhere. It is arguable that we need
more rather than fewer moral restrictions on such
groups as politicians and police. And there is an in-
stitutional dimension to this. Philosophers tend to
focus on particular acts that seem to necessitate the
violation of standard moral constraints, but the cir-
cumstances surrounding these acts are not immu-
table, and there is an important role for morality in
spurring us to devise our public INSTITUTIONS with
a view to minimising or eliminating such “necessi-
dirty hands
ties.” As to the latter, it is true that scenarios can be
produced in which the only right outcome seems to
demand the killing of an innocent person: the bar-
barians are at the gates and they require that the
city’s rulers execute some innocent persons to avoid
total destruction, or an isolated police officer can
prevent a riot that could kill thousands only by re-
leasing a suspect to certain death at the hands of the
lynch mob. These scenarios can seem compelling,
but our resistance to the killing of the innocent is
more profound than these hypothetical calculations
can suggest, and it is more certain that we gravely
wrong the victim and damage our character than any
certainty attaching to the arrival of the expected ben-
eficial outcomes, especially when they depend on the
promises or reliable behaviour of barbarians and
mobs. For these reasons the prohibitions on torture
and murder form a central part of the framework
with which we think about morality, and it is virtu-
ally impossible to engage in deliberation that retains
a significantly moral dimension if they are not in
place.
The category of dirty hands risks treating the cen-
trality of these prohibitions too lightly, since, within
this category, the prohibitions are invariably trumped
by considerations of “necessity,” even allowing for
reference to anguish and remorse. We may therefore
do better to leave the conflictual aspect of the prob-
lem unmitigated by any theoretical bias in favour of
the “necessary.” This would mean that the defusing
strategy could have the potentially beneficial out-
come of collapsing the usual distinction, sketched
earlier, between dirty hands and MORAL DILEMMAS.
Instead of dirty hands and moral dilemmas, we
would have only different sorts of moral dilemma.
See also: ABORTION; CASUISTRY; CHEATING; CHRIS-
TIAN ETHICS; COHERENTISM; CONSEQUENTIALISM;
CONVENTIONS; CORRECTIONAL ETHICS; DECEIT; DOU-
BLE EFFECT; EUTHANASIA; EXCUSES; FIDELITY; FINAL
GOOD; GOVERNMENT, ETHICS IN; GUILT AND SHAME;
HOMICIDE; INFANTICIDE; INSTITUTIONS; JUSTICE, CIR-
CUMSTANCES OF; MACHIAVELLI; MILITARY ETHICS;
MORAL ABSOLUTES; MORAL DILEMMAS; MORAL REL-
ATIVISM; POLICE ETHICS; PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MO-
RALITY; REASONS FOR ACTION; RELIGION; RESPON-
SIBILITY; SELF-DEFENSE; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY; TORTURE; UTILITARIANISM; VIRTUE
ETHICS; WALZER; WAR AND PEACE; WEBER.
410
Bibliography
Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. Edited by Peter Bonda-
nella. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984 [1517].
———. The Discourses. Edited by L. J. Walker. Penguin
Books, 1950 [1513–17].
Nagel, Thomas. “Ruthlessness in Public Life.” In Public
and Private Morality, edited by Stuart Hampshire, 89–
90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Dirty Hands (Les mains sales). In Three
Plays by Jean-Paul Sartre, translated by Lionel Abel.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949.
Scheffler, Samuel. Human Morality. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1992.
Walzer, Michael. “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty
Hands.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1973): 160–
80. The locus classicus for contemporary discussion of
dirty hands.
———. Just and Unjust Wars. New York: Basic Books,
1977.
Weber, Max. “Politics as a Vocation.” In From Max Weber:
Essays in Sociology, translated and edited by Hans H.
Gerth and C. Wright Mills. London: Routledge and Ke-
gan Paul, 1977. Quoted from pp. 127, 123, 120, 125–
26. Very influential essay on the moral ambiguities of
politics.
Williams, Bernard. “Politics and Moral Character.” In
Public and Private Morality, edited by Stuart Hamp-
shire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Wolf, Susan. “Moral Saints.” Journal of Philosophy 79
(1982): 419–39.
C. A. J. Coady
disability
See agency and disability.
discounting the future
Discounting the future is the practice of assigning
less value to a good that occurs later in time than to
a similar good that occurs earlier.
The mechanics of discounting can be illustrated
by an example from accounting. Suppose an ac-
countant has to value an asset that will yield an in-
come of $100 per year for ten years, and then expire.
The value she will give it is not simply the total,
$1,000, of the income it will produce. Instead, she
will apply some ‘discount rate’, say 5 percent, before
adding up the annual amounts. The first year’s in-
come will be given its full value of $100. The second
year’s will be discounted by 5 percent, so it will be

valued at $95. The third year’s will be discounted by
a further 5 percent, making its value $90.25; and so
on. These discounted amounts will be added over
the asset’s life.
The accountant is right to discount future in-
come. In a clear sense, money at a later time is worth
less than money at an earlier time. Money this year
can actually be converted into a greater amount of
money in one year’s time by depositing it in a bank
to earn interest. So of course money now is worth
more than money next year.
If we ignore inflation, money represents a quan-
tity of purchasing power over economic commodi-
ties. Consequently, commodities at one time are
more valuable than commodities at a later time, for
just the same reason. If you have some money, either
you can buy some quantity of a commodity this year,
or you can deposit the money in a bank and use it
with interest to buy a greater quantity of the same
commodity next year, provided the price has not
gone up in the meantime. In effect you are able to
convert a commodity today into a greater quantity
of the same commodity next year. Consequently, this
year’s commodity is more valuable.
There is a deeper explanation of why present
commodities are worth more than future commod-
ities, which also explains how banks are able to pay
interest in the first place. The ultimate explanation
is the productive power of the economy. The econ-
omy’s productive system takes commodities as in-
puts and delivers a greater quantity of commodities
as outputs at a later time. In effect, it converts com-
modities at one time into a greater quantity of com-
modities at a later time.
So long as the economy remains productive, later
commodities should be discounted compared with
earlier ones. This sound practice is universal in eco-
nomics and accounting, and it ought not to be con-
troversial. However, it applies to only a particular
sort of good; when we are wondering whether to
discount future goods, we must always bear in mind
which sort of goods they are. The justification I have
given for discounting applies only to commodities
that are produced within the economic system. It
does not apply to commodities that are not pro-
duced, such as nonrenewable resources, even if they
are bought and sold in the market. Nor does it apply
to more fundamental goods such as people’s well-
being or the preservation of people’s lives. I have so
far given no reason for discounting these goods.
411
discounting the future
When it comes to these fundamental goods, two
questions arise. First, should we as individuals dis-
count our own future goods when planning our
lives? Second, should future goods, including goods
that will come to people who are not yet born, be
discounted in public decision making?
There is evidence that people do in fact discount
their own future goods in planning their lives. More-
over, they do it in a way that leads to ‘dynamic in-
consistency’; that is to say, they may make plans and
then change their minds later (Ainslie). This com-
mon practice of discounting is often thought to be
irrational (for instance, Pigou), but there are impor-
tant counterarguments in Derek Parfit’s Reasons
and Persons.
The second question—whether ‘social discount-
ing’ is justified—is very important for practical is-
sues that have long-term consequences, such as the
disposal of nuclear waste. If we discount at even 1
percent per year, harm done in 1,375 years will be
valued at 1/1,000,000 of the equivalent harm done
now. There is a strong consensus against social dis-
counting, on the grounds that one should be impar-
tial between goods that come at different times. The
utilitarian Henry SIDGWICK (1838–1900) says: ‘The
time at which a man exists cannot affect the value
of his happiness from a universal point of view.’ John
RAWLS supports Sidgwick’s temporal IMPARTIALITY
using a nonutilitarian argument based on the origi-
nal position. Other strong rejections of discounting
come from Parfit and, in economics, A. C. Pigou
(1877–1959), Frank Ramsey (1903–1930), and
Robert Solow. There are dissenting arguments in
Partha Dasgupta and G. M. Heal.
However, despite the favourable consensus, tem-
poral impartiality encounters difficulties once we try
to value streams of well-being that continue forever.
The beginning of the difficulties is that, if we try to
add up an infinite sequence of well-beings without
discounting, we are unlikely to obtain a finite total.
Compare the infinite sequences:
A: (2, 2, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, . . .)
and
B: (2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2, . . .)
A dominates B in the technical sense that it gives
more well-being at one time and less at no time. This
discounting the future
suggests we should judge A better than B. But we
shall not reach this conclusion if we try to judge by
adding up the total of well-beings in an impartial
way, because neither sequence has a finite total. On
the other hand, if we apply a discount rate before
adding (following the example of the accountant
mentioned above), both sequences will have finite
discounted totals, and A will have the larger one. So
discounting leads to a plausible conclusion in this
case. However, it is not a satisfactory way of over-
coming the problem of infinite totals, since many
sequences of well-being will not have a finite total
even if we apply a discount rate.
An alternative way of judging between two infi-
nite sequences is to adopt the so-called ‘overtaking
criterion’ (von Weizsäcker). Instead of trying to add
up the whole infinite sequence of well-beings in each
of the alternatives, we pick a particular date and take
the totals only up to that date. These totals will be
finite. We see which alternative has the greater total.
Then we do the same with another date, and an-
other, and so on, comparing the totals of each alter-
native sequence up to each date. If one alternative
always wins in these comparisons, provided we pick
a date far enough in the future, then we say it ‘over-
takes’ the other, and declare it better by the overtak-
ing criterion. A always wins over B provided we pick
a date after the first, so the overtaking criterion de-
clares A better.
The overtaking criterion reaches a plausible con-
clusion in this case, and it does not involve discount-
ing. Peter Vallentyne and Shelley Kagan recommend
a version of it for reasons like this. However, though
it does not involve discounting, it is not impartial in
Sidgwick’s sense. The time at which a particular
amount of well-being occurs makes a difference.
Compare
C: (4, 2, 6, 1, 8, 3, 10, 5, 12, 7, 14, 9, . . .)
and
D: (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, . . .)
C is just a shuffling around—technically a permu-
tation—of the numbers in D. (Every number apart
from ‘2’ is swapped with a number three places away
in the sequence.) If one sequence is a permutation
of another, impartiality requires the two sequences
to be equally good. Yet the overtaking criterion
makes C better than D.
412
It turns out that impartiality is a very demanding
condition for infinite sequences. A long discussion
in economics (surveyed by Larry Epstein) revolved
around the point that impartiality is incompatible
with topological continuity in ‘social preferences’.
Ensuring continuity has sometimes been taken as
grounds for discounting future well-being. But con-
tinuity is not an ethically appealing requirement, so
these grounds are unpersuasive.
A more challenging difficulty for impartiality is
that it is incompatible with dominance. In the ex-
ample above, the sequence A dominates B, but A is
actually a permutation of B. Starting with B, move
each ‘1’ two places right. Leave the first ‘2’ where it
is, and move the second ‘2’ one place left. Move
every other ‘2’ two places left. The result is A. (The
example comes from Luc Van Liedekerke and Luc
Lauwers.) So dominance implies A is better than B,
and impartiality implies A is equally as good as B.
Since dominance is a very appealing test of relative
value, this is a important threat to impartiality.
It leaves us with three choices. We may say that
our theory of value need not apply to infinite se-
quences, perhaps on the grounds that humanity will
in fact have only a finite existence. We may give up
the dominance condition, perhaps trying to find a
weaker substitute that is compatible with imparti-
ality. (This route is explored by Van Liedekerke and
Lauwers.) Or we may give up impartiality. Since im-
partiality supplies the main objection to discounting,
this may make us think again about discounting.
See also: ECONOMIC ANALYSIS; FUTURE GENERA-
TIONS; IMPARTIALITY; INTERESTS; NEEDS; PUBLIC
POLICY; PUBLIC POLICY ANALYSIS; RAWLS; SIDG-
WICK; SOCIAL CONTRACT; UTILITARIANISM; VALUE,
THEORY OF.
Bibliography
Ainslie, George. Picoeconomics: The Strategic Interaction
of Successive Motivational States within the Person.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Broome, John. “Discounting the Future.” Philosophy and
Public Affairs 23 (1994): 128–56.
Dasgupta, Partha, and G. M. Heal. Economic Theory and
Exhaustible Resources. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1979 (and 1993). See especially pages
255–82.
Epstein, Larry G. “Impatience.” In John Eatwell, et al.,
eds. The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics.

Volume 2, E to J, pp. 720–23. London: Macmillan,
1987.
Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1984. For a discussion of the question
whether individuals should discount their own future
goods when planning their lives, see pp. 158–65 and
317–20. For a rejection of social discounting, see pp.
480–86.
Pigou, A. C. The Economics of Welfare. 4th ed. London:
Macmillan, 1932 (1920). See esp. pp. 29–30.
Ramsey, Frank. “A Mathematical Theory of Saving.” Eco-
nomic Journal 38 (1928): 543–49. Reprinted in his
Foundations: Essays in Philosophy, Logic, Mathemat-
ics and Economics. Edited by D. H. Mellor. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978, pp. 261–81.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press, 1972. Pp. 494–95.
Sidgwick, Henry. The Methods of Ethics. 7th ed. London:
Macmillan, 1907 (1874). See p. 414.
Solow, Robert. “The Economics of Resources or the Re-
sources of Economics.” American Economic Review:
Papers and Proceedings 64 (1974): 1–14. See esp. p. 9.
Vallentyne, Peter, and Shelley Kagan. “Infinite Value and
Finitely Additive Value Theory.” Journal of Philosophy
94 (1997): 5–26.
Van Liedekerke, Luc, and Luc Lauwers. “Sacrificing the
Patrol: Utilitarianism, Future Generations and Infin-
ity.” Economics and Philosophy 13 (1997): 159–74.
von Weizsäcker, Carl Christian. “Existence of Optimal
Programs of Accumulation for an Infinite Time Hori-
zon.” Review of Economic Studies 32 (1965): 85–104.
John Broome
discrimination
Discrimination may be conceived as the power to
make fine distinctions. However we are concerned
here with a different notion: discrimination against
a group of persons that marks them out for unfair,
harmful treatment.
Concepts of Discrimination
Two concepts of such discrimination, overt and
institutional, may be distinguished. Overt discrimi-
nation is exemplified by what is traditionally re-
garded as a racist or sexist act. Thus because of sex-
ual bias, a woman is denied a job, or because of
racial bias, a black school district is denied equal
funding or a black person is denied an apartment.
Institutional discrimination is exemplified when
an organization (e.g., a business firm) uses an intrin-
413
discrimination
sically bias-free selection procedure that has dispro-
portionate adverse impact on minorities or women.
Standardized testing, hiring by personal connec-
tions, and seniority-based layoffs often have such ad-
verse impact. While these practices could exist in an
entirely bias-free world, they are linked in our soci-
ety to past, present, and future overt discrimination.
For example, past and present unequal funding of
black school districts lowers black test scores for
college admission and employment. Past sexist ex-
clusion of women from many employment enter-
prises reduces their opportunities to accrue seniority
credit. Hence they are vulnerable to seniority-based
layoff. Past and present housing discrimination
against blacks contributes to their isolation from
white society. Hence blacks are adversely affected by
hiring through personal connections.
Bias-free employment selection procedures are
also linked to future overt discrimination. By dispro-
portionately excluding minorities and women from
better-paying, more desirable positions, such pro-
cedures sustain the occupational segregation that
confines minorities and women to certain kinds of
work: menial or pink-collar, for example. Such seg-
regation reinforces the discriminatory attitude that
women and minorities are inherently inferior. Thus
the adverse impact on minorities and women of bias-
free selection practices not only perpetuates the vic-
timizing effect of past and present overt discrimi-
nation; it also promotes such discrimination for the
future. Hence the adverse impact characteristic of
institutional discrimination may plausibly be termed
racist or sexist impact.
The two types of discrimination—overt and in-
stitutional—have correlative remedies. The overt
discrimination remedy is exemplified in the United
States when an individual wins a discrimination
complaint: for example, when an employer, proven
to have discriminated against a black job seeker, is
required to hire her by a court or administrative
agency which rules on such complaints under civil
rights law.
The complaint remedy satisfies a retributive
moral claim: The victim should be given what was
wrongfully denied her (or its compensatory equiva-
lent) by the perpetrator. However, critics have ar-
gued that this remedy is ineffective. Victims of dis-
crimination are often reluctant to complain because
the process is too time-consuming, or the reputation
they might gain as troublemakers will damage their
discrimination
future careers. Moreover, the complaint remedy re-
quires proof of bias. Hence it is irrelevant to insti-
tutional discrimination, which is exemplified by the
adverse impact of bias-free procedures.
The remedy for institutional discrimination in the
United States is affirmative action. The aim of affir-
mative action is to contribute to the demise of oc-
cupational segregation by reducing the racist or
sexist impact which bias-free practices, such as qual-
ification requirements, hiring by personal connec-
tions, and seniority-based selection, have on women
and minorities. Those who benefit from an em-
ployer’s affirmative action are not (as in the individ-
ual remedy) required to prove past discrimination
by that employer against them.
Two kinds of affirmative action, unspecific and
specific, may be distinguished: Unspecific affirma-
tive action is illustrated by “good-faith” outreach ef-
forts to recruit minorities and women (without spe-
cific numerical targets) through the advertising of
positions. Using race as “a factor” in admission to
professional schools—a practice endorsed by the
United States Supreme Court in Regents of the Uni-
versity of California v. Bakke (1978)—is another ex-
ample of unspecific affirmative action.
Specific affirmative action is exemplified in the
following procedures: (1) setting numerical hiring
goals, and (2) validation of qualification require-
ments.
Numerical Goals
According to an executive order, employers hold-
ing federal government contracts who have “under-
utilized” women and minorities—that is, have failed
to hire, promote, and train them in reasonable ac-
cord with their availability—are required to set
dated numerical goals for their recruitment. But em-
ployers who fail to meet these goals would not be
penalized if “good-faith” efforts at attainment can be
demonstrated.
However, in some nonacademic enterprises, such
as AT&T, where underutilization was severe, “pref-
erential treatment” has been mandated if necessary
to fill a numerical goal. Thus some employers have
been required to select or set aside a specific number
of slots for minorities and women who are “basically
qualified” (i.e., competent to do the job) rather than
hire a better qualified white male applicant. (See
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v.
414
American Telephone & Telegraph Company, 1973.)
Some academic departments have adapted this “ba-
sically qualified” strategy while some others con-
tinue their traditional preference for white males.
In the 1979 United Steelworkers v. Weber case
(99 S. Ct. 2721), the U.S. Supreme Court accepted
an affirmative action program establishing a 50 per-
cent minority ratio for upgrading black workers to
craft training positions. While such upgrading is
generally determined in union organized enterprises
by seniority ranking, this affirmative action program
effectively promoted black workers over more senior
whites. However, in the 1984 Stotts case, the Su-
preme Court refused to accept any affirmative action
modification of seniority-based layoff.
Validation of Qualification Requirements
The Supreme Court ruled in the 1971 Griggs v.
Duke Power Company decision (401 U.S. 424) that
when a qualification requirement (e.g., a diploma or
standardized test) disproportionately excludes mi-
norities, the employer is required to demonstrate
that the test is valid—that it reliably measures ability
to perform the job.
Where specific types of affirmative action (dated
numerical goals and validation of qualification re-
quirements) have been applied, they have brought
about significantly increased hiring and promotion
of minorities and women (U.S. Department of La-
bor). Despite preferential treatment in some situa-
tions, econometric studies show that, generally
speaking, affirmative action has caused no decline
in relative productivity (Leonard). Studies have also
demonstrated that, among minority persons who
benefited from affirmative action in employment
and admission to professional schools, significant
numbers came from “families of low income and job
status” (Taylor).
Moral Problems of Affirmative Action
Some proponents of affirmative action suggest it
answers two kinds of moral claims. First, it responds
to a consequentialist claim: Bad future effects
should be minimized. Affirmative action, it is ar-
gued, accomplishes this by its contribution to elim-
inating future racism and sexism. Granted, depriv-
ing white males exacerbates some racist or sexist
attitudes in the short run. Nevertheless, this negative

consequence is outweighed in the long run by real-
izing the affirmative action aim of ending occupa-
tional segregation. Such segregation of women and
minorities into monotonous, unskilled, or unpleas-
ant jobs sustains the racist and sexist concept of
women and minorities as inherently inferior. Chil-
dren who grow up in a society in which women and
blacks have their fair share of well-paying positions,
AUTHORITY, and POWER are far less likely to perceive
them as lesser beings. Second, it is argued that by
moving significant numbers of women and minori-
ties up in education and employment, affirmative ac-
tion responds to a claim of retributive justice: Vic-
tims of past injustice should be compensated.
Many affirmative action critics grant widespread
past discrimination. However, they claim that white
males are victimized by affirmative action. Their
criticisms are relevant to preferential treatment
cases, where to meet a numerical goal a less senior
woman or minority person is upgraded over a white
male, or a “basically qualified” woman or minority
person is hired or promoted over a more qualified
white male.
Some affirmative action critics claim that the nu-
merical goals—the fulfillment of which may require
such preferential treatment—are “quotas,” rele-
vantly similar to the old quotas, which excluded
more qualified Jews from professional schools. How-
ever, affirmative action proponents argue that the
old quotas were based on a false, derogatory notion
of Jews as socially inferior—that is, as pushy, vulgar,
and mercenary. The purpose of those quotas against
Jews was to perpetuate a society composed primarily
of Christian gentlemen. That social conception was
shaped by prejudice.
By contrast, the aim of affirmative action numer-
ical goals is to create a society free of prejudice.
Moreover, many women and blacks injured by prej-
udice will be compensated when employers, prod-
ded by goals, hire and upgrade them. Hence affir-
mative action proponents conclude that labeling
affirmative action numerical goals as “quotas” is
misleading. Such labeling suggests that affirmative
action numerical remedies are morally equivalent to
the old exclusionary quotas against Jews. That sug-
gestion ignores their profound difference of moral
purpose.
Some affirmative action critics claim that our so-
ciety is in fact a meritocracy, that hiring by compe-
tence is the rule. In virtue of this accepted rule, the
415
discrimination
white male candidate, who is better qualified, has a
right to the position.
However, some affirmative action proponents
deny that our society is a meritocracy. Being the best
qualified candidate is only one way to get the job. In
fact, extensive preference is given to certain groups.
For example, preference to veterans for govern-
ment employment has disadvantaged millions of job
seekers. Preference to candidates having the right
personal connections—friends, relatives, and neigh-
bors—is widespread in employment. Alumni chil-
dren have enjoyed preference for college admission.
Well-paying craft apprenticeships have often been
given to relatives of union members.
It may be objected, however, that affirmative ac-
tion preferential treatment is relevantly different,
since it excludes some persons (white males) be-
cause of their race or sex. Such exclusion constitutes
discrimination in reverse. But philosophers who en-
dorse affirmative action deny that rejection from a
job because of race or sex suffices to constitute dis-
crimination. Refusing the part of Othello to an actor
because he is white does not exemplify race discrim-
ination. The ground for such denial does not derive
from a false, derogatory assumption of racial infe-
riority. Similarly, the white candidate, rejected be-
cause of affirmative action, is not falsely assumed to
be racially inferior, nor does he suffer—as blacks
have—that demeaning stigma.
Nevertheless, some philosophers who endorse af-
firmative action might grant that white males, de-
nied positions because of preferential treatment ac-
corded to others, are in fact being unfairly singled
out from the rest of society to pay the cost of ending
discrimination. A suggestion by District Judge Sa-
rokin in the 1984 Vulcan Pioneers case (Fair Em-
ployment Practices Cases 34 [1984] 1239) may be
relevant to this concern. He noted that when land is
taken by the state for a public purpose, the owner is
compensated. Thus white males rejected because of
affirmative action should be heavily compensated by
the federal government for their loss. A historical
precedent for this remedy exists. When New York
waterfront jobs were to be eliminated through au-
tomation, opposition subsided after compensation
was authorized (Glickstein).
Philosophers who emphasize the moral value of
fairness might also suggest that compensation to
white males adversely affected by affirmative action
should be funded by a federal progressive tax, based
discrimination
on ability to pay. Thus the burden of paying for dis-
crimination remedies would be distributed more eq-
uitably throughout society.
See also: AGENCY AND DISABILITY; CIVIL RIGHTS AND
CIVIC DUTIES; CONSEQUENTIALISM; ELITE, CONCEPT
OF; EQUALITY; FUTURE GENERATIONS; GROUPS,
MORAL STATUS OF; IMPARTIALITY; INSTITUTIONS; JUS-
TICE, DISTRIBUTIVE; JUSTICE, RECTIFICATORY; MERIT
AND DESERT; PARTIALITY; PUBLIC POLICY; RACISM
AND RELATED ISSUES; RACISM, CONCEPTS OF; SEXUAL
ABUSE AND HARASSMENT; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY.
Bibliography
Bell, Derrick. Race, Racism and American Law. Boston:
Little Brown, 1980.
Blackstone, W., and R. Heslep, eds. Social Justice and
Preferential Treatment. Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 1977. See especially “The Justification of Re-
verse Discrimination,” by Tom Beauchamp; and “The
University and the Case for Preferential Treatment,” by
Richard Wasserstrom.
Boxill, Bernard. Blacks and Social Justice. Totowa, NJ:
Rowman and Allenheld, 1984.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Brown I) 347
U.S. 483 (1954). Brown v. Board of Education of To-
peka (Brown II) 349 U.S. 294 (1955)
Cohen, Carl. “Why Racial Preference Is Illegal and Im-
moral.” Commentary 67 (1979): 40.
Cohen, Marshall, T. Nagel, and T. Scanlon, eds. Equality
and Preferential Treatment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1977. See especially “De Funis v.
Sweatt,” by Ronald Dworkin; “Justifying Reverse Dis-
crimination in Employment,” by George Sher; and
“Preferential Hiring,” by Judith Jarvis Thomson.
Ezorsky, Gertrude. “Fight over University Women.” New
York Review of Books, 15 May 1974, 32–39.
———. “Hiring Women Faculty.” Philosophy and Public
Affairs 7 (1977): 82–91.
———. “‘It’s Mine.’” Philosophy and Public Affairs
(1974): 321–30.
Feagin, Joe R., and Clairece Booker. Discrimination,
American Style. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall,
1978.
Fullinwinder, Robert K. The Reverse Discrimination Con-
troversy. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allenheld, 1980.
Glazer, Nathan. Affirmative Discrimination. New York:
Basic Books, 1975.
Glickstein, Howard. “Affirmative Action, with Compen-
sation for White Males.” In Moral Rights in the Work-
place, edited by Gertrude Ezorsky. Albany: State Uni-
versity of New York Press, 1987.
416
Goldman, Alan H. Justice and Reverse Discrimination.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979.
Gould, William. Black Workers and White Unions. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1979.
Greenwalt, Kent. Discrimination and Reverse Discrimi-
nation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.
Gross, Barry. Discrimination in Reverse. New York: New
York University Press, 1978.
Holmstrom, Nancy. “Do Women Have a Distinct Nature?”
Philosophical Forum 14 (1982): 25–42.
Jaggar, Alison. “On Sexual Equality.” Ethics 84 (1974):
275–92.
Leonard, Jonathan S. “Anti-Discrimination or Reverse
Discrimination: The Impact of Changing Demograph-
ics, Title VII, and Affirmative Action on Productivity.”
Journal of Human Resources 19 (1984): 145–74.
Nagel, Thomas. “A Defense of Affirmative Action.” Re-
port. Center for Philosophy and Public Policy, Univer-
sity of Maryland, 1981.
———. “Equal Treatment and Compensatory Discrimi-
nation.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1973):
348–63.
Nickel, James. “Preferential Policies in Hiring and Admis-
sion.” Columbia Law Review 75 (1975): 534–58.
Pierce, Christine, and Sara Ann Ketchum. “Implicit Ra-
cism.” Analysis 36 (1976): 91–95.
Taylor, William L. “Brown, Equal Protection and the Iso-
lation of the Poor.” Yale Law Journal 95 (1986): 1700–
1735.
Thomas, Laurence. “Sexism, Racism and the Business
World.” Business Horizons 24 (1981): 62–68.
U.S. Department of Labor. Employment Standards Ad-
ministration. Office of Federal Contract Compliance
Programs. A Review of the Effect of Executive Order
11246 and the Federal Contract Compliance Program
on Employment Opportunities of Minorities and
Women, 1983. Shows that numerical goals and vali-
dation of qualification requirements can result in sig-
nificantly increased hiring and promotion of minorities
and women.
Gertrude Ezorsky
distributive justice
See justice, distributive; international justice:
distribution.
Donagan, Alan (1925–1991)
Born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1925, Alan Don-
agan undertook undergraduate studies in philoso-
phy (after having initially enrolled in a combined de-

gree with law) at the University of Melbourne from
1943 to 1945. He traveled to Oxford in 1951 and
there, under the supervision of William Kneale and
Gilbert Ryle, Donagan completed his B. Phil. dis-
sertation on the topic of objectivity in morals. Al-
though Donagan’s first teaching positions were in
Australia—at the University of Western Australia in
Perth (1946–1948) and at Canberra University Col-
lege (1949–1955)—most of his philosophical ca-
reer was spent in the United States. He taught at the
University of Minnesota (1956–1961); Indiana Uni-
versity (1961–1966); the University of Illinois at Ur-
bana (1966–1970); and the University of Chicago
(1970–1984). At the time of his sudden death in
1991, Donagan was Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Pro-
fessor of Philosophy at the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena.
The philosophical climate in Melbourne during
the time Donagan was a student, and for much of
the 1940s and 1950s, was strongly influenced by
Wittgensteinian as well as Marxist ideas. Yet Don-
agan’s own thinking, while not unaffected by these
influences, developed in quite a different direction.
Although he published, during the 1960s, important
papers on both RUSSELL (1872–1970) and WITT-
GENSTEIN (1889–1951), much of Donagan’s early
work was in the philosophy of history. He was a sig-
nificant contributor to the debate over the status of
laws in historical explanation (see Philosophical Pa-
pers, Volume 1 [1994]) and to work on the philos-
ophy of R. G. Collingwood (see The Later Philoso-
phy of R. G. Collingwood [1962]). In later years
Donagan also wrote extensively on topics in the PHI-
LOSOPHY OF RELIGION. His central preoccupation
for almost the whole of his career, however, was un-
doubtedly moral theory, and it is there that possibly
his most influential contributions to contemporary
philosophy are to be found.
In The Theory of Morality (1977), Donagan at-
tempts an elaboration and defence of morality as a
system of law that is universally applicable to all ra-
tional creatures. Although this system of ‘common
morality’ is essentially the same as that to be found
in the Hebrew-Christian tradition, Donagan’s ac-
count of that system does not depend on any theistic
presuppositions. Instead he argues for a view of
common morality as based on a single principle that
reads (in one of its formulations): ‘It is impermissi-
ble not to respect any human being, oneself or any
other, as a rational creature.’ Donagan argues that
417
Donagan, Alan
this principle is sufficient, in conjunction with a set
of premises specifying the nature of the concepts in-
volved, to enable the deductive derivation of a set of
moral precepts governing human actions that is
identical with the set of precepts found within tra-
ditional Hebrew-Christian morality. Two questions
then arise: is this system of morality consistent and
is it true? Donagan’s defence of the consistency of
common morality is indirect, proceeding through
consideration of the particular types of internal con-
flict—involving, for instance, cases where the doing
of what is right seems also to involve the doing of
what is wrong—to which common morality alleg-
edly gives rise. Donagan claims that such conflicts
are apparent rather than real and typically derive
from an inadequate formulation of the moral situa-
tion with which the agent is confronted. Donagan’s
defence of the truth of common morality entails de-
fending it against certain consequentialist criticisms
(and so engaging in a critique of CONSEQUENTIALISM
itself), while also advancing a justification of the
principle on which the system is based. The justifi-
cation that Donagan provides here depends crucially
on the Kantian idea of rational agents as ‘ends in
themselves’ (an idea that Donagan traces back to
THOMAS AQUINAS [1225?–1274] and DUNS SCO-
TUS [c. 1266–1308]). Donagan argues that to con-
ceive of a creature, oneself or another, as rational is
to conceive of oneself as constituting an ‘end’ of just
this sort—not as an end to be brought about in act-
ing, but rather an end to be respected in such acting.
Donagan conceives of a moral system as having
a double foundation: it must encompass both a the-
ory of PRACTICAL REASON and a theory of the nature
of rational agents. But while The Theory of Morality
provides a detailed account of practical reason, it
offers only a sketch of the nature of rational agency.
In Choice: The Essential Element in Human Action
(1987), Donagan makes good on this omission, pro-
viding a extended account of the theory of agency
that is essentially Aristotelian in its general form,
while nevertheless also drawing on contemporary
sources (particularly the work of Roderick Chisholm
(1916–1999) and Donald Davidson). Crucial to the
account is the idea that actions are caused by the
choices of agents and that the capacity to choose
consists in an unconditioned power of agents to act
or to forbear from acting.
Donagan’s work in both the theory of action and
the theory of morality is characterised by a close at-
Donagan, Alan
tention to sources in the history of philosophy. In-
deed, a large part of Donagan’s published work is
given over to historical studies, not only of KANT
(1724–1804) and Aquinas (see Philosophical Pa-
pers, Volume 2 [1994], and Human Ends and Hu-
man Actions: An Exploration in St Thomas’s Treat-
ment [1985]), but also to major figures such as
DESCARTES (1596–1650), Berkeley (1685–1753),
and, especially, SPINOZA (1632–1677) (see Spinoza
[1989]). Donagan’s commitment to the history of
philosophy as integral to philosophy as such marks
him out from many contemporary philosophers
within the analytic tradition. One of Donagan’s
great virtues, and one of the lessons his work can be
seen as teaching, is that analytic rigour need not ex-
clude—indeed it often demands—historical atten-
tiveness.
See also: ACTS AND OMISSIONS; AGENT-CENTERED
MORALITY; ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS; AU-
TONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; CHRISTIAN ETHICS;
COMMON SENSE MORALISTS; CONSCIENCE; CONSE-
QUENTIALISM; DELIBERATION AND CHOICE; DES-
CARTES; DUNS SCOTUS; EXCUSES; JEWISH ETHICS;
KANT; KANTIAN ETHICS; LOVE; MORAL PLURALISM;
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION; PRACTICAL REASON[ING];
RATIONAL CHOICE; RATIONALITY VS. REASONABLE-
NESS; RUSSELL; SPINOZA; TELEOLOGICAL ETHICS;
THOMAS AQUINAS; WITTGENSTEINIAN ETHICS.
Bibliography
Works by Donagan
The Theory of Morality. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1977.
Human Ends and Human Actions: An Exploration in St.
Thomas’s Treatment. Aquinas Lecture Series. Milwau-
kee: Marquette University Press, 1985.
Choice: The Essential Element in Human Action. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987.
Spinoza. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989.
The Philosophical Papers of Alan Donagan. Edited by
J. E. Malpas, forewords by S. Toulmin and D. David-
son. 2 vols. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994.
Work about Donagan
Ethics 104 (1993). Contains a number of essays on Don-
agan’s life and work. Except for this journal number,
418
the secondary literature on Donagan’s work is rela-
tively sparse.
J. E. Malpas
double effect
This principle aims to provide specific guidelines for
determining when it is morally permissible to per-
form an action in pursuit of a good end in the full
knowledge that the action will also bring about bad
results. The principle has its historical roots in the
medieval NATURAL LAW tradition, especially in the
thought of THOMAS AQUINAS (1225?–1274), and
has been refined both in its general formulation and
in its application by generations of Catholic moral
theologians. Although there has been significant dis-
agreement about the precise formulation of this
principle, it generally states that, in cases where a
contemplated ACTION has both good effects and bad
effects, the action is permissible only if it is not
wrong in itself and if it does not require that one
directly intend the evil result. It has many obvious
applications to morally complex cases in which one
cannot achieve a particular desired good result with-
out also bringing about some clear evil. The princi-
ple of double effect, once largely confined to discus-
sions by Catholic moral theologians, in recent years
has figured prominently in the discussion of both
ethical theory and APPLIED ETHICS by a broad range
of contemporary philosophers.
Formulation of the Principle
Classical formulations of the principle of double
effect require that four conditions be met if the ac-
tion in question is to be morally permissible: first,
that the action contemplated be in itself either mor-
ally good or morally indifferent; second, that the bad
result not be directly intended; third, that the good
result not be a direct causal result of the bad result;
and fourth, that the good result be “proportionate
to” the bad result. Supporters of the principle argue
that, in situations of “double effect” where all these
conditions are met, the action under consideration
is morally permissible despite the bad result.
Each of these conditions has, however, been a
matter of considerable controversy. The first condi-
tion requires some criterion independent of an eval-
uation of consequences for determining the moral

character of the proposed action. Moral philoso-
phers who believe that the moral character of an
action is exhaustively determined by the nature of
its consequences will, of course, object to this re-
quirement.
The second condition assumes that a sharp dis-
tinction can be drawn between directly intending a
result and merely foreseeing it. This requirement has
been the subject of much debate. Some philosophers
argue that if an agent recognizes that a certain con-
sequence will inevitably follow from a contemplated
action, then in performing the action the agent must
be intending the consequence. Others argue, less
strongly, that defenders of double effect have failed
to delineate a practicable criterion for marking off
the intended from the merely foreseen. Defenders of
the principle typically respond by pointing to the im-
plicit recognition of the moral significance of this
distinction in the moral practices of ordinary persons.
The third condition writes into the principle of
double effect the so-called Pauline principle, “One
should never do evil so that good may come.” Again,
philosophers who reject the view that actions can
have a moral character independent of their conse-
quences will find this condition unacceptable.
The fourth condition, by bringing in the notion of
PROPORTIONALITY, has seemed to many philoso-
phers to undercut the absolutism presupposed by
the first condition. Although the first three condi-
tions have a decidedly anticonsequentialist charac-
ter, the fourth may appear to embrace consequen-
tialist reasoning. Defenders of the principle typically
attempt to accommodate the consequentialist char-
acter of the fourth condition while ensuring that it
does not render the more complex features of the
principle irrelevant.
Applications
The principle of double effect has played a sig-
nificant role in the discussion of many difficult nor-
mative questions. Its most prominent applications
are in MEDICAL ETHICS, where it figures prominently
in attempts to distinguish among permissible and
impermissible procedures in a range of obstetrical
cases. The Catholic magisterium has argued that the
principle allows one to distinguish morally among
cases where a pregnancy may need to be ended in
order to preserve the life of the mother. The prin-
ciple is alleged to allow the removal of a life-
419
double effect
threatening cancerous uterus, even though this pro-
cedure will bring about the death of a fetus, on the
grounds that in this case the death of the fetus is not
“directly” intended. The principle disallows cases,
however, in which a craniotomy (the crushing of the
fetus’s skull) is required to preserve a pregnant
woman’s life, on the grounds that here a genuine
evil, the death of the fetus, is “directly” intended.
But there is significant disagreement, even among
those philosophers who accept the principle, about
the cogency of this application. Some philosophers
and theologians, by emphasizing the fourth, “pro-
portionality,” condition, argue that the greater value
attaching to the pregnant woman’s life makes even
craniotomy morally acceptable. Others fail to see a
morally significant difference between the merely
“foreseen” death of the fetus in the cancerous uterus
case and the “directly” intended death in the crani-
otomy case.
The principle has also found application in a
number of other morally problematic areas where
actions bring about morally complex results. The use
of force by an individual in SELF-DEFENSE or by a
nation in wartime produces moral complexities that
invite its application. One might, indeed, regard the
“just war” position as an attempt to apply the prin-
ciple of double effect to cases in which military force
is in need of justification precisely because of its two-
fold effect.
Contemporary Discussions
The principle has been prominently discussed in
two different contexts recently. Broadly analytic phi-
losophers have examined the principle from the
point of view of contemporary action theory and phi-
losophy of mind and have paid especially close at-
tention to its treatment of the notion of INTENTION.
Moral philosophers in this same tradition have
drawn on these discussions to hone their use of the
principle in a number of areas of applied ethics. A
related, but in many respects quite different, discus-
sion has gone on among contemporary moral theo-
logians. Here emphasis has been placed on whether
the fourth (“proportionality”) condition moves the
principle in the direction of a more consequentialist
perspective than was allowed on the classical inter-
pretation. Proportionalists have defended this more
consequentialist interpretation against proponents
of the classical view.
double effect
See also: ABORTION; ACTION; ACTS AND OMISSIONS;
APPLIED ETHICS; CASUISTRY; CAUSATION AND RE-
SPONSIBILITY; COHERENTISM; CONSEQUENTIALISM;
DELIBERATION AND CHOICE; INTENTION; INTRANSI-
TIVITY; KILLING/LETTING DIE; MEDICAL ETHICS;
MORAL DILEMMAS; NATURAL LAW; PAUL; PROPOR-
TIONALITY; SELF-DEFENSE; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS;
THOMAS AQUINAS; WAR AND PEACE.
Bibliography
Anscombe, G. E. M. “Modern Moral Philosophy.” Philos-
ophy 33 (1958): 26–42. Influential defense of moral
significance of the distinction between the intended
and the foreseen.
Boyle, Joseph M. “Toward Understanding the Principle of
Double Effect.” Ethics 90 (1980): 527–38. Discusses
implications of double effect for action theory.
Foot, Philippa. “Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Ef-
fect.” In her Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in
Moral Philosophy, 19–32. Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1978. Critique of moral significance of the
distinction between the intended and the foreseen.
Hart, H. L. A. “Intention and Punishment.” In his Punish-
ment and Responsibility. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1968. Influential criticism of double effect.
Mangan, Joseph T. “An Historical Analysis of the Principle
of Double Effect.” Theological Studies 10 (1949): 41–
61. Historical material and a useful bibliography.
Nicholson, Susan. Abortion and the Roman Catholic
Church. Knoxville, TN: Religious Ethics, 1978. Critical
appraisal of the use of double effect in the Roman Cath-
olic discussion of abortion.
Ramsey, Paul, and Richard A. McCormick, eds. Doing Evil
to Achieve Good: Moral Choice in Conflict Situations.
Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1978. Useful an-
thology of largely theological articles.
William David Solomon
Duns Scotus, John (c. 1266–1308)
Medieval theologian and philosopher. He was born
in England; entered the Franciscan order; lectured
at Cambridge and Oxford and in Paris, where he
became regent master of theology in 1305; and
wrote a number of important works, among which
are the Ordinatto (commentaries on the Sentences
of Peter Lombard) and Quaestiones quodlibetales.
He died in 1308 at the Franciscan study house in
Cologne.
Scotus’s most significant contribution to ethical
theory is his doctrine of the will’s freedom and its
420
primacy over reason and appetite (DESIRE). For Sco-
tus, “nothing other than the will is the total cause of
volition in the will.” The will, in order to be free,
must first decide how it is going to act with respect
to opposing alternatives. And this entails, for Sco-
tus, that a moral agent can, without contradiction,
both will and not will the same action. This first act
of deciding for one alternative is always logically
prior to the acts that intend to produce that alter-
native. Nonetheless, freedom of the will must also
include both the power of choosing an alternative
and the power of enacting that alternative.
By way of contrast, for THOMAS AQUINAS
(1225?–1274) it is knowledge of the good that is
the primary cause of a moral act, the will always
being determined by what the intellect presents as
good. If the will is necessarily determined by knowl-
edge of the good, then the will is not free. If this
were the natural order of things, then the divine in-
tellect in apprehending the good would necessarily
determine God’s will; and consequently, God would
be unable to grant dispensation to those who kill,
steal, commit adultery, and so forth. Similarly, the
human will would not have the power to choose be-
tween willing or not willing an action if knowledge
of the morality of the action were the decisive factor.
But we can, in fact, know that an action (e.g., re-
fraining from smoking) is good for us and nonethe-
less still choose to smoke. According to Scotus, EVIL
is a privation and could never be the cause of an act
of will. Further, there is no object of the will that
necessarily determines the choice between it and one
of its alternatives. And since the intellect and appe-
tite are both receptive or passive with respect to
their objects, it is the will alone that “can by a single,
simple and unlimited volition tend to any object
whatsoever, and do so positively and negatively.”
Thus the will alone is the source of human freedom.
If the intellect is a causal factor of volition, then “it
is a subservient cause to the will,” determining only
the best means to the chosen end.
Scotus’s concept of human nature is the tradi-
tional Christianized version of ARISTOTLE (384–322
B.C.E.): Both body and soul are substances, the soul
having the rational, sensitive, and vegetative func-
tions. The rational soul has the major faculties of
will and intellect, while the appetitive soul has the
concupiscible (desiring) and irascible (averting)
functions. Scotus’s descriptions of the will show
how it, reason, and appetite are distinct functions of

one composite being. The intellect can know inde-
pendently of the will; but the will can direct the at-
tention of the intellect, either in turning the intellect
away from the right reason for an action or in caus-
ing the intellect to make errors by deliberating on
the best means to evil ends. The act of willing, al-
though primary, must nonetheless be preceded by
the intellectual act of understanding the object to be
willed or avoided. That is, knowledge of the good is
a necessary condition but not a cause of the will’s
acts.
Scotus further elaborates his argument for the
primacy of the will in the following way: The intel-
lect seeks truth but is determined by its object. In
contrast, the will seeks the good and can adopt both
a positive and a negative attitude toward it. Thus the
will has apparent power over its object, whereas the
intellect does not have power over truth. Now, since
truth is a good, and since the good is superior to
truth, the will is superior to knowledge (and desire).
Thus all human acts have the will as the primary
causal factor. Man’s intrinsic goodness consists in
willing the good, not in knowing (or desiring) it. We
can know (or desire) the good but nonetheless will
to do otherwise.
The moral law is dependent on the divine will,
but the human will is itself the source of the moral
value of human acts. By a process of intellectual in-
tuition (synderesis), we apprehend the first princi-
ples of morality, knowing them directly when, for
example, we understand the meaning of such con-
cepts as ‘love’ or ‘good.’ That is, to understand
these concepts is also to have a direct intuition of
the truth that ‘the good ought to be loved.’ Through
CONSCIENCE, we apply the moral law to concrete is-
sues. In a sense, then, synderesis and conscience,
being aspects of intellect, place the will under a cat-
egorical imperative with respect to the moral law.
For Scotus, the VIRTUES are states of the will and
consist of habits of making volitions in accordance
with right reasons. Thus PRUDENCE or PRACTICAL
WISDOM is a necessary prerequisite for the moral vir-
tues (those habits that control the appetites in ac-
cordance with right reason). But mere conformity
with the moral law does not constitute a moral act;
the act must be chosen for the right reasons. For
example, I may tell the truth to the right person un-
der the right circumstances, or I may do so for some
personal gain (not for the love of God but for self-
love). If I tell the truth because God commands it,
421
Duns Scotus, John
then my act is a moral one. But if I tell the truth
because it is the charitable thing to do, then my act
is only a meritorious one.
Scotus’s doctrine of the primacy of the will is it-
self a consequence of an earlier theological doctrine
about the absolute power of God. His account of
will grows out of this doctrine in the following way:
The doctrine holds that God created the universe in
accordance with a divine plan. In that plan, each
being was given a purpose or function that contrib-
utes to the perfection of the whole. This function
constitutes the created being’s unique good. If it
were the case that intellect (reason) is superior to
will, then God’s power to ordain the universe would
be limited by the goodness of the divine plan. That
is, God would have had to will the creation of this
particular universe because he (as intellect) knew
that it was the most perfect possible universe. How-
ever, the same doctrine also holds that God is all-
powerful. Thus, restricting God’s power by saying
he could have created only this particular universe
is to deny his omnipotence. The response of Scotus
(and others) to this apparent dilemma is to conclude
that God’s absolute power entails that he could have
ordained any other universe—including one in
which killing, stealing, and adultery are goods rather
than evils. Thus Scotus resolves the difficulty origi-
nally posed in PLATO’s (c. 430–347 B.C.E.) Euthy-
phro by saying that an action is good because God
wills it; God does not will an action because it is
good. For example, God does not first know that
truth telling is intrinsically good and then will it;
rather truth telling is good because God wills it so.
The present universe is therefore perfect because
it is an object freely chosen by God’s perfect will.
Moreover, at any time in the history of the universe,
God (having absolute power) could change the par-
ticular order he has created. A consequence of this
position is that if a being’s good is its function rela-
tive to the perfection of the whole, then that good
itself may change; thus the notion of value as an
intrinsic property of a being or action is thereby
greatly weakened. Love of God becomes the only
absolutely intrinsic value, and all other actions or
beings are only contingently good. All beings and
actions acquire value only by being willed by God.
The consequence of this view of things for the
modern world is enormous. For what the modern
world does is make a relatively straightforward sub-
stitution of man for God, leading to the conclusion
Duns Scotus, John
that man is the source of all value—as, for example,
in HOBBES (1588–1679) and NIETZSCHE (1844–
1900), or as in the belief that a law is just because
either a sovereign or a people will it. Further, if an
object or an action has no intrinsic value, then it may
acquire an exchange value in an endless process of
trading one consumable good for another, a process
which to the medieval Scotus would have been ab-
surd precisely because it is incapable of natural com-
pletion. But the point here is that once Scotus’s VOL-
UNTARISM is moved from a theistic to a humanistic
context, the ground is prepared for the development
of the ethical relativism and ethical SUBJECTIVISM
that seem endemic to modern moral philosophy.
See also: CHRISTIAN ETHICS; CONSCIENCE; DESIRE;
EVIL; FREE WILL; FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM;
GOOD, THEORIES OF THE; HISTORY OF WESTERN
ETHICS: 5, 6; INTUITIONISM; THEISM; THEOLOGICAL
ETHICS; THOMAS AQUINAS; VOLUNTARISM.
Bibliography
Work by Duns Scotus
Selected Writings. Edited by Allan B. Wolter. Edinburgh:
Nelson, 1962.
Works about Duns Scotus
Harris, C. R. S. Duns Scotus. New York: Humanities
Press, 1959.
Lef, Gordon. The Dissolution of the Medieval Outlook.
New York: Harper and Row, 1976.
Wolter, Allan B. Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality.
Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1986.
George Proctor
Durkheim, Émile (1858–1917)
Durkheim established SOCIOLOGY as an academic
discipline in France, where he had a wide cultural
and political influence, not least via primary school
teachers to whom he lectured on MORAL EDUCA-
TION. He wrote bold, original, pioneering works that
are still influential within sociology, history, and so-
cial anthropology. They exhibit a distinctive method
and perspective which was applied and developed
by his collaborators, students, and followers. They
include The Division of Labour in Society (1893),
The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Suicide
422
(1897), The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
(1912), Sociology and Philosophy (1924), Moral
Education (1925), and Professional Ethics and Civic
Morals (1950).
He saw sociology as central to the social sciences
and having as its object a distinct reality external to
and constraining on individuals but also (as he came
increasingly to stress) internalized by them. To dem-
onstrate its explanatory possibilities, he sought to
explore the very limits of social determination by at-
tempting sociological explanations of areas of life
apparently intractable to it. So in Suicide he aimed
to explain, in terms of social causes, variations in the
rate at which people commit this apparently most
private and individual of acts. In doing so, he offered
a diagnosis of his own society that he had developed
elsewhere in his work. There was, he argued, a
breakdown in social integration and regulation, a
condition of EGOISM and anomie that led some to
the extreme of SUICIDE. This had resulted from the
rapidity of industrialization and from the collapse of
older normative frameworks, and the consequent
impact on economic, industrial, and domestic life.
Durkheim saw it as “abnormal,” relative to the stage
modern societies had reached. He sought to correct
it by encouraging the growth of occupational ethics
and a civic morality based on INDIVIDUALISM —by
which he meant an increasingly humane and secular
belief-system which set a high value on the individ-
ual and invoked EQUALITY of opportunity, the work
ethic and social justice. He saw this “religion of in-
dividualism” as functional to the integration of mod-
ern societies, but capable of being threatened by at-
avistic social forces, as during the Dreyfus Affair in
the 1890s (he was a strong Dreyfusard) and by the
Germans in 1914 (he was a strong French patriot).
Morality was at the very center of his work al-
though he never synthesized it as he hoped to. In
Moral Education, he offered a provocative analysis
of morality as combining the imperative and the de-
sirable, the “spirit of discipline” and “attachment to
social groups,” with the progressive introduction of
autonomy through rational understanding. In gen-
eral, Durkheim believed that without the postulate
of a society specifically distinct from individuals,
morality would have no object and duty no roots.
He attempted to use his account of morality to solve
some fundamental questions of moral philosophy—
the nature of value judgments, the autonomy of
morals, and what he saw as the dualism of human

nature which, according to him, results from a per-
manent tension between the demands of social life
and those of the individual’s organic nature, a ten-
sion which can only increase with the advance of
civilization.
See also: AUTONOMY OF ETHICS; CIVIC GOOD AND
VIRTUE; CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIC DUTIES;DEWEY;
EGOISM; EXTERNALISM AND INTERNALISM; INDIVID-
UALISM; MORAL COMMUNITY, BOUNDARIES OF;
MORAL EDUCATION; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; SOCIOL-
OGY; SUICIDE; TUFTS; WORK.
Bibliography
Works by Durkheim
The Division of Labour in Society. Translated by W. D.
Halls. London: Macmillan, 1983 [1893]. Introduction
by L. Coser.
The Rules of Sociological Method. Selected Texts on So-
ciology and Its Method. Edited by S. Lukes. Translated
by W. D. Halls. London: Macmillan, 1982 [1894].
Suicide: A Study in Sociology. Translated by J. A. Spauld-
ing, and G. Simpson. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1951
[1897].
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Translated
with an introduction by Karen E. Fields. New York:
Free Press, 1995 [1912].
Sociology and Philosophy. Translated by D. F. Pocock.
Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1953 [1926]. Introduction by
J. G. Peristiany.
Moral Education: A Study in the Theory and Application
of the Sociology of Education. Translated by E. K. Wil-
son and H. Schnurer. New York: Free Press, 1961
[1925].
Professional Ethics and Civic Morals. Translated by C.
Brookfield. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957
[1950].
Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society: Selected Writ-
ings. Translated by M. Traugott. Edited by R. B. Bellah.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.
Works about Durkheim
Cotterrell, Roger. Emile Durkheim: Law in a Moral Do-
main. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.
Lukes, Steven. Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work. Lon-
don: Allen Lane, 1973.
Wallwork, Ernest. Durkheim, Morality and Milieu. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1972.
Steven Lukes
423
duty and obligation
duty and obligation
The idea that certain acts are required, or ought to
be done, can be found both in philosophical and in
everyday practical discussion. Such requirements
are often spoken of as obligations or duties. No
hard-and-fast distinction can be drawn between the
two terms. Generally ‘obligation’ is used for more
abstract claims (e.g., we would speak more readily
of ‘principles of obligation’ than of ‘principles of
duty’) and ‘duty’ for more specific demands (e.g., it
would be more natural to speak of a nurse’s duty to
check a patient’s temperature than of an obligation
to do so). However, in nearly all contexts the terms
are interchangeable, and supposedly systematic dis-
tinctions between them are usually attempts to leg-
islate tidiness where there is none.
Ethical and Nonethical Duties
The concepts of duty and obligation are not tied
to any one domain of PRACTICAL REASONING. In
many contexts some restriction is stated or implied:
a particular discussion will be about legal obligation
or religious duties, about parental duties or obliga-
tions of justice. Ethical skepticism is often formu-
lated as a claim that there are no specifically ethical
or moral duties that provide universal standards for
assessing and criticizing duties of other sorts. For
example, there are some who think that any appar-
ently ethical requirement is ultimately a religious
duty (perhaps based on divine command); they may
claim with Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) that “if God
is dead, then everything is permitted.” Others hold
that what are termed ‘ethical duties’ are in fact the
conventional requirements of a given society and its
socially constituted roles (e.g., HEGEL [1770–1831]
and BRADLEY [1846–1924]). Yet others think that
all claims about what ought to be done are ultimately
prudential claims (EGOISM). The protagonists of any
of these positions think that it is either redundant or
obfuscating to talk of specifically ethical or moral
duties or obligations (religious ethics, moral skep-
ticism, relativism, egoism).
Deontic Terms
What is common to all these positions, as well as
to those who think that there are specifically ethical
duties or obligations, is that all arguments using
duty and obligation
these terms rely on a certain formal structure con-
necting the deontic terms (permissible, obligatory,
forbidden; the term deontic, like the term deonto-
logical, is derived from the Greek word for ought).
Specifically, acts that are obligatory are ones that it
is permissible to do and forbidden to omit; acts that
are forbidden are ones that it is impermissible to do,
i.e., obligatory to omit; acts that are neither obliga-
tory nor forbidden are (merely) permissible. The
study of the relations between these deontic terms
has been developed formally in deontic logic and in
an extended informal version (most often deployed
in discussion of obligations of law and justice) by
Hohfeld (1879–1918). In ordinary conversation
these formal terms are often replaced by more col-
loquial ones which indicate that certain acts are re-
quired, by using verbs such as ‘ought to’ or ‘had to’
or ‘must,’ and the adjective ‘right.’ The term ‘right’
is unfortunately ambiguous; it may signify either ac-
tion that is permissible (at least ‘all right’) or action
that is obligatory (not merely all right, but specifi-
cally ‘the right thing to do’). Although it can be use-
ful for indicating the entire domain of deontic claims
(some writers speak of ‘the categories of right,’
RAWLS and others claim that ‘the right is prior to
the good’), it must be used with care in making spe-
cific deontic claims.
The Role of Obligation in Ethical Theories
Those who hold that there are specifically ethical
or moral obligations or duties provide a great variety
of arguments for their views. Indeed, since the no-
tion of obligation is part of virtually all theoretical
and popular ethical discussion (the only exception
might be certain types of strongly antinomian, or rule-
rejecting, VIRTUE ETHICS), almost any ethical theory
either is or incorporates a theory of obligation.
Teleology and deontology. A common way of
classifying the part played by the notion of obliga-
tion in an ethical theory is to ask whether the theory
is teleological (the notion of the good as fundamen-
tal) or deontological (the notion of the right, and
more specifically that of obligation, as fundamental).
Teleological theories treat obligations and duties as
derivative; deontological theories treat them as pri-
mary. The distinction is less useful than it might ap-
pear. Although it is clear that UTILITARIANISM counts
as a teleological theory, since right action (here,
obligatory action) is defined as whatever tends to
424
have the best results, the classification applies much
less well to other supposedly teleological positions.
For example, ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) gives an
account of right action as action that conforms to
what would be done by someone who has the VIR-
TUES, and considers a life lived according to the vir-
tues, and with enjoyment, as comprising human
flourishing, or the good for man. Here it is hard to
be sure which ethical notion is fundamental; for this
reason some Aristotle scholars reject the classifica-
tion of Aristotle’s ethics as teleological rather than
deontological. Similarly, the label deontological fits
happily onto those contemporary theories of RIGHTS
which treat right action as basic and which often
deny that we can vindicate any claims about the hu-
man good or about the virtues. However, it does not
apply well to Kant’s ethical theory, which is often
cited as the classical paradigm of DEONTOLOGY be-
cause it offers a highly developed account of duty,
since KANT (1724–1804) defines duty in terms of
the more fundamental category of good will.
Consequentialism and nonconsequentialism. A
less ambitious and less questionable distinction
demarcates positions that define right (including
above all obligatory) action in terms of good results
from those that do not, so distinguishing conse-
quentialist from non-consequentialist ethics. Non-
consequentialist positions are very varied: they in-
clude not only the theories of rights and justice in
which deontic notions are taken as fundamental, but
ethics of virtue and perfectionist positions. Apart
from noting that obligation and duty are always sub-
ordinate in consequentialist theories, there is prob-
ably no very useful general approach to classifying
ethical positions by the centrality they assign to ob-
ligation, and the topic has to be pursued by way of
the details of various theoretical positions.
However, the distinction between consequential-
ist and non-consequentialist positions is a deep one.
Consequentialists identify actions (‘options’) by ref-
erence to their results, and need to find a way of
assessing and comparing the expected results of dif-
ferent actions. There are notorious difficulties in the
way of devising or defending any metric for the value
of results. Since non-consequentialists do not derive
claims about obligations from claims about results,
they don’t need to solve this problem, but they need
to provide some way of picking out the morally sig-
nificant types of action. Usually they use the princi-
ple or rule or act-description that an act embodies

to define classes of action. However, acts have mul-
tiple descriptions: a single act may correctly be de-
scribed as killing a human being, as saving an in-
nocent victim from a would-be murderer, and as
taking the law into one’s own hands. This creates
considerable preliminary difficulties for non-conse-
quentialist accounts of obligation: determining which
act descriptions are relevant for moral purposes is a
controversial and difficult matter. These seemingly
dry and awkward issues lie on the cusp between the-
ories of action and of ethics, and are of fundamental
importance for establishing any systematic account
of obligations. Their discussion is probably best
pursued by investigating specific theories of moral
obligation.
Structural Classifications of Duties
and Obligations
A range of distinctions among types of obligation
and duty is used in many different theories; hence
these can be set out in abstraction from any partic-
ular ethical theory or views about METAETHICS.
From natural law to human rights. One of the
oldest distinctions made is between natural and
positive duties or obligations. Natural duties or ob-
ligations are thought of as deriving from or reflecting
human nature, reason, or divine command (or all
three!), and are assumed to be universally binding.
By contrast, positive duties are so-called because
they are thought of as posited by the rulers, laws, or
conventions of a specific time or place, to which they
are restricted. Those who assert that there are no
universal, natural obligations are often relativists;
they contend that there is no external vantage point
from which we can assess critically the whole system
of positive duties and obligations of a particular so-
cial order. Although we may legitimately call these
ethical duties, we should have no illusions that there
are universal ethical standards.
Natural duties have their origin in the Stoic con-
ception of ius naturale or NATURAL LAW, which was
later assimilated into CHRISTIAN ETHICS and into the
political philosophy and jurisprudence of the early
moderns (GROTIUS [1583–1645], PUFENDORF
[1632–1694], and LOCKE [1632–1704]). During
that period, increasing emphasis was placed on the
recipient’s rather than the agent’s perspective on
duties; the politically charged concept of natural
rights, rather than the less alluring concept of nat-
425
duty and obligation
ural duties, became the focus of much discussion.
Eighteenth-century claims to natural rights were of-
ten rhetorically inflated and poorly argued; they
were much criticized in the aftermath of the French
Revolution (1789–1799), which was widely taken
to reveal that the Rights of Man led to revolutionary
terror.
Since World War II these discussions have re-
vived, with the emphasis once again on rights to be
claimed and received rather than on obligations to
be discharged. The fundamental document of the
modern HUMAN RIGHTS movement is the United
Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of
1948. Human rights are the contemporary descen-
dants of natural rights, although few try to vindicate
them as given either by God or by nature. Their vin-
dication—still a highly controversial matter—must
be reasoned. Human rights are thought of as ulti-
mate moral standards which determine human ob-
ligations and by which positive laws and other social
arrangements may be judged. A central aim of con-
temporary work on the principles of justice is to es-
tablish which of various rival accounts of supposed
human rights (and indirectly human duties) can be
vindicated.
Perfect and imperfect duties. While it is gener-
ally accepted that (given the basic deontic relations)
there must be some obligation corresponding to
every human right, the allocation of these obliga-
tions is sometimes left vague. Not all obligations
need have corresponding rights, and it is useful to
distinguish those that do from those that do not.
This distinction is often marked by speaking of du-
ties that have corresponding rights as perfect duties
and of those that do not as imperfect duties. (There
have been other uses of the perfect/imperfect ter-
minology, but this is probably the most fundamental
distinction that it is now used to mark.) The impor-
tance of the distinction between perfect and imper-
fect duties can be considered separately for the dis-
tinct cases of special and universal duties.
Special duties are relatively uncomplicated. They
are owed by specified agents to others, with whom
the obligation-bearer has some special (i.e., defined)
relationship. In the case of perfect special duties
those others have correlative rights. For example,
particular employers may have special obligations to
their employees, who have special rights to their em-
ployer’s performance of those duties. Other special
duties may be thought to lack corresponding rights,
duty and obligation
although it is determinate to whom the duty is di-
rected. For example, parents may think they ought
to provide not only basic care but holidays for their
children. Yet many people would say that the chil-
dren have a right to the care (indeed a right that
ought to be enforced by law), but would doubt that
they had a right to a holiday. If this is correct, there
are also imperfect special duties. Since special duties
of either sort presuppose some definite social rela-
tions, some claim that they are only positive duties.
Others hold that they are specific implementations
of universal principles of obligation adapted to de-
terminate social circumstances.
Universal duties too may be either perfect or im-
perfect. Nearly all contemporary writers think that
there are universal duties to which universal rights
correspond; many think that there are other univer-
sal duties to which no rights correspond. Perfect uni-
versal duties are owed by all to all: everyone can
claim the performance of the duty as a right. For
example, a perfect universal duty not to kill would
be owed by all to each; each would have a right not
to be killed by any other. Some maintain that the
only action we can undertake for all others is not to
interfere with them, and conclude that perfect uni-
versal duties are always the counterparts to liberty
rights. Others consider that there might be perfect
universal duties which come into play only when we
interact with others, but which cannot be thought of
as special duties, since no determinate relationship
is assumed, and that these might require more than
noninterference—for example, duties of courtesy or
respect might require more than mere noninterfer-
ence with others we encounter. More controversially,
some assert that there are universal rights to welfare,
but usually find difficulty in showing who bears the
counterpart obligations.
There may also be imperfect universal duties,
which are incumbent on all, but which are incom-
plete in the sense that there is no corresponding
right, and indeed can be none, because it is not de-
termined to whom the duty is owed. For example,
everyone may have a duty to help others, but since
nobody can help all others (helping needs time, ef-
fort, resources) such an obligation could not be
owed to all. One result of the shift of focus from
duties and obligations to rights and ENTITLEMENTS
in contemporary debates is that imperfect obliga-
tions have been greatly neglected. Many rights the-
426
orists assume that there are no obligations except
those to which rights correspond—for them all ob-
ligations are, by definition, perfect obligations. This
leaves them in some quandary about the classifica-
tion of acts that were traditionally held matters of
imperfect obligation, such as helpfulness, kindness,
and other social virtues. If imperfect obligations are
disallowed, such action must either be classified as
permissible but morally insignificant, or be seen as
supererogatory. The first view seems to many to un-
derestimate the moral significance of the social vir-
tues, and the second to suggest that they are special
adornments rather than necessary elements of the
moral life. This dilemma is most readily avoided by
allowing for the possibility of duties to which no
rights correspond, and seeing whether there are rea-
sons to think that there are such duties.
Strict and wide duties. Duties are also sometimes
characterized as either strict or narrow and con-
trasted with others that are wide or broad. The terms
are used to contrast duties whose performance is
precisely specified, with others that leave more to
the agent’s discretion or interpretation. Whereas the
distinction drawn between perfect and imperfect du-
ties focused on one important source of indetermi-
nacy in duties—lack of counterpart rights, and in
the case of universal imperfect duties, lack even of
identifiable recipients of the duty—the terms wide
and broad are used more generally to cover various
ways in which duties may be incompletely specified.
Wide duties typically characterize the action they re-
quire only in the most schematic terms. For example,
a (wide) duty of kindness or of FAIRNESS does not
tell us what to do with any precision, but a (strict)
duty to sound the alarm when the enemy attacks is
quite narrowly specified. However, as this example
makes plain, even narrowly specified duties may leave
much to the judgment of the one whose duty it is.
The Enforcement of Duties
Sometimes it is said that the distinction between
perfect and imperfect duties is really between duties
that can or ought to be enforced by law, and those
that either cannot or ought not to be so enforced.
However, there must presumably be some deeper
feature that explains why enforcement is sometimes
feasible or obligatory and sometimes not. Evidently
duties which can actually be claimed by the corre-

sponding RIGHT HOLDERS are particularly suitable
for enforcement by legal sanctions, since failure to
fulfill the duty can be clearly established and is likely
to be protested. It is harder to establish whether du-
ties without corresponding rights can or ought to be
enforced by law. Failure to fulfill such duties would
require assessment of the entire course of an agent’s
activities over some period of time; however, if this
could be done enforcement would be possible.
Whether it would be either morally permissible or
required is a further and disputed topic. Discussions
of the enforcement of duty pay rather little attention
to other, nonlegal ways of enforcing duties, which
are more frequently discussed in debates on MORAL
EDUCATION and social legitimation.
Criticisms of Theories of Duty
The indeterminacy of duties. One recurrent
criticism of theories that make duties (or rights) fun-
damental is that the act descriptions by which duties
are identified are often either too determinate or too
indeterminate. In the first case theories of duties are
criticized for being too rigid and specific, and in the
second for being too formal and abstract in their
account of ethical requirements. This is a classical
criticism made of Kant’s ethics by Hegel, and is com-
mon in contemporary criticisms of theories of justice
offered by communitarians, virtue ethicists, and cer-
tain feminist writers. The two criticisms clearly can-
not consistently apply to the same elements of any
theory. Advocates of duty typically argue both for
abstract principles and for specific ways in which
those principles might be implemented in actual cir-
cumstances. It is not abstraction or specificity them-
selves, but confusion over their proper role that may
reasonably be criticized. Theories of duty would be
rigid and insensitive to circumstances if they pre-
sented highly specific rules as the sole basis for
decision making. They would be too abstract to
guide action if not supplemented by procedures for
judging how an abstract principle should be applied
in particular circumstances. An adequate theory of
duty needs to distinguish clearly between abstract
principles of obligation and specific judgments of
duty that are made with the help of these principles
after due deliberation about actual circumstances.
Conflicts of obligation. These same issues are
the background for a second set of criticisms of the-
427
duty and obligation
ories of obligation. These criticisms center on the
claim that it is impossible to give a coherent account
of obligation, since any two proposed principles of
obligation will at times demand incompatible acts.
Some critics consider that such conflicts lead to
TRAGEDY; even if they do not generally lead to trag-
edy, they are the source of intractable and painful
MORAL DILEMMAS. Certainly it would be a serious
objection to any account of duty if it demanded
commitment to formally incompatible principles of
obligation. However, it is possible to avoid commit-
ment to incompatible principles. What is not possi-
ble is to find principles whose specific implementa-
tion will never present us with conflicts. For
example, a commitment to justice and to FRIENDSHIP
may pull us in two directions if one of our friends
can be helped only by unjust means. Indeed only
those with magically lucky lives are likely to avoid
all such dilemmas. Whichever way agents in such
situations decide, they are likely to regret their in-
ability to honor both commitments. However, a con-
flict between the specific implications of two prin-
ciples of duty in a given context is an insuperable
objection only to those theories of duty that pur-
portedly provide a complete ethical algorithm for all
situations (e.g., many consequentialists propose eth-
ical algorithms, designed to resolve all ethical dilem-
mas if the necessary information is available).
Other criticisms of theories of duty. Certain
other criticism of theories of duty recur frequently.
One charge is that theories of duty are necessarily
individualistic, unable to take account of the social
bonds that link agents into communities or of the
possibility that certain responsibilities are shared
rather than individual. A closely related charge, of-
ten made by writers in the Marxist tradition, is that
theories of duty, and above all of rights, are relevant
only when social relations are antagonistic, and that
an ethically superior vision of human life would seek
to overcome antagonisms, so making a society of
love and virtue possible. A third criticism is that the-
ories of obligation are blind to the ways in which
ethical responses to others may demand feelings and
emotions as well as the performance of required
acts. Responses to these criticisms range from dis-
missive insistence that they are not ethically relevant
criticisms, to claims that so long as imperfect obli-
gations are recognized, the tension between social
duty and obligation
and emotional life and the demand of duty is true to
the realities of human life.
What Duties Do We Have?
It is not possible to summarize all the claims that
have been made about the content and scope of hu-
man duties, since these vary widely in different eth-
ical theories; it is feasible to list a few common
claims.
Duties to self and to others. All writers acknowl-
edge that if there are any duties, then there are duties
which are owed to others; some insist that there are
also duties to oneself (e.g., duties of SELF-RESPECT,
or of self-improvement), although the idea of a right
against oneself is generally thought paradoxical. In
any case, duties to others are discussed far more than
duties to self, although some writers attend to the
question ‘What sort of person should I seek to be?’
Duties of justice. Duties to others are generally
thought to include a wide range of duties of justice,
and some writers claim that these are the only uni-
versal duties that ought to be enforced by law or that
are strict (i.e., relatively specific in their demands).
However, all these points are disputed. Older writers
also list a large range of imperfect duties, such as
duties of CHARITY or BENEVOLENCE; however, for
those contemporary writers who deny the possibility
of imperfect duties, these cannot count as duties at
all. Whereas Kant contrasts duties of justice with
duties of virtues whose recipients remain unspeci-
fied, those contemporary writers who deny the pos-
sibility of imperfect duties must regard duties of vir-
tue as impossible. Nevertheless, duties other than
those of justice lead a shadowy half-life on the edge
of contemporary theories of justice (for example, in
Rawls’s account of natural duties). Although the
typical list of moral duties accepted by contempo-
rary writers has shrunk, the category of duty remains
central to almost all ethical positions.
See also: ACTS AND OMISSIONS; CONSEQUENTIALISM;
CONVENTIONS; DEONTOLOGY; EGOISM; ENTITLE-
MENTS; HUMAN RIGHTS; KANT; LEGAL PHILOSOPHY;
MORAL DILEMMAS; MORAL RELATIVISM; MORAL
RULES; NATURAL LAW; NORMS; OBEDIENCE TO LAW;
OUGHT IMPLIES CAN; PRESCRIPTIVISM; PRUDENCE;
RIGHT, CONCEPTS OF; RIGHTS; SKEPTICISM IN ETHICS;
TELEOLOGICAL ETHICS; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS; UTIL-
ITARIANISM; VIRTUE ETHICS.
428
Bibliography
Campbell, Thomas. “Perfect and Imperfect Duties.” The
Modern Schoolman 102 (1975): 185–94.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. On Duties. In his Selected Works.
Harmondsworth: Pelican.
d’Entrèves, A. P. Natural Law: An Introduction to Legal
Philosophy. London: Hutchinson University Library,
1970.
Engstrom, Stephen, and Jennifer Whiting, eds. Aristotle,
Kant and the Stoics: Rethinking Happiness and Duty.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Hare, Richard M. The Language of Morals. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1952.
———. Freedom and Reason. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1963.
Herman, Barbara. The Practice of Moral Judgment. Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Mor-
als. In Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy, trans-
lated by M. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996 [1785].
———. The Metaphysics of Morals. In Immanuel Kant:
Practical Philosophy, translated by M. Gregor. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 [1797].
Marcus, Ruth Barcan. “Moral Dilemmas and Consis-
tency.” Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 121–36.
O’Neill, Onora. Towards Justice and Virtue: A Construc-
tive Account of Practical Reasoning. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1996.
Thomas Aquinas. Summa theologica. In Basic Writings of
Saint Thomas Aquinas, edited by Anton C. Pegis. New
York: Random House, 1945 [1266–73].
Weil, Simone. The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declara-
tion of Duties towards Mankind. Translated by Arthur
Wills. New York: Putnam, 1952 [1949].
Williams, Bernard. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy.
London: Fontana, 1985.
Onora O’Neill
Dworkin, Ronald (1931– )
A highly original and influential figure in Anglo-
American jurisprudence and political philosophy in
the late twentieth century, Ronald Dworkin received
his education in philosophy and law at Harvard
and Oxford Universities. After clerking for Judge
Learned Hand (1872–1961) on the United States
Court of Appeals, Second Circuit (1957–58), Dwor-
kin spent several years as an associate at the presti-
gious New York firm of Sullivan and Cromwell. In
1962, he joined the law faculty of Yale University,
and in 1969 was elected to succeed H. L. A. HART

(1907–1992) as Professor of Jurisprudence at Ox-
ford. He remained at Oxford until 1998, when he
moved to the University of London. Since 1975, he
has also held the position of Professor of Law at New
York University.
Dworkin is a wonderfully lucid writer, bringing
philosophical sophistication to bear on issues in ju-
risprudence and politics without sacrificing either
accessibility or complexity. His preferred medium is
the essay, written for educated audiences and ap-
pearing in such periodicals as The New York Review
of Books. Even articles written for law reviews and
academic journals are free of the usual scholarly
density and jargon. Dworkin’s topical pieces—on is-
sues such as free speech, CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, affir-
mative action, and government support of the arts—
are invariably instructive and of enduring value.
Most of them have been collected, along with his
major jurisprudential essays, in Taking Rights Seri-
ously (1977), A Matter of Principle (1985), and
Freedom’s Law (1996). In 1986, Dworkin offered a
sustained exposition of his jurisprudence in Law’s
Empire, and in 1993 he published what many regard
as his most beautifully written work, Life’s Domin-
ion: An Argument about Abortion, Euthanasia, and
Individual Freedom (1993).
In jurisprudence, Dworkin began as a forceful
critic of the legal positivist doctrines so elegantly for-
mulated in Hart’s work. He disputed, in particular,
Hart’s claim that a society’s laws are identified by
their pedigree, that is, their origin in the authorita-
tive pronouncements of officials, and that they are
clearly distinguishable from moral principles. In
Dworkin’s view, to the contrary, an adequate ac-
count of law and legal institutions rests on contro-
versial ideas of political morality. This alternative to
positivism is not a reversion to traditional NATURAL
LAW theory (in which morality trumps positive law)
but a “third theory” of law, integrating legal and po-
litical argument while still affirming the distinctive-
ness of legal reasoning. Although Dworkin has mod-
ified his views in some respects over the years, the
central thread has remained fairly constant.
The starting point is a concern about judicial dis-
cretion in a democratic polity. Do judges have a law-
ful, reasoned basis for decisions in controversial
cases, especially those involving abstract constitu-
tional provisions, or are their decisions at bottom
arbitrary, having no firmer ground than personal
predilections? Dworkin’s concern is moral. If judges
429
Dworkin, Ronald
do not apply existing law when deciding cases, liti-
gants are subject to liabilities retroactively, which is
unfair. And if a judge’s ruling in a constitutional case
is just one opinion among others, why should it take
priority over whatever opinion emerges victorious in
the legislative process? The positivist account of
judicial decision reinforces these concerns. If law
consists in discrete and readily identified official dec-
larations, judges lack authoritative grounds for de-
cisions in novel cases. That is, in hard cases the law
runs out. At such moments, a judge exercises dis-
cretion in ways that are, necessarily, uncontrolled by
law. Citizens’ legal RIGHTS and duties are the prod-
uct of arbitrary invention, not reasoned discovery.
Dworkin regards this account as deeply inaccu-
rate as a description of the political task that judges
are assigned. Every case in which explicit law runs
out poses a question of interpretation, requiring a
kind of reasoned elaboration. Although the law in
hard cases is not literally preexisting, it is con-
structed within definite constraints and may be said
to be discovered. First, a decision must fit the pol-
ity’s previous political, including legal, commit-
ments as embodied in statutes, case decisions, and
other official pronouncements. Then, to the extent
that some indeterminacy remains, the judge extrap-
olates from these materials in the most morally ap-
pealing way. To envision this task, Dworkin favors a
literary analogy: A judge is like a serial novelist, con-
tinuing a story begun by earlier writers, attempting
to make the story the best that it can be. So in a hard
case a judge faces a question of political morality,
but the relevant morality is not personal. It is the
political morality of existing law, that is, the princi-
ples implicit in accepted legal practice. The question
a judge asks is: What are the polity’s deepest com-
mitments, and what do they entail for concrete sit-
uations? To the extent that these background prin-
ciples are themselves not sufficiently determinate
when brought to bear on a specific case, a judge’s
responsibility is to elaborate them consistent with
what is clearly settled. This is an exercise of reason,
aiming at a coherent account of the polity’s (not the
judge’s) basic commitments. In this sense, judicial
decision is never uncontrolled by law, even in hard
cases.
Thus, adjudication advances by being fused with
moral argument. The upshot is that the law of a pol-
ity consists not simply in the discrete statutes and
rules enacted by officials but in the general princi-
Dworkin, Ronald
ples of justice and FAIRNESS that these statutes and
rules presuppose by way of implicit justification.
Explicit law, we could say, is only the more evident
aspect of the body of NORMS rooted in the moral
CONVENTIONS and understandings of community
members. A principle or rule is part of the law of a
polity if it figures in the soundest theory that can be
offered as a justification of the plainly valid rules of
law of the jurisdiction in question, and the soundest
theory rests on the most defensible political theory
of the polity. Consequently, there is no morally neu-
tral way of determining what the law is. A judge’s
opinion as to the legal rights of the litigants is only
as good as the moral arguments that can be mus-
tered in its favor. This clarifies what Dworkin means
when he says that there is a right answer even in
hard cases—or, at least, that it is a mistake to pre-
sume there is no right answer. It is not to say that
existing legal standards are exhaustive or unambig-
uous. It is a statement about the responsibilities of
judges—namely, that in deciding hard cases they
have a duty to move beyond already articulated stan-
dards and appeal to the principles that would com-
pose the most defensible justifying theory.
Guiding the judge in this endeavor is the ideal of
INTEGRITY. Judges strive to formulate legal stan-
dards expressing a coherent set of principles, as
though a single author (the community personified)
had created all legal rights and duties, reflecting a
single moral vision. Although Dworkin was inclined
for many years to regard the judge as a lone theorist,
a Hercules, elaborating this vision as a kind of per-
sonal achievement, recently he has stressed the idea
that each judge is a partner with other officials, past
and future, who together construct a coherent and
common constitutional morality. Here the connec-
tion between Dworkin’s jurisprudence and his LIB-
ERALISM becomes explicit. For, according to Dwor-
kin, liberalism (suitably understood) provides the
most coherent account of the underlying principles
of U.S. law. It follows that judges who faithfully per-
form their assigned task of rendering judgment in
the polity’s name will apply liberal principles. The
touchstone for formulating these principles is what
Dworkin calls “the last clear liberal settlement,” i.e.,
the New Deal. This settlement includes: reduction
of inequalities of wealth through progressive taxa-
tion, assistance to the disadvantaged, government
intervention in the economy to reduce unemploy-
ment and control inflation, efforts to secure racial
430
EQUALITY, elimination of criminal sanctions for con-
troversial but nonharmful behavior, and so on.
Dworkin argues that these positions and policies are
captured by the principle that each citizen has a right
to equal concern and respect, which is thus the most
fundamental principle of our political morality and
of constitutional law. Much of Dworkin’s work on
topical issues consists of efforts to work out the im-
plications of this principle.
In putting equality at the center of liberalism,
Dworkin reformulates the traditional idea of LIB-
ERTY. Liberty is not the condition of being free of
legal or social constraints to act as one may wish
(liberty as license); it is the condition of being an
independent and equal person (liberty as indepen-
dence). In the first sense, the claim that individuals
have a right to liberty is indefensible. It is infringe-
ments on independence that require justification.
Thus, “basic liberties” are not basic because they
contain a greater amount of liberty, in some quan-
titative sense; they are basic because they protect the
rights that secure equal concern and respect. To ac-
cord respect is to acknowledge that each citizen is
capable of forming and acting on an intelligent con-
ception of how life should be lived. To demonstrate
concern is to realize that each is capable of suffering
harm and being frustrated in the pursuit of chosen
ends, which can result in a diminished sense of DIG-
NITY and personal worth. So the central idea is that
government treats citizens with equal concern and
respect when it is neutral on the question of what
gives meaning and value to life. Since citizens differ
in their conceptions of the good life, government
treats them as equals (as morally independent) only
if it does not aim to prefer one conception to an-
other. For example, a policy that gives greater con-
trol of available resources to citizens with identifi-
able life projects violates the required neutrality. Or,
a policy resting on a view of what sexual experience
should be like, and condemning alternative views as
unwholesome or degrading, violates the moral in-
dependence of those holding the alternative view. In
practice, of course, legislative majorities frequently
enact nonneutral policies in the belief that the polity
as a whole will be better off. That is why it is crucial
for courts to have the power to invalidate legisla-
tion—to use constitutional rights as trumps—when
that happens.
See also: AUTHORITY; AUTONOMY OF ETHICS; AU-
TONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE;

CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIC DUTIES; COHERENTISM;
CONVENTIONS; DEMOCRACY; EQUALITY; EUTHANA-
SIA; GOVERNMENT, ETHICS IN; HART; IMPARTIALITY;
INDIVIDUALISM; INSTITUTIONS; INTEGRITY; JUSTICE,
CIRCUMSTANCES OF; LEGAL PHILOSOPHY; LEGITI-
MACY; LIBERALISM; LIBERTY; MORAL REASONING;
MORAL RULES; NATURAL LAW; NEUTRAL PRINCIPLES;
NORMS; POLITICAL SYSTEMS; PUBLIC GOODS; PUB-
LIC POLICY; RIGHTS; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY.
Bibliography
Selected Works by Dworkin
Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1977.
A Matter of Principle. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1985.
Law’s Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1986.
Life’s Dominion: An Argument about Abortion, Eutha-
431
Dworkin, Ronald
nasia, and Individual Freedom. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1993.
Freedom’s Law: The Moral Reading of the American Con-
stitution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996.
Works about Dworkin
Cohen, Marshall, ed. Ronald Dworkin and Contemporary
Jurisprudence. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld,
1984. Critical essays, with a reply by Dworkin.
Guest, Stephen. Ronald Dworkin. 2d ed. Edinburgh: Ed-
inburgh University Press, 1997. A comprehensive and
critical study, with a complete bibliography through
1997.
Symposium on Hart’s and Dworkin’s jurisprudence.
Georgia Law Review 11 (1977): 969–1424. With a
reply to “Seven Critics” by Dworkin, later revised and
added as an appendix to the paperback edition of Tak-
ing Rights Seriously (1978).
Symposium on Law’s Empire. Law and Philosophy 6
(1987): 281–438.
Symposium on Taking Rights Seriously. Social Theory and
Practice 5 (1980): 267–488.
Kenneth Winston
 E
economic analysis
Economics is partly a science of behavior, concerned
with understanding the way economies work. But it
is also partly concerned with assessing the merits of
economic arrangements and with deciding how gov-
ernments ought to conduct their economic affairs. It
makes judgments of right and wrong, good and bad,
in economic matters. It needs criteria for these judg-
ments, and the criteria must come from ethics. Eco-
nomics is, in this way, a client of ethics: It brings
questions for ethics to answer. But it also happens
that some of the techniques of economics itself can
throw useful light on ethical issues. In particular,
economists are very much concerned with the struc-
ture of people’s preferences and with the rational
pursuit of objectives. Economics contains a highly
developed theory about these things, which can be
turned to philosophical purposes. In this way, eco-
nomic analysis can contribute to ethics. This article
outlines some recent developments in ethical think-
ing among economists. It deals only with modern
orthodox economic analysis and leaves aside the
contribution that has come from other types of eco-
nomics, especially Marxist.
The division of economics that is devoted to eval-
uating economic arrangements and policies is tra-
ditionally known as welfare economics. Here are
some examples of questions that are raised within
welfare economics: How progressive ought income
tax to be? How much ought airlines to spend on
432
safety? Should education be financed publicly or pri-
vately? Questions like these raise explicitly ethical
issues: Is it wrong for income to be unequally dis-
tributed—is it a sort of injustice, perhaps? What is
the value of saving a person’s life—what harm is
done by DEATH? What is the value of freedom of
choice? And so on.
One view among economists is that the ethical
questions are no concern of economics: They con-
cern ends, and economics should only try to find
means to ends that are determined elsewhere (Rob-
bins). Often the ends are supposed to be determined
by political processes, so that economists are seen
as technicians serving political masters. Another
opinion is that the ends should be left to moral phi-
losophers, so that economists should take their ques-
tions to philosophers to answer. In the 1970s, for
example, many economists began unquestioningly
to apply principles taken from John RAWLS’s A The-
ory of Justice (1971). However, since there is no
sharp boundary where welfare economics stops and
ethics begins, some welfare economists have inevi-
tably pursued their investigations into the territory
of ethics and put their own methods to work there.
Utility Theory
Utility theory is the most fundamental of econo-
mists’ methods, and its development during the
twentieth century has shaped economists’ ethical
thinking. It therefore needs to be explained first.

Utility theory is a psychological theory. It holds
that a person always acts so as to maximize a quan-
tity known as her “utility”: When faced with a choice
between alternative actions, she will choose the one
that has the greatest utility for her. Different versions
of the theory assign different meanings to “utility.”
A main source of the theory is Jeremy BENTHAM’s
(1748–1832) Introduction to the Principles of Mor-
als and Legislation, published in 1789. (Another is
Daniel Bernoulli’s [1700–1782] “St. Petersburg” ar-
ticle, published in 1738.) Bentham believed that a
person will act so as to maximize the total of her
pleasure (treating pain as negative pleasure). This is
a version of utility theory in which utility is identified
with PLEASURE. (Bentham himself used the term
“utility” differently.) The theory was taken over from
Bentham in 1871 by the economist William Stanley
Jevons (1835–1882); utility theory has been at the
heart of economics ever since. Jevons, too, claimed
that a person will maximize her pleasure. But in sup-
port he said, “Call any motive which attracts us to a
certain course of conduct, pleasure . . . and it be-
comes impossible to deny that all actions are gov-
erned by pleasure.” Jevons evidently hoped to make
the theory as nearly as possible true by definition.
This pointed the direction for the later development
of utility theory in economics.
For a time, economists continued with a version
of the theory much like Bentham’s, except that they
often took people to maximize “satisfaction” rather
than pleasure. But during the twentieth century a
radically different version was invented. It became
established in economics in the 1930s during the
course of a movement known as “ordinalism.” Or-
dinalist utility theory was first laid out in an article
by John Hicks and R. G. D. Allen published in 1934.
It was refined by later work into what is best called
“axiomatic utility theory.” This is the version that is
generally accepted and presented in textbooks today.
Axiomatic utility theory is a theory of preferences.
Given all the alternatives that face a person (alter-
native consumption plans, say, or actions, or states
of affairs, or something else), the theory takes the
person to have a two-place preference relation be-
tween them: is preferred or indifferent to
, where each blank is to be filled in with one
of the alternatives. The theory assumes that this re-
lation conforms to a number of axioms. Provided it
does, a formal theorem (set out by G. Debreu in
1954) shows that a utility function can be defined
433
economic analysis
for the person to represent her preferences. The util-
ity function assigns a utility to each alternative, and
the sense in which it represents the preferences is
that the utility of one alternative is at least as great
as the utility of another if and only if the former is
preferred or indifferent to the latter. That is to say,
of two alternatives, the person always prefers the
one with the greater utility. She maximizes utility,
because utility is, in effect, defined as what she
maximizes.
The empirical content of the theory is simply that
the person’s preferences satisfy the axioms. The
principal axiom is transitivity: that if one alternative
is preferred or indifferent to a second, and the sec-
ond to a third, then the first is preferred or indiffer-
ent to the third. The axioms ensure that the person
can be construed as maximizing something, and that
something is called “utility.” The theory, unlike Ben-
tham’s, is not committed to any view about what
particular thing the person maximizes.
One conclusion of the theory is that utility is
unique only up to increasing transformations. That
is to say, there are many utility functions that rep-
resent the same preferences, and if one function rep-
resents a particular pattern of preferences, then so
will any other function that is an increasing trans-
formation of it. An increasing transformation is one
that preserves the order of utilities, so that if one
alternative has a higher utility than another accord-
ing to the original utility function, then it does ac-
cording to the transformed function, too. All that the
preferences determine, in fact, is the order of utili-
ties, not amounts of utility. A utility function with
this degree of uniqueness is called “ordinal.” Hence
the name “ordinalism.”
An extension of axiomatic utility theory was de-
veloped in 1944 by John von Neumann and Oskar
Morgenstern (independently of earlier work on the
same lines by Frank Ramsey published in 1931).
This extension takes a person to have preferences
among alternatives that are uncertain prospects. Two
examples of prospects are: If it snows I go skiing and
if not I sit in the hotel room. Or, whether it snows
or not, I stay at home with a broken leg. The theory
assigns an outcome to each of a number of contin-
gencies (such as snow or no snow), and it assumes
that a person’s preferences between prospects con-
form to the same axioms as before, as well as some
extra ones (some of which are controversial—see
Bacharach and Hurley). Then, as before, a theorem
economic analysis
shows that the preferences can be represented by a
utility function. Moreover, they can be represented
by a function that is expectational. That is to say, the
utility of a prospect is the expectation of the utilities
of the results it may lead to. (The “expectation” is
the sum of the utilities, each multiplied by its prob-
ability of occurring. For example, the utility of the
first prospect mentioned above is the utility of skiing
times the probability of snow, plus the utility of sit-
ting in a hotel room times the probability of no
snow.) Of two prospects, then, the person always
prefers the one with the greater expected utility; she
maximizes expected utility. This theory is known as
axiomatic expected utility theory, or decision theory.
The empirical content of the theory is, once again,
simply that a person’s preferences conform to the
axioms. Provided they do, the person can be con-
strued as maximizing the expectation of something,
and utility is defined as that something.
One of this theory’s conclusions is that a person’s
preferences about prospects (provided they conform
to the axioms) determine an expectational utility
function more tightly than does the theory without
uncertainty. They determine a function that is unique
up to increasing linear transformations: Two utility
functions represent the same preferences if and only
if each is an increasing linear transform of the other.
A linear transformation preserves the ratio of utility
differences: If, according to one utility function, the
difference between the utilities of one pair of pros-
pects stands in a particular ratio to the difference
between the utilities of another pair, then these dif-
ferences stand in the same ratio according to any
other function that is a linear transform of the first.
A person’s preferences, then, determine not just the
order of utilities but also the ratio of utility differ-
ences. A utility function with this degree of unique-
ness is called “cardinal.”
Ordinalism
Economists have traditionally been utilitarians in
a broad sense, or at least consequentialists. They
have taken it for granted that the aim of economic
arrangements should be to bring about the best re-
sult, and many of them—Alfred Marshall and A. C.
Pigou, among others—have assumed that the best
results are the ones with the greatest total of people’s
good. Economists’ contributions to ethics have there-
fore been to utilitarian or consequentialist ethics.
434
A contribution to utilitarian thinking made by
economists in the nineteenth century was the doc-
trine of diminishing marginal benefit. The more
money a person has, the doctrine goes, the less extra
benefit she will derive from having an extra dollar.
From this, a utilitarian argument can be derived in
favor of EQUALITY. Diminishing marginal benefit
suggests that rich people derive less benefit from ex-
tra money than poor people do. So, as extra money
becomes available, it better promotes total good for
it to go to the poor than to the rich. This argument
is subject to important limitations, as Francis Edge-
worth pointed out in 1881. But it nevertheless pro-
vided a basis for welfare economics to assess the
value of distributive policies such as progressive in-
come tax. It was very popular among economists,
including Marshall and Pigou, before the 1930s, and
it has been revived in recent years (e.g., by Mirrlees
in 1971).
The advent of ordinalism brought a dramatic
change to the ethics of economics. The classic state-
ment of the ordinalist viewpoint is Lionel Robbins’s
An Essay on the Scope and Nature of Economic Sci-
ence (1935). It has three ingredients.
The first is a view that assigns a special epistemic
priority to preferences. The ordinalists held that a
person’s preferences are in principle observable. By
“this person prefers A to B” they meant something
like, this person would choose A rather than B if she
had a choice between them. And such hypothetical
choices they considered observable. They defined
utility to represent preferences in the way described
above, so that a person’s preferences determine the
order of her utilities. This gave the order of utilities
the same high epistemic status as preferences. Rob-
bins called the order of utilities a “scientific” concept.
The second ingredient is a common assumption
among economists: that a person prefers one alter-
native to another if and only if it is better for her.
Call this the “preference-satisfaction theory of good.”
It implies, since utility is defined to represent pref-
erences, that one alternative has a higher utility than
another if and only if it is better for the person. That
is to say, the order of utilities coincides with the or-
der of good. The order of good therefore inherits the
epistemic status of preferences. On the other hand,
amounts of good, which are not determinable from
preferences, have a low status. They were sometimes
said to be “meaningless” (e.g., by Arrow in 1984).

Robbins called them “unscientific” and banned them
from economics.
The third ingredient is a covert allegiance to UTIL-
ITARIANISM in a broad sense: the ordinalists were
interested in promoting people’s good. But the or-
dinalists’ epistemological position forced them to
deny the validity of most of the judgments about
good that utilitarians rely on. They repudiated any
judgment that depended on comparing amounts of
good, particularly amounts of different people’s
good. The doctrine of diminishing marginal benefit
is a claim about comparative amounts of good, so
they repudiated this doctrine and with it the utili-
tarian argument for equality. Instead, they confined
themselves to the one minimal implication of utili-
tarianism that can be applied without comparing
amounts of good. Utilitarianism implies that, of two
alternatives, one is better than another if it is at least
as good for everyone and definitely better for some-
one. Add to this the preference-satisfaction theory
of good, and we arrive at the Pareto criterion (so
named in honor of Vilfredo Pareto [1848–1923],
though Pareto’s own criterion, published in 1906,
was a little different): One alternative is better than
another if everyone prefers the first to the second or
is indifferent between the two, and at least one per-
son definitely prefers the first. This sufficient con-
dition for one alternative to be better than another
was the sole ethical principle that the ordinalists
were prepared to recognize. Obviously, few pairs of
alternative economic arrangements will satisfy it. So
confining welfare economics to the Pareto criterion
was a drastic limitation; between most pairs of al-
ternatives the criterion makes no judgment. For one
thing, welfare economics finds itself unable to say
anything about the value of equality. The character
of welfare economics for the last half century has
been set by this straightjacket. And ordinalism, or the
attempt to escape from it, has been the stimulus for
a great deal of recent ethical thinking in economics.
Expected Utility Theory
One possible escape seemed to be offered by ex-
pected utility theory, because of its cardinal utility
functions. In expected utility theory, a person’s pref-
erences allow differences in utilities to be signifi-
cantly compared; the preferences determine whether
the difference in utility between one pair of alter-
natives is greater or less than the difference in utility
435
economic analysis
between another pair. This suggested to some au-
thors (including von Neumann and Morgenstern
themselves) that preferences might, through ex-
pected utility theory, allow differences in amounts of
good to be compared. And that was just what was
needed.
An application was this: Suppose a person is risk
averse about money; given a choice between two
gambles with the same expected winnings, she al-
ways chooses the less risky one. Then in expected
utility theory she will have “diminishing marginal
utility”: The more money she has, the less is her util-
ity increased by receiving an extra dollar. This looks
like the doctrine of diminishing marginal benefit
mentioned above. So if RISK AVERSION is prevalent,
it might allow the utilitarian argument for equality
to be revived.
But this thinking was mistaken, because of a con-
fusion about the relation between utility and good.
Granted the preference-satisfaction theory, the order
of a person’s utilities coincides with the order of her
good. But differences in amounts of utility need not
indicate differences in amounts of good. And this is
so even if utilities themselves are cardinal, so that
differences in utilities can be compared (see Arrow
1963; Ellsberg).
Nevertheless, though this particular line of thought
was mistaken, John Harsanyi produced two different
and important arguments intended to show that, in-
deed, the cardinal utilities defined by expected utility
theory do have a place in ethical judgments.
The first, presented in 1953, was this: Suppose
there is a choice of alternative structures for a soci-
ety. Which is the best? Harsanyi argued that this
question could be answered by imagining a person
who has to choose between these structures, know-
ing she will live in the society but not knowing what
position in it she will occupy. The one she would
choose, Harsanyi claimed, is the best. From this per-
son’s point of view, each alternative structure is an
uncertain prospect, presenting her with an equal
chance of ending up in any one of the positions. Ac-
cording to expected utility theory, there will, for this
person, be a utility assigned to each position in the
structure, and the expectation of these utilities will
be the utility of the structure as a whole. In this case,
the expectation is just the average. So, of the alter-
natives available, the person will choose the struc-
ture with the greatest average utility. If we assume
the population is fixed, this structure is also the one
economic analysis
with the greatest total utility. The best structure,
then, according to Harsanyi, is the one with the
greatest total utility. And the utility here comes out
of expected utility theory. So if, say, the imaginary
person is risk averse (and therefore has diminishing
marginal utility), Harsanyi’s argument will favor an
egalitarian society.
Harsanyi’s method in this argument—imagining
choices made behind a “veil of ignorance”—was
later taken up by John RAWLS and eventually led to
the recent “contractualist” school of political philos-
ophy mentioned below.
Harsanyi’s second argument, presented in 1955,
was a formal theorem. It uses a notion that is com-
mon in economics: social preference. This is not a
well-defined notion, but if one alternative is socially
preferred to another, that at least is intended to re-
cord some sort of ethical judgment in its favor. Har-
sanyi assumed that social and individual preferences
conform to the axioms of expected utility theory, and
also that social preferences are “Paretian” (if every-
one prefers one alternative to another or is indiffer-
ent between them, and if one person definitely pre-
fers it, then it is socially preferred). His theorem
shows that social preferences must then be repre-
sentable by a utility function that is the sum of utility
functions representing the preferences of individ-
uals. Socially preferred alternatives, thus, have a
higher total of individual utilities, and these are once
again utilities derived from expected utility theory.
So once more utilities from expected utility theory
are playing a part in ethical judgments. Harsanyi’s
theorem is a remarkable one. A remarkable feature
of its conclusion is that the utility function repre-
senting social preferences is the sum of utility func-
tions representing individual preferences. That is,
the theorem gives no value to equality in the distri-
bution of utilities, but only to the total.
Social Choice Theory
An important product of ordinalist thinking was
Kenneth Arrow’s Social Choice and Individual Val-
ues (1963). As an ordinalist, Arrow thought that so-
cial preferences among a range of alternatives must
be determined solely by the preference orderings of
individuals. He asked whether this could be done in
a way that fulfilled some plausible conditions (that
social preferences should be Paretian and that they
should not always coincide with the preferences of
436
just one individual). He added a condition known
misleadingly as “independence of irrelevant alter-
natives.” This condition served the ordinalist pur-
pose of ensuring that social preferences depend only
on the preference orderings of individuals: No change
that did not alter these orderings could alter the so-
cial ordering. This excludes social preferences, for
example, that depend on how good the alternatives
are for the people, as utilitarian social preferences
would do. The same condition also excludes social
preferences that depend on utilities derived from ex-
pected utility theory, as Harsanyi’s do.
Arrow’s conclusion, however, was negative. He
proved that social preferences could not be deter-
mined by individual preferences in any way that ful-
fills his conditions. This set a new challenge to or-
dinalism. It showed that people’s preferences are not
enough to determine social preferences—a richer
base of information is needed. The ordinalist straight-
jacket is tighter than one might think.
The question arose, then, whether there is some
extra information that could be used without com-
promising too seriously the epistemological princi-
ples of ordinalism. This was the main item on the
original agenda of social choice theory, which came
into being following Arrow’s work. It turns out, in-
terestingly, that the sort of information that is ad-
mitted goes a long way to determine the form of the
social preferences that will emerge (Hammond).
Arrow’s own approach was to extend the range
of preferences that could be taken into account. He
supposed that a person will have preferences be-
tween alternatives like: being this person under
such-and-such conditions, and being that person un-
der such-and-such other conditions. (He called this
“extended sympathy.”) These are preferences and
are therefore epistemologically sound according to
ordinalism, but they are a richer basis for determin-
ing social preferences.
Social choice theory has since developed beyond
the confines of the ordinalist project. It encom-
passes a wide range of work concerned with the
general question how the INTERESTS of the mem-
bers of a society should go together to determine
what happens in the society. It is distinguished from
other work in political philosophy chiefly by its
mathematical nature, derived from the techniques
of economics. Social choice theorists prove theo-
rems from precise assumptions. A debate in recent
social choice theory illustrates the method. A 1970

article by Amartya Sen argued that LIBERALISM is
incompatible with the Pareto criterion. This sparked
off a long debate (see Wriglesworth) about what,
precisely, a liberal should be committed to. The ar-
gument is usefully focused by the need to define lib-
eralism within the formal framework of social choice
theory.
The Rejection of Ordinalism
Recently, many economists have simply aban-
doned the ordinalist doctrine in their approach to
ethical issues. A leader in this movement is Sen,
whose Collective Choice and Social Welfare (1970)
both codified social choice theory and set the scene
for this new departure, and whose On Economic In-
equality (1973) nicely exemplified it. Ordinalism
combined a utilitarian concern for people’s good
with skepticism about a quantitative notion of good.
One can give up the skepticism, and many econo-
mists nowadays unashamedly take for granted a
quantitative notion of a person’s good or well-being.
Or alternatively, one can give up the utilitarianism
and focus concern on something—such as people’s
income—that is more overt and less prone to skep-
ticism. Sen has more recently (1987) been promot-
ing “capabilities” as the proper focus of concern. A
person’s capabilities are what she is made able to do
by the resources at her disposal, so capabilities de-
pend on the proportion between a person’s re-
sources and her NEEDS.
All this has allowed economists once more to en-
ter areas that ordinalism had declared out of bounds,
particularly distributive justice and the value of equal-
ity (e.g., Atkinson). The issue here, seen through
economists’ eyes, is this: Each person in society has
a particular level of well-being. The goodness of the
society is determined by the well-being of its mem-
bers; it is a function of all the individual levels of
well-being. The question is, what is the form of this
function (generally called a social welfare function)?
Should it assign value to equality, and if so, how? A
utilitarian function simply makes goodness the total
of individual well-beings. A maximin function makes
it equal to the well-being of the worst-off person.
And there are many other possibilities. The methods
of social choice theory can help adjudicate among
them. These methods can lay out precisely the im-
plications of each function to allow the function to
be tested against intuitions and moral principles.
437
economic analysis
Game Theory
The development of GAME THEORY has primarily
been in the hands of economists, though largely in-
dependent of the developments outlined above. A
great deal of economics and some ethical discussions
are now conducted in game-theoretic terms.
A game is a situation in which several people
(players) have to make choices, and the outcome for
each of them is determined by the choices of all.
Game theory supposes that each player is rational
and asks what, being rational and recognizing the
rationality of the others, each player will do.
What it is rational for one player to do depends on
what the other players will do, and that depends,
since they are rational, on what it is rational for them
to do. The rational actions of the different players are
therefore intricately interconnected. Consequently,
game theory raises difficult questions about the na-
ture of rationality, which have ethical significance
(see Binmore; Campbell and Sowden). One focus of
discussion has been a game known as the “prisoners’
dilemma,” which has the following structure (see
Luce and Raiffa): A number of people have different
aims. It happens that, whatever the other people do,
each person can always achieve her own aims more
effectively by acting in some uncooperative way than
by cooperating with the others. So rational pursuit
of individual aims seems to require each person to
be uncooperative. But it also happens that if every-
body is uncooperative, everybody’s aims will be
achieved less effectively than they would be if every-
body cooperated. So what rationality seems to re-
quire is, in a clear sense, bad for everybody. This is
puzzling. Some authors (e.g., Gauthier) have sug-
gested that it calls for a new understanding of ra-
tionality: one that in some way embodies an ethic of
cooperation, even though each person ultimately has
only her own aims in view.
A second (related) role for game theory in ethics
is at the foundations of contractualist thinking. Con-
tractualism (following Rawls’s A Theory of Justice)
has a particular way of justifying moral rules, espe-
cially rules of justice. Contractualism says that such
rules are justified by showing they would arise from
the agreements people would make with each other
if these people were placed in some suitably de-
signed imaginary “original position.” Contractualists
therefore need to determine just what agreements
people would indeed reach in an original position.
economic analysis
This is a question for BARGAINING theory, a branch
of game theory. David Gauthier’s Morals by Agree-
ment (1985) deploys bargaining theory in this way
(see also Barry; Binmore).
Conclusion
The techniques of economic analysis seem to be
gaining a recognized place within philosophical
ethics. The mathematical methods are powerful.
They are able to establish significant results that
make surprising connections. Harsanyi’s theorem
mentioned above, for example, connects the value
of avoiding risk with the value of equality between
people. The methods can add rigor to arguments,
and some of the results have philosophically impor-
tant implications. Harsanyi himself (1986) believes
his theorem supports utilitarianism. But some work
by economists also reveals a danger. Because the
emphasis is on proving theorems from assumptions,
the assumptions are sometimes inadequately inter-
preted and justified, and some of them are foolish.
Before ethical conclusions can properly be drawn,
careful philosophical interpretation and assessment
is needed.
See also: BARGAINING; COMMON GOOD; COMPETI-
TION; CONSEQUENTIALISM; COOPERATION, CONFLICT,
AND COORDINATION; COOPERATIVE SURPLUS; COST-
BENEFIT ANALYSIS; DISCOUNTING THE FUTURE; ECO-
NOMIC SYSTEMS; GAME THEORY; INDIVIDUALISM;
INTERESTS; JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE; LIBERTY, ECO-
NOMIC; NEEDS; PUBLIC GOODS; PUBLIC POLICY; PUB-
LIC POLICY ANALYSIS; RATIONAL CHOICE; RATION-
ALITY VS. REASONABLENESS; RISK ANALYSIS; RISK
AVERSION; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY; UTIL-
ITARIANISM; WELFARE RIGHTS AND SOCIAL POLICY.
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John Broome
economic liberty
See liberty, economic.
economic systems
An economic system is a mechanism for allocating
resources. Any such system will involve an attribu-
tion of RIGHTS and institutional and procedural rules
and laws, and will produce as its outcome an allo-
cation of resources that may be viewed in several
dimensions. The system will allocate resources across
time in respect of such categories as the depletion of
nonrenewable natural resources and the accumu-
lated stock of capital; across commodities in respect
of the levels of production of each commodity at any
particular time; and across persons in respect of the
level and composition of consumption and wealth of
each individual at any particular time. The basic in-
puts into an economic system are the physical re-
sources and possibilities of the world (or the part of
the world in question) and the physical and psycho-
logical properties of the individuals that inhabit the
world.
The market system in which private PROPERTY
rights are voluntarily traded is the most familiar and
certainly the most studied economic system. The
fully centralized command economy in which all re-
sources are allocated according to the commands of
a single individual is often held up in contrast to the
decentralized market system. A third type of system
is one in which collective or political decision mak-
ing dominates. In fact, the three elements of individ-
ually voluntary choice, the exercise of centralized
POWER, and collective decision making can be found
in varying proportions in all practicable economic
systems. The evaluation of economic systems may
begin either with the discussion of the operating
characteristics of alternative systems or with the dis-
cussion of the appropriate method of evaluation.
economic systems
Both are necessary for the success of the overall proj-
ect. The comparative economic systems literature
within economics most frequently takes the former
line; I shall take the latter.
The ethical evaluation of economic systems may
be approached in three complementary ways, moti-
vated in turn by considerations of desirability, fea-
sibility, and eligibility. The desirability approach
corresponds to the direct enquiry concerning ap-
propriate ethical criteria and their application, and
is subdivided into teleological and deontological
branches. The feasibility approach emphasizes the
constraints which delimit the set of economic sys-
tems to which any ethical criterion can be applied.
The eligibility approach argues that a system should
be evaluated relative to whether it would have been
collectively chosen in certain circumstances, or
would have come about as a result of what would
be chosen there, and so corresponds to the broadly
contractarian line of ethics. I shall review each of
these approaches in turn.
The Desirability Approach
Mainstream welfare economics has until recently
been concerned almost entirely with the teleological
or consequentialist variant of the desirability ap-
proach to the evaluation of economic systems. CON-
SEQUENTIALISM requires that any economic system
(or any particular act or choice within a system) be
evaluated with respect to the states of the world that
arise as consequences of that system (or act), where
a state of the world is a complete description of the
world (past, present, and future), including both
the procedures and INSTITUTIONS of the world and
the resultant allocation of resources.
In this framework, any attempt to evaluate an
economic system, or compare alternative economic
systems, must begin by selecting the relevant infor-
mation base—those aspects of states of the world
that are ethically relevant. The standard approach
within welfare economics is to focus on the utilities
or welfare levels of the individuals within the system
on the assumption that the relevant utility functions
are independent of the operation of the system.
These individual welfare or utility functions might
themselves depend on any aspects of states of the
world. They may, for example, be altruistic or self-
regarding. The identification of the relevant set of
440
individuals raises further issues, particularly with re-
spect to FUTURE GENERATIONS.
More specifically, the standard assumption is that
of welfarism. Welfarism requires that individual wel-
fare or utility levels are the only inputs to the process
of ethical evaluation. Taken together, welfarism and
consequentialism require that an economic system
be evaluated with respect to the individual welfare
levels that arise under the operation of that system.
The detailed ethical criteria available depend cru-
cially on the precise nature of the information ad-
mitted under alternative interpretations of welfar-
ism. Interpretations of welfarism differ in respect of
the conceptualization of utility, welfare, or well-
being that is employed. These range from narrow
measures of self-interested utility to broad measures
of personal good, from ordinal measurability of in-
dividual welfare to absolute scale measurability,
from interpersonally noncomparable measures to
fully interpersonally comparable measures, and from
one dimensional measures to multidimensional mea-
sures. The Pareto criterion (after Vilfredo Pareto
[1848–1923]) is the most fundamental ethical cri-
terion within the welfare economics tradition. A
state of the world is Pareto-efficient if and only if
there exists no feasible alternative such that at least
one individual prefers that alternative while no in-
dividual prefers the status quo. An economic system
may be said to be Pareto-efficient to the extent that
it generates Pareto-efficient states of the world. The
link from welfarism to the Pareto criterion is pro-
vided by the additional assumption that individual
preferences reflect individual welfare, so that indi-
vidual welfare acts both as the motivator of individ-
ually rational action and as the appropriate input to
ethical evaluation. This assumption says nothing of
the content of the relevant concept of welfare—it
simply requires the concept, whatever its content, to
serve both roles.
The Pareto criterion is extremely parsimonious in
its informational requirements. It requires no inter-
personal comparability of welfare, and only ordinal
measurability of individual welfare. Clearly, Pareto
efficiency is a very weak ethical criterion. In general
there will be many Pareto-efficient allocations and
the Pareto criterion itself can provide no basis for
ethical comparison within the set of Pareto-efficient
allocations. Defined on the set of all feasible allo-
cations, or states of the world, the Pareto criterion
generates only a partial ordering.

Two fundamental welfare theorems are among
the central results of welfare economics. Given the
dual role of welfare mentioned above, the first the-
orem proves that a particular economic system—
based on enforced private property rights and the
operation of a full set of perfectly competitive mar-
kets—is Pareto-efficient (this is essentially Adam
SMITH’s [1723–1790] ‘invisible hand’). The second
proves (under slightly more restrictive conditions)
that any Pareto-efficient outcome can be realized as
the equilibrium of a competitive market system by
appropriately adjusting the initial endowments of
the individuals within the system. The second the-
orem is the basis for the conceptual separation of
efficiency and equity issues. It demonstrates that
lump sum redistribution between individuals does
not interfere with the efficiency of the market mech-
anism, but simply determines which of the Pareto-
efficient allocations is supported.
These theorems play the role of benchmark stan-
dards in welfare ECONOMIC ANALYSIS. No practica-
ble economic system approximates to a full set of
perfectly competitive markets, and no practicable
method of effecting lump sum redistributions exists.
But the theorems provide the framework within
which analysis of practicable alternatives can pro-
ceed. Thus, considerable attention has been focused
on the analysis of the implications of missing or im-
perfect markets, and of inefficient redistributive
mechanisms, and on the possibility that nonmarket
institutions or intervention in the operation of mar-
kets can improve the efficiency of the overall eco-
nomic system in such second-best cases.
A limitation of the Pareto criterion is that it offers
only a partial ordering of states of the world. In or-
der to extend the Paretian partial ordering, it is nec-
essary to extend the information base by moving
away from ordinalism and interpersonal noncom-
parability. The Arrow impossibility theorem shows
that if ordinalism and noncomparability are main-
tained, no social ordering over states of the world
can be derived from individual orderings—the only
possibility is the dictatorship of an arbitrary individ-
ual. If the ordinalist requirement is relaxed, but non-
comparability retained, this result is not seriously
affected. But once interpersonal comparisons of wel-
fare are admitted, the nature of feasible social or-
derings does depend on the measurability of individ-
ual welfare and the extent of comparability. Thus, if
ordinalism is retained alongside full comparability,
441
economic systems
social orderings such as that generated by the maxi-
min criterion are feasible. At the opposite extreme,
if welfare is measured on an absolute scale, and is
therefore fully comparable, the set of permissible
social welfare functions includes the Bergson-
Samuelson function in which social welfare is a gen-
eral increasing function of individual welfares.
Of particular interest is the utilitarian social wel-
fare function in which states of the world are ordered
by reference to the simple sum of individual welfares.
Such UTILITARIANISM requires at least cardinal scale
measurability and at least unit comparability. Utili-
tarianism is not the only form of social welfare func-
tion that can be supported under these conditions. In
order to show that the utilitarian ordering is uniquely
supported, further restrictions are required.
Any Pareto-inclusive social welfare ordering
serves the purpose of picking out a particular Pareto-
efficient allocation as the ethical optimum. But of
course, such a uniquely optimal state of the world
might still be consistent with many different eco-
nomic systems. The second fundamental welfare
theorem tells us only that the desired allocation
could be implemented as the equilibrium of a per-
fectly competitive market system.
Equity and poverty considerations are addressed
indirectly by the social welfare ordering literature. A
social welfare function selects a particular state of
the world, and hence a particular distribution of wel-
fare across persons, as optimal. Questions of the eth-
ical evaluation of equity and poverty may also be
addressed directly. This raises a number of further
issues. The first set of questions is summarized in
Sen’s 1980 title “Equality of What?” If equity (or
poverty) is most appropriately conceived in terms of
something other than welfare, so that it is EQUALITY
of income, or wealth, or access to education, or ca-
pabilities, that is of direct ethical concern, then wel-
farism must be rejected in favor of some broader
information base.
The second set of questions relates to the mea-
surement and evaluation of inequality or poverty,
and the distinction between them. The two standard
approaches here (e.g., by Atkinson and Sen) are
axiomatic derivation of inequality and poverty mea-
sures, and the explication of the links between par-
ticular valuations of inequality or poverty and par-
ticular social welfare functions.
Despite the second fundamental theorem’s ap-
parent separation of efficiency and equity consider-
economic systems
ations it is possible for equity-based criteria to con-
flict with Pareto efficiency even if the equity criteria
are restricted to the class defined only on welfare.
For example, the idea of equity as the absence of
ENVY introduced by Foley requires that resources
should be allocated in such a way that no individual
would prefer to receive the resources allocated to
another. Although this equity criterion is welfarist
and requires no interpersonal comparability of wel-
fare, it can conflict with Pareto efficiency, so that no
Pareto-efficient and envy-free allocation may exist.
DEONTOLOGY provides the major alternative
branch of the debate within the desirability ap-
proach to evaluation. As always, the contrast be-
tween the consequentialist and deontological tradi-
tions may be understood as the contrast between
attention to a maximand and attention to constraints
on the process of maximization. Thus, while conse-
quentialists accept the aim of maximizing social wel-
fare and differ as to their interpretation of social
welfare and the mechanics of maximization, deon-
tologists argue that the primary evaluation of an eco-
nomic system is in terms of its ability to recognize
and work within certain moral constraints. Rights
provide the best-known example of such constraints,
and the debate stimulated by the claim of the im-
possibility of a Paretian liberal illustrates the poten-
tial tension between Paretian consequentialism and
a deontological LIBERALISM.
Despite the vast literature on the problem of the
Paretian liberal, the deontological structure of eval-
uation is relatively little studied by economists whose
comparative advantage lies in the analysis of maxi-
mizing structures. Most economists, like all utilitari-
ans, deny that rights or other apparently deontologi-
cal constraints are fundamental, and seek to ground
them in welfarist or other teleological considerations.
Although it is still common to find references to
the Pareto criterion as a minimalist ethical assump-
tion that commands (or should command) universal
support, it is now widely recognized that Paretian-
ism does involve a significant commitment and that
this commitment is seriously challenged both by de-
ontological considerations and by teleological but
nonwelfarist considerations.
The Feasibility Approach
Like the deontological variant of the desirability
approach, the feasibility approach to evaluation fo-
442
cuses attention on constraints—constraints directly
on the practicability of economic system rather than
moral constraints. Two distinct types of constraint
are emphasized in the literature; one is concerned
with information and the other with motivation.
The informational argument is most closely as-
sociated with Hayek and concerns the information
required for the operation of the economic system,
rather than the informational requirements of any
ethical criterion. The background ethical assump-
tion is that individual preferences or welfare levels
will be at least a major input into the ethical crite-
rion, so that information regarding these prefer-
ences or welfare levels will be required. However,
it is clear that the production and transmission of
such information depends crucially on the set of
social institutions that exist. Thus, argues Hayek,
a decentralized system of market exchange will be
a vital element of any feasible economic system,
not because it produces demonstrably superior re-
sults, but because it is the only viable way of pro-
ducing and utilizing reliable information regarding
individuals.
This argument emphasizes the procedural aspects
of the market system rather than the properties of
market equilibria. For example, it is clear that any
Pareto-efficient or social welfare optimal allocation
could be reached in principle by a perfectly informed
and powerful planner, rather than by the market
mechanism. But the informational requirements of
the central planner are vast, whereas the market sys-
tem operates to ensure that prices provide all the
information required by individuals to make their
decentralized choices. Furthermore, the gathering of
information poses problems to the planner since typ-
ically there will exist incentives to misrepresent.
Again, the market system operates to ensure that in-
dividuals face incentives compatible with honest
revelation.
The motivational argument is associated in recent
times with Buchanan and the public choice school of
economics, and concerns the planner’s motivations.
Again, the background ethical assumption is that the
appropriate ethical standard will be broadly individ-
ualistic. Alternatives to a decentralized market-based
economic system will typically involve a degree of
centralization, either through a political process or
through the exercise of power. Such centralization
must place some individuals—the planners—in key
positions of decision making or implementation, and

so the outcomes of such systems must depend on
the motivations of the planners and the incentives
facing them. We may consider planners who are mo-
tivated by the appropriate ethical considerations to
be benign despots. But if the planners’ motivations
are modeled less idealistically, centralization of power
may itself render such systems problematic. It is the
infeasibility of finding agents to fit the roles required
by alternative economic systems that argues in favor
of the decentralized market system.
These two lines of argument both recommend the
market system, but there is nothing in the deep
structure of the feasibility approach that ensures this
result—it is the background commitment to INDI-
VIDUALISM that provides the basis for the result. The
feasibility approach simply requires that the proce-
dural characteristics of alternative economic systems
be tested against the feasibility constraints imposed
by the physical and psychological conditions of the
world.
The Eligibility Approach
There are two basic variants on this approach.
The first is directly contractarian, the second is
based on an invisible hand argument. The contrac-
tarian approach views the determination of the ap-
propriate economic system in terms of a direct
choice by individuals, and argues that this provides
a necessary link between the motivation of individ-
ually RATIONAL CHOICE (individual welfare) and the
implicit maximand of the derived economic system.
Individuals motivated by considerations of welfare
will accept a system only if it holds the promise of
maximal welfare. This argument is then used to pro-
vide a contractarian support for the market system.
But in recognizing the infeasibility of the perfect
market system, the contractarian approach also pro-
vides an analysis of the choice of a constitution seen
as a means of limiting the discretionary power of the
inevitable planners. The constitution is seen as the
outcome of a contract process in which individuals
engage in marketlike trade, but the final constitution
may support a range of nonmarket institutions. In
this structure it is individuals’ preferences over al-
ternative economic systems that are the basic crite-
rion, rather than the extent to which an economic
system satisfies preferences (maximizes welfare)
overall. The support for the market system is there-
fore contingent on the argument that individuals’
443
economic systems
preferences over systems will be in line with the wel-
fare implications of those systems.
The invisible hand variant of the eligibility ap-
proach is more evolutionary in character. The em-
phasis here is on the emergence of an economic sys-
tem out of the voluntary behavior of individuals
through time. A system is approved by this criterion
to the extent that the process of emergence is vol-
untary and the starting point appropriate.
The distinction between the contractarian and in-
visible hand models is similar to that between the
consequentialist and deontological branches of the
desirability approach. The contractarian model op-
erates with the background assumption of an indi-
vidualistic ethical criterion expressed through con-
stitutional agreement, while the invisible hand model
sets out moral constraints within which a system can
be allowed to evolve.
Application of the Approaches
Each of the approaches sketched above provides
a degree of contingent support for the market-based
economic system. But each offers a different per-
spective on deviations from complete reliance on
markets. These may be illustrated by sketching the
application of the various approaches to a particular
aspect of an economic system—taxation.
In the benchmark first-best world of the funda-
mental welfare theorems, the only role for nonmar-
ket economic institutions is in the support of the
market structure (enforcement of property rights,
laws of contract, etc.) and in the determination of
the distribution of welfare. In such a world all taxes
are assumed to be lump sum in nature.
Remaining within the consequentialist and wel-
farist tradition, but recognizing the infeasibility of
the perfect market system, increases the role for tax-
ation while also denying the practicability of lump
sum taxes. Thus, second-best optimal tax policy will
involve balancing the gains from taxation in respect
of the efficiency improvements derived from pro-
grams of public expenditures and the distributional
gains derived from the tax-expenditure package,
against the distortions introduced by the inefficient
taxes themselves. The resultant optimal tax policy is
that which should be adopted by the appropriately
informed and motivated government.
The deontological tradition would argue that the
economic system must respect the rights of individ-
economic systems
uals, so that the institutionalization of coercive tax-
ation to finance the welfare of others would be illicit.
In this case the only taxation that would be allowed
would be that which could be directly justified to
each taxpayer. This would severely limit the extent
of any redistribution.
The feasibility approach would stress the diffi-
culties involved in operationalizing the optimal tax
regime, in terms of the informational requirements
and the motivations of the planners. This approach
would call for more detailed analysis of the political
and other mechanisms involved in the determination
of tax policy and would emphasize the scrutiny of
the properties of those processes in addition to the
scrutiny of the resultant tax regimes.
When combined with the eligibility or contrac-
tarian view these feasibility constraints can be ar-
gued to motivate constitutional restrictions on the
ability of governments to impose taxes that are rad-
ically different from the results of the more main-
stream optimal tax literature.
The contingent support for the moderated market
system depends in part on the background assump-
tion of ethical individualism that is common to most
economists, and in part on the fact that the opera-
tion of markets is understood in more detail than is
the operation of alternative mechanisms that rely in
part on complex political processes. Progress in this
area depends on deepening the understanding of al-
ternative political and economic institutions as well
as refining the ethical input.
See also: CONTRACTARIANISM; CONTRACTS; CONSE-
QUENTIALISM; DEONTOLOGY; DISCOUNTING THE FU-
TURE; DUTY AND OBLIGATION; ECONOMIC ANALYSIS;
EQUALITY; EXPLOITATION; FUTURE GENERATIONS; IN-
DIVIDUALISM; INSTITUTIONS; INTERESTS; INTERNA-
TIONAL JUSTICE: DISTRIBUTION; JUSTICE, DISTRIBU-
TIVE; LIBERALISM; MORAL RULES; NEEDS; POLITICAL
SYSTEMS; POWER; PROPERTY; PUBLIC POLICY; RA-
TIONAL CHOICE; RAWLS; RIGHTS; SMITH; SOCIAL AND
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY; SOCIAL CONTRACT; TELEO-
LOGICAL ETHICS; UTILITARIANISM; WELFARE RIGHTS
AND SOCIAL POLICY.
Bibliography
Arrow, Kenneth J. Social Choice and Individual Values.
2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963
[1951].
444
Atkinson, Anthony B. “On the Measurement of Inequal-
ity.” Journal of Economic Theory 2 (1970): 244–63.
———. The Economics of Inequality. 2d ed. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1983.
Atkinson, Anthony E., and Joseph E. Stiglitz. Lectures on
Public Economics. London: McGraw Hill, 1980. Cov-
ers many issues in welfare economic analysis; provides
key references.
Bergson, Abram. “A Reformulation of Certain Aspects of
Welfare Economics.” Quarterly Journal of Economics
52 (1938): 310–34.
Bornstein, Michael. Comparative Economic Systems: Mod-
els and Cases. Homewood: Irwin, 1985. Discusses al-
ternative systems.
Brennan, Geoffrey, and James M. Buchanan. The Power to
Tax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Broadway, Robin W., and Neil Bruce. Welfare Economics.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984. Excellent advanced un-
dergraduate text.
Buchanan, James M. The Limits of Liberty. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1975.
Buchanan, James M., and Gordon Tullock. The Calculus
of Consent. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1962. Contractarian approach.
d’Aspremont, Claude, and Louis Gevers. “Equity and the
Informational Base of Collective Choice.” Review of
Economics Studies 44 (1977): 199–209. Utilitarian so-
cial welfare function.
Dasgupta, Partha. An Inquiry into Well-Being and Desti-
tution. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Moral and eco-
nomic analysis of resource allocation.
Debreu, Gerard. Theory of Value. New York: Wiley, 1959.
Technical account of welfare economics.
Deschamps, Robert, and Louis Gevers. “Leximin and Util-
itarian Rules: A Joint Characterisation.” Journal of Eco-
nomic Theory 17 (1978): 143–63.
Fishburn, Peter C. “On Harsanyi’s Utilitarian Cardinal
Welfare Theorem.” Theory and Decision 17 (1984):
21–28.
Foley, Duncan K. “Resource Allocation and the Public
Sector.” Yale Economic Essays 7 (1967): 45–98. Eq-
uity as the absence of envy.
Hamlin, Alan P. “Rights, Indirect Utilitarianism and Con-
tractarianism.” Economics and Philosophy 5 (1989):
167–89. Discusses rights in teleological settings.
———, ed. Ethics and Economics. 2 vols. Cheltenham:
Edward Elgar, 1996. Collection of major articles.
Hamlin, Alan P., and Philip Pettit. “The Normative Anal-
ysis of the State: Some Preliminaries.” In The Good
Polity, edited by Alan P. Hamlin and Philip Pettit. Ox-
ford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Three approaches to eth-
ical evaluation of economic systems.
Harsanyi, John. “Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics
and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility.” Journal of
Political Economy 63 (1955): 309–21.
Haslett, D. W. Capitalism with Morality. Oxford: Clar-

endon Press, 1994. Compares economic systems from
moral perspectives.
Hausman, Daniel, and Michael McPherson. Economic
Analysis and Moral Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. Book-length survey.
Hayek, Friedrich A. von. “Economics and Knowledge.”
Economica 4 (1937): 33–54.
———. “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” American
Economic Review 35 (1945): 519–30.
Koopmans, Tjalling C. Three Essays on the State of Eco-
nomic Science. New York: McGraw Hill, 1957. Non-
technical discussion of welfare economics.
Maskin, Eric. “A Theorem on Utilitarianism.” Review of
Economic Studies 45 (1978): 93–96.
Mirrlees, James A. “An Exploration in the Theory of Op-
timum Income Tax.” Review of Economic Studies 38
(1971): 175–208. Germinal article.
Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York:
Basic Books, 1974. The invisible hand variant of the
eligibility approach.
Panzer, Elisha A., and David Schmeidler. “A Difficulty in
the Concept of Fairness.” Review of Economic Studies
41 (1974): 441–43. Equity criterion versus Pareto
efficiency.
Ramsey, Frank P. “A Contribution to the Theory of Taxa-
tion.” Economic Journal 37 (1927): 47–61. Classic
early argument.
Roberts, Kevin W. S. “Possibility Theorems with Inter-
personally Comparable Welfare Levels.” Review of
Economic Studies 47 (1980): 409–20. Utilitarian so-
cial welfare function.
Samuelson, Paul A. Foundations of Economic Analysis.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947.
Sen, Amartya K. Collective Choice and Social Welfare.
San Francisco: Holden-Day, 1970. Relaxes Arrow’s or-
dinalist requirement while retaining noncomparability.
———. “The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal.” Journal
of Political Economy 78 (1970): 152–57.
———. “Poverty: An Ordinal Approach to Measure-
ment.” Econometrica 46 (1976): 219–31.
———. “Liberty, Unanimity and Rights.” Economica 42
(1976): 217–45.
———. “Utilitarianism and Welfarism.” Journal of Phi-
losophy 76 (1979): 463–89.
———. “Issues in the Measurement of Poverty.” Scandi-
navian Journal of Economics 81 (1979): 285–307.
———. “Equality of What?” In vol. 1, Tanner Lectures on
Human Values, edited by Sterling M. McMurrin. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
———. “Liberty and Social Choice.” Journal of Philoso-
phy 80 (1983): 5–28.
Wiles, Peter J. D. Economic Institutions Compared. Ox-
ford: Basil Blackwell, 1977.
Alan P. Hamlin
445
Edwards, Jonathan
education
See moral education.
Edwards, Jonathan (1703–1758)
Puritan theologian and clergyman. Born in Con-
necticut and educated at Yale, Edwards served par-
ishes in Massachusetts and wrote important theo-
logical treatises as well as many famous sermons. At
Yale, he read the philosophy of LOCKE (1632–1704)
and the new science of Newton (1642–1727) and
Boyle (1627–1691), and he developed his meta-
physical idealism. There and throughout his minis-
try, Edwards reflected on ethical topics, especially
freedom and RESPONSIBILITY, HAPPINESS as the
good, and moral duty and virtue.
In Freedom of the Will (1754), Edwards argued
against Arminian belief in FREE WILL. Understood as
self-determination, free will requires an impossible
infinite regress of acts of self-causation; as indiffer-
ence, it makes choice impossible, since nothing hap-
pens in a state of equilibrium; and as chance or un-
caused choice, it is incompatible with responsibility
and the cultivation of virtuous CHARACTER. Every
event has a cause; every choice is caused by the
strongest motive or set of cooperating MOTIVES; so
there are no free or uncaused choices. However, AC-
TION, the ability to do what we most want, is gen-
erally free unless under immediate external re-
straints or constraints. Edwards’s soft determinism
requires only freedom of action, not freedom of will,
for responsibility and blameworthiness. We are re-
sponsible for doing what we most want to do, and
if that is wrong we are blameworthy. Being justly
punishable (here or hereafter) for wrong merely re-
quires choosing to do wrong when that is what most
pleases us (our PLEASURE being wrong) but not (as
freewillists hold) originating that choice or pleasure.
In The Nature of True Virtue (1755), Edwards
claimed that every being with understanding and
will necessarily aims at the good of happiness, un-
derstood hedonistically as pleasure, delight, or rel-
ish. Beauty consists of forms or qualities that har-
monize, agree with, or consent to one another and
that are immediately pleasant or agreeable in them-
selves. Moral knowledge and virtue are forms of
beauty.
There are two types of morality, natural and di-
vine. Natural morality derives moral knowledge from
Edwards, Jonathan
the moral sense or conscience, as explicated by Fran-
cis HUTCHESON (1694–1746). Informed and impar-
tial CONSCIENCE consists primarily of a disposition
to approve of or take pleasure in two duties and their
corresponding virtues. Consistency approves of treat-
ing others in ways one wishes to be treated oneself,
and justice approves of inflicting EVIL proportion-
ately on those who have harmed others and doing
good to those who do good. This natural morality is
a form of secondary beauty (i.e., “a harmonious cor-
responding of one thing with another”), akin to
beauty in sensory forms. Natural morality is the
same in object or content with divine morality yet
differs from it.
Divine morality involves the duty and true virtue
of BENEVOLENCE, pure LOVE of others not arising
from self-love. Benevolence is more than doing good
to others for their sake. We may promote and delight
in the happiness or prosperity of some other individ-
uals, even millions in number, yet lack true virtue.
As primary beauty, benevolence consists in a whole-
hearted consent to the being of every animate being
as such, not necessarily as beautiful. Being in “agree-
ment and union with every particular being,” true
virtue both promotes and rejoices in the well-being
or happiness of all, except those who do not them-
selves consent fully to the being of all. Thus, true
virtue may oppose and punish evildoers. God has
true virtue, and by grace the saints approximate it
as they love God, in whose being all others live and
move and have their being.
See also: AESTHETICS; BENEVOLENCE; CAUSATION
AND RESPONSIBILITY; CHARACTER; CONSCIENCE; DE-
LIBERATION AND CHOICE; DUTY AND OBLIGATION;
FREE WILL; FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM; HAPPINESS;
HUTCHESON; IDEALIST ETHICS; LOVE; MORAL SENSE
THEORISTS; MOTIVES; PLEASURE; PSYCHOLOGY; PUR-
ITANISM; RESPONSIBILITY; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS;
UTILITARIANISM; VIRTUES.
Bibliography
Works by Edwards
The Nature of True Virtue. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1960 [1755]. Foreword by William
Frankena.
The Works of Jonathan Edwards. Edited by Perry Miller,
John E. Smith, and Norman Pettit. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1957–. Fourteen volumes available,
with many more forthcoming.
446
The Works of President Edwards. Edited by Edward Wil-
liams and Edward Parsons. 10 vols. New York: B.
Franklin, 1968. Reprint of the 1817 edition.
Works about Edwards
Delattre, Roland A. Beauty and Sensibility in the Thought
of Jonathan Edwards. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1968.
Edwards, Rem B. A Return to Moral and Religious Phi-
losophy in Early America. Washington, D.C.: Univer-
sity Press of America, 1982. Chapters 1–5.
Fiering, Norman. Jonathan Edwards’ Moral Thought and
its British Context. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1981. Bibliographical note, pp. 371–79.
Stroh, Guy W. American Ethical Thought. Chicago: Nel-
son-Hall, 1979. Chapter 1.
Rem B. Edwards
egoism
As a philosophical thesis, egoism takes either a psy-
chological or a normative form. Psychological ego-
ism is the view that people are by nature egoistic,
that is, they are by nature motivated to pursue only
their self-interest. For example, Thomas HOBBES
(1588–1679) believed that people are always mo-
tivated to pursue PLEASURE and avoid pain. On the
assumption that such motivation is self-interested,
his view would be a specific form of psychological
egoism. Normative egoism, on the other hand, im-
plies that this is how people ought to be, whether or
not it is how they are. The normative thesis can be
formulated as ethical egoism—the view that people
ought morally to pursue only their self-interest; or it
can be formulated as rational egoism—the view that
people ought to pursue only their self-interest if they
are to be rational. In ethical theory these three kinds
of egoism bear importantly on each other.
Psychological Egoism
Psychological egoism is not, strictly speaking,
about ethics, since it purports merely to describe the
egoistic nature of human motivation rather than to
assess the moral worth of such motivation or the
behaviour that issues from it. Psychological egoism
is, nevertheless, important in ethics, for if it is true,
then any ethical view about how people ought to act
that is inconsistent with ethical egoism would imply

that people ought morally to do what is psycholog-
ically impossible. If, as Immanuel KANT (1724–
1804) thought, one cannot have a moral duty to do
the impossible, psychological egoism would imply
that people never have a moral duty to pursue some-
thing that is not in their self-interest.
Prima facie psychological egoism is an implausi-
ble view, since in fact people appear to pursue ends
which are not in their self-interest. The psychologi-
cal egoist allows, of course, that people often pursue
ends which are not immediately or obviously in their
INTEREST when these ends are really means to some
more distant or more subtle self-interested goal.
Still, it appears that people make sacrifices for the
benefit of others or to achieve some important im-
personal goal (like solving a problem in pure sci-
ence) where the end is sought for its own sake. Much
of the debate, therefore, has centered on whether
these appearances are illusory.
From Joseph BUTLER (1692–1752) and Henry
SIDGWICK (1838–1900) to thinkers of the present
day, the critics of psychological egoism have argued
that the reasons given in favor of it have been based
on conceptual confusion and mistakes in reasoning.
It is, for example, a genetic fallacy to defend psy-
chological egoism on the basis that any intrinsic DE-
SIRE that is not self-interested (say, a desire to fulfill
a moral ideal for its own sake) has been generated
by a process of social conditioning in which self-
interested desires (such as, the desire to avoid PUN-
ISHMENT and the desire for parental approval) have
played a primary role. Even if some such account of
the genesis of apparently nonegoistic desires is true,
it doesn’t follow that the desires thus generated are
not counterexamples to psychological egoism. It is
also fallacious to argue that the pleasure that is de-
rived from the satisfaction of a desire must be the
intrinsic object of the desire. Indeed, it would appear
that in most cases the pleasure that is experienced
upon the fulfillment of a desire would not exist un-
less some object distinct from pleasure were seen as
desirable in itself. The intrinsic desirability of what
is sought explains the resulting pleasure when it is
obtained—not the reverse (e.g., Feinberg; but also
see Morillo). Further errors in reasoning occur in the
argument that evolution through natural selection en-
tails psychological egoism. This reasoning confuses
biological egoism with its psychological counterpart
and then assumes naively that biological altruism can-
447
egoism
not evolve through natural selection (see Sober and
Wilson).
Ethical Egoism
Ethical egoism might be true, however, even if
psychological egoism is not. (Only in the latter case,
in fact, would ethical egoism have much point.) Two
versions of ethical egoism may be distinguished. In-
dividual ethical egoism, asserted by some particular
person P, implies that everyone ought morally to act
in the interest of P. The difficulty with defending
such a position is to explain why everyone should
act in the interest of P rather than another person,
say, Q. Critics argue that, unless there is some mor-
ally relevant difference between them, individual
ethical egoism formulated with respect to P is no
more plausible than individual ethical egoism for-
mulated with respect to Q. The force of this reason-
ing tends to push egoism toward a universal for-
mulation: For every person x and every action y, x
ought morally to do y if and only if y is in x’s overall
self-interest. This is the form of ethical egoism that
has received the most attention and the best recent
defense (by, e.g., Kalin).
At least five important kinds of objection have
been raised against it. One is that a morality based
on this principle would fail to have many of the
structural features that explain the function and
point of morality. For example, such a morality could
not begin to adjudicate conflicts of interest and
would not serve in the normal way to guide one in
giving moral advice (since the principle itself would
imply that one ought not to advocate the principle
to another unless doing so is advantageous to one-
self ). The best reply has been that these charges
show only that egoistic morality is very unlike the
morality that most of us are used to; it doesn’t show
that egoism is inherently irrational or unreasonable
when used as a guide to personal decisions.
Attempts have been made to show that it is un-
reasonable because it leads to contradiction. Sup-
pose A is the action Abe could choose that would
most benefit Abe, and B is the action Beth could
choose that would most benefit Beth; but suppose
further that the performance of either action would
prevent the performance of the other. Ethical egoism
implies that in this case Abe is morally required to
do A and Beth is morally required to do B, even
though by hypothesis the performance of both ac-
egoism
tions is impossible. If we accept the Kantian prin-
ciple that nothing can be morally required that is
impossible, we appear to be led to a contradiction.
But this reasoning is valid only if we assume as an
additional premise the deontic principle that if A is
morally required and B is morally required, then A
and B are (together) morally required. This princi-
ple, which in effect precludes conflicts of obliga-
tions, can be challenged on general grounds (e.g.,
see van Fraassen).
Perhaps the most common objection is that ethi-
cal egoism is unreasonable or irrational in a practical
sense because it is self-defeating. Many choice situ-
ations are so structured that if each agent acts to
maximize his or her own self-interest, paradoxically
each will do less well than if each had acted coop-
eratively and hence not purely egoistically. The Pris-
oners’ Dilemma is the most famous RATIONAL
CHOICE situation of this kind (and see Campbell and
Sowden). This presents a problem for rational ego-
ism as well.
Rational Egoism
Rational egoism, in the narrow sense defined ear-
lier, implies that rationally, people ought to maxi-
mize their self-interest. In the last several decades,
however, the term has been given a much broader
meaning, reflecting the influence of rational choice
theory in ethics. In the wide sense it is the view that
rationally people ought to maximize their individ-
ual utility. Less technically: they ought to maximize
the satisfaction of their preferences, whether self-
interested or not. Significantly, situations like the
Prisoners’ Dilemma cast doubt not only on ethical
egoism but also on rational egoism in the wide sense.
The evidence of persons choosing in iterated pris-
oners’ dilemmas, for example, shows that those who
maximize their individual utility choice by choice
tend to achieve lower utility scores in the long run
than those who interact cooperatively, whether or
not their individual utility is a measure of personal
benefit (Axelrod). Evidently, for some cases of in-
terpersonal conflict, both ethical and rational egoism
are self-defeating principles of choice.
Derek Parfit has challenged the validity of this
kind of objection by distinguishing between the ul-
timate aim that is given in a principle of egoism
(such as, maximizing self-interest or maximizing in-
448
dividual utility) and the best means of achieving that
ultimate aim. There are circumstances in which the
best means would require acting with a different or
even contrary aim (such as, the aim of producing the
best mutually acceptable outcome in cooperation
with someone else). The best means might even re-
quire convincing oneself that the ultimate aim of
egoism is unworthy and that egoism is false. But
from this it does not follow that the principle of ego-
ism is false or that its aim is in any way objectiona-
ble. What follows is only that to achieve this aim one
may not be able to pursue it directly or want to
achieve it.
Parfit himself rejects egoism but for a different
reason. He compares a certain commonsense con-
ception of personal identity with a “reductive” con-
ception in which a person consists of various time
slices or “person stages” unified by psychological
similarity. On the reductive conception there is only
a difference of degree between the ways in which I
am related to my past and future person stages and
the ways in which I am related or might have been
related to those of other people. Parfit argues that
egoism of all kinds presupposes that the self has a
level of importance in relation to other persons that
is plausible only on the nonreductive but implausible
conception of personal identity.
The last objection has the disadvantage of de-
pending on a controversial conception of personal
identity. A problem for normative egoism (advanced
by Stocker, Blum, and Thomas) that does not have
this weakness yet does not reduce to a merely stra-
tegic objection is that the egoistic perspective cannot
account for the worth of important human goods
like FRIENDSHIP, FAMILY, and community. The ob-
jection is not simply that these goods, which engage
our altruistic emotions of SYMPATHY, compassion,
and CARE, generally preclude an egoistic attitude.
They do but, as we have learned from Parfit, that does
not show that the ultimate aim of egoism, the pro-
motion of self-interest, cannot be generally achieved.
The problem is rather that this aim does not give the
reason these important goods are worth having and
why they justify our actions. What is this reason?
Normally, what gives us reason to care about our
friends, family, and community are the people them-
selves. They are, moreover, normally what motivates
us to act for their good. Egoism thus purports to give
a reason for acting but in these important cases,

where the reason for ACTION is usually the motive,
gives us the wrong reason.
The objection has ramifications beyond egoism.
Contemporary contractarian theories of justice char-
acteristically assume that the contracting parties
would be egoistically motivated and hence not mo-
tivated to care for each other. Many feminist philos-
ophers (e.g., A. Baier, Calhoun, Held) argue that this
assumption, since it ignores the fact that responsi-
bilities for care primarily fall to women in current
society, reflects a gender-biased perception of the
motivation that is most in accord with reason and
therefore least in need of justification. This bias also
encourages the false view that family relations, where
the burdens of care are most prominent, are beyond
the scope of social justice (Okin).
Eudaimonism
Thus far, we have not said what the aim of egoism
is other than benefit for oneself or individual pref-
erence satisfaction. It is at least arguable, however,
that a human’s real interest lies in flourishing or
functioning well as a human being. This conception
of individual human good or EUDAIMONIA is ex-
pounded by PLATO (c. 430–347 B.C.E.) and ARIS-
TOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.). Although often translated
as “happiness”, the term does not suggest a life of
pleasure so much as a life that realizes a standard of
living well, or flourishing, peculiar to human beings.
Since Plato and Aristotle hold that humans are best
fitted by nature to live a life according to reason and
such a life would exemplify human VIRTUES, they
espoused eudaimonism, the doctrine in which a life
of virtue and eudaimonia are one. To accept eudai-
monism, though, places normative egoism in an un-
usual light, for egoism would then imply that one
ought to live a life that displays human virtues. Such
a life, according to Plato and Aristotle, would be one
that is conducive to or at least in harmony with the
good of others, contrary to what was assumed in the
objections raised above against normative egoism.
See also: ALTRUISM; CARE; CHARITY; CONTRACTARI-
ANISM; COOPERATION, CONFIICT, AND COORDINA-
TION; DELIBERATION AND CHOICE; DESIRE; ENVY;
EQUALITY; EUDAIMONIA, -ISM; FEMINIST ETHICS;
FRIENDSHIP; HEDONISM; INDIVIDUALISM; INTERESTS;
449
egoism
LOVE; MOTIVES; NEEDS; PLEASURE; PRIDE; RATIONAL
CHOICE; RECIPROCITY; SELF-RESPECT; SYMPATHY.
Bibliography
Axelrod, Robert. “The Emergence of Cooperation Among
Egoists.” American Political Science Review 75 (1981):
306–18. Reprinted in Campbell and Sowden, pp. 320–
39.
Baier, Annette. “The Need for More than Justice.” Cana-
dian Journal of Philosophy 13 Supplementary (1987):
41–56.
Blum, Lawrence. Friendship, Altruism and Morality. Lon-
don: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980.
Butler, Joseph. Fifteen Sermons on Human Nature. First
printed in London, 1726. 2d ed., 1729.
Calhoun, Cheshire. “Justice, Care, Gender Bias.” Journal
of Philosophy 85 (1988): 451–63.
Campbell, Richmond, and Lanning Sowden, eds. Para-
doxes of Rationality and Cooperation: Prisoner’s Di-
lemma and Newcomb’s Problem. Vancouver: Univer-
sity of British Columbia Press, 1985.
Feinberg, Joel. “Psychological Egoism.” In Reason and Re-
sponsibility: Readings in Some Basic Problems of Phi-
losophy, 7th ed., ed. Joel Feinberg, pp. 489–500. Bel-
mont: Wadsworth, 1989.
Gauthier, David, ed. Morality and Rational Self-Interest.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1970.
Held, Virginia. Feminist Morality. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1993.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. London, 1651.
Kalin, Jesse. “In Defense of Egoism.” In Gauthier, supra.,
pp. 64–87.
Milo, Ronald D., ed. Egoism and Altruism. Belmont:
Wadsworth, 1973.
Marillo, Carolyn R. “The Reward Event and Motivation.”
The Journal of Philosophy 87 (1990): 169–86.
Okin, Susan Moller. Justice, Gender, and the Family. New
York: Basic Books, 1989.
Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1986.
Sidgwick, Henry. The Methods of Ethics. New York: Mac-
millan, 1874.
Sober, Elliott, and David Sloan Wilson. Unto Others.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.
Stocker, Michael. “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical
Theories.” Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976): 453–66.
Thomas, Laurence. Living Morally: A Psychology of Moral
Character. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989.
Van Fraassen, Bas C. “Values and the Heart’s Command.”
Journal of Philosophy 70 (1973): 5–19. Reprinted in
egoism
Moral Dilemmas, ed. Christopher W. Gowans, pp.
138–53. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Richmond Campbell
elite, concept of
An elite is made up of those persons in a given group
who are preeminent in terms of some standard of
value; it is the choice or best part of that group.
Thus, for example, we can distinguish a scholarly
elite (the most learned), an artistic elite (the best
painters, the best writers), or a moral elite (the most
virtuous, the most just). In this sense an elite is con-
stituted by just those persons whose actions may be
said to count the most when measured against some
ideal of performance.
Every moral philosophy inevitably carries with it
the standards in terms of which we may distinguish
those persons who constitute an elite. That is, each
moral philosophy, as a set of principles designed to
guide and grade human actions or intentions, intrin-
sically involves the sorting of performances along a
scale the upper and lower limits of which are re-
spectively “the best” and “the worst.” Given this
analysis, John Muir, for example, is a member of the
environmentalist elite, and Che Guevara is a mem-
ber of the anticolonial, revolutionary elite.
The concept of an elite has not met with enthu-
siastic regard in most modern discussions. From a
conservative perspective, T. S. Eliot (1888–1964)
was concerned that an elite could never have proper
regard for its own tradition and thus would become
a destabilizing social factor. By contrast, contem-
porary liberal critics tend to reduce all discussions
of the concept of an elite to discussions of ‘elitism,’
apparently fearing that the principle of hierarchy
(ranking) leads inevitably to injustice, to the ineq-
uitable distribution of goods and chastisements.
However, both the logic of the concept of an elite
and the role of this concept in the history of ethics
show the situation to be somewhat more complex
than this.
In PLATO’s (c. 430–347 B.C.E.) Republic, the con-
cept of a moral and political elite is clearly rooted in
a set of knowledge claims. That is, Plato’s anchoring
of moral AUTHORITY in the class of philosopher
kings is derived from his argument that reality itself
is hierarchical and that goodness is an object of tran-
scendent knowledge known only to those skilled in
450
the art of dialectic. The Platonic elite is, in principle,
beneficent insofar as it promises to assign individ-
uals their appropriate places in the scheme of things,
thereby ensuring their fullest possible measure of
both knowledge and HAPPINESS.
In addition to his philosophical justification for
an elite, Plato offers a prudential rationale, one
based on his own experience of the excesses and ir-
rationalities of Athenian DEMOCRACY, a government
he compared to a ship without a captain, a mob
without order or stability. Thomas HOBBES (1588–
1679) gives a similar prudential rationale for the ex-
istence of a moral and political elite, ambiguously
denying that his elite is grounded in any transcen-
dent reality and insisting that by the term ‘good’ we
mean only the objects of our desires. Hobbes’s mod-
ernist linking of the concepts of ‘good’ and ‘desire’
and his denial that goodness is either objective or
universal significantly alter the sort of warrant avail-
able for any moral or political elite. In a sense, then,
Hobbes’s conception of an elite is Plato’s rational
elite collapsed into a merely prudential elite.
Both Plato and Hobbes find intimate connections
between arguments for a moral elite and arguments
for a political elite. In other contexts, the tight clas-
sical connection between the moral and the political
is severed. For example, in the Catholic notion of a
moral elite (the saints), the moral hierarchy’s prin-
cipal function is to guide one in the perfection of
one’s soul; and that is a quintessentially apolitical
preoccupation. In this view of things, St. Thérèse
(1873–1897) and St. Francis (c. 1181–1226), for
example, exemplify holiness and are signposts in the
imitatio Christi. Analogously, Friedrich NIETZSCHE
(1844–1900) presents, in the figure of Zarathustra,
a humanist paradigm of an individualist and anar-
chic moral elite, an elite whose primary achieve-
ments are the overcoming of resentment, the exer-
cise of the will to power, and the affirmation of the
eternal recurrence of all things. Both the Christian
and the Nietzschean elites are primarily heuristic
elites, elites whose function it is to portray opposing
paradigms of moral achievement.
HEGEL (1770–1831) develops the concept of an
elite in deterministic rather than normative language,
and he does so in two different ways. In the Phe-
nomenology of Mind (1807), Hegel describes an elite
class of Masters who are the first to break with nature
and begin the conscious struggle for both their free-
dom and their POWER over others. As the victor in

the struggle for power, the Master takes up a peril-
ous and dependent struggle for self-consciousness
with those he has conquered. In Reason in History,
Hegel depicts Caesar, Napoleon, and Alexander as
“world historical” heroes whose fate it is to enact
the purposes of the World Spirit. Such heroic indi-
viduals care nothing for PRUDENCE or happiness,
striving only to fulfill the demands of universal his-
tory, demands that are unconscious in the masses but
conscious in themselves. Fated to “trample down
many an innocent flower,” such world historical in-
dividuals are free of the demands of civil morality.
In contemporary thought, the work of Hannah
ARENDT (1906–1975) reflects considerable ambi-
guity concerning the concept of an elite. On the one
hand, Arendt has high regard for an elite’s restrain-
ing influence on the vox populi, frequently sounding
like a Madisonian federalist when expressing her res-
ervations about the chaotic conditions of modern so-
ciety. In that society, the animal laborans (the work-
ing masses) readily lends itself to the temptations of
Nazi and Stalinist totalitarianism. Against that temp-
tation, Arendt theorizes a property-owning elite which,
when emancipated from the conditions of labor, is
capable of rational political action. Such an elite is
the one best hope for the classical Western ideals of
freedom and justice. In her populist voice, however,
Arendt tends to reduce the concept of an elite to that
of ‘elitism,’ thus echoing the egalitarian suspicion of
all elites.
But the term ‘elitist’ does not reflect anything a
priori in the conception of an elite. In its useful
sense, the term ‘elitist’ refers to the decadent state
of a moral philosophy that is preoccupied with the
exclusionary character of its rank order; or it refers
to the situation in which some elite has no accept-
able prudential, theoretical, or heuristic warrant for
its existence. An elite becomes ‘elitist’ when it has
the power but not the authority to exercise its pre-
rogatives. The term ‘elite,’ then, is not necessarily a
pejorative one and certainly not one that is synony-
mous with ‘oppressive.’ There are both oppressive
elites, whose function is, in the Kantian sense, to
deprive one of one’s autonomy, and liberative elites,
whose function is to point one in the direction of
that autonomy.
Beneath all reductions of the concept of an elite
to that of ‘elitism,’ there lurks the bogey of relativ-
ism. The working assumption of normative relativ-
ism—that there are no objective standards in ethics
451
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
and that individuals are their own best authority on
matters of value—necessarily puts itself at odds
with the principle of rank order, since an elite in a
value system would be precisely those who had the
most cogent practical or theoretical claim to under-
stand the values of a given system. Thus whatever
objections may be found to particular moral elites,
the concept of hierarchy is endemic to the notion of
moral value and cannot be dispensed with. Indeed,
a moral philosophy that cannot specify its own sense
of an elite is in a state of conceptual chaos.
See also: ARENDT; EQUALITY; HEGEL; HOBBES;
MORAL RELATIVISM; MORAL SAINTS; NIETZSCHE;
PLATO; RESENTMENT.
Bibliography
Allen, Wayne F. “Homo Aristocus: H. Arendt’s Elites.”
Idealistic Studies 13 (1983): 226–39.
Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Garden City,
NY: Anchor, 1959.
———. On Revolution. New York: Viking, 1969.
———. Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt
Brace, 1973.
Canovan, Margaret. “The Contradictions of Hannah
Arendt’s Political Thought.” Political Theory 6 (1978):
5–26.
Feyerabend, Paul. “Democracy, Elitism, and Scientific
Method.” Inquiry 23 (1980): 3–18.
Flew, Antony. “Competition and Cooperation, Equality
and Elites.” Journal of the Philosophy of Education 17
(1983): 267–74.
Martin, Brian. “Elites and Suppression.” Philosophy and
Social Action 12 (1986): 19–30.
Pareto, Vilfredo. The Rise and Fall of the Elites. Totowa,
NJ: Bedminster Press, 1968.
Stirner, Max. The Ego and His Own. London: Jonathan
Cape, 1971.
Thorson, Thomas L., ed. Plato: Totalitarian or Democrat?
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963.
Harold Alderman
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
(1803–1882)
In his time, Emerson was considered America’s
greatest thinker, and his writing exercised enormous
influence on writers such as THOREAU (1817–1862),
Whitman (1819–1892), and Dickinson (1830–1886).
The next generation of American philosophers—
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
that of JAMES (1842–1910), SANTAYANA (1863–
1952), and DEWEY (1859–1952)—praised him,
but they did not take up the main questions of his
work. His writings continue to appear somewhat
foreign, both in form and substance, to the concerns
of recent moral philosophers. Accordingly, most of
the useful contemporary responses to Emerson have
come from literary critics and historians. Emerson
wrote no systematic ethical work, and moreover we
cannot really point to any separate region of his
work that we could label his “ethics.” Each thought
that he records—and not just the thoughts of what
we call philosophy—must encourage or illustrate
the growth of the individual mind or it is a useless
embarrassment.
Emerson’s interest for ethical thought may be di-
vided into six segments: (1) his reinterpretation of
the moral sense and his related recovery for ethics
of a Platonic insight into “being” and “becoming”
(the Divinity School Address, 1838); (2) his recur-
ring efforts to reinterpret Christianity as a “moral
system,” a systematic expression of ideas by which
the mind can be provoked to instruct itself about its
possibilities (the Address); (3) his concomitant cri-
tique of “historical Christianity” for its exaggeration
of the person of Jesus, its distortion of the moral law,
and its failure to cultivate our moral nature (the Ad-
dress); (4) his revision of the Romantic ideas of
genius, self-cultivation, and expression so as to
underscore their ethical import for everyone (“Self-
Reliance,” 1841; “Experience,” 1844); (5) his essays
about specific VIRTUES such as heroism, PRUDENCE,
FRIENDSHIP, gifts, and LOVE; (6) his increasing ef-
forts to engage with public thought about the po-
litical events of the day (e.g., “The Fugitive Slave
Law,” 1854; “Woman,” 1855). These segments are
interrelated, and the reader who pursues any one of
them will find connections with the others.
Each of these segments of Emerson’s thought is
also a feature of what the American philosopher
Stanley Cavell (1990) has characterized as Emer-
son’s moral PERFECTIONISM: He argues that Emerson
does not propose a moral theory intended to com-
pete with systematic accounts of the right and the
good. Emerson isolates and insists on a direction in-
herent in most great ethical thinkers, a direction
epitomized by SOCRATES (c. 470–399 B.C.E.) when
he points us toward “the care for the best possible
state of [the] soul” (PLATO [c. 430–347 B.C.E.],
Apology 29e). Emerson’s revision of the Greek idea
452
of cultivating the self began as early as his prize-
winning college essay on Socrates.
Cavell describes perfectionism as the possibility
of self-transformation according to an ideal that is
internal to the self’s constitution rather than one
that comes from without. Emerson’s perfectionism
does not imply some ultimate perfectibility: He is
concerned with removing the obstacles to moral
growth that we have imposed on ourselves out of
self-distrust or the fear of autonomy. Contemporary
moral philosophers, at least until recently, have re-
garded such thoughts about self-culture as matters
of exhortation, edification, PSYCHOLOGY, or psycho-
pathology. The very features that constitute Emer-
son’s claim to inherit a central tradition of Western
philosophy have worked to prevent him from being
considered a philosopher.
Emerson’s emphasis on the growth of the self
provides us with a key to the significance he places
on the insights of Platonism and of the moral sense.
Emerson begins—like HUTCHESON (1694–1746)
and PRICE (1723–1791)—by appealing to the exis-
tence of a moral sense as a way of combating the
corrosive skepticism of David HUME (1711–1776).
But almost immediately he interprets the moral feel-
ings less as the dictates of a special moral organ and
more as the source of an internal insight into our
incompleteness and into our consequent need for
growth. Emerson is traditionally and pervasively de-
picted as a kind of seer, awestruck at the moral in-
tuitions of eternity. But the most persistent lesson
which he draws from these perceptions concerns the
difficulty of accepting our transience and the pain of
moving from one moral stage to the next: “Power
ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the mo-
ment of transition from a past to a new state” (“Self-
Reliance”). The fact that we are capable of a still
greater appreciation of an enduring moral worth be-
comes a sign of a human condition in time that we
must somehow cease to deny. We prefer the poverty
of our habitual responses to our moral insights over
the anxiety that is latent in the very possibility of
moral change.
The moral feelings thus provoke the mind to ap-
prehend a difference between its everyday limita-
tions and the more permanent realm of worth that
it aspires to. Emerson often expressed this difference
in Platonic terms of being and becoming. His reli-
ance on such language is reinforced by his under-
standing of the moral sense as capable of appre-

hending the possibilities of virtue. “Virtue” retained
for Emerson the Greek overtones of a trait of CHAR-
ACTER which allows us to be or to do something in
a more perfected fashion. The catch is that the
achievement of virtue is sufficiently difficult that hu-
man beings are inclined to rely on the virtues that
they have already obtained. But the aspiration to-
ward INTEGRITY requires that we overcome this in-
clination to premature self-definition in favor of the
self’s capacity to accept its transience and to initiate
a more permanent transformation: “There is no vir-
tue that is final; all are initial” (“Circles,” 1841). Vir-
tues are intended to be the beginning of something:
an action or a transition to a new level of our char-
acter. When virtues cease to initiate they become im-
pediments, and we must “cast away our virtues, or
what we have always esteemed as such, into the
same pit as our grosser vices.”
Emerson incites us to the patience and tolerance
for anxiety that is required if, as we stand, we are to
live with the possibilities of integrity: “People wish
to be settled; only so far as they are unsettled is there
any hope for them” (“Circles”). The self is not a fixed
unity; and its integrity is not a wholeness that we
could possess once and for all. So the self-trust in
which Emerson sees all the virtues “comprehended”
(“Self-Reliance”) is not a matter of the satisfaction
that the self takes in its moral judgments of the
world. This self-trust is another name for the ability
to overcome our “terror” of change and reforma-
tion (“Circles,” “Self-Reliance”). Like JOHN STUART
MILL (1806–1873), who is almost his exact contem-
porary, Emerson saw human beings as shrinking
from their all-too-human nature. Both of them char-
acterized as “conformity” this disowning of the
human capacity for self-possession in the realm of
feelings, thoughts, and pleasures. Both of them at-
tributed the condition at once to a deformed and
deforming Christianity, to an industrial society of
human masses increasingly intolerant of human dif-
ferences, and to the internal eye of a “hostile and
dreaded censorship” (Mill, On Liberty, chapter III,
1859). And for both Mill and Emerson, it is above
all by means of this self-censorship that we frighten
ourselves out of our original portion of individuality.
Emerson goes beyond Mill in his appreciation for
the difficulties of thinking and writing in such a sit-
uation. He offers us an idea of our “unattained but
attainable self” (“History,” 1841), but at the same
time provokes us to discover that idea for ourselves.
453
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
In trying to illustrate a path on which a reader might
be drawn toward this further self, Emerson must
also communicate the fact that he is in no better a
position than anyone else to disseminate such illus-
trations. His authority as a writer derives from his
capacity to give a reading of the still unexpressed
thoughts of his audience. Emerson’s writing encour-
ages us to stop reading him and to think these
thoughts for ourselves. This increase of self-reliance
in thinking is inseparable from the capacity to read
ourselves and our entanglements in the world, and
it thus provides a preparation or even a model for
autonomy in action. He writes as though the struggle
between his reading of his audience and our reading
of him is about to become the central ethical struggle
of the moment.
Santayana was irritated by Emerson’s double ca-
pacity for cheerfulness and sublimity, which he in-
terpreted as a sign of Emerson’s “imperviousness”
to the evidences of EVIL (“The Genteel Tradition in
American Thought,” 1913). NIETZSCHE (1844–
1900) was delighted by the same traits, regarding
them as an effect of the self-sufficiency of Emerson’s
thinking (Twilight of the Idols, 1889: IX, 13). For
Emerson, as for Nietzsche, we learn to understand
ourselves in a state of elevation. But this elevation is
instructive only to the extent that it marks our over-
coming of dejection at our sense of the impossibility
of change and, at the same time, of our terror at its
impending possibility.
See also: AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; CHARAC-
TER; CHRISTIAN ETHICS; EXCELLENCE; FATE; HUTCH-
ESON; INTEGRITY; KANT; MORAL DEVELOPMENT;
MORAL SENSE THEORISTS; NATURE AND ETHICS;
NIETZSCHE; PERFECTIONISM; PLATO; PRICE; SELF-
KNOWLEDGE; THOREAU; TRANSCENDENTALISM; VIR-
TUE ETHICS; VIRTUES.
Bibliography
Works by Emerson
The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Edited by
Robert E. Spiller, et al. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1971–. The modern critical edition; in-
cludes extensive notes.
The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Edited by
Edward Waldo Emerson. Centenary ed. 12 vols. Bos-
ton: Houghton Mifflin, 1903–04. Excellent edition, of-
ten still cited.
“The Character of Socrates. The Present State of Ethical
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Philosophy.” In Edward Everett Hale, Ralph Waldo
Emerson. Boston: Norword Editions, 1977 [1820,
1821]. Emerson’s first youthful engagements with eth-
ical thought. Still absorbing.
There are many editions of individual works. Among the
most important works, with date of first printed pub-
lication (not necessarily first oral presentation), are:
Nature (1836). Essays, First (1841) and Second (1844)
Series. The Address to the Divinity School (1838).
“The Method of Nature” (1841). “Character” (1856).
“The American Scholar” (1837). Essays on Plato, Swe-
denborg, and Montaigne in Representative Men (1850).
The Conduct of Life (1860), especially “Fate,” “Power,”
and “Behavior.” “The Sovereignty of Ethics” (1878).
“The Fugitive Slave Law” (two versions: 1851; 1854).
“John Brown” (1859). “The Emancipation Proclama-
tion” (1862). “Woman” (1855).
Works about Emerson
Bishop, Jonathan. Emerson on the Soul. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1964. Emerson’s strategies
as writer.
Bloom, Harold. “Emerson and Whitman: The American
Sublime.” In his Poetry and Repression. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1976.
———. Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1982. See the two essays:
“Agon: Revision and Critical Personality,” and “Emer-
son: The American Religion.” Primary architect of re-
cent revival of literary interest in Emerson, Bloom re-
gards Emerson as the author of the principal American
poetics and treats him philosophically as a precursor
of Richard Rorty’s pragmatism, which is in turn re-
garded as a variant of Bloom’s own theory of “strong
misreading.”
Cavell, Stanley. Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome.
Carus Lectures. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1990. First full-scale, contemporary treatment of Em-
erson’s contribution to philosophy. Characterizes Em-
erson’s moral perfectionism; analyzes “The American
Scholar” and “Self-Reliance.”
———. In Quest of the Ordinary. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1988. Especially chapters 1, 2, 5. Anal-
ysis of “Fate.”
———. “Finding as Founding.” In his This New Yet Un-
approachable America. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1989. Analysis of “Experience.”
———. The Senses of Walden. Expanded edition San
Francisco: North Point, 1980. See “Thinking of Em-
erson” (differences between German and American re-
sponses to Kant and skepticism) and “An Emerson
Mood” (of philosophy, religion, and writing).
Goodman, Russell. American Philosophy and the Roman-
tic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991.
Konvitz, Milton, and Stephen Whicher, eds. Emerson: A
454
Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1962. Contains essays or excerpts by
Santayana, James, and Dewey; literary and historical
assessments by Perry Miller, F. O. Matthiesson, New-
ton Arvin, Sherman Paul, and Charles Feidelson; bib-
liography.
Matthiesson, F. O. American Renaissance: Art and Ex-
pression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1941. Powerful early state-
ment of Emerson’s significance.
Miller, Perry, ed. The Transcendentalists. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1950. Contemporaneous crit-
icism of Emerson, along with writing influenced by him.
Packer, Barbara. Emerson’s Fall. New York: Continuum,
1982. Best single introduction to Emerson as thinker;
extended close readings of the major essays; analyzes
philosophical, literary, and religious contexts, as well
as Emerson’s relation to current literary theory.
Poirier, Richard. The Renewal of Literature: Emersonian
Reflections. New York: Random House, 1987. Good
example of Emerson’s continued influence on Ameri-
can criticism.
Porte, Joel. Representative Man: Ralph Waldo Emerson in
His Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. Em-
erson’s historical impact.
Whicher, Stephen. Freedom and Fate: An Inner Life of
Ralph Waldo Emerson. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1953. Useful study of Emerson’s
intellectual development; bibliography.
Timothy Gould
emotion
In the history of ethics, emotion has played an am-
bivalent and unsettled role. Often it has been re-
garded as a dangerous threat to morality and ration-
ality; sometimes, on the contrary, it has been placed
in the center of the moral life. This ambivalence is
reflected in the close connections between the vo-
cabulary of emotions and that of vices and VIRTUES:
ENVY, spite, jealousy, wrath, and PRIDE are some
names of emotions that also refer to common vices.
Some virtues, such as LOVE, compassion, BENEVO-
LENCE, and SYMPATHY, are also names of emotions.
On the other hand, some other virtues— PRUDENCE,
fortitude, TEMPERANCE —consist largely in the ca-
pacity to resist the motivational POWER of emotions.
This ambivalence in regard to emotion runs deep.
One central reason for it is uncertainty about how
to define the role and place of emotion in the human
person. The ethical significance of emotions depends,
in particular, on their relation to (i) body, (ii) reason,
(iii) will, and (iv) perception.

Body
In the Republic of PLATO (c. 430–347 B.C.E.),
emotion was viewed as one of three agencies within
the person, along with reason and DESIRE. Plato
noted that although emotions are commonly taxed
with irrationality, they frequently side with reason
against impulsive desire. This picture of the role of
emotions in the human person had three notable fea-
tures: it was designed to account for inner conflict;
it acknowledged the thought-dependent character of
emotion, which differentiates them from mere sen-
sory feelings; and it recognized that emotions are not
merely complexes of beliefs and desires. On the
other hand, as ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) pointed
out, this account seems to require a reduplication of
functions in the potentially conflicting parts. For Ar-
istotle, emotion, desire, and belief are not homun-
cular parts of the person, but functions. That is also
the preferred modern view; but the problem re-
mains, how that function relates to others.
The simplest account of that relation is that emo-
tions are simply a class of feelings, differentiated
from sensations and proprioceptions by their expe-
rienced quality. This view, however, clearly fails to
do justice to the thought component of most emo-
tions. A variant has it that emotions are specifically
feelings caused by changes in physiological condi-
tions relating to the autonomic and motor functions
(commonly known as the “James Lange” view, after
William JAMES [1842–1910] and Carl G. Lange
[1834–1900]). On this view, it is tempting to sup-
pose that emotions are just brute facts, no doubt
susceptible of biological or psychological explana-
tion but not otherwise capable of being rationalized.
Reason
The claim that emotions are arational—that they
are beyond the pale of rational assessment—is
sometimes confused with the very different claim
that they are irrational. Strictly speaking, the two
claims are incompatible, since the ascription of ara-
tionality amounts to the claim that emotions can be
neither rational nor irrational. But there is a com-
plication which excuses the confusion: if emotions
are arational, questions must still arise about the
proper place of such arational factors in a well-
ordered human life. And it may then appear either
rational or irrational to give arational elements pride
455
emotion
of place in a rational life plan (or, for that matter, in
a principled refusal to live life according to any
plan).
The view that emotions are irrational was elo-
quently defended by the Epicureans and Stoics. For
this reason, the Hellenistic schools pose a particu-
larly interesting challenge for the rest of the Western
tradition. The Hellenistic philosophers (especially
the Stoics) made their own the Socratic hypothesis
that virtue is nothing else than knowledge, but
added the idea that emotions are essentially irra-
tional beliefs. All vice and all suffering is then irra-
tional, and the good life requires the rooting out of
all desires and attachments. (For the third of the ma-
jor Hellenistic schools, the Skeptics, it is convictions
as such that were responsible for pain. Hence they
recommend the repudiation of beliefs of any sort.)
All three schools stressed the overarching value of
ataraxia, the absence of disturbance in the soul. Phi-
losophy is then viewed as therapy, the function of
which is to purge emotions from the soul (Nuss-
baum). In support of this, the Stoics advanced the
plausible claim that it is psychologically impossible
to keep only nice emotions and give up the nasty
ones. For all attachment and all desire, however
worthy their objects might seem, entail the capacity
for wrenching and destructive negative emotions.
Thus erotic love brings the raging jealousy of Medea,
and even a commitment to the idea of justice may
foster a capacity for destructive anger which is noth-
ing but furor brevis—temporary insanity, in SEN-
ECA’s (c. 4 B.C.E.— C.E. 65) arresting phrase. More-
over, the usual objects of our attachment are clearly
unworthy of a free human being, since they diminish
rather than enhance the autonomy of those who suf-
fer them.
The Hellenistic indictment of emotion amounts
to a powerful critique of attitudes as prevalent in our
day as in Greek or Roman times—the obsessive pur-
suit of worldly success and power over others, and
the boundless accumulation of material possessions.
But from the ethical point of view it is open to two
serious objections. First, as Aristotle had already
made clear, the ideal of total self-sufficiency is self-
defeating: a life without minimal comforts, both ma-
terial and social, might simply not be worth living.
(The Stoic insistence on the appropriateness of SUI-
CIDE in certain circumstances is an implicit admis-
sion of this point.) Second, EPICURUS’s (341–270
B.C.E.) famous argument against the fear of DEATH
emotion
again suffers in comparison with Aristotle. For it
presupposes that no human enterprise can derive
value from its continuation in time: that everything
that is of any value must be analogous to Aristotle’s
examples of activities, such as walking or thinking,
and not to his examples of accomplishments, such
as winning a race or solving a problem. But that
seems both arbitrary and quite independent of the
attacks on false or irrational beliefs. In fact many of
the emotions we most value would make no sense
in a homogeneous time without a place for devel-
opment and change.
Will
The view that emotions are intrinsically irrational
cannot be sustained. Emotions retain a complex re-
lation to reason: that they are sometimes irrational
guarantees their categorial rationality, and therefore
their relevance to ethical concerns. What of their
relation to the will?
Two kind of questions arise here: (a) are emotions
active or passive? and (b) are their objects subjective
or objective?
(a) Are emotions more like actions, or are they,
as the word “passion” suggests, states that we pas-
sively suffer? In the former case, we must assume
responsibility for our emotions (SARTRE [1905–
1980], Solomon). Yet even where we unambigu-
ously have reasons for an emotion, the emotion’s
relation to the reason differs in three ways from the
relation of an action to the reasons that ground it.
First, we don’t arrive at emotions by a process of
deliberation; second, we can’t clearly detach our
emotions from the reasons that have given rise to
them; and third, it is only some emotions for which
justifications are legitimately required: those that are
most clearly tied to our lives as social beings, such
as anger, jealousy, pride, or fear, but not love or dis-
like (Baier).
(b) The question of objectivity goes back to
Plato’s Euthyphro: Do we love something because it
is lovable, or do we describe it as lovable merely
because we project on it the shadow of a subjective
state stemming ultimately from an arbitrary act of
our will? In that apparently quasigrammatical ques-
tion, lies the germ of the perennial debate about the
objectivity of ethics.
456
Perception
Questions (a) and (b) are related, but not iden-
tical. If emotions are active, we shall be inclined to
think of them as products of the will, escaping at
least partly the constraints of the objective world.
Nevertheless, they might qualify for rational assess-
ment, providing there is such a thing as PRACTICAL
REASON. If they are passive, on the other hand, our
first inclination is to infer that we can no more be
held responsible for them than for the color of our
hair. But this too would be hasty. For the sense in
which they are passive may be the sense character-
istic of a representational state. In other words, our
passivity in emotional states may be analogous not
to the way in which we suffer a disease, but to the
receptivity of perception (Gordon). They will then
be taken to provide information about certain as-
pects of the world. And it is not contradictory to
suppose that such information might convey moral
or aesthetic facts—unless, of course, one is already
convinced that value can be nothing more than a
projection of subjective states.
Depending on the answers to (a) and (b), there
will be two ways of explicating assessments of emo-
tions as reasonable or unreasonable: strategic or ep-
istemic. A strategic assessment will be made purely
on the basis of the emotion’s experiential quality and
consequences. No correspondence or adequacy is to
be sought between the emotion and some statement
or state of affairs. On the epistemic model, the con-
sequences and intrinsic quality of an emotion no
more justify it than they would justify a belief: we
must seek instead, at least in some emotions, some
sort of representational adequacy. The epistemic ap-
proach stresses one way in which emotions are more
than mere feelings, namely, that they are identified
partly in terms of their causes: to speak of someone’s
shame or anger is normally to imply that whatever
feelings these emotions involve were caused by some
act of wrongdoing.
If emotions can be more or less epistemically ad-
equate to their object, the question arises of what
sort of adequacy and what sort of objects are in-
volved. One suggestion, first made by Max SCHELER
(1874–1928), is that emotions are in effect percep-
tions of “tertiary qualities” that supervene in the (hu-
man) world on facts about social relations, PLEA-
SURE and pain, and natural psychological facts. If
that is right, then emotions have a crucial role to play

in ethics, not just, as David HUME (1711–1776)
thought, in motivating decent behavior, but also in
revealing to us something like moral facts. A con-
sequence of this view is that art and literature, in
educating our emotions, will have a substantial role
in our moral development (MURDOCH [1919–1999],
Nussbaum).
The view that emotions apprehend real moral
properties explains our approval of those, like Huck-
leberry Finn when he ignored his “duty” to turn in
Jim the slave, whose emotions drive them to act
against their own “rational” conscience (Bennett,
Frankfurt).
Note that this suggestion about the relevance of
emotion to ethics is at the very opposite pole from
EMOTIVISM —the claim that emotions can be used to
elucidate the concept of evaluation itself. Such elu-
cidation would be plausible only if we understood the
explicans more clearly than the explicandum. But the
variety and complexity of emotions makes them poor
candidates for the role of explicans. The view in ques-
tion must also be distinguished from the sociobiolog-
ical hypothesis that certain motives of benevolence
are part of the genetic equipment which makes ethical
behavior possible. That view actually goes back to the
ethical NATURALISM of Hume; in recent years, how-
ever, it has attracted energetic opposition. One objec-
tion against it is that the biological origins of a sen-
timent have no obvious bearing on its ethical value.
Nevertheless, sociobiological naturalism has the ad-
vantage of explaining both the existence of some of
our more benevolent emotions and attitudes, and the
way in which their scope often seems so dangerously
limited to the members of some restricted in-group.
On the other hand, the range of emotions to which
the sociobiological hypothesis can be applied is rather
narrow. Most emotions, in their complexity, are to a
certain extent socially constructed, insofar as what is
considered normal emotion varies between epochs
and cultures. Viewed in this light, the emotions lack
that property of UNIVERSALIZABILITY which many
philosophers have regarded as a sine qua non of the
ethical (Blum).
If the emotions are neither mere feelings, nor ge-
netically determined, nor merely passive, the way is
open to inquire into the ideological factors that
might help to shape them. Feminist philosophers
have made much of this point, and have pointed at
the element of mystification that results precisely
from the very claim that emotions are natural. Jeal-
457
emotion
ousy, love, and anger have received illuminating
scrutiny from this point of view (DE BEAUVOIR
[1908–1986]), but the jury is still out on the ques-
tion of the ratio of biological to cultural determi-
nants of our emotions, and on the exact nature of
the putative objective properties which individual
emotions more or less faithfully convey. Neverthe-
less, we would do well to take seriously the hypoth-
esis that at least some emotions do indeed constitute
prima facie perceptions of morally relevant proper-
ties. If, given the multifariousness of emotions, this
hypothesis seems to lead to incoherence at the heart
of the ethical, we need not regard that as an objec-
tion. On the contrary, we can take it as evidence for
what may well be the only original insight of modern
ethical thinking. For it seems to be a truth that did
not occur to any of the great moral philosophers be-
fore NIETZSCHE (1844–1900) that values might be
multiple and ultimately irreconcilable.
See also: AESTHETICS; ALTRUISM; ANGER; ARISTOTLE;
BENEVOLENCE; CARE; CONSCIENCE; DE BEAUVOIR;
DESCARTES; EMOTIVISM; ENVY; EPICUREANISM; EPI-
CURUS; FEMINIST ETHICS; FRIENDSHIP; GENEROSITY;
GRATITUDE; GUILT AND SHAME; HUME; HUTCHESON;
INCOMMENSURABILITY; JAMES; KANT; LOVE; LOY-
ALTY; MERCY; MULTICULTURALISM; MURDOCH; NA-
TURE AND ETHICS; NEO-STOICISM; NIETZSCHE; PAIN
AND SUFFERING; PASSION; PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS;
PLATO; PLEASURE; PRACTICAL REASON[ING]; PRIDE;
RATIONALITY VS. REASONABLENESS; SCHELER; SEN-
ECA; SPINOZA; STOICISM; SUICIDE; SYMPATHY.
Bibliography
Baier, Annette. “Actions, Passions, and Reasons.” In her
Postures of the Mind: Essays on Mind and Morals.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985.
Bennett, Jonathan. “The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn.”
Philosophy 49 (1974): 123–34.
Blum, Lawrence A. Friendship, Altruism, and Morality.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980.
de Beauvoir, Simone. “The Woman in Love.” In her The
Second Sex. Translated by M. Panohley. New York:
Random House, Vintage, 1952.
de Sousa, Ronald. The Rationality of Emotion. Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987.
Frankfurt, Harry G. The Importance of What We Care
About. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1988.
Gordon, Robert. The Structure of Emotions. Cambridge
and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
emotion
James, William. “What Is an Emotion?” Mind 19 (1884):
188–204.
Murdoch, Iris. The Sovereignty of Good. London: Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul, 1970.
Nussbaum, Martha. The Therapy of Desire: Theory and
Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1994.
Rorty, Amélie, ed. Explaining Emotion. Los Angeles: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1980.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Emotions: Outline of a Theory. New
York: Philosophical Library, 1948.
Solomon, Robert C. The Passions: The Myth and Nature
of Human Emotions. New York: Doubleday, 1976.
Williams, Bernard. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985.
Ronald de Sousa
emotivism
What we call the emotive theory of ethics is in fact
a family of theories that should be called metaethical
or, more accurately, metaevaluative, since they are
all concerned with the use of evaluative terms and
utterances—whether in moral, aesthetic, economic,
or any other evaluative context. Negatively, what
these theories have in common is a denial that the
primary function of evaluative utterances is to con-
vey true or false information about any aspect of the
world. Positively, while differing in detail, they claim
that evaluative utterances have the primary function
of expressing the speaker’s emotions and/or atti-
tudes, and/or of eliciting certain emotions and/or
attitudes in others. These two claims in combination
require a clear distinction between such actions as
expressing and eliciting attitudes and emotions on
the one hand, and making factual statements about
attitudes and emotions on the other.
George, Bishop Berkeley (1685–1753). A quite
developed version of the theory is to be found in
Berkeley’s manuscript introduction to the Princi-
ples. There Berkeley denies that evaluative terms like
‘good’ are used to convey information, but asserts
that they serve for ‘the raising of some Passion,’ ‘the
putting of the Mind in some particular disposition,’
and ‘the exciting to or deterring from an Action.’
But, though available, it is unlikely that this writing
of Berkeley had much influence on the twentieth-
century developments of the theory.
Logical positivism. One source of emotivism in
the twentieth century was a metaphysical objection
458
to the idea of a world of value to be described in
nonnatural terms, combined with a conviction that
a naturalistic analysis of evaluative statements was
impossible. The Meaning of Meaning (1923) by Og-
den and Richards was the first statement of emotiv-
ism on epistemological grounds, and this lead was
followed by the logical positivists. Since the logical
positivists denied cognitive meaning to all save em-
pirical statements, they had to find some explanation
of the prevalence of metaphysical, theological, and
evaluative utterances. They frequently did so by sug-
gesting that these utterances were, one and all, ex-
pressions of EMOTION. A. J. AYER (1910–1989), at
least, attempted to justify this view in Language,
Truth and Logic (1936) by reference to possible
moral situations, but in general the logical positivists
do not seem to have been much concerned with de-
tailed analysis of evaluative judgments.
Charles L. Stevenson (1908–1979). STEVENSON
was the first modern philosopher to present a full
and careful analysis of evaluative language in emo-
tivist terms. Stevenson’s ground for rejecting a
purely cognitive theory was not that of the logical
positivists. He was impressed by the fact that eval-
uative utterances in themselves manifestly commit
the utterer to taking sides, to making a stand, and
to requiring the agreement of others, whereas a cog-
nitive judgment is neutral, though it may be a
ground for so taking sides and recruiting others. If
‘X is good,’ for example, were purely cognitive, it
could be linguistically appropriate to ask one who
uttered it whether he was in favor of X or not;
whereas, Stevenson urges, the speaker has already
made his favor manifest, simply by his utterance.
This being so, any purely descriptive account of eval-
uative judgments must be inadequate. This applies
to subjectivist accounts which treat moral judg-
ments as statements about emotion. Thus David
HUME (1711–1776) says: “When you pronounce
any action or character to be vicious, you mean noth-
ing, but that from the constitution of your nature
you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the
contemplation of it.” This treats moral judgments as
autobiography, although the preceding discussion
often reads like emotivism and explicitly denies that
moral judgments state matters of fact. The expres-
sion of emotions has often been confused with state-
ments about them.
Earlier versions of Stevenson’s views were influ-
enced in their formulation by his acceptance of a

causal theory of meaning, of whatever character the
utterance may be. This led him to say that “the emo-
tive meaning of a word is a tendency of a word, aris-
ing from the history of its usage, to produce (result
from) affective responses in people.” In these earlier
versions he also saw no need to distinguish radically
between attitudes and emotions, treating attitudes
mainly as emotional tendencies. In later statements
of his views, Stevenson more plausibly writes of the
speaker expressing an attitude such as favor or dis-
favor, approval or disapproval, and inviting or urg-
ing hearers to share his attitude. In this he was in-
fluenced by J. L. Austin’s (1911–1960) distinction
of illocutionary and perlocutionary force, but he
never moved to the position of regarding evaluation
as just one possible illocutionary force rather than a
distinct variety of meaning.
Validity and generality. Stevenson did not merely
regard evaluative utterances and factual statements
as having different logical characters; he also con-
sidered that there could be no logical relationships
between evaluative and factual utterances. It is, in-
deed, an empirical truth that facts do causally affect
our attitudes, and it is therefore true that one of the
best ways of trying to resolve disagreements in atti-
tude is to attempt to secure agreement on fact. But
no facts are logically more relevant than others.
There is accordingly no distinction of valid and in-
valid argument from fact to evaluation. Stevenson
did, himself, have an evaluative preference for some
ways of securing evaluative agreement over others
(e.g., securing factual agreement rather than brain-
washing), but this is not because of any logical dis-
tinction. But in later, unpublished, writings he did
claim that his theory allowed for, and required, an
‘implicit generality’ that satisfied the requirement of
R. M. HARE’s principle of universalization, roughly
on the ground that if certain facts lead one to an
evaluative judgment in one case, one should agree
to a similar evaluation in any other case in which the
same facts obtain.
Later developments. Other statements and de-
fenses of emotive theories appeared in the 1940s and
1950s. Notable examples are Paul Edwards’s The
Logic of Moral Discourse (1955) and Margaret Mac-
Donald’s somewhat different “Ethics and the Cere-
monial Use of Language” (1950). From the 1960s
onward very little has appeared that claimed to up-
hold the emotive theory, and much that, particularly
through the influence of the writings of R. M. Hare,
459
emotivism
would be called PRESCRIPTIVISM. Stevenson called
Hare’s position ‘near-emotivism’; many prescriptiv-
ists would disagree; history will decide.
See also: AESTHETICS; ANGER; AYER; COGNITIVE SCI-
ENCE; DESIRE; EMOTION; HAPPINESS; HARE; HATE;
LOGIC AND ETHICS; LOVE; METAPHYSICS AND EPIS-
TEMOLOGY; MYSTICISM; NEUTRAL PRINCIPLES; PAS-
SION; PLEASURE; PRESCRIPTIVISM; STEVENSON; STO-
ICISM; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS; VALUE, THEORY OF.
Bibliography
Ayer, A. J. Language, Truth and Logic. London: Gollancz,
1936. Reprinted, New York: Dover, 1952.
Barnes, W. H. F. “A Suggestion about Value.” Analysis
(1934).
Belfrage, Bertil. “Berkeley’s Theory of Emotive Meaning.”
History of European Ideas 7 (1986): 643–49.
Berkeley, George. Treatise Concerning the Principles of
Human Knowledge. In his Works, volume 3, edited by
A. C. Fraser. Clarendon Press: Oxford 1901 [1710].
See pp. 357–83.
Carnap, Rudolph. Philosophy and Logical Syntax. Lon-
don: Allen and Unwin 1935. Reprinted, New York:
AMS Press, 1979.
Edwards, Paul. The Logic of Moral Discourse. With an
introduction by Sidney Hook. Glencoe, IL: Free Press,
1955.
Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Book Three,
Part I, Section I. [1737].
MacDonald, Margaret. “Ethics and the Ceremonial Use of
Language.” In Philosophical Analysis, edited by Max
Black. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1950.
Ogden, C. K., and I. A. Richards. The Meaning of Mean-
ing: A Study of the Influence of Language upon
Thought and of the Science of Symbolism. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1923. Reprinted, with an
introduction by Umberto Eco, San Diego, CA: Har-
court Brace Jovanovich, 1989.
Robinson, Richard. “The Emotive Theory of Ethics.” Pro-
ceedings of the Aristotelian Society Suppl. (1948).
Stevenson, Charles L. “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical
Terms.” Mind 46 (1937).
———. Ethics and Language. New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1944. Reprinted, New York: AMS Press,
1979.
———. Facts and Values: Studies in Ethical Analysis.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963. Reprinted,
Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1975.
———. “Nature of Ethical Disagreement.” In Value and
Obligation, edited by Richard B. Brandt. New York:
Harcourt Brace, 1961.
———. “Persuasive Definitions.” Mind 47 (1938).
emotivism
Stroll, Avrum. The Emotive Theory of Ethics. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1954.
Urmson, J. O. The Emotive Theory of Ethics. London:
Hutchinson, 1968.
J. O. Urmson
Engels, Frederick (1820–1895)
Born in Barmen, Germany, the eldest son of a textile
manufacturer, Engels was brought up a strict Pietist.
After leaving gymnasium, he had a technical edu-
cation designed to train him to run a factory; he also
had military training. Unlike MARX (1818–1883),
he never attended university. From early on he was
involved in radical politics and radical critique. In
1841 he went to Berlin and joined the Young He-
gelian circle around Bruno Bauer (1809–1882).
However, after his stay in England where he worked
in his family’s firm in Manchester and where he care-
fully studied the condition of the working class in
England and the development of capitalism in what
then was the most developed capitalist society, he
moved away from the radical LIBERALISM of the
Young Hegelians to communism. In what is arguably
his masterpiece, The Condition of the Working Class
in England (1845), he depicted vividly how the
working class—victimized by the industrialization
that had created it—would be the indispensable in-
strument of the revolutionary transformation of so-
ciety from capitalism to communism. He also devel-
oped radically democratic principles for the
organization of socioeconomic life. Crucial to his
communism was the view that, with the advent of a
public and collective control of the means of pro-
duction, the anarchy of production of capitalism
would be replaced by a more rational and more hu-
mane organization of socioeconomic life without its
waste, its gross inequalities, and its system of class
domination in which a few, the owners of productive
PROPERTY, dominate and exploit the many, the vast
army of workers.
Moral Progress and the Development
of Society
Engels’s work Anti-Dühring (1878) provides an
account of ethics more extensive than anything writ-
ten by Marx, though this is not to suggest that their
460
views were conflicting. The primary source for En-
gels’s views on ethics, the book was enormously in-
fluential in the development of Marxism. His views
on ethics involve both an appropriation of and a re-
action to the values of the Enlightenment. Engels
saw how the Enlightenment’s emphasis of freedom,
EQUALITY, RIGHTS, and justice supported capitalist
property relations while containing genuinely eman-
cipatory ideas that contributed to moral progress.
However, unlike liberal democrats and utopian
socialists, Engels attempted to establish a sound sci-
entific basis for socialism and his conception of what
a progressive development of moral ideas and prac-
tices would come to. Engels criticized earlier En-
lightenment views for their SUBJECTIVISM. There is
much talk of absolute truth, reason, and justice, but
each theorist and each social group has a different
conception of these notions. Such utopian concep-
tions spawn a surfeit of ideologies and the sectarian
illusion of objectivity rather than anything resem-
bling genuine objectivity. Still, Engels believes that
there is moral progress. The epochal social changes
that have been going on in human society taken as
a whole demonstrate a “process of development of
humanity itself”; in this development Engels finds
the basis for moral progress. A good understanding
of the conflicting material INTERESTS of the different
classes, and an understanding of which class during
a particular epoch is the rising class and why, will
enable us to identify the most crucial aspects of the
history of civilization. This history has been the his-
tory of class struggles. The conditions of production
and exchange determine the direction of class strug-
gle. It is in this way, Engel maintains, that we can
best understand all epochal social changes, includ-
ing the transition from capitalism to socialism.
Utopian socialists without such an understanding
of history were limited to a moral critique of capi-
talism. By contrast, a scientific socialism, which En-
gels attempted to develop, not only will be a moral
critique but also will explain capitalism, indicate his-
torically feasible alternatives, and show something
of what must be done to gain a mastery over capi-
talism so that socialism can be instituted success-
fully. Scientific socialism will enable us to see how
capitalism arises and must for a time persist; it will
also enable us to see how, with the development of
the productive forces and with the intensification of
class struggle, capitalism will in time collapse.

