On Admirable Immorality

Author(s): Marcia Baron

Source: Ethics , Apr., 1986, Vol. 96, No. 3 (Apr., 1986), pp. 557-566
Published by: The University of Chicago Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2381071

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 On Admirable Immorality*

Marcia Baron

In a chapter of his book, Goods and Virtues, Michael Slote puts forth and
defends the view that there is such a thing as admirable immorality.' By
this he does not mean the very strong thesis, often attributed to Nietzsche,
that immorality is generally admirable; nor does he mean the weak thesis
that certain aspects of immoral conduct are admirable. What he means,
rather, is that there are traits of character which are both immoral and
admirable (p. 77) or; more precisely, that there are character traits which
we admire even though they are conceptually inseparable from the tend-
ency to act in ways which we think are immoral (pp. 79-80).
This position, or one very similar to it, has been put forth by other
prominent philosophers in the past few years. Thus, Susan Wolf has
questioned "whether it is always better to be morally better."2 Bernard
Williams has remarked that "while we are sometimes guided by the notion
that it would be the best of worlds in which morality were universally
respected and all men were of a disposition to affirm it, we have in fact
deep and persistent reasons to be grateful that this is not the world we
have."3 This view is often found attractive, because certain sorts of examples
are thought to be clear instances of admirable immorality. Slote presents
just such examples. My aim here is to subject the examples to close
scrutiny to determine whether they indeed do show that there is such a
phenomenon as admirable immorality.4

* I am grateful to the American Council of Learned Societies for its support during
the period of time in which I completed this paper. I would also like to thank Michael
Slote, Michael Stocker and two anonymous referees for their comments on an earlier draft.
1. Michael Slote, Goods and Virtues (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), chap. 4. Hereafter,
references to his book will be given in the text of the paper.
2. Susan Wolf, "Moral Saints,"Journal of Philosophy 79 (1982): 438.
3. Bernard Williams, "Moral Luck," in Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981), p. 23.
4. To understand Slote's discussion in the context of his larger project, we should
note that he is, in his words, "exploring our common understanding of certain aspects of
human well-being and human virtue" and that part of what he intends to show is that
"philosophers have placed unwarranted restrictions on what counts as a personal goo
virtue through reliance on a priori ethical theses that cannot be sustained when we confront
them with the actual phenomena of the moral life" (p. 1). It will be my contention that
there is no clash between the theses in question and our "common understanding" or
"common sense" (p. 77).

Ethics 96 (April 1986): 557-566

X 1986 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0014-1704/86/9603-0008$01.00

557

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 558 Ethics April 1986

Slote's strategy is to put forth three examples which, he thinks, are

instances of admirable immorality. Recognizing that they will not seem
so to people who hold that moral considerations are automatically over-
riding, he first seeks to show that this thesis, which he calls "the overrid-
ingness thesis," is false. I begin by evaluating his argument against the
overridingness thesis. After that, I will evaluate his defense of the claim
that there is admirable immorality.

II

Slote understands the thesis "that morality overrides all opposing con-
siderations" to mean that "there cannot be any (overall) justification for
doing what is morally wrong" (p. 84). After explaining why Philippa
Foot's attempted refutation of the overridingness thesis falls short of the
mark, he presents his own case.5 What is needed, he thinks, is an example
in which the agent recognizes that he does wrong but "feels justified in
doing wrong, and is willing to stand by what he does." Particularly telling,
in his view, are instances in which the agent thinks he must do x, where
this 'must' expresses a sense ofjustification rather than (merely) physical
necessity or psychological compulsion, and where x is something for
which the agent thinks there can (under the circumstances) be no moral
justification (p. 86). With all this in mind, he constructs the following
case:

A father may deliberately mislead police about his son's whereabouts,

even knowing that the son has committed a serious crime and even
while acknowledging the validity of the local system of criminal
justice. He may feel he mustn't let the police find his son, but must,
instead, do everything in his power to help him get to a place of
safety, even though he is also willing to admit that there can be no
moral justification for what he is doing. [P. 86]

