Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals

by Iris Murdoch

  Hume and Kant saw imagination as a necessary faculty mediating between ‘sense’ and ‘thought’. Both philosophers were concerned not only with what we can know, but also with the actual operation and construction of our ‘consciousness’. When we think about ‘the world’ or about ‘our own soul’ or ‘good and evil’, we picture an order with shifting degrees of mediation. (Metaphors.) Coleridge spoke of the importance of thinking in images. Modern philosophers and theologians criticise what they regard as misleading imagery (inner — outer, above — below). We live by developing imagery and also by discarding it. The ‘modern crisis’ can be seen as a crisis about imagery (myth, metaphysics). Reflections upon the sensuous-intellectual nature of our mental being refer us to our ‘consciousness’. What are we to do with this concept, also in crisis? (Wittgenstein evades it, Derrida rejects it.) A conception of imagination demands a conception of consciousness; at any rate if we need to speak of imagination we need also to speak of consciousness. Our inward being happens moment-to-moment. Thinking and feeling imagery is not like an internal cinema show. Yet it is not unlike it either. Nor does the fact that we use metaphors in talking or writing imply that these, or any, metaphorical pictures are privately present. To say I think (doubt, imagine, etc.) need not imply a present mental content. Yet it is not true that there is no significant inward pictorial mental activity, or that we must philosophically obliterate ‘consciousness’. The concept is unique, essential, and difficult to talk about, yet what is closer and (in a sense) what else is there? Hegelian idealism ‘ruins’ consciousness as it ‘ruins’ imagination by making it swallow and be everything. We must attach consciousness to the individual thinker, it is part of his definition and his particular mode of being. Ordinary language admits ‘states of consciousness’, literature and literary criticism allow ‘streams of consciousness’. These are not isolated tropes, but references to something which we can all recognise. It must be mentioned here as a problematic concept and exhibited in use, as when one might say that non-verbal consciousness is the ground of metaphor, or that our deepest not yet explicit thinking is alive with movement already grasped in a pictorial manner. The poet seeking an image, anyone anxiously composing an adequate description, ‘gropes in the dark’. Behind the idea of a mediation between sense and thought lies the deep not yet formed thought-sense activity of the mind, which we must attempt to speak of and not simply surrender to empirical science. Discussion of the place of imagination and metaphor in our lives is not just about figurative writing or clarified metaphorical speech or explicit virtually verbal thought, but (also) about what our private unclarified but often very strong and present thinking and experiencing is like. At deep levels metaphor and perception merge. Perception is a mode of evaluation.

  Images of light and space and movement are fundamental to our modes of cognition. When St Paul tells us to think about whatsoever things are honest, just, pure, lovely and of good report, he believes rightly that we know how to perform this feat of imagination. How do we know how to do it? Oddly enough we do. (We can distinguish too between doing it in a vague feeble way and attempting to do it better.) Observe the assemblage of related moral Forms. Moral imagination is partly aesthetic, it is a place where the aesthetic is moralised. If we have been touched by religion our minds are likely to be full of readily available religious imagery which there is no need to expel simply because (as it may be) we do not believe in God. Some kinds of puritanism and some kinds of Kantian philosophy point in the direction of an imageless morality. Strip the church and strip your mind as well. Islam forbids some images, Judaism is wary of all images. Of course the danger of idolatry, of taking the shadows for real (and the mythology too literally) is always present. We live by moving beyond our images and can recognise the effort of deliberately moving out into a ‘blank’ or ‘void’. This could be a kind of prayer, or part of an artist’s discipline. But we live normally and naturally by metaphors and pictures, some of which are in fairly clear and acceptable ways translatable into less figurative modes, while others seem ‘deep’ and resist analysis. We may have to use very general and ambiguous terms or other images in answer to the question, ‘How do you mean?’ ‘How do you mean you see the light, what light, what exactly does it show, and what was. visible before?’ Such are deep ways in which we think about and judge ourselves and explain ourselves to others and try to understand them. Herein too we can understand Plato’s picture of the progressive destruction of images. There is a continuous breeding of imagery in the consciousness which is, for better or worse, a function of moral change. This slow constant genesis reflects and affects the quality of our attachments and desires. With St Paul’s admonition in mind, I think that what we literally see is important. Perception is both evaluation and inspiration, even at the level of ‘just seeing’. Sometimes what we see is ‘highly significant’, but just looking out of the window is important too. We should also feel socially responsible about what in our society people always or never see. Vision is the dominant sense. Urban poverty can impose relentlessly ugly surroundings. (No trees.) Also of course, and ideally, we should all have the aesthetic training needed to find beauty and interest in apparently charmless and commonplace scenes. Every child should be taught not only how to paint but how to look at paintings. The discipline of art, whether in creator or client, stirs and instructs the senses. Here we should also reflect upon the deep effects of television, for instance upon the fact that so many citizens go to bed at night with their heads full of overwhelmingly clear and powerful images of horror and violence. Television can show us beautiful and fascinating things, distant landscapes and works of art, detailed pictures of animals and revealing close-ups of human faces, but it can also commit terrible crimes against the visible world. I am inclined to think that it blunts our general sense of colour and light and reduces rather than enhances our ability to see the detail of our surroundings. It is an instance, and indeed an image or parable, of how the packaged services of increasingly perfected technology reduce our ability to think and imagine for ourselves.

