A Decent Life Read online

  The fact is, I am too committed to the projects of my life to sacrifice them on the altar of extreme moral altruism. This may or may not be a good thing, depending on what you think of the arguments just presented. Nevertheless, it is my reality, and, I suspect, the reality for most of us. And because of this, perhaps we need to think about what a morality for people like the rest of us might look like.

  Seeking an Alternative

  If we are to create a moral vision based on a more realistic view of what we are morally capable of, what would it be? The arguments above, after all, may convince us that we are permitted to take account of the meaningfulness of our lives, or that it would even be better in some ways to do so, or at least that most of us can’t live within the framework of a strict morality. But that doesn’t offer any positive guidance regarding how we should take up our moral tasks, given the restrictions on morality for which they argue. Otherwise put, these arguments are largely negative in character. They don’t give us an alternative framework for thinking about morality in other than altruistic terms.

  The fact is, so much philosophical reflection has been dedicated to different understandings of “the good life” that a life that is less than that (or other than that) has received very little attention. There have been many arguments that are dedicated to showing that we need not be as morally focused as the extreme forms of these theories require. However, it is one thing to argue that we don’t have to be moral altruists of one stripe or another, or at least to admit that we are not capable of it. It is quite another to say what a substantial but nonaltruistic morality might look like.

  In seeking such a moral view, one obvious answer seems to impose itself at the outset. Perhaps we can take one or another of the moral views on offer and dial it back a bit to accommodate our other commitments and projects. Maybe we need not think about morality differently, but instead adopt a sort of consequentialism-lite, or deontology-lite, or virtue ethics-lite. Rather than developing an entirely different perspective, we could just dim the lights a bit on the moral theories we have in front of us and act in accordance with one of them. Wouldn’t that do the trick?

  In fact, this idea has already occurred among philosophers. Consider the unlovely term satisficing, which was introduced in the context of consequentialist theory.15 The idea of satisficing recognizes that optimizing moral consequences of every decision is too much to ask of a person. We have seen the depth of sacrifice this would involve. However, perhaps optimization is not necessary. Instead of seeking to produce the best consequences all the time, one should dedicate one’s moral energies toward producing good enough consequences, or better consequences than some of one’s current life choices might otherwise produce.

  In one way, this appears to be a bit of obvious advice. For most of us it seems a good thing, a morally good thing, to make the world a better place (although it is not so obvious for Kant, for whom it is intentions rather than outcomes that matter). The question is whether, in taking satisficing on board, we can now count consequentialism as a helpful theory in understanding and moving forward with our daily moral lives. Here things get complicated. As we have seen, consequentialism has its quirks. It seems to allow for kinds of moral luck that most of us would want to reject. It also has other unpalatable implications. Here’s one. It would seem that consequentialism would counsel us to punish a person for a crime they did not commit in order to save two other innocent people from being punished for it.

  Imagine the supervisor in the office you’re working in is biased against two of your coworkers. One of the laptops has gone missing from the office, and your supervisor, without evidence, accuses these coworkers of colluding to steal the computer. Let’s suppose he says that they’ve been talking suspiciously while looking at the laptop in question. Now you don’t know who stole the laptop, or even whether it was stolen at all. But you do know that in addition to these coworkers, your supervisor doesn’t like Sally. If you say that you saw Sally do it, the boss will fire her and it will save the jobs of your other two coworkers.

  In this case, consequentialism, at least in its traditional form, would recommend that you accuse Sally. It would not simply say that it is okay to accuse Sally; it would say you should do it. That would be the best thing to do, the morally right thing, since it would save the jobs of several other coworkers, who are likely just as innocent as Sally is. As with the cases of moral luck we looked at, this seems an unacceptable way to conduct our moral lives.16

  Not all types of consequentialism would counsel accusing Sally,17 although most would allow for some forms of moral luck (although perhaps not the most offensive examples). So perhaps it would be possible to construct a consequentialist moral theory that would incorporate satisficing. It would be fairly complicated, since it would have to provide theoretical ways around some of consequentialism’s traditional difficulties. In addition, it would have to tell us something about how much in the way of good consequences is enough. After all, almost everyone will agree that consequences matter. And most of us will not be able to live in such a way as to seek to create the best consequences all the time. In that sense, we’re all “satisficers.” But if we are to have guidance from a consequentialist moral theory, then it’s going to have to say something about when we’ve reached the satisficing level. Adding that challenge alongside the others will make for a fairly complicated theory.

  I do not want to say this cannot be done. My worry is different. Even if it can be done—and it is certainly worth attempting—then it is not clear how helpful it would be in assisting us in our daily moral lives. Such a theory would in all likelihood need to be constructed at a fairly abstract level. (When I say abstract here, I don’t mean difficult, but rather abstracted or distant from mundane moral practice.) So in addition to the theory there would have to be ways to say how the theory is to be applied to our moral lives. And at that point we might be tempted by another question. Might there be another way of approaching our daily moral lives that does not need first to ascend to an abstract moral theory? Could we not construct a different frame for thinking morally, one that recognizes our moral limits and yet offers us some guidance without being as divorced from our moral practice as consequentialist theory?

