In this paper I make two assumptions as starting points. The first is that trying to ground morality in anything like a Judeo-Christian concept of God is futile. Any attempts to do so that survived the withering attack mounted by Socrates in his dialogue with Euthyphro have not survived Kant's critique where

Even the Holy One of the gospel must first be
compared to our ideal of moral perfection before
we can recognize him as such.1

The second assumption is that the purely rational approach favored by Kant himself, by Alan Gewirth, and by others has equally failed to provide a solid foundation for ethical claims. Such a claim is usually seen to result in a dichotomy. If the Gods of reason and religion cannot provide answers to the deepest ethical questions then there must be no answers. "If there is no God," said Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor, "then anything is permitted." The standard-bearer for a moral world without ideals is Nietzsche. Whether he is cited as a hero and sage or as a bogeyman, he provides the clearest challenge to a morality based on external standards. As he himself said:

My demand upon the philosopher is known, that he
take a stand beyond good and evil and leave the
illusion of moral judgment beneath himself. This
demand follows from an insight which I was the
first to formulate: that there are altogether no
moral facts.2

In his book, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century Jonathan Glover speaks for those alarmed by the Nietzschean slide when he says "The problem is how to accept Nietzsche's skepticism about a religious authority for morality while escaping from its appalling conclusions.3 In this paper I argue that the all-or-nothing dichotomy is a false dichotomy. Rejecting what Elizabeth Anscombe called "a law concept of ethics" does not inevitably lead to a Nietzschean morass.4 It is possible to provide a foothold from which to answer the deepest questions in ethics. In making this claim I want to respond to Glover's appeal that ethics become empirical. But first I want to take up a different strategy for dealing with the all-or-nothing dichotomy.

Part 1 - The Question

The outlines of Alasdair MacIntyre's argument in After Virtue are familiar. MacIntyre also identifies a dichotomy with Nietzsche on one side, but on the other side he places Aristotle. Or rather, he places an Aristotelian teleology that differs in some significant ways from Aristotle's own position. Rather than choosing between God and chaos, we choose between the politics of the will to power on the one hand and communally defined virtue on the other. MacIntyre agrees with Nietzsche that the gods of reason and religion are dead, but argues that we can prevent "the new dark ages" by "the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained.5

The enlightenment project of justifying morality had to fail, says MacIntyre, because it failed to comprehend the nature of morality. Morality requires three component parts. Enlightenment thinkers wrote eloquently on two of them: the raw untutored nature of human beings and the laws of morality. But they left out a crucial third component of morality. Morality requires a conception of human nature as it could be if it realized its telos. The precepts of ethics are the means for getting from raw humanity to a fulfilled existence.6 What provides the telos of human nature, the good for us? Aristotle's well-known answer is our biological nature. MacIntyre rejects this answer in favor of a telos formed within a communal practice, that practice in turn shaped by a historical tradition. MacIntyre rejects Aristotle's teleological biology because it reflects the "a-historical character of [Aristotle's] understanding of human nature."7 MacIntyre says:

To this it may be replied that surely there are qualities
which are useful or pleasant to human beings qua members
of a particular biological species with a particular
kind of environment. The standard of utility or
pleasure is set by man qua animal, man prior to and
without any particular culture. But man without culture is
a myth. Our biological nature certainly places constraints
on all cultural possibility; but man who has nothing but a
biological nature is a creature of whom we know
nothing.8

I believe this dismissal of biology is too quick. I see no reason why the fruits of empirical research cannot play much of the role assigned to Aristotle's metaphysical biology. Here I want to return to Jonathan Glover's book Humanity. Glover spends the bulk of the book

examining in impressive detail the psychological and political sources of the twentieth century's worst moral outrages. He makes some extremely astute comments about how the moral resources of human beings are undermined and overwhelmed, allowing people to perpetrate the most vile acts on each other. Glover's analysis of the roots of evil behavior is masterly but I find his response to his own analysis somewhat thin. Glover offers an impassioned appeal for the cultivation of moral imagination and for a program of "tentative, exploratory, and partly empirical research" that will humanize morality; that will root morality in "human needs and human values."9 Implicit in his account is a positive notion of what our lives would be like if our moral resources were not undermined or overwhelmed. However, he does not attempt to spell this positive account out in any systematic way. What is missing is an account of the fulfilled human condition, turning away from which is turning towards evil.

