Enjoyment: The Moral Significance of Styles of Life

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Enjoyment

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Enjoyment The Moral Significance of Styles of Life

John Kekes

C L A RE N D O N P RE S S · OX F O RD 2008

1

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © John Kekes 2008 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–954692–3 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For J. Y. K.


Contents Part One: Introduction 1. A Grace to be Cultivated

Part Two: Styles of Life

1 3 19

2. Pursuing our Own Good

21

3. Personal Evaluation

38

4. The Importance of Manner

53

Part Three: The Evaluation of Styles of Life

73

5. A Great and Rare Art

75

6. Three-Dimensional Morality

94

7. The Uses of Reason in Morality

Part Four: Some Particular Styles of Life

118 141

8. A Most Perfect Gentleman

143

9. A Morbid Romantic

161

10. An Enemy of Happiness

178

11. A Wise and Virtuous Man

196

12. A Certain Gaiety of Heart

215

13. The Rightful Enjoyment of our Being

234

Part Five: Conclusion

253

14. The Felicity we Make or Find

255

Notes Works Cited Index

271 283 291


Acknowledgments In Chapter 7 I make use of an argument I first discussed in Chapter 10 of The Roots of Evil (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005). Chapter 8 owes much to my conversations many years ago with Shirley Letwin. I regret that she is no longer alive to see the results of our very fruitful talks. An earlier version of Chapter 9 was read and helpfully commented on by Roger Haydon, Jean Y. Kekes, and Noel O’Sullivan. The final version of the chapter incorporates many of their suggestions and I am grateful for their help. In Chapter 13 I recycle a few passages from Chapter 12 of The Art of Life (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002). This whole chapter reflects much that I have gained from reading Ann Hartle’s book Michel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) and from our correspondence over the years. My understanding of Montaigne has benefited greatly from her work and comments. I am grateful to Peter Momtchiloff, my editor of Oxford University Press, for the many ways in which he has helped to make the typescript into a book. John Kekes Ithaka Charlton New York


PA RT O N E

Introduction


1 A Grace to be Cultivated Every person has a life of his own, his one and only life, and that life he leads. But some more so than others. ... My point ... concerns the varying degrees to which people ... manage to give to their lives a pattern, an overallness, or the different degrees of success that they have in making their lives of a piece. ... Such integration of life [is] something that, in many ages, for many cultures, has been in the nature of an ideal—a grace to be cultivated or a triumph to be won. (Richard Wollheim, ‘On Persons and their Lives’, 1980)

1.1. The subject matter Enjoyment is a useful and imprecise word. It is useful because it is imprecise. The source of its imprecision is that it can be used to refer to our responses to a wide range of experiences from the specific to the most general. We can enjoy a specific trip, a book, or a concert. We can also enjoy travel, reading, or music in general. And, most generally, we can enjoy life itself. What makes enjoyment a useful word is that it points to a particular element shared by all experiences of enjoyment. We relish, savor, and take pleasure in the experiences; they make us pleased, delighted, satisfied, and glad. There is, of course, more to be said, because we may enjoy the wrong experiences and we have to meet responsibilities that are not at all enjoyable. But, speaking generally and allowing for exceptions, the more enjoyment we have, the better we find our lives. This book is about the most general sense of enjoyment: that of one’s life as a whole. To have such a life is the grace and the triumph of which the epigraph speaks. I aim to show that one way of achieving it is to develop an individual style of life. Some styles

4

Introduction

of life are admirable because they make the enjoyment of life possible; others are deficient because they lead to a miserable life. But whether admirable or deficient, there are many different styles of life, and all are complex mixtures of attitudes, manners, and patterns of action. My aim is to understand them, show what makes them admirable or deficient, and describe their connection with the enjoyment of life. As a preliminary indication of what I mean by a style of life, consider some well-known, indeed iconic, ways of responding to adversity. When Job lost his family, wealth, and health, when he entered ‘the land of darkness and the shadow of death’, his faith remained unwavering. ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ He trusted his God and struggled to make His will his own. Tried as Job was, he was at least not doomed to a solitary life, as was Robinson Crusoe on his island after shipwreck and before the arrival of Friday. He responded by creating for himself from the remnants of the civilized world a simulacrum of the world he had lost. He was prudent, practical, hard-working, did not allow despair to overtake him, and made the most of the meager resources he salvaged. Melville’s Bartleby, on the other hand, opted out of a life whose circumstances he found unacceptable. He did not struggle, he had no faith, and he made only one choice, which was to refuse to make choices among alternatives that were forced on him. His enigmatic response to the work, shelter, food, sympathy, and charity that might have sustained him was ‘I would prefer not’. He became a spirit who said no to life, and he literally curled up and died. Churchill, by contrast, not only struggled but inspired a nation to struggle and accept long years of ‘blood, toil, tears, and sweat’. He willed ‘victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be’. Styles of life are modal, adjectival; not a matter of doing anything in particular, but how whatever is done is done. Job, Crusoe, Bartleby, and Churchill did many different things, but the most important actions of each formed a characteristic pattern and were done in a characteristic manner. Job acted devoutly, Crusoe prudently, Bartleby resignedly, and Churchill indomitably. Their different manners reflected their different attitudes to life as they found it. Job’s attitude was religious; Crusoe’s practical; Bartleby’s suicidal negativity; and Churchill’s heroic. Their attitudes informed their manners, and their manners informed their patterns of action. The combination of such interdependent attitudes, manners, and patterns of action

A Grace to be Cultivated 5 forms what I am calling a style of life. It is an expression of individuality that guides how one wants to live in the particular circumstances that constitute the context of one’s life. If the attitude is realistic, the manner appropriate, and the pattern of action successful, and if the attitude, manner, and pattern of action cohere and form a mutually reinforcing whole, then the resulting style of life is admirable. A style of life, of course, can also be deficient if its attitude is in some way unrealistic, if its manner is inappropriate, if its pattern of action is unsuccessful, or if the attitude, manner, and pattern of action are incoherent. But, if nothing goes wrong and the style of life reflects one’s individuality, then one will find life enjoyable because one lives successfully and on one’s own terms.

1.2. Three styles of life Let us now consider some styles of life in greater detail. I begin with Rose, who is a character in a novel by Margaret Drabble. She was born into an affluent English family, brought up, educated, and married accordingly, but she severed contacts with her family, divorced her wealthy husband, took her three children, and settled in an impoverished neighborhood in London. She has no money because she gave it all away to a cause she subsequently realized was fraudulent and hopeless. She is dowdy, not particularly bright, has no serious intellectual interests, lacks elementary information, and lost her earlier passion to reform the world. She thinks about her life, and this is what she says: ‘I’ve given up public causes—and ... I think I ought to sit here at home and keep quiet and dig my own garden. Literally dig it, actually. Now that’s the kind of activity that used to seem to me sublimely useless, and now at my age seems a good thing to do. ... It’s a privilege, to be able to learn the lessons I’ve learned. The lessons of the privileged. But that doesn’t mean I can’t learn. I refuse to believe I was damned from birth, you know. ... I can’t really believe all that once a lady always a lady.’ ... She smiled, suddenly cheerful. A sudden ripple of energy went through her, as she sat there: she lifted up a hand, and held it there, the fingers spread out, mocking, smiling, serious. ‘All alone,’ she said: ‘I arrest the course of nature. I arrest it. I divert the current.’¹

By freeing herself from the cant and encumbrances of class, living her own life, and becoming her own master, she stopped herself from being

6 Introduction carried by the current of life and came to divert it in a direction she wanted to give it. She likes what she has become: an independent person whose actions reflect an attitude to life that is her own. She enjoys her life and the activities that flow from her character, even if they seem trivial to others. Independence permeates her mundane actions, as she quietly digs her garden, copes with her children, the disorder of her house, and the limitations of self-imposed poverty. The second description is in one of Anthony Trollope’s parliamentary novels. Mr Boncassen was an American who had lately arrived in England. ... He was a man of wealth and a man of letters. And he had a daughter who was said to be the prettiest young woman either in Europe or in America at the present time. Isabel Boncassen was certainly a very pretty girl. I wish that my reader would believe my simple assurance. But no such simple assurance was ever believed. ... Perhaps what struck the beholder first was the ... vitality of her countenance. Her eyes, too, were full of life and brilliancy, and even when she was silent her mouth would speak. ... It was, I think, the vitality of her countenance,—the way in which she could speak with every feature, the command which she had of pathos, of humour, of sympathy, of satire, the assurance which she gave by every glance of her eye, every elevation of her brow, every curl of her lip, that she was alive to all that was going on,—it was all this rather than those feminine charms which can be catalogued and labelled that made all acknowledge that she was beautiful.²

Isabel Boncassen’s wholeheartedness reflects her vitality, her aliveness to the world around her, and her confident responses. Seeing her is to see that she enjoyed being who she was and responding to the world wholeheartedly. The last description comes from Virginia Woolf’s autobiographical reflection. The shock-receiving capacity is what makes me a writer. I hazard the explanation that a shock is at once in my case followed by the desire to explain it. I feel that I have had a blow; but it is not, as I thought as a child, simply a blow from an enemy hidden behind the cotton wool of daily life; it is or will become a revelation of some order; it is a token of some real thing behind appearances; and I make it real by putting it into words. It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness ... gives me ... a great delight. ... Perhaps this is the strongest pleasure known to me. It is the rapture I get when in writing I seem to be discovering what belongs to what. ... From this I reach what I might

A Grace to be Cultivated 7 call philosophy; at any rate a constant idea of mine; that behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern. ... This intuition of mine—it is so instinctive that it seems given to me, not made by me—has certainly given its scale to my life. ... One is living all the time in relation to certain background ... conceptions. Mine is that there is a pattern hid behind the cotton wool. And this conception affects me every day. I prove this, now, by spending the morning writing. ... I feel that by writing I am doing what is far more necessary than anything else. All artists I suppose feel something like this. It is one of the obscure elements in life that has never been much discussed. It is left out in almost all biographies and autobiographies.³

The obscure element is the spring of creativity. Woolf is describing her creative life. The attitude it reflects is her passionate commitment to make sense of her experiences. Her way of doing so was a matter of finding the appropriate language. And she found success at this intensely enjoyable. Independence, wholeheartedness, and creativity share certain features. Each reflects the protagonists’ attitude to life. It informs their sensibility; provides a standard of judgment for evaluating what is good or bad and better or worse in their lives; elicits their deepest emotions; and motivates their most important activities. The attitude is evaluative through and through. Because it is the evaluation of the life of a person, I refer to it as personal evaluation. It may proceed either from an internal perspective whereby individuals evaluate their own lives, or from an external point of view from which others evaluate someone else’s life. Personal evaluation may be favorable because a life possesses a grace and represents a triumph through the successful exemplification of an ideal. Such a life is enjoyable. But the evaluation may also be unfavorable: a life can be miserable. Much needs to be and will be said to clarify these matters and to discuss how personal evaluation is connected with moral, practical, aesthetic, and other kinds of evaluation. If their lives are enjoyable, then the way individuals pursue their various projects will reflect it. Among Rose’s projects was to raise her children well, get along with her neighbors, and conduct her affairs competently. What revealed her attitude, however, was not the identity of her particular projects, but the fierce independence with which she did whatever she was doing. Some of Isabel Boncassen’s projects were to explore the upper-class society of England, compare herself with other young women of her age, support her father, and maintain her pride in being an American.

8

Introduction

These busy and superficial activities, however, were accidental to her attitude to life; what was essential was the wholeheartedness that infused everything she did. And Virginia Woolf’s projects were to be a successful writer, a social commentator, a feminist, and a critic of Victorian mores. But what she cared about most passionately was creating the language that cuts through the cotton wool of experience and reveals the pattern behind it. One essential feature of these attitudes, then, is the manner in which they lead the protagonists to pursue their projects. Projects may come and go, but the manner in which they engage in them will remain constant, if the attitude they reflect is genuinely theirs. What signifies the attitude is not what is done, but how it is done. Independence, wholeheartedness, and creativity can be shown by pursuing countless different projects. This feature is central to my purposes, and it is to it that I have given the name of ‘style of life’. Although the most common reference to style is in aesthetic judgment, I am using it to characterize the moral aspect of some lives. The first definition of style in The Random House Dictionary (2nd unabridged edition, 1987) is aesthetic, but the second is ‘a particular, distinctive, or characteristic mode of action or manner of acting’, and it is style in this second sense that I have in mind. Independence, wholeheartedness, and creativity are, then, examples of styles of life. I stress that they are examples, because there are many other and varied styles of life. But all of them reflect particular individuals’ attitude to life, as shown by the manner in which they perform whatever happen to be their projects. Different individuals may pursue the same project in different manners and different projects in the same manner. How they do what they do reflects their individuality and stamps their actions as characteristically their own. It is as if their actions bore their signature. Buffon’s ‘le style, c’est l’homme même’ is an exaggeration, but it does point to something important. That human beings are members of the same species guarantees that they share certain physiological characteristics. Social conditions imprint those living together in a context with further similarities. In fortunate circumstances, however, civilized life has room for the cultivation of characteristics that are not imposed by influences over which one has no control, and styles of life are among these characteristics. There is much beside style that may confer individuality on people and

A Grace to be Cultivated 9 distinguish them from others. But style is one of these distinguishing features, and it is one that people can develop, cultivate, and change. Style may occupy part of the room left by escape from physical and social necessities. It is one of the psychological conditions of human life that can be controlled at least to some extent by those who are willing to make the effort and who are lucky in their endowments and conditions of life. The chief reason, however, why individuals should make the effort is not to distinguish themselves from others, nor to take advantage of their possibilities, but to make their lives enjoyable. For having a style of life means that individuals are to some extent in control of their lives, direct how they go, and reduce the extent to which they are at the mercy of necessity and contingency. The achievement of this mastery is intrinsically enjoyable. Those who are progressing toward it do, as the epigraph well says, live their lives more fully than others who lack this mastery because they have not tried to achieve it or have tried and failed.

1.3. The menace of moralism My aim in this book, as I have said, is to understand what is involved in living an enjoyable life and how giving style to one’s life is a means to it. It is very surprising, at least to me, that there is serious moral resistance to pursuing this aim. One would expect that questions about living an enjoyable life are a central concern of moralists, but the opposite is true. There is an enormous gap between what most of us want and what moralists tell us we ought to want. In ordinary circumstances, we care about having a fulfilling job, adequate income, a good marriage, loving children, a satisfying sex life, sufficient leisure filled with interesting activities; we care about the health, security, and happiness of ourselves and those close to us; about being loved, appreciated, respected, listened to; about having an enjoyable life. We may also care about more remote matters, such as the goings-on in our neighborhood, the ups and downs of the team we are rooting for, the books we read, gossip about people we know, the fate of characters in soap operas, the state of the economy, the affairs of our church, if we belong to one, the politics of our country, and perhaps

10

Introduction

the disasters at distant places that the media regard as newsworthy. But we tend to care most about matters closest to home, and less and less as the distance increases between home and what happens elsewhere. We try, insofar as our circumstances allow, to pursue our own good in our own way. Moralists are not content with this state of affairs. There is hardly an area of our lives that is free from the intrusive meddling of moralizers of one ilk or another. They tell us what food we should or should not eat; how we should treat our pets; what clothing we should not wear; how we should spend our after-tax income; how precisely we should phrase invitations for sex; what kind of bags we should carry our groceries in; when and where we should be permitted to pray or smoke; what jokes we should not tell; who should pick the fruit we buy at the supermarket; how we should invest our money; what chemicals we should use in our gardens; how we should sort our garbage; what we should think of cross dressing, sex-change operations, teenage sex, and pot smoking; they accuse us of sexual abuse if we spank our children or hug our neighbor’s; and they allow our 19- and 20-year-olds to fight our wars, but not to buy a beer. There is an unwholesome, dreary, grim determination with which moralists self-righteously tell us how we should live and what we should care about. They lay on us duties, obligations, and responsibilities, while they are blind to the equal importance of making our lives as enjoyable as we can, cultivating our private concerns, and being engaged in interesting activities we value. Moralists forget that morality involves not merely a set of commands and prohibitions, but also the pursuit of an enjoyable life. No reasonable person can deny that we all have responsibilities, but it is just as important to recognize that enjoyment must be part of any life that could reasonably be called good. Why, then, do moralists focus on responsibility and ignore enjoyment? Because they are in the grip of a deeply flawed view of morality that requires people to treat everyone, including themselves, equally, as directed by some universal and impersonal principle. Everyone is said to count for one and no more than one. Morality is thus thought to require treating everyone, especially oneself, as no less and no more important than anyone else. This makes moral thought abstract, focusing on the good, the right, the virtues; on the nature of responsibility, duty, and obligation; and

A Grace to be Cultivated 11 on reasons and justifications. Moralists typically want to generalize, to formulate requirements that everyone ought to meet independently of differences in individual characters and circumstances. As a result, they fail to recognize that we are different individuals and should be treated differently; that loving some people means being partial to them; that different people have different interests whose pursuit makes their lives enjoyable; and that the personal relationships, without which life would not be worth living, depend on treating intimates very differently from others. Even if everybody counts, for each one of us some people count much more than others. The moralists’ view excludes from morality most of the things that make life enjoyable and we ordinarily care about. Moralists may acknowledge that these things matter to us, but they deny that they could or should matter morally. If, then, we proceed from this impoverished point of view, only responsibility will matter morally, and enjoyment will not. Not only is this view absurdly narrow; it is also dangerous, because, by making it a moral requirement to be indifferent to a large part of what makes life worth living, it undermines our commitment to morality. There undoubtedly are situations in which our responsibility is to be impersonal. This is what judges, referees, graders, cops, and examiners ought to be. But the responsibilities of love, friendship, loyalty, and gratitude, among others, can be discharged only by treating some people differently from others. We must also make constant exception for ourselves because we are responsible for ourselves, not for others. And that includes being more than a moral cipher who obediently follows a universal and impersonal principle. All this may be acknowledged while we wonder whether morality could do without universal and impersonal principles. The answer is that principles are needed in morality, but they are almost never universal and impersonal. Take the prohibition of murder, understood as intentional homicide. A moment of thought shows that a defensible principle prohibiting murder must allow many exceptions and raise many doubts. Murder is not prohibited in many cases involving self-defense, war, and law enforcement. It is much debated whether suicide, capital punishment, voluntary euthanasia, or abortion constitute murder. There are also serious and difficult questions about how much or how little information, intelligence, self-control, incapacity, provocation, or emergency is compatible

12

Introduction

with intentional action. There are considerations no less problematic about the conditions that might justify or excuse murder if the generally accepted morality of a society wrongly countenances it. Is the murder of trespassers, heretics, traitors, or soldiers who refuse to obey orders in a battle justifiable or excusable if the prevailing morality permits it? And when does death resulting from inattention, indifference, or self-regard amount to murder? If the principle prohibiting murder, perhaps the most basic moral principle, allows these exceptions and raises these questions, then it cannot be reasonably claimed that the prohibition holds, or ought to hold, always, everywhere, and for everyone. If this is true of murder, then even stronger doubts are warranted about the universality and impersonality of principles prohibiting lesser offenses. This is not to deny, of course, that principles have an important place in morality. But it is to deny the claim essential to moralism that the responsibility of individuals is to follow universal and impersonal moral principles. There is much more to morality than obedience to principles, and far fewer universal and impersonal principles than moralists suppose. It should also be said that universal and impersonal principles sought by moralists during the 2,500-year history of moral thought have not been found. Deep disagreements about principles have always divided highly intelligent, reflective, and decent moralists of good will. The time has come to recognize that it is precisely the abstract, generalizing tendency of moralists that is responsible for the failure of reasonable and thoughtful people to reach agreement about the right answers to fundamental questions. It is natural to wonder, then, why so many moralists suppose that we need a principle to tell us what is good or right. Why suppose that what is good or right is the same for Rose, an independent woman who has chosen to abandon her class, marriage, and wealth, and make a new life for herself; Boncassen, a spirited, wholehearted American girl in London high society; and Woolf, a creative writer of acute sensibility? Why suppose that the same universal and impersonal principle should guide Job, who lives in the ancient world believing himself to be among the chosen of God; Crusoe, shipwrecked and stranded on a deserted island in the eighteenth century; Bartleby, an alienated clerk in nineteenth-century New York; and Churchill, the twentieth-century prime minister of a country waging war against a vicious enemy?

A Grace to be Cultivated 13 The answer is that moralists assume that what is good or right depends on an order that permeates the Universe and determines how one should live, and the right principle would reflect this benign order. Many of the most influential thinkers in the history of Western ethics—Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Leibniz, Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel, among others—shared this assumption. They held that this order provides the one and only reasonable standard of evaluation; that what is good or right is to live in conformity to that standard, and what is bad or wrong is to violate it. The great achievement of these thinkers was to articulate and attempt to give reasons for this assumption, which is the foundation of Western religions, poetic visions, metaphysical systems, and enduring myths. Their attempts are magnificent intellectual feats, but they rest on nothing more solid than the elaboration of the assumption with which they start. How could anyone possibly know whether such order as we are beginning dimly to discern in the minute portion of the Universe with which we are familiar is one that permeates the whole Universe? Why suppose that the order we have discerned is not malignant, or indifferent, or an uncertain and unpredictable mixture of both? Why suppose that conforming to the order is good for us, that, if we conform, we will not go the way of dinosaurs, or the thousands of other now extinct species, or millions of burnt-out stars and exploding galaxies? The impression created by the thinkers who erect these castles on air that ultimately rest on nothing firmer than optimistic and unsubstantiatable assumptions is one of monumental intellectual arrogance. How could they claim they know what no human being could possibly know? How could they be blind to the fact that other, no less reasonable and reflective, thinkers reject their speculations in favor of their own equally groundless speculations? How could they not see that countless incompatible conclusions can be reached if one starts with the unfounded assumption on which all these speculations are based? How could they not suspect their own dogmatic certainty when they criticize the dogmatic certainties of others? All these speculations are designed to provide a framework that could accommodate all known facts and experiences. This gives rise to a dilemma that the speculations can neither resolve nor avoid. If, on the one hand, the speculations succeed, then no fact or experience accessible to human beings could show that they are mistaken. How, then, do they differ from vacuous

14

Introduction

banalities, such as that everything is God’s will, or that all manner of things will be well, or that what will be will be, or that for everything there is a reason? If, on the other hand, the speculations fail to accommodate all known facts and experiences, then they fail to serve the purpose for which they were designed. The speculations, therefore, are either vacuous or failures. The standard response of moralists is that the questions I have been asking undermine morality and the possibility of civilized life. Such questions, moralists say, lead to anti-rationalist, Dionysian nihilism that is the enemy of reason and morality. This too has been a tradition in Western thought. Naturally enough, its representatives have not written treatises or formulated principles, since it is precisely the products of such efforts that they reject. Nihilists, nevertheless, frequently appear in Western literature mainly in works defending the moralistic tradition, where they are put to work as stalking horses, as in Plato’s Republic. But they also make their appearance in ancient Cynicism, in late medieval millenarianism, in Machiavelli, Nietzsche, in German Romanticism and French Existentialism, and closer to our own time in the extreme self-centeredness of Stirner, in some of the writings of Gide, Becket, and Genet, and more recently still in the various versions of relativism that have come to dominate anthropology, sociology, literary criticism, and much of politics. The moralist and nihilist traditions, however, are both animated by the basic assumption they share—namely, that the standard that determines what is good and right, reasonable and unreasonable, depends on there being a benign order permeating the Universe. Moralists believe that there is such an order; nihilists deny it. And, because they deny it, they believe themselves to be driven to the rejection of objective standards of reason and morality, and thus threaten the possibility of civilized life. It might perhaps be preferable, then, to squelch one’s doubts and shore up the crumbling edifice of the moralist tradition. But it is possible to avoid the choice between defending dogmatic falsehood and embracing barbarism. And it is desirable to avoid it because both moralists and nihilists are unwitting and misguided agents of doom. I say to them: a plague on both your houses. One erects an arbitrary, unattainable standard and condemns humanity for not living up to it. The other rejects all objective standards and thereby gives free rein to human depravity. There is an alternative to them that is

A Grace to be Cultivated 15 committed to reason and morality, but rejects the basic assumption shared by moralists and nihilists.

1.4. The alternative This alternative also belongs to a tradition of Western thought. Some of its eminent older representatives are Homer, Protagoras, Sophocles, Euripides, Thucydides, Shakespeare, Hobbes, Montaigne, and Hume. Its influence can be found in Vico, Machiavelli, and Nietzsche. In our times, Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire, Michael Oakeshott, and Bernard Williams, to speak of only the recently dead, have worked in this tradition. And this is the tradition in which I also write. Essential to it is understanding that an acceptable view of morality must be objective, fallible, anthropocentric, particular, and concrete. A thorough explanation and justification of these characteristics require a long book, and this is not that book. I will do no more here than describe them briefly and leave it to the account of styles of life that follows to make them concrete in the aspect of morality that I am concerned with: the enjoyment of life. This view of morality combines a critical and a constructive component. The critical one is the reasoned rejection of the belief that there is a supreme principle that provides a blueprint of how morality requires one to live. The constructive component involves showing that good lives may take many different forms, because lives are made good by the possession of many different goods. Such goods are a loving family life, a successful career, respected achievements, a fine sense of humor, deep understanding in some area of learning, the development and practice of great skills, artistic or scientific creativity, alleviating suffering, rewarding work, close friendships, dedication to a noble cause, providing a service others need, and so on. These and other goods can be combined in many different ways and they can be ranked in many different orders of importance. Which goods should be pursued and how their respective importance should be ranked depends on the characters and contexts of the individuals who are endeavoring to make good lives for themselves. The reason why there cannot be a blueprint of how one should live is

16

Introduction

that individual characters and contexts differ greatly and change as time passes. The moralist strategy of seeking a universal and impersonal principle—like the greatest happiness, the categorical imperative, the Golden Rule, or the Ten Commandments—to answer the question of how an individual should live is a hopeless endeavor, because the field is too diffuse and any universal and impersonal principle would ignore precisely those differences in characters and contexts on which reasonable answers to how an individual should live depend. Morality is nevertheless objective, because there are reasonable answers to the question of how particular individuals in particular contexts should live. Individual aims can be prudent or imprudent, beliefs about one’s capacities and incapacities can be true or false, judgments about what is possible or impossible in one’s context can be realistic or unrealistic, emotional attachments can be overwrought or half-hearted, desires can be destructive or ennobling, and so on. Reasonable answers depend on making the right judgments in these difficult areas. But such judgments can be made, and that is why morality is objective and nihilists are mistaken. And, because right judgments are hard to make and mistakes are frequent, morality must leave ample room for the fallibility of judgments and be suspicious of the dogmatic certainties of moralists. This alternative tradition also holds that morality is anthropocentric. This means that morality must be viewed from the perspective of human beings, and its primary concern is with human well-being. Good lives and the goods that might make them so are good for human beings; nothing can count as morally good that is contrary to human wellbeing. Some goods concern the satisfaction of needs that follow from the physiological, psychological, and social nature that all healthy members of our species share. But there are many other goods that are historically, socially, and individually variable. Such goods are the products of human endeavor, and whether they are indeed good depends in part on whether we judge them to be so. These judgments, of course, can be and often are mistaken. But if they are not, they, not a supposed benign order in the Universe, constitute the ultimate standard of what is good for particular human beings. The only acceptable reason or argument advanced by any moralist or nihilist that could cast doubt on the

A Grace to be Cultivated 17 goodness of goods that was so judged is that the judgment is mistaken. If, however, that doubt is groundless and experience shows that the good is good for human beings, then anthropocentrism implies that any contrary claim supported by any moralistic speculation or nihilistic doubt must be rejected. Goods, however, are good not for human beings in general, but for particular individuals. It often happens that what one person rightly judges to be good is evaluated differently by another person. Such disputes may, but need not, be about the goodness of the good in question. They may be about the goodness of the good given differences in the characters and contexts of the disputing individuals. That is why defenders of this tradition insist that, if morality is objective, fallible, and anthropocentric, then it must also be particularist. Consequently reasons in morality often have to be particular and concrete; universal and impersonal principles cannot be based on such reasons; yet the reasons are good and objective because they make it possible for individuals to enjoy their lives in their own way, in their own circumstances. There are as many such reasons as there are individuals and circumstances. All this needs more explanation and concreteness, and I aim to provide them in the book. Essential to what follows is that it is not an accident that several of the styles of life I have discussed earlier—Job, Crusoe, Bartleby, Churchill, Boncassen, Rose, and Woolf—are drawn from literature. If literature is understood to include drama, autobiography, biography, poetry, novels, and some history, ethnography, religion, and philosophy as well, then literature is a great and necessary aid to moral thought, of which this book is a specimen. If the central concern of morality is with how one should live, then living enjoyably is surely part of the answer. If styles of life lead to enjoyment, then styles of life are or should be central to morality. The importance of literature for moral thought is that it provides the concreteness and particularity that should replace the futile search for the general and the dreary aridity of so much moral dogmatizing. I aim to show that the willful or ignorant disregard of literature is one of the chief reasons for the failure of much moral thought and that good reasons in moral thought are most often concrete and particular, not universally and impersonally applicable to everyone, always, everywhere, but none the worse for that.

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Introduction

1.5. The structure of the book The book is divided into five parts of unequal length. Part One, Introduction, contains only the present chapter. Part Two, Styles of Life, has three chapters. They deal with the attitudes, manners, and patterns of action that form styles of life; with the personal evaluations of these styles; and with the connection between individuality and the enjoyment of life, on the one hand, and styles of life, on the other. Part Three, The Evaluation of Styles of Life, also has three chapters. They concern the justification of personal evaluations, the place of styles in morality as a whole, and the appropriate uses of reason in morality. In each of the chapters of Parts One, Two, and Three I endeavor to make concrete the subject discussed by showing it embedded in a person and context. Part Four, Some Particular Styles of Life, has six chapters. Three are about admirable styles of life, and the other three about deficient ones. The admirable styles are integrity, reflectiveness, and self-direction. The deficient ones are romanticism, moralism, and exuberance. Each of these six chapters is a detailed examination of the life of an actual or imagined person. Those with an admirable style of life are Madame Max Goesler, the most perfect gentleman in Trollope; David Hume, a secular saint; and Michel de Montaigne, one of the most remarkable people known to us. The deficient styles are observable in the lives of Yukio Mishima, a Japanese novelist; Plutarch’s Marcus Porcius Cato, a person of legendary rigidity; and in the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, the great Renaissance goldsmith and sculptor. Part Five, Conclusion, has only one last chapter. It brings together the results that have been reached in the preceding chapters. Readers who want to know where all the chapters lead may turn directly to this last chapter.

PA RT T WO

Styles of Life


2 Pursuing our Own Good

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs. ... Each is a guardian of his own health, whether bodily or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest. ( John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859)

2.1. Personal evaluation This chapter focuses on the enjoyment we may have if, as the epigraph says, we pursue our own good in our own way. This kind of enjoyment is subject to a mode of evaluation, which I call personal. Clues to this essential but curiously neglected aspect of personal evaluation abound, but its nature has been largely unexplored. Aristotle, for instance, says that a good life is made enjoyable by pleasure derived from the unimpeded activities of one’s natural state and these activities are pleasurable because they complete one’s nature.¹ But he also says that ‘it is no easy task to be good. For in everything it is no easy task to ... [act toward] the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right aim, and in the right way.’ The right ways in all these contexts ‘depend on particular facts, and the decision rests with perception’²—that is, with how ‘the man with practical wisdom would determine it’.³ This points in the right direction but leaves unanswered the crucial questions of how the man of practical wisdom would find the right way and how pleasures obtained in the right way could be distinguished from pleasures obtained in the wrong way.

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Montaigne movingly writes that ‘it is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know how to enjoy our being rightfully. We seek other conditions because we do not understand the use of our own, and go outside of ourselves because we do not know what it is like inside.’⁴ But he is not very forthcoming about what the rightful enjoyment of our being consists in. Hume recognizes that ‘there is a manner, a grace, an ease, a genteelness, an I-know-not-what, which some men possess above others, which is very different from external beauty and comeliness, and which, however, catches our affection almost as suddenly and powerfully. ... This manner ... prevails in all our estimation of characters, and forms no inconsiderable part of personal merit.’⁵ Yet, if we want to know what that desirable manner is, we will not be helped by being told that it is a know-not-what. According to Mill, ‘it really is of importance, not only what men do, but also what manner of men they are that do it. Among the works of man which human life is rightly employed in perfecting and beautifying, the first importance surely is man himself.’⁶ But he leaves us in the dark about what the recommended manner is. Nietzsche says that ‘one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself ... only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is continually ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight. For the sight of what is ugly makes one bad and gloomy.’⁷ Like Aristotle, Montaigne, Hume, and Mill, Nietzsche points toward something important about the manner that makes enjoyment possible, but says very little about how to attain it. The neglected aspect of personal evaluation I will explore has to do with enjoyments derivable from actions done in the right way, from our rightful being, from the possession of a manner that confers merit, and from being the right manner of man. The enjoyments these ingredients of a good life provide are the result of one’s style of life, from how something is done, not what is done. I hasten to add that I do not mean to imply that what is done is not morally important. Of course it is. But so is the style of life that informs how what is done is done.

Pursuing our Own Good

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2.2. Styles of life Provided certain conditions are met, our style of life reflects our attitude to life in general and to our own life in particular. It is someone’s style which brings his virtues and vices alive; which shows him to be full of life or dead within; which excites our interest in him or makes us turn away from him in boredom. ‘Le style, c’est l’homme meme,’ says Buffon. Style is one of the most fundamental things about a person and reveals the deepest layer of his mind. The way a person converses, eats, drinks, gets angry, smokes a cigarette, gesticulates, makes love, walks, laughs, weeps, sits—all of these aspects of a person’s style tell us what kind of person he is.⁸ Style is a reflection of ... basic attitude(s) to reality, the general feeling-tone of ... life.⁹ Style is essentially a way of doing something and ... it is expressive of personality. ... My style of dressing, working, speaking and making decisions is typically an expression of (some features of ) my personality, character, mind or sensibility. ... In general, if a person’s actions are an expression of her personality, then those actions have the character they have—compassionate, timid, courageous, or whatever—in virtue of the fact that they are caused by the corresponding trait of mind or character in that person.¹⁰ Style is the ultimate morality of mind.¹¹ Theory of style may perhaps be provisionally accepted which identifies it with character—with unconscious revelation of hidden self. ... There is significance in style, a value in the unconscious self revelations of traits of personality.¹²

The attitudes that styles of life reflect are formed of beliefs, emotions, and motives that guide how we want to live and respond to our circumstances. Examples of styles of life are cheerfulness, confidence, contemplation, creativity, depth, determination, discipline, honor, independence, integrity, inwardness, nobility, purity, reflectiveness, self-control, sensitivity, serenity, seriousness, simplicity, strength, tact, warmth, and wholeheartedness. These are normally admirable as judged by personal evaluation, because they contribute to the enjoyment of life. Styles of life may also be judged deficient because they tend to make one’s life miserable. Examples of such styles may be indicated by the antonyms of the items just listed.

24 Styles of Life Personal evaluation, of course, is not the only mode of evaluation: moral, practical, and aesthetic evaluations are some of the others. What is judged to be admirable or deficient by personal evaluation may be evaluated favorably or unfavorably from the points of view of the other modes. Modes of evaluation, therefore, may yield conflicting judgments. I merely want to acknowledge here the possibility of such conflicts and postpone discussion of them. The aim of this chapter and the next two is to make a case for the importance of admirable styles of life, but, since they are judged to be admirable by the personal mode of evaluation, these chapters aim also to make a case for the importance of that mode to living a good life. In Chapter 5 I will discuss how judgments about styles of life can be justified or criticized within the personal mode of evaluation. In Chapters 6–7 I will consider the complicated connection between the personal and the moral modes of evaluation and how conflicts between evaluations may be reasonably resolved. The ascription of a style of life to people is appropriate only if the attitude it reflects is significant and their actions consistently and generally reflect it. Significance has to do with the importance the attitude has in people’s character. No description of them would be accurate if it failed to recognize the confidence, inwardness, warmth, or some other attitude to life that their actions reflect. Moreover, their attitude distinguishes them from others because its nature, intensity, or centrality makes corresponding actions characteristically and identifiably the actions of particular individuals. It is as if their characteristic actions bear their personal stamp. Consistency requires that over a long period of time, measured in years rather than days or weeks, their actions should habitually and predictably reflect some enjoyable or miserable attitude to life. And generality holds if the same attitude is reflected by a great variety of their different types of action. They do much of what they do cheerfully, confidently, wholeheartedly, and so forth. Consider now three brief illustrations of styles of life. The first is Arthur Koestler’s and it is explicitly autobiographical; the second is Proust’s, probably also autobiographical, but presented as if it were fictional; and the third comes from a pseudonymous potboiler of Trevanian about a protagonist of mythic stature. I felt myself choke and seethe with impotent anger. ... Like most people who suffer from Chronic Indignation—as others do from chronic indigestion—I

Pursuing our Own Good 25 can feel, during an attack, the infusion of adrenalin into the bloodstream. ... I must have used up since then tons of adrenalin. ... I opened ... Weyl’s introduction to Einstein’s theory of Relativity. A phrase suddenly struck me and has remained in my memory ever since. It said that the theory of General Relativity led the human imagination ‘across the peaks of glaciers never before explored by any human being’. This cliché had an unexpectedly strong effect. I saw Einstein’s world-shaking formula ... hovering in a kind of rarefied haze over the glaciers, and this image carried a sensation of infinite tranquility and peace. ... The fate of ... unfortunates had to be viewed with the same serene, detached, meditative eye as that of the stars bursting into novae, of sunspots erupting ... of primaeval forests being transformed into coal. ... The sensation of choking with indignation was succeeded by the relaxed quietude and selfdissolving stillness of the ‘oceanic feeling’. ... The effect of ‘oceanic feeling’ is an expansion of consciousness, its liberation from any pressure and itch, its temporary dissolution. ... I knew that detachment and restraint are essential values in art. ... I knew that the artist should not exhort or preach, and I kept on exhorting and preaching. ... ‘Art is a contemplative business. It is also a ruthless business. One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or shut up. Now I happen to believe that Europe is doomed, a chapter in history which is drawing to its finish. This is so to speak my contemplative truth. Looking at the world with detachment ... I find it not even disturbing. But I also happen to believe in the ethical imperative of fighting evil, even if the fight is hopeless. ... We have to accept the perpetual contradiction between these two.’¹³

I will call the attitude that vies with chronic indignation detached contemplation. The second description is an extract from one of the best-known passages in literature. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory—this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could

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Styles of Life

it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? ... What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? ... It is plain that the truth I am seeking lies not in the cup but in myself. ... I put down the cup and examine my own mind. It alone can discover the truth. But how? What an abyss of uncertainty, whenever the mind feels overtaken by itself; when it, the seeker, is at the same time the dark region through which it must go seeking and where all its equipment will avail nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not yet exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day.¹⁴

The attitude to which those famous petite madeleines led is inwardness that creates, not merely beholds, the object toward which it is directed. The third description is by an author who succeeded in writing a spoof of a best-seller that became a best-seller and in combining a tongue-in-cheek Zen of assassination with the sensitive depiction of an ideal of life. Shibumi ... how are you using the term? ... Oh, vaguely. And incorrectly, I suspect. A blundering attempt to describe an ineffable quality. ... Shibumi has to do with great refinement underlying commonplace appearances. It is a statement so correct that it does not have to be bold, so poignant it does not have to be pretty, so true it does not have to be real. Shibumi is understanding rather than knowledge. Eloquent silence. In demeanor, it is modesty without prudency. In art, where the spirit of shibumi takes the form of sabi, it is elegant simplicity, articulate brevity. In philosophy, where shibumi emerges as wabi, it is spiritual tranquility that is not passive; it is being without the angst of becoming. And in the personality of man, it is ... authority without domination. ... How does one achieve this shibumi? ... One does not achieve it, one ... discovers it. And only a few men of infinite refinement ever do that ... one must pass through knowledge and arrive at simplicity. ... From that moment ... [his] primary goal in life was to become a man of shibumi; a personality of overwhelming calm.¹⁵

Since there is no acceptable one-word translation in English, I will continue to refer to the attitude as shibumi. From these illustrations I derive the following points for further discussion: 1. styles of life are ascribed to individuals, but that does not mean that everyone has one; 2. although detached contemplation, creative inwardness, and shibumi are admirable, styles of life can also be deficient;


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3. styles of life are composed of an attitude to life, actions through which the attitude is reflected, and the manner in which the actions are done; 4. the attitude informs one’s life; 5. actions that reflect the attitude form a habitual and predictable pattern that persists over time and includes many different types of action; and 6. the manner in which the pattern of actions is performed reflects an attitude that is an important constituent of character. In the remainder of this chapter I will discuss attitudes to life, in the next chapter actions that reflect these attitudes, and in the chapter following the manner in which the actions are done.

2.3. Attitudes Having an attitude is to care about something that matters to us.¹⁶ Attitudes may be positive, negative, or an ambivalent mixture of both. Attitudes, therefore, are essentially evaluative. They may be private or public, important or trivial, reasonable or unreasonable, expressed or unexpressed, confident or hesitant, self-conscious or unselfconscious, widely shared or idiosyncratic. They are ours, even if they merely echo conventions or authorities that have influenced us. And they have an object, understood very generally as that toward which the attitude is directed. The object need not actually exist; it is enough if we believe that it does or might exist. Nor is it necessary that we should be right about what we take to be the nature of the object. Attitudes are necessarily subjective, in one sense of this troublesome word, because they are the attitudes of a subject. This does not mean, of course, that our attitudes are subjective in the quite different sense in which their correctness depends merely on our evaluations. Attitudes are correct or incorrect, reasonable or unreasonable, independently of what we think of them. If the evaluation embedded in an attitude reflects unimportant matters of taste or preference, there is no point in justifying or criticizing it. It is right and proper if we have considerable private space in which we can follow our likes and dislikes without needing to ask whether they are reasonable. But evaluations often concern moral, religious, practical, legal, or aesthetic matters that have serious consequences for ourselves and others.

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Styles of Life

My present concern is with one kind of evaluation: the personal evaluation of our own life. This kind of evaluation is normally important and much depends on getting it right. For what is at stake is whether we have a positive, negative, or ambivalent attitude to our life, whether we are satisfied or dissatisfied with it, whether we enjoy it, whether we wish to change it radically if we could. The temporal position of such attitudes is also important. They may be forward-looking and concern the future, or backward-looking and involve a retrospective view. I will concentrate, however, on attitudes held in mid-life when we have left youth behind, we have a realistic expectation of many years of life ahead of us, and our attitude is formed of both backward- and forward-looking evaluations. It is exceptional for us not to have some attitude toward our life. To have it is natural, and what requires explanation is its lack. Brutal conditions, pathological numbness, low intelligence, or fanatical devotion to some cause may prevent us from evaluating our life, but such cases are unusual in civilized circumstances. This is not to say, however, that the attitude must be expressed, reflective, or even conscious. Our attitude to our life may simply be unselfconscious satisfaction, dissatisfaction, or ambivalence. It may be an unarticulated wish that life should go on by and large in the same way as it has done in the past, or that it should be changed for the better in some important respect, even if it is unclear what that might be. I stress this to guard against the over-intellectualization that requires reasonable attitudes to be conscious. We can have a reasonable attitude to life without being conscious of having it, and certainly without having expressed the attitude in some verbal form. There are countless unreflective people—soldiers, athletes, farmers, nurses, and so forth—fully engaged in appropriate activities to whom it never occurs even to ask let alone answer questions about the evaluation of their lives. It remains true, however, that, if we are seriously enough dissatisfied with our life to want to change it, then it becomes important to get clear about the source of our dissatisfaction and about what change would be an improvement. In this position, consciousness, clarity, and articulation become important, but they are important as a means of finding remedies, not as conditions of having a reasonable attitude. The importance of correcting what has gone wrong with our life should not be made a condition of having a reasonable attitude that needs no correction. Socrates was wrong, therefore, to say that the unexamined life is not


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worth living.¹⁷ What he should have said was that examination may make miserable lives more worth living.

2.4. Components Our attitude to life is complex. It is formed of beliefs, emotions, and motives. The beliefs are about what we have done and could have done, about our capacities and incapacities, the circumstances in which we have to act, the opportunities we have, the help or hindrance that comes our way from others, the feasibility and worthwhileness of our goals, the limits we should recognize, the obligations we have, and the importance of our successes and failures. These beliefs may be true or false. If false, they may be so because some internal psychological obstacle, like self-deception, fear, hope, stupidity, laziness, fatigue, and so forth, has interfered with accurate perception. Such obstacles range from reasonable defenses against the awfulness of our circumstances, through non-culpable weaknesses and shortcomings, to culpable vices. It may or may not be reasonable to try to overcome such obstacles, for the effort may be futile or the false belief may help to cope with an unbearable truth. It is normally reasonable, however, to aim to hold true beliefs about our life, for its improvement depends on the truth of the relevant beliefs. The source of false beliefs, however, may also be the misperception of the facts that results from conditions other than psychological obstacles. Physiological limits, physical illness, deception by others, manipulation, adverse external conditions, the ambiguity or complexity of the facts may prevent or make difficult accurate perception. It is not only factual mistakes, however, that account for having false beliefs about our life. The mistake may be one of judgment, in which accurately perceived facts are ascribed the wrong significance. In this way we may over- or underestimate the importance of something we lack or have, such as fame; or we may be attracted by some possibility, while overlooking its no less important drawbacks, such as being attracted by political life, and missing the lack of privacy that goes with it. Koestler may have been mistaken about what he believed were contemplative truths, such as that Europe was finished, or about oceanic feeling being an expansion of consciousness, rather than his conscience taking a

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holiday. Proust’s belief in the great value of the obsessive inwardness that permeates his work may have merely been an excuse for self-indulgence. And shibumi may just be a fancy name distracting its practitioner from asking about the point of what he was doing. The salient feature of possible mistakes of fact and judgment is that they reinforce the point made earlier that the sense in which our attitudes to life are subjective (being the attitudes of a subject) is perfectly consistent with a sense in which the attitudes are also objective (aiming at the accurate perception and judgment of the relevant facts). In one sense, therefore, what our attitudes are is up to us. In another sense, however, they are not up to us because a good life normally depends on attitudes based on true beliefs, and what those are depends on facts, not on what we take to be facts. Emotions are another component of the attitude to our life. Hope, fear, pride, shame, guilt, regret, excitement, boredom, contentment, and frustration are some of the many possible emotional reactions we have to our life. It is natural to react in these ways. What requires explanation is the absence of some emotional reaction to how our life is going. Great adversity, traumatic experiences, mental illness, brutalization, living close to the subsistence level, and other similar debilitating conditions make it understandable why we might focus our attention elsewhere. But if our life is not seriously beset, we will have emotions about how it is going. Koestler was full of emotions of indignation, hatred, and relief when he managed to live in such as way as to achieve some control over them. Proust feared the world, yearned for privacy, and lovingly attended to the workings of his memory and imagination. And the assassin with shibumi felt calm, cultivated refinement, and took delight in simplicity as he disposed of his victims. Having such emotions, however, is one thing; whether they are reasonable is quite another. Emotions are involuntary: strong ones are often overpowering, while weaker ones merely color our attitudes. To know that a certain emotion would be appropriate will not produce it; and to know that it is inappropriate will not dissipate it. Fear of things going wrong, enthusiasm about a project, guilt or shame at not having tried hard enough, joy at success, sadness at failure either come to us or not, but they cannot be summoned up. We cannot practice having them. We can certainly pretend to feel them, but the pretense is for others. We cannot make ourselves feel the fear, enthusiasm, guilt, shame, joy, or sadness that


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we do not feel, no matter how appropriate we think it would be to feel it. Emotions seem to escape our control, make us go up and down, affect our judgments, and influence how we live. They tell us something we may not want to hear. Strong ones do it insistently, weak ones softly. Since what they tell concerns the life we live, their intimations are often important. Unfortunately, they also tend to be obscure and unreliable. This leads many thoughtful people to distrust their emotions. They think of them as noise caused by the operation of their psychological machinery. If this distrust were warranted, it would cast doubt on the attitude to life in which their emotions are ingredients. This distrust of an essential ingredient of our attitude to our life is unwarranted. Although emotions do not lend themselves to direct control, it is possible to control them indirectly. We can do much with the help of collateral beliefs to strengthen reasonable emotions and weaken unreasonable ones. Reasonable emotions involve beliefs that we take to be true: feeling hopeful because a plan is feasible, confident because a goal is within reach, ashamed because a failure is our fault, proud because a prize is deserved, and so on. The realization that any of these beliefs is false is bound to affect the emotion, provided it was a reasonable reaction. The feeling of hope, confidence, shame, or pride will at least weaken if we come to believe that the object toward which it was directed is not what we took it to be. If this happens, a reasonable emotion may linger for a while, like an aftertaste, but it will gradually dissipate. If Koestler had discovered that his oceanic feeling was not the important experience he believed it was, but a self-induced delusion, then his good feeling about his life for having achieved it would not long survive. If Proust became convinced that his belief about the value of his literary efforts was false, he would not have continued to be so delighted by his life. And if the assassin became convinced that his belief in the worth of shibumi was a smokescreen behind which lurked cruelty, then his passion for simplicity, calm, and refinement would have been, at the very least, attenuated. Emotions, of course, may not be reasonable. Thinking of an emotion as a reaction to some object may just be a rationalization whose real object is disguised from us. It may be too shameful, shocking, childish, or threatening to own up to. And then the realization that our belief about the supposed object is false will not weaken the emotion. If the distrust of an emotion about our life is based on the suspicion that the emotion is unreasonable

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in this way, then the distrust may be warranted. But the distrust must be based on some particular suspicion about a particular emotion. The mere fact that it is an emotion is not a sufficient reason for distrusting it. It is as much a mistake to suspect emotions because there are some unreasonable ones as it is to suspect all we see because there are some optical illusions. Motives are the third component of the attitude whose object is our life. By motives I mean, quite generally, whatever moves us toward action. Beliefs and emotions may or may not become motives depending on internal and external circumstances. We normally have many beliefs and emotions, and we must judge their respective importance. We also have images, memories, fantasies, dreams, moods, instincts, physiological needs, and so on that may conflict with or reinforce particular beliefs and emotions. Having a belief or an emotion about our life, therefore, is not enough to motivate an action. A motive is formed only after some sort of coherence appears or is imposed on our inner life. But, even if coherence has emerged, external circumstances may prevent the formation of a motive. For what our beliefs or emotions prompt us to do may be practically impossible, far too dangerous, prohibitively costly in energy or resources, or provoke greater hostility than we are willing to bear. If, however, internal and external obstacles do not stand in the way, then our beliefs and emotions about our life will motivate us to act. In the simplest cases, finding our life miserable will motivate actions that would improve it and finding it enjoyable will motivate us to continue to do whatever we have been doing. But beliefs and emotions about our life are rarely simple, because internal and external obstacles are usually present. Since our control over external circumstances—about how the world is—is very limited, there is not much we can do about the obstacles they may present. A far more promising strategy is to allow only practically feasible beliefs and emotions to become motives. Internal obstacles, however, are another matter. We can shape the motives that form part of our attitude to life in various ways, among which two are particularly important. One is to keep in mind that motives normally lead to actions, actions form patterns, patterns solidify into traits, and make our character what it is. We can shape our motives by asking whether we would want to have the kind of character to which acting on a particular motive will eventually lead. And we can answer the question by considering whether that kind of character would be more or less likely to enable us to live a good—that is, a


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responsible and enjoyable—life. I am not suggesting that we should do this for all or most of our actions. Life would be impossible if we did that. There are numerous customary, habitual, problem-free areas of life in which we can afford to have a seamless connection between motive and action and in which shaping our motives is unnecessary. But our attitude to life is normally not one of these areas, because the influences that move us toward action are many and conflicting. We want our actions to reflect our attitude, and that requires overcoming these internal obstacles and getting clear about what our attitude is. I will shortly say more about how this may be done. The other way in which we may shape our motives is through the examination of the possibilities of life available to us. There are, first of all, the possible ways of life that are available to anyone living in a particular social context at a particular time. I will call these social possibilities. For us, here and now, being a samurai or a chivalrous knight is socially impossible, but being a diplomat or a mercenary is socially possible. We are, of course, able to pursue only a fraction of our social possibilities because we may not be aware of all of them, we may lack essential capacities for the pursuit of possibilities of which we are aware, or we may be prevented from pursuing them by obligations we have accepted. Being a surgeon is socially possible, but it takes manual dexterity that many of us lack, and those who have it may still be prevented by family circumstances that require them to earn money and exclude long years of training. I will call the social possibilities actually available to a particular person individual possibilities. They vary from context to context and from person to person. Few of us, however, recognize all our individual possibilities. We may have mistaken beliefs about our capacities, obligations, or circumstances, or we may find that some of our individual possibilities are emotionally unacceptable, or incompatible with our moral, aesthetic, political, or religious views. The possibilities we believe we have, therefore, are typically narrower than our individual possibilities, and what makes them so are our beliefs and emotions, which may or may not be reasonable. I will call the individual possibilities we regard as possibilities for ourselves our recognized possibilities. If we were perfectly reasonable, our recognized possibilities would be based only on reasonable beliefs and emotions, but of course few of us are perfectly reasonable. We tend to make mistakes about the possibilities of life we recognize as available for ourselves. We may recognize as possibilities

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those that are in fact individually or socially impossible for us, or we may fail to recognize as possibilities those that are in fact available to us. Our view of the possibilities of life we may pursue, therefore, is liable to be too broad or too narrow. The motives we have are prompted by our beliefs and emotions about our possibilities. If these beliefs and emotions are unreasonably broad or narrow, the motives prompted by them will be flawed. Shaping our motives, therefore, requires examining the beliefs and emotions that have prompted them. But this examination is handicapped by the same internal obstacles that handicap our examination of the attitude to life that our actions are supposed to reflect. Koestler’s motive for living as he did may not have been indignation about evil, but resentment of the society that impoverished and persecuted his family. Proust’s motive may not have been a passion for literature, but an unwillingness to resolve his sexual uncertainties. And the assassin’s motive for cultivating shibumi may not have been his yearning for tranquility, but the need to quell the nightmares that haunted him. Each of these three could have been—I do not say were—prevented from recognizing and then shaping his motives by obstacles internal to his character. And, of course, the same may be true in our own case. I now turn to what we can do to overcome these internal obstacles.

2.5. Coherent and incoherent attitudes As we have seen, the chief components of our attitude to life are beliefs, emotions, and motives. I have tried to show that beliefs are colored by emotions and prompt motives; emotions involve beliefs and motivate action; and motives reflect beliefs and emotions about recognized possibilities of life. The distinction between beliefs, emotions, and motives is thus only for the purposes of analysis. In our inner life they are intimately connected and interdependent. But much depends on whether these intermingled elements form an incoherent buzzing and booming confusion or yield a coherent attitude to life. An attitude to life is coherent if there is a large area of overlap among its components. This overlap requires more than consistency, because beliefs, emotions, and motives are consistent if they are not incompatible. But they could be compatible and largely independent, having different objects. At


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the center of our beliefs about life may be scholarly concerns, our dominant emotions may be directed toward family life, and our motives may move us toward earning more money. If this happens, the resulting attitude to life will be incoherent and lead to disjointed actions. We will, then, care about many things and pursuing one will inevitably lead to neglecting the others. Whatever enjoyment we may derive from scholarship will be accompanied by frustrations that come from neglect of our family or livelihood. And the same would be true regardless which of these incoherent components mainly guided our actions. The result is dissatisfaction with our life as a whole, because we continually act in a way that is contrary to some of our most important beliefs, emotions, or motives and violate some of what we deeply care about. The inevitable consequence of incoherence will be a life full of frustration. Our permanent experience will be that, whatever we do, we should be doing something else. But doing that will not change the experience, because by doing it we will fail to do something else that is no less important. If we understand the source of this frustration, it becomes obvious that the key to overcoming it is to impose coherence on the beliefs, emotions, and motives that are the chief components of our attitude to life. We achieve coherence if there is a large area of overlap among them. And that will happen if we direct them toward the same object. Then what we feel is important in life will be what we believe is important, and what we will be motivated to regard as the pivotal activity of our life will be guided by what we believe and feel should be the pivotal activity. This points in the right direction, but does not tell us how to get there. Just how do we make our beliefs, emotions, and motives coherent? The beginning of an answer is what I have attributed earlier to Aristotle: life is made enjoyable by the unimpeded activities of our natural state.¹⁸ To understand how this might help to achieve coherence, we need to understand what our natural state is. We all start out in life with what might be called a field of psychological capacities.¹⁹ Some of them are universally human, others vary with individuals as a result of genetic differences. At an early age, we are, of course, not aware of having these capacities; they are merely there available for development. Coming to maturity involves developing some of these capacities, but not others. Consider, for instance, the universal human capacity to use language. Normal human beings develop it, and the failure to do so is a deficiency.

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But how we develop it is not up to us, because in our social context there is a particular language and becoming a language-user is to learn to use that one. Learning it will not determine what we want to say, but it will determine how we can say whatever we want. The language gives form and sets limits to how and what we may wish to express by its means. The development of many of our capacities proceeds analogously. Our social context provides the conventional forms and limits, and we pour into them the previously inexpressible and inchoate content. These conventions are at once necessary and limiting: necessary because without them our capacities are unconscious, undifferentiated, and unrealized possibilities, and limiting because their differentiation and realization are dictated by the forms the ambient conventions provide. This is how our attitudes to sex, illness, love, work, competition, conflict, pleasure, discipline, and so on are formed. These conventions are likely to enable the development and expression of universal human capacities without great difficulty because the same forms will fit everyone. It would be amazing, however, if the same were true of individually variable capacities. Our talents, tastes, preferences, levels of energy, temperaments, intelligence, sensitivity, pain thresholds, and so on are likely to differ as a result of genetic differences. And these differences are likely to become greater because our early experiences will affect their development in different ways. The fit between individual capacities and available conventions, therefore, is likely to be imperfect. If what is likely occurs and we encounter this imperfect fit between our capacities and conventions, we have two options. One is to make do as well as we can with the resulting tension. The other is to try to resolve the tension through reciprocal adjustments of our capacities and conventions. The first will result in our inability to develop and express some of our capacities to a sufficient extent. The activities of our natural state will thus be impeded, and we will unavoidably find this frustrating. Our beliefs, emotions, and motives about our capacities will have different objects and will move us in different directions, because the conventional forms for fusing them are lacking. The resulting attitude to life will be incoherent. The other option is to create the forms that the available conventions failed to do. We can do this by adapting conventions to fit better our individual capacities and adapting individual capacities to fit better into the adapted conventions. The sign of success is that our beliefs, emotions, and motives become largely overlapping. And they will be that if we have


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succeeded in adjusting conventions that permit the unimpeded exercise of our natural individual capacities. We will, then, do what we want to do, our actions will express our individuality by exercising our individual capacities, and we will find that as enjoyable as we find it miserable to be impeded in their exercise. All this depends on our success in creating for ourselves the forms that allow the expression of our individuality. Those who succeed have what I mean by a style of life, and those who fail or do not try lack it. Having it makes life enjoyable and lacking it makes life miserable. And having it is to acquire that highly desirable possession that Montaigne calls knowing how to enjoy our being rightfully; that Hume thinks of as the manner that is no inconsiderable part of personal merit; that Mill regards as being the right manner of men; and that Nietzsche says is the key to attaining satisfaction with oneself. If Koestler’s detached contemplation, Proust’s creative inwardness, and the assassin’s shibumi had avoided the possible pitfalls I have described, they would have succeeded in having a coherent attitude to their lives formed of true beliefs, reasonable emotions, and motives prompted by these beliefs and emotions. They, then, had a style of life that reflected their individuality consisting of the unimpeded exercise of their individual capacities. Their styles were admirable, because the manner in which they were engaged in their very different activities enabled them to enjoy their being rightfully. This completes part of my account of attitudes that constitute one essential component of styles of life. Actions that reflect these attitudes and the manner in which the actions are performed are other components. They and how the three components are related and jointly form a style of life are the subjects of the next two chapters.

3 Personal Evaluation He explains himself to himself by his history, but by the the history as accompanied by unrealised possibilities on both sides of the track of actual events. His individual nature, and the quality of his life, do not depend on the bare log-book of events and actions. His character and the quality of his experience emerge in the possibilities that were real possibilities for him, which he considered and rejected for some reason or another. From the moral point of view, it is even a significant fact about him as a person that a certain possibility, which might have occurred to him as a possibility, never did occur to him. In self-examination one may press these inquiries into possibilities very far, and this pressure upon possibilities belongs to the essence of moral reflection. (Stuart Hampshire, Innocence and Experience, 1989)

3.1. From attitudes to actions Attitudes to life are normally reflected by actions, or, more precisely, by the manner in which actions are performed. But there is no necessary connection between attitudes and actions. Attitudes to life are often shown by what people do not do, by inaction rather than by action. The personal evaluations embedded in attitudes motivate us to try not only to act in enjoyable ways, but also not to act in miserable ones. Our attitudes both favor some possibilities and set some limits. As enjoyable actions make one’s life better, so miserable actions make it worse. We have good reason, therefore, to seek enjoyment and avoid misery.

