Mackintosh’s dissertation on the history of ethics is mainly famous through its connection to James Mill. In one small paragraph Mackintosh criticised Mill’s essay on government, and Mill retaliated with vitriol. Still, the topic of Mackintosh’s work wasn’t really even political philosophy, and the dissertation deserves to be read on its own. One might think a history of ethics would be of mere antiquarian interest. Yet, a historian of ethics can have something to say about ethics itself, by pointing out what to criticise and what to applaud.
The main point of criticism Mackintosh raises against many earlier philosophers is the same: they have failed to distinguish between a criterion of moral actions and their motivation. This criticism is especially poignant in case of utilitarians, whom Mackintosh characterises as having confused jurisdiction with ethics. In other words, Mackintosh explains, utilitarians are overtly interested with the question of what actions are good and what not, while they almost completely ignore the question of how to improve people’s characters so that they would tend to act well. Thus, Mackintosh does not say that utilitarians were wrong in defining good actions as those useful for most of humanity. Indeed, he appears to mostly agree with the utilitarian definition, although he also says that in practice, we humans cannot apply this criterion alone, due to the limitations of our understanding of what serves the whole humanity best. Yet, even greater fault of utilitarians, in his eyes, is that they do not then properly explain how people could be inspired to act toward such generally beneficial ends.
We might say that Mackintosh has here hit upon a difference between contemporary and classic notion of ethics. If we read an article on ethics nowadays, it invariably tends to be concerned with questions of the first sort, while the second type of question is considered by almost no contemporary ethicists. On the contrary, the second type of question was the main topic found in classical works of ethics, while considerations of the first type of question were more often found in books on natural law.
Even though Mackintosh admits that earlier writers of ethics tried to tackle the second question, he also notes that they confused it with the first question. This confusion was often connected with two errors: making ethical motivation too intellectual and interpreting human actions as always self-centred. Although distinct errors, they were often connected in theories of prudential reason that would make humans act ethically, because ethical actions agreed usually with the interest of the individual. The intellectual error here lies in the idea that reason alone could make us do something. Indeed, Mackintosh notes, prudence has an emotive element (the so-called self-love), although it is so weak that when acting prudently, we might confuse it with acting from mere reason.
The weakness of prudence or self-love as a motive links directly to the second error Mackintosh perceived in many of his predecessors, who assumed all human actions are ultimately based on self-love. How could such a feeble motive make us really do anything? Often what moves us, Mackintosh notes, are much stronger desires, say, a desire to eat chocolate. This desire does not have self and its welfare as its object, as indeed, fulfilling it by eating lots of chocolate won’t do good to our physical constitution. Instead, what is desired is the chocolate itself and its taste, and fulfillment of this strong desire produces equally strong pleasure.
As the example of the desire for chocolate showed, it is quite possible to have desires that are not based on self-love - and indeed, many of them are stronger desires. Furthermore, Mackintosh continues, some of these desires are disinterested in the sense that they aim for the pleasure or happiness of other people. That is, we feel pleasure when we see others become happy, especially if they become happy because of our own actions, and we feel discomfort when we see others in pain. This is an empirical fact that we just cannot disregard, Mackintosh insists.
Despite this empirical fact, Mackintosh notes, some philosophers have tried to argue that even disinterested desires are fundamentally selfish. Their argument is that such disinterested desires and emotions have been generated from more self-centered pleasures and emotions through association. For instance, in our childhood we might have experienced fulfillment of our desires in the company of our family members, making us sympathise with them, and later these feelings of sympathy could be generalised to other people through further associations.
Mackintosh isn’t convinced that the argument works. He admits the premise that disinterested desires are generated on the basis of more primitive desires - indeed, this is even assumed in the notion of moral education of people. Yet, he at once notes, such generation does not mean that the generated emotions would be dependent on their roots nor even essentially similar to them. Consider avarice, for instance. It certainly is a generated emotion, since newborn babies do not yet desire money. Instead, the love of money is generated, because people come to associate money as an indispensable means for gaining things, e.g. for satisfying primary desires, like hunger. Even so, avarice is independent from hunger and other similar desires, which is clearly shown by the actions of a miser preferring to save money instead of spending it on food.
What is true of avarice, Mackintosh says, is equally true of disinterested emotions - although we learn to love and help others only later in life, these affections are still real. This is true also of the highest type of disinterested affection, that is, conscience. Conscience resembles prudence, Mackintosh says, in that it is quite a weak emotion compared to more heartfelt emotions. Indeed, like prudence, it is a more general emotion and even one of different level: its object are our moral dispositions and actions proceeding from those dispositions, that is, it aims to improve our first-order emotions so that we would be more inclined to choose what is known to be good.
We circle back to the difference between criterion and motivation and their confusion especially in utilitarianism. Utilitarians, Mackintosh says, often seem to try to motivate good and virtuous behaviour by pointing out its good consequences for the society and for the individual. Especially in the latter case, Mackintosh notes, they appear to forget the most important beneficial consequences, that is, those affecting the mental condition of the individual. Take as an example one classic virtue, courage. Sure, courageous actions can help us get external advantage through the brave actions we can do because of it. Yet, there is a far greater advantage to be got through the effect of courage on our own mind - courage makes us impervious to fear. Similar positive effects to our mental condition are connected to all virtues, Mackintosh concludes: with virtue it becomes a delight to do good things.
