I came to discover only late that, thanks to the exertions of Micah Watson in his “A Tale of Two Philosophers,” published here last Friday, the readers of First Things were given an account of this interesting exchange I had with my young friend, Matthew O’Brien, taking up the vocation of philosophy. What seemed to rage, though, in the comments attached to the piece were rather emphatic comments, some in criticism and some in support, by people who evidently had no idea of what I had actually said in those pieces, written in that exchange with O’Brien.
Micah Watson was animated, as ever, by the best intentions, but as a result of his efforts the landscape seems to be filled now with people who are ready to declaim with high passion over the defects in my argument, while being serenely detached from any knowledge of what exactly I did say in those essays. Hence my reason now for writing in turn.
Watson was pondering, with people listening, just why two friends who shared so much, should be arguing over the very grounds of their moral judgments. He noted that O’Brien was recoiling from my position because of what he regarded as my over-reliance on the discipline of “reason,” with its anchoring ground in the “law of contradiction.”
But it was far from clear as to what O’Brien was offering as an alternative. Watson noted that I had sought to draw O’Brien in by inviting him to show how he would arrive at a judgment on two notable matters: the case against racial discrimination and the wrong of withdrawing medical care from a child with Down’s syndrome. The force and reason of the move he caught in this way:
[I]n asking O’Brien to put forth his own account of how to understand and present morality, Arkes forces O’Brien to articulate and defend a moral conception that must withstand the same sort of critique that O’Brien applied to Arkes. Yet criticizing the solvency of Arkes’ moral philosophy while proposing a snapshot of his own preferred approach is to engage Arkes in the arena of rational argumentation, the very sort of approach to morality that O’Brien emphasizes is inadequate to the task.
Watson’s puzzlement then came in trying to figure out O’Brien’s move as he steered around this challenge. As he put it with some delicacy, “It is hard to think that O’Brien means strictly what he says in concluding his penultimate contribution that ‘the principles are to be found in experience and not the logic of practical reason.’” The main embarrassment, of course, is that that is what he did say.
O’Brien had observed, quite rightly, that people are drawn to moral understanding in many other ways than through argument; they may be drawn by literature and drama and experience. But that doesn’t answer the question of those standards of judgment we use as we draw from literature and experience the lessons that are rightful or wrongful. Watson thought that he could not have been contesting the centrality of reason, that he was merely offering then a plea for the way in which moral teaching is conveyed. In Watson’s construal,
One cannot make sense of morality. . . . one cannot fully grasp, and apply, those logical truths without a sound moral education. . . . [T]hose who have been poorly raised not only lack the character needed to act virtuously, they lack the understanding that would allow them to respond to logical argument about the human good. This is the strongest component of O’Brien’s critique.
Watson wrote me that he was trying to “make sense” of this amiable but spirited argument between two friends, but his effort begs the question: We could hardly shape a “sound moral education” unless we understand in the first place the things that a sound judgment would hold as good or bad, just or unjust. O’Brien could not have been conceding the centrality of practical reason and yet contesting fiercely over the question of whether it is conveyed best through philosophic essays, children’s stories, or novels. Such differences could hardly have produced such heat.
Watson sought to help readers steer around the poles in the argument, but I don’t think he managed to convey to new readers just what those poles were or where they were to be found. For he did not exactly offer, in the space he had, a luminous account of the argument I had been offering. And so I hope you will permit me to distill the essence of where the matter stood when the argument, for the moment at least, came to its close:
My position, as familiar as it is simple, is that behind all of our practical moral judgments, we will have principles of judgment, or reasons for what we are doing. If indeed the currency is “reason,” then reasons find their firmest grounds in the “laws of reason,” anchored in the “law of contradiction.” That becomes the touchstone in gauging truth or falsity. That is where our judgments do find their ultimate ground—if in fact it makes a difference for us that the judgments we are offering, the answers we are seeking, happen to be true or false.
But if Matthew O’Brien, or other people, offer other sources of moral instruction, cut off from reason, then they should be obliged to tell us the ground on which they claim to know that the moral lessons they are gleaning in this way happen to be true. That is something that he never managed to vouchsafe after three sessions in the exchange, but we are likely to hear from him later, for he is destined to a distinguished career, and he will have many more years in which to ponder the matter.
Hadley Arkes, a long-time member of First Things’ editorial and advisory board, is the Ney Professor of Jurisprudence at Amherst College and author of Constitutional Illusions & Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of the Natural Law (Cambridge). His interlocutor, Matthew O’Brien, is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin and a lecturer at Rutgers University.
RESOURCES
Micah Watson’s A Tale of Two Philosophers
Here is the original exchange:
Matthew O’Brien’s Constitutional Illusions, a review of Hadley Arkes’ book Constitutional Illusions and Anchoring Truths, which began the exchange.
Hadley Arkes’ The Particular Appeal of Universal Principles, his reply to O’Brien.
Matthew O’Brien’s The Ambitions of Natural Law Ethics: A Reply to Arkes.
Hadley Arkes’ Kant the Bogeyman.
Matthew O'Brien's Moral Principles and Human Happiness.
Hadley Arkes and Matthew O’Brien’s The Grounds of Our Judgments, the wrap up of their exchange.
