Review of Christopher B. Kulp, The Metaphysics of Morality, Part 2

Table of Contents

As I turn now to critically assess Kulp’s thinking, I note that he writes clearly, develops his position in good logical order, and also treats opposing positions briefly but fairly throughout his work. I should point out that my critical assessment comes from a distinctively theistic viewpoint, and that his work is one of several expositions of the ascending viewpoint of moral non-naturalism in the last 20 years or so.[1] Although this book has a lot of the same content as his earlier work, Knowing Moral Truth: A Theory of Metaethics and Moral Knowledge,[2] it develops the metaphysics more thoroughly than the earlier work.

Clearly, the key to understanding Kulp’s metaethical approach is in understanding his starting point for inquiry, namely, tutored, everyday, common sense moral beliefs and commitments. This is where Kulp thinks we must begin because these are foundational to our moral lives.[3] This starting point not only shapes how he proceeds in developing his metaethical account, but also shapes the wider character of that account and how he develops certain key broader themes within his account.

Metaphysics of Morality

By Kulp, Christopher B.

Kulp formulates the bedrock of such everyday common sense moral belief in terms of first-order moral propositions. He does not, for example, appeal to our experience of everyday common sense morality in terms of moral phenomenology, as is common among ethical theorists. His approach is to move from bedrock first-order moral propositions to the nature of morality and its second-order metaphysics.[4] This then is a bottom-up approach that works from bedrock first-order moral propositions to the wider and more encompassing second-order moral metaphysics.

I think that this is a worthwhile and interesting move. I agree with most of his thinking here and also agree with his critique of the various non-realist positions that he engages in a critical way. This thoroughgoing bottom-up approach, however, is not matched by an equally rigorous and logically structured top-down approach in developing the metaphysics of morality. Consequently, key questions over a range of top-down fundamental matters are given no thorough consideration in his analysis.

The most significant of these is a matter that we briefly noted in our previous review which we will now consider in a bit more detail. Recall that in Kulp’s metaphysics the moral domain is ontically distinct; it exists in a mind-independent manner. Recall also that moral properties exist as abstract entities, that they supervene on a base set of physical properties and that they are emergent properties.[5] As Kulp asserts, if there is no physical universe then no morality is possible.[6] What then of the status of the moral domain before the Big Bang?[7] Kulp answers that there was no morality before the Big Bang, nor could there have been since no physical universe existed.

Does this then mean that somehow, at the Big Bang, a mind-independent domain of abstract entities comes into existence, for example, necessary and eternal mathematical truths or mind-independent moral properties, to name just a few of the horde of uninstantiated abstract entities that must exist on Kulp’s Platonic account?

He is also firm on rejecting the idea that our moral beliefs are the result of naturalistic evolutionary forces and rejects evolutionary ethics as strongly physicalistic.[8] This way of formulating the ultimate etiology of the moral is not unusual in the case of the various versions of secular nonnaturalist metaethics.[9] However, these non-naturalist formulations raise a host of vexed questions that need to be answered given that they introduce a number of deep metaphysical challenges.

The fact that Kulp never takes theistic metaethics seriously is telling. The fact that he never works out in a rigorous manner a fully integrated top-down account to balance out his bottom-up account of metaethics is likewise telling. But even his bottom-up approach misses key elements that theism handles quite well. How does a universe such as ours, an intelligible universe, given the kind of moral rational beings that we are, come into being in the first place? Not only does Kulp not attempt to come to terms with such fundamental questions, but his mostly bottom-up oriented approach never forces him to fully confront such fundamental matters.

Moral propositions seem to be the kind of entities that require minded, knowing beings to be the meaningful and distinctive propositions that they are. They are necessarily person related.[10] Does a non-minded, impersonal, morally indifferent universe bring into being non-physical, non-natural, moral properties as abstract entities that are obviously fitted for minded, moral, personal moral beings like us? If this is the case, then how and why is this so? We can see here that the first major top-down challenge for any fully secular, non-theistic account is the existence of the universe itself; this has to be explained.

Then the second fundamental challenge for any impersonalist Platonic non-naturalism is the personal moral beings that we are, coming into being and situated in a vast impersonalist universe that includes an infinite array of uninstantiated, ontically specific, diverse, abstract entities to which we are somehow connected in multiple ways. How does an impersonal universe, truth indifferent, morally indifferent, bring into being the minded, moral persons that morality requires, and how then is abstract, propositional moral truth non-accidentally integrated and matched to moral persons like us? Obviously, some causal story must be true that accounts for the universe in which we live and the moral rational beings that we are.

Kulp offers no such causal account, but only vaguely gestures in this general direction. In this respect his bottom up approach is wholly inadequate. Also, nothing in the causal story can come from the side of abstract entities themselves since, as Kulp acknowledges, and most thinkers concur,[11] abstract entities are to be understood as atemporal, non-spatial, non-causal, non-empirical entities.[12]

We then have here another significant problem for all versions of impersonalist Platonism—the problem of exemplification of properties, and of moral properties in particular. How is it that the universe is made in such a way that abstract properties are exemplified in physical properties in precisely the ways that they are? Mere fluke or grand cosmic coincidence will not suffice here; this amounts to no explanation at all and renders the entire matter deeply problematic and mysterious. Surely this undermines Kulp’s theory.

Additionally, in the case of moral properties, merely invoking something like “emergence” will not suffice.[13] Emergence itself is problematic.[14] Also, the relations of supervenience have been questioned in a similar sort of way as emergence? It is generally understood that supervenience merely states a relation but does not actually explain the stated relations.[15] How did the relations of supervenience come to be the way that they are in the first place and how is it that they continue in just the recurrent ways that they do? How is this relation to be explained?

This matter is particularly acute in the case of Kulp’s moral metaphysic since he rightly rejects all versions of physicalism as well as moral constructivism. Kulp nowhere attempts to come to terms with the vast infinite assortment of ontically diverse abstract entities that must exist on any account like his and how these have come to exist and be integrated and exemplified in the actual world in which we live.[16] Mathematical Platonism is typically seen as the paradigm case of certainty and logical necessity and moral Platonism too easily slides into an unstated assumption that moral propositions are to be conferred a similar sort of certainty and necessity. Clearly, mathematical and moral necessities are different in some important respects.[17] The one is true by logical necessity, the denial of which generates a logical contradiction, while the other is made true as a grounded necessity, the denial of which does not generate a logical contradiction. Grounded necessity is made true given a truth condition relation that makes it true. This involves an asymmetric relation of metaphysical dependence.

In the case of Kulp’s non-naturalist metaethics, moral truth is grounded in complex abstract moral properties and facts. However, the existence of these abstract moral facts themselves, as truth makers, is ultimately left unexplained on Kulp’s account. This is therefore a fundamental metaphysical, ontological gap regarding the nature and origin of these abstracta in his account. Given the above criticisms, once again, the fact that Kulp never takes theistic metaethics seriously is telling.

Theism better explains the universe in which we live, the moral domain and the moral nature of humanity. It better accounts for the moral truth that Kulp wants to argue for. It should be pointed out that Kulp nowhere directly denies theism or argues explicitly against theism, but he clearly proceeds in such a way that God is completely irrelevant to his metaphysics of the moral.

If we take something like Kulp’s bottom up approach and work from the moral nature of humanity, there is much that the theist will agree with in Kulp’s metaethics. Theists will naturally embrace some form of moral realism, some form of moral cognitivism, some form of moral objectivism, some form of moral non-naturalism, perhaps even embracing some form of revised Platonism.[18] In this respect there is wide agreement between theists and secular non-naturalists.

Perhaps the most significant area of agreement between theists and secular non-naturalists is the shared rejection of all forms of naturalism; of physicalism as an adequate account of metaethics. In this regard there is shared consensus between theists and secular non-naturalists that naturalism cannot adequately ground and explain the moral domain and the moral nature of humanity. The theist rightly points out that for humanity to exist the life-friendly universe and all subsequent creative acts for our world to be the kind of world it is must also be accounted for.