The force of this example turns on the proper interpretation of

must.' Does the 'must' express a sense of justification or merely a sense
of psychological necessity? Unless it expresses a sense ofjustification, the
example will in no way suggest that moral considerations can sometimes
be trumped by other considerations. If by 'I must do this, though I know
that it is wrong' I mean only that I am psychologically incapable of acting
otherwise, I will probably think that I have an excuse; but excuses are
different fromjustifications.6 I will think that I shouldn't be held responsible

5. Philippa Foot, "Are Moral Considerations Overriding?" in Virtues and Vices (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1978). Her paper is a rejoinder to D. Z. Phillips's "In Search of the Moral
'Must': Mrs. Foot's Fugitive Thought," Philosophical Quarterly 27 (1977): 140-57, itself a
reply to Foot's "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives," reprinted in Virtues and
Vices. See, too, Phillips's response to her rejoinder, "Do Moral Considerations Override
Others?" Philosophical Quarterly 29 (1979): 247-54.
6. See H. L. A. Hart, Punishment and Responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1964), especially "Prolegomenon to the Principles of Punishment," for a good discussion
of the distinction.

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 Baron Admirable Immorality 559

for my action, and that I therefore shouldn't be faulted for what I did,
but this is not to say that I will think that I was justified in doing it.
Thus, one way to understand Slote's example is as follows: (1) The
father feels unable to do other than protect his son from the authorities
and therefore does not think that he is culpable for his actions. However,
it is clear from Slote's remarks on the sort of example that is needed to
refute the overridingness thesis that he intends the 'must' to express
justification, not just psychological necessity and the inculpability that
psychological necessity is generally thought to entail. So we must try to
picture the father accordingly: he believes that he is acting wrongly
(morally speaking) and without moral justification, but that in some
sense he is justified-and not merely to be excused.
The problem is one of making sense of the example while at the
same time picturing the father in the way just described. I find it impossible
to do so. When I try to picture the situation, I see it either in the way
described above, where the father thinks that what he does is excusable,
though not justifiable, or in one of the following two ways: (2) The father
thinks that generally one should not deliberately mislead the police about
the whereabouts of someone accused of a serious crime which one knows
the accused has committed; still, there are circumstances in which one
may, and perhaps should, do so. He isn't sure of exactly what those
circumstances are, but he feels certain that among them are those in
which the criminal in question is one's son or daughter, who in addition
is very unlikely to commit another such crime and certain to be badly
traumatized by a long stay in prison. Since his situation meets these
conditions, the man feels justified in deceiving the authorities in order
to protect his son-and feels that he must so act. (3) The father feels that
he must mislead the authorities to shield his son, in order to be able to
live with himself, to "bear his own survey."7 If he doesn't do anything to
help him escape, then, he fears, he will always suspect his own motives
later. (Sheer exasperation, resentment of his son's coolness toward him;
or perhaps he'll suspect that while he cooperated with the authorities
because morally, there was no other choice, he took inordinate satisfaction
in doing so.) We can imagine that he thinks that he will later hate himself
for it and blame himself if his relationship with his son is thenceforth
hopelessly strained. With so much at stake in cooperating with the police,
he may well judge that he may (is morally permitted to) lie-especially
since, he figures, his son will probably be apprehended anyway.
We can imagine variations on the examples: in the second explanation,
the father's reasons for thinking that his situation is an exception to the
general principle could be revised. The third explanation could be amended
in a number of ways: the parent might be worried only about his subsequent
self-hatred, or about both and also about his wife's reaction to his behavior
if he cooperates with the police, and so on.

