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Symposium. Pragmatist Ethics: Theory and Practice

The Existential Deficit in Ethics

The Ethical Relevance of the Self in John Dewey
Daniel De Vasconcelos Costa

Abstract

Much of the ethical theory posit the moral value in the action and believe in the rational systematization of morality. However, these theories are not able to deal with one of the most interesting and relevant questions in our moral lives, namely, moral dilemmas. They argue that moral dilemmas are not possible since they cannot be integrated into an ethical system without accepting inconsistence. On the contrary, moral theories that deny the possibility of systematization recognize the importance of moral dilemmas for ethics and our lives. This relationship between ethics and our moral lives replaces the centrality of the action with the self. One of the philosophers that made this connection between the self and morality was John Dewey. This paper argues that rational moral theories suffer from an existential deficit and that Dewey’s approach acknowledges how humans change themselves through their moral action, and that moral choices are, in some sense, existential choices.

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1At the end of Denis Lehane’s book, Gone, Baby, Gone (2006), the protagonist and private detective Patrick Kenzie and his partner, Angie Gennaro, who were investigating the disappearance of the four years old Amanda McCready, saw themselves in front of an impossible choice. They discovered that the little Amanda was taken by the police captain Jack Doyle, who ran a whole unit dedicated to the crime against children, with help from some of his subordinates and Amanda’s uncle, Lionel McCready.

2One of the police officers, friend of the private detective, wanted to call for backup to arrest Jack Doyle and to return Amanda to her mother, Helene McCready. Angie Gennaro argued vehemently against it, for she knew that the mother cared nothing for her daughter, even if she loved her. She dated small criminals and left her alone all the time regardless of her age. Furthermore, the little girl was clearly happy with her new family. She seemed to love them, as they loved her and cared for her. To dissolve this bond and to take Amanda back to her mother was morally wrong. However, even if they could understand Angie’s argument, her partner and the police officers that accompanied them said that this could not be right. Not only it was against the law, but it was also morally wrong to let them do as they pleased. They had committed a crime and should be punished for it. Also morally relevant, Patrick had promised her mother that he would do everything possible to bring her daughter back. He did not want to break this promise since he saw this as a betrayal of her trust in him.

3The end of this book was filled with emotional tones and moral considerations about what would be the right thing to do, and, aside from Angie Gennaro, who was completely certain of what was morally correct, the other characters involved in this discussion were ambivalent about what was truly correct; what they really should do. Should they think about the welfare and care the little Amanda was now receiving in full from her new family, or should they think about what the wrongs that had been done and the promise and the rules that would be broken if they did nothing? Any choice they could make seemed to be wrong and unsatisfactory. In the end, they would feel as if they had done something wrong no matter their choice. It was an impossible decision.

4The scenario presented by Denis Lehane is what could be called a “moral dilemma.” In front of a moral dilemma, moral agents must confront not only an impossible decision, they must also confront themselves. This decision is a statement about who they want to be. It is a choice about their selves. The question raised by Patrick Kenzie at the end of the book points to this direction. Nonetheless, philosophers who dedicated themselves to normative moral philosophy said not much about moral dilemmas and almost nothing about how a moral dilemma could affect the identity of moral agents, their selves.

5The present article aims to show how a moral dilemma is, perhaps, one of the most significant moments in the moral reflection, and that rationalist or act-centered normative ethical theories suffer of what we could call “existential deficit.” This deficit could only be overcome by a moral theory that considers the existence of an existential connection between the moral action and the self of moral agents. One of these theories is espoused by John Dewey, who made the self the center of morality.

1. What are Moral Dilemmas? Or, Why do We need Moral Theory?

6One of the first contemporary analysis of the notion of moral dilemma was made by E. J. Lemmon (1962). He argues that there are many situations that were called “moral dilemma”; they have differences, though, even if very subtle ones. One scenario that many think as a case of moral dilemma is one where a moral agent knows what the right thing to do is, but she is strongly inclined to do another action (Lemmon 1962: 143-8). For instance, when a moral agent sees someone clearly ill on the street, but she has tickets for a movie she wanted to watch. Leaving complex cases aside, such as those of akrasia or self-deception that Lemmon also analyzes, it is not hard to see that this kind of dilemma is not a moral one, though it could be described as a practical one. The path of acting in accordance with the moral standards of her society is open and clear to her.

7Before Lemmon, Dewey had already claimed that such an alleged moral dilemma is falsely a moral one, for what is morally correct was already known by moral agents (Dewey 1936: 173). Nonetheless, he argues that in such cases of conflict between amoral actions, that is, morally neutral actions, and moral actions, the former would acquire a moral quality because of their context. In the scenario above, since the moral agent knows of what is morally required of her and knows that her desire to go to the movies is not morally required of her, it would become immoral, for it would prevent the fulfillment of the morally correct action; even the moral agent would probably say in this occasion that acting in such amoral way were wrong. Dewey (ibid.: 178) argues that:

Many acts are done not only without thought of their moral quality but with practically no thought of any kind. Yet these acts are preconditions of other acts having significant value. […] Such acts, non-moral in isolation, derive moral significance from the ends to which they lead. […] A vast number of acts are performed which seem to be trivial in themselves but which in reality are the supports and buttresses of acts in which definite moral considerations are present.

8Only when the actions are considered in isolation from one another, can they be seen as amoral. However, in isolation, even actions that are commonly believed to be morally correct or wrong would lose their justification and become amoral, for even these actions acquire their moral quality only when immersed inside of their context.

