Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals

by Iris Murdoch

  On animals (The Basis of Morality II 8) Schopenhauer reports Kant as saying that ‘beings devoid of reason (hence animals) are things and therefore should be treated merely as means that are not at the same time an end’. He also quotes Kant’s view that ‘man can have no duty to any beings except human’, and ‘cruelty to animals is contrary to man’s duty to himself because it deadens in him the feeling of sympathy to their sufferings, and thus a natural tendency that is very useful to morality in relation to other human beings is weakened’. (The argument about effect on character is in itself sound, and is a strong argument against fox-hutiting, appealing at least to the reason of those who are, in this context, unhappily lacking in compassion.) Schopenhauer goes on:

  ‘Thus only for practice are we to have sympathy for animals, and they are, so to speak, the pathological phantom for the purpose of practising sympathy for human beings! In common with the whole of Asia... I regard such propositions as revolting and abominable. At the same time, we see here once more how entirely this philosophical morality, which as previously shown is only a theological one in disguise, depends in reality on the biblical one. Thus because Christian morality leaves animals out of account ... they are at once outlawed in philosophical morals; they are mere “things”, mere means to any ends whatsoever. They can therefore be used for vivisection, hunting, coursing, bullfights, and horse racing, and can be whipped to death as they struggle along with heavy carts of stone. Shame on such a morality that ... fails to recognise the eternal essence that exists in every living thing, and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun!’

  And (WWI, Book IV, ch. iv, section 68):

  ‘Sacrifice means resignation generally, and the rest of nature must look for its salvation to man who is at once the priest and the sacrifice. Indeed it deserves to be noticed as very remarkable, that this thought has also been expressed by the admirable and unfathomably profound Angelus Silesius in the little poem entitled “Man brings all to God”: it runs, “Man – all loves thee, around thee great is the throng. All things flee to thee that they may attain to God.” But a yet greater mystic, Meister Eckhart ... says the same thing ... “I bear witness to the saying of Christ. I, if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all things unto me (John 12. 32). So shall the good man draw all things up to God, to the source from which they came. The Masters certify to us that all creatures are made for the sake of man. This is proved in all created things by the fact that the one makes use of the other; the ox makes use of the grass, the fish of the water, the bird of the air, the wild beast of the forests. Thus all created things become of use to the good man. A good man brings to God the one thing in the other.” ’

  (I am not sure that the animals would appreciate the idea that God saves them by feeding them to humans. However Schopenhauer glides over that.) He adds, ‘He means to say that man makes use of the beasts in this life because, in and with him, he saves them also. It seems to me that that difficult passage in the Bible, Romans 8, 21-4 must be interpreted in this sense.’ The lines in question speak of how ‘the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now’. Karl Barth on this passage: ‘We must recover that clarity of sight by which there is discovered in the cosmos the invisibility of God.’ Barth refers us here to Romans I. 20. The omnipresence of the spiritual, and the union of all things in their hope of salvation, is, after all, an idea that Christianity shares with Buddhism and Hinduism. Schopenhauer, after mentioning Romans, engagingly quotes Buddha’s words to his horse: ‘Bear me but this once more, Kantatakana, away from here, and when I have attained to the Law I will not forget thee.’

  To resume after this interlude with the animals. In the passage quoted earlier (WWI, Book I, section 9) Schopenhauer suggests that we are not to picture conscious thought in terms of mechanical process or of the Humian notion of a laborious play of mental intermediaries. Thought and language fly direct without the aid of mediating psychological devices which repeat speech or connect mental images. Wittgenstein : ‘How do sentences do it? Don’t you know? For nothing is hidden. But given this answer “But you know how sentences do it for nothing is concealed” one would like to retort “Yes, but it all goes by so quick, and I should like to see it as it were laid open to view”.’ (Philosophical Investigations 435.) The passage of Schopenhauer is quoted by Morris Engel in his article ‘Schopenhauer’s Impact on Wittgenstein’ (in Schopenhauer: His Philosophical Achievement, ed. M. Fox) where he compares it with a passage in the Blue Book. Prefigurings of Wittgenstein may of course also be pursued further back, into Hegel and Herder. (See pointers in Charles Taylor’s Hegel, p. 568.) Engel’s article illustrates other cases where Wittgenstein’s thoughts and terminology concerning words and concepts resemble those of Schopenhauer. I spoke earlier of different (ethical) aspects of Wittgenstein’s debt. The riddle (Rätsel) mentioned and dismissed at Tractatus 6. 5 is a Schopenhauerian riddle. Wittgenstein’s judgment: ‘Schopenhauer is, one might say, quite a crude mind. That is, he has refinement, but at a certain depth this gives out, and he is as crude as the crudest. Where real depth starts, his comes to an end. One can say of Schopenhauer: he never searches his conscience, he never looks into himself, into his soul.’ (Culture and Value, p. 36.) This seems somewhat harsh, though it may be true that Schopenhauer’s vastly inventive, and omnivorous mind did not possess the ruthlessness required to ‘finish the job’. Altogether Wittgenstein fails to admit his considerable debt to Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer does not seem to have radically pursued the insight expressed in the quoted passage, and elsewhere (as Engel points out) seemed unsure whether or not to identify concepts with words, although in at least one place he says firmly that this would be wrong. He does not make any dramatic confrontation between these ways of looking at consciousness, nor describe in philosophical detail what it is for the Ideas to work in the mind, as when we attend to art in situations like that described by Rilke. Wittgenstein does not of course draw any moral conclusions from his critique of ‘mental processes’ in the Investigations. Nor does he, in places where one might like more detail, offer it. ‘Perhaps the word “describe” tricks us here. I say “I describe my state of mind” and “I describe my room”. You need to call to mind the difference between the language games.’ (Philosophical Investigations 290.)