Critique of Ethical Rationalism and Relativism
Like HEGEL (1770–1831), Engels has a holistic
and developmental world outlook, but it is also fal-
libilistic. This is clear in the initial pages of his chap-
ters on morality in Anti-Dühring which begin with
a critique of ethical rationalism. Engels’s view is nei-
ther absolutist nor relativist. Like a relativist he re-
jects the idea that there could be absolutely certain
foundational moral truths with a categorical author-
itativeness. Rather, there are various moral outlooks
whose adherents, lacking a background understand-
ing of the cultural determinates of their beliefs, take
them to be absolute when in reality they are the be-
liefs of a particular people of a distinctive class at a
particular time. They have a confused and ethnocen-
tric belief in the objectivity of their own morality.
This blocks a recognition of how their moral un-
derstanding is skewed to their particular limited
perspective.
However, like the absolutist, Engels also believes
that there are some very general truths, including
moral truths, that it would be insane to deny. But
they are so indeterminate that they are of no use to
the ethical rationalist bent on articulating a categor-
ically authoritative moral system that would enable
us to assess the moralities of various times and
places. In the hunt for “final and ultimate truths,
truths which are pure and absolutely immutable,”
we will find only “platitudes and commonplaces of
the sorriest kind” (A-D, 97, 99). Moreover, it is a
mistake to believe that some philosopher will artic-
ulate a foundation for morality that will provide
some absolute prescriptivity that will enable us to
critically assess the social world. But this does not
justify our taking a relativist or subjectivist turn, for
some of the extant moralities have more “durable
elements” than others.
It is important to see that proletarian morality,
though it no more than any other morality delivers
‘ultimate truth,’ has “the maximum of durable ele-
ments” (A-D, 104). It can yield a coherent conception
of a future proletarian emancipation: an emancipa-
tion that will lead to a general human emancipation
and to the construction of a humane and classless
society without exploiter and exploited, master and
slave, ruler and ruled. Though their adherents have
for the most part been unaware of it, moralities in
the past have been class moralities, largely ideologi-
461
Engels, Frederick
cal, serving the interests of a determinate class and
being “the product, in the last analysis, of the eco-
nomic stage which society” has reached at “a partic-
ular epoch” (A-D, 105). With the consolidation of
the proletarian REVOLUTION, a classless society will
come into being; with that, the morality for that so-
cial world, proximative though it will be, will not be
a class morality and consequently will not be ideo-
logical. When the transition to classlessness has been
consolidated, morality will no longer be used to jus-
tify the domination of some ruling class but will fi-
nally reflect the genuine interests of humankind.
Equality and Socialist Justice
Some commentators (e.g., Wood, Miller) have ar-
gued that neither Engels nor Marx were egalitarians
and that they had no conception of socialist justice.
They argue that for Engels and Marx belief in equal-
ity is a thoroughly bourgeois notion used to ration-
alize bourgeois morality and that there would be no
need for such a conception in a classless society—a
society which would be ‘beyond justice,’ egalitarian
or otherwise.
Engels does stress that talk of equality has been
used to justify the bourgeois order. Indeed, some-
times what in reality has been the brutal subjuga-
tion and repression of one people or class by an-
other has been justified in the name of attaining
equality. That notwithstanding, talk of equality can
in certain circumstances have an emancipatory ag-
itational role. During the rise of the bourgeoisie, it
was a progressive move to stress the importance of
equal legal and political rights. Still, the firmest
form of equality under capitalism was the concep-
tion of the equal status of labour. This conception
found its “unconscious but clearest expression in
the law of value of modern bourgeois economics
according to which the value of a commodity is
measured by the socially necessary labour embod-
ied in it” (A-D, 116). It is to this that we should
trace the modern idea of equality, and in doing so
we are tracing it back to the economic conditions
of bourgeois society. Unlike the guild restrictions of
feudal society, capitalist production relations re-
quire freedom and equality of rights.
However, this is not the full story of equality.
Once it had been set in motion, it was difficult to
limit the demand for equality to its ideological role
Engels, Frederick
in the service of capitalism. Proletarian demands for
equality emerged as well. They moved from “the
bourgeois demand for the abolition of class privi-
leges . . . to the demand for the abolition of classes
themselves” (A-D, 117). The demands for equality
were extended from a demand for equal political and
legal rights to a demand for equality in social and
economic spheres as well. Indeed this was the key
to making the other equalities more than merely
notational.
Where Engels is to be taken as a defender of
equality is in his argument for a strong but indirect
form of equality of condition. Because people are as
different as they are, there can be no guarantee of
equality of condition; but where the productive
forces are sufficiently developed to sustain it, social
arrangements should be made which would not
block the achievement of equality of condition. The
social INSTITUTIONS of a classless society should not
cause unequal life-chances. When classlessness is
achieved we will have destroyed the structural basis
for inequalities of POWER which make dominating
and being dominated part of the fabric of life in class
society. With class structures dismantled, and with
classes finally becoming a thing of the past, human
freedom (self-mastery) will for the first time in his-
tory become a genuine possibility for all. Extensive
LIBERTY requires equality and equality in turn re-
quires liberty. These two ideals stand and fall to-
gether. Engels (and Marx as well) took them both to
be key ideals which could be realized only with the
full achievement of communism.
Criticisms
Engels’s views on ethics have been thought by
some to be naive Enlightenment views which con-
fuse ‘more developed’ with ‘better’; take progress as
something which is relatively unproblematic; are
simplistically naturalistic and historicist; and take
over from Hegel incoherent or at least very problem-
atic teleological conceptions. It is far from evident,
however, that Engels made any of these mistakes or
that his thinking about ethics is as vulnerable as it
is rather routinely believed to be.
See also: EQUALITY; EXPLOITATION; INEQUALITY;
MARX; MARXISM; OPPRESSION; POWER; PROPERTY;
REVOLUTION; RIGHTS; SELF-OWNERSHIP; WORK.
462
Bibliography
Works by Engels
Anti-Dühring. Translated by Emile Burns. New York: In-
ternational Publishers, 1939 [1878]. His central dis-
cussion of ethics.
The Condition of the Working Class in England. Trans-
lated by W. O. Henderson and W. H. Chaloner. Ox-
ford: Basil Blackwell, 1971 [1848].
Engels, Frederich, and Karl Marx. Selected Works. 2 vols.
Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing, 1962.
Works about Engels
Benton, Ted. “Natural Science and Cultural Struggle: En-
gels and Philosophy and the Natural Sciences.” In vol.
2 of Issues in Marxist Philosophy, edited by John Me-
pham and David Hillel-Ruben, 101–42. Sussex: Har-
vester Press, 1979.
Brenkert, George G. “Marx, Engels and the Relativity of
Morals.” Studies in Soviet Thought 17 (1977): 201–
24. Important interpretive account.
Carver, T. Engels. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
———. Marx and Engels: The Intellectual Relationship.
Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1983.
———. “Marx, Engels and Dialectics.” Political Studies
28, no. 3 (1980): 353–64.
McLellan, D. Engels. Glasgow: Fontana, 1977.
Miller, Richard. Analyzing Marx. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1984. Major analytical Marxist text;
interpretation of Marx as rejecting morality.
Nielsen, Kai. Marxism and the Moral Point of View. Boul-
der, CO: Westview, 1988. Includes a reading of Engels
as an egalitarian defending principles of social justice.
Nelsen, Kai, and Steven Patten, eds. Marx and Morality.
Guelph, Ontario: Canadian Association for Publishing
in Philosophy, 1981. Essays on Marxism and justice.
Nielsen, Kai, and Robert Ware, eds. Analyzing Marxism:
New Essays on Analytical Marxism. Guelph, Ontario:
Canadian Association for Publishing in Philosophy,
1989. Interpretive essays on Marxism and ethics.
Wood, Allen. “Marx and Equality.” In vol. 4 of Issues in
Marxist Philosophy, edited by John Mepham and David
Hillel-Ruben, 195–220. Sussex: Harvester Press, 1981.
Major argument for Marx and Engels not being egali-
tarians.
Kai Nielsen
engineering ethics
Engineering ethics is the field of study concerned
with philosophical inquiry into, and solution of mor-
ally laden social problems involving, behaviors of

persons and organizations identified by reference to
engineering. The structure of a theoretical frame-
work employed in engineering ethics may be derived
from theoretical ethics alone, or from ethical con-
cepts subsumed into either multidisciplinary or in-
terdisciplinary arrangements of (a) philosophical
concepts of engineering qua learned discipline;
(b) sociological concepts of engineering qua profes-
sion or kind of organization; (c) psychological con-
cepts about engineers; and/or (d) various concepts
about engineering managers, academicians, and stu-
dents. The function of such a theoretical framework
in engineering ethics may be to facilitate discussions
by asking (1) normative questions like “Should en-
gineering codes of ethics require engineers to blow
the whistle on their employers?”; (2) descriptive
questions like “What relationships exist between en-
gineers and engineering managers that affect ethical
decision making in corporations?”; and (3) concep-
tual questions like “How can we define ‘safety’ in
relation to ‘risk’?” Problems targeted for study in
engineering ethics include: social and environmental
impacts of hazardous technologies; the roles of en-
gineering professional and business organizations,
and engineering units in government, in the man-
agement of these technologies; and moral behaviors
of engineers. Among the issues that have motivated
inquiry into these problems are cases known as DC
10, Goodrich (A7D) Airbrakes, BART, Pinto, Hyatt
Regency Walkways Collapse, TMI, Hydrolevel, Bho-
pal, and Challenger.
Beyond those generalities, however, there appears
to be greater agreement among scholars as to which
philosophical works are part of the discussion in en-
gineering ethics than on what ‘engineering ethics’
means. As a field of study, engineering ethics has
prospered since its beginnings in the mid-1970s, but
the stream of philosophical inquiry into the mean-
ing, nature, and scope of engineering itself (e.g., in
relation to science generally) remains shallow. More-
over, the relation of engineering ethics to traditional
theoretical ethics, as well as to what might be called
philosophy of engineering, is unsettled. We may,
however, venture the following remarks by way of
explicating these opening paragraphs.
The focus of discussion in traditional or theoreti-
cal ethics has been on MORAL TERMS (e.g., good,
bad, right, wrong, etc.) and on general (moral) prin-
ciples governing the assignment of moral terms to
certain kinds of human behavior. The use of exam-
463
engineering ethics
ples in theoretical ethics has been to illuminate
meanings of moral terms and to test claims that cer-
tain moral principles are or can be attached to the
empirical world. In current practice, if such an ex-
ample involves persons or organizations identified
by reference to engineering, then that is sufficient to
make a discussion in theoretical ethics using the ex-
ample as a species of discussion in engineering
ethics. Many modern college texts on theoretical
ethics (e.g., Thiroux), in response to student inter-
ests in subject matter seen as “useful,” cite examples
using engineers and engineering organizations.
The focus of discussion in practical or APPLIED
ETHICS has been on morally laden social problems
and on theoretical frameworks for conducting phil-
osophical inquiry into, and for solving, these prob-
lems. In current practice, if such a problem involves
persons or organizations identified by reference to
engineering, a discussion in applied ethics focusing
on the problem is also a species of discussion in en-
gineering ethics.
Two subspecies of the applied ethics species of
discussion in engineering ethics exist in the litera-
ture. The first uses ethical frameworks, but focuses
on social problems. Studies of cases in which engi-
neering test data were falsified often focus on the
sequence of events and the conflicts forming the
case, and may ground their ethical analyses on tra-
ditional principles pertaining to lying.
The second subspecies uses multidisciplinary
frameworks that engage theoretical ethics together
with systems of ideas borrowed from other mature
learned disciplines. These systems remain intact and
distinct in these multidisciplinary frameworks, but
interact to form coherent discussions. The whistle-
blowing issue, which includes debates about whether
engineering codes of ethics should stipulate that en-
gineers’ loyalties to their employers should be sub-
ordinate to their obligations to the health and wel-
fare of the public, are most often addressed within
multidisciplinary frameworks consisting of ethics,
sociology of the professions, history, and law. Safety
and RISK assessment issues are discussed in multi-
disciplinary frameworks consisting of ethics, values
studies, and engineering mathematics.
The knowledge bases of theoretical ethics and
other disciplines are not sufficient to provide (a) guid-
ance toward solutions to all morally laden social
problems, and (b) criteria for proving whether every
proposition offering a solution to such a problem is
engineering ethics
correct. But this situation is hardly unique. Engi-
neering itself provides theoretical frameworks for
solving practical problems without always having
to await final proofs from mathematics. Medicine
achieves solutions often without corroboration from
the life sciences community. Law is not constrained
by the view that good analysis will yield correct an-
swers to all disputes over legal rights. Certain social
problems are studied—and solved—within interdis-
ciplinary theoretical frameworks that borrow ideas
from immature disciplines, or from one or more ma-
ture disciplines without obedience to rules given by
the disciplines for connecting the ideas together into
defensible systems of thought. Thus also in engi-
neering ethics: Systematic efforts to form interdis-
ciplinary frameworks consisting of ethical principles
together with philosophical concepts about the na-
ture of engineering have been put forward in advance
of firm foundation development in philosophy of en-
gineering. The beginnings of an existential concept of
engineering have been used to suggest that RESPON-
SIBILITY for hazardous technology lies with the public
(Florman). A developing “theory of change” concept
of engineering was used to argue that engineers
share this responsibility with the public, and that
their role in the protection of the public is different
from that of scientists (Broome). Subjective, first-
person accounts of whistleblowing (Sprague) tran-
scend the objectivity criterion of ethical analysis.
The literary approach to decision making, that is, the
substitution of legendary heroes for oneself in an
ethical situation, has been applied to engineering sit-
uations on the rationale that the right thing to do is
what a person of heroic character would do (Broome
and Peirce). The ethicist would likely rely on the ra-
tionale that the right thing to do is what MILL, KANT,
or other ethical theorists would advise.
See also: APPLIED ETHICS; BUSINESS ETHICS; ECO-
NOMIC ANALYSIS; ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS; FUTURE
GENERATIONS; GOVERNMENT, ETHICS IN; INSTITU-
TIONS; LAND ETHICS; NATURE AND ETHICS; PROFES-
SIONAL ETHICS; PROPERTY; PUBLIC HEALTH POLICY;
PUBLIC POLICY; RESPONSIBILITY; RISK; RISK ANALY-
SIS; TECHNOLOGY; THEORY AND PRACTICE.
Bibliography
Baum, Robert J., and Albert Flores, eds. Ethical Problems
in Engineering. Troy, NY: Rensselaer Polytechnic Insti-
464
tute, 1979. Anthology of cases and discussions in en-
gineering ethics. 2d ed., 1980.
Broome, Taft H. “The Slippery Ethics of Engineering.”
The Washington Post, 28 December 1986, D3. Dis-
cussion of various views on the public paramountry
controversy, and analysis of the effect of philosophy of
engineering on the controversy.
Broome, Taft H., and J. Peirce. “The Heroic Engineer.”
Journal of Engineering Education 86 (January 1997):
51–55.
De George, Richard T. “Ethical Responsibility of Engi-
neers in Large Corporations: The Pinto Case.” Business
and Professional Ethics Journal 1 (1981): 1–14.
Florman, Samuel C. The Existential Pleasures of Engi-
neering. New York: St. Martin’s, 1976.
Gunn, Alastair S., and P. Aarne Vesilind. Environmental
Ethics for Engineers. Chelsea, MN: Lewis, 1986.
Ladd, John. “Corporate Mythology and Individual Re-
sponsibility.” Journal of the Institute of Applied Philos-
ophy (Spring 1984): 21–22. Discusses the claim that
corporations are morally responsible organizations.
Layton, Edwin T. The Revolt of the Engineers. Cleveland,
OH: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1971.
Historical account of engineering professional societies
and development of their codes of ethics.
Luegenbiehl, H. “Codes of Ethics and the Moral Educa-
tion of Engineers.” Business and Professional Ethics
Journal 2 (1983): 41–61. Challenges the utility and
rationality of codes of ethics.
Martin, Michael, and Roland Schinzinger. Ethics in En-
gineering. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983.
Sprague, R. L. “The Voice of Experience.” Science and
Engineering Ethics 4 (1998): 33–44.
Thiroux, Jacques P. Ethics: Theory and Practice. Encino,
CA: Glencoe, 1980. An instance of a traditional ethics
text that includes examples of engineers and engineer-
ing organizations.
Weil, Vivian, ed. Beyond Whistleblowing: Defining the
Engineers’ Responsibilities. Chicago: Center for the
Study of Ethics in the Professions, Illinois Institute of
Technology.
Whitbeck, Caroline. Ethics in Engineering Practice and
Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998.
Taft H. Broome, Jr.
entitlements
Entitlement is paradigmatically at home in what we
may call institutional settings. INSTITUTIONS are de-
fined by their rules and procedures. Often such rules
will stipulate that persons of whom such-and-such
empirically ascertainable predicates are true are to
receive certain desirable things, also defined or des-

ignated by the rules of those institutions. We can
then say straightforwardly that persons operating
within the scope of those institutions are “entitled”
to those things.
By contrast, it might be contestable whether the
recipients specified by those structural rules as being
among those who are to receive the benefits in ques-
tion really should receive them. They might be
deemed undeserving of them. For example, Mrs.
Smith’s will provides that her worthless son Charles
receive her entire fortune, when her hard-working
and likable younger son, David, could do much
more good with it and is in every way more worthy
of such a benefit. Still, there it is: the will speaks
clearly, and the rules of the institution of estate say
equally clearly that persons of sound mind may give
their money to whom they please. The administra-
tors of wills undertake to accommodate their wishes
if they but draw them up in proper form, have the
proper witnesses present, and so forth. Mrs. Smith,
we’ll assume, has fulfilled all these conditions. If so,
the system judges that Charles is entitled to the for-
tune, even though it admits that David deserves it.
This is one among many cases that illustrate rather
strikingly the difference between entitlement and its
neighboring concept, desert.
How entitlement works is readily understandable
in these institutional contexts. But this raises two
major questions. First: why should we be bound by
these institutions? Mightn’t we—and shouldn’t we—
be free to do otherwise? For instance, to give Mrs.
Smith’s estate to her worthier younger son despite
her expressed wish? Would it not be a better thing
for all if we did?
Second: once we leave the conceptually comfort-
ing territory of what is institutionally specified, is
there any remaining room for entitlement-like no-
tions of how certain normative questions are to be
decided? Or is entitlement completely enmeshed in
institutions? This second question, of course, raises
the difficult question of just what constitutes an “in-
stitution.” Why that question is difficult, and how it
will affect the inquiry, will be seen below.
1. Regarding the first question, answers are fairly
easy to come by, and have been supplied by such
philosophers as David HUME (1711–1776). We
should support institutions, says Hume, because so-
cial life will scarcely be possible without them. In a
given instance, such as that of Mrs. Smith and her
will, it may be that we can plausibly argue for the
465
entitlements
superiority of David to Charles; but we cannot plau-
sibly argue for the absence of any institutional
framework at all. If definitive rules, set down in
black and white somewhere, or at least engraved in
the social consciousness, cannot be appealed to, we
shall have social chaos. Baseball, for instance, has a
rule specifying that the batter get exactly three
strikes, and when he has gone through them, he is
then declared “out.” Imagine trying to play baseball
in the absence of such rules: batters remain up until
we decide that they no longer deserve to be at the
plate; runners are declared “out,” or not, depending
on how hard they have tried to reach the next base;
and so on. We could not be said to have “a game”
in the absence of reasonably definite rules of that
type.
In economists’ terms, we may suggest that the
value of institutional rules lies in their drastic re-
duction of transaction costs. Granted that baseball
is not exactly a transaction, and marriage at least an
atypical one, yet this seems a reasonable description
of the gains from entitlement-yielding rules. Having
such rules, arguments are settled, usually clearly and
cleanly; lacking them, there is prolonged dispute, or
no resolution at all. Those seem plausible consider-
ations to appeal to here, and indeed, it is difficult to
see how this general account can be improved.
Some might, perhaps, want to appeal to some
such notion as innate AUTHORITY on the part of the
institution-framers. But such ideas have little appeal
to the modern temperament, and certainly, in this
writer’s judgment, rightly so. Authority must always
be justified, and moreover, justified in terms of the
INTERESTS of those over whom and/or on behalf of
whom it is exercised. So any credible authority
would, in the end, have to appeal to notions such as
that of transaction costs and the interests in orga-
nizing their lives as they see fit on the part of those
subject to the institution’s rules.
2. What about the other question, then? In his
neoclassic work, Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974),
Robert NOZICK contrasts two kinds of theories of
distributive justice: “patterning,” and “historical.”
The choice of terminology is not ideal, but we may
spell out the contrast roughly as follows. Patterning
theories look only to properties of individuals which
they have irrespective of their specific relations to
particular persons (or other entities) through time,
whereas historical views allow that a person may
properly come in for some good by virtue of that
entitlements
person’s specific relation to particular other persons,
notably the “distributors.” Many familiar personal
relations are historical. One gives one’s children
benefits because they are one’s children, not simply
because they are children, and not because they are
outstandingly possessed of certain general qualities
possessable by anyone, in principle. Some institu-
tional transfers are certainly patterned. A policy call-
ing for the equal benefiting of all in some respect is
patterned; one that rewards the already wealthy, or
the brilliant, or the beautiful, is patterned. The two
can certainly blend: we may think that if we have
several children, we are obliged to benefit them
equally (though we also may not); but in themselves,
they are quite distinct.
Nozick spoke of entitlement as if it were the spe-
cial property of historical theories, but that is mis-
leading. Nowadays we refer to state pension schemes
as establishing “entitlements” for persons of a cer-
tain age, say, or medical systems as specifying enti-
tlements to medical services on the basis of need.
The point of calling them ‘entitlements’ is that,
given the system, persons with certain properties
have an essentially definitive claim to the benefits in
question. (Even in this case, though, we may note
that those entitled are not so entitled exclusively on
the basis of need; for they must also be citizens, or
landed immigrants. But the distinction of citizen and
foreigner is not due to “patterning” in the relevant
sense, but to history: the citizen was born here, or
else moved here, and the government of this country
specifically gave that person the designation of ‘citi-
zen,’ with its entitlements.)
Even so, however, we can discern the conceptual
difference between desert and entitlement in such
cases. A system in which persons possessing certain
factors that may be argued to constitute desert for
certain benefits are then declared to be such that
they not only ought to be given those benefits but in
fact must be given those benefits is no longer treat-
ing those factors simply as desert-making. It has, in-
stead, crossed a conceptual line into the area in
which ‘entitlement’ is at home.
The distinctive feature of entitlement, then, is
that it is to settle matters. If he deserves it, then
whether we should give it to him is discussable; but
if she’s entitled to it, it isn’t—unless, of course, her
claim turns out to be bogus, or unless there is a con-
flicting claim we didn’t know about.
So far, our model for entitlement has been the
466
institutionalized rule, legal or quasilegal. Such rules
are created by the actions of particular human be-
ings. But might there be “natural” entitlements?
Such entitlements would be the source of, or em-
bodied in, unwritten but nevertheless commanding
rules, not created by any authority or any particular
set of people. The rules in question would amount
to principles of natural RIGHTS or natural laws.
The big question about this idea is whether it
makes any sense. Human-made rules “tell” us to do
something, in a quite literal sense of the word “tell.”
But trees, mountains, genes, planets, and so on, tell
us nothing, or at best “tell” us what they are like.
The constitution of the human body “tells” us what
will happen if we don’t eat enough or eat too much,
etc.; but still, the question whether we will eat or not
eat is open and to be decided by us. Nature doesn’t
look right for being the source of what are literally
laws, in the sense in which the familiar human-made
ones are so.
By far the most influential recent theory along this
line is LOCKE’s (1632–1704), concerning private
PROPERTY —though its general line is by no means
exclusive to him. His idea was that when people
work to bring about useful changes in the world’s
natural supply of resources, those workers are enti-
tled to the resulting products—though he doesn’t
actually use that word for the purpose. (A closely
related idea was that with regard to the use of nat-
ural resources that are previously unowned, the per-
son who undertakes the chronologically first use of
them is entitled to do so—those things become that
person’s “property.”) Moreover, in the view of this
writer, as of many others, both ideas are basically
sound. But is it sound because it is “true”? That is,
is there any reasonable sense in which the Lockean
rule is just naturally the rule on these matters, with
no human deliberations, findings, or rulings entering
into the basis of the results?
The conceptual task then becomes to articulate
and defend that “reasonable sense.” We might pro-
pose that it is “natural” for people to claim such
ownership—though of course very often they do not
in fact carry through on the claims, readily surren-
dering their products to various others for one rea-
son or another. In the face of that, we might then
argue that, people and things being the way they are,
it is a very good idea for people thus to recognize
and confirm such claims if they are made, either gen-
erally or in some important range of cases. Enemies

of private property can then argue that it is not a
good idea, and any number of modifications or com-
promises can be advanced by one theorist or an-
other. All this would then need to be sorted out by
assessing the strength of the proposed arguments.
Claims about “naturalness,” after all, are not of
much use if others do not recognize those claims—
indeed, it is downright puzzling if someone doesn’t
accept a “natural” claim. Yet they often don’t. Ar-
guments will then have to be called on to bear the
weight, somehow.
That is surely the better way to proceed. We could
perhaps say that if one or another view does indeed
win the argument, when all is taken into account,
then if the winning view supports entitlements in
this area, those could be said to be “natural.” But
what that will mean is only that the facts about our-
selves and our relations to each other and to the
world around us provide sufficient reason for em-
bracing that system. Since it is unclear that there is
any intelligible “more” for it to mean than that, and
since that seems quite enough to do, it seems rea-
sonable to conclude that we should stop there and
let it go at that.
See also: AUTHORITY; ECONOMIC ANALYSIS; FAIR-
NESS; HUMAN RIGHTS; HUME; INSTITUTIONS; INTER-
ESTS; JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE;
LOCKE; MERIT AND DE-
SERT; MORAL RULES; NATURAL LAW; NEEDS; NOZICK;
PRESCRIPTIVISM; PROPERTY; PUBLIC POLICY; PUBLIC
POLICY ANALYSIS; RIGHT HOLDERS; RIGHTS; WEL-
FARE RIGHTS AND SOCIAL POLICY.
Bibliography
Feinberg, Joel. “Justice and Personal Desert.” In his Doing
and Deserving. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1970. In modern times, the classic source on the
subject.
Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Book III: Of
Morals. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1955 [1737]. See especially Sections II, “Of
the origin of justice and property” (484–501); III, “Of
the rules, which determine property” (501–14); and
IV, “Of the transference of property by consent” (514–
16). See also Hume’s Enquiry Concerning the Princi-
ples of Morals, Sect. III, “Of Justice.”
Locke, John. Second Treatise on Civil Government. [1689]
In several editions, for example, Locke: Two Treatises
of Government, edited by P. Laslett. New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1960. Chap. V, “Of Property,”
is the relevant source.
Narveson, Jan. “Deserving Profits.” In Profits and Moral-
467
environmental ethics
ity, edited by Mario Rizzo and Robin Cowan, 48–87.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State and Utopia. New York:
Basic Books, 1974. See esp. 150–59. Another modern
classic, which has spawned hundreds of discussions.
Jan Narveson
environmental ethics
Heightened awareness of social issues during the
1960s spawned a group of new subfields in philos-
ophy during the 1970s collectively called APPLIED
ETHICS. Biomedical ethics is the most well worked
of these. Environmental ethics—which came into
being at the same time and is obviously also moti-
vated by social issues—is often mistakenly classified
as just another species of the same genus.
A theoretical, not an applied field. The contem-
porary environmental crisis is the untoward side ef-
fect of the immemorial human effort to reduce na-
ture to dominion, an effort that climaxed in the
twentieth century. Most environmental ethicists fear
that the application of normal ethics (as in “normal
science”) to environmental problems will only make
matters worse. Why? Because traditional Western
moral philosophy has been concerned almost exclu-
sively with human ACTION in relation to other hu-
man beings and has generally considered nonhuman
natural entities and nature as a whole to be mere
means to human ends, not ends in themselves. Thus,
instead of taking the Western ethical canon to be a
dependable, time-tested rudder to steer us through
troubled environmental waters, most environmental
ethicists believe that contemporary environmental
problems are of such magnitude, scope, and com-
plexity that standard Western ethics is called into
question wholesale. Accordingly, the primary goal of
environmental ethics is to rethink moral philosophy
and reformulate ethical theory so that nonhuman
natural entities and nature as a whole may be di-
rectly enfranchised.
An anthropocentric counterattack was mounted
by John Passmore to quell the rebellion led by Rich-
ard Sylvan (né Routley [1936–1996]), the first pro-
fessional philosopher publicly to argue that a com-
pletely new, nonanthropocentric ethic was needed to
govern human actions affecting the environment.
Passmore replied that normal Western ethics is en-
tirely adequate to address the contemporary envi-
environmental ethics
ronmental malaise—since human actions that di-
rectly degrade the environment also indirectly harm
human beings. We do not need new ethics, he insists,
just a more steadfast commitment to our familiar
set. Bryan G. Norton assumes a less reactionary pos-
ture and argues for “weak anthropocentrism,” an at-
titude of noblesse oblige toward nature, that would
enhance and ennoble human life and character as
well as protect the environment. Eugene C. Har-
grove and Mark Sagoff prefer to think that the in-
trinsic value some people claim to find in nature is
more aesthetical (and therefore human centered)
than ethical in character. Norton and many other
anthropocentrists insist that we ought to preserve
nature for the use and enjoyment of FUTURE GEN-
ERATIONS. But in defending normal ethics against
wholesale rejection, even anthropocentric environ-
mental ethicists have been more preoccupied with
theory than with the yeoman business of applying
theory to problems.
Extensionism. Extending the base class of a tra-
ditional Western ethical system is a direct approach
to a nonanthropocentric theory of environmental
ethics. Peter Singer pioneered this approach by ex-
tending UTILITARIANISM. Jeremy BENTHAM (1748–
1832) specifically averred that their capacity to suf-
fer should entitle animals to moral standing. Singer,
accordingly, insists that all “sentient” beings (roughly
all vertebrates, taxonomically speaking) should be
accorded equal moral consideration.
Zoocentrism, as the family of “animal liberation”
ethics may be called, does not serve as an adequate
theoretical foundation for environmental ethics, be-
cause it too leaves most of the environment beyond
the moral pale. Since 1980, environmental ethics
and animal liberation, until then often conflated,
have been regarded as independent domains of non-
anthropocentric moral inquiry. Each has a profes-
sional journal of its own, Environmental Ethics and
Between the Species, respectively. And each ad-
dresses separate and as often conflicting as comple-
mentary moral concerns. Tom Regan, however, points
out that animal liberationists proffer sentience (or in
Regan’s own case for animal rights, the “subject-of-
a-life” criterion) as a sufficient, not necessary, con-
dition for moral standing (or RIGHTS), and he invites
philosophers with wider biological concerns to work
at stretching normal moral theory further still.
Biocentrism takes the next step. Kenneth E.
Goodpaster argues that PLEASURE is not (pace Ben-
468
tham) an end in itself, nor pain an intrinsic EVIL,
since the capacity to experience pleasure and pain
evolved among animals as a means to preserve their
lives. Hence the capacity to live, not the capacity to
suffer, ought to be the criterion of “moral consider-
ability.”
Like zoocentrism, biocentrism grants moral con-
sideration only to individual beings because only in-
dividuals plausibly possess a psychological capacity
that can serve as a criterion of inherent worth, as in
normal ethical theory. Following Arthur SCHOPEN-
HAUER (1788–1860) and Albert SCHWEITZER (1875–
1965), albeit less deliberately than animal libera-
tionists follow Bentham, biocentrists are united in
endorsing conation—the quasi-psychological qual-
ity of striving, whether consciously or not, toward a
goal—as the criterion of moral value. According to
Paul W. Taylor, plants as well as animals are “tele-
ological centers of life” since they strive to grow and
to reproduce. Therefore, they too have interests, lib-
erally construed, and a good of their own and may
be directly harmed and benefited.
Biocentrists face an obvious practical dilemma
posed, on the one hand, by the human need to eat
(and otherwise consume) and, on the other, by the
human obligation to consider the interests of fellow
living beings. This dilemma is not as destructive as
it may at first seem. Various courses of action open
to us as moral agents differently affect psychologi-
cally more and less complex moral patients and their
more and less important INTERESTS. We may choose
the least objectionable option (eating beans, for ex-
ample, instead of chicken, or wearing wool instead
of mink) and thus both live and live justly in a very
crowded moral space.
Environmental ethicists, however, have not uni-
versally embraced biocentrism because it does not
directly address the most important contemporary
environmental problems, the problems that origi-
nally motivated philosophers to explore the possi-
bility of nonanthropocentric ethics. The extinction
of species, the degradation of ecosystems, soil ero-
sion, water and air pollution, and so on top the list
of environmental problems—to most of which bio-
centrism is only tangentially relevant. Indeed, the
practical implications of biocentrism may be not
only out of phase with environmental concerns, but
actively opposed to them as well. Animal liberation-
ists and environmentalists often find themselves on
opposite sides of conflicts between endangered spe-

cies of plants and feral goats, pigs, or horses. Simi-
larly, one can imagine biocentrists objecting to a wil-
derness management plan that would, for the sake
of the ongoing integrity of an ecosystem, permit
wildfires to burn up trees, shrubs, or grass.
One may find here and there an attempt to stretch
normal theory even further—so that it will encom-
pass everything under the sun—but such attempts
have been largely ignored as beneath responsible
critical attention. The hypothesis that “rocks have
rights” may be regarded as a reductio ad absurdum
of the extensionist approach rather than a theoreti-
cal task. However, the deeper problem with exten-
sionism, from an environmental point of view, is not
that it is not sufficiently inclusive but that it is “at-
omistic,” focused exclusively on individuals, while
environmental concerns focus primarily on collec-
tive “entities”—species, ecosystems, watersheds—
in a word, on wholes. A properly environmental
ethics demands a “holistic” as well as nonanthro-
pocentric theory.
Ecocentrism. Ecology, the basic scientific tool for
understanding the environment, studies the rela-
tionships between organisms and among organisms
and the elemental environment. From an ecological
point of view, individual organisms are internally re-
lated and mutually defining. The natural world is an
integrated fabric, an organic whole. Moreover, na-
ture, while the mother and sustainer of life, seems
indifferent to individual life. Indeed, DEATH is at the
heart of organic processes. Hence, an ethics that re-
gards life as the summum bonum, and death, life’s
opposite, as, correspondingly, the greatest evil, can
hardly be an “ethics of respect for nature” as Taylor
titles his version of biocentrism.
The “land ethic” sketched by Aldo LEOPOLD
(1887–1948) has been the inspiration of the mod-
ern American environmental movement and the
point of departure for the development of a moral
theory that is at once nonanthropocentric and non-
individualistic. Leopold’s seminal ecocentric theory
may be traced to the moral philosophy of David
HUME (1711–1776) and Adam SMITH (1723–1790).
Hume, followed by Smith, thought that altruistic
feelings lie at the foundations of both moral judg-
ment and value and that in addition to SYMPATHY
for others severally, we also experience a “public af-
fection” and, accordingly, value the “interests of so-
ciety even on their own account.” Charles DARWIN
(1809–1882) argued that the “moral sentiments”
469
environmental ethics
evolved among human beings in conjunction with
the evolution of society, and that historical growth
in the compass of the moral sentiments and their
refinement correlates with the growth and refine-
ment of human communities. Darwin also devel-
oped the incipient holism of Hume and Smith, flatly
stating that primeval ethical affections centered on
the tribe, not its individual members. Building di-
rectly on Darwin’s theory of the origin and evolution
of ethics, Leopold points out that ecology represents
human beings not only to be members of multiple
human communities but also to be members of the
“biotic community.” Hence, “the land ethic simply
enlarges the boundaries of the community to include
soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the
land. . . . It implies respect for . . . fellow members
and also respect for the community as such.”
Extensionists claim that the holistic aspect of
Leopold’s seminal land ethic, and the theoretical
elaborations of it by Holmes Rolston, III and J. Baird
Callicott, is tantamount to “environmental fascism.”
If, as Leopold wrote and his exponents affirm, “a
thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity,
stability, and beauty of the biotic community [and]
wrong when it tends otherwise,” then not only
would it be right to kill deer and fell trees for the
good of the biotic community, it would also be right
to undertake draconian measures to reduce human
overpopulation—the underlying cause, according to
conventional environmental wisdom, of all environ-
mental ills. Ecocentrism thus appears liable to a re-
ductio ad absurdum of its own.
An ecocentric environmental ethic, although pro-
viding for the possibility of moral consideration of
wholes, does not disenfranchise individuals. Eco-
centrism is holistic as well as (not instead of) indi-
vidualistic, although in the case of the biotic com-
munity and its nonhuman members holistic concerns
may eclipse individual ones. Nor does an ecocentric
environmental ethic replace or cancel previous so-
cially generated human-oriented duties—to FAMILY
and family members, to neighbors and neighbor-
hood, to all human beings and humanity. Human
social evolution consists of a series of additions
rather than replacements. The moral sphere, grow-
ing in circumference with each stage of social de-
velopment, correspondingly, does not expand like a
balloon—leaving no trace of its previous bound-
aries. It adds, rather, new rings, new “accretions,” as
Leopold called each emergent social-ethical com-
environmental ethics
munity. The discovery of the biotic community sim-
ply adds a new outer orbit of membership and at-
tendant obligation. Our more intimate social bonds
and their attendant obligations remain intact. Thus
we may weigh and balance our more recently dis-
covered duties to the biotic community and its mem-
bers with our more venerable and insistent social
obligations in ways that are entirely familiar, reason-
able, and humane.
Ecofeminism combines an ecocentric environ-
mental ethics with feminism. Ecofeminists endorse
ecocentrism’s location of ethics in feelings generated
by relationship. But ecofeminists claim that patri-
archy lies at the root of environmental, no less than
social EXPLOITATION. Hence the family of ecocentric
environmental ethics stemming from the Leopold
land ethic is incomplete in the absence of an analysis
of the historical domination of women by men. Eco-
centric environmental ethics, moreover, is internally
contradictory if it uncritically incorporates concepts
of nature insidiously modeled on patriarchal social
structures. Since nature is routinely represented in
ecology by means of social analogies and metaphors
(e.g., the “economy of nature,” the “biotic commu-
nity”), ecocentric environmental ethics is especially
liable to such insidious influence.
Ecojustice, finally, generalizes the feminist cri-
tique of nonanthropocentric holistic environmental
ethics. The same economic and political ideology
that fosters the exploitation and OPPRESSION not
only of women but of most of the other human den-
izens of the planet also drives the juggernaut of en-
vironmental destruction. Ecocentric environmental
ethics, ecojustice theorists claim, will remain a mere
academic pastime unless it unites with an equally
new and revolutionary economic and political theory
that offers an alternative to the prevailing identifi-
cation of development with industrialization, free-
dom with unrestrained consumption, and DEMOC-
RACY with corporate oligarchy.
During the last quarter of the twentieth century,
environmental philosophers drafted and vigorously
defended a variety of revolutionary theories to bring
nature within the purview of ethics. The excitement
of working in a new and so completely uncharted
field and in one with such a pressing moral mandate
generated acrimonious and fractious debate. In ret-
rospect, the positioning and truculence characteriz-
ing argument among environmental ethicists and
between environmental ethicists and animal libera-
470
tionists may have been necessary to map the con-
ceptual terra incognita into which they gamely ven-
tured. Although many details remain to be sorted
out and filled in, the major coordinates are now
drawn, and the internal dialectic of the debate has
brought environmental ethics full circle. Ecocen-
trism, the deepest penetration into the wilderness of
novel ethical theory, has begun to merge with tra-
ditional HUMANISM in the common interest of a new
human-nature symbiosis.
See also: ALTRUISM; ANIMALS, TREATMENT OF; AP-
PLIED ETHICS;BENTHAM; BIOLOGICAL THEORY; CON-
SERVATION ETHICS; DARWIN; DISCOUNTING THE
FUTURE; ECONOMIC SYSTEMS; EVOLUTION; EXPLOI-
TATION; FEMINIST ETHICS; FUTURE GENERATIONS;
HUME; KANT; LEOPOLD; MORAL COMMUNITY,
BOUNDARIES OF; NATURE AND ETHICS; POLITICAL
SYSTEMS; PUBLIC POLICY; RIGHT HOLDERS; SCHOPEN-
HAUER; SMITH; VALUE, THEORY OF.
Bibliography
Attfield, Robin. The Ethics of Environmental Concern.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.
Callicott, J. Baird. In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in
Environmental Philosophy. Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1989.
———. Beyond the Land Ethic: More Essays in Environ-
mental Philosophy. Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1999.
Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man and Selection in
Relation to Sex. New York: J. A. Hill, 1904 [1871].
Engel, J. Ronald. “Ecology and Social Justice: The Search
for a Public Environmental Ethic.” In Issues of Justice:
Social Sources and Religious Meanings, edited by War-
ren Copeland and Roger Hatch, 243–66. Macon, GA:
Mercer Press, 1988.
Goodpaster, Kenneth E. “From Egoism to Environmen-
talism.” In Ethics and Problems of the 21st Century,
edited by K. E. Goodpaster and K. M. Sayre. Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979.
———. “On Being Morally Considerable.” Journal of Phi-
losophy 22 (1978): 308–25.
Hargrove, Eugene C. Foundations of Environmental
Ethics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989.
Johnson, Lawrence E. A Morally Deep World: An Essay
on Moral Significance and Environmental Ethics.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac: With Essays on
Conservation from Round River. New York: Ballantine
Books, 1970.
Norton, Bryan G. “Environmental Ethics and Weak An-

thropocentrism.” Environmental Ethics 6 (1984):
131–48.
Partridge, Ernest, ed. Responsibilities to Future Genera-
tions. Buffalo: Prometheus Press, 1980.
Passmore, John. Man’s Responsibility for Nature: Ecolog-
ical Problems and Western Traditions. New York:
Scribner’s, 1974.
Plumwood, Val. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature.
London: Routledge, 1993.
Regan, Tom. “The Nature and Possibility of an Environ-
mental Ethic.” Environmental Ethics 3 (1981): 19–34.
Rolston, Holmes, III. Environmental Ethics: Duties to and
Values in the Natural World. Philadelphia: Temple Uni-
versity Press, 1988.
———. Philosophy Gone Wild: Essays in Environmental
Ethics. New York: Prometheus Books, 1986.
Routley, Richard. “Is There a Need for a New, an Envi-
ronmental Ethic.” In Proceedings of the 15th World
Congress of Philosophy, edited by Bulgarian Organiz-
ing Committee, vol. 1, 205–10. Sofia, Bulgaria: Sofia-
Press, 1973.
Sagoff, Mark. The Economy of the Earth: Philosophy,
Law, and the Environment. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988.
Singer, Peter. “Not for Humans Only, The Place of Non-
humans in Environmental Issues.” In Ethics and Prob-
lems of the 21st Century, edited by Kenneth E. Good-
paster. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1979.
Taylor, Paul W. Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environ-
mental Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1986.
VanDeVeer, Donald. “Interspecific Justice.” Inquiry 22
(1979): 55–70.
Warren, Karen. “Feminism and Ecology: Making Connec-
tions.” Environmental Ethics 9 (1987): 3–20.
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vironmental Public Policy. Albany: State University of
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J. Baird Callicott
envy
Despite the fact that discussions of envy have had a
long history, there has been a surprising amount of
agreement about what envy is. Most writers on the
subject seem to assume something like the follow-
ing: Envy is a painful ill-will aroused by another’s
possessing something of value and directed at the
one who possesses it. Most definitions of envy are
equivalent to this one, or very close to it. Of course,
there are issues on which accounts of envy differ,
but these can most often be seen as disputes about
471
envy
its causes, its effects, and its remedies, not about its
essence.
There has also been a surprising amount of agree-
ment about the value of envy. Indeed, writers have
used ascriptions of envy to define characters—such
as Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) Iago, Milton’s (1608–
1674) Lucifer, the biblical Cain, and Melville’s
(1819–1891) Claggart—who are apparently meant
to personify Evil itself. Selfishness, greed, and jeal-
ousy have had theorists who claim that they are
good, but envy has not. People have been known to
proudly, and even self-righteously, confess to venge-
ful MOTIVES, but one cannot imagine someone ad-
mitting in that way to being envious.
It would be interesting to ask why envy seems—
and to almost everybody—to be so bad. There is,
after all, little in the way of obvious evidence for the
idea that it is worse than jealousy and greed, which
at any rate seem to provide the motivation for
overtly criminal behavior more often than envy does.
Perhaps one should look for an answer in the less
immediate effects of envy. Farber has suggested that
what makes envy a bad thing is the fact that it is a
particularly unproductive response to the possession
of value by others. Envious behavior, which is often
hostile and destructive, tends to prevent the envier
from emulating or learning from the achievements
of one’s neighbors. This is probably true, but it does
not seem to explain why envy appears to so many
people to be peculiarly evil. Perhaps, to explain this,
one must look away from the effects of envious be-
havior altogether and focus instead on the motives
which lie behind it.
At first sight envy does not seem to have an in-
telligible motive at all. Envious behavior is often mo-
tivated by a desire to harm the person one envies—
that is obvious enough—but the reason for that
seems to be simply that one’s victim possesses some-
thing good. The good thing may be a skill or, as in
the case of Melville’s Claggart, a virtue. But why
should the good provoke hostility? Envy seems to be
an instance of gratuitous malice, and whatever is
gratuitously evil is perhaps uniquely so.
Powerful as this view might seem, there is a
widely influential theory about envy (which is ac-
cepted by both RAWLS and NOZICK) which suggests
that this view is not true. This is the theory that the
cause of envious ill-will is a felt threat to one’s SELF-
ESTEEM. Envy is actually provoked by another’s pos-
session of some good which one does not have, at
envy
least not in so great a degree. As Silver and Sabini
have pointed out, this would seem to mean that the
resulting hostile behavior is motivated by a desire to
preserve one’s self-esteem by attacking a threat to it.
Since preserving one’s self-esteem is in itself an in-
telligible and even innocent motive, this may mean
that envy is no worse than other vices. Perhaps it is
only bad in virtue of the means it uses in seeking the
goal at which it aims.
Whether this is true or not, the peculiar badness
of envy certainly feels obvious to most of us, and
perhaps because of this fact, much of the literature
on envy takes its badness for granted and discusses
instead the merits of various proposals for getting
rid of envy or reducing its effects on human life.
Here one can distinguish at least two classic theo-
ries. One is adopted by various egalitarian writers
who claim that since envy is caused by the fact that
others have more of some good than one has oneself,
the way to reduce the prevalence of envy is simply
to reduce the extent to which some people have
more than others. On the other hand, various anti-
egalitarian writers have claimed that egalitarianism
is itself a product of envy and is tainted by that fact:
it is either a way to injure people who have more
than oneself or a cowardly attempt to appease the
envy of those who have less. One sometimes finds
this theory joined with another which claims that the
egalitarian plan for abating envy cannot work be-
cause envy is an instinct which forms an ineradicable
part of human nature.
Though it might well seem that neither of these
ideas could be called philosophical theories, it can
at least be argued that they raise or presuppose is-
sues that are philosophical. The main antiegalitarian
contention—that egalitarianism rests on envy—is
usually presented without argument. This suggests
that the reasoning behind it must be something like
this: The notion that EQUALITY is good in itself can-
not be supported by arguments which are strong
enough to explain why someone would believe it
and, lacking such an explanation, we must look for
the motives that would explain why people think
that way. The most likely motive in that case is envy.
Of course, the question of whether there are mini-
mally plausible arguments for an idea like egalitari-
anism is a philosophical issue.
The egalitarian theory also seems to rest on some-
thing that arguably is a philosophical position:
namely, a certain analysis of what envy is. At any
472
rate, the idea that the way to reduce envy is to re-
distribute enviable goods is obvious only if we sup-
pose that envy is (nothing but) what happens when
one perceives that others have more than one has
oneself. However, we have already noticed that, on
one widely accepted view, the perceived possessions
of another cause envious reactions only if they first
make one feel that one’s self-esteem is threatened. If
such a crucial part of the cause of envy lies within
the envying subject, it may well be that as the old
occasions of one’s envy are eliminated by redistri-
bution one’s ego will be wounded and one’s envy
inflamed by some of the inevitably remaining in-
equalities. If one’s self-esteem is sufficiently weak,
any sort of eminence on the part of others may be
painful. Yet this need not mean that we should be
pessimistic about the prevalence of envy in the
world. As Rawls has pointed out, it may be that we
can reduce people’s proneness to envy by having IN-
STITUTIONS which strengthen people’s self-esteem,
so that they are less apt to be wounded by signs of
the superiority of others.
See also: ANGER; COMPETITION; DESIRE; EMOTIONS;
EQUALITY; EVIL; HATE; INEQUALITY; INTERESTS; JUS-
TICE, DISTRIBUTIVE; LITERATURE AND ETHICS; MO-
TIVES; NARRATIVE ETHICS; RESENTMENT; REVENGE;
SELF-ESTEEM.
Bibliography
Farber, Leslie H. “Faces of Envy.” In The Virtues: Contem-
porary Essays on Moral Character, edited by R. B.
Kruschwitz and R. C. Roberts. Belmont, CA: Wads-
worth, 1987 [1966]. A psychologist explains why envy
exists and why it is bad.
Hartley, L. P. Facial Justice. London: Hamish Hamilton,
1960. A dystopian novel in which a dictator tries, and
fails, to eliminate envy by creating equality.
Melville, Herman. Billy Budd, Sailor. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1962 [written 1891]. Envy’s appar-
ent lack of an intelligible motive represents the “mys-
tery of iniquity” itself.
Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York:
Basic Books, 1974. Pages 239–46 argue, partly on the
basis of the role that self-esteem plays in envy, that it
may not be possible to eradicate it.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1971. Pages 530–41 defend a system
that would permit inequality against the charge that it
would cause envy.
Schoeck, Helmut. Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior. New
York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966. A sociologist

argues that envy is both the source of egalitarian ideas
and an ineradicable part of human nature.
Silver, Maury, and John Sabini. “The Social Construction
of Envy.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 8,
no. 3: 313–32. Two social psychologists argue that
envy is not as abnormally evil as it sometimes seems.
Unamuno, Miguel de. “Abel Sanchez.” In his Abel San-
chez and Other Stories. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1956
[1917]. A curious defense of the envious individual, in
which some of the blame for envy is shifted onto the
person who causes it.
Lester H. Hunt
Epictetus (c. 55–c. 135)
Epictetus was born in Hierapolis in Phrygia and
grew up as a slave in Rome, where he studied Stoic
philosophy with C. Musonius Rufus. He was given
his freedom some time after C.E. 68, and taught phi-
losophy in Rome until he was banished by an edict
of Emperor Domitian in C.E. 88 or 93. Epictetus then
moved to Nicopolis in Epirus, where he founded a
school and taught until the end of his life. He did not
write books, but his “discourses”—classroom con-
versations rather than lectures—were written down
by his pupil Flavius Arrianus (c. 95–180) and pub-
lished posthumously. Four volumes (out of eight) of
the Discourses are preserved, together with Epicte-
tus’s most influential work, the Encheiridion or
“Handbook,” a brief collection of instructions for
those who seek to make moral progress.
Although Epictetus was evidently well versed in
Stoic philosophy, including metaphysics and logic,
his teaching did not concentrate on theory, but on
advice about putting Stoic moral doctrine into prac-
tice. The basic assumptions were that the universe
is a perfectly organized whole, ruled by a rational
and benevolent divine power, and that all that is of
value for human beings is what is “up to them,”
namely, their beliefs and the moral attitude that re-
sults from these. They will reach a “well-flowing life”
if they learn to agree with divine reason, wanting
things to happen the way they do rather than try-
ing to make things happen as they want them to
(Ench. 8).
In order to achieve this attitude, it is not enough
to profess belief in Stoic doctrine—indeed, it may
not even be necessary to have studied in detail the
arguments that support it. It is more important to
train oneself to see things in the right perspective.
473
Epictetus
To this end, one has to learn to “make the right use
of appearances.” One should not assent to thoughts
as they present themselves, but examine them, tell-
ing oneself that they are only appearances, not nec-
essarily true. It will help to consider whether what
appears as good or evil is in one’s power or not. If
it is not, it will have to be set aside as indifferent to
one’s HAPPINESS. It may also help to redescribe what
is being presented. For example, if one feels at-
tracted by a person, one should consider that she is
only a human being like so many others. If one is
trying to decide on a course of action, one should
review the prerequisites and consequences to see
whether they might force one to give up one’s moral
principles. When dealing with superiors, one should
prepare oneself by reflecting that they might inflict
physical pain, but that they cannot touch one’s inner
self. By practicing this sort of spiritual exercise, one
will eventually achieve tranquility—a life in which
“you will not do a single thing against your will; you
will have no enemy; no one will harm you, since you
will suffer no harm” (Ench. 1).
Epictetus’s exclusive emphasis on moral improve-
ment is an extreme development of a line of thought
that was present in Stoic ethics from the beginning.
The early Stoics had argued that virtue was the only
human good. It followed that everything else was
indifferent as far as happiness is concerned. It is true
that “appropriate action” involved following the pat-
tern laid down by nature for human beings, such as
trying to preserve one’s self and caring for other
members of humankind. Still, the success or failure
of actions aimed at preserving oneself or helping
others was said to be irrelevant to the achievement
of one’s FINAL GOOD. If this was so, one might be
tempted to give up on the “natural advantages” with-
out even trying, avoiding messy attempts to reform
society, and simply adapting one’s desires to the little
that can be done given one’s situation. If one hap-
pens to be a slave, one should not reproach others,
least of all the gods, for having placed one in so dis-
advantaged a position. Virtue is in one’s power, and
it cannot be taken away by others, nor can one be
forced to do wrong.
It may be comforting to hear that even a slave can
aspire to the highest good; but it is more dubious to
claim that the slave need not strive to change her
situation since, after all, what counts is only her in-
ner freedom, not her outer bonds. Epictetus’s em-
phasis on inner values is attractive in its insistence
Epictetus
that one’s DIGNITY is not lost with one’s external
status, but it also seems to reflect the sense of pow-
erlessness of citizens of the late Roman empire.
See also: DIGNITY; EMOTION; HAPPINESS; HISTORY OF
WESTERN ETHICS 3 (HELLENISTIC), 4 (ROMAN), 7
(RENAISSANCE); MARCUS AURELIUS; NATURAL LAW;
POWER; RECIPROCITY; STOICISM; VIRTUES.
Bibliography
Works by Epictetus
Dissertationes ab Arriano digestae. Edited by O. Schenkl.
Leipzig: Teubner, 1965 [1894]. Standard scholarly edi-
tion. Reprint of the 2d, 1916 edition.
Epictetus. Translated by W. A. Oldfather. 2 vols. Loeb
Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1925–28. A good bilingual edition.
The Handbook of Epictetus. Translated by N. P. White.
Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983. A recent translation, with
introduction and some notes, of the Encheiridion.
Discourses. Book I. Translated with introduction and
commentary by R. Dobbin. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1998.
Works about Epictetus
Bodson, A. La Morale sociale des derniers stoiciens
Sénèque, Epictète, et Marc Aurèle. Paris: Belles Let-
tres, 1967.
Bonhöffer, A. Die Ethik des Stoikers Epictet. Stuttgart:
Teubner, 1968 [1894]. Still the most detailed and in-
formative study of his ethics.
———. Epictet und die Stoa. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1968
[1890].
Gisela Striker
Epicureanism
EPICURUS (341–270 B.C.E.) established his school at
Athens in 306 B.C.E. where it survived for the next
five centuries, serving as a paradigm for Epicurean
conceptions of philosophical activity and the good
life. Epicurus believed that the chief goal of philos-
ophy was to help alleviate human unhappiness by
showing how psychic health and tranquility are
within everyone’s easy reach. True to these thera-
peutic and missionary aims, Epicurus’s followers
attempted to win converts to their philosophical
regimen throughout the Greco-Roman world, often
seeking adherents from social groups slighted by ri-
474
val philosophical systems. Under the leadership of
Epicurus’s successors, Hermarchus of Mytilene (fl.
c. 290 B.C.E.) and Polystratus (fl. c. 275 B.C.E.), the
school flourished and gained adherents. Indeed, be-
cause of its self-conscious egalitarianism and mis-
sionary appeal, Epicureanism became one of the
dominant ethical creeds in antiquity. It held out to
its converts the promise of an alternative commu-
nity, free from the competition and anxieties of con-
ventional society and securely rooted in individual
psychic peace and the pleasures of fellowship with
like-minded friends.
The basic message of Epicureanism was summed
up in the so-called tetrapharmakos (‘fourfold rem-
edy’): “The gods present no fears, and death no wor-
ries; and while good is easy to attain, evil is readily
endurable.” Only by coming to understand each of
these four claims and their mutual implications,
could someone hope to achieve Epicurean HAPPI-
NESS and freedom from suffering. Epicurean groups
developed a variety of methods, some of them highly
coercive, for inculcating their doctrines and main-
taining the orthodoxy of their members. It became
common practice, for instance, for the faithful to
memorize elementary summaries of Epicurus’s teach-
ings and to perform catechisms. Members were en-
couraged, moreover, to confess their own backslid-
ing and to report the lapses of others. As a result, of
all the ancient philosophical sects, Epicureanism
underwent the fewest significant doctrinal changes.
Epicurus, in turn, took on the status of an ethical
savior and god for his followers, who came together
each month in reverent celebrations of his memory.
Through pamphlets and other forms of proselytizing
literature and art, Epicureans attempted to dissem-
inate to the unconverted not only his message but
also a charismatic vision of his exemplary character
and life. Epicureanism thus came to share many of
the characteristics of a missionary religion and, as a
consequence, it elicited both extreme devotion from
its adherents and great hostility from its critics.
Contrary to the usual connotations of the term
‘epicurean,’ Epicureans exhorted each other to live
austerely and with the goal of achieving inner tran-
quility and freedom from dependence on externals.
It was this internal condition of equanimity and ab-
sence of pain that Epicurus had identified with the
highest good, or PLEASURE. Epicureans also rigor-
ously avoided all political and public involvements,
unlike their rivals in PLATO’s (c. 430–347 B.C.E.)

Academy or ARISTOTLE’s (384–322 B.C.E.) Lyceum,
and were determined to maintain the PRIVACY of
their communities. True security could be found,
they argued, only away from the COMPETITION and
strife of political society. Ancient polemicists, how-
ever, and many others since, caricatured these doc-
trines and practices, charging Epicureans with lead-
ing lives of unchecked sensuality and with seeking
privacy merely to hide grosser forms of pleasure-
seeking. In common parlance, at least, these charges
have mostly stuck, since ‘epicureanism’ often con-
notes little more than vulgar HEDONISM or ATHEISM.
Hierocles (fl. C.E. c. 125), the Stoic, was merely re-
flecting three centuries of hostility when he brusquely
dismissed Epicureanism thus: “That pleasure is the
end is a harlot’s doctrine; that there is no providence
is a doctrine not even for a harlot.” This refrain was
to be picked up by the church fathers, who, apart
from their hostility to hedonism, found Epicurus’s
‘fourfold remedy’ completely at odds with their be-
lief in divine providence and the soul’s immortality.
With the coming of Christianity, Epicurus became a
favorite bête noier, representing all that was deca-
dent in the Greek moral tradition. Ironically, even
when using Epicurean distinctions, as do Clement
of Alexandria (c. 150–c. 215) and Nemesius (fl.
c. 390), for instance, in their threefold classification
of desires, patristic writers depict Epicurus merely
as a stock figure—the quintessential debauched pa-
gan, devoted exclusively to carnal pleasures.
The first systematic attempt to defend and revive
Epicurus’s doctrines based on a broad knowledge of
Epicurean texts and arguments was made by Pierre
GASSENDI (1592–1655). There had been earlier iso-
lated flirtations with Epicureanism. For instance, the
humanist Laurentius Valla (c. 1405–1457) was
thought by his opponents to be displaying unhealthy
Epicurean sympathies by arguing in his De voluptate
(“On Pleasure,” 1431) that the summum bonum is
not virtue, but pleasure. His conception of pleasure,
however, was largely antithetical to Epicurus’s, em-
phasizing the eternal pleasures that await Christians
in heaven. Other figures such as Zabarella (1533–
1589), Filelfo (1398–1481), Bruni (1369–1444),
and Landino (1424–1504) attempted to disassoci-
ate Epicurus’s conception of pleasure from mere car-
nal self-indulgence. Cosma Raimondi (1400–1436),
especially, defended Epicurean ethics as the true
path to equanimity (Defensio Epicuri contra stoicos,
achademicos, et peripateticos). By and large, how-
475
Epicureanism
ever, interest in Epicureanism in the Renaissance
was confined to the rediscovery of LUCRETIUS (c.
99–55 B.C.E.), and it was his poetry, not Epicurean
arguments, that won admiration and adherents.
Much the same can be said of MONTAIGNE (1533–
1592), Ariosto (1474–1533), Guicciardini (1483–
1540), and others instrumental in reviving interest
in Epicureanism in the sixteenth century. With the
publication of Gassendi’s De vita et moribus Epicuri
(1647) and Syntagma philosophiae Epicuri (1649)
however, Epicureanism again began to be taken se-
riously as a moral theory in France, strongly influ-
encing, among others, VOLTAIRE (1694–1778) and
ROUSSEAU (1712–1778). In England, Walter Char-
leton’s Epicurus’s Morals (1656) followed Gassendi’s
lead and began that country’s long and fruitful con-
tact with Epicureanism. HOBBES (1588–1679), Gib-
bon (1737–1794), Adam SMITH (1723–1790), BEN-
THAM (1748–1832), and J. S. MILL (1806–1873) all
looked back to Epicurus as a sympathetic precursor.
See also: ATHEISM; BENTHAM; COMPETITION; DE-
SIRE; EPICURUS; EUDAIMONIA, -ISM; FRIENDSHIP;
GASSENDI; HAPPINESS; HEDONISM; HOBBES; INTER-
ESTS; LUCRETIUS; JOHN STUART MILL; MONTAIGNE;
NEEDS; PLEASURE; PRIVACY; ROUSSEAU; SMITH; STO-
ICISM; VOLTAIRE.
Bibliography
Castner, C. J. Prosopography of Roman Epicureans.
Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1988. Discusses the
reception of Epicureanism at Rome and its popularity
among Roman aristocrats.
De Witt, N. W. Epicurus and His Philosophy. Minneapo-
lis: University of Minnesota Press, 1954. Emphasizes the
charismatic and missionary aspects of Epicureanism.
Frischer, B. The Sculpted World: Epicureanism and Phil-
osophical Recruitment in Ancient Greece. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1982. Discusses the Ep-
icureans’ use of sculpture to convey their conception
of philosophy.
Hadzsits, G. D. Lucretius and His Influence. New York:
Cooper Square, 1963. The most comprehensive his-
torical account of Epicureanism from antiquity to the
present.
Jones, H. The Epicurean Tradition. New York: Routledge,
Chapman, and Hall, 1989. Especially strong on Gas-
sendi and seventeenth-century Epicureanism.
Mayo, T. F. Epicurus in England, 1650–1725. Dallas, TX:
Southwest Press, 1934.
Spink, J. S. French Free Thought from Gassendi to Vol-
taire. London: London University Press, 1960.
Epicureanism
Vander Waerdt, P. A., ed. Tradition and Innovation in Ep-
icureanism. 1989. Special issue (vol. 30, no. 2) of the
journal Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies. Special-
ist articles on the first few generations of the Epicurean
school.
Phillip Mitsis
Epicurus (341–270 B.C.E.)
The most comprehensive account of Epicurus’s life
surviving from antiquity is in the tenth book of Di-
ogenes Laertius’s (second century) Lives and Opin-
ions of the Famous Philosophers. Although much in
Diogenes can be dismissed as mere fancy, the follow-
ing outline of Epicurus’s life and philosophical de-
velopment can be extracted from his account with
some confidence. Epicurus was born on Samos
where his father, Neocles, an Athenian school-
teacher, had emigrated. His initial encounter with
philosophy was with the Platonist Pamphilus (fl. c.
340 B.C.E.); however, the instruction he received at
nearby Teos from Nausiphanes (fl. c. 340 B.C.E.)
was to prove far more significant, since it was from
him that Epicurus learned the principles of Democ-
ritean atomism. From Nausiphanes as well, Epicurus
learned of Pyrrho (c. 365–275 B.C.E.) and was
deeply impressed by stories of his equanimity and
mental imperturbability. It is probable that these two
early influences—atomism and an ethics built on the
supreme value of self-mastery and personal tran-
quility—made themselves strongly felt throughout
his subsequent development. Indeed, Epicurus was
to become preoccupied with showing how equanim-
ity and HAPPINESS depend on an understanding of
atomism. At the age of thirty, he set himself up as a
teacher in Lesbos, but was quickly forced to resettle
at Lampsacus, perhaps because of the unpopularity
of his doctrines. After spending a few years there
teaching and gathering a group of devoted followers,
Epicurus again departed, this time for Athens, where
in 306 B.C.E. he established a community just out-
side the city walls. Called the “Garden,” it remained
the focus of his activities until his death.
Although Epicurus was remarkably prolific (his
writings may have filled 300 papyrus rolls), only bits
of his ethical work have survived. These include The
Letter to Menoeceus (a short, protreptic letter out-
lining the tenets of his ethics) and a few isolated
ethical maxims in Key Doctrines and Vatican Say-
ings. For details, one must rely on later writers, es-
476
pecially LUCRETIUS (c. 95–55 B.C.E.) and Philode-
mus (c. 110–40 B.C.E.), two later adherents of
EPICUREANISM, and CICERO (106–43 B.C.E.) and
Plutarch (c. 46–120), who provide sustained,
though often hostile, expositions of his views.
For Epicurus, the primary aim of moral philoso-
phy is to describe the nature of happiness and to
discover the best method for achieving it. He thus
shares with other Greek moral philosophers a basic
eudaimonist outlook. He believes as well that hap-
piness has several essential requirements. To be
happy, agents must be self-sufficient, immune to the
vagaries of chance, and in possession of all the goods
necessary for completely satisfying their natures.
The best strategy for meeting these requirements, he
argues, is to submit one’s desires to careful scrutiny.
Such examination will show that desires are of three
sorts. Some, e.g., for food or shelter, are natural and
necessary, while others, e.g., for sex or for specific
types of food, are natural but not necessary. Others,
like those for wealth or political POWER, are neither
natural nor necessary and should be eliminated from
our lives; they are inimical to happiness and threaten
our self-sufficiency. Of our natural desires, necessary
ones are easily met; attempting to satisfy unneces-
sary ones, however, may disturb our equanimity and
we need to treat them with caution. Epicurus’s rec-
ipe for happiness emerges from this threefold divi-
sion. We must rid ourselves of unnatural desires and
concentrate our energies on satisfying those that are
natural and necessary. When circumstances allow,
we may wish to satisfy unnecessary natural desires,
but when they do not, we can remain completely un-
disturbed. In this way, we can become self-sufficient
and free from externals, while sacrificing nothing
necessary for happiness.
If happiness depends on our ability to change and
adjust our desires, any desires not subject to our
control might impede our progress toward happi-
ness. Epicurus insists, however, that desires are
never independent of our rational control. Every DE-
SIRE has its causal roots in beliefs, and our beliefs
are entirely up to us. Even entrenched desires are
easily eliminated, since we need only change our be-
liefs to effect the alterations in our desires necessary
for happiness. Thus a strictly rationalist MORAL PSY-
CHOLOGY supports Epicurus’s claim that all desires
can be modified by reason and focused on an agent’s
FINAL GOOD. Our happiness, in short, depends solely
on our own rational agency; if we have the right (Ep-

icurean) beliefs, we can live without disturbance,
even “as gods among men.”
For Epicurus, the major source of unhappiness
afflicting us is the fear of DEATH. This fear impels us
to make desperate attempts to stave off death, usu-
ally by engaging in troubling competitions for wealth
and power. As a result, we find ourselves perpetually
troubled. A proper understanding of our MORTAL-
ITY, however, shows that death is nothing to us. In
order to be vulnerable to harm, one must be capable
of sensation. At death, however, we lose all capacity
for sensation. Therefore, since our future nonexis-
tence cannot possibly be a source of pain or harm
to us, we have no reason to fear it. Nor does Epi-
curus believe that death can harm the living. He in-
sists that once we recognize that happiness is mea-
sured not by its duration but by its completeness, we
will understand that death can rob the living of noth-
ing valuable.
Although Epicurus is chiefly known for his HE-
DONISM, little consensus has emerged about how to
interpret this central element of his ethics. He claims
that “the beginning and end of living happily” is
PLEASURE, which he identifies with “freedom from
pain in the body (aponia) and from disturbance in
the soul (ataraxia).” Critics have been puzzled, how-
ever, by this as a description of pleasure. SIDGWICK
(1838–1900), for instance, dismissed as an outright
paradox Epicurus’s identification of the highest
pleasure with the absence of pain. And, indeed, Ep-
icurus’s claim would be paradoxical if he held the
classical utilitarian view of pleasure as a uniform
feeling to be maximized on the basis of its duration
and intensity. However, this is unlikely. His theory
has more affinities with, for example, ARISTOTLE’s
(384–322 B.C.E.) in Nicomachean Ethics, Book VII,
where pleasure is described as the unimpeded activ-
ity of an organism functioning in its natural state.
For Epicurus as well, agents free from all painful
bodily or psychic disturbance are in an optimal nat-
ural state, a state that he calls ‘katastematic plea-
sure.’ By ‘katastematic’ he means the pleasure that
results when a desire is fully satisfied. Such plea-
sures, he argues, must be distinguished from the ‘ki-
netic’ pleasures that occur when a desire is in the
process of being satisfied. Kinetic pleasures, more-
over, only vary but do not increase one’s overall plea-
sure. For example, I can satisfy my hunger with
white or brown bread; but I have no reason, he
claims, to prefer one of these kinetic pleasures to
477
Epicurus
another since my ultimate aim is to be free from hun-
ger, i.e., to be in a katastematic state of satisfaction.
Only katastematic states are ultimately choice-
worthy and part of an agent’s final good. Thus, when
Epicurus asserts that pleasure is the end, his agree-
ment with most subsequent hedonists is largely ver-
bal. He is not primarily concerned with setting up a
calculus for mechanically reducing all value to a par-
ticular feeling; rather, he wants to show the relation
between happiness and the natural functioning of an
organism unimpeded by ‘pain in the body and dis-
turbance in the soul,’ i.e., an organism in a state of
katastematic satisfaction or pleasure.
Epicurus places the highest value on FRIENDSHIP
and virtue, but many have wondered whether this is
consistent with his hedonism. Indeed, a crucial dif-
ficulty facing his theory is justifying concern for any-
thing beyond an agent’s own inner states. In the case
of friendship, even his followers had difficulty in un-
derstanding how he reconciled his deep commit-
ments to friends with his emphasis on individual
equanimity and invulnerability. Some believed that
he endorsed ALTRUISM, while others maintained that
he held friendship to be merely instrumental to plea-
sure. His account of virtue faces similar difficulties.
He argues that the VIRTUES are strictly instrumental
to pleasure. Yet, he also claims that pleasure and
virtue are mutually entailing and that the greatest
fruit of justice is equanimity. Moreover, because he
seems reluctant to allow that pleasure can be char-
acterized independently of the virtues that produce
it, he sometimes appears to attribute to virtue an
ineliminable role in specifications of our final good.
Like J. S. MILL (1806–1873), Epicurus is commit-
ted to including conventional virtues and friendship
in his account of happiness, even perhaps at the cost
of inconsistency.
Although Epicurus was an atomist in the Democ-
ritean tradition, he found the determinism and
mechanistic reductionism of some of his fellow at-
omists inadequate for explaining individual auton-
omy and human rationality. Determinism and phys-
icalism, he argued, are self-refuting, since they
abolish all grounds for distinguishing rational from
nonrational arguments. Moreover, at the material
level, atomic indeterminacies prevent human actions
from being causally determined by antecedent con-
ditions. Our rational quest for happiness is therefore
secure from determinism. Unfortunately, here as in
much of Epicurus’s ethics, most of the details of
Epicurus
what may have been significant and nuanced argu-
ments are now lost.
See also: AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; CICERO;
DEATH; DESIRE; EPICUREANISM; EUDAIMONIA, -ISM;
FINAL GOOD; FRIENDSHIP; HAPPINESS; INDIVIDUAL-
ISM; LUCRETIUS; MORAL REASONING; MORTALITY;
PAIN AND SUFFERING; PLEASURE; SELF-CONTROL;
SELF-KNOWLEDGE; STOICISM; VOLUNTARY ACTS.
Bibliography
Works by Epicurus
Epicuro opere. Edited by G. Arrighetti. Turin: Giulio Ei-
naudi, 1960.
Epicurus: The Extant Remains. Translated by C. Bailey.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926. Includes Eng-
lish translation and commentary.
The Hellenistic Philosophers. Edited by A. A. Long and
D. Sedley. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987. Excellent discussion of Epicurus’s ethics;
helpful bibliography.
Epicurea. Edited by H. Usener. Rome: L’Erma di Bret-
schneider, 1963 [1887].
Works about Epicurus
Annas, Julia. “Epicurus on Pleasure and Happiness.” Phil-
osophical Topics 15 (1987): 5–21. Incisive account of
Epicurus’s eudaimonism.
Bailey, C. The Greek Atomists and Epicurus. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1928. Thorough presentation of
evidence.
Carratelli, G. Syzhthsis: Studi sull’Epicureismo greco e la-
tino offerti a Marcello Gigante. 2 vols. Naples: G. Mac-
chiaroli, 1983. Important collection; includes excellent
critical bibliography.
De Witt, N. W. Epicurus and His Philosophy. Minneapo-
lis: University of Minnesota Press, 1954. Epicureanism
as a reaction against Platonism and anticipation of
Christianity.
Diano, C. Scritti Epicurei. Florence: Universita di Padova,
1974. Collection of learned and stimulating essays.
Farrington, B. The Faith of Epicurus. London: Weidenfeld
and Nicolson, 1967. A Marxist analysis.
Furley, D. Two Studies in the Greek Atomists. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967. Explores possible
Aristotelian influences on Epicurus’s theory of volun-
tary action.
Gosling, J. C. B., and C. C. W. Taylor. The Greeks on Plea-
sure. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. Extensive
discussion of Epicurean hedonism in its ancient context.
Guyau, J. M. La morale d’Epicure et ses rapports avec les
doctrines contemporaines. Paris: Felix Alcan, 1886.
478
Dated, but still the most thorough and authoritative
general discussion.
Long, A. A. Hellenistic Philosophy. 2d ed. Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1986 [1974]. Lucid intro-
duction to all aspects of Epicureanism. Useful bibliog-
raphy.
Mitsis, Phillip. Epicurus’ Ethical Theory: The Pleasures of
Invulnerability. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1988. Discusses Epicurus’s accounts of pleasure, the
virtues, friendship, and theory of action.
Schofield, M., and G. Striker. The Norms of Nature: Stud-
ies in Hellenistic Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1986. Several important articles on
Epicurus.
Phillip Mitsis
epistemology
See metaphysics and epistemology.
equality
The concept of equality plays a variety of roles
within political philosophy. Here the uses of “equal-
ity” will be discussed under three main headings:
equal treatment for equals, fundamental equality,
and social equality.
“Equal treatment for equals” specifies that those
who are equal in some relevant respect should be
treated equally. “Fundamental equality” refers to the
idea that all human beings are of equal worth, have
equal (fundamental) RIGHTS, or should be awarded
equal respect and concern. “Social equality” is taken
here to include political equality, economic equality,
and equality of status among the members of a so-
ciety. Each of these uses of “equality” will be dis-
cussed in turn and the relations between them
explored.
Equal Treatment of Equals
Even those who reject both fundamental equality
and social equality will typically insist that equality
should be maintained among those who are similar
in relevant respects: that those with equal talents
should have equal educational opportunities, that
those who are willing and able to pay should have
equal access to restaurants and hotels, that those
who are equally guilty should receive the same PUN-
ISHMENT, and so on. Thus, ARISTOTLE (384–322

B.C.E.), no friend of either fundamental or social
equality, nevertheless said that “all men think justice
to be a kind of equality . . . For they say that . . . it
should be equal for equals” (Politics, 1282b lines
16–21; see also Nicomachean Ethics, 1131a lines
10–28).
All disputes about justice can, therefore, be re-
garded as disagreements about the identity of the
equals who are to be treated equally in some respect,
and, underlying this, the grounds for regarding peo-
ple as equal for the purpose of distributing some
right or obligation, benefit, or burden. (See Perel-
man for a modern restatement.)
Unquestionably, the formula “equal treatment for
equals” captures a significant usage of the term
“equality.” But, since it is an empty formula until the
“equals” are specified, it cannot give any sense to the
idea that someone is in favor of more equality. Yet
egalitarians—believers in equality—do exist. Unless
we resort to an appeal to mass delusion, we must
assume that popular demands for equality (as in the
French Revolutionary slogan of “Liberty, equality,
fraternity”) have some meaning as yet unexplained.
Fundamental Equality
One claim involving “equality” that has con-
tent—as we can see from its often having been de-
nied—is the claim that all people are in some way
equal. We may call this the claim of fundamental
equality.
The American and French declarations. The
Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Dec-
laration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
(1789) contain the most well-known assertions of
the claim. The Declaration of Independence says:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happi-
ness.” And the French Declaration begins as follows:
“All men are by nature free and equal in respect of
their rights. Distinctions can be founded only on
public utility.”
For two centuries such assertions of human
equality have been derided by those who point out
that there is no respect in which all human beings
are as a matter of fact equal. But neither of the doc-
uments quoted makes that claim. As R. H. Tawney
(1880–1962) observed: “When the Americans de-
479
equality
clared it to be a self-evident truth that all men are
created equal, they were thinking less of the admi-
rable racial qualities of the inhabitants of the New
World than of their political and economic relations
with the Old. . . . When the French . . . [set] the
equalitarian idea . . . side by side with liberty and
fraternity as the motto of a new world, they did not
mean that all men are equally intelligent or equally
virtuous, any more than they are equally tall or fat,
but that the unity of their national life should no
longer be torn apart by obsolete property rights and
meaningless juristic distinctions.”
The assertion of fundamental equality thus func-
tions as a premise on which are founded such con-
clusions as the justice of the American demand for
political independence and the French demand that
the special legal and fiscal privileges enjoyed by
groups such as the nobility and the clergy under the
ancien régime should be abolished. This was ex-
pressed in both the American and French documents
by an attribution of equal rights to all mankind. A
typical modern formulation, which avoids the lan-
guage of rights, is Tawney’s statement that “equal-
ity” is used to convey an “ethical judgment” to the
effect that “while [people] differ profoundly in ca-
pacity and character, they are equally entitled as hu-
man beings to consideration and respect.” (See also,
for example, Benn, Vlastos, and Williams.)
Isaiah Berlin has argued that the principle of
equality should be seen simply as a particular (albeit
important) application of the formula “Treat like
cases alike.” “Then, given that there is a class of hu-
man beings, it will follow that all members of this
class, namely men, should in every respect be treated
in a uniform and identical manner, unless there is a
sufficient reason not to.” This is, however, as Berlin
(1909–1997) admits, vacuous unless some limits
are placed on the range of “sufficient reasons,” and
this Berlin refuses to do: “If I believe in a hierarchical
society, I may try to justify the special powers or
wealth or position of persons of a certain origin, or
of castes or classes or ranks, but for all this I am
expected to give reasons—divine authority, a natural
order, or the like.” (Berlin; for a similar treatment of
equality as a purely “procedural” notion, see Weale.)
The emptiness of Berlin’s conception is well il-
lustrated by the fact that it was explicitly accepted
by Rashdall (1858–1924), who put forward the
principle that “every human being is of equal intrin-
sic value, and is therefore entitled to equal respect,”
equality
taking it to rule out “arbitrary inequality—inequal-
ity not justified by social well-being or some other
general and rational principle—in the treatment of
individuals” (Vol. I, pp. 223–24). But Rashdall later
went on to say: “The lower well being—it may be
the very existence—of countless Chinamen and ne-
groes must be sacrificed that a higher life may be
possible for a much smaller number of white men.”
Willingness to give reasons is not enough. Aris-
totle, for example, was quite prepared to justify
SLAVERY by saying that some men are “slaves by na-
ture.” Yet if there is any conclusion that a premise
of fundamental equality should rule out, it is surely
the legitimacy of slavery. The assertion of funda-
mental equality must be taken to restrict the accept-
able range of reasons for treating people unequally.
The American and French Declarations illustrate
the kinds of move available. If people are equal in
respect of rights, as both insist, how can political
obligation—the obligation of some to obey others—
be justified? The answer given (in the form of the
second “self-evident” truth in the Declaration of In-
dependence) is that “the consent of the governed” is
what gives government its “just powers,” and this is
clearly an answer of the right general form. For if
we deny that political subordination is either di-
vinely ordained or in some sense “natural,” we need
to show it as arising from human artifice. And a story
involving CONSENT by free agents is obviously an at-
tractive candidate.
Again, if human beings have equal rights, how
can we justify any kind of differentiation in the way
in which the state treats people? The answer given
by the French Declaration—that appeal is to be
made to “public advantage”—is, again, clearly of the
right form. This is especially so if we avoid the
anachronism of construing “public advantage” as
meaning “maximizing aggregate utility,” and under-
stand it rather as requiring that everyone should
stand to benefit from an inequality, taking an equal
distribution as the benchmark.
It may, indeed, be observed that the two criteria
are closely related. For, if everyone stands to gain
from an inequality, everyone has good reason to as-
sent to it; and, conversely, if everyone agrees to an
inequality, this is prima facie evidence for their
standing to gain from it. Since any consent theory
rapidly has to move to the invocation of hypothetical
consent to retain any plausibility, and the best reason
for claiming that someone would sign a “SOCIAL
480
CONTRACT” under certain conditions is that he or she
would stand to gain from doing so, it may be said
that the two approaches come close to the same
thing.
It would be too strong to say that (hypothetical
or actual) consent and mutuality of benefit are the
only bases of social inequality that are compatible
with the premise of fundamental equality. But it is
not accidental that the rise of fundamental equality
to the status of a political axiom in the past two
centuries has been accompanied by a continuing fas-
cination with ideas of contract and mutual advan-
tage in all discussions of the moral legitimacy of so-
cial inequality. (See Barry for an analysis of the
varieties of such theories and of their interrelations.)
The justification of the claim of fundamental
equality has been held to be impossible because it is
a rock-bottom ethical premise and so cannot be de-
rived from anything else. In particular, those who
believe in the existence of a logical gulf between “is”
and “ought” deny that any claim about the actual
characteristics of human beings can found the claim
of fundamental equality. (See Popper; for a more nu-
anced view see Nielsen.)
Despite this, most advocates of fundamental
equality have always felt, and continue to feel, the
need to offer some considerations in support of it
rather than leaving it as a naked “decision” (to use
Popper’s term). It will be recalled that the American
Declaration gives the “Creator” credit for endowing
human beings with equal rights, while the French
Declaration makes a bow to “nature.” Since both
were largely the work of Deists, the distinction here
is almost stylistic. But in any case it seems fair to say
that defenses of fundamental equality invariably ap-
peal to either God or nature, or to both.
It has been suggested that the widespread accep-
tance of fundamental equality in Europe and coun-
tries of European settlement from the seventeenth
century onward depended on the groundwork laid
by the Christian doctrine that all and only human
beings have souls and all souls are equal before God.
(For a judicious discussion, see Lakoff.) It does at
any rate appear that the most popular grounding of
fundamental equality among contemporary Anglo-
American philosophers is a secular version of the
appeal to equality of souls. According to this, what
is unique to and common to almost all adult mem-
bers of the human race is that they have the capacity
to form a point of view of the world, and a concep-

tion of themselves and their place in it. Each person
“recognizes in [others] what he knows in his own
experience, the potentialities for moral freedom, for
making responsible choices among ways of life open
to him, for striving, however mistakenly and unsuc-
cessfully, to make of himself something worthy of
his own respect” (Benn; see also Williams).
Critics have pointed out that, even if it is accepted
that human beings do share the characteristics at-
tributed to them by these writers, nothing follows
logically from this about equal worth or respect
(Charvet). But even if this is conceded, it does not
follow that the plausibility of the assertion of fun-
damental equality is totally unrelated to the fact that
(with a small minority of distressing exceptions) all
human beings do in maturity acquire in large mea-
sure a set of capacities that exist not at all or only in
rudimentary form in other species, such as “the abil-
ity to use language, self-consciousness, autonomy,
the ability to form life-plans and to carry them out
with zest, capacity for moral sentiments, capacity for
a sense of justice” (Haksar).
Hobhouse (1864–1929) put the point clearly by
saying that the claim of “natural equality” is to be
understood as in the first instance one about equal
rights, not about equal endowments, but then con-
tinuing: “Could men be equal even in respect of their
rights if there were not some fundamental equality
in their natural or inherent constitution? Have ani-
mals rights, and if so, are they of the same kind as
those of men? Have inanimate things rights? In fact,
is not a ‘right’ a property of a rational, social, moral
being, and if we admit this, can we maintain equality
of rights without coming back to an allegation of fact
in the shape of equality in natural, social or moral
capability?” Raphael answers that, while “people are
unequal in their capacities and needs,” nevertheless
“certain basic capacities and needs are equally pos-
sessed by all. When it is said that all men are equal,
this means not only that they have an equal right of
some sort but also that, despite the many natural
inequalities among human beings, they are all equally
endowed with certain basic capacities and needs, and
that, in some of these shared equalities, they differ
radically from other animals.” (See also Gutmann.)
At this point, the specter of “speciesism” rears its
head, and needs to be addressed. In approaching it,
we must begin by noting that the concept of spe-
ciesism is ill-formed on the analogy with racism and
sexism. If someone were to say that blacks and
481
equality
women are and always will be unfitted by nature to
enjoy civil and political rights (though there should
be laws prohibiting their maltreatment), this would
undeniably be racist and sexist. Yet nobody—from
the most fervent animal liberationist to the most un-
repentant carnivore—dissents from the equivalent
proposition in relation to nonhuman animals. Con-
struing “speciesism” in line with “racism” and “sex-
ism,” therefore, we are all speciesists.
To be at all plausible, therefore, denial of spe-
ciesism has to be understood as an extension of Ber-
lin’s vacuous conception of fundamental equality, so
that it is amended to read: “Given that there is a class
of animals, it will follow that all members of this
class, namely animals, should in every respect be
treated in a uniform and identical manner, unless
there is a sufficient reason not to.” This is in fact the
line taken by Peter Singer, who then construes ra-
cism and sexism as if their denial entailed no more
than the affirmation of this vacuous principle.
It is then clear, however, that there are indeed
“sufficient reasons” (of the kind cited by Haksar) to
distinguish the vast mass of human beings from all
other animals. We do not start from the presumption
that dogs and horses should have a vote and then
eliminate them on a case-by-case basis, as we may
remove from the electoral roll convicted prisoners
and those certified as mentally incompetent. We
eliminate them en bloc just in the way that racists
and sexists—people who believe that women and
blacks lack the prerequisites posited by fundamental
equality—would say that blacks and women should
be denied equal civil and political rights on grounds
of natural incapacity.
But if fundamental equality depends on the pos-
session of a threshold level of certain distinctively
human capacities, where does this leave congenital
idiots and those suffering from severe brain damage,
not to mention the acephalic and the irreversibly
comatose? “If equal consideration of interests de-
pended on rationality, . . . [w]hat reason could then
be offered against using them like dogs or guinea
pigs for, say, medical research?” One obvious re-
sponse would be that what we are not prepared to
do to imbeciles we should not do to dogs or guinea
pigs either. But this is not the only answer available.
Why should not species be itself a relevant crite-
rion—a “sufficient reason” in Berlin’s formula-
tion—for special treatment?
An analogy may be helpful here. Every culture—
equality
even those with no belief in transmigration of souls
or personal survival after DEATH in any form—pre-
scribes that corpses be treated with DIGNITY (though
what this is taken to entail differs enormously, of
course). In the same way, “a human with severe and
irreversible brain damage” might properly be treated
in a way that we would not feel obliged to duplicate
for a nonhuman animal with a similar lack of capac-
ity, simply because what we have here is a member
of the human race.
This is not, it may be noted, necessarily a spe-
ciesist prescription, in the sense of “speciesism” de-
fined by Singer. As Haksar points out, fundamental
equality is generally regarded as compatible with the
idea that I have obligations to my own children that
I do not have to others. “Similarly, even if animals
and (congenital) idiots have an equal right to con-
sideration in one sense [i.e., equal worth], yet the
latter could have greater rights against the human
family of which they are members. . . . Thus, if idiots
are starving and dogs are starving, it seems plausible
to take the line that we have greater obligations to
feed the idiots (since they belong to the same family
as we do) than we do to feed the dogs.”
Perhaps what is in essence the same point may be
expressed in the following way. So long as we do not
treat nonhuman animals worse than we should (and
it is, needless to say, controversial what that entails),
there is no injustice in our treating human beings
better than that, even if they fail to meet the standard
criteria for entry into the “egalitarian club.” (They
are in any case not full members, as can be seen from
their not being granted the usual civil and political
rights.)
But as “associate members” (Haksar), they may
legitimately be given a special deal simply in virtue
of belonging to our species. Thus, we may affirm
that fundamental equality, as the basis for claims to
civil and political rights, has definite preconditions
which human beings do not automatically meet,
while at the same time rejecting the implication that
there is no valid basis for discriminating in treatment
between on one side human beings who fall short of
these preconditions and on the other side nonhuman
animals of comparable capacity.
Social Equality
That someone accepts the premise of fundamen-
tal equality does not enable us to make any precise
482
predictions as to the position that person will take
on social equality. Among mainstream political the-
orists, the most striking illustration of the way in
which fundamental equality may underwrite social
inequality is provided by HOBBES (1588–1679).
Hobbes subscribed without qualification to the view
that all subordination must be built by consent on a
foundation of natural equality, yet on this foundation
he built a political structure of absolute sovereignty.
LOCKE (1632–1704), employing likewise a premise
of natural equality, disputed that conclusion of
Hobbes; but he was far from endorsing equal politi-
cal rights and explicitly maintained that economic
inequality and a hierarchy of status were compati-
ble with this natural equality (The Second Treatise,
para 54).
Coming to the present, we may observe that the
policy positions of all mainstream political parties in
contemporary liberal-democratic societies (the qual-
ification is intended to exclude avowedly racist par-
ties) are compatible with fundamental equality. We
may also observe that the premise of fundamental
equality is explicitly appealed to by philosophers as
divergent in conclusions as Robert NOZICK and Da-
vid Gauthier (both, from very different starting
points, opposed to any interference with market out-
comes), by John RAWLS (a social democrat who de-
fends redistribution within a market framework),
and by Kai Nielsen (a socialist committed to radical
egalitarianism). In the light of all this it might rea-
sonably be asked whether fundamental equality is
worth bothering with. Can a premise from which
such widely differing conclusions can be derived re-
ally be doing any work?
There are two good reasons for an affirmative
answer. The first is that, by historical standards,
the range of policy prescriptions advanced by politi-
cal parties and political philosophers in liberal-
democratic societies is actually quite narrow, and
this can plausibly be attributed to the grip that the
idea of fundamental equality now has. It is hard to
see, for example, how the Nazi program of mass kill-
ings could be sustained without the proposition that
certain racial groups are inferior and in fact subhu-
man. Again, the maintenance of colonial possessions
against the wishes of their inhabitants is very hard
to defend without invoking the kind of attitude
quoted earlier from Rashdall. Thus, the principle of
fundamental equality does set limits, and it is pre-

cisely because we take those limits for granted that
we tend to overlook the crucial role that it plays.
Second, not everything that is claimed by some
people to be compatible with fundamental equality
really is compatible with it. Thus, with enough con-
tortions it might have been possible to square the
apartheid regime (c. 1948–c. 1991) in South Africa
with fundamental equality. But the empirical asser-
tions that would have been needed to mediate be-
tween premise and conclusion would have been
vastly implausible. By contrast, it would have been
simplicity itself to establish the case for apartheid if
one were prepared to start from the premise that the
interests of whites should be given precedence over
the interests of blacks. No doubt the real basis for
supporting apartheid was precisely an exclusive con-
cern for the interests of whites. But the general in-
admissibility of such a premise in any international
forum constrained the arguments that could be put
forward publicly into taking a form that had little
likelihood of ever convincing anyone, since it was
manifestly false that the arrangement served the in-
terests of blacks as well as those of whites.
The battlefield over which arguments about social
equality are fought has changed over time (Nielsen).
The social equality demanded by the Constituent As-
sembly that drew up the French Declaration was the
equality of men (and not, of course, women) as cit-
izens: a common civil status for all, so that the same
laws and the same system of taxation should apply
to everyone. Within liberal democratic societies this
battle has been essentially won—and has included
women, by and large, on equal terms. This has de-
pended on the extension to women of the premise
of fundamental equality, and the main argument has
been precisely that women do in fact share the ca-
pacities on which claim for equal rights among men
is founded—an argument made as early as 1790 by
Condorcet (1743–1794), who wrote in a remark-
able article “On the Admission of Women to the
Rights of Citizenship”: “Now the rights of men result
simply from the fact that they are sentient beings,
capable of acquiring moral ideas and reasoning con-
cerning these ideas. Women, having these same
qualities, must necessarily possess equal rights.”
Attention has now, therefore, shifted from formal
to substantial equality. Thus, formal political equal-
ity is attained by such measures as universal suffrage
and the right of all citizens to stand for public office.
Yet on this basis is built a structure of de facto in-
483
equality
equality within which money and organization can
be translated into political power and in which
women are massively underrepresented. Similarly,
formal equality of civil status coexists with a system
of social stratification that distributes social HONOR
with extreme inequality. And the formal economic
equality embodied in universal freedom of contract
inevitably gives rise, in the absence of state inter-
vention, to a highly unequal distribution of income
and PROPERTY.
Arguments in favor of greater substantive equality
take a variety of forms. There are several perfection-
ist lines of argument: social inequality is the enemy
“both of individual culture and social amenity”
(Tawney); economic equality both depends on and
fosters a less selfish type of human being (J. S. Mill);
the values of solidarity and community are sustain-
able only within an approximately equal society
(Miller); and great inequalities of power (including,
as MILL [1806–1873] emphasized, inequalities be-
tween the sexes) are inherently corrupting (Berger).
UTILITARIANISM is one obvious way of taking the
slogan “everybody to count for one and nobody for
more than one.” But in the first instance all that is
counted equally is utility: a given parcel of utility is
to be weighted the same way in the calculus regard-
less of the identity of its possessor. But there is an
argument going back to BENTHAM (1748–1832)
himself that makes economic equality prima facie
desirable from a utilitarian point of view. This is sim-
ply that, if we assume the diminishing marginal util-
ity of money, a given amount of money will tend to
yield the most utility if it is equally distributed
(Ryan). This line of argument reached its most so-
phisticated development within the tradition of util-
itarian welfare economics that culminated in Pigou
(1877–1959). A version of the argument from di-
minishing marginal utility is restated by Richard
BRANDT (1910–1997). It has to be added that this
case for equality takes a given amount to be distrib-
uted. Thus, if one believes that economic incentives
or a settled property regime are preconditions of a
productive society, a case for some inequality will
reemerge. Thus, “economic welfare [conceived of in
utilitarian terms] is best promoted by a minimum
standard raised to such a level that the direct good
resulting from the transference of the marginal
pound transferred to the poor just balances the in-
direct evil brought about by the consequent reduc-
equality
tion of the dividend [i.e., the total product]” (Pigou;
see also Brandt).
Finally, social equality may be derived as a cor-
ollary of a theory of justice. There are two main lines
of argument for equality here. The first simply ex-
tends the idea that all citizens should have equal
rights from the formal area in which it is broadly
accepted to the substantive area within which it is
controversial. Thus, the claim that all adults should
(with a few exceptions) cast one and only one vote
does not depend on attributing to citizens the pos-
session of any quality in exactly equal amounts. As
argued earlier, it presupposes common attainment of
a certain threshold level of certain capacities, but
explicitly denies that variations in amounts of these
capacities should be correlated with the distribution
of votes. It can be suggested that in exactly the same
way there are no characteristics which are possessed
differentially by citizens upon which substantive so-
cial inequalities can legitimately be founded.
The alternative line is to concede that in principle
differences among people might generate unequal
just claims, but deny that the conditions under
which this would lead to substantive inequalities ac-
tually exist. Thus, for example, we might accept that
more productive people could legitimately claim
more income if the conditions were met for their
deserving more, then go on to say that in fact all
productive advantages arise from good luck in either
the genetic or social lottery, so these conditions are
not met. In practice, theorists of an egalitarian ten-
dency use arguments of both kinds in respect of dif-
ferent aspects of substantive inequality. (This is true,
for example, of both Rawls and Nielsen.)
See also: ANIMALS, TREATMENT OF; CHILDREN AND
ETHICAL THEORY; CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIC DUTIES;
DEMOCRACY; DIGNITY; DISCRIMINATION; ECONOMIC
SYSTEMS; ELITE, CONCEPT OF; EXCELLENCE; FEMINIST
ETHICS; HUMAN RIGHTS; INEQUALITY; JUSTICE (vari-
ous entries); MERIT AND DESERT; MORAL COMMU-
NITY, BOUNDARIES OF; MULTICULTURALISM; POLITI-
CAL SYSTEMS, EVALUATION OF; PROPORTIONALITY;
PUBLIC POLICY; RACISM AND RELATED ISSUES; SLAV-
ERY; WELFARE RIGHTS AND SOCIAL POLICY.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Politics.
Barry, Brian. A Treatise on Social Justice. Vol. 1, Theories
of Justice. Berkeley: University of California Press,
484
1989. Vol. 2, Justice as Impartiality. Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1995.
Benn, Stanley I. “Egalitarianism and the Equal Consider-
ation of Interests.” In Equality, edited by J. Roland Pen-
nock and John W. Chapman, 61–78. NOMOS, vol. 9.
New York: Atherton, 1967. P. 700.
Berger, Fred R. Happiness, Justice, and Freedom. Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1984. See pp.
161–66.
Berlin, Isaiah. “Equality.” In his Concepts and Categories:
Philosophical Essays, 81–102. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1980. Pp. 82–84.
Brandt, Richard B. A Theory of the Good and the Right.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979. Pp. 304–26.
Charvet, John. A Critique of Freedom and Equality. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Pp. 25–27.
Condorcet, Marquis de. “On the Admission of Women to
the Rights of Citizenship.” In his Selected Writings, ed-
ited by Keith Michael Baker, 97–104. Indianapolis, IN:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1976 [1790]. P. 98.
Gauthier, David. Morals by Agreement. Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1986.
Gutmann, Amy. Liberal Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1980. Pp. 46–47.
Haksar, Vinit. Equality, Liberty, and Perfectionism. Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1979. Pp. 66–67;
77–78.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Edited by C. B. Macpher-
son. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968 [1651].
Hobhouse, Leonard. The Elements of Social Justice. New
York: Henry Holt, 1922. P. 105.
Lakoff, Sanford. “Christianity and Equality.” In Equality,
edited by J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman,
115–33. NOMOS, vol. 9. New York: Atherton, 1967.
Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. Edited by Pe-
ter Laslett. New York: Mentor Books, 1965 [1690].
See The Second Treatise, p. 346.
Miller, David. Social Justice. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1976. See pp. 317–35.
Nielsen, Kai. Equality and Liberty: A Defense of Radical
Egalitarianism. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld,
1985. See pp. 24–38; 6.
Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York:
Basic Books, 1974.
Perelman, C. The Idea of Justice and the Problem of Ar-
gument. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963.
See p. 12.
Pigou, A. C. The Economics of Welfare. 4th ed. London:
Macmillan, 1948 [1920]. P. 781.
Popper, Karl. The Open Society and Its Enemies. 4th ed.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962 [1945]. See
vol. I, p. 62.
Raphael, D. D. Problems of Political Philosophy. London:
Pall Mall Press, 1970. Pp. 185–86.
Rashdall, Hastings. The Theory of Good and Evil. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1907. See I, pp. 223–39.

Ryan, Alan. Property and Political Theory. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1984. See pp. 102–5.
Singer, Peter. “All Animals Are Equal.” In Applied Ethics,
edited by Peter Singer, 215–28. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1986. See pp. 218–20; 224.
Tawney, R. H. Equality. New York: Capricorn Books,
1961 [1931]. See pp. 35, 37, 90.
Vlastos, Gregory. “Justice and Equality.” In Social Justice,
edited by Richard B. Brandt, 31–72. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice Hall, 1962.
Weale, Albert. Equality and Social Policy. London: Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. See pp. 11–29.
Williams, Bernard. “The Idea of Equality.” In Philosophy,
Politics and Society, edited by Peter Laslett and W. G.
Runciman. 2nd ser., 110–31. Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1962.
Brian Barry
ethical egoism
See egoism.
ethical naturalism
See naturalism.
ethics
See autonomy of ethics; history of Western ethics.
ethics and morality
‘Ethics’ comes from the Greek ēthos, CHARACTER,
and ‘morality’ from the Latin mores, which refers to
character or to custom and habit. The two words are
often used interchangeably, or with rather uncertain
differences, as in the phrases “personal morality”
and “professional ethics.” Recently, however, influ-
ential arguments have been put forward to the effect
that there is a sharp theoretical distinction—that
ethics is the broader notion and includes much that
falls outside morality. These arguments crystallize an
attitude which is commonly found in work on an-
cient ethics and in modern VIRTUE ETHICS and is
widespread in an implicit form. On this view, ethics,
especially ancient ethics, forms an alternative to mo-
rality: It lacks characteristic narrow features of mo-
rality while still being concerned with the subject
485
ethics and morality
matter of morality—how we should live and what
we should do. Although people who argue for this
distinction often do so in a way unfavorable to mo-
rality, the distinction itself does not compel any par-
ticular relative evaluation of ethics and morality. It
is also compatible with a variety of views as to how
central to our own outlook morality is, and thus how
available to us ethics is, when considered as an al-
ternative. (The most common combination of views
is one that is critical of morality but considers it in-
escapably part of our outlook.)
It is notoriously difficult to define morality and
thus to contrast it clearly with a broader concept of
ethics. It is possible, however, to identify character-
istics of morality which some theories have been
held to lack while still counting as ethical theories.
Such characteristics are (a) a distinction of kind be-
tween moral and nonmoral reasons, (b) a strict de-
mand of RESPONSIBILITY (‘ought’ implies ‘can’),
(c) the prominence of duty or obligation as the basic
moral notion, and (d) an essential concern for the
noninstrumental good of others.
In the twentieth century there have been some
attempts to define morality in terms that narrow it
to a particular field. Particularly influential have
been the views of Kurt BAIER, characterizing the
MORAL POINT OF VIEW as the adoption of rules or
principles with a particular aim—the furtherance of
the COMMON GOOD; and of Geoffrey Warnock, iden-
tifying morality with the adoption of rules or dis-
positions which are such as to counteract the limi-
tations of human sympathies and the damaging
effects of these limitations. (Both of these have been
seen as ‘content-based’ accounts of morality, in re-
action to the earlier tendency, seen especially in the
works of R. M. HARE, to define morality in purely
formal terms.) These views have been criticized on
the grounds that, by compartmentalizing morality,
they create unnecessary puzzles as to the relation of
morality to wider concerns in the agent’s life, such
as are often brought under the heading of ethics and
which are often illustrated by ancient ethical theories.
(a) KANT (1724–1804) has been widely followed
in his insistence that moral reasons are fundamen-
tally different in kind from nonmoral ones; in our
deliberations they cannot be weighed against one an-
other, for moral reasons when properly appreciated
override nonmoral ones. Eudaimonistic theories (par-
ticularly the ancient versions) are often held to lack
such a sharp distinction, working instead with an
ethics and morality
undivided notion of PRACTICAL REASONING over
one’s life as a whole. If this is so, we might wish to
call such theories ethical rather than moral. But in
fact eudaimonistic theories do make a distinction
comparable to the one at issue here, even though
they do not talk in terms of a special kind of rea-
son and do not have a term corresponding to our
‘moral’. The Stoics, for example, insist that the value
of virtue is not comparable with the value of other
kinds of things: Virtue has no need of other kinds of
good to give the agent what matters, and such goods
have no force against virtue. Other theories do not
mark the difference so sharply, but in them also vir-
tue has the preeminent place required for moral rea-
sons. Many theories have nothing corresponding to
Kant’s demand that the contrast between moral and
other reasons is as sharp as that between noumenal
and phenomenal; but argument is needed to show
that a demand as extreme as this is required by a
theory of morality as such.
(b) Moral praise and blame presuppose that the
agent was responsible for her action. If any ethical
theory lacks such a presupposition, we would have
reason to distinguish it from moral theories. EUDAI-
MONISM is again a candidate, but in fact the presup-
position of responsibility is common ground to all
ancient forms of eudaimonism. ARISTOTLE (384–
322 B.C.E.) sets out conditions for the agent’s re-
sponsibility; the Stoics insist that virtue is ‘up to us.’
This presupposition is a commonsensical one, en-
tailing no particular theoretical solution. It seems
plausible to agree with SIDGWICK (1838–1900) that
this commonsense presupposition is all that morality
needs. Thus there seems no way on this score to deny
that eudaimonism is concerned with morality. It is
true that Kant insists that moral responsibility pre-
supposes a freedom that cuts through all physical
and psychological factors, so that the agent is always
free to act morally, whatever the conditions. But it
is implausible that a theory lacking this is thereby
not a theory of morality.
HUME (1711–1776) claims that virtue ethics lays
little stress on responsibility and voluntariness; the
agent is esteemed for excellences including the moral
ones, but in a way that does not give the moral ones
special weight. Hume’s claims are just false about
the theories of his own day, as Sidgwick points out,
but the claim continues to be made about ancient
ethics. There is indeed no special word, in ancient
ethics, for virtue as opposed to other kinds of EX-
486
CELLENCE, since the Greek aretē and the Latin virtus
mean excellence of all kinds. But the excellences that
concern ethical theory are in fact the (moral) VIR-
TUES: They are standardly justice, COURAGE, WIS-
DOM, and self-discipline, and they are standardly
regarded as motivating the agent in a way not re-
ducible to other reasons, just as moral reasons do.
(c) Though it has sometimes been denied, all an-
cient ethical theories, indeed all ethical theories,
contain a notion of moral duty or obligation. Kant,
again, makes this the fundamental moral notion, and
many deontological theories have followed him, ei-
ther making notions like virtue secondary or, in ef-
fect, replacing them by taking obligation to be the
only acceptable form that moral demand can take.
It is not clear, however, why a theory should be
deemed to fall outside morality for not making ob-
ligation prominent in this extremely strong way.
(d) Theories are often called ethical rather than
moral whose base notion is that of the agent’s good
or HAPPINESS, since this is often thought to exclude
concern for the noninstrumental good of others.
This is a mistake, however; such theories are for-
mally self-centered, since concern for the good of
others enters as part of the agent’s concern for her-
self, but they are in no way committed to regarding
the good of others instrumentally, and in fact do not.
They may lack the extreme Kantian demand that
others be regarded completely impartially with one-
self. But it is not obvious that this extreme demand
is simply a demand of morality. Recent discussions
often assume this, but without argument.
A pattern is clear: KANTIAN ETHICS contains ex-
treme forms of all these characteristic features of
morality, but theories are not excluded from being
theories of morality which contain less extreme ver-
sions; and claims that theories of ethics may lack
them altogether turn out to be wrong.
See also: ANSCOMBE; CHARACTER; COMMON SENSE
MORALISTS; COURAGE; DUTY AND OBLIGATION; EX-
CELLENCE; KANTIAN ETHICS; MORAL POINT OF VIEW;
MORAL REASONING; MORAL RULES; PRACTICAL REA-
SON[ING]; RESPONSIBILITY; VIRTUE ETHICS; VIRTUES;
WISDOM.
Bibliography
Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993.

Baier, Kurt. The Moral Point of View. Ithaca: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1958.
Becker, Lawrence C. Reciprocity. London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1986.
Irwin, Terence. “Aristotle’s Conception of Morality.” In
Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient
Philosophy, edited by J. J. Cleary, vol. 1, 115–43. New
York: University Press of America, 1985.
Warnock, Geoffrey. The Object of Morality. London: Me-
thuen, 1971.
Williams, Bernard. “Ethical Enquiry.” In The Legacy of
Greece, edited by M. I. Finley. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1981.
———. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1985.
Julia Annas
etiquette
Etiquette has such a bad reputation among intellec-
tuals that one would expect it to have been intelli-
gently attacked. Instead, one finds only naive and
petulant sideswipes, based on a naughty misunder-
standing of the subject. The chief complaint seems
to be that etiquette restrains natural behavior, re-
quiring artificial control rather than the uninhibited
expression of individual inclinations. The same com-
plaint can, of course, be made of ethics.
Etiquette—the set of imperatives explicitly com-
manding social behavior—derives its AUTHORITY as
a rational prescriptive system from manners, the tac-
itly held beliefs in such goods as communal har-
mony, respect for the DIGNITY of the person, satis-
faction of an aesthetic sense and cultural coherence.
Etiquette plays three conceptually distinguishable
social roles: regulative, symbolic, and ritual.
In its regulative role, etiquette shares with law the
promotion of communal harmony. But while the law
addresses grave conflicts, such as those threatening
life or PROPERTY, etiquette averts personal antago-
nisms to forestall such conflicts, relying on voluntary
compliance with its restraints, rather than on legal
sanctions. That is why etiquette restricts freedom of
self-expression more than the law does. If people
indiscriminately expressed their true thoughts and
feelings about others, as is their legal right, retalia-
tory actions would soon clog the courts.
When general voluntary compliance with regu-
lative etiquette breaks down, the law takes over. Law
might thus be said to exist to compensate for the
487
etiquette
failure of etiquette. It must not, however, be sup-
posed that where the law does take over, etiquette
should withdraw. Law cannot be administered justly
without etiquette. The etiquette of jurisprudence
governing proper behavior in the courtroom is very
strict, just as it is in other professions that must deal
with strongly felt conflicts—government, the mili-
tary, diplomacy, the church, athletics. For all these
enterprises, there are stricter etiquette rules about
how to dress, when and where to stand, how to
move, and how to acknowledge superiors than for
less adversarial activities. The more orderly the form
of a social structure is, the more conflict it can
support.
In its symbolic role, etiquette provides predicta-
bility in social relations, especially among strangers.
Forms of greeting, dressing, eating, and restraining
bodily functions can all be read as symbols of de-
grees of friendliness or hostility, respect or con-
tempt, solidarity with the community or alienation
from it. Since it is the essence of a symbolic system
that its symbols refer to something other than them-
selves, the relation between a symbol and the thing
that it stands for is more often than not arbitrary.
Accordingly, many rules of etiquette are arbitrary
and cannot be given a direct functional justification.
Moreover, they differ for different times, places,
ages, and social classes. They must be learned, rather
than deduced from first principles.
Etiquette is therefore not just common sense; but
its rules, once learned and correctly interpreted, pro-
vide people with a tremendous fund of nonverbal
knowledge about one another, helping them deal ap-
propriately with a wide range of social situations and
relationships.
In its ritual role, etiquette serves the sacred and
the aesthetic, as a means of satisfying those spiritual
needs that transcend our physical needs and make
us distinctly human. Weddings and funerals are two
of the most commonly encountered occasions call-
ing for ritual. Rather than leaving it to individuals
as a do-it-yourself project to come to terms with
their chaotic feelings in such momentously emo-
tional situations, etiquette guides them, providing a
sense of social cohesiveness and a sharing of our
humanity.
In comparing etiquette and ethics, it has some-
times been claimed that in cases of conflict, the
unconditional imperatives of ethics always take
precedence over the dispensable imperatives of eti-
etiquette
quette. Counterexamples show that, contrary to this
claim in many actual situations—for instance, where
ethics calls for telling the truth and etiquette for its
hypocritical concealment—such conflicts are re-
solved by according precedence to etiquette.
It has also been argued that the imperatives of
ethics differ from those of etiquette by the former
being natural (or not capable of being otherwise)
and the latter being purely conventional (or just as
capable of being otherwise). This argument fails to
make the distinction between the deep structure of
a rule, which may reflect a universal imperative of
ethics or etiquette, and its surface structure, which
could be tied to a specific time, place, or society. One
may refer to the deep rules as “natural etiquette” and
to the surface rules as “positive etiquette”—physis
and nomos—just as the philosophy of law distin-
guishes between natural and positive law. Natural
etiquette and NATURAL LAW could not be otherwise,
but positive etiquette and positive law could well be.
A rule of natural etiquette is “Behave respectfully in
a place of worship.” The contrary of this rule, per-
mitting or commanding disrespectful behavior, would
be clearly irrational. Two mutually incompatible, ob-
viously conventional, positive surface transforms of
this deep rule are: “Uncover your head in a place of
worship” (man in church), and “Cover your head in
a place of worship” (man in synagogue). Etiquette
changes continuously over time and place, just as
ethics does. But in both systems, the changes pertain
mainly to the surface, positive rules, leaving the
deep, natural rules largely unaffected.
The social regulation of smoking provides an ex-
ample not only of how etiquette changes, but also of
the historical dialectic between etiquette and the
law. The task of separating smokers used to be ac-
complished satisfactorily by etiquette. There were
special places (smoking rooms, clubs), special cloth-
ing (smoking jackets), and a variety of rules to pro-
tect nonsmokers, including a smoking ban during
dinner. After dinner, the nonsmokers (a.k.a. ladies)
repaired to the drawing room, while the smokers
(a.k.a. gentlemen) enjoyed their cigars. But when
smoking became common to both sexes, the smok-
ing majority managed to change etiquette to permit
smoking almost everywhere at any time.
As the largely unprotected nonsmokers increased
in number, etiquette became more restrictive again,
so that it is now considered rude to smoke near non-
smokers without first seeking their wholehearted
488
CONSENT. But there has been insufficient voluntary
compliance with that rule (intended to avoid annoy-
ing nonsmokers), so the nonsmokers have had to
call in the law, on the grounds that indirectly inhaled
smoke may be injurious to their health. More and
more laws limiting the freedom to smoke are being
adopted, proscribing or severely restricting smoking
in virtually all public places.
In view of the considerable overlap in the aspects
of the human condition with which manners and
morals are concerned, they can hardly be entirely
different and clearly separable components of the
ensemble of our tacit fundamental beliefs, wants,
and INTERESTS. Hence, etiquette and ethics are not
separate systems for the governance of social rela-
tions, but form a spectrum of imperatives whose
metric is the gravity of their intentional violations.
Ethics lies toward that end of the spectrum where
the consequences of violations are most grave. Many
imperatives of ethics are embedded in secular and
religious law established by authority of a sovereign
legislator, with severe, usually formally stipulated,
penalties as sanctions and retributions provided for
violations. A highly structured judicial system exists
for administering the law and resolving cases when
the legal system encounters conflicting imperatives.
Etiquette lies toward the other end of the spectrum,
where the consequences of violation are least grave.
Many imperatives of etiquette are part of an oral
tradition and usually owe their definitive formula-
tion to writers of etiquette books. There are no for-
mally stipulated penalties for violations, with shame
and ostracism as the only sanctions. There is no for-
mal system for administering etiquette, and the res-
olution of conflicts arising from its rules is in the
hands of self-appointed judges, who may also decree
new rules. Between these extremes of the spectrum,
in its middle range, there is a large sector of inter-
mediate gravity, where ethics and etiquette overlap.
It is as true of etiquette as it is of ethics (and the
law) that in the long run their rules can prevail only
with the consent of the governed. But were ethics
and etiquette to fall by the wayside, civilization
would disappear.
See also: AESTHETICS; CARE; CIVIC GOOD AND VIR-
TUE; CIVILITY; COMMON GOOD; COMMON SENSE MOR-
ALISTS; CONVENTIONS; COOPERATION, CONFLICT, AND
COORDINATION; DIGNITY; ETHICS AND MORALITY; FIT-
TINGNESS; FRIENDSHIP; GENEROSITY; GOLDEN RULE;

HUMILITY; HYPOCRISY; INSTITUTIONS; INTEGRITY;
MORAL COMMUNITY, BOUNDARIES OF; MULTICULTUR-
ALISM; NATURAL LAW; NATURALISTIC FALLACY; OBE-
DIENCE TO LAW; PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS; POLITI-
CAL CORRECTNESS; PROMISES; PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
MORALITY; RECIPROCITY; SECRECY AND CONFIDEN-
TIALITY; SELF AND SOCIAL SELF; SELF-CONTROL;
SPORT; SYMPATHY; TOLERATION.
Bibliography
Ackerman, Felicia. “A Man by Nothing Is So Well Be-
trayed as by His Manners? Politeness as a Virtue.” In
Ethical Theory: Character and Virtue, edited by P.
French, T. Uehling, and H. Wettstein, 250–58. Mid-
west Studies in Philosophy, vol. 13. Notre Dame, IN.:
Notre Dame University Press, 1988. Discusses what
makes a rule a rule of politeness or good manners. Ref-
erences to standard contemporary books of etiquette
cited below.
Debrett’s Etiquette and Modern Manners. Edited by Elsie
Burch Donald. London: Debrett’s Peerage, 1982.
Foot, Philippa. “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Im-
peratives.” Philosophical Review 81 (1972): 305–16.
Germinal contemporary discussion of the nature of
morality in which it is contrasted to etiquette. This as-
pect criticized in later numbers of this journal, and by
Eugene Valberg, “Philippa Foot on Etiquette and Mo-
rality,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 15 (1977):
387–91.
Kant, Immanuel. Lectures on Ethics. Translated by Louis
Infield. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1979 [1775–1780].
Particularly the sections on truthfulness, social virtues,
and haughtiness.
Martin, Judith. Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly
Correct Behavior. New York: Atheneum, 1982. Also by
same author: Miss Manners’ Guide to Rearing Perfect
Children (1984); Common Courtesy, New York: Ath-
eneum, 1985; Miss Manners’ Guide for the Turn-of-
the-Millennium, New York: Pharos, 1989.
Post, Emily. Emily Post’s Etiquette: The Blue Book of So-
cial Usage. Edited by Elizabeth L. Post. New York:
Funk and Wagnalls, 1965.
Judith Martin
Gunther S. Stent
eudaimonia, eudaimonism
The Greek word eudaimonia is usually translated
into English as “happiness.” Like its English coun-
terpart, it is an abstract noun built on the base of an
adjective—eudaimon (translated as “happy”). In
English, HAPPINESS has certain hedonistic connota-
489
eudaimonia, eudaimonism
tions; it can mean, e.g., the state in which desires are
satisfied, or a life of PLEASURE. However, most com-
mentators hold that eudaimonia, as used by PLATO
(c. 430–347 B.C.E.) and ARISTOTLE (384–322
B.C.E.), should not be taken to mean happiness as
pleasure; they cite both Plato’s and Aristotle’s ar-
guments that pleasure is not the end of human life.
Rather, the account of eudaimonia must begin with
the notion that humans—because they are ra-
tional—function in a way different from other ani-
mals. Whereas all humans, by definition, fulfill this
peculiarly human function (ergon), some do so in a
particularly fine way; they excel at being human. To
fulfill a function in this way combines both the no-
tion of carrying out well the task for which an entity
is fitted by nature and the notion of realizing a stan-
dard of EXCELLENCE. Finally, human well function-
ing is, or is the leading constituent of, eudaimonia.
Thus eudaimonia is identified with a kind of life-
long performance rather than with a pleasurable
state. Indeed, an alternative translation for eudai-
monia, as it is used in ethics, is “human flourishing.”
However, Plato and Aristotle do hold that the
person who is eudaimon also experiences pleasure
because of being eudaimon. Nevertheless, while hu-
man flourishing is pleasant or enjoyable, its good-
ness does not consist in its being pleasant. In this
distinction, STOICISM, a school founded by Zeno of
Citium (335–263 B.C.E.) in Athens around 301
B.C.E., follows Plato and Aristotle. A contrasting ac-
count of eudaimonia is that of EPICUREANISM. EPI-
CURUS (341–270 B.C.E.), who founded this school
at Athens around 307 B.C.E., identified eudaimonia
with pleasure. In Epicurean teaching, pleasure in-
cludes kinetic and static pleasure; the former arises
in satisfying DESIRE and the latter is enjoyed once
desire is satisfied. Central to Epicureanism is the
claim that static pleasure, i.e., satisfied desire, is
pleasure because it is absence of pain, i.e., the pain
of deprivation. Indeed, Epicureanism holds static
pleasure to be superior to kinetic and thus values the
absence of pain, and the tranquil life, as its ideal.
Thus, not only does it prefer static pleasures, the
kinetic pleasures it recommends are those least likely
to disturb tranquility. In this attitude can be dis-
cerned the springs of Epicurus’s teaching that the
simple life, undisturbed by the vicissitudes of luxu-
rious pleasures, is the best.
‘Eudaimonism’ is the name given primarily to the
ancient Greek doctrine, advanced by Plato, Aris-
eudaimonia, eudaimonism
totle, and the Stoics, that virtue and eudaimonia are
partially or completely identified with one another.
While Epicureanism holds that virtue is valuable
only as a means to pleasure, and thus to eudaimonia,
eudaimonism holds either that virtue is identical
with eudaimonia or that virtue is its major compo-
nent. When first enunciated, the doctrine would
have sounded at least puzzling to the ancients, even
if they understood eudaimonia to mean human
flourishing. To say that the virtuous person is flour-
ishing as a human being is hardly an obvious moral
truth. Plato and Aristotle argue for the position by
maintaining two claims: (1) that virtue is actually—
once one really understands it—fulfilling well the
peculiarly human function of reason and (2) that ful-
filling well that peculiarly human function is, or is
largely, eudaimonia. We can now elaborate on both
claims.
(1) Virtue is actually fulfilling well the peculiarly
human function of reason. The traditional VIRTUES
include justice, TEMPERANCE, WISDOM, and COUR-
AGE; these virtues are stable dispositions to act in
the appropriate way in the appropriate circum-
stances. As such, these dispositions are expressed in,
and identified by, kinds of actions. Temperance, e.g.,
is the disposition to exercise SELF-CONTROL in the
satisfaction of appetites. Plato and Aristotle “psy-
chologized” these stable dispositions by reducing
them to reason’s successfully guiding and control-
ling the other, nonrational, parts of the soul. Both
argued that when reason fulfills well this role, one
is, e.g., just, temperate, wise, and brave. In Book IV
of the Republic (441d ff), Plato argues that justice,
courage, wisdom, and temperance are different as-
pects of reason’s ruling well in the soul—e.g., in the
case of temperance, reason, guided by the knowl-
edge of what is good for each part of the soul and
for the whole, rules the appetites. In Book II of the
Nicomachean Ethics (1103 A), Aristotle distin-
guishes two kinds of virtues: intellectual virtues
(e.g., wisdom [sophia] and practical intelligence
[phronesis]) and moral virtues (e.g., justice, liber-
ality, courage). Clearly wisdom and practical intel-
ligence are different ways in which reason functions
well; in subsequent books, Aristotle shows that the
moral virtues, in turn, all depend on practical intel-
ligence guiding one’s actions and desires.
(2) Fulfilling well the peculiarly human function
of reason is, or is largely, eudaimonia. Although nei-
ther eudaimon nor eudaimonia occurs in Book IV
490
of the Republic as a description of the psychical con-
dition brought about by reason’s ruling, Plato does
compare it to health in the body, i.e., to bodily flour-
ishing. Finally, in Book IX (580 b) Plato explicitly
links his previous account of virtue with eudai-
monia, going so far as to say that the most virtuous
person is the most eudaimon. In the first book of the
Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that the soul’s
activity under the guidance of reason is the pecu-
liarly human function; fulfilling that function well—
the soul’s activity when it is well guided by reason—
is excellent or virtuous activity of the soul (1098a).
For example, in a human being, appetites achieve
satisfaction under the guidance of reason; one eats
and drinks when and as reason decides. When rea-
son functions well in these decisions, a person is car-
rying out well the peculiarly human way of living.
Like the accomplished musician, such a person is an
accomplished human being, fully realizing the ex-
cellence of being human. Although he is studiedly
ambiguous at this point about further specifying the
notion of excellence, Aristotle concludes that the
person who is eudaimon is the one whose soul is
functioning successfully because well guided by
reason.
While these two claims are the core of eudaimon-
ism, Aristotle’s version is complicated by two fac-
tors. First, his argument in the central books of the
Nicomachean Ethics seems intended to establish
that the virtuous activity of the soul, which is the
chief component of eudaimonia, is activity which
expresses the moral virtues—i.e., a political and ac-
tive life. However, in Book X (1177a), Aristotle
identifies eudaimonia not with the moral virtues but
with the intellectual virtue of wisdom; Aristotle says
that eudaimonia is contemplation of truth. Many
commentators believe that it is possible to integrate
these two accounts of eudaimonia; without some in-
tegration, Aristotle’s second account would be eu-
daimonism only in the attenuated sense that it would
identify eudaimonia with the intellectual virtue of
wisdom. Second, in Book I, Aristotle himself raises
the important issue whether virtuous activity by it-
self is enough for eudaimonia; or whether other,
external goods, e.g., friends and health, are constit-
uents of eudamonia. Most commentators take Ar-
istotle to mean that, while virtuous activity is the
chief constituent of eudaimonia, some external goods
are also necessary.
It is over this last point that we can distinguish

Stoic eudaimonism from that of Aristotle. Stoicism
holds that virtue by itself is eudaimonia; this teach-
ing leads to the Stoical doctrine that all other values
besides virtue are indifferent to one’s being eudai-
mon. Only virtue is good, advantageous, or useful.
Health and friends are merely preferable, in the
Stoic terminology—i.e., it is well if one has these
sorts of things but they are not constituents of eu-
daimonia. Thus, Stoicism holds a strong version of
eudaimonism, one that completely identifies virtue
and happiness.
‘Eudaimonism’ is also used to describe subse-
quent moral theories which hold that virtue is par-
tially or completely identical with happiness (under-
stood as human flourishing). Since their notions of
both virtue and flourishing are significantly different
from those of the ancient Greeks, these subsequent
theories, e.g., those of St. THOMAS AQUINAS (1225?–
1274) and of Baruch SPINOZA (1632–1677), are
variations on a theme. For instance, Aquinas aug-
ments the moral virtues with the theological virtues
of faith, HOPE, and CHARITY and holds that complete
happiness is achieved only by contemplation of God
in eternity (Summa Theologiae, First Part of the
Second Part, Questions 1–3). For Spinoza, virtue is
a God-like intuition and as such it restrains lust
(Ethics, Part V).
In recent times there has been renewed interest
in VIRTUE ETHICS. While contemporary philosophers
have adapted insights about virtue from ancient and
medieval philosophers for the modern context, so
far they have been little interested in developing the
eudaimonism of the ancients. Two sorts of reasons
have been given for this lack of interest. First, con-
temporary notions of happiness, even if they are not
hopelessly tied to the notion of pleasure, are closely
allied with other affective states, such as contentment
or satisfaction. For instance, most contemporary ac-
counts of happiness include a sense of satisfaction
with one’s life. One obstacle to a contemporary ver-
sion of eudaimonism is that there seems no neces-
sary connection between satisfaction with one’s life
and virtue because other pursuits besides virtue
seem perfectly capable of affording such satisfac-
tion. In turn, the objectivist component of eudai-
monism presents another kind of problem. An im-
portant part of the eudaimonist argument for the
link between virtue and happiness is the claim that
there are certain human capacities which must be
perfected in a certain way in order to achieve excel-
491
eudaimonia, eudaimonism
lence and thus happiness. The perfection of these
capacities are, in fact, the virtues. If you do not ap-
prehend these capacities correctly, you will not de-
velop them correctly. If you do not develop them
correctly, then, no matter how much you might think
you are happy, you are mistaken. Thus there is a
strong distinction between subjective belief about
happiness and actually being happy. However, ac-
cording to one contemporary view, we lack the
means to determine those capacities whose devel-
opment would constitute objective happiness. We,
thus, cannot devise an account of objective happi-
ness—or even human flourishing—that would be
plausible enough to bear the weight of the argument
for the link between virtue and happiness.
See also: ARISTOTELIAN ETHICS; ARISTOTLE; COUR-
AGE; DESIRE; EPICUREANISM; EXCELLENCE; FAIRNESS;
HAPPINESS; HEDONISM; NEO-STOICISM; PHRONESIS;
PLATO; PLEASURE; PRACTICAL WISDOM; SELF-CON-
TROL; STOICISM; TEMPERANCE; VIRTUE ETHICS; VIR-
TUES; WISDOM.
Bibliography
Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993.
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Terence Ir-
win. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1985.
Cooper, John M. Reason and Human Good in Aristotle.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975.
Foot, Philippa. Virtues and Vices. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1978.
Gosling, J. C. B., and C. C. W. Taylor. The Greeks on Plea-
sure. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
Hardie, W. F. R. Aristotle’s Ethical Theory. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1968.
Irwin, Terence. Plato’s Ethics. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1995.
Kraut, Richard. “Two Conceptions of Happiness.” Philo-
sophical Review 88 (1979): 167–97.
Long, A. A. Hellenistic Philosophy. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1974.
Long, A. A., and D. N. Sedley, translators and editors. The
Hellenistic Philosophers, Vol. I. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1987.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue. Notre Dame, IN: Notre
Dame University Press, 1984.
Nussbaum, Martha C. The Fragility of Goodness. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Plato. Plato’s Republic. Translated by G. M. A. Grube. In-
dianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1974.
eudaimonia, eudaimonism
Rorty, Amélie, ed. Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1980.
Spinoza, Baruch. Ethics. Edited by James Gutmann. New
York: Hafner, 1954.
Telfer, Elizabeth. Happiness. New York: St. Martin’s,
1980.
Vlastos, Gregory. Platonic Studies. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1973.
Richard D. Parry
euthanasia
The term ‘euthanasia’ is derived from the Greek eu,
“good,” and thanatos, “death”—literally an easy or
good death. Despite attempts to develop a reason-
ably adequate definition, the term remains ambigu-
ous and tends to be used persuasively in the litera-
ture. It is often lexically defined as “the act or
practice of putting to death another person or ani-
mal suffering from incurable conditions or diseases,
typically in a painless manner.” But even this char-
acterization has its share of difficulties. Arguably, its
major advantage is that it is morally neutral in that
it allows us to distinguish between moral (or per-
missible) and immoral (or impermissible) acts of eu-
thanasia, and to place impermissible acts (like op-
portunistic or Nazi-like acts) in the latter category.
An act of euthanasia differs from an act of SUICIDE
(“an uncoerced act of intentionally and consciously
taking one’s own life”) and from physician-assisted
suicide (“an act of suicide whereby a patient ends
his or her own life with a dose of medication or other
lethal means requested of and provided by a physi-
cian for that purpose”). The difference is that in
the case of euthanasia death is induced by another
person, while in the case of suicide, death is self-
inflicted. Another important difference is that ar-
guments which purport to establish the dangers of
physician-assisted suicide do not, in themselves, es-
tablish the hazards of euthanasia as do, for example,
the implications of the practice of assisted suicide
for the medical profession. Yet it is also true that
most of the ethical arguments supporting suicide
and physician-assisted suicide have been used in
making the case for voluntary euthanasia.
The concern here will be primarily with voluntary
and nonvoluntary active euthanasia. Active eutha-
nasia occurs when one does something directly to
end life of another being. An act of euthanasia is
held to be voluntary only if there is full disclosure
492
of relevant information to, and CONSENT freely given
by, the intended competent recipient of the act. An
act of euthanasia is involuntary if the intended re-
cipient refuses or opposes the proposed killing. A
nonvoluntary act occurs when the intended recipient
is not mentally or physically free to choose (as in the
case of infants or the permanently comatose), and a
proper legal guardian acting on the individual’s best
interests gives consent, or, when this is inappropri-
ate (as in emergency situations), a representative
acting on behalf of the individual gives consent. The
lines between voluntary, involuntary, and nonvolun-
tary euthanasia are crucial in a society that values
both self-determination and compassion.
A Liberal Point of View
Under the influence of what may broadly be
called a liberal or quality-life point of view, advo-
cates of voluntary euthanasia have urged that mo-
rality and WISDOM consist not in the pursuit of life
but in the pursuit of a quality life and, conversely,
that it may be desirable to end a life which is irrep-
arably blasted by the most loathsome conditions or
diseases. Advocates of voluntary euthanasia believe
that a credible moral theory has no genuine need to
claim that life is always a good, death always an EVIL
and, therefore, that the deliberate killing of an in-
nocent human being is always wrong and impermis-
sible. Despite the great variety in the kinds of justi-
fications offered, liberals do agree that voluntary
euthanasia is sometimes excusable, permissible, vir-
tuous, or obligatory. Indeed, this group might well
be called Promethean, since they are hostile to the
idea of just letting nature take its course; and they
insist that we should consciously and intelligently
control our own destiny. This Promethean perspec-
tive is grounded in MORAL RULES like those of au-
tonomy, freedom, or DIGNITY —rules which typically
prohibit the deprivation of freedom, thereby en-
couraging individual control of one’s own LIFE AND
DEATH plans.
The question of the extent to which this Prome-
thean or a similar stance must generate an ethics of
autonomy, or vice versa, cannot be addressed here.
Suffice it to say that if there is any single area of solid
agreement in the liberal argument, it is that the core
of the ethical case remains the autonomy of the in-
dividual and the right of each person to decide when
and how to die. For there is increasing agreement

that the function of the principle of autonomy is to
affirm self-determination as a, or the, moral value
and to shift the burden of justifying infringement
of individual LIBERTY to established social and gov-
ernmental powers. This, in part, means that if one
has a right to life, (a) she need not exercise it, and
(b) she may waive it. This also means, writes John
Lachs, “that in the end, our lives belong to no one
but ourselves.” Similarly, DWORKIN, Nagel, NOZ-
ICK, RAWLS, Scanlon, and THOMSON suggest that
each individual has a right (presumably a moral and
constitutional right) to make the most intimate and
personal choices central to personal dignity and au-
tonomy, a right that “encompasses the right to ex-
ercise some control over the time and manner of
one’s death.”
Two forms of the slippery slope argument will be
more extensively discussed under the rubric of the
conservative position. However, we should not for-
get that for the liberal, the slippery slope argument
is not an argument against the moral permissibility
of euthanasia, but against implementing the prac-
tice before appropriate safeguards can be provided.
Moreover, liberals insist that it is absolutely vital to
distinguish between whether abuse is actually oc-
curring and whether there are adequate legal safe-
guards against abuse. These seem to be the major
reasons that they are not overly concerned by the
experience in the Netherlands, where euthanasia
under specified circumstances is permitted by the
courts, though not authorized by statute, and where
reports of alleged abuse are often cited as illustra-
tions of the slippery slope effect.
One of the most striking features of the liberal
approach is the belief that dignity is a necessary con-
dition of the good life. Individuals are said to have
this kind of dignity to the extent that they have rea-
sonable POWER to control important aspects of their
own lives. This is dignity as self-possessed control.
It consists not in having unlimited power but in hav-
ing reasonable control over the significant aspects of
one’s life, as well as in satisfying the ofttimes nec-
essary condition of not being treated indecently or
disrespectfully.
At the heart of the liberal position is a negative
moral intuition and two positive theses. The intui-
tion is that existence is not always preferable to non-
existence. The first thesis is that life is a primary but
not an absolute good and, therefore, death may
sometimes be a good. This, in part, means that the
493
euthanasia
badness of death resides in the goodness of what it
ends. Similarly, the goodness of death resides in the
badness of what it ends. Since the term ‘death’ is
here used only to signify the end of life and not a set
of attributed properties, the charge made by conser-
vatives—that liberals are attempting to describe the
utter void of nonexistence—is largely misguided.
For example, saying that “Nancy Cruzan’s death
ended her suffering” does not generate the same dif-
ficulties as saying that “the present King of France
is bald.”
As their second thesis, liberals hold that judg-
ments about the quality of life often can be correctly
made and that these judgments provide part of the
basis for rationally deciding whether or not to end a
life. According to these advocates, there is convinc-
ing evidence that what human beings generally re-
gard as a life of minimal quality is bound up with an
individual’s ability to satisfy certain kinds of reason-
able desires or goals and that there is a difference—
a vital logical, if not moral difference—between a
life devoid of any quality, one almost devoid of qual-
ity, and one that just lies on the negative side of the
scale. In this context the terms “meaningful life” and
“meaningless life” often are used by individuals who
wish to explain why cessation is the best possible
solution to their problem. In its subjective sense,
having a meaningful life signifies having a minimally
adequate sense of purpose or worth—largely be-
cause an individual is attached to dominant goals
and believes that these goals are, or may be, attain-
able. Having a meaningless life in this subjective
sense signifies the lack of both HOPE and a sense of
worth—largely because the individual in question
believes he or she does not have, or can no longer
achieve, any important goal. However, there is an-
other side to this coin. Here a distinction is made
between having a subjectively meaningless life and
having an objectively meaningless one. This distinc-
tion is especially important, since opponents of eu-
thanasia typically maintain that judgments of mean-
inglessness or worthlessness must be subjective.
Consider the case of Matthew Donnelly. As James
Rachels describes it,
Skin cancer has riddled the tortured body of
Matthew Donnelly. A physicist, he had done
research for the past thirty years on the use
of X-rays. He had lost part of his jaw, his
upper lip, his nose, and his left hand.
euthanasia
Growths had been removed from his right
arm and two fingers from his right hand. He
was left blind, slowly deteriorating, and in
agony of body and soul. The pain was
constant; at its worst, he could be seen lying
in bed with teeth clenched and beads of
perspiration standing out on his forehead.
Nothing could be done except continued
surgery and analgesia. The physicians
estimated that he had about a year to live.
Suppose Donnelly repeatedly reports that he be-
lieves that his life is meaningless and, therefore,
worthless. In what sense and circumstances, if any,
can this be true? First, it is quite clear that if he is
sincere, then his judgment—“I believe my life (but
not my earlier life) is meaningless”—is true. Sup-
pose he then adds: “My life is objectively meaning-
less” in the sense that there is little possibility of
important strivings, aversions, projects, goals, or
plans—the necessary components of a human life,
as opposed to being a mere biological organism. The
challenge to the conservative is this: If reliable evi-
dence supports the claim, then many would want to
say that Donnelly’s second, and more serious claim,
is true. One implication of this is that beliefs about
the meaninglessness of a life are often true when
they correspond with reality. Judged by the ordinary
canons of scientific evidence, there comes a point
in some lives where that life becomes objectively
meaningless.
What may not be fully understood is that having
a meaningless life neither entails the worthlessness
of an entire life nor that death is the preferable so-
lution unless other “normative propositions” are
added to the decision-making process. Yet the evi-
dence indicates that these propositions are some-
times added. In exigent and tragic circumstances,
individuals do view their situation as being deeply
problematic because it involves a threshold or judg-
ment as to when, and under what conditions, death
is better than living as well as the judgment that
when it is, death is the best solution.
A Conservative Point of View
A contrary point of view is put forward with con-
siderable vigor by conservatives who argue that talk
about worthwhile or worthless, meaningful or mean-
ingless, quality or nonquality life generates formi-
494
dable problems. Here too we find a diversity of phil-
osophical and moral positions—ranging from the
view that euthanasia is immoral and unlawful be-
cause it is intrinsically evil and entails a direct vio-
lation of the right to life and of God’s supreme domi-
nation over His creature, to the view that euthanasia
is almost always wrongful because sentience, even
painful experience, is almost always preferable to a
permanent state of nonsentience. The primary moral
intuition here is that sentient existence is almost al-
ways preferable to nonexistence.
There is a plethora of other objections. The less
serious ones include J. Gay-Williams’s argument that
“euthanasia is inherently wrong” because it violates
the nature and dignity of human beings in that it
does violence to, and interferes with, our natural in-
clination for survival. In addition, he advances a
complex argument against it from self-interest. This
argument includes the claim that death is final and
the chance of error too great to approve the practice
of euthanasia; that its practice neither allows for the
possibility of finding a new procedure that will pull
the patient through nor for the occurrence of spon-
taneous remission; and finally that “knowing that we
can take our life at any time (or ask another to take
it) might well incline us to give up too easily” and
that “the very presence of the possibility of eutha-
nasia may keep us from surviving when we might.”
Liberals are inclined to say that, although these wor-
ries should not be lightly dismissed, there is little
persuasive evidence that the “violation of the na-
ture” and “self-interest” arguments are sound and
that the extent, if any, to which these bad effects
would in fact occur is only speculative. “Against
these possible bad effects,” writes Dan Brock, “are
the very real gains in self-determination and control
over the process of dying that such an authorization
[of voluntary active euthanasia] would yield.”
There is a stronger case to be made for the con-
servative position. It includes two essential argu-
ments. The first is that the practice of euthanasia or
assisted suicide violates the principles concerning
the sanctity of life and the inherent wrongness of
killing innocent human beings; the second, that these
practices involve an empirical slipperiness and a
slipperiness of moral principles.
The sanctity of life principle is central to the dis-
cussion of euthanasia. According to Ronald Dwor-
kin, “the instinct that deliberate death is a savage
insult to the intrinsic value of life, even when it is in

the patient’s interest, is the deepest, most important
part of the conservative revulsion against euthana-
sia” and that, for the conservative, “choosing pre-
mature death is therefore the greatest possible insult
to life’s sacred value.” Now if we view the sanctity
of life principle as central to this discussion, we need
not be prepared to believe that the idea of sacredness
is generated by the primordial experience of being
alive and the elemental fear of its extinction and,
therefore, that it is self-evident. Dworkin, for ex-
ample, concludes that we cannot sensibly argue that
a human being must sacrifice his own INTERESTS out
of respect for the inviolability of human life because
that begs the question. It begs the question because
the patient “thinks dying is the best way to respect
that value.” Conservatives disagree. First, they would
say that the question posed by euthanasia is not how
life’s sanctity should be understood and respected,
but whether the sanctity of life should yield to some
other value, like individual self-determination and
the belief that we alone are ethically responsible for
making something worthwhile of our lives. Second,
that when it comes to matters of life and death, es-
pecially, the killing of innocent human beings, the
burden of proof must always be on the advocates of
premature death. Third, that there is a logical slip-
periness in that “the two principles [right of self-
determination and mercy] commonly used to justify
euthanasia and assisted suicide seem to admit of no
logical limits and thus, in different contexts, could
perfectly well be used to radically extend the prac-
tice.” Finally, the absolute prohibitions against kill-
ing the innocent is more effective, possibly the only
effective means of protecting life. For there is a con-
stitutive psychological strength to absolute prohibi-
tions which weaker ones do not have, and the avail-
ability of boundaries which cannot be moved just a
little bit is necessary to our long-term rational inter-
ests, whether those interests be moral or not.
The second central conservative objection is that
if euthanasia were permitted it would, in fact, lead
to a general decline in respect for human life. In its
most exaggerated form the claim is that permitting
a single instance of euthanasia would very probably
lead to a slide, to dangerous misuse. This objection
is an application of what is variously called the slip-
pery slope or “wedge” argument.
Used in this context, the argument raises the
question of whether the idea or practice of killing is
contagious—that is, whether or not a person, group,
495
euthanasia
or society exposed to actual killing, or the idea of
sanctioned killing, universalizes and thereby extends
this domain. It is tempting initially to reply by saying
that there is overwhelming evidence indicating that
human beings compartmentalize their experience
and ideas; and that it is only when the normal pro-
cess of compartmentalization breaks down that one
encounters difficulties. In other words, in the normal
process of generalization there are constraints, and
one of the more important constraints is that the
process is limited by the concept of ‘same kind or
same class of objects.’ For example, if we crush an
insect and believe this to be a permissible act, we do
not conclude that it is permissible to kill all living
things. We conclude only that it is permissible to kill
that kind of insect, or at most, all kinds of insects.
Similarly, if we are taught to kill Nazis and the cri-
teria for a Nazi and the circumstances of permissible
killing are clearly spelled out, we do not kill all Ger-
man nationals. We do not mistakenly generalize
even further and kill all Europeans. Nor do we pro-
ceed either in fact or in mind to kill all human be-
ings. Again, there is convincing evidence that the
killing of human beings in “X” situations does not
necessarily lead to the killing of human being in non-
“X” situations. Or, to be more concrete, the merciful
killing of patients who want to die does not neces-
sary lead to the killing of the unwanted or the exter-
mination of the human species.
FAIRNESS requires that we grant there are rational
grounds for distinguishing between permissible and
impermissible killing and that the practice of eutha-
nasia does not necessarily lead to undesirable diffi-
culties. Escalation of killing is not foreordained and
it is not impossible to develop an institutional system
that strictly enforces reasonably clear criteria for
what constitutes permissible acts of euthanasia.
Nonetheless, there are significant difficulties. For
one thing, the principle that “the direct and delib-
erate killing of innocent persons is never morally
permissible” is thereby abrogated. Strictly speaking,
this is an “open slope” and not a slippery slope ar-
gument. Yet it is not at all clear what sort of evidence
is available for believing that utilitarian alternatives
or other deontological rules would be as effective as
the simple and absolute prohibition of the killing of
the innocent. A second objection is that if the prac-
tice of voluntary euthanasia depends on holding all
sorts of lines, if human beings are naturally disposed
to bring about death by violating rules that are not
euthanasia
self-regarding, and if there are tremendous forces in
our society for scaling back costs or a shift to a right-
wing ideology similar to the Nazis’, then the prob-
ability of abuse is real and much greater than liberals
suspect.
In this regard, reading Henry Friedlander’s The
Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the
Final Solution is an enlightening, if not a chilling,
experience. For Friedlander describes the slow but
insidious political development in Germany in which
the term “euthanasia” was used as an euphemism to
camouflage the murder of human beings the Nazis
had designated as “life unworthy of life.” Similar
worries seem to lie behind Daniel Callahan’s em-
phatic rejection of euthanasia and physician-assisted
suicide. According to Callahan, the euthanasia de-
bate is not just another moral debate. Rather it is
“profoundly emblematic of three important turning
points in Western thought”: the first is that of the
legitimate conditions under which one person can kill
another; the second involves the problem of deter-
mining the meaning and limits of self-determination;
and the third, changing the essential nature of med-
icine and redirecting it “to the relief of that suffering
which stems from life itself, not merely from a sick
body.” The idea that what is at issue here is not
merely a normative issue but a metaethical one
which involves the very way we conceive of the good
life and understand ourselves—is also discussed by
Gula and Sandel.
An Altruistic Point of View
The great trinity of ALTRUISM — BENEVOLENCE,
BENEFICENCE, and caring love—permits, and some-
times requires, the taking of an innocent life when
reliable evidence indicates that, for the recipient, it
is the best of all beneficent alternatives and when
the resulting death is a greater good or lesser evil
than the failure to intervene. An altruistic theory
does not preclude liberal values. However, it does
insist that loving-kindness precedes autonomy in
two ways. Although both loving-kindness and au-
tonomy are necessary, the former is more fundamen-
tal since it will generally lead intelligent people to
protect the autonomy of other persons, but not vice
versa. Loving-kindness also precedes autonomy in
the sense that, when the only (or best) way to protect
important goods or prevent serious harms is by ren-
dering aid, then acts of loving-kindness overrule
496
considerations of autonomy. The intuition, albeit not
a simple one, is that in certain circumstances it is a
kindness and morally preferable to end a life and
that in these circumstances beneficent euthanasia is
morally permissible.
By beneficent euthanasia is meant “an act of in-
ducing as painless a death as possible, where the
organism is acutely suffering or in an undesirable
state, where the relief of the latter condition is the
only or primary motive and where there is convinc-
ing evidence that the resulting death is the preferable
kindness and a greater good or lesser evil for the
recipient than the failure to actively intervene.”
Since euthanasia is advocated by many of its cham-
pions chiefly as a means of reducing human misery,
and more particularly as a way of maximizing kind
or merciful treatment, there may be a growing ten-
dency to focus the moral debate on the desirability
of active voluntary and nonvoluntary beneficent eu-
thanasia; its necessary conditions are inducing as
painless a death as is possible, the primacy of mer-
ciful INTENTION, and convincing evidence of benef-
icent results.
Following Fletcher, Feinberg, and Lachs, one
should neither overlook the merits of the individual
case nor choose to err on the side of possible harm
when there is known and clear evidence of benefit
to the individual. In other words, when there is a
choice between known preferable beneficence for an
individual and possible social harm, then if we are
to err, it should on the side of beneficence. For good-
ness does not derive from fear or flawed abstract
moral principles but, rather, from the capacity to feel
love and to practice it by acting beneficently. It may
not always be obvious or straightforward just how
to do this. But except for the terminally naive egoist,
most would agree that we have the duty to relieve
the fortuitous distress of others when we can do so
without great inconvenience to ourselves.
The argument against unnecessary CRUELTY and
humiliation is perhaps more convincing. For good-
ness in conduct seems to require an abhorrence of
cruelty as well as an effective mastery of the condi-
tions that nurture intelligence and helpfulness. To
require that human beings be kept alive against their
will, denying their pleas for merciful release after
dignity, beauty, promise, and meaningful life have
vanished (and they can only linger in agony, weak-
ness, or decay) is cruel and humiliating treatment.
And it seems especially inhumane not to put an end

to irremediable suffering when a competent person
requests it and will die anyway. If anything approx-
imates a self-evident moral truth, it is that cruelty
and inhumanity are evils that ought to be avoided.
“There is,” writes Nietzsche, “a certain right by
which we may deprive a man of life, but none by
which we may deprive him of death; this is mere
cruelty.”
See also: ALTRUISM; AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS;
BENEFICENCE; BENEVOLENCE; CARE; COERCION; CON-
SENT; CONSERVATISM; DEATH; DIGNITY; EUDAIMONIA,
-ISM; FREE WILL; KILLING/LETTING DIE; LIBERALISM;
LIBERTY; LIFE AND DEATH; LIFE, MEANING OF; LIFE,
RIGHT TO; MEDICAL ETHICS; MERCY; PAIN AND SUF-
FERING; RIGHTS; SELF-OWNERSHIP; SELF-RESPECT;
SLIPPERY SLOPE ARGUMENTS; SUBJECTIVISM; SUICIDE;
VOLUNTARY ACTS.
Bibliography
Brock, Dan W. “Voluntary Active Euthanasia.” In his Life
and Death: Philosophical Essays in Biomedical Ethics,
202–32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993. A careful and comprehensive argument for vol-
untary active euthanasia based on the values of indi-
vidual self-determination and individual well-being.
(The passage cited in this entry occurs earlier in the
book on p. 172.)
Callahan, Daniel. “When Self-Determination Runs Amok.”
Hastings Center Report 22, no. 2 (1992): 52–55.
Cited, p. 52.
———. “Ad Hominem Run Amok: A Response to John
Lachs.” Journal of Clinical Ethics 5, no. 1 (1994): 13–
15. Cited, p. 14.
Dworkin, Ronald. Life’s Dominion: An Argument about
Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. Pp. 179–217. Cited, pp.
214, 216.
Dworkin, Ronald, Thomas Nagel, Robert Nozick, John
Rawls, Thomas Scanlon, and Judith Jarvis Thomson.
“Assisted Suicide: The Philosophers’ Brief.” New York
Review, March 27, 1997: 41–47. Cited, p. 47.
Feinberg, Joel. “Overlooking the Merits of the Individual
Case: An Unpromising Approach to the Right to Die.”
In Professional Ethics and Social Responsibility, edited
by Daniel E. Wueste, 271–96. Lanham, MD: Rowman
and Littlefield, 1994.
Fletcher, Joseph Francis. Morals and Medicine. Boston:
Beacon 1960. See pp. 172–210 for a classic situationist
analysis of euthanasia.
Friedlander, Henry. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From
Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill and Lon-
don: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
Gay-Williams, J. “The Wrongfulness of Euthanasia.” In In-
497
euthanasia
tervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Medical
Ethics, edited by Robert Munson, 141–43. Belmont,
CA: Wadsworth, 1988.
Gomez, Carlos F. Regulating Death: Euthanasia and the
Case of the Netherlands. New York: Free Press, 1991.
Found that the Dutch physicians fail to observe their
own self-imposed guidelines and, therefore, largely for
this reason believes that those in the United States
should exercise more prudence and care in their ad-
vocacy of a change in the laws prohibiting euthanasia.
Gula, Richard M. Euthanasia: Moral and Pastoral Per-
spective. New York: Paulist Press, 1994. Focuses pos-
itively on the Catholic tradition’s reasons for opposing
physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia.
Kohl, Marvin. “Voluntary Beneficent Euthanasia.” In Be-
neficent Euthanasia, edited by Marvin Kohl, 130–41.
Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1975. Reprinted in
Philosophy and the Human Condition, edited by T.
Beauchamp, W. Blackstone, and J. Feinberg, 292–98.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1980.
———. “Kindness”; “Defining the Word ‘Kind’”; “Benef-
icent Euthanasia.” In The Morality of Killing, edited by
Marvin Kohl, 71–110. New York: Humanities Press,
1974.
———. “Having a Meaningful vs. a Meaningless Life.”
Humanist 52, no. 6 (1992): 39–41.
Lachs, John. “When Abstract Moralizing Runs Amok.”
Journal of Clinical Ethics 5, no. 1 (1994): 10–13.
Cited, p. 13.
McHugh, Paul R. “The Kevorkian Epidemic.” American
Scholar (Winter 1997): 15–27. A psychiatrist argues
that choosing one’s own death looks like madness from
every quarter.
Neeley, G. Steven. The Constitutional Right to Suicide: A
Legal and Philosophical Examination. New York: Pe-
ter Lang, 1994. See “Euthanasia in the Netherlands:
Testing the ‘Slippery Slope,’” 158–67. Claims that
there is no incontrovertible evidence of substantive
abuse and that whatever abuse, if any, exists in the
Netherlands might well be halted altogether if there
were clearer legal guidelines for health care workers to
follow.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Complete Works. Edinburgh
and London: T. N. Foulis, 1910. Vol. 6, Human, All-
Too Human, Part One, edited by Oscar Levy. See Aph-
orism 88: On the Prevention of Suicide.
Rachels, James. The End of Life: Euthanasia and Morality.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Argues against
the traditional view that the killing of the innocent is
always wrong, and distinguishes between having a life
and being alive. Cited, p. 32.
Sandel, Michael J. “The Hard Questions: Last Rights.”
New Republic 216, no. 15 (1997): 27. A reply to what
Sandel calls the Dream Team of liberal political phi-
losophy, viz., Dworkin, Nagel, Nozick, Rawls, Scanlon,
and Thomson’s article, cited above.
Symposium on Physician-Assisted Suicide. Ethics 109, no.
euthanasia
3 (1999). Contributors are Judith Jarvis Thomson, Dan
W. Brock, Paul J. Weithman, Gerald Dworkin, F. M.
Kamm, J. David Velleman, and Ezekiel J. Emanuel.
Walton, Richard E. “The Mercy Argument for Euthanasia:
Some Logical Considerations.” Public Affairs Quar-
terly 7, no. 1 (1993): 71–84. The mercy argument must
be rejected because, among other things, it attributes
properties to the person after his or her death which
are appropriate only when predicated of a living
creature.
Marvin Kohl
evil
According to early versions of the Greek myth, when
Pandora opened the forbidden jar she let loose all
(and only) the evils in the world. What was in the
jar? What was the world like before she opened it?
To say that something is evil is partly to ascribe a
degree of intensity to it; if it is evil, then it is worse
than merely bad. But the worseness is not just a mat-
ter of more of the same, as in the case in which one
toothache is more painful than another. To call a
situation evil is to suggest that it is the intentional
outcome of some agency. If the world is not just bad
but evil, then it is appropriate to seek out perpetra-
tors of or agents responsible for the evil(s). Many
theistic religions, in particular, confront the problem
of evil: How can there be evil in a world created and
sustained by God?
Types and Causes of Evil
Discussions of the problem of evil typically ex-
tend the notion of evil to cover all cases of badness,
since God is typically thought to be an agent per-
missively responsible, at a minimum, for everything
in the world. The major types of evil—the contents
of Pandora’s jar—would thus include:
Physical suffering of any kind in a sentient be-
ing, either human or animal.
Mental anguish and mental disability of vari-
ous kinds, such as grief, despair, dementia,
and insanity.
Vicious attitudes, even if they find no expres-
sion in action, such as ENVY, greed, and
prejudice.
Character traits or dispositions in agents to
cause suffering or to fail to respond to the
498
suffering of others, such as CRUELTY, self-
ishness, callousness, and cowardice.
Events, actions, and omissions that bring
about any of the evils above, even if the
events, actions, or omissions are not bad in
themselves.
Actions and omissions bad in themselves, even
if they do not cause suffering, such as lying
and failing to perform duties.
It is common practice to sort the causes of evil
into two major kinds.
Natural evils bring about any of the types of evil
listed above in virtue of the operation of the laws of
nature on sentient beings. The Lisbon earthquake
(1755; 10,000–100,000 estimated fatalities) is an
example of a large-scale natural evil; an earthquake
of similar force in an uninhabited area of Alaska is
not. Natural evils can be large in scale (earthquakes,
floods, plagues) or small (one’s falling off a step-
ladder).
Moral evils cause suffering in virtue of the activ-
ities of responsible agents. Robbery, RAPE, and slan-
der are examples, as are neglect and NEGLIGENCE.
The boundary between natural and moral evils is not
always clear. One presumes that being attacked by
an animal is a natural evil, but it may be harder to
say whether smoking that leads to lung cancer is, on
balance, a natural or a moral evil. One version of the
problem of evil maintains that since all evils are at
least permitted by God, all evils fundamentally are
moral evils.
The Problem of Evil Defined
Most theists want to hold the following quin-
tet of beliefs: (1) God exists. (2) God is omniscient.
(3) God is omnipotent. (4) God is perfectly good.
(5) There are instances of evil in the world. It is hard
to see how all the beliefs can be true, especially in
light of the apparent truisms that (a) if God is om-
niscient, then he knows about all the evil in the
world; (b) if God is omnipotent, then he is able to
prevent or eliminate all the evil in the world; and
(c) if God is perfectly good, then he wants to prevent
or eliminate all the evil in the world. So it would
seem that if there is evil, then either God does not
exist or God lacks one or more of the attributes of
omniscience, omnipotence, and perfect goodness.
A theodicy is an attempt to explain how the ex-

istence of evil fits into God’s plans. Some theodicies
allege that beliefs (1)–(5) are mutually inconsistent
and reject one or more of the beliefs. Christian Sci-
entists seem to believe that (5) is false, claiming ei-
ther that there is no evil or that evil is illusory. JOHN
STUART MILL (1806–1873) and process philoso-
phers like Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)
and David Ray Griffin have claimed that (3) is false:
Although very powerful, God is not omnipotent.
(Process philosophers in particular do not believe
that God is a creator; rather, he supplies the impulse
of self-creativity in others, and in continual interac-
tion with them seeks to realize more novelty and
harmony in the world.) Some dualistic religions,
such as Manichaeanism, have asserted the existence
of an evil force as powerful as God and portrayed
history as a cosmic struggle between these two
forces. Such religions seem committed to denying
either (3) or (b). Two of the most influential the-
odicies are committed to the view that beliefs (1)–
(5) are mutually consistent and true.
Augustinianism
The myth of Pandora presupposes that the world
at one time was a better place than it is now. The
same presupposition appears in the account of the
early days of creation given in the first three chapters
of the book of Genesis. In both cases, the existence
of evil can be traced back to the activity of beings
other than God (or the gods). Saint AUGUSTINE
(354–430), who as a young man thought that Man-
ichaeanism offered the only satisfactory account of
the existence of evil, propounded, after his conver-
sion to Christianity, a theodicy that maintained all of
beliefs (1)–(5) within a strict monotheism. Insofar
as everything is created by God, everything is good.
But some things are better than others. Evil is “non-
being,” more accurately, the absence of a good in a
thing where a good should be. In any such case, the
absence or evil is the result of processes the gene-
alogy of which always includes some sinful choices.
Moral evils are the direct or remote product of the
misuse of someone’s FREE WILL, while natural evils
are both a symptom of and a PUNISHMENT for the
disruption between nature and humanity brought
about by the misuse of freedom. According to Au-
gustine, the Fall of Adam and Eve was a free but
prideful choice encouraged by the Devil, who him-
self had been created as good but who freely and
499
evil
pridefully chose to turn away from God. A complete
development of the Augustinian theodicy in the
Christian tradition includes the doctrine of Original
Sin, or the belief that the disfigurement caused by
Adam and Eve’s choice is passed on to all humanity;
the doctrine of the Atonement, or the belief that
Christ effects a reconciliation between God and hu-
mans; and an eschatology, or an account of God’s
final plans, that typically includes doctrines about
resurrection and final judgment.
Augustinianism thus attempts to preserve all of
beliefs (1)–(5) by curtailing principle (b): Not even
an omnipotent God can prevent or eliminate all the
evil in the world while at the same time allowing his
creatures genuine freedom.
Soul-Making
Augustinianism relies on the notions that the
world was once a better place and that all its present
miseries can be traced back to abuses of free will. A
second theodicy, put forward by Saint Irenaeus (c.
130–202) and explored by John Hick and Richard
Swinburne, need not rely on either of these assump-
tions. According to this theodicy, God could have
created a world whose beings never experience
physical or mental suffering, but he did not. Al-
though the inhabitants of such a world would never
be in pain or know fear, frustration, depression, or
grief, they would also never have the opportunity to
develop their moral characters or “make their
souls.” A soul-making theodicy is committed to the
following claims:
The existence of evils is indispensable for the
development of admirable character traits,
such as SELF-CONTROL, COURAGE, CHARITY,
compassion, FORGIVENESS, and coopera-
tion. These traits could not be innate in hu-
mans: No one can just be courageous with-
out having become courageous, any more
than one can be mature without having be-
come mature. It is impossible to become
courageous without facing and overcoming
instances of evil. Not even God could have
made us courageous by nature, and if per
impossibile he had, we would not deserve
moral credit for it.
Humans are better off for having to confront
and overcome evils than not, for on the lat-
evil
ter alternative they would never progress
beyond moral infancy. A soul-making the-
odicy emphasizes that humans are “the chil-
dren of God,” and that the world in which
they are placed is an unfinished world that
enables moral growth, at the individual
level and perhaps also at the species level.
The acquisition and transmission of knowl-
edge to future generations about the causes
and cures of diseases, the prediction and
avoidance of natural disasters, and the
causes of moral evils will enable the human
race as a whole to attain the status of adult-
hood: Turning the biological dictum around,
a defender of soul-making theodicy can say
that phylogeny recapitulates ontogeny. A
world containing evil along with humans
who possess the admirable character traits
is thus better than a world containing no
evil and no such character traits.
A soul-making theodicy either denies or places a
qualification on principle (c). This type of theodicy
can maintain that God is perfectly good, but either
it will deny that He thereby wants to prevent or elim-
inate all the evil in the world, or it will assert that if
He does have that desire, it is overridden by a
stronger desire that humans have a chance for moral
development.
Objections
Both Augustinian and soul-making theodicies
have their difficulties. The Augustinian account of
the Fall raises the question whether God is perfectly
good (belief [4]). Suppose that a person’s parents
place a potent drug within easy reach—a drug so
potent it would poison even the person’s descen-
dants—while admonishing the person never to take
it, knowing in advance that the person will take it.
While it may be true to say that the person takes the
drug freely and culpably, the actions of the parents
are also surely blameworthy. It is incumbent on Au-
gustinianism either to deny the aptness of the anal-
ogy or to claim that it really does not tell against
God’s perfect goodness.
A natural objection to soul-making theodicy is to
point out that people do not invariably develop ad-
mirable character traits in the face of hardship. Evils
can induce in people such lamentable character
500
traits as cowardice, cruelty, selfishness, insensitivity,
and RESENTMENT. The standard reply is to say that
these character traits are the result of human failure
to respond properly to evils, that God could not have
prevented that failure without denying humans their
freedom, and that even if some people go astray, the
world is still a better place for having the possibility
of MORAL DEVELOPMENT in it. The soul-making the-
odicy thus depends not only on the claim that per-
sons are free but also on the claim that freedom re-
quires the power to do otherwise. The latter claim
in turn is thought to entail the thesis that if God were
to cause an agent to have a certain kind of character,
then the actions that issue from that character could
not be free. Many people find this account of free-
dom implausible. To be free, they allege, is to act
within one’s character. One’s character in turn is the
product of all sorts of causal influences—physical,
genetic, environmental, social, economic, politi-
cal—over which one has no say. To insist that free-
dom requires immunity from these sorts of causal
influences is to place an impossible demand on hu-
mans. One can be free as long as causal influences
do not incapacitate one’s ability to reason, to weigh
alternatives, to deliberate about means to ends, to
modify one’s behavior, and the like. Soul-making
theodicy needs to provide a plausible account of how
it is that various sorts of causes can shape one’s char-
acter without necessarily threatening one’s freedom,
whereas God’s causal activity cannot. If it is claimed
that the capacity to reason is an endowment from
God that is necessary for freedom, then the difficulty
is compounded: How is it that God can endow a free
agent with a capacity but not with a character trait
that is compatible with that capacity?
The Free Will Defense
Faced with these and other difficulties (e.g., nei-
ther Augustinianism nor soul-making theodicy pro-
vides a convincing account of the purpose of animal
suffering), some philosophers have abandoned the
project of theodicy in favor of the more modest task
of offering a defense. A defense is not an attempt to
explain God’s purposes but an attempt merely to
show how beliefs (1)–(5) can be consistent. Alvin
Plantinga has argued that it is possible that an om-
nipotent God cannot create a world containing
moral good without its also containing moral evil.
This is so, according to Plantinga, because it is pos-

sible that every free person that God did create or
could have created sometimes does something wrong.
And it is possible that all natural evils are the result
of the free actions of nonhuman spirits, that is, that
all natural evils are basically moral evils. It is not
important to Plantinga’s project, the free will de-
fense, that these claims be plausible. Their function
is exhausted in showing how beliefs (1)–(5) can be
consistent.
Because the free will defense presupposes that
God cannot make free beings whose actions he
causes, it depends on a conception of freedom simi-
lar to that offered by soul-making theodicy. Critics
of that conception of freedom will be skeptical of
the free will defense, even though the only burden
placed on Plantinga is to be prepared to argue that
that conception of freedom is possible.
See also: ACTS AND OMISSIONS; AGENCY AND DIS-
ABILITY; AGENT-CENTERED MORALITY; ANGER; AU -
GUSTINE; CHRISTIAN ETHICS; CORRUPTION; CRUELTY;
DECEIT; ENVY; EXPLOITATION; FREE WILL; GENOCIDE;
GOOD, THEORIES OF THE; GUILT AND SHAME; HARM
AND OFFENSE; HATE; HOLOCAUST; HOMICIDE; HY-
POCRISY; IMMORALISM; INFANTICIDE; MORAL PURITY;
NEGLIGENCE; OPPRESSION; PAIN AND SUFFERING; PHI-
LOSOPHY OF RELIGION; PRIDE; PUNISHMENT; RACISM
[entries]; RAPE; RESENTMENT; REVENGE; SLAVERY;
TERRORISM; THEISM; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS; TOR-
TURE; TRAGEDY; VIOLENCE AND NON-VIOLENCE; WAR
AND PEACE; WEAKNESS OF WILL; WICKEDNESS.
Bibliography
Augustine, Saint. Confessions. (397) Rejection of Mani-
chaeanism; evil as nonbeing.
———. The Literal Meaning of Genesis. Account of the
Fall.
Bayle, Pierre. Historical and Critical Dictionary: Selec-
tions. Translated by Richard H. Popkin. Indianapolis,
IN: Library of Liberal Arts, 1965 [1697]. Entries on
“Manichaeans,” “Paulicians,” and “Rufinus” contain
insightful criticism of several theodicies.
Griffin, David Ray. God, Power, and Evil: A Process The-
odicy. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976. Applies White-
head’s ideas to theodicy; rejects God’s omnipotence.
Hick, John. Evil and the God of Love. 2d ed. New York:
Harper and Row, 1978. Thorough statement of soul-
making theodicy.
Leibniz, G. W. Theodicy. Translated by E. M. Huggard.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951 [1710].
Challenged by Bayle’s writings, Leibniz developed a
501
evolution
theodicy in support of the thesis that this is the best of
all possible worlds.
Mackie, J. L. The Miracle of Theism. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1982. Contains criticisms of the free will
defense.
Madden, Edward H., and Peter H. Hare. Evil and the Con-
cept of God. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1968.
Criticisms of influential theodicies.
Mill, John Stuart. Theism. London, 1874. Denies God’s
omnipotence.
Plantinga, Alvin. God, Freedom, and Evil. New York:
Harper and Row, 1974. Contains a succinct statement
of the free will defense.
———. The Nature of Necessity. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1974. The free will defense, elaborately developed.
Swinburne, Richard. The Existence of God. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1979. Develops a version of soul-making
theodicy.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality. New York:
Macmillan, 1929. Roots of process theodicy in Part 5,
chapter 2.
William E. Mann
evolution
From the middle of the nineteenth century, many
have looked to evolutionary theorizing as a source
and foundation for ethical thinking and action. Tra-
ditionally known as “Social Darwinism,” the resul-
tant movement in fact owes as much if not more to
Charles DARWIN’s (1809–1882) fellow Englishman
and evolutionist, Herbert SPENCER (1820–1903).
Although severely criticised on many occasions, it
continues to thrive today, if not now under any par-
ticular label.
Taking first the question of moral directives (nor-
mative ethics), the traditional Social Darwinian
finds the answer in the ways and means of the evo-
lutionary process, exhorting one to let the process
continue and perhaps even to encourage it. Since,
following Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), the
main evolutionary mechanism is natural selection—
the survival of the fittest brought on by the struggle
for existence—it is generally thought that the chief
norm of Social Darwinism is some form of laissez
faire. Just as nature has an unrestrained COMPETI-
TION leading to the success of a favoured few, so also
society has—and should have—unrestrained com-
petition leading to the success of the favoured few.
There is certainly substance in this claim—Spencer
at times spoke in defence of a libertarian philosophy,
evolution
in society as well as in ideas, as did some of his fol-
lowers (notoriously the American tycoon John D.
Rockefeller [1839–1937], the founder of Standard
Oil). However it is but a part of the spectrum of
dictates endorsed by Social Darwinians. Indeed, it is
no exaggeration to say that just as Christians have
supported almost every course of action in the name
of their Lord, so also Social Darwinians have sup-
ported nigh every course of action in the name of
evolution.
Thus, for instance, Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–
1913), co-discoverer of natural selection, was a so-
cialist and feminist, arguing that these beliefs are
supported by evolution. He believed that selection
acts for the benefit of the group (rather than the
individual) and we likewise should think in group
terms. He saw the salvation of the human race as
lying in the hands (or wombs) of fine-minded young
females, who would choose as mates only the finest
and best males available. Ernst Haeckel (1834–
1919), Darwin’s great German supporter, was like-
wise in favour of group action, but for him as a pro-
fessor in a state-supported university in Bismarck’s
Prussia, the ultimate moral dictates were for a strong
state and a efficient bureaucracy, including state
education! (The connection between Germanic So-
cial Darwinism and Nazism is much debated, but
essentially any links have to be weak. The Nazis were
no friends of any doctrine which sees all humans
linked through simian origins.)
In the twentieth century, notable Social Darwin-
ians (if not by name) have included Julian Huxley
(1887–1975; brother of Aldous, the novelist) and
Edward O. Wilson, the Harvard entomologist and
sociobiologist. Huxley was an enthusiast for large
state-aided scientific and technological projects (he
liked particularly the work of the Tennessee Valley
Authority). He saw the salvation of society as lying
in these, and when he became the first director-
general of UNESCO (the United Nations Educa-
tional, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), it was
he who insisted on the “S” being added. Wilson is
much concerned with biodiversity, and interested
particularly in the preservation of the Brazilian rain
forests. He argues that humans have evolved in sym-
biotic relationship with the rest of nature, and with-
out its preservation and maintenance we will all
wither and die.
All of these aims are surely entirely admirable.
Why then has Social Darwinism so often been held
502
in contempt? A major reason has been the criticisms
of the philosophers, notoriously G. E. MOORE (1873–
1958) in his Principia Ethica (1903). Whatever the
substantival ethical directives, it is thought that
there is a failure at the level of justification (at the
metaethical level). One is moving from the way the
world is—evolution occurs—to the way the world
ought to be—evolution should continue. But this, in
the terms of Moore, is to commit the NATURALISTIC
FALLACY, or, going back to David HUME (1711–
1776), to cut illicitly through the is/ought barrier.
One is going, without proof, from descriptive claims
about the evolution of humans to (variously) pre-
scriptive demands that you ought to promote laissez
faire or state-supported universities, or female power,
or science and TECHNOLOGY, or flourishing Brazilian
rain forests. And, in the eyes of the philosophers,
this transition is simply not on.
Evolutionary ethicists find this criticism uncon-
vincing. They point out that, while it is true that they
are going from “is” talk to “ought” talk, similar
moves are made all of the time in science: one goes,
for instance, from talk about bouncing molecules to
talk about temperature and pressure, as counter-
intuitive a move as anything in ethical discourse. In
any case, argue the defenders of evolutionary ethics,
even if the naturalistic fallacy holds generally, in the
case of evolution one has an exception. We humans
are evolved beings and our future welfare—our fu-
ture evolutionary welfare—must be the supreme
moral principle.
Why this confidence? An early biological critic of
evolutionary ethics, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–
1895), Darwin’s so-called bulldog and grandfather
of Julian, put his finger on the suppressed premise
in the argument. To a person, Social Darwinians are
convinced that evolution makes sense. It is not just
a slow process going nowhere. It has direction, up-
ward from the blob (the “monad”) to the most com-
plex and sophisticated, our own species (the “man”).
Evolution is progressive. And it is in this progress
that we find value and metaethical justification, for
things are getting better and we have an obligation
to see that this continues. Without our aid, progress
will stop and perhaps degeneration will set in.
Hence, the prescriptions.
Of course—and here perhaps is the Achilles heel
of Social Darwinism—in the post-Darwinian age,
evolutionary progress is more a hope than a reality.
If the main process of change is natural selection,

then since selection is relativistic—the survival of
the fittest, but what is fittest in any particular situ-
ation varies according to the situation—there can be
no absolute direction. We humans may prefer hu-
mans because we are human, but that is not to say
that evolution shows we are superior. In fact, a case
might be made for saying that viruses and bacteria
rule the earth—insects certainly—and we mammals
are very indifferent and unstable products of evo-
lution. Perhaps there is progress, but unless and un-
til it is shown and demonstrated on Darwinian
grounds, the case for progress—and hence for tra-
ditional evolutionary ethics—remains in limbo.
Unless one can take a different tack, which is pre-
cisely the move of a number of philosophers and
sympathizers today. Recognizing the limitations of
traditional approaches but convinced that our evo-
lutionary heritage must matter—that it really does
count that we are (as T. H. Huxley said) modified
monkeys rather than modified mud—they go a dif-
ferent route. At the substantive level, much im-
pressed by the advances of the past four decades in
the field of the evolution of social behaviour (“so-
ciobiology”), these new evolutionary ethicists point
out that success in the struggle for existence can
come as much through cooperation as through com-
bat and conflict. Hence, they see the evolution of a
kind of moral sense, one which promotes working
together for mutual gain. One has a kind of SOCIAL
CONTRACT, put in place by natural selection rather
than by a group of wise elders thinking of the good
of the tribe. One thinks that one ought to help oth-
ers, and in so doing one helps oneself. (Not that one
necessarily is consciously thinking that one will ben-
efit oneself. The moral sense may work better if we
think we are doing good genuinely, because it is
good, regardless of self-benefit.)
At the level of justification, these new evolution-
ary ethicists are inclined to deny that there are foun-
dations at all. In other words, these thinkers are
“ethical sceptics” in the sense of repudiating foun-
dations. They argue that our set of moral NORMS
(substantive ethics) is no more (and no less) than a
biological adaptation put in place to make us coop-
erators, and so there is neither need or expectation
that there is anything more. However, what they also
point out is that if we simply realized that (substan-
tive) ethics is without foundation—subjective rather
than objective—there would be a tendency for mo-
rality to break down and its evolutionary value
503
excellence
would be gone. So it is also claimed that evolution
has ensured that we think that morality is objective,
with foundations, and so we are inclined to take it
seriously and obey its dictates. We “objectify” sub-
stantive ethics, and thus it works for our good.
The science behind this new approach to evolu-
tionary ethics is still controversial, especially as it
applies (as it must in this case) to humans. The phi-
losophy is no less so, although (given the naturalistic
approach that it represents) there is a tendency to
see Hume as a forerunner. Nevertheless, controver-
sial or not, it is true to say that whereas a quarter
century ago all varieties of evolutionary ethics were
regarded by right-minded philosophers with con-
tempt, today they are a focus of some considerable
interest and look set to continue to remain so.
See also: ALTRUISM; BIOLOGICAL THEORY; COMMON
GOOD; COMPETITION; CONSERVATION; COOPERATION,
CONFLICT, AND COORDINATION; DARWIN; ENVIRON-
MENTAL ETHICS; FUTURE GENERATIONS; GENETIC EN-
GINEERING; HUME; LIBERTARIANISM; NATURAL LAW;
NATURALISM; NATURALISTIC FALLACY; NATURE AND
ETHICS; RECIPROCITY; SOCIAL CONTRACT; SPENCER;
SYMPATHY; TECHNOLOGY.
Bibliography
Huxley, Thomas Henry. Evolution and Ethics, with New
Essays on its Victorian and Sociobiological Context.
Edited by James Paradis and George C. Williams.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989 [1893].
Moore, G. E. Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1903.
Richards, Robert John. Darwin and the Emergence of Evo-
lutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Ruse, Michael. Sociobiology: Sense or Nonsense? 2d ed.
Dordrecht: Reidel, 1985.
———. Taking Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Ap-
proach to Philosophy. 2nd ed. Buffalo, NY: Prome-
theus, 1998.
Russett, Cynthia Eagle. Darwin in America: The Intellec-
tual Response, 1865–1912. San Francisco: Freeman,
1976.
Michael Ruse
excellence
Excellence, or aretē in Greek, is commonly trans-
lated virtue (through the Latin virtus), though its
excellence
meaning is much broader than what we tend to un-
derstand by virtue. For us, virtue often connotes the
moral sphere, and such qualities as BENEVOLENCE,
GENEROSITY, or GRATITUDE. While aretē may refer
to moral virtue, the sphere of application is formally
much wider and, on Aristotle’s formulation, for ex-
ample, includes any stable state or disposition of a
thing which makes that thing do its work well. Thus,
we can speak of the excellence of an eye, a horse, or
a human being. The excellence of a human being,
according to ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) “will be
the state which makes a human being good and
which makes him do his own work well” (NE
1106a18). It is a state which reflects the good func-
tioning of a human being.
In ethical theory, it is obviously human excellence
that is of primary interest, but even here the gamut
is broad. This may not be so evident from PLATO’s
(c. 430–347 B.C.E.) Republic in which the so-called
cardinal virtues— WISDOM, COURAGE, moderation,
and justice—are taken together to exhaust the good-
ness of the soul. However, for Aristotle, the list
grows and becomes more diverse. Aristotle formally
divides the human excellences into excellences of
CHARACTER (tou ethous) and thought (tes dianoias)
(NE 1103a14, 1139a1), and the latter into excel-
lences that concern nondeliberative and deliberative
reasoning (1139a12). The fully human life requires
the development of all of these, but the practical life
requires especially the excellences of character and
deliberative or PRACTICAL REASON. These are the ex-
cellences that concern choice and ACTION. On the
whole, they comprise just and decent ways of living
as a social being (1129b1). Included will be the gen-
erosity of benefactor, the bravery of citizen, the
goodwill and attentiveness of friends. But human
perfection, on this view, ranges further, to excel-
lences whose objects are less clearly the weal and
woe of others. Included will be moderation of bodily
appetite (which might be thought of as a self-
regarding excellence), as well as a healthy sense of
humour or wit. The latter is broadly speaking a so-
cial virtue, though it extends beyond any narrow
conception of morality as benevolence. But also the
fully human life pushes beyond the practical to in-
clude the leisure of divine-like contemplation whose
purpose, again, has little to do with social improve-
ment or welfare. In this sense, the good life requires
intellectual excellence not directly concerned with
ameliorating the human condition.
504
But in what sense is a list such as Aristotle’s list
of the excellences anything more than a record of
convention? If we tend to be skeptical of anything
“fixed” called human nature, then we should be
equally skeptical that such a list can provide any-
thing more than one culture’s CONVENTIONS. This is
essentially a relativist challenge. But it might be met
as follows: We might argue that what a theorist such
as Aristotle gives us are excellences which locate cer-
tain spheres of experience as those in which human
beings regularly face choice and assessment of their
actions. These spheres of experience represent a
common humanity. They are shared, though the spe-
cific form an excellence takes in response to these
conditions may not be. Thus moderation has to do
with bodily appetite and its pleasures, courage with
fear of damages and loss such as DEATH, justice with
the distribution of scarce goods. The experiences
which ground the excellence are more or less stable,
though the substantive content varies, and is indeed
open to moral debate. This still leaves the further
objection that certain spheres of experience may
themselves not transcend specific historical or cul-
tural conditions. Immanuel KANT (1724–1804), be-
fore Karl MARX (1818–1883), argued that gener-
osity presupposes substantive differentials in wealth
between classes, and that that condition, rather than
the concrete form of generosity, needs reform. But
this does not seem to damage the above account of
excellence too deeply; even if certain types of excel-
lence are historically specific, it might be argued that
there is still a substantial core that operates in more
widely shared human circumstances.
We need to ask now, what sort of states are hu-
man excellences such that they enable us to act well
in particular spheres? Again, drawing from Aris-
totle’s theoretical formulation, they are motivational
states, consisting of stable desires for certain ends,
and cognitive capacities for implementing those
ends through judgment, perception, and deliberative
choice. “Excellence of character is a state that
chooses” (NE 1139a22). It is a state that deliberates
and chooses on the basis of discerning the appro-
priate occasions for various excellences. Thus excel-
lence issues in deliberative choices that require care-
ful grasp of the particulars. In the fully virtuous
person these cognitive capacities constitute PRACTI-
CAL WISDOM. Such wisdom is itself an excellence (of
practical intellect, 1139a15) and includes the above
choice making and specifying capacities as well as

the capacity to reflect on and understand the impor-
tance of the various excellences in the good life.
Practical wisdom is thus exhibited in intelligent
choice, but also in endorsement of the very life of
virtue. It is an endorsement, however, that remains
internal, for the life is not one that could be chosen
from outside. It requires due habituation and social
inculcation. And this is often a matter of good
fortune.
More precisely, what is this process of habitua-
tion? It is often thought that if the excellences or
virtues are habituated, then they must be acquired
by noncognitive means. For if something is to be-
come second nature, then what is important is prac-
tice and repetition, not reflection. But the problem
with this account is that it makes mysterious the de-
velopment of cognitive capacities constitutive of full
virtue; they seem to arise spontaneously at some
magical age of majority. But clearly to say, “Now a
boy becomes a man” is to create an artifice for law,
not to explain when and how. Indeed if the exercise
of mature excellences requires judgment, choice,
and perception, then these capacities must be trained
early on, just as desires are. To the extent that desires
contain cognitive constituents which selectively dis-
criminate objects, the cultivation of desires must in-
clude the cultivation of these capacities. These must
be trained as part of the formation of DESIRE in ways
appropriate to the young intellect. To a limited ex-
tent, even coming to understand the value of partic-
ular excellences in a fulfilling life can be seen as part
of the learner’s acquisition of excellence.
Finally, it is important to appreciate the theoreti-
cal framework in which excellence is discussed in
ancient ethics. The framing question of ancient
ethics is, What is the good life? Put differently, What
constitutes EUDAIMONIA, that is, HAPPINESS or flour-
ishing? Virtue is seen by most theorists, from Plato
through to the Hellenists, as the primary constituent
of a good life. For some, such as Aristotle, virtue is
a necessary condition, and happiness includes, in ad-
dition, external goods, such as health, moderate
good fortune, and FRIENDSHIP. For others, such as
the Stoics, virtue is a sufficient condition. To have
external goods may be preferable to not having
them, but they are not “chosen” as goods that can
in any way enhance happiness. As the Stoics would
put it, they are “indifferents”; adding them to hap-
piness would be like adding a drop of honey to the
Aegean Sea—it makes it no sweeter.
505
excellence
In modern ethics, as exemplified, say, in Kant’s
writings, morality and happiness come to be sepa-
rated. To pursue happiness is one thing, to pursue
virtue another. The separation is, in some sense, a
reaction to the counterintuitive Stoic view of hap-
piness as wholly exhausted by virtue and invulner-
able to luck. In response, Kant will still cling to one
aspect of the Stoic view, namely, that which makes
virtue a matter of agency and reason. But happiness
becomes a separate value, dependent less on a good
will than on the achievement of desires and the for-
tunes of good luck. Consequently, on the Kantian
view, one can lose one’s happiness while still pos-
sessing moral worth. For the Stoics, the sage on the
rack is still happy. The Aristotelian view is some-
thing of a compromise between the Stoic and Kan-
tian positions. Happiness requires virtue, but also a
moderate amount of external goods. To have full vir-
tue and yet to lose one’s friends and family in the
ravishes of war compromises one’s chances for full
happiness.
See also: AGENCY AND DISABILITY; ARISTOTLE; AR-
ISTOTELIAN ETHICS; BENEVOLENCE; CHARACTER; CON-
VENTIONS; COURAGE; DELIBERATION AND CHOICE;
DESIRE; EUDAIMONIA, -ISM; FAIRNESS; FRIENDSHIP;
GENEROSITY; GRATITUDE; HAPPINESS; KANT; KAN-
TIAN ETHICS; MORAL EDUCATION; MOTIVES; PERFEC-
TIONISM; PLATO; PRACTICAL REASON[ING]; PRACTICAL
WISDOM; RESENTMENT; STOICISM; VIRTUE ETHICS;
VIRTUES; WISDOM.
Bibliography
Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993.
Aristotle. The Complete Works of Aristotle. Revised Ox-
ford translation. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1984.
———. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Terence Ir-
win. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1985.
———. Eudemian Ethics. Translated by Michael Woods.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. Books I, II,
VIII.
French, Peter A., T. Uehling, and H. Wettstein, eds. Eth-
ical Theory: Character and Virtue. Midwest Studies in
Philosophy, vol. 13. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Uni-
versity Press, 1988. See especially: “Flourishing and
the Failure of the Ethics of Virtue” by Sarah Conly;
“Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach” by
Martha Nussbaum; and “Common Sense and Uncom-
mon Virtue” by Nancy Sherman.
excellence
Irwin, Terence. Plato’s Moral Theory. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1977.
———. Plato’s Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1995.
Kraut, Richard. Aristotle on the Human Good. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1989.
Kruschwitz, Robert B., and R. Roberts, eds. The Virtues:
Contemporary Essays on Moral Character. Belmont,
CA: Wadsworth, 1986.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue. Notre Dame, IN: Uni-
versity of Notre Dame Press, 1984.
McDowell, John. “Virtue and Reason.” Monist 62 (1979):
330–50.
Nussbaum, Martha. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and
Rational Self-Sufficiency in Greek Ethical Thought.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
———. The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in
Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1994.
Plato. Charmides. Protagoras. Meno. Republic.
Rorty, Amélie O., ed. Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics. Berke-
ley; Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980.
———. Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Berkeley; Los An-
geles: University of California Press, 1996.
Scofield, Malcolm, and Gisela Striker, eds. The Norms of
Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Sherman, Nancy. The Fabric of Character: Aristotle’s The-
ory of Virtue. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
———. Making a Necessity of Virtue. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1997.
———, ed. Aristotle’s Ethics: Critical Essays. Lanham:
Rowman and Littlefield, 1999.
Slote, Michael. Goods and Virtues. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1983.
———. From Morality to Virtue. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1992.
Urmson, J. O. “Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean.” Ameri-
can Philosophical Quarterly 10 (1973): 223–30. Re-
printed in Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, supra, 157–70.
White, Stephen. Sovereign Virtue. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1992.
Williams, Bernard. Shame and Necessity. Berkeley; Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1993.
Nancy Sherman
excuses
An excuse is a condition pertaining to an agent that
precludes his or her blameworthiness for wrongful
action. Thus ignorance may excuse a garbage collec-
tor’s throwing an abandoned baby into the trash
compactor, not realizing the baby has been con-
cealed in the trash barrel. In philosophical literature,
506
although not necessarily in common parlance, an ex-
cuse is distinguished from a justification. According
to this distinction, a justification is a circumstance
that renders an action permissible even though it
would have been impermissible in the absence of
that circumstance. Thus one is justified in exceeding
the speed limit if doing so is necessary to rush a heart
attack victim to the hospital. When an action is jus-
tified, it is permissible; when it is excused, it is not
permissible. Both excuses and justifications may be
distinguished from mitigating circumstances. A mit-
igating circumstance is a circumstance that reduces
but does not entirely eliminate blameworthiness, or
alternatively reduces the severity of PUNISHMENT
that is warranted. Thus extreme hunger might mit-
igate a person’s blame for theft of food. Alterna-
tively, the suffering produced by the death of her
own son in a collision might mitigate the amount of
punishment the driver deserves for causing the
crash. In terms of these distinctions, for an agent to
claim that he performed an action negligently but
not in full knowledge of what he did would be for
him to claim a mitigating circumstance rather than
an excuse, since the negligent agent still deserves
blame, although less blame than the agent who acts
in full knowledge. These distinctions may be used in
nonmoral contexts (for example, in the law, in
games, and in various institutional regulations), but
this discussion will be confined to their moral uses.
A parallel set of distinctions may be introduced
in connection with actions that are right. Thus if the
garbage collector chose not to pick up the trash bar-
rel containing the baby, he would do something
right; but since he is ignorant of the baby’s presence,
we would not judge him to be praiseworthy for his
action. The term ‘excuse,’ however, is normally re-
served for cases in which the ‘excused’ action is mor-
ally wrong.
The salient philosophical issue concerning ex-
cuses is the question why some conditions excuse an
agent while others do not. A variety of theories have
been offered to answer this question. ARISTOTLE
(384–322 B.C.E.), for example, is often held to have
suggested that an action is excused if it is caused by
a factor external to the agent and outside his or her
control. On this view a person is excused from
breaking a valuable vase if a dog lunged into him
and caused him to strike the vase. In this case the
person would not actually have performed an action
at all; the dog’s behavior would ‘excuse’ the person’s

breaking the vase only in an extended (but com-
monly used) sense. A person who breaks the vase at
the suggestion of a hypnotist provides a clearer case
of someone whose excuse is explained by the Aris-
totelian view. A grave difficulty with the Aristotelian
view is that most, and perhaps all, human actions
are caused at least in part by such uncontrollable
external factors as the agent’s parents’ genes and the
environmental influences to which she has been ex-
posed. In view of this we might conclude that most
or all human actions are excused, so that no one is
morally blameworthy (or praiseworthy) for what she
does. Alternatively, we might hold firmly to our in-
tuition that some acts are excusable and some are
not, and seek to explain this intuition by articulating
an alternative theory of excuses.
One such alternative theory was proposed, in ef-
fect, by David HUME (1711–1776), and elaborated
more recently by Richard B. BRANDT (1910–1997).
According to the Hume-Brandt proposal, an agent
has an excuse for wrongdoing if his action was not
produced by a defective CHARACTER. A trait of char-
acter is said to be a relatively enduring trait of per-
sonality that is either a social asset or social liability,
and which itself is within our voluntary control, or
which expresses itself in behavior of the kind that is
within our voluntary control (even if we fail to have
the trait of character in question). Thus COURAGE
and GENEROSITY are traits of character, whereas in-
telligence and a sense of humor are not. On this view
of excuses, the garbage collector has an excuse for
throwing the baby in the trash compactor because
his action does not result from any defect of char-
acter. The act does not result from callous disregard
for human life, or a careless attitude toward the per-
formance of one’s duties; it results from ignorance
of the baby’s presence, which is not a defect of char-
acter. Brandt assumes that most or all traits of char-
acter will be motivational states. Hence whether or
not an agent has an excuse will depend largely or
completely on whether or not his motivation in act-
ing was reprehensible. An excuse functions, we
might say, to block the natural inference from a
wrongful act to the agent’s having a reprehensible
motive for performing that act.
The Hume-Brandt view has found wide accep-
tance. Some authors have pointed out that a person
may be blamed for an act even though the reprehen-
sible motivational state from which it resulted was
not sufficiently enduring to qualify it as part of the
507
excuses
person’s character. When a good person acts “out of
character,” he is still subject to blame. These authors
still agree, however, that whether or not a person is
excused depends on his motivational state at the
time of action.
One might object to the Hume-Brandt account on
the grounds that it does not excuse an agent whose
reprehensible motivational state was caused by fac-
tors outside the agent’s control. Thus if an agent was
programmed in childhood by neuroscientists to be
unduly terrified by physical danger, and later acts
wrongly out of cowardice, the view implies she has
no excuse for her cowardly act. (Her cowardice
counts as a reprehensible trait of character, since al-
though the cowardliness itself is not within her vol-
untary control, it manifests itself in the type of be-
havior that can be voluntarily controlled.) Yet many
people believe that such an agent should not be held
responsible for this act. Those who regard this as a
problem for the Hume-Brandt account will have to
revise it to include a condition concerning the gen-
esis of the motivational states at issue. Finding a sat-
isfactory statement of such a condition will involve
substantial thought about issues of freedom of will.
However, some theorists, including Hume himself,
would hold that the cowardly agent should not be
excused for her act; according to these theorists an
agent’s blameworthiness depends on what kind of
person she is, regardless of how she came to be that
way.
Even among theorists who offer different ac-
counts of what enables a condition to exculpate,
there is substantial agreement on what specific kinds
of conditions provide excuses. Standard lists of ex-
cuses often include ignorance, immaturity, insanity,
automatism, duress, necessity, coercion, compul-
sion, mental subnormality, mistake, and accident.
However, some of these conditions are often cited
as mitigating factors (e.g., duress) or justification
(e.g., necessity) rather than excuses. Moreover, even
with respect to the types of conditions that everyone
agrees provide an excuse, there is a good deal of
dispute. For example, in the case of ignorance, all
writers agree that ignorance of fact can excuse; but
only some writers believe that ignorance of morality
or ignorance of law can excuse. Even in the case of
ignorance of fact, all writers agree that nonculpable
ignorance of fact excuses, but they disagree on the
question of whether culpable ignorance (ignorance
that itself is blameworthy) excuses.
excuses
The most striking debates concern the interpre-
tation of, and justification for, the view that insanity
provides an excuse. How should insanity be under-
stood, and why does it—if it does—excuse an
agent? On some accounts insanity exculpates just
because it is a special case of other generic excuses,
such as ignorance or compulsion. On other accounts
insanity must be understood as a sui generis excuse.
These issues have been most hotly debated in the
law. In American law four general types of tests for
insanity have been dominant. The first and most
common test is the M’Naughten standard and its
variations, which exculpate psychologically dis-
turbed defendants who were ignorant of the nature,
quality, or wrongfulness of their acts. The second
type of test exculpates psychologically disturbed de-
fendants when their act was the result of an irresis-
tible impulse. A third type of test combines both
cognitive and volitional clauses, as in the Model Pe-
nal Code test which exculpates disturbed defendants
who were unable to appreciate the criminality of
their act or to conform their conduct to the law. The
fourth type of test simply exculpates the defendant
if his act was the product of a mental disorder. The
first three tests appear to assimilate insanity to other
generic excuses; the fourth one appears to accept it
as unique.
Most discussions of excuses assume that persons
are blameworthy only for their actions; however,
there are some theorists who believe that one may
be blameworthy for—and consequently may have
an excuse for—thoughts, MOTIVES, emotions, and
other nonactional states. Debate on this question is
likely to throw significant illumination on the con-
cepts of excuses and RESPONSIBILITY.
See also: ACTION; AMNESTY AND PARDON; ARIS-
TOTLE; BAD FAITH;BRANDT; CHARACTER; COERCION;
CONSEQUENTIALISM; CORRECTIONAL ETHICS; DELIB-
ERATION AND CHOICE; DIRTY HANDS; EXTERNALISM
AND INTERNALISM; FORGIVENESS; FREE WILL; FREE-
DOM AND DETERMINISM; GUILT AND SHAME; HOLO-
CAUST; HUME; INNOCENCE; INTENTION; LEGAL PHI-
LOSOPHY; MERCY; MERIT AND DESERT; MORAL LUCK;
MOTIVES; NEGLIGENCE; OUGHT IMPLIES CAN; POLICE
ETHICS; PUNISHMENT; REASONS FOR ACTION; RE-
SPONSIBILITY; VIRTUES; VOLUNTARISM; WEAKNESS
OF WILL; WICKEDNESS.
508
Bibliography
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Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Especially 1110a1–15;
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Baker, Brenda. “The Excuse of Accident.” Ethics 93
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Beardsley, Elizabeth. “Blaming.” Philosophia 8 (1979):
573–83.
Brandt, Richard B. Ethical Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1959. Chapter 18.
———. “Blameworthiness and Obligation.” In Essays in
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attle: University of Washington Press, 1958.
———. “A Utilitarian Theory of Excuses.” Philosophical
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(July 1965): 342–76.
Smith, Holly. “Culpable Ignorance.” Philosophical Review
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Zimmerman, Michael J. An Essay on Moral Responsibil-
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Holly M. Smith
existential ethics
The Rubric
Both words in the umbrella phrase “existential
ethics” need to be glossed. Distrusting moral for-
mulas that oversimplify, on their view, the pervasive-

ness of harsh dilemmas and sociohistorical change
ignored by “rule book” or “human essence” theories,
“existential” philosophers have been significantly
concerned to bring ethical theory close to questions
of value as these actually arise. In consequence, they
are often criticised for failing to provide a “proper”
ethics. To grasp what they are positively doing, then,
it is helpful first to put out of mind at least two major
types of theoretical aspirations: the historically in-
fluential arguments for positive maxims of moral
choice that can be universally applied (e.g., the du-
ties of promise-keeping and truth-telling of Imman-
uel KANT [1724–1804]), or the moral rule of “the
greatest happiness for the greatest number” of JOHN
STUART MILL (1806–1873); or, alternatively, the at-
tempt to derive a norm of conduct from a suppos-
edly determinate “essence” (as in ARISTOTLE [384–
322 B.C.E.]), which existential theories deny of
human beings. Although what we human beings re-
ally are is indeed the only possible ground for ethical
inquiry, an alternative sort of account is required.
Further, in agreement with many ethical theories, ex-
istential ethics takes the primary material of inves-
tigation to be the phenomenon of conscious, reflec-
tive choice.
Historically speaking, although some commen-
tators have sought a similar theme as far back as
Blaise PASCAL (1623–1662), St. AUGUSTINE (354–
430), and even the Socrates of the early dialogues
of PLATO (c. 430–347 B.C.E.), the term “existential”
was hardly to be found before the late 1920s. It be-
came associated primarily with Martin Heidegger
(1889–1976), a German philosopher chiefly inter-
ested in ontology (theory of Being) rather than
ethics. In this connection, it should also be noted
that the appellation “existential philosophy” has since
become internationally known primarily through the
widely read writings of the French philosopher, es-
sayist, novelist, dramatist, and engaged political ac-
tivist Jean-Paul SARTRE (1905–1980), to such an ex-
tent that his work (and writings strongly influenced
by him) are by now more or less equated with “ex-
istential” thought.
The adjective “existential” came from the Ger-
man word Existenz, a locution so rare that German-
speaking thinkers were free to restrict its range, with
no danger of confusion, to “the particular way of
being of a human being.” In what was originally bap-
tised ‘Existenzphilosophie,’ a Tom or a Mary “ex-
509
existential ethics
ist,” but the sun (for example) does not “exist”
(though, of course, there is—“es gibt”—such a star,
and it is perfectly real). The fundamental concepts
needed to understand the being of a human existent,
unlike those relevant to understanding the sun, are
nonobjective (which is not to say nonrational).
Three Important Nineteenth-Century Sources
Contemporary existentialism has generally assim-
ilated the dialectical philosophy of G. W. F. HEGEL
(1770–1831), especially his vast phenomenological-
historical study of human consciousness, Phenom-
enology of Mind (1831); the counter-Hegelian writ-
ings on the moral-religious individual of Søren
KIERKEGAARD (1813–1855); and the attacks by
Friedrich NIETZSCHE (1844–1900) on the MORAL
RULES of the “herd.” Acquaintance with these three
thinkers is therefore virtually indispensable.
Although Hegel’s analysis of human experience
in its sociohistorical context has been influential,
existential philosophers have rejected Hegel’s seem-
ing absorption of the individual mind into an all-
encompassing system of ‘Absolute Spirit.’ How-
ever, existential philosophers have all taken to heart
Hegel’s lesson that the analysis of moral experience
is a conceptual task immensely more complex than
had been recognised by classical and modern phi-
losophers.
Kierkegaard recognised, with Kant, that moral
evaluations are indeed general in scope, not simply
self-serving, and portrayed the ethical life by the par-
adigmatic figure of a judge (Either/Or, 1843). His
primary influence lay in his realistic attention to the
normative dilemmas we typically face as human be-
ings, and the dreadful “vertigo” and “anxiety” of a
conflict of values which no normative rule can settle.
For this religious thinker, such predicaments had
been most tellingly and shatteringly represented in
the Old Testament (Genesis 22:2) by God’s absolute
yet appalling command to Abraham to slay his in-
nocent son (Fear and Trembling, 1843; The Concept
of Dread, 1844). He thereby awakened moral philos-
ophy to the pervasiveness of dilemma and wrenching
choice in the moral life, even when in an entirely
secular context.
Equally influential has been Nietzsche’s eloquent,
wholesale discrediting of conventional moral values,
including the more sophisticated versions expressed
existential ethics
in traditional philosophical theories. Hypocritically
motivated by the ‘ressentiment’ (“reactive hatred”)
of “weak herds” toward all that is positive, coura-
geous, and life-affirming, such habitual obedience to
formulaic obligations and rote values is earnestly
promoted by equally hypocritical rulers whenever it
happens to serve their purposes. “Life-affirming
transvaluation” of these already inverted NORMS
could be accomplished only by a heroic “overman”
capable of courageously assuming the awesome re-
sponsibility of actively creating values, thus oppos-
ing the self-deceptions by which we self-righteously
dignify and impose on others our weaknesses and
fears in the high name of morality. Through Nie-
tzsche, existentialists-to-be also came to consider su-
perficial most philosophical conceptions of the hu-
man psyche or mind (Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
1883–1885; Beyond Good and Evil, 1886; Gene-
alogy of Morals, 1887).
Twentieth-Century Figures
Edmund Husserl (1859–1938). Although his
new “transcendental phenomenology” was intellec-
tually associated rather more with René DESCARTES
(1596–1650), David HUME (1711–1776), and Kant,
than with the foregoing nineteenth-century thinkers,
HUSSERL quite unwittingly was to provide an emerg-
ing existentialism with a conception of philosophy
as both “ontology” (theory of Being) and “ontic the-
ory” (theory of different ways of being, e.g., as a
physical thing, as an organism, as a number, as a
human). He also provided a phenomenological
method of rigorous descriptive analysis, within re-
flection, of the structures of acts of consciousness
or “experience” (Bewusstsein, Erlebnis). Acts of
consciousness are “intentional” (that is, acts of
“consciousness-of . . .”) and necessarily apprehend
correlated objects or states of affairs in the “life-
world” (Lebenswelt).
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). Probably more
than any other twentieth-century thinker, HEIDEG-
GER was responsible (in Being and Time, 1927) for
framing human ‘Existenz’ and the world in which,
willy nilly, it finds itself, in phenomenological con-
cepts. These highly original concepts soon came to
be the dominant framework for existential philoso-
phy. His most influential “Existenz-concepts” were:
(1) Being-in-the-world: An “existent being” is always
already out there in the world, undertaking temporal
510
projects, within its practical and sociohistorical sit-
uation (as over against an “inner Ego” or “transcen-
dental subject” merely responding in a “private”
realm to a world which remains either “external” or
hidden “behind appearances”). (2) Ready-to-hand
things: Unlike the abstract, value-neutral referents
of theoretical discourse, the realities apprehended by
a “being-in-the-world” are initially instrumental ones,
helps or hindrances to our undertakings. (3) Being-
with: As existents we are not only already in the
world, but are already in primordial association with
other existents in the world, who are no less given
to us in their own right than we are given to our-
selves. (4) One (das Man): When faced with dis-
quieting choices, we tend to think of ourselves
falsely as if mere “One’s,” rather than individual ex-
istents, viz., “‘One’ does such-and-such!,” “‘One’
never does thus-and-so!” Heidegger terms this an
“inauthentic” way of existing. (5) By contrast, “au-
thentic” existents consciously acknowledge to them-
selves that they are not abstract “one’s,” and make
genuine and “resolute” choices of values before un-
certain futures. Heidegger denied that he was look-
ing to a moral theory. However, his concepts were
to become crucial to existential ethics.
Karl Jaspers (1883–1969). His panoramic writ-
ings likewise contain no specifically ethical treatise;
yet they do express, almost like a secular Kierke-
gaard, the paradoxical predicament, moral or spiri-
tual, of situated “Existents” who, within inescapable
“limit-situations” (Grenzsituationen), are neverthe-
less beset by an imperative yet deeply troubling need
for transcending all limits.
Gabriel Marcel (1889–1975). Marcel empha-
sised in both his plays and his philosophical essays
that moral issues do not pose merely technical prob-
lems to which solutions are readily available, but
require creative yet humanly responsible interpre-
tation. Although his writings influenced readers in-
terested in existentialism, he denied any such affinity
(Being and Having, 1935; Creative Fidelity, 1940).
General Character of “Existential Ethics” Today
1. Moral philosophy must begin with a true the-
ory of what we humans are as the only beings (so
far as we can determine) capable of inquiry into Be-
ing (ontology) and of making reflective choices
among values. 2. Therefore, what it is to “exist,” and
the conscious activity of choice, become central. Un-

fortunately, the English term “consciousness,” when
compared to the term ‘Bewusstsein’ employed by
Husserl and Heidegger, tends to suggest something
static, even an abstraction (as in “states of con-
sciousness,” and in the implications of our suffix,
“-ness”); similarly, our term “experience” also fails
to convey sufficiently the processual and “lived-
through” connotations of their ‘Erlebnis.’ (The ne-
ologism “consciousing,” once proposed by the Amer-
ican philosopher William JAMES [1842–1910], has
never gained philosophical currency, but it captured
better the wonted connotations.) 3. Contrary to
Kant, there is no unknowable mental “noumenon”
or “real mind” hidden from reflection; nor is the
course of consciousness a misleading or even negli-
gible accompaniment or patina relative to what we
really are. Human consciousness is a dynamic ex-
pression of human existence, so phenomenological
inquiry into consciousness is decisive for our under-
standing of the moral. 4. Phenomenological inquiry
demonstrates that the experience of human free-
dom, and therefore of RESPONSIBILITY, is no illusion,
but is rooted in our very being as “existents.” 5. We
are introduced to this responsibility by the affective
experience of a core of anxiety, qualitatively distinct
from a worry about our individual welfare (e.g.,
whether I will lose my job), that implicitly or explic-
itly structures our experience.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Ontological freedom. Sartre’s massive “Essay in
Phenomenological Ontology,” Being and Nothing-
ness (1943; probably written in 1937), has been his
most influential “existentialist” work. It opens as a
phenomenological inquiry into Being (ontology),
but chiefly for the sake of inquiring into your and
my particular way of being as “existents.” A number
of central features of our way of being are revealed
by an analysis of the dynamic of human “conscious-
ing” (CONSCIENCE).
1. The activity of “consciousing” has no content
of its own, is sheer “transparency.” It is simulta-
neously a “consciousness-of . . .” some content,
which is beyond the activity of awareness (“inten-
tionality”), and is a “consciousness-of-itself” (“re-
flexivity,” implicit or explicit). (In current analytic
philosophy of mind: “mind” is “prepositional”; and,
in linguistic philosophy: “p” can always be derived
from p.)
511
existential ethics
2. It should be noted, however, that while human
consciousness is always at once “consciousing-of-an-
object” and “consciousing-of-itself,” our practical
preoccupation with the object—the thing, other per-
son, event, state of affairs, issue—ordinarily leaves
awareness of its own activity only implicit.
3. Sartre marked this implicit form of the reflex-
ivity of consciousness by parentheses: “conscience
(de) soi” (“consciousness (of) itself”). Ordinarily,
when the subject matter is not threatening, we may
well shift from the implicitly to the explicitly reflex-
ive form; perhaps even to a further reflected level.
(The counterpart claim within contemporary linguis-
tic philosophy is that in principle one can always shift
from propositional uses to propositional mentions.)
4. Because of this bipolar dynamic and tension of
our human “consciousing,” a suitable ontological
formulation of our existence is obliged to introduce
some unexpected concepts. Any other instance of
Being can ordinarily be sufficiently characterized as
“being whatever it is, and not being whatever it is
not.” Though widely held to be a vacuous logical
formula applicable to everything whatsoever, it ap-
plies only to a being that is “in-itself,” that is, self-
coincident. Regarding such beings it is certainly ap-
propriate to seek out some fixed nature, or “essence”
(e.g., these white grains either are, or are not, essen-
tially “NaCl”); and to proceed from there to seek
causal explanations. Sartre was interested in this on-
tological state of affairs of “being-as-in-itself” only
for purposes of contrast to human existence.
5. An existent, a being that can be humanly con-
scious, turns out not to exist simply “in itself,” but
to exist “for itself” (pour soi). And indeed, the term
“for itself” (borrowed from Hegel) is conceptually
apt here because a human being always exists both
“intentionally” and (implicitly or explicitly) in a re-
flexive relation with itself. Each of us must therefore
be conceived, however ungrateful the prose, as a be-
ing that “is whatever it is, but only in the mode of
not being so, while not being whatever it is not, but
only in the mode of being so.” (In conventional log-
ical notation: “S is P, in the mode of not being P; and
is not P, in the mode of being P”).
6. This ontological structure shows that a For It-
self (i.e., a human being) is actively engaged in a
process of “negating itself” (se néantisant) in its very
being. It exists as a veritable “lack” (manque) with
respect to itself. This is to say that a being existing
“for itself” is primordially a project in its very being:
existential ethics
that of closing the gap within its being, of overcom-
ing itself as a perpetual “rupturing” of the “self-
coincidence” of Being. In sum, an existent is the con-
flicted project of trying to become an In Itself while
(per impossibile) remaining “for itself.”
7. When paired with the morally central concept
of conscious choice, only this “ontic” structure pe-
culiar (so far as can be known) to our human exis-
tence yields a correct philosophical account of the
much disputed notion of freedom. For Sartre, the
concept of freedom, indispensable to any under-
standing of human morality, does not refer merely
to a “property” of some “faculty of will,” but desig-
nates the very structure of our entire being (exis-
tence) as active project. “The sole being that can be
said to be free is the being that nihilates (néantit) its
being” (Being).
8. We may well attempt to keep at bay the core
mood of anxiety which intensifies with explicit con-
sciousness of freedom, by consciously interjecting
and embracing a soothing belief. Not least among
these diversionary beliefs is one or another version
of the conviction that there is an infinitely powerful
being, nothing less than “In-Itself-For-Itself”—the-
ologically put, an Ens Causa Sui—that has the re-
sponsibility of revealing to us absolute moral rules
or a highest end, thus relieving us of the anguish of
choice. Sartre cites as an example of our core anxiety
before moral responsibility the experience of a young
man during the World War II Occupation of France.
He was faced with the dilemma of having to choose
between continuing to care for his needy mother or
honoring his fallen brother and his country by en-
listing in the Free French forces (Existentialism Is a
Humanism, 1946). He (indeed, anyone) will most
likely resort to an emotionally comforting belief in
some “quintessential” role (viz., either filial or pa-
triotic) with its accepted duties, or perhaps will turn
to some external moral “authority” (a respected
friend, priestly counsel, a social custom)—decisions
which do not in fact undo our freedom and respon-
sibility.
9. If bad faith (mauvaise foi) be the correct term
for our deceiving another about what one is con-
sciously doing, then such commonplace intellectual
tactics are also “bad faith,” though in the curious
form of attempting to deceive none other than one-
self about one’s human freedom and responsibility.
This obviously unstable form of merely implicit self-
awareness, in which we keep ourselves consciously
512
fixed on the intentional terminus, can at any time be
freely transformed into its explicit form in which we
would become aware of the fact that we are free to
choose otherwise. In Being, Sartre skillfully de-
scribed various such ontologically grounded “self-
deceptions.” Because his accounts are hardly flatter-
ing to us human beings, he has been charged with
painting a misleadingly dismal picture of humanity.
However, the philosophical point of his phenome-
nological analyses (not condemnations, he insisted)
was no more to depreciate us than to flatter us.
Rather, as also shown by his subsequent Notebooks
for an Ethics (written in 1946–47, posthumously
published in 1983) and many other writings, his
phenomenological analyses were offered as crucial
evidence for philosophical claims concerning human
“existence,” not as a final accounting of our human
possibilities.
Authenticity and freedom. It was only on the ba-
sis of these portraits of “bad faith,” indeed, that he
could propose to explore after Being two interre-
lated, normative questions of fundamental impor-
tance. First, can we shift from living in “bad faith,”
which he dubs “inauthenticity,” to an “authentic” ex-
istence, by way of an effort of reflection that is not
“complicitous” with our habit of masking our free-
dom? Second, if so, would such “purifying” reflec-
tion enable us to reconceive our actual freedom as
an ideal or end, even the highest possible one? These
questions motivated many of Sartre’s subsequent re-
flections. In Anti-Semite and Jew (1946), his phe-
nomenological analysis of the structure of human
prejudice served to explore further the concepts of
“inauthenticity” and “authenticity” in relation to hu-
man freedom. At about the same time, in Note-
books, he devoted almost 600 pages of detailed re-
flection to these and related questions. In the 1960s
and 1970s, he widened his ontological inquiry to in-
clude both “interpersonal mutuality”—the “We” of
what he had previously termed “being-for-others”
(être-pour-autrui)—and social institutions as ana-
lysed (though oversimply, in his opinion) by Marxian
economic theory (Critique of Dialectical Reason,
1960).
Thus, although an anticipated treatise on ethics
was never written, Sartre’s work came to inquire in-
creasingly about freedom for all, or human libera-
tion, as a possible ideal by which our value judg-
ments in various situations might be guided. At the
same time, owing to the interpenetration of means

and ends in human action and human history, he
recognised that the concept of human liberation
could not be posited once and for all as a goal, and
therefore could not serve, after the manner of Mill’s
principle of utility, to dictate formulaically what
choices to make (Notebooks, Critique).
Ethical egoism. But why the ideal of freedom
“for all,” rather than, self-servingly, just for oneself?
This question is most frequently raised because of
Sartre’s explicit rejection of Kant’s universal max-
ims of moral conduct. Yet in an extensive public dec-
laration during the political strife of postwar France,
Sartre unqualifiedly insisted that our moral choices
are not egoist in nature, but exemplary: “a man . . .
is responsible for all men,” “I am responsible for my-
self and for everyone else,” “in choosing myself, I
choose man,” “I’m not being singled out [by ‘God’]
as an Abraham, and yet at every moment I’m obliged
to perform exemplary acts”; and the like (Existen-
tialism). Clearly, Sartre was stating that any moral
judgment, however much situated, is general in
character, and therefore cannot be rationally in-
tended to be merely self-serving. To that extent, he
appears on the surface to have agreed with Kant af-
ter all, and with Kierkegaard’s representation of an
impartial courtroom judge as the paradigm of the
moral.
The basis in Sartre for his view appears to have
been an early phenomenological essay, Transcen-
dence of the Ego (1937; probably written in 1934),
in which he argued that consciousness (understood
dynamically, as “consciousing”) is a sequence of lat-
eral syntheses of great complexity that are not pre-
sided over by any inner self. Thus, the pronoun “I”
does not designate some self within, behind, or
above the course of experience, but a self that is
quite as much something out there in the world as
is every other I. No one I in the panorama of I’s,
therefore, can display as such—that is, simply by
virtue of its being an I—any status that privileges or
lowers it by comparison to any other I. To be sure,
one of those I’s will stand out for the agent, by rea-
son of (what Sartre termed) a complex quality of
“intimacy.” And no one should underestimate the re-
sulting strength of our self-serving impulses. Never-
theless, from a rational point of view—that is, if one
is attempting a reflective moral judgment, rather
than merely reacting emotionally—any choice of
conduct within a given situation declares itself ipso
facto to be the best choice for any I. Hence Sartre’s
513
existential ethics
objection in Notebooks (“Appendix 1”) that so-
called ethical egoism is no moral theory at all.
Nonetheless, Sartre’s position in no way what-
soever suggested that one can go on to demonstrate,
as Kant and the utilitarians have claimed to do, some
universal, inviolable maxim or rule of moral con-
duct, e.g., “tell the truth,” “promote the greatest hap-
piness of the greatest number,” etc. One might well
choose on behalf of all similarly placed I’s not to tell
the truth, not to keep a promise, or not to attempt
to optimise happiness by one’s action. (See, for ex-
ample, Sartre’s 1948 play, Dirty Hands, and its anal-
ysis in Barnes, Sartre.) Indeed, if freedom, ontically
understood, be the structure of our very existence,
then we must be perfectly free, like it or not, to
endorse, qualify, or reject the present relevance of
any alleged maxim or rule of action whatsoever. His
thought, consequently, is quite far in spirit from
theories of absolute duties or individual “self-
realisation,” and shows some affinities with PRAG-
MATISM, “situational ethics” in general, and what has
been termed “axiology” or “general theory of value.”
Philosophy and the “human sciences.” Finally,
it is exceedingly important to note that existential
philosophers in general, and Sartre in particular,
have sometimes been dismissed wholesale by Anglo-
American philosophers for incorporating into phil-
osophical inquiry numerous considerations that are
“merely psychological”; for example, the key notions
of “existential anxiety,” BAD FAITH, SELF-DECEPTION,
and AUTHENTICITY (and many more examples to be
found in their philosophical writings). Well ac-
quainted with this sort of dismissal of his work, Sar-
tre always held that so-called empirical psychologies
(and indeed, the “human sciences” in general) are
necessarily predetermined and governed in their
particular theoretical concepts and investigative
methods by one or another set of specific ontologi-
cal principles (varying widely, it would seem, given
the multitude of incompatible psychologies). “[So-
called] psychology is philosophy, or it is nothing,”
he reiterated forcefully to interviewers in 1975 (“In-
terview”). There never has been, and never will be,
cognitive inquiry into the human psyche that occurs
in an intellectual realm where the self-styled “objec-
tive” psychologist has not previously adopted (usu-
ally unwittingly) certain prior ontological principles.
Indeed, in Sartre’s view, it is precisely the themes
and problems of human existence, so recently re-
moved from philosophy and made the sole property
existential ethics
of supposedly “autonomous sciences” (PSYCHOL-
OGY, SOCIOLOGY, history, and so on) that must now
be reclaimed for philosophical (specifically, phe-
nomenological) inquiry into moral concerns.
Simone DE BEAUVOIR (1908–1986), one of
France’s leading thinkers and novelists and a lifelong
ally of Sartre, argued in her Ethics of Ambiguity
(1947) that the ideal of freedom for all, in Sartre’s
sense, is the highest value. At the same time, seem-
ingly in the spirit of Sartre, she held that freedom as
the supreme value cannot be univocally conceived,
once and for all, owing to its origin in the ontological
structure of the existing For-Itself. A constant ele-
ment of ambiguity is inherent in our conception of
freedom and in value judgments.
See also: ABSURD, THE; ALIENATION; AUTHENTICITY;
BAD FAITH; BUBER; CAMUS; CONSCIENCE; CRITICAL
THEORY; DE BEAUVOIR; DIRTY HANDS; EGOISM;
HEGEL; HEIDEGGER; HISTORIOGRAPHY; HUMAN-
ISM; HUSSERL; HYPOCRISY; INDIVIDUALISM; JAMES;
KIERKEGAARD; LIBERTY; LITERATURE AND ETHICS;
MARXISM; MORAL ATTENTION; MULTICULTURALISM;
NARRATIVE ETHICS; NIETZSCHE; NIHILISM; PHENOM-
ENOLOGY; PRAGMATISM; PRAXIS; SARTRE; SELF-
DECEPTION; SITUATION ETHICS.
Bibliography
Barnes, Hazel. An Existentialist Ethics. New York: Knopf,
1967. Defense and development of Sartrean thought.
———. Sartre. New York: Lippincott, 1973. Excellent
short book in the “Portrait” series that brings together
Sartre’s philosophy and the philosophical ideas ex-
pressed in the more didactic of his literary works.
Buber, Martin. I and Thou. Translated by W. Kaufmann.
Magnolia, MA: Peter Smith, 1970 [1923]. Religious
reflections on the personal and spiritual versus the
objective.
Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Translated by G. Stuart.
Mattituck, NY: Amereon, 1946. Existential novel of
isolation in a conventional world.
Contat, M., and M. Rybalka. The Writings of Jean-Paul
Sartre: Vol. I. Translated by R. McLeary. Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press, 1974. Extensively an-
notated bibliography covering 1923–1973.
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Ethics of Ambiguity. Translated
by B. Frechtman. New York: Citadel, 1962 [1947].
Short, readable, strongly argued.
———. The Second Sex. Translated by H. Parshley. New
York: Random House, 1974 [1949]. Existentialism
and feminism.
———. She Came to Stay. Translated by L. Friedman.
514
New York: World, 1954 [1943]. Existential novel writ-
ten under the direct influence of Sartre’s Being and
Nothingness.
Greene, Norman N. Jean-Paul Sartre: The Existentialist
Ethic. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960.
Excellent explication and defense of Sartre as offering
a coherent theory of human action.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by J. Mac-
quarrie and E. Robinson. New York: Harper and Row,
1962 [1927]. Ontological structure of “being-in-the-
world”; classic work, extremely difficult.
Husserl, Edmund. Ideas. Translated by F. Kersten. The
Hague: Nijhoff, 1983 [1913]. See Book I, sections
36–39 on “intentionality.”
Jaspers, Karl. Reason and Existenz. Translated by W.
Earle. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1955
[1935]. Jaspers’s fundamental nonobjective concepts.
Jeanson, Francis. Sartre and the Problem of Morality.
Translated from the French, and with an introduction,
by Robert V. Stone. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1980 [1947]. Early classic work on Sartre’s early
moral writings.
Kierkegaard, Søren. See the following: Concluding Un-
scientific Postscript (1846; existential truth versus
systematic, Hegelian, truth); Either/Or (1843; extraor-
dinary portrayal of aesthetic existence and ethical ex-
istence); Fear and Trembling (1843; the “absurdity” of
religious faith); Philosophical Fragments (1844; hu-
man existence and the paradox of Christian faith).
Linsenbard, Gail E. An Investigation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s
Reflections on Morality in the Posthumously Published
Notebooks for an Ethics. (Studies in French Literature,
v. 40). Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000. At-
tention to some complementary elements in Transcen-
dence and Notebooks that addresses usefully a major
gap in the secondary literature on Sartre.
Marcel, Gabriel. Being and Having. Translated by K. Far-
rar. Magnolia, MA: Peter Smith, 1965 [1935]. Existen-
tial “journal” of a leading Christian philosopher.
———. Metaphysical Journal. Translated by B. Wall. Chi-
cago: Regnery, 1952 [1927].
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception.
Translated by C. Smith. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Hu-
manities Press, 1981 [1945]. Existence as embodied
and situated. See especially “Freedom,” pp. 434–56.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Trans-
lated and edited by W. Kaufmann. New York: Modern
Library, 1968. Attacks on conventional morality and
objective theories by a masterful writer.
Ortega y Gassett, José. What Is Philosophy? New York:
Norton, 1964 [1957]. Vitalist existentialism; see es-
pecially chapters 9–11.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. See: Anti-Semite and Jew (1946; the
“bad faith” of anti-Semitism); Being and Nothingness
(1943; central work in phenomenology of human ex-
istence); Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960; reinter-
pretation of both Marxism and existentialism); Emo-

tions: Outline of a Theory (1939; existential analysis
of emotional life); Existentialism and Humanism
(1946; defense against critics); Nausea (1938; novel of
existential experience); No Exit & Three Other Plays
(1949; on existential freedom); Notebooks for an
Ethics (posthumously published, 1992; translation of
notes originally written in 1946–47); Roads to Free-
dom (1945–47; novel trilogy—The Age of Reason—
The Reprieve—Troubled Sleep); Saint Genêt (1952;
existential study of Jean Genêt, writer and criminal);
The Transcendence of the Ego (1937; the “I” as object
of consciousness).
Schilpp, Paul Arthur, ed. The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sar-
tre. The Library of Living Philosophers; vol. 16. La-
Salle, IL: Open Court, 1981. See various critical essays,
and esp. “Interview” (1975), 5–51.
Solomon, Robert, ed. Existentialism. New York: Random
House, 1974. Varied philosophical and literary selec-
tions; insightful commentaries and introduction; rec-
ommended source book.
Unamuno, Miguel de. The Tragic Sense of Life. Translated
by J. Crawford. New York: Dover, 1921 [1913]. Mys-
tical work.
Forrest Williams
exploitation
In a nonmorally charged sense of the term, “exploi-
tation” means the same as “advantageous use,” as
when one speaks nonpejoratively of the exploitation
of timber and other natural resources. In this sense,
one might more fully exploit the beauty of a sunset
by hiking to higher ground in order to gain an un-
cluttered view. The concept of exploitation that is of
interest to ethical theorists is distinct from this us-
age. In a morally loaded sense of the term, exploi-
tation is unfair use. The exploiter uses people (unfair
use of animals will be set aside to simplify discus-
sion) in a way that is somehow unfair. There will,
then, be as many competing conceptions of exploi-
tation as theories of what persons owe to each other
by way of fair treatment. And with respect to any
given theory of FAIRNESS, a wide miscellany of types
of ACTION will count as exploitative, for there are,
no doubt, many distinct ways of using people
unfairly.
Not every plausible instance of unfairness will
count as exploitation, however. If one eschews in-
teracting with another person, one is not using the
other, so a fortiori one cannot be using that other
person unfairly. So one can avoid being an exploiter
either by not interacting with people at all or by
515
exploitation
interacting with them only on fair terms. The dis-
tinction between fair and unfair interaction that is
crucial for identifying exploitation parallels the dis-
tinction in KANT’s (1724–1804) ethics between us-
ing a person as a means and using a person as a mere
means to one’s goals. Using someone as a mere
means is failing to treat that person with the respect
due every rational agent.
Schematically, an agent exploits a person when
she uses him to her advantage and in so doing acts
unfairly. The following distinctions isolate types of
exploitation: (1) The exploiter may or may not co-
erce or defraud the person who is exploited; (2) The
person who is exploited may or may not voluntarily
CONSENT to the transaction; (3) In every case the
exploiter aims to secure profit or advantage, but in
some cases the person who is exploited (a) is made
worse off, (b) neither benefits nor is made worse off,
or (c) profits from the transaction, but dispropor-
tionately less than the exploiter; (4) in most cases of
exploitation the person who is used is identical to
the person who is unfairly treated, but this need not
always be so. Notice that it would be incorrect usage
or at least incongruous to apply the term “exploita-
tion” to immoral acts that are rightly described as
involving unfair use but that also fit a narrower or
more odious concept. For example, murdering some-
one would not be characterized as exploitation even
though the murderer profits from the act and thus
unfairly uses the victim.
Exploitation Through Exchange
Exploitation (on some views of what fairness re-
quires) can occur by means of transactions that are
voluntarily consented to by all affected parties. This
type of exploitation can happen when there is an
unfairness in the exchange process that does not go
so far as to disqualify the voluntariness of consent.
For example, one person might taunt another with
accusations of cowardice in order to goad the other
into accepting an invitation to duel. For another ex-
ample, a retailer of “exploitation” films might appeal
to the vulgar or prurient taste of a potential cus-
tomer who would rather not strengthen the trait in
himself that makes such material appealing; never-
theless, the customer voluntarily pays the price of
the film due to WEAKNESS OF WILL. Unfairness can
also insinuate itself into voluntary exchange if the
PROPERTY holdings on which persons negotiate an
exploitation
agreement are themselves unfair. Or, one bargainer
may fortuitously enjoy a monopoly BARGAINING po-
sition, which gives her leverage to secure a dispro-
portionate share of the mutual gain from the trans-
action for herself. Additionally, the ordinary, quirky
workings of market competition may leave one party
to a transaction in possession of a share of the profit
from that transaction which violates an independent
standard of proportional benefit or deservingness.
Exploitation Unmeditated by Exchange
Another category of exploitative acts comprises
interactions that do not involve COERCION yet are
not mutually agreed upon in advance by all affected
parties. In one kind of case, some members of a
group undertake costs, cooperating to produce a
good the consumption of which by some group
members does not reduce the amount available for
consumption by others (in the usage of economists,
consumption is nonrival). If cooperators cannot fea-
sibly limit consumption of the good to those who
contribute to produce it, there is a possibility of free-
riding behavior—some noncooperating group mem-
bers can enjoy the good without contributing a fair
share toward its production. On some views of fair-
ness, free riding is exploitative.
Marxian Exploitation
The concept of exploitation is perhaps indelibly
associated with Karl MARX’s (1818–1883) writings
on political economy. This is so even though Marx
purports to develop a nonmoralized concept of ex-
ploitation and in general to eschew moral appeals,
particularly appeals to ideologically freighted no-
tions of fairness, RIGHTS, and justice, in critical so-
cial theory. In Marx’s account, the tendency of a cap-
italist economy is to generate an increasingly large
mass of unskilled workers who own virtually no
means of production other than their own bodies
and hence can survive only by agreeing to work at
bare subsistence wages for one or another of the
class of capitalist employers who own the major
means of production (tools, machinery, raw materi-
als, factories, shops, etc.). The mechanism that
pushes wages toward bare subsistence is the “re-
serve army of the unemployed” that according to
Marx is steadily fed by labor-saving technological in-
novation, an inherent feature of a capitalist market
516
economy. In this scenario, free market competition
places the gains realized by workers’ labor entirely
in the pockets of property owners—capitalist em-
ployers, landlords, landowners. This extraction of
profit from workers is called “exploitation” by Marx
and likened to the, in some respects, similar exploi-
tation of feudal serfs by lords and of slaves by slave
masters in other ECONOMIC SYSTEMS. Whereas some
observers might be inclined to think capitalist profits
are exploitative when they are “too high,” a striking
feature of Marx’s analysis is that any forced extrac-
tion of profit by a nonproducing class from produc-
ers (whether slaves, serfs, or capitalist workers) falls
under the category of exploitation.
Some readers of Marx have not hesitated to judge
that the phenomena that count as exploitative in his
special usage also qualify as exploitative in the moral
sense. In order to defend this “Marxist” judgment—
not made explicitly by Marx himself—one must ar-
gue that the inequality of property ownership on
which capitalist profit rests is unfair.
Exploitation and Justified Coercion
Besides yielding competing accounts of the kinds
of conduct that should count as exploitation, theo-
ries of fairness offer competing views on the moral
issue as to when, if ever, it is justifiable to employ
coercion in order to prevent persons from engaging
in exploitative conduct.
See also: ANIMALS, TREATMENT OF; BARGAINING;
BLACKMAIL; COERCION; CONSENT; ECONOMIC SYS-
TEMS; EQUALITY; FAIRNESS; JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE;
MARX; OPPRESSION; SLAVERY.
Bibliography
Elster, Jon. Making Sense of Marx. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985. A thorough critical exegesis of
Marx on exploitation.
Feinberg, Joel. Harmless Wrongdoings. Vol. 4 of The
Moral Limits of the Criminal Law. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1988. Chapter 31 is a brilliant and
wide-ranging discussion of the concept of exploitation;
chapter 32 considers, from a liberal standpoint, which
sorts of exploitation should be punishable as crime.
Kant, Immanuel. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Mor-
als. Translated by James W. Ellington. Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1981 [1785]. The humanity-as-an-end for-
mulation of the categorical imperative in the second
section of this work can be viewed as prohibiting
exploitation.