9We could ask ourselves, for instance, whether it is morally correct or wrong to kill another person. Most likely, the majority of us would say that killing someone is morally wrong. However, this response is problematic, for it does not consider the context where this kind of action becomes actual. Is the killing of a person by a woman who tries to save her daughter of being kidnapped by that person morally wrong? Contrary to the first response, probably most of us would say that this was not only justified but morally correct, since our culture sees as the duty of a mother to protect her children from harm. There is no generic action that is morally correct or wrong. It is through its context that we ascribe it a moral predicate, and without this context, we cannot truly say what moral quality it had. Thus, according to Dewey, a practical dilemma is not really between an action that we see as morally correct and another that was supposedly neutral, rather, it is between an action that we know to be morally correct and another that would be morally wrong for it would go against the one we know to be morally correct.

10A genuine moral dilemma occurs when moral agents see themselves in a context where they ought to do a morally correct action A and they ought to do a morally correct action B, but it is not possible to do both at the same time. By itself, this description is too vague, and many simple, easily solvable moral conflicts have this structure. This could, in fact, explain why many philosophers claim that there are no genuine moral dilemmas, or, at least, that they are easily dealt with through rational and moral considerations, and there are no good arguments for the existence of moral dilemmas unsolvable by a well-thought moral theory.

11One of these would be the conflict of daily duties and obligations (MacIntyre 1990: 369). Sometimes our duties and obligations could come into conflict. For instance, think of a person who promised to help her friend, but at the same time must attend a presentation of her children. The structure of this moral conflict is the same of a genuine moral dilemma: we ought to do A, but we also ought to do B, and we cannot do both at the same time. However, this kind of conflict is barely a dilemma for moral agents; they could establish higher-order principles or values that organize their duties and obligations or create a complex ordering of them (Lemmon 1962: 151). In this example, one could say “family first” or “do the moral duty or obligation that prevents the most harm” in order to decide what to do. Conflicts of daily duties and obligations are not difficult to resolve, and any further problems that the moral agent could have, are normally dealt with excuses for not being able to fulfill the duty or the obligation (Williams 1981: 74).

  • 1 Interestingly enough, though this kind of conflict could not be called a “moral dilemma,” it would (...)

12The second kind of conflict is normally seen by many as a genuine moral dilemma: this occurs when moral agents must choose between two people to be the beneficiary of their moral action. The classic example of these scenarios is the one where two people are drowning, and an agent can only save one of them. However, as MacIntyre argued (1990: 369), there is no moral dilemma in such cases, for the agent knows what she ought to do. The question in this scenario, “whom she ought to save?,” is only a moral question in very specific circumstances. But, in general, she ought to save any of them; there is no morally correct or wrong choice in this case. There is not even a conflict of duty or value in these cases, even if it appears so. What ought to be done is plain to the moral agent: she has to save one of them; whom she ought to save, though, is another question.1 Nonetheless, this is not to say that she will not experience some kind of emotional distress for not being able to save both.

  • 2 We must say “many” instead of “all” of the protagonists because there are also many of them whose a (...)

13A genuine case of moral dilemma is one that we could describe, in some sense, as tragic (Williams 1981: 74-7; 1987: 123; Nussbaum 1986: 1-84). As Martha Nussbaum very aptly argues, genuine moral conflicts are the core of the Greek tragedies. Many of the protagonists find themselves in a situation where the conflict of values is unavoidable, and a choice has to be made.2 Their own lives are not completely in their control, not because they cannot choose how to act, but rather they do not have all the information necessary to make the best possible choice, and, also, they cannot hinder the occurrence of situations where a choice between two essential moral values has to be made. Even if they were rare, Nussbaum and Bernard Williams claim that these cases are not only to be found in plays; they can and do happen in our lives, since these are subject to the unpredictability of life itself.

14As argued above, there is a common structure to all moral conflicts, but a genuine moral dilemma must present other conditions that separate it from other cases of moral conflicts. There is a genuine moral dilemma when the moral agents (i) find themselves in the middle of two choices that seem morally correct to them, and (ii) there are good moral reasons for them to decide for any one of the two choices (Lemmon 1962: 152-3). Another point brought by proponents of the reality of moral dilemmas is that whatever the choice they make, (iii) they feel themselves as if they had done something morally wrong, even though they know that they had done the best they could, and, normally, experience some emotional backlash (Lemmon 1962: 154; Williams 1987: 122-5; Nussbaum 1986: 27; MacIntyre 1990: 369-70).

15The suggestions are many for the kind of emotion felt in such cases; some say it is remorse, others regret, or even guilt. Perhaps the correct specification of the emotion is not so relevant. The point is that there is an emotional consequence for moral agents that finds themselves in a situation of moral dilemma. This emotional distress is connected with the belief that there are good moral reasons for doing any of the possible actions involved; any choice made is seen by moral agents as if they had, at the same time, done and not done something wrong. MacIntyre (1990: 370) argues that this relationship: “[…] derives from the fact that whatever the person confronted with a genuine moral dilemma does, he or she will have acted in such a way as to inflict a wrong […] He or she seems debarred from discovering the right thing to do.” Moral agents can only hope for what they had done be the truly morally correct action.

