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.
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti