Commitment 9781844652310, 9781138158740, 9781315710211

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: the problems
2. Love
3. Work
4. Faith, chance and the ethics of belief
5. Boredom and acedia
6. Commitment, life and meaning
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Commitment

THE ART OF LIVING SERIES Series Editor: Mark Vernon From Plato to Bertrand Russell philosophers have engaged wide audiences on matters of life and death. The Art of Living series aims to open up philosophy’s riches to a wider public once again. Taking its lead from the concerns of the ancient Greek philosophers, the series asks the question “How should we live?”. Authors draw on their own personal reflections to write philosophy that seeks to enrich, stimulate and challenge the reader’s thoughts about their own life. Clothes John Harvey Commitment Piers Benn Death Todd May Deception Ziyad Marar Distraction Damon Young Faith Theo Hobson Fame Mark Rowlands Forgiveness Eve Garrard and David McNaughton Hope Stan van Hooft Hunger Raymond Tallis Illness Havi Carel Love Tony Milligan Me Mel Thompson Middle Age Christopher Hamilton Money Eric Lonergan Pets Erica Fudge Science Steve Fuller Sport Colin McGinn Wellbeing Mark Vernon Work Lars Svendsen

Commitment Piers Benn

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2011 by Acumen Published 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© Piers Benn, 2011 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notices Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein. ISBN 13: 978-1-84465-231-0 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Typeset in Warnock Pro.

In memory of June Mary Benn, author and mother, 1930–2006

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Contents

Acknowledgements 1. Introduction: the problems

ix 1

2. Love

21

3. Work

51

4. Faith, chance and the ethics of belief

77

5. Boredom and acedia

111

6. Commitment, life and meaning

131

Bibliography Index

153 155

vii

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the Art of Living series editor, Mark Vernon, who read drafts of this work and whose fertile mind led him to make many helpful suggestions for improvements. I am also grateful to Steven Gerrard at Acumen for his publisher insights and patience, and Kate Williams for her perceptive copy-editing.

ix

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1. Introduction: the problems

This book is about commitment. But what are the hard, philosophical questions that commitment, in general, raises? Isn’t there a disturbing vagueness in the title, as if commitment were just one thing, when perhaps it is really multifaceted? Many things come to mind when we think about the concept. There is, most obviously, the idea of responsibility. A manufacturer’s warranty explains “our commitment to you” in respect of the product or the quality of service. A bank says it is committed to “the highest standards of customer service” (whether or not that is the case). A doctor is committed to acting in the patient’s best interests; he or she gives them priority over all else, and must never allow them to be subordinated to other concerns, such as financial ones. Commitment, more generally, has connotations of steadfastness, dedication, a refusal to be deflected from the task at hand. The person who is committed, say, to his profession can be expected to be reliable in it. Someone in a “committed relationship” can be expected not to leave it, or not without very good reason. For these sorts of reasons, the idea of commitment is often associated with promises or undertakings. A sincere promise implies a genuine commitment; if someone promises you something, you have a right to expect that person to deliver on it. We thank people for promising to do certain things for us. But we do not thank them for promising, as such, but for acting on that promise in future. In other words, we thank them in advance. Hence it is very annoying when people expect to be thanked for promising things, 1

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even though, in the event, they do not deliver. “But you should be grateful that at least I said I’d do it!” has a hollow ring to it; the properly tight-lipped response should be, “No, I am not grateful that you said you’d do it. I was grateful to you for being about to do the thing you said you would, but I now withdraw that gratitude, since you did not in fact do it.” It is also interesting to look at how our word “commitment” translates into other languages. The French translation is instructive: the Collins Robert dictionary translates it as “charges”, “responsabilité(s)” or “engagement”. The emphasis there seems to be on obligation; even “engagement” can be used in the context of financial agreements, although it can also refer to commitment in a much wider sense. The taking on of responsibilities is central, and with that comes the idea of intention. “I am committed to mastering Hungarian within three years” suggests an intention from which I am determined not to be swayed. But we should not be sticklers for dictionary definitions or translations, which in any case are suggestions or approximations. We should also look at the wider connotations of the idea. Risk, sacrifice, feeling sure (or at least, acting as if sure), courage, enthusiastic engagement, perseverance, the endurance of hardship or uncertainty: these are all notions naturally prompted by the idea of commitment. And there is an important distinction to be made between commitments to beliefs and commitments to actions. This dichotomy will run though my discussion. The range of areas I choose to discuss may seem somewhat disconnected from each other, so some explanation is in order. I concentrate primarily on the following: the commitments we have to one another, of various kinds – contractual, erotic, parental and so on; the commitments we have with respect to work and especially vocation; and those we have to political and especially religious creeds or ways of life. Their uniting thread is that they present us with practical or theoretical choices, all of which confront formidable obstacles. Sometimes 2

Introduction: the problems

they do not seem to be choices, because the commitments involved appear utterly basic and instinctual, like normal parental love. Yet some people act as if they did not have such instincts. My uniting strategy is to present the different kinds of commitments that arise in these different areas of life, say why they might be good to have, and then say what the obstacles may be. I also try to discuss, in each case, whether lacking, or giving up, commitments may be a good thing. We often think, for example, that love relationships are intrinsically valuable and cannot meaningfully be based only on present consent. Yet at the same time, there are occasions when they should be ruptured. Also, there may be times when intellectual or moral integrity requires us to stay the impulse to commitment, to learn to doubt, and put up with the discomfort this may bring. A unifying question throughout my discussion is therefore: what makes commitment valuable in general, when it is, and when should it be avoided? This, in turn, leads me to very general questions about obstacles to commitment, particularly concerning boredom, ennui and acedia (literally, not caring). It also leads, in my final chapter, to a discussion of a major reason for valuing certain commitments, namely, that commitment is a central ingredient in the meaning of life. But even here I suggest that it may be better to risk a sense of a lack of meaning and some unhappiness rather than to make false or frivolous commitments. So the tension between the urge to commitment and grounds for resisting it is present throughout the whole essay.

Committing to commitment A pertinent question about writing about commitment is: why write about it at all? Might not the very process be a kind of displacement activity, a way of thinking abstractly about commitments rather than actually forming any, rather like a character 3

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who, after much soul-searching, announces, “I am thinking of becoming a doer”? This essay is not autobiographical: that would surely be boring and self-indulgent. But it does arise, to some extent, from my personal concerns. Here are some examples at random. In the UK there was a general election in 2010, and until almost the last minute I didn’t know how I was going to vote. I have never had a party political allegiance of any real depth or passion, even though I take politics seriously. Political philosophy is engaging, but party political propaganda is largely composed of vapid rhetoric (“we shall build a fairer society”, and so on), and is unintelligible to me when it does get down to concrete detail, particularly when it comes to economics. You could argue that if you can’t commit, you shouldn’t vote, but that is taking purity a bit too far, like trying to be more Catholic than the Pope. Talking of popes, a second and less straightforward example concerns religion. My parents were not religious, although I did attend a Nonconformist Christian day school. I read religious literature in the school library, largely of an evangelical Protestant stripe. I found much of it frightening and depressing, and started worrying about hell and the devil. It was not that I really believed in these entities: I was just stuck with a lively imagination and a fear that these things just might be real; a fear that if they were, I could be in real trouble – the worst trouble imaginable. Why, then, did I not act as if they were real, and ask for divine guidance? The worst thing is to worry, yet do nothing about it. The trouble was that I had a fairly lucid intellectual grasp of the issues, yet did nothing. In other words, for whatever reason, I had an entrenched difficulty with certain sorts of commitment. The fear of getting things wrong was always standing in the way of getting things right. I sometimes attend Mass at a liberal Anglo-Catholic church, but at the altar I am always the one to get the blessing rather than take communion, the latter possibly being an act of sacrilege in 4

Introduction: the problems

an agnostic non-believer like me, who was never even baptised. At least the priests there are not the sort to transfix you with a saved expression and ask if you have found the Lord yet. The liturgy and music are beautiful, the sermons often thoughtful. I have often prayed that if there really is a God he may make himself known to me, but all the while wondering whether I really was sincerely praying for this, as I was somewhat afraid that he might respond, if he exists. (In which case, why was I praying? Did I think God would be fooled? Well, the human mind is complex: think of George Orwell’s doublethink in Nineteen Eighty-Four). Oddly, it is a comfort to know that some communicant Christians turn out to have similar worries. Now let us briefly move on to other matters: for example, ethics. For many years I lectured at universities in subjects variously called ethics, applied ethics or moral philosophy. Most recently it was medical ethics to a mix of health-care professionals, keen young medical students and miscellaneous interested others. Certainly I enjoyed explaining ideas, engaging in the cut and thrust of argument, encouraging critical thinking, conjuring up creative thought experiments and adding a bit of dry humour to it all. I was good at devil’s advocacy, at challenging people’s positions on a whole range of issues. When it came to familiar topics such as abortion, assisted dying and what it takes to be a person with something clumsily called “moral status”, I was good at presenting all sides of the arguments in a fairly even-handed way. But there it ended. What did I really think about these issues? Where did I stand? In many cases I didn’t really know. This might have been due to legitimate uncertainty or confusion about issues about which one cannot, without being “deeply shallow”, think dogmatically. Perhaps I was not intellectually quite up to it. Maybe, even, there was a cowardly avoidance of moral commitment, for fear of getting something crucially important wrong. It could have been sheer weariness with the topics. Who knows? But if I am asked 5

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point blank whether I think an early abortion is morally tantamount to infanticide, or whether doctors (or anyone else) should have the right to assist a suicide, or what we may do to animals to provide medical benefit to humans, there are times when I feel I really cannot answer. And this is uncomfortable, and even a professional disadvantage, for many highly productive writers get a great deal written because they have an agenda, which they apply to as many areas as possible. Having such conviction is energising; being less clear about one’s views can cause a despondent lack of motivation to write, for fear of having nothing to say. There is another commitment that is fundamental for most people, and by far the most important one. It is, of course, love, whether parental, erotic, of philia (friendship) or of agape (charity). Love brings us to some of the deepest issues involving commitment and I shall devote a more philosophical chapter to them later on. So all this is just a short account of some reasons why I chose to write about this subject: why the issue of commitment matters, philosophically, to me. But, of course, all of this is about individual commitments. What about the societal factors that underpin individual commitments? We talk about the values of a society. Does this make sense? Could it even be that societies themselves have commitments, which are more than the sum of individuals’ commitments within those societies? What are they? I shall start by saying a little more about commitments at an individual level, and then try to find the bridge between them and wider questions of the commitments – or, as I prefer to say, values – of society as a whole.

The crisis of commitment If a difficulty in forming individual, personal commitments besets us, should it worry us and, if so, how can we rationally remove the 6

Introduction: the problems

obstacles to commitment? Or is this the wrong question? Should we be trying to do this rationally at all? Perhaps we should, if only because it may help silence paralysing fears and doubts that can hold up our lives. Maybe nagging thoughts such as “I might be wrong” or “This new relationship, or career-change, or house-move may be a mistake” are major obstacles to real goods. Many risks, after all, are rational – they are more likely than not to pay off – and the risk involved in not taking risks may be considerable. But there is a deeper worry, which affects commitments of a more fundamental or “existential” kind. The worry is about moral or intellectual integrity. True, I might be happier or more active if I believed something with certainty, but is it either possible or commendable to “choose” a belief? Shouldn’t beliefs, or at least important ones, be based on evidence? Moreover, if I am to try to base my beliefs on evidence, don’t I need a rationally based confidence that my ability to assess the evidence is fairly reliable?

Scepticism: radical versus reasonable At one extreme, these thoughts can tempt us towards that bête noire of philosophy, radical scepticism. In its classic Cartesian form, a radical philosophical sceptic challenges my claims to any knowledge by remarking that things I normally take to justify these claims are consistent with my being radically deceived, or simply dreaming. Maybe I am being perpetually deceived by an evil demon, or perhaps I am really a brain in a vat, being stimulated by electrical devices that produce convincing, but entirely illusory, experiences. The sceptic then challenges me to produce good reasons for thinking I can know anything at all, given that the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis is consistent with all the thoughts and experiences I have. If he really wants to be provocative, he suggests that it is more economical to suppose that my experiences 7

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are all that really exists, since this avoids postulating entities (the external world, other minds and so on) that are surplus to explanatory requirements. It is a relief to see that there are few, if any, such sceptics around, even among philosophers. Were there such people, they might attract the attention of the mental health services, unless they keep their opinions to themselves for the simple reason that there is literally no one else to share them with. The “refutation” of the sceptic remains a highly controversial and involved matter. Fortunately, this is not my central concern here. We do not need to take radical scepticism seriously to see that there are many particular areas where a degree of scepticism is in order, and often more than is allowed for in everyday, non-philosophical life. Many life stances, to do with the nature of the good life, virtues and vices, religion, politics and much besides, seem to be founded on claims that can be assessed for truth or falsity, and only a shallow dogmatist would think such assessment is always easy. As a philosopher, I know that I am biased towards finding examples mainly of philosophical stances, and this is a danger to be guarded against. Most people’s doubts about commitment have nothing particularly philosophical about them: “I’ve fallen in love with a man who seems to love me and want to move in with me, but is this a fantasy? Do I really know him well enough to trust him if he lives with me?”; or “I’m over the moon about being offered what seems like a dream job, but is there a catch? There was something, indefinably, not quite right about the person who interviewed me”; or even “I’ve just had a polite email, in quaint English, from a gentleman in Nigeria, sprinkled with references to the Lord Jesus, who is anxious to give me half a million pounds if I open a bank account for him, so he can deposit his vast fortune there – the only minor formality being that he needs all my bank details for the process to get started. Do I make such a commitment?” (Well, all right, the last example is not a particularly difficult thing to choose 8

Introduction: the problems

not to commit to, although there must be a few people gullible and greedy enough to fall for this notorious scam.) So questions about commitment arise in different kinds of area, ranging from everyday matters to more philosophical issues concerning values, life stances or metaphysical beliefs. There is, therefore, an important distinction to be made between practical and theoretical commitments, between those concerning what to believe and those concerning what to do. But what they have in common is that at least two issues stand out. One is that of risk, at least in many cases. In moving in too quickly with someone you haven’t properly got to know, you risk disillusionment, or worse. The other is that of irreversibility, at least in intention. Commitment to a person, or to live according to certain values, is in effect an inner declaration that there is no going back. It is more than merely having strong passions or beliefs, without any particular thoughts about their future. Passions, of their nature, are powerful but often ephemeral. But commitment is more a matter of saying to yourself: maybe I won’t always feel this way about my new love (job, home or whatever) but I shall try not to let any change in my feelings fundamentally alter the way I act. For example, the Anglican marriage service requires you to promise to stay with your spouse “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health” (my italics). In other words, although a desire to commit oneself may be kick-started by intense passion, commitment implies the intention to stick with the marriage even when misfortune strikes, and this could include the waning of feelings that were once passionate. This is another way of saying that marriage (in Western Christendom at least) has traditionally been seen as a vow rather than a contract, a perception especially reinforced when the ceremony is religious. Of course, contracts also imply a commitment – not to breach them – but they may be time limited, and it may be legitimate to breach them if the other contracting party breaches them first. With vows, things are 9

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different. To enter a marriage with the thought “if this goes wrong, or I get bored, I can always get a divorce” may not be to commit oneself at all. This is not to say divorce is always wrong: it is to say that entering into such a relationship, thinking in advance that it is always a possibility, casts doubt on the sincerity of the promise. This observation is not, per se, a moral argument in favour of commitment. Perhaps, for all that has been said so far, commitment to another person “till death do us part” is unnecessary and irrational. It is only a conceptual point about what commitment involves. This will be discussed later. What has been suggested so far is that issues about commitment arise both in matters of purely personal significance and for societies, and include questions about the extent to which individuals should let their own interests and desires be circumscribed by what is vaguely described as the “common good”. Furthermore, questions about individual commitment can be subdivided into both philosophical or existential questions about meaning and value and “mundane” questions, for example about whether to commit oneself to a larger mortgage for a bigger house. But is commitment of any kind a good thing per se? Or is it neutral, with a value entirely derived from what it is you are committed to? Can it be bad if reached without adequate consideration? Or, on the contrary, is there a level of deep reflection that is intrinsically inimical to commitment? In what follows, I hope to shed some light on these questions and the tensions they provoke.

Reflective doubt So to individual commitments again. The actively religious person, for example, tries to live his life in the light of claims to truth, even if he readily acknowledges that there is much more to religion than propositional belief. For example, traditional Christianity has 10

Introduction: the problems

doctrines such as that there exists a God with a certain nature, and affirms in its creeds that a man who lived in first-century Palestine, Jesus of Nazareth, is “of one Being with the Father, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made”, and that he was “crucified, dead and buried. On the third day he rose again” (the Nicene Creed). It is interesting to speculate on what regular, churchgoing Christians actually make of this, how deeply they think about it, how much they care about getting it right, how literally they interpret it, or how they see it as relating to their secular beliefs. In certain kinds of church, there is some agnosticism about such matters and differences in individual interpretation. But no matter. Whatever these differences, and however liberal or traditional individual believers are on matters of faith and morals, there needs to be some core of intelligible propositional belief at the heart of faith. And, of course, these matters are controversial and difficult, have been debated for centuries and the finest minds continue to take greatly differing positions. Religious convictions are good examples of fundamental commitments that, according to the dogmas in question, should be utterly central to our lives, yet there are sane, intelligent, well-informed, truth-seeking individuals who deny them. And, of course, there are many other deep and difficult problems we may have neither the competence nor the motivation to resolve. I am never going to understand the theory of special relativity. Although I might be interested to hear an accessible explanation of it, I will not go away thinking that I need to know more about it or that I have a duty of discovery. This is partly because life is too short, but more because I do not see any of my central commitments in life as resting on my understanding of it. If I were a professional physicist with a purported expertise in this area, things would be different; it would (or should) matter very much to me to maintain my knowledge and understanding. This is a commitment I would have as a scientist. Yet there would be 11

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no fundamental reason why I should be a scientist rather than a gardener or a poet. And in fact, even for a scientist, there may originally have been no deep reason why she should have chosen science; doubtless she had other interests and talents as well. The choice of a career of scientific enquiry exemplifies, perhaps, a human need to pursue some central interest, activity or project to bolster a sense of purpose in life. It does not have to be this particular thing, but for many people is has to be something. And it may not even be paid employment, let alone of a theoretical or intellectual kind. Many people work to live rather than live to work; they work because they need the money or because it gives them a certain status, but their families, leisure or community activities may be more important to them. They still have basic commitments, because they feel the need to have them. The example of religion, though, is of a commitment that, according to many of its adherents, should be central and lifelong. Highly political animals often say the same of politics: it matters that you believe something and that your convictions should not have been reached casually. It is often said that religion answers to basic spiritual needs, and many secularists agree, often seeing in this fact a good, naturalistic explanation of why religion persists. But for religious adherents, the need for religion is not merely psychological (and it may not even be that) but rather to do with good living, spiritual flourishing and, ultimately, salvation. For them, worship, prayer, observance, penitence, good works and much besides are essential to satisfy our needs as humans, whether we acknowledge them or not. The devout life should be a fundamental commitment, and ultimately we cannot do without it. But as we suggested, if this is correct it raises serious questions about the place of reflective doubt. And, of course, religion is only one example among many where this question arises. What, then, of those who will not or cannot accept certain beliefs? Can they flourish in the necessary ways? 12

Introduction: the problems

Societal and individual commitments This naturally leads to the possible social influences on individuals’ ability to commit themselves in a clear direction. Could it be that a socially liberal society has a corrosive effect on this? And if there is such corrosion, could this even mean there is a “crisis of commitment” in modern society? Are we adrift, individually or socially, and unable to form the solid bonds and projects, rooted in values and virtues, that make for good lives and good societies? Such things are easily and frequently said, sometimes with an air of sententious resignation. It is the kind of thing you might hear lamented in the media, maybe when a “spiritual” pundit opines on some topical issue and derives an uncontroversial and vaguely spiritual conclusion from it. More generally, the idea might be: wouldn’t things be better if only we knew where society was headed, if only we took for granted core social values that would make appropriate commitments possible? In diverse areas of life, many of us seem to have an urge towards rootedness and direction that is all too easily undermined by doubt, fear or unwillingness to take the plunge. It can be difficult to draw an exact distinction between the commitments of individuals and of societies. Is a person’s commitment (or lack of it) to a sociopolitical value, such as democracy, to be conceived as an individual commitment, or as a small part of a wider societal commitment to this particular political system? Whichever it is, commitment to democracy might be expected to show itself in voting at elections and making some effort to think about how to vote. Yet shortly before the 2010 general election in the UK, surveys suggested that many people – perhaps about 35 per cent of the young – were not going to vote. In part, this may have been due to the rise of single-issue politics and a perception that the main political parties were pretty similar, at least since the failure of the miners’ strike in the mid-1980s, the end of the Cold War and the rise of New Labour from the mid-1990s. And 13

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the recent parliamentary expenses scandals have added fuel to an already existing feeling, in some people, that most politicians are crooks. But much of it, I suspect, is apathy. Apathetic refusal to vote suggests disengagement with the political system we are privileged to have, in spite of all its faults. It is a lack of commitment to things that should matter. But this does not quite touch on the values of societies, as opposed to individuals’ commitment to the societies in which they live. Can societies have collective commitments to certain values or goals, and can these have an impact on individuals’ capacity to commit their lives in certain directions? There is a distinction to be made between society and the state. Society – the collective of interrelated individuals – may hold certain fervent values about which the state remains neutral. A good example is that of religion in the United States. The United States constitution is secular, and the country is a secular state (or states), but it is a highly religious nation. But the values of state and society may also coincide, and in the following examples they generally do, or did, at least for a while. Thus in liberal democracies, society and state tend to accord considerable value to individual freedom, so long as its exercise does not impinge on the same freedom for others. On the other hand, the values underpinning the Soviet state and society were those of Marxism–Leninism, dictating that agriculture and industry should be owned by a oneparty state for the sake of a fair society, and that capitalism was an inherently unfair system that must be ruthlessly annihilated. The Nazi state, and no doubt large sectors of its people, were committed to the dominance of the “Aryan race” and the total destruction of people and institutions that supposedly stood in its way, most obviously the Jews, but also many others. It positively welcomed war, violence and conquest, partly as antidotes to decadence. Unlike Marxism, it had no desire to convert: only to kill or enslave. And in our own day, the Iranian state is committed to an 14

Introduction: the problems

Islamic theocracy, although its days may be numbered as so many of the young rise up in revolt. Many of these state or societal values present themselves as somehow unquestionable, and, indeed, in many cases are largely unquestioned. It might be argued that that they lack self-awareness, or a realization that there could be an external perspective on these values that calls them into question. This is characteristic of traditional societies in general, where certain critical questions tend simply not to arise. However, enthusiasts for the Enlightenment see such societies as based largely on irrational values that are frequently a source of oppression. Enlightenment supporters of a more conservative disposition see some such societies as oppressive, yet also see some value in them, for societies whose main value is liberty, as if this were an end in itself, undermine individuals’ abilities to commit to more substantive values, and hence fail to discover the meaning and purpose in their lives that they badly need. So it is interesting to ask: however oppressive some of these illiberal societies may be, do they provide individuals within them with a sense of purpose – of commitment – that is undermined by states that profess that it is not their business to promote any one ideal of the good life? Consider things that most of us desire, such as work, sexual companionship, families, leisure or civic participation. There is a saying that “possibility is the mother of discontent”; in other words, the more choices there are on offer, the more difficult it is to find a direction in life that really satisfies us. Many of us are always striving for something better, however satisfactory the things we already have. There is certainly a case for saying that a liberal, consumer society generates dissatisfaction. Indeed, the author Piers Paul Read puts the point in dramatically theological language, claiming that this is literally the devil at work: So many people are discontented, or think they are discontented with their wives, or their marriages, or their jobs, 15

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or the way they’re living, and have silly notions about what would make them – if only they won the pools, if only they had money, if only they ran off with a prettier girl or something, or had a more handsome lover. That is the devil. That’s the devil just dangling these silly illusions in front of them, and if only people would see the value of what they have, then they’d be much happier, and other people would be much happier too. (Harthill 1989: 72) But devil or no devil, the point still stands that the values of a society – in this case a liberal, materialistic consumer society – can skew the commitments that might make us happy, or at least manageably unhappy. But at the same time, there is a powerful case for saying that the temptations with which it surrounds us are a regrettable side effect of political freedoms that enable us to flourish, if we make the right choices. For many of us yearn for freedom from the shackles of restrictive or traditional societies. Think again of what is happening in Iran (in 2009–10), where at least tens of thousands of young people are defying the tyranny of a traditional society imposed on them by superannuated clerics and middle-aged veterans of a theocratic revolution of more than thirty years ago. The human spirit will not be extinguished that easily. In addition, there is a great difference between commitment and mere habit. I am in the habit of shopping at my local Tesco supermarket, but it would be odd to say that I am committed to it. What are properly called commitments include such things as civic participation, fidelity within relationships, honesty, loyalty, neighbourliness, parenthood, politics, fulfilling employment, charitable work and religion. And commitments are often based on values, explicitly reflective or not. That is partly why “enforced commitment” sounds strange, as does “enforced faith” (which is no faith at all). What seems true is that socially liberal societies provide opportunities to evade certain commitments and not be noticed, or 16

Introduction: the problems

at least judged. But liberal societies do not, in themselves, preclude individual commitments. The point all this is leading to is that certain traditional societies (which may in fact have been radical in their day, such as the former Soviet Union, or be radical attempts to return to a supposed golden age, like the Iranian Islamic Revolution) tend to make reflection and self-understanding difficult. Although there will always be dissidents, the drift is against deep reflection. For example, if it is widely accepted as obvious that women should occupy a largely domestic role, or that marriage is for keeps, or that sons should carry on the family business, then usually it is not too difficult to live accordingly. Most of us have a largely conformist streak, and we find it relatively easy to do what most other people are doing. This makes certain kinds of commitment possible; we may know about other options, but they are somehow not “live” for us. But within liberal individualist cultures a kind of innocence may be lost. Reflection becomes easier, and with that comes doubt. Conservatives of a mildly cynical hue surmise that this is fine for the minority who have the resources of intellect and character to manage it, just as the experiments in living advocated by J. S. Mill in the mid-Victorian period may have been all right for people with his education and gifts, but a complete social disaster if hoi polloi tried them out for themselves. And indeed, it is hard not to see some truth in this in the contemporary Western world. Old commitments have, to some extent, vanished, to be replaced by nothing in particular. In some “intellectuals” this can show itself as a kind of postmodern nihilism that looks askance at grand narratives or the search for objective reason or truth. For ordinary, decent, moderately reflective people, it can cause distressing mental conflict: a knowledge that innocence lost is never really regained, and a desire to believe in something we know-not-what. Just think of the number of people who describe themselves as spiritual but not religious: a piece of half-baked drivel for the hard headed among us, 17

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but a perfectly honest description of a genuine state of mind for many people, including – although I hate to admit it – myself, at least to some extent. In summary, then, traditional societies foster the capacity for some fairly unreflective personal commitments among their members by limiting both their choices and their knowledge of alternative possibilities. This may be good or bad, depending on what the commitments are and the ways in which they are achieved. Sometimes they are blatantly evil, for example when resentment and a sense of inferiority are harnessed to extreme, violent patriotism and paranoia. In other cases, in societies whose values are rooted in kindness and honesty, even if without much intellectual reflection, good commitments are fostered: community spirit; an instinct towards being law-abiding and looking after one’s neighbours. This is particularly characteristic of small communities within larger societies. But in all these cases, we need to be careful not to confuse commitments with habits, although they are interlinked. Commitment is rooted in a view of the future: I shall continue to be kind and honest, I shall stick with this task although it utterly bores me, I shall look after my children until they are adult, come what may. Habit certainly inclines us towards future behaviour, but not in the value-sensitive way that commitment does. It is often hard to tell whether someone is genuinely committed to something or merely habitually inclined towards it, but the conceptual difference is real. But if traditional societies (for want of a better term) are good at nurturing personal commitments, what of more liberal ones? Here, as we saw, the obstacles include a combination of astonishing consumer choice with socially non-judgemental attitudes, for example towards same-sex couples and voluntarily single parents. This easily allies itself with a casual relativism: “This is only my opinion, and I don’t judge yours”. But it might seem strange that these social attitudes have recently coalesced with authoritarian-leaning 18

Introduction: the problems

measures in the UK, such as planned ID cards (now thankfully to be scrapped), massive CCTV surveillance, the gradual erosion of habeas corpus in the name of the “war on terror”, restrictions on photography of public buildings, and much besides. But this illustrates the distinction between state and society; we have recently been living in an increasingly authoritarian state, but an increasingly liberal society. At a societal level, communities are far less effective in policing people’s behaviour than in earlier times, and in any case do not wish to. Traditional commitments are, indeed, more difficult to sustain in modern society. But we also suggested that humans tend to flourish when they have the chance to go wrong as well as right. So reflection is called for, and inner resolution. This suggests that the capacity for commitment requires certain virtues. It is harder to maintain in socially liberal, non-traditional societies, but by no means impossible.

A virtuous suggestion Temperance, courage and practical wisdom are the predominant virtues here. In the West many of us are free as never before to live our lives according to our chosen conception of the good. Unfortunately, this provides the opportunity not to bother to choose any conception of the good, and to drift around like flotsam, gratifying transient whims. Yet it also provides an opportunity to reflect on what really matters to us, without fearing the censure of society, of prying neighbours peering at us through their net curtains. We can exercise practical wisdom in choosing our commitments, and we can exercise temperance in sticking with them in spite of obstacles. The “problems”, as I have called this chapter, can at least partly be solved in this way. But not everything is solved, by any means. How many people live like this? Without doubt, many do; there are a great many good people, unsung people, who do good by stealth. 19

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Yet as commentators are fond of pointing out, there is a minority underclass of people who have never worked and have no intention of doing so, who lead chaotic lives, are often addicts or involved in drug-related crime, and have large families, although fathers are usually not around for long. From my privileged position, it is hard to evaluate the empirical evidence for all this, but there is plenty of testimony from those at the “front line” that it is there. How can worthwhile commitments be induced in such people? Would any attempt be like shutting the stable door when the horse is already miles away? More basically, what should our – anyone’s – commitments be? How can they be reached or justified? Is the desire for any kind of commitment a symptom of over-earnestness, something to be looked on with irony? What should we say of such apparently fundamental aspects of most of our lives as love, work and life stances and, indeed, life in itself? The areas of our lives that invite the question of commitment are many and various, and range from the everyday and practical to the deep and existential. Commitment faces a number of different obstacles, from those that impede belief to those that impede motivation. In particular, the problems of boredom, ennui, acedia and general demotivation are pervasive, and I deal with them in a later chapter. There is the constant possibility of tension between the fact that, as I argue, commitments are an integral part of our well-being, and the fact that some obstacles to it are rational and require the capacity to hold back, however frustrating that may be. This work is an attempt to make sense of the tension between the drive to commitment, and respect for some of the obstacles to it.

20

2. Love

I have suggested that our deepest commitments are those rooted in love. But there is, of course, much to enquire about in this suggestion. For example, there is the phenomenology of love. What kinds of thoughts or experiences constitute our love of someone, or something? What are the different kinds of love ? What is the role of emotion in love, compared, for example, with practical dispositions that aim at a valued good? How are people damaged by not being loved, or not being able to love? I cannot explore all these questions, but they point to the multifaceted complexity of the things that claim the name. The ancient Greeks distinguished different types of relationship between the one who loves and the one who is loved, and these differences make for diverse kinds of love. Hence philia is essentially friendship, whereas eros is desire. Aristotle places certain conditions on philia, namely familiarity, virtue and equality; for him, it is not the casual friendliness or sociability that we might now call friendship. So Aristotle would probably have taken a dim view of Facebook. Eros, a strong theme in Plato (and discussed at length in his Symposium) is bound up with desire and longing, but although it may start with a desire for a particular person, it eventually leads us to a love of his beauty (yes, his) and then to Beauty itself, the Form of Beauty. This love of Beauty in itself springs from a recollection of a previous life in which the soul apprehended other Forms, such as those of Justice, Wisdom and Knowledge. The love of bodily beauty, then, is the first stage of a spiritual ascent, and eros 21

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inspires pursuit of what is truly real, especially by philosophers, poets and lovers. Later on, Christianity introduced the concept of agape, or charity. St Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians (the relevant verses are often read at church weddings, although they have nothing to do with romantic love) says that charity is greater even than faith and hope (I Corinthians 13). Quite unlike romantic love, it is meant to be indiscriminate; we must show charity to our friends and enemies alike, and indeed anyone we come across. Charity (or love in the modern vernacular) is neither affection nor desire but a universal concern, a practical disposition aiming at the good of anyone and everyone. This is not prominent in Greek moral thought. General benevolence is not mentioned in Aristotle’s list of virtues. Possession of the cardinal virtues of justice, temperance, courage and practical wisdom is compatible with caring about only a narrowly circumscribed group of people, and in any case can be fully possessed only by males of a high social status, which obviously excludes slaves, women and, especially, slave women. Christianity, by contrast, from its inception attracted the downtrodden and dispossessed, such as slaves and women. That was one of its notable features, and in ancient Rome the Christians’ love for one another was commented on as remarkable. There is another kind of love that, for some reason, does not seem to get the mention it deserves in philosophical literature but which is surely among the most intense kinds it is possible to experience, and which can inspire enormous personal sacrifice, as if by instinct. It is, of course, parental love. Think of the dread or panic most parents experience when their children become seriously ill, are exposed to significant danger or (horror of horrors) go missing. Think of the opprobrium heaped on parents who abuse their children. This not only is fuelled by pity for the children or anger about cruelty and injustice, but also is about the violation of a quasisacred aspect of the natural order: that parents are there to protect 22

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and nurture their children, and that this should be an unconditional commitment, at least until their offspring can fend for themselves. Consider a recent incident. In 2008, in Britain, there was the extensively publicized case of Shannon Matthews, a nine-year-old girl, who was reported missing by her mother Karen Matthews. Media coverage was ubiquitous, neighbours did all they could to help with the investigation, and Karen made tearful television appeals for Shannon’s safe return. When, later on, it transpired that the tears were of the crocodile kind, that in reality Karen had arranged the abduction of her daughter by a man she knew, and was hoping to benefit from a financial reward when the abductor “found” her, sympathy turned to revulsion. The child was rescued by the police after being missing for twenty-four days, and Karen had to feign joy at this news in front of television cameras. It is possible that she became the most hated woman in Britain when the truth emerged. She was found guilty of kidnap, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice, and sentenced to eight years in prison. Just how could anyone be so callous and greedy as to harm her own daughter in this way, and so devious when questioned? Such things are bad enough when done by a stranger, but by a parent … These observations get us on to the main concern of this chapter, which is the connection of love with commitment. Some types of love seem more obviously tied to commitment than others. With these, we might even say that if there is no commitment, then there is no love. Some of these commitments may be time-limited, at least in so far as the nature and intensity of the commitment naturally changes. Parents are expected to be utterly committed to their young children, and will often risk their lives for them; this is partly why Karen Matthews’s behaviour was so unspeakable, in the contrast it provides with this. But, of course, when children grow up the nature of parental commitment usually changes. One hopes that love and affection will remain, but the protective instinct can and should change. Some parents find this difficult to accept. “Empty 23

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nest syndrome” is the name sometimes given to the feelings of isolation, or of being no longer needed, that some parents feel when their offspring leave home and apparently no longer need their protection. It must be a blow to many parents when they realize that what their offspring most want from them is not protection, but money.

Commitment and erotic love So love takes various forms, and I have referred to some distinctions drawn by the Greeks. All these kinds of love are related to commitment: to unconditional concern for our children; to being prepared to make sacrifices, at least to some degree, for our friends or even humanity itself. But in this chapter the main focus will be on desire and erotic love, not because it is more important than the other kinds, but because (along with parental love for children) it is held by many people to be intimately bound up with commitment, at least normatively, even if not in everyone’s actual practice. Indeed, in traditional moral systems, commitment to your spouse is bound up with a joint parental commitment to the children you bring into the world. Many people believe that children do best, on the whole, when they have two biological parents who love them and look after them without preconditions, and that marriage, or at least a permanent and exclusive union, is the best possible investment in future generations. The sacrifices this requires of people in such relationships – of tolerance, compromise, fidelity and permanence – are repaid in the health, happiness and stability of future generations. I shall return to this idea, philosophically defended, in particular, by Roger Scruton, a little later. But let us start with the contemporary world, at least in many developed nations. This is a world where traditional ideas of “pollution and taboo” have been weakened, where a sharply decreasing number of people bat an eyelid at people who have casual sex, or at 24

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same-sex relationships. Phrases such as “living in sin” and “shotgun wedding” are now all but obsolete, except when used ironically. Admittedly, one must qualify this when remembering the influx of immigrants to the West, particularly from the Muslim world. In that world, considerable importance is attached to strict sexual ethics, although less so among the children and grandchildren of immigrants, who often partially or completely assimilate, sometimes with a sense of inner conflict. However, the point generally stands. When did this start to happen? Although people talk about the swinging sixties, the widespread liberalization of people’s sexual attitudes largely took hold rather later, even though things had been changing more slowly over the previous decades. For a start, the supposedly swinging sixties were a phenomenon of the mid to late sixties, not the early sixties. Philip Larkin, who poetically opined that “Sexual intercourse began / In nineteen sixty-three” probably made a mistake here. (My mother used to say that social rot began in about 1965, although she was referring more to crime, incivility and progressive education than sex, which she was all in favour of.) Additionally, the swinging sixties were largely to do with a metropolitan minority of young people. Swinging London, perhaps, but swinging Aberystwyth? Swinging Belfast? Less likely, perhaps. And as late as 1983, a member of the British Cabinet resigned because he was discovered to have been having an extramarital affair with his secretary, who was pregnant with his child. It is relatively unusual for such things to be considered resigning matters nowadays. But whatever is true of social trends, there are aspects of the psychology of sex and love that do not change so quickly. “Why won’t he commit?” is a common and despairing cry in agony columns. A quick internet search reveals hundreds of websites devoted to “commitment phobia”. Although many people do commit, and have no interest in surfing such sites or buying self-help books on the subject, it is worth asking why the question of commitment arises 25

Commitment

so particularly in matters of sex and erotic love. Whatever attitudes officially prevail in a liberal individualist society, the primitive thought that there is some intrinsic connection between healthy erotic relationships and the intention of permanence will not go away.

The consenting adult Let us accept this. Let us allow that such things as longing for stability and permanence, for the fidelity and commitment of one’s partner, of jealousy, are aspects of the human condition that are not about to disappear, however irrational they might seem to some of us. Still, it is reasonable to ask what this has to do with the permissions and restrictions of a sensible morality of sex and commitment. Is there a good answer to this? Any reasonable sexual ethics must take these facts into account, at least in so far as doing so aims to reduce the misery caused by jealousy and desertion. For example, a utilitarian – someone who believes that the fundamental principle of morality is to act in a way that maximizes the net satisfaction of people’s preferences, and/ or minimizes net frustration of these preferences – accepts that when deciding whether to be unfaithful or to end a relationship we should take into account the misery we may cause. Your partner’s preference that you be faithful does not have to be rational, whatever that means. In order to be worthy of moral consideration, it has only to exist. At the same time, this morality appears, at least to nonutilitarian moralists, to be missing out something important. It is true as far as it goes, but it is incomplete. Take Angie. Angie is in a (so far) faithful relationship with Pete, who is madly in love with her and cannot contemplate the relationship ever ending. However, Angie is getting bored with Pete and has taken a fancy 26

Love

to Octavius, a supposed art collector who appears interesting and cultivated, wears fancy waistcoats with watch chains and seems to reciprocate her interest. Perhaps the utilitarian calculation would favour Angie’s being unfaithful to Pete or even leaving him altogether. His misery certainly counts, but it is outweighed by the ecstatic joy that she and Octavius could be sharing. Furthermore, if, out of loyalty to Pete, Angie says no to Octavius, she will cause him disappointment and herself frustration and more boredom, and that also counts in the moral calculation. And, on top of that, if she remains with Pete, he will eventually notice her lack of interest in him, unless he lacks normal powers of observation, and that will make him unhappy. Is there anything wrong with this way of looking at the situation? Perhaps we need to know more about it. After all, we know that relationships break up and that this is often painful to one or both parties. But we don’t tend to see breaking up and going off with someone else as being, in itself, tantamount to infidelity or wrongful desertion. Maybe we need to know what commitments the parties had explicitly made to one another, or what was their implicit understanding of the nature of their relationship. Suppose that Angie and Pete have promised one another to stay together monogamously until one of them dies, whether the promise was made in private, or in public in a civil or religious ceremony. Is this enough to overturn the utilitarian advice? That could depend on the exact nature of the utilitarianism. There is a form of it called “rule utilitarianism”, which holds that it is rational to live, sometimes fairly unreflectively, in accordance with certain rules. The idea is that a presumption in favour of sticking by these rules has an ultimately utilitarian rationale; the world is a better place if people tend to stick by these rules than if they always try to do a utilitarian calculation every time they make a major decision. Now, one of these rules is likely to be “keep your promises – even if you don’t immediately see the advantage of so doing”. 27

Commitment

So we may be able to scrape together a rule-utilitarian reason why Angie should not run off with Octavius. But rule utilitarianism has its problems, and it would distract from the main point of this chapter to go into them in detail here. Let it be enough to say that the harder-line act utilitarianism does not regard it as genuine utilitarianism at all, since it advocates following rules even when it is clear that breaking them would be better, from the point of view of maximizing happiness or preference satisfaction. And from a non-utilitarian perspective, it is criticized for advocating the wrong reasons for caring about rules concerning promise-keeping, and so on, even when it gives the right moral advice. For isn’t there something intrinsically important about such things as keeping promises, respecting the rights of others and not using deception or coercion to get one’s way? And, in the same spirit, can’t we say that the fundamental basis of sexual morality is not only utility but respect for rights, which will sometimes permit, and sometimes forbid, “extra-curricular” sex, non-committed sex or even casual promiscuity? At last we can cut to the chase. For liberal sexual morality agrees with most, if not all, conservative morality in accepting the principle: no sexual act is permissible unless all those involved in it, and perhaps those directly affected by it, give their competent consent, explicitly or implicitly. There is a basic moral right not to be coerced, deceived or exploited in sexual matters. That means that sexual acts with children are forbidden and abhorrent, since they are unable to give competent, mature consent. They do not properly grasp what they are doing and may end up greatly damaged as a result. It also rules out rape, in which by definition consent has not been given. Apart from these, the issue becomes less clear. The principle holds that adult, competent consent is a necessary condition for permissible sex. This much is relatively uncontroversial. But is it also sufficient? That is the really central question of sexual morality. 28

Love

I shall return to this. But for now, what about Angie and her roving mind? If she and Octavius begin an affair, we assume this is because they want it and agree to it. So far so good, as far as the participants’ consent goes. But what about poor Pete? If Angie has promised to stay with him faithfully until one of them dies, doesn’t he have a moral right to expect this of her? That is what promising is, in such circumstances: voluntarily giving someone a right to expect something of you. The consent-based moral principle of sexual ethics that I have just stated says that if there are third parties who are affected by, although they do not participate in, the sexual acts in question, this could make a difference to the moral nature of such acts. Admittedly, I was tentative about adding that clause, and I suspect that many who base sexual morality on consent would not add it, perhaps because of the sheer difficulty in deciding whether or how third parties are affected by the sexual behaviour of others, and how great the effect needs to be to justify moral condemnation. But here, Pete is affected in two ways. First, he is the victim of a broken promise; his right to Angie’s staying with him monogamously – conferred precisely by her freely given promise – is violated. Second, he is made unhappy, and in any moral theory worth considering, this matters, at least prima facie. If this is right, then a promise of commitment is a moral ground for such commitment. There is at least a strong moral presumption that such promises be honoured. But it is easy to imagine the situation between Angie and Pete differently. Suppose that instead of Pete remaining committed to Angie, but Angie wanting out, both Angie and Pete get bored with one another, and reach a mutual decision to end the relationship. In that case, maybe the promise to stay together no longer has moral force. For we usually accept that we can release people from the promises they make to us. If Angie and Pete release one another from the earlier promise, what morally stands in the way of their leaving one another and going 29

Commitment

their separate ways, perhaps getting into new relationships, especially if they have no children? If that is right, then it is even clearer that two people in a romantic and/or sexual relationship who have never made any kind of promise to each other may separate if they choose, or even if only one party so chooses. If it is only one party who wants out, we cannot say that he or she violates the other’s rights. It may be callous, unpleasant or unfortunate, but not unjust. Moreover, if the parties want to start new relationships, or just engage in one-night stands or short-term flings with others, they are morally free to do so, provided the conditions stated above hold good: that all sexual behaviour that occurs is between consenting adults, and that no third party’s rights are violated. In essence, the competent consent of all involved is both necessary and sufficient for permissible sex. There need be no commitment between the parties to fidelity or permanence, either actual or promised. Even if sex between committed parties tends to be happier or more fulfilling, even if commitment unleashes goods that cannot emerge so easily without it, this is at best a matter of prudence. It is not a matter of morality. This consent-based ethical view is widely held in contemporary Western cultures, and it has able philosophical defenders. But supporters of a conservative, traditional, romantic or sacramental view of sexual love and desire think this consent-based ethics is shallow, and fails to take account of other crucial considerations, perhaps to do with our lived experience of desire. To many people, their attitude looks absurd as they wriggle and writhe about, insistently claiming, point-blank, that everybody knows there is more to sexual morality than consent. And they may find it hard to produce arguments that convince; indeed, some conservatives and traditionalists are apt to think that too much reasoning leads us astray. They think that sound moral health and education require prejudice and taboo. Also, they usually say that not only do promises of permanence create obligations, but that there is also an obligation to 30

Love

promise commitment when a sexual relationship is being contemplated. And if such a promise would be morally illegitimate (e.g. if it would involve infidelity to an existing partner or spouse), then a sexual relationship would be wrong. The idea that too much reasoning may lead us astray is not silly per se and, ironically, it can be defended in sophisticated ways. But it is not surprising that when many defenders of this approach try to argue their case, they often do so rather badly. I shall look at some of these before addressing the central issue of whether relationships whose foundation is in desire morally require a promise of permanence and the keeping of this promise. This view goes beyond the consenting-adult approach, which (roughly) holds consent to be both necessary and sufficient for such relationships. The more conservative approach agrees that it is necessary, but not that it is sufficient. Commitment is also necessary.

Bad “conservative” arguments Supporters of conservative attitudes often say that sex outside the context of a committed relationship, and especially in casual encounters, cheapens or degrades sex, or treats another person as an object. Some feminists draw on similar ideas, not so much to condemn consensual casual sexual activity – although they might ask searching questions about the reality of women’s consent – as to condemn such things as prostitution and pornography. It is interesting that moral conservatives and some feminists not only agree about the badness of these things but sometimes draw on similar arguments. The main difference is that the conservative’s primary thought is that such things degrade human sexuality – male and female – and turn sexual pleasure into an impersonal commodity, whereas the feminist sees these issues through the lens of gender subordination of women by men. Additionally, some feminists differ 31

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from the conservatives in their attitude to marriage, regarding it as patriarchal and oppressive, whereas traditionalists take quite the opposite view. But these differences do not negate the similarities. Liberal sexual philosophy rejects both the conservative and the (radical) feminist approach. Indeed, within the broad church of feminism there are many liberals who reject what they see as the disguised puritanism of the more radical tendencies. Their voice raised its volume in the 1990s, with the emergence of feminist anti-censorship campaigns and a more vociferous liberal feminist (some call it post-feminist) challenge to aspects of radical feminist thinking. Liberal thinking about sexuality, whether feminist or not, tends to be sceptical of concepts such as “degradation” and “objectification”. According to the liberal approach, talk of degradation often rests on woolly, un-argued assumptions about what “proper” sex is and what it is for sex not to be degraded. If casual sex is a cheapening or corruption of sex, what is so pure about committed or married sex, and why? Can’t men objectify their wives, especially in cultures where women are regarded as chattels? And even if sex within committed unions is morally better than non-committed sex, does that mean that the latter is morally bad, as opposed to not quite as good? As for objectification, what exactly is it, and what is wrong with it? If Angie desires Octavius, then Octavius is, by definition, an object of Angie’s desire. Presumably there is no objection to being the object of someone’s desire or sexual pleasure in this purely grammatical sense. Something stronger is implied. It is probably that, in having casual sex, we show that we regard the other person as only an object, or a mere means to our own sexual satisfaction. However, brief reflection shows how implausible this idea is. Sometimes the thought is linked to one of Immanuel Kant’s formulations of his categorical imperative, his supreme principle of morality, which states: “Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, never as a means only, but always at the same time as an end” (Kant 1964: ch. II, §421). 32

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However, the key word here is “only”. There is nothing wrong with treating another as a means, as such. We do this all the time: the checkout assistant at Tesco is my means to pay for my shopping; and the taxi-driver waiting for me outside is my means to get home. My conversation with each of them is minimal, and I have little interest in what they do outside their jobs, in their hobbies, beliefs, relationships and so on. But none of this shows that I am treating them as means only. In taking this limited interest in them, I am not thereby displaying the thought, “You are only a checkout assistant or a taxi-driver; there is nothing else important about you”. Nor am I thereby prepared to override the other important aspects of their lives in order to get what I want. Treating them as means only, on the other hand, would involve treating their own ends as having no intrinsic importance. One of the ends the taxi-driver has is to make a living from people like me, and to him I am a fare, a means of livelihood. I respect this end by paying him when I get home. If I don’t pay, but dash into my home and lock myself inside, then I am treating him as a mere means, by overriding his ends. Some people apply the same reasoning to casual sex, or even paid sex. In her book The Sceptical Feminist (1980), Janet Radcliffe Richards takes issue with the radical feminist view of the sex industry, a view that came to prominence in the 1970s, the first decade of second-wave feminism. She accepts that activities such as prostitution are indeed degrading as things are (writing in the late 1970s) but puts this down to the circumstances that surround these practices, rather than to the practices per se. Being controlled and abused by pimps, having to be nice to low-life punters, having to nod in agreement when they talk about “whores” and “niggers” and so on are all degrading. That is why sex workers may feel they are selling their souls and not just a service. But for Radcliffe Richards, things need not be like this; there could be a world in which women delight the fancies of men by being, say, strippers or prostitutes, without these degrading circumstances. As with the examples 33

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above, the fact that men (or women) who enjoy these things take a purely sexual interest in those who do this work does not imply that they regard them as “mere means”, in Kantian fashion. Similarly, says Radcliffe Richards, we can imagine a dedicated male musician who wants to meet a certain female musician whose performances he admires, purely because he wants to perform music with her. He might have little interest in other aspects of her life; to him she is, if you like, a music object. But there is nothing wrong with this. It doesn’t mean that he denies there are many other important things about her, or that his desire to perform music with her should override her wishes concerning the matter. It only indicates that he is not particularly interested in these other things about her. Why should sex be any different?

Blackburn’s lust Additionally, consider the familiar claim that desire for casual or uncommitted sex with some particular person is desire “only for their body”, or that it bypasses their thoughts, desires and personhood, and is therefore bad. Maybe some sexual encounters roughly fit into this category, but it is surely not intrinsic to casual sex. Call its motive “lust”, and the desired outcome “shagging”: not a very solemn or philosophical term, but there are times when the most accurate way to describe a phenomenon is to talk like this. Must shagging, and the lust that drives it, bypass the personhood of the lusted-after, the excitement of noticing his or her arousal, the pleasure of flirting when he or she knowingly flirts too, and knows that you know this, and knows that you are aroused by it? Of course not. Even if what is desired is only a one-night stand or a brief fling, it is surely nonsense to say that desire is aroused only “by a body” and not the thoughts and desires of the particular person one is attempting to seduce, or be seduced by: thoughts and desires that 34

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are shown in looks, smiles, laughter and body language generally. Obviously, if the relationship progresses beyond this stage, things might emerge to dampen it; the parties might discover that they disagree violently about politics, or have irreconcilable differences in attitudes to expenditure, or conspicuously conflicting tastes in music or household furniture. One of them might watch nothing but Strictly Come Dancing while the other insists on Newsnight. So at the merely shagging stage, the relationship is superficial. But to say that it thereby depersonalized is wide of the mark. Broadly in this spirit, Simon Blackburn (2004) defends the essential innocence of lust, which has had a bad press, not least in being named as one of the seven deadly sins. It was a source of torment for desert monks such as Evagrius of Pontus, and Church Fathers such as Augustine of Hippo, who knew quite a bit about it from his own indulgences before his conversion. It is often associated with excess, exploitation, loss of control and personal ruin. No doubt these luminaries would have been horrified by our present-day idea of safe sex, which is mostly about using condoms and being sober enough to do so. “There is no such thing as ‘safe sex’!” they would thunder. The real dangers are spiritual, not epidemiological! They are compounded, not reduced, by deliberate efforts to prevent pregnancy or disease. Augustine thinks the pleasure even of marital intercourse is a regrettable side effect of procreation. Marital sex for the sole purpose of procreation is just about permissible, but things would be much better if it did not involve pleasure or any loss of control. Blackburn clearly thinks that all this is barking mad, although he allows his descriptions to speak for themselves. He takes lust to be “the enthusiastic desire, the desire that enthuses the body, for sexual activity and its pleasures for their own sake” (2004: 19). He does not try to incorporate ideas of degradation, excess, exploitation and so on into the definition of lust, as it is so tempting to do. This sensibly leaves open the moral question of whether or when 35

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lust is acceptable. It does not try to make arbitrary distinctions between lust, desire and love, the first being “bad” and the others “good”, without explaining the descriptive differences between these things. His account seems to allow that lust may be the motive for short-term shagging, or for enthusiastic and monogamous sex within a long-standing marriage, or for various things in between. Blackburn also brings out a telling contrast between the writings of Thomas Hobbes and Kant on these matters. Hobbes writes: The appetite which men call lust … is a sensual pleasure, but not only that; there is in it also a delight of the mind: for it consisteth of two appetites together, to please, and to be pleased; and the delight men take in delighting, is not sensual, but a pleasure or joy of the mind, consisting in the imagination of the power they have so much to please. (Hobbes 1994, quoted in Blackburn 2004: 88) It focuses on the thoughts and desires of the one who is desired. It is concerned as much to give pleasure as to receive it. Knowing that you are giving erotic pleasure is itself a source of your own pleasure, but this does not imply that it is self-centred, in the sense that you want to give pleasure only to receive it. For the pleasure you give is not a mere instrument to your own pleasure; rather, it is the intentional object of it – that is, the focus of it, or what your pleasure is about. Blackburn contrasts this humane and rather beautiful idea with Kant’s approach: In Kant’s picture, lust objectifies the other person, using him or her as a mere means, a tool of one’s own purposes. It is dehumanising and degrading, and according to Kant it is morally forbidden, since you may never use another person as a mere means to satisfy your own ends. (Ibid.: 94) 36

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For Kant, it is presumably no defence that the use may be consensual and mutual, since if all such use is wrong, then it is wrong even when both parties have consented to use and be used. The objection to using a person is not about inequality or asymmetry, but an objection to use per se. And although Kant does not think sex within marriage is wrong (which is good to know) some commentators have asked how he can accept it, given his grim view of sex. In fact, he does have an elaborate account of how marriage rescues sex from these evils, but he still appears to paint a joyless and problemridden view of the erotic.

Scruton’s meaningful marriage All this is largely a preamble to the questions about sexual commitment that are at the heart of our discussion. If the discussion has seemed too preoccupied with sex, as opposed to all the other components of commitment in partner-like relationships, this is partly because unlike the commitments involved in philia (friendship) or agape (charity), erotic love is rooted in desire: desire for another person. Desire for another person is different from desire concerning another person, for example for his or her welfare. Many people see the expression of desire for another person as throwing up enormous moral questions. Return to Angie and Pete. If their relationship ends by mutual consent, either when they release each other from promises previously made, or if no promises have been made in the first place, then from a consenting-adult moral perspective they are free to do as they please. But ought they to have made such promises? And further, ought they to have made these promises on the understanding that they must be kept, whatever their future inclinations? Should the idea of a promise, in the erotic context, be seen not as a contract, but as a vow? 37

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Scruton, in many writings (e.g. “Meaningful Marriage” [2006]), argues that marriage is a social institution of the first importance and that it entails a vow, not a contract. Entering into marriage thus conceived is something awe-inspiringly solemn. It is entry into a unique condition, one of whose purposes is to protect the erotic desire that prompts it. It is a social transition from one state to another, a radical change of status. The idea of this state’s special character is part of our sense of the sacred, a notion Scruton invokes in many of his writings, although not necessarily in connection with organized religion. To get married with the thought that you can always escape if it doesn’t work out is not to marry in the right spirit. In fact, on one view it can mean not truly marrying at all. For example, the Roman Catholic Church, which does not recognize divorce, occasionally grants annulment. A seeming marriage can be annulled if thorough investigation reveals that the parties were never truly married in the first place. This can include cases where one or both parties exchanged vows without sufficient understanding of what they were doing. Notoriously, annulment is open to abuse, but this does not of itself invalidate the practice. These niceties aside, how should we react to Scruton’s conservative, romantic, indeed sacramental, view? Many people will dismiss it as of no interest to the modern, secular world. However, although Scruton clearly thinks that religion and its ceremonies are natural allies of marriage, he does not think you need to practise a religion to see its importance, and its real nature. He tells us that “No honest anthropologist can fail to acknowledge the functional importance of marriage. In all observed societies some form of marriage exists, as the means whereby the work of one generation is dedicated to the well-being of the next” (2006: 82–3). Furthermore, “Society has a profound interest in marriage, and changes to that institution may alter not merely relations among the living, but also the expectations of those unborn and the legacy of those who predecease them” (ibid.: 83). 38

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Obviously, this stance is highly unconvincing to many people. For example, you might accept that it is a good description of marriage, but one that shows only why it should be avoided. In getting married, you do indeed commit yourself – or at least state a commitment – to a range of things, including lifelong fidelity and permanence, but this is rather like voluntarily becoming a citizen of an authoritarian state. You freely take on severe restrictions to your freedom. Making this commitment is foolhardy, at least if you don’t completely agree with those restrictions and resolve to abide by them, with no possibility of escape should you change your mind. So let people marry who buy into the whole package. Wiser people will run many miles from it. There are also more clichéd objections. Consider the idea that marriage is “just a piece of paper” that is neither necessary nor sufficient for commitment. It is not necessary, since many couples live monogamous and committed lives together without ever going through a public ceremony. It is not sufficient, since many people separate, divorce or have extramarital relationships even though there was such a ceremony. So what is the importance of the public statement of commitment, whether it is a wedding, a registration of civil partnership, or just a declaration made in front of family and friends? It may be a good excuse for a party, but little else besides. Moreover, Christians think that what matters is that a couple be married in the sight of God, and some liberals within the Church accept that not only do weddings not guarantee this, but that couples might be married in God’s sight even without a public vow or legally valid ceremony. Some of these liberals extend this to same-sex relationships, believing that same-sex couples whose intentions and behaviour emulate that expected of heterosexual couples might be married in God’s sight. These ideas merit serious discussion; they are not flippant or badly reasoned per se. However, their prevalence indicates a cultural shift that clouds our ideas of what we are, or should be, doing when we enter into marriage, civil partnership, cohabitation or other kinds of relationship. Where there are ceremonies or legal agreements, 39

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what is being celebrated or endorsed? If ceremonies are just a rubber stamp, then of what are they a rubber stamp? This nagging question is the subtext of Scruton’s essay. In effect, he challenges us to consider whether we can value traditional marriage as just one option among other equally legitimate ones, without implicitly undermining it. Public debate about these matters uncovers a sea of uncertainties and confusions. For example, civil partnerships were recently introduced in the UK, bringing legal recognition of same-sex relationships. But this has not entirely settled the grievances of gay couples, some of whom – including within the liberal churches – desire gay marriage. Surprisingly, it has also generated grievance for some cohabiting heterosexual couples, who ask why they are denied civil partnerships when gay couples can get them? In an ironic twist, there are even gay liberationists who have complained that the new arrangement discriminates against heterosexuals! This invites the answer: there already is an institution for heterosexuals. It is called marriage. What is your complaint? The complaint is no doubt largely about tax and inheritance matters. But more significantly, it appears to be about recognizing a relationship as being something more than cohabitation, yet less, or at least other, than marriage. But since couples are free to conduct their relationships as they please, with whatever degree of commitment suits them, why should this external recognition matter? For conservatives such as Scruton, marriage can be viewed from an external anthropological perspective as having functions: for example, to minimize doubts about paternity; to safeguard against sexual jealousy; to transmit property; and, of course, to provide security for children. But, more importantly, it can be viewed from the inside, in terms of the lived experience of declaring a commitment by means of a non-rescindable vow. This commitment is conducive to the flourishing of both the individual and of society. In his earlier book Sexual Desire (1986), Scruton argues that the goal or telos of sexual desire is erotic love, and that the rationale of sexual 40

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morality is to protect the instincts that make erotic love possible. An individual flourishes erotically only if he or she is disposed to eschew habits of thought and behaviour that undermine erotic love. What these habits might be is an enormous question, and Scruton’s condemnation of sex without commitment, homosexual sex, fantasy, masturbation, pornography and so on is open to reasonable dispute. But I think we should not cave in to a dismissive liberal reflex here. We do need a conception of sexual flourishing that goes beyond subjective gratification. Most people, in varying degrees, grasp the idea of sexual wrongdoing: of the shame, guilt, or sense of emptiness that can assault us when we act against what we sense to be our own real values, or at least when others do. Most sex pundits tell us to let go of guilt, since it adds misery to what should be enjoyable. This is true, but the proper response is not always to banish guilt, but to try to understand its possible basis, and live in a way that will minimize its necessity. Scruton’s view of sexual goods and evils is largely neo-Aristotelian. The idea of sexual flourishing is a central part of it. Sexual morality concerns the education of our desires in a way that protects us from things that undermine this flourishing. Our capacity for erotic love, which is inherently nuptial and geared towards commitment, is a precious, fragile thing that can be assaulted in many ways. However, I suggest that the idea of assault or undermining can be understood either as a causal claim or as something more complex, and it is important to recognize this distinction. Moreover, both causal and non-causal concerns apply both to the individual, and to society as a whole.

Causal concerns Concerning the individual, the conservative causal claim seems to be this: that a habit of sexual enjoyment without commitment 41

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tends to erode the ability to lead a flourishing sexual life. There are also habits that refocus arousal on to substitutable or even nonresponsive objects. Such things scatter the energy and imagination necessary for lasting and fulfilling relationships and love, and weaken our ability to defer gratification. The result can be that we lose, or fail to develop, a disposition towards long-term responsibilities and commitments. This is not to say that they must wreak total destruction. We have to admit that human psychology is complex. Many, perhaps most, people who are sensitive, romantic and idealistic can be aroused by lower things. Think of the chaotic lives of some great, romantic artists. Think of Mozart, who was no saint, or Schubert, who contracted syphilis, probably from a prostitute. Some people may be more immune than others to the destructive tendencies of bad sexual habits. Nevertheless, the risk of damage remains. Similar observations can be made about the social goods of “meaningful marriage”, the title of Scruton’s essay. Scruton thinks we are made aware of the special nature of marriage by its phenomenology: the inner sense (at least for some people) of the existential transition that it involves. Although it is an institution with an anthropological rationale, this does not explain away its value. Just as marriage is uniquely conducive to individual fulfilment, so the social acceptance of marriage as a unique institution is good for the health of society. Scruton bewails how the perceived significance of marriage has been compromised by the incremental creep of liberal legislation and social trends. “Empirical observation is beginning to confirm what should have been obvious a priori, which is that societies in which the vow of marriage is giving way to the contract for sexual pleasure are also rapidly ceasing to reproduce themselves” (2006: 100); or, he might have said, which are reproducing themselves, but in undesirable ways. Consider the many men and boys who serially impregnate different women and girls but see no reason to stick around. The social normalization of this has been 42

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disastrous. His idea is that much of society’s social capital is frittered away when marriage ceases to occupy the special role it once did. If too many couples’ default position is “we’ll stick at this as long as it suits us both, but not otherwise”, then the threshold for ending a relationship almost inevitably becomes lower. And among other things, this greatly complicates the rearing of children, especially for people without great prospects or much money. Without wishing to sound like a right-wing columnist, I think we must grant the truth of much of this. (Having just typed this disclaimer, I see how the very need to make it might have arisen from the social atmosphere Scruton laments.) Possibility can indeed be the mother of discontent, and once something begins to seem normal, it becomes a live option for people who would otherwise not consider it. To what extent this occurs is an empirical matter, not to be decisively resolved from the armchair. Obviously, liberalizing social trends do not affect everyone’s attitudes, and in fact they often produce rearguard reactions. But we can say at least something from the armchair, gleaned from non-scientific observation. We can say, I think, that most people still want to make a serious commitment to a significant other at some point in their lives, that they take permanence to be ideal, but think that some relationships are best ended. And, of course, social trends gain momentum through people’s observation of them. A century ago, divorce was rare and scandalous. Now it is accepted as normal. It is true that in coming to approve, or at least tolerate, these changes, we come to view traditional arrangements as less important than previous generations took them to be. This is a likely causal fact. But announcements of the death of these institutions are somewhat exaggerated. But the important question is not only whether this is true, but how it should be balanced against other truths, when deciding whether current trends are irredeemably rotten. Clearly, traditional marriage can be oppressive, especially to women, and the cause of 43

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misery. In times past, it was common for people to marry too young and/or for the wrong reasons, for example in order to enjoy “licensed” sex, or because the bride was already pregnant (not that that was necessarily a bad reason). No doubt inexperienced people easily confuse sexual infatuation with the sort of compatibility that makes for lifelong commitment; Bertrand Russell noted this in the 1920s, in his attack on some of the sexual attitudes of the day (Russell 1929). It is surely grim to be stuck with someone with whom you have little in common, or do not even like, let alone with someone who abuses you with impunity. Scruton thinks this sort of unhappiness is manageable, compared with the unhappiness caused by modern trends. Perhaps he has in mind that unrealistic expectations create easy disappointments. But he is excessively dismissive of the real marital misery in societies dominated by highly conservative values and laws. I shall soon conclude with a kind of fudge, the premonition of which led me to write this book in the first place. There is good reason to think that the veneration of traditional individual and social commitments is causally undermined by other practices that exist alongside them. There is also good reason to think this undermining is not, and never will be, complete, and that there are at least some advantages to the weakening of old assumptions. We must collectively try to get the balance right, while knowing that we probably never shall.

Non-causal ideas I have also suggested that any threats to commitment, especially as underscored by marriage, may be seen not as causal threats, but as “intrinsic” ones, for want of a better term. The idea is that even if liberalizing and generally de-sacralizing attitudes do not cause traditional institutions to collapse, they nevertheless stand opposed to them in the values they represent. Acceptance of a 44

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purely consenting-adult morality of relationships is incompatible with acceptance of the values implicit in vows of commitment. There is, on this view, an irresolvable tension between upholding the awesome importance of keeping such vows, and also maintaining a liberal, consent-based morality concerning relationships that never involved vows. Trying to defuse this tension would mean aiming for a two-tier morality that is logically, even if not causally, torn apart at the seams. For if the consenting-adult morality is perfectly sufficient as a guide for relationships that do not involve traditional nuptial vows, why think that vows add anything important? The closest we can get to this is by distinguishing relationships underscored by a promise (whether publicly formalized or not) and relationships that do not involve any promise. Hence we can say, for example, that infidelity is worse when it involves breaching a promise of fidelity, than when it doesn’t. But what is morally significant here is merely that a promise has been broken, not the content of that promise. This is a fundamental and difficult issue, and I cannot be entirely sure what to say. The problem would be easier to resolve if it were only about legal approaches to sexual behaviour. In some societies, sexual “immorality”, especially when committed by women, is brutally punished by law. But I am assuming the general validity of a liberal conception of the law. The harder issue is about the moral and social value of committed and faithful relationships, and whether they are undermined by their coexistence with other ways of living, or with our tolerant social atmosphere. It is relatively easy to argue that the law should not (in fact, cannot) concern itself with every aspect of morality: harder to argue about the content of morality itself. I shall attempt to merge a qualified endorsement of some of Scruton’s ideas, with a dash of the drier and more optimistic advice of Blackburn. It will be for the reader to judge whether this is an unstable compromise, a cowardly refusal to commit to a clear position or, indeed, a sensible refusal of such commitment. 45

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The conservative approach faces this challenge: that even if there are great benefits, both for individuals and societies, in permanent and exclusive commitments, why should relationships that fall short of this be condemned? Why not simply say that they are not as good: that the tension is not between the good and the bad, but between the ideal and the adequate? Surely most people would accept this distinction’s general importance; in life, we are not morally obliged always to strive for the best, and sometimes the best is the enemy of the good. So is the health of a society at serious risk if people do not interpret their relationships in the sacramental way recommended by Scruton?

The many faces of love In thinking about such multifaceted and personal things as lust, desire and love, there is a temptation to confuse what is particular to oneself with what is universal. Also, it is easy to fall into the trap of defining sexual phenomena in terms of one’s personal norms and ideals. Thus, if you think that ideal love is mutual, and reaches proper fruition in permanent, monogamous relationships, you may be tempted also to say that other types of love do not deserve the name; they are “love” only in an inverted-commas sense. Consider unrequited love. This may be dismissed as not true love at all but essentially immature and stunted, at best only an emotional ground-clearing for the “real thing”, or a phase to be quickly gone through. It does not merit the name of love, but instead is a “crush”, “infatuation” or “obsession”. This manoeuvre, however, is not entirely convincing. Why should it not be called love? Granted, an adult pattern of falling for unattainable people and becoming stuck on them may be a sign of a real problem, perhaps a fear of commitment; becoming fixated on people you know to be unavailable could be an unconscious strategy for avoiding the challenges of a 46

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real relationship. But should we denigrate the emotion so contemptuously? My own unrequited teenage crushes were charged with wonder, fantasy and imagined joy. These intense emotions were, at least in my idealistic adolescent mind, distinct from lust yet full of physical longing. No doubt they would have been a disastrous basis for commitment, but they were valuable for all that. There is no good reason to deny that such feelings were of genuine, romantic love or erotic desire. There is also a temptation to overlook the dark side of erotic love: its potential for jealousy, self-absorption and cruelty. It is all too easy to call it mere lust (often seen as bad by definition) or as a purely selfish desire for possession and control. But these common and even alarming human phenomena do not show that the word “love” is misplaced. They only show that this kind of love is not, in itself, a disinterested concern for another’s good: is not the same as agape or even philia. One who loves another person erotically wants to be loved in return, and not by just anyone, but by the particular person whom he or she loves. If I desire the happiness of someone with whom I am in love, then I want her happiness to depend, at least partly, on me. I want myself to be the object of it, and at least part of me would prefer her to lack it than to have it from anyone else. The gnawing feelings of hurt and powerlessness upon realizing that she is erotically happy with someone else are the essence of jealousy; I realise that I am irrelevant to her, in that respect. Her joy obliterates me, because it is not focused on me. For this reason it is tempting to describe such feelings as not really love, but something else: a desire to possess and control; fury kindled by a sense of powerlessness. Hence we wonder whether a man could really love a woman on whom he inflicts jealous rages. Or, indeed, how the woman he thus torments could really love him, even if she says she does, citing his jealousy as proof of this love. People often say: surely this is not love but something else, something dark and destructive. Isn’t love about unconditional 47

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self-giving rather than jealous domination, or self-deluded and submissive dependence? All this shows, however, is that erotic love is something quite different from agape and philia. It doesn’t show that it isn’t a kind of love. And even if it isn’t, it is still compatible with other, nobler varieties of love. You can both love someone erotically, and care profoundly about his or her happiness and well-being. But we should avoid the pitfalls of persuasive definition when it comes to understanding erotic love or desire. We should not redefine love that fails to meet our ideals as not real love at all. Love in general, and erotic phenomena specifically, are multifaceted. There is romantic euphoria; there is simple lust; there is affection, tenderness and mutual trust and reliance. And there is, perhaps above all, the loving rearing of children, within an institution respected and protected by society. These things may come together, but they are different and each can exist without the others. On the traditional view, these things are indeed different, but we all have an interest in fusing them together as far as possible. The institution of marriage is designed to bring about this fusion. Of course, even on this view, all will not be a bed of roses; early passion will fade, sometimes without transforming itself into more enduring love, and people will simply have unhappy and even abusive marriages. Sometimes, perhaps, marriages must end, but the default assumption is that they should not, at least without a very serious reason. And even more important, we should not forget that most couples have a joint interest in their children, and even if love between the parents has turned sour, they share, or should share, love for the same children (if they have children together). Parental commitment to their progeny is about the most fundamental kind there can be, and neglect or abandonment of them should not lose its power to shock. Indeed, if we leave the idea of procreation out of our thoughts about sex and commitment, we tend to get a skewed idea of them. 48

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This is not to say all sexual relationships should be geared to producing children, or that every sexual act should be “open to the transmission of life”, as the Roman Catholic Church officially teaches (not that most Catholics in the developed world even pretend to believe this, let alone follow it). It is, however, to remind us of the value of developing erotic relationships of a kind that will withstand the challenges of nurturing children. Since most people become parents at some point in their lives, it is in most people’s interest to internalize habits that are conducive to good, stable parenting. In conclusion, we are left with something of a balancing act. There is great social and individual value in upholding erotic commitment as an important ingredient of society, preferably, although not essentially, reinforced by public vows and rituals. This, I think, should apply both to heterosexual and homosexual relationships, although I have not discussed the important issue of homosexuality. (Scruton does discuss it in various writings [1986, 1990, 2006], and reaches quite a negative view, supported by arguments that are not, in my view, particularly cogent.) This is backed up by what it is like to love someone and hope for reciprocation; there is something hard-hearted about infusing one’s deepest relationships with a provisional air, and however rational we might be in theory, it is natural to see the rupture of a once intimate relationship as a kind of wound. These common aspects of love’s phenomenology point us to the value of giving commitment central importance, for individuals and societies. At the same time, to see it as central is not necessarily to regard it as exclusive. We have the social freedom to discover our erotic selves through experience, trial and, indeed, error. A healthy, life-affirming éducation sentimentale will help us to survive all kinds of learning experiences on the route to commitment, if we ever get there. If we learn not to forget the value we rightly invest in commitment and parenthood, perhaps a thousand other flowers can bloom as well.

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3. Work

Here is a question that has sometimes given me a sinking feeling: “So what do you do?” The question is innocent enough in itself; it is an ice-breaker, a convenient conduit from small talk to medium talk, a possible opportunity to discover common interests or values. It is a personal question, but not too personal. The answer may be embarrassing but the question is well within the bounds of polite conversation. And if I don’t want to answer, I can always make use of some premeditated deflecting manoeuvre. So what is the problem? When people have extracted from me that I am a philosopher, I have sometimes groaned inwardly at the prospect of having to explain what philosophy is, something I am not completely sure of myself. If I explain that I am writing a book on commitment, I start to imagine what the other person might be thinking about me: perhaps he or she assumes that I must have problems in that area, and, if I am lucky, will have the tact not to press the issue. I have heard philosophers exchange anecdotes about how they deal with the inevitable requests to explain themselves. Such advice can be handy in certain situations. A taxi-driver once asked me what I did for a living, and since I was not primed with a plausible evasive response, I confessed. His interest was set alight, and he began to wax lyrical about the “philosopher” Bruce Lee, the star of martial arts films. Fortunately, my journey was not a long one. But I am not out to complain, de haut en bas, about how confused non-initiates can be. For one thing, such conversations need not be at all tiresome. For another, people with a specialized 51

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knowledge of a narrow field tend to forget how confused and ignorant they may appear to those with knowledge of entirely different fields. My point is that just because I work on certain philosophical questions, it does not follow that I always want to talk about them when off duty, so to speak. And I am not alone; when philosophers are together in social situations, they don’t always talk shop all that much. They catch up with old friends (or enemies), they network in search of new ones, they exchange gossipy stories, and they enjoy a few drinks. They talk quite a lot about religion, politics and sex: the three subjects often considered best avoided in polite company, presumably because they are interesting. This is all very human, and agreeable. In such situations, there can be few things worse than to be buttonholed by a pushy graduate student and made to talk shop. Partly for this reason, when I am introduced to people I try to avoid at once asking them what they do for a living. They may be bored having to answer that question and prefer to relax instead. Maybe I am more congenial company if I do not ask obvious and predictable questions. More importantly, it can be tactless to ask someone what they do, when you know almost nothing about them. Maybe they don’t work, and are embarrassed by the fact. Perhaps they do what they consider to be a boring or low-status job and do not want it rubbed in. Of course, if people want to talk about their work, then that is fine. Only I would prefer it if they brought it up rather than me. Occasionally you have a sense of being sized-up when asked about your occupation. For example, it may indicate how much you earn, which for some people determines your place in the pecking order. If you sense this very strongly, you could answer with, “Sorry, I didn’t realize you had to work for a living. How annoying!” Or the sizing-up may be to find out whether you are “one of us”, or a somebody. Whatever the reason, people’s interest in your employment can arise because, for them, it somehow defines your identity, 52

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or what they most want to know about you. What sort of person you are, how important or worth knowing, is revealed by your occupation.

Work and commitment But why discuss work in a book on commitment? The main idea is that for some people work is a central commitment in their lives. This is not the case for everyone, of course. Some people don’t work, and although unemployment is painful for many, others would prefer not to work and find it irksome that they have to. But those who take pride in their work, and especially their careers, are often deeply committed to succeeding in it. Their occupations are central to the meaning of their lives. So one important question is: how central should one’s work be to one’s life? Is it sensible even to ask this question? Is it, perhaps, a purely subjective matter? It is worth asking, also, what should count as work in the first place. As we shall see, there are differences between jobs, careers and vocations, and when people have vocations, these are not always the jobs for which they are paid. But there is also a question about the relation of activity, in general, to work. Gardening is an activity that can involve hard work, but if someone tells you he is a gardener, you assume that this is what he does for a living: that he earns money by looking after gardens. Someone who spends her leisure time playing the violin is not regarded as a violinist, if that is not what she does for a living. Then there are those who engage in activities for money, but who are not generally regarded as working. Lars Svendsen (2008: 7–8) briefly discusses the question, raised by George Orwell, of whether beggars work for a living. Like Orwell, he concludes that they do. And I agree: beggars, or at least some of them, spend a lot of time on the streets, asking passers-by to part with a small amount of 53

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money, and sometimes receiving it. Thus begging is an activity that yields them money, if they are lucky. But the reason for our usual reluctance to call begging work – even though it yields an income – is that beggars are not paid for doing anything of value to those who give them the money. They have not been employed to sit at street corners for a certain number of hours every day, and then been paid for doing so. Nor would most people say that people who receive unemployment benefits are working, merely because they fill up forms, turn up at the benefits office, perhaps attend job interviews, and are then given money. However, both beggars and recipients of unemployment benefits put in some effort, and as a result are paid. In that sense, they do work. It is just that they do not do paid work, in the conventional sense. Again, think of professional criminals. Do they work? In one way, they obviously do. They are not idle, at least until they have enough money to retire to the Costa del Crime. And if they are very successful, they earn much more than they need to live on. Nor are they like beggars, who are given money out of compassion or guilt, but provide nothing of value to those who give to them. On the contrary, criminals often do provide goods and services that their clients want, such as drugs or loans. Of course, their enterprises are illegal and their methods often coercive and alarming. Nevertheless, they still work for a living. And they often have commitment to their activities, shown in their ruthlessness and willingness to take substantial risks. In effect, successful criminals can be highly skilled, driven entrepreneurs. And as demonstrated by the baffling complexity of high-profile, big-money fraud trials, it can be extremely difficult to draw the line between legitimate and illegitimate enterprise. Moreover, philosophical anarchists like to remind us that, sometimes, sufficiently ruthless and resourceful organized criminal gangs eventually become governments. The Iraqi Ba’ath Party of Saddam Hussein must have started out with a highly effective business plan. 54

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Svendsen rightly suggests that there is no precise definition of work: no clear line between work and non-work. And just as illegal activity can be work, so some perfectly legal paid occupations are only dubiously so. There are jobs with impressive titles, but little definable activity. There are people who turn up at the workplace, look alert and competent, dress neatly, carry clipboards, attend meetings punctually, yet in reality no one has a clue what they do. The television comedy The Office cannot be too far removed from some workers’ daily reality. Work like this is unlikely to engender commitment, at least in people with imagination.

Work and identity So if you have work, how central should your work be to your identity, or your life in general? To what extent does having a coherent life story depend on your commitment to your occupation, to being able to tell a story of yourself in terms of your dedication to what you do? Often, when people retire, lose their jobs or can’t find work, they feel that they are nobodies. They feel they lack an important commitment to an activity that largely defines their lives. But of course, there are other reasons why people want to work. Most obviously, they might want or need money. When money is the main end, work has a mainly instrumental value. It may not matter greatly what work you do for the money, so long as it is tolerable. Then there are other reasons still. You might inherit, or even win, so much money that you don’t need to work for it, but still want to. You might have earned so much in a highly paid job that you can afford to stop working, yet still feel driven to keep going. It could be that you get bored easily and need to be busy to keep boredom at bay. You might even be afraid of idleness because of its moral risks: “the Devil finds work for idle hands”. 55

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Indeed, this idea that it is bad to do nothing connects with the so-called Protestant work ethic, which stresses the characterbuilding nature of respectable occupation. Some people have this attitude to work, even if they do not have the religion. They think it is better to be doing something, even if it is hard or dull, than nothing at all. This work ethic also inculcates the importance of delaying gratification for the sake of long-term gain, which may be very considerable. Thus it emphasizes the virtues of temperance and prudence. Although these virtues are associated with Puritanism, it does not have a puritanical disdain for wealth as such. In fact, it was an important propeller of early capitalism, and there are still many who see wealth as a reward for virtue. But even were it not for these rewards, the Protestant work ethic still considers work to be morally more healthy than idleness. Even if idleness doesn’t entirely mutate into the Devil’s nefarious work, it is still a sin of omission. You may have few prospects of gainful employment, perhaps through no fault of your own, but there is usually plenty you can do. There is probably voluntary work available, or indeed any activity that is fulfilling to yourself or useful to others. But there is another particularly important reason why people want to work. As we suggested, this is that for many people, work is bound up with who they are. This “identity”, for want of a better expression, may be constituted either by the nature of the work, or the mere fact of being in work; “I am a worker”, like “I am a wife/ husband/parent”, could in itself be considered a defining fact about yourself. But when it is the nature of the work that constitutes your identity, or the meaning of your life, interesting issues arise. It is important that this need not be paid work, or your regular job. Some people commit themselves to all kinds of activity in addition to, or instead of, paid employment, and these activities can be far more central to their lives than what they are paid to do. T. S. Eliot worked for a bank, and Larkin was a university librarian, but they are best known as major twentieth-century poets. Or it may be that 56

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you enjoy the spin-offs that come from your work more than the central work itself. Thus a human rights lawyer might especially enjoy the campaigning journalism that arises from her work. If, as a bonus, she is paid for pursuing such things, she is lucky. Indeed, if you are very lucky, your work might constitute the pursuit of a vocation, and deep commitment is the hallmark of vocation.