Personal Evaluation 39 Furthermore, even if some actions are enjoyable given a particular personal evaluation, we are normally committed also to other modes of evaluation. Moral, practical, and aesthetic evaluations may conflict with and override personal evaluations, especially if the harm done by acting contrary to a personal evaluation is small and the harm of violating another mode of evaluation is great. Love, prudence, or beauty may on occasions provide good reasons for overriding the claims of independence, wholeheartedness, creativity, or some other attitude to life. All in all, it is inadvisable to be fanatical about our attitude to life. Being independent, wholehearted, or creative does not require that we should be relentless in performing all our actions in that style. We can pause from pursuing our own good in our own way. An enjoyable life should have room for play, curiosity, and entertainment. It is tiring and tiresome to be always independent, wholehearted, or creative. Clenched teeth and grim determination kill the enjoyment of the activities they accompany. The attitude such forced actions reflect is frequently not a genuine possession but one the self-compelling agents suppose they ought to have. Those who are truly independent, wholehearted, or creative can afford to take a holiday from being themselves. It remains nevertheless true that attitudes to life must be reflected by actions, even if not always and by every action. But the agent’s attitude cannot be inferred from single actions. Reasonable inferences must be based on patterns of action and inaction in a variety of circumstances and over a stretch of time that extends to years rather than days. This is equally true when we try to infer what attitudes others have and when we consider whether we ourselves really have an attitude, as opposed to merely believing or hoping that we have it. If, however, an attitude is genuine and reflected by a pattern of actions, then one condition of the actions’ being enjoyable is met. And enjoyable actions contribute to making the agent’s life enjoyable. In this chapter I consider what makes the actions that reflect one’s attitude to life enjoyable. I will proceed by giving reasons for rejecting John Rawls’s well-known and widely accepted answer, which emerges from his discussion of what he calls ‘the Aristotelian Principle’, and then proposing a better answer.

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3.2. The Aristotelian Principle Rawls says that the Aristotelian Principle runs as follows: other things equal, human beings enjoy the exercise of their realized capacities (their innate or trained abilities), and this enjoyment increases the more the capacity is realized, or the greater its complexity. The intuitive idea here is that human beings take more pleasure in doing something as they become more proficient at it, and of two activities they do equally well, they prefer the one calling on a larger repertoire of more intricate and subtle discriminations.¹

Rawls claims that the Aristotelian Principle ‘characterizes human nature as we know it’ and ‘it states a deep psychological fact which, in conjunction with other general facts and the conception of a rational plan, accounts for our considered judgments of value’ (p. 432). These claims rest on a basic misunderstanding of human nature and our judgments of value. Human beings do not enjoy the exercise of their realized capacities for feeling shame, guilt, and regret; for doubting their abilities; for fearing the future; for being jealous or envious; for imposing painful discipline on themselves; for doing their onerous duty; for resenting injustice; for controlling their emotions; and so on and on. Rawls simply forgets these elementary facts of human nature. Nor is it true that ‘human beings take more pleasure in doing something as they become more proficient at it’ (p. 432). Great proficiency may bring with it great boredom, as may be felt by very proficient actors or musicians who are obliged to repeat endlessly a first-rate performance; by physicians who have to diagnose again and again the same disease; or by foreignlanguage teachers who must teach grammar to yet another class of listless students. Furthermore, many people take greater pleasure in acquiring proficiency than in exercising it: as in learning to mix colors to get the right shade; counting calories; or analyzing their motives. The journey is often more enjoyable than the arrival; the anticipation than the possession; the honeymoon than the marriage; or the competition than the prize. It is also mistaken to claim that complex activities are better than simple ones because ‘simpler activities exclude the possibility of individual style and personal expression which complex activities permit and even require’ (p. 427), consequently ‘of two activities’ human beings ‘prefer the one

Personal Evaluation 41 calling on a larger repertoire of more intricate and subtle discriminations’ (p. 432). Do the architects of Bauhaus prefer the complex Gothic to their own simple style? Do the Japanese painters and poets of haiku who make a fetish of simplicity prefer the elaborate clumsiness of amateurs? Do chefs prefer gourmet meals when they cook for themselves? Did Hemingway prefer a complex to a simple style? Here is what Dr Johnson says about Swift in direct contradiction to the preferences that Rawls says are dictated by human nature and constitute a deep psychological fact: ‘His delight was in simplicity ... his few metaphors seem to be received rather by necessity than choice. He studied purity. ... His style was well suited to his thoughts, which are never subtilised by nice disquisitions, decorated by sparkling conceits, elevated by ambitious sentences, or variegated by far-sought learning. ... This easy and safe conveyance of meaning it was Swift’s desire to attain, and for having attained it he deserves praise.’² Does Rawls himself not take great pains to write in a simple, unadorned style rather than in a complex, ornate one? Does he not know of the recurring theme in Western thought that advocates return to the development of simple natural capacities and escape from the corrupting complex activities civilization requires? How could he forget the preference for simple capacities over complex ones of Rousseau’s Emile, the Amish, Quakers, or the thousands of refugees from affluent middle-class suburbia who chose to exercise simple capacities in a rural setting and reject their proficiency in exercising intricate and subtle discriminations among designer jeans, various models of Porsche, home entertainment systems, and pornographic refinements? How could he overlook that millions of Protestants passionately reject the intricate and subtle discriminations of Catholicism? Rawls allows that there may be a few idiosyncratic individual exceptions to the Aristotelian Principle, but he thinks that these are few. I hope to have shown that the exceptions are numerous and that very many of our considered judgments of value are contrary to the Aristotelian Principle. Rawls’s version of the Aristotelian Principle goes wrong on two crucial points. Aristotle is right: the unimpeded exercise of some natural capacities is enjoyable.³ But Rawls takes this to be true of all natural capacities, and that, as we have seen, is a mistake. Aristotle is also right: there are lower and higher forms of enjoyment; he calls them ‘bodily’ and ‘noble’.⁴ Rawls’s second mistake is to suppose that the distinction between lower and higher forms of enjoyment coincides with the distinction between

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simple and complex enjoyments. There are complex bodily enjoyments, such as gourmet meals and ballroom dancing; and there are simple noble enjoyments, like singing Gregorian chants in the shower, appreciating a well-honed aphorism, or rejoicing in the success of a friend. I propose, therefore, to understand the enjoyment involved in actions that reflect one’s attitude to life by beginning again at the Aristotelian starting point and avoiding Rawls’s misinterpretations of what that beginning implies. The reason for the preceding discussion of how Rawls goes wrong is that his mistakes are instructive because they are tempting.

3.3. Enjoyment and personal evaluation In Chapter 2 I stressed the importance of enjoyment to personal evaluation; the importance of personal evaluation to a sufficiently broad conception of morality; and the importance of the individuality of styles of life to that broad conception. I want now to consider the overdue question of why enjoyment is supposed to have such great importance in living a good life. The short answer is that enjoyment reflects a favorable attitude to one’s life. Those who enjoy their life like the way it is going, do not regret their major choices, and are not lastingly jealous, envious, or resentful of the life of others. They would pass Nietzsche’s test: ‘This life as you live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more ... every pain and every joy ... and everything ... small and great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence ... would you gnash your teeth and curse ... would [it] change you as you are and perhaps crush you. ... Or ... would you crave nothing more ... than this ultimate ... confirmation and seal?’⁵ Those who enjoy their life would have this confirmation and seal. But this answer to the question of why the enjoyment of life has such great importance is too short. It does not explain why the favorable attitudes of those who pass Nietzsche’s test are understood as involving enjoyment, rather than pleasure, contentment, fulfillment, or happiness. Providing this explanation requires distinguishing between enjoyment and these other experiences, but the distinctions cannot be sharp, because there is much overlap among them. Take pleasure, to begin with. It may be understood narrowly as a physical sensation—culinary, sexual, and the

Personal Evaluation 43 like—or broadly as a psychological state that may or may not involve such physical sensations. The enjoyment of life can be said to be a kind of broadly understood pleasure, but it is certainly not pleasure narrowly understood, for it need not, although it may, involve pleasurable physical sensations. Consider contentment next. Its source may be resignation or satisfaction. Resignation indicates that one has settled for what one has and does not want more, perhaps because it would be too difficult, dangerous, or hubristic to try to get it. Enjoyment of one’s life is certainly different from contentment in this sense. This kind of contentment is passive, whereas enjoyment is active. But, if contentment is understood as satisfaction with what one is achieving, possessing, or doing—all active ongoing processes—then enjoyment can be understood as a kind of contentment. Fulfillment can also be interpreted in two different senses: as a process or a state. The state is one of having arrived at some sort of terminus that provides sufficient satisfactions. The process involves engagement is various activities that are fulfilling in themselves, regardless of whether they lead to a terminal state of fulfillment. Enjoyment can be thought of as a fulfilling process, but not as a state of fulfillment. For, in the state of fulfillment one has arrived, whereas the enjoyment of one’s life is a process that may be interrupted and come to a bad end, as the life of Priam shows and as Aristotle acknowledges.⁶ Happiness is the broadest and vaguest of these cognate experiences. It may be episodic, short term, and concern some part of one’s life; or it may be lasting and concern one’s whole life. If it is the latter, the enjoyment of one’s life may still not be identified with it, because it matters whether the source of lasting happiness with one’s whole life is internal or external. People may be happy with their lives because their family, cause, or country flourishes, even if they do not find their own activities enjoyable. In fact, the flourishing of what makes them happy may be the result of their own unenjoyable drudgery, sacrifice, or selfless service. But, if happiness with one’s whole life is lasting, and its sources are one’s own activities, then the enjoyment of one’s life may be said to be a species of happiness. The enjoyment of one’s life, then, includes pleasure broadly understood, contentment with ongoing activities, finding the process of living fulfilling, and being lastingly happy with one’s own activities. This kind of enjoyment is active, not passive. Its source is doing what is enjoyable, not merely

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observing and taking delight in it. It is the enjoyment of oneself and one’s activities, not the enjoyment of a spectator who beholds them from the outside. This makes the subject enjoying and the objects enjoyed inseparable, because the objects enjoyed are the subject’s activities. The enjoyment, therefore, is reflexive: doers derive it from their doings. Since the kind of pleasure, contentment, fulfillment, and happiness involved in the enjoyment of one’s life may be greater or smaller and of longer or shorter duration, the same is true of enjoyment. There are gradations in the enjoyment that one may have of one’s life. Whatever its grade, however, the enjoyment involves beliefs and emotions about one’s own past and present activities, as well as motives that prompt future actions and inactions. Each is fallible: the beliefs may be false, the emotions may be directed toward the wrong object or be excessive, and the motives may prompt wrong actions. Such defects may result from self-deception, stupidity, weakness, indoctrination, and so forth. Lastly, the enjoyment of one’s life is the basis of its favorable personal evaluation, but the status of its moral, practical, or aesthetic evaluation remains an open question.

3.4. Internal and external evaluation Personal evaluation is the evaluation of a life from the point of view of how enjoyable it is. Enjoyment, therefore, is the standard in personal evaluation, much as the good or the right is the standard in moral evaluation, success in practical evaluation, and beauty in aesthetic evaluation. This is not to say that a mode of evaluation must exclude the standards of other modes: they may be recognized as relevant to its own evaluations, provided they are subordinated to its own standard. If the various standards yield conflicting evaluations, then each mode of evaluation resolves the conflict by assigning primacy to its own standard. The enjoyment of one’s life, therefore, is the primary standard in personal evaluation, and goodness or rightness, success, and beauty are, if at all, secondary. I must immediately qualify this, however, in the case of moral evaluation, because, if morality is understood in the wide sense—including both responsibility and enjoyment—then there is a considerable overlap between personal and moral evaluations. This raises complex issues, which I will discuss in Chapter 6.

Personal Evaluation 45 If we focus on personal evaluation, then the central question is: how enjoyable is a life? But this is not a simple question. For the enjoyment of one’s life may be better or worse, greater or lesser, reasonable or unreasonable, and each of these possibilities allows for many gradations. Consequently, the question of whether a life is enjoyable rarely allows a simple yes or no answer. I will begin, nevertheless, with two simple cases: with a life that is obviously enjoyable and with one that is obviously not. Here is a fictional first-person singular description of a person who has just left a miserable life behind and passed the threshold into one that utterly delights him. I had stepped into a new life. Between the man I had been and that which I now became there was a very notable difference. ... I had matured astonishingly; which means, no doubt, that I suddenly entered into conscious enjoyment of powers and sensibilities which had been developing unknown to me. ... My eyes had ... been opened; till then I had walked in darkness, yet knew it not. ... So intense was my delight in the beautiful world about me that I forgot even myself; I enjoyed without retrospect or forecast; I ... forgot to scrutinize my own emotions, or to trouble my own happiness by comparison with others’ happier fortune. It was a healthful time; it gave me a new lease of life, and taught me ... how to make use of it.⁷

And here is another description by way of contrast: In the intercourse of familiar life he indulged his disposition to petulance and sarcasm. ... He predominated over his companions with very high ascendancy, and probably would bear none over whom he could not predominate. ... This customary superiority soon grew too delicate for truth. ... He was not a man to be either loved or envied. He seems to have wasted life in discontent, by the rage of neglected pride and the languishment of unsatisfied desire. He is querulous and fastidious, arrogant and malignant; he scarcely speaks of himself but with indignant lamentations, or of others but with insolent superiority when he is gay, and with angry contempt when he is gloomy.⁸

These contrasting descriptions help to understand personal evaluation better. They show, to begin with, that personal evaluation can be either internal, the evaluation of one’s own life, or external, the evaluation of someone else’s life. Both are personal if they evaluate a life on the basis of how enjoyable it is. The first description above is internal: the fictional Henry Ryecroft evaluates his own life. The second is external: Dr Johnson evaluates the life of Jonathan Swift.

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The recognition that there are these two different kinds of personal evaluation should help to avoid the mistaken view that personal evaluation is bound to be self-evaluation and hence unreliable. Even if personal evaluation were only the internal evaluation by subjects of their own life, and hence subjective in one sense, it would not be subjective in the sense of excluding the possibility of subjects correcting their own evaluations. It is true that we tend to be biased in favor of ourselves and put the most favorable interpretation on what we do or do not do, but the standard of enjoyment is available to bring home to us how our life is really going. No matter what stories we tell ourselves, how hard we work at self-deception, or at the refusal to ask questions that may have unpleasant answers, it is a fact whether or not our life is on the whole enjoyable. Not asking the question will not change that fact, and giving a false answer will not provide the enjoyment we lack, if indeed we lack it. The standard of enjoyment in internal personal evaluation has an objective, factual base, just as the standard of truth has in science, consistency in logic, success in practical evaluation, and so forth. The point of Nietzsche’s test I have discussed earlier is that it can show us how in fact we think and feel about our life. And, I repeat, the refusal for good or bad reason to face that fact will not alter it. The refusal may make a miserable life easier to bear, but it also prevents improving it, if it can be improved. There may well be reasons both for and against evaluating how our life is going. But, whatever the balance of reasons turns out to be in particular cases, the question of whether we evaluate our life must be sharply distinguished from the question of what the outcome of the evaluation would be if we made it. Whether we should evaluate our life is a judgment that must be made in the light of the particularities of our characters and circumstances, but the outcome of such evaluations is or would be an objective fact that the judgment can only reflect but not alter. The objectivity of the standard of enjoyment, thus, makes possible the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable evaluations of our own life. But it does more: it motivates us to make the evaluations and to make them as reasonably as we can. For reasonable evaluations allow us to take stock of our lives, and that is a necessary first step toward making them more enjoyable. The prospect of more enjoyable lives is a reason not to deceive ourselves, not to ignore relevant facts, not to exaggerate the importance of pleasant facts at the expense of unpleasant ones, not to mind

Personal Evaluation 47 other people’s business as a substitute for minding our own, not to live vicariously through other people’s lives if we can make our own better, and so forth. It is natural to begin to wonder hereabouts that, if internal personal evaluation can indeed be as reasonable as I claim, then what is the point of external evaluation in which one person evaluates the enjoyment of the life of another. If internal evaluations were unreliable because they were biased and incapable of self-correction, then it would be clear that external evaluation is needed to avoid the bias and provide the needed correction. But we have seen that internal evaluation can be free of these defects. What, then, does external evaluation add that is worth having? This brings us back to the internal evaluation by Ryecroft of his own life and the external evaluation by Johnson of Swift’s life. The pattern of actions that made Ryecroft’s life enjoyable and Swift’s life miserable reflected their attitude to life. Ryecroft’s attitude was a simple, uncomplicated love of nature and a feeling of oneness with it. When he finally left behind his miserable urban drudgery in the poverty, filth, fog, and dampness of London, he removed the obstacles that prevented his actions from reflecting his attitude. His attitude emerged after having been stifled for many years by the awful circumstances of his London existence. It was like sunshine breaking through when the wind finally blows away a thick layer of clouds. During his life in London Ryecroft did what he had to do to keep body and soul together, but he did not realize how miserable he really was until he discovered that life could be otherwise. Once he got outside the urban blight, he saw another possibility, one that allowed his actions to reflect his no-longer-stifled attitude. That is what gave him a new lease on life. When his actions could not reflect the attitude he was not aware of having, he was miserable. When he could act freely, his actions spontaneously reflected his attitude, he was liberated to be himself, and he began to enjoy his life. His misery ebbed and enjoyment flowed, as the gap diminished between his attitude and his patterns of actions. Swift’s intellect, talents, and circumstances were far superior to Ryecroft’s, and his pattern of action was not hindered from reflecting his attitude to life. It was a sardonic, cynical, scornful attitude that unerringly led him to find the weakest point in whatever he encountered and then ridicule it. It was a nay-saying, fault-finding, contemptuous attitude. His actions, accurately reflecting this attitude, were overbearing, boorish, and

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unlovable. But, when he expressed his attitude in writing, it showed that he was an incomparable literary satirist. Johnson shows this about Swift and makes us understand how Swift’s attitude made his life miserable, regardless of his unquestionable literary merit. Johnson could evaluate Swift’s life from the outside, from an external point of view, and find it miserable. But Swift could not or would not do it from the inside, through internal evaluation, because he was unaware of his attitude and of the miserable life it caused him to have. In this respect, Swift was like Ryecroft. Neither was aware of his attitude, thus neither could correct it. Ryecroft was lucky, because his attitude and changed circumstances made his life enjoyable and correction unnecessary. Swift was unlucky, because the unhindered expression of his attitude made his life miserable. Reflection on these two lives shows that external evaluation can add to internal evaluation the crucially important possibility of evaluating our attitude to life. It provides a mirror without which we can see our attitude only accidentally. And seeing it in this possibly critical way allows us to question and possibly to correct it. Internal evaluation tends to focus on reducing the gap between our attitude and our actions. This too is important, but it leads only rarely and exceptionally to the examination of the attitude itself. For such attitudes form the background of much of what we think, feel, and do, and it is very difficult to carry on these activities while simultaneously questioning the background that makes them possible. As Wittgenstein rightly remarks: ‘If life becomes hard to bear we think of a change in our circumstances. But the most important and effective change, a change in our attitude, hardly ever occurs to us, and the resolution to take such a step is very difficult for us.’⁹ To show in concrete terms why a change of attitude is so difficult, consider again first Ryecroft’s and then Swift’s attitudes. Suppose that the truth about Ryecroft’s attitude was that what he took to be a simple, uncomplicated love of nature and feeling of oneness with it was not a lasting attitude to life but only a temporary sense of relief from the oppression of his dismal London existence. He mistook the relief he felt, which was real, for something deeper, which it was not. But Ryecroft—I am supposing—did not know that. He was overpowered by his emotional reaction and he had no reason to become aware of and question his attitude in the background. But if an older, more experienced, and trusted

Personal Evaluation 49 friend had told him, on the basis of his external evaluation of Ryecroft’s state of mind, that what Ryecroft felt was just passing relief, not a deep emotion, then that might have moved Ryecroft to a more rigorous internal evaluation. As it was, there was no pressing need for it, because he was enjoying his unquestionably improved life. Sooner or later, however, the need would have arisen, for he had to make decisions about his future and a misunderstood attitude would have led him to make wrong decisions. In Swift’s situation, however, the need for a changed attitude was immediate, because he was miserable. He was not engaged in internal evaluation, but, if he had been, it would not have been enough to bring about the needed change, because his attitude toward human venality had an element of truth in it. The weaknesses and corruptibility that his keen eye led him to see with such devastating accuracy were indeed facts. As far as that went, his attitude was realistic. The trouble with it was that there were also other facts that he did not see because his attitude prevented it. Human beings have virtues, not just vices; strengths, not just weaknesses; they can resist corruption, not just succumb to it. His attitude did not allow him to form a balanced view of life, and he made himself and those around him miserable by falsely believing that something like the picture Hieronymous Bosch painted of hell was in fact the picture of our quotidian existence. Given Swift’s intellect and overbearing personality, a quietly delivered external evaluation would not have made him question his attitude. But, if someone with the cheerful sanity of Montaigne or Hume—not cowed by Swift’s venomous bad temper and with intellect and personality at least as strong as Swift’s—had forcefully shown him how wrong his sense of proportion and judgment of humanity were, then perhaps he might have been brought to entertain doubts and change his attitude. It is in these ways that external evaluation can correct internal evaluation. It can show us that we have an impoverished or unrealistic view of the possibilities open to us. We may fail to recognize available possibilities, or be frustrated by pursuing goals that are impossible, or impossible for us. External evaluation can show that mistakes about possibilities may result from handicaps we collude in having. We may accept false beliefs uncritically, indulge excessive emotions, allow our timidity or fearfulness to stifle reasonable feelings, or be misguided by unexamined motives. Or, as we have seen in the previous chapter, our beliefs, emotions, and motives may be incoherent, moving

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us in incompatible directions. There undoubtedly are handicaps that no external evaluation can help us overcome. Just as surely, however, there are also handicaps that we are not aware of having, or fail to see as handicaps, and external evaluation can help to free us from them when internal evaluation alone could not.

3.5 Projects and enjoyment We have seen that the enjoyment of life depends on our attitude to life and these attitudes are reflected by actions. But actions reflect the attitudes by how they are done, not by what is done. This is crucial for understanding styles of life, and the descriptions of Ryecroft and Swift are helpful in this respect as well. Ryecroft and Swift were engaged in countless activities, and they performed many and various actions. In both lives, however, as in most lives, there are a few activities that have central importance. I have called such activities a person’s projects. One main project of Ryecroft and Swift was the same: being a writer. Ryecroft was a mere scribbler of mediocre talent who stumbled into writing as a way of eking out a living. Swift was a great writer, with immense talent and originality. Swift’s project was spectacularly successful, whereas Ryecroft’s was just viable enough to prevent him from abandoning it. Yet Ryecroft’s life was enjoyable and Swift’s miserable. From which follows the point I want to concentrate on: there is no necessary connection between the enjoyment of life and the success of one’s projects. A life may be miserable even if its projects are very successful, as was Swift’s. And a life may be enjoyable even if its projects are not successful, as was the case with Ryecroft’s after he had left London. Our projects are our central activities, but, we can now see, our enjoyment of life is not derived from them. It is derived, I claim, from how we do what we do. And how we do it depends on the attitude our actions reflect. Swift’s actions reflected his attitude of misanthropy, and that was what made his life miserable. Ryecroft’s actions reflected his attitude—which may have been just a temporary relief—of delight in nature, and that was what made his life enjoyable. If that delight had been a fleeting emotional reaction, then his enjoyment of life would also have been fleeting. The reasonable personal evaluation of one’s attitude to life, therefore, is crucial to having an enjoyable life. But reasonable evaluation

Personal Evaluation 51 can rarely be merely internal. It is usually made more reasonable if external evaluation corrects or reinforces the internal evaluation. None of the above is meant to suggest that the success of our projects is a matter of indifference to the goodness of our life. In the first place, there is more to a good life than enjoyment. A successful project may contribute to a good life by fulfilling obligations and discharging responsibilities. Secondly, although enjoying life and having successful projects need not go together, they may nevertheless coincide. When that happens, however, the enjoyment is not derived from what we are doing to make the projects succeed, but from how we do it. The actions involved in successful projects reflect our attitude, and what we enjoy is the activity in which the attitude is reinforced by the success of our project. Thirdly, not having an enjoyable life does not preclude taking satisfaction in the success of one’s project. A case in point is Wittgenstein. His friend and student, Norman Malcolm, says in his memoir of Wittgenstein that, ‘when I think of his profound pessimism, the intensity of his mental and moral suffering, the relentless way in which he drove his intellect, his need for love together with the harshness that repelled love, I am inclined to believe that his life was fiercely unhappy’. Yet Malcolm reports that Wittgenstein’s last words were: ‘Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life.’ Malcolm finds this ‘a mysterious and strangely moving utterance’.¹⁰ But it is not mysterious if it is understood that Wittgenstein’s life was made wonderful by the satisfaction he derived from his project, which was doing philosophy, and his fierce unhappiness was the result of his unreasonable attitude to life, which made enjoyment impossible for him. Styles of life are formed of three components: an attitude to life, actions that reflect the attitude, and the manner in which the actions are done. The previous chapter concentrated on attitudes; the present chapter is about actions; and the next one will deal with manner. Each of these components falls somewhere along the continuum that ranges between admiration at one end and deficiency at the other. Where it falls depends on the outcome of personal evaluation, which is evaluation of a life on the basis of how enjoyable it is. The evaluation may be internal or external, and it is most reliable if internal evaluation is corrected by external evaluation. I have stressed, and stress again, that personal evaluation is only one mode of evaluation among others. A favorable or unfavorable personal evaluation may coexist with favorable or unfavorable moral, practical,

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aesthetic, or other modes of evaluation. The overall personal evaluation of styles of life—of the attitude, actions, and manner taken together—is the topic of Chapter 5. The connection between the personal and moral evaluation of a life will be discussed in Chapter 6. I will conclude this chapter by considering an interesting view that illuminates further what I have said about actions and enjoyment. Jon Elster discusses ‘the moral fallacy of by-products—a misplaced or self-defeating form of instrumental rationality. It is the fallacy of striving, seeking and searching for things that recede before the hand that reaches out for them.’¹¹ There are some mental states, Elster says, that ‘come about as the by-product of actions undertaken for other ends’¹² and he gives the examples of being natural, making oneself fall asleep, and willing oneself to have an empty mind. To these may be added being spontaneous, falling in love, feeling delight, lying to oneself, or being surprised. Viktor Frankl writes that ‘success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue ... as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication’.¹³ And Alan Gewirth describes as one of his ‘main theses: that self-fulfillment, like happiness, is attained not by being directly aimed at but rather as a by-product of one’s dedicated pursuit of other purposes’.¹⁴ The enjoyment of life, I think, is another of these by-products that cannot be achieved by aiming at it directly. We cannot make ourselves enjoy life. We do what we do and enjoyment may or may not come to us. If we do what we do in the right way, enjoyment will come. The goal of what we do, however, is not enjoyment, but such quotidian aspirations as making a living, building a career, writing a book, having a love affair, raising children, learning a foreign language, and so on. If the actions and the goals are appropriate, the enjoyment of life follows. What makes them appropriate is that they meet two conditions: the actions reflect our attitude to life and the attitude is favorably judged by personal evaluation. And they will be so judged if they are enjoyable. This account of appropriateness, of course, is circular, unless the obvious question of what makes actions and goals enjoyable is answered. My answer is that what makes them enjoyable is the manner in which they are done. The examination of this manner is the topic of the next chapter.

4 The Importance of Manner Manners are not a mask that hides the truth nor a rigid social form imposed on a chaotic personal reality. There is no ‘inner man’ covered more or less effectively by ‘outer coating’, no core brutishness disguised as a ‘mask of civilization’, no unruly passions being tamed by the forms of society. The bearing of a man, his voice, his dress, the way in which he enters a room and takes his leave are as intrinsic to him as how he earns his living, or spends his money and energy, or thinks about politics. In all of his actions, whether they are utterances or gestures or choices, a human being expresses his personality. And that is why manners make the man. (Shirley Robin Letwin, The Gentleman in Trollope: Indiduality and Moral Conduct, 1982)

4.1. Manner According to the OED (1961), manner is ‘the customary mode of acting or behaviour whether of an individual or a community’. The unabridged Random House Dictionary (1987) says of manners that they are ‘the prevailing customs, ways of living, and habits of a people, class, period, etc.’ and of manner that it is ‘a person’s outward bearing; way of speaking to and treating others’. Manners are on the surface, observable, outward signs that may or may not indicate anything inward or deeper. That manners may only be on the surface does not mean that they are not important. They are, Lionel Trilling says, ‘the buzz of implication which always surrounds us in the present, coming to us from what never gets fully stated, coming in the tone of greetings and the tone of quarrels, in slang and humor and popular songs, in the way children play, in the gesture

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the waiter makes when he puts down the plate, in the nature of the very food we prefer’.¹ But Trilling recognizes also that this buzz of implication may go deep and manners can be ‘the indication of the direction of man’s soul’.² He probably had Emerson in mind, according to whom ‘all things exist in the man tinged with the manners of his soul. With what quality is in him, he infuses all nature that he can reach.’³ And Shirley Letwin writes, in a more sober tone, that the manners of a person ‘flow from the moral quality that defines him’.⁴ This chapter is about manner when it indicates something inward and deep, the direction of one’s soul, a moral quality that defines one. Consider now the very different manners in which two men perform the same type of actions: helping others. The first is Carlo Levi, a physician, writer, and painter; a staunch anti-fascist who was exiled by the Fascists in 1937 to a remote inland village in southern Italy. This village, Levi writes, was hedged in custom and sorrow, cut off from History and the State, eternally patient ... land without comfort or solace, where the peasant lives out his life in motionless civilization on barren ground in remote poverty, and in the presence of death. ‘We’re not Christians,’ they say. ‘Christ stopped short of here.’ ‘Christian,’ in their way of speaking, means ‘human being’ and this proverbial phrase ... [is] the expression of a hopeless feeling of inferiority.⁵

Levi is called to the bedside of a dying man. ‘The man had a ruptured appendix; he was in his death agony. ... There was nothing I could do but soothe the patient with injections of morphine and wait for the end’ (p. 224). This was one of many similar experiences Levi had. As the man was dying, Levi comes to a realization: I loved these peasants and I was sad and humiliated by my powerlessness. ... Why, then, at the same time did a great feeling of peace pervade me? I felt detached from every earthly thing and place, lost in a no man’s land far from time and reality. ... I listened to the silence of the night and I felt as if I had suddenly penetrated the very heart of the universe. An immense happiness, such as I had never known, swept over me with a flow of fulfillment. (p. 225).

The man finally died and ‘the women ... began their lament. ... They tore their veils, pulled their clothing out of place, scratched their faces until blood came ... beating their heads against the wall and singing on one high note. ... This single note was long drawn-out, repetitious and agonizing.

The Importance of Manner 55 It was impossible to listen to it without being overcome by an irresistible feeling of physical anguish’ (p. 226). Levi’s actions were those of a physician who was doing what was possible with the meager resources he had. The manner in which he did it, however, reflected his attitude of love, pity, and fellow feeling for these unfortunate people, and they responded in a like manner, not only to what little he could do for them but also to how he did it. His experiences in the village of which Christ stopped short profoundly influenced his attitude to life. They transformed him from an exiled urban sophisticate into a man who accepted solidarity with these primitive, illiterate, superstitious, brutalized fellow humans. This gave him both anguish and peace: anguish because of the hardness of their life and peace because of their capacity to endure and humanize it. Their example reconciled Levi to the human condition and filled him with a newfound happiness. Now contrast Levi’s manner and the attitude it reflected with Jonathan Swift’s.⁶ According to Johnson, Swift ‘practised a peculiar and offensive parsimony ... [which] being once necessary, became habitual, and grew first ridiculous, and at last detestable’. But Swift was a dutiful man: ‘his avarice, though it might exclude pleasure, was never suffered to encroach upon his virtue’. He forced himself to give away money. ‘He was frugal by inclination, but liberal by principle.’ The result was that ‘his beneficence was not graced with tenderness or civility’ (p. 57). ‘He relieved without pity, and assisted without kindness, so that those who were fed by him could hardly love him’ (p. 58). His conduct toward the needy ‘either repelled with helpless indignity, or endured by clemency and condescension’ (p. 61). And in his customary dealings with others ‘he habitually affect[ed] a style of arrogance’ (p. 60). In sum, ‘he was not a man to be either loved or envied’ and he ‘wasted life in discontent’ (p. 61). This is the kind of motivation that Kant—who regarded the enjoyment of life as a threat to morality—celebrates as a model that morality and rationality require everyone to follow. According to Kant, ‘if nature has put little sympathy in the heart of a man, and if he ... is by temperament cold and indifferent to the sufferings of others ... would not he find in himself a source from which to give himself a far higher worth than he could have got by having a good-natured temperament? This is unquestionably true even though nature did not make him philanthropic, for it is just here that the worth in character is brought out, which is morally and incomparably

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the highest of all: he is beneficent not from inclination but from duty.’⁷ Just as Swift was and Levi was not! Juxtapose this perversity with David Hume’s sanity in describing the character of his imagined Cleanthes: ‘that cheerfulness which you might remark in him, is not a sudden flash ... it runs through the whole tenor of his life, and preserves a perpetual serenity on his countenance, and tranquillity in his soul. He has met with severe trials, misfortunes as well as dangers; and by his greatness of mind, was still superior to all of them. The image ... is that of accomplished merit. ... A philosopher might select this character as a model of perfect virtue.’⁸ The actions of Kant’s knight of duty and Hume’s tranquil exemplar may be equally beneficent, but their manners are very different. This is shown not by what they do, but how they do it. Their manners reflect their attitudes to life and make a fundamental difference to how we evaluate their respective lives. Mill was exactly right: ‘It really is of importance, not only what men do, but also what manner of men they are that do it.’⁹ We need to ask, however, what precisely is it about the manners of Levi and Hume’s tranquil exemplar, on the one hand, and those of Swift and Kant’s knight of duty, on the other, that warrants the favorable personal evaluation of the former and the unfavorable one of the latter?

4.2. Coherence, realism, and enjoyment The judgment of personal evaluation partly depends on how coherent and realistic are the attitudes and how enjoyable are the dominant activities of an individual. To begin with coherence, the manners of Levi and Cleanthes reflected a coherent attitude to life, whereas those of Swift and Kant’s knight of duty an incoherent one. Levi and Cleanthes, having learned from adversity, reached a point in their lives when their beliefs and emotions harmoniously coexisted and jointly motivated many of their actions. They were not internally divided about how they should respond to the circumstances in which they found themselves. Levi’s humane and Cleanthes’ serene attitude to life were reflected by their manners, and their actions showed the manner of men they were. The inner lives of Swift and the knight of duty were a battlefield on which their beliefs and emotions waged an unceasing civil war. The beliefs of both were

The Importance of Manner 57 temporarily victorious over their emotions, and they acted accordingly. But the manner of their actions showed that they were doing violence to their emotions: acting beneficently went against their grain. Their manner reflected their incoherent attitudes, and incoherence made them miserable, because they did not have an attitude to life they could fully endorse. They could not be themselves, because their selves were divided. They acted dutifully, and their dutiful actions made them principled but miserable examples of humanity. This explanation in terms of coherent and incoherent attitudes to life, however, cannot be a full account of what favorable personal evaluation requires, because coherent attitudes and manners reflecting them do not, by themselves, make a life enjoyable. Beliefs and emotions may harmoniously agree that one’s life is miserable; they may motivate corresponding actions; and the manner of actions may accurately reflect a very harmonious dissatisfaction with one’s miserable existence. This is just the attitude and manner that Levi’s villagers might have claimed to have if they had been, what they were not, reflective and articulate. A full account requires, therefore, that more be said. Favorable personal evaluation requires that the attitude to life be realistic, not just coherent. What makes it realistic should be understood in terms of the earlier distinction (in 2.4) between the social, individual, and recognized possibilities of life. Social possibilities are ways of life and projects that are available in a particular society at a particular time. Individual possibilities are those that a person has the ability to realize with a reasonable hope of at least moderate success. Recognized possibilities are ways of life and projects that one sees as open for oneself. For the vast majority of us these possibilities do not coincide. Our recognized possibilities may be fewer than what we have the ability to realize, or what we recognize as a possibility may exceed our abilities. The first impoverishes, the second frustrates our efforts. The same may happen with individual possibilities. We may have abilities we cannot realize in our social context, or there may be possibilities available in our context that we lack the ability to realize. The danger in the first case is that we doom ourselves to frustration by trying to realize the unrealizable. The danger in the second case is that we succumb to the temptation of pursuing attractive possibilities that we lack the ability to realize. These discrepancies between the possibilities we have and those we believe we have are one

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source of unrealistic attitudes to life. The more unrealistic our attitude is, the more frustrated, and the less enjoyable, will our life be. So the second requirement of the favorable evaluation of a life is that the agent’s attitude be realistic. Living an enjoyable life and having a realistic attitude to life wax or wane together. Recall the attitudes to life I have so far discussed: the independence of Drabble’s Rose; the wholeheartedness of Trollope’s Isabel Boncassen; the creativity of Virginia Woolf; the detached contemplation of Koestler; the inwardness of Proust’s narrator; the shibumi of Trevanian’s assassin; the oneness with nature of Gissing’s Ryecroft; the misanthropy and avarice of Swift; and the humaneness of Carlo Levi. Each can be evaluated by asking how coherent and realistic was the attitude of the person considered. We can say right off that the attitudes of Koestler and Swift were incoherent. Koestler’s chronic indignation and detached contemplation and Swift’s misanthropy and sense of duty made them deeply conflicted. However they resolved their conflicts, an essential part of themselves was doomed to frustration, so their lives as a whole could not have been enjoyable. Each had numerous enjoyable episodes in life, but their conflicted selves prevented the episodes from adding up to a durable pattern. We can also say that the attitudes of Trevanian’s assassin and Gissing’s Ryecroft were unrealistic. Murdering people with calm, refined simplicity is both socially and individually very unlikely, potboilers and soap operas notwithstanding. Intended victims will not readily cooperate, laws tend to be enforced even if imperfectly, and there are very few mass murderers whose psychology permits the tranquil enjoyment of their deeds. Oneness with nature is fine and good, but Ryecroft had to earn a living by practicing a craft he did not enjoy and was not very good at. The possibilities of life would sooner or later have forced Ryecroft to act in ways that were unenjoyable and incompatible with the attitude that delighted him. What about the other characters? The two real persons did not fare well. Virginia Woolf committed suicide after numerous bouts of incapacitating depression. It is very likely, therefore, that her beliefs, emotions, and motives did not coexist harmoniously. Carlo Levi eventually returned to civilized life. Although the memory of his villagers stayed with him, his humane attitude was gradually eroded by contrary attitudes forced on him by the political causes he adopted. Proust depicts his protagonist’s agonizing

The Importance of Manner 59 preoccupation, indeed obsession, with his inner life, one result of which is that he has an unrealistically narrow view of the possibilities of life open to him. He is the miserable prisoner of his excessive inwardness. Drabble leaves us with Rose in mid-life, so we can only imagine what her subsequent life might have been. My own imagination takes me in incompatible directions, so I find it hard to say whether Rose’s life was on the whole enjoyable. The one unequivocally enjoyable life is the one that Trollope gives Isabel Boncassen. She is realistic about the possibilities of life she recognizes, and she makes the most of them by marrying fabulously and living happily ever after. Her attitude is coherent and durable, because her wholehearted engagement with life is not handicapped by a divided self. A coherent, realistic, and durable attitude to life, however, is still not enough to make a life enjoyable. For living requires acting, and a coherent, realistic, and durable attitude is compatible with a life in which unenjoyable activities preponderate. One’s realistically recognized possibilities may not be enjoyable, one’s coherent and durable beliefs, emotions, and motives may prompt unenjoyable actions. This points to there being a third requirement of the favorable personal evaluation of a life: its dominant activities must be enjoyable. Dominant activities are those involved in the pursuit of our projects. In the earlier discussion of projects (in 3.5) I noted that in our lives there are normally a small number of projects to which we devote a substantial portion of our time, energy, and efforts. They are typically our work or profession, political cause, personal relationships, religious commitments, or engagement in what started as a hobby but became a ruling passion. The reason why we normally pursue only a few projects is that they consume much of our resources and leave little for other purposes. Of course, there may be obstacles in the way of pursuing our projects. We may need to earn a living, meet obligations, hide our commitment to avoid hostility, or be forced by ill health, poverty, war, or some other adversity to concentrate on obtaining the basic necessities of life. It may happen, therefore, that the pursuit of projects is not our dominant activity, but the activity that would be dominant if adverse conditions did not stand in the way. The enjoyment of life, then, depends also on the enjoyment we take in what are or would be the dominant activities of our life. It would be a mistake to suppose, however, that, if the dominant activities are enjoyable, then the life as a whole must also be enjoyable. In the first place, our dominant activities may be at odds with our attitude to

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life. Our beliefs, emotions, and motives, then, would prompt one course of action and the projects to which we are committed prompt different ones. The enjoyment we derive from the dominant activities will no doubt be good to have, but it will not reflect what we most deeply believe, feel, and want to do. This is just what happened to Koestler. One of his dominant activities was writing, and the attitude to life he cultivated was detached contemplation. But what motivated his dominant activity was precisely the chronic indignation his detached contemplation was meant to overcome. As he put it: ‘I know that detachment and restraint are essential values in art. ... I know that the artist should not exhort or preach, and I kept on exhorting and preaching. ... We have to accept the perpetual contradiction between these two.’¹⁰ If this were true, the life of no morally committed artist could be enjoyable. We know, however, that this is not so, because Bach, Constable, Trollope, and Wallace Stevens, among numerous others, combined moral commitment, artistic work, and enjoyment. What made this possible is that their attitude to life, which included their moral commitments, was reflected by their dominant activity as artists. Morally committed art can be free of chronic indignation. That Koestler could not combine them tells us something about Koestler, not about morality and art. The enjoyment of dominant activities that reflect a coherent attitude to life, however, is still not enough to make life as a whole enjoyable. For the coherent attitude may be unrealistic. If this happens, the projects pursued by means of the enjoyable dominant activities are doomed to fail, because the possibilities they aim to realize are socially or individually impossible. This is bound to be frustrating, but the frustration will be worsened by the fact that it was brought upon oneself by one’s failure to recognize what is and what is not possible, given one’s abilities and social context. A life whose dominant activities fail through one’s own fault cannot be enjoyable, not even if its doomed dominant activities are enjoyable. A case in point is the assassin whose attitude was shibumi and whose dominant activity was murder in a manner that reflected the attitude. What the assassin’s project really amounted to was to be a samurai, even though his character was partly formed by contemporary sensibility and whose social context was not medieval Japan but the Western world as we know it. Even if he found great enjoyment in exquisitely executed murders,

The Importance of Manner 61 his life could not have been enjoyable, because its anachronism led to unavoidable frustration. It is for these reasons, therefore, that the favorable personal evaluation of a life requires a coherent, realistic, and durable attitude to life, the enjoyment of its dominant activities, and an attitude that the dominant activities reflect. Each is necessary for the enjoyment of a life. Suppose they are jointly present. In the resulting lives, then, people are actively and enjoyably engaged in the pursuit of some projects; the projects reflect their deepest and enduring beliefs and emotions about how they wish to live; their motives are formed by these beliefs and emotions; and neither their character nor their social context prevents them from realizing the possibility their projects aim at. I will say that such people possess individuality.

4.3. Individuality According to the unabridged Random House Dictionary (1987), individuality is ‘the particular character, or aggregate of qualities, that distinguishes one person or thing from others; sole and personal nature’. This definition is silent about there being a descriptive and an evaluative sense in which individuality may be attributed to human beings. In the descriptive sense, we all have individuality, if for no other reason than that we all have a unique spatio-temporal position and a unique vantage point from which we view and interact with our environment. In the evaluative sense, individuality is an achievement that requires considerable effort, more than what many people can or would be willing to make. In the descriptive sense, everyone has individuality; in the evaluative sense, few have it. I will use individuality in the evaluative sense. This is by and large the sense in which Mill and those influenced by him have been using it ever since he introduced it in chapter 3 of On Liberty. It should be clear, however, that what I take to be the achievement of individuality is quite different from what Mill had in mind. In my view, the achievement is having a coherent, realistic, and durable attitude to life and enjoying the dominant activities that reflect that attitude. These requirements of individuality serve a dual function: they explain what kind of achievement constitutes individuality and they limit what can

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qualify as its achievement. People can certainly develop many characteristics that sharply distinguish them from others, but these characteristics do not amount to individuality if they reflect an incoherent, or unrealistic, or often changing attitude to life. For such an attitude is conclusive evidence that those who have it are divided within themselves. They cannot have an individual attitude to life, because they have so far failed to develop it. Individuality, therefore, is not just to be different from others, but to be different in specific respects: in having a coherent, realistic, and durable attitude to life, which reflects their deepest concerns and informs their dominant activities. Assume that this has been achieved. The question still remains why the dominant activities that meet these conditions are enjoyable. After all, they may be boring, very difficult, subject to ridicule, humiliation, or hostility, demand great sacrifice, be ruinous to health, or be unenjoyable for some other reason. It is not enough to say that the dominant activities will be enjoyable if they are free of such defects, because the absence of defects is compatible with the activities being neither enjoyable nor unenjoyable. There must be something that makes the activities positively enjoyable, and the question is what that is. Again, it cannot be the answer that the activities are enjoyable because they are instrumental to the success of the projects, because the activities may be enjoyable even if the projects fail as a result of bad luck. The activities, therefore, must be enjoyable in themselves, regardless of the success or failure of the projects. What, then, is it that makes the dominant activities of a life of individuality enjoyable in themselves? The beginning of an answer is Aristotle’s claim—to which I promised to return (in 3.2)—that the unimpeded exercise of one’s natural capacities is enjoyable because it completes one’s nature.¹¹ The reference to one’s nature is ambiguous. It may be taken to mean the nature that all human beings have in common or the nature that characterizes a particular person. Being a featherless biped, or a rational animal, or a social being is a characteristic shared by all normal human beings. Rose’s independence, Isabel Boncassen’s wholeheartedness, Virginia Woolf’s creativity, Koestler’s detached contemplation, Proust’s inwardness, the assassin’s shibumi, Ryecroft’s delight in nature, Swift’s misanthropy, and Carlo Levi’s humaneness were individual characteristics that constituted essential features of their quite distinct individual identities. In what follows, I interpret Aristotle’s

The Importance of Manner 63 claim in the individual sense, although Aristotle himself did not draw the distinction between the generic and the individual senses of one’s nature. I have argued against Rawls, who based his Aristotelian Principle on this claim, that the claim must be further qualified because there are many natural capacities whose exercise is not enjoyable, such as the capacity for boredom, shame, or self-denial. What, then, are the natural capacities whose exercise is enjoyable and why is it enjoyable? An answer is suggested by Matthew Arnold’s fine lines: Below the surface-stream, shallow and light, Of what we say we feel—below the stream, As light, of what we think we feel—there flows With noiseless current strong, obscure and deep, The central stream of what we feel indeed.¹²

The natural capacities whose exercise is enjoyable reflect what we most deeply care about. Individuality follows if how we live and act reflects the central stream of what we feel indeed. That is what would make the activities that complete our nature enjoyable. And that is what the manner in which we do whatever we do should reflect. We would, then, act in the manner our deepest feelings prompt us to act and we are not impeded. Arnold’s lines are moving, but they should not silence critical questions. What if we are mistaken about our deepest feelings as a result of indoctrination, manipulation, or some other external influence? This, of course, is possible, and individuality depends on doing what we can to make sure that what we most deeply care about is a genuine feeling that reflects our nature, not external influences. But the question remains: what is involved in ascertaining the genuineness of our deepest feelings? Isaiah Berlin’s description of what he calls the ideal of positive freedom helps toward finding an answer: ‘I wish my life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind. I wish to be the instrument of my own, not of other men’s acts of will. I wish to be moved ... by reasons, by conscious purposes, which are my own, not by causes which affect me, as it were, from outside. I wish to be a doer ... deciding, not being decided for, self-directed, and not acted upon by external nature.’¹³ Individuality, then, consists in making sure that what we most deeply care about reflects our nature and not external influences. Continued critical questioning, however, may lead us to two problems. One is that we are

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unavoidably subject to external influences, since without being taught how to live in the world we could not survive and much of what we wish to be moved by are the values, ideals, and goals we derive from the context in which we live. If individuality depends on being free of external influences, then it seems to be humanly impossible to achieve it. The other problem is that what we most deeply care about and what genuinely reflects our nature may bring us face to face with what Conrad’s Kurtz found in himself at the end of Heart of Darkness: ‘The horror! The horror!’¹⁴ Individuality, then, may make our life miserable, not enjoyable. Any attempt to claim, as I do, that individuality is a key to an enjoyable life must face and resolve these problems. Doing that, however, is not particularly difficult. Individuality, of course, does not involve the impossibility of freeing ourselves from external influences. We live in the world and it inevitably influences us. What individuality has to do with is what we do with the external influences to which we are subject. Part of personal evaluation is to judge the importance of the values, ideals, and goals that influence us through upbringing, education, the media, the books we read, the conversations or arguments we have, and the lives of people we observe. And individuality involves judging their importance on the basis of their bearing on the life we most deeply care about living. We do not start out in life by being clear about our deepest concerns. Achievement of clarity about them is a gradual process, because at its beginning our beliefs, emotions, and motives are ill-formed, hesitant, and uncertain. We slowly become more articulate about them as we acquire an evaluative language that enables us to draw distinctions and allows us to identify and give shape to our inchoate velleities. This language does not force on us beliefs, emotions, and motives but provides the means by which we can do what we previously could not—namely, articulate them. What we acquire is analogous to the grammar and vocabulary of our native language: they do not force us to say anything but enable us to say what we want. This is an ideal state of affairs. In all societies, external influences are to a lesser or greater extent coercive. The less coercive they are, the easier it is to develop individuality; more coercion makes it harder. But the less we develop it, the less likely it is that what we most deeply care about will be reflected by how we live. As a result, the more frustrated we will be with the dominant activities that do not reflect our individuality. Or, to put

The Importance of Manner 65 the same point positively, the more we have developed our individuality, the more enjoyable will our dominant activities be, because they are more likely to reflect what we most deeply care about. I turn now to the other problem I mentioned earlier: what we care about most deeply may horrify us. This can and does happen. That, however, is not an objection to individuality but a reason for developing it further than we have so far done. Finding that what we care about most deeply horrifies us is a clear indication that our attitude to life is incoherent. For being horrified shows that we are divided, that our beliefs, emotions, and motives lead us at once to care most deeply about something and to be horrified by it. Since these beliefs, emotions, and motives are incompatible, one or more of them must in some way be flawed. Moving toward a coherent attitude requires us to reflect critically on this conflict and eliminate, correct, or demote the importance of the flawed states. If we succeed, the conflict will disappear. We either cease to care most deeply about that thing or we cease to be horrified by it. In either case, the obstacle to individuality will be removed. If we fail, we will not have a coherent attitude to life, consequently we cannot possess individuality, because its possession depends, in part, on having such an attitude. Kurtz’s predicament was not that his individuality horrified him when the conventions of civilized life no longer restrained his primitive urges, but that his inner life was consumed by the struggle in which civilized restraints and primitive urges fought for supremacy. He found himself caring deeply about two incompatible attitudes to life. When civilizing restraints were victorious, his response to his primitive urges was ‘The horror! The horror!’¹⁵ When his primitive urges prevailed, they carried ‘his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations’.¹⁶ Neither reflected his individuality, because the victory of one of his incompatible attitudes over the other was only temporary and the defeated one remained a shrill critic of the victor. Conrad’s treatment of Kurtz is enigmatic, but one interpretation of it may be that it is a warning against individuality, because it is better to lack it and accept civilized restraints than to have it and act on primitive urges. This might have been true in Kurtz’s case, although I doubt it for reasons I have given above. If, however, Kurtz’s case is to have the larger significance it is obviously meant to have—namely, that what is true of Kurtz is true of most of us—then I dissent from it. For it is not true that the acceptance of

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civilized restraints is incompatible with individuality, nor that individuality unavoidably leads us ‘beyond the bounds of lawful aspirations’. There are many people whose commitment to civilized restraints is part of their individuality. When in a cool reflective moment we look inside ourselves, what we find may provoke the horror that Kurtz felt, but we may not infrequently find that we are navigating life’s treacherous waters as honorably as circumstances allow, and this may give us legitimate satisfaction. Trying to develop individuality certainly involves risks. They are worth taking, however, because the enjoyment of life depends on it, and because there are safeguards that minimize the danger of being horrified by the attitudes and actions that reflect our individuality. I will say more about this in Chapter 6. This, however, is not to say that, if individuality has been achieved, then it guarantees an enjoyable life. A life characterized by a coherent, realistic, and durable attitude may still fail to be enjoyable, because the contingencies of life—in the form of accidents, disasters, social upheavals, epidemics, and so forth—may frustrate it. The favorable personal evaluation of a life depends also on good luck, by which I mean that the contingencies of life do not prevent its enjoyment. But, even if luck is bad, people who have achieved individuality have the second best satisfaction of knowing that missing out on enjoyment is not their fault, because they have done all that can be expected to make their life enjoyable.

4.4. Individuality and manner Iris Murdoch writes that we are not free in the sense of being able suddenly to alter ourselves since we cannot suddenly alter what we can see and ergo what we desire and are compelled by. ... Explicit choice seems now less important: less decisive (since much of the ‘decision’ lies elsewhere) and less obviously something to be ‘cultivated’. If I attend properly I will have no choices and this is the ultimate condition to be aimed at. ... The ideal situation ... is a kind of necessity.¹⁷

As I understand it, individuality is the kind of necessity Murdoch is here describing. The necessity comes to those who possess individuality in the

The Importance of Manner 67 form of the imperative: this is what I must do. They must do it, but not because they are forced by external threats or internal compulsion or obsession. They must do it because that is what they most want to do, which is to be true to themselves. Doing anything else would go against what they most deeply care about. But they are true to themselves by being true to their attitude to life and by acting in the manner that reflects their attitude. Acting in that manner requires doing something, but what that happens to be is incidental. The quiddity is how they do whatever is appropriate and reflects their attitude in their contingent circumstances. Levi and Swift both helped others, but Levi had achieved individuality and Swift had not. Levi’s actions reflected his humane attitude to life, whereas Swift’s reflected the conflict between his sense of duty and his obsession with frugality. Levi’s help and the manner in which he gave it showed that he genuinely wanted to give it, that he deeply cared about it. By helping others he was true to himself. Swift also helped, but his manner showed that he was giving it out of a sense of duty, that his heart was not in it. By helping others he was true to one part of himself and false to another part. The difference in their manners affected both the recipients of their help and themselves. The recipients of Levi’s help found their sufferings alleviated and their humanity acknowledged by how Levi helped them, and they loved him for it. The sufferings of those Swift helped were also alleviated, but they were demeaned by the manner in which Swift gave his grudging alms, and they resented him for it. The actions of Levi and Swift also had an important effect on themselves. Because Levi’s actions reflected what he most deeply cared about and the humane attitude to life in terms of which he saw the world, he was true to himself and he enjoyed what he was doing. Swift’s actions, by contrast, went against how he saw the world and did not reflect what he most deeply cared about. He was false to an important part of himself and he made himself miserable by what he was doing. This is why individuality, being true to oneself, tends to be enjoyable and its lack, being false to some part of oneself, tends to make one miserable. Bearing in mind this connection between individuality and enjoyment, we can distinguish between individuality, on the one hand, and authenticity, sincerity, and autonomy, on the other. These distinctions, however, cannot be sharply drawn, because there are similarities, not just differences, among these traits. In some contexts, similarities matter more than differences, and

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then it would be pedantic to try to draw distinctions. But there are also contexts in which the reverse is true, and then the distinctions become important. Individuality and authenticity¹⁸ are similar in that both involve being true to oneself, living and acting in ways that reflect one’s deepest concerns. But they also differ, because individuality places greater demands on what qualifies as being true to oneself than does authenticity. Individuality requires living and acting according to a coherent, realistic, and durable attitude to life, whereas authenticity makes no such demand. People can be authentic by following their emotions, even if their reason advises otherwise; by trying to realize socially or individually impossible goals; or by acting in ways that reflect unstable attitudes to life. The self to which individuality consists in being true is a coherent, realistic, durable self. The requirement of authenticity is simply to be true to whatever self one happens to have. One consequence of this difference is that individuality and enjoyment are intimately connected, for the unimpeded pursuit of possibilities of life we reasonably recognize and which we believe and feel reflect our deepest concerns is in itself enjoyable. But the authentic pursuit of impossibilities or of possibilities about which we are ambivalent is doomed to frustration, because impossibilities cannot be achieved and ambivalence guarantees that what satisfies part of ourselves will frustrate another part. Authenticity and enjoyment may go together if the attitude reflected by our actions is coherent, realistic, and durable. If that happens, individuality and authenticity coincide, and there is no need to distinguish them. Meeting these requirements, however, is necessary for individuality and merely fortuitous for authenticity. In Kurtz’s case, individuality and authenticity diverged. He was authentic, but he did not achieve individuality, because the horror he found in himself showed that his attitude to life was incoherent. The chief similarity between individuality and sincerity¹⁹ is that genuineness is essential to both, while hypocrisy, deception, and like forms of falseness are incompatible with them. But there are also important differences. One is that individuality is enjoyable and sincerity may or may not be. It may be painful or embarrassing to be sincere about various private matters, but living and acting so as to be guided by our deepest coherent, realistic, and durable concerns are enjoyable. Another difference is that we can be sincere in pursuit of unrealistic possibilities and

The Importance of Manner 69 in expressing incoherent attitudes, whereas individuality requires realism about the possibilities of life and coherent attitudes. Furthermore, we can be sincere about shifting commitments, but individuality depends on a durable commitment to being true to ourselves. Lastly, it is possible to be superficial but utterly sincere, whereas individuality is always deep, because it reflects a person’s deepest concerns. So, in contexts where the only question is about genuineness, it makes no difference whether individuality or sincerity is ascribed to someone. But when not just genuineness but also enjoyment, realistic, coherent, and durable attitudes, and deep concern matter, then the differences between individuality and sincerity tend to be more important than the similarities. The similarities between individuality and autonomy²⁰ are considerable, but here too there are differences that prevent their identification. Autonomy is thought to have an important place both in morality and in liberal political thought. For this reason much has been written about it. I begin with two representative definitions that reflect an emerging consensus about how autonomy should be understood. Stanley Benn says that ‘by autonomy I understand a character trait amounting to a capacity to act on principles ... that are one’s own because one has made them so by a process of rational reflection on the complex principles and values that one has assimilated from one’s social environment’.²¹ According to Gerald Dworkin, ‘a person is autonomous if he identifies with his desires, goals, and values, and such identification is not itself influenced in ways which make the process of identification in some way alien to the individual’.²² These definitions make autonomy appear to be very similar to what I have been calling individuality, but the appearance is deceptive. An autonomous person may lack individuality. For individuality requires being true to oneself, living and acting according to one’s attitude to life. Autonomy is to identify oneself with some principle. But this principle need not be the same as one’s attitude to life. In fact, the principle may condemn that attitude. We may identify with a principle because we think morality requires it, not because it reflects what we most deeply care about. We may come to think that what we most deeply care about is morally wrong and it would be irresponsible to be true to that concern of ours no matter how deep it is. Autonomy, thus, may lead us to change ourselves, whereas individuality requires us to be ourselves.

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At the root of this difference between individuality and autonomy is the coherence of our beliefs, emotions, and motives, which is a condition of individuality, but not of autonomy. We lack individuality if the beliefs and emotions that reflect our attitude to life motivate incompatible actions. For, in that case, we can be true only to one part of ourselves and must be false to another part: we must act contrary either to our deepest beliefs or to our deepest emotions. Autonomy, by contrast, often requires that we go against our unruly, selfish, pleasure-seeking feelings, because the principle we believe in on the basis of rational reflection requires it. Individuality requires us to harmonize our deepest beliefs, emotions, and motives. Autonomy aims to shape them to conform to the principle with which we have identified. This is precisely why Kantian morality that assigns pivotal importance to autonomy is hostile to emotions. This is also why the enjoyment of life is central to individuality and irrelevant to autonomy. It is enjoyable to live and act in a way that reflects our coherent, realistic, durable, and deepest concerns. But enjoyment need have no place in living and acting autonomously according to a principle with which we have identified. For the principle may condemn the source of our enjoyment. The divergence between individuality and autonomy, however, is not inevitable. An enjoyable and a principled life may coincide, and if they do it does not matter whether we ascribe individuality or autonomy to a person. But their coincidence is not something we can count on. As we all know from personal experience, enjoyment and responsibility often conflict. A good life depends on resolving such conflicts, but the discussion of how that may be done must be postponed until Chapter 6.

4.5. Overview of part two The conclusion we have now reached on the basis of Chapters 2–4 can be stated as follows: the development of an individual style of life makes the enjoyment of life possible. Living in that style is enjoyable because it consists in being true to our deepest concerns. Such a style is composed of an attitude to life, dominant activities that reflect that attitude, and the manner in which the dominant activities are performed. Each of these constituents may be more or less adequate. The more adequate each is, the more likely it is that the resulting life will be enjoyable.

The Importance of Manner 71 The adequacy of attitudes depends on their coherence, realism, and endurance. They are coherent if the beliefs, emotions, and motives reflect our deepest concerns about how we want to live, coexist harmoniously, and do not prompt incompatible activities. They are realistic if the possible ways of life we recognize are neither more nor less than what is individually and socially possible for us, given our character and context. And they are durable if they last through a variety of times and circumstances. Dominant activities are those involved in projects that are central to living the way we care most about. And the corresponding activities are adequate if they form a durable pattern, reflect our coherent and realistic attitudes, and are themselves enjoyable. What makes dominant activities enjoyable, however, is not the identity or success of our projects, but the manner in which we are engaged in them. The adequacy of manners derives from the adequacy of the attitude they reflect and from the enjoyment of the dominant activities they inform. If the attitude, the activities, and the manner are all adequate, and if the contingency of life in the form of bad luck does not interfere, then the resulting style of life will be individual and enjoyable. The task of personal evaluation is to make the often difficult judgments about the adequacy of the components of a style of life. Such judgments may be internal, made by oneself, or external, made by others about one’s style of life. All such judgments are fallible, but internal evaluation may be corrected by external evaluation, and vice versa. This account describes what an individual style of life would be and why it would be enjoyable. But it says little about the larger question of what implications this kind of personal evaluation has for how we should think about living a good life. The discussion of these implications is the subject of Part Three.


