The Essay: Getting Along Fine

New times demand new habits of thinking about ethics. And philosophers, biologists and economists have started to agree on one thing:

The fundamentals of human life do not change very much. Shakespeare’s seven stages of man from As You Like It (‘first the infant, mewling and puking…’) still characterise our progress from cradle to grave. The dilemmas that faced Antigone and Agammemnon might face any of us today. Fortunately we each of us possess some resources that enable us to cope with life: principally the resources cemented into our language over time. If we know the words someone has been using about us, we can tell whether it was criticism or praise easily enough: if I hear I was called mean, pedantic, cowardly, irresolute, greedy, selfish, or a thousand other things I can infer hostility or contempt; if I was called instead generous, kind, resolute, courageous, just, and far-sighted, then I can permit myself a smile of contentment.

David Hume, the greatest moral philosopher Great Britain has ever produced, asked himself how traits get onto these lists of vices or virtues. He decided that a person’s virtues are “qualities of mind useful or agreeable to himself or others”, while vices are the reverse. He believed that all we had to do was to adopt a “common point of view” with those in the circle of people affected by an individual’s nature, to see whether the person was admirable and commendable, or regrettable and avoidable. When it comes to life, we know the kinds of people by whom we hope to be surrounded.

So far so good, but surely times change and don’t we change in them? Certainly the moral climate, or perhaps micro-climate, changes, and of course varies from place to place. My wife and I recently discovered that a teenager is far more likely to offer up a seat on a bus to an older passenger in Tunisia than in the United Kingdom. But you are doubtless more likely to offend someone by dressing outlandishly in many parts of the world than you are in London. We might wish to import Tunisian politeness and export London’s tolerance, and perhaps there are places that are civilized enough to have the best of both worlds. Civility and tolerance would each be on Hume’s list.

Again, it is often feared that we currently live in a climate where people are quick to detect rights, but much slower to detect correlative duties, or quick to regard themselves as victims, but slow to take responsibility. If we decide that this is so, then we might want to change the ethical climate. It is a slow process, not usually achieved by exhortation or sermonizing, but by the slow and patient business of showing people, from early on in life, a better way. Aristotle was the first to insist that we become virtuous by practising virtue.

I have said nothing about religion. Some people think that religious belief is a necessary underpinning of good behaviour. I do not. Religious teachers may praise the kinds of virtue already mentioned, just as secular teachers do. But they are also likely to insert evil with the good: the belief that their particular sect is the best, and that the others are godforsaken and inferior. Religions unite their followers with what Hume called “frivolous observances” which are team badges that all too often take on more importance than civility or even humanity.

We can all see for ourselves that kindness, for instance, is a virtue, but it takes a special revelation to learn that the infallible way to commend yourself to the infinite, unchanging, all-knowing, self-caused, necessary being that governs the universe is to have a little bit of skin cut off here or there. The current fashion for ‘faith schools’ is perhaps an understandable reaction to the generally feeble state of education in this country, but in itself can be nothing but a recipe for division and discord in society. ‘Interfaith dialogue’ is sometimes touted as a remedy, but it is a pity first to create the fracture and then to try to put a splint on it. The lowest denominator common to all religions is going to be the kinds of virtue that Hume indicated, so much better not to add the team badges in the first place.

If it is suggested that people who live in fear of God are likely to behave better, then the reply is first that this depends on what qualities they have invested their God with, and secondly that it is a pity if, for instance, they can only behave generously or justly out of personal fear. It would be better if they behaved generously because others need their generosity, and justly because they value justice.

Recent philosophy of ethics has devoted a good deal of attention to the emergence of co-operation in human societies. This is a particularly timely topic when nations may have to learn to co-operate over such matters as scarce resources, degradation of the environment, and climate change. Biologists and economists used to be the real pessimists here, supposing that since we have all had to survive in a Darwinian struggle for existence, we must all be selfish and grasping at heart. And then there is an excellent argument appealing to our own self-interest: if others restrain their energy consumption, well, it is better for me to use what I want, while if others do not I would be a patsy to be the only one doing so. If everyone argues like that, no co-operative solution can emerge.

Fortunately even biologists and economists have realized that since co-operation can emerge, there cannot be a Darwinian theorem saying that it is impossible for it to do so. And since we are needy animals, dependent on the co-operation of others for virtually everything in life, that is just as well. But whether our social natures will carry us into the unimaginably large-scale co-operations that will be needed to make a difference to the rate at which we seem to be depleting the environment on which we depend, remains to be seen.