Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals

by Iris Murdoch

  (Systematic Theology, Part II, section I.)

  Heidegger suggested that only now can the concept of divinity be genuinely considered and understood. Perhaps it is true that we are, in this age, really in a general forum considering it openly at last. Tillich glances at the past in speaking of something which was, and is, ‘no longer seen’. One may also say that religion involving supernatural beliefs (in a literal after-life etc.) was always partly a kind of illusion, and that we are now being forced by an inevitable sophistication to have a demythologised religion or none at all. In this time of deep change, it seems better to drop the old word ‘God’ with its intimations of an elsewhere, and of an omniscient spectator and responsive super-thou. Religion can exist without this western concept of a personal God, and does so in Buddhism and Hinduism.

  However it may also be said of those who pursue this line of thought that they are changing religion into philosophy before our eyes. Heraclitus said that the one which alone is wise does not want, and wants, to be called Zeus. The Ens Readissimum does not want to be called God, but also does. He seems to need and want a persona and a name, and we are but too eager to give it to him, as it brings him closer and comforts us; on the other hand he does not want it because if he be named as an individual he becomes but one more contingent thing among others, even if the grandest one, and subject to the fate of what is contingent. Too great a refinement loses the thing itself. Is not religion to do with going to a shrine and kneeling down and worshipping? Well, worship is something personal and symbolic which each individual must ‘make his own’. The outward and visible things show us the inward and invisible things. There are all sorts of ways in which we use the visible for the invisible, life is riddled with metaphor and symbolism, this is not a ‘special subject’, it is everywhere. Religious ritual (in the strict sense) is both a special case and a delicate plant. Our prejudices about it are very deep and can be very irrational. Catholics and Protestants are amazed and horrified at each other’s procedures. I have been arguing in various ways for a moral philosophy which accommodates the ‘unconditional element in the structure of reason and reality’. Theology has always had to ‘place’ (relate to) ethics, whereas ethics has often ignored theology. A changing theology may now more easily relate to a changing ethics. The institutions of religion must of course look after themselves and the argument about morality is independent of historically based speculations about the future of church-going or reactions to the particular activities of religious groups. Moral philosophy must also include political philosophy, must be organised to accommodate the morality of political thinking, a subject which arouses much emotion in popular discussion. Ideally a (western) philosopher should know and consider the whole of philosophy, that is (in the west) from the Greeks to the present day; and also know something about oriental religion (that is, philosophy). Moral philosophy must of course be conscious of the criticisms of traditional metaphysics which have occupied philosophers since Kant, and particularly in this century. If we now call a philosophy ‘metaphysics’ are we redefining the term? (The Ontological Proof raises the question: What is metaphysics?) A metaphysical argument is characteristically inconclusive and involves an appeal to experience which is partly a use of art. (Metaphysics as a kind of magic: Wittgenstein.) The artist makes us see what is, in a sense manifestly and edifyingly open to discussion, there (real), but unseen before, and the metaphysician does this too. Art and philosophy enliven the concept of reality. This is a place where the word ‘being’ is also used, which I prefer to avoid. The language of ontology may divide the argument from ordinary testable experience just at the point where it is most important to join it. Jargon removes us from our experienced world. The sophisticated language of great art is not jargon. Of course great philosophers generate technical terms, but they also offer them most evidently as explanations and justifications of what is experienced. In my view, the propagation of technical terms should be left to geniuses. (Perhaps the under-labourers of philosophy should aspire to the status of art critics.) And indeed, if we reflect, there are not all that many essential technical terms in philosophy.

