The Foundations of Morality

1. The Voluptuary’s Fallacy

There is no irreconcilable conflict between the interests of the individual and those of society. If there were, society could not exist. Society is the great means through which individuals pursue and fulfill their ends. For society is but another name for the combination of individuals for cooperation. It is the means through which each of us furthers the purposes of others as an indirect means of furthering his own. And this cooperation is in the overwhelming main voluntary. It is only collectivists who assume that the interests of the individual and of society (or the State) are fundamentally opposed, and that the individual can only be led to cooperate in society by Draconian compulsions.

The common-sense reasons for temperance and other prudential virtues are frequently misunderstood or derided by ethical skeptics:

Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter,

Sermons and soda-water the day after.

When we talk seriously, it is of course not at all a question whether the pain or the pleasure comes first, but which exceeds the other in the long run. The confusions that result from failure to understand this principle lead not only, on the one hand, to the sophisms of the ethical skeptics but, on the other, to the fallacies of anti-utilitarian writers and of ascetics. When the anti-utilitarians attack not merely the pleasure-pain calculus of the Benthamites but the Greatest Happiness Principle, or the maximization of satisfactions, it will be found that they are almost invariably assuming, tacitly or expressly, that the utilitarian standards take only immediate or short-run consequences into consideration. Their criticism is valid only as applied to crude forms of hedonistic and utilitarian theories. We shall return to a longer analysis of this later.

2. The Ascetic’s Fallacy

The confusion in another form leads to the opposite result—to the theories and standards of asceticism. The utilitarian standard, consistently applied, merely asks whether an action (or more properly a rule of action) will tend to lead to a surplus of happiness and well-being, or a surplus of unhappiness and ill-being, for all those whom it affects, in the long run. One of Bentham’s great merits was that he attempted to apply the standard thoroughly and consistently. Though he was not wholly successful, because there were several important tools of analysis that he lacked, what is remarkable is the degree of his success, and the steadiness with which he kept this standard in mind.

In the interests of the individual’s long-run well-being, it is necessary for him to make certain short-run sacrifices, or apparent sacrifices. He must put certain immediate restraints on his impulses in order to prevent later regrets. He must accept a certain deprivation today either in order to reap a greater compensation in the future or to prevent an even greater deprivation in the future.

However if, rejecting this definition, we think of asceticism as a form of athleticism, analogous to the discipline that athletes or soldiers undergo to harden themselves against possible adversity, or against probable trials of strength, courage, fortitude, effort, and endurance in the future, or even as a process of restraint to sharpen “the keen edge of seldom pleasure,” then it is something that serves a utilitarian and even a hedonistic purpose.

Confusion of thought will continue as long as we use the same word, asceticism, in both of these senses. We can avoid ambiguity only by assigning separate names to each meaning.

The distinction between the consideration of short-run and long-run consequences is so basic, and applies so widely, that one might be excused for trying to make it, by itself, the whole foundation for a system of ethics, and to say, quite simply, that morality is essentially, not the subordination of the “individual” to “society” but the subordination of immediate objectives to long-term ones. Certainly the Long-Run Principle is a necessary if not a sufficient foundation for morality. Bentham did not have the concept (which has been made explicit mainly by modern economics) in just these words, but he came close to it in his constant insistence on the necessity of considering the future as well as the present consequences of any course of conduct, and in his attempt to measure and compare “quantities” of pleasure not merely in terms of “intensity” but of “duration.” Many efforts have been made to define the difference between pleasure and happiness. One of them is surely that between a momentary gratification and a permanent or at least prolonged gratification, between the short run and the long run.

3. On Undervaluing the Future

Perhaps this is an appropriate point to warn the reader against some possible misinterpretations of the Long-Run Principle. When we are asked to take into consideration the probable consequences of a given act or rule of action in the long run, this does not mean that we must disregard, or even that we are justified in disregarding, its probable consequences in the short run. What we are really being asked to consider is the total net consequences of a given act or rule of action. We are justified in considering the pleasure of tonight’s drinking against the pain of tomorrow’s headache, the pleasure of tonight’s eating against the pain of tomorrow’s indigestion or unwelcome increase in weight, the pleasure of this summer’s vacation in Europe against this fall’s precarious bank balance. We should not be misled by the term “long run” into supposing that pleasure, satisfaction, or happiness is to be valued only in accordance with its duration: its “intensity,” “certainty,” “propinquity,” “fecundity,” “purity,” and “extent” also count. In this insight Bentham was correct. In the rare cases of conflict, it is the rule of action that promises to yield the most satisfaction, rather than merely the longest satisfaction, or merely the greatest future satisfaction, that we should choose. We need not value probable future satisfaction above present satisfaction. It is only because our human nature is too prone to yield to present impulse and forget the future cost that it is necessary to make a special effort to keep this future cost before the mind at the moment of temptation. If the immediate pleasure does indeed outweigh the probable future cost, then refusal to indulge oneself in a pleasure is mere asceticism or self-deprivation for its own sake. To make this a rule of action would not increase the sum of happiness, but reduce it.

