Self-Sceptical Ethics and Selfless Morality: A Historical and Cross-Cultural Overview
Description
It is natural to think that, if the ego is an illusion, then egoism cannot stand. This is more than just natural, perhaps, if the 'ego' is simply the self referred to in first-person terms, and if 'egoism' is a generalized claim, for example a claim intended in an ethical (or some normative) sense.[1] If egoism 'cannot stand', in some such sense, this would not amount to denying that 'self-serving' patterns of behaviour might predominate regardless; and even where they seem restrained or muted, nothing in such an unmasking of illusion would rule out that roughly 'selfish' motives may underlie generosity, cooperation and the like. The fact that many such motives are unconscious may mean that, for better or worse, a better theoretical understanding of identity and personhood might not dislodge them. But the natural thought, the idea that egoism 'cannot stand', is rather that egoism could not be valid if the ego is an illusion.[2] That is to say, egoism – qua fundamental normative standard – would seem to be left without any prospect of justification if 'ego' and 'self' turn out to be illusory and thus disqualified from providing any ontological or referential basis for such posits as 'egoism' and 'self-interest'.
Moreover, normative egoism may not be the only view that would turn out to lack justification; the same disqualification might apply also to conceptions of duties that are alleged to depend fundamentally on who one happens to be: someone's legal guardian, heir, senior officer, etc.[3] Some would even say that the disqualification
should go global, in the sense that, once selfhood has been debunked, the subversion must – supposedly – be seen as undermining all of ethics. In the absence of a 'self' for any kind of genuine self-orientation, they say, nothing at all could be justified, at least in the sort of ultimate sense discussed by moral theorists and their detractors – detractors such as existentialists who flirt with a moral anti-realism of this kind.[4] Yet
most would feel that this reaction goes too far. A global rejection of all ethics, besides being so alien a notion as to be almost irrelevant to theorist and layperson alike,[5] hardly seems to follow from scepticism about only one particular kind of entity, such as 'the self'. Nonetheless, a transformation in our understanding of selfhood might well have profound ethical implications – implications within ethics.
Some of these ideas for adjusting our ethical orientation(s) may be 'natural' ways of responding to the claim that the ego is an illusion, but there are two sets of problems to consider: (a) Could any argument be robust enough and convincing enough to justify reconceptualizing what we mean by a sense of self or identity, let alone debunking such basic elements of common sense as these (e.g. relegating the common reference of 'I' and 'me' to the status of a mere illusion)? And (b) Even if there are grounds for debunking the notion of personal identity, be they philosophical or scientific, and even if they seem to be decisive with respect to ontology, must there be any ethical implications, let alone any outright disqualification of moral outlooks that already structure many people's lives?[6] Here I mainly consider the second question; but, reflecting the structure of this volume as a whole, I shall begin and end with some historical context for these questions. (Davis, preliminary remarks, 1–2)
Notes
- It would seem that 'psychological egoism' would be even more of a non-starter, as it probably is in any case; but the qualification in my next sentence complicates the task of explaining how and why that would be so.
- The (different) question of whether egoism is morally justifiable might not even arise, if in this sense egoism is not theoretically valid – that is, lacking the metaphysical credentials that would be required for a place in any ontology.
- These so-called 'agent-relative' duties (conceived as justified by their alleged agent-relativity) would also be disqualified by moral consequentialists – who hasten to add, though, that such duties can be important (even crucial) in serving a larger purpose, such as overall well-being. Illusionists about selfhood, not to mention those who critique notions of identity in more nuanced ways, could make the same accommodation, if they share that purpose. There are other views, situated somewhere between egoism and agent-relative deontology, which often go by the name of 'individualism', and which underlie certain liberal views in political philosophy; many of those views would also seem to be threatened – in their foundations – by any unmasking of the self as an illusion.
- We are here concerned primarily with ethics and only secondarily with meta-ethics, so concerns with moral anti-realism will remain mostly in the background; I do include at the end of this chapter, however, a few comments on the intersection of meta-ethics and the metaphysics of personhood (see also notes 34, 37 and 38 below).
- The term 'ethics' will be used here in such a way as to cover more than 'morality'. Global rejections of moral truth warrant consideration, at least for theorists. Some other chapters in this volume also take seriously Pyrrhonist rejections – even those that go beyond their more usual suspensions – of moral belief; and yet, insofar as the Pyrrhonist goal is ataraxia, which is meant to be a desirable state of mind, this goal can itself be considered ethical in a broad axiological sense.
- Perhaps most ambitiously, Charles Goodman (2009) argues that a morally demanding form of impartial consequentialism follows from reductionism about personal identity (in conjunction with other elements of Buddhist axiology); cf. earlier work in this vein by Siderits (2000). For the most part, in this volume, we consider more modest ethical claims – sometimes prudential claims having to do with value(s) agents can find in their own lives, sometimes a moral altruism that leaves open the full shape of whatever moral theory should prevail. Claims like Goodman's, however – focused on impartiality and/or cosmopolitan concern – surface in Chaps. 2, 5, 10, 11 and 13, respectively by Griffin, Davis & Renaud, Ramlakhan, Harris and Davis & Sahni.
