Diamond Anything but Argument

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The Realistic Spirit.Cora Diamond.© 1995 The MIT Press.

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I choose this sentence as exemplifying a view of how philosophicaldiscussion in ethics can be carried on, and how it should be carriedon- a view as common as it is confused. It rests on a conception ofmoral thought which is not merely false, but which also renders unaccountable

and incomprehensible the moral force of many kinds ofliterature . That is not all it does, but it is enough to be getting onwith .

Chapter 11

Anything but Argument ?

Yet if the appeal on behalf of animals is to convince those whose hearts donot already so incline them, it must , like appeals on behalf of dependenthuman beings, reach beyond assertion to argument .Onora O ' Neill ]

I

Let me place the sentence in its context . It comes from OnoraO' Neill 's review of Stephen Clark 's The Moral Status of Animals, a bookwhose aim is to change the way we think about animals . ProfessorClark 's book does, indeed, contain arguments , but these are for themost part directed against various claims that human beings have aspecial and unique moral status, that they- unlike animals - must betreated with respect. Professor O' Neill criticizes Clark not so muchfor the arguments that are there as for the ones which are not , oneswhich would show us the grounds for granting the moral status ofanimals . Clark suggests a way of looking at animals - as our kin ; butwe may find that our hearts are not touched by what ProfessorO' Neill refers to as Clark 's " vision of the peaceable kingdom ." And

if we are not persuaded by the vision and ask for reasons foraccepting his view that animals are kin , we find no arguments .He believes that animals have both varied sorts of sentience and

intelligence , and that this grounds at least a claim that unnecessary

suffering is wrong . But he wants us to accept that animalshave far more extensive moral claims. And here he appeals onlyto the heart .2

Professor O' Neill contrasts Clark 's approach with that of those whohave been engaged in recent philosophical debate on abortion andeuthanasia and the like , and who have probed the grounds of moral

obligations to those who do not have normal human capacities. She

says of these debates that they scarcely stir the surface of Clark 'sbook- and it is at this point that she makes the claim that I havestarted with : that a convincing appeal on behalf of animals must gobeyond assertion to argument .

Let me go back to that original sentence: its precise wording is important. Here are some questions about it .

1. Yet if the appeal on behalf of animals is to convince. . . it must reach

beyond assertion to argument .When we engage in philosophical discussion about such a subject

as abortion , or the moral status of animals, whom should we think ofourselves as trying to convince? For if we proceed by giving arguments

, we presumably do not expect to be able to convince anyonewho is incapable of following our arguments , or who is too prejudiced

to consider them . And if we are talking about convincing human

beings, surely it is a fact about many of them that one certain way ofnot convincing them is to try arguing the case. So we do recognizeincapacitiesandattitudes of mind which would leave our arguments

- however good as arguments they may be - simply passing bythose with such incapacitiesorattitudes . No one who urges another

philosopher to give arguments thinks of argument as capable of convincing

everybody. When we put forward arguments , or urge someoneelse to do so, we have some conception of what it would be to succeed

in giving genuinely convincing arguments, and also of those whowould nevertheless not be convinced, even should they attend to the

arguments . Now , argument is simply one way people approachmoral questions, and there are other ways of trying to convincesome -

one of one's view of animals or fetuses or slaves or children or whatever it may be. Suppose someone writes a novel (call it Oliver Twist,

or David Copper field) with the aim (among other aims perhaps) of leading

people to share a concern for children . Suppose he succeeds in

writing something which is genuinely convincing in its way. By thatI do not mean that he succeeds in convincing people. Just as a convincing

argument is not one which will succeed in convincing everyone who attends to it , a convincing novel -with -a-moral -aim is not one

292 Chapter 11

Anything but Argument ? 293

which will succeed in convincing everyone who reads it . If we judgesuch a work to be convincing , we may recognize nevertheless thatthere are certain kinds of incapacity which would leave someone unlikely

to be convinced by reading the novel . Two examples of suchincapacities: a very limited moral imagination ; an intelligence inadequately

trained and incapable of recognizing irony .Now, given that there are various styles in which one may attemptto convince someone of some moral view, and given that any such

attempt , even if it is convincing (in whatever way attempts in thatstyle can be convincing ), will not actually succeed in convincing people

with various sorts of incapacities or prejudices , why should it bethought that when a philosopher tries to convince those who are notalready convinced, he should aim at convincing by argument thosewho can be convinced by good arguments? It would not be enoughto say: that is what philosophers do. It is indeed what some of themdo, or perhaps, more accurately, what all of them do some or mostof the time . What we have seen, though , is that when a philosopheraims to convince, as Clark does, and uses a style which - as he himself