To account for the kind of beings that we are, moral-rational beings, theism takes within its creative purview not just humanity and the moral domain, but all the following:

1.      The personal creative God that freely creates the contingent universe in which we live; a fine tuned, life permitting universe and world.

2.      The personal, minded God that creates complex, specified information.

3.      The personal God that creates not only biological information, but information rich biological entities.

4.      The personal God that creates sentient biological life and beings.

5.      The personal God that creates self-knowing, moral rational beings like us fitted to an intelligible universe.[19]

Moral facts are intrinsically person relatable, that is, person-related facts. This fundamental property of moral facts must be accounted for. It must naturally and fittingly lay into the overall wider metaphysical account of the moral. Impersonalist moral Platonism cannot account for this essential property of moral facts. In a theistic account of Reality personhood is ontologically fundamental to Reality. It does not somehow mysteriously emerge from a finite, contingent, impersonal materialist universe, as must be the case on Kulp’s account. Moral facts thus flow naturally and fittingly, out of a personalist theistic account of Reality.

Since the actual physical universe both has a beginning and is fully contingent, the theist takes issue with Kulp’s affirmation that the physical is both necessary and sufficient for the moral to exist.[20] It is neither. On a theistic account, the living God, a personal, infinite, necessary moral being grounds and manifests the moral domain in and from himself, has freely created humanity to be like himself as regards moral rational being. This God therefore adequately explains the kind of universe in which we live, the moral domain, and the personal dimensions of our existence and the fact that these are integrated and matched from the top down in a necessary sort of way. If the physical universe did not exist the moral domain would still exist–in the living, personal, necessary God. There is thus no need to posit the infinite horde of abstract entities that Kulp’s non-naturalism must posit for his non-physicalist account to succeed.[21]

Theism works equally as a fully integrating top-down explanation of things as well as a comprehensive bottom-up approach that explains the varied particulars of our moral lives; from the Grand Story to the particular story of our everyday, common sense, tutored moral beliefs and commitments.

            On the whole, Kulp’s work is commendable and should be read by all who are interested in an accessible exposition of moral non-naturalism. For the theist there is much to agree with in his work. It is clear, well written, and generally well argued. His reviews of the various non-realist metaethical positions are also very useful even though generally brief. But at times Kulp too easily glosses over big issues that he either merely stipulates on, too briefly comments on, or fails to follow through on the logical implications of his own metaphysics. All this taken into consideration, theistic metaethical thinkers should fully engage his work.   

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[1] For example, see David Enoch, Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013); Russ Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism: A Defence (New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 2005); Erik J. Wielenberg, Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014); Michael Huemer, Ethical Intuitionism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

[2] Lexington Books, New York, 2017.

[3] Kulp, Metaphysics of Morality, 6.

[4] Ibid., 8–9.

[5] Ibid., 126.

[6] Ibid., 124.

[7] I fully recognize the problem of using the temporal term “before” in reference to the beginning of the universe. In Perfect Being Theism God is eternal and therefore there is no problem here since God is creator even of our temporal dimensions of time that begin with our physical universe.

[8] Kulp, Metaphysics of Morality, 61.

[9] Each non-naturalist thinker earlier cited formulates his position of the ultimate historical development of the moral in a similar way to Kulp. Each of these thinkers however has attempted a response to the problematic issues raised by evolutionary debunking arguments and other various critiques, whereas Kulp has not. For an overview of debunking arguments, see Guy Kahane, “Evolutionary Debunking Arguments,” Noûs 45, no. 1 (March 2011): 103–125. For an overview of Plantinga’s arguments, see Andrew Moon, “Debunking Morality: Lessons from the EAAN Literature: Debunking Morality,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (December 2017): 208–226; Daniel Crow, “A Plantingian Pickle for a Darwinian Dilemma: Evolutionary Arguments Against Atheism and Normative Realism,” Ratio 29, no. 2 (June 2016): 130–148.

[10] Stephen E. Parrish, Atheism?: A Critical Analysis, 2019, 168–171.

[11] Gideon Rosen, “Abstract Objects,” ed. Edward N. Zalta, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford, CA: The Metaphysics Research Lab, Spring 2020); Sam Cowling, Abstract Entities (New Problems of Philosophy) (New York: Routledge, 2017); Bohn, God and Abstract Objects (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

[12] Kulp, Metaphysics of Morality, 157.

[13] Ibid., 126. See for example Olivier Sartenaer, “Sixteen Years Later: Making Sense of Emergence (Again),” Journal for General Philosophy of Science 47, no. 1 (April 2016): 79–103. J.P. Moreland effectively brings out the problems with emergence in his critique of Eric Wielenberg’s “godless normative realism.” See chapter 11 in William Lane Craig, Erik J. Wielenberg, and Adam Lloyd Johnson, A Debate on God and Morality: What Is the Best Account of Objective Moral Values and Duties? (New York: Routledge, 2020).

[14] Pat Lewtas, “The Impossibility of Emergent Conscious Causal Powers,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95, no. 3 (July 3, 2017): 475–487. As Lewtas points out, part of the challenge to any view of emergence comes from what is known as “causal closure of the physical.” If a truly emergent property has causal powers emergent from, over and above, the physical properties of the entity in question this is not easily reconciled with causal closure of the physical, i.e. that all causal powers are strictly physical powers that come from within the physical system.

[15] Jaegwon Kim, “Supervenience As a Philosophical Concept.” Metaphilosophy 21, no. 1 & 2 (April 1990): 1–27.

[16] William Lane Craig, God Over All: Divine Aseity and the Challenge of Platonism, First edition. (Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2016), 18, 41.

[17] For a useful analysis of this see Michael B. Gill, “Morality Is Not Like Mathematics: The Weakness of the Math‐Moral Analogy,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 57, no. 2 (June 2019): 194–216.

[18] John M. Rist, Real Ethics: Reconsidering the Foundations of Morality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); John M. Rist, Plato’s Moral Realism: The Discovery of the Presuppositions of Ethics (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2012). Robert Merrihew Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). For a good overview of theistic ethics, see David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls, God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls, Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); David Baggett, The Moral Argument: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). For another exposition, see John E. Hare, God and Morality: A Philosophical History (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007); John E. Hare, God’s Command (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Note that I include within theistic ethics the natural law tradition as well, see for example Mark C. Murphy, God and Moral Law: On the Theistic Explanation of Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Craig A. Boyd, A Shared Morality: A Narrative Defense of Natural Law Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2007).

[19] A naturalist account of the universe and life has difficulty with all of these necessary precursors to the existence of humanity. See Stephen C. Meyer, The Return of the God Hypothesis: Compelling Scientific Evidence for the Existence of God (New York: HarperOne, 2020).

[20] Kulp, Metaphysics of Morality, 126.

[21] It should be pointed out that Kulp nowhere addresses the view that abstract moral properties might possibly be classed as “naturalistic” yet non-physicalistic. This issue is raised by William J. FitzPatrick, “Ethical Non-Naturalism and Normative Properties,” in New Waves in Metaethics, ed. Michael Brady (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2011), 7–35. Theists have proposed various ways to understand the nature and relation of abstract objects relative to God. See Paul M. Gould, ed., Beyond the Control of God? Six Views on the Problem of God and Abstract Objects, Bloomsbury Studies in Philosophy of Religion (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014). I espouse a divine conceptualist position wherein these are not autonomous abstract objects but eternal ideal objects in the mind of God. See Stephen E. Parrish, The Knower and the Known: Physicalism, Dualism, and the Nature of Intelligibility (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2013).

Making Sense of Morality: Plato and Aristotle

Editor’s note: R. Scott Smith has graciously allowed us to republish his series, “Making Sense of Morality.” You can find the original post here.

