【伦理学】多元而冲突的价值.doc

Stocker, Michael , Guttag Professor of Ethics and Political Philosophy, Syracuse University, New York; Reader in Philosophy , La Trobe University, Melbourne
Plural and Conflicting Values
Print ISBN 0198240554, 1992

Summary Table of Contents

Introduction 1

PART I:  
CONFLICT
1.  
Dirty Hands and Ordinary Life 9
2.  
Moral Immorality 37
3.  
Dirty Hands and Conflicts of Values and of Desires in Aristotle's Ethics 51
4.  
Moral Conflicts: What They Are and What They Show 85

PART II:  
PLURALITY AND JUDGEMENT
5.  
Courage, the Doctrine of the Mean, and the Possibility of Evaluative and Emotional Coherence 129
6.  
Plurality and Choice 165

PART III:  
PLURALITY AND CONFLICT
7.  
Akrasia: The Unity of the Good, Commensurability, and Comparability 211
8.  
Monism, Pluralism, and Conflict 241

PART IV:  
MAXIMIZATION
9.  
Maximization: Some Conceptual Problems 281
10.  
Maximization: Some Evaluative Problems 310

Bibliography 343

Indexes 351

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Introduction
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Michael Stocker
Neither plural values nor conflicting values can be understood without understanding the other. And to understand ethics, we must understand both. They raise obvious and pressing problems in social and political theory. They also raise important problems within one person or one ethical theory—the locus of this work. Not surprisingly, then, they have received a considerable amount of attention recently—an amount of attention they fully deserve.
So, I welcome the fact that they are now being studied. But I do not welcome many of the things claimed of them. Here are three representative assertions made about them recently:
Plurality and conflict depend on and show a fragmentation of value and the disparate traditions that help make up our evaluative world and sensibility.
A choice between plural values involves a conflict of values.
Conflict requires plurality.
Sometimes concluded from those three and sometimes offered on their own, we find these four other recent and representative claims:
Plural values are incommensurable and thus incomparable.
There is no rational way to compare and choose between plural values, nor therefore to resolve conflicts.
Plurality and conflict preclude sound judgement and decision, allowing only vacillation and indecision, or simply plumping for one option or another.
A rational ethics requires an evaluative and conflict-free monism.
As I will argue, to understand plurality and conflict, these and similar claims must be rejected. And this is what I will do.
There are, of course, problematic areas that involve plural values and conflicting values. And plurality and conflict can, of course, create problems. Moreover I see no theory, much less an algorithmic
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one, which solves all these problems. But plurality and conflict are absolutely commonplace and generally unproblematic features of our everyday choice and action. They had thus better not be a bar to sound judgement, resolute and informed action, and a sound and rational ethics.
Throughout, I will attempt to locate and correct those aspects of our ethical thought which have led—misled—us to think otherwise These include an overconcern with action-guiding act evaluations, such as 'ought' and 'duty' and a concomitant unconcern with other evaluations of acts, with evaluations that are not of acts, and quite generally with moral psychology. They also involve thinking of ethics, and especially of action-guiding act evaluations, in terms of abstract rather than concrete value, i.e. asking only whether an act is the best act, rather than how and why it is good or best. They further involve an overdependence on maximizing theories of evaluation and rationality.
I have divided the work into four Parts each of which considers one central topic. Part I—Chapters 1-4—focuses on the nature and problems of conflict. Part II—Chapters 5 and 6—focuses on the question of whether plural values preclude sound judgement. Part III—Chapters 7 and 8—discusses whether conflict requires plurality. Part IV—Chapters 9 and 10—discusses maximization, with special emphasis on plurality.
There is another way to divide these chapters—in terms of two emphases. One emphasis is on a particular issue. In Chapter 1, 'Dirty Hands and Ordinary Life', the issue is dirty hands—whether what is justified can be, none the less, immoral. Chapter 2, 'Moral Immorality', considers a cognate issue, whether what is immoral can none the less be admirable. Three other chapters take up particular issues about conflict and plurality in Aristotle's ethics and moral psychology: Chapter 3, 'Dirty Hands and Conflicts of Values and of Desires in Aristotle's Ethics', Chapter 5, 'Courage, the Doctrine of the Mean, and the Possibility of Evaluative and Emotional Coherence', and Chapter 7, 'Akrasia: The Unity of the Good, Commensurability, and Comparability'.