PA RT T H RE E

The Evaluation of Styles of Life


5 A Great and Rare Art To ‘give style’ to one’s character—a great and rare art! It is practiced by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye. Here a large mass of second nature has been added; there a piece of original nature has been removed—both times through long practice and daily work at it. ... It is only in this way that they can give pleasure to themselves. For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself. (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 1882)

5.1. The evaluation of styles of life One conclusion reached by the just completed account is that the favorable personal evaluation of styles of life depends on the favorable evaluation of the parts that jointly constitute the style: an attitude to life, a pattern of dominant activities, and the manner in which these activities are performed. If the attitude is coherent, realistic, and durable, the dominant activities and the manner in which they are performed reflect the attitude, then they permit the favorable personal evaluation of a style of life. A style of life that meets these conditions is enjoyable because it expresses the individuality and the deepest concerns of the person who is fortunate enough to have been able to develop it. This, however, is only the beginning of personal evaluation, because styles of life that meet these conditions may still be more or less admirable or deficient. Enjoyable styles of life may be vulgar, boring, lethargic, stupid, futile, trivial, absurd, obsessive, or deficient in other ways. And, even if a

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style of life is admirable, it may be morally deplorable, just as a style of life judged wanting by personal evaluation may be morally praiseworthy. More needs to be said, therefore, about the evaluation of styles of life to deepen the understanding of the conditions I have so far discussed. In this chapter I will concentrate on personal evaluation; in the next I will discuss the connection between personal and moral evaluation. Isaiah Berlin has memorably discussed the tension between the negative and positive conceptions of liberty.¹ Negative liberty is freedom from interference. The fewer external restrictions there are, the greater is the negative liberty of individuals. Positive liberty is the freedom of individuals to develop capacities most likely to lead to an enjoyable life. In Benjamin Constant’s terms, positive liberty is roughly how the ancients understood freedom, whereas negative liberty is close to what is meant by freedom in modern times.² How liberty is understood has far-reaching political implications, but they are not my present concern. I am on the side of Constant and Berlin in regarding it desirable that individuals should be left as free as possible to conduct their experiments in living, as John Stuart Mill called them in On Liberty. What I want to emphasize in the present context is that individuals only exceptionally have sufficiently coherent, realistic, and durable styles of life to enable them to make reliable judgments about how to make their life enjoyable. If liberty were only negative, many experiments in living would fail. But it would not help if liberty were only positive, because tyrannical or paternalistic interference with how individuals live would be an intolerable threat. There has never been a shortage of self-appointed authorities who claim to know what is best for others, and who have been—and are—all too prone to force people to live as they would if they knew what the authorities suppose themselves to know. The enjoyment of life, therefore, depends on finding an optimal balance between negative and positive liberty, between correcting the bad judgment of individuals and gratuitously interfering with how people live. The evaluation of styles of life is a great and rare art, because this optimal balance is hard to find and maintain. The account I have given of personal evaluation must explain how deficient and admirable styles of life can be identified and distinguished. But the evaluation must not lead to forcing on people a supposedly admirable style of life that they would not find

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enjoyable. Reflection on a test case will help to find this optimal balance and provide the needed explanation.

5.2. A test case Sisyphus, a legendary king of Corinth, offended the gods, and they condemned him to an eternal life of misery. He was to roll an enormous boulder up a hill, which, after he reached the summit, rolled down again. Then he had to roll it up, only for it to roll down, and so it was to be for Sisyphus for all eternity. In The Myth of Sisyphus Camus has made the boulder-rolling life of Sisyphus emblematic of the human condition.³ Camus suggested that human lives are as absurd as Sisyphus’ was, because we are all endlessly rolling our own boulder up our own hill. Camus asked why we should continue to do this, if we understand that this is what we are doing. Suicide, after all, presents a way out, and Camus wondered why killing oneself is not the most reasonable course of action. His answer was neither reassuring nor convincing, but he was right in this: the life of Sisyphus is an excellent example of a miserable life. Richard Taylor, thinking about the significance of Sisyphus for human life, asked what a kindly god would have to do to make Sisyphus’ life enjoyable.⁴ (Taylor posed the question in terms of meaningfulness, but the difference between his term and mine is irrelevant to the substantive point at issue.) Taylor’s answer was that, if the god would implant a device in Sisyphus’ brain that caused him to have a passionate urge to roll that boulder uphill, then what was before a life of miserable drudgery would be transformed into an enjoyable life in which his passionate urge was constantly satisfied. The implant would not have changed the fact that Sisyphus had to roll the boulder, but it would have changed his attitude to that fact. Taylor’s suggestion is that the enjoyment of life does not depend on what we do, but on the attitude we have to what we do. And that seems to be just what I have been saying. But Sisyphus’ attitude to his life is not really his; it does not reflect his individual nature; it is the outcome of the implant that deceives Sisyphus and makes his miserable life falsely appear enjoyable. His enjoyment, however, is illusory. A defensible account of the enjoyment of life must provide the means for distinguishing between

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genuine and illusory enjoyment. The question is whether that distinction can be drawn on the account I have been giving. The answer is an obvious yes. Sisyphus’ implant meets the condition of a durable pattern of action by his endless rolling of the boulder. But it does not meet the conditions of realism and coherence. Realism involves the recognition of all and only possible lives that are available to one, given one’s capacities and social context. The implant made Sisyphus incapable of recognizing possibilities other than boulder-rolling. If he had recognized that there were possible lives beside the one to which the gods had sentenced him, he would have been bound to ask himself why he preferred the boulder-rolling one and how he could find it enjoyable compared to other ways of living. And, if he had asked these questions, they would have led him to question his implanted attitude to his boulder-rolling life. The implant certainly made it easier for Sisyphus to endure his miserable life, but the cost of it was to live by an illusion that systematically falsified the facts. Perhaps there are circumstances in which it is better for people to falsify the facts of their life. That, however, does not make their life enjoyable. It only makes them believe falsely that their life is enjoyable. Realism would deprive them of that solace, and it may be kinder not to disabuse them of their false beliefs. But, on the account of personal evaluation I have been giving, the distinction between the genuine and the illusory enjoyment of life can be drawn, even if it may be better for some unfortunate people not to draw it. The same is true of meeting the other condition of an enjoyable life: coherence. A coherent attitude to life requires a substantial overlap between the beliefs, emotions, and motives involved in one’s dominant activities. Sisyphus’ attitude was not coherent. The implant caused him to feel a passionate urge to roll the boulder, and that urge silenced questions that normal people would ask if they suddenly found themselves badly wanting to spend their life engaging in such a pointless and miserable activity. What the kindly god has done is to give Sisyphus a compulsion to do what he was forced to do. But the compulsion did not reflect his individuality; it squelched his contrary beliefs, emotions, and motives; and made him the slave of an unnatural urge. This, of course, happens to people all too frequently, as we know from the lives of drug addicts and alcoholics. Acting on their compulsion, however, does not make their lives as a whole enjoyable. It merely produces temporary euphoria, relieves the agony of


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not doing what they feel compelled to do, and leaves them miserable the rest of the time. On my account, the distinction between coherent and incoherent attitudes to life can be drawn, even if Sisyphus in his abnormal circumstances was prevented from drawing it. The upshot is that Taylor’s gloss on Sisyphus is not a particularly difficult case to handle on the account I am defending. Sisyphus’ life was not enjoyable; he lacked a style of life, because his attitude to life was unrealistic and incoherent, although he was prevented from knowing that and he was led to believe falsely that his life was enjoyable. People can be manipulated, and that is what happened in his case. Joel Feinberg, however, has given another twist to the story of hapless Sisyphus,⁵ and that does pose a difficult question for my account. Feinberg supposes that the kindly god alleviated Sisyphus’ plight, not by an implant, but by changing his nature in such a way as to make boulder-rolling a natural expression of it. That is what he comes genuinely to want to do as the dominant activity of his life. His beliefs, emotions, and motives are coherent, he is cognitively and emotionally convinced that boulder-rolling would give him an enjoyable life, and he chooses it in preference to all the other possibilities of life of which he has formed a perfectly realistic view. He meets all the conditions of having a style of life. He spends his life enjoyably rolling the boulder. He would not have it differently, even if he could. Of course, he cannot, but Sisyphus does not know that. Now one wants to say that such a style of life is deficient, but Feinberg disagrees. He says about his version of Sisyphus that perhaps he is capable of seeing, from time to time, that this ‘nature’ of his is more than a little absurd. ... He knows that [it is] ... of no cosmic significance whatever, and certainly of no interest to the indifferent universe, to posterity, to history, or to any of the other abstract tribunals by which humans in their more magniloquent moods are wont to measure significance. And yet, absurd as it is, it is his nature, and the only one he has, so somehow he must make the best of it and seek his own good in pursuit of his dominant talents. Whose nature could he try to fulfill, after all, but his own? ... Given the nature with which he finds himself indissolubly identified for better or worse, he must ... identify his good with the goals toward which his nature is already inclined.

And, he goes on, ‘that my nature is eccentric, absurd, laughable, trivial, cosmically insignificant, is neither here nor there. Such as it is, it is my

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nature for better or worse. The self whose good is at issue is the self I am and not some other self that I might have been.’⁶ If Feinberg were right about this, then the distinction I want to draw between admirable and deficient styles of life could not be drawn. Provided individuals have a coherent, realistic, and durable attitude to life and find enjoyable the dominant activities that reflect their attitude, their style of life must be favorably evaluated from the personal point of view. If they genuinely enjoy their life and it reflects their individual nature, then that is the end of the matter. There is no room here for better or worse. Genuine enjoyment is the standard of personal evaluation, and any style of life that meets it must be favorably judged. Others may not enjoy that kind of life, but that has no bearing on those who do enjoy it. The evaluation, after all, is personal. Enjoyable lives, of course, may be deplorable from a moral, aesthetic, religious, or some other point of view, but here we are concerned only with personal evaluation. Feinberg’s case is strong, but I think it is nevertheless mistaken. Surely, there are admirable and deficient forms of enjoyment. Does it not make a difference whether one’s enjoyable dominant activity is collecting used matchsticks or teaching students to appreciate poetry? Is it true that, given equal enjoyment, it is a matter of indifference from what it is derived? Is there not something deficient in dedicating one’s life to the enjoyment of animated children’s programs on television, pornographic films, or counting the words in daily newspapers? If someone had sufficient talent and a choice between becoming a serious writer or a hack composing advertising catchphrases, would we not regard the first more admirable and the second more deficient? These questions are intended to indicate the kinds of judgments we make all the time, but which we could not make if we were to accept Feinberg’s case. Another reason for rejecting Feinberg’s case is that the last sentence I have quoted from him hides a dilemma he can neither avoid nor satisfactorily resolve. The sentence is: ‘The self whose good is at issue is the self I am and not some other self I might have been.’ This may mean that I had no choice about becoming the self I presently am because I was compelled to become what I have become. Or it may mean that I had choices about what kind of self to become, but the choices were limited and I could not have chosen just any self that took my fancy. I will call the first ‘no-choice alternative’, and the second ‘limited-choice alternative’.


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Feinberg’s version of Sisyphus is an example of the no-choice alternative. The kindly god so shaped his nature that he could not but enjoy boulderrolling as the dominant activity of his life. If there had been no divine interference, and if Sisyphus had choices and his attitude to life were realistic and coherent, he would have preferred other possibilities. He would have seen boulder-rolling as the miserable drudgery it in fact is. But Sisyphus’ situation is, of course, a fiction. Most of us are not deprived of all choices about what kind of self we want to cultivate. We all have various natural capacities and we all have some opportunities to choose to develop some but not others. I do not mean anything as sophisticated as having access to higher education, questioning one’s religious upbringing, or disowning one’s family, country, or class. Social and psychological conditions deprive countless people of such opportunities. But they do not lack simple opportunities to choose, for example, between cultivating trust or mistrust of others; preferring more sedentary occupations or ones involving strenuous physical activity; inclining toward risk-taking or security; being more or less gregarious; expressing more or less of their feelings; responding to difficulties by discouragement or greater effort; and so forth. Such choices are available to most people even in societies that are repressive, poor, or in a state of ceaseless conflict. So the no-choice alternative is simply false. The self with which we are ‘indissolubly identified’, the ‘self I am’, is, at least to some limited extent, the result of choices we have made. This is not true of Feinberg’s version of Sisyphus, but we real people are not compelled by a kind or unkind god to a choiceless life. The choices we make, however, influence the kinds of enjoyments we seek. And, since the choices are either reasonable or unreasonable, the resulting enjoyments may be more or less admirable or deficient. On the no-choice alternative, therefore, Feinberg’s case against there being a distinction between admirable and deficient styles of life fails. The limited-choice alternative is true, but its very truth falsifies Feinberg’s claim that the ‘self I am’ might not have been ‘some other self’. The self I am, at least to some limited extent, is the result of choices I have made among the selves I might have been. And, as we have seen, we can all make these choices realistically or unrealistically, coherently or incoherently. If we are realistic about the possibilities open to us, we can choose ones that in the long run will make our lives more enjoyable than other possibilities

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we might have chosen. If our beliefs, emotions, and motives are coherent, then the choices we make will reflect our undivided nature, rather than the temporarily victorious one of our inconstant tendencies, and the resulting enjoyments will be more lasting. Consequently, Feinberg’s case fails on the limited-choice alternative as well. It may be thought that these objections to Feinberg’s case—that we are all the unimpeachable authorities on whether our life is enjoyable—presuppose too much reflection and control. It may be granted that we all make at least simple choices, but we make them as the result of genetic inheritance, upbringing, and the social influences prevailing in our context. And when we make them, few of us consider how enjoyable or miserable our lives will be in the long run as a result of these choices. I agree that it is a mistake to over-intellectualize our psychological tendencies. But this strengthens, rather than weakens, my objections to Feinberg’s case. For the inadequate coherence and realism of our attitude to life make mistaken choices more likely. And wishful thinking, insufficient self-knowledge, lack of confidence, and unfounded fears make them still likelier. This is precisely why we are not unimpeachable authorities on our enjoyments. This does not mean that others can reasonably dispute that we genuinely enjoy our life, if we do. But others with greater objectivity, deeper reflection, and more extensive experience may reasonably dispute the genuineness of our enjoyment or whether we should enjoy what we genuinely enjoy. It is crucial to keep in mind that in personal evaluation the questions others might raise about the genuineness or the nature of our enjoyment are raised from our point of view, not theirs. What they might suspect is that what we take to be genuine enjoyment is really a pretense we maintain, often unknowingly and unintentionally, in order to sustain our hopes, assuage our fears, prop up our confidence, and so forth. Others might see this about us, when we ourselves fail to see it. Similarly, when others say about our genuine enjoyment that, although we have it, we should not, what they may mean is that there are other kinds of enjoyments within our reach that we, not they, are likely to find better, longer lasting, more fulfilling, engaging more of our natural capacities than the one we have settled for. Anyone who has raised children or taught students knows that such questions about the children’s or students’ enjoyments often lead


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to changing their minds, enabling them to grow, and bringing them to the eventual realization that what seemed so enjoyable at one time was just a passing phase. One source of the mistake that vitiates Feinberg’s case is that he is seduced by the undeniable attractions of Berlin’s negative liberty and Constant’s freedom of the moderns, but he is blind to the attractions of positive liberty and ancient freedom. The attraction of the former is that it puts individuals in control of their lives. The attraction of the latter is that it recognizes that the justification of enabling and protecting people’s control of their lives is that it makes individual lives better. It is absurd to suppose that the justification of legal and political rights, law enforcement, publicly financed education, health care, and infrastructure is that they enable people to spend their life watching mindless television, getting thrills from pornography, shopping for useless articles advertisements persuade them they need, being entertained by sports in which participants mangle one another, or taking pleasure in music that combines the sentimental falsification of life with monotonous drumbeat. Surely, liberty is valuable because it enables people to live genuinely enjoyable lives that reflect their individual natures. And this is what positive liberty and ancient freedom offer. Unfortunately, the offer comes with the great danger of false authorities imposing their conception of an enjoyable life on unwilling recipients. This danger is serious and it must be avoided, but avoiding it does not require the desperate denial that there is a difference between admirable and deficient styles of life. Another mistake underlying Feinberg’s case is that he thinks that personal evaluation is only the internal evaluation by individuals of their own lives, whereas it involves also the external evaluation of the lives of individuals by others. The importance of external evaluation is that it can correct and supplement internal evaluation. External evaluation enables us moderns to say with the ancients that sincerity, authenticity, or autonomy do not carry their own warrant, they do not guarantee an enjoyable life, individuals often make mistakes in their sincere, authentic, and autonomous choices, and others may recognize and help them to avoid their mistakes. There is no area of life in which individuals could not benefit from the experience and reflection of others. There is every reason to suppose that the same is true of the enjoyment of life.

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Assuming, then, that personal evaluation involves the distinction between the enjoyment of admirable and deficient styles of life and relies on both internal and external evaluation, the question is how the resulting evaluations can be justified. I will now try to answer it.

5.3. Justifying personal evaluations The justification of any particular personal evaluation of a style of life consists in giving reasons for it and showing why those reasons are better than the reasons that might be given for possible alternatives. In an influential essay that has provoked a great deal of discussion, Bernard Williams distinguished between internal and external reasons.⁷ An internal reason for an action, to take the simplest case, is that the agent has a desire (broadly understood to include all internal sources of action) and the action is prompted by it. An external reason for action is independent of any desire the agent may have for that action. Williams, then, denies that there are external reasons. He thinks that any reason for action must somehow connect up with the agent’s desires. I will use Williams’s distinction, but I will understand internal and external reasons differently. Internal reasons follow from internal evaluations and external reasons from external evaluations. Internal evaluations are the agent’s own; external evaluations are by others of the agent’s style of life. In my sense, therefore, there are obviously external reasons. I intentionally leave open whether what I call external reasons are connected with some desire the agent has. This is a very difficult question, and how we answer it has no bearing on what I want to say about justifying personal evaluations. Wittgenstein’s suggestive but obscure remarks about what he calls ‘seeing as’⁸ is a useful place to begin to understand these reasons. I will briefly join, before leaving, the company of a number of people who have attempted to work out the implications of Wittgenstein’s remarks. Wittgenstein distinguishes between two kinds of seeing. One is ‘I see this’ and what I see is a ‘description, a drawing, a copy’ (p. 193). The other is when I look at an ambiguous drawing which I may see first as a duck and then as a rabbit (p. 194). Wittgenstein calls the second kind of seeing ‘noticing an aspect’ or ‘seeing as’. We see the ambiguous figure now as a duck, now as


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a rabbit; we notice one aspect or another of the drawing. He thinks there is a categorical difference (p. 195) between these two kinds of seeing, which makes them irreducibly different. Not all seeing is seeing as; not all seeing as is seeing. This, of course, has epistemological implications for both realism and relativism, but I will not follow them up. What is interesting in the present context is the use to which seeing as has been put in connection with people’s style of life. In an influential essay John McDowell says,⁹ and I fully agree with him, that ‘the point of ethical reflection ... lies in the interest of the question ‘‘How should one live?’’ ’ (p. 51) and he concludes that ‘occasion by occasion, one knows what to do, if one does, not by applying universal principles but by being a certain kind of person: one who sees situations in a certain distinctive way’ (p. 73). Seeing situations in this way is a matter of ‘reliable sensitivity to a certain sort of requirement that situations impose on behaviour. ... A kind person knows what it is like to be confronted with a requirement of kindness’ (p. 51). ‘On each of the relevant occasions’, McDowell says, ‘the requirements imposed by the situation, and detected by the agent’s sensitivity ... exhaust his reasons for acting as he does. It would disqualify an action from counting as a manifestation of kindness if its agent needed some extraneous incentive to comply with the requirement—say, the reward of a good reputation’ (p. 52). This kind of sensitivity is a mode of seeing as. How one should live depends on seeing life as guided by one’s sensitivity, if one has it. In ‘Vision and Choice in Morality’ Iris Murdoch suggests a very similar line of thought. When we apprehend and assess other people we do not consider only their solutions to specifiable practical problems, we consider something more elusive which may be called their total vision of life, as shown in their mode of speech or silence, their choice of words, their assessments of others, their conception of their own lives, what they think attractive or praiseworthy, what they think funny: in short the configurations of their thought which show continually in their reactions and conversation. These ... constitute ... the texture of a man’s being or the nature of his personal vision.¹⁰

She understands seeing as, in the context of considering how to live, as this kind of personal vision.

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If we apply this to justifying personal evaluation, it might be said that the internal reasons we have for a style of life are provided by our sensitivity or vision, by how we see life as. External reasons take the form of others calling our attention to an aspect of our situation relevant to our sensitivity or vision, but one that we have missed. We see it as a duck, when we should see it also as a rabbit. Kindness requires us to be helpful, but we fail to see that sometimes kindness consists in letting people help themselves. Kind people may miss that—this is how they may become meddlesome busybodies—and others can point this out to them. The others, then, provide external reasons that correct or supplement an individual’s internal reasons. Others can provide external reasons for us, however, only if they are familiar with how we see life as, with our sensitivity or personal vision. For the reasons others may give count as such for us only if we indeed have the sensitivity or personal vision that makes what others adduce a reason. This familiarity requires what Wittgenstein called a shared form of life or what McDowell calls, following current usage, a practice (p. 71). One of the main concerns of Sabina Lovibond’s Ethical Formation is to work out the implications of this requirement. She proposes an approach that ‘conceives of the space of reasons as one mapped out for us by immersion in a culture and by initiation into an array of ‘‘language games’’ ’.¹¹ Her approach ‘appeals ... to the idea of a common evaluative culture or way of life that would give some determinate content to ... perceptions and intentions’.¹² She suggests that we should think of giving external reasons (my term, not hers) as ‘a conversation which rests as lightly as possible on the surface of the speakers’ common understanding of effects to be achieved or avoided, and which proceeds ... to call attention to just those points that may not be obvious ... on this common basis’.¹³ What I have been calling an attitude to life, McDowell calls sensitivity, Murdoch calls vision, Lovibond regards as resting on a common evaluative culture, and Stanley Cavell calls projection. He says: Nothing insures that this projection will take place ... just as nothing insures that we will make, and understand, the same projections. That on the whole we do is a matter of our sharing routes of interest and feeling, modes of response, senses of humor and significance and of fulfillment, of what is outrageous, of what is similar to what else, what is a rebuke, what forgiveness ... all the whirl of organism Wittgenstein calls ‘forms of life’.¹⁴


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Thus far I am in agreement with Wittgenstein, McDowell, Murdoch, Lovibond, and Cavell, but now I dissent from them because they think that external reasons are available only within a shared form of life, or whatever we might call the shared context of various styles of life. They think that external reasons are external to the individuals to whom they are given, but they are internal to the form of life shared by the individuals to whom the reasons are given and by those who give them. McDowell says that ‘it is only an illusion that our paradigm of reason ... is not necessarily located within the practice itself’ (p. 71); Lovibond thinks that something qualifies as reason for us only ‘by immersion in a culture and by initiation into an array of ‘‘language games’’ ’;¹⁵ and Cavell writes that ‘human speech and activity, sanity and community, rest upon nothing more, but nothing less, than this [i.e. forms of life]’. He adds that this ‘is a vision as simple as it is difficult, and as difficult as it is (and because it is) terrifying’.¹⁶ With Cavell’s last remark I certainly agree: the vision is terrifying because, if it were correct, no reason could be adduced against a whole form of life no matter how deplorable it is. A form of life, a practice, a vision, or a common evaluative culture would then carry its own warrant. External criticism of it could not be based on reasons and its participants would ultimately have to justify their acceptance of it by saying with Wittgenstein: ‘If I have exhausted the justification, I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: This is simply what I do.’¹⁷ Or, as Murdoch says in retrospect about her vision, ‘the background of morals is properly some sort of mysticism, if by this is meant a non-dogmatic essentially unformulated faith in the reality of the Good. ... This view is of course not amenable even to a persuasive philosophical proof.’¹⁸ If external reasons were necessarily internal to forms of life, then what has been rightly called Wittgensteinian fideism would follow, and that would indeed be terrifying. For forms of life are numerous and conflicting, civilized life depends on resolving or ameliorating their conflicts reasonably, and if that could not be done, violence and barbarism would follow. I will now argue that it can be done.

5.4. External reasons I will discuss external reasons by reflecting on two stories. The first is from the Old Testament. David, King of Israel, ‘saw from the roof a

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woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful’. David found out that she was Bethsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. David summoned her, ‘she came to him, and he lay with her’. David, then, sent Uriah off to fight in the war, and commanded his general to ‘set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, that he may be struck down, and die’. Bethsheba mourned her husband, but David ‘brought her to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son’. What David had done displeased the lord. And the lord sent Nathan to David ... and he said to him, ‘There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb. ... The rich man ... took the poor man’s lamb.’ ... David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, ‘As the lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die.’ ... Nathan said to David, ‘You are the man.’ And David, realizing what he did, said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the lord.’¹⁹

David had seen his taking of Bethsheba as the prerogative of his royal style of life. Nathan showed him that he should see it as grievous injustice. Nathan thus provided an external reason that corrected David’s faulty internal evaluation of what he had done. This brings out three essential features of external reasons. They are corrective; their force derives from bringing home to individuals that their internal evaluations are faulty; and they proceed from the point of view of the individuals whose faulty internal evaluations are being corrected. I do not think McDowell, Murdoch, Lovibond, and Cavell would so far disagree. They would say that Nathan could bring David to see what he had done as unjust only because both of them were steeped in the form of life shared by biblical Jews. Nathan’s reasons were external to how David was seeing his actions as being, but they were internal to their shared form of life. Nathan merely corrected David’s failure to see matters aright as a result of being besotted by Bethsheba’s charms and his own power. I go on, therefore, to another story with the implications of which McDowell et al. would have to disagree. The story is from James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.²⁰ Stephen is the artist as a young man. He is teetering on the brink of abandoning the form of life in which he was brought up: a


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particularly repressive form of Irish Catholicism. Cranly is his friend who has repudiated some, but not all, of that form of life. They are having a serious, no-holds-barred conversation. Cranly says: ‘Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not. ... Whatever she feels, it, at least, must be real.’ Stephen is not sure: ‘Pascal, if I remember rightly would not suffer his mother to kiss him as he feared the contact of her sex.—Pascal was a pig, said Cranly.—Aloysius of Gonzaga, I think, was of the same mind, Stephen said.—And he was another pig then, said Cranly.—The church calls him a saint, Stephen objected.—I don’t care a flaming damn what anyone calls him, Cranly said rudely and flatly. I call him a pig’ (pp. 241–2). This is a significant conversation, because it brings Stephen to a decision. ‘Away then: it is time to go. A voice spoke softly to Stephen’s lonely heart, bidding him to go. ... Yes, he would go’ (p. 245). Going meant giving up his form of life. Two reasons led him to do it: one internal and one external. The internal one was Stephen’s newfound resolve: ‘I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can’ (p. 247). The external reason Cranly gave Stephen for rejecting his form of life was that it prevented Stephen from seeing facts as they were. The facts to which Cranly so crudely pointed were ‘a mother’s love’, ‘the enchanting touch of ... music or of a woman’s hand’ (p. 244), and ‘the sufferings of women’ (p. 245). The form of life corrupted how Stephen saw these simple facts by infusing innocent enjoyment with a sense of sin and by regarding the palpable ubiquitous suffering surrounding them in their ‘stinking dunghill of a world’ as deserved and redemptive. Stephen, then, rejected his form of life partly because the balance of his beliefs and emotions finally shifted against it. What he was brought up to believe and feel was overwhelmed by his doubts. He did not come to believe something else, nor did he find himself with positive feelings for some other form of life. He did not reject his form of life for another. He rejected it because it no longer commanded his assent. He could no longer pay what he saw as ‘a false homage to a symbol behind which are massed twenty centuries of authority and veneration’ (p. 243). And he rejected it so that ‘I may learn in my own life and away from home and friends

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what the heart is and what it feels. ... I go to encounter ... the reality of experience and forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race’ (p. 253). These reasons were internal to Stephen, based on his reflections on his beliefs and emotions, and they formed the motive on which he acted. There were also the external reasons brought to Stephen’s attention by Cranly. These reasons had to do with the falseness of Stephen’s earlier beliefs and the inappropriateness of his earlier feelings. Cranly showed him the deficiencies of their shared form of life and that it no longer reflected what they believed and felt. An adequate form of life must provide a plausible account of the facts that seem uncontroversial to its participants. Cranly showed Stephen that their form of life failed to do this. It denied the possibility of innocent love, such as mothers feel for their children, and of innocent pleasures, such as those of music and sex. And it denied also that there is a great deal of undeserved suffering around them. I want now to broaden these external reasons beyond the particularities to which Cranly points and which add strength to Stephen’s internal reasons for rejecting his form of life. There are facts, I believe, that all adequate forms of life must take into account. These facts have to do with basic physiological, psychological, and social needs that all normal human beings have always, everywhere. There are, for example, physiological needs for nutrition, rest, and the avoidance of severe and lasting pain; psychological needs for contact with other humans, the absence of terror, and some opportunities to choose how one lives; and social needs are for rules protecting physical security, for division of labor, and for some means of resolving conflicts with others. If these needs are not satisfied, creatures like us suffer. If the lack of satisfaction is prolonged, we are damaged, often irrevocably. These needs are created by human nature, not by a form of life. Forms of life depend on the satisfaction of these needs, rather than the needs on forms of life. For a form of life is a form of human life, and there could be no human life without the satisfaction of these needs. The recognition and the satisfaction of these needs, therefore, is a minimum condition of the adequacy of any form of life. One kind of external reason for or against a particular form of life, then, is based on how well or badly it meets this minimum condition. It


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does not require a common evaluative culture to know that a form of life that countenances the murder, enslavement, starvation, or torture of its participants is a bad form of life. And one that prohibits such practices is, to that extent, good. From this follows another kind of external reason provided by the comparison of forms of life. It is a simple question of fact which of two forms of life satisfies better particular basic needs. A form of life in which human sacrifice, cannibalism, the mutilation of criminals, or clitoridectomy are accepted practices is, in that respect, worse than another form of life in which they are not accepted. And, moving to less basic matters, there are excellent external reasons for saying—regardless of what the prevailing common evaluative culture is—that of two forms of life one is better than the other if it is more prosperous, more secure, and provides better education, housing, and health care.

5.5. Personal evaluation: Conclusion McDowell et al. are mistaken in supposing that there could be no reasons against a style of life external to the form of life that provides the style’s evaluative context. But this mistake, if it is one, does not exclude a crucially important point on which I agree with them. External reasons against a style of life normally presuppose a form of life shared by the giver and the receiver of such reasons. This is so because personal evaluation proceeds from the point of view of the person whose life is being evaluated. The standard of evaluation is enjoyment. And the evaluation is always of the extent to which a particular person’s life is enjoyable. The evaluation is favorable if the style of life expresses the person’s individuality. Whether the style does that depends on the coherence, realism, and endurance of the person’s attitude to life, and on whether the person’s dominant activities and the manner in which they are performed reflect that attitude. I have stressed the possibility and importance of there being external reasons that could be adduced for or against forms of life because I wanted to stress that there are minimum conditions that must be met by all forms of life if they are to enable participants to have an enjoyable life. The minimum conditions, I have argued, are dependent on human nature,

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and no adequate form of life can ignore them. Many different forms of life can and do meet these minimum conditions, but the conditions are minimum and an enjoyable life requires much more. My agreement with McDowell et al. is about a shared form of life being necessary for personal evaluation once the minimum conditions have been met. My disagreement with them is about there being minimum conditions that can be specified independently of forms of life. If, then, we focus on personal evaluation of styles of life once the minimum conditions have been met and in the context of a form of life that does meet them, we still need to recognize an important difference between the internal and external forms of personal evaluation. Internal evaluations are our evaluation of our own lives by asking how enjoyable they are. The aim of such evaluations is to make our attitude to life more coherent, realistic, and durable, and to make our dominant activities and their manner reflect our attitude better. External evaluations are evaluations of our lives by others. They too aim to make the evaluated lives more enjoyable, but not by making the attitude more coherent, realistic, and durable and its activities and manner reflect its attitude better. For these improvements we must each make for ourselves; others cannot do this for us. What others can do, however, is to call our attention to obstacles that prevent us from making the improvements needed for a more enjoyable life. These obstacles are self-deception, wishful thinking, fear, thoughtlessness, lethargy, and the many other psychological propensities that stand in the way of seeing one’s life as it is. Internal evaluations, therefore, tend to yield reasons for improvement, whereas external evaluations tend to yield reasons for correcting propensities that prevent improvement. This understanding of external evaluations and reasons makes tractable the problem stated at the beginning of this chapter: finding a balance between negative and positive liberty, between correcting faulty internal evaluations and using external evaluations coercively. The solution is to regard only those external evaluations defensible that help individuals to make their own life more enjoyable. Such external evaluations are enabling, not coercive. They enable individuals to recognize the obstacles they need to overcome if they want to make their lives more enjoyable. They also make it possible to distinguish between admirable and deficient styles of life. Admirable styles of life are more coherent, realistic, and durable, have


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a narrower gap between the attitude and the manner of dominant activities than deficient styles of life. The great and rare art of which the epigraph of this chapter speaks is the art of improving internal evaluations with the help of external evaluations, making our style of life more admirable and less deficient, and thereby making life more enjoyable.

6 Three-Dimensional Morality Instead of saying ‘Ethics is the enquiry into what is good’ I could have said Ethics is the enquiry into what is valuable, or, into what is important, or ... into the meaning of life, or into what makes life worth living. I believe if you look at all these phrases you will get a rough idea as to what Ethics is concerned with. (Ludwig Wittgenstein, ‘A Lecture on Ethics’, 1965)

6.1. Structure This chapter is about the relation between moral and personal evaluation. I will argue that they are not rival modes of evaluation. Personal evaluation is one kind of moral evaluation. It may conflict with other kinds of moral evaluation, but it cannot conflict with moral evaluation itself. My argument depends on a particular understanding of morality, and I begin with an account of it. Morality is three-dimensional both literally and metaphorically: it has three dimensions and it is capacious enough to include a wide variety of moral concerns. Its aim is partly to describe our moral concerns as they now exist. But it goes beyond description to classify moral concerns by noting differences and similarities among them. It aims also to explain the reasons that may be given for these moral concerns, and thus provide a basis on which they can be justified or criticized. The account, therefore, is also partly prescriptive. Giving this account is analogous to giving an account of the grammar of a language. What the grammar is can be extracted from how competent native speakers use the language. They are rarely conscious of the grammar inherent in their language, and they are often careless and ungrammatical.

Three-Dimensional Morality 95 But they know in most cases what uses of language are correct or incorrect, even if they cannot explain what makes them so. But explanations can be given—much of the time by grammarians—for which use is which, and thus to justify or criticize them. So it is with morality and competent moral agents. That is why an account of morality, like an account of the grammar of a language, involves description, classification, and prescription. Moralities differ from one form of life to another, but, if the morality of a particular form of life is adequate, it aims to secure some of the conditions in which individuals sharing that form of life can make a good life for themselves. These conditions are universal, social, and personal. The dimensions of morality correspond to these conditions: the universal dimension is concerned with conditions that are the same for all human beings; the social dimension includes conditions that hold in a particular form of life and may or may not hold in other forms; and the personal dimension focuses on conditions that hold for particular individuals but not for others. In each dimension, securing the conditions counts as good and violating them as bad. Since they are secured or violated primarily by actions, there are universally, socially, and personally right and wrong actions. Each dimension has possibilities and limits. The possibilities are the good lives whose conditions are being secured, and the limits are the prohibitions against violating these conditions. In order to secure the possibilities and prohibit the violation of limits, each dimensions has rules establishing what actions are right or wrong. These rules are moral conventions. If the prevailing conventions secure the conditions, they are right in a derivative sense; if they fail, they are wrong. The justification or criticism of the morality of a particular form of life, then, depends on how well or badly its conventions secure the conditions of good lives in each of the three dimensions of morality. I turn now to the universal, social, and personal conditions of good lives.

6.2. Contents The universal dimension of morality is concerned with the satisfaction of basic needs that are the same for all human beings at all times and

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places and under all conditions. The most obvious are physiological needs for nutrition, oxygen, protection from the elements, rest and motion, consumption and elimination, and so forth. To these may be added basic psychological needs for companionship, appreciation, the absence of terror and self-loathing, having a meaningful life, and the like. There are also basic social needs for a civilized form of life in which there are order and security; division of labor; and rules that provide protection against crime and illness, coordinate individual activities, adjudicate conflicts, educate children, and aim at a life beyond mere subsistence. The satisfaction of these basic physiological, psychological, and social needs is a condition of all good lives, provided they are reasonably conceived, for the prolonged frustration of these needs damages and incapacitates everyone in all circumstances. The specific satisfactions of specific basic needs are universal goods. Since all moralities aim at securing the conditions of a good life, each must have conventions that govern the distribution and possession of universal goods and provide protection against being deprived of them. These are required conventions, because good lives are impossible without them. The aim of the universal dimension of morality is thus to secure universal goods, consisting in the satisfaction of basic needs. Required conventions are means to securing them. They are universal because the basic needs they aim to satisfy exist in all forms of life for all human beings and they are impersonal because they apply to all human beings equally. From this follows the standard of evaluation by which in the universal dimension of morality actions and conventions are judged. Their rightness or wrongness is proportional to their success or failure in satisfying the basic needs of people living together in a particular context. Consider the universal good of life as an illustration of how universal evaluation may proceed in this moral dimension. All reasonable moralities must be committed to the protection of human lives, so they must have a required convention prohibiting murder. But this leaves it open if and when murder can be justified and how far its prohibition extends. What is the status of suicide, abortion, capital punishment, war, euthanasia, revenge, feuds, infanticide, and the like? What is recognized as a justification or an excuse? These are difficult questions that must be answered by all moralities, and they may answer them differently. This, however, must not be allowed to obscure the universal good of life and the necessity of

Three-Dimensional Morality 97 having a required convention prohibiting murder. All reasonable moralities must recognize that there is a difference between clear cases in which the required convention is unambiguously violated and unclear cases that stand in need of interpretation. Murder for fun, pleasure, or profit are clear cases in which the required convention is violated. Disagreements about whether an act constitutes murder are likely to occur. If the disagreements are reasonable, they lead to unclear cases. All moralities are likely to give rise to unclear cases, because the application of required conventions in emergencies, to borderline cases, to acknowledged homicide where the facts or the motives are not fully known is controversial. But unclear cases do not obscure clear ones. It may be unclear whether a homicide constitutes murder, but, if it does, and if it is motivated by fun, pleasure, or profit, then any reasonable morality will prohibit it. Not everyone is reasonable and morally committed, of course. However, that there are unreasonable and immoral people who act accordingly casts no more doubt on clear requirements in the universal dimension of morality than the actions of stupid and self-destructive people do on the clear requirements of health. Reasonable moral disagreements are not straightforwardly factual. People may agree that a homicide has occurred, but disagree whether it constitutes murder, and, if so, whether it is justifiable or excusable. These disagreements are not intractable, because the opposing sides are committed to the universal good of life and to the required convention that protects it, so that the burden of proof can be assigned. If they believe that murder is prohibited, but this homicide is not an instance of it, then they owe an explanation of why the act in question is an exception. Such explanations may be good or bad. Good ones try to excuse the act on the ground that it was accidental or done in ignorance, or, if it was deliberate and informed, then justify it on the ground that the alternatives to it were worse. Killing in self-defense or war may or may not be morally justified. Bad explanations will lack convincing excuses or justifications. There will also be explanations that are not clearly good or bad because it is difficult to weigh the reasons adduced in support of them. Be that as it may, unclear cases do not call into question the requirement that all reasonable moralities must meet: the protection of universal goods by required conventions. Required conventions are not unconditional. They may be justifiably violated in a particular case if the protection of universal goods in general

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warrants it. History is full of hard cases in which the protection of universal goods in general has made it reasonable and morally justified to do in a particular case what required conventions normally prohibit. We may conclude, therefore, that all reasonable moralities must be committed to securing universal goods and protecting required conventions, and that both are derived from the aim of satisfying basic needs. Meeting this commitment is the primary concern of the universal dimension of morality. The social dimension of morality is concerned with securing the social goods recognized by people sharing a form of life. There is a plurality of social goods within any form of life, and their plurality is further extended by the many different social goods in different forms of life. In all forms of life, however, there are rules aimed to secure social goods and prohibit their violation. These rules are variable conventions: they vary with forms of life and with changes within a form of life. These conventions are general, not universal. They hold only in a form of life and they may not hold in others. But, when they hold, they apply to everyone in that form of life, so they are general. Some variable conventions are also impersonal because they are supposed to provide social goods for everyone equally, like police protection or the use of public roads. Some other variable conventions, however, are not impersonal, because they provide social goods for some but not for others because the goods are competitive or scarce, such as a particular job or a prize, or being taught by a good teacher or having a fair-minded boss. Social goods and variable conventions constitute the evaluative framework of a particular form of life. Part of the upbringing and socialization of people sharing that form of life consists in acquainting them with this evaluative framework. They derive from it both their moral identity and the evaluative standard by which they justify or criticize actions and variable conventions in the social dimension of morality. It is helpful to distinguish between two types of social goods. One type is formed of the particular ways in which the universal goods are interpreted in a particular context. Consider, for instance, the basic needs for food, companionship, and the adjudication of conflicts. The need for food must be met, otherwise we die. But there are great differences in how it is met. In all forms of life people reject some perfectly nutritious food, such as beef, pork, human flesh, insects, or bitter or malodorous plants; they all

Three-Dimensional Morality 99 regard some as delicacies; and often what is rejected in one form of life is regarded as a delicacy in another. In all forms of life there are customs about mealtimes, about what is eaten, when, with whom, what should be eaten raw and what cooked, who prepares the food, what is served to guests, and so forth. The same is true of companionship. In all forms of life there are close relationships that alleviate loneliness, provide mutual aid, respect, trust, satisfaction, and enable people to cope with adversities in their lives. Love, friendship, family, and sex exist everywhere, but there are great variations in whom it is thought proper to love, what friendship implies, who counts as a family member, or as a proper sexual partner. Similarly, forms of life have ways to prevent violence by adjudicating conflicts among people, but these ways differ from one form of life to another. Some rely on the legal or political system, others on religious authorities or public assemblies, yet others on oracles, or bribery, or bargaining, or on trials of strength, rhetoric, or some other skill. In all forms of life there are shared ways of interpreting universal goods and shared conventions aiming to secure the goods thus interpreted, but the interpretations and conventions vary with forms of life. This is why the goods are social and the conventions variable. Another type of social good includes aspects of life whose connection with universal goods is more remote, such as ethnicity, religious affiliation, ways of making a living, education, patriotism, sports, music, literature, science, hobbies, and so forth. It includes also the countless customs, rituals, and ceremonies of everyday life that mark significant occasions, such as birth, marriage, and death; conventions about flirtation, competition, clothing, and housing; and the appropriate ways of expressing gratitude, regret, contempt, resentment, admiration, and the like. It includes as well what counts as politeness, tact, generosity, insult, making a promise, being superficial, and so on. People sharing a form of life are familiar with both types of social goods. These goods create expectations and leave their mark on the characters of people who have lived there for a sufficiently long time. They are building blocks of the evaluative framework from which individuals derive the values by which they live. Their expectations, characters, and forms of life jointly constitute a significant part of their moral identity. As the satisfaction of basic needs is a condition of a good life and the standard of evaluation in the universal dimension of morality, so moral

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identity is a condition of a good life and the standard of evaluation in the social dimension of morality. And, just as the required conventions are conditional because the protection of universal goods collectively may require the violation of a particular required convention in a particular case, so variable conventions are conditional because the protection of social goods collectively may require the violation of particular variable conventions in a particular case. There is, however, a difference. The violations of universal goods must be exceptional if good lives are to be possible, but the violations of social goods are likely to be routine in a form of life. The reason for this is that universal goods depend on unchanging basic needs, whereas social goods depend on the prevailing evaluative framework that continually changes in response to changing technological, demographic, cultural, social, and other conditions. It would be a mistake to suppose that continual changes in moral identity signify its lesser importance for good lives. Moral identity is as important for a good life as the satisfaction of basic needs, because without it people sharing a form of life would not know how to satisfy their basic needs, how to relate to each other, and how to make the choices that are open to them. That knowledge, however, is as consistent with changes in moral identity as knowledge of one’s language is with changes in usage. And, just as speaking a language is to know how to say what one wants to say, so having a moral identity is to know how to do what one wants to do. Reasonable moralities, therefore, must protect social goods and variable conventions. The protection, however, is of the system of social goods and variable conventions, not of changing specific constituents of it. It is the having of a moral identity that is a condition of a good life, not the particular social goods and variable conventions that temporarily constitute it. Reasonable moralities must combine the recognition of the importance of protecting moral identity with a great deal of flexibility that allows for changes in its constituents. The conditions of a good life in the universal dimension of morality, having to do with the satisfaction of unchanging basic needs, will therefore be largely the same in different forms of life, whereas the conditions of a good life in the social dimension will be the same only as far as the protection of moral identity is concerned, but they will differ in respect of the changing social goods and variable conventions that constitute moral identity in different forms of life or in different periods within the same form of life.

Three-Dimensional Morality 101 Thus there are both similarities and differences between universal and social evaluation. The similarities are that they aim to secure a condition necessary for a good life; recognize that the condition involves the possession of goods of a particular kind and conformity to a particular kind of moral convention; use the conventions to establish possibilities and limits on which a good life depends; and appeal to an evaluative standard. The differences between universal and social evaluation are that the former aims to secure unchanging universal goods, whereas the latter aims to secure changing social goods; the conventions of the former are required, universal, and impersonal, whereas the conventions of the latter are variable, hold generally in a particular form of life, not universally in all forms of life, and, while some are impersonal, others are not; and the possibilities and limits of the former depend on human nature independently of social context, but those of the latter are context dependent. This brings us to the personal dimension of morality whose concern is with individuals making an enjoyable life for themselves. The goods of this dimension are personal, derived from living in a way that reflects one’s individuality and deepest concerns. One means to the possession of such personal goods is the development of a style of life that consists of a coherent, realistic, and durable attitude to life and a pattern of actions performed in a manner that reflects the attitude. The standard of evaluation is whether the personal goods and the style of life of a particular individual provide an enjoyable life. The possibilities and limits of this dimension of morality vary with forms of life and individuals, so that they are neither universal or general, nor impersonal, since they differ from person to person, depending on their characters and circumstances. In contemporary moral thought, the personal dimension of morality is systematically neglected. For this reason my chief aim in the preceding five chapters has been to describe and defend its importance. I have argued that a good life is both responsible and enjoyable, and that the aim of morality is to secure the conditions in which it is possible to live responsibly and enjoyably. It would be a basic misunderstanding of my argument to suppose that the universal and social dimensions of morality are concerned with responsibility and the importance of the personal dimension is that it is concerned with enjoyment. Each dimension is concerned with both responsibilities and enjoyments. Enjoyments are connected with the realization of possibilities and responsibilities with conduct within the limits

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of each dimension. The possibilities are the possession of universal, social, and personal goods made possible by required and variable conventions and styles of life. It is enjoyable to have one’s basic physiological, psychological, and social needs satisfied; to be part of a form of life in which others share our moral identity, are hospitable to our endeavors, and evaluate people, actions, institutions, and conventions as we do; and to conduct ourselves in a style that reflects our individuality, deepest concerns, and attitudes to life. But there are also responsibilities in each dimension set by the limits within which universal, social, and personal goods may be enjoyed. Acting responsibly is to conform to the required conventions of the universal dimension, the variable conventions of the social dimension, and in a style of life that reflects a coherent, realistic, and durable attitude to life. In giving this account of the structure and content of the threedimensional view of morality I have so far made no mention of moral conflicts and of the crucial question of how to resolve them. But, since moral conflicts occur routinely and a good life requires some way of resolving them, I must now discuss them and how they might be resolved.

6.3. Moral conflicts Conflicts often occur between the requirements of morality and furthering political, ideological, religious, practical, aesthetic, or other goals. Our present concern, however, is with moral conflicts—that is, conflicts within morality, not between morality and some nonmoral undertaking. Given the three-dimensional view of morality, moral conflicts may occur either between two goods in the same dimension, or between two goods in different dimensions. I begin with the first kind of conflict between goods within the universal, social, or personal dimension of morality. The resolution of these conflicts depends on answering the question of which of the conflicting goods is more important as judged by the standard of evaluation proper to the dimension of morality within which the conflict occurs. The universal dimension’s standard of evaluation is the satisfaction of basic needs. If there is a conflict, say, between adequate nutrition and cooperation, it might be settled in favor of the former on the grounds that adequate nutrition is a condition of there being people who could

Three-Dimensional Morality 103 cooperate. The social dimension’s standard is the maintenance of moral identity in a particular form of life. In our form of life, for example, if there is a conflict between equality and prosperity, it might be resolved in favor of the latter, for equal distribution presupposes having sufficient resources to distribute. The personal dimension’s standard is the enjoyment of life. Taking our context again as an example, if there is a conflict between moral education and autonomy, it might be resolved in favor of moral education, because it may be thought that without it autonomy will be misused. Suppose, however, that the reasons I offer above for resolving the conflicts in a particular way are rejected in favor of reasons for resolving them in another way. It may be argued that cooperation is more important than adequate nutrition because only by cooperation can adequate nutrition be produced; or that equality is more important than prosperity because our moral identity makes us value more the equality of all those who share our identity than the surplus that prosperity makes available; or that autonomy should prevail over moral education because styles of life can bring enjoyment only if they are autonomously chosen, and it is better to risk having some deficient styles of life than to impose admirable ones by coercive moral education. Disagreements of this kind are the stuff of moral life. The point of these examples is not to provide a blueprint of how to put an end to them, but to show the kinds of reasons that must be weighed in favor of one resolution over another. The important consideration is the availability of reasons and the need to explain why one set of reasons is more weighty than the other. The three-dimensional view of morality has the resources to provide such reasons and explanations, because the respective weight of reasons depends on their importance as judged by the standard of evaluation in each dimension of morality. What defenders of different resolutions need to explain is why the one they favor is more important than their rivals for the satisfaction of basic needs, or the maintenance of moral identity, or having an enjoyable life. There are several reasons why such explanations may not lead to a consensus about how a particular conflict should be resolved. One is that, although an explanation is good, it is rejected as a result of some intellectual or moral failing. This reflects on those who reject it, not on the explanation. Another is that the explanation is inconclusive because

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the reasons it relies on outweigh only marginally the contrary reasons. This shows that additional reasons are needed. Yet another possibility is that there is agreement about what reasons are relevant, but there is disagreement about what weight should be attached to them. This requires adducing additional reasons for the conflicting weightings. A further possibility is that all available explanations are seriously defective. The remedy in all these cases is to seek further reasons. The three-dimensional view of morality points in the direction where additional reasons may be sought. Let us now turn to the type of conflict that may occur between goods of different dimensions of morality. The requirements of basic needs, moral identity, and an enjoyable life often conflict, and the question is how the three-dimensional view resolves such conflicts. The simplest approach to their resolution is unsatisfactory, but understanding why it is so will point toward one that is better. This unsatisfactory resolution is to claim that the universal dimension is more basic than the social, which in turn is more basic than the personal, so conflicts between the goods of different dimensions should be resolved in favor of the goods of the more basic dimension. The reason that may be given for this simplest resolution is that the satisfaction of basic needs is more important for a good life than the maintenance of moral identity, and that the maintenance of moral identity is more important than the enjoyment of life. This order of importance, it may be said, reflects the fact that the enjoyment of life presupposes the evaluative framework that constitutes moral identity and from which enjoyable styles of life are derived, and moral identity presupposes that the basic needs are being satisfied. This approach to conflict resolution fails because, although it is true that the personal dimension presupposes the social dimension, which presupposes the universal dimension, it does not follow that the presupposed dimension is more important than the presupposing one. In fact, the three dimensions are equally necessary and equally important for a good life. This becomes apparent if it is recognized that a good life may be impossible even if the basic needs are satisfied and moral identity is maintained. For a good life requires living in a way that reflects our individuality, deepest concerns, and attitudes to life, and this is what makes life enjoyable and what adequate styles of life provide. We may reasonably regard ourselves deprived of the possibility of a good life even if our basic needs are met and the moral identity of our form of life is maintained because we are

Three-Dimensional Morality 105 forced to live a miserable life contrary to our style of life. Similarly, people sharing a form of life may regard themselves deprived of the possibility of a good life, even if their basic needs are satisfied, if their moral identity has been destroyed by invaders or adverse conditions. The simplest approach to resolving conflicts between the goods of different moral dimensions fails because it mistakenly regards the goods of one dimension as always more important than the goods of the others. A better approach to conflict resolution requires understanding that there often are reasons for resolving conflicts between the goods of different dimensions in favor of both of the conflicting goods and what makes the conflicts serious is that these contrary reasons are incompatible. To make this concrete consider two examples. In the Apocrypha we read: ‘Eleazar, one of the scribes in high position, a man advanced in age and of noble presence, was being forced to open his mouth to eat swine’s flesh. But he, welcoming death with honour rather than life with pollution, went up to the rack of his own accord, spitting out flesh, as men ought to go who have the courage to refuse things that it is not right to taste, even for the natural love of life.’¹ Eleazar’s conflict was between a social good of his religion that formed an essential part of his and his co-religionists’ moral identity and the universal good of life. He resolved it in favor of the social good. The reason he might have given is that he regarded a life that involved acting contrary to his religious beliefs not worth living. And we can all envisage situations in which we would rather die than live on certain terms, even if the terms that we would find unacceptable were quite different from Eleazar’s. Yet Eleazar’s belief that pork is somehow harmful is false. The belief has long endured and its significance transcends questions of nutrition and spoiled food, but the fact remains that this aura of significance rests on a factual error. Eleazar sacrificed his life in the service of an error, and that is a waste. There are then good reasons on both sides. To decide between them we have to think further. We have to ask whether Eleazar’s belief about pork was merely symbolic or whether he had supposed that the symbolism rested on a factual base. If the first, we can see that he had a good reason to die, even if we do not share his reason. If the second, we will think that his reason was bad. The weight of reasons may fall one way or another depending on further reasons about the respective importance of facts and symbols in Eleazar’s religious moral identity. So the conflict

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can be resolved on the basis of reasons, but it need not be resolved in favor of the universal good of life, as the simple approach to conflict resolution supposes. There may be good reasons for regarding social goods as more important than universal goods. The second example comes from Stuart Hampshire’s fine essay ‘Two Theories of Morality’. It is a conflict Hampshire attributes to Flaubert: Consider the romantic ideal of ... [Flaubert] who, as an artist, neglects every duty and obligation which could stand in the way of the claims of his art upon him. He gives absolute priority to ... imagination and to originality and to the invention of new forms of expression. ... [He has] reasons, the result of long reflection ... for this preferred way of life. ... [He] will not dispute the established and essential virtues of moral character ... but he will adapt and correct and restrict the ethical ideal to take account of ... the peculiarities of his own temperament and emotional needs, as he believes them to be. He will find his justification in an argument that art has taken over some of the former functions of religion, and also that the distortions of modern life can only be rendered tolerable by aesthetic experience and the free exercise of imagination. ... He argues that ... he has to make a harsh choice and to discard some good things in order to realize others; a softer compromise would lead to an inferior achievement.²

Hampshire’s Flaubert, then, faces a conflict between the personal good of a literary life that expresses his individuality, involves the cultivation of his considerable talent, makes his life enjoyable and the social good of moral identity, derived from a common evaluative framework and shared with others in his form of life. He resolves it in favor of his personal good. He knows what he is doing, gives reasons for it, and regards his personal good as more important than the social good. Once again, there are reasons for and against Flaubert’s resolution of this conflict. The reason against it is that Flaubert was mistaken in supposing that he had opted out of the prevailing evaluative framework and moral identity. He was right to think that his literary style of life was incompatible with the prevailing bourgeois social goods of frugality, furtive sex, unthinking religion, hypocrisy, and philistinism. But he was wrong to think that his education, eating and drinking habits, responses to the weather, attitude to illness, expectations about decent housing and what his money could buy, the way he dressed and moved, his sense of humor, and above all his language were not to a very large extent derived from the evaluative framework that provided the moral identity he was not even aware of

Three-Dimensional Morality 107 having, and could not, therefore, be rejecting. This is not because Flaubert was stupid or unreflective, but because many of the influences of the moral identity in which we are raised and in which we continue to live as an adult are unconscious and extremely difficult to eradicate. We can certainly rebel against parts of our evaluative framework, but we normally do so by appealing to other parts of it with which the rejected ones are thought to be inconsistent. The chief reason for Flaubert’s resolution of his conflict is that the style of life that reflected his individuality, deepest concerns, and attitude to life was connected with his literary life, which, he hoped, would make his life enjoyable, and which he pursued in defiance of the surrounding bourgeois morality. That he got the relation between his literary life and evaluative framework partly wrong had little effect on the great personal good that literary life was for him. It may be thought that the approach to conflict resolution that emerges from these two examples is unsatisfactory. The three-dimensional view of morality must be able to resolve conflicts between universal, social, and personal goods, but all it seems to do is to call for the weighing of reasons for or against particular resolutions without reaching clear answers to clear conflicts. This objection is mistaken, but seeing why it is so requires considering the alternative approach to conflict resolution that the objection presupposes, and that is what I will now do.

6.4. A wrong approach to conflict resolution More than 100 years ago Matthew Arnold complained that ‘morals are often treated in a narrow and false fashion; they are bound up with systems of thought and belief which have had their day; they are fallen into the hands of pedants and professional dealers; they grow tiresome’.³ Arnold’s observation remains true. The wrong approach to conflict resolution I will now discuss is bound up with systems of thought that treat morality in a narrow and false fashion. It concentrates on one of the three dimensions of morality and insists that its concerns are alone the true concerns of morality. The standards, requirements, and goods of the other dimensions are, then, said to be morally acceptable only insofar as they conform to those of the favored dimension.

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Moralists think that moral identity and the enjoyment of life are morally acceptable only if they conform to the required conventions of the universal dimension. Relativists think that morality is nothing but the evaluations that follow from the moral identity of a particular form of life. Required conventions and styles of life are morally acceptable only if they conform to the variable conventions of the social dimension. Egoists think that morality is about the enjoyment of life as each individual conceives it. Required and variable conventions, universal and social goods, are morally acceptable only and to the extent to which they contribute to one’s enjoyment of life. The personal dimension alone represents the one true morality. Moralists, relativists, and egoists each treat morality in a narrow fashion; each falsify two essential dimensions of morality by accepting only those segments of them that can be made to fit the favored dimension; each mistakenly identifies morality with one of its dimensions. Egoists insist that the decisive moral voice is that of the I who seeks to enjoy life. Relativists claim that the decisive moral voice belongs to the we who share a form of life and seek to perpetuate its evaluative framework from which the significance of whatever we do derives. Moralists are convinced that the decisive moral voice is the one that speaks for everyone, or, rather, would speak for everyone provided everyone were as well informed and reasonable as are the moralists. Each hears the other voices, but only faintly, because each endeavors to make its own the loudest. Each has reasons for its own preference, but the reasons of each are based on assumptions that the others do not share and, therefore, do not find convincing. What follows is cacophony in which the moral evaluations spoken in one voice are challenged by those who speak with another voice. Moralists, relativists, and egoists each mistake the dimension of morality from which they speak for the whole of morality and they fail to see what they do as narrow and false. They criticize their opponents for having a narrow and false view of morality that the critics recognize and the defenders fail to recognize as false. And so these ‘pedants and professional dealers’, as Arnold calls them, are engaged in controversies that will come to an end only if the unlikely happens and the participants renounce their own narrow and false view. Another reason why these controversies are recalcitrant is that each party to them emphasizes the moral importance of a good life that the other misses. Moralists are right: there are universal goods without which no life

Three-Dimensional Morality 109 can be good; securing them depends on required conventions that must hold universally and impersonally. But moralists are wrong to insist that goods and conventions can be morally acceptable only if they are universal and impersonal. Social goods and variable conventions, personal goods and styles of life, may be morally acceptable even though they vary with forms of life and individuals. There are many conditions of a good life that are not universal and impersonal. Relativists are right: social goods are context-dependent requirements of a good life; securing them depends on conventions that vary with the evaluative framework of forms of life; and this makes social goods and variable conventions morally important. But relativists are wrong in failing to see that the satisfaction of basic needs is also a condition of a good life, and that such needs follow from human nature, not from the evaluative framework of a particular form of life. They are also wrong in failing to see that a good life must be enjoyable, that enjoyment depends on conditions that differ from individual to individual, and that a form of life may not be a condition of but an obstacle to an individual’s enjoyment of life. Egoists are right: a good life is the life of an individual and that individual’s enjoyment of that life has central moral importance. But they are wrong not to see that a good life depends also on universal and social conditions that hold independently of whether particular individuals recognize them or whether they find acceptable the limits on their enjoyment that the need to secure these conditions imposes on them. The moralist, relativist, and egoist approach to conflict resolution consists in appealing to the standard, requirements, and goods of the dimension of morality they favor. They all can and do adduce reasons in favor of resolving conflicts in their own way. But these reasons, one and all, are unconvincing, because, as I will now argue, they are vitiated by a problem they can neither avoid nor satisfactorily resolve. The problem emerges if we ask about the force of the ‘should’ in their claim that conflicts should be resolved in the way they favor. Moralists claim that universal and impersonal requirements should always override conflicting claims because they protect conditions without which life cannot be good. Relativists claim that moral identity should always override conflicting claims because it provides the values that might make life good. And egoists claim that one’s enjoyment of life should always override conflicting claims because an unenjoyable life cannot be good.