Jobs and careers I shall return to the idea of commitment to a vocation or farreaching life plan a little later, in relation to ambition, success and self-realization. But to focus only on these would be an unrealistic removal from the more mundane. Many people have jobs that they don’t consider to be careers. Others have careers that do not amount to vocations. What questions about commitment arise here? During the past three decades or so, people’s expectation of having a job for life has been greatly eroded by changing social and economic circumstances. It is quite common for people to change not only jobs but careers, sometimes relatively late in life. Redundancy is widespread, especially in times of recession, and many people have to consider entirely new avenues of employment from sheer necessity. You might expect that the fear of losing their jobs would increase employees’ commitment to their work, so as to seem indispensable. But this is not always so. Instead it can weaken their commitment as they spend time looking for other work, just in case they lose their current jobs. When I was on a series of one-year contracts, I must have spent a significant amount of my working time applying for more secure positions. Moreover, employees can be forgiven for thinking that if their employers will not commit to them, there is no reason why they should be greatly committed to their employers. 57

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What is it to be committed to a job? You might see the mere fact of having a job, however mundane, as an important ingredient in your own self-development, something worth doing because you are committed to your own growth as a person. But quite apart from this, most jobs, however mundane, require a certain level of commitment; you are expected to turn up on time and reliably do what you are paid to do. Some jobs, especially contract work or temping, are not expected to fulfil your long-term ambitions or goals. And many people do even longer-term jobs mainly to bring in money rather than for self-fulfilment; they are committed in as much as they have certain habits – of turning up, doing the work satisfactorily and perhaps gaining a social life with colleagues – but without identifying with the values or mission of the employer. If they belt out the company song at the Christmas party, it is with irony rather than fervour. Then there are careers. One expects to be in a career for a substantial time, perhaps for life. A career is more likely to be sought to satisfy the ambitions and personal interests of the employee, and there is a promotional structure. To some extent, one gives oneself to one’s career, hoping for personal fulfilment and, perhaps, the sense of doing something valuable. Even so, you may not be all that interested in your career. You may be more interested in other things, such as your family or your leisure activities. And now that we are supposed to be creating a “Big Society” in the UK, you might devote yourself to participating in that instead. If you are lucky, your career will harness some of your abilities and interests, but even if it doesn’t, you can still gain external rewards from it, such as promotion and the status it brings, or enough income for a comfortable lifestyle. Ambitious people who have careers are anxious for such rewards; even if the activity they engage in does not set their hearts on fire, there are various things they want out of it, such as recognition, responsibility, influence, money or even power. Some people are socially ambitious; 58

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they are eager for the recognition of people they already look up to. A few people even want to be famous; or more than a few, in our arguably celebrity-obsessed culture. As a student I knew, or knew of, several people who wanted to become famous. Some actually did, although fortunately most did not. All these things arise from ambition.

Ambition What is ambition, and is it a good thing? Ambitious people can be expected to have a lot of commitment, at least if their ambitions are not idle, vaporous fantasy. Commitment to their work, be it paid work or not, is usually an important contributor to their success, although, alas, is not sufficient for it. Such people persevere despite obstacles, devote a large proportion of their energy to their work and do not spend too much time regretting setbacks or ruminating on what might have been. They also tend to be good strategists. But what is this “success”? What do we mean when we describe so-andso as “successful”? In general terms, you succeed at something if you achieve what you are trying to achieve, as a result of your trying. Success is distinct from good fortune. Effortless well-being is not success, although it may be helpful for achieving it. On this general definition, success need not be about achieving anything grand. If I set out to have the present chapter drafted within a week, put in the necessary effort and duly complete the draft without succumbing to distractions or being waylaid by disasters, then I can claim a success. But when we describe people as successful, we often mean they have achieved notable things in occupations with a reasonably high status. Ideas of success are strongly influenced by culture; people are thought successful if they manage to do things widely admired, whether or not these things have any real value. At one 59

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extreme, some people want to be celebrities. They want to feature in the tabloids and gossip magazines. If they get their images plastered over their pages, then many people will consider them successful. And according to our initial, basic definition of success, so they are: they wanted this publicity, did what they needed to get it, and finally got there. It is a further question whether this success should be valued. Perhaps it would merely highlight the inner emptiness of people who are successful in this way. Ambitious people are, by definition, oriented towards success. But they don’t just desire something: they usually try hard to get it, and their commitment to their goals shows itself in this effort. Exactly how hard they need to work to achieve it partly depends on their natural abilities. If they are very talented, they may not have to try particularly hard. But to count as successful, they must have made some effort, as we have already suggested. But does the converse hold: that people who are strongly committed to their work must be ambitious? This is not so clear. You might work hard for achievements you value, without being especially ambitious. If you choose to work for a good cause such as a charity or pressure group, then your commitment to working towards its goals arises mostly because you believe in them. You may not particularly care that it is you who helps to achieve these goals; what is important is that the goals be achieved. You probably think it is better that you do this sort of work, than that you do other work that doesn’t advance anything worthwhile. But that does not mean you are working for self-advancement. You may be working hard because you really want to advance something important, without necessarily wanting anything much for yourself. Ambition is different. I shall not attempt an exact definition of ambition, or say precisely how it differs from other sorts of achievement orientation. In any case, it is sometimes difficult to tell how much an achievement-oriented person is driven by ambition. Often, people’s motives are mixed. You may choose a line of work 60

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– politics or lobbying, say – because you genuinely believe in its aims. But if you are also ambitious, you strongly want the work to yield something for you. If you are after an important post and have a credible rival – someone you privately admit would do the job at least as well as you – you still would strongly prefer that the job went to you. Your commitment to your work arises largely from your wanting something for yourself, even if you also believe in the value of what you are doing. But what is it that the ambitious person wants? We might know the specific thing he wants, for example a particular job or salary. But what inner need or drive would this satisfy? The general aim is self-advancement, but that can take many forms. The ambition that drives you to work hard may be largely external to the work itself. If your ambition is to be a multi-millionaire, then you will choose work that maximizes your chance of attaining this goal. You may find the work itself neither interesting nor important. If your ambition is to be well known or even famous, then you will try for work that you think might achieve that for you, for example in the arts, sport, politics or the mass media. You might even try the workfree and talent-free route, endlessly applying to be on reality television shows. Extreme, pathological desire for fame may even lead to crimes that will get you a lot of publicity. Perhaps that was the motive of Mark Chapman, the man who murdered John Lennon in 1980. Envious of the fame of the man he idolized, and which reminded him of his own lack of it, he got even by killing Lennon, an act that served both to make him (Chapman) famous and to remove the cause of his envy. The downside was that Chapman received a hefty jail term. But – who knows? – it may have been worth it for him. Fortunately, ambition may be not for money or recognition, but for personal achievement valued for its own sake. A research scientist might have an all-consuming ambition to make a really significant advance in his field. He doesn’t merely want to possess the 61

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relevant knowledge: he wants to be the first to possess it, through his own research; he wants to be the one who makes it available to the world. If he gains this knowledge because someone else has discovered it, then his ambition is thwarted. But this does not mean that all he wants is recognition. He may enjoy any acclaim he receives, but he values not the recognition per se, but the thing he is recognized for. The same goes for many people who want to satisfy personal goals, or to continue bettering their best performance in some field. It is not important that someone betters that performance; what is important is that they manage to do so, whether they receive recognition or not.

Recognition At the same time, there is usually a connection between wanting to achieve something of personal importance, and wanting recognition for it. Sometimes this is because you want to be reassured of the value of your achievement. But often it is more than this. Consider a writer who discovers that someone has profitably plagiarized her work. The fact that the plagiarist has bothered to do this is evidence that her work is valued: that it is worth plagiarizing. However, it outrages her sense of justice. How dare the plagiarist get the rewards that are due to her! If she successfully sues, then she may win monetary damages. Yet money is unlikely to resolve the grievance, since what the original writer wants people to know is that she wrote the work in question, not the plagiarist. But why should this matter? Why do people not only want to achieve worthwhile things, but also want others – even people they will never hear of – to recognize their achievements? In a way, the desire for recognition is quite baffling. It is to do with status, but, then again, why should that matter? The research scientist who wants to be the one to make a major breakthrough 62

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in his field need not be primarily out for status. Even if he receives considerable acclaim from his peers, he will be a big fish in what remains a very small pond, and the desire for even this limited status is not what drives him, in any case. Moreover, some people’s careers require them to avoid recognition for their achievements. Indeed, avoiding it can be strong evidence of their commitment, since it highlights some other, very good reason for carrying on with their work. A BBC correspondent once told how, when young, he had been sounded out for possible work in the British Secret Intelligence Service. But he was warned by his potential recruiter, whom he described as a very grey, inconspicuous man, that he would have to lie continually about what he did, and few people would ever know what he had achieved. Taking on such work, with all the risks and no public acclaim, would indeed require great commitment. But the point still stands that most people, to some extent, want recognition for their worthwhile achievements. Most are content with parochial recognition, say among their peers or in their organization, but some want wider acclaim. The desire for recognition is often an important feature of their ambition. At the same time, when we desire such recognition, most of us want it to be based on some genuine achievement of our own. I would feel somewhat empty and even fraudulent if I found myself widely acclaimed for something I had not actually done, or for something I had done but that I did not really value. I want to achieve something, and I want others to know it, yet I also want to be known because I have, in reality, achieved it. There is an internal relationship between the desire to achieve and the desire to be recognized; they are mutually intertwined. This can generate intriguing psychological paradoxes, however. For most of us, it quite reasonably matters not only that someone thinks highly of us, but who thinks highly of us. We want the good opinion of people whose opinions we take seriously, people whom 63

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we ourselves hold in high esteem. However, when our desire for acclaim has a strongly competitive or even egotistical edge, problems emerge. Consider Jean Hampton’s observation: I was recently told of a philosopher whose work was impressive, who enjoyed a high reputation, and who wanted very much to believe that he was one of the finest philosophers in the country (if not the finest), but who continually worried that he was not. Thus, when he attended conventions he would seek out people who would discuss his work and praise it, and beam with satisfaction as the praise was given. But those who knew him knew that the satisfaction was momentary, and that his fears would quickly return. The person who related this story to me puzzled over the quick return of these fears, but it is not, I think, hard to see why this philosopher was constantly plagued by them … He could only believe that he was a superior philosopher (= superior person) if that judgement came from someone whose philosophical acuity and originality were at least as great as his own, but since he was determined to believe that he was better than those who complimented him, he could not trust their evaluation of his work and abilities. So the method he chose to buttress his wished-for sense of self-worth continually defeated that very goal. (Murphy & Hampton 1988: 64) The philosopher’s ego was making his life difficult. If he simply knew he was the best, without needing reassurance of this fact from lesser mortals, his life would have been happier, provided he didn’t mind the lesser mortals being repelled by his conceit. But his dependence on the good opinion of others defeated his desire to have such a stratospherically high opinion of himself. The desire for recognition can take even more perverse turns, especially when divorced from wanting to be recognized for a 64

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worthwhile quality that you really possess. Consider the desire for fame: the craving to be heard of by very large numbers of people whom you will never hear of yourself, and perhaps for nothing that you really value. Some people, in fact, are famous for nothing apart from being famous, and this fame is often brief. Mark Rowlands (2008) calls this “v-fame” (for “variant fame”) and remarks that in our time there is a lot of it about. It is a much commented-on aspect of our celebrity-obsessed popular culture. It has an enormous pull for some people but, as will be discussed, its attraction conceals paradoxes. People who are ambitious for fame pursue it because they think that, in some way, it is better for them to be famous than not: not better for the world, but for them. They see a significant divide between the non-famous and the famous. They want to leave the inferior ranks of the non-famous and join the superior ranks of the famous. To this end, they are likely to seek the company of famous people at almost any cost. This pursuit becomes a central commitment of their lives. We occasionally encounter noxious characters who spend their time looking over people’s shoulders for someone important to talk to. This is only a small-scale version of the phenomenon. People who act like this – and who are not already well known themselves – do so, I suggest, for two main reasons. First, there is the excitement of being on the radar, however briefly, of someone well known. Even if you know nothing will come of it, you have the thrill of knowing that this particular actor, sporting champion, pop celebrity, television personality (or whoever it is) is paying attention to you. Second, you might hope for the glory to rub off on you; if you are seen in the company of such people, you may eventually become one of them, and others will now want to know you! Name-droppers desperately want their own names to be dropped. The journalist Julie Burchill understands the attraction of it all. At the pinnacle of her celebrity status she wrote about why her success so thrilled her: 65

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It’s nice being called the cleverest woman in Britain (Observer), or one of the cleverest women of all time (Peter York), or more influential than Vanessa Redgrave, Kim Wilde and the Princess of Wales rolled into one (Ray Gosling on Radio 4), but the real kick – and this sounds really mindless teenybopper stuff, but it can’t be helped – is knowing that your heroes have heard of you. (Burchill 1992: 261) The kick she gets from their having heard of her suggests that she feels reassured that she is famous. An important thing about being famous is that other famous people have heard of you. If you meet them, you don’t have to explain yourself; they know anyway. You are a member of an exalted club. For some people this is very heaven. At the same time, being famous entails that most of those who have heard of you are not famous themselves. Indeed, the very existence of fame depends on the fact that most people are not famous. The people whose vigilant gaze wanders over your shoulder at parties are much less interested in being known by obscure people than by famous ones. And some famous people want to know only other famous people. But it is interesting and strange that fame and its allure depend, for their very existence, on people who lack it. If you are not interested in non-famous people, then why should it matter to you that they have heard of you? But if it does matter to you that famous people hear of you, then what is the appeal of their fame, given that it depends on non-famous people (like you) having heard of them? If those who seek fame for its own sake were more philosophically inclined, they might want to think again.

Ambition and vocation This detour into recognition and fame is part of the general subject of ambition. I asked what the relation was between ambition and 66

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commitment to one’s work and suggested that while ambitious people (as opposed to mere dreamers) are often highly committed to their work, the converse does not always hold. There is also a distinction between the internal and external rewards of work. Some work is, of its nature, directly concerned with achieving definite goals, whereas other work is more concerned with the smooth running of the machinery. Some workers are more results-driven than process-driven, and the former tend to be more ambitious. The results hoped for may be something mostly external to the work, such as a high salary, or it may be the kind of self-advancement that the worker sees as inseparable from the value he or she attaches to the work. That self-advancement, in turn, may or may not involve external recognition. These categories are admittedly somewhat speculative. They intersect with each other to some extent. But I hope to make things clearer by focusing once again on the concept of vocation and its relation both to ambition and commitment. Are people with a sense of vocation necessarily ambitious? We often talk as if they were. A keen medical student might describe her great ambition as being to qualify as a doctor and work in public health in a developing country; someone else might work hard to qualify as a teacher, because that is what he has always wanted to do. Such people are ambitious, in a way. But what seems especially important to them is the internal rewards of the work they desire. The satisfaction comes from doing something they consider deeply worthwhile. Of course, the work is results-oriented as well; for example, the medical student really wants to see the public health improvements she plans to work for. But as we suggested earlier, this desire is not primarily for self-advancement. The driving thought is not so much “I want these important results to be achieved by me”, as “It is my calling to do this work”. The difference is subtle, but real. People with a sense of vocation see large parts of their identity, or the meaning of their lives, as being connected with their work. 67

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Vocational commitment tends to be deeper than that bound up with ordinary careers. This difference is a matter not of how hard you work, but of what drives you to do the work. People with a strong sense of vocation choose their work because they feel they have to. In fact, they often feel that the work has chosen them rather than the other way round. They might have an all-consuming passion for (say) music or the stage, and a belief that they have the talent to make a living from it. On the other hand, they may do altruistic work from a sense of moral obligation; they feel morally called to do a particular job, because of the great moral importance that it be done.

Vocation and obligation Consider the idea that vocation could be a moral calling. Clearly, doing any job incurs moral obligations, such as to fulfil the terms of your contract, behave in a civilized manner at work and to do what you are reasonably asked to do by your organization. But could there be a moral obligation to choose a particular kind of work? Or, at least, could it be morally better to pursue a particular line of work rather than another, because it is likely to increase human welfare, or put virtuous characteristics to use, in ways that other work would not? The idea may seem a little curious. Yet it is easy to see how there could be paid jobs we should not do. Perhaps it is wrong to work for organizations that are deeply involved in legal yet morally dubious things, such as selling arms to despotic regimes, or marketing goods produced under oppressive labour conditions. Many people think it is wrong to work in the sex industry, even if the work is legal and freely chosen. In a well-known critique of utilitarianism, Bernard Williams (1973) suggests it might be a violation of your integrity to work for a firm that manufactures biological weapons, even if 68

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you have a family to support, are finding it hard to get other work and know that if you don’t accept this work someone else will. We can disagree about what sort of work comes under the “morally forbidden” banner, but can readily accept that there is such a category. What is more difficult to accept is that there may be jobs that you ought to do, or at least that are morally preferable to other jobs, even if they do not harness your deepest interests and talents. Consider, just as an example, the real or alleged demands of consequentialism. This moral theory tells us that the right thing to do in any situation is the act with the best consequences. It disturbs many philosophers, because it is too demanding. Probably the most discussed example relates to the proportion of our income that we should be giving to good causes, especially famine relief. According to Peter Singer (1972) and Peter Unger (1996), the uncomfortable answer is: a lot more than most of us give. A lot more. In fact, we should go on giving money until we reach the point beyond which we ourselves become more in need of help than those we are helping. If this is correct, it has implications for the work we should be doing. People complain that consequentialist morality “eats into your spare time”, but it clearly eats into your work as well. In fact, it eats into everything. It even eats into your food (as it were) if Singer is also right about the obligation to be vegetarian. The question is not whether consequentialism has implications about the work you should do, but what those implications are. Now some people feel they have a vocation to help the needy. They feel, that is, that such work “calls” them; they want to do such work, rather than merely think they ought. So they go to poor countries to be doctors, nurses, teachers or charity workers, devoting their skills to those in great need. Some enter religious orders that concentrate on charitable work. These benevolent people probably aren’t consequentialists, and are unlikely to have heard of the theory. But to them, and in agreement with consequentialism, it seems better to do work that helps those in very great need than 69

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work that merely develops a personal interest or talent, or advances some ambition. Consequentialists do, of course, face the question of what activities would maximize consequences agreed to be desirable, whether with respect to work or anything else. We might so approve of the people who (say) work for charities for a modest salary, that we just assume that this kind of work tends to maximize the good. But does it? Suppose you are a wealthy barrister with a very comfortable lifestyle, but on reading this chapter you decide that consequentialism has hit on the moral truth. What should you do now? Some would say: leave your job, donate most of your wealth to people with the greatest needs and then use your talents for their benefit. But others would say you should try to earn even more money, so that you can give more away. That would probably mean staying in your job and perhaps working even harder. A consequentialist could even think there is a duty to earn as much as possible, so as to able to help the most needy all the more, adding that if no one did wealth-generating jobs, there would be no wealth to give away. It is not only consequentialists who could argue for this; the great Protestant reformer Calvin thought that there was a duty to do whatever work yielded the highest income, although his main thought was probably not about giving it all away. Since this is not an ethics textbook, I shall not digress into these interesting debates, some of which occur within consequentialist circles. The point is that a sense of calling to work to benefit the most needy people does not imply that you should do any one particular kind of work. The idea that there is an obligation to promote the good faces the further problem: what is this good? You might have a different understanding of what it is to promote the good, to that favoured by mainstream consequentialists. Thus a wealthy art collector who exhibits her collection to the public, free of charge, may feel that she enriches people in an important way, because appreciation of art is an important ingredient of individual fulfilment. But her activities 70

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and lifestyle are unlikely to impress Singer or Unger. She does good (in her eyes at least) but doesn’t feed the starving. We can say that she is promoting a good. Is she promoting the good? It seems, to me at least, there is more likely to be a plurality of incommensurable goods than just one, such as utility. People with a sense of vocation might believe that there are objective goods to be pursued, which they promote by following their calling. But the great variety of vocations people pursue, for moral reasons, suggests that there are many different conceptions of the good; conceptions that indeed do not necessarily conflict, but which cannot all be derived from one overarching principle. But more importantly, people might not see the value of their vocation in moral terms at all. Their chief commitment is not to a moral ideal, even if it is not contrary to such an ideal. So what should you do if you feel that your vocation – your calling – is in fact not to promote the good, whether or not understood in terms of human welfare, but to develop another interest or passion? If your calling is to promote the good, that is fine, but what if it isn’t? The conflict between the demands of morality and the beckoning of vocation is potentially acute, because of the special commitment integral to any vocation. Moral considerations could be relevant to deciding between different careers, but a sense of vocation may seem more important than moral considerations. The conflict might even be construed as one between the moral life and the meaningful life. As Svendsen notes, there is a modern, romantic conception of vocation, which dictates that work should above all be meaningful for the worker: We can see traces of the idea of “work as vocation” in today’s search for one’s “true self ” at work. We change jobs at an increasing rate. The idea of vocation has been transformed by modern individualism. We are no longer serving God, but rather ourselves, and our primary obligation to ourselves as 71

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“individuals” is to realize ourselves. Hence, work falls under the general heading of “self-realization”, and to a great extent becomes a question of choosing a “lifestyle”. (2008: 26) But while this is true, it is only part of the truth; some people still do pursue vocations because they embody their strongly held values. But whether the reason for doing the work one does is rooted in one’s values or in some other passion, the kind of commitment needed is of a special kind. For example, imagine a priest who dutifully goes through the motions of his work, but with a secret and despairing sense that his faith is deserting him. Here, something has gone wrong, provided it is not merely temporary and brief. He may be praised for his tenacity, but on the other hand he may be condemned for hypocrisy. Pursuing a priestly vocation entails having an enduring inner drive or passion; this is what commitment is, in such cases. So there is a deep moral or value-based dimension to pursuing vocations like this; what is needed is not only hard work, but a particular kind of motivation. This partly explains why supposedly unbelieving priests are routine targets of ridicule. People ask: why are these waffle-prone clerics drawing a stipend from the Church, when they fudge or openly deny central tenets of the faith? Such accusations of unbelief are often unfair, especially when they are directed at liberal scholars who are quaintly untutored in the black arts of spin, and speak unwisely to the wrong people. However, these criticisms spring from the thought that the clerics should not be paid or have their opinions respected if they don’t really believe what they are supposed to. So there is an intimate relation between pursuing vocations like this and being always guided by certain values. This is less the case for ordinary professional people. Although we speak of professional ethics and attitudes, there is still a private sphere of life that is not the business of an employee’s professional organization. The 72

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tabloid headline “Accountant in Lap-Dancing Shame” does not have quite the impact it would if the shamed punter were a bishop. This commitment to observing high standards all the time, in virtue of one’s work, is one thing that marks out certain sorts of work as exemplifying vocations. On the other hand, although we expect any ordinary professional to observe a certain professional ethic in his work, there is still such a thing as being off duty: a private space (within reason) that is not the concern of the employer.

Authenticity The example of consequentialist accounts of how we should be spending our time and money, and their tension with certain vocational aspirations, was not primarily intended to be a discussion of consequentialism. It was introduced only as an example of how moral considerations in general, which of course may not be consequentialist ones, could conflict with vocation. But vocations are only an example of the special commitments we have in our lives that, according to some thinkers, should be given great importance in any credible moral system. This is a central reason why Williams rejects consequentialism; for most of us, living as prescribed by consequentialism would significantly deprive individual life of meaning. For instance, most people want to raise a family because it is a focus of privacy, security and love. Yet there are clearly questions about the ethics of doing so, for example given concerns about population and the fact that having a family will inevitably divert resources from other important concerns. When it comes to vocations as normally conceived, another of Williams’s examples, which arises in a different context, is germane. He refers to the artist Gauguin, who abandoned his family for the sake of his art. Williams’s use of this example comes in a discussion of “moral luck”: the idea that the moral nature of our choices 73

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might depend on their actual outcomes, which, of course, are partly determined by factors outside our control (Williams 1981). Since Gauguin happened to become a celebrated artist, then, according to advocates of moral luck, his behaviour towards his family can be looked on leniently. If he had failed, we should not be so lenient. Moral luck is not my concern here, but the example of Gauguin is clearly relevant to vocation and especially to romantic notions of its importance. Might the successful pursuit of a vocation, such as an artistic one, express an authenticity that somehow cancels out or redeems the prima facie immorality of certain choices? “This above all: to thine own self be true” is Polonius’s advice to his son Laertes, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In the play, Polonius means that Laertes should look after himself and his reputation, as he faces the dangers of his impending travels. But the idea of being true to oneself can also be harnessed to the cause of personal authenticity: to the importance of leading a life that expresses one’s true self. This is what people often think they are doing when they choose – or, better, claim to discover – their vocation. Feeling called, they believe they have a duty to respond. But there are problems. Suppose your vocation is something frivolous or deluded, leading you to sit in an attic all day, devising perpetual motion machines. Worse, suppose your authentic self is something alarming, involving Nietzschean Übermensch ideas? People draw on threads in romanticism and existentialism to justify the pursuit of authenticity at almost any cost. True, the idea of vocation suggests the discovery of your true self and true calling more than the choice of these things. Yet believing you have discovered your true self or calling does not make your discovery true. There is much scope for grandiosity and self-deception, as well as the sad fact that you may lack the necessary ability. But with all of this duly admitted, we cannot deny that, for some people, the successful pursuit of a vocation brings them meaning and fulfilment that are indeed good for them, and often for those 74

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around them. Most people want commitments that are central to their lives and, for some, that central commitment is found in their work. This does not necessarily make them better people than those whose commitments reside outside their work, or mean that their particular mode of fulfilment should be the goal for all of us. Svendsen notes that there is much more to happiness than work: “Even if we have found what appears to be the perfect job, the kind of work we appear to be made for, the job will fail to engage us as a whole human being. It is fairly obvious: we need something more in life than just work. A job is not a life” (2008: 124). But he overgeneralizes: there do seem to be people whose jobs engage their whole being. The real point is that they are probably in a minority, and that there is nothing to be ashamed of in wanting something more in life than work. Indeed, people whose work engages their whole being can be difficult to live with; like alcoholics, workaholics tend to neglect those closest to them. But some people’s life really is their work, and the main source of their happiness and sense of meaning. I suggested that the fear of commitment to a particular line of work is often a mask for the fear of mistaken commitment. To commit yourself to a vocation, without that fear, and to throw yourself unreservedly into something that is both deeply fulfilling and that you (rightly) believe to be of real and deep value are surely blessings. You may not receive great recognition for it, you may not be rich or popular, but you are spared the fearful and distracting suspicion that the grass is greener somewhere else, and that it is therefore not worth devoting yourself wholeheartedly to what you actually have. But, of course, it can take time to learn this sobering lesson. “Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait”: if youth only knew, if age only could.

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4. Faith, chance and the ethics of belief

There can be few reflective people who have not been struck by the thought: if I had been born and bred in an entirely different place or time, my beliefs, attitudes, pursuits and values would probably have been very different from what they are here and now. In a way, the observation seems too obvious to be worth making. If I had lived in much earlier times, my knowledge of the world would have been limited to the knowledge then available, and that would no doubt have shaped my perspective on all kinds of things. Beliefs and attitudes that most of us now consider irrational might have been perfectly rational in past times, given knowledge then available. But many social and cultural attitudes have been changed by increased acquaintance with the mores of societies once considered completely alien to our own. The rise of anthropology in the nineteenth century, driven by exploration of other cultures, increased our recognition that “our” way of doing things was not the only way, and that alien societies functioned well in spite of cultural mores that seemed very different to our own. Around the mid-1960s, mass air travel began, but mostly not to exotic destinations. Towards the end of the twentieth century, there was the sharp growth of globalization and the inception of the information revolution. Indeed, the information revolution is itself an important cultural phenomenon, with things that were considered luxuries less than thirty years ago, such as the possession of a personal computer, now regarded as normal and even necessary. When I 77

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was at school, mobile phones, the World Wide Web and email did not exist. Computers were basic, unwieldy and mainly for geeks. There were only three television channels in the UK. (And as Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen might quip, “You try and tell that to the young people today. Will they believe you?”) So a result of all these things, and especially the information revolution – the internet and the mass proliferation of media outlets – is that it is considerably easier now than very recently to know of other cultures and the beliefs that underpin them. For example, if I wished, I could find out about the doctrines of Wahhabi Islam in less than a minute (in fact, I just have done). Within the same time, I could find information about medieval Samurai funeral practices, or about why Mormons don’t drink tea or coffee (I’ll leave that for later). All this leads to a potentially disturbing question: once we have found out so much about other cultures and beliefs, why do we persist (when we do) in holding to our own? In other words, how can I be so sure of the truth of the beliefs and the soundness of the practices I grew up with, when I know that had I been brought up in other circumstances I would take entirely different things for granted? However, is this really so puzzling? After all, even within a common culture, individuals’ beliefs and attitudes differ on an enormous range of matters. Most people must know this, but don’t see it as posing any insurmountable problems for their own beliefs. The mere existence of disagreement does not show that opinions cannot be held correctly and rationally. After all, we often argue with people, and in doing so we may try to draw their attention to facts they are unaware of or fallacies in their reasoning. In holding a view that someone disagrees with, we think we have better reasons for our view than he has for his. We know he thinks the same thing about our opinion, but this does not deter us. Instead, we think he is simply wrong, mistaken or even off the rails. In an intellectual climate influenced by relativism, some people are uncomfortable 78

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with words such as “wrong” or “in error”. They think such talk is arrogant, dogmatic, hegemonic or elitist. They might think it is rooted in a questionable philosophy of truth. However, although such words can be used in an arrogant or dogmatic manner, it is ridiculous to think they are illegitimate per se. If I have an opinion, then I believe that anything that contradicts this opinion is mistaken. That is not arrogance, but logic. (Naturally, we can now hear someone complain, “But it’s only your logic! And what’s so important about logic anyway? And isn’t logic pretty arrogant?” Yes, yes. We can all play that tedious game.) Merely knowing that someone disagrees with us should not be enough to unsettle our beliefs.