  Even if it should prove to be the case that nothing we would now call religion is destined to survive, philosophical arguments may still properly be offered to the effect that morality must be philosophically defined in terms of an unconditional demand. ‘The religious life’ often employs ritual, which is not an essential item in ‘the moral life’. One may be attracted by various kinds of religious ritual, see and feel them as vehicles of enlightenment, as exercises likely to strengthen good desires; and in wanting religion to survive, want ritual to survive too. This is unlike the idle admiration for great or famous men which, as Kierkegaard says, soothes the soul and induces ‘sound sleep’. Holy objects are venerated as pure radiant sources removed from the world yet acting directly upon it. The ritual object speaks directly to the soul, it is meant to be immediately ingested and is itself an image of good and of good persons which is at once an inspiration, and a judgment of oneself. Religion as ritual is a recognition of the oneness of life, and in this sense relates naturally to art and can be a source of joy. So ritual should survive too? Yes. These remarks may seem otiose in a world still full of places and objects of worship. But these precious icons can vanish very quickly, as we see in China, and also in many parts of our western civilisation.

  Metaphysics shows us the internal relations between concepts of great generality, and in doing so may appeal to experience by using all sorts of particular examples. Metaphysicians speak in quasi-tautologies which can be sources of illumination. What is unconditional demands a sense of certainty. Of course there are false ‘certainties’. Certainty may generate hubris. An emphatic sense of the concept of the unconditional as the basis of morals and the highest goal of knowledge is to be found in the philosophy of Descartes and Kant. Descartes was said to have ‘perfected’ Anselm’s Proof, Kant to have destroyed it. Descartes was in a position comparable with that of Anselm in knowing that God existed; whereas Kant’s thoughts about God belong to, and in a sense begin, the modern age. Anselm quotes St Paul about how the invisible things of God are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made. God is both invisible and clearly seen. Clear seeing: an idea essential to Descartes. His version of the Proof in the Third Meditation is a complex structure. Descartes has already argued that cogito ergo sum. What follows, intimately connected with the cogito, appears as a proof that I give to myself. I am sure that I exist (now) because of the clearness and distinctness with which I apprehend this. This unique momentary intuition is one thing I can be absolutely certain is not an illusion. Clear distinct knowledge is also called by Descartes ‘the natural light’. (Metaphors of vision.) The truths of mathematics also stand out clearly in this light. Could I be deceived about these? Descartes is reluctant to believe that such clearly and distinctly perceived notions could be false. Mathematics enters as a cautious support to the idea that what is clearly and distinctly perceived is true. Descartes is certain that he possesses the idea of God. He reflects that as the idea of substance has more objective reality than the idea of accidents, so the idea of God has more objective reality than any other idea. I know myself to be imperfect yet I have this idea of perfection, so must it not be derived from elsewhere, and must not the cause be at least as great as the effect? The idea of what is so great must have come from as great an origin.

  This may remind us again of the myth of anamnesis in the Meno. We can only learn what we already know, what we can, as it were, remember. If we have ideas of good or perfection in an imperfect world these must be derived from a higher source. We have to find our certainties for ourselves, in ourselves, and we must believe in our duty and ability to discover and make our own the truths which we first intuit or make out as shadows. We can only be sure of what we have thus personally found out and appropriated. Here we find ourselves close to Kant’s Categorical Imperative, the moral confidence which can only be
consulted in each individual bosom, not blindly accepted on external authority, and his Ideas of Reason, which constantly inspire us to seek truths which we intuit but have not yet fully discovered. An understanding and practice of goodness clarifies the intuitions of it which arise in the soul. In the Phaedrus the disincarnate soul is pictured as seeing the Forms clearly and distinctly. A vision of moral certainty, of a pure light, of the magnetism of truth and access to reality is central and essential in human existence; it is something which each individual can, and can only, discover for and in himself. This is the spiritual force and energy which moves us toward virtue, and it is as if it came from a divine source, and is the form in which, at our different levels of achievement, we can know the divine.