Marx, Karl. Value, Price and Profit. Edited by Eleanor
Marx Aveling. New York: International Publishers,
1935 [1865]. Address to the General Council of the
IWMA; a popular exposition of Marx’s economic no-
tions pertaining to his account of exploitation.
Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State and Utopia. New York:
Basic Books, 1974. Clear, intelligent statement of a
Lockean position on natural rights and fair treatment.
Roemer, John E. A General Theory of Exploitation and
Class. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982. A
restatement and rethinking of the concept of exploita-
tion by a morally sophisticated Marxist economist.
Simmons, A. John. “The Principle of Fair Play.” Philoso-
phy and Public Affairs 8 (1979): 307–37. Discusses
free riding.
Wertheimer, Alan. Exploitation. Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1996.
Wood, Allen. Karl Marx. London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1981. Chapters 9 and 10 interpret and defend
Marx’s skepticism regarding morality, and particularly
regarding juridical concepts of fairness.
Richard Arneson
externalism and internalism
These terms have been used ambiguously to charac-
terize at least three positions concerning the relation
between morality and motivation. These positions
can be defined by the answers they give to two ques-
tions: (a) what confers the status of a reason for AC-
TION on a moral consideration? and (b) what is the
status thus conferred?
In answer to (a), externalists claim that it is con-
formity with the best moral theory, by whatever the
appropriate standards for evaluating such theories,
that confers the status of justifying reason for action
on a consideration. In answer to (b), they claim that
what is conferred is justification, and that whether
justifying reasons also motivate (are motivating
reasons) is a separate, and logically independent,
question.
The term ‘internalist’ has been used to refer to
two quite different sorts of theory, each giving a dif-
ferent answer to (a). One, deriving its inspiration
from Immanuel KANT (1724–1804), claims a moral
consideration is intrinsically a reason for action, and
someone fully aware of such a consideration must
acknowledge it as a reason for action. Nothing dis-
tinct from the consideration itself, in particular no
desire existing independently of an agent’s recogniz-
ing that the consideration obtains, confers this status
517
externalism and internalism
on it. On this view, moral considerations have a
property in the practical sphere analogous to a prop-
erty traditionally ascribed to “truths of reason.” Just
as conceiving such a truth was thought to be suffi-
cient for believing it, so, on this account, recognizing
a moral consideration is sufficient for having a rea-
son to act on it. The other version of internalism,
deriving from David HUME (1711–1776), claims
that independent MOTIVES, usually the antecedently
existing desires of the agent addressed, confer the
status of a reason for action on a consideration. On
this view the fact that an action is just, for example,
will give a reason for performing it only to those
agents who happen to desire to be just.
The internalism-externalism debate is sometimes
put in terms of action—by asking if desires are
needed to explain action, or if moral considerations
are sufficient. This leads some to think, mistakenly,
that the debate turns on the correctness of belief-
desire psychology. However, the question is not
whether a DESIRE is needed, but rather, whether, in
the ways sketched above, a desire independent of
moral considerations is needed.
It is unfortunate that theories so different as these
two versions of internalism should fall under a single
label, since this tends to mask the depth of the dis-
agreement between them. Indeed, since the Humean
internalist locates the source of motivation essential
to a moral consideration in something extrinsic to
the consideration itself, the Kantian internalist
would regard the Humean as an externalist; and con-
versely, since Kantians have typically held that con-
siderations qualify as reasons for action irrespective
of an agent’s antecedently existing desires, Humeans
have classified Kantians as externalists. But there is
a point to the terminology, despite the confusion it
has generated, for the Kantian and Humean agree
on (b): A reason for action justifies only if it moti-
vates, or would motivate, one who clearly grasped
it. Humeans hold this because they maintain that
reasons are desires or desires are necessary for a con-
sideration to be a reason for the agent; the Kantians
hold it because reasons generate motivation. For
both, the claim that a consideration is a reason for
action for someone commits one to the claim that
that person could not be fully informed, recognize
that consideration, and be completely indifferent to
it. (They differ on the fundamental issue of whether
desires generate reasons or vice versa.)
It would appear that many moral theories could
externalism and internalism
be allied with any of these accounts of reasons for
action. UTILITARIANISM in its earliest formulations
was grafted to Humean internalism, its moral eval-
uations being said to appeal to a universally shared
attitude of impartial BENEVOLENCE. At least since
JOHN STUART MILL (1806–1873), however, utilitar-
ians have tended to externalism, maintaining that
questions of motivation and justification raise sepa-
rate issues; contemporary utilitarians distinguish
them sharply. Indeed, on some versions of utilitari-
anism, what justifies an action, its conformity to the
principle of utility, not only need not but ought not
to motivate agents to perform it, since generally
agents are more likely to act in conformity with the
theory when motivated by other considerations,
such as FRIENDSHIP or LOYALTY.
Internalists and externalists about moral reasons
need not extend these views to other sorts of rea-
sons. It has been common to hold that externalism
gives the correct account of moral reasons, but Hu-
mean internalism gives the correct account of self-
interested reasons. To hold such a position is to
think that moral reasons, since they do not depend
on motives, may justifiably apply to an agent indif-
ferent to them, in a way in which self-interested rea-
sons do not. On the other hand, Philippa FOOT has
defended the view that externalism gives the right
account of self-interested reasons, while internalism
of a Humean sort gives the right account of moral
reasons. On this view, one’s own good gives one a
reason to act, whatever one’s actual motivation,
while morality gives one a reason to act only if one
happens to care about being moral.
Internalism has figured prominently in arguments
against MORAL REALISM and, more generally, as a
proposed constraint on moral theories. Internalism,
if accepted, would constrain moral theories by ruling
out those that do not, or could not, determine a per-
son’s reasons for conduct, and so are psychologically
unrealizable. Two things seem worth noting here.
First, supposing the internalist’s challenge is legiti-
mate, everything depends on precisely how it is for-
mulated. Formulated as the requirement that each
agent always be motivated by a candidate theory, for
example, the requirement is too stringent, and ar-
guably would rule out all moral theories. Other for-
mulations, for example, such as the requirement that
each agent would be motivated by the theory, were
that person rational and fully informed, are simply
unclear as to what, if anything, they rule out. There
518
are formulations that are otherwise defensible that
may well rule out no actual moral theory, as, for ex-
ample, the requirement that every minimally rational
agent have the capacity to be motivated to act on the
theory. It remains to be seen if any formulation of the
requirement is both independently plausible and rules
out any actual moral theory. Second, whether a par-
ticular moral theory fails this requirement is a broadly
empirical matter, with respect to which philosophers’
considered judgments have no special authority.
Let us understand by ‘moral realism’ the view
that there exist determinate moral requirements that
obtain by virtue of the instantiation of moral prop-
erties, this instantiation being a mind-independent
feature of the world. It is widely held that any mind-
independent feature of the world motivates contin-
gently. The externalist position sketched above, in
sharply separating motivation and justification, can
accommodate moral realism and this common belief
concerning motivation, for the externalist holds that
moral truths justify necessarily, but motivate contin-
gently. Similarly, the Humean internalism sketched
above is consistent with this form of realism, for it
holds that REASONS FOR ACTION necessarily motivate,
and is free to claim that there are mind-independent
moral truths that, where they fail to motivate, fail as
well to determine reasons for action. But there are,
as well, philosophers who have wanted to combine
moral realism with the view that moral considera-
tions necessarily determine reasons for action, and
reasons for action necessarily motivate anyone aware
of them. This has led them to challenge the view that
mind-independent features of the world motivate
contingently, holding, for example, that even if it is
possible, it is irrational not to be motivated by such
considerations; or to challenge the intelligibility of
the idea of a “mind-independent feature of the
world,” holding, for example, that because all con-
cepts depend on our theories or forms of life, both
nonethical and ethical concepts are mind-dependent.
See also: ACTION;
FOOT; FRANKENA; HUME; KANT;
METAETHICS; AND EPISTEMOLOGY;
METAPHYSICS
JOHN STUART MILL; MORAL REALISM; MORAL REA-
SONING; REASONS FOR ACTION; UTILITARIANISM;
WILLIAMS.
Bibliography
Cohon, Rachel. “Are External Reasons Impossible?”
Ethics 96 (1986): 545–56.

Darwall, Stephen L. Impartial Reason. Ithaca, NY: Cor-
nell University Press, 1983.
Falk, W. D. “Ought and Motivation.” Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society 48 (1947–48): 111–38. Introduc-
tion of the term ‘internalism.’ Reprinted in his Ought,
Reasons, and Morality (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1986).
Foot, Philippa. Virtues and Vices. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1978. For Foot’s combination of ex-
ternalism concerning self-interested reasons with in-
ternalism concerning moral reasons, see especially
“Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives.”
Frankena, William K. “Obligation and Motivation in Re-
cent Moral Philosophy.” In Perspectives on Morality,
edited by K. Goodpaster. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame
University Press, 1976. The earliest systematic survey
of the issue.
Hume, David. Treatise of Human Nature. [1737]. The
clearest statement on Hume’s internalism concerning
moral considerations, book II, part 3, section 3; book
III, part 1, section 1.
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Mor-
als. [1785]. See sections I–II.
519
externalism and internalism
Korsgaard, Christine. “Skepticism about Practical Rea-
son.” Journal of Philosophy 83 (1985): 5–25. Criticism
of Williams’s argument against externalism.
Mackie, J. L. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. Har-
mondsworth: Penguin, 1977. Internalism of a Kantian
sort seems to be presupposed in this attack on moral
realism; see Part 1.
Nagel, Thomas. The Possibility of Altruism. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1970. Nagel fixed the term ‘in-
ternalism’ in its current usage.
Robertson, John. “Internalism about Moral Reasons.” Pa-
cific Philosophical Quarterly 67 (1986): 124–35.
Smart, J. J. C., and Bernard Williams. Utilitarianism: For
and Against. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1973. Williams urges the externalism that utilitarian-
ism is committed to as an objection to it.
Stocker, Michael. “Desiring the Bad.” Journal of Philoso-
phy 76 (1979): 738–53.
Williams, Bernard. “Internal and External Reasons.” In his
Moral Luck. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
More arguments by Williams against externalism.
John Robertson
Michael Stocker
 F
fairness
The core concept of fairness, around which most of
the familiar uses of the idea revolve, is that of a cer-
tain kind of right-ordering of distributive processes
or practices. Fairness is a morally important prop-
erty of INSTITUTIONS, schemes, and activities (of all
levels of seriousness—from children’s games to in-
ternational politics), which concerns the propriety
of their distribution of benefits and burdens (e.g.,
punishments, income, RIGHTS, victory). While indi-
viduals and the outcomes of distributive processes
(in addition to the processes themselves) are also
referred to as fair or unfair, these uses seem largely
parasitic on the core concept. Fair persons are those
who possess traits of CHARACTER which lead them
to control distributive processes (such as trials or
contests) in a way which makes those processes fair.
Fair outcomes, similarly, seem to be (primarily, but
not exclusively) those which flow from fair pro-
cesses. The standard context in which problems of
fairness arise is one involving social cooperation
aimed at a mutually beneficial end, though consid-
erations of fairness clearly arise as well in nonvolun-
tary arrangements (and are even thought by some to
be relevant in contexts which are only remotely “dis-
tributive”—as when an untimely death or debilitat-
ing handicap is called unfair).
Fairness is strongly associated with ideas like
EQUALITY, PROPORTIONALITY, RECIPROCITY, IMPAR-
520
TIALITY, and justice. Thus, a “fair share” of the bene-
fits or burdens produced by joint activity is either an
equal share or a share which is proportional to one’s
possession of those properties which are relevant to
the distributive intent. A “fair trade” or a “fair fight”
is one conducted under conditions of rough equality.
Fairness in settling disputes is largely a matter of
impartiality and sensitivity to proportion. The reci-
procity evidenced in COMPROMISE, mutual consent
to terms, adherence to common rules, and forbear-
ance from COERCION is crucial to the fairness of
many kinds of arrangements. In all of these cases,
the moral meaning of fairness is at least loosely con-
nected with the nonmoral meanings of the term:
straightness, beauty, flawlessness, proper proportion
(as in “fair weather,” “fair of face,” “fair ball”).
Concerns with fairness obviously play a central
role in our social, economic, and political lives. On
the theoretical level, fairness is appealed to in eco-
nomics (as a constraint on efficiency), political sci-
ence (in theories of voting, representation, etc.), and
philosophy. Prominent theoretical employments of
the concept of fairness have been primarily contem-
porary, earlier generations of theorists having con-
centrated instead on related notions like justice or
equality. This is nowhere truer than in philosophical
ethics, where fairness emerged as an extremely im-
portant concern only in the second half of the twen-
tieth century. The most important recent uses of the
concept of fairness are found in:

Critiques of Utilitarianism
A longstanding complaint about utilitarian moral
theory has been its alleged inability to square its re-
quirements with those entailed by certain firmly en-
trenched, common sense moral convictions. One
such conviction emphasized in contemporary liter-
ature is that fairness requires that all participants in
a scheme be governed by the same rules, even where
making exceptions of some persons would maximize
overall utility (Lyons). The force of this intuitive
counterexample to UTILITARIANISM is diminished,
however, if fairness is taken to be only a moral goal
for cooperative schemes, rather than an absolute re-
quirement to which schemes must conform (since
departures from perfect fairness might then be jus-
tified by appeal to other goals—such as happiness-
maximization) (Scanlon). Furthermore, utilitarians
have argued that all that is interesting in ordinary
appeals to fairness can in fact be captured in utili-
tarian terms, appearances to the contrary notwith-
standing (Narveson, Griffin).
Analyses of the Concept of Justice
ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) claimed that “par-
tial” or “particular” justice—the justice concerned
with the distribution of honors or money—can best
be understood in terms of “the fair” (Nicomachean
Ethics, 1129–1131a). This connection between fair-
ness and justice was not fully exploited, however,
until John RAWLS proposed his theory of “justice as
fairness” in 1958. While Rawls does not equate fair-
ness and justice, he does argue that fairness is the
most basic and important idea in the concept of jus-
tice (and an aspect of justice for which utilitarianism
cannot account). The principles of justice are for
Rawls a kind of fair compromise, which express the
mutuality and noncoercive character of a reciprocal
association. More specifically, if we imagine a fair
initial situation in which free and equal persons bar-
gain about the principles to guide the basic institu-
tions of their society, the principles of justice are
those which would be chosen. Justice can be thought
of as the result of a hypothetical agreement among
individuals who are fairly situated. The many critics
of Rawls’s important work have seldom attacked the
connection between justice and fairness, concen-
trating rather on claims that neither the initial situ-
521
fairness
ation nor the resultant principles described by Rawls
are in fact fair to all.
Theories of Obligation
Traditionally, all voluntarily assumed moral obli-
gations were taken to be grounded in consent (PROM-
ISES, CONTRACTS). This view has been challenged by
the claim that considerations of fairness serve as an
independent source of individual obligation, not re-
ducible to consent (HART; Rawls, 1958, 1971). The
“principle of fairness (or fair-play)” states that when
persons are engaged in a mutually beneficial coop-
erative enterprise, involving rule-governed restric-
tions of LIBERTY, those who have restricted their lib-
erty to make possible the scheme’s benefits have a
right that other participants (who take these bene-
fits) follow the rules as well. Those who accept the
benefits of cooperative ventures have an obligation
to do their part (their “fair share”) within these ven-
tures, to refrain from unfairly “riding free” and tak-
ing advantage of the efforts of others. The principle
of fairness has been used to explain our political ob-
ligations, the obligation to keep promises, and even
obligations of veracity and GRATITUDE (Richards).
Libertarian defenders of the primacy of consent
have attacked the principle of fairness, as part of
their blanket rejection of all principles which allow
that new (i.e., nonconsensual) rights can emerge at
the group level. The principle of fairness either sanc-
tions tyrannical OPPRESSION of individuals by others
engaged in cooperative activities, or it collapses into
a principle of consent (NOZICK). Defenders of the
principle of fairness have argued in response for a
variety of modifications to or more explicit formu-
lations of the principle—e.g., for a stricter under-
standing of “acceptance” of benefits (Simmons), for
a closer approximation to property-style arguments
(Arneson), or for limits on the kinds of benefits
whose receipt can generate obligations (Klosko).
See also: CHARACTER; COMPETITION; COMPROMISE;
CONSENT; CONVENTIONS; COOPERATION, CONFLICT,
AND COORDINATION; DUTY AND OBLIGATION; ECO-
NOMIC SYSTEMS; EQUALITY; FITTINGNESS; HART; IM-
PARTIALITY; INSTITUTIONS; JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE;
NOZICK; OBEDIENCE TO LAW; POLITICAL CORRECT-
NESS; POLITICAL SYSTEMS; PROMISES; PROPORTION-
fairness
ALITY; PUNISHMENT; RAWLS; RECIPROCITY; RIGHTS;
SPORT; UTILITARIANISM.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Book V.
Arneson, Richard J. “The Principle of Fairness and Free-
Rider Problems.” Ethics 92 (1982): 616–33.
Becker, Lawrence C. Reciprocity. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1986.
Chapman, John W. “Justice and Fairness.” In Justice, ed-
ited by Carl J. Friedrich and John W. Chapman for the
American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy,
147–69. Nomos, 6. New York: Atherton Press, 1963.
Greenawalt, Kent. Conflicts of Law and Morality. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Chapter 7.
Griffin, James. “Some Problems of Fairness.” Ethics 96
(1985): 100–18. See Baier’s reply and Griffin’s re-
sponse in the same issue.
Hart, H. L. A. “Are There Any Natural Rights?” Philo-
sophical Review 64 (1955): 175–91. Section II.
Klosko, George. The Principle of Fairness and Political
Obligation. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992.
Lyons, David. Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1965. Chapter V.
Narveson, Jan. “An Overlooked Aspect of the Fairness-
Utility Controversy.” Journal of Value Inquiry 8 (1974):
124–30.
Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York:
Basic Books, 1974. Chapters 5 and 7.
Rawls, John. “Justice as Fairness.” Philosophical Review
67 (1958): 164–94.
———. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1971.
Richards, David A. J. A Theory of Reasons for Action. Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1971. Chapter 9.
Scanlon, T. M. “Rights, Goals, and Fairness.” In Conse-
quentialism and Its Critics, edited by Samuel Scheffler,
74–92. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Simmons, A. John. Moral Principles and Political Obli-
gations. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.
Chapter V.
A. John Simmons
family
In most philosophical commentary, “the family” has
meant a heterosexual couple, living within society
with children whom they have jointly conceived.
Hence, the focus has been on parental AUTHORITY
and responsibilities, children’s RIGHTS, and state
support, supervision, or intervention. These topics
522
encompass reproductive rights (“family planning”);
children’s MORAL DEVELOPMENT and education; child
abuse and neglect; parental decisions about pediat-
ric care; and adoptive and foster parenthood.
By adding to this nuclear family other biological
and legal relatives, contemporary and ancestral,
family ethics expands to include, for example, obli-
gations of aid or respect for people remote in time,
place, or affection. (What do we owe to grand-
parents we have rarely seen? Do we inherit the guilt
of wealthy ancestral slave-holders, or the honor of
courageous ancestral abolitionists? Are we respon-
sible for wayward nephews-by-marriage? What
claims may long-lost relatives renew upon their un-
expected return?)
But even without distant relatives, family ethics
has a growing agenda due to circumstances and criti-
cisms undermining the standard nuclear family it-
self. Widespread divorce and remarriage raise issues
of the definition and priority of a child’s “best inter-
ests” in custody decisions, and of various step-
relationships in “blended” families. A higher inci-
dence of infertility, fewer adoptions, and increasing
social acceptance of gay and lesbian parenting have
encouraged the increased use of assisted reproduc-
tive practice (egg and sperm donation/vending, in
vitro and other clinical fertilizations, contract ges-
tation or “maternal surrogacy”). Such “third-party”
involvements have provoked charges of biological
narcissism, adultery, blasphemous intrusion, and EX-
PLOITATION of poor women by rich infertile couples.
Other critics foresee parents pursuing “perfect” chil-
dren by means of multiplex prenatal genetic screen-
ing, selective abortions, and gene enhancements—
a threat, they think, to any child who fails her par-
ents’ high standards, as well as to disabled people
generally.
In addition there are feminist critiques of tradi-
tional marriage and father-ruled family life, as well
as increasing acceptance of alternative family forms.
Often by choice rather than misfortune, women are
rearing children alone, or with one or more other
women; so, too, to a lesser extent are men. All of
these alternative family arrangements pose complex
questions of children’s needs, parental responsibili-
ties, and the traditional sexual division of moral la-
bor. (Do children need both mothers and fathers?
Can women or men exemplify traditional paternal
virtues of FAIRNESS and COURAGE, as well as mater-
nal virtues of patience and forgiving kindness?)

Finally, there are long-standing charges of anti-
social effects of private family life. PLATO (c. 430–
347 B.C.E.), for example, thought that families made
people acquisitive and hence subverted devotion to
the public good. In his ideal republic, the class of
guardians would procreate and live communally:
there would be only one large family without psy-
chological or material subdivision. Less radical re-
formers would allow private households but limit
inheritance, thereby reducing the advantage that
family wealth confers on children. The issue of in-
heritance is but one aspect of the general issue of
familial favoritism, the kinds of preference family
membership requires or permits. To “be family” is
to be able to call on the help of other members when
in need. (“Home is where, when you have to go, they
have to take you in.”) Hence, the widespread TOL-
ERATION of nepotism, the favoring of family even in
public offices and benefits.
Such preferential practices offend socialists and
other egalitarians as transmitters of undeserved privi-
lege. They would have family members compete on
equal terms with needy or deserving others for fam-
ily resources; it would be morally indefensible for
parents to give their children luxuries and opportu-
nities which would be of far greater benefit to other
children in dire need. Admittedly, we may know bet-
ter how to benefit those with whom we live. But, on
the egalitarian view, this is the only advantage co-
habitants should enjoy over strangers in our deci-
sions of just distributions of benefits and harms.
Family favoritism also offends philosophers who
make IMPARTIALITY the mark of the moral. On their
view, such favoritism is a form of extended self-love,
or at best, primitive “tribal morality” little better
than the “kin altruism” which sociobiologists attri-
bute to social animals. Even if kin favoritism is our
biological bent, due to evolutionary genetic mecha-
nisms, we should strive to transcend its limits in uni-
versalizing concern for all human beings. Even if
blood is “thicker than water,” it carries no moral
weight.
There are at least two related forms of resistance
to such ethical impartialism. One appeals to a “par-
tialist” ethics which allows us to give special weight
to projects integral to our sense of self, to our IN-
TEGRITY, to the lives we lead. The other appeals to
“personalist” moral theories which make SYMPATHY,
intimacy, TRUST, or “caring labor” their central con-
cepts. Although these features of PERSONAL RELA-
523
family
TIONSHIPS are not limited to family members, they
do allow for gradations of response to the NEEDS of
others. Family ties could not justify indifference to
the welfare of other children, known or unknown,
but they would permit familial preferences which
“impartialism” seems to forbid.
Although partialist and personalist theories chal-
lenge the usual centrality of autonomy, fairness, and
rights in KANTIAN ETHICS, they do not deny their
practical importance for regulating family life. Within
a family there are often vast differences of power and
frequent occasions for its abuse. (It is significant that
monarchs have often been cast as fathers in the
fatherland; and, conversely, fathers cast as monarchs
in their private castles.) Intimacy can conceal such
abuses not only from the public, but (as with incest)
from its victims as well; hence the need for rights-
based principles and their application on behalf of
the more vulnerable members of families, typically,
those who are young, aged, infirm, or female.
If rights within a family are to protect the vulner-
able, then traditional division of moral labor and vir-
tue according to sex and age must be rejected. Abuse
of power becomes institutionalized when the more
powerful are made sole judges of injustice and the
more vulnerable are given a monopoly on patience,
FORGIVENESS, and forbearance. More abstractly, even
if the VIRTUES are not as unitary as classical Greeks
thought, justice without patience and forbearance is
a caricature both in family and public affairs.
Any program to overcome sexual stereotyping
with a “moral androgyny” in which family members
all cultivate the same virtues would meet strong
theoretical resistance. Traditionalists appeal to RE-
LIGION (“God ordains that women keep house so
that men may pray and study”), to psychodynamics
(“Girls must identify with, boys differentiate them-
selves from, their mothers”), or to sociobiology
(“Gene propagation favors a double standard of pro-
miscuity for males, but monogamy for females”).
Such appeals may seem to transgress the is/ought,
or fact/value borders. But commands of God the Fa-
ther, conditions of psychological health and matur-
ity, and “biological imperatives” usually enjoy dual
citizenship: for people who regard them as facts,
they carry great moral weight.
In sum, families, even narrowly defined, invite
complex charges of antisocial privatism, unjust fa-
voritism, and abusive sexism and heterosexism. In
understanding and assessing these criticisms and al-
family
ternative proposals, one must address religious, psy-
chological, biological, and political theories and con-
victions. Given the centrality of families in shaping
our morality and lives, this complexity is neither sur-
prising nor escapable. But if philosophy continues to
expand its scope, its ties to other disciplines, and its
opportunities for women, progress is likely. In the
past, family matters arose, if at all, in discussions of
education and politics—a reflection, perhaps, of the
fact that philosophers tend to think of children as
unruly pupils. Philosophers’ growing interest in prac-
tical ethics, social and feminist critiques, and law
should give family matters more room and light.
See also: ABORTION; ALTRUISM; AUTHORITY; CARE;
CHILDREN AND ETHICAL THEORY; EVOLUTION; EX-
PLOITATION; FEMINIST ETHICS; FRIENDSHIP; GAY
ETHICS; GENETIC ENGINEERING; GROUPS, MORAL
STATUS OF; HOMOSEXUALITY; IMPARTIALITY; INFAN-
TICIDE; JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE; LOVE; MORAL DEVEL-
OPMENT; MORAL EDUCATION; NARRATIVE ETHICS;
NEGLIGENCE; PARTIALITY; PATERNALISM; PERSONAL
RELATIONSHIPS; POWER; PRIVACY; PUBLIC AND PRI-
VATE MORALITY; REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES; RE-
SPONSIBILITY; RIGHT HOLDERS; SEXUAL ABUSE AND
HARASSMENT; SEXUALITY AND SEXUAL ETHICS; SYM-
PATHY; TRUST.
Bibliography
Archard, David. Children: Rights and Childhood. London:
Routledge, 1993. A critique of liberal accounts of
parent-child relations and a collectivist proposal for ex-
tending children’s rights.
Blustein, Jeffrey. Parents and Children: The Ethics of the
Family. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. A
liberal theory of parental obligations to meet children’s
needs and foster their autonomy.
Bubeck, Diemut. Care, Gender, and Justice. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1995. An economic and political analysis
of women’s traditional work of care in the family and
elsewhere.
Locke, John. The Second Treatise of Civil Government.
Edited by Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1963 [1689]. Chapter VI. A political
analysis of the limited scope and duration of parental
authority and children’s duty of obedience.
Okin, Susan Moller. Justice, Gender, and the Family. New
York: Basic Books, 1989. A critique and extension of
Rawlsian liberal theory to give women equal rights in
family matters.
O’Neill, Onora. “Children’s Rights and Children’s Lives.”
Ethics 98 (1988). A shift from political focus on chil-
524
dren’s rights to parental obligations of care, kindness,
and other contributions to “the genial play of life.”
Plato. Republic, Book V. Laws, Books VI:11, XI:24.
Ross, Jacob Joshua. The Virtues of the Family. New York:
Free Press/Macmillan 1994. An evolutionary defense
of traditional family patterns and sexual restraints
against criticisms by “individualist liberals.”
Ruddick, Sara. Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of
Peace. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995 [1989]. An analysis
of the kinds of thought and restraint that the demands
of childcare require within families and can foster in a
wider political domain.
Schoeman, Ferdinand. “Rights of Children, Rights of Par-
ents, and the Moral Basis of the Family.” Ethics 91
(1980). A psychological approach to family commit-
ments in terms of intimacy.
Anthologies
Aiken, William, and Hugh LaFollette, eds. Whose Child?
Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1980.
Houlgate, Laurence D., ed. Morals, Marriage, and Par-
enthood: An Introduction to Family Ethics. Belmont,
CA: Wadsworth, 1999.
Meyers, Diana Tietjens, Kenneth Kipnis, and Cornelius
Murphy Jr., eds. Kindred Matters: Rethinking the Phi-
losophy of the Family. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1993.
Nelson, Hilde Lindemann, ed. Feminism and Families.
New York: Routledge, 1996.
O’Neill, Onora, and William Ruddick, eds. Having Chil-
dren: Philosophical and Legal Reflections on Parent-
hood. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Parens, Erik, and Adrienne Asch, eds. Prenatal Testing
and Disability Rights. Washington, DC: Georgetown
University Press, 2000.
Scarre, Geoffrey, ed. Children, Parents, and Politics. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
William Ruddick
Fārābı̄, al- (870–950)
Generally known as “the second teacher,” that is,
second after Aristotle, Abū Nas. r al-Fārābı̄ must be
accounted the most important philosopher within
the Islamic tradition. His writings, charming and al-
luringly deceptive, are couched in remarkably simple
language with quite uncomplicated sentences. Most
often, he sets forth something resembling a narra-
tive, a story about the way things are—the natural
as well as the conventional—that is simply unobjec-
tionable. As the narrative unfolds, the reader slowly
begins to realize that al-Fārābı̄ has accounted for the
natural order, political leadership, prophecy, moral

virtue, civic order, the order of the sciences, even the
philosophic pursuits of PLATO (c. 430–347 B.C.E.)
or ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.)—in short, for all the
major subjects of interest to humans—in a com-
pletely unprecedented and seemingly unproblematic
manner. Frequently, the account explains the reasons
human beings live in civic association, how it can
best be ordered to meet the highest human needs,
the way most actual regimes differ from this best
order, and why philosophy and RELIGION deem this
order best.
These writings, extraordinary in their breadth as
well as their deep learning, extend through all of the
sciences and embrace every part of philosophy. Al-
Fārābı̄’s interest in mathematics is evidenced in
commentaries on the Elements of Euclid (fl. c. 300
B.C.E.) and Almagest of Ptolemy (second century
C.E.), as well as in several writings on the history
and theory of music. Indeed, his Large Book on Mu-
sic may well be the most significant work in Arabic
on that subject. He also wrote numerous commen-
taries on Aristotle’s logical writings, was knowl-
edgeable about the Stagirite’s physical writings, and
is credited with an extensive commentary on the Ni-
comachean Ethics that is no longer extant. In addi-
tion to writing accounts of Plato’s and Aristotle’s
philosophy, he composed a commentary on Plato’s
Laws.
As the first philosopher within Islam to explore
the challenge to traditional philosophy presented by
revealed religion, especially in its claims that the
Creator provides for human well-being by means of
an inspired prophet legislator, al-Fārābı̄ is justly
known as the founder of Islamic political philoso-
phy. In the Enumeration of the Sciences he sets forth
two accounts of the old political science. Both pre-
suppose the validity of the traditional separation be-
tween the practical and the theoretical sciences, but
neither is adequate for the radically new situation
created by the appearance of revealed religion. The
two accounts explain in detail the actions and ways
of life required for sound political rule to flourish,
but are utterly silent about opinions—especially the
kind of theoretical opinions set forth in religion—
and thus unable to point to the kind of rulership
needed now that religion holds sway. Nor can either
speak about the opinions or actions addressed by
the jurisprudence and theology of revealed religion.
These tasks require a political science that combines
theoretical and practical sciences along with PRU-
525
Fārābı̄, al-
DENCE and shows how they are to be ordered in the
soul of the ruler.
In his other writings al-Fārābı̄ develops this
broader political science. It speaks of religious be-
liefs as opinions and of acts of worship as actions,
noting that both are prescribed for a community by
a supreme ruler or prophet, and views religion as
centered in a political community whose supreme
ruler is distinct in no way from the founder of a re-
ligion. Indeed, the goals and prescriptions of the su-
preme ruler are identical to those of the prophet law-
giver. Everything said or done by this supreme ruler
finds constant justification in philosophy, and reli-
gion thus appears to depend on philosophy—theo-
retical as well as practical. Similarly, by presenting
the art of jurisprudence as a means to identify par-
ticular details the supreme ruler did not regulate be-
fore his death, al-Fārābı̄ makes it depend upon prac-
tical philosophy and thus to be part of this broader
political science.
See also: ARISTOTLE; CIVIC GOOD AND VIRTUE; CIVIL
RIGHTS AND CIVIC DUTIES; COMMON GOOD; ISLAM;
ISLAMIC ETHICS; LEGITIMACY; NARRATIVE ETHICS;
PLATO; POLITICAL SYSTEMS; PRUDENCE; RELIGION;
THEORY AND PRACTICE.
Bibliography
Works by al-Fārābı̄
Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Translated by
Muhsin Mahdi. Glencoe: The Free Press, 1962.
Enumeration of the Sciences. Translated by Fauzi M.
Najjar. In Medieval Political Philosophy: A Source-
book, edited by Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi, 22–
30. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1963.
Works about al-Fārābı̄
Butterworth, Charles E. “The Rhetorician and His Rela-
tionship to the Community: Three Accounts of Aris-
totle’s Rhetoric.” In Islamic Theology and Philosophy:
Studies in Honor of George F. Hourani, edited by Mi-
chael E. Marmura, 111–36. Albany: SUNY Press,
1984.
Mahdi, Muhsin S. “Alfarabi.” In History of Political Phi-
losophy, edited by Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey,
160–80. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963.
———. “Al-Farabi and the Foundation of Islamic Philos-
ophy.” In Islamic Philosophy and Mysticism, edited by
Fārābı̄, al-
Parviz Morewedge, 3–21. Delmar, NY: Caravan Books,
1981.
Charles E. Butterworth
fate and fatalism
Fatalism can be understood as the doctrine that it is
a logical or conceptual truth that agents are never
free to do other than what they actually do. Fatalism
is thus similar in result to some doctrines of predes-
tinationism and determinism. But what is distinctive
about fatalism is the claim that one can derive its
conclusion (that we are never free to do otherwise)
from logical or conceptual ingredients alone, rather
than from special, substantive assumptions (such as
that God exists or that causal determinism obtains).
And if we are never free to do other than what we
actually do, then our moral RESPONSIBILITY and even
personhood are threatened.
I shall distinguish two different kinds of argu-
ments for fatalism.
The Fixity of Truth
The first argument may be presented in the fol-
lowing way:
(1) Either it is now true that there will be a
nuclear war tomorrow, or it is now true that
there will not be a nuclear war tomorrow.
(2) If it is now true that there will be a nuclear
war tomorrow, then it is necessary and
thus unavoidable now that there will be a
nuclear war tomorrow.
(3) If it is now true that there will not be a
nuclear war tomorrow, then it is necessary
and thus unavoidable now that there will
not be a nuclear war tomorrow.
(4) Thus, it is either unavoidable now that
there will be a nuclear war tomorrow or
unavoidable now that there will not be a
nuclear war tomorrow; whether a nuclear
war takes place tomorrow is out of any-
one’s control now.
This argument is similar in certain respects to the
Sea Battle Argument discussed by ARISTOTLE (384–
322 B.C.E.) in De interpretatione 9, but scholars dif-
fer about how to interpret that passage.
526
One might reject the fixity of truth argument for
fatalism by rejecting either (1) or (2) and (3). Some
twentieth-century philosophers who deny (1), for
example Lukasiewicz, wish to deny what I shall call
the “principle of bivalence”: that any proposition is
either true or false at any given time. If bivalence is
denied, then one could deny (1), arguing that such
propositions as that there will be a nuclear war to-
morrow or that there will not be a nuclear war to-
morrow are now neither true nor false. This would
be to deny bivalence for “future contingent propo-
sitions.” Some philosophers who take this tack are
willing to accept the coherence of such locutions as,
“Proposition P is true at time T,” but they insist that
genuinely contingent propositions about the future
are not now “grounded” and thus are not now true
(or false). Others who deny bivalence, such as Van
Inwagen, believe that such locutions as “Proposition
P is true at time T ” are meaningless. And still others,
such as Prior, accept bivalence but insist that all fu-
ture contingents are false now.
Another approach to rejecting the fatalistic con-
clusion of the fixity-of-truth argument would be to
follow Fine in rejecting premises (2) and (3). This
move claims that it is inappropriate to infer from the
truth at T of some proposition P its necessity and
unavoidability. One way of motivating this move is
to say that the apparent plausibility of such premises
as (2) and (3) issues from a certain sort of conflation
of different claims. On this approach we are asked
to distinguish the following two distinct claims:
(2) If is now true that there will be a nuclear
war tomorrow, then it is now necessary
(and thus unavoidable) that there will be
a nuclear war tomorrow.
(2*) Necessarily (If it is now true that there
will be a nuclear war tomorrow, then
there will be a nuclear war tomorrow).
The claim is that whereas (2*) is true, (2) is false,
and clearly (2*) does not help to generate the fatal-
istic conclusion (4). Thus, the claim is that the plau-
sibility of (2) and thus the fatalist’s argument rests
on a failure to distinguish (2) from (2*).
Clearly, (2*) is a different claim than (2). Whereas
(2*) expresses the “necessity of the consequence”
(or the necessity of the conditional), (2) expresses
the “necessity of the consequent.” It would be un-
justified to infer the truth of (2) from the truth of

(2*). Might there be a way of justifying (2)? It is
hard to see how to justify (2), except insofar as one
believes that the current truth of a proposition im-
plies that current conditions “strongly ground” that
proposition, where strongly grounding is intuitively
sufficient for necessity and unavoidability. But if one
held this view, there would be considerable pressure
to reject the principle of bivalence and thus (1). It
is hard to see how one could motivate an acceptance
of all of the premises of the first argument for
fatalism.
The Fixity of the Past
The second kind of argument for fatalism is simi-
lar to one attributed to Diodorus Chronus (third
century B.C.E.).
(5) Suppose that I will raise my hand on
Tuesday.
Thus,
(6) It was true on Monday that I would raise
my hand on Tuesday.
And because the past is “fixed”—out of my con-
trol—it follows that
(7) I cannot on Tuesday refrain from raising
my hand on Tuesday.
This argument employs the idea of the fixity of the
past rather than the fixity of truth. The idea can be
put very roughly as follows: No one can ever act in
such a way that a fact about the past would not have
been a fact about the past.
Now one could reject the second argument by re-
jecting (6). But one could also reject it by holding
that our ordinary intuitive judgments about the fixity
of the past do not apply to such statements as (6).
For example, the fixity of the past clearly implies that
on Tuesday it is not up to me whether I got out of
bed at 8:00 A.M. on Monday: The fact that I got out
of bed at 8:00 A.M. on Monday is “fixed” on Tuesday.
In contrast, it is not so clear that a fact about Mon-
day such as that it is true on Monday that I would
raise my hand on Tuesday is “fixed” on Tuesday: This
sort of fact is, intuitively, not “solely about Monday”
but rather also about Tuesday, and thus it should not
527
fate and fatalism
be subsumed under the principle of the fixity of the
past. Thus, whereas the second argument for fatal-
ism is interestingly different from the first, it is ul-
timately no less problematic.
The second fatalistic argument is similar to a fam-
ily of arguments for the incompatibility of causal de-
terminism and freedom to do otherwise, insofar as
those arguments also proceed from the notion of the
fixity of the past. But the incompatibilistic argu-
ments are more powerful because the fixity-of-the-
past claims they make are more plausible than those
made by the second fatalistic argument; they claim
that certain facts solely about prior times are fixed
(Van Inwagen). Fatalism, it seems to me, is less plau-
sible and threatening than incompatibilism.
See also: CAUSATION AND RESPONSIBILITY; CONSE-
QUENTIALISM; DELIBERATION AND CHOICE; EXCUSES;
FREE WILL; FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM; POSSIBIL-
ISM; RESPONSIBILITY.
Bibliography
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———. “Truth and Necessity in De interpretatione 9.”
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———. Time and Modality. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
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Widerker, David. “Fatalism.” Logique et analyse 119
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John Martin Fischer
feminist ethics
Feminist approaches to ethics, often known collec-
tively as feminist ethics, are distinguished by an ex-
plicit commitment to correcting male biases they
perceive in traditional ethics, biases that may be
manifest in rationalizations of women’s subordina-
tion, or in disregard for, or disparagement of,
women’s moral experience. Feminist ethics, by con-
trast, begins from the convictions that the subordi-
nation of women is morally wrong and that the
moral experience of women is as worthy of respect
as that of men. On the practical level, then, the goals
of feminist ethics are the following: first, to articu-
late moral critiques of actions and practices that per-
petuate women’s subordination; second, to pre-
scribe morally justifiable ways of resisting such
actions and practices; and, third, to envision morally
desirable alternatives that will promote women’s
emancipation. On the theoretical level, the goal of
feminist ethics is to develop philosophical accounts
of the nature of morality and of the central moral
concepts that treat women’s moral experience re-
spectfully, though never uncritically.
Just as feminist ethics may be identified by its ex-
plicit commitment to challenging perceived male
bias in ethics, so approaches that do not express
such a commitment may be characterized as non-
feminist. Nonfeminist approaches to ethics are not
necessarily anti-feminist or male-biased; they may or
may not be so.
The Development of Contemporary
Feminist Ethics
The history of Western philosophy includes a
number of isolated but indisputable instances of
moral opposition to women’s subordination. Note-
worthy examples are Mary WOLLSTONECRAFT’s
(1759–1797) A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
(1792), JOHN STUART MILL’s (1806–1873) The
Subjection of Women (1869), Frederick ENGELS’
(1820–1895) The Origin of the Family, Private
Property and the State (1884), and Simone DE BEAU-
VOIR’S (1908–1986) The Second Sex (1949).
528
In the late 1960s, however, as part of a general
resurgence of feminist activism, an unprecedented
explosion of feminist ethical debate occurred, first
among the general public, soon in academic dis-
course. Actions and practices whose gendered dimen-
sions hitherto had been either unnoticed or unchal-
lenged now became foci of public and philosophical
attention, as feminists subjected them to outspoken
moral critique, developed sometimes dramatic strat-
egies for opposing them, and proposed alternatives
that nonfeminists often perceived as dangerously
radical. First grassroots and soon academic feminist
perspectives were articulated on topics such as
ABORTION, equality of opportunity, domestic labor,
portrayals of women in the media, and a variety of
issues concerning sexuality, such as RAPE and com-
pulsory heterosexuality. By the 1980s, feminists
were expressing ethical concern about PORNOGRA-
PHY, reproductive technology, so-called surrogate
motherhood, militarism, the environment, and the
situation of women in developing nations.
Despite the long history of feminist ethical de-
bate, the term “feminist ethics” did not come into
general use until the late 1970s or early 1980s. At
this time, a number of feminists began expressing
doubts about the possibility of fruitfully addressing
so-called women’s issues in terms of the conceptual
apparatus supplied by traditional ethical theory. For
instance, some feminists alleged that a rights frame-
work distorted discussions of abortion because it
construed pregnancy and motherhood as adversarial
situations. Other feminists charged that certain as-
sumptions widely accepted by traditional ethical the-
ory were incompatible with what was now beginning
to be claimed as a distinctively feminine moral ex-
perience or sensibility. SOCIAL CONTRACT theory, for
instance, was criticized for postulating a conception
of human individuals as beings who were free, equal,
independent, and mutually disinterested, a concep-
tion that some feminists claimed reflected an expe-
rience and perspective that were characteristically
masculine. Even IMPARTIALITY, usually taken as a
defining feature of morality, became the object of
feminist criticism insofar as it was alleged to gener-
ate prescriptions counter to many women’s moral
intuitions. Some feminists began to speculate that
traditional ethics was more deeply male-biased and
needed more fundamental rethinking than they had
realized hitherto.
Such reflection was fueled by the much-publicized

work of developmental psychologist Carol Gilligan,
whose 1982 book, In a Different Voice: Psycholog-
ical Theory and Women’s Development, seemed to
demonstrate empirically that the MORAL DEVELOP-
MENT of women was significantly different from that
of men. Claiming that females tend to fear separa-
tion or abandonment while males, by contrast, tend
to perceive closeness as dangerous, Gilligan re-
ported that girls and women often construe MORAL
DILEMMAS as conflicts of responsibilities rather than
of RIGHTS and seek to resolve those dilemmas in
ways that will repair and strengthen webs of rela-
tionship. Furthermore, Gilligan described females as
less likely than males to make or justify moral deci-
sions by the application of abstract MORAL RULES;
instead, she claimed that girls and women were
more likely to act on their feelings of LOVE and com-
passion for particular individuals. Gilligan con-
cluded that whereas men typically adhere to a mo-
rality of justice, whose primary values are FAIRNESS
and EQUALITY, women often adhere to a morality of
CARE, whose primary values are inclusion and pro-
tection from harm. For this reason, studies of moral
development based exclusively on a morality of jus-
tice do not provide an appropriate standard for mea-
suring female moral development and may be said
to be male-biased.
Many feminists seized on Gilligan’s work as of-
fering evidence for the existence of a characteristi-
cally feminine approach to morality, an approach
assumed to provide the basis for a distinctively femi-
nist ethics. For some, indeed, feminist ethics became
and remained synonymous with an ethics of care.
Just how an ethics of care should be delineated, how-
ever, was far from evident; nor was it clear whether
it should supplement or supplant an ethics of justice.
Since the 1980s, many feminists have explored such
questions, even though the empirical connection be-
tween women and care has been challenged by some
psychologists, who allege Gilligan’s samples to be
nonrepresentative, her methods of interpreting her
data suspect, and her claims impossible to substan-
tiate, especially when the studies are controlled for
occupation and class.
Regardless of empirical findings in MORAL PSY-
CHOLOGY, debate continues over whether the fun-
damental tenets of Western ethics are male biased in
some sense: if not in the sense that they express a
moral sensibility characteristic of men rather than
women, then perhaps in that they promote a cultur-
529
feminist ethics
ally masculine image of moral psychology, discour-
age preoccupation with issues defined culturally as
feminine, or in other ways covertly advance men’s
interests over women’s. Since feminism is essentially
a normative stance, and since its meaning is contin-
ually contested by feminists themselves, all feminists
are constantly engaged in ethical reflection; in this
sense, feminist ethics is practiced both inside and
outside the academy. Within the academy, its prac-
titioners are scholars located mainly in the disci-
plines of philosophy, religious studies, and jurispru-
dence; they represent a variety of philosophical
traditions, secular and religious, Anglo-American
and continental European. In challenging perceived
male bias in those traditions, feminist scholars often
draw extensively on feminist work in other disci-
plines, such as literature, history, and PSYCHOLOGY.
Scholarly work in feminist ethics often is also re-
sponsive to the ethical reflections of nonacademic
feminists as these occur, for instance, in much femi-
nist fiction and poetry. In addition, a considerable
body of nonfiction, written by nonacademics and di-
rected towards a nonacademic audience, presents it-
self as feminist ethics. Popular feminist books and
journals frequently engage in ethical consideration
of moral or PUBLIC POLICY issues and sometimes also
offer more general discussions of supposedly “mas-
culine” and “feminine” value systems.
Much of the work in feminist ethics has been
done by white Western women, but this is slowly
changing. A few male philosophers are doing signifi-
cant work in feminist ethics, and people of color are
making increasing contributions, both within and
outside the discipline of philosophy, although they
sometimes hesitate to accept the label “feminist,” be-
cause of feminism’s racist history.
Feminist Criticisms of Western Ethics
Since most feminist ethics is done in a Western
context, it is Western ethics, particularly (though not
exclusively) the European Enlightenment tradition,
that has been the most frequent target of feminist
critique. The feminist challenges to this tradition may
be grouped conveniently under five main headings.
Lack of concern for women’s interests. Many of
the major theorists, such as ARISTOTLE (384–322
B.C.E.) and ROUSSEAU (1712–1778), are accused of
having given insufficient consideration to women’s
INTERESTS, a lack of concern expressed theoretically
feminist ethics
by their prescribing for women allegedly feminine
virtues such as obedience, silence, and faithfulness.
Some feminists charge that many contemporary eth-
ical discussions continue the tendency to regard
women as instrumental to male-dominated INSTI-
TUTIONS, such as the FAMILY or the state; in debates
on abortion, for instance, the pregnant woman may
be portrayed as little more than a container or en-
vironment for the fetus, while much discussion of
reproductive technology has assumed that infertility
is a problem only for heterosexual married women,
i.e., women defined in relationship to men.
Neglect of “women’s issues.” Issues of special
concern to women are said to have been ignored by
modern moral philosophers, who have tended to
portray the domestic realm as an arena outside the
economy and beyond justice, private in the sense of
being beyond the scope of legitimate political regu-
lation. Within the modern liberal tradition, the pub-
lic domain is conceived as properly regulated by uni-
versal principles of right whereas the private is a
domain in which varying goods may properly be pur-
sued. Even philosophers like Aristotle or HEGEL
(1770–1831), who give some ethical importance to
the domestic realm, have tended to portray the home
as an arena in which the most fully human excel-
lences cannot be realized. Feminist philosophers be-
gan early to criticize this conceptual bifurcation of
social life. They pointed out that the home was pre-
cisely that realm to which women had been confined
historically, and that it had become symbolically as-
sociated with the feminine, despite the fact that
heads of households were paradigmatically male.
They argued that the philosophical devaluation of
the domestic realm made it impossible to raise ques-
tions about the justice of the domestic division of
labor, because it obscured the far-reaching social sig-
nificance and creativity of women’s work in the
home, and concealed, even legitimated, the domestic
abuse of women and girls.
Denial of women’s moral agency. Women’s
moral agency is said to have often been denied, not
simply by excluding women from moral debate or
ignoring their contributions, but through philosoph-
ical claims to the effect that women lack moral rea-
son. Such claims were made originally by Aristotle,
but they have been elaborated and refined by mod-
ern theorists such as Rousseau, KANT (1724–1804),
Hegel, and Freud (1856–1939).
Depreciation of “feminine” values. Western
moral theory is said to embody values that are “mas-
530
culine,” insofar as they are culturally associated with
men. Such associations may be empirical, norma-
tive, or symbolic. For instance, Western ethics is al-
leged to prioritize the supposedly masculine values
of independence, autonomy, intellect, will, wariness,
hierarchy, domination, culture, transcendence, prod-
uct, asceticism, war, and death over the supposedly
feminine values of interdependence, community,
connection, sharing, EMOTION, body, TRUST, absence
of hierarchy, nature, immanence, process, joy, peace,
and life. Claims like this are common in both pop-
ular and academic feminist writings on ethics.
Devaluation of women’s moral experience. Fi-
nally, some feminists also charge that prevailing
Western conceptualizations of the nature of moral-
ity, moral problems, and MORAL REASONING are
masculine insofar as they too are associated with
men, rather than women, in associations that again
may be empirical, symbolic, or normative. For in-
stance, feminists have accused modern moral theory
of being excessively preoccupied with rules, ob-
sessed with impartiality, and exclusively focussed on
discrete deeds. In addition, feminists have charged
modern moral theory with taking the contract as the
paradigmatic moral relation and construing moral
rationality so narrowly as to exclude emotions of as-
sessment, sometimes called moral emotions. All
these characteristics have been asserted to be mas-
culine in some sense. A feminine (not feminist) ap-
proach to ethics, by contrast, has been supposed to
avoid assuming that individuals ordinarily are free,
equal, and independent; to take more account of the
specificities of particular contexts; and to be more
likely to resolve moral dilemmas by relying on em-
pathic feeling rather than by appealing to rules.
Not all feminists endorse all of the above clusters
of criticisms—and even where they agree with the
general statement, they may well disagree over its
applicability in the case of specific philosophers or
debates. Despite differences of relative detail, femi-
nists tend generally to agree on the first three clus-
ters of criticisms, whose correction seems not only
attainable in principle within the framework of En-
lightenment moral theory but even to be required by
that framework. However, they disagree sharply on
the last two clusters of criticisms, especially the fifth,
which obviously contains clear parallels with a num-
ber of nonfeminist criticisms of Enlightenment ethics
made by proponents of, for example, SITUATION

ETHICS, VIRTUE ETHICS, COMMUNITARIANISM, and
POSTMODERNISM.
Common Misconstruals of Feminist Ethics
Feminist ethics has sometimes been construed,
both by some of its proponents and some of its crit-
ics, as a simple inversion of the criticisms listed
above. In other words, it has sometimes been iden-
tified with one or more of the following: putting
women’s interests first; focusing exclusively on so-
called women’s issues; accepting women (or femi-
nists) as moral experts or authorities; substituting
“female” (or feminine) for “male” (or masculine)
values; or extrapolating directly from women’s moral
experience. These characterizations of feminist ethics
are sufficiently pervasive that it is worth noting just
why they cannot be correct.
1. Putting women’s interests first occasionally has
been recommended as a way of achieving a “woman-
centered” ethics that transcends the covert bias of a
supposed HUMANISM grounded in fact on male
NORMS. Whatever might be said for or against this
recommendation, it cannot be definitive of feminist
ethics because the formula, as it stands, raises more
questions than it answers. It fails to specify not only
which women’s interests should be preferred over
which men’s (or children’s) and in what circum-
stances, but also what should be done about con-
flicts of interest between women and even how in-
terests should be identified at all. Most obviously,
feminist ethics cannot be identified with “putting
women’s interests first” simply because many femi-
nists would refuse to accept and, indeed, be morally
outraged by what they would perceive as blatant
PARTIALITY and immorality.
2. Feminist ethics certainly addresses issues of
special concern to women that have been neglected
by modern moral theory, but it cannot be identified
with an exclusive focus on such issues. This is partly
because nonfeminists as well as feminists have ad-
dressed these issues—and, indeed, are doing so in-
creasingly as feminism grows stronger and more ar-
ticulate. It is also because feminism rejects the
notion that moral issues can be divided cleanly into
those that are and those that are not of special con-
cern to women. On the one hand, since men’s and
women’s lives are inextricably intertwined, there are
no “women’s issues” that are not also men’s issues;
for instance, the availability or nonavailability of
531
feminist ethics
child care and abortion has significant consequences
for the lives of men as well as women. On the other
hand, since men and women typically are not what
lawyers call “similarly situated” relative to each
other, it is difficult to think of any moral or public
policy (“human”) issue in which women do not have
a special interest. For instance, such “human” issues
as war, peace, and world hunger have special signif-
icance for women because the world’s hungry are
disproportionately women (and children), because
women are primarily those in need of the social ser-
vices neglected to fund military spending, and be-
cause women suffer disproportionately from war
and benefit relatively little from militarism and the
weapons industries. For these reasons, it would be
a mistake to identify feminist ethics with attention
to some explicitly gendered subset of ethical issues.
On the contrary, rather than being limited to a re-
stricted ethical domain, feminist ethics has enlarged
the traditional concerns of ethics, both through
identifying previously unrecognized ethical issues
and by introducing fresh perspectives on issues al-
ready acknowledged as having an ethical dimension.
3. Feminist ethics certainly is being developed by
feminists, most of whom are women, but this does
not imply, of course, that any woman, or even any
feminist, should be regarded as a moral expert
whose moral AUTHORITY is beyond question. Not
only are there deep disagreements among women
and even among feminists such that it would be dif-
ficult to know whom to select as an expert, but many
painful examples of failed insight or principle on the
part of feminist leaders demonstrate only too clearly
that no woman, or feminist, is morally infallible.
4. There are also serious difficulties with thinking
of feminist ethics as the substitution of female or
feminine for male or masculine values. These diffi-
culties include problems with establishing that any
values are male or female in the sense of being gen-
erally held by men or women, when both women’s
and men’s values vary so much, both within cultures
as well as across them. Similar problems confront
attempts to establish that certain values are mascu-
line or feminine in the sense of being considered so-
cially appropriate for individuals of one gender or
the other. Again, norms of masculinity and feminin-
ity vary not only between societies but even within
the same society along such axes as class and eth-
nicity: some social groups, for instance, value physi-
cal health, strength, or athletic prowess in women;
feminist ethics
others value physical fragility, weakness, or incom-
petence. Even if certain values could be identified in
some sense as male or female, masculine or femi-
nine, the conclusive objection to identifying feminist
ethics with the elaboration of female or feminine val-
ues is that the feminine is not necessarily the femi-
nist. Indeed, since the feminine typically has been
constructed in circumstances of male domination, it
is likely to be quite opposed to the feminist. Personal
charm, for example, may be valued not only in
women but also by them; even if charm were, in
these senses, a feminine value, however, it would
seem at least as likely to undermine feminist goals
as to promote them.
5. Similar problems apply to defining feminist
ethics as the systematic extrapolation of women’s
moral experience, exclusive of men’s. While no ap-
proach to morality can be adequate if it ignores the
moral experience of women, it is most unlikely that
women generally are similar enough to each other
and different enough from men that a single distinc-
tively female or feminine approach to ethics can be
identified. Attempts to establish such an identifica-
tion frequently commit the fallacy of generalizing
about the experience of all or most women from the
moral experience of some women; this seems to have
been one flaw at least in Gilligan’s earlier work.
Again, even if a distinctively feminine approach to
morality could be identified, perhaps in terms of
symbolic or normative connections with women
rather than empirical ones, there is no reason to sup-
pose that such an approach would be feminist. In-
deed, given the feminist commitment to a critical
rethinking of cultural constructions of both mascu-
linity and femininity, there is good prima facie rea-
son to suppose that it would not.
Minimum Conditions of Adequacy for
Feminist Ethics
Even though feminist ethics is far broader and
more open than it appears in the foregoing miscon-
struals, its goals are sufficiently specific, especially
when taken in conjunction with its criticisms of tra-
ditional ethics, as to generate certain minimum con-
ditions of adequacy for any approach to ethics that
purports to be feminist.
1. First of all, feminist ethics can never begin by
assuming that women and men are similarly situ-
ated—although it may discover that some women
532
are situated similarly with some men in specific re-
spects or contexts. In addition, not only does femi-
nist ethics need constant vigilance to detect subtle
as well as blatant manifestations of gender privilege,
it must also be sensitive to the ways in which gen-
dered norms are different for different groups of
women—or in which the same norms, such as a cul-
tural preference for slimness or blondness, affect dif-
ferent groups of women differently. Ultimately fem-
inism’s concern for all women means that feminist
ethics must address not only “local” issues of racism
or homophobia or class privilege but also such
global issues as environmental destruction, war, and
access to world resources.
2. In order to develop guides to action that will
tend to subvert rather than reinforce the systematic
subordination of women, feminist approaches to
ethics must understand individual actions in the
context of broader social practices, evaluating the
symbolic and cumulative implications of individual
ACTION as well as its immediately observable con-
sequences. They must be equipped to recognize co-
vert as well as overt manifestations of domination,
subtle as well as blatant forms of control, and they
must develop sophisticated accounts of COERCION
and CONSENT. Similarly, they must provide the con-
ceptual resources for identifying and evaluating the
varieties of resistance and struggle in which women,
particularly, have engaged. They must recognize the
often unnoticed ways in which women and other
members of the underclass have refused cooperation
and opposed domination, while acknowledging the
inevitability of collusion and the impossibility of to-
tally clean hands. In short, feminist approaches to
ethics must be transitional and nonutopian, often
extensions of, rather than alternatives to, feminist
political theory, exercises in non-ideal rather than
ideal theory.
3. Since most of most women’s lives have been
excluded from that domain conceptualized as pub-
lic, a third requirement for feminist approaches to
ethics is that they should be salient to issues of so-
called private life, such as intimate relations, sexu-
ality, and child rearing. Thus, they must articulate
the moral dimensions of issues that may not hitherto
have been recognized as moral. In addition, we have
seen that feminist approaches to ethics must provide
appropriate guidance for dealing with national and
international issues, strangers and foreigners. In de-
veloping the conceptual tools for undertaking these

tasks, feminist ethics cannot assume that moral con-
cepts developed originally for application to the so-
called public realm, concepts such as impartiality or
EXPLOITATION, are appropriate for use in the so-
called private; neither can it assume that concepts
such as care, developed in intimate relationships,
will necessarily be helpful in the larger world. In-
deed, the whole distinction between public and pri-
vate life must be examined critically by feminist
ethics, with no prior assumptions as to whether the
distinction should be retained, redrawn, or rejected.
4. Finally, feminist ethics must take the moral ex-
perience of all women seriously, though not, of
course, uncritically. Although what is feminist often
will turn out to be very different from what is fem-
inine, a basic respect for women’s moral experience
is necessary to acknowledging women’s capacities as
moral subjects and to countering traditional stereo-
types of women as less than full moral agents, as
childlike or close to nature. Furthermore, empirical
claims about differences in the moral sensibility of
women and men make it impossible to assume that
any approach to ethics will be unanimously accepted
if it fails to consult the moral experience of women.
Additionally, it seems plausible to suppose that
women’s distinctive social experience may make
them especially perceptive regarding the implica-
tions of domination, especially gender domination,
and especially well equipped to detect the male bias
that feminists believe has pervaded so much of male-
authored Western moral theory.
Most feminist, and perhaps even many nonfem-
inist, philosophers might well find the general state-
ment of these conditions quite uncontroversial, but
they will inevitably disagree sharply over when the
conditions have been met. Not only may feminists
disagree with nonfeminists, but they are likely even
to differ with each other over, for instance, what are
women’s interests, what are manifestations of domi-
nation and coercion, how resistance should be ex-
pressed, and which aspects of women’s moral expe-
rience are worth developing and in which directions.
Those who practice feminist ethics thus may be
seen both as united by a shared project and as di-
verging widely in their views as to how this project
may be accomplished. Their divergences result from
a variety of philosophical differences, including dif-
fering conceptions of feminism itself, which, as we
have seen, is a constantly contested concept. The
inevitability of such divergence means that feminist
533
feminist ethics
ethics can never be identified in terms of a specific
range of topics, methods, or orthodoxies. While
feminist ethics is distinguished by its explicit com-
mitment to developing approaches to ethics that will
respect women’s moral experience and avoid ration-
alizing women’s subordination, attempts to define it
more precisely or substantively than this are likely
to disregard the richness and variety of feminist
moral thinking and prematurely foreclose feminist
moral debates.
Current Concerns in Feminist Ethics
Since the 1970s, feminists have made significant
contributions to both practical and theoretical ethics.
Because it is impossible to offer anything like a com-
prehensive survey of this work in the space avail-
able, this article will end by sketching a few illustra-
tive examples of feminist work designed to counter
male bias in ethics. Much of this work draws on the
culturally feminine as a resource for reconceiving eth-
ical norms or standards thought to be androcentric.
Giving equal weight to women’s interests. Eigh-
teenth and nineteenth century feminist philosophers,
such as Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill,
responded to the fact that Western ethics had often
accorded less weight to women’s interests than to
men’s by demanding that women receive the same
rights and privileges bestowed on men. They con-
ceptualized sexual equality as formal equality; that
is, as identity of treatment for both men and women
under gender-blind laws. Their twentieth-century
successors sought to enshrine this understanding of
sexual equality in the U.S. Constitution via an Equal
Rights Amendment (passed by Congress in 1972, it
was not ratified by the minimum number of states)
that would have made any sex specific law uncon-
stitutional.
Formal equality does not necessarily result in sub-
stantive equality, however. Feminist work in practi-
cal ethics is characterized by its use of gender as a
category of ethical analysis and its employment of this
category has revealed that many formally gender-
blind policies and practices are not gender-neutral
in their outcomes but instead have a disproportion-
ately negative impact on women. Many illustrations
could be added to the examples of war, peace, and
world hunger, noted above; for instance, women, es-
pecially poor women, are among those hardest hit
by seemingly gender-blind economic policies, such
feminist ethics
as structural adjustment measures; similarly, envi-
ronmental degradation often has more serious con-
sequences for women, especially for mothers, than
it does for men. Such systematically gendered out-
comes suggest that construing sexual equality in
purely formal terms may be inadequate for reaching
substantive sexual equality. Because norms of gen-
der situate women differently from men in most so-
cial contexts across the world, substantive equality
may require establishing policies and practices that
are gender-sensitive or gender-responsive rather than
gender-blind.
Formulating policies and practices that respond
appropriately to gender differences is controversial
and complicated. For instance, providing women
with special legal protections such as pregnancy and
maternity leaves may promote a public perception
that women are less reliable workers than men. At-
tempts to protect women’s sexuality by restricting
pornography or excluding women from employment
in male institutions such as prisons may have the
unintended consequence of perpetuating the cultural
myth that women are by nature the sexual prey of
men; by suggesting that sexual harassment and as-
sault are in some sense natural, this myth implicitly
legitimates these practices. Thus, gender-responsive
interpretations of sexual equality may not only pro-
voke an anti-feminist backlash, they may even un-
dermine the prospects of long-term sexual equality
by stigmatizing women’s competences. In addition,
although gender-responsive conceptions of equality
are intended to reflect sensitivity to differences in the
circumstances of men and women in general, they
are sometimes insensitive to differences in the social
situations of different women. They may fail to no-
tice that broad social groups, like men and women,
are characterized by internal differences that are sys-
tematic as well as individual, following the fault lines
of other social divisions such as race and class. Thus,
these conceptions are sometimes responsive to gen-
dered differences in need that are characteristic of
only some men and women but not of all; often those
taken as paradigms are men and women from more
privileged classes; for instance, a feminist demand
that child care be provided for mothers in paid em-
ployment may be used to discredit other mothers’
claims to welfare support.
Some contemporary feminists seek to avoid the
horns of the so-called equality/difference dilemma
by questioning its underlying assumptions about the
534
normative individual who is taken as the standard
against which others’ equality is measured. These
feminists argue that equal concern for women’s in-
terests requires reassessing major social institutions
on the presumption that their users are likely to be
women—including women who are not otherwise
privileged. The revised institutions would still be
formally gender-blind but they would not be de-
signed primarily for people who were able-bodied
and fully employed, people unlikely to be subjected
to sexual assault or harassment, people without re-
sponsibilities for the primary care of dependents
such as children or elders. For instance, they might
offer workers paid leaves to enable them to care for
family members or they might provide child care on
the same basis as public schooling. If social policies
and practices were revised according to a principle
of what Christine A. Littleton calls “equality of ac-
ceptance,” sex differences could become socially
“costless.”
Broadening the domain of ethics. In response to
their recognition that mainstream, especially mod-
ern, Western ethics has defined the moral domain in
such a way as to exclude many issues of special con-
cern to women, contemporary feminists have sought
to expand the ethical arena. In some cases, their
questions have generated whole new bodies of re-
search, such as feminist environmentalism and femi-
nist BIOETHICS. Issues that feminists have identified
as morally problematic include: abortion; sexuality,
including compulsory heterosexuality, sexual harass-
ment, and rape; representations of masculinity and
femininity, including those produced by the MASS
MEDIA and pornography; the domestic division of
labor; self-presentation, including body image and
fashion; and the role of language in reinforcing as
well as reflecting women’s subordination. Although
these issues received little attention from mainstream
ethics until recent years, all have significant impli-
cations for women’s lives, to the extent that they
sometimes involve matters of life and death for
women. As noted earlier, feminists resist character-
izing such issues as exclusively women’s issues; in-
stead, by presenting them as hitherto neglected hu-
man issues, they broaden previous conceptions of
normative human experience.
Rethinking the moral subject. Feminists’ first re-
sponse to Western philosophy’s disparagement of
women’s moral subjectivity was to insist on women’s
capacity for moral autonomy and rationality, soon,

however, they began to question prevailing under-
standings of autonomy, rationality, and even subjec-
tivity. With respect to autonomy, for instance, femi-
nist concern about women’s collaborations with
male dominance and consequent interest in the so-
cial construction of gendered character structures
provided insight into many ways in which choice can
be socialized and consent manipulated. Some femi-
nists have faulted much modern moral philosophy
for failing to recognize that autonomy cannot be as-
sumed but instead is an achievement with complex
material and social preconditions.
Conceptions of moral subjectivity that privilege
autonomy are especially characteristic of the Euro-
pean Enlightenment; they derive from the Cartesian
model of the self as disembodied, asocial, unified,
rational, and essentially similar to all other selves. In
developing alternatives to this conception, some
feminists have drawn on traditions such as MARX-
ISM, PSYCHOANALYSIS, communitarianism and post-
modernism; others have been influenced by the
work of Carol Gilligan, who postulated that girls and
women were more likely than boys and men to con-
ceive themselves in relational terms. Viewing one-
self as integrally related to others is said to promote
systematically different moral preoccupations from
those that have characterized much mainstream
Western ethics, particularly modern ethics; for in-
stance, such a view of the self encourages women to
construe moral dilemmas as conflicts of responsi-
bilities rather than rights. Many feminist philoso-
phers argue that a relational conception of moral
subjectivity is not only more adequate empirically
than an atomistic model but that it also generates
moral values and a conception of moral rationality
that are superior to those characteristic of the En-
lightenment. For instance, it encourages women to
seek resolutions to conflicts by means that promise
to repair and strengthen relationships, to practice
positive caretaking rather than respectful noninter-
vention, and to prioritize the personal values of care,
trust, attentiveness, and love for particular others
above impersonal principles of equality, respect, and
rights.
Feminist dissatisfaction with the Enlightenment
conception of moral subjectivity springs partly from
an interest in the body, which many feminists regard
as key to women’s subordination. Some argue that
this subordination is maintained by male control of
women’s bodies, especially women’s procreative
535
feminist ethics
and sexual capacities, and that it is expressed in
women’s traditional assignments for biological re-
production and bodily maintenance. They see West-
ern philosophy’s symbolic association of women with
the body as not only reflecting but also rationalizing
and reinforcing these unjust social arrangements.
Attention to human embodiment has implica-
tions for moral psychology. The identity of embodied
moral subjects is constituted in part by specific so-
cial relations, and these, in turn, are partially deter-
mined by the social meanings attached to bodily
characteristics such as parentage, age, or sex. Rec-
ognizing human embodiment explains why moral
subjects are often motivated more by considerations
of particular attachment than by abstract concern
for duty, more by care than by respect, and more by
responsibility than by right. Some feminists have ar-
gued that devaluing the body in comparison with the
mind has turned moral theorists’ attention away
from bodily related differences among individuals,
such as age, sex, and ability, and encouraged them
to regard people as indistinguishable and inter-
changeable. They further contend that disparaging
the body has encouraged ethical theory to ignore
many fundamental aspects of human life and to posit
ideals unattainable by human beings.
Philosophical reflection that begins from the body
tends to give prominence to aspects of human nature
that are very different from those emphasized by
Cartesianism; for instance, it highlights temporality
and situatedness rather than timelessness and non-
locatedness, growth and decay rather than change-
lessness, particularity rather than universality, soci-
ality rather than isolation. Reflection on these
features reveals that INEQUALITY, dependence and
interdependence, specificity, social embeddedness,
and historical community must be recognized as per-
manent features of human social life. They generate
ethical problems that cannot be adequately ad-
dressed by developing highly idealized conceptions
of equality, LIBERTY, autonomy, and impartiality or
that posit isolated individuals, ideal communities, or
some supposedly universal human condition.
The features of human subjectivity emphasized
by many feminist philosophers are precisely those
that Western culture associates with women and the
feminine; they are features that tend to preoccupy
women in virtue of their social situation, they are
culturally defined as appropriate to women, or they
are associated symbolically with women. However,
feminist ethics
to point to these features of human subjectivity is
not to imply that the paradigm moral subject should
be a woman rather than a man, or even culturally
feminine rather than culturally masculine. Instead,
it is to suggest that previous conceptions of human
subjectivity have often provided understandings and
ideals of both women and men that are partial and
distorted.
Revaluing the feminine. Feminists have fre-
quently responded to Western philosophy’s dispar-
agement of what it has constructed as feminine by
insisting that the feminine should be revalued. We
have observed already that feminist ethics cannot be
identified with feminine ethics but we have also seen
that ways of thinking that are culturally feminine
may point toward less biased and more adequate ap-
proaches to ethics. Some feminists regard the ethics
of care as a case in point.
The first articulations of the ethics of care repre-
sented it as an expression of women’s characteristic
experience of nurturing or mothering particular oth-
ers, but later studies had difficulty confirming a clear
empirical link between women and caring. When
subjects were matched for education and occupa-
tion, women often achieved almost identical scores
with men on justice-oriented tests of moral devel-
opment, leaving women who worked in the home as
the main representatives of the care perspective;
moreover, some men as well as women were found
to employ care thinking. Recent advocates of an
ethics of care acknowledge not only that some
women think in terms of justice and some men in
terms of care, but also that most people of each sex
are able to adopt either perspective. Nevertheless,
they still view care as feminine on the grounds that
it emerges from forms of socialization and practice
that, in contemporary Western society, are culturally
feminine; these include nursing, maintaining a home,
raising children, and tending to the elderly. Caring
is also feminine in the symbolic or normative sense
of expressing cultural expectations that women be
more empathic, altruistic, nurturant, and sensitive
than men.
Some feminists have associated the ethics of care
not only with gender but also with race and class.
Joan Tronto links the moral perspective of care with
the work of cleaning up after body functions, tasks
that in Western history have been relegated primar-
ily to women but not to all women or to women
exclusively; caring work is done not only by women
536
but also by the working classes, especially, in most
of the West, by people of colour. This analysis of the
social genesis of care thinking fits well with Law-
rence Blum’s argument that justice ethics expresses
a juridical-administrative perspective that is indeed
masculine but reflects the concerns specifically of
men from the professional and administrative classes.
Together, these arguments suggest that both the
ethics of justice and the ethics of care express moral
perspectives that are not only gendered but simulta-
neously characteristic of different races and classes.
Feminist philosophers are divided about the po-
tential of care ethics. One concern is that it may be
insufficiently sensitive to the characteristically fem-
inine moral failing of self-sacrifice; another is that
its emphasis on meeting the immediately perceived
needs of particular individuals may lead agents to
show unfair partiality to those closest to them. There
also exist concerns about whether care’s character-
istic focus on the details of small-scale situations can
address problems that are rooted in social struc-
tures; such a focus may encourage what are some-
times called band aid or social work approaches to
moral problems rather than attempts to address
them through institutional changes. For these and
other reasons, some feminists doubt that care ethics
provides resources capable of adequately critiquing
male dominance in both public and private life.
Despite these problems, many philosophers are
continuing to draw on care’s “feminine” insights and
values to develop alternative and more feminist ap-
proaches to democratic theory, to social and eco-
nomic policy, and to international relations. Rather
than dismissing the claims of justice, such ap-
proaches typically seek to reinterpret them within a
framework of care. Their goal is to reconceptualize
social and even global institutions so that they will
enable and reinforce caring relations among people.
Building on women’s moral experience. The
ethics of care is often represented as an approach to
ethics that is based on women’s moral experience;
however, it has been presented here as an ethical
revaluation of the culturally feminine. To illustrate
ethical initiatives that are based on women’s moral
experience, let us consider instead some recent femi-
nist reinterpretations of HUMAN RIGHTS.
The concept of rights was central to the emer-
gence of Western feminism but, because rights are
central in most modern versions of the so-called jus-
tice tradition, some contemporary feminists have

dismissed them as reflections of a moral perspective
that is characteristically masculine. These feminists
regard rights as expressing an inherently adversarial
morality that disparages the more basic and impor-
tant human values of interdependence, cooperation,
and trust. Some contend that appeals to rights may
rationalize male POWER over women; for example,
the right to freedom of expression may justify mi-
sogynist pornography. Others observe that legal
equality of rights may obscure inequalities of power
to exercise them, noting that the procedures asso-
ciated with claiming and redressing rights are often
degrading, intimidating, and humiliating for women,
especially in trials for rape and sexual harassment.
Still other feminists argue that focusing on rights
ignores the ways in which women may be compelled
by their social situations to exercise their rights in a
manner that is harmful to them, for instance, by
“choosing” prostitution or cosmetic surgery. In short,
some feminists charge that rights talk may often be
not only unhelpful to women but even rationalize
their inequality.
It is certainly true that appeals to rights have had
only limited success in promoting women’s equality.
The United Nations identifies three categories or
“generations” of rights, including civil, political, eco-
nomic, social, and cultural rights and, in each of
these categories, abuses to women are often still ne-
glected or excused. Either women are seen as iden-
tical to men, so that substantive equality is equated
with formal equality, ignoring salient differences be-
tween the social situations of men and women; or
women are seen as “other,” inherently different from
men, so that abuses of their rights have been rep-
resented as “normal,” “natural,” or “inevitable.”
Despite continuing systematic abuse and subor-
dination of women, some feminists still believe that
the rights tradition constitutes a valuable resource
for women’s liberation. For instance, rights may be
interpreted to take account of morally salient differ-
ences among rights holders and they may be as-
signed to groups as well as individuals. They may
include “positive” as well as “negative” rights, which
are “ENTITLEMENTS“ rather than liberties and carry
claims not only to noninterference but also to cor-
relative duties on the part of others. Such rights may
be thought of as embodying the supposedly feminine
values of interdependence, social co-operation, and
care.
Faith in the concept of rights is certainly evident
537
feminist ethics
in the currently burgeoning global feminist move-
ment, which is united by the slogan, “Women’s
rights are human rights.” This movement calls not
simply for enforcing women’s human rights but for
radically rethinking how human rights have been
conceived. Many feminist proposals for reinterpret-
ing rights begin by recognizing that violations of
women’s rights are more often carried out by non-
state than by state actors—often by male family
members—and that they occur in the private as well
as the public sphere. This recognition requires ex-
panding the definition of state sanctioned repression
to include acceptance of family forms in which
brides are sold and in which fathers and husbands
exert strict control over women’s sexuality, dress,
speech, and movement; it also requires redefining
SLAVERY to include forced domestic labour and
prostitution. Because some violations of human
rights take gender-specific forms, the definition of
war crimes must be expanded to include systematic
rape and sexual TORTURE. Similarly, the definition of
GENOCIDE must be expanded to include female IN-
FANTICIDE; the systematic withholding of food, medi-
cal care, and education from girls; and the battery,
starvation, mutilation, and even murder of adult
women. Feminists have also noted that women’s
rights are often indivisible from each other; for in-
stance, many violations of women’s civic and politi-
cal rights are made possible by women’s economic
vulnerability. Fully protecting women’s human rights
requires changing not only laws but also ECONOMIC
SYSTEMS and cultural practices.
In the above examples, women’s gender-specific
experiences have served as a resource for identifying
covert male biases lurking in existing definitions of
human rights and as a model for revising those def-
initions. However, to imagine the normative bearer
of rights as a woman rather than a man is not to
replace male with female bias. Because women are
vastly overrepresented among the poor and illiterate
of the world and among those most vulnerable to
oppressive systems of power, this image instead ex-
poses the false humanism of older conceptions of
human rights; it also points toward new understand-
ings of rights that are more inclusive and fully
human.
The global movement for women’s human rights
provides a final illustration of the trajectory followed
by much feminist ethics; beginning by criticizing the
exclusion of women and DISCRIMINATION against
feminist ethics
them, it moves to challenging the covert male bias
of existing ethical frameworks, and finally draws on
the culturally feminine to propose more ethically ad-
equate norms and standards.
See also: ABORTION; AGENCY AND DISABILITY;
AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; BIOETHICS; CARE;
CHILDREN AND ETHICAL THEORY; COERCION; COM-
MUNITARIANISM; CONSENT; CULTURAL STUDIES; DE
BEAUVOIR; DISCRIMINATION; DUTY AND OBLIGA-
TION; EMOTION; ENGELS; ENTITLEMENTS; ENVIRON-
MENTAL ETHICS; EQUALITY; EXPLOITATION; FAMILY;
FIDELITY; FRIENDSHIP; GAY ETHICS; HOMOSEXUAL-
ITY; HUMAN RIGHTS; INEQUALITY; LESBIAN ETHICS;
LIBERTY; LITERATURE AND ETHICS; MASS MEDIA;
JOHN STUART MILL; MORAL ATTENTION; MORAL DE-
VELOPMENT; MORAL IMAGINATION; MORAL PSY-
CHOLOGY; MULTICULTURALISM; NARRATIVE ETHICS;
NURSING ETHICS; OPPRESSION; PARTIALITY; PATER-
NALISM; PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS; PORNOGRAPHY;
POSTMODERNISM; PSYCHOANALYSIS; PUBLIC AND PRI-
VATE MORALITY; PUBLIC HEALTH POLICY; PUBLIC
POLICY; RACISM AND RELATED ISSUES; REPRODUC-
TIVE TECHNOLOGIES; RESPONSIBILITY; RIGHT HOLD-
ERS; SELF AND SOCIAL SELF; SELF-OWNERSHIP; SEX-
UAL ABUSE AND HARASSMENT; SEXUALITY AND
SEXUAL ETHICS; STAËL; THOMSON; WELFARE RIGHTS
AND SOCIAL POLICY; WOLLSTONECRAFT; WOMEN
MORAL PHILOSOPHERS; WORK.
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539
Fénelon, François
Fénelon, François (1651–1715)
François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon was born
into a noble but impoverished family in Perigord. He
was ordained in 1675; named director of the New
Catholics (former Protestants) in 1678; appointed
tutor of Louis, Duc de Bourgogne (1682–1712, the
grandson of Louis XIV) in 1689; elected to the
Académie Française in 1693; and made Archbishop
of Cambrai in 1697. At the center of major contro-
versies of the period, he rejected the Jansenist inter-
pretation of AUGUSTINE (354–430) and opposed
Bossuet (1627–1704) in the Quietist debate, a de-
bate precipitated by his refusing to condemn Mme.
Guyon (1648–1717) as a heretical mystic. He set
out his position in Explication des maximes des
saints sur la vie intérieure (1697), in which he ar-
gues that saintly love of God is pure, radically dis-
interested LOVE. Although his opposition to Bossuet
was costly in the short term—he was banished from
the court in 1697 and his book was condemned by
Pope Innocent XII in 1699—his views on pure love,
FREE WILL, predestination and grace soon thereafter
found favor both in Rome and in France. He carried
out pastoral functions as Archbishop in his war-
ravaged diocese until his death.
Fénelon’s work in philosophy was apologetic,
though he believed that the path to the best apolo-
getics was that of reason and true philosophy. He
admired the ancient philosophers—especially PLATO
(c. 430–347 B.C.E.)—and sought a synthesis of Au-
gustine and DESCARTES (1596–1650). In his earliest
work, he maintains that MALEBRANCHE’s (1638–
1715) metaphysics, contrary to good theology and
sound reason, restricts the possible to the necessary
and deprives God of free choice. On the contrary, he
argues, owing to God’s infinite perfection and power,
God is free to create or not to create any possible
world entirely at his pleasure and does not, accord-
ingly, choose a world because it is good, but makes
the world good by choosing it.
And similarly by gratuitous choice does God
make the chosen few good and worthy of salvation.
To the objection that this is at once unfair to those
who are not chosen and contrary to the scripture
that says that God wills that all be saved, Fénelon
replies as follows: First, it is evident that we have
free will, the power to do or not to do A, even when
A appears to us to be what we ought to do. Second—
this is what it means to say that God wills that all
Fénelon, François
be saved—there is an interior and sufficient grace
that enables anyone to choose well and to be saved.
Third, although God knows infallibly in a timeless
present all that we freely do and a fortiori foreknows
that only a few will always choose well and that oth-
ers will not, such foreknowledge does not cause the
saved to cooperate with divine grace nor the damned
not to. To the question why none of the non-
predestined achieves salvation, Fénelon replies that
predestination is a mystery and that to ask the ques-
tion itself bespeaks an impure love of God.
Fénelon’s conception of pure love of God, the
centerpiece both of his defense of MYSTICISM and of
his critique of Jansenism, was already foreshadowed
in his critique of Malebranche. Fénelon’s pure love
is at the other extreme from the interested love of
God that leads one to observe God’s law to gain
natural benefits in this world (servile self-love) or
joy in the next (the love of pure concupiscence). And
it is distinguished from two mixed forms of love—
love of HOPE and mixed love of CHARITY —that are
neither entirely interested nor entirely disinterested;
hope contains an element of fear of PUNISHMENT and
mixed charity an element of desire for recompense.
Fénelon compares the person whose love of God de-
pends on fear or DESIRE to a man who needs
crutches in order to walk. One who loves God purely
is indifferent to his own HAPPINESS and says in his
heart: “Let the will of God be done, even if (per
impossible) it should be God’s will that I be
damned.” Love of God mixed with interest can make
one just, but only pure love of God makes a man
perfectly virtuous.
The similarity of Fénelon’s conception of acting
from pure love and KANT’s (1724–1804) of acting
from duty is often remarked, but the differences are
also significant. In Fénelon’s view, pure love is a
supernatural gift of God; virtue arises from preven-
ient grace and cannot be an unaided achievement of
a rational agent. In his exchanges with Bossuet, who
had argued that the notion of pure love is unintelli-
gible, Fénelon points out that the concept of pure
love was well known to the ancients, citing in par-
ticular Plato and CICERO (106–43 B.C.E.). “They had
to prefer the laws, the country, to themselves, be-
cause justice willed it and one had to prefer to one-
self what is called beautiful, good, just and per-
fect. . . . I grant that the pagans, who so highly
praised disinterested virtue, did not practice it well.
No one believes more than I that all love without
540
grace and outside of God can never be more than
an amour-propre déguisé.”
Fénelon uses his notion of pure love also as a reg-
ulative principle in politics. In connection with his
duties as tutor of the Duke of Burgundy he wrote a
book, Telemachus (1699), in which he sets out in a
compelling narrative how a good king should be
educated and what he must and must not do. Fé-
nelon does not reject monarchy, but he insists that a
good monarch should govern in accordance with the
moral law, put aside entirely his own INTERESTS and
seek above all to promote the well-being of his sub-
jects. Telemachus influenced ROUSSEAU (1712–
1778), as one can see from the closing sections of
Émile, ou Traité de l’éducation (1762), and re-
mained very popular in France throughout much of
the eighteenth century.
See also: AUGUSTINE; CHARITY; CHRISTIAN ETHICS;
DESCARTES; FREE WILL; HOPE; LOVE; MORAL SAINTS;
MYSTICISM; PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION; PLATO; PUN-
ISHMENT; ROUSSEAU; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS; VOL-
UNTARISM.
Bibliography
Works by Fénelon
Oeuvres complètes. 12 vols. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints,
1971 [1851–52].
Oeuvres. 2 vols. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Éditions Gal-
limard, 1983.
Telemachus. Edited by Patrick Riley. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1994. Translation of Les aven-
tures de Télémaque, 1699. Excellent, brief introduc-
tion to Fénelon’s moral and political theory.
Works about Fénelon
Adam, A. Histoire de la littérature française au XVIIe siè-
cle. Vol. 5, chapter 5. Paris: Éditions Domat, 1956.
Superb chapter on Fénelon.
Gore, Jeanne-Lydie. L’itinéraire de Fénelon: Humanisme
et spiritualité. Grenoble: Imprimerie Allier, 1957.
Gouhier, Henri. Fénelon philosophe. Paris: Librairie Phi-
losophique J. Vrin, 1977. Outstanding study of Féne-
lon’s philosophical writings. Bibliography.
Janet, Paul. Fénelon: His Life and Work. Translated by V.
Lenliette. London: Kennikat Press, 1970 [1914].
Leduc-Fayette, Denise. ed. Fénelon philosophie et spiri-
tualité. Geneva: Lirbraire Droz S. A., 1996. Good col-
lection of recent essays on Fénelon. Especially recom-
mended are J. Lagrée on Fénelon and Leibniz, J. Le
Brun on Fénelon’s political ideals, D. Leduc-Fayette on

Fénelon’s conception of the will, and P. Magnard on
Fénelon’s Augustinianism.
John Marshall
Feuerbach, Ludwig [Andreas]
(1804–1872)
Feuerbach attended the University of Heidelberg be-
fore moving on in 1824 to the University of Berlin
to study under HEGEL (1770–1831). Considered
now as among that group of thinkers called Left He-
gelians because their reaction to Hegelian thought
influenced the development of dialectical material-
ism, Feuerbach steered away from Hegel’s Absolute
Spirit towards a materialism grounded in a realistic
anthropology. His most influential works include:
The Essence of Christianity (1841), The Essence of
Religion (1846), The Essence of Faith in Luther’s
Sense (1844?). At the time of his death, he was liv-
ing as an independent scholar near Nuremberg.
Feuerbach focused his criticism and revision of
Hegel upon his philosophical theology and, in par-
ticular, on Hegel’s notion that the eternal entered
human history in the form of Spirit and determined
all of its forms and unfolding structures. In contrast,
Feuerbach sees humanity, in its concrete and secular
nature, as the locus for the unfolding of material
nature. He therefore defends the premise that the
essence of RELIGION is anthropological. Religion is
an “objectification” of sensuous humanity, having no
content that is not grounded in secular mankind.
Historically, people achieve their first, indirect knowl-
edge of themselves through religious beliefs and
practices. Feuerbach argues that we know ourselves
first, in our essence, as projected outside of our-
selves into a religious reality; only after encountering
our own objectification as that religious reality can
we discover and know our inner nature.
Feuerbach’s “devout atheism” resides in his de-
nial of the transcendental subject of divine predi-
cates. At the same time, he insisted that the predi-
cates and descriptive properties of “divinity,” when
interpreted in terms of their human significance,
have both religious and ethical significance. In dis-
covering the model for divine essence in real human
beings, he believes that he discovers also the ineluc-
table social nexus of their being, the Mit-Mensch or
the I-Thou. For Feuerbach, the paradigm for this
unity of “man with man” is the sexual one. The male
541
Feuerbach, Ludwig
needs the female as his complement and vice versa.
The incompleteness of one person alone becomes
the ground for his ethics of LOVE as the universal
law of nature and intelligence, and his social philos-
ophy of democratic communalism. He adjured all
forms of EGOISM, seeing them as denials of the given
reality of humanity as Mit-Mensch, and hence ar-
gued that universal human HAPPINESS must be com-
munal in nature.
For MARX (1818 – 1883), Feuerbach’s great
achievement was the revolutionary resolution of the
religious world into the secular world. The direction
of his thought was entirely correct, however, it was
incomplete. The implicit communism of Feuer-
bach’s I-Thou captures a realistic glance of the being
of secular mankind, but according to Marx it fails to
grasp the human reality in terms of the concrete his-
torical circumstances, the practice that creates us as
a social reality. Feuerbach’s project to reduce the
heavenly world to the human, secular world not only
falls short in its critical analysis of our historical ex-
istence, it also fails to see why we need such “heav-
enly castles.” Marx, by proceeding to an analysis of
historical-social and economic conditions which cre-
ate the human need for a religious world, is able
thereby to discover the grounds for human alien-
ation from historical existence and the foundations
of EXPLOITATION. The fact that the world comes into
conflict with itself, thus producing the “heavenly
kingdom,” is Feuerbach’s discovery; but it becomes
for Marx the germinal thesis that undergirds his
analysis of secular society and his proposals for rev-
olutionizing that society.
See also: ATHEISM; CHRISTIAN ETHICS; HEGEL;
MARX; RELIGION; SELF-KNOWLEDGE; THEOLOGICAL
ETHICS.
Bibliography
Works by Feuerbach
Sämtliche Werke. 13 vols. in 12. Stuttgart-Bad Clanstatt:
Formann Verlag Günther Holzboog, 1960–64.
Gesammelte Werke. Edited by Schuffenhauer. 16 vols.
Berlin: Akademie.
The Essence of Christianity. Translated by M. Evans
(George Eliot). New York: Harper and Row, 1957
[1841]. Translation (1854) of Das Wesen des Chris-
tentums.
Lectures on the Essence of Religion. Translated by Ralph
Feuerbach, Ludwig
Manheim. New York: Harper and Row, 1967 [1846].
Translation of Das Wesen der Religion.
The Essence of Faith According to Luther. Translated by
Melvin Cherno. New York: Harper and Row, 1967
[1844?]. Translation of Das Wesen des Glaubens in
Sinne Luthers.
Works about Feuerbach
Kamenka, Eugene. The Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach.
New York: Praeger, 1970.
Lowith, Karl. From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution
in Nineteenth-Century Thought. Translated by David
Green. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964
[1941].
Allie M. Frazier
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb
(1762–1814)
Born into an artisan family in Saxony, Fichte studied
theology, first at the University of Jena and later at
Wittenberg and Leipzig. He served for a time as a
private tutor in Zurich and in Warsaw. Although he
was initially attracted to Spinozism, his discovery
in 1790 of Immanuel KANT’s (1724–1804) work
brought about what has been described as a conver-
sion. In 1791, he went to Königsberg to meet Kant.
In Königsberg Fichte composed his first work, At-
tempt at a Critique of All Revelation. Kant was im-
pressed with the manuscript and recommended it to
his publisher, who brought it out in 1792. However,
the first copies of the book appeared with some
strange omissions: Not only did Fichte’s name not
appear on the title page, but also the signed preface
was missing. Since at the time there was widespread
expectation that a book on RELIGION by Kant him-
self was about to appear, many readers, including
the first reviewers, took the book to be Kant’s. When
Kant himself announced who the author was, he
praised the book. As a result of these events, Fichte’s
reputation as an important philosopher was quickly
established.
In 1793, partly through Goethe’s (1749–1832)
recommendation, Fichte was appointed to the chair
of philosophy at Jena. By this time he had begun to
develop the philosophical system that he called the
doctrine of science (Wissenschaftslehre). He out-
lined the concept of such a system in On the Concept
of the Doctrine of Science (1794) and developed the
system itself in his major work, Foundation of the
542
Entire Doctrine of Science (1794). Fichte regarded
his system as containing the same view of things as
Kant’s philosophy, even though its method of pre-
sentation differed entirely from the Kantian. Begin-
ning with Kantian transcendental apperception, re-
formulated as the self-positing I, Fichte’s system
proceeds from the contradiction between the self-
positing character of the I and the I’s dependence
on a not-I opposed to it. The system proceeds toward
a synthesis in which this contradiction would be re-
solved. Within the framework of theoretical knowl-
edge, there is only the limited synthesis achieved by
imagination (in the Kantian, transcendental sense).
It is only within practical philosophy that there is
genuine synthesis, not as something achievable by a
finite subject but rather as the practical demand that
the not-I conform to the self-positing I, that is, that
object conform to subject, nature to reason. This
categorical imperative determines a striving for the
absolute I as idea, that is, in Fichte’s own words, a
striving for “a world as it would be if all reality were
absolutely posited by the I.” This imperative and this
striving form the center of Fichte’s practical philos-
ophy, and it was primarily on this foundation that he
went on to elaborate a system of RIGHTS (Founda-
tion of Natural Right, 1796) and of VIRTUES (System
of the Doctrine of Ethics, 1798), extending the Kan-
tian separation between theory of rights and theory
of virtues.
One of the most significant results of Fichte’s
doctrine of science is the establishment of the pri-
ority of practical over theoretical reason. Though
theoretical reason is required in order to think the
practical principles, so that philosophy must in this
sense begin with the theoretical, the development of
the system shows finally that reason is itself purely
practical. As a result, Fichte characterizes transcen-
dental idealism as the only dutiful mode of thought,
that is, as originating not from an ultimate theoreti-
cal principle but from the practical demand that one
set out from the pure I, conceived as absolutely self-
active. It is also to this primacy of the practical that
Fichte refers in his oft-cited remark that “what sort
of philosophy one chooses thus depends on what
sort of man one is.”
During his years in Jena, Fichte became a contro-
versial figure because of his outspokenness on po-
litical and religious issues. In 1798, as a result of a
paper in which he identified God with the moral
world-order, he was accused of ATHEISM. After a bit-

ter controversy, Fichte was forced in 1799 to resign
from his professorship at Jena. One of the results of
the controversy was that Kant published a public
declaration in which he declared Fichte’s doctrine of
science a wholly untenable system and completely
dissociated himself from Fichte.
Following the atheism controversy, Fichte moved
to Berlin. In the following years, though he held no
regular university chair, he developed several new
presentations of his doctrine of science. It is also to
these years that his popular works belong, for ex-
ample The Vocation of Man (1799–1800), in which
he expresses an affirmation of rational faith, and Ad-
dresses to the German Nation (1808), in which he
speaks to the German political situation of the time.
In 1810, he assumed the chair of philosophy at the
newly founded University of Berlin, where he re-
mained until his death in 1814.
In addition to the formative influence of his Ad-
dresses to the German Nation on the emergence of
German national consciousness, Fichte’s philosophy
was also one of the most significant influences on
the leading figures of German Romanticism—No-
valis (1772–1801), Tieck (1773–1853), and the
Schlegels (August Wilhelm, 1767–1845, and Fried-
rich, 1772–1829). Still more significant was his in-
fluence on SCHELLING (1775–1854) and HEGEL
(1770–1831). Schelling’s first works were explica-
tions of Fichte’s doctrine of science, and even Schel-
ling’s much-discussed philosophy of nature was
conceived as a complement to the system of tran-
scendental philosophy developed by Fichte. It was
precisely to the difference between Fichte’s and
Schelling’s systems that Hegel devoted one of his
most decisive early works. Also, it was Hegel who
in 1818 succeeded Fichte in the chair of philosophy
at the University of Berlin.
See also: HEGEL; KANT; SCHELLING; SPINOZA; CAT-
EGORICAL AND HYPOTHETICAL IMPERATIVES; IDEAL-
IST ETHICS; KANTIAN ETHICS; PRACTICAL REA-
SON[ING]; RELIGION; RIGHTS; THEORY AND PRACTICE;
VIRTUES.
Bibliography
Works by Fichte
Addresses to the German Nation. Edited by George A.
Kelly. New York: Harper and Row, 1968 [1807–08].
Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation. Translated by Gar-
543
fidelity
rett Green. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1978 [1792].
Fichtes Werke. Edited by I. H. Fichte. 11 vols. Berlin: Wal-
ter de Gruyter, 1971. Paperback reprint of the 1845–
46 edition prepared by the philosopher’s son.
Gesamtausgabe. Edited by R. Lauth, and H. Jacob.
Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Fromann, 1964–.
Critical edition being issued by the Bayerische Akade-
mie der Wissenschaft.
Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre): With First
and Second Introductions. Translated by Peter Heath
and John Lachs. New York: Appleton Century Crofts,
1970 [1795]. Translation of Fichte’s major work along
with the more accessible “Introduction” written in
1797.
The Vocation of Man. Edited by Roderick M. Chisholm.
Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956 [1800].
Works about Fichte
Hegel, G. W. F. The Difference between Fichte’s and
Schelling’s System of Philosophy. Edited by H. S. Har-
ris and Walter Cerf. Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1977 [1801].
Hohler, T. P. Imagination and Reflection: Intersubjectiv-
ity—Fichte’s Grundlage of 1794. The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1982. A thorough discussion of Fichte’s major
work.
Janke, Wolfgang. Fichte: Sein und Reflexion—Grundla-
gen der kritischen Vernunft. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,
1970. Discusses the 1794 Wissenschaftslehre as well
as the versions of 1801 and 1804.
Philonenko, Alexis. La Liberté humaine dans la philoso-
phie de Fichte. Paris: Vrin, 1966.
John Sallis
fidelity
Fidelity—faithfulness or good faith—means both
being true to persons in basic relationships of TRUST
and being true to one’s just voluntary commitments.
Accordingly, there have been two ways of thinking
about fidelity. One is to think of it in relation to one’s
word as given in a vow, promise, or contract—some-
thing with both a history and an abstract but rela-
tively well-defined content. The other is to think of
fidelity in relation to persons or to a particular in-
stitution in which one is or has been a participant,
where what is important is the relationship—some-
thing with a concrete history but also a content that
is often not well defined. The latter way of thinking
brings fidelity close to LOYALTY; the former brings
it close to honesty and FAIRNESS.
fidelity
There is contemporary philosophical interest in
both areas. John RAWLS regards “the principle of
fidelity” as “a special case of the principle of fairness
applied to the social practice of promising.” More
popular interest, generated by contemporary sexual
and feminist revolutions, may lie in the area of non-
formalized intimate relationships. With modern birth
control, heterosexual intimacy is readily divorced
from reproduction, removing a powerful barrier to
extramarital sex. For lesbian and gay lovers, eco-
nomic independence and a relatively recent ready
accessibility of privacy have made possible, on a
wider scale than in previous ages, nonclandestine
intimate relationships. Questions of fidelity have fo-
cused on how much stability intimate relationships
need in order to be “true” and how relationships
with others affect the stability and value of a partic-
ular intimate relationship.
Because fidelity incorporates the idea of trust-
worthiness, it seems good in itself. Because it in-
corporates constancy, one is tempted to inquire,
however, about the limits of its value. Constancy
suggests inflexibility and duration of attachment;
neither is good in itself. Yet the element of trust-
worthiness in fidelity seems to include discretion,
judgment, and conscientiousness, which suggest a
worthy object of attachment and firmness of the
right sort. Fidelity does not become an issue in just
any relationship of attachment. Kin may exact loy-
alty, but spouses, lovers, and friends expect fidelity.
The difference seems to lie both in the presumed
voluntariness of the relationship and in the values
that are presumed to enter into its definition. The
important ethical questions to ask about fidelity are
who and what its worthy objects are, and how it is
manifested. Perhaps, however, we should distin-
guish—as ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) did with
PLEASURE and TEMPERANCE —between fidelity with-
out qualification and fidelity of this or that kind,
such as sexual or marital fidelity. It is more natural
to inquire about the value of fidelity qualified as this
or that kind.
If fidelity has strong positive connotations, infi-
delity has even stronger negative ones. Infidelities
can be relatively minor. However, persons called in-
fidels in the Middle Ages were thought to have bro-
ken faith in a deeply serious way in renouncing their
Christianity. Or they were believed, rightly or
wrongly, to be profoundly faithless. When a kind of
fidelity is considered morally basic, requisite to
544
trustworthiness of any kind, an infidel is regarded as
evil. Otherwise, one may put “infidel” in scare
quotes or qualify it, as, for example, “Christian
infidel.”
Aristotle takes up issues recognizable as issues of
fidelity in Books VIII and IX of the Nicomachean
Ethics, on FRIENDSHIP, where he sorts through sev-
eral questions of obligation and trust. He considers
how many good friendships one can have at once,
RECIPROCITY among friends, when to break off a
friendship, and how to treat former friends.
In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century En-
glish moral philosophy, fidelity was dealt with pri-
marily as fidelity to promise. SIDGWICK (1838–
1900), for example, first briefly discusses fidelity in
relation to friendship and later, far more extensively,
takes up fidelity to promise. In The Right and the
Good, W. D. ROSS (1877–1971) lists “duties of fi-
delity” among his prima facie duties, understanding
them as duties resting on PROMISES, explicit or im-
plicit. He claims that by “fidelity” we mean, strictly,
certain states of motivation—dispositions to fulfill
promises and implicit promises because we have
made them—and he wishes to modify this under-
standing to mean by “fidelity” the actual fulfillment
of promises, irrespective of motive. Thus he was able
to treat fidelity as a duty without having to acknowl-
edge duties to have certain MOTIVES.
Fulfilling certain duties may be characteristic of
fidelity, understood as being true to one’s word.
However, it does not follow that fidelity is itself a
duty; it seems better understood as an ethical virtue
of persons, having motivational as well as behavioral
elements. So understood, it can be either the virtue
of being true to one’s word (or one’s commitments)
or the virtue of being true to others in certain kinds
of relationships. Often, the context makes clear
which kind of fidelity is intended.
Who and what are worthy objects of fidelity? The
two ways of thinking about fidelity suggest two
kinds of worthy objects: one’s word and relation-
ships of trust, both needing extensive qualification
and clarification. Fidelity is manifested by living up
to obligations created by one’s word and by inter-
personal relationships of trust. While there is over-
lap between these two, there are also areas of dif-
ference. One’s word often creates interpersonal
trust, as in promises and CONTRACTS, but a vow does
not necessarily do so. Interpersonal relationships of-

ten involve giving one’s word in a variety of ways.
But much that is unspoken is a basis for trust.
While KANT (1724–1804) wrote cheerfully of the
duties of friendship, among contemporary philoso-
phers there is resistance to thinking of friendship in
terms of duties or obligations. This resistance is re-
inforced by a popular tendency to equate obligations
with duties and to regard both as enforceable in
principle by penalties, and by an inclination, since
Kant, to regard the sense of obligation as burden-
some. One’s sense of the obligations of friendship
is, however, one’s sense of friendship as a special
trust, often requiring discretion and imagination. A
trust need not be burdensome; it can be an HONOR.
Friendship’s obligations are not enforceable within
the relationship; such attempts jeopardize trust. Not
living up to obligations of friendship raises the ques-
tion to what extent one is a friend. The ultimate
sanction here is loss of the friendship. Infidelity’s
penalty in this case is, ultimately, that no relationship
remains to claim one’s fidelity.
For marriage partners and business partners, the
relationship is ambiguous between something de-
fined by vows, promises, or contracts, and some-
thing larger to which they refer. There is room for
both fidelity to one’s word and fidelity to persons,
and there is the possibility of being faithful in one
way but not in the other—hence, Cole Porter’s “Al-
ways True to You (In My Fashion)” from the musical
Kiss Me Kate.
Adultery—voluntary sexual conduct between per-
sons at least one of whom is married but not to the
other—is commonly regarded a paradigm of infi-
delity. Yet, the two concepts do not mean the same
thing. “Adultery” is, literally, “impurity.” Infidelity is
faithlessness or breaking faith. Extramarital sexual
relations break faith against the background of a
vow of monogamy. The deeper, more interesting eth-
ical questions are whether such vows are reasonable
and whether the conduct in question is unfaithful or
untrue to the other person (or to the relationship,
understood as something the nature of which is not
completely given by promises, vows, or contracts).
Such issues are the subject of contemporary inquir-
ies into “open marriages” and living-together con-
tracts, as well as gay and lesbian research into healthy
lover relationships.
See also: CONTRACTS; DECEIT; DUTY AND OBLIGA-
TION; FAIRNESS; FAMILY; FRIENDSHIP; GAY ETHICS;
545
fiduciary relationships
HONOR; INSTITUTIONS; LESBIAN ETHICS; LOVE; LOY-
ALTY; MOTIVES; PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS; PROM-
ISES; RECIPROCITY; SEXUALITY AND SEXUAL ETHICS;
TRUST; VIRTUE ETHICS; VIRTUES; VOLUNTARY ACTS.
Bibliography
Card, Claudia. “Gratitude and Obligation.” American
Philosophical Quarterly 2 (1988): 115–27. Develops
a contrast between the trustee and debtor models of
obligation, relating the former to friendship.
DeCecco, John, ed. Gay Relationships. New York: Har-
rington Park Press, 1988. Papers from the Journal of
Homosexuality.
Hoagland, Sarah. Lesbian Ethics: Toward New Value.
Palo Alto, Calif.: Institute of Lesbian Studies, 1988.
Kant, Immanuel. The Doctrine of Virtue: Part II of the
Metaphysic of Morals. Translated by Mary Gregor.
New York: Harper and Row, 1964 [1797].
———. “Friendship.” In Lectures on Ethics, translated by
Louis Infield, 200–9. New York: Harper and Row,
1962.
Leites, Edmund. The Puritan Conscience and Modern
Sexuality. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.
Corrects popular misconceptions.
“Non? Monogamy?” Lesbian Ethics 2 (1985): 79–105. A
readers’ forum.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1971.
Ross, W. D. The Right and the Good. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1930.
Sidgwick, Henry. The Methods of Ethics. 7th ed. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1962 [1874].
Taylor, Richard. Having Love Affairs. Buffalo: Prome-
theus, 1982.
Claudia Card
fiduciary relationships
Broadly speaking, we may term fiduciary any rela-
tionship in which one party trusts, relies, or depends
on another’s judgment or counsel. But we use the
term, which originates in Roman law, especially to
mark relationships where one acts on another’s be-
half, as though the other’s INTERESTS were one’s
own. While a fiduciary’s (trusted party’s) duties may
be merely ministerial, requiring no particular knowl-
edge or wisdom beyond the ordinary and admitting
of little or no discretion, the most significant legal
and ethical discussions concern fiduciary associa-
tions where the exercise of expertise and discretion
are substantial. The law of trusts, as it governs fi-
fiduciary relationships
duciary relationships, thus distinguishes between
ministerial and discretionary trusts. In considering
the origin and nature of fiduciary relationships, this
article focuses primarily on those of a discretionary
character.
“Fiduciary,” then, can describe formal arrange-
ments expressly agreed to or at least consciously
undertaken (say, as part of one’s profession), as well
as a variety of less formal associations. Examples of
formal relationships include those between doctor
and patient, attorney and client, guardian and ward,
trustee and trust beneficiary. Requirements for es-
tablishing these and the nature and extent of the fi-
duciary’s duties may be defined by legal statute, case
law, or professional codes of conduct. While we per-
haps most familiarly use the term in legal contexts,
“fiduciary” also describes ethical relationships and
duties. In particular, professional codes of conduct
typically term fiduciary obligations ethical; we do
the same for those obligations one acquires through
informal and perhaps involuntary relationships of
TRUST. Importantly, we often employ “fiduciary” not
only to describe a relationship’s status, but to ad-
vocate legal or moral recognition of trust, reliance,
or dependence and of RESPONSIBILITY heretofore
ignored.
A Fluid Standard
British legal tradition (inherited by the United
States, among others) made fiduciary relationships
and related duties the province of equity courts.
These courts undertook to do justice or insure FAIR-
NESS in particular situations, as opposed to strictly
applying common law rules oblivious to the exigen-
cies and mitigating circumstances of the case at
hand. We still can recognize some of equity’s more
fluid standards of justice, designed to allow for con-
siderations rigid rules cannot, even in the laws and
professional NORMS that govern more formal rela-
tionships.
Thus in identifying relationships, formal and less
so, as fiduciary and in delineating responsibilities,
we tend to emphasize not only trust, reliance, or de-
pendence by one party, but the fiduciary’s conse-
quent POWER over that party and the accompanying
potential for abuse or negligent injury. The fiduciary
must act in good faith, with due care, and with the
end of serving the best interests of beneficiaries. In
particular, self-serving judgments and attempts im-
546
properly to influence the reliant party are unaccept-
able. Although fiduciary obligations may be created
by contract, fiduciary relationships differ from the
contractual first in that they may exist without pay-
ment of consideration by the beneficiary. Second,
unlike parties to a contract, those in a fiduciary re-
lationship may not readily tailor duties to suit them-
selves. Emphasis always is primarily on the relation-
ship of trust, reliance, and dependence and the
fiduciary’s superior power, with an eye to providing
justice for each beneficiary.
Standards for creating formal relationships typi-
cally do admit of straightforward application—
trusts created by a will must meet general require-
ments for the validity of wills (for example must be
in writing and signed before witnesses). Even here,
however, broad language of “trust,” “reliance,” “due
care,” or “best interests” can make it difficult to de-
termine precisely what the accompanying fiduciary
responsibilities are and whether they have been ful-
filled. This especially is true as our appreciation of
the position or interests of a class of beneficiaries
evolves over time.
We can find cases in point in the business and
medical realms, where we might have expected
questions concerning the existence and nature of fi-
duciary relationships to be well settled. The tradi-
tional view that corporate officers and directors owe
fiduciary duties to stockholders, for example, has
faced repeated challenges since the 1930s. Critics
urge that stockholders as a class possess sufficient
wealth and knowledge to warrant substantially weak-
ening the fiduciary protections they are accorded.
These critics often claim further that other parties—
e.g., bondholders or employees—must rely far more
than stockholders on the good judgment of corpo-
rate managers and that managers therefore have
more substantial fiduciary duties to these parties
than to stockholders.
Likewise, understanding of the fiduciary duties
physicians owe their patients has evolved signifi-
cantly in contemporary times with the growing em-
phasis on patients’ autonomy and their legitimate
interest and participation in their own care. A phy-
sician who once fulfilled recognized duties of care
by withholding complicated or disturbing informa-
tion from patients now, by that same silence, might
fail in such duties. This last example points up not
only the difficulty inherent in applying fluid stan-
dards to fiduciaries ex post, but the equally difficult

task that a fiduciary may face ex ante in any good
faith attempt to discern and serve another’s interests.
Use in Moral, Social, or Political Argument
Appropriately, then, a call to understand the char-
acter of certain informal relationships as fiduciary,
or formally to classify an association as such for legal
or professional purposes, often places in relief the
trust, reliance, or dependence on one side, and on
the other the requirements of WISDOM and INTEG-
RITY and the potential for abuse of power. Such a
call sometimes aims to awaken a sense of responsi-
bility in those who come to recognize the trust re-
posed in them; sometimes it aims to urge the larger
populace to hold such persons responsible; some-
times it aims to alert beneficiaries to the obligations
owed to them; and in many cases it combines these
aims.
We can recognize the first and third (calls to ac-
knowledge and accept one’s responsibilities as a fi-
duciary and to insist on one’s due as beneficiary) in
GANDHI’s (1869–1948) advice to India’s rich. As
part of his vision for a peaceful and gradual transi-
tion from private to state-owned PROPERTY, Gandhi
appealed to CONSCIENCE, urging the rich to see
themselves as trustees of any property in excess of
that reasonably required to meet personal NEEDS.
The education and organization of the trust’s bene-
ficiaries, India’s poor, would insure that their strength
too contributed to the reform effort as they pressed
the moral argument for their due.
Asserting a duty to protect the environment or its
resources for the benefit of FUTURE GENERATIONS or
characterizing humankind’s relationship with ani-
mals or the natural environment as one of steward-
ship likewise can alert us (now all human beings) to
our fiduciary responsibilities. Noteworthy in these
last examples are two further points relevant both
to defining and employing the concept of a fiduciary
relationship. First, the fiduciary’s responsibilities do
not presuppose a claimholder actually able to assert
moral or legal RIGHTS. Beneficiaries in legal and pro-
fessional contexts typically possess rights against fi-
duciaries; also (as Gandhi envisioned) they may
press home the moral mandate that binds the fidu-
ciary. But the concept of such a relationship typically
places the primary responsibility for conformity with
fiduciary obligations on the person in whom trust is
reposed. This yields powerful possibilities for pro-
547
fiduciary relationships
tecting the interests of those who, by nature, injus-
tice, or ill fortune, are voiceless.
Second, and relatedly, a fiduciary sometimes owes
duties most directly not to the beneficiary, but to
another party. In Christian theology, for example,
God imposes stewardship on humankind for the
benefit of present and future generations, of ani-
mals, and of the natural environment. Although
beneficiaries are not always voiceless as are future
generations, animals, and the environment, this ar-
rangement can increase accountability where bene-
ficiaries are weakest, since the fiduciary now must
answer to another with significant power.
In some cases, we deem the fiduciary to owe the
beneficiary’s care not to another individual or to
God, but to society or the state. The claim that so-
ciety is one party to the association illustrates the
second aim noted above, urging the community at
large to oversee the fiduciary’s conduct and enforce
obligations (whether through legal sanction or social
condemnation). Courts sometimes understand the
doctrine of parens patriae, through which the state
seeks, inter alia, to protect minor children from pa-
rental abuse or neglect, in this way. Here, parents
are fiduciaries charged by the state with the care of
their children and subject to its intervention if they
fail to fulfill their duties. (Other interpretations
understand the state itself to exercise fiduciary du-
ties when parental CARE is inadequate, not to en-
force those that parents owe to it.)
John LOCKE (1632–1704) illustrates the third
aim of arguments proclaiming a relationship’s fidu-
ciary character. Legitimate government, on Locke’s
view, must better protect citizens’ natural rights than
would be possible in a state of nature that lacks set-
tled laws, an indifferent judge, or an authorized en-
forcer. Citizens give over these rights (some wholly,
others only partially) to government in trust to use
for this purpose and may reclaim them (and disband
the government in power) on grounds of serious
abuse or neglect. Although Locke thus announces to
citizens their claims and powers as beneficiaries in
a fiduciary association, so casting the relationship
between government and citizen seems to acknowl-
edge a subordination of the governed (who put their
faith in the state’s wisdom and rely on its integrity)
that the political theories of later Enlightenment fig-
ures like ROUSSEAU (1712–1778) and KANT (1724–
1804) do not.
Although no proponent of DEMOCRACY, much
fiduciary relationships
less of REVOLUTION, Kant (like Rousseau—who
sometimes seems to advocate both) understands le-
gitimate government to exercise the general will in
which all citizens participate and which all with en-
lightenment would realize. If we wish to determine
what laws and policies a just government would
adopt, we must take up the perspective of such cit-
izens. We must focus in particular on their extensive
freedom to pursue individual ends, on the EQUALITY
among them that warrants only like legal burdens
and ENTITLEMENTS, and (most significant here) on
their independence—their capacity to make their
own judgments about personal values and shared
standards of justice. While the claim that they are
beneficiaries in a fiduciary relationship may em-
power parties by alerting them to what is due, this
characterization also connotes and may foster less-
than-full participation in decisions regarding one’s
most central interests. Details may moot this con-
cern with respect to Locke’s political theory. Never-
theless, the contrast between his model of the state’s
relationship to citizens and those of Rousseau and
Kant highlights the hazards latent in characterizing
a relationship as fiduciary.
Summary
We can and do apply the concept of a fiduciary
relationship to a wide variety of associations, some
expressly or at least consciously established, others
arising de facto, apart from any agreement or con-
scious undertaking. We may term fiduciary obliga-
tions legal, professional, or moral, but all invoke the
relatively fluid standards of justice or fairness asso-
ciated with the concept of equity. In recognizing a
relationship as fiduciary, we acknowledge trust, re-
liance, or dependence in beneficiaries, who may be
persons, animals, or other entities and who possess
varying capacities for policing fiduciary conduct. We
acknowledge a correlative power in the fiduciary ei-
ther to benefit or harm the beneficiary.
By formally establishing or informally recogniz-
ing a fiduciary relationship, we can encourage in-
tegrity and commitment in fiduciaries, oversight by
society at large, and a kind of self-regard and em-
powerment in (some) beneficiaries. Imposing a fi-
duciary duty allows us to account for reliance, de-
pendence, disadvantage, or voicelessness and to
lend significant moral or legal leverage to protect
548
and advance the interests of those designated as
beneficiaries.
See also: AGENCY AND DISABILITY; AUTONOMY OF
MORAL AGENTS; BUSINESS ETHICS; CHILDREN AND
ETHICAL THEORY; COMMON GOOD; CONSCIENCE;
CONSENT; CONTRACTS; DISCOUNTING THE FUTURE;
DUTY AND OBLIGATION; ECONOMIC SYSTEMS; ENTI-
TLEMENTS; ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS; FAIRNESS; FU-
TURE GENERATIONS; GOVERNMENT, ETHICS IN; IN-
TEGRITY; INTERESTS; LEGAL ETHICS; LIBRARY AND
INFORMATION PROFESSIONS; MEDICAL ETHICS; NEEDS;
NEGLIGENCE; POWER; PROFESSIONAL ETHICS; PROM-
ISES; PROPERTY; PUBLIC POLICY; RESPONSIBILITY;
STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS; TRUST; WISDOM.
Bibliography
Clark, R. C. “Agency Costs versus Fiduciary Duties.” In
Principles and Agents: The Structure of Business, ed-
ited by J. W. Pratt and R. J. Zeckhauser, 55–79. Bos-
ton: Harvard Business School Press, 1985. Examines,
toward a positive theory, the legal literature on corpo-
rate managers as fiduciaries.
Dodd, E. M. “For Whom Are Corporate Managers Trust-
ees?” Harvard Law Review 45 (1932): 1145–63. Clas-
sic article—argues against corporate managers’ strict
fiduciary duty to stockholders.
Gandhi, Mohandas K. My Theory of Trusteeship. Edited
by Anand T. Hingorani. New Delhi: Gandhi Peace
Foundation, 1970. Collects Gandhi’s work on trustee-
ship and related topics.
Keeton, George. The Law of Trusts. London: Professional
Books Limited, 1974. A classic legal treatise on trusts.
Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. 2nd, Critical
Ed., edited by Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1967 [1689]. For discussion of gov-
ernments’ trust relationship with citizens, see espe-
cially Second Treatise of Government chapters IX, XI,
XIX.
O’Neill, Onora and William Ruddick, eds. Having Chil-
dren: Philosophical and Legal Reflections on Parent-
hood. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Vari-
ous articles consider fiduciary obligations of parents or
state to children. See especially those by William Rud-
dick and Robert H. Mnookin.
Partridge, Ernest, ed. Responsibilities to Future Genera-
tions. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1981. A
collection investigating stewardship obligations to fu-
ture generations.
Pelligrino, Edmund D., Robert M. Veatch and John P. Lan-
gran, eds. Ethics, Trust and the Professions. Washing-
ton, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1991. Collec-
tion of articles on the nature of the professions and the

role in them of trust and fiduciary obligations—espe-
cially rich in articles concerning the medical professions.
Sarah Williams Holtman
final good
The central concept in all ancient ethical theories.
Here the entry point for ethical reflection is the
agent’s coming to ask whether she is satisfied with
the direction of her life as a whole, with the worth
and coherence of her commitments. Reflection dis-
closes that the agent pursues not just particular
goods but an overall final good; philosophy enables
her to understand better what this good is (e.g.,
PLEASURE or virtue) and how best to achieve it in
her life by coherent and effective deliberation. The
answers to all other ethical questions therefore de-
pend on the answer to the question what the agent’s
final good is.
The Organization of Goods
In ancient ethics, it is assumed that all action of
the kind ethics is concerned with is end directed, and
that the end appears in some way good to the agent.
This is never questioned, since the notion of good
involved is extremely broad (the Stoics define it as
what benefits the agent in some way). ‘Final end’
is therefore treated as interchangeable with ‘final
good.’ The ends or goods the agent pursues are often
said to be objects of DESIRE, where ‘desire’ has a
suitably broad sense to match the broad sense of
‘good’ and covers moral motivation as well as par-
ticular self-interest.
The ends we have, and thus the goods we seek,
are not all on a level. We do some things for the sake
of others; the things we want and the activities we
engage in form hierarchies. ARISTOTLE (384–322
B.C.E.) in Nicomachean Ethics I sets out most clearly
the way in which this point leads us to postulate a
final good. If we merely pursued one thing for the
sake of another ad infinitum, ‘desire would be empty
and vain’; there must be some ends desired for their
own sake to make possible desire for the other ends.
This does not seem to establish that we have a
single end to which all our other ends stand as means
or specifications. Modern writers often supply a
missing premise about rationality: It could not be
rational to have several ends desired for their own
549
final good
sake with no more general end for the sake of which
they are desired; for then we would have no rational
way of determining conflicts between them. No an-
cient writers see this as a problem about rationality,
however; they take it to be a deep empirical fact
about us that once we start ranking ends in a hier-
archy, we do not in fact stop until we see all our
particular ends as means to or ways of specifying a
single end, which, in a definition shared by all
schools, is alone pursued for its own sake while ev-
erything else is pursued for the sake of it. Instinc-
tively we have a hypotelis or ‘pre-end,’ a given ten-
dency to be aware of ourselves as whole beings and
to go for some overall aim. (See Arius Didymus,
Eclogae II, 47, 12, and 18.) As we mature and be-
come rationally self-aware, this becomes our telos or
end, subject to deliberation and reflection. It is thus
taken to be a deep empirical fact about human be-
ings that they see all their ends as organized in the
light of a single end for the sake of which all the
other ends are pursued. Once I start to think about
my life as a whole, there is no nearer stopping place.
Only one ancient school downgrades the importance
of this fact. The CYRENAICS see the agent’s final end
as the maximization of intense experiences of plea-
sure, without regard to his life as a whole; but this
theory did not find widespread acceptance.
Content
Such a single final good is one for which the agent
is likely to have no informative specification. All
agree that it is eudaimonia or HAPPINESS, but this
settles little, since there is disagreement as to what,
substantively, happiness is. Philosophers provide
candidates for the content: pleasure (EPICURUS,
341–270 B.C.E.), virtue (the Stoics), virtuous activ-
ity with sufficient external goods (Aristotle and the
Peripatetics), tranquility (Pyrrhonist skeptics).
Formal Conditions
Any candidate for the final good must satisfy the
formal conditions that emerge from intuitive reflec-
tion. All agree that the final good must be ‘com-
plete,’ teleion. This actually involves two conditions,
which we could call finality (the final good puts a
stop to desire by being desired for its own sake) and
comprehensiveness (it does so by including or being
the aim of all other goods, which are desired for its
final good
sake). Aristotle adds that the final good must be self-
sufficient (autarkes), lacking in nothing. This is eas-
ily interpreted in absurd ways, and some restriction
must be put on it; later schools drop the condition,
though they insist that the agent’s life be self-
sufficient. More informally, the final good must or-
ganize one’s life in a unified way, as we have seen.
Most important, the final good is in a crucial way
unlike particular goods. While it can be informally
called ‘the best good,’ all schools agree that it is dif-
ferent in kind from the goods the pursuit of which
it organizes into a whole. Some later Aristotelian
writers speak of it as simply the collection of all par-
ticular goods into a whole. More popular, however,
is an approach that understands the final good as an
activity involving other goods, or making use of
them. On this view, my final good is not a good
thing, or a state of affairs, that others could produce
for me. It essentially involves my own activity and is
‘up to me’ in that it is the way I, by deliberation,
organize my life. In this way, it resembles modern
notions of ‘life plans’ but with more stress on the
agent’s deliberation and inner development.
By offering theories to develop reflections that
arise from the living of my life, philosophy helps me
to a clearer understanding of what the content of my
final end is, and of the nature of my deliberations
and how they can be clarified. It helps me revise my
aims from the inside. The idea that I can specify my
final end by appeal, for example, to the behavior of
humans in general, or to nature, forms a part of
these theories, but it should be sharply distinguished
from the formal questions about the final good.
Ancient and Modern
In ancient ethics, considerations about one’s final
end provide both the starting point for an individ-
ual’s ethical reflection and the theoretical frame-
work within which ethics is developed as a system.
In the intervening and modern period, such consid-
erations have continued to be powerful in the former
role and have been joined by a stimulus to ethical
reflection unknown in the ancient world: the desire
for a systematic method of producing answers to dis-
puted particular questions.
Since the end of antiquity, however, considera-
tions about the agent’s final good have not had the
same controlling role in the theoretical structure of
ethics; they have had to compromise with other
550
kinds of considerations which have been taken to be
as basic or even more basic. In medieval ethics, for
example, reflections on an agent’s final end have to
compromise with, and frequently give way to, the
demands of a revealed RELIGION. KANT (1724–
1804) sets a pattern whereby reflections on the form
of my life and larger aims are firmly constrained by
prior considerations about duty and by ways in
which, it is claimed, reason requires that we think
impartially about ourselves and others. UTILITARI-
ANISM can be formulated within the framework of
an agent’s search for a correct specification of her
final end, as it is by JOHN STUART MILL (1806–
1873); but this has not been the influential tradition.
Twentieth-century utilitarianism has developed in
ways very like Kant’s on this score: Considerations
about my overall end and the way it orders my pri-
orities are allowed to develop only within a frame-
work that already provides large constraints on these
considerations, constraints given by what is required
of the agent from a wholly impartial point of view.
It is not surprising that the agent’s final end is not
an important notion in ethical theories in which it
can only be reflected on within constraints of this
kind, for such theories leave little or no independent
ethical work to be done by reflections, according to
the ancient pattern, on one’s own good. Further, the
maximizing constraints of utilitarianism in particu-
lar can distort the agent’s way of unifying the
achievement of various goods into one whole life,
judged from the agent’s point of view. It is hard to
see what content the agent is to give to his final end
other than the trivial one of conforming to the prior
principles, and this may well produce conflict with
the agent’s own attempts to create by deliberation a
coherent overall pattern to his commitments.
In recent moral philosophy, serious attention has
been paid once more to the status of ethics in an
agent’s reflection on and determination of his final
end. It has been seen as an objection to Kantians
and utilitarians that they distort and constrain in ad-
vance the form an agent’s thoughts about his life as
a whole can take and the way his commitments fit
together in it.
Intuitively, an agent does reflect on her life as a
whole and does try to make unified sense of her pur-
suits and commitments. If this fact has independent
weight in an ethical theory, it imposes considerable
checks on a moral theory’s demands for IMPARTI-
ALITY. A theory that demands that the agent’s moral

thinking be from an impartial point of view must
therefore either argue that the agent’s thoughts
about her final good have no independent ethical
weight and can justifiably be overridden, or find a
way of compromising between both kinds of consid-
eration (e.g., by requiring the agent to adopt impar-
tial or maximizing principles only insofar as this
does not conflict with her aiming at a unification
within her life of her commitments). If the agent’s
final end is not to be trivialized, this compromise will
be a large one.
The stronger claim that ethics not only should
make room for the notion of the agent’s final end
but could actually use this notion again as its basic
framework has had less appeal. But arguably the
idea has not yet been fully explored. Arguments
against it focus on the following points:
(1) Justification. We are unlikely to accept theo-
ries that ground agents’ thoughts about their final
end in nature, or universal teleology, as the ancients
did. But not only are these theories not as strong as
often thought, they also are not an intrinsic part of
an ethical framework on the ancient pattern, which
can survive their rejection.
(2) Unity of an agent’s life. Powerful modern
arguments query our assumption that the agent’s
tendency to regard her life as a unity is basic and
important. The minority Cyrenaic viewpoint has ac-
quired interesting modern developments.
(3) Adequacy as a foundation. Theories that de-
velop within a framework like the ancient one do
not answer to certain modern expectations of a
moral theory, notably the demand for systematic
production of definite answers to particular, espe-
cially disputed, moral problems. They are often dis-
missed on these grounds as vague and inadequate.
Whether these are good objections waits on further
exploration of two issues: (a) the scope of what a
moral theory should provide and (b) the kind of
foundation an ethical theory requires. Ancient the-
ories are arguably weaker in structure than modern
ones: The rest of a theory is not derived from the
foundational notions alone. The viability and status
of theories patterned after the ancient cannot be de-
termined without detailed discussion of these issues.
See also: ARISTOTLE; CYRENAICS; EPICURUS; GOOD,
THEORIES OF THE; KANT; JOHN STUART MILL;
RAWLS; STOICISM; UTILITARIANISM.
551
fittingness
Bibliography
Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993. Discusses the role of consid-
erations about the agent’s final end in ancient theories
of ethics.
Aristotle. Eudemian Ethics. Books I and VIII are of
interest.
———. Nicomachean Ethics. Book I is the classic discus-
sion of the agent’s final end and happiness. Aristotle
introduces his own candidates in Books I and X.
Arius Didymus. Stoic Ethics and Peripatetic Ethics. In
Eclogae, Book II. Summaries of Stoic and Peripatetic
ethics, which contain much important material on this
topic.
Bradley, F.H. Ethical Studies. 2d ed. Reprint. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1988 [1876]. Contains interest-
ing arguments against Kantianism and utilitarianism
based on their conflict with the agent’s unified delib-
erations about his life as a whole.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. De finibus (On Final Ends). Trans-
lated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, Loeb Library, 1983 [1914]. A new trans-
lation by Raphael Woolf, with introduction and notes
by Julia Annas, is forthcoming from Cambridge Univer-
sity Press in the Cambridge Texts in the History of Phi-
losophy series.
Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1986. Argues that the agent’s sense of
her life as a unity is neither important nor basic and
uses this to support the primacy of impartial principles.
Striker, Gisela. “Greek Ethics and Moral Theory.” In her
Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pages 169–
82.
Williams, Bernard. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy.
London: Fontana, 1985. Chapter 3 argues against the
viability of an ethical foundation of the ancient pattern
on grounds (1) and (3) above.
———. “Persons, Character and Morality.” In his Moral
Luck, 1–19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981. Explores the conflict between demands of im-
partiality and the agent’s conception of herself as a uni-
fied and developed character.
Julia Annas
fittingness
Moral philosophers since KANT (1724–1804) think
of PRACTICAL REASONING as subject to two con-
straints—the requirements of obligation or duty and
the dictates of PRUDENCE. Where neither applies, ac-
tions are permissible: Choice may be left to personal
preference, habit, or whim. This division grants no
formal standing to the familiar practice of assessing
fittingness
conduct as more or less suitable, appropriate, or fit-
ting to particular agents under particular circum-
stances. In everyday life, this normative conception
plays a conspicuous role: In choosing for oneself or
in advising others, it is rather rare that one adverts
either to the moral law or to long-range self-interest.
The right thing to do is what is appropriate, and a
misstep may be serious without being either irra-
tional or wicked. The question is why modern phi-
losophers have neglected the notion of fittingness
and what substance that notion has.
The neglect is comparatively recent. CICERO
(106–43 B.C.E.), drawing on the work of Stoic fore-
bears, gives full weight to fittingness, as do the
countless generations of authors whose principal
source was Cicero’s On Moral Obligation. Cicero
writes:
One component of honorable conduct now
remains to be discussed: it includes modesty
and, what is an ornament to any life, self-
control, as well as reasonableness, the
calming of the passions and the observation
of the happy mean. Under this heading is
contained what in Latin is called decorum,
the Greek equivalent being prepon. Its
properties are such that it cannot be
separated from moral goodness. For what is
fitting is morally good, and what is morally
good is fitting. The difference between them
is more easily conceived than explained; for
whatever there is in any action that is fitting,
is apparent in that it has true goodness as its
prerequisite . . . it is apparent that what I
have called “decorum” is relevant to every
good action and is relevant in such a way
that it should be obvious rather than
requiring any abstruse processes of reason
for its discovery. Just as physical attraction
and good appearance cannot be separated
from bodily health, so this “decorum” which
I am expounding is inextricably bound up
with virtue so as to be only conceptually
distinguishable.
Cicero goes on to explain the difference between
artistic and moral fittingness: The dramatist assigns
appropriate speech and actions to bad characters as
well as to noble ones; here, the test is consistency.
In real life, fittingness demands good CHARACTER as
552
well as consistency. Nature is our guide and teaches
us not only what is fitting for human beings in gen-
eral but also what becomes each sex, stage of life,
and social level. Decorum requires young men to
heed the advice of their elders and old men to proffer
such advice. Resident aliens should not concern
themselves with affairs of state. Behavior that be-
comes a slave (e.g., singing in the marketplace) would
be, in a Roman gentleman, totally unacceptable.
The difference that Cicero found hard to explain
between what is fitting and what is morally good is,
I think, as follows: Just as a particular figure or color
mass may contribute to the formal beauty of a paint-
ing, so a particular action or habit is envisaged as
coherent with some whole valued for its system and
INTEGRITY. Fittingness has strong aesthetic over-
tones. The moral right is determined by principle,
but Cicero’s “decorum” is supervenient, adds an ex-
tra grace, is not achieved by formula. Hence, it pro-
vides a sanction in areas such as ETIQUETTE where
rules are largely the product of custom and are oth-
erwise more or less arbitrary. As his remarks about
the drama suggest, Cicero was aware of the contrast
between aesthetic propriety and the requirements of
duty, but this difference is easily elided, and hence
fittingness invites equivocation. In the universe as a
whole (another Stoic dogma), everything is just as
it ought to be. Such a thought can serve a dual func-
tion: On the one hand, it bespeaks admiration and
wonder at the intricate coordination of parts and
whole—nature becomes an aesthetic object and as
such may inspire the argument from design. On the
other hand, if everything is as it ought to be, then,
rather than contest with WICKEDNESS, EVIL, and
pain, we ought simply to appreciate the dramatic
contrasts they afford. LEIBNIZ (1646–1716) argued
that given the beneficence and the omnipotence of
God, it follows that the world we live in is “the best
of all possible worlds.” Alexander Pope (1688–
1744), in the Essay on Man (1732), draws the
conclusion,
And, spite of pride, in erring
reason’s spite
One truth is clear, Whatever is,
is right.
In the face of human misery, such a claim may
strike us as not only false but callous. It seemed so
to VOLTAIRE (1694–1778), whose Candide (1759)

offers a savage parody of Leibniz in the figure of Dr.
Pangloss. Pangloss’s pupil, Candide, survives a spec-
tacular series of afflictions and misadventures with-
out loss of faith in the teachings of Dr. Pangloss.
Commenting on a description of social life in Paris
as “perpetual civil war,” Candide observes, “A wise
man (Dr. Pangloss), who has since had the misfor-
tune to be hanged, taught me that there is a mar-
velous propriety in such things; they are but shad-
ows on a fair picture.” Martin, his companion,
replies, “[T]hose shadows you speak of are horrible
stains.” Voltaire is on Martin’s side—and with rea-
son: To view evil and wrongdoing with aesthetic de-
tachment is to adopt an attitude which for a human
being is, at the very least, unfitting.
An appeal to the fittingness of the cosmos and the
status quo can be countered by examples, as Voltaire
recognized; but the aesthetic connotations of fitting-
ness allow no room for reasoned argument: Intuition
is all. Hence, eighteenth-century authors bent on re-
futing HOBBES (1588–1679), and in particular the
idea that there is no AUTHORITY save that conferred
by de facto POWER, found a use for fittingness. The
argument is roughly as follows: Granted that God
has the authority to determine moral issues, a
Hobbesian could say that God’s authority, like that
of a mundane sovereign, lies in the power He has to
enforce His commands. On the contrary, according
to, for example, Bishop BUTLER (1692–1752), Rich-
ard PRICE (1723–1791), and Samuel CLARKE (1675–
1729), the authority of moral demands, although
underwritten by God, is inherent and discoverable
even to the nonbeliever. Filial respect is appropriate;
PROMISES are to be kept; it is fitting that evildoers,
not the innocent, be punished: Such truths are self-
evident. Samuel Clarke, in the Discourse Upon Nat-
ural Religion (1706), writes, “Some things are in
their own nature Good and Reasonable, and Fit to
be done, such as keeping Faith and performing eq-
uitable Compacts and the like; and these receive not
their obligatory power from any Law or Authority,
but are only declared, confirmed and enforced by
penalties upon such as would not perhaps be gov-
erned by right Reason only.” Price supposes the con-
nections to be analogues to mathematical truths,
discovered by reason; Francis HUTCHESON (1694–
1746) and others who model moral judgment on
perception think that one recognizes the fittingness
of, for example, GRATITUDE for favors, as one rec-
ognizes that the sky is blue.
553
fittingness
In the attempt to detach authority from power,
fittingness does very little work: Our authors could
just as well have argued that “one ought to keep
one’s promises” is true and needs no external sanc-
tion. Moreover, unless they can be amplified and ex-
plained, fittingness claims tend to block questions.
By analogy, if I claim that for making a soup ladle
fig-wood is suitable (prepon) and gold is not—as
Socrates (c. 470–399 B.C.E.) maintains in the Hip-
pias Major—then I should be able to give some rea-
son for thinking so. If all I can do is pontificate, then
all my hearer can glean is that I prefer one to the
other. Thus BENTHAM (1748–1832) includes fitting-
ness in his catalogue of putative alternatives to the
principle of utility. He characterizes it as one among
many attempts to dress up the idea that the good
and the bad are determined by the sympathies or
antipathies of a particular speaker: “Another man
. . . says, that there are certain practices conforma-
ble, and others repugnant, to the Fitness of Things;
and then he tells you, at his leisure, what practices
are conformable and what repugnant: just as he hap-
pens to like a practice or dislike it.”
Bentham has a point: Although the appeal to fit-
tingness need not be a mask for prejudice, it often
is. Those whose INTERESTS are served by social evils
sanctioned by tradition (e.g., slavery or the subjec-
tion of women) argue that change, while perhaps not
morally wrong, would be unseemly and, more spe-
cifically, that in virtue of their sex or race certain
persons are fittingly consigned to an inferior status.
Through convenience and custom, dreadful INSTI-
TUTIONS acquire the semblance of propriety.
Fittingness has nonetheless a legitimate use. Pro-
fessions, offices, and social roles are in some mea-
sure defined by the duties they entail, but such duties
do not exhaust the incumbent’s responsibilities. It is
fitting, though not required, that teachers give extra
attention to students with special problems; parents
who did nothing for their children except what the
law requires might well be judged unfit parents. Do-
ing more than is asked of one, going the second mile,
need not be exalted as SUPEREROGATION and does
not make an officeholder into a saint. Benefactions
are expected but not spelled out. (This is part of
what Kant tries to capture in his conception of “im-
perfect” duties.) What is crucial is that the offices in
question are designed to achieve some genuine good
and that officeholders are honest. Since it is a bad
thing to be a slave or to own slaves, the question of
fittingness
what does or does not befit a slave is an idle and
frivolous question. A Roman gentleman who feels
an urge to sing in the marketplace might be deterred
by the thought that he will be judged to be drunk or
insane, but here it is the standards of decorum that
are at fault: The enlightened gentlemen would burst
into song.
See also: AESTHETICS; AUTHORITY; CHARACTER;
CICERO; CIVILITY; COHERENTISM; DISCRIMINATION;
DUTY AND OBLIGATION; EPICUREANISM; ETIQUETTE;
HUMILITY; INTEGRITY; INTUITIONISM; JUSTICE, CIR-
CUMSTANCES OF; MORAL PERCEPTION; NATURALISM;
POWER; PROFESSIONAL ETHICS; SELF-CONTROL;
STOICISM.
Bibliography
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. On Moral Obligation. Translated
by John Higginbotham. London: Faber and Faber,
1967. Having explained his use of “decorum” (fitting-
ness) in Book 1, chapter 27, Cicero recurs to the notion
at various points in the later books and offers illustra-
tions and examples.
Selby-Bigge, L. A., ed. British Moralists. Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1897. Citations and references to Bentham,
Butler, Clarke, Hutcheson, and Price come from this
anthology; excellent index.
Mary Mothersill
Foot, Philippa (1920– )
Philippa Foot is one of the most original and influ-
ential contemporary ethical theorists. She took her
degrees at Somerville College, Oxford, and was for
many years a fellow there. In the late sixties and early
seventies, she held various academic posts in the
United States, eventually settling in as a professor
at the University of California at Los Angeles. She
retired in 1991. Throughout her career, she has
worked with the thought that ethics should proceed
from a discussion of virtue and vice, that virtue must
have some non-accidental connection with human
HAPPINESS, that the correct exercise of PRACTICAL
REASON is connected to both happiness and virtue,
and that an appropriately naturalistic ethics will help
to explain these connections. While she has shown
unflagging interest in these topics, it is hard to cate-
gorize her positive views, partly because she has
never been afraid to change her mind in response to
a good argument. One goes to Foot not in search of
554
a convenient theoretical nesting ground, but because
her progress is illuminating, and the arguments she
gives along the way are distinctive, insightful, subtle,
and important.
Foot’s early essays were devoted to arguing
against EMOTIVISM and PRESCRIPTIVISM in moral the-
ory. Emotivists and prescriptivists were united in
their adherence to the then widely accepted view
that there is no logical connection between state-
ments of fact and statements of value. Consequently,
both camps held that evaluative disagreements could
persist even though all parties agreed about the facts
of the case, that there were very few constraints on
which facts one might adduce in support of one’s
evaluations, and that inferences to evaluative con-
clusions were unlike inferences given in support of
factual conclusions. Foot’s response spawned sub-
sequent work on thick ethical concepts. She began
by granting for the sake of argument that there was
some special, ineliminable characteristic that eval-
uations shared. She then asked what, if anything,
followed about the relation between premises and
conclusion of an argument offered in support of an
evaluation. Taking ‘rude’ as her example of an ev-
aluative word, Foot argued that inferences about
rudeness were sensitive to evidence, that there were
fairly stringent constraints on the sorts of facts that
could be adduced in support of the claim that some
bit of behavior was rude, and that we had been given
no good reason to suppose that questions about
rudeness could not be entirely settled with reference
to the facts of the case. In short, at least some eval-
uations had determinate factual content. Since as-
sessments of rudeness bore all the hallmarks her op-
ponents had identified as distinctively evaluative, the
argument went right to the core of prominent ac-
counts of the fact/value distinction, undercutting
moral theories which rested on these accounts.
Both emotivism and prescriptivism held that the
action-guiding force of morality could be explained
only with reference to the special “evaluative ele-
ment” in moral judgment. In rejecting these views,
Foot initially held that all that was needed to link
moral thought to action was the very connection be-
tween facts that shaped moral judgment as such.
Anyone capable of moral judgment had reason to act
in accordance with the dictates of morality, she sug-
gested. Because she also held that reasons for acting
had to connect in some way to people’s INTERESTS,
she attempted to give an account of morality as

grounded in self-interest (the only sort of interest
she thought could be plausibly ascribed to all peo-
ple). Her early work on the rationality of morality
centered on this attempt.
Ultimately, she rejected the approach. Although
it can be argued that morality is in people’s interest
generally, and that there is some connection between
interest and morality, happiness and virtue, there
will inevitably be occasions when morality will re-
quire some sort of sacrifice of one’s own interests or
of the common weal. Once this is admitted, how-
ever, Foot finds it much less plausible to suppose
that moral reasons are reasons to which everyone
must respond, regardless of her interests, desires,
and situation. Moral reasons are reasons for people
who have standard interests and desires and face tol-
erably fair circumstances. We can convict a man of
having a bad CHARACTER or of having acted immor-
ally if he fails to do as he should when his interests
are unusual or his circumstances intolerable. But be-
cause advantage need not coincide with the dictates
of virtue, some people may not have a reason to act
virtuously. Foot did not abandon her interest in
questions about the rationality of morality. Instead,
she continued her work on moral judgment (a topic
with which she had been concerned for some time)
and practical reason without insisting that vicious or
immoral action was inevitably contrary to reason.
In her essays on UTILITARIANISM, the doctrine of
DOUBLE EFFECT, and the moral assessment of actions
and outcomes, she argued against theories in ethics
built on the thought that the rightness or goodness
of actions, rules, and other objects of moral judg-
ment consists in their bringing about, or tending to
bring about, states of affairs which the theory in
question identifies independently as good. In this
work, she implicitly rejected the suggestion that, in
the exercise of practical reason, the end suffices eth-
ically to justify any means taken in its service. Foot
argued that consequentialist theories go wrong
right at the start in the supposition that the re-
quired sense of a good state of affairs is there to be
had for moral theory independently of any thought
about how this state is brought about. States of af-
fairs are not, all on their own, good or bad in the
way they would need to be to make out a case for
CONSEQUENTIALISM.
It is not that consequences don’t matter to moral
judgment. Rather, moral judgment about the con-
sequences of action is sensitive to such distinctions
555
Foot, Philippa
as whether an outcome of voluntary action was di-
rectly intended as the end or means, or merely fore-
seen. The driver of a runaway tram must steer his
vehicle onto one of two narrow tracks in order to
bring it to a stop and protect his passengers: one
person stands on one track; five on the other; anyone
on either track who cannot leap clear of the tram
will die. Clearly, ordinary judgment directs the driver
to the less crowded track. Things are otherwise in a
case in which a judge, faced with rioters threatening
to murder five hostages if no one is punished for a
horrible crime, can disperse the mob only by framing
and executing an innocent person. In the case of the
panicked judge, the death of an innocent person is
directly intended as a means to quieting the mob and
saving the hostages. In the runaway tram case, the
death of the lone man on the tracks is merely fore-
seen (should he manage to survive, Foot points out,
it’s not as though the tram driver would undertake
to hunt him down and do him in).
Her revival of the medieval intended/foreseen
distinction, and distinctions between doing things
and allowing things to happen (there is, she argues,
more than one distinction there) provide not only
the backbone of an important strand of her anti-
consequentialism, but illuminate whole regions of
ordinary moral judgment that had been entirely ob-
scured by modern moral theory. By focusing our at-
tention on the principles which give rise to such
judgments, she both shows how they work and
mounts a challenge to contemporary ethics. She ar-
gues that we ignore at our peril the foundations of
Western morality laid down in Greek and Christian
thought. Ethical judgment and moral life continue
to be shaped for us by these origins. If we do not
retain our hold on such matters, we risk producing
tales full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Fail-
ure to account for standard moral judgment may
amount to failure to produce moral theory.
Foot has found Thomistic thought especially
fruitful in both her critical and positive work. For
THOMAS AQUINAS (1225?–1274), following ARIS-
TOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.), the study of ethics is largely
the study of VIRTUES and vices, and Foot has become
a driving force in contemporary virtue theory. Her
work on the virtues takes up such questions as
whether or not deeply immoral action can be in
some respect virtuous: for example, whether plain
murder can be courageous (she argues that ordinary
moral judgment doesn’t support attributions of vir-
Foot, Philippa
tue to displays of deliberate WICKEDNESS); whether
PRACTICAL WISDOM is a virtue (she holds that virtue
must be within reach of ordinary people, and the
question becomes whether the appropriate charac-
terization of practical wisdom gives us a quality that
an ordinary person might display); how and in what
sense virtue serves human interests given that it
need not conduce to personal advantage; whether
vicious people can be deeply happy; and whether
good people who act ill in response to harrowing
circumstance thereby relinquish hope of afterwards
enjoying the kind of happiness that is open to good
people. She continues to ground this work in a sub-
tle, nuanced, naturalistic account of human good,
and to understand ethics as necessarily responsive
to ordinary ethical judgment. At this writing, her
work on these topics is ongoing. And, with Foot,
while one never knows exactly how things will turn
out, one can expect to learn a lot from watching how
they unfold.
See also: ACTION; ACTS AND OMISSIONS; AESTHETICS;
ARISTOTELIAN ETHICS; CATEGORICAL AND HYPO-
THETICAL IMPERATIVES; CHRISTIAN ETHICS; CONSE-
QUENTIALISM; DOUBLE EFFECT; EMOTIVISM; ETI-
QUETTE; EXTERNALISM AND INTERNALISM; FREEDOM
AND DETERMINISM ; MACINTYRE; METAETHICS;
MORAL ABSOLUTES; MORAL DILEMMAS; MORAL PSY-
CHOLOGY; MORAL REALISM; MORAL REASONING; MO-
TIVES; NATURALISM; PRACTICAL REASON[ING]; PRAC -
TICAL WISDOM; PRESCRIPTIVISM; REASONS FOR
ACTION; TEMPERANCE; THOMAS AQUINAS; THOM-
SON; VIRTUE ETHICS; VIRTUES; UTILITARIANISM; VOL-
UNTARY ACTS.
Bibliography
Selected Works by Philippa Foot
Virtues and Vices, and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy.
Values and Philosophical Inquiry. Oxford: Blackwell,
1978. Published simultaneously at Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1978. Collected papers, with intro-
duction, added footnotes, and two previously unpub-
lished papers.
Morality and Action. Edited by Philippa Foot. Cambridge
Studies in Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1993. Collected papers of Warren Quinn;
introduction by Foot.
Theories of Ethics. Edited by Philippa Foot. Oxford Read-
ings in Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1967. Introduction by Foot.
556
Selected Essays and Reviews
“The Philosopher’s Defence of Morality.” Philosophy 27
(1952): 311–28.
“When Is a Principle a Moral Principle?” Proceedings of
the Aristotelian Society Supp. vol. 28 (1954): 95–111.
“Morality and Art.” Proceedings of the British Academy
56 (1970): 131–44.
“Moral Reasoning.” In Encyclopedia of Bioethics, edited
by W. T. Reich. New York: Free Press, 1978.
“Moral Relativism.” In Relativism: Cognitive and Moral,
edited by J. W. Meiland and M. Krausz. Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982.
“Moral Realism and Moral Dilemma.” Journal of Philos-
ophy 80/7 July (1983): 379–98.
“Morality, Action and Outcome.” In Objectivity and
Value: Essays in Memory of John Mackie, edited by T.
Honderich. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985.
“Utilitarianism and the Virtues.” In Consequentialism and
its Critics, edited by S. Scheffler. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1988.
“Von Wright on Virtue.” In The Philosophy of Georg Hen-
rik von Wright, edited by P. A. Schlipp. Library of Liv-
ing Philosophers, xxix. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989.
“Nietzsche’s Immoralism.” New York Review of Books 38/
11 (13 June 1991): 18–22.
“Rationality and Virtue.” In Norms, Value, and Society.
Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook. Amsterdam: Kluwer,
1994.
“Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake?” Oxford
Journal of Legal Studies 15/1 (1995): 1–14.
Works about Foot
Hursthouse, Rosalind, Gavin Lawrence, and Warren
Quinn, eds. Virtues and Reasons: Philippa Foot and
Moral Theory: Essays in Honour of Philippa Foot. Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
Candace Vogler
forgery
Although forgery is of interest for epistemological,
ethical, and aesthetic reasons, there is relatively little
philosophical literature on the topic. What little there
is is largely confined to aesthetics.
Epistemology
The concepts of a forgery and a counterfeit—two
near relatives—have been put to use to, of all things,
refute an argument concerning scepticism about the
senses.

In a well-known passage, Gilbert Ryle (1900–
1976) has tried to show that a famous argument
of René DESCARTES (1596–1650) won’t do. Des-
cartes’s argument is that, since his senses sometimes
deceive him, it could be the case that they always
deceive him. The premise of this argument is impec-
cable, Ryle thinks, but its conclusion doesn’t follow.
Arguing by analogy, he notes that if a country has
no coinage, it’s impossible for counterfeiters to op-
erate in it, because
there would be nothing for them to
manufacture or pass counterfeits of. . . .
There can be false coins only where there are
coins made of the proper materials by the
proper authorities. . . . In a country in which
there is a coinage, . . . the counterfeiting
might be so efficient that an ordinary citizen,
unable to tell which were false and which
were genuine coins, might become suspicious
of the genuineness of any particular coin that
he received. But however general his
suspicions might be, there remains one
proposition which he cannot entertain, the
proposition, namely, that it is possible that all
coins are counterfeits. For there must be an
answer to the question, “counterfeits of
what?”
By parity of reasoning, Descartes’s argument fails.
Universal doubt about the deliverances of the senses
is thus impossible. In a similar vein, Jay Rosenberg
has noted that Descartes’s argument is structurally
identical to:
Paintings are sometimes forgeries;
Therefore, it could be the case that paintings
are always forgeries.
The conclusion of this argument is false, though, Ro-
senberg thinks, because
a forged painting is a copy of some original
painting, and it could not be the case that all
paintings were copies. If all paintings were
copies, no paintings would be originals, but if
no paintings were originals there would be
nothing for the supposed copies to be copies
of. So the pattern [structure] [of the forgery
argument] is an invalid pattern and, in
consequence,
557
forgery
Descartes’s argument is similarly invalid, and his
conclusion doesn’t follow.
It would be nice if counterfeit coins and forged
paintings had such purchasing power, but they
don’t. Two minor problems with Rosenberg’s argu-
ment are that there’s no such thing as an invalid
argument pattern or form (a formally invalid argu-
ment is one that instantiates no valid argument
form, not one that instantiates an invalid form), and
that the possibility of an infinite regress of copies—
painting A being a copy of painting B, which in turn
is a copy of painting C, and so on ad infinitum—is
neglected by him, or is simply ruled out without ar-
gument. Mutatis mutandis, the same holds for
Ryle’s argument. More importantly, Ryle and Rosen-
berg have gotten the concepts of a counterfeit and a
forgery wrong. A forgery isn’t necessarily a copy of
an existent painting; empirically speaking, in fact,
most of the better-known forgeries haven’t been
copies. Rather, they’ve been painted in the style of
someone or some period. If a forgery isn’t necessar-
ily a copy, then Rosenberg’s objection to Descartes’s
argument collapses; and since Ryle implicitly holds
that a counterfeit is a copy of a genuine coin—a
claim I’ll show is wrong two paragraphs hence—
he’s also subject to the same criticism.
This doesn’t show that Ryle’s and Rosenberg’s
conclusion, that it’s impossible that all coins/paint-
ings are counterfeits/forgeries, is false. If successful,
all it shows is that they haven’t established as much.
But their conclusion is false.
Suppose that there were no paintings, but that a
famous sculptor one day announced that tomorrow
he would reveal a new art form, painting. After de-
scribing the new art form to the public, he retires to
his studio to execute the first paintings. Unfortu-
nately, he’s kidnaped before he applies brush to can-
vas, and someone else executes the first paintings,
making sure to attribute them to the sculptor and
even sign his name. All paintings would then be
forgeries. Similarly, imagine that a country had no
coinage but that one day its government announced
that next week coins, objects of such-and-such a
sort, would be introduced as a general medium of
economic exchange. Imagine further that troubles
beset the operation of the first mint, but not the ac-
tivities of the first of a long line of counterfeiters.
They, and not the government, produce coins and
put them into circulation on the appointed day. All
coins would then be counterfeits. Regardless, then,
forgery
of whether it’s possible for our senses to deceive us
on all occasions, it is possible for all coins to be
counterfeits and all paintings to be forgeries.
Ethics
Ryle and Rosenberg go wrong because they mis-
understand the concepts of a counterfeit and a for-
gery. In particular, they take copy to be an analytical
component of those concepts, and thus think that
both are implicitly relational, just as son is. This is
reinforced by the ‘of’ locution that both draw atten-
tion to: “Counterfeits of what?” Ryle asks; and Ro-
senberg says that if all paintings were forgeries, there
would be no originals for the supposed forgeries to
be forgeries of. The ‘of’ locution is misleading here,
however, and shouldn’t be taken at face value. Of
necessity, all thoughts are thoughts of something,
but ‘thought’ isn’t relational. Thinking of Zeus
doesn’t require that Zeus exist. Rather, the ‘of’ in-
troduces the content of a thought, what the thought
is about or makes reference to. Something similar is
true of forgeries and counterfeits: they implicitly
make reference to a genuine item, and can’t be
understood except in terms of such a reference, but
they needn’t stand in relation to any genuine item.
A forged painting is always a forged-somebody-or-
other painting, and a counterfeit coin always a
counterfeit-some-country-or-other coin. What that
indicates, though, is the conceptually parasitic na-
ture of forgery and counterfeit, not that the concepts
are implicitly relational.
Drawing upon this, and for simplicity’s sake con-
centrating only on forgery, what can be said of a
more positive nature is that the concept of forgery
is best understood in terms of the “forged XY” lo-
cution, with “X” denoting the purported source of
issue (e.g., Picasso, J. P. Getty) and “Y” the kind of
object forged (e.g., painting, check). In a broad
sense, a forged XY is an object which (1) is not a
genuine XY, but which (2) is represented as a gen-
uine XY, and (3) is so represented with the intention
to deceive. Genuineness has to do with the source
of issue of the object, and, logically speaking, the
adjective “genuine” functions in much the same ple-
onastic way that “real” does: a real duck is simply a
duck, a genuine Picasso painting simply a Picasso
painting. A forged XY is thus not an XY, but a forg-
ery differs from a mere misattribution—which, in
the case at hand, would also not be a genuine XY—
558
in that forgery requires an INTENTION to deceive re-
specting an object’s being an XY.
What’s morally wrong with a forgery follows
from this. Many people believe that the wrongness
of forgery is the wrongness of theft. Art forgery is
stealing people’s ideas, it’s commonly said, and
other kinds of forgery similarly other kinds of theft.
Forging checks is stealing money, for example, and
forging prescriptions is stealing drugs. While it’s no
doubt true that most people wouldn’t forge checks
or prescriptions unless they wanted money or drugs
that they had no right to, the view that forgery is a
kind of theft isn’t correct. An examination of the
definition of forgery offered a paragraph back shows
that not only does copying not lie hidden in the folds
of forgery, but that theft doesn’t either. Fraud, how-
ever—more accurately, attempted fraud—does.
Forgery is essentially misrepresentation of source of
issue—basically, authorship—with the intention to
deceive. That’s one special sort of attempted fraud
or, more accurately still, one special sort of lie. A lie
is a representation with the intention to deceive.
Thus a forgery is a special kind of lie, and forging a
species of lying. The wrongness of forging, then, is
the wrongness of lying, not the wrongness of steal-
ing. Misattribution thus differs from forging in ex-
actly the same way that speaking falsely does from
lying.
This view can be reinforced if concepts in the
neighborhood of forgery are examined. The forgery
of works of art has sometimes been considered the
infringement of an artist’s copyright. Consider, then,
copyrights. If the Encyclopedia of Ethics were re-
produced exactly as is, without the express approval
of the Beckers, there would be no forgery but there
would be copyright infringement. There need be no
misrepresentation of origin—author, editor, press—
for copyright infringement to occur. However, if Pi-
casso had known of, but been indifferent to, or per-
haps even approved of, someone’s painting in his
style and attributing canvases to him, there would
still be forgery. Unlike copyright infringement, forg-
ery obtains irrespective of the approval or lack of
approval—irrespective of the authorization or lack
thereof—of the person attributed the forged work.
Copyright infringement, at least in a formal, legal-
istic setting, does not. And, as just mentioned, copy-
right infringement, especially in the form of piracy
or bootlegging, need not, and many times does not,
involve any misrepresentation of source of issue—

any misrepresentation of authorship. Copyright in-
fringement is basically the unauthorized production,
reproduction, or distribution of an item, and has no
inherent connection with forgery. Still, it would be
hard to press theft into service with either forgery
or copyright infringement. With both, the “owner”
possesses everything he had before the forgery or the
infringement, but how can an item be stolen and yet
its “owner” retain it? And even if the concept of
PROPERTY were to apply in a straightforward way
with both forgery and copyright infringement, it
should still be remembered that not every violation
of property RIGHTS is theft. Trespassing, for exam-
ple, certainly isn’t.
Conceptually, PLAGIARISM is much closer to forg-
ery than copyright infringement is. In fact, the defi-
nition of forgery offered several paragraphs back
doesn’t distinguish the two: plagiarism is also mis-
representation of source of issue with the intention
to deceive. Yet we clearly take plagiarism and forg-
ery to be distinct concepts in everyday life. A student
who copies another student’s term paper and turns
it in as his own work is guilty of plagiarism, not
forgery, just as an artist who copies a painting of
Piscasso’s and represents it as Picasso’s work is
guilty of forgery, not plagiarism. (In a relatively for-
mal or institutional setting, though, the requirement
of the intention to deceive may be absent with either
forgery or plagiarism. A foreign student who copies
an encyclopedia article and turns it in as his own
work might be unaware of the forbidden nature of
such behavior, and so lack an intention to deceive.
As far as the university is concerned, however, he
might still be guilty of plagiarism. Similar cases can
be constructed regarding forgery.) This needn’t be
regarded as a problem with the definition proposed,
however. The definition can be taken to demarcate
a genus (perhaps the genus is even best thought of
as that of forgery), with plagiarism and forgery (in
a narrower sense) as species of that genus. Still, even
if acceptable, what distinguishes the two species?
The clue is that, paradigmatically, forgery is passing
off your own work as somebody else’s, while plagia-
rism is passing off somebody’s else’s work as your
own. It is distance from the two paradigms that de-
termines whether forgery or plagiarism is in ques-
tion: the closer to the paradigm, the better grounded
the claim of forgery or plagiarism. Distance from the
paradigms is possible because the person who mis-
represents a work need not be the person who cre-
559
forgery
ated the work. Such a “third party,” a person who
neither creates nor is attributed a work, doesn’t fig-
ure in the paradigms. To illustrate: if I were to find
a seventeenth-century painting and intentionally
misrepresented it as a Vermeer, I would be guilty of
forgery. In any case, it should be obvious that the
wrongness of plagiarism is the wrongness of forg-
ery—namely, that of lying—and not that of theft.
The reasons are precisely those indicated in respect
to forgery.
In saying that forgery is wrong, it should be noted
that the claim is only that it’s prima facie wrong, in
W. D. ROSS’s (1877–1971) sense of the term. By
this, what is meant is not that all or most forgeries
are wrong, but only that forgery is wrong other
things being equal; or, in other words, that the fact
that an act is one of forgery always counts against it
from the MORAL POINT OF VIEW, and counts against
it just because it is one of forgery.
Aesthetics
There is even more debate on the aesthetic side,
since there isn’t even a consensus that there is any-
thing aesthetically wrong with a forgery. Generally
speaking, those who hold that there’s nothing aes-
thetically wrong with forgery as such argue that the
properties that make an artwork (or any other ob-
ject) a forgery have as little to do with its aesthetic
value as its distance from the North Pole does. The
properties that make a check a forgery, for example,
have no bearing on its aesthetic value. Moreover,
they argue that the arguments of their opponents are
all unsuccessful. And confront those arguments they
must, for a rich variety has been offered, and—the
great principle of presumed innocence in the Court
of Reason—arguments are innocent (successful)
until proven guilty (unsuccessful). Again, however,
it should be remembered that the question at issue
isn’t whether all or most forgeries are aesthetically
inferior or of low value. Rather, the question is
whether forgery is prima facie wrong, or makes a
difference from the aesthetic point of view. Differ-
ently and somewhat more simply put, the question
is, Does the fact that an artwork (or any other ob-
ject) is a forgery count against it from the aesthetic
point of view, and count against it just because it’s
a forgery? The key phrase here is “just because.”
Even if there’s something wrong with a forgery, that
might not be because it’s a forgery.
forgery
One of the most ingenious arguments that has
been offered in favor of the view that forgery as such
makes an aesthetic difference has been advanced by
Nelson Goodman. Goodman asks us to imagine two
perceptually indistinguishable paintings before us,
the one on the left an original, the one on the right
a forgery of it—an original and a forgery that we
know to be such. He then asks whether there is an
aesthetic difference between the two paintings “for
us now,” and answers that there is because “knowl-
edge [that the one on the left is an original and the
one on the right a forgery] (1) stands as evidence
that there may be a difference between them that I
can learn to perceive, (2) assigns the present looking
a role as training toward such a perceptual discrim-
ination, and (3) makes consequent demands that
modify and differentiate my present experience in
looking at the two pictures.”
Clever as these arguments are, they don’t show
that there is anything aesthetically wrong with a
forgery, or even that (in Goodman’s unexplained
language) “there is an aesthetic difference for us
now.” If the properties in question were costing five
dollars/costing five million dollars or having been
handled by a grubby philosopher/not having been
handled by a grubby philosopher, the arguments
would hold just as surely as they do for being an
original XY/being a forged XY, yet no one would
hold that costing five dollars or costing five million
dollars has, as such, anything to do with the aes-
thetic value of an artwork, or even whether there is
“an aesthetic difference for us now” when looking
at the two, knowing that the two differ in respect to
price. Grubby philosophers we needn’t consider at
all, of course, as they are far too common to be
worth bothering about, but it should be noted that
the argument would hold, if it holds at all, for any
two perceptually indistinguishable objects—indeed,
any two objects at all—since all that it really banks
on is the fact that the two objects differ in origin—
which, of course, is true of any two objects. Thus if
correct, the argument would prove that the mere
possibility of a perceptual difference—any percep-
tual difference—between two objects—any two ob-
jects—is logical insurance that there is an aesthetic
difference between them, at least “for us now.”
That’s far too many aesthetic differences.
If the objection here isn’t clear, consider only the
case of two perceptually indistinguishable paintings,
but this time modify Goodman’s example by having
560
the one on the right be a copy instead of a forgery.
Goodman’s three arguments are still as strong or
weak as otherwise, but the element of forgery has
dropped out completely. What that shows is that
what is doing the work in Goodman’s arguments is
the possibility of a perceptual difference, not the fact
that an object is a forgery. And since forgery is a non-
perceptual category, the argument couldn’t possibly
prove that the fact that an object is a forgery makes
an aesthetic difference just because it’s a forgery.
A very different argument for the view that forg-
ery as such makes an aesthetic difference has been
advanced by Denis Dutton. “Every work of art,”
Dutton says, “involves the element of performance.
. . . The concept of performance is internal to our
whole notion of art.” Performance being internal to
art, every work of art should be evaluated in terms
of whether and how it succeeds or fails as a perfor-
mance, since success and failure are internal to the
concept of performance. Thus to determine the ar-
tistic value of a work of art, we need to know
whether it succeeds or fails as a performance; and
in order to know that, we need to know what the
performance is. But in order to know what the per-
formance is, we need to know what the conditions
were under which the work was created. That means
that we have to know facts about the origin of the
thing: facts concerning what problems the artist was
trying to solve, facts concerning what she hoped to
accomplish, facts concerning artistic conventions
operative at the time, facts concerning how tech-
nical developments and the medium restricted ar-
tistic creativity, and so forth. It is for the very reason
that a forgery misrepresents these facts that a forg-
ery misrepresents performance, hence misrepre-
sents achievement, hence misrepresents the work of
art as such. Forgeries, therefore, are artistic crimes,
and so are artistically wrong.
But the story doesn’t end there. Forgeries aren’t
just artistic crimes but are aesthetic ones as well.
That’s because talk about an aesthetic experience,
an experience “said to refer to the visual or auditory
experience of the sensuous surface of the work of
art,” is radically misconceived. Babies may have
such experiences; adults seriously interested in art
never do. Forgery is thus an aesthetic crime because
the only sensible way to talk about the aesthetic
value of a work is to take its nonsensuous features
into consideration. Without the introduction of such

features, including features regarding performance,
aesthetic evaluation is literally senseless.
As well-worked-out as this argument is, it won’t
do. First of all, the forger and the person attributed
the forged work could both live at the same time,
both be members of the same artistic group, both
work in the same medium and within the same tech-
nical limitations, both be subject to the same artistic
conventions, both hope to achieve the same thing in
their work, and both be interested in solving the
same artistic problems. As far as the two are con-
cerned, the only difference between them would be
that one is A and the other B. Forgery is possible
under such circumstances, circumstances in which
there is no misrepresentation of performance, and
thus no misrepresentation of achievement. There is
only a misrepresentation of performer. Dutton’s
view, then, is subject to counterexamples, cases in
which, say, Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) forges Juan
Gris’s (1887–1927) work, or a painter in one period
forges the work of a predecessor who is a member
of the same school or movement, or a painter (and
her confrères) returns to a style or subject matter
explored earlier, or a person forges his twin broth-
er’s sculpture, and so on. There needn’t be any mis-
representation of achievement, or significant achieve-
ment, with a forgery. Thus even if Dutton’s argument
is impeccable as far as performance, achievement,
and such like are concerned, it doesn’t prove that
there is anything aesthetically wrong with forgery as
such. As with Goodman’s argument, something other
than forgery is doing the work. That something has
no inherent linkage with forgery.
Indeed, those who think that the fact that an ob-
ject is a forgery doesn’t, in and of itself, make an
aesthetic difference are likely to say that the same
will be true of any promising argument for the con-
trary opinion: all such arguments actually bank on
some property other than forgery, even if that prop-
erty is empirically correlated with forgery. To back
up this claim, they would point out how unlikely it
is that (1) the fact that two people, A and B, are
numerically distinct, (2) the fact that B was misrep-
resented as having created a work that A created,
(3) the fact that such a misrepresentation was a lie,
or (4) any combination of (1), (2), and (3) would
have an inherent connection with the notion of the
aesthetic. It doesn’t, they would maintain, with forg-
eries of high school diplomas, autographed base-
balls, or certificates of deposit, so why should it with
561
forgiveness
works of art? They needn’t hold that all origin-
related properties of a work of art are aesthetically
irrelevant, but they would say that it doesn’t seem
likely that a good case can be made for forgery’s
being among the relevant ones.
See also: AESTHETICS; AUTHORITY; CONSENT; DE-
CEIT; INTEGRITY; INTENTION; INTRANSITIVITY; PLA-
GIARISM; PROPERTY; TRUST; WORK.
Bibliography
Dutton, Denis, ed. The Forger’s Art: Forgery and The Phi-
losophy of Art. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1983. A collection of important papers.
Michael J. Wreen
forgiveness
Forgiveness may be viewed as the principled over-
coming of feelings of RESENTMENT that are naturally
(and perhaps properly) directed toward a person
who has done one a moral injury. Since moral injury
involves responsible wrongdoing, forgiveness must
be distinguished from justification (which argues for
an absence of wrongdoing) and excuse (which ar-
gues for an absence of RESPONSIBILITY).
Forgiveness must also be distinguished from
MERCY, for mercy has a direct bearing on action that
is not necessarily present in forgiveness. Forgiveness
involves a change of heart—in how one feels about
a wrongdoer—that may still be compatible with ad-
vocating that the wrongdoer receive those very “just
deserts” (e.g., public rebuke, PUNISHMENT) that a
commitment to mercy might oppose.
Within the Christian tradition, forgiveness is typ-
ically taken to be a good thing, and the tendency to
bestow it is typically taken to be a virtue. It may be
regarded as a way of showing our commitment to
LOVE and compassion in the really hard test cases
(i.e., cases in which we have been harmed by the
potential beneficiary of our love); it may be a way of
overcoming an overindulgence in self-love or self-
importance; it may help us to avoid the potentially
self-poisoning effects of resentment; and it may al-
low us to reap some important social benefits—for
example, avoiding those resentment-fueled feuds
and acts of vigilante justice that can disturb the pub-
lic peace. Perhaps most important of all, given that
the people who are closest to us are the ones who
forgiveness
can and often do harm us most deeply, forgiveness
allows the restoration of some of our most valued
relationships—relationships that would forever re-
main fragmented if infected by resentment. As the
parable of the unforgiving servant (Matt. 18:21–35)
reminds us, we all on occasion need to be forgiven;
and it is thus not in our interest to adopt or recom-
mend as a general strategy that injuries not be
forgiven.
The beneficial effects of forgiveness—both upon
the forgiver and the person forgiven—are thus ob-
vious. Equally important if less obvious, however,
are some things to be said in favor of resentment
and thus against forgiveness—things to which the
Christian tradition has perhaps been insufficiently
attentive. For example, a failure to resent injuries
may be a sign that one is lacking in SELF-RESPECT;
and thus a too-ready tendency to forgive may indi-
cate not that one is virtuous but rather that one man-
ifests the vice of servility. (“To err is human; to for-
give supine,” goes S. J. Perelman’s insightful quip.)
Also, if one has been genuinely wronged, then a
moral wrong has been done; and thus a failure to
resent the wrong may be a sign that one acquiesces
or is complicitous in immorality—hardly a virtuous
trait. And might not a policy of forgiveness provide
others with incentives to commit wrongs against the
person so disposed? Given the natural human ten-
dency to overestimate the gravity of wrongs done to
oneself and thus to overreact to those wrongs, re-
sentment certainly has its personal and social dan-
gers and therefore needs restraint (what PASSION
does not?). The considerations noted here, however,
suggest that resentment may not be an unambigu-
ously bad or unvirtuous disposition of CHARACTER
and thus that forgiveness may, at least sometimes,
be a sign of moral weakness rather than virtue.
One way to think about the virtue of forgiveness,
a way that may avoid condoning servility or com-
plicity in wrongdoing, is to make legitimate forgive-
ness conditional upon some change in the wrong-
doer—for example, repentance. The person who
immediately forgives the one who wrongs him seems
to be tacitly accepting the evil and demeaning mes-
sage contained in the wrong—the message that the
wrongdoer matters more than his victim and is thus
free to use the victim merely as a means to his own
ends. Such an unwholesome implication could not,
however, be read into the disposition of a person
who forgives only after the wrongdoer has sincerely
562
repented; for sincere repentance is a way that the
wrongdoer has of saying that he no longer stands
identified with his evil act and wants to join the vic-
tim in its condemnation. Forgiveness here could, it
seems, proceed consistently both with self-respect
and with respect for the rules of the moral order.
See also: AMNESTY AND PARDON; EXCUSES; FAMILY;
FRIENDSHIP; JUSTICE, RECTIFICATORY; MERCY; MERIT
AND DESERT; PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS; PUNISH-
MENT; RESENTMENT; RESPONSIBILITY; REVENGE; SELF-
RESPECT.
Bibliography
Butler, Joseph. Fifteen Sermons. London, 1722. See Ser-
mon VIII, “Upon Resentment,” and Sermon IX, “Upon
Forgiveness of Injuries.”
Kolnai, Aurel. “Forgiveness.” Proceedings of the Aristo-
telian Society 74 (1973–74): 91–106. Reprinted in
Ethics, Value, and Reality. Indianapolis: Hackett,
1978.
Murphy, Jeffrie G. “Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Re-
sponding to Evil.” Fordham Urban Law Journal 27:5
(June 2000): 1353–66.
Murphy, Jeffrie G., and Herbert Morris. “Exchange: For-
giveness and Mercy.” Criminal Justice Ethics 7:2
(1988): 3–22.
Murphy, Jeffrie G., and Jean Hampton. Forgiveness and
Mercy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Strawson, Peter. “Freedom and Resentment.” Proceedings
of the British Academy, 1962. Reprinted in Freedom
and Resentment and Other Essays. London: Methuen,
1974.
Twambley, P. “Mercy and Forgiveness.” Analysis 36
(1976): 84–90.
Jeffrie G. Murphy
formalism
How far can or should ethical reasoning abstract
from particular persons, circumstances, or cases?
Some see abstraction as the essence of MORAL REA-
SONING: moral principles must hold universally, pre-
scribing like responses to like cases, so they must
ignore any “irrelevant” differences between persons
and cases. Others think that any reliance on univer-
sal principles (often derided as “Kantian formal-
ism”) will in fact abstract from and so overlook
“relevant” differences and undermine serious ethical
thinking, which must be responsive to the diversity
of persons and situations.

This debate is often presented as one between ad-
vocates of “Kantian” Moralität and of “Hegelian”
Sittlichkeit, but there are many other protagonists.
Abstract principles are seen as indispensable by NAT-
URAL LAW and HUMAN RIGHTS theorists, liberal po-
litical theorists, and many consequentialists, some of
whom offer accounts of moral reasoning that are not
only highly abstract but capable of logical or math-
ematical formalization. They think abstraction is un-
avoidable if principles are to have wide scope and
be rationally defended: to refuse to reason abstractly
leads to relativism at best and to prejudice and ca-
price at worst.
Abstraction is rejected and attacked by intuition-
ists, existentialists, situationists, Wittgensteinians,
and many relativists, who insist that serious ethical
thinking must attend to and judge particular cases.
No rules, least of all highly abstract rules, can be
adequate to the diversity and complexity of cases:
there is no way of picking out the morally relevant
features of persons or situations. In addition, ab-
stract principles or rules do not entail, so cannot
determine, particular decisions; an illusion that they
can do so fosters moral insensitivity and various
forms of “superstitious rule worship.” Moral judg-
ment cannot rely on rules or principles. It must ei-
ther be a mode of perception, intuition, or tact, or
else a mode of casuistry or deliberation, whose char-
acter is depicted, for example, as Aristotelian PHRO-
NESIS or as Hegelian “ethical life” (Sittlichkeit).
These accounts of non-abstract, “concrete” ethical
thinking are often criticized for relying on mythical
epistemological capacities or for uncritical relativism.
These issues are prominent in several recent de-
bates. The claims of formalism and of contextualism
underlie recent disputes about the priority of justice,
which is seen as abstract, and the VIRTUES, which
are seen as responsive to context. They are also at
issue in discussions of MORAL DEVELOPMENT and
education. Those who think moral principles should
be taught and that moral maturity requires that they
be firmly internalized are opposed by others who see
moral maturity as responsiveness to context and
MORAL EDUCATION as a matter of attending to ex-
amples rather than to rules. Feminist discussions
cover some of the same ground. Feminists tradition-
ally advocate the inclusion of women in all spheres
of life on equal terms, and thus advocate ethical
principles that abstract from differences of gender
as well as from other differences. Since the 1980s,
563
formalism
some “radical” feminists have insisted that human
differences, including those of gender, should not be
overlooked or eroded and that there are or should
be separate ethical spheres and voices for women
and men. In practice these three discussions are con-
nected: those who distinguish abstract justice from
context-sensitive virtues may see the public sphere
of justice as the domain of men and the private
sphere of the virtues as the domain of women; they
assert that men’s moral reasoning is typically more
rule-governed and women’s more responsive to par-
ticular others and particular relationships.
These debates raise a number of distinct ques-
tions. Two central issues are the interpretation of
abstraction and the account given of deliberation.
Is abstract reasoning simply reasoning whose
conclusions do not depend on the satisfaction of the
predicates from which it abstracts? Abstraction in
this literal sense is hardly avoidable, and not avoided
by advocates of contextual ethical reasoning. Or is
reasoning considered abstract when it uses premises
that presume the satisfaction of predicates that are
in fact not satisfied by many (or even by any) of the
cases supposedly covered? Some objections to ab-
straction are aimed by Hegelians, Marxists, and
feminists at the “abstract individualism” of liberal
thinking. They in fact criticize ethical and other rea-
soning not for literal abstraction but rather for in-
voking idealized “models of man” that hinge ethical
reasoning on claims that are not true of actual hu-
man beings. The ascription of idealized cognitive
and volitional predicates cannot be vindicated by
reasoning that merely and literally abstracts from
features of actual human abilities to reason and act.
Even if the conflation of literal abstraction with
idealization is avoided, the transition from abstract
principles to judgments about cases remains prob-
lematic. Principles do not determine their own ap-
plication: they provide no algorithms for judging.
Yet judgments about particular cases are the goal of
most ethical thinking. Hence abstract principles are
not enough. Principles can constrain but not deter-
mine judgments, and those who advocate and de-
fend ethical principles share some of the epistemo-
logical difficulties of the advocates of contextual
ethical reasoning, since they too will need to find
some account of CASUISTRY.
See also: CASUISTRY; DELIBERATION AND CHOICE;
EXISTENTIAL ETHICS; FEMINIST ETHICS; HEGEL; IDE-
formalism
ALIZED AGENTS; IMPARTIALITY; INTUITIONISM; KAN-
TIAN ETHICS; LOGIC AND ETHICS; MORAL DEVELOP-
MENT; MORAL EDUCATION; MORAL PERCEPTION;
MORAL REASONING; MORAL RELATIVISM; MORAL
RULES; PRACTICAL REASONING; PRINCIPLISM; RA-
TIONAL CHOICE; RATIONALITY VS. REASONABLENESS;
SITUATION ETHICS; UNIVERSALIZABILITY; WITTGEN-
STEINIAN ETHICS.
Bibliography
Gewirth, Alan. “Ethical Universalism and Particularism.”
Journal of Philosophy 85 (1988): 283–302.
Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory
and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1982; 2nd ed., 1993.
Herman, Barbara. The Practice of Moral Judgment. Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
Marcus, Ruth Barcan. “Moral Dilemmas and Consis-
tency.” Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 121–36.
O’Neill, Onora. Towards Justice and Virtue: A Construc-
tive Account of Practical Reasoning. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1996.
Sandel, Michael. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Onora O’Neill
forms of consciousness
Forms of consciousness have been a central object
of philosophical investigation from the doctrine of
Forms or Eidos proposed by PLATO (427–347
B.C.E.) to the “forms of consciousness” or Bewusst-
seinsformen excavated by Immanuel KANT (1724–
1804). In both cases, they are construed as tran-
scendental, a priori structures of thought. Plato’s
Forms are directly apprehended by the intellect in
an eternal, supersensible realm of Ideas. Kant’s
forms of consciousness constitute an internally reg-
ulating framework processing experiential inputs as
conditions of their intelligibility. What is remarkable
is that in neither of these defining cases of philoso-
phy’s inquiry into forms of consciousness, nor in the
subsequent philosophical tradition, has there been
recognition of underlying structures of conscious-
ness which organize mental life in accordance with
socially presupposed principles of what is good
and bad.
Consider the following examples. The Hindu pre-
supposes dharma as the morally ordering principles
564
of human existence which oblige him or her to think
and act in terms proper to the station of life each
has in virtue of the KARMA of past lives. This is an
assumed ordering of existence inculcated in partici-
pating members of the culture as the mind-set by
which their cultural tradition is reproduced through
time and across individuals. These underlying prin-
ciples which order perception, valuations, and con-
duct across a group membership are denoted by the
concept, “forms of social consciousness.”
The Chinese Confucian is similarly mediated.
There is a given framework of propriety, or i-li, with
whose principles of conduct one is obliged to comply
in, at best, a “perfect form of obedience”; but which,
whether or not one actually conforms to these prin-
ciples, are construed as necessary, universally bind-
ing and no more controvertible than the tendency of
water to flow downhill.
At this point, we need to distinguish between
forms of social consciousness which are conscious,
and those which are pre-conscious. When they are
explicit tenets of doctrine, forms of social conscious-
ness are, to this extent, conscious. When they are
not explicit, but govern agents as unrecognized rules
of normative judgement, they are pre-conscious. A
pre-conscious form of social consciousness across
many social orders would be, for example, the pre-
supposition that one’s own social order, and no
other, is a moral given on the basis of which ac-
ceptable discourse proceeds. No-one may state this
underlying principle, because its presumption is self-
undercutting. But like a grammar which speakers
conform to without knowing its rules, such a social
form of consciousness is complied with as an un-
spoken normative ground regulating what is pub-
licly said and done. It operates, we might say, as an
acquired a priori of ethical judgement. The savage
persecution throughout history of those not comply-
ing with this underlying principle of social judge-
ment is testimony to its hold as a regulating norm of
consciousness across cultures. But this substructure
of thought cannot be understood philosophically as
long as it regulates consciousness. For where its pre-
sumption is laid bare, its rule can be apprehended
only in other social orders where its prohibiting
block to human thought can be condemned—the
banning of doubt of ISLAM in Moslem societies, of
criticism of the Party’s right to rule in Soviet socie-
ties, of questioning of Church dogma in medieval
societies, and so on. The general form of social con-

sciousness itself cannot be laid bare, because this
would implicate one’s own society as participant in
a systematic repression of thought, and thus call into
question the principle of its own assumption.
Despite much lipservice to metaethical analysis,
the deep normative structures of the actual societies
philosophers live within have in this way been typ-
ically assumed as uncriticizable givens. Because such
a form of social consciousness is not acknowledged,
it is not examined. Because it is not examined, it is
not questioned. Because it is not questioned, it is not
criticized, evaluated from a more comprehensive
standpoint, or even justified. In short, preconscious
forms of consciousness are ethically fundamental
and, at the same time, cannot be penetrated by eth-
ical analysis. This closure of thought persists as long
as ethical inquiry fails to lay bare the deepest foun-
dations of its own indoctrination.
Consider the case of David HUME (1711–1776).
Perhaps the West’s greatest subverter of convention-
alized presupposition since SOCRATES —who him-
self presupposed SLAVERY as unworthy of ques-
tion—Hume too was imprisoned within the forms
of social consciousness of his time. Confronted by
radical thinkers who did not assume the social order
within which they lived as an ethical given, but on
the contrary challenged established property ar-
rangements as against Christian principles, Hume
was adamant in condemning them. “Fanatics may
suppose,” he declares in an Inquiry Concerning the
Principles of Morals (1751), “that dominion is
founded on grace and saints alone inherit the earth;
but the civil magistrate very justly puts these sublime
theorists on the same footing with common robbers.”
If we examine Hume’s reaction for its substruc-
tural form of consciousness, we find that what he
presupposes is affirmation of the social order within
which he lives as a first premise of ethical judge-
ment. Thus he repudiates by a repressed and unex-
amined premise any position which controverts this
ulterior moral ground from which he reasons. At the
same time, because this form of consciousness is
pre-conscious, he cannot be aware of the covert
principle of right by which he is walled in. He is
stuck, as ethical inquiry has been over epochs,
within what he and others alike presuppose as their
normative foundation, the social regime by which
they are ruled. Since those who do not comply with
such a substructural form of consciousness are, by
its very operation, ruled out as subversive or unin-
565
forms of consciousness
telligible to those who conform to it, there is a sys-
tematic selection against any confrontation of such
structures of cognitive incarceration.
Socrates and Hume, of course, are not untypical
in their question-begging of unstated premises at the
deepest levels of ethical judgement. On a more ev-
eryday level of expression of regulating NORMS of
consciousness, Christopher Columbus was cele-
brated for five centuries as an heroic exemplar
across continents for having “discovered America.”
Despite the fact that America was inhabited by tens
of millions of people for thousands of years before
Columbus existed, there was no reported demurral
from eminent thinkers, including philosophers, to
century after century of this judgement of the high-
est approbation. If again we look to the substructure
of unstated assumption underlying this judgement,
we can see that what it presupposes is the silent cat-
egorical assumption, All human discernment is Eu-
ropean. Otherwise the claim would be manifestly
absurd. This social a priori of judgement underpins
both the statement and the acceptance of it as a nec-
essary condition of both’s intelligibility. But unlike a
Kantian category of judgement, its a priori principle
is contingent, false, and eliminable. Once exposed
to the light, its hold on consciousness is more vul-
nerable to skepticism. Although philosophers are
obliged to expose such general constructions of the
conditioned mind, they have rarely done so with the
deepest-lying assumptions of the social orders within
which they prosper.
Even when declared, some very basic forms of
social consciousness can still restrict consciousness
within a narrow band. Consider the present a priori
of value judgement across disciplines and cultures,
Market economies are always better, or its corollary,
All alternatives are to be repudiated. Where can we
now see any public assertion not conforming to this
more or less explicit form of social consciousness
and its corollary? More deeply, can we identify any
pre-conscious form of social consciousness intrinsic
to this contemporary normative mind-set? Consider
the unstated equation of value which underlies IN-
TENTION and action across contemporary capitalist
orders. “Real money equals real wealth.” Any num-
ber of value assertions express this underpinning
copula of value, from assumptions of higher GNP’s
as measures of social wealth to the incentive of a
higher salary as a normal good to aspire to and strive
after. The apparently analytic principle which gov-
forms of consciousness
erns these value positions is, however, another form
of social consciousness which is foundationally
false. It assumes that what is an exchangeable de-
mand on wealth is wealth itself. Such a form of con-
sciousness may seem as tautological as 2 Ⳮ 2 ⳱ 4.
But if it operates as an unconscious assumption reg-
ulating value consciousness across societies, it may
have the most fateful consequences for the condi-
tions of life itself. For if the money demand on
wealth keeps growing, as it does, and the wealth
which it is a demand on keeps decreasing (e.g., us-
able land, water, fish stocks, forests and subterra-
nean energy sources), as these kinds of wealth now
do, then such an unexamined form of social con-
sciousness can organize value judgement and action
across the world into a program of mounting life
reduction which a surface-moving ethics cannot
fathom. This is why the underlabour of philosophi-
cal analysis is needed to unmask the moral syntax
which forms of social consciousness bear. Such pre-
suppositions can structure understanding of the spe-
cies itself toward evils to which most remain blind.
Philosophy’s most socially grounded thinker, Karl
MARX (1818–83), introduced the concept of “forms
of social consciousness” (gesellschaftliche Bewusst-
seinsformen) over 150 years ago in his famous Pref-
ace to A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy (1859). He gave no explanation, however,
of its meaning, and nowhere distinguished it from
ideology proper. In the Communist Manifesto eleven
years earlier, he hinted at such a distinction, saying:
“The social consciousness of past ages, despite all
the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within
certain common forms.” But Marx never explained
what these forms are, as distinct from the social con-
sciousness which moves within them. His criticism
of conventional assumptions, however, allows us to
deduce forms of social consciousness which he im-
plies. A central one of these would be the presup-
position that one’s social order is both necessary and
permanent—“an eternal nature-imposed necessity,”
as he describes this preconception in bourgeois ide-
ology’s assumption of capitalist relations of produc-
tion as the inevitable order of humankind. Marx’s
concern, however, was with what he believed forms
of consciousness and ideologies are reflections of,
material production and its relations. He overlooked
the fact that social production and its relations are
themselves expressions of consciousness, and are
structured and reproduced by what conscious agents
566
decide and plan, prescribe and obey as sequences of
value judgement and implementation. Effects of de-
cisions within these sequences appear as law-like be-
cause their antecedent value judgements become au-
tomatic. In truth, however, they are expressions of
presupposed principles of preference whose ground
is fixed forms of social consciousness.
Consider such unstated, economy-regulating prin-
ciples as: “All non-human life is of value only as a
resource of human use”, or “More machine power
is always better.” Both capitalist and Marxist ideol-
ogies assume these principles as givens, although in
ferocious disagreement about the mode of produc-
tion appropriate for the subjugation of nature by hu-
mans, and their machine occupation of the world.
These undergirding presuppositions are not recog-
nized as principles of value, but they are in a fun-
damental sense deeper regulators of societies than
means of production themselves. For the latter are
continuously designed and redesigned by conscious
agency, whereas the former have regulated their de-
velopment and use across centuries and opposing
social orders.
Even if a form of social consciousness is exposed,
however, this recognition is no assurance that it will
be more open to ethical criticism. When persons
think and act in accordance with the fixed premise
that women/blacks/children cannot be reasoned
with, for example, the form of social consciousness
regulating the mind may remain invulnerable to re-
vision, even when laid bare. Opening them to the
light may not make them any less invariantly as-
sumed. Forms of social consciousness operate to se-
lect and validate what conforms to them, and to ex-
clude or invalidate what does not. There is no a
priori limit to how far rationalization of deeper
forms of social consciousness can elaborate in the
compulsion of their hold. Consciousness of their
content need not emancipate consciousness from
their rule, but may merely confirm them as settled
truths. Yet it cannot be doubted that without con-
sciousness of them, forms of social consciousness
are not open to consideration at all, or movement
beyond the “group-think,” as we might call it, of the
values they prescribe.
See also: AUTHORITY; CONVENTIONS; CRITICAL THE-
ORY; GROUPS, MORAL STATUS OF; INSTITUTIONS;
MARXISM; MASS MEDIA; MORAL ABSOLUTES; MORAL
COMMUNITY, BOUNDARIES OF; MORAL PSYCHOLOGY;

MORAL RULES; MULTICULTURALISM; NORMS; POST-
MODERNISM; PRINCIPLISM; PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MO-
RALITY; SELF AND SOCIAL SELF; SELF- [entries]; SO-
CIAL PSYCHOLOGY.
Bibliography
Note: Because there is almost no critical literature on
forms of social consciousness, this bibliography is neces-
sarily limited. Some thinkers who would seem relevant—
Freud and Jung from the psychoanalytic tradition, for ex-
ample, or Levi-Strauss and Foucault from the structuralist
and post-structuralist traditions—do not address any
forms of consciousness they explore as defeasible, cate-
gorical principles of value.
Chomsky, Noam, and Edward S. Herman. Manufacturing
Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1988. The “propaganda
model” exposited in the first chapter outlines the “fil-
ters” of contemporary mass communications, which
explains the means whereby public discourse can be
regulated by forms of social consciousness. FSCs as
such, however, are not considered.
Hume, David. An Inquiry Concerning The Principles Of
Morals. Edited by Charles W. Hendel. New York: Li-
brary of Liberal Arts, Bobbs-Merrill, 1957 [1751]. See
especially p. 24.
Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man. Boston: Bea-
con Press, 1964. This work is the clearest of the Frank-
furt School in laying bare the underlying forms of social
consciousness of industrial corporate positivism, which
Marcuse sees operative in twentieth-century analytic
philosophy. But, again, Marcuse does not analyse FSCs
as universal, cognitive principles of value.
Marx, Karl. A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy. Translated by S. Ryazanskaya; edited by
Maurice Dobb. New York: Progress Publishers, 1970
[1859]. The famous Preface refers to “forms of social
consciousness” as “corresponding to” the economic
structure, but provides no explanation to distinguish
them from the manifest formulations of ideology.
Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. Manifesto of the Com-
munist Party. Translated and edited by Frederick En-
gels and Samuel Moore. Moscow: Foreign Languages
Publishing House, 1969 [1848]. See especially p. 72.
McMurtry, John. The Structure of Marx’s World-View.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978. The chap-
ter entitled “Forms of Social Consciousness” deduces
the meaning of this concept in Marx’s work, as well as
a set of FSCs underlying manifest ideologies across
cultures.
———. “Philosophical Method and the Rise of Social Phi-
losophy.” Eidos 2:2 (December 1981): 139–76. The
confinement of philosophers East and West within the
social assumptions of their surrounding orders of rule
567
Foucault, Michel
is tracked across history from Socrates and Confucius
to Wittgenstein and Rawls.
———. “The Unspeakable: Understanding the System of
Fallacy in the Media.” Informal Logic 10:3 (Fall 1988):
133–50. This analysis formalizes universal principles
of selection and exclusion regulating public communi-
cations across cultures, and deduces from these forms
of social consciousness predictions of what will be ruled
out of public communication by their operation.
John McMurtry
Foucault, Michel (1926–1984)
In his later work concerning Greek and Roman re-
flection on sexuality, Michel Foucault sketched out
an unconventional way of thinking about ethics. In
addition to moral codes—of either laws, duties, and
RIGHTS; or VIRTUES, vices, and goods—and in ad-
dition to the moral behavior that succeeds or fails to
live up to a code, morality also involves the kind of
relationship ethical agents ought to have to them-
selves. This rapport à soi is not simply the awareness
of oneself as a moral agent, but the formation of
oneself as an ethical subject. Foucault’s ‘ethics’ com-
prises the ways in which one constitutes and con-
ducts oneself as an ethical subject in relation to a
code.
This ethical activity or ‘practice of the self’ has
four aspects. The first, ‘determination of the ethical
substance,’ concerns both the aspect of one’s expe-
rience that is constituted as the locus of MORAL AT-
TENTION and the way in which one stands in relation
to it. A morality can, for example, draw attention to
feelings, desires, acts, thoughts, or intentions, and it
also can enjoin different ways of relating to each
(e.g., vigilance, resistance, harnessing, moderation,
cultivation, or enjoyment). The ‘mode of subjection’
is the second aspect. This is the ground on which
subjects recognize themselves as subject to a moral-
ity and so obliged to practice it. For example, one
may subject oneself to a moral code because one is
a member of a group, the heir of a spiritual tradition;
because the morality is according to nature or the
dictate of universal reason; or because it gives one’s
life the form of beauty, nobility, creativity, or reali-
zation of one’s potentials.
The third aspect is the ‘form of ethical work,’ or
askesis. This broad category comprises all the as-
cetic exercises and techniques of the self by which
one transforms oneself into an ethical subject. These
Foucault, Michel
exercises, which Foucault studied extensively, can
vary from meditation, dietetics, practices of resolu-
tion and SELF-CONTROL, Stoic techniques of self-
examination and scrutiny, Christian hermeneutics,
and decipherment and avowal of intentions and de-
sires, to modern activities of self-interpretation, con-
sciousness raising, and truth telling. The final aspect
is the telos: the integrated way of life or character-
istic mode of being the ethical subject aims both to
manifest in the performance of her or his moral ac-
tion and to become committed to upholding in vir-
tue of this manner of engagement in moral practice.
Self-mastery, tranquility, and purification with the
goal of salvation are among the examples Foucault
discusses.
In drawing attention to the realm of ethics, Fou-
cault questioned three CONVENTIONS governing the
study and practice of morality. The first convention
was that of Christian and post-Christian moralists
who tended to take morality as a juristic and often
universal code of laws, and moral behavior as obe-
dience or disobedience to law. This picture has ac-
cordingly caused us to overlook ethics. For the
Greeks and Romans, on the other hand, ethics was
the central moral concern; the elaboration of a code
was correspondingly peripheral. In the study of the
history of moralities, then, we should investigate not
only changes in codes and behavior, as our reigning
juristic conventions dispose us to do, but also changes
in the four aspects of ethics. In the realm of current
moral practice, freedom from the juristic picture en-
ables us to see that we can modify considerably our
ethical lives without either being drawn into the
problems of universality and relativism, which come
along with code-centered moralities, or modeling
our moral practice on a legal prototype.
Second, when Christian and post-Christian mor-
alists do turn their attention to ethics, they stan-
dardly concentrate on one type of ‘ethical work’: the
activity of self-interpretation to liberate an inner
truth or meaning by means of confession or expres-
sion. This conventional fixation impoverishes the
study and practice of ethics because it blinds us to
the other three aspects of ethics, as well as to differ-
ent techniques of ethical work and even to different
forms of self-examination available to us. Moreover,
this technique of interpretation and avowal of truth
about the self is historically linked to the church and
to the modern psychosciences, and thus its use
568
chains the ethical subject to one or another of these
INSTITUTIONS.
The third convention he challenged is one he had
taken for granted, and in fact reinforced, in his ear-
lier work. This is the false inference that if the self
is not given or innate, then it must begin as a tabula
rasa and be produced by relations of POWER acting
directly on the body and by relations of knowledge
which determine forms of thought. As we can now
see, this way of thinking, from John LOCKE (1632–
1704) through Friedrich NIETZSCHE (1844–1900)
to the earlier Foucault, rests on overlooking the free
and self-constituting subjects of ethical practice, by
whom and over whom power is exercised. Our mode
of existence in any field of power and knowledge is
clearly as practitioners of self-awareness and self-
formation, in which we think and act and have our
ethical mode of being, and conduct ourselves in re-
lation to power. Hence, power is not a relation which
molds passive receptacles into obedient subjects, but
one which presupposes free subjects.
Power is any relation that governs ethical subjects
by guiding them, with diverse means, to engage in
specific practices of the self by which they constitute
and conduct themselves as governable subjects, or
refuse to do so. Further, even in the most tightly co-
ordinated games of power and knowledge, such as
military training, subjects are able to use the vast
repertoire of ethical practices to constitute and con-
duct themselves in a variety of ways—either in con-
formity with the rules of the game (the play of
CONSENT and dissent of the soldier and sergeant), or
in direct confrontation with them through rebellion
against an oppressive form of subjection (as classi-
cally in Antigone). As a consequence, ethics is now
seen to be the practice of freedom: “Liberty is the
ontological condition of ethics. But ethics is the de-
liberate form assumed by liberty.”
See also: AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; CHRISTIAN
ETHICS; CONVENTIONS; DESIRE; GROUPS, MORAL
STATUS OF; HUMANISM; INTENTION; INTERESTS; LIB-
ERTY; MORAL ATTENTION; NEITZSCHE; OBEDIENCE
TO LAW; OBJECTIVISM; POWER; PSYCHOLOGY; SELF-
[entries]; STOICISM; SUBJECTIVISM.
Bibliography
Works by Foucault
“The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom.”
In The Final Foucault, edited by James Bernauer and

D. Rasmussen. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988. Also
includes a bibliography and articles on Foucault’s
ethics.
The Foucault Reader. Edited by Paul Rabinow. New York:
Pantheon Books, 1984. See especially “On the Gene-
alogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress,”
340–73.
The History of Sexuality. Translated by Robert Hurley. 3
vols. London: Penguin Books (vol. 1); New York: Ran-
dom House, 1978–1986. Titles of the volumes: An In-
troduction; The Use of Pleasure; The Care of Self.
“The Subject and Power.” 2d ed. In Michel Foucault: Be-
yond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, edited by Hub-
ert Dreyfus and P. Rabinow, 208–99. Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1983. Includes introduction to
Foucault’s work.
Technologies of the Self. Edited by Luther Martin, H. Gut-
man, and P. Hutton. Amherst: University of Massachu-
setts Press, 1988. See especially “Technologies of the
Self,” 16–50.
Michel Foucault: Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews
and Other Writings, 1977–1984. Translated by Alan
Sheridan, edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman. New York:
Routledge, 1988.
The Essential Work of Michel Foucault, 1954–1984. Ed-
ited by Paul Rabinow; translated by Robert Hurley, et
al. New York: The New Press, 1997– . Selections from
his Dit et ecrits, all of his publications outside his
monographs, originally published by Gallimard. Vol. 1,
Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. Vol. 2, Aesthetics,
Method, and Epistemology. Vol. 3, Power (forth-
coming).
Works about Foucault
Ashenden, Samantha, and David Owen, eds. Foucault
contra Habermas. London: Sage Publications, 1999.
Davidson, Arnold. “Archeology, Genealogy, Ethics.” In
Foucault: A Critical Reader, edited by David Hoy, 221–
35. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. Book includes an intro-
duction to Foucault’s work.
Gutting, Gary, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Fou-
cault. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Nehemas, Alexander. The Art of Living: Socratic Reflec-
tions from Plato to Foucault. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1998.
James Tully
Frankena, William Klaas
(1908–1994)
Born on June 21, 1908, in Manhatten, Montana,
Frankena was the son of Dutch immigrant parents
who moved to the farm area of Zeeland, Michigan,
when he was very young. There he grew up in a tra-
569
Frankena, William Klaas
ditional Dutch Calvinist community and went on to
attend Calvin College in Grand Rapids, completing
his B.A. degree in 1930 with a major in philosophy
and literature. His interest in moral philosophy be-
gan during those four years, and he was influenced
by Hegelian idealism and its doctrine that the right
and the good are to be understood in terms of self-
realization. He entered graduate school at the Uni-
versity of Michigan in the fall of 1930, studying with
C. H. Langford and D. H. Parker. After passing his
preliminary examinations there, Frankena decided
to transfer to Harvard University in 1933. Although
he had originally intended to specialize in logic and
studied with Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947),
Frankena found himself increasingly drawn to ethics
and the NATURALISM of his teachers, Ralph Barton
PERRY (1876–1957) and C. I. LEWIS (1883–1964).
During his time at Harvard, Frankena became a
friend of Charles L. STEVENSON (1908–1979), a fel-
low graduate student and later colleague at Michi-
gan, who developed the emotive theory of ethics.
Both young men spent time broadening their edu-
cation at Cambridge University, where Frankena at-
tended during the 1935–36 year on a travelling
fellowship. Cambridge was the center of British an-
alytic philosophy in that period, when G. E. MOORE
(1873–1958) and C. D. Broad (1887–1971) taught
ethics; Frankena’s method of doing moral philoso-
phy was largely shaped by these two prominent fig-
ures, whom he consciously took as his models. After
returning to Harvard Frankena wrote his disserta-
tion, “Recent Intuitionism in British Ethics,” and
was awarded the Ph.D. degree in 1937.
Frankena’s first published article was “The Nat-
uralistic Fallacy,” an expansion of a section of his
dissertation; it appeared in Mind in 1939 and has
been widely reprinted since. Having accepted a po-
sition as instructor in Michigan’s Department of Phi-
losophy upon completing his doctorate, Frankena
had felt the need to publish as a matter of profes-
sional survival, and he was gratified at the response
to what was to be his most influential paper. In this
and three subsequent articles Frankena examined
and criticized the contention of Moore and other in-
tuitionists that (intrinsic) value cannot be defined in
terms of any natural properties, and that to attempt
such was to commit the error of identifying the non-
natural quality of goodness in itself with a natural
property or properties that might be related to it. At
that time Frankena was inclined toward naturalism
Frankena, William Klaas
about intrinsic goodness (following Parker, Perry,
and Lewis) but thought INTUITIONISM about right-
ness and other deontic concepts to be defensible.
Combining elements of competing theories in this
way, as will be seen, is also a salient feature of much
of his later work. Frankena was a cognitivist during
this period— EMOTIVISM being in the earliest stage
of its influence—and he found the intuitionist criti-
cisms of naturalistic analyses of the good (such as
Moore’s famous Open Question Argument) less
compelling than those directed at naturalists’ ac-
counts of the right or obligatory, which he thought
to be the more basic class of concepts in ethics.
In the course of his research and writing during
the following two decades Frankena broadened his
conception of method in ethics, rejecting the Moor-
ean approach to analysis in favor of taking into ac-
count normative considerations and the facts of hu-
man PSYCHOLOGY, the social context of morality,
and the requirements of MORAL EDUCATION, when
attempting to solve metaethical problems. A meta-
ethical theory had to be seen as more than simply an
accurate explication of common ways of thinking
and speaking about values, a view at which Steven-
son also arrived.
While Frankena gradually came to accept a non-
cognitivistic theory, partly because of increasing
doubts about the metaphysical and epistemological
assumptions of intuitionism, he wanted to retain at
least some of the objectivity and rational standards
of cognitivism. Stevenson’s emotivism seemed so ex-
treme in its very limited conception of the role of
reason in ethics that a number of other philoso-
phers—Stephen Toulmin, R. M. HARE, and P. H.
Nowell-Smith most prominently—were led to de-
velop more complex forms of noncognitivism that
ascribed a greater force to reasoned moral argument.
Reflecting on the writings of these philosophers, as
well as important books by Philip Blair Rice (On the
Knowledge of Good and Evil, 1955) and Paul W.
Taylor (Normative Discourse, 1961), Frankena would
eventually adopt a form of noncognitivism without
elements of naturalism or of intuitionism, yet ration-
ally constrained by an objectively defined MORAL
POINT OF VIEW. Among his important articles of this
period are “Ethical Naturalism Renovated” (1957),
a critical examination of some of Rice’s views, and
“Obligation and Motivation in Recent Moral Philos-
ophy” (1958), in which he carefully delineates the
570
strengths and weaknesses of both internalism and
externalism, suggesting an intermediate position.
Frankena published the most complete presenta-
tion of his moral theory in his widely read introduc-
tory text, Ethics (1963; second edition, 1973). A
noncognitivist METAETHICS is clearly defended, to-
gether with a normative theory that is “mixed de-
ontological”: a basic principle of BENEFICENCE is
conjoined with a basic principle of justice (under-
stood as equal treatment). When conflicts between
these prima facie principles occur—which should
not happen very often—appeal to the moral point
of view itself, their foundation, is in order. A rational
and adequately informed person judging from this
perspective will arrive at a resolution that, Frankena
believes, would be agreed to by all others similarly
situated.
What is the moral point of view as Frankena con-
ceives of it? Much of Frankena’s later work is con-
cerned with what he terms “meta-morals,” the expla-
nation of morality and its unique rational demands.
In a series of papers beginning with “The Concept
of Morality” and “On Saying the Ethical Thing”
(both published in 1966), his 1974 Carus Lectures,
and three public presentations given in 1978 as the
first Distinguished Faculty Lecturer at the University
of Michigan, Frankena developed a conception of
the scope and limitations of the moral (as opposed
to nonmoral) that did not favor a particular nor-
mative theory over others or entail that moral con-
siderations were necessarily rationally overriding for
everyone. He has cited Francis HUTCHESON (1694–
1746) and David HUME (1711–1776) as earlier pro-
ponents of this general type of view; among his con-
temporaries the works of Kurt BAIER, Philippa FOOT,
and Geoffrey J. Warnock were clearly influential.
A moral judgment is an expression of attitude
from the moral point of view, Frankena maintains,
directed towards actions, MOTIVES, or traits of
CHARACTER. This special viewpoint requires us to
universalize our judgments and to be calm and clear-
minded as well as fully informed and impartial when
making them. Our supporting reasons must concern
the bearing of what is judged on the lives of sentient
beings in terms of (nonmoral) good and evil. While
we must assume that others taking this same point
of view will share it, there is no logical necessity: a
moral “ought” cannot be validly inferred from fac-
tual beliefs. Moral conduct, Frankena holds, has no
“external object” such as the betterment of the hu-

man condition; its only essential aim is a certain kind
of EXCELLENCE. To take a stronger stance on this
would arbitrarily exclude many normative views as
nonmoral.
Frankena died in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on Oc-
tober 22, 1994, at the age of 86. He had continued
to write and publish for more than a decade after
his retirement in 1978, as did his close friend and
colleague, Richard B. BRANDT (1910–1997), who
became an emeritus professor shortly thereafter.
Frankena’s body of publications includes several
books and well over one hundred articles on moral
philosophy and the philosophy of education. He was
a prominent historian of ethics known for his ency-
clopaedic grasp of its details and a special authority
on Anglo-American moral philosophy, which he
helped to shape in the twentieth century.
See also: BENEFICENCE; BRANDT; COGNITIVE SCI-
ENCE; EMOTIVISM; EXCELLENCE; EXTERNALISM AND
INTERNALISM; HISTORY OF WESTERN ETHICS 12;
HUME; HUTCHESON; IDEALIST ETHICS; INTUITIONISM;
LEWIS; METAETHICS; MOORE; MORAL EDUCATION;
MORAL POINT OF VIEW; MORAL REASONING; NATU-
RALISM; NATURALISTIC FALLACY; PERRY; PSYCHOL-
OGY; STEVENSON.
Bibliography
Works by Frankena
Ethics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963; 2d ed.,
1973. His most well-known work, accessible to begin-
ning students of philosophy.
Three Historical Philosophies of Education: Aristotle,
Kant, Dewey. Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1965. In-
cludes discussion of their ethical theories.
Perspectives on Morality: Essays by William K. Frankena.
Edited by Kenneth E. Goodpaster. Notre Dame: Uni-
versity of Notre Dame Press, 1976. Includes the arti-
cles cited above and a lengthy bibliography.
“Three Questions About Morality.” The Monist 63/1
(1980). Special issue devoted to Frankena’s Carus
Lectures.
Thinking About Morality. Ann Arbor: University of Michi-
gan Press, 1980. Frankena’s 1978 lectures at the
University.
“Moral-Point-of-View Theories.” In Ethical Theory in the
Last Quarter of the Twentieth Century, edited and with
an introduction by Norman Bowie. Indianapolis: Hack-
ett, 1983. Also includes essays by Richard Brandt,
Charles Stevenson, and A. I. Melden.
571
free will
Works about Frankena
Brandt, Richard B. “W. K. Frankena and Ethics of Virtue.”
The Monist 64/3 (1981). Issue on “The Philosophy of
William Frankena”; includes essays by nine other noted
moral philosophers.
Goldman, Alvin, and Jaegwon Kim, eds. Values and Mor-
als: Essays in Honor of William Frankena, Charles Ste-
venson, and Richard Brandt. Dordrecht, Holland: D.
Reidel, 1978. Essays by prominent philosophers and
extensive bibliography.
Robert M. Stewart
free will
The philosophical problem about free will and moral
RESPONSIBILITY derives from a profound conflict
within our human self-conception. On the one hand,
we have a strong tendency to believe that we are the
source of our actions in an especially consequential
sense. We believe that the way we are the source of
our actions differs significantly from how any cur-
rently existing mechanical device is the source of
what it generates. This belief is expressed as the
claim that we produce our actions by the sort of free
will required for moral responsibility. On the other
hand, when we think about the details of how our
actions might be caused, we are often led to a con-
ception that threatens this ordinary belief.
For an agent to be morally responsible for an AC-
TION is for it to belong to the agent in such a way
that she would deserve blame if the action were mor-
ally wrong, and she would deserve credit or perhaps
praise if it were morally exemplary. This character-
ization leaves room for an agent’s being morally re-
sponsible for an action even if the agent does not
deserve blame, credit, or praise for it—if, for ex-
ample, the action is morally indifferent. Alterna-
tively then, but somewhat vaguely, for an agent to
be morally responsible for an action is just for the
action really to belong to the agent. Equivalently, but
in traditional phrasing, for an agent to be morally
responsible for an action is for it to be imputable to
the agent.
The problem for moral responsibility is that there
are reasons for regarding human beings as more like
machines than we ordinarily suppose. These reasons
stem from various sources: most prominently, from
scientific views that consider human beings to be
parts of nature and therefore to be governed by nat-
free will
ural laws, and from theological concerns that re-
quire everything that happens to be causally deter-
mined by God. For many contemporary philosophers,
the first of these is especially compelling, and as a
result, they accept determinism or claims about the
universe that are similarly threatening to moral re-
sponsibility.
The history of philosophy records several types of
reaction to this dilemma. Compatibilists contend
that it is legitimate to accept determinism and at the
same time affirm that we have the free will required
for moral responsibility (which will be abbreviated
simply as free will). By contrast, other philosophers
maintain that determinism is not compatible with
free will—they are incompatibilists. There are two
incompatibilist positions. Libertarians reject deter-
minism and claim that we possess free will. Hard
determinists are also incompatibilists, but they ac-
cept determinism and deny that we have free will.
According to LIBERTARIANISM, we can choose to
act without being causally determined by factors be-
yond our control, and we can therefore be morally
responsible for our actions. Arguably, this is the
common-sense position. Two versions of libertari-
anism have been developed. On the agent-causal
theory, free will is explained by the existence of
agents who can cause actions not by virtue of any
state that they are in, such as a belief or a DESIRE,
but just by themselves as substances. These agents
are capable of causing actions in this way without
being causally determined to do so. In the most com-
pelling version of agent-causal theory, when such an
agent acts freely, she can be inclined but not causally
determined to act by factors such as her desires and
beliefs. But such factors will not exhaust the causal
story behind the action. The agent herself, indepen-
dently of these factors, provides a key element.
Agent-causal libertarianism has been advocated by
Thomas REID (1710–1796), Immanuel KANT (1724–
1804), and more recently by Roderick Chisholm
(1916–1999), Richard Taylor, Randolph Clarke, and
Timothy O’Connor.
In the second version of libertarianism the crucial
factor for moral responsibility is not agent causation,
but some other type of indeterminacy in the produc-
tion of actions. Previously occurring states or events
or, on some versions of the view, nothing at all might
have a role in the indeterministic production of ac-
tions for which agents are morally responsible. The
Epicurean philosopher LUCRETIUS (c. 95–c. 55
572
B.C.E.) provides a rudimentary version of such a po-
sition when he claims that free actions are accounted
for by uncaused swerves in the downward paths of
atoms. Recent proponents of this sort of libertari-
anism include Robert Kane and Carl Ginet.
Critics of libertarianism have often contended
that indeterministically free-willed action cannot be
squared with certain provisions in action theory that
libertarians themselves would want to endorse. Spe-
cifically, they have claimed that because action that
is freely willed in the libertarian sense is indetermin-
istic, it could not at the same time be morally re-
sponsible action. How could an agent, they ask, be
responsible for something that happens randomly?
In addition, critics have argued that the sort of free
will libertarianism espouses cannot harmonize with
the empirical evidence. Our choices produce physi-
cal events in the brain and in the rest of the body,
and these events would seem to be governed by
physical laws. In response, the libertarian position
must make it credible that our actions could be
freely willed in the sense it advocates given the evi-
dence we have about these physical laws.
Beginning students typically recoil at the compat-
ibilist response to the problem of moral responsi-
bility. But for philosophers, to retain the legitimacy
of our ordinary attitudes towards human action and
at the same time to regard actions as actually or
nearly causally determined has been so attractive
that a significant majority of them are confirmed
compatibilists. Three kinds of routes to compatibil-
ism can be differentiated. The first type of route,
suggested by David HUME (1711–1776) and thor-
oughly developed by P. F. Strawson, argues that con-
trary to what incompatibilists assume, the truth of
determinism would be irrelevant to questions of
moral responsibility. According to this sort of view,
the basis of moral responsibility is found in reactive
attitudes such as indignation, resentment, guilt, and
GRATITUDE. For example, the fact that agents are
typically resented for certain kinds of actions is what
constitutes their being blameworthy for performing
them. As a result, justification for claims of blame-
worthiness and praiseworthiness ends in the system
of human reactive attitudes. Because moral respon-
sibility has this type of basis, the truth or falsity of
determinism is immaterial to whether we are justi-
fied in holding agents to be morally responsible.
Criticisms of this route include the claim that the
reactive attitudes can be changed by the belief that

determinism is true. Perhaps the belief that a crim-
inal was determined to behave badly by his upbring-
ing might diminish our indignation towards him.
Furthermore, one might contend that the reactive
attitudes can be undermined by determinism be-
cause they presuppose the belief that the agents to
whom they are directed are not causally determined.
So if an agent believes that determinism is true, then
she will believe that a presupposition of some reac-
tive attitudes of hers is false, which will arguably
make her irrational if she persists in the attitude.
The second type of route disputes a common in-
compatibilist assumption: for an agent to be morally
responsible for an action, it must be that she could
have done otherwise. Harry Frankfurt provides a
powerful argument against this presupposition, and
compatibilists such as John Martin Fischer have used
Frankfurt’s argument to attempt to undermine in-
compatibilism. If it is false that moral responsibility
requires that one could have done otherwise, Fischer
argues, then the claim that determinism is incom-
patible with moral responsibility becomes implau-
sible. In response, some have argued that there is
nevertheless some requirement of alternate possibil-
ity for action or choice that cannot be undermined
by an argument of the type that Frankfurt advances.
One might also contend that this sort of argument
leaves intact a more powerful incompatibilist intui-
tion: moral responsibility requires that one’s actions
do not actually result from a deterministic causal
process that traces back to causal factors beyond
one’s control.
The third and most common type of route to com-
patibilism tries to distinguish causal circumstances
of action that exclude moral responsibility from
those that do not. What underlies this approach is
the conviction that moral responsibility requires
some sort of causal integration between the agent’s
PSYCHOLOGY and her action, while it does not de-
mand the absence of causal determination. This
route to compatibilism is typically explored by sur-
veying our intuitions about blameworthiness and
praiseworthiness in specific cases—cases involving,
for example, COERCION, addiction, mental illness,
hypnotism, and brainwashing. These reactions are
used to discover the metaphysical conditions on
which moral responsibility depends, conditions which
are held to consist in some type of causal integration
between the agent’s psychology and her action. This
third type of route is historically the most promi-
573
free will
nent. Varieties have been developed by ARISTOTLE
(384–322 B.C.E.), AUGUSTINE (354–430), THOMAS
AQUINAS (1225?–1274), Gottfried LEIBNIZ (1646–
1716), and Hume, and in this century by A. J. AYER
(1910–1989), Frankfurt, Fischer, and Mark Rav-
izza, and with respect to praiseworthiness, by Susan
Wolf.
For example, Ayer proposes that an action is free
in the sense required for moral responsibility only if
desires that genuinely belong to the agent play the
right role in causal history of the action. When an
agent is under constraint, for instance, desires that
genuinely belong to the agent do not have the req-
uisite causal role. According to Frankfurt what is
required for moral responsibility is that an agent en-
dorse her will to perform an action, and that her will
is effective because she endorses it. Fischer argues
that an agent is morally responsible when she is re-
sponsive to reasons in a certain way, when, roughly,
the way the agent acts is sensitive to her rational
consideration of the available REASONS FOR ACTION.
One of the most widespread sorts of criticism of
such proposals is that they fail to provide sufficient
conditions for moral responsibility because one can
conceive of an agent who is manipulated to perform
an action while he still fulfills the condition at issue.
For example, one might argue that an agent might
be manipulated by a powerful neurophysiologist to
commit murder and to meet the conditions on will-
ing and endorsing one’s will that Frankfurt develops,
or be responsive to reasons in the sense that Fischer
specifies. Such an agent, despite meeting the rele-
vant condition, would nevertheless not be morally
responsible.
The term ‘hard determinism’ traditionally refers
to the incompatibilist endorsement of determinism.
In accord with this characterization, hard determin-
ists argue that moral responsibility is incompatible
with determinism, and because determinism is true
we lack the sort of free will required for moral re-
sponsibility. Philosophical defenses of the hard de-
terminist position are uncommon. Baruch SPINOZA
(1632–1677), Joseph Priestley, and Ted Honderich
are examples of philosophers who espouse this view
or one closely related to it. Critics have expressed
many worries about this position. They have argued,
for example, that hard determinism threatens our
self-conception as deliberative agents, and that if hard
determinism were true, morality itself would be in-
coherent. Further, they have claimed that hard deter-
free will
minism would undermine the reactive attitudes that
lie at the core of human interpersonal relationships.
The hard determinist might respond by claiming
that the practical reasons for opposing the hard de-
terminist denial of moral responsibility are not as
compelling as they may at first seem. Even if deter-
minism were true, the beliefs, desires, and choices
that constitute the deliberative process might still be
causally efficacious. Perhaps the absence of moral
responsibility would not threaten moral principles,
because their truth or usefulness is independent of
claims about free will or morally responsible agency.
Hard determinism might indeed render irrational
certain emotional attitudes such as indignation and
resentment by undermining their presuppositions
about the agents to whom they are directed. But
nevertheless, attitudes that are legitimate by its stan-
dards could still be sufficient to sustain good inter-
personal relationships. Furthermore, the hard deter-
minist might insist that even if it is practically
impossible to live in accordance with her position,
it may still be true nevertheless.
See also: ACTION; AGENCY AND DISABILITY; AGENT-
CENTERED MORALITY; AUTONOMY OF MORAL
AGENTS; CAUSATION AND RESPONSIBILITY; COER-
CION; DELIBERATION AND CHOICE; DOUBLE EFFECT;
EMOTION; FATE AND FATALISM; FREEDOM AND DE-
TERMINISM; INTUITIONISM; LIBERTARIANISM; POSSI-
BILISM; REASONS FOR ACTION; RESPONSIBILITY;
THEOLOGICAL ETHICS; VOLUNTARISM.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Terence Ir-
win. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1985. Book 3.
Augustine. On Free Choice of the Will. Translated by
Thomas Williams. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1993.
Ayer, A. J. “Freedom and Necessity.” In his Philosophical
Essays, 271–84. Westport, CN: Greenwood, 1980
[1954].
Chisholm, Roderick. “Human Freedom and the Self.”
Originally published as The Lindley Lecture, 1964,
3–15. Department of Philosophy, Univ. of Kansas.
Clarke, Randolph. “Toward a Credible Agent-Causal Ac-
count of Free Will.” Noûs 27 (1993): 191–203.
Fischer, John Martin. The Metaphysics of Free Will. Ox-
ford: Blackwell, 1994.
Fischer, John Martin, and Mark Ravizza. Responsibility
and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
574
Frankfurt, Harry. “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Re-
sponsibility.” Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969): 828–
39.
———. “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Per-
son.” Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971): 5–20.
Ginet, Carl. On Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990.
Honderich, Ted. A Theory of Determinism. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1988.
Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by
L. A. Selby-Bigge, 399–412. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1962 [1737].
———. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
§8. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1980 [1758].
Kane, Robert. The Significance of Free Will. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1996.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by
Norman Kemp Smith; 464–79. New York: St. Mar-
tin’s, 1966 [1781].
O’Connor, Timothy. Persons and Causes. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000.
Pereboom, Derk. Living Without Free Will. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001.
———, ed. Free Will. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997. The
author of this encyclopedia entry has drawn upon ma-
terial from his Introduction to this anthology.
Priestley, Joseph, and Richard Price. A Free Discussion of
the Doctrines of Materialism and Philosophical Neces-
sity, In a Correspondence between Dr. Price and Dr.
Priestley. Part III, 147–52. Reprinted in Priestley’s
Writings on Philosophy, Science, and Politics, edited
by John Passmore. New York: Collier, [1788].
Smilansky, Saul. Free Will and Illusion. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000.
Spinoza, Baruch. Ethics. In The Collected Works of Ba-
ruch Spinoza, translated and edited by E. M. Curley.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985 [1677].
Appendix to Part I, Part II P48, Part III P2 Scholium.
Strawson, Peter. “Freedom and Resentment.” Proceedings
of the British Academy 48 (1962): 1–25.
Taylor, Richard. Action and Purpose. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966, 99–152.
Thomas Aquinas. Summa theologica. I-2 Question 83,
and II Question 6; in Introduction to St. Thomas Aqui-
nas, edited with an introduction by Anton C. Pegis,
479–94; 368–75. New York: Random House, Modern
Library, 1948 [1266–73].
van Inwagen, Peter. An Essay On Free Will. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1983.
Wallace, R. Jay. Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.
Wolf, Susan. Freedom Within Reason. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1990.
Derk Pereboom

freedom and determinism
The relationship between freedom and determinism
is extremely controversial. Some philosophers have
argued for “incompatibilism”—the doctrine that
freedom (of the type under consideration) is incom-
patible with causal determinism. Other philosophers
are “compatibilists”: They believe that freedom and
causal determinism are consistent. This debate is ob-
viously important for moral philosophy because it is
traditionally supposed that moral RESPONSIBILITY re-
quires some sort of freedom.
Historically, many philosophers have discussed
the cluster of issues related to freedom and deter-
minism. Whereas it is in some respects arbitrary to
select only some of these philosophers, it might be
useful to mention at least a few of the landmark dis-
cussions. An important early discussion is in ARIS-
TOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.). Aristotle argues that there
are two primary conditions that reduce “voluntari-
ness”: (nonculpable) ignorance and force (com-
pulsion).
Medieval philosophers tended to worry about the
relationship between God’s omniscience and hu-
man freedom (rather than the relationship between
causal determinism and human freedom). A classic
discussion of causal determinism is found in Laplace
(1749–1827). Some landmark developments of
compatibilistic accounts of freedom are in works by
HOBBES (1588–1679), LOCKE (1632–1704), HUME
(1711–1776), and MOORE (1873–1958). Two his-
torically influential presentations of incompatibilism
are by Bishop Bramhall (1594–1663) and Thomas
REID (1710–1796). There are important discussions
of the relationship between freedom, morality, and
causal determinism in KANT (1724–1804).
It will be useful here to develop the doctrine of
causal determinism first. Then I shall distinguish
three different sorts of freedom, explore a very basic
argument that presents a challenge to freedom from
causal determinism, and discuss the challenge to
freedom from the lack of causal determinism.
Causal Determinism
Causal determinism is roughly the claim that ev-
erything that occurs at any time is causally necessi-
tated by prior states of the world and the laws of
nature. But the way this rough statement is expli-
575
freedom and determinism
cated is crucial for understanding the freedom and
determinism debate.
Two more careful explanations of causal deter-
minism seem to require the idea of a “temporally
genuine” or “temporally nonrelational” fact. A tem-
porally nonrelational fact about a time T is “genu-
inely and only about T.” So, for example, the fact
that the alarm clock rang at 8:00 A.M. is a temporally
nonrelational fact about 8:00 A.M., whereas the fact
that the alarm clock rang (at 8:00 A.M.) four hours
prior to Sam’s eating lunch is a temporally relational
fact about 8:00 A.M. Although it is difficult to give
a precise explication of the distinction, there is nev-
ertheless a clear intuitive distinction between tem-
porally nonrelational and temporally relational facts.
Now we can say that causal determinism is the
thesis that, for any given time, a complete statement
of the temporally nonrelational facts about the world
at that time, together with a complete statement of
the laws of nature, entails every truth as to what
happens at every time.
Alternatively, we could employ the apparatus of
possible-worlds semantics to give an account of
causal determinism. On this approach, causal deter-
minism obtains in a possible world W just in case
any possible world that shares a time slice with W
and shares all of W’s natural laws is identical with
W. (Two possible worlds “share a time slice” insofar
as they share all temporally nonrelational facts about
a given time.)
Freedom
It is useful, as a next step, to distinguish three
kinds of freedom: “freedom of the will,” “freedom
of action,” and “acting freely.” When one has free-
dom of the will, one has a certain sort of freedom
with respect to certain motivational states, such as
“willing,” “trying,” “choosing,” and so forth. Let us
focus on “choosing.” When one has freedom of the
will with regard to a certain act X, then one can
choose to do X and one can choose not to do X.
Thus, freedom of the will entails freedom to “will”
(or, say, choose) otherwise; it implies the existence
of a certain sort of alternative possibility.
Similarly, when one has freedom of ACTION with
regard to a certain act X, one can either do X or
refrain from doing X. Freedom of action, like free-
dom of the will, entails the existence of alternative
freedom and determinism
possibilities. When one has freedom of action, one
has freedom to do otherwise.
Finally, there is a third sort of freedom, which is
exercised by an individual who acts (or “wills”)
freely. It is claimed by some philosophers that this
sort of freedom (which can be applied either to mo-
tivational states or to actions themselves) need not
require genuine alternative possibilities. That is, it is
alleged by some philosophers (e.g., Frankfurt) that
one can freely choose to do X without having the
freedom to choose not to do X, and that one can
freely do X without having the freedom to refrain
from doing X. Although this is controversial, I shall
assume that there is a type of freedom—“choosing
freely” or “acting freely”—which does not require
the existence of alternative possibilities. Rather, this
sort of freedom is an “actual-sequence” notion: One
acts (or chooses) freely insofar as the actual se-
quence issuing in the action (choice) possesses cer-
tain features, apart from the existence of genuine
alternative possibilities. The first two types of free-
dom—freedom of the will and freedom of action—
are “alternative-possibilities” notions of freedom.
A Challenge to Freedom from
Causal Determinism
Consider the argument, advanced by such philos-
ophers as Ginet, Van Inwagen, Lamb, and Wiggins,
which purports to show that, if causal determinism
obtains, then no one possesses either of the first two
types of freedom. For simplicity’s sake, I shall speak
only of freedom to do otherwise (thus, freedom of
action), although the argument would apply as well
to freedom of the will.
We begin by assuming that causal determinism
obtains and that I do something quite ordinary, such
as raise my hand at some time T. Because causal
determinism obtains, we know that conditions in the
past relative to T, together with the natural laws,
entail that I raise my hand at T. Thus, if I am free to
do otherwise at T, that is, to refrain from raising my
hand, then either I am free so to act that the past
relative to T would have been different in some re-
spect from what it actually was, or I am free so to
act that some natural law which actually obtained
would not have obtained. But I cannot so act that
the past would have been different from what it ac-
tually was. And I cannot so act that a natural law
which actually obtained would not have obtained.
576
That is, both the past and the natural laws are
“fixed.” Thus, if causal determinism is true, I am not
free at T to refrain from raising my hand, and, in
general, if causal determinism is true, I am never free
to do (choose) otherwise. The “basic argument for
incompatibilism” proceeds from intuitive principles
putatively capturing the ideas of the fixity of the past
and the fixity of the natural laws to the conclusion
that if causal determinism obtains, then we do not
possess the sort of freedom that entails alternative
possibilities. And if moral responsibility requires
freedom of this sort, then the argument poses a
threat to our confidence in our moral responsibility.
Is the basic argument for incompatibilism sound?
I have given a rather sketchy version of it, but I be-
lieve that the formulation can be sharpened so that
it can be seen to be a valid argument. The crucial
questions then are whether the premises expressing
the fixity of the past and the fixity of the natural laws
are true (and thus whether the argument is sound).
Some compatibilists, who might be dubbed
“multiple-pasts compatibilists,” deny the fixity-of-
the-past premise. They distinguish between two
ways of capturing the insight that the past is fixed:
(FP1) No one can at any time initiate a
backwards-flowing causal sequence is-
suing in the occurrence of some event
in the past that did not actually occur.
(FP2) No one can at any time perform any ac-
tion such that if he were to perform it,
some event that did not actually occur
in the past would have occurred.
The multiple-pasts compatibilist will claim that
whereas (FP1) is true, (FP2) is not. Further, the
claim is that (FP2) is required by the basic argument
for incompatibilism.
The multiple-pasts compatibilist will want to jus-
tify the distinction between (FP1) and (FP2) by in-
sisting that, whereas it is clear that we cannot initiate
backwards-flowing causal chains, there is no inco-
herence in the conjunction of a “can-claim” (I can at
T refrain from raising my hand) and a “backtracking
conditional” (if I were at T to refrain from raising
my hand, the past would have been different in some
respect from what it actually was). The incompati-
bilist, in contrast, will insist that if the pertinent
“backtracker” is true and thus it is a necessary con-
dition of performing the action in question that the

past be different from what it actually was, it follows
that the can-claim is false.
Other compatibilists, who might be dubbed
“local-miracle compatibilists,” deny the fixity-of-the-
laws premise. They distinguish between two ways of
capturing the insight that the natural laws are fixed:
(FL1) No one can ever do something which
itself would be or cause a violation of a
natural law.
(FL2) No one can ever do something which is
such that were he to do it, some viola-
tion of an actually obtaining natural law
would occur at some time.
The local-miracle compatibilist will claim that
whereas (FL1) is true, (FL2) is not. Further, the
claim is that (FL2) is required by the basic argument
for incompatibilism.
The local-miracle compatibilist will want to jus-
tify his distinction between (FL1) and (FL2). He will
claim that whereas it is obvious that (FL1) is true—
no one can fly faster than the speed of light, for ex-
ample—it is not so obvious that (FL2) is true. In
denying (FL2), the local-miracle compatibilist is as-
serting the coherence of a can-claim (I can at T re-
frain from raising my hand) and a certain sort of
conditional (if I were to refrain from raising my hand
at T, then some law which actually obtained would
have been violated, perhaps immediately prior to T).
Note that this sort of compatibilist is not committed
to the truth of obviously wild can-claims, such as
that I can jump to the moon.
The incompatibilist, in contrast, will insist that
(FL2) is no less appealing than (FL1). He will insist
that if it is a necessary condition of performing a
certain action that an actually obtaining natural law
be violated, then one cannot perform the action. He
will claim that our concepts of “natural law” and
“freedom” imply that there is no important differ-
ence between (FL1) and (FL2).
The basic argument for incompatibilism is then a
powerful argument for the incompatibility of the
alternative-possibilities types of freedom and causal
determinism. Given that causal determinism might
be true, if one wishes to protect moral responsibility
from the threat posed by the basic argument one
must either take one of the compatibilistic tacks de-
scribed above or deny that moral responsibility re-
quires the sort of freedom that entails alternative
577
freedom and determinism
possibilities. On the latter approach, one would
claim that the third type of freedom—the actual-
sequence type of freedom—is sufficient for moral
responsibility. Further, the claim would be that the
basic argument does not produce any reason to think
that casual determinism rules out this sort of
freedom.
A Challenge from Indeterminism
So far I have focused on the threat posed to free-
dom by causal determinism. But there is also a threat
posed for freedom by the lack of causal determinism.
The threat can be put very simply as follows. If what
I do is not causally determined by the past (including
my deliberations), then it seems that I am not in
control of what happens. If what I do is not causally
determined, then it would seem entirely arbitrary
that I behave in the way I actually behave rather than
otherwise. Thus the lack of causal determinism poses
a threat to the idea that I have the kind of control
(and freedom) required for moral responsibility.
Some philosophers (e.g., Hobart) have taken this
threat to be a decisive reason to adopt incompati-
bilism about indeterminism and freedom. Others,
like FOOT, have attempted to generate an account of
the pertinent sorts of freedom according to which
indeterminism is compatible with freedom. On such
an approach, one claims that indeterminism need
not entail randomness and arbitrariness, and thus
that indeterminism is consistent with the type of
control required for the freedom that is relevant to
moral responsibility.
See also: ACTION; ARISTOTLE; CAUSATION AND RE-
SPONSIBILITY; DELIBERATION AND CHOICE; EXCUSES;
FATE AND FATALISM; FOOT; FREE WILL; HOBBES;
HUME; LOCKE; MOORE; OUGHT IMPLIES CAN; POS-
SIBILISM; REID; RESPONSIBILITY; VOLUNTARISM.
Bibliography
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‘Hard’ Fact?” Philosophical Review 74 (1967): 492–
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Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics.
Bramhall, John. The Works of John Bramhall.
Dennett, Daniel C. Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free
Will Worth Wanting. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984. Ex-
tensive bibliography.
Fischer, John Martin. “Freedom and Foreknowledge.”
Philosophical Review 92 (1983): 67–79.
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———. “Incompatibilism.” Philosophical Studies 43
(1983): 127–37.
———, ed. Moral Responsibility. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1986. Extensive bibliography.
Fischer, John Martin, and Mark Ravizza. Responsibility
and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Foley, Richard. “Compatibilism and Control Over the
Past.” Analysis 39 (1979): 70–74.
Foot, Philippa. “Free Will as Involving Determinism.”
Philosophical Review 64 (1957): 439–50.
Freddoso, Alfred J. “Accidental Necessity and Logical De-
terminism.” Journal of Philosophy 80 (1983): 257–78.
Frankfurt, Harry G. “Alternate Possibilities and Moral
Responsibility.” Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969):
828–39.
———. “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Per-
son.” Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971): 5–20.
Ginet, Carl. “In Defense of Incompatibilism.” Philosoph-
ical Studies 44 (1983): 391–400.
———. “Might We Have No Choice?” In Freedom and
Determinism, edited by Keith Lehrer. New York: Ran-
dom House, 1966.
Hobart, R. E. “Free Will as Involving Determination and
Inconceivable Without It.” Mind 43 (1934): 1–27.
Hobbes, Thomas. “Of Liberty and Necessity.” In British
Moralists: 1650–1800, edited by D.D. Raphael, vol. 1.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Hoffman, Joshua, and Gary Rosenkrantz. “Hard and Soft
Facts.” Philosophical Review 37 (1984): 414–34.
Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. (1739)
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. (1781)
———. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.
(1785)
Lamb, James W. “On a Proof of Incompatibilism.” Philo-
sophical Review 86 (1977): 20–35.
LaPlace, Pierre Simon. A Philosophical Essay on Proba-
bilities. (1814)
Lehrer, Keith. “Preferences, Conditionals, and Freedom.”
In Time and Cause: Essays Presented to Richard Tay-
lor, edited by Peter Van Inwagen, 187–201. Dordrecht:
Reidel, 1980.
Lewis, David. “Are We Free to Break the Laws?” Theoria
47 (1981): 112–21.
Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understand-
ing. (1690)
Moore, G.E. Ethics. (1912)
Reid, Thomas. Essay on the Active Powers of the Mind.
(1788)
Saunders, John Turk. “The Temptations of ‘Powerless-
ness.’” American Philosophical Quarterly 5 (1968):
100–108.
Strawson, Galen. Freedom and Belief. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1986. Extensive bibliography.
578
Van Inwagen, Peter. An Essay on Free Will. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1986.
Wallace, R. Jay. Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.
Watson, Gary. “Free Action and Free Will.” Mind 96
(1987): 145–72. Extensive bibliography.
———, ed. Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1982. Extensive bibliography.
John Martin Fischer
freedom of the press
Freedom of the press is one element in freedom of
expression (sometimes called freedom of speech),
famously protected in the First Amendment of the
U.S. Constitution, which states that “Congress shall
make no law abridging the freedom of speech . . . or
of the press.” Although it is generally agreed that this
provision extends no protections to journalists be-
yond those afforded all citizens, it is noteworthy
that, as Justice Potter Stewart (1915–1985) put it,
“The publishing business is . . . the only organized
private business that is given explicit constitutional
protection.”
Few countries protect freedom of expression as
zealously as the United States, but the values and
arguments supporting it express broadly held con-
cerns. They include JOHN STUART MILL’s (1806–
1873) idea that freedom of expression is the best
means of attaining truth and Alexander Meikle-
john’s argument that citizens in a democratic society
need an unfettered flow of information in order to
make rational political decisions.
The argument for the political importance of free-
dom of the press can be extended along several lines.
First, since people require adequate information to
vote intelligently, freedom of expression can enhance
the degree to which individuals and groups partici-
pate more directly in the political process. For many
political theorists (although not all), political partic-
ipation is itself an important value. Moreover, the
press in particular serves as a watchdog, or even a
“fourth branch,” of government. From the august
spheres of constitutional theory to the trenches of
dissent in authoritarian countries, the right to criti-
cize the government publicly is often seen as the
heart of freedom of expression. Finally, riddled with
conflicts of interest, the would-be suppresser of
speech—government—is in a very poor position to
judge which speech, if any, should be suppressed.