Yet no future, even the next five minutes, is certain, and we cannot do more at any time than act on probabilities (although, as we shall see, some probabilities of a given course of conduct or rule of action are considerably more probable than others). And there are people capable of concern regarding the fate of mankind far beyond the probable length of their own lives.

When we look at the relative value that we actually do assign to them, we find that in the economic world the market has worked out a “rate of interest” which is, in effect, the average or composite rate of discount that the market community applies to future as compared with present goods. When the interest rate is 5 per cent, $1.05 a year from now is worth no more than $1 today, or $1 a year from now no more than about 95 cents today. If an individual (who is in desperate need) values $2 a year from now at no more than $1 today, we are perhaps entitled to say that he undervalues future as compared with present goods. But whether we are entitled to say, simply because there is a rate of interest or a rate of time-discount, that the economic community as a whole “undervalues” the future, is very dubious. Backward communities have a higher rate of. future time discount than progressive communities. The poor tend to put a higher relative valuation on present goods than the rich. But can we say that the lower valuation placed on future as compared with present goods by humanity as a whole is “wrong”?

I for one will no more attempt to answer this question in the ethical than in the economic realm. At best we can judge the individual’s valuation against the whole community’s valuation. What we can say, however, is that any course of action based on a real underestimation or undervaluation of future consequences will result in less total happiness than one which estimates or values future consequences justly.

The distinction between short- and long-run consequences was implicitly, though not expressly, the basis of the ethical system that Bentham presented in his Deontology, in which he classifies all the virtues under the two main heads of Prudence and Beneficence, and further divides them, in four chapters, under the heads of Self-Regarding Prudence, Extra-Regarding Prudence, Negative Efficient Benevolence, and Positive Efficient Benevolence.

It is consideration of long-run consequences that gives Prudence a far larger role in ethics than it has been commonly assumed to have. This is suggested by Bentham’s title head, “Extra-Regarding Prudence.” The happiness of each of us is dependent upon his fellows. He depends upon their concurrence and cooperation. One can never disregard the happiness of others without running a risk to his own.

To sum up: The distinction between the short-run and the long-run effects of conduct is more valid than the traditional contrasts between the interests of the individual and the interests of society. When the individual acts in his own long-run interests he tends to act also in the long-run interest of the whole society. The longer the run we consider, the more likely are the interests of the individual and of society to become identical. Moral conduct is in the long-run interest of the individual.

To recognize this is to perceive the solution of a basic moral problem that otherwise seems to present a contradiction. The difficulties that arise when this is not clearly recognized can be seen from a passage in an otherwise penetrating writer:

If we emphasize the distinction between short-run and long-run interests, however, the solution to this problem becomes much simpler and involves no paradox. Then we would rewrite the foregoing passage like this: Moralities are systems of principles whose acceptance by everyone as overruling the apparent dictates of immediate self-interest is in the long-run interest of everyone alike. We should be moral because being moral is following rules which disregard apparent self-interest in the short run and are designed to promote our own real long-run interest as well as the interest of others who are affected by our actions. It is only from a short-sighted view that the interests of the individual appear to be in conflict with those of “society,” and vice versa.

Actions or rules of action are not “right” or “wrong” in the sense in which a proposition in physics or mathematics is right or wrong, but expedient or inexpedient, advisable or inadvisable, helpful or harmful. In brief, in ethics the appropriate criterion is not “truth” but wisdom. To adopt this concept is, indeed, to return to the concept of the ancients. The moral appeal of Socrates is the appeal to conduct our lives with wisdom. The Proverbs of the Old Testament do not speak dominantly of Virtue or Sin, but of Wisdom and Folly. “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom. . . . The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. . . . A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother. . . . As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.”

We shall reserve until later chapters the detailed illustration and application of the Long-Run Principle. Here we are still concerned with the epistemological or theoretical foundations of ethics rather than with casuistry or detailed practical guidance. But it is now possible to take the next step from the theoretical to the practical. It is one of the most important implications of the Long-Run Principle (and one that Bentham, strangely, failed explicitly to recognize) that we must act, not by attempting separately in every case to weigh and compare the probable specific consequences of one moral decision or course of action as against another, but by acting according to some established general rule or set of rules. This is what is meant by acting according to principle. It is not the consequences (which it is impossible to know in advance) of a specific act that we have to consider, but the probable long-run consequences of following a given rule of action.

Why this is so, and how it is so, we shall examine in our next chapter.