John .Casey on social ethics
Roles and Values: An Introduction to So. riot Ethics R. S. Downie (Methuen £1.60) It i rare for an analytical philosopher to try to show on purely a priori grounds that one type of political constitution is neces- sarily superior to any other. Such an enter- prise is more readily associated with philoso- phers like Hobbes or Hegel. Mr Downie is very unlike them in either manner or method, but in a rather casual way he does attempt to derive a political and social ethic from first principles.
The capacity or role in which 1 act may affect the description to be given of my action. As a private individual I can forgive, or else take revenge upon someone who has injured me. I can only punish or pardon him if I conceive myself as acting in some more .impersonal fashion—upholding cer- tain rules in my capacity as a judge, parent or some other authority. There are innumer- able roles in which I may act—doctor, father, lawyer—and many of them carry special responsibilities and duties. Although these duties are in a certain sense artificial —in that they could not exist outside of cer- tain social and legal institutions—they do sccm to be very like, moral duties. In other words there is a notion of 'social ethics'— the theme of Downie's book.
A central problem in social ethics is the relation between what I do in my public capacity and what 1 do as a private indivi- dual. In sentencing his own son to death Torquatus acted as an upright judge, but it is less obvious that as a man—or (as philo- sophers sometimes express it) 'as a moral agene--tie acted admirably. In the end it seems scarcely possible entirely to separate social and political ethics from personal ethics, and perhaps we must admit that there iS always a connection between what it is right or wrong for me to do as a Soldier cir doctor, and what it is right or wrong for Me to do as an individual., It always seems more plausible to base a social ethic upon individual morality, rather than the other
way round. • •
It is therefore not surprising that Downie seeks to derive his social ethic from certain very obvious facts of human nature and certain features central to the notion of the human personality. However a pervasive weakness in his method soon shows itself. Again and again he starts. from ,plausible, but weak, premises and proteeds to draw Striking, 'but iinplatisible, conclusions. He Points out, for example, that freedom from external compulsions is necessary over cer-. la.in areas of a man's life if he is to express himself in characteristically human actions. peprived of this degree of 'self-realisation' ne will fail to develop into a person at all. T. his is true enough, but Downie goes on immediately to deduce from it the political Principle of liberty. (The principles of utility and equality are supposed to follow in a similar fashion.) Yet surely it is obvious that liberty, as a social or political principle, means much more than the freedom to express oneself in characteristically human actions. Everything depends upon what we Wish to include in 'characteristically human actions'. Would they have to include the propagation of one's political opinions in public? Or artistic expression? It is normal to include the right to such activities in the notion of 'liberty', yet it would be absurd to hold that without such rights one is not fully a person. The notion of freedom is cer- tainly essential to the idea of choice, which in turn is fundamental to the whole idea of human action. But liberty, as a political principle, makes distinctions within the sphere of human action, allowing some actions as against others'. It cannot be de- duced from any fact about the concept 'of action itself.
Downie's fundamental principle is the moral (and Kantian) one of 'respect for persons as ends'. This is meant to lend sup- port, for instance, to his notion of political liberty. But what exactly he means by it re- mains very unclear. I respect a person as an end, it seems, if I treat him as a rational being capable of moral choices. But it is difficult to see what are the .political conse- quences (if any) of this. It would be absurd just to assert that people living under a poli- tical despot are ipso facto rendered less rational and capable of moral choice.
By a similar argument Downie concludes that a government can only be legitimate if the people `consent' to the constitution. According to this criterion the government of Elizabeth I was not legitimate even when her policies were universally popular. Downie is trying to connect legal authority with moral authority—a connection which
he considers to be 'the essence of democracy'. But this identification of 'assent' in the moral sense with 'consent' in the political sense is just what is in question. It is com- monly held that a moral rule cannot truly be said to be a rule which governs my con- duct unless I assent to it in a quite strong sense. If I never feel guilt or remorse for having broken the rule. then I cannot be said to have assented to it. But is 'consent' to a 'political constitution analogous? On the contrary, it would seem that I can consent to a political constitution simply passively, or through customary obedience. It may be that legitimate government must be based upon consent in this weak sense. To argue for something stronger is just to say that it ought to be based upon moral assent— which is not obviously true, and cannot be shown by a priori argument.
This is the real problem which Downie's book raises: It is most likely that the con- ceptual points which a moral or political philosopher can make are neutral as be- tween, say, democracy and monarchy. To show otherwise would certainly be extremely interesting. It would be particularly inter- esting if done from the standnoint. and with the methods, of modern analytical philoso- phy. But it would require an approach more consciously ambitious and more systematic than what we are offered here. Downie's fre- quent lapses into banality (as when he in- vites the reader to 'compare the moral de- cisions of those who created the Gestapo with those who created Oxfam') do not by themselves damage his argument; but they contribute to the impression of an extra- ordinarily thorough moral and political con- ventionality. If the utter reasonableness of liberal-democracy had seemed to him (if only for a moment) less obvious, he might have written a more interesting book.
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