  To return to Descartes. Could I exist without God? No. The conservation of a substance requires the same power as is necessary to create it. Some self-subsistent cause must exist. I return to my own mind and find the idea of God innate therein, grasped with the same clarity as that with which I grasp myself and at the same time. It must be grasped at the same time, within the momentary cogitatio, since, on the previous argument, cogito ergo sum represents a unique self-certifying moment of personal certainty, and anything outside the cogitatio may be illusory. God cannot be a deceiver since the natural light tells me that all falsehood springs from some defect. I could not possibly be as I am and yet have the idea of God if God did not exist. I grasp myself and God in one. This argument is an example of the partly circular juggling which the human mind indulges in when determined to argue for something which it already knows. Such argument is also characteristic of metaphysics. This ‘package’ combines Platonic conceptions of verification (truth-finding) and degrees of reality with a ‘modern’ (new) conception of the primacy of consciousness, and justifies intuitive faith in God in terms of a basis for morality and empirical knowledge. The idea of God (perfection, most real) must come from elsewhere, mediated to us through some sort of immediate intuitive conception of it, packed up inside the cogito and found to be indubitable. It coheres with everything else we know about truth and cognition, and at once goes beyond these and guarantees them. There is an appeal to experience, of knowing and discovering truth, as well as to intuition of the essence of morality (goodness, virtue as God). Descartes knows what it is like to perceive something, for instance the truths of mathematics, so clear, so immediately apprehensible, as indubitably true. Plato too chooses a mathematical example in the Meno and allots a special status to mathematical objects in the Republic. A general acquaintance with tested certainty and truth and clear-seeing, an ability to think seriously and honestly, works to support what is already innately known. Goodness joins with knowledge, moral vision is cognitive. Through learning and striving and truthfulness we are accorded a ‘proof’ of the divine; and this may be said also to be in the spirit of the Meno Socrates. In the Fifth Meditation Descartes makes a fresh move. Has he accorded too much value to the clarity of mathematics, could one not doubt even the truths of geometry without being certain that God exists? He is here prodding at the circularity of the argument. He proceeds by adding another kind of circularity. God cannot be a deceiver, we can be confident not only of the specialised and recherche truths of mathematics, but of what is surely even more evident and open to all, the world of material things. He gradually joins his central certainty to his peripheral certainties and allows them to support each other. Everything must prove God. Descartes is no longer shut inside his mind but returns to the world where, although he may have illusions and make mistakes, he can confidently trust the ‘natural light’ of truth-seeking. In this context he looks back to Anselm and ‘discovers that existence is a perfection’. Reality must belong to what is most perfect. Just as when I think of a triangle I think of certain essential properties thereof, so when I think of God I must think of him as real:

  ‘Whatever mode of probation I in the end adopt it always returns to this, that it is only the things I clearly and distinctly perceive which have the power of completely persuading me. And although, of the objects I conceive in this manner some indeed are obvious to everyone, while others are only discovered after close and careful investigation, nevertheless after they are once discovered, the latter are not esteemed less certain than the former. Thus, for example, to take the case of a right-angled triangle, although it is not so manifest at first that the square of the base is equal to the squares of the other two sides, as that the base is opposite to the greatest angle, nevertheless, after it is once apprehended, we are as firmly persuaded of the truth of the former as of the latter. And with respect to God, if I were not preoccupied by prejudices and my thoughts beset on all sides by the continual presence of the images of sensible objects, I should know nothing sooner or more easily than the fact of his being.’