recognizes - will not succeed with those whose hearts cannot bemoved at all by the vision he suggests, he is told he ought to use amethod which is as it were heart-indifferent . But it is not at all obvious

that the method is appropriate . I believe that underlying theidea that one ought to use such an approach is the idea that whensomeone is reason ably convinced of something , the convincing willhave to have proceeded by arguments (or what could , at any rate, beset out as arguments), and the capacities of his head and not of hisheart will be all that is involved . Part of this idea is that becomingconvinced in any other way is merely a matter of the operation ofcauses. Alterations in someone's heart are carried out not by reasonable

convincings but by- mere - persuadings . But this takes me to asecond question .2. If the appeal

" is to convince those whose hearts do not already so inclinethem,

" the convincing must go on by arguments .Why ? The picture that is suggested is that we start with a person

whose heart has some fixed inclination : towards animals, or indifferent to them, towards cats and against rats, towards whites and

against blacks, or whatever . If a person's inclinations are (say) towards

cats and against rats, the only way of leading him to take ratsmore seriously will be to give him arguments (e.g., that there are nogrounds for concern for cats that are not equally grounds for concernfor rats, rats and cats not differing in any morally relevant way). Butis this supposed to be obvious? It seems not only not obvious but not

even true . Let me take the case again of someone who writes a novelwith the aim of convincing those whose hearts are not already inclined

in some direction . Must we say: either he is not going in for

convincing - not really- or he is producing arguments? Is there nothing that is an attempt to enlarge the moral imagination ? It is Onora

O' Neill who makes use of the comparison with appeals on behalf of

dependent human beings: like such appeals, she says, those on behalfof animals must proceed by argument . Is David Copper field not (amongother things ) an appeal on behalf of those who were locked up asmadmen, like Mr . Dick? Is it not meant to convince those whosehearts were not already inclined in the same direction as the heart of

Betsey Trotwood ? Was it not meant to show them, and show themwith imaginative force, a way of looking at the Mr . Dicks of theworld ? Some hearts are not '

already inclined ' some ways becausetheir possessors have not exercised their imaginations in certain directions

, have not been led to do so. Is an attempt to widen the imagination something which it is all right for novelists to do, but not all

right for philosophers ? It does not seem as if that is Professor O' Neill 's

point ; for she writes as if the heart as it were simply went whatever

way it did , and that serious thought, directed at those whose hearts goinitially in some direction which one thinks is the wrong direction ,aims for the head and not the heart of its intended audience. But thismust be a mistake. Dickens aims at the heart, and there is serious

thought in what he does; he aims to convince and not simply to bringit about that the heart goes from bad state 1 to good state 2. He doesnot aim at mere conversion, if I may put it so. If the idea is that thatis all right for novelists but not for philosophers , what is there to besaid for it ? Admittedly , the ways we can, as philosophers , judge some

philosophical work which is directed at enlarging our imaginations -as Clark 's is - will not be the same as the ways in which we judgesheer arguments; but the problems of exercising philosophical judgment

of such works need not incline us to regard them as not- assuch- philosophical works at all .

Professor O' Neill gives a slightly different version of the same pointat the end of her paper, and I do not find that it makes things anyclearer:

It is because [Clark ] seeks to do morality without metaphysicsthat his appeals can reach only the audience who share his commitment

to animals .3

The idea is that through metaphysics one can make plain the groundsof moral standing . Again I want to ask: is the point that the appealsof anyone who 'does morality

' without making plain the grounds of

294 Chapter 11

Anything but Argument? 295

moral standing can reach only those who share his commitments ?Does 'doing morality

' include writing essays, poems and stories? Ifso, the claim is so obviously false as to make one think it cannot bemeant; if not , if

'doing morality

' is doing it in the context of philoso -phy, why is it that philosophers

'doing morality

'- and theyalone ?-are in this pickle?3. " reach beyond assertion to argument

"

Is this meant to imply that the only way of going beyond assertionis going to argument ? If Professor O' Neill 's point is that one may reject

anyone's unargued-for vision of things , that is correct but hardly

interesting . One may also simply reject a claim for which sound argument has been offered . Someone who rejects a good argument

does so at a cost: for example, at the cost of showing his own incapacity to think carefully . Someone who rejects some articulated ways

of looking at things may show limitations of other sorts. To proceedbeyond assertion in an attempt to convince others of a way of lookingat animals, or dependent human beings, or trees or whatever is toproduce something that makes plain a cost of rejecting the view inquestion; and there are costs of different kinds , depending on thestyle of the attempt to convince. But in any case there are various waysof proceeding beyond assertion; and in fact as far as I can see it is theconviction that beyond assertion there lies only argument that is thebasis of Professor O' Neill 's description of what Clark does asassertion.