Introduction

To begin our historical tour, I will start with the ancient Greeks. I will focus on Plato and Aristotle, who still much influence on western ethics.

Plato

For Plato, morals are not human products. Instead, they exist objectively in the intelligible realm, which includes the forms. A form is a universal that itself is not located in space and time (it is metaphysically abstract). A universal is one thing, yet it can have many instances in the visible, sensible realm. For example, justice is a universal, and there can be many just people. The identical quality, justice, can be found in many instances.

A comparison of these two realms:

Plato’s Two Realms

Justice can be instanced in a human being because humans are a body-soul duality, and the soul is their essential nature that defines them as the kind of thing they are. All humans should be just, and to reach their true goal, or telos, they need a proper balance of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Yet, it is hard to reach the telos, for the process of education in the knowledge of the good is very difficult. His “cave” illustration shows that only a few people leave the “shadows,” a place of illusions which they mistake for reality. Instead, only a few strive toward the true light outside the cave and acquire knowledge of the forms.

In this, Plato questionably assumes all people want to be virtuous. All they need is education and effort. Furthermore, though he realizes people should be virtuous, he seems to lack a “connection” between the moral forms and human nature. Why is justice appropriate for our souls?

Today, it is hard for many even to conceive that there could be immaterial and objectively real entities. Still, can Plato’s view sustain the four core morals? It seems it can; the virtues of love and justice, as well as the principles that we should not murder or rape, would be universals that are normative for all. Moreover, we know these morals by reason, which fits with our intuitive knowledge of their validity.

Aristotle

For Aristotle, there is a deep unity between the body and the soul. The body is appropriate for humans due to the kind of thing they are (i.e., our essence). Similarly, the cardinal virtues (prudence, temperance, justice, and courage) are appropriate for humans due to their soul’s nature. As one’s essence, the soul enables a person to grow and change and yet remain the same person. That is, one’s personal identity is constituted by one’s set of essential properties and capacities (even for virtues), which do not change. If people changed in some way essential to them, they’d no longer exist! Yet, they can undergo other kinds of changes, like the development of the virtues, and still be the same individuals.

Aristotle’s ethics is practical, seeking how to achieve the function of a human being, which is to guide one’s actions by reason. The virtues are developed by habituation and training. This involves being apprenticed to someone who has the virtues. Moreover, virtues are a mean between two extremes. For instance, courage is a mean between cowardliness (a vice of deficiency) and rashness (the vice of excessiveness). Moreover, like Plato, the good is found in community; Aristotle would not support the western, autonomous individual.

Like Plato, Aristotle believed in universals, though they always had to be instanced in particulars. Still, immaterial, objectively real universals exist, which rubs against today’s common belief that humans are just physical things. Moreover, he was pretty confident in human abilities to use our reason and know universal truths, as well as in our abilities to be virtuous by habituation. Even so, like Plato, it seems his views can preserve the four core morals and our knowledge thereof. Of course, we will have to see later if it is reasonable to believe there are real, immaterial universals.  

Further Reading

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

Plato, The Republic, Books, 4, 6, 7, & 10

R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge, ch. 2

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R. Scott Smith is a Christian philosopher and apologist, with special interests in ethics, knowledge, and seeing the body of Christ live in the fullness of the Spirit and truth.

Intuiting the Beauty of the Infinite: Ramanujan and Hardy’s Friendship and Collaboration

The Man Who Knew Infinity, a recent movie based on a book of the same name by Robert Kanigel, recounts the short but remarkable life story of India’s great mathematical prodigy Srivivasa Ramanujan (henceforth SR). Although what follows is a response to the film, the book is well-worth reading, filled with luscious prose such as in this sample: “The Cauvery was a familiar, recurrent constant of Ramanujan’s life. At some places along its length, palm trees, their trunks heavy with fruit, leaned over the river at rakish angles. At others, leafy trees formed a canopy of green over it, their gnarled, knotted roots snaking along the riverbank.”

The movie begins by quoting Bertrand Russell (a character in the movie itself): “Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.” It then shows SR in India, doing his mathematics (without much formal training) while trying to eke out a living for his family. His passion and talent for math are obvious; trying to describe maths (the preferred British abbreviation) to his wife, he says it’s like a painting, but with colors you can’t see. There are patterns everywhere in mathematics, he adds, revealed in the most incredible forms. Finding himself in need of someone who could understand and appreciate his ground-breaking work, SR wrote G. H. Hardy, legendary professor at Cambridge, and eventually Hardy invited SR to traverse the ocean and come work with him there.

This incredible opportunity required SR to leave his wife behind and endure the long journey and culture shock of moving to England, which contributes to a compelling narrative, with many twists and turns I’m not discussing but that make for a terrific, sometimes heart-wrenching tale. Despite the trials and challenges (including a war), what’s amazing was how much work SR and Hardy were able to do over the next five years—publishing dozens of groundbreaking articles.

The divergent worldviews of the two men make the dynamics of their friendship particularly fascinating to chronicle. SR was a devout Hindu whereas Hardy was a committed atheist—though the first time Hardy says this to SR in the movie (“I’m what’s called an ‘atheist’”), SR replies, “You believe in God. You just don’t think he likes you.” Incidentally, this is a key structuring question in C. S. Lewis’s moving novel Till We Have Faces: whereas both Psyche and Orual believe in the gods, Psyche believed they were marvelous and loving, but Orual thought they were only dark, unkind, and mysterious. In Rudolph Otto’s terminology, Orual was familiar with the tremendum aspect of the Numinous, but Psyche with both the tremendum (the awe-inspiring mystery) and the fascinans aspect of the Numinous. Fascinans is the aspect of the Divine involving consuming attraction, rapturous longing—and is often connected to the imagination, beauty, even poetry.

The diametric difference in SR’s and Hardy’s ultimate worldviews proves to be related to a central aspect of the plot. Hardy is adamant about the need to show step-by-step proofs of SR’s conclusions, while SR is depicted as functioning on a much more intuitive level. I’m not concerned for now what artistic liberties the moviemakers might have taken in this regard, but it is true that SR would often write down the conclusions of his work and not all the intervening steps. There may be at least a partial explanation of this which is fairly prosaic: paper tended to be in short supply for SR in India. But it’s at least intriguing to consider the explanation advanced in the movie: SR possessed incredibly strong intuitive skills. Mystifying Hardy, SR could just see things that few others could and felt little need to offer the proofs.

Hardy—though incredibly impressed with SR’s abilities, likening him to an artist like Mozart, who could write a whole symphony in his head—repeatedly says that intuition is not enough. Intuition must be “held accountable.” Proofs mattered, to avoid projecting the appearance of SR’s mathematical dance or art as on a par with conjuring.

It isn’t that SR’s intuitions were infallible. His theory of primes, however intuitively obvious, turned out to be wrong. Still, though, many of his intuitions were eventually vindicated and proved right. One among other interesting questions that SR’s reliance on intuitions raises is how much discursive analysis they involve. It’s a vexed question among epistemologists whether intuitions are a lightning quick series of inferences, or something more immediately and directly apprehended. The quickness with which they come naturally lends itself to the latter analysis, but perhaps there’s something to the former option—particularly if much of the analysis is done beneath the level of conscious awareness. In the Sherlock Holmes stories, for example, Sherlock’s inferences would come so quickly that Watson characterized them as resembling intuitions; likewise, realizing it’s sometimes easier to know something than to explain the justification for it, Sherlock himself recognized the way knowledge can have features that resemble more immediate apprehendings than just the deliverances of the discursive intellect. A couple of real-life Sherlocks, Al Plantinga and Phil Quinn had a dust up some years back on whether basic beliefs are formed inferentially or not.

