Ethics: a very short introduction by Simon Blackburn

Author:Simon Blackburn [Blackburn, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy, General, Ethics & Moral Philosophy, Ethics
ISBN: 9780192804426
Publisher: Oxford ; Oxford University Press, 2003, c2001.
Published: 2003-05-01T10:19:37.185000+00:00

Part Three Foundations

It is time to pick up some unfinished business. In Part One, I tried to deflect some of the hostile thoughts many people voice about ethics. But we had to acknowledge the threat of relativism, and nihilism, and scepticism. We might still fear that the voice of conscience is a delusion. We might still flounder when we try to gain some sense of its authority. Are truth and knowledge possible, or does reasoning about what to do eventually hinge on nothing but brute will? Or are there yet other alternatives?

16. Reasons and foundations

Suppose we imagine an ordinary, everyday reason for acting. The everyday reason might be ‘I wanted it’, or ‘I liked him (so I did something for him)’, or ‘That’s what will make the most money’. A reason might be narrowly selfish, or it might be highly admirable: ‘It helps to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ or ‘It delivers people from horrendous pains and miseries’. These last two would be the reasons benevolent people offer for actions.

These reasons can be appealing. If our sympathies lie in the same direction, we will appreciate them and accept them. They work in many conversations. But there is no proof that they have to work. It seems to depend how much the audience sympathizes with us, or with humanity, or feels the same way as us. It seems to depend on our feelings or sentiments. And feelings or sentiments are not, on the face of it, capable of proof.

Something much grander would be a reason that everyone must acknowledge to be a reason, independently of their sympathies and inclinations. I shall call that a Reason, with a capital letter. It would armlock everyone. You could not ignore it or discount it just because you felt differently. It would have a necessary influence, or what philosophers sometimes call ‘apodictic’ force. It would bind all rational agents, insofar as they are rational. If you offer someone a reason (no capital letter) and they shrug it off, you might say they are insensitive or inhuman, callous or selfish, imprudent or sentimental. These are defects of the heart. You may regret them, but you may not be able to prove to the audience that they are defects at all. But if you offer someone a capital-letter Reason and they shrug it off, then something different is wrong. Their very rationality is in jeopardy. There is something wrong with their head, if they cannot see things that just ‘stand to reason’.

Philosophers, of course, are professionally wedded to reasoning, so it is natural to them to hope that we can find Reasons.

Before the 18th century, many moral philosophers thought that we could. They thought that fundamental principles of ethics could be seen to be true by the ‘natural light of reason’. The principles had the same kind of certainty as arithmetic or geometry; you could see from your armchair that they had to be true. They were innate, or ‘self-evident’. For many they were prescribed for us by a benevolent deity, so that ignoring them would be a kind of impiety.

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