One of the best things about being a professor is that I’m constantly learning new things. I’m also challenged to articulate, defend, and often revise my positions. In particular, my students have a tendency to challenge me in all the right ways. This winter during a discussion on the history of philosophy, my student Nathalie raised an excellent question which really got me thinking: what should we make of the role of awful historical men in the philosophical canon – and why, especially when it comes to ethics and moral philosophy, do we still include them in the curriculum?
First, let’s resist the temptation to dismiss this concern on account of awful historical men being, well, historical. No one is totally let off the hook because of their historical circumstances. Historical circumstances incline us strongly toward certain viewpoints but they do not compel us. For example, human slavery was accepted by many Americans before the Civil War but there were also abolitionists fighting against it, so opposition to slavery was not only morally correct but also a live political option (at best – following Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit here – we can understand and perhaps forgive, without totally excusing and therefore justifying, erroneous past viewpoints and practices where there were better live options). I’ll be talking about Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) in my next few blog posts, so let his example resonate here: he was a virulent misogynist and racist, and we are under no obligation to excuse him for this just because variants of such viewpoints were the tenor of his times. The question is whether and why, given this stance, we still have anything to learn from him regarding practical ethics.
With this in mind, the answer to Nathalie’s question – what we’re supposed to do with historical figures espousing awful viewpoints – depends upon what exactly an education in ethics entails. If moral knowledge is a kind of theoretical knowledge – like knowledge of the axioms of math, logic, or geometry – then there is perhaps no obvious need to insist that the teacher of moral knowledge be good at what he preaches, or even practice it at all. To give a non-moral example, I once taught a course in symbolic logic, understanding perfectly well what I was talking about and having few problems conveying what I knew (he says, with nagging self-doubt). But I have no particular aptitude for the writing out of proofs, and struggled mightily with the task of practical demonstration (on this score I’m pretty hopeless; I rarely ever just “see” the solution to a formal logical problem like some people do). When it comes to moral knowledge specifically, we can apply Bertrand Russell’s amusing defense: just as a geometry teacher needn’t actually be a triangle, an ethics teacher (or a historical writer on ethics) needn’t be morally angelic in order to be wise and to correctly convey his or her wisdom. There is, in other words, perhaps no necessary link between having moral knowledge and being a good person.
If, however, moral knowledge is more like “know-how”, a knack or practical wisdom, then it does seem pretty odd that so many great moral philosophers were so disappointingly human. Why take advice on the good life from a person whose own life holds up so poorly to scrutiny? And how exactly would sitting in a university classroom or reading an old book help to teach you such knowledge anyway?
Note that there is a third possibility, which is my own view: that an education in ethics entails both theoretical and practical components, each of which constantly bleeds into the other (doing theory is a practice; working through real dilemmas is a kind of reflection), with room for emphasis on one aspect or another as per the needs and interests of the student. If this is the right view, then the examples of awful historical men are extremely instructive, as I hope to show in the case of Schopenhauer. By unpacking his texts on practical morality in subsequent posts, I hope to demonstrate that a) some of his arguments and practical advice hold up very well today; b) that his negativity and bitterness, his hatred of women and racialized persons, should be rejected at face value but contain the seeds of social criticism, allowing us to subvert and build upon his works in ways that run counter to his stated intentions; and c) he provides a lesson in the modularity of human intelligence, helping to illustrate certain theses of contemporary moral psychology which pertain to ethical pedagogy. If I’m successful in this task, then I think I will have answered Nathalie’s question. We still study awful historical men – in some cases, even selectively taking their advice – because philosophy is and always will be a work in progress. It would be a shame to abandon their works when they themselves provide clues on how to push beyond them to better views and practices!