7. This phrase is taken from the conclusion to Hume's Treatise.

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 560 Ethics April 1986

But changing the details will not affect the outcome, which is that
none of the explanations of Slote's example that I have presented supports
his point. None of them shows that the man thinks that he is justified
in doing what he does and thinks that he is not morally justified in so
doing. In the first explanation he thinks he has an excuse, not ajustification;
in the second and the third, he thinks he is morally justified. We can also
imagine another explanation: he thinks that he is not "morally" justified
(he supplies the quotation marks) but that he is morally justified. Or
again, the man may use 'morally' in a restricted way, referring to, say,
laws and social conventions which he thinks are generally, but not invariably,
to be followed. If this is how he understands morality, then he may well
say, "I am justified, though not morally," but this is not, I take it, what
Slote had in mind. He is not making a trivial terminological claim.
Assuming, then, that Slote's assertion that moral considerations are
not automatically overriding is not a terminological claim, I conclude,
tentatively, that his example in no way undermines the overridingness
thesis. My conclusion is only tentative, since it turns on my inability to
make sense of the example in such a way that the devoted parent does
feel justified in misleading the police, yet not morally justified. The pos-
sibility remains that someone else may provide the right sort of explanation
of Slote's example.8
Before leaving the overridingness thesis and turning to Slote's attempt
to show that there is admirable immorality, we should take note of some-
thing that he says in support of his assertion that one may-and that the
father does -feel justified in doing something for which he feels there
is no moral justification. Slote remarks, "But in any case the possibility
of such a moral justification may well be the furthest thing from the
mind of the parent who deceives or has deceived the authorities. Realistically

8. An anonymous referee has proposed the following explanation. The father (as in
my first interpretation) feels that it would be psychologically impossible for him to act
otherwise; but he does not find this fact regrettable. He sees his action as flowing necessarily
from a trait which he approves of in himself, that of fatherly devotion. While he holds the
action to be immoral, he feels justified in doing it, though not morally justified; for while
he approves of the trait from which it flows, he sees that trait as neither moral nor immoral.
My comments will have to be brief, even elliptical, but Sec. III below will shed light on
them. There are two closely related difficulties with the proposed explanation. First, it is
not clear how approval of a trait which one regards as amoral could serve to give one a
sense of justification for all those actions which, one thinks, flow necessarily from it. To
understand the type of approval at hand, we might compare it to approval of one's wit,
candor, or boldness; yet it would be strange to feel justified, simply because one admires
these traits in oneself, in performing any action which flows necessarily from one of these
traits. The related and more serious difficulty is the notion of an action flowing necessarily
from a trait. As if traits operate in isolation from one another! The father's action does
not flow necessarily from parental devotion; it flows necessarily from unbounded parental
devotion, devotion neither tempered by other considerations nor modified by the influence
of other traits. To be sure, the explanation could be modified: the parent admires his trait
of unbounded-monomaniacal-fatherly devotion and feels justified (etc.). But then (and
this anticipates Sec. III) the case becomes unconvincing.

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 Baron Admirable Immorality 561

speaking, what makes him feel justified and willing to stand by what he
has done is not (the possibility of) an overall moral justification in terms
of the morality of traits and motives [or of actions], but rather the particular
danger to his son" (p. 92).9 Granted, the parent may be thinking such
things as "I must do this; I must do all that I can to reduce the risk that
John will spend years in the state penitentiary," and not, "Yes, indeed, I
am morally justified in deceiving the authorities." But that does not show
that his thought that he must act as he does is not undergirded by an
unarticulated sense that he is morally justified. The dichotomy that Slote
draws between an overall moral justification and the danger to his son
is, if not false, misleading: the devoted parent may be thinking particularly
about the danger to his son, but the thought may perform its motivational
role against the background of other beliefs which, together with it,
provide an overall moral justification.'0 While he is not reciting it to
himself, it may still be the basis of his willingness to "stand by what he
has done" (p. 87).
Slote concludes the discussion by saying that even if the overridingness
thesis is modified to take traits and motives into account, it "gives an
insufficient sense of the limits of the role moral considerations play in
our assessment and justification of actions, traits and motives and is thus
inadequate to describe the actual phenomena of the moral life" (p. 93).
But if what I have said is correct, Slote has given us no reason to think
that moral considerations play a more limited role in our assessment of
actions, traits, and motives than moral philosophers have generally thought.
I turn now to his attempt to show that there can be-and indeed
is -admirable immorality.