I have raised these questions about a single sentence of OnoraO' Neill 's. Before I return to them, I need to cast a wider lookaround- first at some remarks earlier in her paper.

Professor O' Neill writes of a problem that she thinks arises, givenClark 's views . For him the root of our moral response is in the affections

; how then, she asks, can we not be landed with aparticularis -tic, local morality

'?- for that is what our affections tie us to. Sherecognizes that Clark thinks that our personal and particular affections

can lead us to a more objective hierarchy of values, in whichrespect goes beyond personal kin and friends . But, she says, he doesnot make clear how this transition is brought about, and he indeedconfess es (her word , and important ) that

my strongest temptation is to reckon the rational hierarchy . . .no more than a paranoid fantasy as soon as it takes on a lifeseparate from the heart's affections and the plain evidence ofsense . . .

Her comment is that if we follow this temptation , the moral claims ofthose for whom we care are stronger than those of distant strangers

with whom we feel no bond , or than those of nearby human kin forwhom we do not care, or than those of animals for whom we feel

nothing warm .4

Now , why does she think that if we follow the temptation to regarda rational hierarchy wholly independent of the heart's affections as a

paranoid fantasy, we must be landed with a hierarchy entirely dependent on unmodified personal affections? That we are thus stuck is a

reasonable conclusion to draw only if one makes an unreasonable

assumption , namely that the only way to lead someone from his initial

personal affections to a recognition of moral status going beyondthe things he initially cared for is by appeal to purely rationalconsiderations .

But here we are back at points we have already considered . It is

simply not true that someone who holds that moral thought must reston the natural affections is committed to the idea that moral thoughtwill , as a result , be as narrow as those affections initially are in all ofus, unless something happens to happen to make the affectionswider , a bolt from the causal blue, transforming the character of the

person it hits . I leave open here the further question raised by this

passage whether the moral claims of those who are near and dear tous are not (often enough) stronger than those of distant strangerswith whom we feel no bond . Fortunately , we are not confronted bythe simple pair of alternatives : all beings who have whatever it is that

rationally grounds moral respect are morally at the same distancefrom us or only those we naturally care for have any moral claim onus. (I suspect Professor O' Neill of doing something like this : Clarkwants to reject both, but what we have to take seriously is that he

rejects the first ; therefore he is - like anyone who rejects the first -

landed, like it or not , with the second.)Professor O' Neill claims, I said, that Clark tells us nothing about

how the transition from particularistic affections to a more objectivehierarchy of values is supposed to come about . But this is a revealingmisreading on her part .

That is to say, Clark gives an answer to that question , but it is notvisible to Professor O' Neill - because she does not see it as a possibleanswer; it is not an answer of the sort she is looking for . The answerhe gives is that the transition depends on our coming to attend to theworld and what is in it , in a way that will involve the exercise of allour faculties; and that religion , poetry , and science, if uncontaminated

by self-indulgent fantasy, are the most important modes of

thought leading to that kind of attentive imaginative response to theworld . It may be that this answer itself needs explanation ; but at any

296 Chapter 11

rate it is a summary of an answer , one that reflects a way ofabout morality very different from Professor O ' Neill 's.

thinkin ~


II

At the beginning of this paper, I said that Onora O' Neill 's conceptionof moral thinking makes it impossible to account for the moral forceof many kinds of literature . I want now to explain that .

Our- philosophers'- paradigm of moral thinking is just what Professor

O' Neill suggests: that of an interweaving of fact and generalprinciple . Thus, e.g.: if you recognise cats as having moral status, thismust- we shall tell you- be grounded in their having somethingwhich on your principle counts as morally significant , say sentienceor intelligence ; and if as a matter of fact there are no differences ofsentience or intelligence between cats and rats, and the only differences

are these slight ones of physiology and behavior , which surelycannot be regarded as of moral relevance, then surely you must giveup your idea that rats lack moral status or give up your idea that catshave it . (This conception is expressed in Professor O' Neill 's repeatedstatements5 that if Clark wants to ground the moral status of animalson their being our kin , he owes us an explanation of what he takesthis kinship to consist in and of how it is supposed that kinship , consisting

in whatever , makes respect for the needs and interests of animals their due.) It is possible to assimilate the moral thinking in some

straightforwardly didactic literature to that model , but it will not fitmost other cases.