In her 1958 paper "Modern Moral Philosophy" Elizabeth Anscombe argued that "it is not profitable to do moral philosophy" and that it should be "laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking."10 I would argue that we no longer lack that psychology or, at least, that we have sufficient resources to begin what Glover calls the reconstruction of ethics. Glover calls for ethics to become partly empirical and the empirical sciences can provide much of what is needed to develop an understanding of what a fulfilled or flourishing human is like. Once we have rejected the law concept of ethics, as we must, it is this understanding that provides a foothold against the Nietzschean slide. It is not an Archimedean point, an absolute external source of value, but a goal rooted in human nature and aspiration. Utilizing resources from a number of disciplines I believe it is now possible to begin to craft an account of human nature as it would be if were fulfilled. I can do no more than map out what the task looks like and indicate what resources are available. What, then are the resources and how do they contribute to elucidating the eudaimonistic goal?

Part 2 - Resources

When Darwin's The Origin of Species first appeared many were quick to see its implications for morality. Human beings were the result of a brutal competition for resources and the virtues could have no place in nature red in tooth and claw. Darwin's opponents were most strident on this point, but even his supporters conceded the point. Thomas Huxley, in his 1894 lecture "Evolution and Ethics" argued that "ethical progress depends on combating nature," and the distinguished biologist G.C. Williams said "The enemy is indeed powerful and persistent and we need all the help we can get in trying to overcome billions of years of selection for selfishness."

However recent work by evolutionary psychologists has shown that this is undue pessimism. Building on the game theoretic work of Robert Axelrod and William Hamilton writers including Richard Dawkins, Robert Wright, Matt Ridley and Daniel Dennett have argued that, for social animals, many of our day to day interactions take on the formal characteristics of a prisoners dilemma.

The prisoners dilemma gets its name from a hypothetical situation in which two prisoners arrested on suspicion of a crime are placed in separate cells. The authorities come to each of them and say "If you betray your friend you will be set free with a reward unless he betrays you as well, in which case you will both get five years. If you remain silent and he betrays you, you will get twenty years. If you both remain silent there will be no case against either of you and you will both be free." The rational thing to do is, of course, to betray your friend. If you remain silent you run the risk of having him betray you in which case he goes free with a reward and you get twenty years.

This may seem like a very abnormal situation but they exist in real life. Consider the USA and the USSR at the height of the cold war when both had first strike capability and both seemed willing to use it. Striking first is like betraying while the other cooperates. The other side is wiped out and you achieve world domination. If both sides strike first they both sustain some damage, but not as much as a cooperating country would if the other launched a first strike. On a more domestic front, the same thing happens when funding for a project, such as street lighting or education, is being sought. Everyone has the temptation to defect, to pay as little as possible. If others pick up the bill, the defector gets the school without having to pay.

Although it looks as if the only rational solution to a prisoners dilemma situation is defection, the truth turns out to be more complicated. In any one instance of a prisoners dilemma the rational strategy is defection, but in iterated prisoners dilemmas, the sort faced by any social animal who must continue to interact with others and who can remember past interactions, the rational strategy is cooperation, as long as we can be sure that others will cooperate too. This provides an evolutionary pressure both to cooperate and to become very successful at detecting and punishing cheats. Under the pressures of natural selection, unsuccessful behavioral strategies are ruthlessly weeded out. Successful genes, those that get passed on to the next generation, will be those that encode for a tendency towards cooperation, and the detection and punishment of cheats. The genes do not themselves cooperate, defect, or punish, of course. But they do build bodies capable of doing so and inclined to do so. The neurological foundations on which the moral sentiments are constructed were laid down in our brains by the pressures of natural selection. As Matt Ridley puts it:

Our minds have been built by selfish genes, but
they have been built to be social, trustworthy,
and cooperative.11

Unfortunately the same pressures that select for cooperation within a group, or within alliances, also code for xenophobia and violence towards outsiders. This is the dark side of what evolutionary psychology tells us about our most basic emotional responses.

Evolutionary psychology can reassure us that we are not inherently selfish and that we are built to be social, trustworthy and cooperative. But that does not give us much in the way of detail about what the fulfilled life is like. For that we need to turn to the discipline of empirical psychology. I am thinking in particular of the work of Carl Rogers and others like him.

Rogers wrote a seminal paper called "A Therapists View of The Good Life" in which he argued that any account of a flourishing life has to be based on human experience. His conclusions are based on countless hours with patients who slowly made their way through a process of healing. The life they live at the end of the process is better because they say it is better, but that assertion is based on hours of therapy and years of experience. Similar evidence is produced by the work of social psychologists like Peter Hills and Michael Argyle.

