“Dr. Janet,” the embarrassed woman says, “I have a sexual problem. I don’t get aroused by my husband.”
Dr. Janet says, “Okay, I’ll do a thorough exam tomorrow. Bring your husband in with you.”
The next day the woman returns with her husband. “Take off your clothes, Mr. Thomas,” says the doctor. “Now turn all the way around. Okay, now lie down, please. Uh-huh, I see. Okay, you may put your clothes back on.”
Dr. Janet takes the woman aside. “You’re in perfect health,” she says. “He doesn’t turn me on either.”
DIMITRI: I’ve got to admit, Tasso, this epistemology stuff is good to know.
TASSO: Good? In what way? What do you mean by “good”?
DIMITRI: Before I answer that, I have a question for you. Do you know what “pain in the ass” means?
{IV}
Ethics
Sorting out what’s good and bad is the province of ethics.
It is also what keeps priests, pundits, and parents busy.
Unfortunately, what keeps children and philosophers busy is
asking the priests, pundits, and parents, “Why?”
DIMITRI: I’ve been thinking about your question, what does “good” mean, and I’ve got the answer—“good” is acting on a just principle.
TASSO: By Zeus, Dimitri, you’re full of surprises—you’re starting to sound like a real philosopher. Just one last question: How do you determine just principles?
DIMITRI: Du-uh! Just like everybody else. I learn them from my mom.
TASSO (aside): Why does Socrates get all the “A” students?
ABSOLUTIST ETHICS: DIVINE LAW
Divine Law makes a simple business of ethics: If God says it’s wrong, it is wrong, wholly and absolutely. That’s all she wrote. But there are complications. The first is, how can we be sure what God really thinks? Fundamentalists have that one covered: Scripture says so. But how did the people in Scripture know the signals they were getting were really from God? Abraham thought he was called by God to sacrifice his son on the altar. Abraham figures, “If God says so, I’d better do it.” Our first philosophical query to Abraham is, “What are you, nuts? You hear ‘God’ tell you to do a crazy thing, and you don’t even ask for identification?”
Another problem with following Divine Law is interpretation. What exactly qualifies as honoring thy father and mother? A Mother’s Day card? Marrying the boring son of the family dentist, as thy honorable mother and father want you to do? These questions don’t feel like Talmudic hair-splitting when the dentist’s son is 4′ 11″ and weighs 270.
A prime characteristic of Divine Law is that God always has the last word.
Moses trudges down from Mt. Sinai, tablets in hand, and announces to the assembled multitudes: “I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. The good news is I got Him down to ten. The bad news is ‘adultery’ is still in.”
A young and lusty St. Augustine apparently attempted a similar negotiation when he famously cried out, “Lord, grant me chastity. But not now!” Clearly, Augustine was trying a little Talmudic hair-splitting himself. “I mean, you didn’t say exactly when not to commit adultery, did you?” Sounds like a joke.
PLATONIC VIRTUE
In his magnum opus, The Republic, Plato wrote, “The state is the soul writ large.” So to discuss the virtues of the indi vidual, he wrote a dialogue about the virtues of the ideal state. He called the rulers of this state Philosopher Kings, which may account for Plato’s popularity with philosophers. The Philosopher Kings guide the state as Reason guides the human soul. The prime virtue—of both the PKs and Reason—is Wisdom, which Plato defined as understanding the Idea of the Good. However, one man’s good is another man’s goodies.
At a meeting of the college faculty, an angel suddenly appears and tells the head of the philosophy department, “I will grant you whichever of three blessings you choose: Wisdom, Beauty—or ten million dollars.”
Immediately, the professor chooses Wisdom.
There is a flash of lightning, and the professor appears transformed, but he just sits there, staring down at the table. One of his colleagues whispers, “Say something.”
The professor says, “I should have taken the money.”
STOICISM
The ethical question that concerned the Stoics in the fourth century B.C. was how to react to the prevailing sense of fatalism that came from living in a tightly controlled empire. They could not change much of anything in their daily lives, so they decided to change their attitude toward life itself. It was the only personal control they had left. What the Stoics came up with was a strategy of emotional disengagement from life. They called their attitude apathia (apathy) and for the Stoics apathy was a virtue, which made them a barrel of laughs at the local taverna. The Stoics were willing to sacrifice some kinds of happiness (sex, drugs, and Dionysian hip-hop) in order to avoid the unhappiness brought on by their passions (STDs, hangovers, and bad rhymes). They acted only from reason, never from passion, and therefore considered themselves the only truly happy people—which is to say they were un-unhappy.
In the following story, Mr. Cooper demonstrates a modern form of Stoicism: Stoicism by proxy.
The Coopers were shown into the dentist’s office, where Mr. Cooper made it clear he was in a big hurry. “No fancy stuff, Doctor,” he ordered. “No gas or needles or any of that stuff. Just pull the tooth and get it over with.”
“I wish more of my patients were as stoic as you,” said the dentist admiringly. “Now, which tooth is it?”
Mr. Cooper turned to his wife. “Open your mouth, honey.”