The other emphasis is a more general and abstract consideration of a topic. Chapter 4, 'Moral Conflicts: What They Are and What They Show', takes up some general issues about conflict, which are raised particularly about dirty hands in Chapters 1 and 3. Chapter 6, 'Plurality and Choice', takes up the general issue of
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whether plurality is an impediment to sound choice. That issue is discussed in Chapter 5 in regard to Aristotle's account of courage. Chapter 8, 'Monism, Pluralism, and Conflict', discusses whether conflict, and especially whether rational conflict, requires plurality. This is discussed in regard to weakness of will in Chapter 7. Chapters 9 and 10, 'Maximization: Some Conceptual Problems' and 'Maximization: Some Evaluative Problems' take up some general issues about maximization which are raised in earlier chapters.
The same topics are taken up more than once and in more than one way. Also each chapter is intended to stand on its own. Thus there is some repetition. But as suggested in the Philebus (24e) it may be necessary, or at least useful, to say some things more than once to secure agreement and understanding.
I rely frequently on Aristotle. As noted, three chapters are devoted to discussions of his ethics and moral psychology, as are various sections of other chapters. My reasons for this have to do, in large part, with how I came to these problems. Although, early in my studies, I was convinced by G. E. Moore and W. D. Ross of the plurality and incommensurability of moral considerations, I did not consider plurality and incommensurability problematic. Two works on Aristotle's ethics, and an examination of a charge frequently made against his ethics, changed this.
The first work, taken up in Chapter 5, argues that because courage involves plural and incommensurable values, victory and danger, and the proper emotions towards these, confidence and fear, there are severe problems in seeing how courage can involve a mean—either in one's concern with these values or in one's emotions. Since they do not shade into each other, how can too much of the one be too little of the other, and how, then, can there be a mean of, or between, them? As I will be concerned to argue, this problem can be solved by seeing how incommensurable values and emotions can fuse into complex wholes of disparate and incommensurable values and emotions, and can thus be assessed as lying or not lying in a mean.
This has direct application to the more recent and quite general worry that where we have incommensurable values, sound comparisons and sound judgement will be impossible—that there is no sound way to compare unlikes with unlikes. This general worry is taken up in Chapter 6, which shows that virtually all our choices concern plural and incommensurable considerations and that we
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are, none the less, able to make sound judgements—by fusing these considerations into complex wholes of disparate and incommensurable elements.
The second work on Aristotle, discussed in Chapter 7, argues that coherent akrasia, weakness of will, requires plural values. This work was concerned to show how Aristotle's pluralism could thus easily allow for akrasia, whereas the monism found in the Protagoras makes akrasia conceptually impossible. This easily generalizes to the view many now have, taken up in Chapter 8, that conflict quite generally requires plurality. As the leading idea can be put, 'There could be no conflict between two options if, as one sees, they have the very same attractive features. Thus, conflict requires difference.'
As I will be concerned to show, both in regard to Aristotle and more generally, this linking of conflict and plurality depends on a seriously mistaken understanding of reason and reasons for acting and of the role of affectivity and emotion in action. I will, however, argue that there are very close connections between plurality and conflict, and especially rational conflict—and that we may have to characterize each in terms of the other.
The charge made against Aristotle's ethics is that he leaves no room for moral conflicts in general or dirty hands in particular—i.e. cases where no matter what one does, one will do something wrong. We are told that this is so because he thought his good people could resolve all issues and act resolutely, no matter how difficult the situation. Some contemporary philosophers see this as a simple implication of his and Plato's somewhat different doctrine of the unity of virtues. But conflicts—because they involve doing what is wrong, no matter what one does—show that such a person is at best an unrealizable ideal.
As I will be concerned to argue in Chapter 3, this is a mistaken account of Aristotle's ethics and moral psychology. His good people may well be able to resolve issues and act resolutely in virtually any situation. None the less, as shown by what he says about mixed acts—those acts that somehow are both voluntary and not—he recognizes that it is possible even for a good person to have no choice but to do what is wrong. As he says at the beginning of Nicomachean Ethics 3, a person may be able to save his family from a tyrant only by doing a base or shameful act.