Reason and conditioning So to add force to the original worry, we should recognize that not only are many culturally embedded beliefs and attitudes controversial, but that they often arise in ways that cast doubt on their rationality, on their ability to track the truth. Recognizing the causal history of many of the beliefs that underpin my fundamental commitments might reasonably lead me to question them. For example, once I realize that my commitment to tolerance, freedom of conscience and liberal democracy is largely traceable to the fact that I live in a society that officially values those things, and that other societies do not value them, I might start to wonder whether my beliefs are so sound after all. Had I grown up in an illiberal society, such as China or Saudi Arabia, I would probably not endorse those values. If I find myself arguing with someone from countries such as those, I shall be tempted to think that he has the views he does mainly because of the way he was brought up. But he will very likely say the same thing about me. If I am rational, this realization should unsettle me, at least to some extent. 79

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We must be careful here, though. The mere fact that a belief has a causal origin does not, in itself, show that it cannot be defended by sound reasons. It may be that such reasons are the cause of the belief or, at least, that beliefs that are causally reinforced by non-rational factors can still be defended by reason. It is hard precisely to measure the tension between being a respectably rational person, able to consider reasons and pursue truth, and being situated in a certain epoch and culture, with a baggage of biases brought about by experience, environment, innate psychological tendencies, sex, social class and so on. But these external factors do not completely determine how our life commitments pan out. We are able to be rational if we properly make the effort. We can learn to recognize the non-rational influences on us and we can transcend them. People sometimes swim against the current. Societies with deeply entrenched attitudes and practices still produce dissidents. Besides, it is annoying to have your views dismissed as the mere product of your background. It is demeaning to be told “You would think that, wouldn’t you? Your class background, age, sex, nationality and the amount of money you possess, have all produced your attitudes – so what else can we expect?” What is objectionable about this is partly the assumption that you cannot be worth taking seriously or arguing with, because your background is such a salient cause of your beliefs and attitudes. It is as if those who sneer like this do not themselves have a background that influences their outlook, or as if the influence of one’s background somehow makes it pointless to discover any rational basis for a conviction. Dismissing a point of view because it is a mere rationalization of an unacknowledged bias is a crooked kind of argumentation. In the light of all this, we need to adopt a judicious middle path between radical doubt on the one hand, and simply dismissing the problem on the other. We can, to an extent, transcend the influence of conditioning. But our knowledge of such conditioning 80

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should make us cautious and sceptically inclined. Rationalization of conditioned responses is still a real phenomenon. In this context it is the providing of reasons for a position, when a sufficient cause of holding it is something non-rational. If your arguments for an opinion are rationalizations, you will probably continue to hold it even when most people can see that the case for it is spurious, or even ridiculous. We all rationalize, but it is in the nature of the habit to hide itself from us. Often we are better at detecting it in others. One warning sign is that the opinion for which the rationalization is produced is self-serving. Another is when someone accepts an argument as sound, even though it has the same logical structure as another argument he would reject, when he already finds the conclusion unacceptable. So there is a case for doubt and caution about our most fundamental life stances and convictions on the grounds of the contingency of our cultural baggage. Many of our assumptions are strongly influenced by the way we were brought up. And when we give reasons for them, we are sometimes rationalizing: coming up with reasons we would not find convincing if we had not had this sort of upbringing. At the same time, rationalizations as such are not necessarily unsound; all arguments in favour of a life stance or commitment should be evaluated as reasons, and not just observed as causes. But the problem now recurs at another level, for our acceptance of certain reasons as good reasons for our stances is often itself culturally influenced. This does not make them invalid, logically speaking. Logical validity is not the core problem here. Rather, culture, upbringing and so on tend to influence the premises we start from. These premises, in turn, may indeed also be conclusions of valid arguments, which should again be assessed as arguments. But the further we go back, the more likely we are to be unaware of our starting-points and how we acquired them. As we really and earnestly try to be rational about our central beliefs, the more difficult we find the attempt. 81

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Relativism is a red herring It is important to emphasize that this is not an argument for cultural relativism. Relativism denies the existence of any transcultural or universal truth, at least in particular areas such as ethics. “True” means, and can only mean, “true for X”. What we have instead is a reminder of fallibilism: that we may be culturally or even biologically biased not only to get certain things right, but also to get things wrong, to overlook salient and relevant considerations, to ignore evidence that points to unfamiliar conclusions. It is very easy to confuse relativism with fallibilism, but the difference is utterly crucial. There may be a way of life to which we all should be committed. But if there is, then unfortunately various causal biases bring it about that most, or all, of us simply fail to understand what it is. Relativism, on the other hand, is more comfortable; it simply denies that there can be such a universal way. So there is a serious challenge in the fact that, had we (whoever “we” are) been brought up in an entirely different way, our beliefs and practices would have been different in significant ways to what they are here and now. And this would be the case, despite the quite easy availability of knowledge of how others live and what they believe. No doubt there would also be important similarities; arguably there is a common humanity that entails that basic needs and desires are quite similar across cultures. We should beware of exaggerating the differences. But there are differences nonetheless. But before looking at their implications, there is another, possibly more intriguing, aspect of this problem that needs attention.

Disagreements among the well informed Across cultures and within them, it might seem surprising at first glance, and obvious at second, that most beliefs are shared. We need 82

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certain shared beliefs simply to navigate our way around the world. The kind of divergence of belief I am discussing is really to do with the beliefs that underpin the central commitments some of us have, for example to do with religion, ethics and politics. The intriguing thing is that highly knowledgeable, intelligent, rational and truthseeking individuals take a variety of very different positions on such matters. They fail to converge on a single belief system even after exhaustive dialogue, in which the parties show great insight into positions they continue to disagree with. I have heard atheist philosophers talk of “the problem of intelligent theists”, referring to the fact that, although it seems obvious to them that the case for theism has been exhaustively examined and found wanting, nevertheless there remain philosophically sophisticated theists, who are very well aware of the atheists’ arguments. The problem is to explain how this could be. Some of them admit that they can’t explain it. For example, as a student, I persuaded an initially reluctant A. J. Ayer, the eminent Oxford philosopher and “media atheist”, to grant me an interview. I raised this question with him. He mentioned various believing philosophers whom he respected intellectually, and told me that it had always puzzled him that they could be religious believers. But he simply had to accept it. The issue is brought into excellent focus by Peter van Inwagen, an eminent philosopher at the University of Notre Dame, and a Christian convert. In a semi-autobiographical essay about why he is a believer, he raises the problem in general terms: Philosophers do not agree about anything to speak of. And why not? How can it be that equally intelligent and welltrained philosophers can disagree about the freedom of the will or nominalism or the covering-law model of scientific explanation when each is aware of all of the arguments and distinctions and other relevant considerations that the others are aware of? How can we philosophers possibly regard 83

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ourselves as justified in believing anything of philosophical significance under these conditions? How can I believe (as I do) that free will is incompatible with determinism or that unrealized possibilities are not physical objects or that human beings are not four-dimensional things extended in time as well as in space when David Lewis – a philosopher of truly formidable intelligence and insight and ability – rejects these things I believe and is aware of and understands perfectly every argument that I could bring in their defense? Well, I do believe these things. And I believe that I am justified in believing them. And I am confident that I am right. But how can I take these positions? I don’t know. (1994: 41–2) However, having raised the problem, van Inwagen immediately suggests that there must be some good solution to it, partly because he doesn’t want to be “forced into a position in which I accept no philosophical thesis of any consequence” (ibid.: 42). He doesn’t know what the solution is, though. He points out, reasonably enough, that no philosopher is what he calls a “philosophical sceptic”: here, someone who thinks that we cannot be justified in believing any distinctively philosophical thesis. So if his critics tell van Inwagen that he is resorting to assertion rather than argument, he can answer that so are they, since they too hold philosophical positions and therefore make the same assertion. But we still have a mystery worth pursuing. Van Inwagen briefly suggests that he has an incommunicable philosophical insight that allows him to know that he is right and Lewis is wrong about certain questions, in spite of Lewis’s brilliance. This might seem a mere conceit. But if so, it is a widely shared conceit; when we hold a high-level theoretical position that we know is intelligently disputed, we often do simply continue to believe it. And perhaps that’s the end of the matter. However, even if there does come a point, perhaps after intense reflection or debate, when you can rationally commit to certain 84

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beliefs knowing that some highly qualified people will never agree with them, there is always the problem of knowing when that point has been reached. For the fact that a prima facie untenable view is defended by somebody who is clearly well qualified and has thought deeply about it is surely some reason to take the view seriously: not a decisive reason, of course, but some reason. On the question of theism, a philosophically convinced atheist who discovers that someone of van Inwagen’s intellectual eminence is a fervent theist now has reason to think that theism is not simply ignorant or stupid: not a repository of the elementary fallacies you might believe it commits if you confine your reading to (say) Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion (2006). And, of course, theists should admit that atheism is not simply ignorant or stupid, either. Suppose our atheist does realize this, and is briefly shaken. His first instinct, just to allay his anxiety, might be to seek out a more sophisticated defence of atheism. Perhaps he will light upon J. L. Mackie’s The Miracle of Theism (1982). But if he perseveres and is reflective, he will know that even this work, for all its undoubted merits, is not considered by all to be the last word. He will discover, indeed, that nothing – however sophisticated – seems to be the last word. At that point, a number of different things could happen. First, he might remain a tormented agnostic, suppressing the urge to commit himself in any direction, for fear of getting something badly wrong. Or he might set the issue aside and distract himself with other concerns. Or he might find himself pulled, as if inexorably, in one direction, perhaps because he finds commitment much more energising and satisfying than the lack of it, and justifying this move by thinking, “At least I made some effort to work this out – how much longer was I supposed to wait?” Or he might, conceivably, decide that he has the kind of incommunicable insight that van Inwagen claims for his own philosophical views, and commit himself to a firm line without fear of being irrational. 85

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If he prides himself on his psychological perceptiveness, he may speculate about non-rational explanations for why people embrace the commitments they do. Such speculation is not particularly difficult. For example, people sometimes gain or strengthen their faith after a terrible personal tragedy, such as the sudden death of someone they love. I have seen this happen. You might think this sort of thing would cause a rejection of religion or a loss of faith, but there is an understandable psychological reason for the exact opposite. Rather than think there cannot be a good God, because if there were the tragedy would not have happened, the victim of the tragedy might as readily think that there must be such a God, because otherwise such a horrific disaster would be in vain. You might even explain some subjective certainties in terms of evolutionary psychology. For example, Scruton (2010) speculates that a hard-wired tendency to make bold, and frequently irrational, decisions could be a throwback to our hunter-gatherer ancestors of many tens of thousands of years ago. In hunter-gatherer days, indecisiveness quite simply got you killed. Hunter-gatherers had to be acutely aware of deadly threats and act decisively on the assumption that rival hunter-gatherer groups were out to kill them. If they did not make that assumption, but instead had an open mind on the matter, they would not be around for long. So it is reasonable to speculate that we carry genes that were especially good for our remote ancestors’ survival in those grim conditions. Scruton, while not sympathetic to the whole package of evolutionary psychology, speculates that such genes may be partly responsible for the delusional optimism about refashioning humanity that explains so many of the modern world’s political disasters. There are other more mundane non-rational explanations of our commitments and their underlying certainties. People might have an emotional need to believe – or indeed, disbelieve – in a system. The influence of local culture and upbringing has already been noted. Our tendency to conformity and “groupthink” is often strong and 86

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indeed has been experimentally demonstrated. Psychologists have persuaded unwitting subjects to agree with palpably absurd statements by surrounding them with other subjects – in fact confederates of the experimenter – who all made the statements first (Sutherland 1992: 45–8). Anyone who finds this incredible should try sitting on a committee. When it comes to religion, Mackie offers various naturalistic reasons for expecting religious belief to persist, even if there is no sound rational ground for it. For example, there are Marxist, psychoanalytic and cultural explanations available, and while Mackie does not fully endorse any of them individually, he makes a respectable case for saying that they cumulatively undermine theism (Mackie 1982: 177–98). Mackie does not claim that, because these explanations are available, we can afford to ignore purported rational grounds for theism: far from it. It is because he first finds no cogent rational ground for theism that he produces these non-rational accounts of the origin of belief, as a supplementary ground for atheism. We can’t ignore rational arguments in favour of beliefs that would probably be held even in the absence of such arguments. This is important, because unless we are sure, as Mackie was, that there are no rationally cogent grounds for religious belief, the claim that such belief is caused and sustained purely by naturalistic factors can itself only be a piece of speculation. There is nothing obviously right about it. As one believing philosopher put it to me, some people will say it is explained by grace, others will say it is psychology. From an agnostic standpoint, neither explanation is clearly and exhaustively correct. I am not trying to manufacture philosophical difficulties out of something perfectly simple. Of course, as we saw, the mere fact of intelligent disagreement does not take away our entitlement to certainty. Nor do I wish to make much of the fact that some of those engaged in arguments like this are professional philosophers, as if having a philosophical training uniquely marked you out as having views worth listening to on issues of faith, ethics or politics. Clearly, 87

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it doesn’t; what philosophical awareness does is contribute, in some measure, to your competence to assess arguments that might be relevant to resolving these issues. Philosophers are by no means the only ones to have this competence, and philosophers are evidently capable of thinking silly things. The main point is that some issues really are very difficult; reflecting on them takes up a lot of mental energy, leads down many blind alleys and causes much confusion. Yet if you are motivated by the love of truth, and possess reserves of this energy, you will do your best to pursue the argument where it leads. This arduous process may lead to a strange dual-track thinking, particularly if you are prone to introspection. Your attempts to reach truth compete for mental attention with an “autoscopic” scepticism about your ability to do so, given your knowledge of all the nonrational factors that are very likely to be operating on you as you pursue your enquiries. Van Inwagen’s essay shows that he is acutely aware of this, yet he retains his Christian faith. Psychologically this can seem to tear you apart. And rationally, it can generate apparent paradoxes, which I think become clearer if we consider an analogy concerning practical, rather than theoretical decision-making.

Practical commitments: intention and prediction Suppose you decide to make a change in your life. It may be about nothing profound: it may only be about resolving to do more exercise, to eat in a healthier way, to stop smoking or drinking. So on 1 January of one year, you resolve to yourself: “This time I mean it: I really am going to stop smoking”. Assume that you believe you can do it. Indeed, making a genuine resolution entails believing that you can keep it; it is paradoxical to intend what you believe to be impossible. The interesting question now is: do you think you will stick to it? Suppose a friend of yours is making a similar resolution. 88

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You know that this friend makes these resolutions annually, only to backslide shortly afterwards. So when she makes it again this year, you think to yourself: “Well, I wish her luck, but I’ve heard that one before”. Unfortunately, though, you too have a habit of regular backsliding. Your friend knows this and thinks exactly the same about your chances of success. You know your friend is thinking this. But do you think she’s right? Since your case is objectively similar to hers, it seems that if you are right to predict her failure, then she is right to predict yours. But that is not how it seems from the inside. You seem to have an “internal” perspective on your own decisions that appears to make your case different. You really are going to stick with the resolution, whereas your friend … And, of course, you know that your friend, again, thinks exactly the same thing about you. If you really thought your chances of success were so slim, there would be little point in making the resolution; the inductive evidence strongly suggests that you won’t keep it this year, any more than you did for the past twenty. However, on the verge of abandoning the resolution, you realize that if you predict failure, you probably will fail. The prediction would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. So to have any chance of success, you had better predict success. At the same time, you cannot just dismiss the inductive evidence that you will fail. So what can you do? Can you honestly and rationally make the resolution, or not? The problem is that you experience a clash of perspectives on your own future, concerning your contemplated resolution. There is the “internal” perspective of intention, and the “external” perspective of prediction. However, when it comes to assessing your friend’s chances of success, you adopt a more external perspective. Although you know that she, like you, can adopt an internal point of view, this is subsumed into your external point of view upon her. This is connected to the fact that we have a sense of control over parts of our own future that we do not have over others’ future. My sense that I really can give up smoking comes partly from my sense that this 89

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is within my control, whereas I cannot control my friend’s decision whether to smoke or not. Of course, I know that she can, but because her control of herself is not within my control, it seems less real than my sense of control over myself. My point of view on my world is irreducibly mine: an intuition that lies at the heart of many philosophers puzzled by the irreducibility of the first-person perspective, especially Thomas Nagel in The View From Nowhere (1986). So there seems to be some analogy between the rational–nonrational dichotomy in the sphere of belief or “epistemic” commitments, and the intention–prediction dichotomy in the sphere of action and practical commitments. In the sphere of epistemic commitments, there is a seeming clash between seeing yourself as one fallible person among billions, ignorant of most things, with all kinds of non-rational biases working on you, and simultaneously as a centre of reasoning, with a claim to justified beliefs. In the practical sphere, there is a clash between seeing yourself as generating firm intentions, yet also as a normally erratic and self-deceiving individual capable of frequently changing your mind. Like van Inwagen, I do not claim to have a definitive solution to the problem. But diagnosis, at least, gets us somewhere. And the relevance to commitment is to do with rationality, in both cases. It brings us back to the question: how can I rationally commit myself to a particular belief system, knowing that there are millions of rational people who come to entirely different conclusions? In committing myself to stances that are central to the meaning of my life, I don’t want to see this as rooted in such highly chancy circumstances. Yet not to acknowledge this involves a kind of hubris, or at least ignorance.

Ethics and belief Much of this discussion has been about the rationality of belief and doubt, broadly construed. I cannot offer a full account of rationality, 90

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which is surely multifaceted. Here I have been referring to sensitivity to relevant evidence and sound arguments, with respect to belief. Beliefs form an important part of our body of commitments, so it has been about the rationality of commitment. So now we should ask: what are our moral responsibilities concerning our beliefs? Are there “epistemic virtues and vices”? Can there possibly be an ethics of belief? Questions about the ethics of belief particularly troubled lateVictorian agnostics, who largely connected it with religion. They were repelled by the idea that someone who genuinely and honestly enquires about something, who tries to believe what is true but turns out to be wrong, should be regarded as sinful for this. Wouldn’t a just God look more favourably on an honest doubter than on a shallow and intellectually conformist believer? This subversive idea became an important part of late-nineteenth-century “agnostic apologetics” from the pens of essayists such as Thomas Henry Huxley and Leslie Stephen, among many others, and famously included the declaration of W. K. Clifford, in perhaps the most often quoted sentence that sums up the whole approach: “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence” (Clifford, “The Ethics of Belief ”, quoted in James 1903: 8). It is not only in religion that the issue arises. Clifford’s essay, although widely thought to target orthodox Christianity, does not explicitly mention it. Totalitarian and authoritarian regimes have persecuted many millions of people, just because they held certain beliefs. Cases like these generate controversial philosophical questions. Ought the mere holding of a belief, or failure to hold it, ever be the object of moral judgement? Might there be moral obligations to believe, or disbelieve, or even suspend judgement about certain things? One of the best-known problems for this idea was expounded by John Locke in A Letter Concerning Toleration ([1689] 1991), and is a central element in many subsequent treatments of the ethics of 91

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belief. One of Locke’s main arguments for religious toleration (which was not, however, to be extended to Roman Catholics or atheists) is that it makes no sense to order someone to acquire a belief. Even if the outward appearance of holding a belief can be compelled, still this cannot guarantee that the belief is genuinely held. This observation is connected to the idea that belief is involuntary. Beliefs can be acquired under the impact of argument or observation, but no one can immediately acquire a belief at will. The only way, logically speaking, to influence another’s beliefs is by providing arguments and evidence for what you are trying to establish.

Belief and the will So one part of the problem is whether belief can be subject to the will. While it is intuitively absurd to think that we have voluntary control over our beliefs, it is quite difficult to demonstrate that we do not. It is also difficult to discuss this question without analysing the concept of belief, or distinguishing the many different kinds of belief over which the question of voluntariness might arise (e.g. perceptual versus theoretical), or noting the blurred boundaries between beliefs and other states over which we may be said to have control, such as attitudes or emotions. Nevertheless, the basic difficulty with “voluntarism” – the view that some beliefs can be freely chosen – comes from the odd idea that acquiring a belief is an action. Consider this passage from Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four (1949: 198). “Do you remember” he [O’Brien] went on, “writing in your diary, ‘Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four’?” “Yes,” said Winston. O’Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended. 92

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“How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?” “Four.” “And if the Party says that it is not four, but five – then how many?” “Four.” The word ended in a gasp of pain. The needle of the dial had shot up to fifty-five. The sweat had sprung out all over Winston’s body. The air tore into his lungs and issued again in deep groans which even by clenching his teeth he could not stop. O’Brien watched him, the four fingers still extended. He drew back the lever. This time the pain was only slightly eased. “How many fingers, Winston?” “Four.” The needle went up to sixty. “How many fingers, Winston?” “Four! Four! What else can I say? Four!” The needle must have risen again, but he did not look at it. The heavy, stern face and the four fingers filled his vision. The fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars, enormous, blurry, and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably four. “How many fingers, Winston?” “Four! Stop it, stop it! How can you go on? Four! Four!” “How many fingers, Winston?” “Five! Five! Five!” “No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think there are four. How many fingers, please?” “Four! Five! Four! Anything you like. Only stop it, stop the pain!” Winston is being commanded to believe that there are five fingers, but is in despair as to what he is meant to do. It is not a matter of finding a technique that has so far eluded him. Nor does he think he has a duty to believe the truth: no doubt he would 93

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believe a falsehood, if he could, to stop the torture. The problem is deeper. Because it is the nature of belief that it fits an independently existing world, any change in belief must be interpreted, by the believer, as corresponding to a change in the world. Yet Winston knows he cannot, by some mental exertion, bring it about that O’Brien is holding up five fingers. The world is, at least in this respect, independent of his will. But what now of fundamental commitments that involve factual beliefs? Can it make any sense to choose your commitments and the fervour with which to pursue them? Doesn’t poor Winston’s agony when O’Brien tortures him show that belief can only be a passive state? Political or religious commitments are not like football fans’ commitment to their clubs. In fact, football fans might know perfectly well that their clubs’ chances of success are woeful. But with politics or religion, things seem to be different. Although it is not unheard of for political parties in some countries to “buy” influential politicians, much as soccer clubs buy players, something has gone a bit wrong when this happens. For politicians are meant to believe the things they publicly endorse, even if we all know that many don’t. And ethical considerations aside, it is logically odd to be paid to believe something. “I believe p because I was paid to do so. If I were paid more, I would believe the opposite”: how does that really sound?

Pascal’s Wager However, we might concede that acquiring a belief is not an action, like raising your arm at will, but add that there are indirect methods by which people can acquire beliefs. A much discussed philosophical example is that of Pascal’s Wager. Pascal mounts an argument for becoming a Catholic, aimed at people whose reason presents 94

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an insuperable obstacle to faith. Pascal himself was not a believer through having adopted the wager. His wager is for the consideration of those for whom nothing else works. In a nutshell, the unbeliever should “bet” on God, as understood by the Roman Catholic religion, because it is prudent to do so. Either God exists, or he does not. Either you believe in God, or you do not. (Agnosticism, of course, counts as unbelief.) If he exists and you believe, you gain an infinite reward. If he exists and you do not believe, you forfeit that reward. If he does not exist, then you neither win nor lose anything of great importance, whether you believe or not. So it is rational to believe, provided there is more than a zero chance of God’s existence. The wager is the best bet, because of (as economists might say) its expected utility, compared with not betting on God’s existence. At least, this is the standard textbook summary of the wager; subtler accounts are possible, as in Mark Vernon’s discussion (2007: 133–5). How are we supposed to acquire these prudent beliefs? Pascal doesn’t think we can start believing propositions “just like that”, as O’Brien requires of Winston when he orders him to believe he is holding up five fingers. Instead, Pascal recommends that we work on our passions. We should immerse ourselves in the religious life, even if at first we don’t believe. We should have Masses said and take holy water. We should read pious works and avoid impious ones. We should choose our company carefully. These things will gradually induce belief. We may not be able to choose our beliefs by an immediate act of will, but we can choose to acquire them indirectly and over time. My purpose is not to go into detail about the wager. Th ere are a number of standard objections to it, and some more or less plausible replies. But the wager is relevant to the ethics of belief because one common objection to it is that it is immoral. The attempt to pervert one’s reason is said to be dishonest: the lack of concern for salient argument and evidence points to a lack of concern for truth. 95

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Additionally, it would produce a bogus, insincere, self-interested kind of faith, born of the fear of a vindictive tyrant – a “cosmic Saddam Hussein”, as Antony Flew once put it – rather than love for a loving God. It would mean endorsing a horrible system, agreeing that it is good to send unbelievers to perdition, even if they include people we have loved on earth, our parents, siblings, spouses, children, dear friends. Only a perverted and terrible religion could produce this hardness of heart. In fact, Pascal is more subtle than he is sometimes given credit for. One can modify the wager in ways that overcome at least some of these problems, while retaining its basic idea. We have already outlined how we can induce beliefs indirectly, and surely this is something we often do. Pascal is not advocating intellectual dishonesty, because he thinks that his wager is only a stepping stone to a faith that he already believes is consistent with reason. And the faith he wants to induce in unbelievers is not something bogus and merely flattering to the deity, but the real thing. This point is often missed. This leads us back to the ethics of belief in general. Some unpleasant beliefs people have are the overspill of morally dubious things about their characters. There is also self-deception. There are beliefs formed in an irresponsible manner. There are things it is good for us to know, but which we do not know because we don’t consider them important enough. These range from the mundane but important – such as learning first aid – to the grand and “existential”. But do these facts address the issue we are investigating? Can it be meritorious or blameworthy to hold a particular belief, per se? Can a belief be morally good or bad?

Following the argument where it leads One hallowed Socratic dictum is that we should “follow the argument wherever it leads”. So apparently it cannot be wrong to hold 96

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any belief, however shocking, if we have reached it by following the argument. Of course, if an argument leads to an absurd or repellent conclusion, it is better not to follow it. Arguments can be challenged by appeal to reductio ad absurdum. But this is no real objection to the Socratic dictum. We need only add that it is important not to confine the idea of “following the argument” to mere obedience to rules of valid inference. If our premises are false, then no amount of valid inference will guarantee the truth of conclusions derived from them. And these premises may themselves be the conclusions of prior arguments. If the premises are false, because we have not properly followed the argument where it leads, then that will infect any further inference made from those premises. And so on backwards. In other words, the Socratic command should be taken as referring to soundness (i.e. where all relevant premises are true and all inference valid) and not only validity.

Ethical evidentialism If we do indeed follow the argument where it leads, in this wider sense, then there is a strong case that the conclusions derived cannot be immorally held, however unwelcome or strange they may be. But what might this mean for the ethics of belief? Must we say that ethics cannot be relevant to belief, because we are justified in reaching any conclusion, provided we have sincerely followed the argument where it led? Return to our Victorian agnostics. These earnest, tortured thinkers were not saying that beliefs cannot be morally judged. Clifford, for example, says the exact opposite. He thinks that there is an ethics of belief, and a strict one at that. He thinks it is morally wrong to believe anything without sufficient evidence: not only irrational, but wrong. In effect, he echoes the Socratic dictum. So apparently we have a choice as to whether to believe 97

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things on sufficient evidence, or without it. And he thinks it is better to believe something false after honest investigation than to believe something true without such investigation. I christen this view ethical evidentialism. Evidentialism as a position in the theory of knowledge says that it is irrational to believe anything unless sufficient evidence supports it. Ethical evidentialism adds that it is morally wrong to believe anything without sufficient evidence. But is this ethics of belief any more tolerant or attractive than what it opposes? Fundamentalists wag their fingers at you and call you a lost sinner if you do not believe propositions that seem, after prima facie honest enquiry, to be unfounded. Now, it seems, we find Clifford doing something similar to those who have beliefs that are not founded on the evidence! But there is a promising way out of this. We should start by looking at the different kinds of cause of irrational or poorly evidenced belief. Some might involve morally innocent, but intellectually flawed, reasoning or perception. Other cases can clearly involve something worse. Some irrational beliefs arise from “epistemic incompetence” – incompetence in beliefformation – but others are the fruits of “epistemic vice”. If you aren’t very good at assessing evidence and argument, but you do your best and end up with irrational beliefs, you might still be innocent of epistemic vice. But if your irrational beliefs result from a moral flaw, an epistemic vice that biases your reasoning, then such beliefs may be immorally held.