  Other recent thinkers have however (as I said earlier) used the elusive and fragmentary nature of our introspectible awareness as an argument for a neo-Kantian moral philosophy of will and imperatives which would have horrified Schopenhauer. If there is no substantial intimately connected inner mechanism, if the inner material is merely shadowy or messy (gluey, viscous) then it cannot have value or play a moral, or rational or cognitive, role and the question of its doing so cannot arise. This then disposes of any philosophical problem about ‘experience’ or ‘consciousness’ as a seat of value or indeed of reason. Schopenhauer rejects Kant’s philosophy of moral will (duty) and his abandonment of the phenomenal world to a spiritless and causally determined status. In this perspective on his thought the determinism which Schopenhauer paradoxically inherited from Kant amounts to a conception of the extreme difficulty of moral change. (The distance from the back of the Cave to the outside world.) The substance of blind will is given form by intellect (idea) and intermittently spiritualised by vision of (Platonic) Ideas. Schopenhauer was aware of the ‘telegraphic’ nature of the mind, and the absence of the ‘machinery’ which was the object of Wittgenstein’s attack.

  In philosophy one sometimes thinks that something must be so; and such moments of conviction are not necessarily sound guides. On the other hand it may be a case of having a philosophical ‘nose’. At any rate a strong sense of direction may be worth trying out. These metaphors come naturally when thinking about thought. The concept of consciousness and the concept of value ‘must’ be internally linked. To be conscious is to be a value-bearer or value-donor. This sounds like a metaphysical or perhaps religious remark. I have used metaphors of being
‘soaked in’, or ‘coloured by’, value. Of course there are many periods when we are reflecting morally or aesthetically, entertaining and carrying out good or bad plans and so on. But are there not other periods which are neutral or blank? Often we are performing ‘automatic’ tasks and operations. It is true that such activity may be rated as good or bad, diligent or lazy, etc. etc. Here it may be argued that the required concept is that of a disposition. Much conscious activity is habitual. Here a close scrutiny of moment-to-moment awareness would yield no relevant information, one would have to step back a little and look at larger areas. This in turn suggests that an idea of ‘parts’ of consciousness gives a wrong image; and moreover it would be better not to think in terms of a continuous consciousness at all. This path might lead back to a dispositional account of mind or states of mind. Yet this may still leave one with the familiar feeling of having lost something. One returns to the most obvious and most mysterious notion of all, that this present moment is the whole of one’s reality, and this at least is unavoidable. (The weirdness of being human.) Then one may start again reflecting upon the moment-to-moment reality of consciousness and how this is, after all, where we live. The concept of ‘experience’ is more wide-ranging and more free. Derrida spoke of experience as thought of in the form of consciousness or not. ‘Experience’ may simply mean dispositional expertise; or may suggest ‘adventures’ of very various kinds wherein we collect a part of our awareness together, making it into some sort of whole which could then be recalled or reassessed. What ‘it was like’ moment-to-moment we normally forget, it is as if we have to forget. This natural ‘lostness’ of the ‘stream’ may suggest its general nearly-non-existence and so its irrelevance. It might be thought of as only dispositionally extant, or at best an occasional indulgence of reflective people. On the other hand, surely it contains the whole chronicle of our existence, perhaps recorded by God. We might attempt to describe some of it in detail (say as an account of our ‘fantasy life’) to an analyst or a priest. Certainly our ‘presents’ are very various in quality.

