1. he finds himself unable to explain very well to ordinary people what his discipline is all about (perhaps in part because)Some of this might just be Cowley's personality. And there's a sense in which he is not "fair" to Benetar (though his question is whether there is any reason to be). I don't know; at times, I'm quite sympathetic with much of what Cowley (and Gaita, from whom he draws in places) has to say about these matters. I find it embarrassing to be introduced (say, by my wife to others) as a philosopher. And perhaps it is because there is a risk that doing philosophy (perhaps moral philosophy or otherwise) can turn into comical navel-gazing. Perhaps one way to read Cowley is that when moral philosophy takes this turn, it isn't so comical, but rather shameful. Perhaps this is related to the feeling (that I have at times, as I'm sure others do) that it's important to do something that matters (something "serious" in Aristotle's sense in Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics), and while philosophy almost inherently involves trying to understand and solve (or dissolve) certain kinds of puzzles, puzzle-solving itself can seem to lack seriousness as the puzzles get stranger and more abstract, and harder to bring back to the "real world." I'm sure that's why Aristophanes depicted Socrates as a buffoon.
2. he is embarrassed that he is associated (by trade) with "the excesses of 'technicians'" and here he singles out David Benetar and his recent book Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence. (Cowley how a work like this can be seen as a serious work of moral philosophy.)
3. he is embarrassed by the "crusading 'ethicists'" like John Harris and Peter Singer who seem to think of 'ethicists' as moral experts (perhaps, a secular moral clergy of sorts)
4. he is embarrassed by his feeling that his "philosophy and wisdom" are nothing to the beggars and the afflicted in the world, that for all his study he still "[does] not know how to deal with these sorts of people" and he seems to worry that this is an endemic problem for philosophers.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
The Embarrassments of Moral Philosophy
Chris Cowley has recently published an interesting paper called "Moral philosophy and the 'real world'" at the online journal Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis. I've been meaning to mention it, but I'm still not sure what to say, except that it certainly made me think about what I'm doing and what I do (as a philosopher--which is a title that I, like Cowley, find a bit uncomfortable). Cowley offers four things which embarrass him about being a moral philosopher:
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I agree with a lot of what Cowley says, and I've been meaning to blog about it too. But I should add a couple of caveats: I haven't read Benatar's book, and I think Cowley is wrong to think that "any non-philosopher" would reject as "patent nonsense" the claim that "there are no objective moral values".
ReplyDeleteAnd of course both Gaita and Cowley are just as much moral philosophers as Singer and Benatar are. It's not as if Singer speaks for us all.
In my humble opinion, Cowley's seemingly willful mischaracterization of the substance and accessibility of Benatar's book is an embarrassment to your profession, as you might be inclined to agree if you read it. In the intro Benatar even indicates for the general reader which chapters and sections can be read by those who wish to understand his basic argument without bothering with the technical, Parfit-related stuff on population. The book is a model of clarity and rigor.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what Cowley would make of Benatar's text book, intended as it is to countervail what he argues in the intro is a generally optimistic tendency in analytic approaches to 'existential' issues.
Also, here's South African radio show featuring Benatar. Cowley might benefit from listening to the callers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpACAyWxleE
(Part one; also in MP3 on Benatar's web page)
As a lay person who has read Benatar's book, I submit that Cowley's exasperating characterization of the substance and accessibility of it strays widely off the mark. In the intro Benatar even indicates for the general reader which chapters and sections can be read by those who wish to understand his basic argument without bothering with the technical, Parfit-related stuff on population. The book is a model of clarity and rigor. And as anyone who's read Schopenhauer might observe, Benatar's views are hardly alien to religion and literature throughout the ages, in various traditions.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what Cowley would make of Benatar's text book, intended as it is to countervail what he argues in the intro is a generally optimistic tendency in analytic approaches to 'existential' issues.
Also, here's South African radio show featuring Benatar. Cowley might benefit from listening to the callers, and how keenly Benatar's views resonate with many of them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpACAyWxleE
(Part one; also in MP3 on Benatar's web page)
Here's the material in Benatar's text book:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.rowmanlittlefield.com/Catalog/TOC.shtml?command=Search&db=^DB/CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=144220169X&thepassedurl=[thepassedurl]
I would love to have taken a course with these readings!
