[I am presenting my contributions to theory, philosophical or otherwise, under
the label ‘my contributions’. I would like to get these articles appreciated as
well as critically reviewed by lay-persons & experts too. If convinced I am
ready to modify my positions acknowledging the critics.]
Morality can be
simply a commitment to conventional dictums or norms into which you happen to
be ‘socialized’ in your childhood. Morality is simply telling you as to what
you ought to do, what you may do and what you ought not to do. These are
enjoining norms, permissible norms and prohibitive norms. Ethics proper equip
us with the methods by which we are in a position to evaluate the norms
themselves. It is critical and universal while morality may be specific to
culture in which we happen to be ‘thrown’ in, at particular era, society,
family or peer-group.
My ethic is
modernist i.e. neither pre-modernist nor post-modernist. Ethic cannot either be
based on science or spirituality, let alone the idea of reducing it to either
of these.
Science per se is
a-moral and morality per se is non-scientific. When I talk about spirituality I
refrain from any super-natural entity-speculations. I will also go on to prove
that positing such entities is not a pre-requisite for spirituality. For those
others who can not refrain, I see the ethical implications of such speculations
rather than ontological status of such entities. Ethic can (at the best) answer
‘what is right’ but that knowledge can not automatically supply the psychic
energy required for volition demanded by the right action. Ethic can not teach you the art
of saving energy from wasteful and harmful blame-games. This requires forgiving
one-self or others in case of failure (without falling prey to escapism).
To be
good is one thing and maximizing the spontaneity in your goodness is quite
another. Spirituality is aimed at the later. However smuggling the ideas
required in spirituality into ethics proper is grand highway for escapism. Personal
ethic is mainly concerned with voluntary possibilities for an individual.
Protecting and enhancing these possibilities however goes in the arena of
political ethic.
Project of
philosophy is not one of speculatively completing the incomplete
causal-knowledge available at given level of progress in science. Deliberations
regarding propriety of purpose (telos) is the task of philosophy and not the
causal explanations regarding why you happen to be ‘in the situation and of the
inclination’ from the point of view of an external observer. Freedom and Causality are compatible. The
subjective experience of exercising
freedom or choosing is immediately given and all have to go through it (rather
have grand opportunity of going through it), no matter how far they understand
or are informed about causal explanations for ‘what is happening in and around
them’ which is not immanent to them. Humans have always been classifying some
of their yearnings as ‘temptations’ and some others as ‘duties’ as they saw the
urges in immanent form irrespective of what sort of ‘objectivist psychology’
they supposed. (say, ghosts, deities and other incumbents of the pan-animism
they believed in.)
Even today the
experience of choice does not appear as mechanical or chemical events in genes,
neurons or whatever. Dilemmas, anguishes, indulgences, attractions, aversions
are belonging to the ethical-dimension, and quite apart from the physical
descriptions proposed to causally explaining them.
Philosophical
Reductionisms are always dangerous. Pragmatic role of science is marvelous as
it is. Philosophical use is dangerous. Danger is very simple. You end up in
eliminating the very problem that you originally wanted to solve.
Prudence: necessary but not sufficient
It is true that in many cases moral conduct does
involve, forgoing gains and accepting losses, bearing stress and giving
preference to the good of the ‘others’. This self sacrifice however is not the
essence of moral conduct but rather a side-product of moral conduct voluntarily
borne by ‘Self’ for the sake of moral conduct. As we shall see later, the
ethics behind moral conduct is not essentially altruistic, but is rather
egoistic at a different level. I must say ‘at a different level’ for, some
thinkers try to reduce moral conduct as simply a more intelligent pursuit of
self-interest.
While taking this care, I do not intend to
denigrate ‘more intelligent pursuit of self-interest’, namely, Prudence. To the
contrary I do hold prudence as a virtue. Moral conduct does transcend prudence
but in no way condemns it. Rationality in its most primary form lies in
choosing most efficient ways of fulfilling a goal, which precisely amounts to
prudence. Stopping at this (prudential) level of rationality however is
immoral. Of course taking a goal as goal itself is questionable and moral conduct
precisely requires, sometimes, refraining from taking a wrong goal as goal.
