A Framework for the Good

A Framework for the Good Kevin Kinghorn University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

Introduction The broad goals of this book are twofold. First, the book offers an analysis of the good : the meaning of the term; the nature of goodness; and why we are motivated to pursue it. Setting this analysis within a larger ethical framework, the book also proposes a way of understanding the relationship between the good and the right. My discussion of these issues takes place in Part I of this book. I engage there with historic (and controversial) issues in moral philosophy, offering my own conclusions on such subjects as noninstrumental value and normativity. Building on these more formal discussions of the nature of the good and our motivation to pursue it, I move in Part II to offer a substantive account of what the good life consists in as well as how we can achieve it. This account is a decidedly Christian one, charting God s relationship to the good and to the right. While I note experiences from everyday life that, I believe, serve as cues pointing to the Christian affirmation that we are created in the image of a Trinitarian God, arguing this point is not a primary goal. Rather, I assume an orthodox, Christian understanding of God as the one who created humans in such a way that our ultimate flourishing is achieved only as our relationships mirror the loving, self-giving relationships within the Trinity. Jesus is recorded in John 1

2 Introduction 10:10 as saying that he came to give us life. I want to propose an ethical framework for understanding that claim. Accordingly, Part II offers a way of understanding substantive questions about how we can achieve a good life. Even while my ultimate concerns in Part II of this book can be described as theological, my main interlocutors throughout the book remain philosophers within the analytic tradition. For the reader whose interests are primarily theological, I would emphasize that we often gain invaluable clarity on theological matters by drawing from the penetrating ways in which moral philosophers have framed discussions on such topics as intrinsic value, normativity, action explanation, and semantic analyses of moral concepts. For the reader whose interests are primarily philosophical, I would commend Part II as an important area of exploration. Christian theism offers a very interesting, as well as historically significant, context in which to find answers to some otherwise intractable difficulties in moral philosophy. And the resources it provides can, in my experience, prove both intellectually and existentially rewarding. I find that my fellow Christian moral philosophers are often keen to explore whether there could be an objective basis for morality if there were in fact no God. 1 I will not be addressing this question, though I hope that by the end of the book it will be clear why I find the question so ambiguous. I do want to insist that, in a theistic, ethical framework, there are certain facts about how we should live that are not dependent on anyone s point of view. However, I distance myself from the attempt to find this objective element in discussions about the rightness and wrongness of actions. As will become clear in chapter 3, I do not believe it makes conceptual sense to suggest that some action could be objectively wrong. This conclusion is certainly one reason I have for privileging the place of the good (and not of the right) in the ethical framework I propose. I realize that I have many allies from Aristotle through Aquinas in privileging the place of the good and in exploring facts about human nature that help us identify conditions for a good life. I even share with this tradition in moral philosophy the conclusion that conceptual links exist between goodness and life. And given that facts exist about how living things do and do not flourish, the door is seemingly opened for

Introduction 3 me simply to follow this tradition in making objective (i.e., perspectiveindependent) claims about how we should live. However, I find problems both with the methodology and with some of the common conclusions associated with the Aristotelian tradition. If I assert that some action or thing is good, I am in some sense commending it. So, while I agree that an important conceptual link exists between goodness and life, I also note the pro-attitude we often (usually? always?) have toward the things we judge to be good. Writers in the Aristotelian tradition seem to me not to offer a clear and adequate explanation for this pro-attitude. I think the problem is partly a methodological one. Before tackling the nature of the good (e.g., linking it with the life functions of a living thing), we must first be clear about the meaning of good. What concept is denoted by this term? And how do we humans come to understand this concept, so that we have a pro-attitude toward the things we view as good? I do not find these questions adequately answered even by the more recent moral philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition who are cognizant of G. E. Moore s emphasis on the distinction between the meaning and the nature of the good. Aristotelians will no doubt view my methodological point as uninteresting, given their strong tendency to eschew a Humean account of action explanation. And admittedly, our pro-attitude toward things we judge to be good is fairly inconsequential if, as someone like Philippa Foot insists, there is a natural normativity associated with the life functions of living things. 2 However, I find this manoeuver as well, more generally, as the appeal to there being reason to perform some action unpromising as an explanation of human motivation. Having abandoned a metaphysic assumed by Aquinas that humans (and other things) tend toward particular ends, I think we must follow David Hume in explaining human motivation in terms of human psychology specifically, human desires. I have stated that one of my aims in Part II is to identify facts not dependent on any human s perspective of how we ought to live. Given my support for a Humean theory of motivation, it might be thought that I will be hard pressed to meet this goal. My situation will only appear worse when I now acknowledge that the range of intrinsic values

