Lecture Supplement on William Ja

Lecture Supplement on William James’ “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”[1] [1891]

According to James, the goal of the ethical philosopher is to: [165] “…find an account of the moral relations that obtain among things, which will weave them into the unity of a stable system, and make the world what one may call a genuine universe from the ethical point of view….The subject-matter of his study is the ideals he finds existing in the world; the purpose which guides him is this ideal of his own, of getting them into a certain form.

165 “…to show that there is no such thing possible as an ethical philosophy dogmatically made up in advance. We all help to determine the content of ethical philosophy so far as we contribute to the race’s moral life. In other words, there can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and said his say. In the one case as in the other, however, the hypothesis which we now make while waiting, and the acts to which they prompt us, are among the indispensable conditions which determine what the ‘say’ [in the distant future] shall be.”

As we shall see, James builds on the sorts of metaphysical views offered in the previous papers arguing that moral or ethical thought is concerned with actual existing relations between actual things.”

He asks us to imagine a world devoid of sentient things contending that such a world (one of only rocks, for example) would be a world where there are no morals (or values) issues. On the other hand, if one “adds” just one sentient being to the world, then

169 “…there is a chance for goods and evils really to exist. Moral relations now have their status, in that being’s consciousness. So far as he feels anything to be good, he makers it good. It is good, for him,; and being good for him, is absolutely good, for he is the sole creator of values in that universe, and outside of his opinion things have no moral character at all.”

James goes on to imagine what transpires if more than one sentient “thing” is added. While it would be wonderful if the world were such that all demands could be satisfied, this is not the nature of the world we live in! Instead, the moral solitude of the single sentient creature is replaced by a situation in which there are not only values, but where there are conflicts amongst the values. Here, of course we find the world we inhabit!

James notes that while there has traditionally been an appeal to some a priori standards of evaluation or particular values, since values and morals only exist because sentient creatures feel them, appeals to “unfelt values or morals” will hold no appeal. He will recommend that we consider each value, claim, or moral relation engenders an obligation:

175 “…in seeking for a universal principle we inevitably are carried onward to the most universal principle—that the essence of good is simply to satisfy demand.” To deal with the conflicts which arise here, James maintains, we must recognize that unless one thinks one can “privilege” one “sentient things’” values or demands, we must adopt the following overall orientation:

Of course for each individual there is a rub here, but James takes a social perspective, not simply an individual one (perhaps since the relations themselves are amongst the sentient creatures[?]):

177-178 The course of history is nothing but the story of men’s struggles from generation to generation to find the more and more inclusive [moral] order. Invent some manner of realizing your own ideals which will also satisfy the alien demands [those of others]—that and that only is the path of peace! Following this path, society has shaken itself into one sort of relative equilibrium after another by a series of social discoveries quite analogous to those of science….though some one’s ideals are unquestionably the worse off for each improvement, yet a vastly greater total number of them find shelter in our civilized society than in the older savage ways.

Here James says we reach the limits of what we can say about ethics and values. Having rejected the a priori and impersonal perspectives, and having accepted that each experience of value by each sentient thing creates a demand, he contends that the moral theorist is in the same position as the scientist (and the philosophers in each area are in the same position). Demand and doubts or problems call out for satisfactions, and scientists and moralists, instead of trying to uncover pre-existing orders, endeavor to create on-going, forward-looking “theories” which preserve what we have in our past theories while accommodating our new experiences and resolving conflicts. The goal is more comprehensive theories which can be tested in, and survive the test of, action.

165 He contends that there is no more a “final truth” in ethics than there is in physics. This does not mean that he is an ethical skeptic, however. That view is no more attractive than is epistemological skepticism. Knowledge and ethical values are not oriented toward the past, toward a transcendent and eternal realm, or about some a priori structure—they are about the forward-looking relationships amongst our experiences!

165 “The subject matter of [the moral philosophers] study is to show that there is no such thing possible as an ethical philosophy dogmatically made up in advance. We all help to determine the content of ethical philosophy so far as we contribute to the race’s moral life. In other words, there can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and said his say. In the one case as in the other, however, the hypothesis which we now make while waiting, and the acts to which they prompt us, are among the indispensable conditions which determine what the ‘say’ [in the distant future] shall be.”

166 James contends that we need to distinguish and deal separately with the psychological [dealing with the historical origins of our moral ideas and judgments], the metaphysical [dealing with the “meaning” of moral terms], and the casuistic [dealing with the standards for measuring moral assessments] questions and issues here. He takes these in turn!

161-167 While the utilitarians are certainly right that many of our ideals and values are related to simple pleasures and pains, there are many other values which we all experience.

168 “Our ideals have certainly many sources. They are not all explicable as signifying corporeal pleasures to be gained, and pains to be escaped. And for having so constantly perceived this psychological fact, we must applaud the intuitionist school.”

