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Moral Aspirations and Ideals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2010

KIMBERLEY BROWNLEE
KIMBERLEY BROWNLEE*
Affiliation:
University of Manchesterkimberley.brownlee@manchester.ac.uk
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Abstract

My aim is to vindicate two distinct and important moral categories – ideals and aspirations – which have received modest, and sometimes negative, attention in recent normative debates. An ideal is a conception of perfection or model of excellence around which we can shape our thoughts and actions. An aspiration, by contrast, is an attitudinal position of steadfast commitment to, striving for, or deep desire or longing for, an ideal. I locate these two concepts in relation to more familiar moral concepts such as duty, virtue, and the good to demonstrate, amongst other things, first, that what is morally significant about ideals and aspirations cannot be fully accommodated within a virtue ethical framework that gives a central role to the Virtuous Person as a purported model of excellence. On a certain interpretation, the Virtuous Person is not a meaningful ideal for moral agents. Second, I articulate one sense in which aspirations are morally required imaginative acts given their potential to expand the realm of practical moral possibility.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , September 2010 , pp. 241 - 257
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 For an expression of concern about ideals as being inextricably linked to fanaticism (‘the pursuit of perfection does seem to me a recipe for bloodshed’), see Berlin, Isaiah, The Crooked Timber of Humanity (London, 1990)Google Scholar. For a defence of a role for ideals within morality, see Coady, C. A. J., Messy Morality (Oxford, 2008)Google Scholar, and Rescher, Nicholas, Ethical Idealism: An Inquiry into the Nature and Function of Ideals (Berkeley, 1987)Google Scholar. For a defence of aspirations within morality, see Fuller, Lon, The Morality of Law (New Haven, 1977)Google Scholar. Also see Kekes, John, The Enlargement of Life: Moral Imagination at Work (Ithaca, 2006)Google Scholar.

2 Cf. Kimberley Brownlee, ‘Reasons and Ideals’, Philosophical Studies (published online 16 October 2009; DOI: 10.1007/s11098-009-9462-y).

3 In this discussion, the terms ‘duty’ and ‘obligation’ are used interchangeably.

4 In The Morality of Law, Fuller characterizes the ‘morality of aspiration’ as the morality of the Good Life, of excellence, of the fullest realization of human powers. Fuller, Morality of Law, p. 5.

5 For an overview of substantive ideals and deliberative ideals, see Rosati, Connie, ‘Ideals’, The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Craig, Edward (London, 1998)Google Scholar.

6 The following five paragraphs develop material discussed in Brownlee, ‘Reasons and Ideals’.

7 Coady, Messy Morality, pp. 51–2.

8 Strawson, P. F., Freedom and Resentment, and Other Essays (London, 1974), p. 28Google Scholar.

9 Coady, Messy Morality, p. 70.

10 Coady, Messy Morality, p. 57.

11 In cases of instrumental promotion of an end, the means are external to, and only contingently connected with, the chosen end, and hence any number of means may be adopted to achieve the end. Buying food promotes the end of eating dinner, but so too does going to a restaurant or, perhaps, begging at someone's door. By contrast, in cases of constitutive promotion, the action we take (or the intentions, beliefs, and attitudes we adopt) is a component of our end, that is, performing that action partly constitutes achieving the end. Eating the main course ‘promotes’ eating dinner. Cf. Irwin, T. H., ‘Aristotle’, The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Craig, Edward (London, 2003)Google Scholar.

12 Aristotle's position, as summarized by Alastair MacIntyre, is that the good of man is constituted by a complete human life lived at its best, to which the exercise of the virtues is a central part. MacIntyre, A., After Virtue (Notre Dame, 1981), pp. 139–40Google Scholar.

13 Rescher, Ethical Idealism, p. 117.

14 Although Coady says that ‘The unrealizability of this ideal of total truth does not stand in the way of striving to achieve it’, nevertheless he suspects that those ideals that are unrealizable are misconceived as ends to be aimed at in this way: Coady, Messy Morality, pp. 59–61.

15 The example of giving birth to oneself is borrowed from John Gardner.

16 Rescher, Ethical Idealism, p. 83.

17 Oxford English Dictionary (current online edition).

18 Hardy, G. H., A Mathematician's Apology (Cambridge, 1992), p. 77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Hardy, Apology, p. 77.

20 Specifying what makes a given professed ideal a genuinely valuable ideal, i.e. a genuine ideal, would require a fuller analysis of the nature of value than can be offered here. In what follows, the term ‘ideal’ refers to genuinely valuable ideals.

21 As an aside, having aspirations to be and to do better morally may be an important part not only of being a morally good person, but also of being a well person. Having aspirations may plausibly be viewed as an essential element of individual flourishing and well-being.

22 Cf. Hursthouse, Rosalind ‘Virtue Ethics’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Zalta, Edward (Stanford, 2007)Google Scholar, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/.

23 Hursthouse, Rosalind, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford, 1999), p. 13Google Scholar.

24 I thank Adam Cureton for outlining this line of objection.

25 Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons (Oxford, 1984), p. 389Google Scholar.

26 Emmet, Dorothy, The Role of the Unrealisable (Basingstoke, 1994), pp. 2–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Rescher, Ethical Idealism, p. 83.

28 Cited from Coady, Messy Morality, p. 59.

29 Cf. Brownlee, ‘Reasons and Ideals’.

30 The idea that a person can be faulted for not espousing certain ideals is discussed only briefly by Coady in Messy Morality.

31 Cf. Kekes, Enlargement.

32 Petsalis-Diomidis, Nicholas, The Unknown Callas: The Greek Years (New York, 2001), p. 96Google Scholar.

33 For an examination of the nature of value, see Raz, Joseph, The Practice of Value (Oxford, 2003)Google Scholar; and Raz, Joseph, Value, Respect and Attachment (Cambridge, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.