[lit-ideas] Re: Sacrifice
- From: Robert.Paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Robert Paul)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 12 Feb 2005 23:21:23 PST
I thought that Julie's point was that altruism ('altruism') as a motive doesn't
really exist--that the real motive behind so-called altruistic acts was really
the agent's own pleasure. At least that's how I understood her.
Hobbes argued somewhat in the same fashion: the real motive behind any act is
one's own good usually under the heading of self-preservation. (Of course if
one's own well-being were always one's primary concern, altruism would be ruled
out immediately.)
Bishop Butler pointed out that Hobbes had mis-characterized sympathy and
benevolence (and I'd say a fortiori altruism) in order to save his
'psychological egoism.' I was going to go more deeply into this but I found some
passages in C. D. Broad's Five Types of Ethical Theory, of a kind no philosopher
would (or, I think, could) write today.
First Broad passage:
It was also fashionable in Butler's time to deny the possibility of
disinterested action. This doctrine, which was a speculative principle with
Hobbes, has always had a certain vogue. It is not without a certain superficial
plausibility, and it has naturally been popular both with vicious persons who
wanted a philosophical excuse for their own selfishness and with decent people
who felt slightly ashamed of their own virtues and wished to be taken for men of
the world. One of Butler's great merits is to have pointed out dearly and
conclusively the ambiguities of language which make it plausible. As a
psychological theory it was killed by Butler; but it still flourishes, I
believe, among bookmakers and smart young business men whose claim to know the
world is based on an intimate acquaintance with the shadier side of it. In
Butler's day the theory moved in higher social and intellectual circles, and it
had to be treated more seriously than any philosopher would trouble to treat it
now. This change is very largely the result of Butler's work; he killed the
theory so thoroughly that he sometimes seems to the modern reader to be flogging
dead horses. Still, all good fallacies go to America when they die, and rise
again as the latest discoveries of the local professors. So it will always be
useful to have Butler's refutation at hand.
Second:
The ideal human nature, then, consists of particular impulses duly
subordinated to self-love and benevolence, and of these general principles in
turn duly subordinated to the supreme principle of conscience. This seems to me
to be perfectly correct so far as it goes; and I will now consider in rather
more detail each of these constituents of human nature.
I. Parlicular Impulses. -- Butler's first task is to show that these
cannot be reduced to self-love, as many people have thought before and since his
time. It is easy to see that he is right. The object of self-love is one's own
maximum happiness over the whole course of one's life. The object of hunger is
food; the object of revenge is to give pain to someone who we think has injured
us; the object of sympathy is to give another man pleasure. Each of these
particular impulses has its own particular object, whilst self-love has a
general object, viz., one's own maximum happiness. Again, these particular
impulses often conflict with self-love, and this is equally true of those which
we are inclined to praise and those which we are inclined to blame. Nor is this
simply a question of intellectual mistakes about what will make us happy. A man
under the influence of a strong particular impulse, such as rage or parental
affection, will often do things which he knows at the time to be imprudent.
In a footnote Butler takes as an example Hobbes's definition of "pity" as
"fear felt for oneself at the sight of another's distress". His refutation is so
short and so annihilating that I will give the substance of it as a model of
philosophical reasoning. He points out
a. that, on this definition, a sympathetic man is ipso facto a man who is
nervous about his own safety, and the more sympathetic he is the more cowardly
he will be. This is obviously contrary to fact.
b. We admire people for being sympathetic to distress; we have not the
least
tendency to admire them for being nervously anxious about their own safety. If
Hobbes were right admiration for sympathy would involve admiration for
timidity.
c. Hobbes mentions the fact that we tend specially to sympathise with the
troubles of our friends, and he tries to account for it. But, on Hobbes's
definition, this would mean that we feel particularly nervous for ourselves when
we see a friend in distress. Now, in the first place, it may be doubted whether
we do feel any more nervous for ourselves when we see a friend in distress than
when we see a stranger in the same situation. On the other hand, it is quite
certain that we do feel more sympathy for the distress of a friend than for that
of a stranger. Hence it is impossible that sympathy can be what Hobbes says that
it is. Butler himself holds that when we see a man in distress our state of mind
may be a mixture of three states. One is genuine sympathy, i.e., a direct
impulse to relieve his pain. Another is thankfulness at the contrast between our
good fortune and his ill luck. A third is the feeling of anxiety about our own
future described by Hobbes. These three may be present in varying proportions,
and some of them may be wholly absent in a particular case. But it is only the
first that any plain man means by "sympathy" or "pity".
Butler makes a very true observation about this theory of Hobbes. He says that
it is the kind of mistake which no one but a philosopher would make. Hobbes has
a general philosophical theory that all action must necessarily be selfish and
so he has to force sympathy, which is an apparent exception, into accord with
this theory. He thus comes into open conflict with common-sense. But, although
common-sense here happens to be right and the philosopher to be wrong, I should
say that this is no reason to prefer common-sense to philosophy. Common-sense
would feel that Hobbes is wrong, but it would be quite unable to say why he is
wrong. It would have to content itself with calling him names. The only cure for
bad philosophy is better philosophy; a mere return to common-sense is no
remedy.
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Robert Paul
Reed College
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