Take, very briefly , three examples.First, there are in Wordsworth 's Lyrical Ballads several poems clearly

meant to lead their audience to new moral responses. One would saythat of the poems even without the description in the Preface ofWordsworth 's intention : to enlarge the reader's moral and emotionalsensibilities . "The Old Cumber land Beggar

" is especially interestingas an example, because the moral aim is very clear, and because thereis actually an argument (given in enthymematic form ) in it , roughlythis : --

None of the created forms can exist divorced from good;Therefore least of all can any human being be scorned without

sin;Therefore the old beggar is not to be deemed useless.6

But it would be absurd to believe that that argument (or that argument more fully spelled out ) is what is intended to do the work of

convincing anyone who had been inclined to deem old beggars useless. We have not only the structure and content of the poem, but

Wordsworth 's Preface, to make clear that the moral force of the poemis created by the way objects are described and feelings given in connection

with each other : that is how Wordsworth thinks to enlightenthe understanding and ameliorate the affections of those readers whocan respond to such poems.

It might be objected that Wordsworth 's account is obscure and that ,so far as anything can be made of it , it means only that a poem maylead us to accept a moral view by describing particular applicationsof it in language likely to engage our emotions - which no one, OnoraO' Neill or anyone else, is likely to deny. What then is there supposedto be in Wordsworth 's practice to clash with the philosophical model?

We may see how to answer that if we ask one question two ways:What moral view is centrally conveyed in such poems as "The OldCumber land Beggar,

" "Simon Lee," "The Brothers,

" "The Idiot Boy,"

"Michael" ? What view of human nature is reflected in Wordsworth 'sconception of his own practice? One expression of the moral view

may be found in "The Old Cumber land Beggar," when the response

of the villagers to the beggar is explained : we have all of us one human heart . But what is it to be convinced of that? What sort of conviction

is it that such poems aim at? It cannot be separated from an

understanding of oneself, from an acknowledgment of certain capacities of response in oneself as appropriate both to their object and to

one's own nature . Rather a lot to expect! Wordsworth believes thatwe have a capacity to respond with deep sympathy to the feelings ofother people - that is, when they are moved by the "great and simpleaffections of our nature,

" " the essential passions of the heart ." The

poet's representation of a person under the influence of such a feeling

can excite in us a feeling appropriate both to what is described andto our own nature, the appropriateness being something we cancome to recognize in part through the kind of pleasure such a poemgives. The "competence and confidence" with which we are able to

judge that truth of the kind Wordsworth thought had been achievedis inseparable (he thought ) from the strength with which the heart

responds to the representation . We can come to recognize what is

expressed in "we have all of us one human heart" through coming tofeel the force of the heart's responses to such poems as the ones Imentioned . In a sense, someone who has not learned to respond withthe heart in such ways has not learned to think (

"thought with him!

Is in its infancy"); for thinking well involves thinking charged with

appropriate feeling . Poetry then helps develop the heart's capacities

298 Chapter 11

that are the basis for the moral life by deepening our emotional lifeand our understanding of it .

The second example is one I have already mentioned : the attemptsby Dickens to lead people to a sympathetic way of looking at children .Many features of many of his novels are relevant to this aim: I shalltake only one. Dickens again and again shows us how the worldlooks to a small and helpless child . For example:

I remember Mr . Hubble as a tough high -shouldered old man, ofa sawdusty fragrance, with his legs extraordinarily wide apart :so that in my short days I always saw some miles of open countrybetween them when I met him coming up the lane. 7

My claim is that such sentences are part of the way Dickens attemptsto realize a moral aim: that of getting the reader to attend to a childas a center of a view of the world , and, of what is particularly and inmany ways peculiarly a child's view of the world . Orwell commentedthat no novelist has shown the same power of entering into thechild 's point of view, and that no one before Dickens had noticedwhat he did of how children perceive and think .8 There are manypassages in Dickens in which what we are shown from the child 'sview has obvious moral significance: being slighted , having one's privacy

invaded , being unjustly treated- and it is easy to see how theseare related to Dickens's moral aims. But my point now is that there isa moral aim even in passages which do not bear specifically on treating

a child well or badly . Stephen Clark remarks on coming to experience, through affection, " the possibility of considering the object in

its own right ," 9 and I suggest that such passages in Dickens show us

what it is to attend to a child so; Dickens, that is, provides paradigmsof a sort of attention . His aim, like Wordsworth 's, is to enlighten theunderstanding and ameliorate the affections by providing descriptions

which stimulate imagination and moral sensibility ; like Words-worth , he sees the achievement of such an aim as inseparable fromwriting something that will give pleasure.