16As argued above, according to Dewey, it is exactly in the moment of a genuine moral dilemma, and in front of such difficulties, that the need of a moral theory becomes clear (Dewey 1936: 173-4; Morris 2021: 87-8). For him, it would be a mistake to believe that morality came to be only after its schematization by philosophers or political or religious leaders. This kind of thinking would just put it far from our nature. If we want to see morality as a human activity, we must see it as a consequence of our interaction with the environment, especially with other human beings (Dewey 1922: 10). As human beings act upon their environment, they run across many problems that have impact on their lives. The way they will decide how to deal with these problems, and their success in dealing with them, shape their future behavior. In this circumstances, human actions become conduct. Dewey proposes that a conduct is not a habitual way of acting, as normally it is comprehended by psychologists and moral philosophers in his time, but a way of acting of an agent that reasoned about it and adopted it as the best way of acting in the appropriate context, forming her own self in deliberation.

17However, as he points out, some moral theories, especially act-centered ones, break the connection between the actions that form the conduct. Instead of analyzing it in a continuum of acts, the act is singularized and evaluated without its context of deliberation and decision. The moral agent disappears, and only discrete moral actions remain. Thus, it becomes important an investigation of how other ethical theories tried to solve this question before analyzing Dewey’s own approach to moral dilemmas.

2. Moral Dilemmas in Act-Centered Ethics: The Loss of the Moral Character

18In a very interesting article, Christopher W. Gowans (1996) describes the moral dilemma debate as the confrontation between two distinct ways of moral thinking. One of them was the rationalism and the other, its opposition, experientialism. Most of the critics of the possibility, and even relevance, of moral dilemmas normally defended some kind of rationalist moral theory, he correctly claims. Before analyzing the rationalist arguments, there should be some further explanation about these theories, so that some mistakes can be avoided in such nomenclature.

19First, it is remarkable how Gowans called the opposition to rationalism “experientialism.” One could think that this was only a peculiar way of referring to empiricism. But this would be wrong. Among the moral empiricists, utilitarianism is one of the most known moral theories based on the human facts. Utilitarianists saw as the most relevant human fact how we all seek pleasure and avoid pain through our actions. The founder of this moral approach, Jeremy Bentham, claims correctly (1907: 1-7) that this is so evident that trying to prove or disprove it is almost a contradiction. However, after the foundation of action on its conduciveness to bring about pleasure or its capacity of avoiding pain there is not any further consideration about the human experience in the moral affairs. Actually, Bentham denies that anything else beyond the relationship to the capacity of causing pain or pleasure would be relevant to morality.

20As Gowans sees it, an experientialist moral theory takes into account the particularities of the moral experience as it actually is. Human beings act based on their values, interests, fears, capacities, limitations, relationships, and what more could affect our actual moral judgment and motivation. Experientialism is not about the perception or experience in the sense of sense data or something similar, rather it is a phenomenological or existential consideration of the features of the actual moral event. He says:

It seeks to understand moral practice primarily from the standpoint of the moral experience of persons. Experientialism gives priority to observation and reflection on what it is like for a person embedded in a particular social context to live a life constituted by values and commitments, to encounter circumstances of perplexity and choice, to deliberate and determine a course of response, to carry out this decision and live with its consequences. (Gowans 1996: 201)

21Also, according to utilitarianism, the search for the correct action involves nothing more than a calculus that should take into account different variables. It is not a coincidence that most of the rational choice and decision-making theories have utility as their basic unit. The behavior in theories that take utility as the basic unit of the calculus is supposed to be rational. Any kind of element beyond the utility that affects the calculus would only make the action irrational. These two considerations about utilitarianism bring us to a point that it is not completely clear that it should be classified as experientialist.

  • 3 The morally relevant facts about human beings could be many: pleasure (utilitarianism); self-intere (...)

22Furthermore, when we say rationalist, we should not necessarily suppose the same as an a priori construct. There are, at least, two kinds of moral rationalism. The first could be called “foundation rationalism.” Moral foundation rationalism claims that a strong foundation for moral claims would be possible only through a rational ground. Adjectives such as a priori or self-evident are commonly used by these theories to designate the arguments or beliefs that grounds all the posterior judgments or claims. This rationalism could be understood in comparison against its competing theory, namely, empiricism, or anthropological moral theory, that proposes a moral foundation after observing empirical facts about the human beings.3

  • 4 This says nothing about whether the motivation is internal or external.

23The second kind of moral rationalism concerns the normativity of the moral action. This could be called “normativity rationalism,” and it says that moral agents have purely rational reasons to act the way they do in order for their action to be moral. This means that one knows how she should act only after a rational reflection about the right action in her context.4 She sees herself obligated to act in the way she knows to be the right way because of a rational reason. The opposed conception of moral normativity defends that some kinds of feelings could be as relevant as rational reasons for the moral agents to know which kind of action would be the right one in their context.

24Taking these considerations into account, utilitarianism could be classified as a kind of rationalism, at least, normativity rationalism, since the moral action is chosen among many after a rational evaluation of them, of their probability to achieve the moral end. Also, the description of rationalism by Gowans makes it clear that utilitarianism would be an instance of it. He claims that: “rationalism is prepared for the possibility that our moral practices are fundamentally flawed, and may require radical transformation from the standpoint of rationality […]” (Gowans 1996: 200). This understanding of the function of moral theory as critical is not far from what Bentham comprehended utilitarianism to be, a rational system or a moral science (Bentham 1907: 2).