4 Introduction for which I allow is very narrow. I believe that the only states of affairs of intrinsic value are pleasurable mental states. 3 Anything else will be, at most, instrumentally valuable. So the theological challenge I set myself is to offer an ethical framework that is recognizably orthodox Christian. I wish to offer a way of understanding the choices God invites people to make choices that secure the kinds of relationships with God and others through which all people s ultimate flourishing is alone found. Yet in offering this theistic, ethical framework I will not follow philosophers such as Robert Adams and Jerry Walls and David Baggett in appealing to objective standards of right and wrong. 4 And in offering a framework privileging the good, I will not seek to argue against what seem to me the correct, broad conclusions of classical hedonists like Henry Sidgwick on intrinsic value or the desire-centered theory of motivation of Hume. Here is a summary of the chapters ahead. In chapter 1 I argue that good is not a primitive concept. Instead, we understand the concepts good and bad by referencing our appreciation of the difference between our experiences of flourishing versus failing to flourish. This appreciation is primitive; and we draw upon it whenever we make assignments of goodness, or value. I defend the view that good means something along the lines of answering to someone s interests (though there can be derivative and deviant uses of the term). I then argue that moral goodness is a fuzzy-edged concept and that there is no nonarbitrary way to demarcate it from other forms of goodness. My analysis of the concept good ends up a reductive, naturalistic one. I consider Moore s open question argument against naturalism. I note that, if the arguments of chapter 1 are correct, then one currently popular response to Moore espousing synthetic naturalism is not available to us. However, the kind of conceptual reductionism I offer readily overcomes Moore s objection to naturalism. I end the chapter by noting that, while a semantic analysis of good does not settle the issue of the nature of goodness, it nonetheless provides prima facie evidence as to where we should look for our answer. Having discussed the meaning of good, I turn in chapter 2 to the question of what things are good. I focus on the much-debated question of that in which goodness, or final value, consists. I appeal to our intuitions in support of welfarism: the view that something can be good

Introduction 5 only if it is good for someone. I then argue that the only things that (noninstrumentally) make someone s life go better for her are her mental states. I argue that mental statism can withstand objections commonly thought to arise from Nozick s experience machine; the badness of death; and the (im)plausibility of thinking that the pleasures of schadenfreude can rightly be called good. Throughout chapter 2, I work to compare and contrast my own position on noninstrumental value with similar welfarist and mental statist positions held by such philosophers as Griffin, Kraut, Sumner, Feldman, and Bradley. Chapter 3 introduces the question of why people are motivated to pursue goals (including the goals people identify as good). I introduce the discussion by explaining why I find the currently popular focus on reasons an unpromising methodology for explaining motivation. I side with Hume in insisting that only desires move, or impel, us to act whenever we act intentionally. And I defend this uncompromising Humean position from the objection that I cannot account for the motivational force of moral beliefs. Noting how we often feel that we should act in certain ways, even if we have desires to act otherwise, I offer an account of the source of normative force, or pressure. I focus on the phenomenology of feeling that one should or ought to do something; and I link this phenomenology with the negative feeling tone of a frustrated desire. After discussing the conditions under which this negative aspect of a desire comes to be felt as normative force, I turn to the meaning and nature of wrongness and rightness. I note their contrasts to goodness and badness, including the way they are conceptually linked to a cluster of further concepts involving guilt, blameworthiness, and punishment. I advance the idea, drawing from J. S. Mill s general comments, that wrongness is always linked to social sanction that is, to the intent of some person(s) to sanction those who perform some action. I note how wrongness involves a violation of one s own obligations and of another individual s rights (that is, what another individual owns). However, I contend that nothing grounds these concepts beyond the intent of some person(s) to sanction those who interfere with this other individual having the final say on some matter. I then defend this account of wrongness from the objection that wrongness surely refers to something more objective. I resist