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None of these claims is obvious, to put it mildly. For why would reasonable people accept that one of these conditions of a good life should always be regarded as more important than other conditions of a good life? This question demands an answer. If the answer is to be convincing, it must be supported by a reason that explains why one should always give up a necessary condition of a good life for the sake of another necessary condition. The problem for moralists, relativists, and egoists, therefore, is that, if they are to do better than voice a merely arbitrary, question-begging, and thus unreasonable preference for their own view, then each must provide the reason needed, but the reason cannot be based on assumptions that their opponents have good reason to question. None of them, however, has provided the reason that would meet this condition. This has not been for lack of trying. It is likely, therefore, that the reason cannot be found. Consider moralist attempts first. Their view is that the reason for resolving conflicts in favor of the universal dimension of morality follows from the very nature of morality and reason. Commitment to morality is commitment to a universal and impersonal principle that expresses the requirements of both morality and reason. Insofar as the claims of the social and personal dimensions conform to that principle, they are morally acceptable. But, if they conflict with what the principle requires, they are immoral and unreasonable. This principle, according to Kant, perhaps the most influential moralist, is ‘the supreme principle of morality [which provides] moral laws [that] hold for every rational being as such’. This law ‘is an imperative which, without being based on, and conditioned by, any further purpose to be attained by a certain line of conduct, enjoins this conduct immediately. This imperative is categorical ... the imperative of morality.’ There is ‘only a single categorical imperative and it is this: ‘‘Act only on that maxim which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.’’ ’⁴ Kant’s principle undoubtedly captures an important feature of morality, but it also has very serious problems. Kant is right: there are situations in which morality requires action motivated by the categorical imperative. The requirement is to act in the way one would want anyone in that situation to act. This is why the categorical imperative is universal—holding for everyone—and impersonal—holding for everyone equally. Acting in this

Three-Dimensional Morality 111 way is typically the responsibility of judges, referees, the police, those who compare and evaluate the work, qualifications, or performance of others, and they must meet their responsibility regardless of their social or personal values. It is thus a consequence of the categorical imperative—the supreme principle of morality—that, since the social and personal dimensions are neither universal nor impersonal, they are not dimensions of morality at all. They are morally acceptable only insofar as they conform to the categorical imperative. One of the many problems with this is that it is naive to suppose that announcing a principle in portentous language is enough to make people believe it and act on it. Why would people follow a principle that makes it their responsibility to disregard their own moral identity and enjoyment of life? Why would they ignore both the evaluative framework of their form of life from which they derive the significance of whatever they do and their own deepest concerns and attitudes to life that reflect their individuality and make their life enjoyable? Kant says that they should ignore them because reason and morality require it. The obvious response is that, if reason and morality require one to do that, then there is something very wrong with reason and morality. This, in effect, was Nietzsche’s response in seeking a ‘new immoral or at least unmoralistic ... anti-Kantian ... ‘‘categorical imperative’’ ... which will articulate this new demand: we need a critique of moral values, the value of these values themselves must first be called in question’.⁵ By grossly inflating the importance of the universal dimension of morality, inexcusably denying the perfectly legitimate moral concerns of the social and personal dimensions, and by arbitrarily reinterpreting the requirements of both reason and morality to suit his misguided views, Kant accomplished the remarkable feat of generating skepticism about what he was most concerned with placing beyond doubt. I have argued that a reasonable view of morality must recognize the legitimacy of each of its three dimensions. And I will argue in the next chapter for a view of reason very different from Kant’s. I should not leave Kant without noting that there have been numerous contemporary attempts to recast his views so as to avoid this and other problems with it.⁶ This is not the place for a detailed discussion of them. I merely note that, if the recast Kantian views remain moralist, they do not avoid the problem of ignoring two of the three dimensions of morality. If

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they give up moralism and accept the three-dimensional view of morality, I welcome them. I turn next to the relativist attempt to establish the supremacy of the social dimension of morality in resolving moral conflicts. The relativist view is that what are thought to be universal and personal goods are in fact the social goods of a particular form of life. There can be no genuine conflict between social and any other kind of goods, because all goods are social, the products of the evaluative framework of a form of life. It is only a slight exaggeration to call relativism the official view of sociologists, anthropologists, social psychologists, and many historians as well. They are professionally concerned with the great variety of forms of life and with their formative influence on the beliefs and actions of individuals. This is certainly a legitimate concern and there is much interesting and important work done by social scientists. But it does not follow from their work that morality is no more than one of the products of a form of life, not even if it is acknowledged to be a product that those who share the form of life regard as particularly important. In the preceding chapter (see 5.4) I discussed and criticized the views of McDowell, Lovibond, and Cavell—all deeply influenced by Wittgenstein—who hold that reasons for or against moral beliefs and actions can be internal to the form of life only of those who hold the beliefs and perform the actions. They deny, therefore, that the universal or the personal dimension of morality could provide any morally relevant reasons external to a form of life and thus to the social dimension of morality. The reason relativists give for this denial is that one of the ways in which a form of life influences those who share it is by providing the standards with reference to which they resolve conflicts and recognize what counts as a reason for proposed resolutions. External reasons for moral beliefs, actions, and conflict resolutions would have to be based on standards external to the form of life of those who hold the beliefs, perform the actions, and resolve the conflicts. People, however, never have a reason to be guided by standards external to their form of life. This is why Wittgenstein could impatiently say that ‘I regard it as very important to put an end to all the chatter about ethics—whether there is knowledge in ethics, whether there are values, whether the Good can be defined, etc. ... One constantly tries to say something that does not concern and can never concern the essence of the matter.’⁷ The essence of the matter

Three-Dimensional Morality 113 is that the morally relevant knowledge, values, and definitions involved in conflict resolution have been provided by one’s form of life, and any further search for external reasons for their justification is just chatter that obscures the importance of living according to what one recognizes as good. One’s form of life exhausts the reasons and justifications that can be given. And ‘if I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say ‘‘This is simply what I do’’ ’.⁸ Relativists are right to stress that there are evaluations that reflect nothing more than the conventions of a form of life. But they are wrong to suppose that all moral evaluations are like that. As we have seen, what goods are universal depends on basic physiological, psychological, and social needs that all human beings have and whose satisfaction is a universal requirement of all good lives. Forms of life, of course, influence whether and how basic needs are satisfied in a particular context, but that their satisfaction is good for everyone is independent of forms of life. The basic requirements of a good life, therefore, provide one type of reason external to forms of life. On the basis of such external reasons, forms of life can be compared and criticized or justified. There is good reason for saying that a form of life above the subsistence level is better than one below it, or that one that prohibits child prostitution, the mutilation of criminals, or the torture of dissenters is better than one that allows such barbarities. There are, therefore, some external reasons, and a form of life is not the bedrock on which all moral evaluations must rest. Universal goods based on human nature may conflict with the social goods of a form of life, and it is not a foregone conclusion that the social goods should override the universal ones. The relativist conflict resolution, therefore, fails. The same conclusion may be reached by reflecting on the implications of the not too uncommon occurrence that individuals reject their form of life. Educated Westerners have become itinerant Buddhists monks, Indian peasants Cambridge dons, Dinka cowherds professional basketball players, socialites troglodytes, and many are the prophets and social critics who have stayed at home to proclaim more effectively that their form of life is irredeemably corrupt. Not all such people were unreasonable; some of them did have reasons external to their form of life on the basis of which they came to reject it. One reason of this sort is that the form of life left them no scope for living an enjoyable life, one that reflected their deepest

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concerns and attitudes to life. Their personal good, then, conflicted with the social goods of their form of life and they had reason to resolve the conflict in favor of their personal good. We find, then, once again, that relativists are mistaken in supposing that all genuine conflicts occur within forms of life and that there are no reasons external to one’s form of life on which conflict resolutions could be reasonably based. This finally brings us to egoism, to the view that all reasonable conflict resolutions must appeal to personal reasons provided by the personal dimension of morality.⁹ Egoists need not deny that there are universal and social goods, required and variable conventions, basic needs and the evaluative frameworks of forms of life. What they insist on is that they have reason to take them into consideration if, and only if, they help the egoist live an enjoyable life. The egoist, therefore, resolves all conflicts between the three dimensions of morality in favor of the personal dimension and the enjoyment of life. This makes egoism similar to relativism, because both deny that there are any reasons external to the dimension of morality to which they ascribe overriding importance. The logic of their position is the same; they differ only about the dimension of morality they favor. There is a sense in which the egoist conflict resolution is trivially true. If we are to resolve conflicts reasonably, then we must recognize the reasons that count for or against the conflicting goods, conventions, standards, or whatever. The non-trivial question is what kinds of reasons we recognize as counting and how heavily do we deem them to count. Once this question is asked, the egoist answer to it will be seen to be either false or unhelpful. It is false if the answer is that it is simply up to individuals to decide what they count as reasons. For individuals, according to the egoist, will decide on the basis of how they conceive of a good life for themselves, and their conception may be incoherent, unrealistic, inconstant, and thus unreasonable. This may happen, for instance, if they fail to count as reasons the satisfaction of the basic needs of themselves and of those they care about, or their dependence on the social goods provided by their form of life. Reasons can be given for criticizing such failures, and these reasons will be external to what the egoist recognizes as a reason. If, however, the egoist answer is based on a coherent, realistic, and durable conception of a good life, then it will recognize not just the relevance of the enjoyment of life, but also the need to satisfy basic needs and protect the evaluative framework that provides the social goods

Three-Dimensional Morality 115 on which everyone’s enjoyment of life depends. In that case, however, the conflict among these components of a good life will recur within the personal dimension of morality. The egoist, then, has not resolved the conflict, but merely reinterpreted it, and the need for a reasonable resolution will have been unmet. This time, however, it cannot be resolved by appealing to one’s enjoyment of life, because the conflicting components have all been acknowledged by egoists to be relevant to the enjoyment of life. The conflict, then, will persist until reasons in addition to the enjoyment of life are adduced. If such reasons are found, the egoist answer fails, since it is committed to denying that they can be found. If such reasons cannot be found, then the egoist resolution of the conflict will be arbitrary. I conclude that the moralist, relativist, and egoist approaches to reasonable conflict resolution fail. Each is vitiated by the fallacy of claiming overriding importance for one of the three dimensions of morality. Each is right in stressing the importance of its favored dimension, but each is wrong in exaggerating its importance and denigrating the importance of the others.

6.5. Toward the right approach to conflict resolution Underlying the fallacy that the key to the resolution of moral conflicts is an overriding principle, good, or standard, there are a number of assumptions about the uses of reason. In Isaiah Berlin’s words, these assumptions are ‘that all men have one true purpose ... that the ends of all rational beings must of necessity fit into a single universal, harmonious pattern ... that all conflict ... is due solely to the clash of reason with the irrational or the insufficiently rational ... that such clashes are, in principle, avoidable’. I join Berlin in recognizing the long history and pervasive influence of these assumptions, but nevertheless claiming that ‘Socrates and the creators of the central Western tradition in ethics and politics who followed him [in accepting these assumptions] have been mistaken for more than two millennia’.¹⁰ These mistaken assumptions and the fallacy to which they lead rest on the view that, if no error has been made and if all relevant facts have been duly considered and weighed, then reason will lead to one and only one

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conclusion. That conclusion establishes what is reasonable to believe and do. Disagreement with the conclusion is either unreasonable, in which case it should not be taken seriously, or it is based on doubting that all relevant facts have been considered or that the right weight has been given to them, in which case further reasons are required. But when no reasonable doubt remains, the conclusion points to a belief or action that all reasonable people must accept regardless of their histories, characters, and circumstances. The great force of this view of reason derives from its immense success in understanding the physical and organic aspects of the world in which we live. The deserved prestige of the natural and biological sciences is made possible by following this view as a methodological principle in their investigations. But the world also has a human aspect that is concerned with evaluating the facts, rather than with accumulating further facts. The facts, however, can be evaluated from various points of view, such as the religious, aesthetic, practical, and so forth. One of these points of view is the moral, whose concern is with evaluating the bearing of the facts on human beings living a good life. Part of the purpose of this chapter has been to establish that there is no unitary moral point of view from which the facts could be evaluated, because morality has three dimensions and the evaluation of facts varies with the dimension from whose point of view the evaluation is made. Is it the point of view of a particular individual, or of those who share the evaluative framework of a form of life, or of all human beings? And, since there are many forms of life and many individual conceptions of a good life, the social and personal dimensions of morality do not form a unitary point of view either. Furthermore, the evaluations that follow from these points of view often conflict, and this makes the variety of reasonable evaluations even greater and even less unitary. When defenders of the view of reason whose applicability to morality I am denying behold what they see as the hopelessly messy plurality of points of view, conflicts, and evaluative standards within morality, they despair of reaching the kind of conclusions that the natural and biological sciences have succeeded in reaching. But they are wrong to despair. Reasonable conclusions can be reached in morality and moral conflicts can be reasonably resolved provided it is recognized that the uses of reason in morality are very different from the uses of reason in science. The root cause of the

Three-Dimensional Morality 117 mistaken Western tradition in ethics and politics is the supposition that the uses of reason in science and morality are the same. The next chapter is about the various uses of reason, the kind of uses that are appropriate in morality, and about how these uses provide the right approach to the resolution of moral conflicts.

7 The Uses of Reason in Morality There is no consideration of any kind that overrides all other considerations in all conceivable circumstances. (Stuart Hampshire, Innocence and Experience, 1989)

7.1. Practical and theoretical uses One feature of the three-dimensional view of morality that has emerged in the preceding chapter is that reason has many different uses in morality. I will not attempt to catalog all of them, but concentrate instead on three pairs of uses: practical and theoretical; particular and general; and permitting and requiring. If these uses of reason are appropriate in morality, then consequences follow that require a radical revision of the dominant Western way of thinking about reason, morality, and the connection between them. Let us, then, begin with the theoretical and practical uses of reason. Its theoretical use aims at true beliefs, its practical use aims at successful action. These uses both overlap and diverge. They overlap because successful actions often depend on true beliefs (for example, finding a solution on there being a problem) and true beliefs are often formed on the basis of successful actions (for example, a series of experiments). They also diverge because many true beliefs normally do not lead to action (for example, the use of copper in ancient Persia) and successful actions often involve no belief (for example, waking up at the usual time). One would expect that the same overlap and divergence occur when reason is put to theoretical and practical uses in morality. They overlap when we form a true belief about what morality requires us to do and we successfully do it. They diverge when we do not act on the belief.

The Uses of Reason in Morality 119 Having made a promise, we believe we should keep it, and in some cases we do, but in others we do not. Generally, when we violate some moral requirement, we often know that we are violating it, and then our moral beliefs and actions diverge. That is why we sometimes feel guilt, shame, or remorse. According to a dominant tradition in Western thought, the explanation of the divergence of theoretical and practical reason in morality is that we, as reasoners, have made a mistake. If we had not, the two uses would not diverge. If we were perfectly reasonable, we would hold only true beliefs and act successfully according to them. If the two uses of reason diverge, it is either because our beliefs were not true as a result of having misused theoretical reason, or because we failed to act according to true beliefs as a result of having misused practical reason. Kant’s defense of this view has had the strongest influence on contemporary thought, so I turn to the arguments he gives for it. Kant thinks that practical reason tells us how reason requires us to act. Insofar as we are reasonable, we will to do what practical reason prompts us to do.¹ Practical reason and the will are but two aspects of reasonable action. The cement, so to speak, that holds them together is freedom. We act freely, Kant thinks, when we, not alien forces, control what we do, and then we act autonomously by giving what he calls a law to ourselves.² This law—the categorical imperative—will be to act as we think everyone in that situation ought to act. The categorical imperative thus combines and expresses the requirements of freedom, autonomy, practical reason, and morality. Reason requires us to follow it because, if we do not, we would act contrary to how we ourselves think everyone ought to act, and that would be inconsistent and thus unreasonable. Following the categorical imperative, however, is to follow a universal and impersonal principle that we ourselves believe expresses how everyone ought to act, and that is a requirement not just of reason but also of morality.³ According to Kant, then, the practical use of reason in morality leads to a universal and impersonal principle. If in a moral situation we do not act on such a principle, we fail in both reason and morality. Kant acknowledges that in nonmoral situations we may be guided by considerations other than universal and impersonal principles but he insists that in moral situations either a universal and impersonal principle guides us, or we are unreasonable and immoral.

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We have seen (in 6.4) that one consequence of this view is that the social and personal dimensions—containing the evaluative framework that provides moral identities in different forms of life and the many styles that make life enjoyable by reflecting our attitudes to life and deepest concerns—are excluded from morality. Since they are not universal and impersonal, our moral responsibility, according to Kant, is to ignore what matters to us most and what makes our life enjoyable. We have also seen that Nietzsche’s understandable response to Kant’s psychologically absurd view was that, if this is what reason and morality require, then we should reject reason and morality. But we do not have to choose between the moralistic hegemony of Kant and the immoralism of Nietzsche, because there is another possibility—namely, that reason and morality are just fine and what is wrong is that Kant misinterpreted their requirements. This is the possibility I will now explore, beginning with asking what had led Kant to misinterpret the use of reason in morality. Kant thinks that the social and personal dimensions are not part of morality, because their requirements are variable and moral requirements are universal and impersonal. But why must moral requirements be universal and impersonal? Why could there not be moral requirements that are reasonable for some people but not for others to follow? Kant’s answer is that such variable requirements could not be moral, because moral requirements are requirements of practical reason, and practical reason, by its very nature, is universal and impersonal. If it were not, it would fail to be reason. And this brings us to the heart of the matter. It is easy to see that conclusions reached by means of the theoretical use of reason hold universally and impersonally. True beliefs hold regardless of social or personal values, preferences, or standards. Kant, however, takes great pains to avoid basing morality on theoretical reason, because he thinks that it could provide only a contingent foundation, which would not be secure enough. He bases morality, therefore, on practical reason. But practical reason is not theoretical reason: its conclusions are not true beliefs but requirements of action. Why should one suppose that it is reasonable for a particular person to act only on a moral requirement that it is reasonable for everyone to act on? It may be that there are some universal and impersonal moral requirements, some situations in which all reasonable people ought to act in the same way. Kant’s claim, however, is much stronger than this. It is that all requirements, insofar as they are

The Uses of Reason in Morality 121 reasonable and moral, oblige all people to follow them, and, if they fail, they are unreasonable and immoral. The force of Kant’s claim depends on his assimilation of practical to theoretical reason. He thinks that morally right requirements of action have the same universality and impersonality as true beliefs. But he gives no reason for supposing that practical and theoretical reasons are assimilable, and there is a good reason to suppose that they are not. The true beliefs the theoretical use of reason yields are impersonal, but moral requirements for action are personal; they tell individuals what they ought to do. What they ought to do, however, often depends on their moral identity and styles of life, which vary with forms of life and individuals. To revert to earlier examples, it is absurd to suppose that the moral requirement that led Eleazar, the biblical Jew, to be killed rather than eat pork must also be followed by Flaubert, the nineteenth-century French writer. Or that Eleazar was immoral and unreasonable because he did not follow the moral requirement that Flaubert followed in devoting his life to writing. It is the exception, not the rule, for moral requirements to apply universally and impersonally. These absurd implications, however, follow from Kant’s position. They cannot be avoided by saying that universal and impersonal requirements hold only for those who are in the same situation. For among the constituents of a moral situation are the moral identity, style of life, history, circumstances, and character of the individual who is in it. The combination of these individual circumstances is often unique and excludes the possibility that anyone else could be in the same situation. Eleazar was old, a respected moral authority in his form of life, and, when the outrage of having pork forced into his mouth occurred to him, he chose to set an example and die. But a young Jew, barely known by his community, and having a wife and children to support, may reasonably have decided when the outrage happened to him to swallow the pork and live. Similarly for Flaubert, who felt morally compelled by his vocation as a writer to expose hypocrisy and shallowness and to place himself at odds with bourgeois morality. He scorned the prevailing mores, rightly felt great promise as a writer, and had enough to live on. An aspiring writer who was poor, uncertain of his talent, and for whom bourgeois mores were a step up on the social scale might well have had a different attitude to the same form of life that Flaubert held in such contempt.

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As these examples show, there are genuine moral requirements that are not universal and impersonal and yet reasonably dictated by one’s moral identity or style of life. Consequently, two individuals in similar situations may reasonably differ about following a moral requirement because of differences in their moral identity and style of life. Kant’s argument that practical reason makes all moral requirements universal and impersonal, therefore, fails. Another reason for doubting Kant’s argument is also connected with the differences between the theoretical and practical uses of reason. The true beliefs that theoretical reason yields are expressible as propositions, and true propositions are consistent with one another. One true proposition cannot contradict another, because, if it did, then either it or the other proposition would have to be false, which true propositions cannot be. But it is otherwise with requirements of practical reason. There is no reason why one requirement of practical reason to perform a specific action could not be incompatible with another requirement of practical reason to perform another action. This is true of all requirements of practical reason, even of universal and impersonal ones. Suppose that Kant is right about it being a requirement of practical reason that one should never lie, cheat, steal, or murder; that one should always help others, be kind, save endangered innocent lives, keep promises, pay debts, and so forth. It is a plain fact of everyday life, however, that such requirements often conflict and call for incompatible actions. Helping someone may involve telling a lie, saving an innocent life may involve breaking a promise. The significance of such commonplace conflicts is that, even if Kant’s account of practical reason and morality were correct, it would still remain incomplete, because it does not go far enough. To know that we ought to be guided by universal and impersonal requirements is not to know how to resolve conflicts among such requirements. If there is a conflict-resolving principle, then practical reason must include it. In that case, however, Kant’s claim that the categorical imperative expresses the requirements of practical reason and morality is mistaken, because the categorical imperative includes no such principle. But if there is no conflict-resolving principle, then the categorical imperative is at best an incomplete guide to conduct, because it lacks the resources to resolve conflicts between incompatible moral requirements that follow from the categorical imperative.

The Uses of Reason in Morality 123 Kant’s position cannot be rescued by arguing that conflicts among the bona fide requirements of practical reason show only that it is our reasoning and not the categorical imperative that is at fault. For even if we conclude that it is a universal and impersonal requirement to act on one of the two conflicting requirements, the other requirement remains universal and impersonal. In violating it, we violate a categorical moral requirement. If, to avoid this difficulty, requirements are watered down to allow for not following them in case of conflicts, then they become toothless prescriptions to the effect that we should not lie, steal, cheat, and so forth unless there is a good reason for it. Practical reason, then, must include an account of what makes particular reasons good or bad, but Kant gives no such account. And it is hard to see how such an account, if one were given, could deny that a good reason for overriding a universal and impersonal moral requirement may be that a person’s moral identity or style of life requires it. Few would deny that homicide in a war that threatens the moral identity of one’s form of life is justified or that there is a good reason to tell a lie or break a promise if protecting a person one loves requires it. If this were conceded, however, then everything that Kant meant to deny would be conceded. If Kant is mistaken in ascribing the universality and impersonality to practical reason that theoretical reason possesses, then he has no reason to deny the obvious—namely, that there are perfectly reasonable moral requirements that are not universal and impersonal. And then he has no reason to exclude from morality the social and personal dimensions that contain many of our deepest moral concerns. If, however, the three dimensions of morality are acknowledged, then it must also be acknowledged that their requirements may conflict. The satisfaction of basic needs, the protection of moral identity, and the enjoyment of life are all conditions of a good life, but strengthening one condition may weaken another. One of the most important uses of reason in morality is to enable us to resolve such conflicts. Doing so, however, depends on recognizing that ‘neither in the social order, nor in the experience of an individual is a state of conflict the sign of vice, or defect, or a malfunctioning. It is not a deviation from ... the normal course of a person’s experience. To follow through the ethical implications of these propositions about the normality of conflict ... a kind of moral conversion is needed, a new way of looking.’⁴ In the old way, ‘moral theorists—Kantians, utilitarians, deontologists, contractarians—look for an underlying harmony and unity

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behind the facts of moral experience’.⁵ The new way is to recognize that moral conflicts are unavoidable; that reason is misused if it is employed to realize the impossible aim of traditional Western thought of devising a scheme in which moral conflicts will not occur; and that the right uses of reason are to resolve moral conflicts as we encounter them in our actual experiences of the concrete realities of life as we know them.

7.2. Particular and general uses If it is recognized that the use of practical reason in morality only exceptionally yields universal conclusions and that a consequence of this is the ubiquity of conflicts within morality, then the question of whether such conflicts can be reasonably resolved becomes pressing. I will now consider an approach to conflict resolution that has acquired much currency in contemporary thought. It backs away from the old way of seeking a universal resolution by appealing to a supreme principle, a highest moral good, or to some other overriding moral consideration, but it continues to hold that practical reason provides a general approach to conflict resolution that can be followed in all moral situations for resolving whatever conflicts may occur in them. Its defenders have called it the all-things-considered view. I will consider the version of it that has been defended by Philippa Foot in Natural Goodness.⁶ Foot says ‘that acting morally is part of practical rationality’ (p. 9) and that ‘the rationality of, say, telling the truth, keeping promises, or helping a neighbour is on a par with the rationality of self-preserving action’ (p. 11). In explaining what she means by practical rationality, Foot distinguishes between ‘what N should do relative to a certain consideration’ and ‘what N should do ‘‘all things considered’’ (a.t.c.)’ (p. 57). She says that ‘the special characteristic of an a.t.c. or final ‘‘should’’ is its conceptual connection with practical rationality’ (p. 59). Thus practical reason calls for doing what, all things considered, one should do. The consideration of all things yields as a conclusion what is ‘the only rational thing to do’. The actions of anyone who does not do what ‘is the only rational thing to do are ipso facto defective ... contrary to practical rationality’ (p. 59). And what practical rationality requires is that human actions should be guided by the goods necessary for human beings. Morality consists in being so

The Uses of Reason in Morality 125 guided. ‘Anyone who thinks about it can see that for human beings the teaching and following of morality is something necessary’ (pp. 16–17). The requirements of morality, therefore, are also requirements of practical reason. The connecting link between them is the conclusion formed on the basis of having considered all things. That conclusion will also be to perform the action that, in a particular context, best secures the goods necessary for human beings. Such actions are right and reasonable, and actions contrary to the human good are unreasonable. The history of moral thought is a graveyard of attempts to show that the requirements of morality and practical reason coincide. Foot stands in this tradition, but her attempt is no more successful than earlier ones proved to be. This becomes evident if we recognize that the moral consideration of all things may be done from any one of the dimensions of morality and none of them yields the conclusion Foot claims to reach. Consider individuals who have to decide in a particular moral situation what they should do. Suppose they want to do what is reasonable and moral. They try to reach a decision, as Foot says they must, by considering all things. The first obstacle they must face is that they cannot possibly consider all things because they are too numerous. They must focus their efforts, therefore, on considering all relevant things. At this point, they encounter the second obstacle of deciding what makes a thing relevant. If they follow Foot, they decide that what is relevant depends on what contributes to the human good. And so they come to the third obstacle. They see that very few people, if any, are ever in a position to do anything that might directly affect all humanity. Whatever they end up doing will directly affect only very few individuals. It is only through them—indirectly—that they can contribute to the human good. In order to surmount this obstacle, they have to decide who the individuals are whose good they should aim at. They have many options (for example, family members, citizens, coreligionists, those who share their ideology, ethnicity, profession, passion), but I will consider only three: everyone likely to be affected by their action; those who share their form of life; or only themselves. As they deliberate about which option to choose, it must become obvious to them that they have reasons both for and against acting on any one of the three options. The reason for aiming at the good of everyone likely to be affected by their action is that good lives depend on cooperation and individuals would be unlikely to cooperate unless they believed that doing so would,

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in some way, directly or indirectly, make their own lives better. The reason against proceeding in this way is that aiming at the good of themselves or of the good of those who share their form of life is often incompatible with aiming at the good of everyone. Loyalty and self-interest provide reasons against resolving such conflicts in favor of everyone’s good. Typical moral conflicts of this sort occur in the distribution of scarce resources or in fighting a war, when it has to be decided whether to opt for the good of everyone who will be affected or the good of oneself or the good of those who share one’s form of life. The reason for aiming at the good of those who share one’s form of life is that human life is made much better by ties of loyalty and maintaining them requires honoring reciprocal obligations and having special concern for those who see the significance of how they live and what they do in terms of the same evaluative framework. The reason against it is that one’s form of life may involve depriving others outside it of goods and that the form of life may be narrowly restrictive and interfere with the pursuit of goods for oneself. Some specific moral conflicts of this sort are between securing prosperity within one’s form of life while ignoring scarcity elsewhere or having a style of life that others in one’s form of life find offensive. The reason for aiming at one’s own good is that, unless it is secured, there is diminished possibility of aiming at anything else. Given normal human psychology and the rarity of saints, one’s continued possession of goods is a condition of caring about the goods of others. The reason against it is that securing goods for oneself depends on the cooperation of others, and ties of loyalty, requiring one to care about the goods of those who share one’s form of life, are among the goods one wants for oneself. Moral conflicts here may take the form of pursuing goods for oneself that interfere with the goods of others either within or outside one’s form of life. The upshot is that, when individuals proceed in the manner recommended by Foot, they routinely find that their consideration of all things yields reasons both for and against particular courses of action. What these reasons are depends on the dimension of morality from whose point of view they are considering all things. This conclusion cannot be avoided by claiming that, if they really consider all things, then they will have reason to consider them from the point of view of one of the three dimensions. For, as we have seen, while they will have reason to consider all things from one of these

The Uses of Reason in Morality 127 dimensions, they will also have reason to consider them from the other dimensions, and each dimension will provide reasons against considering all things from the other dimensions. Urging them to weigh the respective importance of these reasons will not help, because they will have to do the weighing from one moral dimension or another. Different dimensions will prompt the assignment of different weights to these reasons, and there will be reasons for and against each weighting. As a result, it is a mistake to suppose, as Foot does, that the consideration of all things will yield the action that will be ‘the only rational thing to do’ (p. 59). Perhaps the point of view of each dimension will yield one and only one reasonable action, but that action is likely to vary with the dimensions. By way of illustration, let us go back to Stephen’s moral situation as Joyce presents it in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (see 5.4). Stephen has to decide whether to leave his form of life with which he is deeply dissatisfied or stay and try to make do as well as he can. Leaving means facing an uncertain future and an unfamiliar setting in which he can count on no help or understanding from others. Staying will make him alienated, force him to become hypocritical, and incline him toward self-deception. He feels he has promise as a writer, but he does not know whether the promise is true, whether he has talent, and, if he does, how good it is. He is in a state of conflict and he has to decide what to do. If he does nothing, he in effect resolves the conflict in favor of staying. So Stephen is considering all things, but he does not know how he should weigh their respective importance. If he weighs all things in terms of the personal dimensions of morality, it will be clear that staying is incompatible with having an enjoyable life that reflects his individuality, whereas leaving gives him a chance for such a life, even if it is an uncertain one; so he will tend toward leaving. If he weighs all things from the social dimension, he will realize how much of his moral identity—his language, his loves and hates, his attitude to life—is a product of the evaluative framework of the form of life he is considering leaving. He will see that his very dissatisfaction reflects some of the values of the form of life with which he is dissatisfied. When he balances all that against venturing into the unknown, into a context with an unfamiliar evaluative framework, then he will tend toward staying. If he does the weighing from the universal dimension, he will realize that there is no overriding principle, value, or method that is any use to him,

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given the particularities of his character, circumstances, and uncertainties; so he will not know how to weigh the respective importance of all that is relevant to a reasonable resolution of his conflict. If Stephen follows Foot’s advice and considers all things, he will be back precisely where he was before he considered them. Reasons from one dimension will incline him one way, reasons from the other dimension will incline him in the other way, and reasons from the third dimension will be too weak to incline him one way or another. Poor Stephen, then, will remain in a state of irresolution even after he had considered all relevant things. I conclude that the attempt to identify the moral use of reason with the general approach to conflict resolution of the all-things-considered view fails. The basic reason for its failure is that the consideration of all things proceeds from the point of view of the human good, but ‘the human good’ is understood differently within each dimension of morality. These different understandings prompt different conflict resolutions. The conflicts between incompatible actions thus re-emerge as conflicts between incompatible conflict resolutions. It may be that there are some rare cases in which the three dimensions resolve conflicts in the same way. Given the many differences among styles and forms of life, such cases are likely to remain rare. This, of course, is not to say that reasons for conflict resolution cannot be found. The alternative to the all-things-considered view is not to resign ourselves to leaving conflicts unresolved or to resolve them on some arbitrary basis. There is the further alternative that the use of practical reason for conflict resolutions is most often particular and only rarely general. The next step is to explore this alternative.

7.3. Permitting and requiring uses There are beliefs and actions that reason requires holding or performing. Beliefs vouchsafed by logic (for example, modus ponens), mathematics (for example, a × b = b × a), extensive confirmation (for example, gravity), or universal human experience (for example, having a head) are required by reason. So are such actions as breathing or eating, using signs of some sort to communicate with others, sleeping from time to time, and so forth.

The Uses of Reason in Morality 129 Barring extraordinary circumstances, it is unreasonable always, everywhere, for everyone not to accept such beliefs or not to perform such actions. Reason forbids going against what reason requires. Beliefs and actions not forbidden by reason are permitted by reason. Reason permits believing that human beings are basically good, or bad, or ambivalent; that politics drives economics, or vice versa; or that there is or is not intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. Reason also permits acting in conformity to or violation of the Ten Commandments; taking or refraining from risks, such as cigarette smoking, sunbathing, or soldiering; participating in or shunning commercial activities, such as shopping, advertising, or bargaining. The only alternative to believing or doing what reason requires is to be unreasonable. But it is not unreasonable either to hold or not to hold beliefs, to perform or not to perform actions that reason neither requires nor forbids. The uses of reason in morality are both permitting and requiring. One assumption underlying Kant’s and Foot’s argument is that in morality the requiring use of reason is central. For that is what gives the categorical imperative universal and impersonal force binding on everyone, and the allthings-considered view general applicability in all moral situations. Neither Kant nor Foot says much about the permitting use in morality, perhaps because they do not distinguish it from the requiring use. But both positions leave room for both uses. Kant can allow that in some situations two or more actions can satisfy the requirement of the categorical imperative—he speaks of imperfect duties in such cases—and, although performing one of them is required by reason, performing any one of them is permitted by reason. Similarly, Foot could allow that, all things considered, one must perform one of several actions, and then each one of these actions is permitted by reason. Common to both, however, is the assumption that in morality the permitting use rests on the requiring use. They think of the permitting use, if at all, as a kind of moral luxury to have a choice among several ways of doing what morality requires. In my opinion they are both mistaken in holding this view. And the mistake they make about the respective importance of the permitting and requiring uses of reason in morality is what leads to their mistaken identification of the requirements of the categorical imperative and the all-things-considered view with the requirements of morality. The right view is that the requiring use of reason has very small scope in morality and in the majority of moral situations the use of reason is permitting. One

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of the reasons why this view is preferable to Kant’s and Foot’s is that it can readily acknowledge the genuineness and frequency of moral conflicts, while their view cannot. Moral conflicts occur when there are good reasons for pursuing both of two incompatible goods; but, being incompatible, having one excludes having the other. In such cases reason permits pursuing either. But, if the moral use of reason were predominantly requiring, as Kant and Foot believe, then it would follow that there could not be genuine moral conflicts. The appearance of moral conflicts would have to be explained as a consequence of not having gone far enough in following through the requirements of universality and impersonality or of failing to consider all things. Moral conflicts, then, would be treated as symptoms of a defect in reasoning, not in the requiring use of reason itself. For, according to Kant and Foot, if reason were rightly used, it would establish that the pursuit of one of the incompatible goods was required and the pursuit of the other was forbidden by reason. Kant and Foot, therefore, are committed to denying what common moral experience makes familiar—namely, that genuine moral conflicts frequently occur. Their denial of such conflicts makes reasonable conflict resolution impossible, and this deprives morality of a badly needed resource. The view I am defending in contrast to theirs follows from the threedimensional account of morality. I have been arguing that the aim of morality is to secure the conditions that enable individuals to make a good life for themselves; that these conditions are the satisfaction of basic needs, the maintenance of moral identity, and the enjoyment of life; and that these universal, social, and personal goods are pursued in the three dimensions of morality by means of required and variable conventions and realistic, coherent, and enduring styles of life. It is the ubiquitous experience of most people that securing these conditions depends on resolving moral conflicts both between the goods of one dimension and between the goods of different dimensions. The existence of such conflicts and the need to resolve them make moral decisions at once necessary and controversial: necessary because, unless the conflict between pursuing two goods is resolved and what action to take is decided, both of the conflicting goods needed for a good life will be lost; controversial because, since each of the goods is needed for a good life, there is a good reason to pursue each. I have argued that these are the typical moral conflicts. We can now see that what reason requires in such conflicts is to resolve them one way or

The Uses of Reason in Morality 131 another, but it rarely happens that reason requires resolving them in favor of one of the conflicting goods. In typical conflicts reason permits both resolutions, and which should be favored depends on weighing the reasons for and against them. I want to emphasize that in typical moral conflicts there are reasons in favor of both goods, simply because they are universal, social, or personal goods and thus needed for a good life. It may happen that the reasons offered in favor of one of these goods involves inconsistency, or ignoring relevant facts or criticisms. These are the cases in which the requiring use of reason is needed to eliminate putative reasons that violate elementary requirements. Most moral conflicts, however, cannot be resolved in this way. There are good reasons on both sides, and the conflict is about the respective importance of considerations whose relevance is acknowledged by both sides. The requiring use of reason, therefore, is most often eliminative, and the permitting use is typically deliberative. The first aims to exclude unreasonable considerations, the second to assign the right weight to reasonable considerations. In case it is doubted that in typical moral conflicts the requiring use is rarely needed, consider how simple conflicts would have to be for reason to require favoring one of the conflicting goods. If the reason for favoring one of the goods involved inconsistency (for example, believing one thing and doing another), or failing to take into account incontestable facts (for example, scarcity making one of the goods unavailable), or disregarding relevant reasons (for example, the importance of the other good for a good life), or leading to possibly disastrous consequences (for example, taking great risks for small gains), then reason would indeed require resolving the conflict in favor of the other good. No doubt such elementary mistakes in reasoning sometimes are made, but they are surely rare. Eleazar’s conflict between his life and religious commitment, Flaubert’s conflict between the prevailing morality and a creative literary life, Stephen’s conflict between the form of life he found unacceptable and an uncertain and unfamiliar life elsewhere were wrenching conflicts in which both of the conflicting goods had good reasons in their favor. Reason permitted either resolution and required neither. And the conflicts so familiar in contemporary life—about capital punishment, abortion, euthanasia, foreign aid, socialized medicine, pornography, welfare, privacy, terrorism, egalitarianism, immigration, poverty, and so on—have no simple resolution

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either. Resolving them requires weighing the reasons on both sides, and there is often no resolution that reason requires.

7.4. The right approach to conflict resolution The outcome of the preceding discussion of the uses of reason in morality may be summarized in a critical and a constructive claim. The critical one is that the moral uses of reason are only rarely and exceptionally theoretical, general, or requiring. Since the dominant tradition in Western moral thought assumes the contrary, it needs to be revised. The constructive claim is that the moral uses of reason are typically practical, particular, and permitting. And this points to the way in which the dominant tradition needs to be revised. These claims, in turn, imply what the epigraph of this chapter asserts: ‘There is no consideration of any kind that overrides all other considerations in all conceivable circumstances.’ It is crucial for the right approach to conflict resolution that the truth of the epigraph allows that there may be considerations that override all other considerations in particular circumstances. For, if there were no such overriding considerations, moral conflicts could not be reasonably resolved. The overriding considerations that may be appealed to for the resolution of moral conflicts, however, are going to be found by the practical, particular, and permitting uses of reason. If they are found, they will constitute a reasonable resolution of a specific moral conflict, faced by a specific person, in a specific context, and, for this reason, the resolution will not carry over to other moral conflicts. The reasons for conflict resolution, therefore, are context dependent, but, given the context, they can be good, objective, reliable reasons. The practical, particular, and permitting reasons for conflict resolution have to do with maintaining two kinds of balance. One is the balance of the conditions of a good life—namely, the satisfaction of basic needs, the protection of moral identity, and the enjoyment of life. The other is the balance of the internal reasons that a person facing a moral conflict has and the external reasons that may be given by those who are familiar with the conflict but observe it from the outside. In considering the first kind of balance, we must avoid a misunderstanding into which it is all too easy to fall. The reason for balancing the conditions

The Uses of Reason in Morality 133 is to secure a good life, but this does not make good life a general standard of conflict resolution. For what a good life is varies with forms and styles of life. The social and personal goods needed for a good life differ from one form of life to another and from one individual to another. It does not follow from two or more people being alike in wanting a good life that they want the same thing. What a good life is for one will not be a good life for the others. Although one requirement of reasonable conflict resolution is to balance the conditions of a good life, different individuals will have to do it differently. This is one reason why good reasons for conflict resolution have to be practical, particular, and permitting: practical because they concern the actions required for balancing the conditions of a good life; particular because the conditions that have to be balanced vary with individuals; and permitting because reason neither requires nor forbids individuals facing the conflict to aim at the particular good life whose conditions they are trying to balance. The right approach to conflict resolution, then, involves balancing the conflicting particular universal, social, and personal goods. The reason for balancing them is that they are conditions of the good life one aims to have. An obvious difficulty arises, however, at this point. If the conflicting goods are really conditions of a good life, then resolving their conflict in favor of either one will mean that, by disfavoring the other, a condition of the good life aimed at will not be met. It seems, therefore, that the very occurrence of a moral conflict between the goods needed for a good life makes the good life aimed at impossible. The following consideration will ameliorate, but not altogether avoid, this difficulty. Conflicts among goods need not be resolved by all-or-nothing solutions. In many conflicts saying yes to one of the conflicting goods does not require saying no to the other. Eleazar’s conflict was not like this. He had to swallow the pork or give up his life; he could opt for the social good of his religion or the universal good of his life. Moral conflicts in which at least one of the conflicting goods is the satisfaction of a basic need tend to present stark choices. If the basic need is not satisfied, we die or are lastingly incapacitated. This is not to say that reason requires resolving such conflicts in favor of satisfying the basic need. The other good may be so important as to make life not worth living without it. This is why Eleazar chose to die.

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The conflicts of Flaubert and Stephen, however, were not as stark as Eleazar’s was. Flaubert could choose a creative literary life without rejecting bourgeois morality lock, stock, and barrel. He could say no to the hypocritical, furtive, philistine aspects of it and continue to say yes to its prudent, realistic, conscientious aspects. His choice was not between yes and no, but between more or less. The same was true of Stephen’s conflict. He did not have to reject the whole of the Irish Catholic form of life in order to embrace an unfamiliar form of life somewhere in Europe. He could reject the particularly dogmatic form of Catholicism that stifled parts of Ireland at this time, retain the rest of his Irishness, and accept a less stringent Catholicism, for instance, in Italy. Conflicts in which the goods at stake are social and personal do not have the stark immediacy of our basic needs. This is not to say that social or personal goods are less important conditions of a good life than universal goods. The three kinds of goods are all needed, but the need for universal goods is more urgent, more narrowly constrained by time than what we need for maintaining our moral identity and enjoyment of life. Moral identity and the enjoyment of life are more flexible, more resilient, allow for more give and take than our basic needs. The resolution of conflicts among social or personal goods, therefore, does not mean that, if we opt for one, then we must forgo the other and thus doom ourselves to a less than good life. The resolution may be to aim at a balance of the two goods that gives us as much of both as possible in our particular situation. Balanced conflict resolution is not always possible. The practical, particular, and permitting uses of reason will aim at it, but the aim may be unattainable, an all-or-nothing choice may have to be made, and then the best use of reason is to minimize the unavoidable damage. In civilized circumstances, however, moral conflicts tend not to be all or nothing because the satisfaction of basic needs is rarely in question. Indeed, this is part of what makes circumstances civilized. Let us now consider the second kind of balance that needs to be maintained for the reasonable resolution of moral conflicts: between internal and external reasons. Internal reasons are reasons that individuals facing a conflict have for resolving it in one way or another. External reasons are reasons people observing the conflict from the outside regard as relevant for its resolution. Internal and external reasons both concern what the individuals facing a conflict should do, but internal ones are reasons the

The Uses of Reason in Morality 135 individuals facing a conflict have, while external reasons are what observers think the individuals should have. Internal reasons, then, are typically involved in an individual’s deliberations, whereas external reasons are involved in the critical evaluation of the individual’s deliberation. When Eleazar, Flaubert, and Stephen resolved their conflicts by opting for one of the conflicting goods, they acted on the basis of what seemed to them good reasons. They may have been right or wrong about this, but, whichever they were, they were acting on the basis of internal reasons. When we reflect on them, their conflicts, and their resolutions, we also have reasons for thinking that their resolutions were right or wrong. We may think that they were carried away by understandable emotions, or that their judgments were clouded, and we may think that they ought to have balanced their reasons and resolved their conflicts differently. In thinking this, we too may be right or wrong. We are, after all, outsiders to the conflicts, we do not face the wrenching choices they had to face, and we do not have our deepest moral concerns at stake, as they had. And, if we were in their situation, if their conflicts were our conflicts, we may well have come to think as they did. Both internal and external reasons, individually and collectively, are, therefore, fallible. The ways of being wrong about such reasons are many. The conflicting goods are derived from the three dimensions of morality, and in each dimension the standard of evaluation may be misapplied. What are taken to be basic needs may not be, so the failure to satisfy them may not have as serious consequences as supposed. What is treated as essential for maintaining moral identity in a form of life may just be a local custom whose violation upsets some people without endangering the whole evaluative framework. What is regarded as necessary for the enjoyment of life may actually be the result of an incoherent, unrealistic, or changeable attitude to life. Generally speaking, in each dimension of morality there are possibilities, represented by the goods, and limits, set by the prevailing conventions and styles of life, and about each it is easy to be mistaken. Individuals in conflicts and observers outside of them are both prone to error. Human fallibility, the contingencies of life, the pressure of circumstances, and the comforts of conventional, familiar habits of thought make it impossible to eliminate mistakes from conflict resolution. What is possible, however, is to guard against mistakes by recognizing their everpresent possibility and continually testing the reliability of both internal and

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external reasons by using one to judge the reliability of the other. Observers of a conflict often see more clearly than those in it, but those in it often have a better, because more concrete, appreciation of the importance of the goods at stake than observers who can think about the conflict coolly, but do not feel, risk, or agonize about the concrete goods that might be lost. In putting forward what I take to be the right approach to conflict resolution in morality I have done no more than indicate a possibility. To do more requires the consideration of specific conflicts, faced by specific individuals, in specific contexts. This requirement is a consequence of the view that the typical uses of reason in morality are practical, particular, and permitting, rather than theoretical, general, and requiring. Each chapter in Part Four will focus on cases that have the required specificity.

7.5. Overview of part three Apart from really deep thinkers and misanthropes, no one doubts that enjoyment is essential to a good life. But it is far from clear what enjoyment is; how it differs from pleasure, happiness, or satisfaction, each of which may be confused with it; why its sustained possession is rare and difficult; and whether its pursuit can be reasonable and moral. My aim in this book is to answer these questions. In Part Two I argued that the lasting enjoyment of life depends on developing a style of life that reflects one’s individuality. Such a style is composed of an attitude to life, dominant activities that translate the attitude into practical terms, and the manner in which these activities are performed. Each reflects our individuality more or less adequately, and making them more adequate makes life more enjoyable. I have called this critical view of how our life is going personal evaluation. It too can be more or less adequate, depending on how critical we manage to be. Adequate personal evaluation, however, does not guarantee enjoyment, because it cannot change circumstances adverse to our style of life. But life may not be enjoyable, even when circumstances are favorable to it, because self-deception, wishful thinking, lethargy, and the like may be obstacles to sufficiently critical personal evaluation. Developing an adequate style of life is thus difficult, and that is one reason why so many lives are not enjoyable.

The Uses of Reason in Morality 137 In the just completed Part Three I have argued that adequate personal evaluation is reasonable and moral. The argument combined a critical and a constructive part. The critical part was directed against the moralist, relativist, and egoist interpretations of the place of reason in morality. Each, in its own way, misconstrues the place it has and, as a result, misconstrues the requirements of a reasonable and moral personal evaluation of the enjoyment of life. Moralists hold that the requirements of reason in morality must hold universally and impersonally. Since the enjoyment of life varies with individuals and contexts, moralists deny that its evaluation can be moral. This makes the enjoyment of life either immoral or nonmoral. Relativists claim that what counts as reason in morality depends entirely on the evaluative framework of a form of life. They deny that there are external values, standards, or principles to which participants in a form of life could appeal. How reasonable and moral enjoyable lives are, according to relativists, depends on how they are judged by the evaluative framework of a form of life. Egoists believe that whether an enjoyable life is reasonable and moral can be evaluated only by the person whose life it is. I argued against the moralist interpretation that social and personal evaluations are reasonable modes of moral evaluation, even though they are not universal and impersonal. My objection to the relativist interpretation was that there are reasons external to forms of life on the basis of which forms of life may be criticized for failing to satisfy basic needs or for preventing the enjoyment of life. And I rejected the egoist interpretation, because personal evaluations can be reasonably criticized, regardless how individuals evaluate their own lives, on the grounds that they violate the conditions in which basic needs can be satisfied, or they undermine the very moral identity that makes enjoyment possible. The constructive part of the argument aimed to show how personal evaluations can be reasonable and moral if the moralist, relativist, and egoist mistakes are avoided. Personal evaluation proceeding from the point of view of particular individuals may be done by individuals of their own lives, or by others who observe the lives from the outside. Self-evaluations may be mistaken, but they may also be corrected if individuals themselves realize, or are brought by observers to realize, that their attitude to life is incoherent, unrealistic, or fickle, or they do not

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enjoy their dominant activities, or the manner in which they act fails to reflect their attitude. But whether personal evaluation is done correctly or incorrectly, from the inside or the outside, there is an objective ground for it. Favorable personal evaluation is reasonable if individuals in fact enjoy their lives. Evidence of their enjoyment is that they are satisfied with how their lives are going, do not want to change them radically, have no regret for the major decisions they have taken, feel that their manner of living expresses their individuality and deepest concerns, and believe that they are living and acting by and large as they want, and that their actions reflect these attitudes. Such evidence is not conclusive, because individuals may be mistaken in their beliefs and feelings. This, however, is a possibility all factual claims face, and not a special problem for personal evaluation. An enjoyable life may not be admirable. There may be good reasons for saying that some people who enjoy their lives should not because it is unreasonable or immoral. What makes this criticism possible is that, although personal evaluation is a mode of moral evaluation, there are also other modes, both moral and nonmoral. Personal evaluation represents the point of view of the personal dimension of morality, but morality also has a universal and social dimension, each with its own mode of evaluation. The universal dimension is concerned with the satisfaction of basic needs that are the same for everyone. The social dimension embodies the evaluative framework of a form of life from which individuals derive a shared moral identity. The evaluations that follow from the universal, social, and personal dimensions of morality often conflict. There are reasons for resolving their conflicts in favor of one mode of evaluation in a particular context, but it is a mistake to suppose that a particular mode of evaluation will always override the other modes. This is just the mistake moralists, relativists, and egoists make. Providing reasons for or against conflicting moral evaluations depends on understanding the uses of reason in morality. I have argued against a dominant tradition in Western thought that the theoretical, general, and required uses of reason in morality are rare and exceptional. The typical moral uses of reason are practical, particular, and permitting. This has the consequence that, although conflicts among moral evaluations must be resolved if good lives are to be possible, there is no universal or general approach to conflict resolution. There usually are good reasons for

The Uses of Reason in Morality 139 resolving particular conflicts in particular ways, but what these reasons are and how heavily they weigh varies from case to case. This leads to Part Four, in whose six chapters I examine particular cases of enjoyable and miserable lives and provide reasons for or against the style in which they are lived.


PA RT F O UR

Some Particular Styles of Life


8 A Most Perfect Gentleman The most perfect gentleman in Trollope is Madame Max Goesler. ... The quiet charm of Madame Goesler ... was due to its being the natural expression of someone who knew herself, took careful note of her circumstances, and was all of a piece. This clarity about herself and others shaped her conduct. (Shirley Robin Letwin, The Gentleman in Trollope: Individuality and Moral Conduct, 1982)

8.1. Literature and moral thought The conclusion reached at the end of the first half of the book is that an adequate view of morality is three dimensional, the typical moral uses of reason are practical, particular, and permitting, and the moral evaluation of styles of life must concentrate on particular lives in particular contexts. In the second half of the book I will apply this conclusion and discuss in detail three admirable and three deficient styles of life. Literature is a rich source of such lives, but its contribution to moral thought is deeper than supplying illuminating and concrete examples. Works of literature endure, if they do, partly because they depict possibilities whose realization makes lives good and limits whose violation makes lives bad. These possibilities and limits, of course, are also a central concern of moral thought. The subject matter of literature and moral thought thus overlap, and this is crucial to the discussion of the six styles of life I will consider in the following six chapters. Understanding a life depends on knowledge of the relevant facts. Such facts, however, are numerous and complex, their relevance is disputable, and they can be divided and multiplied, connected and arranged, in

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countless ways. An attempt simply to list all the facts that bear on a particular life is doomed to failure, and, even if it were not, it would involve stultifying pedantry and be an obstacle to understanding. If a life is to be understood, the facts relevant to it must be interpreted, and that requires distinguishing between significant and insignificant facts and explaining what makes them one or the other. Significance is partly a matter of the mode of understanding one seeks. It may be historical, psychological, religious, scientific, political, aesthetic, and so forth. Understanding people in terms of any of these modes depends on identifying their most important characteristics. This is a creative and imaginative effort. Its success is marked by the response of competent judges that ‘yes, this makes sense of that person’s life and actions’, that ‘yes, this makes comprehensible the beliefs, emotions, and motives that animate that person and explains his or her actions at crucial junctions’. The achieved understanding leads one to see the significance of the relevant facts in a certain way and convince knowledgeable people that it is the right way. Significant facts, therefore, are not just real—all facts are that—but deep, because they point to a truth that lies behind and explains why the appearances are what they are. Virginia Woolf says about what I am calling significant facts that they reveal the pattern behind the cotton wool of experience.¹ What she has in mind is like this: it is midday in Northamptonshire; a dull young man is talking to a rather weakly young woman on the stairs as they go up to dress for dinner, with housemaids passing. But, from triviality, from commonplace, their words become suddenly full of meaning, and the moment for both one of the most memorable in their lives. It fills itself; it shines; it glows; it hangs before us, deep, trembling, serene for a second; next, the housemaid passes, and this drop, in which all the happiness of life has collected, gently subsides again to become part of the ebb and flow of ordinary existence.²

She does not say, of course, what passes between them and what makes it significant. For that we have to turn to Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, and that is my point. Moral thought only points toward significant facts. Literature communicates the sense of their significance by enlisting the sensibility and imagination of attentive readers, thereby enabling them to understand the protagonists in whose lives the facts are significant.

A Most Perfect Gentleman 145 The aim of the mode of understanding I have been seeking is to identify significant facts from the point of view of the personal dimension of morality, which is concerned with one’s enjoyment of life. This is what the literary works I have been relying on aim to do, not discursively by argument but imaginatively by evocation. They are, among other things, moral reflection conducted by literary means. Discursive moral reflection, having to be particular, is made concrete by them. But whether literary or discursive, the test of success is whether reflection on the lives depicted leads reasonable, thoughtful, and experienced people to acknowledge that the account presented to them has indeed identified significant facts in a particular case. Their significance, in the present context, is the light they shed on a particular form the enjoyment or the misery of a life may take. All the chapters that follow are concerned with such significant facts as they bear on admirable or deficient styles of life: on the attitudes, manners, and patterns of dominant actions involved in projects that jointly constitute styles of life. In all of them, the discursive and literary modes of understanding are intermingled. In these chapters, therefore, I endeavor to make a case that literature does not merely illustrate the possibilities and limits of enjoyable lives but shows concretely and particularly what such lives may be.

8.2. Integrity The first admirable style of life I will discuss is integrity. We may begin with the idea that integrity involves being true to oneself. Whether it is good to be true to oneself depends on one’s self. One can be true to a self-deceived self, and that is neither admirable nor likely to lead to an enjoyable life. But being true to one’s genuine self may still not be good, because one’s self may be genuinely miserable. Being true to a miserable self will perpetuate its misery and prevent alleviating it. This is behind Sartre’s thought, expressed with customary exaggeration, that sincerity is a form of bad faith.³ More needs to be said, therefore, about the nature of the self to which it is good to be true. Integrity is an admirable style of life only if it involves being true to a self to which it is good to be true. Integrity may be understood in a moral and a nonmoral sense. The first involves commitment to some moral value, ideal, tradition, or principle

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and, on appropriate occasions, corresponding action. But, if the required action is easy, pleasant, convenient, and profitable, then doing it does not normally indicate integrity. For integrity is typically shown in response to some difficulty: the required action is hard; there are tempting alternatives to it; it demands much time, energy, or effort; or it involves risking something important. The moral sense of integrity, then, may be thought of as conscientiousness in the face of such difficulties. The nonmoral sense of integrity denotes wholeness and the absence of corruption. It is ascribable to people who think for themselves, who are guided by their own convictions, resist indoctrination, manipulation, changing fashions, fads, and social pressure. Their actions, then, reflect their individuality. They have been influenced by others, of course, but they have reflected critically on these influences and accepted them on that basis. Artists, politicians, scholars, critics, and journalists may pursue their avocations with such nonmoral integrity. I will refer to it as independent judgment. Conscientiousness and independent judgment often overlap, because people often have both moral and nonmoral reasons for acting with integrity. I doubt that it is always possible to draw a sharp distinction between moral and nonmoral reasons, or between conscientiousness and independent judgment, but I will leave this issue aside, since it is irrelevant to integrity as an admirable style of life. What is relevant is that there is more to admirable integrity than conscientiousness and independent judgment either together or separately. When people act conscientiously and judge independently, their actions reflect an attitude to life. Integrity consists in being faithful to that attitude. But such attitudes may be more or less adequate, depending on their durability, realism, and coherence. Since each is a matter of degree, so is integrity. People may have more, less, or none of it. It is pointless to try to identify the precise point at which a person’s attitude has so little realism, or coherence, or is so changeable as to make faithfulness to it undesirable. I simply note that there are many gradations between greater and lesser integrity and between little and no integrity, and leave it at that. But I do want to show how the lack of durability, realism, and coherence in one’s attitude to life might lead to failures of integrity. Consider first people who are conscientious and rely on independent judgment in adhering to frequently changing political, religious, moral,

A Most Perfect Gentleman 147 personal, or aesthetic commitments. Their commitments come and go, but, while a particular one lasts, they scrupulously judge and act according to it, even when it is difficult and risky to do so. They start, say, as devout Christians, lose their faith, become Marxists, which they give up for psychoanalysis, and, when that loses its glitter, turn to yoga, to be followed by deep ecology, scientology, Zen Buddhism, and so forth. The commitments of such people are more accurately described as shortlived enthusiasms. They attitudinize about life, rather than have an enduring attitude to it. This is understandable in adolescents, as they try out various ways of responding to the world. But, if frequently changing commitments persist in adulthood, they indicate that one lacks or is ignorant of deep concerns to which it would be good to remain true. Attitudes to life have depth only if they reflect concerns that are at the core of one’s self. These concerns can change, but being true to them requires substantial continuity between a mature person’s past, present, and future core concerns. Real conversion and radical change are possible, of course, but they are bound to be rare. If they seem to occur frequently, they cast doubt on their genuineness. Integrity is to be true to oneself, but only if the self has an enduring attitude to life. If the attitude is often changing, it indicates the instability of the self to which it would be good to remain true. And, as instability increases, so the likelihood of integrity decreases. Durability, then, is necessary, but still not sufficient, for integrity, because a durable attitude to life may be unrealistic. An unrealistic attitude that endures indicates a fault that lies somewhere on a continuum from dangerous fanaticism, through obtuse dogmatism, to plain stubbornness. Attitudes to life depend on one’s judgment of the possibilities that may be pursued and the limits that ought to be observed in pursuing them. Such a judgment is concerned with selecting some among the many possibilities and acknowledging what one takes to be the limits in one’s context. These judgments, of course, may be mistaken (see 4.2). What are regarded as possibilities may not be, because social conditions or individual shortcomings make their successful pursuit impossible. And what are thought to be impossible may in fact not be, and only custom or ignorance stands in the way of recognizing them as possibilities for oneself. The same is true of limits. There may be genuine limits that one fails to recognize, and one may accept as limits what in fact are not. An attitude to life is realistic if the recognized possibilities and limits are the actual ones.