A somewhat different approach is provided by the work of Amartya Sen. In an essay called "Capability and Well-Being" Sen identifies a point between the possession of a primary good such as food and the welfare which results from the possession of such a good, say the pleasure provided by a good meal.12 This he calls a "functioning" which he defines as "[part] of the state of a person - in particular the various things that he or she manages to be or do in leading a life."13 Rather than having food or experiencing the pleasure of a good meal, Sen's analysis concentrates on the state of being adequately nourished. The list of basic functionings may be relatively brief while that of the more complex functionings, including such features as achieving self respect or being socially integrated, may be "much longer and much more diverse."14 What is important is that it is possible to put together a list of functionings which together present a picture of a life worth living and that this list is applicable across cultures.

It may seem as though I am suggesting a very sterile exercise in morality - putting humanity in a petri dish and quantifying deadly or beneficial environments. I do not want it to seem that way. Reaching an understanding of the telos for people requires more than just empirical study. Morality involves, in Martha Nussbaum's phrase, an act of "creative imagination." Acting morally involves "thinking oneself into the other's best possibility" and the moral life involves not simply intellectual grasp of propositions; it is not even simply intellectual grasp of particular facts; it is perception. It is seeing a complex concrete reality in a highly lucid and richly responsive way.15

Revealing others to us in this way is the task of art,
particularly literature, and a life worth living
requires learning the lessons art has to teach.

Teasing out a viable concept of human flourishing is a multi-faceted and difficult task. Some of the necessary work is already being done by disciplines as diverse as evolutionary psychology, philosophy, social psychology, economics, and comparative literature. Unfortunately, the disciplines are not talking to each other in any systematic way. If Glover's vision of an empirical ethics is to become reality, this situation has to be rectified.

Part 3 - Objections and replies.

There are three objections commonly raised to a project of the sort I have been outlining. The first is that this is yet another illegitimate is/ought jump, another blundering naturalistic fallacy. The second is that human nature and human psychology is culturally specific and not universal enough to serve as a foundation for ethics. The third is that, even if this account is correct, it is a mistake to promulgate and believe it. Undermining a belief in a law concept of ethics will inevitably undermine our commitment to moral behavior. I will address these objections in order.

The charge of having committed a naturalistic fallacy is often the first to be leveled at any supporter of eudaimonistic ethics. An account of what a fulfilled person would look like does not by itself provide an obligation for anyone to seek that fulfillment. Or, as Philippa Foot says the missing element is the "recognition of a duty to adopt those ends we have attributed to the moral man."17 Why, for instance, should someone care about the well-being of others? There are two lines of response here. The first is that the search for a duty to adopt certain ends is destined to be frustrated. As Foot puts it, people seeking such a categorical ought "are relying on an illusion, as if trying to give the moral "ought" a magic force.17

The second line of response is to follow Mill. He too recognized that there could be no free floating "ought" and no proof "in the ordinary and popular meaning of the term" of the principle of utility. Instead there are "considerations ... capable of determining the intellect."18 One such consideration is that a life worth living has as one of its necessary components "genuine private affections and a sincere interest in the public good."19 We should care about the well-being of others because it is an essential component of a satisfying life. We have good reason to believe that this is the case because those who have tried various sorts of life report that a life with genuine affections is better than a life without. This, too, is an empirical claim and Mill's argument can be bolstered with the work of empirical psychologists.

The second objection to the kind of empirical ethics I am suggesting comes from those schools of sociology and anthropology which see all human behavior as dependent on human culture. Human culture, they claim, is consistent only in its inconsistencies. If culture is universal only in its particularities, how can any common ethical foundation be discovered? There are two lines of response to this objection. The first is to note that our common evolutionary heritage, combined with the increasing evidence of how that heritage shapes our personalities and culture, makes it reasonable to assume that there is a common human nature. As Matt Ridley puts it:

for all their superficial differences of language
and custom, foreign cultures are still immediately
comprehensible at the deeper level of motives,
emotions, and social habits.20

This claim is further bolstered by the recognition that the commonality of human experience is also evident in the way art speaks across time, space, and culture.