The example of Holocaust denial Many moral or political beliefs are morally questionable, but Holocaust denial is a good example, since it is generally regarded as inseparable from repellent attitudes towards Jews. Holocaust denial has few followers in the West. But there are still some people 98

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who doubt, or claim to doubt, that the murder of about six million European Jews was methodically planned and brought about by the Nazi regime, on the orders of Hitler. The deniers claim this is a lie, perhaps part of a Zionist plot to justify the existence of a Jewish state, or part of the Jews’ famous “conspiracy” to take over the world. Of course, there are variants within the denial theme: for instance, that Hitler knew nothing about it; or that it was masterminded by the Soviet Union, not the Nazis; and so on. These multiplying variants can sidetrack us into futile disputes about what exactly is to count as denial. But although it is sometimes hard to be sure whether deniers believe all their own propaganda, they astutely present themselves as victims of a great conspiracy to suppress the truth they bravely tell. Sadly, this gains all the more credence from the fact that in Germany and Austria, public denial of the Holocaust is a crime. If you come across a Holocaust denier, it is a fair bet that he despises, fears or hates Jews. But – you might ask – is it impossible a priori that denial be the honest conclusion of earnest, scholarly examination of the historical evidence? While this is a formal possibility, it is empirically very unlikely, at least in the West. In parts of the world where the state vigorously promotes anti-Jewish sentiment and tightly controls the flow of information, we might think differently of Holocaust deniers. But where information is easily available, denial almost certainly comes from mendacity or wilful ignorance – the motivated avoidance of, or failure to see the force of, evidence that would contradict their beliefs – or a rationalization arising from hatred of the Jews. Holocaust denial is a relatively clear example of epistemic vice, but other cases are more difficult. For in other cases, it is unfair to ascribe dubious motivation to unpopular or even shocking beliefs. But the line between when it is fair and when it is unfair to do this can be hard to draw. Sometimes people are right to state beliefs we would prefer to be false, and sometimes we quite unfairly find these 99

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individuals objectionable because they hold such beliefs. People who state views that are unpopular are often “wilfully misheard”. Often we react, not to what someone says, but to what we think he must really be saying. For example, the writer Fay Weldon once ruffled feathers when she said that rape was not the worst thing that can happen to a woman. Literally, this is surely true, yet she was probably heard as saying that rape doesn’t matter all that much. In a range of cases we may, or may not, be right to suspect such hidden messages. Cases must be judged individually and this is often hard. At its worst, saying “you believe X, therefore you are bad” amounts to argument by character-assassination, that time-honoured, reliable standby of mendacious propaganda. Its genius is to appeal to our prejudices about the prejudices of others. It discredits an opinion, not by showing it is false, but by claiming that people who advocate it are bad. Returning, then, to Clifford and ethical evidentialism, Holocaust deniers fall foul of it, because rather than follow the evidence where it leads, they ignore or deny the importance of evidence that leads them where they do not want to go. It is worth adding that such distortion can also result from something good about you. Imagine a mother, confronted in court with the mounting evidence of her son’s nefarious crimes, who refuses to believe he is guilty. She is loyal to her son; she cannot believe such things said against him. We might regard this as showing a virtue; at least, wanting her son to be innocent, rather than just to seem so, is surely good. At the same time, she should still follow the evidence where it leads, even if we can partially excuse her difficulty in doing so. For ethical evidentialists, failing to see where it leads is still a fault, even if it is one that arises from something good. The point all this is leading to is this: truth matters. We should care about truth. It is not only irrational, but wrong, not to care about it. Various things can mitigate blame for not caring about it enough, but the point stands. But if truth matters, then so does 100

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reason. Truth is what reason seeks, of its nature. Sometimes we care about truth, but are not very good at observation or reasoning, so we end up missing it. At other times, we miss the truth, even when we think we seek it, because our reason is undermined by an underlying lack of concern for truth: in other words, dishonesty. This can show itself in deceiving not only others, but ourselves.

Commitment again There is a potentially huge conflict between the energetic certainty required by certain commitments and the love of truth. At the extreme, we know how angry, hate-filled “groupthink” can be mobilized by demagogues. We rightly fear the threatening contempt for truth that can be whipped up. You would no more try to argue at a Nuremberg rally than you would with an enraged pit bull terrier. Although the ranting Führer and his chanting followers may think they possess unchallengeable truth, their real contempt for truth is shown in their hatred, scorn for reason and love of brutal force. And at a much lower level, there has always been political rhetoric designed to mobilize popular sentiment against people who are too clever or are out-of-touch intellectuals. It is, of course, true that intellectuals sometimes make an appalling mess of things, and in ways peculiar to intellectuals. But this does not mean that being non-intellectual or even plain ignorant is a positive qualification for political power. Political commitments that despise the cautious and scrupulous search for truth, and which do not tolerate uncertainty, are commitments we can do without. To allow our commitments to be formed by demagogues or by contemptuously dogmatic systems is often humanly understandable, but it is to be resisted where possible. This is important, because some people’s central commitments are political, nationalistic or religious, and they gain a sense of identity and purpose from them. In some cases 101

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these are bad commitments. There are times when the ability to suppress the urge to commitment is to be admired.

Paralysis? But if we value careful thought, reason and reasonableness, if we try to be aware of the biases that distort our convictions, are we doomed to paralysis? Many people who gain power and influence, or who are successful in worldly terms, have an inflated idea of their abilities and judgement. Some possess a self-belief verging on the pathological. Yet this is largely what gets them going, what makes them active and committed to their causes. If such characters have political power, they might do dramatic things, such as launch wars, because they feel it is right, as if sincerity were a guarantee of wisdom. And when they are criticized for their outlandish behaviour, they do not wonder whether they might have been mistaken, but instead discover in themselves another virtue: that of steadfastness and the courage to endure unpopularity. They think their good character leads to good decisions, and then interpret the goodness of their decisions as further confirmation of their good character. The result is frantic certainty and hyperactivity, tossing and whirling in a delusional bubble. The folly of such people suggests that the capacity for doubt can be at least as valuable as the capacity for commitment. And a crucial part of the capacity for doubt is the capacity for self-doubt, not in the manner of an introspective ditherer, but more in the manner of Socrates, at least as represented by Plato. Socrates sought wisdom because he did not believe he possessed it. In this, he was wiser than the many he encountered who thought they did possess it, but during Socrates’ probings tied themselves up in their own contradictions. As extensively argued by Vernon (2007), Socratic agnosticism is frequently a good thing in religion and philosophy. 102

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But what of the danger of paralysis? If we doubt all the time, don’t we risk paralysis, and thus risk handing over power and influence to self-deluded self-believers, not only in politics but in a great many areas of life? There is, indeed, a difficult balance to be achieved here. But it is crucial to recognize the value of concern, even love, for truth. This need not be reified as Truth with a capital T – we need not be completely Platonic about this – although seeing it in this way may be practically helpful. It brings with it devotion to reason, as necessitated by concern for truth. As Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom point out in their book on the subject, truth has many enemies. They are found not only in our own psychology, but in intellectual fashions which denigrate the very concept (Benson & Stangroom 2006). There have been fashions that attack the concept of truth as a mask for power, that deride the concept of objectivity as oppressive. They seem designed to make defenders of objective truth look foolish, hopelessly naive, unenlightened, part of the old guard. What, though, might be the moral effect of ridiculing the idea of truth? Can people who sincerely denigrate truth really value truthfulness? If scepticism about truth is reached through philosophical enquiry into genuinely knotty problems, then that is one thing; if scepticism is merely an assumption adopted with an air of casual irony, because it relieves one of the tedium of looking for truth and the risk of not finding it, that is another. Honest doubt – when it really is honest – arises from a sense of having failed to reach something that nevertheless is real, and the discomfort of doubt adds yet more energy to the search. Past fashions such as postmodern relativism add energy to very little, except to attack alleged obstacles to a vaguely defined liberation. If this is right, it might seem remarkable that the love of truth does not feature explicitly in the canonical Greek list of cardinal moral virtues or in the Christian addition of the theological virtues. Plato and Aristotle wrote of courage, justice, temperance and 103

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practical wisdom; the Church added the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity. But this absence is more apparent than real. John’s Gospel has Jesus saying “You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free” [John 8:32] and we can also draw some support for it from the Greek virtues. For there is no justice without truth, and practical wisdom requires the pursuit of truth. Even courage and temperance are connected to it: courage is needed to pursue truth when it is far more comfortable not to, and a kind of temperance – of an intellectual sort, if that is not stretching things – is needed to guard against the temptation to rush to conclusions for the sheer pleasure of apparent discovery. Concern for truth is necessary for a general orientation to reality, and this in turn is essential for the moral life.

Dogmatism This concern, it should now be clear, is not for “The Truth” – as asserted by controversial creeds – but for truth, simpliciter. Insistence on “The Truth”, over and above reason, is the province of dogmatism. The word “dogma”, per se, need not have negative overtones. Dogmatism, however, is something different. You can believe dogmas without being dogmatic: without putting reason aside when it doesn’t take you where you want to go. Dogmatism proper is connected with an impatience with reason, and with intolerance. Unlike ordinary conviction, it tends to bring a loss of the capacity for self-correction. There is good reason to worry about the rise of dogmatism and fundamentalism in today’s world. Concern to safeguard “The Truth”, over and above the love of truth, has a chilling ability to silence our humanity. If your enemies are also God’s enemies, you can do whatever you like to them with a clear conscience. They are not only in error but are evil, and as such are not fit objects of 104

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patience, mercy, understanding or normal justice. If God himself is inexplicably silent, this is all the more reason for his zealous lieutenants to stand up for him. The suffering of God’s enemies does not count and is even a matter for rejoicing. The love of truth as I have presented it, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. The love of truth and its inseparable ally, reason, is by nature the steadfast opponent of cruelty, necessary lies or indifference to the suffering of those who disagree with you. Or as Benson and Stangroom put it: And one … good reason for thinking that truth matters, it seems to us, is all about preferences, in the largest and most humanly important sense. It’s about happiness, flourishing, enthusiasm, about what makes life worth living, why we prefer being awake to being asleep, why it’s a privilege to be human. It’s about why truth matters. Really matters. Not in a dull perfunctory dutiful sense, but in a real, lived felt sense – “on the pulses”, as Keats put it. (2006: 179) And Winston, in Orwell’s novel, implicitly gives the idea wonderfully succinct expression: “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. Once that is granted, everything else follows.” O’Brien perfectly understands Winston’s thought, and wants Winston to know he understands it, so the torture that follows is the ultimate, cynical destruction of his moral identity.

Reason, truth and living “as if” However, how should we live in the light of the love of truth? The question, admittedly, risks the appearance of pomposity or lack of connection with reality; it risks ignoring the fact that for the vast swathes of people who are busy, harassed, poor or ill, the problem 105

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of living “in the light of truth” seems something of a luxury. Many of our commitments seem thrust upon us rather than truly chosen, and it is important to acknowledge this. At the same time, there are areas of life where there is a real choice about commitments, whether practical ones to do (say) with our relationships, or more abstract ones to do with religion, politics or philosophy of life. We can evade the commitments that seem thrust upon us if we are sufficiently ruthless or selfish; it is just that many of us are too decent even to think of such a thing. We come, then, to the complex interplay between commitment and uncertainty: to the reconciling of the love of truth with the necessity to act, and indeed commit ourselves, in areas where we lack certainty. There are many areas of life where this necessity seems to impose itself, from trusting other people to embracing ethical stances. I shall give emphasis here to religion, not because it need be more central than other commitments but because it is an area where there has already been so much philosophical reflection. I have made a strong association between the love of truth and the importance of reason. But, of course, many thinkers have taken them to be, in effect, opposed. Protestant reformers such as Luther and Calvin are suspicious of reason; Luther even speaks of reason as a “harlot”. And to sceptics, religion can appear both irrational and immoral, precisely because it seems to insist that reason is less important than believing “truths” on faith. Stuart Sim, for example, expresses concern about the suppression of doubt urged by some religious advocates, and raises justified concerns about the hypersensitivity to offence that has come to the fore in recent years. Some adherents of various faiths want legal protection from “insults”, which often means being shielded from assertions that contradict their beliefs (Sim 2006). As should be clear, I share Sim’s concern. But does this show religious commitment – or commitment to controversial creeds or policies of any kind – to be suspect? 106

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We need not accept this. What is interesting is the possibility of combining ethical evidentialism and a moral concern for truth, with a life of commitment. Is there a tension here? Clearly there isn’t, if, as pronounced by the Catholic Church, there is no true conflict between faith and reason. But what if you doubt that position, and think there may be a conflict, but are not sure whether there really is? This agnosticism about the soundness of the grounds for religious commitment is different from the conviction that reason and commitment are in conflict, and that faith either requires the acceptance of spurious grounds or, even worse, sees reason as irrelevant or even inimical to faith. If that is your view, and you are an ethical evidentialist, then faith commitments seem ruled out, whether in religion, politics or anywhere else. However, there are many classical and contemporary thinkers who advocate both faith and reason, yet do not think reason is decisive in these matters. Is this a coherent position? It is fairly uncontroversial that there is more to faith than propositional belief but that is not the point here. A different position has been put forward by many writers, including William James more than a century ago (James 1903) and John Cottingham in our own time (Cottingham 2003). Their emphasis is on praxis, or participation in the religious life. There is something of Pascal’s Wager in this, yet it also departs significantly from it in that it rejects the idea that honest intellectual doubt is a punishable sin. Without claiming to echo their views completely, we might state the matter as follows. Suppose that, for you, religion is “psychologically live”, as James puts it. You’ve thought about it a lot, you’ve probably oscillated many times between near acceptance and near rejection, you’ve tried to participate, you may have prayed for faith, you’ve read scriptures and religious works, and you’ve investigated the histories and philosophies of faith. You have a sense that the issue will always keep cropping up for you, even after long periods of dormancy. What is it rational to do? Being sensitive to the 107

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importance of reason and truth, you are repelled by a belief system that seems to require blind faith, and don’t think you could ever manage that anyway. The true believers may admonish you that this is your pride speaking, which it may be; yet you can’t help thinking that you are simply right to doubt, and even that the dogmatic faithful may be hiding from their own latent doubts. In that situation, I suggest, it is not contrary to reason to try to participate to the extent that you can, and to see this as part of your enquiry. It is not a matter of trying to force a conclusion, as it seems to be in a crude interpretation of Pascal’s Wager. It is a matter of giving the truth – whatever it may be – the best possible chance of making itself known to you. But is this commitment? Is it faith, if it is not commitment? I have already allowed some slack between propositional certainty and living “as if ”, but for even living “as if ” to be a commitment, there must be the thought of “no turning back”. Perhaps, at times, I have been giving the impression that commitment is the same thing as certainty, when really it is not. You can be certain of something – say a scientific theory – yet willing to change your view in the unlikely event of compelling evidence against it turning up. You may regard this willingness as a sign of integrity. But can a sincere religious life really have this provisional air? Although it is not irrational to live “as if ” while admitting to doubts, is it not monumentally irrational and even dishonest to commit oneself to a way of life or faith, whatever evidence turns up? This problem particularly confronts those who conceive of living the religious life “as if ” as part of a devotional experiment: an attempt to find out whether it is based on truth by trying it out. If it really were an experiment, analogous to a scientific one, we would need to have some idea of what would show the experiment to yield no credible reason to believe. But then we can easily imagine the devout offering plausible saving explanations (no pun intended) of such apparent failure. Perhaps it is impious to think of 108

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devotion as an experiment; after all, we are forbidden to put God to the test. Moreover, any apparently disconfirming evidence can be given a possible explanation consonant with faith: perhaps we are being tested, or we are strengthened in ways not immediately apparent. And all this naturally leads to the unsettling thought that such an experiment is really an attempt at self-persuasion, regardless of what happens, rather than an attempt to discover the truth. What I am proposing as feasible is something that is neither an attempt at blind faith nor an experiment. It starts from a belief that evidential considerations already make the credal elements “live”, even if far from certain. It also assumes that it is unlikely that considerations will turn up that decisively refute these elements, although this cannot be completely ruled out. It is a resolution to persevere in spite of a likely lack of instant results. It is not commitment, if this means categorically ruling out the possibility that the religious life you pursue may one day appear entirely illusory. At the same time, no criterion of “evidential sufficiency” is specified in advance. You decide just to plod on and learn from the experience of others. Of course, this may seem wooden, the product of a rationalistic outlook ludicrously trying to accommodate religious leanings. It will be pointed out, by the faithful and sceptics alike, that this is not true to human psychology. And for the most part, this is probably correct. Religious praxis is often more about belonging than believing. Sometimes it is symbolic or expressive of membership: of a tribe, a community or way of life. Often its emphasis is on good works rather than nitpicking doctrinal commitments. Indeed, there are approaches to religious practice that emphasize belonging far more than believing. Different people, then, approach their fundamental beliefs in different ways, according to their abilities, inclinations and background. Such commitments, whether in ethics, politics, religion or a range of other things, do not require you to be intellectual 109

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or clever. But this does not undermine the central claim of this chapter: that truth matters; that we can fail to reach it through moral fault; and that commitment to truth – one of the most fundamental we should have, according to our abilities – is far from being abstract, cold or dogmatic, but rather is inseparable from many of the things that make for a good character, such as respect for others, understanding, good judgement and love.

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The life full of commitments is associated with enthusiasm, activity and single-mindedness. Committed people get things done. In work, their focus is on achievement, whether to satisfy personal ambition or because they are enthusiastic about the aims of the endeavour (or both). In love, they are not always looking for new thrills. In their philosophical stances, they are likely to have stable dispositions and not be easily led by new fads or instantly persuaded by apparently plausible arguments, unless they are ultra-rational, which is unlikely. Their commitments are underscored by a certain stability of character, in which their values and dispositions are fairly well rooted, yet allow enough flexibility to assess and perhaps reassess whether their present commitments continue to reflect their values. After all, when you have made a mistake, the rational thing is to stop making it, not to continue making it in order to honour a past commitment. At the same time, the capacity for commitment requires certain stable character traits such as courage, temperance and sometimes reflectivity, to ensure that you don’t simply give up on encountering drawbacks. If the capacity for commitment requires certain character traits, virtues in fact, what obstacles do these need to overcome? It is not difficult to think of vices such as intemperance, which entails a disposition to instant gratification, or cowardice, which deflects us from risky commitments. But there are other characteristics we may be more reluctant to regard as vices, or at least as not obviously so. Particularly pertinent is a cluster of loosely associated traits: 111

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despondency, boredom, sloth, apathy, ennui, depression and the interesting condition of acedia (or accidie), described as a deadly sin by theologians of late antiquity and the Middle Ages. What are these things, and how are they related? Does our modern view of depression, now in the province of medicine but previously known as melancholia or even acedia, mark a justified shift from the moral to the medical? Is the “sin” of acedia really the “illness” of depression? Is the resulting failure to take an interest in the world, to care about anything much, to be regarded as a moral failing?

Boredom People sometimes give up on things – lose their commitments – because they begin to find them boring. A child starts trumpet lessons with great alacrity and much irritating noise but gives the lessons up or fails to practise because she gets bored. The trumpet, painstakingly and expensively acquired, now rests abandoned and forlorn in a cupboard. Worse, pets once much fussed over are eventually neglected, because they cease to provide the novelty and amusement they once did. But what is boredom, and why do we find it uncomfortable? Is boredom ever an appropriate reaction to something? What is its relation to effort? Oddly, there is no easy answer to these questions. We think we know what boredom is but it is hard to define. Defining it as lack of interest won’t illuminate very much, because that only raises the question of what interest is. Think about the things that induce boredom. Notice that you can be bored both doing something, and doing nothing. Boredom involves mental discomfort, an unsatisfactory situation from which you desire release. If I am bored doing something, for example, reading and making detailed notes on a tedious book about which I need to appear knowledgeable, I would prefer not to be doing this; I want either to be doing something else, or perhaps just nothing 112

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at all. Because I am not interested in the task, I notice the effort it takes and find it irksome. I desire release from the effort. Yet if I am bored doing nothing, I may desire an escape from this feeling by doing something. Sometimes such boredom is what Svendsen (2005) calls “situational”. I might be bored waiting twelve hours for a delayed flight at an airport, and I anticipate my boredom being alleviated when I board the plane. No doubt I will then find something else to be bored with: probably the flight itself, after the brief, minor thrill of take-off. It is the enforced changelessness that seems to bore me. I seek not necessarily activity, but distraction. In these cases, the boredom of enforced inactivity or lack of change seeks its own destruction, by finding something of interest. However, the boredom may run deeper. It may be that although I desire release from the boredom, I can think of nothing that would release me. It is not only that there is nothing presently available that would rescue me; it is that I can conceive of nothing that would do so. Everything I think of fails to engage me or seem to make effort worthwhile. There is nothing I want to do, yet I am also dissatisfied doing nothing. Maybe I desire to desire something that, if I obtained it, would cure my malaise. Yet nothing available or even imaginable would do so. At the same time, there are occasions when I am perfectly content doing nothing. Idleness, for me at least, is not intrinsically boring. When I have finished a tedious task, doing nothing can come as a blissful relief. But, of course, the sense of relief wears off. When you have been banging your head against a wall it briefly feels wonderful to stop: far better than not banging your head against a wall, never having started. The same thing applies to finishing boring tasks; relief is sweet but brief, perhaps soon to be replaced by the boredom of having time on your hands. Boredom often has the property of “intentionality”: it is about something. It has an object or a content. I am bored with waiting for the flight to be announced; I am bored with a particular book or 113

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conversation. But as with anger, its object can be hard to pinpoint. You can be in an angry mood, without knowing what about. You can, it appears, be bored, without knowing what it is that bores you. This suggests that boredom is at root a mood, or even a state of being, which in some people may run deep. Even when it does have an object, the mood might precede its having the object. Nothing interests the constitutionally bored person, just as nothing placates the constitutionally angry person. In different ways, both are doomed to irremediable dissatisfaction. The previous chapters were devoted to our commitments in love, work and faith. Boredom attacks all of them. The nature of the boredom can differ from case to case. In all cases, though, it entails a desire to escape: to escape from a relationship by leaving your partner, having an affair or spending most of your time away from him or her; to escape from tedious work by not doing it. However, in the case of faith or philosophical conviction we are perhaps dealing with something different: a state of not caring, or acedia, and perhaps a lack of interest in the associated activities and practices. There are great thinkers and writers, such as Leo Tolstoy and Mill, who faced a personal crisis when they ceased to feel engaged by what they had so far vigorously pursued. Their malaise seems to be more “existential”: a dissatisfaction with the very meaning of their lives rather than their present state of mind. They seem to have suffered from acedia, and been bothered by it, not only no longer wanting to make the effort, but also thinking the effort pointless. We shall look a little later at cases like this.

Boredom, sloth and contentment We tend to associate sloth with boredom. We think of sloth as a disinclination to effort, which disposes you to inactivity and hence boredom. But this is not quite right. Inactive and slothful people 114

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are not necessarily bored. They choose inactivity over activity, often because they find activity boring, and hence find the effort all the more irksome. Inactivity is not irksome, and even if they are sometimes bored doing nothing, they are even more bored doing something that requires effort, or so they think, at least. Some lazy people are content rather than bored. The state of contentment, of not wanting what you haven’t got, can be enjoyed by anyone, regardless of their level of activity. People with a disposition to activity are not content unless they are occupied in some way, whereas inactive people can be content not doing much at all. Contrast slothful people with their polar opposites, the hyperactive. Some hyperactive people are very easily bored. And that is true of lazy people as well; lazy people are bored by work and therefore avoid it. The difference is in the things that bore them and bore them easily. People who are highly successful professionally, who work insanely long hours, often seem to have a low boredom threshold that shows itself in their intolerance of inactivity. They feel driven, perhaps to superlative achievements, and they may love risk. They have the so-called “Type A personality”. They cannot understand it when those who work under them don’t want to work equally hard. In reality, their subordinates are usually not lazy but have something called a “life”, for which their manic managers have no conceptual space. Lazy people, on the other hand, are easily bored by work and in addition, are disinclined to grit their teeth and endure the boredom. So many slothful people are content with relative inactivity. But to add a twist to the story, there is another type of person, who in some ways resembles both the slothful and the driven person, but in other important ways is different to both. Call such people thrill-seekers. These people have a low boredom threshold, both in activity and in inactivity. They seek constant mental or physical arousal. This might show itself, for instance, in addictive behaviour, springing from a disordered and insatiable desire for alcohol, drugs, 115

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gambling, sex or risk-taking. One difference between addictive and healthy desire for these things (or some of them) seems to be in the insatiability of these desires and the restless quest for an illusory perfect mood or sense of well-being, that has not been quite achieved by previous indulgence. While downing the first drink, the alcohol-addicted thrill-seeker is already lovingly contemplating the fifth; while pursuing a promising sexual possibility, the sex addict is already thinking about the next but two. Some thrill-seekers, we should admit, gain their thrills from work, especially if the work involves a lot of risk and aggressive competition. But probably the main hallmark of the thrill-seeker is a need for distraction. Pursuing distractions, especially addictive ones, is an antidote both to the boredom of doing very little and the boredom of effort. It can be a manifestation of sloth, yet the converse does not always hold. Some slothful people are not thrill-seekers at all; they are simply content with little activity or arousal. Others, however, do seek thrills; they spend their time in thrill-seeking pursuits both because the effort of work is uncomfortable and because they don’t want to face the void of inactivity. Their lives are a buzz of ersatz activity, as they hop from one gratification to another, usually without the discomfort of effort. Boredom, then, is an uncomfortable state that demands relief. Depending on the person, it can be relieved by changing from one activity to another, from an activity to inactivity or from inactivity to activity. It can also be alleviated by summoning distractions. However, another question lurks that is more pertinent to the theme of commitment. I suggested earlier that there could be a state of boredom that simply does not know how to alleviate itself; a profound malaise to which the sufferer can imagine no solution. The sufferer is drained of interest in anything, yet is not at all content. He cannot think of any occupation that would take this feeling away, and has lost the motivation to find one, even though he wishes he could. It is a giving-up, a feeling of not caring, 116

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a motivational deficit in finding a solution to this situation, together with an emotional dissatisfaction, a profound lack of contentment, with it.

