REVIEWS
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1983.tb02532.x |
| Date | 01 July 1983 |
| Published date | 01 July 1983 |
REVIEWS
TWO
CONCEPTIONS
OF
MORALITY
MORAL
THINKING.
By
R.
M.
HARE.
[Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1981.
AFTER VIRTUE.
By
ALASDAIR MACINTYRE.
[London:
Duckworth.
1981.
MORAL
philosophy is not immune from changes in fashion, and if one looks
back over the last
30
or
so
years one can detect signs
of
what, in political
circles, is called
a
U-turn. Philosophers are apt to charge their predecessors
with asking the wrong questions, and in the years following the last war many
came to the opinion that earlier writers
on
ethics had made
so
little progress
because they had mistaken the subject-matter
of
their discipline. The proper
study
of
moral philosophers, it now appeared, was ethical language or, as
Hare put it,
''
the logical study
of
the language
of
morals." Book titles
reflected this:
Ethics
and Language, The Language
of
Morals, The Logic
of
Moral
Discourse,
The
Language
of
Ethics,
and
so
on. Implicit in this
is
the
distinction between those logical or meta-ethical questions that are the
proper domain
of
the moral philosopher and the questions of substantive
ethics that should only be discussed when
off
duty. It was
no
paradox
to
say
that ethics, thus conceived, was ethically neutral.
Thirty years
on
much has changed. Substantive ethics is once more in
fashion, journals have appeared to cater to this demand, and philosophers
find
themselves writing about justice, rights, war, animals, ecology, women,
euthanasia, reverse discrimination and other concerns. Some, and Hare
is one, believe that their investigations into moral language will contribute to
our search for
a
solution to the world's problems.
"
I
offer this book to the
public now rather than later," he writes in the Preface to
Moral Thinking,
''
not because
I
think it needs
no
improvement, but because of
a
sense of
urgency-a feeling that if these ideas were understood, philosophers
might do more to help resolve important practical issues. These are
issues over which people are prepared to fight and kill one another; and
it may be that unless some way
is
found of talking about them rationally
and with some hope
of
agreement, violence will finally engulf the world.
Philosophers have in recent years become increasingly aware
of
the role
that they might have in preventing this; but they have lacked any clear
idea
of
what constitutes a good argument
on
practical questions."
It
is to
fill
this gap that
Moral
Thinking
has been published. Hare's solution
is
a
two-level version
of
utilitarianism. He starts by distinguishing between
two levels
of
moral thinking, personified by the archangel and the prole. The
former is
a
being
of
superhuman intellectual powers and perfect impartiality
capable
of
performing moral calculations instantaneously and without fault.
He can therefore formulate (and act upon) the correct universal principle on
any occasion, and his thinking is,
in
Hare's sense, purely critical. The prole-
from 1984-represents the other extreme: he is capable
of
some moral
thought but only at the level of prima facie principles, and when these conflict
he is lost. Critical moral thinking is quite beyond him. Actual human beings
viii
and
242
pp.
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ix
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518
July 19831
REVIEWS
519
fall between these two extremes: we may rise towards the archangel by
thinking critically along the lines Hare recommends, or we may sink down to
join the prole by following the intuitionists or-much the same thing-by
failing to think
at
all.
The purpose
of
this device is,
of
course, to construct
a
theory that will
combine in
a
single account the merits
of
both act-utilitarianism and rule-
utilitarianism. Common objections to the former are that it makes unrealistic
demands on peoples’ impartiality and calculating abilities and that
it
leads to
immoral conclusions in many cases. The latter avoids these, but only at the
expense
of
demanding
a
rigorous and, from
a
utilitarian point
of
view,
irrational adherence to
a
set
of
rules. Hare’s aim is
to
show that such objections
are misconceived.
The terms
act-
and
rule-ictilitarianism,
though now part
of
current usage,
can be misleading. The point is not whether a utilitarian theory incorporates
rules but how it does. The aim
of
any utilitarian system is to maximise utility,
and
a
perfectly rational calculator-Hare’s archangel-has no need
for
rules,
whether to aid calculation, to act
as
precedent or to ensure impartiality. For
human beings this is not
so:
the costs
of
individual calculation would be
prohibitive, and the utility saved by doing calculations in batches-that is by
creating rules-would more than outweigh the losses caused by adherence to
the rules thus calculated. But these rules are no more means to an ulterior
end; they are (in Kantian terms) hypothetical imperatives
of
the form
“
if you
wish to maximise utility then.
,
.
.”
Everyone will know that there will be
some cases where adherence
to
the rule will not lead to the best result, but,
provided no one knows
which
cases these are, uniform obedience to the rule
must be correct. This, however, remains true only if the particular exceptions
remain unknown; once it becomes known that breaking the rule in particular
circumstances increases the general utility then to carry on following the rule
would be quite irrational. The crucial question is therefore whether we can
ever know-and probability is all that is needed-that any particular excep-
tion exists. It
is
at this point that critics
of
utilitarianism put forward what they
hope
to
be plausible counter-examples: judicial condemnation
of
the inno-
cent, carving people up for spare parts, and
so
on.
Hare’s two-level theory is
intended to cut the ground from under this kind
of
objection. At the critical
level any counter-example, however far-fetched, may be introduced, but there
can be no appeal
to
received intuitions. Down at the intuitive level these may
be invoked, but now the counter-examples must be such as would occur
“
in
a
real-life situation
”
(p.
133).
The
success
of
this analysis will depend on its
ability to deflect any potentially dangerous counter-examples up to the
critical level where they can
do
no harm.
I
do not think Hare’s argument
succeeds. Of course one can understand his irritation with some
of
the vague
but fantastic objections conjured up by opponents, but odd things do happen
in the real world too, and sometimes they end up in the courts. Cases like
R.
v.
Dudley and Stephens
do not happen very often, but once is enough. In
this case the argument for homicide is, from
a
utilitarian point
of
view, pretty
strong, for it has only
to
be shown on
a
balance
of
probabilities that the
expected utility of this course of action is greater than that
of
any other.
What Hare
is
trying to
show
is that what he calls our moral intuitions are
adequate
for
those occasions that happen in the real world-hence the fantastic
counter-examples put forward by hostile critics. (This choice
of
the term
intuition
for
our
ordinary moral beliefs is not,
I
think,
a
good one.
To
call
something an intuition is to give it a particular epistemological status,
to
say
that we know it by intuition. Many moral philosophers have made just this
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