I should say more about 'paradigms of a sort of attention ', since it

might be thought that the point of attending in a particular way wasin what we could find out by such attention , and that whatever factswe reached, they could be fitted into the philosophical model ofmoral thought . If , that is, Dickens shows us a kind of attention , inthis particular case to children , why then it surely is morally significant

if it enables us to leave behind moral views resting on ignoranceof what children are like , their needs and capacities.

The moral significance of the kind of attention given by Dickens to


the things he writes about is not a matter of its leading us to graspfacts of which we had previously been unaware . The attention whichwe see directed towards the lives and thoughts of children has a characteristic

emotional color, the result of its combining great warmth ,concentration of energy, and humor ; it express es a particular style ofaffectionate interest in human things and imaginative engagementwith them. Dickens does not say: " Look at this : children do this andthat , see thus and so, feel such-and-such, and these facts must betaken to be morally relevant ." Rather his descriptions (not only whatis described but the language in which it is) show an attention whichengages us - if he is successful, and does not fail by getting the emotional

tone off through sentimentality . Where he is successful, thedescription is not only enjoyable but can contribute to our lastingsense of human life, of what is interesting and important . to

Dickens also presents many cases (Gradgrind's the best known ) of

a contrasting sort of attention , a kind of concentration on 'the facts'

which is cold and even insolent . Far from its being the case- on Dick-ens's view- that the point of the kind of attention we give lies in whatwe find out , what we can find out by a coldly presumptuous approach

to the world can feed no adequate moral thought .My third example is the use of various sorts of 'warm '

irony , especially characteristic of writers like Jane Austen and Henry James.

As James himself points out , such irony may be combined with " thatfine taste for the truth and the pity and the meaning of the matterwhich keeps the temper of observation both sharp and sweet." tt

Since one main use of such irony is in moral criticism of human character and forms of social life , we may think that the criticism , whatever it is, might be expressed straightforwardly , without irony , and

that the moral interest of passages in which irony is so used dependson that extractible content . I do not care to argue whether the idea ofthe 'extractible content ' makes sense; probably it does make some.The important point is rather the moral interest of the particular kindof irony exhibited in such works as James

's and Jane Austen 's. Thereader of them is invited to share a way of viewing human nature andits failings , in which amusement, sympathy , critical intelligence , anddelicacy of moral discrimination all playa role . Besides showing usthe possibility and attractiveness of that view of human nature , suchliterature can lead us to a rejection of the heavy-handed, sententious,or solemn in moral thought ; we see that the seriousness and depthof moral thinking is entirely independent of any earnest or moralizingtone - and indeed that such a tone is itself something for ironic treatment

. The appeal of such a view is to the intelligence of the reader,inviting him , as it does, to give moral thought , moral criticism , a place

300 Chapter 11

III

An attempt might be made to force the varieties of moral thoughtfound in literature into our philosophical model this way : it might besaid that a moral view can be presented in literature but its criticalevaluation must be carried out through argument . How can we judgea view except by seeing what its grounds are and what we are committed

to in accepting it ? And how else can we see that , except byargument : argument for it , including argumentative elaboration ofthe view itself , and argument against it ? How else can we judge thestrength of a moral view ?

How else indeed? It is not an unanswerable question- and argument does have some role in supporting the judgments , themselves

more various in kind than the philosophical model allows , that needto be made.

In the case of an attitude like that Dickens shows us towards children, or of an ironic attitude towards - let us say- American life , the

one thing we cannot do is ask, quite independently of the form theattitude is given in particular works , whether that sort of attitude towards

such-and-such kind of thing is appropriate . How would thatgo? Are the facts about children such that the kind of interest Dickenstakes is fitting ? What facts? Are we to describe children , their perceptions

, emotions and thoughts , and then find some principle for directing emotional attitudes towards things of any sort whatever

(small sentient Martians included ) having such-and-such properties ?This is sheer comedy, and not the way to get at what is right (whenit is right ) or wrong with a presented attitude . As I mentioned , Dick-ens's own view is that the investigation of facts, facts, facts cannotshow us what we need in order to respond well to the world . Orsuppose we ask whether American life is such as to make an ironicattitude towards it appropriate . Someone might be inclined to say"Yes, yes!,

" sniffing in the unironic American consciousness a peculiarly

fitting target for ironic criticism . Such a judgment , though ,would be dependent on his having already grasped and enjoyed thepointedness of particular ironic treatments of if not American life itself

sufficiently similar things ; his intelligence has developed thatway- and whether that is an appropriate development is not aquestion

to be settled by general principles governing the suitability ofironic appreciation .


in an ideal of civilized human life . The appeal is to the intelligence ,but does not go via arguments - however hard that may be to fit intoour philosophical schemes.

