Topics Worth Investigating

1. Explain the fallacy of complex question. Suppose Bradley's conclusion that the question why I should be moral "has no sense at all" is correct. Would this assumption imply that any system of ethics answering the question must be logically mistaken?

2. In this essay, Bradley assumes that "virtue" and ‘good’ are interchangeable terms and that neither is a means for something else. But if virtue and good can be distinguished, can't we argue contra Bradley, virtue can be a means for a good end? For example, the hedonist believes that pleasure, and only pleasure, is an intrinsic good. Doesn't the hedonist seek pleasure by the means of enjoyable experiences? If so, why, then, cannot the moral person seek the good by the means of virtuous actions?

3. What kind of why-question is "Why should I be moral?" For example, Wesley Salmon distinguishes a number of different types of why-questions:

   There are many kinds of why-questions. Some why-questions are requests for scientific explanation as in "Why do methyl groups on cytosine in the promoter region of a gene switch it off?" or requests for metaphysical explanations as in "Why does God permit tsunamis and other natural disasters indiscriminately to take the lives of hundreds of thousands of persons?" Some why questions are requests for decisional justifications as in "Why did the United Nations Security Council unanimously pass Resolution 1441 offering Iraq a final opportunity to disarm?" Other why-questions solicit evidence as in "Why are astronomers so certain of the existence of invisible dark matter with no radiation?"[1]

   In what manner is the kind of why-question Bradley asks best answered? Linguistic analysis? scientific inquiry? deductive argument? Is a teleological why-question to be answered differently from a causal one?

4. Explain Bradley's reasoning to support the conclusion that any person who claims immoral action is advantageous contradicts himself. Show how this reasoning relates to the Socratic Paradox where Socrates argues doing the right thing is always acting in a person's own interest as it is "tending one's own soul":

   [My] attempt to prove that all things are knowledge, including justice, and temperance, and courage … tends to show that virtue can certainly be taught; … if virtue is entirely knowledge, … then I cannot but suppose that virtue is capable of being taught.[2]

   In all situations, Socrates believes acting immorally is harmful to oneself and is equivalent to the exact opposite of acting with knowledge, i.e., acting in ignorance.

5. Bradley writes,

   And so we take it as certain that there is an end on one side, means on the other; and that only if the end is good, and the means conduce to it, have we a right to say the means are good.

   But isn't it just possible in examining the relation of means to ends that some ends do not justify their means? Evaluate the ethical implications of Bradley's position on the means-end relation.

6. Explain what Bradley means when he writes,

   [T]o do good … for some ulterior end or object, not itself good, is never virtue, and never to act but for the sake of an end, other than doing well and right, is the mark of vice.

   Is Bradley correct in his assertion that a virtuous means to a bad end is a contradiction of virtue as an end in itself? Can you construct examples illustrating his point?

7. Samuel Alexander writes,

   … [T]he question, ‘why should I be moral?’ means most naturally and usually, what inducements are there to me to do right? …To the wicked the pains and penalties of wrong-doing may be a sufficient deterrent, and the sanctions have their value in this connection. But to a good man they will make no appeal. The only sanction which will induce him to be moral is to reflect upon the unhappiness produced by the wrong act, an unhappiness which means the thwarting of good character and the violations of rights. This intrinsic unhappiness will be reproduced in the disapprobation of his own conscience. It is right to shrink from the pains of conscience, and these are the only personal pains from which a good man will shrink.[3]

   To what extent can you argue Bradley would agree that we should be moral because the realization of ideal self implies good character? Similarly, Socrates' answer to Glaucon in Plato's Republic is that the moral life leads to a harmonious soul. Or would Bradley conclude we should be moral as an end in itself without regard for any future end?

8. Evaluate the following passage from the Bradley reading with respect to the evolutionary benefits of altruism:

   But passing by [that] which we can not here expound and which we lay no stress on, we think that the reader will probably go with use so far as this, that in desire what we want, so far as we want it, is ourselves in some form, or is some state of ourselves; and that our wanting anything else would be psychologically inexplicable.

   For example, Charles Darwin writes,

   [A]lthough a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man … an increase in the number of well-endowed men and advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to the group. A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection.[4]

   Darwin's explanation is then that a group of altruistic individuals will be better adapted and out-survive a group of selfish individuals. Is not Bradley assuming, however, it is the nature of human beings to be egoistic? How do you think Bradley can account for altruistic behavior?

9. T. S. Eliot's literary method is greatly influenced by his early study of Bradley's metaphysics, and in his Harvard Ph.D. thesis,[5] Eliot explores Bradley's relating of individual experience with absolute objectivity. In that work, Eliot states, "All significant truths are private truths."[6] Later, Eliot explains the interrelation among philosophy, experience, and poetry as follows:

   What poetry proves about any philosophy is merely its possibility for being lived for life includes both philosophy and art … For poetry … is not the assertion that something is true, but the making that truth more fully real to us; it is the creation of a sensuous embodiment. It is the making of the word Flesh. … we may find a poet giving greater validity to an inferior philosophy, by realizing it more fully and masterfully in literary art, and another employing a better philosophy and realizing it less satisfactorily. Yet we can hardly doubt that the "truest" philosophy is the best material for the greatest poet; so that the poet must be rated in the end both by the philosophy he realizes in poetry and by the fulness and adequacy of the realization.[7]

   Explain how Eliot's assessment of poetry and philosophy reflects Bradley's assessment of the ideal self and the real self as stated here:

   What is the self that I know and will? What is its true nature, and what is implied therein? What is the self that I am to make actual, and how is the principle present, living, and incarnate in its particular modes of realization?

   Is the universal ideal being realized in the particular individual or is the particular individual being realized in the universal ideal?

10. Lawrence Kohlberg suggests an addition his developmental stages of moral reasoning as follows:

    Even after attainment of Stage 6's clear awareness of universal principles, a fundamental ethical question still remains, namely, "Why be moral? Why be just in a universe that appears unjust?" This question asks whether there is any support in reality or nature for acting according to universal moral principles. … this question entails the further question, "Why live/"; thus, ultimate moral maturity requires a mature solution to the question of the meaning of life. This in turn, is hardy a moral question per se.[8]

    By turning the question of why be moral into a nonmoral question, in what ways is Kohlberg's proposed Stage 7 interpretation consistent with Bradley's transformation of the question?

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