What Would a Satisfactory Moral Theory Be Like?*

After studying various moral theories, one is bound to be left wondering what to believe. In this selection from The Elements of Moral Philosophy, James Rachels sketches what he thinks would be a satisfactory ethical theory. Although his theory has much in common with utilitarianism, it takes seriously people’s right to choose and the moral importance of treating people as they deserve to be treated. In this way Rachels follows Kant’s emphasis on respect for persons.

MORALITY WITHOUT HUBRIS

Moral philosophy has a rich and fascinating history. A great many thinkers have approached the subject from a wide variety of perspectives and have produced theories that both attract and repel the thoughtful reader. Almost all the classical theories contain plausible elements, which is hardly surprising, considering that they were devised by philosophers of undoubted genius. Yet the various theories are not consistent with one another, and most are vulnerable to crippling objections. After reviewing them, one is left wondering what to believe. What, in the final analysis, is the truth? Of course, different philosophers would answer this question in different ways. Some might refuse to answer at all, on the grounds that we do not yet know enough to have reached the "final analysis." (In this, moral philosophy is not much worse off than any other subject of human inquiry-we do not know the final truth about almost anything.) But we do know a lot, and it may not be unduly rash to venture a guess as to what a satisfactory moral theory might be like.

A satisfactory theory would, first of all, be sensitive to the facts about human nature, and it would be appropriately modest about the place of human beings in the scheme of things. The universe is some 18 billion years old-that is the time elapsed since the "big bang--and the earth itself was formed about 4.6 billion years ago. The evolution of life on the planet was a slow process, guided not by design but (largely) by random mutation and natural selection. The first humans appeared quite recently. The extinction of the great dinosaurs 65 million years ago (possibly as the result of a catastrophic collision between the earth and an asteroid) left ecological room for the evolution of the few little mammals that were about, and after 63 or 64 million more years, one line of that evolution finally produced us. In geological time, we arrived only yesterday.

But no sooner did our ancestors arrive than they began to think of themselves as the most important things in all creation. Some of them even imagined that the whole universe had been made for their benefit. Thus, when they began to develop theories of right and wrong, they had held that the protection of their own interests had a kind of ultimate and objective value. The rest of creation, they reasoned, was intended for their use. We now know better. We now know that we exist by evolutionary accident, as one species among many, on a small and insignificant world in one little comer of the cosmos.

Hume, who knew only a little of this story, nevertheless realized that human hubris is largely unjustified. "The life of a man, he wrote, "is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster." But he also recognized that our lives are important to us. We are creatures with desires, needs, plans, and hopes; and even if "the universe" does not care about those things, we do. Our theory of morality may begin from this point. In order to have a convenient name for it, let us call this theory Morality Without Hubris-or MWH for short. MWH incorporates some elements of the various classical theories while rejecting others.

Human hubris is largely unjustified, but it is not entirely unjustified. Compared to the other creatures on earth, we do have impressive intellectual capacities. We have evolved as rational beings. This fact gives some point to our inflated opinion of our

selves; and, as it turns out, it is also what makes us capable of having a morality. Because we are rational, we are able to take some facts as reasons for behaving one way rather than another. We can articulate those reasons and think about them. Thus we take the fact that an action would help satisfy our desires, needs, and so on-in short, the fact that an action would promote our interests-as a reason in favor of doing that action. And of course we take the fact that an action would frustrate our interests as a reason against doing it.

The origin of our concept of "ought" may be found in these facts. If we were not capable of considering reasons for and against actions, we would have no use for such a notion. Like the lower animals, we would simply act from impulse or habit, or as Kant put it, from "inclination." But the consideration of reasons introduces a new factor. Now we find ourselves impelled to act in certain ways as a result of deliberation, as a result of thinking about our behavior and its consequences. We use the word "ought" to mark this new element of the situation: we ought to do the act supported by the weightiest reasons.