Acedia This appears to capture, at least in part, the condition of acedia (accidie) discussed by theologians of late antiquity and the Middle Ages. The Catholic Encyclopedia regards it as the equivalent of sloth, and describes sloth in these terms: In general it means disinclination to labour or exertion … sadness in the face of some spiritual good which one has to achieve (Tristitia de bono spirituali). Father Rickaby aptly translates its Latin equivalent acedia (Gr. akedia) by saying that it means the don’t-care feeling. A man apprehends the practice of virtue to be beset with difficulties and chafes under the restraints imposed by the service of God. The narrow way stretches wearily before him and his soul grows sluggish and torpid at the thought of the painful life journey. The idea of right living inspires not joy but disgust, because of its laboriousness. … St. Thomas completes his definition of sloth by saying that it is torpor in the presence of spiritual good which is Divine good. In other words, a man is then formally distressed at the prospect of what he must do for God to bring about or keep intact his friendship with God. In this sense sloth is directly opposed to charity. It is then a mortal sin unless the act be lacking in entire advertence or full consent of the will. The trouble attached to maintenance of the inhabiting of God by charity arouses tedium in such a person. He violates, therefore, expressly the first and the greatest of the commandments: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy 117

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whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength” (Mark 12:30). (Delany 1912) Acedia is not ordinary tiredness, which naturally follows strenuous effort, but a persisting disposition not to care about the achievement of spiritual good. It is not rebellion, which is perhaps easier to understand, and it is not merely a matter of finding it difficult to pursue the good in question. It is a disposition to avoid the effort in the first place, because one is put off by its difficulty. Aquinas describes it as contrary to joyful charity, since it is failure to be enthused by the good charity requires, which results in failure to work for it. Svendsen (2005: 49ff.) briefly describes the history of the concept and its transformation over the centuries into modern naturalistic or psychological notions such as melancholy and boredom. In the fourth century, the desert monk Evagrius of Pontus describes the torpor induced by the “noonday demon”, in which he recalls with pleasure the life he previously led and regrets his new life devoted to God. For example, he is tormented by sexual images, something that most men, no doubt, would not regard as a torment. But Evagrius thought that if he could withstand acedia and the distracting images it brought he would achieve joy, and with joy he would lose the temptation to sin. This anticipates the passage quoted from the Catholic Encyclopedia, which says that sloth is a failure to experience joy in the difficult task of spiritual development. The idea that it is gravely sinful not be joyful about the quest for spiritual good may produce mixed reactions in those who lack this joyfulness. On the one hand, people in this state might take comfort in knowing that they should not be in it; they should be joyful, not joyless, and who would not prefer this? At the same time, their despondency may be increased by the thought that they are in a sinful state, which could indeed lead them to eternal torments far 118

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worse than the present ones. Their initial torment arises from fear that the achievement of the requisite spiritual goods is arduous and frustrating. The torment is then compounded by the thought that they will be punished eternally for being tormented thus, that is, tormented by the thought of the effort and commitment required. One might think the solution is simple: it is to make the necessary commitment, thoroughly internalize it, and hope to gain spiritual solace on earth and rewards in eternity. But they simply don’t want to do this; that is the problem. They know the solution – or think they do – but are unwilling to embrace it. Moreover, they probably know this as well; they are aware of the conflict. They are unwilling to make the effort because of its arduousness, yet they are also tormented by their unwillingness because they know the consequences. And all the while, they remain unwilling. As the Greeks might say, they are in a state of akrasia, usually translated as weakness of will, but I think better understood as knowing what has to be done, yet being unwilling to do it. Anyone who has known this state knows how it feeds on itself. Obviously it need not arise in the context of spiritual striving. For example, it could arise for anyone contemplating changing his life by giving up deep, habitual pleasure for his own good. Thus if you say to an addict who is unhappy with his condition, “Well, why don’t you just stop your addictive behaviour? Wouldn’t that solve a great many of your problems?”, he will probably agree. “Yes, of course it would. Yet I don’t want to stop. I like it too much. And the fact that I am unwilling to stop, because I like it too much, is also making me unhappy.” He is unhappy about his own unwillingness, yet the unwillingness remains. This is a classic and common kind of mental conflict, which many philosophers from Socrates onwards have dismissed as impossible, but whose reality is clear enough to most non-philosophical observers. Acedia and akrasia are different things. Yet akrasia appears very often to be embedded in acedia. The akratic person judges that, 119

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from a moral or prudential point of view, a particular action is the one he ought to perform, yet he deliberately doesn’t perform it. He may feel blocked by fear, unwillingness to forego pleasure or aversion to the exertion that would come from doing something else. In acedia as described by Evagrius, the sufferer is tempted away from spiritual good by his aversion to the austerity of the struggle, but this distresses him and he loses his will to pursue anything much. Despondency and lack of caring fill his whole being. In akrasia, however, there need not be much distress or any general aversion to effort or commitment. You can (contrary to some accounts) cheerfully do what you consider wrong, or suboptimal. Recognizing the good does not conceptually entail that the motivation to pursue it overrides all conflicting motivations. In fact, several different things could be happening, related in complex ways. In the original, monkish context, we can distinguish a lack of enthusiasm for the end to be achieved – that is, spiritual good, to be perfected in eternal life – from an aversion to the means required to attain it (not that the relation between the end and the means is an entirely external, causal one here, but that is another matter). Suppose the acedia concerns the end. In that case, we can imagine Evagrius simply losing interest in the devout, ascetic life, no longer wanting it or gaining any joy from it. This does not mean he no longer sees it as the life he ought to lead. It is just that thinking about it produces a sluggish, inward groan: “Is that it?” That sort of state no doubt sets him up for the distracting thoughts of dancing girls that assail him. Indeed, he might lose his intellectual conviction in his faith altogether and cease to see these goods as worth pursuing in any sense. But that is another situation. On the other hand, he might continue to be enthusiastic about the end – he might really wish to achieve what he conceives as being spiritual goods and the eternal life in which they are perfected – but groan at the efforts and privations necessary to attain them. He knows these are necessary, but they deter him. Here, he perceives a choice: to 120

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experience and acknowledge his sluggishness but doggedly make the necessary efforts; or to neglect the efforts, all the while admitting that they are necessary and ultimately worthwhile. In the first case, he displays what Aristotle calls enkrateia or continence: better than akrasia but not as good as temperance, which here would involve an internalized disposition to make the efforts and resist distractions, without feeling tempted otherwise. In the second case, he shows akrasia, which here shows itself in giving in to sloth. He knows he should make the efforts but cannot be bothered to do so. Disillusionment with the end itself, losing all interest in it or joyful anticipation of attaining it, appears to be the deepest type of acedia. This disillusionment may trouble him and is likely to show itself in what we now call depression. One of the symptoms of clinical depression is anhedonia: inability to take pleasure in anything. It is like the “don’t care” feeling alluded to in the extract above. And it has affinities with the deep boredom described earlier, where motivation is lacking even to retrieve oneself from the miserable state of demotivation. Clearly, it has many secular versions. It is felt most acutely when it comes from a sense of loss of vocation, whether in religion or not. As we saw in Chapter 2, it can occur with respect to work. It could also occur in love, when you lose interest not only in the particular love relationship you have, but in any such relationships at all. It can also occur when a hitherto energising and cherished belief ceases to appeal.

Mill and Tolstoy Something like this is described by Mill in his Autobiography (1971). Mill had been brought up by his father, James Mill, to pursue certain social and political goals, based on utilitarianism. His education was famously intense, and seemingly geared to this purpose. Mill had been an intellectually precocious boy, and his 121

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analytical abilities were cultivated to great extremes by those who taught him. However, he records that as a young man he suffered a mental crisis, which led him to question whether the realization of all the social changes he was working for would bring him joy or happiness. “And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, ‘No!’ … I seemed to have nothing left to live for” (1971: 81). Mill did not abandon his cherished beliefs but he became less confident in them. He came to see that there was more to life than analysis, and may have had an unconscious resentment of his overmastering father, for trying to manufacture him in his own mould (Ryan 1974: 31). During his crisis – we might now call it a nervous breakdown – he came to realize that his happiness was not guaranteed by the achievement of his ideals. A rather different case is that of Tolstoy. Tolstoy had health, strength, wealth, a loving family and literary fame, but he records how all of this came to seem meaningless: My life came to a standstill. I could still breathe, eat, drink, and sleep, and could not help breathing, eating, drinking, and sleeping; but there was no life, because there were no desires the gratification of which I might find reasonable. If I wished for anything, I knew in advance that, whether I gratified my desire or not, nothing would come of it. If a fairy had come and had offered to carry out my wish, I should not have known what to say. If in moments of intoxication I had, not wishes, but habits of former desires, I knew in sober moments that that was a deception, that there was nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to find out the truth, because I guessed what it consisted in. The truth was that life was meaningless. (1987: 11) Tolstoy recalls how these thoughts brought him to the brink of suicide. He was assailed by increasingly persistent but apparently 122

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unanswerable questions, summed up in “Why? Well, and then?” He ceased to see the ultimate point of all his efforts and achievements: his learning, the education of his children, his estate. He had everything he had ever hoped for, yet was tormented by these terrifying questions about meaning and purpose. In the end, and in spite of all his learning and his interest in philosophy and science, he came to think that simple, Christian peasants – who understood nothing of these things – had a finer grasp of the meaning of life than he had. There is a certain irony in the comparison of his predicament with that of Evagrius, when he was in the grip of acedia. Evagrius was tempted not to see the point of the monastic life and dreamed of worldly things, whereas Tolstoy had all the worldly advantages and plaudits but couldn’t see the point of them, and was drawn in the end to religious devotion, of an idiosyncratic kind. But in a way, his route to it was intellectual. He saw that the question “Why live, wish for anything, why do anything?” would lead either to an indefinite regress of answers, or to an arbitrary ultimate answer, and that neither possibility would satisfy him. However, he thought the answer might be had: [I]f the question were differently put, but only when into the discussion of the question should be introduced the question of the relation of the finite to the infinite … No matter how I may put the question, “How must I live?” the answer is, “According to God’s law”. “What real result will there be from my life?” – “Eternal torment or eternal bliss”. “What is the meaning which is not destroyed by death?” – “The union with infinite God, paradise”. (Ibid.: 18) To the secular mind, this might look like hand-waving, a gesture towards an undefined “infinite” that arises simply from dissatisfaction with what is here, now and finite. But whether this is true or not, his account points to a profound crisis in his values. Values 123

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motivate: you do something because you value that thing for itself or for what it brings; values are reason-giving. Tolstoy came to see no ultimate reason for living as he had. He clearly knew what it was like to carry on living in this way, out of habit, while doubting there was any point in it. He did all the things we need to do as biological creatures – eat, sleep and breathe – and did many things that were social, if not biological, imperatives. But perhaps he sensed something of what existentialists were to call the absurd. Here he was, pursuing all these things as if they were very important, while realizing they were not, or were arbitrary. In this, his “Confession” is somewhat different from that of Mill. Mill did not come to doubt the value of the social changes he strove for, so much as see that they would not bring him joy even if they were accomplished. He seems to have thought that they should bring him joy but then found that they didn’t. Tolstoy’s crisis was different. He had an intellectual revelation that there was no reason why his worldly activities should bring him joy. He wasn’t anti-rational, in the sense of putting commitment before reason, in existentialist fashion. Rather, he sought reasons and found none. If he eventually sought faith, this was not because he rejected reason from the start, but because he thought reason had let him down in the quest for life’s meaning. The conditions I have briefly tried to describe differ from one another, and I have not attempted exact definitions of them. It is difficult in any case to differentiate a definition of, say, acedia from an analysis of its real nature; this is a problem brought to the fore in Plato’s Meno, in which Socrates tries to get his interlocutors to stop providing examples of virtue and instead say what virtue essentially is, in itself. However, states such as boredom, despondency, sloth and disillusionment all militate against commitment. They attack our enthusiasm for the ends we seek, attack our willingness to pursue the means necessary, or both. They can arise from tantalizing glimpses (or illusions) of greener grass elsewhere, 124

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which I know from experience can be a potent cause of demotivation towards the task at hand. In a consumer culture, these sapping states arise from an abundance of prosperity and choice, and a lot of free time; as Svendsen notes, boredom is largely a cultural phenomenon of late modernity. The questions that face us here are mostly about understanding these states, including their possible moral dimensions, the rational endorsement of them and the ways they can be dealt with. But are these states always to be eschewed? Take boredom. It is sometimes said that only boring people find things boring. But there are surely times when finding something boring is a sign of maturity or intelligence. Many things really are boring, we should say, and not to be bored by them is to fail to see them as they are. This is not to say there is a real property of boringness in the fabric of reality. The point is that people with mature judgement and taste will be more engaged by some things – within literature or the arts, say – than others. Of course, boring things can be interesting for extraneous reasons; it is interesting to ask what makes a work boring, and why some people find things interesting that more cultivated or mature people find boring. The vaporous boringness of many reality television contestants, with their delusional conceit and self-absorbed stupidity, is quite fascinating in a way. And there is also room for reasonable individual variation. I am bored to death by sport, but have to admit that some people who are mature and intelligent find it absorbing. But often it is not a fault to find things boring, and that surely applies to activities as well. Your job might, in reality, be boring, but your virtue is shown not in finding it interesting but in enduring the boredom. Indeed, it can be not only misguided but tragic to find something absorbing when you should not. One of the terrible effects of dementia can be that its victims begin to enjoy childish things. People who once had considerable intellect, maturity and judgement have been reduced by dementia into enjoying entertainment for small children, such 125

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as the Teletubbies. Their lack of awareness of what they have lost only sharpens the tragedy. The saying that only boring people find things boring is a gross overgeneralization that derives from an important truth, which is that people with little capacity for being interested in anything are rarely interesting themselves. Such people are not even interested in boring things. Curiosity of the right kinds leads to trying out new things, and this can lead to increased understanding and new experience that others will probably find interesting. To be interested in a subject prompts activity: it leads to finding things out. If you are interested in something you always want to know more, just as if you are gripped by a book you want to turn the page. But there is a mean to be observed. We need to learn to discriminate, and thereby commit ourselves to things that are useful or enriching. There is room, indeed, for eccentric interests, such as researching the members of the Czechoslovak Politburo from 1974 to 1978, or the different types of asparagus. But the important thing is to have some curiosities and interests that can enrich our lives. When it comes to acedia, sloth, despondency and the like, some of the same things apply. Acedia may be different, in that it is described as a spiritual condition that brings torpor and sluggishness both with respect to the spiritual goods you are supposed to be seeking and the means to them. The fact that both ends and means are affected by it (or so it seems to me) is connected with the fact that the effort and discipline required to attain the end are themselves internally related to that end. The end is to worship God with perfect joy, the means is to practise this very thing, but in being put off by the effort needed, the monk’s desire for the end itself is drained away. It is a deadly sin, therefore, because it entails a rejection of God. However, although acedia is discussed in a pre-modern, spiritual tradition, it can have secular counterparts; Mill apparently suffered something like acedia when he realized that he would not be made happy by the achievement of the 126

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utilitarian-inspired reforms he hoped for. And as with boredom, we can always ask whether it cannot ever be justified. Some things are reasonably found boring, and some ends may really not be worth seeking. Some alleged spiritual or psychological benefits are really no such thing: they are peddled by cranks and fraudsters who dupe the gullible. A follower of such mumbo-jumbo may eventually become bored and put off by the endless effort and money required to maintain psychic health, much as I get tired of my computer demanding endless expensive updates to its anti-virus software.

Acedia, depression and zest for life What we need to do is contrast local acedia, which afflicts our enjoyment of particular things, with general acedia, which entails a complete lack of interest or enjoyment in anything and, usually, a consequent lack of effort. The polar opposite of general acedia is a general zest for life (Vanmechelen 2008). Zest for life entails wanting to find things absorbing and enjoyable, which usually yields the ability to do so and to lead a fulfilled life of enjoyment. It is not the life of thrill-seeking (although let’s not be priggish about this, there is nothing wrong with seeking some thrills), and it is the polar opposite of the rejection of life. Indeed, modern medicine sees the rejection of life as a symptom of the illness of clinical depression, which has significant affinities with acedia. Of course, we baulk at the thought of depression as a vice or sin, and regard the culmination of depression in suicide as the tragic outcome of an illness, which diminishes or even eliminates the responsibility of the sufferer. In calling depression an illness, we mean that it is a condition which greatly impairs sufferers’ ability to take pleasure in life; it is an external affliction that significantly diminishes their autonomy. Even the Catholic Church, which continues to condemn suicide as a mortal sin every bit as wicked as murdering another 127

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person, accepts that severe depression can greatly diminish the moral responsibility of people who commit, or attempt, suicide. If there is a genuine contrast, in this respect, between depression and acedia, it is, of course, very hard to draw. It leads to difficult questions about what it is to be able to enjoy life and to what extent we can be responsible for not enjoying it. So the signs of acedia, if not the condition itself, can be part of a depressive illness. But I shall assume that a general lack of interest or pleasure in life need not be a symptom of an illness, and that someone in this state can take steps to get out of it, if she so chooses. This sort of state is clearly a hindrance to commitment. That is not to say it makes commitment impossible, for it is very important to recognize that people commit themselves to enterprises and causes that they admit are unlikely to come to fruition, and engagement in which can be full of drudgery. People plough on with their duties with little evident reward. At the same time, enthusiasm for the desired ends is invigorating and the anticipation of joy drives on the effort. This enthusiasm is often part of a zest for life, a disposition to be engrossed in things or to want to improve them. But why have a zest for life? What is good about it? This is part of the question faced by Tolstoy. It came from an apparently rational assessment of the goods he actually possessed. He saw that we really can ask rational questions about the value of all we have, and could have, and find those things wanting. This reminds us that when people say that nothing enthuses them, we should not patronize them by parroting self-help wisdom on how to be happy, or telling them that the world is a good place. We should, rather, listen to any reasons they may have. Additionally, we should not talk as if positive emotions were simply subject to the will. In Chapter 3 we saw the difficulties of supposing belief was directly subject to the will; there is a similar problem with emotions and moods. You can’t just switch on a good feeling, and the wish to do so is sometimes 128

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morally questionable. You can enhance your mood for a short time by drinking or taking drugs, but you know this is no solution to anything. The same goes for some versions of the positive-thinking mentality. There are few things more annoying than to be told you should think positively, when it seems there is little to be positive about. People who think they will achieve certain things just by believing they can, often end up feeling cruelly let down. Chirpy self-belief is little or no compensation for obvious incompetence and cluelessness, as is clear from the British reality television programme The Apprentice, in which young would-be entrepreneurs are confronted with irrefutable evidence of their witlessness. I heard a story of a philosophy lecturer arguing with students who thought that with the right effort and attitude anyone can achieve anything they want. “Very well then. Levitate!” came his reply. In fact, in psychology there is the theory of depressive realism, which proposes that people who are mildly depressed actually have more realistic perceptions than most non-depressed people, and are less prone to illusions of control or superiority. Sometimes we should accept that our dreams are unrealistic and not waste energy pursuing them. At the same time, this is not to advocate general despondency, acedia or lack of motivation. The zest for life that makes commitment rewarding is not an indiscriminate love of everything. Rather, it is the capacity for discriminating enthusiasm, happiness and pleasure, and a desire for that capacity. A generalized sense of the pointlessness of everything and of the arbitrariness of every possible answer to the question “Why care about this?” has already set itself up to be irrefutable. But it is not an attitude that is rationally forced on us. Moreover, the wish that everything should be ultimately justifiable is mirrored, on a practical level, by perfectionism: the misguided belief that there is no point doing anything unless the result is perfect (whatever that means). There are people who get 129

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little done, not because they are lazy but because they are perfectionists. The perfectionist writer, for instance, tinkers endlessly and laboriously with the to-be-famous manuscript, but never submits it. People do their paid work half-heartedly, because they are not doing their ideal job. If an ideal of perfection is a precondition for commitment to something, then the result may well be commitment to nothing much. So generalized acedia, boredom and despondency are the enemies of commitment. Local or specific instances of these things need not be, for what we need is a discriminating willingness to seize joy and take risks. I have argued already that we should seek and value truth. It seems that a sense of well-being that is based in a fundamental disregard for truth is not to be valued. Sometimes it is reasonable to be pessimistic about reaching truth, especially with regard to great, existential questions of the kind that tormented Tolstoy and which led him to the consolations of faith. Such questions, though, are real, yet they provide no rational ground for despair or lack of effort. Rather than be terrified by the thought of ultimate meaninglessness – if that is what we end up with – we can no less reasonably be led to curiosity and awe in the face of what is incomprehensible. If there is no purpose behind the fact that we find ourselves in this world, as beings with an inexplicable ability to understand a few things about it, we can glory in how interesting this is: how privileged we are to be here at all. With this sense of wonder and curiosity, we can confidently commit ourselves to any number of things, guided by reason and hope.

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There is a story, probably apocryphal, of an anecdote told by a taxidriver: “I had that Bertrand Russell in the back of my cab once. So I said to him, All right Lord Russell – what’s life all about then? And you know what? He couldn’t tell me!” How should philosophers approach the problem of the meaning of life without embarrassment? Although it is the sort of question that often gets people interested in philosophy, some professional philosophers groan inwardly when the subject is raised. At one time it was common to dismiss the question as being itself meaningless, and the asking of it as showing a naive misconception of what philosophy is about. If you must ask such questions, philosophers would say, don’t ask us – try another shop. All philosophers can do, if they think it worth the while, is disentangle the confusions in the question. This sort of reaction especially characterized the heyday of logical positivism and linguistic analysis, around the middle of the twentieth century. Neither reflection on logical truths, nor the analysis of ordinary language, nor any empirical test, could answer questions of this kind. These philosophical theories are not much considered nowadays, except as part of the recent history of philosophy. But the general mindset was part of an empiricist way of thinking that is alive and well. It has significant strengths, in that it stresses the importance of clarity and precision, and discourages grand-sounding verbiage, the sort of thing the Enlightenment thinker David Hume considered to be “sophistry and illusion”. Yet questions about the meaning of life 131

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will not simply go away. Is this because of a tendency of humans to ask questions whose exact meanings they cannot understand? This would be unduly dismissive. We can quite properly attach great importance to questions like this, while also learning from empiricism the importance of approaching them as clearly as possible, and especially of disambiguating them. For the problem of life’s meaning is really a cluster of different concerns, often difficult to articulate coherently, yet pointing to something potentially very important about which something should be said, even if what is said is ultimately deflationary. The relevance to commitment is that, for many of us, our commitments seem to contribute significantly to the meaning of our lives. People say that without, for example, their children, partners, work, passionate interests, religion and so on, their lives would largely lack meaning. Perhaps they mean that these are the things that make it worthwhile to get up in the morning, or that they feel happy, fulfilled and full of life with these commitments. At the same time, the relation between meaning and commitment could be read differently; you could cynically observe that the most important reason for having such commitments is that they stop you wasting time on questions about the meaning of life. Ruminating on these questions is a bad sign of having time on your hands. There is no ultimate meaning to your life, but fortunately your commitments absorb you so much that you don’t see this and therefore don’t worry about it. But what is the worry about meaning that our everyday commitments help us to avoid? To answer this, it helps to let the imagination roam free, without too much regard for philosophical methodology. The rigorous, analytical drive of philosophy functions best when chewing over the products of the imagination, rather than stifling its roaming urge in the first place. So what might people really be driving at when they wonder about the meaning of life? 132

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There are several different thoughts. Many start by assuming that there is a special place in the cosmos for human beings and any other free and rational beings there may be. The meaning of a human life reflects the fact that the individual in question is a member of this special class of beings. Some people deride this idea and see it as a piece of wishful thinking, a mere conceit: we inhabit a tiny and insignificant part of a cosmos that is quite unimaginably vast in space and time, and entirely blind to us. This response, in my view, is largely rhetorical although it purports to be hard-headed. But the thought I am trying to drive at, whether it is based in truth or not, is that we are somehow understood, known about and intended to be here, that our aspirations to meaning have an objective correlate. Our understanding of the universe is somehow reciprocated. We live in a rationally ordered universe, and our own rationality is capable of grasping at least small parts of it; there is a genuine and objective harmony between our reflections on reality and the way things really are. This is the comfort sought by those who, while well aware of naturalistic or psychological explanations of the quest for meaning, feel such explanations wrongly deflate us. On this view, rational beings have objectively valid purposes within this intelligible universe. This is where commitment comes in. Commitment naturally suggests purpose, and one question to be explored is whether the meaning of an individual’s life depends on his commitment to certain purposes that we all should have. Will just any commitments do as providers of meaning, or do our commitments need to be of the right kind, in some way? Does the mere fact of being committed to a particular purpose yield meaning or value, or must the commitment be of a certain kind – for example, must it be based on truth, or at least seriousness? The three main substantive themes of this essay – love, work and religion – are areas where questions of commitment especially arise, and are also areas where questions of meaning are especially 133

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apt. This is no coincidence. They are central sources of meaning and therefore areas where we face the question: should I commit myself to this, or not? Does love supply my life with meaning or purpose? Is my work meaningful? They are also areas of life that seem particularly vulnerable to the following three problems: failure, falsehood and futility.

Failure, falsehood and futility We sometimes say, regretfully, that a person’s life’s work came to nothing; that all the efforts that gave her a subjective sense of meaning were in vain. Yet we might also say that the effort was noble and that the sense of meaning that it conferred was not invalidated by failure; that there was nobility in the effort and the seriousness it gave her life. Although nobody wants “At Least She Tried” inscribed on their gravestones, we can still respect such a life, especially if the failure was due to factors entirely outside their control. We can even feel this is if we did not approve of those efforts and thought that the person’s values were misguided. Wolfgang Becker’s tragicomic film Goodbye Lenin! (2003) puts such intuitions to the test. Its lead character is Christiane, who has been a teacher in communist East Germany. She is completely committed to the Communist Party, so much so that when her son protests against the regime and gets into trouble, she suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma. But the year is 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. Her coma begins shortly before this event and she wakes up eight months afterwards. Because of her fragile condition, her son decides to keep from her the truth about the collapse of communism. So he cleverly recreates, so to speak, the former communist state in her flat. At one point he pulls off an elaborate pretence that television footage of East Berliners escaping to West Berlin is, in reality, footage of West Berliners seeking refuge in the 134

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socialist paradise of the East. Out of kind-heartedness, Christiane suggests that they might offer accommodation to these refugees from capitalism. For our purposes, the important question this raises concerns Christiane’s commitment to communism and its relation to the meaning of her life. Does her commitment alone give her life meaning, or do we have to add that her commitment achieved its goals, that all she worked for turned out as she would have wanted? Here, we can set aside the question of whether her commitment was admirable. Undoubtedly East Germany – the German Democratic Republic – was extremely repressive. Her commitment was to something largely evil, but this does not entail that she was a evil person; perhaps, like Boxer, the loyal horse in Orwell’s Animal Farm, she was not fully aware of the real nature of what she supported. However, the question is really about failure. Those events of November 1989 seemed to spell the final exposure and collapse of a set of ideals. Had Christiane known what really happened, she might have had another heart attack. She would not have been able to comfort herself with the thought that at least she had tried to make it work, by doing her bit. She would have known that it’s not enough to try; you must also succeed. This sounds harsh, but in one important way it is true. We baulk at it, because the comforting sentence “At least she tried” emphasizes that her dedication can be morally admirable. It echoes Kant’s thought that the only thing that is good without qualification is the good will, which “shines like a jewel”, even if, because of external circumstances, its efforts come to nothing (Kant 1964: ch. I, §394). However, if you really are committed to achieving something, it follows that you are not satisfied with failure, however noble or morally faultless. When you try to do something, you try to succeed: this, of course, is a tautology. You can try without succeeding, and that is exactly why it is not enough to try. Another example, provided by Cottingham, makes the point even more clearly: 135

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Consider David, a millionaire architect, who makes it his life’s work to build a hospital in an area where medical facilities are sorely needed. He struggles against great odds to get the project completed, single-mindedly pursuing this goal to the point of bankrupting himself, not to mention the neglect of many other rewarding activities that might have engaged his attention. But on the day the hospital is due to be opened, a meteorite hurtles to earth and vaporises the hospital’s oil storage tanks; the whole building complex is engulfed in a fireball and razed to the ground, with terrible loss of life. David now bitterly declares that his entire effort was pointless – a tragic and futile waste of effort and resources. People may try to console him: “We admire what you tried to do”, “To travel hopefully is better than to arrive”, and so on. But the hard truth is that our assessment of the value of a project – and this includes the sincere pursuit of morally worthy goods – is at least partly success-oriented: we require it is not just to be undertaken in the right spirit, but to achieve something. (2003: 66–7) David’s life has some kind of meaning, in that it is devoted to a morally admirable thing, but he might regret that the disaster took away its meaning, in another, more objective sense. “My life turned out to be largely a waste of time”, he may lament. The more central the project was to his life, the more he might think his life turned out to have been a waste of time. So much for failure then, but what about falsehood? There is a parallel worth exploring between the two. So to return, yet again, to religion, imagine a pious individual, a nun perhaps, who says that the meaning of her life is provided by her faith. She is toughminded enough to say not that her belief in her religion provides her life with meaning, but that its truth provides it with meaning, in an objective sense. In other words, in a way rather similar to the 136

