No modern system of ethics would be
complete without a discussion of duties. Indeed, following Kant, we
would probably think that duty is what ethics is all about – after
all, ethics should tell what you ought to do. At first sight Wolff's
discussion of duty seems quite in line with this Kantian idea. Wolff
defines duty as something that one is bound to do by some law. In
ethics, the law in question is the natural law.
On a closer look, Wolff's idea differs
from Kant's later theory. As the reader might remember, for Wolff,
natural law commands us to do those things that any conscious person
would do, if she had perfectly clear and distinct concept of what is
going on. Thus, duty is not just something we ought to do, but also
something that we would do, if we had correct information.
Furthermore, the motivating factor for this ideal person would be the
purpose of perfecting everything. Wolffian duty has then a goal
external to the duty itself.
For Wolff, ”you ought to do it” can
then be translated by ”you would do it, if you just understood how
good it is for you”. The problem in this identification is that it sometimes appears to lead to unintuitive results. Consider for
instance the choice of using your money to buy new shoes and of
giving it to the beggar on the street. If a perfectly rational person
would be motivated to choose former over latter, that choice would be
a duty in the Wolffian sense, although the opposite choice would
appear to be more virtuous. Of course, it all comes down to whether
Wolff thinks a perfectly rational person would make this choice. The
answer requires a look at the detailed system of duties Wolff
presents.
Wolff divides all duties into three
classes: duties towards oneself, duties towards God and duties
towards other people. I recall that the division precedes Wolff's
ethics and goes probably all the way to medieval philosophy. Remnants
of the division can be found still in Kant's ethics, which
differentiates between duties towards oneself and duties towards
orher people. Indeed, even in Wolff duties towards God play a minor
role compared with other two sorts.
Duties towards God appear to cause some
problems for Wolff, because an omnipotent being should not need the
help of his creations for anything. Still, Wolff could not exclude
God altogether, because that would have probably been considered a
blasphemy. Wolff then suggests that God and his perfections can still
motivate us to do virtuous things and that these divinely motivated
duties might be called duties towards God. Problem is that then all
duties would be also duties towards God, as long as the motivation
for them would lie in God.
Wolff's way for solving the problem
begins from the assumption that a perfectly rational person would in
all likelihood know about God. His knowledge of God would then
necessarily induce some feelings: he would love God for all his work
for human beings, he would fear making God disappointed etc. Wolff
suggests that we would then have a duty for pursuing those
affections, which we could call a duty towards God – somewhat
strange notion as such affections appear to be involuntary and not
dependent on our will. In addition to these affections – well you can
always say a few prayers and thus show your faith in the wisdom and
omnipotence of God.
With the divinely inspired duties taken
care of with few words of devotion, the Wolffian moral agent still
has to tackle with duties toward himself and other persons.
Personally, I've always found the class of duties toward oneself
rather peculiar. This is probably because I have never understood how
self-perfection could be taken as an end in itself. Surely it is
moral to develop your skills for helping others, but it seems
peculiar that mere developing skills in itself would be morally
upright. Hegel had the intruiguing notion that perfecting your skills
only for the sake of perfection is somewhat like sharpening your
sword just for the sake of admiring it: it undoubtedly looks
prettier, but isn't it a bit useless?
Wolff's ideas of duties towards oneself
contain the further problem that they don't clash well with his ideas
of the relationship between soul and body. Wolffian duties towards
soul are rather straightforward. One should strengthen one's will
through ethical reasoning and fables and one's reason through reading
works of Wolff. (By the way, Wolff pronounces the publication of text
books as his moral duty. No doubt the profits he gained from them
must have been God's way of thanking Wolff for his dutyful life.).
It is the duties towards body that
appear more problematic. As one might remember, body is in Wolffian
scheme just a physical thing that is constantly in contact with the
soul, which is the true personality of human being. Still, Wolff can
earnestly say that soul must take care of its body, although body is
not even itself conscious of anything. True, the fates of the body
and the soul are connected and the soul feels everything that happens
to the body, so that the soul would be in pain, if something bad
happened to its body. Yet, this connection is only temporary and one
might think it could be broken, if the body became too ill – but
no, Wolff denies the right of suicide, apparently for no other reason
but that the soul must show its dedicated perseverance by making the
body to live as long as it can. Somewhat inconsistently, the soul
must bear through all the hardships the body goes through, but the
soul must still see to it that the body gets what it needs, i.e. that
it is fed and clothed.
Although Wolff admits that eating well
and clothing yourself warmly are moral duties, thus proving that your
parents were right, he is fortunately not as interested of external
glory. Glory and honour depend on what other people think of you and
it is enough if you act as if you were worthy of glory, no matter
what others think of you. Then again, dishonourable life deserves to
be ridiculed. Indeed, Wolff makes the historically interesting remark
that disease is usually no reason for shame, but if your nose drops
due to illicit sexual behavior, that's your own fault (the slow
detoriation of the nasal tissue is one possible symptom of syphilis
disease, but Wolff's remark appears to be pointed at ”fornication
with pictures of women” or masturbation, which was at that time
suspected as one possible cause for the symptoms of syphilis).
One might expect that the apparent
self-centredness of Wolff's morality would be mitigated when he comes
to duties towards other people. Wolff even starts in a
promising tone by declaring that one should do to others exactly what
one ought to do for oneself. Yet, there is a twist. Apparently the
highest point of perfection is independence, which makes a sort of
sense in the Wolffian world view, where every soul already is a
closed totality with not true connection with the external world: a
soul perfects itself, when it appears to be what it truly is, that
is, independent of anything else. Now, helping others in their need
would constitute a breach of their independency and would thus take
away from their perfection. Hence, Wolff advises that one should help
others only when what they require is beyond their own skills and powers. Most of the
duties towards others are then merely negative: one should not e.g.
cheat others.
If we then come back to our original
problem of a person wondering whether he should spend his money to
new shoes or whether he should give it to a beggar, Wolff would in
most likelihood suggest that we should somehow calculate whether
helping the beggar is really worth more than new shoes. Yet, the
requirement for independence would in most cases make the scales turn
in favour of the shoes. This sounds dangerously close to a person who
would not give anything to charity, because the poor are just too
lazy to make themselves rich.
To be fair, Wolff is describing
morality without any connection to a society or a commonwealth. It
will be the task of Wolff's political works to describe societies in
more detail, and we shall later see whether Wolff can find a place
for solidarity and team spirit. But first, a slight detour to a
student of Wolff.
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