WHENCE THE DEMAND FOR ETHICAL THEORY?

Abstract

Where does the impetus towards ethical theory come from? What drives humans to make values explicit, consistent, and discursively justi(able? This paper situates the demand for ethical theory in human life by identifying the practical needs that give rise to it. Such a practical derivation puts the demand in its place: while (nding a home for it in the public decisionmaking of modern societies, our account also imposes limitations on the demand by presenting it as scalable and contextsensitive. This differentiates strong forms of the demand calling for theory from weaker forms calling for less, and contexts where it has a place from contexts where it is out of place. In light of this, subjecting personal deliberation to the demand turns out to involve a tradeoff. systematization by exercising our judgment in a particular case; nor, according to Williams, does that authority derive from the idea that reason itself demands this kind of systematization. To think that systematization is required either by reason itself or by the need for rational con)ict resolution, Williams maintains, betrays an overly rationalistic conception of rationality.3 But even if we agree with Williams that neither the need to resolve con)icts as such nor reason itself pull us in the direction of ethical theory, it does not necessarily follow that there is no such pull. In “Why Practice Needs Ethical Theory,” Martha Nussbaum has argued that there is a practical demand for ethical theory. Williams, she wryly remarks, conveys the impression of thinking that “when we do away with theory we will be left with people like Bernard Williams”: energetically critical and selfcritical people, not captive to any other theory, and sensitive to distortions in their experience (2000, p. We (nd ourselves with a plurality of values which, even within one person, can con)ict in ways that are not resolvable without loss.1 The need to resolve these con)icts can seem to pull ethical thought in the direction of ethical theory and systematization, notably by demanding that values be made explicit in terms of stateable principles, that they be made consistent by using some of them to overturn others in systematic ways, and that they be rendered as far as possible discursively justi!able. It is this bundle of demands—which we shall call “the Demand” for short—that will be our central concern in this paper.2 Bernard Williams has argued that insofar as we yield to the Demand, there will be a question as to where the resulting regimentation of ethical thought derives its authority from. That authority cannot simply derive from the need to resolve con)icts of values, since we are perfectly capable of rationally resolving con)icts of values without such This content downloaded from 188.154.64.229 on Wed, 31 Mar 2021 10:20:34 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 136 / AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 70). But ordinary life, Nussbaum notes, is not like a Henry James novel with liberal politics thrown in. It is teeming with crude and illconsidered theories regimenting people’s lives. In practice, therefore, we need good ethical theories to drive out the bad. Whatever our conception of rationality, there is a practical demand for ethical theory. In this paper, we show that Williams can agree with Nussbaum that the Demand has a place, notably in public life, and that it is indeed a practical demand; but precisely because it is a practical demand, it must be situated in the practical contexts from which it derives its point, and this means that it arises only in certain contexts, and that even then, it remains a demand for far less than a fullblown ethical theory. We thus propose to take what might be called a humanistic approach to ethical theory: an approach that seeks to situate philosophically vexing subject matters in human life by taking an agentcentered view of them and inquiring into the practical point in human affairs of thinking along these lines in the !rst place.4 Applied to ethical theory, such a humanistic approach invites us to try and make sense, in light of facts about us and our situation, of why we come to feel the impetus towards ethical theory in the !rst place. It encourages to ask such questions as: Who needs to subject ethical thought to the Demand? Do we all need to do it all of the time, or only some of us under certain circumstances? And do we really always need a fullblown systematic and coherent ethical theory, or does the pull towards ethical theory come in degrees? Answering these questions by situating the Demand in human life will reveal that it is not just a fetish, but is rooted in human needs, so that there is a vindicatory explanation for why the Demand arises. Yet it will also vindicate the Demand only up to a point, presenting it as overreaching itself if it is taken either to apply across the board or necessarily to pull us all the way to ethical theory. This is because understanding the Demand as arising out of situated practical needs suggests that it is scalable and contextsensitive: it is scalable insofar as we can distinguish between a demand for a fullblown ethical theory and a weaker demand only for some degree of explication, systematization, and discursive justi!cation; and it is contextsensitive insofar as we can separate contexts in which the Demand has a point from contexts in which it is otiose or even harmful. Understanding these aspects of the Demand will help us put it in its proper place and think about how much ground—particularly in personal deliberation—we should cede to it. 1. Situating the Demand To situate the Demand in human life, we must understand what facts about human beings and their situation it grows out of and derives its point from. Williams goes some way towards doing this in a paper entitled “Con-icts of Values” (1981a), which complements Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. In this paper, Williams has surprisingly positive things to say about the impetus towards ethical theory. Contrary to the impression he gives in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, he is not a sceptic about ethical theory across the board. While he denies that the Demand is a constitutive requirement of logic or rationality, he argues that it does have a practical basis in individual and social needs. In particular, he suggests that it is rooted in a requirement on agencies in a “public, large and impersonal forum” to be “governed by an explicable order which allows these agencies to be answerable” (1981a, p. 81). Taking our cue from Williams, we can try to place the Demand in human affairs by sketching, in barest outline, a prototypical situation in which the Demand arises in its most primitive form in response to human needs, thereby offering what might be called a practical derivation of the Demand. This This content downloaded from 188.154.64.229 on Wed, 31 Mar 2021 10:20:34 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ETHICAL THEORY / 137 way of proceeding is modeled on Williams’s vindicatory genealogy of the virtues of truth (2002), which is in turn modeled on E. J. Craig’s (1990) genealogy of the concept of knowledge. While Williams and Craig aim to derive the need for the virtues of truth and the concept of knowledge from very basic needs that human beings have anyway, however, we aim to show that the need for ethical theory derives from needs that are far more local—needs indexed to particular, restricted circumstances. But though the needs are more local, the method is the same: to determine what a conceptual practice does for us by identifying its natural home and the needs it answers to.5 We can start on this task with the uncontroversial idea that human beings with a plurality of values will get in each other’s way. Given a commitment to social coexistence, they will need some means of resolving con!icts in nonviolent ways, of attributing priority to certain values and determining how far they are to be realized at the expense of the realization of other values. This in itself could be achieved in many different ways—one could just about imagine it being achieved through some process that randomized over different outcomes. But if the decisions reached by any such con!ictresolver are to be effective in preventing con!ict, they also need to be enforced, and this will require some form of public power. If the exercise of this power is to be more than mere coercion—which, by breeding resentment and violence, threatens to be part of the problem rather than the solution—the decisionmaking needs to be authoritative. There needs to be some distinction between might and right, between brute power and power that is legitimated by some kind of legitimation story. In the course of history, such legitimation stories have taken very different forms, many of them transcendental. But in order to bring something like the need for ethical theory into view, we need to factor in two crucial facts about us and our situation that are far more local. The "rst thing that we need to factor in is that we moderns in liberal democracies have particularly demanding standards for what counts as a legitimation of power. As Williams argues (2005a, p. 95), this is connected with the fact that many other legitimation stories, including notably transcendental ones, no longer carry enough conviction under conditions of modernity—we have less material available in terms of which to present decisions as authoritative. But one notable way in which, for us, decisionmaking can differ from purely arbitrary assertions of will by a Caligulan ruler is by being an impartial exercise of reasonable judgement (Williams 2005a, p. 94).6 The second thing to factor in is that we live in large societies. In suf"ciently small and closeknit societies, it might be possible for a person to possess authority in the eyes of those concerned already in virtue of the relations of personal trust established through close acquaintance. The decisions ma