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It is exceptional for an attitude to life to be completely realistic, because it is very difficult to be totally objective about one’s social context and capacities and incapacities. The lack of objectivity, however, may or may not be unreasonable. From those who are raised in a conventional society and know no alternative to it, whose doubts are answered by respected authorities, and whose lives go on in time-honored ways, it is too much to expect to reject customary but mistaken possibilities and limits. Their judgments will be mistaken but not unreasonable, since others agree with them and the prevailing consensus reinforces them. In such circumstances, people may show great integrity in adhering to an unrealistic attitude to life. Many are the martyrs and heroes who died with integrity rather than betray a flawed cause. They were conscientious to the end, but they lacked sufficiently independent judgment. If they had it, they might have acted differently, but it would be unreasonable to expect them to have it. In numerous other circumstances, however, the lack of independent judgment is unreasonable. It is reasonable to expect people to have and to use independent judgment, because alternatives to the recognized possibilities and limits are generally known; or because the recognized possibilities involve treating people in ways that a decent person should not pass over in silence; or because others in the same context are vocal in questioning customary possibilities and limits. In such circumstances, conscientious adherence to the mistaken possibilities and limits is culpable, rather than a sign of integrity, because it is unreasonable to lack or to fail to exercise independent judgment. In between heroes and martyrs who pursue mistaken possibilities and adhere to mistaken limits with integrity, on the one hand, and craven, Eichmann-like functionaries who blind themselves to the inhumanity of the possibilities that violate limits on which civilized life rests, on the other hand, there are many more or less ambiguous cases in which people’s lack of realism is partial. Their judgments about some of their possibilities and limits are mistaken, but not egregiously. Their attitudes to life are flawed, and their adherence to them are partly reasonable, partly not. Their integrity, therefore, is a matter of degree. If circumstances are normal and moderately civilized, these are the typical cases of integrity. Social pressure and human fallibility make it unreasonable to expect more. Assume, then, the adequate durability and realism of an attitude to life. Can we say that being true to it is sufficient for integrity? We cannot,

A Most Perfect Gentleman 149 because the attitude may be incoherent. An attitude to life will inevitably have beliefs, emotions, and motives connected with it. For the attitudes are toward the possibilities people care most about realizing, and this caring, consciously or not, shapes their beliefs about what is important and negligible, ennobling or demeaning, worth pursuing or a waste of effort. Alongside these beliefs there will also be emotions, such as hope and fear, pride and shame, joy and sadness, all being focused on their success or failure in attempting to realize the possibilities they most deeply care about. And these beliefs and emotions, of course, provide motives for choosing and pursuing some possibilities and for observing some limits rather than others. The coherence of an attitude depends on the coherence of the beliefs, emotions, and motives that jointly constitute it. It requires that many of these beliefs, emotions, and motives should have the same object. What one believes is important should be what one hopes to have and fears to lose and what one’s actions should be motivated to achieve. An attitude to life is incoherent if its constitutive beliefs, emotions, and motives have different objects. One does not, then, know what one cares about most, because the relevant beliefs, emotions, and actions point in different directions. To be true to a self that is characterized by such an incoherent attitude is impossible. For being true to a part of one’s self unavoidably involves being false to another part. In such circumstances, there can be no integrity, because whatever one does will betray something to which another part of oneself is committed. This is why integrity requires, in addition to an enduring and realistic attitude, also a coherent one. Conscientiousness, then, is not scrupulous adherence to principles, but the habitual pursuit of possibilities one most cares about. And independent judgment is not the rejection of conventions, but the evaluation of conventions in the light of one’s deepest concerns. Integrity, then, is a style of life that reflects one’s individuality. It consists in pursuing whatever happens to be one’s project in a manner that is faithful to one’s enduring, realistic, and coherent attitude to life. Understanding integrity in this way makes it possible to explain what facts are significant in judging its possession and what makes those facts significant. Significant facts reveal how enduring, realistic, and coherent are people’s attitudes to life. These facts will not be found in the everyday, routine ways in which people conduct their affairs, but in what they do

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when they face difficulties, risks, and appealing temptations to act contrary to their attitudes. Appreciating the significance of these facts requires a detailed understanding of the particular attitudes of individuals, the severity of the difficulties they encounter, their estimate of the specific gains and losses involved in the risks they face, and the attractions from their point of view of the temptations that come their way. Such detailed understanding must be based on knowledge of the character and context of particular individuals. This is why moral thought must become particular and concrete when it aims to evaluate styles of life. The importance of literature for moral thought is that good literary works show one time-honored way in which the necessary particularity and concreteness can be achieved.

8.3. A person of integrity This person is Madame Goesler, who has been called, wittily and with only a little exaggeration, ‘the most perfect gentleman in Trollope’.⁴ She is a main character in what are usually referred to as Trollope’s Palliser or parliamentary novels.⁵ The milieu is English high society in the 1870s, at the height of the Victorian age. Britannia rules not only the waves but also a good part of the world, and the sun never sets on the Empire. Its political system is the envy of the world for its stability, freedom, toleration, constitutional order, and common law. Members of the high society rule confidently, with clear moral ideas, doing their best to further what they regard as right and oppose what they hold to be wrong. Outsiders can gain entry into this society, but not easily. Great wealth helps, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient. Character, merit, rectitude, and good manners count for much. This society is the context of Trollope’s parliamentary novels. Madame Goesler is a very rich widow of about 30. She appears, no one quite knows from where, and sets about making a place for herself in high society. She is beautiful, charming, highly intelligent, witty, has exquisite manners and just the right degree of irreverence that amuses without giving offense. Snobbery, suspicion, envy, malicious gossip, cold shoulders, lupine males, and catty females are obstacles to her success, but she brilliantly surmounts them, succeeds, and takes delight in it. Trollope shows how the key to her success is integrity: a style of life that reflects her individuality and deepest concerns. Shallow readers may think

A Most Perfect Gentleman 151 of her as an ambitious social climber, but they mistake her use of the means that happen to be available to her for the end to which she employs them. Madame Goesler never makes that mistake. She is never less than true. She resists various temptations to compromise her integrity, overcomes adversity, remains utterly honest with herself and considerate of others even when they deserve much worse. She achieves the end she has sought all along: an enjoyable and responsible life that reflects her individuality and allows her to be true to what she most deeply cares about. But she has to work hard to get there. The truth about Madame Goesler’s background is that, although she is ‘a woman with a foreign name, with means derived from foreign sources, with a foreign history’ (PF lxii), ‘her father had been a small country attorney’ living in England (PF lxi). Her husband was ‘an Austrian banker, and [she] has lived the greater part of her life in Vienna’ (PF xli). Her husband ‘had been old when she married him’ and when ‘he had left her a widow ... she found herself possessed of money’ (PF lvii). The ‘old man had loved her’, she ‘had been grateful, tender, and self-sacrificing’, and he left her ‘wealth which she valued greatly’ (PR xxx). After her years of marriage, in possession of a great deal of money, she returns to England, where she had been born and raised. She knows that ‘she had not done aught amiss in life. There was no slur on her name; no stain on her character. ... She had broken no law of God or man, had been accused of breaking no law’ (PF lxi). But she also knows that she is alone in the world, belonging nowhere, and that ‘wealth alone has given her no happiness’ (PR xxx). ‘Madame Goesler, when she was alone ... with something weighty on her mind ... would sit ... for the hour ... resolving, or trying to resolve, what should be her conduct. She did few things without much thinking, and though she walked boldly, she walked warily’ (PF lx). What, then, did she want? ‘She would often ask herself what in truth was the object of her ambition, and the aim of her life. ... What was her definite object,—or had she any? In what way could she make herself happy? She could not say that she was happy yet. The hours with her were too long and the days too many’ (PF liv). After several years in high society, enjoying her spectacular success, she found part of the answer, and she faced it truthfully. ‘She was ashamed to tell herself that it was love ... it was necessary for her happiness that she should devote herself to some one. All the elegancies and outward charms of life were delightful,

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if only they could be used as means to some end. As an end themselves they were nothing’ (PR xxx). Having learned this about herself was a substantial achievement, but it was incomplete. She found that out when she discovered that loving someone was only part of what she cared about most deeply. The other part was that she could not love in a way that would have violated her integrity, her individuality, and sense of responsibility. She had to recognize that ‘I have scruples’, that she is not one whom ‘nothing ever stops’ (PM xi), and that she deeply cares about not going against those scruples. If she came to love, it had to be in her own way within her own limits. The significant facts about her emerge when we try to understand how she came to make this discovery and how her scruples shaped her actions.

8.4. Three significant facts The context of the first significant fact is the relationship between Madame Goesler and the Duke of Omnium. The Duke ‘was a very great person indeed’, he was regarded with ‘an almost reverential awe’ that carried with it ‘something of the ancient mystery of wealth and rank’ (PF xlviii). He was about 70, immensely wealthy, and unmarried. Had there been a Duchess of Omnium, she ‘might be said to fill ... the highest position in the world short of royalty’ (PF lvi). Madame Goesler, then, is about forty years younger than the Duke. The Duke meets and is besotted by Madame Goesler and eventually asks her to marry him. She is considering how to reply. Her reflections show the exceptional realism of her attitude to life. And that is one of the significant facts readers may glean from Trollope’s account of this remarkable character of his. She says to herself: ‘What was it after all, to have a duke and to have lords dining with her ... if life were dull with her, and the hours hung heavy! ... And if she caught this old man, and became herself a duchess ... would that make her life happier, or her hours less tedious? ... Were she ... to be blazoned forth to the world as Duchess of Omnium, what would she have gained?’ She tells herself: ‘Money she already had; position, too, she had of her own. She was free as air, and should it please her to go off to some lake ... there was nothing to hinder her for a moment.’ But ‘there was the name of many a woman written in

A Most Perfect Gentleman 153 a black list within Madame Goesler’s breast. ... It would be a pleasure ... to be revenged on those who had ill-used and scornfully treated her. ... As Duchess of Omnium she thought that probably she might use that list with efficacy’ (PF lx). Yet, although ‘it would be much to be Duchess of Omnium; but it would be something also to have refused to be a Duchess of Omnium’ (PF lxi). She also thinks about the Duke: ‘Poor old man! He had run through all the pleasures of life too quickly, and had not much left with which to amuse himself. ... He would be tired of his new plaything after a month’ (PF lxii). She also knows that, if she married him, it would be ‘to the inexpressible dismay of all those who were bound to him by ties of blood’ (PF lx) and expected to inherit his title and wealth. And, then, she gives her answer: ‘I cannot accept it ... though I should raise myself in name, I should injure myself in character ... I am wiser than this ... I think that when the first flush of passion is over in early youth men and women should strive to regulate ... their desires by their reason ... that we should be man and wife would be ill for both of us’ (PF lxii). One who comes to know all that has happened says to her, ‘you are the wisest woman I ever met’ (PR xxv). Another says that ‘whatever is best to be done, you will do it,—I know that’ and Madame Goesler replies, ‘your praise goes beyond the mark, my friend ... the difficulty is to be true’ (PR xxx). If we reflect on what we so far know of Madame Goesler’s attitude to life, we may think that its realism is too much of a good thing. She is clearly honest, at least with herself, but we may begin to feel that she is too calculating, self-serving, and hard. Her mind is clear, but does she not perhaps lack a heart? As Trollope puts it: ‘she was highly ambitious, and she played her game with great skill and great caution ... doing the very uttermost with those advantages which she possessed’ (PF lvii). No one, however, was more critical of her than herself: ‘she had grown, as she often told herself, to be a hard, cautious, selfish, successful woman’ (PF lx). These suspicions, ours and her own, are misplaced. And this is a further significant fact about her realism. To begin with, if Madame Goesler were really ambitious, she would have accepted the Duke’s offer of marriage. And if she declined it for some reason, as she did, she would have let the world know that she had done so. For she knows well that ‘it would be much to be the Duchess of Omnium; but it would be something also to have refused to be a Duchess of Omnium’ (PF lxi). The fact remains, however, that ‘since the business

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had been completed she had spoken of it to no one but to Lady Glencora Palliser [one of the expectant heirs of the Duke] who had forced herself into a knowledge of all the circumstances while they were being acted’ (PR xvii). Silence is not what a hard and selfish person would maintain. Furthermore, although she would not marry the Duke, she says: ‘I do like the man. He is gracious and noble in his bearing. He is now very old, and sinking fast into the grave; but even the wreck is noble.’ And that is a sentiment she acts on. ‘During the last two years I have allowed the whole fashion of my life to be remodelled. ... Read to him;—talk to him;—give him his food, and do all that in me lies to make his life bearable.’ Her friend says: ‘I don’t see what you get for it all.’ She replies: ‘get;—what should I get? You don’t believe in friendship then? ... I do my very best to make the evening of his days pleasant for him’ (PR xvii). And, then, as the Duke lies dying and knows it, he repeats the offer of marriage. ‘I would do it now if I thought it would serve you. ... Such things have been done, my dear.’ Her response is: ‘Such a thing shall never be done by me, Duke’ (PR xxv). She was thus offered everything that if she were an ambitious and selfish person she would want, and she refuses to take it. And, once again, she says nothing to anyone about the Duke’s second offer and her second refusal. But there is even more. When the Duke finally dies and his will is read, it turns out that he bequeathed to Madame Goesler what was then the great sum of £20,000, as well as his fabulous collection of jewelry, which was worth many times more than the money he left her. She says: ‘I will never take ... [what] has belonged to the Duke. ... According to my ability I have endeavoured to be good to him, and I have no stain on my conscience because of his friendship. If I took his money and jewels ... do you think I could say as much? ... And of all the rich things which the Duke of Omnium had left to her, she took nothing but the little ring with the black stone which he had always worn on his finger’ (PR xxvii). Madame Goesler, then, needs no excuse for her realistic attitude to life. It gave her clarity in seeing facts as they were, scrupulous honesty with herself, a habit of careful examination of her motives, and it enabled her to say to herself ‘I can be both generous and discreet;—but the difficulty is to be true’ (PR xxx). Thus far, however, she has surmounted that difficulty, as well as the others she encountered. Doubts remain, however, about the self to which she was true, and they bring us to the second significant fact about her, which emerges from her relationship with Phineas Finn.

A Most Perfect Gentleman 155 We may share, to begin with, the view the world had of Madame Goesler after initial suspicions have been allayed and she has been fully accepted by high society. ‘She was known to be generous, wise, and of good spirit. ... She had the good opinion of many, and was a popular woman. But there was not one among her friends who supposed her capable of becoming a victim of strong passion.’ As a friend says to her: ‘You like people, but I don’t think you love any one. ... Madame Goesler had smiled, and had seemed to assent’ (PR xlviii). We may think that she was true to a self in which passion has become the slave of reason. Her realism and self-control were so firmly entrenched and have become so habitual as to leave no room for spontaneity or strong feelings. Perhaps she could be true to herself only because she had made her self one-dimensional. Perhaps she achieved coherence by squelching vital parts of herself. Her inner life, the world thought, was too formal a garden because all natural growth has been weeded out of it. The world, however, was badly mistaken. Madame Goesler had a robust emotional life, but she was as discreet about it as she was about everything else. She kept feelings largely to herself, and she expressed them, when she judged it to be appropriate, not in words, but in action. We have seen that when we first encounter her she is not happy because she lacks what she most wants, to which her ambition, wealth, and skills were merely means—namely, to love someone and devote herself to that person. And she does come to love someone and does want to devote herself to him. That person is Phineas Finn. He is a member of the Parliament from an insignificant Irish borough. He is about the same age as Madame Goesler, but, unlike her, he has very little money. Being Irish and Catholic and having no wealth, he is initially as much of an outsider in English high society as Madame Goesler was. But, since he is an attractive, intelligent, obliging man with agreeable manners, very popular with the ladies, and a willing apprentice to experienced politicians, he is making his way, even though money is a constant worry. He finds Madame Goesler appealing and he appreciates her warmth to him, but there are also other women he finds appealing and they are also warm to him. His political fortune temporarily declines, his financial problems become more acute, and he has to return to Ireland to earn a living. So we come to the second significant fact that helps us understand the coherence of Madame Goesler’s attitude to life.

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Madame Goesler loves Phineas, but he does not know that. She, then, takes the unprecedented step of offering him money that would enable him to pursue his political career and stay in London. He is amazed and tempted by this highly unusual solution to his problem, but he does not see how he could honorably accept her offer. Madame Goesler presses him to explain why, and he says: ‘presents of money are always bad. They stain and load the spirit, and break the heart.’ She asks, ‘specially when given by a woman’s hand?’ and he responds, ‘It seems so to me. But I cannot argue of it.’ Then Madame Goesler does something that takes us to the very core of her self. She says: ‘Take the hand than first. When it and all that it holds are your own, you can help yourself as you [wish]. ... So saying, she stood before him with her right hand stretched out towards him’ (PF lxxii). At that time and place, in that milieu, for a young woman to propose marriage to a young man was simply unthinkable. It was totally foreign to the prevailing conventions and revealed a sensibility that saw the conventions from the outside and regarded them as quaint customs observed by the natives. It was polite to conform to them in the company of natives, but when it came to serious personal decisions, the conventions simply stood in the way, much as elaborate clothing stands in the way of making love. The marriage Madame Goesler offered was a personal matter between Phineas and herself, and she was not to be obstructed by other people’s beliefs about what constitutes proper conduct. So she held out her hand—but Phineas did not take it. The significance of the fact that she would reveal herself to him to the extent of showing both that she loved him and that she only played the role the prevailing conventions assigned to her without taking the whole business seriously shows that she truly loved him and would not let the world stand in her way. But the world did stand in the way, and much had to happen before Phineas accepted and returned her love. What is clear, however, at this point is that Madame Goesler has not squelched her feelings. She was discreet about them, kept them private, but when the appropriate time came, she acted on them fearlessly. That she did not allow her feelings to cloud her judgment, that she allowed herself to act on them only when she thought it was appropriate, shows that her attitude to life was coherent because she kept her beliefs, feelings, and motives in harmony, not letting any of them overwhelm the others. The third significant fact has to do with the durability of Madame Goesler’s attitude to life. We have seen that her attitude is realistic, because

A Most Perfect Gentleman 157 she accurately assesses the possibilities and limits of the social context in which she has chosen to live and also her own possibilities and limits, given her character and circumstances. Her attitude is also coherent, because it reflects her individuality formed of her beliefs, emotions, and motives, and because she does not allow any one of them to assume permanent dominance over the others. Her attitude, therefore, is well balanced and well adapted to the world that surrounds her. She knows what she wants and she does what she can to get it, but only within the limits set by her scruples. She is thus true to herself and she is a person of integrity. But she is that because her attitude to life is reliably reflected by the pattern of her actions in a great variety of circumstances. This is what I mean by its durability. An enduring attitude to life is essential to integrity, because, unless the attitude is dependably expressed in action, one cannot be said to be true to it. An attitude unexpressed in action or one that frequently changes indicates suppressed or uncertain individuality, and both are incompatible with integrity. But Madame Goesler’s attitude was enduring, and this is what the third significant fact shows about her. The fact emerges from the context of her various relationships. Her closest friend is Glencora Palliser, now a Duchess because her husband became the Duke of Omnium after the death of the old Duke. Madame Goesler is ‘a friend dearly loved by the Duchess’, the friend to whom she told everything (PM vi). In their friendship ‘there had grown up from accidental circumstances so strong a bond between these two women, that it was taken for granted by both their husbands’. The Duchess says to Madame Goesler: ‘You know I cannot get on without you. ... There isn’t another person in the world that I can really say a thing to’ (PM xlii). She is ‘the closest friend of the Duchess’ (DC ii). And then the Duchess dies. Madame Goesler, knowing the wishes of the Duchess better than anyone, becomes a substitute mother of the Duchess’s daughter and as intimate a friend of the new Duke as that stiff, humorless, icon of rectitude is capable of having. Throughout all this, Madame Goesler is affectionate, gives sensible advice when asked, remains uncompromisingly herself in all she does and says, and is fastidious in not taking ‘advantage of her friendship with the Duke’s family’ (DC ii). The Duke, who is exceptionally obtuse about human motivation, including his own, misunderstands what she does on behalf of his daughter and unjustly accuses her of wrongdoing. Madame Goesler, then, abandons her usual easygoing and lighthearted manner and

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becomes uncompromising and adamant in her indignant defense of her integrity. She is formidable in demanding and getting an apology from the Duke for his injustice, which is like demanding and getting an apology from an Old Testament prophet for having been insufficiently severe. The most important of her relationships, of course, is with Phineas, the man she loves and the one who did not accept her offer of marriage and money, even though it would have solved his problems. As it happens, Phineas is accused of murder. Circumstantial evidence strongly points to his guilt. He is in jail, awaiting trial, public opinion is split on his guilt, and Madame Goesler, convinced of his innocence, believes that, ‘were he free tomorrow he would ... become the husband of Lady Laura Kennedy’ (PR liv). None of this changes her love and devotion to him. She ‘cling[s] to him with constancy’ and ‘is sore of heart, as well as broken down with sorrow’ (PR xlviii). As the wheels of justice laboriously grind the mounting evidence against Phineas, his few loyal friends try to console him, public opinion, which is vital for his political future, is turning against him, and his lawyers do what lawyers do; but Madame Goesler is certain of his innocence and the only one who thinks of gathering evidence for the guilt of someone else. She goes to Prague and finds conclusive evidence that reveals the real murderer. Sparing no expense and effort, she exonerates the man she loves and who, she believes, will marry someone else. She asks nothing in return, she does not even visit Phineas in jail, nor does she see Phineas until many weeks after his ordeal is over. When they finally meet, she treats him as no more than a friend, using great tact not to make him feel her chagrin at having made her rejected proposal. But she does not falter in her love of him. After a long time and gradually growing realization of the depth of her love of him and his own growing love of her, Phineas at last proposes to her and he is, of course, accepted. And, believe it or not, they both flourish and live enjoyably ever after.

8.5. Integrity as an admirable style of life ‘Fashions change, theories emerge and fade, but the realistic writer goes on believing that plain writing, energized by the named things of the world, can make imagined places actual and open other lives to the responsive reader, and that by living those lives through words a reader might be

A Most Perfect Gentleman 159 changed.’⁶ These fine words succinctly express my opinion of Trollope’s remarkable portrait of Madame Goesler. She is a complex, mature person who lives her life on her own terms. Her style of life is integrity. Its constitutive attitude is to be true to herself even when it is tempting and hard not to be otherwise. Her manner is tactful regardless of whether others are deserving of it. And her project is to marry the man she loves and enjoy him, her wealth, and life in the pleasant setting of Victorian high society in which reason and decency prevail and the seamy side of life is kept on the margins. Madame Goesler knows herself and the world, and with much thought and great skill finds a niche whose possibilities and limits allow her to pursue possibilities she values and observe limits she set for herself. She thus finds a fit between the life she reasonably and responsibly wants and a life the world allows. And when she lives that life, she enjoys it. She is true to herself, she has a good marriage based on reciprocal love, she is liked and respected by others, and she is generous in helping others. She understands much about human weaknesses and the often silly conventions by which people live. But she does not respond by deluding herself with illusions or by allowing misanthropy to poison her mind. She sees life steadily and she sees it as a whole, and she says yes to it and lives with enjoyment. Her portrait is Trollope’s gift to responsive readers who might change their own lives for the better by realizing in their own circumstances the possibility Madame Goesler’s life represents. The value of that gift is not just the affirmation of the possibility of a good life, but also the contrast it presents to some deplorable tendencies in contemporary literature. It shows that seeing does not have to be a cynical seeing through; knowing oneself need not depend on an obsessive preoccupation with the minutiae of dubious memories; reversals of fortune may be good, not just bad; lives need not be full of self-loathing, sexual corruption, undeserved misfortune, or brutalization by injustice; we can be free of mauvaise foi, anomie, ennui, or of the other maladies the French insist we all suffer from; and that the alternative to the naive belief that human beings are angels, fallen or otherwise, need not be that they are sublunary devils. It suggests the outrageous thought that reason and decency may actually lead to a good life. I have tried in this chapter to make explicit through discursive thought what is implicit in Trollope’s evocative literary approach. But my effort is dependent on Trollope’s achievement, because only what is implicitly

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there can be made explicit. And that, in the present case, is an admirable style of life that makes it possible to live enjoyably and responsibly. The key to it is a coherent, realistic, and enduring attitude to life informed by one’s deepest concerns and a pattern of dominant activities performed in a manner that reflects that attitude. Madame Goesler’s life makes concrete the particular attitude, manner, and project that jointly constitute her integrity.

9 A Morbid Romantic Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility ... and the whole train of monkish virtues ... are everywhere rejected by men of sense ... because they serve to no manner of purpose; neither advance a man’s fortune in the world, nor render him a more valuable member of society; neither qualify him for the entertainment of company, nor increase his power of self-enjoyment. ... They ... stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper. We justly ... transfer them to the ... catalogue of vices ... [of a] gloomy, hair-brained enthusiast. (David Hume, Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, 1777)

9.1. A horrible death The year is 1970, the place is the headquarters of Japan’s Eastern Army. Yukio Mishima, aged 45, one of Japan’s prominent novelists and a public figure notorious for extravagant antics, accompanied by three acolytes, occupies the office of the commanding officer. They are armed with swords and daggers and threaten to murder the commander unless he orders his troops to assemble under his window. Mishima climbs up on the ledge of a balcony and starts to read to the troops a manifesto that urges them to revolt and restore the Emperor and Japan to their former glory. The troops cannot hear a word he says. They jeer at him and call him ‘bakayaro’, which is a most insulting word in Japanese. Mishima stops, climbs down, and goes inside. He takes off his shirt, drops his pants around his ankles. He wears a white loincloth. He kneels. One acolyte places a piece of paper in front

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of Mishima to write his last message in blood. Mishima takes a foot-long dagger in his right hand. Behind him stands an acolyte with a sword. With his left hand Mishima finds a soft spot on his abdomen, drives in the dagger, while shouting a salute to the Emperor. Then he draws the dagger from left to right across his abdomen. Blood spurts, his intestines ooze out. He writes nothing because he is in pain. The whole point of this ghastly ritual is to show self-control in extreme pain, but Mishima fails. Do not leave me in agony, he says, and crumples forward. This prevents the acolyte with the sword behind him from doing what he is there for, which is to cut off Mishima’s head. The acolyte tries but misses and cuts into Mishima’s shoulder instead. He tries again, misses again, and inflicts another wound. He gives up, hands the sword to a less incompetent swordsman, who finally severs Mishima’s head. It falls and adds to the gore already on the floor. As a finale, another acolyte has his head cut off.¹ The deed is done. The bungling has turned the intended drama into a horrible farce. The Prime Minister condemns Mishima’s act as insane, the newspapers use especially large headlines, and the literati say they had seen it coming. Life goes on as before and the political consequences are zero. It is recalled that a few days earlier Mishima had said in a conversation: ‘I come out on the stage determined to make the audience weep and instead they burst out laughing’ (Scott-Stokes, 312). This is thought to be an acute prediction, and it is quoted with sadness by his friends and head shaking by others. The unwholesome spectacle staged by Mishima combines the horrible reality of death, pain, and gore with the unreality of theater, quixotic anachronism, political idiocy, and utter futility. The aim of this chapter is to explain Mishima’s death as the last episode in a pattern of actions that reflects his attitude to life and the manner in which he lived and died. The attitude, the manner, and the pattern jointly form his style of life. Once that style is understood, it will be seen as a gross understatement to call it deficient. Mishima tried to be true to himself, but the effort to be true to such a self was a morbid pursuit of misery and death. Before I go on to give reasons for this evaluation, it is necessary to show why some explanations that have been given of his death are mistaken. To begin with, the Prime Minister had something like a point in calling Mishima’s death insane. If the word is understood metaphorically to mean outrageous to common sense, extravagantly excessive, absurdly

A Morbid Romantic 163 imprudent, then his death was insane. If we speak strictly, however, then neither Mishima nor his act was insane. He had planned it in detail for over a year; coordinated the activities of his acolytes; and gave reasons for what he did. He was not deluded, deranged, or frenzied; his considerable intelligence was unimpaired; he carried on his usual life in his usual manner until the very end; he made practical arrangements for his death; and he proceeded calmly, methodically to follow a prearranged design. That his death demands an explanation, and that the explanation must be very unusual, are, of course, true. But there is an explanation. The act was not senseless. Some people, especially on the Japanese left, thought that the act was political, and it reflected the dangerous extremism of reactionary right-wing politics. There were those in Japan, such people thought, who had not learned from the devastation of the lost war, who still deified the Emperor, who were convinced of Japanese racial superiority, who wanted Japan to rearm, prepare for war, and either win with glory or die with honor. The truth in this explanation is that Mishima did claim for some time before his death that his sympathies were with the right. But this was just one of the many masks he wore, and one of his numerous oddities was that he was vocal in avowing that his masks were masks. The title of one of his many autobiographical novels is Confessions of a Mask. In another, Kyoko’s House, Mishima’s alter ego recounts the slogans of his right-wing ideology. He is, then, asked: ‘And you believe that?’ He replies: ‘I wouldn’t say I believed it exactly. It’s just that phrases like that give me a fine feeling. ... I know perfectly well I don’t believe. I see this ideology outside of myself, and I use it as a tool to obtain an indescribable rapture’ (Nathan, 163–4). In response to a student’s question of why he opposes communism, Mishima says: ‘I have little reason really. I simply chose communism as an opponent, because I needed an opponent to provoke me to action’ (Nathan, 241). One of his biographers concludes that the planned death ‘finally executed a year later was conceived by Mishima ... as merely a formal gesture without meaning or value’ (Nathan, 261). He says ‘that Mishima wanted passionately to die all his life and ... he chose ‘‘patriotism’’ quite consciously as a means to the painful ‘‘heroic’’ death his lifelong fantasy prescribed’ (Nathan, pp. x–xi). Another biographer writes that Mishima ‘was regarded, in fact, until the late 1960s [he died in 1970], as a writer with vaguely leftist sympathies, as he never expressed reactionary

164 Some Particular Styles of Life opinions until the last five years of his life. ... He remained intensely suspect to the ... fanatical right-wing in Japan—and he never had ... any contacts whatever with [them], whom he regarded as gangsters’ (Scott-Stokes, 313). Perhaps the most respected Western expert on Japanese culture concludes that ‘the political gesture he made ... was probably his way of imparting to his suicide a dignity that would make it more than an act of selfindulgence. ... He died as he wished, wearing the mask he first put on many years before.’² Mishima himself has his alter ego say in Kyoko’s House about a death like the one he planned for himself that all we can know ... is that death must always have been his desire. Death confronted him wearing a variety of masks. One by one he took them off and put them on his face. When he removed the final mask, death’s real face must have been revealed. ... Until then his desire for death had made him fervently desire the masks too. With the masks he gradually made himself beautiful. You must realize that a man’s determination to become a beautiful person ... is always the desire for death. (Nathan, 167)

Mishima had many masks indeed: the homosexual, the aesthete, the nihilist, the actor, the bodybuilder, the patriot, the existentialist, the social critic, the samurai, among others. In wearing these masks, he was true to one part of himself and false to the others. But beneath these surfaces was his lifelong fascination with death, pain, eroticism, and beauty. He regarded them as intimately connected. Again and again he inflicted on his readers graphic, forceful, nauseating, and detailed fantasies in which he made concrete this unwholesome combination. Here are two examples among many. In my murder theater, young Roman gladiators offered up their lives for my amusement; and all the deaths that took place there not only had to overflow with blood but also had to be performed with all due ceremony. ... But I would allow ... no gallows, as they would not have provided a spectacle of outpouring blood. ... I chose primitive and savage weapons ... and in order to prolong the agony, it was the belly that must be aimed at.³

The second example concerns a lieutenant and his wife, Reiko. The lieutenant decides to kill himself. They make love one last time, then she watches him die, and then she also commits suicide. Was it death he was now waiting for? Or a wild ecstasy of the senses? The two seemed to overlap, almost as if the object of his bodily desire was death

A Morbid Romantic 165 itself. ... They felt as if the still unknown agonies of death had tempered their senses to the keenness of red-hot steel. The agonies they could not yet feel, the distant pains of death had refined their awareness of pleasure. ... A death beneath the eyes of his beautiful wife ... he was ... realizing an impossible union of them both. ... This must be the very pinnacle of good fortune, he thought. To have every moment of his death observed by those beautiful eyes. ... The lieutenant began to cut sideways across his stomach. ... He directed the strength of his whole body into his right hand and pulled again. ... The pain spread slowly outward from the inner depths until the whole stomach reverberated. ... The volume of blood had steadily increased, and now it spurted from the wound as if propelled. ... The mat ... was drenched with splattered blood. ... A spot, like a bird, came flying across to Reiko and settled on the lap of her white kimono. ... It would be difficult to imagine a more heroic sight. ... Reiko ... gazing in fascination at the tide of blood advancing toward her knees.⁴

This combination of morbidity, sadomasochism, and aestheticism is the significant fact that is central to understanding Mishima and his death. I will return to it shortly. For the moment, however, I conclude that it is absurd to try to understand this man and his death in political terms. Right-wing politics was one of Mishima’s masks. It is much too simple-minded to focus on one of the masks of this complex person, ignore both the other masks and what was beneath them, and attribute what he was and did to reactionary politics.

9.2. The samurai ethos Let us now consider a deeper explanation. It will also turn out to be mistaken, but its mistake is interesting and important, and it leads to a better understanding of Mishima and his death. We may begin with a fascinating work: The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan.⁵ The heroes are samurai who dedicated themselves to serving a lord. They were fabled swordsmen who fought in whatever cause their lord chose, and were ready to die. Their ethos was to die rather than to accept defeat. They differed from other men by their legendary fighting skill and by valuing their life much less than the cause for which they fought. If the cause was defeated but they survived, they routinely committed ritual suicide, called hara-kiri or seppuku, meaning belly-cutting, which involved an excruciating

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form of self-mutilation. By this means they showed courage, willing endurance of pain, and contempt for a life they regarded as disgraced by defeat. Their manner of death was thought to redeem the honor they lost by losing the battle. They were celebrated as heroes throughout the history of Japan. Their example infused Japanese militarism and explained both the willingness of Japanese troops in the Second World War to fight to death and the contemptuous cruelty with which the Japanese treated prisoners of war. Although the book is not about Mishima, the author, Ivan Morris, says that ‘Mishima’s own last act ... belongs squarely to the scenario of heroism as described in these chapters. ... The moral and physical courage of his resolution was no less than theirs.’⁶ Morris’s claim is strengthened by the fact that Mishima himself wrote a book, The Way of the Samurai,⁷ which is a commentary on the teachings of Jocho Yamamoto, one of the legendary samurai, who became a priest and founded a cult. Mishima says that at the core of Jocho’s teaching is the rule: ‘the Way of the Samurai is Death.’ Jocho’s teaching, Mishima claims, provided him with ‘constant spiritual guidance’, formed ‘the basis of my morality’, gave him ‘a philosophy of life’, and ‘is the womb from which my writing is born’ (Way, 6, 10). We are, then, to see Mishima as standing in the long tradition of the samurai ethos, and his death as an honorable act chosen in contempt of a life in disgrace, just as it was chosen by his heroic predecessors. Unfortunately the facts—those inconvenient spoilers of melodrama—are incompatible with Morris’s sympathetic and Mishima’s self-glorifying view. To begin with Morris, the samurai whose ghastly deaths were historically celebrated in Japan did not show the nobility of failure; they showed at most nobility in failure. Much depends on the changed preposition. The samurai detested failure and regarded it as disgraceful. They fought to win, and, if they lost, they avoided the disgrace of failure only by killing themselves in a spectacular manner in order to show that they did not fail because they lacked courage. Perhaps they showed nobility by preferring a painful death to life as a failure, but they would not have done that if they had regarded failure as noble. Morris is right to compare the samurai who committed suicide to the tragic heroes of the Western tradition, but their resemblance provides no support for his view that the samurai, or the tragic heroes, regarded failure as noble. They were alike in valuing their cause so highly as to prefer death

A Morbid Romantic 167 to its failure, but that does not mean that they did not value life and success. Achilles, Antigone, and Ajax, to mention some among others, would have preferred to succeed and live than to fail and die as they did, but only if they could have done so on their own terms. They, like the samurai, hated failure, and chose to die precisely because they found living with failure contemptible. It adds to the implausibility of this explanation that Mishima’s own book makes clear that Jocho did not hold the simple belief that a samurai should commit seppuku if his cause was lost. The core of Jocho’s teaching, contrary to Mishima’s commentary, is not the simple rule that ‘the way of the samurai is death’. Jocho himself did not follow this rule. Although his lord died and his cause failed when Jocho was 42, he did not kill himself, because, as Mishima says, ‘his deceased master ... was ahead of his time in strictly forbidding such loyalty suicides ... and he issued an edict that if anyone committed suicide upon his death, the honor of that man’s family would be destroyed’ (Way, 36–7). Instead of killing himself, Jocho retired and lived in seclusion until he died at the age of 61. As Jocho saw it, therefore, the way of the samurai was not death, but obedience to his lord. The samurai must be prepared to die if need be, but obedience took precedence over death. Nevertheless, Mishima claims that ‘death is the samurai’s supreme motivation’ (Way, 27). If this were so, the person to whom Mishima turned for ‘constant spiritual guidance’, whose teachings formed ‘the basis of my [i.e. Mishima’s] morality’, was a dishonorable samurai. Mishima, thus, misses the fundamental feature of the samurai ethos. He was certainly not ignorant of the central place in it of obedience, since he explicitly refers to it. But then he ignores it, and the question is why. I think the answer is that he was not concerned with being a latter-day samurai. He wanted to kill himself in a spectacular way, and the samurai ethos was merely a convenient device he used for this purpose. He was no more a samurai than a reactionary right-wing fanatic. He was obsessed with dying, and he wanted it to be a public event. He used the samurai ethos as a means that came readily to hand. Furthermore, Mishima also quotes Jocho as saying that ‘we would all prefer to live’ (Way, 44); that ‘avoiding dishonor is quite a separate consideration from winning or losing. To avoid dishonor he must die. But if the first time things do not proceed as he would wish, he must try again’

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(Way, 56); and that ‘true samurai stumble and fall seven times, bounce back eight times. ... A samurai ... must conceive of himself as a self-righting doll that bounces back no matter how many times you knock it down’ (Way, 136). Jocho, therefore, considerably qualifies the extreme view Mishima attributes to him. Mishima embraces the extreme and ignores the qualifications. The important question this raises is why Mishima does this. Let us, however, take the extreme view and consider whether it would explain Mishima’s death. If we bear in mind the facts of Mishima’s life, it is obvious that the extreme view of the samurai ethos cannot explain what he did to himself. First, being a warrior is essential to being a samurai, and Mishima was no warrior. Until he took up bodybuilding late in his life, he was sickly, weak, and underdeveloped. ‘He was pale as death. ... His body seemed to float in his clothes. ... When he looked at himself with those eyes that would really perceive beauty, and he was looking at himself constantly, he was filled with disgust at what he saw’ (Nathan, 106). The only opportunity he had to become a warrior was when he might have been conscripted during the last days of the Second World War, but he prudently faked illness and was exempted from military service. Secondly, samurai killed themselves, according to the extreme view, in order to avoid being dishonored by failure. Mishima, however, was a conspicuous success at whatever he tried. He was celebrated as one of Japan’s premier authors, won numerous prizes, had plenty of money, was translated into many languages, and was a sought-after speaker in many countries during his numerous foreign travels. He wrote plays that were staged and much praised. He acted on the stage and in films, making a point of exhibiting his recently developed muscular body, and was favorably reviewed. He was a popular figure in Tokyo’s nightclubs and social life. Foreign visitors sought his company and spread his fame. He had a good marriage, as that was understood in conventional Japanese terms. There was no area of his life where he encountered failure, so he lacked the reason samurai may be supposed to have for killing themselves. Lastly, samurai killed themselves because their cause was lost. Mishima, however, had no cause. He says that the ‘practical ethics for daily living’ he had learned from Jocho ‘might be called a man of action’s belief in

A Morbid Romantic 169 expediency’. And ‘it is a philosophy of action, not of government ... there is absolutely nothing political about it’ (Way, 7, 40). This, of course, is a further reason for regarding his adoption of right-wing politics at the end of his life as another mask he put on to disguise his real motivation. So once again we are brought to the question of what really led him to kill himself. The upshot is that the attempt to explain Mishima’s suicide by seeing it in the light of the ritual suicide of the samurai is utterly unconvincing. By no stretch of the imagination can Mishima be regarded as a latter-day samurai. Real samurai valued life and were willing to give it up only if they were convinced that their cause was irrevocably lost; but Mishima did not have a cause and did not fail. Real samurai regarded obedience as their chief virtue; but Mishima obeyed no one and recognized no authority over himself. Why, then, did this successful man—in the prime of life and the height of fame, full of vitality and energy, celebrated as a valued member of his society, sought out by foreigners, supported by a loyal wife who accepted his homosexual affairs, having no financial worries, and being in robust health—kill himself?

9.3. The torments of a man in conflict Mishima committed suicide because he could not live with himself. One half of his self was at war with another, and whichever prevailed despised the temporarily suppressed part. He thus contrived to loathe part of himself no matter what he did. He killed himself in the ghastly manner he did because his incoherent attitude to life was exacerbated by a virulent form of romanticism. The torment he caused himself and the pain and death of his bungled suicide were motivated by romantic excess, self-loathing, and a deliberate misinterpretation of the samurai ethos. These motives led him to commit suicide in a way that faithfully reflected the inner conflict he inflicted on himself and could not resolve. The reasons supporting this explanation now follow. Mishima says that he has been tormented by a conflict that made living as an artist unusually difficult for him, because, ‘although life is the mother of literature, it is also her bitter enemy; although life is inherent in the author himself, it is also the eternal antithesis of art’. The

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‘beautiful, pristine world’ of literature is incompatible with the ‘quagmire’ of life that ‘constantly threaten[s]’ it (Way, 10). There are ‘within his subconscious mind deep, blind impulses. These are the dynamic expressions of the contradictions filling one’s life ... the drives for resistance and death’ (Way, 25–6). He says to his mother: ‘most writers are perfectly normal in the head ... I behave normally but I’m sick inside’ (Nathan, 109). Describing one of his novels, he writes that he ‘attempted to show discrepancies and conflicts within myself, as represented by two I’s’ and he was concerned with ‘the expression of diametrically opposed attitudes within human beings’ (Scott-Stokes, 128). He talks about ‘the stress under which he lived—the strain which he so faithfully hid behind his mask ... an ever wider split in the personality’ (Scott-Stokes, 181). He was ‘masquerading as a normal person’, a person who has never known happiness ... but I give an appearance of happiness in which no one can detect a flaw’ (Mask, 153, 212). What, then, is the conflict, the contradiction, the sickness inside him, the diametrically opposed attitudes, the strain under which he lives? What is he hiding behind the masquerade? His conflict is between life and death; between living and enjoying all the worldly goods of health, fame, and fortune that he has, and acting on his fascination with death, pain, eroticism, and beauty. He resolved the conflict by forging his morbidity, sadomasochism, and aestheticism into an attitude to life. I will refer to it as morbidity, but it should be remembered that it is an eroticized and aestheticized fascination with death. Morbidity leads him to embrace death as the way of the samurai, while ignoring the prudent qualifications a real samurai would place on it; to say that, ‘when a human being tries to live beautifully and die beautifully, strong attachment to life undermines that beauty’; to the view that ‘romantic love ... is always reinforced by death. One must die for love, and death heightens love’s tension and purity’ (Way, 21–2, 23–4); to the ‘esthetic formula in which Beauty, Ecstasy, and Death were equivalent and together stood for his personal holy grail’; to write that ‘a man’s determination to become a beautiful person ... is always a desire for death’; and that ‘death ... is the only truly enticing, truly vivid, truly erotic concept’ (Nathan, 31, 167, 190). Morbidity involves not just the desire for death but also the rejection of ordinary life. Mishima believes that in their quotidian existence ‘people

A Morbid Romantic 171 are lowering their goals ... degenerate into a single cog, a single function’, and he agrees with Jocho that this ‘leads to a debasement of status’. He acknowledges that the ‘human instinct for survival, faced with a decision between life and death, normally forces us to choose life’, but his own choice, following Jocho, is that ‘in a life or death crisis, simply settle it by deciding on immediate death. There is nothing complicated about it. Just brace yourself and proceed’ (Way, 21–2). He does not say why the decision should be for death, nor why death should take an extremely painful form. He objects to ‘rational humanism ... turning the eyes of modern man toward the brightness of freedom and progress ... ignoring the fact that bringing death to the level of consciousness is an important element of mental health’. And he thinks we should ‘reevaluate our views of life and death after twenty years of peace since the Second World War’ (Way, 29). He is conscious of this being an unnatural preference: ‘I do not accept the course of Nature. I know I am going against Nature’ (Scott-Stokes, 216). He had systematically trained himself to choose death over life: ‘As a part of my system of self-discipline, dating from childhood, I constantly told myself it would be better to die than become a lukewarm person, an unmanly person. ... This image of a lukewarm man ... aroused my disgust, made my entire existence seem worthless, and tore my selfconfidence into shreds.’ He was appalled by the ‘everyday life of a member of human society. How the mere words made me tremble’ (Mask, 203, 218). But why did he choose death over life? Why were rational humanism, freedom, progress, and everyday life so abhorrent to him? Because ‘I cherished a romantic impulse toward death’ (Scott-Stokes, 222). At the core of his life and writing was a ‘quintessential ... anxious, erotic romanticism ... the ecstasy of erotic death. At the heart of [his] esthetic ... death is equated with supreme beauty’ (Nathan, 39, 42). He says that ‘I am inherently and therefore incurably afflicted with the disease called romanticism’ (Nathan, 191). His ‘romantic idea ... impinges directly on his eventual decision to commit suicide’ (Scott-Stokes, 56). He writes that ‘the romantic impulse ... had formed an undercurrent in me from boyhood on’ (Scott-Stokes, 222). Romanticism, of course, has many forms, some less noxious than others, but Mishima’s form of it had excess at its core. ‘There is no such thing as going too far.’ He celebrates the ‘supreme resolution to die a fanatic’s death.

172 Some Particular Styles of Life There is no such thing as correctness or propriety in fanaticism’ (Way, 7). He admires ‘strength’, which is ‘not to be carried away by attempts at wisdom ... not to go overboard in judgment’ and people must not ‘lose their strength’ and be ‘rendered ineffectual’ by ‘wisdom and judgment’ (Way, 77). And ‘the supreme moment in life ... is devotion to ideals which transcend rationality’ (Nathan, 179). My explanation of Mishima’s death emerges if we put all these pieces together. He was tormented by a conflict at the core of his character between what he saw as life and death. Life was a quagmire; it made one into a lukewarm, unmanly, debased person. Death was beautiful and pure, and pain made it more so. After many years of torment and struggle, he opted for death. He knew that reason, judgment, and wisdom were on the side of life and against death, but his romantic style of life silenced them and drove him to follow his attitude of morbidity, which combined eroticism, beauty, and death-wish. He was tormented because his attitude to life was incoherent. He wanted both to live and to die. Throughout his life he despised himself for living and longed for painful death. As time passed, his attitude became more and more morbid, his manner more and more excessive, and his actions reflected more and more his style, attitude, and manner until they culminated in the final victory of death over life.

9.4. Why then? An adequate explanation of Mishima’s death must do more than simply establish that he wanted to die. It must explain why he killed himself in 1970 and not at some other time. Why did he not do it earlier or put it off until later? The answer, I think, consists in the combined influence of three elements of Mishima’s life. The first is explicitly stated by Mishima himself: I cherish a romantic impulse toward death, yet at the same time I required a strictly classical body as its vehicle ... the reason why my impulse toward death remained unfulfilled in reality was the immensely simple fact that I lacked the necessary physical qualifications. A powerful, tragic frame and sculpturesque muscles were indispensable in a romantically noble death. Any confrontation between weak, flabby flesh and death seemed absurdly inappropriate. Longing at eighteen for an

A Morbid Romantic 173 early demise, I felt myself unfitted for it. I lacked, in short, the muscles suitable for a dramatic death.

Mishima began his bodybuilding in 1955, and continued it assiduously, even while traveling, for fifteen years, until his death. He reached peak condition: ‘I had to make my body beautiful. When at last I came to own such a body, I wanted to display it to everyone, to show it off.’ But he did not have it for long because doubts began to set in: ‘The body is doomed to decay. ... I for one do not, will not, accept such a doom. This means that I do not accept the course of Nature. I know I am going against Nature; I know I have forced my body onto the most destructive path of all’ (Scott-Stokes, 222, 216). So he reached a point in 1970 between peak condition and the onset of decay when he had to have the dramatic death he wished for before decay set in. The second element is that until 1966 he lacked a cause that would at least appear to make his death a sacrifice of some sort rather than a private matter. Until then, if he had killed himself, he would have been liable to ‘the crushing sentence, ‘‘The cause for which you died was not worthwhile’’ ’ (Way, 27). He wanted his death to have the dignity that dedication to a cause might confer on it. But he did not much care, as we have seen, what the cause was. He happened to adopt the ultranationalist one in 1966, but it took some time for him to be accepted by the group he joined, to attract acolytes who might assist his suicide, and to choreograph in detail and to rehearse in many discussions their respective roles in the event itself. The third element emerges from the context of his detailed planning for death. In 1966 he announced that he planned a tetralogy, to be called The Sea of Fertility. ‘This was the most ambitious literary project so far conceived in Japan in the twentieth century’ (Scott-Stokes, 193). The completion of the four novels was to be Mishima’s crowning literary achievement. He worked feverishly during the next four years, and three of the volumes had appeared in 1966, 1968, and in early 1970. He completed the last volume in November 1970. The day he sent the manuscript to the publisher was the day he killed himself. Mishima, then, chose the time of death when he still had the body he thought was beautiful enough to kill, when his writing career has reached a crescendo, and when he had acolytes willing to assist him with the process. These elements were not in place earlier. And he could not leave his death

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until later, because he would not accept the natural process of aging, would not call off the plans he had made with his gullible acolytes, and would be unlikely to surpass his literary achievement.

9.5. Romanticism as a deficient style of life The time has now come to ask about the contribution of romanticism to Mishima’s miserable life and horrible death. The idea of romanticism is extremely imprecise. It has been rightly said that ‘it has come to mean so many things that, by itself, it means nothing’.⁸ The remedy is to make clear what one means by it. I follow Isaiah Berlin’s account of it. Central to it is the image of the heroic individual, imposing his will upon nature and society: of man not as the crown of a harmonious cosmos, but as being alienated from it, and seeking to subdue and dominate it. ... The noblest thing a man can do is to serve his own inner ideal. ... The question of whether an ideal is true or false is no longer thought important, or indeed wholly intelligible. The ideal presents itself in the form of a categorical imperative: serve the inner light within you because it burns within you, for that reason alone. Do what you think right, make what you think beautiful, shape your life in accordance with those ends which are your ultimate purpose, to which everything else in your life is a means, to which all else must be subordinated. ... The only principle which can be sacredly observed is that each man shall be true to his own goals. ... That is the romantic ideal in its fullest ... form.⁹

And he spells out the consequences of romanticism: ‘What romanticism did was to undermine the notion that in matters of value, politics, morals, aesthetics there are such things as objective criteria which operate between human beings ... objective truth has been compromised.’¹⁰ Romanticism understood in this way is a combination of the ideas of transcendence and inspiration. Each, in turn, combines affirmation and rejection. Take transcendence first. It affirms an ideal: goodness, beauty, truth, God, justice, nature, and the like. It rejects individual and social limits that stand in the way of pursuing the ideal. Transcendence, therefore, is always a quest toward something and overcoming something. It involves saying ‘yes’ to the ideal and ‘no’ to what stands in its way. The affirmation is a commitment to making the ideal one’s standard of evaluation. People and actions, institutions and conventions, possibilities and limits are judged

A Morbid Romantic 175 on the basis of whether they help or hinder the pursuit of the ideal. And the ideal is transcendent because it transcends the human condition. It depicts how the human condition ought to be, not how it is. The quest is from ‘is’ to ‘ought’, from imperfection to perfection. Romantics differ about the nature of ideal and about its attainability, but they agree that its pursuit is what gives meaning to human lives and what ennobles them. Consider inspiration next. Its affirmation is of loving the ideal and dedicating oneself to its pursuit. This love is not a passive admiration at a distance, but an active, motivating force. Its aim is not to possess the ideal, but to live in a way that approximates the perfection of the ideal. This is difficult and extremely demanding, because the ideal is perfect and one is imperfect. The quest for perfection, therefore, is arduous, full of obstacles, pitfalls, false steps, and setbacks. But its attraction is so strong as to make any effort worthwhile. What inspiration rejects is prudence, common sense, conventional wisdom, and cautious calculation; in short, it rejects practical reason that counsels moderation. According to it, moderation in love is a betrayal of it. Reason holds one back, cautions against taking risks, poses too many questions, and nurtures doubt. Reason interferes with loving the ideal; it is the enemy of imagination, emotion, and the quest for perfection. It keeps one earthbound, and inspiration requires its rejection. If the affirmations and rejections of romanticism are not treated with great circumspection, they are ruinous to human well-being and lead to a miserable life. As we have seen, Mishima enthusiastically embraced romanticism and spurned circumspection. His tormented life and horrible death were among the consequences. It is, of course, true that life cannot be improved unless we change it from how it is to how it ought to be. It is also true that this requires having some ideal of how it ought to be. But it is not true that this ideal must be of some kind of perfection that is attainable only if we transcend individual and social limits. The ideal may just be to do more or better what we have already been doing. Nor is it true that we can or should try to transcend individual or social limits indiscriminately. We all have limited capabilities in some areas of life and those cannot be transcended, even if the pursuit of an ideal requires it. And social limits may be imposed on us by the legal system, moral principles, or personal loyalties. Transcending them, even if we could, is highly undesirable if the limits protect our physical security, moral identity, or intimate ties to others we love. Moreover, having an

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ideal, say of beauty, does not exclude having other ideals, such as truth or justice. The pursuit of these ideals routinely leads to conflicts. It would be foolish to resolve them by declaring the supremacy of one of our several ideals and abandoning the rest. It is normally better to resolve their conflicts by balancing the conflicting ideals, which, of course, means accepting some limits on all our various pursuits. Only fanatics or those obsessed proceed otherwise, and that is what Mishima did. Romantics are also right to stress that life without loving higher ideals is hardly worth living. But our loves are often foolish, incompatible, destructive, or pathological, and we often mistake need, infatuation, or a passing fancy for love. Just as we must hold our ideals critically, so we must be critical of our loves. What enables us to be critical is practical reason. To reject practical reason, as romantics do, is to make it very likely that they will love wrong ideals in the wrong way. Their mistake is to suppose that practical reason is a competitor of inspiration, imagination, emotions, and creativity. I have already argued against this mistake (in Chapter 7). It will perhaps suffice to say here that practical reason is not a form of motivation that competes with other forms of motivation. It is a method of evaluating critically whatever we are motivated to do. It does not hinder inspiration but helps to direct it, as Aristotle rightly says, toward ‘the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right aim, and in the right way’.¹¹ By rejecting limits and practical reason, romantics pit themselves against the human condition. What they want to transcend is their humanity. But human beings cannot do that. The obstacle is logical, not a character defect that could be transcended by sufficiently strong inspiration. Romantics fail to see that and they keep banging their heads against an impenetrable wall and celebrate the resulting headache as proof of their courage. As the poet said: To say more than human things with human voice, That cannot be; to say human things with more Than human voice, that, also, cannot be; To speak humanly from the height or from the depth Of human things, that is acutest speech.¹²

Mishima’s romanticism made him unable to accept the conditions of life. His miserable life was an impossible quest to transcend the conditions

A Morbid Romantic 177 of his own existence. He tried to speak with more than a human voice and he failed. He was in love with death, because he saw it as a way of freeing himself from self-inflicted torment. He loathed himself because he lived by conforming to limits he hated. His morbidity finally defeated his ever-weakening attachment to life. And he killed himself horribly to punish himself for having lived what he saw as a detestable life of compromise. His style of life was romantic, his attitude morbid, his manner excessive, and the dominant pattern of his actions was to seek a beautiful public death. We learn from his life one way in which we can make ourselves miserable.

10 An Enemy of Happiness The heroic in life ... is based on the consciousness that life is a struggle; and that in this struggle it is courage, strength of will, and determination which are decisive, not intelligence nor sensibility. The heroic involves a contempt for convenience and a sacrifice of all those pleasures which contribute to what we call civilized life. It is the enemy of happiness. (Kenneth Clark, ‘The Young Michelangelo’, 1961)

10.1. Another death Mishima’s suicide was no doubt spectacular and extraordinary, but few would regard it as admirable. There is, however, another death, strangely similar to Mishima’s, that is thought by many very different people to be a perfect end to ‘the noblest life that ever was’.¹ It was the suicide of a man whose cause was defeated and who was unwilling to live under the tyranny he foresaw coming. He stabbed himself with his sword, but, because his hand was injured, he could not aim properly and cut himself open instead. He ‘[lay] weltering in his blood, great part of his bowels out of his body, but himself still alive and able to look at them’. He was found shortly thereafter in this state and his ‘physician went to him ... put in his bowels ... and sewed up the wound’. But the man ‘thrust away the physician, plucked out his bowels, and tearing open the wound, immediately expired’.² He was Marcus Porcius Cato, or Cato the Younger; the year was 46 bc; and Cato was 48 years old. The similarity between the deaths of Mishima and Cato is both strange and illuminating. It is strange, because killing oneself in the way they did is extremely painful. It is understandable to want to die in some circumstances, but dying in great self-inflicted pain involves choosing what virtually

An Enemy of Happiness 179 everyone wishes to avoid. It is stranger still that two people—separated by 2,000 years and very different cultures, having quite different personalities and histories, and living at opposite spots on the globe—would respond to their dissatisfaction with life by choosing to die and to die in this manner. The similarity, however, is also illuminating, because it is a striking confirmation of one of the main claims I am making in this book: namely, that the significance of many actions derives from the style of life they reflect. Similar actions may have different significance, and this is particularly striking in the cases of Mishima’s and Cato’s suicides. They did virtually the same thing, but the manner in which they did it and the attitude to life from which their actions followed force on us radically different explanations and evaluations. In the previous chapter I gave reasons for regarding Mishima’s romantic style as deficient. My present concern is with understanding and evaluating Cato’s death as a consequence of his style. For 2,000 years views have been divided about whether his life and death were admirable or deficient. I start with this disagreement. Cicero, who knew him well, said that ‘Cato had been endowed by nature with an austerity beyond belief, and ... by unswerving consistency had remained ever true to his purpose and fixed resolve; and it was for him to die rather than look upon the face of a tyrant’.³ According to Plutarch, ‘for virtue and reason [Cato] was one of the most eminent personages of his time’.⁴ Seneca wrote that Cato ‘demonstrated that a brave man can live in defiance of fortune. ... No one ever saw a change in Cato. ... He showed himself always the same man.’⁵ Montaigne talks about Cato’s ‘heart so noble, so lofty, and so unbending’.⁶ Dante thought that Cato was free of sin and, although a pagan, escaped Hell. Countless paintings over the centuries depict, some more gruesomely than others, Cato’s heroic death. Addison’s eulogy, Cato: A Tragedy,⁷ was first performed in 1713 in London. It was an instant and great success. Italian, French, German, Dutch, and Polish translations appeared quickly, and the play was repeatedly staged in all these countries and elsewhere.⁸ It was a favorite of George Washington, who had it performed to inspire the troops during the hard winter at Valley Forge. Benjamin Franklin memorized long passages from it.⁹ And as late as 1902 the Chichelle Professor of Modern History at Oxford wrote of Cato that ‘his principle was that a loyal citizen must not do evil that good may come, that anything is better than opportunism, and that it is far more important to have a clear conscience than ... political success. If evil days

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were at hand, he was perfectly willing to fight, by every device that an honest man might use; but he would not buy support from any quarter by what he considered corrupt concessions.’¹⁰ Alongside these encomia, however, there are also voices of doubt. Interestingly, they are often expressed by the same people who celebrate Cato’s heroism. No one doubts that Cato was virtuous, but there are serious questions about the wisdom of his virtuous actions. Cicero complained that ‘Cato speaks as if he was dealing with the ideal commonwealth of Plato, not with our corrupt and decadent Rome’.¹¹ Montaigne says about Cato that ‘in these ultimate necessities where there is nothing to hold on to, it would perhaps be more wisely done to lower your head and give away a little’; that ‘there is much more fortitude in wearing out the chain that binds us than in breaking it, and more proof of strength. It is lack of judgment and patience that hastens our pace’; that ‘his was a righteousness, if not unrighteous, at least vain and out of season’; and that Cato’s ‘inimitable straining for virtue that astounds us ... [was] severe to the point of being troublesome’.¹² Addison allows the warning to a young prince loyal to Cato that ‘your youth admires | The throws and swellings of a Roman soul, | Cato’s bold flights, the extravagance of virtue’.¹³ And Oman accepts that ‘he was a little impracticable, a little grotesque—in short, a magnificent anachronism’.¹⁴ These doubts are justified, I think. I will argue that, although Cato’s virtue was unquestionable, it was also immoderate. There was just too much of it: it became an excessive and extravagant straining after righteousness. Its unfortunate consequence was that his dogmatic attitude to life transformed his righteous manner of actions into a self-righteous one. His pattern of actions, self-righteous manner, and dogmatic attitude jointly formed a moralistic style that became characteristic of Cato. It was a deficient style, because it made his life miserable through an obsessive, grossly exaggerated preoccupation with responsibility. It poisoned his relationships, bound him to an impoverished range of possibilities, made him unfit for politics, and dried up his soul by deliberately excluding enjoyment from his life.