  This ‘breeding of imagery’ is a familiar aspect of our moment-to-moment, minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour ‘consciousness’, and contributes to giving body to the concept. Our busy minds are (for better or worse) not often empty or idle. Such activity constitutes, in my picture of the matter, a large part of our fundamental moral disposition, it is a function of what we really value, what we love and are magnetised by, and of what we are capable of noticing. I do not want to use the word ‘will’ (moral will) to describe this deep level, because of its Kantian and existentialist connotations. The distinction between intellect and will is, as I have suggested, misleading. I would (as I said earlier) see ‘will’, or to be clearer ‘effort of will’, in a narrower use, as when an act, good or bad, is consciously forced into being against the general tenor of the personality. Obedience to duty may involve force of will. It is also possible for a bad act to be felt as overwhelmingly necessary, even ‘as a sort of duty’, against the good forces, including the habitual strong desires, of a personality alien to it (as perhaps in the case of Macbeth). When should one speak in terms of a sudden quantity into quality change after a long unseen build-up of a new attitude? Novelists, who ‘know’ their characters, can confidently describe these deep things, in real life it is more difficult. ‘Acts of will’, thought of as acts of violence against structures of preformed character, can release fresh good or bad energy. However, moral change for the better happens, if at all, slowly, as new modes of outlook (metaphor) and new desires come into being. Sudden conversions and dramatic new starts can be significant if a new external regime can be established, which then gradually assists the inward change, which cannot happen all at once, upon its way. A new outward landscape assists the imaginative creation of a new inward one. Old associations must be broken in the mind, new ones made. One escapes (often) from really seductive temptation, not by a sudden violent inward ‘act of will’ which redirects the character,
but by an external change such as literally running away, making something impossible, winning time to develop other attachments, to imagine how things might be different. The outward not the inward move may often (as I said earlier) initiate the change; one stops going to a certain place or seeing a certain person. Falling out of love (with a person, possession or activity) is a skill we should all have access to. The background to all such change is our general (moral, spiritual) tendency to descend rather than to rise, which Simone Weil called gravity. Better conduct is often harder and less natural than mediocre or bad conduct. It is not easy to sacrifice strong egoistic attachments or break bad habits. We ‘satisfy our conscience’ by doing half the task; surely more cannot be required of us. We can always say: well, other people do this. These are among the best-known facts concerning the human condition.