III

Slote's strategy is again to present examples, this time three of them:

Gauguin, as we know him from Bernard Williams's "Moral Luck," Winston
Churchill, somewhat recast by Slote just as Gauguin was by Williams,
and a strictly fictitious political leader, concocted by Michael Walzer."1 I
begin with Churchill. After presenting the pertinent details, I will discuss
him together with Gauguin. Despite appearances to the contrary, the
two cases are quite similar.
Slote asks us to imagine Churchill "single-mindedly devoted to crushing
Nazism, to Allied victory." He continues: "As a result, late in the War he

9. In the passage cited, Slote is arguing that even if the overridingness thesis is modified
to "accommodate the idea that the morality of motives or character traits may sometimes
override the morality of single actions" (p. 90), it still is flawed in the way he has indicated.
I have inserted 'or of actions,' since Slote omits it only to emphasize that even the modified
overridingness thesis has the problems that he pointed out.
10. For more on how this works, see my "The Alleged Moral Repugnance of Acting
from Duty," Journal of Philosophy 81 (1984): 197-220.
11. Williams; and Michael Walzer, "Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands,"
Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1973): 160-80, esp. pp. 166-67.

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562 Ethics April 1986

approves the fire-bombing of certain German cities in the hope of breaking

civilian morale and bringing Germany quickly to its knees, even though
ultimate Allied victory is by that time reasonably assured. Imagine further
(what I believe is historically inaccurate) that the fire-bombing achieves
its purpose, rather than simply stiffening German resistance" (p. 95).
Most of us will agree, Slote thinks, that "there is no moral justification,
in the circumstances mentioned, for what Churchill did." Yet, he says,
we admire Churchill and, furthermore, we admire him for the very
character trait which led him to approve the firebombing. Slote writes,
"Churchill's single-minded, passionate devotion to Allied victory would
by its very nature impel him to do everything in his power to defeat the
enemy (at the cost of fewer Allied lives), and so lead him to do the very
things we have just said seem to be wrong" (p. 95). Here, Slote says, we
have an instance of admirable immorality.
Now, if this is to be an instance of admirable immorality, then what
we admire and what we morally disapprove of must be such that the
former cannot be conceptually prised from the latter. Slote makes this
clear when he distinguishes his thesis from the weaker thesis that "we
may sometimes admire certain aspects of immoral action or find people
admirable for traits whose possession makes them more likely to act
wrongly." This familiar phenomenon, Slote explains, is one in which
"what we admire [e.g., a robber's daring] can be conceptually prised from
its immorality" (p. 79). In contrast, an instance of admirable immorality
is one in which what we admire cannot be conceptually prised from what
we deem immoral.12
According to this stipulation, it is not enough if we admire Churchill's
devotion to Allied victory but disapprove of the single-mindedness of
that devotion. Nor is it enough if we disapprove of single-minded devotion
to Allied victory and admire the same devotion-this time, however,
tacitly assuming that the single-minded devotion is tempered by some
other concern, for example, a concern to avoid causing unnecessary
suffering, or that it is regulated by higher-order principles or by a sense
of proportion.
Slote thinks that we admire Churchill's single-minded devotion to
defeating the Nazis, while morally condemning his approval of the fire-
bombing. He constructs the Gauguin case similarly. The somewhat fic-
tionalized Gauguin is passionately and single-mindedly devoted to (his)
art-and this, Slote thinks, we approve of. But this devotion leads him
to desert his family to go to the South Seas, and this desertion, Slote
believes, we regard as immoral.

12. The test could stand some clarification and, perhaps, refinement. Slote does not
explicate the relation of x's being such that it cannot be conceptually prised from y but,
instead, appeals to examples which contrast the robber's daring and Gauguin's artistic
talent to the latter's single-minded devotion to his art. I have been primarily concerned to
be faithful to Slote's use of this notion, and, to avoid altering, it, I have had to leave the
notion a bit vague.