25There is also another similarity between utilitarianism and the Kantian moral theory, the rational moral theory par excellence. They focus not on the moral agents per se, but on the moral action. Action is the unit that is moral evaluated. One cannot say that an agent is good or bad in a moral sense, for, if the action is correctly executed, she did something good. Even if human beings had a moral character, this would be only the characterization of a moral tendency, and not the unit that should be morally evaluated. Someone could be said to have a good moral character when she had the correct disposition to act morally most of the time. These moral theories are act-centered.

26There are two main criticisms against moral dilemmas made by the act-centered and rationalist theories. The first is that these allow logical contradictions when we analyze them through deontic logic. The second criticism is that the avoidance of moral dilemmas would be exactly one task of moral theory; allowing it, would be the same as failing in developing a complete theory. One of the qualities of a complete moral theory is that of consistency, that is, there is no system that allows two or more sentences which deny each other, making it a self-contradictory system.

  • 5 This can be seen through the basic rules of modal and deontic logics. It is possible to redescribe (...)

27The first criticism says that, if moral dilemmas are theoretically allowed, we would have a schema like this: A is obligated and -A is obligated (Conee 1982). This would generate the modal consequence that A is morally necessary and -A is also morally necessary, which we could reformulate as: A is morally necessary and A is morally impossible.5 Therefore, allowing contradictory moral sentences such as these in a system of ethics would testify against it, since, as Ruth Barcan Marcus said, consistency is the “property that such a set has if it is possible for all of the members of the set to be true, in the sense that contradiction would not be a logical consequence of supposing that each member of the set is true” (Marcus 1980: 128). It is clearly impossible to have both sentences above to be true, so this ethical system would be inconsistent.

28Another possible logical attempt to show that such a system would be inconsistent would be through epistemic logic. Instead of referring to the construction of moral sentences in an ethical system, this logic says something about the knowledge of the agents. In cases of moral agents, this would refer to sentences about their moral knowledge, such as, “they know that in the context C, they ought to φ,” or “they know that φ-ing is a morally good action in the context C.” It is clearly impossible for someone to know that A and, at the same time, to know that -A. When a moral agent says that she knows that she ought to φ and also knows that she ought not-φ in the same context, this kind of contradiction concerns not the ethical system but her moral knowledge. To accept moral dilemmas is to allow an inconsistent set of moral knowledge; therefore, moral theories that allow moral dilemmas would also allow irrational moral agents.

29The second criticism of lack of consistency says that this kind of problem appears only in not well thought ethical systems or in those whose rules are not conceived through a procedural principle. Discussing the construction of rationalist ethical systems, Alan Donagan (1987: 273) affirms that this kind of theory normally has the following structure: few basic principles that serve as the moral basis from which further moral principles or rules could be derived through an “informal dialectical reasoning.” He argues that these further moral principles or rules are less new principles than specification of the basic ones by adding new premises. For instance, assuming the “not using another as a means, only as end of our actions” as one of the basic principles of an ethical system, we could say that deceiving another in order to gather her help would be a clear breaking of its moral basis. Therefore, this kind of behavior should be morally prohibited. It seems that he believes that a rationalist ethical system would be erected on each new moral problem that the moral agents encounter for which there is no solution already formulated. The consistency of an ethical system is only affected if this construction does not take into consideration the basic principle and the already added moral principles or rules.

30In his Metaphysical of Morals (1991: 48-50), Kant says something different. He differentiates between duty, obligation, and ground of obligation. When moral agents have an obligation, they have a duty related to it. This obligation is based on a ground that gives the reason why the content of this obligation is an obligation. Whenever a moral agent has in front of her a situation in which she sees contradictory obligations, they just seem like obligations, because, in reality, they are only grounds for obligations, that is, moral reasons why the moral agent ought to act in a certain way. What she will be obligated to do depends on these grounds. So, there is no inconsistency, according to Kant, because there is no real conflict between duties or obligations, but only between their grounds in the moment in which she finds herself in.

31Finding consistency in the act-utilitarianism seems to be even easier than in the Kantian ethics or in the ethical rationalism from Donagan. In the end, the correct action would be the one that achieves the best possible state of affairs that maximizes the happiness of all the agents involved. If there are more than one action that achieve the same maximization, which action moral agents ought to choose is morally irrelevant.

32Although, at first, these seem to be good arguments in favor of act-centered moral rationalism, they fail as good arguments against the reality of moral dilemmas.

33First, in the case of deontic logic, it is not the case that: “A is obligated and -A is obligated.” Were it like this form, it would be obviously a contradiction. However, moral situations have particularities. Normally, a moral dilemma is not “x ought not to kill y and x ought to kill y,” but “x ought not to kill y and x ought to kill y to save z.” This is already a different kind of situation. So, the formal description of moral dilemmas would be better formulated as: “A is obligated and B is obligated.” This is clearly not a contradiction. Even though one could argue that to B, someone has to kill the other person, this is not the moral end, but the only possible means in that context. However, as Dewey already argued, to separate the means of the end is to incur in an error: “Means and ends are two names for the same reality. The terms denote not a division in reality but a distinction in judgment” (Dewey 1922: 36). In the above example, to ignore that someone does not want to kill, but to save another, is to misconstrue the moral dilemma. Killing is only an aspect of the action; to put it against a mandatory “thou shalt not kill” is a faulty reasoning. Thus, there is no logical contradiction in moral dilemmas about its deontic form.