Although prudence is not sufficient for morality, one should never deem
imprudence as a virtue. Wickedness is more of a vice than stupidity but that
does not make stupidity a virtue! As we shall see later self-harming vices are as
deplorable as other-harming vices.
Logical conclusion is that, we should follow
prudence within the limits of morality. It is immoral to cross the limits,
imprudent to unnecessarily narrow down the limits and disastrous to fail on
both axes.
State of mind or degree of consequences or intent
of the actor?
What makes an action a ‘right’ action? Those who
tend to substitute ethics by spirituality focus upon ‘blissful state of mind’.
One simple objection is that if actor is ignorant about means and connections,
can be misled into wrong action without any trace of bad intent. But even
keeping this aside, blissful state of mind is extremely rare in terms of
occasions and personalities. Blissful state of mind will make life of a moral
actor easier but will not make him a moral actor in the first place. Moral
actor overcomes temptations and applies his volition for the right action and
he cannot decide about rightness of ‘action as such’ simply by observing his
personal state of mind. This is where Indian tradition has remained weak in
developing ethical theory and has assumed that duties given by social structure
are ‘duties’ in an ‘ethical’ sense. ‘Performing
given duties without any expectation for fruit’, is supposedly one of the paths
to permanently achieve blissful state. Thus this ‘state of mind’ theory no way
helps us in developing critical and universal ethic. As we will find soon, ‘duty’
is the central notion of ethic that I agree with. This duty however is not
given to us but we have to decide upon and give it to ourselves.
Degree of consequences of any action is highly
dependant on fortuitous variations in circumstances. We can not say that earnings
of a gambler on his lucky day constitute a ‘well-deserved reward’. If an
engineer callously commits mistakes in his calculation but there happen to be
no casualties in the resulting accident, does that make that engineer less
blame-worthy? Ethic that we are trying to formulate is individual agent-based.
Political management of macro-results is a different thing. It is indeed
possible to arrange immoral agents in such a way that social outcome is
positive. This can be a good prudence at macro-level but not morality at
micro-level.
Therefore ‘intent of the actor’ is the proper
variable for deciding about morality of the actor. Type of action in terms of
intent itself has to be deemed as moral or immoral. This position is called
‘deontological ethic’ to which I subscribe to. You simply can not skip over
Kant’s teachings as he is the founder of (modern) deontological ethic. For
Kant, if actor is acting out of pure sense of duty without putting any
conditions of his ‘interest’, he is counted as ‘moral’ actor. Second teaching
is that the principle implicit in the action has to be universalizable. This
means that the actor must think as if, he is legislating a law, applicable to
all and think of what sort of world will be created if all act in the same way.
If the actor finds that he would not be ready to
live in such world, he is making an exception for himself from the rule he
endorses and this is precisely immoral.
While regarding this teaching as very valuable,
one problem immediately arises. Absolute barbarianism is also universalizable
if I am ready to die at the hands for the victor who kills me! Of course Kant
does not endorse this as he is committed to principle of non-violence. This
becomes amply clear when we see his third teaching. “Never treat humanity in
other or yourself as ‘means’ alone but always also as an ‘end in itself’.” [I
would replace ‘end in itself’ by ‘end-generator for and by himself/herself’ but
that is a finer difference dealt elsewhere]. Principle of universalization
along with humanism of the third teaching eliminates the barbarian possibility.
The third teaching however clashes with the first
teaching namely pure sense of duty regardless of any other interest. Form of
right action may be pure sense of duty but how do we say anything at all about
the ‘content of duty’ without referring to human interests? Furthermore, if I
act out of pure sense of duty without any regard to my or other peoples
interests, am I not using myself and others as ‘means alone’? Thus Kant’s third
teaching flows in the face of his first!
Apprehension to consider human pleasures and
sufferings as ethically relevant variables has arisen out of blunders made by
‘Utilitarianism’. Pleasure maximization calculus, apart from its operational
difficulties, takes aggregates of
pleasure or suffering without considering as to who has contributed in
generating pleasures or suffering, completely fails to ground any principle of
Justice. Secondly if we consider pleasure and suffering on the receiving end,
receiver will naturally try to avoid suffering and get pleasure by sheer prudence.