Once we consider morality as a matter of acting on reason, another important point emerges. In reasoning about what to do, we can be consistent or inconsistent. One way of being inconsistent is to accept a fact as a reason for action on one occasion, while refusing to accept a similar fact as a reason on another occasion, even though there is no difference between the two occasions that would justify distinguishing them. (This is the legitimate point made by Kant’s Categorical Imperative .... ) This happens, for example, when a person unjustifiably places the interests of his own race or social group above the comparable interests of other races and social groups. Racism means counting the interests of the members of the other races as less important than the interests of the members of one’s own race, despite the fact that there is no general difference between the races that would justify it. It is an offense against morality because it is first an offense against reason. Similar remarks could be made about other doctrines that divide humanity into the morally favored and disfavored, such as egoism, sexism, and (some forms of) nationalism. The upshot is that reason requires impartiality: we ought to act so as to promote the interests of everyone alike.

If Psychological Egoism were true, this would mean that reason demands more of us than we can manage. But Psychological Egoism is not true; it gives an altogether false picture of human nature and the human condition. We have evolved as social creatures, living together in groups, wanting one another’s company, needing one another’s cooperation, and capable of caring about one another’s welfare. So there is a pleasing theoretical "fit" between (a) what reason requires, namely impartiality; (b) the requirements of social living, namely adherence to a set of rules that, if fairly applied, would serve everyone’s interests; and (c) our natural inclination to care about others, at least to a modest degree. All three work together to make morality not only possible, but in an important sense natural, for us.

So far, MWH sounds very much like Utilitarianism. However, there is one other fact about human beings that must be taken into account, and doing so will give the theory a decidedly non-utilitarian twist. As rational agents, humans have the power of choice: they may choose to do what they see to be right, or they may choose to do wrong. Thus they are responsible for their freely chosen actions, and they are judged morally good if they choose well or wicked if they choose badly. This, I think, has two consequences. First, it helps to explain why freedom is among the most cherished human values. A person who is denied the right to choose his or her own actions is thereby denied the possibility of achieving any kind of personal moral worth. Second, the way a person may be treated by others depends, to some extent, on the way he or she has chosen to treat them. One who treats others well deserves to be treated well in return, while one who treats others badly deserves to be treated badly in return.

This last point is liable to sound a little strange, so let me elaborate it just a bit. Suppose Smith has always been generous to others, helping them whenever he could; now he is in trouble and needs help in return. There is now a special reason he should be helped, above the general obligation we have to promote the interests of everyone alike. He is not just another member of the crowd. He is a particular person who, by his own previous con

duct, has earned our respect and gratitude. But now consider someone with the opposite history: suppose Jones is your neighbor, and he has always refused to help you when you needed it. One day your car wouldn’t start, for example, and Jones wouldn’t give you a lift to work-he had no particular excuse, he just wouldn’t be bothered. Imagine that, after this episode, Jones has car trouble and he has the nerve to ask you for a ride. Perhaps you think you should help him anyway, despite his own lack of helpfulness. (You might think that this will teach him generosity.) Nevertheless, if we concentrate on what he deserves, we must conclude that he deserves to be left to fend for himself

Adjusting our treatment of individuals to match how they themselves have chosen to treat others is not just a matter of rewarding friends and holding grudges against enemies. It is a matter of treating people as responsible agents, who by their own choices show themselves to be deserving of particular responses, and toward whom such emotions as gratitude and resentment are appropriate. There is an important difference between Smith and Jones; why shouldn’t that be reflected in the way we respond to them? What would it be like if we did not tailor our responses to people in this way? For one thing, we would be denying people (including ourselves) the ability to earn good treatment at the hands of others. Morally speaking, we would all become simply members of the great crowd of humanity, rather than individuals with particular personalities and deserts. Respecting people’s right to choose their own conduct, and then adjusting our treatment of them according to how they choose, is ultimately a matter of "respect for persons" in a sense somewhat like Kant’s.

We are now in a position to summarize the outline of what, in my judgment, a satisfactory moral theory would be like. Such a theory would see morality as based on facts about our nature and interests, rather than on some exaggerated conception of our "importance." As for the principles on which we ought to act, the theory is a combination of two ideas: first, that we ought to act so as to promote the interests of everyone alike; and second, that we should treat people as they deserve to be treated, considering how they have themselves chosen to behave.