  This is not to say that there is no use for such an abstract theory. There are moral dilemmas that might be difficult to navigate from within a moral framework that is focused on daily living. To anticipate, the framework I will offer here will be unable to solve some serious moral dilemmas. In cases like that, having a more rigorous moral theory to appeal to would be helpful. However, it is the wager of this book that there is at least one way of framing our moral lives that, from within the moral limits of most of us, can help us recognize what we often do and yet guide us in our commonplace moral lives. And that framework does not require an abstract moral theory.

  However, if consequentialism won’t help us live within our moral limits, perhaps deontology or virtue ethics will. In fact, deontology, especially in its Kantian version, is even less promising than consequentialism. With consequentialism, we at least have a rough idea of what it means to satisfice, that is, to do less than try to maximize the good. This is because consequentialism is about amounts, specifically amounts of good. If we are really good consequentialists, we will produce the most amount of good we can. If we are satisficers, we’ll produce less. Kantian deontology, in many cases (although admittedly not all), doesn’t have a concept of the more and the less, and so it is unclear how we are to go about being less than fully deontological.18 Does this mean that we don’t keep our promises all the time, or that we lie periodically? Does it mean that I act in accordance with the categorical imperative 70 percent of the time instead of 100 percent? It is difficult to get a grip on what a Kantian deontology would look like in a more modest form.

  Perhaps we can approach the categorical imperative in another way. Surely we cannot live up to the categorical imperative all the time. It is too much to be always honest, to
keep all our promises, to help others whenever the opportunity arises, to develop our talents to the best of our abilities. However, we can hold up the categorical imperative as a model of how we should act, and seek to live up to it as best we can. We can take it as an ideal by which we can measure our own moral conduct and our moral progress. We may never achieve this ideal in full—in fact, most of us probably won’t—but at least we will have some guidance about what we ought to aspire to. Otherwise put, we will all be moral failures, but perhaps some of us will fail less egregiously than others.

  There are problems even with this view. As we have already seen, Kantian deontology does have its quirks. Should I really aspire to keep all my promises even in situations where it could cause me to ignore a great harm that I can prevent? Should I seek not to lie even when telling the truth will only serve to hurt someone’s feelings? If Kantian deontology is going to be an adequate moral guide, then it will need to be revised in ways that make it more responsive to the dilemmas of daily moral practice. But then we run the risk, as many people have noted, of a categorical imperative whose principles are determined by our experience rather than being a guide to it. Can we instead construct a moral framework that would be more useful in thinking about our mundane moral lives? In constructing this moral framework we need not neglect the core idea of many deontological views, that intention matters. But neither do we need to place intention at its center and seek to characterize all moral action in terms of it.

  How about virtue ethics? In some ways this seems more promising than the other two views. We can be more or less brave or magnanimous or (to use more modern virtues) patient or tolerant. In a way, it may seem that Aristotle and his contemporary followers have offered us a moral view that can admit of the more and the less, and so can offer guidance to those of us who are not likely to embody full virtue but seek to be morally decent. And this way of taking things would not be entirely beside the point.

  There is a limitation here. Virtue ethics asks us to develop particular virtues, virtues that have a broadly moral character. We might think of these virtues as themes for our lives. Recall that for Aristotle the good life is not to be assessed by its particular acts in the way that consequentialism and Kantian deontology do. Rather, it should be assessed on personal character, on the themes that characterize that life. Virtue ethics proposes a set of themes (or different sets of themes, depending on the virtue ethicist) that properly characterize a good life. And, if we are interested in morality, that good life should be a morally good one.

  However, there are other themes that might be said to characterize a life that would give it meaning but not be considered specifically moral themes.19 Some lives might be characterized by themes of intensity or curiosity. Other lives express themes of spirituality or steadfastness or spontaneity. And these themes may be central in making the life a significant one for the person living it. Imagine certain rock singers (in my generation, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, James Brown) without intensity animating their lives. Consider friends you know whose spontaneity inspires you, or whose spirituality—even if you don’t share it—is a source of admiration. These nonmoral themes are often central in making a life worthwhile for those who live it and inspiring for those who come across it. We would not, however, call these themes virtues, but rather something more like narrative values of meaning for those who live them.

  Moreover, it can be that these narrative values come into conflict with moral virtues. The spontaneous person may neglect some moral obligations, or the spontaneous person may drift away from previous commitments, leaving others in the lurch. It has been asked of Aristotle’s view whether all the virtues are necessarily convergent or mutually supporting in the way he believed them to be. When we look at other values, however, we have a deeper problem. Not only are some values not mutually supporting; they can be in open conflict. In cases like this, we might need to sacrifice some of the fullness of a virtue in order to accommodate other values that contribute to the meaningfulness of our lives.

