Boundaries of Obligation in American Politics: Geographic, National, and Racial Communities Book

This is an impressive work of Professor Scheffler's, the aim of which is less to sketch out a distinctively new "moral theory" so is it to defend the potential for a sort of logical space-carving: namely, that it is possible to have a moral theory of exactly the same sort as Kantianism or utilitarianism, "Enlightenment-style" if you will, while taking into account important criticisms from the neo-Aristotelians (including David Wiggins, Philippa Foot, John McDowell, and most prominently in this book, Bernard Williams), to the effect that moral theories are conceived by analytic philosophy as decision algorithms which, once complete, will for any moral question, spit out a correct answer. It is in this way that Bernard Williams in his famous criticisms of utilitarianism and Kantianism finds it problematic that any moral theory should ever be successful; by their very nature they impinge upon our agency certain reasons that there is no justification for us needing to take as significant a priori. If a moral theory M is the correct one, it will churn out sentences which list the wrong actions (say) and the justifications for their being wrong, and one of the theoretical virtues of a moral theory would be one in which the maximal number of intuitively wrong actions are accounted for by the fewest number of prospective "justifications". (For example, in simple act-utilitarianism, there is only one such "justification": an action is wrong when its consequences produce more net pain then net pleasure in the relevant population.) Bernard Williams, among others, takes moral theories to be forcing upon agents a sort of moral responsibility that they may reasonable question and reject as overly stringent, to now use Scheffler's word.

Scheffler's aim then is to not refute this with a new moral theory towards which these criticisms have less bite. His aim is instead to put these criticisms in perspective and to show how there is room for a naturalistically-acceptable, middle position between the outright amoralism of Hobbesianism and the overly-stringent nature of utilitarianism. One way of putting them in perspective is noticing a problem with almost all of Williams's famous criticisms: they all rely on a picture of moral theorists as instrumentalists: they take themselves to be deriving from a priori fundamental principles (or of whatever epistemic status) the decision procedures which line up the correct moral conclusions with the correct ways of seeing how it is that they are the correct ones (what I've called their justifications). When the Kantian has one thought too many, it is because his moral theory dictates that he ought to have such a thought; Kantian moral theory is sort of a mental moral instruction manual for how to act. Scheffler points out (correctly, I think) that this view of moral theory as blatantly oppressive may be shrugged off without at the same time shrugging off the entire project of moral theorizing. One can admit to a moral theory, not have the one thought too many, and save one's own wife purely out of love for her, without forfeiting rationality or admitting contradiction, or even acting wrongly. A moral theory gives us the most plausible reasons for why a particular action might be wrong. But that doesn't mean that our reasons for doing a particular right action need be this plausible reason. Reasons for action are first and foremost explanations of actions, placing them in the logical space of reasons, to use the Sellarsian term. One explanation for why I saved my wife is that it was the right thing to do; another being because I love her. These are only incompatible potential explanations if the wife-saving's being the right thing to do a priori contradicts its being done out of love; but of course, no moral theory would be plausible if that were the case! (And it is arguable, though plausible from what I've heard, that Kant would have found it perfectly moral to save one's own wife from death purely out of love, albeit lacking "moral worth". If this is troubling, then we drop Kantianism as appropriate, or at least the bits of it which imply anything implausible.) This line of thinking is one way of coming to conclusions which would fit into our moral theory; none of them nor their justifications should contradict our most deeply held moral convictions. (This last bit is less Scheffler than it is me speaking, but I think he would find this quite agreeable and representative of his project.)

This finding a place for a moral theory that is not just (if at all) instrumental for deliberation but as representative of something distinctively human is perhaps the point of this book's name. I was initially very sympathetic to Williams's criticisms, however, Scheffler's penetrating analysis has swiftly changed my mind. Aristotelianism, if it is to recover, will have to relocate its motivation for reconceiving of the focus of moral philosophy from that of moral theory as central to moral education as central. Moral theory can be pervasive (that is, applicable to all actions, although most actions will end up merely permissible), far from stringent (that is, not forcing the agent to adopt as reasons or motivation certain thoughts-too-many), and perhaps not (though this is less essential) overriding (that is, given an overall moral verdict about what the right thing to do is, it is not necessarily a rational requirement that one do as that verdict demands). In the end, Scheffler is left with a view of moral theory as balancing claims of prudence against claims of morality, assuming they at least differ at a point, in which neither prudence nor morality necessarily overrides the other in all cases.

Here then is where my only criticism of this work comes in. (I have not yet done justice to the wealth of arguments for further points in this book, especially his fascinating Chapter 5 on the potential for a naturalized "Kantian" moral psychology, which would coexist well with and be a part of a plausible metaethics for the newly minted non-stringency required of any plausible moral theory.) It seems that Scheffler has done as promised: he has found a place for distinctively human morality, one situated between the Hobbesian's "prudence = all" and the moralism of utilitarianism, where one is morally required to do things that it seems we may reasonably object to doing. But as Scheffler's reservation to fully disavowing overridingness indicates, there is something quite unusual about the picture that results from such a disavowal. Namely, it leaves us wondering what the very point of morality is if it is to be in competition with prudence. Clearly, I ought to act as I feel I ought to act. In numerous situations I may find myself deliberating about what I ought to do, strike upon the most convincing of reasons for one action over the other, and subsequently do it. For the Schefflerian who disavows what Scheffler calls the "claim of overridingness" (henceforth CO), and under Scheffler's picture of the place of moral theorizing in the life of the moral agent (one which renders it, as it were, the tool of the theoretician), calling this particularly effective reason for action the moral one or the prudential one seems like simply categorization. I take many facts of the matter as important to me and as potential reasons for action, but since Scheffler's point is that moral theory need not be seen as forcing upon me extra reasons that I must take as important also, moral theory is simply the act of categorizing which of my reasons are the moral ones, or at least, which of them fall in line with the moral theory we have independent grounds for finding plausible. But this categorization seems now completely useless in distinctively *practical* life, in which what I care about is how I should act. The distinction that matters is not which reasons for action were moral and which were prudential, but which actions were the ones I ought to do and which not! Scheffler's view of moral theory, I claim, seems to be less concerned with the practical, with what I ought to do, as with the correct theoretical application of our multitude of moral concepts, and how it is that they fit together. This makes me worry why it is that we ought to care now, not only about moral theory, but also morality itself, if the only point of its existence is to group together one kind of reason for action I ought to do. It seems almost inevitable that I care about what I ought to do, but classification, even if it does carve up the moral world at its proper joints, seems tangential to my actually finding the courage to do as I ought to. Here perhaps, is where the Aristotelian can begin a resurgence.