The second line of response is to note that the claim that human differences are as significant within cultures as they are across cultures is an empirical question and should be settled empirically. Take for instance the often touted contrast between the "Western values" of liberty, individualism and rationalism on the one hand, and so called "Asian values," among them obedience and adherence to tradition.21 There are two pitfalls to avoid when making claims about such differences: ignorance and self interest. Trying to understand another culture is a vast undertaking that requires considerable time, effort and intelligence as anyone who has changed countries can attest to. Glib and easy assertions about cultural relativism often rest on a shallow empirical foundation. Cultures express themselves through literature, art, and theology as well as the political speeches of leaders. As Theodore DeBary argues, a tradition like Confucianism can be seen as more or less "other" depending on whether one looks "only for historical and cultural differences and not for human commonalities."22

The problem of self interest plagues both sides of the divide. As Amartya Sen points out, authoritarian regimes often have autocratic reasons for championing Asian values and, on this side of the divide,

Different cultures are ... interpreted in ways that
reinforce the political conviction that Western
civilization is somehow the main, perhaps the only,
source of rationalistic and liberal ideas.23

The third objection to the kind of ethics I am suggesting lies in the fear that jettisoning a law concept of ethics will lead to a lack of commitment to moral behavior. One reviewer of Ridley's book wrote that

I have met a few evolutionary psychologists, and they
seem like cultured, well-mannered individuals who do
not beat their children or murder their undesirable cousins
... but I do worry about the morality of those who follow
their doctrines to their logical ends.24

On a more serious note, Glover reflects the same concern when he says that high standards need strong sources. This is the objection that ttroubles me the most but I think it behooves us to be clear-eyed about it. Fear of the consequences is no reason to reassert a law concept of ethics. I also think we have to trust ourselves a bit more. Evolutionary biology tells us we are hardwired for compassion and cooperation. It is our task to cultivate our moral resources in order to keep alive a world in which we may all live fulfilled lives. Philippa Foot put it more eloquently.

We are apt to panic at the thought that we ourselves, or
other people, might stop caring about the things we do
gives us some control over the situation. But it is
interesting that the people of Leningrad were not struck by
the thought that only the contingent fact that other citizens
shared their loyalty and devotion to the city stood
between them and the Germans in the terrible years of
siege. Perhaps we should be less troubled than we are by
fear of defection from the moral cause; perhaps we should
even have less reason to fear it if people thought of
themselves as volunteers banded together to fight for
liberty and justice and against inhumanity and
oppression.25

Conclusion

I have argued that any attempt to base ethics on an external foundation, to seek a law concept of ethics, is doomed to failure. But that this does not mean that we are destined to slide into a Nietzschean morass. We need to look elsewhere for a reason to behave in certain ways.26 I am convinced that one of the reasons our moral resources get undermined and overwhelmed is that we do not clearly grasp what we are losing during this process. We lose a life worth living, a fulfilled human existence. Combining the resources of philosophy, expressive art, and empirical science into an empirical ethics will enable us to articulate and defend that telos.

Notes

1 Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals Kant's Second Edition Trans. H.J. Paton 29

2 Twilight of the Idols, ch. 7, s. 1.

3 Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century p. 12.

4 "Modern Moral Philosophy" Philosophy (1958)

5 After Virtue p. 263

6 After Virtue p. 53

7 After Virtue p. 159

8 After Virtue p. 161

9 Humanity p. 406

10 "Modern Moral Philosophy" Philosophy (1958) p. 26.

11 Matt Ridley The Origins of Virtue p. 249

12 The Quality of Life 1993

13 The Quality of Life 1993 p. 31

14 The Quality of Life 1993 p. 31

15 "Finely Aware and Richly Responsible: Moral Attention and the Moral Task of Literature" The Journal of Philosophy 1985, p 521.

16 "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives" The Philosophical Review, 1952.

17 "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives" The Philosophical Review, 1952.

18 Utilitarianism, Chapter 1

19 Utilitarianism, Chapter 2

20 Matt Ridley The Origins of Virtue

21 See for instance Gertrude Himmelfarb's claim that ideals of justice, right, reason, and love of humanity are "predominantly, perhaps even uniquely, Western Values." Gertrude Himmelfarb, "The Illusions of Cosmopolitanism" in Martha Nussbaum with Respondents, For Love of Country (Beacon Press, 1996) pp. 74 - 75.

22 Wm. Theodore DeBary Asian Values and Human Rights p. 158.

23 Amartya Sen, "East and West: The Reach of Reason" New York Review of Books, July 20, 2000. P 36.

24 Philip Yancey "The Unmoral Prophets." Christianity

Today Oct. 5, 1998, p 76.

25 "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives" The Philosophical Review, 1952.

26 I don't know if papers can have theme songs but if they can the theme song for this paper would be "Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places." Fearful of the all-or-nothing dichotomy, humanity has poured untold resources into looking for external standards. We have been looking outward to the heavens when we should have been looking inward to our own natures.