34The same error occurs with epistemic logic; there is no contradiction in saying that a moral agent knows that A and knows that B. Nevertheless, according to Williams (1987), there is another problem. He says that, when we speak of conflicts of morality, we speak about a conflict that is similar to conflicts of desire, and not between beliefs. Then, there is no similar mode of justification between moral claims and doxastic claims; whereas we can solve these through searching what was indeed true, morality claims are about values, and values are not objects to be found in the world; they are not, probably, truth-apt claims.

35Williams’ argument restricts itself to a non-cognitivist conception of morality, one that says, among many things, that moral claims cannot be resolved through discursive reasoning. Dewey would find this approach unappealing; especially for the tacit acceptance of the fact/value dualism. His response would be different and would not deny the possibility of moral knowledge or moral reasoning; he would criticize the certainty of the moral agent about what she ought to do.

36When we say that a moral agent knows that she ought to φ in her context, we are speaking about a person without any kind of room for doubt. She is certain of her action. A person that is certain of her actions and her obligations, would hardly experience a moral dilemma. According to Dewey, even though it could be possible to live a life without experiencing any kind of moral conflict, this person should have to be a fanatic (Dewey 1936: 294). Moral agents completely certain about their moral practices are fanatics. Between two morally conflicting paths, they would have no problem to find which one was the correct according to their beliefs, even if third parties could look at this moral conflict and be lost as to what they would have done. There is no room for a true moral reflection, only for moral obedience to the rules.

37The same criticism could be presented to Donagan and to Kant (Dewey 1936: 240-1). To be a fanatic is to follow the rules without even thinking about questioning them. Fanatics are, in some sense, perfect. There is no situation in which they should do more than using the correct procedure. The ending achieved through it and its consequences are indifferent; the only right thing to do is to use the procedure. This symbolizes fanaticism for Dewey.

If the standard were taken as a rule, in the sense of a recipe, it would signify that one comes to each case with a prior hard and fast, Procrustean, and complete conception of just and only what elements form happiness, so that this conception can be applied like a mathematical formula. “Standards” interpreted after this fashion breed self-righteousness, moral conceit, and fanaticism. (Ibid.: 311-2)

38Besides, in ethical systems along the lines from the rationalism from Donagan and Kant, moral agents proceed applying the fundamental basis in each new context with new relevant variables, constructing new moral rules for guidance in this new context. As these new rules are created, there is no reason to suppose that they will not see themselves in front of a moral dilemma. Just because they can establish new rules in a new context, this does not mean that this will be an easy thing to do. They will face the moral dilemma, will suffer the same things that others normally do, and only then they will think about how to act. The mistake in the rationalism is to suppose that the possibility of creating a new rule eliminates the possibility of a dilemmatic event. They are still possible to occur and, when they happen, it is still difficult for the moral agents. Only in the middle of the event will they have to come up with a rule of how to solve the moral problem. In this sense, even fanatics could confront moral dilemmas.

39Rationalists could claim that this begs the question, since moral agents could not see themselves in a moral dilemma if there were no ethical system established before this event. This argument presupposes that morality exists only after the creation of an ethical system. This is clearly counterintuitive and contrary to our experiences. Morality just happens in social relationships. An ethical system comes after morality already exists. Moral philosophy, or Ethics, was created to analyze this social creation and even to suggest which practices would be the correct ones, but not to suggest that morality only occurs when a philosophical system creates it. Some moral standards, rules, or principles could be created by an organization, as the church or the government, but even before this, our social relationships are regulated by other moral standards already existing in society.

40The same can be said about moral emotions, such as guilt or resentment. They happen even if there is no consistent ethical system established. Furthermore, trying to exclude them from morality is the attempt to eliminate one of the most relevant parts of it. Even if pure emotions could be said to be problematic, without emotions, how could moral agents identify when a moral wrong happened? This moral perception is not only based on the rational description of moral standards, but on the emotional connection that human beings experience with each other (ibid.: 265-300). In this sense, as Conor Morris argues, Dewey’s critique of Kant dwells in the dualisms that he created, first, between moral theory and morality already found in the social relationships and, second, between moral judgment and “natural affections”:

Dewey thinks a core aspect of moral conduct is being able to learn and improve one’s “natural affections” in order to act as a better moral agent. And this requires re-integrating the “affections” and one’s reasons for actions into a mora holistic package of moral conduct. (Morris 2021: 84)

41Kant’s clever solution of disassembling the duty in different features would also not be satisfying for Dewey. Affirming that there is no conflict of duties because this would be between the grounds on which the obligations would be justified makes little sense. When a moral agent has a moral reason to φ, then she has an obligation to φ. This does not change because we differentiate them conceptually; their reality is the same. A conceptual distinction does not sever their unity. When a moral agent sees that she has good moral reasons to act in two different ways, she feels herself obligated by two distinct duties. She does not see any separation between those concepts Kant tried to distinguish.

42In turn, the maximization of utility proposed by utilitarianism takes into account everything that could influence it. However, it does not distinguish between kinds of pleasure, at least not in Bentham’s conception. Therefore, it would be possible to have distinct pools of maximization in a same event with the same sum. Each possible action of the moral agent related to the event generates a different state of affairs with a certain quantity of utility that is the sum of the individual utilities from the people involved. It is theoretically possible that two contradictory actions could generate the same quantity of utility. The problem is that, according to utilitarianism, each of these actions is equally morally justified. In addition, there is no moral criterion to help the decision between the two or more actions. At the end, the decision would be based on rational or moral criteria not included in utilitarianism, or it would be an irrational decision.

