Thomas Reid and the Ethical Life by Terence Cuneo (review)

This is a very short book, but it has a suitably limited purpose and a clearly defined audience. The aim is to elaborate the fundamentals of Thomas Reid’s ethical theory, and especially his philosophy of action, for two kinds of readers: those who are familiar with Reid’s philosophy of mind but not his ethics, and those who are interested in philosophical ethics but know nothing of Reid.

Cuneo thinks that Reid’s ethical theory is not simply another application of “the philosophy of common sense” with which Reid has long been identified. Rather, it is an interesting and distinctive, pluralistic construction that draws upon the Protestant conception of natural law while retaining important components of Aristotelianism. It has elements of Stoicism, but Hedonistic or Eudaimonistic aspects also, all undergirded by providential theism. The result is a conception of the ethical life that is action centered and successfully integrates the pursuit of objective worth with the agent’s subjective satisfaction.

Two chapters elaborate Reid’s account of normative governance, actions, motives, and power. A third chapter considers objections that might be brought against this account by Aristotelians or moral sentimentalists. A final short section seeks to locate Reid within the differences between ancient and modern ethics that were first identified by Sidgwick, and that, thanks to Christine Korsgaard and others, have shaped a great deal of discussion in recent moral philosophy. Reid, the book argues, does not fit at all neatly into this ancient/modern divide, and for that reason presents conceptual possibilities that have generally been overlooked.

Cuneo makes a good case for the interpretation of Reid that he wants to advance, while at the same time indicating the points at which Reid himself is unclear or uncertain. A lengthy list of references reveals an extensive knowledge of both moral philosophy in the early modern period, and of its contemporary debates. Consequently, he is well placed to address the two groups of readers he hopes to attract.

Yet, I suspect that only those who are already inclined to a certain way of doing philosophy will find the book to be of interest. Its style is the professionalized one first made familiar in philosophy of mind and language. It came to prominence in the 1980s, and it is noteworthy for aspiring to a kind of linguistic informality—problems become “worries,” objections are “challenges”—while at the same time being replete with quasi-technical definitions. In the opening sentence of the section on “Action,” Cuneo effectively acknowledges this: “Let me begin by regimenting some terminology ” After a few pages, the “regimented” terminology enables him to make this kind of claim: “End-states . . . . are not what favor the actualization of a behavior-state but are the behavior-states whose actualization is favored.” It is something of an irony that this (to my mind) very opaque prose should be called into service for the explication of Reid, whose own prose style (in comparison with Hume’s, say) is notable for its elegance and clarity. It is not that the claim is false, or even uninteresting, but that the reader has to wrestle with the sentence to find its meaning. Understandably, many readers may be strongly inclined to give up the fight. Oddly, too, though the book is very short, it is longer than it need be. There is rather a lot of unnecessary sign-posting—“Earlier I pointed out”; “Let us take a closer look”; “As indicated, I am not going to address”; and so on. Such phrases add nothing to the flow of the argument, and though their inclusion is meant, I imagine, to suggest greater engagement between author and reader, after a while they become tiresome and make for rather heavy going.

These aspects of style will not deter philosophers already accustomed to writing and reasoning in this way, but this just shows that Cuneo has, intentionally or not, produced an “insiders” book. This is a pity, to my mind. A book as short as...