Why Be Moral? — Ethics 1 (C1)

ETHICS · LESSON 1

Why Be Moral?

C1 (B2–C2) · 90 minutes

The ring

Task You find a ring that makes you invisible whenever you want, and nobody will ever know you have it.

Alone: privately write three things you would do in the first 24 hours.

In pairs: label each of your items harmless, self-serving or harmful, and share only the items you choose. Which label did you use most, and why?

harmless

self-serving

harmful

READING

Glaucon's challenge

Plato's Republic, written around 375 BCE, turns on a question that sounds simple: why should anyone be just? In Book II, Plato's brother Glaucon sharpens it into a challenge for Socrates. He says he is "not of their opinion" himself, and restates the view only so that Socrates can defeat it.

Glaucon begins with three kinds of good. Some things we want for their own sake, like harmless pleasures. Some we want both for themselves and for their results, like

health and knowledge. Others we want only for their results, like medical treatment or earning money. Most people, he says, put justice in the last group: a burden we accept for its rewards.

His account of where justice comes from is an early social contract theory. Doing wrong without paying for it is the best outcome; suffering wrong without being able to strike back is the worst.

READING · CONTINUED

Glaucon's challenge

Too weak for the first and afraid of the second, people agree on laws and call obeying them "just": a compromise, kept because we must.

Then comes the Ring of Gyges. Gyges, a shepherd serving the king of Lydia, climbs into a chasm opened by an earthquake. Inside a hollow bronze horse he finds a corpse wearing a gold ring. When he turns its setting inward, he becomes invisible. He has himself sent to court, seduces the queen, kills the king with her help and takes the

throne.

Give one such ring to a just person and one to an unjust person, Glaucon argues, and they will behave alike. In Jowett's translation: "wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust." His final test is harder still: compare a perfectly unjust man with a spotless reputation and a perfectly just man thought guilty and punished for it. Which one is happier?

Only fear of getting caught?

Task Partner A argues that Glaucon is right: people are just only because they fear punishment or a bad reputation. Partner B argues that he is wrong. Use the questions below. In the last minute, drop your roles and say which side you really believe.

1. Would you trust a friend who was honest only because they feared being caught?

2. If no one could ever find out, would cheating in a card game still be wrong?

3. Is guilt just a punishment we carry inside us, which would make Glaucon right after all?

4. Why do some people behave well when nobody is watching at all?

5. Where you live, does reputation keep people honest more than the law does?

What Socrates answers

Socrates spends the rest of the Republic answering Glaucon, placing justice among goods wanted both for themselves and for their results. Justice, he argues, is not a rule imposed from outside but a condition of the soul, which has three parts: reason, spirit (pride and anger) and appetite. In the just person, reason rules, spirit supports it, and appetite is kept in order. In the unjust person the parts are at war, like a city torn by civil war, and desire takes over. So injustice damages the person who commits it, whether or not anyone finds out.

In Book X he returns to the story: "Let a man do what is just, whether he have the ring of Gyges or not" (Jowett). Whether this answers Glaucon, or quietly changes the question, is still debated.

soul

reason

spirit

appetite

Describe or prescribe?

Task Write D if a statement describes what people do or believe, P if it prescribes what people should do, or B if it does both. Then pick the statement you disagreed about most and agree what kind of evidence, if any, could settle it.

D = describes · P = prescribes · B = both

1. Most people would return a lost wallet.

5. In many cultures, refusing food offered by a host is considered rude.

2. You should return a lost wallet.

6. A good doctor never lies to a patient.

3. Stealing is wrong.

7. People are just only because they fear punishment.

4. Most people believe that stealing is wrong.

8. Humans are selfish by nature, so there is no point asking them to share.

READING

From is to ought

In 1740 the Scottish philosopher David Hume noticed a habit in the moral writing of his day. An author would describe how things are, about God or about human life, and then, "of a sudden", Hume wrote, "instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not." The move from is to ought is never explained.

This is the is–ought problem: facts about how the world is do not, on their own, tell us how it ought to be. Philosophers still argue about whether, and how, the gap can be crossed. A descriptive claim can be checked against evidence. A prescriptive, or normative, claim needs a different kind of support.

READING

Is it all relative?

The Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BCE, tells a story about the Persian king Darius. Darius summoned the Greeks at his court and asked what price would persuade them to eat their dead fathers. No price, they said. He then summoned an Indian people called the Callatiae, who ate their dead parents, and asked, with the Greeks listening through interpreters, what would persuade them to burn their fathers' bodies, as the Greeks did. They cried out and begged him not to speak of such a thing. Herodotus' lesson is that every people, asked to choose the best customs in the world, would choose its own. He quotes the poet Pindar: "custom is lord of all" (Godley's translation, Histories 3.38).

Cultural relativism builds a theory on such stories.

READING · CONTINUED

Is it all relative?

Descriptive relativism is the factual claim that moral codes differ between societies. Metaethical relativism is the philosophical claim that there is no moral truth beyond those codes: right means what a society approves. The view has real appeal. In the 1930s, anthropologists such as Ruth Benedict used human variety to challenge the habit of judging every people by one's own standards, and relativism still stands for humility about how much of "morality" is local custom.