43Lastly, it could be argued that the feeling of being obligated is a phenomenological error, and that they are not truly obligated, but only feel that way, for, rationally, nothing was determined yet. However, denying the rationality of this emotion does not eliminate the emotion itself. This kind of answer leaves outside the most relevant part of moral dilemmas, their emotional impact on our selves. In such cases, even if someone told us that the dilemma were not rationally justified, because we feel it to be so, we will act as if it were justified. Besides, even if it could be true that in some cases the feeling is not appropriate to the situation at hand, this does not mean that this will be true of all cases.

44Also, as William James aptly argued in his known text The Will to Believe (1956), the notion of rationality must be thought in reference to the individual, and even, perhaps, to the culture she lives in. Our intellect and emotions are intertwined and trying to separate them is not possible; at most, this attempt would change the beliefs one has, but it would not sever this connection. Thus, saying that a belief begins because of an emotion is not as strange as saying that an emotion was determined by one’s beliefs. Since we feel as if we face two conflicting obligations, contending that one of them were not justified or overridden by the other through rational arguments seems to be weak or “lifeless” when compared to the emotions we have.

45Denying the reality of emotions for our morality is a common posture of act-centered or rationalist ethics, since it ignores that emotions are constitutive of our selves. If rationalists considered emotions relevant for the normativity of the actions, they would see themselves obligated to acknowledge the importance of the entirety of the agents for morality, and not only their actions. The strict focus on rationality is more a theoretical necessity of act-centered ethics than a justified adoption of these theories. They must put emotions aside or discrete actions could not be the unit of morality.

3. The Existential Significance of Moral Dilemmas for the Self

46As argued above, act-centered ethical rationalism is too limited to recognize the existence of moral dilemmas. Rationalists claim that moral dilemmas are theoretically indefensible and that the moral emotions experienced by moral agents in those cases are a phenomenological error. There is one and only one obligation that is normatively justified in any context. However, it is not clear that is so. First, many of their arguments are not strong enough to justify their claim. Further, they ignore much of the reality of our moral lives, and the importance of morality for the human being as a whole, that is, for their selves. Dewey emphasizes this point when he affirms that: “the key to a correct theory of morality is recognition of the essential unity of the self and its acts, if the latter have any moral significance” (1936: 318-9). These moral theories have what we could call an “existential deficit.”

47One could ask in this point: what is this “existential deficit”? And why is it relevant for moral theory? Perhaps, the best way to understand what this existential deficit is, is through a brief description of how two of the leading figures of existentialism, Søren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre, saw with great clarity that when faced with a genuine moral dilemma, the only choice a person can make is a leap of faith (Kierkegaard), or a jump in the dark (Sartre).

  • 6 It is noteworthy to point it out that many philosophical texts that try to deal with moral dilemmas (...)

48Kierkegaard (2013) describes the story of Abraham and God’s commandment to sacrifice his son, Isaac, as act of faith and sacrifice; Sartre (2007) tells us the case of one of his students who was torn between the choice of staying with her life dependent mother or fighting against those who invaded his country and killed his brother.6 The conviction of both philosophers was that ethics could not help in these dilemmas for the there was no right decision. This decision is one that the agent must confront herself: who does she want to be? Sartre’s famous phrase, in its complete form, synthetizes well the idea of existentialism: “[w]hat they [the existentialist philosophers] have in common is simply their belief that existence precedes essence; or, if you prefer, that subjectivity must be our point of departure” (ibid.: 20). By that, Sartre adds, they could only mean that people have no “human nature” and they are what they want to be through their lives (ibid.: 22). We find ourselves in the world and we create our selves in this world. This is the meaning of existence in the existentialism.

49When we speak about an existential deficit in moral theory, we mean, first, the non-consideration of the impact of morality on the individual self, how it affects us and demands from us an action; and, second, the ignorance of how our decision and action also affects us, changing or reinforcing our selves. When act-centered or rationalist moral theories ignore this impact or think of selves at most as a byproduct of our morality, they lose sight of one of the most significant tasks of moral theory, namely, to help us live a more fulfilling and meaningful life.

50The question becomes now: how could moral theory fulfill this existential task? For Sartre, if ethics is helpful for something, it is for guiding moral agents to an authentic life. As he argued: “we are dealing with a morality of action and commitment” (ibid.: 40), and “moral choice is like constructing a work of art. […] What art and morality have in common is creation and invention. We cannot decide a priori what ought to be done” (ibid.: 45-6). Ethics is a way of dealing with moral conflicts, but it always requires one to open oneself to life and to one’s own desires.

51Even if critic of existentialism, Sidney Hook sees a similarity between some of the bases of the pragmatic and of the existentialist philosophy. For instance, he says (1959a: 159): “The first point of agreement between pragmatism and existentialism is that existence is prior to essence.” To him, since their object was basically the same, but their way of philosophizing different, pragmatism could be seen as “existentialism without tears” (Hook 1974b). As he says: “[b]ecause man’s quest for security is unending, everyone can find meaning in life even if he dismisses the question of the meaning of life as meaningless” (ibid.: 60). But he is not the only one who sees an approximation between pragmatism and Dewey’s philosophy with existentialism. Steven Fesmire (1999a; 1999b; 2003) takes Dewey’s ethics to be a kind of art, almost in the same sense as Sartre does. The role of imagination and the development of the possibilities is acknowledged as central; new ways of acting are creations to be explored in front of moral situations. He highlights that, for Dewey, to deliberate is to experiment with old and new possibilities, and to create a narrative. In Dewey’s own words, a “dramatic rehearsal” through which agents will explore the paths open to them and the possible consequences of these (1922: 190-2; 1936: 303). This interpretation is also shared by Thomas M. Alexander (1993) and William R. Caspary (2006).