If we consider a particular ironic treatment of something , it may be

judged to be unconvincing , and the judgment supported by argument. Thus, for example, F. R. Leavis argues (unconvincingly , as I

should wish to say) that the ironic 'placing

', in Portrait of a Lady, of

Isabel Archer 's illusion of free choice is unconvincing - because, sup-

posedly, James has failed to put her character in a sharp enough crit -

icallight ; she is insufficiently specified.12 Again , James himself argues

that the 'ironic idea' in de Maupassant's treatment of the blackguard

in Bel-Ami is 'injured

' by the depravity of all the characters over

whom he is victorio US.13 If a work uses both irony and argument , asfor example Hume 's "Of Suicide,

" either- or both- may be judgedunconvincing ; the judgments are characteristically different and supported

by different sorts of consideration . Thus one might argue thatHume 's ironic treatment of the contemporary view of suicide is unconvincing

because he has not got a 'civilized ' alternative to the 'su-

perstitious' view : "diverting a few ounces of blood from their natural

channel" so obviously will not do. Like criticism of an argument as

unconvincing , criticism of a use of irony as unconvincing is directedat the thought of the writer ; it is not a matter of judging the work in

question to be unpersuasive, or unlikely to be successful as propaganda. I have taken irony as an example; similar points could be

made about criticism of other kinds of moral thought inliterature -and out of it .

But it may be said that that sort of criticism is of limited interest . Ifa moral view is presented, by argument or otherwise , we may judgethat the presentation fails (or is flawed as whatever kind of presentation

it is), but that leaves open the question of evaluation of what is

presented. And it is here (or so the suggestion would run ) that wemust come to something like philosophical criticism . Thus, e.g., in thecase of Hume , it might be said that whether or not the irony works ,what matters is to establish whether he is right that suicide " may befree from every imputation of guilt or blame." But we should notethat Hume has two aims. Showing suicide to be morally permissibleis the subordinate one; the more important one is to illustrate the

superiority of the 'philosophical ' over the 'superstitious' approach to

things of importance in human life . (In fact, Hume loses interest inthe subject of the permissibility of suicide as soon as he gets to questions

irrelevant to his main aim, and the discussion then loses its intellectual distinction .) Does he show that the philosopher

's way of

thinking about a question like suicide is preferable to that of the 'su-

perstitious'? He cannot do so if his view of suicide is shallow ; and the

philosopher's model of what it is to judge a moral view does not fit

judgments of the sort we need to make about Hume .

302 Chapter 11

We develop the capacity to make such judgments through habitsof awareness, reflection , and discrimination .14 That is, we comeacross all sorts of things which invite emotional response, or invitethe taking up of an attitude or of a mode of thought - including here,as 'issuers' of such invitations , works of literature and philosophy . Atfirst such responses will not be considered ones at all : we respond (letus say) with delighted amazement and wonder at fairy tales, in awholly unreflective way. But we can come to be aware of what makesfor deeper understanding and an enriching of our own thought andexperience; we can come to have a sense of what is alive, and whatis shallow, sentimental , cheap; as we make comparisons, we come toknow what are the reasons for our interest in this , our feeling thatthat is important . We thus learn also to support our judgments witharguments, which will in many cases depend on the kinds of comparison

we are able to make: the shoddy thought can be shown upby being placed alongside the genuine .

This is a kind of learning to think ; it plays an essential role in theeducation of the emotions and in the development of moral sensibility

. I have spoken of literary and non-literary works which invite usto respond emotionally or to take up some moral attitude or view oflife; what I need to add is that such works may include in the 'invi -tation ' an invitation to just the kind of awareness and critical reflection

that I have described. We are familiar enough with the kind ofcritical attention invited by philosophical argument , the kind of workdemanded by it of the reader; but critical attention to the characterand quality of thought in a work may be asked of a reader in manyother ways as well . Further , a work may invite the reader to elaborateand develop a way of looking at things and to respond critically to itthen as a possibility , perhaps leaving open in various ways how it isto be elaborated, perhaps incorporating any number of suggestions.This is in fact what Stephen Clark does, and his book is indeed demanding

of a reader in quite different ways from those of standardcontemporary moral philosophy . For example, at the end of adiscussion

of the fantasies that distort our thought about the non-humanworld , Clark prints , without comment , Gerald Manley Hopkins