The difference in Hardy’s and SR’s styles, we come to see, is related to their divergent worldviews. Exasperated at Hardy’s recurring disparagement of intuition as lacking in substance, SR finally blurts out, “You say this word as if it is nothing. Is that all it is to you? All that I am? You’ve never even seen me. You are a man of no faith. . . . Who are you, Mr. Hardy?” The underlying dynamic that brought this exchange to a head was the way SR connected his own identity to those intuitions. Hardy had asked SR before how he got his ideas. Now SR gives his answer: “By my god. She speaks to me, puts formulas on my tongue when I sleep, sometimes when I pray.”

SR asks Hardy if he believes him, and adds, “Because if you are my friend, you will know that I am telling you the truth. If you are truly my friend.”

In Till We Have Faces, we find a similar scene. Orual can’t see the gold-and-amber castle that Psyche tells her of, but Orual also knows that Psyche had never told her a lie. One issue here is testimony, and the conditions that need to be in place to take it as reliable. Of course someone could be telling the truth, the best they understand it, and still be unreliable—for perhaps they’ve unwittingly made a mistake, or they’re delusional or confused.

At any rate, Hardy’s reply is transparent: “But I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in anything I can’t prove.”

“Then you don’t believe in me,” SR responded. “Now do you see? An equation has no meaning to me unless it expresses the thought of God.”

Hardy remained skeptical of SR’s theology, but couldn’t dispute with the results. He would go to bat for SR to get him a fellowship at Cambridge, and in his impassioned defense of SR’s accomplishments he extolled his incredible originality, by which SR could apprehend so much truth otherwise missed. On Hardy’s view, the creativity and originality, though they provided SR a lens through which to see, didn’t subjectivize SR’s findings; rather, they were a tool for seeing farther and seeing more.

This contrasts with, say, Simon Critchley’s interpretation of the poetry of Wallace Stevens. On (Critchley’s) Stevens’s view, the only reality we experience is mediated through categories furnished by the poetic imagination, rendering our perspectives products of the imagination and, thus, subjective—yet still able to be believed despite their fictive nature. This is what some might call a more “postmodern” perspective than Hardy’s more traditional view that there’s an objective reality we’re able to discern, however imperfectly and through a glass darkly.

In real life, when Hardy died, one mourner spoke of his “profound conviction that the truths of mathematics described a bright and clear universe, exquisite and beautiful in its structure, in comparison with which the physical world was turbid and confused. It was this which made his friends . . . think that in his attitude to mathematics there was something which, being essentially spiritual, was near to religion.”

Hardy didn’t believe in God, but he did believe in SR and in the objectivity of mathematical truth. He wrote of his Platonism in his Mathematician’s Apology, and the movie captures this too. In one of his defenses of SR, he related the story of the way SR said mathematical truths are thoughts of God—a view parallel to, say, Plantinga’s view that modal and necessary moral truths are also thoughts in the mind of God. Then Hardy added, “Despite everything in my being set to the contrary, perhaps he’s right. For isn’t this exactly our justification for pure mathematics? We are merely the explorers of infinity in the pursuit of absolute perfection. We do not invent these formulae—they already exist and lie in wait for only the brightest minds to divine and prove. In the end, who are we to question Ramanujan—let alone God?”

Though math, on Hardy’s view, is discovered, not invented, it may take those with prodigious talents to uncover its deepest truths. Speaking of which, near the start of the film Hardy had said, “I didn’t invent Ramanujan. I discovered him.” Even more than the math, this is a movie about men and their remarkable friendship and fertile partnership across radically divergent and conflicting paradigms. The humanity of the film is its best feature of all.

After five years of collaboration between these unlikely friends, SR returned to India, having contracted a fatal disease—likely tuberculosis. Within a year he died, at the age of just 32. Hardy was crestfallen when he heard the news, and grieved the loss deeply. Near the end of the movie, he reflected on his collaboration with both SR and another colleague, Littlewood, saying he’d done something special indeed: “I have collaborated with both Littlewood and Ramanujan on something like equal terms.”

Paraphrasing Hardy, he once commented that out of 100 points, he would give himself 30 as a mathematician, 45 to Littlewood, 70 to Hilbert. And 100 to Ramanujan. In the year SR spent in India before his death, he poured his brilliant findings into another notebook. It was lost for a while, but when found, the importance of its discovery was likened to that of Beethoven’s “10th Symphony.” A century later, these formulas are being used to understand the behavior of black holes.

Summary of Chapter Three of God and Morality: Four Views, edited by R. Keith Loftin.

Summary by Michael W. Austin [su_dropcap]I[/su_dropcap]n the third essay in God and Morality, theistic philosopher Keith Yandell engages in a discussion of a variety of topics in metaethics, including ethical relativism, divine command theory, and the Euthyphro dilemma. The breadth, concise nature, and complexity of the chapter make a comprehensive summary difficult. The view that Yandell seems to hold is moral essentialism. This will be the focus of my summary.

A moral essentialist believes that moral truths are necessarily true. A necessary truth is not merely true; it is also impossible for it to be false. To put it differently, a necessary truth is true across all possible worlds. In the non-moral realm, one example of a necessary truth is the claim that two logically contradictory statements cannot both be true. “X is y” and “X is not y” cannot both be true. Many philosophers argue that there are necessary moral truths. For example, if I claim “Torturing infants for fun is wrong” or “Humility is a virtue” I am making a claim involving a necessary moral truth. Yandell claims that it is the fundamental principles of ethics that are necessarily true, such as the claim that we ought to respect persons (unless they’ve forfeited that right).

Both theists and non-theists can hold to some type of moral essentialism. Both might adopt some form of Platonism, in which necessary moral truths are necessarily existing abstract objects of some sort. Platonism is not merely a view of moral truths, but also of other types of truths. On a non-theistic Platonic view,“2 + 2 = 4” is true whether or not there is a God. This necessary mathematical truth is simply a part of the furniture of the universe. Similarly, a necessary moral truth does not depend on God in some ontological sense, but rather it is true whether or not God exists. On such a view, “Torturing infants for fun is wrong” is also a part of the universe’s furniture, whether or not God exists.

Alternatively, a theist may conceive of such truths as “the propositional contents of thoughts that a necessarily existing Mind necessarily has” (p. 103). On this view, Yandell points out that “If ethical principles are made true by divine command or nature, and these principles are necessarily true, God must exist necessarily and necessarily command as God does” (p. 113).

Mark Linville’s reply to Yandell is helpful in further clarifying some of these issues. On Linville’s interpretation, Yandell holds that God is an exemplar of the good. God exists, as do the relevant abstracta, and God exemplifies those abstracta. For Linville, God is himself the good. That is, God’s character, his nature, are identical to the good. If Linville is right, and the good is in fact identical with God, then we have grounds for a distinct moral argument in support not only of God’s existence, but of the necessity of God’s existence. If such an argument is sound, it is difficult to imagine a more powerful case for the existence of God.

Platonic Ethics and Classical and Christian Theism, Part 4

One of the reasons that I chose to investigate what Plato could tell us about morality is that he provides a great case study as to what can be discerned about God through general revelation. This thought goes back to the church fathers as this quote from St. Augustine demonstrates:

But we need not determine from what source [Plato] learned these things,—whether it was from the books of the ancients who preceded him, or, as is more likely, from the words of the apostle: “Because that which is known of God, has been manifested among them, for God hath manifested it to them. For His invisible things from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by those things which have been made, also His eternal power and Godhead.” From whatever source he may have derived this knowledge, then, I think I have made it sufficiently plain that I have not chosen the Platonic philosophers undeservedly as the parties with whom to discuss; because the question we have just taken up concerns the natural theology.[1]

In my previous post I looked at what Plato could tell us about moral motivation; in this one I’ll look at how this compares with Judeo-Christian thought on the subject.

Moral Motivation According to Plato

As discussed, Plato identified three levels of moral motivation:

The first and highest form of moral motivation is love of the Good. We should be motivated to be good because the Good is worthy of our love and our desire should be to be like it.

