Derek Parfitt's "On What Matters"

Derek Parfitt has at last published a two-volume meisterwerk called On What Matters. It's been over a decade in the making and discussed with almost everyone on the planet who cares about what he thinks matters. I was one of the many who beat their heads against the prose of Reasons and Persons, all the while wondering why, and I'm not going to do it again with On What Matters. And here's why...

He's asking and answering the wrong questions.

When I was young and knew little of the world, I thought of moral philosophy in abstract terms. I wanted principles, if not a super-principle, by which to judge and act. Well, judge, anyway. I didn't want to make decisions, which imply responsibility and the possibility of error, with all the attendent apologies, amends, revisions and starting over, and the possibility that I'd get it wrong again. What I wanted was apriori principles on which I could act, and if it didn't work out, it would be the world's fault, not mine. More people than you might think still want something like this. Anyone looking for fundamental principles surely does.

The issue isn't whether there is such a fundamental principle. The issue is what difference it would make if there was. The answer is that it makes no difference at all. Because it is high-level, and presumably can be stated in twenty-five words or less, you will need to interpret it in any situation. Unless it is the only general-purpose principle with an utterly unambiguous interpetation in any situation, other people may disagree with your interpretation and consequent actions. They will have and equally strong conviction that their interpretation is correct. You are both agreeing on the principle, but you disagree on what it means in a specific circumstance. Which means you may as well adopt a bunch of less ambiguous lower-level principles, rather than one necessarily ambiguous high-level one. This ambiguity is not something unique to high-level moral principles: there's more than way of applying Newton's Third Law to the orbit of a satellite.

While all this sort of thing is very interesting, at least to philosophers, it's not much use to anyone interested in the question "how should I live", let alone "how do I run this freaking country"? (It's worth noticing that the more freedom we give to answering the first question, the harder it is to answer the second.)

What's often overlooked is that the first question is always asked in a context: by someone who is already placed in an existant society with laws, rules, expectations, manners and etiquette. The first draft answer to "how should I live?" is "as much of an exemplary a member of the society in which I find myself as I can manage". The problems start when I am not a native of that society and have, perhaps from being raised somewhere else, perhaps from having that personality disorder known as an "independent mind", my own ideas about what is acceptable, or find myself having an unexplained but forceful emotional reaction to some practice of that society. "I can't do that, I don't care if I'm supposed to, I can't." We are not born moral tabula rasa, but with, perhaps never-to-be-triggered, ideas of what they will and won't tolerate or do, which appear not as intellectual theories, but as deep-seated emotional reactions. (Not many people are like this: the majority will go along with whatever they find themselves born into.)

We have by now left the realm of detached ethical shoulds and oughts, and entered the prudential and pragmatic world of contracts, argeements, deals, expectations, manipulations, promises, compromises, pay-offs and other assorted rewards and punishments. The question "how should I live" now becomes "how much of this stuff can I accept, how much can I organise my life so it doesn't affect me, and how much am I going to have to take some kind of stand, or accept that there are some jobs I won't get, some parties I won't be invited to, some people who won't be in my circle, and some people who I will sincerly wish were elsewhere but my vicinity." I'm not sure about you, but that sounds more like my real life.

Parfitt knows that a steller reputation as an abstract thinker is not gained by getting down and dirty in the world of prudence and pragmatism. He's arguing abstruse points about high-level moral theories - utilitarianism, Kantian universalism and a social contract theory - that no practical person who makes decisions (judges, jurors, politicians, managers and directors, doctors, administrators) has ever used. If you need a high-level abstract principle to help solve a problem, you're solving the wrong problem.

Moral philosophy has long been politics by other means. Kant wanted to set up a universal moral standard so that there would be no authoritative role for the Church. Utilitarianism was a doctrine that fitted well with the mood and aims of Victorian social reformers. Consequentialism goes well with pragmatic people who deal with the world case-by-case and don't want grand principles and political programmes. As a fallibalist, I don't believe we can know what's right, but I'm pretty sure we can spot what needs to stop happening and shouldn't spend our tax revenues on. We don't need a theory of right and wrong to stop bankers hyping another bunch of useless products, or the pharamceutical industry from corrupting every third doctor and medical researcher into endorsing expensive, barely-effective drugs with more side-effects than e-coli.

If I had to pick one question that I think "matters" above all, it's this: at what point must we abandon the pursuit of our personal goals and be prepared to sacrifice our advancement so that the rest of the community can benefit? The obvious questions here are: how much profit is enough? How big a bonus is too much? Is it really acceptable to collect expensive vintage cars: isn't there something better to do with the money? Do we draw the line at sending jobs to poor countries? Should we donate to charities if we believe that they are ineffective and spend too little of their income on the cause? Notice that our personal goals may well already include charitable and welfare aims, and we may also live a modest life with no great riches or prestige. We may even be mired in debts. Does poverty, or the prospect of sustained unemployment, excuse us for not blowing the whistle on our employer's mal-practices? Does the continuous need for a salary mean that we should be complicit in selling useless and meritricious products and services?

None of these questions, you will notice, have anything to do with runaway trolleys. There are plenty of simple but moral problems in the daily world - should we give money to a beggar if we suspect that they are going to spend it on drugs? - without using toy examples. So maybe if I think there is one thing that "matters" it's the examination of the moral world created by post-modern capitalism and sprawling States that take forty per cent of our income in direct and indirect taxation and still can't keep our hospitals clean and teach children to read, write and show up on time. With a smile. That's what matters.