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 Baron Admirable Immorality 563
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that we disapprove of
Gauguin's desertion and of Churchill's approval of the firebombing. The
question to ponder is this: is it (also) the case both that we admire Gauguin's
single-minded devotion to art and Churchill's single-minded devotion to
Allied victory and that these traits cannot be conceptually prised from
the acts to which they respectively lead?
We may begin by examining the relation between the traits and the
acts to which they lead. Whether they can be conceived apart from the
acts which, we are assuming, we regard as immoral depends on just how
we understand the single-mindedness of the devotion. One way to un-
derstand it is as monomaniacal-recognizing no bounds whatsoever (except
those needed for the realization of the project). The other way is to see
it as recognizing certain bounds-though only certain types of bounds.
On the latter reading, Gauguin's devotion to art could still be said
to be single-minded if he recognized moral bounds and led his life ac-
cordingly, but it could not be if (for instance) he were deeply interested
in geology as well as (and independently of) art and spent his summers
on geological excavations. 13 On the former reading, to be single-mindedly
devoted to something is to go for it, no holds barred. A Gauguin thus
devoted to art would kill for art supplies. If he thought he could create
a fantastic work of art by painting the murder of one of his children by
the others, then, on this understanding of single-minded devotion to art
as monomaniacal, he would do so (even if producing this masterpiece
required, in his estimation, that he view the murder-and thus that the
murder actually take place).
Now, if passionate, single-minded devotion to x is conceived in the
former way, as recognizing some bounds, then it does not lead inevitably
to such acts as that of deserting one's family in order to pursue one's
artistic endeavors in the South Seas. It can easily be "prised" from such
acts, for a person who is intent on x in this way can say, "I have my limits!
There are some things that I won't do, despite my deep devotion to x."
Thus understood, single-minded devotion to art (or to Allied victory) is
admirable; yet since it can be conceptually prised from the immoral acts
to which it sometimes conduces, it does not constitute admirable immorality.
If, on the other hand, such devotion is understood as a sort of
monomania, recognizing no constraints except those imposed by physical
(or logical) impossibility, then the devotion cannot be conceptually prised

13. I hope it is clear that by 'moral bounds' I do not mean merely prima facie moral
bounds but, rather, all-things-considered moral bounds. I mention this to defuse a possible
objection, namely, that Gauguin's devotion to art could not be single-minded if, say, he
were punctilious about returning borrowed art utensils precisely when he had said he
would, even though that meant ceasing work on a painting at a critical moment, and even
though the person who had lent the utensils was unlikely to need them right away. There
is no reason to assume that someone who recognizes moral bounds is stupid and unreflective
about just what those moral bounds are, nor is there any reason to assume that morality
is strictly other-regarding.

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564 Ethics April 1986

from the immoral acts to which it leads. Thus, it passes that part of Slote's
test. But it fails to render the Gauguin and Churchill examples instances
of admirable immorality because single-minded devotion, thus understood,
is not admirable. If you do not think of Gauguin murdering to get art
supplies or slamming the door to leave for Tahiti despite his wife's an-
guished pleas and the grave illness of one of his children, then his devotion
to art may seem admirable enough. But of course it does not count as
admirable immorality if we admire only certain aspects of the quality which
cannot be conceptually prised from the immorality to which it conduces.
It would be rash to conclude at this point that the freely portrayed
Churchill and Gauguin are not cases of admirable immorality. For there
are intermediate degrees of single-minded devotion, and perhaps these
could count as instances of admirable immorality. Suppose, for instance,
that Gauguin would not murder for art supplies but might do something
less extreme, for example, steal art supplies from a former artist who no
longer has any use for them but who, jealous of Gauguin's talent, does
not want Gauguin to have them. Suppose too that he does not depart
for the South Seas in the circumstances that I described but instead waits
until his child has recovered (or died) and until his wife is more reconciled
to his plan. Is there a way of understanding single-minded devotion
which renders it admirable yet at the same time conceptually inseparable
from acts which we regard as morally inadmissible?
The difficulty emerges most clearly when we look at Churchill. As
Slote points out, single-minded devotion is to be distinguished from
resolute devotion. We can "imagine a different Churchill who was suf-
ficiently resolute and devoted to Allied victory to do everything necessary
to ensure it, without being so passionate and single-minded as to put
victory ahead of moral considerations in the way that Churchill seems
actually to have done" (p. 96). What we admire in Churchill is his (resolute)
devotion. Yet it is the single-mindedness of the devotion which connects
it with immorality: resolute devotion, as Slote describes it, can be con-
ceptually prised from any tendency it might have to immoral acts. If
what we admire is not the single-mindedness of the devotion but other
aspects of it, and if we admire it less if it is single-minded than if it is
(only) resolute, then, given what hasjust been said, the Churchill example
is not an instance of admirable immorality. Similarly with Gauguin. We
admire his devotion to art insofar as we assume that it recognizes certain
limits. If we imagine it as bounded by certain moral principles or coun-
terbalanced by gentleness and compassion and admire it pictured thus,
then what we admire is something that can be prised from a tendency
to immorality. If we imagine it as sufficiently single-minded to be something
that cannot be understood apart from its tendency to immorality, then,
I think, we do not admire it. So I do not see that there is any intermediate
interpretation which will satisfy the test for admirable immorality.
Let us look now at the other example which Slote presents in support
of his thesis, this time Walzer's "highly-principled political leader who
has just taken power in a situation of civil strife in which rebels have