But now the key question is: How are these two ideas related? How do they fit together to form a unified principle of conduct? They are not to be understood as entirely independent of one another. The first establishes a general presumption in favor of promoting everyone’s interests, impartially; and the second specifies grounds on which this presumption may be overridden. Thus the second thought functions as a qualification to the first; it specifies that we may sometimes depart from a policy of "equal treatment" on the grounds that a person has shown by his past behavior that he deserves some particular response. We may therefore combine them into a single principle. The primary rule of morality, according to MWH, is:

This principle combines the best elements of both Utilitarianism and Kantian "respect for persons," but it is not produced simply by stitching those two philosophies together. Rather, it springs naturally from a consideration of the main facts of the human condition-that we are perishable beings with interests that may be promoted or frustrated, and that we are rational beings responsible for our conduct. Although more needs to be said about the theoretical basis of this view, I will say no more about it here. Instead I will turn to some of its practical implications. Like every moral theory, MWH implies that we should behave in certain ways; and in some cases, it implies that commonly accepted patterns of behavior are wrong and should be changed. The plausibility of the theory will depend in part on bow successful it is in convincing us that our behavior should conform to its directives.

THE MORAL COMMUNITY

When we are deciding what to do, whose interests should we take into account? People have answered this question in different ways at different times: egoists have said that one’s own interests are all-important; racists have restricted moral concern to their own race; and nationalists have held that moral concern stops at the borders of one’s country. The answer given by MWH is that we ought to give equal consideration to the interests Of everyone who will be affected by our conduct. In principle, the community with which we should be concerned is limited only by the number of individuals who have interests, and that, as we shall see, is a very large number indeed.

This may seem a pious platitude, but in reality it can be a bard doctrine. As this is being written, for example, there is famine in Ethiopia and millions of people are starving. People in the affluent countries have not responded very well. There has been some aid given, but relatively few people have felt personally obligated to help by sending contributions to famine-relief agencies. People would no doubt feel a greater sense of obligation if it were their neighbors starving, rather than strangers in a foreign country. But on the theory we are considering, the location of the starving people makes no difference; everyone is included in the community of moral concern. This has radical consequences: for example, when a person is faced with the choice between spending ten dollars on a trip to the movies or contributing it for famine relief, he should ask himself which action would most effectively promote human welfare, with each person’s interests counted as equally important. Would he benefit more from seeing the movie than a starving person would from getting food? Clearly, he would not. So he should contribute the money for famine relief. If this sort of reasoning were taken seriously, it would make an enormous difference in our responses to such emergencies.

If the moral community is not limited to people in one place, neither is it limited to people at any one time. Whether people will be affected by our actions now or in the distant future makes no difference. Our obligation is to consider all their interests equally. This is an important point because, with the development of nuclear weapons, we now have the capacity to alter the course of history in an especially dramatic way. Some argue that a full-scale nuclear exchange ... would result in the extinction of the human race. The prediction of "nuclear winter" supports this conclusion. The idea is that the detonation of so many nuclear devices would send millions of tons of dust and ash into the stratosphere, where it would block the sun’s rays. The surface of the earth would become cold. This condition would persist for years, and the ecology would collapse. Those who were "lucky" enough to escape death earlier would nevertheless perish in the nuclear winter. Other theorists contend that this estimate is too pessimistic. Civilization might come to an end, they say, and most people might die, but a few will survive, and the long upward struggle will begin again.

Considering this, it is difficult to imagine any circumstances in which the large-scale use of nuclear weapons would be morally justified.... Suppose a situation arises in which [a country], despite America’s nuclear strength, acts against the very interests our arsenal is supposed to protect. Would we then be justified in using our strategic weapons? Suppose we did. In executing a policy designed to protect our interests, we would not only have destroyed ourselves; we would have violated the interests of all the people yet to come (assuming, of course, that there were at least some survivors who could try to rebuild civilization). In the larger historical context, our interests are of only passing importance, certainly not worth the price of condemning countless future generations to the miseries of a post-nuclear war age. History would not judge the Nazis to have been the pre-eminent villains of our time. That distinction would be reserved for us.

