Théodore Simon Jouffroy: Course of natural right – Indefinable good

Jouffroy thinks he has by now proven that good is not identifiable with happiness nor with any object of natural instinct. The only solution left, he states, is that good is an a priori concept reason, which is immediately connected with the notion of obligation: what is good ought to be searched for. The next question is to decide within this rationalist notion of good whether the concept of good is indefinable or whether it can be analysed further.

Jouffroy begins to investigate the first of these options. Just like with previous systems, he chooses a prominent example, who this time is Richard Price, a philosopher who reacted against the sentimentalist system of Francis Hutcheson. Jouffroy does admit that Price had predecessors (Ralph Cudworth) and successors (Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart), but thinks that Price set the same idea up in more distinct terms.

Jouffroy notes that like all rationalists, Price rejected the notion that the concept of good could be derived by empirical means and thus concluded that it must be based on intuitive reason. Yet, Jouffroy thinks, Price makes a crucial error in not distinguishing two different notions of good: what is good in itself or absolutely, independent of human beings, and conformity of a voluntary action of a free intelligent being to this absolute good, which could be called virtue or moral good. Indeed, Price states that good is a quality belonging primarily only to actions, although, Jouffroy objects, actions wouldn’t be good without the absolute good.

The confusion makes Price accept an account of how we come to know good that is quite opposite to the way in which Jouffroy imagines the process works. According to Jouffroy, we must at first have at least an implicit concept of absolute good, which we then use to evaluate the goodness of actions. Price, on the other hand, thinks that we have an intuitive grasp of the goodness of actions, and we at most abstract a general notion of good from these individual intuitions of good actions. With Jouffroy’s account, he insists, we must at first be able to define what is good in itself, in order to recognise the goodness in actions, again in opposition to what Price thinks about good.

Jouffroy understands why Price adopted his theory in his historical context. The important element in this context, Jouffroy thinks, was Locke’s rejection of all ideas that were not derived from senses or reflective observation of oneself. When philosophers like Hutcheson tried to explain good in this Lockean framework, they assumed the existence of a new, moral sense, which perceived good and evil as simple qualities of action. When Price rejected the Lockean framework and took reason as another source of ideas, he still inherited the notion of good and evil as simple qualities of actions.

Jouffroy suggests that there are further reasons why Pricean theory seems natural. The things discovered by philosophy, he explains, are later just assumed as axioms by the so-called common sense. Thus, moral truths discovered in the past become later immediately assumed as self-evident. In other words, Jouffroy says, it becomes natural to assume, like Price, that we immediately recognise actions as good or evil. This illusion is strengthened by the fact that educators tend just to teach that some actions are good, but not why they are – often they themselves do not know these reasons.

Furthermore, Jouffroy continues, God has provided us with natural instincts striving for goodness, in order to strengthen our reason. Thus, when we begin to reason about ethical matters, we already have strong emotions about them, and since our idea of good is still obscure, we think we have immediate perceptions about the goodness of actions. In addition, Jouffroy explains, these natural instincts make all people share similar opinions about certain common actions. These common actions have been used as examples by most moral philosophers, and because of the shared opinions about them, their moral quality is imagined to be immediately perceived. Generalisation makes philosophers then extend this idea to the whole of ethics.

If goodness is an immediately perceived simple quality, like Price thinks, reasoning has nothing to do with recognising what is good and how good it is. This means, Jouffroy explains, that there can be no discussion or demonstration concerning goodness: we can only say that we immediately perceive an action to be good or evil. Indeed, it seems impossible even to have any difference of opinions about goodness. Thus, Jouffroy concludes, there can be no experts on the question of goodness, and indeed, no science of natural law. Price cannot even explain, Jouffroy thinks, why we educate children about ethics or why we are more lenient toward criminals whom we consider to not have capacities for moral reasoning.

Jouffroy finds similar problems with Price’s notion that nothing is good independently of actions. Price’s commitment means, Jouffroy says, that good actions are done only because they are good, and the results of these actions are at most only derived goods. Thus, if our health is not a result of an action, it is not good, while a seemingly bad thing, like sickness, is good, if it just is a result of a good action. Indeed, Jouffroy notes, because the same thing can be a result of many actions, we cannot say whether it is good, before we know what action has generated it. In summary, we would not be interested in ends, like knowledge as such, but only of effects. Jouffroy finds all of this ridiculous: surely we must know at first e.g. that the results of just actions tend to be good, before we can conclude that justice is a good thing for actions to show.

When faced with facts not lining up with one’s system, Jouffroy notes, philosophers tend to introduce contradictions. Price makes no exception, he thinks. Thus, in order to account for ethical discussions, Price suggests that these concern circumstances of actions. Circumstances, including motives and ends, become then intrinsic elements of actions, and in separation from such circumstances, actions do not have any ethical character. Hence, Jouffroy concludes, Price has to admit, in the end, that to know an action to be good we have to know independently that its end is good and that we can then define what it means to be a good action.

The closer to truth we get, Jouffroy concludes, the harder it is to find the errors in the systems we investigate. Still, we have managed to make another step forward, he thinks: we now know that good is definable, although we as yet do not know how to define it.

Théodore Simon Jouffroy: Course of natural right – System of sentimentalism

Last time, we saw Jouffroy tackle what he calls an egoist systems of ethics. He notes that at first philosophers had not been interested in the foundation of ethics, but when the question suggested itself, egoism was a natural start, because self-love is so apparent of a motive. When the consequences of egoism were recognised, especially the denial of disinterested motives, egoism was rejected and replaced with two other systems: rationalism, based on the idea that reason intellectually perceives what is good and evil by reason, and sentimentalism, which grounds ethics in sensibility and instinctive impulses.