Even the political functions of a free press, then, are
varied and numerous.
Our interests in freedom of speech and press also
reflect a concern about individual autonomy and
self-expression independent of any political role ex-
pression may have. Altogether, freedom of expres-
sion is connected to a variety of values, some of
which focus on the interests of speakers, some of
listeners, and some of society at large. How strenu-
ously one believes a particular kind of expression
ought to be protected will depend on the values of
which it is an instance. Perhaps the most common
view, at least in the American tradition, is that the
core concerns underlying freedom of expression in-
volve its political functions, and that therefore po-
litical speech warrants a higher degree of protection
than nonpolitical speech. (This of course leaves open
the question of how to distinguish political from
nonpolitical speech. For example, it might be argued
that PORNOGRAPHY, which seems on its face a non-
political form of speech, may in fact express a polit-
ically significant view of gender relations.) A view
elevating political speech would seem also to elevate
the position of the press, insulating it from legal
restrictions.
The important question is what countervailing
forces make freedom of the press sometimes contro-
versial. Let us consider four values with which free-
dom of the press can conflict: national security, rep-
utation, privacy, and justice in criminal and other
trial proceedings.
National security. On the one hand, many would
agree that if a nation’s security is genuinely threat-
ened by what a newspaper publishes, limitations on
its freedom may well be justified. On the other hand,
“seditious libel”—the ability to criticize the govern-
ment, or even to call for revolutionary change—has
been understood as central to the meaning of free-
dom of the press. Furthermore, in claiming their se-
curity is threatened governments often cry wolf. In
American law, the government must overcome a
strong burden of justification if it is to impose “prior
restraint” on the press. Post-publication punish-
ments require a lesser burden of justification.
Reputation. The law of defamation—including
libel and slander—reflects the value of reputation.
As Iago in Othello put it, “He that filches from me
my good name . . . makes me poor indeed.” The in-
terests in reputation and in PRIVACY might appear
hard to distinguish, since in both cases journalists
579
freedom of the press
may report embarrassing or damaging information
about a person. But in many democratic countries,
there is a difference: in defamation cases, the “in-
formation” is by definition false. This is not so in
France and Norway, for example, where truth is not
necessarily a defense against defamation. Com-
plaints of invasion of privacy, by contrast, never pre-
suppose the falsity of what is reported.
In the United States, defamation was essentially
excluded from First Amendment protection until the
1960s. But the case of New York Times v. Sullivan
in 1964 changed that, holding that public officials
criticized for their official conduct could successfully
sue for libel only if they could show not just that the
statements in question were false and defamatory
but that they were made with “actual malice,” that
is, with knowledge of their falsity or with reckless
disregard of whether they were false or not. This
standard was eventually extended to statements not
describable strictly as criticism of official conduct
(but that bear, for example, on a public official’s fit-
ness for office). A lower but still significant standard
applies to public figures who sue for defamation.
These rulings clearly reflect the political values
underlying freedom of speech and press.
Privacy. Collisions between press freedom and
privacy have come to the forefront of public atten-
tion during the last decade, with many highly pub-
licized accounts of the private lives—generally
meaning the sexual lives—of public officials and
public figures. Such conflicts also arise when re-
porters publish the names of rape victims, or of mi-
nor children who are either victims or suspected per-
petrators of crimes. With no law to buttress their
claims of journalistic excess, critics of such practices
find themselves appealing to the CONSCIENCE or pro-
fessionalism of journalists and rarely invoke (even if
to attack) the concept of freedom of the press. The
latter, it seems, has distinctly legalistic connotations,
at least in the United States.
Criminal justice. A defendant’s right to a fair
trial, basic to a democratic regime, can be endan-
gered by the press in at least two ways. One concerns
pretrial publicity, which can bias potential jurors
against (or, theoretically, in favor of) a defendant.
Countries such as Great Britain prohibit the press
from reporting any information about accused per-
sons or their alleged crimes if doing so “creates a
substantial risk that the course of justice in partic-
ular proceedings will be seriously impeded or prej-
freedom of the press
udiced” (UNESCO). In the United States, such rules
are widely believed to be inconsistent with the First
Amendment. But not even voluntary guidelines re-
straining press behavior in such matters have ever
received serious consideration.
The relationship between freedom of the press
and criminal (as well as civil) proceedings is also
affected by rules governing confidentiality between
journalists and their sources. Although journalists
have sometimes claimed a privilege of confidential-
ity akin to the attorney-client privilege and the
doctor-patient privilege, the U.S. Supreme Court de-
nied such a privilege in Branzburg v. Hayes (1972).
Only statutory “shield” laws, enacted by state or fed-
eral governments, can be invoked to support a jour-
nalistic privilege of confidentiality.
Another important issue that comes under the
heading of freedom of the press concerns access to
the press. If the justification for press freedom lies
largely in the democratic functions outlined above,
it would seem important that a large number and
variety of individuals and groups be able to make
their voices heard and have their views expressed in
public media outlets. But access to the MASS MEDIA
is distributed very unequally and dominated by the
most powerful groups. We thus encounter a para-
dox: freedom of the press has generally meant free-
dom from interference by government, but it may be
possible to achieve access for less powerful groups
only by government interference or regulation.
Legal systems do not necessarily treat all media
equally, and one way to resolve the tension just
noted is to distinguish among them. (One might put
this point by saying that the question is what should
count as “press,” at least in countries like the United
States where the term has implications for law.)
Changing communications technologies—from print,
to broadcasting, to cable, to the Internet—raise the
question whether all media should come under the
stringent protections traditionally guaranteed to the
paradigmatic examples of newspapers and maga-
zines. The simple answer is no. Electronic media in
the United States have always been subject to reg-
ulations that print media have avoided. This differ-
ence is reflected in two important Supreme Court
cases: Miami Herald v. Tornillo (1974), in which the
Court held that a newspaper was not required to
print a reply by a candidate attacked in editorials,
and Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC (1969), in which
the Court upheld the Federal Communications Com-
580
mission’s requirements that radio and television sta-
tions provide free reply time to those attacked in
station broadcasts.
But the gap in treatment of print and electronic
media is closing, in part due to a general political
climate sympathetic to privatization and deregula-
tion, and in part due to the changed circumstances
in which electronic media operate. In the infancy of
broadcasting, a central rationale for regulation was
the scarcity of spectrum space. By contrast, news-
papers were plentiful, and no natural restrictions on
starting them existed. As cable and the internet have
developed, we have seen the proliferation of elec-
tronic outlets and the decline of newspapers. These
factors seem to weaken the reasons for distinguish-
ing betweeen print and electronic media. It does not
follow, of course, that regulation is inappropriate,
only that the old ways of drawing lines may no
longer stand up.
See also: APPLIED ETHICS; AUTONOMY OF MORAL
AGENTS; CORRECTIONAL ETHICS; DEMOCRACY; GOV-
ERNMENT, ETHICS IN; HONOR; JOURNALISM; LIBERTY;
LIBRARY AND INFORMATION PROFESSIONS; MASS ME-
DIA; OBEDIENCE TO LAW; PLAGIARISM; POLICE
ETHICS; PORNOGRAPHY; PRIVACY; PROFESSIONAL
ETHICS; PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY; SECRECY
AND CONFIDENTIALITY; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY.
Bibliography
Adler, Renata. Reckless Disregard: Westmoreland v. CBS
et al.; Sharon v. Time. New York: Knopf, 1986.
Barron, Jerome A. “Access to the Press—A New First
Amendment Right.” Harvard Law Review 80 (1967):
1641–78.
Barron, Jerome A., and C. Thomas Dienes. First Amend-
ment Law in a Nutshell St. Paul: West Publishing,
1993.
Dworkin, Ronald. “The Farber Case: Reporters and In-
formers.” In his A Matter of Principle, 373–80. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1985.
Kalven, Harry. “The New York Times Case: A Note on
‘The Central Meaning of the First Amendment.’” Su-
preme Court Review 1964: 191–221.
Lewis, Anthony. “A Preferred Position for Journalism?”
Hofstra Law Review 7 (1979): 595–627.
Lichtenberg, Judith. “Foundations and Limits of Freedom
of the Press.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 16 (1987):
329–55. Reprinted in her Democracy and the Mass
Media.

———, ed. Democracy and the Mass Media. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Meiklejohn, Alexander. Political Freedom: The Constitu-
tional Powers of the People. New York: Harper, 1960.
Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. Originally published 1859.
See especially chapter 2, “Of the Liberty of Thought
and Discussion.”
Milton, John. Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of
Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England.
Originally published 1644.
Pool, Ithiel de Sola. Technologies of Freedom: On Free
Speech in an Electronic Age. Cambridge: Belknap,
1983.
Schauer, Frederick F. Free Speech: A Philosophical In-
quiry. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Schmidt, Benno, Jr. Freedom of the Press vs. Public Access.
New York: Praeger, 1975.
Stewart, Potter. “‘Or of the Press.’” Hastings Law Journal
26 (1975): 631–37.
UNESCO. Press Law and Practice: A Comparative Study
of Press Freedom in European and Other Democracies.
UNESCO, 1993. See Article 19, p. 183.
Judith Lichtenberg
friendship
Ancient Greek moral philosophers devoted a good
deal of attention to friendship and other PERSONAL
RELATIONSHIPS motivated by mutual LOVE. All the
main traditional ethical theories—Platonist, Aristo-
telian, Epicurean, Stoic—had distinctive and original
things to say about the nature and the special value
to any human being of such relationships. In these
discussions many philosophical problems of consid-
erable intrinsic interest were brought to light and
insightfully pursued. Christian writers of later antiq-
uity and medieval times, working under the influ-
ence of ancient moral theory, developed specifically
Christian versions and applications of Greek ideas
about friendship. These did much to enrich our con-
ception of the varieties of such personal relation-
ships and their place in a well-lived human life.
Moral philosophy in modern times has neglected
these subjects, apparently treating them as matters
of personal choice and commitment lying outside
the bounds of moral theory properly conceived. Un-
til very recently, religious writers, novelists, and
“popular” rather than professional philosophers
have provided the only worthwhile treatments of
these topics.
It is the wide scope given in the ancient philo-
581
friendship
sophical tradition to the subject matter of ethics that
makes possible the relative prominence of these top-
ics in ancient philosophy, and in Christian thought
directly influenced by it. For the ancients, ethics sys-
tematically addressed the whole of the human good.
What objects, personal characteristics, states of
mind, activities and experiences, relationships to
others, and so on, are by their nature, and by the
nature of human beings, such as to possess value for
us? In what does this value consist, and what must
one do in order to achieve in one’s life the things
that are most valuable? What sort of life is best for
a human being? It seems obvious to everyone, and
was a cultural commonplace among the Greeks, that
friendship and other intimate relationships involving
love are among the most important goods human
beings can achieve. On the other hand, it is not ob-
vious what philosophical account should be given of
the PSYCHOLOGY of these relationships in general,
and of the allegedly best among them in particular.
In what does their goodness consist? How does this
goodness connect to the goodness of other good
things? How does friendship fit into the life that is
naturally best for a human being?
ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) recognizes three
distinct types of friendship, based respectively on the
friends’ mutual PLEASURE in one another’s company;
mutual utility and assistance of a mundane sort; and
the appreciation of one another’s good qualities of
CHARACTER. A friendship of any of these three types
exists only when two persons mutually recognize
that each wishes the other well (because of their
pleasantness, or utility, or good character) and as-
sociate with one another on that basis in the way
appropriate to the type of friendship in question. In
friendship “of the good,” and perhaps in the other
types as well (there is disagreement about Aristotle’s
meaning at this point), friends wish their friends
well for their friends’ own sake. Aristotle makes
such concern for the well-being of a friend for the
friend’s own sake an essential component of all re-
lationships that deserve this name. Aristotle calls the
friendship of the good “perfect friendship” because
such friends will enjoy mutual pleasure in one an-
other’s company and (being people of good char-
acter) will confer on one another such needed bene-
fits as may be appropriate, as well as achieve
additional goods not available in the other types of
friendship. By intimate acquaintance with one an-
other’s good qualities of mind and spirit, achieved
friendship
and maintained through the pursuit together of
common interests, such friends participate in each
other’s intrinsic human goodness. The common ac-
tivities making manifest such a friendship are intrin-
sically good for each of the two friends in two ways.
First, one expresses one’s own personal VIRTUES in
doing one’s part in them, and that is intrinsically
good. Second, because the activities are shared, one
also shares in the additional goodness that derives
from the friend’s virtues that are equally expressed
in them. In addition, the friend’s appreciation of
one’s own good qualities provides valuable confir-
mation of the correctness of one’s own views about
what is worthwhile in human life, and strengthens
one’s capacity to express them in ACTION.
Aristotle’s insistence on two points was accepted
by his successors in the Greek tradition, however
much they disagreed with him in other respects.
First, true friendship requires that friends wish for
and pursue their friends’ good for their friends’ own
sake. Second, friendship achieves its most important
value only when it is based on mutual appreciation
of good qualities of mind and character that are ac-
tually present. EPICURUS’s (341–270 B.C.E.) convic-
tion that friendship is a divine and immortal good
incorporated this perspective, however difficult we
may find it to square it with the hedonist basis of his
ethical theory. The same is true of the Stoics’ doc-
trines that only the virtuous person can be anybody’s
friend, and that every virtuous person is the friend
of every other one (and of god). CICERO’s (106–43
B.C.E.) understanding of friendship, based on a soft-
ened version of the Stoic doctrine, conveyed these
ideas to the Latin middle ages. Basing himself on
Cicero, Aelred of Rievaulx (twelfth century) devel-
oped a sophisticated conception of the ideal friend-
ship as one of openness and intimacy in their spiri-
tual life between chosen and tested Christians
(particularly fellow monks), drawn to one another
by both strong emotional bonds and rational appre-
ciation for one another’s goodness and purity. He
argued that the union of souls in such a friendship
was a giant step toward ultimate union with God,
and he went so far as, in some sense, actually to
identify God with friendship. Like THOMAS AQUI-
NAS (1225?–1274) in the following century (but
without Aquinas’s knowledge of and dependence on
Aristotle), Aelred interpreted friendship as one spe-
cial form, and one especially well suited to the actual
conditions of human life, that Christian CHARITY can
582
take (despite the exclusivity that is essential to
friendship).
With the social and religious upheavals of the six-
teenth century, mainstream moral philosophy be-
came preoccupied with the problem of constructing
a common morality to which members of different
and opposed sects (and social classes) could all give
their allegiance. Friendship is a private affair, an op-
tional matter of personal choice—not part of the
common morality that applies to everyone regard-
less of his or her religious and other personal values.
So friendship came to be thought of as a merely “per-
sonal” value, separate from the weighty common
concerns on which philosophers concentrated their
attention and for which they increasingly came to
reserve the term “morality.” In his Lectures on Ethics
(c. 1780), KANT (1724–1804) introduces the topic
with the disparaging remark that it is “the hobby-
horse of all rhetorical moralists,” and paints a severe
and somewhat depressing picture of it. He finds it
morally significant at least as much for the danger
that by over-familiarity friends will violate that
moral respect each person owes to every other, as
for the loving attention friends pay to one another;
and he emphasizes the value of friendship in provid-
ing a refuge from the universal distrust of one’s fel-
lows that PRUDENCE would otherwise condemn
us to.
Friendship has figured in recent philosophy mostly
as part of the growing attack on the dominant uni-
versalistic moral theories of Kantianism and UTILI-
TARIANISM. It has been argued that the exclusivity of
friendship—the division of people into an included
“we” and an excluded “they”—goes flatly counter to
the harmonizing demands of these theories, which
propose universal agreement or the best interests of
everyone taken together as the criterion of morality.
Friendship, it is alleged, requires lies, breaches of
confidence, gross favoritism, and other divisive forms
of behavior that these universalistic theories do and
must count as immoral on that very ground. Again,
it has been argued that friendship involves forms of
motivation certainly distinct from those treated by
these theories as central to morality, and perhaps not
even permitted by them. There seems no doubt that
one grossly betrays one’s friendship if one visits a
friend in the hospital out of a general duty to succor
those in distress, or for the sake of giving the greatest
pleasure to the greatest number of sentient beings
possible. Friendship requires that one act out of sen-

timents of love and personal attachment to this spe-
cific individual, not for any such universalistic con-
siderations. It may be replied that these theories do
permit the formation of true friendships—relation-
ships of which such motivations and actions are im-
portant constituents. They only require that acting
out of motives specific to friendship should be ap-
provable from some universal point of view; and
there is good reason to think most friendships, and
most acts of friendship, would pass this test. No
doubt some acts of friendship (and so, some friend-
ships) would not pass it (the acts involving lying and
other immoralities mentioned above) but it is doubt-
ful whether any true friendship should (or can) ever
require them.
Finally, even if this point is granted, it has been
argued that in imposing prior, external conditions
that must be met by one’s friendships if they are to
be acceptable, these theories rob friendship of the
spontaneity that is essential to its value, and deny to
its motivations the status of fundamental, original,
and independent bases for the leading of one’s life
that friendship itself seems to demand that they be.
Here one appears to meet a fundamental difference
of opinion. Some regard their friendships as invio-
late, not properly subject to external criticism, but
only to criticism from within, from the point of view
simply of the values inherent in the friendship itself.
Others think it bespeaks no denial or downgrading
of friendship and its inherent values to demand that
it only take forms that the common morality itself
can find acceptable; it is simply part of being a re-
sponsible grown-up person to ensure that this de-
mand is met in all aspects of one’s life.
See also: ARISTOTELIAN ETHICS; CARE; CHARACTER;
CHARITY; CHRISTIAN ETHICS;
EMOTIONS; EUDAI-
MONIA, -ISM; FAMILY; FEMINIST ETHICS; FIDELITY;
HAPPINESS; IMPARTIALITY; LOVE; LOYALTY; PER-
SONAL RELATIONSHIPS; PLEASURE; PSYCHOLOGY;
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY; RECIPROCITY; SELF
AND SOCIAL SELF; SYMPATHY; TRUST; VIRTUES.
Bibliography
Aelred of Rievaulx. De spiritali amicitia. 1160s. Written
by the Abbot of Rievaulx in North Yorkshire, a Cister-
cian; the first treatise on friendship after Cicero. Rich
personal experience of intimate friendships; supple-
ments Cicero by adding the shared love of God to the
basis in human virtues of true friendship.
583
friendship
Aristotle. Eudemian Ethics, VII. Magna moralia, II, 11–
17. Nicomachean Ethics, VIII-IX. Rhetoric, II, 4.
Augustine, Saint. De civitate dei. 413–26. Book XIX.
Bacon, Francis. “Of Friendship.” In his Essays or Counsels
Civil and Moral. 1597–1625. Famous but superficial
secular treatment.
Blum, Lawrence A. Friendship, Altruism and Morality.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980.
Card, Claudia. “Gratitude and Obligation.” American
Philosophical Quarterly 25 (1988): 115–27.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Laelius de amicitia. For many cen-
turies, the standard ancient writing on friendship in
western Europe. Except for the Aristotelians of the
High Middle Ages, writers on friendship up through
the Renaissance took Cicero as their model.
Cooper, John M. “Aristotle on Friendship.” In Essays on
Aristotle’s Ethics, edited by A. O. Rorty, 301–40.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Friendship.” In vol. 2 of The
Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 181–206.
Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1883.
Epicurus. Principal Doctrines. Vatican Sayings. Epicurean
views are expounded extensively in Cicero, De finibus,
Book I, 65–70.
Kalin, Jesse. “Lies, Secrets and Love: The Inadequacy of
Contemporary Moral Philosophy.” Journal of Value In-
quiry 10 (1976): 253–65.
Kant, Immanuel. Lectures on Ethics. Translated by Louis
Infield. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1982 [c. 1780].
———. The Doctrine of Virtue: Pt. II of The Metaphysics
of Morals. Translated by Mary J. Gregor. New York:
Harper and Row, 1964 [1797]. See sections 46–8.
Lewis, C. S. The Four Loves. London: Geoffrey Bles,
1960. See “Friendship,” pp. 69–105. A shrewd and
perceptive treatment from an upper-middle class Brit-
ish Christian perspective.
Plato. Lysis. Symposium. Phaedrus.
Plutarch. Moralia. “How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend”
(48E–78E); “How to Profit from One’s Enemies”
(86B–92F); “On Having Many Friends” (93A–97B).
Seneca. Epistulae morales. III, IX, LXIII.
Stocker, Michael. “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical
Theories.” Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976): 453–66.
———. “Values and Purposes: The Limits of Teleology
and the Ends of Friendship.” Journal of Philosophy 78
(1981): 747–65.
Taylor, Jeremy. “A Discourse of the Nature and Offices of
Friendship.” In volume 1 of his Works, edited by Re-
ginald Heber. London: Longmans, 1854 [1657]. An
original updating of Cicero by an Anglican divine for
the use of English gentry with religious scruples about
the exclusivity of friendships.
Thomas Aquinas. Summa theologiae. 1266–73. Treatise
on Charity, IIa IIae, qq. 23–33. Aquinas interprets the
theological virtue of charity as involving friendship be-
friendship
tween the good man and God, and as the proper basis
for all other friendships.
Thomas, Laurence. “Friendship.” Synthese 72 (1987):
217–36.
John M. Cooper
Fuller, Lon Luvois (1902–1978)
A leading contracts theorist and preeminent voice in
American jurisprudence in the middle decades of the
twentieth century, Lon Luvois Fuller taught at the
Harvard Law School from 1939 to 1972. His hypo-
thetical “Case of the Speluncean Explorers” (1949),
an elegant and incisive portrayal of rival judicial phi-
losophies, is a classic of the legal literature. His most
provocative and fecund proposal, the idea that law
has a distinctive morality, was introduced in a 1958
exchange with the English legal theorist H. L. A.
HART (1907–1992), in the pages of the Harvard
Law Review. Elaborated in The Morality of Law
(1964, 2d ed. 1969), this idea was famously illus-
trated by the imaginary story of the hapless king,
Rex, who nobly attempts to make law for his sub-
jects—and fails in eight instructive ways that illu-
minate “the morality that makes law possible.”
Fuller also wrote important essays on the common
law, legal education, and the professional responsi-
bilities of lawyers, among other topics. A set of es-
says on forms of legal order, written over a span of
more than twenty-five years, was collected post-
humously and published as The Principles of Social
Order (1981). Twenty years after his death, Fuller
remains a figure of enduring influence in law and
philosophy.
Although Fuller was deeply versed in European
legal scholarship, the principal philosophical influ-
ences in his early years were American, especially
William JAMES (1842–1910), Morris Cohen (1880–
1947), and John DEWEY (1859–1952). Cohen’s
“principle of polarity,” the idea that opposites “in-
volve each other” in any important matter, was em-
ployed by Fuller to explore basic and recurring an-
tinomies in law—reason and fiat, fact and value,
duty and aspiration. From James and Dewey, Fuller
drew the core insight that the human intellect is pur-
posive and problem solving. Mind does not impose
a fixed and universal structure on experience; it is
selective, interpretive, and goal-directed. Accord-
584
ingly, ideas are anticipatory and action guiding; they
always mean something that does not yet exist, an
ideal presence absent in fact. To develop a thought’s
meaning is to determine what direction it gives to
human conduct. Thus, in his exchange with Hart,
Fuller said that the controversy over the meaning of
law is not about some datum of experience, but di-
rection posts for the application of human energies.
The problem-solving orientation infused Fuller’s
social theory as well as his epistemology. He was
suspicious of appeals to abstract RIGHTS or universal
principles of justice. Reflection begins with a partic-
ular society and generalizing is warranted only to the
extent that it is helpful in “muddling through,” in
the best sense of that term. As a result, Fuller pro-
moted what he called “theories of the middle range.”
At the same time, he was sufficiently confident in
the good nature of men and women to be optimistic
about their ability to achieve a program of living to-
gether that would be satisfactory for everyone. DE-
MOCRACY presupposes that conflicts can be resolved
by people’s talking with and understanding one an-
other. When people are encouraged to explain and
justify their actions publicly, the effect is generally
to pull them towards goodness, however that is
conceived.
Consistent with this homegrown philosophy, Fuller
was both a student of American legal realism and
critic of its excesses. His appreciation of the heuristic
nature of concepts is evident in his first major pub-
lication, a series of three papers on legal fictions
(1930–1931), conceived as judicial tools for achiev-
ing structure and coherence in legal doctrine, bridg-
ing gaps between established precedents and unfa-
miliar questions posed for resolution. The pragmatist
focus on concrete meaning also led him to stress the
primacy of remedies in law, a focus that is apparent
in his innovative casebook on CONTRACTS (1st ed.
1947). Of course, Fuller did not declare that law is
only what judges do; like most realists, he believed
that the reasoning of judges is equally important.
But he saw this reasoning as profoundly influenced
by unarticulated assumptions, and he continually
searched for the latent rules or implicit expectations
underlying judicial pronouncements.
This was a quest for “the law behind the law,”
and Fuller employed what he called the NATURAL
LAW method to uncover it. It consisted in bringing
to explicit consciousness the shared purposes and

policy choices shaping the development of case law
over time and evaluating specific decisions in terms
of their contribution to, or detraction from, these
aims. Fuller employed this method most brilliantly
in two essays on contracts, one on the reliance in-
terest (1936–37) and the other on the doctrine of
consideration (1941). Here, however, Fuller also
made his most decisive break with legal realism. The
realists took the quest for the law behind the law as
an invitation to employ the latest social scientific ap-
proaches. This led them to a variety of commitments
that Fuller firmly rejected, including a behaviorist
analysis of human action (in which its purposive as-
pect disappears), an emotivist analysis of evaluation
(in which reason has no place), and treatment of law
as a value-independent datum or fact. Fuller asso-
ciated each of these tenets with positivism and re-
jected them because they distort the relation be-
tween law and morality.
Fuller emphasized three intersections of law and
morality. The first starts from the observation that
the AUTHORITY of law cannot be based on its coer-
cive power, since physical force cannot lift itself by
its own bootstraps into LEGITIMACY. Rather, law has
authority only if based on general acceptance, es-
pecially acceptance of the rules by which lawmaking
itself occurs. This general acceptance, in turn, is sus-
tained only if vitalized by citizens’ appreciation of
the “persuasive moral power” of the rules. In other
words, for a legal order to exist over time, citizens
must actively support the law’s effort to insure “or-
derly, fair and decent” governance. In this way, the
law engages citizens as moral agents. A legal order
founded more on habit than on critical reflection,
more on the threat of force than on allegiance, will
be that much more vulnerable to collapse.
The second intersection centers on the variety of
practices—forms of legal order, Fuller called them—
only a subset of which is likely to be found, at least
in a dominant role, in a specific polity. Fuller wrote
at greatest length about adjudication, mediation,
contract, and legislation—but also about elections,
choosing by lot, and administration. Although he
never elaborated a comprehensive account of these
forms, he coined a term for the theoretical effort he
envisioned, “eunomics,” which he defined as the
study of good order and workable social arrange-
ments. The point to emphasize is that these diverse
forms are viewed dynamically, that is, not just as
585
Fuller, Lon Luvois
determinate structures of NORMS but as reasoned re-
sponses to problematic situations common to hu-
man societies. This brings out their moral, as well
as their purposive, aspect. Since people think about
what they are doing, they construct models of pos-
sible structures, which then serve to guide the emer-
gence of specific practices and provide patterns for
evaluating their success. These models are focal
points of human striving; they embody moral aspi-
rations and define moral relationships. Thus, each
form of order has at its core a particular “internal
morality” which sustains its distinctive activities. The
task of eunomics is to describe these models in detail
and assess the possibilities for their realization.
The third intersection addresses the moral ends
of law. Here, in a remarkable departure from main-
stream jurisprudence, Fuller abandoned the notion
that justice is the inherent general aim of legal insti-
tutions; instead he conceived of them as diverse ve-
hicles of freedom. Not that justice is neglected;
rather, it is not fundamental. Since justice depends
crucially on choices actually made by individuals, no
pattern of allocation can be regarded as just unless
individuals have been free to make decisions for
themselves. However, in contrast to the standard lib-
eral analysis of freedom as absence of external im-
pediments to self-chosen action, and hence a con-
ception of law as inherently inimical to freedom,
Fuller argued that legal forms of order are enabling.
They make action, especially collective action, pos-
sible where it could not otherwise occur. Freedom is
reformulated, accordingly, as the effective exercise
of basic human capacities or powers. And since legal
arrangements are the standing mechanisms by which
human choice becomes socially effective, a free so-
ciety includes the ever-present availability of these
arrangements. In this regard, the forms of legal or-
der are analogous to the rules of grammar or terms
of social address; they are “enabling constraints.”
Freedom consists in what one can do with, and can-
not do without, these institutional practices.
See also: AUTHORITY; AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS;
CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIC DUTIES; COHERENTISM; COL-
LECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY; COMMON GOOD; CON-
TRACTS; CONVENTIONS; DEMOCRACY; DEWEY; HART;
JAMES; JUSTICE, RECTIFICATORY; LEGAL ETHICS; LEGAL
PHILOSOPHY; LEGITIMACY; MORAL REALISM; MORAL
Fuller, Lon Luvois
REASONING; MORAL RULES; NATURAL LAW; NORMS;
PRAGMATISM; RIGHTS.
Bibliography
Selected Works by Fuller
“The Reliance Interest in Contract Damages.” Yale Law
Journal 46 (1936–37): 52–96, 373–420.
The Law in Quest of Itself. Chicago: The Foundation
Press, 1940.
“Consideration and Form.” Columbia Law Review 41
(1941): 799–824.
Basic Contract Law. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing, 1947.
2d ed., with Robert Braucher, 1964; 3rd and 4th eds.,
with Melvin Aron Eisenberg, 1972, 1981.
“The Case of the Speluncean Explorers.” Harvard Law
Review 62 (1949): 616–45.
“Freedom—A Suggested Analysis.” Harvard Law Review
68 (1955): 1302–25.
“Positivism and Fidelity to Law—A Reply to Professor
Hart.” Harvard Law Review 71 (1958): 630–72.
The Morality of Law. Rev. ed. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1969 [1964].
Legal Fictions. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967
[1930–31].
“Freedom as a Problem of Allocating Choice.” Proceedings
of the American Philosophical Society 112 (1968):
101–6.
Anatomy of the Law. New York: Frederick A. Praeger,
1968.
The Principles of Social Order: Selected Essays of Lon L.
Fuller. Edited by Kenneth Winston. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 1981.
Works about Fuller
Summers, Robert S. Lon L. Fuller. Stanford: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, 1984.
Symposium on Lon Fuller, Law and Philosophy 13
(1994): 253–418.
Winston, Kenneth. “The Ideal Element in a Definition of
Law.” Law and Philosophy 5 (1986): 89–111.
———. “Is/Ought Redux: The Pragmatist Context of Lon
Fuller’s Conception of Law.” Oxford Journal of Legal
Studies 8 (1988): 329–49.
Witteveen, Willem, and Wibren van der Burg, eds. Redis-
covering Fuller. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University
Press, 1999.
Kenneth Winston
586
future generations
Our decisions today about the environment, about
birth control, and about nuclear weapons can have
many effects on future generations. They can affect
the quality of life in future generations; they can af-
fect people’s identities in future generations; and
they can affect the number of people in future gen-
erations, at the limit determining whether there are
any such people at all. The moral issues this raises
are daunting, and philosophical discussion of them
is relatively recent. Apart from some passing re-
marks by utilitarians, the discussion dates mainly
from the 1960s. In an increasingly complex litera-
ture, philosophers have asked whether our capacity
to affect future generations gives us duties concern-
ing future generations, and if so, what kinds of du-
ties these are.
Impersonal Consequentialism
One approach to these issues is impersonal CON-
SEQUENTIALISM. It says we should always bring
about the best states of affairs, including states in
future generations. If it would be good in itself that
people exist in the future with a high quality of life,
we should bring this outcome about. One can com-
bine this view with a temporal discount rate, which
gives progressively less weight to goods in more re-
mote generations. But most consequentialists reject
discounting, holding that we should care equally
about goods at all times in history. This temporal
neutrality supports very strong duties concerning fu-
ture generations: we should do as much to promote
the quality of future lives as we do for present lives.
To have concrete implications, impersonal con-
sequentialism needs a way of calculating the aggre-
gate good in a population at a given time. Unfortu-
nately, no aggregative principle so far proposed has
been immune to objections. One principle equates
the good in a population with the sum of the goods
in all its members. But this summative view entails
what has been called the “repugnant conclusion.”
Try to imagine an ideal state of the world, one where
a tremendously large number of people enjoy a tre-
mendously high quality of life. If summation is cor-
rect, there is another better state possible, even
though in it no one’s quality of life is more than
barely positive. If this state contains enough extra
people, its sum of good is greater than in the sup-

posedly ideal state. A second aggregative principle
equates the good in a population with the average
good per member. This avoids the repugnant con-
clusion but has its own implausible consequence.
It implies that if we add to our ideal state some
extra people at a slightly lower but still high quality
of life, we make the state worse. More complicated
aggregative principles have been proposed, em-
bodying various incommensurabilities or disconti-
nuities in value. But none has yet won universal
acceptance.
Person-Affecting Consequentialism
Apart from this internal difficulty, impersonal
consequentialism faces a more general challenge.
The impersonal view holds that if a couple could
conceive a well-off child, they ought, other things
equal, to do so. But many philosophers deny that
there is a duty to conceive a well-off child. And they
claim that, in affirming this duty, the impersonal
view mischaracterizes our general duty to promote
what is good. This duty is not to make well-off peo-
ple, but to make people well off. If our acts are right
or wrong, it is because they affect particular people
for good or ill. Accordingly, these philosophers en-
dorse a “person-affecting” version of consequential-
ism, one requiring us not to act in ways that make
people worse off than they would otherwise be. This
consequentialism supports some duties concerning
future generations, but no duty to bring such gen-
erations into existence. Since unconceived people do
not exist, they cannot be said to be harmed by
nonconception.
Though initially appealing, person-affecting con-
sequentialism also faces difficulties. If it denies that
there is a duty to conceive a well-off child, how can
it affirm, as most want to, that there is a duty not to
conceive a badly off child, that is, one who will suf-
fer? Second, if it does capture this “asymmetry,” how
can it avoid holding that it is always, other things
equal, wrong to conceive a child? Since there is al-
ways some chance that one’s child will be badly off,
there is always some moral reason against concep-
tion. If there is no counterbalancing positive reason,
conception would seem in itself always wrong. Fi-
nally, how can the view give us any duty when our
acts will affect future people’s identities? This last,
“non-identity” problem has been central to the re-
cent literature.
587
future generations
The Non-Identity Problem
Imagine that we can either deplete natural re-
sources, giving us short-term benefits but lowering
the quality of life in the future, or conserve them. If
we deplete, this will have large effects on the econ-
omy, which will in turn affect people’s lives. It will
affect which people marry and when they conceive
children. It is likely that if we deplete, eventually no
people will exist who would have existed had we
conserved. This means that, given person-affecting
consequentialism, there can be no moral objection
to depletion even though it lowers future people’s
well-being. If their well-being is still positive, deple-
tion has not made them worse off than they would
otherwise be, since they would otherwise not be. If
anything, it has made them better off.
Proponents of person-affecting consequentialism
wanted to limit the extensive duties imposed by the
impersonal view, and in particular to deny that there
is a duty to conceive well-off people. But they
thought they could retain a duty to preserve the
quality of life in future generations. The non-identity
problem shows that this is not possible in many
cases, including those where the effects on future
people are the greatest. This leaves two options: to
return to impersonal consequentialism or to explain
our duties to future people in some other person-
affecting way.
Rights
May our duties concerning future generations de-
rive from RIGHTS held by people in future genera-
tions? There are obvious difficulties in talk of rights
held by nonexistent people, but if these can be over-
come rights may provide a partial solution to the
non-identity problem.
Unlike consequentialist principles, which con-
cern people’s overall well-being, rights protect spe-
cific INTERESTS. They can therefore be violated even
by acts that, because of collateral effects on other
interests, increase a person’s well-being. (If a person
is refused a plane seat because of race, the rights-
violation is not cancelled if the plane crashes.) Be-
cause of this, a rights view can condemn acts that
harm future people even if the acts were necessary
for the people’s existence. Imagine that as a result
of our NEGLIGENCE with chemical wastes an accident
occurs next century that kills many people. Our neg-
future generations
ligence violates these people’s rights even if it was
part of a policy without which they would not have
existed. It invades a specific interest of theirs and is
wrong even if does not make their overall condition
worse.
Though they may solve some of the non-identity
problem, rights cannot solve it all. They protect only
basic interests, and are not violated if these interests
are secure. Perhaps if we deplete resources, people’s
quality of life in the future will be quite high,
whereas if we conserve them it will be higher. Here
depletion violates no one’s rights. If so, there can be
no person-affecting objection to depletion. If we
nonetheless prefer conservation, it must be on im-
personal grounds.
Intergenerational Justice
Another possibility is to ground our duties in a
principle of just or fair distribution. Some theories
of justice, for example, contractarian ones, make this
difficult. They hold that relations of justice can exist
only among those able to benefit each other. (Ob-
viously, future generations cannot benefit us.) Be-
cause of this, contractarians who do not wish simply
to deny duties concerning future generations must
ground these duties in a roundabout way. Thus,
some claim such duties are owed, not to future peo-
ple, but to present people who care about their de-
scendants. It is doubtful, however, whether this ap-
proach supports sufficiently strong duties, especially
about remote generations, or duties of the right
kind. If it is wrong to reduce future people’s well-
being, this is surely because of what the reduction
does to them.
Noncontractarian theories of justice do not have
this difficulty. If we accept some such theory, we may
hold that each generation has a duty to use no more
than its fair share of resources, or to leave its suc-
cessors at least an equal range of basic opportuni-
ties. This view is in one respect stronger than the
impersonal view, since duties of justice are more
stringent than duties of BENEFICENCE. But it can also
make fewer demands. It need impose no duty to con-
ceive future generations, holding only that if there
are future generations they deserve a fair share of
resources. It may also give more weight to present
opportunities. Whereas some impersonal principles
can require large sacrifices to benefit generations
that, no matter what, will be far better off than we,
588
a principle of EQUALITY does not. The principle does
not apply naturally to cases where our acts may
change the numbers of people in future generations
and needs elaboration to handle them. It may also
need some deeper justification, if only because it
lacks the stark simplicity of impersonal or person-
affecting consequentialism.
Conclusion
Questions about future generations are difficult,
because they are so different from those our moral
thought is accustomed to addressing. Often princi-
ples that coincide in other domains diverge when
applied to population questions. Summing and av-
eraging support the same judgements when the num-
ber of people is fixed, but not otherwise. Impersonal
and person-affecting consequentialism coincide when
there are no effects on who is conceived, but conflict
when there are. The choices forced on us by these
splits are strange, and even initial intuitions about
them differ radically.
To illustrate, consider perhaps the largest ques-
tion in this area: our species’ survival. If the human
race died out, would this be a morally bad thing?
Extinction occurring through nuclear war would un-
controversially be wrong because of its effects on
existing people. But would it also be wrong because
it prevented the existence of future people? Or, to
isolate the issue, would it be wrong if existing people
made a voluntary pact to cease reproduction, and
extinction followed? Impersonal consequentialism
holds that this would be terribly wrong, for it would
prevent the existence of any future human value.
And adherents of the view fervently endorse this
claim. But person-affecting consequentialism, and
most views about rights and justice, deny that it
would be wrong. And their adherents too endorse
this claim. Such radical disagreement, not only
about general principles but about a vital particular
judgement, shows how daunting questions about
our duties to future generations can be.
See also: APPLIED ETHICS; CHILDREN AND ETHICAL
THEORY; COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY; COMMON
GOOD; CONSERVATION ETHICS; CONSEQUENTIALISM;
CONTRACTARIANISM; COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS; DIS-
COUNTING THE FUTURE; DUTY AND OBLIGATION;
ECONOMIC ANALYSIS; ENGINEERING ETHICS; ENVI-
RONMENTAL ETHICS; EUDAIMONIA, -ISM; FIDUCIARY

RELATIONSHIPS; GENETIC ENGINEERING; GROUPS,
MORAL STATUS OF; INTERESTS; INTERNATIONAL JUS-
TICE: DISTRIBUTION; JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE; LIFE AND
DEATH; LIFE, MEANING OF; NATURE AND ETHICS;
NEEDS; NUCLEAR ETHICS; POSTMODERNISM; REPRO-
DUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES; RIGHTS; TECHNOLOGY;
TECHNOLOGY AND NATURE; UTILITARIANISM.
Bibliography
Barry, Brian. “Intergenerational Justice in Energy Policy.”
In Energy and the Future, edited by D. MacLean and
P. G. Brown. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield,
1983. Intergenerational justice as equal basic oppor-
tunities.
Cowen, Tyler, and Derek Parfit. “Against the Social Dis-
count Rate.” In Justice Between Age Groups and Gen-
erations, edited by P. Laslett and J. S. Fishkin. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Against temporal
discounting.
Dasgupta, Partha. “Savings and Fertility: Ethical Issues.”
Philosophy and Public Affairs 23 (1994): 99–127.
Mixed impersonal and person-affecting consequen-
tialism.
Gauthier, David. Morals by Agreement. Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1986. See chapter 9 on contractarianism
and future generations.
Heyd, David. Genethics: Moral Issues in the Creation of
589
future generations
People. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press,
1992. Extreme person-affecting view.
Hurka, Thomas. “Value and Population Size.” Ethics 93
(1983): 496–507. Alternative impersonal principle.
McMahan, Jefferson. “Nuclear Deterrence and Future
Generations.” In Nuclear Weapons and the Future of
Humanity, edited by A. Cohen, and S. Lee. Totowa,
N.J.: Rowman and Allenheld, 1986. Species survival.
Narveson, Jan. “Utilitarianism and New Generations.”
Mind 76 (1967): 62–72. Ground-breaking article in-
troducing person-affecting consequentialism.
Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1984. See part 4: very influential discussion,
reaching few definite conclusions but tending to sup-
port impersonal consequentialism.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1971. Contractarianism and future
generations, sections 27–28, 44.
Sikora, R. I., and Brian Barry, eds. Obligations to Future
Generations. Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press,
1978. Collection of essays; see especially those by
Barry, Narveson, Sikora.
Woodward, James. “The Non-Identity Problem.” Ethics 96
(1986): 804–31. (One entry in a symposium on Parfit’s
Reasons and Persons.) Rights and the non-identity
problem. See also Parfit’s comment, this issue, pp.
854–62.
Thomas Hurka
 G
Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1900– )
In his autobiography, Philosophical Apprenticeships
(1977), Gadamer traces the course of his intellec-
tual development. He tells of his studies at Marburg
with Paul Natorp (1854–1924), Nicolai HARTMANN
(1882–1950), and, most notably, Martin HEIDEG-
GER (1889–1976), who was to remain the single
most important influence on Gadamer’s thought.
Gadamer first met Heidegger in 1923, participating
in a seminar that Heidegger gave on ARISTOTLE’s
(384–322 B.C.E.) Nicomachean Ethics. Gadamer
has often recalled the impact that this seminar had
on him; in it Heidegger focused on Aristotle’s dis-
cussion of PHRONESIS, which represented for Hei-
degger a kind of knowing within the concrete situ-
ation of existence. Gadamer went on to write his
habilitation thesis under Heidegger’s direction. In
this now well-known work, Plato’s Dialectical Ethics
(1931), Gadamer argues that PLATO’s (c. 430–347
B.C.E.) ethics is not doctrinal but dialectical in the
ancient sense; he insists that the Platonic dialogues
are models that present the ethical life not as privi-
leging certain ideas but as a striving for understand-
ing through the play of ideas in endless conversation.
Indeed, in all his later work, Gadamer continues to
regard the original phenomenon of language as con-
sisting in dialogue.
Such a conception of ethics remains decisive
throughout all of Gadamer’s later work. Ethical life,
action in its moral aspect, is not reducible to the
590
application of a theoretical position in the classical
sense of theoria. Rather, it consists in existential
understanding within the concrete situation and in
the dialogue in which such understanding is tested,
shared, and perfected.
In his autobiography, Gadamer conveys con-
cretely his own efforts—in a most exceptional situ-
ation—to gain such understanding in open dialogue.
He tells of becoming professor in Leipzig in 1938,
of the difficult war years, of his time as rector of the
university under the Soviets, of his decision to return
to the West, briefly to Frankfurt and then perma-
nently to Heidelberg.
Gadamer’s work at Heidelberg culminated in the
publication in 1960 of his major work, Truth and
Method. In this work, the influence of Heidegger is
unmistakable. Here Gadamer takes up and extends
Heidegger’s conception of the hermeneutical char-
acter of understanding, his move toward an over-
coming of AESTHETICS for the sake of an ontology of
the work of art, and his concern with language as
determining all access to the world. But the most
significant contribution of Truth and Method lies in
the investigation of the conditions that underlie
understanding in all its modes, an investigation that
serves to expand the hermeneutical question beyond
the concern with method in science, to moral, artis-
tic, and historical understanding as well. In contrast
to the Cartesian and Enlightenment ideal of an au-
tonomous subject that, in understanding, would dis-
tance itself from its historical involvements and the

prejudices that go with such involvements, Gadamer
takes the bond of the knower to present horizons
and the temporal separation of the knower from his-
torical objects to constitute the positive ground of
understanding rather than an obstacle to be some-
how overcome. As Gadamer says, “Prejudices are
the biases of our openness to the world.” The effect
of such philosophical hermeneutics is to rehabilitate
AUTHORITY and tradition and to construe all his-
torical understanding as a fusing of the horizon of
the present with that of the past. It is also to recover,
along the lines first indicated by Heidegger, the Ar-
istotelian conception of phronesis as a moral knowl-
edge involving self-deliberation and application in a
concrete situation, a knowledge irreducible to techne.
With regard to ethics, Gadamer’s work thus serves
both to differentiate moral understanding from other
forms of knowledge and to reinscribe such under-
standing within the horizon of tradition, thus un-
derlining its dialogical and historical character.
Since the appearance of Truth and Method, Gad-
amer’s work has had enormous influence, especially
through a series of debates in which Gadamer has
engaged: with Betti and Hirsch, regarding the pos-
sibility of historical objectivity; with HABERMAS, re-
garding the need for distantiation and science as
conditions for critical moral judgments; and more
recently with Derrida, regarding the possibility and
limits of dialogue. Gadamer’s influence has come to
the United States through his extensive lecturing
and his teaching for more than a decade at Boston
College.
See also: EXISTENTIAL ETHICS; HABERMAS; HART-
MANN; HEIDEGGER; PHRONESIS.
Bibliography
Works by Gadamer
Gesammelte Werke. 10 vols. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
1985–1995.
Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on
Plato. Translated by P. Christopher Smith. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1980.
Hegel’s Dialectic: Five Hermeneutical Studies. Translated
by P. Christopher Smith. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1976.
The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy.
Translated by P. Christopher Smith. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1986.
591
game theory
Philosophical Apprenticeships. Translated by Robert R.
Sullivan. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985.
Philosophical Hermeneutics. Translated by David E. Linge.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.
Reason in the Age of Science. Translated by Frederick G.
Lawrence. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981.
Truth and Method. New York: Seabury Press, 1975.
Works about Gadamer
Figal, Günter, Jean Grondin, and Dennis Schmidt. Her-
meneutische Wege: Hans-Georg Gadamer zum Hun-
dersten. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000.
Michelfelder, D., and R. Palmer, eds. The Gadamer-
Derrida Encounter: Texts and Commentary. Albany:
SUNY Press, 1988.
Risser, James. Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other:
Re-reading Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics.
Albany: SUNY Press, 1997.
Warnke, Georgia. Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition,
and Reason. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
1987.
Weinsheimer, Joel C. Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading
of Truth and Method. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1985.
John Sallis
game theory
Game theory is a methodology or framework for cat-
aloging and analyzing the effects of STRATEGIC IN-
TERACTION between individuals. Although it has
forerunners, it originated as a general approach in
the massive work of John von Neumann (1903–
1957) and Oscar Morgenstern (1902–1977) in the
early 1940s. It is a general framework for the rep-
resentation of interactive choices by any number of
individuals. Each individual has a set of strategies
(choices or moves). Suppose you and I are involved
in an interaction in which each of us has several
strategies available. Outcomes of the game result in
payoffs to both of us that are interactively deter-
mined, for example by your choice of your ith strat-
egy and my choice of my jth strategy. If instead you
choose your kth strategy, we may both receive dif-
ferent payoffs. Hence, we are generally dependent
on each other for our payoffs so that we must often
compete or coordinate with each other. This, of
course, is not merely the nature of a game but also
of life.
Von Neumann had earlier worked on the mathe-
matical solution of pure conflict interactions be-
game theory
tween pairs of individuals. Games such as chess are
pure conflict in that, if one player gains, the other
loses. Von Neumann’s saddlepoint theorem says that
each player in such a game has a uniquely best strat-
egy (or set of equally best strategies) to choose
against a rational opponent trying simultaneously to
maximize her result. The best strategy is that in
which the worst payoff is at least as good as the
worst payoff in any other strategy. That is to say, it
maximizes the minimum payoff. Hence, it is the
maximin strategy. Since chess is a game of pure con-
flict between two individuals, it has a maximin strat-
egy (or strategies), just as tic-tac-toe does. The
saddlepoint theorem merely establishes the exis-
tence of a maximin strategy for each player in such
games. It need not help us find the strategy.
Von Neumann and Morgenstern generalized the
problem from two-person pure conflict interactions
to many-person interactions of both conflict and co-
ordination, that is, to all interactions. Unlike the
two-person pure conflict game, the general game is
mathematically intractable because, although it is
sometimes possible to do so, it is not generally pos-
sible to maximize over two or more functions si-
multaneously. For many games, maximin is a poor
strategy because it cuts off opportunities for far bet-
ter than maximin payoffs. For games of many play-
ers, coalitions may play important roles in jointly
limiting the range of possible outcomes to improve
some individuals’ payoffs. A coalition of all players
could determine a single outcome, just as indepen-
dent choices of strategies by all players do.
For the breadth and significance of its applica-
tions, game theory is badly named. Interest in it has
had little to do with interest in the parlor games of
its origin. It has been applied with fruitful results to
the understanding of international conflict and of
economic interactions. It is especially useful for an-
alyzing interactions of small numbers of actors,
whose choices may not be readily handled by tradi-
tional microeconomic analyses. It is increasingly be-
ing applied to the analysis of problems in moral and
political theory, which often deal with small numbers.
The value theory of game theory can be cardinal
utility with a variant of interpersonal comparison
that permits addition of payoffs across players (as is
required for so-called zero-sum and, more generally,
constant-sum games) or merely ordinal utility with-
out comparisons. Until recently most of mathemat-
ical game theory was founded on cardinal utility
592
with transferability of utility between players. This
value theory may seem retrograde in that it supposes
utility is something that can be handed from one
person to another, as though it were an objective
thing such as money, in violation of the common
view that utility is subjective. The outcomes that we
would want games to model are various results, such
as distributions of objects or offices or victories,
which are subjectively valued by the players in ways
that need not be transferably related to the objects
or offices or victories themselves. Unfortunately, the
study of games with only ordinal payoffs is in its
youth. Yet it is generally such games that best fit the
problems of moral and political interaction.
The original presentation of game theory was
criticized for its cardinal, transferable utility that
seems very nearly like the classical utility debunked
by Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923) and the ordinalists.
Von Neumann responded to the cardinality com-
plaint with a demonstration that, if I have complete
ordinal rankings over a set of outcomes, I can con-
struct cardinal values for the outcomes. Assign the
best and the worst of my outcomes values of 1 and
0, respectively. Now I can equate the ranking of any
intermediate outcome with the ranking I would as-
sign to a lottery over the best and the worst. If that
lottery results in probability p (where 1 典 p 典 0) for
the best outcome, my utility for the intermediate out-
come is p. It is just such a move that is required for
many of the results of mathematical game theory. It
is also required more generally for the hard analysis
of individual decision making under RISK, which is
an important general problem that most of us often
face. It does not, however, address the central ob-
jection of the ordinalists because it does allow for
interpersonal comparisons that would be needed for
adding utilities across all players.
The most important general understanding that
lies behind game theory is that states of affairs are
typically produced by interactions of choices by more
than one person. This fact undercuts many relatively
simple statements about human action. For exam-
ple, it may confuse claims about voluntary CONSENT
to various states of affairs. One might say that I do
not consent to having to pay for my food. But my
having food in most social contexts entails that I get
others to act in various ways that serve my interest
in providing me food. If I wish to live in social con-
texts, therefore, I may, by implication, be said to con-
sent to whatever is constitutive of such life, such as

paying or otherwise performing for my food. But
now it may seem that a claim of consent must be a
claim about whole or fairly extensive states of af-
fairs. Or worse, it may be a claim about my choices
of strategies that play only a small part in determin-
ing the state of affairs that affects me.
More generally, the game theoretic understanding
suggests that simple action theory may be misguided
in many social contexts and that deontological moral
systems that prescribe the rightness or wrongness of
particular actions purely as instances of action types
are misfit for social life.
This conceptual difficulty goes beyond the prob-
lem in utility theory that rankings can only finally be
over whole states of affairs. In my utility rankings I
may include various states in which others do things
for me while I do nothing in return for them. These
states may be ruled out of the range of possible states
because they violate others’ incentives or because
they violate particular moral principles. Bland asser-
tions, such as those we encounter in traditional con-
sent theory, that I consent to some one of the re-
maining states of affairs may seem ill-defined. But
assertions that I choose under COERCION may also
seem ill-defined.
Some of the most important insights from game
theory come from experimental work over the past
few decades. Despite the frequent use of monetary
payoffs that are treated as though they are transfer-
able cardinal utilities, many of these experiments are
effectively about ordinal choices of players. Absolute
and relative magnitudes of payoffs often seem to
play no role in the experimental results, which de-
pend almost entirely on the ordinal structures of the
games at issue and on constraints on information,
communication, and binding agreements. But some-
times relative magnitudes of payoff seem to matter,
so that we may doubt purely ordinalist views on util-
ity. Plausibly the bulk of all experimental work has
been done on the Prisoner’s Dilemma in two-person
and n-person variants. Much of this work is espe-
cially relevant to moral and political concern with
FAIRNESS and with social motivations.
Almost everything of interest to us involves stra-
tegic interactions. In most moral theories, morality
is primarily about such interactions. Hence, moral
theorists may find the structure and arguments of
game theory generally relevant even if they reject the
usual game theorist’s value theory. Arguably, the
moral and political theories of such early thinkers as
593
Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand
David HUME (1711–1776) and Thomas HOBBES
(1588–1679) were grounded in a nascent under-
standing of the strategic nature of social life and
even in a proto-game theory (Hardin).
See also: COERCION; CONSENT; COOPERATION, CON-
FLICT, AND COORDINATION; DELIBERATION AND
CHOICE; ECONOMIC ANALYSIS; FAIRNESS; INTERNA-
TIONAL JUSTICE: CONFLICT; JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE;
POLITICAL SYSTEMS; PUBLIC POLICY ANALYSIS; RA-
TIONAL CHOICE; RISK; RISK ANALYSIS; STRATEGIC
INTERACTION.
Bibliography
Hardin, Russell. Morality within the Limits of Reason.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Includes
a game theoretic account of Hume’s moral and political
theory.
Luce, Robert Duncan, and Howard Raiffa. Games and
Decisions. New York: Wiley, 1957. Dated but still valu-
able general survey of fundamental issues in game
theory.
Neumann, John von, and Oskar Morgenstern. Theory of
Games and Economic Behavior. 3d ed. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1953 [1944]. The original
presentation of game theory.
Russell Hardin
Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand
(1869–1948)
Indian leader, national hero. Gandhi’s career and
ideas are of special ethical interest because he at-
tained political and social goals without military
force or legal COERCION.
Background
Gandhi was a rather secular middle-class Hindu.
He learned to respect Christianity, but the Bhaga-
vadgı̄tā remained his most distinctive source. He
had some formal philosophical training and occa-
sionally used the law he studied in London as a tool
to help plan political strategies.
Principles
Gandhi frequently invoked three principles, ahiṁ-
sā, brahmacharya, and satyagraha—roughly trans-
lated as non-violence, celibacy, and truth-force. The
Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand
first two are traditional Hindu principles and the
third is original with Gandhi.
Ahiṁsā. This principle, “a positive state of love,”
is both broader and narrower than the non-violence
of Martin Luther KING, Jr. (1929–1968) and A. J.
Muste (1885–1967). It means not using physical
force against any living thing; it therefore entails
vegetarianism, which Gandhi practiced. In that
ahiṁsā does not imply direct action, its meaning is
narrower than King’s non-violence.
Brahmacharya Gandhi practiced brahmacharya
from his late thirties to the end of his life. He based
this practice on several considerations: the convic-
tion that sexual PASSION leads to force; the tradi-
tional Hindu belief that one could retain (for social/
political action) the energies or “vital force” of se-
men; the need to master his sexual needs as an act
of self-sacrifice and personal renunciation, necessary
for a satyagrahi; and the desirability of transcending
traditional gender roles by becoming more like a
woman and acting as a mother as well as a father.
Satyagraha. As adopted by Gandhi, this princi-
ple transformed the traditionally passive Hindu out-
look into social activism. This active non-violence
arises from the awareness that people who lead im-
poverished lives often are being suppressed by oth-
ers. Such suppression is wrong because it violates
ahiṁsā; but harming the oppressors would be
equally wrong for the same reason. Gandhi gets
around the impending dilemma with the assumption
that impoverished lives can be improved without
rich lives becoming poorer—that is, in modern jar-
gon, social conflicts are not zero-sum. Part of the
“truth” that lies behind satyagraha is that ending
oppression will improve the lives of the oppressors
as well as those of the oppressed. By its very nature
satyagraha can only serve to liberate, not to sup-
press, and perhaps not even to govern—a measure
of the value Gandhi put on freedom and self-
reliance.
While Gandhi rarely invoked individual RIGHTS,
he did emphasize other principles, including self-
reliance, rejection of castes, cleanliness, health,
community living, truth, and universal LOVE. These
principles served as guidelines, not absolute rules.
Gandhi’s ethical thinking is centered on what sort
of life is worth living, and has similarities to such
late-twentieth-century thinkers as MACINTYRE, Hamp-
shire, and Nussbaum.
594
Practice
In practice, satyagraha, which always combines
personal and political action, requires four things: a
core of persons who are self-reliant, alert to truth,
and not dependent on oppressors; simple actions
which entail that people do what is forbidden;
ahiṁsā; and willingness to undergo hardship or
sacrifice.
In South Africa, where his anti-colonial protests
began, Gandhi brought his followers together in
ashrams, intensive communities where the pattern
of life was regular and wholesome. Cleanliness was
important, as was simplicity: his dress on all occa-
sions became a plain piece of homespun cotton
cloth. PRIVACY mattered little.
Gandhi fasted as part of his religious discipline,
and as a way to become inured to hardship and sac-
rifice. Public fasting, or “hunger strikes,” which be-
gan during the strike of mill hands in Ahmedabad
in 1918, became one of his most effective and dis-
tinctive weapons.
Gandhi’s convincing success in achieving POWER
and DIGNITY through satyagraha has undoubtedly
contributed to his ideas gaining a respectful hearing.
See also: DIGNITY; HINDU ETHICS; INDIA; KING;
LOVE; OPPRESSION; PACIFISM; RELIGION; SELF-
CONTROL; VIOLENCE AND NON-VIOLENCE; VIRTUE
ETHICS.
Bibliography
Works by Gandhi
The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. New Delhi:
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1958–
1988. This is a comprehensive collection. A prolific
writer whose collected works fill ninety volumes, Gan-
dhi wrote articles and speeches. Some of the latter have
been recorded by others. He wrote two separately pub-
lished pamphlets, “Indian Home Rule” and “Satya-
graha in South Africa.”
The Selected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. Edited by S.
Narayan. 6 vols. Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1968.
The Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi.
Edited by Raghavan N. Iyer. 3 vols. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1986–1987. The most useful edition
of Gandhi’s writings; contains bibliographies.
An Autobiography, or The Story of My Experiments with
Truth. Translated by Mahadev Desai. Ahmedabad: Na-
vajivan, 1927. A collection of articles; translation from
the Gujarati. 2d ed. pub. 1940.

Works about Gandhi
Bondurant, Joan V. Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian
Philosophy of Conflict. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1958. The best analytical examination of
Gandhian ethics.
Borman, William. Gandhi and Nonviolence. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1986. The most recent
study; extensive select bibliography.
Gregg, Richard B. The Power of Nonviolence. 2nd, rev.
ed. New York: Schocken, 1966 [1934]. The first good
work of analysis combined with advocacy; still a clas-
sic. Introduction by Rufus Jones.
Iyer, Raghavan N. The Moral and Political Thought of Ma-
hatma Gandhi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973.
Fine, scholarly work.
Mehta, Ved. Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles. New
York: Viking, 1976. Useful discussion of Gandhi bib-
liography, biography, hagiography, principles, prac-
tices; presented through interviews of those who knew
Gandhi.
Richards, Glyn. The Philosophy of Gandhi. London: Cur-
zon Press, 1991. Taking “truth” to be Gandhi’s central
concept, Richards locates Gandhi’s thought in relation
to Plato, Kant, Tillich, Weil, and Wittgenstein, as well
as to Indian philosophy.
Sharp, Gene. The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Boston:
Porter Sargent, 1973. Uses Gandhi’s principles and his
campaigns as a basis for historical comparison and gen-
eralization; bibliography.
———. Gandhi as a Political Strategist: With Essays on
Ethics and Politics. Boston: Porter Sargent, 1979. Fo-
cus on practical politics with a good eye for principles.
Useful select bibliography and suggestions for courses
on Gandhi non-violence.
Newton Garver
Gassendi, Pierre (1592–1655)
French historian of philosophy, natural philosopher,
and astronomer. Born near Digne, he studied and
later taught at the University of Aix until 1622, when
the new Jesuit administration of the University
caused him to resign the professorship of philoso-
phy. A Catholic priest, he also served as theological
canon (1614–34) and dean (1634–55) of the cathe-
dral at Digne. Much of Gassendi’s life was spent as
a private scholar in Paris and Provence. His appoint-
ment to a professorship of mathematics in the pres-
tigious Collège Royal (1645–55) was made with the
understanding that he would devote his efforts
chiefly to research. His knowledge of both the theo-
retical and observational parts of astronomy quali-
595
Gassendi, Pierre
fied him for this mathematics position, which was
reserved for an expert in astronomy. In 1631, he had
been among the first observers of the solar transit of
Mercury, confirming some of Johannes Kepler’s
(1571–1630) predictions about Mercury’s orbit and
contributing to more accurate calculations of the
planet’s size.
Gassendi’s reputation as one of Europe’s leading
intellectuals owed even more, however, to his schol-
arship in the history of ancient and modern philos-
ophy. Many of his contemporaries regarded him as
DESCARTES‘ (1596–1650) principal rival in philos-
ophy. Unlike Descartes, he saw no epistemological
virtue in rejecting past philosophical traditions in or-
der to formulate a new philosophical method. In-
deed Gassendi employed the history of philosophy
as a means of identifying the comparative advan-
tages and disadvantages of rival philosophical sys-
tems. His history was not organized as a chronolog-
ical narrative but as a topical comparison of the
philosophical theories that had been advanced by
most of the major thinkers in Western philosophy.
Beginning with the Presocratics, covering the an-
cient Greek and Hellenistic schools as well as the
various branches of Medieval and Renaissance Chris-
tian thought, and ending with the Aristotelians and
Cartesians of his own day, he discussed their respec-
tive views in three broad areas: logic, physics (in-
cluding metaphysical questions), and ethics. What
emerged from these historical comparisons as the
most preferable system? Gassendi advocated a mod-
ified version of Epicurean principles in logic, phys-
ics, and ethics.
This project of rehabilitating EPICUREANISM, by
rendering it compatible with Christian doctrines and
developing it into one of the cutting-edge natural
philosophies of the Scientific Revolution, solidified
Gassendi’s reputation as Descartes’ principal rival.
He was widely recognized as an empiricist opponent
of Cartesian metaphysics and an anticipator of
LOCKE’s (1632–1704) theory of ideas. Through
Walter Charleton’s (1619–1707) English summary
of his Animadversiones (1649), Gassendi also influ-
enced the young Newton’s (1642–1727) early specu-
lations about the corpuscular nature of matter and
light. Gassendi’s Animadversiones, in two volumes
totaling 1,768 pages, consisted of the Greek text of
Book 10 of Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Phi-
losophers, his Latin translation of this Greek text,
and his philological as well as philosophical com-
Gassendi, Pierre
mentary on it. The commentary was divided into
four sections discussing EPICURUS‘ (341–270 B.C.E.)
(a) logic, (b) physics and metaphysics, (c) astron-
omy and meteorology, and (d) ethics. Gassendi fo-
cused on Book 10 of Diogenes Laertius’ Lives be-
cause it contains three long letters by Epicurus that
were the only whole works by him available to
seventeenth-century scholars. Before the Animad-
versiones appeared, Gassendi had also written a
short biography of Epicurus that was published
without his permission in 1647. Afterwards he la-
bored until his death to produce a fully revised and
expanded version of the commentary. This work, the
Syntagma philosophicum, appeared posthumously
in his six-volume Opera omnia (1658). Modern
scholars disagree about how much of the commen-
tary he had actually revised before he died, with es-
timates varying from perhaps three-fourths of it to
considerably more. In any case, the manuscript evi-
dence seems to show that the Syntagma philosophi-
cum’s Part 3—a defense of Epicurean ethics—con-
tains much material taken from his earlier writings
of the 1630s or 1640s as well as material from the
original commentary.
Gassendi’s ethics, as presented in his mature
work, is at best a rough approximation of his actual
ethical thought. Moreover, his own views are diffi-
cult to specify because his method of stating them
was to offer lengthy comparisons of the ethical con-
cepts and theories advanced by others. The aim of
such comparisons was, ultimately, to show that Ep-
icurean ethics was compatible in its important fea-
tures with the ethics of ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.),
and that both these standpoints were preferable to
that of the Stoics. The aim was also to render Epi-
cureanism consistent with the practice of the Chris-
tian religion insofar as the former serves as a guide
to the natural lives of human beings while the latter
directs both their eternal and natural lives. For Ep-
icurus, it was pointed out, had taught his disciples
that the gods do exist but do not concern themselves
with the realm of human affairs.
How did Gassendi attempt to establish a basic
consensus among the ethical principles of Aristotle,
Epicurus, and the Christian religion? Why did he
characterize this consensus as a defense of Epicu-
reanism? Complete answers to these questions would
require a lengthier consideration than can be given
here. For example, Gassendi’s consensus building
may seem naive or misguided to those present-day
596
historians of philosophy who see profound differ-
ences among these philosophical traditions. How-
ever, he himself was aware of many of the differ-
ences, such as the sharp divide between the Stoics’
deterministic account of nature and human nature
and the Epicureans’ conception of chance and hu-
man freedom. He furthermore acknowledged the
gulf between, on the one hand, a Christian view of
the summum bonum and the happiness of union
with God and, on the other hand, Epicurus’ defini-
tion of human HAPPINESS. The following paraphrase
of Epicurus’s definition, given in Diogenes Laer-
tius’s Lives, Bk. 10, Sec. 128, was discussed by Gas-
sendi: “The end of a happy life . . . is nothing else
but the health of the body and the tranquility of the
[mind]. Because all our actions aim and tend to this
end, that we may be free from pain and trouble.”
Whenever he examined such seriously conflicting
views, he usually accepted their incompatibility and
indicated which of the rival claims he himself af-
firmed. Regarding these rival claims about what is
happiness, he clearly distinguished them and ex-
plained that his ethics in the Syntagma philosophi-
cum was primarily concerned with a worldly hap-
piness consisting of mental tranquility, freedom
from pain, and a pleasant life.
Gassendi nevertheless tried to devise a synthesis
of the Epicurean view that PLEASURE is the end of a
happy life and Aristotle’s view that happiness is the
chief good. This attempted synthesis involved a
painstaking effort to unite an Aristotelian account of
the virtues with Diogenes Laertius’ report (Lives,
Bk. 10, Sec. 138) that, according to Epicurus, “we
choose the virtues . . . on account of pleasure and
not for their own sake, as we take medicine for the
sake of health.” Not surprisingly, the longest chapter
of Gassendi’s ethics in the Syntagma philosophicum
discusses theories of the VIRTUES, focusing on Aris-
totle’s Nicomachean Ethics but also citing numer-
ous other Greek, Latin, and Christian authors. His
alliance between the Epicureans and the Aristoteli-
ans highlighted the differences between these two
schools and the Stoics. The Stoics’ teaching, that
sages should have no passions, excluded them from
this alliance—as did their principle that virtue is
desirable not for pleasure or happiness but for its
own sake. By working to establish a coherent rela-
tionship between Epicurean ethics and the predom-
inant Christian and Aristotelian moral beliefs of his
own seventeenth-century France, Gassendi put for-

ward a key piece of his defense of the Epicurean
tradition.
See also: ARISTOTLE; CHRISTIAN ETHICS; COMPARA-
TIVE ETHICS; DESCARTES; EPICUREANISM; EPICURUS;
FINAL GOOD; HAPPINESS; LOGIC AND ETHICS; NATURE
AND ETHICS; PLEASURE; STOICISM; THEOLOGICAL
ETHICS; VIRTUE ETHICS; VIRTUES.
Bibliography
Works by Gassendi
Opera omnia. 6 vols. Lyons, 1658. Reprint edition,
Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann, 1964.
Animadversiones in decimum librum Diogenis Laertii, qui
est de vita, moribus, placitisque Epicuri. 2 vols. Lyons,
1649.
Epistolae quatuor de apparente magnitudine Solis humilis
et sublimis. (1642). Reprinted in the Opera omnia,
vol. 3.
Disquisitio metaphysica seu dubitationes et instantiae ad-
versus Renati Cartesii Metaphysicam et responsa. Am-
sterdam, 1644. Reprinted in the Opera omnia, vol. 3.
Exercitationes paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos. Bk. 1:
Grenoble, 1624; Bk. 2: the Opera omnia, vol. 3.
Mercurius in Sole visus, et Venus invisa. Paris, 1632. Re-
printed in the Opera omnia, vol. 4.
Syntagma philosophicum (1658). 2 vols. In the Opera om-
nia, vols. 1–2. See especially vol. 2, pp. 682, 736–820.
De vita et moribus Epicuri libri octo. Lyons, 1647. Re-
printed in the Opera omnia, vol. 5.
Primary Works
Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Trans-
lated by R. D. Hicks. 2 vols. Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1979. See especially Bk. 10, Secs. 128,
138.
Bernier, François. Abrégé de la philosophie de Gassendi.
8 vols. Lyons, 1678. Volume 7, containing Bernier’s
summary of Gassendi’s ethics, was translated by an
anonymous English translator as Three Discourses of
Happiness, Virtue, and Liberty collected from the works
of the learn’d Gassendus by Monsieur Bernier. (Lon-
don: Awnsham and John Churchill, 1699.) In Three
Discourses, see especially pp. 44–76, 173–90. Several
brief excerpts from this English translation of Bernier’s
work are reprinted in Moral Philosophy from Mon-
taigne to Kant, edited by J. B. Schneewind, vol. 2,
pp. 355–66 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990).
597
gay ethics
Secondary Works
Bloch, Olivier René. La philosophie de Gassendi: Nom-
inalisme, matérialisme, et métaphysique. The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1971.
Joy, Lynn S. Gassendi the Atomist: Advocate of History in
an Age of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987.
———. “Rationality Among the Friends of Truth: The
Gassendi-Descartes Controversy.” In Perspectives on
Science, vol. 3 (1995), pp. 429–49.
Jones, Howard. Pierre Gassendi, 1592–1655: An Intellec-
tual Biography. Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf, 1981.
Osler, Margaret J. Divine Will and the Mechanical Phi-
losophy: Gassendi and Descartes on Contingency and
Necessity in the Created World. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1994.
Pintard, René. Le libertinage érudit dans la première moi-
tié du XVIIe siècle. 2 vols. Paris: Boivin, 1943.
Rochot, Bernard. Les travaux de Gassendi sur Epicure et
sur l’atomisme, 1619–1658. Paris: J. Vrin, 1944.
Sarasohn, Lisa. Gassendi’s Ethics: Freedom in a Mecha-
nistic Universe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996.
Schneewind, J. B. The Invention of Autonomy: A History
of Modern Moral Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998.
Lynn S. Joy
gay ethics
The very notion of a “gay ethics” raises questions
about whether it is a new and specific field of phil-
osophical enquiry or the application of traditional
conceptions of justice and human flourishing to the
situation of emergent sexual minorities. In fact, it is
both: gay ethics seeks to articulate and justify the
forms of life of homosexual individuals and com-
munities at the same time that it draws on modern
ideals of democratic citizenship and classical reflec-
tions on LOVE and FRIENDSHIP in defining a good life.
“Lesbian and gay rights” are asserted by a social
movement defined by shared forms of DESIRE that
differ from the majority. Gay ethics raises funda-
mental questions about political EQUALITY, MORAL
PLURALISM, and the relation of individual freedom
to social morality; it interrogates the NORMS that
govern sexual conduct, the INSTITUTIONS through
which erotic desires and needs for intimate relation-
ship may be fulfilled, and the status of ascribed iden-
tities in the pursuit of personal fulfillment. Gay
ethics situates modern democratic citizenship in re-
lation to an ancient philosophy and politics of desire:
gay ethics
erotic relations between men have been a subject of
reflection since at least PLATO’s (c. 430–347 B.C.E.)
Symposium and Phaedrus.
The movement of lesbian and gay citizens for full
equality builds on the civil rights struggles of racial,
religious and ethnic minorities within democratic so-
cieties since the 1960s. It is also an application of
the feminist notion that “the personal is political” to
citizens of diverse sexuality. As feminist politics
challenges the social subordination of women, so
lesbian and gay politics contest the marginalization
of homosexuals, bisexuals, and transgendered peo-
ple, and the assumption that “compulsory hetero-
sexuality” is the “natural” foundation of social order.
As feminist theory contests male bias and the privi-
leging of masculine experience in traditional philos-
ophy, so gay ethics insists on the plurality of forms
of desire and intimate association. Since “gay” has
come to refer in recent years to distinctly male ho-
mosexual acts and identities, feminist critiques of
the sexism of Western societies and the masculinism
of the philosophic tradition have complicated con-
temporary efforts to appropriate classic defenses of
“Greek love.” Indeed, LESBIAN ETHICS has emerged
in an effort to distinguish the concerns of women
who love women from those of men who love men.
Further, scholars have contested the status of “ho-
mosexuality” itself as a trans-historical category of
persons as opposed to physical acts. “Queer theory”
questions the imbrication of same-sex desire with
conventional conceptions of sexual difference as
well as the dependence of “identity politics” on his-
torically specific forms of social POWER. At its most
critical, queer theory challenges the salience of
“identity” itself as a political and ethical norm.
The conjunction of classical concerns with rela-
tively recent social and scientific developments was
already manifest in the work of John Addington
Symonds (1840–1893), author of the first sustained
defenses of homosexual rights in English. In “A
Problem in Greek Ethics” (1883), he argued that
love between men was not simply tolerated by the
ancient Athenians but that “noble” pederasty was an
institution at the heart of Greek ethical life, as least
for citizens. Other writers of the nineteenth century
also invoked Hellenic models as a justification for
same-sex desire, including Karl Ulrichs (1825–
1895), Benedict Friedlander (1866–1928), Walter
Pater (1839–1894), Edward Carpenter (1844–
1929), and Oscar Wilde (1854–1900). In 1891,
598
Symonds published “A Problem in Modern Ethics,”
which introduced work in continental psychiatry
and sexology to an Anglophone audience. At his
death, he had almost completed his collaboration
with Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) on Sexual Inver-
sion, which was published in 1897 but withdrawn
in England as the result of legal prosecution as an
“obscene and bawdy” work. Ellis and Symonds ar-
gued that same-sex desire is the result of an anom-
alous natural condition over which individuals have
no control and that it is unjust to criminalize or
otherwise disadvantage those who are so affected.
Symonds had insisted that his work on ancient
Greek ethics be included. His own position re-
mained resolutely ethical; he argued that desire for
others of the same sex could be disciplined to the
same extent as desire for those of another sex. Nei-
ther homosexual nor heterosexual desire was inher-
ently moral: both were subject to abuse but might
be shaped to contribute to a full and useful life.
Aware of the limitations of ancient Greece as a mod-
ern model, Symonds vigorously defended the alli-
ance of male comradeship with democratic aspira-
tion in the works of Walt Whitman (1819–1892);
Carpenter and Wilde shared his egalitarian hope.
The contemporary thinker with the greatest im-
pact on gay ethics and queer theory has been the
French philosopher Michel FOUCAULT (1926–1984).
He died before completing his monumental history
of sexuality; however, three volumes have been pub-
lished with the fate of a fourth dependent on the
outcome of litigation. Like Symonds, Foucault was
engaged by both nineteenth-century sexology and
ancient Greek pederasty. He turned to sexuality as a
theme after extensive analyses of institutions such as
the clinic, the sanitarium, and the prison, as well as
the scientific and political discourses that legiti-
mated them. In The History of Sexuality: Volume
One: An Introduction, Foucault analyzes sexuality as
a conception within medicine and the behavioral sci-
ences and as an array of techniques for social con-
trol. He argues against the “repressive hypothesis”
that contrasts an inner truth of sexual desire with an
external power that seeks only to restrain it. He
claims that sexuality manifests a distinctively mod-
ern form of power: rather than relying on external
threats, dominant norms are enforced by internal-
ized modes of self-understanding. Foucault is am-
bivalent about the phenomenon, situating sexual
desires and identities within complex, sometimes

oppressive, political matrices. At the same time, he
insists that modern power depends on its subjects to
maintain itself. Plurality, contestation, and change
characterize the regime of sexuality. Discourses give
rise to counter-discourses: the invention of “homo-
sexuality” as a medical pathology led to claims of
political equality by minorities mobilized by their
“sexual identities”. The question remains whether
embracing such a history risks perpetuating the so-
cial subordination that shaped it. Foucault com-
ments that the pervasiveness of modern power is not
necessarily “bad” but that it is “dangerous”: one can-
not escape conflict and flux into a domain of moral
or theoretical certitude; outcomes of struggle remain
contingent and unpredictable.
In Volume Two: The Use of Pleasure and Volume
Three: The Care of the Self, Foucault shifts his at-
tention from the social contexts of desire to its role
in shaping an individual life. In the introduction to
the former, he explains that further research forced
him to revise some of the historical claims of the first
volume; whether he also abandoned some of its
more radical theoretical positions is a matter of
scholarly controversy. Although he earlier alleged
that “sexuality” as such was an instrument of
nineteenth-century science and society and that the
moralizing of desire was a legacy of Christianity, his
work on ancient Greece and Rome led him to see
erotic love as an ethical problem as early as the fifth
century B.C.E. He linked this revision of his historical
account to a reevaluation of the moral status of sex-
ual behavior. Foucault surveys a range of philosoph-
ical, legal, medical, and literary texts to retrieve an
ancient ethic. In doing so, he focuses on two issues
of continuing importance: the role of desire in in-
dividual self-making and the difficulties of achieving
RECIPROCITY in erotic relations. Foucault articulates
“an aesthetics of existence” for which the shaping of
one’s life in interesting and attractive ways becomes
the central issue for ethics. He offers a Nietzschean
reading of the Greeks that intersects with the “ex-
istential” ethos of Albert CAMUS (1913–1960) or
early Jean Paul SARTRE (1905–1980), the “Emer-
sonian perfectionism” of Stanley Cavell, and the
“democratic individualism” of George Kateb. Fou-
cault problematizes erotic reciprocity in terms of
asymmetrical relations between men, as Greek ped-
erasty defined distinctive roles for an older, active
erastes and younger, passive eromenos. However, his
concerns for equality and mutuality overlap with
599
gay ethics
feminist criticisms of the ways in which institutions
of compulsory heterosexuality reinforce the subor-
dination of women in modern societies.
The range of issues charted in the works of Sym-
onds and Foucault continue to occupy scholars in
the field: the ethical and scientific status of same-sex
desire; the interplay between individual LIBERTY and
social moralities; and the relevance of ideals of dem-
ocratic equality. In his earlier work, Richard Mohr
conjoined an “essentialist” account of homosexual-
ity as an inherent natural condition with a Millean
defense of individual liberty and PRIVACY rights. His
more recent work explores the potential of some gay
male relationships to embody forms of egalitarian
reciprocity. The classicist David Halperin has used
conceptions of the “social construction” of sexuality
to offer provocative readings of ancient Greek insti-
tutions and texts. More recently, he has employed
Foucaultian discourse analysis to illuminate the
workings of homophobia and developed a specific
“aesthetics of existence” grounded in an account of
gay sado-masochistic practices and relations. In a
somewhat different vein, Leo Bersani has argued,
through a reading of both literary and theoretical
texts, that homosexual desire poses a radical chal-
lenge to all forms of sociality, proposing an anarchic
resistance to the domestication of desire.
A central question for gay ethics and politics re-
mains the relation between distinctively homosexual
forms of life and dominant social mores. Gay and
lesbian activists, journalists, and theorists have fo-
cused attention on the movement to gain legal and
social recognition of same-sex partnerships and un-
conventional FAMILY arrangements. Some have ar-
gued that the right to marry is a necessary corollary
of equal citizenship, while others have gone further
in seeing the establishment of long-term relations as
both a crucial component of individual HAPPINESS
and a moral imperative. The latter formulation es-
pecially has led some critics to reject all demands for
recognition as symptomatic of assimilation to dom-
inant norms of compulsory heterosexuality and gen-
der hierarchy and to insist instead on an unabashed
defense of a polymorphous sexual freedom.
The legacy of Symonds and Foucault—and Plato
as well—places the relationship between the indi-
vidual and society, and the necessity of maintaining
a critical perspective on established powers, at the
heart of gay ethics. The emphasis on critique is cen-
tral to works that have come to be characterized as
gay ethics
“queer theory.” Judith Butler has offered a sustained
reflection on the ways in which dominant discourses
and institutions shape desires and identities. She em-
ploys psychoanalytic and philosophical accounts of
subject formation to display the complexity and con-
flict at work in the emergence of self-conscious in-
dividuals. Pervasive social inequalities and margin-
alized forms of life are reflected in the subject’s own
attitudes towards gender and sexuality. Notions of
personal identity are deeply implicated in the en-
forcement of norms; rather than facts of life reveal-
ing inner truths, they are regulative ideals policed by
subjective self-understanding as well as by social
sanctions. Butler argues that even the most deviant
forms of desire are entangled with CONVENTIONS of
gender identity and heterosexuality and that images
of an exclusive and unified identity may be person-
ally damaging and socially dangerous. On her ac-
count, subject-formation in modern societies is in-
herently fraught with discontent and susceptible of
transformation. In her most recent work, the links
between a queering of personal identity and the de-
mocratization of politics have become increasingly
explicit. In a complementary vein, Shane Phelan has
emphasized that most individuals are subject to mul-
tiple and shifting affiliations, drawing especially on
the work of third world feminists to develop a more
general conception of mestiza or hybrid identities.
The intersection of overlapping and sometimes com-
peting modes of gender, sexuality, race, class, and
ethnicity points towards a more radical form of
democratic politics that emphasizes the ongoing
contestation of boundaries and formation of alli-
ances across differences. Butler and Phelan analyze
the individual subject as an arena of contesting
forces; they emphasize both the pervasiveness of the
political and its inherent susceptibility to change. On
these accounts, “gay ethics” is inextricably entangled
with democratic citizenship.
See also: CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIC DUTIES; CONVEN-
TIONS; DEMOCRACY; DESIRE; DIGNITY; DISCRIMINA-
TION; EQUALITY; EXISTENTIAL ETHICS; EXTERNALISM
AND INTERNALISM; FAMILY; FEMINIST ETHICS; FOU-
CAULT; FRIENDSHIP; HOMOSEXUALITY; INSTITUTIONS;
LESBIAN ETHICS; LIBERTY; LOVE; MORAL PLURALISM;
OPPRESSION; PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS; POSTMOD-
ERNISM; PRIVACY; PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY;
RACISM AND RELATED ISSUES; SELF-KNOWLEDGE;
SEXUAL ABUSE AND HARASSMENT; SEXUALITY AND
600
SEXUAL ETHICS; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY;
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY.
Bibliography
Bersani, Leo. Homos. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1995. Argues for a conception of homosexuality
as radically contesting the limits of sociality with read-
ings of Freud, Foucault, Proust, Gide, and Genet.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subver-
sion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. A sus-
tained philosophical investigation of the role of sexual
difference and sexual desire in the formation of politi-
cal and personal identities.
———. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative.
New York: Routledge, 1998. Situates the legal treat-
ment of hate speech, pornography, gays in the military
in the broader contexts of speech act theory and dem-
ocratic politics.
Ellis, Havelock, and John Addington Symonds. Sexual In-
version. New York: Arno Press, 1974 [1897]. Reprints
the original published under both names in London in
1897, but withdrawn. Ellis revised subsequent editions
which appeared in the United States in his Studies in
the Psychology of Sex.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Translated
from the French by Robert Hurley. Volume One: An
Introduction. New York: Random House, 1978. Vol-
ume Two: The Use of Pleasure. New York: Pantheon,
1985. Volume Three: The Care of the Self. New York:
Vintage, 1986.
Halperin, David M. One Hundred Years of Homosexual-
ity: and Other Essays on Greek Love. New York: Rout-
ledge, 1990. Applies contemporary conceptions of the
social construction of sexuality to classical texts and
politics.
———. Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Develops a
queer politics based on Foucault’s discourse analysis
and “aesthetics of existence.”
Kaplan, Morris B. Sexual Justice: Democratic Citizenship
and the Politics of Desire. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Situates lesbian and gay equality in the context of mod-
ern democracy and an ethics of self-making based in
readings of Plato, Thoreau, Freud, and Arendt. Argues
for the recognition of same-sex partnerships and a plu-
rality of forms of “intimate association.”
Mohr, Richard. Gays/Justice: A Study of Ethics, and So-
ciety and the Law. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1988. The first sustained contemporary philo-
sophic treatment of homosexuality, primarily in rela-
tion to Mill’s liberalism.
———. Gay Ideas, Outing and Other Controversies. Bos-
ton: Beacon Press, 1992. Emphasizes Kantian concep-
tions of dignity as a keystone of gay ethics and erotic
relations between men as a form of democratic
equality.

Phelan, Shane. Getting Specific: Post-Modern Lesbian
Politics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
Press, 1995. Situates queer politics in relation to rad-
ical democracy and the hybrid and provisional char-
acter of contemporary identities.
Stein, Edward D. The Mismeasure of Desire: The Science,
Theory and Ethics of Sexual Orientation. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999. Combines a detailed
survey of the science, a trenchant analysis of the essen-
tialism/constructionism controversy, and a sustained
argument that ethical and political claims about free-
dom and equality must be developed independently of
any assumptions regarding the causes or ontological
status of sexual orientation.
———, ed. Forms of Desire: The Social Constructionist
Controversy About Sexual Orientation. New York:
Routledge, 1992. Collects essays from the debate be-
tween “essentionalists” and “social constructionists”,
including Stein’s judicious conclusion, pp. 325–53.
Symonds, John Addington. Sexual Inversion: A Classic
Study of Homosexuality. New York: Bell, 1984 [1883,
1891]. Includes the texts of “A Problem in Greek
Ethics” and “A Problem in Modern Ethics.”
Weeks, Jeffrey. Invented Moralities: Sexual Values in an
Age of Uncertainty. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1993. Argues for the centrality of values in de-
bates about erotic freedom and democratic diversity.
Morris B. Kaplan
generosity
Comparatively little has been written about gener-
osity in this century, but a number of the philoso-
phers of the past have given it serious attention,
including ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.), THOMAS
AQUINAS (1225?–1274), DESCARTES (1596–1650),
and (at least if we interpret him in a certain way)
NIETZSCHE (1844–1900). As an ethical matter, gen-
erosity has the potential to be taken seriously today,
though contemporary writers might be inclined to
ask questions about it that were not raised in the
past. Most of the philosophers who have taken an
interest in generosity assumed that the only way to
study ethics is to study the VIRTUES and, further, that
generosity is one of the greatest virtues. They seemed
unaware that fundamentally different systems of
values can compete for our allegiance. Today, the
extremely high value thinkers have placed on gen-
erosity can seem to embody a quaintly antique ap-
proach to the general problem of doing good to oth-
ers—our civilization has most recently lived through
a century of liberal and socialist emphasis on social
601
generosity
justice and, before that, many centuries of the Judeo-
Christian admiration for CHARITY. It should be in-
teresting to ask what difference it makes to our view
of life whether we value most highly the ancient vir-
tue of generosity or one of these more recent alter-
natives, and what effect a concern for generosity
would have on our notions about the study of ethics.
Logically prior to these questions is the question
of what generosity is. Perhaps the two most widely
different answers to this question are those sug-
gested by Aristotle and Nietzsche.
In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle held that
generosity is flanked by two opposite traits, both of
them vices, which might be translated as “prodigal-
ity” and “meanness.” Lying between the extremes of
giving either too much or too little, generosity is,
among other things, giving the right amount. Be-
yond that, the generous person “will give to the right
people . . . at the right time, and do everything else
that is implied in correct giving” (1120a, 24–26).
This is an application of one of the most distinctive
features of Aristotle’s conception of virtue, the so-
called “doctrine of the mean,” which holds that vir-
tue consists in doing neither too much nor too little:
virtuous action is essentially correct action.
This view contrasts sharply with the impression
given by Nietzsche’s boundless praise, in Thus
Spoke Zarathustra (1885), for “the gift-giving vir-
tue” which “is insatiable in wanting to give.” He de-
scribes this virtue in terms suggestive of excess
rather than correctness. “When your heart flows
broad and full like a river, a blessing and a danger
to those living near: there is the origin of your virtue”
(Part I, #22). The person who possesses the gift-
giving virtue is “a squanderer with a thousand
hands” (Part IV, #1). If we suppose that Nietzsche
is talking about generosity here, he appears to be
saying that it is a matter not of accurately hitting the
mark between too much and too little, but rather of
doing more than we need to do, and perhaps not
even caring about what we need to do. “When you
. . . call this cessation of all need ‘necessity’; there is
the origin of your virtue” (Part I, #22).
It is arguable that Nietzsche’s idea is closer to the
concept of generosity most of us have than Aris-
totle’s is. Our ordinary conception of justice is a
matter of hitting the mark. If I give you either more
or less than you have coming to you then what I do
fails by that increment to be just. At least in this
dimension, our notion of justice does not admit of
generosity
excess. But this is not true of the ordinary concep-
tion of generosity. We speak of being “too generous”
or “generous to a fault,” meaning that someone, in
being generous, has given excessively. An Aristote-
lian could reply that here we are talking about gen-
erosity as a virtue, and no virtue could ever result in
an action which has anything wrong with it. This is
something a Nietzschean would deny: a trait might
be profoundly good though it results in actions
which can have something wrong with them. How-
ever one might wish to resolve this dispute, it seems
that one needs a theory at least as powerful and well
grounded as the doctrine of the mean in order to
defend Aristotle’s conception of generosity; com-
mon sense does not clearly support it.
Generosity, as we ordinarily understand it, does
not seem to be consistent with the idea that virtuous
action is essentially correct action. Nor, as some of
Nietzsche’s comments suggest, does it seem to fit
well with a certain other conception of meritorious
conduct. Giving is never generous if it is done be-
cause it is required of us, whether the requirement
is the result of a promise made, a contract signed,
or a favor accepted. Further, we do not generally call
the act of giving generous if we think the thing given
was owed to the recipient in virtue of the recipient’s
really needing it. We usually call such attempts to
fulfill the NEEDS of others charity rather than gen-
erosity. In general, the ordinary conception of gen-
erosity does not seem to cohere with a concept of
virtue according to which each virtuous action is one
which we need to do, in that it is required of us by
some moral rule or other ethical ideal. Nor does it
seem to be a response to the needs of others. As we
usually think of it, it is something over and above
the various moral requirements which apply to us.
It also confers a benefit which is something over and
above the needs of the recipient.
The ancient and aristocratic notion that gener-
osity is one of the greatest virtues can be an attrac-
tive one for a number of reasons. For instance, one
might think that the modern emphasis on moral re-
quirements (including the requirement that we al-
ways be just) is somehow too confining, that it fails
somehow to emphasize sufficiently the value of free
agency. In addition, we might think that the modern
emphasis on charity and compassion invites us to
think that we are only responding ethically when we
respond to the deficiencies and problems of others,
rather than to their virtues and strengths. But even
602
if one does not feel either of these dissatisfactions,
one still has some reason to be interested in gener-
osity: it may be worth asking if this virtue (whether
it is an important one or not) is compatible with the
idea that the way to study ethics is to formulate the
rules which ought to regulate our conduct.
See also: ALTRUISM; AMNESTY AND PARDON; ARIS-
TOTLE; ARISTOTELIAN ETHICS; BENEFICENCE; BENEV-
OLENCE; CHARITY; FORGIVENESS; GOLDEN RULE; IM-
PARTIALITY; MERCY; MERIT AND DESERT; MORAL
RULES; NEEDS; NIETZSCHE; PROMISES; RECIPROCITY;
SYMPATHY; TOLERATION; VIRTUE ETHICS; VIRTUES.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Book IV, chapter 1
(1119b–1122a). Generosity as correct giving.
Descartes, René. The Passions of the Soul. (1649) Articles
156, 159, 161. Generosity as “the key of all the
virtues.”
Hunt, Lester H. “Generosity.” American Philosophical
Quarterly 12 (1975): 235–44.
———. “Generosity and the Diversity of the Virtues.” In
The Virtues: Contemporary Essays on Moral Character,
edited by Robert Kirschwitz and Robert Roberts, 216–
28. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1987.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spake Zarathustra. 1883–
1885. Book I, “On the Gift-Giving Virtue,” suggests,
in effect, that all virtue arises from a fundamentally
non-Aristotelian sort of generosity.
Spinoza, Baruch. Ethics. (Posthumous, 1677.) Part IV,
Propositions 37, 50, 67–73, argue that people who
seek their own true advantage because they live ration-
ally are the only ones who will zealously seek to confer
benefits on others; they will have no use for pity.
Thomas Aquinas. Summa theologiae. (1266–1273) 2a,
2ae, Question 117: an Aristotelian account of gener-
osity in which it is explicitly treated as a form of justice.
Wallace, James. Virtues and Vices. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1978. Distinguishes generosity from
obligatory giving and criticizes Aristotle’s account of
generosity as a mean.
Lester H. Hunt
genetic engineering
Genetic engineering involves directly altering the ge-
netic structure of an organism in order to provide
that organism with traits that are deemed useful or
desirable by those doing the altering. For centuries,
plant and animal breeders have attempted to pro-
duce organisms with useful or desirable traits, but

this kind of breeding is not genetic engineering as it
does not involve directly altering the genetic struc-
ture of an organism. Genetic engineering of plants
and nonhuman animals has been going on only since
the 1970s.
The most straightforward use of genetic engi-
neering involves producing a plant or animal with
“improved” characteristics. In the case of agricul-
ture, for example, genetic engineering has produced
crop plants resistant to lower temperatures, herbi-
cides, and insect attack, as well as tomatoes with a
longer shelf life. A completely different kind of ge-
netic engineering involves transplanting a gene, usu-
ally a human gene, from one species to another in
order to produce a useful product.
In 1982 human growth hormone and human in-
sulin were produced by genetically engineered bac-
teria. Fifteen years later corn and soybeans have
been genetically engineered to secrete human anti-
bodies for herpes simplex and for treating cancer
patients. With the advent of cloning of large mam-
mals, it has become practical for genetic engineering
to implant human genes in nonhuman animals such
as sheep and cattle to produce similar substances in
their milk. A patent has already been applied for to
mix human embryo cells with embryo cells from a
monkey or ape, which could create an animal that
might have kidneys or a liver suitable for transplan-
tation to human beings. There seem to be no limits
to the creatures made possible by genetic engineer-
ing, e.g., creating edible birds and mammals with
minimal brain functions, including no conscious-
ness, so as to avoid protests about the CRUELTY in-
volved in raising and killing conscious animals for
food.
Genetic engineering of plants and nonhuman ani-
mals has caused some controversy, primarily be-
cause of environmental, health, and safety concerns.
However, most of that controversy was similar to
concerns raised by traditional breeding practices
and the introduction of plants or animals to com-
pletely new environments. Genetic engineering of
plants and animals is now a generally accepted prac-
tice. The major moral controversy concerns whether
to allow directly altering the genetic structure of hu-
man beings themselves. However, genetic engineer-
ing that is done by altering the somatic cells of an
individual in order to cure genetic and nongenetic
diseases has not been controversial. Indeed, what is
603
genetic engineering
known as somatic cell gene therapy is becoming a
standard method for treating both kinds of diseases.
Unlike the genetic engineering that is used in
plants and animals, somatic cell gene therapy alters
only the genetic structure of the individual who re-
ceives the somatic cell gene therapy; the altered ge-
netic structure is not passed on to that individual’s
offspring. However, now that it is possible to clone
large mammals such as cows and sheep, it may be
possible that genetic engineering of human beings
done by altering somatic cells may also be passed on
to FUTURE GENERATIONS.
Currently, somatic cell genetic engineering is lim-
ited to therapy; there has not even been a proposal
to use this form of genetic engineering for enhance-
ment. Clinical trials using human patients have dem-
onstrated the feasibility of somatic cell gene therapy
in humans, successfully correcting genetic defects in
a large number of cell types. In principle, there is no
important moral distinction between injecting insu-
lin into a diabetic’s leg and injecting the insulin gene
into a diabetic’s cells.
The most serious moral controversy concerns the
application of the kind of genetic engineering that is
used on plants and nonhuman animals to human be-
ings. This kind of human genetic engineering, usu-
ally referred to as germ line gene therapy, is regarded
by some as the best means to correct severe hered-
itary defects such as thallasemia, severe combined
immune deficiency, and cystic fibrosis. But many be-
lieve that genetic engineering to treat or eliminate
serious genetic disorders, that is, the practice of neg-
ative eugenics, will lead to genetic engineering di-
rected toward enhancing or improving humans, that
is, positive eugenics. But this slippery slope argu-
ment presupposes that there is something morally
unacceptable about positive eugenics, and that has
not been shown. No one has yet provided a strong
theoretical argument that shows that genetic engi-
neering to produce enhanced size, strength, intelli-
gence, or increased resistance to toxic substances is
morally problematic.
Eugenics properly has a bad connotation because
prior to the possibility of genetic engineering, eu-
genics could be practiced only by preventing those
who were regarded as having undesirable traits from
reproducing. Genetic engineering even allows for
positive eugenics without limiting the freedom of
anyone. If there were absolutely no risks at all in
positive eugenics, that is, in germ line genetic en-
genetic engineering
hancement, it would be difficult to imagine what
would be morally objectionable about it. The moral
force of the objection that eugenics is “playing God”
is that we do not know that there are no risks. A
proper HUMILITY, that is, recognition of limited hu-
man knowledge and human fallibility, is required for
reliable moral behavior. A strong argument for con-
cluding that genetic enhancement and perhaps even
genetic therapy is morally unacceptable is that it
risks great harms for many in future generations in
order to provide benefits for a few in this generation.
Two standard arguments have been put forward
that even negative eugenics should not be practiced.
The first of these is that it will result in the elimi-
nation of those deleterious alleles which may be of
some future benefit to the species. The argument is
that the genetic variation of a species affords evo-
lutionary plasticity or potential for subsequent ad-
aptation to new and perhaps unforeseen conditions.
To eliminate a deleterious mutant allele, like those
responsible for cystic fibrosis or sickle cell anemia,
could have some risk. It is generally agreed that the
recessive gene responsible for sickle cell anemia
evolved as an adaptive response to malaria.
This argument is false for two different reasons.
The first concerns the nature of genetic maladies.
For maladies based on the inheritance of recessive
alleles, it is not the presence of two mutant alleles
that causes the malady, rather it is the absence of a
normal allele. As long as a normal allele is present,
the mutant alleles do not cause a genetic disorder.
Even if the situation of heterozygote advantage, as
in the case of sickle cell anemia, were common,
which it is not, gene therapy for recessive disorders
will work even though the mutant and nonfunc-
tional alleles still remain. However, when it is pos-
sible, not merely to add a gene, but to replace a non-
functional mutant allele, nonfunctional alleles will
no longer remain. This kind of gene replacement
procedure will expand the range of candidate ge-
netic maladies subject to gene therapy to those
caused by dominant alleles. But no evolutionary
problem is caused by eliminating dominant genes
that cause serious genetic disorders such as Hunting-
ton’s disease.
Almost all genetic disorders are caused by reces-
sive genes and it seems quite unlikely that there will
be any serious attempt to eradicate these genes from
the human gene pool, even if it becomes possible.
The technology required must be applied on an in-
604
dividual basis with rather limited accessibility. Be-
cause it is a surgical procedure, germ line gene ther-
apy would be done in a medical setting and on a
voluntary basis. So although many couples might
qualify for gene therapy, only a small number would
elect to participate. Finally, the vast majority of del-
eterious alleles that are recessive are maintained in
heterozygous condition by carriers. Since there would
be no reason to perform gene therapy on heterozy-
gotes, the frequency of deleterious alleles would still
be maintained at high levels. For example, if germ
line gene therapy involving gene replacement could
be developed for Tay Sachs and was used to treat all
homozygous Tay Sachs embryos (which occur at a
frequency of 1/2,000), the frequency of the Tay
Sachs allele in the entire population would decrease
only from 0.01000 to 0.0099 over one generation.
The second argument is that since it is impossible
to draw a nonarbitrary line that distinguishes posi-
tive from negative eugenics by defining what a ge-
netic disorder is, even genetic therapy may cause
more serious maladies in future generations than it
prevents for the present generation. However, ge-
netic conditions like hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, and
muscular dystrophy all share features common to
other serious diseases or disorders, such as cancer.
An objective and culture-free distinction can be made
between genetic conditions that everyone counts as
diseases or disorders and those that no one does.
Even if there are some borderline conditions, it is
theoretically possible to limit genetic engineering to
those conditions about which there is no disagree-
ment. If genetic engineering is used only to cure se-
rious genetic maladies such at Tay Sachs, it is ex-
tremely unlikely that more serious genetic maladies
will be created in the future.
While there is no theoretical reason for not using
germ line gene therapy, there is a persuasive argu-
ment, based on real world considerations, that con-
cludes that all forms of germ line genetic engineering
involving humans should be prohibited. This argu-
ment, similar to the argument against genetic en-
hancement, claims that even genetic therapy risks
great harms for many in future generations, and that
there is not sufficient harm prevented to justify these
risks. Not only is genetic therapy, like genetic en-
hancement, permanent during the entire lifetime of
the affected individual, but the transgene also be-
comes heritably transmitted to countless members
of future generations.

Facts about basic genetic phenomena are now be-
ing discovered. For example, five human genetic dis-
orders have been found that are based on mutations
involving expandable and contractible trinucleotide
repeats. This baffling and novel mechanism for pro-
ducing mutations was totally unpredicted and there
is currently no complete explanation for its cause.
Similarly, geneticists have only recently discovered
another novel and unpredicted phenomenon, ge-
netic imprinting. For a small but significant fraction
of genes, in humans and other species, the expres-
sion of the gene during early embryonic develop-
ment varies according to its paternal or maternal
origin. The biological role of imprinting, and the mo-
lecular mechanism responsible for selective gene ex-
pression, remain mysteries. But the effect of genetic
imprinting and trinucleotide expansion, in terms of
carrying out germ line gene therapy, may be critical.
Problems may not be discovered until the third or
fourth generation. It seems quite likely that more
new unpredicted future findings about basic genetic
phenomena will be discovered which carry similar
risks.
Given even this small possibility of significant
harm to many, an analysis of risks and benefits in-
dicates that germ line gene therapy would be justi-
fied only in cases of severe maladies. Further, germ
line gene therapy would be justified only if there
were no less radical way of preventing these severe
maladies from occurring. However, pre-implantation
genetic screening, in which embryos are first pro-
duced by in vitro fertilization, does provide such
an alternative. At an early blastocyst stage of devel-
opment, when the embryo is at the eight or sixteen
cell stage, a single embryonic cell is removed and
screened, genetically, for the presence of defective
alleles. If analysis reveals that the fetus would de-
velop a severe genetic malady, the embryo would not
be implanted. If analysis reveals that the embryo has
no severe genetic malady, uterine implantation would
be carried out so that normal development would
occur.
Pre-implantation screening will eliminate essen-
tially all severe genetic maladies that can be elimi-
nated by genetic engineering. For those with reli-
gious or metaphysical beliefs that prohibit destroying
any fertilized human egg, it should be pointed out
that genetic engineering usually involves creating
more fertilized eggs than one plans to use, since im-
605
genetic engineering
planting of any fertilized egg, including a genetically
altered one, is often not successful.
Consequently, pre-implantation screening elimi-
nates the need for germ line gene therapy. The num-
ber of cases in which both parents are homozygous
for a rare deleterious recessive allele, such as cystic
fibrosis, is vanishingly small. Genetic engineering,
then, is necessary only for improving or enhancing
people by adding new genes for strength, intelli-
gence, or for resistance to pathogens or toxins. Ge-
netic engineering to add improvements rather than
to eliminate defects may give rise to serious social
and political problems.
Gene therapy will be, for the foreseeable future,
a very expensive procedure. Thus, only the wealthy
will be able to afford it. Germ line gene therapy
probably comes as close as is humanly possible to
guaranteeing that those families who can afford it
will be able to perpetuate their social and political
dominance. Thus, together with cloning, it may give
rise to a genetically stratified society as envisioned
in Huxley’s Brave New World. Once this technology
is well developed, it could be used by those societies
in which those in power are not governed by ethical
restraints. People may be genetically engineered to
provide various tasks, e.g., as warriors. Imagine a
group of people engineered to be resistant to various
poisonous gases, e.g., sarin. However, these con-
cerns, although genuine, are speculative.
On the other hand, we know from experience that
cutting edge TECHNOLOGY, including genetic tech-
nology, generates pressures for its use. Consequently,
it is likely that if genetic engineering were permitted,
it would be used inappropriately, that is, it would be
employed even when a comparable outcome could
be accomplished using a less risky method. There is
justified concern that genetic engineering advocates
will make claims that the risks are less than they
really are, and the benefits are greater than will be
realized. It is at least disconcerting that proponents
of germ-line gene therapy do not talk at all of the far
less risky alternative of pre-implantation screening.
If every scientist, administrator, and venture cap-
italist involved in applying and commercializing ge-
netic engineering were appropriately thoughtful,
there would be much less reason to prohibit its de-
velopment and application for those rare cases in
which it could be the therapy of choice. However,
based on the real world risks that were just de-
scribed, there is insufficient potential benefit to jus-
genetic engineering
tify any human genetic engineering. Until certain
knowledge of the real risks and benefits associated
with human genetic engineering has been obtained,
the potential risks to all of the descendants of the
patient outweigh any benefit to a very small number
of persons who might benefit. In the event of an
unanticipated harmful outcome of genetic engineer-
ing using mice or corn, the transgenic organisms can
be killed, but clearly this option cannot be used with
humans.
It takes only a few scientists who have convinced
themselves that they know that the risks are only
imaginary, and that the benefits are real, for human
genetic engineering to become a field in which sci-
entists compete to be first. Prospects of national and
international recognition, of prizes, awards, patents,
and grants, of all measures of status, wealth, and
POWER, are potent incentives to overstate successes
and benefits, to take unacceptable risks, and to dis-
miss valid objections. The extraordinary loyalty of
scientists to one another, their reluctance to interfere
with any research project that their scientific col-
leagues wish to pursue, make it very likely that some
misguided projects will be carried out.
Technology that is not needed to prevent great
harm, and poses even a small possibility of causing
great harm to many people, cannot be justifiably
used to provide benefits to only a few, even if those
benefits are great. The presence of the less risky al-
ternative procedure of pre-implantation screening of
embryos changes the moral situation. In cases where
no great harm is being prevented and a great number
of people may be put at significant risk, caution must
prevail. Even if there is no chance of completely
stopping germ line gene therapy, it may be possible
to delay it long enough that the technology is devel-
oped that enables scientists to repair a gene rather
than replace it. Similarly, it might have been better
if the building of nuclear power plants had been de-
layed until they were designed so there would be no
chance of a nuclear explosion or meltdown. Indeed,
it may have been better to postpone building them
until acceptable plans for disposing of nuclear
wastes had been developed.
The human genome project involves mapping the
entire genome, that is, showing where each gene is
located: not only which chromosome it is on, but
where it is located on that chromosome. It also in-
volves sequencing each gene, that is, showing how
each gene is built up from the base pairs that make
606
up a gene. Most defective genes involve a change in
a few of these base pairs, often only one. Gene repair
involves changing the base pair or pairs that are
causing the problem. This form of genetic engineer-
ing has far less potential for disaster or misuse than
the kind of genetic engineering now being consid-
ered. Further, the concept of gene repair reinforces
the difference between gene therapy and gene en-
hancement. It would be inappropriate to regard
making any change in a gene as repairing it unless
that gene is both different from the standard form
or allele and results in some genetic malady. Limiting
human genetic engineering to the repairing of genes
would dramatically lessen the risks of such engi-
neering while not preventing any of its therapeutic
benefits.
See also: AGRICULTURAL ETHICS; ANIMALS, TREAT-
MENT OF; BIOETHICS; BIOLOGICAL THEORY; ENVI-
RONMENTAL ETHICS; EVOLUTION; FUTURE GENERA-
TIONS; HARM AND OFFENSE; LIBERTY, ECONOMIC;
MEDICAL ETHICS; NATURE AND ETHICS; PUBLIC
HEALTH POLICY; REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY; RISK;
SLIPPERY SLOPE ARGUMENTS; TECHNOLOGY; TECH-
NOLOGY AND NATURE.
Bibliography
Gert, Bernard, et al. Morality and the New Genetics: A
Guide for Students and Health Care Providers. Sud-
bury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 1996; Wads-
worth Publishing, 1997. Co-authors are: Edward M.
Berger, George F. Cahill, Jr., K. Danner Clouser,
Charles M. Culver, John B. Moeschler, and George
H. S. Singer.
Kevles, Daniel J. In the name of Eugenics: Genetics and
Uses of Human Heredity. Boston: Harvard University
Press, 1995 [1985].
Reiss, Michael J., and Roger Straughan. Improving Na-
ture? The Science and Ethics of Genetic Engineering.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Rollin, Bernard E. The Frankenstein Syndrome: Ethical
and Social Issues in the Genetic Engineering of Ani-
mals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Silver, Lee M. Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a
Brave New World. New York: Avon Books, 1997.
Walters, LeRoy, and Julie Gage Palmer. The Ethics of Hu-
man Gene Therapy. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1997.
Bernard Gert

genocide
The term “genocide” was coined in 1944 by Rafael
Lemkin most immediately in reaction to the Nazi
“Final Solution” directed against the Jews, but it was
also meant to identify that crime more generally as
the annihilation or attempted annihilation of the
members of a group (genos) solely because of group
association. Lemkin, a lawyer and himself a Polish-
Jewish refugee, had previously (at the Fifth Inter-
national Conference for the Unification of Penal
Law, Madrid, 1933) unsuccessfully proposed inter-
national recognition of the crime of “barbarity”—
“oppressive and destructive actions directed against
individuals as members of a national, religious, or
racial group.” In his book, Lemkin expanded the
concept of genocide to include attacks on political,
economic, and cultural groups; in addition to the
Nazi campaign of annihilation, he cites among ear-
lier instances of such attacks the Roman destruction
of Carthage (146 B.C.E.), the conquest of Jerusalem
by Titus (C.E. 72 ), and the Turkish massacre of the
Armenians (1915–1917). The crime of genocide, he
claims, extends beyond the attacks on civilian pop-
ulations in “occupied” territory that had been ad-
dressed and in some measure guarded against in in-
ternational law by the Hague Conventions. The
designation of groups as targets for destruction, in
Lemkin’s view, expands the possible rationale (and
thus the threat) of systematic killing.
In December, 1948, the United Nations General
Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which
defines genocide as an act or acts “committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, eth-
ical, racial or religious group.” (After considerable
controversy, political groups were removed from the
Convention’s protection.) The means of genocide
cited by the United Nations Convention include, in
addition to actual killing, less direct methods such
as the prevention of births within a group and the
transfer of children to other groups. Under the U.N.
Convention, charges of genocide are to be heard be-
fore the International Court of Justice. (Legislation
for implementing ratification of the Convention by
the United States, an original signatory in 1948, was
not passed by the U.S. Congress until 1988 and then
with the attachment of substantive—to an extent,
disabling—reservations. Ninety-seven other mem-
bers of the United Nations had previously ratified
the Convention.)
607
genocide
Although the term “genocide” is often used as a
synonym for “mass killing,” the element of intention
implied in genocide—the destruction of a group as
a group—distinguishes the two terms. This distinc-
tion also suggests an intrinsic role in genocide for
premeditation, insofar as determination of the group
which is the object of genocide must be made before,
and then maintained during, the act. In certain re-
spects, the issue of what defines a group as the object
of genocide remains a matter of convention—for
example, whether a minimum number of people is
required to constitute the group or, as victims, to
warrant the charge of genocide, and what the con-
nections among members of a group must or may
be. But here, as in other “paradigm” cases, such
methodological difficulties need not affect claims of
the occurrence of the phenomenon. The deliberate-
ness and systematic extent of the Nazi “Final Solu-
tion” have led some writers (e.g., Bauer) to view it
as historically unique and thus to distinguish the
category of “Holocaust” from other putative in-
stances of genocide; but it is arguably the distinctive
features of genocide itself that mark the various
occurrences.
Attempts have been made to develop a typology
of genocide—for example, as ranging from physical
destruction of a group carried out irrespective of in-
dividual considerations (e.g., geographical bound-
aries), as in the Nazi genocide against the Jews; to
physical destruction which is restricted by such
boundaries or by other distinctions within the group
itself (as in the differences ascribed by the Nazis to
the several “tribes” of Gypsies); to “ethnocide” or
cultural destruction, as in the transfer or dispersion
of populations or the repression of cultural and lin-
guistic traditions. (A recent extension of the concept
of genocide associates the prospect of nuclear de-
struction with the threat of “omnicide” or “anthro-
pocide”—the killing of all groups and individuals.)
Attempts are also ongoing to formulate an “early-
warning” system to anticipate the occurrence of gen-
ocide; but inasmuch as the most flagrant twentieth-
century instances of genocide were directed against
a populace under the cover of a more general war,
the difficulty of identifying such predictive features
is significant.
It has sometimes been claimed that genocide is
essentially a modern phenomenon, related to the his-
torical development of totalitarianism and the tech-
nological society; but these, although contributory,
genocide
seem to be neither necessary nor sufficient condi-
tions. (The technology employed in the occurrences
of genocide on record did not involve “advanced”
means.) The question of how to determine RESPON-
SIBILITY for genocide is complicated by the fact that
genocide characteristically occurs as a group or cor-
porate act (in addition to being directed against a
group). The U.N. Convention conceives of account-
ability for genocide as primarily individual, attrib-
uting liability to anyone who takes part in the act,
“whether they are constitutionally responsible rul-
ers, public officials or private individuals.” Legal and
moral questions of how such a standard can be ap-
plied do not differ, it seems, from the issues of how
and to what extent individual responsibility can be
assigned for other corporate acts. Beginning in 1998
and continuing, international tribunals considering
charges of genocide against individuals for acts com-
mitted in Bosnia and Rwanda strengthen the possi-
bility of enforcing the U.N. Convention.
The relatively recent recognition and designation
of genocide suggest that social awareness of wrong-
doing is itself subject to development—that it has a
history. But if this new consciousness is construed
(as it sometimes has been) as evidence of moral
progress, the events which impel that history—in
this instance, the occurrence of genocide itself—
provide stark counter-evidence.
See also: COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY; GROUPS,
MORAL STATUS OF; HOLOCAUST; HOMICIDE; HUMAN
RIGHTS; KILLING/LETTING DIE; LIFE, RIGHT TO; MILI-
TARY ETHICS; RESPONSIBILITY; VIOLENCE AND NON-
VIOLENCE; WAR AND PEACE.
Bibliography
Andreopoulos, George J., ed. Genocide: Conceptual and
Historical Dimensions. Philadelphia, PA: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1994.
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New
York: Meridian, 1959.
Bauer, Yehuda. The Holocaust in Historical Perspective.
Seattle. WA: University of Washington Press, 1978.
Chalk, Frank, and Kurt Jonassohn. The History and So-
ciology of Genocide. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1990.
Charney, Israel W., ed. Toward the Understanding and
Prevention of Genocide. Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1984.
———. Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review. 3 vols.
New York: Facts on File, 1988–1994.
608
Chorbajian, Levon, and George Shirinian, eds. Studies in
Comparative Genocide. New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1999.
Dadrian, Vahakn N. “A Theoretical Model of Genocide
with Particular Reference to the Armenian Case.” So-
ciologica Internationalis 14 (1976).
Fein, Helen. Accounting for Genocide. New York: Free
Press, 1979.
Katz, Steven R. The Holocaust in Historical Context. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Kuper, Leo. The Prevention of Genocide. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1986.
Lang, Berel. Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Lemkin, Raphael. Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Wash-
ington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, 1944.
Levene, Mark. “Is the Holocaust Simply Another Example
of Genocide?” Patterns of Prejudice 28 (1994): 3–26.
———. “Connecting Threads: Rwanda, the Holocaust,
and the Pattern of Contemporary Genocide.” In Gen-
ocide: Essays toward Understanding, Early Warning,
and Prevention, edited by Roger W. Smith. Williams-
burg, VA: William & Mary Press, 1999.
Robinson, Nehemiah. The Genocide Convention. New
York: Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1960.
Walliman, Isidor, and Michael Dobkowsky, eds. Genocide
and the Modern Age. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press, 1987.
See also the following periodicals for ongoing discussions
related to genocide: Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Per-
gamon Press); Internet on the Holocaust and Genocide
(Institute of the International Conference on the Holo-
caust and Genocide); Journal of the Armenian Assembly
of America.
Berel Lang
Gert, Bernard (1934– )
American philosopher. Gert received his Ph.D. in
philosophy from Cornell and has taught at Dart-
mouth College since 1959. He has published on
Ludwig WITTGENSTEIN (1889–1951), emotions,
FREE WILL, and personal identity, and he has cham-
pioned a new interpretation of Thomas HOBBES
(1588–1679) as rejecting psychological EGOISM.
However, Gert is best known for his moral theory,
which was presented first in The Moral Rules (1970)
and then in Morality (1988, 1998).
Gert’s moral theory attempts to justify a partic-
ular moral system on the basis of rationality, IMPAR-
TIALITY, and the definition of morality. Morality is
defined as a public system applying to all rational

persons. A system is public only when everyone to
whom it applies can understand and rationally ac-
cept it. Since morality applies to all rational persons,
every basic feature of morality must be known to all
rational persons. This definition of morality severely
constrains the form of Gert’s moral system.
To justify a moral system is to show that it would
be accepted by all rational impartial persons, so any
such justification must rest on accounts of rational-
ity and impartiality. Gert’s theory of rationality starts
with a list of evils, including DEATH, pain, loss of
ability, loss of freedom, and loss of PLEASURE. An
action is then irrational if and only if it significantly
increases the agent’s risk of suffering some evil on
the list, the agent is able to know this risk, and the
agent has no adequate reason for the action. A rea-
son for an action is a conscious rational belief of the
agent that the action will increase the probability
that someone (not necessarily the agent) will avoid
an evil or will gain ability, freedom, or pleasure.
Reasons never include mere desires, beliefs about
the past, or beliefs that someone will be harmed.
Whereas a reason for action is what can make some
otherwise irrational action rational, such a reason is
adequate when it does make an otherwise irrational
action rational.
Rationality alone is not enough to justify morality,
because immoral actions are not always irrational,
according to Gert. His justification of morality de-
pends also on his analysis of impartiality: A is im-
partial in respect R with regard to group G if and
only if A’s actions in respect R are not influenced at
all by which member(s) of G benefit or are harmed
by these actions. This general kind of impartiality is
compatible with arbitrariness and injustice, so it is
supposed to be morally neutral, as should be any
premise in a justification of morality. Morality is then
said to require a certain kind of impartiality, namely,
impartiality towards at least all moral agents with
regard to the MORAL RULES. One is impartial in this
way only if one does not allow any moral agent, in-
cluding oneself, to violate a moral rule with regard
to or for the sake of any moral agent unless one
would allow every moral agent to violate the same
rule with regard to or for the sake of any other moral
agent in the same circumstances. This kind of im-
partiality is supposed to be guaranteed only if the
basic moral system uses only facts that are known
to all rational persons.
Gert uses these theories to argue that no person
609
Gert, Bernard
who is rational and impartial would advocate pub-
licly allowing unjustified violations of ten moral
rules. As one might expect, the first five moral rules
are: Don’t cause death, pain, loss of ability, loss of
freedom, or loss of pleasure. The second five moral
rules are: Don’t deceive, break your promises, cheat,
disobey the law, or neglect your duty (as a parent,
child, doctor, student, and so on). In contrast with
these ten rules, Gert argues that ‘Promote pleasure’,
‘Prevent evil’, and ‘Make the punishment fit the
crime’ are not justified moral rules.
Violations of these moral rules are strongly (or
weakly) justified just when all (or some) rational im-
partial persons would advocate publicly allowing
every act with all of the same morally relevant fea-
tures. Morally relevant features include any feature
that could be known to all rational agents and could
affect what some rational impartial agent would ad-
vocate publicly allowing. This includes, among other
things, the rule that is violated, the evils that are
caused or avoided or prevented, the relevant desires
and beliefs of the person toward whom the rule is
violated, certain special relationships between the
agent and those towards whom the rule is violated,
the goods being promoted, whether the person to-
ward whom the rule is violated did or would other-
wise violate a moral rule unjustifiably or with only
weak justification, whether any alternatives would
be preferable, whether the violation is intentional,
and whether the situation is an emergency. By spec-
ifying these morally relevant features and the general
procedure for justifying exceptions, Gert seeks to
avoid problems of indeterminacy that plague other
rule-based moral theories.
The payoff from Gert’s moral theory comes in ap-
plications. Gert focused first on medical ethics in
Philosophy in Medicine (1982) and, more recently,
in Bioethics: A Return to Fundamentals (1997).
Gert’s theory of evils and rationality provides the
basis for his novel definitions of malady and mental
malady that profoundly affected the official defini-
tions by psychiatrists in two editions of the Diag-
nostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders:
DSM-III-R (1987) and DSM-IV (1994). Gert also
uses his account of moral rules and justified excep-
tions to define PATERNALISM and to distinguish jus-
tified from unjustified paternalism in medicine and
other areas. Gert has also argued for redefining the
distinction between active and passive EUTHANASIA
in terms of requesting and refusing treatment.
Gert, Bernard
Gert applied his moral theory to the human ge-
nome project in Morality and the New Genetics
(1996), and he has written extensively about many
other areas of APPLIED ETHICS, including BUSINESS
ETHICS, ENGINEERING ETHICS, and the ethics of sci-
entific research. If the test of an abstract moral the-
ory is its fruit in applied ethics, then Gert’s theory
passes as well as, if not better than, any other.
See also: AGENCY AND DISABILITY; ANALYTIC PHI-
LOSOPHY AND ETHICS; BIOETHICS; CHEATING; DEATH;
DECEIT; DUTY AND OBLIGATION; EMOTION; ETHICS
AND MORALITY; EUTHANASIA; FREE WILL; GENETIC
ENGINEERING; HOBBES; IMPARTIALITY; MEDICAL
ETHICS; MORAL RULES; OBEDIENCE TO LAW; PAIN
AND SUFFERING; PATERNALISM; PLEASURE; PROMISES;
RATIONAL CHOICE; REASONS FOR ACTION.
Bibliography
Morality: A New Justification of the Moral Rules. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Adds to The
Moral Rules an analysis of impartiality, applications,
and comparisons with Baier and Rawls.
Morality: Its Nature and Justification. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1998. Adds a theory of reasons, more
morally relevant features, and new details.
The Moral Rules: A New Rational Foundation for Moral-
ity. New York: Harper and Row, 1970. The original
presentation of Gert’s moral theory.
Gert, Bernard, and Charles M. Culver. Philosophy in Med-
icine: Conceptual and Ethical Issues in Medicine and
Psychiatry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Discusses malady and mental malady, paternalism and
its justification, death, and other problems in medical
ethics.
Gert, Bernard, Charles M. Culver, and K. Donner Clouser.
Bioethics: A Return to Fundamentals. New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1997. A greatly expanded and
revised edition of Philosophy in Medicine.
Gert, Bernard, et al. Morality and the New Genetics: A
Guide for Students and Health Care Providers. Boston:
Jones and Bartlett, 1996. Exploration with biologists of
ethical issues surrounding the human genome project.
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
Gewirth, Alan (1912– )
In a century driven by moral skepticism, a disinterest
in systematic philosophy, and a reluctance, until re-
cently, to apply philosophical analysis to practical
problems, Alan Gewirth has set forth a powerful
610
moral vision that is rationally compelling, is system-
atic, and applies to a wide range of individual, social,
political, and legal problems.
Educated at Columbia University in the 1930s,
Gewirth has taught at the University of Chicago
since 1937. Following military service in World War
II, he resumed teaching at Chicago in 1947. In 1975
he was named the Edward Carson Waller Distin-
guished Service Professor of Philosophy and, in that
same year, was elected to the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences.
Gewirth’s published works range from ancient
philosophy to the philosophy of science. They are
concentrated, however, in three main areas: DES-
CARTES’s (1596–1650) theory of knowledge; Mar-
silius of Padua (d. 1342?) and medieval political
philosophy; and moral theory. His original work in
ethics began appearing in the 1960s in a series of
interrelated articles. That work can be found fully
developed in Reason and Morality (1978) and Hu-
man Rights: Essays on Justification and Applica-
tions (1982).
Working in the rationalist tradition, Gewirth ad-
dresses head-on the most important and difficult
question in ethics—whether a substantial moral
principle can be rationally justified—by construct-
ing an intricate, unrelenting web of arguments that
proceed from nonmoral, factual premises to nor-
mative, prescriptive conclusions. Those conclusions
purport not simply to be true, moreover, but to be
true in the most compelling sense, namely, that their
denial leads to self-contradiction. Thus, if it suc-
ceeds, the argument constitutes a noncircular reso-
lution of the “is-ought” problem.
Perhaps the most original and important part of
Gewirth’s theory is what he calls its “dialectically
necessary method.” Taking human ACTION as the ba-
sic subject matter of ethics in that ethics has as its
primary function the justification and prescription
of rules for human conduct, Gewirth explicates the
normative structure of human action from the per-
spective of the actor or agent. This indirect method
of justification is thus “dialectical”—justification
takes place within the phenomenon of human ac-
tion, proceeding from the beliefs and claims of the
agent—but “necessary”—those beliefs and claims
are inherent, if only implicitly, in the normative
structure of conative action, a necessary feature of
the human condition, and are replete with normative
implications. In its full scope, then, the argument is

a long and complex unpacking of the necessary con-
tent and normative implications of human action,
first as they apply to the agent, then to others. Yet
in its premises, the argument depends only on the
internal perspective of the agent, not on other-
regarding sentiments or MOTIVES, intuitions, pru-
dential CONSENT, or any other such devices.
In barest outline, Gewirth argues that agents, in
acting, implicitly but necessarily make claims about
themselves, claims they must admit, on pain of self-
contradiction, apply not only to themselves but to
all others as well. And what are those claims? Here
the argument has shifted slightly but importantly
over the years. In an earlier version, Gewirth argued
that all conative action exhibits the generic features
of voluntariness and purposiveness in that it pro-
ceeds, at least by implication, from some choice and
toward some seeming good; and that because this
good justifies the act to the agent, he is involved,
again by implication, in making a right-claim to per-
form it. But this “voluntariness and purposiveness
which every agent necessarily has in acting, and
which he necessarily claims as rights for himself on
the ground that he is a prospective agent who wants
to fulfill his purposes, he must also, on pain of self-
contradiction, admit to be rights of his recipients,”
who are relevantly similar to him in being prospec-
tive agents. From here Gewirth went on to derive
RIGHTS against COERCION and harm, reflecting the
respective generic features of action—voluntariness
and purposiveness.
In later versions, however, the agent, by his ac-
tion, is said to claim not only the right to act vol-
untarily and purposively but the right to have “as
necessary goods the proximate general necessary
conditions of his acting to achieve his purposes.”
Those “necessary goods” translate into rights to
“freedom and well-being,” the latter consisting in
having the “general abilities and conditions required
for agency.” Because those goods are the agent’s
“due,” others are obligated, on this later version, not
simply to not interfere with the agent but, in certain
circumstances, to affirmatively assist him in realiz-
ing his purposes. The rights Gewirth derives, there-
fore, are not simply the negative rights of the clas-
sical liberal tradition, as in an earlier version, but
the positive rights of the modern “supportive state”
as well, which he goes on to defend.
In either version, however, the arguments culmi-
nate in what Gewirth calls the supreme principle of
611
Gewirth, Alan
morality, the Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC):
“Act in accord with the generic rights of your recip-
ients as well as of yourself.” But unlike the GOLDEN
RULE, or Kant’s Categorical Imperative, the PGC is
substantive, drawing its substance from the norma-
tive structure of human action, and is couched in the
modern language of rights, not the older language
of duties. At this time, it is probably too early to
judge the full power and scope of Gewirth’s contri-
bution to moral philosophy, although his work has
been the subject of a number of symposia in recent
years, and its influence continues to grow, both in
philosophy and beyond.
See also: AGENCY AND DISABILITY; AGENT-CENTERED
MORALITY; ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS; DUTY
AND OBLIGATION; EXTERNALISM AND INTERNALISM;
KANT; MORAL ABSOLUTES; MORAL REASONING; OUGHT
IMPLIES CAN; PRESCRIPTIVISM; RATIONALITY VS. REA-
SONABLENESS; RIGHTS.
Bibliography
Works by Gewirth
Self-Fulfillment. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1998.
“Are There Any Natural Rights?” In Mind, Value and Cul-
ture: Essays in Honor of E. M. Adams, edited by David
Weissbord. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview, 1989.
“Human Rights and Conceptions of the Self.” Philosophia
(Israel) 18 (1988): 129–49.
“Rights and Duties.” Mind 97 (1988): 441–45
“Ethical Universalism and Particularism.” Journal of Phi-
losophy 85 (1988): 283–302.
“The Justification of Morality.” Philosophical Studies 53
(1988): 245–62
“The Epistemology of Human Rights.” In Human Rights,
edited by Ellen Frankel Paul, 1–24. Oxford: Blackwell,
1986.
“Practical Philosophy, Civil Liberties, and Poverty.” Mo-
nist 67 (1984): 549–68.
“Economic Rights.” Philosophical Topics 14 (1986): 169–
93.
“The Epistemology of Human Rights.” Social Philosophy
and Public Policy 1 (1984): 1–24.
Human Rights: Essays on Justification and Applications.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
“Why Agents Must Claim Rights: A Reply.” Journal of Phi-
losophy 79 (1982): 403–10.
“Symposium on Reason and Morality.” Metaphilosophy
11 (1980): 54–69.
“The Basis and Content of Human Rights.” Georgia Law
Review 13 (1979): 1143–70.
Gewirth, Alan
Reason and Morality. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1978.
“Action and Rights: A Reply.” Ethics 86 (1976): 288–93.
“Ethics.” In vol. 6, Encyclopaedia Britannica. 15th ed.,
967–98. 1974.
“The ‘Is-Ought’ Problem Resolved.” Proceedings and Ad-
dresses of the American Philosophical Association 47
(1974): 34–61.
“Moral Rationality.” The Lindley Lectures. University of
Kansas Press, 1972.
“The Normative Structure of Action.” Review of Meta-
physics 25 (1971): 238–61.
“Categorial Consistency in Ethics.” Philosophical Quar-
terly 17 (1967): 289–99.
“The Generalization Principle.” Philosophical Review 78
(1964): 229–42.
Marsilius of Padua and Medieval Political Philosophy.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1951.
“Clearness and Distinctness in Descartes.” Philosophy 18
(1943): 19–38.
“The Cartesian Circle.” Philosophical Review 50 (1941):
369–95.
Works about Gewirth
Beyleveld, Deryck. The Dialectical Necessity of Morality:
An Analysis and Defense of Alan Gewirth’s Argument
to the Principle of Generic Consistency. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1991.
Boylan, Michael, ed. Gewirth: Critical Essays on Action,
Rationality, and Community. Studies in Social, Politi-
cal, and Legal Philosophy. Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1999. Papers originally presented at a con-
ference, Nov. 7–8, 1997, at Marymount University.
Chronological list of published writings by Gewirth,
215–19.
Regis, Edward, ed. Gewirth’s Ethical Rationalism: Criti-
cal Essays with a Reply by Alan Gewirth. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1984. Includes list of Ge-
wirth’s publications, 257–61.
Roger Pilon
Godwin, William (1756–1836)
Born in Cambridgeshire, England, the son and grand-
son of austerely Calvinistic ministers, Godwin was
relentlessly indoctrinated until the age of seventeen,
first at home, and then as the sole pupil of a fierce
dissenting minister in Norfolk. Dissenters were barred
from the universities, so for his higher education
Godwin was enrolled at one of the academies for dis-
senters (Hoxton), where for five years he received a
rigorous education in classical and modern lan-
612
guages, theology, and philosophy. For several years
thereafter, while he sought unsuccessfully to find a
parish, his theological views underwent a transfor-
mation. Enlightenment philosophy became his pas-
sion; deism (at most) his religion; resistance to po-
litical OPPRESSION his cause; and literary hack work
on London’s Grub Street the source of his livelihood.
His appetite for philosophical debate was legendary
(as was his reputation for moral courage, generosity,
and tactless candor); his literary output was prodi-
gious; his circle of famous friends and enemies was
spectacular: Edmund BURKE (1729–1797), Thomas
PAINE (1737–1809), Joseph Priestley (1733–1804),
Mary WOLLSTONECRAFT (1759–1797), William Haz-
litt (1778–1830), and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772–1834), among others.
An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)
made Godwin famous in England—some say the
most famous English philosopher of his generation.
It was a risky book, arguing unremittingly against
conventional forms of political AUTHORITY and
moral obligation. It was a systematic book, ground-
ing its anarchism in a theory of justice derived from
general moral principles which were themselves de-
veloped from metaphysical and epistemological as-
sumptions. And, like its author, it was uncompro-
mising, unwavering in its commitment to the power
of impartial reason.
How Godwin the anarchist escaped prosecution,
and how the book escaped the censors, is something
of a puzzle. Historians typically account for it by
alluding to the fact that the book’s price put it be-
yond the reach of individuals in the working class.
But the same historians note in the next breath that
groups of artisans and laborers all across England
quickly formed syndicates to buy copies.
It is similarly difficult to explain why the book
virtually dropped out of circulation after Godwin’s
death. (Aside from fragments of the chapters on
PROPERTY, it was not reprinted again in English until
1946.) Some writers have argued that the neglect
was just; that the arguments in the book are either
incoherent, or mostly derivative, or silly. But that
judgment is not supported by a fair reading of the
book. Others have cited the success, during God-
win’s life, of a politically motivated and persistent
press campaign to discredit him, both for his phil-
osophical views and for the scandals his marriage to
Mary Wollstonecraft precipitated. Yet it is difficult
to believe that later generations of scholars could

have been so long influenced by such matters. Still
other writers have appealed to matters of timing: On
this account, the utopian premises of the book were
quickly undermined by the excesses of the French
Revolution (1789–1799), its rationalistic ones were
replaced by romanticism, and Godwin the philoso-
pher was transformed, in pot-bound accounts of lit-
erary history, into Godwin the husband of Mary
Wollstonecraft and father of Mary Wollstonecraft
Shelley (1797–1851).
Whatever the reason for its neglect, Political
Justice amply repays careful study. The most noto-
rious passage of the work is Book II Chapter II, in
which Godwin argues that it is our moral duty to
judge our actions with complete IMPARTIALITY. Feel-
ings of GRATITUDE, bonds of FRIENDSHIP, and famil-
ial duty are to have no fundamental place in justice.
He says if François FÉNELON, the Archbishop of
Cambrai (1651–1715), and his valet or chamber-
maid are in danger, and we can save only one, our
duty is to save the one whose continued existence
will have the best overall consequences for aggregate
human HAPPINESS. He presumes this will be Féne-
lon—no matter if the valet is one’s father or brother,
the chambermaid is one’s mother, wife or sister.
Justice is simply “the production of the greatest sum
of pleasure or happiness.” It is our duty to do what-
ever “constitutes the best application of the capacity
of the individual, to the general advantage.” And it
is our right to claim from others our “share of the
benefit arising from [our] neighbours’ discharge of
their . . . duties.”
In this respect Godwin adopts an extreme form of
what would later be called direct or act-utilitarianism,
and he does not shrink from its consequences: Du-
ties are shorthand ways of referring to what we
ought to do; RIGHTS refer to what others ought to
do for us. What we and others ought to do is what-
ever produces the most aggregate happiness. Our
duties and rights concern not only forbearance but
mutual assistance (i.e., we have not only negative
duties but positive ones). We are entitled to only as
much property as is conducive to the general good.
Others are entitled to as much from us as is con-
ducive to the same. Promises are not in themselves
binding. If it is conducive to the general good to
break a promise, then it is our moral duty to do so.
Social INSTITUTIONS such as marriage and FAMILY
are pernicious insofar as they blind us to the duties
of impartial justice, and divert us from pursuing
613
Godwin, William
what is best for all. OBEDIENCE TO LAW is likewise
to be judged by its consequences: Government has
no legislative authority whatsoever. That is, it cannot
determine what our duties are, for those are given
by a direct calculation of consequences. Govern-
ment’s only legitimate role is an executive one: when
necessary, it may impose restrictions on people in
order to prevent injustice. (In the real world, God-
win argues, those legitimate restrictions are far
fewer than we have. In a fully realizable world they
are minimal, and in an ideal world they are virtually
nonexistent.)
Godwin is not a crude hedonist. For him the good
is happiness, and happiness includes what JOHN
STUART MILL (1806–1873) later called “higher”
pleasures. (Godwin’s term is “secondary pleasures,”
and such pleasures include those of “intellectual
feeling . . . sympathy . . . [and] self-approbation.”)
In order to achieve such happiness, humans need
knowledge (achieved by the fullest possible exercise
of reason), a “high state of civilisation” (to provide
the environment in which the exquisite secondary
pleasures can exist), the widest possible degree of
individual LIBERTY (both for finding the truth and
for SELF-RESPECT) and prodigious “sincerity” or
truthfulness (to secure and sustain the knowledge
required to make judgments about justice). Godwin
gives arguments for personal liberty and freedom of
speech that are echoed in Mill; he gives arguments
for radical redistribution echoed in nineteenth-
century anarchist and socialist literature; he answers
objections to the analysis of PROMISES by encour-
aging readers to think carefully about consequences.
(He believes that honoring promises will most often
turn out to be a good thing.) He argues against wars
of aggression, and outlines how a loosely organized
DEMOCRACY can defend itself against invaders. (He
advises never engaging the enemy in a formal way,
but rather waging what we now call a low intensity
conflict that makes it impossible for the invader to
govern.)
At least four sorts of objections are commonly
raised against Political Justice. One is incoherence,
which is much less applicable to the editions of 1796
and 1798 than to the original, since in 1793 Godwin
was working under a deadline that meant sending
sheets to the printer as he wrote them, without the
opportunity to revise in the light of what he discov-
ered in writing later chapters. The incoherence that
remains is as much (or as little) as we may expect of
Godwin, William
an attempt to be a rigorous utilitarian while uphold-
ing strong commitments to individual liberty, sin-
cerity, and the pursuit of truth.
Another charge is lack of originality. It is true that
Godwin appropriated, rather than advanced, the
metaphysical, epistemological, and historical under-
pinnings of Political Justice, and it is true that he
advanced many of his own arguments by borrowing
an organizational framework from other writers. By
present day standards (though not by those of his
own day) his referential practices were sloppy. One
finds it odd, for example, that Jeremy BENTHAM
(1748–1832) is nowhere discussed in Political
Justice, even though his Introduction to the Princi-
ples and Morals of Legislation (1789) was available,
and Godwin certainly knew him. But the crystalline
character of Godwin’s arguments and his relentless
pursuit of their consequences produced a work of
more originality and enduring use than most.
A third charge is absurdity. This charge is that
Godwin took some good ideas to their logical but
ridiculous extremes, thus exposing them (and him-
self) to an appropriately dismissive response.
The final charge is irrelevance. The idea here is
that Godwin is at most a creature of his time—a
writer for a special moment in which hope for the
triumph of reason and the perfectibility of human
society seemed reasonable. In our wiser age, so the
criticism goes, these naive hopes are useless. Indeed,
it is said, Godwin himself softened with experience
and thus undermined the worth of his book. To this
charge, only the work itself can answer.
See also: AUTHORITY; BENTHAM; BURKE; CALVIN;
COMMON GOOD; CONSEQUENTIALISM; DEMOCRACY;
DUTY AND OBLIGATION; FAMILY; FEMINIST ETHICS;
FÉNELON; FRIENDSHIP; HAPPINESS; IMPARTIALITY;
INSTITUTIONS; JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE; LEGITIMACY;
LIBERTY; MORAL REASONING; NORMS; OBEDIENCE TO
LAW; OPPRESSION; PAINE; PLEASURE; POLITICAL SYS-
TEMS; PROMISES; PROPERTY; RIGHTS; SOCIAL CON-
TRACT; UTILITARIANISM; WOLLSTONECRAFT.
Bibliography
Works by Godwin
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on
Morals and Happiness. Edited by F. E. L. Priestley. 3d
ed. 3 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1946
[1793, 1st ed.]. Facsimile of the 3d, corrected edition
614
(1798). Includes variant readings of the 1st and 2d
eds., critical introduction and notes. Text in vols. 1 and
2; critical apparatus in vol. 3. Extremely valuable edi-
tion, though the editor’s introduction has some mis-
leading remarks about the nature of utilitarianism and
Godwin’s account of rights.
Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of
Woman. Farnborough: Gregg, 1970 [1798]. This edi-
tion includes Wollstonecraft’s book. Intimate account
of the author’s relationship with Mary Wollstonecraft.
Caused a scandal, and did much to damage Godwin’s
reputation.
Works about Godwin
St. Clair, William. The Godwins and the Shelleys. New
York: W. W. Norton, 1989. Masterful biography of
Godwin. Extensive bibliography of Godwin’s signed,
unsigned, and pseudonymous works.
Lawrence C. Becker
golden rule
Commonly formulated as “Do unto others as you
would have others do unto you” (negatively: “Do not
do unto others what you would not have others do
unto you”), the Golden Rule is so called because it
has long been thought of inestimable worth as a first
principle of morals. It can be traced back to CON-
FUCIUS (551–479 B.C.E.) and the Old Testament,
and the expression is often specifically used to refer
to the precept in Luke: “As ye would that men
should do to you, do ye also to them likewise”
(6:31), as well as to that in Matthew: “All things
whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do
ye even so to them.” ( 7:12) On occasion another
precept in Matthew has been regarded as a version
of the Golden Rule: “Judge not, that ye be not
judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall
be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall
be measured to you again.” (7:1–2). But, though the
latter may be a golden rule, it is not the Golden
Rule, and it is a nice question how it relates to the
Golden Rule. Diogenes Laertius (second century
C.E.) ascribes a version of the Rule to Thales (fl. 580
B.C.E.): “How shall we lead the best and most right-
eous life?” “By refraining from doing what we
blame in others”; and something very like it to AR-
ISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.): “To the question how we
should behave to friends, he [Aristotle] answered,
‘As we should wish them to behave to us.’” If the
implied restriction to friends is emphasized, this

would not be genuinely a version of the Golden
Rule. It is evident that the Golden Rule is a principle
of great antiquity; it has played a key role in the
moral teachings of nearly all cultures and religions
and continues to play a vital role in MORAL EDUCA-
TION. Yet until recently it did not receive much phil-
osophical discussion, had been mentioned usually
only in passing and often with disdain, and was dis-
cussed mainly only in works of CASUISTRY and moral
theology.
One problem about the Golden Rule is to explain
its ubiquitous character, especially given the diver-
sity of moral codes and customs. Another is to de-
termine its status, as sound or unsound, primary or
secondary, necessary or contingent, and, if it is nec-
essary, how it can be a substantive principle. A third
is how to respond to various objections to it that
have prevailed at different times. A fourth is to de-
termine its scope and application.
Immanuel KANT (1724–1804) treated the Golden
Rule with disdain, saying that it cannot “serve . . .
as the rule or principle,” that it is only “a deduction
from” the supreme principle, though with serious
limitations. In his Groundwork (1785), Kant stated
objections of the sort that have since become stan-
dard: “Many a one would gladly consent that others
should not benefit him, provided only that he might
be excused from showing benevolence to them”;
and, “On this principle the criminal might argue
against the judge who punishes him, and so on.” Yet
T. K. Abbott, in his “Memoir of Kant,” says that
even though “difficulties might be raised” about the
Golden Rule “from a speculative point of view . . .
nevertheless . . . in practice it probably never misled
anyone, for everyone sees that the essence of it is the
elimination of self-partiality and inward dishonesty.”
In 1934, E. W. Hirst argued that “The Rule does not
teach that as between two persons there must be
similarity in the details of behaviour, but rather im-
partiality of interest; from that point of view the
criminal must endorse the verdict of the judge, as
the judge must expect and approve the same verdict
were he the criminal.”
Other objections were raised by Henry SIDGWICK
(1838–1900), who claimed that the “formula is ob-
viously unprecise in statement: for one might wish
for another’s cooperation in sin, and be willing to
reciprocate it. Nor is it even true . . . that we ought
to do to others only what we think it right for them
to do to us: for no one will deny that there may be
615
golden rule
differences in the circumstances . . . of two individ-
uals, A and B, which would make it wrong for A to
treat B in the way in which it is right for B to treat
A.” This led Sidgwick to an early formulation of
the principle of justice that has since acquired the
name UNIVERSALIZABILITY. Sidgwick claimed that
“the self-evident principle strictly stated” would be,
“It cannot be right for A to treat B in a manner in
which it would be wrong for B to treat A, merely on
the ground that they are two different individuals,
and without there being any difference between . . .
the two which can be stated as a reasonable ground
for difference in treatment.” He added that “such a
principle manifestly does not give complete guid-
ance.” Sidgwick regarded this principle as equiva-
lent to Samuel CLARKE’s (1675–1729) “rule of eq-
uity”: “Whatever I judge reasonable or unreasonable
that another should do for me; that, by the same
judgment, I declare reasonable or unreasonable, that
I in the like case should do for him.” Sidgwick says
that Clarke’s rule of equity “is of course, the ‘Golden
Rule’ precisely stated.” But there is no “of course”
about it; it is not obvious that this is a statement or
restatement of the Golden Rule, no matter how pre-
cise it is. The exact relationships among the Golden
Rule, Clarke’s “rule of equity,” Sidgwick’s principle
of justice (“What is right for one person is right for
every similar person in similar circumstances”), and
universalizability remain to be determined. Hirst is
acute on this matter as well:
The Golden Rule does not say merely that
what is reasonable for one man to do to
another is reasonable for any other man in
the same circumstances. It does not primarily
teach impartiality of judgment on acts
considered in abstraction from the agents;
rather does it inculcate impartiality of regard
between the agents themselves. So long as we
use the ideas of similarity and equality which
pertain to the maxim of Equity, we relate acts
and situations rather than persons. The
Golden Rule relates to persons, and involves
the idea of unity. Clarke’s Rule of Equity
could . . . be applied by persons whose
attitude to each other was one of
indifference. . . . All it requires is equality of
treatment; whereas the Golden Rule implies
community of interest, and teaches
impartiality of regard.
golden rule
One question about the Golden Rule of long
standing, especially in the literature of moral theol-
ogy, is whether, as was long taken for granted, the
positive version is better than the negative. G. B.
King and M. G. Singer have both argued, though on
different grounds, that this is not so, that there is no
substantive difference between them. A more im-
portant question is how objections such as the ones
mentioned can be met in general. In 1963, Singer
argued that such objections are met by a distinction
between the particular interpretation, which “im-
plies that whatever in particular I would have others
do to or for me, I should do to or for them”—an
interpretation regarded on all sides as unacceptable
and absurd—and the general interpretation, where
“what I have to consider is the general ways in which
I would have others behave in their treatment of
me,” which is not subject to these same difficulties.
For “what I would have them do, in abstraction from
any of their particular desires, is to take account of
my interests and either satisfy them or not willfully
frustrate them. . . . I am to treat others on the same
principle or standard I would have them apply in
their treatment of me. And the same standard in ap-
plication to differing circumstances or interests can
lead to widely divergent particular results.”
This distinction has not met with overwhelming
acceptance. Lansing Pollock argued that the Golden
Rule, even on the general interpretation, is still an
“imprecise . . . directive,” is “unacceptable as an
action-guide” in any interpretation, and “fails as a
precise statement of the reciprocal ground of our
duties and obligations.” Alan GEWIRTH has argued
that the Golden Rule, in its traditional formulations,
is imprecise, fails as an action guide, and is irrational
since in such interpretations it would require people
to do things that are irrational. It consequently needs
rationalizing if it “is to be saved.” But this “saving”
of the Golden Rule involves transforming it into “the
Rational Golden Rule”, which is equivalent to Ge-
wirth’s “principle of generic consistency.” In Ge-
wirth’s reformulation, the Golden Rule reads: “Do
unto others as you have a right that they do unto
you.” Or, to put it in its Generic formulation: “Act
in accord with the generic rights of your recipients
as well as yourself.” Although the argument is fas-
cinating, this transformation fails to capture the es-
sence of the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule is mis-
construed when it is taken either as an attempt to
provide a precise action guide or as “a precise state-
616
ment of the reciprocal ground of our duties and ob-
ligations.” Indeed, no moral principle can serve as a
precise action guide, telling us in each set of circum-
stances exactly what we should do. So to construe
principles is to confuse moral principles with de-
tailed rules applying to specific sets of circumstances
and to leave out of account the morally essential fac-
tor of moral judgment, which is not something de-
ducible from precise “action guides.” A principle can
be a general guide to action without telling us exactly
just what to do in each set of circumstances. This
requires judgment, which in turn requires CHARAC-
TER, moral sense, and discernment, and to look to
precise principles for exact direction is to surrender
both autonomy and RESPONSIBILITY for one’s own
judgments and decisions.
The philosopher who has come closest to a sound
account of the meaning and status of the Golden
Rule may well be Hans Reiner, who observed, in
1983, that the Golden Rule is not just a principle of
equity but one of autonomy. Reiner argues that the
Rule “presupposes a moral standard, viz. my judg-
ments of the conduct of others,” and consequently
also “does contain a standard . . . and one of no
slight consequence. . . . It gives us a standard to
judge our own conduct by in referring us to our judg-
ments of similar conduct on the part of others. . . .
About the conduct of others we generally have some
opinion . . . The rule refers us . . . to a norm that it
does not . . . explicitly contain, but that each of us
takes for granted, and so already has. . . . Every one
of our judgments about the conduct of others . . .
presupposes a moral norm.” Consequently, “we must
have long ago acknowledged some norms to be
valid.” Reiner adds that such a rule is a rule of au-
tonomy, since it implies “that I acknowledge moral
demands, which I cannot do without submitting to
myself, and so imply self-legislation.” Reiner adds
further that the Golden Rule supplies “a proof of
natural law, when natural law is defined in its clas-
sical sense, as a law that is irrevocably in force as a
concomitant of man’s nature.” He continues, “There
is no one who does not claim, somehow and in some
circle of men, the right to be protected under the
law, and thus acknowledge the law’s validity. And so
. . . all men, in acknowledging the validity of some
law, acknowledge a difference between right and
wrong.” Any principle that can do all this must be
very powerful indeed, and if the Golden Rule can do
this, as claimed, it is not only powerful but also de-

serving of its appellation “golden.” Reiner’s argu-
ment also indicates that the standard treatment by
counterexample or looking for the Golden Rule to
serve as a precise action guide has been radically
misguided. It will be interesting to see where further
discussion will lead.
Discussion also should attempt to explain why
the Golden Rule, in one formulation or another,
should be involved in the moral codes of nearly every
culture known to us. In some of these cultures, as in
societies governed by or tracing back to the code of
Confucius, it plays a subsidiary role. In others, es-
pecially those resting on at least a proclaimed ideal
of EQUALITY, it serves as a fundamental principle on
which more specific rules are based. It is surely cu-
rious why the Golden Rule should be at the core or
at the head of so many codes of conduct in such
disparate parts of the world. The fact that it is basic
to the moral codes of so many and such different
peoples would seem to entail that it is a fundamental
normative moral principle, connected inextricably
with human nature, and this inference from an is to
an ought surely deserves examination.
See also: ALTRUISM; AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS;
BARGAINING; BENEVOLENCE; CASUISTRY; CHARAC-
TER; COMMUNITARIANISM; COMPARATIVE ETHICS;
CONFUCIAN ETHICS; DUTY AND OBLIGATION; EQUAL-
ITY; GEWIRTH; HARE; IMPARTIALITY; JUSTICE, CIR-
CUMSTANCES OF; MORAL EDUCATION; MORAL RULES;
NATURAL LAW; NORMS; PROMISES; RECIPROCITY; RE-
SPONSIBILITY; RIGHTS; SIDGWICK; THEOLOGICAL
ETHICS; UNIVERSALIZABILITY.
Bibliography
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his translation of Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason
and Other Works on The Theory of Ethics, lii–liii. 6th
ed. London: Longmans, Green, 1909.
Adler, Felix. An Ethical Philosophy of Life. New York:
Appleton, 1919. Distinguishes between the Golden
Rule enunciated by Confucius and that laid down by
Jesus. See pp. 31–32.
Alexy, Robert. A Theory of Legal Argumentation. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1989. See p. 72 for useful references
to discussions in German.
Ausubel, Nathan, ed. A Treasury of Jewish Folklore. New
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Baier, Kurt. The Moral Point of View. Ithaca: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1958. See pp. 202–11.
617
golden rule
———. The Rational and the Moral Order. Chicago:
Open Court, 1995. See pp. 277–78.
Baylis, Charles A. Ethics: The Principles of Wise Choice.
New York: Holt, 1958. The Golden Rule is discussed
on pp. 97–99. Baylis proposes a “revised Golden Rule
[which] says to act toward others in the way which will
result in the greatest good for all, giving equal consid-
eration to the good of each.” (p. 99.) As with so many
other attempts to “revise” the Golden Rule, this rests
on a faulty analysis and consequent misunderstanding
of it, in the process transforming it into something else,
in this case a qualified form of non-hedonistic utilitar-
ianism. But, as even Sidgwick had trouble understand-
ing, the Golden Rule is not a utilitarian principle.
Bertocci, Peter A., and Richard M. Millard. Personality
and the Good. New York: David McKay, 1963. See pp.
397–98 and 598–601. The latter pages contain some
instructive historical observations.
Bierman, A. K. Life and Morals. New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1980. See pp. 339–42.
Blackstone, William T. “The Golden Rule: A Defense.”
Southern Journal of Philosophy 3 (1965): 172–77.
Bok, Sissela. Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private
Life. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. See pp. 30–
31, 98.
Butler, Joseph. Sermons. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897
[1726]. Sermon X, “Upon Self-Deceit,” sec. 18.
Cadoux, A. T. “The Implications of the Golden Rule.” In-
ternational Journal of Ethics 22 (1912): 272–87.
Clarke, Samuel. Discourse Upon Natural Religion. In Brit-
ish Moralists, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, vol. 2, 23–
25. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897 [1706]. Also in
British Moralists 1650–1800, edited by D. D. Raphael,
vol. 1, 207–9. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.
Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Trans-
lated by R. D. Hicks. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1925. I: 329, 465.
Etzioni, Amitai. The New Golden Rule. New York: Basic
Books, 1996. Assumes, without actually arguing the
point, that the Golden Rule, which the author refers to
disparagingly as “the old golden rule,” is somehow de-
ficient and in need of replacement by something called
“the new golden rule”, the precise statement of which
is not easy to pin down. Michael Elliott, in The New
York Times Book Review, February 23, 1997, has
stated it as “Respect and uphold society’s moral order
as you would have society respect and uphold your au-
tonomy,” which seems to come close to what the author
is trying to say. See pp. 4–5, 12–13, 27, 47, 218, 224,
235, 244, 247–48, 251, 254. On the whole, a contri-
bution to communitarian sociology and politics rather
than to moral philosophy.
Fishkin, James S. The Limits of Obligation. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1982.
Gaffney, James. “The Golden Rule: Abuses and Uses.” In
Introduction to Ethical Theory, edited by Kenneth R.
golden rule
Rogerson. Philadelphia, Chicago: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1991. See pp. 104–6.
Gewirth, Alan. “The Golden Rule Rationalized.” Midwest
Studies in Philosophy 3 (1978): 133–47.
Gould, James A. “The Not-So-Golden Rule.” Southern
Journal of Philosophy 1 (1963): 10–14.
———. “Blackstone’s Meta-Not-So-Golden Rule.” South-
ern Journal of Philosophy 18 (1980): 509–13.
Hannaford, Robert V. “The Golden Rule: Motive and
Method in Moral Reasoning.” Chapter 3 in his Moral
Anatomy and Moral Reasoning, 104–23. Lawrence,
KS: University Press of Kansas, 1993. An especially
acute discussion in a book that has not received the
attention it deserves.
Hare, R. M. Freedom and Reason. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1963. Chapter 6, and passim.
———. “Abortion and the Golden Rule.” Philosophy and
Public Affairs 3 (1975): 201–22.
———. Moral Thinking. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.
See pp. 95–96.
Hertzler, J. O. “On Golden Rules.” International Journal
of Ethics 44 (1934): 418–36. Though philosophically
not very searching, this has some historical and socio-
logical interest. Spooner, cited below, is source of many
of its points.
Hirsch, Emil R. “The Golden Rule.” In The Jewish Ency-
clopedia, VI, 21–22. New York and London: Funk and
Wagnalls, 1904.
Hirst, E. W. “The Categorical Imperative and the Golden
Rule.” Philosophy 9 (1934): 328–35.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. (1651) Chapter 15, par. 35;
chapter 14, par. 4; chapter 17, par. 2. (In the Everyman
edition, 1914, pp. 81–82, 67, 87.)
Hoche, Hans-Ulrich. “The Golden Rule: New Aspects of
an Old Moral Principle.” In Contemporary German
Philosophy, edited by D. E. Christensen, et al., I: 69–
90. University Park: Pennsylvania University Press,
1982. A paper of first importance, containing an ex-
tensive bibliography, especially of works in German.
———. Elemente einer Anatomie der Verpflichtung. Mu-
nich: Verlag Karl Alberg, 1992. Argues, inter alia, that
certain forms of the Golden Rule are analytic.
Hodges, D.C. “The Golden Rule and its Deformations.”
The Personalist 38 (1957): 130–47.
Hruschka, Joachim. “Die Konkurrenz von Goldener Regel
und Prinzip der Verallgemeinerung in der juristischen
Diskussion des 17.18, Jahrhunderts als geschichtliche
Wurzel von Kants kategorische Imperativ.” Juristen
Zeitung (JZ) 42 (1987): 941–52.
———. “Universalisation and Related Principles.” Archiv
für Rechts-und Sozialphilosophie 78 (1992): 289–
300. Hruschka’s work is historically unique and philo-
sophically valuable.
Hume, Robert Ernest. The World’s Living Religions. New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1927. See pp. 265–67.
618
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Mor-
als. Translated by H. J. Paton. London: Hutchinson’s
University Library, 1948 [1785]. See p. 97n (Prussian
Akademy ed., 430n).
King, G. B. “The ‘Negative’ Golden Rule.” Journal of Re-
ligion 8 (1928): 268–79.
———. “The ‘Negative’ Golden Rule: Additional Note.”
Journal of Religion 15 (1935): 59–62.
Lamont, W. D. Law and the Moral Order. Aberdeen: Uni-
versity Press, 1981. See chapter 8, especially pages
59ff., and 63–64.
Liszka, James Jakob. Moral Competence: An Integrated
Approach to the Problems of Ethics. Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1999. See pp. 346–48, 351,
352.
MacIver, Robert M. “The Deep Beauty of the Golden
Rule.” In Moral Principles of Action, edited by Ruth
Nanda Anshen. New York: Harper & Bros., 1952.
Mackie, J. L. Ethics. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,
1977. Chapter 4.
McArthur, Harvey K. “Golden Rule.” In Dictionary of
Christian Ethics, edited by John Macquarrie, 136–37.
Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1967. Also in
The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics, edited
by James F. Childress and John Macquarrie, 250–51.
Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1986.
Pollock, Lansing. “Reciprocity in Moral Theory.” Ph. D.
diss., University of Chicago, 1970. See chapter 2, “The
Golden Rule,” pp. 6–28.
Reiner, Hans. “Die ‘Goldene Regel’: Die Bedeutung einer
sittlichen Grundformel der Menschheit.” Zeitschrift für
philosophische Forschung 7 (1948): 74–105. Re-
printed in his Die Grundlagen der Sittlichkeit, 348–79.
Meisenheim: Verlag Anton Hain, 1974. Contains,
among other things, a detailed account of the philo-
sophical history of the Golden Rule.
———. “The Golden Rule and Natural Law.” In his Duty
and Inclination: The Fundamentals of Morality Dis-
cussed and Redefined with Special Regard to Kant and
Schiller, translated by M. Santos, 271–93. The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1983. One of the most important and
penetrating pieces to appear on the subject. Reiner has
published a number of pieces on die Goldene Regel.
There is a bibliography of Reiner’s writings in Hoche
1982, cited above. See also a review in Philosophical
Review 96 (1987): 299–304.
Rost, H. T. D. The Golden Rule. Oxford: George Ronald,
1986. Possibly the first book-length treatment of the
subject in English, though in the tradition of moral
theology rather than moral philosophy. Contains an ex-
tensive bibliography, especially of religious and theo-
logical treatments and of discussions in non-Western
religious traditions.
Rowley, Harold Henry. “The Chinese Sages and The
Golden Rule.” In his Submission in Suffering and
Other Essays on Eastern Thought, 74–107. Cardiff:

University of Wales Press, 1951. Well off the beaten
track and valuable both for the quality of its discussion
and its references. Consider the following: “. . . it
seems futile to discuss the sayings [versions of the
Golden Rule descended from antiquity] merely as iso-
lated maxims, unrelated to the rest of the teaching of
those who uttered them, since it can only be in the
context of that other teaching that the real meaning of
the words on the lips of any teacher can be discerned.
Moreover, before the relative worth of the precepts can
be appraised, it is important to consider how far they
embody the penetrating observation of the philosopher,
or how far the inspiring call of the leader. Yet again, it
is essential to ask what was the motive power to which
the teacher looked for the realization of his teaching.”
(p. 76.)
Russell, H. J. “Ideals and Practice.” Philosophy 17 (1942):
109–10.
Sachs, A. “Rights, Promises, and Property.” in R. N. An-
shen, ed., Moral Principles of Action, edited by R. N.
Anshen, 228–302. New York: Harper, 1952.
Samuel, Herbert Louis. Practical Ethics. London, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1935. See pp. 46–47.
Scott-Taggart, M. J. “Recent Work on the Philosophy of
Kant.” American Philosophical Quarterly 3 (1966).
See section 9, esp. pp. 198–200.
Sharp, Frank Chapman. Ethics. New York: The Century
Co., 1928. See pp. 140–41, 334–39.
Sidgwick, Henry. The Methods of Ethics. 7th ed. London:
Macmillan, 1907 [1st ed., 1874]. See especially pp.
379–80, 384–85.
———. Outlines of the History of Ethics. 6th ed. London:
Macmillan, 1931. See note, p. 167.
Singer, Marcus G. “The Golden Rule.” Philosophy 38
(1963): 293–314.
———. “Golden Rule.” In The Encyclopedia of Philoso-
phy, edited by Paul Edwards, 3: 365–67. New York:
Macmillan, 1967. Contains a bibliography, here largely
supplemented though with some repetition.
———. “Universalizability and the Generalization Prin-
ciple.” In Morality and Universality: Essays in Ethical
Universalizability, edited by N. Potter & M. Timmons,
47–73. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1985. Lays out the host of
ambiguities carried by the term ‘universalizability’; the
book itself contains an excellent introduction by the
editors, and a comprehensive bibliography.
Spooner, W. A. “Golden Rule.” In The Encyclopedia of
Religion and Ethics, edited by James Hastings, volume
VI, 310–12. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914.
Stebbing, L. Susan. Thinking to Some Purpose. Harmonds-
worth: Penguin Books, 1939. Although the Golden
Rule is not mentioned explicitly, the book discusses the
“fallacy of special pleading”, therefore the Golden
Rule, on pp. 49–53, 114–16, 164–65, 190.
Stoljar, Samuel. Moral and Legal Reasoning. New York:
Barnes and Noble, 1980. See pp. 36–39, 160–61.
619
golden rule
Syrkin, A. “The Golden Rule.” Darshana International,
Part I, 25/1 (January 1985): 20–34; Part II, 25/2 (April
1985): 1–14. A mainly historical survey, but a very
broad one, with information about versions of the
Golden Rule as it appears in many other cultures and
languages.
Tasker, J. G. “Golden Rule.” In A Dictionary of Christ and
the Gospels, edited by James Hastings, volume I, 653–
55. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1907. Main-
tains, inter alia, that the positive form of the Golden
Rule is superior to the negative. See p. 654.
Thomas, George F. Christian Ethics and Moral Philoso-
phy. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955. See pp.
48, 55, 429–30.
Thoreau, Henry David. A Week on the Concord and Mer-
rimack Rivers. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
Modern Student’s Library, 1921; Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, n. d. [1849]. Of interest here for the following
remark: “Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you
would that they should do unto you, is by no means a
golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest
man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden
not to have any rule at all in such a case.” (“Sunday,”
paragraph 35.)
Tsanoff, Radoslav A. Ethics. Revised Edition. New York:
Harper & Bros., 1955 [1947]. Pages 31–33 contain an
interesting historical account.
Votaw, C. W. “Sermon on the Mount.” In A Dictionary of
the Bible, edited by James Hastings, vol. 5, 41–42. New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1904.
Wattles, Jeffrey. The Golden Rule. New York; Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1996. A thorough if not defini-
tive treatment of the subject, which traces its history
in both Western and Eastern traditions and conscien-
tiously and capably, if only in a summary way, considers
a number of recent discussions of it, philosophical, psy-
chological, and religious. Contains an inclusive and
wide-ranging bibliography, the fullest yet seen, includ-
ing listings of some doctoral dissertations on the sub-
ject from 1966 on. A valuable supplement to Rost,
supra.
Weiss, Paul. “The Golden Rule.” The Journal of Philoso-
phy 38 (1941): 138–54.
———. Man’s Freedom. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1950. See pp. 138–54.
Westermarck, Edward. The Origin and the Development
of the Moral Ideas. London: Macmillan and Co., 1906.
See volume I, 102–3.
Whately, Richard. Lessons on Morals (Cambridge, Mass.:
John Bartlett, 1857). See chapter iv.
Wheelwright, Philip. A Critical Introduction to Ethics.
New York: The Odyssey Press, 1949. See pp. 165, 207.
Wright, G. H. von. The Varieties of Goodness. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963. See pp. 201–2, 21.
Marcus G. Singer
good, theories of the
good, theories of the
The word ‘good’ can be used adjectivally, to modify
a noun, as in “good meal”, “good hammer”, “good
doctor”, “good school”, “good painting”, “good per-
son”, “good choice”. So used, the word ‘good’ is syn-
categorematic, which is to say that it cannot be de-
tached from the noun that it modifies. Thus a good
painting is not something that is a painting and that
also possesses the property of goodness; rather the
good-making characteristics vary for each class or
kind of object. However, life, HONOR, PLEASURE,
HAPPINESS, freedom, knowledge, health, and many
other things are often said to be good or goods or
good things—to be good in themselves (as ends) or
good as means to desirable ends, or both. Here, it
does look as though we were attributing a common
property of goodness (whether as a means or as an
end or both) to certain things. But we should heed
ARISTOTLE’s (384–322 B.C.E.) warning that the ac-
counts we give of such things as honor, WISDOM, and
pleasure, in respect of their goodness, are distinct
and diverse (Nicomachean Ethics 1096b). So there
is plenty of reason to doubt that there is, or could
be, a single common property of goodness, in which
case the twentieth-century attempt to give an ac-
count of it (Ralph Barton PERRY [1876–1957],
G. E. MOORE [1873–1958], W. D. ROSS [1877–
1971]) was foredoomed to failure. The denial of the
existence of such a property by the early emotivists
(I. A. Richards [1893–1979], W. H. F. Barnes, A. J.
AYER [1910 – 1989], C. L. STEVENSON [1908 –
1979]), who claimed to say that something is good
is not to predicate a property of it, but to express an
attitude of favor or approval towards it, would seem
to be equally off-track, since, like the claim of which
it is the denial, viz goodness is a single property, it
assumes that the word ‘good’ functions the same
way in all contexts. The claim of Thomas HOBBES
(1588–1679) that ‘good’ is simply the name we give
to the object of our own desires and that it does not
denote anything in things (Leviathan, I, 6) might
very well succumb to the same criticism. To put Ar-
istotle’s point in somewhat different terms, when we
say that something (e.g., freedom) is good, or is a
good, we want to know in what its goodness con-
sists, or what is good about it, and the answer will
be different for different goods. If we are looking for
a synonym for ‘good’, ‘desirable’ would seem to
come closest, and while things may be objectively
620
desirable (or good), there would be little temptation
to claim, hence little occasion to deny, that there was
a common property of desirability.
But we also speak of the good, or the highest
(greatest) good (summum bonum), or the chief
good, or the good for humankind (the human good),
or the good achievable by action, where the word
‘good’ is not only a substantive, as it is in ‘goods’ in
the preceding paragraph, but is part of a definite
description, thus implying uniqueness. The intended
reference is to some one thing (the good), and some-
thing is said to be that thing, as in, for example,
“Pleasure is the [only] good.” This is the theory of
HEDONISM, and it was held by, among others, EPI-
CURUS (341–270 B.C.E.), David HUME (1711–1776),
and JOHN STUART MILL (1806–1873).
Whatever the good (or the highest good) is, it is
inherently good, valuable in its own right. By this we
can mean, on the one hand, something that is good
in its very essence (e.g., Plato’s Idea of the Good) or
in its very existence as something of a certain kind
(e.g., KANT’s good will, sparkling like a jewel in its
own light). This is intrinsic goodness. Or, on the
other hand, we could mean something that is worth
possessing or worth seeking for its own sake and not
for the sake of anything beyond itself, as EUDAI-
MONIA (happiness, well-being, flourishing) is for Ar-
istotle, or happiness (understood in terms of plea-
sure and the absence of pain) is for the classical
utilitarians, Jeremy BENTHAM (1748–1832), JAMES
MILL (1773–1836), and John Stuart Mill. The good,
then, can be something that possesses value in and
of itself regardless of its relation to anything else (in-
trinsic value); or it can be something that is worth
seeking or possessing for its own sake, something
which is supremely worth having, something that
has value in its own right for its possessor.
In PLATO’s (c. 430–347 B.C.E.) Republic, we find
the good in both these senses: goodness itself or the
Idea of the Good (constituting intrinsic goodness),
and, for human beings (both individual persons and
civil society, including the state), eudaimonia, for
which the possession of the virtues, especially justice
(dikaiosune), is both the necessary and sufficient
condition. Aristotle rejects, though with regret, the
Idea of the Good, partly because goodness does not
seem to be a single property, and partly because of
its seeming practical irrelevance. He prefers to con-
cern himself with what is good for us, and in partic-
ular with what is achievable by action. As it turns

out, there is one end in the light of which everything
else is desirable and which is not desirable for the
sake of anything beyond itself. This single end,
which is also final, complete, and self-sufficient,
both for individuals and for social groupings, is eu-
daimonia—happiness or flourishing or well-being.
Eudaimonia is therefore the supreme good (that
which is most desirable), the chief good, or simply
the good for human beings. For Aristotle, acting vir-
tuously is the basic ingredient of happiness and
therefore a necessary condition of it; but Aristotle
does not claim, as Plato does, that the possession of
the VIRTUES is sufficient for happiness. Some good
fortune is also necessary.
Notice that, on the classical view, happiness or
flourishing is the supreme good, that which is ulti-
mately desirable or worth seeking and having, whether
for the individual or for any social grouping, includ-
ing the state. If virtue is to be sought, that too is
mainly for the sake of happiness, indeed as its sine
qua non. There is no suggestion that the virtues are
to be sought or pursued exclusively for their own
sakes; the end of all purposive activity, including the
cultivation of the virtues, is eudaimonia. According
to this way of seeing things, the virtues are subor-
dinate to happiness and have value especially as they
relate to this supreme human good.
There is, furthermore, on the classical view, no
conflict between the aims of individual flourishing
and the flourishing of various social groupings up to
and including the state; in fact, the individual can
flourish only in an appropriate social and political
setting. This is because human beings are under-
stood to be social and political by nature. It is not
that contractarian and other individualist views did
not exist in ancient Greek society. We are aware of
them through the reported sayings of such sophists
as Thrasymachus (fl. c. 430–400 B.C.E.) and PRO-
TAGORAS (c. 490–421 B.C.E.), and the reports of
Glaucon and Adeimantus in Book II of Plato’s Re-
public. But the views of Plato and Aristotle are dis-
tinctly not individualist. The social and political
good is an integral part of the good of the individual,
and there is no conflict between my good and the
good of others or the good of the social groupings
to which I belong, including the state of which I am
a citizen.
In the Hellenistic and Roman periods, virtue
maintains its close association with happiness or
well-being; but now it is the well-being of the indi-
621
good, theories of the
vidual, in the face of a largely inimical world, that is
seen as the good. Wisdom is now chief among the
virtues, but it is much closer to PRUDENCE as we
understand it than to Aristotle’s intellectual virtue
of PHRONESIS (the intellectual element involved in
all the moral virtues). Wisdom becomes, for the Sto-
ics, a sufficient condition of happiness, regardless of
external circumstances. For the Epicureans, wisdom
becomes the way of assuring that one leads a life that
contains as much pleasure and as little pain as pos-
sible, well-being consisting in pleasure and the ab-
sence of pain. Hellenistic and Roman philosophy, at
least as represented by these two schools, appears to
be both individualist and egoistic. To be virtuous is
to know how to look after oneself, that is to possess
prudence in the modern sense, which for these phi-
losophers means knowing how to maintain calmness
of mind in whatever circumstances one finds oneself.
CICERO (106–43 B.C.E.) speaks somewhat differ-
ently. He appears to attribute his views (De officiis,
I, ii; II, ii) to the Academics (the school founded by
Plato but which, in Cicero’s time, had been the cen-
tre of skepticism for two centuries), the Peripatetics
(the school founded by Aristotle but which, as Cic-
ero knew it, was closer to Platonism than in its
founder’s day), and the Stoics, but this may be mere
modesty, for he appears to say something which, in
sum, is different from what we know of all these
schools. For Cicero, the supreme good (summum
bonum), that which is most desirable for its own
sake and hence to be pursued above all things, is
virtue (virtus), identified with uprightness (hones-
tum). However, he is firm in denying that this can
conflict with one’s INTERESTS, properly understood,
insisting that a thing cannot be honest without being
profitable (in one’s interest), or profitable without
being honest. The view, which must have had some
currency, that being morally good can conflict with
one’s own best interest, he declared to be “the most
pernicious error, and most destructive of all good-
ness, that ever could have crept into the minds of
men” (De officiis, II, iii). This view, which Cicero so
strongly opposed, is indistinguishable from the char-
acteristically modern belief that one’s own interest
(prudence) is one thing and morality (virtue, moral
goodness) another, and that the two are inescapably
in conflict. The typical modern belief is that because
morality requires us to concern ourselves with the
good of other people, this may (and almost certainly
will) require some sacrifice of our own good. Mo-
good, theories of the
rality and self-denial or self-sacrifice have become
indissolubly linked in modern thought, both reli-
gious and secular; indeed this individualist moral
view has become the commonplace of our time. The
world, it is generally supposed, consists of individ-
uals each with his or her own set of purposes, but
since there are other people in the world, we must
have some concern for their interests as well. The
view can take various forms. There is the view of
KANT (1724–1804) that morality places a limit on
what individuals can do in the pursuit of their own
ends (Grundlegung, IV, 430–31). The altruist view
is that being morally good consists in always denying
oneself for the sake of others (selflessness). The
universalist view permits us to take our own ends
into account, but no more than the ends of anyone
else: we are to concern ourselves with everyone af-
fected by our acts, equally and disinterestedly.
We began with the good, said to be eudaimonia,
for which the possession of the virtues is a necessary
condition. Here, because of our social and political
nature, there can be no ultimate conflict between the
eudaimonia of individuals and that of the various
social groupings to which they belong; hence there
can be no ultimate conflict between the eudaimonia
of this family member, friend, or fellow citizen, and
that. This was succeeded by the individualist pru-
dentialism of the Stoics and Epicureans, who pre-
served themselves through virtue (chiefly wisdom)
in the face of an inimical social world. So far as can
be determined, it was Cicero who first put forward
the idea that we are to pursue virtue or the moral
good as the summum bonum, thus giving virtue it-
self the rôle formerly assigned to happiness or well-
being (eudaimonia). Still he rigorously insisted that,
while it is virtue that is to be pursued before all else,
the two (virtue and happiness) are coincident and
not in opposition. Still, in unseating happiness as the
final end, replacing it with virtue (honestum), he laid
the groundwork for the characteristic modern view
that we are to pursue virtue or moral goodness even
when it is in conflict with one’s own good as—so it
is believed—it often is. This modern view, while it
is typically opposed to EGOISM or prudentialism,
takes, in the CONTRACTARIANISM of Hobbes (and
such recent followers as David Gauthier), an egois-
tic form: we had better coöperate because that is the
best deal we can get, given that there are other peo-
ple in the world.
On the first account (Plato, Aristotle), the good
622
of the individual person, the moral good, and the
social and political good all coincide. On the second
account (Stoics and Epicureans), virtue or moral
good is simply what is necessary (and possibly suf-
ficient) for the good of the individual person, al-
though, for the Stoics at least, other people and so-
ciety as a whole are of great importance. On the
third (Ciceronian) view, we are to seek moral virtue,
in the sense of honesty or uprightness, above all, but
such moral virtue is coincident with one’s own hap-
piness or well-being. On the fourth and typically
modern view, my good, the moral good (now essen-
tially tied to the good of others as distinct from and
in possible conflict with my own), and the social or
political good are all distinct. Whether or not ulti-
mately for reasons of prudence (Hobbes), it is, so
far as the individual is concerned, the moral good
that takes precedence over all other goods, even
where this involves some self-sacrifice or self-denial.
The notion that virtue or moral goodness, often
self-denying, is itself the end, finds its apogee in the
opening sentence of Kant’s Grundlegung (1785),
where it is stated that the good will, that is the will
that follows the moral law because it is the moral
law, is the only thing in the world that is good with-
out qualification. Human beings are to be treated
with respect because they are possible subjects of a
good will, hence possible ‘objective ends’. Eudai-
monia, or well-being, has been dethroned, and in-
deed has ceased altogether to have any moral im-
portance in its own right. Moral goodness (the good
will) is the supreme value in and for itself without
regard to any other end. Nevertheless, on Kant’s
view, happiness is an essential ingredient in the sum-
mum bonum, which he sees as consisting in an a
priori synthesis of two distinct parts: (1) moral good-
ness, and (2) happiness. Moral goodness (obedience
to the moral law) takes precedence over all other
ends in this life although it may not be and often is
not rewarded with happiness. But the synthesis of
virtue and happiness is a priori practically necessary,
and so we must believe that this will be put right in
the end (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], Book
II, chapter 2). (We should not be surprised when
we learn that Cicero’s De oficiis never left Kant’s
desk.)
Though he wishes to escape the influence of Kant,
J. S. Mill is nevertheless haunted by him and his in-
spirer Cicero. The opening paragraph of Utilitari-
anism (1861) refers to “the summum bonum or,

what is the same thing, . . . the foundation of mo-
rality,” where by morality is meant moral obliga-
tion or requirement, or what Kant would call duty
(Pflicht). Since for Mill the summum bonum is the
greatest happiness of the greatest number, it be-
comes our duty, according to him, always to act so
as to further this end. (This becomes, in effect, the
moral law.) The good, or the highest good, had al-
ready become ambiguous in Cicero. Was it moral
goodness or was it human well-being? (Cicero did
believe them to be coincident, but he did not think
they were the same thing.) Kant resolved this am-
biguity by declaring that moral goodness (obedience
to the moral law) took precedence over all else re-
gardless of the consequences. Mill sees happiness,
glossed as pleasure and the absence of pain, as the
final end, but it is also the foundation of morality,
where that is construed deontically, distinct from
and possibly in conflict with one’s own happiness.
One is to act, indeed one is morally bound to act,
not for one’s personal happiness, but for the hap-
piness of the aggregate of all persons, which may
entail some sacrifice of one’s own happiness. Notice
that it is an aggregate of individuals we have here,
not a community or a polis. No more is Kant’s “king-
dom of ends” a community, but simply a set of in-
dividuals. The understanding that morality and one’s
own interests are distinct and may be opposed is
essentially tied to INDIVIDUALISM.
On the classical utilitarian view, my good consists
in my having as much pleasure and as little pain as
possible. Modern utilitarianism sees my good, now
called my utility (note how the word has slipped
from signifying the means to signifying the end it-
self), as consisting in the satisfaction of my desires
or ‘preferences’. Since it is obvious that getting what
I want often does not do me any good or leaves me
dissatisfied, my good is now more often said to con-
sist in the satisfaction of informed or rational desires
only (John RAWLS, James Griffin, Richard BRANDT
[1910–1997], Stephen Darwall), that is to say what
I would choose, ideally, if I had the Scrooge-like
privilege of being able to sample and appraise how
things would be if I did this or that. Like Scrooge, I
would be able to discover the value of the conse-
quences of my choices, and my desires would align
themselves accordingly. Even if I am uncertain and
have to rely on speculation and conjecture, it is sup-
position about value that is doing the work here and
not desire as such.
623
good, theories of the
That one’s good is a function of the satisfaction
of one’s desires or preferences, informed or other-
wise, has been the dominant view of our time. A
more acceptable view, one that is closer to the an-
cients and which is perhaps gaining wider accep-
tance, is that my good consists, first of all, in the
satisfaction of my NEEDS (that without which I can-
not function as a human being); second, through the
exercise of my developed talents, in valuable and val-
ued activity as a member of society; and third, in
having things and taking part in activities which,
though unneeded, make my life more interesting and
enjoyable. The social or political good consists in
the establishment and maintenance of INSTITUTIONS
that make such a life possible for everyone. The
moral virtues are those dispositions that tend to re-
inforce, and the vices those that tend to undermine,
the FRIENDSHIP, free coöperation, and good will that
such a state of affairs presupposes.
See also: ALTRUISM; BENEFICENCE; COMMUNITARI-
ANISM; CONTRACTARIANISM; COOPERATION, CON-
FLICT, AND COORDINATION; DUTY AND OBLIGATION;
EGOISM; EPICUREANISM; EUDAIMONIA, -ISM; EVIL;
FAMILY; FRIENDSHIP; HAPPINESS; HONOR; HEDONISM;
INDIVIDUALISM; INTERESTS; LIBERTY; NEEDS; PAIN
AND SUFFERING; PHRONESIS; PLEASURE; PRUDENCE;
STOICISM; UTILITARIANISM; VALUE, CONCEPT OF;
VALUE, THEORY OF; VIRTUES; WISDOM.
Bibliography
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the good.
Becker, Lawrence C. A New Stoicism. Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 1998. Proposes what stoic ethics
would be like today if it had survived as a systematic
approach to ethical theory.
Bond, E. J. Ethics and Human Well-Being. Oxford: Black-
well, 1996. Chapter 12—“The Best Life For All.”
———. “Morality and Community.” In Values and Moral
Standing, edited by Wayne Sumner et al. Bowling
Green, OH: Applied Philosophy Program of Bowling
Green State University, 1987. The congruence and in-
terdependence of the good of the individual, the social
good, and the moral virtues.
Brandt, Richard. A Theory of the Good and the Right.
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of rational desire.
Braybrooke, David. Meeting Needs. Princeton: Princeton
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good, theories of the
Cicero. De officiis, Book I, chapter ii. Moral goodness as
the summum bonum.
Darwall, Stephen. Impartial Reason. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1983. The good of the individual as
“maximum informed utility”; reason as placing con-
straints on the pursuit of individual interest.
Gauthier, David. Morals by Agreement. New York and Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1984. Morality (seen as
a contract or agreement placing restrictions on the pur-
suit of one’s own interests) as rational prudence (en-
suring the best life one can have for oneself).
Griffin, James. Well-Being. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
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as the satisfaction of informed desire.
Hobbes, Thomas. The Elements of Law. 1640. (De cor-
pore politico.)
———. Leviathan. 1651. Ethical egoism; deontic morality
as rational prudence.
Hurka, Thomas. “‘Good’ and ‘Good For.’” Mind (1987):
71–73. An argument for “just plain good”, understood
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“‘Good’ and ‘Good for’: A Reply to Hurka.” Mind
(1988): 279–80.
Kant, Immanuel. Grundlegung zur Metaphysic der Sitten.
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own sake) as the supreme good; morality as a con-
straint on freedom.
Long, A. A., and D. N. Sedley, eds. The Hellenistic Phi-
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Press, 1987. An editorial arrangement of the reported
sayings and writings of the Hellenistic philosophers,
including the Stoics and Epicureans, with philosophi-
cal commentary.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue. 2nd ed. London: Duck-
worth, 1981. Chapter 12—“The Nature of the Vir-
tues.” The virtues as tied to the good communal life.
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bonum (the greatest happiness of the greatest number)
as the foundation of deontic morality.
Murdoch, Iris. The Sovereignty of Good. London: Rout-
ledge, 1970. Good as involving transcendence of the
self.
———. Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. London:
Chatto & Windus, 1992. The reality of (moral)
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Nagel, Thomas. The View From Nowhere. New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Chapter 10,
“Living Right and Living Well.” We must act morally,
but this will involve some sacrifice of our own interests.
Nussbaum, Martha. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and
Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986. Goodness in the
Greek tragedians and philosophers, especially (contra
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tive to virtue and goodness (and thereby to our
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———. The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in
624
Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University
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Oates, W. J., ed. The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers.
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E. J. Bond
government, ethics in
The question whether governments are properly
held under ethical standards of conduct may be di-
vided into questions of external relations (between
governments) and internal relations (between a gov-
ernment and its people).
External Relations
The term “realism” in this context refers to the
view that denies that governments are properly held
under ethical standards of conduct in their dealings
with each other. This view has a history that starts
with the SOPHISTS. In the Republic of PLATO (c.
430–347 B.C.E.), Thrasymachus says that “justice
is nothing else than the interest of the stronger.”
Thucydides (c.460–399 B.C.E.), in his history of the
Peloponnesian War (431–404 B.C.E.), records a di-
alogue between the Athenian generals and the am-
bassadors of Melos, a small island that had refused
to submit to the naval might of Athens. The gener-
als, following the Sophists, say that it is by the ne-
cessity of nature that the strong rule; they proceed
to kill all the males of fighting age on the island and
sell the women and children into SLAVERY. In the
modern period, the most conspicuous realists have
been Niccolo MACHIAVELLI (1469–1527) and Thomas
HOBBES (1588–1679). The twentieth century has
seen the tradition upheld by Reinhold NIEBUHR
(1892–1971) and Hans Morgenthau (1904–1980).
Realists in the study of international relations em-
phasize that the structure of the international system
is anarchy (the absence of a higher government

above the states) and that in consequence the states
behave in ways in principle predictable from an anal-
ysis of the POWER relations among them.
Reinhold Niebuhr’s most famous book, Moral
Man and Immoral Society (1932), espoused a
“Christian Realism” that proposed a “frank dualism”
between ethics and politics. Niebuhr is here follow-
ing Martin LUTHER (1483–1546). He sees an acute
tension between this-worldly and other-worldly val-
ues. He holds that an ethics of self-sacrifice is the
only pure ethics, and that governments are unable
to meet this demand. It is true that he also insists
that the statesman should be “under the influence of
the foolishness of the moral seer.” But it is unclear
how this influence can be exercised, given Niebuhr’s
equally strong conviction that it is a dangerous il-
lusion to think that a society can be moral. What lies
behind Niebuhr’s pessimism about society is a doc-
trine of human nature, a kind of psychological EGO-
ISM of groups. He gives a number of reasons why
national groups are inevitably more selfish than in-
dividuals: They will tend to operate by the lowest
common denominator; societies are more remote
from each other than are individuals within socie-
ties; societies are held together by EMOTION rather
than reason; what is outside the nation is too vague
to inspire devotion. One question about Niebuhr’s
view is whether he has not exaggerated the place of
self-sacrifice in ethics. He denies the claim of the self
to count as one (though no more than one) in moral
decisions. The result is to condemn all governmental
actions as lesser evils and hence to obscure the gen-
uine possibility of a government acting ethically.
Hans Morgenthau’s Politics among Nations (1950)
was strongly influenced by Niebuhr. He supposes, as
Niebuhr had done, that there is a tragic and unclos-
able gap between ethics and politics. His interest is
not theological, and he does not see the tension as
one between this-worldly and other-worldly values;
but he shares with Niebuhr the view that the essence
of ethical life is self-sacrifice and that politics cannot
meet this demand. In an earlier work, Scientific Man
vs. Power Politics (1946), Morganthau gives a theo-
retical justification: Not only no political action, but
no action at all can ever be just. He thinks that
morality characteristically demands complete self-
sacrifice, and we cannot achieve this because every
individual is infected by the animus dominandi, the
lust for power (Morgenthau quotes Luther here).
Moreover, for humans to live by rational ethics, they
625
government, ethics in
would have to be rational; but in fact their reason is
the slave of their passions. For Morgenthau, any eth-
ical evaluation of international political behavior is
ideology, and ideology is merely disguised national
interest. Some results of his view are that no nation
can voluntarily surrender power; no state will ever
agree to an international military force that would
diminish to any degree its national sovereignty; no
gradual progress toward collective security is pos-
sible; and no nation will voluntarily forgo the use of
all the weapons its technology is able to produce.
His conclusion is one of almost unrelieved gloom.
He recommends the recultivation of the art of
amoral diplomacy, as it was practiced in the two pe-
riods 1648–1772 and 1815–1914. But he admits
that what made this kind of diplomacy successful was
a moral consensus among citizens of the states in con-
flict; his view is that this consensus has not survived
the rise and continued growth of nationalism.
The tradition opposed to realism is as old as the
tradition supporting it. Both Plato and ARISTOTLE
(384–322 B.C.E.) are prepared to evaluate the polis
ethically. Their concern is primarily with internal po-
litical life, with the extent to which the polis allows
for the flourishing of its own citizen body. But both
are prepared to condemn some forms of external
conduct as well. It is probable that Thucydides is
describing the realist tendencies of Athens during
the Peloponnesian War, not to approve them but to
display the symptoms of civic decay. In the modern
period, political philosophers have generally felt free
to hold governments under ethical standards. Hugo
GROTIUS (1583–1645) and Samuel PUFENDORF
(1632–1694) should be mentioned as detailing a
theory of NATURAL LAW in the light of which states
could be evaluated in their internal and external re-
lations. To take one other example, it is the convic-
tion of Immanuel KANT (1724–1804) that “true
politics cannot take a single step without first paying
homage to morals.” His categorical imperative sets
limits to political action. “Reason,” he says, “as the
highest legislative moral power, absolutely con-
demns war as a test of rights.” Eternal peace (exter-
nally) is linked to republicanism (internally); the
first definitive article of eternal peace is that “the
civil constitution of every state shall be republican.”
In the twentieth century, the liberal tradition has
emphasized the pacific tendencies of trade, demo-
cratic republican government, and the growth of in-
ternational INSTITUTIONS. One classic statement is
government, ethics in
by Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) in “Sociology
of Imperialism” (1919). States are held accountable
in their internal and external relations to the value
of individual LIBERTY or to HUMAN RIGHTS or to
the greatest HAPPINESS of the greatest number. An
alternative nonrealist account is that of Michael
Oakeshott, in On Human Conduct (1975). He dis-
tinguishes two categorically distinct modes of con-
stituting human associations: Prudential (or “enter-
prise”) association is united by a common purpose,
and moral association by the acknowledgment of the
AUTHORITY of common practices. For Oakeshott,
civil society is not enterprise but is moral associa-
tion. An important book extending this analysis to
international association is Terry Nardin’s Law, Mo-
rality, and the Relations of States (1983). Nardin’s
project is to rescue the usefulness of international
law from the twin attacks of realism and idealism:
from realism because it reduces the authority of in-
ternational law to the case-by-case consent of the
parties, and from idealism because it ties this au-
thority to shared purposes which Nardin thinks the
states by and large do not have. The main questions
in evaluating the success of Nardin’s project are
whether the distinction between the two kinds of
association can be made out for internal and external
relations, and whether the primacy of the moral (or
“practical”) conception can be established.
Another way of steering between realism and ide-
alism is to distinguish levels of moral thinking. On
this view, the realist wrongly assumes that because
political leaders have to break rules (e.g., against ly-
ing) at the level of ordinary or intuitive moral think-
ing, they therefore have to move beyond moral
thinking altogether. The idealist wrongly assumes
that because political leaders must stay within mo-
rality they must therefore stay within the ordinary
or intuitive MORAL RULES. But if there is another
level of moral thinking (i.e., critical or consequen-
tialist) that can evaluate cases in which rules at the
intuitive level ought to be overridden, then political
leaders may be able to justify their actions morally
at this second level.
Finally, one may consider the question whether
there are obligations (from justice) for the richer
nations to assist the poorer ones, or whether the spe-
cial relation of a government to its citizens precludes
this.
626
Internal Relations
There are three general questions about the ex-
tent to which those in government are properly held
under ethical standards in their relations to their fel-
low citizens. The first is whether in a representative
democracy the representatives are entitled to use in-
dependent ethical judgment (the representative as
trustee) or whether they must do what their constit-
uents want (the representative as agent or delegate).
There will be, second, questions of PROFESSIONAL
ETHICS. Finally, there is the question of DIRTY HANDS,
of whether political life requires those in govern-
ment to act in violation of moral obligations that
would be incumbent on them if they were not public
officials.
The answer to the question about individual judg-
ment depends on what role is ascribed to the rep-
resentative. Hobbes defined representation as acting
in the name of another who has authorized the ac-
tion, so that the representative’s act is ascribed to
and binds the represented. He thought that repre-
sentation could be limited in time or scope, but that
when people authorize a sovereign by the SOCIAL
CONTRACT they make that sovereign their unlimited
representative. For John LOCKE (1632–1704), the
supremacy of the legislature is provisional, being de-
pendent on its continued FIDELITY to the ends, if not
the will, of the people in the matters it legislates.
The classic opposition on the question of the in-
dependence of the representative is between Ed-
mund BURKE (1729–1797) and JAMES MILL (1773–
1836). In his Essay on Government (1820), Mill
adheres to the position of Jeremy BENTHAM (1748–
1832) that the only true end of government is the
attainment of the greatest happiness for the greatest
number of people. This requires an identification of
the people’s happiness with the legislator’s deci-
sions. “The legislator,” Mill says, “must have an iden-
tity of interest with the community.” Mill thought
this could be achieved only by radically limiting the
duration of legislative service and by requiring full
enfranchisement and a mandated legislator. Millian
delegates bind themselves to the instructions of their
constituents. Burke, on the other hand, in his speech
to the electors of Bristol (1774), argues against the
view of representatives as delegates on three related
grounds. First, it robs legislators of their judgment
by making their rationality subservient to the “col-

lective will” of the majority of their constituents.
This not only offends their DIGNITY but does a dis-
service to the governed; for it allows often ill-formed
opinion to supplant reasoned decision making con-
cerning the morally acceptable political means and
ends. This might happen, for example, when what is
at stake are the INTERESTS of a disliked minority in
the member’s constituency. Burke says, “Your rep-
resentative owes you, not his industry only, but his
judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if
he sacrifices it to your opinion.” Second, he asks
whether legislators should investigate the probable
consequences of their votes, or not. If they do not,
they will be negligent. If they do, and the conse-
quences of voting in accordance with their constit-
uents’ expressed preferences seem worse for their
constituents, how can overriding this judgment be
justified? Third, Burke says, “You choose a member,
indeed; but when you have chosen him he is not a
member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parlia-
ment.” Legislators have to consider the interest not
merely of the districts that elected them, but of the
country, perhaps of the world. This point is distinct
from the other two. It would be possible to take the
intermediate position that the representative should
make an independent judgment about the interests
of the constituency, and not consider any wider
interests.
In political practice, the issue does not present
itself as an exhaustive dichotomy. On some votes,
members are likely to feel bound by the expressed
wishes of their district, and on other votes not. Mem-
bers of the U.S. House of Representatives, for ex-
ample, do take the views of their constituents seri-
ously. A careful tally is kept of incoming mail. But
still, on most issues the district does not determine
the vote. The reason is that there are sources of in-
fluence on the member that come from outside the
district. A list of influences might include (not in
order of strength) contributors, the press, lobbyists,
the Administration, friends and family, congres-
sional staff, and colleagues. Of these, the last is often
the most significant. The issues on which the mem-
bers have to vote are so many and so varied that they
rely to a large extent on each other’s specialized
knowledge. Moreover, cooperation among members
based on RECIPROCITY creates an elaborate set of
NORMS with their own momentum.
Whatever position is taken on the question of
627
government, ethics in
whether to view representatives as delegates or
trustees, there will be some obligations they have in
virtue of their fiduciary role as public servants. Here,
the question of professional ethics can be widened
to all three branches of the government. In the
United States, the phrase “ethics in government” has
been used most frequently of the executive branch,
after the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 (see Mor-
rison v. Olson, 1988, which covers the Act’s inde-
pendent counsel provisions). But the House and the
Senate both have set up Ethics Committees, and fed-
eral judges can be impeached for ethical infractions.
The House Ethics Manual will serve as a good
illustration of the scope of codes of conduct for gov-
ernment service. The Manual is published in each
Congress by the Committee on Standards of Official
Conduct. The code states that any person in Gov-
ernment service should adhere to the highest moral
principles, give a full day’s labor for a full day’s pay,
never discriminate unfairly by dispensing special fa-
vors, never accept favors or benefits that might be
construed as influencing the performance of govern-
mental duties, make no private PROMISES binding on
the duties of office, engage in no business with the
Government inconsistent with the performance of
governmental duties, and never use information re-
ceived confidentially in the performance of govern-
mental duties for making private profit. The Manual
then considers in detail gifts, travel, entertainment
and favors; outside employment and income of mem-
bers, officers, employees, and spouses; financial dis-
closure; staff rights and duties; official allowances
and franking; casework considerations; campaign
funds and practices; and involvement with official
and unofficial organizations. Similar codes can be
found in the Senate, and also at different levels of
government (state and local).
It is interesting how much of what one would
think central to the ethical duties of those in govern-
ment is left out of this list of topics. The list starts,
it is true, with a completely general call for the “high-
est moral principles”, but then proceeds directly to
matters of internal administration. One way to see
the scale of the omission here is to compare the list
with Aristotle’s view (echoed, for example, by
Thomas JEFFERSON [1743–1826]) that the chief
function of the legislator is to inculcate virtue in the
citizen body. Or one might ask whether it is not the
ethical duty of those in government service to pro-
government, ethics in
mote justice and a fair distribution of society’s re-
sources. The official codes seem to take the ethical
purposes of government for granted, and proceed
from there. This fits the present author’s experience
of working on congressional staff, where he ob-
served the same tendency to take the basic purposes
of the institution for granted. This tendency is frus-
trating for a philosopher, but there is in fact nothing
unusual about this kind of omission. A study of pro-
fessional ethical codes in, for example, engineering
or business administration would display very much
the same results. The codes arise not out of philo-
sophical reflection about the institution, but out of
day-to-day pragmatics within the institution.
It can be seen from the list of topics in the Man-
ual that many of them presuppose a distinction be-
tween what is appropriate in the private and public
spheres. But the distinction between public and pri-
vate is philosophically controversial. A key text here
is HABERMAS’s The Structural Transformation of the
Public Sphere (1989), which has generated a large
respondent literature. Especially within recent FEMI-
NIST ETHICS, there has been much work decrying the
historical tendency to link the public sphere to the
male and the private to the female. The feminist
writers, for example, who have made a distinction
between care thinking and justice thinking have re-
sisted any implication that CARE belongs in the pri-
vate, and justice in the public, sphere. On most ver-
sions of the distinction between the spheres, and of
the types of ethical thinking, it is clear that both
spheres are severely damaged without both types of
thinking. Having said this, however, there are dif-
ferences in the kinds of consideration appropriate
for moral thinking, for example, in FAMILY life and
in government service. The differences derive in part
from the nature of representation, as discussed ear-
lier. Government officials can affect millions of their
fellow citizens very directly by their decisions.
There is a question, therefore, whether not only
the kinds of moral consideration differ, but also the
appropriate moral standards. This is sometimes called
the question of “dirty hands.” Machiavelli is famous
for the dictum, “It is necessary for a prince wishing
to hold his own to know how to do wrong.” This
can be given the realist interpretation that morality
has to be overridden by considerations of power. But
there is also the position that morality is itself di-
vided, that public life imposes moral obligations that
are tragically incompatible with the obligations of
628
private life. Politicians are sometimes permitted,
even required, to lie, deceive, mislead, threaten, co-
erce, or break promises, actions condemned by or-
dinary moral principle.
It is possible, as a consequentialist, to view these
conflicts as settled in principle by an impartial con-
sideration of the consequences. On this view, the
prima facie prohibitions on lying, for example, can
be overridden by consideration of the long-term con-
sequences for large numbers of people (and politi-
cians will be considering such long-term conse-
quences more often than will ordinary folk). This is
not to say that politicians will feel comfortable in
overriding the prohibition and acting contrary to
their own moral feelings. On the contrary, part of
having proper moral feelings against lying is that one
feels remorse when one goes against them, even
when this has been shown to one’s own satisfaction
to have the best consequences on the particular
occasion.
Those who object to this view maintain that CON-
SEQUENTIALISM is itself only part of morality, albeit
a part peculiarly suited to political life. They insist
that there may be in these sorts of dilemmas no
“right” answer to the question of what the politician
should do; rather, there is an irresoluble tension be-
tween two different parts of morality. Finally, there
is the position of the natural law tradition that those
in government are permitted neither to override mo-
rality nor to utilize one part of morality in tension
with another; rather, their actions both in govern-
ment and outside it are bound by the same laws of
morality entire.
See also: BURKE; CARE; CIVIC GOOD AND VIRTUE;
CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIC DUTIES; COERCION; COLLEC-
TIVE RESPONSIBILITY; COMMON GOOD; CONSEQUEN-
TIALISM; COOPERATION, CONFLICT, AND COORDINA-
TION; DEMOCRACY; DIRTY HANDS; DUTY AND
OBLIGATION; FEMINIST ETHICS; FIDUCIARY RELATION-
SHIPS; GROTIUS; GROUPS, MORAL STATUS OF;
HOBBES; IDEALIST ETHICS; INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE:
CONFLICT; INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE: DISTRIBUTION;
INTUITIONISM; JEFFERSON; JUSTICE [entries]; LIBER-
ALISM; MACHIAVELLI; MILITARY ETHICS; JAMES MILL;
MORAL COMMUNITY, BOUNDARIES OF; MORAL REAL-
ISM; NATURAL LAW; POLITICAL SYSTEMS; POWER;
PRESCRIPTIVISM; PROFESSIONAL ETHICS; PUBLIC AND
PRIVATE MORALITY; PUBLIC POLICY; PUBLIC POLICY
ANALYSIS; PUFENDORF; RECIPROCITY; SECRECY AND

CONFIDENTIALITY; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSO-
PHY; SOCIAL CONTRACT; SOPHISTS; WAR AND PEACE.
Bibliography
Bowie, Norman, ed. Ethical Issues in Government. Phila-
delphia: Temple University Press, 1981.
Bull, Hedley. The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in
World Politics. London: Macmillan, 1977.
Burke, Edmund. Works. Boston: Little, Brown, 1865.
Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the
Public Sphere. Translated by Thomas Burger. Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989.
Hampshire, Stuart, ed. Public and Private Morality. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Hare, J. E., and Carey B. Joynt. Ethics and International
Affairs. London: Macmillan, 1982.
Kant, Immanuel. “Perpetual Peace.” In Political Writings,
edited by H. Reiss and translated by H. B. Nisbet. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970 [1795].
Kingdon, John W. Congressmen’s Voting Decisions. New
York: Harper and Row, 1973.
Mill, James. “An Essay on Government.” In Utilitarian
Logic and Politics: James Mill’s Essay on Government,
Macauley’s “Critique” and the Ensuing Debate, edited
by J. Lively and J. Rees. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978
[1820].
Morgenthau, Hans. Politics among Nations: The Struggle
for Power and Peace. 6th ed. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1985 [1950].
———. Scientific Man vs. Power Politics. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1946.
Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654 (1988).
Nardin, Terry. Law, Morality, and the Relations of States.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983.
Niebuhr, Reinhold. Moral Man and Immoral Society. New
York: Scribner, 1932.
Oakeshott, Michael. On Human Conduct. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1975.
Pitkin, H. F. The Concept of Representation. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1967.
Schumpeter, Joseph. Imperialism and Social Classes.
Cleveland: World, 1955.
United States Congress. House of Representatives. Com-
mittee on Standards of Official Conduct. House Ethics
Manual. Washington, D.C.: GPO (published in each
Congress).
Walz, Kenneth. Theory of International Politics. Reading,
Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979.
John E. Hare
629
gratitude
gratitude
The core cases of gratitude involve a benefactor and
a beneficiary but we can also be grateful for benefits
large and small, such as winning a lottery or feeling
the sun. There are three aspects of the conception
of gratitude: one which connects it with justice; one
which connects it with BENEFICENCE; and one which
connects it with reciprocating LOVE with love. The
core cases typically exhibit each of these aspects,
though no one of them is necessary or sufficient for
being an instance of gratitude.
Three writers stressed one of each of these as-
pects. THOMAS AQUINAS (1225?–1274) defined
gratitude as “recollecting the friendship and kindli-
ness shown by others, and desiring to pay them
back” and saw gratitude as one of the VIRTUES “an-
nexed to justice.” KANT (1724–1804) defined grat-
itude as “honoring a person for a benefit rendered
us,” and aligned it with beneficence. SPINOZA (1632–
1677) defined gratitude as “the desire or endeavour
of love to do good to others who from a similar emo-
tion of love have done good to us” and drew a strict
distinction between acting from love, and acting
from BENEVOLENCE, which he defined as being mo-
tivated by pity.
Both Aquinas and Kant acknowledged what the
other treated as the defining characteristic. Kant
thought of benefitting a benefactor in terms of mak-
ing a recompense and Aquinas thought the benefac-
tor’s due was to have a suitable benefit bestowed
upon him. Both noted the aspect of love or grace.
Kant distinguished “gratefulness (a thankful senti-
ment)” from gratitude which he took to involve a
sacred duty. After practice he thought the two could
come to coincide. Aquinas seemed finally to rate the
most common kind of ingratitude as a failure of love;
and as a venial rather than a mortal sin. Spinoza, in
viewing gratitude as reciprocation of love for love,
also saw love as motivating actions directed at an-
other’s good; but he made no reference to its con-
nection with justice.
Gratitude construed as what is due, or as a rec-
ompense, focuses attention on the problem of the
commensurability of the beneficiary’s response with
the benefactor’s action and on the possibility of dis-
charging a debt in a way which gratitude construed
as requiting love with love does not. Thus we find
both Kant and Aquinas concerned with commen-
surability and gratitude as a rather delicate balanc-
gratitude
ing or reciprocating act. Aquinas distinguished the
proportionate determinate repayment of commuta-
tive justice as a legal due, from the moral due, which
he held to be neither proportionate nor determinate.
He maintained nonetheless that since the benefactor
had conferred the favor upon the beneficiary gratu-
itously without being bound to do so, the beneficiary
was under an obligation to bestow gratuitously some-
thing in return; and that the beneficiary would not
be seen to do this were he not to go beyond the value
of the favor received. He thus believed debts of grat-
itude could be discharged. Kant seems to have re-
garded every debt of gratitude as a duty which could
never be discharged and one still binding after the
benefactor’s death. He thought that nothing one
could do could be commensurate with what the ben-
efactor had done. Here it is enlightening to contrast
ARISTOTLE’s (384–322 B.C.E.) view that some debts
of gratitude could not be discharged. He said of our
debts to those who taught us philosophy that “their
worth cannot be measured against money, and they
can get no honor which will balance their services,
but still it is perhaps enough, as it is with the gods
and with our parents, to give them what we can.”
HUME (1711–1776) said, “Of all crimes that hu-
man creatures are capable of committing, the most
horrid and unnatural is ingratitude . . .” and implied
the duty of gratitude to be of the utmost stringency.
How stringent did these writers who saw gratitude
as a duty take that duty to be? Aquinas saw it this
way: “the debt of gratitude requires a man to make
a liberal return, which however he is not bound to
do; where if he fail to do so, he does not sin mor-
tally.” Gross ingratitude, responding with aggression
to goods conferred with goodwill, however, would
be a mortal sin. Kant, who stressed how special a
duty the duty of gratitude was, nonetheless rated it
as less stringent than the duty not to deprive persons
of their RIGHTS (i.e., not to treat them with respect).
In this he is counterpart to CICERO (c. 106–43
B.C.E.), who, while stating that there is no greater
duty than the duty of gratitude, remarked, “For gen-
erosity is of two kinds: doing a kindness and requit-
ing one. Whether we do a kindness or not is op-
tional; but to fail to requite one is not allowable to
a good man, provided that he can make requital
without violating the rights of others.”
Involved in the core cases of gratitude, along with
reciprocating actions, is the EMOTION of gratitude.
It involves appreciation of what is received and
630
thankfulness extended to the benefactor rather than
for the benefit. In grave contexts gratitude is as af-
fecting as love. A prisoner pardoned for a crime, or
one forgiven for a personal betrayal, can be over-
whelmed by the actions of a ruler or a friend who
pardons or forgives him. In such cases giving “rec-
ognition,” “honor,” and “respect” fail to capture the
emotional response of gratitude. In the peripheral
cases of gratitude, it is thankfulness we feel, and this
is also true where a much needed benefit is be-
stowed, even when a benefactor’s motives are sus-
pect or self-interested.
Gratitude, like other emotions, involves experi-
ential affective states, physiological disturbances,
expressive behavior, and characteristic desires, hopes,
fears, wishes, and intentions. Like admiration and
remorse, but unlike depression and loneliness, it is
also intentional and presupposes judgment concern-
ing what is good or bad.
Spinoza’s account of gratitude stresses both af-
fective state and motivation towards actions for the
good of another and so affords no bar to aligning
gratitude with beneficence (in our sense, not his);
but it does raise questions as to its compatibility with
gratitude as aligned with justice.
Is the conception we have of gratitude therefore
confused, combining, as it does, aspects which re-
semble justice with aspects resembling love? It will
seem so only if what is legally due is too closely as-
similated with what is morally due. Aquinas, who
stressed the affinity of gratitude with justice, himself
maintained we are not bound in the case of gratitude
as we are in, for example, the case of repaying loans.
The benefactor cannot in the moral case demand
that the beneficiary be grateful. Such failing to be
bound is not an isolated moral phenomenon. A per-
son deserving of HONOR and love cannot morally
demand honor and love from those who should
honor and love him or her. It may nonetheless be
that person’s due. Thus, the aspect of gratitude
which resembles justice in no way contravenes the
concept of a free gift, an act of beneficence which
has no strings attached. Nor is Spinoza’s account
lacking in respect to the aspect resembling justice.
He saw love, and the endeavor of love to benefit
another to be deserving of love, and the endeavor
to benefit the benefactor; and ingratitude as sadden-
ing to a benefactor who did not receive what he
deserved.