10.2. The style of a moralist Marcus Porcius Cato was born in 95 bc and died in 46 bc.¹⁵ His years coincide with the last years of the Roman Republic, which came to an

An Enemy of Happiness 181 end when Julius Caesar seized power. The center of the Roman Empire was Rome. Its population may be roughly divided into four groups. At the bottom were the slaves; next came common soldiers, farmers, and artisans; above them were merchants and small landowners; and on the top were a few dozen powerful families. It was possible but rare to move from one of these groups to another. Rome was ruled by the Senate, and the Senate was ruled, in descending order, by consuls, praetors, aediles, and quaestors, who were elected for fixed terms by the free, male citizens of Rome. The Senate itself comprised all those who, or whose family, had held one of these offices in the past. The interests of the general population were represented by tribunes, who were elected for a fixed term and who could veto any proposed legislation but who otherwise had no vote. This political system was riddled with corruption, staggered from crisis to crisis, and was maintained by taxation and booty, which the usually victorious legions and the Senate-appointed proconsuls extracted from conquered territories and populations. Each ruling family had a large number of so-called clients who supported the family in exchange for office, money, and protection. The elections were determined by the bribery of the electorate. This was very costly, and only the ruling families could bear the expense. Each family was compelled by the system to choose between going under or striving to increase its wealth and power by competing with other families, maintaining its clients, and trying to control the Senate. The politics of Rome was thus a cauldron of competing interests, which were only temporarily laid aside when war, epidemic, or starvation threatened the very survival of Rome. Essential to this system was Roman law. The state was meant to be governed by law, not the will of men temporarily in power. The business of the Senate was to make and enforce laws. Although both processes were frequently corrupted, the policies and actions of the Senate had to be justified by the existing laws. The proffered justifications were often merely rhetorical, but the rhetoric was needed because both the leaders and the populace believed that political measures had to have legal sanction. This, of course, gave great scope to eloquent jurists, like the elder Cato or Cicero. They used their knowledge of laws, skill in applying them to particular cases, and rhetorical eloquence to persuade the Senate and the populace of the justice or injustice of the measure they were concerned with defending or attacking. The appeal to laws was

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thus central, regardless of whether the appeals were conscientious or self-serving and sophistical. Cato was born into one of the lesser ruling families, whose most prominent member was his great-grandfather, also named Cato. The older Cato became consul. He ‘grew more and more powerful by his eloquence ... but his manner of life was yet more famous and talked of. ... For his general temperance ... and self-control he really deserves the highest admiration. ... [He] showed most inflexible severity and strictness in what related to public justice.’¹⁶ He was an exceptional figure in Roman politics, an exemplar of civic virtue in a corrupt society. The younger Cato, our present concern, admired the elder and modeled his entire life on him. From childhood on Cato was of ‘inflexible temper, unmoved by any passion, and firm in everything. He was resolute in his purposes. ... He was rough and ungentle toward those that flattered him, and still more unyielding to those who threatened him.’ He was ‘dull, and slow to apprehend ... but he would also ask the reason, and inquire the cause of everything’ (p. 918). He was deeply influenced by Antipater, the Stoic philosopher, and ‘devoted himself to the study, above everything, of moral and political doctrine’. He was aided in this ‘by a kind of inspiration for the pursuit of every virtue, yet ... most of all ... [for] that steady and inflexible justice which is not to be wrought by favour or compassion’ (p. 920). And by justice Cato understood adherence to the prevailing laws. He ‘habituated himself to go bareheaded in the hottest and the coldest weather, and to walk on foot at all seasons’ (p. 921). He regarded ‘the customs and manners of men at that time so corrupt, and reformation in them so necessary, that he thought it requisite, in many things, to go contrary to the ordinary way of the world’ (p. 921). He was first elected tribune and later appointed to command troops. He showed great bravery in the fighting. In clothing, diet, and mode of travel ‘he was more like a common soldier than an officer’ (p. 922); and this made him well liked by the troops. At that time Pompey was one of the great men of Rome and his attitude to Cato was widely shared: he ‘rather respected than loved him; and ... while Cato was there he paid him admiration, but was not sorry when he was gone’ (p. 925). Cato was well on his way to becoming a Stoic saint, who, like an Old Testament prophet, was severe, formidable, and feared rather than liked; more like

An Enemy of Happiness 183 Isaiah than St Francis. As Plutarch puts it: ‘Cato’s virtue looked like a kind of ecstasy ... in the cause of what was good and just’ (p. 932). He was elected quaestor, which put him in charge of Rome’s treasury. It was an office with even greater than the usual scope for corruption, but Cato was scrupulously honest and got rid of lesser officers who were notoriously dishonest. He ‘made the office of a quaestor equal to the dignity of a consul’. His ‘assiduity and indefatigable diligence’ were much admired, and he was treated with ‘awe and respect’ (pp. 926–7). In the Senate he was ‘terrible and severe as to matters of justice’ (p. 930). He could not be intimidated by threats or by physical violence, he was neither bribable nor would he bribe others, and he was tireless and eloquent in defending the laws of Rome, no matter how powerful were those whose interests would have been served by violating them. In this manner, he pitted himself against Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey, the most powerful and richest men of Rome. They were the ones who later came to form the Triumvirate, whose disintegration led first to the civil war and later to the fall of the Republic and the reign of Caesar. Cato had only eloquence and moral authority on his side and he ‘was opposed by all the[se] great men, who thought themselves reproved by his virtue’ (p. 944). At every opportunity he had, Cato, moved ‘as it were by inspiration, foretold all the miseries that afterwards befell the state’ (p. 942). But his warnings were not heeded. As Seneca puts it: ‘I do not know ... what nobler sight the Lord of Heaven could find on earth ... than the spectacle of Cato, after his cause had already been shattered more than once, nevertheless standing erect amid the ruins of the commonwealth.’¹⁷ The day it became clear that Caesar could be stopped only by civil war, if at all, ‘from that day he never cut his hair, nor shaved his beard, nor wore a garland, but was always full of sadness, grief, and dejectedness for the calamities of his country’ (p. 948). Nor did he forbear to tell his countrymen that he told them so: ‘If you had believed me, or regarded my advice, you would not now have been reduced to stand in fear of one man’ (p. 947). His defense of the laws of Rome failed, and the rule of law was replaced by the rule of men who struggled for power and recognized no limits. Cato was forced to take sides in the civil war, and he chose the side of Pompey against Caesar, because he believed that the interests of the Republic and the laws were less threatened by Pompey than by Caesar. Cato was right in this too. Nevertheless Caesar won, Pompey lost, and

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finally Cato, in charge of the last troops loyal to the Republic, made his last stand in Africa. But even in this grave situation he scrupulously observed the laws, for, as he said, ‘he would not break those laws which he sought to defend’ (p. 951). Caesar’s military genius and superior forces, however, prevailed, and Cato knew that the Republic was lost. Although Caesar’s generosity to those whom he had defeated but who accepted his rule was well known by everyone, Cato ‘resolved on his own death’ (p. 955), because, he said: ‘I would not be beholden to a tyrant for his acts of tyranny. For it is usurpation in him to save, as their rightful lord, the lives of men over whom he has no title to reign’ (p. 956). Cato, therefore, went to his chosen death, but ‘he did not confess to any defeat in all his life, but rather ... he had got the victory, and had conquered Caesar in all points of justice and honesty’ (p. 955). And so ended the life of this moralist, this stoic saint of unquestionable virtue.

10.3. The attitude of vanity Cato’s commitment to justice, his physical and moral courage, his rectitude and honesty, and the austerity of his life cannot be reasonably doubted. But the goodness of life can be, and that is what I will now do. The case against Cato, in short, is that his virtue was excessive. He felt responsible when he was merely meddling, and his excess prevented him from feeling responsible when he should have been. This made him a cold, narrowminded dogmatist whose life was devoid of perfectly reasonable enjoyments and who scorned the enjoyments of others. If he had been less virtuous, he would have been a better person. We learn from his life that immoderate virtue is not good. Consider first his personal relationships. Extramarital sex and adultery were customary, but not for Cato. When he married Atilia, his first wife, she was ‘the first ... woman he ever knew’ (p. 921), and after she had borne him two children, ‘he was forced to put her away for misconduct’ (p. 931). Then he married Marcia, ‘a woman of good reputation’ (p. 931). Cato’s good friend Hortensius, however, asked Cato to give him Marcia, ‘for she was young and fruitful, and he [Cato] had already children enough. ... Cato did not deny his request’ (p. 932), divorced Marcia, and let Hortensius marry her. But when Hortensius died and Cato needed ‘somebody to

An Enemy of Happiness 185 keep his house and take care of his daughters, he took Marcia again, who was now a rich widow’ (p. 948). As Robert Graves comments in the introduction to his translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia: ‘Cato treated his wife Marcia as though she were a brood-mare, allowing himself no sensual pleasure during the act of procreation, and selling her, while pregnant of a fourth child, to a noble friend who wished to have his empty cradles filled with good stock.’¹⁸ Cato’s friendships were no less frigid than his marriages. He suspected everyone’s rectitude and ‘looked doubtfully upon all alike ... even his own friends. ... This mistrustfulness offended most of his friends, and, in particular, Munalius, the most intimate of them all’ (p. 938). Munalius ‘complained in very gentle terms to Cato, but received a very harsh answer, that too much love, according to Theophrastus, often causes hatred’. Munalius, then, ‘would no more sup with him, and when he was invited to give his counsel, refused. ... Then Cato threatened to seize his goods’ (p. 939). All in all, he was ‘inflexible ... unmoved by any passion, and firm in everything’; he had ‘natural stubbornness’ (p. 918); he was ‘very strict and austere’ and he had ‘that steady and inflexible justice’ uninfluenced ‘by favour or compassion’ (p. 920). The responsibility he felt for upholding the Republic and its laws thus blinded him to the responsibilities he ought to have felt toward his wives and friends, and made him closed to affection and compassion. Nor was Cato’s justice all that ‘steady and inflexible’. It is true that he upheld the laws of the Republic on numerous occasions and at great danger to himself. But it is also true that he was by no means consistent in doing so. When he was elected tribune, ‘observing that the election of consuls was become a matter of purchase, he sharply rebuked the people for this corruption, and ... [said that] he would bring to trial whomever he should find giving money’. But he made ‘an exception ... in the case of Silanus, on account of his near connection, he having married ... Cato’s sister’ (p. 929). Although he passionately blamed others for bribery, Cato ‘persuaded the senate to win over the poor ... by a distribution of corn’ and thereby ‘dissipated the present danger’ of driving them into Caesar’s party. Apparently, bribery in a cause Cato favored was acceptable even if against the law. When the senate required its members to swear that they would not alter a law, Cato first refused, since he thought it a bad law and wanted to alter it. But Cicero persuaded him that it was ‘folly and

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madness to throw himself into danger without the chance of doing his country good. ... For ... though Cato have no need of Rome, yet Rome has need of Cato. ... Thus Cato ... went unwillingly to take the oath’ (p. 936). Expediency and a little flattery thus took precedence over that ‘steady and inflexible’ sense of justice. Cato also persuaded himself that ‘it was necessary to make use of lesser illegality as a remedy against the greatest of all, and better to set up a monarchy themselves than to suffer sedition to continue that must certainly end in one’ (p. 945). And so he violated the principle he avowed—namely, that ‘he would not break those laws which he sought to defend’ (p. 951). Consider next the manner of Cato’s virtuous actions. What he did, he overdid. He was not content with being virtuous; he went to extremes. He flaunted his virtue and thereby he reproved others. His performance as a quaestor was outstanding for its honesty and strictness. But ‘after he laid down his office ... [he] did not cease to keep a watch on the treasury’. It was no longer his job, yet he claimed not to be meddling but doing his duty ‘as the proper business of an honest man, and therefore he thought himself obliged to be as constant in his public duty as the bee to the honeycomb’. As a self-appointed guardian of the honesty of others ‘he took care to have his friends and correspondents everywhere to send him reports’, and he claimed to be doing it for ‘the commonwealth ... for whose sake alone he professed to do everything’. He thus set himself up as a paragon of virtue. As Plutarch dryly remarks: ‘he gained a great and wonderful reputation’ (p. 928). His actions after the exposure of the Catiline conspiracy followed the same pattern. The conspiracy was indeed a serious threat to the Republic. Cato stalwartly supported Cicero in exposing it. After the culprits had been identified and arrested, the Senate debated the question of what to do with them. Caesar gave ‘a merciful and persuasive speech’ and said that they ‘ought not to suffer death without fair trial according to law, and moved that they be kept in prison’ until then. The Senate agreed, but then Cato argued ‘with great passion and vehemence’ that ‘the enemies of the state’ should not be shown mercy and should be put to death immediately. And this is what happened (p. 930). In the grip of his moralistic fervor, Cato cowed others into dispensing with the nuisance of a fair trial. He knew that the conspirators were guilty, and that should have been sufficient.

An Enemy of Happiness 187 Cato’s austerity took the same form: first he imposed it on himself and then he condemned others for deviating from it. ‘Cato esteemed the ... time ... corrupt, and reformation ... necessary.’ In this, he showed just how unbalanced was his sense of proportion. ‘The lightest and gayest purple was then most in fashion, he would always wear that which was the nearest black’ (p. 921). When a friend of his was chosen aedile, he put Cato in charge of public entertainment. In the past, the best actors were rewarded with crowns of gold, but Cato gave them olive crowns instead; they used to be given ‘magnificent presents’, but Cato gave them ‘beet root, lettuces, radishes, and pears’. Cato was ‘ridiculed for his economy’, but he wanted to teach men that they ought not to take ‘care and trouble about things of little concern’ (pp. 944–5). It was not enough for him that he was indifferent to entertainment; he had to show that others were wrong to care for it. When he was a soldier, ‘in his apparel, his diet, and mode of travelling, he was more like a common soldier than an officer’ (p. 922), but he wanted more: he ‘habituated himself to go bareheaded in the hottest and coldest weather’ (pp. 920–1) and ‘he resolved to make his soldiers, as far as he could, like himself’ (p. 922). His austerity in clothing persisted long after he was a soldier. When he was made praetor, ‘he disgraced and diminished ... [the office] by his strange behaviour. For he would often come to the court without his shoes, and sit upon the bench without any undergarment, and in this attire give judgment in capital cases’ (p. 942). Why, then, did he do it? Because his austerity had the ulterior purpose of reproving others for caring about their clothing. His often ridiculously excessive austerity not only showed that he had the virtues of self-denial, but also that others did not have them. He flaunted his virtues to show contempt for those who lacked them. The more excessive his virtues were, the more contemptuous he could be of others. This finally brings us to what I believe is the key to Cato’s character and moralistic style of life: the attitude of vanity. I understand by vanity excessive pride in one’s personal endowment. The endowment may be superficial, such as unblemished skin, supple hair, or a well-shaped nose, and then vanity about it is more risible than morally suspect. But Cato’s vanity was deep. He was vain about his moral superiority to others. And he took as the measure of his superiority the extent to which he could forgo ordinary comforts and be a severe judge of those around him. Since his

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vanity depended on comparing himself favorably to them, he became ever more excessive in flaunting his severity and self-denial. His involvement in politics, and his commitment to the Republic and to upholding its laws, were public forms that allowed his moral superiority to shine forth. They were the ways in which he satisfied his vanity. His political views were probably sincere, and it is unlikely that he was hypocritical. He seems to have held his views genuinely and to be committed to the principles he avowed. Yet this was only the surface, even if the surface was not deceptive. It was nevertheless a misleading surface, because under it was something deeper, which accounted for the surface being what it was. His fundamental concern was not with politics, but with himself. And the quiddity of that concern was his attitude of vanity: excessive pride in his moral superiority. That is why he was austere, severe, and reproving of others, especially the great men of the day: Crassus, Pompey, and, above all, Caesar. As Plutarch says: ‘many were offended at his ... taking upon himself the whole authority of the senate, the courts of judicature, and the magistracies’ (p. 943). Cato’s offense to them, however, was not an unfortunate effect of his principled defense of the Republic and its laws, but the unavoidable by-product of his vanity. He could assure himself of his moral superiority over others and thus satisfy his vanity only by being contemptuous, and that is what gave offense. He used politics to moralize, and he moralized to maintain his moral superiority to others. We do not know enough about Cato to be certain whether he recognized that his central attitude was vanity. The evidence is incomplete, but on its basis I doubt that he was consciously deceiving others. He is likely to have deceived himself as well. His deception, therefore, was in a sense genuine. He really believed that he was a stalwart defender of the Republic and its laws, even though what he so stalwartly defended was his excessively high opinion of himself. If we reflect on his life and actions, there are three significant facts that support this understanding of Cato’s attitude. The first emerges from his relationship with Pompey. Pompey was a highly successful general and a very rich man as a result of the wealth he acquired in his victorious campaigns. Cato feared that Pompey’s ambition was to overthrow the Republic and become its ruler. He also feared that Caesar had the same ambition. Pompey, then, returned to Rome. It became clear that he

An Enemy of Happiness 189 was not taking advantage of the opportunity to seize power. Pompey, in fact, offered his friendship to Cato. Any person with political sense and commitment to the Republic would have accepted Pompey’s offer and concentrated on foiling Caesar’s ambition. But what Cato did was to scorn Pompey’s offer, contemptuously reject his proffered friendship, and make it publicly known that he, Cato, would not be bought. He said: ‘I will not give hostages to Pompey’s glory against my country’s safety’ (p. 935). What he achieved, of course, was to drive Pompey to ally himself with Caesar, form the Triumvirate, with Crassus as the third member, and overthrow the Republic. Plutarch, great admirer of Cato, comments: ‘Cato was much to blame in rejecting that alliance, which thereby fell to Caesar. ... [This] well-nigh ruined the Roman empire, and did destroy the commonwealth’ (p. 935). Why did Cato reject Pompey’s friendship? Because making publicly known his moral superiority to Pompey was more important to his vanity than the defense of the Republic. The second significant fact becomes apparent when we consider Cato’s death. Why did he kill himself and kill himself in that ghastly way? When it was clear that his victory was complete, Caesar sent an emissary to Cato and his followers offering them clemency, provided they acknowledge Caesar as their ruler. Cato advised his followers, including his son and friends, to accept Caesar’s offer. As for himself, he said: ‘I would not be beholden to a tyrant for his tyranny’ (p. 956). Why would he not be beholden to Caesar? The Republic was lost in any case, further resistance was useless, and, if Cato had lived, he could have worked to depose Caesar, as indeed he was deposed two years later by Cato’s followers. Cato, however, was not swayed by these political considerations. Uppermost in his mind was that, if he had ‘allowed himself to owe his life to Caesar, he would not so much have impaired his own honour, as augmented the other’s glory’ (p. 959). For seventeen years Cato had inveighed against Caesar, ceaselessly condemned his character and actions, begrudged his brilliant victories, been jealous of his popularity, and accused him of plotting to ruin Rome. And now Caesar had won. Cato had no other way left to save his vanity than by his willing embrace of death and extreme pain, which Caesar and everybody else did what they could to avoid. Cato, then, did not die for Rome; he died for his vanity. The third significant fact has to do with Cato’s defense of the Republic. No one was more severe in condemning the corruption of the Republican

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political system than Cato. He could not help knowing that political life involved inevitable compromises, opportunistic alliances, and opting for the lesser of two evils. It was an old system. The Senate showed itself again and again incapable of making reasonable decisions. Rome lurched from crisis to crisis, and the crises were met by the Senate’s giving dictatorial power to someone who could act unilaterally and do what was necessary to avert the crisis. No one could reasonably maintain that morality and justice required upholding the corrupt laws of such a corrupt system. Cato, however, maintained just that. Why did he do so in the face of his own condemnation of the system? Because he could claim that he did not gain from its defense, unlike his opponents, who attacked it in the hope of gaining power and wealth. He thus defended the Republic to show his moral superiority to those, like Crassus, Pompey, and Caesar, who first exploited and then attacked it. But what motivated Cato was not the morality of the Republic, for it had very little of it, but his attitude of vanity, whose maintenance was more important for him than anything else. He became a moralist and died horribly as a moralist out of vanity.

10.4. The doomed project The manner of Cato’s political activities was self-righteous; the attitude to life they reflected was vanity; and the actions, their manner, and the attitude behind them together formed Cato’s moralistic style of life. I have given reasons for thinking that the underlying attitude was Cato’s vanity. This was what motivated his doomed defense of the Republic, which was his dominant activity, his project in life. People’s projects are the contents of which their styles of life are the form. Styles of life may accurately reflect what people most deeply care about, even if their projects fail. Whether a life is responsible and enjoyable does not depend on the outcome of the project that constitutes its dominant activity. For the success or failure of a project to which one has dedicated one’s life will mean little if the project does not engage one’s deepest concerns. From the point of view of an admirable style of life, it is the journey that matters, not the arrival. And, if a style of life is deficient, then the journey will not be enjoyable, regardless of whether it ends in arrival.

An Enemy of Happiness 191 Cato’s style of life was deficient, even if it was motivated by his deepest concern—which, I am assuming for the sake of argument, was for the Republic and its laws—because there can be no reasonable doubt that his life was not enjoyable. He trained himself from an early age to do without physical pleasures and comforts; his coldness and severity prevented him from enjoying marriage or friendship; and he could have found no enjoyment in political activities, since the state of Rome, in his judgment, was going from bad to worse. There can be only anxiety and no enjoyment in keeping one’s finger in the dyke. It has been rightly said that ‘during his career Cato was ... spat upon, stripped of his toga, pelted with dung, dragged from the rostrum ... beaten up and hauled off to prison. He escaped with his life, but he was present on occasions when others did not.’¹⁹ He gave one enraged speech after another, he trusted no one and suspected everyone, his alliances were tactical, and he admired no one, except his long dead great-grandfather, whom he spent a lifetime imitating. He ‘was always full of sadness, grief, and dejectedness’ (p. 948). It might be said that, despite all this, he enjoyed the very activity of politics, regardless of his lack of success at it, because it allowed him to live and act in a style that reflected his deepest concerns. But this would be a mistake. It was psychologically impossible for Cato to enjoy his life in politics, because his style of life was in conflict with the project that dominated his life. The form and the content of his life were incompatible. A moralist cannot be a politician and a politician cannot be a moralist, except perhaps in Plato’s republic, which Cato’s Rome was certainly not. The essential virtue in politics is practical reason, prudence, what the Greeks called phronesis. This is the skill of applying general principles to particular cases in circumstances where there is disagreement both about which general principle should be applied and about how the particular case should be characterized. Such disagreements may occur for many reasons, but in politics they typically occur because the parties to it have conflicting interests. Prudence in politics takes largely the form of balancing conflicting interests by finding a way to satisfy each sufficiently to make it preferable to all parties to accept a compromise rather than reject it and risk getting no satisfaction at all. Such compromises are normally reached by negotiation between politically experienced moderates representing conflicting interests. The radicals on each side agitate to reject

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the compromise and take the risk. What radicals tend to ignore and what gives great force to the moderates is the overriding importance of maintaining the political framework in which people with conflicting interests can live together peacefully. The satisfaction of that interest is far more important than the satisfaction of any particular interest, because the former is a condition of the latter. Cato was an especially extreme radical in politics, because he was a moralist. He convinced himself that he knew what was right and wrong, what the authoritative general principle was, and how any particular case at hand should be characterized. He possessed unshakeable certainty and he regarded any deviation from it as a sign of culpable weakness at best, but, more usually, as irrefutable evidence of moral corruption. This led him to condemn interests that conflicted with those he approved. He was thus committed to the rejection of any attempt to balance conflicting interests. He would take any risk to defend what he thought he knew was right. His moralistic intransigence naturally led to the civil war that destroyed the Republic and its laws. What he accomplished by his moralism, therefore, was precisely the opposite of what he aimed at. That is why his moralistic style of life was incompatible with his project of defending the Republic and its laws. He was a traitor malgré lui to the Republic. There is much that can be said for and against moralists in general. But I hope to have made clear that in politics moralists are a menace, which is what Cato was in Rome, regardless of his courageous defense of his convictions and the extraordinary death he inflicted on himself. As Plutarch says: ‘Cato ... was by nature altogether unfit for the business’ (p. 946).

10.5. Moralism as a deficient style of life Moralism is to morality what fanaticism is to politics. As fanatics taint the cause they pursue, so moralists provoke resistance to their dogmatic pronouncements. As counterfeit money undermines the currency, so excess undermines reasonable judgment. Excess polarizes, and the excess of moralism forces people to choose between unquestioning dogmatism and revulsion against self-righteous bullying. Moralists tend to make all disputes into moral disputes, and, since moralists are convinced that they are right, they convict those who disagree with them of willful immorality or ignorant

An Enemy of Happiness 193 error. They see the first as intolerable and the second as imposing on them the obligation to force the ignorant for their own good to act as they would if they were not prevented by their ignorance. Moralists, thus, divide the world into two. One is a very small class containing the right-minded, the elect, the chosen, the faithful, the true believer, the pure, or the cadre. The other is very large, comprising the enemies, the sinners, the nonbelievers, the indifferents, the heretics, and the sleepwalkers through life. If moralism is evaluated from the outside, these tendencies provide good reasons for regarding it as a deficient style of life. It is a harsh, intolerant, divisive force that makes civilized disagreement impossible, undermines peace and stability, gives a bad name to morality by using it to justify narrow-minded dogmatism, and impoverishes human life by arbitrarily prohibiting the exploration of enriching possibilities. Moralists, of course, evaluate moralism from the inside. They believe that they have excellent reasons for their dogmatism and for what they see as the righteous manner of their action. They are mistaken but they think otherwise. Are there reasons that might persuade them to abandon, or at least to question, their moralism? There are, I think, two kinds of reasons. Not all moralists, of course, will listen to them, but that shows only that some moralists are unreasonable, not that the reasons they ignore fail to be good. The first is that the life of moralists cannot be nearly as enjoyable as their life would be without moralism. For moralists cannot feel at home in the world and cannot have amicable relationships with the vast majority of people with whom they come into contact. It may be that life is a struggle for everyone, but moralists add a dimension to all the usual ones by making it their business to condemn most people for their immorality. If they express their condemnation openly, they provoke hostility, because the condemned will respond in kind. But keeping their condemnation to themselves and to the handful of their fellow moralists will avoid only overt enmity. It will not alter their own disapproval and hostility toward those whom they see as living and acting immorally. This will inevitably color the moralists’ relationships with their colleagues, neighbors, and acquaintances, and, as often as not, with their family members as well. They will also be alienated from their society, for its politics, customs, institutions, and laws are all too likely to fall far short of what the moralists could in good conscience accept. The moralists’ open or hidden condemnation of most

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people transforms normally enjoyable or at least neutral relationships into antagonistic ones. This will deprive them of much enjoyment that would make their lives better. If moralists compare their lives to those of others around them whose attitudes are not dogmatic, whose manners are not self-righteous, and whose style of life is less moralistic than their own, they will find good reasons against their moralism. The second kind of reason is that moralism is unsustainable if the ignorance on which it is based is overcome. Moralism is dogmatic commitment to a particular moral outlook. The ignorance of moralists is of moral outlooks different from their own, but it is not the ordinary kind of ignorance of lacking knowledge of relevant facts. The ignorance of moralists is self-imposed. In a sense they know that there are moral outlooks other than their own; in another sense, however, they do not know it, because they refuse to enter into them and imagine how lives and actions are evaluated from their points of view. Moralists know beforehand that this imaginative effort would be wasteful and likely to be corrupting simply because a moral outlook contrary to the one they have is, for that reason, mistaken. Those who are committed to any moral orthodoxy, therefore, have no reason to evaluate anything from any other point of view and they have reason not to do so. And this, of course, is why moralists have no doubt about the rightness of their moral outlook. They can have no doubt, because they cultivate ignorance of the grounds on which doubt becomes possible. If there is no morally acceptable alternative to their beliefs, then there is no morally acceptable reason to doubt their beliefs. The second kind of reason, then, that may bring moralists to question their own moral outlook is to present them with the fruits of the imaginative effort they refuse to make. This would consist in the patient description of forms of good lives, good societies, and good possibilities of human existence other than the ones they have previously recognized. It is to show them that reasons can be and have been given for each of these alternative forms. If moralists can be brought to see this much, then it is but a small step to the subversive thought that accepting any one of these forms requires explaining why the reasons for it are better than the reasons for the other alternatives that might have been accepted but were not. And then it might dawn on moralists that the moral outlook they themselves have accepted is merely one of these forms. They no doubt regard it as superior to the others, but, now that their self-imposed ignorance of other forms

An Enemy of Happiness 195 has been lifted, they need to explain what makes their own superior to the alternatives to it. If moralists acknowledge that they owe an explanation, then their dogmatism is alleviated and they enter into the civilized discourse that sustains the framework in which good lives can be lived. If moralists refuse to provide the explanation, then their very refusal opens the floodgate of doubt, and it is not easy to close it again. Once critical thought has begun, dogmatism and arbitrariness become increasingly difficult to sustain. This may appear to be a more optimistic conclusion than I wish to draw. History shows that the scope for moralism is great. If one of its forms is discredited, it soon crops up in another form. The most that can be realistically concluded, I think, is that, whether moralism is viewed from the inside or from the outside, good reasons can be given for regarding it as a deficient style of life. How these reasons will be received is as uncertain now as it ever was. Perhaps it bears emphasizing by way of a conclusion that in criticizing moralism I am not criticizing conscientious commitment to moral principles. Such a commitment is a virtue, and people deserve praise, not criticism, for having and acting on it. What warrants criticism is an intrusive and immoderate preoccupation with morality that leads moralists to condemn others for failing to live up to absurd standards and to impoverish their own life by nurturing the delusion that enjoyment is a symptom of moral failure. The trouble with moralists is that they make other people’s business their passionate concern and they strive to demonstrate their own rectitude by making themselves miserable. Cato’s moralism was motivated by his vanity. Moralism, of course, may be motivated by indoctrination, prejudice, fear, ignorance, and so on. And vanity need not lead to moralism. But, in Cato’s case, moralism and vanity coincided and contributed both to the destruction of the Roman Republic and to the miserable live of Cato.

11 A Wise and Virtuous Man The extreme gentleness of his nature never weakened either the firmness of his mind, or the steadiness of his resolutions. His constant pleasantry was the genuine effusion of good nature and good humour, tempered with delicacy and modesty, and without the slightest tincture of malignity. ... Upon the whole, I have always considered him ... as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will admit. (Adam Smith, ‘Letter to William Strahan’, 1777)

11.1. A false alternative It is a relief to turn from the morbid romanticism of Mishima and the moralistic vanity of Cato to the wise and virtuous life of David Hume. He was a good man and a good philosopher. One of the numerous lessons his life teaches is that the stark alternatives Yeats sees as part of the human condition can be avoided by the reflective style of Hume’s admirable life. Yeats writes that The intellect of man is forced to choose Perfection of the life, or of the work, And if it take the second must refuse A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark. When all that story’s finished, what’s the news? In luck or out the toil has left its mark: That old perplexity and empty purse, Or the day’s vanity, the night’s remorse.¹

Hume did not have to make that choice, he sought no literal or metaphorical heavenly mansion, he was not perplexed, his purse was eventually far from

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empty, he was not vain, and he had no occasion for remorse. He lived responsibly and enjoyably, and created a body of classic works whose influence has steadily grown during his life and since his death. He was far too wise to seek perfection or believe that it is attainable; nevertheless his life and work, as the epigraph says, approximate perfection as closely as human frailty allows. Yeats, however, had a point. The work of the vast majority of human beings is and has always been a matter of necessity, not choice. For most people work is at best routine, but, more usually, drudgery that consumes their energy. They must find such enjoyment as they may have in the space and time that is left after work. Naturally, they prefer whatever life is left after work, rather than work itself. There are also others, always a minority, whose work is interesting in some way, and they—artists, scientists, writers, statesmen, inventors, and so on—are fully engaged in the work they love and do. It commands their attention, and occupies much of their thoughts, emotions, and imagination. They tend, consequently, to shortchange what is left of their life after work in order to perfect their work. Both patterns are readily recognizable, and one does not have to look hard to find lives that exemplify them. But these two patterns do not exhaust human possibilities. Yeats is mistaken in saying that the intellect of man is forced to choose one or the other. The intellect of man may choose work whose excellence is also the excellence of the life of the worker—work that is as inseparable from the life of the worker as the dance is from the dancer. Hume’s life is an example of this last possibility. His work was to reflect on how to live and his reflection governed how he lived. But he did not just reflect: he formulated the results of his reflection in closely reasoned, eloquent, and generally accessible books. He shared the fruits of his reflections and made it possible for others to benefit from them as much as he did himself. He could honestly say, then, as he was dying at the age of 65, that ‘I have done every thing of consequence which I ever meant to do, and I could at no time expect to leave my relations and friends in a better situation than that in which I am now likely to leave them: I therefore have all reason to die contentedly’.² There are not many people who could truthfully say the same about their own lives and deaths. But Hume could, and that is one reason for regarding his life as good.

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Hume was born in 1711 in Scotland and spent his early childhood at the small family estate at Ninewells, not far from Edinburgh.³ He began to attend the University of Edinburgh when he was 12, which was not an unusual age at that time. After four years, he continued his studies on his own at Ninewells until 1729, when the strain of exceptionally hard work and concentration resulted in a nervous disorder. He slowly recovered from it, largely by his own effort, which consisted in much physical activity and the relaxation of his strict reading and thinking regimen. This regimen, however, led to the formulation of the philosophical ideas he developed during the rest of his life. The small amount of money he had was worth more in France, where he lived between 1734 and 1737 and wrote his masterpiece, A Treatise of Human Nature. From France he went to London, where he saw through to publication the first two volumes of the Treatise in 1739 and the third in 1740. It was almost completely ignored except for a few religious dogmatists who condemned its skepticism, which they correctly saw as inimical to the religious orthodoxy that then dominated English and Scottish life. He returned to Ninewells and worked on what came to be published in 1741–2 as Essays Moral and Political. They were much more favorably received than the Treatise, but not favorably enough to improve his meager finances. In 1744 he was turned down for a Professorship at the University of Edinburgh on account of his views about religion. After this he spent a lucrative but unfortunate year as tutor to the Marquis of Annandale, for his charge relapsed into his earlier madness. He then became secretary to General St Clair, a post he held twice with a brief interval between the two periods of over a year. This was also lucrative, and from 1748 on he could live on what he had. He spent the next fifteen years first in Ninewells and then in Edinburgh. In 1748 he published the Enquiries concerning Human Understanding, as well as Three Essays Moral and Political and in 1751 the rest of the Enquiries called Enquiries concerning the Principles of Morals. During this time he drafted Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. He also began and finished his monumental six-volume History of England. He was once again turned down for a professorship, this time at Glasgow University. In 1763, after all this work had been completed, he accepted the invitation to become secretary to the English ambassador to France and he served in that post until 1765. In 1767 he


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held the post of Under-Secretary of State in London. In 1769 he returned to Edinburgh, where he died of chronic ulcerative colitis at the age of 65 in 1776. Hume spoke throughout his life, both English and French, with a heavy Scottish accent; he was over 6 feet tall and very fat; when in Scotland he lived with his sister; he never married; he had several relationships with women, but it is not known whether they involved sex. The French, especially the women, adored him; the philosophes regarded him as one of their own; the English eventually and rather grudgingly recognized him as one of their pre-eminent men of letters; but in his own Scotland the bigoted Presbyterian clergy made sure that he was denied the recognition he deserved. He loved conversation, good food and drink, he was a stalwart friend, and he never lost his rustic simplicity and good humor. The aim of this chapter is to understand what made Hume’s life good. It was, I think, the reflective style of his life, his skeptical attitude, the moderate manner that infused his actions, and his successful engagement in the project that dominated his life.

11.2. A reflective style of life Most human lives are spent in routine activities. We sleep, wash, dress, eat; go to work, work, shop, relax; balance the checkbook, clean the house, do the laundry, have the car serviced; chat, pay bills, worry about this or that, take small pleasure in small things. We do all this in the intervals between familiar milestones: birth, maturation, aging, and death; we have children and lose our parents; leave school, find a job, get married, divorce, fall in and out of love, set up house; succeed at some things, fail at others; make friends and have fights; move house, change jobs, get fired or promoted, fall ill and recover, save for retirement and retire. So life goes for just about everyone, allowing for individual and cultural variations that affect the form but not the fact of routine. Such activities constitute what Hume calls common life. Common life is what life mostly is. Keeping it going, however, involves constant struggle. From a birth no one chooses to a death few desire, we have to cope with endless problems, relying on the customary practices of our society. Hume means by custom ‘a convention enter’d into by all

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the members of the society’ (Treatise, 489).⁴ And he thinks that ‘Custom, then, is the great guide of human life’ because ‘without the influence of custom ... we should never know how to adjust means to ends, or to employ our natural powers in the production of any effect’ (Enquiries, 44–5). Customs take the form of a generally approved and widely practiced pattern of actions prevailing in a society. The customary is traditional and old, and, while it may be violated, it is generally observed. Customs change, but usually slowly. Custom is thus a civilizing and stabilizing force that allows people living together to pursue their individual projects with minimal interference from others. Many people live more or less contentedly within the framework of common life and its customary practices. They are engaged in the hurlyburly of living, do as well as they can, enjoy the comforts they may, and prudently keep out of deep waters. This, however, is likely to be possible only for those who successfully navigate life’s treacherous waters. The young who are about to start tend to ask why they should follow the customs of their society. The old who look back may wonder whether it was worth it. And the sick, poor, unlucky, and untalented may question, with various degrees of resentment, the framework in which they have not done well. It is not easy to ignore such questions, because they are persistently asked. Nor is it reasonable to avoid putting these questions to ourselves, quite independently of external challenges. It is demeaning to participate in customary activities, expending great effort, giving and getting hard knocks, following conventions we have not made, chasing goals said by others to be rewarding, without asking why we should do all this. Is it not the very opposite of prudence and common sense to invest our lives in projects whose value we have not ascertained? Furthermore, there are exceptionally few lives uninterrupted by serious crises. Grief, ill health, social cataclysms, injustice, setbacks, lack of merited appreciation, being in the power of those who abuse it, and many other adversities are likely to interfere with most lives. The questions prompted by such adversities, and those raised by the dissatisfactions of others, can be answered, if at all, only by reflection on common life and its customs. Hume’s reflective style of life consisted in asking and trying to find answers both for himself and, through his


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works, for others. His reflections involved him in four closely connected activities: facing significant facts about the human condition; rejecting bad answers that others have given to the questions; trying to formulate his own answers; and applying them to his own life, especially in adverse circumstances. I will now consider what he says and what his life shows about these activities. We may begin with the fact that the attempt to regulate common life by customary conventions can have, at best, only limited success. ‘To reduce life to exact rule and method, is commonly a painful, oft a fruitless occupation.’ For ‘human life is more governed by fortune than by reason’ (‘Sceptic’, 180). Although living according to virtue be undoubtedly the best choice, when it is attainable; yet such is the disorder and confusion of human affairs, that no perfect or regular distribution of happiness and misery is ever, in this life, to be expected. Not only the goods of fortune, and the endowments of the body (both of which are important), not only these advantages, I say, are unequally divided between the virtuous and vicious, but even the mind itself partakes, in some degree, of this disorder, and the most worthy character ... enjoys not always the highest felicity’. (‘Sceptic’, 178)

‘The instability of fortune’, therefore, ‘is a consideration not to be overlooked or neglected. Happiness cannot possibly exist, where there is no security; and security can have no place, where fortune has any dominion’ (‘Stoic’, 150). This state of affairs could perhaps be somewhat ameliorated by concerted effort, but ‘the Madness and Imbecility & Wickedness of Mankind’ stand in the way. ‘To a Philosopher & Historian ... [these] ought to appear ordinary events’ (quoted in Mossner, 150). If common life and customary conventions cannot overcome the instability of fortune, the contingency of life, and human imbecility and wickedness, then what can be done to cope with these problems? Hume’s answer is twofold. He first criticizes the wrong way of going about trying to cope and then suggests the right way. Hume calls the wrong way ‘false philosophy’ (Treatise, 222). False philosophy proceeds by ‘the frequent use of terms, which are wholly insignificant and unintelligible’. They are supposed ‘to have a secret meaning, which we might discover by reflection. ... By this means these philosophers set themselves at ease, and arrive at last, by an illusion ... [at]

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a faculty or an occult quality, and there is an end of all dispute and enquiry upon the matter’ (Treatise, 224). The result is that whatever has the air of paradox, and is contrary to the first and most unprejudic’d notion of mankind is often greedily embraced by philosophers, as showing the superiority of their science, which could discover opinions so remote from vulgar conception. ... From these dispositions in philosophers and their disciples arises that mutual complaisance betwixt them; while the former furnish such plenty of strange and unaccountable opinions and the latter so readily believe them. (Treatise, 26)

If in doubt, remember such dicta as Thales’ that all is water; Plato’s that a good man cannot be harmed; Leibniz’s that this is the best possible world; Berkeley’s that to be is to be perceived; Rousseau’s that man is born free; and so forth. The method of false philosophy, according to Hume, is that ‘when a philosopher has once laid hold of a favourite principle, which perhaps accounts for many natural effects, he extends the same principle over the whole creation, and reduces to it every phaenomenon, though by the most violent and absurd reasoning’ (‘Sceptic’, 159). What motivates these ‘Pretenders to Wisdom’, says Hume, is the ‘grave philosophic Endeavour after Perfection, which, under the Pretext of reforming Prejudices and Errors, strikes at all the most endearing Sentiments of the Heart ... which can govern a human Creature’ (‘Moral Prejudices’, 539). Hume concludes that ‘all the philosophy ... in the world, and all the religion, which is nothing but a species of philosophy, will never be able to carry us beyond the usual course of experience, or give us measures of conduct and behaviour different from those furnished by reflection on common life’ (Enquiries, 146). And he insists that ‘a correct Judgement ... confines itself to common life ... leaving the more sublime topics to the embellishment of poets and orators, or to the priests and politicians. ... Philosophical decisions are nothing but the reflections of common life, methodized and corrected. ... All attempts to extend this ... are mere sophistry and illusion’ (Enquiries, 162–3). If Hume rejects the sophistry and illusion of false philosophy and confines philosophy to imposing method and correction to reflections on common life, then how does he propose to cope with the problems that prompted false philosophies—namely, the problems of instability of fortune, the contingency of life, and human imbecility and wickedness? Hume regards


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these problems as undeniable facts of life and he recognizes that it is useless to try to philosophize them away. What he thinks we can do to cope with them is to react wisely to these adversities. The wise reaction depends on cultivating the philosophical temper. The first step toward it is to ‘consider human life, by a general and calm survey’. This, however, is no more than a beginning, because, ‘when any real, affecting incident happens; when passion is awakened, fancy agitated ... the philosopher is lost in the man, and seeks in vain for that persuasion which before seemed so firm and unshaken’. And Hume asks: ‘What remedy for this?’ It is to ‘fortify the mind against the illusions of passion ... by ... that philosophical temper which both gives force to reflection, and by rendering a great part of happiness independent, takes off the edge from all disorderly passions, and tranquillizes the mind’. He adds: ‘Despise not these helps; but confide not too much in them neither’, for the fact remains that our misfortune may be too great, passions too strong, and reflection too weak. Yet there is no other remedy than to do what we can to cultivate the philosophical temper (‘Sceptic’, 179). It is unavoidable that, in cultivating it, ‘mistakes be often, be inevitably committed, let us register these mistakes; let us consider their causes; let us weigh their importance; let us enquire for their remedies. When from this we have fixed all the rules of conduct, we are philosophers: When we have reduced these rules to practice, we are sages’ (‘Stoic’, 148–9). It must not be thought, however, that the rules Hume has in mind here are anything but rules of thumb that individuals can make for themselves, and only themselves. They may be arrived at when ‘a man propose[s] to himself the model of a character, which he approves: Let him be acquainted with those particulars, in which his own character deviates from this model: Let him keep a constant watch over himself, and bend his mind, by a continual effort ... and I doubt not but, in time, he will find, in his temper, an alteration for the better’ (‘Sceptic’, 170). In this way, slowly, we may develop ‘the happiest disposition of mind ... which leads to action and employment ... steels the heart against the assaults of fortune, reduces the affections to a just moderation, makes our own thoughts an entertainment to us, and inclines us ... to the pleasures of society and conversation’ (‘Sceptic’, 168). True philosophy, then, shows that the way to cope with the adversities reflection on common life reveals is to cultivate the philosophical temper. It

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shows also how to see through the sophistry and illusion of false philosophy, whose abstruse speculations vainly try to explain away the instability of fortune, contingency of life, and human imbecility and wickedness. But true philosophy merely shows what the best way of coping is; it leaves to individuals the demanding task of following it. Hume’s reflective style of life is admirable, not only because he benefited others by making true philosophy accessible to literate readers, but also because his life exemplified the philosophical temper, as shown by how he coped with the adversities he encountered and how he cultivated the happiest disposition of mind. After ten years of extreme concentration, Hume published the Treatise. He believed that it ‘wou’d produce almost total alteration in Philosophy’ (Letters, i. 26); that it ‘must alter from the foundation the greatest part of the sciences’ (quoted in Mossner, 125); that it has ‘vast consequence’ (quoted in Mossner, 127). But the work ‘fell dead-born from the Press; without reaching such distinction as even to excite a Murmur among the Zealots’ (Own Life, 612). Hume’s reaction was ‘that nothing need be despaired of, as well as nothing can be depended on’ (Letters, i. 100), and he returns ‘cheerfully to Books, Leizure, & Solitude in the Country’ (quoted in Mossner, 206). And he says: ‘I very soon recovered the Blow, and prosecuted with great Ardour my Studies’ (Own Life, 612). He was nominated for a professorship by his friends, once in Edinburgh and once in Glasgow. In both cases, the appointment went to a lesser man. Although either appointment would have relieved Hume’s poverty, he said: ‘I was always so indifferent about Fortune, & especially now, that I am more advanc’d in life, & am a little more at my Ease, suited to my extreme Frugality, that I neither fear nor hope any thing from any man, and am very indifferent either about Offence or Favour. ... I would not sacrifice Truth & Reason to political views’ (Letters, i. 156). He was often abused in print for his views. ‘I was assailed by ... Cry of Reproach, Disapprobation, and even Detestation.’ But, he writes, ‘I had a fixed Resolution ... never to reply to any body; and not being very irascible in my Temper, I have easily kept myself clear of all literary Squabbles’ (Own Life, 613). He adds: ‘For tho’ most authors think, that a contemptuous manner of treating their writings, is but slightly reveng’d by hurting the personal Character & Honour of their Antagonists, I am very far from that


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opinion’ (Letters, i. 186). He writes: ‘I cou’d cover the Floor of a large Room with Books and Pamphlets wrote against me, to none of which I ever made the least Reply, not from Disdain ... but from my Desire of Ease and Tranquillity’ (Letters, ii. 92). Hume had succeeded in the cultivation of the happiest disposition of mind. He could truthfully say that ‘I retired to my native Country of Scotland, determined never more to get my Foot out of it; and retaining the Satisfaction of never having preferred a Request to one great Man or even making Advances of Friendship to any of them. ... I thought of passing all the rest of my Life in this philosophical manner’ (Own Life, 614). There he lived knowing that ‘Good and ill are universally intermingled and confounded. ... Nothing is pure and entirely of a piece. All advantages are attended with disadvantages.’ The best we can do is to maintain a ‘steady virtue, which either preserves us from disastrous, melancholy accidents, or teaches us to bear them’. And there he enjoyed the well-earned reward of the ‘calm sunshine of the mind’ (Religion, 74, 73).

11.3. The skeptical attitude A style of life, I have argued, combines an attitude, a manner, and a pattern of actions. One condition of a good life is that these constituents of style should jointly reflect one’s deepest concerns. Hume’s style of life was reflective, and his skeptical attitude, I will now argue, was a consequence of conclusions he reached by reflection. I will discuss his manner and pattern of actions in the next section. Hume’s skepticism may be approached from an epistemological or a psychological point of view. The former treats it as a philosophical theory about the possibility of knowledge and the reliability of reason; the latter as a character trait. Since I am concerned here with Hume’s style of life, rather than with the correctness of his philosophical views, my approach to his skeptical attitude will be primarily psychological and only incidentally epistemological. Hume, of course, believed that his skepticism was justified, and he gave reasons for his belief. But I will focus on how his skeptical attitude affected how he lived, not on how good his reasons were for holding it. I think his reasons were very good, but that is not the present point.

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Hume distinguishes between ‘mitigated’ and ‘excessive’ skepticism. Mitigated skepticism is ‘desirable and useful’. It is the result of ‘excessive scepticism, when its undistinguished doubts are, in some measure, corrected by common sense and reflection’. He accepts mitigated skepticism. It is a corrective of the tendency of the greater part of mankind ... to be affirmative and dogmatical in their opinions. ... They see objects only on one side, and have no idea of any counterposing argument, they throw themselves precipitately into the principles, to which they are inclined; nor have they any indulgence for those who entertain opposite sentiments. ... Could such dogmatical reasoners become sensible of the strange infirmities of human understanding ... such reflection would naturally inspire them with more modesty and reserve, and diminish their fond opinion of themselves, and their prejudice against antagonists. (Enquiries, 161)

Mitigated skeptics, therefore, reject dogmatism. But what do they accept? ‘The declared profession of every reasonable sceptic is only to reject abstruse, remote and refined arguments; to adhere to common sense and the plain instincts of nature; and to assent, whenever any reason strikes him with so full force, that he cannot, without the greatest violence, prevent it’ (Dialogues, 154). Hume recognizes ‘that every one, even in common life, is constrained to ... make continual advances in forming more general principles of conduct and reasoning; that the larger experience we acquire, and the stronger reason we are endowed with, we always render our principles the more general and comprehensive’. But ‘to philosophise on such subjects is nothing essentially different from reasoning on common life. ... So long as we confine our speculations to trade, or morals, or politics, or criticism, we make appeals, every moment, to common sense and experience.’ All this is accepted by mitigated skeptics. What provokes their skepticism is ‘when we look beyond human affairs and the properties of surrounding bodies: When we carry our speculations ... wide of common life ... one [speculative view] ... has no more weight than the other. The mind must remain in suspense between them; and it is that very suspense or balance, which is the triumph of scepticism’ (Dialogues, 134, 135, 136). In theological and metaphysical speculations about supposed supernatural entities that exist beyond the possibility of human experience ‘a degree of doubt,


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and caution, and modesty ... ought for ever to accompany a just reasoner’ (Enquiries, 162). Theological and metaphysical speculations lead to ‘philosophical melancholy and delirium’ in which one imagines that ‘I must torture my brain with subtilities and sophistries, at the very time that I cannot satisfy myself concerning the reasonableness of so painful an application, nor have any tolerable prospect of arriving by its means at truth and certainty. Under what obligation do I lie in making such abuse of time?’ When in the grip of such benighted speculations, Hume’s remedy is: ‘I dine, I play a game of back-gammon, I converse and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours’ amusement, I wou’d return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain’d, and ridiculous, that I cannot find it in my heart to enter into them any farther’ (Treatise, 269–70). These are not just impersonal recommendations. Hume is explaining his own attitude, one that he held to in very difficult circumstances. He sees that dogmatism permeates many areas of life. Influential historical, political, literary, theological, moral, and philosophical works are written and read from sharply divided partisan points of view. Champions of one brand of dogmatism savagely attack the works and character of authors who are even suspected of having some sympathy for the views of an opposing faction. These attacks are not confined to written abuse; they affect people’s physical security, employment, future prospects, friendships, and, above all, their peace of mind. Hume himself was much abused. When the first volume of his History appeared, ‘I was assailed’, Hume writes, ‘by one Cry of Reproach, Disapprobation, and even Detestation: English, Scotch, and Irish; Whig and Tory; Churchman and Sectary; Free-thinker and Religionist; Patriot and Courtier united in their Rage’ (Own Life, 613). He wryly comments, ‘I do not believe there is one Englishman in fifty, who, if he heard that I broke my Neck to night, wou’d not be rejoic’d with it. Some hate me because I am not a Tory, some because I am not a Whig, some because I am not a Christian, and all because I am a Scotsman’ (Letters, i. 470). So, he says, ‘I retired to my native Country of Scotland. ... I thought of passing all the rest of my life in this philosophical manner’ (Own Life, 613). ‘This philosophical manner’ was partly to expose and avoid the dogmatism raging around him about religion, politics, human nature, and philosophy. Thinking of the religious dogmatism that caused the Civil War

208 Some Particular Styles of Life in England, continued during Cromwell’s rule and the Restoration, persisted in Scotland, and resulted in endless wars and bloodshed in Europe, Hume said, ‘examine the religious principles, which have, in fact, prevailed in the world. You will scarcely be persuaded, that they are any thing but sick men’s dreams: Or perhaps will regard them more as the playsome whimsies of monkeis in human shape, than ... asseverations of a being, who dignifies himself with the name of rational’ (Religion, 75). This dogmatism takes the form either of superstition or enthusiasm. Superstition arises because ‘the mind of man is subject to certain unaccountable terrors and apprehensions. ... In such a state of mind, infinite unknown evils are dreaded from unknown agents; and ... the soul ... finds imaginary ones, to whose power and malevolence it sets no limits.’ In enthusiasm ‘the soul is at liberty to indulge itself in every imagination. ... Hence arise raptures, transports ... seeming quite beyond the reach of our ordinary faculties, [which are then] attributed to the immediate inspiration of that Divine Being, which is the object of devotion. ... When this frenzy once takes place ... every whimsy is consecrated: Human reason, and even morality are rejected as fallacious guides’ (‘Superstition’, 73–4). The result of such dogmatism is ‘celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude ... that ... stupefy the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper’ (Enquiries, 270). What, then, is the response that the skeptical attitude prompts to religious dogmatism? Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason ... that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition [or enthusiasm] to another, set them quarrelling, while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy. (Religion, 76)

Dogmatism has ample scope in politics as well. ‘Factions subvert government, render laws impotent, and beget the fiercest animosities among men of the same nation. ... They naturally propagate themselves for many centuries’ and often end in ‘the dissolution of that government, in which they are sown’ (‘Parties’, 55). Hume’s concluding thoughts in the History are that ‘extremes of all kinds are to be avoided; and though no one will ever please either faction by moderate opinions, it is there we are most


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likely to meet with truths’ (History, VI. 633–4). In the conflicts between the extreme views of the factions, it is the philosopher alone, who is of neither party, to put all the circumstances in the scale, and assign to each of them its proper ... influence. Such a one will readily ... acknowledge that all political questions are infinitely complicated, and that there scarcely ever occurs, in any deliberation, a choice, which is either purely good, or purely ill. Consequences, mixed and varied, may be foreseen to follow from every measure: And many consequences, unforeseen, do always, in fact, result from every one.

The philosopher, therefore, will have ‘derision against the ignorant multitude, who are always clamoring and dogmatical, even in the nicest questions, of which from want of ... understanding, [the dogmatical] are altogether unfit judges’ (‘Protestant Succession’, 507). Philosophy is no less free of dogmatism than religion and politics. During Hume’s stay in France, the philosophes welcomed him as almost one of themselves. But Hume would not have it. ‘The a priori character of the Holbachian atheism, the Helvetian materialism, and the Physiocratic economics ... showed complete indifference to [Hume’s] ... mitigated scepticism. The old Aristotelian dogmatism of the schools was but replaced in France by a new dogmatism of inevitable progress’ (Mossner, 486–7). And Mossner comments, ‘the genial Scottish sceptic must have been somewhat amused ... by the dogmatic atheism of the rue Royale, just as formerly in Edinburgh he had occasionally been riled by displays of dogmatic theism’ (Mossner, 486). ‘A true sceptic’, Hume says, ‘will be diffident of his philosophical doubts, as well as of his philosophical conviction’ (Treatise, 273). Hume’s reflective style of life and skeptical attitude are, of course, closely connected and mutually reinforcing. Reflection leads him to reject false philosophy and live by true philosophy, while his skeptical attitude leads him to reject the dogmatism and superstition on which false philosophy rests. Both his reflection and skepticism point to the conclusion that it is sophistry and illusion to try to think away the instability of fortune, contingency of life, and human imbecility and wickedness that are unavoidable risks that common life faces. True philosophy consists in guiding one’s life and pursuing one’s projects in a manner that acknowledges the risks but moderates the passion with which one responds to them. The constructive

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component of true philosophy and of the reflective style of life is, then, provided by the pursuit of one’s projects in the appropriate manner. I now turn to Hume’s project and manner.

11.4. The project and the manner Hume says that he ‘was seized very early with a passion for Literature which has been the ruling Passion of my Life, and the great Source of my Enjoyments’. He goes on: ‘I laid that Plan of Life, which I have steddily and successfully pursued: I resolved to make a very rigid Frugality supply my Deficiency of Fortune, to maintain unimpaired my Independency, and to regard every object as contemptible, except the Improvements of my Talents in Literature’ (Own Life, 611). These are honest, true, and eloquent words; rich in implication about how Hume lived and about one way in which a style of life can be admirable. Notice, to begin with, that Hume’s ruling passion and project were the same. What he most deeply cared about was what motivated how he lived. The beliefs, emotions, motives that guided how he thought he should live and the dominant pattern of his actions thus formed a coherent whole. His life was all of a piece. Throughout his life he remained faithful to the project he adopted at an early age as a plan of his life, so the manner in which he lived was not only coherent but also durable. It was also realistic, because he chose among the possibilities of life open to him in his social context the one that best suited his talents and impecunious circumstances. He did, therefore, everything he reasonably could to succeed in the life that was informed by his ruling passion. It is a further significant fact about Hume’s life that he found the pursuit of his ruling passion the chief source of enjoyment in his life. Many people pursue their ruling passions—for power, wealth, equality, conquest, liberation, salvation, authenticity, and so on—with little enjoyment. They may be motivated by a sense of duty, compassion, sinfulness, superiority, altruism, and the like, but even conspicuous success will bring them only temporary relief from what drives them. They value the goal, but that does not make the activity that leads to it enjoyable. Hume enjoyed the activity itself. He did it for its own sake and he did it because he found it enjoyable. His style of life is admirable partly because he so ordered it


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as to allow himself to be guided by a passion that reflected his deepest concern and gave him lasting enjoyment. Hume’s pursuit of this passion, of course, was not only enjoyable but also conscientious and beneficial. Thus another reason why Hume’s life was admirable is that it showed that it is possible to combine responsibility and enjoyment; that a morally good life need not be grim and an enjoyable life need not be morally suspect. That Hume’s basic and strongest motive was a passion does not mean, of course, that he did not keep it under firm control. In the first place, he did not allow it to become an enthusiasm—that is, ‘an unaccountable elevation and presumption’ in which ‘the imagination swells with great, but confused conceptions, to which no sublunary beauties or enjoyments can correspond’ (‘Superstition’, 74). His passion was kept within the limits of common life as he lived it, it ‘never soured my humour, notwithstanding my frequent Disappointments’. Furthermore, he was ‘a man of mild Dispositions, of Command of Temper ... and of great Moderation in all my passions’, so his ruling passion was not all that passionate, and the ups and downs of the reception of his work had little effect on his ‘cheerful Humour’ (Own Life, 615). As Adam Smith said of Hume, ‘his temper, indeed, seemed to be more happily balanced ... than that perhaps of any other man I have ever known’ (Letters, ii. 452). The manner, then, in which Hume pursued the project that was his ruling passion was one of exceptional moderation. This is not to say that he did not care about success. He cared a great deal about how his books were received, and their reception caused him the frequent disappointments mentioned above. Writing to a friend about the failure of the literary world to notice the appearance of the Treatise, he concludes a letter: ‘You will excuse the frailty of an author in writing so long a letter about nothing but his own performances. Authors have this privilege in common with lovers, and founded on the same reason, that they are besotted with a blind fondness of their object. I have been upon my guard against this frailty’ (Letters, i. 27). But, says Hume, ‘I very soon recovered the Blow, and prosecuted with great Ardour my Studies in the Country’ (Own Life, 612). This is what he does again and again as he faces disappointments, hostility, and incomprehension. When religious bigots prevented him from getting the well-deserved professorship for which his friends nominated Hume, he wrote to one of these friends, ‘I can now

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laugh at the Malice of those who intended me an Injury, without being able to reach me’ (quoted in Mossner, 160). When the third volume of his History appeared, ‘the Clamour against ... [it] was almost equal to that against the History of the first two Stuarts’. Nevertheless, ‘I was now callous against the Impressions of public Folly; and continued very peaceably and contentedly in my Retreat at Edinburgh’ (Own Life, 614). His disappointments, however, came to an end. He could say with some satisfaction as he approached what he knew was the end that financially he had ‘become not only independent, but opulent’, that he could be ‘seeing the Encrease of my Reputation’, that the object of his ‘Love of Literary Fame’ was at last achieved, and that he could ‘see many Symptoms of my literary Reputation’s breaking out at last with additional Lustre’ (Own Life, 614–15). The fact was that about ten years before his death ‘Hume was generally acknowledged to be the leading man of letters, not only of North Britain, but of South Britain as well; and, on the Continent, the unrivalled inheritor of the mantle of Montesquieu’ (Mossner, 223). Money, fame, and reputation were no doubt pleasant, because they put an end to Hume’s struggles and worries, but I do not think that this was the main, or at least the only, reason why he cared about them. The reason was that Hume did not exempt his own judgment from his skeptical attitude. He was unwilling to accept at face value the selfappraisal of the importance of his own work. He thought that his work ‘wou’d produce almost total alteration in Philosophy’ (Letters, i. 26) and that he ‘was the only Historian, that had at once neglected present Power, Interest, and Authority, and the Cry of popular Prejudices’ (Own Life, 613). But he also knew about himself that ‘I was ever more disposed to see the favourable than unfavourable Side of things’. He valued this ‘turn of Mind, which it is more happy to possess than to have been born to an Estate of ten thousand a Year’, but he also thought that it might make his high opinion of his own work unreliable. And that, I believe, was the reason why he cared so much about the reception of his work. For the public judgment could confirm or disconfirm his private judgment. When the former became as favorable as the latter, Hume could lay his skeptical attitude to rest and enjoy unimpeded by doubts the pleasant things that finally came to him from the long-hostile literary world.


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11.5. Reflectiveness as an admirable style of life One of the most striking features of Hume’s life is the unity and reciprocal reinforcement of the components of his style of life and his project. The activity that constituted his reflectiveness and the activity of pursuing his ruling passion for literature were two sides of the same coin. For he expressed the results of his reflection through his literary works, and his reflections were refined, examined, clarified, and supported with reasons by means of his writing. The subject matter of his reflection and his writing was thus one and the same: permanent adversities that always threaten and so often disrupt common life. His reflection and writing, therefore, were not the idle musings of a retiring and introspective man. They dealt with the most basic problems of the human condition: the instability of fortune, the contingency of life, and human imbecility and wickedness. The particular forms in which these problems occur varies with historical and social contexts, but, in one form or another, they are unavoidable obstacles to the enjoyment of life. Reflecting and writing about what to do and what not to do in trying to cope with them is of fundamental importance for human beings. Hume’s style of life and ruling passion aimed at formulating a reasoned response to this predicament. In formulating this response, Hume was guided by his skeptical attitude and the moderate manner in which he engaged in this dominant activity of his life. The skeptical attitude led to conclusions about how not to respond to permanent adversities, and his moderate manner pointed toward the best possible response. The skeptical attitude was directed against the durable temptation to invent a theological or metaphysical realm beyond ordinary life and the natural world and derive consolation from that realm. Hume concluded that all such attempts were based on sophistry and illusion. Most of his readers were and are blind to the significance of this conclusion. Those few who understood it were and are mostly appalled by its implications. Hume also had a constructive suggestion about the reasonable response. He did not suppose that the facts of the human condition could be changed, but he did think that our attitude to the facts could be shaped by cultivating a moderate manner. That manner enables us to control our emotive and imaginative responses if we acknowledge the threat of permanent adversities and if we have the misfortune to fall afoul of them. Such control will not

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suppress our natural responses, but it will prevent them from getting out of hand. This is the most reasonable response, because excessive fear and fantasy about a mere threat waste energy that would be better spent elsewhere, and because, if the threatened calamity actually befalls one, an excessive reaction would make an already bad situation even worse. One of the lasting achievements of Hume’s life was that he did not merely formulate his critical and constructive responses and express them in his writings, but that he lived by them. His style of life exemplifies how one might live a literary life that unifies reflectiveness, the skeptical attitude, and moderate manner, and thereby endeavor to perfect both life and work. Hume would not have liked talk about his life in terms of perfection, but he would, I think, have been satisfied to know that its description as responsible and enjoyable was accurate.