6 Introduction the conclusion that wrongness even can be objective in the sense the critic wants, though I do explain why despite its social root the concept wrong has commonly come to mean for people something objective along the lines of not to be done, period. I also note that, though there is no scope for true objectivity in matters of rightness and wrongness, there is wide scope for objectivity in matters of goodness and badness (i.e., on the question of what does make people s lives go well for them). In Part II I construct a theistic framework for identifying facts both about all human flourishing and about the decisions we must make to attain this flourishing. I begin chapter 4 by noting the perfectionist element within my theistic framework. Building on the mental statist conclusions of chapter 2, I then look at the substantive question of which mental states ensure our welfare in the long run. Consonant with the Christian affirmation that we are created in the image of a relational God, I suggest that there is a common feeling tone one of connecting with others to many of our experiences. As my way of spelling out the theological claim that our well-being ultimately hinges on our relationships with God and others, I suggest that this experience of connecting is both necessary and sufficient for our ultimate flourishing as humans. I turn in the latter half of chapter 4 to explore how we can establish and maintain the ideal relationships within which we can connect with others in such a way that our ultimate flourishing is realized. I identify as pivotal the mutual goal within a relationship of making the other person s interests one s own. After exploring the coordinating role that God must inevitably play if ideal relationships are to be established, I conclude the chapter with an overview of how any interpersonal relationship is established. Having emphasized in chapter 4 the key role that benevolent commitments play in establishing ideal relationships, I begin chapter 5 by discussing the scope for self-interested pursuits within such a commitment. I then defend my advocacy of benevolence against the objections: that we can desire relationships (in addition to desiring the other person s welfare); and that my position emphasizing mere benevolence ignores the importance in friendships of desiring that we be the ones who help

Introduction 7 our friends to flourish (as opposed to desiring merely that our friends flourish). Continuing to draw from discussions of earlier chapters, I go on to spell out an understanding of the Christian claim that God invites us into the ongoing life of the Trinity, which is the life that is good for us. I discuss the ways in which God communicates to us, prompting us toward the type of benevolent commitments that mark ideal relationships (as exemplified within the Trinity and within the community of the redeemed in heaven). I emphasize that God prompts us toward these commitments primarily by ensuring that we have various attractions to others and desires that their lives go well for them. I also note that God has given us strong desires for our own flourishing. Through our feeling the pulls of these contrasting sets of desires (toward benevolence and toward self-interest), scope for moral freedom is ensured. I defend the importance of the divine gift of freedom by showing how our acting as an ultimate cause allows for a particular kind of relationship with God and with others. I conclude the chapter by explaining why both benevolent and self-interested patterns of behavior are such that we will end up decisively committed to one or the other. In chapter 6 I explore further the nature of those decisions that move us either toward or away from the life of ultimate flourishing that Christianity describes. I review my earlier conclusions that motivations whether for benevolent or for self-interested pursuits consist of desires with a common phenomenology. I defend my emphasis on desire from the objections that moral decisions involve seeing an act as a kind of act and that I have no way of distinguishing good motivations from bad motivations. I then provide ways to distinguish morally significant decisions that is, decisions that lead us further toward a fixed commitment either to benevolence or to self-interest from decisions that do not have this significance. In further analyzing the decision whether to pursue benevolence or self-interest, I note that the attraction we feel toward benevolence involves different feeling tones than does the attraction we feel toward self-interested pursuits. Accordingly, the decision whether to pursue benevolence or self-interest can be analyzed in terms of the particular kinds of feeling tones to which we choose, qua free agents, to

8 Introduction add our efforts. I respond to the objection that the feeling tones associated with a desire are simply not weighty enough to ground the moral significance of our decisions especially those with eternal significance. I conclude by connecting my ethical framework to theological doctrines such as heaven, hell, and the nature of sin, noting some significant advantages of spelling out these doctrines within the framework I have outlined. Once again, my aim in Part II will not be to argue for the truth of Christian theism (though I believe that the indispensable role loving relationships clearly play in our well-being hints at an explanation that we are created in the image of a Trinitarian God). Rather, my theological goal is one of clarity: to spell out a way of understanding the claim that God makes available a good life for us humans, as well as the claim that God invites us to make decisions through which we can come to live this good life. For my fellow Christian theists who do not agree with every philosophical conclusion in Part I, I hope that Part I will nevertheless prompt us to reflect seriously on where we should and should not seek to defend objectivity within discussions of morality. Important issues surrounding the relationship between the good and the right must be disentangled if we are to have anything to offer the serious moral philosopher. For those moral philosophers whose interests lie primarily with the material of Part I, I again also commend the substantive material in Part II as a resource for resolving some of the lingering questions raised in Part I about what makes our lives go well for us.