See also: ALTRUISM; BENEFICENCE; BENEVOLENCE;
CARE; CHARITY; DESIRE; DUTY AND OBLIGATION;
EMOTION; FAIRNESS; FIDELITY; FRIENDSHIP; GENER-
OSITY; HONOR; HOPE; INTENTION; JUSTICE, DISTRIB-
UTIVE; LOVE; MERIT AND DESERT; RECIPROCITY; SYM-
PATHY; VIRTUES.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Books IV (1124b), VIII
and IX (1155–1172a): On receiving gifts and on
friendship and reciprocity.
Berger, Fred R. “Gratitude.” Ethics 85 (1975): 298–309.
The duty to show gratitude, feeling grateful, and gen-
erally the internal aspects of gratitude.
Card, Claudia. “Gratitude and Obligation.” American
Philosophical Quarterly 25 (1988): 115–27. The
“trustee paradigm” rather than the “debtor paradigm”
for gratitude. Includes extensive bibliographical refer-
ences.
Cicero. De officiis. Bk. 1, XIV–XV: 115–27: The duty of
gratitude.
Kant, Immanuel. Lectures on Ethics. 118–19. The Meta-
physical Principles of Virtue, Second Part of the Ele-
ments of Ethics 23–33 inc.: Gratitude as one of the
imperfect duties to others.
Lyons, W. Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1980. A general theory of emotion; includes ex-
tensive bibliographical material.
Rorty, Amelie, ed. Explaining Emotions. Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1980. Essays concerning the
variety of the emotions and theories of the emotions;
includes extensive bibliographical material.
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. De Beneficiis. Epistle lxxxi: The
morality of giving and receiving.
Spinoza, Baruch. Ethics. Propositions 41, 27, 34, 35: Def-
initions of gratitude, benevolence, and ingratitude.
Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. 1266–1273. 2a,
2ac, 80, 106, 107: Gratitude as a virtue annexed to
justice.
Walker, A.D. M. “Gratefulness and Gratitude.” Proceed-
ings of the Aristotelian Society 81 (1980–81): 39–55.
Gratitude as a matter of external behaviour and grati-
tude as feeling and emotion.
Weiss, R. “The Moral and Social Dimensions of Grati-
tude.” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 23 (1985):
491–501. Gratitude related to free gifts and opposed
to justice.
Mary A. McCloskey
Green, Thomas Hill (1836–1882)
English philosopher. An appreciative and penetrat-
ing critic of UTILITARIANISM and an exponent (like
631
Green, Thomas Hill
JOHN STUART MILL [1806–1873]) of an ethic of hu-
man development, Green is also notable as a philos-
opher for the needy and exploited.
His book Prolegomena to Ethics (PE), published
in the year after his death, was edited by A. C. Brad-
ley (1851–1935), whose paragraph numbering is
used here. It comprises several sets of lectures given
by Green between 1878 and 1882 while he was Pro-
fessor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford. The book
would have benefited from revision and pruning;
Green exercised his power to synthesize several con-
siderations in a paragraph and even in a sentence,
and to develop a cumulative argument. His writing
is not easy to follow, but it does reward close
attention.
The nature of PE, broadly idealist and Kantian, is
well expounded by Green’s friend Edward Caird
(1835–1908) in his preface to the fifth edition. In
the introduction and Books I and II, Green, like
KANT (1724–1804), holds that it is crucial to ethics
to reject any view of human beings as simply prod-
ucts of nature (1–8, 52, 74, 84), arguing that such
a view cannot do justice to knowledge or to self-
consciousness. In Book I, he emphasizes both the
self-distinguishing nature of such consciousness and
the need to regard human consciousness as a repro-
duction of itself by an eternal subject (36, 38, 99).
In Book II, he reiterates that human beings do not
merely feel wants, but conceive of some imagined
state of themselves as their greatest good, that state
in which “self-satisfaction” can be found (88, 99).
Without such a conception, there would be no moral
agency (91, 112, 115).
Book III, “The Moral Ideal and Moral Progress,”
exhibits Green’s concerns most fully. He refutes HE-
DONISM: the fact that PLEASURE inevitably accom-
panies satisfying oneself by achieving some end does
not imply that pleasure is the object of DESIRE (158).
Green holds that “the true development of man
. . . consists in so living that the objects in which self-
satisfaction is habitually sought contribute to the re-
alization of a true idea of what is best for man.”
(177). Such a moral ideal must include that of a
COMMON GOOD (202); human progress has as a pri-
mary component “a gradual extension . . . of the
range of persons to whom the common good is con-
ceived as common” (206).
There follows an excellent account of that sense
of justice opposed to gaining an advantage at the
expense of another (212). Green also pays tribute to
Green, Thomas Hill
BENTHAM’s (1748–1832) utilitarian principle that
“every one should count for one and no one for more
than one,” in contrast to, for example, the exclusive-
ness of the class prejudice which resisted it (213). In
an argument (214) that anticipates RAWLS’s in A
Theory of Justice, Green adds, however, that on
comparing this principle of Bentham’s with Kant’s
“treat humanity . . . always as an end,” we find that
for Bentham “it is not every person, . . . but every
pleasure, that is of value in itself.” Hence, Green
concludes, a utilitarian doctrine may sometimes ap-
pear to “a superior race or order . . . being pre-
sumably capable of pleasure in higher degree” as a
justification for “systematically postponing the in-
ferior’s claims to happiness to its own.” In Book IV,
Green returns to this theme of the value and limi-
tations of utilitarianism.
The most striking and probably most influential
chapter is the fifth and last in Book III, headed “The
Greek and the Modern Conceptions of Virtue.” Here,
Green argues that the fundamentals of the moral
ideal remain what they were for PLATO (c. 430–347
B.C.E.) and ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.), but that it
was not possible in ancient Greek society to appre-
hend “in its full universality” the principle that all
human beings without exception are to be treated as
ends and not merely as means (267). Here, as often,
Green is deeply indebted to Kant; but he emphasizes
the importance of the historical development of
Christian morality, especially as shown by those in
his own century who accepted “the necessity . . . of
sacrificing personal pleasure in satisfaction of the
claims of human brotherhood” (271).
Green memorably presents “the will for true
good” in accordance with “the Greek classification
of the virtues”:
It is the will to know what is true, to make
what is beautiful; to endure pain and fear, to
resist the allurements of pleasure (i.e., to be
brave and temperate), if not, as the Greek
would have said, in the service of the state,
yet in the interest of some form of human
society; to take for oneself, to give to others,
of those things which admit of being given
and taken, not what one is inclined to but
what is due. (256)
But equally he urges the claim of the destitute and
oppressed to “such positive help . . . as is needed to
make their freedom real” (270).
632
Green expounded this notion of a real or true or
positive freedom in his famous public lecture of 1881,
“Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract.” Such
positive freedom, according to Green, is more valu-
able than the negative freedom, that of not being
coerced by others, which Mill had stressed, though
(as Berlin in “Two Concepts of Liberty” did not re-
alize) it requires that negative freedom (Works, vol.
III, p. 371). Green argues that the state’s business is
“to maintain the conditions without which a free ex-
ercise of the human faculties is impossible” (p. 374).
In PE he presents a moral ideal of a self-devotion
that not only develops one’s own faculties but does
so by doing what is necessary to help others develop
theirs (269–80).
It may now be comprehensible how Green could
have the kind of influence—stemming in part from
his own self-devotion, for example, to the widening
of educational opportunity and to the general wel-
fare of the city of Oxford—of which R. G. Colling-
wood (1889–1943) wrote in his Autobiography:
“The school of Green sent out into public life a
stream of ex-pupils who carried with them the con-
viction that philosophy and particularly the philos-
ophy they had learned at Oxford was an important
thing and that their vocation was to put it into prac-
tice.” Those who seek a better life for all, and es-
pecially for persons who are denied negative or posi-
tive freedoms, have more, perhaps, to gain from
Green than from any other philosopher.
See also: ALTRUISM; BENEFICENCE; COMMON GOOD;
CONSCIENCE; DESIRE; ELITE, THE; EXPLOITATION; HE-
DONISM; HUME; IDEALIST ETHICS; INDIVIDUALISM;
JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE;KANT; KANTIAN ETHICS;
LIBERALISM; LIBERTY;
JOHN STUART MILL; MORAL
DEVELOPMENT; NATURALISM; NEEDS; OPPRESSION;
PLEASURE; TEMPERANCE; UTILITARIANISM; VIRTUES.
Bibliography
Works by Green
Prolegomena to Ethics. Edited by A. C. Bradley. 5th ed.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906 [1883].
Works. Edited by R. L. Nettleship. London: Longmans,
1888. Volume I has a sustained critique of Hume’s
ethics. Volume III includes the lecture “Liberal Legis-
lation and Freedom of Contract”; two famous ad-
dresses, “The Witness of God” and “Faith”; and a long
and vivid memoir by the editor, including an account
of Green’s ethics.

Works about Green
Caird, Edward. “Preface.” In Essays in Philosophical
Criticism, edited by A. Seth and R. B. Haldane. Lon-
don: Longmans, 1883. An excellent brief account of
Green as philosopher and person.
Richter, Melvin. The Politics of Conscience: T. H. Green
and His Age. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964.
Not a philosophical study, but useful.
Ryan, Alan. “The Philanthropic Perspective after a Hun-
dred Years.” In Giving: Western Ideas of Philanthropy,
edited by J. B. Schneewind. Bloomington and India-
napolis: Indiana University Press, 1996. Though lack-
ing quotation, explains the appeal of Green’s ethics to
those unsatisfied by utilitarianism, and shows how rad-
ical was his criticism, in the 1881 lecture, of compla-
cent assumptions about unlimited liberty in relation to
property and the market.
Sidgwick, Henry. Lectures on the Ethics of T. H. Green,
Mr. Herbert Spencer, and James Martineau. London:
Macmillan, 1902. Shows that Green offered insuffi-
cient argument in PE for some of his main positions
but is insensitive to the anti-utilitarian strengths of the
work. See also Sidgwick’s review in the journal Mind
(1884), and the index references to Green in the bi-
ography Henry Sidgwick by A. and E. M. Sidgwick
(Macmillan, 1906).
Skorupski, John. English-Language Philosophy, 1750–
1945. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
1993. Chapter 3 discusses Green as a Kantian critic of
naturalism and of a narrow individualism.
Thomas, Geoffrey. The Moral Philosophy of T. H. Green.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. Bibliographically valu-
able, but does not do justice to Books III and IV of PE.
Vincent, Andrew, ed. The Philosophy of T. H. Green. Lon-
don: Gower, 1986. More on Green’s political philoso-
phy than on his ethics; but his campaign for liquor leg-
islation is well described, and related to his view of
freedom, by Peter Nicholson.
Ward, Mrs. Humphrey. Robert Elsmere. London: Smith,
Elder, 1888. A novel dedicated to Green; he appears in
it thinly disguised as Mr. Grey. See especially chapters
5, 27, 44.
John Howes
Grotius, Hugo
[or, Huig de Groot] (1583–1645)
The father of modern international law. A typical
humanist, Grotius combined prodigious scholarship
as historian, theologian, legal philosopher, editor of
classical texts, and Latin poet, with an active public
life as lawyer, politician, and diplomat.
Born into a family of lawyers and civic officials in
633
Grotius, Hugo
Delfts, he was reared in an extraordinary circle of
humanists associated with the University of Leiden.
The major conflicts of the age shaped his intellectual
work. When the United Provinces were fighting for
independence from Spain, the young Grotius de-
fended his country’s right of free trade overseas in
De Indis, a work only rediscovered and published in
the nineteenth century as De iure praedae. A chapter
appeared in 1609 as the controversial Mare liberum
(and provoked Mare clausum [1635], a reply by the
English historian, John Selden [1584–1654]). It is
notable also for a theory of PROPERTY which denies
individual states exclusive RIGHTS to common goods
such as the open sea.
Grotius, a defender of aristocratic republics, en-
joyed rapid political preferment under the powerful
statesman, Jan van Olden Barnevelt (1547–1619).
This ended abruptly in 1619 with their arrest and a
trial which led to the latter’s execution for treason
and Grotius’s own life imprisonment and subsequent
famous escape. The trial originated in the split in the
Dutch Church between strict Calvinism and Armin-
ianism. Grotius underwrote Arminius’s (1560–1609)
notion of the supremacy of the state over the church
with an ‘absolutist’ contract theory, whose principles
are that any free contract is valid, and that free in-
dividuals are presumed to grant the sovereign every
power necessary to secure a peaceful society, except
such powers as threaten their temporal or eternal
life. Whether the former leads to some right of re-
sistance is debatable. As for the latter, Grotius even-
tually concluded that the state needed, and was jus-
tified in enforcing, only two beliefs: that there is a
God and that he cares for his creation. This convic-
tion inspired his lifelong schemes for reunification
of the Christian churches and his rapprochement
with Catholicism, while remaining an Arminian;
these irenic and liberal doctrines inform his theolog-
ical works, notably the influential De veritate reli-
gionis christianae (1627).
The confessional wars, especially the Thirty Years
War, led Grotius to write his great De iure belli ac
pacis. He elaborated theories of ‘just war’ and NAT-
URAL LAW, especially those of the Spanish scholas-
tics, into the theoretical foundation of a system of
international law. It was published in 1625 in Paris,
where he lived in exile until his death, spending the
last ten years of his life as Queen Christina of Swe-
den’s ambassador to France. Its central idea is that
(pace moral relativists) there is a moral standard, or
Grotius, Hugo
law of nature, which is common to all mankind and
crosses religious and other boundaries, and by which
all conflict, including war, must be judged. The core
of this universal morality is the recognition of ra-
tional self-preservation. One premise for this is that
creation would be pointless unless one assumes a
right of self-preservation in the creature. Since this
applies equally to all creatures, one’s preservation
must not be at the expense of another’s unless this is
unavoidable. Grotius expresses this in rights language
derived from parts of the scholastic tradition. All
moral agents have equal rights to self-preservation
and to the means thereto. Among the most impor-
tant of these means are all social associations, in-
cluding civil society, which we freely enter. The same
applies to the right to the use of nature. Private prop-
erty originates in our use of individual parts of the
common world and is eventually formalized con-
tractually. Similarly, relations between states are for-
malized as elaborations of the basic law of nature.
The central philosophical problems in Grotius are
these. The ontological status of the law of nature
hinges on the problem of whether people are origi-
nally rights-bearers (or owners) whose ‘negotiations’
establish all relations of justice; or whether claims
presuppose regard for the claims of others in order
to be recognized as rights at all. While the latter is
favored above (hence rational self-preservation), the
former has been forcefully presented as pointing to
HOBBES (1588–1679). The epistemic status of the
law of nature is twofold, primarily a rational insight
into mankind’s position in the world, confirmed,
secondarily, by the universal CONSENT of mankind.
Its moral status derives from a direct insight into the
wrongness of transgressions and the rightness of
conformity. Grotius here takes up a medieval idea of
ius (‘right’) as not only something we have, but as a
POWER to judge and act morally. This contributed to
the modern notion of an active or moral power. This
idea of the moral status of the law of nature was
perhaps his most original point, leading him to sug-
gest that this law was obligatory even if we assumed
that there were no God. Previously and for long
afterwards it was commonly maintained that hu-
mans might see the goodness of natural law but
could be under no obligation to it without presup-
posing its origin in God’s will. Finally, Grotius’s for-
mulation of the distinction between perfect, enforce-
able, ‘negative’ rights and imperfect, ‘positive’ rights
is a major source for the debates about the sphere
634
of justice in the seventeenth and eighteenth centu-
ries, and for the attempts to deal with the problem
of SUPEREROGATION in legalistic terms.
Despite persistent controversies about Grotius’s
originality, it is clear that the modern schools of nat-
ural law originating from him and centering around
these problems were the most pervasive form of
moral philosophy until KANT (1724–1804).
See also: AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; CALVIN;
COMMON GOOD; CONTRACTS; HOBBES; HUMANISM;
INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE: CONFLICT; JUSTICE, CIR-
CUMSTANCES OF; LEGAL PHILOSOPHY; LIBERALISM;
MILITARY ETHICS; NATURAL LAW; POWER; PROPERTY;
RECIPROCITY; RIGHT HOLDERS; RIGHTS; SOCIAL AND
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY; SOCIAL CONTRACT; SUPER-
EROGATION; WAR AND PEACE.
Bibliography
Works by Grotius
De jure praedae commentarius ⳱ Commentary on the
Law of Prize and Booty. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1950 [written 1604–1605]. 2 vols: vol. 1, English
translation by G. L. Williams; vol. 2, reproduction of
Grotius’s manuscript. Reprinted, New York: Oceana,
1964.
Mare liberum ⳱ The Freedom of the Seas. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1916 [1609]. Vol. 1, Latin text of
1633; vol. 2, English translation by J. Brown Scott.
De veritate religionis Christianae. In vol. 3 of his Opera
theologica. 3–96. Amsterdam: J. Blaeu, 1679 [1627].
The Truth of the Christian Religion. Translated by J.
Clarke. Edited by J. le Clerc. London: Rivington, 1805
[1623]. Important edition; translation from the French.
De jure belli ac pacis libri tres. Leiden: Brill, 1939 [1625].
The only variorum edition.
The Rights of War and Peace. London: Innys, 1738
[1625]. Notes by J. Barbeyrac; important edition for
the diffusion of natural law; this translation is particu-
larly important for moral philosophy in the English-
speaking world.
De jure belli ac pacis libri tres ⳱ The Rights of War and
Peace. Edited by F. W. Kelsey. 3 vols. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1924 [1625]. The most readily avail-
able edition and translation; reprinted New York:
Oceana, 1964. Introduction by J. Scott Brown.
Briefwisseling van Hugo Grotius. Edited by P. C. Molhuy-
sen and B. L. Meulenbroek. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1928.
Works about Grotius
Diesselhorst, Malte. Die Lehre des Hugo Grotius vom Ver-
sprechen. Cologne: Bohlau, 1959.

Edwards, Charles S. Hugo Grotius, The Miracle of Hol-
land. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981.
Haakonssen, Knud. “Hugo Grotius and the History of Po-
litical Thought.” Political Theory 13 (1985): 239–65.
———. Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Gro-
tius to the Scottish Enlightenment. New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1996.
———, ed. Grotius, Pufendorf and Modern Natural Law.
International Library of Critical Essays in the History
of Philosophy. London: Dartmouth, 1998.
Haggenmacher, Peter. Grotius et la doctrine de la guerre
juste. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983.
The most comprehensive recent monograph, wider
ranging than the title suggests; extensive bibliography.
Knight, W. S. M. The Life and Works of Hugo Grotius.
Grotius Society Publications, no. 4. London: Sweet
and Maxwell, 1925. The standard biography.
Schneewind, Jerome B. The Invention of Autonomy: A
History of Modern Moral Philosophy. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Tierney, Brian. The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Nat-
ural Rights, Natural Law and Church Law, 1150–
1625. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1997. Ch. 13.
Tuck, Richard. Natural Rights Theories, Their Origin and
Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1979. See chapter 3.
———. Philosophy and Government 1572–1651. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. See chap-
ter 5.
———. The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought
and the International Order from Grotius to Kant. Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1999. See chapter 3.
Knud Haakonssen
groups, moral status of
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of giving
moral status to groups is the problem of group (col-
lective) RESPONSIBILITY, but questions concerning
group harms, group INTERESTS, and group RIGHTS
have also generated thoughtful discussions. In the
Western world, individuals rather than groups are
thought to be the entities that can have moral pred-
icates assigned to them. Critics of the practice of
assigning moral status to groups believe that such a
practice involves a form of tribalism: a discredited
and outdated form of self-identification.
The practice of holding individuals morally ac-
countable is far from a settled matter. For thousands
of years, philosophers have pondered this problem.
For example, ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) offered
an analysis of individual moral responsibility, but his
account is far from satisfactory. His examination of
635
groups, moral status of
responsibility leads him to analysis of voluntary and
involuntary actions. For Aristotle, free choice is a
necessary condition for holding an agent morally re-
sponsible. However, it is no simple matter, as Aris-
totle discovered, to say what it means to choose
something, let alone to choose “freely.” What is the
relationship between free choice and compulsion?
Can a person act under constraint (external or in-
ternal) and yet be said to have chosen freely?
These are complex questions that cannot be ad-
dressed here; they are mentioned only to indicate
that the issue of responsibility of individuals is by
no means settled. In fact, some philosophers believe
that it makes little sense to talk about responsibility
if a necessary condition of holding individuals re-
sponsible is the ability to control and choose other
than the way they have chosen. If it is a matter of
MORAL LUCK that we find ourselves in the situations
that we do (circumstances of birth, parents, etc.),
luck may shape our lives and our choices in ways
beyond our control. Nonetheless, even with all of the
controversy surrounding holding individuals respon-
sible, Westerners are strongly wed to this practice.
Group (Collective) Responsibility
What is group (collective) responsibility? Is the
same model that is used to explain individual agent
responsibility sufficient to explain group responsi-
bility? There have been a variety of responses to
these questions. Some writers believe that if we
adopt the theoretical model used to explain individ-
ual agent responsibility, then group responsibility is
impossible. Others believe that even if we do employ
the model used to explain agent responsibility, we
can still adequately define group responsibility. Still
others believe that an altogether different model of
responsibility is required in order to adequately de-
fine group responsibility.
Regardless of which side of the debate over group
responsibility one is on, defining what is meant by
“group” is crucial. Philosophers generally agree that
a group is defined as more than one individual. How-
ever, they quickly part company over what consti-
tutes a group that can have moral predicates as-
signed to it. Some contend that group responsibility
occurs only when all members of the group have
acted to cause some blameworthy action. In this
case, the group as a whole is responsible because
each member of the group is responsible. On the
groups, moral status of
other hand, some believe that a group as a whole
can be held responsible even if only some of its mem-
bers have acted in a blameworthy way. Moral pred-
icates cannot necessarily be distributed over the
group as a whole. In other words, from the judg-
ment, S is a member of group G, one is not entitled
to conclude that S has been harmed or that S is
responsible.
Can a mere collection of diverse and unrelated
individuals qualify as a group that can have moral
responsibility assigned to it? The prevailing view is
that a random collection of individuals cannot form
a group that can have moral predicates assigned to
it. Other philosophers argue that, under certain spe-
cial conditions, a random collection of unrelated in-
dividuals can constitute a moral group if they fail to
organize to prevent some dreadful wrong from oc-
curring if they could safely and easily do so.
What is necessary for holding a group morally
responsible? Some philosophers claim that an im-
portant and necessary condition for assigning moral
status to groups as a whole is group solidarity. By
group solidarity, they mean that all members of the
group share interests, feel PRIDE when one of its
members does something noteworthy, and feel shame
when one of its members acts badly. Although group
solidarity is seen as important and necessary, it is not
seen as a sufficient condition. Other conditions, like
opportunity for control and contribution, have also
been thought to be required for assigning moral
status to groups.
Is group solidarity a necessary condition for
group responsibility? Many writers believe that if we
weaken or eliminate the group solidarity condition,
then we create an unacceptable fit between those
who have wronged and those who are held respon-
sible for the wrongdoing. For instance, supporters
of this position refuse to believe that all whites in
the South were responsible for the injustices com-
mitted against black southerners because they do
not think that all southern whites had solidarity with
one another. It is their contention that those white
southerners who did not condone or associate with
whites who wronged blacks are relieved of any
responsibility.
On the other hand, others have argued that some-
thing weaker than the group solidarity condition can
bind together as a morally responsible group what
might appear to be a loose or random collection of
individuals. An example of the weaker requirement
636
is the failure to clearly disassociate oneself from a
group that serves as one’s primary form of identifi-
cation, when some members of the group in the
name of the group engage in blameworthy behavior.
The problem here is to say clearly what counts as a
reasonable practice of disassociation, and when such
a practice is called for.
The individualist critics of the idea of assigning
moral responsibility to groups give two basic argu-
ments against assigning moral predicates to groups:
the metaphysical argument and the pragmatic ar-
gument. The metaphysical argument maintains that
there are no real entities that are being assigned re-
sponsibility in the collectivist account. The support-
ers of this position claim that if morality does not
rest with the individual or if group morality does not
reduce to individuals, then we are engaging in bad
metaphysics. The pragmatic argument asserts that it
is socially desirable to connect responsibility to in-
dividuals because it better creates an atmosphere
that is conducive to law and order.
Both of these arguments fail to demonstrate the
untenability of group responsibility. The pragmatic
argument fails because there is an important differ-
ence between usefulness and truth. It may be true
that groups can be assigned moral predicates like
responsibility, even though such a practice may not
be as socially useful as some other practice. The
metaphysical argument fails to recognize that there
may be some entities we assign responsibility to that
are not strictly analyzable into the actions of indi-
viduals. Although this fact may not be well received
by those who do the metaphysics of morals, it is a
fact accepted by philosophers of law.
It has been argued that we can reject the either/
or dichotomy advanced by the individualists if we
recognize the existence of “social roles.” The con-
cept of a social role is understood in institutional
terms, and it allows for responsibility in a social role
that cannot be reduced to purely individualistic
terms while at the same time recognizing that the
individual still plays a role in the analysis.
Group Harms and Group Interests
Some philosophers have argued that groups can
be harmed by the infringement of the common in-
terest of their members and that this fact provides a
moral foundation on which to rest legitimate moral
claims. Proponents of this position believe that an

organizational structure, a decision procedure, or
the capacity for action is not necessary for correctly
ascribing moral harms or interests to certain social
groups. They also contend that harm is roughly de-
fined as the infringement of an interest where an
interest can be defined as anything that is the object
of human DESIRE, but recognizing the fact that we
all have desires that are against our interests. Their
view is that certain social groups, as a whole, are
harmed when their interests are violated.
The problem for this position is to show how
those who are members of “loosely organized”
groups (i.e., groups lacking an intricate organiza-
tional structure, a decision procedure, and the ca-
pacity for collective action) who have not had their
interests directly violated can have been harmed.
One proposed way of doing this has been to argue,
for example, that each member of the group is
harmed because of the existence of negative stereo-
types and the role these harmful stereotypes play in
society.
But is such a move necessary in order to show
that a member of a social group can be harmed in a
very indirect way? What about “vicarious” harms
and interests? Legal philosophers contend that an
individual can experience vicarious harm in two
ways: (a) if her well-being is intimately linked with
persons who experience direct harm, and (b) if there
is some felt solidarity between the person who is
directly harmed and the person who is said to be
vicariously harmed. However, this distinction in
practice is somewhat artificial, because when we
find (a) we also find (b). One point is that there must
be a strong communal, emotional, or legal connec-
tion between members of the group in order to as-
sign moral or legal predicates to members who are
not directly harmed.
An alternative account of the common interest
shared by members of loosely organized social
groups maintains that people can have common in-
terest and thus experience collective harm when they
can be acted upon as a group even when they do not
share communal, emotional, or legal ties. Examples
of these types of groups are racial minority groups
in racist societies. Racial minorities in racist socie-
ties have experienced group harm because they have
a common interest: the elimination of mistreatment
due to their being adversely stereotyped. What is
crucial here is not the fact that they have solidarity
or that they are incapable of acting as a group to
637
groups, moral status of
eliminate or reduce maltreatment, but the very idea
that they are adversely treated because of their group
membership. The harm that results from this type of
treatment is group based and cannot be properly
understood if we view it as the aggregate harms and
claims of the individual members of these social
groups.
The members of these socially defined groups
need not actually identify themselves by reference to
the group in order to have moral group interests.
Pervasive discriminatory treatment of group mem-
bers on the basis of characteristics beyond their con-
trol is thought to be sufficient to accord such groups
moral standing. For example, the discriminatory
treatment of blacks under the former apartheid re-
gime in South Africa nicely illustrates this point.
Even black South Africans who did not identify
themselves in racial terms or who did not identify
with some particular harm done to some specific
black South African will still be harmed because
they are subject to the indiscriminate treatment of
blacks due to apartheid.
There are at least two interpretations for why the
group as a whole is harmed or has its interest vio-
lated in the above account: (1) Each member is sus-
ceptible to the same type of harm, even though at
the time one may not experience some particular
harm; (2) there is no way to avoid the harm that is
likely to result because of some characteristic or set
of characteristics beyond one’s control. On this ac-
count, harms that occur due to indiscriminate treat-
ment affect members of certain social groups even
though they choose not to identify with the group.
But what about those blacks, for example, who
are passing for white and are not susceptible to the
indiscriminate harm of racial discrimination? These
blacks would not be harmed on this account unless
they were harmed because they had solidarity (or
something like it) with other blacks who cannot pass
for white. But if we embrace this way of understand-
ing group interest, what about those whites who em-
pathize with the plight of blacks who face such per-
vasive indiscriminate treatment? Are these whites
harmed? If so, should they be included with the
group of blacks who are passing for white but feel a
sense of solidarity with blacks? Perhaps a distinction
should be drawn between empathizing with a group
and identifying or having solidarity with a group.
While identification and solidarity require some cul-
tural participation, empathy does not.
groups, moral status of
Group Rights and Justice
Many writers, particularly political libertarians,
have insisted that justice is based on the rights of
individuals. They contend that programs or policies
that focus on groups in an attempt to compensate
for harms and rights violations are unfounded. For
them, justice forbids granting rights to groups.
On the other hand, supporters of group rights
maintain that while individual rights are an impor-
tant aspect of justice, justice may function differ-
ently for social groups. In this account, there is some
disagreement over how group rights should be char-
acterized. One way of doing so defines social groups
as entities or persons in their own right. In other
words, the group is given ontological status. An-
other way denies ontological status to these social
groups but still recognizes that entities larger than
the individual play a crucial role in contemporary
life.
According to this view, group rights cannot be
reduced to individual rights, nor can groups who are
rights bearers be thought of as entities or persons in
their own right. The basic idea is that the only way
to protect the rights of members of certain socially
defined groups is by granting rights to the group as
a whole. The group is seen as the repository of the
aggregate rights of its members. This view affirms
the importance of individual rights, but it does insist
that justice demands that groups can be bearers of
rights in special social circumstances—for example,
where the only way to correct some harm done to
members of a historically disadvantaged group is by
assigning rights to the group as a whole. The prob-
lem, however, is to show how supporters of this view
can square it with a healthy respect for individual
rights and distinguish it from teleological views that
do not assign any privileged moral status to individ-
ual rights.
The debate over the moral status of groups is still
raging, and the issues in dispute lie at the heart of
the affirmative action controversy. Becoming clear
about the moral status of groups is an indispensable
step in becoming clear about what morality requires
when it comes to awarding scarce resources to cer-
tain socially defined groups.
See also: AMNESTY AND PARDON; CIVIL DISOBEDI-
ENCE; CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIC DUTIES; COERCION;
COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY; COMMUNITARIANISM;
638
CONVENTIONS; COOPERATIVE SURPLUS; DELIBERA-
TION AND CHOICE; DISCRIMINATION; FAMILY; FREE
WILL; GENOCIDE; HOLOCAUST; INDIVIDUALISM; IN-
STITUTIONS; INTERESTS; JUSTICE, RECTIFICATORY;
MORAL COMMUNITY, BOUNDARIES OF; MULTICULTUR-
ALISM; PROFESSIONAL ETHICS; RACISM AND RELATED
ISSUES; RESPONSIBILITY; REVOLUTION; RIGHT HOLD-
ERS; RIGHTS; VOLUNTARY ACTS.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Book III contains material
on responsibility and voluntary and involuntary actions.
Bittker, Boris. The Case for Black Reparations. New York:
Random House, 1973. Group rights and group re-
sponsibility in the law.
Boxill, Bernard. Blacks and Social Justice. Totowa, N.J.:
Rowman and Allanheld, 1984. The morality of com-
pensating groups.
Brodbeck, May. “Methodological Individualism: Defini-
tion and Reduction.” In Readings in the Philosophy of
the Social Sciences, edited by May Brodbeck. New
York: Macmillan, 1968. The nature of social groups.
Feinberg, Joel. “Collective Responsibility.” In his Doing
and Deserving. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1970. Group responsibility.
———. “Harm and Self-Interest.” In his Rights, Justice,
and the Bounds of Liberty. Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1980.
Fiss, Owen. “Groups and the Equal Protection Clause.”
Reprinted in Equality and Preferential Treatment, ed-
ited by M. Cohen et al. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1977. Group rights.
French, Peter A., ed. Individual and Collective Responsi-
bility: The Massacre at My Lai. Cambridge, MA:
Schenkman Press, 1972.
Friedman, Marilyn, and Larry May. “Harming Women as
a Group.” Social Theory and Practice 11 (1985): 207–
34. Group interest and group harms.
Gomperz, H. “Individual and Collective Social Responsi-
bility.” Ethics 49 (1939): 329–42.
May, Larry. The Morality of Groups: Collective Responsi-
bility, Group-based Harms, and Corporate Rights.
Bloomington, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
1987.
———. Sharing Responsibility. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1992.
———. The Socially Responsive Self: Social Theory and
Professional Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1996.
May, Larry, and Stacey Hoffman, eds. Collective Respon-
sibility: Five Decades of Debate in Theoretical and Ap-
plied Ethics. Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield,
1991.

McGary, Howard. Race and Social Justice. Oxford: Black-
well Publishers, 1999.
McGary, Howard, Jr. “Morality and Collective Liability.”
Journal of Value Inquiry 20 (1986): 157–65.
Pilon, Roger. “Corporations and Rights: On Treating Cor-
porate People Justly.” Georgia Law Review 13 (1979):
1245–1370.
Howard McGary
guilt and shame
Literature, since antiquity, has abounded with works
that owe their structure to themes of guilt and
shame. Genesis 1–3, Oedipus Rex (fifth century
B.C.E.), Hamlet (c. 1601), The Scarlet Letter (1850),
and Crime and Punishment (1866) come quickly to
mind. Yet only since Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
have studies in philosophy, PSYCHOLOGY, and the
social sciences made theoretical use of these con-
cepts. Freud showed how powerful an explanatory
concept guilt can be, and his work guided others,
both inside and outside PSYCHOANALYSIS, to the idea
of pairing guilt and shame and using their differ-
ences to classify and explain various social and psy-
chological phenomena. Thus, on the one hand, eth-
nologists have pursued this idea in studying the
regulative practices of different societies, and on the
other, philosophers and psychologists have pursued
it in studying the MORAL PSYCHOLOGY of individ-
uals. This article will discuss these two programs of
study.
Ethnology
Regarded as objective conditions, guilt and shame
differ in the responses they call for. Guilt is that con-
dition in virtue of which PUNISHMENT is deserved,
whereas shame, being a condition of dishonor or dis-
grace, invites ridicule and opprobrium. This way of
differentiating the two brings out their connection
with distinct social practices and, indeed, distinct
social worlds. The world of guilt and punishment is
a world governed by laws or the commands of a su-
preme AUTHORITY. In it great importance is placed
on individual RESPONSIBILITY: individuals have the
POWER to choose whether to obey or disobey these
laws or commands, and their choices, for the most
part, control their liability to punishment. That is,
obedience secures a presumption of INNOCENCE and
thus immunity from punishment, while disobedi-
639
guilt and shame
ence, if indefensible, entails guilt and thus a liability
to punishment. In this world justice is a principal
interest, and the system that determines guilt or in-
nocence and punishes or exonerates accordingly
serves this interest.
The world of shame and opprobrium, by contrast,
is a world governed by public esteem or the esteem
of one’s peers. In it great importance is placed on an
individual’s worth, his HONOR, and that worth de-
pends on the individual’s retaining the public’s or
his peers’ esteem. Generally speaking, he retains it
by acting in ways and achieving successes proper to
someone of his status and standing and through the
good fortune of not suffering indignities that would
impugn his honor; and correspondingly he loses it
through improprieties or failures, when they become
publicly known, or through indignities that go un-
avenged. Such loss is a loss of face, which puts one
to shame and makes one a target of ridicule and
scorn. In this world individual responsibility is not
of great importance since one can lose face as a re-
sult of events over which one has no control. The
customs by which honor is given, lost, and restored
are largely indifferent to justice.
These contrasts suggest the ethnological classifi-
cation of societies into guilt cultures and shame cul-
tures. This classificatory system, however, in its best
known form, primarily turns on a psychological cri-
terion. Thus, following the general idea that CON-
SCIENCE equips a person for living in a society that
places great importance on individual responsibility
while a sense of shame equips him for living in a
society governed by public esteem, one classifies a
society as having one or the other type of culture
according as its members manifest a conscience or
a sense of shame in their personal and public be-
havior. The test for which of these MOTIVES explains
the relevant behavior is whether the behavior im-
plies a complete internalization of the society’s
moral standards or is merely a response to pressures
to conform exerted by others. Accordingly, so the
ethnologists who applied the system in this form
maintained, the compunctions and guilt feelings that
conscience produces can occur independently of any
real or felt pressure from others, whereas, in every
experience of shame, one is aware of or imagines
another observing one.
This system for classifying societies, though once
widely influential, has two serious drawbacks. First,
common experience directly opposes the thesis that
guilt and shame
one never feels shame without being aware of or
imagining another’s presence. On the evidence of
such experience, a developed sense of shame, no less
than a conscience, implies completely internalized
standards. Second, conscience and a sense of shame
can be complementary elements of a moral person-
ality, a normal possibility that representing them as
bases of alternative types of personality obscures.
Recognition of these drawbacks contributed to the
sharp decline in the system’s influence. Insofar as
interest remains in differentiating guilt-oriented from
shame-oriented societies, the contrasts between the
regulative practices that the two social worlds
sketched above highlight provide sounder criteria.
Psychology
Regarded as subjective states, guilt is an EMOTION
one feels over disobeying a rule or command whose
authority one accepts, whereas shame is an emotion
one feels over falling short of a standard of worth or
EXCELLENCE with which one identifies. Put suc-
cinctly, guilt is felt over wrongdoings, shame over
shortcomings. This way of putting the difference
presupposes that, in either case, beliefs one has
about one’s actions and circumstances mediate be-
tween them and the emotion, for it locates the main
difference between the emotions in the distinctions
between the major concepts that constitute these
mediating beliefs. Attention to these conceptual dis-
tinctions then helps to clarify the different places
that guilt and shame have in our lives.
Thus, typically, rules whose authority one accepts
bind one together with others in social relations.
Transgressing the rules means breaking these bonds,
which is to say, rupturing these relations; and in feel-
ing guilt over the transgression one painfully rec-
ognizes one’s responsibility for the rupture. Accord-
ingly, one is disposed to repair it: to make amends
or reparations, to right the wrong one did. In dramas
of relations damaged by wrongdoing and made whole
by atonement and FORGIVENESS, guilt has a central
place. In contrast, typically, standards of worth with
which one identifies define a model member of a
group or kind one belongs to or seeks to join. In
falling short of such a standard, one displays a defect
or blemish that makes one unworthy of membership
in the relevant group, and shame is the shock to
one’s sense of worth that comes from recognizing
this shortcoming and its significance. Because one
640
has staked one’s identity on being a member and
attributed to oneself the worth that membership
brings, the discovery of such a shortcoming comes
as a serious blow to one’s pride and SELF-RESPECT.
Accordingly, one is disposed to conceal this short-
coming and, where possible, remove or surmount it.
In our endeavors to make and present ourselves,
shame’s place is vital.
While accounts of guilt and shame that use the
concepts of wrongdoing and shortcoming to differ-
entiate these emotions fit well into the cognitivist
theories of moral agency that now prevail in moral
psychology, they do not explain all the salient differ-
ences between the two emotions. Specifically, they
do not explain why shame, unlike guilt, is charac-
teristically felt before someone. Of course, one must
avoid construing this difference in a way implying
the thesis that sank the well-known ethnological dis-
tinction between guilt cultures and shame cultures,
but too many studies of shame and the circum-
stances that excite it, from ARISTOTLE (384–322
B.C.E.) to Jean Paul SARTRE (1905–1980), have
treated its being felt before someone as distinctive
of the emotion to regard accounts that fail to distin-
guish it from guilt in this respect as satisfactory. A
distinction Freud drew between different guises of
the superego suggests a way in which psychody-
namic theories of moral agency may overcome the
inability of cognitivist theories to account for this
difference. For the superego is an internal agent
whose operations recall both the disciplinary and
judgmental responses of one’s parents and later au-
thorities and models, and the two emotions may
then be understood as experienced differently ac-
cording as this internal agent makes itself felt
through a voice of reproach and ANGER or a look of
disapproval and disdain. These different ways in
which parents impress themselves upon their chil-
dren in their tenderest years may thus, through the
processes of internalization that ensue, explain sa-
lient differences between the two emotions that es-
cape accounts that depend on the concepts of wrong-
doing and shortcoming for their differentiation.
See also: AGENT CENTERED MORALITY; COMPARA-
TIVE ETHICS; CHARACTER; COGNITIVE SCIENCE; CON-
SCIENCE; CULTURAL STUDIES; DIGNITY; EXTERNALISM
AND INTERNALISM; FORGIVENESS; HONOR; INNO-
CENCE; JUSTICE, RECTIFICATORY; MERIT AND DESERT;
MORAL PSYCHOLOGY; MORAL RULES; MULTICULTUR-

ALISM; OBEDIENCE TO LAW; PSYCHOANALYSIS; PSY-
CHOLOGY; PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY; PUNISH-
MENT; PURITANISM; RESPONSIBILITY; SELF-ESTEEM;
SELF-RESPECT; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; SUBJECTIVISM.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Rhetoric. Book 2, chapter 6.
Benedict, Ruth. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Pat-
terns of Japanese Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1946.
Deigh, John. The Sources of Moral Agency: Essays in
Moral Psychology and Freudian Theory. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Dodds, E. R. The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1951.
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. 1930.
Lynd, Helen Merrell. On Shame and the Search for Iden-
tity. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1958.
Morris, Herbert. On Guilt and Innocence: Essays in Legal
641
guilt and shame
Philosophy and Moral Psychology. Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1976.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals. Second
essay (“‘Guilt’, ‘Bad Conscience’, and the Like”). 1887.
Peristiany, J. G., ed. Honour and Shame: The Values of
Mediterranean Society. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1966.
Piers, Gerhart, and Milton B. Singer. Shame and Guilt: A
Psychoanalytic and a Cultural Study. Springfield, Ill.:
Charles C. Thomas, 1953.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press, 1971.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Translated by
Hazel Barnes. Part 3, chapter 1, section 4 (“The Look”).
New York: Philosophical Library, 1956 [1943].
Williams, Bernard. Shame and Necessity. Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993.
Wollheim, Richard. The Thread of Life. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1984.
John Deigh
This page intentionally left blank
 H
Habermas, Jürgen (1929– )
German philosopher. Habermas was born in Düs-
seldorf and raised in Nazi Germany. His life and
work were indelibly stamped by the moral and po-
litical trauma of his youth. After World War II, he
studied in Göttingen, Zurich, and Bonn, where he
submitted a dissertation (1954) on SCHELLING
(1775–1854). From 1955 to 1959, he was Theodor
Adorno’s (1903–1969) assistant in Frankfurt. After
habilitating at Marburg (1961), he taught philoso-
phy and SOCIOLOGY at Heidelberg and Frankfurt,
before becoming director of the Max Planck Insti-
tute in Starnberg (1971). In 1983 he returned to
Frankfurt, where he became Professor, and later
Professor Emeritus, of Philosophy at Frankfurt
University.
Habermas’s scholarly work, which aspires to a
comprehensive CRITICAL THEORY of contemporary
society, ranges across most of the humanities and
social sciences. From the time of his involvement
with the German student movement in the 1960s,
he has also been prominent as a public intellectual,
speaking out on issues such as violations of civil lib-
erties and the “historicization” of the HOLOCAUST.
In ethics proper, Habermas is closest to the Kan-
tian tradition. He defends a cognitivist position that
focuses on questions of the right and the just; ques-
tions of the good life, while open to rational discus-
sion, are not deemed universalizable. “Discourse
ethics” replaces the categorical imperative with a
643
procedure of moral argumentation; normative jus-
tification is tied to the reasoned agreement of those
subject to the NORMS in question. The central prin-
ciple is that for a norm to be valid, its consequences
for the satisfaction of everyone’s particular INTER-
ESTS must be acceptable to all as participants in a
practical discourse. This shifts the frame of refer-
ence from KANT’s (1724–1804) solitary, reflecting,
moral consciousness to the community of moral sub-
jects in dialogue: Whether a norm is justifiable can-
not be determined monologically but only through
discursive testing of its claim to IMPARTIALITY. Un-
like RAWLS’s original position, however, the dis-
course model does not feature rational egoists pru-
dently contracting behind a veil of ignorance—a
procedure which might itself be carried out mono-
logically—but moral agents trying to put themselves
in each others’ places. While empathy models cap-
ture an aspect of Kant’s fundamental intuition that
is different from what is captured by contract mod-
els, they are insufficiently cognitive. The discourse
model, by requiring that perspective taking be gen-
eral and reciprocal, builds the moment of empathy
into the very procedure of coming to a reasoned
agreement: Each must put him- or herself in the
place of every other in discussing whether a pro-
posed norm is fair to all. And this must be done
publicly: Arguments played out in the individual
consciousness are no substitute for real discourse.
From this standpoint, Habermas’s extensive writ-
ings can be viewed as a sustained reflection on the
Habermas, Jürgen
historical, social, psychological, and cultural precon-
ditions of practical discourse. His theory of commu-
nication locates the roots of PRACTICAL REASON in the
validity claims and RECIPROCITY structures of every-
day interaction. His psychological writings adopt a
developmental perspective on what he regards as a
specieswide competence to reason practically. His
writings on society and politics treat reflective moral
argumentation as a historical achievement, whose
institutional embodiment has been and will continue
to be a function of the collective efforts of social
movements.
See also: COSMOPOLITAN ETHICS; CRITICAL THEORY;
DEMOCRACY; HOLOCAUST; IMPARTIALITY; KANTIAN
ETHICS; MORAL DEVELOPMENT; MORAL PSYCHOL-
OGY; MULTICULTURALISM; POSTMODERNISM; PRAC-
TICAL REASON[ING]; PRAXIS; PSYCHOLOGY; RECI-
PROCITY; RAWLS; SELF AND SOCIAL SELF; SOCIAL
CONTRACT; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; SOCIOLOGY; THE-
ORY AND PRACTICE; UNIVERSALIZABILITY.
Bibliography
Works by Habermas
Communication and the Evolution of Society. Translated
by T. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon, 1979. Seminal essays
on communication theory, moral development, and so-
cial evolution.
Justification and Application. Translated by C. Cronin.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993. Collection of essays
that develop a distinction between ethics and moral
theory, while engaging with a number of Anglo-
American authors.
Legitimation Crisis. Translated by T. McCarthy. Boston:
Beacon, 1975. Diagnosis of the ills of contemporary
society, tracing their roots to a failure to live up to the
promise of democracy.
Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Trans-
lated by C. Lenhardt and S. Nicholsen. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1989. Collection of essays on moral
theory and moral psychology.
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.
Translated by T. Burger and F. Lawrence. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1988. Habermas’s habilitation, still
the best way into his political thought.
Theory and Practice. Translated by J. Viertel. Boston: Bea-
con, 1973. Collection of early essays that reflect the
scope of his interests.
The Theory of Communicative Action. Translated by T.
McCarthy. 2 vols. Boston: Beacon, 1984, 1987. Ha-
bermas’s magnum opus, ranging widely across philos-
644
ophy and social science along the way to developing a
comprehensive social theory.
Between Facts and Norms. Translated by W. Rehg. Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. Habermas’s definitive
statement of the discourse approach to the theory of
law and democracy.
The Inclusion of the Other. Edited by C. Cronin and P. De
Greiff; translated by C. Cronin. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1998. Applies the discourse model of delibera-
tive democracy to issues of multiculturalism, nation-
alism, and cosmopolitanism.
Works about Habermas
Benhabib, Seyla. Critique Norm and Utopia. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1986. Study of the foun-
dations of critical theory from Hegel to Habermas;
raises interesting questions about discourse ethics.
Bernstein, Richard, ed. Habermas and Modernity. Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985. Habermas responds to
probing criticisms; good introduction by Bernstein.
Geuss, Raymond. The Idea of Critical Theory. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981. Careful examina-
tion of the claim of critical theory to provide enlight-
enment and emancipation.
McCarthy, Thomas. The Critical Theory of Jürgen Haber-
mas. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978. Detailed ac-
count of Habermas’s thought through the 1970s. In-
cludes extensive bibliography.
Meehan, Johanna, ed. Feminists Read Habermas. New
York: Routledge, 1995. An interesting collection of
critical essays by leading feminist philosophers.
Rehg, William. Insight and Solidarity. Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1994. The best study of Ha-
bermas’s discourse ethics.
Thompson, J., and D. Held, eds. Habermas: Critical De-
bates. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982. Habermas
debates with his critics.
White, Stephen. The Recent Work of Jürgen Habermas.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Cen-
ters on the themes of communicative rationality and
the foundations of ethics.
Thomas McCarthy
happiness
The desire for happiness is one of the most impor-
tant springs of human conduct. Any satisfactory eth-
ical theory must, therefore, take a position about it.
The positions of utilitarians and Kantians occupy
opposite ends of a continuum. BENTHAM (1748–
1832), JOHN STUART MILL (1806–1873), and SIDG-
WICK (1838–1900) identify the human good with
general happiness, and they evaluate actions on the

basis of their propensity to contribute to it. KANT
(1724–1804) and his followers agree with utilitari-
ans about happiness being a universal human goal,
but deny that this confers ethical value on it. In their
view, ethics categorically commands doing one’s
duty, irrespective of the consequences this has for
happiness. Both of these theories face several seri-
ous difficulties. One of which for utilitarians is to
explain how happiness could be the human good if
it could be, as it often is, enjoyed by immoral people,
whereas Kantians must explain why reasonable peo-
ple would be moral if it may have an adverse effect
on their happiness.
The ethical theories of the utilitarians and Kan-
tians are modern. The ancient ethical theory of EU-
DAIMONISM, versions of which were held by PLATO
(c. 430–347 B.C.E.), ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.),
the Stoics, and the Epicureans, proceeds differently.
Eudaimonists regard happiness as the human good,
but they also think that living virtuously is an indis-
pensable part of it. Eudaimonists thus avoid the
problems utilitarians have by denying that immoral
people could be happy. Eudaimonists also avoid the
Kantian problem by holding that morality necessar-
ily leads to happiness. The key to eudaimonism is
the linkage between morality and happiness by way
of virtue. Eudaimonists differ among themselves
about the precise relationship between virtue and
happiness. All of them agree that virtue is at least
necessary for happiness, but some of them think that
it is also sufficient. If that is so, then morality and
happiness are indissolubly connected. But is it so?
As eudamonists see it, happiness without moral-
ity is deceptive. The importance of the VIRTUES is
that they enable people to impose a reasonable rank-
ing on the goods required for happiness. Those who
lack the virtues rank the goods wrongly and deprive
themselves of true happiness. But how can eudai-
monists know that the ranking of goods that virtue
affords is more reasonable than a nonvirtuous rank-
ing? The answer leads to a deep assumption under-
lying the various versions of eudaimonism: reason-
able ranking is that which reflects the moral order
implicit in the scheme of things. Good lives are
bound to be happy and evil lives are bound to be
unhappy because the first conform to and the second
violate the moral order. This assumption is trans-
formed by Christian thought into an outlook that
combines Judaism, biblical revelation, and the teach-
ings of JESUS.
645
happiness
The difficulties faced by eudaimonists, however,
are no less than those of utilitarians and Kantians.
There seems to be no convincing reason to believe
in the existence of a moral order in the scheme of
things and common experience plainly indicates that
morally good and virtuous people are often unhappy,
whereas evil people are often happy. Contemporary
defenders of each of these three ethical theories are,
of course, aware of these difficulties and aim to over-
come them. It is a precondition of any hope of suc-
cess, however, to achieve clarity about what happi-
ness is.
The first step to that end is to identify as a central
and noncontroversial portion of happiness lasting
satisfaction with one’s life as a whole. Those who
enjoy this satisfaction want their lives to continue by
and large the same way; if asked, they would say that
things are going well for them; their most important
wants are being satisfied; they are doing and having
much of what they want; they frequently experience
joy, contentment, and PLEASURE; they are not di-
vided about their lives; they are not often beset by
fundamental inner conflicts; they are not given to
lasting depression, anxiety, or frustration; they have
no serious regrets about important decisions they
have taken; nor are they ruled by such negative feel-
ings as RESENTMENT, rage, ENVY, guilt, shame, or
jealousy.
Going below this surface description, it is possi-
ble to distinguish between two aspects of happiness.
One is an attitude, the other is a collection of epi-
sodes that contribute to forming the attitude. The
episodes are satisfactions derived from what one
does and has. The attitude is satisfaction with one’s
life as a whole. Given a sufficiently broad view, it
may be said that the lives of people are largely com-
posed of what they have and do. What they have are
not merely material goods, but also CHARACTER
traits, PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS, the respect of oth-
ers, worldly success, and a private sense of well-
being. And what they do includes not merely their
publicly observable actions but also reflection, aes-
thetic appreciation, feelingfulness, and quiet bemuse-
ment, which are private, yet often conducive to
happiness.
The attitudinal aspect of happiness is more than
a succession of satisfying episodes. For the attitude
requires that the significance of the episodes be ap-
praised in terms of a whole life. This appraisal need
not involve conscious reflection, although it fre-
happiness
quently does. It may just be an unspoken feeling of
approval of one’s life and a sense that particular
episodes fit into it. The episodes may be goals
achieved, obstacles overcome, experiences enjoyed,
or merely a seamless continuation of the approved
pattern of one’s life. Without many such episodes,
the attitude cannot be reasonably maintained. But the
connection between satisfying episodes and an atti-
tude of satisfaction with one’s life is not simple. By
appreciating why it is not so, it will begin to emerge
why happiness is such a complex phenomenon.
Happiness cannot consist in having and doing all
that one wants, for some wants are trivial and the
urge to satisfy them is transitory. Everyone can tol-
erate unsatisfied minor wants, and these only excep-
tionally stand in the way of happiness. It might be
supposed instead that happiness requires the satis-
faction of all that one seriously wants. But some peo-
ple seriously want only one thing, they pursue it
single-mindedly, to the exclusion of everything else,
and while they get it, their souls shrivel. Rich misers,
triumphant climbers of many of life’s greasy poles,
and successful avengers often find themselves empty
once their obsessions are acted out. Alternatively,
people may want only what they do not have, and
when they get it, they no longer want it—like Don
Juan. Yet others are mistaken in thinking that what
they want will satisfy them. The glittering sophisti-
cation of an inner circle may pale once the outsider
is accepted. Having what one seriously wants, there-
fore, is no guarantee of happiness.
Nor is doing all that one really wants to do suf-
ficient for happiness. One may want very much to
do something with the full realization that it will not
bring happiness, such as commit SUICIDE, do one’s
onerous duty, or choose the happiness of a child,
parent, or lover over one’s own. But doing all one
really wants is not even necessary for happiness, for
happy people can tolerate the frustration of some of
what they seriously want. A woman may be happy
in her life even though she realizes that her career is
incompatible with having the children she wants.
The cost of happiness is frequently to leave some
important wants unsatisfied. Life forces one to
choose and happiness requires the capacity to pre-
vent frustration from spoiling what one has. It is true
that happy lives are incompatible with the frustra-
tion of everything that one may want to have or do,
but it is a mistake to suppose that happiness consists
in having or doing all that one seriously wants.
646
Consider instead the more modest view that one
condition of happiness is satisfaction with many of
the important things one has and does. Having and
doing figure as merely formal notions in this sug-
gestion. This makes it possible to say what happiness
consists in without having to specify the particular
possessions and activities that may be conducive to
it. It can thus be said that happiness essentially in-
volves the satisfaction of important wants, while re-
maining uncommitted about whether there are some
particular satisfactions indispensable to happiness
or some particular dissatisfactions inevitably prohib-
iting it.
The satisfaction of important wants involves the
episodic aspect of happiness, but happiness also has
an attitudinal aspect. That aspect is also connected
with satisfaction, but it concerns one’s life as a
whole. This suggests a threefold distinction among
the kinds of wants and satisfactions that happiness
involves: each may be first-order, regulative, and
overall.
First-order satisfactions occur in the context of
the episodic aspect of happiness. Their objects are
specific activities and possessions. But since the
wants and the satisfactions may be trivial or serious,
harmful or beneficial, harmonious or incompatible,
foolish or wise, it is necessary to pick and choose
among them. Doing so requires having some way of
deciding which wants and satisfactions are impor-
tant. Such decisions depend on the development of
higher-order wants and satisfactions that have as
their objects the regulation of first-order wants and
satisfactions. These regulative wants and satisfac-
tions still belong to the episodic aspect of happiness,
although their object is not to obtain satisfactions,
but to determine what satisfactions may be reason-
ably sought. It is necessary, however, to ascend yet
even higher because there is one want whose satis-
faction is the ultimate object of the whole enterprise,
namely, wanting to have a happy life, that is, a life
in which many of the important wants are satisfied.
This may be identified as one’s overall want and sat-
isfaction. They occur in the context of the attitudinal
aspect of happiness because they take as their ob-
jects the totality of lower-order wants and satisfac-
tions. People whose lives are happy, therefore, have
numerous first-order wants and satisfactions, a
much smaller number of regulative wants and sat-
isfactions concerned with harmonizing and distin-
guishing between important and unimportant first-

order wants and satisfactions, and one each of an
overall want and an overall satisfaction bearing on
their attitude toward their life as a whole.
This three-tiered structure of wants and satisfac-
tions discloses certain relationships among the items
in the hierarchy. The satisfaction of the overall want
is dependent on the satisfaction of many important
first-order wants, and, since importance requires the
satisfaction of regulative wants, overall satisfaction
is dependent on that, too. Furthermore, the satisfac-
tion of regulative wants requires that there be first-
order wants, for otherwise there could be nothing
whose importance could be ascertained. But depen-
dency does not go merely from first-order to higher-
order wants and satisfactions; there is a kind of
dependence that proceeds from the top down. For
the distinction between important and unimportant
wants and satisfactions presupposes some standard
with reference to which the distinction could be
drawn, and this standard is that of wanting to be
satisfied with one’s life overall. Moreover, the activ-
ity of endeavoring to satisfy many first-order wants
presupposes the possession of a standard of impor-
tance, for, the world and human PSYCHOLOGY being
what they are, it is impossible and undesirable to
satisfy wants indiscriminately.
The connections within the hierarchy of wants
and satisfactions suggest several inferences that help
specify the conditions for the justified ascription of
happiness to a whole life. The first one is that hap-
piness requires knowing what is important in one’s
life. This knowledge need not be articulated either
publicly or privately. It may just be a steady policy
reflected by the judgments happy people make about
the satisfaction of their wants. Happiness requires
such judgments because even if seekers of haphaz-
ard satisfactions can truly claim to have enjoyed a
great many of them, they may still not have a happy
life. For their satisfactions may be of unimportant
wants or of only a few of the important ones. It is
necessary to choose between satisfactions and the
better the judgments are about what is important,
the more likely it is that the satisfactions chosen will
contribute to one’s overall happiness. Contrariwise,
the poorer the judgments are, the smaller is the
chance that unconsidered choices will lead to hap-
piness. Happiness, therefore, requires the balanced
pursuit of first-order satisfactions. If there were no
scarcity, no conflicts between short- and long-range
satisfactions, if wants were never harmful, stupid,
647
happiness
self-destructive, or inconsistent, then this balance
would not be required. It is not that imbalance is
incompatible with many episodic satisfactions; rather,
imbalance makes it impossible for these satisfactions
to add up to a happy life.
This point may be marked by distinguishing be-
tween feeling happy and being lastingly happy. The
feeling is a temporary result of a first-order satisfac-
tion: a demanding task well done, sexual gratifica-
tion, the experience of a work of art may produce it.
Being lastingly happy comes from the conjunction of
the satisfaction of important first-order wants; and
thus from the satisfaction of regulative wants, which
require judgments of importance; and, furthermore,
from the satisfaction of the overall want whose ob-
ject is one’s life overall. Going from first-order sat-
isfactions toward overall satisfactions is going from
the episodic aspect of happiness, involving feeling
happy, toward the attitudinal aspect of happiness,
having to do with being lastingly happy.
Happiness varies with the kind of satisfaction
whose possession it signifies. The best kind of hap-
piness comes from overall satisfaction with one’s life
as a whole. But there may be periods of happiness
in one’s life when important wants are satisfied, al-
though the happiness does not last because frustra-
tion sets in or because one’s judgment about what
is important shifts. The least valuable kind of hap-
piness is also the most frequent, that occasioned by
transitory episodes of feeling happy on account of
having satisfied urgent first-order wants.
A second inference derivable from the structure
of the hierarchy of wants and satisfactions has to do
with the connection between pleasure and pain, on
the one hand, and happiness, on the other. It is pos-
sible to have a great deal of pain and a happy life
because physical and psychological suffering may be
episodic, and such episodes may be outweighed by
more felicitous ones in the long run. Even lasting
pain is compatible with overall happiness, provided
many important first-order wants are satisfied.
The connection between happiness and pleasure
is one of the main themes that runs through the his-
tory of the subject from Plato to our days. It is an
elementary point that if “pleasure” is taken to mean
all forms of satisfaction, then happiness is necessar-
ily connected with pleasure. But this is a misleading
attempt at linguistic legislation, for there is no good
reason to stretch the meaning of “pleasure,” as this
maneuver does, to include such satisfactions as oc-
happiness
casioned by having done one’s painful duty or by
having successfully resisted a particularly tempting
opportunity for self-indulgence. On the other hand,
if the connection between happiness and pleasure is
not made tautologous, and pleasure is identified
with a cluster of sensations caused by physiological
processes involved in sex, consumption, elimination,
motion, rest, and the like, then it is clearly false that
happiness is necessarily connected with pleasure.
For there are many forms of satisfaction—aesthetic
appreciation, parental love, being given one’s due—
which have nothing to do with this cluster of phys-
iological sensations. A life without any pleasure, in
this second sense, probably cannot be happy. But it
is wrong to suppose that pleasure is part of every
episode of satisfaction.
A third inference leads to the recognition that
happiness comes in degrees. The extent of it de-
pends, in the first instance, on the satisfaction of
important first-order wants. These satisfactions are
quantitative, having to do with number, frequency,
and duration, and also qualitative, depending on in-
tensity, complexity, and modality. The degree of hap-
piness is partly determined by the quantity and qual-
ity of satisfactions, but the comparative importance
attached to various satisfactions and the personal
history of enjoyment of them also play a determining
role. Since judgments and histories differ, it is not
to be expected that when different people are cor-
rectly described as being lastingly happy, then it is
reasonable to make quantitative or qualitative com-
parisons between them. The kinds of satisfactions
Saint Theresa, Disraeli, Picasso, and Montaigne re-
garded as important were different, to put it mildly.
Each was happy to a degree, and even if it were pos-
sible to ascertain that they were happy to the same
degree—whatever “same” could mean here—it
would be fatuous to suppose that they were in simi-
lar states. It is important to bear this pluralistic as-
pect of happiness in mind in order to resist the blan-
dishments of cruder forms of utilitarianism and
decision theory that rest on the supposition that hap-
piness is measurable.
Reasonable people want to be as happy as pos-
sible, for they want to satisfy their important first-
order wants. But wanting that does not mean that
all reasonable people want the same thing. This is
why it is an advantage to describe happiness without
specifying the particular possessions and activities
required by it. Nor is it that when reasonable people
648
want to be happy, then they are unconditionally
committed to satisfying this want. For such people
may come to believe that their important first-order
wants are incompatible, harmful, injurious to those
they love, or that the requirements of their family,
country, cause, or profession take precedence over
the satisfaction of their wants. Unless there are over-
riding considerations, it is reasonable to want to in-
crease one’s happiness, but it does not follow that
happiness is the only reasonable aim to have.
If people’s lives conform to the conditions of hap-
piness, as they have been formulated up to now, then
they enjoy overall satisfaction with their lives, be-
cause as they apply their standards of what is im-
portant for them to have and to do, so they judge
that enough of their important first-order wants are
satisfied. Conformity to these conditions is then nec-
essary for happiness. Is it justified, however, to go
further and claim that it is sufficient as well? This
question can be interpreted from a first- and a third-
person point of view. The former takes it to be posed
by individuals about themselves: is it reasonable to
believe that my life is happy if I judge it to be so on
the grounds just given? The latter regards the ques-
tion as being raised about individuals by others: is it
reasonable to believe that individuals are happy if
they sincerely and on appropriate grounds believe
themselves to be happy? The first-person perspec-
tive yields a subjective view of happiness, the third-
person one gives rise to an objective view.
According to the subjective view, if people sin-
cerely believe themselves to be happy, then both the
necessary and sufficient conditions of their happi-
ness are met, and so it is justifiable to ascribe hap-
piness to them. According to the objective view, peo-
ple’s sincere belief is necessary but not sufficient for
the justified ascription of happiness to them, for
such beliefs may be mistaken. Only if the likelihood
of this type of mistake is eliminated have both nec-
essary and sufficient conditions for the ascription of
happiness been met.
The disagreement between subjectivists and ob-
jectivists is one of the great divides in ethics. Plato,
Aristotle, and THOMAS AQUINAS (1225?–1274),
among others, think that there is a kind (or perhaps
a few kinds) of life proper to human beings and it is
a mistake to suppose oneself to be happy unless one
lives it (or one of them). HOBBES (1588–1679),
HUME (1711–1776), John Stuart Mill, as well as
many emotivists, existentialists, and egoists think

that lives are what people make of them, and if the
individual whose life it is sincerely believes it to be
happy, then it is happy. This disagreement turns on
the possibility of making sense of the kind of mistake
that defenders of the objective view allow and cham-
pions of the subjective view disallow. How could it
be reasonable to say of people that they regard them-
selves as happy, but they are wrong? What could be
a mistake here? On what grounds could such sincere
beliefs be falsified?
At this point, contemporary philosophy can claim
to have advanced over its predecessors. Historically,
the debate between objectivists and subjectivists
was taken to turn on the existence of objective stan-
dards by which the happiness of lives could be
judged. It was agreed by both parties that the stan-
dards were ontological, such as the existence of a
divinely ordained purpose or of essential character-
istics implicit in human nature and determining
what sort of life could be happy for human beings.
Objectivists affirmed and subjectivists denied that
there was such a standard. The emerging contem-
porary consensus is that there are two reasons for
thinking that this debate has been misdirected. One
is that the issue is not ontological, but epistemolog-
ical. The question is not about the existence of ob-
jective standards, but about the possibility of rea-
sonably overruling the agents’ sincere beliefs. The
other is that the subjective-objective distinction
needs to be refined in at least four ways, indicated
below.
First, it must be recognized that happiness is
agent-relative and that it is so in a particular way.
Happiness is necessarily the possession of individual
agents and the necessary indication of its possession
is that the agents experience overall satisfaction with
their lives taken as a whole. There is no happiness
without a subject who experiences it. In this sense,
happiness is necessarily subjective. If any objective
view of happiness denies this, then it is incoherent.
But, second, happiness is an intentional experience
in both its attitudinal and episodic aspects. When
agents are or feel happy, it is about something; about
their lives as a whole, if it is the attitudinal aspect of
happiness; or about some particular satisfaction, if
it is the episodic aspect. Happiness thus has an in-
tentional object, which may or may not exist. The
agents must certainly believe that the intentional ob-
ject of their happiness exists, but their beliefs may
be mistaken. They are happy because they believe
649
happiness
that they are loved, but they may not be loved. It is
a crucial question about the subjective and objective
views of happiness whether or not it can be reason-
ably ascribed if the agents’ beliefs about the inten-
tional objects of their happiness are mistaken.
In thinking about this question, it must be rec-
ognized, third, that such beliefs are not only fallible
but also corrigible. The fundamental reason for
thinking that people’s sincere beliefs about their
own happiness could be mistaken and could be cor-
rected by others is that they could be shown to be
mistaken in their own terms. The temporal perspec-
tive is crucial to this possibility. People can view
their lives retrospectively, as their biographers may.
Or, they can plan for the future and construct sce-
narios about how they hope their lives might go; this
is the adolescent’s view. But the relevant perspective
is that of mature people considering their lives mid-
stream, people who sincerely believe that their im-
portant first-order wants are sufficiently satisfied.
Such beliefs could be overruled on the grounds that
the patterns of wants and satisfactions on which the
beliefs are based are internally faulty and will fail to
yield overall happiness or that the context in which
their lives are lived makes their overall happiness
impossible. In both cases, present and temporary
happiness will not last. The happiness these people
sincerely believe themselves to feel is merely a fleet-
ing experience before dissatisfaction with their lives
overall sets in.
Typical faults internal to patterns are having im-
portant first-order wants whose satisfaction cannot
last or cannot be achieved, but in whose case the
agents fail to realize that this is so. This may occur
if their wants are created by manipulation, indoctri-
nation, or SELF-DECEPTION, or if the wants are in-
compatible, too ambitious, require character traits
the agents fail to possess to a sufficient extent, or are
capable of satisfaction only during one period of
changing lives. Another type of mistake is to have a
pattern of wants and satisfactions that is unsuitable
to the context in which the agents live. The pattern
may lack the context of a culture that nourishes it.
Patterns of wants and satisfactions may thus be
doomed to failure, this may be temporarily disguised
from their agents, and the agents may sincerely be-
lieve themselves to be happy on the grounds of their
success hitherto, and yet be mistaken about the hap-
piness of their lives as a whole. Others may realize
that this is so, and then they may justifiably point
happiness
out the agents’ mistakes and propose ways of cor-
recting the sincere beliefs of these agents about their
own happiness. If the subjective view of happiness
is taken to deny and the objective to affirm the fal-
libility and corrigibility of the sincere beliefs of
agents about their own happiness, then the subjec-
tive view is mistaken and the objective view is
correct.
The fourth way in which the subjective-objective
distinction needs to be refined is that although hap-
piness is agent-relative and experiential, and thus, in
a sense, subjective, the experience is not just a mat-
ter of the agents’ states of mind, but also that of the
objective state of the world that the agents take
themselves to be experiencing. This may be ex-
pressed by saying that happiness is not merely
feeling-based but also fact-based. Suppose that an
agent’s happiness is based on feeling loved, but the
agent has been deceived and the experiences are re-
ally of deception, not of love. The feeling of happi-
ness in such a case is certainly present, but the facts
make it inappropriate, although the agent does not
know that. Is then the agent happy? In the episodic
sense, the answer is yes. In the attitudinal sense, the
answer is a qualified no. It is most unlikely, though
not impossible, that the episodic feeling created by
the deception will form a pattern lasting enough to
justify a lasting attitude. It is not easy to deceive peo-
ple over a long period of time, especially about mat-
ters they regard as crucial to their happiness. Never-
theless, it can be done. What that shows, however,
is not that happiness is only feeling-based and not
fact-based, but that feelings of happiness are made
precarious by human fallibility. This makes happi-
ness fragile, but that is not exactly news. Whether
this fragility makes happiness subjective or objective
appears to have become a verbal, not a substantive,
question.
It may be concluded, therefore, that it is justified
to ascribe happiness to people’s lives as a whole if,
and only if, two conditions, individually necessary
and jointly sufficient, are met. First, the agents sin-
cerely believe that enough of their important first-
order wants are satisfied. Second, there is no reason
to suppose that latent internal defects or inhospita-
ble contexts falsify the agents’ sincere beliefs.
See also: CHARACTER; CHRISTIAN ETHICS; DESIRE;
EGOISM; EMOTION; EMOTIVISM; EPICUREANISM; EU-
DAIMONIA, -ISM; EXISTENTIAL ETHICS; GOOD, THEO-
650
RIES OF THE; INTERESTS; JEWISH ETHICS; LIFE,
MEANING OF; NEEDS; PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS;
PLEASURE; PSYCHOLOGY; STOICISM; SUBJECTIVISM;
UTILITARIANISM; VIRTUE ETHICS; VIRTUES.
Bibliography
Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1993. A historical and critical
account of ancient eudaimonistic theories.
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by W. D. Ross
and revised by J. O. Urmson. In The Complete Works
of Aristotle, edited by J. Barnes. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1984. A classic argument for eudai-
monism.
Den Uyl, Douglas, and Tibor R. Machan. “Recent Work
on the Concept of Happiness.” American Philosophical
Quarterly 20 (1983): 115–34. Contains a useful bib-
liography.
Gewirth, Alan. Self-Fulfillment. Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1998. Explores the connection between
happiness and self-fulfillment.
Griffin, James. Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement,
and Moral Importance. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1986. A contemporary Utilitarian account.
Kekes, John. “Happiness.” Mind 91 (1982): 358–76. A
contemporary objectivist account.
Kraut, R. “Two Conceptions of Happiness.” Philosophical
Review 88 (1979): 167–97. Analysis of the subjective
and objective views.
McFall, L. Happiness. New York: Peter Lang, 1989. Con-
temporary defense of the objective view.
Mill, J. S. Utilitarianism. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1979
[1861]. A classic utilitarian account.
Nussbaum, Martha. The Therapy of Desire. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1994. A historical account
of Hellenistic theories.
Sidgwick, Henry. The Methods of Ethics. Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1981 [1874]. A classic utilitarian account.
Sumner, L. Wayne. Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics. Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1996. A contemporary defense
of the subjective view.
Telfer, E. Happiness. London: Macmillan, 1980. A con-
temporary eudaimonistic account.
John Kekes
Hare, R[ichard] M[ervyn]
(1919– )
One of the leading moral philosophers of the cen-
tury, Hare is perhaps the only one who has contrib-
uted significantly to the three main areas of ethical

inquiry, namely, METAETHICS, normative theory, and
APPLIED ETHICS.
Educated at Rugby School and Balliol College,
Oxford, Hare survived war service in Asia (1939–
1942) and an agonizing period as a prisoner of war
in Singapore and on the Burma-Thailand railway
(1942–45) to become a philosophy don at Balliol
(1947–66). In time, he ascended to the White’s Pro-
fessorship of Moral Philosophy at Oxford (1966), a
position he eventually resigned in order to become
Graduate Research Professor at the University of
Florida (1983).
Hare’s first two books, The Language of Morals
(1952) and Freedom and Reason (1963), resusci-
tated interest in moral philosophy in the English-
speaking world and quickly came to preoccupy phil-
osophical discussion. With ethics construed as an
inquiry into the meanings and logical properties of
the MORAL TERMS, Hare sets out his noncognitivist
metaethic of universal PRESCRIPTIVISM. He distin-
guishes descriptive from prescriptive meaning and,
in the cases of the most general moral terms in their
central uses, argues that the latter is logically pri-
mary; it is a mistake, therefore, to treat moral judg-
ments as if they were a kind of fact-stating, truth-
functional discourse. Rather, they are prescriptive in
character, in the sense that, to assent to them is to
assent to the imperatives that Hare argues they en-
tail; and to assent to an imperative involves doing
something or making something the case. Different
types of judgments, of course, are prescriptive; a
necessary condition of a prescriptive judgment’s be-
ing a moral one is that it be universalizable. This
notion captures the thought that the moral princi-
ples which our moral judgments encapsulate and to
which they appeal must be universal ones and so
contain no references to particular individuals. This
means that such judgments amount to universal pre-
scriptions, in the sense that, if John says that it would
be wrong for Bill to cheat on this exam, he implies
that it would be wrong for all relevantly similar per-
sons in relevantly similar circumstances to cheat.
Hare returns to some of these metaethical themes in
Sorting Out Ethics (1998).
In the 1970s, Hare published four volumes of es-
says on metaethical, normative, and applied themes;
papers such as “The Argument from Received Opin-
ion” (1971) and “Wrongness and Harm” (1972)
proved very influential. Then, in 1981, Moral Think-
ing, Hare’s statement of his substantive, normative
651
Hare, R. M.
position, appeared. In this important work, Hare
first tries to show how UTILITARIANISM emerges at
the normative level from his universal prescriptivist
account of the logic of the moral terms, and then
offers a two-level account of moral thinking. The
central idea in this latter account is that one uses
(act-) utilitarianism at the critical level to select
those guides at the intuitive level by which to con-
duct one’s life; the guides chosen will be those whose
general acceptance will maximize utility. Since they
are selected with an eye to actual situations, ACTION
in accordance with them is likely to give us the best
chance of doing the right thing, i.e., of performing
that act whose overall consequences are at least as
good as those of any alternative. Hare’s theory bars
any extensive appeal to consequences at the intuitive
level, thereby removing clashes with “common opin-
ion,” and his examples suggest that (act-) utilitarian
critical thinking, properly conceived and executed,
will select as guides at the intuitive level many, if not
most, of those characteristic of common morality.
Finally, Hare has written on a wide variety of ap-
plied issues, including ABORTION, EUTHANASIA, popu-
lation policy, SLAVERY, MORAL EDUCATION, political
obligation, MEDICAL ETHICS generally, and TERROR-
ISM. He was among the very first recent moral phi-
losophers to move into applied areas, as he tried to
show, first, how his metaethic, and second, how his
two-level account of moral thinking enabled him to
deal with substantive issues. His recent Essays in
Political Morality (1989) exhibited his bent for ap-
plication in full flower.
See also: APPLIED ETHICS; EMOTIVISM; INTUITIONISM;
METAETHICS; MORAL REASONING; MORAL TERMS;
PRESCRIPTIVISM; SITUATION ETHICS; UNIVERSALIZ-
ABILITY; UTILITARIANISM.
Bibliography
Works by Hare
The Language of Morals. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1952.
Freedom and Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1963.
Practical Inferences. London: Macmillan, 1971.
Essays on Philosophical Method. London: Macmillan,
1971.
Essays on the Moral Concepts. London: Macmillan, 1972.
Applications of Moral Philosophy. London: Macmillan,
1972.
Hare, R. M.
Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method and Point. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1981.
Plato. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Essays in Ethical Theory. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1989.
Essays on Political Morality. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1989.
Essays on Religion and Education. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1992.
Essays on Bioethics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.
Sorting Out Ethics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.
Works about Hare
Seanor, Douglas, and N. Fotion, eds. Hare and Critics:
Essays on “Moral Thinking.” Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1988. Material on Hare, for and against, is
legion. So diverse and significant have been his contri-
butions to moral philosophy that it would not be too
much to say that most works in the area (since 1952),
whether in metaethics, normative theory, or applied
ethics, make reference to him. The above volume is
devoted to critical essays on Moral Thinking and con-
tains a response by Hare to his critics.
R. G. Frey
harm and offense
These terms refer to types of evils that institutional
rules, especially those enforced by criminal sanc-
tions, are characteristically concerned to prevent. In-
deed, according to JOHN STUART MILL (1806–1873)
and the liberal tradition generally, the prevention of
harm to others is the only purpose for a criminal
prohibition that can be morally legitimate, although
he adds as a kind of afterthought in chapter 5 of On
Liberty (1859) that “there are many acts which be-
ing directly injurious only to the agents themselves,
ought not to be legally interdicted, but which if done
publicly, are a violation of good manners and coming
thus within the category of offenses against others
may rightly be prevented.” Mill says very little more
about the relation between harm and offense, but
this passage suggests that he believed that both the
prevention of harm to others and the prevention of
offense to others are legitimate reasons for criminal
prohibitions. Another way to put this is to say the
he believed that both the “harm principle” and the
“offense principle,” and only these, are valid liberty-
limiting principles. Whether this normative theory
652
about the limits of coercive law is correct depends
in large part on how the concepts of harm and of-
fense are analyzed.
Harms and Interests
A necessary element in all harming is that it have
an adverse effect on someone’s INTERESTS. There is,
to be sure, a derivative sense in which even objects
without interests of their own can be “harmed.” By
smashing windows, for example, vandals are said to
harm people’s PROPERTY. We do not, however, feel
aggrieved on the windows’ behalf. Rather our ref-
erence to their “harm” is elliptical for the harm done
to those who have interests in the maintenance or
improvement of some condition of those objects.
The term “interests” is best left undefined here, ex-
cept to say that interests are distinguishable com-
ponents of a person’s good or well-being. The lan-
guage of interests is useful because it allows us to
acknowledge the complexity of a person’s good, how
it contains various components, some of which may
be flourishing while others languish at a given time,
some of which might be advanced while others are
set back by the same cause. Some interests (the “wel-
fare interests”) are more basic or vital than others in
the sense that when they are severely set back, no
other interests in a person’s interest-network can ad-
vance. Thus, the interest in having a certain mini-
mum of food to eat, for example, is more basic or
vital than the interest in being widely admired. De-
spite these complexities, many philosophers have
seemed committed to the view that the interests of
normal persons can be summed up or integrated into
one emergent personal interest. Suppose that A’s act
sets back one of B’s interests thirty units but ad-
vances another of his interests twenty units. That
would be a net loss of ten units. If interests can be
related in such ways, then we can speak of offsetting
benefits, and also net harms or harms on balance, as
opposed to harms to component interests that can
be offset by advancing other component interests.
Thus we speak not only of what promotes or sets
back this or that particular interest of a person but
also of what promotes or sets back that person’s self-
interest as a whole, and we speak as if overall self-
interest could in principle be plotted on a graph, like
the profit and loss chart of a business corporation.

Interest Balancing
Applying the harm principle in some cases re-
quires a comparative evaluation of conflicting inter-
ests. In all such cases, to prevent A from harming
B’s interest in Y would be to harm A’s interest in X
(as well as A’s general interest in LIBERTY, for what-
ever that is worth). The principle directing us to
minimize harm all around doesn’t tell us, by itself,
whether or how the law should intervene in such
cases. To be sure, we should protect an interest that
is certain to be harmed in preference to one whose
liability to harm is only conjectural, other things be-
ing equal; and we should deem it more important to
prevent the total thwarting of one interest than the
mere invasion to some small degree of another in-
terest, other things being equal. Harm is the setback
of an interest and setbacks do differ in degree, but
when interests of quite different kinds are invaded
to the same degree, where is the greater harm? That
depends, of course, on which of the two kinds of
interest is the more important, and the harm prin-
ciple cannot itself, without supplementation, settle
that issue. Rather, appeal at this point must be made
to such considerations as the involvement on one
side but not the other of personal autonomy, the
comparative vitality in the interest systems of most
informed persons of the conflicting interest types,
even the inherent moral quality of the interests (mor-
bid and sadistic “interests,” if there are such, have
little weight).
Harming and Wronging
Ordinary language tends to distinguish between
being harmed (in the broad sense of suffering an
adverse effect, or the unreasonable risk of such an
effect, on one’s self-interest) and being wronged,
that is having one’s RIGHTS violated. There are many
familiar examples of nonwronging setbacks to inter-
est, or “harms that are not wrongs” to those who
suffer them. People are often harmed by microbes,
unforeseeable eruptions of nature, innocent actions
of other persons, and actions of other persons to
which they have freely consented. Similarly, one can
be wronged without being harmed, that is without
having one’s net interest adversely affected, though
examples of this are harder to come by. Perhaps a
wrongly broken promise that redounds by a fluke to
653
harm and offense
the promisee’s advantage, and a trespass to land that
incidentally improves the owner’s property thus pro-
moting his interest as a whole, are such examples.
Mill’s harm principle would not be very plausible
if the word “harm” in its formulation meant either
“harm” in the broad sense described above, or pure
“wrong.” If the broad sense of “harm” were in-
tended, then the criminal law could prohibit volun-
tary sports contests in which the loser forfeits a
wager, and punish accidental injuries caused by in-
nocent parties, or injuries emerging from risks the
injured party freely consented to, all of which would
be indefensible invasions of liberty. It is not quite so
clear that the criminal law should not forbid “harm-
less wronging,” but insofar as people are not harmed
by such wrongdoing they need no “protection” from
it. Perhaps the way of interpreting “harming” that
makes Mill’s harm principle most plausible is to
mean by it “adversely affecting another party’s in-
terest in a way that wrongs him,” or equivalently,
“wronging him in a way that adversely affects his
interest.”
Moral Harm
PLATO (430–347 B.C.E.) is famous for two doc-
trines about harm. The first of these is that a morally
defective CHARACTER is in itself a harm to its pos-
sessor, regardless of whether it affects other interests
of the person and regardless of what those other in-
terests are. To have powerful immoral dispositions
not subject to the control of reason is to be an im-
moral person, which in turn is, necessarily, a state
of pure wretchedness that cannot be offset by gains
in one’s other interests, like material wealth and so-
cial prestige. The reason immorality is a harm in it-
self is that it consists in a kind of disharmony among
the elements of the soul in which the role of the
ruling part is usurped by passional elements that are
in their nature meant to be ruled. That disharmony
is a kind of mental illness, a serious setback to the
welfare interest all persons share in being healthy
and capable of functioning properly. Pity then is an
appropriate attitude to take (as well as suspicion
and SELF-DEFENSE) toward the immoral person. The
“moral harm” he suffers is the worst kind of harm
there is, perhaps even—in the form of the doctrine
later Stoics attributed to Socrates—the only true
harm there is.
harm and offense
The second Platonic doctrine about harm is that
it is always wrong “to do harm to any man, no matter
what we may have suffered from him” (Crito, X, 49).
It follows either that deserved PUNISHMENT is never
a true harm or that punishment is never justified.
Plato preferred to draw the former conclusion. Ide-
ally speaking at least, punishment is not a harm to
criminals, unpleasant as it may seem to us, because
it functions essentially as education or therapy de-
signed to make them better persons, and this can
only be a benefit to them, regardless of its effect on
their other interests.
Harms and Offenses
Not everything that we dislike or resent, and wish
to avoid, is harmful to us. Seeing a naked stranger
in the supermarket would cause no psychic trauma
or harmful condition in a normal observer, but it
would be a distasteful and embarrassing experience
for many people nonetheless. So it is with a large
variety of other experiences, from watching a badly
performed play, or eating a poorly cooked dish, to
receiving a rude comment. These experiences can
distress, offend, irritate, disappoint, or bore us,
without harming any of our interests. They come to
us, are suffered for a time, and then go, leaving us
as whole and undamaged as before. Offended states,
in this broad sense, are diverse, having little in com-
mon except that they are generally disliked. They
include affronts to sense or sensibility, disgust,
shock, shame, fear, and even minor pains and dis-
comforts. Only some states in this miscellany are
“offensive” in the strict and narrow sense of ordinary
usage. I am offended in the narrow sense (or “take
offense”) when (a) I suffer a disliked state, (b) I at-
tribute that state to the wrongful conduct of another,
and (c) I resent the other for causing me to be in
the state. Legal and philosophical writers often use
“offense” in the broader sense, and then inquire
whether the prevention of offended mental states,
with or without RESENTMENT, is a legitimate purpose
for a criminal prohibition. Offensive conduct in this
broader technical sense, is more plausibly prohibit-
able when it is a nuisance, that is when the behavior
in question produces unpleasant or uncomfortable
experiences from which the victimized observer can-
not escape without either unreasonable inconven-
ience or even genuine harm. Victims in those cir-
cumstances are trapped; they have no choice but to
654
endure their unpleasant mental states as long as they
last, and this inescapability is likely to produce of-
fense in the narrow sense, too. The experiences are
very unpleasant, and their offended victims will
think it unfair that they should have to pay the ex-
cessive cost in inconvenience that would be required
to escape them.
There are at least two philosophical controversies
over offenses. Some writers (e.g., VanDeVeer) argue
against the above account that the distinction be-
tween harm and offense collapses. There is an inter-
est that most of us have in not suffering offended
states of mind, they maintain, and when that interest
is invaded, they conclude, the interest is set back,
and that is another way to say that the person suffers
a harm, albeit a slight harm. Defenders of the harm-
offense distinction, on the other side (e.g., Feinberg,
1985), reply that their distinction is an old and use-
ful one reflected in common sense, ordinary speech,
and legal usage (where the traditional definition of
tortious assault, to pick one of many examples, re-
fers to “the intentional infliction of harmful or of-
fensive physical contacts”). A woman may report
that the kiss inflicted upon her by a rude admirer
was disgusting but left her, fortunately, unharmed.
Sometimes, of course, an offensive experience can
be so intense or so long lasting that it leads to harm,
by distracting or upsetting the victim, or by pre-
venting her from doing her work, in which case the
offense itself becomes harmful.
The second controversy is between defenders of
the offense principle (that prevention of offense is a
legitimate purpose for a criminal prohibition) and
those who think of harmless annoyance as too trivial
an EVIL to warrant the suppression of a liberty. The
offense principle defenders’ best hope of convincing
their liberal opponents is to develop an elaborate
schema on the model of nuisance law, for “balanc-
ing” the seriousness of the offense, as determined by
standards of magnitude, reasonable avoidability, and
voluntary CONSENT, against the reasonableness of
the offending conduct, as determined by such stan-
dards as the personal importance to the offending
actor of his conduct, its social value, whether it
could be interpreted as “free expression of opinion,”
the availability of alternative opportunities to engage
in the valued activity while causing less offense to
others, whether or not the offending conduct arose
from spiteful or malicious motives, and finally, the
nature of the locality where the conduct occurred. It

would take great sensitivity to weigh all these factors
in the legislative forum in order to decide whether
to pass a criminal prohibition of a given class of of-
fensive harmless conduct, but the required WISDOM
might at least be available in principle.
See also: AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; CENSOR-
SHIP; CHEATING; CIVILITY; CONSENT; COOPERATION,
CONFLICT, AND COORDINATION; COST-BENEFIT ANAL-
YSIS; CORRECTIONAL ETHICS; CRUELTY; DECEIT; DIS-
CRIMINATION; ETIQUETTE; EVIL; FREEDOM OF THE
PRESS; GUILT AND SHAME; IMMORALISM; INSTITU-
TIONS; INTERESTS; JUSTICE, RECTIFICATORY; JOHN
STUART MILL; MORAL RULES; NEEDS; OBEDIENCE
TO LAW; PAIN AND SUFFERING; PLATO; POLICE ETH-
ICS; POLITICAL CORRECTNESS; PROMISES; PUNISH-
MENT; RIGHT HOLDERS; RIGHTS; SELF-DEFENSE;
SELF-ESTEEM; SELF-RESPECT; SEXUAL ABUSE AND HA-
RASSMENT.
Bibliography
Ellis, Anthony. “Offense and the Liberal Conception of the
Law.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 13 (1984): 3–24.
Rejects the offense principle.
Feinberg, Joel. Harm to Others. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1984. Interpretation and restriction of the
harm principle; use of “offense” in the broader sense.
———. Offense to Others. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1985. Interpretation and restriction of the of-
fense principle.
Kleinig, John. “Crime and the Concept of Harm.” Ameri-
can Philosophical Quarterly 15 (1978): 27–36. A pre-
cise analysis of the concept of harm.
Mackenzie, Mary Margaret. Plato on Punishment. Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1981. Detailed
scholarly interpretation and criticism of Plato’s theory
of punishment.
Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett,
1981 [1859].
Plato. Georgias: Socrates argues that doing wrong is worse
than suffering it, and that punishment is a benefit, not
a harm. Protagoras: A prime source of the reformative
theory of punishment. Republic: Immorality as a harm
in itself to the wrongdoer, and a development of the
analogy between punishment and medical therapy.
VanDeVeer, Donald. “Coercive Restraint of Offensive Ac-
tion.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 8 (1979): 176–
93. A critical analysis of the offense principle and a
proposal of various standards for applying it.
Joel Feinberg
655
Hart, H. L. A.
Hart, H. L. A. (Herbert Lionel
Adolphus) (1907–1992)
Widely regarded as the most distinguished theorist
in Anglo-American jurisprudence in the twentieth
century, Herbert Hart single-handedly revived the
discipline of legal philosophy after a long period of
relative inattention. Hart attended Oxford, where he
studied classics, ancient history, and philosophy. He
was called to the Bar in 1932 and practiced as a
Chancery barrister for eight years, specializing in
trusts and estates. With the outbreak of World War
II, he served in British military intelligence, where
he developed collegial relations with two Oxford
philosophers, Gilbert Ryle (1900–1976) and Stuart
Hampshire, who rekindled his interest in philoso-
phy. After the war, Hart returned to Oxford as Fel-
low and Tutor in philosophy and, in 1952, was
elected to the Chair of Jurisprudence, which he held
until 1968, resigning, in large part, to spend more
time on the project he initiated of editing the papers
of Jeremy BENTHAM (1748–1832). After holding
other positions, including Principal of Brasenose
College (1973–1978), Hart retired from Oxford in
1978 but continued his scholarly writing.
Beginning with his inaugural lecture, “Definition
and Theory in Jurisprudence” (1953), Hart trans-
formed the study of law by bringing the new Oxford
philosophy to bear on the analysis of legal concepts,
reflecting John L. Austin’s (1911–1960) proposal to
use “a sharpened awareness of words to sharpen our
perception of the phenomena.” In following this
path, Hart rejected the quasi-scientific legacy of the
dominant nineteenth-century jurist John Austin
(1790–1859), who had sought to formulate precise
definitions of basic legal terms and their necessary
and sufficient conditions of application. Hart, in-
stead, engaged in close analysis of the ordinary uses
of words and their variations in legal discourse. His
first major publication, Causation in the Law
(1959), co-authored with A.M. Honoré, examined
ordinary ways in which people ascribe fault and RE-
SPONSIBILITY to each other, illuminating the central
ideas of causality employed in criminal and civil law.
Hart’s principal work in analytical jurisprudence,
The Concept of Law (1961), aimed to provide a the-
ory of law that is both general and descriptive. The
influence of ordinary language philosophy was again
evident, but in contrast to his analysis of specific
legal terms Hart was not preoccupied with standard
Hart, H. L. A.
uses of the word “law.” Indeed he rejected altogether
what he referred to as the mistaken idea that the
central task of jurisprudence is semantic. For defi-
nitions do not begin to answer the kind of recurrent
questions we want to answer about law and legal
institutions: How does law differ from, and how is
it related to, orders backed by threats? How does
legal obligation differ from, and how is it related to,
moral obligation? What are rules and to what extent
is law an affair of rules? Each of these questions was
carefully chosen. The answer to the first enabled
Hart to distinguish his analysis from Austin’s (and
Bentham’s) formulation of law as a species of com-
mand, with its emphasis on sanctions and their
threat. The second enabled him to distinguish his
view from that of NATURAL LAW theorists, who as-
sert a necessary connection between law and moral-
ity. And the third question pointed to Hart’s alter-
native conception of law as a system of rules.
In place of the quest for a true definition of law,
Hart identified characteristic activities composing
an intricate, heterogeneous practice. These activities
are captured in what he called a concept of law,
where that means a representation of law as a com-
plex set of social INSTITUTIONS taking the same gen-
eral form in different societies and in different times.
Developing such a representation is less a task in
linguistics than in descriptive SOCIOLOGY. The rea-
son is that law, at bottom, is a system of social rules
or CONVENTIONS. More specifically, it consists in a
combination of two types of rules: primary rules of
conduct that regulate the ordinary activities of citi-
zens, and secondary rules that set down criteria for
the identification of the primary rules, along with
powers to introduce, extinguish, or modify them “or
in various ways . . . control their operation.” Sec-
ondary rules, in other words, create roles or offices
and empower individuals within them to formulate,
alter, interpret, and enforce the primary rules of the
system. (A group of professionals, we could say,
have it as their principal occupation to perform such
tasks.)
Hart’s thesis is that the combination of these two
kinds of rules is the key to jurisprudence. Here he
steers a middle course between law as an instrument
of COERCION and law as an embodiment of moral
ideals. On the one side, orders backed by threats
cannot yield the idea of a legal rule as a reason for
action. The hallmark of legality is not the exercise of
POWER, whether personal or corporate, but the col-
656
lective management of social rules through accepted,
standing procedures. On the other side, if we were
to count as law only such rules as meet an indepen-
dent moral standard, we would fail to recognize that
laws can be binding even when morally defective.
This is because the normative force of law results,
not from morality, but from what Hart called an “in-
ternal point of view,” a critical reflective attitude
adopted by citizens toward the two kinds of rules
taken as common standards. The internal point of
view is a kind of acceptance of the rules, short of
explicit CONSENT but stronger than mere acquies-
cence, expressed in the normative language of
“ought,” “right,” and “duty.” Although voluntary, ac-
ceptance does not necessarily involve moral ap-
proval or a feeling of being morally bound. To the
contrary, legal rules may be accepted for a variety of
reasons: perhaps out of unreflecting deference to tra-
dition, the mere wish to do as others do, or a simple
calculation of self-interest. Whatever the motives,
accepted rules become obligatory REASONS FOR AC-
TION apart from any sanction attached to them, just
in virtue of widespread adoption of the critical re-
flective attitude and the attendant demand for con-
formity—resulting in social pressure on those who
deviate or threaten to deviate.
In carving out this middle ground between coer-
cion and morality, Hart found a sophisticated de-
fense of legal positivism, understood as “the simple
contention that it is in no sense a necessary truth
that laws reproduce or satisfy certain demands of
morality, though in fact they have often done so.” In
practical terms, the separation of law and morality
means that the criteria judges use for determining
the validity of laws need not have any moral content;
judges properly employ only those standards that
can trace their pedigree to official sources, including
the constitution. Hart’s explicit reason for insisting
on separation is that it assists intellectual clarity and
facilitates moral evaluation of the law. But an im-
plicit reason, which he hints at occasionally, turns
on his claim that the point of law is to provide stable,
known, public standards of conduct that, precisely
in virtue of these features, ought to take priority over
standards lacking these features, such as moral prin-
ciples. In this quest for public order, positivism re-
tains a moral agenda.
At the same time, Hart acknowledged two signifi-
cant exceptions to the positivist thesis. First, he
claimed that a minimum of justice is necessarily

achieved whenever human conduct is governed by
rules. This is because the notion of law as general
rules “connotes” the principle of treating like cases
alike. Second, reviving a form of argument found in
Thomas HOBBES (1588–1679) and David HUME
(1711–1776), Hart attempted to redeem what he
called the “core of good sense” in natural law doc-
trine. Given certain truisms about human life, there
is a “natural necessity” for any legal system to in-
clude rules with a certain content. Specifically, given
the basic aim of survival and such salient features of
human beings as their vulnerability to harm, their
limited ALTRUISM, and the scarcity of natural re-
sources, any system of municipal law will find it nec-
essary to enforce rules protecting persons and prop-
erty and imposing liability for breach of PROMISES.
Only if law has this minimum content will it ensure
the voluntary conformity and cooperation on which
social order depends. (Still, immoral or unjust laws
are not thereby precluded.)
In subsequent work Hart engaged in critical moral
reflection on Anglo-American law, assessing its con-
tribution, in particular, to LIBERTY and justice. In
Law, Liberty, and Morality (1963), he responded to
the claim of Lord Devlin (1905–1992), among oth-
ers, that society has an interest in suppressing im-
morality even when it causes no assignable harm.
Hart revived JOHN STUART MILL’s (1806–1873) de-
fense of a protected sphere of action that is none of
society’s business, although he was more disposed
than Mill to allow certain forms of paternalistic in-
tervention. In the lectures published as The Morality
of the Criminal Law (1965) and the essays collected
in Punishment and Responsibility (1968), Hart ex-
amined such jurisprudential issues as the justifica-
tion of PUNISHMENT and the role of mental states in
criminal liability. He also wrote important essays on
rights theory, which are included in two subsequent
collections, Essays on Bentham (1982) and Essays
on Jurisprudence and Philosophy (1983). In all of
this work, Hart reflects the liberal utilitarian tradi-
tion of British social thought: humane, undogmatic,
clearheaded, practical, and tolerant.
Hart’s last effort was an unfinished postscript for
a second edition of The Concept of Law, published
posthumously (1994). It is mainly a response to
criticisms tendered by Ronald DWORKIN, his suc-
cessor in the Chair of Jurisprudence at Oxford. By
concentrating on Dworkin, Hart returned the com-
pliment that Dworkin had paid to Hart at the begin-
657
Hart, H. L. A.
ning of his own distinguished career, when he said
that he chose to focus on Hart’s work “not only be-
cause of its clarity and elegance, but because here,
as almost everywhere else in legal philosophy, con-
structive thought must start with a consideration of
his views.” That remains true today.
See also: ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS; BEN-
THAM; CAUSATION AND RESPONSIBILITY; CIVIL RIGHTS
AND CIVIC DUTIES; COERCION; COLLECTIVE RESPON-
SIBILITY; CONSENT; CONTRACTS; DETERRENCE,
THREATS AND RETALIATION; DUTY AND OBLIGATION;
DWORKIN; FULLER; INSTITUTIONS; LEGAL PHILOSO-
PHY; LIBERTY; JOHN STUART MILL; MORAL POINT OF
VIEW; MORAL RULES; NATURAL LAW; NEUTRAL PRIN-
CIPLES; NORMS; PATERNALISM; PUNISHMENT; REA-
SONS FOR ACTION; RESPONSIBILITY; RIGHT, CON-
CEPTS OF; UTILITARIANISM.
Bibliography
Selected Works by Hart
“Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals.” Har-
vard Law Review 71 (1958): 593–629.
The Concept of Law. 2d ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1994 [1961].
Law, Liberty, and Morality. Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1963.
Punishment and Responsibility: Essays in the Philosophy
of Law. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968.
Essays on Bentham: Studies in Jurisprudence and Political
Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
Essays in Jurisprudence and Philosophy. Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1983.
Hart, H. L. A., and A.M. Honoré. Causation in the Law.
2d ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985 [1959].
Works about Hart
Bayles, Michael. Hart’s Legal Philosophy: An Examina-
tion. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992.
Gavison, Ruth, ed. Issues in Contemporary Legal Philos-
ophy: The Influence of H. L. A. Hart. Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1987.
George, Robert, ed. The Autonomy of Law: Essays on Le-
gal Positivism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
Hacker, P. M. S., and J. Raz, eds. Law, Morality, and So-
ciety: Essays in Honour of H. L. A. Hart. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1977.
MacCormick, Neil. H. L. A. Hart. London: Arnold, 1981.
Kenneth Winston
Hartmann, Nicolai
Hartmann, Nicolai (1882–1950)
Born at Liga, Latvia, Hartmann was educated at
Riga and St. Petersburg (Leningrad) before studying
medicine at Tartu in Estonia, and classical philology
in St. Petersburg, and finally philosophy in Germany
at Marburg, where neo-Kantians Hermann Cohen
(1842–1918) and Paul Natorp (1854–1924) held
the principal chairs. He began his academic career
there with his habilitation thesis, Plato’s Logic of
Being (1909). He accepted a professorship at Mar-
burg in 1920.
By 1921, Hartmann had moved away from his
neo-Kantian beginning, declaring affinities with the
PHENOMENOLOGY of Edmund HUSSERL (1859–1938),
the most obvious of these being insistence on objec-
tive and transcendent universals. According to his
monumental Ethics (1926), these universals include
values, those laws to which any possible entity con-
forms insofar as it ought to be. With SCHELER
(1874–1928), he holds that acquaintance with such
laws originates in emotions: a positive affective con-
sciousness of X being a necessary condition for
knowing X to be good. Such emotions involve ob-
scure intuition of an ideal universal value as well as
a fallible consciousness of something as possessing
an individual and unique value quality through which
it is an exemplar for that value. He sides with Hus-
serl and HEIDEGGER (1889–1976) against Scheler’s
doctrine that value properties of an exemplar are
themselves values. Close explication of valuations
would be able, in principle, to show that something
is correctly valued just because it is of a certain non-
axiological description and that being of that de-
scription is a sufficient condition for exemplifying a
certain value. There can be a priori and synthetic
cognition of axiological laws (values).
An a priori theory of correct valuation is therefore
possible. Yet it does not follow that there can also
be an aprioristic ethical theory (theory of correct
practice). Here, Hartmann anticipates the position
of SARTRE (1905–1980). As theory of correct prac-
tice, ethics requires principles for correctly prefer-
ring exemplars of some values to exemplars of other
values. Since there is a plurality of primary values,
correct preference requires that some goods be
higher than others. There is a hierarchy of ideal val-
ues—another point on which Hartmann agrees with
Sartre as well as with Scheler. Moral value is of a
658
higher sort than utility. A minimum condition for an
action’s having moral value is that agents be con-
scious of their actions as having some sort of utility,
promoting in some way the fulfillment of some pri-
mary value. While Hartmann and Scheler both reject
KANT’s (1724–1804) formalism, Hartmann denies
Scheler’s thesis that moral goodness cannot be the
end of a correct striving. This enables Hartmann to
side with Kant’s cosmopolitan view that promoting
morality and justice in the world at large is the way
to the highest purpose.
The only changes in subsequent editions of Ethics
were the forewords to the second (1935) and third
(1949) editions. The 1935 Foreword reports that the
mass of criticism elicited by the first edition left the
work unscathed. The substance of the work could
be improved only by elaborating on the analyses of
(1) persons and their ethical activities (affects and
conation), (2) the community ethos, (3) the relativ-
ity of “valuings” and their relation to values them-
selves, (4) the mode of being of values themselves,
and (5) particular values. The first and second elab-
orations he carried out in Parts I and II, respectively,
of The Problem of Spiritual Being (1933). Part II
delineated the place of community ethos within the
universe of “objective spirit.” The same analyses
throw new light on point (3), since transformation
of “acceptance” transforms precisely the living his-
torical spirit and is always conditioned by what is
current in the given historical situation, all of which
shows why the “acceptance” of values is not identi-
cal with their being. Part IV of Toward the Foun-
dation of Ontology (1935), dealing with ideal being
of all sorts, explicates point (4), the “ideal being in
itself” of each and every value. The 1949 Foreword
denies that there has been significant work since
1926 on the issues most important to him in Ethics:
first, the laws deriving from the hierarchy of values
(chapters 59–64 [English, Volume II, Section VIII])
and, second, the antinomy between personal free-
dom and the person’s being determined by objective
(transcendent) values (chapters 74–83 [English,
Volume III, chapters 10–19]).
See also: EMOTION; EXISTENTIAL ETHICS; HEIDEG-
GER; HUSSERL; IDEALIST ETHICS; INTUITIONISM;
MORAL RELATIVISM; NATURALISM; NEO-KANTIAN
ETHICS; PHENOMENOLOGY; SARTRE; SCHELER; VALUE,
CONCEPT OF.

Bibliography
Works by Hartmann
Das Problem geistigen Seins. Reprint. Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter, 1933.
Der Aufbau der realen Welt. Grundlegung der allgemeinen
Kategorienlehre. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1940.
Ethik. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1962 [1926]. In English:
Ethics. Translated by Stanton Coit. London: George
Allen and Unwin, 1932. The translation is often in-
accurate, misleading, and more awkward than the
original.
Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis. Berlin: Wal-
ter de Gruyter, 1921.
Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,
1938.
Neue Wege der Ontologie. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1949.
In English: New Ways in Ontologie. Translated by
R. C. Kuhn. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1953.
Platos Logik des Seins. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1909.
Teleologisches Denken. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1951.
Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie. Berlin: Walter de Gruy-
ter, 1921.
Edited by Werner Ziegenfuss. “Hartmann, Nicolai.” In
Philosophen-Lexikon. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1949.
Works about Hartmann
Cadwallader, Eva Hauel. Searchlight on Values: Nicolai
Hartmann’s Twentieth-Century Value Platonism. Lan-
ham, MD: University Press of America, 1984.
Eaton, Howard O. “The Unity of Axiological Ethics.”
Ethics 43 (1932): 23–36.
Garnett, A. C. “Phenomenological Ethics and Self-
Realization.” Ethics 53 (1943): 159–72.
Hazelton, Roger. “On Nicolai Hartmann’s Doctrine of
Values as Essences.” Philosophical Review 48 (1939):
621–32.
———. “The Relation between Value and Existence in the
Philosophies of Nicolai Hartmann and A. N. White-
head.” Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1937.
Heimsoeth, Heinz, and Robert Heiss, eds. Nicolai Hart-
mann: Der Denker und sein Werk. Göttingen: Vanden-
hoeck and Ruprecht, 1952. Includes bibliography com-
piled by Theodor Bellauf, pp. 286–308.
Hook, Sidney. “A Critique of Ethical Realism.” Ethics 40
(1929): 179–210.
Jensen, O. C. “Nicolai Hartmann’s Theory of Virtue.”
Ethics 52 (1942): 463–79.
Jino, David Torinoto. “Coherence in Hartmann’s Ethik.”
Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1941.
Jordan, Robert Welsh. “Unnatural Kinds: Beyond Dignity
and Price.” Man and World 20 (1987): 283–303.
———. “Hartmann, Nicolai,” and “Value Theory.” In En-
659
hate
cyclopedia of Phenomenology, edited by Lester Em-
bree, et al., 288–92; 724–28. Contributions to Phe-
nomenology 18. Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer, 1997.
Includes bibliographical references.
Landmann, Michael. “Professor Nicolai Hartmann and
Phenomenology.” Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research 3 (1944): 393–423.
Park, Dorothy G. “The Objectivity of Value: A Study of
the Ethics of N. Hartmann.” Ph.D. diss., University of
Nebraska, 1957.
Samuel, Otto. A Foundation of Ontology: A Critical Anal-
ysis of Nicolai Hartmann. Translated by Frank Gaynor.
New York: Philosophical Library, 1954.
Schlaretzki, W. E. “Ethics and Metaphysics in Hartmann.”
Ethics 54 (1943): 273–82.
Shein, Louis. “A Critique of N. Hartmann’s Ethics.” Ph.D.
diss., University of Toronto, 1946.
Spiegelberg, Herbert. The Phenomenological Movement.
2 vols. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965. See vol. 1,
pp. 358–91.
Werkmeister, W. H. Nicolai Hartmann’s New Ontology.
Tallahassee, FL: Florida State University Press, 1990.
Includes excellent bibliography. See especially chapter
5, “The Realm of Spiritual Being,” and chapter 6,
“Ethics.”
———. “Introduction.” In Searchlight on Values: Nicolai
Hartmann’s Twentieth Century Value Platonism, by
Eva Hauel Cadwallader. Lanham, MD: University
Press of America, 1984.
Robert Welsh Jordan
hate
Some philosophers have argued that there is a set of
basic human emotions that are universal and possi-
bly even innate, and that hate may be among these.
DESCARTES (1596–1650) claimed that there were
six basic emotions: LOVE, hate, astonishment, DE-
SIRE, joy, and sorrow. SPINOZA (1632–1677) sug-
gested three: PLEASURE, pain, and desire, with hate
being a form of pain, and WILLIAM JAMES (1842–
1910) defined four: love, fear, grief, and rage. Other
thinkers such as NIETZSCHE (1844–1900) and
SCHOPENHAUER (1788–1860) stress the link be-
tween hate and morality, the former arguing that res-
sentiment, a form of envy/anger, is the basis of
“slave morality,” of which Christianity is a paradigm,
and the latter insisting that malicious joy (Schaden-
freude), a spiteful pleasure in the misfortune of oth-
ers, is the most despicable antimoral force in human
affairs. Though not all theorists of emotions regard
hate as basic, almost all recognize that it is a com-
hate
mon and frequently destructive attitude that has
complex relations with other emotions such as fear,
anger, and even love. In general, people have viewed
hate as a base emotion in the same class as CRUELTY,
greed, rage, and vanity, and many philosophers have
shared this view. In this entry I will discuss the con-
cept of hate; sketch its relations to fear, love, and
anger; and remark on its moral status as represented
in selected writings of philosophers in the Western
tradition.
The Concept of Hate
According to the Oxford English Dictionary,
“hate” as a subject refers to an EMOTION of extreme
dislike or aversion. Cognates include “detestation,”
“abhorrence,” “loathing,” “malice,” “enmity,” and
“odium,” all of which suggest the low character of
this emotion. Hatreds such as the infamous blood
feud between the Hatfields and McCoys, as well as
racism and other bigotries, are examples of this us-
age. The term “hate” is also sometimes employed to
form such notions as hate campaigns and hate lit-
erature. George Orwell’s (1903–1950) description
in Nineteen Eighty Four (1949) of “the economy
drive in preparation for Hate Week” is a classic ex-
ample of this latter usage. Hate may also refer to
an ambivalent emotional state combining love and
hate, as when people claim to have a “love-hate” re-
lationship with their job, their spouse, or their pets.
Used as a verb, “to hate” means “to hold in very
strong dislike; to detest; to bear malice to. The op-
posite of to love.” This sense is sometimes intensified
by phrases such as “he hated her like poison,” or
“she hated him with a passion,” making clear that
hating admits of degrees.
These senses of the term immediately suggest a
distinction between hate which does not necessarily
involve cognitions such as beliefs or propositional
attitudes, and which therefore may have application
to human infants and nonhuman animals as well
as to mature adult human beings; and hate which
connotes detestation, malice, loathing, or enmity, a
sense which constitutively involves such cognitions.
We may regard the former as “nonmoral” hatred, the
sort of instinctive response persons and animals may
bear toward that which frustrates, endangers, or ter-
rifies them; and the latter as “moral” hatred, or ha-
tred comprised in part of negative judgments or
evaluations of persons, events, or objects. Further
660
conceptual refinement would add the previously
noted Nietzschean concept of ressentiment as im-
moral hatred inasmuch as it involves the desire to
hurt or diminish another for the sake solely of gain-
ing some sort of competitive advantage over that
person, and what Jeffrie Murphy has called “retrib-
utive hatred,” which is a kind of deserved hatred
connected with the wish to see another suffer for the
sake of achieving “just deserts.” This latter notion is
closely linked to Kantian intuitions about retributive
justice, and may be the only morally justifiable form
of hatred.
Moral and immoral forms of hatred are probably
not reasonably attributed to infants and animals,
though it must be conceded that there is room for
debate, for certain behaviors among “higher” ani-
mals like chimpanzees and lions certainly look a lot
like hatred and the closely allied notions of malice
and cruelty. Animals not only fear one another, per-
sons, and events, but they also behave in ways which
manifest mild to extreme aggression (e.g., rams butt-
ing heads to assert herd dominance; male chimpan-
zees fighting viciously over a desired female), raising
the question whether something like moral hatred
occurs among these animals.
Relation to Love
Hate sometimes appears combined with its pu-
tative opposite, love, forming an ambivalent emo-
tional state, yet if hate is the opposite of love, how
can it combine with love at all? HUME (1711–1776)
argued that because love and hate are “directly con-
trary in their sensations,” we cannot simultaneously
love and hate the same object. Hume was led to this
conclusion because he believed, as did Spinoza, that
love is always an “agreeable” sensation, whereas
hate is always “uneasy.” But love is often very pain-
ful, and not only the love that is unrequited. Love
that is reciprocated may be tinged with sadness, the
pain of anticipated loss, or even loathing. And hate
may be an enjoyable state, as is evident in the phe-
nomenon of malicious glee. Hume’s view ignores the
role of cognitions in love and hate, and assumes that
the opposition between these emotional attitudes is
a matter of logic. But as Freud (1856–1939) argued,
love and hate are not opposites in the sense that they
are incompatible, for “The logical laws of thought
do not apply to the id, and this is true above all of
the law of contradiction. Contrary impulses exist

side by side, without canceling each other out or di-
minishing each other.” We hate people for the EVIL
they do us. Lovers can injure one another more eas-
ily and more deeply than can strangers, at least in-
asmuch as they typically possess greater knowledge
of and access to one another’s vulnerabilities. Since
all love relationships involve disappointments and
injuries, all such relationships involve reciprocal ha-
tred of one sort (and intensity) or another. Loving
and hating different aspects of the same person or
loving and hating the same person, or traits of that
person, for different reasons, produces such mixed
feelings. There is nothing paradoxical about this un-
less one assumes a theory of emotions in which some
cancel out or neutralize others.
Relation to Anger
Not all theorists distinguish clearly between hate
and anger. It may be tempting to agree with Hume
that hate is always linked to anger, as BENEVOLENCE
is to love, for “It is certain we never love any person
without desiring his happiness, nor hate any without
wishing his misery.” But this is surely wrong, for in
addition to the complex relations between love and
hate described above, which suggest that one may
hate others without wishing their unhappiness, peo-
ple hate many different things and they hate them in
different ways. Some hates are no doubt causally re-
lated to anger, but it is clear that hatred is not nec-
essarily connected to anger of any sort. I may despise
communism, for instance, but bear no anger toward
individual communists or communist regimes. Of
course, one may hate the sources of one’s injuries
just as one may be angry toward them, but this does
not make hatred a kind of anger or anger a kind of
hatred any more than one’s sadness over an injury
makes unhappiness a type of RESENTMENT or re-
sentment a type of unhappiness.
Relation to Morality
Hate takes a wide array of objects. People may
be said to hate other people, themselves, animals,
objects, ideas, character traits, political systems, cli-
mates, and so on. Hate is sometimes used as a mod-
ifier to intensify descriptions of especially vile ac-
tions such as “hate mail,” “hate speech,” and “hate
crimes.” Hate also takes various collective forms and
objects (e.g., Jewish self-hatred) and motivates war
661
hate
and such atrocities as GENOCIDE and ethnic cleans-
ing. It is therefore natural to wonder about the moral
status of hate, especially given its close connection
to violence. Some of the moral questions one might
ask include whether it is morally permissible or
sometimes even obligatory to hate, whether the mo-
rality of personal hate is different than that of col-
lective hate, and how hatred is involved in such
morally dubious attitudes as racism, sexism, and
misanthropy. A sample of philosophical reflections
on the moral status of hate will allude to possible
answers to these and related queries about the mo-
rality of hate.
The relation between hate and fear has already
been remarked on in distinguishing nonmoral from
moral hatred, but some forms of “moral” hatred are
themselves related to fear. It is often supposed that
forms of hate such as ethnocentrism, misogyny, and
misanthropy are grounded in beliefs about the base-
ness or even worthlessness of certain groups of peo-
ple (or even all people), beliefs which may be
grounded in and/or engender fear of such groups.
In his Lectures on Ethics (1775–1780), Kant dis-
cusses enmity and misanthropy, shedding light on
this phenomenon. He claims that misanthropy, the
hatred of mankind, has two sources: shyness and
enmity. Shyness is a form of fear, which according
to Kant makes a person regard all others as enemies.
Here again we see the link between fear and hate.
The misanthrope who hates from shyness is timid,
thinks less of herself than she should, and flees from
people in an effort to hide from them. Enmity, by
contrast, involves a person making himself an enemy
of all others. Enmity is more than mere dislike, for
we can dislike others but bear no ill will toward
them. Enmity is “an express disposition to do harm
to another.” The misanthrope who hates from en-
mity shuns other people on principle, thinking him-
self too good for them. This is but one form of hate,
for we can hate those who deserve it, but we should
not, because of that, be their enemy and do them
harm. For Kant, enmity is a kind of hate akin to
malice as Schopenhauer understands that notion
(with its connection to deriving pleasure from the ill
that occurs to others), and is therefore thoroughly
ignoble.
In general, then, one morally dubious form of
hate involves the desire that others suffer. Not all
hate involves such a desire, as the precept “Hate the
sin, love the sinner” neatly expresses. And even hate
hate
that does involve the desire that another suffer may
not be morally inappropriate, as Jeffrie Murphy has
recently argued. Murphy claims that in cases of ret-
ribution hatred is in principle justifiable, because the
person at whom it is aimed deserves to be hurt. Par-
adigm cases include the hatred of survivors of Ho-
locaust victims toward the perpetrators of such
atrocities, or the hatred of a rape victim toward her
violators. What justifies such retributive or “right-
eous” hate is the fact that the demands for just PUN-
ISHMENT implicit in them are understandable re-
sponses to the wrongs done to the victims. There are,
nevertheless, considerations that militate against feel-
ing or acting on this form of hatred. One reason is
that we may be mistaken about the CHARACTER of
the person we subject to our hate. Rarely can we
know enough about why persons act as they do to
ensure that such a strong response is appropriate.
Moreover, as fellow wrongdoers we may not have
the proper “standing” to hate another, inasmuch as
hating is a way of removing another from the moral
community of mutual respect. Perhaps God alone
has such standing.
The moral status of hate thus depends on the type
of hate at issue. Hate as strong dislike is probably in
many cases instinctive or otherwise hard-wired, and
its presence involuntary and beyond the scope of RE-
SPONSIBILITY. Perhaps the most we can say of this
type of hate is that its moral status depends essen-
tially on what actions it motivates. Hate as malice or
enmity is more morally dubious, as are the preju-
dices and behaviors it occasions. Whether there is a
form of appropriate hatred is a matter of some de-
bate. Surely we ought to hate injustice. Less clear is
the status of hating those who perpetrate injustice.
See also: ANGER; CRUELTY; EMOTION; EMOTIVISM;
ENVY; GUILT AND SHAME; HARM AND OFFENSE; IN-
TENTION; JUSTICE, RETRIBUTIVE; LOVE; MERIT AND
DESERT; PASSION; PRIDE; PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS;
PUNISHMENT; RACISM AND RELATED ISSUES; RACISM,
CONCEPTS OF; RECIPROCITY; RESENTMENT; REVENGE;
TOLERANCE; VIOLENCE AND NON-VIOLENCE.
Bibliography
Freud, Sigmund. New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-
analysis. 1933. Cited in “Odi et Amo: On Hating the
Ones We Love,” by Jerome Neu, 54–55. In Freud and
the Passions, edited by John O’Neill, 53–73. University
Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.
662
Hume, David. A Treatise on Human Nature. Open Court
Publishing, 1930 [1737].
Kant, Immanuel. Lectures on Ethics. Translated by Louis
Infield. New York: Century Publishing, 1931 [1775–
80].
Kressel, Neil J. Mass Hate: The Global Rise of Genocide
and Terror. New York: Plenum Press, 1996.
Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff, and Susan McCarthy. When
Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals.
New York: Delacorte, 1995. See especially chapter 7,
“Rage, Dominance, and Cruelty in Peace and War,” for
an interesting overview of the angry emotions some
animals appear capable of experiencing.
Murphy, Jeffrie, and Jean Hampton. Forgiveness and
Mercy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
A useful discussion of forms of anger and hatred and
their relation to forgiveness, mercy, and other re-
sponses to wrongdoing.
Neu, Jerome. “On Hating the Ones We Love.” In Freud
and the Passions, edited by John O’Neill, 53–73. Uni-
versity Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.
A clear Freudian analysis of love-hate ambivalence.
Schopenhauer, Arthur. On the Basis of Morality. Trans-
lated by E. F. J. Payne. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,
1965 [1841]. Schopenhauer’s treatment of moral and
antimoral incentives in human affairs, especially the
nature of and relationship between compassion and
various forms of malice.
Seneca. Moral Essays. Volume I. Translated by John W. Ba-
sore. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928.
Spinoza, Baruch. Ethics. Translated by R. H. M. Elwes.
New York: Dover, 1955 [posthumous, 1677].
Paul M. Hughes
hedonism
Introductory Remarks
Hedonistic theories are among the oldest, the
most popular, and the most intuitively attractive of
all theories of value. The common core of such the-
ories has been expressed in various ways: “Pleasure
is The Good”; “Pleasure alone is worth seeking as
an end”; “Pleasure is the only thing that is good in
itself.” Hedonists hold that a person’s life is better
as it contains a more favorable balance of PLEASURE
over pain; that the same factor determines the value
of a possible world, or the consequence of some line
of behavior.
Hedonism, in various forms, has been endorsed
(or seriously considered) by a long line of moral phi-
losophers. Important discussions can be found in
the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus, among

the ancients. Among British philosophers, Bentham,
Mill, Sidgwick, and Moore made important contri-
butions, though not all endorsed hedonism. Other
valuable work has been done by Broad, Brentano,
Ryle, and Brandt, among others.
Different philosophers have understood hedo-
nism in different ways, and these different ways are
not always consistent with each other. In many
cases, new formulations have been developed pre-
cisely because it has been thought that received for-
mulations are defective, either in substance or in
form. Thus, it might be wise to think of hedonism
not as a particular theory of value, but rather as a
family of theories, or perhaps as a general approach
to the theory of value.
The Nature of Pleasure and Pain
Since every form of hedonism places great em-
phasis on pleasure and pain, it is important at the
outset to reflect on these puzzling phenomena.
The distinctive feeling view. Many people ap-
parently find it natural to think that pleasure and
pain are a pair of distinctive bodily feelings, or sen-
sations, analogous in important ways to such feel-
ings as the sensations of hot and cold. G. E. MOORE
(1873–1958) assumed a view of this sort in Prin-
cipia Ethica (1903). He took hedonism to be the
doctrine that these distinctive feelings are the sole
fundamental bearers of intrinsic value, positive and
negative.
If we adopt this view of pleasure as a distinctive
sort of sensation, we may go on to say that other
sensations (e.g., a feeling of warmth while basking
in the sun) are pleasures in a derived sense: they are
immediate causes of the feeling of pleasure itself. We
may also say that to enjoy an activity, or to “take
pleasure in” that activity, is just to get the distinctive
feeling of pleasure as a result of, or in conjunction
with, the activity. Thus, to take pleasure in a game
of golf would be to get the feeling of pleasure while,
or as a result of, playing golf. Corresponding things
would be true of the connection between the feeling
of pain and “disenjoyment,” or “taking pain in”
activities.
While the Distinctive Feeling View is initially at-
tractive, it will not bear scrutiny. The central diffi-
culty (as pointed out by Henry SIDGWICK [1838–
1900] in The Methods of Ethics [1874]) is that
careful reflection on our experience does not reveal
663
hedonism
the occurrence of any such alleged distinctive feel-
ings of pleasure and pain. The pleasurable feelings
one enjoys while basking on a sunny beach need not
have any consequences in common with the plea-
surable feelings one gets from a sip of cold cham-
pagne. There does not seem to be any third feeling
of pleasure itself that is the common effect both of
the basking and the sipping.
In a number of articles, Gilbert Ryle (1900–
1976) presented further arguments against the Dis-
tinctive Feeling View. Some of these turned on the
claim that pleasure is not “localized” and “clock-
able” as it would be if the theory were true. Others
turned on the implausibility of the associated view
about enjoyment.
The hedonic tone theory. C. D. Broad (1887–
1971) and others agreed that pleasurable feelings
need not have any common effect. Yet they claimed
that all such feelings are alike in a certain phenom-
enally given dimension. They are said to share a cer-
tain positive “tone.” This alleged tone may vary in
intensity. Negative amounts of this tone may be
called “doloric tone” and it may also be claimed that
feelings with doloric tone are pains. According to
this view, a person can tell by immediate introspec-
tion whether a given feeling is characterized by he-
donic or doloric tone, and if so, to what degree.
Again, the central problem seems to be phenom-
enological. Careful reflection on our experience does
not reveal any such “tone.”
Attitudinal theories. According to the dominant
current view, what makes a feeling be a pleasure is
the fact that the person who experiences that feeling
takes up a certain attitude toward it. There is debate
about the nature of the attitude. On the simplest of
such views, the claim is that a feeling is a pleasure
if the one who experiences that feeling desires to feel
it. Sidgwick proposed a view according to which a
feeling is a pleasure if the one who experiences it
“apprehends it as desirable as feeling.” Richard
BRANDT (1910–1997) endorsed yet another ver-
sion. On his view, what makes a feeling a pleasure
is the fact that the one who experiences it “wants to
prolong it for its own sake.”
According to yet another view, the fundamental
hedonic phenomena are two indefinable attitudes—
taking pleasure in and taking pain in. A feeling or
sensation is then said to be a sensory pleasure (pain)
if the one who experiences it takes immediate atti-
tudinal pleasure (pain) in that sensation.
hedonism
Prolegomena to Simple Sensory Hedonism
Before attempting to state a simple form of he-
donism, we must draw some distinctions and record
some assumptions.
First, we distinguish between two sorts of evalu-
ation. (i) There is evaluation of actions or behavior
as morally right, morally wrong, or morally obliga-
tory. (ii) There is evaluation of various states of af-
fairs as good or bad. Some (e.g., consequentialists)
think that these two forms of evaluation are linked
by an important principle: “an action is morally right
if and only if it produces consequences that are out-
standingly good.” But many others reject this. In any
case, hedonism is a view about what’s good and
what’s bad; it is not a view about morally right
behavior.
Second, we distinguish between intrinsic value
and extrinsic value. The intrinsic value of a thing is
the value it has “in itself,” by virtue of its intrinsic
nature. Moore claimed that if a thing has intrinsic
value, then it has that value of necessity and would
continue having precisely that value even if it were
to exist in complete isolation. The extrinsic value of
a thing is the value it has by virtue of what it causes,
or prevents, or makes more probable, or signifies.
Hedonism is fundamentally a view concerning the
intrinsic value of pleasures and pains. Hedonists ac-
knowledge that pleasures may be extrinsically bad,
and pains extrinsically good.
Next, we record some assumptions about plea-
sure and pain.
(i) We assume that pleasures are certain feel-
ings or sensations. When a person experiences a
feeling of pleasure, there is an event, or episode,
that consists in that person feeling pleasure. Each
such episode lasts through a period of time, and so
it has a duration. The pleasure experienced in the
episode is of a certain intensity—or “strength” or
“vividness.”
(ii) We assume that each episode of pleasure con-
tains a certain “amount” of pleasure, and that this
amount is in principle subject to measurement. (We
need not assume that these amounts can in practice
be precisely determined either by introspection or by
any existing technology.) The amount of pleasure in
an episode depends on intensity and duration, with
longer lasting and more intense pleasures being said
to contain more total pleasure.
(iii) We assume that pains are also feelings that
664
come in episodes with intensity and duration. Each
such episode contains a determinate amount of pain.
(iv) We assume that pain is “opposite” to pleasure
so that we can speak of a balance of pleasure over
pain, or “net pleasure.”
(v) Finally, we assume that it is possible in prin-
ciple to compare the amount of net pleasure in some
combination of pleasures and pains to the amount
of net pleasure in some other combination of plea-
sures and pains.
Simple Sensory Hedonism
With these assumptions as background, we can
sketch a simple form of sensory hedonism. It is not
clear that any actual hedonist has ever endorsed pre-
cisely this view, although the report of Diogenes
Laertius (third century C.E.?) suggests that it might
not be unreasonable to attribute something like this
to Aristippus (c. 435–350 B.C.E.). Some critics of
hedonism seem to understand hedonism in some-
thing like this way, since their criticisms are best in-
terpreted as attacks on such a doctrine.
(i) Every episode of pleasure is intrinsically good,
and every episode of pain is intrinsically bad.
(ii) The intrinsic value of an episode of pleasure
(pain) is determined by the amount of pleasure
(pain) contained in that episode, with more intense
and longer lasting episodes of pleasure (pain) being
intrinsically better (worse), other things being equal.
(iii) The intrinsic value of a complex thing such
as a life, the total consequence of an ACTION, or a
possible world is entirely determined by the intrinsic
values of the episodes of pleasure and pain con-
tained in the complex thing, in such a way that one
complex thing is intrinsically better than another if
and only if the net amount of pleasure in the one is
greater than the net amount of pleasure in the other.
(iv) The extrinsic value of anything (action, leg-
islation, belief, trait of CHARACTER, etc.) is deter-
mined in some interesting (but not here specified)
way by the intrinsic value of what it causes, or pre-
vents, or signifies.
Let us call this first form of hedonism “Simple
Sensory Hedonism,” or “SSH.” SSH implies that
every episode of sensory pleasure is intrinsically
good. We can therefore say that SSH is a form of
universal sensory hedonism. SSH also implies that
the intrinsic value of a complex thing such as a per-
son’s life is determined entirely by the intrinsic val-

ues of the sensory pleasures and pains occurring
therein. No other thing (e.g. knowledge, virtue, free-
dom, goodwill) plays a similar role in the determi-
nation of intrinsic values of complex things. There-
fore, we can say that SSH is a form of pure sensory
hedonism.
This enables us to state an answer to the question
“What is hedonism?” We can say that a theory is a
form of hedonism if and only if it is a theory in ax-
iology and it is sufficiently similar to SSH. What
counts as “sufficient similarity” is a matter of con-
troversy. Must the theory be a form of pure hedo-
nism? of universal hedonism? How else may it differ
from SSH while still properly being considered a
form of hedonism? Different philosophers would
give different answers to these questions.
Historically important forms of hedonism differ
from SSH in many ways. Several variants are dis-
cussed below.
Diogenes Laertius reports that Aristippus argued
for his form of hedonism by claiming that “from our
youth up we are instinctively attracted to [pleasure],
and, when we obtain it, seek for nothing more, and
shun nothing so much as its opposite, pain” (217).
The argument thus moves from psychological he-
donism—the view that pleasure alone is in fact ul-
timately desired and pain alone ultimately shunned—
to ethical hedonism—a view in axiology relevantly
like SSH. JOHN STUART MILL (1806–1873) seems
to have employed a similar form of argument in Util-
itarianism (1861). ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) says
that anyone who rejects this sort of argument is
“talking nonsense” (NE, X, 2). Such arguments are
nowadays viewed with great suspicion, since it is
hardly clear that any form of psychological hedo-
nism is true, and it is very doubtful that there is any
valid way to derive ethical hedonism from psycho-
logical, even if the latter is true.
SSH is open to a variety of objections. In the Phi-
lebus, PLATO (c. 430–347 B.C.E.) imagines a life
filled with sensory pleasures, but utterly lacking
knowledge, memory, and foresight. He describes this
as a life fit for an oyster, not a person. If SSH were
true, such a life (if it lasted long enough) would have
to be rated as outstandingly good; but of course such
a life would not be good, no matter how long it lasts.
No reasonable person would wish for the life of a
contented oyster. Hence, SSH is not true.
In Principia Ethica, Moore presents another ob-
jection. He remarks that some of the lowest forms
665
hedonism
of sexual enjoyment are among the most intense sen-
sual pleasures we ever experience. If SSH were true,
a life that consisted in a “perpetual indulgence in
bestiality” (PE, 95) would be “heaven indeed.” On
this basis, Moore dismisses the view as false and
paradoxical.
The Hedonism of Epicurus
EPICURUS (341–271 B.C.E.) apparently defended
a form of hedonism that is not subject to objections
such as Moore’s “Bestiality Objection.” He claimed
that the most valuable sort of pleasure is “static plea-
sure,” which he defined as “freedom from pain in
the body and from disturbance in the soul.” Plato
had already shown (Philebus 44; Republic 583) that
it is a mistake to suppose that the mere absence of
pain is itself a sort of pleasure, since there is an in-
termediate state in which we experience neither
pleasure nor pain. A person in that intermediate
state experiences no pain, but does not therefore ex-
perience pleasure. A dead or comatose person ex-
periences no pain, but does not experience pleasure,
either.
Perhaps it would be better to understand Epicu-
rus’s concept of static pleasure in a different way.
We can say that a person enjoys static pleasure if he
takes attitudinal pleasure in the fact that he himself
is feeling no pain, bodily or mental. If understood in
this way, static pleasure is not the mere absence of
pain, nor is it a sensation of any sort; rather, it occurs
when a person adopts a certain attitude (he “takes
pleasure in”) a certain fact—the fact that he himself
is then feeling no pain.
Epicurus apparently held that longer durations of
static pleasure are no better than shorter ones. Per-
haps he adopted this odd view because he recog-
nized that if longer durations were better, this would
make it reasonable for us to fear early DEATH, for
early death would cut short our enjoyment of static
pleasure. It was important to Epicurus to avoid
anything that would make the fear of death seem
reasonable.
The details of Epicurean hedonism are unfortu-
nately lost, but Epicurus seems to have held that all
pleasures are intrinsically good and all pains intrin-
sically bad. We may speculate that he would say that
static pleasures (of any duration) are incomparably
better than active (sensory) ones. Perhaps Epicurus
would say that the best life is one that consists in an
hedonism
unbroken period of static pleasure. All such lives are
equally good, no matter how long they last. We do
not know how he would have evaluated lives con-
taining various mixtures of active and static pleasure
and pain.
The resulting form of hedonism is not open to the
Oyster Objection or the Bestiality Argument, but it
has some very odd implications. One is this: the he-
donism of Epicurus (if our speculations about it are
correct) implies that a life of a hundred years, filled
with the pleasures of food and drink, LOVE and FAM-
ILY, art and learning and virtue, is not as good as a
life that lasts just a minute, and contains none of
these pleasures, so long as in the latter life but not
the former, the person takes pleasure in the fact that
he feels no pain.
Bentham
Jeremy BENTHAM (1748–1832) maintained a
very robust form of sensory hedonism. He devoted
special attention to the question how to evaluate
complex combinations of pleasure and pain. His
“hedonic calculus,” whatever its defects, is a mile-
stone in the history of hedonism. Bentham mentions
seven factors that must be taken into account when
evaluating a particular episode of pleasure or pain.
These are: (i) intensity, (ii) duration, (iii) certainty
or uncertainty, (iv) propinquity or remoteness, (v) pu-
rity, (vi) fecundity, and (vii) extent. The first two
have already been mentioned, and are fairly uncon-
troversial. ‘Certainty’ and ‘propinquity,’ however,
are problematic. Bentham seems to be imagining
that a person is about to engage in some action. She
has several choices. Each choice would lead to an
outcome. Those outcomes might contain some plea-
sures and pains. By ‘certainty’ Bentham seems to
mean the degree of assurance that the person has
that a given pleasure will indeed occur given that
she chooses one of her possible actions. By ‘propin-
quity’ he might mean the distance in space or time
of the pleasure from the proposed action. The idea
seems to be that other things being equal, nearer and
more certain pleasures are more valuable.
It is hard to see what could justify a higher eval-
uation for nearer pleasures. Imagine that I could
send a greeting card either to my nearby grand-
mother or to my distant grandmother. Imagine that
the pleasure my nearby grandmother would enjoy if
she were to receive the card is equal in intensity and
666
duration to the pleasure my distant grandmother
would enjoy if she were to be the lucky recipient of
the card. Could Bentham have meant that the plea-
sure of the first grandmother is superior merely be-
cause it occurs sooner and closer? This seems im-
plausible.
Furthermore, given that two otherwise similar
pleasures in fact occur, it is hard to see why one
should be rated more highly merely because it was
more certain at some time prior to its occurrence.
Fecundity (the tendency to be followed by other
pleasures) and purity (the tendency not to be fol-
lowed by pains) cannot be thought to affect the in-
trinsic value of a pleasure. At most, these factors
have a bearing on the extrinsic values of pleasures.
Bentham himself seems to have been vaguely aware
of this. Thus, the fifth and sixth factors seem mis-
placed.
Bentham’s seventh factor, extent, is also trouble-
some. The extent of a pleasure is the number of per-
sons to whom it extends. Bentham thus apparently
thinks of “a pleasure” as something that can be
shared by different people. If we imagine two such
pleasures alike in the total amount of pleasure they
contain, but differing in extent, then it is hard to see
why the more widely dispersed (but “thinner”) plea-
sure is better. Why should it be better for a hundred
people to feel one unit of pleasure each rather than
for ten people to feel ten units each?
The Hedonism of Mill
In his Utilitarianism, J. S. Mill presents a form of
hedonism specifically designed to avoid objections
relevantly like Moore’s Bestiality Objection. Mill dis-
tinguishes between “higher” and “lower” pleasures.
Intellectual, aesthetic, and moral pleasures are of the
higher quality; mere sensual pleasures are of the
lower quality. Mill claims—perhaps unwisely—that
higher-quality pleasures can be distinguished from
lower-quality ones by virtue of the fact that those
who have experienced both always prefer the higher
to the lower.
While the details of Mill’s position are still subject
to debate, the general outlines are fairly clear. An
episode of pleasure may be evaluated in three di-
mensions: intensity, duration, and quality. Two plea-
sures alike in intensity and duration may yet differ
in quality—one may be “higher” than the other. In
this case, the higher-quality pleasure is of greater

intrinsic value. This doctrine enables Mill to main-
tain that a life of “perpetual indulgence in bestiality”
is of very low value, even if it contains pleasures of
very great intensity and duration. The value of such
pleasures is compromised by their low quality. A life
of less intense but higher quality mental pleasures
could be better.
Moore presented a barrage of arguments against
Mill’s doctrine of quality. One line of argument is
based on the claim that since pleasure is just “one
thing,” it is a mistake to say that there are different
sorts of pleasure. Hence, it is a mistake to say that
pleasures of some sorts are more valuable than plea-
sures of other sorts. This objection may be based on
an uncritical acceptance of the Distinctive Feeling
View. In any case, it is not very convincing. Any de-
terminable property is just “one thing,” yet each such
property has many determinate forms. Instances of
the determinable may thus vary in many ways.
Moore’s main objection seems to be this: hedo-
nism implies that pleasure is the only intrinsically
good thing; Mill’s doctrine of quality implies that
something else—“quality”—is also intrinsically good.
Therefore, the doctrine of quality is inconsistent
with hedonism. This objection seems to be based on
a misunderstanding of Mill’s view. Mill need not be
understood as claiming that “quality” is intrinsically
good; he may be understood as claiming that epi-
sodes of pleasure are intrinsically better (other
things being equal) if they are of higher quality. But
when this happens, it is the episode of pleasure that
is intrinsically good, not the quality of the pleasure
in that episode.
Attitudinal Hedonism
A person enjoys attitudinal pleasure at a time if
he “takes pleasure in” or enjoys something. The ob-
ject of his attitudinal pleasure may be some sensa-
tion he is then experiencing, or it may be some ac-
tivity in which he is engaged. It may be more
abstract: a person may take pleasure in the fact that
there is peace and justice in the world, or in the fact
that there is less poverty and racism than there once
was. (Corresponding things can be said about the
opposite attitude of “taking pain in.”)
Whenever a person takes attitudinal pleasure in
something, he takes pleasure of some degree. ‘De-
gree’ here is not to be understood as intensity of any
sensation. Rather, it is to be understood as strength
667
hedonism
of attitude. Similarly, when a person takes pleasure
in something, he does so for some period of time.
Thus, there are episodes of attitudinal pleasure (and
pain).
On this basis we may introduce a form of attitu-
dinal hedonism. We may say that every episode of
attitudinal pleasure is intrinsically good, with longer
and stronger episodes being intrinsically better. Ep-
isodes of attitudinal pain are intrinsically bad, with
longer and stronger episodes being intrinsically worse.
We may go on to say that the intrinsic values of
lives, of consequences of action, and of possible
worlds are entirely determined by the intrinsic val-
ues of the episodes of attitudinal pleasure and pain
contained within. We may call the resulting theory
“Simple Attitudinal Hedonism,” or SAH. Since ac-
cording to SAH every attitudinal pleasure is intrin-
sically good, it is a form of universal attitudinal he-
donism. Since it also implies that no other factor
influences the intrinsic value of a life, or a world, or
the consequence of an action, it may be said to be a
form of pure attitudinal hedonism.
Among the goods recognized by SAH is the state
of affairs in which someone takes attitudinal plea-
sure in some sensation he is then experiencing. Thus,
SAH accomodates some of the thoughts of sensory
hedonism. However, SAH is not a form of sensory
hedonism. According to SAH, a life might be out-
standingly good even if it contains very little sensory
pleasure. The relevant factor is the extent to which
the person takes attitudinal pleasure in things, not
the extent to which he feels pleasurable sensations.
SAH is open to a line of argument illustrated by
Broad’s Malice Argument. Suppose a person takes
great pleasure in the fact that innocent others are
suffering. This is malicious pleasure. If SAH were
true, this pleasure would be intrinsically good, yet it
may seem to be worthless, or even bad. A similar
argument might be developed by appeal to the pains
of compassion and condolence. Suppose a person is
appropriately pained by the fact that others are in-
nocently suffering. This is compassionate pain. If
SAH were true, this pain would be intrinsically bad,
yet it might seem much less bad than pain taken in
neutral, or “pleasure-worthy” objects.
A revised form of attitudinal hedonism could say
that the intrinsic value of an episode of attitudinal
pleasure is determined by three factors: its intensity,
its duration, and the “pleasure-worthiness” of its ob-
ject. Other things being equal, an episode in which
hedonism
someone takes pleasure in a pleasure-worthy object
(e.g., HAPPINESS, knowledge, virtue, freedom, jus-
tice) is intrinsically better than an episode in which
someone takes pleasure in a neutral object (e.g., the
existence of plastic, the fact that there are stones);
an episode of pleasure in which someone takes plea-
sure in a neutral object is better than one in which
pleasure is taken in a pain-worthy object (e.g., suf-
fering, ignorance, vice, bondage, injustice).
Corresponding things could be said about the val-
ues of episodes of attitudinal pain. These too might
be affected by intensity, duration, and the pain-
worthiness of their objects.
The resulting theory—which we may call “Qual-
ity Adjusted Attitudinal Hedonism”—is not refuted
by the Malice Objection. It can be maintained that
malicious pleasures are of little value, since they are
attitudinal pleasures taken in objects that are not
pleasure-worthy. Similarly, it can be said that the
pains of compassion are not so bad, since they are
attitudinal pains taken in pain-worthy objects. These
reflections suggest that it is possible to develop a
fairly plausible form of pure and universal attitudi-
nal hedonism.
The Limits of Hedonism
We may develop an even more extreme form of
attitudinal hedonism. This is loosely based on the
nonhedonistic axiologies of Moore and Franz BREN-
TANO (1838–1917). On this view, as on Quality Ad-
justed Attitudinal Hedonism, attitudinal pleasure
taken in pleasure-worthy objects is very good, and
attitudinal pleasure taken in neutral objects is some-
what good. But this extreme view maintains that at-
titudinal pleasure taken in pain-worthy objects is
intrinsically bad. Thus, on this view, malicious, sa-
distic, and cruel pleasures are not merely worthless,
they are evaluated as bad in themselves.
Correspondingly, attitudinal pain taken in pleasure-
worthy objects is very bad in itself, while attitudinal
pain taken in neutral objects is bad in itself, but less
so. Pain taken in pain-worthy objects is now said to
be positively good, rather than merely worthless.
On this view, the intrinsic value of a complex
thing such as a person’s life is determined by the
intrinsic values of the episodes of attitudinal plea-
sure and pain occurring within that complex thing.
The intrinsic value of an episode of pleasure or pain
depends on three factors—intensity, duration, and
668
pleasure-worthiness of object. Most pleasures are
said to be intrinsically good, but some are intrinsi-
cally bad. Most pains are intrinsically bad, but some
are intrinsically good.
The theory is neither a pure nor a universal form
of attitudinal hedonism. Some might say that it is
therefore not a form of hedonism at all. However,
since the ultimate determinants of all value are on
this theory episodes of attitudinal pleasure and pain,
this theory could be counted as a form—though a
fairly extreme form—of attitudinal hedonism.
See also: AESTHETICS; ARISTOTLE; BENTHAM;
BRANDT; BRENTANO; CONSEQUENTIALISM; CRADLE
ARGUMENTS; CRUELTY; DESIRE; EPICUREANISM; EPI-
CURUS; EXTERNALISM AND INTERNALISM; HAPPINESS;
INTERESTS; LOVE; MERIT AND DESERT; JOHN STUART
MILL; MOORE; NATURALISTIC FALLACY; NEEDS; NEO-
STOICISM; PAIN AND SUFFERING; PHENOMENOLOGY;
PLATO; PLEASURE; SEXUALITY AND SEXUAL ETHICS;
SIDGWICK; STOICISM; UTILITARIANISM; VALUE, CON-
CEPT OF; VALUE, THEORY OF.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, Book VII, chapters 11–
14; Book X, chapters 1–5.
Bentham, Jeremy. Principles of Morals and Legislation.
[1789]. Chapter IV, “Value of a Lot of Pleasure or Pain,
How to be Measured” contains Bentham’s so-called he-
donic calculus.
Brandt, Richard. “Hedonism.” In The Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, edited by Paul Edwards. New York: Mac-
millan and Free Press, 1967. Vol. 4, pp. 432–35. In
this and other works, Brandt defends an attitudinal
analysis of pleasure. See also Brandt’s Theory of the
Good and the Right. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.
Brentano, Franz. The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right
and Wrong. Edited by Oskar Kraus; English edition
edited by Roderick M. Chisholm. New York: Human-
ities Press, 1969 [1889]. See especially the essay “Lov-
ing and Hating,” in which Brentano presents his rather
idiosyncratic theory of attitudinal pleasure.
Broad, C. D. Five Types of Ethical Theory. London: Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul, 1956 [1930]. Contains Broad’s
formulation and defense of the hedonic tone theory, as
well as his statement of the Malice Argument.
Epicurus. “Letter to Menoeceus,” “Key Doctrines,” etc.
An especially useful collection of Epicurean writings
can be found in chapter 3 of A. A. Long and D. N.
Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1990.
Feldman, Fred. Utilitarianism, Hedonism, and Desert.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Con-

tains three papers on pleasure and hedonism: “Two
Questions about Pleasure,” “Mill, Moore, and the Con-
sistency of Qualified Hedonism,” and “On the Intrinsic
Value of Pleasures.”
Diogenes Laertius. Lives of the Eminent Philosophers.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925. The
life and thought of Aristippus is described in Book II.
All of Book X is devoted to Epicurus. Several letters
and various fragments are included.
Mill, J. S. Utilitarianism. [1861]. Contains Mill’s presen-
tation and defense of his form of qualitative hedonism,
together with his notorious “proof of the principle of
utility.”
Moore, G. E. Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1903. Chapter III is devoted to he-
donism. Moore attacks virtually every aspect of Mill’s
hedonism. He tries to show that it is based on a “naive
and artless use of the naturalistic fallacy.” He claims
that qualitative hedonism is inconsistent, and presents
arguments designed to show that the central intuition
of hedonism is false.
Penelhum, Terence. “The Logic of Pleasure.” Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research 17 (1957): 488–503.
See Ryle citation, below.
Plato. The Republic. In Book IX, Plato distinguishes
among three main sorts of pleasure, and claims that
intellectual pleasures are the most “true” and the most
valuable. There are hints of some elements of the he-
donic calculus in the final few pages of the Protagoras.
The Philebus contains an extended discussion of many
issues pertaining to hedonism. The “oyster argument”
occurs at 21c; a discussion of “truth and falsity” of
pleasures begins at 36d; an argument for the view that
pleasure cannot be defined as the absence of pain be-
gins at 43. Plato claims that pleasure is intrinsically
good, but several other things (“the mean,” “the beau-
tiful,” wisdom, and science) are better.
Ryle, Gilbert. Dilemmas. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1954. Chapter IV, “Pleasure,” contains
arguments designed to show that pleasure is not a sen-
sation, and that pleasure and pain are not “counter-
parts.” For a good critical discussion, see Terence Pe-
nelhum, cited above.
Sidgwick, Henry. The Methods of Ethics. 7th ed. London:
Macmillan, 1962 [1874]. Some especially interesting
and relevant passages occur in Book I, chapter 4, Sec-
tion 2; Book II, chapters 2–4. Sidgwick defends the
view that pleasure may be defined as “feeling which we
apprehend as intrinsically desirable.” He defends a fairly
straightforward version of quantitative hedonism.
Fred Feldman
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
(1770–1831)
Hegel was born in Stuttgart in the duchy of Würt-
temberg (in southern Germany) on August 27,
669
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
1770. He was educated in Stuttgart until 1788,
when he entered the distinguished theological school
at Tübingen. The circle of his close friends there in-
cluded the poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843)
and the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph
SCHELLING (1775–1854). Hegel completed his
studies at Tübingen in 1793 and earned his living as
a children’s tutor in households in Bern and Frank-
furt until 1800; with Schelling’s help, he then ob-
tained a post at the University of Jena, where he pro-
duced his first published writings and began the
construction of his philosophical system. His first
major work, The Phenomenology of Spirit, was pub-
lished in 1807. Hegel’s university career was inter-
rupted in 1806, however, by Napoleon’s victory at
Jena (which Hegel nevertheless welcomed). Hegel
edited a Bamberg newspaper in 1807–1808 and was
headmaster at a Nuremberg gymnasium from 1808
to 1816. He continued his philosophical writing dur-
ing this period, publishing the first volume of the
Science of Logic in 1812 and the second volume in
1816. In 1816, he accepted a professorship at the
University of Heidelberg and composed the first ver-
sion of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences
in connection with his lectures there. Only a year
later, Hegel succeeded Johann Gottlieb FICHTE
(1762–1814) in the prestigious chair at the Univer-
sity of Berlin, where he remained until his death
from cholera on November 14, 1831.
Hegel as “Prussian State Philosopher”
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right was drafted in 1818–
1819, but in the summer of 1819, before it could be
published, a series of sudden political events put an
end to the era of reform in Prussia (1808–1819),
which was until then the most progressive of the
major continental states. The universities were made
a particular target of the reactionaries, and academic
publications on politically sensitive topics became
subject to censorship. Hegel had reason to fear the
reaction: His appointment was recent, and his choice
as professor at Berlin reflected the views of reform-
minded members of the government, such as the cul-
ture minister Karl von Altenstein; Hegel’s assistant
and several of his students were arrested in the sum-
mer of 1819. Moreover, The Philosophy of Right’s
advocacy of constitutional rather than absolute
monarchy, representative INSTITUTIONS, and public
jury trials presented a picture of the state that fit the
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
aims of the reformists and was very much at odds
with Prussian reality as well as the political aims of
the reactionaries. In 1820, Hegel revised the text of
The Philosophy of Right, and attempted (chiefly in
the Preface) to present his political thought as above
any suspicion of subversion, having as its aim not to
tell the state how it ought to be but rather to identify
the affirmative or rational factor in the actual state,
so as to reconcile the rational mind to what exists.
Hegel appeased the censors, and the work was
published in 1821. But this success revenged itself
on Hegel many times over: From the beginning, the
reform minded who regarded Hegel as a traitor to
the cause attacked his Philosophy of Right as an
apology for the Prussian reaction, and the image of
Hegel as “Prussian state philosopher” has perpetu-
ated itself down to the present day, despite the fact
that most scholars agree that this image is a gross
distortion of Hegel’s political philosophy. The pub-
lication in 1983 of Hegel’s Heidelberg lectures on
the philosophy of right (1817–1818) has reinforced
the picture of Hegel as a partisan of moderate re-
form, committed to constitutional government and
representative institutions.
The Development of Hegel’s Ethical Views
Hegel’s mature views on ethical topics are found
principally in The Philosophy of Right. But from He-
gel’s earliest writings in the 1790s onward, ethical
topics were a focus of his philosophical concern, and
some of Hegel’s earlier writings on ethics have ex-
ercised an important influence of their own.
The writings of Hegel’s Tübingen and Bern pe-
riods show the influence of Immanuel KANT’s (1724–
1804) Religion (1793), and they take the form of
reflections on the history of the Christian religion
and its relation to Judaism and to ancient pagan cul-
ture. But their deeper purpose is to diagnose the
moral and religious needs of the modern world. He-
gel focuses on the need for reconciliation between
the rational and sensuous aspects of human nature,
and on the roles of religious sentiments and social
institutions in shaping human nature. Along with
Kant, Hegel attacks ceremonial or “positive” reli-
gion, but in place of Kant’s deistic “religion of pure
reason” Hegel advocates a “folk religion” modeled
on his conception of ancient Greece.
In the writings of Hegel’s Frankfurt period, the
same concerns lead Hegel to a radical critique of the
670
moral standpoint, especially as exemplified by Kant’s
moral philosophy, with its emphasis on the conflict
between duty and inclination, and the good will as
the will motivated by respect for the law. It is in these
writings that Hegel first articulates many of his best-
known criticisms of the moral standpoint—as self-
alienated and pharisaical, a standpoint which can
only blame and condemn but never convert its
“ought” into an “is.”
Though Hegel is preoccupied in his Jena period
with the task of developing a system of speculative
philosophy, his writings show a continuing interest
in ethical issues and in the relation of the human
personality to its social context. The focus of his
critical reflections on the moral standpoint now
shifts to the ethical writings of Fichte. Hegel, follow-
ing Fichte, regards Kant’s principle of morality as
“empty,” incapable of yielding determinate duties;
but unlike Fichte, who thought the defect could be
made good through an alternative moral epistemol-
ogy, Hegel finds the emptiness to be endemic to the
moral standpoint as such.
It is in 1801 that Hegel first begins to contrast the
standpoint of “morality” (Moralität) with that of
“ethical life” (Sittlichkeit), in which the gap between
reason and sense is overcome, and duties are drawn
not from abstract moral reflection but from the con-
crete relations of a living social order. For Hegel, the
paradigm of ethical life is his nostalgic image of an-
cient Greek culture; he realizes that such a social
order is gone forever, that the principle of modern
society is that of the free individual. Hegel’s spiritual
history of Western culture in chapter 5 of the Phe-
nomenology thus begins with Greek ethical life and
ends with the problems of modern individualist
“morality.”
Hegel also understood this INDIVIDUALISM of
modern society in an economic sense. By 1804, he
was familiar with the writings of the Scottish politi-
cal economists James Steuart (1712–1780), Adam
Ferguson (1723–1816), and Adam SMITH (1723–
1790), and under their influence he saw modern
society as distinguished from previous ones by the
existence in it of an economic organization of inde-
pendent persons, distinct from the political state—
an organization to which some years later he was to
give the name “civil society” (bürgerliche Gesell-
schaft). As members of civil society, individuals are
Bürger in the sense of bourgeois, not in the sense of
citoyens; their primary orientation is toward their

private good, not toward “ethical” ends; but civil so-
ciety nevertheless forms a determinate social system
which determines individuals objectively as it frees
them subjectively. In the lectures from Hegel’s Jena
period, he articulated the concept of the free person
as participant in this system in terms of an innova-
tive adaptation of Fichte’s theory of “recognition,”
which tried to understand the natural or human
RIGHTS of persons as an inevitable consequence of
being conscious of oneself as an individual self, and
hence as one self among others. In the Jena period,
however, Hegel was unable to integrate his picture
of modern society (with its independent economic
organization and its orientation to Moralität) into
his positive conception of ethical life.
Hegel’s primary philosophical efforts in the dec-
ade after he left Jena were directed not to moral or
social philosophy but to The Science of Logic. The
principal text in which we find evidence of a devel-
opment in his ethical views is the Nuremberg Pro-
padeutic (1810–1811), lecture notes at the Nurem-
berg gymnasium where he was headmaster from
1808 to 1816. Possibly owing in part to pedagogical
considerations, the notes are surprisingly Kantian on
many points and in that respect prefigure the more
positive treatment of Moralität in the writings of He-
gel’s maturity, beginning with the Heidelberg Ency-
clopedia of 1817. Here Hegel’s philosophy of objec-
tive spirit is structured around the three stages of
“abstract right,” “morality,” and “ethical life.” “Eth-
ical life,” moreover, no longer refers paradigmati-
cally to a lost Greek ideal but instead means a mod-
ern ethical life, characterized by the uniquely modern
institution of “civil society” and into which are in-
tegrated positively the correspondingly modern
spheres of abstract right and morality. It was this
structure around which Hegel built his definitive
ethical theory in The Philosophy of Right.
Freedom
Hegel’s ethical theory is founded on the value of
freedom. Freedom is the essence of spirit, and
“right” (in Hegel’s technical usage) is freedom made
objective or actual. The series of stages discussed in
The Philosophy of Right is a developing hierarchy of
forms in which freedom is actualized. But Hegel in-
sists that what most people mean by freedom, the
unhindered capacity to act arbitrarily or do as you
please, is not true freedom. Genuine freedom, “ab-
671
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
solute,” “concrete,” or “positive” freedom, consists
not in a mere capacity or potentiality but in that ac-
tivity which fully actualizes reason. Hegel’s concep-
tion of freedom is derived from Kant’s conception
of autonomy and Fichte’s conception of absolute
self-sufficiency, a kind of action which has its source
solely in the self-activity of the agent and not at all
in anything alien or foreign to the agent.
Hegel, however, significantly revises this concep-
tion as it is found in Kant and Fichte. For them,
autonomous action is that which has its source in
the agent’s pure reason and not in the agent’s sen-
suous impulses, still less in the external (natural or
social) world. For Hegel, however, this represents a
false and rigid conception of the relation of the self
to otherness. Spirit, Hegel insists, is “self-restoring
sameness”; it stands in an essential relation to oth-
erness, and its actualization consists not in a sepa-
ration from its other but in overcoming that other-
ness. Spirit’s freedom, therefore, consists not in
holding itself separate from what is other, but rather
in mastering it and making it one’s own. Freedom
for Hegel therefore consists in “being with oneself
in an other” (Beisichselbstsein in einem Andern).
When the other which I distinguish from myself
does not limit but expresses my self, then it is not a
hindrance to me but is in fact the very actualization
of my freedom. One consequence of this is that au-
tonomous action is not action which (as in Kant and
Fichte) holds itself aloof from empirical motivation,
but rather action in which the empirical MOTIVES are
themselves the self-expression of the agent’s reason.
Another consequence is that social institutions and
our duties within them are not hindrances to free-
dom but in fact actualizations of freedom, when the
content of these institutions is rational and the per-
formance of our duties is a vehicle for our self-
actualization. In such cases, we are “with ourselves”
in our duties and in the social order of which we are
a part: Far from setting limits to our freedom, they
constitute its actualization.
The Philosophy of Right is a system of “objective
freedom,” presenting the hierarchy of different kinds
of objects in which spirit or the self or reason is
“with itself.” In “abstract right,” a spiritual self is
with itself in external things, which are its property.
In “morality,” the self is with itself in its own sub-
jective willing and with the external consequences
of that willing. In “ethical life,” the self is with itself
in a system of social institutions that actualize it by
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
fulfilling its various needs for both subjective indi-
viduality and substantive community. The most com-
plete actualization of the individual’s freedom is
found in the institutions of the rational modern state.
Hegel explicitly distinguishes his conception of
positive freedom from the “superficial” everyday no-
tion of freedom as the ability to do as you please;
but he emphasizes that the distinguishing feature of
the modern state is the way in which its institutions
allow for what Hegel calls “subjective freedom,”
including personal arbitrariness and private self-
satisfaction, the sanctity of individual moral and re-
ligious CONSCIENCE, and the universal status for all
individuals of personhood and abstract right.
Abstract Right
Abstract right corresponds to the image of the self
as a person. To be a person is to have a claim on an
“external sphere” for the exercise of one’s arbitrary
choice. Following Fichte, Hegel derives a conception
of persons with rights from a theory of “recogni-
tion,” through which individuals become aware of
themselves in relation to other free selves. (Hegel’s
version of this argument is most famously presented
in the “Master and Servant” section of The Phenom-
enology of Spirit.) Hegel interprets a person’s exter-
nal sphere of arbitrary freedom as the sphere of that
person’s property, taking that term in a very broad
sense. A person’s right to life and free status, which
Hegel regards as inalienable and imprescriptible, de-
pends on the fact that a person’s body and life are
paradigmatically that person’s PROPERTY, constitut-
ing an external sphere that is inseparable from per-
sonality itself. It follows for Hegel that SLAVERY is
necessarily a violation of basic right, as is, moreover,
a society in which there are individuals who alto-
gether lack property.
Punishment
“Abstract right” is treated by Hegel under three
main headings: property, contract, and injustice or
wrong (Unrecht). Under the first heading, he treats
of the relation of a person to external objects, and
under the second, of relations between persons,
through which they constitute a “common will”; un-
der the third heading, Hegel deals with the opposi-
tion between the “universal will” implied in the mu-
tual recognition between persons and the “particular
672
will” which may set itself against the universal and
do wrong. When wrong takes the form of an inten-
tional violation of the right of a person, it is crime.
Hegel’s theory of PUNISHMENT is retributive, in the
sense that Hegel believes that a criminal act deserves
to be punished simply because it is a violation of
right and that the beneficial consequences of pun-
ishing a crime are incidental to the justification of
punishment. One theme in Hegel’s theory of punish-
ment is the claim that a criminal act, though exter-
nally real, is inwardly “null” or self-contradictory,
calling forth punishment, or an “injury of the injury”
to manifest its true nature. Another theme is Hegel’s
claim that the criminal act wills its own punishment;
by violating the right of another, I give my express
consent that a like right of my own should be
violated.
Morality
One of the most prominent themes in Hegel’s eth-
ical thought is the contrast between “morality”
(Moralität) and “ethical life” (Sittlichkeit). But in
Hegel’s mature moral thought, “morality” is not
merely a pejorative term, and the moral outlook is
not simply contrasted with the attitude of ethical
life; on the contrary, morality is an essential aspect
of the ethical life characteristic of the modern state.
Morality is the sphere in which the self is regarded
as a volitional “subject.” In the subject, the opposi-
tion between universal and particular will (which we
found in crime) has been internalized; the aim of the
moral subject is to make his particular will conform
to the universal will. As a subject, the self seeks to
actualize itself through its own volition and action,
and so a central focus of morality is on the moral
RESPONSIBILITY of the subject for acts and their con-
sequences. Hegel contrasts the modern moral atti-
tude toward responsibility with the “naive simplic-
ity” (Gediegenheit) of ancient ethical life, which (for
example) ignored Oedipus’s intentions and held him
responsible for the whole compass of his deeds.
Modern moral agents, according to Hegel, further
demand of themselves not only that they do what is
objectively good, but also that they do it with insight
into the reasons why it is good; the value and DIG-
NITY of the moral will consist in an insight and an
INTENTION which accord with the good. Hegel thus
agrees with Kant that duty should be done for duty’s
sake. But he disagrees with the Kantian view that

our acts lack moral worth unless they are performed
solely from duty. In Hegel’s view, an agent’s inten-
tion accords with the good if the dutifulness of the
act was, under the circumstances, a sufficient reason
for that agent to do that act: Where this is the case,
the presence and efficacy of sensuous or self-
interested motives take nothing away from the act’s
moral worth.
Even in his mature thought, Hegel emphasizes
the limits of the moral standpoint. He repeats his
criticism of the Kantian moral principle, that it is
unable to provide any determinate moral guidance;
further, he maintains that the standpoint of morality
generally is incapable of yielding a determinate doc-
trine of duties. And though he emphasizes the sanc-
tity of individual conscience as part of the modern
recognition of the value of subjectivity, Hegel
strongly criticizes an extreme or aberrant form of
SUBJECTIVISM to which he thinks morality is prone—
the “ethics of conviction,” which he associates with
the moral philosophy of Jakob Friedrich Fries
(1773–1843). This is the view that no act can be
morally condemned so long as the agent followed
his own conscience or moral convictions (no matter
how wrong and misguided those convictions might
be). Hegel regards this view as a reduction to ab-
surdity of the inherent emptiness of the moral stand-
point if it is considered in abstraction from ethical
life. In effect, Hegel thinks, the ethics of conviction
abolishes the distinction between moral good and
EVIL. Just as the sphere of abstract right showed its
limitations by eventuating in the category of wrong,
so the limits of morality are shown by its culminat-
ing in the category of evil. And as the sphere of
abstract right passed over into that of morality, so
the sphere of morality is transcended in the sphere
of ethical life.
Ethical Life
Hegel’s use of the term Sittlichkeit—which might
be translated “customary morality”—has often been
interpreted as an endorsement of the view that to do
what is morally right, all one needs to do is to act in
conformity with the accepted standards of one’s
people and culture. It is true that Hegel regards ob-
jective and determinate moral standards as founded
on the organization of a rational social order and
that he regards some Enlightenment moral theories
as shallow and overly individualistic. But Hegel’s
673
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
conception of modern ethical life is not particularly
conservative or traditionalist in its orientation, and
the “ethical” standpoint in Hegel is better inter-
preted as a certain type of critical reflection on ex-
isting social institutions than as a rejection of such
reflection.
It should be recalled that Hegel’s first use of the
term Sittlichkeit in contrast to Moralität is con-
cerned with issues in Kantian MORAL PSYCHOLOGY.
Hegel feels that the Kantian moral outlook, with its
divorce of reason from sense, represents an un-
healthy form of self-alienation; the term “ethical life”
is coined to describe an ethical stance in which rea-
son and sense are in harmony with one another. Ac-
cordingly, “ethical life” refers to an ethics of CHAR-
ACTER, emphasizing behavioral dispositions and
practical judgment in concrete situations, in contrast
to a morality of NORMS, where the emphasis is on
deriving particular actions from general rules. But
Hegel thinks that the opposition of reason and sense
goes hand in hand with the opposition between so-
cial norms and individual moral reflection. Where
individuals do not feel themselves at one with their
social being, they will regard what is particular to
themselves, their inclinations or sensuous desires, as
something which must be overcome or suppressed
if their life is to conform to rational or universal
standards, whose true source (whether moralists re-
alize it or not) is the social reason embodied in their
culture.
Hegel developed the conception of ethical life at
a time when he was strongly influenced by his ide-
alized picture of ancient Greek society, with its beau-
tiful harmony of reason and sense, nature and spirit,
individual and community. Accordingly, his primary
image of ethical life is that of a society in which these
harmonies are immediate, unreflective. But in The
Philosophy of Right, Hegel is attempting to describe
an ethical life that is distinctively modern, hence re-
flective and subjective in a way that Greek ethical
life could not have been. At times Hegel still uses
the term Sittlichkeit with connotations of unreflec-
tive and immediate acceptance of social norms; in
some of these uses, however, the term has for that
reason a pejorative connotation, since it implies a
lack of subjective freedom. In the modern world,
Hegel thinks, the harmony of ethical life need no
longer be an unreflective harmony, but may be a ra-
tional harmony won through philosophical under-
standing. And he explicitly distinguishes the unre-
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
flective attitudes of “identity” or “trust” toward the
ethical order from the attitudes of “insight” and
“philosophical cognition,” which are more appro-
priate in the modern world. It is the avowed purpose
of The Philosophy of Right to provide us with such
cognition of the ethical life of the modern state.
But this seems to assume that philosophical re-
flection on the state will inevitably result in its ra-
tional acceptance and hence gives the impression
that Hegel’s attitude toward social norms is in prin-
ciple an uncritical one. We will understand that this
impression is a misleading one if we come to ap-
preciate the fact that the ethical life of the modern
state of which Hegel writes is not so much a de-
scription of any existing state as it is a rational re-
construction or projection of the form of the state
based on Hegel’s theory of modern humanity’s self-
understanding. Hegel explicitly distinguishes the
“actual” state with which his theory deals from the
various “existing” states we see before us, all of
which are, to be sure, actual to a degree, but whose
actuality is disfigured by contingencies and human
failures of various kinds.
From the Hegelian standpoint, ethical life there-
fore does not involve an uncritical acceptance of the
existing order but rather a certain type of critical
reflection on it. This reflection is based on a com-
prehension of the rational form of the existing social
order in the light of its cultural and historical ori-
gins. Hegel intends it to be contrasted with a (Kan-
tian or Fichtean) moralistic reflection based on
principles of a priori reason, or a critique of the
existing order (characteristic of many Enlighten-
ment thinkers) which is founded on an abstract
(ahistorical) conception of human nature.
Clearly, one of the connotations of the term Sitt-
lichkeit is the suggestion, found in the thought of
Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) and other
critics of Enlightenment thought, that different so-
cieties and cultures may legitimately have different
customs and different norms. This suggestion some-
times prompts Hegel’s readers to interpret him as a
sort of ethical relativist, who regards the accepted
norms of every society as valid for the members of
that society. But this interpretation cannot withstand
even the most casual acquaintance with Hegel’s ac-
tual views. He has no hesitation in condemning cer-
tain social practices, such as slavery, and certain pro-
visions of Roman law and morality, such as those
which permitted creditors to commit bodily muti-
674
lation on their debtors and those which made chil-
dren the property of their father. More generally,
however, and despite the connotations of the term
Sittlichkeit, Hegel’s conception of modern ethical
life makes strikingly little provision for cultural di-
versity among modern states. Hegel’s Philosophy
of Right must be read as a powerful contribution to
the argument—directed against the conservative ro-
manticism of Hegel’s age—that the institutions of
modern society must be held accountable before the
bar of reason.
Influence
Hegel’s influence on the intellectual tradition of
Continental thought, as well as on modern HISTO-
RIOGRAPHY, political theory, anthropology, and so-
cial science, has been incalculable. Hegel’s thought
became the effective heir of the German idealist tra-
dition, which is perhaps the last great original phil-
osophical movement of modern times and which
Continental thinkers have certainly regarded as the
last great paradigm of the Western metaphysical tra-
dition. In English-speaking philosophy, Hegel’s most
conspicuous followers have been the British ideal-
ists—such as Thomas Hill GREEN (1836–1882),
F. H. BRADLEY (1846–1924), and Bernard Bosan-
quet (1848–1923); but his impact has also been felt
in late-twentieth-century “communitarian” ethical
and political theory. Hegel’s influence on modern
political thinking has been extremely varied, mani-
festing itself in nineteenth-century nationalism; in
some twentieth-century fascist thought, such as that
of Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944); and above all, of
course, in the thought of Karl MARX (1818–1883)
and in the later Marxist tradition.
In many quarters, Hegel’s influence has appeared
mainly in a negative form: To those who unite a sym-
pathy for classical LIBERALISM with a Kantian or em-
piricist philosophy, Hegel has often seemed the su-
preme example of the extravagant metaphysician
whose obscure, twisted ideas may have dangerous
practical consequences. Such hostility might seem
misguided, since the modern state whose rationality
Hegel wants to demonstrate is essentially the liberal
state rather than any ancien régime or totalitarian
state. But the hostility may be correct to the extent
that Hegel’s social philosophy provides a far-reaching
critique of the fundamental philosophical assump-
tions of classical liberalism; perhaps its fundamental

tendency (albeit against Hegel’s own intentions) is
after all toward a radical critique of modern (liberal)
society.
See also: ALIENATION; AUTONOMY OF MORAL
AGENTS; BRADLEY; CHARACTER; COMMUNITARIAN-
ISM; CONVENTIONS; ETHICS AND MORALITY; FICHTE;
FREE WILL; GREEN; IDEALIST ETHICS; INDIVIDUAL-
ISM; INTENTION; JUSTICE, RECTIFICATORY; KANT; LIB-
ERTY; MORAL RELATIVISM; MOTIVES; NATURAL LAW;
PRACTICAL REASON[ING]; PROPERTY; PUNISHMENT;
REASONS FOR ACTION; RESPONSIBILITY; RIGHT, CON-
CEPTS OF; SCHELLING; SLAVERY; SMITH; SUBJECTIV-
ISM; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS.
Bibliography
Selected Works by Hegel
Die Philosophie des Rechts: Mitschriften Wannenmann
(Heidelberg, 1817–1818) und Homeyer (Berlin 1818–
1819). Edited by Karl-Heinz Ilting. Stuttgart: Klett
Cotta, 1983 [1817–1819]. Edited transcriptions of
Hegel’s first two sets of lectures on the philosophy of
right, not included in Ilting’s 1973–1974 edition.
Early Theological Writings. Translated by T. M. Knox.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971
[1794–1800]. Selections from Hegel’s manuscripts of
1794–1800, first published by Hermann Nohl, 1907.
Natural Law. Translated by T. M. Knox. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975. Hegel’s first
published treatise on ethical topics.
Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1977 [1807].
The Philosophy of Right. Translated by H. B. Nisbet. Ed-
ited by Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1991 [1821].
Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie. Edited by Karl-Heinz
Ilting. 4 Bde. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstadt: Fromman-
Holzboog, 1973–1974. Edited notes and transcrip-
tions from Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of right.
Werke. Theorie Werkausgabe. 20 Bde. Frankfurt: Suhr-
kamp, 1971. Most recent complete edition of Hegel’s
published works.
Works about Hegel
Avineri, Shlomo. Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.
Hardimon, Michel. The Project of Reconciliation: Hegel’s
Social Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1992.
Neuhouser, Frederick C. Foundations of Hegel’s Social
Theory: Actualizing Freedom. Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press, 2000.
675
Heidegger, Martin
Pelczynski, Z. B., ed. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Prob-
lems and Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1971.
Riedel, Manfred. Between Tradition and Revolution.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Taylor, Charles. Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1975.
Walsh, W. H. Hegelian Ethics. New York: St. Martins,
1969.
Wildt, Andreas. Autonomie und Anerkennung. Stuttgart:
Klett Cotta, 1982.
Wood, Allen. Hegel’s Ethical Thought. New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1990.
Allen W. Wood
Heidegger, Martin (1889–1976)
Primarily concerned with providing a phenomeno-
logical grounding of the ‘fundamental ontology’ of
the human outlook, Heidegger did not see himself
as directly concerned with questions of moral phi-
losophy. Yet, the importance of ethics is clearly im-
plied in his early work. The “Letter on Humanism”
(1947) states that an ethics can be derived from an
authentic understanding of the existence of Dasein
as a Being-in-the-world. In later works, however, for
example, Gelassenheit (1959), strictly ethical con-
siderations appear to have given way to a passive
poetical outlook already enunciated in the “Letter on
Humanism.” In this phase of his thought, authentic
thinking “lets Being—be.” But even here the issue
is complicated, since moral implications may be dis-
cerned in the rather cryptic claim that “Man is the
shepherd of Being”—a claim that underlines his
later thinking.
Unlike Heidegger’s later works, the early works
are replete with concepts usually found in moral dis-
course. It can be argued that a distinctive ethical
teaching, with a strong Kantian flavor, can be ex-
tracted from them. Four of these works are as
follows.
Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) (1927)
This work was intended as a phenomenological
overture to an essentially ontological inquiry. Ethical
terms structure this attempt to lay out the ‘funda-
mental ontology’ of human Being: CARE, CON-
SCIENCE, guilt, resoluteness, RESPONSIBILITY, self-
hood, solicitude. ‘Care’ emerges as the form of ‘the
Heidegger, Martin
Being of Dasein,’ by which “Man’s perfectio is ac-
complished.” ‘Conscience’ individualizes and brings
one to authentic existence by means of ‘guilt’
(schuldig, which also means responsibility), de-
fined as “the breach of a ‘moral requirement.’” Con-
science thus brings one to that kind of behavior
which is understood as “making oneself responsi-
ble.” Such behavior, characterized as ‘resolute-
ness,’ reveals the “truth of Dasein which is most
primordial because it is authentic”: ‘authentic’ be-
cause it is anticipatory and thus brings Dasein to
an understanding of possibility and appropriation
of finitizing temporality.
This individualized AUTHENTICITY, always in-the-
world-with-others, manifests itself in essentially Kan-
tian terms by recognizing the other as a person, not
a thing. Through ‘solicitude’ one honors one’s own
moral responsibility for the autonomy of the other.
Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1929)
The primary task of this study is to elucidate Im-
manuel KANT’s (1724–1804) notion of the tran-
scendental imagination as the center of the critical
system. Through this Heidegger points to the cen-
trality of care in Being and Time, and claims to
ground Kant’s moral doctrine in the critical system.
Regarding Kant’s enunciated ‘respect for the moral
law’ as a ‘feeling’ which cannot justify itself, Hei-
degger transforms respect by means of a phenome-
nological argument that turns on intentionality, into
a “respect for oneself” that is the “transcendental
foundational structure of the moral self.” Heideg-
ger thus claimed to ground the very possibility of
morality.
The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic (1928) and
Vom Wesen des Grundes (1929)
In both of these works (especially the chapter on
“Freedom and World” in the former), Heidegger
sought to justify the ontological primacy of freedom
which, as Kant had argued, is necessarily presup-
posed in any doctrine of morality.
See also: AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; AUTHEN-
TICITY; CARE; CONSCIENCE; GUILT AND SHAME; HU-
MANISM; KANTIAN ETHICS; PHENOMENOLOGY; RE-
SPONSIBILITY; SELF-RESPECT; SYMPATHY.
676
Bibliography
Works by Heidegger
Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Ed-
ward Robinson. New York: Harper and Row, 1962
[1927]. Translation of Sein und Zeit. Quoted from
pp. 243, 328, 327, 343. Compare with Heidegger’s Be-
ing and Time as translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany,
NY: State University Press of New York, 1996.
Discourse on Thinking. Translated by John M. Anderson
and E. Hans Freund. New York: Harper and Row,
1959. Translation of Gelassenheit.
Letter on Humanism. Translated by Edgar Lohner. In vol-
ume 3 of Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, edited
by William Barrett and Henry D. Aiken. New York:
Random House, 1962 [1947]. Translation of Brief über
den Humanismus. Quoted from pp. 298, 288.
Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Translated by Rich-
ard Taft. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990,
1995 [1929]. Translation of Kant und das Problem der
Metaphysik. There is also an earlier translation by
Churchill. Quoted from pp. 165, 166.
Vom Wesen des Grundes. Frankfurt am Main: Kloster-
mann, 1929. Translated as The Essence of Reasons by
T. Malick. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University
Press, 1969.
The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic. Translated by Mi-
chael Heim. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press,
1984 [1978]. Translation of Metaphysische Antangs-
gründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz.
Charles M. Sherover
Hindu ethics
There is no general agreement concerning the range
of phenomena that should appropriately be encom-
passed under the rubric of “Hindu ethics.” Hindu-
ism itself is a problematic category whose proper
boundaries are differently delineated, both by those
within the tradition and by those who study it. The
term “ethics” is even more problematic because, no
matter which Western definition one chooses, the
concept has no single Hindu equivalent.
For present purposes, we will adopt a working
definition of Hinduism that has recently been for-
mulated by Brian Smith. From this perspective, Hin-
duism is the religion of peoples who “create, per-
petuate and transform traditions with legitimizing
reference to the authority of the Veda.” (The Veda
is a supposedly revealed truth that is expressed and
preserved in a corpus of sacred hymns, commentar-
ies, etc., compiled in northern INDIA beginning

about 1200 B.C.E.). Hinduism, thus defined, encom-
passes two rather different phases of development
known respectively as Vedic Hinduism and post-
Vedic Hinduism. Vedic Hinduism enjoyed its heyday
in the first half of the first millennium B.C.E. This
was a period during which the early Vedic hymns
were accepted as authoritative while other hymns,
commentaries, etc. that later came to be regarded
as a part of the Veda were being composed and
compiled.
Post-Vedic Hinduism began to take form during
the second half of the first millennium B.C.E., at least
partially as a response to the very serious challenge
that was mounted during this period by new, non-
Vedic religions such as Buddhism and JAINISM. By
the early to middle centuries of the first millennium,
post-Vedic Hinduism had emerged as the dominant
religion of India. Despite the impact of later Muslim
and Christian conquests and conversions, it has con-
tinued to play that role up to the present day.
We will take the term “ethics” to encompass
NORMS for socially oriented attitudes and activities
that are not limited to the realm of ritual. In the
Hindu case it needs to be emphasized that the dis-
tinction between ethical norms and ritual norms is
often very difficult to draw. In most Hindu traditions,
the “prophetically” inspired separation/opposition of
ethics and ritual (as, for example, in the case of
some of the judgments of the Hebrew prophets and
certain aspects of the teachings attributed to the
BUDDHA) has never played a central role; and,
therefore, the ritual and ethical components of re-
ligious activity that we tend to classify into discrete
categories remain, in the Hindu tradition, inter-
twined in many very complex and intriguing ways.
Thus, in order to cover the full range of Hindu
ethics, it will be necessary to consider certain
Hindu norms for socially oriented attitudes and ac-
tivity that involve ritual as well as ethical dimen-
sions, as well as other Hindu norms that are more
exclusively ethical in character.
In the discussion that follows we will give primary
attention to the mainstream socioethical orientation
that developed in Vedic and post-Vedic Hinduism—
the socioethical orientation that provided, and still
provides, the basic ethical component in the struc-
turing of “orthodox” Hindu society. The discussion
will also consider certain ethical dimensions brought
to the fore by Hindu THEISM; and it will make some
677
Hindu ethics
very brief comments on developments in contem-
porary Hindu ethics.
R. ta, Dharma, and Karma
The Hindu tradition, in both its Vedic and its
post-Vedic forms, gives dominance to the notion of
an ordering principle or principles that support and
regulate the cosmic order, the natural order, and the
social order. Closely associated with this notion is
the recognition that these ordering principles estab-
lish normative modes of ritual and ethical behavior
both for the gods and for mankind. According to this
thoroughly deontic mainstream of Hindu tradition,
it is through proper adherence to these norms of rit-
ual and ethical activity (or through an appropriate
negotiation of the paradoxes and ambiguities that
they engender) that societies and individuals main-
tain a viable world in which to live.
In the R. g Veda (the collection of hymns that con-
stitutes the earliest Vedic “text”), the very prominent
term r. ta refers to a primordial, impersonal, ordering
reality that structures and maintains the phenome-
nal world in all its aspects. Again and again r. ta ap-
pears in the R. g Veda as a powerful force that regu-
lates the behavior of the gods and accounts for the
efficacy of their actions. It is a force that undergirds
and, therefore, correlates the cosmological order, the
social order, the ritual order and the ethical order.
Living within the cosmic/social context governed by
r. ta, human beings must act in conformity with it:
they must perform proper ritual sacrifices; they must
cultivate proper moral attitudes and behavior. For
example, the Vedic hymns emphasize that truthful-
ness (both in the ritual contexts and beyond) is es-
sential; and they stress the importance of GENER-
OSITY (especially but not exclusively generosity to
the priests who perform the sacrifice). If the ritual
and moral requirements are met, the cosmos and
society will be kept in good order. If not, the guard-
ians of r. ta—for example the god Varun. a—will bring
PUNISHMENT, and chaos will reign.
With the later development of Hinduism, the no-
tion of r. ta gradually receded into the background
and was superceded by the closely related concep-
tion of dharma. In the early Vedas, dharma is a rela-
tively obscure term that refers primarily to divine
actions through which proper cosmic order is es-
tablished and preserved. In post-Vedic Hinduism,
dharma emerges as the name that Hindus give to the
Hindu ethics
all-important principle of cosmic/social action that
they recognize, and to the norms for proper ritual
and social behavior that they associate with that
principle. In the post-Vedic Hindu tradition, dharma
includes norms for ritual activities that continue, in
a new way, the liturgical emphasis that characterized
Vedic religion. The pervasive Vedic practice of ani-
mal sacrifice is relegated to the background; but at
the same time, norms for the performance of new
rituals that serve as substitutes for actual animal sac-
rifices are carefully spelled out. Dharma, in post-
Vedic Hinduism, also includes a continued insis-
tence on certain Vedic notions of obligation and
repayment that center around three primary obli-
gations set forth in the Brāhman. as (commentaries
on the earliest Vedic hymns; compiled c. 800 B.C.E.).
These obligations are: the obligation that is owed to
the gods and must be repaid by the performance of
proper rituals; the obligation that is owed to the
sages and must be repaid by passing on to posterity
the knowledge that one has received; and the obli-
gation that is owed to the ancestors that must be
repaid by producing offspring—particularly sons—
to maintain the family lineage.
Alongside this deontic strand of Vedic/Hindu
ethics associated with the notions of r. ta and dharma,
is a second karma-oriented, consequentialist strand.
In the early Vedic hymns and commentaries, karma
is a term that is primarily associated with sacrificial
action. To be more specific, karma refers to sacrifi-
cial actions through which the sacrificer constructs
a ritual body and/or world in which he will subse-
quently live. In the forms of Hinduism which devel-
oped during and after the period when Buddhism
and Jainism became prominent, karma came to be
understood in a new way. In the post-Vedic Hindu
context, karma names a principle that connects rit-
ual actions and ethically relevant actions to directly
correlated effects that extend through an ongoing
series of continuing births and rebirths. According
to the post-Vedic Hindu view, persons who perform
appropriate ritual and/or ethical actions produce for
themselves good karmic results that lead to happier
rebirths in happier worlds. Those who perform evil
actions produce for themselves bad karmic results
that lead to unhappy rebirths in worlds filled with
EVIL and suffering.
Taken together, the notions of dharma and karma
provide the basic structure for the ethics of post-
Vedic Hindu “orthodoxy.” When dharma is to the
678
fore, the emphasis is on religiosocial obligation and
duty; when karma is to the fore, the emphasis is on
individual reward and retribution. But in most post-
Vedic Hindu formulations, the two notions are
closely correlated. From within the traditional Hindu
perspective, those who perform actions in accor-
dance with dharmic norms support the cosmic and
social order at the same time that they generate the
good karma that assures that they will enjoy happier
rebirths. Those who do not conform to dharma, and
thereby threaten the order of cosmos and society,
generate bad karma that leads inevitably to unhappy
rebirths. Working together in this way, these tightly
interwoven notions of dharma and karma effectively
combine a demand for religiosocial RESPONSIBILITY,
a promise of long-term reward to those who respond
favorably, and a threat of long-term retribution for
those who refuse to conform.
Dharma, Varn. a, and Āsrama
The basic lineaments of the post-Vedic Hindu
conception of a religiously valorized, organically
conceived, caste-structured society can already be
discerned in the later strata of R. g Vedic hymns. For
example, R. g Veda 10:90 recounts a cosmogonic
myth which contains what Paul Mus has called the
first truly Indian constitution. In the beginning, ac-
cording to this very famous and influential myth, Pu-
rus. a—the cosmic Person—is sacrificed and dis-
persed. Through this dispersion and sacrifice, both
the cosmos and society are brought into being.
When Purus. a is sacrificed by the gods, his mouth is
made into the Brahmins (brāhman. a)—the priestly
caste by whom the Veda is presented and preserved;
his arms are made into the Ks. atriya—the aristo-
cratic caste responsible for war and politics; his
thighs are made into the Vaiśya—the caste to which
the ordinary people belong; and his feet become the
Śudra—the caste of servants.
In post-Vedic Hinduism this Purus. a-based image
of an organically constituted, religiously valorized,
caste-structured hierarchy was taken over and greatly
extended. In a key move, the cosmic/social principle
of dharma was identified as its source and ground.
In another key move, the karmic law of reward
and retribution was recognized as a regulating prin-
ciple that guaranteed the justice of the hierarchy
and provided ethical motivation for those who lived
within it.

