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.
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