Then what remains ‘moral’ about it? Utilitarianism is also consequentialist and
hence obscures the aspect of fortuity. So we have very good reasons to guard
ourselves from falling in the Utilitarian trap. At the same time we must come
out of the impasse of form-only type of deonticism wherein sense of duty is
cherished but one is left with no guidance regarding the content of duty.
Non-violence, Prosperity and Justice
In my opinion the way out of the impasse is to
consider pleasures and sufferings, not at receiver’s end but at generator’s
end. To avoid suffering at receiving end is prudent but to refrain from
generating suffering can be a maxim which is universalizable. Nobody wants
suffering and everybody will agree that nobody should generate suffering, as
far as possible. This is the non-violence principle. Generating suffering for
one-self is also violence unto oneself. Here we come to one axis of what should
be content of duty. It must be borne in mind that any principle that we derive
is not to be taken in any perfectionist sense. We may fail, as we more often
than not, do. But we know the axis on which improvement is to be made.
Non-violence is one duty along with other duty-principles that we will shortly
derive.
Here a possible confusion must be cleared right
away. Moral actor, in course of his commitment and efforts for right-action,
may suffer as a receiver. This is not suffering generated by moral actor. It is
already generated by some immoral actor or ones own immoral conduct in past. In
case of overcoming some addiction one has to tolerate the withdrawal symptoms and
this is suffering at receiving end. Generation of this suffering was done by
the addict while he was indulging in the pleasure of addiction qua an immoral
actor.
Pleasure principle has been made notorious because
it was regarding maximizing pleasure at receiving end. The ‘content enriched’
deonticism that I am proposing, guides us to focus upon the generation-point of
pleasure. Everybody wants pleasure so everybody ought to contribute in
generation of pleasure. This commitment to productive labor and enterprise as
well as cordial communication, is a commitment to what we are going to call as
Prosperity-principle. Here, medical or similar efforts for alleviating already
existing suffering are also counted as equivalent to generation of additional
pleasure. We must recognize the operational difficulties in determining as to
‘who contributed how much?’ This difficulty is present in non-violence as well.
Still we get a qualitative criterion that, whether the act was of constructive
nature or destructive nature. We also have to account for human costs incurred
while producing prosperity.
Justice is very difficult and controversial
principle. Once we have decided that non-violence and prosperity are the duties
in which everybody must contribute, we can turn to the question as to who
contributes in which direction as per these two principles, vis-à-vis what
fruit one gets in the course. It is clear to our ‘axiomatic-intuitive’ sense of
justice that positive contributors should get positive fruits and negative
contributors should get negative fruits. As far as crime and aggression is
concerned, we can not endorse retributive justice. One, retributive justice
directly violates non-violence principle. Two, no retribution leaves behind
satisfaction of justice done but rather taken as an additional injustice and
vicious circle of retribution ensues. Especially targeting perpetrator’s family
or group members is not correct even as retribution. Therefore for violent and
aggressive acts, deterrent and restitution are the principles acceptable to
modern civilization. In case of constructive acts, meritocratic values are
necessary but not sufficient. This is on account of operational difficulties in
determining merits and also considering disabilities of actors which may not be
due to their own fault. Therefore a generous-meritocratic principle has to be
accepted.
There is a philosophical basis for this. In order
to make the philosophical principle of justice more clear, we can formulate it
as below.
“Give priority in your duticiousness to the
dutiful and then you may bestow your primary duties (non-violence and
prosperity) towards others who are not so dutiful”
I ought to give prosperity first to those who
highly contribute in prosperity. If my capacity of creating prosperity remains
to be exercised, there is no bar against giving prosperity to those whose
contribution is low. Similarly I ought
to be strictly non-violent to those who are non-violent. However this does not
permit me to be violent unto the violent except in case of utter self-defense
or lawfully permitted deterrence. In short ‘duticious to the dutiful’ does
not mean ruthlessly duty-denier to the duty-failed.
Non-violence, Prosperity and Justice is the
trinity of ethical principles. What if they clash? This is a very pertinent
question. At this juncture it must be noted that
1) The three axes tend to form a vicious circle as well as virtuous circle.
Every opportunity to break vicious circle and connect virtuous one must be
grabbed.