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 Baron Admirable Immorality 565

placed a number of time bombs around the country's capital city" (p.
97). To summarize the situation: the only way to find out in time where
the time bombs are is to torture the ringleader of the rebellion whom
the government forces have captured. We are to assume that torturing
is sufficient, as well as necessary, for securing the information needed
to avert disaster. Now, among the leader's principles is an absolute pro-
hibition on "the use of torture for political ends." Deeply opposed to
torture, he "will have to conquer his own personal and moral aversion
to torture, in order to use it" (pp. 97-98).
The trait that we are supposed to admire here is "moral stomach"
or "the ability to overcome personal aversion and pangs of conscience
in a cause of the sort mentioned" (p. 99). This time it clearly is inseparable
from a tendency to perform actions which are morally dubious (p. 99).
Since it is, indeed, "defined in terms of the tendency to act against conscience
and aversion," the trait itself is something that Slote expects us morally
to disapprove of yet, at the same time, to admire. Do we?
I think that there is little question but that moral stomach is admirable
if it means what Slote just said and not the ability to act contrary to moral
principles which one unwaveringly accepts and has good reason for ac-
cepting. My doubt concerns Slote's assumption that moral stomach is
something that we take to be morally undesirable. Any appearance that
it is morally unsavory derives, I think, from unclarity in the description
of the case and in the notion of moral stomach. Does moral stomach
involve going against a moral principle which one is virtually certain
should never be violated? Or does it mean overcoming one's aversion to
an undertaking which although generally immoral, is, under the circum-
stances, the only morally acceptable choice? If the former, then, I think,
we neither admire nor morally approve of moral stomach. If the latter,
then we both admire and morally approve of the quality.
Consider the case at hand. Of course we admire the leader for
overcoming "personal aversion" (p. 98). We also approve of him for that.
But if he really thinks that torture must never be used, no matter how
vast the destruction will be if it is not, and if we, moreover, agree with
him, will we admire him for "overcoming" his moral scruples? I do not
think so. We may admire him for some other trait, but that is a different
matter. 14

14. A caveat is in order with respect to all three of the examples. There is a sense in
which we might admire the traits, but it is a sense which Slote (rightly) discounts as not
the correct sense. We may admire something without thinking it admirable. For example,
a man who was raised to admire machismo but who has decided that he does not think it
admirable may catch himself feeling momentary admiration for a husband who asserts
himself as the head of "his" household. Slote's example is the admiration which some of
us occasionally catch ourselves feeling for the ability of some politicians "publicly to mul
the public" (p. 100). Neither example shows that there are things which we think admirable
yet morally dubious. Rather, as Slote says, they reveal a sort of "internal akrasia." Slote
denies that our admiration for Gauguin and the two leaders is this type of admiration. His
arguments are not, however, convincing if they are to apply to admiration for single-
minded devotion and to moral stomach, as Slote describes it.

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 566 Ethics April 1986

IV

Let me conclude by clarifying that I do not pretend to have shown that

moral considerations invariably are overriding or that there is no such
thing as admirable immorality.15 I think I have shown that Slote has
failed to demonstrate that moral considerations are not automatically
overriding or that there is admirable immorality. In addition, I have tried
to indicate the careful scrutiny which examples such as Slote's warrant
before they can be taken to lend support to the thesis that they are
supposed to prove.

15. To do so one would have to do more than put forth and evaluate examples. While
I share Slote's position that one should not address the questions of overridingness and
admirable immorality by superimposing a metaethical theory which dictates the answers,
I do not think that one can answer the questions without appealing to some (rough) idea
of how morality is to be conceived. Since any such conception is itself open to challenge,
one best approaches the questions of overridingness and admirable immorality by evaluating
the competing conceptions of morality and the opposing answers on these (and related)
questions at the same time.

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