Yes, the readings in the textbook look great.
ReplyDeleteI took Cowley to be complaining primarily about the thesis of Benatar's (other) book, not its accessibility. And since I haven't read it, I can't say whether he has been fair to the book or not. What I've read about it, though, makes it sound much less serious than Schopenhauer. But whether it really is or not, I'm not in a position to judge.
(Sorry to be slow in following up; Rob had posted a comment that didn't appear for some reason and we went back and forth some by e-mail.)
ReplyDeleteThe move Cowley makes in questioning not the philosophy in Benetar's book--which he allows might be first rate (does that "might" suggest that he hasn't read it, or not read it closely???)--but rather whether it is to be taken seriously as moral philosophy reminds me somewhat of Anscombe's remarks about consequentialism in "Modern Moral Philosophy." And also to some of Gaita's discussion of Singer in his book A Common Humanity.
I wonder how things change if one has to advance certain criticisms in the presence of one's target (as it were) rather than on paper. This happens to Elizabeth Costello (in Coetzee's novel) when she stands to give a lecture about how novelists should not imagine some evils--that the psychic cost is too terrible (and may degrade the novelist). Her target is Paul West, and she realizes before beginning the lecture that West is in the audience.
On the one hand, it's surely fair game to hold and even state that one thinks that another's thesis (etc.) is terribly misguided (etc.). The difficulty for someone like C (or Anscombe) is that their objections seem to run deeper--that they don't believe that engaging with their opponents--say, in argumentative terms, in the analysis of the arguments--is the right response. The puzzle is about how to respond to an argument or thesis that one doesn't think should be taken seriously. Responding looks like taking it seriously...but then I guess we need to distinguish between two different ways of taking a view seriously: (1) as a possible legitimate way of dealing with some problem or answering some question or (2) as a solution or answer which one thinks is profoundly confused as to what the problem or question is. And it seems like the stronger the disagreement of type (2) is, the less the parties may have to say to each other; instead, they will perhaps be vying for the support of some third party. (I imagine that certain types of debates about things like gay marriage and perhaps the existence of God--at least as some people debate these issues--are of the second sort, which has the implication that the disputants involved have little to say to each other, but lots to say at each other. I'm not sure what to do about this, except to notice it, and if Cowley is embarrassed by Benetar, then perhaps Benetar may also be embarrassed by Cowley.)
One thing Anscombe does with consequentialists is imply that they are in bad faith. She does this in response to Glanville Williams, for instance. This might be considered bad manners if Williams were present and publicly humiliated by the accusation (assuming it was convincingly supported). But if, for instance, a parent argued that having children was wrong, it would seem fair to question his/her consistency or sincerity. I don't know whether Benatar is a parent, but if he is so certain that life is bad then one might be tempted to ask him the kind of question that Socrates is asked in the Phaedo: why don't you kill yourself? That too would be rude, and perhaps it would miss the point of his book. But there's something wrong, isn't there?, with presenting a book as if it argued that we would be better off dead when/if one believes no such thing. It might be that the marketing people are to blame and not Benatar at all. But the impression that I think Cowley and I have been deliberately given (whether by him or his publisher, and whether accurate or not) is that the book argues for a thesis that is more than provocative--it is absurd. And some people will just laugh off absurdities, but others will not, especially when values they hold sacred (e.g. life) are involved. My own inclination is to ignore it. Obviously I'm not entirely succeeding, but I doubt I will read the book unless it starts to seem very different from the initial impression I have got of it.
ReplyDeleteIn person I think Anscombe would have been quite happy calling people on their errors (intellectual or moral). The Paul West case is a little different, it seems to me, since his crime, if any, is one of thinking what perhaps should not be thought, rather than saying something untrue or evil. He has perhaps been guilty of insensitivity, but then it might seem all the more important to respond sensitively to him. The consequentialists that Anscombe opposed were: a) not just one person (like Paul West), and b) supporters of a moral view that had, in her opinion, played a key role in mass murder. Benatar's case seems more like West's than the consequentialists' (and, of course, might not be much like either).