  This does not require us to be entirely unvirtuous. We need not abandon all moral integrity for the sake of other values. Rather, it may be that in order for a person’s life to be meaningful to them, they cannot simply follow the virtuous path but instead must veer off at point onto other paths, paths without which they would not recognize their life as theirs. The parent who is steadfastly loyal to the daughter who brings light to her world cannot be expected to act with moral probity, or even with honesty, if the daughter is rightfully accused of something whose punishment would bring her great harm. Nor can what Aristotle calls temperance be asked of someone who throws their life into an artistic endeavor, convinced that only through committing their entire self to their art can they make it succeed. We need not entirely admire people like this. But neither need we—and we often do not—entirely fault them either. If their lapse is a moral one, it is also one that is both understandable and perhaps, in a way that is nonmoral, laudable as well.

  None of the three traditional moral views we have canvassed here seems capable, without significant revision, of accommodating the fact that most of us will not, indeed cannot, live entirely moral lives. We are something less—or perhaps something other—than altruists. Our lives involve projects and commitments whose importance to us may conflict at points with moral requirements. And at times we simply are not up to the task. We want to be moral beings, but for a variety of reasons, and for better or worse, our lives get in the way. Is there a manner of approaching morality that can both allow us our lives and at the same time give us a sense of how to proceed morally? Can we discover or construct a framework that recognizes our moral limits yet gives us moral guidance, a framework that perhaps cannot help us through deep moral dilemmas but can offer assistance in our daily engagements?

  We might be tempted by a simple approach, one that eliminates the necessity of constructing a moral framework. Perhaps we can just have a list of duties that would suffice for minimal moral decency. Follow the rules and you’re a morally decent person. Perhaps not morally great, but at least decent. Would a set of rules to follow provide us with the material we need to conduct our lives in ways that while not altruistic are at least morally acceptable to us?

  We might fear, indeed I think we should fear, that such a list would not offer moral decency but probably something more like moral mediocrity. After all, most of us are not simply interested in performing our basic moral duties and then moving on. We seek to integrate morality into our lives, to make it part of who we are. We would like the threads of our moral existence to be woven into the larger fabric of our lives, even though we acknowledge that not all the moral threads will fit the weave. We want morality to be an issue for us as we navigate through the world, not simply an external demand placed upon us.20

  How Shall We Proceed?

  It seems, then, that for those of us who want a helpful moral framework for our daily lives, we cannot rely on traditional moral theories either in their rigorous or slightly watered down form, nor can we appeal straightforwardly to the concept of moral duties. We must look elsewhere. What this book proposes is a different frame for moral reflection. It starts from the premise that most of us would like to be moral but that we will not or cannot be moral altruists. Its goal is to provide a way of thinking that not only helps us see what we already do morally but allows us to further our moral behavior in ways that remain within the parameters of what we can reasonably ask of ourselves. If this framework is to be helpful, both of these challenges must be met. If we only meet the first one—telling us what we already do—there would be no need for a framework. It might be nice to have one, but it wouldn’t offer us any guidance for our further moral action. “Oh, so that’s how we act. Cool,” would probably be the best response to a framework like that. And if we only meet the second one—giving us guidance—the proposed moral framework would not hook on to our current moral behavior. It wouldn’t give us a way of moving forward from where we are. It
runs the risk of feeling alien to us. So it will have to perform both tasks at once.

  It would be helpful, I think (I hope!) to locate this framework somewhere in between the abstractness of traditional moral theories and the specific types of moral acts we perform: more general than the latter, less general than the former. It will certainly borrow from the intuitions of traditional moral theories. After all, for most of us, consequences, intentions, and being a generally good person all matter morally. But it will not seek to decide among them in favor of one or another. In this way, the view offered here will be a little more diverse, or perhaps even more scattered, than traditional moral theories.

  However, there will be a single guiding thought that runs throughout. It is one that is not uncommon among moral philosophers. For many, in fact, it is the central theme of morality.21 This is the idea that decent moral action recognizes that there are others in the world who have lives to live. The idea lies at the heart of what I am calling “decency.” With regard to human beings (who will not be our only concern here), I have elsewhere elaborated the idea this way: “We have a sense of what it is in general to lead a human life: to engage in projects and relationships that unfold over time; to be aware of one’s death in a way that affects how one sees the arc of one’s life; to have biological needs like food, shelter, and sleep; to have basic psychological needs like care and a sense of attachment to one’s surroundings.”22 This is not meant to be an exhaustive definition of what it is to live a human life but rather a gesture in the right direction to help guide us in our behavior toward one another.