The ethics of fantasy

However, even if all the difficulties and indeterminacies men-tioned in the last section were resolved, by argument or by decision, there would still be a fatal objection to the resulting act utilitarian system. It would be wholly impracticable. The system can, indeed, be looked at in several different ways, but this charge can be sustained against each interpretation in turn.

Suppose, first, that it is considered as a morality in the broad sense, as an all-inclusive theory of conduct. Then, when utility or the general happiness is proposed as the immediate criterion of right action, is it intended that each agent should take the happiness of all as his goal? This, surely, is too much to expect.

M i l l himself conceded this, and replied to this objection by saying that it confuses the rule of action with the motive of it.

T h e great majority of good he said, intended not for the benefit of the world, but for that of individuals and the thoughts of the most virtuous man need not travel beyond the particular persons concerned, except so far as is necessary to assure himself that in benefiting them he is not violating the rights, that is, the legitimate and authorized

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tations, of any one But even if we accept this clarification, and take utilitarianism to be supplying not the motive but only a test of right actions, the charge of impracticality still stands.

We cannot require that the actions of people generally should even pass the test of being such as to maximize the happiness of all, whether or not this is their motive. Even within a small village or commune it is too much to expect that the efforts of all members should be wholly directed towards the promoting of the well-being of all. A n d such total cooperation is out of the question on the scale of a nation state, let alone where the are to be the whole human race, including its future or possible future members, and perhaps all other sentient beings as The question, which moral philosophers sometimes discuss,

would happen if there were a society of pure act u t i l i is purely academic. We can indeed work out an answer, though only with difficulty, because this hypothesis is so far removed from anything within our experience that it is difficult to envisage it consistently and thoroughly. But the answer would have no direct bearing on any policies of practical importance. A l l real societies, and all those which it is of direct practical use to consider, are ones whose members have to a great extent divergent and conflicting purposes. A n d we must expect that their actions will consist largely of the pursuit of these divergent and conflicting purposes, and consequently will not only not be motivated by a desire for the general happiness but also will commonly fail the proposed test of being such as to maximize the general happiness.

Act utilitarianism is by no means the only moral theory that displays this extreme of impracticality. The biblical com-mandment T h o u love thy neighbour as though it has its roots in a mistranslation of a much more realistic rule, is often taken as prescribing a universal and equal concern for all men. So interpreted, it is, as M i l l says, effectively equivalent to the utilitarian principle. A n d it is similarly impracticable.

People simply are not going to put the interests of all their on an equal footing with their own interests and

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near to them. Such universal concern will not be the actual motive of their choices, nor will they act as i f it were.

In Chapter 4 I argued that an ethics based on the univer-salizability of moral judgements would come close, in its specific demands, to some kind of utilitarianism only if it in-cluded what I there called the stage of

taking account of all different tastes and rival ideals, or looking at things from all actual points of view at once. Only this -indeed only this pushed to an extreme - and not the first and second stages on their own, would give equal weight to the interests of all. W i t h the extreme form of this third stage in-cluded, universal prescriptivism would be open to the same charge of impracticality as utilitarianism and the doctrine of neighbourly love, but if only the first and second stages were incorporated, or only these with a modest version of the third, it would not.

But why have moralists and preachers thought it worthwhile to propound rules that obviously have so little chance of being followed? They must surely have thought that by setting up such admittedly unattainable ideals they might induce at least some movement towards them, that if men were told to let universal beneficence guide all their conduct, they would not indeed do this, but would allow some small admixture of uni-versal beneficence to help to direct their actions.