  A habit of decent conduct may come by temperament or conditioning or may be consciously achieved. To establish or maintain such habits may be difficult, the requirement to rise above them shocking. One may put it thus, that we cannot see the point of being moral beyond a certain level, we cannot imagine it except in terms of pure damaging disadvantage. Kant thought we were all framed by nature to respect what was rational, and that such respect was accompanied by a kind of proud pleasure (in the capacity for free rational thought) as well as by distress at the frustration of desire. He denied that this pleasure could be a moral motive, the moral act being essentially a motiveless assent to reason. Desires, carriers of imagination and fantasy, including ‘pathological’ (as opposed to practical) love, belong to the phenomenal self. If at this point we (I) part company with Kant, it is in the interests of a more realistic and flexible account of moral progress, as a purification and reorientation of desire. That spontaneity of imagination which Kant allows in empirical knowledge (in the ‘creation’ of an object), and also in artistic genius and sublime experience, has its place in morals too. The good (better) man is liberated from selfish fantasy, can see himself as others see him, imagine the needs of other people, love unselfishly, lucidly envisage and desire what is truly valuable. This is the ideal picture. Effective moral motivation, such as may produce ‘excellent results’ (promotion of justice, good happiness for others, etc.) may be, and admittedly, very mixed, may include magical Gnostic thrills, a wish to please a virtuous mentor, desire to appear good not easily distinguishable from desire to be good. It is at least something if we notice and want to be commended by virtuous people, or have an intuitive sense of what we would be like if we were better! Schopenhauer, who thought moral change was almost impossible, said that virtue usually consisted of pride, timidity, desire for advancement, fear of censure and fear of the gods. Yet, so mixed up are we, pride, fear of disgrace, and intelligent (one might even say well-intentioned) hypocrisy, can lead to genuine change. We flee from one place to another hoping for better ‘moral luck’. Hamlet advised his mother to assume a virtue even if she had it not, abstention from sin would then be easier. It is usually, for better or worse, easier to do something a second time. Literature tends to be more interested in dramatic moral change than in good habits, we tend to think more about the former than the latter because it is pleasant to fantasise a rapid easy escape and a miraculous removal of the burden of thickened egoism. Plato pointed out that writers find bad unstable men more interesting than steady good men. The romantic sinner, supposed to be ‘really’ more saintly than dull well-behaved folk, is a familiar contemporary hero. Pictures of swift (even instant) salvation may also of course be offered in religious contexts to save, or with the effect of saving, sinners from despair and to inspire them to persevere in virtue. Here the idea of forgiveness and reconciliation (with or without God) may properly be detached from the magical prospect of fast moral change. The Prodigal Son is more attractive than his brother, but the latter, who in his dull way never abandoned his decent habits, might also be taken as a model. The retention of innocence is an important and underrated idea in morals. One would also like to know whether, on the whole, Mary or Martha led a better life. Religious mythology which dramatises the spiritual life for purposes of edification can bring sudden insight but may also be looked at with a calm eye. Persisting historical and personal differences in attitude and style are involved here: such as, in Christianity, can be seen in the contrast of St Paul with the Gospel writers, and of the first three Gospels with the fourth. Plato’s Eros can be seen as a figure of divine grace. Surely there is such a power. Yet is not Eros also a trickster, as Plato suggests in the Symposium? Any artist, or thinker, knows of what may be called ‘help from the unconscious mind’, sometimes called inspiration. One lives for a time with dull intractable material which is suddenly irradiated and transformed by a new vision. Rat-like fantasies or old stale thoughts are metamorphosed or dislodged by the creative force of imagination. Such changes, often so remarkable, explicable sometimes, as we may try to see them later, in ‘quantity into quality’ terms, can appear too as absolute novelty, something which comes ‘from beyond’, as it might be from God. And if we say this we are speaking too of ‘moral inspiration’, as in ‘conversion’, or as in more everyday changes of heart. (Suddenly the resentment ceases, the spring of love returns.) Thus in speculation upon human nature, whether in real life or in moral philosophy or in fiction, we may move from an instructive instance of something exceptional to the thought: But we are all like that.

