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Chapter 13. Ethics and the Purpose of Human Life
- State University of New York Press
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Chapter 13 Ethics and the Purpose of Human Life P eirce maintained that while philosophical ethics can be a legitimate pursuit, it cannot and should not try to deal with issues of vital importance. He made a clear distinction between practical and theoretical ethics. Practical ethics should not deal with questions such as why we should be beneficent, honest, truthful, loyal. Theoretical ethics deals with these questions, but its investigations are not useful in trying to teach people, especially young people how to live their lives. Practical ethics has vital importance, but it cannot be scientific and should not pretend to be. Scientific ethics, in turn, has no value for vital interest. These two disciplines should not be confused; when we confuse them we spoil both. I propose here to give an account of Peirce’s ethics and argue within a Peircean perspective, that ethics can deal with vital interests scientifically, and then show how Peirce’s philosophical ethics can serve as the basis for a contemporary virtue ethic. This section first presents Peirce’s argument against the practicality of ethics; next it presents a description of his architectonic, showing the place of ethics. The central part is an analysis of Peirce’s notion of the summum bonum, concrete reasonableness to show the reconciliation between theory and his practice. The conclusion consists of an outline of a foundation for a Peircean virtue ethic. Reasons for the Incompatibility of Practical and Theoretical Ethics A reading of Peirce’s description of ethics will likely dishearten anyone interested in philosophical ethics. Peirce made a distinction between theoret- 133 ical science and vital interests. He insisted that the former be disinterested and therefore not attempt to be practical. The pursuit of vital interests, by contrast, must avoid the hypocrisy of pretending to be scientific. Vital interests , by definition, pertain to this or that individual life, but in the whole scheme of things vital interests are relatively insignificant. Clergy, teachers, and all those who study ethics as a way of guiding their own lives, or the lives of others, must rely on tradition and instinct. Philosophers, in turn, who investigate the meaning of the good, must do so objectively and disinterestedly and never pretend that their investigations can be of vital importance in guiding anyone’s life. Furthermore, no one can serve two masters by pursuing ethics as theory and as practice. Peirce bluntly tells his readers that he has no “philosophical wares that will make them better or more successful” (CP, 1.621). Peirce defined the ideal of practical ethics as “...nothing but a sort of composite photograph of the conscience of the members of the community. In short it is nothing but the traditional standard, accepted, very wisely, without radical criticism, but with a silly pretense of critical examination” (CP, 1.573). The science of ethics, in this view, consists of nothing more than the study of what today, following Lawrence Kohlberg, might be called “conventional morality.” Or it could be described in the words of Peirce’s contemporary, William Graham Sumner, as the mores of the society. This kind of ethics, in the hands of clergy, teachers, and parents can be useful, but not scientific. Those philosophers, who think that they study this discipline critically, and that they base their conclusions on well-examined theory, simply delude themselves. Peirce described, as a task of practical ethics, a series of self-criticisms that all morally serious people must undertake to make sure that their conduct conforms to their ideals. A moral action begins with a general intention that conforms to and promotes the person’s ideals. In a particular case, the person may make a resolution in keeping with the intention. After the fact the first act of self-criticism requires the person to reflect on whether the conduct remained true to the resolution. The second question asks whether the conduct accords with the general intention, and finally whether the intention itself conforms to the person’s ideals. A further and deeper meditation is to examine the ideals themselves to judge their fitness for the particular person. At each step a feeling of pleasure or pain accompanies the examination and reveals the fitness or lack of fitness (CP, 1.594–1.599). (Peirce, of course, was not a hedonist. We do not live for pleasure, but pleasure and pain can serve as a symptom of fitness or lack thereof.) But beyond this practical self-examination, the student of theoretical ethics may ask, “as...