[lit-ideas] Re: Hartiana
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 21 Mar 2015 15:10:41 -0400
Hart was a virtuous legal philosopher.
My last post today!
Why do moral theorists such as Grice and Grice use 'contract', and
quasi-contract, when they don't mean it. Cfr. Locke on compact?
Is there a legal implicature, there, somewhere?
(Grice and Grice refer to Grice the author of "Studies in the way of words"
and Grice the author of "The grounds of moral judgement").
As Ann Cudd says, "the metaphor of the social contract requires some
interpretation in order to apply it to the situation of morality or politics",
so Grice and Grice are being _metaphorical_ (or figurative). Literally, there
is no contract (even if 'literalness' IS one of the _figures_ of speech,
even if a boring one).
Of course, we have to distinguish as to whether Grice and Grice are
proposing contractarianism or mere contractualism.
Contractarianism has its roots in Hobbes, whose account is based on mutual
self-interest. Morality consists in those forms of cooperative behaviour
that it is mutually advantageous for self-interested agents to engage in.
(The most prominent modern exponent is David Gauthier).
By contrast, any form of contractualism is grounded on the equal moral
status of persons.
----- One may still need to study the legal implicature behind the use of
'contract', even if figurative, in both contractualism, contractarianism,
and Grice's quasi-contractualism.
But back to O. K.'s point about 'Hart is virtuous' being kind of vacuous,
or rather seldom made, qua utterance (I should revise his actual wording), I
found further evidence for the contrary -- what's the fun of philosophy if
we are not going to discuss?
For Socrates, virtue is one.
The Stoics adhered to the Socratic doctrine that virtue is one.
For Plato, granted, virtues are four:
temperance: σωφροσύνη (sōphrosynē)
prudence: φρόνησις (phronēsis)
courage: ἀνδρεία (andreia)
justice: δικαιοσύνη (dikaiosynē)
But D. Carr, however (in "the cardinal virtues and Plato's psychologism",
Philosophical Quarterly) considers either of the above FOUR virtue
combinations as mutually reducible and therefore NOT cardinal.
Gregory Vlastos goes further. In "The Unity of virtues in the
"Protagoras"", Review of Metaphysics, 25) Vlastos argues alla Grice that Plato
subscribes to a unified view of virtues -- 'virtue is entire'.
In "Protagoras" (and also in "Meno") Plato argues that the separate
virtues can't exist independently.
Plato offers as evidence the logical contradiction of saying that Smith,
for example, acted with wisdom, yet in an unjust way. Or that Smith acted
with bravery (fortitude), yet without wisdom.
Plato was a philosopher, i.e. a lover of wisdom, and this possibly biased
into thinking that virtue is synonymous with wisdom -- and that it can be
taught (possibly at the Academy -- no fee required. Things changed with
Aristotle). (Geary disagrees: "Plato taught love-of-wisdom; not wisdom").
Seneca, the Roman Stoic, also held that virtue is entire -- even if he
perhaps lacked it.
His reasoning is, like Plato, based on linguistic analysis -- now Latin,
not Greek.
Seneca explicitly says that perfect prudence is indistinguishable from
perfect virtue.
"Considering all consequences, a prudent man would act in the identical
way as a virtuous person."
"If that's not a linguistic proof that virtue is entire, I don't know what
is."
Nero found that VERY offensive and ordered Seneca to commit suicide. This
was not 'by law'; for otherwise Seneca could have appealed (vide Hart, "Law
as coercive orders", in "The Concept of Law").
The thesis of the Unity of Virtue happens to be then a well-known tenet of
ancient Graeco-Roman ethics, and Griceian one, at that.
The strongest version of the thesis, is held by Socrates and Plato. As
Grice puts it, it states that Virtue is One (said solemnly).
A weaker but still very strong version of the thesis for the integrity of
virtue claims rather that there are various virtues (like branches of
philosophy -- Grice's point about saying that Hart is ONLY a 'legal'
philosopher (or Oxford's "man at legal philosophy") gets, via something like
damn by
faint praise, that Hart was not good at philosophy) are SO INTEGRATED with
each other that a person cannot have one virtue without having all the
others.
To have one virtue, in other words, is to have them all. (Mutatis
mutandis, there is only one problem in philosophy, namely all of them).
One cannot be truly courageous unless one is also just; one cannot be
truly just unless one is also generous, as well as temperate, magnanimous,
truthful, friendly, witty and so on.
On the face of it, however, this thesis SEEMS plainly false.
Indeed, on most of the occasions in which the Stoics exposed the thesis of
the Unity of the Virtues it was scornfully dismissed as one of the weakest
aspects of Graeco-Roman ethics -- it became fashionable again with Cato
the younger.
The thesis of the integrity of virtue is a puzzle that generates the right
conversational implicature. For something can be true BUT misleading -- or
'misleading but true' -- Myro, who knew Grice well once formulated a
"Grice rule": if what Grice says strikes me first as plainly false, it is
ultimately true; and vice versa").
The thesis that virtue (like philosophy) is entire is not an empirical
thesis, arrived at or supported by empirical evidence, neither is it a
straightforwardly normative thesis of the kind just mentioned.
Rather, the thesis is one that falls out of a broader normative view as a
corollary.
It may be understood as the conclusion of an argument that rests in part
on normative and analytic premises.
Moreover, it seems to me that the premises of the argument are quite
plausible and that therefore the argument in favour of a qualified form of the
thesis is quite strong.
The classical Graeco-Roman (and indeed Griceian) thesis of the unity of
virtue is understood to imply that to have one virtue is to have them all.
If a person is courageous, according to this thesis, then he will also be
generous, just, truthful, and temperate.
Similarly, if he is just, he will possess courage as well as all the rest
of the virtues.
Grice does not elaborate the point, but if virtue is entire, so is vice.
One of his adages against weakness of the will was of a man being 'caught in
the grip of a vice', but he admitted the utterance could trigger the wrong
implicature in context -- especially in Oxford if not America.
In Oxford, what Americans call a vise is a vice, and so, 'he was caught in
the grip of a vice' may well mean, in Oxford, that he is held by the tool
that carpenters use.
vice1 -- Latin vitium "defect, offense, blemish, imperfection," in both
physical and moral senses (in Medieval Latin also vicium; source also of
Italian vezzo "usage, entertainment"), from PIE *wi-tio-, from root *wei-
"vice, fault, guilt."
vice2 -- (spelt 'vice' in America) Anglo-French vice, Old French vis, viz
"screw," from Latin vitis "vine, tendril of a vine," literally "that which
winds," from root of viere "to bind, twist" (see withy). Also in Middle
English, "device like a screw or winch for bending a crossbow or catapult;
spiral staircase; the screw of a press; twisted tie for fastening a hood under
the chin." The modern meaning "clamping tool with two jaws closed by a
screw" is first recorded c.1500.
But Hart _knew_ that!
Cheers,
Speranza
.
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