by Bruce E.R. Thompson.
I assume you have already watched The Good Place. I further assume you already know it to be one of the most well-acted, well-written, and philosophically profound shows ever created for a television streaming service. So, I assume you are familiar with Chidi Anagonye, the quintessential moral philosopher.
By a “moral philosopher” I mean, of course, not a philosopher who is especially moral—many aren’t—but a person who studies the philosophy of morality. What makes Chidi especially representative of the species is that he is pathologically incapable of making a decision. Anyone who asks a moral philosopher for advice has already made a decision they are sure to regret. That’s why everyone hates moral philosophers.
In the third season of the show (Episode 4), Chidi gives a lecture on moral philosophy that encapsulates the fundamental problem. His students are desperate for a review of the course material so they can be prepared for the final. Chidi is in no mood to oblige. He is convinced that the review, the final, the course itself, their grades, and indeed all human existence is meaningless. None of it matters. But to please his students, he gives the review anyway, while stirring a huge pot of chili con carne mixed with candy Peeps.
Moral philosophy, he tells his students, is divided into three camps: the Kantians, who believe that we should follow moral principles derived from the “categorical imperative,” which is a complexly stated version of the Golden Rule, the consequentialists (or Utilitarians), who believe we should follow the “principle of utility,” which is the view that we should try to promote the greatest possible happiness, and Aristotelian Virtue Theory, which is the view that actions don’t matter so much as whether they are done for virtuous reasons. All three theories are a hot mess, or to give the exact quote, “hot stinking cat dukie.” None of them consistently give us results we can follow. None of them accurately describe moral behavior as we intuitively understand it in real contexts. None of them tell us what to do when we are on a trolley on which the brakes have failed. In short, none of them can help us make real decisions. And that is why everyone hates moral philosophers.
Chidi is right. Moral philosophy is a hot mess. But the problem is deeper than just that we do not know which moral theory to follow. The problem is that modern moral philosophers believe there is some kind of debate involved, as if we had the ability to decide whether the Kantian view, or the Utilitarian view, or the Aristotelian view is correct. In fact, no such debate exists—or, indeed, is even possible. All three theories believe that morality is rooted in a fundamental principle—an axiom—as if the study of morality were akin to the study of mathematics. But axioms are, by their very definition, incapable of being questioned or defended. They are accepted as true merely because… well, because we must begin somewhere.
This creates a paradox, which I call the “paradox of meta-morals.” Should we accept the Kantian axiom—the categorical imperative—or the Utilitarian axiom—the principle of utility—or the Aristotelian axiom—that only our motives matter? This is, of course, a question about what we should do. And the whole point of moral philosophy is to give us guidance concerning what we should do. So, ultimately, the question of whether to be Kantians, Utilitarians, or Virtue Theorists is itself a moral choice. How should we make that choice? Well, naturally a Kantian would prefer to make the choice by asking, “What would the categorical imperative tell me to do?” It would tell us to choose a principle that would be morally binding on all people equally, and that principle is the categorical imperative. But a Utilitarian would prefer to make the choice by asking, “Which principle would tend to promote the greatest happiness?” Well, of course, the principle that directs us always to choose the greatest happiness is likely, in the long run, to promote the greatest happiness, so that is clearly the principle we should choose. Meanwhile, the Virtue Theorist doesn’t care which we choose, provided we make the choice for the right reasons. In all three cases, the choice must be made before the choice can even be made! Thus, in all three cases, the choice is circular, unjustified, and entirely nonsensical. That is why everyone hates moral philosophers!
Sometimes, of course, we must make important decisions, and sometimes we turn to others for advice. Jean Paul Sartre—who was himself no fan of moral philosophers—regards this as an error. According to Sartre we are all burdened with “radical freedom,” meaning that we must make our own choices, and that we have no basis on which to make them—no basis whatsoever. In Existentialism is a Humanism, Sartre asks us to consider the case of a former student of his. At the beginning of World War II that young man had a choice. The nazis had overrun France, so he had to choose between staying at home with his mother to look after her because he was all the family that remained to her, or joining the resistance, thus risking his life to defeat the nazis and to revenge his father and older brother who had already died at their hands. What should he do? More importantly, how should he decide what to do? He studied scripture, but he found no definitive answers there. He prayed to God to send him an omen, but he realized that he would simply have to choose from among the omens presented to him. He could ask his priest for advice, but he already knew what advice the priest would give. He could ask his friends (who had already joined the resistance) for advice, but he already knew what advice they would give. Even in choosing how to make his choice, he was making a choice! There was simply no way to escape his responsibility to make the choice on his own, without help.
Sartre believes that we cannot make choices on a rational basis. We simply choose. In retrospect, our choice is rational and correct, not because we made it rationally, but because the choice itself defines what being rational means to us. We become what we choose—but only after we choose. There may be some truth to that; but I think it is fairer to say that we also choose what we wish to become. In any case, I believe that a philosopher’s best work is done, not by answering questions, but by defining what questions we ought to be asking.
True story: I was once asked by one of my students to give advice on a very important matter. It was a young woman in my philosophy class, who came to my office during office hours. Her problem was that her boyfriend had been given the opportunity to transfer to a university in Minnesota, and he had asked her to come with him. She knew, of course, that following him to Minnesota would mean abandoning her studies at the University of Denver. There was no guarantee that she would be admitted to the university in Minnesota, or that she would be able to pick up her studies there. The question, as she put it to me, was this: should she follow her heart and go with her boyfriend to Minnesota, or should she follow her head and stay in Denver?
The way she posed the question, and the fact that she had asked ME for advice, told me what answer she wanted to hear. But I did not think it was appropriate for me to give her that answer. Instead, I told her that I thought she was misunderstanding the choice she had to make. The choice was not one of logic vs. feelings: both choices were perfectly logical, but her heart had to tell her what she valued. The question she should ask was not whether to follow her heart or her head; it was what her heart and her head together were telling her to do. She had to ask what kind of person she was and what kind of person she wanted to be. This puzzled her, so I laid it out in the form of a syllogism. I explained that if she was truly in love and committed to becoming a wife, even if it meant foregoing her education, then the correct choice, from a logical point of view, was to go to Minnesota with her boyfriend. But if she was committed to her education, even if that meant possibly giving up her boyfriend, then the rational choice would be to stay in Denver. It all depended upon who she was and who she wanted to become. That was obviously not a choice I could make for her. It was a choice she had to make for herself. But she could rest assured that both options were perfectly logical, and that both equally depended upon what she truly felt in her heart.
She left my office probably thinking that there was no point asking moral philosophers for advice. I never talked to her again. I later learned that she was among the students who graduated from the University of Denver. She had graduated with honors.