Comments:
Hadley Arkes
Second, I wonder how Prof. Arkes might reply to the following consideration. Thomas Aquinas distinguishes between different kinds of precepts of the natural (or moral) law. Some precepts (called by folks like J. Budziszewski) are called common precepts. Here I have in mind not those precepts that Aquinas says hold universally but rather those precepts that are true most of the time but not always. For instance, return to someone that which he has loaned you is a precept that usually holds . . . but not always. Now the law of non-contradiction always holds. If moral propositions are always at least in part applications of the law of non-contradiction, would not the possibility of such for-the-most-part obligations described by St. Thomas be ruled out? If not, why not?
I ask the question not as one that is rhetorical. I am inclined to think there is a conflict here. But I am happy to be shown wrong.
Now, if it is Himmler, asking you for the whereabouts of that pill he was about to take to commit suicide, you may indeed return to him what is his—if you think that he will be punishing himself rightly for the things he has done. You may hold back of course for other reasons: that he is about to kill himself as he has killed others, as a matter of his willfulness. But that for another day when we argue yet again about capital punishment.
Apart from that, I trust that I'm not responsible for depriving Mr. Duffy of David Hart, for I too look forward to him.
Most importantly, I quite agree that if Himmler is asking for his pill for that purpose, well then he can have it.
Second, while I look forward to David Bentley Hart as well, one does need to get one's Arkes fix as well. Indeed, I think the Arkes fix may be equally as important. Meanwhile, Mr. Duffy might note that Hart writes (I believe) every other Friday rather than every Friday.
Third, I quite see from where you're coming. And I think it entirely plausible that the denial of certain goods as goods is self-referentially incoherent. I find Finnis's argument plausible with respect to the good of knowledge. And I find not only intriguing but also convincing the argument you have advanced in two or three of your books concerning the wrongness of racial discrimination on the grounds that such discrimination depends on a theory of determinism that eliminates the grounds for moral responsibility.
Here's my question about natural law, Kant, and Aquinas. As I read Aquinas, the usually-but-not-always precepts of natural law are moral precepts. They are, as your reply suggests, lower order moral precepts. But in those cases where "return to a man that which he has loaned you" fails to hold, then we have a moral precept that fails to hold. We have a lower precept that no longer holds just because it gives way to a higher order moral obligation that trumps it. But in that case, the lower order moral precept was not a universal law in the Kantian sense. That is, it seems to me (just thinking out loud) that the Kantian framework cannot fully accommodate conflict between distinctly moral precepts in which a higher precept must yield to a lower. Given that some moral precepts do not always hold, they cannot be universal laws in the Kantian sense.
But suppose I'm wrong about that (and, after all, that is always quite plausible). Is your argument that the exceptions to such not-always precepts of natural law are built in so that the precepts can in fact be willed as a universal law. Or is the position, rather, that denial of one's obligation, in a given moment, involves a self-contradiction or is in some way self-defeating--thus, it is not the case that denying a moral precept always results in a contradiction but only denying an obligation does? Or is there yet a third possibility that I'm missing here.
Meanwhile, I hope folks will take the time to read not only the Kant chapter of your most recent book but also the other chapters--especially on ex post fact laws and the chapter on Lochner--which sets up an argument that Roe is, ultimately, self-contradictory.
That said, the contribution from Mr. Arkes and the subsequent comments have been a pleasure to read, and I'm sure weren't responsible for the absence of Mr. Hart.
Consider:
"If indeed the currency is “reason,” then reasons find their firmest grounds in the “laws of reason,” anchored in the “law of contradiction.” That becomes the touchstone in gauging truth or falsity. That is where our judgments do find their ultimate ground—if in fact it makes a difference for us that the judgments we are offering, the answers we are seeking, happen to be true or false."
As it turns out, however, Arkes apparently endorses a rather expansive and non-standard conception of "the law of contradiction." As his earlier response to me seems to indicate, what he really means to invoke by the such a law is simply what "people find it impossible to contradict" (that Arkes uses the terminology in such a non-standard way has generated, I think, much confusion). Obviously, people find it impossible to contradict a lot more than merely what the "law of contradiction/non-contradiction" rules out (understood as it is usually understood in philosophy, i.e., as a bare principle of logic).
But, since Arkes opts for this expansive idea, he now owes us--at least by his own standards of what is owed--an account of why it is that happening to find it impossible to contradict a given judgment serves both as an adequate "ultimate ground" for the content of that judgment, and as a suitable touchstone in gauging its truth or falsity. After all, there is nothing more ordinary than encountering a person who finds impossible to contradict a given thesis simply because of that person's lack of understanding, lack of imagination, or strong attachment to a particular ideology.
The embarrassment is that these are questions that Arkes' himself also needs to answer, since--as has been emphasized--the law of contradiction ALONE will not suffice to ground the substantive truths of morality. (I'd love to see Arkes try to show otherwise. Of itself, the law of contradiction doesn't even suffice to ground the truths of arithmetic. We can use the law of contradiction to show that!) But, since Arkes himself cannot derive the truths of morality from the law of contradiction ALONE, he'll need some further premises. But now this is where Arkes' own challenge turns back upon himself: how does Arkes' know that his additional premises are true? What are his other grounds, and how can he trust them?
Arkes "should be obliged to tell us."