's"God's Grandeur ." He neither asserts nor argues that the poem is freeof such fantasy; nor does he show us the bearing of the poem on whatit is to think without fantasy about animals . What thought the placingof the poem there shows and what thought it asks of the reader isclear enough, if , that is, we read with habits other than those of philosophers

trained to look only for assertion and argument . If Clark 'saim is that his readers acknowledge something in themselves whichhabits of thought and response overlay and keep hidden , it is essen-


IV

Someone might conceivably agree with what I have said in Part IIIabout the critical assessment of moral thought , and indeed use it tomake a different objection from any I have considered . You may be

right , he says, that presentations of moral thought invite critical reflection of various kinds , but a philosophical work invites a particular

kind of assessment of any moral view it presents: it invites assessment of it by assessment of the arguments for it , the placing of it in

an articulated body of moral thought .Such a view reflects in some ways a shrinkage of the original claim

made in Onora O' Neill 's piece: that no one not already convinced ofa view like Clark 's could come to be convinced of it except by arguments

. The idea is now that human beings, even including philosophers, might be convinced by such a work , but that without more in

the way of argument and articulation than Clark provides , certain

characteristically philosophical kinds of assessment of his view- implicitly invited by the presentation of the work as a work of philoso -

phy- cannot be made.What underlies the objection is, in part , the idea that philosophy ,

as contrasted with literature (or at any rate with literature not itself

steeped in philosophy ) presents us with views whose generality and

systematic interrelations are important . We are not told , when a workof philosophy presents a moral view, that this is right and also that ,but are shown that the thises and the thats are all consequences ofsome general propositions about what beings of such-and-such sorts

ought to do, taken together with claims about the facts and perhapssome general points about human nature; at the very highest levelthere may also be statements linking various kinds of moral status ofa very abstract sort (

'moral agent',

'bearer of rights' , and so on) with

very general kinds of characterization , like sentience, rationality , andthe capacity for free choice.- Thus when we come across such claimsas that Individual A has a right at time t that state of affairsS obtainat time t* only if Individual A is the type of object that is capableof desiring that state of affairsS should obtain at time t* (etc.),15

we should greet this not with blank unbelief that anyone shouldwant to think such a thought but with the reassuring certainty

304 Chapter 11

tial that he invite us to set our imagination and sensibility and intelligence to work ; only that exercise can put us in a position properly

to judge the view of animals he invites us to take up . Like any judgments worth bothering with , it will call on more than just the capacities

of the head.


that here at any rate is moral philosophy critically assessable assuch.

What is wrong with the objection is not the idea that philosophy ischaracteristically more systematic than literature in its presentation ofmoral views; it is rather the implicit view of the kind of system thatmoral philosophers should aim at. But it is not merely a view aboutmoral philosophy . If we think that philosophers should try to workout moral views with that kind of systematic generality , it is becausewe think that people should aim to order their own moral thought insomething like that sort of way, even if we do not expect them towork out fully explicit systems. Even without such expectations, wethink that they ought to be able to feel the force, or be able to bebrought to, of objections and lines of argument which clearly dependon the idea that that kind of systematic order is desirable. One of ourinheritances from the Great Age of Metaethics is that we take to be'morally neutral ' such ideas as that the body of someone's moralthought is improved when his principles are altered so that they nolonger give counter-intuitive results in some case no matter how unlikelyis

it permissible to destroy an acorn that has been treated sothat it will become a rational being in two years

' time?) or when theyare formulated more clearly so that it can be determined what theirconsequences are for such cases, or when his underived principlesno longer make use of allegedly

'morally irrelevant ' distinctions like

that between human beings and animals . But these ideas belong to aparticular ideal of moral thought , the same one expressed in the current

objection, in its idea of how moral philosophers should aim topresent their moral views . Such an ideal of moral thought is far frombeing the only one and far from being some sort of obvious consequence

of what morality is. It embodies a particular view of the relation between morality and human nature : a view of which human

capacities are characteristically exercised in the development of some-one's moral life , and more specifically of what it is for someone toexercise his capacities as a thinking being in that development . Wetake the explicit formulation and testing of principles , for example, assuch an exercise, but not the bringing of imagination to bear on observation

, or the recognition that that has been done. Too narrow aview of what is an exercise of one's capacities as a thinking being-the identification of those capacities with those of the 'head' in thesense in which I have been using that term- leads us to mistake whatis merely an ideal of moral thought for something far more obviousthan it is.