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importance of success as opposed to mere effort, she says that it is not enough to believe something: your beliefs must also be true. She is thus not like someone who believes his life’s meaning is provided by some arbitrary commitment – to a sports club, a theatre or some activity enthusiastically pursued – but who acknowledges that such meaning could just as well have been provided by something else. The nun believes that her sense of her life as meaningful would be deluded and worthless should her religion’s fundamental claims and promises be false. A meaningful life must be oriented towards truth, a fact that reminds us that human beings are the only known animals able to pursue truth: to make truth their goal. Imagine her now arguing with a secular humanist, who agrees that her life is meaningful, but disagrees about why it is so. The humanist – assuming he is not the sort who says that life is meaningless and we had better get used to it – says that it is the pursuit of truth rather than its attainment that makes life meaningful, or offers other humanist reasons for affirming life’s meaning or value. He tells the nun that her life is indeed meaningful, since she is at least earnestly pursuing truth. But she retorts that it is more honest for an unbeliever to admit that life is meaningless, than to invent flimsy reasons for affirming its meaning. Of course, she also admits that were she to lose her faith, she might come to accept some nonreligious account of life’s meaning. But that has not happened, and she thinks that were this to happen, she would be deluded. There is another threat to meaning aside from failure and falsehood, and this is what we might call futility or, perhaps better, pointlessness. The Greek myth of Sisyphus is an archetypal model for this, for as Richard Taylor suggests, it may be understood as symbolic of many of our earthly travails (Taylor 1987). Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to roll a stone up a hill, only for the stone to crash down to the bottom of the hill just before it reached the top, at which point he would have to start all over again, in a cycle that was never going to end. The story doesn’t explain why 137

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Sisyphus doesn’t wise up to his predicament and stop doing the absurd task. Maybe he continues with it to avoid boredom. But no matter: the story can be seen as showing the predicament we are all in without knowing it – we commit ourselves wholeheartedly to efforts that will eventually come to nothing, or be indefinitely repeated by future generations. As I write this in 2010, who knows who occupied my present location in 1910? Or 1810? Doubtless they were busy with things they thought important, but for the most part we have no idea who they were or what they did. People obviously had commitments then as they do now. And no doubt some of these commitments gave them a subjective sense of meaning. No doubt some succeeded in their aims, unlike the unfortunate philanthropist whose hospital is destroyed. They no longer have these commitments, since they are dead. Their commitments may or may not have come to fruition, but in a way it doesn’t matter now. But are these forgotten activities analogous to the toil of Sisyphus? Although Taylor initially suggests that they are, this is far from clear. Sisyphus’ toil will go on forever, and achieves nothing, whereas the commitments and toil of forgotten generations came to an end, and sometimes did achieve something. It doesn’t matter that the achievements didn’t last: they were still achievements. Why should their commitments be meaningful only if their fruits last a very long time, or even forever? And exactly how would the eternal endurance of an achievement add to their meaning? The Sisyphus case illustrates very well how the endless prolongation of a pointless activity only adds to its pointlessness, and increases our sense of its pointlessness. For there to exist an activity or achievement that would be meaningful if endlessly prolonged, it would have to be meaningful quite independently of its endurance. It is hard to see why endurance, endless or otherwise, should be necessary for meaning. The contrary thought evokes a mood rather than a coherent proposition. “What’s it all for? Why do I have these commitments?” is a question that appears set up for 138

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being unanswerable, if the criteria for meaningfulness are impossibly stringent. The Sisyphus myth suggests that some activities, or even commitments, lack meaning whether they are short-term, longterm or everlasting. But whether such a judgement is justified partly depends on the context in which these commitments exist. A “soccer sceptic” might ask what the point is of trying to get a ball into a net, and why so many people get worked up about it. We answer this question if we understand the meaning of games, competition and the display of skill. We could – at a stretch – confer meaning on Sisyphus’ task, in a similar way. If we suppose he were competing with other condemned men who were also pushing stones up the hill, or that it were an endurance test he had set himself, we could conceivably provide a context that confers some significance on the seemingly meaningless activity. However, in the myth, Sisyphus’ task is paradigmatically pointless. He has a purpose: to get the stone to the top of the hill, presumably so that it stays there. But it never quite reaches the top, so his efforts, although having a purpose, are always in vain. Even if the stone did remain there, what would be the value of its remaining there? But Taylor goes on to modify the story, imagining that the gods: waxed perversely merciful by implanting in him a strange and irrational impulse; namely, a compulsive impulse to roll stones … He has but one obsession, which is to roll stones, and it is an obsession that is only for the moment appeased by his rolling them – he no sooner gets a stone rolled to the top of the hill than he is restless to roll up another. (Ibid.: 42) This, for Taylor, would not take away the pointlessness of his activity. The relief of Sisyphus’ suffering would be no small mercy, but the absurdity of his situation would remain. 139

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So we seem to have at least three distinctive threats to the idea that merely having commitments, per se, can confer meaning on our lives. But can we leave the matter there? Could there be some value in a commitment that either fails to achieve its aims (as with the philanthropist who builds the doomed hospital), or which is rooted in falsehood, or is even pointless? More precisely, is there any way in which such a commitment could confer some sort of meaning on a life?

Autonomy and authenticity The modern Western mind holds autonomy to be central to a properly human life and, by extension, to a life of meaning. The Kantian tradition gives it such centrality that it finds itself embodied in Kant’s famous categorical imperative, as we saw above, which comes down to a central idea: “Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, never as a means only but always at the same time as an end” (Kant 1964: ch. II, §421). The evil of treating a person as a mere means is that it undermines his autonomy. The only actions with any distinctively moral worth are those performed from the motive of duty, and the ability to adopt this motive is a function of pure practical reasoning, the product of a “noumenal” will that is to be conceived as autonomous and outside the “phenomenal” world of cause and effect. We do not need to explore Kant’s ingenious theory to see the relevance of autonomy to the meaning and value of our commitments. Nor do we need to confine the concept to the sphere of morality. Autonomy is a buzzword in much practical philosophy. In medical ethics, for example, autonomy is regarded by some leaders in the field as one of the four principles that form its framework, the other three being non-maleficence, beneficence and justice (Gillon 1985: 60–66). We attach value to allowing people to choose 140

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and follow their own conceptions of the good life, provided this is compatible with allowing the same to others. When it comes to my fundamental commitments, it is important that they be truly mine, and decided on by me; the word “autonomy” is derived from the Greek meaning “self-rule”. To live a life whose every juncture is dictated by others is not to live a properly human life. Even if I internalize the dictates of others and consider them my own, I may still be a victim of false consciousness, with commitments adopted without any proper sense of there being alternatives. The flipside of this coin is that an autonomous decision may be bad or foolish (although not according to Kant, but that is another matter). But there is, in one sense, more value in a self-chosen bad or foolish life than in a good life almost entirely chosen for you by other people. But it is unrealistic to think that autonomous commitments can ever be adopted in a complete void. We do not choose our time and place of birth, or the beliefs and values that we absorb from around us. We cannot ignore the vast influence of all kinds of pressures and conditioning. In Chapter 3 I discussed the implications of this. I suggested that our knowledge of the chanciness of many of our fundamental commitments should have a real effect on our certainty about them, but also that since we can be aware of this problem, we can to some extent transcend it. Autonomy and reasonable commitment are not completely undermined by the difficulty. To be sure, contemporary critics of liberal political philosophy, and even of the Enlightenment itself, stress the fictitious nature of the autonomous deliberator, the single-handed author of his values, deciding in a void. But this is a straw man. Few people think we decide in a void. But the fact that we do not does not destroy the ideal of autonomy altogether. We could not possibly decide our commitments in a complete void, but we know enough of alternatives still to be able to make fundamental decisions about them. And the fact that there are clearly internal constraints on our 141

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decisions – to do with innate temperament and inclination – as well as external ones, does not do away with autonomy either. My innate constitution may incline me to commit myself in one way rather than another, but it is still precisely my constitution that so propels me, and not an alien force. However, there is a difference between commitments that express our autonomy and those that negate it. You can be committed to a way of life, because the costs of trying to escape it are too great, as might be the case under secular totalitarianism or theocracy. Your life does not express your true self; in fact you never get to know your true self, because you are never given the chance. The meaning of your life – if it can be called that – is externally determined, and to that extent your life is largely wasted, almost as if it were literally spent in prison. The line between those commitments that are autonomous and those that negate autonomy is obviously hard to draw, given the fact that our most important commitments are contingent on living where and when we do. It is also important to distinguish autonomous commitments from self-interested ones. Committing yourself to the interests of others is not incompatible with your autonomy. The world is full of good, unsung people who devote enormous amounts of time and energy looking after the interests of others. Think of full-time, unpaid carers, who give up normal enjoyments and careers in order to look after people in need. Think of parents who exhaust themselves looking after disabled children. Consider the many people – often women in late middle age – who are devoted to the care of elderly, infirm parents. Probably they would not choose such a life if they felt they could avoid it. And it is not literally impossible for them to avoid it. But they feel it is morally impossible to dodge such duties; a selfish course would be morally inconceivable for them. Do admirable commitments like these negate autonomy? We might feel ambivalent about this question, but there is a deep sense in which they do not. They have adopted a 142

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moral course, when, at least in some cases, they might have chosen to evade it. They have chosen commitments that contribute to a meaningful and even admirable life, precisely because they are not focused on self-expression or self-fulfilment. However, we still face the challenge posed by commitments that fail, are rooted in falsehood, or are pointless in a Sisyphean sense. Can autonomy rescue them from the danger of overall meaninglessness? To reach a proper answer to this, we shall have to disambiguate the idea of “meaning” still further, and I shall attempt this at the end. What we can say though – and this is quite depressing – is that although the autonomy of our commitments may well be necessary for a meaningful life, we have seen no reason to think it is sufficient. That the commitments of Christiane in Goodbye Lenin! or of Cottingham’s philanthropic architect were autonomous does not entirely redeem them from the charge that they do not ultimately make their lives meaningful. If they are to be redeemed, we should look elsewhere.

Authenticity and “radical freedom” Autonomy may profitably be understood as “rational freedom”. You make decisions based on what you take to be objectively valid reasons. For Kant, the moral law is objectively binding on all rational beings – it cannot just be made up at random – yet it is also self-legislated. Our freedom consists precisely in our ability to be moved by rationally binding practical reasons, which we work out for ourselves. My discussion is not only about moral commitments, but any commitments at all. Calling them autonomous amounts to saying that they belong to a self-ruling person, who bases them on his own reasons, in some suitably flexible sense. But suppose we replace the idea of rational freedom with that of radical freedom? Can we find the root of a meaningful life here? 143

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The idea is central to existentialism, whose most prominent exponent is Jean-Paul Sartre. For Sartre, “existence precedes essence”. There is no objective human nature that determines the way we ought to live; no “good for Man” or telos as conceived by either Aristotle or the Church. Moral theories such as those of Kant and Mill tried to take us from the subjective to the objective, in determining a supreme principle of morality. But Sartre thinks we are stuck with consciousness or subjectivity, and, indeed, that our freedom is incompatible with objective norms. To see this is to realize we are faced with unavoidable choices, which cannot be made for us by any appeal to human nature, divine revelation or any kind of objective code of living. If we try to duck this awesome reality, we are guilty of “bad faith”. Sartre produces examples of bad faith, perhaps the most famous one being that of the waiter. This man plays the role of waiter to perfection: he is formal, unfailingly attentive to customers and never puts a foot wrong. But he lives in bad faith, according to Sartre, because he acts as if his given essence were to be a waiter. He thinks his role defines him, and it does not occur to him that he had a choice in the matter. Had he made a conscious decision to be a waiter, to commit himself to all the things required of waiters while being aware that this decision was truly his, that would be a different matter. Sartre thinks that ethical consciousness is consciousness of its own freedom, and that good faith requires that we face our own freedom (Kerner 1990: 168ff.). This will lead to anguish and despair, when we realize the enormity of the fact that we exist as rational beings, able to appreciate a condition that does not itself reciprocate our appreciation, but is blind. We can hide from this terrible truth by means of various kinds of bad faith, but if we reflect properly we cannot escape it. The aim of life, therefore, is to live in good faith, and this entails taking on a terrible burden of responsibility. We can choose to be committed – engagé – but our commitments 144

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cannot be given to us by God, reason or nature, but must be formed in a recognized condition of radical freedom. I cannot do justice to the richness of Sartre’s thought in a short space. But one question stands out. Exactly why should our freedom be incompatible with the existence of objective moral norms? After all, it is not as if such norms literally compel. I can see the good, or the right, and yet not be interested in pursuing them. Or perhaps more commonly, I can see the force of such norms yet also perceive a conflict between them and other things I want to pursue, and on occasion I might freely choose to pursue these other things, while still feeling the force of the moral norms. There may, in fact, be no such norms, no objective values, but it is difficult to argue that their absence would give me a freedom I would otherwise lack. More credible, I think, is either a Kantian or a Humean account of the relation between freedom and practical reason. For Kant, as we saw, free action is possible only when we adopt morality as a motive and do our duty for duty’s sake. Moral requirements are categorical imperatives, which give me an overriding reason to act a certain way independent of any desires or aims I happen to have. And if this is overstretched, we can derive something more modest from it; we can see the difference between those creatures that can act on the promptings of principle or a grasp of truth, and those that cannot. It seems to me that human beings are the only known creatures able either to act on principle, or pursue truth: in other words, to act for reasons rather than merely from causes. If we do not favour a Kantian account of moral motivation, there is the more straightforward one of Hume, who is a “compatibilist”: one who thinks that freedom, and our moral attitudes, are compatible with causal determinism. In his Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Hume claims that “By liberty, then, we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will; that is, if we choose to remain at rest, we may; if 145

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we choose to move, we also may” (Hume 1975: 95). We are free if we act as we choose and, moreover, free if our choices make a real difference to how we act, regardless of the causal history of those choices. And these choices include moral choices, which are not to be explained in any mysterious noumenal, non-empirical way but in terms of the operation of natural dispositions such as sympathy. Some philosophers, including Kant, think Hume’s account is suspiciously over-simple: that it does not give us a strong enough idea of freedom. But while the issue is deep and difficult, the Humean approach does challenge us to say what else could be required. Would a non-causal account of free action do the trick? If so, exactly how? For Humeans, my choices express my character, and if my character has causal determinants, it is still my character that they express, and not some alien imposition, as might be the case if I acted strangely owing to a psychotic illness. It is hard to see what more can reasonably be asked for. Much more can be said here. But what Sartre has correctly identified is our uniquely human sense of being free in a way in which no other animal or material object can be. In this, he agrees with Kant. We see ourselves as unavoidably faced with choices. We have, or can have, a sense of being able to invent ourselves, to conform or not to conform to expectations. A bird or a fish cannot but act in a birdlike or fishlike way; that is its given nature. But consciousness, for humans, gives us a completely different perspective. For Sartre this seems to imply that there is no such thing as a given human nature. But I suggest that this fails to show either that there are no objective moral norms which we can choose to follow or reject, or that there is no determining human essence. The idea of living in good faith, taking on board our awesome freedom, can be illuminated by considering the idea of authenticity, even if this is not quite what Sartre had in mind. There are both philosophical and colloquial interpretations of this idea. I shall look at the term quite loosely, because something in the idea could help 146

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us understand how the authenticity of our commitments could be the key to understanding how commitment might confer meaning on our lives. The concept of authenticity has associations with romanticism, with the Byronic drive towards personal uniqueness and even greatness, in defiance of convention. We saw earlier how Gauguin left his family to pursue his vocation as an artist, and how we might either condemn this as selfish, or praise it as romantic and indicative of authenticity. Pursuing your true vocation could be seen as a paradigm of authentic living. In Chapter 2 we looked at the idea of vocation and of being true to oneself. Could it be in the idea of authenticity that we find a clue to meaningful commitment? It is possible to contrast “authentic” commitment with “inherited” commitment or unreflective habit. One may think of an authentic commitment as one that expresses your true self. Advocates of authenticity rebel against the idea that the point of an individual life is just to be a very small part of a much bigger scheme. As we saw in the Introduction, different societies have greatly differing philosophical attitudes towards the importance of the individual. We can contrast the question “What is the purpose of my life?” with the question “What is the purpose of humanity, or life in general?” Some philosophical outlooks would see the second question as far more important. Individual commitments are seen as more given than chosen: you must fulfil them, not to make your life meaningful but for the sake of the larger scheme or whole. Or put slightly differently, the meaning of your life just is to make a tiny contribution to the meaning or destiny of the whole. Commitment to this whole is essential, but not because it expresses your “true self ”. Consider this example. My grandmother used to recall how when she got married, in 1920, the officiating minister told her that from that day onward, “your life passes into his”: that is, my grandfather’s. Although she was never a feminist, she resented this lofty 147

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clerical exhortation. If we construe authenticity not only as selfexpression but also as self-realization, then we might judge that a life that passes into that of another life is inauthentic. As it happens, my grandmother was being told her life would be subsumed by that of her husband, and to cap it all her husband was a rising politician. It was a role she largely accepted, in spite of her annoyance at being told so explicitly to accept it. Of course, there is an important difference between a life committed to another person and one subsumed by that person. The minister’s words seem to suggest the latter. To the extent that authenticity is about self-expression, and that authentic commitments are those that express your “true self ”, such a life might be inauthentic. But does this matter? What is so good about being authentic, in this way?

Authenticity as self-expression Whether or not it is good to express (or realize) your “true self ” depends on what kind of “self ” is being expressed. If you are kind, sensitive, artistically gifted, funny, courageous and so on, then the world will be a better place for your expressing yourself in it. But the value of self-expression depends on the characteristics of the self that are expressed, and not on the mere fact that it is the self that is expressed. If you are someone dreadful – a shallow, narcissistic specimen of humanity, say – then you should be strongly discouraged from expressing yourself until you acquire something better to express. Unfortunately, there are aspects of modern (or postmodern) culture that place such a premium on authenticity, conceived as self-expression, that a temptation is created towards an unfounded sense of entitlement. People who expect others to provide for them or generally indulge them, because they cannot compromise in the pursuit of their authentic selves, should be given a sharp dose of mundane, inauthentic reality. 148

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How should we bring these strands together, on the subject of authenticity? It is helpful to note three slightly differing threads to the concept. There is self-creation, self-realization and selfexpression. Self-creation brings us back to Sartre’s idea of radical freedom and its incompatibility with objectives norms of purpose or morality. I have suggested that although there is a sense in which we do choose our values, nevertheless there may still be an objective rational basis for them. So we should prefer the Kantian idea of rational autonomy to the Sartrean idea of radical freedom. As for self-realization, it is a matter of allowing the flourishing of what you already are, however you came to be that way. There are inherited or compulsory commitments that can indeed impede both your self-expression and your self-realization – for example, when your life is subsumed by that of another person or an imposed way of life, rather than autonomously devoted to that person or way of life – and these commitments can detract from the overall meaning of your life. So it is time to be reminded of the guiding question of this chapter. That question was whether commitment, simply by existing, contributes to the meaning or purpose of life. If our commitments can be deemed either to have failed, or to be rooted in falsehood, or to be intrinsically pointless, can they still contribute to life’s meaning? We toyed with two ideas: that they might do so if our commitments are either autonomous or authentic. Rational autonomy was seen as a good thing to aim for, necessary for a commitment to contribute to meaning, but not sufficient. Radical freedom, together with the related idea of authenticity, is largely rooted in philosophical confusion. We have seen no reason to think that authenticity as such, whether of self-creation, self-realization or self-expression, is enough to make our commitments confer overall meaning on our lives.

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A counsel of despair? Not quite. What still remains is the purely subjective side to life’s meaning: the psychological fruits of leading a life perceived as having significance and purpose, perceived indeed as worth living. I said earlier that we should disambiguate the idea of meaning, and here is how we might do this. The threats posed by our three Fs – failure, falsehood and futility – are really threats to the meaning of our lives, objectively conceived. They are threats to the meaning of our lives, perhaps conceived in a quasi-religious sense as somehow conforming to an objective rational order. But we can take heart from the fact that this is not the only way we can conceive of meaning. There is a subjective side to the notion, as well. Our lives and purposes can seem meaningful, and this has some value. This sense of meaning may not satisfy all our aspirations, but it is arguably not nothing. Albert Camus remarked that the most profound philosophical question we could face was that of suicide. Most people reject that option without needing to think about it. But if we consciously reject that option – not merely because it has never occurred to us but because it comes over as intrinsically dreadful – then we choose life. We could, in theory, leave it there, allowing ourselves to drift through life passively, allowing things to happen to us instead of making them happen. But it is far more energising to be active in the unfolding of our lives: committed, indeed, to life itself. It helps banish the demons of acedia, even if we encounter them from time to time, as I am sure I have done. When I was quite young, I wrote my doctoral thesis on – of all things – death. I approached it in a dry, analytical way, enquiring into such questions as whether death could be an evil for the dead, and whether it was possible to conceive of one’s own death from a first-person point of view. The thesis was not outstandingly good; it meandered around and veered from the point at crucial junctures. It was a bit of a patchwork quilt of themes. It was born of an 150

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intellectual acknowledgement of the possibility of death at any time, and of the fragility of all we care for. However, it is only on getting older that I have had brief glimpses of death as something that will really happen to me, and conceivably soon. When I receive alumni records from my old college, I first go through the death announcements and obituaries. From time to time – although fortunately quite rarely so far – I see that someone I knew has died. Sometimes there is no explanation, but merely a note of the fact. But it brings home that death from natural causes, and not only from misadventure, is something that really happens to people my age: that is, alas, middle age. Naturally, I always knew I was going to die, and I wrote my thesis partly to try to make sense of it. But this is quite different from being hit by the thought: no, this is not a joke. This really could happen to me, and even soon, especially if I don’t take greater care of my health. I am soon distracted from the thought, of course. But when it strikes, I know I am afraid of death, and that I have no idea how I would cope if I knew it was imminent. And that reminds me that although I am not always particularly happy or content, I love my life. And one of my most fundamental commitments is, and should be, to keep it, to treasure it. I could, just possibly, find myself obliged one day to risk or sacrifice my life. I do not know what I would do in such a situation, but I am not a particularly self-sacrificing man, and I would probably try to duck the challenge in some way. But all this leads to the big question: why do I want to live? It is not as if my death will be a great disaster for the world; it will make only the smallest ripple in the scheme of things. Not only my experiences but, more strangely, my memory will probably be extinguished. It is likely that, once I am dead, I will no longer know that there was ever such a person as me. (Just think of that – seriously – for a moment). My death will, I imagine, cause grief to those who love me, but what will that matter, once they are dead themselves? No, my love of life is something primitive and rationally inexplicable. And just as primitive is the 151

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fact that I look for meaning in various kinds of interests, relationships and commitments. So I can say that, whatever may be said of the objective meaning of life, my life is full of subjective meanings, arising partly from commitments that are, in a sense, arbitrary. It is these subjective meanings that are the fuel stoking my relentless drive to be alive. The possible failure, falsehood or futility of my commitments, then, should not be a cause of complete despair. Some commitments, in any case, make no claims to rootedness in truth. They may even be completely arbitrary – such as support for a particular cricket team rather than another – and be none the worse for that. However, throughout much of this book my concern has been about those commitments that do make a claim to being rooted in truth, or practical reason. There is something irresponsible, for instance, in seeing your faith, or political or ethical commitments as being purely subjective, arbitrary or freely chosen. Here, my message has been more sombre. Even though feeling secure in such commitments makes for happiness, there are requirements of honesty and rationality that should never be brushed aside. There are times when we need to learn to doubt: when we need to develop a kind of mental self-control that helps us keep tabs on reality, by reminding us of how utterly fallible we are. And that means that we must be prepared for sacrifices of happiness, for the sake of integrity. There are welcome spin-offs from this attitude, such as the tolerance that is so alarmingly lacking in the world. But the fundamental concern, where it is applicable – and it is by no means applicable everywhere – is concern for truth. If we can combine a concern for truth, for connection with reality, with a spontaneous love of life, we are close to finding the right balance between regard for the objective and the subjective meaning of our commitments. We are close to combining a resolute preparedness to be sceptical with a zestful devotion to that mysterious thing we did not ask for – life itself. 152

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Rowlands, M. 2008. Fame. Stocksfield: Acumen. Russell, B. 1929. Marriage and Morals. London: Allen & Unwin. Ryan, A. 1974. J. S. Mill. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Sartre, J.-P. [1943] 2003. Being and Nothingness, H. E. Barnes (trans.). London: Routledge. Sartre, J.-P. [1946] 2007. Existentialism and Humanism, P. Mairet (trans.). London: Methuen. Scruton, R. 1986. Sexual Desire. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Scruton, R. 1990. “Sexual Morality and the Liberal Consensus”. In The Philosopher on Dover Beach, 261–72. Manchester: Carcanet Press. Scruton, R. 2006. “Meaningful Marriage”. In Arguments for Conservatism, 81–102. London: Continuum. Scruton, R. 2010. The Uses of Pessimism. London: Atlantic. Sim, S. 2006. Empires of Belief. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Singer, P. 1972. “Famine, Affluence and Morality”. Philosopy and Public Affairs 1(1): 229–43. Sutherland, S. 1992. Irrationality, The Enemy Within. London: Constable. Svendsen, L. 2005. A Philosophy of Boredom. London: Reaktion. Svendsen, L. 2008. Work. Stocksfield: Acumen. Taylor, R. 1987. “The Meaning of Life”. In Life and Meaning, O. Hanfling (ed.), 39–48. Oxford: Blackwell. Tolstoy, L. [1882] 1987. “My Confession”. In Life and Meaning, O. Hanfling (ed.), 9–19. Oxford: Blackwell. Trigg, R. 1973. Reason and Commitment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Unger, P. 1996. Living High and Letting Die, Our Illusion of Innocence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. van Inwagen, P. 1994. “Quam Dilecta”. In God and the Philosophers, T. V. Morris (ed.), 31–60. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vanmechelen, X. 2008. “Zest”. In Conversations in Philosophy: Crossing the Boundaries, F. Ochieng’-Odhiambo, R. Burton & E. Brandon (eds), 317–28. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press. Vernon, M. 2007. Science, Religion and the Meaning of Life. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Williams, B. 1973. ‘”A Critique of Utilitarianism”. In J. J. C. Smart & B. Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against, 75–150. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, B. 1981. “Moral Luck”. In Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980, 20–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Index

acedia 3, 20, 112–21, 124, 126–30, 150 agnosticism 91, 102 akrasia 119–20 ambition 59–67 Aquinas, Thomas 118 Aristotle 21–2, 121 atheism see theism Augustine of Hippo 35 authenticity 74, 146–9 autonomy 140–43 bad faith 144 Benson, Ophelia 105 Burchill, Julie 65–6 Blackburn, Simon 35–6, 45 boredom 3, 20, 112–21, 124–7 Camus, Albert 150 careers 58 charity see agape Christianity 10–11 civil partnerships 40 Clifford, W. K. 91, 97–8 consequentialism 69–70 Cottingham, John 107, 135–6 depression 112, 121, 127 devotional experiment 108–9 dogmatism 104–5 encrateia 121 ethics of belief 96–102 Evagrius of Pontus 35, 118, 120, 123 existentialism 74

fame 65–6 fallibilism 82 futility 137 Gauguin, Paul 73–4, 147 God 39, 86, 91, 95, 126, 145; see also theism Goodbye Lenin! 134 Hampton, Jean 64 Hobbes, Thomas 36 Holocaust denial 98–100 homosexuality 49 Hume, David 131, 145–6 Iran 14, 16–17 James, William 107 Kant, Immanuel 32, 36–7, 135, 140, 143, 145 Larkin, Philip 25, 56 Locke, John 91–2 love parental 3, 22–4 as philia 21, 37, 48 as eros 21, 37, 46–8 as agape 22, 37, 48 Mackie, J. L. 85, 87 marriage 9, 38–44, 48 Mill, J. S. 114, 121–2 Orwell, George 92–3, 105, 135

failure 134–6 falsehood 136–7

Pascal’s Wager 94–6, 107–8

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Plato’s Forms 21–2 promises 1–2, 10 Protestant work ethic 56 Radcliffe Richards, Janet 33–4 radical freedom 143 rationalization 80–81 Read, Piers Paul 15–16 recognition 62 relativism 82, 103 Roman Catholic Church 38, 49, 107, 127–8 St. Paul 22 Sartre, Jean-Paul 144–6, 149 scepticism 7–8 Scruton, Roger 38–46, 86 sexual ethics 26–42 and feminism 31–4 Soviet Union 14, 17, 99 Sim, Stuart 106 Socrates 119, 124

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Stangroom, Jeremy 105 Svendsen, Lars 53, 71–2, 75, 113, 118 Sisyphus myth 137–9 Taylor, Richard 137, 139 theism 83, 85 thrill seekers 115–16 Tolstoy, Leo 114, 122–4, 128 utilitarianism 26–8; see also consequentialism van Inwagen, Peter 83–5 virtues 22, 103–4, 111 vocation 2, 66–75 and moral obligation 68 vows 9, 37, 45 Williams, Bernard 68–9, 73–4 zest for life 127–9