52Thus, the distinction between an existentialist ethics and a pragmatic one seems to be not as much of content, since they both conceive ethics as concerned about our selves, about who we are, and about helping us in our decisions, rather than about prefixed rules that guide our actions; and not even of methodology, for pragmatism also places a big importance in imagination and creation. The difference is one of attitude (Hook 1959a). Whereas existentialism can become quite cynical about the human condition and hopeless about any kind of betterment of human life, pragmatism searches for whatever available scientific or conceptual tools can help provide a theory able to lead to a better and more satisfying life and growth, even if it acknowledges that an assurance of a better life is never truly possible (Hook 1959b).

53When we ask ourselves what we should do, we are asking ourselves what action has the most value to us; which value we are going to exhibit through our actions. We choose what to do in light of the necessities that appear in front of us and of the values we attach to them. We determine what we value through our judgment, an activity called by Dewey valuation, and, with this, we show our selves in our behavior when we decide what we should and will do, especially in a moral situation (1936: 292, 302). That is why, the unity of the self with her acts can be seen, first, in her choices and her interests (ibid.: 315-9).

54Act-centered moral theories take the choices of moral agents as discrete acts, with no connection with each other. Simple acts as drinking water and taking a shower are common acts, and considered as distinct. However, when those choices are observed with point of reference in the self, they are neither discrete nor distinct. They both are acts of self-caring, in the sense that agents care for their own body and health. If someone argued that an agent drinks water because she is thirsty, claiming that this is just a biological stimulus and a behavioral impulse, she would not take into account the choice of the object, water, in this case, forgetting the social context where the connection between becoming thirsty-drinking water came to be (Pappas 1997a: 530-9).

55First, as the consequence of a choice, an act is the externalization of one’s own self. On one side, an act can always be the end of a deliberate choice. In this sense, a choice is not the determination of an object or a way of behaving, but the result of a deliberation of the reasons why an object or a way of behaving should be part of the conduct of the agent; of what they take to be the correct choice for them, that is, the choice that most symbolizes what they want to be.

56The self becomes relevant for the deliberation because agents consider their action as a part of a continuum; they look at their past and their future and reunites them in their deliberation and decision. For instance, someone takes a shower because before that she had activities that made her decide that taking a shower was the correct action; and also because after she has other activities for which she thinks that showering before it is the correct action. Every singular action is connected with one’s past conduct and with one’s future aims. In the deliberation, agents unite their real, past self with their ideal, future self. As Dewey claims: “Superficially, the deliberation which terminates in choice is concerned with weighing the values of particular ends. Below the surface, it is a process of discovering what sort of being a person most wants to become” (Dewey 1936: 317).

57On the other side, even though the choice has a deliberative side, it also can have a habitual one. In the moment of choosing between doing something new, that represents ideal thoughts of herself, or an act that the agent herself repudiates, which is, nonetheless, how she normally acts, if the agent maintains her pattern of action, doing what she normally does, the agent is still choosing what she is. She could deny and affirm that this is only a bad habit of her. But Dewey criticizes this separation of habit and self, as if we could be dominated by habits; something over which we have no control. Actually, a habit is still the formation of one’s own self, the confirmation of what one really is. “All habits are demands for certain kinds of activity; and they constitute the self” (Dewey 1922: 25).

58A choice for a new act is the formation of a new conduct. Agents can just act as they have until that time. Doing what we normally do is not strange for us, for this is our normal way of doing things. Letting the habit forming our actions is not letting a mental event to take control of us, rather it is just to be what we truly are. Not choosing differently is also choosing how we want to be; we want to remain the same. If we wanted, we could have thought about our past conduct and change. Perhaps, our situation presents the need for a different behavior, or we have just learned a new way of doing things that we thought it could be better. Relevant is that our choice can reproduce our past actions, maintaining our selves intact, or we can test a new way of acting; this new way can be successful or not, but, even so, this decision will have an impact on our selves, forming a new conduct and a new way of being. Dewey says:

[E]very such choice sustains a double relation to the self. It reveals the existing self and it forms the future self. […] [E]ach different possibility as it is presented to the imagination appeals to a different element in the constitution of the self […] The resulting choice also shapes the self, making it, in some degree, a new self. (Dewey 1936: 317)

59Even little choices matter for the agent as a self, for her conception of her own self. An agent could always have acted in another way or chosen another object, so, the question of “why did she not act differently?” could only be answered with reference to other motives and interests, which, in turn, could only be answered with reference to others, and so on. At the end of all the decisions, deliberations, and interests, one can only find the agent and her conception of her ideal self. This is the meaning of growth in Dewey (Teehan 1995: 845-50).