168-173 His response to the question of the meaning of our moral and valuational concepts and experiences:

168 He contends that in a world without sentient things, there would be no moral or valuational meaning or phenomena:

“Betterness is not a physical relation. In its mere material capacity a thing can no more be good or bad than it can be pleasant or painful. Good for what?....Physical facts simply are or are not; and neither when present or absent, can they be supposed to make demands.”

169 But if one adds just one sentient thing, morals, demands, and values come into existence.

“…there is a chance for goods and evils really to exist. Moral relations now have their status, in that being’s consciousness. So far as he feels anything to be good, he makers it good. It is good, for him,; and being good for him, is absolutely good, for he is the sole creator of values in that universe, and outside of his opinion things have no moral character at all.”

Where there are more than one such things, there are more demands and values, but if they could all be satisfied, there would still not be much need for moral theory. Moreover, [putting this in my terms rather than his] where each sentient thing ignores the values and demands of others, there is still a moral solitude—one which is inhabited by sentient things which are “morally and valuationally unrelated” to one-another. Just as the universe is physically so large that one can say that two physical things (trillions of light years apart) are physically unrelated to each other, so two sentient creatures might be so “distant” from one-another that they do not experience each other’s demands, values, etc. James, clearly, would maintain this is not our world! In fact, James, says, in a world of two such things, we have not a “moral universe,” but, instead, a moral dualism. This “dualism” is actually two moral solitudes! James believes this is not the world we inhabit either.

170 “Since the outcome of the discussion so far has been to show us that nothing can be good or right except so far as some consciousness feels it to be good, or thinks it to be right, we perceive on the very threshold that the real superiority and authority which are postulated by the philosopher to reside in some of the opinions, and the really inferior character which he supposes must belong to others, cannot be explained by any abstract’ nature of things; existing antecedently to the concrete thinkers themselves with their ideals…..If one ideal judgment be objectively better than another, that betterness must be made fresh by being lodged concretely in some one’s actual perception.”

171-173 Of course this, it seems, leaves the question as to which “things” values are, indeed, better. This, of course, leads us to James’ third question—how do we measure our demands, obligations or values?

174-175 He reaches the conclusion that [174-175]: “no one of the measures that have actually proposed has…given general satisfaction.”

175 …so that, after all, in seeking for a universal principle, we inevitably are carried onward to the most universal principle that the essence of good is simply to satisfy demand. The demand may be for anything under the sun….The elementary forces in ethics are probably as plural as those of physics are. The various ideals have no common character apart from the fact that they are ideals. No single abstract principle can be so used as to yield to the philosopher anything like a scientifically accurate and genuinely useful casuistic scale.”

176 He notes that since we are all born into social settings and inculcated with certain values and demands, we can easily become blinded to the difficulty of our philosophical task.

177 But once we carefully reflect we can see that “since everything which is demanded is by that fact a good, must not the guiding principle for ethical, philosophy (since all demands conjointly cannot be satisfied I this poor world) be simply to satisfy at all times as many demands as we can?

177-178 The also goes on to note that the course of our social history is nothing but the story of men’s struggles from generation to generation to find the more and more inclusive [moral] order. Invent some manner of realizing your own ideals which will also satisfy the alien demands [those of others]—that and that only is the path of peace! Following this path, society has shaken itself into one sort of relative equilibrium after another by a series of social discoveries quite analogous to those of science….though some one’s ideals are unquestionably the worse off for each improvement, yet a vastly greater total number of them find shelter in our civilized society than in the older savage ways.

178-179 Effectively (appealing to his underlying analogy between scientific and moral theorizing) he contends that this “history” has been a series of continuing experiments at developing a comprehensive theory which incorporates what has worked in the past with or new experiences as we endeavor to develop a more comprehensive and adequate theory:

179 “…so far as the casuistic question goes, ethical science is just like physical science, and instead of being deducible all at once from abstract principles, must simply bide its time, and be ready to revise its conclusions from day to day.

179-180 Thus, James concludes, “In point of fact, there are no absolute evils, and there are no non-moral goods; and the highest ethical life—however few may be called to bear its burdens—consists at all times in the breaking of rules which have grown too narrow for the actual case. There is but one unconditional commandment, which is that we should seek incessantly, with fear and trembling, so to vote and to act as to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see.”

180 James points out that philosophers are no better suited to this activity than are novelists or others.

Note: (click on note number to return to text for the note--emphasis has been added to several of the citations)

[1] The essay was first read by James to the philosophy club at Yale University and was first published in the International Journal of Ethics (1891). The selection this supplement refers to is in Classic American Philosophers, ed. Max Fisch, op. cit., pp. 165-180. I have added emphasis to a number of the passages, but will not further note this. The full essay may be found in The Will to Believe and Other Essays In Popular Philosophy and Human Immortality (bound as one) [1897], (N.Y.: Dover, 1956), pp. 184-210.