12 A Certain Gaiety of Heart A selfish villain may possess a spring and alacrity of temper, a certain gaiety of heart, which is indeed a good quality, but which is rewarded much beyond its merit, and when attended with good fortune, will compensate for the uneasiness ... arising from all other vices. (David Hume, ‘The Sceptic’, 1741)

12.1. The man The epigraph is a remarkably accurate, although unintended, description of Benvenuto Cellini. He is an emblematic figure of Renaissance Italy. His years were 1500–71. He was a goldsmith and a sculptor, a great craftsman and a very good artist, perhaps not equal to Michelangelo, Leonardo de Vinci, or Donatello, but certainly prominent among those in the second tier. His surviving masterpieces are the bronze sculpture Perseus and Medusa in Florence, the gold Saltcellar in the Kunsthistorische Museum in Vienna, and the Crucifix in the Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escortal in Florence. There are also extant coins, dies for coins, emblems, and several more or less unfinished works. His greatest achievement, the source of his fame, however, is his Autobiography,¹ running over 400 printed pages. It provides a vivid, incomparably rich, often funny picture of life and society in the city states of Renaissance Italy. The Autobiography is the life of an artist, who was also a murderer, a thief, a brawler, a liar, and a braggart. He enjoyed life with great gusto and scant regard for morality. He was passionate, funny, generous to his family and friends, implacable to his enemies, feisty with the great, the small, and his fellow artists alike. He basked in the favor of princes and endured terrible conditions in their dungeons. He was brave, relished risks,

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took and discarded women, earned great sums of money, and spent it all mostly imprudently. He was also an excellent swordsman and shot; a necromancer; deeply superstitious; unquestioningly religious; and a penitent sinner without illusions about the dignitaries of the Church, whom he knew well because they were among his regular patrons. He was half-pagan, halfCatholic; kind and cruel; avenging and forgiving; impulsive and calculating; scrupulously honest and cunningly dishonest. As Burckhardt rightly says: The autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini ... describes the whole man—not always willingly—with marvellous truth and completeness. It is no small matter that Benvenuto ... as a man will interest mankind to the end of time. It does not spoil the impression when the reader often detects him bragging and lying; the stamp of a mighty, energetic, and thoroughly developed nature remains. ... He is a man who can do all and dares do all, and who carries his measure in himself. Whether we like him or not, he lives, such as he was, as a significant type of the modern spirit.²

My interest is also in Cellini as representative of a significant type, although the type is not the one Burckhardt had in mind. I have argued throughout this book that a good life is both responsible and enjoyable, and I have inveighed against moralists who stress responsibility and forget about enjoyment. Nevertheless, moralists are right about the importance of responsibility, if only they would not overstate their point and treat enjoyment with suspicion. The significance of Cellini, in this context, is that his style of life exemplifies a way of going wrong, which is the opposite of the moralists’ way—namely, a life in which enjoyment is often at the expense of responsibility. Cellini’s style of life was exuberant, but it was deficient partly because it frequently led him to act irresponsibly. This is the style of life that concerns us in this chapter. Before considering his attitude, manner, pattern of actions, and project, which jointly constitute his exuberant style, I will take one episode from his life that Cellini describes in the Autobiography (pp. 291–3). It shows the complex mixture of enjoyment and irresponsibility, virtue and vice, artistic creativity and moral failings that are so very typical of his life and actions. Cellini was working in Paris on the Saltcellar, commissioned by the King of France. It was, of course, no ordinary salt cellar. Among its numerous ornaments is a nude female figure. Cellini based it on a live

A Certain Gaiety of Heart 217 model, a young French woman of great beauty. The work was slow, the woman tempting and willing, and Cellini had sex with her on numerous occasions, paying generously for her dual services. The woman’s mother often negotiated similar arrangements for her daughter, so there was no question here of Cellini seducing an innocent person. Their relationship had continued agreeably for some time, but one day Cellini was told that his model had another arrangement going with another Italian who happened also to be in France. Upon hearing this Cellini’s notoriously hot temper came to a boil, he rushed to his model’s house, and found her and the Italian in flagrante delicto. He saw this as being cuckolded, and he knew that only revenge could remove the stain from the honor of his manhood. He drew his sword—he was a formidable swordsman—and threatened to kill the peccant rival, who begged for mercy. Cellini relented on condition that the rival then and there marry his model. He, the rival, the model, and her ever-present mother came to terms, notaries were summoned, and the marriage took place. After which he continued to employ the model to provide both modeling and sexual services. But now Cellini enjoyed the latter more fully because his pleasure was enhanced by the sweet revenge of cuckolding the man with his wife who earlier had cuckolded him with his model. That the two women were the same merely tickled the piquancy of his revenge. Cellini also knew that in all this the model was far from blameless, so, by way of punishment, he beat her up, dragged her by the hair around the studio, and threw her out. The next day the model returned, no doubt at her mother’s behest, work on what became an incontestable masterpiece continued, and the beauty of the model can be seen by all in the Kunsthistorische Museum in Vienna. The author of the Encyclopedia Britannica article on Cellini writes of the Autobiography’s ‘splendidly gifted and barbarically untameable author’ that his amours and hatreds, his passions and delights, his love of the sumptuous and the exquisite in art, his self-applause and self-assertion, running now and again into extravagance ... make this one of the most singular and fascinating books in existence. Here we read ... of the devout complacency with which Cellini could contemplate a satisfactorily achieved homicide; of the legion of devils which he and a conjuror evoked in the Colosseum, after one of his not innumerous mistresses had been spirited away from him by her mother; of the marvellous halo of light which he found surrounding his head at dawn and twilight after his Roman

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imprisonment. ... If he is unmeasured in abusing some people, he is also unlimited in praising others.³

12.2. Pride as an attitude to life Cellini begins his Autobiography by saying that ‘all men ... who have done anything of excellence ... ought ... to describe their life’. He takes it that excellence consists in having ‘proved their manhood and achieved renown’ (p. 5), and he thinks that he has done both. The descriptions of many of the episodes and events of his life aim to show his outstanding accomplishments in both respects. He was proud of his manhood and renown, he wanted them acknowledged, and he wanted to be honored for them. Pride was at the center of Cellini’s attitude to life, informed his manner, and motivated many of his actions. Whether we think of Cellini’s style of life as admirable or deficient depends on what we think of pride. Pride, however, is a controversial character trait, as the relevant definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary (1961 edn.) show. According to one, pride is ‘a high or overweening opinion of one’s own qualities, attainments, or estate, which gives rise to a feeling and attitude of superiority over and contempt for others; inordinate self-esteem’. Consequently pride is always bad, and this sense reflects one strand of the Christian tradition. According to Aquinas, ‘pride corrupts all the virtues and all the powers of the soul. ... To prefer one’s own will to the will of a superior is to be proud. But whoever sins mortally prefers his own will to the will of a superior, namely, God’s; therefore he is guilty of pride. Consequently every sin is a sin of pride.’⁴ On the other definition, however, pride is ‘a consciousness or a feeling of what is befitting or due oneself or one’s position, which prevents a person from doing what he considers to be beneath him or unworthy of him; esp. as a good quality, legitimate, ‘‘honest’’, or ‘‘proper pride’’, self-respect; also as mistaken or misapplied feeling ‘‘false pride’’ ’. It follows that pride may be good or bad, depending on whether it is true or false pride. This definition reflects Aristotle’s view that ‘the truly proud man must be good. And greatness in every excellence would seem to be characteristic of a proud man. ... If we consider him ... we shall see the utter absurdity of a proud man who is not good. ... Pride, then, seems to be a sort of crown of

A Certain Gaiety of Heart 219 the excellences; for it makes them greater, and is not found without them. Therefore it is hard be truly proud; for it is impossible without nobility and goodness of character.’⁵ The first definition concentrates on false pride, and condemns it; the second focuses on true pride, and praises it. This is not merely a verbal dispute. For, according to the Christian view, true pride is impossible, because pride always involves transgressing the limits of one’s place in the cosmic moral order created by God. According to the Aristotelian view, true pride is possible, albeit hard, because it is hard to acquire the excellences of which it is proper to be proud. I think that the Christian view is mistaken, because there is no good reason to believe in a cosmic moral order and plenty of reasons against it; even if such an order exists, endless controversies about it show that we do not know what it is; and, even if the order exists and we know what it is, true pride may still be possible, because it can lead one to value highly one’s goodness in conformity to that order and to refuse to do what is beneath or unworthy of one’s position in it. I also think that an appropriately amended version of the Aristotelian view is right. The Aristotelian view needs to be amended for two reasons. First, it is a mistake to suppose that true pride is ‘impossible without nobility and goodness of character’. People can take true pride in their literary, artistic, scholarly, or athletic achievements, even if their character as a whole falls short in other ways. In such cases, they are proud of themselves for having developed some of their characteristics to a sufficient extent to make their achievement possible. Other aspects of their character, say their kindness, or fortitude, or tact, however, are no more than mediocre. The characteristics and achievements of which they are truly proud are free of moral weakness, whereas their other characteristics and achievements are liable to it. The second reason for amending Aristotle’s view is that its account of the characteristics and achievements of which people can be truly proud is unsatisfactory. Aristotle says, for instance, that true pride requires a deep voice, being unhurried, not gossiping, and having much money.⁶ What true pride requires is not merely possessing some characteristic, such as beauty, talent, or health, but also, having developed the characteristic, putting it to use in order to achieve something one values, and it being reasonable to value the achievement.⁷

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If the Aristotelian view is amended in these ways, it becomes the view that true pride involves knowing one’s merit and valuing it, but neither too much nor too little. Merit, on this view, consists in an achievement made possible by having developed some of one’s qualities and in the achievement’s being worthwhile in itself, independently of the fact that it happens to be one’s own. True pride, then, is a source of justified self-esteem that warrants feeling good about oneself, or, at least, about a certain aspect of oneself. It gives those who have it a sense of personal worth. This is clearly a good thing, provided it is justified. If the pride is true, then the sense of personal worth is justified. True pride, then, is a favorable attitude to oneself, but it may be episodic or durable. Both are good to have, but durable true pride is by far the better. It is, in fact, one of the great good things in human life, for it indicates that one’s dominant activity, the activity that expresses one’s deepest concerns, is going well. One is not merely engaged in it; the engagement is successful and it leads to achievements—not once or twice but as a durable pattern—in the activity at the center of one’s life, the activity that one cares about most. People fortunate enough to have durable true pride will be motivated by it to continue to do what they have been doing and not to do whatever may interfere with their dominant activity. The first gives meaning and purpose to their actions; the second sets limits to what they might do. The contingencies of life may, of course, disrupt their dominant activity and force them to transgress the limits they have set. There is no guarantee that their dominant activity will continue to be successful and that their true pride will endure. The best they can do is to continue to do well what is up to them. That may sustain a reduced degree of true pride, if they fail through no fault of their own. True pride often goes wrong and turns into false pride because of the faults of those who have it, not because of adverse contingencies. The ways of going wrong are many, but the following are perhaps the most frequent. In the first, one derives pride from substantially overestimating the excellence of one’s valued achievements. This is conceit. In the second, one’s valued achievements are excellent, but pride rests not on them, but on other people’s praise of them. This is vanity. In the third, the achievements are excellent, one values them independently of the praise of others, but pride is based on exhibiting one’s superiority to others by flaunting the

A Certain Gaiety of Heart 221 excellence of one’s achievements in comparison with the niggardliness of theirs. This is arrogance. Whether or not we should call conceit, vanity, and arrogance forms of false pride is merely a verbal dispute. I find false pride a convenient expression and will use it to point to instances when true pride has been corrupted. Cellini’s pride was false, but we can learn from it what pitfalls true pride as an attitude to life must avoid. Consider some of the episodes in which Cellini’s pride is false. To begin with, he knows of himself that he is ‘by nature somewhat choleric’ (p. 29), that he lacks ‘patience, which of all things I find most difficult’ (p. 275), that an ‘insane passion’ sometimes takes ‘possession of me’ (p. 289), and he thanks God for delivering him from his ‘fiendish fury’ (p. 338) on more than one occasion. One revealing feature of Cellini’s pride, however, is not his hot temper but the events that may provoke it. When a man indebted to him for past favors refuses to give Cellini the help he believes is his due, thus failing to treat him with the respect he thinks he deserves, he is ‘made so angry, that, fuming with fury and swelling like an asp ... [he takes] a desperate resolve’ to kill the man, and he fails only accidentally (p. 29). When the Governor of Rome bullies him by threat of punishment, Cellini replies with great haughtiness: ‘you will treat me with honour and courtesy, if you wish to act as I deserve’ (p. 113). When a man boasted of having insulted Cellini, he ‘drew a little dagger with a sharpened edge ... I aimed to strike him in the face; but fright made him turn his head round; and I stabbed him just beneath the ear ... he fell stone dead’ (p. 132). When he believes that ‘the Pope [for whom he worked] did not hold me in the same esteem as formerly’, he stops working for him and departs for France, leaving behind unfinished works and much money that is owed to him (p. 173). When he thinks he has been wronged by a rival artist, he ‘marched off with my good sword at my side’ and said to the culprit that ‘all men who wish to pass for persons of worth allow it to be seen that they are so by their actions; if they do the contrary, they lose the name of honest man’. He makes clear that he will act as a man of worth would and ‘I will kill you like a dog’ unless the one who wronged him makes amends (pp. 287–9). When a minor official treats him with insufficient respect, he says ‘men of my kind [are] worthy to converse with popes and emperors ... and that there were not two such men [as he] alive upon this earth, while ten of his [the official’s]

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sort might be met at every doorway’ (p. 321). When the King of France fails to give Cellini what he regards as his due, he says: ‘I stood upon my honour and wrote [to the King] in terms of haughty coldness’ (p. 325). The pattern in all these episodes is the same: he receives a real or imagined insult that affronts his pride, provokes his hot temper, moves him to a vain, arrogant, or conceited over-reaction, thus turning the true pride he takes in his undoubted artistic achievements into false pride based on how others regard him. This, in turn, leads him to flaunt and exaggerate his genuine merits. There is a pattern also to Cellini’s braggadocio, which is excessive even by the standards of Renaissance Italy, which honored modesty and reticence only in the breech. He talks about ‘the special gift which the God of nature bestowed on me, that is to say, a temperament so happy and of such excellent parts that I was freely able to accomplish whatever it pleased me to take in hand’ (p. 45). He describes his hunting: ‘it was by pure skill in the act that I filled such heavy bags. ... I discovered secret processes, beyond any which have yet been found ... which will astonish great shots of every degree’ (p. 46). When Rome was besieged, he ‘strove to achieve the impossible ... it was I who saved the castle that morning’; he discharged his military tasks ‘better than those of my own art’ (p. 66), and he ‘every day performed some extraordinary feat’, of which he says that ‘if I were to relate in detail ... I should make the world stand by and wonder’ (pp. 70–1). He claims that the Pope said that ‘men like Benvenuto, unique in their profession, stand above the law’ (p. 134). He reports that his fellow goldsmiths said: ‘Benvenuto is the glory of our art, and it is only due that we should doff our caps to him’ (p. 169). He says that ‘it has always been my ambition to do those things which offer the greatest difficulty to men, and that I had done them’ (p. 198). He relates with great satisfaction that the King of France ‘praised me as no artist was ever praised before’ (p. 261). The King, he says, called him ‘Mon ami’ and said that Cellini was ‘a man after his own heart’ (p. 274). Back in Florence, he says that ‘I have accomplished what no craft of the art could do’ and reports that people ‘did not believe a mere ... [person] could work such miracles as I ... had shown’ (p. 353). He claims that Michelangelo told him: ‘My dear Benvenuto, I have known you for many years as the greatest goldsmith of whom we have any information; and henceforward I shall know you for a sculptor of like quality’ (p. 355).

A Certain Gaiety of Heart 223 Most of these claims are lies, and all of them are grotesque exaggerations. They are nevertheless worth attending to because they express, not how he was seen by others, but how he would have liked to be seen by them. They reveal that what would have satisfied his pride was to be recognized as the best at whatever task he attempted, and that his pride has been corrupted. For his bragging lies show that what he took pride in, or rather what he would have taken pride in, were not his achievements, but the achievements for which he would have liked to be honored by others. His pride was false because its source was not what he was but how he was seen. What mattered to him were appearances, not reality. This was a pity and a waste, because he actually achieved, even if to a lesser degree than he claimed credit for, what he could have been truly proud of independently of what others had thought of it. It cries out for an explanation why this man of genuine artistic merit lied about and grossly exaggerated his achievement when this falsification was quite unnecessary. Why did he turn the true pride he could have had into the false pride of arrogance, conceit, and vanity? Because the manner of his conduct was at odds with his attitude to life. How he did what he did involved permanent braggadocio claiming much greater merit than he had.

12.3. The faulty manner Cellini thought that excellence consisted in proving manhood and achieving renown, and he was proud of having done both (p. 5). He proved his manhood through sexual adventures and physical or psychological victory in struggles with other men. Both, of course, essentially involved others who were subjected—by charm, guile, or force—to his will. He achieved renown by prevailing in competition with others. Manhood and renown alike required him, as he saw it, to show others that he was a better man than his competitors, rivals, or enemies. He does this again and again in life, and he does it in the Autobiography by telling countless anecdotes of his sexual affairs and quarrels with fellow artists and patrons. He was rightly called the ‘most quarrelsome and most boastful Florentine’.⁸ Proving manhood and achieving renown, therefore, depended, first, on showing himself ever ready and willing to compete fearlessly and to do what he could to prevail. And it depended, secondly, on making sure that he was seen by others

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to be ready, willing, and winning. He met these requirements by acting in a manner that demonstrated what in Renaissance Italy was called virtú. Acting in that manner, I will now argue, was what corrupted the true pride Cellini might have had. The argument proceeds in two steps: one is an explanation of virtú, the other is its ascription to Cellini.⁹ The Italian Renaissance idea of virtú was composed of a moral and a nonmoral element. The moral element combined Christian ideals and classical—ancient Greek and Roman—notions of virtue. The conception of virtú changed as the emphases on these elements shifted. One significant feature of the Renaissance was the increasingly greater importance attributed to classical notions at the expense of Christian ones. There were attempts at reconciliation, but when the classical cardinal virtues—justice, moderation, courage, and wisdom—conflicted with the Christian virtues—such as faith, hope, and charity—the classical ones tended to prevail. The nonmoral element stressed courage and grew indifferent to the other virtues, classical or Christian. Courage was reinterpreted to consist in pursuing one’s goals fearlessly, audaciously, with verve. Success in action and the manner in which success was achieved became the marks of excellence. Machiavelli’s works are the self-conscious applications of this nonmoral sense of virtú to politics. ‘Machiavelli’s use of the word virtú ... has altogether lost the Christian sense of virtue, and retains only so much of the Roman virtus as is applicable to the courage, intellectual ability, and personal prowess of one who has achieved his purpose, be that what it may.’¹⁰ Virtú in the nonmoral sense was the excellence of men, not in the generic but in the masculine sense. The etymology of virtú reinforces this, since its root is vir, meaning a mature male human being. One favorite model of virtú was Hercules, the man who relies on nothing but himself in his successful struggles against adversity. There are, as we will shortly see, constraints on what he, or men trying to be like him, can do, but the constraints are not moral, either in the classical or in the Christian sense. Machiavelli expresses this clearly: ‘The gulf between how one should live and how one does live is so wide that a man who neglects what is actually done for what should be done learns the way to self-destruction rather than self-preservation. The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous. Therefore ... he must learn how not to be virtuous, and to make use of this

A Certain Gaiety of Heart 225 or not according to need.’¹¹ Virtú, then, is the character trait that enables men to prevail in the competitive struggles of their society and achieve their goals. In this struggle men can count on nothing but themselves. ‘The most enduring aspect of Machiavelli’s message was his ... insistence that even in the worst times men must trust in themselves: only to do so was virtue.’¹² Independence and confidence, however, do not guarantee success, for what in the Renaissance was called fortune (fortuna) and what I have been calling the contingencies of life may cause one to fail regardless of independence and confidence. But the sway of fortune, of the contingencies of life, is not irresistible. ‘I believe’, says Machiavelli, ‘that it is probably true that fortune is the arbiter of half the things, leaving the other half or so to be controlled by ourselves.’ Whether or not men succeed depends on ‘nothing else except the extent to which their methods are or are not suited to the nature of the times.’ And he concludes that men prosper so long as fortune and policy are in accord, and when they clash they fail. ... It is better to be impetuous than circumspect; because fortune is a woman and if she is to be submissive it is necessary to beat and coerce her. Experience shows that she is more often subdued by men who do this. ... She favours young men, because they are less circumspect and more ardent, and because they command her with greater audacity.¹³

Assembling these components, we can say that virtú required acting in a manner that combined the rejection of, or, at least, indifference to, classical or Christian moral constraints, and the cultivation of independence, confidence, impetuosity, audacity, and a flexibility in adjusting one’s actions to changing circumstances. Machiavelli made this sense of virtú explicit in his works. Cellini was a younger contemporary of Machiavelli; he was born in 1500, and Machiavelli died in 1525. Cellini was not a thinker and it is unclear how consciously he was motivated by the ideal of virtú, but that he was so motivated is clear from his Autobiography. His energy and vital force were what the age idealized as virtú. Combining rare artistic gift with a most violent temper ... he paints himself at one time as a conscientious artisan, at another as desperate bravo. He obeys his instincts and indulges his appetites with ... irreflective simplicity. ... In pursuit of vengeance and the commission of murder he is self-reliant, coolly calculating, fierce and fatal as a tiger. His vanity is inordinate; and his unmistakable courage is unimpaired ... swaggering bravado.¹⁴

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All in all, ‘the virtú extolled by Machiavelli is exemplified by Cellini’.¹⁵ ‘Cellini’s Vita revolves around a basic concept, Renaissance virtú ... [the] power to perform actions worthy of a human being through his own strength alone. ... Virtú stands for strength, courage, vital force, human excellence.’¹⁶ As Cellini says: ‘I chose to be my own master and not the man of others’ (p. 26). He persists in this choice throughout his life. ‘The fights, the duels, and the murders narrated throughout the autobiography ... reveal, time and again, the protagonist’s indomitable courage, that whatever the purpose is for which he is displaying it ... the most striking aspect of this ... is its roguish quality ... the scoundrel prevails over the hero, the artist.’¹⁷ Nevertheless, ‘adverse fortune assumes so great a power that Benvenuto’s virtú is often vanquished’.¹⁸ To which it must be added that just as often it reasserts itself in the face of adversity. Cellini reflects in jail, awaiting a likely sentence of death: ‘it seemed that what was happening to me was the same as what happens to unlucky people in the street, when a stone falls from a great height upon their head. ... At the same time I know that I am possessed of free-will. ... In this long struggle of the soul I spent some time; then I found comfort, and fell presently asleep’ (p. 213). On another occasion, after having prevailed in a big fight, ‘he was laughing over those blows which fortune strikes, for good as well as evil ... fortune always comes upon us in new ways, quite unforeseen by our imagination’ (p. 266). Years later, he makes his way to Venice ‘pondering upon the divers ways my cruel fortune took to torment me, yet at the same time feeling myself none the less sound in health and hearty, I made up my mind to fence with her according to my wont’ (p. 330). And fence with fortune he did throughout his life. He did it fearlessly, audaciously, with verve, confidence, relying on himself; in a word, he did it with virtú. Doing it in that manner, however, was not enough for Cellini. Virtú for him was not its own reward. Its reward was getting what he wanted, achieving his goal, and being recognized and honored for having done so. What he cared about was proving his manhood and achieving renown. He cared about virtú because it was the only way he knew of subduing fortune when it stood in his way. When he succeeded, which was often, he enjoyed life to the hilt. But he was only momentarily satisfied, because he had to succeed again and again. Renown fades; manhood is forever challenged by men and women who have to be conquered; competitions must be won; enemies must be defeated; and insults must be avenged. His

A Certain Gaiety of Heart 227 life was a quest compelling him to ascend to a peak, but there were always further peaks, and the failure to conquer them cast doubt on his previous achievements, because it cast doubt on his possession of virtú. And this shows why his manner of virtú is faulty and why it is inconsistent with his pride as an attitude to life. Cellini’s pride was false, because he derived it from the recognition of his achievements by others, rather than from the genuine achievements themselves. Since he found the recognition he received from others grudging, or, at least, insufficiently laudatory, he constantly lied and bragged about his achievements and grossly exaggerated what they were. We can now see that what misdirected Cellini’s pride, what made it false, was his manner of virtú. For virtú is essentially connected with being recognized by others. He could prove his manhood only by having women doing his bidding, rival artists acknowledging his excellence, his enemies choosing between flight and death, and all this being witnessed and applauded by the small societies of city states in Renaissance Italy. Life in these times and at these places was not just a matter of living, but also a theatrical performance in which everyone’s manner of acting was observed, debated, and judged by the spectators. One important standard on which they based their judgment was the virtú shown by the actors. The recognition Cellini craved was the applause of these spectators. This made his pride false, because it led him to care about the applause, not the quality of his performance. It made matters worse that he derived his pride not just from proving his manhood in this specious manner but also from achieving renown as an artist. That, of course, was also a matter of receiving proper appreciation of his work from others, especially from his actual and potential patrons, on whom his livelihood depended. His extant works show that he had great talent, some great achievements, and for these he deserved renown. But virtú compelled him to demand always more than he had, because his view of renown was indissolubly competitive. It was never enough to have created a great work of art; it had to be greater than those of others. It was not enough to be paid handsomely; he had to be paid more than his fellow artists. It was not enough to be cherished by cardinals; it had to be by the Pope. Princes were not enough either; it had to be the King of France. Nothing was ever enough, and there was no patron with whom he did not quarrel and whom he did not leave for another patron because

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he was dissatisfied with the extent of the appreciation he received. But his dissatisfaction was permanent, because its source was not what he had but what his competitors were having. And there were always competitors bent on the same quest. Proving manhood and achieving renown, therefore, did not depend on his own judgment but on the judgment of the ever-present audience whose applause or jeer egged on the competitors to scale yet another peak, faster, taking more risks, showing more verve, making more elegant moves than the others. Hobbes had written that human life is ‘a perpetuall and restlesse desire for Power after power, that ceaseth onely in Death. And the cause of this, is not alwayes that a man hopes for a more intensive delight, than he has already attained to; or that he cannot be content with a moderate power: but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more.’¹⁹ If we substitute renown for power, then we get the idea of what life is like for those who, like Cellini, sought renown by means of virtú as their manner of acting.

12.4. The project and its enjoyment The picture I have so far constructed of Cellini’s life is incomplete. The missing element is his appetite for life; the pleasure he took in women, fights, food; in delivering a well-directed insult; and in working hard and well at his craft and art. Cellini enjoyed life greatly, even as he was continually frustrated by lack of sufficient appreciation and transgressed what he knew were moral limits. We need to understand how this enjoyment could coexist with the inevitable frustrations and challenges of virtú. The answer is that they had different sources. Two pairs of distinction will help to identify the sources of Cellini’s enjoyment of life: between intrinsically and instrumentally and between centrally and marginally enjoyable activities. Intrinsically enjoyable activities are enjoyable in themselves, for their own sake, regardless of whether they yield other benefits. Making love, listening to music, seeing an old friend once again, taking delight in a natural scenery, reading a good book, appreciating a funny story are normally intrinsically enjoyable. Such activities may or may not serve a goal beyond themselves, but the enjoyment one may take in them is not on that account, but on account of the pleasure, delight, or amusement

A Certain Gaiety of Heart 229 they provide. Instrumentally enjoyable activities are goal directed, and the enjoyment of them derives from the goal to which they are means. If they did not lead to their goal, one would not engage in them. Musicians perfecting their technique, keeping one’s house in good repair, brushing one’s teeth in the morning, haggling with a merchant may be instrumentally enjoyable activities for some people in some circumstances and unenjoyable or neutral for others or in other circumstances, depending on what their relevant goals are. There is, of course, no reason why some activities could not be both intrinsically and instrumentally enjoyable. Such activities are enjoyable both for their own sake and derivatively from the goal to which they lead. These are different kinds of enjoyment, but having both increases the overall enjoyment by adding one kind of enjoyment to the other kind. That an activity is enjoyable is a reason for engaging in it, but, of course, not a conclusive reason, because there may be much stronger reasons—derived from morality, prudence, or self-interest—against engaging in it. In the absence of countervailing reasons, however, if an activity is both intrinsically and instrumentally enjoyable, it gives one stronger reason for engaging in it than if it were enjoyable in only one of these ways. The other distinction is between centrally and marginally enjoyable activities. They are central or marginal to one’s projects—that is, to the dominant activity of one’s life. Dominant activities, it will be remembered, are expressions of one’s deepest concerns, of what one cares about most in life. Centrally enjoyable activities are parts or the whole of one’s dominant activities, whereas marginally enjoyable activities are neither. Centrality and marginality refer not to the strength or the weakness of the enjoyment an activity yields, but to the importance or its lack that the activity has in one’s dominant activity, in the project of one’s life. And, of course, both centrally and marginally enjoyable activities could be enjoyable intrinsically, instrumentally, or both together. Cellini’s project, the dominant activity of his life, was his work as a goldsmith and sculptor. That is what he was about; what he most deeply cared about; the activity from which he derived a great deal of enjoyment. But this dominant activity of his was both intrinsically and instrumentally enjoyable. It was the first because he was very good at it and loved the beautiful objects he was making. And it was the second because it was a means to his livelihood and renown. Although Cellini’s dominant activity

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was centrally enjoyable, he also enjoyed greatly many of his marginal activities: love-making, dining well, fighting, taking revenge, and so forth. Many of these marginally enjoyable activities were also enjoyable both intrinsically and instrumentally. The goal to which they led was proving his manhood. He had, therefore, two kinds of enjoyment in his life: the centrally and marginally enjoyable ones, and some of both were intrinsically and instrumentally enjoyable. But his centrally enjoyable activities were instrumental to his achievement of renown and his marginally enjoyable ones were instrumental to proving his manhood. If we understand Cellini’s life in the light of these distinctions, we can readily see the sources of both his enjoyments and frustrations in life. The sources of his enjoyment were his intrinsically enjoyable activities; the sources of his frustration were his instrumentally enjoyable activities. But his instrumentally enjoyable activities were frustrating for two different reasons. One was the manner in which he was engaged in them. Virtú, as we have seen, was competitive, and it was psychologically impossible for him to win permanently or to terminate his participation. For termination would have meant abandoning both virtú and the pride he took in his manhood and renown, and dooming him to see his life as a shameful failure. And winning the competition once and for all was impossible, because his competitors kept changing and challenging him again and again with producing new works of art, being paid more highly, having greater patrons, seducing women in more ingenious ways, taking sweeter revenge, delivering more cutting insults, or winning by taking greater risks. The other way his instrumentally enjoyable activities led to frustration was that the goals toward which they were directed, proving manhood and achieving renown, were inconsistent. The better he succeeded at reaching one of these goals, the more he failed at reaching the other. Cellini was hugely energetic, but even his energies had limits; he was, as everyone, aging; and the thrill of the chase, the novelty of a new commission, a new seduction, or a new contretemps was rapidly fading. The more time and energy he spent on seeking renown through art, the less he had left for proving his manhood in the face of ceaseless challenges. And, if he had shifted his emphasis from chasing renown to chasing manhood, then he would have frustrated the former. The central and marginal enjoyments he sought were at the expense of one another. Cellini did not see this, or perhaps he merely pretended to himself or others that he did not see it. In

A Certain Gaiety of Heart 231 any case, he did this and he did that and thus doomed himself to frustration by dissipating his time and energy instead of concentrating them. The result was that he left behind an unusually large number of unfinished works of art, his livelihood was threatened by his quarrelsomeness, and it became harder and harder for him to find a patron. Thus he undermined both his manhood and his renown. In thinking about his life, however, it would be wrong to dwell only on his frustrations. For, alongside the frustrations caused by the frequent failure of what might have been his instrumentally enjoyable activities, there was also the enormous enjoyment he derived from his intrinsically enjoyable activities. Using his great talent, satisfying his appetites, indulging his passions enabled him to live enjoyably, fully, with exuberance, even if he lived also with frustration.

12.5. Exuberance as a style of life The pride that was Cellini’s attitude to life, the virtú that was the manner in which he pursued manhood and renown, and the dominant pattern of actions that was his project in life jointly constitute his exuberant style of life. This style formed his identity, made him an undoubtedly remarkable individual, and gave him success and enjoyment. It was, nevertheless, deficient whether we evaluate it internally, in its own terms, from its own point of view, or externally, from the outside, in other terms than its own. Viewed from the inside, the pride that formed Cellini’s attitude to life was false, because it rested on lies and exaggerations, rather than on his genuine achievements, which could have sustained true pride. Cellini falsified the facts and deceived both himself and others. He thus doomed himself to permanent frustration on account of what he saw as his lack of success in proving his manhood and achieving renown. His style of life brought him lifelong frustration and no lasting enjoyment. If we ask, still from an internal point of view, why Cellini’s pride was false when his achievements could have made it true, then the answer is that the manner of his actions, his virtú, stood in the way of true pride. For true pride is taking satisfaction in one’s genuine achievements, neither belittling nor exaggerating the merits one can justifiably claim for them. Virtú makes this impossible, because it compels the evaluation of one’s achievements

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on the basis of how others regard them. The achievements are thus judged, not for what they are, but for how they appear to others. And that depends on usually poorly informed witnesses of the life judging the performance of the actors in the spectacle that was life in Renaissance Italy. This provoked the actors to lie and boast in order to influence the spectators, and it made their own view of themselves competitive. Cellini’s virtú committed him to this mode of evaluation, and it excluded judging his own achievements independently of appearances and competition. Virtú thus prevented him from taking true pride in his achievements. This inconsistency between Cellini’s attitude and manner is only one reason for regarding his style of life as deficient in its own terms. Another is the inconsistency between his pursuit of manhood and renown. Renown could only have come from his work as an artist, but the endless competitions he had to engage in and the ceaseless challenges to which he had to rise to prove his manhood prevented him from working as well and as much as he otherwise could have. By aiming both at proving manhood and achieving renown and by refusing to accept his own limited time and energy, Cellini caused himself to fail to do as well as he could have at either pursuit. These two inconsistencies made Cellini’s style of life incoherent and incapable of achieving what he most cared about. This is why his style of life was deficient in its own terms. It should have made his life more deeply and lastingly enjoyable than it had succeeded in doing. If we evaluate Cellini’s style of life from the outside, independently of its internal defects, we must be struck by the fact that its remarkable exuberance was the result of his inability or unwillingness to control his passions. Perhaps this lack of control contributed to his excellence as an artist, but it also made him a murderer several times, a thief of the gold and silver his patrons provided for his work, and an unscrupulous manipulator of his many lovers, patrons, apprentices, and journeymen. Perhaps it is too much to ask that he should have freed himself from the moral expectations prevalent in Renaissance Italy. But, murder, theft, beating his lovers, and selfishly making use of people who trust him are acts that violate basic decency. These acts were motivated by the passions he indulged. His style of life was deficient, when judged from the outside, because it encouraged, rather than discouraged, his moral irresponsibility. None of this is meant to show that a style of life exuberant in the way Cellini’s was could not be admirable. It could be if it involved cultivating

A Certain Gaiety of Heart 233 true rather than false pride; a manner of acting that replaced virtú with a combination of courage and verve that was not self-defeating; a coherent pattern of activities that reflected one’s deepest concerns, avoided the sort of inconsistencies that beset Cellini, did not indulge passions, and did not violate elementary moral responsibilities.

13 The Rightful Enjoyment of our Being

It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know to know how to enjoy our being rightfully. We seek other conditions because we do not understand our own, and go outside of ourselves because we do not know what it is like inside. (Michel de Montaigne, Essays, 1588)

13.1. The background Reflection on history has led a wide variety of thoughtful people to conclude that our contemporary Western moral sensibility is the result of a slow but deep transformation that began around the fourteenth century.¹ Before this sea change people took for granted that their rights and duties, responsibilities and entitlements, were defined by their positions in the secular and religious hierarchies of their society. They held their positions by birth, inheritance, or appointment. They were titled or commoner; landowner or serf; priest or laic; parent or child; master, journeyman, or apprentice in a guild; husband or wife; soldier, trader, or monk; ruled by those above and ruling those below. The responsibilities people had and the obligations they owed were attached to the positions they occupied. Whoever was in a position had the responsibilities and obligations attached to it. Conflicts among obligations occurred, but the religious and secular authorities were there to resolve them. Their judgments were enforced by the institutions from which they derived their authority. A gradual change began when people started to think of themselves primarily as individuals and only secondarily as occupants of positions.

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They began to think that they had rights and obligations as individuals, and that the promptings of their conscience had an authority that competed with the prevailing secular or religious authorities. This change was partly caused and partly quickened by the great upheavals of the Reformation and the Renaissance, and it became self-conscious and articulate in the Enlightenment. Disagreements remain about the precise dating and the causal connections among these momentous events and about how broad and deep the changes were, but there is agreement on two points crucial to the formation of our contemporary moral sensibility. The primary holders of rights and duties, entitlements and responsibilities, have become individuals, and only secondarily positions. Individuals came to have choices about the positions they occupied. Even if they were born into some positions, they could choose to leave or to stay in them. It came to be thought that, if important moral choices were not based on the private decisions of individuals, they were not fully responsible. Thus, in Western moral sensibility, individuals became the primary moral subjects. Responsibility was ascribed to them, and it was supposed that they could and should exercise it by turning inward and consulting their conscience, rather than turning outward and consulting religious or secular authorities. The other generally agreed change is that what was morally impossible before has become morally possible. When rights and duties were attached to positions, the moral resources were unavailable for questioning the morality of the positions themselves. But if rights and duties are attached to individuals, and individuals can choose the positions they occupy, then they can examine critically the rights and duties of positions they consider occupying. They can make judgments backed by the authority of their conscience and juxtapose its authority to the judgments of religious or secular authorities. Individuals can now, for better or worse, direct how they live and act, whereas, before the change had occurred, how they lived and acted were directed by the positions assigned to them by religious or secular authorities. There is no reason to think that this change in moral sensibility has brought with it a decrease in immorality, but there is very good reason to think that it brought with it the possibility of greater individual freedom and control, new opportunities and benefits, and new dangers and burdens. Countless people even now leave this possibility unexplored, but it is widely available, whereas before only rare and exceptional people could even try to realize it. Many moral thinkers

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regard this change as moral progress, but acknowledging that it has occurred does not commit one to their Whiggish interpretation of morality. This brings me to Michel de Montaigne, the subject of this chapter. He was a remarkable man. He was among the first whose life and actions were informed by the emerging new sensibility. He recognized himself as an individual apart from the various positions he occupied. He lived enjoyably and responsibly by cultivating a style of life that was characteristically his own. He left a record—the Essays²—of the lifelong critical reflection that guided his conduct of life. By this means he not only showed how he lived, but left for posterity a fleshed-out moral possibility that enlarged the existing stock of possibilities. His life was a successful experiment in living, which he described, which others can learn from, and which they can, with appropriate changes, adapt to their very different characters and circumstances. The salient facts of Montaigne’s life are easily told.³ He was born in 1533 into a Gascon Catholic family of lesser nobility, residing not far from the city of Bordeaux. He was educated first at home, where he learned Latin before French, and later at one of the best schools of France. He was trained in the law, and, at the age of 24, he became a Councillor in the Parlement of Bordeaux, where his duties required him to participate in legislation and to act as something like a magistrate. During this period he married, had six children, all but one of whom died in infancy, and formed the most significant relationship of his life: a friendship with La Boétie, who died from a painful illness four years later. In 1570, after thirteen years of service, Montaigne retired to his estate ‘long weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments ... where in ... freedom, tranquillity, and leisure’ (pp. ix–x) he intended to read and reflect, and he began to record his thoughts in a form that eventually resulted in the Essays. But two years later he was called out of retirement to act as a mediator between the warring Catholics and Protestants of France. As a moderate Catholic and an experienced man of affairs, he was acceptable to both parties. He was intermittently engaged in this for four years. In 1580, when he was 47, the first edition of the Essays, containing books 1 and 2, appeared. It was well received. Montaigne then traveled for almost two years in Switzerland, Germany, and especially Italy. In his absence, he was elected Mayor of Bordeaux, a prestigious office he did not seek and was reluctant to accept. But he was prevailed upon, and, when his two-year term came to an end,


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he was given the rare honor of a second term. After this he once again took up residence on his estate, finished book 3 of the Essays and kept revising the first two books. The three books were first published together in 1588, when he was 55 years old. He continued revising them until the end of his life. He died in 1592, a few months before his sixtieth birthday. He was generally regarded as a wise and learned man, an eminent scholar, and a distinguished public servant. Montaigne’s style of life emerges from the Essays. He thinks that ‘there is no one who, if he listens to himself, does not discover in himself a pattern all his own, a ruling pattern’ (p. 615). His main aim in life was to discover this pattern in himself and to live according to it. In order to discover it, ‘I recognized’, he writes, ‘that the surest thing was to entrust myself and my need to myself’ (p. 799). He thus opted for a ‘private life that is on display only to ourselves ... [and has] a pattern established ... by which to test our actions, and ... now pat ourselves on the back, now punish ourselves’. He aimed to ‘have my own laws and court to judge me, and I address myself to them more than anywhere else’. ‘To be disciplined within ... where all is permissible, where all is concealed—that’s the point’ (p. 613). ‘The greatest task of all,’ he writes, is ‘to compose our character ... not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things ... are only little appendages and props, at most’ (pp. 850–1). This was his ruling pattern, the key to understanding him and his style of life. I call this style self-direction. Self-direction, of course, is a complex process, and it may take many different forms. The form Montaigne’s took is best understood by examining his attitude to life, his manner of acting, the pattern of his dominant activities, and the project that jointly composed his style of life. As Montaigne was consciously engaged in forming his attitude and manner and imposing a pattern on his activities, he encountered tensions within himself. He resolved them by prudently weighing the respective importance of his contrary commitments, not by denying any of them. In the tension between his private judgment and external influences, he attributed much greater importance to the former, but he accommodated rather than denied the latter. This became a characteristic feature of the inwardness that was his attitude to life. In the tension between private and public life, he acknowledged the need to participate in public life, but set a limit beyond

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which he would not go. This formed his remarkably independent manner. He also recognized that the aspiration to achieve control over himself was continually frustrated by the contingencies of life surrounding him. He resolved their tension by means of the Essays, work on which became the dominant pattern of activity and the project of his life. The significant facts that allow us to understand Montaigne’s style of life and why it was admirable emerge from how he resolved these tensions. He knew that he had to find resolutions, but he also knew that ‘it takes management to enjoy life ... [and] the measure of enjoyment depends on the greater or lesser attention that we lend it’ (p. 853). He lent it great and lifelong attention, and that is what finally enabled him to compose his character, live appropriately, and enjoy order and tranquility. I turn now to the components of his self-directed style of life and to how he resolved the tensions implicit in them. It should be obvious, however, that the tensions between one’s judgment and external influences, private and public life, self-control and contingency, are not just tensions Montaigne happened to have encountered, but ones that human beings can hardly avoid having. The enduring significance of Montaigne’s style of life is that we can learn from it ways of resolving these ubiquitous tensions, ways that are conducive to an enjoyable and responsible life.

13.2. Inwardness as an attitude to life Montaigne writes that ‘I turn my gaze inward, I fix it there and keep it busy. ... I continually observe myself, I take stock of myself’ (p. 499). This is not just an autobiographical report; it is meant as a recommendation of what people should do if they are disenchanted with ‘the hustle and bustle of the world’, who are aware that ‘contagion is very dangerous in the crowd’, and who, ‘if he has the choice ... will flee even the sight of a throng’ (pp. 174–5). To these people, of whom Montaigne is one, he says: ‘We must reserve a back shop all our own, entirely free, in which we establish our real liberty and our principal retreat. ... Here our ordinary conversation must be between us and ourselves ... here we must talk and laugh. ... We have a soul that can be turned upon itself ... it can keep itself company’ (p. 177). But who are the people who should turn inward and


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why should they do it? Montaigne has in mind those who wish to be self-directed, and the reason they should turn inward is that one can be directed by one’s self only if one pays attention to it. A self-directed style of life, therefore, must involve inwardness, because that is the only way of attending to one’s self. The obstacles to cultivating inwardness, however, are formidable. ‘The common attitude and habit ... [is] of looking elsewhere than at ourselves.’ The reason for this is that ‘we are an object that fills us with discontent; we see nothing in us but misery and vanity. In order not to dishearten us, Nature has very appropriately thrown ... our vision outward. We go forward with the current ... to turn backward toward ourselves is a painful movement’ (p. 766). Montaigne himself goes against this current. He thinks that ‘what Nature flatly and originally demands of us ... is too little’ and he supplements it by developing the habit of inwardness. This ‘habit is a second nature, and no less powerful. ... And I would as soon be deprived of life as have it reduced and cut down very far from the state in which I have lived for so long’ (p. 772). Nevertheless, ‘if others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense. ... We are all steeped in it, one as much as another; but those who are aware of it are a little better off’ (p. 766). The reason why they are better off is that those who ‘want to get out of themselves and escape from the man’ (p. 856) can go only in two directions, and both are harmful. One is in the direction of a transcendental realm. But, Montaigne says, ‘transcendental humors frighten me, like lofty and inaccessible places’, because of ‘two things that I have always observed to be in singular accord: supercelestial thoughts and subterranean conduct’ (p. 856). The other direction is the ‘disposition to live with reference to others’. This ‘does us much more harm than good. We defraud ourselves of our own advantages to make appearances conform with public opinion. We do not care so much what we are in ourselves and in reality as what we are in the public mind. Even the joys of mind, and wisdom, appear fruitless to us ... if they do not shine forth to the sight and approbation of others’ (p. 729). To be well thought of by others may give us ‘accidental and external conveniences’, but we should not make them ‘our mainstay; they are not; neither reason nor nature will have it so. Why should we ... enslave our contentment to the power of others?’ (p. 179). What we should do instead is to ‘retire into yourself, but first prepare to receive yourself there;

240 Some Particular Styles of Life it would be madness to trust yourself if you do not know how to govern yourself’ (p. 182). Montaigne, however, sees clearly that the self to which he recommends retiring has been to a great extent formed by that very public world from which we should retire into a private one. ‘The principal effect of the power of custom is to seize and ensnare us in such a way that it is hardly within our power to get ourselves back out of its grip and return into ourselves to reflect and reason about its ordinances’ (p. 83). And he says—famously and with apparent inconsistency—that ‘it is the rule of rules, and the universal law of laws, that each man should observe those of the place he is in’ (p. 86). Here, it seems, there is a serious tension within Montaigne’s inward attitude to life. How can he simultaneously advocate following custom and freeing ourselves from public opinion and the approbation of others? How can he recognize that ‘almost all the opinions we have are taken on authority’, claim that ‘there is no harm in this’ (p. 792) and say that ‘we must husband the freedom of our soul and mortgage it only on the right occasions; which are very small in number, if we judge sanely’ (p. 767); that ‘I am so jealous of the liberty of my judgment that I can hardly give it up’ (p. 500); and that ‘I have a soul all its own, accustomed to conducting itself in its own way’ (p. 487)? If our private world and self are formed of the customs and authorities of the public world that surrounds us, then self-direction and inwardness are chimerical. One’s private world, then, is just the small segment of the public world that got attached to one’s body; the self is a social construct; and to gaze inward is in fact to gaze into a mirror that reflects the portion of the public world that happens to appear in it. Has not Montaigne deconstructed the self and thereby destroyed the distinction between the private and the public, the inner and the outer? The answer is no. There certainly is a tension between the private and the public, but Montaigne found a way of resolving it that sustains the importance of self-direction and inwardness. The key to Montaigne’s resolution is the following remarkable passage. Things in themselves have their own weights and measures and qualities; but once inside, within us, she [i.e. the soul] allots them their qualities as she sees fit. ... Health, conscience, authority, knowledge, riches, beauty, and their opposites—all are stripped on entry and receive from the soul new clothing, and the coloring she chooses ... and which each individual chooses ... each one is queen


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in her realm. Wherefore let us no longer make the external qualities of things our excuse; it is up to us to reckon them as we will. Our good and our ill depend on ourselves. ... Fortune has no power over our character. (p. 220)

Montaigne accepts that the customs, conventions, traditions, and practices of the public world inevitably influence us. He also accepts that we are each initially formed by the external influences to which we happen to be subject. But he denies that this is the end of the matter: we can make choices about what to do in response to these influences. We can accept them unquestioningly, or we can evaluate them. The evaluation does not consist in rejecting the influences, for we cannot undo what we have been influenced by; it consists in imposing on them our own sense of importance. We learn from the public world, for instance, about death. But we can form our own attitude toward it. We may learn from the public world that ‘death is frightful to Cicero, desirable to Cato, a matter of indifference to Socrates’ (p. 220). Our choice is whether our attitude should be like Cicero’s, Cato’s, Socrates’, or perhaps someone else’s. And, of course, we can do the same with health, money, politics, beauty, marriage, work, and all the many other possibilities and limits we learn from the surrounding public world. Our general attitude to life is formed by these influences and by the particular attitudes we develop toward them. The public world provides the influences, the private world is where we can evaluate their importance. There is no tension between these two worlds. They coexist, and each contributes an essential component to the formation of our character. We become individuals by having the attitudes we have toward the possibilities and limits that constitute the structure of our world—a world that is formed of both public and private components. Our general attitude to life is formed by these particular attitudes, and our style of life reflects the general attitude. The general attitude we end up with can take a wide variety of forms, because the particular attitudes that form it reflect the differences in the characters and circumstances that are the inevitable starting point for each of us. As we form particular attitudes, so we alter our initial characters and responses to our circumstances. And the altered characters and responses, in turn, alter the attitudes that reflect them. This reciprocal process takes place in our private world; it is the substance of our inner lives.

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The private world of many people—Montaigne thinks of most people— in fact mirrors their public world, because they do not make the choices available to them. They simply accept the importance customarily assigned to the surrounding possibilities and limits. Such people have freedom, but make no use of it; they could develop their individuality, but they do not; they could give style to their lives, but they conform to custom instead. Montaigne rejects such conformity, certainly for himself, and, contrary to his repeated refusal to prescribe for others, often for others as well. He thinks that it is better to take control of one’s life, to find out what one cares about deeply, and to form one’s particular attitudes so as to reflect these concerns. Self-direction is the style of life of those who aim to control their lives. Their corresponding attitude is inwardness, because it is by directing their attention inward, toward their private worlds, rather than outward, toward the surrounding public world, that they discover what they really care about and form their particular attitudes about the importance of death, sex, money, and all the other focal points of their lives. Montaigne values the ‘orderly management of our soul’ (p. 251), is ‘jealous of the liberty of my judgment’ (p. 500), ‘fond of privacy in actual life’ (p. 611), and treasures ‘the freedom of our soul’ (p. 767), because they are conditions needed for inwardness and a self-directed life.

13.3. Independence as a manner of action Montaigne says that he is ‘extremely independent’, and by that he means that ‘I stand up well under hard work; but I do so only if I go to it of my own will, and as much as my desire leads me to it’. He adds: ‘if I have any other guide than my own pure free will, I am good for nothing’ (p. 487). His independent manner of action is thus an essential component of his self-directed style of life. One cannot act independently if one follows the prescriptions of any other authority but one’s own. However, to follow the dictates of one’s will and desire, one must know what they truly are, and that depends on knowing what one most deeply cares about. Knowing that requires inwardness, so there is also a natural connection between inwardness as an attitude to life and an independent manner of acting. In Montaigne’s life, this style, attitude, and manner harmoniously coexist and reinforce one another. He can truly say that ‘I have a soul all its


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own, accustomed to conducting itself in its own way. Having had neither governor nor master forced on me to this day, I have gone just as far as I pleased. This has made me ... no good to anyone but myself’ (p. 487). It would be natural to expect that living in this manner is possible only for those who retire from ‘the hustle and bustle of the world’ and ‘flee even the sight of a throng’ (pp. 174–5). Montaigne’s life, however, is contrary to this expectation. It must be remembered that at 24 he became a legislator and a magistrate; that after thirteen years at this he retired, but, when he was called out of retirement two years later, he acted for four years as a mediator between the warring Catholics and Protestants; and that he was Mayor of Bordeaux for another four years. His retirement, therefore, was not much longer than his engagement in the public affairs of his day. He chose retirement, but he also took an active part in politics. He says that ‘solitude seems to me more appropriate and reasonable for those who have given to the world their most active and flourishing years’ (p. 178), and that ‘I do not want a man to refuse, to the charges he takes on, attention, steps, words, and sweat and blood if need be’ (p. 770). It seems, then, that Montaigne had conflicting motives: he felt compelled to seek both retirement from the world and participation in it. This man, whose deepest commitment was to self-direction, inwardness, and independence, chose again and again to compromise that commitment by taking part in public affairs. He recognized that politics was corrupt, corrupting, and incompatible with living in the way he prized above all else. He was indifferent to the money and the honor he might gain, and he had no worldly ambition. He had adequate means and opportunity to live as he desired, and yet he repeatedly chose to act in incompatible ways. Was he just irrational? Was he the helpless victim of an unresolved tension? I think not: the incompatibility was only apparent. The truth behind the appearance is that Montaigne had found a way of resolving a tension that most of us feel, and what he found is of enduring interest. Montaigne participated in politics because he knew, as all thinking people must nowadays know, that politics creates the framework that makes private lives possible. His political activity was not incompatible with living as he wanted but part of the cost of living that way. That politics is corrupt and corrupting is a very good reason for participating in it, rather than an excuse for withdrawal. For the worse the prevailing state of affairs is, the more urgent is the need to improve it. Montaigne says that

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‘what most weighs me down is that when I count up the symptoms of our trouble, I see as many that are natural and that Heaven sends us ... as those that our disorder and imprudence contribute. ... The evil that most nearly threatens us is not an alteration in the entire and solid mass, but its dissipation and disintegration.’ Montaigne thinks that disintegration should be ‘the worst of our fears’ (p. 734). ‘The worst thing I find in our state is instability. ... It is very easy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of it. ... But as for establishing a better state in place of the one ... ruined, many of those who have attempted it have achieved nothing for their pains’ (p. 498). Montaigne recognizes that ‘our morals are extremely corrupt, and lean with a remarkable inclination toward the worse; of our laws and customs, many are barbarous and monstrous; however, because of the difficulty of improving our condition and the danger of everything crumbling into bits, if I could put a spoke in our wheel and stop it as this point, I would do so with all my heart’ (p. 497). The aim of Montaigne’s participation in politics was to do what he could to prevent the existing bad state of affairs from becoming worse. For, if they became worse and everything crumbled into bits, private lives would become impossible. So he was protecting the conditions on which living as he wanted depended; he was not pursuing a course of action incompatible with it. He was mediator because he saw himself living in a ‘sick age’ where religious strife ‘is tearing France to pieces and dividing us into factions’ (p. 760). And he was a legislator, magistrate, and mayor to mitigate ‘the form of justice that governs us: it is a true testimony to human imbecility, so full it is of contradiction and error’ (p. 819). Although he did all this, he did it with detachment, without enthusiasm: ‘I am attached to the general and just cause only with moderation and without feverishness’ (p. 601). He gave some of his time and energy to politics, ‘but this is by way of loan ... [his] mind holding itself ever in repose and in health, not without action, but without vexation, without passion. ... I have been able to take part in public affairs without departing one nail’s breadth from myself, and to give myself to others without taking myself from myself’ (p. 770). But how could he do this, especially when he sees so clearly the corruption of politics? How could he escape being tarred by the imbecility and injustice of the public affairs in which he participates? The first step toward escape is to form a realistic view of public affairs. He sees that ‘most of our occupations are low comedy. The whole world plays


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a part. We must play our part duly, but as part of a borrowed character. Of the mask and the appearance we must not make a real essence, nor what is foreign what is our very own. ... It is enough to make up our face, without making up our hearts’ (p. 773). But he also sees that, even if he plays his part without confusing play-acting with his real self, his real self is involved in compromises that, left to itself, it would not make. One must be realistic about that too. ‘Whoever boasts, in a sick age like this, that he employs a pure and sincere virtue in the service of the world, either does not know what virtue is ... or, if he does know, he boasts wrongly, and, say what he will, does a thousand things of which his conscience accuses him’ (p. 759). This is the unavoidable cost of trying to be of service to the world, of trying to stop the bad state of public affairs from becoming worse. ‘I once tried’, Montaigne says, ‘to employ in the service of public dealings’ ideas and rules ... which I use ... in private matters. ... I found them inept and dangerous. ... He who walks in the crowd must step aside, keep his elbow in, step back or advance, even leave the straight way, according to what he encounters. He must live not so much according to himself as according to others, not according to what he proposes to himself but according to what others propose to him, according to the time, according to the men, according to the business. (p. 758)

If this is indeed a realistic view of public affairs, then, Montaigne asks, is participation in them not blameworthy? And he answers: in ‘a wormeaten and maggoty body ... the least diseased member is called healthy; and quite rightly, since our qualities have no titles except by comparison. Civic innocence is measured according to the places and the times. ... We may regret better times, but not escape the present’ (p. 760). And he asks rhetorically of a man in the deplorable present: ‘is it wrong of him not to do what it is impossible for him to do?’ The fact is that ‘the virtue assigned to the affairs of the world is a virtue with many bends, angles, and elbows, so as to join and adapt itself to human weakness; mixed and artificial, not straight, clean, constant, or purely innocent’ (p. 758). We must accept that ‘an honest man is not accountable for the vice and stupidity of his trade, and should not therefore refuse to practice it: it is the custom of the country. ... We must live in the world and make the most of it as we find it’ (p. 774). Hereabouts one may begin to wonder whether Montaigne is not making it too easy for himself. All that realism looks suspiciously like expediency.

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Is there, then, no limit beyond which a man should not go? Montaigne, however, faced that question as well and answered it. ‘The mayor and Montaigne’, he said, ‘have always been two, with a very clear separation. ... I do not ... involve myself so deeply and entirely’ (p. 774). In public affairs, he gives only ‘limited and conditional services. There is no remedy. I frankly tell them my limits’ (p. 603). He recognizes that ‘not all things are permissible for an honorable man in the service of his king, or the common cause, or of the laws. ... Our country does not come before all other duties. ... We commit a fallacy in thinking that everyone is obliged to perform ... an action merely because it is useful’ (pp. 609–10). What, then, are his limits? His limits are set by the requirements of self-direction. ‘I have a soul all its own, accustomed to conducting itself in its own way’ (p. 487). That way is to maintain ‘a well-ordered state of mind’ (p. 488). ‘Wisdom’, Montaigne says, ‘is an orderly management of our soul, which she conducts with measure and proportion and is responsible for’ (p. 251). His primary responsibility is to himself, and that is what defines his limits and what he regards as permissible and honorable. What he will not do is what is incompatible with living a self-directed life. That is his hard core. Around that hard core is a soft periphery. There he is prepared to make compromises, fall in with the ways of the world, and do what is expedient to shore up the crumbling political framework. But he will not allow these compromises with the corrupt state of public affairs to penetrate his core and corrupt his self-direction. His manner is independent, because he knows this about himself. And, because he knows it, he can resolve the tension between the private and the public world. He sees that participation in the public world is both necessary and corrupting, but he sets a firm limit to how far he allows the corruption to go: it can tar the periphery, but not the core of his self. His independent manner consists in setting his own limit. We can learn that manner from him, but only if we learn what the core of our selves are, and if we learn to distinguish between their core and periphery.

13.4. Self-direction as an admirable style of life The inward attitude and the independent manner that partly compose a self-directed style of life are expressed in a project that involves the


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dominant pattern of a person’s activities. What that project is, however, will vary with characters and circumstances. For the selves that direct it and the deepest concerns that motivate the activities unavoidably reflect individual differences among self-directed people. The style of self-direction is shown by how such people are engaged in their projects, not by what the projects are. Montaigne’s project was writing the Essays. Of the many remarkable features of his life, the relationship between himself and the Essays was perhaps the most remarkable. Montaigne memorably says that ‘I have no more made my book than my book has made me’. The book is ‘concerned with my own self, an integral part of my life’ (p. 504). Readers of it know how much of the book is the detailed description, analysis, evaluation, criticism, explanation, and justification of the inner life of Montaigne and of his motives for acting or refraining from acting in various situations in his life. As always, Montaigne is acutely aware of what he is doing, and asks the question that will occur to attentive readers: ‘Have I wasted my life by taking stock of myself so continually, so carefully?’ His answer is: ‘For those who go over themselves only in their minds and occasionally in speech do not penetrate to essentials in their examination as does a man who makes that his study, his work, and his trade, who binds himself to keep an enduring account, with all his faith, with all his strength’ (p. 504). But we should press the question: why make oneself one’s study? What is the point of all this description and analysis? Why not just get on with living and stop thinking about it? Montaigne’s answer is that thinking about living is part of living well. For those who are fortunate enough to have escaped the drudgery necessary for survival, it is a crucially important part. The escape from drudgery creates an opportunity to control how we live. We can fail to take control, as countless people do, but that is ‘the worst condition of man’ (p. 245). They ‘through stupidity see things only by half’, and Montaigne calls this, with a harshness rare for him, ‘spiritual leprosy’. Such people ‘will have to see adversities and the injuries of fortune in all their depth and sharpness ... and taste ... their natural bitterness and their gravity’ (p. 776). They lend themselves to ‘the inconstant and variable movement of Fortune’ (p. 163). We cannot, of course, control fortune, but we can control our attitude to it. And Montaigne’s attitude is that, ‘not being able to rule events, I rule myself, and adapt myself to them’ (p. 488).