The second form of moral motivation is that the pursuit of and adherence to the Good leads to the very best life: the good life is obtained by acting in accordance with the Good.

The third (and lowest) form of moral motivation is based upon rewards and punishment. Those who do good will receive good things in this life (possibly) and after this life (certainly). Those who do evil will reap the consequences of those actions in this life and also after this life.

Just as his four requirements for a truly objective morality aligned well with the Judeo-Christian perspective, I believe his three levels of moral motivation align equally well.

Moral Motivation in Judeo-Christian Theism

The love of God as the primary motivating factor in Biblical ethics is fundamental in both the Old Testament (Tanach) and the New Testament. This centrality is seen in Deuteronomy 6:4-5, “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” This centrality is reiterated in the NT by Jesus as the greatest commandment (Matthew 22:37-38). In the Judeo-Christian worldview, the love of God is to be the controlling factor that frames every other concept—especially moral ones. The primary form of moral motivation for the Jew and Christian should be the love of God. We should want to be good because we love God—the source of all good—and want to be like Him. This love of God should spur us to “walk in His ways,” as Moses and Joshua frequently reminded the people (Dt. 10:12; 11:22; 19:9; 30:16; Josh. 22:5). In the center of one of his extended passages on Christian ethics, Paul tells us we ought to imitate God in our actions just like a loving child imitates her father (Eph. 5:1). If we truly have a love for God, this will extend not only to imitating the goodness of God, but also to obeying His commands (1 Jn 5:3). So, as with Plato, the best and highest form of moral motivation in Judeo-Christian theism is love of God/the Good.

The secondary motivation for morality in the Judeo-Christian world is that the life aligned with God’s character—that of godly wisdom—will bring about wellbeing, and that the life set against this—the life of folly—will bring death. Nowhere is this better seen in the Old Testament than in the book of Proverbs.

In Proverbs, the way aligned to God’s character is personified as Wisdom. She calls out to all who will listen:

And now, O sons, listen to me: blessed are those who keep my ways.

Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it.

Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors.

For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord,

but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death.[2]

On the other hand, the way of life not aligned with God’s character—personified in Proverbs as Folly—leads a person to personal disaster:

The woman Folly is loud; she is seductive and knows nothing.

She sits at the door of her house; she takes a seat on the highest places of the town,

calling to those who pass by, who are going straight on their way,

“Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” And to him who lacks sense she says,

“Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”[3]

But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

Following the wisdom teachings of the Old Testament, the New Testament also teaches that those who align themselves to God’s character will do well and those who do not will harm themselves. James, in his epistle, contrasts what is brought about through the two different lifestyles—the one driven by heavenly wisdom (godliness), the other by natural wisdom:

Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.[4]

In the Judeo-Christian world, godly living brings personal peace (even when outward circumstances are difficult), and ungodly behavior harms the soul (even if it is accompanied by all of the comforts of life).

As with Plato, the final form of moral motivation for Judeo-Christian theism is reward and punishment. This is clearly taught in both the Old and New Testaments. The Law of Moses is full of moral obligations and has specific punishments for those who do not follow them. And, even if reward tarries in this life, or if justice fails for the wicked, Daniel tells us everything will be made right in the next life:

At that time your people, everyone who is found written in the book, will be rescued. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt. Those who have insight will shine brightly like the brightness of the expanse of heaven, and those who lead the many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.[5]

In the New Testament, Jesus confirms this eschatological teaching:

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” Then the righteous will answer him, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?” And the King will answer them, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Then they also will answer, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?” Then he will answer them, saying, “Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.[6]

Interestingly, for both Plato and the Biblical authors, while love for God/the Good is the highest form of moral motivation, they spend more words on the punishment and rewards aspect of moral motivation than on the love aspect. I believe this is because both Plato and the Biblical writers understood that most people would not attain to this level of motivation. Plato affirmed multiple times that only the true philosopher could reach this lofty goal and that there would be few who attain to this level. Jesus also stated that the road to life is narrow and that there are comparatively few who find it. This common problem, I believe, left both to focus disproportionately on the lowest form of motivation because (unfortunately) it is applicable to the greatest number of people. But the goal of each is to encourage as many people as possible to attain to the highest level.[7]

Conclusion

So once again, we see discoveries that Plato made which align nicely with the Judeo-Christian worldview, and this helps us, along with St. Augustine, to see some of the possibilities of general revelation. Plato not only discovered the characteristics of a truly objective morality, but also the optimal and pragmatic aspects of moral motivation.

Notes:

[1] St. Augustine, The City of God, Book VIII, Chapter 12.

[2] Proverbs 8:32-36.

[3] Proverbs 9:13-18.

[4] James 3:13–18.

[5] Daniel 12:1–3.

[6] Matthew 25:31–46.

[7] Another potential take on at least the Biblical emphasis on rewards and punishments is to construe the salient underlying truth along these lines: in a classically theistic world, there is a deep correspondence between happiness and holiness. Aligning ourselves with ultimate reality, God Himself, is the very way in which to experience our deepest joy; and to lose out on this ultimate fulfillment is to forfeit or lose something of infinite worth. This connection between virtue and joy, happiness and holiness, doesn’t render the moral life as mercenary, but rather makes morality fully rational, affirms that reality itself is committed to the Good, which is one of the evidential and explanatory advantages of classical theism over secular and naturalistic perspectives in which no such connection or correspondence is guaranteed, thereby rendering a commitment to morality less than fully rational. This is one piece of what this site often describes as the four-fold moral argument for God’s existence.

Image: "Wisdom 62/365" by Andy Rennie. CC License. 

Platonic Ethics and Classical and Christian Theism, Part 3

In my first  two posts, I reviewed Plato’s requirements for a truly objective morality and then showed how Judeo-Christian theology meets his four requirements, providing a solid foundation for objective morals. With an objective foundation for morality in place, the big question becomes, “Why should I care?” Just because objective morals exist doesn’t necessarily mean I sufficiently want to obey them. This is the issue of moral motivation, and, unsurprisingly, Plato addresses this topic as well. In this post, I’ll take a look at the three levels of moral motivation that Plato describes in the Republic.

I’ve actually been working backwards in these posts. In the Republic, the question of moral motivation is the subject of Book II and the starting point for the investigation as to what justice (the Good) really is. After Socrates defeats Thrasymachus’s philosophically unsophisticated challenge that justice is merely “the advantage of the stronger” in Book I, Glaucon doesn’t let Socrates off the hook that easily, immediately challenging him to show why one should want to be just. While Plato asserts that justice is good in and of itself and good for the one who practices it, Glaucon responds:

Well, that’s not the opinion of the many…rather it seems to belong to the form of drudgery, which should be practiced for the sake of wages and the reputation that comes from opinion; but all by itself it should be fled from as something hard.[1]

Glaucon persuasively recites some popular arguments against acting justly, saying that it is best merely to appear just (so you can enjoy the benefits of a good reputation) rather than to actually practice justice—if you can get away with it. Given this popular opinion, why should one want to be good? Plato has three reasons, corresponding to three levels of moral motivation.

1. It Is Good to Love the Good because It Is Good

As discussed before, in the Euthyphro the pious was loved by the gods because it was (obviously) pious.[2] It had an innate loveliness that impelled the gods to love it. Likewise, the Good is loved by the gods because they directly experience its goodness and cannot help but to love it. Plato describes this concept the most thoroughly in his Symposium where people are drawn to the Beautiful through a form of eros, erotic love. John Rist brings the point home well:

The Socratic person, as we have seen, is a philo-sopher, a lover of wisdom, an erotikos, as has been emphasized in the Symposium…. His knowledge of the Form is inseparable from his love of it; he is as committed emotionally as he is intellectually to the world of Forms and the Good; his mind is not that of a Cartesian calculator, but of a Socratic lover.[3]

The first and highest form of moral motivation is love of the Good. Those who experience the form of the Good directly—the gods for Plato—are captivated by it and happily arrange their actions according to it because of their love for it. If men could see the Good directly, they would always want to do good. Unfortunately, they do not. What then are we mortals to do? What should compel us to do good even if we do not have this love for the Good? We should do good because it is good for us.