Its critics, among them the philosopher James Rachels, reply in two ways. First,

the argument does not work: from the fact that people disagree, it does not follow that nobody is right. People once disagreed about the shape of the Earth. Second, its consequences are hard to accept. If right means "approved here", a society can never be wrong by its own standards, and its moral reformers, those who campaigned against slavery or for women's votes, were mistaken until the majority came round. We could never say a practice now abolished was wrong, only that it was once approved. The idea of moral progress would make no sense.

Custom, or morality? (cards 1–4)

Task Groups of 3 or 4. For each of cards 1–8, write C (only a matter of custom), M (a matter of right and wrong) or U (unsure). Then agree one sentence that finishes: "A custom becomes a moral matter when…"

1. The greeting In Tokyo, Haruto bows to a new colleague. In Rio de Janeiro, Beatriz greets hers with a kiss on the cheek. Each finds the other's greeting a little strange.

2. The menu Horse meat is a traditional food in Kazakhstan and Mongolia. In many other countries, people find the idea of eating it upsetting.

3. The shoes Visiting a family in Seoul, Lukas keeps his shoes on indoors, although his hosts and every other guest took theirs off at the door.

4. The late guest Invited to dinner at eight, Amara arrives at nine without a message. Where she grew up, that is normal. Her hosts grew up where it is rude.

Custom, or morality? (cards 5–8)

C = only a matter of custom · M = a matter of right and wrong · U = unsure

5. The care home Wei's mother can no longer live alone, so Wei moves her into a good care home nearby. In Wei's community, many people believe adult children should take their parents into their own homes.

6. The envelope Kemal needs a licence for his bakery. A clerk hints that an envelope of cash "for tea" would get it approved in a week instead of eight months. Kemal says everyone pays, and that refusing would close his business.

7. The cane For much of the twentieth century, teachers in many countries were allowed to hit pupils with a cane or a ruler, and many parents approved. Today most countries ban it in schools.

8. The duel From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, in parts of Europe and the Americas, a gentleman who was insulted was expected to challenge the offender to a duel. Refusing could ruin him socially. Duelling is now a crime almost everywhere.

The Euthyphro question

In Plato's Euthyphro, Socrates meets Euthyphro outside a court in Athens. Euthyphro is prosecuting his own father for the death of a labourer, sure that the gods would approve. Socrates asks him "whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods" (Jowett). If the first, goodness exists apart from the gods' will. If the second, it depends on their choice, which could have been different.

Many religious thinkers reject the choice. Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages, and Robert Adams more recently, argue that God's commands come from God's own good nature, so they are neither arbitrary nor answerable to an outside standard. Classical Islamic theology debated a related question: the Mu'tazila held that human reason can know good and bad, while the Ash'arites tied good and bad to God's commands.

The question also has a secular form: is something right because the law or society says so, or should laws follow what is already right?

1. Is something right because the law says so, or should the law follow what is right?

2. If your society approved of something cruel tomorrow, would it become right?

3. Can people who disagree about religion still agree on what is right? On why it is right?

The course's map: four lenses

Moral philosophers have offered several families of answer to the question "what makes an act right?". This course calls them lenses. Each one asks a different question.

LESSON 2

LESSON 3

LESSON 4

LESSON 5

Consequences

Duty

Character

Relationships

What will happen?

What rule applies?

What would a good person do?

Who am I to them?

Every case in this course

Private reflection

Task Choose one prompt and write privately. Nobody will read what you write. Sharing afterwards is optional.

Prompt 1

Think of a time you did the right thing when no one would ever have known. Why did you do it? Would Glaucon be satisfied with your answer?

Prompt 2 (lighter)

Think of a rule from your upbringing that you have kept, or one that you have dropped. Was it a custom, or a matter of right and wrong?

Before Lesson 2

This week, notice one moral decision you make. What did you weigh up?

Consequences

Duty

It can be small: a message you did or didn't send, a queue, a promise, a purchase. Note whether you thought about what would happen, about a rule, about what kind of person you want to be, or about who the other person was to you.

Character

Next lesson: The Greatest Good: Consequences. Is the right act simply the one with the best results?

Relationships

TEACHER'S REFERENCE · SKIP OR DELETE BEFORE CLASS

Answer key

DESCRIBE OR PRESCRIBE? suggested; statements 5, 6 and 8 are there to be argued over

1 D. A claim about behaviour, which evidence can settle. A 2019 study in Science (Cohn and colleagues) tested it with over 17,000 "lost" wallets in 40 countries.

2 P. It says what you should do. No survey of what people actually do can prove or disprove it.

3 P. It sounds like a plain fact, but it is a moral judgement.

4 D. It describes a belief. The belief is about a prescription, but the statement itself only reports what people think, and a survey could check it.

5 D. It reports a norm in many cultures, without saying anyone should follow it. Tricky because "rude" sounds like a judgement; here it describes what people consider rude.

6 P, usually. Read as a standard for doctors, it prescribes. Some will argue it is a definition of "good doctor", or a description of how good doctors behave. Let them argue, and note that whether doctors should ever lie returns in Lesson 8.

7 D. This is Glaucon's claim: a claim about human motives, which is true or false whatever we think of it.

8 B. The first half describes human nature; the second half prescribes ("no point asking"). The step between them is exactly the move Hume questions in "From is to ought".