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The Essays are the means whereby Montaigne seeks to rule himself. His goal is to ‘order my soul to look upon both pleasure and pain with a gaze equally self-controlled’ (p. 853). And the way he does this is to write the Essays about himself, ‘modeling this figure upon myself’. But, in order to do so, ‘I have had to fashion and compose myself so often’ that the original of ‘the model itself has to some extent grown firm and taken shape’. At first, ‘I have painted my inward self with colors clearer than my original ones’; later, however, ‘my book has made me’ (p. 504). This reciprocal process of writing the Essays to think through how he should be and then using the Essays to guide his self-transformation was Montaigne’s project and the dominant pattern of his activities. The result was that ‘I cannot keep my subject still. ... I do not portray being: I portray passing. I ... change, not only by chance, but also by intention. ... We go hand in hand and at the same pace, my book and I. In other cases one may command or blame the work apart from the workman; not so here; he who touches one, touches the other’ (pp. 610–12). This is the process he rightly describes as ‘the act of finishing up this man, not of making another out of him. By long usage this form of mine has turned into substance, and fortune into nature’ (p. 773). This was the source of his ‘most delightful pleasures’, which he experienced ‘inwardly’, and which ‘avoid leaving any traces and avoid the sight not only of the public but of any other person’ (p. 504). Montaigne acknowledges the tension between the contingency of life, of which ‘the tragic play of human fortune’ (p. 800) is the result, and his efforts to grow in ‘wisdom’—that is, in ‘an orderly management of our soul which she [our soul] conducts with measure and proportion’ (p. 251). He resolves the tension by increasing the area over which he has control. That area is his inner life, and so the key to coping with tension is to ‘carry my own preservation within me, which are resolution and patience’ (p. 802). This is how he faced the plague that decimated the population of France, the civil war that raged around him, and the marauding bands of brigands that spread insecurity and threatened anarchy. The area he succeeded in controlling was the area of his freedom, and he recognizes that ‘true freedom is to have power over oneself’ (p. 800). This is especially important in his circumstances, when ‘every Frenchman ... sees himself at every moment on the verge of the total overthrow of his fortune’ (p. 800). And he did gain power over himself:


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‘I doubt if I can decently admit’, he says, ‘at what little cost to the repose and tranquillity of my life I have passed more than half of it amid the ruin of my country.’ The key is that ‘before complaining to myself I consider not so much of what is taken from me as what I still keep safe, both within and without’ (p. 800). This gave him ‘some foothold against Fortune’ (p. 801). Resisting anxiety, despair, self-deception, and various forms of feverish over-reaction to the recognition of one’s vulnerability to fortune is a fine thing. It is to Montaigne’s great credit to have achieved it. The fact remains, however, that this achievement is merely to refrain from the wrong reaction. Self-control is certainly good to have, but there is still the question of what one should do in life and with one’s life once these pitfalls have been avoided. And what Montaigne quietly did with his life is perhaps the greatest of his achievements and the most significant fact of his life. First, he found ways of resolving the tensions between relying on his own judgment and being subject to inevitable external influences, between private life and participation in public affairs, and, as we have just seen, between self-control and the contingency of life. Secondly, his development of a ‘well-ordered state of mind, equally difficult in every kind of fortune’, enabled him ‘to content myself with my lot’ (pp. 487–8). He was ‘happy beyond my deserts’, and ‘his conscience is content with itself’ (p. 612). He could honestly say that ‘I love life and cultivate it. ... I accept with all my heart and with gratitude what nature has done for me, and I am pleased with myself and proud of myself’ (p. 855). His achievement was the ‘great and glorious masterpiece ... to live appropriately’ (p. 851). Reflecting on that achievement, he was able to say that, ‘if I had to live over again, I would live as I have lived’ (p. 620). Lastly, he did even more because, having learned how to resolve the tensions in his life and ‘how to enjoy our being rightfully’ (p. 857), like Plato’s philosopher, he returned to the cave to tell others what he had learned, and thereby enrich the possibilities of life for all those who have the ears to listen. Montaigne’s achievements were made possible by his self-directed style of life, which, in turn, depended on his attitude of inwardness, on the independence of his manner, and on the success of his project, which combined making his book and using his book to make him. He was a great and good man, and he lived enjoyably, responsibly, and admirably.

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13.5. Overview of part four The discussion of the six styles of life is now complete. I hope to have shown through them how some lives can be said to succeed or fail when evaluated from the moral point of view. Success is to live a good life and failure is to live a bad one. The moral goodness or badness of lives depends on how enjoyable and responsible they are. I have concentrated on enjoyment throughout the book because it is neglected in contemporary moral thought. Responsibility is important, of course, but it is a disservice to morality to suppose, as it is widely done, that responsibility is the hinge on which the goodness or badness of lives turns. If responsibility were the sole or the main or the primary concern of morality, if doing one’s duty or obligation were the requirement of morality, then it would be hard to explain why reasonable people want to be moral, especially since responsibilities, duties, and obligations are often onerous. But, if it is understood, as it should be, that enjoyment is also an essential part of a morally good life, then it would be hard to explain why reasonable people would not want to be moral. In normal circumstances, we all want to enjoy life, but, in wanting that, we do not want the same thing. Differences in our characters and circumstances assure that we find different things enjoyable and that we find the same things more or less enjoyable. The contrary also holds: different lives can be miserable in countless different ways and for countless different reasons. Human nature and world limit what could make the lives of beings like us enjoyable or miserable, but within these limits there is a very wide range of possibilities. This is one reason why there are many forms of good and bad life and why there can be no universal and impersonal prescription of how to live a good life. I have been arguing that enjoyment is a necessary part of a good life and that one way of making life enjoyable or miserable is to develop a style of life. Styles of life can be admirable or deficient, and what makes them one or the other is whether the lives to which they give style are enjoyable or miserable. The variety of styles of life is as great as the variety of enjoyable or miserable lives. The six styles I have discussed, therefore, are only some among many others I might have discussed. I selected these six because I found the three admirable ones particularly appealing and


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the three deficient ones particularly striking exemplifications of widespread contemporary ways in which people make themselves miserable. The admirable styles of life were Madame Goesler’s integrity, Hume’s reflectiveness, and Montaigne’s self-direction. I endeavored to show that their lives were both enjoyable and responsible; that they were enjoyable partly because of their style; and that the styles were what they were because of the particular attitudes, manners, dominant patterns of activity, and projects that jointly formed them. The three deficient styles of life were the romantic one of Mishima, the moralistic one of Cato, and the exuberant one of Cellini. Their lives were in various ways bad, but they were bad for different reasons. Mishima’s life was both miserable and irresponsible. Cato’s life was responsible but miserable. And Cellini’s life was enjoyable but irresponsible. One might say, therefore, that good lives are good because they are both enjoyable and responsible, whereas bad lives are bad because they are either miserable, or irresponsible, or both at once. But the contribution styles of life make to the goodness or badness of lives varies from life to life, because the attitudes, manners, dominant patterns of activity, and projects differ from life to life. The discussion of these six styles of life suggests some general critical and constructive conclusions about contemporary moral thought and life. I will set them out in the following chapter, which concludes the book.


PA RT F I V E

Conclusion


14 The Felicity we Make or Find How small, of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Still to ourselves in every place consigned, Our own felicity we make or find (Samuel Johnson, ‘Lines added to Goldsmith’s Traveller’, 1765)

14.1. Realism and consolation It is a lamentable truth about the human condition that very few lives indeed have been good. Most of them have been more or less miserable, irresponsible, or both. We tend to keep this unwelcome truth at arm’s length: ‘Human kind | Cannot bear very much reality.’¹ We generally want to get on with life, do as well as we can, and keep out of deep waters. But the reluctance to face the truth will not alter it. Few lives escape illness, misfortune, the loss of people loved, or the disappointment of legitimate expectations. We often have to endure injustice, hostility, humiliation, or unfairness. In the midst of such adversities, we are unavoidably confronted with our vulnerability and with man’s inhumanity to man. We, then, have the stark choice Euripides formulated 2,500 years ago: O Zeus, what can I say? That you look on man and care? Or do we, holding that the gods exist, deceive ourselves with unsubstantial dreams and lies, while random careless chance and change alone control the world?²

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We can refuse to make this hard choice, but then the adversities we face will be exacerbated by our incomprehension. It is natural to want to understand the bad things that have happened, and this may lead us to ask a supposed authority to make sense of it. Depending on the authority, the answer may offer either consolation or realism. The dominant tendency in Western moral thought has been to offer consolation. This is what countless priests, sages, theologians, philosophers, poets, mystics, and prophets have done. As Julian of Norwich put it simply and eloquently: ‘all shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.’ We must look beyond our troubles, the consolers say, and have faith in an order that permeates the scheme of things. Perhaps we do not understand it, but it is there nevertheless. The miseries of the human condition are symptoms of our ignorance, weakness, or wickedness, which pit us against this order. All manner of things will be well, because, in the long run, by our efforts or by the grace of God, our faults will be overcome and we will be saved. This ‘faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen’.³ Most of those who have held this faith have assumed that the order is God-given. Others have faith in secular ideologies based on history, sociology, biology, psychology, dialectic, or reason. The religious belief is that the order is created and has been revealed. The ideological assumption is that the order is inherent in the scheme of things and must be discovered. What matters, however, is not how the order came to exist, nor how it might be known, but that it exists. According to both versions of the faith, conformity to this order is the key to a good life, and deviation from it is the cause of our troubles. That is the essence of the faith, the key to consolation, and the supposed basic truth without which, the consolers claim, the human condition would be hopelessly at the mercy of chance and change. Perhaps the most significant change in the moral thought of our times is that there is widespread and growing doubt about both the religious and the secular versions of this faith. Nietzsche’s aphorism ‘God is dead; we have killed him’ is a succinct expression of it. We see that the consolation faith offers has not made it easier to bear misfortune and man’s inhumanity to man. Deeply held faith not only consoles but leads to the hatred of heretics and infidels, suspicion of pleasure, a grim determination to silence one’s own and other people’s natural doubts. These unlovely tendencies

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threaten good lives as much as change and chance do. And the faith that the future, in this world or in another, will compensate for our present miseries is wishful thinking that is not and cannot be supported by evidence, for no one can know what the future will bring. We see also the historical evidence that faith tends to lead to tyrannical excess. History is a sad tale of religious wars and persecutions directed by defenders of one faith against the defenders of another. In secular revolutions and dictatorships ideologues murder and torture their supposed enemies in the name of a faith, which they outrageously call reason. The avowed motivation for causing these horrors is the love of humanity. And the absurd justification proffered for the persecution of dissenters and the manipulation and indoctrination of the rest is that these despotic measures are necessary means to making life good. Defenders of faith are impelled by this moralistic dogma to coerce people for their own good to live as they would if they had the knowledge possessed by the faithful. This dubious and dangerous faith is the foundation of the view of reason and morality that I have been criticizing throughout the book. For the assumption that the requirements of a good life are universal and impersonal and that what is reasonable to do is the same for everyone would be plausible only if there were an order to which all good lives and reasonable actions must conform. In the absence of such an order, the faithful suppose, all decisions about how we live and what we do would be arbitrary, there would be no objective standards of reason and morality, civilized life would be impossible, and chaos and anarchy would prevail. The alternative to the moralistic dogma is thus supposed to be nihilism. That is the threat assumed to loom behind the guises of relativism, egoism, historicism, postmodernism, or whatever the name is of those who deny that there are universal, impersonal, and objective standards of reason and morality that determine what a good life is for human beings. I have been arguing that this is a misunderstanding of the human condition. We do not face a choice between faith, order, and the good life, on the one hand, and nihilism, arbitrariness, and bad lives, on the other. I have rejected both alternatives in favor of a third, which opts for realism over consolation and attempts to work out a possible way of living in a world permeated by contingency.

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14.2. The realistic alternative The key to the realistic alternative is the recognition that we must ‘our own felicity make or find’ and we cannot reasonably count on a God-given or natural order to provide it. Making life good depends on increasing our control over the small segment of the world that is in our power: our inner life. The more control we have over it, the greater is our freedom to live as we want and our freedom from contingency. The crucial question is how we should do that, how we should increase our control. That is the question to which this book is the proposed answer. And my answer is that one way of doing that is to develop a style of life. The three lives we have found good succeeded in this. Madame Goesler through integrity, being true to herself; Hume through reflectiveness that ‘renders a great part of happiness independent’;⁴ and Montaigne through the ‘orderly management of our soul’ guided by the realization that ‘not being able to rule events, I rule myself, and adapt myself to them’.⁵ These styles of life were their way of increasing control over how they lived and making their lives enjoyable. The other three lives we have examined failed because their styles were deficient. The romanticism of Mishima, the moralism of Cato, and the pride of Cellini led to incoherent and unrealistic attitudes to life and made their lives miserable and lacking in control. We learn from these styles of life that the freedom we want to achieve through increasing our control is not to follow our will and desire wherever they might lead, but to find out what matters to us most and to live accordingly. This kind of freedom is not the absence of external obstacles but an inner necessity that follows from our deepest concerns. These are concerns that we must be true to, that constitute our ruling passion, give direction to the orderly management of our soul, make us the individuals we are. The freedom is to live in a way that gives meaning to our lives. The freedom from contingency is not to attempt the impossible, alter the facts of life, and free ourselves from chance and change. It is rather to develop a reasonable attitude to contingency, act in a manner that reflects that attitude and expresses our deepest concerns, and pursue a project informed by the attitude, manner, and concerns. To have done this is what I have called having a style of life.


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It is part of realism to acknowledge that having a style of life merely makes possible, but does not guarantee, enjoyment, because contingency may still stand in the way. But this should not lead to hopelessness, nihilism, or to some other manifestation of the loss of nerve. For the fact is that, although contingency may prevent enjoyment, there is no reason to believe that it will. Furthermore, contingency may also favor rather than hinder us. And, perhaps most importantly, the enjoyment of life is enhanced but does not depend on the success of our projects. Enjoyment depends on living in a style that reflects our deepest concerns. It is how we live, not what we achieve, that matters. Our achievement of particular goals is easily frustrated, but we can remain true to ourselves, reflective, self-directed, and enjoy life even if illness, accident, misfortune, grief, or disappointment assails us, and even if we suffer injustice, cruelty, hostility, or humiliation. We may know that because Madame Goesler, Hume, and Montaigne, among others, have shown it. I have repeatedly stressed the essential connection between individuality and styles of life. Developing a style of life, I have argued, is one way to develop our individuality. But individuality is a complex, protean notion and stressing its connection with styles of life can be easily misinterpreted. One misinterpretation connects individuality with uniqueness, with being different from others. The development of individuality, then, is thought to depend on freeing oneself from external influences. The right interpretation connects individuality with being oneself, with finding out what one’s genuine concerns are and being guided by them. The development of individuality, then, is seen to depend on acquiring self-knowledge and self-control. Essential to both the right and the wrong interpretations is becoming aware of and nurturing some genuinely important aspect of oneself. But the two interpretations diverge, because uniqueness requires the repudiation of external influences, whereas being oneself does not. If individuality is interpreted as being oneself, then its crux is to learn what one’s deepest concern is and to live according to it. But we can learn that only through external influences—such as the actual or literary examples of others—and then coming to feel that one of them represents what really matters to us. If we learn in this way that we really care about beauty, justice, creativity, God, human solidarity, or adventure, then the discovery that others also care about it as much as we do may strengthen rather than

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weaken our individuality. Being oneself does not require being different from others. It is clear, I hope, that I have been understanding individuality as being oneself, not as uniqueness, and it is in that sense that I have stressed the connection between individuality and styles of life. Learning from the examples of others is part of giving style to one’s life. But this kind of learning is not imitation. It would be ridiculous to suppose that the key to being oneself is to learn to imitate a charming, young, rich widow who is trying to make her way in Victorian high society, or a scholarly Scottish bachelor in eighteenth-century Edinburgh with a passion for writing, or a Catholic nobleman in sixteenth-century France struggling in the middle of a civil war and plague to overcome his weaknesses. If the imitations, per impossibile, succeeded despite the great differences in characters and circumstances, then the imitators would have succeeded only in being like their models, not in being themselves. Learning from the examples of others is to learn an attitude to life. We start out with chaotic, imprecise, inarticulate beliefs and feelings about our ill-defined needs, wants, desires, hopes, and fears. The ways in which we think about life, other people, and our future are confused and unclear. To clarify them, we must draw distinctions, identify possibilities and limits, feel our way into various forms of life. We learn, then, what it is like to live a life of integrity, like Madame Goesler; to be ruled by romantic morbidity, like Mishima; to be imbued with uncompromising moralism, like Cato; to have a passion for skeptical reflection, like Hume; to be obsessed with manhood and renown, like Cellini; or to reject the blandishments of worldly success for the sake of being one’s own master, like Montaigne. In learning this, we do not learn to live like them; we learn what it would be like to live like them. We learn to see their lives and attitudes from the inside, as they did. We learn to draw the distinctions they drew. We learn how the world looks to those who are deeply concerned with tact, or death, or vanity, or moderation, or pride, or independence. We thereby learn to be articulate about these possibilities of life. And the more articulate we are about more of them, the broader and deeper is our understanding of how we ourselves might live. We may like or dislike, prize or disparage, these possibilities, but, at any rate, we see them. Seeing them, however, is not enough, because what we see is what it would be like to live in a manner that was faithful to someone else’s


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attitude and deep concerns. What we have to evaluate now is whether that manner would allow us to live according to our attitude and deep concerns. We must, then, switch perspectives from the point of view of someone else to our own. We want to evaluate what it would be like for us to live a life of integrity, or reflectivesness, or self-direction, given our very different characters and circumstances. The way to make such evaluations is to compare how, for example, Madame Goesler, Hume, or Montaigne in fact judged in their contexts with how we would judge in our context. Concreteness and particularity are indispensable to such comparative evaluations. Consider, for instance, a reasonable evaluation of Madame Goesler and an unreasonable one of Cato. Madame Goesler told herself that what she really cared about was to make a place for herself in Victorian high society. She, then, had an offer of marriage that would have given her a very high place indeed, but she rejected the offer. This was highly significant, both for her self-understanding and for our understanding of her. She did not accept the offer, because reflection led her to see that she cared more about a loving marriage than about social status. Take Cato next. He saw himself as caring most deeply about the defense of the Roman Republic against the dictatorial pretensions of Caesar. Yet, when Caesar’s chief opponent offered Cato an alliance against Caesar, Cato high-handedly spurned the offer, and this eventually led to the demise of the Republic. Cato’s evaluation was unreasonable because he was mistaken about what mattered to him most. What he really cared about was showing himself morally superior, not the fate of the Republic. Madame Goesler got it right; Cato got it wrong. Their evaluations were significant, because they revealed what they really cared about. Madame Goesler reflected and came to know it, and this allowed her to judge reasonably. Cato did not reflect and remained ignorant, and this led him to judge unreasonably. Now the important lesson their examples may teach us is not that a loving marriage matters more than social status, nor that vanity makes one a bad politician, although both may be true. We can learn from them, far more importantly, that reasonable evaluations require us to weigh the respective importance of the alternatives we face from the point of view of what matters to us most in our lives. For this we must have sufficient self-knowledge to know what that is, and sufficient self-control to act on

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what we know. We can learn from others, then, not what evaluation we should make, but how to make a reasonable one. In reasonable evaluations both external and internal considerations have an essential part. We rely on external influences to learn from the good or bad examples of others. And we rely on our self-knowledge and self-control to evaluate what we have learned and to apply it to our own situation. This is why the development of individuality involves learning to be oneself, rather than cultivating uniqueness. If we were unique, the examples of others would be useless and we would all have to start from scratch in trying to develop a style of life that reflects an attitude that only we have and that allows us to pursue a project that no one else pursues, pursue it in a manner that is exclusively ours, and be faithful to a deepest concern shared by no one else. The pursuit of uniqueness would doom us to the absurd refusal to benefit from the accumulated experiences of others. A reasonable style of life, by contrast, allows us to learn from others how we might be ourselves. If contingency does not prevent it, the resulting life will be enjoyable.

14.3. The importance of literature We have personal knowledge of only a few people, and even those we rarely know well. The two or three we might know intimately are often as unclear, confused, and undecided about their attitudes, manners, and projects as we are. Personal acquaintance, therefore, tends to be too limited to allow us to benefit from the experiences of others. Travel and news reports may broaden somewhat our understanding of the possibilities of life, but they are unlikely to deepen it. They usually provide only brief and superficial glimpses that may reveal that there are complexities under the surface, but not what the complexities are. Literature has from biblical to our times done what personal acquaintance, travel, and news reports can do only rarely and exceptionally. It shows individuals with distinct characters in particular contexts struggling to face significant choices, making them well or badly, and living with the consequences. Such accounts show how choices follow from character and context, and they show it in complex detail, often from the different points of view of a dispassionate observer and of the person making the


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significant choice. They show readers what reasons there were for or against making particular choices; what reasons the choosers believed themselves to have; why they acted or failed to act as real or imagined reasons guided them; how false beliefs, overwrought or suppressed emotions, and misunderstood motives led them to make the wrong choices; and what prevented them from recognizing that character and context severely limited their choices. Literary works can do this well or badly. Some that do it well enable reflective readers to understand characters, contexts, and choices whose significance transcends the particularities of place and time. The predicaments of Oedipus, Antigone, and Socrates; Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth; Augustine, Montaigne, and Hume; Abraham, Job, and Pontius Pilate; Faust, Anna Karenina, and Robinson Crusoe; Kurtz, the Grand Inquisitor, and Isabel Archer—in the company of numerous others—have become milestones of Western moral thought. They provide us with a repertoire of the possibilities of life, a shared moral vocabulary, and emblematic figures enabling us to compare and contrast ourselves with them. They jointly constitute the accumulated experiences of our moral tradition—the means by which we can learn about others. The works that give them to us are the classics. They are among the riches we have inherited from our predecessors. It follows from the realistic alternative that the classics form an essential part of moral thought. They give us the complex, concrete, particular possibilities of life that we might make our own or try to avoid by reflecting on and evaluating them and by adapting them to our characters and contexts. It is from them that we can learn what it would be like to have a particular attitude to life, to conduct ourselves in a particular manner, and to pursue a particular project. Through finding similarities and differences between ourselves as we are or would like to be and these emblematic figures, we form a view of the kind of life that would allow us to be ourselves, to live in a way that is faithful to our deepest concerns. My concentration on literary works throughout the book was, then, not just an expository convenience but an attempt to show why the connection between literature and moral thought is essential. There is, of course, much more to literature and moral thought than this connection. Literature also entertains, tells stories, provides new forms, enriches the language, scandalizes, informs, invents imaginary worlds, and so forth. And

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moral thought is not just particular and concrete but also conceptual, analytical, concerned with rigorous justification and criticism, and has historical, political, religious, legal, and psychological dimensions. But the classic works of literature have an essential moral aspect, and moral thought is given essential breadth, depth, particularity, and concreteness by its connection with literature. Moralists must deny that this connection is essential. They must think that literature can have only a marginal relevance to moral thought, because literature is concerned with the particular and the concrete and moral thought must be guided by a supreme principle that holds universally and impersonally. Moralists believe that, when individuals choose, they must either follow this principle or fail to be moral. The principle determines what the right action is, and that action is what morality requires everyone to take in that situation. Moralists can acknowledge that individual characters and circumstances are different, but they are committed to holding that the moral obligations of individuals in the same situation are the same, because their obligations follow from the principle, not from their characters and circumstances. This mistaken approach partly explains the abstractness, aridity, and irrelevance of much contemporary moral thought. Reflection on actual moral situations soon makes evident the uselessness of the moralistic approach. Consider an episode in Hume’s life. He was familiar with Rousseau’s work, admired his eloquence, although not his conclusions or the bad reasons he gave in support of them. Hume nevertheless recognized that Rousseau was an important thinker. He came to know that Rousseau lived in poverty and felt persecuted on the Continent because of his political views. Hume, then, went to great trouble and arranged housing and financial support for Rousseau and invited him to England, where he could live and work in peace and comfort, and where his political views would be tolerated. Rousseau accepted, came, and after a short stay falsely accused Hume of coercing him to change his political views. Rousseau spread this lie far and wide, responded to Hume’s kindness with the basest ingratitude, and blackened Hume’s reputation to all who would listen. Hume had made a resolution in early life that he would not engage in public controversy, because it disrupted his peace of mind and work. He adhered to it up to Rousseau’s malicious attack, but he had never met anything like this before. Here was a moral situation in which Hume had to decide what to do. Hume realized that Rousseau was


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deluded to the point of madness, but also that he was brilliant; he was hurt by Rousseau’s lies; he cared about his good name; he needed peace of mind for his own work; and, in spite of everything, he thought it important that Rousseau should continue to develop and publish his views. What, then, should Hume do? The prescriptions of various persuasions of moralists would be that he should do what would be the right thing to do for anyone in that situation; or that he should do what produces the most happiness or least unhappiness for everyone concerned; or that he should follow God’s commands; or that he should do to Rousseau what he would wish Rousseau to do to him if their situations were reversed; and so forth. But such prescriptions are utterly useless for two reasons. One is that none of them tells Hume what particular action would be right for him, let alone for everyone. To tell him that he should do what everyone should do could help him only if he already knew what everyone should do. But his precise problem is that he does not know, so the prescription is useless. As to happiness, his problem, once again, is that he does not know what would produce most happiness or least unhappiness for himself and Rousseau. To tell him that he should act on knowledge that he does not have is of absolutely no help. Nor does he know which of God’s commands apply here: turning the other cheek, not bearing false witness, being like the lilies of the field, or what? And he has no idea what he would wish Rousseau to do to him if he had, inconceivably, acted in the unconscionable way Rousseau had done. Moralists may try to fend off the charge of uselessness by saying that their prescriptions are not about what particular action to take, but about how to choose among particular actions that they might take. In that case, however, their prescriptions run headlong into the problem that the moral situations in which Hume, or anyone else, has to choose among alternative courses of action are typically constituted of the characters and circumstances of the people in that situation. If other people were in that situation, the situation would be different. Even if a person knew what the right action would be in a particular situation, the knowledge could not be carried over to another situation constituted of people with other characters and circumstances. The second reason, therefore, why the moralists’ prescriptions are useless is that Hume’s moral situation is what it is because it concerns perhaps the

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two foremost philosophers at that time; one kind, the other deranged and vicious; one needing peace of mind, the other thriving on controversy; one a model of rectitude, the other a thief and a liar. There could be no one else in that situation because, if anyone else were in it, the situation would be radically altered. Any reasonable prescription would have to say what the specific individuals involved in the situation should do, not what should universally be done. And the prescription could not be impersonal, because the individuals involved make the situation what it is. What Hume eventually did was to write a long letter to Diderot, who knew both him and Rousseau, gave a full and true account of what had happened, came to terms with his bad feelings, got on with his work, and soon ceased to be bothered by the unfortunate imbroglio. Hume’s decision was reasonable. What made it so, however, was not his adherence to a universal and impersonal principle, but his calm judgment based on the particularities of the situation and on his style of life and deepest concerns. I do not know how Hume actually reached his decision. But, given his abiding interest in history and literature, it would have been natural for him to reflect on the different ways in which Plato’s Socrates, Euripides’ Hippolytus, Plutarch’s Coriolanus, and Shakespeare’s Desdemona had responded to false accusations. He would, then, have availed himself of the resources of literature. Moralists might concede that Hume’s decision was reasonable and what he did was right. They may nevertheless claim that it was reasonable and right because it appealed tacitly, perhaps unknown to Hume, to a universal and impersonal principle. Moralists assume that reasonable decisions must be based on such a principle, otherwise they could not be reasonable. They assume that reason must be universal and impersonal. This brings us to the conception of reason I have used throughout this book and from whose point of view the moralists’ assumption that reason must be universal and impersonal is nothing but arbitrary, dogmatic prejudice.

14.4. Reason and responsibility Reason has many uses: theoretical, aiming at truth; practical, aiming at successful action; general, applying to all similar cases of a certain kind; particular, applying only to one specific case; requiring, appealing to considerations that


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must be taken into account in order to achieve whatever goals anyone has; permitting, appealing to considerations relevant only to some specific goals. These uses may overlap and reason may have other uses as well. In the physical and biological science the combined theoretical, general, and requiring uses of reason have led to spectacular advances in our knowledge of the world and contributed to human well-being in many ways. Moralists assume that the uses of reason in morality should be the same as in the physical and biological sciences. Unlike scientists, however, moralists have not succeeded in discovering a body of generally recognized knowledge. Their efforts have failed to convince even fellow moralists who share their assumption about the uses of reason in morality. Plato, the Stoics, Augustine, Aquinas, Rousseau, Kant, Mill, Hegel, Marx, and their followers have offered incompatible theories of good and evil, right and wrong, and of the ground on which their theories could be justified or criticized. Moralists attribute this disagreement to the insufficient rationality of those who do not accept the claims that seem obviously true to moralists of a particular persuasion. This unsatisfactory state of affairs has existed throughout the recorded history of moral thought, but it has not dampened the ardent efforts of moralists to find yet another account of moral truths by means of the theoretical, general, and requiring uses of reason. Nor has it curbed their eagerness to impose on others the dubious obligation to live according to the truths moralists suppose themselves to have found. They self-righteously claim that reason and morality require living according to the particular theory or principle they favor, and the failure to accept it leads to the rejection of reason and morality and threatens the possibility of civilized life, because the only alternative left is some form of nihilism. These claims are false, and that is why I said that moralism rests on arbitrary, dogmatic prejudice. Part of the significance of the realistic alternative is that it is an alternative to both moralism and nihilism. It shows that reason and morality do not require universal and impersonal principles, and the possibility of good lives does not depend on continuing the futile search for the one true moral theory that provides the canonical principle conformity to which constitutes the right and the good. This alternative proceeds by paying attention to how people in moral situations actually reach reasonable or unreasonable decisions about what to do. Reasonable decisions, if made habitually, tend to lead to enjoyable

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and responsible lives, and unreasonable decisions tend to result in miserable or irresponsible lives. How, why, and in what ways this may happen can be understood only by reflecting on good and bad lives, which is what I have been doing. Such reflection has shown that the typical uses of reason in morality are practical, because their aim is to discover what to do in moral situations; particular, because moral situations differ as a result of differences in the characters and circumstances of the individuals in them; and permitting, because the goals individuals aim at vary and the same goals can be pursued in different ways. Good reasons are based on objective considerations, bad reasons are not. Moral decisions can be justified or criticized and good or bad reasons can be distinguished on the basis of objective considerations. But these considerations vary with moral situations, because the characters and circumstances of those involved in them vary. This is why there can be no universal and impersonal account of these objective considerations and why they can be identified only by attending to actual moral situations. It may seem obvious that the moral uses of reason are typically practical, particular, and permitting, but it will be denied by moralists, who are obsessed with the search for objective considerations that do not vary as a result of differences in characters and circumstances. It will also be denied by nihilists, who deny that there are any objective moral considerations. I have argued that moral thought does not have to face the false choice between moralistic dogmatism and nihilistic arbitrariness. The alternative is to focus on the place of style and the enjoyment in reasonable and morally good lives. Good lives, of course, are not only enjoyable but also responsible. I have not said much about responsibility, but I did stress its importance to living a good life.⁶ Individuals have responsibilities, and what they are follows from the three dimensions of morality. The universal dimension is concerned with the satisfaction of basic needs; the social dimension with protecting the evaluative framework of the form of life; and the personal dimension with individuals trying to make enjoyable lives for themselves. There are, then, universal responsibilities that everyone has; social responsibilities that only people sharing a form of life have; and personal responsibilities that only individuals with a particular style of life have. Individuals have reasons to honor their responsibilities, because they protect thereby the conditions on which depends the enjoyment both of


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their own lives and of the lives of those they love or care about. These reasons, however, are not conclusive, and no responsibility is unconditional. For universal, social, and personal responsibilities often conflict. Honoring one is, then, incompatible with honoring another. Good lives depend on resolving these conflicts, but, however that is done, not all the conflicting responsibilities can be honored. The general approach to resolving such conflicts is to evaluate the respective importance of the conflicting responsibilities from the point of view of protecting the whole system of universal, social, and personal conditions on which good lives depend. Such evaluations will systematically vary, because responsibilities vary with forms of life and individuals. But there will be reasonable and unreasonable resolutions in each conflict, because reasons can be given for the respective importance of the conflicting responsibilities. How this is to be done depends on the particularities of the conflict. So we find, once again, that there is no universal and impersonal principle prescribing unconditional responsibilities to individuals, but this does not lead to irresponsibility, because there are particular and concrete reasons showing why a particular individual has a particular responsibility in the context of a particular conflict.

14.5. Last words To accept realism is to reject the unsubstantial dreams of consolation. But consolation offers hope, and it is reasonable to ask whether realism must lead to hopelessness, despair, cynicism, fatalism, indifference, or to some other manifestation of a debilitating pessimism about the human condition. I think it does not, if, in place of the inflated expectation of salvation by religion or ideology, we allow ourselves the more modest hope that, by increasing our control over how we live, we will increase our chances of living well. To hope for complete control is another illusion, but to increase such control as we have is a perfectly reasonable aim. We know that it can be done, because we have the examples of those who have done it and thereby made their lives much better than they would otherwise have been. Increasing control ultimately depends on individual effort. We must each do it for ourselves. Political, economic, and cultural arrangements

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can provide favorable conditions, but it is up to us individually to take advantage of them. One way of doing that, I have endeavored to show, is to develop a coherent, realistic, and durable style of life that reflects our deepest concerns. We can learn from others about the various attitudes, manners, and projects we might adapt to our characters and circumstances. But we cannot learn from them how to make our beliefs, emotions, and motives cohere; how to be realistic about the possibilities we recognize; and how to persist even in the face of adversity in pursuing projects that reflect what matters to us most. It remains true that, if we make the required effort and succeed in increasing our control, contingency may still frustrate our enjoyment of life. There is no good reason to suppose, however, that it will frustrate it, and there is very good reason to suppose that, if we do not make the required efforts, it will doom us to miserable lives. We can only try and hope modestly that, if we succeed, our lives will be more enjoyable. This modest hope may be disappointed. But even then we will have the satisfaction of knowing that we have done what we could and our miseries are caused by the indifferent forces of nature of which it is our bad luck to have fallen afoul.

Notes Chapter 1 1. Margaret Drabble, The Needle’s Eye (New York: Knopf, 1972), 111–12. 2. Anthony Trollope, The Duke’s Children (1880; London: Oxford University Press, 1963), i. 264–5. 3. Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being, ed. Jeanne Schulkind (Brighton: Sussex University Press, 1976), 72–3.

Chapter 2 1. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. W. D. Ross, rev. J. O. Urmson, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1153a 12–15. 2. Ibid. 1109a 23–9. 3. Ibid. 1107a 1–2. 4. Michel de Montaigne, Essays, in The Complete Works of Montaigne (1588), trans. Donald M. Frame (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1943), 857. 5. David Hume, Enquiries concerning the Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals (1748–51; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 267. 6. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859; Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978), 56. 7. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882), trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974), 232–3. 8. Christopher Hamilton, ‘Morality and Style’, in Living Philosophy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001), 45. 9. John Hospers, Understanding the Arts (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall, 1982), 130. 10. Jenefer M. Robinson, ‘Style and Personality in the Literary Work’, Philosophical Review, 44 (1985), 227–47, at 228–9. 11. Alfred North Whitehead, The Aims of Education (1929; New York: Free Press, 1967), 12. 12. T. H. Wright, ‘Style’, Macmillan’s Magazine, 37 (1877), 78–84, at 83–4.

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13. Arthur Koestler, Arrow in the Blue (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 104–9. 14. Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way (1913), trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin (New York: Random House, 1981), ‘Overture’, pp. 48–9. 15. Trevanian, Shibumi (New York: Crown, 1979), 62–3. 16. A useful review of the psychological literature on attitudes is Gerald F. Gaus, Values and Justification (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 8.2, 8.3. An exceptionally illuminating discussion is Joel Kupperman, Value ... and What Follows (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), ch. 2. See also L. W. Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), ch. 2. 17. Plato, Apology (c.371 bc), trans. Hugh Trendennick, in The Collected Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 38a. 18. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1153a 12–15. 19. See Joel Kupperman, Character (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), ch. 2.

Chapter 3 1. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 426; further references in the text are to the pages of this edition. 2. Samuel Johnson, ‘Swift’ (1779–81), in Lives of the Poets, ed. George Birkbeck Hill (New York: Octagon Press, 1967), iii. 51–2. 3. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. W. D. Ross, rev. J. O. Urmson, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), bk. vii, 10–13. 4. Ibid. 14. 5. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882), trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974), §341; the numerous ellipses indicate my omission of rhetorical embellishments. 6. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1100a 708. 7. George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903; New York: Boni and Liveright, 1918), 20–2. 8. Johnson, ‘Swift’, 57–61.

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9. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, ed. G. H. von Wright, trans. Peter Winch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 53e. 10. Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 100. 11. Jon Elster, Sour Grapes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 107. 12. Ibid. 43. 13. Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (New York: Washington Square, 1963), preface. 14. Alan Gewirth, Self-Fulfillment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. ix.

Chapter 4 1. Lionel Trilling, ‘Manners, Morals, and the Novel’, in The Liberal Imagination (New York: Scribner’s, 1976), 206. 2. Ibid. 212. 3. Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘Character’ (1844), in Essays: Second Series, Essays and Lectures (New York: Library of America, 1983), 498. 4. Shirley Robin Letwin, The Gentleman in Trollope: Individuality and Moral Conduct (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 113. 5. Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli, trans. Frances Frenaye (New York: Farrar, Strauss, 1950), 3; further references in the text are to the pages of this edition. 6. Samuel Johnson, ‘Swift’ (1779–81), in Lives of the Poets, ed. George Birkbeck Hill (New York: Octagon Press, 1967), iii; references in the text are to the pages of this edition. 7. Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), trans. Lewis White Beck (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), 17–18. 8. David Hume, Enquiries concerning the Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals (1748–51; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 269–70. 9. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859; Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978), 56. 10. Arthur Koestler, Arrow in the Blue (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 109. 11. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. W. D. Ross, rev. J. O. Urmson, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1153a 12–15.

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12. Matthew Arnold, ‘St Paul and Protestantism’ (1869), in Dissent and Dogma, ed. R. H. Super (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968), 51. 13. Isaiah Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ (1958), in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 131. 14. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902; New York: Penguin, 1999), 130. 15. Ibid. 130. 16. Ibid. 124. 17. Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge, 1970), 39–40. 18. For critical reflection on authenticity, see Charles Guignon, On Being Authentic (New York: Routledge, 2004), Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), and Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971). 19. See Stuart Hampshire, ‘Sincerity and Single-Mindedness’, in Freedom of Mind (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972); also Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity; and Bernard Williams, Truth and Truthfulness (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). 20. See Gerald Dworkin, The Theory and Practice of Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), Thomas E. Hill Jr, Autonomy and Self-Respect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), and Christine M. Korsgaard, Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 21. Stanley Benn, ‘Wickedness’, Ethics, 95 (1985), 795–810, at 803. 22. Dworkin, Theory and Practice of Autonomy, 61.

Chapter 5 1. Isaiah Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ (1958), in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969). 2. Benjamin Constant, Political Writings (c.1830; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 3. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. J. O’Brien (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955).

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4. Richard Taylor, Good and Evil (New York: Macmillan, 1970), ch. 18. 5. Joel Feinberg, ‘Absurd Self-Fulfillment’ (1980), in Freedom and Fulfillment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). 6. Ibid. 324–5. 7. Bernard Williams, ‘Internal and External Reasons’ (1980), in Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 8. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (3rd edn., Oxford: Blackwell, 1968); the remarks about ‘seeing as’ are scattered in pt. II. 9. John McDowell, ‘Virtue and Reason’, in Mind, Value and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); references in the text are to the pages of this edition. 10. Iris Murdoch, ‘Vision and Choice in Morality’ (1956), in Existentialists and Mystics (New York: Allen Lane, 1998), 80–1. 11. Sabina Lovibond, Ethical Formation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 38. 12. Ibid. 43. 13. Ibid. 40. 14. Stanley Cavell, ‘The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy’ (1962), in Must We Mean What We Say? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 52. 15. Lovibond, Ethical Formation, 38. 16. Cavell, ‘Availability’, 52. 17. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 217. 18. Iris Murdoch, ‘On ‘‘God’’ and ‘‘Good’’ ’ (1970), in Existentialists and Mystics (New York: Allen Lane, 1998), 360. 19. 2 Samuel 11–12, Revised Standard Version. 20. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960); references in the text are to the pages of this edition.

Chapter 6 1. Apocrypha, 2 Maccabees 6, 18. 2. Stuart Hampshire, ‘Two Theories of Morality’, in Morality and Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 38–9.

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3. Matthew Arnold, ‘Wordsworth’ (1879), in Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, ed. William Savage Johnson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), 229–30. 4. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), trans. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper, 1964), 60, 79, 84, 88. 5. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, 1966), 453, 456. 6. See, e.g., Marcia Baron, Kantian Ethics (Almost) without Apology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995); Barbara Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993); Thomas E. Hill Jr., Autonomy and Self-Respect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), Dignity and Practical Reason in Kant’s Moral Theory (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), Respect, Pluralism, and Justice: Kantian Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), and Human Welfare and Moral Worth: Kantian Perspectives (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002); and Christine M. Korsgaard, Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) and The Sources of Normativity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 7. Friedrich Waismann, ‘Notes on Talks with Wittgenstein’, Philosophical Review, 74 (1965), 12–16, at 13. 8. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (3rd edn.; Oxford: Blackwell, 1968), 217. For some contemporary defenses of relativism, see Michael Krausz (ed.), Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989); John L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977); Gilbert Harman and Judith Jarvis Thomson, Moral Relativity and Moral Objectivity (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996); and David B. Wong, Moral Relativity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984). 9. Classic statements of egoism are Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651; London: J. M. Dent, 1914); Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (1874; Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981); Max Stirner, The Ego and his Own (1845; New York: Harper & Row, 1971). Some contemporary treatments are David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), and David Gauthier (ed.), Morality and Rational Self-Interest (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970).

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10. Isaiah Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ (1958), in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 154.

Chapter 7 1. ‘The will is nothing but practical reason’ (Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), trans. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper, 1964), 80). 2. ‘Freedom ... [is] being able to work independently of determination by alien causes’ and ‘Freedom of the will ... [is] autonomy—that is, the property which the will has of being a law to itself’ (ibid. 114). 3. ‘The practically good is that which determines the will by ... reason, and therefore not by subjective causes, but objectively—that is, on grounds valid for every rational being as a such’ (ibid. 81). 4. Stuart Hampshire, Justice is Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 33–4. 5. Stuart Hampshire, ‘Morality and Conflict’, in Morality and Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 151. 6. Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000); references in the text are to the pages of this edition. Some other defenders of this approach are Kurt Baier, The Moral Point of View (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1958), and The Rational and the Moral Order (Chicago: Open Court, 1995); Lawrence E. Becker, Reciprocity (London: Routledge, 1986). See also Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut (eds.), Ethics and Practical Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).

Chapter 8 1. Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being, ed. Jeanne Schulkind (Sussex: University Press, 1976), 72–3. 2. Virginia Woolf, ‘Jane Austen’ (1925), in The Common Reader: First Series (London: Hogarth, 1951), 178. 3. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (1943), trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), 63. 4. Shirley Robin Letwin, The Gentleman in Trollope: Individuality and Moral Conduct (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 74–5. My

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discussion of Madame Goesler and her integrity is deeply indebted to Shirley Letwin, both for what she says in her book and for our conversations when she was writing it. 5. The relevant novels are Phineas Finn (PF), Phineas Redux (PR), The Prime Minister (PM), and The Duke’s Children (DC). Since the editions are many and the chapters short, references in the text are to the title abbreviations, followed by chapter number. 6. Samuel Hynes, New York Times Book Review, 29 Mar. 1992, p. 23.

Chapter 9 1. The account of Mishima’s death is based on the following: John Nathan, Mishima (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 279–80, further references in the text are to Nathan, followed by page number; Henry Scott-Stokes, The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima (New York: Dell, 1974), 49–50; further references in the text are to Scott-Stokes, followed by page number. My discussion of Mishima is indebted to both works. 2. Donald Keene, Appreciations of Japanese Culture (1971; Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1981), 225. 3. Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask (1949), trans. Meredith Weatherby (New York: New Directions, 1958), 92–3; further references in the text are to Mask, followed by page number. 4. Yukio Mishima, ‘Patriotism’ (1953), in Death in Midsummer, trans. Geoffrey W. Sargent (New York: New Directions, 1966), 103, 104–5, 111, 114. 5. Ivan Morris, The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan (1975; New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988). 6. Ibid., p. xiii. 7. Yukio Mishima, The Way of the Samurai (1967), trans. Kathryn Sparling (New York: Basic Books, 1977); references in the text are to Way, followed by page number. 8. Arthur O. Lovejoy, ‘On the Discriminations of Romanticism’, in Essays in the History of Ideas (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1948), 232. 9. Isaiah Berlin, ‘The Apotheosis of the Romantic Will’, in The Crooked Timber of Humanity, ed. Henry Hardy (London: Murray, 1990), 185, 187, 192.

Notes

279

10. Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 140. 11. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. W. D. Ross, rev. J. O. Urmson, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1109a 23–9. 12. Wallace Stevens, ‘Chocorue to its Neighbor’, in The Collected Poems (New York: Vintage, 1982), 300.

Chapter 10 1. Michel de Montaigne, Essays, in The Complete Works of Montaigne (1588), trans. Donald M. Frame (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1943), 777. 2. Plutarch, ‘Cato the Younger’ (c.ad 100), in The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, trans. John Dryden, rev. Arthur Hugh Clough (New York: Random House, 1932), 777; further references in the text are to the pages of this edition. 3. Cicero, De officiis, in The Loeb Classical Library, trans. Walter Miller (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918), 115. 4. Plutarch, ‘Marcus Cato’, in The Lives, 431. 5. Seneca, Letters from a Stoic (c.ad 100), trans. Robin Campbell (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), 192–3. 6. Montaigne, Essays, 309. 7. Joseph Addison, Cato: A Tragedy (1713), ed. Christine Dunn Henderson and Mark E. Yellin (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004). 8. Ibid., p. xi. 9. Ibid., p. viii. 10. Charles Oman, Seven Roman Statesmen (New York: Longmans, 1902), 216. 11. Quoted in ibid. 216. 12. Montaigne, Essays, 89, 253, 758, 851. 13. Addison, Cato: A Tragedy, ii. v. 53–6. 14. Oman, Seven Roman Statesmen, 233. 15. I rely on Plutarch for the life of Cato. Plutarch’s reliability has, of course, been questioned. The person I am discussing, therefore, is Plutarch’s Cato. I ignore how accurately Plutarch’s Cato corresponds to the actual Cato, because it is the former who has become an icon.

280

Notes

16. Plutarch, ‘Marcus Cato’, 414–15. 17. This is part of the epigraph of Addison’s Cato. 18. See Robert Graves, ‘Introduction’, in Lucan, Pharsalia (c.ad 60), trans. Robert Graves (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957), 14. 19. Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Heroes (London: Fourth Estate, 2004), 112.

Chapter 11 1. W. B. Yeats, ‘The Choice’ (1933), in The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (London: Macmillan, 1982). 2. ‘Letter from Adam Smith to William Strahan, November 9, 1776’, in The Letters of David Hume, ed. J. Y. T. Greig (2 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), ii. 450; further references to these volumes in the text are to Letters, followed by volume and page number. 3. For the facts of Hume’s life I rely on David Hume, My Own Life, in Ernest Campbell Mossner, The Life of David Hume (1954; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 611–15; further references in the text are to Own Life, followed by page number. I rely also and especially on Mossner’s biography; references in the text are to Mossner, followed by page number. My interpretation of Hume’s life and thought owes a great deal to Donald W. Livingston, Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), and Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). 4. References in the text to Hume’s works are by abbreviated titles, followed by page number. Thus Treatise refers to A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960); Enquiries refers to Enquiries concerning the Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals (1748–51; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961); Dialogues refers to Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779; Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1947); Religion refers to The Natural History of Religion (1757; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957); History refers to The History of England (1778; 6 vols; Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1983); and individual essays are referred to by their title (‘Sceptic’, ‘Stoic’, ‘Moral Prejudices’, ‘Superstition’, ‘Parties’, and ‘Protestant Succession’) and page number in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (1777; Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1985).

Notes

281

Chapter 12 1. Benvenuto Cellini, The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (c.1562), trans. John Addington Symonds (New York: Garden City Publishing, 1927); references in the text are to the pages of this edition. 2. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), trans. S. G. C. Middlemore (New York: Random House, 1954), 249. 3. Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edn., v. 605. 4. St Thomas Aquinas, On Evil (c.1263), trans. John A. Oesterle and Jean T. Oesterle (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 318. 5. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. W. D. Ross, rev. J. O. Urmson, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1123b 30–1124a 5. 6. Ibid. 1124b 7–1125a 16. 7. I draw on accounts of pride by Annette Baier, ‘Master Passions’, in Amélie Rorty (ed.), Explaining Emotions (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980); Lawrence C. Becker, ‘Pride’, in Lawrence C. Becker and Charlotte B. Becker (eds.), Encyclopedia of Ethics (2nd edn.; 3 vols.; New York: Routledge, 2001); John Casey, Pagan Virtues (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980); Gabrielle Taylor, Pride, Shame, and Guilt (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). 8. Christopher Hibbert, The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici (1974; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979), 240. 9. For the explanation of virtú I rely on Jerrold E. Seigel, ‘Virtú in and since the Renaissance’, in Philip P. Wiener (ed.), Dictionary of the History of Ideas (5 vols.; New York: Scribner’s, 1973), iv. 476–86, and on John Addington Symonds, Renaissance Italy (2 vols.; New York: Modern Library, 1935). For the role of virtú in Cellini’s Autobiography I rely on Dino Sigismondo Cervigni, The ‘Vita’ of Benvenuto Cellini (Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1979). 10. Symonds, Renaissance Italy, i. 87. 11. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (c.1514), trans. George Bull (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961), sect. xv. 12. Seigel, ‘Virtú’, 483b. 13. Machiavelli, The Prince, sect. xxv. 14. Symonds, Renaissance Italy, i. 788. 15. Ibid. i. 806.

282 16. 17. 18. 19.

Notes Cervigni, The ‘Vita’, 75. Ibid. 101–2. Ibid. 166. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651; London: Dent, 1962), pt. I, ch. 11.

Chapter 13 1. See, e.g., sources as varied as Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), trans. S. G. C. Middlemore (New York: Random House, 1954), especially pt. II; Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924; London: St Martin’s Press, 1949); Michael Oakeshott, ‘The Masses in Representative Democracy’ (1962), in Rationalism in Politics (1962), new and expanded edn., ed. Timothy Fuller (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1991); and Jerome B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), especially ch. 1. 2. Michel de Montaigne, Essays, in The Complete Works of Montaigne (1588), trans. Donald M. Frame (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1943); references in the text are to the pages of this edition. 3. The source of these facts is Donald F. Frame, Montaigne: A Biography (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984).

Chapter 14 1. T. S. Eliot, ‘Four Quartets: Burnt Norton’, in The Complete Poems and Plays (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1952), 118. 2. Euripedes, Hecuba (c.425–424 bc), in The Complete Greek Tragedies: Euripides III, trans. William Arrowsmith (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 489–92. 3. Hebrews 11: 1, Revised Standard Version. 4. David Hume, ‘The Sceptic’, in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (1777; Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1985), 179. 5. Michel de Montaigne, Essays, in The Complete Works of Montaigne (1588), trans. Donald M. Frame (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1943), 251, 488. 6. See further my The Roots of Evil (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), ch. 13.

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Works Cited 285 Hampshire, Stuart, ‘Sincerity and Single-Mindedness’, in Freedom of Mind (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). ‘Two Theories of Morality’ (1977), in Morality and Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983). ‘Morality and Conflict’, in Morality and Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983). Justice is Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). Harman, Gilbert, and Thomson, Judith Jarvis, Moral Relativity and Moral Objectivity (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996). Herman, Barbara, The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). Hibbert, Christopher, The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979). Hill, Thomas E., Jr., Autonomy and Self-Respect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Dignity and Practical Reason in Kant’s Moral Theory (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992). Respect, Pluralism, and Justice: Kantian Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Human Welfare and Moral Worth: Kantian Perspectives (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002). Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan (1651; London: J. M. Dent, 1914). Hospers, John, Understanding the Arts (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1982). Hughes-Hallett, Lucy, Heroes (London: Fourth Estate, 2004). Huizinga, Johan, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924; London: St Martin’s Press, 1949). Hume, David, The Letters of David Hume, ed. J. Y. T. Greig (2 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932). A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960). Enquiries concerning the Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals (1748–51; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961). The Natural History of Religion (1757; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957). Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (1777; Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1985). ‘The Sceptic’, in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (1777; Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1985). The History of England (1778; 6 vols.; Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1983). Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779; Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1947). My Own Life, in Ernest Campbell Mossner, The Life of David Hume (1954; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970).

286 Works Cited Hynes, Samuel, New York Times Book Review, 29 Mar. 1992. Johnson, Samuel, ‘Swift’ (1779–81), in Lives of the Poets, ed. George Birkbeck Hill (New York: Octagon Press, 1967). Joyce, James, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960). Kant, Immanuel, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), trans. Lewis White Beck (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959). Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), trans. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper, 1964). Keene, Donald, Appreciations of Japanese Culture (1971; Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1981). Kekes, John, The Roots of Evil (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005). Koestler, Arthur, Arrow in the Blue (New York: Macmillan, 1952). Korsgaard, Christine M., Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). The Sources of Normativity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Krausz, Michael (ed.), Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989). Kupperman, Joel, Character (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). Value ... and What Follows (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Letwin, Shirley Robin, The Gentleman in Trollope: Individuality and Moral Conduct (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). Levi, Carlo, Christ Stopped at Eboli, trans. Frances Frenaye (New York: Farrar, Strauss, 1950). Livingston, Donald W., Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). Lovejoy, Arthur O., ‘On the Discriminations of Romanticism’, in Essays in the History of Ideas (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1948). Lovibond, Sabina, Ethical Formation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). Lucan, Pharsalia (c.ad 60), trans. Robert Graves (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957). McDowell, John, ‘Virtue and Reason’, in Mind, Value and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Machiavelli, Niccolò, The Prince (c.1514), trans. George Bull (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961). Mackie, John L., Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977). Malcolm, Norman, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir (London: Oxford University Press, 1958).

Works Cited 287 Mill, John Stuart, On Liberty (1859; Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978). Mishima, Yukio, Confessions of a Mask (1949), trans. Meredith Weatherby (New York: New Directions, 1958). ‘Patriotism’ (1953), in Death in Midsummer, trans. Geoffrey W. Sargent (New York: New Directions, 1966). The Way of the Samurai (1967), trans. Kathryn Sparling (New York: Basic Books, 1977). Montaigne, Michel de, Essays, in The Complete Works of Montaigne (1588), trans. Donald M. Frame (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1943). Morris, Ivan, The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan (1975; New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988). Mossner, Ernest Campbell, The Life of David Hume (1954; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970). Murdoch, Iris, The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge, 1970). ‘Vision and Choice in Morality’ (1956), in Existentialists and Mystics (New York: Allen Lane, 1998). ‘On ‘‘God’’ and ‘‘Good’’ ’ (1970), in Existentialists and Mystics (New York: Allen Lane, 1998). Nathan, John, Mishima (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974). Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Gay Science (1882), trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974). On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, 1966). Oakeshott, Michael, ‘The Masses in Representative Democracy’ (1962), in Rationalism in Politics, new and expanded edn., ed. Timothy Fuller (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1991). Oman, Charles, Seven Roman Statesmen (New York: Longmans, 1902). Plato, Apology (c.371 bc), trans. Hugh Trendennick, in The Collected Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). Plutarch, ‘Cato the Younger’ (c.ad 100), in The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, trans. John Dryden, rev. Arthur Hugh Clough (New York: Random House, 1932). Proust, Marcel, Swann’s Way (1913), trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin (New York: Random House, 1981). Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971). Robinson, Jenefer M., ‘Style and Personality in the Literary Work’, Philosophical Review, 44 (1985), 227–47. Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness (1943), trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956).

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Index aristotelian principle 40–42, 62–66 Aristotle 21, 43, 62–63, 218–219 attitudes 27–37 and actions 38–39 and coherence 56–57, 78–79 and endurance 57–59, 78 and realism 57–59, 78 coherence of 34–37 components of 29–34 integrity 145–160 inwardness 238–251 morbidity 161–177 pride 218–233 scepticism 199–214 vanity 184–195 authenticity 67–68 autonomy 69–70

Drabble 5–6, 58 Dworkin, Gerlad 69 egoism 108–110, 114–115, 137 Eleazar 105–106, 121, 131, 133–135 Elster 52 endurance 57–59, 78, 146–147, 156–158 Euripides 255–257 exuberance 215–233 Feinberg 79–84 Flaubert 106–107, 121, 131, 134–135 Foot 124–128, 129–130 fulfillment 43–44 Gissing 45–50, 58

Bartleby 4, 12, 17 Benn 69 Berlin 15, 76, 83, 115, 174 Boncassen 6, 7, 12, 17, 58, 62 Buffon 8, 23

Hampshire 15, 38, 106–107, 118 happiness 43–44, 178–195 Hobbes 228 Hume 18, 22, 37, 56, 161, 196–214, 215, 251, 258–262, 264–266

Camus 77–78 Cato the Younger 18, 178–195, 251, 258–262 Cavell 86–91, 112 Cellini 18, 215–233, 258–262 Churchill 4, 12, 17 Clark 178 Cleanthes 56 coherence 56–57, 78–79, 149–150, 156 conflicts 102–117, 122–124, 132–139 Conrad 64–66 Constant 76, 83 contentment 43–44 Crusoe 4, 12, 17

independence 242–251 individuality 4–5, 61–71 integrity 145–160 inwardness 238–251 Job 4, 12, 17 Johnson 45–50, 55–59, 255 Joyce 88–91, 127–128

David 87–88 dominant activities 50–52, 59–61, 159–160, 190–195, 210–214, 228–233

Letwin 53, 143 Levi, Carlo 54–59, 62, 67 literature 143–145, 159–160, 262–266 Lovibond 86–91, 112

Kant 55–56, 70, 110–112, 119–124, 129–130 Koestler 24–25, 29–30, 31, 37, 58, 60, 62 Kurtz 64–66, 68

292 Index Machiavelli 14, 15, 224–226 manner 53–71 excess 161–177 independence 242–251 moderation 196–214 self-righteousness 178–195 virtú 224–233 McDowell 85–91, 112 Melville 4 Mill, John Stuart 21, 22, 37, 56, 61, 76 Mishima 18, 161–177, 178–179, 257, 259–262 moderation 196–214 Montaigne 18, 22, 37, 234–251, 258–262 moralism 9–17, 108–112, 137, 178–195 morality 94–117 and conflicts 102–117 and egoism 108–110, 114–115 and literature 143–145, 159–160, 262–266 and moralism 108–112 and personal evaluation 101–102, 137–139 and reason 118–139 and relativism 108–110, 112–114 personal dimension of 101–102 social dimension of 98–101 universal dimention of 95–98 morbidity 161–177 Morris 165–167 Mossner 197–212 Murdoch 66–67, 85–87 Nathan 161–174 Nietzsche 14, 15, 22, 37, 42, 46, 75, 111, 256 nihilism 14–17 Oakeshott 15 personal evaluation 21–27, 28–29, 38–52, 75–93 and morality 101–102 and reason 137–139 external 44–50, 87–93 internal 44–50, 84–87 justification of 84–93 Plato 14 pleasure 42–44

pride 218–233 projects 50–52, 59–61, 159–160, 190–195, 210–214, 228–233 Plutarch 18, 178–195 Proust 24, 25–26, 30, 31, 34, 37, 58, 62 Rawls 39–42 realism 57–59, 78, 147–148, 155–156, 255–262 reason 118–139, 176–177, 266–269 and conflicts 132–139 and morality 118–139 particular and general 124–128 permitting and requiring 128–132 theoretical and practical 118–124 reflectiveness 196–214 relativism 108–110, 112–114, 137 responsibility 3, 11–12, 44, 101–102, 216–233, 266–269 romanticism 161–177 Rose 5–6, 7, 12, 17, 62 Rousseau 264–266 Ryecroft 45–40, 62 samurai ethocs 165–169 Sartre 145 scepticism 199–214 Scott-Stokes 161–174 self-direction 234–251 self-righteaousness 178–195 sincerity 68–69 Smith, Adam 196, 211 Socrates 28–29 Stephen 88–91, 127–128, 134–135 Stevens 176 styles of life 23–27 and individuality 4–5, 61–71 creativity 7–8 detached contemplation 24–25 evaluation of 38–62, 75–93 explained 4–9 exuberance 215–233 independence 5–6 integrity 145–160 inwardness 25–26 moralism 178–195 morbidity 161–177 reflectiveness 196–214 romanticism 161–177

Index 293 self-direction 234–251 shibumi 26 wholeheartedness 6–7 Swift 45–50, 55–59, 62, 67 Sysiphus 77–84 Taylor, Richard 77–79 Trevanian 24, 26, 31, 34, 37, 58 Trilling 53–54 Trollope 6, 18, 150–160

vanity 184–195 virtú 224–233 Williams 15, 84–91 Wittgenstein 48, 51, 84–87, 94, 112–113 Wollheim 3 Woolf, Virginia 6–7, 8, 12, 17, 58, 62, 144–145 Yeats 196–197

Enjoyment: The Moral Significance of Styles of Life

The Moral Significance of Class (Secondary Course)

Education and the Significance of Life

Enjoyment of Poetry

The Styles of Ornament

Yuck! The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust

The Significance of Emergence

The Significance of Consciousness

The Significance of Consciousness

The Significance of Consciousness

The Significance of Consciousness

The Significance of Style

The Significance of the Church

A Causal Theory of Enjoyment

Stones Of Significance

The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism

The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism

The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism

The Enjoyment of Art (Classic Reprint)

Tests of significance

Stones Of Significance

Stones of Significance

Stones Of Significance

Ethics and The Moral Life

Significance

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