Read more: Nietzsche—America's superman
On 31st May Naomi Goulder will speak at "The Good, The Bad and the Controversial" at "HowTheLightGetsIn"—the philosophy and music session at Hay Festival. The discussion will be hosted by Sameer Rahim, Prospect's Arts and Books Editor.
When moral considerations are invoked, it is often to limit or constrain pursuit of our individual interests or preferences for the sake of others. It’s “unfair” to put one’s money in a tax haven. It’s “wrong” to leave people sleeping on the street—or to deny entry to refugees. At the same time, it’s widely assumed to be rational, inevitable even, for an individual to act so as to maximize the satisfaction of his own preferences or goals.
Is this tension inevitable? Granted, certain preferences seem made for harmonious coexistence or cooperation; if I take enough pleasure in promoting others’ interests, self-interest and duty may coincide. But not all preferences are like that: power and prestige may be inherently competitive and we are thrown into conflict whenever the resources we desire are scarce. In Plato’s Republic, from around 380 BC, Glaucon presses Socrates for a response to the concern that justice lies “in the troublesome class, among goods which are to be pursued [only] for the sake of rewards and of reputation, but in themselves are disagreeable and rather to be avoided.”
Perhaps, when good will and fellow feeling give out, state-backed incentive structures must take their place. With its monopoly of coercive power, the state may correct natural misalignments between individual self-interest and the collective good by creating incentives to divert self-interested desires towards socially beneficial goals. Bureaucrats may design laws to coordinate and maximize satisfaction of existing individual preferences. Through threat of punishment, the wayward self-interested individual can be brought into line. This can coordinate individual self-interest and the collective good at the national level—but it doesn’t go far beyond that.
Is there room for imagination, even psychological transformation, to more globally beneficial effect? Like those pioneering advertisers who at some point stopped seeking to satisfy existing desires and started inspiring new desires instead, Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778) built a theory on the malleability of human nature. Distrustful of the dominant preferences and purposes in his contemporary society, he sketched a role for a visionary to inspire—“rally without violence”—people to hitherto undreamt-of collectively realisable ideals and goals; ideals and goals that could then motivate each individual to comply of his own accord. This “law-giver” would change individual behavior through rhetoric rather than force. He would transform desires through persuasion rather than merely re-directing them through violence-backed threats.
In The Social Contract, 1762, Rousseau wrote: “The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked… the voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses and right of appetite…”
In Rousseau’s proposal, each individual comes to be identified with the collective in such a way that his preferences and interests coincide with its own. This solves what Rousseau had seen as the original problem: to find a form of association in which each while serving the good of everyone could nonetheless be “as free as before.” Perhaps, having gone through the envisaged transformations, the individual would be evenmore free—because in this new state his heart's desire would be co-realisable with the desires of his fellow citizens, backed by the entire collective will, and (more speculatively) through this psychological transformation he would have in some sense more fully realised his own true social self.
Can imagination do that much? Can any individual or set of ideas inspire each of us to purposes that are universally beneficial? And how far, in considering these questions, can the demands of public and personal morality be kept apart? Rousseau grew up in the small republic of Geneva. It is hard to envisage his ideas being implemented without sinister consequences on a larger scale. Are we left then only with narrow self-interest and bureaucratic incentives; concessive punishments and rewards?
In his moral (though not political) philosophy, Immanuel Kant (1724—1804) sought to derive absolute moral duties from the mere logic of deliberation. If Kant’s argument worked then, instead of relying on a bureaucrat to re-direct self-interest through incentives or a law-giver to inspire cooperation through rhetoric, one might call on each individual to come to universally realisable moral laws by themselves. (Kant kept a portrait of Rousseau on his wall.)
Few have been persuaded by Kant's attempt to derive moral constraints from the mere logic of deliberation, even if many have agreed that the constraints Kant came up with (e.g. act only on principles that you can will as universal laws) capture an important part of our ordinary moral thinking. It's one thing to say that the right thing to do is to act on universalizable laws. It's a further thing to say (as Kant did) that this constraint is imposed by the pure logic of deliberation—as if one who failed to deliberate in this way would be making an error of the kind “’if p, then q,' 'p,' and 'not-q'’ or “1+1 isn't 2.”
No wonder, then, that Friedrich Nietzsche (1844—1900) suggested that our ordinary moral rhetoric is not what it seems. Moral discourse sounds absolute, universal, and binding (“thou shalt”; “you must”; “this is wrong”); but if neither fellow feeling nor supernatural entities nor common logic underwrite its demands, then it is not so binding in fact.
Nietzsche suggested that the Judeo-Christian influenced morality of his own society arose not just as an innocent mistake, but as a more or less resentful attempt by the weak to resist the strong; and that as a practice it was, and could only be, sustained by some kind of deception. He raises the prospect that a clear recognition of how moral norms came about, or might have come about, and why, would undermine and destroy our confidence in their dictates. And he thought this would be a healthy transformation.
Here’s to confronting the challenge head on. Clashes between self-interest and others’ interests are not inevitable. Our individual preferences are not set in stone; they change under the impact of imagination. Coming to see that might also be a healthy transformation.