G. K. Chesterton once wrote, “The word ‘good’ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his mother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.” It’s the qualifier “necessarily” that shows Chesterton possessed a truly philosophical mind.
UTILITARIANISM
We all know that that twentieth-century pinko Vladimir Lenin said, “The end justifies the means,” but, ironically, it’s not too far from the view of one of the GOP God Squad’s favorite philosophers, John Stuart Mill. Mill and the utilitarians proposed a “consequentialist” ethic: The moral rightness of an act is determined solely by its consequences.
The protagonist in the following story is clearly a utilitarian:
Mrs. O’Callahan instructed the artist painting her portrait to add to it a gold bracelet on each of her wrists, a strand of pearls around her neck, ruby earrings, and a diamond tiara.
The artist pointed out that would be tantamount to lying.
Said Mrs. O’Callahan, “Look, my husband’s running around with a young blonde. After I die, I want her to go crazy looking for the jewelry.”
This sort of justification could presumably be used to condone some pretty serious stuff, if the consequences were felt to be “good” enough.
Mrs. Brevoort, a widow, was hanging out by the pool at her country club when she spotted a handsome man sunning himself. She sidled up to him and said, “Well, I don’t believe I’ve seen you here before.”
“Not likely,” the man said. “I’ve been in the penitentiary for thirty years.”
“Really? What for?”
“I murdered my wife.”
“Ah!” Mrs. Brevoort said, “So you’re single!”
The influential contemporary utilitarian Peter Singer often draws analogies between decisions that we all agree involve horrendous consequences and more seemingly benign decisions that he contends are ethically similar. In one essay, he poses a situation in which one can earn money to buy a new TV by selling a homeless child to a corporation that will harvest his organs for transplants. Way bad, we all agree. But then Singer argues that anytime one buys a new TV in lieu of sending money to a charity that protects homeless children, he is doing essentially the same thing. Don’t you hate it when he says things like that? It’s an argument by analogy from a dramatic particular to a general moral pronouncement, li
ke in this classic gag:
He: Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?
She: A million bucks? Wow! I guess I would.
He: How about for two dollars?
She: Get lost, buddy! What do you think I am?
He: We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling over the price.
THE SUPREME CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE
AND THE OLDEN GOLDIE
Kant’s overarching principle, the criterion for all other ethical maxims, is what he calls the “supreme categorical imperative.” At first blush, this imperative merely sounds like a gussied-up version of the old golden rule.
Golden rule:“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”
Supreme categorical imperative: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
Of course, Kant’s rendition has a decidedly colder ring to it. The very term “supreme categorical imperative” sounds, well, Germanic. But then Kant couldn’t help it—he was German.
Still, the categorical imperative and the golden rule do share a lot of philosophical territory:
• Neither of them is a rule about specific action, like “Honor thy father and mother” or “Eat your spinach!”
• Instead, both provide an abstract principle for determining which specific actions are right and which are wrong.
• In both, this abstract principle invokes the idea that all folks are as valuable as you and me, and so all should be treated morally the same as you and me . . . particularly me.
But there is a fundamental difference between the categorical imperative and the golden rule, and this one-liner hits it on the head:
A sadist is a masochist who follows the golden rule.
In inflicting pain on others, the masochist is only doing what the golden rule requires: doing what he would like done unto him, preferably with a whip. But Kant would say that there’s no way the masochist could honestly claim that the moral imperative, “inflict pain on others,” could be a universal law for a livable world. Even a masochist would find that unreasonable.
Similar considerations led English playwright George Bernard Shaw to wryly rewrite the golden rule:
“Do not do unto others as you would have others do unto you; they may have different taste.”
Variations on the golden rule are found not only in Kant, but in religious traditions from around the world:
HINDUISM (C. THIRTEENTH CENTURY B.C.)
Do not to others what ye do not wish done to yourself
. . . This is the whole Dharma. Heed it well.
—The Mahabharata
JUDAISM (C. THIRTEENTH CENTURY B.C.)
What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor;
that is the entire Torah; the rest is commentary; go learn it.
—The Babylonian Talmud
ZOROASTRIANISM (C. TWELFTH CENTURY B.C.)
Human nature is good only when it does not do unto
another whatever is not good for its own self.
—The Dadistan-i-Dinik
BUDDHISM (C. SIXTH CENTURY B.C.)
Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find
hurtful.
—The Tibetan Dhammapada
CONFUCIANISM (C. SIXTH CENTURY B.C.)
Do not do to others what you do not want done
to yourself.
—Confucius, Analects
ISLAM (C. SEVENTH CENTURY A.D.)
No one of you is a believer until you desire for another
that which you desire for yourself.
—“The Sunnah,” from The Hadith
BAHÁ’Í (C. NINETEENTH CENTURY A.D.)
Ascribe not to any soul that which thou wouldst not
have ascribed to thee, and say not that which thou
doest not. This is my command unto thee, do thou
observe it.
—Bahá’u’lláh, The Hidden Words
SOPRANOISM (TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY A.D.)
Whack the next guy with the same respect you’d like to
be whacked with, you know?