This, however, allows that such a person can see clearly what
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is to be done and will act resolutely. In the case at hand, the person should save his family and he should do this resolutely—despite the fact that he will have to do what is base. Thus, there is conflict. It is not a conflict of indecision and vacillation, but a conflict within a single moral appreciation of what is to be done. The conflict is within the one complex whole composed of disparate and incommensurable elements. Such conflict is best understood in moral psychological terms and as having to do with the conflicting elements of a situation that are seen and felt as conflicting, even where the agent also sees clearly what is to be done and resolutely takes that course of action.
This line of thought is also pursued in Chapter 1 in regard to dirty hands, and in Chapters 2 and 4 in regard to conflicts more generally. Here I argue that to understand conflicts—and not to see them as posing serious, even catastrophic, problems for ethics and ethical theory—we cannot approach them as our contemporary ethical theories more or less force us to do. That is, we cannot see them simply as involving incompossible action-guiding act evaluations, telling us at once to do and not do a given act. Rather, we must recognize that there are other important evaluations of acts than action-guiding ones. And we must also see that there is more to evaluate than acts. One way to get at these other areas is, as already suggested, via a study of the moral psychology of conflict. For this will help us see that there are properly conflicting ways to appreciate the complex wholes that we are faced with when we decide and act, especially where there are conflicts.
My approach to plurality and conflict—both my past approach and also as I now think of the issues—is thus directed by my concern with Aristotle's ethics and moral psychology. I find this entirely natural, since, as I see matters, plurality and conflict are at the heart of his ethics and moral psychology. And, also as I see matters, if we keep our problems with plurality and conflict in mind while examining his treatment of them, we will come to a better understanding of both our problems and our ethics and moral psychology, as well as his. (Much the same applies to Plato, to whom I also turn.)
However, I know that many do not share my appreciation of Aristotle—especially on these topics. I would be pleased if my chapters on Aristotle move them towards my view. But there are some who find it distracting to discuss a contemporary or abstract
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issue by means of a historical text or philosopher. It is partly for this reason that, despite the repetition involved, I have tried to make each of the chapters self-contained. Those who want to pursue the contemporary and abstract issues about plurality and conflict without recourse to Aristotle can simply omit Chapters 3, 5, and 7. Those who want to concentrate on Aristotle can omit the others. For my own part, I still find it best to think about these topics together.
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Part I Conflict
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1 Dirty Hands and Ordinary Life
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Michael Stocker
Can there be acts of dirty hands—acts that are justified, even obligatory, but none the less wrong and shameful? To borrow an example from Michael Walzer, can it be justified, even obligatory, for an official to torture someone to force him to tell where his fellows have hidden a time bomb among the innocent populace? And if, as Walzer suggests, it can be justified, even obligatory, to do this, can it also be wrong and shameful? This question has recently attracted much attention, but little agreement. 1 
1 Here is a partial, chronological list: M. Merleau-Ponty, Humanism and Terror (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971); T. Nagel, 'War and Massacre', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1 (1972) 123-44; M. Walzer, 'Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands', Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1973) 160-80; R. Brandt, 'Utilitarianism and the Rules of War', Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972) 145-65; R. M. Hare, 'Rules of War and Moral Reasoning', Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972), 166-81; B. Williams, 'Ethical Consistency' and 'Consistency and Realism', Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), and 'Conflicts of Values', Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); B. Williams and J. J. C. Smart, Utilitarianism, For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973); T. McConnell, 'Moral Dilemmas and Consistency in Ethics', Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 8 (1978), 269-87; R. Marcus, 'Moral Dilemmas and Ethical Con