Jouffroy proceeds first to discuss sentimentalism, and he at once recognises Adam Smith’s idea of basing ethics to sentiment of sympathy as a prime example. Jouffroy suggests investigating Smith’s theory through three questions: what is the ultimate goal of human actions in this life, what is the motive impelling them to act and what is the criteria or rule for determining what actions are good. As an example, he notes that the egoist system regarded pleasure as the ultimate goal of life, desire for happiness as our only motive and the tendency of acts to promote our welfare as the criterion of goodness.

Jouffroy begins his investigation with the third question about the criteria for good and evil actions. He notes that Smith bases the ethical qualities of actions to the qualities of affections producing them and reduces ethical qualities of affections to four basic qualities: affection can be proper or improper, in regard to its cause, and can have merit or demerit, in regard to its effects. Jouffroy reads Smith as stating that the judgement on both propriety and merit of affections is ultimately based on a thought experiment whether an impartial observer feels sympathy for the person having the affection.

Jouffroy finds several problems in Smith’s suggestion. Firstly, Jouffroy asks, what is the impartiality Smith mentions? Smith talks about sympathy as an emotion or instinct, Jouffroy notes, but emotions or instincts cannot really be impartial, since impartial judgment requires more of a stifling of emotions. Furthermore, he continues, sympathy seems a very fluctuating criterion, since different people in different conditions feel very different sympathies. Finally, Jouffroy notes even Smith admitting that sometimes people do good, even if others do not regard their actions good and even feel antipathy toward them.

The ultimate problem with Smith’s theory, Jouffroy thinks, is that sympathy has no authority over other criteria of action, since it is just one instinct among others. Smith tries to make definitions that give sympathy this authority by connecting it to the notion of goodness, Jouffroy admits, but all these definitions just beg the question: for instance, he identifies feeling of sympathy with a judgement approving something as good, yet, the latter is something intellectual and not an emotion.

Moving on to the question of motive, Jouffroys note that Smith defines through his classification of ethical qualities four primary virtues. Thus, Smith says that propriety corresponds to the virtues of self-command – restraining the manifestation of our affections in their proper limits – and benevolence – elevation of sympathetic affections to the level of others, while merit corresponds to justice – repressing of affections that could harm others –  and charity – development of affections that benefit others. He then notes, Jouffroy says, that all of these virtues are based on an instinctive desire to feel sympathy for others and seem sympathetic to others. Jouffroy quickly notes that sympathy is not our only motive: other instinctive emotions, self-interest and motives of reason motivate us also. In fact, Jouffroy states, of all these, only the motives of reason can really obligate us.

Finally, Jouffroy notes that for Smith the final goal of humanity is the production of perfect harmony of sentiments between humans. Jouffroy notes that Smith’s only argument for this position is that such a harmony would be beautiful and very useful to everyone. Jouffroy quickly points out that neither beauty nor utility is identical with goodness.

Jouffrey points out that other examples of the sentimentalist or instinctive system have suggested the existence of a peculiar moral sense that has the particular ability to pick out what is good and evil. Jouffroy admits that this improves Smith’s system in that such a moral sense wouldn’t be as fluctuating as sympathy. Yet, he at once adds, such a system also falls to the problem of how to prove the superiority of such a moral sense in relation to other instincts.

Jouffroy thinks that the sentimentalist system is ultimately better than the egoist system, since it at least acknowledges the existence of disinterested motives. Yet, he states, it fails in trying to regard disinterested motives as instinctual. True, Jouffroy admits, instinctual desire is not consciously interested, but it still has a personal, albeit unconscious motive. In comparison, a truly moral action would involve conscious rejection of selfish motives and a choice of a disinterested motive.

Jouffroy points out that the followers of the sentimentalist system think that only instinct can show what is good and evil, since reason can merely analyse what this decision of the instinct means. Yet, he insists, reason does go beyond this immediate notion of what seems good to us and conceives of an absolute goal of everything. Such an absolute goal is beyond instinct, because it is universal. Thus, Jouffroy says, reason must know by itself that humans have an end, that this end is good and that natural desires reveal our end, before it can move on to evaluating the data from instincts. In other words, we must know absolutely that whatever our nature is, we should strive for our goals, but the determining of our nature and thus our goal is to be decided with the help of our instincts.

All the errors of the sentimentalist system, Jouffroy suggests, are ultimately based on its empiricist outlook: if all ideas are generated by experience, we are left only with an internal observation of our desires and an external observation of their objects. True idea of good, Jouffroy insists, can be justified only through a priori conceptions of intuitive reason. Rejection of this justification leads in a consistent manner to egoism, while in trying to avoid egoism, sentimentalism stumbles on a basic contradiction that disinterested motives exist, but cannot be justified empirically.

Jouffroy finds it easy to understand why people have been attracted by sentimentalism. As he has already indicated earlier, natural instincts do often agree with self-love and even virtue. When a person is interested in the origin of the notions of our morality, they often just pick out the most obvious component of our volitions, that is, natural instincts. This choice is made even more natural, Jouffroy suggests, by the fact that the intuitive reason does not provide moral notions through any reasoning, but spontaneously, like through an intuitive invention, and this immediacy is easily confused with the immediacy of instincts.