Whatever else may be wrong with the current objection , the attempt to draw back from Professor O' Neill 's claims about how, how

only, we can convince was a mistake. The ideal of moral thought thatis expressed in that objection cannot be separated from her view ofwhat is involved in convincing someone of a moral view, of what itmust be like to do so. We could put it so: there is, after all , a distinctionbetween convincing someone of a moral view he has hitherto beeninclined to reject and simply getting him to change his moral views . Atthe very least, if he is to be convinced, he must be led, through theuse of his capacities as a thinking being, to take a certain change inhis moral outlook to be an improvement of some sort, a developmentfor the better. But now what is to count as such a development ? Andwhat is to count as a use of one's capacities as a thinking being in

taking a change in moral outlook so? Take as unproblematic the ideathat it is always an improvement in the body of someone's moral

thought when it comes closer to being a single coherent organizedsystem of principles , whose application to particular cases can befixed by adequate empirical data, take as unproblematic the identification

of one's capacities as a thinking being with those of the head-and one has answered those questions, answered them in a way thatmakes clear, or seems to, that only argument can convince .

The conclusion is that the arguments I have given are in a sense

quite useless. For if someone takes a view of the relation betweenhuman nature and morality from which it follows that only argumentcan convince, you cannot convince him by examples that convincingdoes not need to go by arguments, nor can you show such a personby examples that assessment of a moral view does not rest on its argumentative

elaboration . Any case that might be brought will not orrather cannot count; what I have called cases of convincing must be

relegated to the limbo of mere persuasion. But there is after all no

compulsion on us to go that way, well trodden as it is. Stephen Clarkis hardly alone in taking a very different view of how morality andhuman nature are related; nor do you have to go in for his brand ofAristotelianism laced with Pyrrhonic Scepticism, Neo-Platonism, and

Episcopalianism on different days of the week to do so. You can be aCatholic, an Existentialist , or a Marxist , as Iris Murdoch once said,16

or None of the Above, like Dickens, Wordsworth , Henry James, anda host of others. What is characteristic of some of these views, including

Clark's, is that they take as the root of morality in human naturea capacity for attention to things imagined or perceived: what I thinkit would be fair to call a loving and respectful attention ; W. H . Auden

speaks of it (in describing the implicit morality of Walter de la Mare'sverse) as a combination of wonder , awe and reverence, and another

very characteristic expression of such a view may be found , inWords -

worth , in an early draft of The Prelude:

306 Chapter 11

We live by admiration and by love,And even as these are well and wisely fixed ,In dignity of being we ascend.17

It is easy to see that anyone who accepts such a view is likely to regard imaginative literature as of the greatest importance indeveloping

and strengthening our moral capacities, and in turning them innew directions .

Such a view of the relation between morality and human natureis - not least because what one takes morality to be is not somethinggiven in advance and independently - highly disputable ; and it isperfectly all right for philosophers to dispute it . But what is not allright is for philosophers to lay down exclusive ground rules for thediscussion of moral issues in blithe unconsciousness that they aresimply taking for granted and building into those rules a totally different

view of morality and its relation to human nature . And that ina way makes it sound more of an impersonal matter than it is; for ourviews on this point show as nothing else in philosophy does soclearly how we see ourselves, what we take to be ourselves most trulyand what we find it difficult to own .

I began this paper with three questions about the relation betweengiving arguments and convincing someone of one's moral views . Wecan hold the following : that a convincing appeal for a moral view isone which shows the view in question to be connected systematicallywith a rationally acceptable morality . Argument is the way in whichwe make such connections clear; to make a moral assertion rationallyacceptable is to show such connections by argument . If we hold thatview, the answers to the questions I asked at the beginning are indeedclear. But it is important to note that " if ." IS

- -6. See lines 67-87.7. Great Expectations, chapter 4.8. "Charles Dickens," in George Orwell, A Collection of Essays (Garden City, New

York, Double day, 1954), pp. 67-8.9. Stephen Clark, The Moral Status of Animals (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1977) ,

p. 91.10. "Life," " interest," " importance

" : cf. Henry James's much stronger remark aboutits being art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance (in The Letters of


Notes

1. Review of Stephen Clark, The Moral Status of Animals, in The Journal of Philosophy,LXXVII, 7 Guly 1980), p. 445.

2. ibid.3. op. cit., p. 446.4. op. cit., p. 443.5. op. cit., p. 442, pp. 445-6.

308 Chapter 11

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The Realistic Spirit.Cora Diamond.© 1995 The MIT Press.

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Diamond Anything but Argument

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