60When we consider this connection of the self with our acts and our conduct, we can perceive the existential relevance of moral acts for moral agents. A moral act can be seen as an action that presents itself as necessary for the moral agent because of reasons that seem to be relevant enough to justify acting in such way. This necessity stems from its relevance for the agents and their society, so that they could criticize themselves or be criticized by their society if they did not act in accordance with it. Whenever moral agents act in accordance with the customary morality, they affirm the value of it. However, their deviation of it means that they do not recognize it as valuable, both for them and their society. This change in moral conduct is a change of what moral agents think that should be considered as a value in their society. Thus, to act morally is to affirm to oneself and to others that something is valuable enough to guide our actions. This relevance of a moral act for moral agents and their growth makes the case for the recognition of the existential side of moral theory, especially of moral dilemmas (Hook 1959b: 1013-4; Pappas 1997b: 458-9).

61As remarked at the ending in the first section, a moral dilemma carries in itself a tragic element. The response of moral agents will always be unsatisfying and affect them emotionally. They will always consider whether they acted correctly. However, more than appreciating whether their action was the correct one, they will ask themselves whether they can live with their choice. What happens after the decision in a moral dilemma is decisive for the growth of the self of the moral agent. The consequences of her decision together with her expectations come to her as a proof of whether what she has done was right or wrong. As Dewey claims: “The goodness or badness of consequences is the main thing to consider, and these consequences are of the same nature whether they concern myself or yourself.” (1936: 327). Ignoring this existential aspect of moral dilemmas is the same that ignoring how our actions and our selves are connected. Hook expresses this in a clear way:

At any level the conflict of values must become momentous to oneself or others to convey adequately the tragic quality. Where the choice is between goods that are complex in structure and consequential for the future, the tragic quality of the moral dilemma emerges more clearly. And when it involves basic choices of love, friendship, vocations, the quality becomes poignant. The very nature of the self as expressed in habits, dispositions and character is to some extent altered by these decisions. (Hook 1974a: 13)

Conclusion

62Act-centered or rationalist moral theories cannot handle this existential aspect of morality. For these theories, moral actions are a matter of doing the right action, and just that. There is nothing more to morality than searching for the right action. But in which sense could a moral action be right? Only in some metaphysical or formal definition. There is no connection between the moral agent and her moral action, and this kind of moral theory also ignores the relevance of morality for the self.

63According to Dewey, concepts employed by philosophers to found their ethical systems such as motive, interest, happiness, and many others, can be of use only when in connection with the moral agent and her self. Without this, those conceptions lose their meaning and become detached from their psychological importance. Ignoring the totality of the moral agents, their selves and their external context, is ignoring why moral theory is relevant for our lives. The search for what is true and what is the right thing to do is a never-ending journey, and this journey is about finding ourselves in what we should believe and who we should be.

64Dewey’s conception of morality takes seriously the existence of moral conflicts and how these can impact us profoundly. Genuine moral dilemmas are the clearest instances of moral conflicts. They exhibit situations where the moral agent cannot escape and any choice will be decisive for her conception of her own self. Existentialists showed this with great clarity. The true significance of morality appears in such moments. The belief that moral theory is the search of some universal rightness or goodness only brings morality to irrelevance, since it does not help the moral agent when she most needs and only says what she should do in the most obvious cases. That is why, moral conflicts are moments in which the moral agent can thrive and grow.

65Even if a moral agent stubbornly stagnates in her own moral thinking and conceives morality in the duality of a right or wrong action, genuine moral dilemmas still would continue to affect her. She still would be unsure about her actions and feel as if she had not done the right action. Not clear whether what he has done was the right choice, Patrick Kenzie tried in the last sentences of Gone, Baby, Gone to convince himself that what he has done was, at least, not wrong (Lehane 2006):

We’d returned Amanda McCready to her home. That’s all we’d done, I told myself. No crime. We’d returned her to her rightful owner. Nothing more. Nothing less.

That’s what we’d done.

We’d taken her home.

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Notes

1 Interestingly enough, though this kind of conflict could not be called a “moral dilemma,” it would not be a mistake to call it a “tragic situation.” A tragic situation is one that appears to be dilemmatic because of the feelings involved. However, it is not a characteristic of such situations that we have a choice to make, as in the case of drowning people. Actually, we can be very far from where these situations happen and yet consider them tragic. For instance, cases of natural or man-made catastrophes, or of large-scale famine in a country, elicit in us emotions very similar to those in a moral dilemma even if we know that we had a say about it. Also, in tragic situations there is not any kind of moral values conflict, only the occurrence of something beyond our expectations that comes as a strong shock against our moral values.

2 We must say “many” instead of “all” of the protagonists because there are also many of them whose acts against their moral values were already committed, and the realization of this moral transgression by the protagonists creates the tragic situation, as, for instance, Oedipus.

3 The morally relevant facts about human beings could be many: pleasure (utilitarianism); self-interest (egoistic theories); feelings (sentimentalism), are only few among several.

4 This says nothing about whether the motivation is internal or external.

5 This can be seen through the basic rules of modal and deontic logics. It is possible to redescribe the “A is necessary” as “-A is impossible.” In the same way: -A is necessary = A is impossible. Cf. Fitting & Mendelsohn (1998: 7-8).

6 It is noteworthy to point it out that many philosophical texts that try to deal with moral dilemmas mention this sartrean dilemma; perhaps, acknowledging it as the paradigmatic case of moral dilemma.

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References

Electronic reference

Daniel De Vasconcelos Costa, The Existential Deficit in EthicsEuropean Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy [Online], XIII-2 | 2021, Online since 20 December 2021, connection on 19 April 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/2464; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/ejpap.2464

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About the author

Daniel De Vasconcelos Costa

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
danieldevcosta[at]gmail.com

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