  Is there not something we ought to aim at here? Is every moment morally significant? We may be inclined to say no, are there not innocuously valueless gaps, can we not rest sometimes! The question seems censorious and inappropriate. On the other hand if we say yes, are we making some kind of moral or religious or metaphysical move? Does the whole consist simply of its parts? (Moore was concerned in a not dissimilar context with this problem.) The attractive image of the ‘stream’ may suggest something in some sense homogeneous. In literature the detailed portrayal of it (as a general literary form) seems to be surprisingly recent, liberally in use since Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. The term ‘stream of consciousness’ was, I gather, coined by William James (Principles of Psychology). The ‘purest’ example, or classic case, is Molly Bloom’s soliloquy at the end of Ulysses. This art form, briefly regarded as odd, is now taken for granted. Of course any of these possible descriptions compared with the ‘real thing’ are likely to be loaded, coloured, evaluated. Streams of consciousness in fiction are usually moral indicators. The deepest thoughts and feelings of the fictional character are revealed, from this evidence he cannot escape! And is it not the same with us? Of course the fictional stream serves a fictional end, its formlessness has form and context, it is, compared with the ‘real thing’, purposeful and thin. But can we record (write down, dictate) our own stream, as if we could see it all or overhear it as an inner monologue? Could we ‘keep up’ with it? It moves so fast and is so full of miscellaneous ‘stuff’, we cannot capture it. We recognise Hegel’s image of a ragbag. Only the eye of God could be alert enough to see it all. Does this matter? Perhaps on other planets for other beings the stream moves more slowly. Reflection here may suggest how much of our self-existence continues unknown in the dark, we do not need Freud to tell us. Perhaps our merciful Demiurge decided that it would overburden, indeed destroy, our frail souls if we could recall and hold all the moving substance of the mind. This concerns what it is to be human, the enigma at the centre. If we are a whole is not this its core? If this escapes us what are we? Do such thoughts represent a new form of anxiety brought on by an increased self-awareness? If we cannot deal in continuously identifiable items, must we be content to be, as our own observers, our own fiction-writers? Indeed what is truth, and why bother?

  This line of investigation could occasion the ‘eerie feeling’ experienced in another (related) context by Saul Kripke. It could lead to relativism, cynicism, doubts about morals, doubts about order: the chaos which Hume and Kant were so afraid of. Of course these are, in their extreme form, philosophers’ conceptions and worries, not likely to trouble the great innocent majority of mankind. Hume’s remedy lies here nearest to common-sense: habit and custom conceal the lack of any genuine foundation. As for consciousness and its weirdness, there does seem to be a décalage, a slipped connection, between the moment-to-moment flow and the procedure, however continuous, of the inner monologue or inner life. Here, so far from raising doubts about morality, it seems to me that morality is ‘proved’ by its indelible inherence in the secret mind. As for the loss of ‘items’ this is an aspect of our radically contingent nature, the bit which the Demiurge blotted out. We have to confront mysteries. We are not gods. Meanwhile of course philosophers hanker after deep foundations and describable (even if postulated) entities. In the Theaetetus Socrates discussing the nature and possibility of true judgment (knowledge) suggests (the dream of Socrates, 201E-202B) that we should think of reality as composed of primal elements, not accessible to reason and knowledge, which can only be named. As these elements are woven together, so their names are woven together. This complex becomes a logos, an account or rational explanation; a logos is essentially a complex of names. However: how can the primal elements be unknowable and the complexes knowable? The dialogue continues and reaches no satisfactory conclusion. Wittgenstein, acknowledging his debt to Plato (Investigations 46ff., also Philosophical Grammar, p. 208), offers a similar picture in the Tractatus. ‘Objects can only be named. Signs are their representatives ... The requirement that simple signs be possible is the requirement that sense be determinate.’ (Tractatus 3. 221, 3. 23.) I do not propose to discuss these metaphysical statements, I offer them only as examples of how philosophy can try, with an appearance of clear system, to reach the basis of things and show us what, though we may not be able to see it, must be there. These systems are, like Kant’s, deduced, transcendental, offering huge general pictures of what ‘must be the case’ for human being to be as it is. Of course one seeks out concepts with motives, celebrating one, ignoring or obliterating another. I want to assert and indicate the importance and omnipresence of a reflective experiential background to moral decision and action, and with this the omnipresence of value (an opposition between good and bad) in human activity. This might be a point at which some technical vocabulary might be set up, some fundamental distinction made, for instance between self-reflective and unreflective awareness, between Erfahrung and Erlebnis, and so on. But it may be wise to avoid too much hasty technical precision. Distinctions mooted in philosophy can too rapidly become taken-for-granted shorthands, ‘obvious’ starting points and tools of reflection (such as intellect and will, fact and value, emotive and descriptive). As we cannot keep track of items, to say that every moment counts may seem absurd; or else like a profession of faith. God sees it all. The Psalmist clearly thought that every moment counted. Is that simply poetic or picturesque? The idea of detailed scrutiny and potential judgment of all states of mind is not the exclusive property of traditional religion. If we call it a religious way of looking we may be said to extend the concept of religion. However that may be, more often than might seem at first sight our passing moments have a positive controllable content. We may encourage or discourage certain thoughts or emotions. That place, where we are at home, which we seem to leave and then return to, which is the fundamental seat of our freedom, has moral colour,
moral sensibility. We have a continuous sense of orientation. The concept of consciousness, the stream of consciousness, is animated by indicating a moral dimension. Our speech is moral speech, a constant use of the innumerable subtle normative words whereby (for better or worse) we texture the detail of our moral surround and steer our life of action. We cannot over-estimate the importance of the concept-forming words we utter to ourselves and others. This background of our thinking and feeling is always vulnerable. Looked at in this way we may entertain a metaphor of a continuous tone, or murmur, or conversation, or perhaps a symphonic binding together of different vibrations. We know very well what it is like to be obsessed by bad thoughts and feelings. Nothing is more evident in human life than fear and muddle, and the tumultuous agitation of the battle against natural egoism. The ego is indeed ‘unbridled’. Continuous control is required.