The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life
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"The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life" was an essay by the philosopher
William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
, which he first delivered as a lecture to the Yale Philosophical Club, in 1891. It was later included in the collection, ''The Will to Believe and other Essays in Popular Philosophy.'' He drew a distinction between three questions in
ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns m ...
:
psychological Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between t ...
,
metaphysical Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
,
casuistic In ethics, casuistry ( ) is a process of reasoning that seeks to resolve moral problems by extracting or extending theoretical rules from a particular case, and reapplying those rules to new instances. This method occurs in applied ethics and ju ...
. "The psychological question asks after the historical origin of our moral ideas and judgments; the metaphysical question asks what the very meaning of the words 'good,' 'ill,' and 'obligation' are; the casuistic question asks what is the measure of the various goods and ills which men recognize, so that the philosopher may settle the true order of human obligations."


The psychological question

As James sees it, the psychological question is whether human ideas of good and evil arise from "the association of ertain idealswith act of simple bodily pleasures and reliefs from pain." He believes that some elements of our moral sentiment do have such a source, and that
Jeremy Bentham Jeremy Bentham (; 15 February 1748 Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates">O.S._4_February_1747.html" ;"title="Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O.S. 4 February 1747">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.htm ...
and his followers have done the world a lasting service by pointing that out. But he doesn't believe that association and pleasure/pain calculus are adequate to account for the psychology of morality. One must also admit innate, brain-born ideas or tendencies. In a famous passage that recalls some of
Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (, ; rus, Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, p=ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ dəstɐˈjefskʲɪj, a=ru-Dostoevsky.ogg, links=yes; 11 November 18219 ...
's work, James wrote that "if the hypothesis were offered of a world in which Messrs Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris' utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture," most people would feel that the enjoyment of such a utopia would be a "hideous thing" at such a cost. That feeling, he infers, must be brain born. The passage was the inspiration for
Ursula K. Le Guin Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (; October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an American author best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the '' Earthsea'' fantasy series. She was ...
's short story "
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is a 1973 work of short philosophical fiction by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. With deliberately both vague and vivid descriptions, the narrator depicts a summer festival in the utopian city of Omelas, w ...
Le Guin, Ursula K. (1973)
"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"
.
(Variations on a theme by William James)".


The metaphysical question

The gist of this section is the contention that to be good, something has to be desired, by some sentient being. A world of only rocks would have no good or bad. A world with one thinking being in it would have plenty of good and bad—some things would work out as that being wanted them, others wouldn't. It could even have moral conflict of a sort, as that one thinker may have trouble rendering his own ideals consistent with one another. From such considerations, James concludes that "claim" and "obligation" are two sides of the same coin. Without a claim actually made by some concrete person there can be no obligation, but there is obligation wherever there is a claim.


The casuistic question

But this resolution of the metaphysical question only makes the casuistic question (settling the true order of human obligations) seem hopelessly difficult. If everything that anyone could want of me, or that I could want from myself, be considered an obligation, then my obligations are hopelessly in conflict with one another. "The various ideals perating in the worldhave no common character apart from the fact that they are ideals. No single abstract principle can be so used as to yield to the philosopher anything like a scientifically accurate and genuinely useful casuistic scale." How, then, shall I make choices? How shall I live? James' answer is that history is resolving this problem for us, and our task is to co-operate in the process by which it does so, by which apparently irreconciliable demands are reconciled over time. One might say, although the terminology would be foreign to him, that he found his
ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns m ...
within a pluralist
meta-ethics In metaphilosophy and ethics, meta-ethics is the study of the nature, scope, and meaning of moral judgment. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normative ethics (questions of how one ought ...
.


Original publishing history

James, William: "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life" -- ''International Journal of Ethics'', volume 1, number 3 (April 1891), pp. 330–354 (Available via
JSTOR JSTOR (; short for ''Journal Storage'') is a digital library founded in 1995 in New York City. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary sources as well as current issues of j ...
) The essay was also featured in: *James, William: ''The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy''. First edition: Longmans, Green, 1897.


References


External links


Text of ''The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life, The 1891 essays Essays by William James Modern philosophical literature Ethics essays Metaphysics literature Philosophy of psychology