There is one other way in which our conception of the moral community must be expanded. Humans, as we have noted, are only one species of animal inhabiting this planet. Like humans, the other animals also have interests that are affected by what we do. When we kill or torture them, they are harmed, just as humans are harmed when treated in those ways. The utilitarians were right to insist that the interests of nonhuman animals must be given weight in our moral calculations. As Bentham pointed out, excluding creatures from moral consideration because of their species is no more justified than excluding them because of race, nationality, or sex.... Impartiality requires the expansion of the moral community-not only across space and time but across the boundaries of species as well.

JUSTICE AND FAIRNESS

MWH has much in common with Utilitarianism, especially in what I called MWH`s "first idea." But ... Utilitarianism has been severely criticized for failing to account for the values of justice and fairness. Can MWH do any better in this regard? It does, because it makes a person’s past behavior relevant to how he or she should be treated. This introduces into the theory an acknowledgment of personal merit that is lacking in unqualified Utilitarianism....

Questions of justice arise any time one person is treated differently from another. Suppose an employer must choose which of two employees to promote, when he can promote only one of them. The first candidate has worked hard for the company, taking on extra work when it was needed, giving up her vacation to help out, and so on. The second candidate, on the other hand, has always done only the minimum required of him. (And we will assume he has no excuse; he has simply chosen not to work very hard for the company.) Obviously, the two employees will be treated very differently: one will get the promotion; the other will not. But this is all right, according to our theory, because the first employee deserves to be advanced over the second, considering the past performance of each. The first employee has earned the promotion, the second has not.

This is an easy case, in that it is obvious what the employer should do. But it illustrates an important difference between our theory and Utilitarianism. Utilitarians might argue that their theory also yields the right decision in this case. They might observe that it promotes the general welfare for companies to reward hard work; therefore the Principle of Utility, unsupplemented by any further consideration, would also say that the first employee, but not the second, should be promoted. Perhaps this is so. Nevertheless, this is unsatisfactory because it has the first employee being promoted for the wrong reason. She has a claim on the promotion because of her own hard work, and not simply because promoting her would be better for us all. MWH accommodates this vital point, whereas Utilitarianism does not.

MWH holds that a person’s voluntary actions can justify departures from the basic policy of "equal treatment," but nothing else can. This goes against a common view of the matter. Often, people think it is right for individuals to be rewarded for physical beauty, superior intelligence, or other native endowments. (In practice, people often get better jobs and a greater share of life’s good things just because they were born with greater natural gifts.) But on reflection, this does not seem right. People do not deserve their native endowments; they have them as a result of what John Rawls has called "the natural lottery." Suppose the first employee in our example was passed over for the promotion, despite her hard work, because the second employee had some native talent that was more useful in the new position. Even if the employer could justify this decision in terms of the company’s needs, the first employee would rightly feel that there is something unfair going on. She has worked harder, yet he is now getting the promotion, and the benefits that go with it, because of something he did nothing to merit. That is not fair. A just society, according to MWH, would be one in which people may improve their positions through work (with the opportunity for work available to everyone), but they would not enjoy superior positions simply because they were born lucky....

As I said at the outset, MWH represents my best guess about what an ultimately satisfactory moral

theory might be like. I say "guess" not to indicate any lack of confidence; in my opinion, MWH is a satisfactory moral theory. However, it is instructive to remember that a great many thinkers have tried to devise such a theory, and history has judged them to have been only partially successful. This suggests that it would be wise not to make too grandiose a claim for one’s own view. Moreover, as the Oxford philosopher Derek Parfit has observed, the earth will remain habitable for another billion years, and civilization is now only a few thousand years old. If we do not destroy ourselves, moral philosophy, along with all the other human inquiries, may yet have a long way to go.

Review and Discussion Questions

1. Why does Rachels call his theory Morality Without Hubris?

2. According to him, what important implications does the fact of human rationality have for ethics?

3. How and why does Rachels modify the utilitarian approach? Would you agree that Rachels successfully combines the best elements of utilitarianism and Kantianism?

4. According to Rachels, who is in "the moral community"? How would adopting his perspective cause people to change their moral attitudes and conduct? In your view, do the practical implications of his theory make it more plausible or less?