At the same time, this dharmicly grounded and
karmicly regulated hierarchy of castes came to be
conceived as a hierarchy of purity. According to one
extremely influential Hindu formulation, the Brah-
mins were constituted by the karmicly determined
presence in their nature of the purest kind of sub-
stance—a pure substance that was associated with
wisdom and refinement; the Ks. atriya (and to some
extent the Vaiśya) were constituted by the karmicly
determined prominence in their nature of a less pure
kind of substance that was associated with vital en-
ergies; and the Śudra (and certainly those who were
ranked even lower) were constituted by the karmicly
determined predominance in their nature of a kind
of impure substance that was associated with heav-
iness and lethargy. From one very important per-
spective, the primary purpose of dharmic prescrip-
tions was to maintain the proper ordering of cosmos
and society by maintaining hierarchical distinctions
based on relative degrees of purity and impurity.
During the last half of the first millennium B.C.E.,
the basic lineaments of this post-Vedic Hindu ori-
entation were formulated in two very different types
of texts that became normative for the latter tradi-
tion. This was the period during which two great
Hindu epics were compiled in their classical forms.
The Mahābhārata is an extended and very complex
account of a great war in which the forces of dharma
overcame the forces of adharma and, in so doing,
instituted the new age in which we now live. The
other great epic of post-Vedic Hinduism—the Rā-
māyana—has a similar theme that involves the tri-
umph of dharma over adharma; but the Rāmāyana
is even more direct in presenting characters who
have been taken by later Hindus as paradigms for
proper dharmic activity. Clearly Rāma himself has
been identified as an ideal king; Sı̂ta, his wife, has
been identified as an ideal wife; Laks. man. a, his
brother, has been identified as an ideal brother; and
Hanuman, the monkey hero, has been identified as
an ideal warrior doing battle in the service of his
king.
Working in a more legalistic mode, the authors of
the Dharması̄tras and the commentarial collections
called Dharmaśāstra set forth detailed dharmic norms
for the behavior of those who were born into each
of the four hierarchically ranked castes. They also
set forth dharmic norms, applicable to the three
highest or “twice-born” castes, that prescribe partic-
ular modes of behavior for specific stages in life.
679
Hindu ethics
These stages of life (āśrama) include two that re-
ceive a great deal of attention—namely, the stage of
the student and the stage of the householder. They
also involve two later stages that are mentioned, but
not given nearly as much attention—namely, the
stage of the forest dweller and the stage of the re-
nunciant. Moreover, these law-oriented dharma texts
give prominence to the law of karma by describing,
in great detail, the rewards that will come to those
who act in proper dharmic fashion, and the retri-
bution that will be visited on those who do not.
The post-Vedic Hindu notion of dharma as a sa-
cralizing cosmic/social principle that undergirds a
karmicly regulated and legitimated hierarchy based
on relative degrees of purity and impurity proved to
be powerful and persistent. So much so that the sys-
tem of establishing dharmicly grounded norms for
behavior that apply to different birth-determined
castes, social roles, and stages of life was eventually
extended far beyond the limits that bounded the
classical dharma texts. This orthodox pattern was
gradually extended so that the dharmic order of
brāhman. a, ks. atriya, vaisya, śudra, and “others”
eventually came to structure—however roughly and
incompletely—the extremely complex variety of
castes (jāti) and “outcastes” that were encompassed
by traditional Hindu society.
The notion of dharmic and purity-oriented ethics
that is directly correlated with birth-determined
caste membership, social role and stage of life (var-
n. āśramadharma) is without doubt the dominant
ethical notion in the “orthodox” tradition of post-
Vedic Hinduism. There are, however, two other eth-
ically oriented aspects of the Brahmanical teachings
concerning the dharma that are also important. The
first is the recognition of a sanātanadharma or “eter-
nal dharma” that applies to all persons regardless of
their caste status or their particular stage of life.
Though differently specified in various texts, this
sanātanadharma involves such universal ethical ob-
ligations as the duty to be truthful, the duty to be
generous, the duty to refrain from committing mur-
der and theft, the duty to avoid injuring others in
any way, and the duty to be self-restrained in all mat-
ters. Like actions performed in accordance with
caste and role-oriented duties, actions performed in
accordance with these more universal duties serve a
double purpose. They, too, contribute in their own
way to the maintenance of a religiously valorized,
dharmicly structured society; and they, too, enable
Hindu ethics
the person who performs them to accumulate the
good karma that will ensure a future rebirth in a
better or “purer” condition.
The other important aspect of the orthodox
dharma tradition that coexists with the emphasis on
var. nāśramadharma and the recognition of a sanā-
tanadharma is the recognition of an āpaddharma or
“dharma for emergencies.” As its name suggests,
this āpaddharma legitimates the temporary suspen-
sion—in times of crisis—of many dharmic rules that
would otherwise inhibit actions that are necessary
and, given the context, ethically appropriate.
Finally, those who have transmitted and applied
the dharma tradition in post-Vedic Hinduism have
taken full cognizance of the fact that, in actual life
situations, conflicts and problems concerning the
ethical (as well as ritual) requirements of dharma
and the operation of karma will inevitably arise. Ac-
cording to the Brahmanical teaching, the highest au-
thority that can be consulted when such situations
occur is the Veda itself. Hence the importance of
Mı̄māsā, a quintessential orthodox “philosophical”
school which specializes in systematically expound-
ing the dharmic import of Vedic texts. Next in the
hierarchy of authority is Smr. ti, the literature con-
taining “remembered” knowledge that includes Ve-
dāngas such as the Dharmasūstras, commentaries
such as the Dharmaśāstras, the two great epics, and
the Purān. as (collected myths and stories that for the
most part derive from a later period). A third locus
of authority to which appeal can be made when nei-
ther the Vedic texts nor the “remembered” traditions
provide an appropriate answer is the example of
learned and pious predecessors. In post-Vedic Hin-
duism, the ethical authority of personal judgment or
individual CONSCIENCE is sometimes mentioned, but
only as a last resort.
The Four Purus. ārthas
Though dharma with its deontic connotations
and karma with its consequentialist connotations
are the central structuring principles in post-Vedic
Hindu ethics, there are other closely correlated ele-
ments in the tradition that must also be taken seri-
ously into account. To cite what is perhaps the most
important example, there is a strong eudaimonistic
tradition that identifies dharma as just one in a set
of four purus. ārthas (values or “aims of life”) that
are recognized as valid and appropriate. These four
680
values or aims of life are kāma—the attainment of
PLEASURE, especially sexual pleasure; artha—the
accumulation of wealth, prosperity, and POWER;
dharma—the exercise of personal and social re-
sponsibility within the cosmic order; and moks. a—
the achievement of release from the karmicly regu-
lated bondage and suffering that constitutes this
worldly life. When pursued in its own proper con-
text, at the appropriate time and by the appropriate
person, each of these four values or “aims of life” is
deemed to be ethically appropriate and valid. In fact,
within the tradition, there are specific texts devoted
to the cultivation of each of the four.
In many of the classical texts, these four values
or aims of life are presented in a clear-cut hierarchi-
cal series. In this reckoning, artha is privileged over
kāma, dharma is ranked above artha, and moks. a is
identified as the highest value and goal. In the actual
development of Hindu ethics, however, the relation-
ship among these four purus. ārthas has been much
more complex than such a simple hierarchical ren-
dering would suggest. Within post-Vedic Hinduism
there has been, for example, a persistent tradition
not only of tension but also of mediation, between
the values associated with kāma and artha on the
one hand, and those associated with dharma and
moks. a on the other. In fact, many elements of Hindu
practice, both ethical and ritual, can quite appropri-
ately be seen as attempts to negotiate this tension in
a way that best serves the goal of simultaneously
maintaining prosperity and vitality on the one hand,
and proper purity and order on the other.
There has also been a persisting tradition of ten-
sion and mediation between the two highest “aims
of life”—namely, the exercise of the kind of cosmi-
cally grounded social responsibility associated with
karma and dharma, and the ideal of moks. a associ-
ated with the attainment of saving knowledge and/
or the practice of renunciation. Most “legal” texts
emphasize the importance of dharma and karma,
while most “philosophical” texts emphasize the im-
portance of the knowledge and/or renunciation that
leads to moks. a. In addition, there are other texts that
attempt to bridge the gap. Probably the most famous
of these is the Bhagavadgı̄tā, a relatively late section
of the Mahābhārata epic that advocates, among
many other things, the practice of karmayoga. As
the Bhagavadgı̄tā presents it, karmayoga is a form
of religioethical action that combines the perfor-
mance of dharmic deeds with the attainment of

moks. a through inwardly renouncing the benefits
that such deeds would otherwise generate.
The Theistic Dimension: Lı̄lā and Bhakti
From Vedic times onward, Hindu theism has con-
sistently played a very important role in determining
the character of Hindu ethics. For example, in the
Vedic tradition certain gods such as Varun. a were
taken to be the “guardians” of cosmic and social or-
der. Later, in the context of post-Vedic Hinduism,
great deities such as Vis. n. u, Sı́va, and the Goddess
became even more prominent. In many myths and
stories, these deities (notably, but not exclusively,
Vis. n. u) were portrayed as defenders of dharma who
act in very dramatic ways to assure that the dharmic
order is maintained and that adharma is defeated or
contained. In addition, the great theistic traditions
of post-Vedic Hinduism became the locus for devel-
opments that added distinctive new dimensions to
the structure and dynamics of Hindu ethics.
Actually, the great theistic traditions that came to
the fore in medieval India have had a very complex
relationship with the “orthodox” norms of ethical
and ritual practice. On the one hand, the major the-
istic traditions have affirmed these ethical and ritual
norms as their own, and have justified and adapted
them in relation to their own particular situation and
needs. On the other hand, these traditions have gen-
erated and fostered new religious and ethical ori-
entations that have supplemented and sometimes
challenged “orthodox” ideas and practice.
One of the most important ethical developments
that occurred within the great theistic traditions is
the increasing emphasis on lı̄lā (“spontaneity” or
“play”). Within certain strands of post-Vedic Hin-
duism, particular deities came to be seen as divine
creators who were continually constituting and re-
constituting the world through a mode of sponta-
neous activity that is characteristically described as
lı̄lā. Among many of those who adopted this kind of
theistic orientation, the ideal form of religioethical
practice came to be seen as participation in the pro-
cess of creative play in which the deity himself was
engaged.
This specifically theistic norm for ethical activity
has played a prominent role, both in Vais. n. avism and
in Śaivism. For example Vis. n. u—in his form as
Kr. s. n. a—is presented in the culminating chapters of
the Bhagavadgı̄tā as a great deity who engages in a
681
Hindu ethics
process of lı̄lā through which the caste-structured
world of orthodox Hinduism is continuously being
constituted and reconstituted. According to the
Gı̄ta, the proper religioethical response is to partici-
pate, in accordance with one’s particular position in
the caste hierarchy, in this process of spontaneously
creating and re-creating a caste-structured dharmic
world.
In the Śaiva context, a rather different example
of this kind of lı̄lā-oriented ethic is found in the Śiva
Purān. a. In this highly influential text, Śiva is pre-
sented as the Great God who is engaged in the pro-
cess of maintaining, through his spontaneous and
playful activity, a world characterized by an appro-
priate balance between conflicting orientations and
values. For the Śaiva practitioner, the message is
clear: what must be done to act ethically is to discern
the character of Śiva’s playfully balancing activity;
and to participate—with Him—in its ongoing im-
plementation.
In the great theistic traditions of medieval Hin-
duism, there also developed a closely related focus
on the importance of bhakti (devotion). In many
contexts, the new emphasis on devotion has been
quite carefully synthesized with the classical notions
of dharma and karma. For example, many highly
“orthodox” Hindu texts recognize that the law of
karmic retribution (which they continue to affirm)
can to some extent be circumvented through the
performance of various, largely ritualized acts of
devotion.
At the same time, some of the more radical prac-
titioners of theistic devotion have made a very clear
break with the “orthodox” traditions of the Brah-
mins. Many devotees of the great Hindu deities have
affirmed that through their devotion they have to-
tally transcended the law of karmic reward and ret-
ribution; and they have affirmed that, because of
their relationship to the deity, the birth-based hier-
archy of caste has been rendered wholly obsolete.
Thus they have laid claim to a new mode of com-
munity life in which relationships are established on
a basis of EQUALITY in the presence of the God to
whom their devotion is offered. For the most part,
these more radically oriented devotional groups
have eventually been either reabsorbed or subverted
by the more hierarchical tradition of the “orthodox”
Brahmins. However, it is important to note that the-
istic devotional groups with this kind of more egal-
itarian ethic have existed within the traditional
Hindu ethics
Hindu fold, and that they have continued to appear
and to reappear over the centuries.
The Ethics of Hindu Modernism
Still another component in the complex tapestry
of Hindu ethics has been added during the course of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. During this
period Hindu thinkers and activists, influenced by
modern ideas of human equality, national self-
determination, economic justice, and social service,
have developed ethical approaches that are at the
same time distinctively Hindu and distinctively mod-
ern. In these new formulations, two traditional
themes have been especially emphasized and crea-
tively reinterpreted.
As noted above, Hindus have long recognized a
sanātanadharma that sets forth dharmic norms that
extend across the boundaries established by the
caste-oriented varn. āśramadharma. Among Hindu
traditionalists, however, the sanātanadharma is
largely formal, and both theoretical and practical
precedence is given to the requirements of the var-
n. āśramadharma. Among Hindu modernists, on the
other hand, the emphasis has been reversed. Among
this group, precedence is given to the sanātanad-
harma interpreted as the preeminent dharma that
must be followed by all in order to assure the well
being of the community, including—most espe-
cially—the national community.
Like the notion of the sanātanadharma, the no-
tion of karmayoga (the discipline of disinterested ac-
tion taken in accordance with the requirements of
duty) was also an integral component in traditional
Hindu thought. In the premodern period karma-
yoga, jñānayoga (the discipline of knowledge), and
bhaktiyoga (the discipline of devotion) were often
seen as three soteriologically oriented “paths” open
to serious Hindu practitioners. But among Hindu
modernists, karmayoga has been elevated into a po-
sition of primary importance. Karmayoga is widely
touted as the path that leads most directly (in our
era at least) to personal spiritual fulfillment. At the
same time it is vigorously advocated as the path that
leads to the kind of disinterested dharmic action that
is necessary for the establishment and maintenance
of a properly ordered society.
Given India’s situation as a British colony in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it is not at
682
all surprising that the Hindu thinkers who were de-
veloping modernist ethical ideas devoted much of
their attention to the more specific task of formulat-
ing an ethics of resistance. Some, like G. B. Tilak
(1856–1920), set forth an ethic that called for active
opposition to British rule on the basis of a new, more
nationalistic interpretation of classical Hindu texts—
an interpretation that justified, when necessary, the
use of falsehood, violence, and the like. Others, no-
tably Mahātma GANDHI (1869–1948) and his fol-
lowers, put forward a rather different and more
original alternative that combined Hindu elements
and nationalist elements with elements drawn from
Jainism and Christianity. This new Hindu ethic that
Gandhi developed and propagated also called for
vigorous action to resist British rule and other forms
of OPPRESSION; but unlike Tilak and many other
Hindu nationalists, Gandhi highlighted the virtue of
ahimsā (noninjury, non-violence) and advocated re-
liance on the transforming power inherent in a strict
adherence to truth and a militant practice of LOVE.
Hindu modernists have also developed, before,
during, and after the period in which the struggle for
independence was the primary focus of attention, an
ethics of reform. Many of the proponents of the
ethics of reform have identified a particular corpus
of Hindu texts and/or a particular period of Hindu
history as embodying an ideal that is in conformity
with values that have been lost and must be recap-
tured if Hinduism is to be true to itself and make its
proper contribution to society. The reformers have
differed in their choice of texts and periods; and they
have utilized styles that have ranged from funda-
mentalist (Swami Dayananda [1824–1883] and the
Arya Samāj), to liberal (Rammohun Roy [1772–
1833] and the Brāhmo Samāj), to pietistic (Swami
Vivekananda [1863–1902] and the Ramakrishna
Mission), to ascetic and renunciatory (Gandhi and
his postindependence successors, such as Vinobe
Bhave [1895–1982]). But despite their very real
differences, these modern reformers and reform
movements have shared a concern to formulate and
implement a new kind of spiritually grounded,
dharma-oriented ethic—an ethic designed to purge
Hinduism of the rigidities and injustices associated
with the caste system (as well as related practices,
such as the self-immolation of widows), and to fos-
ter positive programs of social service, economic re-
form, and mass education.

Concluding Comments
Hinduism has, in the course of its long and com-
plicated history, generated many different kinds of
ethics. Some, like the ethics of dharma, the ethics of
karma, and the ethics concerned with the attainment
of the four aims of life can be at least roughly clas-
sified in familiar Western categories (deontic, con-
sequentialist, eudaimonistic, etc.). Some, like the
ethics associated with lı̄lā, resist such classification
and suggest new possibilities. Some, like the caste-
oriented ethics of hierarchy and purity often offend
Western sensibilities. Still others, like the ethics of
karmayoga and the Gandhian ethics of non-violent
resistance, have demonstrated their appeal far be-
yond the boundaries of Hinduism proper.
But, however we may classify or evaluate the vari-
ous ethics that have been generated by Hindu think-
ers and practitioners over the centuries, the fact is
that these ethics (sometimes in tandem and some-
times in conflict) continue to inform the attitudes
and activities of hundreds of millions of people in
India and beyond. This, in itself, is sufficient reason
to justify further research and study.
See also: BUDDHA; BUDDHIST ETHICS; CONSEQUEN-
TIALISM; DEONTOLOGY; DUTY AND OBLIGATION; EU-
DAIMONIA, -ISM; GANDHI; GENEROSITY; INDIA; JAIN-
ISM; KING; THEISM.
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Coward, Howard G., Julis J. Lipner, and Katherine Young.
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bany: State University of New York Press, 1989.
Crawford, Cromwell S. The Evolution of Hindu Ethical
Ideals. 2d, rev. ed. Asian Studies at Hawaii, no. 28.
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Daniels, Sheryl. “The Tool Box Approach of the Tamil to
the Issues of Moral Responsibility and Human Des-
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Charles F. Keyes and E. Valentine Daniel. Berkeley:
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———, ed. Karma and Rebirth in the Classical Indian
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ligion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Quoted
from pp. 13–14.
Frank E. Reynolds
historiography
Philosophical historiography, of which the histori-
ography of ethics is a branch, seeks to elucidate the
relation between historical knowledge and philo-
sophical understanding in the history of philoso-
phy. According to some views the two do not mix,
giving rise to separate projects: one aiming to re-
cover past philosophy from the perspective of his-
torical accuracy even at the cost of antiquarianism;
the other, to recover it with a view to engaging in
contemporary discussion even if the result is his-
torically flawed. This position, recently advocated
by Richard Rorty, presupposes that conceptual
frameworks have so changed in time that past phi-
losophy does not address the same questions as
contemporary philosophy.
A similar claim underlies the relativistic views
propounded by R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943)
and, for the history of science, by Thomas Kuhn
(1922–1996) in The Structure of Scientific Revolu-
tions (1962). It is a claim traceable to G. W. F. HE-
GEL (1770–1831) in his Lectures on the History of
Philosophy (1805–1829): “Every philosophy . . .
belongs to its own time. . . . [Past philosophies] do
not answer our questions.” According to Hegel,
however, philosophy has a fixed, real essence: it is
historiography
necessarily historical. To properly understand con-
temporary philosophical issues we must see them as
the latest stage in the dialectical process which is the
unfolding of Reason in time. Thus, on Hegel’s view
history and philosophy come together in the history
of philosophy: “philosophy is a system in develop-
ment, and this is the history of philosophy too.”
Rorty, on his part, conceives philosophy as pos-
sessing no given, true nature. He does recognize a
third kind of philosophical history apart from ra-
tional and historical reconstructions, a “Geistesge-
schichte” which proposes an imaginative and uni-
fying narrative spanning radical conceptual chasms.
Yet unlike Hegelian history of philosophy, this Ror-
tian enterprise supposes no determined structure in-
herent to the temporal development of philosophical
discussion; it is rather a free construction whose aim
is to creatively set the canon of themes and thinkers
for both historical and philosophical reconstructions.
A third view has been proposed which, while
agreeing with Hegel that the history of philosophy
need not be inevitably torn between anachronism
and contemporary irrelevance, holds that past and
present philosophers have in many central cases
been addressing the same issues. According to Ber-
trand RUSSELL (1872–1970), the history of philos-
ophy is like a book where are found the main an-
swers to the great philosophical problems. This idea
has its roots in ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) who
turned to past thinkers for help in his inquiries into
the soul and the ultimate nature of things.
The three views just sketched correspond to three
different claims as to the relation between past and
present philosophical questions: according to the re-
alist (Aristotle, Russell), the relation is one of iden-
tity; for the idealist (Hegel), it is a dialectical and
ineliminably historical one; and for the pragmatist
(Rorty), it is in itself open and undetermined.
Now, if the historian of philosophy is to avoid
confinement to doxography and the production of
critical editions, she will have to engage in refor-
mulation and interpretation. And her results must
abide by Quentin Skinner’s rule that we ascribe to
a past author only views he himself would have ac-
knowledged as his own. Since this rule contains a
counterfactual, it needs supplementing: under what
conditions is the author supposed to accept or reject
the proposed interpretation? A spectrum of possi-
bilities opens up extending from exposure to, if any-
thing, minimum translation tools to submission to
684
radical reeducation. Historical accuracy will demand
staying closer to the former end of the spectrum.
The histories of different disciplines are signifi-
cantly different with regard to the matter at hand. If
we consider what it would take for a past author to
understand contemporary work in different sub-
jects, we arrive at a corresponding range going from
discursive conceptual clarification (consider what
would be needed to explain, say, non-Euclidean ge-
ometries to an ancient Greek mathematician) to sub-
tantial exercises of imagination and significant per-
sonal transformation (consider what it would take
for an archaic Greek poet to come to appreciate
James Joyce’s Ulysses [1922], for example). The his-
tory of certain disciplines—mathematics being the
paradigm—seems to be reconstructible synchroni-
cally in a way in which the history of other disci-
plines—literature and art come to mind—is not:
one might conceive mathematical contributions of
vastly different ages as the product of one idealized
human being in a single, very long, creative exercise;
but one cannot conceive the author of The Odyssey
(eighth century B.C.E.), however idealized, then go-
ing on to write literary works like those of future
ages up to our own time in one single, very long,
writing session. Historical insight is eliminable from
the understanding of the history of mathematics in
a way in which it is not eliminable from the history
of literature.
Where does philosophy and its history fall on this
range? It would appear that at least in the case of
some metaphysical and epistemological issues it is
closer to mathematics than it is to literature or art.
More or less disputable examples include the exis-
tence of God, the identity and the individuation of
bodies, and the continuity of space or time. It is per-
haps in the history of ethics or political philosophy
that one may find affinities with the history of liter-
ature. Anachronism and antiquarianism are always
dangers, but they might loom larger there than in
the history of other philosophical areas. Many con-
crete moral problems are tied to cultural sensibili-
ties and to contingent presuppositions and circum-
stances, all of which may have been completely
forgotten and left behind. POLITICAL SYSTEMS and
values have changed greatly during the last two mil-
lennia and so, one might argue, have the philosoph-
ical issues arising from them. Still, the suggestion
that certain ethical questions, for example regarding
the nature of moral value and its place in human life,

have occuppied both past and present thinkers is not
easy to dismiss. Works such as Sarah Broadie’s
Ethics with Aristotle (1991) may indeed be taken to
show that the contemporary relevance of the distant
philosophical past does not have to be bought at the
price of historical distortion, even in the case of
ethics.
The matter ultimately hinges on the nature of phi-
losophy. There is of course an immediate connection
between the history of some subject and the concep-
tion one has of that subject; only from what one
takes a subject to be can one determine the content
of its history. But there is no shortage of incompat-
ible conceptions of philosophy. Yet on this matter
the historian of philosophy cannot avoid taking
sides. Her writings are bound to reflect the views
she has about philosophy. Maybe the more sensible
approach is to adopt a methodological nominalism
about the nature of the subject, resist the temptation
to generalize, and move away from universal claims
to the exploration of particular problems.
All the same, substantive philosophical issues re-
garding truth and interpretation will need to be de-
cided before assessing whether reconstructions which
satisfy the criteria for historical accuracy do or do
not support a certain conception of the subject and
its history. Still, there may be room here for a con-
tribution to philosophy from its history. For if his-
torically faithful reconstructions reveal a seeming
identity of issues and concepts despite massive his-
torical and cultural change, this will not only under-
mine usual appeals to history on the part of relativ-
ists, idealists, and pragmatists, but it will also demand
that such appearance of rational continuity be given
some explanation.
See also: AESTHETICS; ARISTOTLE; COMPARATIVE
ETHICS; CRITICAL THEORY; CULTURAL STUDIES; COM-
MENSURABILITY; ETHICS AND MORALITY; FOUCAULT;
GOOD, THEORIES OF THE; HEGEL; IDEALIST ETHICS;
LITERATURE AND ETHICS; METAETHICS; METAPHYSICS
AND EPISTEMOLOGY; MORAL ABSOLUTES; MORAL REL-
ATIVISM; MULTICULTURALISM; NARRATIVE ETHICS; NA-
TURE AND ETHICS; PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY;
POLITICAL SYSTEMS; PRAGMATISM; RUSSELL; SKEPTI-
CISM IN ETHICS.
Bibliography
Aristotle. The Complete Works of Aristotle. Edited by J.
Barnes. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
685
history of Western ethics
1984. See particularly Metaphysics, I, and On the Soul,
I, 2 in vol. 2, pp. 1552–69 and vol. 1, pp. 643–46.
Broadie, Sarah. Ethics with Aristotle. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1991.
Collingwood, R. G. Autobiography. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1964. See chapter VII, pages 59–72. May
be read as replying to the preface of Russell’s book on
Leibniz (see below).
Hare, Peter H., ed. Doing Philosophy Historically. Buf-
falo: Prometheus Books, 1988. Proceedings of a con-
ference on the topic of the title.
Hegel, G. W. F. Introduction to the Lectures on the His-
tory of Philosophy. Edited by T. M. Knox and A. V.
Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. The
best English edition of an influential classic of philo-
sophical historiography. See especially pp. 21, 49, and
106.
Holland, A. J., ed. Philosophy, Its History, and Histori-
ography. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985. Contains papers
by Michael Ayers, Mary Hesse, Jonathan Rée, and oth-
ers, on “Conceptions of Philosophy’s History.” Collec-
tion of papers presented at a conference organized by
the Royal Institute of Philosophy, 1983.
Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
3d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996
[1962]. Very influential among intellectual historians.
Reath, Andrews, Barbara Herman, and Christine Kors-
gaard, eds. Reclaiming the History of Ethics: Essays for
John Rawls. New York: Cambridge University Press,
1997.
Rorty, Richard, Quentin Skinner, J. B. Schneewind, eds.
Philosophy in History. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1984. Papers by the editors, Alasdair
MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Lorenz Krüger, Myles Burn-
yeat, and others.
Russell, Bertrand. A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy
of Leibniz. London: Allen and Unwin, 1937 [1900].
See the preface to the 1st ed., xi–xv.
Smart, Harold R. Philosophy and Its History. La Salle, IL:
Open Court Publishing, 1962. A useful, even if dated,
introduction.
Tully, James, ed. Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner
and his Critics. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1988. Contains Skinner’s “Meaning and Understand-
ing in the History of Ideas,” others of his papers on
historical interpretation, several critical articles on his
work, and a reply by Skinner.
Jorge Secada
history of Western ethics
This entry is a twelve-part survey of the history of
ethics in Western philosophy, from pre-Socratic
history of Western ethics
Greece through the twentieth century. Major fig-
ures in this history (and many minor ones as well)
have separate entries in the encyclopedia, as do
various schools and themes of ethical theory. The
bibliographic material in those separate entries has
for the most part not been repeated in this survey,
and the most obvious of the See also references
(e.g., to particular philosophers) often have been
omitted.
The twelve parts of this section are as follows:
1. Presocratic Greek
2. Classical Greek
3. Hellenistic
4. Roman
5. Early medieval
6. Later medieval
7. Renaissance
8. Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
9. Nineteenth-century British
10. Nineteenth-century Continental
11. Twentieth-century Continental
12. Twentieth-century Anglo-American
For additional material on matters raised in this sur-
vey, see: ALTRUISM; ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND
ETHICS; ATHEISM; CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS; CASU-
ISTRY; CHILDREN AND ETHICAL THEORY; COMMON
SENSE MORALISTS; CONSEQUENTIALISM; CRITICAL
THEORY; CYNICS; CYRENAICS; DEONTOLOGY; DUTY
AND OBLIGATION; EGOISM; EMOTIVISM; EPICUREAN-
ISM; ETHICS AND MORALITY; EUDAIMONIA, -ISM; EX-
ISTENTIAL ETHICS; FEMINIST ETHICS; FINAL GOOD;
GOOD, THEORIES OF THE; HUMANISM; IDEALIST
ETHICS; KANTIAN ETHICS; LITERATURE AND ETHICS;
MARXISM; MORAL SENSE THEORISTS; NATURAL LAW;
NATURALISM; NEO-KANTIAN ETHICS; PERFECTION-
ISM; PHENOMENOLOGY; PRAGMATISM; PRESCRIPTIV-
ISM; SKEPTICISM IN ANCIENT ETHICS; SKEPTICISM IN
ETHICS; SOCIAL CONTRACT; STOICISM; TELEOLOGICAL
ETHICS; UTILITARIANISM; VALUE, THEORY OF; VIRTUE
ETHICS; WITTGENSTEINIAN ETHICS; WOMEN MORAL
PHILOSOPHERS.
For contrasting approaches and traditions, see:
AFRICA; BIOLOGICAL THEORY; BUDDHIST ETHICS;
CHINA; CHRISTIAN ETHICS; COMPARATIVE ETHICS;
CONFUCIAN ETHICS; HINDU ETHICS; INDIA; ISLAMIC
ETHICS; JAINISM; JAPAN; JEWISH ETHICS; MYSTICISM;
RELIGION; SITUATION ETHICS; SOVIET ETHICAL THE-
ORY; TAOIST ETHICS; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS.
686
history of Western ethics:
1. Presocratic Greek
Philosophical ethics is often thought to begin with
SOCRATES (c. 470–399 B.C.E.). There is no doubt
that the example of Socrates, as represented in the
writings of PLATO (430–347 B.C.E.), helped estab-
lish moral philosophy as a distinct subject. But the
age of Socrates is also the age of the SOPHISTS. The
debates we find in the Clouds of Aristophanes (c.
448–c. 388 B.C.E.), the tragedies of Euripides (c.
480–406 B.C.E.), and the History of Thucydides
(c. 460–c. 400 B.C.E.) demonstrate that in the last
decades of the fifth century B.C.E. the basic issues of
normative ethics were under intense discussion. The
philosophical roots of this discussion can be traced
back as far as Xenophanes (fl. 540–500 B.C.E.) and
Heraclitus (fl. 500 B.C.E.) at the end of the sixth
century. And before philosophy there was poetry.
A survey of Presocratic ethics must at least take
cognizance of this earlier, prephilosophical moral
tradition.
The heroes of the Homeric (Homer: c. 800–700
B.C.E.) epics provided the Greeks with their predom-
inant moral ideal. The code of the hero was summed
up in the advice given to Achilles by his father: “Al-
ways be first and best [aristeuein] and superior to
the others” (Iliad 11.784 ⳱ 6.208). The heroes of
the two epics—Achilles first in battle and PASSION,
Odysseus first in cunning and endurance—both em-
body the agonistic paradigm that Jakob Burckhardt
(1818–1879) found to be so characteristic of Greek
culture. But in Hesiod’s (c. 700 B.C.E.) Works and
Days we meet a different view. Hesiod puts his trust
in the justice of Zeus, which guarantees disaster for
the man who is tempted down the path of wrong-
doing and crime (hybris), but promises blessings for
the one who perseveres along the more difficult, up-
hill road of Justice (dike). In Homer we have the
fierce heroic aspiration to excel; Hesiod provides the
counterpart warning against arrogance and excess.
These two themes constitute the major topics of
moral comment in the work of the early lyric poets
and the Attic tragedians. The Greek moral tradition
thus bears within itself two potentially conflicting
conceptions of arete, or human EXCELLENCE: on the
one hand the heroic ideal of unlimited self-assertion;
on the other hand the Delphic principle of meden
agan, “nothing to excess,” the proverbial wisdom
formulated in the aphorisms of the Seven Sages

(Bias, Chilon, Cleobulus, Periander, Pittacus, Solon,
Thales). Of them, Thales (fl. 580 B.C.E.) was alleg-
edly the first natural philosopher. Another, Solon (c.
640–c. 560 B.C.E.), was the founding father of the
Athenian moral tradition. The poems of Solon, com-
posed in the early sixth century just when philoso-
phy and science were beginning to take shape in Mi-
letus, aim at a careful balance between the two
standards of success: “May the gods give me pros-
perity and good fame in the eyes of all men. . . . I
want to have wealth, but not to acquire it unjustly;
for punishment [dike] always comes later” (Solon
1, 3–8).
For the earliest philosophers, the Milesians, at
least one ethical concept is attested. The sense of
inevitable PUNISHMENT for excess and crime, illus-
trated above in the quotation from Solon, also serves
Anaximander (fl. c. 550 B.C.E.) as his figure for the
immutable order of nature: “They [the constituents
of the world, probably the elemental opposites] pay
the penalty [dike] and make retribution to one an-
other for their injustice, according to the ordering of
time” (DK 12. B 1). A moral conception of natural
order is also implicit in the very designation of the
world as a kosmos, a well-ordered structure. The
word kosmos has both aesthetic and political over-
tones. The natural philosophers reinterpreted the
justice of Zeus as the rational governance of the
world of nature. Some tension inevitably results
with the older conception of the gods. As Heraclitus
put it, the one wise principle, who is steersman of
the universe “is both unwilling and willing to be
called by the name of Zeus” (DK 22.B 32; cf. B 41
and 64). The natural order is conceived as a moral
order as well: “The sun will not overstep his mea-
sures. If he does, the Furies handmaids of Justice
[Dike] will find him out” (Heraclitus B 94).
Xenophanes spelled out the ethical implications
of the new cosmic theology. “Homer and Hesiod
have assigned to the gods everything that is a re-
proach and blame among men: stealing, adultery,
and cheating one another” (DK 21. B 11). Xeno-
phanes rejected Hesiod’s tales of battle between
gods and giants and between different generations
of gods; hostility and conflict, he claimed, have no
place in the realm of the divine (B 1, 20–24), which
must be a realm of justice and harmony. Xenophanes
challenged not only the accounts of the immorality
of the gods, but also the cultural standards that exalt
athletic prowess over the new learning. An Olympic
687
history of Western ethics: 1. Presocratic Greek
victory, he insisted, is less valuable for the city than
the WISDOM of the philosopher-poet; the latter, but
not the former, can contribute to civic peace and
eunomia—good government (B 2).
Alongside this rationalistic conception of nature
and the gods, we find, again at the end of the sixth
century, a new view of the human psyche, a view
which was influenced by the doctrine of transmigra-
tion. Pythagoras (c. 560–500 B.C.E.) is the first
thinker known to have introduced this doctrine into
Greece. By the middle of the fifth century, in the
Purifications of Empedocles (fl. c. 450 B.C.E.), trans-
migration provides the background for a picture of
the human condition as a fall into this world of mis-
ery from a primeval state of bliss. We do not know
exactly what moral conclusions were originally im-
plied by this mystic view of the soul, but they seem
to have included vegetarianism and a general dis-
taste for violence and bloodshed. (See Empedocles
B 124–125, 128, 130.) In the works of both Pindar
(c. 520–c. 440 B.C.E.) and Empedocles, the fate of
the soul after death was a matter of serious moral
concern. Something like the Indian doctrine of
KARMA seems to have been preached by Pythagorean
and Orphic sectaries throughout the fifth century;
but again the details are obscure. This tradition
found its full literary expression only much later, in
the judgment myths of Plato. There are early echoes
of the new view in some mysterious utterances of
Heraclitus: “Immortals mortal, mortals immortal;
living the others’ death, dead in the others’ life” (B
62); “You will not find out the limits of the psyche
by going, even if you traverse every path; so deep is
its logos” (B 45). And similarly in a famous quota-
tion from Euripides: “Who knows, if life is really
death, but death is regarded as life in the world be-
low?” (Euripides frag. 638, cited by Plato in Gorgias
492e).
Heraclitus is the first philosopher to have left us
substantial, if enigmatic, reflection on the nature of
moral experience and moral excellence. “It is not
better for human beings to get all they want. It is
disease that makes health sweet and good, hunger
satiety, weariness rest” (B 110–111). “Sound think-
ing [or moral restraint, sophronein] is the greatest
excellence and wisdom, to speak the truth and act
according to nature, knowingly” (B 112). Heraclitus
owed to the earlier cosmologists this concept of na-
ture (physis) as a model for truthful speech and vir-
tuous ACTION. The moral interpretation is his legacy
history of Western ethics: 1. Presocratic Greek
to later thinkers, particularly the Stoics. The most
decisive innovation is Heraclitus’s notion of cosmic
law as the source and sanction for human laws: “The
people must fight for their law as for their city wall”
(B 44). “Those who speak with understanding must
hold fast to what is common to all things [or to all
men?], as a city holds to its law and even more
firmly. For all human laws are nourished by a divine
one. It dominates as much as it wants; it is enough
for all and more than enough” (B 114). Heraclitus’s
conception of law (nomos) as the foundation of civ-
ilized life prepared the way for the Stoic theory of
NATURAL LAW.
In his defense of human nomoi Heraclitus seems
to be reacting against an early version of cultural
relativism, provoked by the extensive Greek con-
tacts with older civilizations that began in the Ori-
entalizing period (eighth and seventh centuries
B.C.E.). In Heraclitus’s own time, the historian and
geographer Hecataeus of Miletus (c. 550–480 B.C.E.),
brought home strange tales of the customs of foreign
lands and published some of them in his Travels
around the World. In the same period Xenophanes
knew that Ethiopians make their gods snubnose and
black, while Thracians make them blue-eyed and
red-haired (B 16). A generation or two later, in the
mid-fifth century, this awareness of cultural diversity
received a philosophical articulation in the Man-the-
Measure formula of PROTAGORAS (c. 490–c. 421
B.C.E.). If Plato’s account can be trusted, Protagoras
said in effect: “Whatever each city judges to be just
and honorable really is just and honorable for that
city, as long as this remains that city’s custom and
belief” (Theaetetus 172 A–B). On this view there
can be no standard of right and wrong other than
nomos, the social NORMS of a given community. It is
just this positive, conservative version of cultural
relativism that is endorsed by Protagoras’s contem-
porary, the historian Herodotus (c. 485–425 B.C.E.),
in his quotation of a famous verse from Pindar: “No-
mos is king over all.” Thus Herodotus interpreted
King Cambyses’s (d. 522 B.C.E.) deliberate violation
of the religious customs of the Egyptians as proof
that the Persian monarch was mad. “If one offered
all men the chance to select the finest nomoi from
all that there are, each group would choose its own
nomoi” (Herodotus III.38).
This conservative relativism of Protagoras and
Herodotus reflects the political insight of Heraclitus
without its metaphysical foundation: nomos and
688
dike, the accepted standards of right and wrong,
may vary from place to place; but they make possible
a civilized human life in society. (Without any ref-
erence to relativism, this is essentially the view as-
signed to Protagoras in Plato’s dialogue that bears
his name.) But such conservative relativism exists in
an unstable equilibrium; it tended to disappear in
the so-called Enlightenment of the last three decades
of the fifth century. A much more skeptical attitude
to Greek moral and religious tradition found ex-
pression in the popular opposition between nomos
and physis, where physis stands for the hard facts
of human nature (such as sensuality, greed, and the
lust for POWER) in contrast to the more artificial re-
straints of nomos or convention. Behind this nega-
tive view of nomos lies an epistemological tradition
going back to Parmenides (fl. c. 500 B.C.E.), accord-
ing to which the customary views of mortals can rep-
resent only falsehood or at best mere appearance,
whereas physis designates reality, the way things re-
ally are. DEMOCRITUS (c. 460–c. 370 B.C.E.) stands
in this Eleatic tradition when he says “By nomos
there is sweet, by nomos bitter, by nomos hot, by
nomos cold, by nomos color; but in truth there are
atoms and the void” (B 9). The freethinkers of the
late fifth century utilized this negative view of nomos
in their attack on the VIRTUES of restraint (namely,
TEMPERANCE and justice) as repressive social restric-
tions on the freedom and self-interest of the individ-
ual. The most important documentation for this rad-
ical view is in the fragments of Antiphon the Sophist
(possibly identical with the oligarch executed in 411
B.C.E. and praised by Thucydides). These texts claim
that “the demands of nature (physis) are matters of
necessity, those of nomos are matters of agreement
or convention [homologethenta].” “Most of what is
just according to nomos is hostile to nature.” Life
and PLEASURE are naturally advantageous, but our
pursuit of these goals is restricted by law and moral
convention. “What is established by the laws as ad-
vantageous are chains upon our nature; but what is
established by nature as advantageous is free” (An-
tiphon B 44A. 1–4). The popular impact of such
teaching is brilliantly parodied by Aristophanes in
the Clouds; a character known as the Unjust Argu-
ment comes on stage to represent the New Educa-
tion in debate with a representative of traditional
virtue: “Think what pleasures morality [sophronein]
would deprive you of: boys, women, gambling, del-
icacies, drinking, fun and games. . . . Respect the ne-

cessities of nature [e.g., sex and adultery]. . . . Fol-
low me, obey nature, kick up your heels and laugh,
hold nothing shameful” (Clouds 1071–1078).
Plato was to take this challenge more seriously.
The antimoralist’s case is formulated repeatedly in
his dialogues, first by Polus and Callicles in the Gor-
gias, then by Thrasymachus in Republic I, and finally
by his own brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus in Re-
public II. The great speech assigned to Callicles
makes eloquent use of the ideas attested in the frag-
ments of Antiphon. Some things are “honorable by
nomos but not by nature; in most cases nature and
convention are opposed to one another,” argues Cal-
licles. The weak have made laws in their own inter-
est, and so they have established the principles of
FAIRNESS and EQUALITY as conventional justice. On
the contrary, what is just by nature is that the
stronger should rule over the weaker and that su-
perior men should have a greater share of wealth and
power (Gorgias 482E–283E). It is clear that Plato
did not invent these notions, but assigned to Calli-
cles ideas that were current in the late fifth century.
Thus in the Melian Dialogue, Thucydides has the
Athenians say: “Of gods we believe and of men we
certainly know that in every case, by a necessity of
their nature, they rule wherever they are strong
enough to do so” (Thucydides V. 105. 2; cf. V. 89).
Antiphon, in speaking of laws based on agree-
ment, and Callicles, in speaking of laws established
by the weak, both alluded to some theory of SOCIAL
CONTRACT as the origin of law and morality. In Re-
public II Glaucon says explicitly that men created
nomoi and principles of justice by some sort of com-
pact or covenant (synthekei; 359A). We do not
know the original form of this theory, but we do have
a fifth-century parallel in a fragment of a Sisyphus
play assigned variously to Euripides and to Critias
the tyrant (c. 465–403 B.C.E.): “There was a time
when the life of mankind was without order and like
the life of beasts, subject to the rule of strength, and
there was no reward for the good nor any punish-
ment for evil men. And then, I think, men set up
laws [nomoi] for punishment, so that justice would
rule and violence [hybris] would be her slave” (DK
88. B 25). The author goes on to derive belief in the
gods from a similar device designed to curb criminal
actions and produce decent behavior out of fear of
divine punishment.
Like early social contract theory with which it is
closely connected, the origins of the nomos-physis
689
history of Western ethics: 1. Presocratic Greek
antithesis in ethical discussion are undocumented
and obscure. What is clear in the fully developed
antimorality of figures like Callicles and Thrasyma-
chus is that their ideal of ruthless self-assertion rep-
resents the old heroic conception of arete stripped
of the restraints of justice and temperance, since
these are now thought of as mere human CONVEN-
TIONS deprived of any basis either in nature or divine
decree. The social and political climate of the late
fifth century, with violent class conflicts reinforced
by thirty years of nearly continuous warfare, must
also have contributed to the decay of traditional mo-
rality. Such at least was the judgment of Thucydides.
(See Thuc. II. 52–53 on the moral effects of the
plague in Athens; III. 81–83 on stasis in Corcyra; V.
87–105 for the cynicism of the Melian Dialogue.)
The Sophists were of course blamed for this
moral decline, and with them Socrates as well. Soc-
rates is a separate topic, but we may properly ask
how far men like Protagoras and Gorgias (c. 470–
380 B.C.E.) were responsible for the intellectual
revolt against the traditional virtues of justice and
restraint. Protagoras was certainly an outspoken ag-
nostic with regard to the existence of the gods (B 4).
But in matters of morality he seems to have been a
conservative like Herodotus. Plato represents him as
offering to make his pupils better men and better
citizens (Protagoras 318A, 319A). The case is dif-
ferent for Gorgias. According to Plato, Gorgias was
careful not to claim to teach virtue; he promised only
to make men good public speakers (Meno 95C).
This indifference to the moral or immoral ends
served by powers of persuasion is no doubt one of
the reasons that Plato constructed his Gorgias so as
to imply that “Gorgias’ teaching is the seed of which
the Calliclean way of life is the poisonous fruit”
(E. R. Dodds). And in Gorgias’s written work we
find that he is willing to play with words and ideas
in ways that seem both morally and intellectually ir-
responsible. His treatise On Nature or on Not-being
undertakes to prove (a) that nothing is real or true;
(b) that if there is anything, it is unknowable; and
(c) that if it is knowable, it is unsayable. This bril-
liant inversion of Parmenides’s argument for Being
was no doubt designed to be entertaining rather than
seriously nihilistic. And the same can be said for
Gorgias’s Defense of Helen, on the grounds that she
was either (a) compelled by the gods; or (b) carried
off by force; or (c) persuaded by the irresistible
power of speech (logos), and hence is not to be held
history of Western ethics: 1. Presocratic Greek
responsible in any case. Gorgias describes his De-
fense of Helen as a game or plaything (paignion).
But there could hardly be better ammunition for the
standard charge against the Sophists: they make the
weaker argument the stronger, and hence they per-
vert justice by their powers of persuasion.
Nevertheless, the professional Sophists were prob-
ably too dependent on public favor to become open
enemies of traditional morality. In Plato’s dialogue
it is the ambitious politician Callicles, not the Soph-
ists Gorgias or Polus, who formulates the extreme
antimoralist position. (The corresponding position
taken up by Thrasymachus in Republic I is not con-
firmed by any independent evidence concerning this
Sophist.) The same phenomenon holds for Antiphon
“the Sophist,” if he was in fact Antiphon the oligarch
of 411 B.C.E., as many scholars now believe. If the
Sisyphus fragment was not written by Critias the ty-
rant, it was written by Euripides—in either case not
by a Sophist. The antimoralism of the late fifth cen-
tury is essentially the work of practical men, willing
to act ruthlessly and happy to learn from the New
Education that the traditional restraints of dike and
nomos are only a conventional artifice, the invention
of men more timid than themselves.
See also: AGNOSTICISM; CONVENTIONS; CULTURAL
STUDIES; DEMOCRITUS; EQUALITY; EXCELLENCE; FAIR-
NESS; LITERATURE AND ETHICS; MORAL RELATIVISM;
MYSTICISM; NARRATIVE ETHICS; NATURAL LAW; NA-
TURE AND ETHICS; NORMS; PLATO; PROTAGORAS;
PUNISHMENT; SOCRATES; SOPHISTS; STOICISM; TEM-
PERANCE; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS; WISDOM.
Bibliography
Adkins, A. W. H. Merit and Responsibility: A Study in
Greek Values. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960.
Classen, C. J. “Bibliographie zur Sophistik.” Elenchos 6
(1985): 75–140.
Diels, Hermann, and Walter Kranz, eds. Die Fragmente
der Vorsokratiker. 7th ed. Berlin: Weidmannsche,
1954. The fragments in the original Greek with Ger-
man translation.
Guthrie, W. K. C. A History of Greek Philosophy. Vols. 1–
3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962–
1969. Includes good bibliography.
Jaeger, W. Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture. Translated
by G. Highet. Oxford, 1939. See especially vol. 1.
Kahn, Charles H. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Kerferd, G. B., ed. The Sophists and Their Legacy. Her-
690
mes Einzelschrift 44 (1981). See especially “Anti-
phon’s Case Against Justice,” by D. J. Furley (pp. 81–
91); “The Origins of Social Contract Theory,” by C. H.
Kahn (pp. 92–108).
———. The Sophistic Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1981. Contains good bibliography.
Plato. Gorgias. Introduction and commentary by E. R.
Dodds. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959.
Sprague, Rosamund K., ed. The Older Sophists. Colum-
bia: University of South Carolina Press, 1972. Contin-
uation of title: A Complete Translation by Several
Hands of the Fragments in “Die Fragmente der Vor-
sokratiker”, With a New Edition of “Antiphon” and
“Euthydemus.”
Charles H. Kahn
history of Western ethics:
2. Classical Greek
Beginning in Hellenistic times (322–86 B.C.E.), or-
thodoxy held that Greek philosophical ethics was
originated by a single person—SOCRATES. (See, for
example, CICERO, Tusculan disputations 5. 10–11.)
But this verdict was motivated in large part by a
characteristic Greek preference for a single founder
for every intellectual movement, and there is no
good reason to accept it. In fact, the surviving lit-
erary evidence, taken as a whole, points rather to a
sizable group of people, all active in the second half
of the fifth century B.C.E. This group includes Soc-
rates, but also DEMOCRITUS and, as well, a number
of the itinerant teachers (especially PROTAGORAS)
who later became known pejoratively as SOPHISTS
and were aligned with the tradition of rhetoric rather
than philosophy. Before that time, Greeks who
sought beyond the customs and traditions of their
local communities for guidance in living their lives
as private persons and as citizens looked to the tra-
ditional WISDOM of poets, and especially to Homer
(850?–800 B.C.E.), for precepts and for models of
good living. Such philosophers as Heraclitus (c.
551–c. 470 B.C.E.), Parmenides (fl. fifth century
B.C.E.), Zeno of Elea (fl. fifth century B.C.E.) and An-
axagoras (500–428 B.C.E.) had claimed to follow
reasoned analysis and disciplined argument in estab-
lishing the truth about other matters of general in-
terest and concern, and had developed distinctive
methods of reasoning for doing this. But Socrates
and his contemporaries were the first to undertake
by reasoned analysis and argument to investigate

how one ought to lead one’s life and, on that basis,
to reject uncritical reliance on the traditional au-
thorities in these matters. The claim that they are to
be regarded as the first moral philosophers rests on
their self-conscious appeal to the authority of reason
in determining how one ought to lead one’s life, and
their attention to devising methods appropriate for
the employment of reason in investigating the ques-
tions that arose in this connection.
No complete writing of any of this first generation
of moral philosophers survives. Socrates himself
wrote no philosophical work. His philosophical ac-
tivity was known to later generations through the
published writings of a number of the young men
who had gathered round him in Athens in the last
quarter of the century, including Xenophon (c. 435–
354 B.C.E.) (Apology, Memorabilia) and PLATO, as
well as through the oral tradition. However, as early
as ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) it became estab-
lished practice among philosophers to treat the
methods of argument and the opinions of the char-
acter named Socrates in certain dialogues of Plato
(now generally agreed by scholars to be early com-
positions) as authoritative presentations of the his-
torical Socrates’s methods and views. For the pur-
poses of this article we need not express an opinion
about the historical accuracy of Plato’s representa-
tion of Socrates. But since, whether correctly or not,
the later philosophers we shall be concerned with
based their discussion and criticism of the philoso-
phy of Socrates on Plato’s early dialogues, in what
follows “Socrates” should be understood to refer to
the character named Socrates in those dialogues
(that is, Apology, Euthyphro, Crito, Charmides,
Laches, Protagoras, Euthydemus, Lysis, Hippias Mi-
nor, and Ion).
Democritus (c. 460–c. 370 B.C.E.)
Democritus’s work is known to us only through
quotations from his writings and discussion of his
views in later authors, together with excerpts (many
of doubtful authenticity) in anthologies prepared
centuries after his death. This evidence leaves it
doubtful as to the extent to which he developed a
full-blown theory of ethics, with arguments aimed at
providing an account of the good life for a human
being in terms of some basic good—a good from
which the goodness of any other good thing derives.
But he seems to have made a certain subjective state
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history of Western ethics: 2. Classical Greek
of mind (best captured in English by “good spirits”
or simply “tranquillity”) the controlling objective for
a well-lived life. His somewhat archaic word for this,
euthumia, gave the title to his best-known work in
this field, On Good Spirits. One late ancient author
quotes him as using the word ataraxia to describe
this state of mind. EPICURUS (341–270 B.C.E.) was
later to use ataraxia for the goal that he holds makes
for a completely happy life, achievable if, besides
being rid of bodily pain, one is free of mental upset
of all kinds. In antiquity, there were already debates
about whether Democritus identified this condition
with the condition in which a person enjoys the pur-
est and greatest PLEASURE. But there is no doubt that
(even if he did not say it explicitly) Democritus re-
garded the most fundamental human good as simply
consisting in a subjective condition of mind, the con-
dition in which a person is free from all distress. He
urged as the most reasonable means of achieving this
goal a conservative strategy of limiting one’s desires
and ambitions, not attempting more than one’s pow-
ers permit, and, in general, avoiding exposure to the
sources of frustration. Some modern scholars have
seen evidence in one excerpt that Democritus thought
of his ethical views as deriving in some way from his
atomic physical theory; he explained the good con-
dition of the souls of those who have achieved eu-
thumia as depending on “smooth motions” allowed
by the orderly arrangement of their constituent soul-
atoms. But the mention in this passage of “smooth
motions” seems best interpreted as metaphorical
only. There seems no good reason to think Democ-
ritus derived the goodness of euthumia from prem-
ises drawn from the atomic theory of matter. His
ethical views appear to have been developed by in-
dependent reflection on the conditions of human
life.
Protagoras (c. 490–c. 421 B.C.E.)
Protagoras is known to us mainly through the di-
alogues of Plato, whose Protagoras and Theaetetus
deal extensively with his views. The Theaetetus fo-
cuses on Protagoras’s relativism (“man is the mea-
sure of all things: of the things that are, that they
are, and of the things that are not, that they are not,”
152 a). This is first introduced in connection with
perceptual characteristics such as the felt heat and
cold of a wind, and applied to each individual per-
cipient. Later in the dialogue (172 a–b), however,
history of Western ethics: 2. Classical Greek
we find a specifically MORAL RELATIVISM, concern-
ing justice and apparently all other moral values and
applying to each civic community, rather than to
each individual person. What is just, courageous,
temperate, religiously proper, and so on, is whatever
conforms to the general opinion about these matters
in the city in question. In the Protagoras, Protagoras
presents himself as a teacher of human virtue (ar-
ete), which he specifies as the ability to reason well
about how to manage one’s personal affairs and the
affairs of one’s city. This, he thinks, is a preeminent
good, one that any well-informed person should
wish to have above all else. He thinks, however, that
this virtue already exists to some degree in all mature
citizens, having been taught to them in the course
of their upbringing in much the same way as they
acquire their language: anyone who totally lacked
virtue could not live together with other people at
all. The virtue Protagoras teaches is simply a devel-
opment of this preexistent virtue. But since the vir-
tue that everyone possesses must consist, in large
measure, of willing obedience to traditional and con-
ventional standards of behavior, it follows that the
virtue Protagoras professes to teach is simply a re-
fined and self-conscious ability to reason about prac-
tical matters, beginning from and staying within the
limits of the conventional NORMS of the particular
city one lives in. Thus the position ascribed to Pro-
tagoras in the dialogue named after him is closely
akin to the moral relativism discussed in the
Theaetetus.
Unlike Democritus, Protagoras emphasized that
central to a good human life were the recognized
VIRTUES of justice, COURAGE, TEMPERANCE (or self-
discipline), LOYALTY to gods and parents, and (es-
pecially) WISDOM or knowledge. In this, Protagoras
reflected a tendency, deeply seated in the social at-
titudes prevalent even in the democracies of the
Classical period, to think of the best life for a human
being simply as the life led by the “best people”—
the life that those having full possession of the vir-
tues (aretai) lead just insofar as they express these
virtues in their way of life. Even on the original aris-
tocratic conception of who the best people are, of
course, this way of life involved due consideration
of communal values and a sense of responsibility to
one’s fellow citizens. But for Protagoras, speaking in
democratic Athens, the “political” or citizenly ori-
entation of the virtues and the way of life they define
assumes a more prominent position. For Protagoras,
692
one qualifies in these virtues not by family inheri-
tance and aristocratic upbringing, but by the ability
to reason well—something not in principle re-
stricted to any particular social group. In thus mak-
ing the “best people” the ones who both possess the
virtues of a common citizen and have reasoned
knowledge about how to exercise and apply the vir-
tues in private life and in the public affairs of the
city, Protagoras posed a radical challenge to the
moral and political prestige of traditional elite
groups in the Greek cities.
Socrates (c. 470–399 B.C.E.)
Socrates agreed with Protagoras in accepting the
primacy of the recognized virtues of justice, courage,
and so on, in fixing the structure and substance of
the best life for a human being—the overall human
good. But he developed this common starting point
in a fundamentally different direction, away from
Protagoras’s flattering (and self-satisfied) affirma-
tion of the essential correctness of any and every
city’s established moral and political norms. He
promoted an ambitious program of philosophical
construction which would, at the limit of ideal com-
pletion, provide a grounding in reason itself, inde-
pendent of traditionally established norms, for a vir-
tuous way of life. At this limit one would have
achieved full knowledge of everything that is good
for human beings—knowledge of the ways in which
and why anything is good, and how to weigh and
measure its goodness in comparison with other good
things (and with all the things that are bad for us,
in whatever way). Socrates vigorously denied that
he had achieved this comprehensive knowledge, and
insisted that any wisdom he did possess was limited
to the knowledge that he did not possess it. None-
theless, he was convinced he knew the right way to
advance toward its attainment: by constant discus-
sion with other people in a spirit of sincere mutual
inquiry into the truth, examining together their opin-
ions, and thereby one’s own as well, about what was
good and bad for human beings, and about how one
ought to conduct one’s life—the method of elen-
chus. Such examination would bring to light and put
to the test the best arguments, the ones that, if one
were honest with oneself, one would see carried the
weight of reason and so possessed the only AUTHOR-
ITY a human being can acceptably be subject to. In
this way one would collect an interconnected set of

moral opinions, supported by argument tested many
times over in discussion with a wide variety of other
persons, under many different circumstances and
contexts. However novel and even counterintuitive
these opinions might first appear to the average per-
son, this experience would give legitimate confi-
dence in their truth. It would, however, be arro-
gantly dogmatic, even unphilosophical, to rule out
the possibility that—in some future discussion, un-
der some new situation, and in the light of what
some as yet unexamined person might say in expla-
nation and defense of his contrary views—one
might uncover some previously unsuspected reason
for doubt, and so reconsider or revise one’s opin-
ions, even radically. To be sure, the knowledge Soc-
rates was seeking would guarantee that this would
not happen, since it would give us the ability to pro-
duce convincing solutions to all apparent difficul-
ties, and show to the satisfaction of everyone pre-
pared to think matters through what is the right
thing to do in any situation. But we cannot know in
advance that we have that knowledge: the only proof
that one has it is in continued success in argument.
By this means Socrates became convinced of a
considerable body of moral theory. First and fore-
most he was convinced that the recognized virtues,
when correctly understood, were the most important
good a human being could aspire to possess, incom-
parably better than pleasure or wealth or health or
political influence or the good opinion of others or
any other kind of conventional success in life. These
conventional goods are good for a person only if they
are put to some good use, and the virtues determine
what use of them is good. Any choice of these goods
entailing either the loss of virtue or damage to one’s
moral CHARACTER could never be rationally justi-
fied. Hence Socrates insisted that it was always per-
sonally better for anyone to be unjustly deprived of
such goods than to do injustice oneself, and that a
good person cannot be harmed by a bad person’s
mistreatment. He held also, contrary to common
opinion, that the virtues cannot be acquired inde-
pendently of one another. We cannot be truly cou-
rageous or pious without at the same time being just
and self-disciplined and wise—in short, without
having full and perfectly formed moral characters,
sufficient to see us correctly through difficulties aris-
ing not just in some specified set of contexts, but in
whatever situation might arise that calls for decision
and ACTION. Furthermore, because VOLUNTARY ACTS
693
history of Western ethics: 2. Classical Greek
are all done for reasons (considerations about what
is good and bad), and acting for reasons entails act-
ing for what we take at the time (implicitly or ex-
plicitly, rightly or wrongly, consistently or not with
what we think at other times) to be the best reasons,
he thought that whenever we act voluntarily we act
as and because we think it best to act. Only our
thoughts about what it is good and bad to do are
psychological causes of our voluntary behavior. Ac-
cordingly, since the moral virtues are preeminently
causes of good behavior, they must be conditions of
our minds, in which we consistently think the truth
about what is good and bad for us to do. In short,
each and every moral virtue must be the same as the
knowledge of what is good and bad for a human
being to do. It is this knowledge, and nothing else,
that can save our lives, by causing us to make all the
right decisions and so live in the best way possible.
It is for these so-called Socratic paradoxes that Soc-
rates has become best known in modern times: vir-
tue is one, virtue is knowledge, no one does wrong
knowingly and willingly.
Fifth-Century Moral Theory: Summary
The principal lines of the later debate were
shaped by this first generation of moral theorists.
Democritus introduced the subjectivist conception
of the human good that Epicurus was to take over
and develop into a flexible philosophical HEDONISM
of considerable depth. Protagoras initiated the sort
of relativistic and conventionalistic ethic—one which
eschewed all possibility of getting behind or beyond
ordinary views and ordinary ways of thinking to
some philosophically grounded ultimate truth—that
the Greek skeptics would later make their own. And
Socrates inaugurated the rationalist, virtue-centered
theory that became the dominant form of moral the-
ory in the Greek tradition, one taken up successively
by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics.
Plato (c. 430–347 B.C.E.)
Socrates made a sharp distinction between the
sort of knowledge about what is good and bad for
human beings that a human being could aspire to,
and that which a god might have. A human’s knowl-
edge was simply the ability to discuss these matters
effectively together with other human beings, from
the point of view of one engaged in actually living a
history of Western ethics: 2. Classical Greek
human life. God’s knowledge, of course, would not
be situated and contextualized in this way. The
knowledge Socrates strove for was specifically in-
tended for use in the give and take of discussion with
all and sundry, and assumed only their willingness
to think carefully and say what they really believed,
in light of the arguments advanced during the dis-
cussion. The ultimate test of this knowledge was its
ability to yield arguments that would persuade any
and every human being who would attend honestly
to their own thoughts and their consequences.
In the Republic and other dialogues of his middle
period, Plato sought a philosophically adequate
grounding for Socrates’ rationalist ambitions. How
can the comprehensive knowledge of human good
that Socrates worked toward be achieved? Plato
concluded that it is not possible actually to know any
such partial and limited good except in the light of
a prior knowledge of the good (or goodness) itself—
what it is in general for anything to be good, the
universal source to all other good things of their be-
ing good in their partial and limited ways. Knowing
this good, the Form of the Good, would enable a
person, in principle, to judge infallibly about the
goodness of anything whatsoever—about what is
good for human beings and other animals and
plants, about the goodness of the world order as a
whole, about the goodness of certain mathematical
harmonies and ratios, and so on. By thus enormously
expanding the scope of the knowledge that Socrates
was pursuing, Plato obliterated the distinction Soc-
rates had taken such pains to preserve between the
sort of knowledge a god could have of the human
good and the limited, contextual knowledge that was
the most he thought a human being could aspire to.
According to the scheme of education spelled out in
the Republic, the knowledge of the Good-itself could
be achieved only at the age of fifty, after fifteen years
of philosophical dialectic engaged in exclusively by
and among trained philosophers—a far cry from
Socrates’ commitment to carrying on his inquiries in
the marketplace, and to persuasiveness in such dis-
cussions as the ultimate test of the knowledge being
sought.
A second momentous change concerned the PSY-
CHOLOGY of action. Whereas Socrates had held that
only reasoned thoughts about what is good and bad
can ever motivate our actions, Plato introduced a
tripartite theory of human motivation. On Plato’s
account, reasoned thoughts are only one source of
694
motivation. In addition, emotions (like ANGER) and
appetites (such as hunger and thirst, conceived not
as feelings of bodily discomfort but as fully com-
pleted wants for food and drink) are causes of vol-
untary bodily movement as well, working indepen-
dently of one’s reasoned judgments about good and
bad. No longer, therefore, can moral virtue be con-
ceived of simply as a condition of one’s mind, the
condition in which one consistently thinks the truth
about what is to be done. Virtue also requires that
emotions and appetites be properly controlled, so
that they do not prevent or interfere with reason do-
ing its job of directing our decisions and actions, and
so our lives. The virtue of wisdom remains, as for
Socrates, a virtue of the reasoning part of the soul.
But courage no longer resides in the reasoning mind
at all, but in the emotions—it is the condition of the
emotions in which they contribute their motivating
force in support of reason and reason’s decisions.
Temperance and justice coordinate the parts of the
whole soul. Temperance is the condition in which
the two lower parts yield to reason, giving reason
authority over themselves for the determination of
what is to be done. Justice makes each of the three
parts positively and appropriately contribute its own
special force in generating the actions that make up
a person’s life. Nonetheless, despite this sharp dif-
ferentiation of the virtues, Plato maintained the So-
cratic unity of the virtues. He held that the knowl-
edge of the Good required by the virtue of wisdom
will not be attained except by one who has first dis-
ciplined the two lower parts of the soul by imposing
on them conditions of obedience which, once wis-
dom is present in addition, will constitute the virtues
of justice, courage and temperance. Hence the vir-
tues, though disparate in nature and function, are
either possessed all together or not at all.
In ethics Plato is best known for his views in the
Republic and other middle-period dialogues, such as
Phaedo and Symposium. But he showed his contin-
ued concern for ethical topics in the Laws, which is
noteworthy especially for its discussions of the
moral basis for PUNISHMENT (Book IX) and of the
connection between religious belief and morality
(Book X). In another late dialogue, Philebus, Plato
investigated in a highly original and influential way
the nature and value of pleasure, and argued for a
new conception of the human good as involving a
harmoniously mixed life of pleasure and knowledge.
This ideal has pronounced affinities to the concep-

tion of EUDAIMONIA (HAPPINESS, human flourishing)
developed by Aristotle.
Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.)
Three treatises on ethics survive under Aristotle’s
name: Magna moralia, Eudemian Ethics, and the
well-known Nicomachean Ethics. Our texts go back
only to the first century B.C.E., when Aristotle’s
works were collected and edited at Rome by An-
dronicus of Rhodes (fl. 70–50 B.C.E.). It is not
known to what extent or in what form they circu-
lated before that time. They probably derive from
three sets of lectures given by Aristotle at different
periods, in the order listed above (though many
scholars think the Magna moralia was composed in
Aristotle’s school after his death). All three treatises
deal with much the same topics in much the same
order. There are instructive differences, however,
and the two less well-known ones deserve careful
attention. The following summary relies primarily
on the Nicomachean Ethics (E.N.).
Aristotle’s ethical theory can best be seen as a
judicious blend of Plato’s MORAL PSYCHOLOGY (he
recognizes the same three independent sources of
motivation argued for in the Republic) and Socra-
tes’s insistence on the situated and contextual
character of human knowledge of the human good.
Aristotle rejects as logically, metaphysically, and eth-
ically misguided Plato’s idea that knowledge of the
human good should be made dependent on some
abstract and universal knowledge of good in general.
There is no such thing as a substantive universal na-
ture of goodness; the human good must be under-
stood wholly on its own terms, through intimate
knowledge of the conditions of human life and in-
sight into the interconnected capacities making up
human nature. This knowledge requires personal ex-
perience; it responds to and respects the claims
about what is valuable for us that are presented in
the mature person’s feelings, as well as the claims
presented by abstract and general reasoning.
Just as with the good of any other species of living
thing, the human good consists in the full develop-
ment, and exercise under favorable conditions, of
those capacities that are distinctive of humankind.
Aristotle identified these as all, in one way or an-
other, aspects of our nature as rational beings. We
have the capacity to inquire into the truth about mat-
ters of theoretical interest, including mathematics,
695
history of Western ethics: 2. Classical Greek
physical science, and metaphysics. We have the ca-
pacity to understand ourselves and our natural good.
And we have the capacity to make our nonrational
desires (corresponding to the appetites and emo-
tions of the lower two parts of Plato’s tripartite soul)
conform with and support our reasoned understand-
ing of our good. The human good therefore consists
first of all in the perfection of these three capacities,
through the development of the virtues appropriate
to each: the virtues of the theoretical intellect
(summed up in wisdom, sophia); those of the prac-
tical intellect (PRACTICAL WISDOM — PHRONESIS —
and its constituents); and the moral virtues or vir-
tues of character (the virtues that organize the
nonreasoning desires). Those who possess all the
human virtues and direct their lives through them,
provided they are not seriously interfered with by
bad health or lack of necessary external goods, lead
naturally flourishing and happy lives. Aristotle placed
special emphasis, however, on the virtue of the theo-
retical intellect, since it is through our capacity for
theoretical understanding that we are in some de-
gree like god, and thus capable of enjoying in some
measure the sort of goodness of life that god enjoys
always and in full measure. Aristotle’s remarks on
the intellect (in E.N. X) are subject to more than one
interpretation, but he probably intended only to ex-
press a view about the contributions made to the
value of the single best life by the three classes of
virtues, all of which are essential aspects of the best
life and each of which is an indispensable compo-
nent of the natural human good. He does not restrict
happiness, or even an especially high grade of it, to
a life of theoretical thinking withdrawn from social
and political involvement.
No summary can do justice to the richness and
perennial interest of Aristotle’s ethical theory. Wor-
thy of note are his conception of the study of ethics
as a practical endeavor, aimed not at theoretical
knowledge, but immediately at improving our lives;
his view that ethics is properly conceived, not as a
separate inquiry, but as part of political theory; and
his account of each virtue of character as achieved
by avoiding two opposed vices, and not a single one
in each case. Philosophers today continue to return
for stimulation and instruction to his discussions of
WEAKNESS OF WILL, FRIENDSHIP, and pleasure, among
many other topics.
See also: ARISTOTLE; CHARACTER; CIVIC GOOD AND
VIRTUE; COURAGE; DEMOCRITUS; DESIRE; EMOTIONS;
history of Western ethics: 2. Classical Greek
EPICURUS; EUDAIMONIA, -ISM; GOOD, THEORIES OF
THE; HAPPINESS; LOYALTY; MORAL REASONING;
MORAL RELATIVISM; NORMS; PASSION; PHRONESIS;
PLATO; PRACTICAL WISDOM; PROTAGORAS; REASONS
FOR ACTION; SELF-KNOWLEDGE; SOCRATES; SUBJEC-
TIVISM; TEMPERANCE; VIRTUES; VOLUNTARY ACTS;
WISDOM.
Bibliography
Articles on (and bibliographies of works by and about)
major figures mentioned in this entry may be found
elsewhere in this encyclopedia. Also of interest:
Annas, Julia. An Introduction to Plato’s Republic. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1981.
Cooper, John M. Reason and Human Good in Aristotle.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975.
———. Reason and Emotion: Essays on Ancient Moral
Psychology and Ethical Theory. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1999.
Guthrie, W. K. C. A History of Greek Philosophy. 3 vols.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962–1969.
Comprehensive scholarly survey; includes large bibli-
ography.
Kerferd, G. B. The Sophistic Movement. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981. Useful synthesis;
selective bibliography.
Rorty, Amelie O., ed. Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics. Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1981. Good articles
by leading philosophical scholars; covers most of the
major topics.
John M. Cooper
history of Western ethics:
3. Hellenistic
The death of Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.E.)
marks the beginning of what is conventionally called
the Hellenistic period of Greek culture. A few
months later ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) too was
dead, a coincidence that enables intellectual histo-
rians to call post-Aristotelian philosophy Hellenistic,
distinguishing it thereby from the “classical” thought
of SOCRATES (c. 470–399 B.C.E.), PLATO (c. 430–
347 B.C.E.), and Aristotle himself. The distinction is
a useful one, but it needs to be handled with care.
In particular, it would be a mistake to assume that
ethics after Aristotle instantly underwent dramatic
developments corresponding to, or even directly re-
sponding to, the great political and social changes
which Alexander’s conquests introduced into Greece
696
and the eastern Mediterranean world. Two new Hel-
lenistic schools, STOICISM and EPICUREANISM, as it
turned out, can be regarded as the philosophies of
this epoch; but that judgment, though it must con-
cede something to the prescience of their founders,
is largely made with the benefit of hindsight. When
these schools began, around the year 300 B.C.E., they
were simply two among many competing options. It
is still less appropriate to imitate HEGEL (1770–
1831) and treat “Hellenistic” or “post-Aristotelian”
as periods of second-rate philosophy; that once fre-
quent, though fortunately now outmoded, practice
simply assumes what it has to prove. Ethical theory
in the Hellenistic period should be approached, at
least initially, as a continuation and critique of all
that went before. At the end of this survey, and only
then, will it be reasonable to ask: “What is Hellenis-
tic about Hellenistic ethics?”
An important reason for such caution is the se-
vere limitations on our knowledge of the whole his-
tory of Greek philosophy in the three centuries fol-
lowing the death of Aristotle. Complete works by
only two major philosophers of this period survive,
Theophrastus (c. 372–286 B.C.E.) (Aristotle’s suc-
cessor) and EPICURUS (341–270 B.C.E.), both of
them writing in its earliest phase. What has come
down from Theophrastus is largely scientific work;
his ethics is known only from scanty quotations and
summaries compiled centuries later. For the ethics
of Epicurus, as written by himself, we have one short
summary, Letter to Menoeceus, and a series of “car-
dinal doctrines” and other apothegems. Of Zeno of
Citium (c. 342–270 B.C.E.), the founder of Stoicism,
and other early Stoic philosophers, virtually nothing
verbatim has been preserved. Still less is transmitted
about most of the remaining Hellenistic philoso-
phers—Plato’s successors in the Academy, the skep-
tical Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360–270 B.C.E.), the Cyrenaic
and Elean (or Eretrian) schools. Only in the case of
the CYNICS, the least theoretical of all Hellenistic
philosophers, can we be fairly confident of knowing
most of what there was to be known.
This is not to say that a history of Hellenistic
ethics cannot be written. For Stoicism and Epicu-
reanism the record is extensive, but much of it was
compiled by CICERO (106–43 B.C.E.) and later Ro-
man and Greek authors. Their own preoccupations
and purposes color the way they present the mate-
rial. These later sources (the Epicurean poet LUCRE-
TIUS [c. 95–c. 55 B.C.E.] is a great exception) are

sometimes hostile to the doctrines they record. Even
when they quote a Hellenistic philosopher, they may
slant his words and misrepresent or misunderstand
his original context. Only rarely do they analyse con-
cepts in depth or record detailed arguments. We can,
of course, draw on the copious writings of the Ro-
man Stoics, SENECA (c. 4 B.C.E.– C.E. 65), MARCUS
AURELIUS (C.E. 121–180), Arrian’s (C.E. 95–180)
record of EPICTETUS (C.E. c. 55–c. 135), and a pu-
pil’s record of Musonius Rufus (C.E. c. 30–c. 100);
but in doing so, it is necessary to remember that they
were as distant from the Hellenistic origins of Stoi-
cism as we are from DESCARTES (1596–1650).
The history of Hellenistic ethics, then, has to be
a conjectural reconstruction. It must not be pre-
judged by its Roman appearances, nor should the
shortcomings of our sources be retrojected onto the
philosophers themselves. However, provided we re-
member that we cannot read the Hellenistic philos-
ophers as we read Plato and Aristotle, the tenor and
developments of ethics during this period can be
sketched with a fair measure of accuracy.
The Socratic Legacy
An unqualified distinction between “classical”
and “Hellenistic” ethics is precluded by the fact that
the latter no less than the former was decisively
shaped by the life and thought of Socrates. The mod-
ern image of Socratic ethics is largely Plato’s crea-
tion, briefly supplemented by Aristotle. But Plato
was only one of several philosophers who knew Soc-
rates and developed an ethical position deemed So-
cratic in inspiration. The others include Antisthenes
(c. 445–c. 360 B.C.E.), Aristippus (fl. c. 400 B.C.E.),
and Phaedo (fl. c. 370 B.C.E.). Of these, only Phaedo
perhaps actually founded a school, at Elis in the Pel-
oponnese; but Antisthenes, if he did not actually
originate Cynicism, was believed to have decisively
influenced the Cynic Diogenes (d. c. 323 B.C.E.); and
Aristippus inspired the Cyrenaic school, probably
established by his grandson. All these movements,
though pre-Hellenistic in origin, were still influential
by 300 B.C.E.
Modern scholars call the Cynics, CYRENAICS, and
Eleans “the minor Socratics,” but how minor were
they in the eyes of their contemporaries? Minor for
sure, if one counts philosophical stature by the stan-
dards of Platonic conceptual nuances and argument.
But, for a more rounded assessment, it is necessary
697
history of Western ethics: 3. Hellenistic
to reckon with the complexity of Socrates, and with
legitimate differences in interpreting his ethical sig-
nificance. Xenophon (c. 435–354 B.C.E.), who re-
corded his impressions of Socrates at length, was
largely insensitive to the philosophical subtleties
that Plato grasped. Yet it is Xenophon who, in a few
lines, probably best captures the paradigmatic chal-
lenge of Socrates, as this was perceived across the
board. “Socrates,” he says, “was the most self-
controlled of all men over sex and bodily appetite,
the most resilient in relation to winter and summer
and all exertions, and so trained for needing mod-
erate amounts that he was satisfied when he had only
little” (Memorabilia 1.2.1). Plato’s Socrates is con-
sistent with this, but Xenophon, unlike Plato, em-
phasizes Socrates’ SELF-CONTROL as his cardinal
attribute.
Xenophon had little aptitude for ethical theory,
but his Socrates, no less than Plato’s, is a challenge
to theory, an invitation to ask what it was about this
man, his beliefs and desires, that made him excep-
tional. And exceptional he was in the Greek tradi-
tion; it is impossible to find any pre-Socratic exam-
ples of this degree of self-mastery. Such autonomy,
grounded in a rational understanding of what a per-
son needs in order to flourish, was taken up by the
Cynics and by the Cyrenaics. The Cynic professes
contempt for everything but reason. Under the guide
of reason he can train himself to live independently
of everything that is not “natural,” free from stan-
dard constraints and CONVENTIONS. The Cyrenaic,
though his goal is the PLEASURE of the moment, is
equally committed to maintaining complete self-
control in all circumstances. (If Aristippus justified
his HEDONISM by Socratic example, he may have
been inspired by the kind of discussion Plato pro-
vides at the end of the Protagoras.)
Three other well-attested concerns of Socrates, in
addition to the rule of reason, were crucial to these
Socratic schools. First, his insistence that the VIR-
TUES of WISDOM, justice, COURAGE, and TEMPER-
ANCE are essential, either intrinsically or instru-
mentally, to human HAPPINESS; second, his lack of
respect for convention per se as a ground for ethical
judgment; and third, his exclusively ethical orienta-
tion as a philosopher. In this last respect the Cynics,
and the Cyrenaic and Elean schools, could claim to
be more faithful interpreters of the life and philos-
ophy of Socrates than Plato and Aristotle were,
history of Western ethics: 3. Hellenistic
whose schools included all kinds of studies that Soc-
rates was believed to have deprecated.
As briefly characterised here, these Socratic phi-
losophers may seem more interested in specifying
the conditions for an individual’s happiness than in
addressing the concerns of society or justifying re-
spect for another’s good. But Greek ethics quite
generally is eudaimonist; that is to say, it starts
from a consideration of what is good for the agent
and includes “morality” (respect for another’s
good) by deeming ethical virtue to be the or an es-
sential condition of the agent’s happiness. (The pre-
cise relation of virtue to happiness is one of the
major controversies in Hellenistic ethics.) Apart
from this, the paradigmatic Socrates, as illustrated
above, was clearly intended to serve as a model for
imitation, and thereby an aid to others to achieve
happiness.
The Hellenistic world inherited this notion of a
“wise man,” perfected in a given philosophy. His
precise form varied with the differences of each
school, but he was in all cases a Socrates-like figure,
meaning that he was a model of rationality, self-
sufficiency, virtue, and autonomy. This combination
of qualities, to which should be added his internal-
izing all that was good for a human being, provided
the formula of ethical EXCELLENCE that had para-
mount appeal in this period. It was clearly appro-
priate to the ideals of Epicureanism, “an untroubled
life,” and Stoicism, “a smoothly flowing life.” Each
of these specifically Hellenistic philosophies set out
conditions for happiness that made it independent
of chance and uncontrollable circumstances. Yet the
model itself was Socratic and thus pre-Hellenistic.
The Socratic legacy is decisive evidence for con-
tinuity between classical and Hellenistic ethics.
Cynics, Cyrenaics, and Eleans transmitted their pop-
ularised versions of it into post-Aristotelian philos-
ophy. But to anyone interested in more systematic
and rigorous thought, these philosophies could not
prove satisfying. The Eleans faded out, leaving vir-
tually no record. The Cynics, after influencing the
beginnings of Stoicism, ceased to exist as an inde-
pendent movement for several centuries. And the
Cyrenaics were soon ousted as the hedonist option
in ethics by the Epicureans. In addition, there was
an important, though short-lived, challenge to all
theory—Pyrrhonism.
698
Pyrrhonism
Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360–c. 270 B.C.E.) is a bridge
figure, old enough to have accompanied Alexander
the Great to India, but looking forward, in his influ-
ence, to the new movements in Hellenistic thought.
Some Greek historians of philosophy tried to link
him to the Socratic tradition. Although that is prob-
ably incorrect, he can appropriately be related to
“the Socratic legacy.”
Like Socrates, Pyrrho wrote nothing, so we are
dependent for the little that is known about him on
his publicist, Timon of Phlius (c. 320–c. 230 B.C.E.),
and an unreliable biographical tradition. Pyrrho’s
chief ethical importance consists in connections he
is said to have drawn between happiness, episte-
mology, and nature (objective reality). He urged that
happiness depends on how we dispose ourselves to
nature. However, nature is completely unknowable,
and therefore the attitude we should take toward it
is one of complete suspension of judgment. Thereby
we shall attain happiness in the form of tranquillity.
Timon characterises Pyrrho himself as someone
who had fully achieved this state. Pyrrho does not
accept that anything is good or bad by nature. He
achieves serenity precisely by committing himself to
nothing. This radical attitude liberates him from fear
and DESIRE. He governs his life by what he takes to
be mere “appearance,” unconcerned about what, if
anything, it is an appearance of. Whether someone
can in fact live a life of radical skepticism became
an issue that was soon to be debated between Stoics
and Academics. Pyrrho’s importance for Hellenistic
ethics consists in his raising the question at the be-
ginning of the period. In his concern to undermine
baseless opinions and unjustified emotional reac-
tions, he has an affinity to Socrates, and anticipates
the Stoics and Epicureans. His supreme evaluation
of tranquillity also foreshadows their ethical ideals.
Important though these connections are, Pyrrho’s
greatest significance for Hellenistic ethics lies in his
linking that field of inquiry to philosophy of nature
and epistemology. Like Plato, and to a more limited
extent Aristotle, but unlike Socrates and the Cynics,
Pyrrho held that ethics cannot be isolated from an
understanding of how the physical world impinges
on us. Although he interpreted that understanding
in wholly negative terms, he set an agenda which
other philosophers, dissatisfied with skepticism,

could use positively. That point was taken by the
Stoics and the Epicureans. They insisted that knowl-
edge is possible, and that what we can know about
the way the world is structured bears directly on our
own good, on how we should dispose ourselves to
the world. Thus their ethical ideals, though impor-
tantly similar to one or other of the Socratic options,
were given a comprehensive philosophical ground-
ing far more ambitious than anything available in the
Socratic legacy itself.
Ethics in the Hellenistic Academy and Lyceum
From what has just been said it might appear that
the schools best fitted to develop ethical theory in
the Hellenistic world were not the Stoic and Epicu-
rean newcomers but those founded by Plato and Ar-
istotle. It is these philosophers, after all, who had
reflected most deeply on Socrates’ contributions and
elaborated moral philosophy in ways well grounded
in PSYCHOLOGY and an understanding of where hu-
man beings fit within the world. In fact, however,
the history of the Hellenistic Academy and Lyceum
underlines the fact which has already been stressed
in this survey—what had greatest appeal for this
later period was an ethical theory which would give
individuals reasons to believe that they could secure
complete control over their own happiness in the
world here and now. Plato and Aristotle stop short
of such an ambitious undertaking. Imperfection is
endemic to the physical world, as Plato conceived of
it, and to embodied humanity. Aristotle, though the
conditions he specifies for happiness are designed to
secure its self-sufficiency, stops short of making it
invulnerable to fortune: happiness, and the exercise
of virtue (its prime constituent), require adequate
provision of goods that may fall outside the individ-
ual’s control.
This realism (as it may seem to us) was not a
recipe for success in Hellenistic ethics. Aristotle’s
successor, Theophrastus, claimed that “the whole
authority of philosophy consists in securing a happy
life”; yet he was notorious for conceding the power
of fortune to wreck happiness, for allowing chance
to warp CHARACTER, for granting propriety to cer-
tain passions, and for saying that virtue could be
lost. Unlike the Stoics, who made virtue the only
constituent of happiness, Theophrastus and his suc-
699
history of Western ethics: 3. Hellenistic
cessors opted for a goal which included bodily and
external goods as well.
At the end of the Hellenistic period, Cicero, in his
book De finibus bonorum et malorum, drew on a
version of Theophrastus’s theory and used it to criti-
cize what he took to be the excesses and shortcom-
ings of Stoic ethics. But, so far as our record goes,
the ethics of Theophrastus and his Peripatetic suc-
cessors were insignificant for most of the period.
Their modest recipe for happiness did not accord
well with the more challenging interpretations of the
Socratic legacy. Moreover, Aristotle himself is hardly
Socratic in his respectful assessments of conven-
tional values, and some of his successors were ex-
plicitly critical of the life of Socrates. Yet what they
probably disliked in Socrates—his unconventional-
ism, his antipathy to purely scientific research, his
asceticism—were precisely the qualities that Stoics
and Epicureans were successful in placing at the top
of the ethical agenda.
It is important to note two further facts about the
Hellenistic Lyceum. First, owing to Aristotle’s Mac-
edonian origins the school became unpopular at
Athens, which was now under Macedonian control.
Second, it is doubtful whether Aristotle’s ethical
treatises—the ones that we possess—were accessi-
ble to general readership throughout most of the
Hellenistic period. Epicurus and Zeno probably had
a general idea of Aristotle’s ethical theory; but his
detailed studies were not edited and published be-
fore the middle years of the first century B.C.E.
As to the Hellenistic Academy, its contributions
to ethics bring us back once again to the Socratic
legacy. After Plato’s death in 347 B.C.E. his imme-
diate successors, Speusippus (c. 394–336 B.C.E.)
and Xenocrates (396–314 B.C.E.), concentrated on
a systematic exposition of ideas, especially in meta-
physics, that Plato had hinted at rather than elabo-
rated. The Socratic legacy, so far as we can tell, was
not their concern. There then occurred in the Acad-
emy a period, from about 314–270 B.C.E., during
which virtually nothing is known about its activities.
When the record resumes, the school is headed by
Arcesilaus (316–241 B.C.E.). Under his initiative,
the Academy abandoned all interest in doctrinal phi-
losophy and became a school of radical skepticism.
This dramatic shift of orientation is one of the most
intriguing events in Greek philosophy. We shall
probably never fully understand its rationale, but
history of Western ethics: 3. Hellenistic
what was at stake certainly falls within the scope of
Hellenistic ethics and helps in understanding its gen-
eral tendency.
As interpreted by Arcesilaus, the upshot of Plato’s
philosophy is the thesis that nothing can be known.
Arcesilaus presented himself as a skeptical Socrates;
he would argue against any proposition presented to
him with the object of showing that neither its affir-
mation nor its negation was justified, and so assent
should be withheld. He and his successors, there-
fore, came to be known as “those who suspend
judgment about everything.” Our sources describe
Academic epoche not simply as the only rational re-
sponse to the impossibility of knowledge, but also
as “the right and honourable response for a wise
man.” It is, in other words, an ethical attitude.
Arcesilaus developed his philosophy, at least in
part, as a critique of Stoic dogmatism. Criticized in
turn by the Stoics for “making life impossible,” he
and his successors responded by arguing that it is
possible to live a rational life without fully assenting
to anything. The details are too complex to be sum-
marised here. What needs to be emphasised is Ar-
cesilaus’s concern to return the Academy to the So-
cratic legacy, albeit a very different interpretation
from that adopted by the other Socratic schools. As
a Platonist, Arcesilaus was certainly original in his
skepticism. But his immediate Academic predeces-
sors, it seems, had already begun to regard the life
and ethics of Socrates as the key to Platonism, in
reaction against the scholarly exegesis of Plato prac-
tised by Speusippus and Xenocrates.
For an adequate introduction to Epicureanism
and Stoicism one needs to be aware of all the ethical
alternatives that have just been outlined. Epicurus
and Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, were familiar
with the preceding tradition in ethics, though their
knowledge of Aristotle may have been only cursory
and they were a generation older than Arcesilaus.
Their theories should be approached as rival at-
tempts to present the best rationale for happiness in
the Hellenistic world.
Epicureanism
Considered purely as an ethical theory, Epicure-
anism is deceptively simple. Like the Cyrenaics,
Epicurus identified goodness with pleasure, but he
disagreed with their concentration on the bodily
pleasure of the moment. Epicurus was as committed
700
as Aristotle had been to specifying conditions for
enduring happiness. He grounded these in the fol-
lowing theses: first, mental pleasure is preferable to
bodily pleasure since, through recollection and an-
ticipation, it is longer lasting and can thus serve to
counterbalance present pain. Second, a rational cal-
culus of the sources of pleasure and pain makes it
possible to live a life in which long-term pleasure
predominates over short-term pain. Third, absence
of pain is pleasure, and pleasure cannot increase
once absence of pain has supervened. (This third
thesis is crucial, since it enables Epicurus to infer
that “we need nothing once the pain of want has
been removed.”) Fourth, only those desires that are
“necessary and natural” need to be satisfied. Fifth,
although pleasure is the only intrinsic good, happi-
ness also requires PRUDENCE and the other ethical
virtues as instrumental goods, “for the virtues are
naturally linked with living pleasurably, and living
pleasurably is inseparable from them.”
That, in essence, is the basis of Epicurean
ethics—a life of pleasurable self-sufficiency which
excludes the fulfilment of any desires that could is-
sue in wrongdoing (cf. the Socratic legacy). Yet if
that were all, Epicureanism would differ little from
some of the proposals made by the later Cyrenaics.
In fact, the official goal of Epicureanism is not plea-
sure or even absence of pain, but “freedom from dis-
turbance” (as with Pyrrho, whom Epicurus is said to
have admired). It is this term which brings us to
what is most distinctive about Epicurean ethics—a
promise to deliver happiness by removing the prin-
cipal causes of unhappiness. These consist in two
kinds of false beliefs: one set of these is misassess-
ment of the goods/pleasures that we need and the
bad things/pains we have to endure. The other set
moves beyond ethics to two facts about the world—
“the gods present no fears, and death no worries.”
Elaborating the physics of Democritus (c. 460–c.
370 B.C.E.), Epicurus argued that the world consists
simply of matter in motion. There are gods, but our
correct concept of them as blissful and immortal ex-
cludes their having any interest in human affairs and
the world’s organisation. The world has no purpose,
and its processes, though amenable to scientific in-
vestigation, are only accidentally conducive to hu-
man life. Human beings, like all other complex sub-
stances, are impermanent composites of atoms. At
death our atoms are dissipated, thereby excluding
any possibility of a subsequent existence. Thus

atomic physics removes all grounds for fearing the
gods or fearing DEATH.
Human beings, then, have a short span of exis-
tence in a world which is irreducibly neutral in
value. Once errors about unhappiness are removed,
Epicurus thinks that reason can guide our natural
desire for pleasure and natural aversion to pain into
criteria that enable us to live tranquil lives. Tran-
quillity, however, crucially depends on limiting de-
sires, as specified above. In particular, it is essential
to recognise the purely ad hoc or conventional status
of political arrangements, and not to seek power as
a natural desirable. The wise Epicurean lives “qui-
etly,” augmenting his security and happiness by as-
sociation with like-minded friends.
Stoicism
The Epicureans claimed a greater originality for
their ethics than was justified. The Stoics, by con-
trast, were willing to be called “Socratics.” When
Zeno began teaching in the Stoa Poikile at Athens
(the “Painted Colonnade” which eventually gave its
name to the school) his ethical position had much
in common with that of the Cynics’ Socrates. Like
the Cynics, Zeno held that happiness is determined
not by pleasure or the acquisition of any circum-
stantial “goods” but solely by the cultivation of rea-
son. The cultivation of reason, which constitutes the
perfection of human nature, manifests itself in moral
knowledge or a set of virtues such that a truly ra-
tional person will be consistently wise, just, coura-
geous, and temperate. Happiness, generated solely
by virtue, is an absolute state, which cannot be aug-
mented or diminished by anything else. Equipped
with virtue, a Stoic sage possesses all that is good.
His ethical character gives him the capacity to “flow
smoothly through life.”
Another way of describing the Stoics’ ethical ideal
is “life in agreement with nature.” The only nature
that had interested Socrates was human. Zeno, how-
ever, was as concerned as Epicurus had been to in-
vestigate the position of human beings within the
world at large, though he arrived at diametrically
opposite conclusions. According to orthodox Stoi-
cism, the physical world is a unitary living being,
animated and organised throughout by a power that
they termed god, or reason (logos), or divine
“breath” (pneuma). The physical world is not an ac-
cident, but a necessary consequence of a super-
701
history of Western ethics: 3. Hellenistic
human intelligence that has designed it to be the best
possible structure for its human inhabitants. As be-
ings whose natures are rational, we are “parts” of
the divine intelligence. To live “in agreement with
nature” is not only to perfect one’s humanness, but
to harmonise oneself with, and to accept, everything
that happens; for everything that happens, in the last
analysis, is part of the grand design.
The Stoics elaborated their ethical theory in great
detail. They made important contributions to such
topics as the relation between ACTION and desire, the
distinction between intentions and results, and the
analysis of emotions. But for the purpose of this sur-
vey, what matters most is to emphasise the two as-
pects of “living in agreement with nature.” In Epi-
cureanism, as was said above, the physical world is
void of purpose, value, and rational direction; it pro-
vides no reason for living in any particular way. In
Stoicism, as in Plato, goodness and harmony are
taken to be facts of nature. An ethically good char-
acter is a microcosm of the divine order manifest in
the teleological workings of divine reason.
A Stoic, then, is someone for whom the world at
large has the structure of a well-ordered city. This
structure transcends conventional political arrange-
ments just as Stoic values transcend the significance
conventionally accorded to such things as health,
wealth, and fame as conditions of happiness. Stoics
denied that these are “good” and their opposites
“bad.” They admitted the naturalness and reason-
ableness of preferring the former to the latter, but
insisted that happiness is independent of them.
Over the centuries Stoic ethics underwent various
modifications. Its principal ethical theses were often
presented in isolation from the macroscopic dimen-
sion outlined above. That has been emphasised here
because it seems to be central to understanding the
initial appeal of the philosophy for the Hellenistic
epoch. Whereas Epicurean ethics involves a retreat
from politics, Stoicism invites its practitioners to re-
gard themselves as “citizens of the world.”
What Is Hellenistic about Hellenistic Ethics?
Stoicism and Epicureanism are the first Greek
philosophies that clearly specify and identify their
adherents’ complete outlook on the world. As such,
they have much in common with religions, political
parties, and other such organisations. If someone is
a committed Stoic or an Epicurean, you know much
history of Western ethics: 3. Hellenistic
more about that person than would be conveyed by
“Platonist” or “Aristotelian.” With the benefit of
hindsight it seems certain that this comprehensive
orientation gave them the benefit over their ethical
rivals. The two new schools offered people in the
Hellenistic world a radical choice, not only between
pleasure or virtue as the supreme good but also be-
tween ways of understanding the kind of world in
which they were situated. Plato and Aristotle had
investigated all this too, but their ethics, especially
Aristotle’s, assumes a political context that was in-
sufficiently internationalist and open-ended for the
Hellenistic world. One of the salient features of Hel-
lenistic ethics is its detachment from practical poli-
tics and from the male dominance, ethnic superior-
ity, and prestige attaching to lineage, status, and
wealth of the classical Greek city-state.
INDIVIDUALISM and cosmopolitanism are often,
and rightly, regarded as distinguishing features of
the Hellenistic world. Another of its frequently
noted characteristics is an obsession with the vaga-
ries of fortune. Epicureans and Stoics alike offered
prescriptions for happiness that were applicable to
anyone in any place and which made minimalist de-
mands on circumstances. In either system individual
persons take RESPONSIBILITY for their own happi-
ness. These last two points, as has been shown, were
by no means new; they formed part of the Socratic
legacy. But most of his immediate followers, one may
conjecture, lacked his passionate commitment to en-
couraging people to be more concerned about their
souls than their bodies. Although organised political
action was not part of the Stoic and Epicurean
agenda, both philosophies owed much of their suc-
cess to the fact that they were founded by men of
charisma and consistency similar to Socrates. Zeno
and Epicurus were not simply ethical theorists. They
appear to have lived the principles that they taught,
and thus they helped authorise the Western tradi-
tion’s conception of philosophy as ars vitae, “the art
of living.”
See also: AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; CONVEN-
TIONS; COSMOPOLITAN ETHICS; COURAGE; CYNICS;
CYRENAICS; EMOTION; EPICUREANISM; EPICURUS;
EUDAIMONIA, -ISM; EXCELLENCE; FAIRNESS; HAPPI-
NESS; HEDONISM; HISTORY OF WESTERN ETHICS: 2;
INDIVIDUALISM; INTENTION; METAPHYSICS AND EPIS-
TEMOLOGY; MORAL REASONING; NATURE AND ETHICS;
PERFECTIONISM; PLEASURE; PRUDENCE; SELF-CONTROL;
702
SKEPTICISM IN ANCIENT ETHICS; SOCRATES; STOI-
CISM; TEMPERANCE; VIRTUES; WISDOM.
Bibliography
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A. A. Long
history of Western ethics:
4. Roman
As a result of its conquest of Greek-speaking peoples
during the second century B.C.E., the Roman Repub-
lic became open to influence from all aspects of Hel-
lenistic culture, including philosophy. The Romans
had no indigenous philosophical tradition, and their
government’s initial attitude to visiting Greek phi-
losophers was hostile. When three of them came
on an embassy from Athens to Rome in 155 B.C.E.
and lectured there, the conservative politician Cato
(234–149 B.C.E.) persuaded the Senate to settle the
diplomatic business as quickly as possible, “so that
these men may return to their schools and lecture to
the sons of Greece, while the youth of Rome give
ear to their laws and magistrates, as in the past”
(Plutarch, Cato maior 22). Greek philosophers did
not set up schools at Rome during the Republican
period, but many patrician Romans, unlike Cato,
were eager to patronize them in private and employ
them as tutors to their sons. A few Romans in the
first century B.C.E.—CICERO (106–43 B.C.E.) is the
conspicuous example—completed their education
by studying at philosophical schools in Athens, thus
acquiring fluency in Greek and a lifetime interest in
the subject. Such study included a practical element.
Rhetoric was essential to the education of ambitious
Romans. Greek philosophy provided training in ar-
gument and conceptual refinement that could im-
press a Roman audience.
Independently of Greece, however, Rome had a
strongly entrenched moral tradition. It was concern
for the preservation of that tradition which moti-
703
history of Western ethics: 4. Roman
vated Cato’s fears of what philosophers might do to
the youth of Rome. “Youth” here signifies young
men, since the central concept of Roman ethics was
virtus, literally “manliness,” a term derived from the
word for man, vir. Although virtus could be used to
refer to the virtue of women as well as men, its male
reference predominated in Roman culture, so that
even Cicero, familiar though he was with an un-
gendered notion of virtue, stresses the etymology of
virtus, and observes that it stands above all for for-
titude (man’s special excellence, Tusculan disputa-
tions 2.43). Virtus was the decisive mark of an in-
dividual man’s merit, earned by the capacity and
desire to perform great deeds on behalf of country
and FAMILY. It was the spur to achieve “glory,” and
glory was its reward. As an early Roman epigram
puts the point, “All virtus lies dormant unless its
fame is spread abroad.” A “good man” was also ex-
pected to be “wise” or “intelligent,” “just,” “dutiful,”
“temperate,” etc. These attributes, though not for-
mal “parts” of virtus, were assumed to go along with
it. In its original usage, virtus did not imply wealth
or noble birth; for a later Cato the “good man” is
paradigmatically a farmer.
What makes Roman ethics a topic of conceptual
interest is the contact that developed between this
cluster of indigenous ideas and Greek moral philos-
ophy, especially STOICISM. By the time that Romans
began to transmit Greek philosophy in Latin (the
middle of the first century B.C.E.), political life in
Italy was in total disarray. The state had been rav-
aged for decades by civic strife, caused among other
things by the inability of the central government to
resist the conflicts between rival military leaders.
These civil wars ended in the brief dictatorship (48–
44 B.C.E.) of Julius Caesar (100 or 102–44 B.C.E.),
which was followed, after further strife, by the au-
tocracy of his great-nephew and adopted heir, Oc-
tavian (63 B.C.E.– C.E. 14) who, under the name Au-
gustus, initiated the era we call the Roman Empire.
The two pioneers of philosophical writing in Latin,
LUCRETIUS (c. 95–c. 55 B.C.E.) and Cicero, who
lived through the turbulence of the period, incor-
porate ethical observations on it. Lucretius designed
his great poem, De rerum natura (On the Nature of
Things), as a detailed lesson in Epicurean philoso-
phy of nature. Cicero, in an ambitious series of es-
says, expounded many of the doctrines of the Hel-
lenistic schools of philosophy. The two authors were
not professional philosophers, and present them-
history of Western ethics: 4. Roman
selves, in the main, as disseminators of this Greek
material. Yet at many points they convey their own
viewpoint on the contemporary world, or rather,
they use their philosophical material as a vehicle for
commenting on the contemporary corruption of Ro-
man values. It was the political crisis of the Roman
Republic that primarily stimulated ethical reflection
at Rome.
To understand why this was so, it is necessary to
return to the moral tradition outlined above. Rec-
ognition, HONOR, praise, fame—these were not only
the anticipated rewards of virtus; the acquisition of
them was an essential part of being a “good man.”
The historian Sallust (86–34 B.C.E.), a contempo-
rary of Cicero, in his War with Catiline attributes
the rise of Rome to “passion for glory,” and writes
(section 2.9): “That man seems to me truly alive who
is devoted to some enterprise and intent on gaining
the reputation for a glorious deed or good conduct.”
This ideology stimulated intense competitiveness.
Cato’s frugal farmers, if they ever existed, were suc-
ceeded, as our historical record makes plain, by men
who strove to outdo one another in wealth, POWER,
and nobility of birth. None of these was a constituent
of the ideal virtus, but the external recognition that
this quality demanded was readily taken to be an end
in itself. In Rome, where the potentially powerful
were raised with the ambition of equaling and out-
doing their ancestors, PASSION for glory often super-
seded virtus and its ethical accompaniments. In the
lives of such as Pompey (106–48 B.C.E.) and Caesar
it was strong enough to provoke civil war.
That is the point that Cicero, drawing on Stoicism
in his De officiis (On Duties), constantly stresses.
There he aligns Stoic virtue with Roman virtus, as
exemplified in men of the past who kept their word
( fides), who displayed unflinching rectitude in their
family relationships (pietas), and who were no less
dutiful in their public life. In Stoicizing Roman vir-
tus, he seeks to detach it from “the passion for
glory,” which, as he argues, was what drove the likes
of Julius Caesar “to regard the destruction of law and
liberty as something glorious.” Cicero was too much
an ambitious Roman himself to be capable of fully
separating praiseworthy action from actual praise.
Nonetheless, he succeeded in articulating a concept
of honestum, “moral goodness,” which treated the
conventionally praiseworthy aspects of virtus as
things that are desirable just for their own sake.
Traditional Roman virtus was not, or was not an-
704
alyzed as being, a moral CHARACTER grounded in
articulated reasons. In its idealized form, however,
it did imply NORMS of conduct aimed at promoting
and respecting another’s good. What the tradition-
ally “good man” does he does, in respect of his vir-
tus, for others—for state, family, friends. There is
no suggestion that he himself flourishes or achieves
well-being thereby. This is a decisive contrast with
Greek philosophy in which arete (ethical virtue) is
taken to be constitutive of, or at least instrumental
to, HAPPINESS. Virgil’s (70–19 B.C.E.) Aeneas aban-
dons Dido because their love affair interferes with
his mission as the founder of Rome. In that episode
Virgil (writing under Augustus and after Cicero) in-
dicates the cost to his hero and heroine in terms of
personal satisfaction. Aeneas exemplifies traditional
virtus, but with one significant difference, which
may reflect Cicero’s influence: He is motivated by
duty and a sense of destiny, not by desire for glory.
In that respect Aeneas has more in common with
Stoicism than with the prephilosophical tradition at
Rome.
Aeneas is invested with a moral character. He
does not validate his actions by reference to the ap-
proval of his peers, but by his perception of what is
demanded of him as pius. This untranslatable epi-
thet is Virgil’s word for epitomizing his hero’s de-
votion to his divinely appointed role. Aeneas is not
represented as a philosopher, but he stands for a type
of person that the Romans may not have been able
to conceptualize without the help of Greek philos-
ophy—someone who has internalized his sense of
what he should do and who looks to that sense as
the monitor of his actions.
The Development of Roman Ethics
From what has been said above it should be clear
that the Romans, quite apart from Greek philoso-
phy, had a strong, though unsystematic, set of ethical
concepts. The traditional emphasis on virtus, while
rendered problematic by its link to public recogni-
tion, made Romans familiar with Stoicism receptive
to the doctrine that ethical virtue is sufficient by it-
self to constitute the summum bonum. In Stoicism
fame, wealth, and noble birth count as “preferable”
but as completely nonessential to human flourishing.
Thus Stoic ethics could serve as a means of justifying
part of the prephilosophical values, while also pro-
viding reasons for rejecting their dependence on ex-

ternal success and approval. In addition, the Stoics
had developed a doctrine of “proper functions” (ka-
thekonta), which served as MORAL RULES for deter-
mining how people should act in specific circum-
stances. These were grounded in a “reasonable”
understanding of human nature, from self-regarding
and from other-regarding perspectives. Indepen-
dently of Stoicism, the Romans had a concept that
they called officium. The term, like its English deriv-
ative “office,” signifies a person’s functions or roles,
and the conduct appropriate to the execution of
these. Romans who encountered Stoicism could
readily adapt the Stoic concept of “proper functions”
to their traditional view of propriety in the fulfilment
of offices they had undertaken.
In his De officiis (On Duties), which has already
been mentioned, Cicero seeks to do three things:
first, he expounds a series of appropriate actions,
grounding these in the four cardinal VIRTUES — WIS-
DOM, TEMPERANCE, COURAGE, and justice—which
are represented as the perfections of human nature.
Second, he argues that genuine conflict between mo-
rality and expediency is impossible. Third, he ex-
plores and disposes of apparent conflicts of this
kind. For the first two books he says he is following
the work of the Stoic philosopher Panaetius (c. 180–
109 B.C.E.). This last point is of great interest for the
history of Roman ethics. Panaetius, a Greek from
Rhodes, spent considerable time at Rome in the lat-
ter part of the second century B.C.E. He was patron-
ized there by two eminent Romans, Scipio Africanus
(Minor, 185–129 B.C.E.) and Laelius (fl. second cen-
tury B.C.E.), and there is good reason to think that
his experience of Rome influenced his interpretation
of Stoic ethics.
Originally, the main thrust of Stoic moral philos-
ophy was a radical Socraticism. Under Cynic influ-
ence, Zeno (342–270 B.C.E.) had developed a po-
litical theory which called in question the principal
INSTITUTIONS of Greek community life. In particular,
Zeno saw no basis in nature for private PROPERTY.
Some later Stoics, who will certainly have included
Panaetius, were embarrassed by Zeno’s extremism.
In De officiis, Cicero speaks contemptuously of the
CYNICS, and defends the right of persons to own
what they legally possess. What we can infer from
these remarks and from much else in his work is
Panaetius’s concern to tone down the radical ideal-
ism of earlier Stoicism and adapt the philosophy to
existing power structures. Although Cicero was no
705
history of Western ethics: 4. Roman
slavish copier of Panaetius, it seems clear that the
primary addressees of the latter’s model were the
Roman upper class, as they certainly were for Cicero
himself. This is not to say that Panaetius altered eth-
ical theory in an elitist direction. Earlier Stoics, un-
like the Epicureans, had stated that their wise man,
salva virtute, would engage in politics. What Pan-
aetius probably did was to emphasize the congru-
ence between a would-be Stoic’s ethical outlook and
practice and the ideal values of the Roman elite with
their emphasis on political service and achievement.
Traditional Roman virtus, as noted above, was
constantly in danger of corruption into a ruthless
drive for power and recognition. Cicero, almost cer-
tainly following Panaetius, provides a conceptual
framework to enable individuals to analyze their
own sense of who they are, and what is incumbent
on them (De officiis book 1, 107–17). Each of us,
he proposes, has “four identities” (or roles, perso-
nae). These are first, one’s identity as a human be-
ing, i.e., as a moral agent; second, one’s physical,
mental, and temperamental endowment; third, what
falls to one by chance or circumstance (the examples
given include public office, wealth, noble birth); and
fourth, “the most difficult question of all,” what we
choose for ourselves. The suggestion is that self-
analysis along these lines will ideally result in a dis-
position to act in a way that both respects general
ethical norms and, at the same time, fits the person
one is. People are explicitly required to reject any
objectives (for instance an exalted position) that do
not accord with their nature, i.e., objectives they are
not well equipped to fulfill. Implicit in this recom-
mendation is a rejection of externally given norms—
one thinks here of the standard career for ambitious
Romans—as necessarily appropriate to “who,” on
close analysis, “one is.”
Traditional Roman values had not depended on
introspective analysis and self-monitoring; a man’s
peers told him how he was doing. In this passage
from Cicero we witness the first Roman instance of
a concern with the “self” as moral AUTHORITY. Cic-
ero himself does not develop the point, probably be-
cause he saw no reason to detach himself from those
features of Roman tradition that he approved. For
Stoics under the Empire, on the other hand, care of
the “self” becomes the primary focus of ethics.
Though he wrote in Greek, Panaetius may rea-
sonably be regarded as the primary catalyst of “Ro-
man Stoicism.” In its earlier Greek form Stoicism
history of Western ethics: 4. Roman
had been a philosophy which grounded its ethics in
natural theology: humans should perfect their ra-
tionality, the essence of their human nature, because
perfected reason and the virtues that it constitutes
are the human counterpart to the harmony of nature
as directed by divine rationality. On the evidence of
Cicero’s De officiis Panaetius played down this
physical and theological dimension, fastening his at-
tention on human nature. (What little is known
about his physics suggests that it was largely hetero-
dox.) Whatever may have been his reasons for doing
so, the outcome, at least in Cicero’s adaptation of
his work, is a detailed system of moral rules,
grounded in general principles but elaborated ca-
suistically.
Cicero wrote De officiis shortly before his death,
as a victim of the civil wars, in 43 B.C.E. This work
has been emphasized here for three reasons. First, it
is his only philosophical essay which draws exclu-
sively on Stoicism. Cicero was officially an Aca-
demic, and elsewhere, though sympathetic to Stoi-
cism, he prefers not to commit himself to that
school’s doctrinal rigidity. Second, more than any
other of his essays, De officiis is firmly rooted in his
own political experience. It combines theory with
good and bad exempla from Roman history, which,
like the references to his own career, serve as a ral-
lying cry to moral and political rearmament. This
highly engaged tone, characteristically Roman in its
rhetoric, helps explain a third point—the great in-
fluence of the work on later periods, especially the
Renaissance, which viewed Cicero as a champion of
Republican LIBERTY.
For modern historians of ethics, Cicero’s most
valuable work, written shortly before De officiis, is
De finibus bonorum et malorum (Ultimates among
Goods and Evils). There he expounds and criticizes
the ethics of the Hellenistic schools, thus translating
these doctrines into Latin and providing precious in-
formation on what would otherwise be lost. Here
too Cicero’s Roman identity shows through, but this
work is less distinctive of Roman ethics than two
earlier essays he wrote, De republica (The Republic)
and De legibus (On Laws). In both of these books,
whose titles are modeled on PLATO (c. 430–347
B.C.E.), Cicero produces his own blend of Greek
ethics and Roman values.
The Roman flavor emerges most clearly in Cic-
ero’s focus on political well-being and improvement.
At the beginning of De republica he attacks Epicu-
706
rean retirement as a goal of life, urging that “nature”
impels human beings to devote themselves, no mat-
ter what the personal cost, “to defend the common
safety.” In the same context he takes “government”
to be the principal “use” of virtus, arguing that leg-
islators, rather than philosophers, have been the ef-
fective sources of morality. (Here one observes a
characteristic Roman impatience with ethical the-
ory.) In De legibus, however, he takes the analysis
back a stage further, seeking justification for law in
“philosophical” doctrines of human nature. Again
drawing on Stoicism, he identifies law with the per-
fection of reason. The universality of reason, as a
human endowment, makes law and justice “natu-
ral.” “Natural” law—as represented in the perfec-
tion of reason—is to be contrasted with the partic-
ular edicts of a society, which are often arbitrary and
unjust.
Cicero contributed to Roman ethics by enriching
the indigenous tradition with Greek philosophy; in
particular he used Greek philosophy, especially Sto-
icism, as a justification for traditional Roman values
and as a critique of what he took to be their contem-
porary perversion. In his political CONSERVATISM he
contrasts sharply with the Epicurean Lucretius.
Although the De rerum natura is primarily an ex-
position of Epicurean physics, Lucretius repeatedly
presents EPICURUS (341–270 B.C.E.) as an ethical
savior for the Rome of his own day. He invests Ep-
icurus with the title pater, a sure emblem of Roman
authority and also makes him the source of “paternal
precepts.” Unlike an ambitious Roman father, how-
ever, Lucretius’s Epicurus undermines the rationale
of COMPETITION and acquisitive values. Lucretius
sees fear of DEATH, which Epicurus had given rea-
sons for removing, as the principal cause of “greed,
and the blind passion for honors, which compel un-
happy men to transgress the limits of law . . . and
with exceeding effort to climb the pinnacle of
power” (book 3, 59–63). EPICUREANISM teaches
that all natural desires have their limits in the re-
moval of pain. Failure to recognize these limits is
responsible for the false goals characteristic of Ro-
man ambition, and for civil strife, ENVY, and rejec-
tion of the values that bind people to one another.
Lucretius shared Cicero’s sense that competitive-
ness was at the root of Rome’s current disasters. He
differs from Cicero in his explanations of this, and
in the apolitical nature of his solutions. Whereas
Cicero justifies pristine virtus, there never was such

a thing, according to Lucretius. He shows no respect
for traditional Roman values and their focus on civic
service. For Lucretius, there is only one way to sal-
vation—the philosophy of Epicurus. Liberated from
fear of death and RELIGION, unencumbered by
groundless desires for power and status, Epicureans
can live trouble-free lives, content with satisfying
their natural desires and enjoying the company of
their friends.
It should be clear from what has been said above
that this quietism did not sit well with the Roman
ethical tradition. Coming when it did however, at the
collapse of the Republic, Lucretius’s work was a sig-
nificant challenge to Roman values, whether in their
idealized or in their perverted manifestations. Al-
though a little later Horace (65–8 B.C.E.) flirts with
Epicureanism in some of his poems, Virgil’s Aeneas,
toiling at his destiny, is more representative of the
kind of reform that Cicero hoped to inject into Ro-
man ethics. Even when glory, earned in service to
the state, was played down as an ideal, reflective Ro-
mans found it very difficult to detach their ethical
thought from military and political activity. But with
the establishment of the Empire, public distinction
could never rival that of the Emperor himself. This
may be the main reason that ethics in this later pe-
riod (first two centuries C.E.) loses its strong con-
nection with politics and becomes highly introspec-
tive, focusing on the individual’s internal conditions
for happiness—the cultivation of a virtuous char-
acter, which will produce autonomy, invulnerability
to fortune, and tranquillity. These are the preoccu-
pations of the Roman Stoics SENECA (c. 4 B.C.E.– C.E.
65), EPICTETUS (c. 55–c. 135), and MARCUS AURE-
LIUS (121–180). They display a concern for self-
improvement and self-scrutiny which, though briefly
adumbrated by Cicero, harks back to SOCRATES (c.
470–399 B.C.E.) rather than to any Roman precedent.
Stoicism Under the Roman Empire
Some Romans who were Stoics under the Empire
risked or lost their lives as opponents of tyrannical
emperors. It is often believed that they were moti-
vated by their philosophy, but the connection cannot
be proved. Nothing in the theory of Stoicism re-
quires political martyrdom. The chief thrust of that
philosophy, as interpreted by its leading figures un-
der the Empire (named above), is an understanding
of how to conduct oneself rationally or reasonably
707
history of Western ethics: 4. Roman
at every waking moment in the world as it is, no
matter how fraught the circumstances may be, as
viewed by conventional notions of good and bad.
From time to time in their discourses they expound
details of Stoic ethics. Anyone unfamiliar with that
system would be able to reconstruct its principal
doctrines from their work. But they are less con-
cerned with theory than with practice, albeit prac-
tice grounded in basic Stoic principles. Although
their work is addressed to men not women, Seneca
makes it plain that a woman’s capacity for virtue is
equal to that of a man’s. Another Roman Stoic, Mu-
sonius Rufus (c. 30–c. 100 C.E.), developed that
point at length, arguing that women should have the
same education as men and that their virtues are no
different from men’s—a striking reversal of the tra-
ditional link between virtus and male gender, as
noted at the beginning of this survey.
Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius have
been underrated in modern times. (But see the sym-
pathetic references to them by Michel FOUCAULT
[1926–1984] and Charles TAYLOR.) What is per-
ceived as their “moralizing” tendency, though it ap-
pealed to earlier Europeans and Americans, does not
suit the modern analytical methods of ethics. Actu-
ally, however, “moralizing” is not, or not primarily,
what they do. They give that impression only when
their essentially interrogative and self-referential
style is ignored. These Stoics do not exclude them-
selves from their prescriptions. They should not be
read as telling the rest of the world how to behave,
but rather, as providing instruction in how to look
at oneself as a moral agent, how to review and ad-
judicate oneself, and how to test one’s ethical con-
sistency and INTEGRITY.
What this concern with the “self” amounts to can
best be indicated by a series of illustrations. In his
essay On Tranquillity of Mind, Seneca converses
with a man who is troubled by self-doubt and in-
ability to stick consistently to his own principles; he
is someone who, in Stoic parlance, has “made prog-
ress” but is still liable to “fall sick.” Seneca responds
to him by analyzing the sources of his condition and
the foundations of tranquillity. Much of his advice
may seem banal or homespun—learning how to
relax, comparing one’s own situation with that of
others, not setting one’s heart on implausible goals,
adaptation to circumstances, the cultivation of de-
tachment, and withdrawal into oneself. But the fa-
miliarity of such nostrums is precisely a mark of
history of Western ethics: 4. Roman
the Roman Stoics’ influence and their responsibility
for the popularized usage of the term “stoical.”
In the example just given Seneca seeks to improve
an individual’s view of himself. The assumption is
that people can conduct themselves well in the
world only if they have their beliefs and desires in
good shape, attuned to a proper sense of what they
can do and what it is not in their power to change.
There are two aspects to this “care for the self.” First,
as is clear from the example given, Seneca intends
to help his addressee to what we would call a better
state of “mental” health. Second, as in ancient phi-
losophy generally, “mental” health is “moral” health.
The route to happiness is the route to ethical virtue.
Tranquillity is not perceived by the Roman Stoics as
opting out of the world. To the contrary. It is that
state of mind which issues in an ability to react and
act well.
Epictetus constantly directs his interlocutors to
reflect on the limits of their autonomy, and to use
that understanding as a basis for shaping their out-
look: “Remembering the way the world is struc-
tured, one should proceed to educate oneself not in
order to change the conditions . . . but in order that,
things about us being as they are and as their nature
is, we ourselves may keep our attitude in tune with
what happens” (Discourses 1.12. 17). Marcus Au-
relius, in similar vein, focuses attention on himself:
“You should construct your life one action at a time,
and be content if each is effective, as far as possible;
and that it should be effective, no one at all can pre-
vent you. ‘But something from outside will obstruct.’
Nothing to stop your acting justly, temperately and
reasonably. ‘But perhaps some other activity will be
hindered.’ Well, by accepting the obstacle and grace-
fully changing to what is granted you, another ac-
tion is at once substituted which fits into the life-
construction I mentioned” (Meditations 8.32).
The life of which Marcus Aurelius speaks is lit-
erally his own. His Meditations, which he wrote in
Greek under the title “To Himself,” were not pub-
lished until centuries after his death, and may never
have been intended for anyone else to read. They
consist of a series of jottings, composed during his
arduous life as emperor which included long periods
of military service reluctantly but resolutely under-
taken. In their privacy his reflections are a unique
record of a Roman’s ethical life, but their purpose is
symptomatic of what Foucault has well called “tech-
nologies of the self.” Marcus was not simply keeping
708
a spiritual diary, a record of his thoughts. He wrote
in this way as a disciplinary exercise, to remind him-
self of his Stoic principles, to register his shortcom-
ings, to bolster his morale. There was Epicurean, as
well as Stoic authority, for training oneself in this
way: Epicurus had required his followers to memo-
rize maxims and constantly rehearse his principal
doctrines. At the time of Seneca and Marcus Aure-
lius, being an “administrator” of oneself (Foucault’s
expression) had become the center of ethics. Hence
the emphasis on meditation, note-taking, setting
time aside for reading and for letters to friends, re-
treating into the country. Hence too the repetitive
and sometimes censorious features of writing moral
philosophy at this time.
In a brief survey it is impossible to convey the
range and richness of ethical reflection to be found
in Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Here it
has seemed best to indicate their common interest
in modes of discourse and practices that provide in-
dividuals with ways of evaluating their lives and sit-
uations. As Stoics they take moral rules to be
grounded in human nature, but it is not what they
say about these rules that is chiefly interesting, but
the questions, answers, objections, and illustrations
they attach to these. Unlike Cicero, whose presen-
tation of ethics varies between dispassionate expo-
sition and the style of a public orator, these later
moralists let their thought emerge as if they are en-
gaging the reader in a conversation with a benevo-
lent, though intensely serious, mentor. By presenting
their ethics in this way, they provide models of what
it is to have a moral sensibility. Focusing as they do
on internal dialogue, they complete the shift, which
we see beginning in Cicero, from external criteria
and conventional norms to ethical principles that are
actually constitutive of the self. A deeper look into
their work would reveal its importance for the his-
tory of such concepts as CONSCIENCE and the will.
See also: AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; CICERO;
COMPETITION; CONSCIENCE; COURAGE; DELIBERA-
TION AND CHOICE; DUTY AND OBLIGATION; ELITE,
CONCEPT OF; EPICTETUS; EPICUREANISM; EPICURUS;
FAIRNESS; FIDELITY; HONOR; INTEGRITY; LUCRETIUS;
MARCUS AURELIUS; NATURAL LAW; NATURE AND
ETHICS; NEO-STOICISM; PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORAL-
ITY; SELF-KNOWLEDGE; SENECA; STOICISM; TEMPER-
ANCE; THEORY AND PRACTICE; VIRTUES; WISDOM.

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Foucault, Michel. Technologies of the Self. Edited by L. H.
Martin, H. Gutman, and P. H. Hutton. Amherst: Uni-
versity of Massachusetts Press, 1988. See especially for
the contributions of the Roman Stoics.
Griffin, Miriam T., and J. Barnes, eds. Philosophia Togata:
Essays on Philosophy and Roman Society. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1989. Specific aspects are well con-
sidered in this anthology.
Hadot, I. Seneca und die griechisch-römisch Tradition der
Seelenleitung. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969.
Hadot, P. The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus
Aurelius. Translated by Michael Chase. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
Kahn, Charles H. “Discovering the Will from Aristotle to
Augustine.” In The Question of Eclecticism, edited by
J. M. Dillon and A. A. Long. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1988. See for Roman Stoics.
Laks, A., and M. Schofield, eds. Justice and Generosity:
Studies in Hellenistic Social and Political Philosophy.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Con-
tains valuable chapters on Cicero and Seneca.
Long, A. A. “Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius.” In Ancient
Writers II, edited by T. J. Luce. New York: Scribner’s,
1982.
Marcus Aurelius. The “Meditations” of Marcus Aurelius
Antoninus. Translated by A. S. L. Farquharson; edited
and with introduction and notes by R. B. Rutherford.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Mitchell, T. N. “Cicero on the Moral Crisis of the Late
Republic.” Hermathena 136 (1984): 21–41.
Nussbaum, Martha. The Therapy of Desire: Theory and
Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1994.
Oppermann, H., ed. Römische Wertbegriffe. Darmstadt:
Wege des Forschang vol. 34, 1967. A valuable, though
709
history of Western ethics: 5. Early Medieval
somewhat dated, collection of articles on specific
notions.
Rist, John M. Stoic Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1969.
Rutherford, R. B. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: A
Study. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
Segal, C. Lucretius on Death and Anxiety: Poetry and Phi-
losophy in “De rerum natura”. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1990.
Seneca. Moral and Political Essays. Edited by J. Cooper
and J. Procopé. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995.
Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self. Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press, 1989. See for Roman Stoics.
Zeller, Eduard. A History of Eclecticism. Translated by
S. F. Alleyne. London, 1883. The only comprehensive
history, in one volume, of the material; seriously dated.
A. A. Long
history of Western ethics:
5. Early Medieval
“Medieval” and its cognates arose as terms of op-
probrium, used by the Italian humanists to charac-
terize more a style than an age. Hence it is difficult
at best to distinguish late antiquity from the early
middle ages. It is equally difficult to determine the
proper scope of “ethics,” the philosophical schools
of late antiquity having become purveyors of ways
of life in the broadest sense, not clearly to be distin-
guished from the more intellectually oriented ver-
sions of their religious rivals. This article will begin
with the emergence of philosophically informed re-
flection on the nature of life, its ends, and respon-
sibilities in the writings of the Latin Fathers and
close with the twelfth century, prior to the systematic
reintroduction and study of the Aristotelian corpus.
Patristic Foundations
Early medieval thought is indissolubly bound to
the seminal writings of the patristic period, roughly
those Christian writings produced from the second
through the sixth centuries. The ethical presuppo-
sitions inherited by the early fathers reflect the
broader intellectual milieu of late antiquity, with its
loose amalgam of Platonism, STOICISM, and popular
tradition, and it is this background which the early
medieval period inherits. In the Latin context it is
primarily the moral thought of CICERO (106–43
B.C.E.) and SENECA (c. 4 B.C.E.–c. C.E. 65) which
history of Western ethics: 5. Early Medieval
undergoes Christian interpretation. An influential
figure in this process of reinterpretation was Am-
brose of Milan (c. 340–397), whose work On the
Duties of the Clergy undertook to answer Cicero’s
De officiis and expound the relations of duty and
virtue to the blessed life promised by scripture.
The most influential of the Latin fathers, how-
ever, is AUGUSTINE of Hippo (354–430), who, in his
work On the Morals of the Catholic Church, rede-
fined the cardinal VIRTUES as forms of loving service
oriented toward God. In his Confessions Augustine
merged this account of the virtues with a neo-
Platonic telos for which earthly life is a pilgrimage
toward our true heavenly home. As pilgrims we
must undertake to serve God and our neighbor, tak-
ing scripture as our primary guide. Here again the
primary ethical injunction is to cultivate the virtues,
which discipline the individual to the proper use of
earthly things. Book 10 of the Confessions, for ex-
ample, indicates the ways in which the senses must
be disciplined to the service of God, and distin-
guishes the search for the saving knowledge of
God’s will from the vice of curiosity (chapter 35).
Augustine elaborated his political ethics in The
City of God. Just as the individual is a pilgrim, so is
the Church, that body made up of the faithful. The
church “militant,” making its way in the world, must
acknowledge that God has ordained the political or-
der for the restraint of WICKEDNESS and the protec-
tion of the good. This social order extends to the
faithful and the unfaithful alike, sustaining at least
the peace necessary for regular communal activity.
Christians must be willing, and make themselves
able, to undertake this necessary political activity
even to the extent of accepting the burdens of judge
and soldier.
In many shorter works, such as his treatise On
the Good of Marriage, Augustine demonstrated the
POWER of his notion of LOVE directed to the service
of God and neighbor to come to grips with matters
of practical morality. Rejecting PERFECTIONISM he
acknowledged the genuine goods of marriage, not
merely in begetting children and sacramentally le-
gitimating sex, but in establishing a permanent fel-
lowship between two people.
Augustine became the most influential of the
Latin Fathers in generating a broad moral vision, but
some mention must be made of the emergent INSTI-
TUTIONS which established and sustained the moral
world of the early Middle Ages: the penitential sys-
710
tem and the monastic ideal. As the fundamental
means for securing moral and spiritual well-being,
the penitential system and its attendant theology
pervade the early Middle Ages. To be in a state of
sin is to be excluded from the community of God
and the neighbor. To remain in a state of sin jeop-
ardizes the very possibility of eternal HAPPINESS.
Thus the sacrament of penance actively reflects the
early medieval vision of genuine human good, its re-
sponsibilities and the consequences of breaching the
proper order of society. The structure of penance
came to be systematized toward the end of the early
Middle Ages. Traditionally, penance has three com-
ponents. Essential for penance is contrition of the
heart: the person recognizes the sin and regrets it as
an EVIL. Contrition must be followed by confession;
by the early Middle Ages, this meant primarily the
private admission of sin to a priest. Finally, restitu-
tion is necessary for complete reintegration of the
individual into the community. Failure at any point
renders penance defective and its efficaciousness
suspect, at very best. The nature and relative gravity
of sins at a given period can be discerned from the
penitential literature that begins to emerge in the
sixth century.
Philosophically more interesting is the complex
MORAL PSYCHOLOGY presupposed by the penitential
system. Peccatum seems to retain its broader sense
of “mistake,” suggesting that it is not the DESIRE
which is evil, properly speaking, but the complex of
the desire, the understanding of that desire, and the
ACTION taken. Sin creates a disorder in the soul. The
sinner who is not depraved suffers and recognizes
the wickedness of the action as well as any of its
untoward consequences. Confession acknowledges
RESPONSIBILITY for the breach of order; restitution
reflects the desire to restore that order. This account
of penance points up two important aspects of early
medieval ethics. There was no hard-and-fast distinc-
tion between the public and the private, the ethical
and the political, or similar polarities. Further, the
complex relations between agent, community, and
God make it fruitless to characterize medieval ethics
as essentially teleological, deontological, or divine
command.
The complexity of the period emerges even more
clearly in the second pervasive institution, the mo-
nastic order. From the sixth century to the twelfth,
the centers of learning in western Europe were the
monasteries dedicated to the Rule (Regula Monâ-

chorum, of St. Benedict [c. 480–c. 547]). The Rule
proclaims itself a “school for beginners in the service
of the Lord.” As such, it emphasizes attaining HU-
MILITY through the practice of obedience. Of partic-
ular note is Benedict’s concept of the “ladder of hu-
mility” on which the monk ascends from fear of God
through the various subordinate virtues such as def-
erence and gravity to the twelfth degree “when the
monk’s inward humility appears outwardly in his
comportment” (Regula, chapter 5). From perfected
humility, the monk progresses to perfect CHARITY
and the spiritual power to confront the powers of
evil in mortal combat. Humility and charity, from the
monastic perspective, constitute primary virtues po-
tentially in conflict with the virtues of classical
culture.
Benedict’s Rule served to organize the monastic
life of the early Middle Ages, but it also served to
establish a general ideal. This ideal found elaborate
expression in the writings of Gregory the Great
(Pope Gregory I [c. 540–604; r. 590–604]). Through
his Pastoral Rule, Dialogues, and particularly the
Moralia in Job, Gregory exercised a determining in-
fluence on the early medieval conception of the end
of human life and how that life should be led. He
established the hierarchy of the modes of sin, igno-
rance being the least grave, infirmity the intermedi-
ate, and intentional sinning the worst. His list of the
seven capital sins became canonical. Gregory had a
great influence on moral theology throughout the
medieval period. Of extrabiblical authorities only
ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) and Augustine, for ex-
ample, are more frequently cited by THOMAS AQUI-
NAS (1225?–1274).
The centrality of the sacramental system and the
monastic ideal meant that questions of CHARACTER
and responsibility were never merely theoretical
matters, but always issues of practical concern for
the health of the individual and the society as a
whole. The practical upshot of this is the attempt to
ensure that each person is, in the classical definition
of justice, rendered what is due. Given the complex-
ity of Gregory’s moral psychology, not to mention
the diversity of sins, it is important that CONSCIENCE
be examined so that in making restitution all par-
ties—God, the sinner, the human victim, and society
as a whole—be treated fairly. Thus the early medi-
eval period lays the foundation for CAUSISTRY, the
examination of the casus conscientiae that is essen-
tial to determining equity, what the high middle ages
711
history of Western ethics: 5. Early Medieval
will, following Aristotle, come to call epieikeia. A
famous popular example is the legend of Gregory’s
intercession for the pagan emperor Trajan, whose
justice to a wronged widow so moved Gregory that
his tears were accounted the equal of baptism and
served to redeem the just Roman. Without ceasing
to be an act of grace, God’s recognition of Trajan’s
“baptism by tears” recalls Abraham’s intercession
for Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:23–33) and
the notion that the just must be treated justly, wher-
ever, and in whatever circumstances, they are found.
That Gregory only tries this once, however, is a mark
of his humility.
The story of Gregory and Trajan points to another
important source for early medieval moral NORMS
and expectations, namely, the lives of the saints. The
medieval calendar was replete with feasts dedicated
to men and women whose lives were held to exem-
plify one or more Christian virtues. From the stories
of Gregory’s Dialogues through the later lives of lo-
cal saints, those narratives associated with the vari-
ous saints displayed for the literate and illiterate
alike the ways in which Christians were to deal with
the MORAL DILEMMAS of daily life and the conse-
quences of giving in to temptation. That they were
frequently good stories made them all the more
suited to pastoral instruction, and it is not surprising
that lives of the saints are among the earliest exam-
ples of medieval vernacular literature.
If Benedict and Gregory established the ideal of
humility defined by service to God, Benedict’s con-
temporary, Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c.
480–524) represented a more straightforwardly
philosophical tradition. Boethius never completed
his vision of translating the Aristotelian corpus and
that of Plato into Latin, but his Consolation of Phi-
losophy rivaled Augustine’s Confessions as a guide
to the moral life.
God, Boethius argued, is true perfection and
hence true goodness as well. Through providence
God governs the world, grasping it all in an eternal
present. Fate is the unfolding of this providential or-
der in time. There is a temptation to think of God’s
eternal knowledge as necessitating a fatalism which
denies freedom of action and human responsibility,
but this, Boethius argues, is a non sequitur. Human
freedom is inviolate and it is the responsibility of the
wise person to come to grips with the mutability of
fortune and train himself not to care about its vicis-
situdes. This involves realizing that the individual is
history of Western ethics: 5. Early Medieval
essentially a soul, whose true home is in heaven.
Earthly life is a form of captivity and evil is a pri-
vation of the good. Those deficient in virtue are de-
ficient in being and happiness, appearances not
withstanding (Cons. 4,4). Those who know their
true home and reject attachment to fortune retain
their peace of mind regardless of their sufferings.
Augustine, Boethius, and, to a lesser degree,
Gregory were all thinkers of power and originality;
Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636) was not. Nonethe-
less, his Etymologiae brings together a remarkable
amount of information in an atmosphere dominated
by the thought of Augustine and Gregory. Isidore
created the preeminent encyclopedia of the early
Middle Ages, and in so doing made available for gen-
erations not merely a body of arcane and often amus-
ing lore, but definitions of basic ethical concepts as
well. From Isidore, later authors typically derive, for
example, the distinction of law into ius, lex, and mo-
res. In his subdivision of ius into the natural, the
civil, and the ius gentium, Isidore paved the way for
later theories of NATURAL LAW and its relations to
the laws of nations. The natural law covers the con-
duct of all persons, establishing, for example, the
responsibility of parents for the upbringing of their
offspring, and the propriety of meeting violent at-
tack with force. Isidore seemed to imply that the nat-
ural law establishes constraints on the civil law,
which to be sound must promote the COMMON
GOOD in accord with nature, tradition, and social
context (Etymologiae, 5, 4; 5, 21).
The Carolingian Renaissance
The renaissance of learning, which had its center
at the court of Charlemagne (742–814), did not give
rise to innovation in moral thought. The works of
Alcuin (735–804), the leading figure in Charles’s
reform, reflect a period of consolidation and are
instructive in their concerns. Introducing his De
grammatica, for example, Alcuin pens a short intro-
duction to philosophy which stresses, in Boethian
fashion, the need to free the soul from the vicissi-
tudes of Fortune and transitory involvements and to
discipline itself with study. A dialogue on rhetoric
closes with a discussion of the cardinal virtues and
their parts. His treatise On the Virtues and the Vices,
drawn primarily from scripture and the sermons of
St. Augustine, presents a concise statement of the
relation of faith and works, emphasizing the primacy
712
of charity, fear of God, and chastity as the vita an-
gelica. Alcuin traces the fundamental moral direc-
tive to reject evil and do the good back to Psalm 33,
and derives from it the four cardinal virtues. It is of
interest that a list of eight principal vices and a new
set of subordinate virtues emerge—a set which in-
cludes peacefulness, MERCY, patience, and humility.
Half a century later John Scotus Eriugena (c.
813–880), working at the court of Charles the Bald
(Charles I, King of France [823–877; r. 843–877]),
engaged in a heated dispute on predestination and
foreknowledge which relates directly to the foun-
dations of ethics. If God is omniscient, are not all
human actions immutably fixed and inescapable?
Taking his start from Augustine, Eriugena argued
that language about God must of necessity be meta-
phorical and nonliteral. Hence talk of God’s knowl-
edge as preceding human acts is misleading. God
exists in an eternal present without change. His un-
derstanding remains merely foreknowledge in the di-
vine eternity and is in no way coercive. Eriugena re-
mained primarily a cosmologist, however, though
book four of his De divisione naturae does outline
a moral psychology based on the allegorical inter-
pretation of Genesis 3.
From Anselm to Alan of Lille
A growth in theology and philosophy paralleled
the expansion of agriculture and population begin-
ning in the eleventh century. Perhaps the most subtle
intellect of the early part of this period was ANSELM
of Bec (1033–1109), later Archbishop of Canter-
bury. Anselm’s interest in the logical analysis of con-
cepts reflects the influence of his teacher, Lanfranc
(c. 1005–1089), as well as the growing debate on
the use of logic in theology. Although Anselm did
not undertake an independent treatise on ethics, his
Cur Deus homo incorporated a complex account of
justice and the end of human existence. God created
humans for happiness, which he would not remove
without just cause (Cur Deus homo, 1, 9). Sin is
specifically the injustice of not rendering God his
due (1, 11), and the incommensurability between
God and his creation makes it necessary for resti-
tution to be made by the man who is also God (cf.
2, 16). The happiness made possible through Christ’s
act of restitution consists in justice, which requires
that the moral agent be free (2, 10) and capable of
discerning and willing what justice requires (2, 1).

Anselm elaborated this moral psychology in his
work On the Virgin Conception and Original Sin,
where he distinguishes between action, appetite, and
will, locating sin in CONSENT to the promptings of
the appetites, rather than in the appetites themselves
(De conceptu, 3–4). Sin properly so-called involves
a willful and deliberate act contrary to justice, and
it is this which merits PUNISHMENT. The natural sin
inherited as a consequence of Adam’s personal sin
is, properly speaking, an incapacity on the part of
the agent to achieve justice unaided (De conceptu,
23). Natural and personal sin both exclude the non-
believer from the community of the saints; but they
do not bear equal gravity, and so, Anselm implied,
they do not merit equal punishment in hell.
In the half century following Anselm’s death, Pe-
ter ABELARD (1079–1142) emerged as the most
brilliant, and controversial, thinker of the early
schools. In his unfinished Dialogue between a Phi-
losopher and a Jew and a Christian, Abelard is
called on to judge, in a dream vision, the outcome
of a dispute over the proper path to true happiness.
The philosopher begins by noting his attachment to
the natural law, which he equates with moral teach-
ing, also called ethics. But reason is so denigrated by
the common intellect that the search for the good is
mired in tradition and bias. Hence he seeks guidance
from the Jew and the Christian. The law of the Jew
he argues, while it may be divine in its origins, re-
mains too tied to this worldly particularism to appeal
to the reasonable mind. The righteousness of Abra-
ham and Noah demonstrate that the burden of Jew-
ish law is not necessary for ethics. Turning to the
Christian, the Philosopher receives an account of
ethics as having two parts: First there is the doctrine
of the summum bonum as the object of moral striv-
ing; then there is the doctrine of the virtues as the
path toward the summum bonum. Drawing primar-
ily on Augustine and Cicero, the Philosopher and the
Christian agree on an account of the virtues which
they couple with an Augustinian theory of the rela-
tion of good to evil in the world. The Dialogue
breaks off after the discussion of the application of
‘good,’ thus we lack Abelard’s analysis of the debate.
The Dialogue remains valuable, nonetheless, for its
discussion of natural law, virtue, and the concept of
‘good.’
In his Ethics or Know Thyself, Abelard analyzed
the interrelations between ‘sin,’ ‘vice,’ and ‘evil,’
and the ways in which responsibility for actions is
713
history of Western ethics: 5. Early Medieval
assessed. Acts are good when they accord with what
God wills for people, and wicked when they evince
contempt for God or knowingly violate what God
demands. Sin lies not in the act, or even in the will,
but rather in consent to the deed contrary to God’s
will. With regard to guilt before God, the doing of
a deed adds nothing, a view Abelard recognizes as
provocative. But he notes that an admittedly prohib-
ited act, such as sleeping with another’s wife, may
well be done without sin if it is done in ignorance,
and this strongly suggests the neutrality of acts in
themselves. Abelard checks the apparent slide to-
ward SUBJECTIVISM by insisting that an INTENTION is
good only when it is actually, as opposed to just ap-
parently, in accord with God’s will. Nonetheless, an
individual cannot be held guilty if he acts in accord
with the dictates of conscience.
This discussion leads Abelard into the question
of repentance, and then into a discussion of the
status of priests in the penitential order. This closes
the first book. There remains but a fragment of a
second book and thus, as with the Dialogue, it is
unclear what the final shape of Abelard’s work
might have been. Nonetheless, both the Ethics and
the Dialogue display subtle and well-argued analyses
of key MORAL TERMS. It is not inappropriate to view
Abelard’s fragmentary works as essays toward an in-
dependent philosophical ethics.
Parallel, and not unrelated, to the development of
Abelard’s thought is the upsurge of interest in canon
law. From early in the history of the church, councils
had met to debate and decide issues confronting
Christian life. The canons, or rules, issued by the
various councils were intended to clarify and regu-
larize the life of the faithful community. At the same
time, papal and episcopal decrees were pronounced
in response to various issues. By the end of the elev-
enth century there existed disparate collections of
sometimes conflicting canons and decrees. While
Abelard, in his Sic et non, seemed happy to array
competing authorities against each other, those
charged with the care of souls sought more definitive
guidance. Of the many scholars working in the field,
Master Gratian of Bologna, active around 1140, pro-
duced the most important compendium. His Con-
cordance of Discordant Canons, popularly referred
to as the Decretum, came to dominate the study of
medieval law. With its accounts of law, the relations
of church and state, and its analyses of cases, the
Decretum provided not only a handbook of church
history of Western ethics: 5. Early Medieval
law but also a foundation for much later moral and
political thought. Gratian’s commentators will es-
tablish the fourfold distinction of “counsels,” “per-
missions,” “precepts,” and “prohibitions” as defin-
ing the ways in which law regulates responsible
human action. In addition, they will shape the di-
rection of much subsequent discussion of natural
law and the law of nations. This latter in particular
will be developed in response to the Crusades and
to the ever-expanding contact of Europeans with
other cultures and religions, up to and including the
encounters with the indigenous peoples of the New
World. Given the broad impact of canon law on so-
cial and political life, the impact of Gratian and the
twelfth-century renaissance of legal thought on eth-
ical reflection would be hard to overestimate.
Many of the disparate traditions of early medieval
ethics come together in Alan of Lille (c. 1120–
1203), master at Paris toward the end of the twelfth
century. Alan’s works run the gamut from philo-
sophical poems such as his Anticlaudianus, on the
creation of the perfect man, to a Rules for Theology
and a Treatise on the Virtues and the Vices, which,
together with his Art of Preaching, make up a sus-
tained treatise on practical philosophy. The details
of Alan’s account are not novel, but two aspects of
his thought invite reflection. First, the organization
of his works, with the emphasis on definition and
analysis, extends the interest in philosophical method
found in Anselm and Abelard. Second, the account
of nature’s attempt at constructing a perfect man in
the Anticlaudianus expresses a growing interest in
ethics as an extension of natural philosophy. Al-
though the soul comes from God, the rest of the
attributes of Alan’s New Man are shaped by Nature
and her companions, the Virtues. In the battle
against the Vices which closes the poem, Alan gives
the impression that Virtue triumphs without super-
natural aid. Without ceasing to be a Christian theo-
logian, Alan looks forward to a period when it will
be possible to undertake ethical analysis on a thor-
oughly natural basis.
See also: AUGUSTINE; CASUISTRY; CHRISTIAN ETHICS;
CICERO; FATE AND FATALISM; FREE WILL; FREEDOM
AND DETERMINISM; GOOD, THEORIES OF THE; GUILT
AND SHAME; JEWISH ETHICS; LOGIC AND ETHICS;
MORAL SAINTS; NATURAL LAW; PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
MORALITY; SENECA; SIN; STOICISM; THEOLOGICAL
ETHICS; VIRTUES.
714
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Williams, et al. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced
Studies, 1968 (Bks. 1–3), 1995 (Bk. 4).
Evans, G. R. Allan of Lille: The Frontiers of Theology in
the Later Twelfth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1983.
———. The Thought of Gregory the Great. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Fairweather, Eugene R., ed., trans. A Scholastic Miscel-
lany: Anselm to Ockham. Philadelphia: Westminster
Press, 1956.
Gratian. The Treatise on Laws with the Ordinary Gloss.
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by Katherine Christensen. Washington, D.C.: Catholic
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Isidore of Seville. Etymologiarum sive originum libri XX.
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Jonsen, Albert R., and Stephen Edelston Toulmin. The
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Leclercq, Jean. The Love of Learning and Desire for God:
A Study of Monastic Culture. Translated by Catharine
Misrahi Second rev. ed. New York: 1974.
Lottin, D. O. Psychologie et moral aux XIIe et XIIIe. sie-
cles. 6 volumes. Louvain: Abbaye du Mont Cesar,
1942–1960.
Madec, Goulven. St. Ambroise et la philosophie. Paris:
Études augustiniennes, 1974.
Markus, Robert. The End of Ancient Christianity. Cam-
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Marenbon, John. From the Circle of Alcuin to the School
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McNeill, John Thomas, and Helena M. Gamer, eds. and
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Muldoon, James. Popes, Lawyers, and Infidels: The
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Verbeke, Gerard. The Presence of Stoicism in Medieval
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Scott Davis
history of Western ethics:
6. Later Medieval
Later medieval moral philosophy in the Latin west
is characterized by the interweaving of two distin-
guishable moral traditions: one deriving from Scrip-
ture, the other from ancient philosophical ethics.
Platonist, Aristotelian, Stoic, and Neoplatonist ele-
ments of the ancient ethical tradition were transmit-
ted to the Middle Ages by ancient pagan writers such
as CICERO (106–43 B.C.E.), SENECA (c. 4 B.C.E.– C.E.
65), Macrobius (fifth century C.E.), and Calcidius
(fourth century C.E.), and by Christian thinkers such
as AUGUSTINE (354–430) and the Church Fathers,
Boethius (c. 480–524), and the pseudo-Dionysius
(fl. c. 500). These strands of the ancient tradition
had been largely assimilated in the twelfth century,
but from the late twelfth century, when the so-called
ethica vetus (Books II and III of Aristotle’s Nico-
machean Ethics) became available in the Latin west,
medieval ethics was increasingly influenced by AR-
ISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.). More of the Ethics, the
ethica nova, became available near the beginning of
the thirteenth century, and Robert Grosseteste (c.
1175–1253) produced the first complete Latin trans-
lation of the Ethics in about 1247. From the 1250s,
Aristotle’s Ethics was the authoritative text on ethics,
rivaled only by Augustine’s works. Though the
Ethics did not become an established part of the phi-
losophy (arts) curriculum until the second half of the
fourteenth century, it was the source of a rich com-
history of Western ethics: 6. Later Medieval
mentary tradition extending from the mid-thirteenth
century to the Renaissance. Among the most influ-
ential commentaries are those by Albert the Great
(c. 1200–1280; the first commentary on the com-
plete Ethics written c. 1248–52), THOMAS AQUI-
NAS (1225?–1274; written 1271–2), Walter Burley
(c. 1275–1345; written 1333–1345), and Jean
Buridan (c. 1300–after 1358; written sometime be-
fore 1358).
Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century philosophers
discussed ethical issues not only in commentaries on
Aristotle but also in the context of topically ar-
ranged, systematic discussions in their Sentences
commentaries, summas, and independent treatises.
In fact, the summa and Sentences-commentary lit-
erature common in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries is ideally suited both for collating and ad-
judicating the disparate elements of the growing
philosophical tradition and reconciling them with
the moral elements of Christianity. Some philoso-
phers devoted entire summas (e.g., Albert the
Great’s Summa de bono, c. 1245) or substantial sec-
tions of larger works (e.g., the Second Part of Aqui-
nas’s Summa theologiae, 1269–1272) to the sys-
tematic exposition of moral philosophy and related
issues. In their Sentences commentaries and sum-
mas modeled on the Sentences (such as William of
Auxerre’s Summa aurea, c. 1215–1225), they dis-
cuss ethical issues in the places suggested by the ar-
rangement of Peter Lombard’s (c. 1100–1164) Sen-
tences. The Sentences, for instance, raises issues
involving FREE WILL, divine grace, and sin in dis-
tinctions 25–44 of Book II, and discusses the theo-
logical and moral VIRTUES in distinctions 23–33 of
Book III.
The confluence of these streams of ancient phil-
osophical and Christian ethical thought in the later
Middle Ages resulted in the nearly universal accep-
tance of a generically Greek framework of ethical
theory, extended and modified to accommodate
Christianity. The dominating features of this frame-
work are its concern with the metaphysical and psy-
chological foundations of ethics, its eudaimonistic
structure, and its focus on virtue and right reason as
central concepts for the moral evaluation of agents
and actions. Within this theoretical framework, later
medieval philosophers explained and debated the
ethical nature and role of theological conceptions
such as sin, grace, divine commands, and union with
God as the goal of human existence.
716
Metaphysics of Goodness
Moral goodness, the primary ethical concept in
later medieval ethics, is grounded in a metaphysics
of goodness according to which goodness is a prop-
erty that supervenes on the natural properties of
things and is relative to kinds. Natural substances
are the kinds of things they are in virtue of possess-
ing certain specifying capacities. In virtue of pos-
sessing its specifying capacities, a substance is in po-
tentiality with respect to certain activities, the actual
performance of which constitutes its (complete or
final) actuality as a substance of its kind. Hence, a
substance’s good or end is its being fully actual as a
substance of its kind, and since the natural proper-
ties in virtue of which a substance is fully actual vary
with types of substance, the natural properties in
which a given substance’s good consists depend on
the type of substance it is.
Accounts of the metaphysics of goodness are ex-
plicitly presented as introductions to moral philos-
ophy in a group of closely related treatises on good-
ness in the first half of the thirteenth century. In his
Summa aurea (Bk. III, tr. X, ch. 4), William of Aux-
erre (c. 1150–1231) offers an account of the nature
of goodness in general as part of a preamble to a
discussion of the virtues (quaestiones praeambulas
ad virtutes). Following William’s lead, Philip the
Chancellor (d. 1236) introduces his Summa de bono
(qq. I–XI; c. 1225–1228) with a lengthy discussion
of the metaphysics of goodness. The well-known me-
dieval doctrine that goodness (together with being,
unity, and truth) is a transcendental is a corollary of
this account of the nature of goodness. Since a thing
is good of its kind to the extent to which it is actual
or has being as a thing of that kind, and since every-
thing that exists is actual as a thing of its kind to
some extent, it follows that everything that exists is
good to some extent. (The first systematic treatment
of the transcendentals seems to be this introductory
section of Philip’s Summa de bono; see also Aqui-
nas’s Summa theologiae Ia.5.1–3.)
Beatitude
This sort of metaphysics of goodness, applied to
the particular case of human beings, yields a eudai-
monistic account of the human good: the human
good is the state or activity in which complete ac-
tuality as a human being consists. Following the an-

cient tradition, later medieval philosophers call this
state or activity ‘happiness’ or ‘beatitude’ and view
ethics as the attempt to specify the nature of beati-
tude and the means of achieving it.
Most later medieval philosophers took it as a da-
tum of Christian doctrine that the ultimate end of
human life is supernatural union with God and that
that state, unattainable in this life, is achieved
through divine grace in the next. (Some radical Ar-
istotelian masters of arts at Paris may be exceptions:
Boethius of Dacia [fl. c. 1275], for instance, in De
summo bono [c. 1270], argued that the contempla-
tive philosophical life is the best life for a human
being; and propositions asserting that HAPPINESS is
to be had in this life and not in another were among
those condemned by the Bishop of Paris in 1277.)
But the apparently nontheological account of the hu-
man good in Aristotle’s Ethics (inferable from Book
I or in the discussion of contemplation in Book X)
is at least prima facie incompatible with the theo-
logical conception of beatitude. William of Auxerre
distinguishes between imperfect beatitude, the per-
fection of natural human capacities attainable in this
life, and perfect beatitude, the supernatural state at-
tainable only through grace in the next life (Summa
aurea Bk. III, tr. XLVII, ch. 2; see also Aquinas,
Summa theologiae IaIIae.5.5). A distinction of this
sort allowed many philosophers to secure a legiti-
mate subject matter—viz., the nature and attain-
ment of imperfect beatitude—for purely philosoph-
ical (as opposed to theological) moral speculation
and to accommodate both the theological and Ar-
istotelian conceptions of beatitude.
Though philosophers in the medieval Latin west
largely agree in accepting the Christian doctrine that
the ultimate end of human life is union with God,
they disagree about the precise characterization of
that union. Aquinas argues that beatitude must con-
sist primarily in the highest activity of a human be-
ing’s highest faculty, which he takes to be intellect.
Hence, for Aquinas perfect beatitude consists pri-
marily in the intellectual vision of the divine essence,
since the divine essence is the highest possible in-
telligible object (Summa theologiae IaIIae.3.4–8).
For Bonaventure (c. 1217–1274), however, and for
other Franciscans beatitude consists primarily in an
activity of will, loving God, by which human beings
achieve union with God (Bonaventure In I Senten-
tiarum 1.2.1).
717
history of Western ethics: 6. Later Medieval
Moral Psychology
Later medieval philosophers follow the Greek
tradition in taking the capacities distinctive of hu-
man beings to be those they possess by virtue of hav-
ing a rational nature, viz., powers of intellect and
rational appetite (will). The distinctively human ac-
tions, the actions with which ethics is concerned, are
those resulting from intellect and will.
Nearly all these philosophers maintain, on both
philosophical and theological grounds, that the hu-
man will is free in significant respects, but their dis-
pute over the precise nature of will, the roots of its
freedom, and its relation to intellect constitutes one
of the deepest rifts in medieval moral speculation.
One account derives from an Aristotelian concep-
tion of will as the rational creature’s natural incli-
nation toward what intellect perceives as good. On
this account will, as a natural inclination, is natu-
rally necessitated in certain respects. The will nec-
essarily wills the complete or perfect good, happi-
ness. But the will is free in other significant respects,
and its freedom is rooted in the manner in which
intellect presents will with its object. First, though
will is necessitated with respect to willing happiness,
intellect must determine what state or activity hap-
piness actually consists in. Aquinas thinks that in
this life, will is not determined with respect to any
given determinate conception of happiness because
intellect is never certain that a given determinately
specified state or activity is in fact what happiness
consists in; hence, though he argues that perfect
happiness consists in the vision of the divine es-
sence, he denies that human beings in this life nec-
essarily will this end, because intellect is not neces-
sitated with respect to believing that vision of the
divine essence is what happiness consists in. Second,
will is not unconditionally necessitated with respect
to any particular good other than happiness (unless
that good is perceived as necessary for happiness):
it is always possible for intellect, as directed by will,
to consider it under some description under which
it does not appear good, find some alternative, or
simply cease considering the object. For Aquinas,
then, the will’s freedom is ultimately rooted in its
dependence on intellect and in intellect’s indeter-
minacy with respect to judging certain objects to
be good (Aquinas Summa theologiae Ia.82–83;
IaIIae.8–10).
The second account, Augustinian in inspiration,
history of Western ethics: 6. Later Medieval
defines will as a self-determining power for oppo-
sites and takes it to be a sui generis type of power
distinct from all merely natural inclinations. John
DUNS SCOTUS (c. 1266–1308) explicitly distin-
guishes will, which is an active power entirely free
with respect to its exercise, from natural active pow-
ers, which are determined with respect to their ex-
ercise (Quodlibet XVIII.2; Quaestiones in Meta-
physica IX.15). No object, not even happiness, can
necessitate an act of will. Scotus, however, denies
that will is free to reject, nolle, beatitude; it is free
only with respect to willing, velle, or not willing, non
velle, it (Ordinatio IV d. 49, q. 10). WILLIAM OF
OCKHAM (c. 1285–c. 1349) attributes an even more
radical freedom to will. Not only can will refuse to
will, non velle, beatitude, it is free to reject, nolle, it
as well (In IV Sententiarum q. 16). Those who ac-
cept this account of will as entirely self-determining
agree with philosophers who accept the Aristotelian
account in maintaining that will depends on intellect
for its object, but they disagree with them that the
root of the will’s freedom is in intellect; they take
freedom to be the distinguishing mark of will as
such.
Virtue
The specifically human powers and capacities (in-
tellect and will) require certain habits (a type of Ar-
istotelian first actuality) by which they are disposed
toward their complete or perfect actuality. These
habits are the intellectual and moral virtues, and
they dispose a human being toward the actual per-
formance of the activities in which human perfection
consists: PRUDENCE is the habit of reasoning cor-
rectly about what is to be done; TEMPERANCE and
COURAGE (for instance) are habits inclining the ap-
petitive powers toward appropriate ends. The ac-
quisition of the virtues, then, is an integral part of a
life aimed at attaining the human good.
Later medieval philosophers held that, in addi-
tion to the traditional cardinal virtues which dispose
human beings with respect to purely natural, imper-
fect beatitude, there are certain theological virtues,
e.g., faith, HOPE, and CHARITY, which dispose hu-
man beings toward their supernatural end (Aquinas
Summa theologiae IaIIae.62.1; Bonaventure In III
Sententiarum 33.1.1). Moreover, the theological no-
tion of divine grace gives rise to the notion of infused
virtues: faith, hope, and charity (along with certain
718
other virtues needed to incline human beings toward
their supernatural end) are infused by grace rather
than acquired through training and moral effort.
Most maintained that the infused theological virtues
are necessary for the attainment of supernatural be-
atitude (Bonaventure Breviloquium V.1); Ockham,
however, denies this (Ordinatio I d. 17, q. 2). More-
over, they claim that the infused virtues are perfect
virtues because they incline a human being toward
perfect beatitude, while the acquired virtues are only
imperfect virtues because they incline a human be-
ing only toward imperfect beatitude.
Right Reason
Later medieval philosophers applied their meta-
physics of goodness not only to agents (producing
an account of the virtues and criteria for the moral
evaluation of agents), but also directly to human ac-
tions. Human actions can be viewed as beings in
themselves, and they can be judged good to the ex-
tent to which they possess all the attributes (actu-
alities) they ought to possess. Since any human ac-
tion whatsoever is a positive entity—a reality—just
in virtue of being an act, it will possess goodness to
some extent (natural goodness), but it may also pos-
sess generic moral goodness, specific moral good-
ness, or gratuitous goodness, provided that certain
other conditions are satisfied. Provided the act (say,
the giving of alms) has an appropriate object (a per-
son in need), the act has generic moral goodness—
that is, it satisfies the most basic of several condi-
tions necessary for the action’s being unqualifiedly
morally good. The action has specific moral good-
ness if it is done for the sake of an appropriate end,
in an appropriate way, and in appropriate circum-
stances (at an appropriate time, in an appropriate
place, etc.). In addition to moral goodness, an action
possesses gratuitous or meritorious goodness if it is
an act performed out of charity. (Albert Summa de
bono tr. I, qq. 2–3; Aquinas Summa theologiae
IaIIae.18; Scotus Quodlibet XVIII.1, Ordinatio II.7;
Ockham Quaestiones variae VII.2.)
Since the determination of suitability or appro-
priateness is a matter for reason, the requirement
that an action have an appropriate end and be done
in an appropriate way in appropriate circumstances
if it is to be morally good is often abbreviated as the
requirement that it be in accordance with right rea-
son: a morally good action is an action done in ac-

cordance with right reason. PRACTICAL REASONING,
reasoning about what is to be done, is right reason-
ing only if (a) it takes as the ultimate end to be
achieved what is in fact a human being’s ultimate
end; and (b) reasons correctly about what particular
steps are to be taken or objects pursued in order to
achieve that ultimate end. Under the influence of
Aristotle the process of practical reasoning came to
be viewed as starting from self-evident principles
(in practical reasoning these are general principles
about what is to be pursued) and progressing de-
ductively to more determinate principles and appli-
cations of those principles in particular circum-
stances (Aquinas Summa theologiae IaIIae.58.4–5;
Ockham Quodlibeta septem II.14). The body of
practical principles true in virtue of their terms, or
self-evident (either to all people or only to the
learned), or derived from such principles, is the body
of NATURAL LAW (Aquinas Summa theologiae Ia-
IIae.94; Scotus Ordinatio III.37; Ockham, Quodli-
beta septem II.14).
Later medieval philosophers took the notion of
an action’s being in accordance with right reason to
involve more than its merely being the action dic-
tated by right reason. First, the action must result
from a process of right reasoning in the agent who
performs it; that is, the agent himself must correctly
judge that the action is to be done and do it because
it is dictated by his reason. An agent who acts
against his own judgment does not act rightly even
if his own judgment is mistaken and he in fact does
what right reason would dictate (Aquinas Summa
theologiae IaIIae.19.5–6; Scotus Quodlibet XVIII.1).
Second, the agent’s own soul must be governed by
reason; that is, the agent’s appetites must be habit-
ually inclined toward what reason dictates. The
merely continent person reasons correctly and does
the act dictated by reason because it is dictated by
reason, but his appetitive powers are at odds with his
reason (Aquinas Summa theologiae IaIIae.58.3.ad2;
Ockham Quaestiones variae VII.3).
Divine Commands
Medieval philosophers recognized the existence
of divinely revealed moral precepts, paradigms of
which are found in the ten commandments. But,
contrary to some caricatures of medieval ethics, it is
difficult to find any who unequivocally endorsed a
divine command METAETHICS according to which
719
history of Western ethics: 6. Later Medieval
the moral rightness (or wrongness) of any act con-
sists solely in its being approved (or disapproved) by
God. Nearly all medieval philosophers maintained
that at least some acts are morally right not because
they have been commanded but because they are in
accordance with right reason. These philosophers,
nevertheless, hold that an act’s being commanded
by God is evidence of its rightness and that right
reason can dictate that one obey a divine command
when one knows it to be a divine command.
Philosophers such as Scotus and Ockham, how-
ever, clearly distinguish between positive and non-
positive (natural) moral law and claim that in the
case of divine positive moral law the rightness of the
acts commanded consists solely in their being com-
manded by God (Scotus Ordinatio IV.17; Ockham
Quodlibeta septem II.14). They take divine com-
mands such as the prohibition of adultery and theft
as falling within the scope of divine positive law, and
so they maintain that these acts are morally wrong
just because God has prohibited them, and that they
would be morally right should God enjoin them
(Scotus Ordinatio III.37; Ockham In II Sententia-
rum q. 15). Hence, Scotus and Ockham disagree
with rationalists such as Aquinas, who maintains
that all the moral precepts of the divine law are in
accordance with right reason and morally right be-
cause they are in accordance with right reason
(Aquinas Summa theologiae IaIIae.100.1).
But Scotus and Ockham maintain that nonposi-
tive moral laws command or forbid actions the right-
ness of which is independent of the divine will. Ac-
cording to Ockham, for example, moral science built
on nonpositive moral laws is demonstrative and
“more certain than many other [sciences]” (In II
Sententiarum q. 15). Not even God can alter the
moral value of acts dictated by this sort of moral
science because to do so would involve a contradic-
tion. So Scotus and Ockham agree with Aquinas
that some moral precepts are right because they are
in accordance with right reason but disagree with
him about the scope of natural law.
See also: ABELARD; ANSELM; CHARITY; CHRISTIAN
ETHICS; COURAGE; DUNS SCOTUS; EUDAIMONIA,
-ISM; FINAL GOOD; FITTINGNESS; FREE WILL; FREE-
DOM AND DETERMINISM; GOOD, THEORIES OF THE;
HAPPINESS; HOPE; JEWISH ETHICS; MAIMONIDES;
METAPHYSICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY; MORAL PSYCHOL-
OGY; MORAL REASONING; NATURAL LAW; PRACTICAL
history of Western ethics: 6. Later Medieval
REASON[ING]; PRUDENCE; STOICISM; TEMPERANCE;
THEOLOGICAL ETHICS; THOMAS AQUINAS; VIRTUE
ETHICS; VIRTUES; WILLIAM OF OCKHAM.
Bibliography
See also the separate bibliographies in this volume for Duns
Scotus, William of Ockham, and Thomas Aquinas.
Albertus Magnus. Summa de bono. Edited by H. Kuehle,
et al. Munich: Aschendorff, 1951.
———. Super Ethica. Edited by W. Kuebel. Munich:
Aschendorff, 1968–1972; 1987.
Jean Buridan. Quaestiones super decem libros ethicorum.
Paris, 1513. Reprinted Minerva, 1968.
Kretzmann, Norman, A. Kenny, and J. Pinborg, eds. Cam-
bridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. See sections
8 and 9.
Lottin, O., ed. Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe
siècles. 6 vols. Gembloux: J. Duculot, 1942–60.
Philip the Chancellor. Summa de bono. Edited by Nicolaus
Wicki. Berne: Francke, 1985.
Walter Burley. Expositio super decem libros Ethicorum Ar-
istotelis. Venice, 1481; 1500; 1521.
William of Auxerre. Summa aurea. Edited by Jean Ribail-
lier. Rome: Grottaferrata, 1980–1987.
Scott MacDonald
history of Western ethics:
7. Renaissance
From the fourteenth to the sixteenth century the
study of ethics was based on the moral thought of
classical antiquity. While the Aristotelian tradition
dominated the field, especially in the universities,
there was nonetheless a significant interest in the
ethical ideas of Platonism, STOICISM, and, to a lesser
extent, EPICUREANISM. Thinkers in this era followed
the traditional view, articulated by ARISTOTLE (384–
322 B.C.E.), that the primary aim of ethics as a phil-
osophical discipline was the determination of the su-
preme good—the summum bonum, for whose sake
everything else is sought, while it alone is sought for
its own sake (Nicomachean Ethics 1094a18–26).
The fact that each of the ancient schools of philos-
ophy had come to a different conclusion on this cen-
tral issue provided a convenient focus for discussing
and evaluating their relative merits.
720
Aristotelian Ethics
Throughout this period ethics as a professional
and university discipline was Aristotelian. In all ma-
jor European universities, whether the subject was
taught by scholastic philosophers or humanists, by
Protestants or Catholics, Peripatetic texts and doc-
trines formed the basis of instruction. One of the
main reasons for Aristotle’s continuing dominance
was that the Nicomachean Ethics was easily adapted
to teaching: it was better organized and more me-
thodical than PLATO’s (c. 430–347 B.C.E.) highly
rhetorical and unsystematic dialogues, and more
comprehensive than CICERO’s (106–43 B.C.E.) mis-
cellaneous philosophical works.
A number of commentaries on Aristotle’s Ethics
were produced in the fourteenth century, many by
theologians belonging to the Augustinian, Francis-
can, and Dominican orders. Among the most influ-
ential scholastic commentaries were those of the En-
glish philosopher Walter Burley (c. 1275–1344/5)
and the Parisian Ockhamist Jean Buridan (1300–
1358), both of which were printed several times in
the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The
characteristic features of scholastic commentaries—
quaestiones, dubitationes, responsiones, and con-
clusiones—continue to be found throughout the six-
teenth century and can be seen, in simplified form,
in works such as the Cursus Conimbricensis on the
Ethics, the commentary produced by the Jesuits of
Coimbra in 1593 and widely read throughout Eu-
rope during the seventeenth century.
Unlike scholasticism, HUMANISM, which began to
take root in Italy in the fourteenth century, did not
at first show any interest in Aristotle’s ethical
thought. On the contrary, Petrarch (1304–1374),
the founder of the movement, severely criticized Ar-
istotle’s treatises, known to him only in the literal
Latin translations of the thirteenth century, as dry
and theoretical. Although Aristotle had carefully de-
fined and distinguished the VIRTUES and vices, he
lacked the stirring and persuasive eloquence which
Petrarch admired in the writings of Cicero and SEN-
ECA (c. 4 B.C.E.– C.E. 65), and which he thought was
necessary to inspire virtuous behavior. In the fif-
teenth and sixteenth centuries, however, many hu-
manists followed the lead of Leonardo Bruni (1369–
1444) and became adherents of Aristotelian moral
philosophy: along with grammar, rhetoric, poetics,

and history, it came to be regarded as part of their
course of studies, the studia humanitatis.
Reacting against scholastic modes of presenta-
tion and argumentation, humanist commentaries at-
tempted to produce a clear and eloquent exposition
of Aristotle’s words, concentrating more on philo-
logical than logical analysis and citing classical
rather than medieval authorities—although the phil-
osophical insights of THOMAS AQUINAS (1225?–
1274) often received favorable mention. Jacques Le-
fèvre d’Étaples (c. 1460–1536), one of the most
important proponents of the new style of commen-
tary, disparaged the scholastic method of dreaming
up intricate quaestiones only tangentially related to
the text. In his own introduction to the Ethics he
provided simple and straightforward explanations of
Aristotle’s meaning, illustrated by exempla taken
from classical literature and history, as well as from
the Bible. Although there were important formal and
substantive differences between humanistic and
scholastic interpretations of the Ethics, there was
nevertheless a good deal of cross-fertilization. Both
humanist and scholastic commentators tended to be
eclectic in their choice of material, borrowing—of-
ten without acknowledgment—information and ar-
guments from the opposite camp.
Alongside commentaries on the Ethics were trea-
tises and textbooks, professing eclecticism but in re-
ality devoted chiefly to Aristotelian ethical doctrines.
A typical example is Bruni’s Isagogicon moralis dis-
ciplinae. This begins with a perfunctory attempt to
reconcile the Peripatetic, Stoic, and Epicurean views
of the supreme good, but then develops into a stan-
dard account of Aristotelian ethics. Toward the end
of the sixteenth century, a fashion arose for large-
scale works, like the Universa philosophia de mor-
ibus of Francesco Piccolomini (1523–1607), which
aimed to provide a comprehensive treatment of all
major ethical issues. Yet even though the topics were
discussed in a framework and order which differed
from Aristotle’s, his works remained the primary
source.
The supreme good, according to Aristotle, was
HAPPINESS (EUDAIMONIA), defined in book I of the
Ethics as a lifelong activity in accordance with the
best and most perfect virtue, supplemented by suf-
ficient bodily and external goods, such as health and
wealth. Interpreters of Aristotle in this period em-
phasized the secondary status of these goods, point-
ing out that while they made the happy life happier,
721
history of Western ethics: 7. Renaissance
their absence did not take away the principal source
of happiness, which was virtue. Some drew a dis-
tinction between the completeness of happiness,
which was affected by bodily and external goods,
and its essence, which was not, just as having five
fingers on each hand affects a man’s completeness
but not his essence. Critics of Aristotle’s position,
however, argued that virtuous activity, as the su-
preme good, should be sufficient on its own account
to produce happiness without the addition of any
supplementary goods; to claim that wealth or health
increased happiness was to diminish the value of
virtue.
The main function of external goods in procuring
happiness lay in their role as instruments for the per-
formance of virtuous actions: money, for instance,
was needed to practice GENEROSITY. The rich man’s
virtue par excellence was magnificence (or munifi-
cence), which entailed the appropriate expenditure
of large sums of money for public buildings, reli-
gious offices, and the like; this virtue attained a cer-
tain popularity during the Renaissance since it was
a useful way to flatter wealthy patrons. But Aris-
totle’s general belief in the moral utility of external
goods did not escape criticism. While it was rare for
secular authors to praise Franciscan poverty, many
of them felt uneasy about wealth, regarding its eth-
ical status as at best ambiguous. The acquisition of
money, far from implementing virtue, was thought
to bring in its train opportunities for PRIDE and av-
arice, as well as irresistible temptations to dissolute
living.
Aristotle classifies the virtues as either intellectual
or moral, corresponding to his division of the soul:
the five intellectual virtues belonging to the rational
soul, and the twelve moral virtues to the appetitive
half of the irrational soul, which participate in rea-
son only through obedience to the rational soul.
Moral virtues are defined by Aristotle in book II,
chapter 6 of the Ethics as fixed dispositions to ob-
serve the mean in relation to both actions and emo-
tions. Surrounding each moral virtue are two vices,
one characterized by excess, the other by deficiency.
Thus, COURAGE is the mean between rashness and
cowardice in relation to fear, while generosity is the
mean between prodigality and miserliness in relation
to giving money. Virtually all commentators ac-
cepted and expounded this view, forming the basis
for its extensive diffusion in both philosophical and
popular literature. But just because this doctrine was
history of Western ethics: 7. Renaissance
so influential, it became a particular target for those
who wanted, for whatever motive, to challenge the
primacy of Aristotelian ethics.
The Byzantine neo-Platonist Gemistos Plethon
(c. 1355–1454), for example, wanted to win West-
ern philosophers and theologians away from their
misguided addiction to Aristotelianism. Attempt-
ing to undermine Peripatetic ethics, he attacked the
notion of moral virtue as a mean by claiming that
it was based on crude quantitative considerations.
Aristotle, he said, determined which things it was
appropriate to fear on the basis of how great or
small they were. Platonists, on the other hand, used
quality as their sole criterion: whatever was dis-
honorable was to be feared, regardless of size or
number.
Another outspoken critic of Aristotle, the Italian
humanist Lorenzo Valla (c. 1405–1457), argued in
his dialogue De vero falsoque bono that there were
not two vices opposed to each virtue, as Aristotle
had maintained, but rather only one contrasting vice
for each virtue. Aristotle’s mistake, in Valla’s view,
derived from his consistent conflation of two distinct
virtues under one name. So, what Aristotle calls
courage includes two different virtues: fighting
bravely (courage) and retreating wisely (caution).
Instead of one virtue and two vices in relation to fear,
there were in reality two virtues and two opposing
vices: as regards fighting, the virtue was courage and
the vice rashness; as regards not fighting, the virtue
was caution and the vice cowardice. Likewise, in giv-
ing money, the virtue was generosity and the vice
prodigality; while in not giving money, the virtue was
thrift and the vice miserliness.
Valla, a man not known for his moderation, also
objected to Aristotle’s assumption that the middle
course was always good and the extremes necessar-
ily excessive or deficient. Was it not better to be ex-
ceedingly beautiful or wise than moderately so, and
minimally, rather than moderately, malformed or
foolish? He even suggested that the mean itself was
a vice, citing the example of God rebuking the Angel
of Laodicea in Revelation 3:16: “Because thou art
lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee
out of my mouth.”
A similar critique of Aristotle’s doctrine of the
mean was presented in the next century by the Span-
ish grammarian and philosopher Francisco Sánchez
(1523–1600). He was probably aware, directly or
indirectly, of Valla’s views, for he too claimed that
722
there was only one vice in opposition to each virtue.
The principle that each thing can have only one con-
trary was, he noted, not only to be found in the Bible
and in Plato, but was also expressly formulated by
Aristotle himself in Metaphysics 1055a19–21. Sán-
chez made the further point that the contrary vice
of each virtue was closely related to it: the virtue of
generosity resembled the vice of prodigality, while
thrift was kindred to miserliness.
Although better known as a political theorist,
Jean Bodin (1530–1596) also contributed to the eth-
ical debate surrounding Aristotle’s concept of moral
virtue. During the last desperate phase of the French
wars of religion he wrote a treatise entitled Para-
doxon, in which he promoted moral regeneration as
the only means of resolving a crisis which he be-
lieved to be occasioned by divine retribution for hu-
man sinfulness. Desiring to replace this-worldly Ar-
istotelian ethics with a moral code centered firmly
on the fear and love of God (in that order), Bodin
attacked most aspects of Aristotle’s teaching, rebut-
ting in particular the idea that virtue consisted in a
mean. Like Valla and Sánchez, he argued that one
thing could not have two contraries; just as hot was
contrary to cold but not to dry, and black was the
opposite of white but not green, so each virtue was
opposed not by two vices but only by one. For Bodin
the “golden mean” was not a natural principle. Quite
the opposite: the mean was in no way compatible
with nature; fires did not burn and the sun did not
shine moderately, but as fully and powerfully as pos-
sible. For virtues to be in accordance with nature,
they must therefore be extreme. To earn great praise,
great courage or generosity must be shown; half-
hearted virtue rightly earns only half-hearted praise.
Drawing support from the Old Testament (as Valla
had done from the New), Bodin cited Deuteronomy
6:5: “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
might.” This extremist position on virtue, although
forcefully defended by Bodin and other thinkers of
the time, never developed a broad enough appeal to
counter the enduring popularity of Aristotelian
moderation.
Intellectual virtues were more perfect than moral
ones since, according to Aristotle’s intellectualist
psychology, the rational soul to which they belonged
was superior to the irrational soul, seat of the moral
virtues. The most perfect of the intellectual virtues
was theoretical WISDOM (sophia), and the activity in

accordance with it, which for Aristotle was the
means of attaining the supreme good of happiness,
was contemplation of the most exalted objects. The
contemplative life was preferable to the active one
because it was more continuous, more pleasurable,
more leisured, and more self-sufficient and desired
more for its own sake. Furthermore, since the con-
templative man imitated the sole activity of the gods,
he was most beloved by them.
Aristotle’s belief that contemplation was the
source of happiness earned widespread approval;
but, as with his doctrine of moral virtue, it had its
detractors—many of them the same. Valla, for in-
stance, objected to Aristotle’s argument that by pur-
suing the contemplative life, we imitate the gods and
thereby earn their love. If man was, as Aristotle
stated elsewhere, a political animal, then it was
wrong to exhort him to pattern his life on gods who
did nothing but contemplate and therefore had no
social relations whatever. The Platonist Plethon
thought that by describing contemplation as the
most pleasurable activity Aristotle had shown that
his view differed little from that of EPICURUS (341–
270 B.C.E.), for he too had placed the supreme good
in intellectual pleasures. Aristotle’s position was
also opposed by those who took the voluntarist view
that the supreme good was to be found in the will,
not the intellect, and by those who believed that in-
tellectual activity in this life inevitably led not to hap-
piness but frustration since knowledge of the ulti-
mate causes of things could not be obtained until
the next life. It was sometimes argued that contem-
plative happiness, as described by Aristotle, was ac-
cessible only to an elite minority, whereas the hap-
piness of the active life was more suited to the
majority. So, even though the contemplative life was
more “divine,” it was not always to be chosen by
everyone, especially since the active life contributed
more to the COMMON GOOD.
Aristotle does not indicate how the intellectual and
moral virtues are to be combined in any given indi-
vidual—an issue which is still intensely debated by
modern interpreters. Scholars in the fourteenth, fif-
teenth, and sixteenth centuries tended to take the
view that the attainment of moral virtues was a nec-
essary preliminary or adjunct to the achievement of
contemplative happiness. It might be possible to be-
come learned without acquiring the moral virtues,
but never happy. According to some, the moral vir-
tues were needed in order to calm the emotional dis-
723
history of Western ethics: 7. Renaissance
turbances within the soul and thus free it to be lifted
up into contemplation of divine and celestial objects.
Others assumed that if the contemplative man was
beloved by God (into whom Aristotle’s gods were of-
ten transformed in this period), he must possess the
moral as well as the intellectual virtues, for God could
not love a wicked person, no matter how learned.
Platonic Ethics
The humanists who produced translations of
Plato’s work concentrated on those dialogues which
were particularly concerned with ethical issues. But
the few professional philosophers who lectured on
Plato were usually more interested in metaphysics
and cosmology than in ethics. Platonism nonetheless
had an impact on the ethical thought of a small num-
ber of thinkers and through them exerted an impor-
tant influence on the literary culture of the era.
The supreme good, in Platonic as in Aristotelian
ethics, was reached through contemplation. But
while Peripatetics considered celestial as well as di-
vine beings to be appropriate objects of the highest
form of contemplation, neo-Platonists contended
that it was through contemplation and knowledge
of God alone that the highest good was attained,
and that this could not be perfectly achieved until
the next life, when DEATH had freed the soul from
its imprisonment within the body. Marsilio Ficino
(1433–1499), the central figure of Renaissance neo-
Platonism, held that although the soul could not
fully know God until it had separated itself from the
body, a very small number of exceptional people
could reach this state in the present life, albeit im-
perfectly and for brief periods of time, as had Plato,
PLOTINUS (205–270) and St. PAUL (C.E. 5?–67?)
(who in 2 Corinthians recounts his ascent to the
third heaven in a divine rapture). Others followed
Ficino in maintaining that it was possible for some
people to enter, for fleeting moments, an ecstatic
trance in which, like St. Paul, they did not know
whether they were in the body or out of it and during
which they achieved temporary and limited knowl-
edge of God. Epinomis 973C and 992B were often
cited as evidence that Plato had believed in such mo-
mentary foretastes of happiness in this life, while
Phaedo 66D–E was used to demonstrate that the
perfect beatitude of continuous and unimpeded con-
templation of God could not be attained until the
next.
history of Western ethics: 7. Renaissance
This perfect beatitude consisted both in the in-
tellect’s contemplation of God and in the will’s en-
joyment of him; but which of these predominated
was a matter of considerable controversy. Ficino, in
his early commentary on the Philebus, took the in-
tellectualist position that contemplation was supe-
rior to enjoyment since the intellect was a higher
power than the will. Later, however, in a letter to
Lorenzo de’ Medici, he concluded that the knowl-
edge obtained through the intellect’s vision of God
was less perfect and fulfilling than the joy which the
will derived from loving him. Although Ficino’s de-
sertion of the more strictly Platonic intellectualism
of the Philebus commentary was criticized by certain
purists, it was on the whole his voluntarist stand
which was taken up and developed by his many fol-
lowers and disciples.
The Platonic theory of love, as Ficino formulated
it in his commentary on the Symposium, set out a
path parallel to that of contemplation by which the
supreme good could be reached. Drawing on Ploti-
nus’s Enneads, especially the treatise “On Love”
(III.5), he produced an interpretation of Plato’s di-
alogue in which neo-Platonic metaphysics and cos-
mology were given a strong Christian cast. Ficino
defined love as the desire for beauty, and described
beauty as a ray which emanated from God, progres-
sively penetrating the created world in a downward
movement from the angelic mind to the material
substance of bodies. Corresponding to this gradu-
ated descent of beauty from God to the lower levels
of being was a step-by-step ascent of love up the
ontological ladder: from the beauty of the body to
that of the soul, from the soul’s beauty to that of the
angelic mind, and from there to the absolute and
ultimate beauty of God, the vision and enjoyment of
which constituted the soul’s supreme good.
Ficino’s theory of Platonic love was both propa-
gated and challenged by his young friend and rival
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494). In a
lengthy Commento on a brief Italian poem inspired
by Ficino’s Symposium commentary, Pico distin-
guished six stages by which we ascend from the de-
sire to unite corporeally with sensual beauty to the
desire to unite spiritually with intelligible beauty.
The sequence begins with the visual perception of
the corporeal beauty of a particular individual and
ends with the soul’s union with the universal and
first mind. In contrast to Ficino, Pico believed that
while the soul was still attached to the body, it could
724
not attain the seventh and final stage of love, for only
after death could the soul unite itself with God.
The Platonic ladder of love by which desire as-
cends from the physical beauty of humans to the
spiritual beauty of God became a standard theme,
publicized and popularized in numerous vernacular
writings of the sixteenth century. Notable among
these is Il libro del cortegiano, a portrayal of a so-
phisticated Renaissance court by Baldassare Casti-
glione (1478–1529), who tempered the extreme ide-
alism characteristic of Platonic love with his own
keen sense of social and psychological realities.
More down-to-earth accounts of love were also de-
veloped by Francesco Patrizi (1529–1597), who
saw self-interest as the motivating force behind all
love, and by Agostino Nifo (1469/70–1538), who
used the more naturalistic psychology of Aristotle to
explain human eroticism. Even those thinkers who
accepted Ficino’s ideas tended to adapt them to their
own needs and purposes: Leone Ebreo (c. 1460–
after 1523) combined Platonism with Jewish MYS-
TICISM in his Dialoghi d’amore; Giordano Bruno
(1548–1600), in his De gl’eroici furori, transformed
Platonic into heroic love, a type of spiritual purifi-
cation and regeneration; while in the popular genre
of trattati d’amore, the theory lost its philosophical
underpinning, becoming detached from the Chris-
tianized neo-Platonic context which had originally
given it meaning.
Stoic Ethics
The ethical doctrines of Stoicism were well
known during the Middle Ages. They had been
transmitted directly through the works of classical
Latin writers, above all, Seneca’s moral essays and
letters and Cicero’s De finibus and De officiis, and
indirectly through the writings of Latin Church Fa-
thers, many of whom had found Stoic ethical beliefs
compatible with those of Christianity. A few Greek
texts presenting new information on Stoicism, such
as the seventh book of Diogenes Laertius’s (fl. sec-
ond century) Lives of the Philosophers and the En-
chiridion of EPICTETUS (c. 55–c. 135), became avail-
able in Latin translation during the fifteenth century;
but, for the most part, knowledge of Stoic ethics
continued to be based on Seneca and Cicero.
The supreme good, according to the Stoics, was
virtue. Indeed, it was the only good, and vice was
the only evil. Everything else, including the so-called

bodily and external goods, such as health and
wealth, they regarded as morally indifferent. The
Stoics believed that the truly wise person would not
allow such random factors to affect his happiness
and would instead base it on his own subjective state
of mind, the only element in his life completely un-
der his conscious control. To behave virtuously was
to follow nature, which the Stoics regarded as the
immanent manifestation of divine reason. Virtue in
their view was not a path toward some higher goal
but was itself the sole and self-sufficient aim of
man’s existence.
The rigorous morality of Stoicism, with its con-
viction that virtue alone was sufficient to live the
good life, found many supporters in these centuries.
But the extremism and uncompromising nature of
Stoic ethics more typically engendered an ambiva-
lent attitude: admiration for its high standards was
mixed with misgivings about the austerity of its de-
mands. Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), the human-
ist chancellor of Florence, gave the highest praise to
the Stoics in his early works; but later in his life he
began to question the practicability of their doc-
trines. While accepting that virtue and vice were the
only moral good and evil, he insisted that the various
fortunes and misfortunes which befell men were nat-
ural, if secondary, goods and evils, and could not be
dismissed with Stoic indifference.
As others would later point out, the Stoic empha-
sis on virtue to the exclusion of everything else
clearly ran counter to the general belief that misfor-
tune was inimical to happiness. The notion that
someone could be happy while suffering imprison-
ment, poverty, or torture seemed not only unrealistic
but inhuman. The Aristotelian doctrine that happi-
ness depended on bodily and external goods as well
as on virtuous activity was regarded as much closer
to the way people actually spoke and felt. Virtue
might be the most important constituent of happi-
ness, but few would go so far as to assert that it was
the only one.
The Stoic assumption that virtue is its own re-
ward was ridiculed by Lorenzo Valla, who found the
argument to be circular. According to the Stoic the-
ory, I act courageously for the sake of virtue. But
what is virtue? Acting courageously. So, I am to act
courageously in order to act courageously: this was
not an ethical principle but empty rhetoric. Valla
also thought that Stoic morality rested on a funda-
mental misunderstanding of human nature. No one,
725
history of Western ethics: 7. Renaissance
in his opinion, ever committed virtuous deeds self-
lessly, as the Stoics would have it. He insisted that
people were always motivated by the desire to se-
cure their own fame, glory or some other personal
advantage.
The emotions were considered by the Stoics to be
irrational impulses that therefore had no role to play
in virtuous conduct, which consisted in conformity
to the rational law of nature. To achieve virtue and
happiness it was necessary to attain a condition of
impassivity (apatheia), in which all emotions (ex-
cept the three rational ones: joy, caution, and will)
were totally eradicated.
The Stoic theory of the emotions was the inspi-
ration for Petrarch’s De remediis utriusque fortunae,
the stated purpose of which was to restrain or, if
possible, to extirpate the passions of the soul both
from himself and from his readers. Petrarch’s work
found a large and receptive audience; but not every-
one was convinced of the psychological validity of
the Stoic position. The Florentine humanist Gian-
nozzo Manetti (1396–1458), attempting to come to
terms with the recent death of his young son, repu-
diated Stoic consolatory topoi as psychologically in-
effective. It simply was not possible for fathers to
follow the Stoic recommendation not to grieve at the
loss of their sons. Death, in his opinion, was a gen-
uine evil, and grief was a natural and legitimate re-
sponse to it. In reply to the frequently voiced criti-
cism that the Stoic repression of emotions required
superhuman power, Angelo Poliziano (1454–1494),
who translated Epictetus into Latin, claimed that al-
though it was by no means easy, it was not beyond
man’s capacities, as the conduct of Solomon (c.
1015–977 B.C.E.) and Cato the Elder (234–149
B.C.E.) proved.
Nevertheless, the Peripatetic view that emotions
should be moderated rather than eliminated seemed
to many a more realistic and humane basis for mo-
rality. Since Aristotle applied his doctrine of moral
virtue (as a mean between two extremes) to emo-
tions as well as actions, he considered a deficiency
of emotion just as wrong as an excess. Far from see-
ing the emotions as obstacles to virtue, as did the
Stoics, followers of Aristotle regarded them as, at
least potentially, incentives to virtuous behavior: AN-
GER, for instance, could in certain circumstances
spur men on to courageous actions. The emotions
had, after all, been given to us by nature, which did
nothing in vain; so they must be beneficial to us.
history of Western ethics: 7. Renaissance
Besides, the emotions were so intimately connected
to our bodies that it would be just as difficult to
extirpate them as to remove our blood or nerves.
The Stoic condemnation of certain emotions that
were usually viewed in a positive light (such as pity)
was especially censured. While it was recognized
that pity could easily be overdone, those who felt
none at all were generally regarded as lacking both
sense and sensibility. John CALVIN (1509–1564), in
his commentary on Seneca’s De clementia, took ex-
ception to the statement that pity was a mental de-
fect (II.4), citing against this position an array of
classical and patristic authors who had strongly ap-
proved of the emotion. Calvin himself considered
pity to be not merely a virtue but an essential quality
in the CHARACTER of a good man. Michel de MON-
TAIGNE (1533–1592) took a similar view. Moreover,
he felt that the noble impassivity to which the Stoics
aspired was, for most men at any rate, unattainable.
He himself attempted to cultivate an attitude of
Stoic constancy when faced with the unavoidable,
such as the prospect of his own death; but in less
extreme circumstances he leaned toward the Aris-
totelian view that emotions should be tempered
rather than abolished. Above all, the Stoics’ demand
for godlike moral virtue was, in Montaigne’s eyes,
an example of the most characteristic of human
vices: intellectual vanity and presumption. Even the
Stoic wise man, try as he might, could not control
his natural inclination to pale with fear and blush
with shame. These small physical signs indicated na-
ture’s authority over us, which neither reason nor
Stoic virtue could overthrow, and demonstrated to
us the limit of our capabilities as human beings.
The neo-Stoic movement arose as a direct re-
sponse to the religious and civil wars which tore
northern Europe apart in the second half of the six-
teenth century. Aristotelian moderation seemed to
many inadequate to cope with the political anarchy
and moral chaos by which they found themselves
surrounded. In such conditions the severe and rig-
orous ethical philosophy of the Stoics no longer ap-
peared quite so extreme; indeed it seemed that the
only way to control the inflamed passions which
were ravaging society was to eradicate them com-
pletely, just as the Stoics had recommended.
The first and greatest proponent of NEO-STOICISM
was the Flemish scholar Justus Lipsius (1547–1606),
who initiated the movement in 1584 with his enor-
mously influential De constantia. Set during the re-
726
volt of the Low Countries against Spain, the dia-
logue begins with Lipsius expressing his desire to
escape from the civil strife of his native land. His
wise friend, however, counsels him that it is not his
country which he should flee but his emotions. He
tells Lipsius that instead of allowing his emotions to
disturb the equilibrium of his soul, he should pursue
Stoic constancy, defined here as an upright and im-
movable mental strength, which is neither lifted up
nor depressed by external or accidental circum-
stances. Not only the war and its destruction, but
everything which happens outside the soul, whether
it involves money, politics, or health, must be dis-
regarded if we are to obtain the tranquility we desire.
Nor should we allow ourselves to commiserate with
the misfortunes of others; for pity, as the ancient Sto-
ics had proclaimed, was a harmful and useless emo-
tion, causing us to suffer needlessly while doing no
good to those toward whom it is directed.
The neo-Stoicism which Lipsius developed to
deal with the traumatic upheavals in his own coun-
try was soon adapted by Guillaume Du Vair (1556–
1621) to serve the needs of Frenchmen suffering
through the murderous Wars of Religion. Du Vair,
a man of action rather than a systematic philosopher,
addressed a popular audience in his Philosophie mo-
rale des Stoı̈ques, based primarily on the Enchirid-
ion of Epictetus, which he had translated into
French, and supplemented with precepts and ex-
amples taken from other Stoic authors, along with
observations drawn from his own experience. Like
Lipsius, Du Vair believed that it was essential to gain
complete control of our emotions by disregarding
everything which it was not in our power to regulate:
health, wealth, reputation, and the like, none of
which impinged on the true and only good, which
for Du Vair, as for all Stoics ancient and modern,
was virtue.
Neo-Stoicism also migrated to countries where
the political and social situation was reasonably sta-
ble. Spanish readers, already well disposed by long
tradition to Seneca, a Spaniard by birth, were intro-
duced to its characteristic themes by Sánchez’s pref-
ace to his translation of the Enchiridion of Epictetus.
In England it was Du Vair’s treatise, translated in
1598, which initiated interest in neo-Stoicism. There,
as in most areas of Europe, it was not until the first
part of the seventeenth century that the neo-Stoic
movement established itself and developed a signifi-
cant following.