1. It Is Good to Do the Good because It Is Good for You

In the middle of Book II, after repeating the common man’s argument that it is best to act unjustly as long as people believe you to be just, Glaucon sets up the main challenge for Socrates that drives the rest of the book:

So, don’t only show us by the argument that justice is stronger than injustice, but show what each in itself does to the man who has it—whether it is noticed by gods and human beings or not—that makes the one good and the other bad.[4]

In effect, Glaucon wants to know what makes practicing justice good for the soul and practicing injustice harmful to one’s soul—this is the main question of the Republic. Through his investigation of the best and worst types of cities, Socrates is really discovering the best and worst types of man.

The very worst city corresponds to the most miserable man—the tyrant. This person, even if he enjoys wealth and good reputation (wrongly), is the most miserable because the turmoil in his soul will not allow him to enjoy the good things that are available to him. He is more a beast than a man. He cannot enjoy the best pleasures of this life because those enjoyments are experienced through our rationality and the tyrant has debased himself in this area. Because of the defilement of his soul, at best he can enjoy animal goods; but, because of his injustice, even those things cannot satisfy him.

On the other hand, the very best city, ruled by the philosopher-king, corresponds to the very best type of person: he who lives justly, who does the Good and can truly enjoy it. Because he is trained in philosophy, his rational abilities are honed and he can truly enjoy the best—the most human, or, better, the most divine—pleasures. Even if this person does not have material possessions, and if his fellow citizens do not understand him and hence mistreat him, his intellectual pursuit of and love for the Good make him the happiest man of all.

John Stuart Mill captures the difference between these two types of people in his famous quote:

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.

The pursuit of, and adherence to, the Good leads to the very best life, whether or not that life is accompanied by material possessions and the acclaim of men. For Plato, Socrates was the prime example of this. The pursuit of injustice leads to the worst possible life for a person. Even if it is accompanied by riches and fame, the debasement of the soul that it causes leads the unjust man to a truly miserable life, whether or not he realizes it.

So, for the rational person there are two good reasons to be moral: love of the Good is good in and of itself, and the Good is also good for you. In his Finite and Infinite Goods, Robert Adams similarly argues that what is best for us is what is good in and of itself. But what motivates the person who is acting irrationally?

1. It Is Good to Do Good because the Just Will Be Rewarded and the Unjust Punished

In the early dialogues, Socrates teaches, and Plato appears to hold, that people will never knowingly do the worse when they know the better. In his middle and later dialogues, Plato appears to move away from this position and deal with the problem of akrasia, where people know the good to do but choose the worse. How are people motivated when they know the Good is good, and is good for them, but they still choose to do the worse? For these people—who are more like unreasoning animals than men—rewards and punishments must be offered to motivate them.

In Book II Glaucon challenges Socrates to show that acting justly was beneficial even if it was accompanied by poverty and scorn, and Socrates argues his case with this restriction in place. In Book X, Socrates asks Glaucon to let him correct this injustice and show that the just man will receive good for acting justly: “Thus, it must be assumed in the case of the just man that, if he falls into poverty, or diseases, or any other of the things that seem bad, for him it will end in some good, either in life or even in death.”[5] In this life, Plato believed that the just will typically receive rewards for the good that they do and that the unjust will typically receive punishment for their injustice; however, if it does not happen in this life, Plato had a story for what would happen to the just and unjust after this life.

Book X ends with the myth of Er, a valiant warrior who died in battle but came back to life after twelve days and shared what he saw in the “other world.” There, the just and unjust went through a period of 1,000 years of either rewards or punishment for their deeds. The just “told of the inconceivable beauty of the experiences and sights” in heaven, while the unjust “lamenting and crying, [recounted] how much and what sort of things they had suffered and seen in the journey under the earth.” While the common unjust suffered for 1,000 years, men who were tyrants, after suffering for that same duration, were bound and thrown into Tartarus, never to emerge. This is Plato’s message for those who would practice injustice, and the message “could save us, if we are persuaded by it, and shall make a good crossing of the river of Lethe and not defile our soul.”[6] If nothing else will motivate one to be just, they must be coerced with either the hope of reward or the fear of punishment.

Conclusion

So for Plato there are three levels of moral motivation. The first and purest is to be good because of a passionate love for the Good itself; this is the best, and only truly moral, type of motivation. For those who are too short-sighted to make the philosophical investment to know the Good directly, the second is to be good because doing justice is good for you—more importantly, it is good for your soul. This motivation leans more towards the self-interested side, but at least it remains a form of internal motivation. Finally, for those who will not strive to do even what is good for them, the third form is either to bribe with promises of rewards for acting justly or threaten with punishment for the unjust. This form is not strictly moral motivation, but, given the problem of akrasia, it is necessary to get some to act rightly in a world that is moral to its core.

In my next post, I’ll take a look at how Plato’s moral motivation compares with Judeo-Christian theism’s and briefly contrast these views with moral motivation typically found in certain naturalistic ethical systems.

Notes:

[1] Plato, The Republic, Book II, 358a.

[2] Plato, Euthyphro, 10a, d.

[3] John Rist, Plato’s Moral Realism, p. 150.

[4] Plato, The Republic, 367e.

[5] Plato, The Republic, 613a.

[6] Plato, The Republic, 621c.

Image: "The School of Athens; a gathering of renaissance figures in Wellcome V0006665" by http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/obf_images/6e/38/1020e0a4faf0edbca4cd1275752a.jpgGallery: http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/V0006665.html. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_School_of_Athens;_a_gathering_of_renaissance_figures_in_Wellcome_V0006665.jpg#/media/File:The_School_of_Athens;_a_gathering_of_renaissance_figures_in_Wellcome_V0006665.jpg

Platonic Ethics and Classical and Christian Theism, Part 2

In my last post, I looked at Plato’s Republic and the standard he set for a truly objective moral foundation, one that can defeat Thrasymachean nihilism. In particular, I highlighted four items that he asserted were necessary: 1) a transcendent standard; 2) a standard that is recognizably good; 3) a standard people can know; and 4) a standard people are able to adhere to. For Plato, if any of these items is missing, nihilism wins. I also argued that, while Plato’s understanding of the requirements for a foundation for ethics was correct, his details for them were not. Instead, classical theism (in general) and Judeo-Christian theology (in particular) can provide a solid foundation for morality, hopefully in a way that Plato would have appreciated. In this post, I’ll take a look at how Judeo-Christian theism meets Plato’s four requirements for a truly objective morality.

1) God - The Transcendent Standard

In significant strands of Judeo-Christian thought, God is the Good. Like Plato’s Form of the Good, God is the ontological source of everything else. Goodness is established in His character and grounded in His immutable nature. Being loving is good because it is God’s unchanging nature to love. Grace, mercy, honesty, and patience are all good because they are eternal character traits of God. The Christian Platonic theistic ethicist who has made this case most powerfully in recent decades is, of course, Robert Adams, in his seminal Finite and Infinite Goods.