2) Improvement on any axis is complementary to improvement on the others and
so any improvement is welcome.
3) The axis lagging behind too much deserves more attention.
Why people would tend to be moral actors?
1) Will to deserve
2) Will to Integrity
3) Will to Peace
Human nature contains virtues as well as vices. In
a sense, it is an empirically open question, as to which ones will prevail
more. Politically managing to make people behave is necessary but that does not
make them moral-actors. Ethics that we are discussing is voluntary and we must
justify the optimism that (which has to be a faith, to some extent), if given a
better chance people would prefer to be moral actor than an immoral one. It is
said that trustworthiness required in teamwork and food-sharing for fully
utilizing big-game, have gone into genetic makeup. Of course cultural
inculcation and volition are too large factors than mere genetic evolution.
Keeping aside the causal explanations we must identify the structure of
moral-emotion as is presented to our consciousness. I think, ‘will to integrity’
and ‘will to deserve’ are important drives that tend to make us cherish
morality and justice in particular.
Why I am disturbed when I find my conduct contradictory,
incoherent or arbitrary? Rationality hunger is definitely a core inclination in
humans. It is true that man is not a readymade rational animal but certainly
one who tries to be. Even ‘blatantly fallacious justifications’ are
‘justifications’ hence an evidence that one needs justification in the first
place. Even
amongst criminals there is loyalty & resentment towards betrayal. This
shows the existence of ‘will to deserve’ in rather unexpected quarters as well.
Any animal would go for fruits of its efforts,
humans included. Humans however are not merely satisfied with positive fruits
but also want to ‘deserve’ them. Without the verb ‘to deserve’ there can be no
discussion about Justice. It is this ‘will to deserve’ that makes us maintain
some sense of fair-play though not ‘equality’ of results! Some thinkers
maintain that all this is nothing else but prudence in the long run or
‘enlightened self-interest’. I would not use the term enlightened in the sense
‘more intelligent’ alone. Enlightenment is also about positive and negative
values. Mutuality in relations is not mere calculus of gains/losses. There is
some intrinsic value of genuine togetherness. No doubt communication is partly
manipulative. However at least partly it is for seeking communion.
This is not to suggest at all that there is a
necessary truth about unidirectional emergence of peaceful mankind. Kant whose
teachings rested upon moral-volition of human individual, himself had to admit
in essay on perpetual peace, “Man is made up of such a crooked timber that
nothing straight can come out of him”!
Supererogatory Virtues
These are the virtues of which commission is
praiseworthy but omission is not blameworthy. In other words these virtues can
not be imposed or even self-imposed as duties. If generosity is made a duty it
logically ceases to be generosity because by definition, generosity means
giving more than what you dutifully ought to. Generosity, Compassion, Forgiveness
and Mudita (joy induced due to joy of others) are typically classifiable
in the category of Supererogatory Virtues. Mudita (which is polar
opposite of envy) implies induced joy and multiplication of joy.
Karuna (compassion)
is regarding suffering. However a word of caution and distinctness is needed in
case of compassion. Compassion does not mean induced suffering due to suffering
of others. That would multiply suffering unnecessarily. True compassion lies in
urge to do something to alleviate the suffering of others and not expressing
grief more loudly than the aggrieved.
Generosity is true one, if it is not coming out of
showing off glory or craving of fame or an indirect ‘investment’ or ‘insurance’
(last two are clear cases of Prudence which are infra-moral and not
supra-moral). True generosity comes out of need of sharing and co-enjoying.
Forgiveness appears altruistic but it benefits the
‘forgiver’ more than the ‘forgiven’. Holding in oneself a continuous fire of
retribution is larger a suffering than the one inflicted upon the ‘enemy’. Here
again a word of caution is needed. If you are trying to sublimate your weakness
in defense or deterring retaliation in the name of forgiveness it is hypocrisy and
is not a supererogatory virtue.
Supererogatory virtues do have beneficent
consequences similar to the consequences of morality. However one cannot justify one’s moral failure
because he has displayed his supererogatory virtues in another situation or
occasion. Going beyond duty does not justify evading duty. Prudence, Morality and
Supererogatory virtues is a hierarchic sequence wherein later should come later
without losing former.