This would amount to proposing utilitarianism (or the doc-trine of neighbourly love) no longer as a morality in the broad sense but indirectly and in effect as one in the narrow sense: not as an overriding guide to conduct in general, but as a check or corrective on conduct which was very largely otherwise mo-tivated and otherwise directed. I shall discuss utilitarianism, ex-plicitly so presented, in the next section. Here I would remark only that if this is what is intended, it would be much better if it were explicitly so presented. To put forward as a morality in the broad sense something which, even if it were admirable, would be an utterly impossible ideal is likely to do, and surely has in fact done, more harm than good. It encourages the treatment of principles not as guides to action but as a which 131

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accompanies actions with which it is quite incompatible. It is a commonplace that religious morality often has little effect on the lives of believers. It is equally true, though not so frequently pointed out, that utilitarian morality is often treated as a topic of purely academic discussion, and is not taken any more seriously as a practical guide. In both cases the mistake is the same. To identify morality with something that certainly will not be followed is a sure way of bringing it into contempt -practical contempt, which combines all too readily with theo-retical respect.

But why, it may be asked, are such moralities of universal concern impracticable? Primarily because a large element of selfishness - or, in an older terminology, self-love - is a quite ineradicable part of human nature. Equally, if we distinguish as Butler did the particular passions and affections from self-love, we must admit that they are inevitably the major part of human motivation, and the actions which express and realize them cannot be expected in general to tend towards the general hap-piness. Even what we recognize as unselfishness or benevolence is equally incompatible with universal concern. It takes the j form of what Broad called self-referential altruism - concern for others, but for others who have some special connection with oneself; children, parents, friends, workmates, neighbours j in the literal, not the metaphorically extended, sense. Wider affections than these usually centre upon devotion to some special cause religious, political, revolutionary, nationalist -not upon the welfare of human beings, let alone sentient beings, \ in general. It is much easier, and commoner, to display a self-sacrificing love for some of one's fellow men if one can combine this with hostility to others. It is quite implausible for j M i l l to argue that such an array of limited motives can express \ themselves in actions which will conform to the utilitarian stan-dard, provided only that the agent assures himself that he is not violating the rights of anyone else. As a proposed general pat-tern of conduct, there is indeed much to be said for the pursuit j of some such array of special and limited goals within bounds set by respect for some of others. But it is misleading to

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present such a pattern as a consequence of the act utilitarian standard of right action, and to suggest that each choice that is a component in such a pattern could be validated as that which, out of the options available to that agent at that time, would contribute more than any other to the happiness of all men or of all sentient beings.

But could not human nature be changed? I do not know. Of course, given the techniques of mass persuasion adolescents can be turned into Red Guards or Hitler Youth or pop fans, but in each of these we have only fairly superficial redirection of what are basically the same motives. It is far more doubtful whether any agency could effect the far more fundamental changes that would be needed to make practicable a morality of

universal concern. Certainly no ordinary processes of edu-cation can bring them about.

Besides, if such changes could be effected, they might well prove self-defeating. Thus Bernard Williams has argued that in becoming capable of acting out of universal concern, people would have to be stripped of the motives on which most of what is of value in human life is based - close affections, private pursuits, and many kinds of competition and struggle. Even if our ultimate goal were the utilitarian one of maximizing the general happiness, the cultivation of such changes in human nature as would make an act utilitarian morality practicable might not be the most sensible way of pursuing it. But in case this is at most a remote possibility, and has little relevance to our present choice of a first order moral system. For the present our terms of reference can be summed up in words close to those of Rousseau: we are to take men as they are and moral laws as they might be.

It may be objected that if we t r i m down moral demands to fit present human capacity, we bring morality into contempt in another way. But I do not mean that moral demands are to be so minimal that they are likely to be fulfilled by most people pretty well at once. We may well advocate moral principles that are in conflict with established habits of thought and behaviour, that prescribe a degree of respect the claims of others - and 133

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of distant others - which can flourish only by overcoming in-grained selfishness and limitations of generosity that are author-ized by the existing law and the real conventional morality (as

contrasted with the fantasy moralities of utilitarianism and neighbourly love). A l l I am insisting upon is that we should advocate practicable reforms, that we should look for rules or principles of conduct that can fit in with the relatively per-manent tendencies of human motives and thought.