Unlike Plato’s Form, however, the Judeo-Christian God is a rational, personal agent; God is the type of substance that can actually bear moral qualities. This fact overcomes a major problem with Plato’s system: how can things that appear to be characteristics or qualities actually be substances? John Rist explains this aptly:

God and God’s nature, Platonically understood, are the successors of the evaluative Forms and of the Good itself, and not merely are they successors, but they indicate metaphysical progress, for goodness looks like a quality, though Plato, as Aristotle realized, needs his forms to be substances. Unless goodness is substantiated in and as some sort of “good thing,” it appears to be an ungrounded quality, and hence incapable of doing the philosophical work for which it was proposed.[1]

Augustine ties the conceptual worlds of Plato and Judeo-Christian theism together nicely:

There is, accordingly, a good which alone is simple and, therefore, which alone is unchangeable—and this is God. This good has created all goods.[2]

There’s another theoretical advantage here. If there is such a thing as “the Good,” God’s being the Good makes sense of “the Good” being good, morally and metaphysically, unlike any merely abstract object—causally inert, impersonal, and unable to be good. “God is good,” then, obtains, both as an “is of predication” and “is of identity.” Another way to put it is in terms of the de re / de dicto distinction. “God is good” obtains both de dicto (the proposition is necessarily true in virtue of the requirements of the office of Deity) and de re (God himself is good—necessarily, essentially, perfectly).

2) God as The Good – A Recognizable Standard

The famous dilemma in Euthyphro—Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?—was no dilemma for Plato; for him, the pious was loved by the gods because it was (obviously) pious.[3] Likewise, the Good was loved by the gods because they recognized that it is good.  For Plato, if you could see the Good directly you would immediately recognize its goodness:

In the knowable the last thing to be seen, and that with considerable effort, is the idea of the good; but once seen, it must be concluded that this is in fact the cause of all that is right and fair in everything.[4]

In Judeo-Christian theology, the same is true for God: If we could see Him as He is, we would immediately recognize his goodness. We get a glimpse of this in the book of Isaiah:

In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him…and one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory.” And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. Then I said, “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.” (Isaiah 6:1-5)

From Isaiah, we see the biblical perspective that rational creatures in God’s presence immediately recognize (and constantly proclaim) that He is good (which is one aspect of being holy). Along with this rational response, we also see emotional responses: the unfallen angels adore and worship God for His goodness and fallen man immediately realizes that he fails to meet this perfect standard of goodness.

This is not to say that God’s goodness will always be easily reconcilable with our clearest moral intuitions. Old Testament conquest narratives, for example, can be difficult on occasion to square with such intuitions. But difficulty is not the same as impossibility, and even the difficulty may not be as bad as many think, as Matthew Flannagan and Paul Copan have argued persuasively in Did God Really Command Genocide? (chapters of which are summarized, one per Monday, on this site).

3) The Image of God – The Foundation for Moral Knowledge

For Plato, man, as rational animal, had the right faculties to know the Good (at least theoretically). Through recollection, right opinion, or through the hard work of philosophy, man has the ability to seek and comprehend the Good. In the Judeo-Christian world, it is the Imago Dei (image of God) that gives men and women the power to know God/the Good: God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:27) The image of God in man provides the foundation for us to be rational agents.

Interestingly, both Plato and Judeo-Christian theism agree that while mankind has the ability to know God/the Good, this knowledge is generally limited and corrupted. For Plato, the process of the rebirth of the soul into a new body makes one forget what one has learned in the spiritual realm. This knowledge must be reconstructed via recollection, or right opinion must be converted to true knowledge via philosophy. As we can discern from the training Plato required for the guardians in The Republic,[5] this is an arduous task that requires proper conditioning and training from a very young age.

In Judeo-Christian theology, the fall of man has left him with rational faculties through which he can know God, but, by default, that knowledge is superficial and subject to corruption. Humankind can increase its knowledge of God both through general revelation[6] and special revelation (the Tanach, or Hebrew Bible, in Judaism, and the Old and New Testaments for Christianity). While God can only be known in detail through special revelation, general revelation is enough to provide mankind with a rudimentary knowledge of God and of morality.[7] For both Plato and the Judeo-Christian theist, knowledge of The Good is possible, but it requires effort both rationally and emotionally to acquire and apply.

4) The Image of God - The Foundation for Moral Ability

For Plato, the tripartite nature of the soul gives humans the ability to be moral (or immoral) agents. The head (rational element) allows people to know the right thing to do and the chest (spirited element/will) provides the power to do what is right. If these two are aligned in a just fashion, then people can and will act in a moral way. If however, the belly (bodily desires) becomes the guiding source for the chest instead of the head, then men will act in carnal and unjust ways.

In Judeo-Christian theology, it is the Imago Dei and God’s grace that impart the ability for us to be moral agents as well as rational agents. Through reason, man has the ability to know the good. Through the will, with God’s assistance, man has the (theoretical)[8] ability to do the good. God’s transformative grace can enable us not just to live morally, but to become new creatures, to be inwardly transformed, and ultimately to be entirely conformed to the image of Christ. If God commands us to do something, He will give us the grace, if we avail ourselves of it, to obey the command. Clement of Alexandria helps us to connect all of these concepts together:

Further, Plato the philosopher says that the end is twofold: that which is communicable, and exists first in the ideal forms themselves, which he also calls “the good”; and that which partakes of it, and receives its likeness from it, as is the case in the men who appropriate virtue and true philosophy.[9]

Conclusion

Plato was an amazing philosopher, and he had a deep understanding of the requirements for a truly objective morality; however, the details of his view on how these might actually be fulfilled were flawed. Classical theism provides a foundation for objective morality that arguably meets Plato’s four criteria in a way that would have both felt familiar to him, while also serving as a needed corrective on certain key issues his worldview was not able to address. Judeo-Christian ethics rests on a foundation that is transcendent, recognizably good, knowable, and that humans, with God’s assistance, can obey. This is obviously just a sketch of such an argument, but if it works, classical theism can defeat Thrasymachean nihilism in a way that other systems, especially naturalistic ones, cannot.

But, given this foundation, why should people be moral? In the next posts I’ll look at Platonic moral motivation and its corollaries in classical theism.

Part 3

Notes:

[1] John Rist, Real Ethics: Reconsidering the Foundations of Morality, p. 38.

[2] St. Augustine, The City of God, Chapter X.

[3] Plato, Euthyphro, 10a, d.

[4] Plato, The Republic, Book VII, 517c.

[5] If you are not familiar with The Republic, Plato spends a great deal of time talking about what type of education is required for the guardians and philosopher kings. This starts in their early youth as they are conditioned to love the right kinds of things and continues for decades with training in music, gymnastics, mathematics, and other subjects. Without this extensive and arduous training it is doubtful that one can come to know the good in the necessary way. This helps us see that the ultimate Good includes but is not exhausted by the Moral Good.

[6] See Romans 1:18-20.

[7] As discussed in the first post in this series and fortified here, Plato is an excellent source for seeing how much man can determine about God and morality solely from general revelation.

[8] Precisely how much ability mankind has is obviously a matter of debate. In the Judeo-Christian world there is a range of opinions on how much moral ability humans actually have. I think that most would agree, however, that most people in a certain circumstance can choose to either do or refrain from doing particular moral acts based upon their moral knowledge. Editor's Note: This site is firmly committed to the view that God’s grace is operative in all (prevenient grace in the case of unbelievers), that such grace is resistible, and that such grace is needed to do good. We affirm total depravity, but reject unconditional election, limited atonement, and irresistible grace.

[9] Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, Book II, Chapter XXII.

Image: "Plato, Bibliotheca Universitatis" by Attila Brunner - Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plato,_Bibliotheca_Universitatis.JPG#/media/File:Plato,_Bibliotheca_Universitatis.JPG

Platonic Ethics and Classical Theism, Part I

Why bring Plato into a modern discussion of ethics and classical theism? While moderns might nostalgically refer to him in their works, his theological and ethical teachings, especially in the form he presented them, are usually not considered serious contenders in today’s theologies and texts on the metaphisics of morals.  There are of course some notable exceptions, like Robert Adams, but even Adams admits Plato gets relatively little attention. In light of this, several key reasons can be adduced to show that Plato is very important—especially for the Christian community. One important reason is that early theologians like Ambrose and Augustine saw value in his work and Platonic thought helped shape their theologies. Another reason—one that should be particularly interesting to Christians—is that Plato provides evidence of the power of general revelation. As you read through his works, you will notice many things that align nicely with Christian theology. Most importantly, Plato was an amazing philosopher and many of his philosophical insights still have value today. My hope is to mine some of these insights (e.g., the foundations of objective morals, levels of moral motivation, etc.) over a series of posts. Hopefully you will enjoy the ride.