Now read: Hilary Putnam—a philosopher in the age of science
On 31st May Naomi Goulder will speak at "The Good, The Bad and the Controversial" at "HowTheLightGetsIn"—the philosophy and music session at Hay Festival. The discussion will be hosted by Sameer Rahim, Prospect's Arts and Books Editor.
When moral considerations are invoked, it is often to limit or constrain pursuit of our individual interests or preferences for the sake of others. It’s “unfair” to put one’s money in a tax haven. It’s “wrong” to leave people sleeping on the street—or to deny entry to refugees. At the same time, it’s widely assumed to be rational, inevitable even, for an individual to act so as to maximize the satisfaction of his own preferences or goals.
Is this tension inevitable? Granted, certain preferences seem made for harmonious coexistence or cooperation; if I take enough pleasure in promoting others’ interests, self-interest and duty may coincide. But not all preferences are like that: power and prestige may be inherently competitive and we are thrown into conflict whenever the resources we desire are scarce. In Plato’s Republic, from around 380 BC, Glaucon presses Socrates for a response to the concern that justice lies “in the troublesome class, among goods which are to be pursued [only] for the sake of rewards and of reputation, but in themselves are disagreeable and rather to be avoided.”
Perhaps, when good will and fellow feeling give out, state-backed incentive structures must take their place. With its monopoly of coercive power, the state may correct natural misalignments between individual self-interest and the collective good by creating incentives to divert self-interested desires towards socially beneficial goals. Bureaucrats may design laws to coordinate and maximize satisfaction of existing individual preferences. Through threat of punishment, the wayward self-interested individual can be brought into line. This can coordinate individual self-interest and the collective good at the national level—but it doesn’t go far beyond that.
Is there room for imagination, even psychological transformation, to more globally beneficial effect? Like those pioneering advertisers who at some point stopped seeking to satisfy existing desires and started inspiring new desires instead, Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778) built a theory on the malleability of human nature. Distrustful of the dominant preferences and purposes in his contemporary society, he sketched a role for a visionary to inspire—“rally without violence”—people to hitherto undreamt-of collectively realisable ideals and goals; ideals and goals that could then motivate each individual to comply of his own accord. This “law-giver” would change individual behavior through rhetoric rather than force. He would transform desires through persuasion rather than merely re-directing them through violence-backed threats.
In The Social Contract, 1762, Rousseau wrote: “The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked… the voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses and right of appetite…”
In Rousseau’s proposal, each individual comes to be identified with the collective in such a way that his preferences and interests coincide with its own. This solves what Rousseau had seen as the original problem: to find a form of association in which each while serving the good of everyone could nonetheless be “as free as before.” Perhaps, having gone through the envisaged transformations, the individual would be evenmore free—because in this new state his heart's desire would be co-realisable with the desires of his fellow citizens, backed by the entire collective will, and (more speculatively) through this psychological transformation he would have in some sense more fully realised his own true social self.
Can imagination do that much? Can any individual or set of ideas inspire each of us to purposes that are universally beneficial? And how far, in considering these questions, can the demands of public and personal morality be kept apart? Rousseau grew up in the small republic of Geneva. It is hard to envisage his ideas being implemented without sinister consequences on a larger scale. Are we left then only with narrow self-interest and bureaucratic incentives; concessive punishments and rewards?
In his moral (though not political) philosophy, Immanuel Kant (1724—1804) sought to derive absolute moral duties from the mere logic of deliberation. If Kant’s argument worked then, instead of relying on a bureaucrat to re-direct self-interest through incentives or a law-giver to inspire cooperation through rhetoric, one might call on each individual to come to universally realisable moral laws by themselves. (Kant kept a portrait of Rousseau on his wall.)
Few have been persuaded by Kant's attempt to derive moral constraints from the mere logic of deliberation, even if many have agreed that the constraints Kant came up with (e.g. act only on principles that you can will as universal laws) capture an important part of our ordinary moral thinking. It's one thing to say that the right thing to do is to act on universalizable laws. It's a further thing to say (as Kant did) that this constraint is imposed by the pure logic of deliberation—as if one who failed to deliberate in this way would be making an error of the kind “’if p, then q,' 'p,' and 'not-q'’ or “1+1 isn't 2.”
No wonder, then, that Friedrich Nietzsche (1844—1900) suggested that our ordinary moral rhetoric is not what it seems. Moral discourse sounds absolute, universal, and binding (“thou shalt”; “you must”; “this is wrong”); but if neither fellow feeling nor supernatural entities nor common logic underwrite its demands, then it is not so binding in fact.
Nietzsche suggested that the Judeo-Christian influenced morality of his own society arose not just as an innocent mistake, but as a more or less resentful attempt by the weak to resist the strong; and that as a practice it was, and could only be, sustained by some kind of deception. He raises the prospect that a clear recognition of how moral norms came about, or might have come about, and why, would undermine and destroy our confidence in their dictates. And he thought this would be a healthy transformation.
Here’s to confronting the challenge head on. Clashes between self-interest and others’ interests are not inevitable. Our individual preferences are not set in stone; they change under the impact of imagination. Coming to see that might also be a healthy transformation.
Now read: Hilary Putnam—a philosopher in the age of science