  Descartes adds, reaffirming his circle of internal relations, that the certitude of all truths depends on the existence of God and that ‘without this knowledge it is impossible to know anything perfectly’. The full apprehension of God, like the philosophical argument of the cogito with which it is connected, demands a certain reflective concentration. Yet also all clear cognition of what is ‘obvious to everyone’ (such as material objects) as well as what is only ‘discovered after close and careful investigation’ (such as properties of triangles) points toward and evidences the existence of God as supremely real. All learning, all cognition, all truth-finding and testing of verification, in perception, in mathematics and (I add) in art, in craft, in love, indicate the connection of the good and the real. Serious reflection is ipso facto moral effort and involves a heightened sense of value and a vision of perfection. Certainty and necessity live with intimations of perfection. Descartes’ sense of the existence of material things in which the natural light gives him confidence thus reinforces and gives body to his belief in the existence of God. There is here a dialectic or oscillation or ferment within which fundamental ideas enlighten and support each other. This kind of metaphysical argument may displease many critics and never be capable of perfect clarity, but it is the way human beings often tend to think, at less exalted levels also, about serious matters. As when we give a certain weight in a complex situation to our sense of someone as ‘truthful’, or set aside an instinctive belief for a while when struggling with an alien concept, then welcome the belief back again in a modified form. Descartes, devout Catholic and scientist, worked with passionate ingenuity to fit God and science metaphysically together. At the end of his Principles he submits ‘all my opinions to the authority of the church’, but adds that no one is to believe them unless ‘constrained by the force and evidence of reason’.

  Kant also argues by juggling together a number of large concepts which give each other mutual support. As he frankly says, in the Grundlegung, he assumes freedom and a rational will because of the existence of the moral law, and then proves the reality of the moral law through the concept of freedom. This, he adds, is ‘a petitio principii which well-disposed minds will readily grant us’. Later he professes to remove this circle by saying that when we conceive of ourselves as free we ‘transfer’ ourselves to the world of understanding, whereas when we feel we are under obligation we are experiencing our belongingness to the world of sense as well. Kant’s division of fact from value is felicitously complicated by the particularity of duty. Reason is a universal faculty, the same for all, but each individual is differently situated and brings spirit into ‘his own’ world by seeing it in Reason’s light. God does not appear in this picture, he is veiled, an object of faith, that faith which Kant’s limitation of reason and his rational agnosticism make a space for. We are ourselves moral sources, able to be sure about morality and to be confident judges of our spiritual life. Kant’s metaphysic is a model of demythologisation, wherein God, if present, is secluded. The Grundlegung hints that, from the existence of the moral law, we can perhaps intuit a supreme lawgiver who will introduce happiness into the summum bonum; but strictly speaking this must be regarded as a slip! K
ant fears happiness as Plato fears art. A search for happiness here below would be for Kant heteronomous, a surrender to egoistic desires. Happy love can be an ingenious moral cheat. Happiness is not our business, and speculations about what God might do about it are not only empty, but likely to mislead us into giving it a value. Plato’s Eros, by contrast, is potentially a happy lover, at many levels, and the joy which breathes in the art of the dialogues is itself a sign or symbol of the possibility of spiritual happiness. Kant’s God, who may or may not join happiness to goodness, is a mystery. But the unconditional element in human life is clearly and indubitably visible to all in the categorical imperative of duty. Kant makes an inconclusive attempt to draw human society into the background of the argument by emphasising the generality, as well as the universality, of reason, and connecting certain very general imperatives (such as ‘Do not lie’) with the bases of human association. Society is not for Kant, in the sense in which it was for Marx, an absolute, a prime reality or goal, a touchstone. Yet the notion of an ideal society or Kingdom of Ends, where the rational purposes of all individuals form a harmony, is an important ancillary member of his system of internally related concepts. The idea of the perfect society has of course a long history in philosophy and theology. Rousseau, whom Kant admired, and later of course Hegel and Marx, took the idea of perfect social harmony as a conceivably attainable political aim. However, in Kant’s metaphysic of morals the shadow of complete social integration appears as an Idea of Reason, a rational inspiration or inspiring image, in the context of individual moral activity. The scattered pieces of such a general harmony are to be found ‘crystallising out’ wherever peace emerges from conflict as a result of the reasonable unselfish truthful goodwill of any group of persons. And one could imagine that small (for instance monastic or Lutheran) like-minded societies could properly live by principles (such as ‘Never lie’) which were not only universal but very general. (Remember Jeanie Deans.) But the warnings against heteronomous morality in the Grundlegung clearly operate against any social ideal which might override individual conscience.