Epicurean Ethics
Of the four major philosophical schools which
formed the classical tradition of ethics, Epicurean-
ism had the worst reputation and the least influence.
The Epicurean doctrines which aroused the most
hostility were the denial of divine providence, the
assertion that the soul was mortal, and, in the ethical
sphere, the belief that PLEASURE was the supreme
good. Even in antiquity Epicurus was vilified as a
sensual hedonist. Yet though he did not deny the
importance of gratifying the senses, he in fact iden-
tified the highest pleasure with an absolute tran-
quility and peace of mind (ataraxia), which when
attained would produce happiness even while the
body was being tortured. Furthermore, he held that
pleasures which brought with them greater pains
were to be avoided. Since it was the sensual plea-
sures of the body which were most likely to result in
pain, the Epicurean sage, far from indulging in he-
donistic excesses of eating, drinking, and sex, was
cautious and moderate in his pursuit of corporeal
pleasures.
One of the most sympathetic portrayals of Epi-
curus was presented by Seneca, who praised him
for his moderation, sobriety, and virtuousness and
cited a number of Epicurean pronouncements
which he regarded as fundamentally compatible
with his own brand of austere Stoicism. There was,
however, one tenet of Epicurean ethics which Sen-
eca could not accept: the belief that virtue was pur-
sued not for its own sake but on account of the
pleasure which invariably accompanied it. Seneca
and Cicero (whose attitude was far less positive)
were the primary sources for detailed information
on Epicureanism during the Middle Ages. Although
they continued to perform this function throughout
the Renaissance, two new texts also became avail-
able in the early fifteenth century. The most impor-
tant was Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of the Philoso-
phers, which was translated into Latin by 1433.
Book X, which contains three letters by Epicurus
and a list of his principal doctrines, gave Western
scholars direct access for the first time to his writ-
ings; Diogenes also provided a detailed account of
his life and philosophy. The other newly recovered
text was Lucretius’s De rerum natura, a poetic ex-
position of Epicurean philosophy. Virtually un-
known since the ninth century, it was discovered in
1417 and gradually entered the humanist reper-
727
history of Western ethics: 7. Renaissance
toire, although Lucretius, precisely because of his
commitment to Epicureanism, never attained the
status of a canonical author. The few commentators
who attempted to grapple with the poem were
forced either to repudiate the doctrines which they
expounded or to play down the less acceptable as-
pects of the philosophy while stressing such things
as Lucretius’s advocacy of frugality and moderation
or his belief that the greatest pleasure was an inner
peace attained by scientific speculation into the se-
crets of nature.
Although these new sources presented a more in-
formed view of Epicureanism, old prejudices against
the sect persisted. Bruno—who saw affinities be-
tween the Epicurean concept of pleasure and his
own notion of heroic love, since both (in his view)
were exalted sensations uncontaminated by pain—
regretted that people did not bother to read Epicu-
rus’s books or unbiased accounts of his doctrines
and therefore continued to regard him as a sensu-
alist. Certainly many were still convinced that the
Epicurean supreme good consisted in food, drink,
and sexual pleasure; others, however, recognized
that it was based primarily on mental contentment
rather than corporeal stimulation. Even so, prob-
lems remained. How, for example, could Epicurus
assert that all happiness derived from the pleasures
of the senses but nevertheless maintain that mani-
festly nonsensual pleasures, such as virtue, also
brought happiness? And how could he believe that
the wise man was mentally happy even while suffer-
ing physical torture and yet affirm that the absence
of pain was the supreme good?
Those who saw Epicureanism chiefly through
Seneca’s eyes tended to adopt his view that in the
rigor of its moral precepts, it was by no means in-
ferior to Stoicism. On this basis, Epicurus the Stoic
manqué found a number of supporters. Epicurus
the hedonist was another matter: almost no one was
willing to espouse undiluted Epicureanism whole-
heartedly. A striking exception is Cosma Raimondi
(d. 1435), a humanist from Cremona, who de-
scribed himself as a devoted follower and endorsed
with enthusiasm Epicurus’s belief that the supreme
good consisted in pleasure both of the mind and of
the body. According to Raimondi, not only do we
have an innate desire to seek out pleasure, nature
has also given us a variety of sense organs in order
to enable us to enjoy pleasure in all its forms. An-
other Italian humanist, Francesco Filelfo (1398–
history of Western ethics: 7. Renaissance
1481), applauded Epicurus for recognizing that
bodily pleasures, although inferior to mental ones,
were not to be entirely neglected. Filelfo felt that
Epicurus’s concern for the total man, body and
soul, made his moral doctrines preferable to those
of philosophers such as Pythagoras (c. 560–500
B.C.E.) and Socrates who concentrated on the soul
to the exclusion of the body. The fact that Epicu-
reanism took into account our corporeal as well as
our spiritual aspect and underlined our connection
with, rather than superiority to, the natural world
was an important part of its appeal to Montaigne.
But his was very much a minority opinion. Far more
common, indeed a commonplace since antiquity,
was the criticism that Epicurus, by making pleasure
the supreme good, had lowered man to the level of
pigs. Epicurean happiness was thought to subor-
dinate reason to the senses and thus to reduce hu-
man life to that of animals.
Even more seriously, Epicurus’s denial of divine
providence and the immortality of the soul was
viewed as a threat to the entire framework of Chris-
tian ethics. Bodin condemned Epicurus for having
committed the unpardonable sin: not only had he
destroyed the concept of God’s love for man but,
by abolishing the expectation of reward and PUN-
ISHMENT in the afterlife, he had undermined the
fabric of civil society. Despite such obstacles, a few
thinkers developed the notion of a Christian Epi-
cureanism, based on the similarity they perceived
between the this-worldly pleasures praised by Epi-
curus and the other-worldly ones promised by
Christ. This theme, first developed by Valla, was
later taken up by Erasmus (c. 1466/9–1536) in his
colloquy Epicureus, in which he maintains that true
pleasure does not come from sensual delights, in-
variably accompanied by pain, but from living a pi-
ous life, which alone reconciles man to God, the
source of his supreme good. The inhabitants of
Utopia, described by Erasmus’s friend Thomas
More (1478–1535), are Epicureans in that they re-
gard pleasure as the highest good. But they are also
Christians—in spirit, at any rate—because they
forgo the fleeting pleasures of this life in favor of
the eternal joy which God will grant the virtuous
in the next. Only when Epicureanism was thus
turned on its head, its values transformed by the
truths of the Gospels, could it become an admissi-
ble ethical system for Christians.
728
Christianity and the Classical Tradition
of Ethics
As Christians, the writers of this period could not,
any more than their medieval predecessors, fully ac-
cept any pagan account of the supreme good. Chris-
tian thinkers had never felt entirely comfortable with
the classical tradition: what, they asked, had Athens
to do with Jerusalem or Cicero with St. Paul? But
they had never entirely rejected it either. Instead they
attempted to appropriate the useful aspects of clas-
sical philosophy, while abandoning, avoiding, or
condemning any doctrines which overtly contra-
dicted Christian dogma. In general Platonism and
Stoicism fared better among the Church Fathers
than Aristotelianism and Epicureanism. Attitudes
were continually revised and challenged, especially
in the late Middle Ages when scholastic philoso-
phers devised elaborate strategies to make Aristo-
telian ethical doctrines compatible with Christian
morality. The intensified interest in the full range of
classical philosophy which characterized the thought
of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries brought no
diminution in these tensions. Ancient philosophical
sources were used as the foundation of an ethical
system for laymen living in the secular world of the
present. But it was not forgotten that these laymen
were Christians, whose immortal souls were des-
tined for a higher goal in the next life.
From the thirteenth century onward the most
widely accepted formula for combining classical and
Christian morality was to assume that pagan ethics
had signposted a path which led toward the true
Christian homeland, but which stopped short at the
boundaries of the temporal world. Classical philos-
ophers had taught essentially the same moral pre-
cepts as Christians but had regarded them solely in
the context of this life. The French Augustinian
Jacques Legrand (c. 1365–1415) therefore felt no
qualms about filling his Sophilogium, a treatise de-
signed for preachers, with references to pagan
works; for the aim of classical moral philosophy was
the attainment of temporal happiness through vir-
tuous living, which was the privileged means of ac-
cess to the higher beatitude of eternal life. Treated
judiciously, the writings of pagan authors could pro-
vide, as Erasmus realized, much that was conducive
to upright living; and good advice, from whatever
quarter, was not to be scorned. It was, of course,
recognized that there were crucial distinctions be-

tween, say, the theological virtues and those de-
scribed by Aristotle or the Stoics. But most writers
saw no essential rift between classical and Christian
ethics.
There were, as ever, some dissenting voices. The
growing absorption of the nascent humanist move-
ment in pagan thought and letters provoked the Do-
minican Giovanni Dominici (1355/6–c. 1419) to
write his Lucula noctis, in which he attempted to
dissuade Christians from the study of classical phi-
losophy on the grounds that it could not lead them
to true beatitude. Similarly, John Colet (c. 1467–
1519), dean of St. Paul’s, insisted that Christians
should banquet only with Christ, refusing to seat
themselves at other tables, where everything savored
of the devil. Such opinions were also held, more sur-
prisingly, by some of the foremost representatives of
the humanist movement. Valla, for instance, was
anxious to draw the line between pagan ethics and
Christian dogma, repudiating the common assump-
tion that the one could be easily assimilated to the
other. According to him, it was impossible for any
non-Christian to have been virtuous or to have un-
derstood the nature of virtue; to say otherwise was
to maintain that there was no need for Christ to have
come to earth to redeem fallen mankind. In De tran-
situ Hellenismi ad Christianismum, the French hu-
manist Guillaume Budé (1467–1540) also rejected
any shallow compromise between Christian and
classical culture. Since authentic philosophy was to
be found in the Bible, the problem of happiness
should be discussed not in the Stoa, Academy, or
Lyceum, but in the school of the Gospel. Another
prominent humanist, the Spaniard Juan Luis Vives
(1492–1540), complained in his De causis corrup-
tarum artium that his contemporaries neglected the
infallible guidance on virtues and vices that God
provided in sacred doctrine, preferring to put their
faith in the hallucinations of half-blind philosophers.
Protestants also faced this problem. A few, such
as the Calvinist Lambert Daneau (c. 1530–1595),
renounced all forms of pagan moral philosophy
since none of them took original sin into account,
which rendered them useless to postlapsarian man.
Daneau therefore wrote his Ethices christianae libri
tres, in which he presented a complete ethical system
based on the divine law as revealed to Moses in the
Ten Commandments. In like manner, a number of
English Puritans rejected the AUTONOMY OF ETHICS
as a philosophical discipline and produced moral
729
history of Western ethics: 7. Renaissance
treatises in which all precepts were derived from the
Bible. A different stance was taken by the influential
Lutheran theologian Philipp Melanchthon (1497–
1560). He believed that although our spiritual un-
derstanding of God’s law had been fundamentally
vitiated by the Fall, our rational knowledge of the
law of nature, which was part of divine law, re-
mained intact. Melanchthon regarded moral philos-
ophy as the rational explication of this law for the
purpose of establishing rules to govern external be-
havior and civil society. Theology, on the other hand,
was concerned solely with our inner spiritual life and
relation to God; Christ had come to earth to remit
our sins, not to deliver ethical teachings already
known through reason. As long as ethics was kept
rigidly separate from theology, it was permissible—
indeed desirable—for Christians to follow the doc-
trines of pagan authors.
See also: CALVIN; CHRISTIAN ETHICS; EMOTION; EP-
ICUREANISM; EUDAIMONIA, -ISM; HAPPINESS; HEDO-
NISM; HUMANISM; LUTHER; MACHIAVELLI; MON-
TAIGNE; STOICISM; SUÁREZ; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS;
THOMAS AQUINAS; VIRTUES; VITORIA; VOLUNTA-
RISM; WILLIAM OF OCKHAM.
Bibliography
Bodin, Jean. Selected Writings on Philosophy, Religion
and Politics. Translated by P. L. Rose. Geneva: Droz,
1980.
Colet, John. Commentary on First Corinthians. Translated
by B. O’Kelly and C. A. L. Jarrott. Binghamton, NY:
Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1985.
Originally written c. 1496–1505.
Joy, L. S. “Epicureanism in Renaissance Moral and Natu-
ral Philosophy.” Journal of the History of Ideas 53
(1992): 573–83.
Kraye, Jill. “Moral Philosophy.” In The Cambridge History
of Renaissance Philosophy, edited by C. B. Schmitt, et
al., 303–86. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1988. The essay of which this entry is a summary (with
new material added). Contains full bibliography of
texts and criticisms.
———. “The Transformation of Platonic Love in the Ital-
ian Renaissance.” In Platonism and the English Imag-
ination, edited by A. Baldwin and S. Hutton, 76–85.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
———. “Like Father, Like Son: Aristotle, Nicomachus
and the Nicomachean Ethics.” In Aristotelica et Lulli-
ana magistro doctissimo Charles H. Lohr septuagesi-
mum annum feliciter agenti dedicata, edited by R. Im-
bach, et al., 155–80. Turnhout: Brepols, 1995.
———. “Renaissance Commentaries on the Nicomachean
history of Western ethics: 7. Renaissance
Ethics.” In The Vocabulary of Teaching and Research
between Middle Ages and Renaissance, Proceedings of
the Colloquium: London, Warburg Institute, 11–12
March 1994, edited by O. Weijers, 96–117. Turnhout:
Brepols, 1995.
———, ed. Cambridge Translations of Renaissance Phil-
osophical Texts. Volume 1: Moral Philosophy. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Morford, Mark. Stoics and Neostoics: Rubens and the Cir-
cle of Lipsius. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1991.
Panizza, Letizia. “Valla’s De voluptate ac de vero bono and
Erasmus’ Stultitiae laus: Reviewing Christian Ethics.”
Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook 15 (1995):
1–25.
Rabil, A. “Cicero and Erasmus’ Moral Philosophy.” Eras-
mus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook 8 (1988): 70–90.
Raimondi, Cosma. “Defence of Epicurus.” Rinascimento
ii, 27 (1987): 123–39. M. C. Davies’s critical edition
of the text. Originally written c. 1429.
Struever, Nancy. Theory as Practice: Ethical Inquiry in the
Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1992.
Jill Kraye
history of Western ethics:
8. seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries
Modern philosophical thought about morality began
during the enormous intellectual, political, and re-
ligious turmoil of the first half of the seventeenth
century. The Reformation had given rise to inter-
minable disputes about the interpretation of Chris-
tianity and its morality. The destructive wars waged
in the name of RELIGION seemed just as endless. Rel-
ativistic skepticism, feeding on religious controversy
and on new knowledge of the non-European world,
seemed both inescapable and dangerous. If morality
was at best a matter of local custom, if we could not
be sure that there are universal standards according
to which God judges the wicked and the good and
punishes and rewards, would we not all be tempted
to escape human surveillance and live dissolute lives
of pleasure-seeking? The Pyrrhonian skepticism of
classical antiquity, revived during the period, offered
a way of life to the small number of those able to
study its arguments; the classical doctrines of the
Stoics and the Epicureans also attracted some ad-
herents. But more than a morality for an elite group
was needed. There was a clear need for the recon-
730
struction of an understanding of morality in both its
private and public dimensions.
Reconstruction turned out to require going be-
yond the search for new intellectual justifications
for moral belief. It involved reshaping the way in
which human capacities for self-direction and SELF-
CONTROL were understood. At the beginning of the
seventeenth century there was a widespread belief
that people need to be guided and controlled in
moral matters by someone or something external to
themselves. By the end of the eighteenth century
various attempts had been made to show that human
beings are capable of providing fully adequate moral
guidance and control for themselves. The slow and
often unintended shift toward belief in the moral au-
tonomy of the individual is the most marked general
tendency of the period; it is the development that,
more than any other, created the problems for the
moral philosophy that followed.
It would be a mistake to think that modern moral
philosophy was simply an offshoot of the develop-
ments in epistemology that began with Francis Ba-
con (1561–1626) and René DESCARTES (1596–
1650). Concern about the possible widespread
collapse of moral order could not be allayed by a
general theory of knowledge. The moral philosopher
had to show how awareness of the requirements of
morality can move people to action; and if awareness
of those requirements could not be available to
everyone alike, then the philosopher had to explain
how there could be effective guidance for the actions
of those who could not see for themselves how to
behave. There were epistemological problems of
morals, but they were not the same as the episte-
mological questions raised by the new sciences.
It would be equally erroneous to think that mod-
ern moral philosophy arose originally or primarily
from a conscious wish to secularize morality. Though
the Western world was irreconcilably divided about
how to interpret its religion, it still took itself to be
Christian. To win wide acceptance, a moral philos-
ophy would have to offer an account of at least the
main points of what was taken by every confession
as the core of Christian morality. Throughout the
period, most of the serious writers about morality
were religious believers. Deliberate attempts to ex-
plain morality in overtly secular terms, however
much attention they drew, were relatively rare.
Christ taught (Matthew 22:37–40) that the law
is summed up in the command to love God above
 history of Western ethics: 8. seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
all else and our neighbor as ourselves; and PAUL said
(Romans 2:14–15) that God’s law is written in the
hearts of all people alike—although, he added, our
ability to grasp it is enfeebled because of the sinful
nature we inherited from Adam. Much of the moral
philosophy of the period accordingly centered on
ideas of law and LOVE. Virtue, usually construed as
the habit of acting in accordance with moral law,
occupied a lesser place in moral theory until the
eighteenth century. Self-interest posed a problem
throughout the period. Was it a threat or a prop to
morality? Philosophers throughout the period were
also concerned about the general availability of
moral knowledge. Did only those who were saved
have adequate access to it? Only a few wise men or
scholars? Or everyone?
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
an extraordinarily rich array of valuable and original
moral theories was published. A purely chronologi-
cal treatment runs the risk of losing sight of the ma-
jor questions the philosophers faced and the major
options they created in answering them. A more use-
ful overview of the period may come from looking
at the affinities of different theories and grouping
them accordingly. This will place the philosophers of
the time in relation to one another and to the dom-
inant concerns of the period. The main directions of
thought can be reasonably well indicated by consid-
ering the moral philosophers as falling into four
main groups: the NATURAL LAW theorists, the ration-
alists, the egoistic theorists, and the theorists of
autonomy.
Natural Law
The political turmoil of the earlier seventeenth
century called for ways of publicly discussing con-
troversial practical issues which the highly personal
ethic of a skeptic like Michel de MONTAIGNE (1533–
1592) could not provide. Natural law doctrine
seemed to be the sensible place to look, since ver-
sions of THOMAS AQUINAS’s (1225?–1274) view
were held by Martin LUTHER (1483–1546) and John
CALVIN (1509–1564) as well as by leading Catholic
theologians.
Two restatements of Thomism were especially im-
portant, those published by the Anglican Richard
Hooker (1553/4–1600) in 1594 and by the Jesuit
Francisco SUAREZ (1548–1617) in 1612. Both of
them elaborated the Thomistic view that the good
731
of the universe and the good of the individual are
related through laws given to us by God. Each of the
different kinds of created being was intended by
God to play a special part in contributing to the
COMMON GOOD of the universe. The contribution
each is to make is indicated by the laws; and every
individual finds its own fulfillment in acting as it is
appropriate for beings of that kind to act. The lower
orders of creation play their parts unknowingly. If
there is failure or disorder among them, it is only
because created beings are all less than fully perfect.
Rational beings alone are meant to be guided by con-
scious knowledge of the laws which are appropriate
to our nature, and are capable of willful disobedi-
ence. Through reason, which is common to all hu-
man beings, we can discover the laws God intends
to govern us. Hence these laws are common to all
people, unlike the divine positive laws God laid
down for only some of his subjects. And because
they are laws suitable to the nature of beings capable
of voluntary action, they are different in kind from
the laws that govern the lower parts of creation.
Hooker did not aim to modify or extend Thomas
Aquinas’s basic views, and he did not give detailed
analyses of the concepts he used. His aim in restating
Thomism was to provide common ground on which
Anglicans and Puritans could settle their disputes
about church governance. From natural law doc-
trine he drew the conclusion that forms of govern-
ment, whether in state or in church, are not dictated
by God through the Bible. Many different kinds of
governance can be legitimate, he held, provided
those who are governed by them consent to them.
Hooker’s lasting influence was on political rather
than on moral thought.
Suarez went beyond both St. Thomas and Hooker
by providing an elaborate analysis of the obligation
imposed on us by God’s laws. Although the laws of
nature can be shown to be reasonable by showing
that they lead us to perfect the different aspects of
our nature and order us to the common good, the
obligation to obey them cannot arise, Suarez held,
simply from our knowledge of the goods to which
they direct us. Morality on his view requires OBE-
DIENCE TO LAW, and law must reflect the will of a
lawgiver, and be backed by sanctions. We are obli-
gated when we have to act in certain ways because
a legitimate ruler makes us do so. It is through sanc-
tions that the ruler makes it necessary for us to act
history of Western ethics: 8. seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
as he directs. The sanctions are thus the source of
obligation.
The centrality of obedience in morality is thus re-
flected in Suarez’s view of law. It is reinforced by a
psychological view which was widely held at the
time. The will follows the prompting of intellect, in
the sense that we act for what we see to be the great-
est amount of good we can bring about. If we could
really know that compliance with the laws of nature
will lead to our own fulfillment or good as well as
to the good of the whole community, the knowledge
would be effective in moving us to act. But if we do
not fully understand this, we must be moved to obey
by being shown a good we do understand. Sanctions
serve this function. They move us to do, for the sake
of avoiding an obvious evil to ourselves, what will
in fact be for everyone’s good, our own included.
The theory that sanctions obligate us to act morally,
and that these moral sanctions are imposed ulti-
mately by God, was a standard outlook, which some
later natural lawyers rejected or modified but most
accepted.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Hugo GROTIUS (1583–1645) was widely regarded
as the founder of a new view of natural law and a
modern treatment of morality. He outlined views
which made it possible to work out a system of nat-
ural law without raising any controversial religious
issues. He was the first to hold that each person,
simply as an individual, possesses RIGHTS which
must be respected by any community into which the
person enters. These rights, Grotius held, constrain
even God in his law-making. They are prior to ob-
ligations and would give rise to obligations even if
God did not exist. But we can see for ourselves that
God has so arranged matters that respecting rights
would in fact work for the common good. This is
because we are—as empirical evidence shows—so-
ciable by nature, wanting human company for its
own sake. The laws of nature show us how to order
a community of sociable rights-bearers so that we
can all live profitably together.
Thomas HOBBES (1588–1679) used the termi-
nology of natural law and generally presented his
view as a version of natural law theory. But even
more clearly than Grotius he took the attainment of
the good of the separate individual as the point of
morality. Like Grotius he attributed natural rights to
individuals in a presocial state of nature. Society
arises, he held, from each person’s realization that
732
only submission to a powerful sovereign could give
protection against the threat of death from other
people. The laws of nature or morality simply point
out how to achieve one’s own safety. His denial of
human sociability, his apparent insistence that each
person seeks only his own good, his wholly natural-
istic treatment of obligation in terms of forces mov-
ing us to action, and his refusal to attribute a promi-
nent role in the moral life to God, all separated him
sharply from the mainstream natural lawyers, and
helped make him the most frequently attacked
thinker of the century. Much of later natural law
thought was an effort to rescue the doctrine from
Hobbes’s version of it. Among later philosophers,
Hobbes’s real followers were those whom some have
called the egoists.
The two major post-Hobbesian natural law the-
orists to elaborate moral positions were Richard
CUMBERLAND (1632–1718) and Samuel PUFENDORF
(1632–1694). (John LOCKE, also born in 1632, does
not qualify here, since his published work on natural
rights concerned politics; his more general essays on
natural law remained in manuscript until 1954.)
Cumberland highlighted one element of classical
natural law theory—that laws order action for the
common good. In opposition to Hobbes he held that
the basic law is that we are to promote the good of
all rational beings; all other laws would follow ob-
viously from that. We learn the basic law simply by
learning that we ourselves are happiest when we act
for the HAPPINESS of all. This shows us what God
intended us to do. The sanctions for the law of na-
ture are purely natural. Just as headache follows
overindulgence in wine, so unhappiness follows ex-
cessive concern for oneself.
Grotius, Hobbes, and Cumberland in quite dif-
ferent ways proposed theories that stretched the lim-
its of the legal model to the breaking point, and
threatened to make God as legislator irrelevant to
morality. Pufendorf, by far the most widely read of
all the modern natural law writers, made a powerful
attempt to show why God is essential to morality,
and to hold together all the other elements of clas-
sical natural law teaching. Reviving the voluntarist
theory held by John DUNS SCOTUS (c. 1266–1308),
WILLIAM OF OCKHAM (c. 1285–c. 1349), and Lu-
ther—the theory that God’s will is the source of the
truth or legitimacy of moral laws as well of their
sanctions—Pufendorf argued that morality arises
from the unconstrained will of God, without which
 history of Western ethics: 8. seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
nothing would have any moral properties at all. He
amended Grotius by holding that laws imposing ob-
ligations are prior to rights, which only arise from
obligations. He insisted that sanctions are required
by the very nature of law, because it is through sanc-
tions that a superior obligates us to obey. He did not
wholly naturalize the sanctions which God imposes,
though he was deeply uncomfortable about bringing
anything supernatural into natural law theory. Yet in
the end he could only convince himself that obedi-
ence to the laws of nature benefits the individual as
well as the community by appeal to rewards and
punishments after death.
The natural lawyers held that empirical investi-
gation of the salient features of our distinctive hu-
man nature was the method through which we could
attain knowledge of the laws of nature. They treated
the laws of nature as showing us the solution to the
problems that arise when beings with our nature
have to live together. Hobbes excepted, they held
that while we are self-interested, we are sociable as
well, desiring one another’s company for its own
sake; and most of them thought that this fact could
not be doubted even by the skeptic. But even
Hobbes thought we had to live together and treated
natural law as showing us how to do so. It was an
important consequence of this approach that it en-
abled the lawyers to hold that we can discover God’s
laws without appeal to any religious doctrines be-
yond the uncontestable thesis that God exists and
looks after his creation. Or at least, they held, some
people can discover his laws. The inquiry is too dif-
ficult for many. Consequently those who can obtain
the knowledge must teach the others, thereby trans-
mitting God’s direction of our lives to the whole
society.
The Grotian natural lawyers saw us as capable of
determining for ourselves the form our political or-
ganization should take; but they all, Hobbes in-
cluded, assumed that our being obligated—being
made to comply with law—was central to morality.
The attempt to work out the details of the duties to
which compliance can be enforced—“perfect” du-
ties, as they came to be called—occupied much of
their thought. But Grotius and Pufendorf also made
room for “imperfect duties,” where compliance can-
not be enforced. These they called “duties of love,”
including among them the requirements of CHARITY
and GENEROSITY and kindliness. In recognizing
them, they not only began to transform the Christian
733
concepts of agape and caritas into a secular notion
of BENEVOLENCE, but they also opened the door for
consideration of an area of behavior in which no
external control over the individual was necessary
or possible, and in which morally requisite action
came from the agent’s internal motivation. Christian
THOMASIUS (1655–1728) was the first to hold that
the realm of unenforceable duties arising from direct
concern for others is itself the special domain of mo-
rality, and to contrast morality sharply with law,
where external enforcement is possible.
Rationalism
The rationalists did not think that empirical in-
vestigation of human nature was the key to learning
what morality directs us to do. Though Descartes
did not work out a theory of morality, he held that
one could be developed from unshakeable founda-
tions. The earliest rationalist to develop a distinctive
ethics was the French priest Nicolas MALEBRANCHE
(1638–1715). Better known for his highly original
development of Cartesianism in epistemology and
metaphysics, Malebranche rejected the VOLUNTA-
RISM of Descartes and Pufendorf. He held instead
that moral awareness involves awareness of eternal
ideas in the mind of God. These ideas are the arche-
types according to which God created the universe.
We can see the different degrees of perfection they
contain, and thereby come to know the different de-
grees to which their exemplifications are worthy of
love. We have a right love of earthly things and of
God if we love and act only in accordance with the
eternal order of perfections we can perceive. We nat-
urally seek only our own good, Malebranche held,
but with the aid of grace we can come to see that
our own good is to be found only in God, and that
we attain God only by having right love. Since God
is the most perfect being, and humans are all equal
in metaphysical degree of perfection, right love leads
us to love God above all else and our neighbors as
ourselves.
The strong Augustinianism that marks Male-
branche’s view was not shared by most of the ra-
tionalists, but the belief that harmful and narrow
self-love could be overcome by adequate knowledge
was so important to many of them that it must be
taken as a major distinguishing mark of the group.
It led them to play down the natural lawyers’ idea
of obligation as arising from sanctions, though they
history of Western ethics: 8. seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
did not drop it altogether. In the treatise Eternal and
Immutable Morality, written before 1688 and pub-
lished in 1731, Ralph CUDWORTH (1617–1688) de-
veloped a cognitivist moral epistemology, arguing
much more explicitly than Malebranche against vol-
untarism. He knew and opposed Descartes’s version
of it but his primary target was the Calvinism of the
English Puritans. Their teaching portrayed God as
arbitrarily consigning most people to eternal dam-
nation, and made the precise interpretation of bib-
lical texts a matter of major significance. Cudworth
wanted to see their version of Christianity replaced
with one which made God’s love of all people cen-
tral, and in which moral action rather than theolog-
ical purity was of prime importance for our lives.
Like Malebranche, he thought moral knowledge was
knowledge of ideas in God’s mind—he took this to
be what PLATO (c. 430–347 B.C.E.) thought the
Ideas were—and held that if we came to see the
Ideas clearly and distinctly they would show us what
is eternally good and what evil. The clear perception
of good would transform us so that we would seek
the good as good and not only on condition that it
be our own. He has little to say about those who
cannot attain this perception.
Baruch SPINOZA (1632–1677), who had political
interests which Malebranche and Cudworth did not
have, was more aware of the problem raised by those
incapable of attaining adequate knowledge. He be-
lieved that insofar as we could come to understand
the nature of the universe, seeing that all things are
one in God and cannot be otherwise, we would come
to live a blessed life. We would cease to be narrowly
self-seeking and discontented with our own situa-
tion, and our growth in knowledge would itself be a
growing joy. The masses, he held, could not be ex-
pected to attain such knowledge, though stories like
those in the Bible could convey some of the sub-
stance of eternal truth to them in a form they could
understand. But since they would never clearly see
what the wise man sees—that one’s own good and
the good of others are inseparable—they would al-
ways need to be led to moral behavior by fear of
sanctions, and so would never be truly free, as the
wise man is who acts only from his own perceptions
of the good. If the wisdom Spinoza holds out to us
confers a kind of autonomy on its possessor, it is as
hard to acquire as the similar WISDOM of the Stoic
sage.
Gottfried LEIBNIZ (1646–1716) believed with
734
Spinoza that metaphysical knowledge is the source
of truly moral behavior. We naturally pursue what-
ever we see to be the most perfect option open to
us. If we learn from metaphysics to know the differ-
ent degrees of perfection built into the universe, we
will seek the greatest perfection we can bring about.
Leibniz identified charity with the love of perfection
in general, and he defined justice as the charity of
the wise—in other words, as the motivating love that
arises from knowledge of how to bring about the
greatest possible amount of perfection. Though he
himself wrote much less on ethics than on other sub-
jects, his viewpoint was transmitted and greatly elab-
orated by Christian WOLFF (1679–1754), through
whose work it exercised a commanding influence on
German thought well into the middle of the eigh-
teenth century. Wolff took himself to be arguing for
autonomy: when we act from our own knowledge
of the perfections of things, we are wholly self-
motivated. But he declared that the work of scholars
like himself was necessary if ordinary people were
to learn the degrees of perfection, so that on this
view most people could not in fact be self-directing.
Morality involved a quite different kind of knowl-
edge in the widely read work of Samuel CLARKE
(1675–1729). His model was mathematics rather
than metaphysics. There are, he claimed, self-evident
axioms which state the eternal relations or fitnesses
of things, and we can obtain all our moral guidance
from them. The axioms direct us to piety as well as
to justice, benevolence, and an appropriate degree
of concern for our own good. The knowledge of
them and their implications for conduct had initially
to be revealed to mankind through Christ and must
still be taught by the more learned and intelligent
among us, even though the axioms are perfectly ra-
tional. Clarke remained interestingly unclear about
the MOTIVES we have to act as the axioms tell us we
ought. Though at times he comes close to saying that
we can be moved simply by the knowledge that some
act is fitting or appropriate, in the end he seems to
come back to the view that whatever is fitting is also
good, so that we are moved by our perception of
goodness. Those who cannot know the laws for
themselves will still need to be made to comply with
them by sanctions; and these would ultimately have
to be divinely instituted.
Clarke’s work stimulated a heated debate among
British thinkers about whether morality was indeed
a matter of knowledge and reason. That controversy
 history of Western ethics: 8. seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
was inextricably connected with the lengthy attempt
to overcome the legacy of Hobbes. We must there-
fore look first at what that legacy was.
Egoism
Christianity always recognized self-love as part of
our essence and its influence as approvable within
limits. It also taught that Adam’s fall had made us
unable or nearly unable to confine self-love to its due
degree. Hobbes gave a secular version of AUGUS-
TINE’s (354–430) vision of corrupted human nature
and a harsh remedy for the evils it causes. Later
thinkers, accepting as unalterable fact that voluntary
action is always motivated by pursuit of the agent’s
own good rather than by pursuit of good generally,
drew different conclusions about the meaning of our
motivational makeup.
The first notorious egoistic theory after Hobbes’s
was that of Bernard MANDEVILLE (1670–1733). He
argued that most of what we all really want from
social life arises from self-interest, not from the VIR-
TUES to which we give such praise. General austerity
in matters of food, drink, sex, and luxury would lead
to unemployment and considerable suffering. The
selfish vices thus do far more than benevolence does
to keep us busy and happy. Selfishness does not de-
serve its bad name.
Mandeville meant to shock and perplex, but he
was not alone in believing that we are moved only
by self-interest, in the form of pursuit of our own
PLEASURE and avoidance of our own pain. The prob-
lem for the morally conventional believer in psy-
chological egoism was to explain how self-interest
moves us to behave as Christianity teaches us we
should. Innumerable authors strove to show that do-
ing good to others pays. Some, following a view orig-
inating in the seventeenth century among the CAM-
BRIDGE PLATONISTS and others, argued that it is
highly pleasurable to do so. Others took a harder
line: helping other people ensures their willingness
to help us. In either case, the obligation to virtue is
the necessity of pursuing our own pleasure and
avoiding our own pain.
Holding thus that our dominant motive always
leads us to do good for everyone, the psychological
egoist could be quite complacent. Either Nature has
so organized the world that self-interest as motive
always prompts us to forward the good of every-
one alike; or else—as William PALEY (1743–1805)
735
held—God, who is benevolent, wills us to do good
to others, and backs his will with sanctions. Hence
he obliges or obligates us to do good to all for the
sake of our own heavenly reward. Paley’s theological
UTILITARIANISM prospered in the early nineteenth
century.
One might be a less complacent psychological
egoist. One might hold that society as it is currently
structured does not bring about the happy juncture
of self-interested motive and beneficent deed. And
one might conclude that it is up to us to change so-
ciety so that it does. This line of thought emerged in
prerevolutionary France. Helvetius (1715–1771),
d’HOLBACH (1723–1789), and other Enlightenment
writers argued that since self-interest is the sole mo-
tive of all action, society must be reorganized so that,
in effect, what Mandeville believed to be already oc-
curring would be made to come about. Most people
are now neither happy nor virtuous, they held, but
it is because religious superstition and political des-
potism stand in the way of the free play of enlight-
ened self-interest. If we educate people to see what
is their true interest, and free them to pursue it, they
will sweep away these outdated obstacles to a new
and better world. Their thinking was influential in
shaping the work of Jeremy BENTHAM (1748–1832),
whose combination of psychological egoism and
moral concern for the good of everyone alike led to
a reformist version of utilitarianism. It was not until
after some decades of competition with Paley’s the-
ory that the Benthamite view became the accepted
classical statement of utilitarianism.
In the hands of the egoists, self-interest ceased to
be the feature of human nature that makes it nec-
essary for us to be controlled by divine and human
laws. It became the feature that enables us to work
for the good of everyone alike. Self-interest can con-
trol self-interest: humanity can control itself. Cleri-
cal writers like Paley still saw their views as vindi-
cating God’s rule over his creatures; but egoists even
of this persuasion were compelled by the logic of
their position to help move moral thought toward a
higher estimate of our potential for autonomy.
Theorists of Autonomy
On egoistic assumptions, individual self-direction
leads to morally acceptable action only if society is
structured so that each of us can see that morality
pays. To what extent, then, on this view, can people
history of Western ethics: 8. seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
have the knowledge required to generate morally
proper action? So much factual information about
the interlocking consequences of everyone’s actions
is needed that it seems that only very few would be
able to acquire it. Those who do not see that moral-
ity pays would have to be guided by those who do,
and compelled to be moral by external sanctions.
The egoist, like the natural lawyer and the early ra-
tionalist, can thus attribute full self-direction and
self-motivation only to the few. Philosophers who
were moved to make stronger claims about human
moral capacities had to explain how there could be
universal access to awareness of the requirements of
morality, and had to show, in opposition to the ego-
ists, how humans can guide and motivate themselves
in moral matters regardless of the condition of the
society in which they live.
Two main directions of thought about these issues
developed during the eighteenth century. On one
side, rationalists worked toward the view that the
knowledge required to guide moral action is consid-
erably simpler than previous theorists had held, and
therefore arguably within the reach of everyone
alike. On the other hand, several philosophers ar-
gued that the morality of our behavior does not de-
pend primarily on knowledge at all but on feeling.
And since on their view feelings are common to
everyone alike, the problem about access to moral
guidance vanishes. Different views of moral moti-
vation were developed to explain how, for each of
these strongly opposed views, moral awareness can
be effective in the control of action. The emergence
of a variety of ways of claiming for mankind a con-
siderable degree of self-directive capacity was the
distinguishing feature of eighteenth-century ethics.
But within the group of philosophers moving in this
direction, there was a deep difference between those
who aimed to show that our capacity for moral au-
tonomy still leaves us subordinate to God, and those
taking us to be independent of divine guidance or
any other external constraints in moral matters.
These attitudes naturally affected the philosophical
views through which they were articulated.
Rationalist proponents of the thesis that there is
special knowledge of moral principles increasingly
took the position that those principles of morality
are known to all of us because they are self-evident
or available through an intuitive faculty which every-
one has. They also considered it fairly easy to apply
the principles to cases, pointing out that difficulties
736
of application did not indicate any fundamentally
unequal distribution of moral capacity. Such views
were developed in Britain by Richard PRICE (1723–
1791) and Thomas REID (1710–1796), and in Ger-
many by Christian August CRUSIUS (c. 1715–1775).
All were Protestant ministers, anxious to defend the
equal moral responsibility of every person before
God at the last judgment, and so led to their claim
about the general accessibility of moral knowledge
by the argument that God would not make us re-
sponsible for abiding by principles which we could
not know.
An alternative to this kind of view was first pro-
posed by the third Earl of SHAFTESBURY (1671–
1713). From some of the Cambridge Platonists he
learned to think that virtue must be an expression
of the self as a whole, not merely compliance with
an external order. The human self includes first-
order desires or motivating impulses and in addition
the ability to reflect on them, and to feel approval of
some, disapproval of others. Virtue, Shaftesbury
held, is action from motives of which we approve.
What he sometimes called a moral sense makes us
aware of harmony or disharmony among our feel-
ings: we approve when they are harmonious. He
seemed to hold that approval itself is a feeling akin
to love, and like love able to move us to action. His
views were developed by Francis HUTCHESON (1694–
1746), who held that the sole motive we approve is
benevolence, which for him was a form of Christian
love. While the moral agent needs to know the facts
about the effects of actions, merit or demerit are pro-
portional not to the amount of good the agent ac-
tually does but to the strength and stability of the
benevolent motive. Approval helps reinforce benev-
olence, in ourselves as well as in others; and so feel-
ing is sufficient to explain both our awareness of
what morality requires and our motives for acting
accordingly. We have within ourselves, therefore, re-
sources that enable us to be self-governing in a
strong sense. That we are so constituted is due,
Hutcheson emphasized, to the benevolence of God,
to whom we owe gratitude for the goodness he has
thus shown us.
Shaftesbury and Hutcheson argued against the re-
ductionist psychology of Hobbes and Mandeville, in-
sisting that we are moved by benevolent as well as
self-interested desires. The most powerful attack on
egoist psychology was that mounted by Joseph BUT-
LER (1692–1752), as a key part of his belief that
 history of Western ethics: 8. seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
both motivation and morality are more complex
than most theorists had recognized. He held with
Shaftesbury and Hutcheson that virtuous acts are
those prompted by motives the agent approves.
More explicitly than they he asserted the ability of
the ordinary person to come up with satisfactory an-
swers to any moral question. He attributed this abil-
ity to CONSCIENCE, which he saw as operating intu-
itively, and not, as on older views, by applying laws.
He refused to declare himself on the issue of ration-
alism and sentiment, thinking it unimportant for
practice. But he did produce new and powerful ar-
guments against the view that benevolence is the
whole of virtue. Like most of the natural lawyers, he
held that morality in practice cannot be reduced to
any single principle. But the complexity he saw in
morality did not lead him to doubt that our God-
given conscience can steer us through life, and he
assumed, with no explanation, that we can always
respond to its guidance without any external in-
ducements to do so.
David HUME (1711–1776) was influenced by
Butler as well as by Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, but
in contrast to them he developed a wholly secular
ethic of virtue. Rejecting the natural law doctrines
of Grotius and Pufendorf which he had had to read
as a student, he proposed that we understand the
virtues not as habits of compliance with laws but as
firm dispositions to respond to the needs of others,
encouraged or moderated by the feeling of approval
which is directed to these dispositions when we view
them from an impartial standpoint. He had no doubt
that mankind everywhere had the same feelings, and
he thought that his theory showed how morality
could move us directly to action, not requiring the
addition of incentives which it itself did not provide.
He challenged rationalists to respond, arguing that
reason alone never moves us to action; and since
morality does, he concluded that morality could not
be a matter of reason. He also developed a sophis-
ticated theory of justice which enabled him to reply
to Butler’s objections to the nascent utilitarianism of
Hutcheson and others and to show that even justice
is approved because it serves social good, though it
does so indirectly. But though Hume thus believed
that all our approvals are directed toward acts which
serve the general good, he did not propose any prin-
ciple as one which should replace the operation of
the moral sentiment. He was explaining our virtues,
737
not, as Bentham later did, giving us a method for
making rational decisions.
In showing how we can be wholly capable of
guiding and motivating ourselves as individuals, and
making no appeal to any external source of order
other than a vaguely named “Nature,” Hume offered
as radical a challenge to prevailing views as the chal-
lenge Hobbes had offered about a century earlier.
Among the most constructive replies were those
from Price and Reid, who had been greatly influ-
enced by Butler. In addition to offering powerful ar-
guments against Hume’s sentimentalism, they tried
to resolve the issue he had raised about motivation
by making an important change in the previous or-
thodoxy about the psychology of action. It had been
almost universally held that in voluntary action, un-
less we are being perverse or irrational, we pursue
what we believe to be good. Price and Reid (and,
quite independently, Crusius in Germany) held that
there is a different kind of practical rationality. We
can be rational in complying with moral principles
just as such, regardless of whether we believe the
actions they dictate bring about good or not. The
principles themselves may not explicitly direct us to
bring about good, but as they are rational in them-
selves, compliance with them is also rational, and
our being rational gives us a motive to comply.
Immanuel KANT (1724–1804) is the most fa-
mous exponent of this view of the duality of human
motivation. While our natural desires, on his view,
are all directed at our own good, he held that we can
also be moved by pure respect for the moral law.
Through this respect we can constrain ourselves in
our pursuit of our own projects so that we need
never transgress that law. But if Price and Reid
would have found Kant a welcome ally on this point,
they would have been less happy about his view of
the status of the moral law. For they held that the
requirements of morality are eternal truths indepen-
dent of us to which we must conform. Kant however
held the startling view that the moral law is one
which rational agents as such (and not humans only)
impose on themselves. Our knowledge of it is there-
fore not knowledge of some order external to our-
selves: it is rather an awareness of what our own
rationality requires of us insofar as we are agents
capable of responding to this aspect of our nature.
Kant’s understanding of the moral law required
that it be transparently rational. The laws which
Crusius, Price, and Reid thought self-evident were
history of Western ethics: 8. seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
conventional enough to win ready acceptance as rea-
sonable, but they did not wear their rationality on
their face. What Kant proposed as the sole principle
of morality did: it was simply the requirement that
in action we not contradict ourselves. We are to ask
ourselves, before any action, whether our personal
principle of action can be acted on or willed by
everyone without contradiction. If not, we may not
proceed. Kant believed that even the simplest la-
borer could tell whether or not some plan he pro-
posed to carry out would pass the test this principle
provides. No elaborate code of laws, no calculations
of complex consequences, not even any consultation
of a list of allegedly self-evident principles is in-
volved in moral knowledge. The moral law provides
a plain test and respect for its results enables us to
comply.
Kant went beyond anyone else in asserting our
moral autonomy. It is part of our essence, he held,
to be self-governing, needing neither external guid-
ance nor external incentives. But while his theory
was revolutionary at its core, it carried many of the
traditional contents of morality. For he thought his
principle dictated a division of duties into duties of
justice, with requirements that might be enforced
by external sanctions if agents did not voluntarily
comply; and duties of virtue, where the agent’s spon-
taneous will to benefit others was essential, and en-
forcement correspondingly impossible. If the com-
bination of law and love which is captured here goes
back to Christian teaching, so too does Kant’s insis-
tence that we must believe that the virtuous are
somehow rewarded for their steadfast refusal to con-
sider reward in their virtuous action. It was this be-
lief that led Kant to claim that the moral law gives
us a defensible if not provable belief in the existence
of God and immortality. Shaftesbury had freed mo-
rality from religion by asserting that we must be sure
that an allegedly divine command is morally proper
before we can be sure it comes from God. Kant went
further and held that the sole justification for belief
in God arises from the requirements of the moral
law which we freely impose on ourselves.
The theories of Bentham, Reid, and Kant did
more to shape the problems which nineteenth-
century moral philosophers took as central to their
investigations than did the views of any of the earlier
writers. In very different ways and with very differ-
ent social, religious, and political aims in mind, each
of these three moved far from the commonplace be-
738
lief of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that
humans have little or no capacity for moral auton-
omy and must be ruled somehow from without. At
the beginning of the period the question for moral
theory was: how are people governed so as to make
a decent society possible? At the end the question
was: what must we and morality be like, given that
through self-governance we can create a decent so-
ciety? The contemporary dominance of the beliefs
that underlie the later question should not lead us
to think that it was always the central question of
moral philosophy.
See also: AMERICAN MORAL PHILOSOPHY; AUTON-
OMY OF ETHICS; AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; BAL-
GUY; BECCARIA; BENEVOLENCE; BENTHAM; BURKE;
BUTLER; CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS; CHRISTIAN ETHICS;
CLARKE; CRUSIUS; CUDWORTH; CUMBERLAND; DES-
CARTES; EDWARDS; EGOISM; EXTERNALISM AND IN-
TERNALISM; FÉNELON; FICHTE; FITTINGNESS; GAS-
SENDI; GODWIN; GROTIUS; HOBBES; HOLBACH;
HUME; HUTCHESON; JEFFERSON; KANT; LEIBNIZ;
LOCKE; MALEBRANCHE; MANDEVILLE; MONTAIGNE;
MONTESQUIEU; MORAL RELATIVISM; MORAL SENSE
THEORISTS; MOTIVES; NATURAL LAW; OBEDIENCE TO
LAW; PAINE; PALEY; PASCAL; PRICE; PUFENDORF;
REID; ROUSSEAU; SHAFTESBURY; SKEPTICISM IN
ETHICS; SMITH; SPINOZA; STOICISM; SUAREZ; THEO-
LOGICAL ETHICS; THOMASIUS; UTILITARIANISM; VOL-
TAIRE; VOLUNTARISM; VOLUNTARY ACTS; WOLFF;
WOLLASTON; WOLLSTONECRAFT.
Bibliography
Articles on (and bibliographies of works by and about)
the major figures listed above can be found elsewhere
in this encyclopedia. The following general works are
also of interest:
Albee, E. History of Utilitarianism. London: Allen and
Unwin, 1902.
Bourke, V. J. History of Ethics. 2 vols. New York: Vintage
Books, 1968. Has a useful bibliography.
Cassirer, Ernst. The Platonic Renaissance in England.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1953 [1932].
Crocker, Lester. Nature and Culture: Ethical Thought in
the French Enlightenment. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1963.
Darwall, Stephen. The British Moralists and the Internal
‘Ought.’ Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Fiering, Norman. Moral Philosophy at Seventeenth-
Century Harvard. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1981.
———. Jonathan Edwards’s Moral Thought and Its Brit-
 history of Western ethics: 9. nineteenth-century British
ish Context. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1981. Both Fiering volumes focus on American
thought, but discuss British philosophy as well.
Haakonssen, Knud. Natural Law and Moral Philosophy.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Hope, Vincent, ed. Philosophers of the Scottish Enlight-
enment. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1984.
Ilting, Karl-Heinz. Naturrecht und Sittlichkeit. Stuttgart:
Klett-Cotta, 1983. Includes an erudite and shrewd es-
say tracing ideas of natural law, and another on ideas
of morality.
Keohane, Nannerl O. Philosophy and the State in France.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. A Short History of Ethics. New York:
Macmillan, 1966. Brilliant and controversial survey.
Olivecrona, Karl. Law as Fact. Stockholm: Almquist and
Wickurll, 1971.
Passerin d’Entrèves, Alessandro. Natural Law: An Intro-
duction to Legal Philosophy. London: Hutchinson,
1951. Reprinted, with a new introduction by Cary J.
Nederman, New Brunswick: Transaction, 1994.
Rommen, H. A. The Natural Law. St. Louis: Herder,
1947.
Schmucker, Josef. Die Ursprünge der Ethik Kants. Mei-
senheim: Anton Hain, 1961. Background to, and de-
velopment of, Kant’s ethics.
Schneewind, J. B. The Invention of Autonomy. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Schneiders, Werner. Naturrecht und Liebesethik. Hildes-
heim: Olms, 1971. For an important aspect of conti-
nental thought.
Sidgwick, Henry. Outlines of the History of Ethics. 5th ed.
London: Macmillan, 1902 [1886]. Very usable study
despite its age.
Skinner, Quentin. Foundations of Modern Political Thought.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Vol. 2
is most valuable.
Stephen, Leslie. English Thought in the Eighteenth Cen-
tury. London: Duckworth, 1876–1880. Badly out of
date on some matters, but still provides a useful start
on its subject.
Tuck, Richard. Natural Rights Theories. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1979. Discusses natural law
and natural rights up to Hobbes.
Wade, Ira O. The Structure and Form of the French En-
lightenment. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1977. Contains useful studies of Helvetius and
Holbach, among others.
J. B. Schneewind
history of Western ethics:
9. nineteenth-century British
Ethics in nineteenth-century Britain opens with Jer-
emy BENTHAM (1748–1832) and ends with Henry
739
SIDGWICK (1838–1900), and thus both opens and
closes with UTILITARIANISM, though utilitarianism
of markedly different varieties. JOHN STUART MILL
(1806–1873) was the major figure in the middle of
the century, a period dominated by utilitarianism
and discussions about it. Thus utilitarianism was in
many ways the dominant moral philosophy of the
century, but it was by no means the only important
moral philosophy of the century. Cambridge ration-
alism was still strong, especially in the work of Wil-
liam WHEWELL (1794–1866), who, even though his
work has in large measure dropped from sight, was
not just another intuitionist—as he came to be re-
garded by so many—but an acute and knowledge-
able thinker who had an ethical theory of some com-
plexity. Idealism, influenced in varying degrees by
the philosophies of Immanuel KANT (1724–1804)
and G. W. F. HEGEL (1770–1831), was especially
strong, and especially pronounced in the work of
Thomas Hill GREEN (1836–1882)—currently a very
underrated philosopher—and F. H. BRADLEY (1846–
1924). The latter’s virtuosity as a dialectician was
so strong as to create for him an indelible reputation
as a keen philosophical thinker, whose work—as
with the paradoxes of Zeno—is to be taken seriously
even when it is most incredible. Egoism still had its
adherents, as always, but took on different forms,
now almost totally disregarded. The outstanding
new development of the century was the develop-
ment of the theory of EVOLUTION and of natural se-
lection by Charles DARWIN (1809–1882) and Alfred
Russel Wallace (1823–1913), and its anticipation in
the work of Herbert SPENCER (1820–1903), who
gave a naturalistic and evolutionary account of
ethics in a work that foreshadowed the theory of
biological evolution by almost ten years. Spencer
also developed a philosophical system, based on evo-
lutionary theory, of immense scope and range, in
which ethics played an essential but subordinate
part.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, then,
there were three or four strands of thought vying
with one another: THEOLOGICAL ETHICS, based on
the will of the deity and on the promise of a life to
come; utilitarianism, earlier in its theological form
(advanced first by John Gay [1669–1745] and near
the end of the eighteenth century by William PALEY
[1743–1805]) and then in the secular form estab-
lished by Bentham; EGOISM, strong in the British tra-
dition ever since Thomas HOBBES (1588–1679) and
history of Western ethics: 9. nineteenth-century British
despite pious acclamations against it; and various
form of INTUITIONISM or moral sense theory. In mid-
century, NATURALISM, the attempt to base ethics on
nature or the facts of human nature (and which is
first found in ARISTOTLE [384–322 B.C.E.]), was re-
vived by the work of Spencer, Darwin, Leslie Ste-
phen (1832–1904), and others. From the 1860s on,
a good deal of debate was expended on the supposed
antagonism between evolution and THEISM, science
and religion. All moral philosophers had to come to
terms with evolutionary theory, whether they ac-
cepted it or not, and ethics in turn came to be
thought of as something evolving—for if species
evolve, so does society. Some attempted to combine
evolution theory with utilitarianism; others attempted
to work out an evolutionary ethics independently of
utilitarianism; and some were convinced that the
theory of evolution had no special relevance to
ethics. Near the end of the century evolution theory
was still going strong, but rationalism had made
something of a comeback, influenced partly by the
work of Sidgwick (whose Methods of Ethics re-
mained a dominant work from its first edition, in
1874, through its fifth edition, published in 1893),
and also by the attention being paid to the work of
Kant. The form moral philosophy assumed in the
early twentieth century was the form it took in this
period, until the development of logical positivism,
the emotive theory, SUBJECTIVISM, relativism, and
other forms of moral skepticism influenced by de-
velopments in SOCIOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY, his-
torical studies, linguistics, and the physical sciences.
Jeremy Bentham
Bentham’s most famous work, An Introduction to
the Principles of Morals and Legislation, was pub-
lished in 1789 and was thus firmly established in the
eighteenth century. But in manner, authority, and in-
fluence it was a work of the nineteenth, the work
with which ethics in nineteenth-century Britain be-
gan. Indeed, it was not actually widely read until its
second edition of 1823. Bentham’s main interest,
however, was in jurisprudence, more specifically leg-
islation, with the question how it can be determined
what laws ought to be passed, revised, or repealed,
and how to effectuate this determination. What Ben-
tham called “private ethics” played only a subordi-
nate part in it. Bentham’s discussion of private
ethics—so far as it is Bentham’s and not the edi-
740
tor’s—is contained in the Deontology of 1834 (two
years after Bentham’s death), arranged and edited
by John Bowring, with a number of Bowring’s own
interpolations. Its authenticity is disputed. J. S. Mill
held a very low opinion of it, insisting that it was
not genuinely Bentham’s: “The style proves it to
have been so entirely rewritten, that it is impossible
to tell how much or how little of it is Bentham’s”
(Diss). In part Mill held this view because the book’s
treatment of private ethics is so inferior to Mill’s idea
of how Bentham should or would have treated it.
On the other hand, in the preface to the third edition
of his History of Ethics (1892), Sidgwick remarked
that he was “now disposed to accept the . . . Deon-
tology of Bentham as giving a generally trustworthy
account of his view as to the relation of Virtue to the
virtuous agent’s Happiness.”
Bentham took it as axiomatic that “it is the great-
est happiness of the greatest number that is the mea-
sure of right and wrong” (A Fragment on Govern-
ment), where HAPPINESS is understood to consist of
a balance of discrete pleasures over discrete pains.
This is one formulation of the central principle of
utilitarianism, which over time came to be formu-
lated in various ways both by Bentham and by oth-
ers. But Bentham’s main contribution was not in
originating utilitarianism (though he may have orig-
inated its name), nor is it in the hedonic calculus
(which had been anticipated by Francis HUTCHESON
[1694–1746]). It lies in the dictum, “Each to count
for one and none for more than one,” which is vital
in impartially applying the hedonic calculus and the
utility principle, and which consequently sharply
marks off Benthamite utilitarianism from pre-Bentham
varieties. It also lies in the detailed and exhaustive
working out of the application of the principle of
utility, especially with respect to legislation and the
criminal and civil codes.
James Mill
Bentham had a number of disciples who were in-
strumental in transforming utilitarianism from a
philosophical doctrine and legislative program into
a political and social movement. Among them were
JAMES MILL (1773–1836), father of John Stuart, and
John Austin (1790–1859). James Mill’s Essay on
Government of 1820 was the object of a fierce criti-
cism by Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)
in the pages of The Edinburgh Review (1829) which
 history of Western ethics: 9. nineteenth-century British
in turn generated a sharp controversy between Ma-
caulay and anonymous authors in the Westminster
Review (started by Bentham in 1824), in which
some searching criticisms of utilitarianism as politi-
cal doctrine and as ethical theory are to be found
(collected in Lively and Rees). The elder Mill’s main
contribution to ethics proper consists in the Frag-
ment on Mackintosh (1830), a defense of utilitari-
anism and Bentham by way of an attack on James
Mackintosh’s (1765–1832) Dissertation on the Prog-
ress of Ethical Philosophy (1830). Mackintosh had
said that “it is unfortunate that Ethical Theory . . .
is not the province in which Mr. Bentham has
reached the most desirable distinction”; that “Mr.
Bentham preaches the principle of utility with the
zeal of a discoverer. Occupied more in reflection
than in reading, he knew not, or forgot, how often
it had been the basis, and how generally an accepted
part, of moral systems.” Also: “He is too little ac-
quainted with doubts to believe the honest doubts
of others, and he is too angry to make allowance for
their prejudices and habits.” Mackintosh’s twenty-
nine pages on Bentham are dissected and excoriated
in the 181 pages of the Fragment on Mackintosh in
a manner that echoes Bentham’s ferocious demoli-
tion, in A Fragment on Government, of a few sen-
tences in William Blackstone’s (1723–1780) Com-
mentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769).
James Mill was also the organizing force behind the
development of Benthamism as a philosophical-
ideological movement and program of reform.
John Austin
John Austin played a different role. Austin devel-
oped what was basically Bentham’s thought on ju-
risprudence into a comprehensive and penetrating
philosophy of law in his Lectures on Jurisprudence,
published posthumously in 1863, preceded and
prefaced by his Province of Jurisprudence Deter-
mined (1832), both works that fell stillborn from the
press. In this work Austin introduced, hearkening
back to Paley, an interpretation of utilitarianism that
amounted to a departure from orthodox Bentham-
ism, though that was not perceived at the time,
which has come to be called rule or indirect utilitar-
ianism. Austin maintained that “we must not con-
template the act as if it were single and insulated,
but must look at the class of acts to which it belongs.
We must suppose that acts of the class were gener-
741
ally done or omitted, and consider the probable ef-
fect upon the general happiness.” On the view Aus-
tin is advancing, “our conduct [should] conform to
rules inferred from the tendencies of actions, but . . .
not be determined by a direct resort to the principle
of general utility. Utility [is] the test of our conduct,
ultimately, but not immediately: the immediate test
of the rules to which our conduct [should] conform,
but not the immediate test of specific or individual
actions. Our rules would be fashioned on utility; our
conduct, on our rules.” Since Austin’s Province went
unnoticed for years, it is not surprising that this twist
of doctrine did so as well. It was later revived by J. S.
Mill (who had attended Austin’s lectures in 1828),
though without any reference to Austin. It may even
be that the younger Mill did not regard this inter-
pretation as any sort of departure from Benthamite
utilitarianism.
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill did not write any systematic trea-
tise in ethics, as he did in logic and political econ-
omy, and his developed views on ethics have to be
gleaned from a number of sources. However, his
Utilitarianism (1863) is one of the most widely read
works in the history of ethics, and is usually taken
as representing Mill’s ethical theory. In Utilitarian-
ism Mill attempted to defend utilitarianism from
various objections that had been leveled against it
and misunderstandings to which it had been subject.
In the process he added what some critics regarded
as misunderstandings of his own. Apart from the
one just mentioned, perhaps his most pronounced
departure from Bentham is the idea that in deter-
mining the value of distinct pleasures the quality of
the pleasures must be considered, not just the quan-
tity. “It would be absurd that while, in estimating all
other things, quality is considered as well as quan-
tity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed
to depend on quantity alone.” This distinction, and
the accompanying idea that some pleasures are of
such a quality as to be higher and therefore better
than others, was not generally accepted, and a con-
sensus developed that in moving in this direction
Mill had actually abandoned HEDONISM, although
without intending to. It was not until fairly recently
that the idea began to be considered on its merits
and not simply on the ground of whether it is con-
sistent with hedonistic utilitarianism. (See Edwards.)
history of Western ethics: 9. nineteenth-century British
J. S. Mill’s ethical views were also presented in
some of the essays collected in his Dissertations and
Discussions. Some of them are highly polemical,
such as his “Whewell on Moral Philosophy” (1852).
Whewell represented for Mill the example par ex-
cellence of the a priori intuitionist whose doctrine is
to be combated at all costs, since it is regarded as
essentially reactionary in practice, an implicit de-
fense of the status quo and an attempt to defend “the
present wretched social arrangements” that make
for unhappiness, mass misery, and a backward state
of society. And Mill’s emphasis on the importance of
rules by which to apply the principle of utility is ech-
oed in his “Inaugural Address” (on being installed
rector of the University of St. Andrews in 1867):
“You will find abundance of people to tell you that
logic is no help to thought, and that people cannot
be taught to think by rules. Undoubtedly rules by
themselves, without practice, go but a little way in
teaching anything. But if the practice of thinking is
not improved by rules, I venture to say it is the only
difficult thing done by human beings that is not
so. . . . Wherever there is a right way and a wrong,
there must be a difference between them, and it
must be possible to find out what the difference is;
and when found out and expressed in words, it is a
rule for the operation” (Diss.).
William Whewell
Whewell’s most important ethical works are his
Elements of Morality (1845); Lectures on System-
atic Morality (1846), a commentary on and expla-
nation of the Elements; and Lectures on the History
of Moral Philosophy (1852). The Elements is the
most well known of these works, but it is easily mis-
understood, and it has appeared to some to be
simple-minded. Some recent commentators, in par-
ticular J. B. Schneewind and Alan DONAGAN (1925–
1991), have found more sense and substance in it.
Whewell regarded his Elements as setting out a sys-
tem of morality, not a moral philosophy; it was his
view that between morality and moral philosophy
there is a relationship analogous to that between ge-
ometry and the philosophy of geometry; but while
geometry was already well understood, there was
not sufficient understanding of actual morality,
which the Elements were designed to bring about.
Whewell was a rational intuitionist who emphasized
the importance of understanding and conforming to
742
common sense: “No scheme of morality can be true,
except a scheme which agrees with the Common
Sense of Mankind, so far as that Common Sense is
consistent with itself.” One implication of this is that
first principles of morality, which Whewell goes on
to describe, cannot be applied apart from a social
context, and one of the essential features of that con-
text is the law of the land. Thus on Whewell’s view
morality depends on law, in the sense that there are
moral precepts that can be understood only by ref-
erence to the law of the land. One instance given is
the precept that it is wrong to steal, which presup-
poses the concept of PROPERTY, and it is the law that
determines what is property and whose property
it is.
Whewell was probably the first philosopher since
Aristotle to attempt to give an account of the mo-
rality of common sense and to systematize and co-
ordinate it. He held that a system of morality is a
“body of moral truths, definitely expressed and ra-
tionally connected” (LSM), all shown to be subor-
dinate to practically necessary first principles. He
aimed to “construct a deductive system in which a
comprehensive and consistent set of precise MORAL
RULES would be rationally derived from practically
necessary first principles” (Donagan), and from
which, given adequate knowledge of the facts, the
solutions to problems of CONSCIENCE could be
derived.
Thomas Hill Green
T. H. Green’s Prolegomena to Ethics (Prol.) was
published posthumously in 1883, his Lectures on
the Principles of Political Obligation (Pol.) in 1886.
Though both are incomplete and unfinished, they
are remarkable works, related to each other some-
what as Aristotle’s Ethics relates to his Politics. Each
conceives of politics as necessary for the completion
of ethics. Green was an opponent of empiricism, an
idealist influenced more by Kant than by Hegel, who
talked uncommonly good sense about that with
which he was dealing. He was a liberal idealist who
took philosophy seriously as a guide to life, and he
sought to provide a foundation for a liberal theory
of society that would succeed in coming to terms
with contemporary life in a way in which, he was
convinced, utilitarianism had failed. Green held that
the good could not be identified with PLEASURE and
argued against the main tenet of psychological he-
 history of Western ethics: 9. nineteenth-century British
donism, that pleasure is the object of every desire.
Although THE GOOD, he held, is what satisfies DE-
SIRE, the satisfaction must be an abiding one, not
transitory; “there can be no such thing as a state of
feeling made up of a sum of pleasures” (Prol.), and
“a sum of pleasures is not [itself] a pleasure.” Moral
good is “that which satisfies a moral agent,” and
moral agency is to be found in the willing of a good
will, in and for a complex of a COMMON GOOD (pos-
sibly the first time that the concept of the common
good formally entered ethical discourse). “Man has
bettered himself through institutions and habits
which tend to make the welfare of all the welfare of
each,” Green held, and he attempted to explain how
“the idea in man of a possible better state of himself,
consisting in a further realisation of his capabilities,
has been the moralising agent in human life.” Green
takes it as “an ultimate fact of human history . . .
that out of sympathies of animal origin, through
their presence in a self-conscious soul, there arise
interests as of a person in persons,” from which he
deduces the necessity of a common good as both a
reality and a moral ideal. Since “society is the con-
dition of the development of a personality,” politics
is necessary for the completion of ethics. “There can
be no right without a consciousness of common in-
terest on the part of members of a society” (Pol.).
Green’s political liberalism is illustrated by his ar-
gument that society has “the moral duty . . . to make
its punishments just by making the system of rights
which it maintains just. The justice of the punish-
ment depends on the justice of the general system of
rights . . . on the question whether the social organ-
isation in which a criminal has acted is one that has
given him a fair chance of not being a criminal”
(Pol.). Thus Green was akin to Mill in his LIBERAL-
ISM, despite being so opposed to utilitarianism, and
these two had the most liberating and inspiring so-
cial vision of all the thinkers mentioned in this
survey.
F. H. Bradley
Bradley’s Ethical Studies (1876) was “mainly
critical”, of egoism, hedonism, utilitarianism, the
theory of “duty for duty’s sake,” and also of its own
views. It is Hegelian and dialectical: each chapter
modifies the doctrine of the preceding chapter,
which is admitted to be partial and “one-sided.”
Bradley’s positive doctrine is one of self-realization,
743
but since the self is itself evolving in the process of
attempting to realize itself, the doctrine here takes
on a distinctive form. The most famous chapter is
“My Station and its Duties,” which Bradley takes as
representing the minimum required by morality:
one’s duties are determined by one’s station, and
one’s station by the social and moral order that
shape one. There is no individual independent of so-
ciety. But the morality of “my station and its duties”
is itself only preliminary. One must realize one’s self
by overcoming its obstacles and generating a true
self in which self-sacrifice will be seen to be identical
with self-interest. “Selfishness and self-sacrifice are
equally selfish” is one example of Bradley’s provoc-
ative rhetoric. Bradley’s fiercest assaults are reserved
for the idea that philosophy can serve as a guide to
life. “There cannot be a moral philosophy which will
tell us what in particular we are to do . . . moral
philosophy has to understand morals which exist,
not to make them . . . ethics has not to make the
world moral, but to reduce to theory the morality
current in the world.” Thus, although Bradley was a
philosophical idealist, as was Green, in politics and
practical philosophy he was a reactionary, “the im-
placable enemy of all utilitarian or liberal thinking”
(Wollheim), and in this respect there was greater af-
finity between Green and Mill, the great liberals of
the age, than between Green and Bradley, the great
idealists.
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics (1851) preceded
by eight years the publication of Darwin’s Origin of
Species (1859). Nonetheless a theory of evolution is
presupposed and foreshadowed in it, even though
the word Spencer used was “adaptation.” Spencer’s
post-Darwinian work in ethics, the Principles of
Ethics of 1879–1893, was the culminating work of
his massive System of Synthetic Philosophy (1862–
1893); The Data of Ethics, the first part of the Prin-
ciples, appeared separately in 1879. Although there
were changes in expression and in emphasis over
this long period of time, the view as a whole mani-
fests remarkable consistency of doctrine. From the
start Spencer set out to found ethics on natural facts,
in which the facts of natural adaptation were taken
as paramount. “The human race . . . has been, is, and
will long continue to be in a process of adaptation”
(Social Statics, chapter 2, section 3). Part II of Social
history of Western ethics: 9. nineteenth-century British
Statics is devoted to the derivation and application
of a “first principle,” the Law of Equal Freedom.
“Every man has freedom to do all that he will, pro-
vided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other
man,” “the law on which a correct system of equity
is to be based” (6.1). (Spencer was unaware that this
was equivalent to Kant’s principle of justice.)
Spencer’s ethics is an ethics of the ideal; it is not
intended to apply in the imperfect actual world. It
specifies the state toward which humanity is inevi-
tably tending. Since “all imperfection is unfitness to
the conditions of existence,” and since “it is an es-
sential principle of life that a faculty to which cir-
cumstances do not allow full exercise diminishes,
and that a faculty on which circumstances make ex-
cessive demands increases,” it follows that “the ul-
timate development of the ideal man is logically cer-
tain . . . Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but
a necessity” (2.4). On this view, “morality is essen-
tially one with physical truth . . . a species of tran-
scendental physiology. That condition of things dic-
tated by the law of equal freedom; that condition in
which the individuality of each may be unfolded
without limit, save the like individualities of others
. . . is a condition toward which the whole creation
tends” (30.12). “Moral truth . . . proves to be a de-
velopment of physiological truth . . . the moral law
is in reality the law of complete life” (31.6). This
doctrine was an argument for as little state interfer-
ence in the social order as possible, since such in-
terference is interference with the natural struggle
for existence and would circumvent the develop-
ment and the survival of the fittest—the ideal per-
son. Unfortunately, the specifically ethical features
of the doctrine were as a consequence relatively ig-
nored, and the law of equal freedom has not been
subjected to the sort of examination typically leveled
at claimants to the title of ethical first principle. (But
see Sidgwick, 1902, and Ritchie.)
In the preface to the Principles of Ethics, forty-
one years later, Spencer said that his primary pur-
pose had been “to show that . . . the principles of
ethics have a natural basis.” Though, he said, full
use is made in the later work of “the general doc-
trine of evolution . . . the ethical doctrine set forth
is fundamentally a corrected and elaborated version
of the doctrine set forth in Social Statics.” This
should not be taken to imply that there are no dif-
ferences in doctrine. Spencer’s AGNOSTICISM ap-
pears in the later work, not the earlier, and the doc-
744
trine of a moral sense, developed in the earlier
work, is distinctly deemphasized in the later. But it
is a pity that ideological fashion, which led the
works of Spencer to be so much overemphasized in
the nineteenth century, has led to their almost total
neglect in the twentieth. Spencer’s system of phi-
losophy was a remarkable construction, still worthy
of study.
Spencer emphatically denies that OUGHT IMPLIES
CAN (although that was not at that time an idea that
was the subject of much debate): “If men cannot yet
entirely obey the law, why, they cannot . . . but it
does not follow that we ought therefore to stereo-
type their incompetency by specifying how much is
possible to them and how much is not. . . . a system
of morals which shall recognize man’s present im-
perfections and allow for them cannot be devised,
and would be useless if it could” (32.2). “It is only
by perpetual aspiration after what has been hitherto
beyond our reach that advance is made.” Spencer
adds that even though he “once espoused the doc-
trine of the intuitive moralists . . . it has become
clear to me that the qualifications required practi-
cally obliterate the doctrine as enunciated by them.
. . . It is impossible to hold that men have in common
an innate perception of right and wrong” (Part II,
chapter 14, section 191).
Charles Darwin
The outstanding intellectual development in nine-
teenth-century Britain, amounting to a revolution in
thought, was the publication in 1859 of Darwin’s
Origin of Species, which advanced the doctrine, sup-
ported by an immense mass of observations, of evo-
lution by natural selection. In the later Descent of
Man (1871), Darwin tried to give an evolutionist
account of the moral sense. Darwin had long ac-
cepted the doctrine that the moral sense has a “right-
ful supremacy over every other principle of human
action,” which he had learned from his conversa-
tions with and his reading of Mackintosh. Darwin
was here attempting to provide a naturalistic basis
for Mackintosh’s theory of the moral sense. (See
Richards.) Darwin considered the moral sense a spe-
cies of social instinct—not a developed or acquired
capacity—which evolved out of the process of social
selection, itself a species of natural selection. Since
instinctive actions are not calculated actions, Dar-
win regarded the moral sense theory so understood
 history of Western ethics: 9. nineteenth-century British
as altogether distinct from egoism, hedonism, and
utilitarianism.
And Darwin did have a theory of morality. He
took as “the standard of morality the general good
or welfare of the community, rather than the general
happiness,” where “general good [is] defined as the
rearing of the greatest number of individuals in full
vigour and health, with all their faculties perfect, un-
der the conditions to which they are subjected” (De-
scent). Darwin added that when a person “risks his
life to save that of a fellow-creature, it seems . . .
more correct to say that he acts for the general good,
rather than for the general happiness.” Darwin’s
moral theory was thus, as R. J. Richards has ob-
served, “a biologizing of Mackintosh’s ethical sys-
tem.” While Mackintosh regarded “the moral sense
for right conduct” as distinct from “the criterion of
moral behavior” (something for which he was se-
verely fragmented by James Mill), Mackintosh “could
not satisfactorily explain the coincidence of the moral
motive and the moral criterion.” “He could not easily
explain why impulsive actions might nevertheless be
what moral deliberation would recommend. Darwin
believed he could succeed where Mackintosh failed;
he could provide a perfectly natural explanation of
the linkage between the moral motive and the moral
criterion. Under the aegis of community selection,
men in social groups evolved sets of instinctive re-
sponses to preserve the welfare of the community.
. . . What served nature as the criterion for selecting
behavior became the standard of choice for her crea-
tures as well.”
This feature of Darwin’s view—his attempt at the
formulation of a moral theory—was not adequately
appreciated at the time. Yet it is apparent that Dar-
win was a pioneer not only in biology but also in
moral theory and in attempting to understand the
relative roles played in the progress of society be-
tween the egoistic and the altruistic impulses and the
overriding character of the moral sense (something
that even Joseph BUTLER [1692–1752] could only
assert but could not explain). Even though Sidgwick
may have been correct in his claim that the theory
of evolution provides no “argument for or against
any particular ethical doctrine,” if this interpretation
be correct then Sidgwick was not correct in his claim
that “the theory of evolution . . . has little or no bear-
ing upon Ethics,” a point argued in rebuttal by Fred-
erick Pollock.
745
Henry Sidgwick
The neglect of Darwin and evolutionary theory
(although Spencer comes in for some notice in it)
may be the single greatest gap in Sidgwick’s monu-
mental Methods of Ethics (1874)—a gap that Sidg-
wick tried to fill with his 1876 evolution article—
the main achievement of which is generally taken to
be the detailed account given of the intuitive moral-
ity of common sense. The methods referred to are
those of egoism, intuitionism, and hedonistic utili-
tarianism, and Sidgwick’s argument is that common
sense is unconsciously utilitarian, in that it appeals
to utilitarian considerations to resolve conflicts that
arise between commonsense rules. Sidgwick thus at-
tempted to show that utilitarianism itself rests on an
intuitionistic basis. But Sidgwick reached an im-
passe in trying to decide between the ultimate ra-
tionality of egoism and of utilitarianism, since they
seem in unavoidable conflict with each other, neither
seems more rational than the other, and each taken
by itself seems intrinsically rational and to rest on a
self-evident principle. Sidgwick called this ultimate
conflict the “Dualism of the Practical Reason,” and
he never in a lifetime of thought was able to resolve
it, without bringing in theistic assumptions. None-
theless, Sidgwick’s work of synthesis and the close
careful analysis it involved set ethics off on a new
course. Sidgwick was actually building on the work
of Whewell in his discussion of commonsense mo-
rality, though he did not acknowledge this (perhaps
because Whewell was an acknowledged opponent of
utilitarianism), and he built also on the work of Ben-
tham, J. S. Mill, Clarke, Butler, and Kant. Indeed,
the sort of work on which he engaged required a
wide and deep knowledge of the history of ethics.
Journals and Histories of Ethics
Sidgwick’s work had an impact very early on. The
discussion of this work, and of course of others as
well, was facilitated by the founding in 1876 of
Mind, the first specifically philosophical journal to
be published in Britain. This provided a forum for
philosophers and featured what, by current stan-
dards, must be regarded as rapid discussion of phil-
osophical issues, ideas, and books. Most of the well-
known thinkers of the period contributed to it. It
was followed in 1887 by the publication of the Pro-
ceedings of the Aristotelian Society, and the two pe-
history of Western ethics: 9. nineteenth-century British
riodicals together added a new dimension to the de-
velopment of ethics in nineteenth-century Britain.
The nineteenth century was also the first in which
there was concentrated study of the history of ethics.
What may be the first such history appears in Adam
SMITH’s (1723–1790) The Theory of Moral Senti-
ments (1759), in which Smith “examine[s] the most
celebrated and remarkable of the different theories
which have been given concerning the nature and
origin of our moral sentiments.” This, of course, was
eighteenth-century, and did not start a trend, but it
was a forerunner. The first history of ethics as such
appears to have been the article on the “history of
the science of morals” in the third edition of the En-
cyclopedia Britannica (1797), contributed by George
Gleig, though this history manifestly had a didactic
purpose. Thomas Brown’s (1778–1820) Lectures
on Ethics, published posthumously in 1846, delve in
part into the history of ethics, from Bernard MAN-
DEVILLE (1670–1733) through David HUME (1711–
1776) and Adam Smith to Hutcheson, Ralph CUD-
WORTH (1617–1688), and Richard PRICE (1723–
1791). Though not exactly a history, it also is a fore-
runner. Dugald STEWART (1753–1828) had planned
a history of ethics as part of his “Dissertation on the
Progress of Philosophy,” prepared as a supplement
to the Encyclopedia Britannica, but he died before
completing more than a preliminary sketch of the
section on ethics. The first book-length history of
ethics in Britain was Mackintosh’s Dissertation on
the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, published in
1830 as a supplement to the Encyclopedia Britan-
nica and issued separately in 1836 with a valuable
preface by Whewell. This is the work that aroused
such ideological ire in James Mill and stimulated
Darwin to fundamental ethical inquiry. Whewell’s
own Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy
were delivered in 1838, published in 1852, and re-
issued with a Supplement in 1862. William Edward
Hartpole Lecky’s (1838–1903) History of European
Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (1869) at-
tempted in its first chapter to integrate an account
of the development of moral theory with the devel-
opment of morals, and is one of the first attempts in
that direction. A work that has retained its status as
a classic is Sidgwick’s Outlines of the History of
Ethics for English Readers, which first appeared as
an Encyclopedia Britannica article in 1878 and was
published separately in 1886. Though brief—Out-
lines is an accurate title—it covers the whole subject
746
and is a genuine history. James Martineau’s (1805–
1900) learned Types of Ethical Theory (1885) inter-
sperses its presentation of Martineau’s own “idio-
psychological ethics” with historical discussions.
Sidgwick thought its doctrines worthy of close scru-
tiny, and its historical discussions are genuine his-
tory, not a form of historical demolition. Another
work worthy of mention is Volume I of The Princi-
ples of Morals, by John Matthias Wilson (1813–
1881) and Thomas Fowler (1832–1904). Though
printed in 1875, it was not published until 1886 ow-
ing to the ill health and then the death of Wilson.
This first volume contains preliminary studies that
are mainly historical.
Thus, a distinctive feature of nineteenth-century
British ethics was the felt need to take account of
the history of the subject. To what extent this felt
need resulted from the influence of the historical
school, represented for example by Henry Maine’s
(1822–1888) Ancient Law of 1861, and to what ex-
tent it was stimulated by the general idea of unfold-
ing, evolution, and transformation, is a speculative
question not to be examined here. But a question
worth keeping in mind is this: how does the appear-
ance of a noteworthy history of a subject affect the
later development of the subject? In particular, to
what extent was the development of ethics itself af-
fected by, and to what extent did ethics in turn affect,
these studies in the history of ethics? Leslie Ste-
phen’s massive three-volume work, The English
Utilitarians, was published in 1900; but it was more
an account of Bentham and the two Mills than an
account of utilitarianism itself. And Ernest Albee’s
(1865–1927) more comprehensive, if less massive,
History of English Utilitarianism, appeared about
the same time, in 1901. The end of the century also
saw the publication of L. A. Selby-Bigge’s (1860–
1951) classic collection British Moralists (1897),
which made the writings of British moral philoso-
phers of the eighteenth century more readily acces-
sible. No one was more ahistorical than Bentham.
The interest in the history of ethics was much greater
at the end of the century than it was at the beginning.
Nineteenth-Century Casuistry
Another distinctive feature of nineteenth-century
British ethics was the dearth—practically the death—
of studies in and of CASUISTRY. Whewell devoted
space to this matter, both in his Elements and in his
 history of Western ethics: 9. nineteenth-century British
History, but Whewell’s example was not picked up
by many. In 1868 Frederick Denison Maurice (1805–
1872) published The Conscience: Lectures on Ca-
suistry, which seems to have been ignored by all ex-
cept moral theologians (among whom the tradition
of casuistry was kept alive), and its merits have yet
to be discovered. Frederick Pollock’s (1845–1937)
Essays in Jurisprudence and Ethics (1882) contains
three essays of the first importance for the study of
casuistry. Still, with the development of the Ethical
Societies in Britain as an outgrowth of the Ethical
Culture movement, and the involvement in them of
distinguished moral philosophers, some attention
began to be paid to questions of practical or APPLIED
ETHICS. Thus Sidgwick’s Practical Ethics, a collec-
tion of addresses on such topics, appeared in 1898.
And in 1899 Lecky published The Map of Life: Con-
duct and Character, an illuminating discussion of a
number of the ethical questions of life. Although it
was reprinted a number of times, it does not appear
to have had a wide technical readership. So by and
large casuistry did not play a prominent role in
nineteenth-century British ethics. Utilitarians tended
to take the view that casuistical questions could all
be decided by hedonistic calculation and the appli-
cation of the greatest-happiness principle. Bradley
was publicly nauseated by the idea, not only in his
Ethical Studies but in his Principles of Logic (1883),
and the power of his rhetoric, if not the power of his
logic, may have proved intimidating to others. Also
operating in this century was the idea that casuistry
was an outgrowth of a theological ethics, not of a
rational or utilitarian one, or any that operated with
a first or supreme principle or that claimed to be
scientific in method or in substance.
Lesser-Known Writers
There were, naturally, a number of lesser, or lesser
known, writers who would come in for discussion
in a fuller account of the subject. If ethics is to be
adequately aware of its history, it should not over-
look such writers as James Martineau, Alfred Barratt
(1844–1881), Francis Ysidro Edgeworth (1845–
1926), William Samuel Lilly (1840–1919), William
Kingdom Clifford (1845–1879), John Grote (1813–
1866), Leslie Stephen, Richard Whately (1787–
1863), and Alexander Smith (c. 1794–1851). Some
of their works are listed in the bibliography, but it
may not be amiss to add a few words here about
747
some of them. Even though Martineau tended to be
prolix, a study of his work might prove enlightening
even today. His two discussions of Whewell, re-
printed in Volume III of his Essays, Reviews and
Addresses (1891), though very unsympathetic and
unfortunately no more perceptive of what Whewell
was up to than was John Stuart Mill, are stimulating
reading nonetheless. Clifford was the author of the
brilliant and provocative essay “The Ethics of Be-
lief,” but also wrote a number of other stimulating
essays in ethics. “The Ethics of Belief” is known be-
cause it stimulated William James’s famous “The
Will to Believe,” but it is only historical accident that
keeps these other essays from being known as well.
The ignorance of Edgeworth is hard to fathom in
these days of GAME THEORY and decision theory, es-
pecially given the perpetual interest in the attempt
to utilize mathematical techniques, since Edgeworth
was the first thinker since the days of Plato and Py-
thagoras to attempt to apply mathematics to the
problems of ethics.
William Lilly’s On Right and Wrong (1890)
would probably have only curiosity value today. The
penchant for complaining about “the dreadful state
of ethical theory,” etc., has for a long time been a
mark of the second rate, given more to complaining
than to accomplishing, and this penchant certainly
plays a role in Lilly’s book. Nonetheless, there is one
observation in it that is worth noting: “The idea of
‘right’ or ‘ethical good’ is a simple aboriginal idea,
not decomposable into any other, but strictly sui ge-
neris. It cannot be resolved into the idea of happi-
ness, or of pleasure, or of greatest usefulness. . . . It
admits of no definition save in terms of itself, which
is equivalent to saying that it is an ultimate” (pp.
117–18). This, though its antecedent is unacknowl-
edged, is in the tradition of Price and Sidgwick, and
is in some ways a forerunner of the intuitionism of
G. E. MOORE (1873–1958).
Those who have done the most important work
in ethics, or in any other area of philosophy, did not
usually burn daylight complaining of their predeces-
sors and contemporaries, but built on the work of
the tradition, improving, modifying, sometimes thor-
oughly revamping, but always aware of and respect-
ing the tradition, even if not every thinker in it. This,
apart from its intrinsic interest, apart from its play
as drama, and apart from the stimulus it provides to
more fruitful thinking, is surely the great value of
increasing our awareness of the history of the sub-
history of Western ethics: 9. nineteenth-century British
ject. And every once in a while an important yet to-
tally ignored thinker turns up to provide added div-
idends. This would appear to be the case with
Alexander Smith, discovered by Schneewind, though
in the present state of our knowledge he can hardly
be said, yet, to have turned up.
See also: AMERICAN MORAL PHILOSOPHY; BENTHAM;
BRADLEY; CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS; CASUISTRY;
COMMON GOOD; COMMON SENSE MORALISTS; CON-
SCIENCE; DARWIN; EGOISM; EMOTIVISM; EVOLUTION;
GOOD, THEORIES OF THE; GREEN; HEDONISM; HIS-
TORY OF WESTERN ETHICS 8: SEVENTEENTH AND
EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES; HISTORY OF WESTERN
ETHICS 10: NINETEENTH-CENTURY CONTINENTAL;
IDEALIST ETHICS; INTUITIONISM; JAMES; LEGAL PHI-
LOSOPHY; LIBERALISM; MILL, JAMES; MILL, JOHN
STUART; MORAL RELATIVISM; MORAL RULES; MORAL
SENSE THEORISTS; NATURALISM; OUGHT IMPLIES CAN;
PALEY; PLEASURE; SIDGWICK; SKEPTICISM IN ETHICS;
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY; SPENCER;
STEWART; THEISM; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS; UTILITAR-
IANISM; WHEWELL.
Bibliography
Abrams, M. H. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic The-
ory and the Critical Tradition. London, New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1953; pbk. ed., 1971. In chapter
VI, section 4, and elsewhere, discusses Alexander
Smith and his “Semantics of Expressive Language,”
thus adding to our meager knowledge of this little-
known figure, discussed below (and who should not be
confused with the Scottish poet of the same name who
lived 1830–1867).
Albee, Ernest. A History of English Utilitarianism. Lon-
don: Allen and Unwin, 1901. “Properly speaking,” said
Albee, “we have no history of English Ethics” (p. ix).
Coming after Sidgwick’s History, this is distinctly odd.
Alexander, Samuel. Moral Order and Progress: An Anal-
ysis of Ethical Conceptions. London: Kegan Paul,
1889.
Austin, John. The Province of Jurisprudence Determined.
London, 1832. Part I of the Lectures. Quoted from Lec-
ture III.
———. Lectures on Jurisprudence, or The Philosophy of
Positive Law. 2 vols. London, 1863. 5th ed., edited by
John Campbell, based in part on John Stuart Mill’s lec-
ture notes. London: John Murray, 1885.
Bain, Alexander. The Moral Philosophy of Paley with Ad-
ditional Dissertations and Notes. London and Edin-
burgh: William and Robert Chambers, n.d. Interesting
commentary on sections of Paley’s famous work, writ-
748
ten from a different perspective than Whately’s and not
as penetrating.
Barratt, Alfred. Physical Ethics, or the Science of Action.
London: Williams and Norgate, 1869. A very unusual
work, which regards ethics as a physical science and
advances a vehement argument for egoism, conse-
quently one that could repay some contemporary study.
Bentham, Jeremy. A Fragment on Government. 1776.
Quoted from the Preface. Cited as Frag.
———. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation. 1789; 2d ed., 1823. Chapters 1–2; chapter
17, section 1.
———. Deontology: or, The Science of Morality. Edited
by John Bowring. 2 vols. London: Longmans, 1834.
Bradley, Francis Herbert. Ethical Studies. Oxford, 1876.
2d ed., 1927. Quoted from Essays 7 and 5.
———. Mr. Sidgwick’s Hedonism. Oxford, 1877. In Vol.
I of his Collected Essays. Oxford, 1935.
———. The Principles of Logic. 2 vols. Oxford, 1883; 2d
ed., 1922. See pp. 268–71.
Brown, Thomas. Lectures on Ethics. Edinburgh: William
Tait, 1846. Delivered probably in 1820.
Calderwood, Henry. Handbook of Moral Philosophy. Lon-
don: Macmillan, 1872. 3d ed., 1874. “The present
handbook offers an exposition and defence of the In-
tuitional Theory of Morals, with the criticism of Utili-
tarianism. The uniform object, however, has been to
give a careful representation of the conflicting theories,
supplying the reader with materials for independent
judgment” (page iv). A good example of a pre-Sidgwick
standard textbook.
Clifford, William Kingdon. Lectures and Essays. Edited
by Leslie Stephen and Frederick Pollock. 2 vols. Lon-
don, 1879. Vol. II, the essays “On the Scientific Basis
of Morals”; “Right and Wrong: The Scientific Ground
of their Distinction”; “The Ethics of Belief”; and “The
Ethics of Religion.”
Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species by Means of Nat-
ural Selection. 1859. 6th ed., 1872.
———. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to
Sex. 1871. Modern Library edition, n.d. Quoted from
chapter 4, and chapter 4, paragraph 40.
Dicey, A. V. Introduction to the Study of the Law of the
Constitution. London, 1885.
Donagan, Alan. “Whewell’s Elements of Morality.” Jour-
nal of Philosophy 71, no. 19 (1974): 724–36. Quoted
from p. 735.
———. “Sidgwick and Whewellian Intuitionism: Some
Enigmas.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7, no. 3
(September 1977): 447–65.
Edgeworth, F. Y. New and Old Methods of Ethics, or
“Physical Ethics” and “Methods of Ethics.” London:
James Parker, 1877. An early commentary on Sidg-
wick. Cf. Barratt, supra.
———. Mathematical Psychics: An Essay on the Appli-
 history of Western ethics: 9. nineteenth-century British
cation of Mathematics to the Moral Sciences. London:
Kegan Paul, 1881.
Edwards, Rem. Pleasures and Pains: A Theory of Quali-
tative Hedonism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1979.
Flew, Anthony. Evolutionary Ethics. New York: St. Mar-
tin’s Press, 1973.
Fowler, Thomas. Progressive Morality: An Essay in Ethics.
London: Macmillan, 1884. 2d ed., 1895. “These pages
represent an attempt to exhibit a scientific conception
of morality in a popular form, and with a view to prac-
tical applications rather than the discussion of theo-
retical difficulties” (page v). Cf. Wilson.
Gay, John. Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Vir-
tue or Morality. 1731. A “Dissertation prefixed to the
first edition of Edmund Law’s translation of Arch-
bishop King’s Essay on the Origin of Evil.” Reprinted
in British Moralists, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge (in-
fra.), II, 267–85 (from which the above quotation is
taken), and also in somewhat abbreviated form in Brit-
ish Moralists 1650–1800, edited by D. D. Raphael, I,
410–21. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. The origin of
theological utilitarianism, developed later by Paley (as
well as of associationist psychology, developed later by
Hartley). Available in full in The English Philosophers
from Bacon to Mill, edited by E. A. Burtt, 767–85.
New York: The Modern Library, 1939. Burtt’s intro-
duction to the Dissertation is illuminating: “This little
treatise is of historical importance. It is the first clear
statement of the combination of associationism in psy-
chology and utilitarianism in morals which was to ex-
ercise a controlling influence on the development of the
next century and a half of English thought. . . . Gay’s
. . . Dissertation is . . . the progenitor of a large and
important philosophical literature” (p. 767).
Gibbins, John R. “John Grote and Modern Cambridge Phi-
losophy.” Philosophy 73, no. 285 (1998): 453–77. Al-
though not especially well written, quite informative
on a little-known figure and on the development of
philosophical ethics in nineteenth century Britain.
Gleig, George. “Moral Philosophy, or Morals.” Encyclo-
pedia Britannica, 3rd ed., 1797. Vol. 12, 272–318. See
especially pp. 273–79.
Green, Thomas Hill. Prolegomena to Ethics. Edited by
A. C. Bradley. Oxford, 1883. Cited as Prol., with ref-
erences to section numbers. Quoted from sections 221,
171, 172, 180, 201, 191.
———. Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation.
Edited by R. L. Nettleship. London, 1886. Delivered
in 1879. Cited as Pol., with references to section num-
bers. Quoted from sections 31, 189.
Grote, George. Fragments on Ethical Subjects. London:
John Murray, 1876.
Grote, John. An Examination of the Utilitarian Philoso-
phy. Edited by Joseph Bickersteth Mayor. Cambridge:
Deighton, Bell, 1870. Discussed by Sidgwick in Essays
on Ethics and Method.
749
———. A Treatise on the Moral Ideals. Edited by Joseph
Bickersteth Mayor. Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, 1876.
Hall, Robert T. “Autonomy and the Moral Order: The
Moral Philosophy of F. D. Maurice.” Monist 55, no. 5
(1971): 504–19.
Hallam, Henry. Introduction to the Literature of Europe
in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries.
4 vols. 1837. 2d ed., 1842; 3d ed., 1847; 4th ed., 1853.
5th ed., London: John Murray, 1855. Vol II, chapter 4,
“History of Moral and Political Philosophy and of Ju-
risprudence from 1550 to 1600,” 119–80; Vol. III,
chapter 4, “. . . from 1600 to 1650”, 131–226; Vol. IV,
chapter 4, “. . . from 1650 to 1700,” 151–220.
Hodgson, Shadworth. The Theory of Practice: An Ethical
Enquiry. 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green, 1870. An
early work on practical or applied ethics, well worth
resurrecting and studying today.
Huxley, Thomas Henry. Evolution and Ethics and Other
Essays. London: Macmillan, 1894. See, in particular,
the title essay (1893) and the “Prolegomena” (1894).
“Ethical nature, while born of cosmic nature, is nec-
essarily at war with its parent . . . this seeming paradox
is a truth . . . the recognition of which is essential for
the ethical philosopher” (preface, p. viii). Heretical
doctrine for an evolutionist.
Jevons, William, Jr. Systematic Morality: Or, A Treatise on
The Theory and Practice of Human Duty, on the
Grounds of Natural Religion. 2 vols. London: Printed
for Rowland Hunter, St. Paul’s Churchyard; and sold
by G. and J. Robinson, and W. Grapel, Liverpool,
1827. A little-known and difficult-to-find work that is
worth seeking out, since it makes a number of original
points and is an independent discussion of the subject,
especially in its emphasis on the importance of char-
acter. But it appears to be another work, like that of
Alexander Smith, that disappeared from sight despite
its manifest merits. The only reference this writer has
ever seen to it is in Schneewind’s Sidgwick’s Ethics,
and there it is merely listed in the bibliography, with
nothing further said about it.
Lamont, W. D. Introduction to Green’s Moral Philosophy.
London: Allen and Unwin, 1934. “A systematic ac-
count of Green’s moral philosophy” as contained in the
Prolegomena.
Laurie, Simon S. Notes Expository and Critical on Certain
British Theories of Morals. Edinburgh: Edmonston and
Douglas, 1868. Hobbes to Bain.
Lecky, William Edward Hartpole. History of European
Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne. London, 1869.
Chapter 1, “The Natural History of Morals.”
Lilly, William Samuel. On Right and Wrong. London:
Chapman and Hall, 1890. Quoted from pp. 117–18.
Lively, Jack, and John Rees, eds. Utilitarian Logic and
Politics: James Mill’s ‘Essay on Government’, Macau-
lay’s Critique and the Ensuing Debate. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1978. Contains the original essays in the
famous debate that went on in the pages of the Edin-
history of Western ethics: 9. nineteenth-century British
burgh Review and the Westminster Review between
Macaulay and anonymous writers in the Westminster,
March 1829–January 1830. The editors observe: “The
general contemporary verdict on the debate, even
amongst Benthamites themselves, was that the Utili-
tarian cause suffered great damage. What was thought
to have been damaged was both a philosophic and a
political position, both the general Utilitarian approach
to social theorizing and Utilitarian arguments for Rad-
ical reform” (p. 5). (Cf. Nesbitt, infra.)
Macaulay, Thomas Babington. “Mill’s Essay on Govern-
ment.” Edinburgh Review no. 97 (March 1829). Re-
printed in The Complete Works of Thomas Babington
Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays, vol. 1, 381–
422. New York: Sully and Kleinteich, 1900. See Lively
and Rees, supra.
———. “Westminster Reviewer’s Defence of Mill.” Ed-
inburgh Review no. 98 (June 1829); Complete Works,
423–59. Of special interest in this essay is Macaulay’s
argument that “the principle of Mr. Bentham . . . is this,
that mankind ought so to act as to produce their great-
est happiness. The word ought, he tells us, has no
meaning, unless it be used with reference to some in-
terest. But the interest of a man is synonymous with
his greatest happiness—and therefore to say that a man
ought to do a thing is to say that it is for his greatest
happiness to do it. And to say that mankind ought to
act so as to produce their greatest happiness is to say
that the greatest happiness is the greatest happiness—
and this is all!” (Complete Works, 450–51). I know of
no prior occurrence of this line of argument, which
anticipates Sidgwick and Moore, except perhaps in
Richard Price’s Review of Morals.
———. “Utilitarian Theory of Government.” Edinburgh
Review no. 99 (October 1829); Complete Works,
460–95.
Mackintosh, James. Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical
Philosophy, Chiefly During the Seventeenth and Eigh-
teenth Centuries. 1830. 2d ed., with a preface by Wil-
liam Whewell. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black,
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Maine, Henry Sumner. Ancient Law: Its Connection with
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lock. London, 1906. New York: Holt, n.d.)
———. Lectures on the Early History of Institutions. 1st
ed., 1875. New York: Holt, 1888. A Sequel to “Ancient
Law.”
Martineau, James. Types of Ethical Theory. 2 vols. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1885. 3d ed., 1891.
———. “Whewell’s Morality.” In his Essays, Reviews and
Addresses, vol. 3, 227–75 (part I), 377–407 (part II).
London: Longmans, Green, 1891. [1845, 1846].
Maurice, F. D. The Conscience: Lectures on Casuistry.
London: Macmillan, 1868.
750
———. Social Morality. London and Cambridge: Mac-
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McCosh, James. “Present State of Moral Philosophy in
Great Britain in Relation to Theology.” In his Philo-
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Mill, James. “An Essay on Government.” Supplement to
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of Nations. London: J. Innes, 1825.
———. A Fragment on Mackintosh: Being Strictures on
Some Passages in the Dissertation by Sir James Mack-
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Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. 1863. References are to
chapter and paragraph numbers. Quoted from chapter
2, paragraph 4.
———. Dissertations and Discussions. 4 vols. New York:
Henry Holt, 1874 [1859]. Cited as Diss. Quoted from
I, p. 390; IV, p. 373.
Muirhead, J. H. The Elements of Ethics: An Introduction
to Moral Philosophy. 1892.
Nesbitt, George L. Benthamite Reviewing: The First
Twelve Years of the Westminster Review 1824–1836.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1934. (Cf.
Lively and Rees, supra.)
Paley, William. Principles of Moral and Political Philoso-
phy. 2 vols. London, 1785. The bible of theological
utilitarianism. A standard text at Cambridge and at
most American colleges for over sixty years during the
nineteenth century.
Pollock, Frederick. “Evolution and Ethics.” Mind l, no. 3
(1876): 334–45. Quoted from 336ff. A response to
Sidgwick 1876.
———. Essays in Jurisprudence and Ethics. London: Mac-
millan, 1882.
Richards, Robert J. Darwin and the Emergence of Evolu-
tionary Theories of Mind and Behavior. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1987. A marvelously illumi-
nating study. See especially pp. 115–17. Quoted from
pp. 116, 601.
Ritchie, D. G. Natural Rights. London: George Allen and
Unwin, 1895. A critique of the idea of natural rights
and of Spencer’s Law of Equal Freedom. See chap-
ter 7.
Schneewind, J. B. “Moral Problems and Moral Philosophy
in the Victorian Period.” Victorian Studies, Supple-
ment to vol. 9 (September 1965): 29–46.
———. “Whewell’s Ethics.” In Studies in Moral Philoso-
phy, American Philosophical Quarterly Monograph Se-
ries, no. 1 (1968): 108–41.
———, ed. Mill: A Collection of Critical Essays. Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969. The es-
says contained are predominantly on Mill’s moral and
 history of Western ethics: 9. nineteenth-century British
political philosophy; one or two of note are not avail-
able elsewhere.
———. Backgrounds of English Victorian Literature. New
York: Random House, 1970. A well-named book that
is extraordinarily informative on the period. Chapter 3,
“Morality,” is especially valuable.
———. Sidgwick’s Ethics and Victorian Moral Philoso-
phy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977. The best account
of its subject, and the best account of this period in
ethics. Ample, though unfortunately unannotated, bib-
liography.
Selby-Bigge, L. A., ed. British Moralists: Being Selections
from Writers Principally of the Eighteenth Century. 2
vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897. New York: Do-
ver, 1965.
Sidgwick, Henry. The Methods of Ethics. 1st ed., London:
Macmillan, 1874; 7th ed., 1907.
———. “The Theory of Evolution in its Application to
Practice.” Mind 1, no. 1 (1876): 52–67. Quoted from
p. 54. (Cf. Pollock 1876.)
———. Outlines of the History of Ethics. London: Mac-
millan, 1886; 3d ed., 1892.
———. Practical Ethics. London: Swan Sonnenschein,
1898.
———. Lectures on the Ethics of T. H. Green, Mr. Herbert
Spencer, and J. Martineau. London: Macmillan, 1902.
Part II, lecs. 8 and 9.
———. Essays on Ethics and Method. Edited by Marcus
G. Singer. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000. Contains
the essay on the theory of evolution just listed and
twenty-nine others.
Singer, Marcus G. “Mill’s Stoic Conception of Happiness
and Pragmatic Conception of Utility.” Philosophy 75,
no. 291 (2000): 25–47.
Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Edited by
D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1976. [1759; 6th ed., 1790] See Part VII, “Of
Systems of Moral Philosophy,” 265–342. A valuable
and interesting account by a first rate mind whose fas-
cinating work in ethics has been largely overshadowed
by his immensely influential Inquiry into the Nature
and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776).
Smith, Alexander. The Philosophy of Morals: An Investi-
gation, by a New and Extended Analysis, of the Fac-
ulties and Standards Employed in the Determination
of Right and Wrong: Illustrative of the Principles of
Theology, Jurisprudence, and General Politics. 2 vols.
London: Smith, Elder, 1835. Since this book has been
almost completely forgotten and has probably hardly
been read—it was rediscovered (perhaps it is better to
say discovered) and discussed by Schneewind (1977)—
it is hardly accurate to suppose that it played any role
in nineteenth-century or later British ethics. None of
the other writers listed here ever referred to it; in all
probability they did not know of it. Yet it exists, even
though it is extraordinarily hard to find, and its quality
751
if not its reputation (it has no reputation) entitles it to
a place in this chronicle. Schneewind says that this
“book is plainly the best work of ethics of the Scottish
school after Reid, and arguably one of the two or three
finest produced in Britain between Reid and Sidgwick.
It was wholly ignored on publication and has been com-
pletely forgotten since. . . . The book . . . contains some
very striking anticipations of Sidgwick” (p. 82).
———. “Lieber’s Political Ethics.” Edinburgh Review 73
(April 1841): 55–76. This and the item following are
marvelously acute analyses.
———. “Phrenological Ethics.” Edinburgh Review 74
(January 1842): 376–414. A discussion of George
Combe’s Moral Philosophy (1840).
Sorley, W. R. On the Ethics of Naturalism. Edinburgh:
William Blackwood and Sons, 1885. A valuable and
enlightening yet little-known work.
Spencer, Herbert. Social Statics. 1851.
———. The Data of Ethics. 1879. Part I of the Principles.
———. The Principles of Ethics. 2 vols. 1879–1893.
Stephen, Leslie. The Science of Ethics. New York: G. P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1882.
———. The English Utilitarians. 3 vols. London: Duck-
worth, 1900. Vol. I is on Bentham, vol. 2 on James Mill,
and vol. 3 on John Stuart Mill.
Thomas, Geoffrey. The Moral Philosophy of T. H. Green.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. A much needed study,
comprehensive and thorough.
Whately, Richard. Introductory Lessons on Morals. Cam-
bridge, MA: John Bartlett, 1857. A work on practical
ethics by a writer of eminent good sense. Published
anonymously.
———. Paley’s Moral Philosophy, with Annotations. Lon-
don: John W. Parker and Son, 1859. The annotations
are superb and definitive.
Whewell, William. On the Foundations of Morals, Four
Sermons Preached before The University of Cambridge,
November 1837. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, and London: John W. Parker, n.d.
———. Elements of Morality. 2 vols. 1st ed., 1845; 2d
ed., 1848; 3d ed., 1854. Quoted from the preface to
the 2d ed.
———. Lectures on Systematic Morality. 1846. Cited as
LSM. Quoted from pp. 20–21. A necessary supple-
ment to the Elements.
———. Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy.
1852. 2nd ed., 1862.
Wilson, John, and Thomas Fowler. The Principles of Mor-
als. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1886, 1887. Vol.
2 is solely by Fowler; vol. 1 is historical.
Wollheim, Richard. F. H. Bradley. Penguin, 1959. See es-
pecially chapter 6. Quoted from p. 14.
Marcus G. Singer
history of Western ethics: 10. nineteenth-century Continental
history of Western ethics:
10. nineteenth-century
Continental
This period of ethical thought began with the radi-
calization of KANT’s (1724–1804) ethics by FICHTE
(1762–1814), and concluded with its radical rejec-
tion by NIETZSCHE (1844–1900). HEGEL (1770–
1831), MARX (1818–1883), KIERKEGAARD (1813–
1855) and Nietzsche are particularly deserving of
attention in this area of philosophical inquiry as in
others; and Fichte, SCHOPENHAUER (1788–1860)
and FEUERBACH (1804–1872) warrant notice as
well. While their differences are many and deep,
they were united in the conviction that Kantian mo-
rality is too abstract and austerely rational, while
utilitarian morality aims too low. They all sought a
conception of morality or ethical life that is better
attuned to the attainment of the highest human
good—concerning which, however, they differed
with each other as well as with Kant, with significant
consequences.
While Fichte, Schopenhauer, and Feuerbach were
more willing than the others to claim kinship with
Kant, Marx is perhaps closer than any of them to
Kant in his basic moral outlook, despite his radical
rejection of Kant’s ahistorical moral rationalism.
Hegel came closest to retaining Kant’s emphasis on
the rational character of moral thought and action.
He parted company with Kant, however, in insisting
that the only sort of rationality relevant to actual
ethical life is associated with the normative systems
established by and within mature societies.
For all of these thinkers, there is no meaningful
purely rational categorical imperative possessing
necessary and universal validity that might serve as
the supreme principle of morality. Their fundamen-
tal task was to find some new way of understanding
the nature and place of morality in human life, given
that it can no longer be supposed either to consist
of some set of divine commandments or to have a
strictly rational basis and derivation. They further
sought to discover some other basis and warrant
for morality that would endow at least some pos-
sible forms of it with a normative force transcend-
ing mere natural inclination and self-interest. Their
general strategy was to attempt to link morality to
some sort of human possibility that would be a
higher human good than life lived in a manner re-
sponsive only to the promptings of commonplace
desires and dispositions.
752
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814)
Fichte played a major role in the transformation
of Kant’s philosophy into a metaphysical idealism in
which all of reality is viewed as the activity of an ul-
timate spiritual principle he called the Absolute Ego.
The phenomenal world, he held, is not only struc-
tured but also engendered by the transphenomenal
Absolute Ego, “spun out of itself as the spider spins
its web”; and it is brought forth as “the material of
duty,” precisely in order to make moral action
possible.
It is above all in moral action, for Fichte, that the
essential freedom of this Ego and its particular in-
stances—ourselves—is concretely manifested. He
conceived of moral action as the expression at once
of freedom and of duty. Unlike Kant, however, he
ascribed no basic rational source or content to it,
but rather grounded it in the creative spontaneity of
our fundamentally spiritual nature, which enables us
to posit ideals and to strive to achieve them. Obli-
gation is thus linked to aspiration rather than the
regulation of conduct in accordance with laws of any
sort; and morality for Fichte becomes an affair of
ideals rather than rules, in which CONSCIENCE calls
us to dedication rather than obedience.
Fichte does, however, give morality a social turn.
He rejected the INDIVIDUALISM that would accord
ontological distinctness to each particular ego, as
well as the opposing view that would dismiss their
particularity altogether, in favor of an intermediate
position that embeds individual existence in the col-
lective existence of a “people” and its historically
specific life. It is the collectively formed aspirations
of a people that are taken to mark out the ideals
providing moral duty with the primary content it has
for particular individuals within it, elevating moral
action above mere arbitrariness and inclination. This
theme sets Fichte’s moral philosophy quite apart
from the existential ethic to which it might otherwise
seem to have a strong affinity, as well as from the
Kantian morality of duty by which it was originally
inspired.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)
Schopenhauer considered himself to be Kant’s
truest disciple; but his moral philosophy shares with
Kant’s little more than its emphasis on the radical
opposition of the MORAL POINT OF VIEW to natural
 history of Western ethics: 10. nineteenth-century Continental
inclination, and its association of morality with the
attainment of a kind of universality transcending our
natural preoccupation with what befalls us as ap-
parently distinct individuals. For Schopenhauer, all
existence is but the ephemeral manifestation in vari-
ous particular and merely phenomenal forms of an
underlying irrational dynamic principle he called
“will,” which issues in ceaseless and meaningless
striving, conflict and suffering. To live is to suffer, to
no purpose other than the perpetuation of this
wretched state of affairs. The struggle for existence
is thus worse than senseless; and so he maintained
that the greatest conceivable good attainable would
be its utter cessation.
Schopenhauer’s moral philosophy derives directly
from this pessimistic assessment of life. Its basic
concern is the greatest possible reduction of suffer-
ing. In the first instance, he advocated a personal
ethic of withdrawal from active engagement in the
world of “will,” culminating in the cultivation of a
thoroughgoing asceticism involving the suppression
of all desires as well as the cessation of all efforts to
satisfy them.
But true morality, for Schopenhauer, cannot be
restricted in its focus to one’s own greatest attain-
able good. Suffering is equally abhorrent wherever
it occurs, for reason “places other individuals com-
pletely on the level with myself and my own fate.”
“Sympathy with all that suffers” is therefore the first
principle of morality for him; and seeking to dimin-
ish suffering everywhere, while doing nothing to add
to it, is its highest counsel and imperative. In prin-
ciple, at least, this applies not only to all of humanity
but moreover to all that lives as well. Schopen-
hauer’s morality of asceticism, generalized into a
kind of universal anestheticism, is thus the pessi-
mistic counterpart of the utilitarian morality based
on the “greatest happiness” principle, radically am-
plifying Kant’s dark conviction that genuine HAPPI-
NESS is not humanly attainable in this life and world.
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach (1804–1872)
A far more optimistic assessment of life is re-
flected in the contrasting moral philosophy of Feuer-
bach. His program of the “reduction” of theology to
a secular anthropology, returning to humanity the
essentially human capacities projected into a tran-
scendent God and thereby denied to ourselves, is a
prelude to his attempt to ground a humanistic ethic
753
of community and self-realization in a naturalistic
account of our human nature. Feuerbach’s PHILO-
SOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY goes beyond character-
izing the basic elements of our nature, further indi-
cating the sort of genuine humanity we have it in us
to attain. His conception of the latter draws both
on the Kantian idea of the DIGNITY of autono-
mous individuals and the respect they accordingly
owe each other, and on the Hegelian idea of the
possibility of a form of humanity transcending our
original merely natural condition though a devel-
opmental process that transforms that condition. In
contrast to both, however, he placed primary em-
phasis on our capacity to develop an enriched and
refined emotional life.
The attainable form of humanity Feuerbach en-
visioned would be more genuinely human than hu-
man life in its more commonplace state, in that it
would be both more truly individual and more truly
social than the latter. He introduced a notion of
“species-being” that he defined initially in terms of
our ability to become conscious not only of our in-
dividual existence but also of our “species-nature.”
He then drew on this notion and its connotations
in an attempt to provide warrant for his claim that
we achieve full self-realization only in community
with our fellow human beings—community of a
kind that both preserves our individuality and unites
us with our fellows. The paradigm of such a com-
munity is love, in contrast to all more depersonalized
forms of interpersonal relations. Feuerbach’s ethic
thus anticipates the “I-thou” model later advocated
by BUBER (1878–1965). It is an ethic not of NORMS
and rules but of LOVE, in keeping with what he be-
lieved to be the “essence of Christianity.”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
In ethics, as in so many other areas, Hegel at-
tempted to bring the “rational” down to earth, to
replace abstraction with concreteness, and to rec-
oncile necessity and universality with historical de-
velopment. The key to this ethical theory is his con-
ception of the crucial connection of the ethical to
the social, which he takes to be its basic context,
when both are properly understood. For Hegel, it is
only in particular social contexts that the abstract
idea of “doing the right thing” becomes concretely
meaningful. At the same time, he grounded his eth-
ical theory in a conception of self-realization, un-
history of Western ethics: 10. nineteenth-century Continental
derstood in terms of his conception of what the full
realization of our essential “spiritual” nature re-
quires and involves.
The institutionalized norms of social life, for He-
gel, provide human conduct with the only means of
transcending the plane of natural determination and
becoming concretely rational. These norms vary in
their specific content from one society to another,
much as the rules of different games vary; and the
general character of ethical life for Hegel is basically
the counterpart in social life of playing by the rules.
This means that ethical judgments are concretely
meaningful and appropriate—and even correct or
incorrect—only within some such social context, in
which there is a relatively well-established, coherent,
and articulated system of norms, just as it makes
sense to talk of playing by the rules (or in violation
of them) only in relation to some established game.
This has the consequence that for those not for-
tunate enough to live in a mature society, in which
some such system of norms has been worked out,
ethical life is not a real possibility; just as playing by
the rules is not a real possibility in situations in
which there are no established and generally recog-
nized rules by which to play. It also has the conse-
quence that there is no higher standard that may be
used to assess the relative merit of different existing
systems of norms, beyond the general criteria of
comprehensiveness, coherence, and comprehensi-
bility by which mature societies may be distin-
guished from those which have not yet attained this
well-ordered condition.
In a general sense, what mattered for Hegel was
not whether one does some specific thing, or even
whether one lives in some particular society, but
rather only that one does live in some such society,
and conducts oneself in accordance with its norms.
On the other hand, for one living in some particular
social context, living ethically does have concrete
and specific meaning, supplied by the content of the
norms established in it. Here “doing the right thing”
does make good and important sense.
Hegel’s version of the “rationality” appropriate to
ethics is “practical rationality” brought down to
earth and provided with the conditions of its real
human possibility. While for Hegel ethics is relative
to historically particular “peoples” and societies, it
retains an important connection to our essential
(spiritual and rational) nature as he understood it,
and its significance transcends that of merely social
754
life. For to live ethically in this way is to rise above
merely natural existence, and to attain the fullest
sort of “rationality” in interpersonal conduct that is
humanly possible.
According to Hegel, we realize our essential ra-
tional nature precisely to the extent that we have
some such system of norms available to us, and par-
ticipate in it. He agreed with Kant that we may be
said to give these “laws” to ourselves, as an expres-
sion of our essential rational nature. But Hegel fur-
ther believed that we do so collectively and socially,
through the establishment of such a system by the
“people” of which we are a part, rather than through
the abstract exercise of our “pure reason” either as
individuals or as universal rational agents. For Hegel
as for Kant, however, in doing so we attain rather
than lose our highest human dignity, and achieve
rather than forfeit genuine self-realization.
In further contrast to Kant, Hegel recognized two
ways in which humans can transcend the plane of
ethical life. One is exemplified by “world-historical
individuals,” whose conduct may well deviate from
the established norms of their society and results in
a transformation of the society itself. The other pos-
sibility is also essential to full human-spiritual self-
realization for Hegel. It consists in the transcen-
dence of ethical life that is involved in the various
forms of experience and activity Hegel associated
with “absolute” (rather than merely “objective”)
spirituality, which culminate in “absolute knowl-
edge.” While those attaining it still exist on the plane
of ethical life, they go beyond its norms, and realize
the crowning human good.
Karl Marx (1818–1883)
It is far from clear whether there is or even can
be a Marxian normative moral philosophy. (This is
a matter of continuing dispute among Marxian the-
orists.) Yet Marx clearly suggested at least the out-
lines of an ethical theory in his account of the status
and significance of ethical norms in human life.
This account owes a good deal to Hegel, but it de-
parts in certain important respects from Hegel’s
thinking.
For Marx, as for Hegel, ethical life is fundamen-
tally social, in that it is bound up with the existence
of particular forms of social life, and reflects the val-
ues associated with them. Marx, however, believed
that the imperatives of the economic system which
 history of Western ethics: 10. nineteenth-century Continental
prevails in a given society decisively shape the soci-
ety’s ethical norms.
Marx took these norms to be a part of society’s
“ideological superstructure” (or remnants of the
ideological superstructure of some earlier stage of
its history). They are engendered by the basic eco-
nomic arrangements underlying them, and serve as
a means of inducing individuals in the society to
conduct themselves in a manner conducive to the
functioning of the economic system. Here too, eth-
ical life is to be concretely and fundamentally un-
derstood as life lived in accordance with the “rules
of the game”; only it is the economic system that is
held to determine what these rules are. Marx re-
gards participation in such systems as an under-
standable but problematic outcome of their sway,
which in the modern Western world is profoundly
dehumanizing and self-alienating rather than hu-
manizing and self-realizing.
This conviction, which informs Marx’s polemic
against capitalism, is rooted in what might be con-
sidered a deeper moral vision of an alternative hu-
man possibility, for which this very system has pre-
pared the way. This vision, which has both Kantian
and Romantic roots (and owes something to Feuer-
bach as well), provided Marx’s thought with its
strongly normative force. It appeals to the idea of a
form of human life in which human productive pow-
ers would be highly developed and creatively em-
ployed, the senses cultivated and refined, and inter-
personal relations transformed into a community of
mutually respecting and supportive individuals, in
which the free and full development of each and of
all would be inseparable.
Only such human life would be truly human, for
Marx; it alone would represent the full realization of
our historically developed human possibilities. Like
Hegel, Marx believed its attainment will be possible
only in the corresponding form of society, which is
required to establish the conditions of its realizabil-
ity. Such a society might be thought of as Kant’s
“kingdom of ends” brought down to earth, in which
Kant’s Categorical Imperative can come to life among
a community of human beings. Their cardinal trait,
however, would be their creativity rather than their
rationality, in a social setting in which economic con-
ditions permit its expression, and all exploitative
practices and dispositions are eliminated.
By insisting on the emergence of the requisite
form of economic organization and social-institutional
755
life as the real basis of this sort of ethical life, Marx
supposed that he was faithful both to his general
naturalistic interpretation of human existence and to
his general ethical theory, which ties ethical norms
to forms of social life. Yet it is evident that his as-
signment of superiority to such a society over all other
types of human social systems invokes a normative
standard that cannot be justified by considerations
pertaining only to their analysis and explanation.
Marx’s professed thoroughgoing NATURALISM
blocks any appeal to religious, metaphysical, or tel-
eological principles transcending human life; and yet
the moral vision that inspires both his polemic and
his advocacy of REVOLUTION requires some sort of
grounding if it is to withstand critical scrutiny. The
only recourse available to him for this purpose
would appear to be to appeal to considerations per-
taining to our fundamental human nature; but in
view of his own criticisms of this notion, this re-
course would not seem to be a very promising one
for him. If such an appeal cannot be successfully
made, Marx’s general conception of the nature and
function of ethical norms within various social sys-
tems might remain standing; but there would be
nothing further to be said about them, by way of
either condemnation or commendation.
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813–1855)
Kierkegaard is best known for his conceptions of
a fundamental “either/or” choice between the “aes-
thetic” and “ethical” modes of existence, and of an
even more dramatic “leap of faith” beyond the eth-
ical level to the religious. He said a great deal about
what lies in between, however, distinguishing be-
tween several importantly different “ethical” human
possibilities. One possibility recalls Hegel’s concep-
tion of ethical life, while a second resembles Kantian
morality in certain respects and also anticipates an
existential alternative to it. A third is associated with
his understanding of genuinely religious life.
In several of his works (Either/Or, 1843; and Fear
and Trembling, 1843), Kierkegaard gives recogni-
tion to a form of ethical life that Hegel had sought
to capture, which has a fundamentally social-
normative character. It involves embracing socially
acknowledged standards and rules as the “determi-
nants” of one’s conduct, internalizing them and
making them one’s own, rather than living in accor-
dance with the promptings of one’s natural or cul-
history of Western ethics: 10. nineteenth-century Continental
tivated desires and inclinations (which he broadly
characterizes as “aesthetic”). One who lives ethically
in this sense achieves the dignity and worth of a re-
sponsible, honorable member of one’s society. The
paradigm here is the “pillar of the community,” who
accepts these norms as obligations that take prece-
dence over the promptings of any dispositions one
may have to conduct oneself otherwise. This type of
ethical life has an “objective” content and character,
deriving from the socially established status of these
norms.
Kierkegaard conveys a genuine appreciation of
this sort of ethical life, as a fine and commendable
thing under ordinary circumstances, when such con-
duct is not mere mindless conformity but rather is
reflectively chosen. In his Concluding Unscientific
Postscript (1846), however, he identified a different
sort of ethical life, in which the determinants of
one’s actions are not general social norms of con-
duct, but rather are autonomously chosen. It might
be considered “existential” rather than social, or
“subjective” rather than “objective.” It constitutes
no mere reversion to an aesthetic mode of existence;
for in this case it is not one’s inclinations that guide
one, but rather certain things one resolves on, to
which one commits oneself deliberately and auton-
omously. Here one imposes one’s own law on one-
self, rather than allowing one’s conduct to be deter-
mined either by the inclinations of the moment or
by the norms and values of society.
It is this emphasis on autonomy that links this
conception of ethical existence with Kantian moral-
ity; but here autonomy is not resolved into an ab-
stract and general model of rational agency, in which
the law given to us turns out to be an expression of
our general and fundamental rational essential na-
ture. Kierkegaard departed from Kant as well as He-
gel on this point, believing human beings to be ca-
pable of autonomous choice beyond all natural,
social, and rational determinations.
Here something like INTEGRITY or AUTHENTICITY
replaces integration or conformity to prevailing
norms as the watchword of ethical life; and while
RESPONSIBILITY is a salient feature of it in both cases,
its focus shifts from one’s society to oneself. If the
paradigm of objective-ethical life is the “pillar of the
community,” the paradigm of subjective-ethical life
might be taken to be Kierkegaard’s figure of the “sol-
itary individual.” To those who cannot conceive of
ethical life other than in terms of submission to some
756
sort of general (social or rational) law, such an au-
tonomous “solitary individual” may seem to have de-
parted from ethical life altogether. For Kierkegaard,
however, this would construe ethical life too nar-
rowly, and fail to recognize another of its important
humanly possible forms.
When Kierkegaard introduces his conception of
a “teleological suspension of the ethical” in conjunc-
tion with the “leap of faith,” he does so with partic-
ular reference to its objective (social) variant. Yet he
is no less concerned to distinguish genuinely reli-
gious existence from its subjective alternative, which
he considers likewise to be transcended by this mode
of existence. His point in both cases is that ethical
life of either sort is not the highest mode of existence
of which human beings are capable. For the genu-
inely religious person there is a higher and quite dif-
ferent source and form of obligation than either of
them involves. Its source is the God-relationship one
may attain through faith and grace; and here the fo-
cus of responsibility shifts yet again, to God and
God’s will, which has a higher claim on one than
either socially established norms or any merely au-
tonomous resolve can have.
One can here discern the outlines of a kind of
religious situation-ethic. Its only law is that of the
individual’s submission to God’s will on any given
occasion, which is subject to no constraints of any
kind. It may be stretching the conception of ethical
life to regard this religious possibility as a further
variant of it (which Kierkegaard himself does not
explicitly do); but it is a possibility to which he at-
taches greater importance than any other, and in any
event is his last word where any thing like ethical
life is concerned.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
(1844–1900)
Nietzsche was preoccupied with “the problem of
morality” throughout his philosophical life. Al-
though he called himself an “immoralist,” he distin-
guished between a variety of types of morality; and
the hostility toward some of them that is reflected in
his adoption of this label does not extend to all of
them. He was severely critical of those he called
“herd” and “slave” moralities; but he was far better
disposed to certain others. The latter may be “be-
yond good and evil” as these notions are construed
and applied within the former sorts of morality; but
 history of Western ethics: 10. nineteenth-century Continental
the alternative notions of “good and bad” figure sig-
nificantly in them.
Nietzsche also suggested the appropriateness of
something like Kierkegaard’s “teleological suspen-
sion of the ethical” in the sense of conventional mo-
rality. It involves the replacement of the latter by a
kind of “higher morality” more conducive to the “en-
hancement of life,” at least in the case of those ex-
ceptional human beings who have it in them to con-
tribute to it. In his polemic against conventional
morality, on the other hand, he shares Marx’s sus-
picion of the ends it serves, which are at odds with
the realization of a more valuable form of human
life.
In certain respects Nietzsche’s “higher morality”
resembles Kierkegaard’s conception of subjective-
ethical life, for which reason he is often linked with
Kierkegaard by interpreters of the origins of existen-
tialism. In both cases, independence of social norms
and commitment to something chosen and willed on
one’s own are stressed. Nietzsche differed impor-
tantly from Kierkegaard, however, not only in his
radical rejection of anything like Kierkegaard’s “leap
of faith,” but also in his subordination of the value
of autonomous individuality to that of creativity.
This gives his conception of a “higher morality” a
very different cast, making it more akin to the mo-
rality of the artist than to that of the “solitary indi-
vidual” as such.
Nietzsche emphatically rejected the idea of any-
thing beyond this world or within ourselves from
which universally valid moral principles might de-
rive, or by reference to which they might be sanc-
tioned; and he likewise rejected the idea that there
are any irreducibly moral phenomena. There are in-
deed actual moralities, which have emerged under
various conditions and in response to specific social
and psychological needs in the course of human his-
tory. They must be understood, however, in terms of
the functions they perform and the interests they
serve, and must be assessed in terms of their “value
for life.”
Existing moralities thus are prime candidates for
Nietzsche’s “revaluation of values” along these lines,
once an investigation of their “genealogy” has re-
vealed their human and often “all too human” ori-
gins and attractions. He distinguished two funda-
mental types of morality that have emerged in the
course of human events, which he calls “master” and
“slave” moralities. In the case of “master” moralities,
757
those qualities and forms of conduct in which “rul-
ing groups” experienced and asserted their superi-
ority were deemed “good,” while those contrasting
with them were derivatively despised.
In the case of “slave” moralities, on the other
hand, which emerged in reaction to them, the tables
were turned; and the things by which “ruled groups”
felt threatened or diminished were deemed “evil,”
while the opposite qualities and forms of conduct
characterizing their own manner of existence were
derivatively proclaimed to be “good.” It is funda-
mentally these judgments of “good and evil” that
Nietzsche believed govern contemporary conven-
tional morality and its philosophical refinements;
and he would have exceptions to the human rule go
beyond them.
Nietzsche’s ultimate standard of value, grounded
in his interpretation of life and the world as “will to
power,” is the “enhancement of life.” More specifi-
cally, his ultimate standard is the greatest possible
enhancement of strength and spirituality of “the type
man,” which finds its highest expression in the do-
main of culture. This general “morality of develop-
ment,” however, implies that it is appropriate that
particular moralities should differ when the differ-
ences among human beings are taken into account.
Since human beings differ in ability (some being ca-
pable of far more than others), the enhancement of
life will be best served if they conduct themselves
differently, in ways adjusted to their limited or ex-
ceptional abilities.
Nietzsche thus proposed a “naturalization” of
morality rather than its complete abolition. When
understood as the sort of discipline required for the
optimal flourishing and development of which par-
ticular human beings are constitutionally capable, it
acquires considerable significance in relation to the
enhancement of life. In this context it also acquires
an objective basis in reality, even if a contingent one,
since these are matters reflecting characteristics hu-
man beings actually possess as the living creatures
they are. But morality thus “naturalized” is plural-
istic as well as contingent, since human beings differ
significantly in their constitutions, in their ability
and potential, and in what their optimal flourishing
and development require.
For those who are unable to endure an existence
unstructured by convention, and whose self-assertive-
ness would be merely self-serving or destructive, one
type of morality is most suitable—a “healthy herd
history of Western ethics: 10. nineteenth-century Continental
morality.” But for those who are strong enough to
live a life of their own and who have the capacity to
be truly creative contributors to cultural life, another
type of morality is more appropriate and desirable—
a more individualistic and self-assertive “higher mo-
rality,” that would discipline and train them “for the
heights.” Neither type of morality is right for all or
wrong for all; but Nietzsche would have all live in
accordance with some variant of one or the other,
rather than none at all.
Influence on Twentieth-Century Thought
These nineteenth-century philosophers profoundly
influenced discussions of ethics and morality in Eu-
ropean philosophy in the twentieth century. In the
English-speaking world, however, they were largely
ignored. The ideas of some may be found to have
little enduring merit; but this can hardly be said of
all of them. They deserve to be reckoned with; and
when they are given the serious attention they war-
rant, they prove to have made contributions to eth-
ical theory that are of no little significance for con-
temporary inquiry.
See also: AUTHENTICITY; AUTONOMY OF MORAL
AGENTS; BUBER; CONVENTIONS; CRITICAL THEORY;
CULTURAL STUDIES; EGOISM; EXISTENTIAL ETHICS;
FEUERBACH; FICHTE; HEGEL; IDEALIST ETHICS; IM-
MORALISM; INTEGRITY; KANT; KIERKEGAARD; MARX;
MARXISM; MORAL PLURALISM; NATURALISM; NIETZ-
SCHE; PHENOMENOLOGY; PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHRO-
POLOGY; RATIONALITY VS. REASONABLENESS; REVO-
LUTION; SCHOPENHAUER; SITUATION ETHICS; SUB-
JECTIVISM; TELEOLOGICAL ETHICS.
Bibliography
Articles on (and bibliographies of works by and about)
the major figures mentioned in this entry can be found
elsewhere in this encyclopedia. The following works
are also of interest.
Copleston, Frederick C. A History of Philosophy. 8 vols.
New York: Doubleday, 1946–1966. See volume 7,
parts 1 and 2.
Lowith, K. From Hegel to Nietzsche. New York: Double-
day, 1967.
Mandelbaum, M. History, Man and Reason. Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1960.
Marcuse, Herbert. Reason and Revolution. Boston: Bea-
con, 1960.
758
Royce, Josiah. The Spirit of Modern Philosophy. New
York: Norton, 1967 [1892].
Schacht, Richard. Hegel and After. Pittsburgh, PA: Uni-
versity of Pittsburgh Press, 1975.
Solomon, Robert. From Rationalism to Existentialism.
New York: Harper and Row, 1972.
Richard Schacht
history of Western ethics:
11. twentieth-century
Continental
In the twentieth century, Continental philosophers
developed a new type of foundation for ethics, fur-
ther explored several nineteenth-century traditions,
and produced some distinctive ethical responses
to the horrors of the European wars that defined
the era.
The most original movement of thought oc-
curred in the first third of the century in Germany;
this movement might be termed value realism. Its
main members are Franz BRENTANO (1838–1917),
Max SCHELER (1874–1928), and Nicolai HART-
MANN (1882–1950). Other contributors include
Hans Reiner and Aurel Kolnai (1900–1973). A
second, relatively new line of thought made a dis-
tinctive relation to other people the central feature
of ethics. One anticipation of this kind of theory
can be found in HEGEL’s (1770–1831) distinction
between master-slave relationships and reciprocal
recognition. Martin BUBER (1878–1965) and Em-
manuel LEVINAS (1906–1995) are the most promi-
nent members of this tradition, along with Karl
Jaspers (1883–1969) and Luce Irigaray. A third
tradition might be called the ethics of personal trans-
formation, whose nineteenth-century forerunners in-
clude Søren KIERKEGAARD (1813–1855) and Fried-
rich NIETZSCHE (1844–1900). Martin HEIDEGGER
(1889–1976) explicitly rejected the idea that he of-
fered an ethics, but Jean-Paul SARTRE (1905–1980),
Simone DE BEAUVOIR (1908–1986), and Michel
FOUCAULT (1926–1984) were self-acknowledged
representatives of this tradition. A fourth movement
is MARXISM. Twentieth-century enrichments of Karl
MARX’s (1818–1883) ethics have taken several di-
rections, the most developed of which has been for-
mulated by Jürgen HABERMAS. The ethical reflection
of a fifth group of thinkers was prompted by the
horrors of two world wars and the rise of totalitar-
 history of Western ethics: 11. twentieth-century Continental
ianism. This tradition’s representative figures in-
clude Simone WEIL (1909–1943) and Albert CA-
MUS (1913–1960) as well as Hannah ARENDT
(1906–1975).
Value Realism
Two defining features of this movement are an
attempt to elucidate objectively apprehensible in-
trinsic values and an analysis of emotions—espe-
cially LOVE and HATE —construed as the medium
through which such values may be discerned. Com-
mon to value realists is a belief in the plurality of
intrinsic goods; they differ on how these diverse
goods are related.
Franz Brentano (1838–1917). Brentano estab-
lished the main ideas essential to this tradition: a
strong analogy between EMOTION and judgment and
distinctive intentional objects for emotional states.
He outlined his theory in The Origin of Our Knowl-
edge of Right and Wrong (1889). Brentano at-
tempted to define a source of moral law that is in-
dependent of external AUTHORITY and is as evident
as the laws of logic. The strategy is to clarify a notion
of evidence and correctness for emotional attitudes
that is parallel to the evidence and correctness of
judgments—especially self-evident judgments like
the law of contradiction. For Brentano, knowledge
of intrinsic value is the proper ethical motive for ac-
tion, and the best end to pursue is the best one at-
tainable in the situation.
Brentano’s main task was thus to clarify how in-
trinsic values can be known and how they can be
ranked. Brentano suggests that emotions and judg-
ments share a common feature: each has a positive-
negative polarity. Judgments can affirm or deny;
emotions can be loving or hateful. Further he sug-
gests that only one of these can be correct (at least
for some cases of emotion). A judgment is true when
its affirmation is correct; something is good when
loving it is correct. In both cases he distinguishes
blind instances from evident ones. One’s judgments
are blind—without evident insight—when they de-
rive from tradition, unconscious factors, or preju-
dice. Brentano thinks that one’s loves and hates can
be similarly blind or evident. Evident love reveals
intrinsic goods, such as knowledge, joy, or beauty.
He defines the notion of “better” as evident prefer-
ability, where preference is a distinctive type of emo-
tional act that compares intrinsic values, e.g., pure
759
goods over mixed goods. Intrinsic goods cannot al-
ways be compared, however, for rich love is not al-
ways preferable to deep insight. Brentano also de-
veloped a complex theory of how intrinsic goods can
be summed or combined into larger unities. Many
of his insights served as the basis for and were fur-
ther developed by G. E. MOORE (1873–1958) and
the intuitionists in England.
Max Scheler (1874–1928). Scheler developed a
distinctive early version of phenomenology simul-
taneously with HUSSERL (1859–1938), who was a
student of Brentano’s. He sought to uncover the
structures and essences implicit in ethical experi-
ence; these often challenge traditional philosophical
theories of ethics. For Scheler, value is the implicit
target of all striving or desiring, and values are the
explicit object of loving and preferring. He believed
values can be ranked in a hierarchy from low to high
(sensory and use values; vital values; intellectual and
cultural values; and spiritual values). To each level
of this four-tiered hierarchy there corresponds a
characteristic model person (bon vivant; hero; gen-
ius; saint) and form of social organization (mass; life
community; cultural community; and spiritual com-
munity). For Scheler, these ranks were intuitively
evident, but he indicated associated properties that
confirm this ranking. Higher values are more endur-
ing, less divisible, provide deeper fulfillment, pro-
vide the foundation for lower ones, and are more
absolute in the sense that transgressing them results
in greater guilt. For Scheler, the best action is the
one realizing the highest value afforded by the
situation.
Different persons are sensitive to different levels
of this hierarchy to different degrees, and the sector
of the hierarchy to which one is most attuned defines
one’s basic moral tenor. This tenor organizes one’s
moral life and conditions one’s will; so it is not easily
transformed by will. It can be altered by conversion
or expansion through the influence of personal mod-
els. One of Scheler’s major contributions is this em-
phasis on the importance of personal models in eth-
ical development. Both persons and cultures can
learn from each other’s moral tenors, and Scheler
thinks history and creative persons are gradually
clarifying the value hierarchy in its entirety.
Another important contribution is Scheler’s elu-
cidation of the logic of particular emotions (e.g.,
RESENTMENT, love, SYMPATHY, shame, HUMILITY,
suffering, and repentance); he wrote several book-
history of Western ethics: 11. twentieth-century Continental
length studies of their essences and their implica-
tions for ethics. Love, for example, is the movement
by which the highest possibilities of value of the be-
loved object emerge; it can be directed toward oth-
ers or oneself. Resentment is the result of a sense of
impotence characteristic of social groups that lack
POWER and mobility. It inhibits the apprehension of
higher values and poisons one’s sense of one’s own
value. In many of these studies Scheler criticizes
Nietzsche’s analyses and the implications he draws
from them. For example, Scheler contested the claim
that Christian love is based on resentment, arguing
that it flows from the rich sense of self-value char-
acteristic of Nietzsche’s higher persons. He also dis-
tinguished four types of sympathy and showed that
Nietzsche’s critiques of sympathy apply to only one
of them. His analyses are among the most systematic
and thorough treatments of these emotions ever
written.
Nicolai Hartmann (1882–1950). Hartmann’s
greatest contribution is an analysis of the variety of
particular values and their tensions and oppositions.
He rejected Scheler’s specific hierarchy without
abandoning the general idea. For Hartmann, lower
values are easier to achieve than higher values, but
for that very reason are more binding in that break-
ing them is more culpable. Hartmann also rejected
the view that values can be graded along a single
dimension. There are many planes and vectors of
value; they do not necessarily form a unity, and some
exist in fundamental tension with others, for exam-
ple, purity and richness of experience. Hartmann’s
task in his three-volume Ethics (1926) is to make
explicit our implicit sense of the ultimate ends that
guide our activity. These ends are drawn from his-
torical tradition and from the enrichment of ethical
sensibility achieved by moral visionaries. Hartmann’s
descriptions intend to sharpen our value sensitivity
and clarify our sense of value conflict. He groups
VIRTUES into four types: fundamental moral values
(goodness, nobility, richness of experience, and pu-
rity), classical virtues (justice, WISDOM, COURAGE,
and SELF-CONTROL), Christian virtues (brotherly
love, truthfulness, trustworthiness, and humility),
and modern virtues (radiant virtue, love of the re-
mote, personality, and personal love).
Intersubjectivity Theories of Ethics
Distinctive of this kind of theory is an effort to
ground ethics in a fundamental and profoundly im-
760
portant kind of relation to other people. Since the
reality of others transforms one’s own reality, these
theories typically regard ethical demands as objec-
tive. In this way their advocates are similar to value
realists; but they differ from them in thinking that
the source of ethics lies not in quasi-objective values,
but in primordial interpersonal relations, within
which the selves and experience of the related per-
sons are constituted. Because these fundamental in-
tersubjective relations can be conceived in different
ways, different kinds of ethical theory have devel-
oped within this tradition.
Martin Buber (1878–1965). In his germinal
book I and Thou (1922), Buber distinguished two
fundamental relations that can exist between oneself
and others (which includes nature and art as well as
other humans): I-It and I-Thou. In the I-It relation,
one offers oneself only partially, uses the other as a
means to some predefined end, grasps the other as
a type, and experiences oneself as a detached, iso-
lated, separate subject. In the I-Thou relation, one
offers oneself wholly, participates with the other in
an event that takes its own course, grasps the con-
crete particularity of the other, and emerges as a per-
son in currents of RECIPROCITY. Only in the I-Thou
relation does one achieve genuine presence; I-It re-
lations remain locked in the past. The I of the I-Thou
is fundamentally different from the I of the I-It; the
relation constitutes the selves of its members. Buber
acknowledged that humans live in a continuous di-
alectic between these two poles; even the most vital
love occasionally falls into the realm of the It, but
correlatively even the most nameless stranger can
suddenly enter the realm of the Thou. The I-Thou
relation does not really unite its members; instead
they achieve a reciprocity that acknowledges their
distinctness.
Though the I-Thou relation cannot itself become
a goal (it happens through grace), Buber left no
doubt about its preferability. In it one risks and of-
fers oneself fully, is genuinely addressed by the other,
and becomes a genuine person. Someone who never
experienced I-Thou would be greatly impoverished.
Buber lamented the condition of the modern world
because it has become so mired in the realm of I-It.
Genuine spirit flows in the dialogue made possible
by I-Thou, and true community emerges only when
the members live in I-Thou relationships with one
another and with the living center that defines the
community. Sometimes an I-Thou relationship might
 history of Western ethics: 11. twentieth-century Continental
require one to transgress the bounds of customary
morality, but Buber leaves little doubt that the forms
of address and response in the I-Thou relation su-
persede everything else. In later essays and books,
Buber applied this distinction to other spheres of
human life: education, politics, art, and religion.
Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995). For Levinas,
the relation to the other defines the ethical, but the
other remains wholly alien and unassimilable. In
Western philosophy “being” is typically conceived as
“coming to presence,” and for Levinas the other’s
proximity is prior to his “presence” and makes it pos-
sible. No unity or synthesis with the other is possi-
ble; so no totality (a whole that assimilates its parts)
can integrate self and other. The relation to the other
is like a relation to infinity, perpetually beyond ex-
perience, making the organizing structures of expe-
rience possible. This primordial other defines the
ethical relation; it precedes and conditions experi-
ence, self-consciousness, and intentionality. Thus,
ethics is first philosophy, prior to metaphysics, epis-
temology, and ontology. The central difference be-
tween Buber and Levinas is the asymmetry between
self and other asserted by Levinas; Buber’s dialogue
never merges its participants, but in it both parties
say “Thou” reciprocally and thus are symmetrical.
For Levinas the other’s absolute transcendence pre-
vents symmetry and reciprocity. Levinas’s other be-
comes manifest through the face which both com-
mands one (not to harm) and solicits one’s aid; to
acknowledge the other’s face is to bear responsibility
to the other and for the other. Ethics concerns only
this relation to the other; when more than one per-
son is involved, each becomes a third with claims to
be weighed. This is the qualitatively different realm
of politics.
Levinas struggles to find appropriate metaphors
to clarify this ethical relation to the other and expli-
cate its importance. He employed different meta-
phors in different books. In Time and the Other
(1947), he uses those of physical pain, DEATH, pa-
ternity, and heterosexual DESIRE. Pain and death
underline one’s own passivity, and neither can be
assimilated, only acknowledged and faced. In het-
erosexual erotic love, the other remains a mystery,
wholly distinct from one’s own mode of existence;
the caress offers one to this mystery without trying
to assimilate it. In Totality and Infinity (1961), Lev-
inas challenges the notion of totality that has gov-
erned much European philosophy since Hegel. The
761
other is not a moment of a larger whole; the relation
to the other is not transformed by history; it can be
used to judge historical agents and eras. The insis-
tence of the other is explored through an analysis of
sensibility, which renders one continuously exposed
to the outside. In Otherwise Than Being or Beyond
Essence (1974), these metaphors are reworked, and
new ones emerge. Central is a notion of RESPONSI-
BILITY that involves substituting oneself for the
other; one bears the burden not only of one’s re-
sponse to the other but also for the other’s own ac-
tions. This responsibility is extreme and grows
greater as one acknowledges it more completely.
Ethics of Personal Transformation
The premise of this type of ethical theory is that
human existence has certain conditions which we
typically avoid. The ethical ideal demands an ac-
knowledgment of these conditions, and this pro-
duces a personal transformation. To refuse to ac-
knowledge them is to live blindly and dishonestly.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980). The guiding
thread in Sartre’s ethic is freedom. Its meaning and
presuppositions change as his position evolves, but
throughout his works Sartre insisted on the value of
freedom as a foundation for all human aims and as-
serted that persons bear responsibility for their ac-
tions and lives. He tried to show how the ontological
fact of freedom legitimates the value of freedom.
In the early period of Being and Nothingness
(1943), the source of freedom is the nature of con-
sciousness, which perpetually transcends its situa-
tion even as it defines itself within such situations.
Since nothing determines one’s response to a situa-
tion, one always chooses that response and bears re-
sponsibility for one’s choices. The values one pursues
through such choices have no external or rational
supports. This freedom and responsibility are bur-
densome, and typically people avoid them through
self-deceptive ruses; e.g., assuming that one’s social
role defines one’s obligations, pretending that cer-
tain values have objective guarantees, or believing
that one’s past actions foreclose one’s present
choices. To refuse these self-deceptive ruses, to bear
one’s responsibility, and to truly author one’s long-
term projects is to live authentically. At this stage
Sartre’s notion of freedom is formal and for the most
part asocial.
In the middle period when “Existentialism Is a
history of Western ethics: 11. twentieth-century Continental
Humanism” (1946) was published and his Cahiers
(1946–1949) was composed, Sartre attempted to
develop more substantive implications from this ba-
sic position. First, he accentuates the seriousness of
one’s choices by suggesting that one chooses for all
whenever one acts; in effect, one’s actions function
as examples for all to follow. Second, he suggests
that humanity is something to be made both individ-
ually and socially. Since humans produce the con-
ditions of their lives in history, there is no antecedent
human essence which governs one’s actions. Finally,
since freedom is the foundation of all values, the
freedom of all must be taken as a guiding value. In
this period Sartre also acknowledged the possibility
of authentic love, which respects the loved one’s
freedom; eventually he tried to show that none can
be fully free until all are. Further, he recognized that
profound social changes are required for most peo-
ple to have the opportunity to undergo the transfor-
mation to AUTHENTICITY. In addition, he explored
many paradoxes of morality; e.g., that morally rig-
orous persons are often most tyrannical.
In the later period of the Critique of Dialectical
Reason (1960), the locus of freedom shifts from
consciousness to PRAXIS. Praxis still transcends
given situations, but now it is internally shaped by
those situations and mediated by a variety of social
and material conditions. Thus, Sartre better grasped
the weight of situations, the manner in which they
make their own demands and carry their own iner-
tia. This inertia derives from the projects of present
social groups, from the resources and technology
handed down by past generations, and from scarcity.
Thus, Sartre acknowledged that history makes in-
dividuals as much as individuals make history. In
addition, Sartre accepted the possibility of recipro-
cal recognition and of transforming social ALIEN-
ATION into communal freedom through group ac-
tion. This recognition exists against a background of
fear, however, and group action typically produces
social structures that undermine the spontaneous
freedom a group initially discovers through taking
collective action. Thus, freedom becomes social, but
some paradoxes by which freedom undermines itself
are also explicated. Sartre’s ideal becomes group
praxis in which each member is end and means for
one another, where each recognizes the others,
where each controls others only insofar as others
also control. Ultimately Sartre hoped for a time
762
when history itself will be made by the whole of hu-
manity functioning as such a group.
Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986). Beauvoir
worked with Sartre’s categories, but she trans-
formed them and explicitly defended many conclu-
sions Sartre was later to adopt. Her most important
treatise in ethics is The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947),
which was given powerful practical application in
The Second Sex (1949)—a book which inspired the
feminist movement throughout the West. Her main
disagreement with Sartre is her early insistence on
the possibility of reciprocal recognition of free per-
sons which respects and facilitates the autonomy of
each party. (She thus sides with Hegel against early
Sartre.) This becomes a communal ideal as well as
a model for relations between the sexes. She sug-
gested that this reciprocity requires legal, social, and
economic EQUALITY and that this in turn will require
a total transformation of the institutions of FAMILY,
child rearing, education, and employment. More-
over, she argued that one’s own projects require the
support and confirmation of others in order to be
sustained over time, both as one seeks to realize
them and after one dies. Thus, she asserts a stronger
interdependence of persons, sees the contributing
role of others in achieving authenticity, and grasps
the importance of seeking others’ freedom as a pre-
condition to one’s own. Beauvoir also shows great
sensitivity in detailing the ways people avoid their
freedom, in diagnosing the dynamics of interper-
sonal OPPRESSION, and in revealing the ways in
which victims often collude in their own domina-
tion. She argued that the status and “nature” of
women is humanly made, not biologically destined.
She also insisted that genuine authenticity requires
sustained commitment to one’s projects and a will-
ingness to continually question the efficacy and ap-
propriateness of the means one uses to achieve one’s
ends and to compare the values sought with the val-
ues realized.
Michel Foucault (1926–1984). Foucault offered
both a general schema for analyzing possible (and
historically actual) forms of personal transforma-
tion, and toward the end of his life sketched a posi-
tive ideal that incorporates a critical relation to the
present. Foucault’s early focus was on behavior and
practices and the rules and institutions that shape
and define them. He showed that knowledge and
humanity have no essence—taking wholly different
forms in different eras—and suggested that changes
 history of Western ethics: 11. twentieth-century Continental
among these forms are not rationally motivated. He
also claimed that power produces the forms of life
people live, rather than simply prohibiting specific
acts. He portrayed individuals as pawns in networks
of knowledge practices and power strategies.
Subsequently Foucault developed a different
theme—that individuals control themselves through
techniques of self-mastery; for him this is the sphere
of ethics. Foucault differentiates this sphere from
that of principles or laws, which regulate what can
and cannot be done. The forms of self-relatedness
and self-transformation can vary even if the laws or
NORMS remain the same. He suggested four dimen-
sions by which to classify forms of self-mastery: the
ethical substance (what persons work on to trans-
form themselves, e.g., desires, pleasures, images);
the mode of subjection (the way one relates to rules
and their form of LEGITIMACY, e.g., custom, divine
law, moral exemplar); the forms of elaboration (the
practices by which one works on oneself, e.g., re-
nunciation, self-decipherment, confession); and the
telos (the ultimate aim of self-mastery, e.g., purifi-
cation, tranquility, detachment). With these catego-
ries he analyzed the types of ethos in Greece, Rome,
the Christian era, and in our era.
Beyond this analytic work, Foucault saw his en-
tire enterprise as an ethical response to the present
era, a first step toward maturity. This maturity in-
volves both a critical relation to the present and an
experimental relation toward the future. By analyz-
ing the knowledge and power structures that define
the present, he indicated specific points where those
limits might be challenged, where specific power re-
lations might be reversed, and where arbitrary au-
thority might be eliminated. Although he was critical
of the notion of liberation, he used his analyses of
historical ethos to suggest new practices that would
encourage creativity in the way individuals relate to
themselves. Just as he assimilated and redefined
Nietzschean genealogy, he also subsumed and rede-
fined Nietzschean creativity in relation to oneself
and to one’s era. Foucault suggested that personal
transformation cannot be independent of a critique
of the present and its social transformation.
Enriching the Marxist Tradition
One appeal of Marxism is the moral challenge it
makes to capitalism and its impact on nature, soci-
ety, culture, and humanity. There is some question,
763
however, whether Marxism can justify this moral
challenge. Twentieth-century Marxism is a rich and
wide-ranging tradition, producing a variety of ap-
proaches to ethics.
There are at least three types of ethical projects
in which Marxists might engage. One is to examine
the function of moral codes in relation to specific
historical modes of production, including our own.
This may extend to the exploration of emerging
normative ideologies in recent forms of capitalism.
Here ethical systems are treated as part of the super-
structures which are ancillary to the economic base.
The functional relation to this base may differ in dif-
ferent eras, and the importance of ethical systems in
accentuating contradictions is a matter of disagree-
ment. Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), for example,
suggested that ethical principles play a significant
role in creating the dominant ideology that legiti-
mates the current mode of production, and thus that
challenges to this ideology can be as politically ef-
fective as economic challenges. In general, this ap-
proach regards ethical principles as part of the era’s
mode of production. Some, like Louis Althusser
(1918–1990), deny that they can have any more
binding normative status.
Other Marxists seek not only to indicate the
moral and ethical failings of capitalism (the current
mode of production), but also to justify them in
some larger sense, going beyond arguing that its ef-
fects are condemned by the ethical principles it pro-
duces (this latter task is pursued by the Frankfurt
School). Some suggest that early Marx tried to do
this through an appeal to human nature and an anal-
ysis of the ways in which capitalism produces alien-
ation from it; and there has been a variety of at-
tempts to develop this approach, e.g., by Adam
Schaff, and perhaps Georg Lukács (1885–1971).
Finally, some Marxists propose and justify some
specific moral principles that will operate in the
newly emerging order; they explore normative issues
relating to interpersonal relations and to the reor-
ganization of economic, cultural, and political life.
The “humanistic Marxism” of such Eastern Euro-
pean philosophers as Mihailo Markovic and Gajo
Petrovic is one example of this endeavor. Another
example is Habermas.
Jürgen Habermas. Habermas’s communication
ethics develops the Kantian element in Marxism.
Like Immanuel KANT (1724–1804) he limits him-
self to issues of right conduct, establishes the validity
history of Western ethics: 11. twentieth-century Continental
of normative commands, and distinguishes PRACTI-
CAL REASON from theoretical reason. He is a cogni-
tivist because he thinks norms can be rationally jus-
tified and a formalist because he does not define
which norms will be justified, only a procedure for
determining them. His procedure relies on two ideas
(which replace Kant’s categorical imperative): norms
are valid if they receive the CONSENT of all affected
in unconstrained practical communication and if the
consequences of their general observance for the IN-
TERESTS of each are acceptable to all. The validation
process is thus essentially social; it cannot be per-
formed by a single individual in isolation. Habermas
contends that these principles are presupposed by
the very process of practical argument and suggests
that participating in real argumentation, freely and
equally and without constraints, is the key to achiev-
ing the moral standpoint. Real participation de-
mands that each take the perspective of all the other
participants by understanding and evaluating their
contributions to the argument and responding to
their criticisms.
Habermas believes communication ethics will
both protect the rights and identities of individuals
and achieve universally recognized general interests.
Hegel sought to mediate the classical opposition be-
tween individual and society; Habermas thinks he
fulfills Hegel’s aim because the communication pro-
cess stretches individuals beyond their private per-
spectives, assures each equal respect and DIGNITY,
and socially supports individual identities in the pro-
cess of reaching agreement. Each person must be
sensitive to others to reach agreement on particular
norms, and such resolutions will produce real gen-
eral interests. Habermas argues for no substantive
norms; he leaves this to the communities which en-
gage in practical communication. But to the extent
that a social system (such as the current capitalist
order) prevents the presuppositions of communica-
tion from being met (e.g., through hunger, lack of
education or employment, or COERCION), he con-
demns it. Further, he seeks to identify types of public
institutions that would be necessary to achieve this
kind of communication.
Ethical Responses to the Crises of the
Twentieth Century
The twentieth century was plagued by two world
wars, mass killing of helpless civilians, and vicious
764
totalitarian governments that ruled by fear and tor-
ture. The ethical thought of another group of think-
ers can best be understood as a response to these
facts. They try to fix moral limits to political action
and define minimum conditions of human existence
that must not be transgressed. They protest against
the way political aims have been used to justify ter-
rible acts.
Simone Weil (1901–1943). For Weil, obliga-
tions precede rights, and humans have identical ob-
ligations to one another. Each person is sacred and
is owed respect. Everything of highest moral value
is impersonal: knowledge, perfection, and beauty.
One’s responsibility is to this impersonal dimension,
and one’s obligation is to safeguard others’ ability to
live in accord with it. This primarily involves pre-
venting harm and alleviating pain. Moral demands
thus supersede and limit the whole realm of politics.
In The Need for Roots (1943; pub. 1949), she iden-
tified minimal human NEEDS that must be respected:
some room, solitude, warmth, order, comprehensi-
ble laws, responsibility, HONOR, and the impersonal
attentiveness she calls love. But most of modern life
is organized to frustrate these needs, especially mod-
ern factories and MASS MEDIA. Socially, she sought a
rejuvenation of local communities which produce a
sense of rootedness, a living relation to neighbors,
cooperation within local associations, and a recov-
ery of the family. She tried to clarify social institu-
tions that would make such a life possible.
Albert Camus (1913–1960). In The Myth of Sis-
yphus (1942), Camus offered an ethic of personal
transformation that takes the disharmony between
the human search for meaning and the universe’s
indifference—termed “the absurd”—as its point of
departure. He asked whether SUICIDE is the only le-
gitimate response to the absurd. Camus rejected sui-
cide and argues for the value of heroic resistance to
it. Other parts of his early notion of authenticity are
the refusal of transcendent supports, the acceptance
of the reality of death which then allows one to de-
vote oneself to the present without fear, and a pur-
suit of diverse experiences.
Later, in The Rebel (1951), Camus focused more
on human than on cosmic injustice. Because of po-
litical ideologies, humans in our era murder their
fellows in good conscience. In seeking resources
within his position to combat this, he offered two
main arguments. He showed that life is preferable
to death (even given the absurd), thus life has value;
 history of Western ethics: 12. twentieth-century Anglo-American
it makes heroic resistance possible. But then life is
valuable for all, and murder must be rejected. Sec-
ond, since rebellion occurs because some minimal
standard of decency is transgressed, one is commit-
ted to sustaining this standard for everyone. Rebel-
lion thus spins a thread of solidarity; the true rebel
seeks to overcome humiliation without humiliating
in turn. But this solidarity can be realized only
through communication, and violence undermines
communication. Camus rejected sacrificing present
humanity to achieve future redemption or future
utopia, and showed that most political crimes are
justified by reference to future goods. Authentic re-
bellion refuses servitude, falsehood, and terror. Re-
bellion thus produces an ethic of limits, a search for
relative value that rectifies small injustices without
cant or self-inflation. The only legitimate demand is
to aid suffering people in the best way one can. This
self-effacing dedication to the alleviation of present
suffering is best exemplified by Dr. Rieux in Camus’s
novel The Plague (1947).
The efforts of these philosophers to develop new
kinds of ethical theories, to enrich existing Conti-
nental traditions of ethical thought, and to produce
serious ethical responses to horrible evil, represent
important contributions to the history of ethics.
They can be read with profit by anyone seeking to
contribute to ethical theory today.
See also: ABSURD, THE; ALIENATION;
ARENDT; AU-
THENTICITY; BRENTANO; BUBER; CAMUS; CRITICAL
THEORY; CULTURAL STUDIES; DE BEAUVOIR; EXISTEN-
TIAL ETHICS; FOUCAULT; HABERMAS; HARTMANN;
HEGEL; HEIDEGGER; HUSSERL; KIERKEGAARD; LEGIT-
IMACY; LEVINAS; MARX; MARXISM; NIETZSCHE; PHE-
NOMENOLOGY; PRAXIS; SARTRE; SCHELER; SELF AND
SOCIAL SELF; WEIL.
Bibliography
Articles on (and bibliographies of works by and about)
the major figures mentioned in this article can be found
elsewhere in this encyclopedia. Very few good general
sources on this period exist, especially sources which
focus on ethics. Worthy of mention are:
Bubner, Rudiger. Modern German Philosophy. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Descombes, Vincent. Modern French Philosophy. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Spiegelberg, Herbert. The Phenomenological Movement.
Martinus Nijhoff, 1960.
765
Books and articles consulted for the preparation of this
article include:
Chisholm, Roderick. Brentano and Intrinsic Value. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Coles, Robert. Simone Weil: A Modern Pilgrimage. Read-
ing, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1987.
Flynn, Thomas. Sartre and Marxist Humanism. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Kruks, Sonia. Situation and Human Existence. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Schacht, Richard. “Marxism, Normative Theory, and
Alienation.” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Cul-
ture, edited by Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson.
Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988.
Sprintzen, David. Camus: A Critical Examination. Phila-
delphia: Temple University Press, 1988.
Winch, Peter. The Just Balance. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989.
William R. Schroeder
history of Western ethics:
12. twentieth-century
Anglo-American
Although the main currents of late-nineteenth-
century Anglo-American ethics—Hegelianism, util-
itarianism, and evolutionism—continued into the
twentieth, only UTILITARIANISM grew in strength.
Hegelian ethics gradually fell out of discussion, until
it returned late in the twentieth century as COMMU-
NITARIANISM. And although various alleged funda-
mental human motivations, from communal aggres-
sion to individual ALTRUISM, have at different times
been announced to be explained and justified by bio-
logical natural selection, the reasons given have been
dismissed by biologists as scientifically dubious and
by philosophers as ethically crass. None of these in-
vestigations has been as sophisticated as Charles
DARWIN’s (1809–1882) were.
During the first quarter of the century, academic
philosophers gradually ceased to treat “normative”
questions about what kinds of ACTION are right as
seriously in dispute; they devoted more and more
attention to “metaethical” questions about the na-
ture of morality. The early work of G. E. MOORE
(1873–1958) prepared the way. In Principia Ethica
(1903), he reaffirmed three doctrines of his teacher
Henry SIDGWICK (1838–1900): (a) that ethics is dis-
tinguished from other sciences by its object—the
good; (b) that the states of affairs that are good are
mostly states of consciousness; and (c) that the
history of Western ethics: 12. twentieth-century Anglo-American
property ‘goodness’, by which good states of affairs
are distinguished from indifferent or bad ones, is not
reducible to any other, and hence is indefinable. It is
a NATURALISTIC FALLACY to identify goodness with
any other property, of which JOHN STUART MILL’s
(1806–1873) identification of being good with be-
ing a state of PLEASURE is a horrid example. Moore
agreed with Sidgwick that the goodness of a state of
affairs supervenes upon its other properties, and
that no state of consciousness is good if it is not to
some extent one of pleasure. But he repudiated Sidg-
wick’s inference that all goods are states of pleasure,
on the ground that it violates what he called “the
principle of organic unities”: the goodness of a com-
plex state of affairs is not the sum of the goodness
supervenient upon the properties of its components.
Although no state of consciousness can be good un-
less it is pleasant, its goodness is not proportional to
its pleasantness.
Moore’s normative ethics combined a largely con-
formist theory of right action with a nonconformist
theory of the great goods. He defined a morally right
action in a way G. E. M. ANSCOMBE (1919–2001)
was to label “consequentialist”: namely, as an action
the total consequences of which are at least as good
as those of any other that could have been done in-
stead. Moore acknowledged that the comparative
goodness of many actions cannot be known because
their total consequences, and a fortiori their good-
ness, cannot be known. However, he argued that,
since the consequences of preserving any civilized
society are better than those of not preserving it,
members of any such society should for the most
part follow the codes of right and wrong generally
recognized in it. Some rules in its code will be such
that it would be weakened if they were not generally
observed, and others will be such that any society at
all would be the better for observing them. When a
rule of right and wrong cannot be justified in either
of these ways, those living where it is socially ac-
cepted should not consider it binding; but, in situ-
ations to which it applies, they should choose an ac-
tion, among those open to them, such that no other
would probably have better consequences.
Being confident that any normal human adult can
nondiscursively “cognize,” of any two clearly speci-
fied states of affairs he contemplates, which, if ei-
ther, is better than the other (he called such cogni-
tions “intuitions”), Moore concluded that people
disagree about the comparative goodness of such
766
states only because they neglect to specify them
clearly and to consider them in isolation from others.
Thus Sidgwick mistook pleasure for a great good
because he failed to consider it in isolation from
what it is pleasure in. All great goods are complex,
and reduce to two: the appreciation of the beautiful
(a category that includes the intellectually absorb-
ing), and affection for good and beautiful persons.
This development of Sidgwick’s moral epistemology,
which came to be known as INTUITIONISM, was at
first embraced by Bertrand RUSSELL (1872–1970),
and by the largely ex–Cambridge Bloomsbury circle,
whose members included John Maynard Keynes
(1883–1946), Lytton Strachey (1880–1932), and
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941).
The anti-Hegelians at Oxford rejected Moore’s
view of the range of moral intuition. As early as
1912, H. A. PRICHARD (1871–1947) contended
that it is a mistake to reduce the moral rightness of
an action to the comparative goodness of its conse-
quences, and that, because of that mistake, Moore
had also mistaken the chief property of actions it is
the business of ethics to study, which is moral right-
ness. To be morally good, as Immanuel KANT
(1724–1804) had maintained, is to be a person who
intends that her actions be right. What can be in-
tuited is not which of two clearly conceived states
of consciousness is the better, but rather, in any sit-
uation that is clearly apprehended, what action, if
any, is right, that is, morally required of us. Prichard
even declared that only those who have not been
well brought up need to reason about what it is right
or wrong to do—an absurdity quietly dismissed by
W. D. ROSS (1877–1971) and C. D. Broad (1887–
1971), who independently produced essentially simi-
lar versions of ethical intuitionism that were to re-
main standard.
This standard intuitionism combines elements
from both Moore and Prichard. It accepts from
Moore that states of affairs can be better or worse
in themselves, and that, if two such states are clearly
perceived, human beings can reliably intuit which is
better, if either is. And it accepts from Prichard that
properties other than having better consequences
than their alternatives (e.g., being the keeping of a
promise, or being the avoidance of a lie), can confer
on an action an intuitive claim to be right not pos-
sessed by alternatives lacking those properties. But
unlike Prichard, Ross and Broad insisted that all that
follows from an action’s having such a claim is that
 history of Western ethics: 12. twentieth-century Anglo-American
it is prima facie right, and its alternatives prima facie
wrong; and they agreed with Moore that actions hav-
ing better consequences than their alternatives have
an intuitive claim to be right. Hence in some situa-
tions agents must choose between options each of
which is prima facie right. For example, telling a
certain lie would have better consequences than any-
thing else; telling a different lie would keep a prom-
ise; and saying nothing at all would avoid lying.
Which is right sans phrase? The one with the great-
est quantity of prima facie rightness. Both Ross and
Broad agreed that, while human beings have some
capacity to weigh quantities of prima facie rightness,
that capacity is less reliable than the intuitive capac-
ity to cognize its simple presence.
Ross’s view of the structure of moral thinking—
that most moral problems arise from conflicts be-
tween genuine moral claims, and not between moral
duty and nonmoral INTERESTS speciously presenting
themselves as moral—has more and more capti-
vated academic moralists. It is the seed of the now
popular notion that conflicts of moral principle are
dilemmas rather than soluble problems. Most of
Ross’s successors, however, follow Stephen Toul-
min’s Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics
(1949) in repudiating Moore’s intuitionistic episte-
mology, which Ross had accepted, and in conceiving
moral conflicts as not between prima facie duties,
but between valid but not decisive moral reasons.
On Toulmin’s analysis, MORAL REASONING is the ob-
jective weighing of good reasons rather than of
prima facie duties; yet his analysis of what makes a
reason good leaves room for rational differences of
opinion about not only whether a given reason is a
good one but also its relative weight. And although,
in The Moral Point of View (1958), Kurt BAIER ex-
plores more deeply than Toulmin what makes a rea-
son a good one, he too leaves room for such differ-
ences. Despite Ross’s decent CONSERVATISM and
Toulmin and Baier’s decent LIBERALISM, their con-
cept of moral reasoning is radically permissive in
practice: in the end, its application depends on in-
dividual CONSCIENCE, which Toulmin and Baier at
any rate acknowledge to be fallible.
In asserting that the rightness of an action is a
property distinct from its being good-maximizing,
Broad and Ross did not question that moral good-
ness and rightness are each genuine properties, dis-
tinct from the natural ones on which they supervene.
In distinguishing nonnatural properties from natural
767
ones, Moore had depended in Principia Ethica on
an eccentric and now largely forgotten theory of
truth and knowledge which by 1912 he was to aban-
don for a version of the correspondence theory. In
1922 he offered a new account of the distinction, in
which he identified natural properties with those of
which the intrinsic nature of a thing can be consti-
tuted, and nonnatural ones with those which super-
vene upon the natural ones: the former, he sug-
gested, are descriptive; the latter are not.
That the property of states of affairs that makes
it right to bring them into existence is nonnatural,
and that it has no part in constituting their nature,
were doctrines that found less favor in America than
in Britain. George SANTAYANA (1863–1952), ob-
jecting that what is good is relative to the different
kinds of person for whom it is good, ridiculed Moore
for joining the “shouting moralists” who “hyposta-
tize” goodness and substitute “exorcisms and anath-
emas” for courteous attention to that relativity. Like
his elder contemporary John DEWEY (1859–1952),
Santayana refused to think of ethics as a science dis-
tinct from the sciences of how different human in-
dividuals and societies come to prize or despise dif-
ferent human characteristics and modes of conduct.
This reaction to intuitionism, often referred to as
NATURALISM, was not the only one, although it
proved to be the deepest and most enduring. When
confronted by Santayana’s ridicule, Moore’s friend
and early ally Bertrand Russell lost his faith in non-
natural or nondescriptive ethical properties, but not
his Moorian conviction that ethics cannot be part of
the human exploration of nature. And so he con-
cluded, as sociologists like Max WEBER (1864–
1920) had already, that questions of good and bad,
right and wrong, are not questions of fact, and do
not have answers that are true or false. There is a
gulf between “value” and fact, and reason and sci-
ence are only concerned with questions of fact.
The great American naturalists—Dewey, R. B.
PERRY (1876–1957), and C. I. LEWIS (1883–1964)—
all agreed that to be good is to have natural prop-
erties in which people are in fact interested, and de-
nied that people are interested in those natural prop-
erties because to have them is good. Believing, in
Perry’s words, that “any variation of interest or of
its object will determine a variety of value,” they
considered it the business of ethics to investigate
how human interests are formed, and, if not re-
tained, are either modified or abandoned for others.
history of Western ethics: 12. twentieth-century Anglo-American
Dewey argued that people’s actual interests cannot
determine what consequences of their actions will
be for their good, because the more intelligently they
live, the more they change not merely their environ-
ment but also their interests. What is for their good
is not necessarily what they desire—what in fact
they are interested in bringing about—but what is
desirable; and what is desirable is never finally de-
termined, because it is continually being determined
by the process of human living. To this position,
commonly referred to as “[ethical] PRAGMATISM,”
intuitionists objected that neither Dewey nor other
naturalists (such as Lewis) were able to say more
about the desirable than that it emerges from the
changing actual desires of beings in nature. Dewey
at least was not embarrassed by this. From what else,
he asked, could a concept of the desirable emerge?
And how could a concept of it that would interest
anybody who lives actively be unmodifiable? Like
J. S. Mill, the American naturalists were confident
that, since the historical tendency of human society
is progressive, so would modifications in the concept
of the desirable be.
Partly under the influence of logical positivism,
philosophers who, like Russell, denied that questions
of value are questions of fact, concluded that uttered
sentences that appear to express ethical truths or
falsehoods are “pseudo-propositions” which, despite
their grammatical form, should be classified as non-
propositional, like imperative and optative sen-
tences, and many exclamatory phrases. Although
this doctrine was satirized as “the boo-hurrah theory
of ethics,” different forms of it were rigorously elab-
orated by continental Europeans like Rudolf Carnap
(1891–1970) and Moritz Schlick (1882–1936). It
scandalized many in the English-speaking world
when A. J. AYER (1910–1989) confronted them
with it in his unprofessionally lively Language, Truth
and Logic (1936); and the scandal did not abate un-
til Charles L. STEVENSON (1908–1979) made it re-
spectable by his sober Ethics and Language (1944).
Stevenson analyzed sentences in which the predicate
is “good” or “right” as expressions of a felt “pro-
attitude” which hearers are implicitly expected to
share. This view became known as EMOTIVISM. Al-
though disagreements in attitude cannot be directly
resolved, Stevenson pointed out that many of them
arise because those who thus disagree differ about
the facts of the case, and would vanish if they ceased
to. Some differences, however, are purely in attitude.
768
People may agree about the “facts” of certain con-
duct, for example ABORTION, and yet some of them
may regard a pregnant woman who chooses to abort
her child as exercising a moral right and others as
committing a moral wrong. Their disagreement, Ste-
venson maintained, can be resolved only by changes
in attitude, and the linguistic counterparts of such
changes will be “persuasive definitions”—in this
case, redefinitions of ‘right to choose’ or of ‘killing
an innocent person.’ However, despite his liberal
commitment to forming attitudes by first establish-
ing facts, his examination of the rhetorical processes
by which such redefinitions are brought about made
it plain that he had left himself no ground for re-
garding any attitude that does not arise from a mis-
take of fact as more or less reasonable than any
other. In his later thought he drew closer and closer
to Dewey.
The many philosophers who rejected intuition-
ism, and yet insisted on distinguishing value from
fact and on recognizing that people, while agreeing
about what their situation is can disagree in their
valuations of the different things they may do in it,
could not forever dodge the question, “How can it
be told which valuations are reasonable and which
not, except by intuition?” R. M. HARE found an at-
tractive answer. Against Stevenson, he held that
moral sentences express not felt attitudes or emo-
tions but universal prescriptions: that is, prescrip-
tions that everybody in situations of specified kinds
act in specified ways. To make honest universal pre-
scriptions one must investigate, as thoroughly as is
practicable, how those affected by the various ways
in which the agent might act would be benefited and
harmed, imagine each such way of acting from the
point of view of each such person, and calculate
which would produce the greatest net benefit or the
least net harm. Universal prescribers, Hare con-
tended, would not significantly differ in their cal-
culations unless, like Nazis, they assigned different
weights to the same benefits and harms when they
affect different people—for example, Poles or Jews
on one hand, and Germans on the other. Those who
falsify weights in this way are fanatics, and their cal-
culations may be disregarded as warped. However,
Hare does not make plain why he considers himself
entitled to disregard all universal prescribers who
are not benefit-maximizers at all.
From 1950 to 1970, utilitarianism in its various
forms was the dominant moral theory. J. S. Mill, in
 history of Western ethics: 12. twentieth-century Anglo-American
the concluding chapter of Utilitarianism (1861), had
seemed to vacillate about whether the principle of
utility (that what will produce the greatest good of
the greatest number is right) should be understood
as being about individual acts (“act-utilitarianism”)
or about rules governing individual acts (“rule-
utilitarianism”). Many utilitarians were attracted to
the “rule” form of it in the hope of reconciling the
claims of utility with those of justice. J. J. C. Smart
countered by accusing them of “rule-fetishism.”
While acknowledging that “rules of thumb” are
needed when it is impracticable to calculate which
possible action will on balance do most good, he
argued that such rules derive from the principle of
utility, and cannot override it when such calculations
can be made. David Lyons then distinguished the
“conformance utility” of a rule (that of all the acts
of conformance that result from its acceptance),
from its “acceptance utility” (that of all the conse-
quences of its acceptance, including those that are
not acts, e.g., reduction of anxiety or fear); and he
argued that, although act and rule utilitarianism co-
incide when only conformance utility is in question,
they do not when acceptance utility is.
One of the grounds on which Sidgwick had rec-
ommended utilitarianism was exploded by this
proliferation of its forms: namely, that its conse-
quentialist calculations are more objective than tra-
ditional Judaeo-Christian moral CASUISTRY. In no
form of it are moral problems solved by scientific
calculation. Perhaps because of this, “invisible hand”
versions of utilitarianism modeled on classical mar-
ket economics spread from philosophy of law to
ethics: their fundamental idea is that, since the IN-
STITUTIONS by which the MORAL RULES of a free so-
ciety are determined largely resemble those of a free
market, those rules tend to approximate those that
maximize what the greatest number takes to be their
greatest good. What utilitarian theorists cannot do
is in fact done by utilitarian institutions.
As utilitarianism flowered, so did theories ac-
cording to which the “logic” of moral thinking is
distinct from that of theoretical thinking. Some of
these logics are propositional, others not. The prop-
ositional ones can be traced to David HUME’s
(1711–1776) doctrine that moral propositions dif-
fer from factual ones in their copula, which is ‘ought
to be’ and not ‘is.’ G. H. von Wright and others have
constructed systems of “deontic” logic on the as-
sumption that the expression ‘ought to exist/be
769
done’ has a semantic function resembling that of
‘necessarily exists/is done,’ but not identical with it.
So far the chief ethical interest evoked by such sys-
tems has been in the paradoxes that result when eth-
ical reasoning is regimented according to them. The
nonpropositional logics so far offered vary accord-
ing to the nonpropositional roles their authors be-
lieved sentences expressing moral judgments to have.
Thus Hare, who held that they are prescriptive, de-
veloped an “imperative” logic. Classical logicians ob-
jected that such “logics” are systems of syntactical
rules without semantic foundation. Hector-Neri Cas-
tañeda made the only coherent response to this criti-
cism. Thinking, he argued, has to do not only with
propositions, which have one or other of the two
truth-values, but also with “practitions,” which have
semantic values other than truth-values. A complete
logic must therefore deal with all semantic values,
and not only with truth-values.
Until the 1960s, overt conflicts in Anglo-American
society were social and political rather than moral:
both those who suffered hostile DISCRIMINATION and
those who practiced it, both liberals and conserva-
tives, at least affected to believe that their opponents
respected the same moral standards. In the conflicts
between Fascist and Marxist totalitarianism on one
hand, and constitutional DEMOCRACY on the other,
few in the United States or Great Britain took the
part of totalitarianism of either sort, although both
liberals and conservatives were prone to accuse each
other of doing so. Much injustice was done to ethnic
and political minorities, and it was seldom re-
dressed; but it was at least often condemned. The
numerous groups, mostly religious, which resisted
such social change as there was, chiefly in sexual
mores, were academically marginal. Although social
change was sometimes tacitly advocated in anthro-
pological studies of the mores of attractive prein-
dustrial societies (as in Margaret Mead’s [1901–
1978] Coming of Age in Samoa, 1928), the mores
of unattractive societies, for example, polygamous
or cannibal ones, did not trouble moral philosophers.
In the 1960s, this ceased to be the case. First of
all, African-Americans, no longer content to criticize
customs and laws that denied their HUMAN RIGHTS,
refused to comply with them and denounced those
who urged delay and caution. A little later, when
Americans of all classes and races were liable to be
drafted to fight in a war in Vietnam that few of them
understood and that many who did considered to be
history of Western ethics: 12. twentieth-century Anglo-American
morally wrong, the theory of the just war, largely
created by medieval and counter-Reformation Cath-
olics, began to supplant post-Kantian “Machiavel-
lian” doctrines of the right of states to compel citi-
zens to serve in wars they disapproved. Protests
against racial discrimination and unjust war opened
a forum for dissent from other accepted practices.
Even as late as 1960, although the 1940 judicial per-
formance remained unique in which Bertrand Rus-
sell was deprived of an academic appointment at the
City College of New York for his “immoral” writings
on sexual matters, few in universities who agreed
with Russell dared to criticize sexual mores as he
had. Yet by 1970, not only was far more radical criti-
cism commonplace, from feminist as well as pur-
portedly gender-neutral points of view, but even HO-
MOSEXUALITY had ceased to be a forbidden topic.
At the same time, Catholic universities in Amer-
ica, which had hitherto both stood aloof from phi-
losophy as pursued in non-Catholic ones, and been
largely ignored by those who pursued it, put an end
to their isolation. That this would both enlarge the
agenda of secular moral philosophy and introduce
new points of view had been anticipated in Britain,
where there is no separate Catholic university sys-
tem, when in 1956 G. E. M. Anscombe had provoked
discussion of the then neglected classical theory of the
just war by issuing a pamphlet opposing Oxford’s
conferring of an honorary degree on President Harry
S. Truman (1884–1972; U.S. President, 1945–
1953). Her act shocked those who had forgotten
that moral philosophy has implications for public
conduct. Traditionally minded Catholics rightly fore-
saw that some views they cherished would be sub-
verted by secular ideas; but, as the 1980s was to
show, there would be reverse subversion.
The confluence of these currents was expressed
above all in a single masterpiece: John RAWLS’s A
Theory of Justice (1971). In it, Rawls criticized both
contemporary American mores and the then domi-
nant utilitarian ethics, while reaffirming and devel-
oping the liberal traditions of American social
thought. He drew extensively on twentieth-century
social sciences, but, while his mastery of twentieth-
century philosophical ethics was evident, his deepest
philosophical affinities were with the SOCIAL CON-
TRACT theorists of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, with Kant, and (for his theory of the good)
with ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.).
According to Rawls, reason is practical, and what
770
at bottom it requires of us is not that we maximize
good, but that we be fair to one another. Of course,
since everybody is interested in maximizing the good
of some people, FAIRNESS to all implies an interest
in good-maximizing, but a controlled interest. Social
arrangements—whether institutions or distributions
of socially produced goods—are fair if and only if
everybody, if impartially rational, would agree to
them. In thus combining rationalism with CONTRAC-
TARIANISM, as John LOCKE (1632–1704), Jean-
Jacques ROUSSEAU (1712–1778), and Kant had
done, Rawls began by assuming that only self-
interested PARTIALITY could tolerate social arrange-
ments that fail to compensate those comparatively
disadvantaged through no fault of their own, whether
in genetic endowment, upbringing, or wealth. He
therefore proposed that agreement on social ar-
rangements is fair if it would coincide with that
made by autonomous parties behind a “veil of ig-
norance” about their initial advantages and disad-
vantages, and the conceptions of the good life that
arise from them. The result of such an agreement,
he contended, would be social arrangements in
which: (a) everybody equally is accorded the fullest
set of basic RIGHTS, because autonomous contrac-
tors would settle for no less; and (b) other socially
produced goods are distributed according to the
“difference principle” that the least advantaged are
to be made as well off as possible, because only ir-
rational contractors would neglect to ensure that the
worst lot that could fall to them be as good as
possible.
Rawls’s theory of justice was attacked from
within on both Kantian and contractarian grounds,
and from without by “communitarians.”
Some questioned the difference principle on Kan-
tian grounds. The view that disadvantages in genetic
endowment, family, or inherited PROPERTY are un-
fair or unjust was rejected by both F. A. von Hayek
and Robert NOZICK as a misguided concession to the
temptation of ENVY. They did not deny that a society
is unjust to children born into it if it does not ensure
that they are nurtured and educated to take a full
part in it; but they dismissed as a principle of SLAV-
ERY the notion that the more gifted and industrious
are entitled to what they produce over and above the
average only if they will not otherwise produce it.
Non-Kantian contractarians regarded morality as
the set of social rules that self-interested persons can
rationally agree to be bound by, but repudiated
 history of Western ethics: 12. twentieth-century Anglo-American
Rawls’s doctrine that the concept of fairness is prior
to any such set of rules, and imposes conditions on
how the contractors are to deliberate. David Gau-
thier developed this line of thought in Morals by
Agreement (1986).
Communitarians (Michael Sandel’s Liberalism
and the Limits of Justice [1982] is representative)
resurrected G. W. F. HEGEL’s (1770–1831) denial
of all rights that do not arise out of an actual com-
munity’s view of the good life, and supported it by
applying to Rawls Hegel’s criticism of Kant—that
he conceives human moral agents as abstract prac-
tical reasoners and choosers, and not as what they
are, social creatures of flesh and blood. They then
inferred that Kantian moral theories like Rawls’s
have no specific content that is not drawn from the
concrete ethical life they professedly transcend.
Kantians defended themselves along lines antici-
pated by H. J. Paton (1887–1969), Lewis White
Beck, and Mary Gregor, whose translations and
commentaries had by the 1960s finally made most
of Kant’s ethical writings accessible to anglophone
readers. First, they repudiated the charge that found-
ing morality on properties common to human beings
everywhere and at all times committed them to de-
nying either that they vary physically, culturally, and
psychologically, or that those variations can give rise
to rationally acceptable differences in mores; and
then they counterattacked by pointing out the vi-
cious implications of following Hegel in dismissing
as empty abstractions the grounds of Moralität that
are common to all peoples, and denying content to
any but “folk” Sittlichkeit.
Kant’s doctrine that reason has irreducibly prac-
tical functions as well as theoretical ones was also
developed. Onora O’Neill and others showed, against
the familiar Hegelian objections, that Kant’s formal
principles have the substantive practical applica-
tions he claimed for them. At the same time, in The
Possibility of Altruism (1970), Thomas Nagel re-
turned to Kant’s position that the moral rightness
and wrongness of actions, while real properties, are
not what the intuitionist tradition of Sidgwick and
Moore said they are: they are the properties of ac-
cording or not according with PRACTICAL REASON.
Alan GEWIRTH constructed a radically original ra-
tionalist theory, Kantian in aim but not in execution,
by arguing dialectically in Reason and Morality
(1978) that, since all human beings necessarily act
freely, and since they cannot do so without implicitly
771
claiming for themselves rights they cannot consis-
tently deny to others, they cannot reject a funda-
mental moral Principle of Generic Consistency. He
explored the social implications of this principle in
Human Rights: Essays on Justification and Appli-
cations (1982). In The Theory of Morality (1977),
Alan DONAGAN (1925–1991) took the more con-
servative line of working out the teleology of ends
in themselves, as opposed to producible ends, which
Kant himself had said that his rationalist conception
of moral law presupposes. So interpreted, Kant’s
moral theory is in the tradition of NATURAL LAW
interpretations of Hebrew-Christian morality. The
more recent journal literature, much of the best of
it by women, promises further developments.
Notwithstanding these contractarian, Kantian and
communitarian onslaughts, the moral theories that
had dominated the first sixty years of the century did
not melt away.
Some intuitionists professed to find no more in
Rawls than a new variety of their own view. Thus
Samuel Scheffler, in his influential Rejection of Con-
sequentialism (1982), put that eponymous rejection
down to the appeal of “agent-centered” restrictions,
that is, of Ross’s nonconsequentialist prima facie
duties: an appeal he confessed to feeling, while be-
ing dissatisfied with the reasons given for doing so.
Why he was not persuaded by the Kantian reason
for rejecting CONSEQUENTIALISM, which is patient-
centered rather than agent-centered—namely, that
to maximize the good of the totality of ends in them-
selves by sacrificing any of their number fails to treat
the sacrificed ends as ends—he did not say.
Utilitarianism also continued to be advocated,
but for the most part with a difference. Both R. B.
BRANDT (1910–1997), in A Theory of the Good and
the Right (1979), and Hare, in Moral Thinking: Its
Levels, Method and Point (1981), drew attention to
the disutility of violating the rules accepted in one’s
own society, if it is relatively decent, in order to ob-
serve ideally better ones, and recommended a form
of rule-utilitarianism reminiscent of Moore’s: that
the accepted rules of a relatively decent society are
to be observed within it, subject to what Dan Brock
has called a “disastrous consequences clause”: that
they are suspended when abiding by them will be
disastrous. In an even more recent version, that of
Russell Hardin’s Morality within the Limits of Rea-
son (1988), utilitarianism is transformed into a con-
structive theory of what rules would be rationally
history of Western ethics: 12. twentieth-century Anglo-American
agreed to by citizens committed to maximizing so-
cial welfare in their society, and the calculations of
total consequences required by its classical form are
dismissed as impossible. Hardin’s moral theory not
only structurally resembles Rawls’s more than it
does any version of classical utilitarianism, it even
finds room for a utilitarian justification of something
like Rawls’s difference principle.
One much-discussed work exhibiting strong sym-
pathy with utilitarianism, although avoiding com-
mitment to it, stands alone: namely, Derek Parfit’s
Reasons and Persons (1984). The problems Parfit
tackled in it are as ingenious and complex as his
examples are fantastic. By offering a solution of a
problem that baffled Hume—how the same person’s
distinct mental states are connected—he resur-
rected a Humean “reductionist” conception of hu-
man persons which, he argued, supports several
changes in traditional beliefs about both rationality
and morality. In addition, he first showed how seri-
ous are the moral difficulties raised by social policies
that affect the composition of FUTURE GENERATIONS
as well as their welfare.
In striking contrast to Parfit, his Oxford colleague
John Finnis and the Americans Germain Grisez and
Joseph Boyle, sometimes individually and sometimes
in collaboration, have constructed a natural law
ethics owing much to THOMAS AQUINAS (1225?–
1275), and have applied it to a variety of controver-
sial twentieth-century moral issues. Their principle,
originally formulated by Grisez, is that certain nat-
ural goods are fundamental to human life, and hence
rationally inviolable. The radical criticism of the pol-
icy of nuclear deterrence in their collaborative Nu-
clear Deterrence, Morality and Realism (1987) is
both their most powerful defense of their principle
and their most disturbing application of it. A differ-
ent reconstruction and defense of Aquinas’s natural
law ethics emerges from Alasdair MACINTYRE’s Af-
ter Virtue (1981) and Whose Justice? Which Ra-
tionality? (1988), in which he arrives at his own
version of Aquinas’s thirteenth-century Enlighten-
ment moral theory by investigating, inter alia, the
Aristotelian tradition of VIRTUE ETHICS as exempli-
fied in imaginative literature from Homer (850?–
800 B.C.E.) to Jane Austen (1775–1817) and of the
achievements and failures of the eighteenth-century
European Enlightenment in Scotland. Although
MacIntyre condemns the construction of rationalist
moral systems from the concepts of practical reason
772
and of rational animals living together in a natural
environment, at least as conceived in the eighteenth-
century Enlightenment and in its twentieth-century
Anglo-American revivals, his work gives hope that
in the twenty-first century the tradition of the
eighteenth-century European Enlightenment may be
refreshed by that of the thirteenth.
[Alan Donagan died shortly before the publica-
tion of the first edition of the Encyclopedia of Ethics.
Had he been able to revise the article for this edition,
we are confident he would have extended his ac-
count of VIRTUE ETHICS, and included an extended
discussion of FEMINIST ETHICS. He might also have
noted more fully some important developments in
CONTRACTARIANISM, the remarkable growth of AP-
PLIED ETHICS in the final third of the twentieth cen-
tury, and increasing philosophical attention to inti-
mate PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS, to INTERNATIONAL
JUSTICE and COSMOPOLITAN ETHICS, and to EUDAI-
MONIA and concerns about the good life. We rec-
ommend that readers follow out the references to
these topics, both for the articles themselves and for
the relevant bibliography.—The Editors.]
See also: ANSCOMBE; ARENDT; AYER; BAIER; BARRY;
BRANDT; DEWEY; DONAGAN; DWORKIN; FOOT; FRAN-
KENA; FULLER; GERT; GEWIRTH; HARE; HART; KING;
LEOPOLD; LEWIS; MACINTYRE; MOORE; MURDOCH;
MURPHY; NOZICK; PERRY; PRICHARD; RAND; RAWLS;
ROSS; RUSSELL; SANTAYANA; SINGER; STEVENSON;
TAYLOR; THOMSON; TUFTS; WALZER; WILLIAMS. In
addition, see: AMERICAN MORAL PHILOSOPHY; ANA-
LYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS; APPLIED ETHICS;
CARE; COGNITIVE SCIENCE; COHERENTISM; COMMU-
NITARIANISM; CONSEQUENTIALISM; CONSTRUCTIV-
ISM; CONTRACTARIANISM; COSMOPOLITAN ETHICS;
EMOTIVISM; EVOLUTION; FEMINIST ETHICS; FRIEND-
SHIP; HOMOSEXUALITY; HUMAN RIGHTS; INTERNA-
TIONAL JUSTICE [ENTRIES]; INTUITIONISM; LOGIC AND
ETHICS; METAETHICS; NATURALISTIC FALLACY; OR-
GANIC UNITY; PACIFISM; PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS;
PERSUASIVE DEFINITION; PRAGMATISM; PRESCRIPTIV-
ISM; UTILITARIANISM; VIRTUE ETHICS; VIRTUES.
Bibliography
Sellars, Wilfrid, and John Hospers, eds. Readings in Eth-
ical Theory. 1st ed. New York: Appleton-Century-
Crofts, 1952. No histories of Anglo-American ethics in
the twentieth century or any part of it are both schol-
arly and up to date. This remains unrivaled as a source-

book for Anglo-American ethics in the first half of the
century and will enable serious students to construct
their own histories. There is no comparable collection
for the second half of the century, but see the following.
Thomson, Judith Jarvis, and Gerald Dworkin, eds. Ethics.
New York: Harper and Row, 1968. Good for the period
1945–1967.
Daniels, Norman, ed. Reading Rawls. Oxford: Basil Black-
well, 1975. Recommended for essays on A Theory of
Justice and related topics.
Sen, Amartya, and Bernard Williams, eds. Utilitarianism
and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1982. See for utilitarianism.
Alan Donagan
Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679)
Describing himself as the “twin of fear” because his
premature birth was supposedly caused by rumors
of the Spanish armada off the coast of England,
Thomas Hobbes made fear of DEATH the centerpiece
of his political and moral theorizing. In a series of
works culminating in Leviathan (1651), Hobbes ar-
gued for the institution of an absolute sovereign as
a way to further the peace of the community and
thereby promote the preservation and comforts of
its citizens. To reach this conclusion he forged a SO-
CIAL CONTRACT argument, a type of argument pop-
ular among some intellectuals of his day but which
he revolutionized in a way that powerfully influ-
enced the political thinking of subsequent contrac-
tarians such as John LOCKE (1632–1704), Jean-
Jacques ROUSSEAU (1712–1778) and Immanuel
KANT (1724–1804). He also published other works
tackling issues in METAPHYSICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY
(including ontology, scientific method, and FREE
WILL), and topics in science and mathematics (in-
cluding optics, geometry, and human physiology).
Politics
In his political writings, Hobbes asks us to imag-
ine a world devoid of government, filled with people
who are “sprung up like mushrooms” (De Cive,
chapter 8, section 1), free of either political or social
influences. In this “state of nature” people act to
satisfy their desires, chief of which is the desire to
preserve their lives. In the process they come into
conflict with one another: first, because of their in-
evitable COMPETITION for objects that each of them
takes to be necessary to satisfy this desire; second,
773
Hobbes, Thomas
because of their fear of the aggressive MOTIVES of
others; and third, because certain passions, among
them the desire for glory, impel them to fight. The
state of nature thus becomes a state of “war of every
one against every one,” so that every person’s life in
that state is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”
(Leviathan, chapter 13).
Hobbes argues that in order to end the war threat-
ening their self-preservation, people in this state
would agree to create the only genuine remedy: a
commonwealth headed by an absolute sovereign.
Hobbes is not arguing for a tyranny: sovereignty, on
his view, can be invested in one person (a monar-
chy), several persons (an oligarchy), or all the people
(a DEMOCRACY). But he argues against dividing sov-
ereignty between or among different jurisdictional
units or branches of government (advocated by con-
temporary English parliamentarians) on the grounds
that these sovereign-parts will inevitably dissolve
into factions violently competing for POWER, precip-
itating a return to the state of war. He also argues
against attempts to limit the sovereign’s power by a
contract or constitution enforced by the people,
claiming that if the people have the right to judge
the sovereign’s performance, disagreements among
themselves or between them and the sovereign
about how well he was governing could be adjudi-
cated only by violent conflict, once again precipitat-
ing civil strife. Finally, he argues that the state must
have the power to intervene in any area of human
life in order to prevent internal strife.
Ethics
While the structure and conclusion of Hobbes’s
social contract argument are well known, his moral
theory is less famous and is the subject of many in-
terpretive controversies. In virtue of the chaos in the
state of nature, for which Hobbes proposed a po-
litical rather than a moral remedy, it may seem that
he did not take seriously the idea that there could
be moral imperatives which all human beings ought
to follow and which, if followed, could ensure stable
cooperation. But in all of his political works he gives
a detailed list of what he calls “laws of nature”—
moral imperatives dictating various kinds of coop-
erative behavior. Although Hobbes claims these laws
have a kind of validity in the state of nature, he none-
theless argues that they can neither stop the violence
in that state nor provide the content of a constitution
Hobbes, Thomas
limiting the sovereign’s rule or governing the sov-
ereign’s legislation. What are these laws? What is
their justification? And why don’t they provide a
remedy for conflict in the state of nature?
The Taylor-Warrender Interpretation
A group of critics, headed in this century by A. E.
Taylor and Howard Warrender, has insisted that
Hobbes was an ethical objectivist and deontologist
propounding laws of nature establishing RIGHTS and
obligations. Whereas Taylor sees Hobbes as a proto-
Kantian, Warrender believes he is still tied to the
medieval NATURAL LAW tradition and offers an inter-
pretation that is probably the most influential of the
recent deontological approaches to Hobbes. Warren-
der finds textual evidence for interpreting Hobbes as
a deontologist in those passages in which Hobbes
discusses rights and obligations. When, for example,
Hobbes speaks of the rights of a sovereign, Warren-
der argues that he is using this term in a traditional
way, to designate that to which the sovereign is mor-
ally entitled. Such a right is a correlate of a duty
which others are obliged to respect. However, War-
render also argues that Hobbes sets out a different
and original notion of right in passages such as the
following:
For though they that speak of this subject,
use to confound jus, and lex, right and law:
yet they ought to be distinguished; because
RIGHT, consisteth in liberty to do, or to
forbear; whereas LAW, determineth, and
bindeth to one of them: so that law, and
right, differ as much, as obligation, and
liberty; which in one and the same matter are
inconsistent. (Leviathan, chapter 14)
Warrender argues that this passage contrasts a duty,
i.e., that which a person is obliged to do, with a right
in Hobbes’s new sense, which is what a person can-
not be obliged to renounce. He maintains that
Hobbes believes all obligations have validating con-
ditions which define when an obligation holds, and
that the Hobbesian study of rights is the study of
when these validating conditions do not hold, and
thus when one is freed from an obligation.
Warrender claims that the principal validating
conditions for Hobbes are defined by applying the
principle OUGHT IMPLIES CAN. They are: (a) possess-
774
ing the capacity to comprehend the law setting out
one’s obligation; and (b) having a sufficient motive
to perform the action that is obliged. For example,
even though the third law of nature insists that
contract-makers have an obligation to keep their
PROMISES, Hobbes argues that when either promisor
realizes that reneging will be to his advantage, he
lacks sufficient motive to keep the promise, so that
the second validating condition does not hold and
the obligation is removed.
Warrender also argues that Hobbes rejects the
idea that the mere knowledge of one’s obligation
could give one a reason to perform it. According to
Warrender, Hobbes’s psychological theory insists
that human beings can only act so as to secure that
which they take to be a good for themselves. Hence,
if Hobbes’s moral theory is to be consistent with his
psychological and motivational pronouncements,
morality must be understood to supply us merely
with a descriptive account of our duties and rights,
and not to provide any additional motivational ele-
ments. Warrender argues that this way of interpret-
ing Hobbes’s moral theory makes that theory consis-
tent with his psychological pronouncements, although
it also means that the two views have no logical con-
nection with one another. Hobbes’s ethical theory,
on Warrender’s view, merely answers the question:
“How ought we to act?” whereas his psychological
theory answers the question “What motivates us
to act?”
Why are the laws authoritative pronouncements
of our duty? Warrender contends, on the basis of
passages in which Hobbes claims the laws of nature
are the commands of God (e.g., Leviathan, chapter
15), that—like the Medieval natural law theorists—
Hobbes regards these laws as morally obliging be-
cause our supreme divine authority commanded
them. But Warrender also argues that these divine
commands are not followed in the state of nature
because the validating conditions for the obligations
set forth in these laws are not met.
Critics have raised a number of problems with
Warrender’s view. First, as we shall see below, they
have criticized Warrender’s objectivist reading of
the text. Second, they have argued that Warrender’s
objectivist view amounts to attributing to certain ac-
tions a nonmaterial and nonnatural quality of “right-
ness” that cannot be reduced to any material object
or physiological feature of human beings (Hamp-
ton). Moreover, Hobbes’s persistent tendency to shy

away from all property talk (discussed by Watkins),
and his rejection of nonmaterial moral objects pro-
posed by Aristotelian moral theorists (e.g., in Levi-
athan, chapters 11 and 15) are inconsistent with an
advocacy of the objectivist moral theory Warrender
attributes to him.
Third, critics complain that Warrender’s attribu-
tion to Hobbes of an inert notion of obligation is
tantamount to denying that he has any ethical theory
at all (Nagel). If our obligations cannot move us,
morality becomes merely an intellectual activity, a
way of evaluating events and actions in the world
that can have no motivational effect on human ac-
tion. So we lose the idea that, as Kant would put it,
one can do one’s duty for duty’s sake. It is arguable
whether or not the notions of DUTY AND OBLIGATION
survive if they are interpreted as motivationally pow-
erless, and whether what remains is a genuinely de-
ontological moral theory.
Fourth, Warrender’s interpretation of Hobbes’s
ethical views would also make his moral theory
largely irrelevant to his political argument. That ar-
gument is concerned to persuade people to institute
and maintain a sovereign. Given Hobbes’s psycho-
logical theory, people will do this only if they believe
it is in their self-interest. Hence, self-interest is all
that can yield obedience to the laws of nature and
political obedience to the sovereign. But if this is so,
then why would Hobbes talk about these actions in
moral terminology lacking motivational force? Given
his goals, there seems to be as little point in his de-
scribing them in moral terms as in aesthetic terms—
either description would have no role to play in an
argument designed to motivate people to institute a
sovereign.
In part because of the religious language in
Hobbes’s writing, many theorists since Warrender
have persisted in developing objectivist interpreta-
tions of Hobbes’s views. But note that any objectiv-
ist interpretation of Hobbes’s ethical theory faces
one or more of the problems besetting Warrender’s
interpretation. Either such a moral theory will be
made consistent with Hobbes’s psychological pro-
nouncements by an interpretation that renders it
motivationally powerless, in which case it loses its
normative power and becomes irrelevant to Hobbes’s
political argument, or it will be understood to be
motivationally efficacious, in which case it is incon-
sistent with Hobbes’s psychological pronouncements
and his nominalist and materialist metaphysics.
775
Hobbes, Thomas
The Systematic Interpretation
Those who object to an objectivist interpretation
of Hobbes’s ethical theory tend to endorse a subjec-
tivist interpretation that they claim is not only con-
sistent with but reducible to Hobbes’s psychological
views (e.g., Gauthier, Watkins, Barry, Hampton,
Kavka). It has been called by Warrender the “sys-
tematic” interpretation insofar as it purports to take
seriously Hobbes’s claim that his ethical views are
derived from his psychological and physiological
theories of human behavior, and by Gauthier the
“contractarian” interpretation insofar as it captures
a sense in which Hobbes’s moral laws could be con-
tracted on by everyone.
On this interpretation, some or all of Hobbes’s
normative language (including his use of terms such
as ‘obligation’ and ‘right’) is to be given both au-
thoritative and motivational force, but in a purely
prudential way, and not in any morally objectivist
way. ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ objects or states of affairs are
defined by a person’s desires and aversions, and
‘right’ or ‘rational’ actions are understood instru-
mentally, as those actions that are the most effective
ways of attaining good (i.e., desired) objects or
states of affairs. The resulting theory, exemplifying
what is called NATURALISM in ethics, makes no at-
tempt to refer to nonmaterial objects or qualities,
attributes no strange powers to human reason, and
is entirely consistent with a physicalist metaphysics.
Hobbes appears to endorse this kind of theory when
he dismisses the existence of any summum bonum—
the prescriptive entity that his academic contempo-
raries were most likely to embrace.
The cornerstone of this moral theory, according
to the systematic interpreters, is a subjectivist con-
ception of value, which they argue is put forward in
passages such as the following:
whatsoever is the object of any mans
Appetite or Desire; that is it, which he for his
part calleth Good: And the object of his
Hate, and Aversion, Evill; And of his
Contempt, Vile and Inconsiderable. For these
words of Good, Evill, and Contemptible, are
ever used with relation to the person that
useth them: There being nothing simply and
absolutely so; nor any common Rule of Good
and Evill, to be taken from the nature of the
objects themselves. (Leviathan, chapter 6)
Hobbes, Thomas
A subjectivist position on value is consistent with
Hobbes’s nominalist and materialist metaphysical
tendencies. On this view, that which is responsible
for our evaluations and which moves us to act is not
some kind of intrinsic good “out there,” but our de-
sires, whose satisfaction is accomplished by securing
objects which, in virtue of their power to satisfy DE-
SIRE, we call good. Hobbes does not explicitly put
forward a projection theory of value, i.e., one in
which a positive or negative evaluation is projected
onto objects in virtue of our perception of them as
either satisfying or impeding desire. But systematic
interpreters regard his remarks in the passage above
as highly suggestive of and consistent with such a
theory.
After taking this naturalistic approach to value,
Hobbes explains the sense in which moral philoso-
phy is a “Science of what is Good and Evill, in the
conversation, and society of mankind” (Leviathan,
chapter 15). He points out that, although men differ
greatly in what they desire, “all men agree on this,
that Peace is good” (Leviathan, chapter 15). Hobbes
calls this type of good (i.e., one that all human be-
ings want and that they can all share) a COMMON
GOOD (De Homine, chapter 11).
But Hobbes also distinguishes between two sorts
of desired goods: real and apparent. The former is
what a person would desire if he had true beliefs as
well as a rightly functioning reason and desire-
formation system in his body; the latter is what a
person actually desires given the beliefs that he has
and the physiological state he is in. Therefore, sys-
tematic interpreters claim that when Hobbes speaks
about moral philosophy as the science of what is
good in the conversation of mankind, he is not in-
terested merely in what people actually seek, given
their desires, as means to achieving those desires; he
is also interested in what they should seek as means
to achieving them (i.e., as the correct or most effec-
tive way to realize the object they are pursuing).
Peace is, in his eyes, a “real” common good insofar
as it actually does lead to the furtherance of what
people desire most—their self-preservation. More-
over, he also believes that peace is actually perceived
by all as a good—the apparent and the real coincide
in this case. But what is not so manifest to everyone
is that if peace is good, then also
the way, or means of Peace, which (as I have
shewed before) are Justice, Gratitude,
776
Modesty, Equity, Mercy, and the rest of the
Laws of Nature, are good. (Leviathan,
chapter 15)
Systematic interpreters take this passage to present
the laws of nature as prudential imperatives (what
Kant would call ‘hypothetical imperatives’) assert-
ing a causal connection between cooperative forms
of behavior and self-preservation because these
forms of behavior effect peace and thereby help to
effect longer life. And as further evidence they cite
Hobbes’s description of them as “Conclusions, or
Theorems concerning what conduceth to the con-
servation and defence of [people]” (Leviathan,
chapter 15). Moreover, they are mutually beneficial
laws, and thus laws that people “could agree to,”
because everyone benefits when they are followed.
Why aren’t these laws followed in the state of
nature? Hobbes answers this question by maintain-
ing that
The Laws of Nature oblige in foro interno;
that is to say, they bind; to a desire they
should take place: but in foro externo; that is,
to the putting them in act, not always. For he
that should be modest, and tractable, and
performe all he promises, in such time and
place, where no man else should do so,
should but make himself a prey to others,
and procure his own certain ruin, contrary
to the ground of all laws of nature, which
tend to nature’s preservation. (Leviathan,
chapter 15)
Two systematic interpreters (Kavka, Hampton) take
this passage to say that every law has a rider attached
to it, requiring that the action dictated in the law be
performed only if others are willing to do so, too.
This means the laws have the following structure:
If you seek peace (which is a means to your
preservation), provided that others are will-
ing to do x, then do action x.
So interpreted, the laws can be taken to be accu-
rate axioms of prudence, and not directives that gen-
erate obligations that are opposed to self-interest.
What about a situation in which others are willing
to do action x, and action x is conducive to peace,
but I am able to attain more for myself if I refrain

from doing x and “free ride” on others’ performance
of the action? Does Hobbes believe I should follow
the rule anyway? Kavka argues that he does, inter-
preting Hobbes as a “rule egoist” who accepts that
following the laws of nature will be contrary to self-
interest in this one case. Hampton claims he does
not, on the grounds that such a position is inconsis-
tent with his psychological view that each of us al-
ways acts to procure some good for ourselves.
The systematic interpreters disagree over exactly
how to interpret Hobbes’s use of the term ‘right’.
However, all of them tend to think that the term is
primarily used to denote an individual’s LIBERTY
rather than a claim, and all of them want to interpret
his use of that term to make it consistent with what
they take to be his subjectivist moral theory and his
largely egoistic psychology.
The Aristotelian Interpretation
The systematic interpreters believe that the key to
Hobbes’s moral theory is his subjectivist theory of
value; it is this theory which provides the nonnor-
mative building blocks for the theory that enables it
to be derivable from his psychology and consistent
with his metaphysics. However, what if, upon ex-
amination, Hobbes’s selection or definition of what
counts as value-defining turns out to presuppose a
norm either directly (i.e., that which does the selec-
tion or defining is a norm) or indirectly (i.e., a norm
motivates the requirement that does the selecting or
defining)? If so, Hobbes’s moral theory presupposes
the existence of the kind of inherently prescriptive
moral object that the systematic interpreters claimed
he was supposed to be explaining. The Aristotelian
critics of Hobbes’s texts argue that we can often see
him relying on this kind of moral object, making him
a neo-Aristotelian thinker rather than a proto-
Humean one.
ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) posited the exis-
tence of an objective value, commonly called the
summum bonum by subsequent philosophers (in-
cluding Hobbes), which is good for its own sake and
which one ought to desire. The summum bonum is
supposed to be accessible through the use of reason,
so that reason has an end of its own, which may
conflict with the ends of our desires. When someone
pursues an end set by desire that is in conflict with
the end set by reason, he is rightly criticized as ir-
rational. Hobbes’s Aristotelian interpreters note
777
Hobbes, Thomas
that, when Hobbes labels as irrational those people
who do not pursue their self-preservation (especially
the glory-prone among us), he sounds quite Aristo-
telian. How can a subjectivist say that the effective
pursuit of any good defined by desire is contrary to
reason? A true subjectivist is barred from attributing
to reason a goal that is taken to be objectively valu-
able and which can be opposed to the goals of desire.
Therefore, these critics argue that such passages
show that Hobbes embraces a very Aristotelian the-
ory about the role of reason in defining value. But
systematic and Aristotelian interpreters quarrel over
whether or not these passages really do rely on an
objective conception of value. Suppose, for example,
that we distinguish between “basic” and “motivated”
desires: Whereas the object of a basic desire is de-
sired for its own sake, the object of a motivated de-
sire is desired, at least in part, as the means to the
satisfaction of some other desire. One can be a
thoroughgoing subjectivist and still criticize desires
as irrational, if those desires are motivated rather
than basic. Insofar as motivated desires are informed
by reasoning about how to achieve either a basic
desire or another motivated desire, then whenever
the object of the motivated desire is not a means to
the satisfaction of a more basic desire, criticizing
that motivated desire as irrational amounts to a criti-
cism of that person’s reason, which has motivated a
desire for the wrong object and which has therefore
failed to be an effective servant to the more basic
desire. One might argue that Hobbes’s distinction
between ‘real’ and ‘seeming’ goods is prompted by
his wish to make this kind of criticism of motivated
desires.
But it is unclear that all of Hobbes’s criticisms of
certain passions, such as the passion for glory, can
fit this analysis. He often criticizes as irrational a
person who acts to achieve one basic desire, the de-
sire for glory, because this pursuit impedes the sat-
isfaction of another basic desire, the desire for self-
preservation. Such criticism appears to be motivated
by the Aristotelian thought that self-preservation is
the “right” good for people to pursue, regardless of
what they actually desire. Hobbes also calls vain-
glorious people “insane” (e.g., in Leviathan, chapter
8, and De Homine, chapter xii), a pejorative label
that appears to convict them of falling short of a
norm of reasoning and choice.
If these passages cannot be rendered consistent
with Hobbes’s SUBJECTIVISM, we can either see them
Hobbes, Thomas
as consciously Aristotelian (an interpretation that
sits uneasily with Hobbes’s constant disparaging of
ARISTOTELIAN ETHICS in his writings), or as regret-
table Aristotelian “slips” from the austere moral sci-
ence that may not have enough content to generate
the results Hobbes needs to justify his political
conclusions.
The latter conclusion holds attractions for those
who wonder if it is possible to construct a synthesis
of these three interpretive approaches to Hobbes’s
texts, one which admits that proto-Humean, Aris-
totelian, and deontological language all surface in
the Hobbesian texts. This view takes it that Hobbes,
despite setting out to construct what we may de-
scribe as a proto-Humean conception of reason and
morality, was forced to resort to Aristotelian and de-
ontological ideas in order to generate a reasonable,
plausible moral system. If this interpretation is right,
it may show that it is difficult, perhaps impossible,
for anyone, including Hobbes, to sustain a purely
naturalistic moral theory.
See also: ARISTOTELIAN ETHICS; AUTHORITY; COM-
MON GOOD; CONTRACTARIANISM; COOPERATION,
CONFLICT, AND COORDINATION; DEATH; DEMOC-
RACY; DEONTOLOGY; DESIRE; DUTY AND OBLIGA-
TION; FINAL GOOD; FREE WILL; GRATITUDE; KANT;
LEGITIMACY; LIBERTY; LOCKE; MORAL PSYCHOLOGY;
NATURAL LAW; NATURALISM; OBEDIENCE TO LAW;
POWER; PRUDENCE; ROUSSEAU; SOCIAL CONTRACT;
SUBJECTIVISM; VALUE, THEORY OF.
Bibliography
Works by Hobbes
Leviathan. Edited by C. B. Macpherson. Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1968 [1651]. From the 1651 “Head” edition.
Man and Citizen: Thomas Hobbes’s “De Homine” and
“De Cive.” Edited by Bernard Gert. London: Human-
ities Press, 1968 [1658; 1642]. See especially Gert’s
“Introduction.”
The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic. Edited by F.
Tönnies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928
[1640].
The English Works of Thomas Hobbes. Edited by W.
Molesworth. London: John Bohn, 1840.
Works about Hobbes
Barry, Brian. “Warrender and His Critics.” In Hobbes and
Rousseau: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by M.
Cranston and R. Peters, 37–65. New York: Anchor-
Doubleday, 1972.
778
Gauthier, David. The Logic of Leviathan. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1969.
———. “Thomas Hobbes: Moral Theorist.” Journal of
Philosophy 76 (1979): 547–59.
Hampton, Jean. Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Chap-
ter 1.
Kavka, Gregory. Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.
Nagel, Thomas. “Hobbes’s Concept of Obligation.” Phil-
osophical Review 68 (1959): 68–83.
Taylor, A. E. “The Ethical Doctrine of Hobbes.” In Hobbes
Studies, edited by K. Brown, 35–55. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1965.
Warrender, Howard. The Political Philosophy of Hobbes.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957. Pp. 21, 23, 87,
302–11.
Watkins, J. W. N. Hobbes’s System of Ideas. London:
Hutchison, 1965. Pp. 143–60.
Jean Hampton
Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry,
baron d’ (1723–1789)
Paul Henri Thiry, baron d’ Holbach, treated ethics
as an extension of his materialist philosophy. Seeing
the individual as a product of the “physiological ma-
chine,” he proposed to make morals a “human sci-
ence” based on the natural laws that universally de-
termine relations among those living together in
society. Sensibilité physique—a compound of sen-
sation and affectivity—caused everyone to seek not
merely self-preservation but also HAPPINESS, defined
as a state of being that one wished to perpetuate.
But, given the inequalities and imperfections pecu-
liar to our species, the attainment of such a goal
required a continual exchange of goodwill and ser-
vices among its members—in a word, cooperation.
Ethics, for Holbach, is the empirical study of this
necessary interdependence and its effects on the mu-
tual well-being of the individual and society. Deny-
ing that morality is founded on pure convention, re-
ligious belief, an intuitive “moral sense,” or innate
notions of right and wrong, he affirmed instead that
it springs from a practical awareness of the kinds of
behavior that are best suited to achieving the hap-
piness of social agents. Virtue and justice are simply
those attitudes and actions that promote the desired
end. Moral obligations and duty coincide with our
need to employ appropriate means for satisfying oth-

ers, so as to motivate them to contribute, in turn, to
our own satisfaction. Disinterested virtue is an illu-
sion; even the proverb that virtue is its own reward
indicates that it promises some gain. Human nature
and the “passions” that rule it are intrinsically nei-
ther good nor bad. Any moral judgment concerning
them should be consistent with their actual results.
To the extent that behavior generates PLEASURE, in-
dividually and collectively, it is good; to the extent
that it generates pain, it is bad. There is no point in
trying to suppress the passions as dangerous. When
people act against their own and others’ happiness,
their misdirected passions should be rectified through
education, the task of which is to convince us that
virtue, or cooperative behavior, is in our long-term
interest. Thus, in subordinating the pleasure prin-
ciple to the ideal of personal and social utility, Hol-
bach’s ethics envisions a reconciliation of EGOISM
and ALTRUISM.
For Holbach, FREE WILL has no place in ethical
theory because the naturalistic concept of human be-
ings means that moral freedom is nothing but an
internalized necessity. This, however, does not nul-
lify the grounds of morality: An action is good or
bad not because it is freely chosen, but because it
is advantageous or disadvantageous to oneself and
others. Determinism implies no immunity for vice
and crime, since the hostile reaction of society to
what offends or harms it is also necessary. Ethics
leads, therefore, to be a system of rewards and pun-
ishments for modifying individual conduct along so-
cially beneficial lines. But an unresolved tension re-
mains between Holbach’s determinist PSYCHOLOGY
and his project to reeducate everyone in utilitarian
virtue. He supposes, somewhat uncritically, that in-
dividual interest and happiness will be congruent,
ultimately, with the proposed well-being of society.
The concrete realization of that aim is regarded as
the proper role of politics, which Holbach views
as the indispensable outcome of ethics. Only a gov-
ernment established on a “social pact,” which makes
the exercise of political POWER dependent on public
approval and guarantees to all such basic RIGHTS as
LIBERTY, PROPERTY, and security, could bring about
a convergence between the happiness of individual
citizens and that of a nation. Holbach bolstered
these ideas with a militant critique of RELIGION in
general, and of Christianity in particular. He at-
tacked both, in typical Enlightenment fashion, be-
cause historically they had fomented intolerance,
779
Holocaust
persecution, fanaticism, tyranny, and civil turmoil.
But he also insisted that Christianity had destroyed
the very foundations of ethics because its super-
natural dogmas and otherworldly imperatives, being
imaginary and chimerical, were hopelessly at odds
with the facts of human nature, the dynamics of so-
cial life, and the conditions of happiness on earth.
See also: ALTRUISM; CHRISTIAN ETHICS; CIVIL RIGHTS
AND CIVIC DUTIES; CIVILITY; COLLECTIVE RESPONSI-
BILITY; COMMON GOOD; COOPERATION, CONFLICT,
AND COORDINATION; EGOISM; ETIQUETTE; FREE WILL;
FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM; NATURAL LAW; POLITI-
CAL SYSTEMS; PURITANISM; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY; SOCIAL CONTRACT; UTILITARIANISM.
Bibliography
Works by Holbach
Ethocratie, ou le gouvernement fondé sur la morale. 1776.
La morale universelle, ou les devoirs de l’homme fondés
sur sa nature. 1776.
Système de la nature, ou des lois du monde physique et
du monde moral. 1770.
Système social, ou principes naturels de la morale et de la
politique. 1773.
Works about Holbach
Kors, Alan Charles. D’Holbach’s Coterie: An Enlighten-
ment in Paris. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1976.
Naville, Pierre. Paul Thiry d’Holbach, et la philosophie
scientifique au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Gallimard, 1943.
Topazio, Virgil. D’Holbach’s Moral Philosophy: Its Back-
ground and Development. Geneva: Institut et musée
Voltaire, 1956.
Aram Vartanian
Holocaust
Unlike most topics in ethics, the Holocaust is a par-
ticular historical event, albeit an enormously com-
plex one. From 1941 until nearly the end of World
War II, Nazi Germany pursued an official policy of
killing every Jew who came under its control with
the ultimate aim of destroying the Jewish people as
a whole, extirpating its culture, and permanently
ending its history. In fact, between 5 and 6 million
European Jews were killed. Other groups, such as
Gypsies (both Sinti and Roma), Jehovah’s Wit-
Holocaust
nesses, and homosexuals, were persecuted and many
of them killed, but the Germans did not have a pol-
icy of exterminating them. This article deals primar-
ily with the nearly successful attempt to exterminate
the European Jews.
There are good reasons for thinking that philo-
sophical ethics is just now beginning to come to
grips with the fundamental challenge that the Ho-
locaust presents to our moral understanding. Inter-
estingly, this challenge does not arise from uncer-
tainty about the immorality of GENOCIDE in general,
or of the Holocaust in particular; there is a nearly
universal consensus in both popular thought and
ethical theory about the unmitigated EVIL of the Ho-
locaust. In this respect, genocide differs greatly from
some other matters of LIFE AND DEATH such as
ABORTION and CAPITAL PUNISHMENT about which
there is public controversy, since it occupies a posi-
tion in contemporary moral opinion similar to that
held by SLAVERY. Even anti-Semites largely restrict
themselves to denying that the Holocaust occurred.
Instead, the Holocaust challenges our capacity to
understand the MOTIVES of individual perpetrators
and to assess their blameworthiness. If, as virtually
all of us now believe, genocide is so obviously im-
moral, how were thousands of perpetrators able to
intentionally kill millions of harmless and defense-
less men, women, and children, and do so seemingly
with a clear CONSCIENCE? Why did the great major-
ity who were bystanders not help or rescue the vic-
tims? What motivated the relatively small minority
who did help and rescue Jews? In short, the Holo-
caust raises fundamental ethical questions having to
do primarily with individual MORAL PSYCHOLOGY,
VIRTUES and vices, and RESPONSIBILITY. Nonethe-
less, these questions are raised so insistently in the
first place precisely because of the enormity of the
wrong done in the Holocaust, so it is best to start
with that issue.
The Profound Evil of the Holocaust
The wrongness of the Holocaust stems principally
from three characteristics. First, each act of inten-
tionally killing an individual Jewish victim who was
defenseless and harmless was morally wrong. This
judgment would be agreed to no matter what ethical
theory one used, whether it be Kantian, utilitarian,
or otherwise. Every ethical theory provides a justi-
fication for a prohibition against intentionally killing
780
others who are harmless and defenseless. Second,
everything else being equal, the greater the number
of victims the more serious the wrongness of the
killing activity. Since the Holocaust took between 5
and 6 million lives, it is one of the most grievously
wrong actions in history. Third, the Holocaust was
carried out with an explicit goal of genocide: the goal
was to kill all Jews and thereby bring a permanent
end to the Jewish people, their culture, and their his-
tory. Not only is this third characteristic distinct
from the first two, but it has been argued (by Steven
Katz, for example) that it is this which gives the Ho-
locaust its historical uniqueness as a profoundly evil
event. The genocidal INTENTION adds a dimension of
wrongness that is independent of both the wrong-
ness that stems from the killing of individual Jewish
victims and the wrongness attributable to the sheer
magnitude and scale of the killing. It is for this rea-
son that the Holocaust may be viewed as more pro-
foundly wrong than other mass killings that have
claimed an even greater number of victims. How-
ever, if the Holocaust is unique because of the gen-
ocidal intention behind it, that uniqueness is his-
torically contingent in the sense that, although it
may well have been unprecedented, there is no guar-
antee that another Holocaust will not happen.
Individual Moral Responsibility in the Holocaust
If the wrongness of the mass killing that occurred
in the Holocaust is noncontroversial, the same can-
not be said for the blameworthiness of the perpetra-
tors. To be blameworthy for having participated in
the immoral killings that constitute the Holocaust is,
first and foremost, to be justifiably liable to judg-
mental blame, that is, to deserve being regarded as
reprehensible, disapproved of, and to be a fit subject
of feelings of indignation. Thus, judgmental blame-
worthiness must be kept distinct from other aspects
of holding people responsible, such as liability to
overt expression of condemnation, informal social
sanction such as ostracism, and liability to legal PUN-
ISHMENT. At a first level of analysis, Holocaust per-
petrators who performed some wrong act, A, were
fully blameworthy in this basic judgmental sense for
doing A only if they performed A (1) intentionally,
(2) knowing that A was wrong, (3) doing so freely
and voluntarily (that is, they had the ability and op-
portunity to refrain from doing A), and (4) from a
bad motive. If one or more of these conditions were

absent, a perpetrator might still have been to some
degree blameworthy, but not fully so. If none of them
obtained, the perpetrator would be blameless.
At this first level of analysis, the conditions for
being fully blameworthy for wrongdoing all refer to
aspects of the state of mind with which persons
acted: their knowledge, intention, ability, and mo-
tive. A second level of analysis raises a parallel set
of questions about persons’ blameworthiness for be-
ing in that state of mind, for having the kind of mo-
tives they have, and even for having a certain kind
of CHARACTER. The remainder of this article will be
devoted to illustrating some of the principal kinds
of questions about these two aspects of blame-
worthiness using examples drawn primarily from the
behavior of Holocaust perpetrators.
The Blameworthiness of Perpetrators
A perpetrator is any person who knowingly took
part in the process of the destruction of the Euro-
pean Jews, whether by (1) ordering, authorizing, or
planning the killing; (2) directly participating in the
killing; or (3) making an essential contribution to
the killing. This definition reflects the complexity of
the Holocaust as an historical process, which in-
volved thousands of people in a number of large hi-
erarchical governmental INSTITUTIONS and took sev-
eral years to carry out. The question whether leaders
such as Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) and Heinrich
Himmler (1900–1945) were blameworthy for their
roles in ordering and implementing the genocide is
relatively noncontroversial, especially if one rejects
blanket explanations that appeal to psychopathology
that might make them nonresponsible. (See below.)
Hitler and Himmler and a large number of other per-
petrators in the leadership of the Nazi party and the
Schutzstaffel (SS) clearly met the criteria for being
fully blameworthy. This article will focus instead on
rank-and-file perpetrators in the SS, the army, and
police battalions, and on bureaucrats in civilian min-
istries. The kind of knowledge required for one to
be a perpetrator under this definition is the knowl-
edge that the Jews were indeed being systematically
killed; this leaves open the question whether one
also knew or appreciated that the killing was im-
moral. It also leaves open other questions of blame-
worthiness such as whether one acted freely or with
a bad motive.
(1) Did perpetrators know or appreciate that kill-
781
Holocaust
ing the Jews was immoral? One answer to this ques-
tion emerged shortly after World War II within the
psychological and psychiatric professions, namely,
that since the perpetrators’ behavior resulted from
mental pathology of some kind, they did not know
that killing Jews was wrong. It is not difficult to see
how mental health professionals might have been
led to this conclusion. Many perpetrators sincerely
believed the ideological justifications contained in
Nazi racial anti-Semitic doctrines or in traditional
Christian anti-Semitic myths: that Jews were inher-
ently evil, dangerous, and vicious; that they had al-
ready committed great crimes and were conspiring
to control and destroy civilization. Consequently,
they believed not only that killing the Jews was not
wrong , they also believed that it was either permis-
sible (all right) or positively required, a duty. Since
they felt completely justified in killing Jews, they felt
no remorse, guilt, or shame. Indeed, many perpetra-
tors felt exaltation and pride in the great service
which they believed they were performing for the
German people.
It is an understatement to say that the alleged jus-
tifications contained in Nazi ideology and in some
Christian anti-Semitic myths were not rationally jus-
tified, since the beliefs on which they were based
were virtually indistinguishable from the kind of
paranoid delusions frequently encountered by psy-
chiatrists in clinical settings. However, merely not-
ing the irrationality of these beliefs does little to
resolve the question of whether such convinced per-
petrators were blameworthy, since now one is faced
with the further question of how great numbers of
people could come to hold such views and act on
them.
One way to respond to this question was that
taken by many psychologists and psychiatrists when
the full enormity of the Holocaust first became
known: they were convinced that the chief perpetra-
tors, the Nazi leaders and members of the SS, must
be suffering from some kind of mental pathology.
There was a concerted effort to study both the prin-
cipal perpetrators who were indicted as war crimi-
nals at the main trial in Nuremberg, as well as large
numbers of rank-and-file perpetrators, in order to
identify a “Nazi personality” which would account
for their criminal behavior. Of course, most expla-
nations in terms of mental illness imply that perpe-
trators were either nonresponsible (lacking compe-
tence), excused on the grounds of nonculpable
Holocaust
ignorance, or less than fully blameworthy because of
mitigating circumstances. However, despite an ex-
tensive investigation using Rorschach tests, IQ tests,
and intensive psychological interviews, no psychi-
atrically diagnosable impairment was found which
could explain the perpetrators’ actions. Thus, the
question of perpetrators’ blameworthiness was left
open. In fact, there has been a gradual but persistent
trend away from trying to explain the actions of Ho-
locaust perpetrators in terms of mental illness, on
the one hand, and toward explanations that view
those actions as the predictable result of social and
political conditions in which otherwise normal peo-
ple found themselves, on the other.
An example of the latter is the thesis that the ir-
rational beliefs by which many perpetrators justified
their participation in the Holocaust were the inevi-
table result of their having been socialized into the
prevailing authoritarian and anti-Semitic culture. In
its strongest form, this view holds that people who
were successfully socialized to believe in the per-
missibility or rightness of killing Jews suffered from
a lack of, or diminution of, the cognitive and delib-
erative capacities needed to be competent and ac-
countable moral agents; specifically, they lacked the
cognitive capacity to appreciate the wrongness of
killing Jews. As a consequence, it is argued, they
were either not blameworthy at all, or they were less
blameworthy than they might otherwise have been.
An objection to this view is that it exaggerates the
effectiveness of socialization; it is extremely doubt-
ful that socialization inevitably causes diminished
capacity, especially in a modern society like Ger-
many with a highly educated citizenry. Furthermore,
the fact that most people tend to hold beliefs derived
from their culture is not sufficient to show that they
lack capacity to evaluate those beliefs. Consequently,
even if many people do in fact acquire mistaken be-
liefs from their culture, they may still be justifiably
held responsible for accepting them; indeed, most
people take an active role in selectively adapting to
the culture in which they are raised, accepting some
cultural values and acquiring others on their own,
in the process of constructing their own sense of per-
sonal identity. A more qualified conclusion might be
in order, namely, that socialization probably caused
only a small percentage of people to suffer from di-
minished capacity, consequently, most perpetrators
who used irrational beliefs to justify their partici-
782
pation in the Holocaust are to some extent blame-
worthy for holding those beliefs and acting on them.
Another consideration which lends weight to this
conclusion is the pervasive role played by normal,
everyday SELF-DECEPTION. There is considerable
agreement among psychologists that most people
engage in self-deception to some degree in order to
maintain their SELF-RESPECT and cope with life’s re-
curring problems, and some go so far as to claim
that some kinds of self-deception are beneficial and
necessary for mental health. However, even if this is
true, there is no doubt that self-deception can also
be pernicious and morally bad. The most prevalent
form of self-deception that people use to cope with
threats to their self-respect and other psychological
problems is purposeful evasion of unwanted truths
or information which, if confronted honestly, would
cause anxiety, fear, guilt, or shame. If successful, a
project of evasion results in a state of willful igno-
rance which allows the person to avoid subjective
distress. Thus, purposeful self-deception is very
likely one way in which some people actively con-
struct a sense of personal identity as “good anti-
Semites,” selectively adapting to their culture, and
then killing with a clear conscience when called on
to do so. Bystanders, whether or not they were anti-
Semitic, also very likely engaged in willful evasion
of the truth that the Jews were being systematically
killed. Since tactics of self-deceptive evasion are pur-
poseful and actively engaged in, they are something
for which the perpetrators and bystanders were
blameworthy. If the resulting ignorance also facili-
tated Holocaust perpetrators’ participation in the
killing, they were to some extent blameworthy.
One principal ethical conclusion that emerges
from these considerations is that, in many cases, the
ignorance of perpetrators and bystanders was cul-
pable, something for which the individuals were
completely or partially to blame. Thus, explanations
that appeal to social facts such as socialization do
not automatically excuse. This conclusion should
also be kept in mind when one assesses the relevance
of similar claims, such as that perpetrators killed be-
cause they were subjected to indoctrination or peer
pressure.
It should be noted, however, that at least one
philosopher has denied both that Nazi leaders sin-
cerely believed their ideological justifications for
anti-Jewish policies and that they were self-deceived.
Berel Lang has argued that not only did Hitler and

many other Nazi leaders know that killing the Jews
was immoral and evil, but they also perpetrated the
“final solution to the Jewish question” precisely be-
cause it was so radically evil, and that they relished
doing it. If Lang’s view is correct, it would make
these Nazi leaders even more blameworthy and rep-
rehensible than the previous assessment would in-
dicate (if that is conceivable).
(2) In addition to the question whether perpetra-
tors knew that killing Jews was immoral, questions
have also been raised about whether they acted
freely and voluntarily. Perpetrators directly involved
in killing were themselves the main source for the
contention that they had no choice but to participate
in the Holocaust because, as members of the SS or
the regular armed forces, they were under military
orders and would have been severely punished for
refusing to take part in the killing. Thus, they
claimed to have a valid excuse that completely ex-
culpated them for their actions: because they were
coerced, they had no fair or reasonable opportunity
to act otherwise. Their claim has some initial plau-
sibility because, over and beyond its horrendous
genocidal policies, the Nazi regime was one of the
most brutal that has existed in modern history in its
treatment of its own citizens and soldiers. For ex-
ample, one historian notes that the German armed
forces executed 15,000 of their own men for infrac-
tions of discipline. However, the claim made by per-
petrators of the Holocaust (as opposed to men serv-
ing in regular combat units) that they were forced
to kill under extreme COERCION does not stand up
to close scrutiny; historians have been unable to doc-
ument a single case of severe punishment for refusal
to follow an order to kill unarmed civilians. More-
over, a good deal of evidence points in the opposite
direction, namely, that because Himmler and other
planners of the Holocaust quickly recognized how
difficult some men were finding it to kill defenseless
men, women, and children, they implemented very
permissive policies of granting requests to be ex-
cused from the killing or to be transferred to other
duty. Consequently, it seems reasonable to conclude
that many ordinary Holocaust perpetrators were to
some extent blameworthy for engaging in the direct
killing.
Thousands of bureaucrats who worked in civilian
ministries, often far removed from the actual killing,
also performed essential tasks that enabled Nazi
Germany to kill such a large number of victims on
783
Holocaust
such a huge geographical scale. The millions of Jew-
ish victims had to be officially identified, arrested,
isolated from the rest of the population in ghettos
or segregated housing, and eventually rounded up,
either to be shot in outdoor operations or trans-
ported to killing centers with gas chambers such as
those in Auschwitz. This required the services of a
variety of professionals such as lawyers, judges, and
doctors, as well as huge numbers of police, railroad
workers, and white-collar workers. The fact that
most bureaucrats performed their essential roles in
the Holocaust without dissent is sometimes ex-
plained by an alleged tendency in a majority of peo-
ple to obey AUTHORITY; Stanley Milgram’s studies of
obedience are often cited in this connection. An-
other explanation appeals to the diffusion of indi-
vidual responsibility that characterizes large and
complex hierarchical organizations.
Although these explanations are empirically plau-
sible, they require careful analysis before one can be
sure about what they imply regarding the blame-
worthiness of bureaucratic perpetrators. For one
thing, it is not at all clear that even if Milgram’s ex-
planation, which appeals to an authoritarian trait of
obedience, is true, it constitutes a valid exculpating
excuse; it would seem that the most it can do is es-
tablish a mitigating circumstance. (Milgram himself
does not make any ethical judgments, one way or
the other.) Moreover, since a good case can be made
that uncritical deference to authority is a moral de-
fect, perhaps even a vice, then Milgram’s explana-
tion would actually incriminate perpetrators. Finally,
it is difficult to accept the frequently heard claim
from bureaucratic perpetrators that they had no idea
that the Jews were being systematically killed, al-
though it is quite plausible that many of them were
able to make that claim in a convincing way because
they had engaged in purposeful evasion in order to
keep from finding out exactly what was happening.
In either case, whether they actually knew or were
guilty of purposeful self-deception, many bureau-
cratic perpetrators were to some extent blameworthy
for their willing participation in the Holocaust.
(3) A central feature of most blameworthiness is
the fact that one has been discredited by what one’s
actions reveal about one’s motives and character.
Many of the perpetrators are not blameworthy
merely because they intentionally, knowingly, and
voluntarily killed defenseless men, women, and chil-
dren (as bad as that was), but also because of their
Holocaust
motives for killing. Many anti-Semites hated the
Jews, wished to see them suffer, and treated them
with great CRUELTY. Many perpetrators and by-
standers were greedy and quite happy to take ad-
vantage of Aryanization laws that allowed them to
buy Jewish businesses for paltry sums and forced
emigration policies that made Jewish homes avail-
able at unfairly low prices. Moreover, a substantial
majority of Germans came to idolize Hitler person-
ally, not only because he had led the nation out of a
period of great political turmoil and economic un-
certainty (a reaction which is to some extent under-
standable, even justified), but also because he bru-
tally silenced the parties on the left with violence,
assassination, and imprisonment in concentration
camps. The willingness to condone violence and re-
pression so long as the victims were confined to the
so-called enemies of the Volk bespeaks the same
kind of cruelty and indifference to the well-being of
countless individuals that also underlies the Holo-
caust. Finally, most Germans came to have an ex-
tremely strong version of patriotism—most accu-
rately described as triumphalist nationalism—which
resulted from the eight years of spectacular success
by Hitler and his regime in both domestic and for-
eign affairs. That Hitler’s success involved ever more
repression of unpopular victims at home (including
of course the archenemy, the Jews), as well as wars
of aggression and conquest against most of Ger-
many’s neighbors abroad, did not seem to bother
very many among this wildly supportive majority. It
seems reasonable to infer that triumphalist nation-
alism was a principal motive behind the willing par-
ticipation of a great many Germans in the Holo-
caust. Consequently, it seems reasonable to infer
that the varying degrees of blameworthiness of Ger-
man perpetrators and bystanders that have already
been discussed would be substantially increased be-
cause of the unworthy motives, character defects,
and vices revealed by their actions.
See also: AGENT-CENTERED MORALITY; AUTHORITY;
AUTONOMY OF MORAL AGENTS; CHARACTER; COER-
CION; COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY; CONSCIENCE; CRU-
ELTY; CULTURAL STUDIES; EVIL; EXCUSES; GENOCIDE;
GROUPS, MORAL STATUS OF; GUILT AND SHAME; HOM-
ICIDE; IMMORALISM; INNOCENCE; INTENTION; LEVI-
NAS; LOYALTY; MORAL PSYCHOLOGY; MORAL RULES;
MOTIVES; OBEDIENCE TO LAW; OPPRESSION; POLITICAL
SYSTEMS; PSYCHOLOGY; RACISM AND RELATED IS-
784
SUES; RESPONSIBILITY; SELF-DECEPTION; SOCIAL PSY-
CHOLOGY; VIOLENCE AND NON-VIOLENCE; VIRTUES;
VOLUNTARY ACTS; WICKEDNESS.
Bibliography
Bartov, Omer. Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in
the Third Reich. New York: Oxford University Press,
1991. See especially pp. 6, 69–71.
Berenbaum, Michael. A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Per-
secuted and Murdered by the Nazis. New York: New
York University Press, 1990. Includes articles on the
Gypsies, homosexuals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police
Battalion 101 and the Final Solution. New York:
Harper Collins, 1991. On the lack of evidence for co-
ercion of perpetrators, see especially p. 170.
Gross, Hyman. A Theory of Criminal Justice. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1979. Covers all of the main
topics of responsibility, including excuses and lack of
capacity.
Jones, David H. Moral Responsibility in the Holocaust.
Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999. A sys-
tematic ethical assessment of the responsibility of per-
petrators, victims, bystanders, and rescuers with sug-
gested readings for each chapter.
Katz, Steven. The Holocaust in Historical Context. Vol-
ume 1: The Holocaust and Mass Death before the
Modern Age. New York: Oxford University Press,
1994. On the uniqueness of the Holocaust, see espe-
cially the introduction and chapter 1.
Kruschwitz, Robert, and Robert C. Roberts, eds. The Vir-
tues: Contemporary Essays in Moral Character. Bel-
mont, CA: Wadsworth, 1987.
Lang, Berel. Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1990. On the view that
Hitler and other perpetrators knew that killing the Jews
was immoral and did it for that reason, see chapters 1
and 2.
Lewy, Guenter. The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2000. A detailed his-
torical study that refutes the view that the Germans
planned to exterminate all Gypsies.
Milgram, Stanley. Obedience to Authority: An Experimen-
tal View. New York: Harper and Row, 1974. A classic
psychological study often used to explain Holocaust
perpetrators.
Taylor, Shelley E. Positive Illusions. New York: Basic
Books, 1989. The role of self-deception in mental
health.
Wolf, Susan. Freedom within Reason. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1990. Defends the view that people
who suffer from diminished capacity as the result of
socialization are either not blameworthy or less blame-
worthy for wrongdoing.
Zillmer, Eric A., et al. The Quest for the Nazi Personality:

A Psychological Investigation of Nazi War Criminals.
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Associates, 1995.
David H. Jones
homicide
Strictly defined, homicide is the killing of one human
being by another human being. While it is true that
all societies have a prohibition against homicide, it
is rarely considered to be an absolute prohibition.
Various exceptions are allowed, and some of these,
such as killing in SELF-DEFENSE, are relatively non-
controversial, while others, such as CAPITAL PUNISH-
MENT, continue to be disputed. For this reason, the
ethics of homicide is far from being the settled mat-
ter that it might at first seem to be.
The moral prohibition against homicide is best
seen as a strong presumption that killing someone is
always the most serious kind of harm that can be
done to that person, and that, consequently, it re-
quires the most compelling kind of reason to make
it permissible or pardonable. In developed legal sys-
tems, homicide for which there is neither a justifi-
cation nor an excuse is a crime, that is, a culpable
offense against the community, not merely a private
harm in civil law. The paradigm of morally blame-
worthy homicide is intentional or deliberate killing
with a bad motive such as REVENGE or greed, and
for this reason it is called first-degree murder in
many legal jurisdictions. Homicides that lack either
the element of INTENTION or the element of bad mo-
tive, or both, are considered less serious and are
called second-degree murder or manslaughter.
One traditional way of justifying the strong pro-
hibition against homicide is to appeal to a belief in
God, conceived of as an omnipotent and benevolent
creator who commands that we not kill each other.
Alternatively, it is sometimes argued that all persons
are given their lives by God and only God has the
right to take them away. Neither of these religious
justifications is free from difficulties. Secular mor-
alists attack the controversial assumptions that there
exists a God of the sort envisaged, that it is possible
to ascertain what his commands are, and that he
commands that we not kill each other. Moreover,
from a secular point of view, such justifications seem
to miss the main reason homicide is morally wrong,
namely, that the victim has been harmed in the most
serious and irreversible way possible.
785
homicide
John LOCKE (1632–1704), an early modern ex-
ponent of the ancient natural law tradition, argued
in the Second Treatise of Government (1689) that
the prohibition against homicide is a part of NATU-
RAL LAW which is both ordained by God and know-
able by reason. Even in the state of nature, Locke
argued, every person has an obligation not to kill
others because they are all creatures of God “fur-
nished with like faculties.” Locke explicitly recog-
nized a secular reason the prohibition against hom-
icide is part of natural law, namely, that everyone has
an equal interest in life and thereby an equal right
to life. Most contemporary moral philosophers em-
phasize nonreligious justifications for the prohibi-
tion against homicide even if, like Locke, they also
happen to believe in God as the origin of it.
In contemporary moral philosophy, the two prin-
cipal secular approaches to the ethics of homicide
are the individual RIGHTS approach, usually shorn of
its natural law component, and the utilitarian ap-
proach. Utilitarian writers assume that the purpose
of morality is to maximize intrinsic good (variously
defined as PLEASURE, HAPPINESS, or well-being) and
to minimize intrinsic EVIL (pain, unhappiness, or
misfortune) for as many persons as possible. If UTIL-
ITARIANISM is construed as a standard by which to
judge the morality of individual acts, it seems im-
possible to justify a strong prohibition against hom-
icide, because sometimes one can maximize happi-
ness of others overall by killing an individual. Since
most utilitarian writers agree that there should be a
stringent prohibition against homicide, they argue
that the utilitarian standard should not be used to
evaluate the consequences of individual acts of hom-
icide, but rather used to evaluate the consequences
of having a stringent social rule that prohibits hom-
icide. According to this rule-utilitarian view, the so-
cial practice maximizes utility in the long run only if
everyone obeys the obligation to refrain from killing
in the overwhelming majority of cases, and this can
be accomplished only if the rule is regarded as vir-
tually inviolable. In this way, a defender of utilitari-
anism tries to accommodate the common moral
view that each individual act of homicide is seriously
wrong even when on occasion it might maximize
utility for others.
To its critics, the rule-utilitarian approach to
homicide is open to the objections that it, too, misses
the highly personal and irreversible nature of the
harm done to individual victims, and, moreover, that
homicide
the empirical claims on which it depends seem ad
hoc and unsupported by evidence. Proponents of an
individual rights approach argue that each act of
homicide is a serious moral matter because each per-
son has a right to life that is justified by reasons
independent of utility. On this interpretation of the
MORAL POINT OF VIEW, each person is to be given
equal respect and consideration, and the most fun-
damental interest that persons have is the good of
life itself. The only way to adequately protect this
basic interest, it is argued, is to recognize a stringent
obligation not to kill, and this is tantamount to rec-
ognizing that everyone has a right to life.
In addition to the debate between the two prin-
cipal approaches to the justification of a prohibition
against homicide, there is also controversy concern-
ing the circumstances in which exceptions are per-
missible or excusable. Killing in self-defense is per-
haps the least controversial example of justifiable
homicide, but both it and such closely related ex-
amples as killing in the line of duty by the police and
members of the military need to be very carefully
described and analyzed. Capital punishment also
continues to be highly controversial, in large part
because of the basic differences of moral opinion
between utilitarians and individual rights theorists
about the purpose of criminal penalties in general,
but also because there is a lack of sufficient empir-
ical data to substantiate claims that capital punish-
ment deters homicide and other serious crimes.
A third area of controversy involves the question
whether all human beings have a right to life from
the moment of conception until death. If a fetus has
a right to life, then the moral permissibility of abor-
tion seems questionable in most circumstances that
do not present a threat to the life or health of the
mother. Some writers have denied that a fetus has a
right to life at any stage of a pregnancy, because, they
argue, only fully developed persons with conscious-
ness and a concept of self are a proper subject of
rights. This has opened them to the criticism that they
are thereby committed to the permissibility of INFAN-
TICIDE of normal newborn infants. It does not seem
plausible to argue that a fetus, which immediately
prior to being born has no right to life, earns the right
just by being born. Similar questions can be raised
about the right to life of permanently comatose per-
sons and the permissibility of EUTHANASIA.
See also: ABORTION; ANIMALS, TREATMENT OF; CAP-
ITAL PUNISHMENT; DEATH; EUTHANASIA; EXCUSES;
786
GENOCIDE; HOLOCAUST; HUMAN RIGHTS; INFANTI-
CIDE; INTENTION; KILLING/LETTING DIE; LIFE AND
DEATH; LIFE, RIGHT TO; MILITARY ETHICS; MORAL AB-
SOLUTES; MOTIVES; NATURAL LAW; POLICE ETHICS;
REVENGE; RIGHT HOLDERS; RIGHTS; SELF-DEFENSE;
SUICIDE; UTILITARIANISM; WAR AND PEACE.
Bibliography
Devine, Philip E. The Ethics of Homicide. Ithaca and Lon-
don: Cornell University Press, 1978. A philosophical
defense of the right to life; includes bibliography.
Dix, George E. Criminal Law: Cases and Materials. St.
Paul: West Publishing, 1979. Legal theory.
Grisez, Germain. “Toward a Consistent Natural Law
Ethics of Killing.” American Journal of Jurisprudence
15 (1970): 64–96. Natural law approach.
Hoebel, E. Adamson. The Law of Primitive Man. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1954. A classic text
in anthropology.
Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. [1689]. Nat-
ural law and social contract theory.
Tooley, Michael. Abortion and Infanticide. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1983. Philosophy; includes bibliography.
Wakin, Malham M., ed. War, Morality, and the Military
Profession. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979. An in-
terdisciplinary anthology.
Williams, Glanville. The Sanctity of Life and the Criminal
Law. New York: Knopf, 1957. Legal theory.
David H. Jones
homosexuality
A majority of the polled American public claims ho-
mosexual acts are immoral in all circumstances. To
evaluate this claim, different senses of ‘moral’ must
be distinguished. Sometimes “morality” refers to all
the beliefs affecting behavior in a society—its mo-
res, NORMS, and customs. On this understanding,
homosexuals certainly are not moral: Many people
hate them, and social customs register severe dis-
approval of them. But this sense of morality is
merely a descriptive one. On this understanding of
what morality is, every society has a morality—even
Nazi society, which had racism and mob rule as cen-
tral features of its popular “morality.” What is
needed in order to use the notion of morality to
praise or condemn behavior is a sense of morality
that is prescriptive or normative. What is needed is
a sense of morality in terms of which descriptive mo-
ralities may be assessed.