In The Republic, Plato’s Socrates faces his most difficult—and most important—challenge: the battle for objective morality. In Book 1 of the dialogue, immediately after Socrates defeats Polemarchus and removes convention as a possible foundation for justice, Thrasymachus attacks Socrates like a beast with his wild opinion that “the just is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger” (338c). In other words, true justice (or morality) does not exist—powerful men create morality to ensure that others will do as they wish. Thrasymachus is brash, but he is not a trained philosopher, and Socrates quickly shows his assertion to be inconsistent.[1] However, Glaucon and Adeimantus come to Thrasymachus’s aid (or at least his argument’s aid), presenting a more philosophically sound version of his nihilism, and together they press Socrates to show what justice truly is and why it is good in and of itself. At this point Plato’s Socrates claims to be at a loss, for his dialog partners would not accept the “proof” he offered to Thrasymachus that justice was better than injustice. However, he is willing to investigate the matter with their assistance to see if he can save objective morality.

In his investigation, Socrates discovers defeating Thrasymachus requires four things: 1) a transcendent standard; 2) a standard that is recognizably good; 3) a standard people can know; and 4) a standard people are able to adhere to. Without any one of these items, nihilism wins.

1. The Transcendent Standard

The foundational insight that Plato provides in The Republic is that for objective value to exist it must have a foundation that is not merely an invention of some group—or even unanimously of all persons. An invention is merely convention, and Plato had forcefully removed that as a possible foundation for morality in Book 1 with his master’s discussion with Polemarchus. Any mere invention can always be reinvented and therefore cannot provide the unchanging foundation that true values require. For a standard to apply to all persons at all times, it must be transcendent.

The main vehicle Plato posits for this type of standard is the Forms, and the Form of the Good is his metaphysical and epistemic foundation for all transcendent value. An early intimation of the Form as this transcendent moral standard was arguably explored by Plato in Euthyphro where Plato’s Socrates asserts that the gods love the pious because it is pious—both gods and men were subject to the standard, the Form.  Later, in The Republic, Plato establishes the Form of the Good as the foundational form:

Therefore, say that not only being known is present in the things known as a consequence of the good, but also existence and being are in them besides as a result of it, although the good isn’t being but is still beyond being, exceeding it in dignity and power. (509b)

An important aspect of Plato’s assertion is that, since the Good is the source of the knowability, existence, and being of the other Forms (and everything else), it is ontologically prior to them. This is a critical insight: if something else—call it X—were ontologically prior to the Good, then X would possibly be the foundation of values. When you descend to the bedrock foundation of some value, you come discover the essential nature of that value; the buck stops there. The Form of the Good defines goodness simply because it exists and because of its nature—it is the type of thing that can possibly ground goodness—not for any reason outside its nature.

1. The (Recognizable) Goodness of the Standard

Since (for Plato) the Form of the Good is the standard for goodness itself, it cannot be measured against anything to show that it is good; however, we need some way to know that it is in fact good. Plato provides for this by telling us that, if we could see the Good as it is, we would immediately recognize its goodness. When you eat chocolate peanut butter ice cream, no one needs to tell you it is delicious; you experience its deliciousness directly. Plato tells us that if we could also experience the Good directly, we would immediately know not only that it is good (like the ice cream being delicious), but that it is the foundation for—and source of—all goodness (unlike the ice cream which only partakes in deliciousness). He says,

In the knowable the last thing to be seen, and that with considerable effort, is the idea of the good; but once seen, it must be concluded that this in fact is the cause of all that is right and fair in everything…and that the man who is going to act prudently in private or in public must see it (517c).

There is no external way to judge the goodness of the standard; it must be experienced directly. Once this is done, it will be obvious that all of the terms we try to use to judge the goodness of things owe their existence to the Good itself—they have no other source.

1. Knowledge of the Standard

As you can see from the quote above, Plato tells us it is difficult to know the Good. His cave metaphor helps us to understand why. When an inhabitant of the cave, who is only used to seeing dim shadows cast on the inner wall of the cave, emerges into the brightness of the sun, he cannot perceive it directly.

At first, he’d most easily make out the shadows; and after that the phantom of human beings and the other things in water; and, later, the things themselves. And from there he could turn to beholding the things in heaven and heaven itself, more easily at night—looking at the light of the stars and the moon—then by day—looking at the sun and sunlight. (516a)

The difficulty of knowing the Good, and the training it will take to make true philosophers who can actually achieve this (through the use of the dialectic), occupies most of Plato’s time in Books 5, 6, and 7, detailing the education of the Guardians (and true philosophers). Although it is difficult, and perhaps no man has done it well so far, in Plato’s economy it is possible to come to know the Good. But knowledge of the Good is indispensable: if you cannot know it, you cannot intentionally do it.

1. Adherence to the Standard

The final piece of the Platonic puzzle is that of being able to live according to the standard once one knows it (what contemporary philosopher John Hare calls the “performative” question)—Plato’s view of the soul plays the key role here. For Plato, the soul has three components: the calculating part (the head), the spirited part (the chest), and the desiring part (the belly). By default, through nature and poor training, Thrasymachean order exists in the soul where the belly rules and the chest drives one to fulfill desires—the head is used only to calculate how best to get what one wants. Plato tells us, however, that if these three are in harmony—the head ruling the belly through the chest—then we can overcome our passions with knowledge (of the Good) and do the things that we should truly desire to do if we want justice. When properly cultivated, our knowledge of the Good can lead us to live just lives.

With these four items in place, Socrates was able to convince his friends that justice does exist and that it is worth pursuing independent of any practical benefits it might bring. While I believe Plato was wrong in many of the details of his stories describing the Good and how we can know it, I believe he was right philosophically on what is required to have objective morality. If any of the four items above is missing, the moral world risks becoming Thrasymachean. And these criteria have proven difficult for modern philosophers to find in their worldview. G. E. M. Anscombe highlights this in her influential paper Modern Moral Philosophy when she asserts that, while they may sound very different, modern ethical systems all struggle with such foundational issues:

Such discussions generate an appearance of significant diversity of views where what is really significant is an overall similarity. The overall similarity is made clear if you consider that every one of the best known English academic moral philosophers has put out a philosophy according to which, e.g., it is not possible to hold that it cannot be right to kill the innocent as a means to any end whatsoever and that someone who thinks otherwise is in error.

If your ethical system cannot confidently state that murder for fun is wrong, difficult work still lies ahead, work eminently worth the effort. Modern (naturalistic) moral philosophy is faced with the significant challenge of finding a stable foundation for ethics that does not produce unpalatable implications, yet still does justice to our pre-theoretical and nonnegotiable moral insights and apprehensions.

In my next post I’ll look at how classical theism generally and specifically Judeo-Christian ethics can meet Plato’s four requirements, thereby providing an adequate foundation for objective morality.

Notes:

[1] Thrasymachus makes the assertion that the unjust man, inventing morality to gain advantage, is virtuous and wise. However, in his nihilism, Thrasymachus does not realize that when he dispatched the foundation for justice he actually destroyed all value. Unfortunately for him, he still held to a conventional view of virtue (in particular, wisdom in the crafts) and Socrates used this to show an inconsistency in his view of justice. Socrates uses conventional ideas of wisdom to show that unjust men cannot be virtuous and wise, and uses this to defeat Thrasymachus.

Image: "Platon, painted portrait"  by thierry ehrmann. CC license.