  Of course art and morals have a different status, altogether a different place in human life. Moral and aesthetic imagination are different from each other though often on reflection hard to distinguish. Artists need (as artists) virtues such as courage, patience, etc. On the other hand really good art, rare as it is, is easier and more natural than really good life. Thinking about goodness inclines us to say this; although because all art instinctively aims at visibility, and much virtue at invisibility, it would be hard to prove. Good life is required of us in a sense in which good art is not. Moral seriousness is required of us, we blame frivolity in moral situations. Morality is ubiquitous and we expect a primary recognition of it; whereas we do not have to be, in the ordinary specialised sense of that word, artists. If we are artists, we are not morally blamed for being bad ones (mediocre, tenth-rate, etc.) unless there are special circumstances. We may (for instance) be blamed for wasting our time; or for producing depraved or pornographic work, or for deliberately and wilfully debasing our talents by producing bad commercially successful work. If an artist who could do better does worse because he needs money to feed his family, we excuse him while criticising his art. If a man takes what is not his own in order to feed his family, if we exonerate him we may also classify his act as blameless. In general, sheer lack of artistic skill is not a fault, there is no harm in cultivating a very modest talent, and we may not feel bound to exhort a mediocre artist to ‘try harder’, because art (in the ordinary sense) is not compulsory, it does not matter if, here or there, it exists or not. Of course good art benefits a society, but must be allowed to happen spontaneously, and we condemn societies which coerce artists. The contiguous area between art activity and moral activity is, as indicated, complex and variegated, though for ordinary purposes we can usually sort it out fairly easily. I have used an extended sense of the aesthetic in which ‘we are all artists’: ‘use of language is use of imagination’, and ‘perception is creative evaluation’. These are formulations, designed to evade being tautological or senseless, intended in their context to draw attention to areas of reality which are ‘ordinarily’ missed or misunderstood. It could for instance be misleading to divide language between dull blunted ordinary language used by ordinary folk, and elegant precise language used by educated or aesthetically sensitive people. Anyone can talk well, anyone (if he can write) can write ‘a good letter’, many people, whether or not they can write, can dance and sing, more people than we might imagine can draw expressively, everyone can rearrange his possessions (and so on). Anyone can try to imagine someone else’s plight. Looked at in this way life c
an be seen as full of aesthetic imaginative activity which is also, scarcely distinguishably, moral activity. Must we, it might be asked, anxious lest the aesthetic corrupt the moral, always make the distinction?

  The apparent area occupied by the concept of imagination is very large and amorphous. Perhaps it would be better just to try to discern the elements of which it seems to be composed. Of course one must attempt this in any case, but the presence of the word, with its strong associations, may too much suggest a unity in diversity. One must ask, at various points, what the concept is doing, and whether it represents an unnecessary emotive mystification. Would it be helpful, for instance, to define imagination as primarily an aesthetic faculty? Kant values genius, but nothing is more fundamental than ordinary morality, and here he enjoins a movement toward cool reason out of the warmer medley of pictures and feelings. (Don’t picture Christ, consult your own rational conscience.) Such general advice must always be available; a contrast between an imaginative grasp and a rational grasp of a situation could be illuminating. ‘He lacks imagination’ is often uttered as a reproach, but ‘imaginative activity’ is not always what is required. Imagination can ‘go too far’, ‘become too personal’, ‘be an end in itself’. Here we must avoid the temptation to simplify the problem by a general reference to the distinction between good creative imagination and fantasy imagination. Perhaps in some kinds of moral thinking imagination, in anything like its ordinary senses, is out of place. Imaginative speculation about the consequences of an action may in some cases be irrelevant. (For instance in a straightforward case of keeping a promise.) In some decisions we should not ‘think too precisely upon the event’. The doubter is called back from imaginative speculation toward the required form of the act. Imaginative reflection upon a moral choice can become too aesthetic, can tempt us to be stylish rather than to be right. The conception of ‘too aesthetic’ is recognisable and frequent. On the other hand to distinguish a moral from an aesthetic use of the imagination may be in general difficult and indeed undesirable. Consider how difficult it is in a scrutiny of good art. We work roughly in complicated contexts to discern in particular cases whether a writer is too coldly moralistic or a moral agent too self-indulgently imaginative. Metaphors of warm and cool, hot and cold, arise naturally here. Also, we cannot, in considering the ‘place’ of imagination in morals, avoid considering how and whether we are to separate morality from religion. This is indeed a main question posed by the diverse philosophies of Plato and Kant.