Moral thinking that carries a prescriptive force
has certain basic ground rules. One of these ground
rules is that a mere opinion to the effect that some-
thing is good or bad does not make it so, regardless
of how widely that opinion has been held. Our re-
jection of the long history of socially approved SLAV-
ERY is a good example of this ground rule at work.
Slavery, we may think, would be wrong even if every-
one liked it. Similarly, we may not conclude that gays
are immoral simply because a majority of people dis-
approve of them.
The most frequent attempt to ground claims that
homosexuality is immoral, without resorting to ap-
peals to custom or RELIGION, holds that homosexu-
ality is unnatural. There are both technical and pop-
ular versions of this charge. The popular charge of
unnaturalness is usually just an expression of revul-
sion, hurled at gays in the same breath as “gross”
and “disgusting.” Further, the moral scope of the
popular accusation of unnaturalness is now so re-
stricted, applying to homosexuality and to little else,
that it also appears arbitrary—without moral ex-
planatory force.
One technical usage of ‘nature’ entails that what-
ever is made “by artifice” or “by man,” rather than
“by nature,” is unnatural. But this by itself does not
ground a charge that homosexuality is immoral, for
much that is good about life is unnatural in this
sense. One feature that distinguishes people from
other animals is people’s ability to make over the
world to meet their needs and desires, and people’s
well-being indeed depends on these departures from
nature.
Another technical sense of “natural” is that some-
thing is natural, and thus good, if it fulfills some
function in nature. Homosexuality on this view is
unnatural because it violates the reproductive func-
tion of genitals. A problem with this view is that
many body parts have multiple functions. The fact
that a given activity (say, eating) can be fulfilled by
only one organ (the mouth) does not entail that
other functions of the same organ are unnatural. So
the possible use of the genitals to produce children
does not, without more, condemn the use of the gen-
itals for other purposes, say, achieving ecstasy and
intimacy.
The functional view of nature will only provide a
morally condemnatory sense to the term “unnatural”
if a thing which might have many uses has but one
“proper” function. Yet the morally “proper” function
787
homosexuality
cannot be established simply by looking at the thing.
For what is seen is all its possible functions: “It’s a
stamplicker,” “no, it’s a talker,” “no, it’s a sex organ.”
So the notion of function does not in itself ground
moral authority; instead, moral authority is needed
to define proper function.
Some people try to fill in this moral authority by
appeal to the “design” or “order” of an organ, saying
that the genitals are designed for the purpose of pro-
creation. But an appeal to design requires making
explicit who the designer is. If it is God, the discus-
sion collapses into theology.
Further, ordinary moral attitudes about child
rearing will not provide the needed supplement
which, in conjunction with the natural-function
view of body parts, would produce a positive obli-
gation to use the genitals for procreation. Conven-
tional social attitudes toward a childless couple are
often those of pity rather than censure—even if the
couple could have children. The pity may be an un-
sympathetic one, registering the fact that childless-
ness is not a course one would choose for oneself,
but this does not make childbearing a course one
would require of others. Couples who discover they
cannot have children are viewed, then, not as having
had a debt canceled but rather as having to forgo
some of the richness of life, just as a quadriplegic is
not viewed as absolved from some moral obligation
to hop, skip, and jump but is viewed as missing some
of the richness of life. Efforts to win back some of
that richness (through adoption or new reproductive
technologies, in the case of infertile couples) thus
usually meet with social approval, or at any rate
understanding. Efforts to prevent people from
achieving what richness they can have in their lives
usually meet with disapproval. Consistency in the
case of homosexuality then requires that, at most,
gays who do not or cannot have children are to be
pitied rather than condemned, and that willfully pre-
venting them from achieving the richness of life is
wrong. Immorality in this regard lies not with gays
themselves but with those social customs, regula-
tions, and statutes that prevent lesbians and gay men
from establishing blood or adoptive families.
Sometimes people attempt to establish authority
for a moral obligation to use certain body parts in
only one way simply by claiming that moral laws are
natural laws and vice versa. On this account, inani-
mate objects and plants are good in that they follow
natural laws by necessity, animals by instinct, and
homosexuality
persons by a rational will. People are special in that
they must first discover the laws that govern the spe-
cies. Now, even if one believes the view—dubious
in the post-Newtonian, post-Darwinian world—that
natural laws in the usual sense (e ⳱ mc2, for in-
stance) have some moral content, it is not at all clear
how one is to discover the laws in nature that apply
to people.
If, on the one hand, one looks to people them-
selves for a model—and looks hard enough—one
finds an amazing variety of models, which include
treating homosexuality as a social ideal (upper-class
fifth-century Athenians) and even as a socially man-
datory practice (Melanesia today). When one looks
to people, one is simply unable to strip away the
layers of social custom, history, and taboo in order
to see anything more specific than that people are
the creatures which make over their world and are
capable of abstract thought.
On the other hand, if for models one looks to
nature apart from people, the possibilities are stag-
gering. There are fish that change gender over their
lifetimes: Should people “follow nature” and be op-
erative transsexuals? There are many species in
which only two members per generation reproduce:
Shall we be bees? The search in nature for people’s
purpose, far from finding sure models for action,
may leave people morally rudderless.
See also: CONVENTIONS; DISCRIMINATION; FAMILY;
GAY ETHICS; LESBIAN ETHICS; LIBERALISM; MULTI-
CULTURALISM; NATURAL LAW; NORMS; PRESCRIPTIV-
ISM; PRIVACY; RACISM AND RELATED ISSUES; SEXU-
ALITY AND SEXUAL ETHICS; TOLERATION.
Bibliography
Dworkin, Ronald. “Liberty and Moralism.” In Taking
Rights Seriously. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1977. Equality-based liberalism.
Finnis, John M. “Law, Morality, and ‘Sexual Orientation.’”
Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics and Public Policy
9 (1995): 11–40. Pro–natural law.
Macedo, Stephen. “Homosexuality and the Conservative
Mind.” Georgetown Law Journal 84 (1995): 261–300.
Anti–natural law.
Mohr, Richard D. Gays/Justice: A Study of Ethics, Society,
and Law. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.
Liberty-based liberalism.
Scruton, Roger. Sexual Desire. London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1985. Conservative opinion.
Richard D. Mohr
788
honor
Western European discussions of honor are marked
by ambivalence. Past philosophers have been unsure
whether honor has moral value, whether it is anti-
thetical to morality, or whether it is morally neutral.
In the late twentieth century, honor is almost never
discussed in works of philosophy. The silence ap-
pears to indicate that honor is no longer deemed ei-
ther socially or intellectually important. The basis of
this reticence lies in the nature of honor itself and in
its particular manifestations in the cultures of West-
ern Europe.
Moral Value of Honor
To honor is to esteem, and to be worthy of honor
is to be worthy of esteem. Esteem is valuable, but it
is not obvious that the upright person is morally
obliged to seek it or entitled to claim it. ARISTOTLE
(384–322 B.C.E.) clearly believed honor had moral
worth. In his view, the magnanimous person should
seek honor and endeavor to perform honorable
deeds. Failure to do so is a sign of weakness or de-
fect. With the rise of Christianity, the fortunes of
honor waned, since the Apostles and Church Fathers
espoused HUMILITY, a value seemingly opposed to
honor. However, with THOMAS AQUINAS (1225?–
1274) the picture changed once more. He argued
that exceptional persons could seek to perform great
deeds so long as they understood that the resulting
honor was due to God rather than themselves.
Honor of this sort, given to God, is compatible with
personal humility. For HOBBES (1588–1679), by
contrast, the basic human drive to seek esteem is one
of the factors which preserve the natural condition
of war. As an elemental drive, it is morally neutral,
but its ill effects require that it be controlled. Hobbes
argued, therefore, that the quest for honor should
be reined in by the sovereign.
Apart from whether honor itself has moral value,
the upright may have the moral obligation to be-
stow honor on others. Humans may have a strong
desire for the good opinion of others and shrivel
without it. Honor may be like food and water. The
latter are not moral values, but it is morally impor-
tant that people have them. Responsible persons
may therefore have the moral obligation to honor
others because doing so is important for personal
well-being.

Because honor must always be given by someone
to someone else, it is inescapably social—and thus
depends on NORMS which are socially acknowl-
edged. A person honored for the wrong reasons ap-
pears to be honored nonetheless. But if honor is
morally tainted, it is not merely granted wrongly but
is a moral disvalue. This socially embedded charac-
ter of honor is one of its most elemental features and
lies at the core of the explanation of why honor has
fallen into its current obscurity and disrepute.
Social Role of Honor
Beginning with Homer (ninth? century B.C.E.),
there has been a close connection between honor
and military exploits. There is no mystery about this.
The human imagination is strongly attracted to the
great deeds and charisma of the armed hero. In
Homer’s day, military culture was dominant, and its
great value was the honor of great deeds and great
doers. This changed with Aristotle, who found a role
for honor in the urban life of the Athenian gentle-
man, and it changed again with the advent of
Christianity.
However, military culture regained dominance in
the European Middle Ages and reified the values of
the warrior class in the codes of chivalry. When the
Middle Ages passed, and POWER no longer depended
on force of arms but on the control of land, chivalry
was transmuted into codes of honor which nonethe-
less retained a martial tone. These codes came to
define the lives of gentlemen both in Europe and in
the American South—and were sharply distin-
guished from the constraints of morality. This con-
flict was particularly exacerbated by the glorification
of dueling in both European and Southern codes of
honor—an activity which was strictly condemned by
moralists. By the end of the nineteenth century, with
the day of the landed gentry on the wane, the codes
of honor which defined that life lost their hold as
well, and moralists wished them a relieved good
riddance.
In the United States, the vestige of honor is found
in two areas: in the military, and in the honor codes
that remain in place at a few colleges and universi-
ties. These vestiges retain the marks of earlier tra-
ditions of honor in that they are found within well-
defined and close-knit societies where acceptance of
the codes is explicitly understood as a requirement
for admission. Furthermore, the codes are thought
789
honor
to play a role in molding people of a certain sort—
those worthy of honor as the codes define it.
The Loss of Honor
If honor is gained and maintained by hewing to
social codes and standards, it is lost by failure to do
so. In response to this failure, others may withdraw
their esteem from the wayward individual. When the
failing is sufficiently important, the community may
respond with contempt or ridicule. That is, it will
shame the errant individual. Fallen individuals may
also lose their SELF-ESTEEM and fall prey to the EMO-
TION of shame. Shame thus faces in two directions:
outward, to the good opinion of the larger group;
and inward, to the individual’s self-regard. It differs
from guilt in that it need not result from blame-
worthy ACTION; the bare fact, whatever its cause,
that an individual has fallen short suffices to bring
shame. It is complex in a way that honor is not, for
honor depends only on the good opinion of others,
but shame, while retaining this aspect, adds the di-
mension of the individual’s own response.
Hence, human groups are particularly galled by
the cheerful scoundrels who are caught in turpitude
and despised by all, but refuse to be ashamed. Res-
olutely shameless rogues confound and dismay by
rejecting the community’s standards of honor and
its AUTHORITY over them. In contrast, individuals
who accept the shame the group wishes to confer
remain under its sway and continue to embrace its
standards. Such people may hope to regain both the
community’s honor and the personal satisfaction of
upholding its standards. But, if their failure is suf-
ficiently great, they may be doomed to remain on the
fringes of community life, or, in the extreme case,
they may be exiled altogether. Hence, as honor is a
gauge of how closely the individual is embraced by
the community, dishonor and its attendant shame
monitor the degree to which the individual is shoved
from the community’s core.
Honor in Current Life
Though European codes of honor have faded into
history, honor is connected to deeper moral roots
which retain vitality. For instance, while ‘honor’ is
no longer much in vogue among philosophers, ‘re-
spect’ is. Yet the two are clearly related, so much so
that respect may perform the role in human life that
honor
honor once did. Some philosophers argue that it is
important that people respect themselves—and
heartily endorse the importance of respecting others.
Respect is more egalitarian than honor, lacks its mili-
tary trappings, and seems more closely allied to
strictly moral values. So honor may remain, but in a
new form.
Codes of honor—transformed perhaps—may
have their role as well. Philosophers are currently
much involved with issues of APPLIED ETHICS, and
these concerns have surfaced in areas as diverse as
library science and medicine. If moral accountability
is expected of people, one plausible means of achiev-
ing it is through a roster of precepts that is inter-
nalized and maintained through the force of public
opinion. In other words, the mechanisms will be
quite similar to those of the ancient cultures of
honor and present-day military honor codes.
Along with honor, shame appears to have fallen
into the shade of contemporary life. Flamboyant and
outrageous public figures who flaunt, rather than
conceal, their vices, give precious little nourishment
to the sense of shame. These wastrels are able to
strut and brandish their failings particularly when a
society’s traditional standards of sexual, personal,
and professional conduct are in turmoil. But, they
can also flourish when the tart lash of public opinion
is replaced by the soothing activity of therapy. Many
who, in past ages, would have received vigorous cen-
sure for their failings are now shuttled into therapy
sessions. These sessions are often scrupulously non-
judgmental and commonly encourage participants
to accept their traits, whatever they may be, and
avoid a negative image of themselves no matter how
abysmal their characters may appear to other peo-
ple. Hence, in contrast to honor, it is possible the
withering sense of shame is a significant loss, for the
community incapable of shaming has lost grip on its
ideals of human life, and individuals who are free of
the astringent sense of shame are also free of stan-
dards of decent conduct.
See also: APPLIED ETHICS; AUTHORITY; CHARACTER;
CULTURAL STUDIES; ELITE, CONCEPT OF; EMOTION;
EQUALITY; EXTERNALISM AND INTERNALISM; GROUPS,
MORAL STATUS OF; GUILT AND SHAME; HUMILITY; IN-
DIVIDUALISM; INTEGRITY; LOYALTY; MERIT AND DES-
ERT; MILITARY ETHICS; MORAL COMMUNITY, BOUND-
ARIES OF; MORAL RULES; MORAL SAINTS; NORMS;
PRIDE; PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY; SELF AND SO-
790
CIAL SELF; SELF-ESTEEM; SELF-RESPECT; VIRTUES;
WAR AND PEACE.
Bibliography
Aristotle. The Complete Works of Aristotle. Edited by Jon-
athan Barnes. Rev. Oxford trans. 2 vols. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1984.
Baldwin, James Mark, and Henry Sidgwick. “Honour.” In
Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, edited by
James Mark Baldwin, vol. 1, 484–85. New York: Mac-
millan, 1911.
Berger, Peter L., Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried Kellner.
The Homeless Mind. New York: Random House, 1973.
Carlson, Sebastian. “The Virtue of Humility.” Thomist 7
(1944): 135–78; 363–414.
Dewey, John, and James H. Tufts. Ethics. Rev. ed. New
York: Henry Holt, 1932.
Gibbard, Allan. Wise Choices, Apt Feelings. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1990.
Hardie, W. F. R. “‘Magnanimity’ in Aristotle’s Ethics.”
Phronesis 23 (1978): 63–79.
Heidsieck, François. “Honor and Nobility of Soul: Des-
cartes to Sartre.” Translated by James M. Somerville.
International Philosophical Quarterly 1 (1961): 569–
92.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Edited by Michael Oakesh-
ott. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1946 [1651].
Kristol, William. “Liberty, Equality, Honor.” Social Phi-
losophy and Policy 2 (1984): 125–40.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. A Short History of Ethics. New York:
Macmillan, 1966.
McNamee, Maurice. Honor and the Epic Hero. New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960.
Macpherson, C. B. The Political Theory of Possessive In-
dividualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962.
May, William. “Honor.” In Powers that Make Us Human,
edited by Kenneth Vaux, 29–44. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1985.
Paley, William. The Principles of Moral and Political Phi-
losophy. 11th U.S. ed. Houston: St. Thomas Press,
1977 [1785].
Piers, Gerhard, and Milton B. Singer. Shame and Guilt: A
Psychoanalytic and a Cultural Study. Springfield, IL:
Charles C. Thomas, 1953.
Pope, R. Martin. “Honour.” In Encyclopaedia of Religion
and Ethics, edited by John Hastings, vol. 6, 771–72.
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920.
Raphael, D. D. Hobbes. London: George Allen and Un-
win, 1977.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1971.
Rosen, Bernard. “Honor and Honor Codes.” Teaching
Philosophy 10 (1987): 37–48.

Sidgwick, Henry. The Methods of Ethics. 6th ed. London:
Macmillan, 1874.
Smith, T. V. “Women and the Institution of Honor.” Ethics
52 (1941): 80–85.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Edited by
J. P. Mayer and Max Lerner. 2 vols. New York: Harper
and Row, 1966 [1835–1840].
Walzer, Michael. Spheres of Justice. New York: Basic
Books, 1983.
Weil, Simone. The Need for Roots. Translated by Arthur
Wells. New York: Putnam’s, 1952.
Westermarck, Edward. The Origin and Development
of the Moral Ideas. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan,
1906–1908.
Williams, Bernard. Shame and Necessity. Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1993.
Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. Southern Honor. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1982.
Nicholas Fotion
Gerard Elfstrom
hope
Concepts of Hope
There is a standard understanding of hope, em-
ployed by THOMAS AQUINAS (1225?–1274), HUME
(1711–1776), KANT (1724–1804), and Ernst Bloch
(1885–1977), and there is a less common but more
nuanced understanding presented by Gabriel Marcel
(1889–1973) and others.
The standard understanding takes hoping to have
an act and object structure; hoping consists of de-
siring a state of affairs which is future, good, and
possible, but perhaps attainable only with difficulty.
Such aimed hoping thus has elements of DESIRE and
expectation. Typically hope is classified as an EMO-
TION or PASSION of the soul, primarily conative and
affective, even if implying epistemic assessments of
worth and possibility. Hope-locutions of standard
hope have the form “I hope that such-and-such
comes to pass.”
One range of aimed hoping, familiar in politics
and RELIGION, is utopian or ultimate: the good
hoped for is the highest good, whether “highest” is
understood as including all genuine goods or as se-
lecting only the best. Such an ultimate or horizon
hope is characterized by a target that one judges
most worthwhile, and—under conditions personal,
social, historical or transhistorical, or divine—pos-
sible. Immanuel Kant’s and Ernst Bloch’s ultimate
791
hope
hopes for the highest good are of such a sort (the
kingdom of God, with or without God), and so is,
in a different way, Marcel’s. An ultimate hope’s tar-
get may have stepping-stone targets as simply in-
strumental to a final goal; or an ultimate hoping’s
target may have foretaste or ingredient targets as in-
choate of a final goal.
A less commonly understood but more nuanced
understanding of hoping adds to or qualifies several
features of the standard understanding.
One can distinguish between hoping with a spe-
cific aimed-for state of affairs, and hoping without
such an aimed-for state of affairs. Hoping without a
specific aim consists of a refusal to yield to the temp-
tation to despair, expressed as “All is lost, I am lost.”
Hoping thus consists in surmounting specific dis-
appointments and not going to pieces even when one
seems unable to imagine something worthwhile and
possible. Such hoping exhibits patience, HUMILITY,
and flexibility, in contrast with an aimed hoping’s
ardor and specific focus. Hoping without an aimed-
for specific state of affairs has simple despair as its
contrasting fundamental orientation (while aimed
hoping has as its opposite despair-over or despair-
about specific worth or possibility). Such hoping is
presented in the thought of Gabriel Marcel. Such
Marcellian genuine hoping does not ambition having
more accurate and specific calculation of likelihood
and more precise targeting of good future states of
affairs. The outcome hoped for is a relationship of
appreciative union—what Marcel calls “commun-
ion”—rather than a system of fair-minded reciprocal
instrumentalities typically found in the thought of
Kant and Bloch. It has hope-in or trust as the rela-
tionship obtaining in the present. It finds a formula
in “I hope in thee for us.” The desiring that charac-
terizes such Marcellian hoping is not a covetous or
self-centered hope-for-me. It thus is less subject to
criticisms that see desirelessness as optimal, as in
Buddhist or Advaita thought.
A further nuance derives from William Lynch’s
distinguishing two types of desiring. Desire can be
for what someone else wants me to want or what
someone else wants me not to want; such desiring
derives its direction in reaction to another’s will, in
yielding or rebelling. Or desire can be in response to
the merits of a future possible situation; such desir-
ing derives its direction from the good presented.
Distinctions among types of outcome (specific
states of affairs, event- or state-unspecific relation-
hope
ships of appreciation) and distinctions among types
of desiring (noncovetous versus covetous; reactive
to another’s will versus goal-oriented) permit fur-
ther nuances regarding links between hoping, esti-
mating an outcome’s likelihood, and assessing its
form and desirability. Ardor of some desiring, es-
pecially in human affairs, can affect possibility, ren-
dering outcomes fluid and therefore less amenable
to calculation.
Hoping differs from both pessimism and opti-
mism, from both despair-over and presumption-
about, at least insofar as these exhibit closure or cer-
tainty about impossibility or inevitability. There is an
uncertainty to most aimed hope.
Evaluations of Hope
Ethical assessment of hoping finds inspiration in
Kant’s third question near the end of the Critique of
Pure Reason: What may I hope? What is permissi-
ble, given human cognition and obligation and their
limits? Insofar as hoping can be examined, it be-
comes subject to ethical evaluation. Insofar as hop-
ing can be chosen, it can be evaluated as other
choices are evaluated.
Aimed hoping is not per se virtuous; its possibility-
judgments, worth-judgments, and desiring are sub-
ject to evaluation.
On teleological grounds, hoping which is instru-
mental to obtaining an outcome derives its value
from the outcome hoped for. Hoping which partici-
pates as ingredient in an outcome hoped for simi-
larly derives value from the outcome hoped for. In
some cases, hoping and fearing are equally instru-
mentally valuable, but in some cases they are not:
slaves threatened with whips may build pyramids
but not friendships.
In addition, the fact of hoping may alter the pos-
sibility of an outcome, and therefore the reasonable-
ness of a possibility-judgment; while it would be
good to fit the hope to the likelihood of its outcome,
in some human affairs hoping ratified or withheld
changes the outcome’s likelihood.
Furthermore, aimed hoping seems in most cases
to be more reasonable insofar as the desiring is mo-
tivated by the hoped-for’s merits rather than by an-
other’s requiring or forbidding it. Sound specifically
aimed hoping, therefore, is hoping that meets stan-
dards or ideals in judgments not only about the pos-
792
sibility and worth of what is hoped for but also about
the worth of the desiring itself.
A virtue approach finds hope a virtue with op-
posing vices of despair-over and presumption-about,
which include respectively pessimism and optimism.
Presumption in common understanding implies an
overestimation of an outcome’s worth or possibility;
in theological understanding, presumption implies
the view that hope is unnecessary because of one’s
own self-sufficiency. In the matter of union with God
as highest good, virtue does not lie in refraining from
an excess or deficiency of hoping; but in the matter
of a social highest good, a utopia, one could arguably
find virtue in settling for a lesser but practically pos-
sible good.
Illusory hopes are by definition those aimed at
what lacks reckoned worth or possibility. Caution is
needed, however, and is suggested by a case posed
by Marcel. Suppose a mother hopes to see again her
son concerning whom she has been presented with
clear evidence of his death. Objectively speaking,
there is no possibility of reunion with him. But Mar-
cel proposes that if her hope to see him again is ex-
ercised in the register of love rather than in that of
prediction, it is not wrong for her so to hope. This
suggests that some ‘impossible dreams’ may be sal-
utary insofar as they imagine and want a future not
readily subject to precise reckoning of possibility
and worth, provided such imagining and hoping lead
to suitable action. Given the limits of human knowl-
edge and desiring, to head ardently for a doubtful or
ambivalent goal is not obviously wrong if disap-
pointment will lead to better aims or at least to ma-
turity and patience, and if achievement will lead to
better goals beyond.
It is therefore difficult to indicate the conditions
under which one would have no right to hope, al-
though hopes that contribute to rupture of salutary
bonds between persons would qualify as at least
prima facie ethically objectionable, as a genocidal
hope would be.
More comprehensively considered, then, aimed
hoping’s soundness depends not just on the intrinsic
worth and possibility of the hoped-for but also on
its integration with other goals. Furthermore, its
soundness depends also on some characteristics of
the hoping itself, namely, on the quality of its desir-
ing, in answer to the question: How may I hope?
The soundness of hoping’s resisting temptation to
despair seems prima facie good or even morally

obligatory, but such an evaluation is conditional on
some overarching view regarding the human situa-
tion, its possibilities, and its worth—on whether
there are no conditions under which unqualified de-
spair is warranted.
Obligations or RIGHTS of an epistemic sort sug-
gest a larger range for ethical evaluation of hoping.
What one may legitimately hope to know depends
in theory on the extent of intellectual closure it is
reasonable to judge possible; Paul RICOEUR is among
those who explore the possible legitimate extent of
hoping for systematic knowledge. Hoping’s range
and worth is also reviewed by Josef Pieper when he
contends that the structure of hope, the structure of
human beings, and the structure of philosophy are
the same.
In the last analysis, the worth of hoping is linked
to the metaphysical or ontological models used to
understand human existence, its worth, and its
possibilities.
See also: BUDDHIST ETHICS; DESIRE; EMOTION; FINAL
GOOD; GOOD, THEORIES OF THE; HUME; HUMILITY;
KANT; MORAL PSYCHOLOGY; PASSION; POSSIBILISM;
RATIONALITY VS. REASONABLENESS; RELIGION; RI-
COEUR; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS; THOMAS AQUINAS.
Bibliography
Axinn, Sidney. The Logic of Hope: Extensions of Kant’s
View of Religion. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994. An elab-
oration of Kant’s doctrine of religion regarding hope,
employing logical and analytic techniques to chart re-
lations among means, ends, knowledge, and ignorance.
Bloch, Ernst. The Principle of Hope. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1986. Translation by Neville Plaice, Stephen
Plaice, and Paul Knight, of Das Prinzip Hoffnung
1959, 1970.
Dauenhauer, Bernard P. The Politics of Hope. New York:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986.
Day, John Patrick. “Hope: A Philosophical Inquiry.” Acta
Philosophica Fennica 51 (1991): 11–101. This mono-
graph emphasizes a conception of intersubjectively un-
derstood objective probability in analysis and evalua-
tion of hope and its related propositional attitudes.
Godfrey, Joseph J. A Philosophy of Human Hope. Dor-
drecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987. A systematic mapping
of hope and its implications, studying the thought of
Bloch, Kant, and Marcel, with some treatment of psy-
chology and theology; with bibliography.
Kant, Immanuel. Religion within Limits of Reason Alone.
Translated by Theodore M. Green and Hoyt H. Hud-
son. New York: Harper and Row, 1960 [1793]. Kant’s
substantial treatment of what may be hoped for, follow-
793
Hsün Tzu
ing leads developed in his Critique of Practical Reason
[1788] but introducing considerations of evil pivotal
in his Perpetual Peace [1795].
Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740).
Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch. Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1975. Book II, part III, section
IX presents hope as one of the direct passions.
Lynch, William F. Images of Hope: Imagination as Healer
of the Hopeless. Baltimore: Helicon, 1965; reprint No-
tre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974.
Differentiates between the reactive “willful act” in re-
sponse to what others want me to want and the simple
“absolute wish” in response to the value of a possibility.
Mann, William. “Hope.” In Reasoned Faith, edited by
Eleonore Stump. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1993, 251–80. A study of Luther and Aquinas, with
Luther’s argument that because of the nature of pure
love, hope is not a virtue.
Marcel, Gabriel. “Sketch of a Phenomenology and Meta-
physic of Hope.” In his Homo Viator: Introduction to
a Metaphysic of Hope, translated by Emma Craufurd,
29–67. New York: Harper and Row, 1962 [1942].
Marcel’s classic text.
———. “The Structure of Hope.” Communio: Interna-
tional Catholic Review 23 (Fall 1996): 604–11. Orig-
inally “Structure de l’espérance” in Dieu vivante 19
(1951): 71–80.
Pieper, Josef. “The Philosophic Act.” In his Leisure the
Basis of Culture, translated by Alexander Dru. New
York: Random House, 1963, 102–7. On the similarity
of structure of hope, humanity, and philosophy.
Ricoeur, Paul. “Hope and Structure of Philosophical Sys-
tems.” Proceedings of American Catholic Philosophical
Association (1970): 55–69. Reprinted in his Figuring
the Sacred (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995). Con-
sidering Moltmann, Hegel, and Kant, Ricoeur argues
that the philosophical desire for systematic closure
needs to be tempered by acknowledgment of reason’s
limits.
Sutherland, Stewart. “Hope.” The Philosophy in Chris-
tianity. Edited by Godfrey Vesey. Supplement to Phi-
losophy 1989. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989, 193–206.
Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. I-II, 40, hope as a
passion; I-II, 52–57, as among the theological virtues;
II-II, 17–22, as the particular theological virtue.
Joseph J. Godfrey
Hsün Tzu (third century B.C.E.)
Hsün Tzu (Master Hsün), also called Hsün Ch’ing
and Hsün K’uang, was a major exponent of classical
Confucianism. Very little is known of his life. Ac-
cording to the earliest biography in Szu-ma Ch’ien’s
(c. 145–87 B.C.E.) Historical Record (Shih Chi),
Hsün Tzu
completed in 91 B.C.E., he was a native of the state
of Chao (north China), went to Chi (in modern
Shantung) at the age of fifty to spread his teachings,
and became the most eminent among senior schol-
ars. He was thrice appointed chief libationer, a po-
sition generally occupied by men of exemplary schol-
arship and virtue. When some men of Chi slandered
him, he went to Chu and was a magistrate in Lan-
ling. He later lost the position, but remained there
and taught until his death. His fundamental doc-
trines are contained in the Hsün Tzu, consisting of
thirty-two sections, compiled by Liu Hsiang of the
Former Han (206 B.C.E.– C.E. 8). While the author-
ship of many sections is disputed, most of the self-
contained essays give a remarkably coherent and
reasoned statement of the key aspects of the Con-
fucian ethical and political vision of a well-ordered
society. They display wide-ranging interest in such
topics as the relation between morality and human
nature, the ideal of the good human life and its re-
lation to the natural order, the nature of ethical
knowledge and discourse, and MORAL EDUCATION
and self-cultivation. While critical of the views of his
predecessors, Hsün Tzu’s philosophy also shows
traces of their influence, particularly those of
CHUANG TZU (fourth century B.C.E.) on mind and
nature, and the later Mohists’ logical writings on rec-
tifying terms. As compared with MENCIUS (fourth
century B.C.E.), Hsün Tzu had a greater influence
during the Han period (206 B.C.E.– C.E. 220), but his
works were largely neglected until the nineteenth
century.
Like CONFUCIUS (sixth–fifth centuries B.C.E.) and
Mencius, Hsün Tzu’s ideal of a well-ordered society
focuses on government by a sagely or enlightened
ruler (ming-chu), whose private and public life ex-
emplifies the tao (the way), that is, a concern with
jen (BENEVOLENCE), yi (rightness, righteousness),
and li (rites, rules of proper conduct). Unlike Men-
cius, Hsün Tzu was a staunch advocate of abolition
of hereditary titles. For him, a good ruler must be
able to attract worthy, talented persons to govern-
ment service and promote or demote them in accor-
dance with the merits or demerits of their perfor-
mance. Moreover, he must enrich the state and its
people with strong military defense measures and,
more important, promulgate and efficiently admin-
ister ethically legitimate laws and INSTITUTIONS.
Thus an enlightened ruler is one who is good at or-
ganizing the people in society in accordance with the
794
requirements expressed in jen, yi, and li. The li, as
formal prescriptions for proper conduct, are espe-
cially stressed, for they form the foundation of laws
and precedents. As markers of tao, “the li provide
models, but no explanations.” Nevertheless, their
necessity for society can be shown if one reflects on
the basic human motivational structure, which con-
sists of feelings and desires.
In terms of motivational structure, every human
is a self-seeking animal. Feelings and desires demand
satisfaction. Self-serving concern, or in Hsün Tzu’s
words “the fondness for personal gain,” does not ex-
clude concern for others. Nevertheless, this propen-
sity is in some way “bad” or problematic. For what
is good is “that which is upright, reasonable, and
orderly,” and what is bad is “that which is partial,
irresponsible, or chaotic.” Were our basic motiva-
tional structure good in the sense explained, there
would be need neither for rules of proper conduct
nor for moral education. Given the scarcity of re-
sources to satisfy desires, humans are wont to com-
pete against one another, and this necessitates some
form of regulation of human behavior. The li are
thus seen to perform a basic function in regulating
human behavior, though Hsün Tzu was insistent
that they also have supportive and ennobling func-
tions (i.e., providing channels for satisfaction and
the refinement of desires). As Hsün Tzu said, “The
original nature of man is the beginning and material;
acquired characteristics [wei] are the beautification
and glorification of the original nature.” Human ba-
sic motivational structure, while problematic, also
provides the materials for ennoblement in accord
with tao. Like Mencius and the neo-Confucians
(e.g., CHU HSI [1130–1200] and WANG YANG-MING
[1472–1529]), Hsün Tzu believed that every person
is capable of becoming a sage if he or she under-
stands and practices jen and yi and attends to li.
For Hsün Tzu, the vision of tao is a holistic con-
ception and a proper object of knowledge and pur-
suit. Clarity of mind (ming) is essential to compre-
hending the tao. When a clear mind is guided by
reason, it is free from the obscuration (pi) of the
various sorts of distinction, for example, DESIRE and
aversion, past and present, immediate and distant
consequences of actions. For Hsün Tzu, all distinc-
tions owe their origin to comparison and analogy of
different kinds of things in terms of similarities and
differences. Basically, distinctions are not absolute
dichotomies, but are relative to the purpose and con-

text that occasion them. Since distinctions in general
are the products of the mind’s intellectual function
in the service of cognition and ACTION, their utility
in a particular situation is also relative to purpose
and context. Even in cases in which the utility of
distinction is not in question, there is still the need
to render a reasoned judgment concerning the sig-
nificance of each item in the distinction. Obscura-
tion of the mind (pi) arises when the mind exclu-
sively attends to the significance of one item without
proper regard for the significance of the other. It is
in this sense of being “one-sided” or partial to one
item without carefully weighing the value of the
other that distinctions in general are potential sources
of pi.
Clarity of mind, as the opposite of pi, is a state
that exemplifies IMPARTIALITY. For Hsün Tzu, im-
partiality and conceptual clarity are especially im-
portant in argumentative discourse, along with other
standards of competence such as respect for linguis-
tic conventions, reasoned defense of one’s theses,
and evidential grounding. Pi is a common affliction
of humanity. Even philosophers are susceptible to pi.
MO TZU (fifth century B.C.E.), for example, exagger-
ates the importance of utility without understanding
the beauty of forms, Mencius and Tzu Ssu have only
a sketchy understanding of tao without understand-
ing its underlying unity, and Chuang Tzu is too pre-
occupied with Heaven (t’ien) to appreciate the im-
portance of humanity. In general, ordinary people,
as well as philosophers, tend to see only “one cor-
ner” of tao and thus fail to see its holistic character.
Only an enlightened sage, informed by a holistic vi-
sion of tao, confronts all things and weighs them
impartially on a balance.
Perhaps the most distinctive and modern feature
of Hsün Tzu’s view is the relation between Heaven
(t’ien) and human beings. Unlike Confucius and
Mencius, Hsün Tzu was critical of any conception
of the will of Heaven, whether as mere purposive-
ness, as personal will endowed with a power to re-
ward or punish good and bad behavior, or as a hab-
itat of spiritual beings. For him, Heaven is nature;
its operations are constant and have no normative
powers or supernatural significance. The proper at-
titude toward strange events or phenomena is one
of wonder and awe, not fear and indulgence in such
superstitious practices as divination and prayer. Sac-
rificial offerings to ancestral spirits are indeed ethi-
cally acceptable, not because of belief in their exis-
795
Hsün Tzu
tence but as the humane way of expressing HONOR
and affection, a matter of ritual performance in-
vested by the attitude of reverence. As a natural or-
der of events, Heaven is indeed an object of atten-
tion, for human well-being depends fundamentally
on knowledge and control of Heaven, and this
knowledge is indispensable for coping with chang-
ing conditions. In its emphasis on the mastery and
control of nature, we find in Hsün Tzu’s conception
of Heaven a protoscientific attitude. Unfortunately,
this attitude did not lead to the development of nat-
ural science in China. Wing-tsit Chan offers a plau-
sible explanation: “Although Hsün Tzu enjoyed great
prestige in the Han dynasty, his theory of overcoming
nature was not strong enough to compete with the
prevalent doctrine of harmony of man and nature,
which both Confucianism and Taoism promoted.”
In the pursuit of tao, moral education is indis-
pensable. The primary aim of moral education is the
transformation of human beings’ native but prob-
lematical motivational structure through learning
the standards of goodness or EXCELLENCE (e.g., jen,
li, and yi). Learning, however, is not mere acquisi-
tion of ethical knowledge but requires understand-
ing and insight. The ultimate objective of moral edu-
cation is to become a sage, one who has a keen
insight which never fails into the rationale of tao and
its import for dealing with different sorts of human
situations. Put differently, learning is an unceasing
process of accumulation (chi) of goodness, knowl-
edge, and practical understanding. Said Hsün Tzu,
“If a noble or superior person [chün-tzu] studies
widely and daily engages in self-examination, his in-
tellect will become enlightened and his conduct be
without fault.” In learning, classics such as the Odes,
the History, Li, Music, and the Spring and Autumn
Annals must be studied with care to appreciate their
concrete ethical significance. Intellectual and prac-
tical understanding of the classics goes hand in hand
with self-examination and self-cultivation. Moral
learning culminates in the attainment of complete-
ness and purity, that is, a state of moral INTEGRITY
(te-t’sao). As a consequence, one can deploy a res-
olute will in coping with moral perplexities that arise
out of changing circumstances.
It is widely acknowledged by scholars today that
Hsün Tzu ranks among the greatest of Chinese
thinkers. Apart from his critical and coherent ex-
position of classical Confucian ethics, his works
provide some rudiments for developing a modern
Hsün Tzu
Confucian moral philosophy, in the view of some
contemporary Chinese thinkers.
See also: CHINA; CHU HSI; CHUANG TZU; COMPAR-
ATIVE ETHICS; COMPETITION; CONFUCIAN ETHICS;
CONFUCIUS; DESIRE; EMOTION; MENCIUS; MO TZU;
MORAL DEVELOPMENT; MORAL EDUCATION; MORAL
PURITY; MOTIVES; NATURE AND ETHICS; PRACTICAL
WISDOM; PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY; SELF-
KNOWLEDGE; TAOIST ETHICS; WANG YANG-MING.
Bibliography
Works by Hsün Tzu
Basic Writings. Translated by Burton Watson. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1963.
The Works of Hsüntze. Translated by Homer H. Dubs.
Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1966.
Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works.
Translated by John Knoblock. 3 vols. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1988–1994. Vol. 1, Books
1–6; vol. 2, Books 7–16; vol. 3, Books 17–32.
Works about Hsün Tzu
Chan, Wing-tsit, trans. A Source Book in Chinese Philos-
ophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963.
Chan, Wing-tsit, and Charles Fu. Guide to Chinese Phi-
losophy. Boston: C. K. Hall, 1978.
Cua, A. S. Ethical Argumentation: A Study of Hsün Tzu’s
Moral Epistemology. Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1985. Includes extensive bibliography.
———. “The Conceptual Aspect of Hsün Tzu’s Philoso-
phy of Human Nature.” Philosophy East and West 24,
no. 4 (1977): 373–89.
———. “The Quasi-Empirical Aspect of Hsün Tzu’s Phi-
losophy of Human Nature.” Philosophy East and West
28, no. 1 (1978): 3–19.
———. “Dimensions of Li (Propriety): Reflections on an
Aspect of Hsün Tzu’s Ethics.” Philosophy East and
West 29, no. 4 (1979): 373–94.
———. “The Possibility of Ethical Knowledge: Reflec-
tions on a Theme in the Hsün Tzu.” In Epistemological
Issues in Ancient Chinese Philosophy. Edited by Hans
Lenk and Gregor Paul. Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1993.
Dubs, Homer H. Hsüntze, The Moulder of Ancient Con-
fucianism. London: Arthur Probstain, 1966.
Kline, T. C., and P. J. Ivanhoe, eds. Virtue, Nature, and
Moral Agency in the Xunzi. Indianapolis: Hackett,
2000.
A. S. Cua
796
human rights
The development after World War II of institutions
for the international protection of human rights has
brought the concept of human rights into use around
the world. Human rights are basic moral guarantees
that people in all countries and cultures allegedly
have simply because they are people. Calling these
guarantees “rights” suggests that they attach to par-
ticular individuals who can invoke them, that they
are of high priority, and that compliance with them
is mandatory rather than discretionary. Human
rights are frequently held to be universal in the sense
that all people have and should enjoy them, and to
be independent in the sense that they exist and are
available as standards of justification and criticism
whether or not they are recognized and implemented
by the legal system or officials of a country.
These characteristics of today’s human rights were
also ascribed to natural rights in the eighteenth cen-
tury. For instance, the abstract rights, outlined by
John LOCKE (1632–1704), to life, LIBERTY, and PROP-
ERTY were universal and independent. Eighteenth-
century rights documents such as the U.S. Bill of
Rights (ratified 1791) and the French Declaration of
the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789) can be seen
as applying these abstract rights to some specific po-
litical problems of the time, thereby producing lists
of specific RIGHTS applicable to particular countries.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(1948), which was formulated by the United Nations
after World War II, tried to do something similar at
the international level. It offered an international an-
swer to the question of which specific rights are uni-
versal human rights, thereby attempting to give the
idea of human rights a common and fixed content
all around the world. The first twenty-one articles of
the Declaration formulate rights similar to those
found in the Bill of Rights and succeeding amend-
ments of the U.S. Constitution. These “civil and po-
litical rights” include (1) rights to personal liberties
(e.g., RELIGION, speech, travel, PRIVACY), (2) rights
protecting life and health (e.g., against TORTURE and
arbitrary deprivation of life), (3) rights of due pro-
cess (e.g., to a fair trial in criminal proceedings),
(4) rights of political participation (e.g., to vote and
run for office), and (5) rights against DISCRIMINA-
TION and unequal treatment (e.g., to equal protec-
tion of the law). The final articles of the Declaration,
however, go beyond the traditional lists. They de-

clare rights to education, employment, and an ade-
quate standard of living. In the decades since 1948,
the Universal Declaration has been supplemented by
international treaties, thus giving many of its pro-
visions the status of international law.
Today’s human rights obviously rely for their for-
mulation and interpretation on other ethical and po-
litical concepts, such as liberty, procedural justice,
and DEMOCRACY. An account of human rights
should not be thought of as a complete moral or
political philosophy; rather, it is an attempt to set
out some minimal standards that no government, so-
ciety, or person should violate. Accounts of human
rights have many ethical and political uses. They
give direct guidance on how governments must be-
have and on what individuals can justifiably de-
mand. Accounts of human rights also give guidance
by providing directions for social and political re-
form and standards for criticism and justification.
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, for example, is often justified
as a way of protesting or ending violations of hu-
man rights.
The Existence and Justification of Rights
Understanding the ways in which legal NORMS
come into existence—for example, through custom,
judicial decision making, legislation, and contract—
enables us to understand the existence of legal
rights. The existence in Brazil, for example, of a right
to freedom of religion can be explained by reference
to the inclusion of this right in the new constitution
that was enacted in 1988. When a right is part of a
system of constitutional norms, it is common to refer
to it as a “constitutional right” or “civil right.”
Understanding the ways in which moral norms
come into being enables us to understand the exis-
tence of customary moral rights. A customary right
to travel freely within the country, for example,
might exist within accepted moral norms in a coun-
try with nomadic tribal groups, even if no such right
is proclaimed by that country’s law.
These ways of understanding the existence of
rights can be used for human rights insofar as hu-
man rights have become part of domestic or inter-
national law, or part of the accepted morality of
many groups. The fact that human rights have been
recognized in international law through treaties, and
in the constitutions and legal codes of many coun-
tries through appropriate legal measures, means that
797
human rights
positivist doubts about rights that have not been le-
gally recognized are not fatal—if they ever were—
to the idea of human rights (see Henkin).
Nevertheless, human rights advocates have strong
practical reasons for not wanting to give up the
claim that human rights exist independently of rec-
ognition in particular legal or moral systems. Some
of the worst atrocities and injustices occur in coun-
tries where rights are not recognized in the consti-
tution and legal code or are not part of the social
norm. Accounts of human rights play a useful role
in helping end these atrocities and injustices by pro-
viding an international standard for describing and
criticizing the problems, applying international pres-
sure to recalcitrant governments, and measuring al-
leged improvements.
If human rights advocates wish to defend the in-
dependent existence of human rights, they must ex-
plain how a right, say, to freedom from torture can
exist in countries where it is neither morally ac-
cepted nor legally enacted. The standard explanation
of how such rights can exist suggests that human
rights exist independently within justified rather
than customary moralities. This way of explaining
the independent existence of human rights presup-
poses that we can know that some moral norms are
better justified than others. An independent right
against torture will be as real as our moral reasons
are strong for holding that everyone is entitled not
to be tortured (see Narveson). These reasons will
have to provide a strong moral case not just for the
importance of everyone’s being free from torture,
but also for the burdens that have to be imposed
on others in order for torture to be avoided and
prevented.
Because of its heavy reliance on the concept of jus-
tification, this explanation of the existence of human
rights is sure to confront demands that justifications
for human rights be provided. These demands for jus-
tifications in turn raise philosophical questions about
where such justifications should start, how stringent
they must be, how affordability is to be taken into
account, and whether the same justifications will
work in different cultures. Many philosophers have
sketched justifications for rights, including ones that
start from egoistic, utilitarian, contractarian, Kantian,
and other premises (see bibliography for works by
HOBBES; JOHN STUART MILL, 1863; Lyons; Narveson;
GEWIRTH; Lomasky; Griffin; Nickel; RAWLS; and
Shue). Justification is not just a matter of demonstrat-
human rights
ing the plausibility of the high priority and universal-
ity of human rights; justification also requires that
particular human rights (e.g., a right to a fair trial or
a right to education) can be defended.
Unsurprisingly, the idea of justified moral rights
has always stimulated doubts. Legal positivists like
BENTHAM (1748–1832) doubt that the sort of exis-
tence that justified moralities have is sufficiently ro-
bust to generate rights that are meaningful for prac-
tical purposes. They take legally implemented rights
as their paradigm of what rights are, and they find
justified moral rights too vaporous to qualify as real
rights (see Bentham’s “Anarchial Fallacies” in Wald-
ron, 1988). The more radical doubts of the moral
skeptic suggest that it is not possible to have reliable
moral knowledge, and hence that it is not possible
to know that there are good moral reasons that sup-
port universal human rights (see Nielsen, 1968).
Universality of Human Rights
The claim that human rights are universal is at-
tractive because it means members of oppressed mi-
norities have rights to appeal to. Independence and
universality work together to ensure that all people
everywhere have rights. The claim of universality is
also attractive because it expresses the idea, often
thought central to morality, of equal respect for per-
sons. But the alleged universality of human rights
has been challenged by cultural relativists who deny
that a single set of rights can or should be applied
to countries with diverse cultures and circumstances
(see Nickel; Nielsen, 1974; Walzer).
Even if the general criticisms of the ethical rela-
tivist can be overcome, there are more localized
problems that require claims of universality to be
qualified. Many of the specific rights of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights cannot be universal in
the sense that they apply to all humans at all times,
since these rights presuppose contemporary social
and political INSTITUTIONS (e.g., national bound-
aries, legal systems, newspapers, school systems).
Further, rights such as the right to vote or to emi-
grate are not plausible when applied to the very
young, the severely retarded, the comatose, and the
senile. And some rights (e.g., to vote and run for
political office in a particular country) are clearly
rights of citizens rather than of everyone.
Philosophers have often approached the question
of universality at an abstract level by asking whether
798
there is some characteristic, or set of such charac-
teristics, that is necessary and sufficient for one to
have before being entitled to human rights. Utilitar-
ians, for example, take this characteristic to be the
capacity to suffer pain; Kantians take this character-
istic to be the capacity for RATIONAL CHOICE. If one
could identify and defend such a characteristic, then
one might be able to argue that some humans totally
lack rights (e.g., fetuses or the permanently coma-
tose) and perhaps that some nonhumans qualify for
some moral rights (e.g., all animals with sentience
and substantial cognitive capacities).
The Weight of Human Rights
Conflicts between human rights and other con-
siderations are common (e.g., when the rights of
protesters conflict with the public order or national
security). Also common are conflicts between rights
(e.g., when Abigail’s right to a fair trial conflicts with
Beverly’s right to privacy). Because of these con-
flicts, it is important to have some idea of the weight
of human rights.
One attraction of formulating political standards
in the vocabulary of rights is that this suggests that
rights, and especially human rights, are important,
high-priority considerations. Ronald DWORKIN ex-
pressed this metaphorically by saying that rights are
“trumps.” This is not to say that rights always pre-
vail over conflicting values or norms but rather to
say that they generally do so. Dworkin stipulated
this as a part of the meaning of a right; he proposed
“not to call any political aim a right unless it has a
certain threshold weight against collective goals in
general; unless, for example, it cannot be defeated
by appeal to any of the routine goals of political
administration.”
Many conflicts between rights can be avoided by
building exceptions into their scopes. For example,
the right to privacy can be defined to include an ex-
ception for information needed in criminal trials—
with the result that Beverly’s right to privacy would
not protect her refusal to reveal information needed
to satisfy Abigail’s right to a fair trial. It is doubtful,
however, that the possibility of conflicts between
rights, and between rights and other values and
norms, can be totally eliminated by building in nu-
merous exceptions. We are not able to foresee all
conflicts, and we are often uncertain which right or
which value or norm should prevail in conflicts that

we can imagine. For this reason, the project of for-
mulating rights and other norms so that they form
an interlocking and totally coherent order is likely
to remain perpetually incomplete, even though the
project is worth starting and pursuing. To represent
the fact that we are unable to give a complete or-
dering of specific human rights, it is often said that
these are prima facie rights. A prima facie right is a
right whose weight in competition with other con-
siderations is not fully specified.
The rights of the Universal Declaration are prima
facie rights in this sense. They are formulated in
broad terms with few exceptions, and their weights
in competition with each other or with other norms
are not even partially specified. Subsequent human
rights documents, such as the European Convention
of Human Rights (1953) and the United Nations In-
ternational Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(1966), attempted to address questions of scope and
weight to a greater degree. Some exceptions to rights
were built in, as when the formulation of the right
to life in Article 2 of the European Convention per-
mitted killings that are strictly necessary “(a) in de-
fense of any person from unlawful violence; (b) in
order to effect a lawful arrest or to prevent the es-
cape of a person lawfully detained; and (c) in action
lawfully taken for the purpose of quelling a riot or
insurrection.” Article 15 of the European Conven-
tion addressed the weight of some human rights by
making it impermissible for countries adhering to
this convention to suspend (or “derogate”), even in
emergencies, the right to life, the rights to freedom
from torture and degrading punishments, the right
against SLAVERY and servitude, and the right against
retroactive criminal laws. Article 15 effectively makes
these rights absolute in weight; they cannot be over-
ridden even in the worst of circumstances. It is im-
portant to note, however, that being absolute in this
sense is compatible with having many exceptions,
as we saw above in the case of the right to life. Per-
haps it is only because of these exceptions that the
right to life can plausibly be said to be absolute or
nonderogable.
Are Welfare Rights Human Rights?
The Universal Declaration’s assertion that human
rights include guarantees of economic and social
benefits has stimulated many objections (see NOZ-
ICK). One line of criticism suggests that the problem
799
human rights
with viewing economic and social rights as human
rights is that economic and social rights are positive
rights, whereas traditional civil and political rights,
like the right to freedom of speech, are negative. The
distinction between negative and positive rights is
drawn on the basis of whether the right requires peo-
ple to engage in some action, such as providing as-
sistance or paying taxes, that they might otherwise
not take. Not torturing anyone is negative, while
paying taxes to provide children with a free educa-
tion is positive. For this argument to work, it is not
enough just to show that economic and social rights
are positive; it also needs to be shown that this fact
is an obstacle to the justification of rights. This
might be done, perhaps, by showing that positive
rights are always or generally less important morally,
or that such rights are generally more expensive to
implement and hence run afoul of considerations of
affordability (see Lomasky).
Critics of the contention that economic and social
rights cannot be genuine human rights because of
their positive dimensions have generally claimed ei-
ther that (1) it is untrue that civil and political rights
are negative rather than positive or (2) the distinc-
tion between negative and positive rights makes no
sense. The first of these criticisms points out that a
human right like the right against torture requires
that governments not only refrain from torture
themselves (a negative obligation) but also provide
protections and remedies against torture (a positive
obligation). Thus, a human right against torture has
both positive and negative elements. It is generally
the case, according to Henry Shue, that human
rights have both negative elements (duties to re-
spect) and positive elements (duties to protect, as-
sist, or provide). If this is so, then human rights can-
not be purely negative or purely positive. The
negative-positive distinction can be applied to duties
but not straightforwardly to rights.
The second criticism argues that the distinction
between negative and positive rights is unintelligi-
ble. This can be argued either by claiming that the
distinction necessarily depends on the untenable dis-
tinction between ACTS AND OMISSIONS (see Rachels
and, generally, the articles in Mack), or by claiming
that this distinction is not value neutral, that it can
only be applied by presupposing the normative con-
clusions it is supposed to yield (see Husak).
See also: AUTHORITY; CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE; CIVIL
RIGHTS AND CIVIC DUTIES; CORRECTIONAL ETHICS;
human rights
CULTURAL STUDIES; DEMOCRACY; DISCRIMINATION;
EQUALITY; GOVERNMENT, ETHICS IN; INTERESTS; IN-
TERNATIONAL JUSTICE: CONFLICT; JUSTICE, CIRCUM-
STANCES OF; LEGAL PHILOSOPHY; LIBERTY; LIFE,
RIGHT TO; MILITARY ETHICS; MORAL RELATIVISM;
MULTICULTURALISM; NEEDS; OPPRESSION; POLICE
ETHICS; POLITICAL SYSTEMS; POWER; PRIVACY; PROP-
ERTY; RACISM AND RELATED ISSUES; REVOLUTION;
RIGHT HOLDERS; RIGHTS; SKEPTICISM IN ETHICS;
SLAVERY; TORTURE; WAR AND PEACE; WELFARE
RIGHTS AND SOCIAL POLICY; WORK.
Bibliography
Bauer, Joanne R., and Daniel A. Bell, eds. The East Asian
Challenge for Human Rights. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1999.
Brownlie, Ian, ed. Basic Documents on Human Rights. 2d
ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981. Includes texts of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and sub-
sequent relevant treaties.
Feinberg, Joel. “Rights: Systematic Analysis.” In Encyclo-
pedia of Bioethics. New York: Macmillan, 1978.
Frey, R. G., ed. Utility and Rights. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1984. See especially “Toward a
Substantive Theory of Rights,” by James Griffin; “Con-
tractarian Rights,” by Jan Narveson.
Gewirth, Alan. Human Rights: Essays on Justification and
Applications. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1982.
Henkin, Louis. The Rights of Man Today. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1978.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. 1651.
Lillich, Richard B., and Frank C. Newman, eds. Interna-
tional Human Rights: Problems of Law and Policy.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1979.
Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. 1690.
Lomasky, Loren. Persons, Rights, and the Moral Com-
munity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Lyons, David, ed. Rights. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1979.
See especially his article, “Human Rights and the Gen-
eral Welfare,” pp. 175–86.
Mack, Eric, ed. Positive and Negative Duties. Tulane
Studies in Philosophy, vol. 33. 1985. See especially “Is
the Distinction between Positive Actions and Omissions
Value-Neutral?” by Douglas Husak.
Markovitz, Inga. “Socialist vs. Bourgeois Rights: An East-
West German Comparison.” University of Chicago
Law Review 45 (1978): 612–36.
Martin, Rex. Rawls and Rights. Lawrence: University
Press of Kansas, 1986.
Meyers, Diana. Inalienable Rights. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1985.
Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. 1859.
800
———. Utilitarianism. 1863. See especially chapter 4.
Nickel, James W. Making Sense of Human Rights. Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1987. Includes texts
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and rele-
vant subsequent treaties.
Nielsen, Kai. “On the Diversity of Moral Beliefs.” Cultural
Hermeneutics 2 (1974).
———. “Scepticism and Human Rights.” Monist 52
(1968): 573–94.
Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State and Utopia. New York:
Basic Books, 1974.
Perry, Michael J. The Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquir-
ies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Rachels, James, ed. Moral Problems. 3rd ed. New York:
Harper and Row, 1979. See his “Active and Passive
Euthanasia.”
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1971.
Rosenbaum, Alan S., ed. The Philosophy of Human
Rights: International Perspectives. Westport, CT: Green-
wood Press, 1980. Bibliography.
Shue, Henry. Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and
U.S. Foreign Policy. 2d ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1996 [1980].
Waldron, Jeremy, ed. Nonsense on Stilts. London: Me-
thuen, 1987. Bibliographical essay.
———, ed. Theories of Rights. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1984. Bibliography.
Walzer, Michael. Spheres of Justice. New York: Basic
Books, 1983.
Wellman, Carl. Real Rights. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1995.
———. A Theory of Rights: Persons Under Laws, Insti-
tutions, and Morals. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allen-
held, 1985.
———. Welfare Rights. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Little-
field, 1982.
Werhane, Patricia, et al., eds. Philosophical Issues in Hu-
man Rights. New York: Random House, 1986.
James W. Nickel
humanism
Today the word “humanism” is understood to mean
primarily a system of thought focusing on the value
and welfare of the human race, but this usage is not
found until the middle of the nineteenth century.
“Humanism” and the much older word “humanist”
were first used in a largely educational context. In
the late fifteenth century, the humanist was a teacher
of the studia humanitatis (grammar, rhetoric, his-
tory, poetry, and moral philosophy), although soon
the “humanist” label could be used of all scholars of

classical literature. By the eighteenth century the
word “humanist” also had a historical meaning and
covered almost any aspect of the intellectual life of
the Renaissance period. When the word “human-
ism” was coined in 1808 by F. J. Niethammer
(1766–1848) for his Der Streit des Philanthropin-
ismus und Humanismus in der Theories des Erzieh-
ungsunterrichts unserer Zeit, it was still with refer-
ence to education. Niethammer advocated humanist
education, which used the study of Greek and Latin
literature to cultivate reason, and opposed philan-
thropic education, which was vocational and sought
to cultivate the whole man. The significance of the
fact that today “humanism” is on the contrary largely
identified with philanthropy, in the sense of love of
humanity, can best be appreciated by returning to
the history of the word humanitas.
In classical Latin, the notion of humanitas was
used as a translation for two very different Greek
words, paideia (“education and training in the good
arts”) and philanthropia (“good-feeling toward all
men without distinction”). However, the Roman
grammarian Aulus Gellius (c. 123–170) appealed to
CICERO (106–43 B.C.E.) and Varro (116–27 B.C.E.),
in his argument that only the first was correct usage.
Furthermore, by describing those who genuinely
pursue education in the good arts as maximi hu-
manissimi (“most highly humanized”), Gellius au-
thorized a sense in which some are more human
than others. Although in the Middle Ages the word
humanitas was sometimes used in theological de-
bates about the humanity of Christ to designate a
quality all human beings shared, the Renaissance
humanists followed the classical precedent and dis-
missed this usage in favor of humanitas as an edu-
cational ideal. The fact that the latter conception lay
behind the so-called civilizing mission of Europeans
to races that they judged less human on the basis of
their customs and ideas suggests that disagreement
about the fundamental meaning of humanitas has
had a profound impact on world history. It is no
surprise to find that Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–
1803), who saw a connection between European EX-
PLOITATION of non-Europeans and a cosmopolitan
conception of the philosophy of history such as
KANT’s (1724–1804), attacked them both by pro-
posing an idea of Humanität that respected the
unique characteristics of individual peoples. Insofar
as the dominant sense of humanism today follows
the ethical ideal of philanthropia, according to which
801
humanism
all human beings are valued equally, it marks a re-
versal of the hierarchical model implicit in at least one
strand of the educational ideal of humanitas.
The history of the association of humanism with
ATHEISM is also worth examining. The Greeks, who
are often credited as the source and model for hu-
manism, lacked a clear conception of humanity. In-
sofar as they did have the concept, it tended to take
its starting point in the relation of the divine to the
human. (See PLATO [c. 427–347 B.C.E.], Laws 713d
and Symposium 189d.) Even Renaissance thinkers
like Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) and Pico della Mi-
randola (1463–1494) found it hard to divorce the
question of man from its theological context. Pico’s
treatise, known as Oration on the Dignity of Man,
may have placed man at the center of the world, but
the words in which he expressed this thought were
nevertheless attributed to God. Perhaps the decisive
step came only with Giambattista Vico (1668–
1774). No longer supposing that humankind could
be known only through God, Vico established the
new science of history as a way to gain knowledge
of humanity through its works. Once the human be-
ing is placed at the center not just of the world but
of history, it is a short step to maintaining that the
source of all human actions lies with humanity itself.
It is only at this point that the association of human-
ism with atheism becomes possible.
In addition to atheistic humanism, there are, for
example, Christian, secular, pragmatic, social, so-
cialist, existentialist, and personalist humanisms.
The word “humanism” is now also applied outside
of Western culture, particularly to CHINA. The re-
mainder of this article will be confined to those kinds
of humanism that have provoked the most interest-
ing philosophical debates in recent years.
Marxist and Socialist Humanism
Although Bruno Bauer (1809–1882) and espe-
cially Ludwig FEUERBACH (1804–1872) discussed
humanism explicitly, Karl MARX (1818–1883) must
be recognized as the first major thinker to subject
the notion of humanism to rigorous examination. In
the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of
1844, Marx distinguished three kinds of humanism.
Theoretical humanism (atheism) and practical hu-
manism (communism in the sense of the abolition
of private PROPERTY) were the preconditions for
“self-deriving” or “positive” humanism. The impact
humanism
of Vico’s dictum that “men make history” is clearly
apparent in this period of Marx’s development.
The debate about Marxist humanism revolves
around the question whether Marx’s early human-
ism was the foundation for the works that followed
or whether in 1845 there was a strong break in
Marx’s thought which led to a “theoretical anti-
humanism.” Louis Althusser (1918–1990) was the
foremost proponent of the latter alternative. Just as
the upholders of positive humanism maintain that
humankind is its own product, Althusser claims that
history should be understood as a process without a
subject. Within that process, the individual is simply
the bearer or support (Träger) of the relations of pro-
duction. Humans are not the makers of history so
much as the personifications of socioeconomic re-
lations. For example, the capitalist is “personified
capital.”
Existentialist Humanism and Twentieth-Century
Antihumanism
When in Existentialism and Humanism (1946),
Jean-Paul SARTRE (1905–1980) claimed that exis-
tentialism was a humanism, he started from socialist
humanism’s understanding of human beings at the
center of history. Sartre rejected those forms of hu-
manism that upheld the human being as an end in
itself and that were committed to the idea of a hu-
man essence. In its place, he proposed that the only
universe was that of human subjectivity: “Man can
realize himself as truly human.” Sartre’s 1946 lec-
ture provoked Martin HEIDEGGER (1889–1976) to
write his Letter on Humanism. Heidegger criticized
humanism for not setting the humanitas of human-
kind high enough. He referred the idea of the es-
sence of man beyond man to what he called the
“truth of Being.” A number of French thinkers took
their cue from Heidegger and also from Friedrich
NIETZSCHE’s (1844–1900) questioning of the idea
of subject. Michel FOUCAULT (1926–1984) was per-
haps the most outspoken of them. Whereas Heideg-
ger identified the beginnings of humanism with
Plato, Foucault understood it as a system for restrict-
ing the DESIRE of POWER and saw its origins in Ro-
man law. According to Foucault, the idea of man was
more recent, an invention of the nineteenth century;
he wrote of the end or “disappearance” of man as
having already been outlined by ethnology and
PSYCHOANALYSIS.
802
Civic Humanism
The term “civic humanism” received its definition
in 1955 from the historian Hans Baron (1900–
1988) in his controversial study The Crisis of the
Early Italian Renaissance. He focused on the redis-
covery of active citizenship and the reinterpretation
of Roman republicanism by certain Florentine think-
ers of the early fifteenth century. Among these were
Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), Leonardi Bruni
(1369–1444), and Bracciolini Poggio (1380–1459)
and their successors Francesco Guicciardini (1483–
1540) and Niccolò MACHIAVELLI (1469–1527).
Baron also recognized the importance of Venetian
civic humanism, in which Venice served as a model
for questions about the machinery of government.
Political scientists, like J. G. A. Pocock and Quentin
Skinner, took up Baron’s phrase and expanded it to
apply both to James Harrington (1611–1677) and
to the revival of republican thought in Federalist
America. The appeal of civic humanism to “com-
munitarian” philosophers like Charles Taylor lies in
its role as an alternative to liberal INDIVIDUALISM.
ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.), MONTESQUIEU (1689–
1755), ROUSSEAU (1712–1778), ARENDT (1906–
1975), and even HEGEL (1770–1831) are among
those whose names have been associated with the
concept of civic humanism, which is identified by
communitarians as a tradition of thought and not
just a phenomenon of the Renaissance period.
Religious Humanism and Secular Humanism
American PRAGMATISM has also played a role in
both defining and spreading humanism. At the be-
ginning of the twentieth century, first F. C. S. Schil-
ler (1864–1937) and then William JAMES (1842–
1910) used the term to describe their thought. In
1933, a group of thirty-four educators, including
John DEWEY (1859–1952), issued a humanist man-
ifesto now known as Manifesto I. Opposed to tra-
ditional THEISM, it called for a “religious humanism,”
which would look not to God or the gods but to
human experience for moral guidance. Forty years
later, another group of social commentators, includ-
ing B. F. Skinner (1904–1990), Brand Blanshard
(1892–1987), and Sidney Hook (1902–1989), co-
signed Manifesto II. Whereas Manifesto I seemed
designed more to answer objections to humanism,
Manifesto II, by contrast, was an attempt to address

the problems threatening the planet: “No deity will
save us; we must save ourselves.” The second man-
ifesto held ethics to be situational and autonomous:
“Ethics stems from human need and interest.” It
adopted a number of ethical positions affirming, for
example, birth control, EUTHANASIA, and the right
to ABORTION; it set itself against nationalism, racial
divisions, and sexual chauvinism. The second man-
ifesto spoke simply of humanism and not of “reli-
gious humanism,” or even of “secular humanism,” a
term which apparently was introduced in the 1960s.
Secular humanism gets its meaning not from the
contrast with the “religious humanism,” represented
by Manifesto I, a humanism with which it is roughly
equivalent, but from comparison with the attempts
religious thinkers have made to identify a humanistic
element in their thought. Such attempts reflect the
high regard in which a rather broad and largely un-
defined idea of humanism is still held.
See also: AUTONOMY OF ETHICS; CIVIC GOOD AND
VIRTUE; COMMUNITARIANISM; EXISTENTIAL ETHICS;
INDIVIDUALISM; MARX; MARXISM; SITUATION ETHICS;
SUBJECTIVISM.
Bibliography
Althusser, Louis. “Marxism and Humanism.” In his For
Marx, 221–41. London: New Left Books, 1977 (1965).
Baron, Hans. The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance.
Rev., one-vol. ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1966. Civic humanism.
Campana, Augusto. “The Origin of the Word ‘Humanist.’”
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 9
(1946): 60–73.
Fromm, Erich, ed. Socialist Humanism. London: Allen
Lane, 1967.
Gellius, Aulus. Attic Nights. Translated by John C. Rolfe.
London: Heinemann, 1948. Vol. II, Book 13, chapter
17.
Heidegger, Martin. “Letter on Humanism.” In Basic Writ-
ings, edited by D. F. Krell, 193–242. New York:
Harper and Row, 1977.
Humanist Manifesto I and II. Buffalo: Prometheus, 1973.
Imamichi, Tomonobu. “Die Idee des Humanismus im
Western und im Osten.” In Betrachtungen über das
Eine, 23–39. Tokyo: Institut der Aesthetik, 1968.
Kristeller, Paul Oskar. Renaissance Thought and Its
Sources. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.
See especially essays 1, 5, and 9.
Kurz, Paul. In Defense of Secular Humanism. Buffalo:
Prometheus, 1983.
Marx, Karl. “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts.”
803
Hume, David
In Early Writings, translated by R. Livingston and G.
Benton, 279–400. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
Pico della Mirandola. On the Dignity of Man. Translated
by Paul J. W. Miller. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965
[1486].
Pocock, J. G. A. The Machiavellian Moment. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975. Civic humanism.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism and Humanism. Lon-
don: Methuen, 1966.
Schurmann, Reiner. “Anti-Humanism: Reflections of the
Turn Towards the Post-Modern Epoch.” Man and
World 12 (1979): 160–77.
Skinner, Quentin. The Renaissance. Vol. 1 of The Foun-
dations of Modern Political Thought. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1978. Civic humanism.
Snell, Bruno. “The Discovery of Humanitas, and Our At-
titude Toward the Greeks.” In The Discovery of Mind,
246–63. New York: Harper and Row, 1960.
Robert Bernasconi
Hume, David (1711–1776)
Life and Works
David Hume, Scottish philosopher, came of “a
good Family,” as he wrote in his succinct, posthu-
mously published My Own Life (1777). His father,
Joseph Home, who died in David’s infancy, was a
small landowner, and “not rich.” David grew up on
the pleasant family estate, Ninewells, on the Whit-
adder river near Berwick. The Humes or Homes (the
spelling varied) had been involved in armed protest
against Bothwell and Mary, Queen of Scots, after the
murder of Darnley, and later in the Covenanters’ re-
bellion against Charles the First of England and
Scotland. David Hume was eventually, in his History
of England (1754–1762), to record the part played
by his ancestors in these various rebellions, criticiz-
ing both the conduct of the royal parties and that of
some of his unruly and zealous ancestors. Of the
Calvinist zeal that inspired the Covenanters, he
wrote: “The genius of that religion which prevailed
in Scotland was far from inculcating deference and
submission . . . rather, by nourishing in every indi-
vidual the highest raptures of devotion consecrated,
in a manner, every individual and in his own eyes
bestowed a character on him much superior to what
forms and ceremonies alone could confer” (H, V,
260). This was the religion in which David Hume,
his elder brother, John, and his sister, Katherine,
were raised by their widowed mother. She, Kather-
Hume, David
ine Falconer, “was daughter of Sir David Falconer,
President of the College of Justice,” and was “a
woman of singular merit who, though young and
handsome, devoted herself entirely to the rearing
and educating of her children.” She accompanied
her children to Edinburgh in 1722 when the boys
became students at Edinburgh University. Hume
writes: “My studious disposition, my sobriety and
my industry gave my family a notion that the law
was a proper profession for me; but I found an un-
surmountable aversion to everything but the pur-
suits of philosophy and general learning.”
After a breakdown in health, and a “very feeble
trial of entering into a more active scene of Life”
with a shipping firm in Bristol, in 1734 Hume “went
over to France with a view to prosecuting my studies
in a country retreat.” He finally settled in La Flèche,
and there his “slender fortune” and “a very rigid fru-
gality” enabled him “to maintain unimpaired my in-
dependence, and to regard every object as contempt-
ible, except the improvement of my talents in
literature.” There he finished writing A Treatise of
Human Nature, published in 1739. He had the use
of the library of the famous Jesuit school where DES-
CARTES (1596–1650) had studied, and he also had
the conversation of the Jesuits, some of whom, he
reports, he “very much gravelled” (i.e., perplexed or
confounded, L.I., 361) with his arguments about
miracles. Apprehensive friends persuaded him to
omit these arguments from his Treatise, but he in-
cluded them in his later Philosophical Essays Con-
cerning Human Understanding (1748; 1758, re-
vised and given the title Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding), where they continue to “gravel”
both religious and some nonreligious readers.
After the (anonymous) publication of his Trea-
tise, Hume returned home to Ninewells, and was dis-
appointed at his book’s lack of impact. It “fell dead-
born from the press, without such distinction as
even to excite a murmur among the zealots.” These
words of his indicate one constant purpose of
Hume’s writings, to combat the influence of “sacred
zeal and rancor.” His importance as a moral philos-
opher is due both to the thoroughgoing secular char-
acter of his ethics, and to his criticism of rationalism
in ethics. He saw such rationalism as an ally of the-
ology, and he tried to work out an alternative natu-
ralistic nontheological basis both for human knowl-
edge and for human morality. His target in most of
his philosophical writings is the version of ourselves
804
that we find, for example, in Descartes’s writings—
more-than-natural souls, whose powers of thought
and whose freedom of will are quasi-divine, quite
unlike animal capacities. In his Treatise, Hume in-
cluded sections on “Reason in Animals,” “Pride in
Animals,” and “Love in Animals,” deliberately lik-
ening our capacities to those of other animals, in-
deed making it a “touchstone” for any epistemology
that it be able to make sense of animal as well as
human performance, and to account for their “evi-
dent” continuities. No wonder he hoped for, and
eventually got, louder murmurs from the zealots!
This naturalism of Hume’s was not new in mod-
ern European philosophy, but a continuation of a
naturalist revolution begun by mechanist HOBBES
(1588–1679) and materialist or pan-psychist SPI-
NOZA (1632–1677), to both of whom Hume is ob-
viously indebted. (His references to them are cau-
tious and ironic. He writes of the “true atheism” for
which Spinoza is “universally infamous,” and he
notes that Hobbes, despite his “selfish system of
morals,” lived an irreproachable life, without “any
restraint of religion which might supply the defects
of his philosophy.”) Hume’s own naturalist version
of human persons and the morality by which we
judge each other is not a “selfish system,” and he
finds our religious propensities to be not a help but
a hindrance to our moral natures. He presents his
ethics as a superior alternative to a religion-based
morality; superior in content and also in the strength
of its foundations. Morality plays an important role
in Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature since it is our
moral capacity, more than anything else, that he
finds distinctive of human nature. Like Darwin
(1809–1882), who read him, he finds that our self-
critical “moral sentiment,” rather than our intellect,
distinguishes us most strikingly from other known
living things. He attributes to other animals forms
of the LOVE, PRIDE, SYMPATHY, and intelligence that
morality presupposes, but finds no real animal ana-
logue of moral evaluation. “Animals have little or no
sense of virtue or vice . . . and are incapable of that
of right or property” (G.G. II, 119). He contrasts
our cooperative social schemes, within which obli-
gations and rights arise, with the instinctive coop-
erative schemes of social animals. Justice and our
sense of justice, for Hume, are “artificial,” invented
to compensate for our distinctive lack of adequate
instincts for cooperation with nonkin.
Not only do our moral evaluations have no animal

analogues but also according to Hume, no divine an-
alogues. Whereas it is the moral sentiment’s depen-
dency on self-attention, forethought, self-conscious
design, and a special impartial point of view that he
thinks makes moral evaluation different from any
form of animal reason, animal passion, or their com-
binations, it is the fact that moral evaluation does
involve a special case of PASSION or sentiment, and
involves sympathy or fellow-feeling, that he sees to
exclude any divine beings from the class of moral
evaluators. In an early letter to Frances HUTCHESON
(1694–1746), he wrote, “since Morality, according
to your Opinion as well as mine, is determin’d
merely by Sentiment, it regards only human Nature
and human Life” (L.I., 40). In his posthumously
published Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
(1779) his character Philo repeats this skepticism
about the coherence of projecting human moral
standards and concerns, or animal fellow-feeling,
onto any hypothesized intelligent cause of the uni-
verse. Hume finds morality to be a distinctively hu-
man phenomenon. The human good is our concern
and our RESPONSIBILITY. The belief that some super-
being gives us moral guidance, and protects our in-
terests, is worse than baseless infantilism, if Hume
is right, for he sees it to have led to organized RE-
LIGION with all its “pernicious consequences on pub-
lic affairs. Factions, civil wars, persecutions, subver-
sions of government, OPPRESSION, slavery: these are
the dismal consequences which always attend its
prevalence over the minds of men. If the religious
spirit be ever mentioned in any historical narrative,
we can be sure to meet afterwards with a detail of
the miseries that attend it” (G.G. IV, 460). These are
Philo’s words, but they express Hume’s sentiments.
In his own historical narratives he gives plenty of
space to detailing the miseries that organized reli-
gion, especially monotheistic factions, have brought
on the human race.
Although Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion, in whose concluding section the bad ef-
fects of religion on morality are vividly described,
were published three years after Hume’s peaceful
cheerful death, some of his last energies were spent
arranging for their publication. He had worked on
them since about 1750. Between the Treatise, his
“firstborn,” and his posthumous child, the Dia-
logues, came the Essays Moral and Political (1741,
1742, 1748), Philosophical Essays Concerning Hu-
man Understanding (1748, later entitled An En-
805
Hume, David
quiry Concerning Human Understanding), An En-
quiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751),
Political Discourses (1752), Four Dissertations
(1757, which included his Natural History of Reli-
gion and Of the Standard of Taste), and The History
of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to
the Revolution in 1688, six volumes, (1754–1762).
Many of his essays and dissertations, and his two
Histories, contain much “thick” moral philosophy,
i.e., reflections on human morality in particular his-
torical and cultural settings. Hume’s moral philos-
ophy is grounded not just on his naturalist analysis
of human nature but on his historian’s findings
about varieties and alterations in human culture. In
his essays, and in his historical writings, he studied
human morality in a variety of economic, political,
social, and cultural settings. In the history of modern
moral philosophy he stands among the select few
who supplemented their more abstract narrowly
“philosophical” enquiries into morality not just with
political, economic, social, and cultural commen-
tary, but with a serious study of history. By the time
of his death he was a successful and well-known
writer, and known primarily as a historian.
He failed in his attempts to obtain an academic
appointment as a professor of philosophy (in Edin-
burgh in 1744, and in Glasgow in 1751), and he lost
his position as librarian at the Advocates’ Library,
Edinburgh (1752–1757) after being charged with
having purchased “indecent Books, unworthy of a
place in a learned Library” (one was La Fontaine’s
[1621–1695] Contes [1665]). In Scotland his rep-
utation as a dangerous freethinker, acquired by the
Treatise, continued to the end. But it is hard to regret
his failure to get or keep a niche in any ivory tower
in Scotland, when that failure led him to the sort of
employment that gave him the worldly experience
informing his later writings. He was a military sec-
retary in Europe (1746–1748), secretary at the Brit-
ish Embassy in Paris (1763–1766), and he spent a
year (1767) in London as an Undersecretary of
State. His early training in law, his brief trial of com-
merce, his diplomatic and other work in public life,
as well as his wide reading and his historical re-
searches, all contributed to the understanding of hu-
man customs and human capacities that inform his
later writings, and those earlier ones that he contin-
ued to revise and polish throughout his life.
At the end of his life, in his autobiography, he
gave it as “my own opinion (who ought not to judge
Hume, David
on that subject)” that the Enquiry Concerning the
Principles of Morals (1751) “is of all my writings,
historical, philosophical, or literary, incomparably
the best” (G.G. III, 4). In this work Hume combines
literary and philosophical subtlety, and turns to clas-
sical historians for many of the examples of good or
bad human characters which enrich the book’s nar-
rowly philosophical claims. Not many of Hume’s
philosopher readers have agreed with his judgment
about the book’s merits. That may be because they
are accustomed to being given their moral philoso-
phy “pure,” without literary “artifice” and without
so much historical example. Few historians and lit-
erary critics read this Enquiry, and philosophers
have tended to prefer the Treatise. At the end of the
latter, Hume had expressed doubts about the impact
of his “minute dissections” of morality in that work,
fearing that his “cold anatomical” treatment of mo-
rality might make it appear more “hideous” than he
believed it really to be. So he there more or less
promises us another work on the same subject, in
which he would emulate the portrait painter not the
anatomist, so as to give his reader “a just notion of
the happiness as well as the dignity of virtue and . . .
interest every principle in our nature in the embrac-
ing and cherishing of that noble quality” (G.G. II,
373). His favorite Enquiry does try to interest every
principle; passion as well as reason, literary and his-
torical sensibility as well as philosophical interest,
and practical concern in what he is writing about. It
is no mere intellectual analysis of moral judgment.
It repeats the claim made in the Treatise that moral
evaluations express a special sentiment, so that our
passions and sensibilities as well as our reason and
good sense are exercised when we pronounce as
moral judges. In making that claim, the Enquiry
Concerning the Principles of Morals, unlike Book
Three of the Treatise, tries to exercise and appeal to
the same rich set of human capacities that Hume
believed were involved in their subject matter, moral
evaluation itself. In this “best” of his writings, Hume
tries to make moral evaluation fully reflective—to
turn on to morality all the human capacities that are
involved in morality. So it is a book that displays the
broad sympathies and expresses the transcultural
fellow-feeling that Hume thinks morality itself calls
into play. It is expressive of calm, informed senti-
ment as well as being about calm, informed senti-
ment, and it has literary as well as intellectual intri-
cacy. This makes it a rich and challenging text.
806
The summary of Hume’s views that follows will
largely abstract from the differences between their
Treatise and their Enquiry presentation, but true stu-
dents of Hume will want to study the differences
made by Hume’s self-consciously varied styles of
presentation, differences that Hume himself cer-
tainly thought important. He came to regret the
“manner” of his Treatise’s presentation of his subject
matter, and believed that the less purely intellectual
manner of the Enquiry was more appropriate. There
had indeed been a sort of “contradiction” between
Hume’s abstruse intellectual manner in the Treatise
and the matter he presented there, in particular the
famous thesis that “Reason is, and ought only to be
the slave of the passions” (G.G. II, 195). This thesis,
and its particular application to morality, are pre-
sented with more warm, expressive rhetoric in the
Enquiry than in the Treatise, and his theses about
morality’s employment of artifices to give our pas-
sions nondestructive satisfaction are more artfully
and less offensively advanced in the later work. The
“matter” remains more or less unchanged, but the
manner changes rather dramatically. He had prac-
ticed this sort of writing, which has more than purely
intellectual goals, in the essays he published before
the Enquiry. Some of these, such as “Of the Delicacy
of Taste and Passion,” “Of the Dignity and Meanness
of Human Nature,” “Of the Rise and Progress of the
Arts and Sciences,” the four essays culminating in
“The Skeptic,” and the provocative, soon withdrawn
“Of Moral Prejudices,” contain material that helps
us fill out Hume’s views in ethics, as well as giving
us instances of his experimentation in nonabstruse
styles of writing on moral matters.
Moral Philosophy
Hume claims that by a special moral sentiment
we respond, with welcome and encouragement, to
particular “characters” (what we would call CHAR-
ACTER or personality traits) in each other. These ap-
proved traits we call VIRTUES, and what makes them
virtues is the fact that they evoke our “pleasing sen-
timent of approbation.” This approbation has “a
productive quality, and gilding and staining all nat-
ural objects with colors taken from internal senti-
ment raises, in a manner, a new creation” (G.G. IV,
265). Hume here likens our moral taste to our aes-
thetic taste. The latter can gild “all natural objects,”
but our moral sentiments are restricted in their ob-

jects to human character traits and behavior express-
ing them. From these naturally given “objects”
which our understanding can “find,” the sentiment
of moral approbation “produces” virtues, by its gild-
ing, by its sharing of its own “colors” with its objects.
Hume’s own philosophical findings, in such pas-
sages, confirm his earlier thesis in Book One of the
Treatise that “the mind has a great propensity to
spread itself on external objects, and to conjoin with
them any internal impressions which they occasion”
(G.G. I, 461). The “objects” on which the mind
spreads its moral sentiments are lasting character
traits, which may already have had other internal
impressions projected on them, in our intellectual
viewing of them. (Hume also sees causal necessity,
and the identity over time of things not continuously
under our attention, as “products” of our projection-
prone minds.) Our moral projections add to our
other more “cognitive” projections. Hume is no
more nonrealist about moral virtues than he is about
causal necessity, or about the identity over time of
physical objects and even of ourselves as persons.
Like KANT (1724–1804), he traces fundamental fea-
tures of the human world to features of the human
mind. Unlike Kant, he traces its moral features to
our informed passions and sentiments, rather than
to the understanding, to “pure reason,” or to purely
rational will.
Hume’s projectionist treatment of virtues qua vir-
tues is combined with his “attempt to introduce the
experimental method of reasoning into moral sub-
jects” (subtitle of his Treatise). A “scientific” MORAL
PSYCHOLOGY, an “experimental” (experience-based)
knowledge of human motivation, of “contrariety” in
human passions, of the human capacity and need for
sympathy, of the range of human personality and
character traits, are prerequisites for a fully reflec-
tive morality. Once we see the human repertoire of
character traits clearly, and understand their causal
conditions and consequences, we can agree, Hume
believes, about which of them should be approved
as virtues. (In “Of the Standard of Taste” he shows
how we can agree about artistic merit.) His list of
“agreed” virtues is in some respects controversial,
indeed revolutionary. It is neither ARISTOTLE’s (384–
322 B.C.E.) list, nor THOMAS AQUINAS’s (1225?–
1274). (Not surprisingly, it is closer to Hobbes’s and
Spinoza’s lists.) Good sense, knowledge, wit, elo-
quence, humanity, FIDELITY, truth, COURAGE (pref-
erably off the battlefield), TEMPERANCE, constancy,
807
Hume, David
DIGNITY of mind; this is the short list of cross-
culturally agreed virtues that he gives us in “A Dia-
logue,” a short, “whimsical” (L. I.145) piece whose
topic is moral agreement and apparent disagree-
ment, published along with An Enquiry Concerning
the Principles of Morals. His longer lists in the Trea-
tise and the Enquiry add justice, honesty (in prop-
erty matters), obedience to legitimate rulers and their
laws, sociability, good nature, MERCY, GRATITUDE,
kindness, tenderness, friendliness, GENEROSITY, be-
neficence, INTEGRITY, moderate chastity combined
with sexual enterprise, other sorts of enterprise, dis-
cretion, caution, industry, assiduity, frugality, econ-
omy, PRUDENCE, discernment, sobriety, patience, per-
severance, forethought, considerateness, “secrecy”
(capacity to keep a secret), order, “insinuation and
address,” presence of mind, quickness of concep-
tion, ingenuity, facility of expression, veracity, good
judgment, a selective memory, a proud spirit, disdain
of SLAVERY, serenity, magnanimity, avoidance of
quarrel and scolding, disdain of fortune, the poetic
skill to move an audience to sympathetic passions,
sensibility to poetry, delicacy of taste, politeness,
liveliness in conversation, humor, avoidance of lo-
quacity, modest ambition, mutual deference and
“decency, or a proper regard to age, sex, character,
and station in the world” (G.G. IV, 243), cleanliness,
and “a manner, an ease, a genteelness, an I know-
not-what, which is very different from external
beauty and comeliness and which, however, catches
our affection almost as suddenly and powerfully”
(G.G. IV, 244).
This (partial) list includes some characteristics
that the puritans among Hume’s fellow Scots would
not include in their lists of virtues, and it excludes
some that they would put high on their lists. Hume
goes out of his way to demote “celibacy, fasting, pen-
ance, mortification, self-denial, HUMILITY, silence,
solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues”
(G.G. IV, 246) into vices, and he expresses serious
reservations about the traditional virtue of martial
bravery. The cost of encouraging it, he says, is the
likely destruction of “sentiments of humanity,” and
it is responsible for “infinite confusions and disorder
. . . the subversion of empires, the devastation of
provinces, the sack of cities” (G.G. II, 357). Like
Hobbes’s list, Hume’s list of virtues is a list of the
qualities of peacemakers, not of warmakers. Neither
Calvinists, nor monks, nor generals would be happy
with Hume’s list.
Hume, David
Others who query his list are those moralists who
put great weight on the question of whether or not
a trait is “voluntary,” controllable by will. Hume in-
cludes, and defends his inclusion of, many traits that
others would regard as god-given or nature-given
talents or abilities, not moral virtues. Both the fact
that wit, for example, may seem more a matter of
the head than the heart, and the fact that a person
may not be able by effort of will to make herself any
wittier, may make us hesitant to call the evaluation
“witty” a moral evaluation. Hume sees no good rea-
son to draw any sharp lines here. Most of our qual-
ities, of heart as much as of head, are, he believes,
“involuntary and necessary,” and so are not likely to
be changed by moral scolding. In any case, he writes,
only those moralists who first unite their ethics
closely with their theology, and then treat “all morals
on a like footing with civil laws, guarded by the sanc-
tions of reward and punishment” (G.G. IV, 287),
will see moral evaluation as essentially a preliminary
to reward or PUNISHMENT, and so reserved for what
can be influenced by the prospects of reward or pun-
ishment. Hume does not see moral evaluation to
serve this questionable social purpose (extra COER-
CION beyond that which law enforcement involves),
so he sees no reason why it should be restricted to
“voluntary” traits. What he calls “personal merit”
includes every quality of mind or psyche that a per-
son is pleased to have sincerely attributed to her (by
those who do not wish her ill): “Whoever said, ex-
cept by way of irony, that such a one was a man of
virtue, but an egregious blockhead?” (G.G. VI,
280). If we dread being deemed fools as much as,
or more than, we dread being deemed dishonest or
intemperate, then foolishness counts as a vice, dis-
approved by “the moral sentiment.” We “blame” a
person for bad character traits, but this “blaming” is
simply expressing moral displeasure, negative eval-
uation. Hume’s version of moral judgment is de-
signed to be acceptable to determinists, and to non-
theists. That very fact tends to make it unacceptable
to Kantian voluntarists and to theists who unite their
theology to their ethics.
Hume’s list of virtues puts considerable emphasis
not just on what Hobbes called “complaisance,”
qualities that help us get along without undue fric-
tion with our fellows, but also on charm, and ability
to please and entertain. The “agreeable” as well as
the “useful” traits are included in Hume’s list and he
reduces neither category to the other. In one passage
808
in the official “Conclusion” of the Enquiry Concern-
ing the Principles of Morals, Hume writes of virtue’s
own “genuine and engaging charms,” that should en-
able us to welcome her with “ease, familiarity and
affection. The dismal dress falls off, with which
many divines and some philosophers have covered
her; and nothing appears but gentleness, humanity,
beneficence, affability; nay even at proper intervals,
play, frolic and gaiety” (G.G. IV, 254). Philosophers
more impressed than Hume with the reasons for de-
manding “austerities and rigours, suffering and self-
denial” are sometimes offended by the very idea of
a frolicsome morality. Passages such as this made
him many enemies in his native Calvinist Scotland,
just as it made him friends in more playful Paris.
(They did not, however, weaken his many close
friendships with other “enlightened” Scots, includ-
ing several ministers of the Church of Scotland.)
One important group of virtues, those he calls
“artificial,” do involve constraint, even if not long-
term self-sacrifice. In general, Hume writes, we do
not call a welcome trait a virtue unless it is a char-
acteristic that we take to be fairly “natural,” or nor-
mal, and thus frequently found in human popula-
tions. (It would be perverse or masochistic of us to
value in ourselves only what we are most unlikely to
find.) Useful and agreeable traits, such as parental
solicitude, gratitude, and facility of expression, are
the norm rather than the exception in human per-
sons, and in welcoming them we are welcoming
what “nature” provides without any special contri-
vance by human planners—at most, parents, plan-
ners, and educators are responsible for giving these
traits free play, and removing any obstacles to their
“natural” emergence in us. But “nature” has not
given us every characteristic that we need in order
to live well in company with one another. Indeed,
Hume thinks “nature” gives us the passion of love
of gain, which creates conflict and opposition of in-
terests between us, unless it is regulated and “arti-
ficially” transformed.
In order to avoid mutually disadvantageous tus-
sles for possession, we sensibly agree on some
“whole plan or scheme of actions” that succeeds in
making possession secure, even when there is con-
siderable inequality and arbitrariness in the rights
the scheme allots. This general acceptance of a co-
operative scheme is what Hume calls a “conven-
tion,” which is “only a general sense of common in-
terest; which sense all members of a community

express to one another, and which induces them to
regulate their conduct by certain rules. I observe that
it will be in my interest to leave another in posses-
sion of his goods provided he will act in the same
manner in regard to me. He is sensible of a like in-
terest in the regulation of his conduct. When this
common sense of interest is mutually express’d and
is known to both, it produces a suitable resolution
and behavior” (G.G. II, 263). In this concise passage
Hume anticipates many later game-theoretical ac-
counts of social coordination problems and their so-
lution. It has rightly become one of the classic pas-
sages in modern moral philosophy.
Hume emphasizes that this “agreement” to co-
ordination through regulation in our acquisitive be-
havior is “not of the nature of a promise,” since he
takes PROMISES to be special penalty-incorporating
private binding agreements that themselves “arise
from human conventions.” He likens our acceptance
of property CONVENTIONS to the coordination of
rowers, to acceptance of the conventions of our na-
tive language, and of a particular monetary currency.
In all these cases the agreement is usually unspoken,
almost automatic. All these conventions could have
been other than they are without being the better or
the worse for that. All enable those who accept them
to do things they otherwise could not do (row to-
gether, make gifts, trade, speak, read, buy, sell),
things that improve and civilize human life. In the
elaboration of his account of this artificial “justice,”
Hume goes on from the invention of PROPERTY
rights to rights to voluntary disposal and exchange
of property, to the invention of promise as a special
device enabling us to securely dispose of or exchange
future goods and services, and only after these to the
invention of magistrates with their “authority” to de-
clare and enforce law. Magistrates are invented to
protect the other artifices, and to arrange new large-
scale schemes of cooperation where these are seen
to be needed (“thus bridges are built, harbours
opened; ramparts rais’d, canals formed” [G.G. II,
304]). In his essays and in the History of England
he continues with this analysis of the way basic so-
cial artifices need supplementation by further arti-
fices—a free press is needed and invented to curb
the excesses of governments, but itself has dangers
that invite new corrective artifices, and so on. The
line of thought begun in Part II of Book Three of the
Treatise of Human Nature was a fruitful one, both
for Hume and for later thinkers.
809
Hume, David
Hume is clearly indebted to Hobbes in his ac-
count of the “artificial” virtues. But there are impor-
tant disagreements. Hobbes has no place and sees
no need for a moral sentiment to check the accept-
ability of his one artifice, the all-powerful state. Rea-
son and the dictates of rational self-interest are sub-
mitted to no further check in Hobbes’s rational,
sentiment-free “selfish system.” So Hobbes’s META-
ETHICS, his way of determining the content of mo-
rality, is rejected by Hume, who distinguishes be-
tween what he somewhat confusingly calls the
natural obligation to which an accepted convention
gives rise and the moral obligation to conform to
that convention. For there to be any moral obliga-
tion, the cooperative scheme must not only be in
each person’s interest, compared with the absence
of any scheme, but it must be subject to correction
by the sympathy-dependent moral sentiment and
prepared for by an informed and impartial look at
the particular costs and benefits to the public inter-
est, and to all concerned. Social institutions such as
slavery would fail this test, however efficiently they
might divide labor, increase productivity and even
sometimes get the more or less willing cooperation
of the slaves themselves. Hume subjects the findings
of reason, in the form of rational calculations of self-
interest, to a check by passion in the form of the
moral sentiment, this even in his account of the ar-
tificial virtues, where reason in the service of our
passions plays a most important role.
Hume disagrees with Hobbes also on the nature
and scope of the problem that social artifice must
solve. It is therefore not surprising that his solution
also differs—not one all-powerful state, but several
progressively mutually corrective artifices, among
which binding covenant is neither the first nor the
most fundamental, and the state only one. The
scope of the problem solved by Hume’s version of
acceptable social artifice is limited to the opposi-
tion in passion and ACTION caused mainly by one
human passion, the desire for gain, or “the inter-
ested passion,” in whose satisfaction we display
“selfishness and confin’d generosity.” (Hume also
allows that reproductive drives get “artificial” regu-
lation, in marriage.) Other powerful human pas-
sions, such as love of one’s friends, lovers, and chil-
dren, both affect the form that avidity for gain takes
and provide motivational force in their own right.
For example, in his eventually withdrawn essay, “Of
Avarice,” Hume had written that avarice, a vicious
Hume, David
form of the desire to “go on heaping up possessions
on possessions,” “generally prevails in old men, or
in men of cold tempers, where all the other affec-
tions are extinct” (G.G. IV, 393). The opposition
which Humean conventions of justice are designed
to solve is not that between Hobbist egoists, each
with an insatiable desire for POWER, but between
persons whose behavior in respect of scarce re-
sources is affected by “unequal affections.” Hume
sees the strength of our concern for “our nearest
friends” to contribute to the problem justice is to
solve, but he also sees this concern as helping make
a solution possible. The limits of our generosity
help pose the problem, the fact that we are selec-
tively generous, and that this ALTRUISM to friends
and FAMILY is accompanied by spontaneous coop-
eration with them, provides one precondition of the
solution. For to have good reason to accept a
society-wide scheme of cooperation, a person must
have knowledge from experience of the possibility
of some mutual TRUST and of the benefits cooper-
ation can bring. “But in order to form society, ’tis
requisite not only that it be advantageous, but also
that men be sensible of its advantages” (G.G. II,
259). The small natural society of parents and chil-
dren, or pairs or groups of friends, provides this
requisite, experience-based knowledge.
Hume supposes the persons who accept property
conventions to be already familiar with the benefits
of some forms of cooperation, and with the human
capacity for trust:
When therefore men have had experience
enough to observe that, whatever may be the
consequence of a single act of justice
perfom’d by a single person, yet the whole
scheme of actions, concurr’d in by the whole
society, is infinitely advantageous to the
whole and to every part; it is not long before
justice and property take place. Every
member of society is sensible of his interest:
Everyone expresses this interest to his
fellows, along with the resolution he has
taken of squaring his actions by it, on
condition that others do the same. No more
is requisite to induce any one of them to
perform an act of justice, who has the first
opportunity. This becomes an example to
others. Thus justice establishes itself. (G.G.
II, 270)
810
Hume’s justice-initiators are certainly not mutu-
ally fearful egoists, new to cooperation and trust, but
experienced cooperators, each confident enough to
be first performer, to set an example, trusting that
“others are to imitate my example.”
Hume emphasizes that the circumstances of his
version of justice are moderate not extreme scarcity,
and moderate not unlimited selfishness:
Reverse, in any considerable circumstances,
the condition of men: Produce extreme
abundance or extreme scarcity: Implant in
the human breast perfect moderation and
humanity, or perfect rapaciousness and
malice: By rendering justice totally useless,
you thereby totally destroy its essence, and
suspend its obligation upon mankind. (G.G.
IV, 183)
Like Hobbes, Hume supposes that the point of
rules or conventions of “justice” is to control human
competition for scarce resources. Like him, too, he
supposes that the obligations of justice must be ac-
companied by the reasonable expectation of “utility”
or “advantages” not just for the group, but for each
member of it, for there to be reason to expect every-
one’s concurrence in the cooperative scheme. Unlike
Hobbes, he takes the problem that the first artifice
is to solve to arise from competition for scarce ex-
ternal goods, not also from competition for honor.
Vanity or pride, which needs to be “seconded” by
the esteem of others, is “a social passion and a bond
of union among men” (G.G. II, 491). The problem
the first social artifice is to solve is not of the sort
that game theorists call “prisoner’s dilemma,” but
rather a coordination and assurance problem. Co-
operation in stabilizing possession is not a second-
best option adopted by persons who would prefer to
dispossess all their fellows in order to become sole
possessors, but an option at least as good as any
other, if only coordination can be achieved.
In a sense, Hume agrees with Hobbes that we
cannot rely on CONTRACTS unless there is some pen-
alty for breach of contract. But since he does not see
the most fundamental agreements to be contractual,
nor see contract itself as any more important than
other convention-created imposers of obligation,
penalty plays a much less crucial role in his account
of justice than in Hobbes’s. The most powerful
penalty-involving artifice that Hume describes is, of

course, that of human authorities, official rule de-
clarers and rule enforcers. He repeatedly denies that
there is any good reason to see this useful coercive
social invention, the state, as deriving its moral force
from that other useful coercive social device, con-
tract. “To obey the civil magistrate is requisite to
preserve order and concord in society. To perform
promises is requisite to beget mutual trust and con-
fidence in the common offices of life. The ends, as
well as the means, are perfectly distinct, nor is the
one subordinate to the other” (G.G. II, 308). This is
Hume’s verdict, repeated later and classically in “Of
the Original Contract,” on CONTRACTARIANISM in
political theory. Allegiance to one’s country is dis-
tinct from “fidelity to promises,” and both are dis-
tinct from the natural virtue of faithfulness to one’s
friends. Like contractarians, Hume takes all morality
to be something that sensible people “agree” about.
Unlike them, he finds that only part of morality, jus-
tice, rests on an initially self-interested implicit re-
ciprocal agreement, and he believes that even that
must be ratified by the sympathy-dependent moral
sentiment before it becomes morally binding. Again,
unlike contractarians, he does not take contract as
the paradigm of a binding agreement. He disagrees
with Hobbes and many others on the role that pen-
alty should play in solving assurance problems and
making cooperation secure. “The sword” plays a
much less dominant role in his social philosophy
than in Hobbes’s.
Who are to be RIGHT HOLDERS, subjects of jus-
tice, and citizens? Hume’s interesting answer to this
important question is that we must include all and
only those who can “make us feel the effects of their
resentment” (G.G. IV, 185) if they are excluded,
while they are still being relied on for labor or other
services. He applies this criterion to determine that
animals are not right holders, so can suffer no in-
justice from us (while they can be victims of our
CRUELTY or inhumanity), and that women, who fre-
quently are enslaved and “rendered incapable of all
property, in opposition to their lordly masters”
(G.G. IV, 186), do have sufficient capacity for resis-
tance and for resentment-fueled punitive strikes to
be included in any cooperative social scheme that
we can expect to be stable. Women have the power,
Hume announces, to break any male confederacy
against them, and so “share with the other sex in all
the rights and privileges of society.” This power
comes not just from their “insinuation address and
811
Hume, David
charms” (all can be virtues, for Hume), but also
from the fact that no individual “possesses in himself
every faculty, requisite both for his own preservation
and for the propagation of his kind.” As Hume
stresses when discussing the reason for demanding
chastity in wives, men are vulnerably dependent on
women for knowledge that they have propagated
their kind. Women’s resentment, then, is peculiarly
to be feared. “Men’s views” of justice get “enlarged,”
Hume writes, when they reflect on their dependency.
There are, then, many ways in which women are
commonly able to break the confederacy. Both the
recognition of the existence of male conspiracies,
and the confident proclamation of women’s ability
to break them so as to claim social EQUALITY, are
pretty remarkable divergences, on Hume’s part,
from a long philosophical tradition of defense of the
existing patriarchal society and the subordination of
women. Hume here returns to the theme of his essay
“Of Moral Prejudices,” the extent of women’s power,
and of eighteenth-century European women’s ability
and willingness to resist domination.
Radical as Hume’s social philosophy is in its
clever campaigns against the entrenched power of
churches and patriarchs, it is conservative about the
proper means for effecting social change. He is no
advocate of violent overthrow, even of oppressive
powers. In his philosophical and historical writings
he shows great interest in social change, and some-
times retrospectively welcomes rebellions and rev-
olutions, but he is skeptical of any rebel’s ability to
be confident that more good than harm will come
from violent rebellion. What he takes to (some-
times) justify rebellion is tyranny, the overconcen-
tration or abuse of power. Though he shows sym-
pathy with those who protest great inequalities of
wealth, he judges that the cost of trying to prevent
it without removing incentive to industry would be
too great. Constant redistribution to preserve equal-
ity would require “a most rigorous inquisition” and
“a most severe jurisdiction,” and “so much authority
must soon degenerate into tyranny” (G.G. IV, 188).
Tyranny and a climate of violence are judged to be
worse evils than inequality of wealth, so only tyranny
can justify armed rebellion. Even then: “’Tis cer-
tainly impossible for the laws, or even for philoso-
phy, to establish any particular rules by which we
can know when resistance is lawful” (G.G. II, 325).
In his History of England, which traces the origins
and checkered history of that “plan of liberty,” the
Hume, David
English constitution, he finds no steady progress,
and such progress as there has been to have come
about as much from the going awry of human plans
as from the successful implementation of policies of
reform. At the end of his life he wrote to Edward
Gibbon (1737–1794), praising the first volume of
his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–
1788), warning him that the chapters concerning
the Christian religion might retard the book’s suc-
cess with the public, and remarking that “among
other marks of Decline, the Prevalence of Supersti-
tion in England prognosticates the fall of Philosophy
and the Decay of Taste” (L, II, 31). Another decline
and fall is seen to be under way, at least in Europe.
(Hume welcomed the rebellion of Britain’s Ameri-
can colonies, and perhaps optimistically taking
Benjamin Franklin [1706–1790] to be a typical
American, expressed to him hopes for a rise in phil-
osophical taste among American readers.)
This pessimism or near fatalism of his political
philosophy is of a piece with his downplaying of the
role of human choice in his philosophy more gen-
erally. All our actions are seen as having causal ex-
planations in our motives and beliefs, themselves
caused ultimately by factors outside the individual
human agent. What is more, few of these causes of
our actions are seen to be modifiable, once we are
adults, by rewards and punishment. We are not eas-
ily reformed. Such moral improvement schemes as
Hume sees to succeed, namely, the artifices of prop-
erty, promise, and the rest, succeed by redirecting a
potentially troublesome passion, not by inhibiting,
let alone extirpating it. Our moral capacity, as Hume
understands it, is the capacity to recognize and dis-
like our faults or vices, but not necessarily to cure
them; to welcome and perhaps preserve our agree-
able and useful virtues, but not to will them into
existence. The calm moral sentiment registers our
vices and our virtues, with resignation rather than
indignation at the former, with lively appreciation of
the latter. Hume has his skeptic reflect: “Shall we
engage ourselves in it (human life) with passion and
anxiety? It is not worth so much concern. Shall we
be indifferent about what happens? We lose all the
pleasure of the game by our phlegm and careless-
ness” (G.G. III, 231).
Hume’s use of the word “utility” in his moral the-
ory has inclined some to classify him as a utilitarian,
and BENTHAM (1748–1832) certainly saw himself as
following Hume’s lead. Hume shows no wish either
812
to reduce the “agreeable” virtues to the “useful”
ones, nor the reverse. Referring to our recognition
of the group of virtues that are “agreeable” to their
possessors, he writes “no views of utility or of future
beneficial consequences enter into this sentiment of
approbation, yet it is of a kind similar to that other
sentiment which arises from views of a public or
private utility” (G.G. IV, 239). Hume never suggests
that the moral sentiment reaches its verdict by using
any sort of hedonic calculus. Only justice, among the
virtues, need involve any sort of accounting, any
summing of costs and of benefits. Hume writes that
to “pave the way” for the moral sentiment’s recog-
nition of virtues, “it is often necessary, we find, that
much reasoning should precede, that nice distinc-
tions be made, just conclusions drawn, distant com-
parisons formed, complicated relations examined,
and general facts fixed and ascertained” (G.G. IV,
172). This intellectual preliminary to the “final sen-
tence” pronounced by the moral sentiment sounds
less monotonic than Bentham’s moral arithmetic,
and certainly involves the sort of comparisons JOHN
STUART MILL (1806–1873) called comparisons of
quality rather than quantity of PLEASURE. If Hume
is to be seen as any sort of utilitarian, then he is
neither an act nor a rule utilitarian, but a character
trait utilitarian. His moral philosophy, however, is
free of the reductionistic drive animating most
utilitarians.
The special satisfaction that we take, according
to Hume, in character traits that are either agreeable
or useful (or both) to their possessors or to their
fellows (or to both), is a “calm” pleasure, or a “sen-
timent,” so calm, indeed, that some have confused
it with cool reason. The term “reason,” as Hume uses
it, primarily refers to our capacity for inference, be
that “demonstration” (which traces “relations of
ideas”) or causal inference (which traces causal
trains of events, or estimation of probability). For
any motivation to action, and for any evaluative re-
action, “reason” must “concur” with some “pas-
sion”; the “head” must work for the “heart.” Moral
judgment expresses a metapassion, a joy or grief
taken in other passions, the ones motivating some
human behavior, or otherwise expressed in it. “When
we praise any actions, we regard only the motives
that produced them, and consider the actions as
signs or indications of certain principles in the mind
and temper” (G.G. II, 252). For the praise to be of
“the moral quality” of these motives or passions, a

special point of view must be adopted, a “steady and
general” one from which we can “over-look [i.e.,
look beyond] our own interest” (G.G. II, 340–41)
and correct for the PARTIALITY of our affections and
sympathies. Because we must try to do this, when
we make any moral evaluation, we can reasonably
expect that our standards of moral merit “may not
admit of so great a variation” (G.G. II, 342), both
from time to time and from person to person, as
evaluations made from purely personal or sectional
points of view. Thus a moral judge “expresses sen-
timents in which he expects all his audience are to
concur with him” (G.G. IV, 248). For his judgment
to count as moral, he must “depart from his private
and particular situation, and must choose a point of
view common to him with others; he must move
some universal principle of the human frame, and
touch a string to which all mankind have an accord
and harmony.” Hume thinks we can succeed in this
attempt at harmony in judgment, that we can move
and be moved by “some universal principle,” and so
can agree in our lists of virtues.
Our ability to agree in admiration of character
traits from a moral viewpoint builds on the non-
moral agreement that we have concerning what we
can be proud of, and what makes a person lovable
or admirable. In Book Two of the Treatise, and in
the Dissertation on the Passions, Hume had ex-
plored the way our pride needs and gets “seconding”
by others who can sympathize with our reasons for
it, and his first discussions of virtue and of vice occur
in that context. Our attitudes to our passions would
be “absurd,” he writes, if we could not admire an-
other for what we would be proud to have, and
could not sympathize with each other’s passions
(G.G. II, 123). This premoral “correspondence” of
human passions makes even pride into “a social pas-
sion,” and prepares the way for moral agreement.
The phenomenon of disagreement in what pur-
ports to be moral judgment was of course one Hume
could not deny. “A Dialogue” is devoted to explain-
ing it away. Since his characterization of the senti-
ment that moral judgments express is so complex
(and similar in its formal requirements to those his
contemporary and temporary friend ROUSSEAU
[1712–1778] imposes on “the General Will”), and
since the point of view that must be taken before it
can calmly move us is so hard to attain, and so hard
to be confident one has attained, Hume can explain
much apparent disagreement as due to failure to
813
Hume, David
adopt a really impartial and properly informed view-
point. That our views have been contaminated by
religion, he claims, explains many disputes that pa-
rade as moral ones. Agreement could be reasonably
expected only once self-interest and partiality of af-
fections are properly discounted, and human minds
and hearts “free from the illusions of religious su-
perstition or philosophical enthusiasm.” Hume dis-
misses the admitted variations in the form taken by
the artificial virtues, and so by the obligations they
involve, as mostly unimportant differences, not
showing genuine moral disagreement. Since these
obligations arise from useful conventions, and al-
ways incorporate some arbitrariness and some ef-
fects of historical happenstance, sensible people will
expect and tolerate variation there. Ancient Greece
will have adopted a different version of sexual chas-
tity from eighteenth-century Scotland, as it will have
had different property laws. “By tracing matters . . .
a little higher, and examining the first principles” we
will find agreement on the need for some convention
to regulate sexual intercourse, possession and dis-
possession, killing, and ruling and being ruled.
Hume brushes aside cultural differences in the TOL-
ERATION of adultery, HOMOSEXUALITY, SUICIDE, ty-
rannicide, as expected variations, compatible with
cross-cultural moral agreement on “higher” moral
matters. His judgments of what is morally more and
less important are as radical as the inclusions and
exclusions in his list of “agreed” virtues.
Notorious as a critic of traditional rationalist
metaethics, and of puritan authoritarian militant
Christian normative ethics, Hume is most important
for the constructive alternative he proposed to the
moral establishment that he tried gently to over-
throw. He defends a peaceable secular version of a
reflective morality whose main point is calm, mutual
evaluation, not the justification of “scolding and mu-
tual reproaches” (G.G. IV, 231), let alone of a super-
system of deliberate rewards and punishments. He
“founded” this morality on human nature as he
found it in himself and others, on a limitedly flexible
culture-bent nature in which a sociable reason can,
when conditions are favorable, concur with calm
passion and reflective sentiment.
See also: BENTHAM; COOPERATION, CONFLICT, AND
COORDINATION; EMOTION; FAME THEORY; HOBBES;
KANT; METAETHICS; JOHN STUART MILL; MORAL RE-
ALISM; MORAL SENSE THEORISTS; NATURALISTIC FAL-
Hume, David
LACY; OPPRESSION; PASSION; PURITANISM; UTILITAR-
IANISM; VIRTUE ETHICS.
Bibliography
Works by Hume
My Own Life. 1777. Also titled The Life of David Hume,
Written by Himself. This autobiography is found in
G.G. III and in many other editions of Hume’s Essays
and other writings.
The Philosophical Works of David Hume. Edited by T. H.
Green and T. H. Grose. 4 vols. London: Longman,
Green, 1875. Cited as “G.G.”
The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar
to the Revolution in 1688. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty
Classics, 1983 [1754–1762]. Cited as “H.”
The Letters of David Hume. Edited by J. Y. T. Greig. 2
vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932. Cited as “L.”
Collected Works Critical Edition. Edited by Tom L. Beau-
champ, David Fate Norton, and M. A. Stewart. Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press. In progress, a critical edition of
Hume’s philosophical, political and literary works.
A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge
and P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975
[1737].
Enquiries. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.
Essays, Moral, Political and Literary. Edited by Eugene F.
Miller. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Classics, 1985.
New Letters of David Hume. Edited by Raymond Kliban-
sky and Ernest C. Mossner. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1954.
Works about Hume
Árdal, Páll S. Passion and Value in Hume’s “Treatise.”
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1966.
Baier, Annette C. A Progress of Sentiments: Reflections on
Hume’s Treatise. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1991.
Basson, A. H. David Hume. Baltimore, MD: Penguin,
1958.
Berry, Christopher. Hume, Hegel, and Human Nature.
The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982.
Bricke, John. Hume’s Philosophy of Mind. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1980.
———. Hume’s Moral Psychology. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1996.
Capaldi, Nicholas. Hume’s Place in Moral Philosophy.
New York: Peter Lang, 1989.
Flew, Antony. David Hume: Philosopher of Moral Science.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.
Fogelin, Robert. Hume’s Scepticism in “The Treatise of
Human Nature.” London: Henley, 1985.
814
Forbes, Duncan. Hume’s Philosophical Politics. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Gaskin, J. C. A. Hume’s Philosophy of Religion. 2d ed.
Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1988.
Harrison, Jonathan. Hume’s Moral Epistemology. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
———. Hume’s Theory of Justice. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1981.
Hendel, Charles W. Studies in the Philosophy of David
Hume. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs Merrill, 1963.
Jones, Peter. Hume’s Sentiments. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1982.
Kydd, Rachel. Reason and Conduct in Hume’s “Treatise.”
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946.
Laird, John. Hume’s Philosophy of Human Nature. Lon-
don: Methuen, 1932.
Livingston, Donald W. Hume’s Philosophy of Common
Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Mackie, J. L. Hume’s Moral Theory. London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1988.
MacNabb, D. G. C. David Hume: His Theory of Knowl-
edge and Morality. 2d ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1966 [1951].
Miller, David. Philosophy and Ideology in Hume’s Politi-
cal Thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.
Mossner, Ernest Campbell. The Life of David Hume. Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1981.
Norton, David Fate. David Hume, Common Sense Mor-
alist, Sceptical Metaphysician. Princeton, NJ: Prince-
ton University Press, 1982.
———, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Hume. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Noxon, J. Hume’s Philosophical Development. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1973.
Passmore, John. Hume’s Intentions. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1952.
Penelhum, Terence. Hume. London: Macmillan, 1975.
Phillipson, Nicholas. Hume. London: Weidenfeld and Nic-
olson, 1989.
Russell, Paul. Freedom and Moral Sentiment: Hume’s
Way of Naturalizing Responsibility. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995.
Smith, Norman Kemp. The Philosophy of David Hume.
London: Macmillan, 1941.
Snare, Francis. Morals, Motivation and Convention:
Hume’s Influential Doctrines. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991.
Stewart, John B. Opinion and Reform in Hume’s Political
Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1992.
Stroud, Barry. Hume. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1977.
Whelan, Frederick. Skepticism and the Moral Basis of
Hume’s Political Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press, 1977.

Wright, John P. The Sceptical Realism of David Hume.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983.
Annette C. Baier
humility
In the popular conception, humility consists in hav-
ing a low opinion of yourself, or, possibly, in under-
estimating yourself. Humble people are expected to
be modest and self-deprecating whenever they do
something of which we would be proud. They are
supposed to say, “It was nothing, really,” when we
all think it was marvelous. And, they are supposed
to mean it.
Henry SIDGWICK (1838–1900) found it puzzling
that this should be considered morally admirable.
Such a person is being inaccurate, after all, and in-
accuracy is not usually a good thing. Why should it
be a good thing here, either in itself or in the con-
sequences it is likely to produce?
Exactly the same puzzles arise if we take humility
to consist in having a low opinion of oneself. For, a
low opinion sometimes is an underestimation, it
seems: there are people who appear to be quite mer-
itorious and accomplished. Indeed, in some cases it
is hard to see how such people could even manage
to think that they were nothing much, so obvious
would be their mistake and so perceptive are they
on other matters. Thus on this view the humility of
the truly accomplished begins to sound as though it
must be false humility: a deeply ironic turn of events,
since (a) it is their humility we admire the most and
(b) false humility is either pathetic or disgusting.
Such puzzles call for a closer look at humility,
which is often described as a distinctively Christian
virtue. Various fathers of the Roman Catholic
church have discussed it in detail. (For example,
Bernard of Clairvaux [1090 or 91–1153], THOMAS
AQUINAS [1225?–1274], Ignatius Loyola [1491–
1556], and Thomas à Kempis [1380–1471].) This
is a tradition according to which nothing that is good
about you is to your own personal credit: such things
are only the particular gifts God chose to give you,
for which you should be grateful but of which you
cannot properly be proud. On the other hand, every-
thing that is bad about you is your own fault, a way
in which you personally have failed. If so, to have a
high opinion of yourself would always be to over-
estimate yourself and to take credit where none
815
humility
was due. Properly humble individuals would take a
dim view of themselves instead, because that would
be the accurate view, the view which did not over-
estimate. Humility turns out to be a matter of having
oneself in proper perspective; the idea that this per-
spective must be depressing rests on the tradition’s
further claims about the nature of human beings and
their place in the universe.
Two things of interest follow. First, there is noth-
ing paradoxical about valuing humility after all. For
humility does not consist in underestimating your-
self or what you have done, but in understanding
those things rightly, in the face of various tempta-
tions to exaggerate. It is not puzzling why this ac-
curacy should be virtuous, especially if it is hard-
won. Prime among the temptations to think too
much of yourself would be exaggerated praise from
others. Thus it is perfectly plausible for the humility
of the accomplished to be especially admirable, since
they hear a great deal of praise without having their
heads turned.
Second, humility is one thing, and Catholic meta-
physics are another. It could be that those meta-
physics are correct, and humility does require us to
have low opinions of ourselves, because in fact we
all are contemptible. But it could also be that the
metaphysics are mistaken. It could be that some of
our good deeds are our own doing, and some of our
VIRTUES are (to some extent) of our own making. It
could be, that is, that some of us do have things of
which we can properly be proud. If so, keeping our-
selves and our deeds in proper perspective would
not mean mistaking these for nothing, but only being
no prouder than we should be. It would mean, for
example, not taking what was really only a nice piece
of philosophy you had done to be something for the
ages, not underestimating the role in your life of
sheer good luck and the contributions of others, not
considering yourself to be more important intrinsi-
cally than anyone else, and so on.
Many of us believe this “free will” metaphysics,
rather than the gloomier Roman Catholic view.
However, most writing on humility has been from
the latter perspective. There has been little explo-
ration of what a humble person would be like if we
are praiseworthy for some of what we do and some
of what we become. If we do have some things of
which we are proud, and you had your particular
self and life in proper perspective, how forgiving
would you be of mistreatment from others? How
humility
compassionate toward those in need? How envious
of those who surpassed you? How inclined or dis-
inclined toward PATERNALISM, or toward a simple
life rather than a luxurious one? The answer to such
questions would depict what it is to be humble if we
do “have free will.” They remain to be worked out.
See also: CHARACTER; CHRISTIAN ETHICS; DIGNITY;
ENVY; FORGIVENESS; FREE WILL; GENEROSITY; GUILT
AND SHAME; JESUS OF NAZARETH; PATERNALISM;
PRIDE; PURITANISM; SELF-ESTEEM; SELF-KNOWLEDGE;
THOMAS AQUINAS; VIRTUES.
Bibliography
Bernard of Clairvaux. The Steps of Humility. [twelfth cen-
tury] A procedure for achieving self-loathing.
Gilleman, G. “Humility.” S.v. New Catholic Encyclopedia.
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967.
Kraybill, Donald B. The Riddle of Amish Culture. Balti-
more, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. De-
scribes a society which values humility highly and
weaves it into the required way of life.
Loyola, Ignatius. Spiritual Exercises. [c. 1523] Includes a
brief account titled “The Three Kinds of Humility.”
Richards, Norvin. Humility. Philadelphia: Temple Univer-
sity Press, 1992. Defends a particular analysis of hu-
mility and pursues its implications.
Sidgwick, Henry. The Methods of Ethics. 7th ed. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1962 [1874]. Material on
humility in book 3, chapter 10.
Snow, Nancy E. “Humility.” Journal of Value Inquiry 29
(1995): 203–16. An analysis derived from examples in
which someone is humbled.
Taylor, Gabriele. Pride, Shame and Guilt. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1985. Includes a discussion of Hume on
humility.
Thomas à Kempis. Imitation of Christ. [Written between
1415 and 1424.] References to humility occur through-
out.
Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica. [1266–73]. Vol-
ume 2, qq. 161, 162, concern humility and pride.
Wardle, John. “Miss Anscombe on Sidgwick’s View of Hu-
mility.” Philosophy 58 (1963): 389–91. A defense
against a jibe in her “Modern Moral Philosophy.”
Norvin Richards
Husserl, Edmund [Gustav
Albrecht] (1859–1938)
German philosopher and founder of the modern
phenomenological movement. Husserl studied as-
tronomy, physics, and mathematics at the universi-
816
ties of Leipzig and Berlin (1876–1881) and mathe-
matics, philosophy, and PSYCHOLOGY in Vienna,
where he received his Ph.D. in 1883 and then did
postdoctoral work under BRENTANO (1838–1917)
between 1884 and 1886. He was Lecturer at the
University of Halle (1887–1901) and Professor at
the University of Göttingen (1901–1916) and the
University of Freiburg (1916–1929).
Husserl lectured regularly on ethics between
1889 and 1924; the texts of these lectures are pre-
served in manuscript form but have only recently
been published. In his own ethics, Husserl depended
very heavily on Brentano’s axiological ethics, with
which he was familiar through a course he had taken
with Brentano in Vienna. Through Brentano, Hus-
serl must also have become acquainted with the
moral philosophy of HUME (1711–1776).
Husserl defines the concept of value as the objec-
tive correlate of acts that flow from the emotional
dimension of human beings (Gefühlsakte); yet a
value is a characteristic of an object. Husserl speaks
of values insofar as there are objects which have
value. In each object that has value, we must thus
make a distinction between the object itself and the
value which it has. The latter is not actually real, but
rather it is an entity which has an ideal existence.
Yet such ideal objects are actual because we appear
to have certain truths that pertain to them. If such
truths have validity, then there must also be those
entities which the validity of these truths objectively
presupposes.
Values taken as ideal entities have both a formal
and a material side. Therefore, Husserl maintained,
there must be a purely formal axiology and a mate-
rial axiology. In formal axiology, Husserl discusses
purely formal laws such as the following: If M is
some axiological matter, then within the domain of
a given axiological world, only three possibilities can
be the case: Either M is the matter of a positive
value, or M is the matter of a negative value, or M
is an adiaphoron, a value-neutral matter.
In material axiology, Husserl first describes the
domain of hierarchically ordered material values.
Here he distinguishes between values of things
(Sachwerte), values of person (Personwerte), and
mixed values for the area in which things play an
important role in the interaction between persons.
Finally, he adds cultural values to these values.
In a third part of his axiology, Husserl turns to a
pure practica in which the emotional, willing, and

striving actions are related to the relevant values so
that their moral quality can be determined. This
practica is again divided into a formal and a material
part. In the formal part of this discipline, Husserl is
able to specify the idea of a summum bonum for-
maliter spectatum, introduced in his formal axiol-
ogy, into the following categorical imperative: At
each time and in each situation always do the best
thing you can achieve, in the entire domain that falls
under the sphere of your rational influence.
Husserl made two important contributions to
value ethics. First, he maintained that one must ac-
cept an a priori element in the domain of man’s emo-
tional life which is an essential element of value
ethics. Such an a priori element can be justified and
founded by means of a careful distinction between
passive and sensuous feelings and those acts of con-
sciousness that are inherently valuing and value-
positing such as feeling and willing.
In addition to this basic idea which guides Hus-
serl in his formal ethics, Husserl also developed a
material axiology that is of importance for the mod-
ern theory of values. Here Husserl describes a do-
main of values (Wertreich) which can be structured
and ordered according to value differentiations and
which is governed by an inner teleology. Thus Hus-
serl’s ethics ultimately rests on a teleology a priori.
This teleology refers to an ultimate ground and thus
also to a necessary and absolute foundation by
means of which one is able to guarantee the cate-
gorically obligatory character of moral NORMS and
laws. Husserl’s ethics presupposes a philosophical
metaphysics and a philosophical theology which sees
in the highest Good the ultimate determining ele-
ment of man’s moral actions.
See also: BRENTANO; HISTORY OF WESTERN ETHICS:
11. TWENTIETH-CENTURY CONTINENTAL; METAPHYS-
ICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY; PHENOMENOLOGY; TELEO-
LOGICAL ETHICS; VALUE, THEORY OF.
Bibliography
Works by Husserl
Vorlesungen über Ethik und Wertlehre, 1908–1914. Ed-
ited by Ullrich Melle. (Husserliana, 28). Dordrecht:
Kluwer, 1988.
The following manuscripts are housed in the Husserl-
Archives located in Leuven, Belgium:
Kritisches aus Ethik-Vorlesung, Sommer-semester 1902,
Ms. F I 20.
817
Hutcheson, Francis
Beilagen zu den Grundproblemen der Ethik (insbesondere
der formalen Ethik), Wintersemester 1908/09, Ms.
F I 21.
Formale Ethik und Probleme der praktischen Vernunft,
1909/11, 1914, 1920, 1922/23, Ms. F I 24.
Grundprobleme der Ethik, Wintersemester 1908/09, Ms.
F I 23, Cf. Ms. F I, 11.
Freiburger Vorlesung zur Einleitung in die Ethik, 1920,
1924, Ms. F I 28. Scheduled to be published in 2002.
Works about Husserl
Brück, Maria. Über das Verhältnis Husserls zu Franz
Brentano, vornehmlich mit Rücksicht auf Brentanos
Psychologie. Würzburg: Konrad Triltsch, 1933.
Kraus, Oskar. Die Werttheorieen. Leipzig: Felix Meiner,
1937.
Lessing, Theodor. Studien zur Wertaxiomatik. Leipzig: Fe-
lix Meiner, 1914.
Rintelen, Fritz-Joachim von. Der Wertgedanke in der eu-
ropäischen Geistesentwicklung. Halle/S.: Niemeyer,
1932.
Roth, Alois. Edmund Husserls ethische Untersuchungen,
dargestellt anhand seiner Vorlesungsmanuskripte. The
Hague: Nijhoff, 1960.
Wittmann, Michael. Die moderne Wertethik. Münster: As-
chendorff, 1940.
Joseph J. Kockelmans
Hutcheson, Francis (1694–1746)
Scottish philosopher. The first to work out a system-
atic philosophy of moral sentiment or sense, Hutch-
eson was a central figure in British moral philosophy
during the first half of the eighteenth century. He
was born in what is now Northern Ireland and en-
tered the University of Glasgow in 1711. After uni-
versity, he returned to Ulster and, not long after,
went to Dublin to found a dissenting academy.
While in Dublin, Hutcheson joined a circle of intel-
lectuals, led by Lord Molesworth (1656–1725),
who were admirers of SHAFTESBURY’s (1671–1713)
philosophy. During this period Hutcheson published
An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty
and Virtue (1725) and An Essay on the Nature and
Conduct of the Passions and Affections (1728). The
latter included Illustrations on the Moral Sense. In
1730 he became professor of moral philosophy at
the University of Glasgow, where he remained until
his death in 1746. Two “compends” of his lectures
(in Latin), one on metaphysics and one on ethics,
appeared during his lifetime. The latter was trans-
Hutcheson, Francis
lated into English and published posthumously in
1747. A System of Moral Philosophy also appeared
posthumously in 1755.
Hutcheson characterized his Inquiry as a work
“in which the principles of the late Earl of Shaftes-
bury are Explain’d and Defended.” Shaftesbury had
introduced the term ‘moral sense’ to refer to a re-
flexive affection through which primary affections
“of pity, kindness, gratitude, and their contraries, be-
ing brought into the mind by reflection, become ob-
jects” of affection themselves—objects “of a new lik-
ing or dislike.” Hutcheson’s use of this general idea,
however, was more precise and systematic than
Shaftesbury’s had been. For Hutcheson, the moral
sense is distinguished by the ideas it receives—ap-
probation and condemnation. He believed these to
be the fundamental simple ideas of morality; all
other moral ideas, he thought, are definable in terms
of them. Following LOCKE’s (1632–1704) dictum
that every simple idea requires a sense to receive it,
Hutcheson called “the determination of the mind to
receive” approbation and condemnation the moral
sense.
Hutcheson’s claim that morality is defined by the
simple ideas received by moral sense went together
with his thesis that morality involves a distinctive
kind of value, moral value, which is different from
“natural good.” Natural value, for Hutcheson, is the
capacity an object has to give PLEASURE. Moral
goodness, on the other hand, “denotes our idea of
some quality apprehended in actions, which pro-
cures approbation, and love towards the actor, from
those who receive no advantage by the action.” So
an action will be naturally good just in case it actu-
ally causes, or is apt to cause, pleasure as a conse-
quence; and it will be morally good just in case con-
templating it causes the distinctively moral simple
idea of approbation, which idea we have only when
contemplating the “affections of rational agents.”
All other moral ideas derive from the fundamen-
tal simple ideas of approbation and condemnation.
This is not always obvious, as in Hutcheson’s origi-
nal version of the famous utilitarian formula: “that
action is best, which accomplishes the greatest hap-
piness of the greatest numbers.” Here Hutcheson is
ranking acts “to regulate our election,” i.e., indepen-
dently of MOTIVES, contemplation of which elicits
the distinctive moral ideas. He held, however, that
the sort of value implicit in this ranking is derivative
from moral goodness and, thus, from the simple
818
moral ideas requiring a moral sense. Since he
thought moral sense approves most highly of uni-
versal BENEVOLENCE, Hutcheson concluded that the
utilitarian formula ranks acts in the order they
would be preferred by an agent who was fully in-
formed and morally best.
The final section of the Inquiry included “a de-
duction of some complex moral ideas, viz. of obli-
gation, and right from this moral sense.” Unlike
HOBBES (1588–1679), Locke, and even Shaftes-
bury, who accounted for the binding power of mo-
rality in terms of rational self-interest, Hutcheson
maintained that there is, in addition to such motives,
a distinctively moral obligation depending on the
moral sense. The concept of right, including the dis-
tinctions between perfect and imperfect, alienable
and unalienable RIGHTS, likewise derives ultimately
from the moral sense. Rights are simply those “fa-
cult[ies] of doing, demanding, or possessing any-
thing,” which, if “universally allow’d in certain cir-
cumstances,” would be most highly preferred by
someone who was fully informed and morally best—
i.e., “faculties” which “would in the whole tend to
the general good” if generally established.
Hutcheson’s most direct philosophical influence
was on David HUME (1711–1776). Hume sought
out Hutcheson’s advice and support when writing
the ethical parts of A Treatise of Human Nature
(1737). The main lines of Hume’s initial statement
of his theory of moral sentiment, as formulated in
Book III of the Treatise, derive directly from Hutch-
eson, although Hume modified them in important
ways later in the Treatise and in the Enquiry (1751).
Moreover, much of Hume’s case for his claim against
the ethical rationalists—that “reason alone can
never be a motive to any action of the will”—comes
from Hutcheson’s arguments in Illustrations on the
Moral Sense.
While Hutcheson’s major philosophical motiva-
tions were different than those of later utilitarians
such as BENTHAM (1748–1832) and JOHN STUART
MILL (1806–1873), he provided the later utilitarian
tradition with rich resources on which to draw. In
addition to formulating the distinctively utilitarian
conception of the general good—“the greatest hap-
piness of the greatest numbers”—he advanced a
utilitarian theory of rights, worked out in great detail
in his System, which is as subtle as anything in Mill.
Faced with the problem of how to commensurate
pleasures, Hutcheson proposed, as would Bentham

later, that “the value of any pleasure . . . is a com-
pounded proportion of the intenseness and dura-
tion.” He also directly confronted the problem of
interpersonal comparisons of intensity: “to compare
these several pleasures . . . as to their intenseness,
seems difficult because of the diversity of tastes, or
turns of temper.” To solve this problem he proposed
what has come to be known as “Mill’s test”: “those
alone are capable of judging, who have experienced
all the several kinds of pleasure, and have their
senses acute and fully exercized in them all.” Hutch-
eson held all VIRTUES to be instances of benevolence,
and not, like the later utilitarians, to derive their
moral value from the goodness of their conse-
quences. Still, in arguing against other common-
sense virtues that seem not to be grounded in either,
he used a form of argument that has appealed to
utilitarians ever since: “Justice, or observing a strict
equality, if it have no regard to the good of mankind
. . . is a quality properer for its ordinary gestamen,
a beam and scales, than for a rational agent.”
See also: BENEVOLENCE; HUME; MORAL SENSE THE-
ORISTS; MOTIVES; PLEASURE; SHAFTESBURY; UTILI-
TARIANISM; VIRTUE ETHICS.
Bibliography
Works by Hutcheson
Collected Works. 7 vols. Hildesheim, 1969–1971.
An Inquiry Concerning the Original of Our Ideas of
Beauty and Virtue. London, 1725. 4th ed. pub. 1738.
An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and
Affections, with Illustrations on the Moral Sense. Lon-
don, 1728. 3d ed., “with additions,” pub. 1742.
A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy, In Three
Books; Containing the Elements of Ethics and the Law
of Nature, Translated from the Latin. Glasgow, 1747.
A System of Moral Philosophy. 2 vols. London, 1755.
Works about Hutcheson
Darwall, Stephen L. The British Moralists and the Internal
‘Ought’: 1640–1740. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1995. See chapter 8.
Frankena, William. “Hutcheson’s Moral Sense Theory.”
Journal of the History of Ideas 16 (1955): 356–75.
Leidhold, Wolfgang. Ethik und Politik bei Francis Hutch-
eson. Freiburg: Karl Alber, 1985.
Norton, David. “Hutcheson’s Moral Sense Theory Recon-
sidered.” Dialogue 13 (1974): 3–23.
———. “Hutcheson on Perception and Moral Percep-
819
hypocrisy
tion.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 59
(1977): 181–97.
———. “Hutcheson’s Moral Realism.” Journal of the His-
tory of Philosophy 23 (1985): 397–418.
Schneewind, J. B. The Invention of Autonomy: A History
of Modern Moral Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998. See pp. 333–42.
Scott, William R. Francis Hutcheson: His Life, Teaching
and Position in the History of Philosophy. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1900.
Winkler, Kenneth P. “Hutcheson’s Alleged Realism.” Jour-
nal of the History of Philosophy 23 (1985): 179–94.
Stephen L. Darwall
hypocrisy
In Dante’s (1265–1321) Inferno (probably between
1307 and 1320), the hypocrite is condemned to
wear brilliantly bedecked cloaks lined with lead,
eternally carrying about the weight of sin covered
over by the appearance of virtue. Hypocrisy, a form
of deception, is a morally blameworthy imposture
whereby the dissembler poses as being better (in
some morally relevant sense) than he or she really
is. It is carried on for self-interested reasons often at
the expense of those against whom the deception is
marshaled. The hypocrite makes a profession of be-
liefs and values to which she or he neither adheres
nor subscribes. The moral culpability of hypocrisy
lies less in the failure to live up to an avowed stan-
dard of behavior or set of ideals (something it may
share with akrasia, or WEAKNESS OF WILL) than in
the intention or willingness to deceive. Yet it is not
merely the deceptive INTENTION, but the deception
about intention (that is, in matters where a sincere
intention is required) that marks the particularity of
the moral blame attached to hypocrisy. This can be
seen by considering the domains in which an im-
posture is thought hypocritical, domains in which
sincerity matters: RELIGION, morality, FRIENDSHIP,
and political conviction. The self-interested advan-
tage is generally secured by the hypocrite’s violation
of the TRUST implicit in the presumption of sincerity.
While the hypocrite’s deception is often directed to-
ward others, it can be directed at oneself as well.
That is, the hypocrite can be either self-deceiving or
lucid. In the former case, the advantage secured is a
good opinion of oneself not gainsaid by adopting the
expedient course. Discussions of SELF-DECEPTION
and BAD FAITH are often linked with hypocrisy,
hypocrisy
doubtless because the desire to hold a good opinion
of oneself is a strong motive force in belief forma-
tion, if not in action.
It is often claimed that the hypocrite stands self-
accused by a failure to meet the self-avowed stan-
dards. This means that the charge of hypocrisy can
be leveled against those whose values we do not
share. This charge seems especially apt in the hy-
pocrisy of the self-deceived, a hypocrisy distinguish-
able from akrasia only by the lack of struggle with
the untoward inclinations (Szabados). But particu-
larly in the case of the hypocrite who is not self-
deceived, we need to bear in mind that the charge
of hypocrisy is leveled by those for whom the pre-
tense is staged—it is they who would judge that the
assumed persona is better than the actual one. The
question of perspective is therefore important in as-
sessing an ACTION or a character as hypocritical.
We should note that in the case of hypocrisy the
pretense is not only to be different than one is but
to be better than one is. The con artist appears to be
different than he is. PLATO’s (c. 430–347 B.C.E.)
Socrates tries to pretend that he is not as clever or
eloquent as he is. But the con artist and Socrates
would not be thought hypocrites.
We should also note that we can speak of either
an act, or a character, as hypocritical, although to
speak of a person as a “hypocrite” is generally a judg-
ment of CHARACTER.
Origin and Early History of the Concept
The term, if not the concept, derives from the
Greek hypokrisia (also hypokrisis), originally “an-
swer” or “reply,” but more commonly “play a part
(on stage).” The moral opprobrium attached to hy-
pocrisy is absent in the Greek derivatives in the writ-
ing of Plato and ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) and in
most Greek writings prior to the New Testament.
The term with a moral charge is found in “The Wolf
and the Lamb,” a fable (284 Halm ⳱ 166 Haurs) of
Aesop (sixth century B.C.E.), and in Job and II Mac-
cabees in the Septuagint. But the import differs from
the later use in the New Testament.
In Job 34:30 and 36:13, the charge of hypocrisy,
interestingly, is leveled against the righteous Job. In
II Maccabees 6:25, Eleazar, a venerated old Jewish
scribe, refuses to commit a deception he calls a “hy-
pocrisy,” for he fears that it will mislead the youth
into thinking that he has abandoned his religion to
820
gain a few more years of life. Although the “hypoc-
risy” has morally undesirable consequences, it is not
the deceitful playacting but its potential to mislead
unintended dupes that restrains Eleazar. Matthew
23 provides the most sustained employment of the
term in the sense which has become paradigmatic.
The Pharisees and scribes are derided by Christ as
hypocrites who attend only to the outward, super-
ficial appearance of their actions without attending
to the “weightier matters of the law, judgment,
mercy and faith.”
The hypocrisy denounced here is less a deception
aimed at pleasing others for personal gain and more
a delusion and a self-delusion born of self-interest
and self-satisfaction concerning what counts as re-
ligious conviction. Within the Christian ethos, more
perhaps than within Judaism or Greek and Roman
religious life, the playactor is condemned. Where
outward ceremony is not only unnecessary but ir-
relevant to religious life (c.f. Matthew 15), where the
state of one’s soul, that “which is within cup and
platter” (Matthew 23) and not one’s outward clean-
liness count for virtue, there the pretense of the play-
actor can scarcely be tolerated (see also Luke 12). It
is an offense not only to God (as in the hypocrisy
condemned by Job’s friends) and not only to other
men (as in the hypocrisy renounced by Eleazar) but
also to oneself. To pretend to be other than one is is
most egregious where the only value of outward
words and deeds for a shared religious life is to in-
dicate an inner “true” state. There the hypocrite
mocks the foundation of religious community. The
concept of hypocrisy is doubtless shaped by the
moral tone it received with the emergence of Chris-
tianity, where attention to what is hidden from view
(often from one’s own view) is paramount.
Domains of Hypocrisy
Not all pretense to be better than one is is hypo-
critical—consider a purported scholar who pretends
to having knowledge—but imposture within certain
domains are sure to be hypocritical.
Religion, writes William Hazlitt (1778–1830),
“either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes
them set up false pretenses to both.” Both in its or-
igin and its conception religion bears a special rela-
tion to hypocrisy, especially religious belief that gives
priority to sincerity and the inwardness of faith. The
religious community has a special interest in the pu-

rity of intention, especially where outward obser-
vance is but a sign of an inward state. God cannot
be “hoodwinked” (to borrow from Hazlitt), but
one’s co-religionists can, with serious consequences
to the coherency of the religious body. More prob-
lematic than the lucid and villainous hypocrisy, por-
trayed in Molière’s (1622–1673) Tartuffe (1664) for
those seriously committed to religious belief or the
value of an authentic life, is the pervasive and com-
plaisant hypocrisy of those who have little true
commitment—for example, the cleric who uses his
position for social advance (but see Stendhal’s
[1783–1842] sympathetic portrayal of Julien Sorel
in The Red and The Black, 1831), or the congre-
gants who appear at church only for show and for
social conformity.
Morality is a dimension of all hypocrisy. But hy-
pocrisy can do special damage within the domain of
morality, since the trust and understanding that un-
derlie morally sound interactions are betrayed by the
hypocrite. The closer one moves to a consequential-
ist ethic, the less the harm of hypocrisy can be un-
derstood, for most of the EVIL resulting from hypoc-
risy is the consequence not of the pretense, but of
the dropping of the pretense (see Kittay). The harm
of hypocrisy is best understood on a view of morality
that sees the outward act as a sign for an inner in-
tention—an intention whose trustworthiness is ba-
sic to a moral community.
Politics is the public arena in which hypocrisy fig-
ures. A thoroughgoing treatment of political hypoc-
risy would need to examine the relation between hy-
pocrisy and ideology in the Marxian sense. Eva
Kittay and Judith Shklar both argue that the evil of
hypocrisy needs to be evaluated and understood in
relation to the political and social relations of de-
ceiver and deceived. Using the model of Julien Sorel,
Kittay argues that there are circumstances in which
the culpability of the hypocrite is significantly atten-
uated because of his or her position as victim in an
oppressive political and social system. Shklar’s anal-
ysis examines the role of hypocrisy within the liberal
tradition and with respect to the political uses that
hypocrisy and antihypocrisy can be put. Hypocrisy
can be the weapon of choice for those who would
attain social mobility, and it is the vice to be feared
in underlings by those in high social positions. Fur-
thermore, in circumstances permitting social mobil-
ity, the ascendent protagonist must learn to reconcile
a concept of self marked by social class and the as-
821
hypocrisy
pirations of moving out of a lower social class. In
the latter case, the operative antithesis to hypocrisy
is not sincerity, but AUTHENTICITY. (For an illumi-
nating discussion of these concepts, see Lionel Tril-
ling [1905–1975].)
Friendships and intimate personal relations are
the most private of domains. More than elsewhere
sincerity and trust underlie the possibility of a happy
intercourse. The literary figures who are hypocrites,
Dickens’s (1812–1870) Uriah Heep (David Cop-
perfield, 1850), Molière’s Tartuffe, Shakespeare’s
(1564–1616) Iago (Othello, c. 1604), all feed on the
trust of their intended victims in order to carry out
their crimes. But lesser crimes, even a feigned sen-
timent, can be damaging in a friendship. Within the
domains of friendship and intimate personal rela-
tions, pretense itself can be a betrayal, precisely be-
cause of the centrality of trust and sincerity for per-
sonal relations.
Philosophical Treatments
In contrast to the rich literary portrayals—the
despicable Tartuffe, the perfidious Marquis de Mer-
teuil in LaClos’s (1741–1803) Dangerous Liaisons
(1782), the complaisant Podsnap in Dickens’s Our
Mutual Friend (1865), the pitiful Dimmesdale in
Hawthorne’s (1804–1864) Scarlet Letter (1850),
the sympathetic Julien Sorel, to mention but a few—
sustained philosophical discussion of hypocrisy is
rare. This is surely not because it is a transparent
concept or a nonproblematic vice. While deception
is itself morally suspect, it is not always clear what
makes the hypocrite culpable, especially since it is
often concomitant misdeeds of the hypocrite, rather
than the pretense itself, that generates harm. That
hypocrisy is prima facie blameworthy is part of our
understanding of the term. But since it can generate
deeds that are beneficial and bolster admirable at-
titudes, it is not so clear why the pretense itself
should be despised. Discussed, in brief, are some
of the few sustained treatments in the history of
philosophy and in the contemporary philosophical
literature.
Aquinas (1225?–1274) models his analysis on
verbal deception. The misleading behavior is a sig-
nifier falsely signifying a virtuous moral character.
But just as a false signification is not always a lie, so
a falsely signifying act is not always hypocritical. If
one fails to achieve the perfection at which one sin-
hypocrisy
cerely aims, that is not yet hypocritical. To be hy-
pocritical, one needs to pass oneself off as virtuous.
That is, one has to intend the manifestations of vir-
tue to be taken as signs of a good intention that is
not there. This sort of deception has the effect that
the hypocrite “steals the praise due to another way
of living” (Summa Theologiae 2a2ae, 111, art. 3),
a condemnation later repeated by PASCAL (1623–
1662) (c.f. Shklar). THOMAS AQUINAS argues that
an otherwise virtuous action in the service of hypoc-
risy fails to be one because, for the hypocrite, its
admirable character is a mere expediency.
Another important contribution of Aquinas’s the-
ory is his dual categorization of hypocrisy as mortal
sin and venial sin. The hypocrite, strictly speaking,
is one who has no regard for the virtue or holiness
he feigns, but deceives with respect to that very
point. That is a mortal sin. But the hypocrite may
also cover up a sin, without a disregard for virtue.
That may be just a venial and not a mortal sin. If the
end of the deception is compatible with CHARITY to-
ward God or neighbor, it may be only a venial sin.
G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), in the Philosophy
of Right (1821), distinguishes a newer from an older
form of hypocrisy. In its original form, the agent
knows what is right, desires something other, and
has compared the two and knows that his will con-
travenes what right requires. The hypocrite adopts
a “falsity of holding up evil as good in the eyes of
others . . . conduct which in these circumstances is
only a trick to deceive others.” But insofar as all ac-
tion contains something positive—presumably no
one wills evil for the sake of evil, but for the sake of
some positive DESIRE, PLEASURE, etc.—it is possible
to find justification for action desired and so “use
these reasons to pervert its apparent character from
evil into good.” The result is a more invidious, if not
more evil form of hypocrisy. Self-deception and com-
placency distinguish what HEGEL took to be this sec-
ond and newer form of hypocrisy. Hegel’s concep-
tual and historical analysis depends on a distinction
between the moralische (the moral) and the sittliche
(ethical). The moral concerns itself most pertinently
with the individual CONSCIENCE. In contrast, the eth-
ical concerns itself with those INSTITUTIONS that pro-
vide the concrete and objective basis for the moral
life: the FAMILY, civil society, and the state. The
newer form of hypocrisy depends on a subjective
morality which has cut itself off from the institutions
that constitute the ethical. It is the “highwater mark
822
of subjectivity at the level of morality,” which Hegel
took to be prevalent in his own age. If the content
of what is to constitute a good action depends only
on intent, if there is no objective characterization of
the content of a good action, then as long as some
positive intent can be found, the evil done can be
judged good by the agent. In a sense this self-
deception is no longer hypocrisy; it makes the gen-
uine hypocrisy no longer possible and means that
nothing need be thought immoral. We can add that
such self-complacency also encourages the easy
avoidance of those wrongs which need to be righted.
Other figures in the history of philosophy have
made scattered remarks concerning hypocrisy with-
out developing a systematic or extended treatment
of the subject. Friedrich NIETZSCHE (1844–1900)
added his voice to Hegel’s in decrying the moral mal-
leability that made a genuine hypocrisy impossible.
Blaise Pascal saw a self-love which refuses to re-
veal the weakness of the self as the motive force of
all social interaction. “Human society,” he declares,
“is founded on mutual deceit. . . . Man is then only
disguise, falsehood and hypocrisy, both in himself
and in regard to others” (Pensées, 1669). So great
is the desire to hide faults that even the rebellion
against the Catholic Church can be traced to the un-
willingness of humankind to reveal weaknesses even
to a single confessor. It is this same self-love and
penchant for deceit on which the probablism of the
Jesuits capitalizes on and that leads to a “false piety,
a double sin.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) includes an entry on
the hypocrite in his Encyclopédie (1751–1765) and
wrote two major treatises on the themes of sincerity,
feigning, deception, and playacting: Le paradoxe sur
le comédien (1773–1778), a treatise on the philo-
sophical problematics of playacting, and Le neveu
de Rameau (1762), a dialogue with composer Ra-
meau’s nephew, a scoundrel for whom deception,
flattery, and hypocrisy of the most blatant sort
formed a way of life. Bishop BUTLER (1692–1752)
discusses hypocrisy in the context of a fuller discus-
sion on self-deceit and speaks of an “inner hypoc-
risy.” Closer to contemporary times, we find the dual
concern of self-deceit and hypocrisy in the pervasive
bad faith that Jean-Paul SARTRE (1905–1980) lo-
cates in human words and actions.
Contemporary literature has produced some in-
teresting and extensive discussions of hypocrisy,
some of which have already been alluded to above.

Some writers, notably Gilbert Ryle (1900–1976), in
The Concept of Mind (1949), treats it as an issue for
the philosophy for mind that would account for
mind in dispositional terms, without appeal to a pri-
vate and inaccessible inner sanctum. For a philo-
sophical behaviorism hypocrisy poses a challenge.
His account, that the hypocrite tries “to appear ac-
tivated by a motive other than one’s real motive,”
depends on a behavioristic account of motive. Bela
Szabados challenges the adequacy of the account.
Some of the arguments are directed against the be-
haviorist PSYCHOLOGY and some against the inade-
quate attention to the moral dimensions of the con-
cept. Szabados locates the principal defect in Ryle’s
neglect of the “garden variety” of hypocrisy, which
is not nearly as self-conscious and deliberate, but
more closely tied to self-deception. Several contem-
porary studies explore this “garden variety” form.
Jay Newman analyzes both the “garden variety”
sort and the villainy of a Uriah Heep as perversions
of commitment, where commitment is the “accep-
tance of a world view” through a set of beliefs, feel-
ings, and valuations leading to action. Newman sees
healthy commitment as a means between the ex-
tremes of fanaticism and hypocrisy. There is a dia-
lectic between fanaticism and hypocrisy: while the
hypocrite is sometimes mistaken for a fanatic, the fa-
natic, in a zealous pursuit of some feature of the
chosen world view, betrays some other feature and
so becomes the hypocrite. Although this perspective
slights the importance of deception and personal
gain in hypocrisy, it is one of the few treatments that
emphasizes the element of commitment. The flaccid
commitment offends especially because hypocrisy
pertains to those domains in which commitment and
sincerity are requisite. The centrality of this offense
to the moral evaluation of hypocrisy is demonstrated
by Kittay.
But sometimes sincerity is demanded where the
demand is not justified—where, for example, those
in power live by a corrupted set of values, yet de-
mand a purity from those they exploit. Both Kittay
and Shklar see circumstances in which the moral cul-
pability of the hypocrite is significantly attenuated.
Shklar’s rich study of hypocrisy is set within an
examination of “ordinary vices,” vices which consti-
tute “the sort of conduct we all expect, nothing spec-
tacular or unusual.” Why, asks Shklar, do some con-
sider hypocrisy the worst of crimes, and what are
the consequences for a social and political concep-
823
hypocrisy
tion when hypocrisy is made out to be the first
among vices? She shows that both hypocrisy and
antihypocrisy can serve political ends, and religious
and personal ones as well.
Summary
Shklar’s account alerts us to the variegated char-
acter of this ordinary vice. True to its histrionic or-
igins, hypocrisy itself takes on many faces. It is not
one vice but many; and sometimes not much of a
vice at all. The antihypocrite’s charge may at times
be more pernicious than the hypocrisy inveighed
against. Different hypocrisies flourish under differ-
ent social and political circumstances. Within rigidly
hierarchical structures, those below engage in a hy-
pocrisy allied to flattery to curry favor with their su-
periors. Those in power engage in an hypocrisy al-
lied with snobbery or in the service of CRUELTY to
mask the tenuous legitimacy of their position and to
manipulate those over whom they have mastery. In
the play of political, economic and clerical POWER,
the charge of hypocrisy and antihypocrisy become
substitutes for the juridical force of a common set
of values. But hypocrisy will at other times thrive
just when one standard of beliefs and behavior is
rigidly enforced. Each set of circumstances and each
set of players yields a species of hypocrisy unique to
itself. Acknowledging “hypocrisies that are morally
exceptionally cruel because they humiliate and em-
bitter people, and also are not in keeping with the
mores of liberal democracy,” Shklar nonetheless
warns:
The only voice that damns hypocrisy to some
purpose is one that laments that the society
in which we live does not live up to its
declared principles, promises and possibilities
. . . To put hypocrisy first entangles us finally
in too much moral cruelty, exposes us too
easily to misanthropy, unbalances our
politics.
See also: AUTHENTICITY; BAD FAITH; CHRISTIAN
ETHICS; CONSCIENCE; CONVENTIONS; DECEIT; EGO-
ISM; EXTERNALISM AND INTERNALISM; FRIENDSHIP;
GUILT AND SHAME; HONOR; INTENTION; JEWISH
ETHICS; PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS; PUBLIC AND PRI-
VATE MORALITY; RELIGION; SECRECY AND CONFIDEN-
hypocrisy
TIALITY; SELF-DECEPTION; SELF-ESTEEM; SUBJECTIV-
ISM; TRUST; VIRTUES; WEAKNESS OF WILL.
Bibliography
Bok, Sissela. Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and
Revelation. New York: Vintage Books, 1983.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Ethics. Translated by N. H. Smith.
London: SCM, 1955 [1949].
Butler, Joseph. “Upon Self-Deceit.” In his Fifteen Sermons,
edited by W. R. Matthews. London: Bell and Sons,
1969 [1722].
Diderot, Denis. “Hypocrite.” In T. 17 of Encyclopédie, ou
dictionnáire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des mé-
tiers, 956–57. Lausanne, 1773–1778.
Hazlitt, William. “On Religious Hypocrisy.” In his The
Round Table, 128–31. London: Dent and Sons, 1964
[1817]. See p. 1280.
Hegel, G. W. F. The Philosophy of Right. Translated by
T. M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952. Tr. of Die
Philosophie des Rechts [1821]. For remarks on hypoc-
risy, see especially p. 94.
Kittay, Eva. “On Hypocrisy.” Metaphilosophy (1982):
277–89.
Martin, Mike W. Self-Deception and Morality. Lawrence:
University of Kansas Press, 1986.
824
Newman, Jay. Fanatics and Hypocrites. New York: Pro-
metheus, 1986. See p. 12.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Twilight of the Idols. New York:
Russell and Russell, 1964. Tr. of Götzendämmerung
[1889].
Rich, Adrienne. On Lies, Secrets and Silences. New York:
W.W. Norton, 1980.
Ryle, Gilbert. The Concept of Mind. London: Hutchinson,
1949. See especially page 173.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Translated by
Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library,
1956. Tr. of L’Être et le néant [1943].
Shklar, Judith N. Ordinary Vices. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1984. See pp. 50, 51.
Szabados, Bela. “Hypocrisy.” Canadian Journal of Philos-
ophy 9 (1979): 195–210. See p. 197
Trilling, Lionel. Sincerity and Authenticity. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1972.
Eva F. Kittay
hypothetical imperative
See categorical and hypothetical imperatives.
 I
Ibn Rushd (1126–1198)
Abū al-Walı̄d Ibn Rushd or Averroës, as he is more
commonly called in the West, was an accomplished
commentator on PLATO (c. 430–347 B.C.E.) and
ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.), physician, practicing
judge, jurist, princely advisor, and spokesman for
theoretical problems of his day. His great intelli-
gence and profound accomplishments in jurispru-
dence, medicine, poetry, philosophy, natural science,
and theology were recognized by fellow Muslims as
well as by the Jews and Christians who first trans-
lated his writings into Hebrew and Latin.
Born in Cordoba, the son and grandson of noted
judges, he was educated in jurisprudence, medicine,
theology, and the natural sciences. Known above all
for his commentaries on the works of Aristotle—
commentaries that range across the whole of Aris-
totle’s corpus and include the Rhetoric and the
Poetics, On the Soul, the Metaphysics, and the Ni-
chomachean Ethics—Averroës also wrote a com-
mentary on Plato’s Republic, this ostensibly because
Aristotle’s Politics was unknown to the Arabs.
Moreover, he composed treatises on topics of more
immediate concern to fellow Muslims: the Decisive
Treatise on the relationship between philosophy and
the divine law and the Incoherence of the Incoher-
ence, an extensive refutation of al-Ghazālı̄ (1058–
1111). In these works, Averroës forcefully pleads
that philosophy serves religious and political well-
being. It is ever the friend of RELIGION, seeking to
825
discover the same truth as religion and to bring the
learned to respect divine revelation.
Though persuaded that science and with it phi-
losophy had been completed by Aristotle, Averroës
thought philosophy still needed to be recovered and
protected in each age. To these goals he addresses
himself in all of his works: the commentaries on Ar-
istotle and Plato are intended to recover or redis-
cover the ancient teaching and explain it to those
who can profit from it while the public writings,
written to address issues of the day, seek to preserve
the possibility of philosophical pursuits in an in-
creasingly hostile religious environment.
From Averroës’s Commentary on Plato’s Repub-
lic we learn, above all, that the simply best regime
is one in which the natural order among the VIRTUES
and practical arts is respected. The practical arts and
the moral virtues exist for the sake of the delibera-
tive virtues, and—whatever the hierarchy between
the practical arts and the moral virtues—all of these
exist for the sake of the theoretical virtues. Only
when this natural order is reflected in the organiza-
tion and administration of the regime can there be
any assurance that the virtues and practical arts will
function as they ought. Sound practice depends,
then, on understanding the order and the inter-
relationship among the parts of the human soul. He
reaches the same conclusion in his Middle Commen-
tary on the Rhetoric by identifying the best regime
as the city whose opinions and actions are in accor-
dance with what the theoretical sciences prescribe.
Ibn Rushd
These principles permit Averroës to identify the
flaws in the regimes he sees around him more clearly.
They are faulted either because they aim at the
wrong kind of end or because they fail to respect any
order among the human virtues. Thus he blames DE-
MOCRACY for the emphasis it places on the private
and for its inability to order the desires of the
citizens.
See also: ARISTOTLE; DEMOCRACY; ISLAM; ISLAMIC
ETHICS; ISLAMIC MEDICAL ETHICS; NATURAL LAW;
PRACTICAL REASON[ING]; RELIGION; PLATO; POLITI-
CAL SYSTEMS; VIRTUES.
Bibliography
Works by Ibn Rushd (Averroës)
Averroes’ Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics.
Translated by Charles E. Butterworth. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1986. Reprinted, with new
preface, South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2000.
Averroes on Plato’s “Republic”. Translated by Ralph Ler-
ner. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974.
Averroes’ Decisive Treatise and Epistle Dedicatory. Trans-
lated, with notes and introduction, by Charles E. But-
terworth. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press,
2000.
Work about Ibn Rushd
Butterworth, Charles E. Philosophy, Ethics, and Virtuous
Rule: A Study of Averroes’ Commentary on Plato’s
“Republic.” Cairo Papers in Social Science, vol. 9,
Monograph 1. Cairo: AUC Press, 1986.
Charles E. Butterworth
Ibn Sı̄nā
See Avicenna.
Ibn T. ufayl (1110–1185)
Muh. ammad Ibn ÛAbd al-Malik Ibn T. ufayl is best
. ayy Ibn
known for his famous philosophical novel, H
Yaqz. ān (Living the Son of Awakened) and for the
important role he played in setting Averroës (IBN
RUSHD, 1126–1198) on the path to writing commen-
taries on the works of ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.)
by introducing him to the Almohade ruler as the one
man most capable of such an undertaking—this not
826
being a task Ibn T. ufayl thought himself suited to pur-
sue. In addition to his knowledge of medicine, which
led him to become chief physician to the Almohade
rulers, Ibn T. ufayl was deeply learned in philosophy,
jurisprudence, theology, and logic, as well as the nat-
ural sciences. He was most interested in exploring the
relationship between the normal, rational acquisition
of knowledge and the path to it pursued by those who
favored MYSTICISM or SUFISM.
This becomes especially clear in H . ayy Ibn Yaqz. ān,
most notably in its philosophical introduction. The
work consists of three major parts. There is an in-
troduction in which Ibn T. ufayl explains why he is
writing a book such as this and provides a general
critique of philosophy, theology, and mysticism
within the Arab world at his time. This is followed
by the story of H . ayy and it, in turn, by a formal
conclusion in which Ibn T. ufayl returns to the main
theme of the work.
The story of H . ayy is that of a man who is either
self-generated from a lump of clay or comes into be-
ing as do all humans but is then put into the sea in
a basket because his mother, the sister of a very proud
monarch, has dared to marry beneath her status in
secret and fears for the fruit of this union should her
brother learn of H . ayy’s existence. However gener-
ated, H. ayy grows up on a deserted island, nursed by
a doe until he can fend for himself. During seven pe-
riods of seven years each, H . ayy discovers his natural
surroundings and the way they interact, ascending by
a series of inductions to embrace physics and all of
its many divisions as well as mathematics and its vari-
ous parts. He also gains insight into the nature of the
heavenly bodies and then into the character of the
creator as well as of his messenger and prophet, Mu-
h. ammad. H . ayy’s education is all the more wondrous,
for his enforced solitude deprives him of language.
Only when he encounters Asāl, the inhabitant of a
neighboring island who is discontent with the way his
fellow citizens practice religion, does H . ayy learn to
speak. They return to Asāl’s island intent upon show-
ing people the correct path, but fail miserably. Only
Salāmān, a friend of Asāl’s who discerns that most
people cannot appreciate the truths H . ayy wishes
them to grasp and who is thus content to let them
flounder, understands the limits of human reason. He
is also too complacent for H . ayy and Asāl, not to men-
tion most of Ibn T. ufayl’s readers.
Ibn T. ufayl recounts the tale of H . ayy Ibn Yaqz. ān
in response to a request from a friend that he unfold

what he knows “of the secrets of the Oriental wis-
dom mentioned by the master, the chief, Abū ÛAlı̄ Ibn
Sı̄nā [Avicenna].” The question, says Ibn T. ufayl,
moved him to a strange state and caused him to dis-
cern a world beyond the present; it also caused him
to see how difficult it is to speak intelligently and
circumspectly about this state. To prove the latter
point, Ibn T. ufayl passes in review what mystics and
philosophers have said about it. Desire to avoid their
foolishness prompts Ibn T. ufayl not to speak about
the state except insofar as he must while pointing
out the errors of his predecessors. He insists, none-
theless, that it is to be reached by “speculative
knowledge” and “deliberative inquiry” and intimates
that at least one philosopher—Ibn Bājja—reached
that rank or perhaps managed even to go beyond it.
Ibn Bājja (Avempace, d. c. 1138) did not, how-
ever, set down in a book what this state is; nor has
any other philosopher. Some have not simply be-
cause they have no awareness of it. Others have not
because it is difficult to explain in a book. Indeed,
Ibn T. ufayl dismisses as useless for this task what has
come down from Aristotle, AL-FĀRĀBĪ (870–950),
AVICENNA (980–1037), and all those in Andalusia
who preceded Ibn Bājja. Yet even Ibn Bājja, who was
capable of providing an account, failed to do so.
Still, to accede to the request of his friend, Ibn
T. ufayl promises to set forth the truth and knowledge
he has learned from al-Ghazālı̄ (1058–1111) and Av-
icenna, plus what he has gained from the philosophi-
cally inclined people of his time via study and reflec-
tion. Even so, he hesitates to give the results of what
he has witnessed without also providing the principles
lest his interlocutor be content with a lower degree
of insight. To arouse his interlocutor’s longing and
encourage him to move along the path, Ibn T. ufayl
offers the tale of H. ayy Ibn Yaqz. ān. This means, then,
that the story itself is intended to leave us short of the
end and to show us merely what the path is like.
See also: ARISTOTLE; AVERROËS; AVICENNA; DELIB-
ERATION AND CHOICE; FĀRĀBĪ, AL-; IBN
RUSHD; IS-
LAM; ISLAMIC ETHICS; ISLAMIC MEDICAL ETHICS;
MYSTICISM; RATIONALITY VS. REASONABLENESS; SU-
FISM; THEOLOGICAL ETHICS; WISDOM.
Bibliography
Work by Ibn T. ufayl
. ayy Ibn Yaqz. ān. Translated by Lenn Evan Goodman.
H will make one displeased with oneself and disap-
New York: Gee Tee Bee, 1995.
827
ideal observer
Works about Ibn T. ufayl
Fradkin, Hillel. “The Political Thought of Ibn T. ufayl.” In
The Political Aspects of Islamic Philosophy: Essays
in Honor of Muhsin S. Mahdi, edited by Charles E.
Butterworth, 234–61. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1992.
Mallet, Dominique. “Les livres de H . ayy.” Arabica 44/1
(1997): 1–34.
Charles E. Butterworth
ideal observer
This theory of moral judgment, usually associated
with the names of Adam SMITH (1723–1790) and
Roderick Firth (1917–1987), arose in the eigh-
teenth century as a protest against the then wide-
spread views that moral truth can be known by pure
reason and that moral truth is dependent on the will
of God. The theory looked to human nature as the
source of moral knowledge, and especially to the ap-
proval/disapproval of actions (as motivated) by per-
sons aware of the ACTION. It was thought that this
response is indicative of moral truth only if the ob-
server has accurate information about the act and its
circumstances and is in some sense impartial. The
approval/disapproval was usually thought to be a
consequence of the BENEVOLENCE of the observer, or
empathy (in the sense of an echo of the feelings of
the parties involved), or a more complex form of
SYMPATHY, as in Adam Smith (see below). It is de-
batable whether the approval-based moral judgment
is to be construed as a report of the psychological
response of the speaker (or of all persons), affirming
it to be well informed and impartial, or as an ex-
pression of the feeling of the speaker, but also im-
plying, or giving the impression that, the speaker’s
attitude is informed and impartial.
Francis Hutcheson. A precursor of the developed
theory was Francis HUTCHESON (1694–1746), who
thought the approval consisted in a joyful reaction
to an act conceived to follow from a desire for the
HAPPINESS of others, along with admiration and a
desire to praise the agent. Such reactions, he thought,
are native to the human species (except when sup-
pressed by PASSION or bad habits), not “derived
from custom, education, example, or study.” One
feels obligation when one knows failure to perform
proved by others—a fact explaining the motivation
ideal observer
to discharge obligations. Using the phrase for the
first time in the history of ethics, Hutcheson said that
a morally optimal act is one which “procures the
greatest happiness for the greatest number.” One
can debate whether he thought the moral judgment
an expression of the feelings of the agent or an as-
sertion about them.
David Hume. HUME (1711–1776) held a more
fully developed form of the theory. He agreed roughly
with Hutcheson’s analysis of approval, suggesting it
is natively produced satisfaction with an act, con-
ceived as springing from benevolence. This approval
(disapproval) causes GRATITUDE (RESENTMENT) to-
ward the agent. Sometimes he attributes the re-
sponse to empathy for the ill of the victim but more
usually to the observer’s benevolence. Consequently,
he thinks we are favorably sensitive to traits agree-
able or useful to the agent or others. He viewed the
moral rules about PROPERTY and contract as impor-
tant for the welfare of society and, as such, the
source of especially strong approval (disapproval).
These feelings vary with distance in time and space
and personal involvement, but language has devel-
oped the terms “right” and “wrong” to give expres-
sion to attitudes freed from these contingencies and
insofar impartial. Hume seems, rather like Hutche-
son, to think that “that was right” either asserts the
existence of a favorable feeling toward the agent or
expresses such a feeling, while also implying or giv-
ing the impression that the feeling is based on ade-
quate knowledge of the facts of the case and is im-
partial (so going beyond Hutcheson).
Adam Smith. Smith differed from Hume pri-
marily in the account of the PSYCHOLOGY of moral
approval/disapproval. It does not derive from the
observer’s benevolence, but from a sympathetic
emotional reaction to the motivation of an agent’s
act and its impact on the patient. So, if an agent
strikes someone in ANGER, the observer imagines
vividly the anger of the agent, including its cause and
intended consequences, and the hurt of the patient
and any resentment the patient feels toward the
agent (mutatis mutandis, for a kindly act). Evalua-
tion is a holistic summary-response to the whole pic-
ture. If there is a match between the observer’s ho-
listic response and the motivation of the agent, the
observer approves the action, and if an agent thinks
his action would elicit a favorable response from an
impartial observer, he feels comfortable with his
own action. The observer is to be factually informed,
828
and impartial in the sense of being personally unin-
volved with either party; but he is an average human
being, and his response is subject to his moods and
may be corrected later. Smith thinks the evaluations
of all informed impartial observers are substantially
identical, although he allows for culture-caused de-
viation (e.g., in Sparta). To call an action “right,” he
says, “just means” that it elicits impartial approval.
Does Smith view a moral statement as the assertion,
or expression, of this approval? There are passages
that can be read to support either view.
Twentieth century. The theory went into eclipse
in the nineteenth century, due to various influ-
ences—Richard PRICE (1723–1791), Immanuel
KANT (1724–1804), and UTILITARIANISM. It was re-
vived in the twentieth century. Edward WESTER-
MARCK (1862–1939) thought “is wrong” expresses
the speaker’s tendency to feel impartial resentment
at the agent of an act as being the cause of pain, and
is true if the speaker actually has this tendency. F. C.
Sharp thought that “X is right” affirms that X is the
kind of act the speaker would want all human beings
to perform in the circumstances if the speaker had
complete knowledge of all the relevant consequences
and if this knowledge would evoke “impersonal ap-
proval.” Rather similar views were expressed by
John Findlay and William Kneale, and favorably re-
viewed by C. D. Broad. The most refined expression
of the theory, however, was provided by Roderick
Firth in an influential paper published in 1952.
His proposal was offered as an “analysis” of
MORAL TERMS as used in ordinary language, in the
sense in which “the daffodil is yellow” is analyz-
able into statements about the way a daffodil would
appear to normal observers. His analysis is “prag-
matic” in the sense that it is based on “the pro-
cedures which we actually regard, implicitly or ex-
plicitly, as the rational ones for deciding ethical
questions.” The essence of the analysis is that “is
morally obligatory” means that all persons would
have a certain experience if they met certain condi-
tions. The analysis departs from the traditional view
that the experience is one of approval/disapproval,
by allowing that it may be of a phenomenologically
objective “demand-quality” (influence of Wolfgang
Koehler). So the experience which fixes the morality
of an act is that of a person who is (a) omniscient
with respect to nonethical facts; (b) omnipercipi-
ent—imagines this information as vividly as if per-
ceptually present; (c) devoid of INTERESTS in partic-

ular persons, times, or places; (d) totally without
passions toward persons or objects; and (e) in other
respects “normal.” These requirements seem strong,
but Firth argued for them with great sophistication.
The account is intended to be empiricist and abso-
lutist (the same response for all qualified observers).
Immediate objections were that we know enough
of the psychological and historical conditioning of
moral “reactions” to make it probable that not every
person qualified as an “ideal observer” would have
the same reactions, so the theory is not absolutist.
Again, it was said that it is unclear how a being both
omniscient and omnipercipient could be “normal”
in any clear sense. More elaborate recent criticisms
have been made by T. D. Campbell and Thomas
Carson.
It is often not noticed that Firth’s proposal could
easily be altered to a noncognitivist form. He could
say that “X is wrong” expresses an unfavorable at-
titude of the speaker, and at the same time implies
or gives the impression that the speaker’s attitude
would be the same if he were omniscient, omniper-
cipient, impartial, and otherwise normal. So con-
strued, his position is very similar to that of the
earlier theorists, although more precise and sophis-
ticated and omitting any account of the psychology
of moral reactions.
See also: BENEVOLENCE; BRANDT; GRATITUDE;
HUME; HUTCHESON; IDEALIZED AGENTS; IMPARTI-
ALITY; MORAL SENSE THEORISTS; RAWLS; SMITH;
SYMPATHY; UTILITARIANISM; WESTERMARCK.
Bibliography
Fundamental Sources
Firth, Roderick. “Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Ob-
server.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
12 (1952): 317–45.
———. “Reply to Professor Brandt.” Philosophy and Phe-
nomenological Research 15 (1955): 414–21.
Raphael, D. D., ed. British Moralists 1650–1800. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1969. Includes excerpts from the fol-
lowing fundamental sources: “An Essay on the Nature
and Conduct of the Passions, with Illustrations upon
the Moral Sense” (1728), by Francis Hutcheson; “A
Treatise of Human Nature” (1739–1740) and “An En-
quiry Concerning the Principles of Morals” (1751), by
David Hume; and “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”
(1759), by Adam Smith.
Sharp, F. C. Good Will and Ill Will. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1950.
829
idealist ethics
Westermarck, Edward. Ethical Relativity. London: Kegan
Paul, 1932. Chapter 5.
Some Discussions
Brandt, Richard B. “The Definition of an ‘Ideal Observer’
Theory in Ethics.” Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research 15 (1955): 407–13.
———. Ethical Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1959. Chapter 7.
Broad, C. D. “Some Reflections on Moral-Sense Theories
in Ethics.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 45
(1944–45): 131–65.
Campbell, T. D. Adam Smith’s Science of Morals. Lon-
don: George Allen and Unwin, 1971.
Carson, Thomas L. The Status of Morality. Dordrecht: D.
Reidel, 1984. Chapter 2.
Frankena, William. “Hutcheson’s Moral Sense Theory.”
Journal of the History of Ideas 16 (1955): 356–75.
Harman, Gilbert. Moral Agent and Impartial Spectator.
Lawrence: University of Kansas, 1986.
Harrison, Jonathan. “Some Comments on Professor Firth’s
Ideal Observer Theory.” Philosophy and Phenomeno-
logical Research 17 (1957): 256–62.
Richard B. Brandt
idealist ethics
The metaphysical idealist regards mind or the men-
tal as basic, and everything else, or at least the physi-
cal world, as somehow derivative from, or depen-
dent on, this. For to be an idealist in the usual
philosophical sense one must accept at least one of
the following three propositions.
(1) There is nothing but mind or the mental
and its modes or states;
(2) There is nothing but mind or the mental
and its modes or states and things whose
existence is one with their being cognized
[or cognizable] by mind;
(3) The physical world exists only as an object
of actual [or possible] mental awareness.
Three points should be noted.
(a) If a philosopher needs to make use of the
bracketed expressions to define his ideal-
ism, the idealism is less radical, and per-
haps also less defensible, than when they
are not needed.
(b) Idealism may be pluralistic or monistic.
idealist ethics
For the monistic or absolute idealist, all
minds, or all things mental, are a compo-
nent in one absolute mind or mental real-
ity; while for the pluralist idealist, there
are many distinct minds or instances of the
mental not belonging together in any over-
arching mind or mental reality.
(c) There is a tendency to restrict the term
‘idealism’ to theories which give a more
fundamental role to higher forms of mind
than to lower ones.
One main source of idealism lies in Berkeley’s ar-
guments for his view that to be is to perceive or to
be perceived. His view of physical reality rested
mainly on the argument that it cannot be conceived
without sensory, hedonic, and aesthetic character-
istics which it can only have in, or for, a perceiving
consciousness. Though Berkeley himself also em-
phasized the important role of rational inference in
the formation of our conception of the physical, and
the nonsensory nature of the perceiving mind itself,
some of his arguments point toward versions of ide-
alism for which it is mind in its sensory, rather than
its rational, aspects which is pervasive in the universe.
The other main source of idealism lies in Kant’s
arguments that the physical cannot be conceived co-
herently except as falling under categories which can
only apply where mind applies them. (Kant also ar-
gues to the mind-dependence of the physical from
its relation to perceptual intuition. However, he ap-
peals here to the least sensory features of perception
such as present mere space and time.) This leads to
the view that physical reality as we know it, and in-
deed everything we can think of, exhibits the opera-
tion of reason and can therefore only be there for
rational mind. One might call those in whom this
note is dominant ‘rational idealists.’
Among the main philosophers usually called ide-
alists the more Kantian and rationalist emphasis has
been dominant. This is partly because philosophers
who emphasize the pervasiveness of sensory rather
than rational mind are often denied the title ‘idealist’
on the basis of consideration (c) above. Thus, cer-
tain forms of pan-psychism for which reality is men-
tal through and through, but for which higher forms
of mind have arisen from, and are explicable by ref-
erence to, lower forms of the mental, would perhaps
not be called idealist except when they emphasize
the special role of higher forms of mind in producing
830
a physical world through their awareness of it. This
is of some importance in considering the ethical im-
plications of idealism, for an idealism which empha-
sizes the pervasiveness of sensory feeling is a natural
ally with ethical positions, such as hedonistic utili-
tarianism, with which idealism has usually been seen
as being at odds. However, there is no sharp division
between these types of idealism. Rather is there a
continuum from those in which considerations re-
lating to the more sensory characteristics of mind
are dominant to those in which the rational are. He-
gel and Green are almost entirely rational idealists,
while Bradley insists on the pervasiveness both of
reason and of sensory feeling. As for Berkeley,
though it is mainly the sensory character of the only
conceivable physical world which shows its depen-
dence on mind, mind itself is not conceived in sen-
sory terms.
A full discussion of the ethical theories which
have been associated with metaphysical idealism
would need to consider at least the following sixteen
very disparate thinkers, of whom we will have space
to consider only nine: George Berkeley (1685–1753),
James Frederick Ferrier (1808–1864), Immanuel
KANT (1724–1804), Johann Gottlieb FICHTE (1762–
1814), Friedrich Johann Joseph von SCHELLING
(1775–1854), G. W. F. HEGEL (1770–1831), Ar-
thur SCHOPENHAUER (1788–1860), Thomas Hill
GREEN (1836–1882), F. H. BRADLEY (1846–1924),
Josiah ROYCE (1855–1916), Bernard Bosanquet
(1848–1923), Benedetto Croce (1866–1952), G. H.
Howison (1834–1916), W. E. Hocking (1873–1966),
John McTaggart McTaggart (1866–1925), and Mi-
chael Oakeshott (1901–1990). Of these, the most
influential were Kant and Hegel, and most subse-
quent idealists have been strongly influenced by ei-
ther one or both of them.
Idealists since Kant have typically had two great
enemies in sight in developing their own ethics:
UTILITARIANISM (together, as a lesser enemy, with the
MORAL SENSE THEORISTS who base their ethics upon
the contingencies of emotional response and fellow
feeling) and determinism. Utilitarianism has been
conceived as teaching that the sole good for humans
is PLEASURE and the sole evil pain; determinism as
teaching that human actions are events in nature
falling under deterministic causal law just as do all
other events there. Idealists have charged both sys-
tems with undue assimilation of humans and ani-
mals for whom these doctrines are probably ade-

quate. Kant and Green are among the main idealists
who have argued thus.
Of propositions (1) to (3) listed above, Kant def-
initely accepts only (3). The physical world has only
a phenomenal status; it is the appearance to the hu-
man mind of a world which in its own independent
being is certainly not physical, while there is no
knowing whether, as thing in itself, it is mental in
character or of some character utterly inconceivable
by us. Even the human self is known to itself only
as an appearance. It falls, as we know it, like any
physical thing, under such forms and categories as
time and causation (which cannot on pain of para-
dox be regarded as features of things in themselves),
differing mainly in its nonspatial character. Thus it
presents itself as a natural phenomenon, associated
with a physical organism to form a psycho-physical
whole whose behavior is explicable by physical and
psychological laws (the latter concerning the lures
and menaces of animal pleasure and pain mediated,
to some extent, by rational calculation and perhaps
modified by sentimental fellow feeling). However,
the human self also has the right to the belief or faith
that it is something more than this, namely a free
rational agent whose apparently natural career owes
something to free choice exercised at the level of
fundamental noumenal reality. If it is such, it can
voluntarily submit its inclinations to the rational
test of potential inclusion in a system of moral law
accepted as binding by all rational agents and ex-
pressing their respect for each other as ends in them-
selves. But such faith can never amount to knowl-
edge. What seems submission to the moral law may
always really be mere animal urgency and sentimen-
tal fellow feeling finding its path through the world
by sophisticated calculation.
Fichte’s philosophy was conceived as a develop-
ment of Kant’s. However, he differed metaphysically
from Kant in that he categorically denied a system
of things in themselves behind the scenes of the
physical. Our sole ground for rejecting a solipsistic
phenomenalism and believing in a real world, con-
taining other conscious beings and a shared envi-
ronment, is that our sense of duty requires it as its
scene of action. This is because there is but one ul-
timate reality, a single spiritual ego which posits it-
self as an individual in each of us and in the world
of physical appearance as the environment in which
we must work together for our MORAL DEVELOP-
MENT. “Our world is the sensualised material of our
831
idealist ethics
duty.” Thus we recognize what we truly are only in
commitment to this duty which is best done in the
realization that the solicitations of sense come from
a realm posited by the universal self to be conquered
in its individual manifestations. We must work for a
universal civilization (which Fichte conceived in es-
sentially socialist terms, and presented, in 1807, to
a German people humiliated by Napoleon’s victo-
ries, as peculiarly its role to forward by an educa-
tional system dedicated to training its citizens in un-
selfish devotion to the good of the community and
to spiritual striving for its own sake). But we must
do so, less for the sake of any actual success, than
because we thereby find our true good in uniting
ourselves with the one infinite spirit which expresses
itself in our consciousness of this world and in laying
this task upon us. We may still be guessing at its
ultimate purposes when we are faced with fresh
tasks in the life to come.
Exactly in what sense Hegel was an idealist is
problematic. Though his philosophy is in many re-
spects akin to that of Fichte, in Hegel’s system,
physical nature seems to be less of a mere presen-
tation to human consciousness. What is certain is
that his conception of reality is a strongly holistic
one for which individual humans are scarcely real
except as members of their community. The ethical
implications he drew from this have been a major
influence on the moral philosophy of most subse-
quent absolute idealists, though it is usually com-
bined with a more individualistic note derived from
Kant. By a very different route from Kant’s, Hegel
claims to establish the reality-constructing nature of
mind or spirit conceived finally as a single Absolute
Idea actualizing itself primarily through human his-
tory. As such it passes through a series of different
ethical stages, each of which has value in its place.
The Kantian ethic of duty is one such phase, and a
higher one than the sentimental moralities to which
it was opposed; but it needs to be surpassed in turn
by an ethics in which the emphasis on human fellow
feeling is restored in a more rational form. As a
member of a developed national community, the in-
dividual can find his freedom in playing an appro-
priate role in a society which he can see as a stage
in the self-realization of the cosmic spirit. The purely
formal test of the morally obligatory, which Kant
purported to provide, is vacuous. Only the concrete
demands imposed by the accepted morality of an ac-
idealist ethics
tual society can give a definite content to the require-
ments of duty.
It was only later that an idealism deriving both
from Kant and Hegel became dominant in Anglo-
American philosophy. One of the chief initiators of
this development was T. H. Green. Central to his
thought is the antithesis between an idealist ethics
and the utilitarianism, NATURALISM, and determin-
ism which had dominated the British intellectual
scene. Thus, the utilitarian thought of Jeremy BEN-
THAM (1748–1832) and JOHN STUART MILL (1806–
1873) on the one hand, and the naturalistic view of
man’s origin advanced by Charles DARWIN (1809–
1882), threatened to command the minds of all
those who could not simply hide in the traditional
faith of their fathers. Green, in his metaphysics, ar-
gued elaborately that mind could not be the mere
product of physical EVOLUTION. For while the physi-
cal world consists in a series of events in time, the
human mind has knowledge of this world and this
would be impossible if it also was merely a series of
events in time. A temporal series can only be known
to something which stands outside the series so that
its different phases can be present to it. More gen-
erally, the whole natural world is a system of events
in relation (is, Green even seems to say, nothing but
relations), and relations can exist only as presented
to a synthesizing mind. However, granted the physi-
cal world is mind-dependent, its independence of
our minds shows that it is present to an eternal con-
sciousness, and we may conclude that we ourselves
are a kind of emanation of this eternal consciousness
and that our knowledge of the world, ourselves, and
each other is the eternal mind somehow injecting
itself into history. For Green, however, the individual
has a much more distinct reality than for Bradley or
even Royce.
Ethically the significance of this is that a human
mind is not the mere series of sensory impressions,
feelings, and images which it was for David HUME
(1711–1776). (Green’s elaborate critique of Hume
was thought by many to be the deathblow to tradi-
tional British empiricism.) It follows that our behav-
ior is not to be explained on a simple desire-means-
end calculation model. Nor can its end be a mere
sum of pleasures occurring in succession, for the
good of a mind which is more than a series must lie
in something whose existence is more than serial.
Rather must its good be a satisfaction of the self
which can be apprehended as a whole. (One won-
832
ders why, since the synthesizing mind can experience
history thus, it cannot also experience a succession
of pleasures.) It is, in fact, the self-making of a mind
which can stand back from the flux of desires and
freely decide how to mould them into a unity which
will provide that “abiding satisfaction of an abiding
self” which is its only true good. And this requires
that we recognize others as similar individualized
emanations of the eternal consciousness. Thereby
we will see our duty as the production of a society
in which each can thus realize himself in a COMMON
GOOD —common in the sense that it is to be
achieved by each only in cooperation with all, such
cooperation being itself part of the good.
Although sometimes regarded as a founding fa-
ther of British Hegelianism, Green is perhaps closer
to Kant. He shared Kant’s extreme suspicion of any
form of sensory good, although he differed in that
he made self-realization or organization, rather than
rationality, the nonnatural feature in human life
which gives it moral worth. Essentially, Green was
a liberal individualist like Kant rather than Hegel,
for, though the good of each person is said to be a
common good, the highest value lies in personal
worth. Thus Green ascribes value to the community
only insofar as it is the system in which each indi-
vidual realizes himself.
The two other most important idealists in the
Anglo-American world, Bradley and Royce, were
rather closer to Hegel, though far from being strict
Hegelians. In his earlier ethical work, Bradley de-
picts the goal of human life, morality included, as
each individual’s self-realization. This is to be found
neither in the achievement of an impossible maxi-
mization of pleasure (as in HEDONISM), nor in a
merely formal rationality (as in Kantianism), but in
becoming an integrated whole personality. However,
one can become such a whole, for the most part, only
insofar as one finds one’s place in a larger (which
usually means a social) whole. Yet there are some
whose self-realization must be more solitary, though
even here it will consist in a sense that one is playing
one’s proper role in the unitary system of a self-
conscious universe. The sense of being a fragment
of a unified reality with a nisus to becoming a whole
by finding one’s place in the whole is the key to hu-
man practice and thought for Bradley and follows
from his holistic idealism. However, especially in his
later work, the more sensory basis for idealism is
also significant. Thus, good is eventually identified

with that which feels good in the form of satisfactory
experience, though Bradley insists that “pleasure” is
a mere thin abstraction from the totality of what
satisfies.
Josiah Royce saw the problem of ethics in very
modern terms as the dilemma that we are seemingly
required to choose between the arbitrariness which
an ethic of personal choice seems to imply and the
motivational inertness of an ethic based on factual
claims. The dilemma can be overcome by realizing
that the satisfaction of every human aspiration must
necessarily present itself as a prima facie good to one
who knows its nature fully through SYMPATHY.
Thus, to the extent that we imagine human life ad-
equately, we must see the harmonious satisfaction of
the maximum of aspiration as the highest good.
Moreover, we will see that this satisfaction can come
to the individual only through his or her LOYALTY
to a community. Thus, the highest ethic consists in
loyalty to loyalty itself—that is, in striving toward a
world composed of societies each of which com-
mands the loyalty of its members without threaten-
ing the similar loyalty present in other societies. This
ethic is firmly rooted in Royce’s view of reality as a
system of persons who together compose a universal
person realizing itself through them.
The absolute idealism of thinkers like Bradley and
Royce seemed to many to trample alarmingly on the
ultimate reality, freedom, and ethical importance of
the individual, and to be unattractively complacent
about EVIL as an essential moment in the Absolute’s
being. This criticism encouraged a move toward a
“personal idealism” closer to Kant, with echoes of
Gottfried LEIBNIZ (1646–1716) and Berkeley. If
there is any truly great figure in this school (apart
perhaps from the atypical case of McTaggart) his
greatness has not been recognized; its most unam-
biguous exponent was the American philosopher
G. H. Howison, who protested at the destruction of
the sense of personal duty which both evolutionary
naturalism and spiritual monism threatened. For
Howison, the universe is an uncreated system of
conscious persons including God as primus inter pa-
res distinguished from all others chiefly by the un-
bounded love He has for them. He is the supreme
exemplar of the perfection for which all others long
and they evoke the shared appearance of the physi-
cal world as a scene of action in which they may
move toward it asymptotically, voluntarily, and di-
versely through moral struggle.
833
idealist ethics
So far we have seen idealism standing in oppo-
sition to utilitarianism. But surely it is a mistake to
see these as intrinsically hostile. Indeed, utilitarian-
ism’s claim that only HAPPINESS or pleasure (broadly
understood as what feels good in the living of it) is
good in itself is virtually the ‘esse is percipi’ principle
applied to value: to be good (in the sense of pos-
sessing intrinsic value) is to feel good. So perhaps it
is not surprising to find that the ethical position of
Berkeley was effectively a rule utilitarianism derived
from the rational conviction that God created men
in order that the well-being of all should be “pro-
cured by the concurring actions of each,” and that
behavior based upon those general principles, con-
formity to which is the one sure way to the general
good, shall be the best means for obtaining the great-
est happiness in the life to come. Thus, “the general
good of mankind being the rule or measure of moral
truth,” we should seek our present happiness and
future bliss in work for the community, not in sen-
sory pleasure. (In his early notebooks, at least,
Berkeley emphasized the sensory character of ulti-
mate good, though he deplored ordinary sensuality.)
Though subsequent idealist ethics has seldom
come so near to utilitarianism, it has not been en-
tirely dominated by Kantian and Hegelian perspec-
tives. Of alternative ethical uses of idealism the most
important is that of Schopenhauer. His metaphysics
has a Kantian starting point, depicting the physical
world as the partly illusory appearance of a non-
physical reality in itself to itself. But Schopenhauer
goes beyond Kant in claiming that our own self-
consciousness tells us something of what reality is
like in itself, for we here confront ourselves not as
mere appearance but as a partially revealed thing-
in-itself. What thus reveals itself is will. The inner
being, therefore, of reality is something akin to will,
and since plurality can only pertain to what is dis-
tributed in the phenomenal forms of space and time,
this will-like reality must be one. Thus, our various
wills and persons are only seemingly distinct and
separate. What sees and feels the world and itself
through you, me, the cat, and even the forces of na-
ture is really a single subject and will. Selfishness
turns on a failure to recognize oneself in the other,
and the truth of things reveals itself to compassion.
All unprejudiced persons see this as the basis of
ethics. Metaphysics simply adds the intellectual en-
dorsement of the truth revealed to the unselfish per-
son. Schopenhauer professes not to recommend any-
idealist ethics
thing, but only to describe the essence of human
goodness. This consists in compassion with the suf-
ferings of the will in all its different apparent indi-
vidualizations and in action inspired by such com-
passion. Thus, Schopenhauer deplored the ethical
formalism of Kant and its low valuation of fellow
feeling (a fact in tune with his being closer to Berke-
ley in his idealism than was Kant).
A full consideration of the logical, rather than
the historical, relations between idealism and ethics
would need to examine the very idea of basing ethics
on a metaphysical system. Bypassing that, I end with
some suggestions about the ethics appropriate for
an idealist. These are best presented by a compari-
son with utilitarianism.
Idealism and hedonism. Idealism, we have seen,
has historically often appeared as the antagonist of
utilitarianism. This has partly been because utilitar-
ianism developed mainly among thinkers who sought
to rescue society from the shackles of religious
dogma and were committed to a naturalistic secu-
larist view of the world which emphasized the physi-
cal determinants of human life, while idealists were
typically devoted to the defense of spiritual values
(though often with scant respect for religious ortho-
doxy) against the ravages of just such a view. Utili-
tarianism also, with its calculative approach to plea-
sure and pain, had tended to an atomistic view of
human experience and of society which idealists
have mostly condemned. These antagonisms have
hidden the natural fit between the esse is percipi (or
percipere) p
the collectivism of utilitarianism as a threat to the
values of personal LIBERTY; but then again the more
liberal kind of utilitarian has thought the same of
the social philosophy of holistic idealists.
Idealism and community. Absolute idealism has
had a holistic view not only of the individual con-
sciousness but also of the world as a whole, and usu-
ally this has meant also of society. Thus, utilitarian-
ism has been condemned for seeing society as merely
a device through which individuals pursue private
goals in peace. In contrast, idealists, or at least those
of the absolute variety, have typically insisted that
the good of the individual is that of a being who can
only properly become himself as a member of a so-
ciety to which he attaches value for its own sake.
Utilitarianism would have to cast off some of its tra-
ditional commitments to agree with this. It is argu-
able, however, that in doing so it will remain truer
to its ultimate greatest happiness principle. In recent
times, both opponents and supporters of utilitari-
anism have seen it as associated with a denial of the
ultimate reality of individual persons which is also
often found in absolute idealism. There is truth in
this, provided it is realized that both can stress the
importance of personal values as among the greatest
goods the world or the community can contain.
This author believes that adequately thought
through absolute idealism and utilitarianism unite in
their deliverances and, taken separately or together,
are logically compelling.
See also: AGENT-CENTERED MORALITY; BRADLEY;