—Tony, Episode Twelve
WILL TO POWER
The nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche boldly proclaimed that he was turning traditional Christian ethics on its ear. He started small, by announcing the death of God. God retaliated by announcing—on the walls of men’s room stalls in college towns—the death of Nietzsche. What Nietzsche meant by the death of God was that Western culture had outgrown metaphysical explanations of the world as well as the accompanying Christian ethic. He called Christianity “herd morality,” because it teaches an “unnatural ethic”—that it’s bad to be an alpha male who dominates the herd. In place of Christian ethics he substituted a life-affirming ethic of strength, which he called the will to power. The exceptional individual, the Übermensch or superman, is above herd morality and deserves to express his natural strength and superiority freely over the herd. Friedrich was clearly a member of the Tony Soprano school when it came to the golden rule. Consequently, Nietzsche has been blamed for everything from German militarism to sauerkraut:
The problem with German food is that, no matter how much you eat, an hour later you’re hungry for power.
EMOTIVISM
By the mid-twentieth century, most ethical philosophy was metaethical. Instead of asking, “What actions are good?” philosophers were asking, “What does it mean to say an action is good? Does ‘x is good’ mean only ‘I approve of x’? Alternatively, does ‘x is good’ express an emotion I feel when I observe x or think about x?” The latter stance, known as emotivism, finds expression in this story:
A man wrote a letter to the IRS saying, “I have been unable to sleep knowing that I have cheated on my income tax. I have understated my taxable income and have enclosed a check for $150. If I still can’t sleep, I will send the rest.”
APPLIED ETHICS
Just when metaethical speculation about the meaning of the word “good” was beginning to run out of steam, doing ethics became fashionable again, and philosophers began to write once more about what particular actions are good. Bioethics, feminist ethics, and ethics for the proper treatment of animals became de rigeur.
One type of applied ethics that burgeoned in the twentieth century was professional ethics, the codes regulating the relationships of professionals to clients and patients.
After attending a conference on professional ethics, four psychiatrists walked out together. One said, “You know, people are always coming to us with their guilt and fears, but we have no one to go to with our problems. So why don’t we take some time right now to hear each other out?” The other three agreed.
The first psychiatrist confessed, “I have an almost uncontrollable desire to kill my patients.”
The second psychiatrist said, “I find ways to cheat my patients out of their money whenever I can.”
The third followed with, “I’m involved in selling drugs and often get my patients to sell them for me.”
The fourth psychiatrist then confessed, “You know, no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to keep a secret.”
Each medical specialty developed its own ethical principles.
Four docs went on a duck-hunting trip together: a family practitioner, a gynecologist, a surgeon, and a pathologist. As a bird flew overhead, the family practitioner started to shoot but decided not to because he wasn’t absolutely sure it was a duck. The gynecologist also started to shoot, but lowered his gun when he realized he didn’t know whether it was a male or a female duck. The surgeon, meanwhile, blew the bird away, turned to the pathologist and said, “Go see if that was a duck.”
Even lawyers have professional ethics. If a client mistakenly gives a lawyer $400 to pay a $300 bill, the ethical question that naturally arises is whether the lawyer should tell his partner.
It should come as no surprise that clergy also have professional ethics or that theirs co
me with divine sanctions.
The young rabbi was an avid golfer. Even on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, he snuck out by himself for a quick nine holes.
On the last hole he teed off, and a gust of wind carried his ball directly over the hole and dropped it in for a hole in one.
An angel who witnessed this miracle complained to God, “This guy is playing golf on Yom Kippur, and you cause him to get a hole in one? This is a punishment?”
“Of course it is,” said the Lord, smiling. “Who can he tell?”
What makes applied ethics interesting, but also puzzling, is that ethical decisions often turn on a dilemma, a tough choice between two goods: “How much allegiance do I owe my family as opposed to my job? My kids as opposed to myself? My country as opposed to humanity?” It’s those practical ethical dilemmas that kept Abby and Ann Landers in business all those years and now provide the material for “The Ethicist,” Randy Cohen’s weekly column for The New York Times.
The following question, Cohen recently wrote on slate.com, is one of the ten best he’s never been asked:
Although I’m happy in my current job, having recently received a promotion (I’m the new Thane of Cawdor), that’s not enough for my wife who is eager for me to get ahead. I’m not saying I lack ambition, but I am reluctant to do what it takes to climb higher—the long hours, the bloody murders. And yet, don’t I have a special obligation to consider my wife’s desires? We are, after all, a family.
—MACBETH, SCOTLAND
THE IMPACT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS ON
PHILOSOPHICAL ETHICS
Sigmund Freud, though not a philosopher, had a dramatic impact on ethical philosophy with his assertion that it is really unconscious biological drives that determine human behavior, not nice, rational, philosophical distinctions. No matter how hard we try to bring our lives under rational control, as the moral philosophers would have us do, our unconscious is always breaking through. The Freudian slip, for example, occurs when we “mistakenly” say something that expresses our unconscious desires, as when the city councilman introduces his gorgeous chairwoman as “a great pubic servant.”
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